Over the desert of Cuppar-Nombo and the city Golthoth, named by some the Damned, Night rose and shook his hoary wings. An evil twilight was creeping across the sky, with multitudenous waxing stars; hidden bats stirred uneasily in doubtful sleep; and in the painted wagons men lighted incense whose duty it was, and chanted the old songs, as they have always done at evening for the last four thousand years.
For a song and no more creditable reason the painted wagons came to Cuppar-Nombo. For though deceitful Time has concealed much behind the centuries, still those songs forget not the greatness of Golthoth’s limestone temples and obelisks, nor any rumor of the arts whereby the cyclopean limestone blocks were moved, which is one with the dust of architects. Very splendid still are Golthoth’s temples, with their images and myriad columns spectral in that light which filters only at noon down through the shadowy fanes. There by little copper lamps the shaven priests mumbled once over papyrus scrolls before the cryptical gods: strange figures with human bodies and the heads of cats, hawks, rams and lions, and jackal-headed Anubis whos concern is with the dead. But the old gods and kings are unnamed for the last four thousand years, since a certain thing happened which even the songs dare not hint. Some have surmised a curse which the gods once spoke in anger and could never since recall. But the songs say only how after this certain thing the eyes and glyphic name of Anubis were chipped off the temple walls by the shaven priests, before the priests disappeared, and how he people fled their ancient, horrible city, screaming.
Now this certain thing was forgotten, for the songs made no mention of it, and the old gods slept. And in cities less ancient and horrible than Golthoth strange, dark wanderers began to think again of the opulence of their ancient kings all lonely in the desert, sentineled only by the lean jackals and their shadows. These people considered how one might spend so many emeralds, and the uses men have for gold. One morning the strange, dark wanderers were gone with their painted wagons from the market places of cities where they told fortunes for silver and bought gay beads from the merchants, which displeased no one but the torturers and dispensers of justice who are not kind to thieves. When they came to Cuppar-Nombo the high walls were all blue with the evening.
Much has been sung of the wealth of the old kings. It was the intention of the dark people to come beneath the high tomb shaped, as was customary, like a pyramid, and to locate therein the hidden door such tombs are known to have. Among their number were several persons for whom familiarity had made the felonious arts of burglary wholly contemptable; and one wearing the head-dress with the two horns and a curious disk between the horns, who was not unlearned concerning cold guardians of tombs who have a deplorable appetite for the blood of venturesome thieves, and how most effectively to curb that appetite. Many had mattocks and spades. On Cuppar-Nombo in sight of the beautiful blue walls the burglars confered with the priest, who consulted in turn the little ivory fetishes he had, and so determined that the enterprise so dear to all their hearts should begin with the first light of dawn. No one knows when Snid and Leshti and Loth decided upon their own enterprise, but for several days more than one person had missed a spade or mattock from among his personal belongings.
For Leshti and Loth were of course both notably fine thieves, but the deeds of Snid have become a matter of fable. When ever his name is mentioned men stop smiling and look to their shutters; jewellers who remember what became of the gnomes’ opals, justly fear the deftness of his quick brown fingers; in a certain disreputable quarter of Celephais they wonder how once he appropriated, by means not entirely honest, the three unlikely ruby coffers and the key to the Vaults of Zin, all in a single night’s work. It is therefore not surprising that the plan should have occurred to Snid. And the plan was not at all uncongenial to Messrs. Leshti or Loth.
When those three conspiritors left the watch-fires in front of the painted wagons the stars were already out, still nobody saw them steal away into the shadows. Perhaps someone did see a lean, crouching shape slipping suspiciously just past the edge of sight, noticed hardly at all, while elsewhere one overheard the crack of a pebble (or was it only the fire?) and a little breeze rattling in the grass. But of course it was neither Snid nor Leshti nor Loth — who were much too subtle — for they had already gotten as far as the secret path which men never made, that goes furtively down along Golthoth’s dizzy walls, past the pits there are on the far side, and thence by devious ways down into that valley where the three hoped to find and loot the high tomb. They would not enter that ancient, horrible city, for Snid had spent many hours in pondering the old songs and his plan, and it seemed to him not improbable that the old gods who slept might also dream. And Snid had his reasons for not wishing to meet any dream of the gods. So they came, those three thieves with their mattocks and spades and the three zebras brought for a purpose, which Snid had concealed in his wagon so cunningly that no one even suspected, the zebras on whose backs they hoped to bear away their loot to Drinen, thereby confounding their tribe; so they came down that old forgotten path between the crumbling lesser tombs, and found at last that which of all things the thieves had least reason to expect: the high tomb was not there!
