by Brian Lumley
‘And so I arrived at an hitherto unthinkable conclusion: he’d been no mage at all but had relied entirely upon his mentor, Yibb-Tstll for whatever he’d required in the way of morbid magicks. In this I was somewhat mistaken, but not utterly …
‘Eventually I came across Yoppaloth’s most secret place, a locked tower room, which I broke open to discover its purpose. And now at last I could see for myself how the monster god had used and misused – and planned to further misuse – his priestling. For here were his magicks – but all of them limited to a single purpose, all channelled along the same sad route. Yoppaloth’s “magick” was that of the ultimate coward: each charm, each rune, all powers and potencies, were without exception designed for his own protection!
‘Here were deflective devices, to turn aside the perilous spells and caustic conjurations of others; and here likenesses of Yoppaloth in precious metals, upon which certain mordancies might spend themselves in place of their true target. Here were antidotes for every known and some unknown poisons, runes against the Red Rot and Purple Pestilence (which might easily fret to nothing even a man supposedly immortal!) and assorted activates to counter and work against the senders of other thaumaturgical terrors.
‘And the fantastic truth which all of these things revealed to me was this: that Black Yoppaloth’s every living moment had been one of abject fear, indeed a palsy of fright! So that all that remained was to discover what he had so feared, and why.’
Tarra Khash could keep silent no longer. ‘And did you discover those things?’
‘Aye,’ the other nodded, as the light from the green lantern burned lower, ‘I did. It was all written there in the pact itself! There in that secret room, kept locked an hundred years except when Yoppaloth cowered there. And this is what he’d set his seal upon:
‘That he would serve Yibb-Tstll, and through him the Old Ones, until the time of their return, which was to be a period of one thousand years. In that time, for his pains, Black Yoppaloth would be Lord of Shad and Shadarabar and master over all therein, but afterwards he would become the undisputed Master of all Theem’hdra, mighty above all men. Indeed, all man’s works would be his, everything, and none to stay his hand. All the wealth of the cities would be his, and even the cities themselves, and the entire world would belong to Yoppaloth – so long as he served the Old Ones, did their bidding and made sacrifices unto them.
‘Until that time, he would feed Yibb-Tstll on the souls of many men and make him strong; periodically, he would make small sacrifices to the god, and annually would glut him with souls. And each hundred years he would prepare for Yibb and the Old Ones a special feast, preceded by an unthinkable orgy of blood spilled in detestable combat; and the games would be of his devising, cruel almost beyond imagination, for which the Old Ones, though they could not be there in the flesh, would bless him and look upon him as their one true priest in the world of men.
‘And that was the pact against which Black Yoppaloth, great fat fool, had set his seal, to which he’d sworn, upon which oath he’d pledged his soul! And how could he lose? Cruel by nature, the pact guaranteed an excess of cruelty lasting a thousand years, and then lasting an eternity; greedy, an entire world had been promised him to rule, mighty above all men. And yet, even signing, even pledging his soul to this calamitous compact, Yoppaloth felt a tremor in his limbs, a sudden shaft in his heart. So that for the first time he felt – afraid! But that had been only the beginning of the fear.
‘Now, in his dreams, he heard the booming laughter of the Old Ones and felt them near as never before; and so he determined to reassure himself, by calling up Yibb-Tstll to come to him and tell him how it would be when in fact the Old Ones came and made him Master of the World. And the monster-god had declared that it would be as promised, exactly so, and had shown him the future he’d set his seal to. The future, aye, but in no wise the future as Yoppaloth had pictured it! For this is what Yibb-Tstll showed him:
‘A future world where men were no more – a world cleared off of the entire human race – where Man’s cities lay crumbling in vast red blighted deserts. And rising in the distance, the twisted spires and turrets of cities vast and grey and terrible, mighty windowless mausoleums, and mad, cyclopean statuaries whose very angles defied Yoppaloth’s eye to fathom their true shapes and perspectives. The cities of the Old Ones! And so he saw the world over which he’d one day rule, and finally he understood the words of the pact.
