Haggopian and Other Stories

Dylath-Leen

In my first couple of months as a recruiter—in March 1969, to be precise—I wrote my first Dreamlands story, “after” HPL of course. While “Dylath-Leen” would later go into my Titus Crow/De Marigny Mythos novel The Clock of Dreams as a chapter in its own right, at the time of writing it was my first attempt at this sort of story. As such it was mainly unconnected to later Dreamlands stories that would feature David Hero (called “Hero of Dreams”) and his fellow adventurer Eldin (“the Wanderer”), which wouldn’t be written until the late 1970s–early ’80s. Anyway, after reading the story in my Arkham collection The Caller of The Black, L. Sprague de Camp particularly liked it and wrote to ask if he might include it in a fantasy collection he was planning. Well, that never happened, but in any case it was nice to know that this fine author had enjoyed it. And it’s my hope that you will too.

“If aught of evil ever befalls the

people of Dylath-Leen, through their

traffick with certain traders of ill

repute, then it will not be my fault.”

—Randolph Carter

I

Three times only have I visited the basalt-towered, myriad-wharved city of Dylath-Leen; three curious

visits which spanned I fancy almost a century of that city’s existence. Now I pray that I have seen it for the last time; for though Dylath-Leen exists only in dream, beyond the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber, when I think back on my visits there—remembering my waking studies and those tales heard in my youth of dreams and how they affect the waking world—then I shudder in strange dread.

I went there first in my late teens, filled with a longing—engendered by continuous study of such works as The Arabian Nights and Gelder’s Atlantis Found—for wondrous places of antique legend and fable and centuried cities of ages past; nor was my longing disappointed.

I first saw the city from afar, wandering in along the river Skai with a caravan of merchants from distant places, and at sight of the tall black towers which form the city’s ramparts I felt a strange fascination for the place. Later, lost in awe and wonder, I took leave of my merchant friends to walk Dylath-Leen’s ancient streets and alleys, to visit the wharfside sea-taverns and chat with seamen from every land on Earth—and with a few from more distant places. I never once pondered my ability to chatter in their many tongues, for often things are simpler in dream, nor did I wonder at the ease with which I fitted myself into the alien yet surprisingly friendly scene; after all, I was attired in robes of dream’s styling, and my looks were not unlike those of many of dream’s peoples. I was a little taller than average, true, but overall Dylath-Leen’s diverse folks might well have passed for those of any town of the waking world, and vice versa.

Yet there were in the city others, strange traders from across the Southern Sea, whose appearance and odour filled me with a dread loathing so that I could not abide to stay near where they were for long. Of these traders and their origin I questioned the tavern-keepers, to be told that I was not the first from the waking world whose instinct found in those traders traces of hinted evil and deeds not to be mentioned. Another had warned long ago that they were fiends not to be trusted, whose only desire was to spread horror and evil throughout all the lands of dream. Certain of the taverners even remembered that dreamer’s name; Randolph Carter, he had called himself, and had been known to be a personal friend of that great lord of sky-floating Serannian and of the rose-crystal Palace of the Seventy Delights at Celephais, King Kuranes, once a dreamer of no mean repute himself. But when I heard Carter’s name mentioned I was quietened, for an amateur at dreaming such as myself could not dare aspire to walk even in the shadow of one such as he. Why! Carter was rumoured to have been even to Kadath in the Cold Waste, to confront Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, and more—he had returned from that place unscathed! How many could boast of that?

Yet loath though I was to have anything to do with those traders, I found myself one morning in the towering tavern of Potan-Lith, in a high bar-room the windows of which looked out over the Bay of Wharves, waiting for the galley I had heard was coming to the city with a cargo of rubies from an unknown shore. I wanted to discover just what it was of them which so repelled me, and the best way to do this, I thought, would be to observe them from a safe distance and location at which I, myself, might go unobserved. I did not wish to bring myself to the notice of those queerly frightening people of unguessed origin. Potan-Lith’s tavern with its ninety-nine steps served my purpose admirably. I could see the whole of the wharfside spread beneath me in the morning light; the nets of the fishermen drying, with smells of rope and deep ocean floating up to my window; the smaller craft of private tradesmen rolling gently at anchor, sails lowered and hatches laid back to let the sun dry out their musty holds; the thagweed merchants unloading their strongly scented, dream-within-dream-engendering opiates garnered in exotic Eastern parts; and, eventually appearing on the horizon, the sails of the black galley for which I so vigilantly waited. There were other traders of the sane race already in the city, to be sure, but how could one get close to them without attracting unwanted attention? My plan of observation was best, I was certain, but I did not know just what it was I wished to observe—nor why…

It was not long before the black galley loomed against the entrance to the bay. It slipped into the harbour past the great basalt lighthouse and a strange stench driven by the South Wind came with it. As with the coming of all such craft and their weird masters, uneasiness rippled all along the waterfront as the silent ship closed with its chosen wharf and its three banks of briskly moving oars stilled and slipped in through their oarlocks to the unseen and equally silent rowers within. I watched eagerly then, waiting for the galley’s master and crew to come ashore, but only five persons—if persons they truly were—chose to leave that enigmatic craft. This was the best look at such traders I had so far managed, and what I saw did not please me at all.

