Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  We ate the delayed meal finally set before us with little appetite and left the dining hall in the midst of the general throng, Martala tugging on the rope around my neck to guide me, for it was her custom to lead me by the rope in any crowded public place. I walked bent over, as though something disagreed with my stomach. None of the monks noticed the bulge of my robes. Their attention was elsewhere.

  No, I corrected myself, one monk had his gaze fixed upon us. Brother Adrian watched our exit from the dining hall, and started to follow after us as we approached the front entrance of the dormitory. Martala had not yet sensed his eyes on her back. I was relieved to see him stopped in the entrance hall and taken into earnest conversation by two bearded elders, no doubt concerning details of the search. He cast a glance of frustrated fury at me as I passed through the door, and I could not refrain from giving him my idiot grin.

  “Did you get the wheelbarrow?”

  “It is waiting,” she murmured without turning to look at my face.

  On any ordinary day, it was common for the younger brothers to go into the market square to teach lessons, or to buy meat, fish, vegetables, and other goods from the merchants. I put my faith in the strength of long custom, that Rumius in his preoccupation with the search had not thought to forbid the monks to leave the walls of the monastery, or told the guards to bar the door. As I pushed the wheelbarrow toward the gate, I was relieved to see a clerical monk enter with an armload of scrolls, which he had no doubt purchased from a master of one of the recently arrived riverboats.

  Martala spoke to the guard who was about to draw the iron bars across the small door. We had often been outside the gate to the market, so our presence aroused no suspicion. He opened the door.

  As we were about to pass through, the other guard put his heavy hand on my bent shoulder. My heart tripped in my chest.

  “What’s wrong with your brother?” he asked.

  “Poor Idi,” Martala laughed. “I can’t keep him from eating apricots. He steals them from the kitchen. This morning he stuffed his belly with them and now he has cramps.”

  They laughed with her at my predicament. I grinned and lolled my tongue from the corner of my mouth, tilting my head to look at each of them.

  Their attention was distracted by a monk who came running across the lawn, waving his arms like a madman and calling out to them. I did not need to look to know the voice of Brother Adrian. I had hoped that the thing in the vault would not betray me at the last, since it gained nothing by it, but the satisfaction of causing my discovery must have tempted it beyond endurance. While the guards were distracted, I leaned close to Martala.

  “Whatever happens, say nothing and keep going.”

  I did not wait for her to respond, but cast my attention inward to Sashi.

  Can you control this body of mine, if I leave it? I asked in thought.

  Of course, my love.

  Keep it moving beside Martala. Go where she leads you.

  “Guards! Bolt the gate! I know the murderer of Brother Baruch!”

  One of the guards glanced at the open door, then at Adrian, who had the appearance of a madman, stumbling across the lawn with widened eyes and disordered hair hanging from beneath the band of his turban. As the thing in the vault had indicated in the library, its control over the coordination of its host was limited. Perhaps this was the first time it had ever attempted to run.

  Focusing my will and murmuring the required words under my breath, I sent my mind outward in the way the monster had taught me, and felt it touch the brain of the staggering monk. My unexpected thrust succeeded. At once, I ceased to inhabit my own body, and became a resident in the flesh of Adrian. Not the sole tenant, for his flesh was filled with the powerful presence of the spawn of the warrior god, whose will is strongest of all the Old Ones. We struggled like two wrestlers, while the body of the monk stopped and swayed, the words gurgling in his throat. He must appear to the approaching guards to be taking some kind of fit, I thought with a corner of my mind. The rest was occupied in a battle for survival. Now that the thing held my mind in its grasp, naked and unprotected, it intended to crush it.

  The mind is curious in its ways. Mine was bound by chains of unseen iron. I could not begin to overthrow the will of the spawn, so much more potent than my own, yet my thoughts, which could not move forward or retreat, managed to escape sideways into memory. I found myself reliving the final wrestling match with my brutish foster brother, Yanni. My brother had always been stronger. Yet sometimes I was able to throw him to the ground by using his own force against him, by letting it carry itself past me without resistance and then adding to its momentum with my lesser strength. I did this in my mind against the thrusting, destroying force of the thing in the vault, and felt it lose its equilibrium and tumble out of the brain of the monk. Before it could return, I slammed shut all the gates against it. The brain was mine, and the body it controlled.

  “Brother Adrian, what’s wrong? Are you ill?” One of the guards held my arms near the shoulders to keep me from collapsing.

  “I know the murderer of Brother Baruch,” I repeated breathlessly, the spittle flying from my lips. “I did it, I killed him. Then I hid the body.”

  One of the guards glanced at the gate, uneasy about having left his post. I saw over his shoulder Martala lead Idi, who still pushed the empty wheelbarrow, through the open doorway. She did not look behind.

  The other guard laid his hand on my back and studied my frenzied face with concern. I began to grapple with them both, pulling them close, and let madness creep into my voice. They restrained me, the gate momentarily forgotten.

  “Do you know what you are saying, Brother Adrian?” the second guard asked, not unkindly.