‘“Mighty over all men” – because there would be no other men! “Ruler of all Man’s cities and works” – crumbling piles shattered by the Old Ones’ coming, or simply fallen into the decay of ages, untended in a world without human tenants. But… if Yibb and the Old Ones would destroy the entire human race, then how might Yoppaloth make sacrifice unto them? Must he sacrifice the beasts of the fields? And was this how he’d spend his immortality, in the never-ending service of creatures from black pits of earth, far stars and darkling spheres?
‘At which point Yoppaloth, who to this juncture had been half-mad, went completely insane! For he knew now that he was doomed. Beasts for sacrifice? But he had seen no beasts in that future world – there had been no beasts! Nothing had lived there, save the Old Ones themselves in their terrible cities, and puffed Shoggoths in foul black lakes. And if they had left nothing that he might sacrifice to them, then the pact would be broken and his own soul forfeit. Aye, and Yoppaloth had seen how Yibb-Tstll took the souls of men and knew only too well how monstrous would be his fate.
‘His only hope was this: that if he served Them exceedingly well in the thousand years before their coming, then that they’d leave some small part of Theem’hdra for him, and stock it with men and beasts, so that he might continue to serve them. And so, Tarra Khash, this was Yoppaloth’s lot up to the moment when I killed him …’
And now Black Yoppaloth II fell silent, and in the near-darkness as the lantern burned lower still, only the gleam of his black eyes and certain greenly illumined highlights of his skeletal features could be seen …
Hypnotized by his ominous host’s story, and by the circumstances of its telling, Tarra Khash was silent for long moments; then, with an effort of will, he dragged himself back to the here and now. ‘And so you inherited his curse,’ he finally said. ‘Which seems to me a very difficult thing to understand.’
‘How so?’ the other glanced at him.
Tarra shrugged. ‘He’d spent the best part of an hundred years gathering protections for his life – indeed he was protected by Yibb and the Old Ones themselves – and yet you succeeded in killing him.’
‘Good!’ said the other. ‘That was a mystery which puzzled me, too, when first I gave it thought. Especially having found the necromancer’s secret tower room and read his story. But while I have called him a necromancer, wizard, mage and such, in truth he was none of these things. I reason it like this:
‘That in the moment of supramundane influx – when that whirlwind from subterranean regions would have transferred to Yoppaloth strength to resist the ages, which I received in his stead – then that all his protective devices were cancelled. The magick of the Old Ones was greater than his and put all such petty spells and simples aside, which left him open not only to Their device but also to my sword.’
Tarra nodded. ‘Since when you’ve accumulated magicks of your own, such as the powers you call on to give you strength, which you draw like a vampire from your victims. Also the bolt you hurled at some unseen foe, back there on the island where all very nearly came unstuck.’
Yoppaloth shook his head, gave a wry laugh. ‘I am protected,’ he answered, ‘right enough – and certainly I’ve done what I can to protect myself – but as for any other form of magick… I have none! Do you not see? Even in a thousand years, I have learned nothing of the true thaumaturgies. The Old Ones, through Yibb-Tstll, have kept all such knowledge from me. What? And do you think they’d let me dabble, and perhaps discover a means to rid myself – and the world – of their curse?’
‘I was warned that someone spied upon me,’ the other patiently explained, ‘and was delivered of just enough power to deal with the incursion. I tell you, I have no magick – not of my own making! Even the winds which blow me home to Shad, they are not of my calling. They are sent, by powers whose sway over me is great and greater than any puppet-master’s over his puppets …’
Tarra shook his head in wonder. ‘Then your fix is exactly the same as that of the first Yoppaloth,’ he said.
‘No, it is worse than that of the first Yoppaloth,’ the other gloomed, ‘for he had worried over his fate for only one century, while I have worried over mine for ten. It drove him mad in a very little while, and as for me …Well, in any case, that fate is now upon me.’
‘Upon you?’ Things were only just beginning to connect up in the Hrossak’s mind. He frowned – then gasped: ‘A thousand years – the compact nears completion!’
