The Night Land, a Story Retold

by James Stoddard

  I could write for hours about all the examinations, observations, and speculations spent on the Headland alone. The Monstruwacans possessed thousands of images comparing the creatures who came to peer, and still no one could say what they were, or how many. For a brief period of time in my childhood, Cartesius thought he had positive proof that they were all actually a single being, returning again and again. It is impossible for me to convey how much excitement the discovery caused throughout the pyramid, or the wild theories that arose from it, but in the end, the information proved contradictory, and the Monstruwacans were forced to admit they knew no more than before.

  Far closer than the Headland, running straight before me, was The Road Where The Silent Ones Walk. As I had done countless times before, I searched it with the spyglass, for the sight of its sojourners always stirred my heart.

  Soon, alone in all the miles of that night-gray road, I saw a quiet, cloaked figure. As was the way of those beings, it was shrouded, and looked neither to right nor left. Legends said the Silent Ones would not harm a human, so long as one kept a fair distance from them, but I could not help but shudder as I watched him leave that part of the Road lit by the light from the Three Silver Fire Holes and pass into the shadows.

  Far beyond the Fire Holes fluttered The Thing That Nods. I gaped at it a time; it had indeed turned a fraction more of its face toward the pyramid, and though its features remained indecipherable, I looked upon it in fascination. No one knew what it was, or why it moved; like so much of the Night Land it remained a dark and unfathomable enigma.

  To the right of The Thing That Nods, but nearer, rose the vast bulk of the Southeast Watcher—the Watching Thing of the Southeast. Though the fires called The Torches, burning to either side of the squat monster, were easily a half mile away from it, they cast enough light to illuminate the beetled head of the unsleeping brute. Its body hung behind it in a mound resembling the distorted form of a frog. It seemed to rest its weight on its deformed, splayed front legs. Regardless of how many times I had seen it, it always brought a shudder to my soul, and I soon looked away, following the Road as it swept farther on to where it wound close by the Dark Palace, and then farther on, passing around beyond the mountainous bulk of The Watcher Of The South—the greatest monster in all the visible Night Lands. My spyglass showed it clearly: a living hill of watchfulness, brooding squat and tremendous, hunched over the pale radiance of the Glowing Dome, its mouth gaping open, its eyes staring vacantly ahead.

  Much had been written concerning that odd, vast Watcher, for it had come out of the blackness of the Unknown Lands of the south a million years before and had drawn steadily closer through twenty thousands years, but so slowly no one could perceive its movements in a single year. Yet it did move, and the Monstruwacans had recorded every foot of its progress.

  After it had come quite far on its journey to the Last Redoubt, a Glowing Dome had arisen out of the ground before it, halting its advance, and from that time on, through countless ages, the Watcher had stared over the pale glare of the Dome toward the pyramid.

  Because of the rising of the Dome, many scholars wrote essays suggesting that even as the Forces of Evil were unleashed upon the last age of mankind, so other Powers of Good, incomprehensible to the human mind, arrayed themselves to battle the terrors. But the Glowing Dome was not the only evidence of such Powers, as I will later relate.

  Of the coming of the monstrosities, we knew little, for the evil began before the histories of the Great Pyramid were written, before the sun had even completely faded. We believed the trouble arose in the legendary Days of the Darkening, when ancient science disturbed powers beyond the earthly plane, allowing the monsters and Ab-humans to pass an unseen barrier previously protecting mankind. Grotesque and horrible creatures materialized to assault humanity, while those entities lacking the power to assume physical form grew into Forces capable of influencing and destroying the human spirit. As civilization degenerated into lawlessness, the surviving millions banded together in the twilight of the world to build the Last Redoubt.

  Later, through hundreds of thousands of years, mighty races of dreadful creatures, half man and half beast, appeared. They warred against the pyramid, but were driven back time and again, with much slaughter on both sides. After many such attacks, the people tapped the energy flowing through the earth and erected a circle of power around the redoubt. Then, after sealing the lowest half-mile of the pyramid, they found peace in what was the beginning of an eternity of quiet waiting for the time when the Earth Current would fail.

