The View From The Zamok

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, V.

An earlier post, The Kazan, identified the Dennitzan capital city, Zorkagrad, on Lake Stoyan in the center of the Kazan and summarized the view from the Zamok in Zorkagrad so let us now take a closer look at that view:

Old Town has steep tile roofs and pastel-tinted half-timbered stucco;

the small city slopes down from Old Town;

twisting lanes become broad boulevards;

later generations have raised geometrical buildings in modern materials;

traffic flits;

ships crowd the docks and the bay;

glittering, deep blue Lake Stoyan stretches west beyond the horizon;

the sky is cloudless;

from a sun deck of the Zamok, Kossara sees cultivation along the shores, both green Terran and blue or purple native, widely spaced buildings and sunpower towers, the Lyubisha River flowing from the north and the Elena River, with barges and boats, flowing east;

the crater walls are below the horizon but she knows that they protect this "...chalice of warmth and fertility..." (p. 408) from "...glacier and desert..." (ibid.) 

She feels a breeze, smells flowers and hears the singing guslars that nest in the vines on the gray stone of the Zamok.