Now on that selfsame slab, close to Leela’s head, were censers of smouldering opiates whose fumes subdued the girl; and as Arborass disrobed Ayrish saw that the necromancer would take first-fruits before feeding his god. And a red rage rose up in Ayrish as he thought of the misery of so many girls gone this way before. And such was his fury that he no longer owned his senses.
As Arborass went to the girl, so Ayrish leaped out upon him, a great knife uplifted in his hand. Arborass heard!—saw!—grasped the lever!—screamed as Ayrish’s knife pierced him!
Now the youth swept the girl from the slowly tilting slab and made to carry her from the place; but the necromancer, dying, called upon his mummies to kill them. Down into that secret place the returning dead ones shuffled, and two of them snatched Leela from Ayrish’s arms while the others sought to stab him with their spears. And he was struck, and the spear tore a wound in his side.
Then, in his pain and horror, Ayrish became filled with the strength of ten. Before the mummies could pierce him again, he snatched up two of their number like bales of straw and hurled them at the staggering necromancer. Now mummies, wizard and all fell atop the tilting slab, and all slid therefrom into Ashtah’s fiery maw. In the next moment, even in the blinking of an eye, the rest of Arborass’ tomb-spawn crumbled and fell to dust where they stood, and all the volcano isle shook itself as a man starting from evil dreams.
Then Ayrish took up the girl from where she had fallen, and he tottered from Arborass’ tower even as it slid into ruins and toppled into Ashtah’s furnace throat. And down the shuddery carven steps went Ayrish, and deliriously into his boat where it bumped against the rocky wharf and rolled on the choppy waters; and as Leela began to come awake he placed her in the middle of the boat, took up the oars and plied madly for the open sea.
Now, with Arborass dead, the island no longer exerted its magnet pull, and soon Ayrish was well clear of the volcano. But the sea grew rougher yet as Ashtah thundered, great waves rising and frothing in all directions; and the youth, weak from his scarlet wound, rose up from where he sat to attend to the sail. And at that very moment the boat tilting like a cockleshell, Ayrish was tossed overboard and dragged down in the wrack of ocean!
Up Leela sprang, recovered from her drug-induced swoon, and clinging to the boat’s side she scanned the frothy deep and flying spume. And “Ayrish” she cried uselessly against the storm. “Ayrish! Ayrish!”
But only the volcano answered, with roar of steam and spouting lava flood. And splitting his sides in fissures of fire, Ashtah hurled his molten might aloft. God no more, he vented his fury upon the sky—and all the steamy bile of his belly fell in the valley of New Bhur-Esh.
“Ayrish! Ayrish!” the maid screamed again through the maelstrom of wind and water—and miracle of miracles, from somewhere close at hand, suddenly she thought to hear her lover’s answer!
X
“Ayrish!” the maid’s cry receded along with the rush and roar of the storm. “Ayrish—” it became the merest whisper. But to Erik Gustau, lolling in his chair, it seemed the name she cried was now his own! And her voice . . . that voice! The sweet, anguished voice he had thought never to hear again except in memory or later, God willing, in heaven. Could it be? A faint, far echo in a sounding shell: “Erik! Erik!”
Snatched awake, startled from his dream by hope and horror combined, the young man sprang up from his chair and reeled with a feverish vertigo. Rivered in sweat he clung to his table, glared at the spinning room, cursed the fickle god of fever-dreams whose spiteful hand had snatched him back.
Then he remembered the wine!
His glass stood empty, but wine enough in the bottle. “Lilly!” he cried after his dream, which suddenly he knew was more than any mere dream. “Lilly!” And tilting the bottle to his lips he drank it dry . . .
THE POST-MORTEM VERDICT was death by misadventure. But in fact Erik Gustau’s lungs were found full of salt water. Indeed, upon hearing his master’s cry and bursting in the door, Benson found him lying in a pool of water.
As for the deep gash in his side . . .
A mystery, the entire thing, which must forever go unexplained. And then there was that which even Benson dared not tell. For he must now seek a new master, and things were bad enough without making them worse. Who would employ a proven liar or madman?
Who would believe that upon entering his master’s study and finding him stretched upon the floor, drenched and dead, Benson had thought to hear, as from a great distance in space and time, the glad, wondering cries of lovers reunited, the snap of sails filling in the wind, and the hiss and crash of a sundered island sinking in a primal sea? . . .
The Sorcerer’s Dream
As translated by Thelred Gustau, from
Teh Atht’s Legends of the Olden Runes
I
ITEH ATHT, have dreamed a dream; and now, before dawn’s, light may steal it from my old mind—while yet Gleeth the blind God of the Moon rides the skies over Klühn and the stars of night peep and leer hideously—I write it down in the pages of my rune-book, wherein all the olden runes are as legends unfolded. For I have pondered the great mysteries of time and space, have solved certain of the riddles of the Ancients themselves, and all such knowledge is writ in my runebook for the fathoming of sorcerers as yet unborn.
