Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (63 page)

Disturbed, the fragment sat still for a moment, trying to remember when it had first gained enough sense of itself to feel emotions like gratitude.

It couldn’t really remember. The years had added up, so.

It shrugged and began pulling out the rows it had knitted since the dropped stitch.

The youngling was someone else’s problem, now. It was already on the move, headed south.

The man known to some as John Williams stood on a frozen beach in Ice Like Glass.

The lake before him was the first of a series that lay like stepping stones through the valleys ahead. The jagged, scorched peaks rising to either side were impassible. Short of flight, the lakes provided the only way through this stratum.

The journey from Fur had taken more than a year. Every stratum had posed some difficulty. Float of Charms had been particularly bad.

The delay was unfortunate. He’d crossed Ice Like Glass many times, but never this late in the spring.

A thin layer of new snow covered the landscape. Kneeling, he brushed the crystals aside and examined the ice beneath. It seemed sound enough. Average highs were still several degrees below freezing. He should be all right, if he went quickly.

The steppe bison behind him chose that moment to rub its massive head against his shoulder, nearly knocking him down. He stood and scratched the animal’s wooly forehead. In return, it gave his coat several long, wet licks.

They were good creatures, but heavy. He’d bought one to use as a pack animal, but he wouldn’t chance riding it this late in the year. Not on the ice, at any rate.

He turned back to the lake and, clucking to the bison, started across.

The rhythm of walking on ice came back quickly, and he picked up his pace, giving the bison its head to walk or trot, as needed, to keep up.

He could hear the wind and the sound of his own crampons. Every so often, the ice creaked.

The quiet of the place was soothing. Ice Like Glass was good that way.

Out in the center of the lake, the man paused and drank from his waterskin.

Here the wind had scoured away the snow, revealing ice the color of clear sky a good while after sunset but before true night — deep, luminous blue. Flattened white disks were stacked within it like pancakes — trapped bubbles of the methane that made this stratum so dangerous. In summer, a dense layer of the gas hung over the water, suffocating those foolish enough to attempt a crossing; when lightning struck, whole valleys were filled with fire.

As though mindful of the need for haste, the bison nudged his back.

The man took another drink, then slipped his waterskin back inside his coat.

He took a moment to study the route ahead, looking for pressure ridges and other flaws, but the surface was remarkably smooth and even, as though the ice had formed all of a sudden on the coldest and stillest of fall days. When he looked straight down, it was, in fact, almost as clear as glass.

Sounds beautiful
, she’d said of this place.

It was.

Things that could get you killed often were.

Though to be fair, the ice wasn’t what killed you, here. The ice was the thing that kept you safe. Maybe. Ice is frail, especially in April.

The bison bellowed softly, and the man began walking again.

With luck, he would be home by autumn.

He took no pleasure in that thought.

Becca Mills teaches writing at a university in California. She has loved fantasy since, at age seven, she listened to her father read Tolkien aloud.

Solatium
is the second book in Becca’s Emanations series (the first was
Nolander
). She’d love to hear your comments. You can find her on
Facebook
or through her
website
. If you’d like to be alerted when Becca publishes new works of fiction, you can add yourself to her
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, which is super-duper 100%-guaranteed spam-free (honest!).

The third novel in the Emanations series, tentatively titled
Isolate
, is forthcoming in 2016. A free short story in the Emanations series, “Theriac,” will be available soon.

Agathon Dherudellen:
An elderly friend of John Williams, great-grandfather of Agathe Dherudellen.

Ancient Inland:
A late Carboniferous or early Permian stratum, about 300 million years old. The single supercontinental landmass is arid inland and wetter on the coasts. Connected via ligature to Gold Rush and Fur.

Andy (Andrew) Duff:
A Nolander who belongs to Cordus’s organization. An air-worker.

Baasha:
The
lingua franca
of the Second Emanation.

Beans (Fred) Beenton:
A member of Cordus’s organization, usually stationed in Phoenix, Arizona.

Ben Ryder:
Beth’s brother, older by ten years. He manages a hardware store in Dorf, Wisconsin. His wife is Justine Ryder, and his children are Tiffany, Jazzy, Lia, and Madisyn.

Beth (Elizabeth Joy) Ryder:
A member of Cordus’s organization. Until age twenty-three, a receptionist at a doctor’s office in Dorf, Wisconsin, and severely afflicted with panic disorder.

between:
A mysterious space Ghosteater can visit. He usually keeps his feet there.

Bill (William) Gates:
A power born in West Africa in around 1710. He controls the North Carolina strait, which connects to Gold Rush in Free.

Blue Seas:
A late Jurassic stratum. A narrow sea separates the diverging landmasses of Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south. The world sea Panthalassa covers the rest of the globe. Connected via ligature to Gold Rush and Demesnes.

blunt:
A derogatory term for a Second who cannot work essence.

Bob of Dorf:
An ice man who lived in the graveyard attached to a Catholic church in Beth Ryder’s hometown. He was killed by John Williams, upon Graham Ryzik’s orders, because Beth photographed his (clearly not human) foot and showed it to others.

the Brooklyn fragment:
See Sturluson, Helen.

Butua:
A mining town in the stratum Gold Rush.

