A church grim like Magrat could taste death, scent it on the air, feel it in the marrow of her bones. Every mortal carried a little bit; death was always a possibility, from accident or disease. But sometimes the possibility grew stronger, closer, when a man stood at a fork in the road, then chose the path that led toward peril.

Duration: 64 min.
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A church grim like Margat could taste death, scent it on the air, feel it in the marrow of her bones. Every mortal carried a little bit; death was always a possibility, from accident or disease. But sometimes the possibility grew stronger, closer, when a man stood at a fork in the road, then chose the path that led toward peril.

So I made a horse. I made bones of iron and a mane of silk. Tendons of rubber from the king's caravans. I gave it a belly made from a wine vat. Around this I wrapped a skin of black and brown velvet--brindled bars such as no horse had, but that would make a cage to contain its life. I would ride this horse to freedom, away from my prison to the wastes where I’d fly with my sisters on owl wings.

The spider creeps closer, dragging its meal behind. Moira counts its eyes again. Seven. The spider's the only thing that has reality. It's realer than she is, right now. She's already on her way out--has been since the burns, really. She tries to breathe, but the wrappings are so tight, and the weight on her chest is so heavy.

My voice sounds thin and choked when I speak. "Let the soldiers choose for themselves," I say. "Let those who wish to flee leave now, in good faith. I will not have them stay to be murdered for a cause they cannot support. But let food and bandages be stockpiled through the day, and close the gates"--I almost say, at nightfall, but it is always night now--"before midnight. We will hold my father’s fortress until the last."

The spider creeps closer, dragging its meal behind. Moira counts its eyes again. Seven. The spider's the only thing that has reality. It's realer than she is, right now. She's already on her way out--has been since the burns, really. She tries to breathe, but the wrappings are so tight, and the weight on her chest is so heavy.

Duration: 28 min.
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Ms. Brennan will sign and personalize the copy of A Star Shall Fall for the winner, and it will be mailed to them.

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The spider creeps closer, dragging its meal behind. Moira counts its eyes again. Seven. The spider's the only thing that has reality. It's realer than she is, right now. She's already on her way out--has been since the burns, really. She tries to breathe, but the wrappings are so tight, and the weight on her chest is so heavy.

They thought of it as a game, these dusty old men. Tease the dim, pretty little poppet with bits of magic to keep her dazzled and quiet. They’d never realized how much I had actually understood until I'd raised my head from my work and pulled back my hair so they could see my eye, see that I'd received the curse of knowledge. Then they were frightened, and rightly so.

The nightmares had mostly stopped now, and my face only ached on hot days. I never looked at myself in the stream, so I wasn't sure what color the scars were, but my fingertips told me the skin was tough and dead. As for the rest, once I washed myself out with lemon juice, I just went on with my rituals in the temple, because someone had to. I tried not to remember. Not to let it rule me. But now that he was at the temple too, I felt a little safer.

"You?" I stood, furious, and as I did the red brazier-light glinted on something behind the throne that I could not see. "Did you not have enough of father’s blessings while he lived? He gave you gifts, and horses, and talked of the great kingdom you would inherit. Meanwhile I sat in your shadow and the heap of your scorn. No, brother. For this once I will have something that you have not had first."

The nightmares had mostly stopped now, and my face only ached on hot days. I never looked at myself in the stream, so I wasn't sure what color the scars were, but my fingertips told me the skin was tough and dead. As for the rest, once I washed myself out with lemon juice, I just went on with my rituals in the temple, because someone had to. I tried not to remember.

Duration: 21 min.
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The nightmares had mostly stopped now, and my face only ached on hot days. I never looked at myself in the stream, so I wasn't sure what color the scars were, but my fingertips told me the skin was tough and dead. As for the rest, once I washed myself out with lemon juice, I just went on with my rituals in the temple, because someone had to. I tried not to remember.

