"Come," said the cat. "It is time." It shamed him, speaking with animals. "They summon you," she said. He guessed who those summoners must be. "No," he said. But imperial constables hunted him. He didn't know why. He fled upriver, terrified, into the great forest, where ancient spells lingered, his only guides this cold-eyed cat and a feckless dog. And with every decision, every act, he was changed. He'd never chosen this--they'd bred him for it. He must be a thief.

This was not a good place to be.... After a moment, I realized we were caged, staring out through iron bars. Defion stood outside the cage, insect faced, no expression. Philip Prester stood beside him, but with his back to us, looking out over the plain. Windblown orange dust sandpapered my face. I felt a buzz inside my head, and knew the dust did that, as if it was electrically charged. After a few moments, I didn't notice it. "Where's this?" I said, mainly to hear my own voice, something familiar. Defion surprised me: he spoke. "Sinnabar," he said.

An alien visitor gets sloppy drunk on Diet Pepsi. At the OK Corral, old-west spellslingers fire off incantations. Ancients from the Cretaceous emerge from Manhattan's subways. A scientist riles a Florida swamp shaman, and never sees the magic coming. Hunting a renegade, intercosmic rangers take the form of professional wrestlers. And then.... Is fact really stranger than fiction? Not in these fifteen stories.

A Pleistocene western (imagine herding saber-toothed tigers) and fourteen other stories from the farthest reaches of the imaginable.