The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington)

by Alan K Baker

  ‘But what about that?’ he continued, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the Servitor, which had ceased its sluggish movements and was now as still as a rock on the far side of the Void Chamber.

  ‘The Servitor is dead,’ Titania replied, glancing at the abnormality, ‘as is the one on Carcosa. I believe they would have died anyway, after channelling so much psychic energy, but in any event, the source of their power, the King in Yellow, is now gone from the universe. It was that being’s influence which allowed Charles Exeter to perceive this Servitor without having his mind rent asunder…’

  ‘And when that influence left his mind, it was undefended against the fantastic alienness of the thing,’ de Chardin completed. ‘Nevertheless, we’ll have to get rid of it somehow…’

  ‘Leave that to us,’ said Titania. ‘You have done well, de Chardin. You have successfully defended your world, at great risk to yourselves. King Oberon will be pleased.’

  As she smiled at him, de Chardin felt a great agitation seize his heart, and he looked down in embarrassment. ‘Thank you, Your Majesty. We… we certainly could not have prevailed without your help.’

  ‘You are kind to say so. Now, you have some more work to do. Take Exeter into your custody, while I organise the removal and disposal of the Servitor.’

  Although they had avoided injury from the hurtling shards of the Carcosa Anti-Prism, Blackwood, Sophia and Castaigne had been knocked off their feet by the concussive force of the device’s destruction, which had spread through the water filling the throne room.

  As they stood up, Oberon smiled at them and sent a thought into their minds.

  Well done, my friends. The danger is passed; the blight is gone from the universe. You have prevailed, and the Earth is safe.

  ‘It has gone,’ said Sophia, and even through the crackle of her radio transmitter, the joy and relief in her voice were unmistakeable.

  Blackwood moved to her, and through the tall globes of their helmets, he saw that the brightness had returned to her eyes, and her beautiful face was animated by a smile which was delightful to behold. ‘Indeed it is, my dear,’ he said.

  I do not think that Sophia is referring to the departure of the King in Yellow in quite the way you suppose, Thomas, said Oberon.

  Blackwood frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  Sophia? said the Faerie King.

  ‘Oberon is right,’ she said. ‘I said nothing of it, because I didn’t want to worry you… but after I took Dr Castaigne’s Taduki drug and voyaged here, after I encountered the King in Yellow, I felt that a part of the fiend had stayed with me…’

  ‘Stayed with you?’ said Blackwood, glancing from her to Oberon. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘I felt that part of its mind was still inside mine – how, I cannot begin to speculate. It was like… like an echo… but it was there, constantly, at the back of my awareness.’ Her voice cracked, and she gave a brief sob. ‘But it is gone now.’

  I suspected as much, said Oberon. As I said to you on the Aurelius, Thomas, no human could be in the presence of a being such as the King in Yellow and return from the encounter unscathed. We must be thankful that the fragment of the entity’s mind which remained with Sophia did not cause any permanent damage.

  ‘I do not believe that was its intention,’ Sophia replied. ‘I sensed that it was fascinated by me… or rather by my audacity in voyaging to Carcosa alone. I cannot begin to speculate on what it would have done to me, had it succeeded in its plan to take up residence on Earth.’

  Nor should you, Oberon said. The time for dark and fearful speculation is over. Your world awaits your return, although very few will be aware of the great service you have performed.

  ‘No matter,’ said Castaigne. ‘I just want to get out of this infernal place and back to Blighty.’

  Blackwood gave him a wry smile. ‘I thought you were an inveterate traveller, Dr Castaigne.’

  ‘I assure you I remain so, my dear chap, but I feel the need for an extended period of rest and relaxation in pleasantly mundane surroundings.’

  A desire I well understand, said Oberon. Let us return to the Aurelius and make for Earth without delay.

  As the vast faerie ship lifted clear of the Lake of Hali, Sophia pointed over the edge of the main deck. ‘Look!’ she cried. ‘The cloud waves are breaking up. You can see the water!’

  It was true, for just as the King in Yellow had gone from the universe, so the reality-warping effects of his erstwhile presence were likewise beginning to dissipate.

  ‘And look!’ added Castaigne, pointing up. ‘The moons of Carcosa are regaining their sanity. They are returning to their rightful place in the heavens!’

  As he, Sophia and Blackwood watched, the four moons, which had drifted impossibly above the Lake of Hali, appearing in front of the towers of the surrounding cities in an outrageous affront to the laws of physics, began to fade from view, while in the far distance their forms gradually became more and more discernible.

  From now on, they will follow their proper orbits around Carcosa, said Oberon. Dr Castaigne is right: this world is becoming sane again.

  ‘Although too late for those who remain,’ said Blackwood.

  The Faerie King lowered his eyes. Yes, too late for them.

  Quickly gaining altitude, the Aurelius passed the shoreline of Hali and flew above the towers of the nearest city. Sophia looked down at the strangely elegant buildings and winding streets extending beyond the great stone ramparts which had shielded them from the constantly moving cloud waves, and she spied the forms of people emerging, collecting in large groups and talking animatedly.

