The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith
Page 23
On which to stretch their scalded stumps?
Natanasna:
Indeed
I know your laws, and also know that you
Have a law forbidding murder.
Smaragad:
What do you mean?
Natanasna:
I mean but this, that you the king have filled
More tombs than I the outlawed necromancer
Have ever emptied, and detest not idly
The raising of dead men. Would you have me summon
For witness here against you the grey shade
Of Famostan your father, in his bath
Slain by the toothed envenomed fish from Taur
Brought privily and installed by you? Or rather
Would you behold your brother Aladad,
Whose huntsmen left him with a splintered spear
At your instruction, to confront the fen-cat
That he had merely pricked? Yet these would be
Only the heralds of that long dark file
Which you have hurried into death.
Smaragad (half-rising from his seat):
By all
The sooted hells, you dare such insolence?
Though you be man or devil, or be both,
I’ll flay you, and leave your hide to hang in strips
Like a kilt about you, and will have your guts
Drawn out and wound on a windlass.
Natanasna:
These be words
Like froth upon a shallow pool. No finger
Of man may touch me. I can wave this staff
And ring myself with circles of tall fires
Spawned by the ambient space arcane. You fear me,
And you have reason. I know all the secrets
Of noisome deed and thought that make your soul
A cavern where close-knotted serpents nest.
Tell me, was there not yestereve a youth
Named Galeor, who played the lute and sang,
Making sweet music for an evil court?
Why have you slain him? Was it not through your fear
Of cuckoldom, thinking he pleased too much
The young Somelis? But this thing is known
To me, and I know moreover the dim grave
Where Galeor waits the worm.
Smaragad (standing erect, his features madly contorted):
Begone! begone!
Out of my presence! Out of Faraad!
And here’s a word to speed you: when you entered
This hall, my sheriffs went to find your house
And seize Kalguth, your negro neophyte
For whom ’tis said you have the curious fondness
That I might keep for a comely ebon wench.
Ponder this well: Kalguth must lie by now
Embowelled in our dankest dungeon-crypt.
He will rejoin you if tomorrow’s sun
Meet you outside the city. If you linger,
I’ll give him to my sinewy torturers.
Natanasna:
King Smaragad, if young Kalguth be harmed,
Hell will arise and sweep your palace clean
With fiery besoms and with flails of flame. (Exit Natanasna.)
(Curtain)
SCENE III
The necropolis of Faraad. Dying and half-decayed cypresses droop over creviced headstones and ruinous mausoleums. A gibbous moon shines through wispy clouds. Enter Natanasna, humming:
A toothless vampire tugs and mumbles
Some ancient trot’s whitleather hide,
But he’ll fly soon to the abattoir
And the pooling blood where the stuck pig died.
(Kalguth emerges from behind the half-unhinged door of a tomb close at hand. He carries a dark bag, which he lays on the ground at Natanasna’s feet.)
Kalguth: Greetings, O Master.
Natanasna:
It was well I sent you
To wait me here among the tacit dead—
Lugging you from your slumber at morning dusk
While none but blind-drunk bowsers were abroad.
As I prevised, the king took advantage
Of my commanded presence in his halls,
And sent his hounds to sniff for you. He’ll not
Venture to harry me, who have climbed too high
In magedom’s hierarchy, but would fang
His baffled spleen on one not fully armed
And bucklered with arts magical. We must
Depart from Yoros promptly, leaving it
To all its many devils, amid which
This king is not the least. (He pauses, looking about him at the tombs and graves.) It is a land
Where murder has made much work for necromancy,
And there’s a task to do before we go
That we be not forgotten…. I perceive,
My good Kalguth, that you have found the spot
Which my strix-eyed familiar did describe:
Those yonder are the yellowing cypresses
That death has pollarded, and this the tomb
Of the lord Thamamar, which sheltered you
Daylong from eyes still mortal…. See, where it bears
The lichen-canceled legend of his titles
And the name itself, half-blotted out. (He paces about, peering closely at the ground, and holding his staff extended horizontally. Over a certain spot the staff seems to twist violently in his hand, like a dowser’s wand, until it points downward with the tip almost touching the earth.)
This is
The grave that covers Galeor. The turf
Was lately broken here, and spaded back
With the grass turned upward. (He faces in the direction of Faraad, whose towers loom indistinctly beyond the necropolis. Raising both arms, he intertwines his fingers with the thumbs pointing skyward in the Sign of the Horns.)
