by Brian Lumley
It was as simple as this: they had followed him through the breach! He who had sought only to assist Elysia, had doomed her! Cthulhu was free, he was here, and The Searcher had led him here!
It was all so obvious, so very obvious. Everything de Marigny had done since Titus Crow rode his Great Thought to him in Borea might have been designed to draw Cthulhu's attention. Ithaqua the Wind-Walker had doubtless known de Marigny was seeking Elysia; Nyarlathotep, in both his primal and current forms, he too had known; the Hounds of Tindalos had known; and because all of them reported directly to Cthulhu, so too the Lord of R'lyeh. And where better to strike their first blow against universal sanity than Elysia? And how better to get there than by following de Marigny, whose place in Elysia was assured?
`I've betrayed you!' de Marigny cried then in his agony, through clenched teeth. `All of you ... all Elysia!'
'Oh,. Henri, Henri!' Moreen clung to him sobbing.
'Nor he put her gently aside. 'I came here to fight, and I can still fight!' With his mind he reached out for the time-clock's weapons.
`They won't work for you, Henri,' Exior K'mool shook his head. 'See, the clock has a mind of its own now. It flees before this hideous army. And they follow on, determined to hound us down, and whoever awaits us at the end of our journey.'
Exior was right the clock's weapons would not fire, the space-time machine- refused to respond to de Marigny's touch. And faster than its unimaginable pursuers — answering some unknown; unheard summons — it sped on. across Elysia, across the once-Frozen Sea, where now the ice bucked and heaved and waterspouts gouted skyward, toward its goal, the Icelands, where dwelled Kthanid in the heart of Elysia's mightiest glacier. The Hall of Crystal and Pearl: de Marigny saw it again in his mind's eye as once he had seen it in a prophetic dream, that throneroom of
Kthanid, spokesman of the Elder Gods themselves. And how would that mighty beneficent Kraken greet him now, he wondered, whose ambition had brought ruin on all Elysia?
The time-clock dipped low and skimmed across ice-cliffs, plunged toward an entrance carved from the permafrost of a vast cavern. But even upon entering the complex of caves and corridors that led to Kthanid's sanctum sanctorum, the clock was slowing down, its scanners dimming, sensors blanking out. The controls were totally dead now, and darkness closing in fast.
`Henri?' In the deepening gloom, still Moreen clung to The Searcher.
`Elysia's finished,' de Marigny felt drained, his voice was cracked. `Even the time-clocks are running down. This place must be their final refuge the refuge of Elysia's peoples, I mean, and of their leaders. If Cthulhu can find them here he can find them anywhere, so why run any farther? This is the end of the line ...' Even as he spoke the clock came to a halt; its door swung open and its now feeble purple glow pulsed out; the three gazed upon the interior of the vast Hall of Crystal and Pearl.
Exior K'mool was first to step out. The clock had come to rest deep inside the enormous clamber, close to the curtained alcove where sat Kthanid's throne. The curtains were drawn now and the throne itself invisible, but still Exior felt the awesome atmosphere of the place, knew that he stood at a crossroads of destiny. The shimmering curtains went up, up and up, to the massively carved arch which formed the alcove's facade. And wizard that he was master of wonders, still Exior went down on his knees before those curtains and bowed his. head. 'The place of the Eminence!' he whispered.
De Marigny and Moreen followed him, flanked him, gazed with him as he lifted his head. And as at a signal the curtains swept open!
De Marigny might have expected several things revealed when the curtains swept aside. He might even have guessed correctly, if he'd guessed at all. But in fact it had happened too quickly; his mind had not yet adjusted to his whereabouts: the fact that, however disastrously, he finally stood in Elysia; and so the physical presence of what - of who he saw there at the head of the great steps behind the curtains, before the throne and beside the onyx table with its huge crimson cushion and shewstone big as a boulder, was simply staggering.
`Henri!' Titus Crow's face had been drawn, haggard -but it lit up like the sun at the sight of The Searcher. 'Henri - you made it but of course I knew you would. You had to!'
`Titus!' de Marigny tried to say, except nothing came out. On his second attempt he managed a croak, but recognizable anyway. `Titus ...'
