Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  THE ESSENCE OF DUST

  HIGHJACKING THE LORD OF LIGHT

  OUT IN THE WILDLANDS

  ZALE AND ZEDRIL

  THE AMULET AND THE SHADOW

  ANTEDILUVIA: SEASONS OF THE WORLD

  A THOUSAND WORDS FOR DEATH

  STONE SNAKE

  SEVEN THRONES

  THE EATER OF GODS

  Also available

  THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

  Selected by Douglas Draa & David A. Riley

  CLASSIC WEIRD

  Selected by David A. Riley

  CLASSIC WEIRD 2

  Selected by David A. Riley

  KITCHEN SINK GOTHIC

  Selected by Linden Riley & David A. Riley

  KITCHEN SINK GOTHIC 2

  Selected by Linden Riley & David A. Riley

  SWORDS & SORCERIES Volume 1

  Presented by David A. Riley & Jim Pitts

  First Published in the UK in 2021

  Copyright © 2021

  Cover & interior artwork © 2021 Jim Pitts

  The Essence of Dust © 2021 Mike Chinn

  Highjacking the Lord of Light © 2021 Tais Teng

  Out in the Wildlands © 2021 Martin Owton

  Zale and Zedril © 2021 Susan Murrie Macdonald

  The Amulet and the Shadow © 2021 Steve Dilks

  Antediluvia: Seasons of the World © 2021 Andrew Darlington

  A Thousand Words for Death © 2020 Pedro Iniquez

  First published in Whetstone #1 Spring 2020

  Stone Snake © 2021 Dev Agarwal

  Seven Thrones © 2021 Phil Emery

  The Eater of Gods © 2021 Adrian Cole

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, rebound or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author and publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

  ISBN: 978-1-9161109-8-4

  Parallel Universe Publications, 130 Union Road,

  Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, BB5 3DR, UK

  ​

  INTRODUCTION

  Welcome to our second volume of swords and sorcery stories. I am pleased that we have been able to increase the number of stories to ten – and with more pages too.

  Opening this collection is The Essence of Dust by veteran horror, fantasy, SF writer Mike Chinn. Mike lives in Birmingham, UK, with his wife Caroline and their tribe of guinea pigs. In 2012 he took early retirement so he could spend more time writing (and not housework). Over the years he has published over sixty short stories, as well as editing three volumes of The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes, and Swords Against The Millennium, also for The Alchemy Press. His own contribution to the Pulp Adventure genre, The Paladin Mandates, garnered two nominations for the British Fantasy Award in 1999, and Pro Se Productions have recently published a revised and extended edition. Pro Se also published the second Damian Paladin collection, Walkers in Shadow, along with his first Western, Revenge is a Cold Pistol.

  In 2015, his Sherlock Holmes steampunk mash-up, Vallis Timoris (Fringe-works), sent the famous detective to the Moon. Parallel Universe Publications has also published a collection of his stories, Radix Omnium Malum.

  Tais Teng (Highjacking the Lord of Light) is a Dutch SF writer and illustrator with, in his own words, the quite unpronounceable name of Thijs van Ebbenhorst Tengbergen, which he shortened to Tais Teng 'to leave room for a picture of an exploding starship or a clever steam-punk lady on the covers of my novels.’

  In his own language he has written everything from radio-plays to hefty fantasy trilogies.

  To date he has sold sixty-eight stories in the English language and two children's books: When the Nightgaunt Knows Your Name and The Emerald Boy. His YA novel Phaedra: Alastor 824, set in the universe of Jack Vance, has been published by Spatterlight Press.

  His most recent sales have been to Daily Science Fiction, Unreal, Lowlife and Cirsova.

  English website: http://taisteng.atspace.com/

  Art: https://taisteng.deviantart.com/

  Martin Owton (Out in the Wildlands) lives in the south of England. In addition to some 30 published short stories, he has written 3 published novels: 2 non-epic adventure fantasies, Exile and Nandor – ‘which could certainly be called sword and sorcery’ – and a con-temporary fantasy Shadows of Faerie set in Southampton and the New Forest. A former member of the defunct T-Party Writers Group, he is represented by Shiel Land Associates. In real life he is a drug designer for big pharma.

