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| Mark Sumner: Leather Doll |
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Lisle was a hereford, born for meat and leather. When she was younger, the ranch manager had given some thought to breeding, but the girl grew up small-framed and narrow-hipped, so she was turned out into the fields. If it hadn't been for the whistling, she would have gone off to the slaughterhouse with the rest of the twelve year-olds.
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| Mark Sumner: Touched By Fire |
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The southbound train was slow to leave the station. The engine's coal-fired boiler was deep in its sixth decade, and the numerous patches and welds along the curved iron flank could not hold back a trickle of rusty water at every seam. Both the wheels and the rails they followed showed long years of heavy use and little maintenance. Still, the fire was stoked and the pressure slowly built.
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| Mark Sumner: Antriders |
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It's not everyday you meet a faerie ambassador. To my knowledge, no member of their court had made a call on Timberlane since the days of the fist court. So it was little wonder that the grand hall was packed for the official introduction. Minor nobles and land holders appeared from homes more than three day's ride, and armor was polished bright as rain. Even old Wilater, my predecessor in the post of court magician, forsook his dusty research long enough to put in an appearance.
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| Mark Sumner: A Matter of Death |
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The first one came in the grey hours of false dawn.
It was a pitiful thing, barely more than bones, with a wooden leg on the left and a face cracked and scaly as long dried leather. I watched through the second floor window as thing pawed at the door with the fingerless stump of its right hand and moaned for admittance. Flakes of skin rained down from its dry limbs like rust falling from ancient metal.
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Copyright © 1998 by Mark Sumner
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