Mad Moon of Dreams

by Brian Lumley

  The four crossed the floor of the cave and passed behind the stalagmite clump into the fissure, and as they went so the pictures changed in their minds, showing them every inch of the way they must go. Puzzled by something—even in the extremity of the knowledge that this most probably would be his last hour—still Eldin thought to ask:

  “Eeth, how can you know the way so well?”

  “My mother knew the way,” came Eeth’s crystal voice, a little fainter now, “and her mother before her, and something of their knowledge came down to me. Also, I have been this way once before—as a caterpillar on my way to feed in the mushroom forest.”

  “And yet your, er, sisters haven’t hatched yet?” Eldin appeared to be trying to understand.

  “I was deposited some little time before them,” came the answer, with a hint of something like pride.

  “D’you take me for a fool?” Hero suddenly asked the Wanderer for no apparent reason.

  “Always,” Eldin drily answered.

  “Huh!” said Hero. “I know what you’re up to. Taking my mind off things with your infernal moth-talk!”

  “Taking my own mind off things, really,” the Wanderer replied. “Hero, I’m stiff … and not with boredom.”

  “You’re looking more than a bit gray, too,” said the other. They paused for a moment where Eeth’s mind-pictures said they must turn to the left and climb a steep incline. “Eldin, have you ever had that feeling you’ve been here before?”

  “Deja vu?”

  “No riddles, just answer my question.”

  “Aye,” Eldin replied with a sigh as they climbed (but oh so slowly now) the stony ramp. “Oh, we’ve been here before, all right, you and I. Staring into the teeth of the Old Boy himself. Death’s grinned at us more than once.”

  “But this time he’s in hysterics!” Hero answered without humor.

  Now the way led straight up, an easy climb even for a pair of untried girls. Yellow moonlight showed high up at the top of a wide chimney full of ledges and cavelets and resting places. “There you … go,” Eldin told the girls, and he rested his numb legs and aching back against a rocky wall. “Watch how you go … and you’ll be … all right.”

  Hero came to a halt beside him. They looked layered with moon-dust, gray as pumice, but in fact it was the color of their skin, their flesh. “You’ve come … this far,” said Hero, “and no harm done. With that … kind of luck … I believe you … should make it.”

  “No harm done!” cried Ula, clutching at him and weeping bitterly. She stood on tiptoe to kiss his mouth—and her hand flew to her lips in shock. Una, too, sobbed as she clung to Eldin’s stony chest; sobbed all the louder when she no longer detected the beating of his heart. Then the girls stepped slowly away from the questers and stared at them with wide, tearful eyes.

  Dust trickled down the wall behind the two when, with a scraping sound, they slowly settled and leaned together. And the last dim gleams of fire went out of their eyes.

  For some little time Ham Gidduf’s twin daughters hung in each other’s arms and sobbed. Then, when it was done, they began to climb. Behind them a pair of statues became one with the shadowed, centuried stone, and from somewhere far below the merest tinkle of a tiny crystal chimed farewell in their minds …

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Return of Randolph Carter

  Limnar Dass, where he stood on Gnorri’s bridge, simply could not believe his eyes. For long seconds he stared at the curving horizon of sharp-etched peaks, and at what rose above them, as a man might stare at some monster born of delirium tremens; except that this was no monster but the gladdest, maddest sight imaginable.

  “Pinch me, Zura,” Limnar said to the zombie Princess where she stood beside him. “Wake me up or relieve me of my command, one of the two, for I’m either asleep or insane!”

  “Then we’re both for the madhouse, Cap’n Dass,” she answered. And under her breath she added, “Damn! Damn! Damn!”

  “Damn?” Limnar faintly repeated her, slack-jawed and pop-eyed. Not really listening to her, his response was almost drugged, automatic. He could not take his eyes from that fantastic horizon.

  “Limnar!” came Gytherik’s ringing shout as he leapt up onto the bridge in a frenzy of excitement. “Do you see it? Do you see it?”

  “We see it,” Zura answered, “and I for one know I’m not dreaming. I’ve seen it before, and from much the same vantage point—and the last time it cost me my fleet!”

  “Serannian!” gasped Gytherik.

  “The sky-floating city!” sighed Limnar, almost sure now of his senses.

