Calumnus
The city of Calumnus was, in its time, called the Pearl of the Olymphin. Its many walls were built of a white stone that would shine with a dazzling brilliance in the light of the sun and at night would emit a soft glow that lit the streets and made the city a dreamlike, mystical place. This was the chief city in Nemn, trading with all the other Realms; but it had fallen in a great earthquake when the Roving Mountains, long held in check by the Songs of the Olymphin, swept down from the North. Calumnus fell to ruin, a flower trampled by a herd in stampede.
Now no one lived there and the only visitors were the Huntsmen and Chantresses who passed through en route to the Highway.
As the Wandersea was not in there was a long, rocky stretch between the water’s western-most edge and the seawall of Calumnus. Carrying the boats and packs, the Hunt traversed this oft-submerged rocky stretch on foot, and reached the desolate city by dusk. They camped in a large warehouse where it was their custom to store their longboats until the return journey.
Symna and Jono slept side by side as they always did; but neither slept soundly despite the hard labour of the past days. There was something very unsettling about the city. Seeing the crumpled seawall from a distance, the quays all tumbled down, and the hulking ruins of great towers up behind the walls of the city – it brought an uneasiness to their minds. Then as the sky darkened and they climbed up into the empty streets filled with crushed masonry, all the white stones put forth their nocturnal glow, casting a faint, ghostly light everywhere in which there were no shadows and noises seemed to echo strangely. Even within the warehouse they felt they lay in a haunted space, and the high rafters and vast expanse of space all seemed to be filled too much with emptiness.
Waking before Jono the following dawn, Symna looked down on him and wondered, not for the first time, whether she still loved him. There was a longing in her to touch him, and to hold him. She wanted to kiss him and wake him with kisses. But then she also wished that they could be in her home on Pfann street, back in the high district of Galn. She didn’t want to be here, on this quest: not anymore. She was tired.
Jono had grown distant over the course of their journey with the Hunt. Was he going to be like this for the rest of their time together? Maybe she was better off with Valcomn after all. At least he never shied away from speaking out when something was bothering him. Symna thought Jono’s choice to be reticent and moody was nothing but childish behaviour.
Well, let him be that way if he wants, she decided. And rising she went out of the warehouse to find some water, for she felt grimed with dirt and wanted a wash.
When Symna returned she found everyone was about; and Daralloc was addressing the Hunt: “We have come to the Ruins,” he said. There was a thick drawl to his voice, and it made Symna think of thick, dark syrup. “Most of you know the ways we take through to the other side, but some of you who are on their first Hunt – or those who are not of the Hunt – do not. There are many dangers here, you new-comers, so take care!”
As he said this, Daralloc looked at Symna; and as she returned his look their eyes met. She shivered and looked away.
Jono witnessed this exchange, and its dark boding was not lost on him. He will set a trap for us, Jono thought. Something is keeping him from just abandoning us.
This realization opened up for him a new dimension of fear and mistrust. Now they had to be wary of the Hunt itself, and could be sure of no alliance.
In the city there were many avenues that ran from one end to the other; but many of these had been blocked by buildings that had in their collapse heaved their forms over onto the streets. Also there were canals – broader and deep than those of Gelmnos, for the traffic and trade here had been heavier by far – and the bridges crossing over these had crumbled or fallen entirely and were not safe. All these obstacles and more forced the Hunt to take a wandering path through the city; but they had a course already marked out for themselves.
Since its fall, Calumnus had been looted many times so that whatever had not been salvaged and brought to Irrow City or Nama in Námesemn was scattered and sold across the seven inhabited realms. So amid the rubble there were no treasures to be found, unless buried, and whatever had been left behind was now rotted and grown into waste.
As they walked through the Ruins, by ways safest and most clear, the sun arose high in a clear sky. Whenever they came to a place where they could see past the knuckles and broken fingers of the old towers, the mountains came into view: stark brown slopes capped with white, a range of vast heights and deep, stony valleys.