  Susan Murrie Macdonald (Zale and Zedril) is only one of three writers who also had stories in our first volume. Susan is a free-lance wordsmith: ghost-writer, blogger, journalist. She has published roughly twenty short stories, mostly fantasy, but also some science fiction, westerns, romance, and children's stories. She is the author of R Is For Renaissance Faire, a children's book based on her four years as a volunteer with the Mid-South Renaissance Faire. She is a stroke survivor, although she has been out of the wheelchair almost two years and can limp half a mile with the help of a cane. She is an ex-copy editor and an ex-teacher. She still works as a freelance proof-reader. She is a staff writer for SciFi. Radio with over a hundred articles posted on their website. She is, of course, working on a novel; ‘isn't everyone?’

  Susan lives in a small town in Tennessee about twenty kilometres from Memphis. She is married to a travel agent and has a son and daughter of university age. She has had stories in Tales from OmniPark, Under Western Stars, Space Force: Building a Legacy, Cat Tails: War Zone, Wee Tales, The Caterpillar, Sirius Science Fiction, Itty Bitty Writing Space, Bumples, Alternative Truths, More Alternative Truths, Paper Butterfly, Sword and Sorceress, Knee-High Drummond and the Durango Kid, Barbarian Crowns, and Supernatural Colorado.

  The second writer also to have been included in our first volume is Steve Dilks (The Amulet and the Shadow). Steve has been published in Weirdbook, Startling Stories, Savage Realms Monthly, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and Savage Scrolls. Last year his novellas of Gunthar, the Black Wolf of Tatukura, were collected in the paperback Gunthar – Warrior of the Lost World. Another collection, this time featuring his sword-&-sorcery hero Bohun of Damzullah, is due to be published under the title Bohun: The Complete Savage Adventures. His second Bohun story The Horror From the Stars appeared in volume 1 of Swords & Sorceries.

  Andrew Darlington, whose Antediluvia: Seasons of the World is arguably the most unusual story in this collection, watched the very first episode of ‘Dr Who’, he also watched the most recent episode.

  He says that whatever academic potential he may once have possessed was wrecked by an addiction to loud Rock ‘n’ Roll and cheap Science Fiction, which remain the twin poles of what he laughingly refers to as his writing career. He is most proud of his Parallel Universe collection A Saucerful Of Secrets. His latest book is a biography of the Beatles spin-doctor Derek Taylor: For Your Radioactive Children (SonicBond Books). His writing can be found at Eight Miles Higher:

  Andrew’s website is http://andrewdarlington.blogspot.co.uk/

  Pedro Iniguez (A Thousand Words for Death) is a speculative fiction writer who also enjoys reading and painting. His work can be found in magazines and anthologies such as Space and Time Magazine, Crossed Genres, Dig Two Graves, Tiny Nightmares, Deserts of Fire, and Altered States II. His cyberpunk novel Control Theory (Indie Authors Press, 2016) and his 10-year collection, Synthetic Dawns & Crimson Dusks, (Indie Authors Press, 2020) are available on Amazon.

  Originally from Los Angeles, he now resides in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he is currently working on his second novel.

  Dev Agarwal is a science fiction and fantasy writer. His fiction has been published online and in magazines including Albedo One, Aoife’s Kiss, Aeon and, forth-coming, in Mithila Review. His non-fiction has been published online and in a variety of magazines.

  Dev has been editing non-fiction for a number of years and is non-fiction editor for the magazine Khoreo. He is also the editor of Focus, the magazine for genre writers produced by the British Science Fiction Association.

  His fantasy often draws on historical events. His story Stone Snake is the start of a series of adventures of the principal character travelling home.