  “Kuranes and Carter,” moaned Zura. “I might as well jump overboard here and now!”

  “No,” Limnar caught her by the elbow—then quickly let go as he thought of all the poisons that she was. “You’ve played your part, Zura,” he told her. “There’ll be no punishment for you—not if I have a say in it.”

  “You’re assuming, of course, that the dreamlands will win?” she said.

  “Oh, they will!” cried Gytherik deliriously. “We will!”

  “But Serannian!” said Limnar, still astounded and not quite accepting the evidence of his own five senses. “How can it possibly be?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Zura, “and I care even less. If I survive—and if I’m not locked away—then it’s back to the Charnel Gardens for me.” There was no gladness in her tone, and suddenly the sky-Captain felt sorry for her.

  “How can you take it so calmly?” Gytherik danced a jig on the bridge. “Look, it’s Serannian. It is Serannian!”

  And indeed it was Serannian, the sky-floating city, jewel of the dreamlands, fully emerged now from behind the mountains and approaching like some incredible stately behemoth of the sky. Beneath the aerial city a haze of warm, vented flotation essence, literally an ocean of that ethereal vapor, shimmered in sunlight from beyond the moon’s rim; and on her flanks sailed the massed might of the dreamlands, Kuranes’ and Randolph Carter’s warship fleets. At the front, leading all into battle, came the Royal Yacht itself, whose colors told Limnar Dass a great deal.

  “You see that flag?” he caught hold of Gytherik to keep him still.

  “I can’t quite make it out,” answer the other, squinting his eyes.

  “Here,” said Limnar, “use my glass. Now tell me what you see …”

  “A lantern, I think,” the gaunt-master reported, “and what looks like a great jaw—all set against a green and ancient hill.”

  “Aye,” Limnar grinned, excitement flaring up in him until he trembled to contain it. “That’s the King’s standard, all right. Randolph Carter is back, Gytherik—and if you think you’ve seen it all, I’ve news for you. Do you see those bright-shining mirrors lining the decks of yon ships? They’re ray-projectors, last used in the Bad Days. King Carter outlawed them for a time when the troubles were over, but now it seems he’s had them installed in the ships of his fleet. You saw their like in Ilek-Vad, on the night of the mad moon’s beam, and before that in the war with, er—”

  “With me,” Zura nodded. “And little use they were.”

  “Oh, I remember the ray-projectors well enough,” Gytherik hastily replied. “Didn’t you have a couple of them aboard Skymaster one time? I seem to remember that before we were friends, you shot down one of my gaunts with just such a weapon.”

  “Ah!” Limnar coughed. “Yes, that’s right. I had forgotten. Actually, the projectors were undergoing trials at the time. They had been improved a little over models used in the Bad Days. And I think you’ll find these even newer models are better still. They were originally designed for work against organic targets: to destroy evil beings and creatures,” he glanced at Zura. “Living ones, that is. But I know for a fact that there were plans afoot to have them adapted for inorganic targets too. Then King Carter and Kuranes canceled the project, or perhaps they simply placed it under wraps? We shall see.”

  “I seem to remember,” said Gytherik again, “that they were quite deadl
y enough in their old form!”

  “Oh? Well, believe me,” answered Limnar, “that if these really are the latest models, anything that passed for deadly before was merely a prelude. Now comes the concerto!”

  High over the suddenly muted moonscape sailed the fleets of dreamland, and while they still could their mirrors gathered the rays from the sun beyond the rim and enhanced them in their batteries of projectors. Now the ships were descending, venting essence and spreading across the sky like a scarlet stain in the vastness of Serannian’s shadow; and too late, the commanders of the Lengite fleet knew that they were doomed.

  Pent fury—the furious power of the sun itself—was released then, to lash down from on high in the shape of dazzling-white pencil beams from the fleet’s ray-projectors, and where those beams struck they brought death and destruction. They licked over sails and rigging and left them blazing; they lingered on wooden decks until timbers gouted fire and smoke; they penetrated deep to seek out and detonate magazines, filling the sky with falling debris and burning wreckage. And where a Lengite fleet had sailed, soon nothing remained but fire-tinged smoke and rolling thunder!

