Creatures of Light and Darkness

THE THING THAT CRIES IN THE NIGHT

In the days when I reigned

as Lord of Life and Death,

says the Prince Who Was A Thousand,

in those days, at Man’s request,

did I lay the Middle Worlds within a sea of power,

tidal, turning thing,

thing to work with peaceful sea change

the birth,

growth,

death

designs upon them;

then all this gave

to Angels ministrant,

their Stations bordering Midworlds,

their hands to stir the tides.

And for many ages did we rule so,

elaborating the life,

tempering the death,

promoting the growth,

extending

the shores of that great, great sea,

as more and more of the Outworlds

were washed by the curling,

crowned by creation's foam.

Then one day,

brooding on the vast abyss

of such a world, brave,

good-seeming,

though dead, barren,

not then touched by the life,

I roused some sleeping thing

with the kiss of the tide I rode.

And I feared that thing which awakened,

issued forth,

attacked me-

came out the bowels of the land-

sought to destroy me:

thing which devoured the life of the planet,

slept for a season within it,

then hungry rose and vicious sought.

Feeding upon the tides of the Life,

it awakened.

It touched upon thee, my wife,

and I may not restore thy body,

though I preserved this breath of thee.

It drank, as a man drinks wine,

of the Life;

and every weapon in my arsenal

was discharged upon it,

but it did not die,

did not lapse into quiescence.

Rather, it tried to depart.

I contained it

Diverting the power of my Stations,

I set up the field,

field of neutral energies

caging the whole of the world.

Were it able to travel the places of Life,

devastate an entire world,

it must need be destroyed.

I tried, I failed-

many tried, many failed-

during the century’s half

I held it prisoner

upon that nameless world.

Then were the Midworlds cast into chaos,

for want of my control

over the life the death the growth.

Great was my pain.

New Stations were a building, but all too slow.

It was mine to lay the field once more,

but I might not free the Nameless.

I held not the power

to keep my shadow prisoner

and hold the Worlds of Life.

Now, among my Angels

grew up dissension’s stalk.

Quickly did I harvest it-

the price being some loyalty,

as even then I knew.

You, my Nephytha,

did not approve when my father,

risking the wrath of the Angel Osiris,

returned from Midworld's end,

to undertake the ultimate love

that is destruction.

You did not approve,

because my father Set,

mightiest warrior who ever lived,

was also our son in those days gone by,

our son, those days in Marachek,

after I had broken the temporal barrier,

to live once again through all time,

for the wisdom that is Past.

I did not know that, as time came back,

I would come to father the one who had been my father,

sun-eyed Set,

Wielder of the Star Wand,

Wearer of the Gauntlet,

Strider over Mountains.

You did not approve,

but you did not gainsay this battle,

and Set girded himself for the struggle.

Now, Set had never been defeated.

There was nothing he would not undertake to conquer.

He knew that the Steel General had been broken

and scattered by the Nameless.

But he was not afraid.

Holding forth his right hand,

he drew upon it the Gauntlet of Power,

which instantly grew

to cover over his body,

that but the brightness of his eyes shone through.

He placed upon his feet

the boots

which permitted him

to straddle the air and the water.

Then, with a black strand

he hung about his waist the sheath of the Star Wand,

ultimate weapon,

born of the blind smiths of Norn,

which only he might wield.

No, he was not afraid.

Ready then was he to depart my circling fortress,

descend upon the world,

where the Nameless crept,

spread,

swirled,

furious and hungry.

Then did his other son, my brother Typhon,

black shadow out of the void,

appear,

begging to go in his place.

But Set did deny him this thing,

opened the hatch,

pushed himself into darkness,

fell toward the face of the world.

Now, for three hundred hours did they battle,

over two weeks by the Old Reckoning,

before the Nameless began to weaken.

Set pushed the attack,

hurt the Thing,

prepared the blow of death.

He had fought it on the waters of the oceans

under the oceans,

had fought it on dry land,

in the air’s cold center,

and on the tops of mountains.

