by Martha Wells
From R’lyeh he conducted wars against an alien race known as the Elder Things who inhabited our world at the time of his coming, using his star-spawn as his army of conquest. Little is known of this spawn, save that each member is alike to Cthulhu in shape, only much smaller in size. But they, too, can control other intelligent creatures with the force of their minds, yet to a lesser degree than their master.
With the turning of the ages, the very pattern of the stars in the heavens changed and became noxious to the nature of this vast being, whose substance is not like that of any earthly form of life. Cthulhu fled from the hostile constellations and their destructive rays by closing himself up deep within the crypt of his great stone house, the walls of which offered him some protection. There, to further preserve himself, he cast himself into a kind of waking dream that was neither death nor life as we understand it.
Even in his unending dream, sealed within his stone house, such was the power of his mind that he was able to send forth his thoughts to his worshippers around the entire circumference of the world. He ordered them that when the ages passed, and the stars once again turned aright in the heavens, that they should come to him and release him from his house, for there was set a seal on the door that he could not pass from within. It was necessary that the seal be broken from outside before he could emerge from his tomb.
But even the gods are not immune to the vagaries of fate. Something occurred that Cthulhu, despite his vast knowledge, had not foreseen. R’lyeh and the entire continent of which it was a part suddenly sank to the depths, and miles of dark water closed over the stone house where he lay dreaming. Cthulhu found his mind cut off from his slaves on the surface of the world by this barrier of ocean, through which his thoughts could not penetrate. For know this, Cthulhu both hates and fears the salt water of the sea. He is a being suited by nature to the air and the dry land.
Yet it is prophesied that as R’lyeh sank when the stars went wrong, so at a future time when the stars become aligned once again, it will rise from the depths. Then the dreaming god will call his worshippers to him, and they will crack the seal on the door of his stone house, and Cthulhu will come forth as of old, to raven the world for his delight.
Until this great epoch is achieved, the cults of his worshippers continue to chant to him in an alien tongue so old, its origins have been forgotten, a single phrase that is both riddle and enigma, “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,” which signified in our language, “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” This led a poet of Yemen, Abdul Alhazred, to compose the following couplet:
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
For Cthulhu subsisted in a state that was neither death nor sleep, but a strange amalgam of the two, yet something else again to which there is no name. In his deathlike trance he dreamed of conquest and dominion. So he dreamed through the ages, and so he lies still, dreaming of the day when the stars come right, and the men of his cults take ships and sail to risen R’lyeh to release their god to raven and slay and burn across the face of this world, as he did in ages that are lost in time.
The center of Cthulhu’s cult is near the lost city of Irem, renowned in ancient times as the City of Pillars, but there are lesser hereditary clans of his worshippers in the far-flung waste places of the world, where they have practiced their strange religion and made their sacrifices unmolested for millennia. One is atop the high mountains far to the east of Persia. Another is to be found in a fishing village far to the north and west, where the waters of the ocean are locked beneath ice for most of the year.
Vast is this old one’s wisdom in arcane arts that to us appear to be forms of magic. He is said to be the high priest of the old ones, but what this designation signifies has been lost. It may mean that his grasp of alien sciences is greater than that of any other. Yet most of his intellectual power is devoted to the strategies of battle and the making of weapons of conquest, for before all else Cthulhu loves to make war. It was to conquer and lay waste that he came to our world. Only the salt water of the ocean and the malignity of the wandering stars restrain him. On the day the stars come right, and R’lyeh rises, man will lose his dominion over this earth and become a slave race to Cthulhu.
The Dark Gates
Martha Wells
Reja crept through the knee-high weeds, mud squishing under her sturdy but stylish boots. The day was so overcast it was nearly dark, even though her watch said it was midmorning. She muttered, “Next time, we send the Honorable Tamith to do this part.”
Fletcher, moving near silently behind her, snorted.