By this potent Sign,
O jealous king who dreaded cuckoldom,
Murder shall not avert from your proud head
The horns of that opprobrium: for I know
A spell whereby the dead will cuckold you. (Turning to Kalguth)
Now to our ceremonies. While you set
The mantic censers forth, I’ll make the circles. (Taking a short sword, the magic arthame, from under his cloak, he traces a large circle in the turf, and a smaller one within it, trenching them both deeply and broadly. Kalguth opens the dark bag and brings out four small perforated censers whose handles are wrought in the form of the double triangle, Sign of the Macrocosm. He places them between the circles, each censer facing one of the four quarters, and lights them. The necromancers then take their positions within the inner circle. Natanasna gives the arthame to Kalguth, and retains his magic staff, which he holds aloft. Both face toward the grave of Galeor.)
Natanasna (chanting):
Mumbavut, maspratha butu,
Varvas runu, vha rancutu.*
Incubus, my cousin, come,
Drawn from out the night you haunt,
From the hollow mist and murk
Where discarnate larvae lurk,
By the word of masterdom.
Hell will keep its covenant,
You shall have the long-lost thing
That you howl and hunger for.
Borne on sable, sightless wing,
Leave the void that you abhor,
Enter in this new-made grave,
You that would a body have:
Clothed with the dead man’s flesh,
Rising through the riven earth
In a jubilant rebirth,
Wend your ancient ways afresh,
By the mantra laid on you
Do the deed I bid you do.
Vora votha Thasaidona
Sorgha nagrakronithona.**
(After a pause)
Vachat pantari vora nagraban***
Kalguth:
Za, mozadrim: vachama vongh razan.****
(The turf heaves and divides, and the incubus-driven Lich of Galeor ris
es from the grave. The grime of interment is on its face, hands, and clothing.
It shambles forward and presses close to the outer circle, in a menacing attitude. Natanasna raises the staff, and Kalguth the arthame, used to control rebellious spirits. The Lich shrinks back.)
The Lich (in a thick, unhuman voice):
You have summoned me,
And I must minister
To your desire.
Natanasna:
Heed closely these instructions:
By alleys palled and posterns long disused,
Well-hidden from the moon and from men’s eyes,
You shall find ingress to the palace. There,
Through stairways only known to mummied kings
And halls forgotten save by ghosts, you must
Seek out the chamber of the queen Somelis,
And woo her lover-wise till that be done
Which incubi and lovers burn to do.
The Lich:
You have commanded, and I must obey.
(Exit the Lich. When it has gone from sight, Natanasna steps from the circles, and Kalguth extinguishes the censers and repacks them in the bag.)
Kalguth:
Where go we now?
Natanasna:
Whither the first road leads
Beyond the boundary of Yoros. We’ll
Not wait the sprouting of the crop we’ve sowed
But leave it to lesson him, who would have crimped
My well-loved minion and my acolyte
For the toothed beds of his dark torture-chambers.
(Exeunt Natanasna and Kalguth, singing:)
The fresh fat traveler whom the ghouls
Waylaid in the lonesome woodland gloom,
He got away, and they’ll go now
For gamy meat in a mouldy tomb.
(Curtain)
* Mumbavut, lewd and evil spirit,
Whereesoever thou roamest, hear me.
** By (or through) Thasaidon's power
Arise from the death-time-dominion.
*** The spell (or mantra) is finished by the necromancer.
**** Yes, master: the vongh (corpse animated by a demon) will do the rest. (These words are from Umlengha, an ancient language of Zothique, used by scholars and wizards.)
SCENE IV
The queen’s bed-chamber. Somelis half-sits, half-reclines on a cushioned couch. Enter Baltea, bearing a steaming cup.
Baltea:
With wine that stores the warmth of suns departed,
And fable-breathing spices brought from isles
Far as the morn, I have made this hippocras
Slow-mulled and powerful. Please to drink it now
That you may sleep.
Somelis (waving the cup away):
Ah, would that I might drink
The self-same draft that Galeor drank, and leave
This palace where my feet forever pace
From shades of evil to a baleful sun.
Too slow, too slow the poison that consumes me—
Compounded of a love for him that’s dead
And loathing for the king.
Baltea:
I’ll play for you
And sing, though not as gallant Galeor sang.
(She takes up a dulcimer, and sings):
Lone upon the roseate gloom
Shone the golden star anew,
Calling like a distant bell,
Falling, dimming into death.
Came my lover with the night,
Flame and darkness in his eyes—
Drawn by love from out the grave—
Gone through all the loveless day—
(She pauses, for steps are heard approaching along the hall.)
Somelis:
Whose footsteps come? I fear it is the king.
(The door is flung open violently, and the fiend-animated Lich of Galeor enters.)
Baltea:
What thing is this, begot by hell on death?
Oh! How it leers and slobbers! It doth look
Like Galeor, and yet it cannot be.
