Author: Rob Rhodes

Last in our Heroes series, by Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Electra Wilson.

In the White Garden are many mirrors and many pools. She wanders among them in the unfailing daylight, watching as glass and water open on the crossroads of distant lives.

In an ivy-framed mirror, a shepherd girl weeps, unable to touch her oldest friend, bound in a tomb of ensorcelled ice. In one pool a young emperor stands at the edge of desert and ruined highway, choosing knowledge above all the pleasures of his world;

Nineteenth in our Heroes series, by Robert Rhodes, this is part 2 of “Love & Winter: Yelena’s Story” which was a finalist in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. Art is courtesy of Lialia.

Continued from part one

She slammed the palace doors behind her and threw herself against the seam. The wood shuddered, and snarls and barking echoed inside. Teeth snapped, then nothingness.

With her back to the doors, Yelena panted from the chase and squinted into the vale’s clouded light.

Eighteenth in our Heroes series, by Robert Rhodes, this is part 1 of “Love & Winter: Yelena’s Story” which was a finalist in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. Art is courtesy of Lialia.

The four sorcerers gathered that night in the iron tower by the river Dnal. “Brothers,” they said, “this day has proven us equal in power. Let us depart then, one to each end of the world. Let each hone his craft, take an apprentice, and return in one-and-twenty years,

Seventeenth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Anders Finér.

One of the baron’s guardsmen grunted and pressed a candle into her hand. No sooner had she grasped it than another shoved her through the shadowed doorway. The door slammed behind her, snuffing the candle, and its iron bar thudded into place.

“Jackwits,” Morrigan snapped under her breath. The garments they’d given her, such as they were, were ridiculously inadequate in the keep’s dank catacombs, and the door-gust had chilled her skin to gooseflesh.

Sixteenth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Andreea Ifteni.

Shadows always covered the entrance to the Grotto, and the black muslin of her veil made it doubly hard to see. She easily recognized, though, two of the beggars gathered before it. The first was an old man, thin and handless — a twice-caught thief who seemed to live beneath a particular willow and never failed to greet her. He bowed his head and called, “Hail, your majesty. I am sorry for your loss.”

Fifteenth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Emma Rose Paterson.

“Wake now, little sister,” she hears Eldest Sister say. She breathes and pearlescent light washes over her eyelids. Outside a woodpecker’s beak thrums against a tree trunk; a goldeneye duck calls on the pond. She smells silk and jasmine… and something more.

She lifts herself onto one elbow and finds Eldest Sister kneeling beside her. Never, outside of the temple, has she witnessed Eldest Sister kneel. But a smile illuminates her wrinkled face,