George R. R. Martin - Songs of Love and Death: All-Original Tales of Star Crossed Love

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

Love Hurts copyright 2010 by Jim Butcher

The Marrying Maid copyright 2010 by Jo Beverley

Rooftops copyright 2010 by Carrie Vaughn LLC

Hurt Me copyright 2010 by M. L. N. Hanover

Demon Lover copyright 2010 by Cecelia Holland

The Wayfarers Advice copyright 2010 by Melinda Snodgrass

Blue Boots copyright 2010 by Robin Hobb

The Thing About Cassandra copyright 2010 by Neil Gaiman

After the Blood copyright 2010 by Marjorie M. Liu

You, and You Alone copyright 2010 by Jacqueline Carey

His Wolf copyright 2010 by Lisa Tuttle

Courting Trouble copyright 2010 by Linnea Sinclair

The Demon Dancer copyright 2010 by Mary Jo Putney

Under/Above the Water copyright 2010 by Tanith Lee

Kaskia copyright 2010 by Peter S. Beagle

Man in the Mirror copyright 2010 by Yasmine Galenorn

A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows copyright 2010 by Diana Gabaldon

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition November 2010

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Designed by Renato Stanisic

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Songs of love and death : tales of star-crossed love / edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. 1st Gallery Books hardcover ed.

p. cm.

1. Love stories, American. 2. Love stories, English. 3. Fantasy fiction, American.
4. Fantasy fiction, English. I. Martin, George R. R. II. Dozois, Gardner R.

PS648.L6S55 2010 823'.08508dc22 2010021181

ISBN 978-1-4391-5014-6
ISBN 978-1-4391-7083-0 (ebook)

For everyone weve loved and lost

you know who you are.

The earliest reference we can find for the phrase star-crossed lovers traces it to 1595, attributing it to Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy about the doomed romance that blossoms between a young man and a young woman on the brawling streets of Verona, a romance that is destined to fail because the families they come from are locked in a deadly feud: From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, / a pair of star-crossd lovers take their life.

Its an astrological phrase, of course, stemming from the old belief (still held today by millions of people, as a look at any newspaper will tell you) that the position of the stars at your birth casts a supernatural influence that determines your fate. So to say that a romantic relationship is star-crossed is to say that the influence of the stars are working against it, that its opposed by fate, ill-fated, thwarted by a malign star. Not meant to be. That youre destined to be kept apart no matter how hard you struggle to be together.

In real life, even without the influence of the stars or the dread hand of Fate, there are any number of things that can doom a relationshipdifferences in temperament, race, religion, social status, political affiliations, being on different sides of a bitter war, philosophical dogma, degrees of affluence (or lack of it). Even simple distance can work to keep people apart, and over the centuries there must have been many lovers who stood on the dock and watched their loved ones sail off to destinations like Australia or America thousands of miles away, knowing that theyd never see them again, since in the days before modern transportation, they might as well have been sailing off to Mars. Many, many immigrants must have left someone behind them in the Old Country, as they were forced into exile or set off to find their fortunes, and most were never reunited.

This is a theme that has been eagerly embraced by fiction and folklore, and world literature is full of star-crossed lovers desperately struggling to hold on to love no matter how overwhelming the odds against them: Paris and Helen, Pyramus and Thisbe, Lancelot and Guinevere, Roxanne and Cyrano, Cathy and Heathcliff. Recently, thanks to the booms in fantasy and romance, everyone knows of Buffy and Angel, Bill Compton and Sookie Stackhouse, Edward Cullen and Bella Swan.

Which brings us down to the book you hold in your hands at this moment (unless youre using your mental powers to make it levitate or reading it off a screen), a cross-genre anthology called Songs of Love & Death, which explores the borderlands of fantasy and romance, stories from the heart and about the heart, tales of endangered love played out against every kind of setting, from ghost-haunted fantasy landscapes to mile-long spaceships in transit between the stars, stories where a lovers heart is put in danger, and love, life, and happiness are at risk with great odds to be overcome to achieve them. Star-crossed lovers who are really star-crossed, with grave obstacles to be overcome before they succeed in finding love (if they do): a wizard who must battle both a supremely powerful vampire and the hidden desires of his own heart; a man who must seduce a reluctant maiden or forfeit his familys life to the Queen of Faerie; a woman who falls in love with a superhero she glimpses hurtling toward the scene of a crime; a ghost who lusts for sex and blood long after he should be safely in his grave; a girl who must brave the wrath of an otherworldly prince to rescue the man she loves; a lonely man who falls in love with a woman he can never meet; a smuggler who dares to fall in love with the ruler of a star-spanning Empire; a soldier cast adrift from his world who will face immense hardships to return to his own time and place; a lover who mayor may notexist; a love that persists across lives and worlds, and transcends death...

Weve gathered for you here some of the most prestigious and widely read names in romance and fantasy, and the booming hot new field of paranormal romance, including Jim Butcher, Robin Hobb, Neil Gaiman, Diana Gabaldon, Jacqueline Carey, Carrie Vaughn, and eleven other first-class writers. Among other goodies, we are proud to offer you a brand-new Harry Dresden story, a pivotal story in the Kushiel series, a follow-up to