“Wilkins, where is Kitty? I have to talk to her.”
“I think she may be in the laboratory, young master. None of the servants are allowed in there.”
“Good. Then that’s where I am going. Best play least-in-sight, Wilkins. I don’t want you in trouble over this business, and it is deep doings. But thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”
“I am glad to be of service, young Master.” He smiled. “In the hall we always thought you and Lady Catherine would make a match of it. It was not to be, but I’d always thought that I would be your man.”
“You may yet be. And I may still surprise you. First I’ve got to put your present master to grass . . . I am less than sure how to do that. First off, I must spring Annwn and talk to Kitty. Best be back to your post, old friend.”
I walked down the passage toward the laboratory.
* * *
“I have been quite blind, haven’t I?” said the alfar-girl.
“Bespelled, yes. For many years,” said Annwn.
“And now it would seem,” said a cold voice from the doorway, “that I will have to redo a great deal of my work.”
“Papa!”
He smiled, showing his teeth. “In a manner of speaking, yes. Now, back away from that creature, Catherine. They are dangerously glib if nothing else. I am proof against your spell, fay. I have been studying you kind for many years. I lack your power, but I exceed your skill.”
Uncertainly, the alfar-woman moved toward him.
She had after all been under his influence for many years. Then, to Annwn’s surprise she grabbed his arms. “Run!” she screamed.
But it was too late. Gwyn stood behind him. Annwn knew that he was more powerful than she was. She felt him raise his will . . .
And saw him turn and fall as the alfar-girl was thrown off by the man she called father. The human mage turned and drew a long thin blade from inside his silver headed cane. “Redmund,” he said. “I was planning to dispose of you more tidily.” He raised the blade.
Annwn could do nothing to the mage. He had indeed protected himself very well. But a faerie blade was hers to call. And Arthur had earned it.
* * *
As I faced my death, I felt the swordhilt smack into my palm. It was a long and a very light blade. Lord Carandon dropped his thrust to parry my stroke, and I was forced briefly onto the back foot. I beat at his blade, and then we were hard at it. He was not my master by much, but I was feeling the months of dissipation wearing away my stamina. It might have gone ill . . . but then Kitty thrust a foot between his legs.
He fell heavily, and I leaped forward. This was no gentleman’s duel . . . and I thrust at nothing. He was gone with a clap of inrushing air.
I looked around in puzzlement. “He has translocated,” said the little fay.
I helped Kitty to her feet. “You have to go,” she said. “Now. I have seen him do this before. He’ll be back with help.”
The fay nodded. “We need to be away. All of us. What did you do to Gwyn? He is more dangerous still.”
“I gave him a leveler. He is just back there. . . .”
He wasn’t.
“Wilkins sent a groom to saddle horses for us.” I took Kitty’s hand. “Come with us.” There was much yet to be dealt with, and much that could not be undone.
But this I could put right.
“She must,” said the fay. “I will need her to get home.”
“Only if you want me to,” said Kitty, looking down.
I lifted her chin gently. Looked into her dark eyes.
“I never wanted anything more,” I said, and kissed her, while the little fay stamped her foot with impatience.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
By day, Walt Boyes is a not-so-mild-mannered chief editor of a technical magazine called Control and a partner in a high-technology consulting firm, Spitzer and Boyes LLC. Ah, but by night, he transforms into the Bananaslug of Baen’s Bar and begins to write. Walt has written ten nonfiction books, articles and columns too numerous to count (Bananaslugs have very few fingers anyway), and has published several fiction pieces, including two short stories in the 1632 Universe and some children’s stories. Walt is currently working on two nonfiction books, and a novel (of course— doesn’t every writer have one stashed somewhere?). Walt is Associate Editor and Marketing Director for Jim Baen’s Universe magazine.
Paul Crilley is a thirty-year-old Scotsman living in South Africa with his partner, Caroline, and their young daughter, Isabella-Rose. He spends his days writing scripts for South African television and his nights trying to finish the various novels he has on the go. His first novel, Night Of The Long Shadows, was released in May 2007. He and Caroline have just bought their first house. Visit Paul at www.paulcrilley.com
Linda A. B. Davis was originally schooled in print journalism but has decided that writing science fiction and fantasy is a lot more fun. She enjoys creating new worlds and characters that she would like to see become real. Her work has appeared in various magazines, both web and print, as well as in local newspapers. She lives in northwestern Florida with her husband, daughter, three dogs, cat, and rabbit. When she’s not dodging hurricanes, she also enjoys softball, reading, jigsaw puzzles, and travel. Many thanks go to Steve, her parents, and her Aunt Frances for their support and inspiration.