  A dozen heavily armored escort vessels spiralled down, four to each of Limnar’s three crippled ships, and put out grapples. Then, powerful engines pulsed; and they were lifted up, up and into the Bay of Serannian itself. This took some little time, during which the fleet had concentrated its ray bombardment upon Mnomquah and the cities of the moonbeasts. Where the former seemed amazingly invulnerable, the latter could not withstand the fleet’s fiery fury.

  How those windowless towers burned when the devastating power of the sun fell upon them, and how dreamland’s gunners took revenge for the ravaged towns and hamlets of the land of Earth’s dreams! Ah, but the moonbeasts were not helpless! They had their magic, and wizards who knew well how to use it. Up from the cities under attack sprang the weaving heads of wand-snakes, and wherever they struck ships turned to stone and fell out of the sky. For where the moonbeast wizards of Mnomquah’s temple had merely played a cat-and-mouse game with Limnar’s flotilla, now their brothers in the cities were in deadly earnest where the greater fleet was concerned. A full dozen of dreamland’s ships were caught this way, for no sooner would the ray-projector gunners find and destroy one group of wizards than another would spring up somewhere else.

  And yet the wizard-priests did not strike at Serannian itself, perhaps because they saw little profit in petrifying that which was already stone; so that high over the scene of battle Limnar, Gytherik and Zura, safe now behind Serannian’s ramparts, could look down with bated breath and see how the fighting fared. And eventually, as exchanges between ships and cities grew more heated, there came that signal occurrence which put an end to the whole thing.

  The flat nodding head of a wand-snake found its way into the bay of Serannian and hovered there over a half-dozen ships held in reserve. It was a large snake, this one, and the ships were sailing in close formation. Back went the cobralike head of that magic-spawned smoke-snake, as if to strike, but before it could thrust forward and down upon the ships—

  “Look!” cried Limnar, pointing out through an embrasure. “The promontory there—the Museum!”

  Zura and Gytherik followed his pointing finger, saw the great circular building he indicated where it stood upon a jutting, fragile-looking promontory. Built on the very rim, beyond the Museum was—nothing! Beneath it, a thin-seeming fifty feet of rock overhung a mile of thin air. Between sky-island and Museum, a narrow, walled causeway was the only means of access. Now, clanking out from the shadow of the Museum and making his way to the center of the causeway, the Curator had come into view.

  “Aye,” said Zura sourly, “and I remember him, too! He was responsible for the destruction of many of my ships.”

  “Only because they threatened his Museum,” answered Gytherik breathlessly, “as even now it might appear to be threatened.”

  Many-armed, built of metal, thin, tall, spiky, shiny and tough-looking, the Curator gazed at the nodding wand-snake through glittering crystal eyes. And as the vast flat head of the thing struck, so did the Curator. Out from his eyes shot pencil-slim beams of blue light which met the wand-snake’s head in mid-thrust. The snake instantly stopped, as if time itself had frozen for the semi-sentient thing, and began to glow with the same blue fire of the Curator’s beams. The blue light raced down the body of the snake in a moment into the heart of a gray moonbeast city, to the top of a squat windowless tower—which also began to glow with that same blue energy.

  Only then, when the source of the great wand-snake was discovered, did the fire behind Curator’s eyes blink out. So did the wand-snake’s head, its body, the squat building in the moonbeast city, and doubtless a large coven of moonbeast wizards!

  Nor was Curator satisfied. If one such magical device could threaten his Museum—threaten to turn all of its aeon-gathered contents to worthless stone—then so could the others. He leaned over the causeway’s wall, gazed down at the scene of battle below, and proceeded to destroy wand-snakes wherever he found them until none at all remained! Then, with the danger disposed of, he clanked back across the causeway and into his Museum.

  For a long time now the ray-projector gunners had been bombarding Mnomquah where he still reared, half-in, half-out of his pit. As if contemptuous of them, more interested in the battle than annoyed by the puerile attempts of mere dreamlings, the moon-God had seemed to ignore them. By use of that power with which he had drawn the very moon down out of dreamland’s sky, Mnomquah had surrounded himself with energies which all the ferocity of the sun itself could not penetrate. Even Curator’s weapons would be useless here.

