I’ve just delivered the revised ECHO CITY to my editors at Bantam in the US, and Orbit in the UK. Hoorah! I’ve been immersed in it for the past couple of weeks, and I really think it’s the best fantasy novel I’ve ever written. So … for now, here’s the final brief extract. I hope these snippets have whetted your appetites, and closer to publication, there will be many more.
Dragar’s Canton had been hidden away from the rest of Echo City for over five hundred years, and though there were written accounts about what it had been like before the concealment—a normal place, with buildings similar to those throughout the city, ruled by priests of the generally benevolent Dragarian religion—no one knew for sure what had become of it since. There had been conjecture for a while, and sometimes there still was, but it had become a silent part of the city, forgotten by most because it was as distant and unknown as the Markoshi Desert. An enigma on their doorstep, Penler had called it once, and he should know. His book about the Dragarians had resulted in his banishment, but even he knew little. It was a book of legends and myths considered insidious because so few knew even them, he’d told Peer once over a bottle of wine. The most amazing place in the city, and nobody thinks about it. It’s just the six domes, that’s all. They’re regarded as sculptures now. Even kids don’t dare each other to go out there and stand close to them anymore, because it’s boring. Nothing can happen. Nothing ever does. At least, not that we see. Pushed by Peer, tongue loosened by more wine, he’d smiled and laid back, staring at the cracked ceiling of his adopted home in Skulk. The Dragarians can’t be fools, he’d said. They’ll want to know what the rest of the city is doing. They might be closed off from us, but we’re no mystery to them.
Once, before the Hanharans had declared them blasphemous because of their artificial stimulation of ecstatic terror and awe, her mother had taken her to one of Mino Mont’s traveling fairgrounds. She’d been a child then, maybe ten years old, and the smells, sights and sounds of the fair had remained with her ever since. She’d never seen anything like it. Men and women walked through the crowds on stilts a dozen steps high, dropping roasted nuts into willing hands, urging people to try this ride or that, or the phantom rooms, or the crushed mirror swamp. Huge, creaking structures of wood, metal and rope rose all around, with oil lamps burning different colored and scented oils and casting their soft light over the whole scene. And it was one of these structures that had grabbed Peer’s attention from the moment she first saw it.
Her mother told her it was called a drop ship. People paid to be strapped into a metal-reinforced wooden cart, which was then hauled to the summit by means of an intricate system of pulleys, ropes and chains. The pulling was carried out by three tusked swine, and even that process was made into an entertainment, with clowns leaping from one creature’s back to another and conducting a fake swordfight with silk snakes as they went. Once the cart was at the top, the clowns paused and began a countdown. Ten … nine … eight … When they reached one, a clown threw a lever in the hauling-wheel’s hub, and the cart fell to the ground.
The noise was tremendous. Ropes whipped around wooden spools, sending smoke hissing out of the ride. The people inside screamed. And as it reached the bottom, a high whining shriek was emitted from the complex braking system. The riders emerged laughing and pale, shaking and whooping, and Peer had insisted that she have a turn. Her mother had refused at first, but soon relented. She’d been wearing a smile that day, and Peer was the center of her life.
I’m going to see the Baker’s daughter, Peer thought. Back before she was arrested, tortured and banished, stories of the Baker had terrified her. She had been hunted and killed by the Scarlet Blades when Peer was a teenager, but she was a legendary character throughout Echo City, and many of her chopped constructs could still be seen. There was the Scope that Peer and her mother had once seen, and the larger Scopes that watched from the top of Marcellan Canton. There were Funnelers that drew air into the tunnels and routes passing through the higher parts of Marcellan. And as a child, she and her friends had delighted at rumors of a series of monstrous chopped that existed within the many water refineries dotted along the riverbank in Course and Mino Mont Cantons. They eventually came to learn that the refineries were driven by rather more mundane technologies, but the memory of that belief persisted, and the sense it had imbued within her that anything was possible. Sometimes she dreamed of the dead Baker and her creations, and anything was a dangerous thing.
“Don’t be afraid,” Nadielle said, her voice carrying over the wet sounds from the tearing vat.
“If you say so,” Gorham muttered, and he watched one of the Baker’s creations being birthed. The vat opened, thick rips in its side spreading and allowing the thing inside to push out. Both of its arms were in the open now, grasping at the air as trying to gain purchase. Its head followed, then its body, hips and legs. It fell to the solid ground with a wet thump, screaming again as it tried to stand. Fluid spilled out around it. The air steamed and stank. The vat spewed a thick flow of afterbirth, spattering down around the emerged shape.
It lifted its head and mewled, and Gorham saw its face for the first time. It was a very human face, with an expression of startled delight at being free. It smiled, dribbling slightly, and he saw the fully formed teeth in its mouth, some of them longer and sharper than normal. The size of a big man, its hair was dark and long, matted across its shoulders and back. A human face, he thought, and he concentrated on its eyes because the rest of its body was far from human. Very far. It looked at him and smiled, and Gorham looked away.
They called them the Levels. Once, before the plague, the dividing line between Skulk and Course Cantons had been difficult to distinguish. A street here, a square there, the banks of the Southern Reservoir, perhaps the edge of a park or the center line of a road. After the salt plague, there’d been a need to mark the border permanently. And so the razing had begun. In history books, the transcribers had gone to some effort to describe the methods used, and the caution taken to prevent injury or worse to those innocents caught up in the chaos. In reality, the Marcellans had ordered the razing to be completed within two days. In such a short time, with so many fires set, ruin-wagons despatched, and buildings marked for destruction, the suffering of innocents was inevitable.
I’m just finishing up revisions on my forthcoming fantasy novel ECHO CITY, which will be published by Bantam Spectra in the US and Orbit in the UK. I thought it’d be fun to post a few random extracts over the next day or two, until the revisions are finished, just to whet your appetite.
Here’s the book’s opening quotation:
“In conclusion, my despair: the concept that Echo City could be all there is; the thought that we are alone; the conceit that humanity rose from one man, expanding into one place, shunning the beyond though dangerous it must be. This is abhorrent to me. It denies our nature, which has been proven again and again to be exultant and brave. It disregards the very idea of our progress as a race, and the ultimate triumph which must come. But such ignorance is clasped to the heart of those who claim rule over us. And though I see glory in our future, before glory, I see pain.”
Benjermen Daxia, Truth—An Exhortation to Revolt
My forthcoming novel from Bantam in the USA (October ‘10) and Orbit UK (June ‘11) is now called ECHO CITY. I’m currently working on revisions, and have just spent a very productive couple of hours in Coffee #1 in Abergavenny brainstorming a couple of issues. A mocha and a coconut flapjack helped, oh yes.
