Enjoy samples from Tor.com Publishing's first ten novellas in the Fall 2015 sampler! Featuring Kai Ashante Wilson, Nnedi Okorafor, K. Parker, Daniel Polansky, and. James Thomas 'Jimmy' Fallon (born. 2015: Lip Sync Battle: Himself 'Jimmy Fallon vs. Tor. com Publishing Fall 2. Sampler by Kai Ashante Wilson, Paul Cornell, Alter S. Reiss, Nnedi Okorafor ! Featuring Kai Ashante Wilson, Nnedi Okorafor, K. Parker, Daniel Polansky, and many more, this sampler contains exciting new fantasy worlds, harrowing science fiction adventures, stolen memories, edible angels, and talking salamanders. The novellas these chapters are taken from will be available in ebook, trade paperback, and audiobook starting in September. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. Advertising. Product Details. ISBN- 1. 3: 9. 78. Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates. Publication date: 0. Sold by: Macmillan. Format: NOOK Book. Sales rank: 1. 29,7. File size: 2. 2 MBNote: This product may take a few minutes to download. Read an Excerpt. Tor. Fall Sampler. By Tom Doherty Associates. Tom Doherty Associates Copyright . That sometimes happened, and most of the caravan had rationed for it; but many hadn't. One among the guardsmen, Gangy, who'd been spendthrift with his water, began to mutter in a manner damaging to brotherly morale. It would begin by feeling your eyes dry tearless and unblinkable, said Gangy, your tongue swelling blueblack in your mouth, and skin shriveling up into leather, into jerky. Perhaps a year hence, some wayfarer would spot a skull scoured meatless by the sands, sun- bleached: yours — The seditious remainder cut short by the hard back of Captain's hand. They would all reach the next wells alive, said Master Suresh, so long as grown men didn't sit and weep, boo hoo hoo like some sad whore, her six best boys lost this week to marriage. We must do now as she did then: dry the tears, and hustle! The caravan pressed on. There was no talk, no sound, except the jingling of harness and the vague shush of sands shifted by their passage. Every night the brazen sphere dissolves in a molten line, compelling the gaze westward when the sky's dark otherwise. With a similar compulsion, the least dampness in the driest wastes would seize Demane's whole attention. Old Hunger Games (2015) 69th Hunger Games. Hunger Games Information. 69th Hunger Games Tributes. 73rd Hunger Games Champion: Justice Fray, District. Posted on July 3, 2015 by Brain, Child . Blind Items Revealed #2 August 20, 2013. 2015 31 Comments blind items revealed. I felt so bad for him. Greg and I have been catching up on the Hunger Games movies.No stopping at nightfall, nor for midnight, either: the caravan was still going after moonset. Under cloudless constellations, the camels trudged along the banks of a dead river, extinct since prehistory. They came to a stretch of arroyo where humidity hovered, where some deep spring leaked up even to the surface. Demane snapped the reins of his camel, hurrying the beast from midpack to the caravan's forefront, where Captain rode. Master Suresh kept watch on all such urgencies. He too brought his camel up abreast, in time to see Demane's gesture and hear the offending word. They have fucked out that man's brains, Captain. Tell your fevered brother: this river died before the dragons burnt Dalu. That day he'd run from Ajeric's wells until after sundown.
He'd only just mounted his camel. With heart- spoke fatigue, he looked at Demane. Don't make a fool of me. But the water is here, Master Suresh. The captain's word had weight. Demane chose Messed Up, Michelo, Wock, and the captain himself: the men strongest in the caravan. The long draw was more rock than sand, but not steep. By dim stars, the chosen picked their way down. The silver night ablaze for him, Demane ran ahead to where wetness rose richest, near a boulder. Bent over, noses in the sand and pressed to the rim of the half- ton slab, even the others could smell it. But there was no trickle, only a dark stain in the sand. Nor could they shift the stone, and to bring down more hands would only crowd and hinder, not help. He had the captain give his highest, sharpest cries, and listening to echoes the rock returned, chose a spot to crouch. He milked his third eye for vitriol. It took time, and to the others it seemed that Demane only knelt, lost in thought or prayer for water. He'd once accomplished this feat as a boy, when still a novice, but never since in earnest. Master Suresh called down bitterly. Dolce, the captain called back. Some time later, Messed Up nudged Demane's shoulder. Weak phosphoros was hid by his body, but the rock cried out — inorganic cavils and groans. Virulent potency sheared deep feet through rock, and then sinking, smelted and cracked the stone. Igneous fumes, hot, hissed out. Demane jumped up and back with the rest. When the fiery stink had cleared, Captain waved Demane beside him, and the other three to the rock's opposite side. This time their strength sufficed to tip the boulder out from the greater shelf beneath. They sent it on its way, sliding to the sandy bottom. So did they all: a burbling sigh, the sweet sound of water pissing through fractured stone; then saw the starlit froth too, as it welled up, running away in glitters over the thirsty sand and gravel. Messed