Kate Elliott - Cold Steel

Katharine Kerr suffered through more versions, false starts, detours, and backtracks than I really have a right to inflict on anyone. This book could not have been written without her patient encouragement.

Sherwood Smith, Michelle Sagara, Karen Miller, Fragano Ledgister, Shweta Narayan, Nathaniel Smith, Dani McKenzie, Mark Timmony, N. K. Jemisin, Alyssa Louie, Raina Storer, Cora Kaichen, Alexander Rasmussen-Silverstein, and Jennifer Flax all offered comments on early drafts. Laura Kinnaman mentioned woolly rhinos. Elizabeth Bear kindly gave me last-minute climbing advice. I am indebted to Dr. Kurtis Nishimura for his expertise in physics and his skill at brainstorming “alternate physics”; this trilogy became much more interesting because of his contributions over several lunches at my favorite casual restaurant in Honolulu, Kaka‘ako Kitchen. I would also like to thank my editor, Devi Pillai, for her wise patience and piercing insight, and Susan Barnes for the details.

As always, my spouse, Jay Silverstein, did his best to support me through a grueling writing process. Thanks also to my children, Rhiannon, Alexander, and David, for sharing the initial inspiration with me and letting me run with it.

The Spiritwalker books take place on a different Earth, with magic. This is 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 either reverse or accelerate the normal flow of entropy.

Almost all the names and words used are real, not made up. Most of the place-names are, when possible, based on actual names used at one time or another in the history of the various regions. Geographical differences from our own world reflect the extended Ice Age, which would have locked up enough water in the ice sheets to cause the sea levels to drop, as they were in the Late Quaternary and Early Holocene in our time line. Doggerland is the English name for the region that is now beneath the North Sea but was, in our Mesolithic, a land bridge between Britain and the European continent. Naturally, because of these things, history flowed down different tributaries in the Spiritwalker world.

CALENDAR NOTES

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 don’t need translating. From the Celtic tradition, I’ve used the “cross-quarter days” of Samhain (November 1), Imbolc (February 2), Beltain (May 1), and Lughnasad (August 2), although it’s unlikely Samhain was considered the turn of the year.

I was serving drinks to the customers at the boardinghouse when a prince came to kill me.

I had my back to the gate and had just set a tray of empty mugs on the bar when the cheerful buzz of conversation abruptly ceased. Behind the counter, Uncle Joe finished drawing a pitcher of ale from a barrel before he turned. His gaze widened as he took in the sight behind me. He reached under the counter and set my sheathed sword next to the tray, in plain view.

I swung around.

As with most family compounds in the city of Expedition, the boardinghouse’s rooms and living quarters were laid out around a central courtyard. A wall and gate separated the living area from the street. Soldiers stood in the open gate, surrounding the man who intended to be the next ruler of the Taino kingdom.

Prince Caonabo had a broad, brown face, and his black hair was almost as long as mine, although his fell loose while I confined mine in a braid whose tip brushed my hips. He wore white cotton cloth draped around his body much like a Roman toga, and simple leather sandals. Had I doubted his rank because of the plainness of his dress, I might have guessed his importance from the gold torc and gold armbands he wore, as well as the shell wrist-guards and anklets that ornamented his limbs and the jade-stone piercing the skin just above his chin.

The prince raised a hand, palm up. A flame sparked from the center of his palm, flowering outward as a rose blooms.

“Catherine Bell Barahal, you have been accused in the council hall of Expedition of being responsible for the death of the honorable and most wise cacica , what you call a queen, she with the name Anacaona. As Queen Anacaona’s only surviving son, and as heir to her brother, the cacique , I am required to pursue justice in this matter.”

I met his gaze. “I would like to know who made that accusation.”

“I made the accusation.”

He knew what I had done.

I took a step back, but I could not move faster than magic. Warmth tingled across my skin as the backlash of his fire magic brushed across my skin and stirred heat within my lungs and heart.

Yet as the light of the growing flame shimmered across his face, his features melted quite startlingly, like candle wax. He was as poured into a new mold and began to transform into a different person. I had not known that fire mages were skilled in the art of illusion, able to make themselves appear as someone else! Even the bar and courtyard were cunningly wrought illusions that, like his face and body, dissolved into mist. A gritty smoke filled my lungs, choking me.

Leaping back, I grabbed for my sword, but before I could grasp the hilt, my hand burst into flame. A blast of hot wind dispersed the stinging veil of smoke. As my vision cleared, I found myself standing on grand stone steps that led up to the imposing entry of a palatial building. Its walls and roof blazed. Sheets of fire crackled into the air like the vast wings of a molten dragon. Flames clawed searing daggers into my flesh as I groped for my sword. I had no cold magic with which to kill the inferno. Only if I could wield cold steel had I a chance to save myself.

My fingers closed over the smooth hilt. I tugged, but the blade stuck in its sheath. An icy wind poured down in gouts of freezing air that battered against the raging flames, as if fire and ice were at war and I was at the center of the battle. The flames shimmered from gold to white, and in the blink of an eye the fire transmuted to become falling snow. Brushing away the snowflakes icing my eyes and lips, I tried to make sense of what had happened.

Where was I? Why was everything changing so fast? Was I dreaming?

Instead of a burning building, the sheer cliff face of an ice sheet loomed over me. The pressure of its glacial mass slowly advanced, grinding and groaning. I pulled on my sword, but the blade was crushed in the ice and my hand had frozen to it. I simply could not move.

Beyond my frozen body lay a hollow cavern that bloomed with the harsh glamour of cold fire. In that lofty cave, the melted form that had first appeared to me as Prince Caonabo glittered as it changed. Frost and crystals shaped themselves into the figure and face of a man I recognized: the Master of the Wild Hunt.

My sire.

His expression was as cold and empty as his heart. “So are you trapped, little cat. You will never be free.”

“I will be free! All of us will be free!” I tugged at the sword with all the heart and might I had in me.