Cold Magic (Untitled Kate Elliott Series #1)

by Kate Elliott

  Aminata Traoré once said, “Another Africa is possible.” To which I would add, speaking as a Westerner who knew little about Mali and West Africa before I began work on this novel, Another Africa is there, one people in the West are rarely shown: it’s the ordinary, everyday “Africa” in which people go about their lives within a rich cultural tradition just like people do everywhere. Malians know all about that place. It’s where they live.

  How many of the political and place names in this book are real, like the Romans, and how many are made up?

  Most of the names are real, either familiar names, like the Romans, or names used in earlier historical times, like Massilia for Marseilles, or once-inhabited places that are now abandoned, like Numantia. Insofar as possible I did not use names derived from any Germanic-language-family-groups, although since I am writing in English, my ability to manage this was, obviously, constrained. As this is a fantasy novel, I have taken a number of liberties with the landscape, and of course in a world of cold magic, many things will not be the same as they are on our own Earth. I did a lot of research, but I also made up stuff. You can find more information on how I world build and the research I do, as well as discussions about the craft and process of writing, at www.kateelliott.com.

  When you refer to the Celts and the Mande, who are you talking about?

  In a novel, it is difficult to bring across the full complexity of any given town, much less a region or cultural group or multiethnic society. That’s especially true since many readers are not familiar, say, with the history of Celtic Iron Age Europe or the diversity of cultures in West Africa. I wasn’t, either; I had to do a lot of research for this book.

  The Celts were people who probably spoke related languages in Europe before the Roman Empire; the Celtic people were not all the same, and there were many tribes or local populations with different names and different gods. Later, they were conquered by, absorbed into, intermarried with, or pushed to the margins of Europe by an influx of other population and language groups. That’s why we still have Irish and Welsh, for instance, which are modern descendants of older Celtic languages. But mostly in the novel I just say “Celts” and “Celtic” even though it’s not really accurate to suggest that the word is anything except a catchall term for a very diverse group of peoples.

  The same is true of Mande. Mande is a catchall term for people who speak Mandan descended languages and who live in various places across West Africa (not all people who live in West Africa are Mande speakers). There are also some similar cultural traditions (like that of the djeliw, or griots) across the Mande-speaking groups, although these groups are not at all the same. The Mali Empire was a Mande empire, as in the old phrase “What built up the Mande? War! What broke down the Mande? War!”

  So, basically, I am using Celtic and Mande as simplified terms for what in the real world are far more complex and diverse cultural and regional histories and traditions.

  I think one treads a fine line as a writer. To deal with historical cultures, I strove for as much accuracy as possible, although I was always aware I was writing a fantasy world. At the same time, I worked to show respect for the deep cultural traditions of all the cultures mentioned in the book. However, I also accepted that there is simply too much for one person to know, especially when dealing with multiple cultural strands, and that there would be nuances I simply fail to grasp. I tried to draw my novel out of historical cultures; that is, I tried to speculate on what the Cold Magic world would look like if things had worked out differently in a “past” of an alternate and very magical Earth, so I am not trying to portray cultures as they are today in our world. Still, I always felt it was important for me to be aware of the limitations of interpreting other times, other places, and other cultures. I think, on the whole, I wanted to approach this novel with humility and respect, and I hope in that sense that I succeeded.

  If every character in the book entered a flower-arranging contest, who would win and why?

  Andevai. Not because he has any special interest or aptitude for flower arranging, but because he can’t stand to do anything but the absolute best he can do. Also, he could cheat by using illusion, but he wouldn’t. Knowing he could cheat would make him work even harder to win by legitimate means. Also, I’m not sure how many of the other characters would have the patience to see the contest through. Cat certainly wouldn’t. But she might dredge up some interesting anecdotes about traditional meanings of different flowers—roses represent passion, lavender gives healing—from her father’s journals. Bee, of course, would rather draw the flowers than arrange them.

  Did your children really help you write this book?

  If you mean, did they write the sentences and revise them and so on? No. I wrote the entire book myself, although they read scenes and drafts multiple times and made many suggestions, and I often consulted them when I got stuck on some plot point. And it was their world to begin with, so any time I needed to think through some aspect of the world or the background (for example, if I had to answer the question “what exactly CAN the cold mages do?”), then I would usually talk things through with my children, because they had interesting ideas, are good at the back-and-forth of discussion, and, anyway, it was really fun. So, yes, this world is a collaboration between us, and it’s been an awesomely cool experience so far. I mean, you raise your kids to be useful, right?

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  COLD MAGIC,

  look out for

  A MADNESS OF ANGELS

  by Kate Griffin

  Two years after his untimely death, Matthew Swift finds himself breathing once again, lying in bed in his London home.

  Except that it’s no longer his bed, or his home. And the last time this sorcerer was seen alive, an unknown assailant had gouged a hole so deep in his chest that his death was irrefutable… despite his body never being found.

  He doesn’t have long to mull over his resurrection, though, or the changes that have been wrought upon him. His only concern now is vengeance. Vengeance upon his monstrous killer and vengeance upon the one who brought him back.