I have intimated my doubts with regard to the humanity of those…men? Let me explain why. Firstly their mouths were far too wide. Indeed, I thought that one of them glanced up at my window as he left the ship, smiling a smile which only just fell within the boundaries of that word’s limitations, and it was horrible to see just how wide his evil mouth was. Now what would any eater of normal foods want with a mouth of such abnormal proportions? And for that matter, why did the owners of such mouths wear such queerly moulded turbans? Or was it simply the way in which the turbans were worn? For they were humped up in two points over the foreheads of the wearers in what seemed especially bad taste. And as for their shoes: well, those shoes were certainly the most peculiar footwear I had ever seen—in or out of dreams—being short, blunt-toed and flat, as though the feet within were not feet at all! I thoughtfully finished off my mug of muth-dew and wedge of bread and cheese, turning from the window to leave the tavern of Potan-Lith.

My heart seemed to leap into my mouth. There in the low entrance stood that same merchant who had so evilly smiled up at my window! His turbaned head turned to follow my every move as I sidled out past him and flew down the ninety-nine steps to the wharf below. An awful fear pursued me as I ran through the alleys and streets, making my feet fly faster on the basalt flags of the wider pavements, until I reached the well known, green-cobbled courtyard wherein I had my room. But even there I could not get the face of that strangely turbaned, wide-mouthed trader from beyond the Southern Sea out of my mind—nor his smell from my nostrils—so I paid my landlord his due, moving out there and then to head for that side of Dylath-Leen which faces away from the sea and which is clean with the scents of window-box flowers and baking bread, where the men of the sea-taverns but rarely venture.

There, in the district called S’eemla, I found myself lodging with a family of basalt quarriers. I was accorded my own garret room with a wide window, a bed and mattress of fegg-down; and soon it was as though I had been born into the family, or might have seemed so had I been able to imagine myself a brother to comely Litha.

Within the month I was firmly settled in, and from then on I made it my business to carry on Randolph Carter’s word of warning, putting in my word against the turbaned traders at every opportunity. My task was made no easier by the fact that I had nothing concrete to hold against them. There was only the feeling, already shared by many of the folk of Dylath-Leen, that trade between the city and the black galleys could bring to fruition nothing of any good.

Eventually my knowledge of the traders grew to include such evidences as to make me more certain than ever of their evil nature. Why should those black galleys come in to harbour, discharge their four or five traders, and then simply lie there at anchor, emitting their foul odours, showing never a sign of their silent crews? That there were crews seems needless to state; with three great banks of oars to each ship there must have been many rowers! But what man could say just who or what such rowers were? Too, the grocers and butchers of the city grumbled over the apparent frugality of those singularly shy crews, for the only things the traders bought with their great and small rubies were gold and stout Pargian slaves. This traffic had gone on for years, I was told, and in that time many a fat black man had vanished, never to be seen again, up the gangplanks into those mysterious galleys to be transported to lands across uncharted seas—if, indeed, such lands were their destination! And where did the queer traders get their rubies, the like of which were to be found in no known mine in all Earth’s dreamland? Yet those rubies came cheaply enough, too cheaply in fact, so that every home in Dylath-Leen sported them, some large enough to be used as paper-weights in the homes of the richer merchants. Myself, I found those gems strangely loathsome, seeing in them only the reflections of the traders who brought them from across nameless oceans.

So it was that in the district called S’eemla my interest in the ruby-traders waxed to its full, paled, waned and finally withered—but never died completely. My new interest, however, in dark-eyed Litha, Bo-Kareth’s daughter, grew with each passing day, and my nights were filled with dreams within dreams of Litha and her ways, so that only occasionally were my slumbers invaded by the unpleasantly turbaned, wide-mouthed traders from unknown parts.

One evening, after a trip out to Ti-Penth, a village not far from Dylath-Leen where we had enjoyed the annual Festival of Plenty, as Litha and I walked back, hand in hand, through the irrigated green valley called Tanta towards our black towered city, she told me of her love and we sank together to the darkling sward. That night, when the city’s myriad twinkling lights had all blinked out and the bats chittered thick without my window, Litha crept into my garret room and only the narg-oil lamp on the wall could tell of the wonders we knew with each other.

In the morning, rising rapidly in joy from my dreams within dreams, I broke through too many layers of that flimsy stuff which constitutes the world of the subconscious, to waken with a cry of agony in the house of my parents at Norden on the North-East coast. Thereafter I cried myself to sleep for a year before finally I managed to convince myself that my dark-eyed Litha existed only in dreams.

II

I was thirty years old before I saw Dylath-Leen again. I arrived in the evening, when the city was all but in darkness, but I recognised immediately the feel of those basalt flagstones beneath my feet, and, while the last of the myriad lights flickered out in the towers and the last tavern closed, my heart leaped as I turned my suddenly light feet towards the house of Bo-Kareth. But something did not seem right, and a horror grew rapidly upon me as I saw in the streets thickening crowds of carousing, nastily chattering, strangely turbaned people not quite so much men as monsters. And many of them had had their turbans disarrayed in their sporting so that protuberances glimpsed previously only in books of witchcraft and the like and in certain biblical paintings showed clearly through! Once I was stopped and pawed vilely by a group of them who conferred in low, menacing tones. I tore myself free and fled for they were, indeed, those same evil traders of yore, and I was horrified that they should be there in my City of Black Towers in such great numbers!