She had to admit it was unlikely. Ahead, she could catch glimpses of the house through the trees. It was owned by Baron Mille, and had no resident staff, which supported the rumor that it was used for assignations. It had taken Reja a few days and a couple of judicious bribes to discover its location, and she hoped she was right about the current occupant being presently in town. If she wasn’t right, this case might be over abruptly. Nosy Lady Detective and Her Assistant Never Seen Again was not a headline Reja wished to appear in the society pages.
She slipped through the copse of trees and crouched in the overgrown brush. “Don’t touch that,” she cautioned Fletcher in a whisper. “Stinging nettle.”
Fletcher avoided it with a hiss of distaste. His ancestry might lead one to expect him to be more competent in the forest than the average human, but he had grown up in the city. So had Reja, but at least she had the benefit of childhood summers in the country.
From this sheltered vantage point, she had a good view of the house. It was small by the standards of the mind-bogglingly rich, three stories of light brown stone with a rather elegant conical turret, framed prettily against the giant oaks behind it. The immense towers of the Mille family mansion were just visible over the tops of those trees. There was no sign of movement in the empty windows or on the lawns.
Reja took a deep breath, touched the pistol in the pocket of her jacket, and stepped through a gap in the brush. Walking across the wet grass of the overgrown lawn toward the house made her feel as if every unfriendly eye in the world was on her. Her only option if caught was to say they were lost; she had dressed conservatively but finely enough to pass as a guest at one of the other wealthy houses nearby, in dark gray pants and a belted jacket of a steely blue to complement the soft brown of her skin. Fletcher wore dark clothes and looked like a housebreaker. There wasn’t anything she could do about that.
They reached the service entrance at the back, tucked into a little cubby on the far side of the terrace. Reja had a set of lock picks, drills, and other devices for the opening of locked doors. As she set to work, Fletcher stopped her with a slim, too-pale hand on her sleeve. “There may be traps.”
She shook her head. “He has no reason; he believes he’s covered his tracks too well.”
“People do things for no reason.” Fletcher was grim, and Reja knew, correct. Surely Baron Mille, with enough money to buy most of the city, had no need for more power or influence. Reja cared nothing for what the monied and powerful chose to do to each other’s jealously guarded fortunes, and she would not have accepted a case involving that. But the disappearance of Mille’s stepdaughter and his wife’s secretary was different.
After a short time, the lock yielded and Reja turned the handle.
Fletcher pushed the door open, but nothing sprang out at them, or exploded. Inside it was dark, the muted gray sunlight only falling far enough to illuminate a flagstone floor. Reja took the torch Fletcher handed her and switched it on.
They made it through a clean but deserted scullery and a kitchen and pantry that smelled only of coffee dregs and what must be yesterday’s ham-and-pickle sandwiches. Reja checked the icebox briefly and found only prosaic contents. If Mille’s new sorcerer Challis was abducting young persons and using their bodily parts for dark magics, he wasn’t cutting them up in the kitchen.
/> “Odd,” she told Fletcher as she closed the icebox. “Do you see a basement door?”
“No.” Fletcher returned from a prowl through the pantry. “He’s not doing it here. We’d smell it.”
“Perhaps he’s very tidy about it.” Reja stepped past him and followed the short passage to the servants’ door and the back of the house’s front hall. They needed confirmation of their theories; being a sorcerer wasn’t illegal, it was the kidnapping and murder that the authorities would frown on.
Reja’s client Baroness Mille still expected her daughter Merita and the secretary Osgood Rodrign to be found alive, imprisoned somewhere. Reja would have liked to think that was the case. “Look for papers, books.”
They flashed their lights over the downstairs parlor, lounge, a dining room, and music room, all bearing only slight signs of use. No books except for the leatherbound editions of classics and modern novels obviously purchased for the house along with its carpets and furniture, no papers except a crumpled bill for tailoring an evening suit, paid in cash, and a newspaper on a chair seat. Reja met Fletcher again in the front hall and said, “We need to find the room he sleeps in.” She started up the stairs.