  “It was jealousy. It drove me to madness. Baruch was my lover but he ceased to care about me, so I killed him and hid his body where you’ll never find it. No, I won’t tell you where it is.”

  My hold on the mind of the monk began to slip. I felt pressure as the thing in the vault probed the surface of his brain in search of a crack through which to pour itself and resume command. I tried to hold on for as long as possible while the body of the monk slowly collapsed to the grass in the arms of the guards. As the creature cast me out of the monk’s skull, I looked directly into the eyes of the guard who held me close, his face no more than a hand’s breadth away. With a tremendous effort of concentration, I framed the words of power and forced my escaping awareness into the head of the guard.

  His mind was not so highly educated as Adrian’s but his will was stronger. I had control for only a few moments, for he almost immediately began to push back against the rushing flood of my will. It was long enough to grasp the hilt of his dagger and thrust its point through Adrian’s chest. The surprise and fury in the face of the dying monk might have made me laugh aloud had I still possessed a mouth, but I was ejected from the brain of the guard before the blade ceased to slide between the monk’s ribs.

  I found myself whirled through a roaring cataract of darkness. The impact of my awareness entering my own brain made my body jerk as though stung by a wasp. I drew a gasp and saw that I pushed the wheelbarrow through the market square. My body felt chill beneath my robe, and I tasted the salt of sweat beads on my upper lip. Martala glanced across at me with concern in her wide pale eyes, but gave no other sign that she noticed the violence of my return.

  The market was more than usually crowded with new arrivals from the boats. The few monks bargaining at the stalls paid us no attention, since we were a familiar sight. We left the wheelbarrow near the gate and walked quickly toward the corner as though having business at one of the inns on the southern side of the wall. I felt a prickling between my shoulder blades, but refrained from turning to look at the guards on the battlements. The numerous travelers who walked and pushed carts along the road that led through the village made our passage inconspicuou
s.

  We went quickly across the fields and through the trees to the rock where I had concealed the leather wallet containing our precious possessions and my money purse. The weather had done it no great harm, apart from a small patch of mildew on one corner that easily brushed off. The smooth surface of Gor’s skull beneath my fingertips filled me with fondness. I transferred the pilfered gold to the purse, and slung the wallet and my empty water skin on my back, after giving the other wallet with the stolen scrolls and food to Martala. It was a credit to the common sense of the girl that she asked no questions. With a single glance through the trees at the looming wall of the monastery, I led the way toward the rutted track that led west.

  As we retraced the road that had brought us to the monastery, I explained how close we had come to betrayal by Adrian, and how I had diverted suspicion upon the monk.

  “Was it necessary to kill him?” she asked.

  “The spawn of Cthulhu was sure to deny the confession and name us both as murderers. It would have led the elders directly to the corpse, and Rumius would have dispatched horsemen at once to ride us down and capture us.”

  “You gained us a few hours, at least,” she said with understanding. “Unless the monster can betray us through another monk.”

  “I do not believe it has any other under its power, or it would surely have managed to free itself from its cage. Adrian’s mind was uncommonly weak, and he made the error of visiting the thing in its vault. The spawn was able to forge an enduring link with him.”

  She shivered.

  “If it ever escapes, it will kill you.”

  “It will have to await its turn,” I said lightly.

  In early afternoon we left the road and went behind the brow of a low hill to eat some of the food Martala had stolen from the kitchen.

  “It is time we changed our identities,” I told her, and used the spell of glamour to disguise the horrors of my face.

  “Good. I’ve grown tired of being a boy.”

  She stripped off her turban and shook out her long hair, then folded the band of the turban and slid it into the front of her robe, withdrawing from the same place a scarf of blue silk she had somehow obtained and draping it over her head. I attached Gor’s skull and my sword to my belt but left the dagger with the girl. There was little we could do about our plain white linen robes. If we bought different clothing in the fishing village beside the lake, the fishermen would tell the monks when they came searching after us, as they surely would when our absence from the evening meal was observed, and they located the corpse in our room by its smell and the buzzing swarm of flies. It might take them longer to discover the loss of the gold and missing scrolls, but the thefts were the least of the reasons Rumius would seek our return.

  We came upon the lake at sunset and made a wide circle around the fishing village, then followed the lakeshore southward in the darkness to gain as much distance from the village as possible before stopping for the night. While we were still on the margin of the lake I filled my water skin, and felt reassured by its heaviness. The weight of water always gave me confidence.

  It still hung from its leather strap on my shoulder when I walked down the lee side of an enormous dune in the Empty Space, the sand blowing over my boots and concealing my toes as though I walked through moonlit mist. The dark man walked at my side, and I knew when I saw him that I dreamed.

  “What have you learned, my resourceful spy?” he said with a kind of hollow chuckle.

  I dug into an inner pocket of my thawb, which I saw was my old cream-colored thawb that I had stolen from the corpse of the Bedouin so long ago, and passed over a packet of parchment sheets. He took them and unfolded them. They were closely written on both sides in the language of the Old Ones. A part of my dreaming mind remembered writing them in my dreams, while another part knew that they did not exist in the material world. It was merely a device by which my mind conveyed its knowledge to Nyarlathotep. He read them as we walked to the bottom of the dune and began to mount toward the crest of the next.