(The Lich sidles forward, grinning, mewing and gibbering.)
Somelis:
If you be Galeor, speak and answer me
Who was your friend, wishing you only well
In a bitter world unfriendly to us both.
(Baltea darts past the apparition, which does not seem to have perceived her presence, and runs from the room.)
But if you be some fiend in Galeor’s form,
I now adjure you by the holy name
Of the goddess Ililot to go at once.
(The features, limbs, and body of the Lich are convulsed as if by some dreadful struggle with an unseen antagonist. Then, by degrees, the convulsions slacken, the lurid flame dies down in the dead man’s eyes, and his face assumes a look of gentle and piteous bewilderment.)
Galeor:
How came I here? Meseems that I was dead
And men had heaped the hard dry earth on me.
Somelis:
There is much mystery here, and little time
In which to moot the wherefores. But I see
That you are Galeor and none other now,
The dear sweet Galeor that I thought had died
With all the love between us unavowed,
And this contents me.
Galeor:
I must still be dead,
Though I behold and hear and answer you,
And love leaps up to course along my veins
Where death had set his sullen winter.
Somelis:
What
Can you recall?
Galeor:
Little but night-black silence
That seemed too vast for Time, wherein I was
Both bounded and diffused; and then a voice
Most arrogant and magisterial, bidding
Me, or another in my place, to do
A deed that I cannot remember now.
These things were doubtful; but I feel as one
Who in deep darkness struggled with a fiend
And cast him forth because another voice
Had bade the fiend begone.
Somelis:
Truly, I think
There is both magic here and necromancy,
Though he that called you up and sent you forth
Did so with ill intent. It matters not,
For I am glad to have you, whether dead
Or living as men reckon bootless things.
’Tis a small problem now: Baltea has gone
For Smaragad, and he’ll be here full soon,
Mammering for twofold murder. (She goes to the door, closes it, and draws the ponderous metal bars in their massive sockets. Then, with a broidered kerchief and water from a pitcher, she washes the grave-mould from Galeor’s face and hands, and tidies his garments. They embrace. He kisses her, and caresses her cheeks and hair.)
Ah, your touch
Is tenderer than I have known before….
And yet, alas, your lips, your hands….
Poor Galeor, the grave has left you cold:
I’ll warm you in my bed and in my arms
For those short moments ere the falling sword
Shatter the fragile bolts of mystery
And open what’s beyond.
(Heavy footsteps approach in the hall outside and there is a babbling of loud, confused voices, followed by a metallic clang like that of a sword-hilt hammering on the door.)
(Curtain)
SCENE V
The king’s pavilion in the palace-gardens. Smaragad sits at the head of a long table littered with goblets, wine-jars and liquor-flasks, some empty or overturned, others still half-full. Sargo and Boranga are seated on a bench near the table’s foot. A dozen fellow-revelers, laid low by their potations, lie sprawled about the floor or on benches and couches. Sargo and Boranga are singing:
A ghoul there was in the days of old,
And he drank the wine-dark blood
Fresh from the deep throat-veins of the dead.
But we instead, but we instead,
Will drink from goblets of beryl and gold
A blood-dark wine that was made by the dead
In the days of old.
(A silence ensues, while the singers wet their husky throats. Smaragad fills and empties his flagon, then fills it again.)
Boranga (in a lowered voice):
Something has ired or vexed
The king: he drinks
Like one stung by the dipsas, whose dread bite
Induces lethal thirst.
Sargo:
He’s laid the most
Of our tun-gutted guzzlers ’neath the board,
And I’m not long above it…. This forenoon
He held much parley with the necromancer
Whose stygian torts outreek the ripened charnel.
Mayhap it has left him thirsty. ’Twas enough
For me when Natanasna passed to windward.
I’m told the king called for incensories
To fume the audience-hall, and fan-bearers
To waft the nard-born vapors round and round
And ventilate with moa-plumes his presence
When the foul mage was gone.
Boranga:
They say that Natanasna
And his asphalt-colored ingle have both vanished,
Though none knows whither. Faraad will lose
One bone for gossip’s gnawing. I would not give you
A fig-bird’s tooth or an aspic’s tail-end feather
For all your conjurers. Let’s bawl a catch. (They sing:)
—There’s a thief in the house, there’s a thief in the house,
My master, what shall we do?
The fuzzled bowser, he called for Towser,
But Towser was barking the moon.
(Enter Baltea, breathless and disheveled.)
Baltea:
Your Majesty, there’s madness loose from hell.
Smaragad:
What’s wrong? Has someone raped you without leave?
Baltea:
No, ’tis about the queen, from whose bed-chamber