I must have seen hundreds of those vile—creatures—as I hurried through the city’s thoroughfares; yet somehow I contrived to arrive at the house of Bo-Kareth without further pause or hindrance, and there I hammered at his oaken door until a light flickered behind the round panes of blue glass in the upper sections of that entrance. It was Bo-Kareth himself who eventually came to answer my banging, and he came wide-eyed in a fear I could well understand. Relief showed visibly in his whole aspect when he saw that only a man stood upon his step. Although he seemed amazingly aged—so aged, in fact, I was taken aback, for I did not then know of the differences in time between the worlds of dream and waking—he recognised me at once, whispering my name:

“Grant! Grant Enderby…my friend…my old friend…! Come in, come in…”

“Bo-Kareth,” I burst out, “Bo, I—”

“Shhh!” He pressed a finger to his lips, eyes widening even further than before, leaning out to glance up and down the street before pulling me in and quickly closing and bolting the door behind me. “Quietly, Grant, quietly—this is a city of silence now, where they alone carouse and make their own hellish brand of merry—and they may soon be abroad and about their business.”

“They?” I questioned, instinctively knowing the answer.

“Those you once tried to warn us of—the turbaned traders!”

“I thought as much,” I answered, “and they’re already abroad, I’ve seen them—but what business is this you speak of?”

Then Bo-Kareth told me a tale that filled my heart with horror and determined me never to rest until I had at least attempted to right a great wrong.

It had started a number of years earlier, according to my host—(I made no attempt to pin-point a date; how could I when Bo-Kareth had apparently aged thirty years to my twelve?)—and had involved the bringing to the city of a ruby so gigantic that it had to be seen to be believed. This great gem had been a gift, an assurance of the traders’ regard for Dylath-Leen’s peoples, and as such had been set on a pedestal in the city’s main square. But only a few nights later the horror had started to make itself noticeable. The keeper of a tavern near the square, peering from his windows after locking the doors for the night, had noticed a strange, deep, reddish glow from the giant gem’s heart; a glow which seemed to pulse with an alien life all its own, and when the tavern-keeper told the next day of what he had seen an amazing thing came to light. All the other galley-brought rubies in the city—the smaller gems set in rings, amulets and instruments, and those larger, less ornamental, almost rude stones owned purely for the sake of ownership by certain of the city’s richer gentlemen—had all glowed through the night to a lesser degree, as if in response to the greater activity of their bulky brother. And with that unearthly glowing of the gems had come a strange partial paralysis, making all the people of the city other than the turbaned traders themselves slumbrous and weak, incapable and unwanting of any festivity and barely able to go about their normal duties and businesses. As the days passed and the power of the great ruby and its less regal relatives waxed, so also did the strange drowsiness upon Dylath-Leen’s folks; and it was only then, too late, that the plot was seen and its purpose recognised.

For a long time there had been a shortage of the fat black slaves of Parg. They had been taken from the city by the traders faster than they came in, until only a handful remained; and that handful, on hearing one day of a black galley soon due to dock, had fled their master and left the city to seek less suspicious bondage. That had been shortly before the horned traders brought the great jewel to Dylath-Leen, and since that time, as the leering, gem-induced lethargy had increased until its effects were felt in daylight almost as much as they were at night—so had the number of strangely shod traders grown until the docks were full of their great black galleys. Then inexplicable absences began to be noticed; a taverner here and a quarrier there, a merchant from Ulthar and a thagweed curer and a silversmith’s son; and soon any retaining sufficient will-power sold up their businesses, homes and houses and left Dylath-Leen for Ti-Penth, Ulthar and Nir. I was glad to learn that Litha and her brothers had thus departed, though it made me strangely sad to hear that when lithe Litha went she took with her a handsome husband and two laughing children. She was old enough now, her father told me, to be mistaken for my mother; but she still retained her great beauty.

By this time the hour of midnight was well passed and all about the house tiny red points of light had begun to glow in an eerie, slumber-engendering coruscation. As Bo-Kareth, talked his monologue interrupted now with many a yawn and shake of his head, I tracked down the sources of those weird points of radiance and found them to be rubies. It was as Bo-Kareth had described it, rubies!—ten tiny gems set in the base of an ornamental goblet; many more of the small red stones enhancing the looks of hanging silver and gold plates; fire-flashing splinters of precious crystal embedded in the spines of certain of my host’s leather-bound books of prayer and dream-lore—and when his mumbling had died away completely I turned from my investigations to find the old man asleep in his chair, lost in distressing dreams which pulled his grey face into an expression of muted terror.

I had to see the great gem. I make no excuse for such a rash and headstrong decision (one does things in dreams which one would never consider for a moment in the waking world), but I knew I could make no proper plans nor rest easy in my mind until I had seen that great ruby for myself.

I left the house by the back door, locking it behind me and pocketing the key. I knew Bo-Kareth had a duplicate key and besides, I might later need to be into the house without delay. The layout of the city was well known to me and thus it was not difficult for me to find my way through labyrinthine back streets to the main square. That square was away from the district of S’eemla, far nearer to the docks, and the closer I drew to the waterfront the more careful I crept. Why!—the whole area was alive with the alien and evil traders! The wonder is that I was not spotted in the first few minutes; and when I saw what those hellish creatures were up to, thus confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt Bo-Kareth’s worst fears, the possibility that I might yet be observed—and the consequences such an unfortunate discovery would bring—caused me to creep even more carefully. Each street corner became a focal point for terror, where lurking, unseen presences caused me to glance over my shoulder or jump at the slightest flutter of bat-wings or scurry of mouse-feet. And then, almost before I knew it, I came upon the square.

