THAT SLEEP OF DEATH, by Mary-Jean Harris   “There is no religion higher than Truth,” Lady Wickham spoke as she raised her lace handkerchief to her eyes. Before I could comment on the great sensibility of such a phrase, she exclaimed, “Isn’t it blasphemous!” As a philosopher, I could by no means agree with that, […]

THINGS OF SHREDS AND PATCHES, by Norman Doege   Muffled voices and broken songs seeped like slow passion around a carved birch door. Scori, courier to the Lord-Apparent of Bremland, had ridden through the northlands to find himself in the cold dark staring at a brass knocker nestled between a pair of wooden breasts. Over […]

CRAZY SNAKE AND THE DEMONS OF OMETEPE, by Eric Atkisson   What has occurred before: Comanches, white men called them. Lords of the Southern Plains. Warriors and horsemen the likes of which had never been seen, their name was feared and their deeds were legend. From the ranks of this mighty people came one they […]

HUNGER’S END, by Scott Shank   For nine days they had tasted no bread. For five days they had tasted no flesh. The last of their arrows they had lost to the sun-eating canopy, for the little blackcaps that flitted among the branches were too swift. Of other game, there was no trace. No creature […]

DRAGON IN AMBER, by Patrice Sarath   I raised my head and looked at the man who entered my iron prison. My captors had put rings through the once-supple leathery skin of my wings and at the base of my spiked tail, and threaded the iron chains through them so that even a small movement […]