Search Worlds Without End

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in Whispers #8, December 1975. The story has been reprinted many times. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• Whispers: An Anthology of Fantasy and Horror (1977), edited by Stuart David Schiff
• The World Fantasy Awards, Volume Two (1980), Stuart David Schiff and Fritz Leiber
• Heads to the Storm (1989), edited by Sandra Miesel and David Drake
• The Century's Best Horror Fiction 1951-2000 (2012), edited by John Pelan
• The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (2012), edited by Jacob Weisman and David G. Hartwell

The story is included in the collections:

• From the Heart of Darkness (1983)
• Vettius and His Friends (1989)
• Balefires (2007)
• Night & Demons (2012)

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Now a nascent demon-hunting crew on the lam, Danielle and her friends arrive in a small town that contains a secret occult library run by anarchists and residents who claim to have come back from the dead. When Danielle and her crew investigate, they are put directly in the crosshairs of a necromancer's wrath -- whose actions threaten to trigger the apocalypse itself.

To find the Sword, unearth the Barrow. To unearth the Barrow, follow the Map.

When a small crew of scoundrels, would-be heroes, deviants, and ruffians discover a map that they believe will lead them to a fabled sword buried in the barrow of a long-dead wizard, they think they've struck it rich. But their hopes are dashed when the map turns out to be cursed and then is destroyed in a magical ritual. The loss of the map leaves them dreaming of what might have been, until they rediscover the map in a most unusual and unexpected place.

Stjepan Black-Heart, suspected murderer and renegade royal cartographer; Erim, a young woman masquerading as a man; Gilgwyr, brothel owner extraordinaire; Leigh, an exiled magus under an ignominious cloud; Godewyn Red-Hand, mercenary and troublemaker; Arduin Orwain, scion of a noble family brought low by scandal; and Arduin's sister Annwyn, the beautiful cause of that scandal: together they form a cross section of the Middle Kingdoms of the Known World, united by accident and dark design, on a quest that will either get them all in the history books...or get them all killed.