Seeing the distant mountains beyond the ruined city, Symna felt afresh the feeling of being far from home in strange lands: an odd mixture of excitement and awe mixed with a deep and growing desire to return to Galn and sit once more in her mother's kitchen with her sisters, giggling over steaming mugs of mulled wine. Surely they must think me gone for good, it occurred to her, and the thought of her dear sisters and blind mother in grief pained her heart. But she could not go back: she must go on, up to those cold mountain passes, crossing over to Námesemn, and beyond.
At midday, they halted for lunch in an old, sprawling square. Here there was a great basin in which, sculpted of stone, stood a great mephisto, reared up and throwing its maned head back, maw agape as if in a great roar. Long ago a jet of water had come from its open mouth falling in a sparkling fountain, filling the basin where young lovers put fala flowers to float on the surface as a pledge of their union. Now there was no roar of water, no lovers, no flowers.
While they rested, Jono looked up and saw dark, furtive shapes moving along the top of one building across the square, which stood more or less intact. He jumped to his feet, alarmed, but then froze, saying nothing, gripped by a sudden uncertainty. Was this the trap? Or were they all about to be attacked?
The Huntsmen, he noticed, were smiling at him, mocking. Some of the younger ones who were new to Calumnus were looking not at him but trying to get a glimpse of the dark shapes across the square. So the Hunt was familiar with such creatures, Jono realized. Of course they were! No doubt they had been aware of their presence here before Jono had ever spotted them!
Feeling a fool Jono sat again next to Symna. “You’re all red in the face,” Symna said to him. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. There are some creatures over there. I thought maybe I should warn them; but they already knew.”
“Those are the gnorochs,” said a Huntsman, a man with hard eagle eyes and a beak growing out of his face. This was Horostl, a kind-hearted man and fierce hunter whom some said was the only one among them who could fly. “Do not fear them.”
His speech was altered a bit by the beak. He still had a mouth like a man’s, but the lower lip was as if pierced by the lower part of the beak, which met the upper part grown over where his nose should be. His brow was feathered lightly, and into his hair were woven many eagle feathers.
“What are they?” Jono asked, curious but disturbed also: he had seen those creatures flitting from shadow to shadow, and he knew they were intelligent and watchful.
“They are stone shapers. Do not you have any fey creatures in Naulemn? Once they were kept by the masons here who used them in the making of the white towers. Now they are free to roam and shape the stones as they will. All the men are gone from the Ruins but the gnorochs stay, and multiply.”
“Are they a threat?” Symna asked, seeing Jono’s look of concern.
“No,” Horostl said without hesitation. The Hunt did not consider many creatures to be a threat. “No doubt they could hurt you if you came here alone and intruded on them. But they eat only plants and they keep small gardens here. Whenever we pass through they come to see us; but always they are wary and cautious, keeping out of sight and never coming too near. Curiosity has brought them here today, nothing more.”
“Have you ever seen one up close?” Symna asked.
“Once, yes. They are not lovely to behold, but then neither are we Huntsmen.”
Once their lunch break had ended the Hunt packed up and moved on once more. Within the hour they came to a place where the land fell sharply away, leaving half the ruined city standing on a sunken plane well below the precipice at their feet. They paused here, looking down, and those who'd never seen this before were bewildered. A great fault line had here divided the city and now even the highest tower left standing below was well under street level.
“By the Sylphs!” Symna said, shaking her head. She could see, a hundred feet down, the wide street on which they had been walking continue along its course. A little stream sparkling in the sunlight ran down one side of the street far below, then disappeared.
“How do we get down?” she asked.
Onassi said, “There is a stair. We made it long ago. It is not far.”
They walked along the edge of the precipice for some ways. Symna felt dizzied by the sight of the sunken city below her. She felt as if she were walking the very brink of the world, above the Void, and would fall into oblivion if she didn’t keep her footing. Before long they came to the stair, which was broad and clear: a safe descent.
The lower section of the city was very different from the upper side. Here the buildings seemed less destroyed, and nearly all the streets were cleared. It was more full of life, too: trees and shrubs grew here and there, having pushed up through cracks in the streets, and the trees were full of birds. The shrubs fed little rodents that hid as the Hunt came near. The air was more humid and the ground in some places quite wet: a whole section of the sunken city was a boggy marsh where water had pooled and ducks lived there: they could be heard cackling as the Hunt passed near the edge of the wetland.