So Leshti fell down weeping, and Loth would have thrown himself upon his sword; but Snid only sat dejectedly upon a stone, biting his nails and considering how things were not going at all as he had planned.
Now it no longer made any difference to Snid why the name and painted eyes of Anubis (and not sinful Nyar-lathotep, who has no eyes) were effaced by the vengeful priests, for his reputation was at stake. Nor was he ever one to leave perfectly valuable sapphires lying in a desert. But Snid was having uncomfortable suspicions about what a certain thing that had left Golthoth desolate may have been; and had he not his reputation to think of, he might almost have slipped quietly back to the watch-fires before anyone there even realized that Snid had been away. Then avarice got the better of him. Never telling the younger thieves what he feared, he made instead some likely reference to wind and sand and Time: for the Desert, as he said to Leshti and Loth, was always jealous of his secrets, and there were four thousand years to be considered. Then those notable thieves took heart, and lighted the copper lanthorns they had, knowing that no one who spies strange red lights out in the desert at night is likely to investigate, and unpacked their spades and mattocks. And there beneath the stars, under Snid’s shrewd direction, they set about their heroic project, the unearthing of the high pyramid tomb which the desert was inhospitably concealing.
They worked very quickly in the starlight, driven by sheer avarice. Still Leshti and Loth were not happy as they dug; though when the oddly moist clay began to assume an unhealthy shade that was not reassuring, they said it was only the red beams of their lanthorns, and dug stoutly on. The cleverly muffled spades made less noise than their breathing, they heard the jackals draw near with terrible smiles, and heard them whine nervously as they slunk away with their shadows and tails between their legs. But Snid would only scoff at omens. And when the thieves had dug down to the depth of a grave, they uncovered three small diorite cubes bearing an exceedingly peculiar inscription on five of the six polished faces of each, and the sign of the five-pointed star. These Snid eyed perplexedly for several minutes, then cast from him in revulsion, muttering something about their being of little market value. Still he would not admit that it might be as he feared, for his reputation was at stake. But much later even Snid could not hide his unease, for they all loathed the way that viscid, quivering mud clung to their spades and crept and bubbled noisomely, and the horrible way it ate holes in their boots.
Now when evening comes the dark wanderers sing the old songs no longer, and light incense only to conceal a certain terrible odour which has haunted their wagons since the morning, long ago, when they fled from Cuppar-Nombo. They have since tried to explain that odour away in view of what they now know to have happened, but of the way the ground beneath the painted wagons behaves at evening they never speak. Once a man admonished them to return to the worship of the old gods who sleep, and to offer sacrifice to Anubis lest the World swallow them as well; but they slew him with a curious rite and buried him beneath one of the wagons where the ground acted strangely. It is many years since the burgesses of Ulthar have heard any rumour of the dark wanderers.
This is what the dark people found on that morning they came down between the crumbling lesser tombs, to the place where they looked to find the high tomb of their hearts’ desire: a lonely crouching shape that snarled and laughed and scrabbled in the dust, whom they recognized as Snid by the little lines of greed about the eyes. But there was very little human in those eyes now, and even less in the ghoulish aspect of the face. And observing then the spades and mattocks where they had been laid, and the three dead zebras, they guessed what Snid had planned, and searched his pockets to learn whether he had found the treasurer of the old kings. But there were only some white finger-bones, a number of teeth, and a portion of somebody’s femur. They wondered at the freshness of those pitiful osseous relics, and at the hideous way Snid leered at them and laughed and called them by name. No recognizable traces of Leshti or Loth were ever found.
Yet despite these queer portents the dark people would have begun an excavation of their own. Only after they saw how the earlier digging had not been filled in, as they had supposed, but had closed up in a horrible smile, did they drop their implements and hurry judiciously away.