Black Gate

It was just a turtle made of stone. But why were so many people willing to kill for it?

“Leave.” The man’s voice was low but intense. “You should not have come. These wizards are beyond you.”

What did this man know of the docks? Thinking that hiring Kyre meant that Kyre could let him be robbed and do nothing?

“No one robs me,” said Kyre, drawing his knife. The man looked taken aback. “Don’t you know how much my name means to me? Did you think I’d let these knaves drop it in the dust? I took your coin.”

The man’s tongue touched his lips. After a moment, he said, “You’ll not stop them with only that knife.”

Kyre shrugged. He could not let this man know that he had never killed before. “I’ll help you.”

Mary Catelli started writing in her teens, when deprived of books to read. After a while, she started finishing the stories. Since then, her short stories have appeared in various Sword and Sorceress anthologies and Weird Tales. She is working on a novel. She lives in Connecticut, where she works as a computer programmer.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Michael Penkas, Vera Nazarian, Robert Rhodes, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“The Turtle in the Sea of Sand” is a complete 4,800-word tale of adventure fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

In which Moses learns the next 10 terrible plagues the Almighty had in store for the Pharaoh of Egypt.

And the Lord, sounding a little giddy, said unto Moses, “For the twelfth plague, I’d send rats.”

And Moses nodded, saying, “Yes, to grow fat on the grain of the Egyptians, to spread disease and gnaw at the foundations of Pharaoh’s kingdom.”

“Oh, not just regular rats. Winged rats. Here, I’ve got some concept drawings.” And the Lord produced his concept sketches of a winged and feathered rat.

“And then, after a week of that, the thirteenth plague… this would have been great. All the cats in Egypt would grow thumbs.”

And there was a silence as Moses tried to envision such an act. And he said unto the Lord, “I don’t get it, Lord. Why is that bad?”

“Because cats hate you. The only thing that prevents them from picking up daggers and stabbing you in your sleep is that they don’t have opposable thumbs.”

And Moses nodded, seeing no point in questioning the Lord’s reasons, for they were mysterious… and kind of crazy.

Michael Penkas has been the website editor for Black Gate since August of 2012. He’s had over a dozen stories published since 2007. While he tends to stay near to those things that go bump in the night, he’s occasionally delved into mystery, science fiction, and the odd humor piece. Long-time readers of Black Gate will know that he has more than a few opinions concerning a certain crazy redhead with a sword.

His acclaimed first collection, Dead Boys, was released this month.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Vera Nazarian, Robert Rhodes, Jason E. Thummel, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“The Worst Was Yet to Come” is a complete 2,000-word tale of humorous fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

A young woman waits helplessly in the streets for her grandmother as her city falls around her.

There was almost no one left in the streets now. The last to leave were the city militia forces and army units. As the sunset gave way to night, darkness-cloaked foot soldiers marched past Niola.

One of the unit captains paused “Why are you still here?” he said. “Don’t wait too long, girl. We are the last division, and as we leave this city you will be all alone.” Niola nodded, and thanked him in a parched whisper.

Night came, and with it came silence.

And suddenly it hit her, the terror.

Niola was all alone. The monolithic city lay around her like a blanket of black wool; no light, no respite. The wind swept alone in the silence, slithering and reverberating against stone and thatch and mud clay brick and empty marble, whistling in the structures and making the tree leaves whisper and crinkle… If anyone else was left here it was only the most criminal-minded, the looters, the infirm, the mad…

The ghosts.

Vera Nazarian is a two-time Nebula Award Finalist and a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed Dreams of the Compass Rose (set in the same ancient world universe as this story) in 2002, followed by epic fantasy Lords of Rainbow in 2003. Her novella, The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass, made the 2005 Locus Recommended Reading List. Her debut collection, Salt of the Air, contains the 2007 Nebula Award-nominated “The Story of Love.” Her recent work includes the 2008 Nebula Finalist novella, The Duke in His Castle, and Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Robert Rhodes, Jason E. Thummel, Ryan Harvey, Steven H Silver, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Emily Mah, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“Niola’s Last Stand” is a complete 7,000-word tale of adventure fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.