He had pursued it about the globe,

awaiting the opening that would permit

the final thrust.

The force of their conflict shattered two continents,

made the oceans to boil,

filled the air with clouds.

The rocks split and melted,

the heavens were laced with sonic booms

like invisible jewels of the fog,

the steam.

A dozen times did I restrain Typhon,

who would go to his aid.

Then, as the Nameless coiled and reared

to a height of three miles,

a cobra of smoke,

and Set stood his place,

one foot upon the water

one foot on the dry land,

then did that accursed master of mischief-

Angel of the House of Life-

Osiris,

work his deadly betrayal.

What time Set had stolen his consort, Isis,

who had borne him both Typhon and myself,

Osiris had vowed Set's undoing.

Backed by Anubis,

Osiris wielded a portion of the field

in a manner used for release of the solar energies,

driving suns to the limit of stability.

I had bare warning ere he struck.

Set had none.

Never directed at a planet before,

it destroyed the world,

I escaped,

removing myself to a place light years away.

Typhon tried to flee

to the spaces below where he made his home.

He did not succeed.

I never saw my brother again. Nor thyself, good

Nephytha.

It cost me a father who was a son, a brother,

my wife's body;

but it did not destroy the Nameless.

Somehow,

that creature survived the onslaught

of the Hammer that Smashes Suns,

Stunned,

I later found it drifting

amid the world's wreckage,

like a small nebula

hearted with flapping flame.

I worked about it a web of forces,

and, weakened,

it collapsed upon itself.

I removed it then to a secret place

beyond the Worlds of Life,

where it is yet imprisoned

in a room having doors nor windows.

Often have I tried to destroy it,

but I know not what it was that Set discovered

to work its undoing with his Wand.

And still it lives, and yet cries out;

and if ever it is freed,

it could destroy the Life

that is the Middle Worlds.

This is why I never disputed the usurpation

which followed that attack,

and why I still cannot.

I must remain warden,

till Life’s adversary is destroyed.

And I could not have prevented what followed:

the Angels of my many Stations,

grown factious in time of my absence,

fell upon one another,

striving for supremacy.

The Wars of the Stations were perhaps thirty years.

Osiris and Anubis reaped what remained at the end.

The other Stations were no more.

Now, of course, these two must rule with great waves

of the Power,

subjecting the Midworlds to famines,

plagues, wars,

to achieve the balances

much more readily obtained by the gradual,

peaceful actions of the many, of many Stations.

But they cannot do otherwise.

They fear a plurality within the Power.

They would not delegate the Power they had seized.

They cannot co-ordinate it between them.

So, still do I seek a way to destroy the Nameless,

and when this has been done,

shall I turn my energies

to the removal of my Angels

of the two surviving Houses.

This will be easy to accomplish,

though new hands must be ready to work my will.

In the meantime,

it would be disastrous to remove

those who work the greatest good

when two hands stir the tides.

And when this final thing is true,

shall I use the power of these Stations

to re-embody thee, my Nephytha-

Now Nephytha cries beside the sea and says, “It is too much! It shall never be!” and the Prince Who Was A Thousand stands up and raises his arms.

Within a cloud which hovers before him, there appears the outline of a woman. Perspiration dots his brow, and the woman-form grows more distinct. He steps forward then in an attempt to embrace her, but his arms close only on smoke, and his name, which is the name “Thoth,” sounds as a sob within his ears.

Then he is all alone beside the sea, beneath the sea, and the lights in the sky are fishes' bellies digesting fishes' food.

His eyes grow moist before he curses, for he knows it is within her power to end her own existence. He calls her name and there is no reply, not even an echo.

He knows then that the Nameless will die.

He hurls a stone into the ocean and it does not return.

Crossing his arms, he is gone, footprints crumbling in the sand.

Sea birds shriek through the moist air, and a massive reptile rears its green head thirty feet above the waves, long neck swaying, then sinks again beneath the waters a short distance away.