The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith

by Clark Ashton Smith

  Submissively, while the Envoy was speaking, Woadley had begun to remove his garments. Hastily and with utter negligence, he flung the dark, conservative coat and trousers of tweed across an arm-chair, tossed his shirt, tie, socks and under-garments on the pile, and left his shoes lying where he had removed them. Trifling as it may have seemed, this negligence was a potent proof of the change he had undergone; for such disorder would have been unthinkable to the neat and somewhat fussy bibliophile.

  Presently he stood naked from heel to head before Avalzant, the amulet glowing darkly in the palm of his right hand. Only with the utmost dimness was he able to prevision the ordeal before him; but he trembled with its imminence, as a man might tremble on the shore of uncrossed Acheron.

  “Now,” said Avalzant, “it is needful that I should wound thee deeply on the bosom with my spear. Art fearful of this wounding? If so, it were well to re-clothe thyself and remain amid these volumes of thine, and to let the talisman pass into hardier hands.”

  “Proceed.” There was no quaver in Woadley’s voice, though sudden-reaching talons of terror clawed at his brain and raked his spinal column like an icy harrow.

  Avalzant uplifted the strange, blue-gleaming weapon he bore, till the stream of sparks that poured ceaselessly from its point was directed upon Woadley’s bare bosom. The neophyte was aware of an electric prickling that wandered over his chest as Avalzant drew the weapon in a slow arc from side to side. Then the spear was retracted and was poised aloft with a sinuous, coiling movement of the arm-like member that held it. Death seemed to dart like a levin-bolt upon Woadley; but the apparent lethal driving-power behind the thrust was in all likelihood merely one more test of his courage and resolution. He did not flinch nor even close his eyes. The terrible, blazing point entered his flesh above the right lung, piercing and slashing deeply, but not deeply enough to inflict a dangerous wound. Then, while Woadley tottered and turned faint with the agony as of throbbing fires that filled his whole being, the weapon was swiftly withdrawn.

  Dimly, through the millionfold racking of his torment, he heard the solemn voice of Avalzant. “Even now, it is not too late, if thy heart misgive thee; for the wound will heal in time and leave thee none the worse. But the next thing needful is irrevocable and not to be undone. Holding the amulet firmly with thy fingers, thou must press the graven mouth of the monster into thy wound while it bleeds; and having begun this part of the process, thou hast said farewell to Earth and hast forsworn the sun thereof and the light of the sister planets, and hast pledged thyself wholly to Pnidleethon, to Yamil Zacra—and Yuzh. Bethink thee well, whether or not thy resolution holds.”

  Woadley’s agony began to diminish a little. A great wonder filled him, and beneath the wonder there was something of half-surmised horror at the strange injunction of the Envoy. But he obeyed the injunction, forcing the sickle beak and loathsome wattled mouth of the double-sided profile into the slash inflicted by Avalzant, from which blood was welling profusely on his bosom.

  Now began the strangest part of his ordeal; for, having inserted the thin edge of the carving in the cut, he was immediately conscious of a gentle suction, as if the profile-mouth were somehow alive and had started to suck his blood. Then, looking down at the amulet, he saw to his amazement that it seemed to have thickened slightly, that the coin-flat surface was swelling and rounding into an unmistakable convexity. At the same time, his pain had altogether ceased, and the blood no longer flowed from his wound; but was evidently being absorbed through what he now knew to be the vampirism of the mineral monstrosity.

  Now the black and shimmering horror had swollen like a glutted bat, filling his whole hand as he still held it firmly. But he felt no alarm, no weakness or revulsion whatever, only a vast surge of infernal life and power, as if the amulet, in some exchange that turned to demoniacal possession, were returning a thousandfold the draught it had made upon him. Even as the thing grew and greatened on his breast, so he in turn seemed to wax gigantic, and his blood roared like the flamy torrents of Phlegethon plunging from deep to deep. The walls of the library had fallen unheeded about him, and he and Avalzant were two colossi who stood alone in the night; and upon his bosom the vampire stone was still suckled, enormous as behemoth.

