Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  Watching the serpents slide among the green leaves, I sighed with regret. It would be a hardship to give up salt on our journey. In any case, collecting and drying the poison would take hours. I had what remained of the jewels, the white spiders, the u’mal roots, the amber, and the scroll of the Old Ones for trade—although it was my intention to retain the scroll for my own study, at least until I exhausted its wisdom.

  “Let us cross the bridge and see what the other tree offers,” I told her.

  “What does Schacabao write of the other tree?”

  “Nothing at all.” Memory stirred in my head. “He did write something about a wisdom seat, but what he meant was not clear to me.”

  We climbed the slope of the stone bridge, which was unnaturally wide, as though shaped for feet larger than human.

  “Surely this is Schacabao’s wisdom seat,” Martala said, stopping in the middle of the bridge.

  A large throne occupied the right side of the bridge, set into a recess in the parapet so that it did not project on to the walkway. We had not noticed it before since the ornately carved back of the seat concealed it from the western approach, and appeared nothing more than an architectural feature of the bridge. Nor was it prominent when viewed from the side, since the sun declining in the western sky and striking its back cast a shadow over it. The low arms were shaped like the claws of a hawk. Each claw grasped a stone ball. The back was carved into four feathered wings, two raised upward toward heaven, and two drooping to the earth. At their center rested an inhuman visage more than a cubit broad, with ribs or streamers extending from its opened mouth. Or they may have been intended to represent serpents. The stonework was greatly weathered by time.

  In the forehead of the face, a single ruby occupied a golden frame shaped to resemble an eye. Both the gold of the frame and the polished surface of the jewel had resisted the action of sun and wind, and appeared as fresh as if they had been placed in the throne the day before. The stone looked almost black in the shadow of the throne’s wings. I touched it with my fingers, wondering if so large a jewel could be real. It felt cool. The round ruby filled a circle in the center of the oval gold setting that was the size of a hen’s egg. It was of greater monetary value than all the gems I carried in my wallet. The decision to investigate this enclosure had proved more rewarding than expected, even without the dried crystals of the viper venom.

  Martala sat upon the throne and laid her hands on its sinister arms. She resembled an infant in the chair of its father.

  “Not a very comfortable seat. It needs a cushion.”

  “It was not made for your buttocks, or those of any human being, to judge by the shape of it.”

  I continued across the bridge to the south side of the brook. She ran up behind me.

  “Aren’t you going to sit in it, Alhazred?”

  “Perhaps later. I want to explore the rest of this place before we lose the sun.”

  It surprised me that the day had grown so late while we wandered along the convoluted paths under the trees. It had seemed that we had walked but a short time, yet the entire afternoon had passed away.

  The white tree was as it appeared from the other side of the brook, no more than a bleached framework of naked limbs. There was no sign of decay. Some property of the wood preserved it, so that even small twigs that littered the ground beneath it did not rot. I picked up a stub of a branch. It felt unnaturally heavy and hard, more like ivory than wood. It seemed prudent to select half a dozen short sections of branches and put them into my wallet. The wood might possess properties of value, or might command a good price if we ever again walked among civilized men. Observing my activity, the girl did the same.

  We made our way down to the place where the stream bubbled beneath the wall on the eastern side of the enclosure. The water looked black, with no gap between the base of the wall and its swirling surface. The stream backed up into a deep pool in which a small whirlpool turned. It did not appear to be a promising exit, unless we wished to emerge from the wall as corpses. I resolved to explore the exterior of the enclosure the next day, to see what lay on the other side of the eastern wall. The four tributaries of the spring left the valley, so there must be some passage through those looming hills, presently lit red by the setting sun as though splashed with blood.

