"If ever your heart has said, _The great days are no more. The golden afternoon of golden tales has faded into night, and I came late, born out of time, to warm my hands at the embers that flicker and fade hour by hour_ -- read this. . . Here are ghosts grim and gentle, red gold of Ophir, and fell weavings. Here is a tale to keep Scheherazade talking a hundred years." -- Gene Wolfe "Darrell Schweitzer is a fine writer . . . Not only is he skilled in the exotic use of the best trappings of Fantasy, he employs a disquieting awareness of the dark nooks of the mind and soul. . . .Best of all, Schweitzer is a story-teller, by whose smoky fire one may sit spell-bound." -- Tanith Lee "Superlative." --Interzone Darrell Schweitzer has been three-times nominated for the World Fantasy Award, twice for Best Collection, and once for the novella "To Become a Sorcerer," which forms the first four chapters of this book. He is also the author of _The White Isle, The Shattered Goddess, _ and nearly 300 short stories, many of which are collected in such volumes as _Tom O'Bedlam's Night Out, Transients, Refugees from an Imaginary Country, Nightscapes, _ and _The Great World and the Small._ An expert on fantastic fiction, who has written books about Lord Dunsany and H.P. Lovecraft, he is also co-editor of the legendary _Weird Tales_ magazine.