It shuddered out of him, that word, that name and in it was contained all the agony of his soul. He swayed, might have fallen. Crow started forward, paused, spoke quickly, forcefully: `Henri, I know how you feel. Like the greatest traitor who ever lived, like Judas himself. I know, because that's how I've been feeling. Forget it. You're no Judas. You're Elysia's greatest hero!'
`What?' de Marigny's brow furrowed; he knew he was hearing things.
`What?' Moreen was equally confused. `A hero?' But Exior K'mool only smiled.
`No time for long explanations, Henri, Moreen,' said Crow. 'You know .what's followed you, who's on his way here - to the Hall of Crystal and Pearl even now. Come up here, quickly! You too, Exior.'
They climbed the steps, de Marigny falteringly, assisted by Moreen and Exior. 'They say a picture's worth a thousand words,' said Crow. `So look at this - for I've lots to say to you and no time to say it all.'
He touched the great crystal and milky clouds at once parted.
They gazed upon Elysia. Upon an Elysia falling into ruinst
The drenched, leaden skies had been empty before, but now they were full of death. The Hounds of Tindalos were everywhere, chittering round and about the aerial palaces, the tall buildings, even the lower structures. They were like a cloud of lice around host beasts: the Beings at the head of that monstrous airborne procession. Cthulhu was there, no longer dreaming but awake, crimson-eyed, evil beyond imagination. Flanking him, on his right, YogSothoth seethed behind his shielding globes, unglimpsed except in the iridescent mucous froth which dripped from him like pus; and to Cthulhu's left, there strode the bloated figure of Ithaqua the Wind-Walker, snatched here in an instant from Borea; beast-god of the frozen winds that howl forever between the worlds. And these were but a few ...
They did not fly but seemed half-supported — suspended on the unbreakable strands of Atlach-Nacha's webs, which even now the spider-thing wove fast as the eye could follow across Elysia's drab skies. Yibb-Tstll was there, and BuggShash, both of them close behind their cousin and master Yog-Sothoth; and Tsathoggua the toad crept apace with Cthulhu's shadow. Hastur, eternal rival of the dread Lord of R'lyeh, kept his distance from the main body of the procession, but still he was present, equally keen for revenge. Dagon cruised amid the icebergs of the now melting Frozen Sea, shattering ice floes as he came, and with him Mother Hydra and certain chosen members of the Deep Ones.
Shoggoths surged across the earth like formless towers of filth, while beneath it ran the steaming tunnels of Shudde-M'ell and his burrowers. And all of them converging on the Icelands, closing with the great glacier which housed Kthanid's immemorial palace.
And wherever they moved, each and every one of them brought destruction: sky-islands plummeted and cities went up in gouts of fire; aerial roadways were sliced through, sent crashing, and once golden forests roared into infernos. The waters of a blue, tropical ocean turned black in moments, and mountains long quiescent cracked open and spewed fire, smoke and stinking tephra
`Hero?' said de Marigny dully, flinching from these scenes of destruction. 'I can write my name on ... on that, and you call me a hero?'
Crow grasped his arm, said: 'Let me show you something else, my friend.' Again he touched the shewstone, his hand erasing the scenes of destruction and replacing them.
In the miles-long corridor of clocks, the last of Elysia's exotically diverse peoples and denizens filed into the remaining handful of time-clocks, which then blinked out of existence on this plane. In the Vale of Dreams the last N'hlathi centipede crawled into his life-support canister, his own time-clock, and was gone from Elysia. With him, as with the r
est of his race, he carried life-sustaining — life-assuring seeds of the great poppy, to: sow in fresh, far distant fields. High over Elysia, where even now the Tind'losi Hounds streamed ravenously, the silver-sphere manse of Ardatha Ell — in which he had first come to Elysia — slowly faded to insubstantiality, seemed to disappear in drifting wraiths of coloured light. And in the Gardens of Nymarrah, there about the titan wine-glass shape of a Great Tree, a squadron of time-clocks hovered like bees, all perfectly synchronized. In another moment they, too, were gone — and the Great Tree with them. Only the mighty hole which an instant earlier had housed the Tree's taproot remained to show where he had stood.