  Through the centuries, the creatures glutted themselves upon any who dared to venture outside the sanctuary to explore the Night Land. Of those who went, few returned, for eyes peered through the darkness, and Forces of Evil moved upon the face of the earth, keeping vigil with senses superior to those of humankind.

  As the eternal night lengthened across the world, the power of the evil ones grew, and new and greater monsters developed, bred out of space and other dimensions, attracted like infernal sharks by that lonely hill of humanity. Giants arose, fathered by bestial humans and mothered by monsters, and various other creatures appeared, bearing human semblance and cunning, so that some of the lesser brutes possessed machinery and underground chambers for warmth and air.

  I listened to the sorrowful roar rising continuously over the Gray Dunes from the Country Of Wailing, which lay midway between the pyramid and the Watcher Of The South, then I took the migrator toward the southwest side. As I rode the traveling roadway, I watched the panorama of the Night Land, a landscape vast as a nation, through the passing windows.

  Leaving the migrator, I looked from a narrow embrasure far down into the Deep Valley, four miles to the bottom, where boiled the Pit Of The Red Smoke. The mouth of this pit extended one full mile across, and the smoke filled the Deep Valley at times, making it appear as a glowing red circle amid dull, ocher clouds. Since the smoke never rose much above the valley, it left a clear view across to the country beyond. There, along the farther edge of the Valley, the gray, quiet Towers, each nearly a mile high, shimmered wickedly.

  Beyond these, to the southwest, loomed the enormous bulk of the Southwest Watcher, a creature shaped much like a gargoyle with shoulders held high as if in a perpetual shrug. The Eye Beam projected from the ground before it—a single ray of gray light shining on the monster's right eye. Because of the illumination, that eye had been scrutinized through thousands of years. Some believed it looked steadily through the light at the pyramid. Others, thinking the ray the work of the Powers of Good, argued that it blinded the Watcher, preventing it from seeing the redoubt clearly. Whatever the case, as I watched through the spyglass, it seemed the brute stared, unwinking, as if fully aware I spied upon it.

  I have told of the five great Watchers surrounding the redoubt: the Watchers of the Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, Southeast, and South, each keeping silent, immovable guard upon the pyramid. Despite their motionlessness, we knew them as mountains of living vigilance, filled with hideous, steadfast intelligence, ever ready to destroy us should our defenses fail.

  To the northwest of the Southwest Watcher, extending an unknown distance, lay a region called The Place Where The Silent Ones Kill, so named because ten thousand years before a group of adventuring humans left the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk and were immediately destroyed. Only one survived to tell the tale, though he died soon after, his heart frozen. Our scholars could never explain this strange account, but it was written in the Records along with the testimonies of those who examined the body.

  In the very mouth of the western night, far beyond The Place Where The Silent Ones Kill, glistened the Place Of The Ab-humans, where the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk was lost in a dull green, luminous mist. We knew nothing of that region, though it stirred the imaginations of our greatest thinkers. Some believed it to be a place of sanctuary, differing from the Last Redoubt as we of this day suppose heaven to differ from earth. Those who held that view thought
the Road might lead there, if only the Ab-humans did not block the way.

  Finally, my observations came full circle, back to the Red Pit and the Northwest Watcher. Between all the Watchers, the monsters, the flames, and the terrors, countless fire-holes pocked the surface of the Night Land. From where I stood, they appeared as pin-points of light across the dark plain. As a boy I had often tried to count them, but they were too numerous.

