Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, #131. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eigh (2014), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

What's a horseman of the Apocalypse to do when the Earth has been picked bare, scoured clean, and burned black? Perhaps a spot of... gardening?

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On the Banks of the River of Heaven presents fourteen stories by Richard Parks, an "unrepentant storyteller," according to Locus Magazine. In his third collection, you'll find stories about a ghoul with an identity crisis; a girl who can be anyone she wants except herself; a woman from heaven and a man very much from earth; gardening tips from hell; ten aspects of a goddess all searching for one wayward husband, and many other thrilling wonders.

With his light touch and imaginative storytelling, Parks takes readers into the past as well as the future, to lands foreign as well as nearby, and from matters sublime to ones familiar (but never trivial or predictable). One of the most versatile fantasists of his generation, for Parks it is never style over the substance (or the other way around) -- it is always a seamless melding of both.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Charles de Lint
• On the Banks of the River of Heaven - (2008) - short story
• The Finer Points of Destruction - (2005) - short story
• A Pinch of Salt - (2006) - short story
• A Garden in Hell - (2006) - short story
• The Twa Corbies, Revisited - short fiction
• Lord Goji's Wedding - (2005) - short story
• The Feather Cloak - short fiction
• Skin Deep - (2008) - novelette
• Brillig - (2006) - short story
• On the Wheel - short fiction
• Soft as Spider Silk - short fiction
• Courting the Lady Scythe - (2008) - short story
• The Man Who Carved Skulls - (2007) - short story
• Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge - (2006) - novelette

A fox who reaches the age of fifty gains the ability to transform into a human woman. A fox who reaches the age of one hundred can transform into either a beautiful young girl or a handsome young man at will and can sense the world around them to a distance of over four hundred leagues. A fox who reaches the age of one thousand years, however, becomes a Heavenly Fox, an Immortal of great power, able to commune with the gods themselves.

This short story originally appeared in Weird Tales, April-May 2007, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2013. It can also be found in the anthology Weird Tales: The Twenty-First Century, Volume One, edited by Sean Wallace and Stephen H. Segal. The story is included in the collection On the Banks of the River of Heaven (2011).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, #150, June 2014, It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015, edtied by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

This short story originally appeared in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, #25, April 2010, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, December 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, December 2005. It can also be found in the anthology Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection The Collected Tymon the Black (2017).

This novelette originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, April 2006. It can also be found in the anthology Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collections On the Banks of the River of Heaven (2010) and Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter (2013).

Listen to the full story for free at PodCastle.

In an ancient Japan where the incursions of gods, ghosts, and demons into the living world is an everyday event, an impoverished nobleman named Yamada no Goji makes his living as a demon hunter for hire. With the occasional assistance of the reprobate exorcist Kenji, whatever the difficulty--ogres, demons, fox-spirits--for a price Yamada will do what needs to be done, even and especially if the solution to the problem isn't as simple as the edge of a sword. Yet, no matter how many monsters he has to face, or how powerful and terrible they may be, the demons Yamada fears the most are his own.

Yamada no Goji is a minor nobleman of ancient Japan who has lost everything - except a single purpose: keep a promise to the woman he loved. In order to fulfill his vow, all he has to do is fight a horde of demons and monsters, bargain with a few ghosts, outwit the sinister schemers of the emperor's court, find a way to defeat an assassin who cannot be seen, heard, or touched - and change the course of history. Fortunately, Yamada specializes in achieving the seemingly impossible, so he is sure in some way to succeed... if he doesn't drink himself into oblivion first.

The Abe clan and its allies are in full rebellion. When the Emperor's greatest military leader, Yoshii, is targeted for assassination by magic, it is up to the newly sober Lord Yamada and his exorcist associate Kenji to keep the young man alive long enough to put down the uprising before the entire country is consumed by war. Yamada knows how to deal with demons, monsters, and angry ghosts, but the greatest threat of all is one final assassin, hidden in a place where no one - especially Lord Yamada - would ever think to look.

Lord Yamada is called away "one last time" from his newly restored estates in Kamakura to help Prince Kanemore ensure that Princess Teiko's son, Takahito, inherits the Chrysanthemum Throne. Unfortunately, assuming the throne proves to be the easy part. Yamada must then help Takahito renounce that throne in such a way as to hobble the power of the Fujiwara clan forever!