Trapped though he was by fabulous and hippocephalic winged
nightmares that pressed around in great unholy circles, Randolph Carter
did not lose consciousness. Lofty and horrible those titan gargoyles towered
above him, while the slant-eyed merchant leaped down from his yak and stood
grinning before the captive. Then the man motioned Carter to mount one
of the repugnant Shantaks, helping him up as his judgement struggled with
his loathing. It was hard work ascending, for the Shantak-bird has scales
instead of feathers, and those scales are very slippery. Once he was seated,
the slant-eyed man hopped up behind him, leaving the lean yak to be led
away northward toward the ring of carven mountains by one of the incredible
bird colossi.
There now followed a hideous whirl through frigid space,
endlessly up and eastward toward the gaunt grey flanks of those impassable
mountains beyond which Leng was said to be. Far above the clouds they flew,
till at last there lay beneath them those fabled summits which the folk
of Inquanok have never seen, and which lie always in high vortices of gleaming
mist. Carter beheld
them very plainly as they passed below, and saw upon
their topmost peaks strange caves which made him think of those on Ngranek;
but he did not question his captor about these things when he noticed that
both the man and the horse-headed Shantak appeared oddly fearful of them,
hurrying past nervously and shewing great tension until they were left
far in the rear.
The Shantak now flew lower, revealing beneath the canopy
of cloud a grey barren plain whereon at great distances shone little feeble
fires. As they descended there appeared at intervals lone huts of granite
and bleak stone villages whose tiny windows glowed with pallid light. And
there came from those huts and villages a shrill droning of pipes and a
nauseous rattle of crotala
which proved at once that Inquanok's people are right
in their geographic rumours. For travellers have heard such sounds before,
and know that they float only from the cold desert plateau which healthy
folk never visit; that haunted place of evil and mystery which is Leng.
Around the feeble fires dark forms were dancing, and Carter
was curious as to what manner of beings they might be; for no healthy folk
have ever been to Leng, and the place is known only by its fires and stone
huts as seen from afar. Very slowly and awkwardly did those forms leap,
and with an insane twisting and bending not good to behold; so that Carter
did not wonder at the
monstrous evil imputed to them by vague legend, or the
fear in which all dreamland holds their abhorrent frozen plateau. As the
Shantak flew lower, the repulsiveness of the dancers became tinged with
a certain hellish familiarity; and the prisoner kept straining his eyes
and racking his memory for clues to where he had seen such creatures before.
They leaped as though they had hooves instead of feet,
and seemed to wear a sort of wig or headpiece with small horns. Of other
clothing they had none, but most of them were quite furry. Behind they
had dwarfish tails, and when they glanced upward he saw the excessive width
of their mouths. Then he knew what they were, and that they did not wear
any wigs or headpieces after
all. For the cryptic folk of Leng were of one race with
the uncomfortable merchants of the black galleys that traded rubies at
Dylath-Leen; those not quite human merchants who are the slaves of the
monstrous moon-things! They were indeed the same dark folk who had shanghaied
Carter on their noisome galley so long ago, and whose kith he had seen
driven in herds about the unclean wharves of that accursed lunar city,
with the leaner ones toiling and the fatter ones taken away in crates for
other needs of their polypous and amorphous masters. Now he saw where such
ambiguous creatures came from, and shuddered at the thought that Leng must
be known to these formless abominations from the moon.
But the Shantak flew on past the fires and the stone huts
and the less than human dancers, and soared over sterile hills of grey
granite and dim wastes of rock and ice and snow. Day came, and the phosphorescence
of low clouds gave place to the misty twilight of that northern world,
and still the vile bird winged meaningly through the cold and silence.
At times the slant-eyed man
talked with his steed in a hateful and guttural language,
and the Shantak would answer with tittering tones that rasped like the
scratching of ground glass. AlI this while the land was getting higher,
and finally they came to a wind-swept table-land which seemed the very
roof of a blasted and tenantless world. There, all alone in the hush and
the dusk and the cold, rose the uncouth
stones of a squat windowless building, around which a
circle of crude monoliths stood. In all this arrangement there was nothing
human, and Carter surmised from old tales that he was indeed come to that
most dreadful and legendary of all places, the remote and prehistoric monastery
wherein dwells uncompanioned the High-Priest Not To Be Described, which
wears a yellow
silken mask over its face and prays to the Other Gods
and their crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.
The loathsome bird now settled to the ground, and the
slant-eyed man hopped down and helped his captive alight. Of the purpose
of his seizure Carter now felt very sure; for clearly the slant-eyed merchant
was an agent of the darker powers, eager to drag before his masters a mortal
whose presumption had aimed at the finding of unknown Kadath and the saying
of a prayer before
the faces of the Great Ones in their onyx castle. It
seemed likely that this merchant had caused his former capture by the slaves
of the moon-things in Dylath-Leen, and that he now meant to do what the
rescuing cats had baffled; taking the victim to some dread rendezvous with
monstrous Nyarlathotep and telling with what boldness the seeking of unknown
Kadath had been tried.
Leng and the cold waste north of Inquanok must be close
to the Other Gods, and there the passes to Kadath are well guarded.
The slant-eyed man was small, but the great hippocephalic
bird was there to see he was obeyed; so Carter followed where he led, and
passed within the circle of standing rocks and into the low arched doorway
of that windowless stone monastery. There were no lights inside, but the
evil merchant lit a small clay lamp bearing morbid bas-reliefs and prodded
his prisoner on through
mazes of narrow winding corridors. On the walls of the
corridors were printed frightful scenes older than history, and in a style
unknown to the archaeologists of earth. After countless aeons their pigments
were brilliant still, for the cold and dryness of hideous Leng keep alive
many primal things. Carter saw them fleetingly in the rays of that dim
and moving lamp, and shuddered at the tale they told.
