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City of Mirrors [MultiFormat]
eBook by John T. Cullen
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$0.80 |
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$0.68 |
eBook Category: Dark Fantasy
eBook Description: Kanon, a fugitive felon unjustly imprisoned, escaped from Prison Hammerkill and found refuge offworld. Now he returns--a lone knifeman on a secret and deadly mission in Terraform City. The world he returns to is nominally ruled by the (human) Authority, but, in reality, hideous unmen rule the dark streets at night. Kanon's life is saved by an enigmatic sylph named Rin, who lives in an ancient bishop's tomb deep in the necropolis--where the shadows run from themselves. Together, he and she challenge the Authority's hold on a powerful talisman sphere kept in the pyramids above Hammerkill. It is a hopeless but courageous quest full of cruel twists and bloody adventure, seeking to change the balance of power in this world. The last thing Kanon needs is another stretch in Hammerkill--his last, if he is caught. And what of Rin? Faintly, on the night wind, one can hear the distant cries of unmen and their victims, among cold underground tomb corridors--which are home to Rin's fugitive people, and where their merciless enemies come to hunt.
eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine)
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2006
19 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [39 KB]
, ePub (EPUB) [52 KB]
, Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [23 KB]
, Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [269 KB]
, Palm Doc (PDB) [25 KB]
, Microsoft Reader (LIT) [72 KB]
, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [96 KB]
, hiebook (KML) [114 KB]
, Sony Reader (LRF) [71 KB]
, iSilo (PDB) [21 KB]
, Mobipocket (PRC) [27 KB]
, Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [61 KB]
, OEBFF Format (IMP) [37 KB]
Words: 7687
Reading time: 21-30 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
Kanon dozed on the gravity shuttle, his narrow, unshaven face nuzzling against its reflection in the fuselage window as the night city seemed to rise around him. It was the illusion of night, of lights and fog and descending from space, he realized. For better or for worse, with all of its promise and terrors, it was he who was descending into the maw of the city, whose lights and windows seemed to form a prison of mirrors all around the descening shuttle.
Kanon had made it this far, but now the most dangerous part of his journey would begin. If he succeeded, he could chew stars in his teeth and laugh with the gods. If not, he would leave only his last desperate fingerscratches on the slimy walls of Hammerkill.
His exhaustion from the long and nauseating trip through the interstellar deepweave, or Temporale, had caught up with him while the barge hovered amid endless delays in the black of space. The unreflective ball of the ground port was dotted with tiny white figures like insects crawling under huge loads.
Startled, Kanon awoke when the shutters snapped open, revealing pale blue sky with sickly orange-brown streaks of cloud. He had fallen asleep as the craft drifted in controlled free fall the last hour or so of its descent toward the city's outskirts. Already, night was falling. Already, a shroud of darkness rushed like a tidal wave over the horizon.
The barge bumped twice, landing in a small valley of broken stones.
"Terraform 345," a speaker announced. "Terraform City 345. Please gather your belongings and move forward to the customs station." Kanon uttered a short prayer to Almighty, the Dark God, as he joined a row of stragglers in the narrow corridor.
* * * *
Kanon waited in the train station, . He was a lone figure in a long dark coat, with a military bag over one shoulder, a pair of sturdy boots, and an attitude. His brown hair was rough-cut, its ends frazzling on his shoulders. He had a high forehead, needling smallish blue eyes, a beak nose, and small dissatisfied lips in a scarred face. He had not shaved in a week, and his strong jaw looked as if it had been spray-painted army-drab. Tattoos ran up his arms and around his back: opium monsters wrestling like angry storm clouds, their eyes like flashes of lightning--prisonware; what else had there been to do?
He did not stand near the clots of locals who huddled on the concrete apron under an overhang while a damp fog blew over the tracks. A sign creaked slowly back and forth, hanging from the roof beams: "Terraform City."
The locals were anxious to get home before curfew. At night, the City came alive with other kinds of citizens. At night, it was not the Authority that ruled, but the unmen. Kanon had grown up here. He knew the ways.
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