The gnorochs were here in greater numbers too. Clearly this is where the main concentration of their nests had been built. Jono noticed them crawling and lolloping about the tops of the buildings, peering out of high windows, hiding. Despite the words of the Huntsman, he did not like the look of these creatures and wished they would leave the Hunt alone.
Further into the territory of the gnorochs they ventured, fearlessly. Then they beheld a great mystery: the gnorochs’ work. Once labourers employed by the high craftsmen of the Olymphin, the gnorochs had not simply given up on the shaping of stone when their masters had vanished; rather they had kept it up, but the shapes they crafted were wondrous and strange. Where they had once been bound to the will of their masters – shaping the towers, roads and bridges of a city for men – now they followed only their own will..
Great looping wheels of seamless stone raised above the streets. Giant spheres stacked one on top of another stood balanced upon a thin pike of stone. Snaking wires intertwined to become a thick vein running for several block, conjoined with numerous buildings. It looked as if a child had sculpted it all of thick cream with no other intention than to satisfy its whims.
“What are they building?” Symna asked, bewildered.
Onassi, beside her, answered, “We can only guess; but I don’t think it is anything with any purpose. Every year we come here and it is different. They shape and reshape the stone of the buildings, never completing any structure.”
“Why? What does it mean?”
“Why does a musician play the flute? Why does a dancer learn to turn on the point of a single toe? They enjoy it. It is easy for them. It is art. It means nothing more than that.”
On they went, through the strange convolutions of the sculpted works. Some were intricate, some simple, but all smooth and flawless, mostly using curves and rounded shapes as if that appealed now to the gnorochs, after years of being forced to make squared buildings, right angles.
The land here was not even, but sloped upward as they went, so that the streets were difficult to climb. They rested twice more before entering the fringe of the city where things were completely run down and there were no sculptures of any kind.
Daralloc spoke, saying, “Here the Hunt will camp for the night. Tomorrow we set out on the Highway.”
That night Jono sat by the campfire with the Huntsmen and he was alert with an acute fear. He had gone the whole day’s journey thinking that Daralloc would spring some trap on them, but it had not come. When he had first seen the precipice, where the city fell away from under their feet, Jono had feared that Daralloc had conspired to bring them this way with the purpose of making them fall. Now that night fell, he was even more certain that the dark Captain would try something before the sun came up. He fretted more and more thinking about this, and watched the furred or bearded faces of the silent Hunters from across the fire.
It was only after they had sung the Songs Puum and Mnem, which are sung to herald the oncoming of night and to keep off the gonogs and other creatures of Uobuoremn that might come invading, did Jono realize that Symna was not among them. In a panic, he left the Hunt.
He found her atop a half-collapsed refectory. The only reason why he was able to find her at all was because he had seen her silhouette against the stars from the street below. Fearing some trick of Daralloc’s, he had first asked Onassi and had then gone looking for her outside the hall in which the Hunt was making camp. Out in the open Jono had remembered suddenly the discomforting sight of the gnorochs hunkering above, along the rooftops and had looked up, afraid. So he had seen her.
Joining her there, he said with an accusing tone, “Here you are! What are you doing up here?”
Symna half turned to him, as if barely concerned with what he might have to say. She replied coldly, “I wanted to be alone. That is all.”
Above them the moon was nearly emptied of all her light. Jono remembered the silly song his mother had sung to him as a child about how a woman named Pophom lost her way while gathering seeds in the forest, and when night came she found herself in a field of stars. They were so magnificent that Pophom immediately cast all the seeds from her basket and began plucking stars to take home and treasure.
She filled her basket with the stars and as she did the basket grew and grew and began to glow with a stronger and stronger light. Then when her basket was full to bursting she started home again; but the seeds that she had cast out had by that point grown into a thick brush about her, and as she tried to pass through their stiff branches caught at her sleeves and scratched her ankles. She pulled through, struggling with her heavy load and, just as she freed herself, one of the branches snagged on the underside of the basket.