  Author of Seven Thrones, Phil Emery’s work has been published in the UK, USA, Europe, and Canada since the seventies. His particular claims to sword-&-sorcery infamy include appearances in the Rogue Blades’ anthologies Return of the Sword and Demons, and the experimental fantasy The Shadow Cycles, together with a doctoral thesis on the subject. The sworder Zain first appeared in print in a 1972 story entitled Swords at Night. Both he and his creator are a little longer-in-the-scabbard these days . . .

  Adrian Cole (The Eater of Gods) is the third writer who also appeared in volume one. He has been writing stories set in his own fantasy series such as the Voidal and Elfloq for man
y years, as well as reviving Elak, King of Atlantis, originally created by the late Henry Kuttner. Adrian’s first collection of Elak tales was published in 2020 by Pulp Hero Press to much acclaim. Though not sword and sorcery, his collection Nick Nightmare Investigates won the 2015 British Fantasy Award for best collection and he is a regular contributor to Weirdbook magazine, as well as having stories in anthologies such as Year’s Best Fantasy, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Mammoth Book of Halloween, Occult Detective Quarterly Presents, and The Alchemy Press Book of Horror.

  And, of course, there is the inimitable Jim Pitts. His amazing illustrations add much to the interior as well as the covers of this book. Jim’s career began in the 1970s when he created artwork for David Sutton’s ground-breaking fanzine Shadow. Since then he has contributed illustrations to an impressively wide variety of publications both here in the UK and overseas, particularly the United States. A hardback retrospective of Jim’s work, The Fantastical Art of Jim Pitts was published in 2017. This was split into two volumes for the soft cover version. Later this year a second hardcover collection of Jim’s more recent work will be published by Parallel Universe Publications: The Ever More Fantastical Art of Jim Pitts.

  These then are the contributors to our second volume of swords and sorcery stories. I hope you enjoy reading them and, with your support, I look forward to being able to edit further volumes in the coming years.

  David A. Riley

  Oswaldtwistle. 2021

  THE ESSENCE OF DUST

  Mike Chinn

  Das Ewan took an uncoordinated step, pausing to steady himself against a nearby wall. It sagged under his weight and he almost fell. Behind him there was a snigger and Ewan turned carefully. There was no one, just another swirl of grit on the cold night air, glittering in the light of the twin moons.

  Ewan frowned. Surely Tallach had been standing there? The man had been trailing him all the way back from the ramshackle drinking den, pleading with Ewan to share the wineskin they had pooled their last coppers to buy. And now he had wandered off, though Ewan could not imagine where. The outskirts of Caerbanth held nothing but empty, skeletal buildings as its citizens gradually retreated to the relatively intact centre. The lane was narrow, the flanking buildings all leaning precariously overhead, and there was no other street or alley leading off.

  After a moment Ewan shook his head, reaching for the wineskin dangling off his belt. ’Your loss, my friend.’ He raised the wineskin to his lips, but nothing came out. He upended it, frowning. Empty but for the sour bouquet of old wine. How was that possible? He brought the spout up to one eye, as though the act of looking could summon up a fresh reserve. Nothing.

  Ewan hunched his broad shoulders in misery and stared hard up and down the moonlit lane. The grainy mists which perpetually filled Caerbanth’s streets ebbed and flowed, occasionally obscuring his vision. A section of overhanging building fell, crumbling to dust before it reached the rotting cobbles. Ewan spat grit from a drying mouth and threw the wineskin aside.

  He drew a ragged leather cloak around his gaunt body. He almost fell, legs organising themselves at the last moment. Locking his knees, he took a breath and resumed his unsteady trek, heading for what had once been a fine mansion at the foot of the mountains looming over the city: the manse of the Thane of Caerbanth. If Feruman was in a good mood, maybe his old master would furnish Ewan with a drink or two, to see him through to the morning.

  The lane ended abruptly, opening out onto a bleak, stony rise, stark in the moons’ light. Nothing grew on these slopes; Ewan could not remember if anything ever had. Ahead was the mansion. Its ancient walls stood out so harsh and white in the moonlight it was almost possible for Ewan to ignore the pockmarks and network of cracks disfiguring them, to fool himself it wasn’t as decayed as the rest of Caerbanth. Behind it reared the mountains, black and unforgiving. Ewan tried to keep his eyes averted from the vast, blurred shape growing on the higher slopes, like a huge fungus. It seemed to glow, daring him to look. Ewan stared instead at the nearing mansion gates, concentrating on them.