I came at the run, my feet flying frantically, for I knew now for sure what the horned ones did at night and a fancy had grown quickly on me that something followed in the dark; so that when I suddenly burst from that darkness into a blaze of red firelight I was taken completely by surprise. I literally keeled over backwards as I contrived to halt my flight of fear before it plunged me into the four turbaned terrors standing at the base of the dais of the jewel. My feet skidded as I pivoted on my heels and my fingers scrabbled madly at the round cobbles of the square as I fell. In truth it could scarce be called a real fall—I was no sooner down than up—but in that split second or so as I fought to bring my careening body under control those guardians of the great stone were after me. Glancing fearfully back I saw them darting rat-like in my wake.

My exit from that square can only properly be described as panic-stricken, but brief though my visit had been I had seen more than enough to strenghthen that first resolve of mine to do something about the loathsome and insidious invasion of the traders. Backtracking, bounding through the night streets I went, with the houses and taverns towering blackly on both sides, seeing in my mind’s eye that horrible haunting picture which I had but glimpsed in the main square. There had been the four guards with great knives fastened in their belts, the dais with pyramid steps to its flat summit, four hugely flaring torches in blackly forged metal holders, and, atop the basalt altar itself, a great reddish mass pulsing with inner life, its myriad facets catching and reflecting the fire of the torches in a mixture with its own evil radiance. The hypnotic horror—the malignant monster—the great ruby!

Then the vision changed as I heard close behind me a weird, ululant cry—a definite alert—which carried and echoed in Dylath-Leen’s canyon alleys. In rampant revulsion I pictured myself linked by an iron anklet to the long chain of mute, unprotesting people which I had seen only minutes earlier being led in the direction of the docks and the black galleys, and this monstrous mental image drove my feet to a frenzied activity that sent me speeding headlong down the dark passages between the city’s basalt walls. But fast and furious though my flight was it soon became apparent that my pursuers were gaining on me. A faint padding came to my ears as I ran, causing me to accelerate, forcing my feet to pump even faster. The effort was useless—if anything, worse than useless—for I soon tired and had to slow up. Twice I stumbled and the second time, as I struggled to rise, the fumbling of slimy fingers at my feet lent them wings and shot me out in front again. It became as one of those nightmares (which indeed it was), where you run and run through vast vats of subconscious molasses, totally unable to increase the distance between yourself and your ethereal pursuer; the only difference being, dream or none, that I knew for a certainty I was running for my life!

It was a few moments later, when an added horror had just about brought me to the verge of giving up hope, that I found an unexpected but welcome reprieve. Slipping and stumbling, panting for air, I had been brought up short by a mad fancy that the soft padding of alien feet now came from the very direction in which I was heading, from somewhere in front of me! And as those sounds of demon footfalls came closer, closing in on me, I flattened myself to the basalt wall, spreading my arms and groping desperately with my hands at the bare, rough stone; and there, beneath my unbelieving fingers—an opening!—a narrow crack or entry, completely hidden in jet shadows, between two of the street’s bleak bindings. I squeezed myself in, trying to get my breathing under control, fighting a lunatic urge to cry out in my terror. It was pitch black, the blackness of the pit, and a hideous thought suddenly came to me. What if this tunnel of darkness—this possible doorway to sanity—what if it were closed, a dead end? Then, as if in answer to my silent, frantic prayers, even as I heard the first squawk of amazed frustration from somewhere behind me, I squirmed from the other end of the division to emerge in a street mercifully void of the evil aliens.

My flight had carried me in a direction well away from Bo-Kareth’s house; but in any case, now that my worst fears were realized and the alarm raised, it would have been completely idiotic to think of hiding anywhere in the city. I had to get away, to Ulthar or Nir, as far as possible—and as fast as possible—until I could try to find a way to rid Dylath-Leen of its inhuman curse.

Less than an hour later, with the city behind me, I was in an uninhabited desert area heading in a direction which I hoped would eventually bring me to Ulthar. It was cool beneath that full, cloud-floating moon, yet a long while passed before the fever of my panic-flight left me. When it did I was almost sorry, for soon I found myself shivering as the sweat of my body turned icy chill, and I wrapped my cloak more tightly about me for I knew it must grow still colder before the dawn. I was not particularly worried about food and water, there are many water-holes and oases between Dylath-Leen and Ulthar; no, my main cause for concern lay in orientation. I did not want to end up wandering in one of the many great parched deserts! My sense of direction in open country had never been very good.

Before long great clouds came drifting in from a direction I took to be the South, obscuring the moon until only the stars in the sky ahead gave any light by which to travel. Then, it seemed, the dune-cast shadows grew blacker and longer and an eerie sensation of not being alone waxed in me. I found myself casting sharp, nervous glances over my shoulder and shuddering to an extent not entirely warranted by the chill of the night. There came fixed in my mind an awful suspicion which I had to resolve one way or the other.