  Old plastic bags, torn-up junk mail, broken CD cases, they bounced through the tear in the bag, ripping it further, to let more rubbish spill out. They shook on the floor of the alley, and then, the lightest first, shopping bags caught in the breeze, remnants of ham packages, the sleeve that had held some piece of cheese, started to rise, straight upwards as if gravity were just some passing fad. Then the heavier pieces of rubbish—the cardboard box that had held a new portable radio, the remnants of a half-gutted lemon, a pile of orange peel that unwound upwards like a stretching snake in one unbroken piece. I watched them drift up from the torn rubbish bag in a slow, leisurely fashion, sheets of cling film each unscrunching and spreading as they ascended, bread sacks inflating like hot-air balloons and rising, bottom down, nothing rushed, nothing dramatic, all to a gentle hissing and rustling of old litter.

  They rose towards a single spot, a shadow on the edge of one of the houses, clinging to the corner where wall met drainpipe, and as it all rose, it seemed to mingle with the shadow’s form, a crisp packet reflecting with silver foil off what might have been an arm, a sliver of cardboard coating what could perhaps be described as a belly. It looked like some sort of organic gargoyle, dripping strange thick liquid waste from one of its clinging limbs, still, patient, lumpen.

  Then it turned its head, and its eyes glowed with the dying embers of two cigarette stubs. When it exhaled, its nose, the broken end of a car exhaust pipe, gouted smoke; when it raised one arm off the wall it clung to, its paw came away with the suction sound of well-chewed gum sticking, and its claws gleamed with the shattered razor-edges of old Coke cans and soup tins. Its thighs were composed of old hosepipe left in the street by some builders after a water-main repair job, its middle was covered over with old pieces of tin and card, bent traffic signs and abandoned boxes, to create an armoured underbelly beneath its hulked form, under which I
could smell, and through cracks between its surface skin, see, a squelching heart of dead fruit, apple cores; chips, half-eaten hamburgers and abandoned Chinese takeaway, all crunched together into a brown mass beneath its surface armour, like a belly without the skin. Its teeth, when it opened its mouth, were reflective green glass from a broken bottle, its face was covered over with old newsprint and abandoned magazines, its arms shone with the reflective coat of foil, its wings were two translucent thin spreads of cling film that rose up behind it with a thin, sharp snap across the air, the joins woven together with fuse wire spun like tendons throughout its body. As it clung with its gummed paws to the wall of the house above me, the rubbish from the split bag settled into its flesh, spread itself across its arched back, wrapped itself around the backward-jointed bend of its knee. If it had been a living creature, I would have said it resembled a giant hyena, larger than a man, but hunched and feral, the shape its body made was arched and ready for a strike. But since it was not living, and its very breath was hot with the power that sustained it, I took it for what it was: a litterbug.

  It had all been too easy.

  I should have guessed that something like this would have to happen sooner or later. I’d just been counting a little too optimistically on later.

  It stretched its jaw of green glass and rotting sandpaper tongue wide and hissed a tumbling gout of black exhaust into the air. The last broken plastic straw and burnt-out light bulb drifted up from the alley floor, settling into the litterbug’s flesh, making it bigger, stronger. I saw its back arch, cling-film wings shimmering with the rainwater running across their surface, as with the hiss of a dying carburettor it stretched its razor-tin claws for my face, opened its mouth to emit a gout of fumes, kicked off with its back legs and tried to take my head off.

  Instinct rather than conscious decision saved my life.

  I let go the wall of force I had been building. It slammed into the litterbug mid-leap, propelled it backwards, threw it up against the wall, sending an explosion of dirty newspaper and mouldy organic spatter out from its flesh, and dropped it into the alley in a pile of torn foil and cling film. I had no interest in seeing whether this was going to stop it, I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t, so without further ado I turned, slammed my shoulder into the high wooden gate until the lock tore away from the door, and ran into the garden beyond. Behind me, the litterbug pulled itself onto its hind legs, the torn remnants of its skin flowing back into its flesh, and advanced after me, snorting loudly through its rusting nose.

  I ran across the soggy garden lawn, climbed over the back wall without looking back and slipped down the long drop to the railway line below on my backside, which, compared to my feet, had had an easy time so far. Bracken and broken shopping trolleys, which always seemed to find their way into railway cuttings, tore at my skin and clothes; nettles stung me, and a family of rats scuttled for cover in the destructive wake of my passage. I hit the hard ballast of the railway line with a bang and sprawled across it, catching myself on one of the railway tracks, smooth and silver on the top surface, rusted thick brown on the sides. Getting back on my feet was perhaps worse than the descent down the embankment: every muscle screamed indignation, every inch of skin featured a cut or a bruise or a stung bubble of inflamed flesh. I hobbled along the side of the railway track in that dry muddy space where ballast met slope, not caring where I was going, so long as it was somewhere else. Litterbugs did not just randomly stalk the streets of Dulwich; they had purpose, direction, intent, and it didn’t take any thought to know that tonight, it wanted us. Behind me, I could hear the low wailing hunting-cry of the creature, a sound like the shriek of ancient bus brakes. I didn’t have the courage to look back, but kept on hobbling along the railway line.

