Woe, woe unto Bel Yarnak! Fallen forever are the shining silver towers, lost the magic, soiled the glamor. For stealthily and by night, under the triple moons that hurtle swiftly across the velvet sky, doom crept out inexorably from the Black Minaret.
Mighty magicians were the priests of the Black Minaret. Mighty were they, alchemists and sorcerers, and always they sought the Stone of the Philosophers, that strange power which would enable them to transmute all things into the rarest of metals. And in a vault far below the temple gardens, toiling endlessly at glittering alembics and shining crucibles, lit by the violet glow of ocuru-lamps, stood Thorazor, mightiest of priests, wisest of all who dwelt in Bel Yarnak. Days and weeks and years he had toiled, while strange moons reeled down to the horizons, seeking the Elixir. Gold and silver paved the streets; blazing diamonds, moon-glowing opals, purple gems of strange fire, meteor-fallen, made of Bel Yarnak a splendid vision, shining by night to guide the weary traveler across the sandy wastes. But a rarer element Thorazor sought. Other worlds possessed it, for the intricate telescopes of the astronomers revealed its presence in the flaming suns that fill the chaotic sky, making night over Bel Yarnak a mirror reflecting the blazing scintillance of the city, a star-carpeted purple tapestry where the triple moons weave their arabesque patterns. So toiled Thorazor under the Black Minaret all of glistening jet onyx.
He failed, and again he failed, and at length he knew that only with the gods’ aid could he find the Elixir he sought. Not the little gods, nor the gods of good and evil, but Droom-avista, the Dweller Beyond, the Dark Shining One, Thorazor called up blasphemously from the abyss. For Thorazor’s brain was warped; he had toiled endlessly, and foiled as often; in his mind was but one thought. So he did that which is forbidden: He traced the Seven Circles and spoke the Name which wakens Droom-avista from his brooding sleep.
A shadow swept down, darkening over the Black Minaret. Yet Bel Yarnak was untroubled; glorious and beautiful the shining city glowed while thin voices called weirdly in the streets.
Woe, woe unto Bel Yarnak! For the shadow darkened and encompassed the Black Minaret, and midnight black closed ominously about the sorcerer Thorazor. All alone he stood in his chamber, no gleam of light relieving the awful darkness that heralded the coming of the Dark Shining One, and slowly, ponderously, there rose up before him a Shape. But Thorazor cried out and hid his eyes, for none may look upon the Dweller Beyond lest his soul be blasted forever.
Like the groaning tocsin of a Cyclopean bell came the voice of the Dweller, rumbling terribly under the Black Minaret. Yet only Thorazor heard it, for he alone had called up Droom-avista.
“Now my sleep is troubled,” the god cried. “Now my dreams are shattered and I must weave new visions. Many worlds, a mightier cosmos, have you ruined; yet there are other worlds and other dreams, and perchance I shall find amusement in this little planet. For is not one of my names the Jester?”
Shuddering and fearful, still hiding his eyes, Thorazor spoke.
“Great Droom-avista, I know your name; I have said it. By the doom even upon you, you must obey one command of him who calls you up.”
The darkness throbbed and pulsed. Ironically Droom-avista assented. “Command, then. O little fool, command your god! For always have men sought to enslave gods, and ever have they succeeded too well.”
Yet Thorazor heeded not the warning. One thought only had he: the Elixir, the mighty magic that would transmute all things into the rarest of elements, and to Droom-avista he spoke fearlessly. He said his desire.
"But is that all?” the god said slowly. “Now this is but a small thing for which to disturb my slumber. So shall I grant your desire—for am I not named the Jester? Do thus and thus.” And Droom-avista spoke of that which would transmute all things into the rarest of metals on Bel Yarnak.
Then the god withdrew, and the shadow lifted. Again Droom- avista sank into his dreaming sleep, weaving intricate cosmogonies; and speedily he forgot Thorazor. But the sorcerer stood in his chamber, trembling with exultation, for at his feet lay a jewel. This had the god left behind.
* * *
Flaming, blazing, streaming with weird fire the gem illuminated the dark chamber, driving the shadows back into the distant corners. Yet Thorazor had not eyes for its beauty; this was the Philosopher’s Stone, this the Elixir! A glory was in the wizard’s eyes as he prepared a brew as Droom-avista had commanded.