Sully could practically feel her glance brushing along his skin like silky smooth lips. It could, more to the point, the thing inside him, exploiting his senses as if they were its own. She stood and stretched, then strolled to the doors of carved tulgey wood that opened into the mews outside. Sully caught her fragrance, the scent of her feminine places, a smell of spice and rich dark petals of bloodleaf. "Sabrina? Don’t get too close."

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I felt the first cut like a violation. Pain burst in my chest, would not cease. I screamed and screamed until my voice was raw. No. No. I never asked for this! I saw a priest lift out a bloody, pulsating thing dizzyingly high above me, and a sensation of emptiness spread from the hole in my chest and swallowed me.

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Jeris tensed. "A rogue territorialist?" Circle Circle Six, nominally protected by its more prominent neighbors, had one of the highest turnover rates for territorialists. If it had just been a change of regime, Jeris would have sat back to see how long the newcomer lasted. But the bone-map's reaction had been a clear warning that he would have to intervene.

The body was my own, and not my own. It was no mere trick for others’ eyes; my very joints seemed strung together more loosely, and my breasts ached under the tight bindings I had always worn. By the end of each night I had nearly adjusted to this female form, only to be wrenched back to my natural male one at the first whisper of dawn.

The BCS Audio Fiction Podcasts will be taking a short hiatus in July, but they will return in August with audio stories by Vylar Kaftan, Erin Cashier, and more.

Such is our addiction. Living formless is its own refuge--our skin-shifting a means of escape, to always have a new identity waiting in the tank for when the one we wear becomes overly tiresome and persistent. But the King no longer wearies of change, and has but one face now to show the world. And though it resembles candle wax, it remains. "That is my difference," he says.

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"They will want you always," said Madame. "If you do not find a way to guard against them, they will pursue you. They love to destroy, and you make it possible for them to destroy again and again. If you are in their power, they can cut that page's throat again and again. You understand? They need not find something new to smash until they have wrung all the joy out of one toy, if you are with them. You must not let them take you."

The true story the Slow Game tells is depicted in the scenes that are enacted as we players meet in the maze and move towards the central tableau. The audience members meet with each other, share what they have seen and try to decipher the overall meaning. The Slow Game moves ceaselessly, a great beast that never seems to shift and yet is never in the same place twice.

His pain is too much; we cannot hide any longer. In a flutter of copper wings, we descend from the pine tree, settle near Nezahual: the hummingbirds on his shoulders; the parrots on the stone rim of the fountain; the lone quetzal balancing itself on the handle of the broom.

Of course, this was very nice for all the other women of the world, but not for me. For me, Dollies were the chore of my life: winding them, bathing them in oil, mending gears and joints, and keeping good care of their pricier parts which pleasured the men. I cannot say that I hated it, nor that I was fond of it, only that it was my task every single day to care for these immortal metal beauties.

His pain is too much; we cannot hide any longer. In a flutter of copper wings, we descend from the pine tree, settle near Nezahual: the hummingbirds on his shoulders; the parrots on the stone rim of the fountain; the lone quetzal balancing itself on the handle of the broom.

Duration: 41 min.
File Size: 28 MB.
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His pain is too much; we cannot hide any longer. In a flutter of copper wings, we descend from the pine tree, settle near Nezahual: the hummingbirds on his shoulders; the parrots on the stone rim of the fountain; the lone quetzal balancing itself on the handle of the broom.

Now a cold anger overcame Absinthe. How could this boy deign to come between him and his treasure, tittering his way across the Archipelago? How could he himself think that frills and creamy silks could deliver into his hands what he desired? Elaborate capers were all well and good at whiles, but most times the only solution to a problem was a swift, sure, well-delivered blade.

“You remember. You can tell me how Surnyao was. And then I can go home, and tell my people, and we will take that light with us into the darkness.” It would come regardless. The last suns would burn out, and Surnyao would go into the Crush, as countless worlds had gone before them. But they could go as Asurnya, with the strength of all they had forgotten. They could make their own light.

