The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington)
Page 25
When Exeter hesitated, the voice continued,
You would kill me if I did.
But you have power over me. You have influenced my thoughts for months. That is the reason I am here, now, in this place that should have remained buried forever.
That’s not true!
Exeter knew it was true, and now that the crucial moment was approaching, he trembled with the shame of it. The lies he had told himself had been laid bare by this thing from beyond the stars: the lie that he had no choice but to become the most powerful human being who had ever existed on Earth, and ever would exist; the lie that his actions were out of his control, that he had no choice but to do the bidding of the King in Yellow.
But it was too late.
Much too late.
And what if I were to turn away from you now?
Again, that hideous amusement.
Consequences?
You would leave me to be driven insane by it?
That… would be foolish of me.
Exeter sighed and closed his eyes. To his great surprise, he started to weep.
No, I will not.
In all his thousands of years of life, Oberon had never seen anything remotely like the thing which filled the passageway ahead of them. He had travelled to many worlds on the Aurelius, had witnessed many wonders and terrors on the orbs which rolled silently through the star lanes of the island universe which was home to Earth and Carcosa and a hundred billion other worlds, but never had he encountered anything like this.
Its shape was nearly impossible to hold in his mind, even though he was looking directly at it: the writhing filaments and pulsating lobes were merely the two most easily describable aspects of it, but there were many others which conformed to no words or concepts which had ever been conceived in this universe.
Oberon and his warriors fired their weapons again and again, and where the ruby beams struck the thing, its abysmal form sizzled and burst, disgorging loathsome, liquid miasmas which instantly recombined to form further extrusions, thrashing madly across the walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor.
How can we defeat such a beast? asked one of the warriors. We have never encountered anything with such resistance to our weapons!
Apparently in response to the thought, one of the pulsating lobes split apart to reveal a vast, slobbering mouth which began to mimic obscenely the movements of speech.
The word-impressions echoed suddenly through the minds of the faeries.
The King in Yellow! Oberon thought.
We know what you are planning to do. We will not allow you to destroy the Earth, as you have destroyed Carcosa.
My strategy is simple, fiend: I am going to lead my warriors to your throne room, and we are going to destroy you!
Their power has waned, such is their great age. But Earth is much younger than Carcosa, and we are much younger than this world’s Planetary Angels. We will prevail against you!
Oberon’s warriors looked at him, and then at each other. The King had not mentioned the Anti-Prisms on Carcosa and Earth, and such was their faerie nature that their inner thoughts were shielded from the enemy.
You know of that?
Not as dearly as if I were to allow you to hold dominion there. I will find a way to make amends, even if they involve my own exile or destruction.
Then allow it! I promise you, you will find our efforts to defend our world most amusing!
You do me a disservice, Yellow King, for I am neither cruel nor stupid enough to bring humans to this place. Their sanity could not withstand it; they would suffer the same fate as the poor wretch whose mind was destroyed by this Servitor’s counterpart on Earth. No, you will have to deal with us of Faerie, and us alone!
Allow us entry to your throne room, coward, and we will show you what we think of your intentions.
The slobbering mouth of the Servitor stretched wide as it produced a sickening parody of laughter.
And with that, the foul protuberance that had pretended to be a mouth withdrew into the heaving mass, and the Servitor retreated along the corridor.
As Oberon and his faerie warriors followed, he sent out a single thought across the Æther to Titania:
Make ready, my wife, for we are about to enter the throne room!
Nine hundred trillion miles away, the Templar Police were advancing steadily along the tunnel, moving close to the walls so that they could take advantage of the regularly-spaced boltholes and entrances to maintenance corridors, should they come under fire again, while Queen Titania walked along the centre of the rail bed.
The darkness was no impediment to her, such was the vast superiority of her eyesight to that of the humans. She could see right to the end and into the distant Void Chamber, where something appeared to be glowing faintly.
Suddenly, she paused, and de Chardin glanced at her softly-glowing form.
‘Your Majesty,’ he whispered. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, Detective,’ she replied. ‘I have just received a message from King Oberon. He and his warriors are about to enter the thron
e room in the Castle of Demhe. We must hurry!’