Through those archaic frescoes Leng's annals stalked;
and the horned, hooved, and wide-mouthed almost-humans danced evilly amidst
forgotten cities. There were scenes of old wars, wherein Leng's almost-humans
fought with the bloated purple spiders of the neighbouring vales; and there
were scenes also of the coming of the black galleys from the moon, and
of the submission of Leng's people to the polypous and amorphous blasphemies
that hopped and floundered and wriggled out of them. Those slippery greyish-white
blasphemies they worshipped as gods, nor ever complained when scores of
their best and fatted males were taken away in the black galleys. The monstrous
moon-beasts made their camp on a jagged isle in the sea, and Carter could
tell from the frescoes that this was none other than the lone nameless
rock he had seen when sailing to Inquanok; that grey accursed rock which
Inquanok's seamen shun, and from which vile howlings reverberate all through
the night.
And in those frescoes was shewn the great seaport and
capital of the almost-humans; proud and pillared betwixt the cliffs and
the basalt wharves, and wondrous with high fanes and carven places. Great
gardens and columned streets led from the cliffs and from each of the six
sphinx-crowned gates to a vast central plaza, and in that plaza was a pair
of winged colossal lions guarding the top of a subterrene staircase. Again
and again were those huge winged lions shewn, their mighty flanks of diarite
glistening in the grey twilight of the day and the cloudy phosphorescence
of the night. And as Carter stumbled past their frequent and repeated pictures
it came to him at last what indeed they were, and what city it was that
the almost-humans had ruled so anciently before the coming of the black
galleys. There could be no mistake, for the legends of dreamland are generous
and profuse. Indubitably that primal city was no less a place than storied
Sarkomand, whose ruins had bleached for a million years before the first
true human saw the light, and whose twin titan lions guard eternally the
steps that lead down from dreamland to the Great
Abyss.
Other views shewed the gaunt grey peaks dividing Leng
from Inquanok, and the monstrous Shantak-birds that build nests on the
ledges half way up. And they shewed likewise the curious caves near the
very topmost pinnacles, and how even the boldest of the Shantaks fly screaming
away from them. Carter had seen those caves when he passed over them, and
had noticed their
likeness to the caves on Ngranek. Now he knew that the
likeness was more than a chance one, for in these pictures were shewn their
fearsome denizens; and those bat-wings, curving horns, barbed tails, prehensile
paws and rubbery bodies were not strange to him. He had met those silent,
flitting and clutching creatures before; those mindless guardians of the
Great Abyss whom
even the Great Ones fear, and who own not Nyarlathotep
but hoary Nodens as their lord. For they were the dreaded night-gaunts,
who never laugh or smile because they have no faces, and who flop unendingly
in the dark betwixt the Vale of Pnath and the passes to the outer world.
The slant-eyed merchant had now prodded Carter into a
great domed space whose walls were carved in shocking bas-reliefs, and
whose centre held a gaping circular pit surrounded by six malignly stained
stone altars in a ring. There was no light in this vast evil-smelling crypt,
and the small lamp of the sinister merchant shone so feebly that one could
grasp details only little by little. At the farther end was a high
stone dais reached by five steps; and there on a golden throne sat a lumpish
figure robed in yellow silk figured with red and having a yellow silken
mask over its face. To this being the slant-eyed man made certain signs
with his hands, and the lurker in the dark replied by raising a disgustingly
carven flute of ivory in silk-covered paws and blowing certain
loathsome sounds from beneath its flowing yellow mask.
This colloquy went on for some time, and to Carter there was something
sickeningly familiar in the sound of that flute and the stench of the malodorous
place. It made him think of a frightful red-litten city and of the revolting
procession that once filed through it; of that, and of an awful climb through
lunar countryside
beyond, before the rescuing rush of earth's friendly
cats. He knew that the creature on the dais was without doubt the High-Priest
Not To Be Described, of which legend whispers such fiendish and abnormal
possibilities, but he feared to think just what that abhorred High-Priest
might be.
Then the figured silk slipped a trifle from one of the
greyish-white paws, and Carter knew what the noisome High-Priest was. And
in that hideous second, stark fear drove him to something his reason would
never have dared to attempt, for in all his shaken consciousness there
was room only for one frantic will to escape from what squatted on that
golden throne. He knew that
hopeless labyrinths of stone lay betwixt him and the
cold table-land outside, and that even on that table-land the noxious Shantek
still waited; yet in spite of all this there was in his mind only the instant
need to get away from that wriggling, silk-robed monstrosity.
The slant-eyed man had set the curious lamp upon one of
the high and wickedly stained altar-stones by the pit, and had moved forward
somewhat to talk to the High-Priest with his hands. Carter, hitherto wholly
passive, now gave that man a terrific push with all the wild strength of
fear, so that the victim toppled at once into that gaping well which rumour
holds to reach down to the hellish Vaults of Zin where Gugs hunt ghasts
in the dark. In almost the same second he seized the lamp from the altar
and darted out into the frescoed labyrinths, racing this way and that as
chance determined and trying not to think of the stealthy padding of shapeless
paws on the stones behind him, or of the silent wrigglings and crawlings
which must be going on back there in lightless corridors.
After a few moments he regretted his thoughtless haste,
and wished he had tried to follow backward the frescoes he had passed on
the way in. True, they were so confused and duplicated that they could
not have done him much good, but he wished none the less he had made the
attempt. Those he now saw were even more horrible than those he had seen
then, and he knew he was not in the corridors leading outside. In time
he became quite sure he was not followed, and slackened his pace somewhat;
but scarce had he breathed in half relief when a new peril beset him. His
lamp was waning, and he would soon be in pitch blackness with no means
of sight or guidance.
