right across the horizon; some ceiling strakes were known to stretch halfway round the world itself.
The result was that the light of a star was often much more localised here than it was on the Eighth, so that bright sunshine shone along one line of landscape while just to the side the rest would be held in deep shade, receiving only the light reflected from the general spread of the shining sky itself. Some benighted lands, usually those caught between tall surface vanes, received no direct sunlight whatever, at any time, and were truly barren.
The little rail car chuffed and steamed its way to a halt, shuddering to a stop in a screech of brakes some few metres shy of a set of damaged-looking buffers, the water crashing and bursting across the car’s roof and sides, rocking it like a demented cradle. Steam rolled up from its wheels.
Oramen looked down. They were poised above the side of a great, tipped, fallen building made of, or at least clad in, material much like that which provided the rail car with its sides and roof. The rail tracks rested on trestles like wedges attached to the side of the building itself, making it feel more secure than the flimsy-looking pylons they had recently traversed.
Metres beyond the buffers, the edge of the building fell away sharply to reveal — between this upended edifice and the still upright Fountain Building — a cauldron of wildly swirling mist and spray fifty metres or more deep, at the base of which — on the rare occasions when the clouds of vapour were torn apart sufficiently for such a view to be opened — giant surging waves of brown-tinged foam could briefly be glimpsed.
A large platform of wood and metal extended from the rail tracks on the down-slope side, awash with the near-solid torrents of water falling from the Fountain Building. One or two bits of machinery lay scattered about the platform’s surface, though it was hard to imagine how anyone could work on the platform in this stunning, down- crashing deluge. Parts of the platform’s edges seemed to have broken off, presumably washed away by the sheer weight of the falling water.
“This was a staging platform for workings within the building beneath us,” Poatas said, “until whatever cave-in or tunnel collapse upstream caused the building before us to become the Fountain Building.”
Poatas sat alongside Oramen behind the rail car’s driver. The seats behind were taken up by Droffo, Oramen’s equerry, and his servant, Neguste Puibive — Oramen could feel the fellow’s bony knees pressing into his back through the seat’s thin back whenever Neguste shifted his long legs. In the last row were the knights Vollird and Baerth. They were his personal guard, specifically chosen by tyl Loesp and most highly recommended and able, he’d been told, but he’d found them somewhat prone to surliness and their presence vaguely offputting. He’d rather have left them behind — he found excuses to whenever he could — but there had been space in the rail car and Poatas had talked darkly of needing all the weight in the little conveyance they could muster to help keep it anchored to the tracks.
“The platform looks in some danger of being washed away,” Oramen shouted, perhaps a little too loudly, to Poatas.
“No doubt it is,” the small, hunched man conceded. “But this will not happen quite yet, one hopes. For now, it provides the best view of the Fountain Building.” He jabbed his stick up at the tall, improbably spray-plumed structure.
“Which is quite a sight,” Oramen conceded, nodding. He gazed up at it in the bronze wash of sunset-gloom. Folds and waves of water came crashing down on the rail car’s roof, a particularly heavy clump slamming off the near invisible material protecting them and causing the whole car to quiver, making it seem that it was about to be thrown off the tracks beneath and hurled across the water-drenched surface of the railing-less platform, doubtless to be dashed to smithereens somewhere far below.
“Three balls of God!” Neguste Puibive blurted. “Sorry, sir,” he muttered.
Oramen smiled and held up one hand, forgiving. Another wave of solid water hit them, making something on one lower side of the seats creak.
“Chire,” Poatas said, tapping the driver on the shoulder with the end of his stick. “I think we might reverse a way.”
Oramen held out one hand. “I thought I might try standing outside for a bit,” he said to Poatas.
Poatas’ eyes went round. “And try is all you’d do, sir. You’d be battered down and swept away before you drew a single breath.”
“And, sir, you’d get awfully wet,” Neguste pointed out.
Oramen smiled and looked out at the maelstrom of crashing water and swirling wind. “Well, it would only be for a moment or two, just to experience something of that fabulous power, that mighty energy.” He shivered with the anticipation of it.
“By that logic, sir,” Droffo said, sitting forward to talk loudly into Oramen’s ear, “one might experience something of the power and energy of a piece of heavy artillery by positioning one’s head over the barrel just as the firing lanyard’s pulled; however, I’d venture to suggest the resulting sensation would not remain long in one’s brain.”
Oramen grinned, looking round at Droffo and then back at Poatas. “My father warned all his children there would be times when even kings must allow themselves overruled. I suppose I must prepare for such moments. I accept the judgement of my parliament here gathered.” He waved one flat hand from Poatas to the driver, who was looking round at them. “Chire — was that your name?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Please do as Mr Poatas says, and let’s retreat somewhat.”
Chire glanced at Poatas, who nodded. The train clanked gears and then went, huffing, slowly backwards in clouds of steam and a smell of hot oil.
Droffo turned round to Vollird and Baerth. “You are well, gentlemen?”
“Never better, Droffo,” Vollird replied. Baerth just grunted.
“You seem so quiet,” Droffo said. “Not sickened by the rocking, are we?”
“It takes rather more,” Vollird told him with an insincere smile. “Though I can sicken well enough with sufficient provocation.”
“Of that I’m sure,” Droffo said, turning away from them again.
“The Falls are, what? Ten thousand strides across?” Oramen asked Poatas as they withdrew.
Poatas nodded. “Bank to bank, straight across; one has to add another two thousand if one follows the curve of the drop-off.”
“And about a thousand strides of that is without water, is that right? Where islands in the stream upriver block the flow.”
“Nearer two thousand strides,” Poatas said. “The figure changes constantly; so much here does. At any one time there might be three or four hundred separate falls within the greater cataract.”
“So many? I read of only two hundred!”
Poatas smiled. “A handful of long-years ago, that was true.” His smile might have looked a little brittle. “The young sir has obviously done his book research, but it has to cede authority to that which actually pertains.”
“Of course!” Oramen yelled as a howling gust of rain-filled wind shook the rail car. “How quickly it all changes, eh!”
“As I say, sir; so much here does.”
The mayoral residence in Rasselle had been sacked and burned during the taking of the city. Oramen’s mother and her new family were staying in the old ducal palace of Hemerje while the repairs and renovations were effected.
Built on a wide fertile plain, the Deldeyn capital had grown according to quite a different plan compared to Pourl on its hill, with broad, tree-lined boulevards separating a variety of extensive enclaves: noble estates, palaces, monasteries, League and Guild trading yards and Public Commons. Rather than city walls, the inner city was ringed with a double set of canals overseen by six Great Towers; tall forts which were the highest buildings in the city and remained so by statute. The citadel, near the Great Palace, was a giant, barrel-shaped barracks; purely a place of last resort with no pretensions towards luxury in the same way that the Great Palace was purely a great royal house with little intrinsic defendability.
Every element of the city had been linked through the boulevards and, originally, by canals — later railways.