Jesper whirled. Right at his back, feet clacking on the limestone, was one of his steam-powered wolves. But instead of ambling across the gravel path and back into the forest, it went utterly mad, hoping forward and back, tail pinwheeling. It jumped forward, teeth bared; the air rent with a scream and the ugly sound of ripping fabric; the wolf danced away with a mangled petticoat in its gleaming jaws.

“You remember. You can tell me how Surnyao was. And then I can go home, and tell my people, and we will take that light with us into the darkness.” It would come regardless. The last suns would burn out, and Surnyao would go into the Crush, as countless worlds had gone before them. But they could go as Asurnya, with the strength of all they had forgotten. They could make their own light.

Duration: 43 min.
File Size: 30 MB.
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"You remember. You can tell me how Surnyao was. And then I can go home, and tell my people, and we will take that light with us into the darkness." It would come regardless. The last suns would burn out, and Surnyao would go into the Crush, as countless worlds had gone before them. But they could go as Asurnya, with the strength of all they had forgotten. They could make their own light.

"Um," Absinthe said. The perfect opportunity had sailed athwart his bows. All he had to say was "What a beautiful dress you are wearing, my lady," and the room would burst with his men attacking, overcoming the crowd, and the jewels would be his. Something was holding back the words. She was so beautiful....

But when Mister Hadj started in on them cowboy songs--well, as sure as I'm standing here, when that man got to crooning a tune he made the earth itself cry. This ain't just me tale-telling, you hear? I seen tears fall from big red rocks when the old man hummed. Heard stones weep as they parted before him. So when Mister Hadj said that a stone in the road told him where to find Parson Lucifer, I didn't doubt it.

Khatire couldn't seem to catch her breath, afraid to swallow the fouled air. The cut in her palm throbbed like heartache. She had just killed one of the precious vaimen. In the eyes of the emperor, her life was forfeit.

But when Mister Hadj started in on them cowboy songs--well, as sure as I’m standing here, when that man got to crooning a tune he made the earth itself cry. This ain’t just me tale-telling, you hear? I seen tears fall from big red rocks when the old man hummed. Heard stones weep as they parted before him. So when Mister Hadj said that a stone in the road told him where to find Parson Lucifer, I didn’t doubt it.

Duration: 27 min.
File Size: 18 MB.
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But when Mister Hadj started in on them cowboy songs--well, as sure as I'm standing here, when that man got to crooning a tune he made the earth itself cry. This ain't just me tale-telling, you hear? I seen tears fall from big red rocks when the old man hummed. Heard stones weep as they parted before him. So when Mister Hadj said that a stone in the road told him where to find Parson Lucifer, I didn't doubt it.

Carneby and the young woman attend the Apogee Swim, that moment at the height of The City's bound when the air is becalmed. Lifeguards watch over the citizens who swim into the great void with flippers and paddles made of cardboard and tape. The young woman is ecstatic as she ventures out above the green and blue smear of The Earth. They thrash their cardboard fins, flirting with the airy abyss which is the only respite from the numbing continuity of The City.

I knew I was not alone. Unseen things crept at the edges of my hearing, but none made any sign that they could talk to me, or that they recognized me as a friend. I began making the motions with my hands, which trembled a little. Will any of you talk to me? I asked, knowing it was futile to expect an animal to know the hand-signs that my family used to speak with me.

The full moon let me see the train coming. It raged up the path of the old tracks but it wasn't on them. It wove across them, ignoring their boundaries, sweeping like a snake on sand. It was a long one. It'd be full of a lot of good things--nails, cotton, wood, corn. That pleased me. Made everything a little more worthwhile, as worthwhile as dying ever got.

I knew I was not alone. Unseen things crept at the edges of my hearing, but none made any sign that they could talk to me, or that they recognized me as a friend. I began making the motions with my hands, which trembled a little. Will any of you talk to me? I asked, knowing it was futile to expect an animal to know the hand-signs that my family used to speak with me.

Duration: 26 min.
File Size: 18 MB.
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I knew I was not alone. Unseen things crept at the edges of my hearing, but none made any sign that they could talk to me, or that they recognized me as a friend. I began making the motions with my hands, which trembled a little. Will any of you talk to me? I asked, knowing it was futile to expect an animal to know the hand-signs that my family used to speak with me.