  It was hard to say how far I went. I stopped only when I reached a station: North Dulwich. It was locked, the lights on its high yellow-brick walls casting odd shadows. I crawled onto the platform close by the safety of its heavy doors, and didn’t care that the CCTV camera was watching. I lay down on my back and shook and felt in pain and generally sorry for myself.

  When I had my breathing under control and some of the fire in my skin had died down to just a dull ache, we cast our awareness into every inch of ourself, feeling the shape and pressure of every cut and bruise. We were oddly fascinated by it, by the reality of it, even though we were surprised and appalled at the indignity of pain. We lay, and felt the cold rough surface of the concrete beneath us, and the cold rain drying on our face in the breeze that drifted along the railway track. For a moment, the overwhelming torrent of sense from every inch of our body, from every nerve in our skin, the coldness of the rain, the hotness of our muscles, the dryness of our tongue, the wetness of our hair, the gentle bleeding of our scratches and the tightness in our bruising, was fascinating, real, alive. For a moment, we wanted to laugh, although I wasn’t sure if it mightn’t be wiser to cry.

  Then I smelt the rubbish.

  Getting up on my feet was a triumphant act of will—staggering to the closed exit a shocking realisation of weakness, leaning against it a second of reprieve. I whispered imploring words to the lock and caressed it with my fingertips until it gave up and clicked; pulled back the heavy door even as, beyond the circle of neon light on the platform, I saw the glowing reddish embers of the litterbug’s eyes. It slunk out of the dark, taller than ever, its skin now glowing with pieces of broken glass snatched up from the railway embankment, mosaicked across its flesh like royal jewellery.

  I staggered out of the station, and it followed. The moment of reprieve had given me time to think, remember; I knew what I needed. It didn’t take me long to find it as I ran through the tight uphill streets. The first was the lid of a black dustbin, painted with “Flat 5” in yellow letters. The second was a bank of green wheelie bins, left by the local council outside a chemist on a small shopping parade, and thank all the powers in the heavens, they weren’t too full. The litterbug was not far behind me, but it was too big to run as fast as the fear could carry us; not that it would give up for such a simple reason.

  I opened all the lids on the wheelie bins, checking that there weren’t any containing split rubbish bags—and tonight my luck held: every bin looked clean. I held the black dustbin lid I had taken from Flat 5 like a shield, pushing my right hand as far as I could through its handle, until it rested just above my wrist, wedged onto my arm. But by the time I was ready the creature was in sight, padding up the middle of the road and wading through the rainwater that poured downhill, with the slow, laborious and inevitable purpose of a sidewinder crossing the desert.

  Here, the rain pouring off my face and seeping into my clothes, and I hoped, washing some of the stench away, I turned and faced the monster.

  We regarded its approach curiously, watching the care with which it advanced towards us, and with what single-minded purpose. It seemed almost a pity to destroy it, since we could probably have learned a lot from its structure, its form of life, but the preservation of ourself took priority.

  As it came on, I stood my ground, hefting my dustbin lid in front of me, waiting. It advanced more cautiously than I expected, and before reaching me it stopped, raised its snout and emitted a strange shriek, like the scrape of old tyres skidding on a wet road. It did this three times and then sunk onto all fours, eyeing me up with its unblinking red embers. I felt that if I blinked it would pounce, and was immediately aware of my own eyes and the need to blink, as if, by thinking about it, the unconscious part of me that controlled this action could no longer function, and every blink and every breath had to be a deliberate, demanding thought-process. Still the monster didn’t attack, and it took me too long—embarrassingly so—to work out why. The shrill call wasn’t a challenge or an expression of pain—it was a call for reinforcements.

  So much for this.

  I looked around the street for a source of heat and found a fragment clinging to the wet surface of the chemist’s bright green and white shop sign. Raising my left h
and, I dragged it into my fingertips, crunching it down into a small penny shape between my fingers. The light, sucked dry of its energy, flickered and whined in indignation. I turned to the litterbug. It sensed my intentions, shifted uneasily, rose up a little, flexing the metal shards of one of its paws and emitting puffs of smoke. I pinched the penny of heat between my thumb and forefinger, and it winked out. For a second, nothing happened. Then the cigarette embers in the creature’s eyes glowed brighter, burnt yellow, and exploded into flame. The spitting fire caught the newspaper of its head and burrowed into the soggy mass, sparks digging down through its skull to the dry ash and paper that formed the bulk of its long, snoutish head.

  It screamed with the sound of a thousand screeching brakes as flames burst up through the mesh of wire and old laundry line that had spun a frame around its head, gouts leaping out through its nose, mouth, eyes and ears, spreading down the dry rope of its spine and melting the thin fuse wire of its wings, turning their cling-film sheen black and liquid, dripping hot plastic onto the ground. The flames burst out between the metal plates of its belly, glowed red-hot in the joints at its knees and elbows, spat out angry sparks between its clawlike fingers, made the chewing-gum pads of its paws dribble and smoke with a sickly smell, sent gouts of steam exploding off its surface—