As to why I dreamed this dream, plumbing the Great Abyss of future time to the very END itself, where only the gaunt black Tomb of the Universe gapes wide and empty, my reasons were many. They were born in mummy-dust sifting down to me through the centuries; in the writings of mages ancient when the world was still young; in cipherless hieroglyphs graven in the stone of Geph’s broken columns; aye, and in the vilest nightmares of shrieking madmen, whose visions had driven them mad. And such as these reasons were they drew me as the morning sun draws up the ocean mists on Theem’hdra’s bright strand, for I cannot suffer a mystery to go undiscovered.
The mystery was this: that oft and again over the years I had heard whispers of a monstrous alien God who seeped down from the stars when the world was an inchoate infant—whose name, Cthulhu, was clouded with timeless legends and obscured in half-forgotten myths and nameless lore—and such whispers as I had heard troubled me greatly . . .
Concerning this Cthulhu a colleague in olden Chlangi, the warlock Nathor Tarqu, had been to the temple of the Elder Ones in Ulthar in the land of Earth’s dreams to consult the Pnakotic Manuscript; and following that visit to Ulthar he had practiced exceedingly strange magicks before vanishing forever from the known world of men. Since that time Chlangi has become a fallen city, and close by in the Desert of Sheb the Lamia Orbiquita has builded her castle, so that now all men fear the region and call Chlangi the Shunned City.
I, too, have been to Ulthar, and I count it a blessing that on waking I could not recall what I read in the Pnakotic Manuscript—only such awful names as were writ therein, such as Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, and Ubbo-Sathla. And there was also mention of one Ghatanothoa, a son of Cthulhu to whom a dark temple even now towers in Theem’hdra, in a place that I shall not name. For I know the place is doomed, that there is a curse upon the temple and its priests, and that when they are no more their names shall be stricken from all records . . .
Even so, and for all this, I would never have entertained so long and unhealthy an interest in Loathly Lord Cthulhu had I not myself heard His call in uneasy slumbers; that call which turns men’s minds, beckoning them on to vile worship and viler deeds. Such dreams visited themselves upon me after I had spoken with Zar-thule, a barbarian reaver—or rather, with the fumbling mushroom thing that had once been a reaver—locked away in Klühn’s deepest dungeon to rot and gibber hideously of unearthly horrors. For Zar-thule had thought to rob the House of Cthulhu on Arlyeh the forbidden isle, as a result of which Arlyeh had gone down under the waves in a great storm . . . but not before Zar-thule gazed upon Cthulhu, whose treasures were garnets of green slime, red rubies of blood and moonstones of malignancy and madness!
A
nd when dreams such as those conjured by Zar-thule’s story came to sour the sweet embrace of Shoosh, Goddess of the Still Slumbers, I would rise from my couch and tremble, and pace the crystal floors of my rooms above the Bay of Klühn. For I was sorely troubled by this mystery; even I, Teh Atht, whose peer in the occult arts exists not in Theem’hdra, troubled most sorely.
SO I WENT up into the Mount of the Ancients where I smoked the Zha-weed and sought the advice of my wizard ancestor Mylakhrion of Tharamoon—dead eleven hundred years—who told me to look to the ORIGIN and the AFTERMATH, the BEGINNING and the END, that I might know. And that same night, in my secret vault, I sipped a rare and bitter distillation of mandrake and descended again into deepest dreams, even into dreams long dead and forgotten before ever human dreamers existed. Thus in my search for the ORIGIN I dreamed myself into the dim and fabulous past.
And I saw that the Earth was hot and in places molten, and Gleeth was not yet born to sail the volcanic clouds of pre-dawn nights. Then, drawn by a force beyond my ken, I went out into the empty spaces of the primal void, where I saw, winging down through the vasty dark, shapes of uttermost lunacy. And first among them all was Cthulhu of the tentacled face, and among His followers came Yogg-Sothoth, Tsathoggua, and many others which were like unto Cthulhu but less than Him; and lo!—Cthulhu spoke the Name of Azathoth, whereupon stars blazed forth as He passed and all space gloried in His coming.
Down through the outer immensities they winged, alighting upon the steaming Earth and building great cities of a rare architecture, wherein singular angles confused the eye and mind until towers were as precipices and solid walls gateways! And there they dwelt for aeons, in their awful cities under leaden skies and strange stars. Aye, and they were mighty sorcerers, Cthulhu and His spawn, who plotted great evil against Others who were once their brethren. For they had not come to Earth of their own will but had fled from Elder Gods whose codes they had abused most terribly.
