Fantasy Archives - Page 65 of 68 - Lightspeed Magazine

Lightspeed Magazine
Nightmare Magazine

Fantasy Fiction

Heartless

Across the landscape of the battlefield, men stared sightlessly into the sky, their armor black with blood, their steaming intestines spread over the ground. Swarms of crows covered them in a jumping, fluttering carpet. Camp women scavenged among the corpses, cutting the throats of the dying and looting the bodies for anything of worth.

In Sep. 2012 (Issue 28)

The Seven Samovars

by Peter Sursi

Author spotlight

“The first samovar, the silver one at the end with the little bird perched atop the key, is filled to the top with Life,” she says, “freshly brewed each morning at sunrise exactly. A few drops will perk up most customers on a Monday morning, to be sure. And most of them need it, don’t you think?”

In Sep. 2012 (Issue 28)

The Last Supper

by Scott Edelman

Author spotlight

Walter’s mind was at one time rich with emotions other than hunger, but those feelings had long since fallen away. They’d dropped from his being like the flesh, now absent, which had once kept the wind from whistling through his cheeks. He remembered those inner tides but vaguely, for he lived in the eternal present, with barely a shred of memory left in which to contain them.

In Sep. 2012 (Issue 28)

Breaking the Frame

by Kat Howard

Author spotlight

The photograph is of a woman at the center of a forest. She is slim and tall and pale as the birches she stands among. The shadows turn her ribs and spine into branches, into knots in the wood. Around her arms, the peeling white bark of the birches, curved in bracelets. Between her thighs, the hair is dense and springy like moss. She is turning into a tree.

In Aug. 2012 (Issue 27)

Love Might Be Too Strong a Word

by Charlie Jane Anders

Author spotlight

Here’s how I remember it: A touch shocked me. I was reaching for a flash-seared bog-oyster, and then a fingertip, softer than I’d ever felt, brushed my knuckle. The softness startled me so much, it took me a moment to realize the hand had seven fingers, three more than mine.

In Aug. 2012 (Issue 27)

Cotillion

by Delia Sherman

Author spotlight

Celia Townsend’s mother brought up the subject of debutante balls for the first time in June. It was the day after graduation, and they were discussing when Celia would have to be home from Maine at the end of the summer to get ready for her freshman year at Vassar.

In Aug. 2012 (Issue 27)

A Moment Before It Struck

by Linda Nagata

Author spotlight

He felt death coming a moment before it struck. In the lingering gray twilight, Smoke lay on his bedding, eyes not quite closed and mind adrift, only half-aware of the sounds of the encampment around him: steel on whetstone, the rattle of dice, a soft song, and loud bragging.

In Aug. 2012 (Issue 27)

The Necromancer in Love

by Wil McCarthy

Author spotlight

The young necromancer is a blight on the social landscape, because when his sweetheart meets with an untimely interruption of service (don’t they all? don’t they always?), he’s bound to do something the rest of us regret.

In Aug. 2012 (Issue 27)

Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream

by Maria Dahvana Headley

Author spotlight

In the middle of the maze, there’s always a monster. If there were no monster, people would happily set up house where it’s warm and windowless and comfortable. The monster is required. The monster is a real estate disclosure.

In July 2012 (Issue 26)

Gordon, the Self-made Cat

by Peter S. Beagle

Author spotlight

Once upon a time, to a family of house mice there was born a son named Gordon. He looked very much like his father and mother and all his brothers and sisters, who were gray and had bright, twitchy, black eyes, but what went on inside Gordon was very different from what went on inside the rest of his family.

In July 2012 (Issue 26)