by Brian Lumley
Now Eldin found his voice, however croaky. 'Well said,' he nodded his approval. 'A bit theatrical, perhaps, but —'
'Silence!' howled Nyarlathotep. And more quietly: 'Silence, and live a little longer. Soon enough the engines of horror shall have you, and the essence of your crushed, terrified souls sent to start dreamers madly awake and raving forever — or would you go down to the pits of nightmare right now, on the instant, without more ado? For the longer you talk to me the longer you live, and when you stop — '
'Then make an end of it,' Hero blurted. 'If we're to die anyway let's have it now, rather than hang here passing the time with the source of all nightmares!'
'Make an end of it?' the Pharaoh-figure was obviously taken aback; but he smiled his monstrous smile to cover his confusion, and when he spoke again his voice was once more languid: 'Is that really your preference? But that implies a choice, and you have no choice.'
And now the questers knew the worst: that indeed there would be no resisting Nyarlathotep, for he commanded — he was —all the telepathic power of the Great Old Ones, who read the minds of men like men read open books. A creeping numbless settled over their brains, an iciness as of outer space invaded their staggering minds. And knowing he would be answered, Nyarlathotep began his inquisition:
'Dreamers, you have grown learned in the ways of the dreamlands and fast grow into legends. At least, I shall make legends of you - when I send you to be pulped in the grinding cogs of nightmare. But you two have talked with that old fool Atal, who in reality is no one's fool, and dined and chatted in company with triple-cursed Kuranes, even conversed with Randolph Carter himself. You are accepted in dreamland's highest echelons, and yet have plumbed the lower levels with equal flair. Lathi knows you, and Zura of Zura. Indeed it is your panache, your talent, that dooms you; too many powerful dreamers control man's subconscious mind in these times, which is not in acordance with Their plans. Especially not at this time. Which is why, when I am done with you, you are to be stopped ...
'Ah! But where Kuranes and Carter and Atal have learned bow to close their thoughts to me - to us - your minds are like open doors as yet! You may not deny me access. Now know you:
`The stars are very nearly right! The Great Old Ones are coming to claim what is rightly Theirs, in the dreamlands, the waking world, throughout all the worlds of space and time, and all the super- and sub-strata of endless dimensions. This will be! The multiverse will dissolve to chaos when Cthulhu comes. But there yet remains one great obstacle, one first and final goal which They must achieve: the discovery and destruction of Elysia!
`The way to Elysia, however, is a hidden way. The so-called "Elder Gods" hide there; they hide from Cthulhu's wrath, who has sworn vengeance on them that bound him in immemorial aeons. But you two - ex-mortals, men late of the waking world - perhaps you two may know something of Elysia, of the way to that place of the Elder Gods. Incredible, that perhaps you have knowledge of that which Great Cthulhu himself has not yet discovered! And yet I am reliably informed that even now One has come into the dreamlands to seek you out; aye, and he too searches for Elysia. Perhaps he has already found you, talked to you, learned from you ... ? I, too, would learn from you - if you have anything to teach me - so now I command you: open up your minds to me, let me see all!'
Twin tendrils of mist reached out from Nyarlathotep's dark eyes, flowed writhingly through the. air across the pit, fastened like lampreys to the foreheads of the questers where they fought a last desperate mental fight to keep their minds to themselves. Their brains felt like onions, being peeled layer by layer as Nyarlathotep commenced his 'examination' - but only for a moment.
All eyes were on the tableau formed by Nyarlathotep and the questers, all concentration centred there, so that none had seen the fractionally slow lowering of the time-dock down from the flue of the central vent. The first the horned ones, Gudge, Nyarlathotep, questers and all knew of it was when de Marigny's amplified voice boomed out in the confines of the cavern junction:
`Am I this "One" you seek, Nyarlathotep? If so, why not speak to me directly? For these questers know nothing of me.'
Now all eyes gazed upward; simultaneously, as the silently hovering time-clock was spied there, a concerted gasp broke out from all ranks. But de Marigny had confronted Nyarlathotep before and knew the danger; he had the advantage here and must be careful not to lose it.
`Your the Pharaoh-figure's voice was now a croaking bass belch of sound. `You, The Searcher, de Marigny!'