I hid behind a dune and waited, peering back the way I had come. Soon I saw a darting shadow moving swiftly over the sand, following my trail—and that shadow was endowed with twin points at its top and chuckled obscenely as it came. My hair stood on end as I saw the creature stop to study the ground, then lift its wide-mouthed face to the night sky. I heard again that weird, ululant cry of alert and I waited no longer.

In a passion of fear even greater than that I had known in the streets of Dylath-Leen I fled—racing like a madman over the night sands, gibbering and mumbling in my flight, scrambling and often falling head over heels down the sides of the steeper sandhills—until my head struck something hard in the shadow of a dune and I passed into the even deeper darkness of lower unconsciousness.

This time I was far from sorry when I leapt screaming awake at my home in Norden; and in the sanity of the waking world I recognised the fact that all those horrors of dream and the night had existed only in my slumbers; so that in a few days my second visit to Dylath-Leen was all but forgotten. The mind soon forgets that which it cannot bear to remember.

III

I was forty-three when next—when last—I saw Dylath-Leen. Not that my dream took me straight to the basalt city; rather I found myself first on the outskirts of Ulthar, the City of Cats! Ulthar is well named, for in that city an ancient law decrees that no man may kill a cat, and the streets crowd with many a variety of soft-furred feline. I stooped to pet a fat tom lazily sunning himself in the street, and an ancient shopkeeper seated outside his store beneath a great shade called out to me in a friendly, quavering voice:

“It is good, stranger—it is good when a stranger pets the cats of Ulthar! Have you journeyed far?”

“Far,” I affirmed, “from the waking world—but even there I stop to play when I see a cat. Tell me, Sir—can you direct me to the house of Litha, daughter of Bo-Kareth of Dylath-Leen?’

“Indeed, I know her well,” he nodded his old head, “‘for she is one of the few in Ulthar with as many years to count as I. She lives with her husband and family not far from here. Until some years ago her father—who was ancient beyond belief, second only in years to Atal, climber of Hatheg-Kla and priest and patriarch of Ulthar’s Temple of the Elder Ones—also lived at his daughter’s house. He came out of Dylath-Leen mazed and mumbling, and did not live long here in Ulthar. Now no man goes to Dylath-Leen.”

But the old man had soured at the thought of Dylath-Leen and did not wish to talk any longer. I took his directions and started off with mixed feelings along the street he had indicated; but only half-way up that street I cut off down a dusty alley and made for the Temple of the Elder Ones instead. It could do no good to see Litha now. What use to wake old memories?—if indeed she were capable of remembering anything of those Elysian days of her youth—and it was not as though she might help me solve my problem—that same problem of thirteen waking years ago: how to avenge the outraged peoples of Dylath-Leen; and how to rescue those of them—if any such existed—still enslaved. For there was still a feeling of yearning in me for the black-towered city and its peoples of yore. I remembered the friends I had known and my many walks through the high-walled streets and along the farm lanes of the outskirts. Yet even in Elysian S’eemla the knowledge that certain offensive black galleys moored in the docks had somehow always sufficed to dull my appetite for living, had even impaired the happiness I had known with dark-eyed Litha, in the garret of Bo-Kareth’s house, with the bats of night clustered thick and chittering beneath the sill without my window.

As quickly as the vision of Litha the girl came I put it out of my mind, striding out more purposefully for the Temple of the Elder Ones. If any man could help me in my bid for vengeance against the turbaned traders Atal, the Priest of the Temple, was that man. Atal had even climbed the forbidden peak, Hatheg-Kla, in the stony desert, and had come down again alive and sane! It was rumoured that in the temple he had keep of many incredible volumes of sorcery. His great knowledge of the darker mysteries was, in fact, my main reason for seeking his aid. I could hardly hope to engage the forces of the hell-traders with physical means alone.

It was then, as I left the little green cottages and neatly fenced farms and shady shops of the suburbs behind me, as I pressed more truly into the city proper, that I received a shock so powerful my soul almost withered within me.

I had allowed myself to become interested in the old peaked roofs, the overhanging upper storeys, numberless chimney-pots and narrow, old cobbled streets of the city, so that my attention had been diverted from the path my feet followed, causing me to bump rudely into someone coming out of the narrow door of a shop. Of a sudden the air was foul with shuddersome, well-remembered odours of hideous connection, and my hackles rose as I backed quickly away from the strangely turbaned, squat figure I had chanced into. The slightly tilted eyes regarded me curiously and a wicked smile played around the too wide mouth.

One of Them! Here in Ulthar?

I mumbled incoherent apologies, slipped past the still evilly grinning figure, and ran all the rest of the way to the Temple of the Elder Ones. If there had been any suggestion of half-heartedness to my intentions earlier there was certainly none now! It seemed obvious to me the course events were taking. First it had been Dylath-Leen, now an attempt at Ulthar—where next? Nowhere, if I had anything to say of it.

The Temple of the Elder Ones stands round and towering, of ivied stone, atop Ulthar’s highest hill; and there, in the Room of Ancient Records, I found the patriarch I sought—Atal of Hatheg-Kla; Atal the Ancient. He sat, in flowing black and gold robes, at a centuried wooden bench, fading eyes studiously lost in the yellowed pages of a great aeon-worn book, its metal hasps dully agleam in a stray beam of sunlight striking in from the single high window.