  “You have done well,” he murmured, putting the phantom sheets away beneath the folds of his black cloak.

  “What is my reward, lord?” I asked, unable to keep a sardonic lilt from my voice.

  “You already have your reward, ungrateful wretch.”

  “If you mean the location of the well, I discovered that through my own efforts.”

  “I mean your life.”

  He stepped in front of me and turned, quick as thought, forcing me to stumble to a halt to avoid walking into him. I felt coldness emanate from his dark body in the same way it flows from ice that is brought down from the mountains.

  “Do not question my methods. Seek only to obey my commands, and I may allow you to live a little longer.”

  “Is that to be my only reward?” I asked with bitterness that overcame my fear. “Only life?”

  “Only life,” he echoed. “Yet I promise you this, Alhazred. Your life will be interesting.”

  Chapter 49

  After leaving the lake behind, we walked west for a day, then turned south. It was a desolate region, possessing neither the clean severity of the desert, nor the lush and rampant greenery of the Nile valley. Our way was obstructed by hillocks, fissures, ridges, and occasional bogs in hollows, where springs found their way to the surface and made the stinking ground suck around our soft leather shoes at each step. The land seemed uncertain whether it wanted to be dry or wet. We encountered many small animals and birds, but no travelers or human habitations.

  By the close of the second day, my spirits rose. If the monks had any notion of where we were going, we would have been overtaken by riders. The spawn of the Old One must not control another mind, or it would surely have found a way to betray my purpose to Rumius. I concluded that we had escaped their search, and began to sing as I walked. For once, Martala did not join in, but listened with a slight smile on her lips.

  “What landmark are we looking for?” she asked when I fell silent.

  “Two rounded hills rising from the plain. The valley of the well lies somewhere between them.”

  “Tell me what was written in the scroll.”

  This was the first time she had asked about the gloss. I saw no reason to withhold its contents from her.

  “It relates a legend of the Jews. You know that in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, their city of Jerusalem was conquered and its people led away to Babylon as slaves to serve his empire?”

  She shook her head, squinting into the sunset as she searched the horizon. I reminded myself that her education, although considerable in a woman, was of uneven quality. She had acquired it piecemeal, in a sense stealing it from those around her, and had not enjoyed the benefit of tutors other than the teachers in the schoolroom at the monastery.

  “The legend relates that the priests of the Temple at Jerusalem took away one of its holy objects before its destruction by the Babylonians. It does not say what it was, only that it was divided into pieces so that it could be more easily concealed on the journey to Babylon, where it was reassembled. The priests could not bear the thought of its discovery by their conquerors, so one night they took it out of Babylon on the back of a camel, and carried it southeast for three days to a long-disused well known only to the barbarous tribe that inhabited the region. The well had been poisoned for generations, and was all but forgotten.”

  “The Well of the Seraph?” she murmured.

  “Yes. But it was not called that by the hill dwellers. Six men went out of Babylon in the darkness, prepared to defend the holy object with their lives. They found the well and uncovered it, then lowered the sacred thing into the depths on ropes. To their amazement, the water far down in the well began to glow with a golden light. It sent a column of radiance into the heavens. The eldest priest, eager to investigate the cause of this wonder, had a pail low
ered into the well to sample the shining water.”

  “Did the water still glow when it was taken out of the well?”

  “So the legend relates. When the white-bearded priest found the courage to taste it, he discovered that it was pure and sweet on the tongue. The poison had been purged away by the golden light. More than this, it possessed restorative virtue. On the journey out of Jerusalem he had fallen from a horse and broken his arm, and the bones had knitted poorly, making his arm useless. The glowing water caused his entire body to shine as though illuminated by the sun, and his twisted arm became whole and straight.”

  “A powerful virtue indeed,” the girl said with a trace of amusement. “You should have been a storyteller in the marketplace, Alhazred. I liked the detail of the white beard.”

  “He was an old priest, he must have had a white beard. Be quiet while I finish the tale. Seeing these wonders, and emboldened in their courage, the other priests also drank from the pail. The water strengthened their bodies and washed away their travel fatigue. More than this, it healed their infirmities. Scars were erased from their skin. One who was deaf in his left ear regained his hearing. The youngest among them, who had lost a finger, watched with amazement as the finger regrew itself.”

  She made a sound of understanding, and looked at my face. It lay concealed beneath its glamour, but I knew she could see its scars with her scrying gift.

  “The u’mal root can restore vigor and heal disease, but cannot replace a finger,” she mused aloud. “Only the water of the Well of the Seraph is fabled to regrow an amputated member.”

  I smiled at her discreet use of the word. There was one particular member I was most anxious to restore, and it was not my nose.

  “The priests covered the well with stones so that it would remain hidden, then made their way back to Babylon. On the journey they were attacked by bandits and all were killed except the youngest, who carried the tale of the well to the Jews in the city.”