`We meet again,' said de Marigny - and he, triggered the time-clock's weapon.
A pencil beam of incredible light sizzled down from the clock's dial, drove back the flickering shadows and put the torches of the petrified almost-humans to shame, cut through the tenuous tendril of mental mist stretched between Nyarlathotep and the questers. The connection was severed; but more than that, the shock of the severance was felt throughout the multiverse!
Yogg-Sothoth in his prison dimension beyond chaos reeled as his telepathic polyp mind felt that hot, cleansing breath of Eld; Cthulhu, dreaming mad dreams of universal conquest in R'lyeh, started fitfully, lashed out with terrific tentacles and crushed several aquatic shoggoth guards, who instantly re-formed and backed off; Shudde-M'ell convulsed deep under Earth's mantle, then dived down through salving lava as he felt even his mind singed by that pure, clean fire.
And Nyarlathotep, staggering back from the pit's rim, clapped his manicured hands to his head and croaked: 'Gudge, the questers - send them to hell!' And before de Marigny could trigger his weapon again, the Crawling Chaos dissolved into dank mist which writhed away into the crevices of the west-leading tunnel and was gone.
The horned ones were fleeing, stampeding down the north-leading tunnel toward their black ships of Leng, hastened by a salvo of fire from the time-clock; but Gudge, commanded by Nyarlathotep, was forbidden to. flee. He took up a fallen sword and flopped wobblingly toward Hero and Eldin - toward the ropes which alone held their crosses in position over the pit's rim. Now that sword was lifted on high, and now it flashed down in an arc which would find both ropes at once where they were made fast to a projecting knob of lava. But -
That arc of bright steel was never completed. Caught by a pencil-beam from the time-clock in mid-sweep, Gudge's sword shivered into shards and took his arm, or whatever he had that passed for an arm, with it! A second stabbing beam struck him full-face, ate into his frantically scrabbling snout-tentacles, the leprous jelly face behind them, and finally the brain or ganglion behind the face. And voiceless though he was, still that creature uttered his first - and last shriek, like a jet of steam escaping under pressure, as he floundered to the edge of the pit, flopped to and fro there, toppled into nightmare. A shower of lava-dust and other cavern debris went with him, missing the dumbstruck, delirious dreamers on their crosses by inches.
Then .. .
...In a very little while de Marigny had set the time-clock down close to the pit, and not long after that the dazed questers were freed and stumbling about in the purple glow of the clock's open door, flailing and stamping life back into their numb arms and legs. But when de Marigny and Moreen would have led them inside the time-dock:
`Hold!' growled Eldin, stepping back a pace. He looked at Hero and cocked a querying eyebrow. 'Out of the frying pan ... ?' he asked.
Hero shook his head, said: 'Shouldn't think so, old lad.' And to The Searcher, 'Didn't I hear a certain ex-moonbeast call you de Marigny?'
De Marigny grinned. 'You're probably thinking of my father,' he said. 'But don't worry, for I'm cut of much the same cloth as him - else I'd not be here.'
Eldin seemed somewhat mollified. Grudgingly he agreed: 'Aye, and I remember you now. A banquet in Ulthar - in your honour, too! Henri-Laurent de Marigny, and Titus Crow. It was toward the end of the Bad Days, in which you'd played quite a hand.' Then he looked again at the time-clock. 'Still, that's a damned weird threshold you're inviting us over. And I can't see how we'd manage it anyway. I mean, I
'm hardly a stripling, now am I? You and the girl must be stifled in there, let alone asking two such as us in with you!'
Now de Marigny laughed out loud. 'The time-clock is bigger inside than out, Wanderer,' he said.
`Come on in,' said Moreen, 'and see for yourselves.' And as a further inducement, de Marigny added: `If we hurry, we might just be in time to see those three "pirate" ships blown out of dreamland's skies by the eidolon Lathi and Zura of Zura.' Which finally did the trick; for that was a thought - and a promised delight which Eldin couldn't resist for the world!
Deep down below in black bowels of earth, a horribly familiar, monstrous throbbing had started up again, like the thundering of vast subterranean hammers. And as Hero and Eldin at last accepted de Marigny's invitation and boarded the time-clock, and as that fantastic vessel lifted off and soared straight up the volcano's vent toward open skies, so, far behind, a hot black smoke ring was formed and billowed toward the surface.