He looked up, starting as if in shock as I entered the musty room with its myriad book-shelves. Then he pushed his book away and spoke:

“The Priest of the Temple greets you, stranger. You are a stranger, are you not?”

“I have seen Ulthar before,” I answered, “but, yes, I am a stranger here in the Temple of the Elder Ones. I come from the waking world, Atal, to seek your help…”

“You—you surprised me. You are not the first from the waking world to ask my aid. I thought at first sight that I knew you of old. How are you named and in what manner might I serve you?”

“My name is Grant Enderby, Atal, and the help I ask is not for myself. I come in the hope that you might be able to help me rid Dylath-Leen of a certain contagion; but since coming to Ulthar today I have learned that even here the sores are spreading. Are there not even now in Ulthar strange traders from no clearly named land? Is it not so?”

“It is so,” he nodded his venerable head. “Say on.”

“Then you should know that they are those same traders who brought Dylath-Leen to slavery—an evil, hypnotic slavery—and I fancy that they mean to use the same black arts here in Ulthar to a like end. Do they trade rubies the like of which are found in no known mine in the whole of dreamland?”

Again he nodded: “They do; but say no more—I am already aware. At this very moment I search for a means by which the trouble may be put to an end. But I work only on rumours, and I am unable to leave the temple to verify those rumours. My duties are all important, and in any case, these bones are too old to wander far. Truly, Dylath-Leen did suffer an evil fate; but think not that her peoples had no warning! Why, even a century ago the city’s reputation was bad, through the presence of those very traders you have mentioned! Another dreamer before you saw the doom in store for the city, speaking against those traders vehemently and often; but his words were soon forgotten by all who heard them and people went their old ways as of yore. No man may help him who will not help himself! But it is the presence of those traders here in Ulthar which has driven me to this search of mine. I cannot allow the same doom to strike here—whatever that doom may be—yet it is difficult to see what may be done. No man of this town will venture anywhere near Dylath-Leen. It is said that the streets of that city have known no human feet for more than twenty years, nor can any man say with any certainty where the city’s peoples have gone.”

“I can say!” I answered. “Not where, exactly; but how at least! Enslaved, I said, and told no lie. I had it first from Bo-Kareth, late of DyIath-Leen, who told me that when those traders had taken all the fat black slaves of Parg in exchange for those evil stones of theirs, they brought to the city the biggest ruby ever seen—a boulder of a gem—leaving it on a pedestal in the main square as a false token of esteem. It was the evil influence of this great jewel that bewitched the people of Dylath-Leen, bemusing them to such a degree that in the end they, too, became slaves to be led away to the black galleys of the traders. And now, apparently, those traders have…used up…all the peoples of that ill-omened city and are starting their monstrous game here! And Bo-Kareth’s story was true in every detail, for with my own eyes—”

“A great ruby…hmmm!” Atal musingly cut me off, stroking his face and frowning in concentration. “That puts a different complexion on it—yes, I believe that in the Fourth Book…there may be a mention! Shall we see?”

I nodded my eager agreement and at Atal’s direction lifted down from a corner shelf the largest and weightiest tome I had ever seen. Each single page—pages of no material I had ever known before—glowed with burning letters which stood out with fire-fly definition in the dimness of the room. I could make nothing of the unique ciphers within that book, but Atal seemed thoroughly familiar with each alien character, translating easily, mumbling to himself in barely discernable tones, until suddenly he stopped. He lurched shakily to his feet then, slamming the priceless volume shut, horror burning in his ancient eyes.

“So!” he exclaimed, hissing out the word, “It is that! The Fly-the-Light from Yuggoth on the Rim, a vampyre in the worst meaning of the word; and we must make sure that it is never brought to Ulthar!” He paused, visibly taking hold of himself before he could continue:

“Let me tell you…

“Long ago, before dreams, in the primal mist of the pre-dawn Beginning of All, the great ruby was brought from distant Yuggoth on the Rim by the Old Ones. Within that jewel, prisoned by light and the magic of the Old Ones, lurks a basic avatar of the prime evil, a thing hideous as the pit itself! Understand, Grant Enderby, it is not the stone that induces the hypnotic weariness of which you have spoken, but the thing within the stone, the evil influence of the Fly-the-Light from dark Yuggoth on the Rim! Few men know the history of that huge jewel, and I do not consider myself fortunate to be one of the few.

“It is told that it was discovered after coming down in an avalanche from the heights of forbidden Hatheg-Kla—which I can believe for I know much of that mountain—discovered and carried away by the Black Princess, Yath-Lhi of Tyrhhia. And when her caravan reached her silver-spired city it was found that all Yath-Lhi’s men at arms, her slaves, even the Black Princess herself, were as zombies, altered and mazed. It is not remembered now where Tyrhhia once stood, but many believe the centuried desert sands to cover even its tallest spire, and that the remains of its habitants lie putrid within their buried houses.