Reja had traced Challis’s path through the city, always in places owned by or associated with Baron Mille. They weren’t certain Challis was the one who had made Merita and Rodrign disappear, but he was the only new factor in the life of the carefully guarded Mille family. They knew Challis had been in Baron Mille’s penthouse in the Vermillion Towers, where the two young people had last been seen. They couldn’t discover why the Baron, who had sorcerers of all kinds at his beck and call, had hired Challis, and why he had made such efforts to conceal his association with him.
The stairs made only the faint and occasional creak underfoot, a benefit of the expensive joinery. Then Reja realized she was listening for those individual creaks, that she had been listening to them for some time. That she had been listening… Listening…
Fletcher caught the belt of her jacket to pull her to a halt. Reja stumbled, gripped the bannister, and swore. She looked down at Fletcher. Some people found his dark eyes, the star-shaped pupils, difficult to read emotion in. Reja could tell his expression was wry. He said, “I won’t say I told you so, but this is a trap.”
“I hate these tricks,” Reja muttered. And she was glad she had brought Fletcher, whose resistance to such sorcerous deceptions was far stronger than hers. They were probably walking in place, or perhaps already up in the hallway, while whatever illusion cloaked the stairs made them think they were still climbing. She fished in her pocket and brought out a silver ball of a glass so delicate it seemed like it might break in her hand like a soap bubble. Reja lifted the ball and slammed it down on the steps ahead. The ball shattered into a puff of silver dust.
Reja expected the illusion to shatter as well, as delicate spell structures would not survive contact with the pure silver. But light sparked as if electricity streaked through the silver dust. For several instants it outlined a door at the top of the stairs. She shined her torch through it and the light fell on the upper hall, the patterned carpet lining the boards. The door faded a heartbeat later as the dust settled. The torchlight shone only on the stairs and the curious darkness at the top that Reja had only just noticed.
Reja looked at Fletcher. “What the hell was that?”
He stared at the spot where the door had formed, perfect brow furrowed, biting his lip in consternation. “How many more spellbreakers do you have?”
“Four.” When she had filled her pockets at the office, it had seemed like more than enough. “It was a portal?” She was reluctant to say the word. Fletcher’s fay ancestors had used such things for travel to and among the hidden places of the fayre realm, but they weren’t common now. “To where?”
“Back to the house.” He met her gaze, worried. “Where we just were. But aren’t anymore.”
Reja absorbed that information. “Right. The stairs—”
“Have been pulled out of our world and partially into another, probably right after we started up them. Whatever did this will be nearby.”
“And probably coming closer.” She pulled out two more of the silver balls. “Get ready.”
Reja flung the first ball against the steps and lunged forward. Fletcher’s hand on her back propelled her upward and kept them together. Now would be a very bad time to be separated.
Sparks of light flashed and the door formed above them. Reja tossed the second ball and barreled up toward it. But as they reached the top of the stairs the light faded. A shove from behind sent her over the top step. She skidded on the carpet and tumbled across the floor.
Fletcher landed beside her, neatly catlike. Reja twisted to look, shining her torch down the stairs. The light reached the whole way down now to the front hall, and glinted off the chandelier in prosaic “there’s no magical dimension shifting trap here no none at all” fashion.
Fletcher said, “We need to get out of here.”
“Search first, fast,” Reja countered, and scrambled to her feet.
The third bed chamber was the right one, a fact made obvious by the unmade bed and the clothes hanging in the open wardrobe. Reja went to the wardrobe first, found a crumpled handkerchief there and stuffed it into her own pocket. Fletcher tossed her the satchel as she headed for the desk. He dragged open dresser drawers as she clawed papers and books into the bag. There was no need to be subtle, no time to cover their traces.
She flinched when Fletcher caught her arm, then froze to listen. Steps sounded from somewhere below, heavy, slapping steps as if a large man in swim fins stalked across the tiles. Reja was fairly certain it wasn’t a large man in swim fins. She whispered, “Go.”