  It seemed that he beheld the shrunken world beneath him, the rondure of its horizons curving far down in darkness against the abyss of stars, with a livid fringe of light where the sun hovered behind the eastern hemisphere. Higher and vaster still he towered, and his whole being seemed to melt with unsufferable heat, and he heard in himself a roar and tumult as of some peopled inferno, pouring upward with all its damned to overflow the fixed heavens. Then he was riven apart in a thousand selves, whose pale and ghastly faces streamed about him in the momentary flashing of strange suns. The sorcerers of Ur and Egypt, of Antillia and Moaria; necromancers of Mhu Thulan and shamans of Tartary; witch and enchantress of Averoigne, Hecatean hag, and sybil from doomed Poseidonis; alchemist and seer; the priests of evil fetiches from Niger; the adepts of Ahriman, of Eblis, of Taranis, of Set, of Lucifer—all these, resurgent from a thousand tombs in demonomaniacal triumph, were riding the night to some cosmic Sabbat. Among them, like a lost soul, was the being who had called himself Oliver Woadley. And upon the bosom of each separate self, as well as upon that of Woadley, a talismanic monster was suckled throughout the black, appalling flight on deeps forbidden save to the stars in their lawful orbits.

  DAWN OF DISCORD

  ime was a dimension of space: time was a closed curve, without beginning or end, and space was curved, endless, yet finite. Or so John King had told himself, during those years of study. But now, with war threatening to overwhelm the world, King was through with theory. He was going back into time—or space—or both, if his equations did not lie. And he was going to stop war at its origin.

  He took off his acid-stained smock and put on a khaki shirt, breeches, laced boots. King was incongruous among the switchboards and oscillation tubes, the retorts and electric furnaces of the laboratory in the old house on top of Russian Hill; he looked like a man ready to invade the jungle, and he was tall and lean and fit enough for such a task.

  One look at the broad bay, at the housetops far below him, at the bridges that spanned the water; one pang of regret as he paused at the door of adventure. His fanatic devotion to science had kept him a stranger to women, and though he resolutely kept them from his thoughts, he wished that he could be sure of returning. There was a shapely blonde girl who must work in an office nearby; he had tried not to notice her on his way to the restaurant where he ate during the afternoon breathing spell.

  Then he turned toward the time-traveling machine which was to take back an age when there was no such thing as war. Arrived there, King would cut war off at its root.

  The machine had thick metal walls, and was shaped like a bathysphere; its glass ports were built to resist enormous pressure, and it was powered by atomic energy. This would be nothing like the flight of an airplane or rocket ship; there would be no travel in the ordinary sense of the word, for King was putting himself into a magnetic field which would reverse time. This would not be like any three-dimensional journey that any man had ever made.

  The self-locking door closed behind him. King wanted to look back once more at the present, but he feared that he would falter; so he stepped to the control levers and the dials that filled all the bulkheads. Two people could have found room beside him, provided they were slender.

  He closed the switch; a surge of power shook the machine, and the daylight that came in through the ports became green, then a grey blur. Every atom of his body threatened to leap into space on its own account. King felt knifing pains, a horrible giddiness, and a fear beyond reckoning. Suppose he could not find his way back? Suppose he became an exile from time and space?

  When his consciousness ceased whirling, he glanced at the dials that recorded the coordinate of the time-space equation. He had gone back, as nearly as he could calculate from old traditions,
to the Golden Age, the fabled era before man learned of hate and iron.

  War, King had reasoned, was an insane habit that some bird-brained primitive had devised as a substitute for judgment or intelligence; and thus, a man of the twentieth century, without any illusions as to the glory of strife, might direct the first warrior chief into a happier channel. If these people of the Golden Age, drunk by the novelty of Iron and Power, could see what evolution had finally made of war, they might sober up. War had once been an adventure, but it had long since lost whatever redeeming quality it had possessed.

  Through the ports of the time machine, King looked at the green-gold jungles of an infant world. Tall tree ferns trembled in the breeze. The jade waters of a lake lapped a shore fringed with gigantic reeds and grasses; bright insects flashed gold and crimson.

  King opened the hatch and stepped to the springy turf. Ages were not as sharply divided as political boundaries, and he would have to reconnoiter to see if he had actually reached the Golden Age.