Then the mixture seethed and bubbled in the golden crucible, and over it Thorazor held the shining jewel. The culmination of a lifetime’s hopes was reached as he dropped the gem into the frothing brew.
For a heartbeat nothing happened. Then, slowly at first, but with increasing swiftness, the golden crucible changed in color, slowly darkening. Thorazor cried out, blessing Droom-avista, for the crucible was no longer golden. It had been transmuted, by the power of the jewel, into the rarest of metals.
The gem, as though lighter than the bubbling mixture, lay lightly on the liquid surface. But the metamorphosis was not yet complete. The darkness crept down the pedestal that supported the crucible; it spread out like a fungoid stain across the onyx floor. It reached the feet of Thorazor, and the sorcerer stood frozen, glaring down at the frightful transmutation that was changing his body from flesh and blood into solid metal. And in a flash of blinding realization Thorazor knew Droom-avista’s jest, and knew that by the power of the Elixir all things are changed to the rarest of elements.
He shrieked once, and then his throat was no longer flesh. And slowly, slowly, the stain spread across the floor and up the stone walls of the chamber. The shining onyx dulled and lost its sheen. And the hungry stain crept out through the Black Minaret, out upon Bel Yarnak, while the thin voices cried sadly in the marble streets.
Woe, woe unto Bel Yarnak! Fallen is the glory, dulled and tarnished the gold and silver splendor, cold and lifeless the beauty of the magic citadel. For outward and ever outward crept the stain, and in its path all was changed. The people of Bel Yarnak no longer move light-heartedly about their houses; lifeless images throng the streets and palaces. Immovable and silent sits the Sindara on a tarnished throne; dark and grim looms the city under the hurtling moons. It is Dis; it is the damned city, and sad voices in the silent metropolis mourn for lost glory.
Fallen is Bel Yarnak! Changed by the magic of Thorazor and by Droom-avista’s jest, changed to the rarest of all elements in the planet of gold and silver and shining gems.
No longer Bel Yarnak—it is Dis, the City of Iron!
Spawn of Dagon by Henry Kuttner
Under all graves they murmur,
They murmur and rebel,
Down to the buried kingdoms creep,
And like a lost rain roar and weep
O’er the red heavens of hell.
— Chesterton.
Will Murray has characterized Henry Kuttner as the quintessential pulp writer: He could write stories in any genre, fast, and on demand. When Robert E. Howard plunged into the River Styx, Kuttner sought to carry on in the tradition of Conan the Cimmerian and penned a small but valuable canon of the adventures of Prince Raynor and the hero of the present tale, Elak of Atlantis. Gary Lovisi (of Gryphon Books, P.O. Box 209, Brooklyn NY 11228) had collected the two series in a pair of small press books. You may also find them, if you look hard enough, in several old paperback anthologies: “Spawn of Dagon” itself in Leo Margulies (ed.), The Ghoul Keepers, Pyramid, 1961; Lin Carter (ed.), The Magic of Atlantis, Lancer, 1970; and Sean Richards (ed), The Barbarian Swordsmen, Star, 1981; “Dragon Moon” in L. Sprague de Camp (ed.), The Fantastic Swordsmen, Pyramid, 1967; Hans Stefan Santesson (ed.), The Mighty Barbarians, Lancer, 1969; “Thunder in the Dawn” in De Camp (ed.), Warlocks and Warriors, Berkley, 1970; “Beyond the Phoenix” in Peter Haining (ed.), Weird Tales, Vol. 1, Sphere, 1978; “Cursed Be the City” in Lin Carter (ed.), The Young Magicians, Ballantine, 1969; “The Citadel of Darkness” in De Camp (ed.), Swords and Sorcery, Pyramid, 1963- Carter always maintained that Kuttner beat Howard
at his own game in these tales. Certainly “Spawn of Dagon” has at least a little in common with Howard’s “Rogues in the House” (and, come to think of it, so does Carter’s own “Thieves of Zangabal”!). You may be the judge as to which is the better.
“Dagon”, of course, is no Lovecraftian coinage. HPL borrowed it from the Philistine deity of the Bible. There is evidence that Dagon was pictured as a semi-ichthyic merman, and Brian Lumley reinforces this possibility by pointing out the association of Dagon with Oannes the fish god. So it might be that Kuttner is here making his own independent use of the same deity. But it is hard to miss a Lovecraftian coloring to the idea of Dagon as a fish god with an ichthyic race of servitors seeking to sink all the surface continents in order to regain their primordial hegemony.
