Author: Rob Rhodes

Ninth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Sabrina Moles.

He waits behind the curtain of crimson velvet, listening to the court’s gossip and chatter. At last, silvered trumpets blare — the least subtle of distractions — and he parts the curtain imperceptibly. Across the great ballroom, the Crown Prince and his wife appear in the broad doorway, their golden sashes seeming to glow beneath the gaslight sconces. Arm in arm, they proceed toward the wide curtained dais like pieces gliding on a chessboard of red and white marble.

Seventh in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Barbara Brashier.

“You’re late, milady,” Aramis says even as she parts the silver curtain. He snaps shut his pocket watch and tucks it into his checkered vest, his white-tipped ginger tail swishing.

She shrugs and sits on the closest bench in the Armory. “My geology midterm’s tomorrow,” she says, unlacing her sneakers. (Did I forget to take them off? she wonders.) “It’s going to be hard. And besides,”

Sixth in our Heroes series, by our own Robert Rhodes. Art is courtesy of Leela Wagner.

“You’re a trueborn child of Goldspire,” his mother once said while stroking his hair. He’d fought an older boy behind the Butchers’ Market that afternoon and lost. “Quick. Tough. Clever. You’ll be a lord someday, Tan, if you use your head before your hands and heart.”

Later — seven years ago, now — he found her in a snowdrift near their home, her throat cut from ear to ear.

This the fifth installment in our Heroes series, written by our own Robert Rhodes. The art is courtesy of Ida Mary Walker Larsen.

He is free.

He simply stands as the wide gates of the mining barracks thud shut and a wave of cold air hits his nape. He lingers under the gatehouse arch, his boots uneasy on the icy muck, and lifts his eyes. Before the jagged white mountains, under the leaden sky, it remains.

The Spire.

He wishes,

This the fourth installment in our Heroes series, written by our own Robert Rhodes. The art is courtesy of Allen Douglas.

On a brisk autumn day, Mad Batson went a-wandering.

He closed behind him the door of the forgotten shrine that was his home in Fair Forest and, clicking his tongue, finger-painted the lintel with a rune of sulfur and bean curd. Satisfied that any intruder would be whisked onto the pleasure barge of the Archduchess of Milph and bloated with nose-wrinkling gases, he brushed off his hands and departed.