  Then he saw the girl. At the first stirring of the foliage, he had reached for his Colt, not knowing what prehistoric terrors might come out of the jungle; but now his hand dropped. She had the rounded hips and tapered lines of a wood nymph; she moved effortlessly, and the breeze pulled at the translucent tunic that modeled her bosom and the slim curve of her waist. King wondered for a moment if this exquisite creature were just another one of those taunting fancies that had at times crowded equations and integrals from his weary brain.

  The girl’s blue skirt reached a little below her knees; a costume that reminded him somewhat of the classical drapes worn by women pictured on fragments of Greek pottery. The warm light shaped a golden halo about her head; her unbound hair trailed in copper-colored luxury to her hips.

  She started, wide-eyed, when she saw King. Impulsively, he came toward her, and said,

  “Don’t be afraid, I’m a stranger and maybe you could tell me where I am.”

  Her grey-green eyes showed her perplexity, but she smiled, recognizing the friendliness of his voice. King could not understand a word of her answer, but that made little difference; her voice warmed him, and made him forget the wonder of having traveled all those centuries into time and space. Whatever she had said, she meant that he was welcome. Then, coming within arm’s length, he noted that the skirt was torn, and that scratches crisscrossed her calves and thighs. Her tunic was tattered, and her sides were bruised and scarred. He caught her arm and gestured toward the time machine, saying, “You’d better meet the first aid kit.”

  He could not understand her answer, but there was meaning in the way she fell in step with him, her hip brushing against him, her arm closing against her side and imprisoning the hand he had laid on her elbow. King’s blood sang as if it had been blended with the sap of the young earth.

  A rosy flush spread over the girl’s cheeks when she looked up and saw King’s ardent glance. She held up her free hand, and showed him the small band of yellow metal about her wrist. On this curious bracelet were two golden cases, neither of them much larger than a man’s watch; a small reel of fine cable connected them. With her other hand she took off one of the cases and clipped it to King’s wrist.

  She spoke again, and King could now understand her speech; rather, read her thoughts, in spite of the foreign words.

  “I am Ania, a slave, and I ran away from my master, Jurth. He beats me. As you can see—” She half turned, and King saw that her back was seamed with red welts. “He used to be so kind and friendly, like the rest of us. But who are you? I’ve never seen such strange clothes though they’re really becoming.”

  “I’ll give you something to put on those scratches, and while you’re doctoring yourself, I’ll tell you, though I’m afraid I can’t make it very clear. I’ve come back from what is the future to you; back thirty-two thousand, seven hundred thirteen years—” He lost count of his dial reading, and had to start all over again, for Ania had snuggled up close to him in the cramped cabin of the time cruiser. He finished, “Six months and twenty-two days.”

  He showed her how to use an iodine swab.

  “Oh—that stings! But I can’t understand, coming back from the future. It sounds impossible. And why did you do it?”

  “We have a disease in our time. A disease called war. Fighting that would be bad enough even if it settled anything, which it never does.” He bitterly went on, “Two of my brothers were killed, and a third one is a horrible cripple. I was too young to go. I was sorry then, but when I saw the one who returned, I wished he too had died. So I have come back through time to find the man who started war.”

  “War?” Ania frowned. “I can say it, but I don’t understand.”

  He was in the Golden Age; her answer assured him of that. His theory was justified. More than that, her master, Jurth, was strangely and unaccountably becoming vicious.

  Jurth, the father of strife? Then this was the dawn of discord!

  King caught Ania in his arms. “Tell me about Jurth. I won’t let him hurt you.”

  Ania anxiously asked, “You won’t go back into the future without taking me with you?”

  “Tell me about Jurth,” he evaded, and turned toward the shade of the swaying tree ferns.

  There he seated himself on the springy turf, and drew in an exhilarating breath. The air of this young world gave him vitality that no human being had had for centuries. He drew Ania closer and kissed her upturned lips; she clung to him, sighed rapturously, and the warmth of her mouth and the pressure of her encircling arms troubled King until there was no room left in his whirling brain for anything but this dawn woman and her possessive beauty.

