by Brian Lumley
But the silver beams had fastened on Hero now, floating him off the cobbles and suspending him in mid-air. Curator inclined his gaze upward, lifting Hero swiftly into the sky over Serannian. The metal man's head tilted back farther yet, until he looked straight up - at which point the beams swiftly extended themselves and rocketed Hero into the clouds overhead and out of sight. Then the beams cut out, were instantly withdrawn. All human viewers of that act held their breath until Hero came tearing through the clouds, plummeting back into view. And then the beams reached out again, unerringly, to catch and lower him to the wharfside. Breathless and dizzy, Hero staggered and fell on his backside as Curator released him.
And without pause the Museum's keeper again turned, lifted Eldin from the causeway in a like manner, dumped him beside his friend. Now golden beams lanced forth from eyes suddenly yellow. It was that bright yellow with which wasps are banded, and the beams likewise appeared to have the sting of those unpleasant insects. Yelping, leaping, howling whenever the stinging beams struck them - with Eldin doubly tormented where he clutched his rags to cover himself - the two tumbled in the direction of Serannian's mazy alleys where they quickly disappeared from view.
`Harm them?' said Curator again, clanking to where his almost-stolen jewels lay on the cobbles and collecting them up. 'A very little, maybe. If only I could be sure I had deterred them, that would suffice. But where that pair are concerned . .' And very humanly, he let the sentence hang. And 'having retrieved all of the gems, he went on into the Museum.
De Marigny followed in the time-clock, and behind him Moreen. As for Kuranes: he went off after the questers. He owed them a small sky-boat - to say nothing of a telling-off - and since they'd soon be a laughing-stock in Serannian (and therefore ripe for many a brawl), it might be best to 'banish' them from the sky-island, for a little while anyway.
In the Museum, Moreen entered the time-clock and de Marigny showed her his discovery: the clock's 'communicator'. Now Curator's 'conversation' reached her also.
'You seek Elysia,' the metal man said. 'Well, it is my understanding that I was made there. I was given form in Elysia, and life here. But I can't tell you how to get there. I know nothing of Elysia, except that the way is long and hard. However, your coming here was anticipated. Before you someone something - also came into Earth's dreamland to see Curator.'
'The grey metal cube,' said de Marigny. 'Some kind of time-clock. It brought you instructions for me, from Elysia.'
'Say on,' said Curator, impressed. 'Perhaps the dream-clock is not required. Perhaps you already possess the necessary information.'
'Dream-clock?'
'Of course. The grey metal cube is a dream-clock - a monitor working in the subconscious levels of intelligence. No previous need for such a device in. Earth's dreams, for I was here. But on this occasion the cube came as a messenger.'
De Marigny frowned, said: 'Titus Crow told me to look in my own dreams, and to carry my search into the past -rather, my past. He mentioned a wizard, just as you have mentioned a wizard: Exior K'mool. The sentient gas Sssss told me much the same things. Well, I've tracked down all possible leads here in the dreamlands, so now it seems the final answer must lie in the remote past. With Exior K'mool in Theem'hdra.'
`Good!' said. Curator.
`But the past is more than four billion years vast!' said de Marigny. 'Where in the past when - am I to seek for Theem'hdra? And where in Theem'hdra will I find Exior K'mool?'
Alt!' said Curator. 'But these are questions you must ask of the dream-clock. For he alone has the answers, which were given to him in Elysia.'
Curator's chest opened; panels of shining metal slid back, telescoped, revealed a space. And snug in that cavity, there the grey metal cube rested - but for only a moment longer. Then -
The dream-clock slid from Curator's keeping, hovered free, spun like some strange metal dervish for a few seconds until it located and recognized the time-clock, then commenced to 'talk' in its own voice, the exotic articulations of its four hands. De Marigny 'heard' the opening details of the dream-clock's message, ensured that the dock was recording the spatial-temporal co-ordinates which constituted that singular monologue, then returned his attention to Curator:
`The dream-clock's information means nothing to me personally,' he said. 'I would need the mind of a computer. But the time-clock understands and records all. It is the location of Exior K'mool in primal Theem'hdra, yes. That's my next port of call, and I have you to thank for it, Curator.'