  ***

  I have described something of that land, and of the besieging Watchers and terrors that waited for the hour when the failure of the Earth Current would leave us defenseless. I stood, quietly gazing, lost in wonder both at my own dark world, and at the forgotten days of sunlight. Sometimes I glanced upward to the gray, metal mountain rising measureless into the gloom of the everlasting night, or downward to the sheer sweep of the grim, metal walls, more than six full miles to the plain below. All around the base of the pyramid, which was five and a quarter miles each way, ran the great circle of light generated by the Earth Current, bounding the edifice for a mile on every side and having the appearance of a transparent tube. This, we referred to simply as The Circle. None of the monsters could cross it, because it created what we called the Ether Barrier, an invisible wall of safety. The vibrations from the Barrier disrupted the minds of the monsters and lower man-brutes, and created resonances to protect us against the Forces capable of attacking our souls. A Force of Evil could only penetrate the pyramid if an inhabitant dabbled in matters that left him open to its dreadful influence.

  I could never look at The Circle without thinking of my parents, who had helped maintain the pyramid's mechanisms. They and their fellow workers had been required to perform a full survey of The Circle once every six months. A young member of the team, either through foolishness or carelessness, stepped across the Barrier and was attacked by a monster. When my mother and father rushed to his aid, the beast killed all three. I was ten years old at the time, and saw the entire episode through a small spyglass.

  As I stood thinking of my parents and Mirdath, I realized that in both instances death had stolen my loved ones while I helplessly watched. Leaning against the embrasure, overtaken by the losses of two lifetimes, I stared out into the night.

  III

  THE QUIET CALLING

  Upon turning seventeen, every child in the Great Pyramid is required to spend three years and two hundred, twenty-five days traveling from floor to floor through all the cities of the redoubt, spending one twenty-four hour period in each. I greatly enjoyed this journey and met many I might have learned to love, if there had only been time. Most I never saw again, for though the whole population traveled up and down the pyramid with an almost obsessive passion, there were so many millions and so few years. During my sojourn, I continuously watched for someone who might be Mirdath reborn, but as time passed I grew discouraged, for it seemed to me our souls would be drawn to one another if she were in the redoubt.

  As I journeyed, I heard a rumor of another remnant of the human race living in a second refuge located somewhere in the night. As was often the case, though its existence was confirmed by hundreds of ancient works stored in libraries scattered throughout the cities, those scholars who bothered to read the Records remained skeptical, but from the moment I heard the tale of a second refuge, I thought it must be true. Having discovered no sign of Mirdath in my own pyramid, I believed she must be elsewhere, perhaps in that other, hidden sanctuary. I found myself constantly listening for her with my Night Hearing. Though I had not heard her voice for an eternity, it sang sweet and clear in my memory, as if she slept within my soul, whispering to me out of the eons.

  When I came of age at twenty-one, my journey through the cities ended, and like many young men, I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. I considered becoming an instructor in mathematics, but I preferred applying my knowledge rather than teaching it to others, and was therefore overjoyed when, because of my gift of the Night Hearing, Cartesius offered me a post within the Tower of Observation. Such an appointment was the most coveted in all the pyramid, and I arrived at the tower grinning with pride, my yellow copy of Ayleos' Mathematics tucked under my arm.

  As Cartesius's ward, I had been to the Tower of Observation often, but had never lost my sense of awe. It stood at the pinnacle of the redoubt, overlooking the Night Land from a height of nearly eight miles, two miles higher than that of my native city of Ogygia at the One Thousandth Plateau. Although the tower was less than a hundred yards in any direction, its embrasures covered the entire surface of the walls, giving one the impression of floating high above the plain of the Night Land. The Instruments clustered in the center of the chamber, a mass of crystals, pulsing lights, and controls. In many ways, the Tower of Observation was like the bridge of a warship, for the Master Monstruwacan had many forces at his disposal. The Instruments were as old as the pyramid itself, though some had become neglected and fallen into disrepair.

  The most important Instrument of all was the Great Spyglass, an apparatus that took up as much space as the rest of the equipment combined. It bore little resemblance to the spyglasses of the nineteenth century, its main mechanism being a multi-faceted stone, pure as the clearest diamond, filled with shimmering light. Connected to this gem were hundreds of tubes running up to the ceiling and back down again beside the embrasures. The tubes, each of which contained a pair of eye slits, normally rested about seven feet off the floor. Whenever a Monstruwacan needed to look through the Great Spyglass, he simply seized one of the tubes and pulled it down to the proper level.

