A woman ran past Max in the opposite direction, yelling, “To the roofs! To the roofs!” with a great deal of good sense. In fact, Max suddenly decided, as the whole expanse of the castle curtain wall congealed and the wave of crystallization spread out across the rock, there was no longer a moment to lose. Just ahead of him along the street was a four-story building, shop on the bottom floor and residence areas above, the fourth-floor windows flaring with candles and the light of another torch sparkling on the roof. Straight behind the roofline was the center of the spinning cloudbank alive with the strobe of lightning, and the sinking mass of the castle.
The wind had now begun to ease. Max reached the building, jumped onto a shuttered windowsill, caught hold of a protruding half-timber above his head, and clambered upward toward the roof. It was really amazing, Max reflected, how after a while you stopped paying attention to injuries when things got serious, assuming of course that you hadn’t actually broken anything critical; he’d started off the evening with a torn-up arm, as events had progressed he’d picked up more burns and fire damage, a mess of deep bruises, a badly strained leg, and maybe even a few cracked ribs and a ripped muscle or two, and yet here he was, still swarming straight up the side of a wall. You do what you have to do, he thought, or at least you try.
The streets that had filled with people were now just as suddenly emptying again. Max reached the top of the wall and swung himself out around the eave. Ahead of him at the center of the sharply peaked roof was a small roof deck surrounded by a sturdy wood railing. Although his sword had disappeared somewhere into the jumble of recent events, Max had retained his climbing-cord. He slapped out his knife and snapped in a dart, stretched out his arm, and activated the mechanism on his forearm; the springs sproinged softly, the dart arched up along the roof, and with a rapid woosh~woosh the dart-end of the cable wrapped itself tightly around the roof deck railing. Max belayed the cord around his waist and walked it up the slope of the roof.
Three adults in night-clothes and a small child occupied the deck, a lantern on the floor and a trapdoor open at their feet, the harsh wind ripping at their garments. Their attention was totally focused on the river fifteen blocks ahead. Through the occasional gaps in the buildings Max could see a flickering violet haze over the sea-wall and the wharves; at least somebody had energized the flood defense field. Gaps were showing in the clouds overhead and the lightning in the hub of the wheel was losing force. A last spray of glowing colors filled out a row of crenellations on the spinning castle, the rock at the castle’s base (already below Max’s eye level) inexorably closed on the surface of the water, a tall breaker splashed froth on the upstream face, and as the rotation of the castle brought the dripping rock around toward the city, Roosing Oolvaya seemed to draw its breath in one giant collective gasp. Then - a massive SMACK, SMACK-SMACK-SMACK of swells slapping along the underside of the castle became an even heavier rumble, a smooth mound of water lifted in a ring all around the castle, growing tall, huge, above the castle’s rock base, above the curtain wall, above the lower battlements, the top of the mound breaking into churning foam and starting to curl; and with the greatest THUD!! and THUMP!! and screeching grind of all the castle dug itself into the riverbed and its monster wave rushed ashore in the midst of the wharves.
19. THE CASTLE OF DEATH
The building began to quiver, the rooftop vibrating up and down underfoot in a staccato drumming pound that grew louder and stronger with great speed. Max had wrapped his arms around the railing and had planted a firm stance on the floor, anticipating the shaking and not wanting to be distracted from the spectacle if he could help it; if he was going to die, he was going to die, but either way it was going to be quite a show. The wave hit the wharves already traveling faster than the gallop of a seasoned horse, a vast dark form alight with the glow of foam and the trapped reflection of firelight from the city, lifting far above the warehouses, higher than Max’s vantage point, higher than anything else in Roosing Oolvaya, eight, nine stories tall, potentially ten or even more. It plowed through the mass of packed ships and straight across the wharves without a hesitation, carrying barges and tall-masted river schooners and keelboats and dock pilings together into its thundering wall as if they were all merely sailing into a bank of thick mist. The top of the wave, now racing slightly ahead of the main body, had formed a solid mass of whipping foam cascading forward as a tube. Then the wave’s leading edge swept up past the base of the wharves into the line of violet on top of the seawall.
Roosing Oolvaya’s flood barrier had locked into its full-strength configuration as a dense violet web spun like extended fishnets along the riverfront. Suspension cables woven through its matrix bound the web to pilings of a deeper glowing purple that rose up every fifteen feet out of the seawall, making the whole assembly resemble a bridge slung on its side. The pilings were buttressed from behind by long thick struts driven solidly into the foundation rock; it was a durable and resilient barrier indeed. Of course, the floods it had been designed for generally rose slowly and not in a single crashing surge, and since the highest flood tide ever recorded in Roosing Oolvaya had only reached a level of two stories, the barrier had been extended upward to a generous height of three.
The expanding circle of the wave plowed into the long barrier net ten blocks south of Max and spread immediately north and south from there in a fast rolling tower of exploding spray. Max could feel the power of the secondaries kick in as the web snapped tight against the incredible hurled force of the water. The net stiffened, strained, stretched, bowing backward to try to take up the shock; sections began to yield as the supporting columns ripped free from their underpinnings or simply snapped clear through at the roots; and at a spot twenty blocks south and then another five blocks north the overstressed web parted completely, letting the wave rush clean through the shredded breaches. The tall crest of the wave poured over the top of the barrier as spillage over a dam and rushed ahead into the streets.
But the greatest mass of the wave was at its base, and its greatest force as well, and against this the barrier was doing its job - holding back, fending off, retarding the internal phase synchronization, reflecting the resonance of the water back into itself and rearward into the river - so that in the half-second of delay the wave had its bottom cut out from under it and spread out backward, converting the single towering mound of water into a surge that was indeed still tall, still mighty, still crushing, but now more elongated and dampened, with much of its grandest energies spent.
The ground lurched violently as the ground-borne shockwaves passed them, jerking the rooftop perch forward and back in a continuous quaking spasm. A building a few blocks straight in front of Max toppled into its neighbor and both spun together out of sight. Off to the side other buildings were falling too, as the boom and crash of the approaching water beat against the ears. A repeating whoosh-whOOOM!, whoosh-whOOOM! sound suddenly explained itself as a manhole cover rocketed into sight at the top of a geyser spout, propelled by the pressure of the bore of water bashing through the sewer under the street. Whoosh - the water jetted on through the sewer channel - WHOOM - the next access cover streaked up into the air at the head of another fountain column. Then the ear-filling rolling bellow seemed impossibly to double in its force, and the wave burst around the corner in front of them.