When the light was all gone he groped slowly in the dark,
and prayed to the Great Ones for such help as they might afford. At times
he felt the stone floor sloping up or down, and once he stumbled over a
step for which no reason seemed to exist. The farther he went the damper
it seemed to be, and when he was able to feel a junction or the mouth of
a side passage he always chose
the way which sloped downward the least. He believed,
though, that his general course was down; and the vault-like smell and
incrustations on the greasy walls and floor alike warned him he was burrowing
deep in Leng's unwholesome table-land. But there was not any warning of
the thing which came at last; only the thing itself with its terror and
shock and breath-taking chaos. One moment he was groping slowly over
the slippery floor of an almost level place, and the next he was shooting
dizzily downward in the dark through a burrow which must have been well-nigh
vertical.
Of the length of that hideous sliding he could never be
sure, but it seemed to take hours of delirious nausea and ecstatic frenzy.
Then he realized he was still, with the phosphorescent clouds of a northern
night shining sickly above him. All around were crumbling walls and broken
columns, and the pavement on which he lay was pierced by straggling grass
and wrenched asunder by
frequent shrubs and roots. Behind him a basalt cliff
rose topless and perpendicular; its dark side sculptured into repellent
scenes, and pierced by an arched and carven entrance to the inner blacknesses
out of which he had come. Ahead stretched double rows of pillars, and the
fragments and pedestals of pillars, that spoke of a broad and bygone street;
and from the urns and basins along the way he knew it had been a great
street of gardens. Far off at its end the pillars spread to mark a vast
round plaza, and in that open circle there loomed gigantic under the lurid
night clouds a pair of monstrous things. Huge winged lions of diarite they
were, with blackness and shadow between them. Full twenty feet they reared
their grotesque and unbroken heads, and
snarled derisive on the ruins around them. And Carter
knew right well what they must be, for legend tells of only one such twain.
They were the changeless guardians of the Great Abyss, and these dark ruins
were in truth primordial Sarkomand.
Carter's first act was to close and barricade the archway
in the cliff with fallen blocks and odd debris that lay around. He wished
no follower from Leng's hateful monastery, for along the way ahead would
lurk enough of other dangers. Of how to get from Sarkomand to the peopled
parts of dreamland he knew nothing at all; nor could he gain much by descending
to the grottoes of
the ghouls, since he knew they were no better informed
than he. The three ghouls which had helped him through the city of Gugs
to the outer world had not known how to reach Sarkomand in their journey
back, but had planned to ask old traders in Dylath-Leen. He did not like
to think of going again to the subterrene world of Gugs and risking once
more that hellish tower of
Koth with its Cyclopean steps leading to the enchanted
wood, yet he felt he might have to try this course if all else failed.
Over Leng's plateau past the lone monastery he dared not go unaided; for
the High-Priest's emissaries must be many, while at the journey's end there
would no doubt be the Shantaks and perhaps other things to deal with. If
he could get a boat he might sail back
to Inquanok past the jagged and hideous rock in the sea,
for the primal frescoes in the monastery labyrinth had shewn that this
frightful place lies not far from Sarkomand's basalt quays. But to find
a boat in this aeon-deserted city was no probable thing, and it did not
appear likely that he could ever make one.
Such were the thoughts of Randolph Carter when a new impression
began beating upon his mind. All this while there had stretched before
him the great corpse-like width of fabled Sarkomand with its black broken
pillars and crumbling sphinx-crowned gates and titan stones and monstrous
winged lions against the sickly glow of those luminous night clouds. Now
he saw far ahead
and on the right a glow that no clouds could account
for, and knew he was not alone in the silence of that dead city. The glow
rose and fell fitfully, flickering with a greenish tinge which did not
reassure the watcher. And when he crept closer, down the littered street
and through some narrow gaps between tumbled walls, he perceived that it
was a campfire near the wharves with
many vague forms clustered darkly around it; and a lethal
odour hanging heavily over all. Beyond was the oily lapping of the harbour
water with a great ship riding at anchor, and Carter paused in stark terror
when he saw that the ship was indeed one of the dreaded black galleys from
the moon.
Then, just as he was about to creep back from that detestable
flame, he saw a stirring among the vague dark forms and heard a peculiar
and unmistakable sound. It was the frightened meeping of a ghoul, and in
a moment it had swelled to a veritable chorus of anguish. Secure as he
was in the shadow of monstrous ruins, Carter allowed his curiosity to conquer
his fear, and crept
forward again instead of retreating. Once in crossing
an open street he wriggled worm-like on his stomach, and in another place
he had to rise to his feet to avoid making a noise among heaps of fallen
marble. But always he succeeded in avoiding discovery, so that in a short
time he had found a spot behind a titan pillar where he could watch the
whole green-litten scene of action. There around a hideous fire fed
by the obnoxious stems of lunar fungi, there squatted a stinking circle
of the toadlike moonbeasts and their almost-human slaves. Some of these
slaves were heating curious iron spears in the leaping flames, and at intervals
applying their white-hot points to three tightly trussed prisoners that
lay writhing before the leaders of the party. From the motions of their
tentacles Carter could see that the blunt-snouted moonbeasts were enjoying
the spectacle hugely, and vast was his horror when he suddenly recognised
the frantic meeping and knew that the tortured ghouls were none other than
the faithful trio which had guided him safely from the abyss, and had thereafter
set out from the enchanted wood to find Sarkomand and the gate to their
native deeps.