Callie McCallister:
A member of Cordus’s organization who lives in Dorf, Wisconsin. Gifted with prescience.

capacity:
A measure of someone’s strength as an essence-worker.

carven strait:
A set of two stones (or other objects) invested with the ability to transport people from the location of one to the location of the other. Their making is thought by Cordus to be a lost art.

caste:
The level of essence-working ability attained by an individual. Reaching the
first caste
means being sensitive to worked essence to the degree that one can “see through” a half-working and recognize the presence of a working; many workers never leave the first caste. One enters the
second caste
upon manifesting a gift. Achieving the
third caste
means becoming sensitive to natural (unworked) essence. A worker who has mastered a significant number of learned workings is said to have entered the
fourth caste
; few workers reach this level, which requires great time and study as well as natural strength.

Cata MacAngus
: A teenaged Second. One of Bill Gates’s people, living in Free. Gifted with low flight. Ida MacAngus is her mother.

Chasca:
The power ruling the town Free; styles herself “Lady.”

Cordus: A
great power born in Constantinople around the year 330 or 340. Gifted in mind-working. Styles himself “Lord.” His full name is Gnaeus Cornelius Marci Filius Cordus.

court:
A formal reception space established by a power. Cordus holds court in a penthouse suite at the top of the Time Warner Center in Manhattan.

Demesnes:
A Holocene stratum, created by humans for humans roughly 700 years ago, comprising the modern landmass of New Zealand. Relatively densely populated. A number of human powers hold territory in this stratum. Connected via ligature to Blue Seas and Ice Like Glass.

Dorf:
The small town in north-central Wisconsin where Beth Ryder grew up. A strait is located nearby, at an old mill at Bilford Crossing.

dress code:
At formal events, Nolanders are expected to wear black. This clothing distinguishes them from Seconds, who usually wear more colorful outfits. Nolanders may wear small amounts of white if they possess significant power; the greater their power, the more white they are permitted to wear.

Emden:
A major port city in the stratum Demesnes. Ruled by Mary of the Flowers, who likes things neat.

émigré:
An entity originating in the First Emanation but possessing enough power to open a strait and travel into the Second Emanation. All émigrés are powers, but not all powers are émigrés (many powers are born in the Second Emanation and don’t need to emigrate).

essence:
The fundamental constituents of the universe. Defies easy explanation. Essence-workers conceive of essence in different ways; they often rely on metaphors that make sense to them as individuals. The human sciences of cosmology and particle physics have, over the years, constructed its own approaches to the subject.

essence-worker:
An organism capable of manipulating the fundamental constituents of reality, or at least aware of others’ manipulation of those constituents. Often called “workers,” for short. Workers occur among all species of plants and animals.

Eye of the Heavens:
An ancient (perhaps mythical) entity of the Second Emanation. Cordus believes that Justine Ryder is Eye of the Heavens.

Eyry:
A later Triassic stratum, created between 228 and 210 million years ago. Connected by ligature to Demesnes and Fur.

First:
A person, animal, or other entity native to the First Emanation.

the First Emanation:
Earth and its universe, as we know it; the normal world. Nolanders tend to call it the “F-Em.”

Free:
A small market town in the stratum Gold Rush. Ruled by Chasca. Connected via fixed strait to Bill Gates’s farm in North Carolina.

Fur:
An arctic stratum created within the last million years. Inhabited by the ice men. Connected by ligature to Eyry and Smerda.

Ghosteater:
A wolf power born in North America about a million years ago. He is gifted with the ability to go “between.” Over time, he has modified his body in several ways and has gained some ability to use language and think symbolically.

gift:
A working someone can do automatically, without study and practice. The emergence of a gift marks entry into the second caste. The weakest essence-workers do not have gifts. Some workers have more than one.

Gold Rush:
A late–Cretaceous stratum comprising the South American landmass. It has been in the process of colonization by human beings for some thousands of years.

Graham Ryzik:
A high-ranked member of Cordus’s organization, in charge of the Upper Midwest region and stationed in Madison, Wisconsin. Gifted with luck. Assigned as Beth Ryder’s first trainer.

green men:
A Second Emanation species with birdlike features. Their trackers often become bounty hunters and assassins.

Gwen Hegstrom:
A Nolander who belongs to Cordus’s organization. A firearms expert. Capable of making small objects disappear.

Hagut Kidron:
A strong healer living in Kye Wodor in the stratum Gold Rush.

half-working:
A working that does not attempt to maintain essence in an entirely altered state, instead allowing fluctuation back and forth between natural and worked states. Sometimes called a “halfing,” for short.

human:
This word is used in different and contradictory ways. To some speakers, “humans” are only non-essence-workers born in the First Emanation. To others, the term is broader, including anyone who derives from human stock, whether from
Homo sapiens
or another
Homo
species, whether able to work essence or not, whether born in the First or Second Emanation.

Ice Like Glass:
A stratum of mountains and methane-heavy lakes. Connected via ligature to Demesnes and Float of Charms.

ice people:
A species of giant, horned apelike creatures native to the Second Emanation, famed for their water-working. The males are known as “ice men” and the females as “ice mothers.” They are a cold weather species. Their home stratum is Fur.

Ida MacAngus:
One of Bill Gates’s people, a Second gifted in healing and superficial mind-reading. Cata MacAngus is her daughter.

Innin:
A power controlling territory in the First Emanation, including the Florida penninsula, the Caribbean, and the northern coast of South America. Styles herself “Lady.”

isolate:
A stratum that has no straits and no ligatures to other strata. A stratum can be created as an isolate or can become one over time. Pronounced is?l?t, not is?lat.

Jazzy (Jazmin) Ryder:
One of Beth Ryder’s nieces, second daughter of Ben and Justine Ryder.