`He would have been satisfied if we'd taken only his life-leaf,' said Titus Crow. 'Kthanid insisted we take the whole tree.'
`But . . . where to?' de Marigny's mind was still reeling.
`Watch!' said Crow. He put his shoulder to the crystal, and as the three got out of the way toppled it from the table-. It jarred, rang hollowly when it hit the floor, but it didn't break. Then it rolled ponderously across the floor of the dais, clanged down the steps and across the massively paved hall toward the several entranceways. There it finally came to rest, spun sluggishly for a moment and was still.
`Come on,' said Crow. He led the way down the steps to the time-clock. 'We're very nearly finished here,' he said, putting his hands on the clock's panelling. Then he smiled wryly, added, 'A million memories here, Henri.'
De Marigny couldn't believe it. He began to doubt Crow's sanity — maybe even his own. For in the midst of all this, Crow seemed completely calm, unpanicked. `You're thinking of using the time-clock?' The Searcher said. 'But its controls have failed, energy all drained off.'
And Crow's smile was as wide as de Marigny had ever seen it. Incredibly, he suddenly seemed younger than ever! `What, the old dock finished?' And slowly he shook his head. 'Oh, no, Henri. Even now he leeches warp-energy from Elysia's heart. See?' And sure enough, the familiar purple pulse was building in power, the enigmatic light from within streaming out as of old.
`But where can we go?' De Marigny grasped Crow's shoulders. 'Where? They followed me here — they can follow us anywhere!'
`They?' Crow's eyes narrowed. 'Ah, yes!'
It was then that the centuried odour of deep water hit them. That and the alien stench of things no ordered universe should ever contain. And into the vast hall, squeezing his bulk in under the arch of the main entranceway, came Cthulhu, the Lord of R'lyeh — now destroyer of Elysia. Behind him and from all quarters crowded the rest. And there across the floor of the Great Hall of Crystal and Pearl, four human beings gazed into the very eyes of hell itself.
The tableau held, for a moment. Then —
Cthulhu's mind reached out, spoke three words, and in so doing paid humankind its greatest ever tribute:
CROW! that awesome, threatening thought rumbled like thunder in their minds. AND DE MARIGNY!
The tide of uttermost horror swayed forward — and Titus Crow, a man, held up a hand to stop it. For one and all they remembered, respected him, even though they would now, in the next moment, destroy him.
'Cthulhu!' he called across the sweep of the floor, his voice strong, unwavering. 'You came for Kthanid and the Elder Council and found only me. But Kthanid left you a message. It is written in his great crystal there.' And he pointed.
As the nightmare horde turned to observe the new scene now framed in the shewstone, so Crow whispered to his friends: 'Now, into the clock!'
Moreen and Exior obeyed at once, but de Marigny must see this out. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Titus Crow, and:
MESSAGE? WHAT MESSAGE? Cthulhu gazed rapaciously into the sphere. I SEE ONLY... CHAOS!
`That's right!' .Crow yelled, and his laughter rolled out to fill the Hall of Crystal and Pearl. 'It's the legend you brought with you when first you came, Cthulhu — don't you remember? You spoke a word, a Name, and worlds burst into flame. The crazed children of Azathoth destroyed themselves at your command, to light your. coming. Isn't that how the story goes? And now you've used two more of these bereft nuclear beings to blast your path into Elysia. Aye, but there's one here who knows what you've done. One who doesn't fear you, who fears nothing. One who was satisfied simply to exist and serve, who now is satisfied to sacrifice himself in the name of Sanity! Now I speak a word, a Name ... Can you not guess it, Cthulhu?'
The Lord of R'lyeh's octopus eyes bulged hideously, focussed on Kthanid's crystal, where a seething holocaust raged. And so intense his gaze that the shewstone shattered, spilled cold white liquid fire across the paved floor. As if in answer to which -
The floor bucked, heaved - crashed upward and open! Elysia reeled!
NAME? WHAT NAME?
The hell-horde could not be contained; they surged forward.
