“Bones of a Righteous Man” by Michael Ezell
(Originally published in Fantasy for Good.)
— Has the life of a righteous man been taken?
— We find that it has, Excellency.
— And what shall become of the killer?
— He shall carry the bones of the righteous man until their weight does cause his death.
The setting sun reflected in a million rose-hued sparkles across the surface of the Glass Desert. The slit in Traveler’s eyeshades cut everything down to a thin panorama. A glittering expanse of heat glass, marked only by the crushed tracks of the Apostates’ road. In those tracks traveled the wagon he’d been following for days. Weeks, really. With a start, he realized it was more like months. Wasn’t it?
Through the shimmer to his right, he saw either a town, or a mirage that would lead him astray, wasting precious time.
Michael Ezell is a former US Marine who now works as a project coordinator for an Emmy-winning makeup effects shop in Southern California. Michael’s story “The Good Food”, from Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy’s Edge, was selected for Baen Books’ 2016 Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, edited by David Afsharirad. For more, check out Sinisterwriter.com and follow @SinisterEZ on Twitter.
About the Narrator:
Graeme Dunlop is a software solution architect and voice actor living in Melbourne, Australia. He is the former co-editor of the fantasy podcast Podcastle, and former host of the YA podcast Cast of Wonders. You can find him on Google+, and he occasionally tweets as @kibitzer on Twitter.
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