  Unsteadily he pushed his way through thick wooden gates which felt as insubstantial as a spider’s web. Beyond was a garden, choked with rubble and the gaunt remains of what had once been fragrant bushes. Back when the mansion had been more than an empty stone and brick shell, and titles mattered. When Feruman was Thane, and Ewan his Swordmaster. A lot of wine had flowed since then. Decent wine. Not the piss that was all Ewan could afford – even if better had been available. Which he knew, from experience, it wasn’t.

  ‘Feruman?’ He stepped under a sagging veranda and pushed open the double doors leading into the echoing shell of a reception area; once richly carved, now colourless and scarred by mildew. He flopped onto the bottom step of an ancient, dusty staircase. At his back was a rotting plastered wall.

  ‘Feruman? Where are you, my ex and gracious lord?’ The once Thane had taken to hiding away any drink just in case Ewan stopped by. Even though the mansion was nothing but bare walls and tattered roof, with barely a stick of furniture, Feruman had grown inventive. Ewan didn’t feel like a treasure hunt.

  ‘Feruman! You bastard!’

  He stood, hanging onto a bannister even more unsteady than he, and made his way to the deserted banqueting hall. A sullen fire, signally failing to warm the empty hall, burned at one end. Smoke curled out of the fireplace, masking the overall smell of rot. Diffident flames flickered around stacked kindling – the remains of some chair or other – reluctant to take hold. Ewan spat at it. He missed.

  ‘Feruman!’ Where in hell was he?

  A diffuse, cold blue glow was attempting to make its way through the tall windows lining the outer wall, but could not pass through tired, filthy glass that seemed to droop with fatigue. The sun was rising, licking at Caerbanth with exhausted rays. Surely it wasn’t morning already? What had happened to the night?

  There was a long, scarred table standing haphazardly in the centre of the hall, the last of five magnificent boards which had once groaned with the finest food and drink. Four carver chairs lay nearby, so far spared the fire. Ewan hauled one upright and dropped into it.

  He rubbed at his lined face. He licked parched lips. Wherever his ex-master was, Ewan hoped he would return with a drink. Feruman’s rank, no matter how illusory, still meant something in certain quarters. He might acquire a half-decent skin or two if he had a mind. Ewan ran a hand through his thin, greying hair, his face twisting into a self-pitying grin. As if it mattered anymore.

  On the wall facing the fireplace hung a skeleton clock, as tall as Ewan stood in his proud youth. Once it had marked time with commendable accuracy, looming over the high table, marking off each second of Thane Feruman’s rule. Now it was lifeless. The mechanism appeared undamaged, yet no amount of winding or adjustment had coaxed the device into action.

  Ewan was unsure why Feruman hadn’t sold the thing for precious coin, or tossed it onto the fire before now – the frame was mostly wood, after all. Misplaced sentiment, he supposed.

  He heard the squeal of the mansion’s doors, the pad of footsteps. Ewan half rose, hands fumbling for a sword he had long ago exchanged for drink. A moment later the thin, weasel-faced Feruman limped into the hall. He spread himself in front of the fireplace, holding out naked hands for the meagre warmth. His ragged clothes bore no hint of the fine velvets and silks they had once been; like so much else they were drab, colourless and spent. The cockscomb of his chaperon hat was stiff with grease.

  Ewan sagged back onto the chair. ’Where have you been?’ He sounded petulant. He didn’t care. Feruman could hardly dismiss his services.

  The other man was about to speak when another voice overrode him. ’With me.’

  A figure stepped gracefully into the hall, stooping to pass through the doors: a woman, unnaturally tall, and dressed in loose black clothing. Ewan was about to thank Feruman for sharing his good fortune when the words died, unspoken. There was something about the newcomer, something. . . wrong. Was she even a woman? Ewan had never certainly never seen one quite like her before.