"""Moontide"" by Mercedes Lackey: A woman who has been fostered out most of her life in a poorly-run, poorly supervised gigantic household, is summoned home. Her father turns out to be a wrecker-baron who makes his fortune by deliberately wrecking ships on the coast and sending his men to salvage what comes ashore. He's sent for her to cement an alliance; she, however, rather than learning proper womanly submission, has been training with the boy-squires...and tells him she is not going to marry anyone. In a fit of rage, he says that she will, and if she won't have the man he's chosen for her, she'll marry his Fool. Fine, says she, and there and then is married to the Fool, who is wise enough to play the Fool very well, and is, in fact, a magician who has infiltrated the household on the orders of the King in order to stop this wrecking business from going on. Suddenly he's married to the Baron's daughter--suddenly she's married to this bizarre little man. She wants escape from this madhouse -- he has to convince her to help him.
""The Heart of the Moon"" by Tanith Lee: Struggling under the curse of a dead comrade, Clirando, a warrior priestess unready to face the powers trapped within her, must face ""The Heart of the Moon"" to reveal what has been hidden.
""Banshee Cries"" by C.E. Murphy: The story tells of Jo's mother and a manifestation of the Big Bad that's hiding in the astral plane waiting for Jo, and ritual murders that take place on the full moons of winter in a year that the first full moon of winter hits on the solstice (which is when Jo's mom died) and the final full moon is on the spring equinox. Jo's mother faced down this Big Bad years ago when she was pregnant with Jo, but wasn't able to vanquish it entirely because she'd have lost the baby and now it's back to go after Jo. Her mom knew Jo wasn't going to be prepared for it and pulled a kind of Obi-Wan Kenobi (if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can imagine!) by willing herself to death, and is setting up a kind of astral projection for Jo."
advertisement