  A low, pleasant hum constantly filled the tower and the air tingled with a slight electrical tinge. Monstruwacans shuffled back and forth, studying various portions of the Night Land, bending over their Instruments or hovering over one of the many breathing bells scattered across the chamber. Despite the air being pumped throughout the pyramid, the atmosphere in the tower sometimes grew rare, making the breathing bells a necessity, and clouds billowed from them with a soft, continuous hissing. I adored working there, where I could see the Night Land through the clearest eyes in the world.

  ***

  If I had debated the scholars before my awakening, I did so even more afterward. I often sat half a day telling tales that sounded like fables, entrancing their hearts while angering their intellects. But Cartesius listened to anything I had to relate. Sometimes, after speaking for hours in the Tower of Observation, I glanced up and found all the Monstruwacans gathered round, their observations and recordings forgotten, their Master too enthralled to notice their negligence. When Cartesius finally roused himself, he would scold his assistants, scattering them, bewildered and thoughtful, back to their work, but they were always eager for more. The scholars outside the Tower of Observation were the same; though they scoffed and argued, they would have listened to me from the first hour, the start of what we still called the day, to the fifteenth, the beginning of the Hours of Sleep. Occasionally, I found some who believed my tales, and a faction eventually rose up that later became more numerous, but regardless of whether they believed or not, everyone loved to hear, and I could have spent all my time telling stories.

  Because of this, I became famous among the millions of inhabitants, for the people passed my tales down through the cities, even to the farms at the lowest tiers of the Underground Fields lying a hundred miles below the redoubt. There, supervisors and workers alike gathered eagerly around me whenever the Master Monstruwacan and I descended on business concerning the Instruments and the Earth Current.

  ***

  I had worked in the tower less than a year and was at my post at the fifteenth hour, pondering my lost love and my memories of the past. As a young man might, I had fallen so deeply into my meditations I almost fancied hearing my Beautiful One whispering in my ear. As I stood gazing out at the Night Land, communing with my own thoughts, there arose a real whisper, beating on my Night Hearing.

  I staggered as one struck. Through five long years, since my awakening in the emb
rasure at sixteen, I had listened. Now, out of the everlasting darkness, through all the eternal years of my lost life, the call came. I knew it instantly, but because of my rigorous training, did not reply using my name, but sent the Master Word through the night, projecting my thoughts in the manner taught to every inhabitant of the pyramid. If my caller were human, she would be able to hear and respond, but if this were a false message intended to deceive my soul, sent by cunning monsters, Evil Forces—or as was often suspected—by the House of Silence, the creatures would be unable to repeat the Master Word. I do not know why this was so, except that we considered the Master Word holy, possessed of a power proven through all the everlasting ages. Even now, in my journal, I will not dare to reveal the sacred Word.

  As I stood trembling, trying to control those emotions that destroy mental reception, the throb of the Master Word swirled around and around my spiritual essence, beating steadily in the night. Though I had no evidence that this might be my lost love, I replied with all my will, Mirdath! Mirdath!

  At that moment, the Master Monstruwacan approached me. "Andros, the Instruments have detected the faint pulsing of the Master Word. Did you—" Seeing the intensity of my expression, he fell silent.

  I listened with my spirit a long while before returning his gaze.

  "What is it?" he demanded.

  "A voice from the darkness."

  "Do you still hear it?"

  "No. Only a sense of faint, happy laughter."

  ***

  According to the law of the Pyramid no one can enter the Night Land before the age of twenty-two, when—if a person wishes to make the journey—he receives three lectures upon the methods of survival, the use of weapons, and the dangers, including a strict account of the mutilations and atrocities done to other adventurers. If the candidate is judged sane and still wants to go, the people consider it an honor for him to add to the knowledge of the Great Pyramid by making the journey. A small capsule containing a fast-acting poison is inserted beneath the skin of the traveler's inside left forearm, so that, should he become entrapped by a Force of Evil, he can save his spirit from destruction by biting the capsule and taking his own life.