Cold Steel

Author’s Note

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.