A Visit from the Scythians: Four Shaman Stories

Four shaman stories. Two reprints, two originals.

'Ill Spirits'

Qamty used masculine speech tags for himself and kept a curl of bristle on his chin, and he wore what was a woman’s hat in Merqot, white stoat, with pearls and silver strung into his hair.

'Spirit Writing'

The Cosmocrat of Ping had outlawed origin spirits for the peoples of the north. Instead, you must have ancestry, orderly, recorded, and limited to men.

'A Truce with Evil'

Too often she saw, instead of his empty seat, the Talisy of two years ago in his splendid fishscale armour astride a young Batrad, the stag’s white hair and the opalescent armour both polished to a fine shine.

'A Visit from the Scythians'

Hands the size of shovels; her feet sprawl like a camel’s. I have never seen a woman walk like that.

Together, 17000 words.

'Ill Spirits' first published in The Knot Wound Round Your Finger: An Anthology on Memory, History & Inheritance, edited by Devon Field, Bell Press, 2021.

'A Truce with Evil' first published in Queer Weird West Tales, edited by Julie Bozza, LIBRAtiger, 2022.