  I made our camp for the night in the middle of the bridge, on the consideration that if danger threatened, we would have a route of escape. The brook was too wide to leap across. Any enemy approaching from one side would need to use the bridge to reach the opposite side. By that time, we could flee safely back into the trees of the forest. Such was my thinking, although if asked what danger I imagined might appear, I could offer no answer. The sense of unease felt at our entry into the meadow had not lessened with time. It weighed upon the mind like a cloak of shadow with a pressure that was almost palpable.

  We ate with little conversation. I pissed over the low stone parapet on the eastern side of the bridge into the gurgling water and unrolled my rug to sleep. In defiance of our usual custom, we did not remove our boots, but left them on along with our tunics beneath our cloaks, and placed our wallets and weapons where they could be grasped in the darkness. The twilight air barely moved, yet we remained untroubled by biting insects. I realized that we had seen no living things in the meadow other than the serpents, although there were undoubtedly fish in the brook. Perhaps the same oppression that weighed on my mind discouraged the presence of other creatures. I was grateful not to dream.

  A glow filled the eastern sky when I woke. The girl lay on her rug, breathing easily with her arm across her face, her spine twisted, one leg bent double to her hip. How she could sleep in such an awkward posture was a source of puzzlement, but she often lay in even more ungainly positions. Her body appeared jointless in slumber. I shrugged to myself. The mysteries of this world were infinite, and there were infinite worlds to explore.

  Washing my mouth with water from my water skin, I spat over the side of the bridge, then drank deep. The skin felt half empty. It would do no harm to fill it, I reflected to myself, and left the bridge for a place where the grassy bank dipped low near the surface of the stream. There I splashed icy droplets over my face, and filled my vessel.

  I expected that the noise would awaken the girl, but to my surprise she still slept when I returned. Perhaps she had lain awake the previous night, and was recovering her lost slumber. The rising sun illuminated the edges of the line of hills that projected above the black wall along the eastern end of the valley. The two tallest peaks stood up like raised arms, and I saw that the sun would ascend between them. I opened my pack and made a light breakfast of salted meat and dried figs. The combination of flavors went surprisingly well together, to a man with an appetite. Still the girl slept. I found no reason to disturb her.

  The edge of the solar disk crept above the hollow between the eastern peaks, orange enough to gaze at without strain on the eyes. Its rays struck the ruby and sent beautiful reflections of red across the walkway and parapet of the bridge. The effect was beyond the capacity of any artist to imitate with his brush, yet it had repeated itself every day for countless years, unobserved in this place of mystery. Ruminating in this way, with the taste of breakfast still in my mouth, I sat upon the seat to watch the sunrise.

  The walls of my mind fled away into limitless space in all directions, and I felt myself falling through an infinite void. I was no longer in my body, but formless and without a center. Blinding white obscured my vision, a low roar that was like the rumble of a waterfall sounded in my ears from every side. I experienced a moment of utter terror similar to that of a man who steps forward in darkness with confidence, only to discover that his foot descends on empty air. The urge to scream rose within me but I heard no sound above the roar.

  With desperation, seeking some firm image to cling to, I focused my thoughts on the bridge. At once I saw it as
though floating in the air above it. Every particle of its stones shone with an inner illumination. I saw myself sitting in the chair, an entranced expression on my ravaged face—for I had not renewed the glamour that veiled my features. As I looked more closely, every wrinkle and hair and pore in my skin became visible. I needed only to direct my attention to a part of my body to see into it, through the barrier of my skin, and could count the particles of blood that pulsed through my veins with the throbs of my heart.

  When I turned my attention to the girl, I saw that she was sitting on her rug, regarding me with curiosity but without alarm. I looked more closely and counted the hairs growing from her scalp. There was no effort, the number was simply available to my awareness. I wondered what she was thinking, and immediately heard her thoughts echo in my own mind.

  So he tried the seat after all. I knew he could not resist. I wonder why he sits so silent? He must be thinking. I will not disturb him. What a pity about his face. He must have been so handsome.