  ‘They know that their world has been set free,’ she said, and, peering more closely at them, added, ‘They are not so very different from us.’

  ‘No,’ Oberon replied. ‘They are very similar to humans.’

  ‘Can we not go down to them? Can we not meet them…?’

  Oberon gave a soft chuckle. ‘I have an inkling that you will be meeting them before very long. But not yet.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Oberon said nothing; he merely glanced at Blackwood, who was observing the city with a thoughtful expression.

  The Aurelius turned its prow away from Carcosa and its giant red suns and plunged once more into the metallic grey liquid of the Pneuma hypertube. When Blackwood, Sophia and Castaigne had divested themselves of their environmental suits, Oberon gave his guests a tour of his astonishing vessel, from the bowsprit which extended like a vast needle out from the prow (and which itself was longer than any ship sailing the oceans of Earth), past the gigantic forecastle, which was larger than Saint Paul’s Cathedral, across the main deck to the colossal aftcastle containing the captain’s suite of cabins and quarters for the more senior members of the crew.

  From there they descended into the interior of the ship, past the regular crew’s quarters (all of which were appointed with an elegant sumptuousness far surpassing the most opulent palaces of Earth), the whipstaff steering mechanism controlling the three-hundred-foot-tall rudder and the engine room powering the great paddle wheel which drove the ship through the higher dimension of the hypertube. Blackwood and Castaigne looked up at the vast and arcane machinery which filled this latter chamber, glanced at each other and shook their heads in befuddlement, for neither could begin to identify any of the components, which had a curiously organic cast to them, as if, like everything else on the ship, they had been grown rather than manufactured.

  They were walking through the cargo holds and supply rooms, each cathedral-like in its size, when Sophia stopped suddenly, gasped and put a hand to her head. Her companions regarded her with concern.

  ‘What is it, my dear?’ asked Blackwood.

  ‘He is back,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The King in Yellow… he has returned!’

  ‘That is not possible, Sophia,’ said Oberon. ‘He has been excised from the universe; the tunnel between worlds has been sealed
off with him inside it. There is no conceivable way–’

  ‘I tell you it’s true, Oberon!’ Sophia cried. ‘I can feel him in my mind again, just as before!’

  ‘Good God!’ Castaigne exclaimed. ‘If that’s the case, then what the deuce are we to do?’

  ‘We are approaching Earth,’ replied the Faerie King. ‘If the fiend really has broken free of his imprisonment, there is only one thing we can do. Follow me.’

  Oberon led them back up to the aftcastle, where their guest quarters were located.

  ‘Put on your environmental suits,’ he commanded, ‘and when you have done so, join me at the helm.’

  Blackwood paused at the door to his cabin, and turned to the Faerie King. ‘What’s your plan, Oberon?’ he asked.

  ‘My plan is simple, Thomas. We are going to engage the King in Yellow directly. The Aurelius is going into battle!’

  CHAPTER SEVEN:

  A Deeper Darkness

  Blackwood, Sophia and Castaigne arrived at the summit of the colossal aftcastle in time to see the waters of the hypertube dissipate, replaced by the stars of quotidian space. Directly ahead of the Aurelius the blue, cloud-strewn orb of Earth hung suspended in the glittering firmament, beautiful to behold and unsuspecting of the calamity which once again threatened it.

  ‘What do you mean you’re going into battle?’ asked Blackwood as they joined Oberon at the helm. ‘If you are directly responsible for the King in Yellow’s destruction, you’ll have broken your Covenant with the universe. We humans are the ones who must neutralise the threat.’

  ‘There was only one way you could have done that, Thomas,’ Oberon replied. ‘We tried it, and we failed. There is nothing more you can do. Now… now I must take over.’

  ‘And what happens if you succeed?’ asked Sophia.

  ‘There will be a price to pay, and I will gladly pay it.’

  ‘What price?’

  ‘I will take full responsibility for the breaking of the Covenant. I will offer myself in payment to the Primal Mind. The punishment will, at best, be permanent exile from the Earth…’

  ‘And at worst?’ said Blackwood.

  ‘Death.’

  ‘No!’ Sophia cried. ‘You cannot!’

  ‘It is a price worth paying for the safety of the world you see before you.’

  ‘There must be another way, Oberon,’ said Castaigne. ‘There must be.’

  The Faerie King turned and smiled at the occultist. ‘I am open to suggestions, sir.’

  ‘We could… I mean, I…’ Castaigne lapsed into silence and shook his head.

  ‘Your Majesty!’ cried one of the crewmen from the main deck. ‘There!’

  They turned their gazes in the direction he was pointing. Off to port, a shape had become visible against the backdrop of stars: a ragged, tattered form of chaos and foulness, still distant, but getting closer by the second.

  The voice of the King in Yellow blasted into the awareness of everyone onboard the ship.

 

  The Anti-Prisms were destroyed, Oberon replied. You were trapped within the tunnel between worlds… you were trapped outside the universe!

 

  ‘You filthy bloody brute!’ Blackwood shouted. ‘I’ll die before I let that happen!’