The number of malodorous moonbeasts about that greenish
fire was very great, and Carter saw that he could do nothing now to save
his former allies. Of how the ghouls had been captured he could not guess;
but fancied that the grey toadlike blasphemies had heard them inquire in
Dylath-Leen concerning the way to Sarkomand and had not wished them to
approach so closely the
hateful plateau of Leng and the High-Priest Not To Be
Described. For a moment he pondered on what he ought to do, and recalled
how near he was to the gate of the ghouls' black kingdom. Clearly it was
wisest to creep east to the plaza of twin lions and descend at once to
the gulf, where assuredly he would meet no horrors worse than those above,
and where he might soon find
ghouls eager to rescue their brethren and perhaps to
wipe out the moonbeasts from the black galley. It occurred to him that
the portal, like other gates to the abyss, might be guarded by flocks of
night-gaunts; but he did not fear these faceless creatures now. He had
learned that they are bound by solemn treaties with the ghouls, and the
ghoul which was Pickman had taught him how
to glibber a password they understood.
So Carter began another silent crawl through the ruins,
edging slowly toward the great central plaza and the winged lions. It was
ticklish work, but the moonbeasts were pleasantly busy and did not hear
the slight noises which he twice made by accident among the scattered stones.
At last he reached the open space and picked his way among the stunned
trees and vines that had
grown up therein. The gigantic lions loomed terrible
above him in the sickly glow of the phosphorescent night clouds, but he
manfully persisted toward them and presently crept round to their faces,
knowing it was on that side he would find the mighty darkness which they
guard. Ten feet apart crouched the mocking-faced beasts of diarite, brooding
on cyclopean pedestals whose
sides were chiselled in fearsome bas-reliefs. Betwixt
them was a tiled court with a central space which had once been railed
with balusters of onyx. Midway in this space a black well opened, and Carter
soon saw that he had indeed reached the yawning gulf whose crusted and
mouldy stone steps lead down to the crypts of nightmare.
Terrible is the memory of that dark descent in which hours
wore themselves away whilst Carter wound sightlessly round and round down
a fathomless spiral of steep and slippery stairs. So worn and narrow were
the steps, and so greasy with the ooze of inner earth, that the climber
never quite knew when to expect a breathless fall and hurtling down to
the ultimate pits; and he was
likewise uncertain just when or how the guardian night-gaunts
would suddenly pounce upon him, if indeed there were any stationed in this
primeval passage. All about him was a stifling odour of nether gulfs, and
he felt that the air of these choking depths was not made for mankind.
In time he became very numb and somnolent, moving more from automatic impulse
than from
reasoned will; nor did he realize any change when he
stopped moving altogether as something quietly seized him from behind.
He was flying very rapidly through the air before a malevolent tickling
told him that the rubbery night-gaunts had performed their duty.
Awaked to the fact that he was in the cold, damp clutch
of the faceless flutterers, Carter remembered the password of the ghouls
and glibbered it as loudly as he could amidst the wind and chaos of flight.
Mindless though night-gaunts are said to be, the effect was instantaneous;
for all tickling stopped at once, and the creatures hastened to shift their
captive to a more comfortable position. Thus encouraged Carter ventured
some explanations; telling of the seizure and torture of three ghouls by
the moonbeasts, and of the need of assembling a party to rescue them. The
night-gaunts, though inarticulate, seemed to understand what was said;
and shewed greater haste and purpose in their flight. Suddenly the dense
blackness gave place to the grey twilight of inner earth, and there opened
up ahead one of those flat sterile plains on which ghouls love to squat
and gnaw. Scattered tombstones and osseous fragments told of the denizens
of that place; and as Carter gave a loud meep of urgent summons, a score
of burrows emptied forth their leathery, dog-like tenants. The night-gaunts
now flew low and set their passenger upon his feet, afterward withdrawing
a little and forming a hunched semicircle on the ground while the ghouls
greeted the newcomer.
Carter glibbered his message rapidly and explicitly to
the grotesque company, and four of them at once departed through different
burrows to spread the news to others and gather such troops as might be
available for a rescue. After a long wait a ghoul of some importance appeared,
and made significant signs to the night-gaunts, causing two of the latter
to fly off into the dark.
Thereafter there were constant accessions to the hunched
flock of night-gaunts on the plain, till at length the slimy soil was fairly
black with them. Meanwhile fresh ghouls crawled out of the burrows one
by one, all glibbering excitedly and forming in crude battle array not
far from the huddled night-gaunts. In time there appeared that proud and
influential ghoul which was once the artist Richard Pickman of Boston,
and to him Carter glibbered a very full account of what had occurred. The
erstwhile Pickman, pleased to greet his ancient friend again, seemed very
much impressed, and held a conference with other chiefs a little apart
from the growing throng.
Finally, after scanning the ranks with care, the assembled
chiefs all meeped in unison and began glibbering orders to the crowds of
ghouls and night-gaunts. A large detachment of the horned flyers vanished
at once, while the rest grouped themselves two by two on their knees with
extended forelegs, awaiting the approach of the ghouls one by one. As each
ghoul reached the pair of night-gaunts to which he was assigned, he was
taken up and borne away into the blackness; till at last the whole throng
had vanished save for Carter, Pickman, and the other chiefs, and a few
pairs of night-gaunts. Pickman explained that night-gaunts are the advance
guard and battle steeds of the ghouls, and that the army was issuing forth
to Sarkomand to deal with the moonbeasts. Then Carter and the ghoulish
chiefs approached the waiting bearers and were taken up by the damp, slippery
paws. Another moment and all were whirling in wind and darkness; endlessly
up, up, up to the gate of the winged and the special ruins of primal Sarkomand.