  Now it must seem to Mnomquah that he was invincible. Surely these invaders from the dreamlands had tried to destroy him—had employed their weapons to that end to such an extent that even now their batteries were failing and their beams losing their strength—and still he prevailed. They had done their worst, and he was unharmed. Very well, his moonbeast wizards and priests had failed him, and so he himself must now take a greater hand in the battle. It would be a very simple matter, and after that he would make his mighty leap from moon to dreamland’s Sarkomand.

  As the last few beams from the now useless ray-projectors petered out, so Mnomquah reared up gigantically from his crater and reached a webbed forepaw into the sky. Fifty yards across, that paw, a great club which would cut a swath of destruction through a fleet of ships like a man swatting flies frozen in flight—and yet that swath was never cut!

  Limnar Dass where he leaned out of an embrasure in Serannian’s ramparts saw it all. His glass trembled in his hands at what he first took to be sheer lunacy as the Royal Yacht of Randolph Carter sailed down out of the moon’s sky directly into Mnomquah’s range, confronting that horror as a midge might confront some monstrous chameleon. And though Mnomquah could not truly “see” the King’s ship, still he sensed its presence and paused before the sheer insolence of it.

  Or perhaps that was not why he paused—perhaps he sensed something else …

  For in the prow of the Royal Yacht stood Ilek-Vad’s King in the red robes of a warrior, and his arms were raised on high as in invocation to Gods or Powers mightier by far than the moon-God. Still watching, hypnotized by the scene below, Limnar’s flesh tingled and his hair began to stand on end as utterly alien energies awakened, took flight, and filled the air with their rushing. It was as if huge dark wings beat invisibly in the sky, as if they were shutting out all light, as if this might be the beginning of the End of the Universe.

  Darkness descended like a candle snuffed out in a deep cave, until only Mnomquah and the Royal Yacht—aye, and the regal figure of Randolph Carter—were clearly visible in an otherwise universal gloom. And a SILENCE fell over the entire tableau like no silence before or since. Or perhaps there had once been just such a silence, in that far forgotten age when last this selfsame seal was set over the prisons of the Great Old Ones!

  A seal, yes, in the form
of awesome words of power which even now Randolph Carter uttered, and which echoed up out of the silence like the booming of some great and alien gong. What those words meant no man would ever know, not even the King himself. Sufficient that he voiced them—and that Mnomquah recognized and was powerless before them!

  For as the last WORD was spoken the monster’s jaws snapped open in a vast rictus, his yellow tongue lolled out and writhed about the moon pit’s rim, the pulsing beneath his membrane-covered sockets became a violent throbbing—as if his very brains were about to burst out—and he gave one huge and terrible cry before sliding backward into his pit and disappearing from view in a blinding blaze of light which sprang up on the instant all around his crater burrow.

  And when next anyone dared look, all that remained of the moon pit was a vast flat expanse of bubbling, fuming lava …

  CHAPTER IX

  The Survivors

  It was a time of joy and celebration for some, and of sadness for a great many. So many proud ships were gone forever, their crews with them, and so many dear friends would never again raise their cups together in dreamland’s wharfside taverns or sail the wide aerial oceans of her skies. Amongst those who would mourn most were Limnar Dass and Gytherik Imniss.

  But first there had been the elation, the exhilaration of victory, of knowing that the battle was won, the enemy vanquished, the horror averted; and the fleets had gone down to sweep low over the moonscape, picking up survivors from wrecked ships and firing their more conventional weapons in broadsides upon the already devastated moonbeast cities. Survivors on the surface were few, for by far the vast majority of vessels had been destroyed by wand-snakes. There were some, however—a handful, from Limnar’s flotilla—shot down more or less conventionally and hiding until the rescue ships came along.

  Of the latter group: Sniffer and Biffer, Gytherik’s last surviving gaunts, had once more proved themselves invaluable in tracking them down, and but for that fine pair of beasts many an injured or unconscious man would have been left behind to rot or fall prey to the moon’s menaces. Gytherik had sent the gaunts down from Serannian, and tired as they were still they worked ceaselessly at the task he had given them until it was fairly reasoned that all survivors had been picked up. Even then, when Carter’s and Kuranes’ ships were called back into formation about the sky-island, still the gaunts searched on in a sort of frantic dismay. They had already discovered and rescued Ula and Una from where they had lain unconscious at the foot of the temple hill, and now they sought bigger game.