It is worth a moment’s pause to exegete an in-joke in the story. Elak happens to overhear the musings of the sorcerer Zend: “I now summon…a new soul to serve me. When her soul is freed, I shall send it to Antares. There is a planet there where I have heard much sorcery exists. Mayhap I can learn a few more secrets. ” Surely the reference here is to Edmond Hamilton’s “Kaldar, World of Antares” (The Magic Carpet, April 1933, reprinted in Don Wollheim’s Ace anthology Swordsmen in the Sky J. Hamilton himself recalled that when Kuttner was in high school he had written a fan letter to Weird Tales “that I was his favorite author” (in Robert Weinberg, The Weird Tales Story, FAX Collector’s Editions, 1977, p. 53)
First publication: Weird Tales, July 1938.
* * *
Two streams of blood trickled slowly across the rough boards of the floor. One of them emerged from a gaping wound in the throat of a prostrate, armor-clad body; the other dripped from a chink in the battered cuirass, and the swaying light of a hanging lamp cast grotesque shadows over the corpse and the two men who crouched on their hams watching it. They were both very drunk. One of them, a tall, extremely slender man whose bronzed body seemed boneless, so supple was it, murmured:
“I win, Lycon. The blood wavers strangely, but the stream I spilt will reach this crack first.” He indicated a space between two planks with the point of his rapier.
Lycon’s child-like eyes widened in astonishment. He was short, thick-set, with a remarkably simian face set atop his broad shoulders. He swayed slightly as he gasped, “By Ishtar! The blood runs up-hill!”
Elak, the slender man, chuckled. “After all the mead you swilled the ocean might run up-hill. Well, the wager’s won; I get the loot.” He got up and stepped over to the dead man. Swiftly he searched him, and suddenly muttered an explosive curse. “The swine’s as bare as a Bacchic vestal! He has no purse.”
Lycon smiled broadly and looked more than ever like an undersized hairless ape. “The gods watch over me,” he said in satisfaction.
“Of all the millions in Atlantis you had to pick a fight with a pauper,” Elak groaned: “Now we’ll have to flee San-Mu, as your quarrels have forced us to flee Poseidonia and Kornak. And the San-Mu mead is the best in the land. If you had to cause trouble, why not choose a fat usurer? We’d have been paid for our trouble, then, at least.”
“The gods watch over me,” Lycon reiterated, leaning forward and then rocking back, chuckling to himself. He leaned too far and fell on his nose, where he remained without moving. Something dropped from the bosom of his tunic and fell with a metallic sound to the oaken floor. Lycon snored.
Elak, smiling unpleasantly, appropriated the purse and investigated its contents. “Your fingers are swifter than mine,” he told the recumbent Lycon, “but I can hold more mead than you. Next time don’t try to cheat one who has more brains in his big toe than you have in all your misshapen body. Scavenging little ape! Get up; the innkeeper is returning with soldiers.”
He thrust the purse into the wallet at his belt and kicked Lycon heartily, but the small thief failed to awaken. Cursing with a will, Elak hoisted the body of the other to his shoulders and staggered toward the back of the tavern. The distant sound of shouting from the street outside grew louder, and Elak thought he could hear the querulous complaints of the innkeeper.
“There will be a reckoning, Lycon!” he promised bitterly. “Ishtar, yes! You’ll learn—”
He pushed through a golden drapery and hurried along a corridor — kicked open an oaken door and came out in the alley behind the tavern. Above, cold stars glittered frostily, and an icy wind blew on Elak’s sweating face, sobering him somewhat.
Lycon stirred and writhed in his arms. “More grog!” he muttered. “Oh gods! Is there no more grog?” A maudlin tear fell hotly on Elak’s neck, and the latter for a moment entertained the not unpleasant idea of dropping Lycon and leaving him for the irate guards. The soldiers of San-Mu were not renowned for their soft-heartedness, and tales of what they sometimes did to their captives were unpleasantly explicit.
However, he ran along the alley instead, blundered into a brawny form that sprang out of the darkness abruptly, and saw a snarling, bearded face indistinct in the vague starlight. He dropped Lycon and whipped out his rapier. Already the soldier was plunging forward, his great sword rushing down.
