A MATTER OF GOATS, by Ben Fenwick:   An eerie call fell down the wind from the dark mountainsides. It was a high-pitched tone that fell slowly into a humanlike, ululating sob. Anton Le Bouveret felt the hairs on his forearms and the back of his neck prickle. The dark, rugged, Balkan shadowland surrounded them […]

THE TOMB ROBBER’S TALE, by Sean P. Robson:   The funeral procession wound like a wailing snake through Mourner’s Row, out the Death Gate, and around the sepulchral neighborhoods of the necropolis to the grand mausoleum of House Torenescu.  As the priests—one each to represent the gods Thanatos, Mithra, and Heka—began the rites of lamentation, […]

LADY CARDULA AND THE GRYPHON, by Shawn Scarber:     Duncan hated human-sized books. Sadly, they were about the only tomes created and though he wrote long letters to the monks who lived in the Sambata monastery imploring them to copy larger editions, his letters often went unanswered. “If I were a dragon, they wouldn’t […]

  A BREATH OF DARKNESS, by Liz Colter:   The wind gusted up the mountain, rattling the pine cones and shaking the blue-green branches of the trees. This was no fickle spring breeze, nor even a winter gale; it was a wind that carried the feel of fangs and decay and misery. # The chorus […]

I WALK TOWARDS DEATH, by Elwin Linhirrie:   I walk towards death with every step An outcome long foretold I keep my time in numbered breaths More precious now than gold   Immortal once, or so they said A life made mortal now The curtain drops upon the stage The actor takes his bow   […]