“But the ruby was not buried with Tyrhhia, more’s the pity, and rumour has it that it was next discovered in a golden galley on the Southern Sea twixt Dylath-Leen and the isle of Oriab. A strange ocean is the Southern Sea, and especially between Oriab and Dylath-Leen; for there, many fathoms deep, lies a basalt city with a temple and monolithic altar. And sailors are loath to pass over that submarine city, fearing the great storms which legend has it strike suddenly; even when there is no breath of wind to stir the sails! However, there the great jewel was found, aboard a great golden galley, and the crew of that galley were very beautiful even though they were not men, and all were long dead but not corrupt! Only one sailor, mad and babbling, was later rescued from the sea off Oriab to gibber pitifully the tale of the golden galley, but of his fellow crew-mates nothing more is known. It is interesting to note that it is further writ how only certain peoples—they who are horned and who dance to the evil drone of pipes and rattle of crotala in mysterious Leng—are unaffected by the stone’s proximity!” Atal looked at me knowingly. “And I can see you have already noticed how strangely our traders wear their turbans.

“But I digress. Again the jewel survived whatever fate overtook the poor seamen who rescued it from the golden galley, and it was later worshipped by the enormous dholes in the Vale of Pnath, until three leathery night-gaunts flew off with it over the Peaks of Throk and down into those places of subterrene

horror of which certain dim myths hint most terribly. For that underworld is said to be a place litten only by pale death-fires, a place reeking of ghoulish exhalations and filled with the primal mists which swirl in the pits at Earth’s core. Who may say what form the inhabitants of such a place might take?”

At this point Atal’s eyes cleared of their far-away look and turned from the dark places of his tale to the present and to me. He placed his rheumy hands on my shoulders, peering at me earnestly: “Well, so says legend and the Fourth Book of D’harsis; and now, you say, the great ruby is come again into the known places of Earth’s dreamland. Now hear you, Grant Enderby, I know what must be done—but how may I ask any man to take such risks? For my plan involves not only the risk of destruction to the mortal body—but the possible eternal damnation of the immortal soul!”

“I have pledged myself,” I told him, “to avenge the peoples of Dylath-Leen. My pledge still stands, for though Dylath-Leen is lost, yet are there other towns and cities in dreams which I would dream again—but not to see them corrupted by horned horrors that trade in fever-cursed rubies! Atal—tell me what I must do.”

Atal then got to it, and there was much for him to do. I could not help him with the greater part of his work, tasks involving the translation into language I could understand of certain tracts from the Fourth Book of D’harsis, for, even though many things are simpler in dream, those passages were not meant to be read by any man—neither awake nor sleeping—who did not understand their importance.

Slowly but surely the hours passed and Atal laboured as I watched, putting down letter after letter in the creation of pronounceable syllables from the seemingly impossible mumbo-jumbo of the great book from which he drew. I began to recognise certain symbols I had seen in allegedly “forbidden” tomes in the waking world, and even began to mumble the first of them aloud— “Tetragrammaton Thabaite Sabaoth Tethiktos”—until Atal silenced me by jerking to his feet and favouring me with a gaze of pure horror.

“It is almost night,” he remonstrated, striking a flint to a wax candle, his hands shaking more than even his extreme age might reasonably explain, “and outside the shadows are lengthening. Would you call That forth without first having protection? For make no mistake, distance is no matter to this invocation, and if we wished we could call out the Fly-the-Light even from here. But first you must cast a spell over Dylath-Leen, to contain the thing when you release it from the ruby; for certainly unless it is contained it will ravish the whole of dreamland; and you, the caller, The Utterer of The Words, would be one of the first to die—horribly!”

I gulped my apologies and sat silently from then on, listening attentively to Atal’s instructions even as my eyes followed his scratching pen. “You must go to Dylath-Leen,” he told me, “taking with you the two incantations I now prepare. One of them, which you will keep at your left, is to build the Wall of Naach-Tith about the city. To work this spell you must journey around Dylath-Leen, returning to your starting point and crossing it, chanting the words as you go. This means, of course, that you will need to cross the bay; and I suggest that you do this by boat, for there are things in the night sea that do not take kindly to swimmers. When you have crossed your starting point the wall will be builded. Then you may use the other chant, spoken only once, to shatter the great gem. You should carry the second chant at your right. This way you will not confuse the two—a mistake which would prove disastrous! I have used inks which shine in the dark; there will be no difficulty in reading the chants: So, having done all I have told you your revenge will be complete and you will have served all the lands of dream greatly. No creature or thing will ever be able to enter Dylath-Leen again, nor leave the place, and the Fly-the-Light will be loosed amongst the horned ones. One warning though, Grant Enderby—do not watch the results of your work! It will be as was never meant for the eyes of men!”

IV

I came through the desert towards Dylath-Leen at dusk, when the desert grasses made spiky silhouettes atop the dunes and the last kites circled high, their shrill cries telling of night’s stealthy approach. Night was indeed coming, striding across dreamland in lengthening shadows which befriended and hid me as I tethered my yak and made for the western point of the bay. I would start there; making my way from shadow to shadow, with the wall-building chant of Naach-Tith on my lips, to the opposite side of the bay; and then I would see about crossing the water back to my starting point.

I was glad that the moon was thinly horned, glad the desert was not more brightly illumined, for I could not be sure that there were no sentries out from the unquiet city. Whatever joys Dylath-Leen may once have held for me, now the place was unquiet. No normal lights shone in its streets and squares, but, as night came more quickly, there soon sprang up many thousands of tiny points of evil red, and in one certain area a great morbidly red blotch glowed in strange reminiscence of Jupiter’s huge eye-like spot, glimpsed often in my youth through a friend’s telescope. Empty though the city now was of all normal life, that poisoned jewel in the main square still filled the town with its loathsomeness, a terror ignored by the abnormal traders as the statues of past heroes are ignored in saner places.