  My restless mind could not remain focused for long on any one thing. I turned my awareness toward the east, and sent it flying over the black wall, over the hills, and across the plain. There, somewhere, lay the stronghold of the magi who were the foes of the dark man. At once my mind flew like a hawk across the ground, and I observed every feature along the way. Beside a broad river I saw a walled fortress bordered on one side by cultivated fields and cottages, and on the other by a dockside with numerous river craft loading and unloading their wares. This occupied no more than an instant to my perception, yet I could easily trace every step of the path. It was impressed on my memory as a print of a hand shows itself in wet clay.

  I wondered if Altrus still pursued us, or if he had died from his wounds, and at once my awareness flew in the opposite direction, toward the west, where I saw as from a great height a solitary man on a travel-weary horse, riding along the line of hills that guarded the valley, looking for some passage through their slopes. He was far from the fissure, and I knew with absolute clarity that he would never locate it. He would be forced to ride around the hills, which would take him days. I descended closer, and saw that his wounds had begun to heal, and contained no putrescence. He would recover. The vitality of his body surprised me. It burned with an inner fire that generated prodigious reserves of endurance.

  Before I could examine him in more detail, my restless mind flew to the great desert of the Empty Space. I looked down upon the territory of the Black Spring Clan, and saw that it was occupied by a scattering of families from another clan of ghouls that I did not recognize. They lay within their dens, protected from the rays of the morning sun. I could see the bubbles rise and break on the inky surface of the spring, and remembered the taste of its water on my tongue.

  My mind turned to the dark man. I wondered what his true purpose might be, and why he needed my aid when he was so great with power. This was a mistake. My awareness flew through a vast distance in a moment, and beyond space to another realm of reality, and there I found the dark man, but when my mind attempted to encompass him, it became bewildered in its failure. It was as though I attempted to pick up a smooth wooden sphere larger than my head in the fingers of one hand. My awareness slipped and slid when it tried to grasp the purposes of this Old One. Even the true form of Nyarlathotep was not revealed, for he possessed countless forms, each no less real than the others, and more than this, his forms changed and mutated in their interaction with the worlds he simultaneously inhabited.

  He became aware of my attention, but his reaction was no more than mild amusement. I felt it brush my thoughts and burn them, so that I instinctively withdrew, but there was no hostility in the touch. Had he wished, I realized with the clarity granted me by the wisdom seat, he could with a single word have purged my mind of all thought and left me a drooling idiot. I withdrew from him in the way a man will stumble backward from a room in which he does not belong.

  With a gasp of breath, I leapt up from the seat and stood trembling, covered with sweat, nausea twisting my bowels, the world spinning around me. Arms caught me as my knees buckled.

  “Alhazred, what is the matter?” Martala asked.

  She guided me to my sleeping rug and helped me to sit. I said nothing for a few moments, waiting for the sickness in my guts to subside. I knew that were I to part my lips to speak, I would surely vomit. A ghoul does not vomit. They view it as a contemptible weakness that men sometimes throw forth the food they consume. What a ghoul takes into his body remains always a part of him and is never given up. Such was the philosophy of the Black Spring Clan, strangely clear in my thoughts due to my memory of them on the wisdom seat.

  When my head ceased to spin, I noticed that the sun had risen full above the eastern hills. What had seemed to me mere moments had consumed almost an hour. The ruby in the carven stone face no longer cast its colored panels of light across the bridge.

  In a few words I told the girl what had transpired in my mind while I sat upon the seat. She glanced at it with respect mingled with aversion.

  “I saw nothing while I sat upon the seat.”

  “The ruby was in shadow. In some manner the rays of the sun make it active and release its power.”

  I struggled to my feet. Silently, she lent her arm and supported me until I gained my balance. Strength returned to my limbs and my guts ceased to roll. It had not been a physical sickness that overcame me, but a reaction to the confusion in my mind. Now that my thoughts were ordered and limited in their usual way, my body ceased to complain.

  When the girl realized what I intended, she pulled against me.

