Kate Elliott - Cold Fire

The Spiritwalker books take place on a different Earth, with magic. Almost all the names and words are real, not made up. Although the world may seem like an attempt to write alternate history, it isnt true alternate history. Its more like a fantasia of an Earth that might have been had conditions included an extended Ice Age, the intelligent descendants of troodons, nested planes of interleaved worlds, and human access to magical forces that can redirect the normal flow of entropy.

The Roman days of the week commonly used in this world are Sunday, Moonday, Marsday, Mercuriday, Jovesday, Venerday, and Saturnday. The months are close enough to our own that they dont need translating. From the Celtic tradition, Ive used the cross-quarter days of Samhain (November 1), Imbolc (February 2), Beltain (May 1), and Lughnasad (August 2), although its unlikely Samhain was considered the turn of the year.

Part of this story takes place in the Antilles, the Caribbean, which has developed within a very different history from the one that shaped our own world. For that reason I decided to create my own creole rather than attempt (badly) to replicate any of the various historical or modern Caribbean dialects or patois.

With the heroic assistance of Dr. Fragano Ledgister and additional advice from Katharine Kerr, I instituted specific linguistic rules common to creoles and applied them with a few nods toward the languages that would have been part of Expeditions creole, most importantly Taino but secondarily Latin and Bambara. Obviously because I write and think in English I did also borrow heavily from elements of modern creoles as well. Insofar as the three levels of creole (as per Mervyn Alleynes definition of a hierolect, mesolect, and basilect in Jamaican English) used in this book sound reasonable to the reader, it is due to the generous advice I received. Any faults and flaws are my own.

Our Caribbean, by the way, has an astonishing and marvelous literary and musical tradition so extensive there is not room here to even begin to discuss it, but I would urge you to explore it on your own.

It was a cursed long and struggling walk hauling two heavy carpetbags stuffed with books across the city of Adurnam. That it was night helped only because the darkness hid us. The bitter cold turned our hands to ice even through gloves. A dusting of new snow crunched beneath our boots. My half brother Rory ranged ahead, on the watch for militia patrols.

The princes curfew had emptied the streets. In a normal year every intersection would have been lit with a fire in honor of the winter solstice. Inns and taverns would have remained open all night, awash with ale and free oatcakes. But after the riots that had wracked the city, people and businesses had locked their doors and shuttered their windows. It was so quiet I could hear my cousin Beatrices breathing as she trudged along beside me with a bag across her shoulders.

Cat, are we almost there? she asked.

Ill carry both bags, I offered, even though the one I carried felt like a bag of bricks.

Its not the weight. Its the dark.

The night was hardest on her. Clouds covered the sky, and we avoided the few main thoroughfares that had gaslight and kept to side streets where it was darkest. With a curfew in force and people fearful they would run out of oil and candles, few night-watch lanterns burned on porches. Both Rory and I could see abnormally well in the dark. That was one of the reasons my family called me Cat instead of Catherine. We led the way, while Bee had the more difficult task: She had to trust us.

Rory loped back. Patrol coming.

We shrank into the shadow of an alcove. I set down my bag and slipped my ghost-sword from its loop on my outer skirt. It looked like a black cane, but at night I could twist its hilt and draw a sword. I waited, poised to strike. Rory tensed like a big cat about to spring. Bee sucked in and held a breath. Ahead, a troop of mounted men clattered toward the nearest intersection.

Rory sniffed, then licked his lips. I hear other people, too. I smell iron and that nasty stuff you call blackpowder.

In the house nearest us, a shutter shifted as someone inside peeked out. I closed my eyes, tasting the air and listening with senses far sharper than Bees. The wind carried the clop of hooves but also a hiss of men whispering, the click of a boot heel on stone, the lick of flame and the sting of burning.

Stay here, I whispered, shoving the heavy bag into Rorys arms. They obeyed.

In the interstices between our world and the spirit world lie threads of magic that bind the worlds together. I drew the threads as shadow around me to conceal myself from ordinary sight. Staying close alongside the buildings, I skulked forward. In the intersection, no one moved, but I heard the jingle of harness grow louder as the soldiers approached. Movement stirred in an alley to my right. A tiny flame flared, lighting the shape of a mustachioed mouth and the gleaming barrel of a gun. After a hissed whisper, the flame was snuffed out.

I stepped back against the wall of the building at the corner just as the first rank of turbaned mage House soldiers rode into view. Sparks flowered. At least ten sharp gunfire reports echoed down the houses. Horses snorted and shied. Two soldiers crumpled forward. One tumbled from his horse. His boot caught in the stirrup, and the panicked horse dragged him sideways. A volley of crossbow bolts loosed by the mounted soldiers clattered against the buildings on either side of the alley. A glass window shattered, and bolts thunked into wood shutters.

Theyre bad shots! shouted a man from the alley. Weve got them, lads! Fire!