Half way round the city’s perimeter there came to my ears the strains of music—if such evilly soul-disturbing sounds warrant placing in any such category—and leaping fires sprang up in Dylath-Leen’s outer streets, so that I could see and shudder at the horned figures that leapt and cavorted round those ritual hell-fires, observing the way their squat bodies jerked and shook to the jarring cacophony of bone-dry crotala and strangled flutes. I could neither bear to hear nor watch, so I passed quickly on, chanting breathlessly to myself and feeling about me a weird magic building up to a thrill of unseen energies in the night air.

I was more than three-quarters towards the eastern side of the bay when I heard behind me a distant sound that stiffened the short hairs on the back of my neck and brought a chill sweat to my brow. It was the terrified cry of my yak, and following that single shrill scream of animal fear there came another sound—one which caused me to quicken my pace almost to a run as I emerged from the dunes to the washed pebbles of the shore—the horrid, ululant cry of alarm of the horned ones!

Stranded on the beach was a small one-man craft as used of old by the octopus fishers of Dylath-Leen. Frail and unsafe though it looked, beggars cannot be choosers, and thus thinking I leapt within its tar-planked shell and found the round-bladed paddle. Still chanting those mad words of Atal’s deciphering I paddled strongly for the black outline of the far side of the bay, and ungainly though my craft had at first looked it fairly cleft the dark water as I drove furiously at the paddle. By now there were squattish outlines on the shore behind me, dancing in anger at my escape to the sea, and I wondered if the horned ones had a means of communication with which more orthodox creatures—such as men!—were unfamiliar. If so, then perhaps I would find monstrous welcomers awaiting my beaching on the western point!

Half-way across the bay things happened to make me forget the problem of what might wait for me on landing. I felt a tug at my paddle from the oily water and a dark mass rose up out of the depths before my boat. I screamed then, as the thin moonlight lit on the sharp teeth of that unknown swimmer, and lashed out with my paddle as it came alongside, taking a deep breath when it turned away and submerged. I continued then with my frenzied paddling and chanting until the western point loomed out of the dark and the shallow keel of my boat bit sand. As I leapt overboard into the night-chill water I imagined soggy gropings at my legs and ploughed in an agony of terror for the pebbles of the beach—

—And in that same instant, as I touched dry land, there loped out of the dark from the direction of the city the squat forms of a dozen or so of those foul, horned creatures whose brothers dwell in nighted Leng! Before they could reach me, even as their poisonous paws stretched out for me, I raced across my starting point and there came a clap of magical thunder that flung me down face first into the sand. I leapt up again, to my feet, and there within arm’s length, clawing at an unseen barrier—the Wall of Naach-Tith—were those thwarted horned ones of elder dreams. Hateful their looks and murderous their strangled intent as they clawed with vile purpose at thin air, held back by the invisible spell of Naach-Tith’s barrier.

Without pause I snatched out the second of those papers given me by Atal and commenced the invocation of the Fly-the-Light, the spell to draw forth the horror from the ruby! As the first of those weird syllables passed my lips the horned ones fell back, unbelievable terror twisting their already awful features…

“Tetragrammaton Thabaite Sabaoth Tethiktos—:” and as I chanted on, by the dim light of that thin-horned moon, the snarls of those creatures at bay turned to pleading mewls and gibbers as they began to grovel at the base of the Wall of Naach-Tith; and eventually I spoke the last word and there came a silence which was as that quiet that rules at the core of the moon.

Then, out of the silence, a low and distant rumble was born; growing rapidly in volume to a roar, to a blast of sound, to an ear-splitting shriek as of a billion banshees—and from the heart of Dylath-Leen a cold wind blew, extinguishing in an instant the hellfires of the horned ones; and all the tiny red points of light went out in a second; and there came a loud, sharp crack, as of a great crystal disintegrating—and soon thereafter I heard the first of the screams.

I remembered Atal’s warning “not to watch”, but found myself unable to turn away. I was rooted to the spot, and as the screams from the dark city rose in horrid intensity I could but stare into the darkness with bulging eyes, straining to pick out some detail of what occurred there in the midnight streets. Then, as the grovellers at the wall broke and scattered, It came; rushing from out the bowels of the terrified town, bringing with it a wind that bowled over the fleeing creatures beyond the invisible wall as though they had no weight at all; and I saw it!

Blind and yet all-seeing—without legs and yet running like flood water—the poisonous mouths in the bubbling mass—the Fly-the-Light beyond the wall. Great God! The sight of the creature was mind-blasting! And what it did to those now pitiful things from Leng!

Thus it was and is.

• • •

Three times only have I visited the basalt-towered, myriad-wharved city of Dylath-Leen, and now I pray that I have seen that city for the last tine. For who can say but that should there be a next time I might find myself as I did once before within that city’s walls—perhaps even within the Wall of Naach-Tith! For the road twixt the waking world and the world of dream knows no barrier other than that of sleep—and even now I grow drowsy. Yet dare I sleep? I fear that one night I shall awaken to the beams of a thin and haunted moon, within basalt-towered Dylath-Leen, and that the thing from the great ruby shall find me there, trapped within a prison of my own making…