Back to The Book of Ninety and Nine Doomed Cities
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No one now living has seen the festivals that once were celebrated in Mimor Fosh, that lay to the south of the Dolorous Mountains, in the last weeks before the coming of the rains. Mimor Fosh was a city of the D’nar, who have an abhorrence of all that is wet, and a love for all that is dry and fiery. The D’nar are black and made of a stuff like horn, and they do not drink. Neither do they build their cities of stone, but cunningly direct the labours of creatures like worms or bees, that make for themselves habitations of a black matter something between wax and iron - this substance the D’nar name trahs, and by art goad the insects that make it into constructing prodigious towers. Mimor Fosh was built all of trahs, and lay amidst a bare and desolate land.
The greatest of the festivals of Mimor Fosh were those celebrated in the last weeks before the coming of the rains; these were held in honour of fire, and in hope of driving away the rain. The V’shari, who were the priests of the D’nar, would kindle fires on every side of the city, to destroy the grasses that had grown there, and the ruins of the harvested crops. These fires sent up a sulfurous reek to the heavens, for the crops of the D’nar are not at all like the crops we know, and our food is poison to them. And the smoke of the many fires covered the face of the sun, so it appeared like an angry red eye. Even so, the V’shari said, as the sun of their own lost world, the world where there are no seas and no heaviness and there is the smell of sulfur always - the world that will be restored to them at the end of T’sai, when the last Phthonian has died.
Great bonfires were built also, at nine places about the city, from wood sent as tribute by the villages that owed allegiance to Mimor Fosh; and these were not lit all at once, but in turn, as a great procession of all the inhabitants of the city passed from one to another. Into each fire the King of Mimor Fosh would cast costly offerings - garments of the finest weave, unguents of Kazusar in pots of polished trahs, poems carved onto sheets of mother of pearl, and all manner of victuals. Especially the King would offer many figures of D'nar made of a bitter dough called zra, which they eat like sugar, in place of the slaves that once were burned. And all the Tash of Mimor Fosh would also cast offerings into the fires, and vie with one another in the magnificence of the things they destroyed.
At the last, when each one of the nine fires was alight, the chief V’shar of the city would light the final pyre, which was built about a pillar of fresh trahs, and the vapours that seeped from the pillar would burn green and blue like the eyes of spirits. Then there would be silent singing in the strange scents of the Fiery ones, and Vhar would glide down from the tops of the towers, making perilous circuits of the great fires. And of old children of the caste Gimphar would be cast alive into the central fire; but in later times this practice was forbidden.
And in this way all in Mimor Fosh all would honour whatever it was they worshipped, so that in that year the rains would pass them by.
The people of Mimor Fosh were always liable to sickness, and in every generation would come a plague from over the mountains, and some part of the people would spit black slime and die, or grow blind and crippled from a rash like fire that ate away at the joints between their bones. The lawgivers of Mimor Fosh extended the prohibited degrees, but this only hastened the dwindling of the race. One year finally came a rumour of plague from over the mountains, and the last of the people of Mimor Fosh fled before it, seeking the distant land of Zahr where it was said no sickness could come. What befell them on this journey is not known.
Now no trace of Mimor Fosh remains, for trahs is easily rendered into lacquer, and when ground to a powder burns with a clear bright flame and not unpleasing scent. Moreover skilled artisans can work old trahs, though it is brittle, and for a time it was much fancied by the folk of the cities of Laan and of Qavh, to make the images of saints which they venerate there.
S’luk was the name for Mimor Fosh in the tongue of the T’sai Lho. The T'sai Lho lived and still live in lands not far from Mimor Fosh, though D'nari are now become things of legend there. The two races lived together always in peace, though they mingled seldom, and were ever deceitful toward one another. Of Mimor Fosh it is written, in the Temptation of the Lover of Eshaon:
“Would you take S'luk curled at the feet of bare mountains, Mimor Fosh with its towers of black trahs? For Eshaon would you accept the bat-winged D'nar who circle those towers, their fierce and rheumy eyes, and the streets below with their shops of glass and crystal marvels? S'luk, and the angry short lives of its masters, and prowess at arms, and many swords, and beautiful things that are poison growing on the sculpted slopes of the mountains?" |