Exeter had heard the shots echoing through the tunnels.
They are here! he thought.
But the Void Chamber is about to be attacked!
The mediumistic substrates in Exeter’s brain flared to life, just as they had done when he summoned the Servitor to his apartments. He felt their strange power seeping through his mind, like hot ink through blotting paper, as he called a different set of unpronounceable words into his awareness and transmitted them towards the centre of the Void Chamber.
As he did so, he felt a stirring of the air behind him, and a sound as of something vast heaving itself into existence.
The Servitor had arrived, carrying its cargo of screaming souls.
Exeter shuddered as he felt his mind strengthening under the influence of the King in Yellow. He gave the briefest of thoughts to fleeing the Void Chamber and the horror and madness that were about to be unleashed upon the world… but there was nowhere to flee to, and Exeter strongly suspected that, were he to do so, he would be among the first of those who would fall victim to the ravenous appetite of the King in Yellow.
As he completed the mental incantation, Exeter looked around and saw that each of the bas-reliefs of the Yellow Sign carved upon the thousands of tiles lining the Void Chamber had begun to put forth a sickly, pallid glow.
He looked down at the centre of the floor, watching in horrified fascination as a circular section, perhaps ten feet in diameter, glowed brighter than the rest and rapidly became molten. Like melting wax, the tiles were transformed into a liquid mass which quickly sank into the resulting hole.
Exeter backed away and watched the walls of the Void Chamber warp and twist – while simultaneously remaining perfectly still – to accommodate the ultra-dimensional mass of the Servitor, which approached the edge of the steaming hole.
A maddening, pulsating hum, as of some vast electrical generator, began to thump through the chamber. Exeter felt his bones vibrate with each pulse and put his hands to his ears in a vain attempt to shut out the hideous power of the alien noise.
Something pointed and red began to emerge from the hole at the centre of the Void Chamber: a crystalline spire which surged with a strange interior movement, and whose surface flickered with blue-white arcs of energy.
Exeter gasped and took another few steps back as the spire became a long, slender multi-sided pyramid. As its emergence continued, he saw that its form was mirrored in an identical inverted pyramid beneath – livid red, stirring strangely within, its surface caressed by the crackling arcs of incomprehensible energy.
His familiarity with engineering principles told Exeter that the shape of this thing was a hexagonal trapezohedron, but its shape was the only thing remotely understandable about it.
‘The Anti-Prism,’ Exeter whispered.
‘How… how does it work?’
Exeter sensed contemptuous amusement from the thing in his mind.
As the Servitor surged forward with its awful cargo, the voice of the King in Yellow thundered through Charles Exeter’s mind.
Blackwood was pacing back and forth impatiently upon the main deck of the Aurelius, periodically checking the waterproof fob watch which was part of his environmental suit’s equipment. Every few minutes, he went to the balustrade, leaned over and gazed into the lightless depths of the castle entrance.
‘What the blazes are they doing down there?’ he said. ‘They must have reached the throne room by now.’
‘It’s a fair bet that they’re encountering resistance,’ replied Castaigne. ‘We must give them time.’
Blackwood sighed and shook his head. ‘Time is not something we have in great supply, Dr Castaigne. If the King in Yellow manages to complete his transit to Earth, it’s all up for the human race!’
‘I understand, my friend,’ said the occultist. ‘But there’s nothing we can do except wait.’
Blackwood nodded and then glanced along the deck to where Sophia was standing alone. He switched his radio communication device to a private channel. ‘I’m worried about her, Castaigne,’ he said. ‘There’s something she’s not telling us.’
‘About what?’
‘Herself – what happened when she encountered the King in Yellow after taking your Taduki drug. Something’s wrong, I’m sure of it.’
‘Do you think her mind might have been… damaged?’
‘No, I don’t think it’s that – not quite; after all, the symptoms of such a derangement would be quite unequivocal. It’s something else… but I’m dashed if I can put my finger on it.’
At that moment, a faerie crewman approached them, and Blackwood switched his radio back to the common channel.