  “Are you mad? You may be killed.”

  I shrugged her away in annoyance. Must I explain my every intention to this troublesome child?

  Tentatively, I lowered my buttocks onto the seat and placed my hands on the balls held in the carven claws. The sun had warmed the stone. I no longer felt its chill penetrate through my flesh. As I suspected, nothing happened. I tried to cast my mind over the hills, but it remained firmly within my skull. Standing, I turned and touched the ruby. It, too, felt warm.

  “Whatever activates the seat, it occurs only in the hour of sunrise.”

  I left the seat. The girl gave me a nervous glance, then gathered her courage and sat in it. After a moment, she stood up.

  “A man who stayed in this enclosure and sat upon this seat every morning for a year would have all the wisdom of this world, and countless other worlds, at his command,” I murmured.

  “We can’t stay here,” Martala objected. “Don’t you feel it? This place hates us. It wants to kill us.”

  I would have laughed, had I not struggled against the same conviction since entering the enclosure.

  “There’s no need to stay here. All the power of the wisdom seat is contained in this one jewel. If we take the jewel with us, we will possess the power of the seat whenever we wish to use it.”

  She regarded the ruby with doubt.

  “It may not work without the chair.”

  “The chair is only carved stone. We can have another fashioned similar to it when we reach a place of civilization. I will remove the jewel and its setting of gold. Even if we cannot make the ruby function as it does in the chair, it is worth the wealth of a kingdom.”

  Drawing my dagger, I applied its sharp tip to the heavy rim of gold that formed the setting for the jewel. I did not wish to damage it, but intended to remove it from the brown stone of the chair’s back intact or in pieces. It resisted the point of the steel blade with unnatural toughness. Perhaps it was not gold at all, but merely a metal that resembled gold.

  As I felt the setting shift in the stone the merest trifle, a darkness covered the sky. Martala screamed. I stepped back from the chair and looked heavenward.

  The sky gaped opened at the zenith as though torn, its blue parted to reveal the black of night beyond. Through this un
natural aperture descended a thing of nightmare of the kind that the mind refuses to confront, but mercifully blots from memory at the moment of waking. Seen without the protective oblivion of sleep, there was no escape from its horror.

  The body of the thing appeared that of a woman, but a second look revealed its mockery of the human form. Myriad translucent streamers grew not only from her narrow head but from her naked shoulders and back, spreading outward in all directions to wave with sinuous grace as plants dance in the sea, in continual motion, changing with bright colors. They spread so wide that they covered the sky and seemed to draw warmth from the air itself. Her feet were like the talons of a hawk bent to clutch its prey. How many arms she possessed I could not count. They were many, and long, but their unceasing movement made their number uncertain. From her fingers grew slender filaments black in color.

  Her face held an expression of fury. In her high forehead was set a single enormous eye, its midnight center glittering with stars. When she parted her lips, the air trembled with her cry. Streamers of light expanded from her open mouth, and on their tips formed droplets of flame. These fell like burning oil. In moments the entire sky filled with points of flame.

  Awareness of our immediate peril came to me and to the girl at the same moment. She stared at me with terror, but seemed to gather strength from my eyes.

  “Tie on your wallet. Quickly.”

  My words were almost lost on the shrieks that rent and shivered the sky. I glanced upward. Each cry of the monster sent a thousand additional streamers erupting from her mouth, dripping with fire.

  “Leave the cursed sleeping rug. Get your sword.”

  Without waiting to see if she understood my words, I ran off the bridge and along the southern bank of the brook toward the black wall. The girl was close behind, and in a dozen paces she passed me. Something touched my cheek and burned like an ember from a fire. Another similar pain stabbed my shoulder through my cloak, and I smelled the stench of my burning hair. The girl’s head and back were soon covered with points of flame that did not extinguish themselves, but continued to blaze with the vigor of burning sulfur. Smoke streamed from her green felt hat as she ran.