Russell Davis has written numerous short stories and novels in a variety of genres under several different names. Some of his most recent work can be seen in Slipstreams, Maiden, Matron, Crone, and Under Cover of Darkness. He lives in Nevada, where he writes, rides horses and spends time with his family.
Eric Flint is a popular star of SF and fantasy. 1634: The Galileo Affair, a collaboration with Andrew Dennis, was a New York Times best seller. His novel Mother of Demons, was picked by Science Fiction Chronicle a best novel of the year. His novel 1632, which launched the Ring of Fire series, won widespread critical praise, as from Publisher’s Weekly, which called him “an SF author of particular note, one who can entertain and edify in equal, and major, measure.” He has also shown a powerful gift for humorous fantasy adventure with Forward the Mage and The Philosophical Strangler, which Booklist described as “Monty Python let loose in Tolkien’s Middle Earth.” A longtime labor union activist with a master’s degree in history, he currently resides in northwest Indiana with his wife Lucille.
As a sick brat, Dave Freer once found himself trapped in house in which he had had nothing to read. Having read the contents of all the jars and detergent boxes, he started on his sister’s collection of Regency romances. As a rugged outdoor fisheries scientist and fish-farm manager, he learned to hide his passion for them in girly-magazine covers until he grew up and stopped worrying about it. Now he is a full-time writer, author or coauthor of ten novels, including Rats Bats &Vats (no. 7 on the Locus ranking) and Pyramid Scheme (no. 3 on Locus), both with Eric Flint, and the successful Heirs of Alexandra series with Mercedes Lackey and Eric Flint. His last solo novel, A Mankind Witch, was star rated by Publishers Weekly (meaning they considered it a book of outstanding quality). He is contracted to write a further five novels. Freer has written a growing body of shorter fiction too, all of which is designed to avoid him wasting time rock-climbing or diving for spiny lobsters. He lives near Mooi River, South Africa, with his wife, sons, various dogs, and the cats that own him, somewhere close to middle of nowhere.
Esther M. Friesner is the author of thirty-three novels and over one hundred fifty short stories and other works. She won the Nebula Award twice as well as the Skylark and the Romantic Times Award. Best known for creating and editing the wildly popular Chicks in Chainmail anthology series, her latest publications are the Young Adult novels Temping Fate, Nobody’s Princess and Nobody’s Prize. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, is the mother of two grown children, and harbors cats.
Darwin A. Garrison resides in the wastelands of northeastern Indiana, where he spends his days hunting the wily saber-toothed prairie gopher to supplement his family’s m
eager diet of instant ramen noodles and Kit Kat bars. Frequently observed near video retailers stocking anime titles and bookstores with notable science fiction and manga sections, he cannot be easily identified because he looks just like any other middleaged cubicle lemming. By dint of his disconnect with reality and the miracle of the “infinite typing monkeys” theory, he has managed to write two other stories of sufficient quality for sale to DAW/Tekno anthologies this year in addition to Firebird and Shadow. His dearest dream is to sell enough fiction to fund a recurring Friday night anime-pizza party that will continue until he succumbs to intense mozzarella poisoning.
Daniel M. Hoyt aspires to be that Dan Hoyt—you know, the one who writes those cool stories and books. Realizing a few years ago that rocket science was fun but unlikely to pay all the bills, Dan embarked on a new career choice—writing fiction for fun and profit. Since his first sale to Analog, he’s sold several stories to other magazines and anthologies. In addition, Dan is particularly pleased to announce his upcoming DAW anthology, Fate Fantastic, edited with Martin H. Greenberg. Curiously, after a few short years, Dan’s mortgage is still outstanding, but he remains hopeful. Catch up with him at http://www.danielmhoyt.com
John Lambshead was born in the English Westcountry surf town of Newquay in 1952. He was educated at Newquay Grammar School, and Brunel University in West London. He took a PhD at The Natural History Museum in London in 1983 and now works there as a research professor in biodiversity. He is married to Valerie, and they have two grown-up daughters. John’s hobby was designing wargames and computer games. He is best known for creating the first icondriven computer game, The Fourth Protocol. He has written a number of popular history and gaming books, including David Drake’s Hammers Slammers Handbook. His historical science fantasy, Lucy’s Blade, was published in May 2007.
