The Mask of the Sorcerer

Sekenre, son of Vashtem the sorcerer, lives in his father's strange house. They're not a very happy family, his father the most feared man in all the City of Reeds, maybe in the whole country and his mother being murdered by him when Sekenre is still quite young. And it doesn't get any better when Vashtem dies and travels upriver to the Land of the Dead.

When Vashtem – now dead – also kills Sekenre's sister, and the citizens of the City of Reeds turns against him, he sees no other way than to seek the advice of the ancient Sybil, who lives under the city. She gives him the means to, while still alive, travel upriver to the Land of the Dead, the stomach of Surat-Kemad, the crocodile god. He undertakes the trip, but nothing turns out the way he hoped.

"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