'You owe me nothing,' said Curator. `But you owe your race, the race of Man, everything. You deserted that race once for a dream, and now you return to a dream. And in you, germinating, lie the seeds of that race's continuation. The stars are very nearly right, Searcher, and you still have far to go. You seek a source and the clock now has the route, knows the destination. Waste no more time, but use it!'
The dream-clock's hands had steadied to a less erratic rhythm; it whirled for a brief moment, stopped abruptly and slid home into Curator's chest. The panels closed it in.
'Then it's time to say farewell,' said de Marigny.
`Indeed,' said Curator. 'As for the dream-clock: for the moment he stays here with me, perhaps forever, or for as long as we have. Only if you are successful will he ever return to Elysia. Until then, all Elysia's expatriate children must remain in exile.'
`Why do you say that?' de Marigny asked. 'What do you mean?'
`I have already overstepped myself,' said Curator. He began to turn away. `Farewell, and good fortune ...' He clanked away into dream's oldest, rarest memories.
De Marigny and Moreen watched him go. Then The Searcher said to the time-clock: 'Very well, you have the co-ordinates. Now take us to Exior K'mool. Take us to Theem'hdra, the primal land at the dawn of time.'
Which without more ado the clock set out to do ...
PART THREE : THE END OFTHE BEGINNING OF THE END
1 Exior K'mool
Theem'hdra
There had been other 'primal' lands: Hyborea and Hyperborea, Mu, Uthmal, Atlantis and many others; but in Theem'hdra lay the first, the original Age of Man. It was Pangaea, but not the Pangaea of modern geographers and geologists and theorists. How long ago exactly is of little concern here; suffice it to say that if the 'popular' Pangaea was last week, then Theem'hdra was probably months ago. Certainly it was an Age of Man which predated the Age of Reptiles, and was dust when they were in their ascendancy. But civilizations wax and wane, they always have and always will, and some are lost forever.
Theem'hdra, whereon a primal Nature experimented and created and did myriad strange and nightmarish' things. For Nature herself was in her youth, and where men were concerned ... she had not yet decided which talents men should have and which should be forbidden, discontinued.
In some men, and in certain women, too, the wild workings of capricious Nature wrought weird wonders, giving them senses and powers additional to the usual five. Often these powers .were carried down through many generations; aye, and occasionally such a man would mate with just such a woman and then, eventually, through genealogical patterns and permutations long forgotten to 20th Century scientists, along would come the seventh son of a seventh son, or the ninth daughter of a ninth daughter - and what then?
Mylakhrion the Immortal, who had been less than immortal after all, was the greatest of all Theem'hdra's wizards; and after him, arguably, his far removed descendant, Teh Atht of Kluhn. Next would probably be Mylakhrion's one-time apprentice and heir to many of his thaumaturgies, Exior K'mool. And Exior would not be the first magician whose experiments had led him into dire straits ...
Mylakhrion had been dead for one hundred and twenty years, victim of his own magic. Long before that, Exior's first master, Phaithor Ull, had rendered himself as green dust in an ill-conceived conjuration. And where Um-hammer Kark's vast manse had once sprawled its terraces, walls and pavilions on Mount Gatch by the River Luhr, overlooking the Steppes of Hrossa, a great bottomless pit now opened, issu
ing hissing clouds of mordant yellow steam. Wizards all, and all gone the way of wizards. Who lives by the wand .. .
And now
`My turn,' gloomed Exior K'mool to himself, where he prowled and fretted in his walled, palace in the heart of ruined Humquass, once-proud warrior city. Lamias flaunted their buttocks at him as he passed, and succubi rubbed him with their breasts, eager to balm him; but Exior said only. 'Bah!' and brushed them aside, or sent them on meaningless errands to keep them from annoying and pestering him. Did not the idiot creatures know that his doom would be theirs also? And could they not see how close that doom was now?