Black Yoppaloth nodded. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘It matures tomorrow night, in Shad, in the arena of death!’
‘Turn back the boats!’ Tarra cried at once. ‘Flee! There’s no alternative, for you’ve seen what the Old Ones intend for this world.’
The other laughed a harsh, grinding laugh. ‘I’ve fled more times than I can number,’ he answered. ‘Always they bring me back.’
‘Then kill yourself!’ The words slipped out before Tarra could stop them.
‘Oh?’ The other’s gaze was bleak upon him. ‘And would you be so brave? Yes, I dare say you would. Well, I have tried – and failed – and then been punished. Do you forget? I’m immortal.’
‘Unless some man kill you!’ Tarra barely breathed the words; but this time at least, he let them come out of his own will.
Their eyes met in the near-darkness. ‘But how?’ Black Yoppaloth whispered. ‘It can’t be done, until tomorrow night. And even then only at the exact moment, that single instant of time.’
Tarra felt the muscles bunching of their own accord in his arms, felt his fingers crooking, his body trembling as he fought against its leaning towards his host. Immortal Black Yoppaloth might well be, but there were certain things a man must find out for himself. At which moment, the guttering lantern went out …
Tarra forced himself to relax, heard Black Yoppaloth’s frosty voice in the sudden, smoky darkness:
‘You see, Tarra Khash? Protected!’ Then fingers of ice took Tarra’s shoulder, drew him to his feet, thrust him from the tent. He stood blinded by moonlight, gazed back into utter darkness. ‘I knew you’d be tempted,’ came that cold, cold voice from within. ‘And didn’t I tell you not to come to Shad? Didn’t I warn you? Well, and now we’re almost there, and so another warning:
‘No man will harm you in Shad, Tarra, so long as you stay well clear of my palace. That’s my word. Even if you come there, they’ll not harm you – but be advised in this matter, do not come.’
‘Because in that case you would harm me?’
Silence answered the Hrossak’s question.
‘But what good will it do to stay away?’ Tarra pressed. ‘The world is doomed anyway.’
‘So it would seem,’ the cold voice agreed, ‘but would you risk a thousand-year nightmare for yourself – or immediate physical destruction and eternal torment for your living soul – when it can all be ended for the world in a single moment?’
Tarra gritted his teeth, slowly turned away; but from behind:
‘Tell me just one thing, Hrossak. That first time in my tent, the trial with the knife: did you let me win?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tarra answered truthfully. ‘Maybe I could have moved faster. But I knew that if I won I lost: if I tried to kill you, then that you or your Yhemnis would surely kill me.’
‘Hmm!’ the other mused.
‘And you?’ Tarra’s turn to question. ‘At ocean’s rim, the trial with the sword? Oh, I know I moved faster that time than ever before in my entire life – but did you let me win?’
After a moment: ‘Perhaps,’ said Yoppaloth. ‘It was that or kill you, which I had no desire to do. And of course I knew that you couldn’t kill me. So – maybe Shad was always your destiny after all. We can only wait and see.’
Then there was nothing but silence and the soft slap of waves against the hull, and in a little while Tarra moved away …
XI
VARIOUS MAGICKS!
A new dawn came to Theem’hdra, turned to a new day, which in time lengthened toward evening. Perhaps the last evening.
As the sun surrendered to Cthon’s nets and dipped down under the rim of the world, so Orbiquita was borne safely to the surface of the desert. Changing even as her ex-sisters carried her up from the brimstone reek of their secret place, the excommunicated lamia lost all of her loathsomeness and metamorphosed into that delicious human female form she had always loved best; so that by the time the blowhole opened to a smoking pit, her delicate lungs were burning and her eyes streaming from the sulphurous heat and stench. Lamia memory was fading, too, but not so much that she’d forgotten her rights.
‘To Teh Atht,’ she gasped, choking out the words as they dumped her unceremoniously onto the side of a dune which was already cooling in its own shade. ‘Take me to my cousin, in his manse in Klühn.’