And what music he created. His sculpted notes and cascading chords--ripped from the heart of ruined, grieving PameMorturas--were sweet and somber, furious and mournful, filled with the longing of unfulfilled lives and stolen years. They spoke of things that once were and now could never be again, of the selfishness and jealousy of those who had destroyed Morturas and the destruction they had wreaked not only upon that poor city but on the future of mankind itself.

Tarc was awake for a couple hours at the beginning and end of my shift, and those hours were longer than the ones I spent with my thoughts. He was chatty as a guiro-bug. He didn't just talk, though. He asked questions. The more he asked, the more chary I got that he'd figure out what I was doing--that one of his marks was my little girl, and that I meant to stop him.

The man's head swung wildly, his fingers grasping towards the straining netted bundle. The touch of the God on an unholy man was not pretty. Halla could sense it, crackling the air from the Mouth to the man. It was a compulsion that filled him with blood lust, blanketed his mind with one urge: kill the dove.

Tarc was awake for a couple hours at the beginning and end of my shift, and those hours were longer than the ones I spent with my thoughts. He was chatty as a guiro-bug. He didn’t just talk, though. He asked questions. The more he asked, the more chary I got that he’d figure out what I was doing--that one of his marks was my little girl, and that I meant to stop him.

Duration: 35 min.
File Size: 25 MB.
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Condescension, from a slave, though Periphas. How appropriate. He got up, following the loggerhead along the circus' aisle as it swam. The carvings on its shell were spidery and thin, interconnected traceries meaningless in any language of logic or linear thought. He doubted that an untrained eye, even in the first row, would know them for what they were: the marks of madness bent to will. The symbols of a sorcerer's attention.

Tarc was awake for a couple hours at the beginning and end of my shift, and those hours were longer than the ones I spent with my thoughts. He was chatty as a guiro-bug. He didn't just talk, though. He asked questions. The more he asked, the more chary I got that he'd figure out what I was doing--that one of his marks was my little girl, and that I meant to stop him.

He'd called her excellent! Four's heart soared, and she sped up to keep pace with the music's racing beat. Oh, let them watch. Let them ooh and aah, them with their foul stinking breath. Even when sweat rolled down their noses and fell to her platform in large blobs, splashing so she had to jump out of the way, she never flinched. Let Master see how strong she was.

Unified by poison--by the power of the elder's will--the ragged line of sorcerers dissolved, passing through a ring of tall stone stelae carved with human shapes. Nods and mumbled words shaped tenuous alliances along demarcations of homeland and creed. The buzzards found perches among the empty seats. This, Periphas realized, is why Eurytus waited. The humans would fight, exhaust themselves to within inches of death; then the centaurs would gallop in, laughing.

He'd called her excellent! Four's heart soared, and she sped up to keep pace with the music's racing beat. Oh, let them watch. Let them ooh and aah, them with their foul stinking breath. Even when sweat rolled down their noses and fell to her platform in large blobs, splashing so she had to jump out of the way, she never flinched. Let Master see how strong she was.

Duration: 26 min.
File Size: 19 MB.
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Featuring new Cover Art by Christophe Vacher, and From the Archives, a select past BCS story related to one in the current issue.

She was in the fields and out of sight of the kin-nest before she stopped to reconsider. Tahn would die anyway, once the Destroyer broke completely free of the barrier. If the old fool wanted to hurry the process, why stop him? He was no friend of hers, just another selfish lackey of the ley-readers. He'd probably only gone to manipulate her into following him. And like a soft-shelled hatchling, she was doing exactly that.

He'd called her excellent! Four's heart soared, and she sped up to keep pace with the music's racing beat. Oh, let them watch. Let them ooh and aah, them with their foul stinking breath. Even when sweat rolled down their noses and fell to her platform in large blobs, splashing so she had to jump out of the way, she never flinched. Let Master see how strong she was.