Fran LaPlaca’s short story, “Wings to Fly,” appeared in the award winning Realms of Wonder anthology, Fantastic Companions, and her flash fiction has been featured online at antipodeansf.com. She lives in the rolling green hills of northwest Connecticut with a cat, a hamster, two fish, a rabbit, as well as a husband and two of her three children. A member of the soon-to-be-famous CEvo writing group, she works on her novels while laboring away in customer service. You can find her online at http://www.sff.net/people/fran-laplaca.
Alan Lickiss was raised in the suburbs of Washington, DC, where he met and married his wife, Rebecca. He lives along the front range in Colorado with his wife, four children, and at last count one cat, six parakeets, and one dwarf hamster. Alan spends his days working in software development, writing in the evenings and on weekends. His goal is to give up the day job to write full time. Other work by him appears in All Hell Breaks Loose and The Future We Wish We Had.
Barb Nickless’s short stories have appeared in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, including All Hell Breaking Loose, New Writings of the Fantastic, and Fate Fantastic. Currently at work on her second mystery novel, she lives in Colorado with her husband and two children.
Kate Paulk takes interesting medication. This explains her compulsion to write science fiction and fantasy and also means you’ll be seeing a lot more of her in the future. Her friends would fear for her sanity, but she claims not to have any. She’s been published in Crossroads, Fate Fantastic, and Misspelled and is hard at work on a novel. She lives in semiurban Pennsylvania with her husband and two bossy lady cats. Whether this has any effect on her sanity is not known.
Charles Edgar Quinn works buying and selling books at The Book Broker in downtown Colorado Springs, a huge, independent used book store that now faces an uncertain future because of renovations and rebuilding on the block. He has worked there under three owners and three different names since 1993. Previously he worked managing the metaphysical bookstore section of a new age store, a job he got by virtue of having the right birthdate— they seemed to consider the horoscope the most important part of the interview process. He worked a few years as an independent wholesale distributor, and worked for a while at a North Carolina newspaper, the Durham Herald. His unavoidable writer’s cat is a large orange Tabby named Scooter.
Irene Radford has been writing stories ever since she figured out what a pencil was for. A member of an endangered species, a native Oregonian who lives in Oregon, she and her husband make their home in Welches, Oregon, where deer, bears, coyotes, hawks, owls, and woodpeckers feed regularly on their back deck. For this story Irene updates her popular Merlin’s Descendants Series, bringing her world of magic and wolfhounds into the present.
Laura Resnick is the author of such fantasy novels as Disappearing Nightly, In Legend Born, The Destroyer Goddess, and The White Dragon, which made the “Year’s Best” lists of Publishers Weekly and Voya. A long-ago winner of the Campbell Award for best new science fiction/fantasy writer, she has published more than fifty short stories. Under the pseudonym Laura Leone, she is the award-winning author of more than a dozen romance novels, including Fallen From Grace, which was a finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s Rita Award. You can find her on the Web at www.LauraResnick.com.
Mike Resnick is the author of more than fifty science fiction novels, one hundred seventy-five stories, twelve collections, and two screenplays, and has edited over forty anthologies. His work has appeared in twentytwo languages. He is the winner of five Hugo Awards, has won other major awards in the USA, France, Japan, Poland, Croatia, and Spain and, according to Locus, is the leading short fiction award winner in science fiction history.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch has sold novels in several different genres under many different names. The most current Rusch novel is Paloma: A Retrieval Artist Novel. The Retrieval Artist novels are stand-alone mysteries set in a science fiction world. She’s won the Endeavor Award for that series. Her writing has received dozens of award nominations as well as several actual awards from science fiction’s Hugo to the Prix Imagainare, a French fantasy award for best short fiction. She lives and works on the Oregon Coast.
Harry Turtledove is an escaped Byzantinist who writes alternate history, other sf, fantasy, and historical fiction. He may be best known for alternate-history novels The Guns of the South and Ruled Britannia. He is married and has three daughters and the stereotypical writer’s cat—although the fuzzy galoot in question hasn’t got the brains to make a proper stereotype.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Sarah A. Hoyt was often disciplined for lying as a child. Being who she is, this meant only that her lies kept getting more complex and inventive. Now living in Colorado with her husband, two teen sons and a claw of cats, she has sold a dozen novels and over fifty short stories. Her Shifters series with Baen started with Draw One in the Dark, while her Musketeers Mysteries—with Prime Crime—started with Death of a Musketeer. Upcoming is her Bantam Trilogy Heart of Light, Soul of Fire, and Heart and Soul, which details adventures in an alternate British Empire where magic works. Something Magic This Way Comes is her first attempt at editing, and she can’t really explain it. All she can imagine is that after four decades of a blameless life she somehow got bitten by an editor, thereby becoming one every full moon.
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