When, after a great interval, Carter saw again the sickly
light of Sarkomand's nocturnal sky, it was to behold the great central
plaza swarming with militant ghouls and night-gaunts. Day, he felt sure,
must be almost due; but so strong was the army that no surprise of the
enemy would be needed. The greenish flare near the wharves still glimmered
faintly, though the absence of
ghoulish meeping shewed that the torture of the prisoners
was over for the nonce. Softly glibbering directions to their steeds and
to the flock of riderless night-gaunts ahead, the ghouls presently rose
in wide whirring columns and swept on over the bleak ruins toward the evil
flame. Carter was now beside Pickman in the front rank of ghouls, and saw
as they approached the noisome
camp that the moonbeasts were totally unprepared. The
three prisoners lay bound and inert beside the fire, while their toadlike
captors slumped drowsily about in no certain order. The almost-human slaves
were asleep, even the sentinels shirking a duty which in this realm must
have seemed to them merely perfunctory.
The final swoop of the night-gaunts and mounted ghouls
was very sudden, each of the greyish toadlike blasphemies and their almost-human
slaves being seized by a group of night-gaunts before a sound was made.
The moonbeasts, of course, were voiceless; and even the slaves had little
chance to scream before rubbery paws choked them into silence. Horrible
were the writhings of
those great jellyfish abnormalities as the sardonic night-gaunts
clutched them, but nothing availed against the strength of those black
prehensile talons. When a moonbeast writhed too violently, a night-gaunt
would seize and pull its quivering pink tentacles; which seemed to hurt
so much that the victim would cease its struggles. Carter expected to see
much slaughter, but found that
the ghouls were far subtler in their plans. They glibbered
certain simple orders to the night-gaunts which held the captives, trusting
the rest to instinct; and soon the hapless creatures were borne silently
away into the Great Abyss, to be distributed impartially amongst the Dholes,
Gugs, ghasts and other dwellers in darkness whose modes of nourishment
are not painless to their
chosen victims. Meanwhile the three bound ghouls had
been released and consoled by their conquering kinsfolk, whilst various
parties searched the neighborhood for possible remaining moonbeasts, and
boarded the evil-smelling black galley at the wharf to make sure that nothing
had escaped the general defeat. Surely enough, the capture had been thorough,
for not a sign of further life could the victors detect. Carter, anxious
to preserve a means of access to the rest of dreamland, urged them not
to sink the anchored galley; and this request was freely granted out of
gratitude for his act in reporting the plight of the captured trio. On
the ship were found some very curious objects and decorations, some of
which Carter cast at once into the sea.
Ghouls and night-gaunts now formed themselves in separate
groups, the former questioning their rescued fellow anent past happenings.
It appeared that the three had followed Carter's directions and proceeded
from the enchanted wood to Dylath-Leen by way of Nir and the Skin, stealing
human clothes at a lonely farmhouse and loping as closely as possible in
the fashion of a man's walk. In Dylath-Leen's taverns their grotesque ways
and faces had aroused much comment; but they had persisted in asking the
way to Sarkomand until at last an old traveller was able to tell them.
Then they knew that only a ship for Lelag-Leng would serve their purpose,
and prepared to wait patiently for such a vessel.
But evil spies had doubtless reported much; for shortly
a black galley put into port, and the wide-mouthed ruby merchants invited
the ghouls to drink with them in a tavern. Wine was produced from one of
those sinister bottles grotesquely carven from a single ruby, and after
that the ghouls found themselves prisoners on the black galley as Carter
had found himself. This time, however, the unseen rowers steered not for
the moon but for antique Sarkomand; bent evidently on taking their captives
before the High-Priest Not To Be Described. They had touched at the jagged
rock in the northern sea which Inquanok's mariners shun, and the ghouls
had there seen for the first time the red masters of the ship; being sickened
despite their own callousness by such extremes of malign shapelessness
and fearsome odour. There, too, were witnessed the nameless pastimes of
the toadlike resident garrison-such pastimes as give rise to the night-howlings
which men fear. After that had come the landing at ruined Sarkomand and
the beginning of the tortures, whose continuance the present rescue had
prevented.
Future plans were next discussed, the three rescued ghouls
suggesting a raid on the jagged rock and the extermination of the toadlike
garrison there. To this, however, the night-gaunts objected; since the
prospect of flying over water did not please them. Most of the ghouls favoured
the design, but were at a loss how to follow it without the help of the
winged night-gaunts.
Thereupon Carter, seeing that they could not navigate
the anchored galley, offered to teach them the use of the great banks of
oars; to which proposal they eagerly assented. Grey day had now come, and
under that leaden northern sky a picked detachment of ghouls filed into
the noisome ship and took their seats on the rowers' benches. Carter found
them fairly apt at learning, and before night had risked several experimental
trips around the harbour. Not till three days later, however, did he deem
it safe to attempt the voyage of conquest. Then, the rowers trained and
the night-gaunts safely stowed in the forecastle, the party set sail at
last; Pickman and the other chiefs gathering on deck and discussing models
of approach and procedure.
On the very first night the howlings from the rock were
heard. Such was their timbre that all the galley's crew shook visibly;
but most of all trembled the three rescued ghouls who knew precisely what
those howlings meant. It was not thought best to attempt an attack by night,
so the ship lay to under the phosphorescent clouds to wait for the dawn
of a greyish day. when the light
was ample and the howlings still the rowers resumed their
strokes, and the galley drew closer and closer to that jagged rock whose
granite pinnacles clawed fantastically at the dull sky. The sides of the
rock were very steep; but on ledges here and there could be seen the bulging
walls of queer windowless dwellings, and the low railings guarding travelled
highroads. No ship of men
had ever come so near the place, or at least, had never
come so near and departed again; but Carter and the ghouls were void of
fear and kept inflexibly on, rounding the eastern face of the rock and
seeking the wharves which the rescued trio described as being on the southern
side within a harbour formed of steep headlands.
