The Spring in the Desert
by Wynne F. Winters
Silas rested her back against a large rock, grateful for the little shade it offered. Red dust danced in the heated wind around her, sticking to the tan skin beneath her tattered clothes. The mountain pass walls stretched hundreds of feet high, but with midday approaching shadows were minimal. The sun beat down relentlessly, with not a single cloud to dull its might. There rarely was — it hadn’t rained here for nearly 100 years.
Silas sucked on the flat stone in her mouth, trying not to think of water. That was the commodity these days — people lied for it, stole for it — even killed for it. When the drought first began no one seemed too concerned — there were water mages aplenty, enough to pull the blessed substance from the ground, and even the air. But then fewer and fewer were born every year, until mages of any kind were considered worth their weight in gold. Any water mages now living were kept under lock and key by the warlords who ruled the vast desert, forcing anyone who wanted access to bend the knee.
Or, like Silas, steal from those people.
Something stirred around the bend in the road, jolting Silas from her reverie.
She knelt, resting her fingers against the ground and closing her eyes. She detected a faint vibration, the sensation growing stronger moment by moment. Quarry.
Moving quickly Silas stood and pocketed her flat stone, already tasting the sparkling water on her tongue. The mountain pass lay between two of the largest warlord compounds, meaning anyone who wanted to travel to one or the other had to make their way through. Silas wasn’t stupid enough to try robbing any of the official convoys, but unaccompanied travelers — they were ripe for the picking.
From what Silas had felt there was one on their way right now.
Rose Strickman
The Monster of Carroch
“Alastair? Alastair!” Callum’s voice echoed off the cave walls, fading away, transfiguring into something like deep laughter, a malicious cackle, before dying in the dark heart of the mountain.
Callum drew his knife; blade at the ready and torch in hand, he pressed deeper into the darkness.
Twice he slipped and nearly fell, only just recovering himself. A roar began to build, the sound of torrential waters pounding around him. Callum grimaced, feet already soaked from the cave’s stream, but kept going. His senses, sharpened by the darkness and stillness of the cavern, told him that there was another human presence here, and not far away. His heart hammered, loud enough it seemed, to echo against the stone.
The passageway squeezed tightly around him, narrowing until he was wriggling more than walking. He was crawling through the cracks until, with one final struggle, he pushed through the passageway, buttons scraping off as he stumbled into a wide, open chamber.
The cave stretched away, far beyond the reach of his torch. The waterfall’s sound was deafening here, thundering into deep water. Callum stepped forward, feet splashing, and saw the waterfall at last.
What had sounded like a huge cataract was only a foot high. The water foamed over a shallow shelf of stone, the cave’s acoustics making it sound like a vast fall, but Callum had no eyes for the waterfall. For there, curled up on a stone island in the middle of the pool, lay Alastair.
The boy lay asleep or unconscious, dark curls tumbling down, face thin and strained even while unconscious. He stirred, murmuring, and Callum nearly collapsed in relief. “Alastair,” he called, but the boy didn’t stir.
Callum started forward, wading into the pool only to freeze as dim forms emerged from the depths. They curled around him, fish-like and serpentine. The elementals of Water bared their fangs at him, scales flashing in their own weird, eldritch light. On the stone island, Earth elementals gathered around the boy, teeth sharp and wet as they snarled at Callum.
He retreated, splashing back out of the pool onto the narrow shore. For a moment he regarded the scene: shallow waterfall, sleeping boy, vicious elementals. Then he let out a barking, humorless laugh.
What We Were Made
by Crystal Lynn Hilbert
Crows carried word through the forest, bloodshed in each beat of their wings.
“The Keeper bore twins,” they called. “Doomed, doomed. Trapped forever! One may break, but two? Two?”
Darkness wept. Shadows rent spruces from their moorings and set them burning an unholy autumn. Screaming filled the empty canopy, “Twins, twins...” the omen howling through the smoke and mist and undergrowth, battering the remnants of the broken kingdom littered between the trees.
I woke in one such fallen stonework.
A fingernail moon lighting my path I sank my claws into the earth. Each gashing strike dragged the wretched shade of my once-bright self from my bed of bones. With much effort I struggled to the lip of a stagnant pool.
There I whispered a curse, a command, and unraveled an insignificant, blood-worn memory into my hand. One of many, worth little, but in its sacrifice, its ghostly entrails an oil-slick on dark water, I spied the Keeper. Sweated and laughing before the chill of an open window, she held two newborn babes. One child howled, red-faced and hands fisted; the other only watched.
Two mouthfuls, I thought. Perhaps three. A morsel more tender than their mother’s insolent offerings.
My forest mourned around me, but I smiled.
I would savor these.
Black Lake Tower
by Cameron Scott Kirk
Rain came down in sheets, driven sideways by the night wind. It created dancing, spasmodic water devils on the surface of the oily, opaque lake, and it pattered down upon the burden boards and center thwart of the small rowboat. Two hooded figures sat therein: one at the oars, the other huddled at the stern, both bearing the brunt of the storm that lashed Black Lake
Black Lake by name, Black Lake by nature.
In the middle of the water an obscene crag jutted, though this was no natural rock formation: here rose the thrice-cursed, sorcerous tower of Ashmith the Vile, known as Oberon the Dead-Dancer among those in the southern climes.
The two aboard the boat called him by a different name, for they hailed from the east. To them the old man in the jagged tower held the title Owl-Spoil, the Necromancer.
Tonight they would kill Owl-Spoil and take the Amulet of Ulfur.
Alvena stopped rowing and peered into the darkness scratched by glinting rainfall, elven eyes scanning the flecked lake.
Lia moved forward to join her at the oars, whispering, “What do you see?”
Alvena pointed. “Water golem. Get down.”
There, at the edge of sight, the water golem stood. It was impossibly balanced on the surface of the lake, its massive frame seemingly made of glass, the pelting rain giving shape to the behemoth’s presence.
“It's almost invisible,” hissed Lia.
“That’s why we cross in the rain. All the old man’s traps and watchdogs will avail him naught. Be silent now; the current takes us past.”
The two elven females crouched low as the rowboat drifted around the periphery of the unmoving water golem, the creature’s square head tilted downwards as it stared soundlessly into the water.
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