It was an especially black, especially oily smoke ring: Gudge, of course, on his way to where he'd disperse in dreamland's high, clean upper atmosphere ...
5 Shrub Sapiens
As de Marigny had promised, they were in time to see Zura and Lathi's revenge on the horned ones. For as the time-clock rose up into the full dawn light, away down below on the northern slope of the volcano the three black ships of Leng were only just emerging from their vast keep and rising into the sky. Dangerously close together, they were, in a very tight formation, and it was plain that confusion reigned aboard. Each of the three captains had just one thought in mind: to get as far and as fast away as almost-humanly possible. Gudge was no more; a terrible destructive 'device was on the loose, one the Lengites had known before, which in Dylath-Leen and other places had spelled disaster for them; their moonbeast masters, of which Gudge had been only one, would be most unhappy about things, and someone - perhaps many someones - would.be called to pay the price of failure. Horned heads would roll, wherefore ... now was definitely a good time to run for home and quietly disappear into the less hazardous (for almost-humans) encampments of mist-shrouded Leng.
So that the advent of Lathi's Chrysalis and Zura's Shroud II from behind the volcano's flanking crags came, as a complete surprise to them. The central 'pirate' got away, however, for it was shielded by the vessels to port and starboard, which took the brunt of Lathi's and Zura's vengeful salvoes. And as those two ships, crippled from the onset, put up what they could of a fight, so the one in the middle, unscathed, rose up higher into the sky and headed north for Leng. Its sails quidcly filled as it found a good current of air, whereupon it sped off, leaving its comrades to their fate.
De Marigny let the survivor make a mile or two, then casually aligned the time-clock's weapon and triggered off a hastening beam. The black topsail and Jolly Roger went up in a flash of light and a puff of smoke, and The Searcher nodded and lowered his aim a little. But then, when even the slightest mental pressure would reduce the black ship to so much scorched wreckage, he hesitated.
`Well?' Eldin was on tenterhooks. 'What's holding you? You've got 'em, dead!'
But de Marigny shook his head and released his mind's grasp on the trigger. 'No,' he said, 'for that's not my way.'
`You mean you're letting them go?' the Wanderer was beside himself. 'I don't believe it! Well, if you've no stomach for it, you just show me how it's done and step aside!'
But Hero said: 'Calrn yourself, old friend. De Marigny's right - we're the good fellows, remember?'
'Eh?' Eldin rounded on him. 'Good fellows? You speak for yourself ! As for me, where these damned Lengites are concerned I'm all baddie!'
'No you're not,' Hero contradicted with a shake of his head. 'And you know it. If de Marigny squeezed that trigger, it would be sheer slaughter. That sort of thing might be okay for Zura and Lathi, but not for us. Anyway, if we kill 'em all, who'll be left to spread our legend abroad, eh?'
'You mean, these buggers'll go back to Leng and say: "that Hero and Eldin, they got the best of us again", right?'
'Something like that,' Hero nodded.
'Huh? Eldin scowled. And: 'You realize of course that it could easily be one of these very Lengites, one of these fine days, who sticks his sword right through your backbone - or mine?'
`Possibly,' said Hero. 'But not today, eh?'
Still furious, Eldin turned to Moreen. 'What do you say, lass? Are these two daft or not?'
`Maybe they are,' she took one of his great hands in both of hers, 'and maybe they're not. But if the horned ones -and all other dark creatures and men - weren't here to do their bad things, would there be any point in a Hero and an Eldin, or a de Marigny? What would you do, Wanderer, if there was no longer anything to strive for? No more questing? No last small danger in all the dreamlands?'
'Me,' said Hero, determined to change the subject, `I'd head straight for Serannian, take charge of the sky-yacht Kuranes owes me, crew her with a couple of likely lasses out of Bahama, and set sail for a tiny jewel island somewhere off '
'Ah, but now you're talking!' said Eldin. 'What? Give me a sky-yacht, a tiny jewel isle and a likely lass - and you can keep the yacht and the island for yourself !'