The headlands were prolongations of the island proper,
and came so closely together that only one ship at a time might pass between
them. There seemed to be no watchers on the outside, so the galley was
steered boldly through the flume-like strait and into the stagnant putrid
harbour beyond. Here, however, all was bustle and activity; with several
ships lying at anchor along a
forbidding stone quay, and scores of almost-human slaves
and moonbeasts by the waterfront handling crates and boxes or driving nameless
and fabulous horrors hitched to lumbering lorries. There was a small stone
town hewn out of the vertical cliff above the wharves, with the start of
a winding road that spiralled out of sight toward higher ledges of the
rock. Of what lay inside
that prodigious peak of granite none might say, but the
things one saw on the outside were far from encouraging.
At sight of the incoming galley the crowds on the wharves
displayed much eagerness; those with eyes staring intently, and those without
eyes wriggling their pink tentacles expectantly. They did not, of course,
realize that the black ship had changed hands; for ghouls look much like
the horned and hooved almost-humans, and the night-gaunts were all out
of sight below. By this time
the leaders had fully formed a plan; which was to loose
the night-gaunts as soon as the wharf was touched, and then to sail directly
away, leaving matters wholly to the instincts of those almost-mindless
creatures. Marooned on the rock, the horned flyers would first of all seize
whatever living things they found there, and afterward, quite helpless
to think except in terms of the
homing instinct, would forget their fears of water and
fly swiftly back to the abyss; bearing their noisome prey to appropriate
destinations in the dark, from which not much would emerge alive.
The ghoul that was Pickman now went below and gave the
night-gaunts their simple instructions, while the ship drew very near to
the ominous and malodorous wharves. Presently a fresh stir rose along the
waterfront, and Carter saw that the motions of the galley had begun to
excite suspicion. Evidently the steersman was not making for the right
dock, and probably the watchers had noticed the difference between the
hideous ghouls and the almost-human slaves whose places they were taking.
Some silent alarm must have been given, for almost at once a horde of the
mephitic moonbeasts began to pour from the little black doorways of the
windowless houses and down the winding road at the right. A rain of curious
javelins struck the galley as the prow hit the wharf felling two ghouls
and slightly wounding another; but at this point all the hatches were thrown
open to emit a black cloud of whirring night-gaunts which swarmed over
the town like a flock of horned and cyclopean bats.
The jellyish moonbeasts had procured a great pole and
were trying to push off the invading ship, but when the night-gaunts struck
them they thought of such things no more. It was a very terrible spectacle
to see those faceless and rubbery ticklers at their pastime, and tremendously
impressive to watch the dense cloud of them spreading through the town
and up the winding
roadway to the reaches above. Sometimes a group of the
black flutterers would drop a toadlike prisoner from aloft by mistake,
and the manner in which the victim would burst was highly offensive to
the sight and smell. When the last of the night-gaunts had left the galley
the ghoulish leaders glibbered an order of withdrawal, and the rowers pulled
quietly out of the harbour between the grey headlands while still the town
was a chaos of battle and conquest.
The Pickman ghoul allowed several hours for the night-gaunts
to make up their rudimentary minds and overcome their fear of flying over
the sea, and kept the galley standing about a mile off the jagged rock
while he waited, and dressed the wounds of the injured men. Night fell,
and the grey twilight gave place to the sickly phosphorescence of low clouds,
and all the while the
leaders watched the high peaks of that accursed rock
for signs of the night-gaunts' flight. Toward morning a black speck was
seen hovering timidly over the top-most pinnacle, and shortly afterward
the speck had become a swarm. Just before daybreak the swarm seemed to
scatter, and within a quarter of an hour it had vanished wholly in the
distance toward the northeast. Once or twice something seemed to fall from
the thing swarm into the sea; but Carter did not worry, since he knew from
observation that the toadlike moonbeasts cannot swim. At length, when the
ghouls were satisfied that all the night-gaunts had left for Sarkomand
and the Great Abyss with their doomed burdens, the galley put back into
the harbour betwixt the grey headlands; and all the hideous company landed
and roamed curiously over the denuded rock with its towers and eyries and
fortresses chiselled from the solid stone.
Frightful were the secrets uncovered in those evil and
windowless crypts; for the remnants of unfinished pastimes were many, and
in various stages of departure from their primal state. Carter put out
of the way certain things which were after a fashion alive, and fled precipitately
from a few other things about which he could not be very positive. The
stench-filled houses were
furnished mostly with grotesque stools and benches carven
from moon-trees, and were painted inside with nameless and frantic designs.
Countless weapons, implements, and ornaments lay about, including some
large idols of solid ruby depicting singular beings not found on the earth.
These latter did not, despite their material, invite either appropriation
or long inspection; and
Carter took the trouble to hammer five of them into very
small pieces. The scattered spears and javelins he collected, and with
Pickman's approval distributed among the ghouls. Such devices were new
to the doglike lopers, but their relative simplicity made them easy to
master after a few concise hints.
