Although I’ve written a fair bit of urban and historical fantasy, set in the real world or close alternates thereof, for me the heart of fantasy is the secondary-world story. My Driftwood and Nine Lands stories are numerous enough to get their own pages; below are the one-offs, listed in reverse publication order (i.e. newest story first).

 

• Maps to Nowhere
  Follow the map to another world . . .

  Two cities joined by their reflections. A realm of feathered serpents and jaguar-men. A desert where a former goddess seeks the ultimate truth. In this collection, award-winning author Marie Brennan takes you to ten different fantastical lands, including the world of her famed scholar-heroine Lady Trent. Journey with her to places rich and strange: here there be more than just dragons.

• The Atlas of Anywhere
  Seek out extraordinary lands . . .

  Strange guardians overseeing fate-bound duels. A priceless stone on a journey toward a bloody destiny. A thief determined to steal a worthless treasure. In her second collection of worlds-spanning fantasy, award-winning author Marie Brennan takes you back to the world of her famed heroine Lady Trent, through the land of her Hugo Award-nominated poem “A War of Words,” and onward to seven other fantastical realms, filled with pirates, demigods, and murderous creatures of winter’s cold night.

 

• “The Poison Gardener”
  Not everything in the Poison Garden of Kos Rakhin will kill you on the spot.
• “Dead Man’s Map”
  It’s tradition: you have to help a corpse get home for its funeral.
• “Embers Burning in the Night”
  Yes, I’ll tell the truth. As best as I can remember it, anyway.
• “Silver Necklace, Golden Ring”
  That was how the tale used to end, told by grannies at the fire, by performers at the fair.
• “Never to Behold Again”
  Beauty is a consumable thing.
• “Chrysalis”
  In fire and thunder it was born, and with patience it waits to become.
• “As Tight as Any Knot”
  Ondrakja had a sharp eye for valuable things . . . like the girl begging on the corner of the Uča Idvo. (Rook and Rose)
• “The City of the Tree”
  The tree dominated everything. The sky above, the sea below, the earth on which it stood, and the city that sheltered beneath its leaves.
• “On the Impurity of Dragon-kind”
  Jake Camherst discourses on a passage from the Book of Priests. (Memoirs of Lady Trent)
• “At the Sign of the Crow and Quill”
  The inn that bears the sign of the Crow and Quill is an unusual place.
• “The Şiret Mask”
  It is abundantly clear to me–far too late to be of any use–that the whole affair is a joke.
• “From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review”
  As we all know, legends of the cockatrice date back many centuries. (Memoirs of Lady Trent)
• “The Mirror-City”
  The skies were always clear and the winds still when a Giovane met his bride.
• “Love, Cayce”
  The good news is, nobody’s dead anymore.
• “Once a Goddess”
  For eleven years Hathirekhmet was a goddess, and then they sent her home.
• “Letter Found in a Chest Belonging to the Marquis de Montseraille Following the Death of That Worthy Individual”
  It is presumptuous of me, you must be thinking, to use such terms of affection in addressing you.
• “A Mask of Flesh”
  Alone in the forest, Neniza began to craft her mask of flesh.
• “Beggar’s Blessing”
  Enhardt had neither maid nor manservant, and so he walked through his cold house alone.
• “Nine Sketches, in Charcoal and Blood”
  The townhouse of Richard Lowell was not one known to respectable members of Society.
• “A Thousand Souls”
  The ships always hurry away when they see me.
• “But Who Shall Lead the Dance?”
  If fate is kind, I shall never see the likes of Elsara Reen again.