The crewman was carrying something which looked like a large, folded-up sheet of pale green linen, which he handed to Blackwood.
‘What’s this?’ asked the Special Investigator.
‘There has been a change of plan, Mr Blackwood,’ the faerie replied. ‘King Oberon wishes you to bring this to him.’
Blackwood took the sheet, and was surprised to find that it was virtually weightless. ‘Then he and his men have gained the throne room?’
‘They are approaching it as we speak.’
‘Good show!’ Blackwood exclaimed.
‘Are we ready?’ asked Sophia, who had joined them.
‘It looks like it, my dear,’ Blackwood replied. ‘You’re sure you’re able to guide us through the castle?’
‘Believe me, Thomas, every twist and turn is etched in my mind.’
Oberon’s voice suddenly flashed through their minds.
I am both gratified and saddened to hear it, Sophia.
‘Oberon!’ she said. ‘Are we to join you now?’
Yes. You must come immediately. Descend from the Aurelius into the castle. By the time you reach the throne room, we will be there. Thomas, do you have that which I instructed my crewman to give to you?
‘Yes, I have it,’ Blackwood replied. ‘But what is it?’
Something without which our mission will most certainly fail!
Blown by the wind from distant suns, the Wanderer entered the Solar System. Through the vast outer cloud of comets it flew, and then on through the great ring of asteroids beyond the orbit of the tiny ninth planet, which would not be discovered by human astronomers for another thirty-one years.
It detected the presence, far off in the infinite night, of two ice giants, and further on towards the distant yellow sun which shone brightly, as yet unsuspecting the calamity which was about to befall it, the haloed jewel of a beautiful ringed planet.
Conserving its energy, the Wanderer headed for a larger gas giant whose striated surface was marred by a vast storm of rotating red clouds. Complex celestial calculations were conducted instantaneously in the Wanderer’s partly organic, partly mechanical brain, and it swung beneath the vast world, altering its trajectory at precisely the correct moment to catapult it at yet greater speed on a precise path towards the tiny blue mote which drifted serenely through the inner system, which was called by its inhabitants Earth.
The Wanderer scented
the Luminiferous Æther in that direction but was unable to detect any trace of the yellow blasphemy from beyond the stars.
It was satisfied: the thing had yet to arrive, and when it did, the Wanderer would be waiting for it, for the Wanderer had received a message from Carcosa’s twin suns upon its entry into that system: once again, it was too late to save a world and its people from destruction, but the suns had told it of a conversation they had had with a transmundane being from a nearby system.
This system…
Presently, the Wanderer spread its vast, membranous wings to catch the rays of the sun and began to decelerate in preparation for its final approach to the tiny blue world…
The newly excavated tunnel suddenly exploded with a cacophony of gunfire.
‘This must be the place,’ Sergeant Clairvaux quipped as he and de Chardin hurled themselves into the nearest bolthole, while Queen Titania paused and stood tranquilly amid the storm of bullets. As before, the ones which struck her bounced off and fell harmlessly to the ground.
A Templar Knight behind her was too slow to seek cover and staggered backwards as a hail of bullets struck his cuirass. Before he hit the ground, Titania flew to him in a lilac blur, picked him up and flung him into a bolthole. His grunt of thanks was lost in the continuing thunder.
‘Your Majesty!’ cried de Chardin. ‘There must be a dozen men up there – a score! They’ve got us well and truly pinned down!’
Beside him, Clairvaux unslung his Maxim and began to return fire. From boltholes and corridor entrances, the rest of the Templar Knights were doing the same, but they were firing into near total darkness, and their expert marksmanship was all but wasted.
‘It’ll take too long to gain the Void Chamber like this!’ de Chardin continued.
‘Don’t worry, Detective,’ Titania replied in a quiet, gentle voice which nevertheless – incredibly – reached the Templar’s ears in spite of the thunderous racket. ‘I will see to them. You and your men prepare to make for the Void Chamber on my command – and remember, if your gaze falls upon the Servitor for more than a moment, your minds will be undone.’