Exior's hair was short-cropped and grey as grey as it had turned on the day he first looked in Mylakhrion's great runebook, one hundred and seventy-three years earlier -and his mien, as might well be imagined, was that of an old man heavy-burdened with wisdom and knowledge and some sin; for it's a hard business being a wizard and remaining free of sin. And yet his long slender back was only slightly bent and his limbs still surprisingly spry. Aye, and his yellow eyes undimmed by his nearly two centuries
of rune-unriddling, and his mind a crystal, where every thought came sharp as a needle. And for this not entirely misleading simulacrum of vitality he could thank long-gone Mylakhrion, whose fountain of youth and elixir of longevity and wrinkle-reducing unguents had kept the years in large part at bay. Alas that he must also 'thank' that elder wage for his current fix, which in all likelihood were his last.
Exior's palace had a high-walled courtyard before and high-walled gardens behind; in Humquass' heyday, the palace had been the city's tallest edifice, its towers even higher than the king's own palace. Now it was not only the tallest but the only building, chiefly because Humquass was no more. But the palace, like Exior himself, had survived wars and famines and all the onslaughts and ravages of nature; aye, and it would survive for many a century yet -or should.
It should, for from its foundations up the place was saturated with magical protections: spells against decay and natural disaster, against insect, fungus and human invasion, against the spells of other sorcerers, but mainly against the incursion of that which even now frothed and seethed on the other side of the walls, seeking a way in. A .legacy of Exior's search for immortality. Like Mylakhrion before him, he had sought everlasting life until finally he'd attracted imminent death.
Exior!' croaked a black, fanged, half-man, half-insect thing where it scuttled about his feet as he walked in the gardens. 'A doom is upon you, Exior! A great doom is come upon Exior the Mage!'
'Hush!' he scowled, kicking half-heartedly at the creature and missing. He stooped and found a pebble, hurled it at the scurrying, hybrid monstrosity. 'Away with you! And what are you for a familiar anyway? Be sure that if that slime out there gets me, then that it will surely get you also! Bah! I'd find a better familiar among the cockroaches in my kitchen!'
'But you did find me there,' croaked that unforgiving creature, - half of me, anyway and welded me to Loxzor of the Hrossaks. I, the Loxzor part, was also a magician, Exior - or had you forgotten?'
In fact Exior had forgotten; but now he shook a fist at the thing, yelled: 'How could I forget, with your infernal crowing to remind me day and night? 'Twas your own fault, Hrossak - sending your morbid magics against me. Be thankful I didn't give you the habits and lower half of a dung-beetle - and then make you keeper of the palace privy! Indeed, I still might!'
As the Loxzor-thing hastily withdrew, Exior climbed a ladder beside the wall and carefully looked over.
In his life Exior had seen, had even created, shudder-some things; but nothing he had seen or made or imagined was more noxious, poisonous, mordant or morbid than the frothing slime that lapped all about his palace walls and closed them in. At present the walls and his spells combined to hold the stuff at bay, but for how much longer? In extent the slime covered and roiled over all of olden Humquass' ruins, and lay deep as a thick mist all about. But never before a mist like this.
It was mainly yellow, but where it swirled it was bile-green, or in other places red like bad blood in pus. It was a gas or at worst a liquid, but now and then it would thicken up and throw out tendrils or tentacles like a living thing. And indeed Exior knew that it was a living thing - and the worst possible sort.
Even now, as he stared at the heaving, sickly mass, so it sensed him and threw up groping green arms. But Exior had spelled a dome of power over the .palace, enclosing the entire structure, grounds and all. Now tentacles of slime slapped against that invisible wall mere inches from his face, so that he drew himself back and quickly descended the ladder into the gardens.. But not before he'd seen the crumbling and steaming of the walls where the stuff's acid nature was eating into them.
'Shewstone!' muttered Exior then, under his breath. And, stumbling toward the main building: 'Last chance . shewstone ... no spells can help me now ... but if I can find just one possible future for myself ... and then somehow contrive to go there ... Rah! ... Hopeless . Not even Mylakhrion could control time!'