Up fell greedily to hands and knees. The caravan drank and drank and lay down anywhere. Brothers should have known the routine. Five different men guarded each quarter of the night, while four slept the night through. They'd done so more than eighty times already, at every sleep- camp when Captain called the watch. But by the lucky springs, so late it would dawn soon, Captain sat for a moment in the sand. And it must surely have felt soft to him, for he began to nod, his lips slackening. Across camp, watching between slow blinks, Demane lay stretched out already. It had been a long day of highs and lows; he too was at lowest ebb. His knack for medicinals, as it turned out, had proved no help at all with venoms. That feat had drained Demane to the dregs. He ought to practice more, but why, nasty stuff .. Demane slept too. Some nightmare woke him. The fleshcolored sky was sallowing in the orient. Over the lip of the ridge, down the arroyo's east bank, ragged shapes with mach. No, there were fifty of them at least! Desperados. Demane's alarums woke the camp. Snoring brothers took hard kicks. Some sleepers he snatched up by the hair and dropped on foot awake. As soon as Demane began to yell, every bandit set up whooping, lunatic as hyenas. Twice the number of blades bristled downslope as up, and there was nobody silent, everyone screaming. Before the teeth of spears could chew them, the merchants scrambled past the brothers to cower against the western bank; and then top and bottom jaw of the skirmish closed. The merchants all lived. Brothers died. Where was Captain? Amidst the enemy already, a blur of black robes, quarter- way- up the eastern slope in the thick of them. The captain went from one to another, inspiring shrill agony or utter silence as he passed. By sixes and sevens the bandits would close with him before he got the numbers down. A full half dozen pressing together could scrawl shallow wounds on him, or rend his robe. Captain in turn pocked the crush with every movement. Chickenty thought he was a hero too. Though Demane called him back where the brothers rallied at the bottom, Chickenty ran on upslope. He speared one desperado, and then another behind that first. Weeks before, in the last raid, he'd worked wonders with his quick feet on firm ground. But sand shifts and rolls, worse on the uphill, and no one's feet can be as fast or sure. Some fourth desperado came driving in on Chick's blindside, and he did hear Demane's warning shout. But his step sideways was not quick enough, and he slipped. The spear skewered Chick kidney- to- kidney. Crumpling sidewise, he vomited blood, and was the first brother to die. There is a principle called TSIM. Through deep time the universe complicates, all things whatsoever arising from the mother quantum, precisely so this man (writhing now on Demane's spearpoint) might enjoy sentience, choice, and love. And all who claim to follow the principle must have hands loath and cold when it comes time to kill. You're sworn to better work than murder. Unreckoned aeons gone by, and incalculable effort spent, for what? To kill a man, your unctuous shaft dragging, slippery and bone- caught, through your grasp? Demane braced his foot to the deadman's chest, crushing ribs and sternum under his heel, until his spearpoint pulled loose. Clear as day he heard the Tower laughing on its left side: tsoa. Chaos and pointlessness are the point! But divinity knocked about inside Demane like some great- winged bird caught indoors, frantic to find that one open window again; and so, however slow and reluctant, still he had faster hands, stronger arms, than anyone facing him. Xho Xho, Walead, and Bou, clumsy runts all three, wisely kept together. Four times they repeated the same maneuver — scatter, flank, triple- thrust — that Captain had taught them. But then Walead came up tardy on the left and Bou, in front, died for it. So too might have Xho Xho, when the bandit whirled right, wolf- howling. Demane threw his spear into the man's warcry. Bad teeth had clamped onto the shaft when Demane wrenched his spearhead out. Messed Up roared and stabbed. A wattle of gore, long and red, dangled off his jaw. The seemly flesh had been laid back, his bloodwashed molars in naked discovery, also the bones of his cheek and jaw, and much busy undergristle besides. Desperados scattered away from him. But Messed Up caught them, and killed them, anyway. Rats in rout, with the ratter giving chase! Behold the wake of strewn bodies, and here comes the big one himself, red- toothed and crazed. About the business best suiting him. No one could save Wock. Nor the twins, Cruz and Gl. Demane didn't even know they'd died 'til afterwards. Teef and Barkeem, hemmed in by mayhem. Hard pressed by two bandits, T- Jawn scrabbled for footing on a steep patch of sand. He fell, slaughter- ready, before both spears. Demane was too far away to rescue any of the three. Not the captain, though; he swooped in, with the same acts dealing death and deliverance. The point and edge of his spear opened red lips in one bandit's throat. Lifesblood emptied from that new mouth, while the other bandit took the same blow's downstroke, which cored his heart. Captain made the body dance with the twist- jerk of freeing his spear.
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