Asim stalked out of my subconscious with his personality and authorial tone pretty much fully formed. The setting where he and his best friend were going to adventure, though, wasn’t as clear, and I toyed briefly with the idea of a fantasy world loosely modeled on ancient Arabia before I decided to follow the lead of Clark Ashton Smith, who’d invented an imaginary corner of medieval France for a short story cycle. I fashioned a quadrant of the Abbasid Caliphate that never really existed, north of Mosul, and that is where I set Dabir and Asim’s first short stories.
Once I sat down to draft a Dabir and Asim novel I decided to ground the setting even more firmly in our own reality, with Mosul taking the place of the make-believe Dariashan, and I’ve updated the older short stories to reflect that change.
Very few people who actually existed appear in these stories, though they are occasionally mentioned. Creatures of myth wander through, and, in order to keep readers guessing, they may not necessarily act as described in legend. But then it must be remembered that different storytellers themselves did not consistently describe monsters, no matter that the monsters had the same name. The idea of traits that can be cataloged for creatures like vampires and werewolves is more of a modern conceit. Specific attributes and behaviors tended to be more fluid, even if some of the basics remained the same.
Almost all of Dabir and Asim’s short adventures are included here (although I fully intend to write more). There are three exceptions. One of the stories, “Whispers from the Stone,” is incorporated into the narrative of The Desert of Souls. Another, “The Dream Horn,” is slated to be printed in an upcoming anthology from Rogue Blades Entertainment. The third, “An Audience with the King,” was the first Dabir and Asim story I ever wrote and is, frankly, goofier than anything else that followed. For now at least I’ve decided to leave it out of circulation. Perhaps I’ll release a revised version someday as an apocryphal story.
A few might be interested to know that not all the stories collected here take place in the interval between the first and second novel. Asim wrote of his adventures with Dabir late in life, and did not always recount things in chronological order. Thus “The Waters of Eternity” takes place at a later time than anything yet written about the characters. More obviously, so does “The Slayer’s Tread,” by which point Jafar al-Barmaki has become the vizier and Dabir and Asim have already encountered the villainous Acteon at least once before.
I’ve discussed how much these stories owe to reading the works of favorite authors (Harold Lamb, Robert E. Howard, Leigh Brackett, Roger Zelazny, Catherine L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, Fritz Leiber, C. S. Forester, and others), but in a very real way they might not have existed without a series of gifted editors. Fraser Ronald was the first of these; he gave the original Dabir and Asim story a home beside some of my early fiction on his Sword’s Edge Web zine. Daniel Blackston was a friend and enthusiastic supporter both at Future Mystery Anthologies magazine and in his Pitch-Black anthologies. Without the encouragement of these two men I might not have kept on with the writing of the tales. Later came the talented Chris Cevasco, who published the late lamented historical magazine Paradox, and Eric Flint, who ran Jim Baen’s Universe, among other fine (and even better known) accomplishments. I am grateful to both of these men, as well as to Ahmed Khan, who helped me fix some historical flaws in “Servant of Iblis” when he reprinted it in his excellent anthology, Mosque Among the Stars. John O’Neill, Black Gate’s publisher and editor, has provided a safe haven not just for my work, but for the work of countless other writers of the fantastic. He is long overdue recognition for his commitment to modern speculative fiction with an adventurous twist, and I am particularly grateful to him for championing heroic fiction and sword-and-sorcery, subgenres that in too many other quarters are dismissed out of hand. Most recently, Peter Wolverton of Thomas Dunne Books has stepped in to offer sage advice for final cleanup on these tales. Like my wife, sometimes it seems he knows the voices of Dabir and Asim better than I, for both Pete and Shannon are never shy about letting me know when my heroes don’t sound quite like themselves.
Over the years the drafts of these stories passed through the hands of talented critiquers who provided feedback and brilliant suggestions, most especially Shauna Bryce, Chris Hocking, Eric Knight, Angela McConnell, Beth Shope, Clint Werner, Dr. Mark Krahling, and my beloved wife and muse, Shannon. To all of them, and many more, I am indebted, though I owe my deepest thanks to you, the reader, for taking the chance on them. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy what you find here.