Iniquiss was with them and listened awhile to their grumbling, but finally she gave the request her approval. ‘Aye, take her to that puny sorcerer relative of hers, if that’s what she wants,’ she said. And to Orbiquita: ‘Two more requests, my girl, and then you’re on your own.’
As a cloud they flew her over the Mountains of Lohmi, the plains and scrublands, the Great Eastern Range and the River Lohr, then dipped down out of a sky already sprinkled with stars toward the softly litten aerie which was Teh Atht’s manse. And all accomplished at a great, whirring speed, so that Orbiquita – a mere girl now – was breathless from the headlong rush of it and dizzy in the spiral of the final descent to her cousin’s place, built on the craggy stub of a promontory in the rounded bite of the Bay of Klühn.
There, all day, the wizard had worriedly paced the crystal-paved flags of his rooms, finally going up to a tower workshop he no longer used and out onto its balcony. And there too he now saw against the stars and dark blue sky a darker knot of figures falling, and wondered at this weird aerial phenomenon. But not for long.
‘Lamias!’ he breathed as their shapes became more apparent, and he at once threw up a Keep-Ye-Out, which might have worked with one lamia but not with an entire flock. They dropped right through the spell, their wings beating their hot, foul stink into Teh Atht’s face as they deposited Orbiquita upon his balcony.
‘What?’ he cried, falling back from them, toward the archway leading to the descending stone stairwell. ‘What? Lamias – with whom I’ve nothing of disagreement – invading my house and at such a time? Or is it merely portent of the hastening calamity? Are you, then, the chosen harbingers of a world’s doom?’
‘Our visit is portent of nothing, wizard,’ Iniquiss breathed brimstone upon him, pushed Orbiquita into the protection of his uplifted arms. ‘Except this poor creature desired to be brought here, to the manse of her cousin!’
‘Her cous—?’ Teh Atht began to repeat the Great Lamia’s words, until his jaw fell open and stopped him. He looked at the lovely naked girl in his arms, then at her vile ex-sisters where they lifted off on leathery membrane wings. ‘Orbiquita?’
She by now was recovered from her momentary nausea, and she clutched at him in seeming desperation. ‘Does he live?’ she begged, in an urgent but entirely human voice, indeed with the voice of a sweet girl. And then of course Teh Atht knew for a certainty that this was Orbiquita.
‘Tarra Khash?’ he said, quite needlessly.
‘Of course, Tarra Khash,’ she answered, with that creeping into her voice to hint of what she’d recently been. ‘Only say that he lives, cousin, for if not I’ll call down Iniqu
iss and her brood and beg of them my second boon, which will involve yourself most direly …’
By now the lamia flock was risen far up into the night, but still Teh Atht peered nervously after them and held the girl close. And when at last they were diminished to black specks against the stars, then he answered: ‘Aye, he lives, cousin – for now. We all live – for now! But what’s this? Have you broken your vows, put the Sisterhood behind you? For a man? Incredible!’
She nodded, shivered, and he at once took her inside and down into warm apartments where he found clothes for her. Then he led her to the room of the astrologarium and showed her the flux and flow of its plasm, explaining to her the awesome meaning which he read in the doomful rush and reel of moons, planets, comets and stars. Following which, when his words had sunk in, he said:
‘And so you see, Orbiquita, how all of your trials are come to naught. Your Tarra is doomed, as are we all – as is the world!’
She had been patient, but now demanded: ‘Show him to me.’
‘Have I not explained?’ Teh Atht threw wide his hands. ‘I dare not use my shewstone! For all I know Black Yoppaloth is waiting for me even now on the other side of the scrying. And in any case, this is only a small—’
‘But the merest glimpse!’ she pleaded, cutting his protests short. ‘A glimpse – of Tarra alone and not this necromancer you so greatly fear.’
Fear Shad’s monstrous mage? Yes, Teh Atht had to admit that he did. But the contradiction was clear: what use to fear anyone or anything when the sands of time were running out for all Theem’hdra, a process due to terminate in ultimate chaos, death and destruction this very night? Teh Atht hesitated a moment longer, then strode to his shewstone.