Outside, were it not for the slime, the season would be autumn. In Exior's courtyard, however, it was spring; he controlled the seasons within his own boundaries; but even so, still black clouds were building, and he felt in his bones the nip of winter. The winter of his years, perhaps? His days? His ... hours? Was that all he had left, who so recently sought immortality, hours?
Grinding his teeth with anxiety, Exior entered his basalt palace, followed the corkscrew stairs of a tower where they wound inexorably upward, finally came to that place which had been his room of repose and was, more recently, his workshop. Here he had worked unceasingly to discover a way to nullify the ever-encroaching slime sea, to no avail. For here, scattered about, were the many appurtenances of his art, all sorts and species of occult apparatus.
Here were the misshapen skulls of an ancient order of sub-man, and the teratologically fabulous remains of things which had never been men; bottles of multi-hued liquids, some bubbling and others quiescent; flutes made of the hollow bones of pteranodon prima, capable of notes which would transmute silver into gold and vice-versa; shelf upon shelf of books in black leather and umber skins, at least one of which was tattooed!
Here too were miniature worlds and moons in their orbits, all hanging from the tracked ceiling on mobile ropes of jewelled cowries; and here pentacles of power adorned the mosaic walls and floor, glittering with the fire of gem-chips, from which they were constructed. Sigilinscribed scrolls of vellum were littered everywhere; but alone in the comparatively tidy centre of the room, there was Exior's showpiece: a great ball of clouded crystal upon its stand of carved chrysolite.
Kicking aside the disordered clutter and muttering, `Useless, all useless!' he approached the shewstone, seated himself upon a simple cane chair, made passes to command a preview of possible futures. this was not the first time he had scried upon the future (hardly that, for his greatest art lay in oneiromancy: reading the future in dreams, in which he'd excelled even as an apprentice) but it was certainly the first time he'd achieved such dreary results.
He was shown a future where the slime lapped over the palace, devouring it, and himself with it. He saw a time when Humquass was a scar on the land, like a great sore in earth's healthy flesh. He scried upon a stone raised by some thoughtful soul in a shrine built centrally in the blight, which read:
`Here lies Exior K'mool, or
would if alien energies had
not eaten him entirely away.
Here his shade abides, anyhow.'
But nowhere, for all his desperate passes, could he find a possible future where Exior K'mool lived. A fact he could scarce credit, for his dreams had foretold otherwise: namely that there was a future for him. Indeed he had seen himself, in recurrent dreams, dwelling in a manse whose base was a bowl that floated on a lake of Lava. And he had known the world or lake where the manse drifted on liquid fire as `Lith', and he had lived there a while with the white wizard Ardatha Ell, of whom he'd heard nothing except in
his dreams. But where was this future, and Where Lith? The shewstone displayed nought but dooms! All very disheartening.
Exior sighed and let the crystal grow opaque, turned to his runebook and thumbed disconsolately through its pages. Runes and spells and cantrips galore here, but none to help him escape the slime, not permanently, not in this world or time. The stuff's nature was such as could not be avoided, it would pursue him to the end. His end.
And full of despair, at last his eyes lighted upon a spell only three-quarters conceived, borrowed from a fragment Mylakhrion had left behind when long ago he took himself off to his last refuge, the lonely isle of Tharamoon in the north.
At first, staring at the uncompleted page, Exior saw little; but then his eyes widened, his mind began to spark; and finally he read avidly, devouring the rune almost in a glance. A spell to call up the dead, but without necromancy proper. If he could complete the rune, perhaps he could call up some wizard ancestor to his aid. There must surely have been magic in his ancestry, else he himself were not gifted. And what if he erred in completing the thing, and what if it came to nought? Well, and what had he to lose anyway? But if he were to succeed - if indeed he could find and call up some mage ancestor centuries dead - well, even at worst two heads are better than one. And certainly better than none!
He set to work at once.
Using other runebooks, -lesser works, slowly he put the finishing touches to the invocation. No time to check his work however, for day crept toward evening, and a grim foreboding told him that the palace walls and his slime-excluding spell could not last out the night. And so, with stylus that shook even as his hand shook, he set down the last glyph and sat back to cast worried, anxious eyes over the completed rune.