And such were their thaumaturgies in the great grey cities that those Elder Gods felt tremors in the very stuff of Existence itself, and they came in haste and great anger to set seals on the houses of Cthulhu, wherein He and many of His kin were prisoned for their sins. But others of these great old sorcerers, such as Yogg-Sothoth and Yib-Tstll, fled again into the stars, where they were followed by the Elder Gods who prisoned them wherever they were found. Then, when all was done, the great and just Gods of Eld returned whence they had come; and aeon upon aeon passed and the stars revolved through strange configurations, moving inexorably toward a time when Cthulhu would be set free . . .
so IT WAS that I saw the ORIGIN whereof my ancestor Mylakhrion of Tharamoon had advised me, and awakening in my secret vault I shuddered and marvelled that this Loathly Lord Cthulhu had come down all the ages unaltered. For I knew that indeed He lived still in His city sunken under the sea, and I was mazed by His immortality. Then it came to me to dwell at length upon the latter, on Cthulhu’s immortality, and to wonder if He was truly immortal . . . And of this also had Mylakhrion advised, saying, “Look to the ORIGIN and the AFTERMATH, the BEGINNING and the END.”
Thus it was that last night I sipped again of mandrake fluid and went out in a dream to seek the END. And indeed I found it . . .
There at the end of time all was night, where all the universe was a great empty tomb and nothing stirred. And I stood upon a dead sea bottom and looked up to where Gleeth had once graced the skies; old Gleeth, long sundered now and drifted down to Earth as dust. And I turned my saddened eyes down again to gaze upon a gaunt, solitary spire of rock that rose and twisted and towered up from the bottom of the dusty ocean.
And because curiosity was ever the curse of sorcerers, it came to me to wonder why, since this was the END, time itself continued to exist. And it further came to me that time existed only because space, time’s brother, had not quite ended, life was not quite extinct. With this thought, as if born of the thought itself, there came a mighty rumbling and the ground trembled and shook. All the world shuddered and the dead sea bottom split open in many places, creating chasms from which there at once rose up the awful spawn of Cthulhu!
And lo!—I knew now that indeed Cthulhu was immortal, for in Earth’s final death spasm He was reborn! The great twisted spire of rock—all that was left of Arlyeh, Cthulhu’s house—shattered and fell in ruins, laying open to my staggering gaze His sepulcher. And shortly thereafter, preceded by a nameless stench, He squeezed Himself out from the awful tomb into the gloom of the dead universe . . .
Then, when they saw Cthulhu, all of them that were risen up from their immemorial prisons rushed and flopped and floundered to His feet, making obeisance to Him. And He blinked great evil octopus eyes and gazed all about in wonderment, for His final sleep had endured for aeon upon aeon, and he had not known that the universe was now totally dead and time itself at an end.
And Cthulhu’s anger was great! He cast His mind out into the void and gazed upon cinders that had been stars; He looked for light and warmth in the farthest corners of the universe and found only darkness and decay; He searched for life in the great seas of space and found only the tombs at time’s end. And His anger waxed awesome!
Then He threw back His tentacled head and bellowed out the Name of Azathoth in a voice that sent all of the lesser Beings at His feet scurrying back to their chasm sepulchers, and lo! . . . nothing happened! The sands of time were run out, and even the greatest magicks had lost their potency.
And so Cthulhu raged and stormed and blasphemed as only He might until, at the height of His anger, suddenly He knew me!
Dreaming as I was and far, far removed from my own age, nevertheless He sensed me and in an instant turned upon me, face tentacles writhing and reaching out for my dreaming spirit. And then, to my eternal damnation, before I fled shrieking back down the corridors of time to leap awake drenched in a chill perspiration in my secret vault, I gazed deep into the demon eyes of Cthulhu . . .
NOW IT is dawn and I am almost done with the writing of this, and soon I will lay down my rune-book and set myself certain tasks for the days ahead. First I will see to it that the crystal dome of my workshop tower is covered with black lacquer, for I fear I can no longer bear to look out upon the stars . . . Where once they twinkled afar in chill but friendly fashion, now I know that they leer down in celestial horror as they move inexorably toward Cthulhu’s next awakening. For surely He will rise up many times before that final awakening at the very END.
Aye, and if I had thought to escape the Lord of Arlyeh when I fled from him in my dream, then I was mistaken. Cthulhu was, He is, and He will always be; and I know now that this is the essence of that great mystery which so long perplexed me. For Cthulhu is a Master of Dreams, and now He knows me. And He will follow me through my slumbers all the days of my life, and evermore I shall hear His call . . . Even unto the END.
The House of Cthulhu: Tales of the Primal Land Vol. 1 Page 21