 

  At that moment, Sophia screamed and sank to her knees, clutching at her helmeted head with both hands. Blackwood crouched down beside her and took her in his arms. ‘Sophia! What…?’

  ‘He is…’ she gasped. ‘He is… inside me!’

  She screamed again, and Blackwood looked up at Oberon, his features twisted into a tortured expression of rage and helplessness.

  The King in Yellow had drawn close to the Aurelius. Unencumbered by gravity, its ragged form now spread out equally in all directions, a vast, amorphous mass which flapped and writhed hideously, like the gelatinous denizens which pulsated in the gelid darkness of Earth’s deepest oceans.

  Oberon’s next words were addressed to his crew, although the humans heard them also.

  Ready the cannons, he said.

  All along the great flanks of the faerie vessel, vast doors slid aside to reveal pewter-coloured cylinders, each a hundred feet long with a muzzle thirty feet wide.

  Fire at will! cried Oberon.

  Instantly, the cannons disgorged sun-like spheres of blinding green energy, which struck the monstrosity floating off the vessel’s port side. Each ball of green fire found its target unerringly, blasting away huge chunks of the King in Yellow’s fetid mass, and with each impact, Sophia screamed louder and writhed upon the deck, her features contorted in unendurable torment.

  As he held her wildly thrashing body in his arms, Blackwood looked up at the ragged form of the King in Yellow, which was being torn to further tatters by the impacts of the faerie projectiles. And to his horror, he saw that the thing was recombining after each impact, sending whipping tendrils out to gather up each fragment and draw it back into itself.

  ‘It’s not working, Oberon!’ he screamed. ‘Your weapons are useless against it.’

  came the voice of the King in Yellow.

  ‘Leave her alone, you bastard!’ cried Blackwood. ‘If you want a mind to consume, then take mine!’

 

  Blackwood looked up at Oberon in desperation, but the Faerie King was not looking at him, or at the King in Yellow. His gaze was cast in an entirely different direction, into the depths of space behind the Aurelius.

  As Blackwood followed his gaze, his eyes grew wide in astonishment.

  Against the backdrop of diamond-bright stars… something was moving.

  ‘What is that?’ he whispered.

  Our salvation, Oberon replied.

  As the object approached, more of its outline and structure became discernible. It was like nothing anyone on the Aurelius – human or faerie – had ever seen. The only components which were remotely recognisable were the vast, fan-like wings, striated with iridescent bands of blue-grey, which emerged from the main body of the thing. The body itself appeared to be composed of a dozen or more flesh-coloured discs, intersecting each other along a single axis, which imparted to it a spherical shape.

  Its size was difficult to determine at first, for there was no frame of reference, nothing in the firmament with which to compare it, but as its approach continued… and continued… it became apparent that the thing was of an unimaginable size, completely dwarfing the mile-long Aurelius.

  ‘It’s the King in Yellow’s nemesis!’ declared Castaigne, his voice all but strangled by awe. ‘It’s the Wanderer! It has found him!’

  At that moment, Sophia stopped screaming and lay still. Blackwood peered through the globe of her helmet, and then at the gauges on her suit’s chest-mounted control unit. Still alive, he thought. Thank God… but what state is her mind in… if she still has one?

  Hold your fire, Oberon ordered, and immediately the seething orbs of faerie energy ceased their battering of the King in Yellow.

  said the monster.

  And with that utterance, the stars before which the King in Yellow floated grew suddenly warped, smearing around it in arcs of twisted light, at the centre of which was a circular patc
h of perfect darkness.

  The Wanderer must have observed this, for it surged forward towards the phenomenon, but it did not move quickly enough. The King in Yellow vanished into the darkness, and when it had vanished, the stars returned to their normal aspect.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Castaigne urgently.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Blackwood replied. ‘But if pressed, I’d say that the beast has escaped, perhaps into some other realm of time and space.’

  I would say you are correct, Thomas, said Oberon. Look. The newcomer has ceased its forward charge. It is remaining still.

  ‘You are not correct, Thomas,’ said another voice, and all turned to see Sophia getting unsteadily to her feet.

  ‘Sophia!’ Blackwood cried.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said, although her voice was terribly weak and tremulous. ‘The King in Yellow is still in my mind,’ she added, ‘although his influence is much weakened. He has not escaped – at least, not entirely, for he has cloaked himself in a shield of energy…’

  A shield of energy? said Oberon. What kind of energy?

  ‘I don’t know; it is a form of which we know nothing, and it is undetectable… undetectable by us, and by the Wanderer also. It is utterly invisible… but the King in Yellow is still here!’

  CHAPTER EIGHT:

  Sophia’s Sacrifice

  The Aurelius and the Wanderer floated beside each other in interplanetary space. In comparison to the vast alien device, the faerie vessel was as a grain of rice compared to an orange. Oberon tried to communicate with it, but to no avail; it either could not or would not answer. At the helm, Oberon, Blackwood, Sophia and Castaigne looked at the region of space where the King in Yellow had last been.

  ‘Can you tell if the thing is still there, Sophia?’ asked Blackwood.