Then it happened. Elak saw the guard’s mouth open in a square of amazement, saw horror spring into the cold eyes. The man’s face was a mask of abysmal fear. He flung himself back desperately — the sword-tip just missed Elak’s face.
The soldier raced away into the shadows.
* * *
With a snake-like movement Elak turned, rapier ready. He caught a blur of swift motion. The man facing him had lifted quick hands to his face, and dropped them as suddenly. But there was no menace in the gesture. Nevertheless Elak felt a chill of inexplicable uneasiness crawl down his back as he faced his rescuer. The soldiers of San-Mu were courageous, if lacking in human kindness. What had frightened the attacking guard?
He eyed the other. He saw a medium-sized man, clad in voluminous gray garments that were almost invisible in the gloom — saw a white face with regular, statuesque features. A black hollow sprang into existence within the white mask as a soft voice whispered, “You’d escape from the guards? No need, for your rapier — I’m a friend.”
“Who the — but there’s no time for talk. Thanks, and good-bye.” Elak stooped and hoisted Lycon to his shoulders again. The little man was blinking and murmuring soft appeals for more mead. And the hasty thunder of mailed feet grew louder, while torchlight swiftly approaching cast gleams of light about the trio.
“In here,” the gray-clad man whispered. “You’ll be safe.” Now Elak saw that in the stone wall beside him a black rectangle gaped. He sprang through the portal without hesitation. The other followed, and instantly they were in utter blackness as an unseen door swung creakingly on rusty hinges.
Elak felt a soft hand touch his own. Or was it a hand? For a second he had the incredible feeling that the thing whose flesh he had touched did not belong to any human body — it was too soft, too cold! His skin crawled at the feel of the thing. It was withdrawn, and a fold of gray cloth swung against his palm. He gripped it.
“Follow!”
Silently, gripping the guide’s garment, bearing Lycon on his shoulders, Elak moved forward. How the other could find his way through the blackness Elak did not know, unless he knew the way by heart. Yet the passage — if passage it was — turned and twisted endlessly as it went down. Presently Elak had the feeling that he was moving through a larger space, a cave, perhaps. His footsteps sounded differently, somehow. And through the darkness vague whisperings came to him.
Whispers in no language he knew. The murmurous sibilants rustled out strangely, making Elak’s brows contract and his free hand go involuntarily to the hilt of his rapier. He snarled, “Who’s here?”
The invisible guide cried out in the mysterious tongue. Instantly the whisperings stopped.
“You are among friends,” a voice said softly from the blackness. “We are almost at our destination. A few more steps—”
A few more steps, and light blazed up. They stood in a small recta
ngular chamber hollowed out of the rock. The nitrous walls gleamed dankly in the glow of an oil lamp, and a little stream ran across the rock floor of the cave and lost itself, amid chuckles of goblin laughter, in a small hole at the base of the wall. Two doors were visible. The gray-clad man was closing one of them.
A crude table and a few chairs were all the furnishings of the room. Elak strained his ears. He heard something — something that should not be heard in inland San-Mu. He could not be mistaken. The sound of waves lapping softly in the distance … and occasionally a roaring crash, as of breakers smashing on a rocky shore.
He dumped Lycon unceremoniously in one of the chairs. The little man fell forward on the table, pillowing his head in his arms. Sadly he muttered, “Is there no mead in Atlantis? I die, Elak. My belly is an arid desert across which the armies of Eblis march.”
He sobbed unhappily for a moment and fell asleep.
* * *
Elak ostentatiously unsheathed his rapier and laid it on the table. His slender fingers closed on the hilt. “An explanation,” he said, “is due. Where are we?”
“I am Gesti,” said the gray-clad one. His face seemed chalk-white in the light of the oil lamp. His eyes, deeply sunken, were covered with a curious glaze. “I saved you from the guards, eh? You’ll not deny that?”
“You have my thanks,” Elak said. “Well?”
“I need the aid of a brave man. And I’ll pay well. If you’re interested, good. If not, I’ll see you leave San-Mu safely.”
Elak considered. “It’s true we’ve little money.” He thought of the purse in his wallet and grinned wryly. “Not enough to last us long, at any rate. Perhaps we’re interested. Although—” He hesitated.
The Book of Iod Page 8