When she pulled it free, she tore open a hole; unbeknownst to her as she went on, the lovely stars that she had picked tumbled out through the hole in her basket, falling back into the night sky. Pophom’s basket grew smaller and dimmer until it was completely empty. Then she looked about her and saw the truth: that she had lost her treasures. So she bent down and started to pick up the stars again, one by one, filling her basket once more. But always the same thing happened: the basket filled up and the stars ran out of the hole in the bottom; and poor Pophom never made it back home but stayed in the field of stars trying vainly to collect them all.
“And for us looking up we can see her basket filling, filling, fill to bursting, then empty itself of all her prized stars. That is what the moon is.” So his mother had said.
It occurred to Jono that Symna was similar to the woman in the story. She had, after all, cast him away for something better, had she not? Into his imagination entered images of her with his brother, who had always been a dutiful son and an honourable man, but with Jono had been aloof, acting superior. Jono pictured him marrying Symna, kissing her, laying with her in their wedding bed. The thought filled him with a black jealousy. He looked at her, the one who had betrayed him and had broken his heart. Had she come up here thinking about Valcomn, the one they were trying to save? Was she pining for her lost husband?
Jono came to stand next to her. The ruins, all aglow now with the radiant properties of the stone, looked a marvel to behold: they could clearly see the sculptures of the gnorochs giving off the ghostly light; beyond that was the dark wall of the fault line; and above stood the upper half of the city, over which the waning moon soared shining with a pale light.
“It isn’t safe,” he said, speaking more gently to her now. “You should tell me if you need to go off alone. I worried about you.”
“You don’t have to, you know,” she said; and he noticed that her tone had become no gentler towards him. “I can take care of myself. And besides, I don’t think that Onassi and the Chantresses would let any harm come to me. Don’t pretend as if you’re my protector, Jono, just because you’ve been travelling for many years. I know that you couldn’t have come this far without the Hunt, on your own.”
Jono scowled. He had come this far on his own, the first time; but he did not say so. Instead, he enquired, “What is it you need to think about out here, on your own?”
“Nothing,” she replied.
Jono sighed. “There was a time when you were open with me.”
“And you with me. You did not keep secrets as you do now.”
“What secrets do I keep from you?”
“Nothing. Everything. Why didn’t you tell me when you found the mark on Valcomn’s body, for instance? Why did you even leave in the first place? Where have you been? What have you been doing?”
“I’ve been looking for a way back to you.”
“Back to me,” she said, shaking her head. “I think you’re mistaken. You’re thinking about yourself, not about me. I’m just the prize for you, and you’ve been trying to make yourself into this champion so you can win me over. But you don’t even know me anymore, Jono – just as I don’t know you.”
“I know you,” Jono said quietly, head bowed, his heart breaking all over again.
“Do you? I’ll tell you what I was thinking about up here. I was thinking about the dog we had when I was a girl. He was this great big old halfreem with a golden coat and a heart of gold. When he was too old my father sang the song Thox over him and so he died. We buried him in the garden out back, in the furthest corner near the stand of gawan trees. Do you remember? I showed you his grave once. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” Jono said, revisiting the memory of it. “The gawan trees were in bloom. When the winds blew, pink petals fell into your hair. You took me to his grave and wept over it, but you would not let me comfort you.”
Symna turned to him then, and under the stars and in the pale moonlight she was painfully beautiful. “Can you tell me his name, Jono?” she said. “I was thinking about him up here. I don’t know why. This place just made me think of him. I used to play with him in the fields where the old alder tree grew. He made me feel safe, and I loved him. When he died I cried and cried. I was inconsolable. And I would bet my very heart that you cannot tell me, here and now, my poor dog’s name.”
Jono felt all his love for her rise up in him at once. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen; even with her anger towards him she was beautiful. With a lump in his throat he said to her, “You’re right, Symna. I don’t remember his name. I’m sorry.”
The Sylvan Song is available online at Lulu.com:
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