A Breviary of Fire

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”

The words of composer Gustav Mahler animate this collection of sixteen tales from award-winning author Marie Brennan, inspired by mythological and folkloric traditions around the world. Here you will find flames of revenge, immortality, and grace, as a valkyrie seeks peace, a queen weaves and unweaves her own fate, and a goddess vanishes from mortal memory — but never from the page.

Table of Contents

• “This Is How”
• “Serpent, Wolf, and Half-Dead Thing”
• “The Waking of Angantyr”
• “Silence, Before the Horn”
• “Daughter of Necessity”
• “Your Body, My Prison, My Forge”
• “For the Fairest”
• “The Wives of Paris”
• “The Me of Perfect Sight”
• “The Gospel of Nachash”
• “Salt Feels No Pain”
• “At the Heart of Each Pearl Lies a Grain of Sand”
• “Centuries of Kings”
• “The Old Woman and the Tea”
• “Ghost and Fox”
• “Speak to the Moon”
• Story notes