Dear Readers,
It’s been more than a year since we launched Distant Reaches. In that time, we’ve published 75 — 75! — stories from 15 different authors, representing all four corners of the Amal Empire. Many have featured incredible art from the brilliant Shay Plummer and Alana Fletcher.
You’ve read of romances, wars, familial spats, epic journeys, lovable fools, and forgotten terrors. You’ve read forbidden texts and ancient histories, studied classical documents and reports of unsolved mysteries, scoured the land for wondrous beasts and loathsome enemies.
And there’s still plenty more to come!
Our new website is almost ready to launch. When it does, adventure will have a brand new home. Creator/co-editor Benjamin Reeves and I are so excited for you to see it. And I’m excited for you to read my brand-new story from the Distant Reaches, “Songs for the Flies to Dance to” — available for free when the new site is live. This is a big one, folks; the Distant Reaches will not be the same when it is over.1 Scroll down for an exclusive excerpt.
In the meantime, catch up on all the adventures you may have missed — or revisit your old favorites — on DistantReaches.com.
Finally! We know we’ve mentioned our Indiegogo a lot. Readers, we’re still more than $6,000 away from our fundraising goal. Every story you read is commissioned; all of our contributors are paid for their work and talent. (Benjamin and I are the only exceptions: This project is a labor of love, and all money made goes straight back into it.)
Please — help us keep the Distant Reaches alive and well.
And if you’re unable to give at this time, please share Distant Reaches with anyone you know who likes exciting adventures.
Thank you all for your continued readership and support. We can’t wait for you to see what else is in store.
Cheers,
Robert
Recently, from the Distant Reaches:
Shocking revelations of love and magic abound in
’s “REVEALED: A Forbidden Affair in Rorei’s Court.”Silvana Rhinebeck meets a mysterious Uncanny with an unusual — and affordable! — request in
’s “The Shadowspinner’s Price.”Emily Wink can’t stop gushing about how much she loves the Conclave of Bards in Shannon Hall’s and Tamia Johnson’s “Amalcross Times: A Starry-Eyed Lass or a True Bard?”
An excerpt from “Songs for the Flies to Dance to,” by Robert Frankel
This is the story of three women.
The first stands on a dais, naked, her robes rumpled at her feet. A fire burns before her, untamed but controlled. She holds nothing in her hands, though they are not empty. She will never need to weep again.
The second kneels on the floor of a cabin, her clothes drenched with blood that is not her own. Smoke billows into and out of the windows, heat biting at the exposed skin of her neck and face. She squeezes the body of a dead man against her breasts. If she still had a voice, she would be wailing.
The third leans against the slimy grates at the dead end of a dark tunnel. Her armor hangs ragged and her chainmail weighs heavy. She holds stable the arrow shot through her stomach, for she cannot afford to lose more blood. With her free hand, she raises a blade and snarls. The men surrounding her flinch.
This third woman’s name is Lisbeth.
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Everyone knows the Conclave of Bards is rigged, but no one acknowledges it. Each Conclave, mountains of Imperial academics and bureaucrats and Catechists scour the Amal Empire, learning more about each incoming bard than even those same bards may know about themselves.
Take, for example, the seventeenth Conclave in 321 AE: Naia Hideota’s tale of the star-crossed lovers Conroy and Milius left not a single eye dry in the realm. The Emperor himself was reported to have stained his silken sleeve with tears.
But before she stepped onto the Conclave platform to recite her tale, the Imperium had learned about Naia Hideota: Her family belonged to a founding clan of Amalcross. It had risen to modest fortune through grit and lucky breaks and hard-won contracts — including enough ancient agreements with House Roarer to suggest a friendly relationship. And though the Hideotas were a rigidly patriarchal family — Naia was the lone official daughter of her eight recognized siblings — Naia was an active member of the suffragette movement House Roarer was bankrolling.
So, Naia Hideota got her time on the platform in the Great Hall, but the Emperor bequeathed his boon to a less-controversial house’s son for a milquetoast retelling of some Amal victory or another.
Take also, for example, the thirty-sixth Conclave in 511 AE, when Hylke Ezra-Tami recited his thrilling ballad about a Mardian prison break at the end of that long war.
It was an uncommonly cold spring day when he sang in the Great Hall. But when Hylke was finished, the air was stuffy and humid, and the attendees drenched in sweat, and the nipping breeze no balm at all for the heightened nerves or racing hearts.
At the time, however, the crimes of Amalcross during the Mardian War were just coming to light, and Hylke’s tale scraped too deep into the fledgling nerve. So, Hylke stood aside to watch a priest win the Empress’s boon.
And if Hylke Ezra-Tami did not know his family had descended from Mardian refugees — that they had fled the rape of their city and passed as native Amalcrossers — he would never forget it after the week he spent with the Catechists upon the Conclave’s conclusion.
Lisbeth Longhill knows all about Naia Hideota and Hylke Ezra-Tami. She knows about Teed ‘ja Bramble, too, and about Carmina Holden and Nemisin Armstrong and Bobbye ‘ja Lokta and so many more. She can recite their life stories and their Conclave ballads as if they are her own. She loves and loathes them each.
She knows them all well enough to know she has not made any of their same mistakes. Knows, too, that she will not.
And isn’t that the greatest compliment one could give their predecessors?
Ben, here: Robert isn’t kidding. This new story brings to shattering conclusion the fifty-seventh Conclave of Bards.