There's always a woman. And she plays her part, one way or the other. "The stranger’ll come for you," I tell her, trying to tip-toe round the vulgarity. Whether it's The Marshal or The Hired Gun, the innocent's champion gets the woman. He'll be good to her, but she'll never forget, never be quite the same when he rides away.

I lifted my muzzle and sniffed. The wood was different today. Fine dust still hung in the air and sparkled in sunlit shafts. Such a thing this sparkling was. I gazed at it in wonder. Had the light ever been just so before? Was this a new thing?

There's always a woman. And she plays her part, one way or the other. “The stranger’ll come for you,” I tell her, trying to tip-toe round the vulgarity. Whether it’s The Marshal or The Hired Gun, the innocent’s champion gets the woman. He’ll be good to her, but she’ll never forget, never be quite the same when he rides away.

Duration: 42 min.
File Size: 30 MB.
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New, starting with this issue: From the Archives (below), a select past BCS story that's related to one in the current issue.

The old man's form shimmered in my grasp, like a mountain peak glimpsed through summer haze. Another instant and I did not hold an old man at all, but rather an oni. He was perhaps a head taller than myself, with red skin, gleaming tusks and horns, and black hair as coarse and thick as a horse's mane. He continued to struggle, and it was all I could do to hold him.

Jesper whirled. Right at his back, feet clacking on the limestone, was one of his steam-powered wolves. But instead of ambling across the gravel path and back into the forest, it went utterly mad, hoping forward and back, tail pinwheeling. It jumped forward, teeth bared; the air rent with a scream and the ugly sound of ripping fabric; the wolf danced away with a mangled petticoat in its gleaming jaws.

I felt it, or rather Gaumont's body did, and with such force that it took me a moment to throw it off, a sudden desperation not to see what lay beneath that heavy drape of fabric. Yet I watched eagerly as the hands drew back the folds of grey material to reveal a granitic face, human in form, but so frozen that its wrinkles might have been carved from stone.

Kenji began to chant. It might have been a passage from the Diamond Sutra; I was not pious enough to know one book of Buddhist scripture from another, but Kenji, despite his flaws, knew nearly all of them and could recite the appropriate passages at will. Which he was doing now. The shadow moved away from us toward the outbuilding as we stepped out onto the rear veranda, always keeping the structure to its back, or such I judged its back to be. It was hard to be certain with something so close to formless.

I felt it, or rather Gaumont's body did, and with such force that it took me a moment to throw it off, a sudden desperation not to see what lay beneath that heavy drape of fabric. Yet I watched eagerly as the hands drew back the folds of grey material to reveal a granitic face, human in form, but so frozen that its wrinkles might have been carved from stone.

Duration: 30 min.
File Size: 21 MB.
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I didn't have to ask whom he meant, but it seemed that Daiki, in this one regard, was not going to get his wish. The bushi produced two flea-bitten, scruffy men. Both were bruised and bloody but alive. Two more were not. Daiki kicked the body so that it rolled face up and studied the dead man’s features. "It would seem the bandit has escaped me after all."

I felt it, or rather Gaumont's body did, and with such force that it took me a moment to throw it off, a sudden desperation not to see what lay beneath that heavy drape of fabric. Yet I watched eagerly as the hands drew back the folds of grey material to reveal a granitic face, human in form, but so frozen that its wrinkles might have been carved from stone.

I go further in, to the ghosts. The first ghost is the ghost of the Boots. They are two holes in the wave of stone that half-fills a room of the old house. No telling who felt inside the pair of holes and found they were the shape of the inside of a boot. If you slide your feet into them--first checking that nothing has gotten there first--you can ask the ghost for a wish.

I go further in, to the ghosts. The first ghost is the ghost of the Boots. They are two holes in the wave of stone that half-fills a room of the old house. No telling who felt inside the pair of holes and found they were the shape of the inside of a boot. If you slide your feet into them--first checking that nothing has gotten there first--you can ask the ghost for a wish.

Duration: 38 min.
File Size: 26 MB.
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