  When King finally got the conversation back to Jurth, Ania explained, “He has studied the forces of nature and bent them to his own use. This thing that makes me understand you—or any other foreigner I might meet—a sort of thought-reading thing, I guess you’d call it, is one of the things Jurth made. But some of his inventions are evil. He makes weapons to kill, to paralyze. Every wise man has servants, lots of them, but Jurth sends out fighting men to take prisoners. That’s why he invented this thought-disc, so the strangers could understand his orders.”

  Pride; greed; restless ambition—this Jurth was moved by the very things that made war. Find Jurth, and give peace to all the centuries to come. For all his horror of killing and wounding, King knew that he had to finish Jurth.

  In the meanwhile, the sun was setting, and the time machine, cramped though it was, would be the safest shelter. King rose, gave Ania his hand. “Tomorrow—”

  Ania’s cry of dismay cut him short. There was a crashing in the brush, and a confusion of deep voices. “That’s Jurth!” she cried. “Hurry—before….”

  Three men bounded from the edge of the small clearing, and cut off King’s retreat to the time machine. The foremost was as tall as King, but heavier of limb and deeper of chest; a black beard jutted aggressively from his craggy face. In one big hand he had a nine-thonged whip. The muscles of his legs and arms were like hawsers. He halted, cracked his scourge, and gestured to Ania. In his other hand he had a rod of bluish metal, tipped with a glass-like bulb; King, taking in the newcomers at a glance, assumed that this was a scepter or other emblem of rank.

  Like their chief, Jurth’s two retainers wore kilts and short-sleeved jackets, but their weapons were three-pronged spears. King jerked clear of Ania’s embrace. “Let go! You run to the machine while I stop these fellows!”

  He snapped the telepathic coil and cord from his wrist, and thrust the girl from him. He drew the heavy pistol. The two spearmen were easy targets. But something stayed his hand, and he was glad, for an envoy of peace should certainly not shoot men armed with tridents; so he yelled a warning, and gestured, hoping that they would know enough to stop.

  Ania, instead of dashing on, had stopped, unwilling to leave King. One of the spearmen swerved and bounded toward her. King fired, purposely throwing the shot against a rock that jutted up out of the turf, right in fr
ont of the big fellow’s path. Chips of rock peppered his legs. “Halt, or I’ll hit you!” King warned.

  The man stopped. Then Jurth raised the rod, and King learned that it was more than a scepter. A tongue of light the length of a man’s hand flamed from the glass bulb. King’s right arm went numb, and his pistol dropped from his grasp. Amazement froze him; he did not know which way to go, or what to do.

  Jurth was now upon him, the scourge hissing in a backward arc. King ducked. While his right arm was still useless, his left was unharmed. He came up, bringing one from the turf, and the blow snapped Jurth’s head back. But he had an iron jaw, and instead of dropping in his tracks, Jurth bellowed and slashed home again with the short-lashed scourge.

  Apparently he forgot his peculiar ray projector, or else the whip suited his mood. He drove King back with cutting lashes; one peeled his ribs, a second crippled his arm to the shoulder.

  King took a third blow. He recoiled, raised his arm as if to shield his face, yelled as if in terror. Jurth laughed and wound up for the cut to lay him out. This was what King had expected. He lunged, letting his legs propel him, and with shoulder and one sound arm he caught Jurth below the knees, just as the whip hissed through empty space.

  Jurth thumped to the turf. King followed through, booting his oppressor in the pit of the stomach. He had pretty well forgotten his pacific mission. He cut loose and booted his limp opponent another one, and wondered when he had ever had such a pleasant afternoon.

  King was about to get up so he could trample Jurth into the ground when a trident prodded his back. The cold metal brought him to his senses. In his fury he had forgotten the spearmen and Ania. Now, startled and menaced, he realized what he had been trying to do, and he was ashamed. Not but that Jurth deserved a mauling for whipping a girl like Ania; rather, King felt cheap for that ecstasy of rage. Something was undermining his character; he had given up ten years of his life to confer the boon of peace on mankind, and now, a slugging match made him drunk with fighting spirit.