She slung the bag over her shoulder as Fletcher went to the window and shoved the sash open. The footsteps below went from a walking pace to a run and Reja knocked a chair over to get to the window, her heart pounding. Fletcher stepped up onto the window frame. As Reja reached him, he grabbed her around the waist and flung them both out into empty air.
Reja didn’t scream, only because all the air in her lungs shot up into her throat and choked her to silence. They landed in soft grass and rolled, Fletcher taking the weight and the shock on his wiry body. He let her go and Reja staggered upright, caught his arm, and dragged him to his feet.
Framed in the window was a large gray shape, and if Reja had been given to imaginative fancies she would have said it was a dead man whose rotting body had been shored up with pieces of wood and broken stone and dry brush. It put one foot on the sill to jump and Reja saw nothing after that because she and Fletcher were sprinting across the field toward the road.
They were both long-legged fast runners with great motivation but the thing was simply too fast. Breathing hard from terror, Reja dug in her pocket. She considered the gun, but too many magical creatures were immune to bullets. She whipped around and flung the silver ball instead. The creature was barely ten steps behind her and the ball struck it squarely in the chest.
It jolted to a halt, pieces of its assemblage of debris dropping away. It was a dead man, half his head gone, still dressed in the rotting fabric of a funeral suit. There was a cemetery and chapel a few miles away, Reja remembered. Then Fletcher grabbed her wrist, urging her on, and they ran again.
They crossed the lawn and crashed through a rhododendron hedge. The road was at the bottom of the next field. Then Reja heard the bushes rustle behind her and looked back. She gasped out a curse. The damn thing was still coming.
It staggered through the hedge, wavering now that the deadfall branches and rocks and debris were no longer shoring up its rotten flesh. It was still coming far too fast.
A horn blared from the road. She looked ahead and saw the gleaming silver town car with a four-door cabin just rounding the curve. Fletcher waved frantically.
The car swerved off the road and plowed across the field toward them, powerful engine digging ruts in the wet ground. If he gets that car stuc
k, Reja thought, I’m going to be dead and angry.
As they neared it the car swerved around and presented the passenger side to them, slowing just enough for them to reach it. The front door flew open and Reja put on a last burst of speed, grabbed the handle, and flung herself in.
She scrambled onto the seat. Fletcher landed on the running board and shouted, “Go, go!”
The Honorable Tamith spun the wheel and floored the car back toward the road. “What the hell is that?” he demanded.
“We were hoping you’d know!” Reja dragged the door shut, then squirmed around to lean over the backseat and unroll the window. Fletcher crammed his body through the space and fell across the backseat.
Through the rear windscreen, Reja had a good view of the creature racing toward them across the field. Dirt clods from the car’s ruts flew up toward it, filling in the holes and gaps in its legs as it ran faster and faster. Her throat constricted. She cleared it and said, “Fletcher, lock the doors and roll up the window.”
The car rocked as it climbed back to the paved road and put on a spurt of speed. Unfortunately, so did the creature. Tamith said, “Reja, dear, tell me when it’s on our bumper.”
Reja gripped the back of the seat to steady herself. “Soon, soon… Now!”
Tamith hit the brakes and threw the big car into reverse. The creature slammed into the trunk and bounced off, pieces of dead flesh flying. Tamith changed gear and hit the gas again and they roared away.
Grimly watching the horrible thing crawl around on the road, collecting pieces of itself, Reja said, “This case is more complicated than we thought.”
***
When they were far enough away to risk a brief stop, Reja took over the driving so Tamith and Fletcher could look through the papers retrieved from Challis’s desk. Once they were near the city, she would let Fletcher take over as she had no intention of driving two men through a fashionable part of town. Female chauffeurs had a somewhat risqué reputation and she didn’t want anyone to recognize her and report it to a society gossip column. Reja’s large number of relatives came from several different cultural backgrounds but all of them would be united in coming completely unhinged if they read such a story. Telling them that Tamith preferred the company of men and that Fletcher thought sex with humans was disgusting would not placate them. “Well?” she demanded after several moments of silence and rustling pages. “So how did our friend Challis create that thing?”