The upper parts of the rock held more temples than private
homes, and in numerous hewn chambers were found terrible carven altars
and doubtfully stained fonts and shrines for the worship of things more
monstrous than the wild gods atop Kadath. From the rear of one great temple
stretched a low black passage which Carter followed far into the rock with
a torch till he came to a lightless domed hall of vast proportions, whose
vaultings were covered with demoniac carvings and in whose centre yawned
a foul and bottomless well like that in the hideous monastery of Leng where
broods alone the High-Priest Not To Be Described. On the distant shadowy
side, beyond the noisome well, he thought he discerned a small door of
strangely wrought bronze; but for some reason he felt an unaccountable
dread of opening it or even approaching it, and hastened back through the
cavern to his unlovely allies as they shambled about with an ease and abandon
he could scarcely feel. The ghouls had observed the unfinished pastimes
of the moonbeasts, and had profited in their fashion. They had also found
a hogshead of potent moon-wine, and were rolling it down to the wharves
for removal and later use in diplomatic dealings, though the rescued trio,
remembering its effect on them in Dylath-Leen, had warned their company
to taste none of it. Of rubies from lunar mines there was a great store,
both rough and polished, in one of the vaults near the water; but when
the ghouls found they were not good to eat they lost all interest in them.
Carter did not try to carry any away, since he knew too much about those
which had mined them.
Suddenly there came an excited meeping from the sentries
on the wharves, and all the loathsome foragers turned from their tasks
to stare seaward and cluster round the waterfront. Betwixt the grey headlands
a fresh black galley was rapidly advancing, and it would be but a moment
before the almost-humans on deck would perceive the invasion of the town
and give the alarm to the monstrous things below. Fortunately the ghouls
still bore the spears and javelins which Carter had distributed amongst
them; and at his command, sustained by the being that was Pickman, they
now formed a line of battle and prepared to prevent the landing of the
ship. Presently a burst of excitement on the galley told of the crew's
discovery of the changed state of things, and the instant stoppage of the
vessel proved that the superior numbers of the ghouls had been noted and
taken into account. After a moment of hesitation the new comers silently
turned and passed out between the headlands again, but not for an instant
did the ghouls imagine that the conflict was averted. Either the dark ship
would seek reinforcements or the crew would try to land elsewhere on the
island; hence a party of scouts was at once sent up toward the pinnacle
to see what the enemy's course would be.
In a very few minutes the ghoul returned breathless to
say that the moonbeasts and almost-humans were landing on the outside of
the more easterly of the rugged grey headlands, and ascending by hidden
paths and ledges which a goat could scarcely tread in safety. Almost immediately
afterward the galley was sighted again through the flume-like strait, but
only for a second. Then a few moments later, a second messenger panted
down from aloft to say that another party was landing on the other headland;
both being much more numerous than the size of the galley would seem to
allow for. The ship itself, moving slowly with only one sparsely manned
tier of oars, soon hove in sight betwixt the cliffs, and lay to in the
foetid harbour as if to watch the coming fray and stand by for any possible
use.
By this time Carter and Pickman had divided the ghouls
into three parties, one to meet each of the two invading columns and one
to remain in the town. The first two at once scrambled up the rocks in
their respective directions, while the third was subdivided into a land
party and a sea party. The sea party, commanded by Carter, boarded the
anchored galley and rowed out to meet
the under-manned galley of the newcomers; whereat the
latter retreated through the strait to the open sea. Carter did not at
once pursue it, for he knew he might be needed more acutely near the town.
Meanwhile the frightful detachments of the moonbeasts
and almost-humans had lumbered up to the top of the headlands and were
shockingly silhouetted on either side against the grey twilight sky. The
thin hellish flutes of the invaders had now begun to whine, and the general
effect of those hybrid, half-amorphous processions was as nauseating as
the actual odour given off by the toadlike lunar blasphemies. Then the
two parties of the ghouls swarmed into sight and joined the silhouetted
panorama. Javelins began to fly from both sides, and the swelling meeps
of the ghouls and the bestial howls of the almost-humans gradually joined
the hellish whine of the flutes to form a frantick and indescribable chaos
of daemon cacophony. Now and then bodies fell from the narrow ridges of
the headlands into the sea outside or the harbour inside, in the latter
case being sucked quickly under by certain submarine lurkers whose presence
was indicated only by prodigious bubbles.
For half an hour this dual battle raged in the sky, till
upon the west cliff the invaders were completely annihilated. On the east
cliff, however, where the leader of the moonbeast party appeared to be
present, the ghouls had not fared so well; and were slowly retreating to
the slopes of the pinnacle proper. Pickman had quickly ordered reinforcements
for this front from the party in the town, and these had helped greatly
in the earlier stages of the combat. Then, when the western battle was
over, the victorious survivors hastened across to the aid of their hard-pressed
fellows; turning the tide and forcing the invaders back again along the
narrow ridge of the headland. The almost-humans were by this time all slain,
but the last of the toadlike horrors fought desperately with the great
spears clutched in their powerful and disgusting paws. The time for javelins
was now nearly past, and the fight became a hand-to-hand contest of what
few spearmen could meet upon that narrow ridge.
As fury and recklessness increased, the number falling
into the sea became very great. Those striking the harbour met nameless
extinction from the unseen bubblers, but of those striking the open sea
some were able to swim to the foot of the cliffs and land on tidal rocks,
while the hovering galley of the enemy rescued several moonbeasts. The
cliffs were unscalable except where the monsters had debarked, so that
none of the ghouls on the rocks could rejoin their battle-line. Some were
killed by javelins from the hostile galley or from the moonbeasts above,
but a few survived to be rescued. When the security of the land parties
seemed assured, Carter's galley sallied forth between the headlands and
drove the hostile ship far out to sea; pausing to rescue such ghouls as
were on the rocks or still swimming in the ocean. Several moonbeasts washed
on rocks or reefs were speedily put out of the way.
Finally, the moonbeast galley being safely in the distance
and the invading land army concentrated in one place, Carter landed a considerable
force on the eastern headland in the enemy's rear; after which the fight
was short-lived indeed. Attacked from both sides, the noisome flounderers
were rapidly cut to pieces or pushed into the sea, till by evening the
ghoulish chiefs agreed that
the island was again clear of them. The hostile galley,
meanwhile, had disappeared; and it was decided that the evil jagged rock
had better be evacuated before any overwhelming horde of lunar horrors
might be assembled and brought against the victors.
