Chapter 09: Cities and the Sky 05
1 sound
In this city, the sky stretched down across the curving streets in all directions; a haze of day-old clouds hung over the broad avenues. Sky spread overhead, thin slits dividing them into distant planes, drifting, darting, and gradually dividing them from one another, toward the distant fortress. Then there was nothing but a narrow maw of darkness. Then a shaft, showing the vaulted roof of a large plain building in the highest corner of the city. Then a row of vaulted arches and vaulted arches. Then the rooftops. A blue stone wall edged with steep spires rose from the city center into the heavens. Here, in the midst of all this brightness and noise, the faintest traces of blue skylight pierced the gloom and illumined the steep roofs. Then the cavernous black of the empty street. Then the sky again, bringing with it a night-day contrast that blew every shade into the hollows, especially along the distant, twisting passageways and over the stone wall. The thick whiteness of the river and the stone bridges and gates. The green green of the dappled edges of the rush green growth of trees crowded together to escape the wind. The pale blue tower tops and temples, high above the city. The sky paled in comparison to the somberness of the city.