And that was that. As the black ship limped for the grey northern horizon, the Wanderer watched it go and scowled a very little. But he made no.further comment ...
Lathi was already heading for Thalarion when de Marigny set the time-clock down on the deck of Shroud II. As he, Moreen and the questers stepped forth, Zura greeted them with a curt: 'Ho, Searcher and Co! Success to both sides of our venture, it appears.' Then, staring straight into de Marigny's eyes, she added: 'But it seems you came over all faint-hearted when you might have burned that third black ship to ashes. I was not so foolish.' And she inclined her head downward across the rail of her ship. On the volcano's lower slopes, the ruins of her own and .Lathi's conquests lay scattered amidst sharp lava crags.
'Not faint-hearted, Zura,' growled Eldin at once, before anyone else could say a word. 'Big-hearted. Not foolish but compassionate. There's a difference such as you wouldn't understand. We're not all death's bosom-pals, you know!'
Hero scratched an ostensibly itchy nose, hiding his grin; he controlled himself and nodded, straight-faced, as Zura now turned her black-eyed gaze on him. Scowling, she acknowledged his nod anyway, said: `All intact, I see. I'd thought by now that the horned ones might have eaten you.'
'Our hides might be a bit tough on their teeth, I fancy,' said Hero. 'Anyway, they weren't after eating us but sending us instead down that volcano's throat, fuel for Cthulhu's engines of horror. And it seems we've you to thank for telling The Searcher where to find us.'
`Oh?' she arched her eyebrows. 'Well, save your thanks, Hero of Dreams. Let's not get too friendly. De Marigny didn't leave me much choice, after all; and anyway, it wasn't your interests I was looking after.'
`Zura,' said Eldin, 'you like, to play at being hard, but let's face it: you've had a soft spot for Hero here from the moment you first met him. Now deny that, if you can!'
Zura smiled sweetly, or it might seem so if they didn't know her better. But there were crimson points in her black eyes, doubtless in her black heart, too. 'I've soft spots for him, for you, for all of you live ones,' she said, her words honeyed. But then they came sharper: 'Or more correctly, soft plots! Row upon row of 'em: six foot of damp earth in my Charnel Gardens!'
Death leered out of Zura's soul at them, and as one person Moreen, The Searcher, Hero and Eldin, the entire temporary crew of Shroud II, stepped back a pace from her. 'What?' she laughed. `And what good were you to me, if Gudge sent you down to the machineries of madness? And how might I use you, if the horned ones had chewed on all your tenderest bits? But this way - being foolhardy questers and all - one day you'll come to me on my terms. And with a bit of luck none too badly banged about. Aye, and then we'll talk some more of "soft spots," Eldin the Wanderer ...'
They sailed Zura's coffin-ship back to a mooring over the Charnel Gardens - o
ne with sufficient elevation as to make the stench endurable - and there left that peculiar squidprowed vessel in charge of Kuranes' men for the nonce. But now, before returning to Serannian, there was another matter to consider: Thalarion the land bordered close to Zura the land, so close indeed that the time-clock would make very short work of the distance between. And there, somewhere in Thalarion's hinterland, Atal's 'strange thoughts' - possibly having their origin in Elysia - had fallen to earth, had even been answered!
`What do you know of the land behind Thalarion?' de Marigny asked the questers when they were once more airborne in the clock and making their leisurely way eastward.
`There's a swamp there where a whirlpool empties itself from a mighty lake in the Great Bleak Mountains,' said Eldin. 'All marsh and rot and toadstools, and creeping leafy things more animal than plant. Terrible place!' He gave 'a small shudder. 'Me and Hero, we were there once. But thanks, no, we'd prefer not to go back.'
Moreen turned to. Hero. `But is there nothing pleasant or welcoming or friendly in Thalarion's hinterland? You see' (she began to explain something of their quest), 'we're looking for someone or thing - for an intelligent being, anyway - who receives thoughts from the waking world, maybe even from Elysia. Some unknown one who talks with his mind to someone else far, far away in another world.'
`Talks with his mind, you say?' Hero raised a speculative eyebrow, glanced at Eldin.
`Er, and would this telepathic someone be sort of big and green and lumberlike?' asked the Wanderer.