So by night Pickman and Carter assembled all the ghouls
and counted them with care, finding that over a fourth had been lost in
the day's battles. The wounded were placed on bunks in the galley, for
Pickman always discouraged the old ghoulish custom of killing and eating
one's own wounded, and the able-bodied troops were assigned to the oars
or to such other places as they
might most usefully fill. Under the low phosphorescent
clouds of night the galley sailed, and Carter was not sorry to be departing
from the island of unwholesome secrets, whose lightless domed hall with
its bottomless well and repellent bronze door lingered restlessly in his
fancy. Dawn found the ship in sight of Sarkomand's ruined quays of basalt,
where a few night-gaunt sentries
still waited, squatting like black horned gargoyles on
the broken columns and crumbling sphinxes of that fearful city which lived
and died before the years of man.
The ghouls made camp amongst the fallen stones of Sarkomand,
despatching a messenger for enough night-gaunts to serve them as steeds.
Pickman and the other chiefs were effusive in their gratitude for the aid
Carter had lent them. Carter now began to feel that his plans were indeed
maturing well, and that he would be able to command the help of these fearsome
allies not only in quitting this part of dreamland, but in pursuing his
ultimate quest for the gods atop unknown Kadath, and the marvellous sunset
city they so strangely withheld from his slumbers. Accordingly he spoke
of these things to the ghoulish leaders; telling what he knew of the cold
waste wherein Kadath stands and of the monstrous Shantaks and the mountains
carven into double-headed images which guard it. He spoke of the fear of
Shantaks for night-gaunts, and of how the vast hippocephalic birds fly
screaming from the black burrows high up on the gaunt grey peaks that divide
Inquanok from hateful Leng. He spoke, too, of the things he had learned
concerning night-gaunts from the frescoes in the windowless monastery of
the High-Priest Not To Be Described; how even the Great Ones fear them,
and how their ruler is not the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep at all, but
hoary and immemorial Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss.
All these things Carter glibbered to the assembled ghouls,
and presently outlined that request which he had in mind and which he did
not think extravagant considering the services he had so lately rendered
the rubbery doglike lopers. He wished very much, he said, for the services
of enough night-gaunts to bear him safely through the aft past the realm
of Shantaks and carven mountains, and up into the old waste beyond the
returning tracks of any other mortal. He desired to fly to the onyx castle
atop unknown Kadath in the cold waste to plead with the Great Ones for
the sunset city they denied him, and felt sure that the night-gaunts could
take him thither without trouble; high above the perils of the plain, and
over the hideous double heads of those
carven sentinel mountains that squat eternally in the
grey dusk. For the horned and faceless creatures there could be no danger
from aught of earth since the Great Ones themselves dread them. And even
were unexpected things to come from the Other Gods, who are prone to oversee
the affairs of earth's milder gods, the night-gaunts need not fear; for
the outer hells are indifferent
matters to such silent and slippery flyers as own not
Nyarlathotep for their master, but bow only to potent and archaic Nodens.
A flock of ten or fifteen night-gaunts, Carter glibbered,
would surely be enough to keep any combination of Shantaks at a distance,
though perhaps it might be well to have some ghouls in the party to manage
the creatures, their ways being better known to their ghoulish allies than
to men. The party could land him at some convenient point within whatever
walls that fabulous onyx
citadel might have, waiting in the shadows for his return
or his signal whilst he ventured inside the castle to give prayer to the
gods of earth. If any ghouls chose to escort him into the throne-room of
the Great Ones, he would be thankful, for their presence would add weight
and importance to his plea. He would not, however, insist upon this but
merely wished transportation to and
from the castle atop unknown Kadath; the final journey
being either to the marvellous sunset city itself, in case of gods proved
favourable, or back to the earthward Gate of Deeper Slumber in the Enchanted
Wood in case his prayers were fruitless.
Whilst Carter was speaking all the ghouls listened with
great attention, and as the moments advanced the sky became black with
clouds of those night-gaunts for which messengers had been sent. The winged
steeds settled in a semicircle around the ghoulish army, waiting respectfully
as the doglike chieftains considered the wish of the earthly traveller.
The ghoul that was Pickman glibbered gravely with his fellows and in the
end Carter was offered far more than he had at most expected. As he had
aided the ghouls in their conquest of the moonbeasts, so would they aid
him in his daring voyage to realms whence none had ever returned; lending
him not merely a few of their allied night-gaunts, but their entire army
as then encamped, veteran fighting ghouls and newly assembled night-gaunts
alike, save only a small garrison for the captured black galley and such
spoils as had come from the jagged rock in the sea. They would set out
through the aft whenever he might wish, and once arrived on Kadath a suitable
train of ghouls would attend him in state as he placed his petition before
earth's gods in their onyx castle.
Moved by a gratitude and satisfaction beyond words, Carter
made plans with the ghoulish leaders for his audacious voyage. The army
would fly high, they decided, over hideous Leng with its nameless monastery
and wicked stone villages; stopping only at the vast grey peaks to confer
with the Shantak-frightening night-gaunts whose burrows honeycombed their
summits. They would then, according to what advice they might receive from
those denizens, choose their final course; approaching unknown Kadath either
through the desert of carven mountains north of Inquanok, or through the
more northerly reaches of repulsive Leng itself. Doglike and soulless as
they are, the ghouls and night-gaunts had no dread of what those untrodden
deserts might reveal; nor did they feel any deterring awe at the thought
of Kadath towering lone with its onyx castle of mystery.
