The ruined mansion seemed the perfect place to elude their pursuers… until they began to penetrate its secrets.

     “What unrelenting desolation!” remarked Folie. “Not a stem or leaf to be seen.”
     Soon they were poised on the lip of a depression in the rock landscape. In this hollow, some distance off to their left, was a mansion whose middle section had fallen in.
     “The lords of this demesne,” observed Folie wryly, “must receive their rent in gravel and scorpions.”
     “Can their hospitality be worse than that?” Rhing said, motioning toward the roiling darkness and webs of lightning filling the horizon to their right.

Douglas Empringham lives in San Bruno, California. Art by Kent Burles.

“Folie and Null” appears in Black Gate 14. You can read a more complete excerpt here. The complete Black Gate 14 Sneak Peek (Part I) is available here.

This wraps up Part I of our Sneak Peek. Over the next few weeks we’ll bring you Part II — excerpts from novellas from Pete Butler, James Enge, and Robert J Howe — and Part III, the non-fiction, including a look at Modern Reprints of Classic Fantasy by Rich Horton, and copious reviews.