Crow balanced himself on the tilting, grinding floor, shoved de Marigny toward the clock. And:
'Azathu!' he cried. 'Azathu, who has powered Elysia from the beginning - who was sane and sedated, kept that way by Kthanid - and who now takes his revenge, for his poor demented brothers' sake!'
NO! Cthulhu's mental croak of denial followed Crow even inside the time-clock. NO, NO, NO!
`Damn you, yes!' answered Titus Crow and de Marigny together. And together they piloted the clock a billion miles distant ...
The scanners showed the rest an area of space-time warped and torn beyond recognition. A supernova to end all supernovas, one whose energy could not be contained in this continuum, and so flowed through into another. It brought into being the mightiest black hole ever to exist, which itself swallowed up the nuclear holocaust that made it. All that had been Elysia -. and all it contained at the end - was sucked into the funnel of that hole and passed into the far, fabulous legend of The Beginning.
And as far as Crow and de Marigny had shifted the dock, still the waves of that massive disruption reached to them. The time-clock tumbled end over end in deepest night, slowly righted itself, warped back into normal space and time. Stars twinkled afar.
`What ... what the hell ... was that?' de Marigny finally found strength to ask.
Crow's voice was tiny as he answered. 'Creation, Henri. That was Creation ...'
Epilogue
After some little time, de Marigny said: 'Three questions, Titus - to which you'd better have the answers. Because if someone doesn't tell me the whys and wherefores of it, then I'll surely go out of my mind. I mean, I realize that I was used, that I was made a focus for Their attentions, some sort of decoy - and of course I knew that Cthulhu intended to take his revenge on Elysia, and that like me he therefore sought to discover its whereabouts - but how did he do it? How did he follow me through, him and all the rest? That's my first question.'
'Cthulhu knew all the angles,' Crow answered at once. 'I mean that literally, not in any sort of slang context. He had had billions of years to calculate the vectors. But it must be done in one fell swoop: all of the greater Beings of the Cthulhu Cycle brought through the gates at the same time.'
`Gates?'
'Yog-Sothoth's department,' said Crow with a nod. 'Yog-Sothoth knew the gates, he was the gates. The stars were coming right - made to come right by Cthulhu -when all restrictions would be lifted. Then for a period the Great Old Ones would be able to move at will through the space-time continuum, go wherever they wished to go. It was like that at the beginning - though by the time you have all your answers, "the beginning" as a phrase probably won't make a lot of sense any more. Didn't they come "seeping down from the stars ... not in the spaces we know but between them"? And don't we use our time-clocks to achieve the same sort of travel? Anyway, Yog-Sothoth, coexistent with all time and conterminous in all space, would be the guide, would show them the gates. First they must strike at Elysia, remove all opposition. But in fact Elysia would be the only real opposition. As for the rest ... a walkover.
'You were a decoy of a sort, yes. They knew you were coming through. It wasn't that you were cleverer than them, simply that in
the end you would have Elysia's assistance. In the end you would be directed. And so they focussed on you. Oh, if they could they would kill you en route, certainly, for you were a great danger to them. You must be, for why else would Kthanid want you in Elysia? They would kill you in Borea, in the dreamlands, in Theem'hdra, wherever - if they could. In which case Kthanid would have relied on Ardatha Ell. That was Ardatha's other reason for being in Lith: to act as the lure if you ... if you didn't make it. But the laws of probability said you would make it, and of course you did.
'So, when the stars came right - with Lith's termination when space-time was warped and the gates were opened ...'
Still de Marigny didn't understand. 'But they all came through together, physically en muse! Teleportation?'
'No,' Crow shook his leonine head, `though certainly you can be forgiven for that wrong conclusion. It looks like teleportation, but it's a world apart. Even Kthanid can't teleport, and neither can Ardatha Ell. Riding their Great Thoughts is about as close as they can come. Likewise Cthulhu, except he uses Nyarlathotep.'
De Marigny nodded. 'I see. They were all in telepathic contact with one another at the moment the barriers went down.'
'Of course. When Lith blew and warped space-time, Cthulhu guided the Great Old Ones along the Vectors and Yog-Sohoth was there as he is "everywhere" - to bring them through the gates. From there they could go anywhere they wanted to, but this was their main chance. You were going to Elysia. So they followed you.'
