by J K Ishaya
“His dark eyes glazed as he told me this, and he even let a few memories leak to me, mostly images, some frozen as a photo, some moving. We walked through a small, terraced town lined with flower boxes, colorful shops and, strikingly, clowders of every kind of cat imaginable lounging along the walks or pouncing in and out of alleys and I knew that vision to be from a visit to Ulthar. We stared up at a golden towered city with alabaster walls that sat beside a peaceful river. We stared up into the undersides of the bridges that linked the basalt towers of Dylath-Leen. We looked up into a gray-patched and soggy sky at at a swarm of night-gaunts and ducked down within a crevice of black rock so as not to be seen and when we turned around, we looked upon the face in the mountain side that belonged to the Great Ones.
“I gaped in astonishment at these flashes of his adventures, and a streak of jealousy shot through me. But just as I struggled to banish it, he looked straight at me. His eyes narrowed as if his keen mental senses had picked up this emotion, but if so, he did not address it. He let the rest of his story do that for him.
“‘On the earth plane I was but a teenager and training to fight in battle alongside my father. Caesar had already claimed a stake in Gaul, and we all knew he was not going to go away easily. But I discovered that I could keep training in the Dreamlands. I found a retired sword master who lived in Ulthar, and after some degree of groveling, I talked him into teaching me. His name was Setnakht, and he professed to have been a Dreamer before he died in Egypt ages prior in the waking world. I would awaken every morning with a sharp mind, ready to fight any battle placed before me. When training with my peers, I grew arrogant in my prowess, but I never told them how my skills had grown so quickly. I knew better than to do that, and this secret I kept into my twenties. I was still arrogant, having survived six skirmishes, though I was not without despair having also lost many comrades over the years.
“‘The last of that arrogance was quashed in the battle of Alesia. It was no mere skirmish. My tribe had joined many others under the leadership of Vercingetorix.’ His brow furrowed when he saw that I was smiling at this, my earlier speculations now confirmed. I let this thought simply flow, let him read it easily, and then he looked down, gave another little smile of his own, and still new remorse showed on his face.
“‘In the nights before Alesia, I descended the steps and went into Ulthar to seek out Setnakht both to train and to seek martial advice, but he was nowhere to be found. I asked around the town for him, but to my astonishment, no one in Ulthar seemed to know who he was. They looked at me as if I were mad and made signs in the air at me as if to hex or bless me one. It was as if Setnakht had never existed, and I began to question whether my experiences in the Dreamlands had ever been real. Perhaps I had fooled myself into believing I was able to traverse worlds and back again and mold myself into a fierce warrior by cheating time.
“’Confused, disheartened, I faded back into the waking world and did not try to seek him again. My dreams reduced to the ordinary imaginings of my fellow man, and worse, they were more often than not nightmares in which, I know now, Nyarlathotep had begun to show me one of his many other faces. All of his most horrid masks. My confidence crumbled, and by the time I stood with my tribe to face Caesar’s forces, I felt fears I had never known before. I went down with a legionnaire’s blade in my gut, a wound that pierced all the way through and severed my spine but left me alive, bleeding out, and unable to even crawl. I could only turn my head and watch my brothers fall around me.
“‘The light faded, and when I came to again, I was laying on a stone slab in a cavern and aware of shackles around my ankles and wrists. I witnessed creatures unlike I had ever seen before, pale and slick and crawling up the columns and across the ceiling over me, my first glimpse of the sheq n’gai. I could not move, but I was aware of long black things, like tendrils, wrapping around and penetrating my body, sliding into the sides of my neck and inner arms, and when a figure stepped into my periphery, I heard myself gasp with the faintest breath.
“‘It was Setnakht, my beloved mentor, smirking down at me with utmost wickedness. Only, there never had been any Setnakht. He was always Nyarlathotep, who had discovered me in the Dreamlands and there comprised a scheme to gain my trust, to keep an eye on me.
“‘I heard a groan in that cavern, a misery-laden whimper of agony accompanied by a puncturing sound and slithering and sloshing. When I forced my head to turn, I found three of my comrades there with me.’
"By now Malorix's gaze had become explicitly distant, no longer on me but through me. ‘Albiorix… Suadurix… Croisis…' he continued. 'Brothers in battle whom I had seen laying near me on the field dying along with me. They were stripped bare, as was I, and ensnared by the same crawling, twining appendages that held me. Some of these tendrils terminated into sharp and narrow tips which were spearing into our anatomy: arms, torsos, necks and inner thighs, all areas where blood pathways flow at their strongest. That was the last time I saw them alive, for I succumbed to the black substance that invaded my body. Years later I awoke completely changed and with this inhuman hunger, and Nyarlathotep was there to greet me, with that filthy smirk on his face, and plans. Oh, the plans he had for me.’ He boosted up from his seat and walked a few feet out, his back to me, rigid with tension.
“I kept my questions to myself and allowed him to process the inner torment provoked with those memories. But then he spun around and the look on his face was nothing short of a plea… for forgiveness… I think… maybe.
“‘So, you see,’ he said, ‘when I kept you from going down those steps, it was because I was afraid he would be waiting to attract and deceive you, too. To corrupt you as he tried to corrupt me.’
“‘What does he want?’ I asked, finding my voice just above a whisper.
“‘Vessels,’ he said.
“‘He already has a vessel,’ I argued. ‘Why would he want another when he has achieved the perfect one already?’
“‘I did not say that they were for him.’ He looked intensely at me, cool and quiet as he waited for me to catch on. ‘We were meant for something else, and we already carry a piece of it within us.’
“My head bobbed, absently nodding along as if I understood, which I really did not. ’But what is it? What do we carry?’ He did not seem able to answer this, but I persisted in trying to comprehend it. ’So, I was somehow compatible?’ I asked. ‘Is that how you saved me?’
“He nodded and slowly reclaimed his spot on the root. ‘It is.’
“‘How did you know? Was it because I am a Dreamer, too?’ This was Nyarlathotep’s hypothesis and, so far, it was the only thing that made sense.
“His eyes lowered, and it was a long time before he finally nodded.
“‘And your comrades,’ I said. ‘They were not Dreamers. Is that why the substance failed to change them?’
“He admitted that he really had no answer, but that was likely the most obvious. ‘It is much like with that Borean husk he is wearing now. A vessel of both worlds is the perfect fit. That is what Dreamers are, and it is not impossible for them to manifest objects from one world to the other. When they die on the earth plane, this is where they will reside.’
“For a long time, I sat and pondered, and he let me without any insisting that we should be on our way. After a moment, he pardoned himself and went into the woods, and some time later I heard an echo of a cry among the trees—some animal such as a deer, I assume—and I smelled warm blood even from such a distance. By the time he returned, I had stewed in all of this fresh knowledge and had fresh questions to match. Some were more inevitable than others.
“‘There is something I need to understand,’ I said. ‘When I was a child, I made a certain attempt to descend the steps, and you stopped me. You became…’ I did not have to finish.
“‘Yes,’ he said and leaned against a tree, wiping discreetly at the corners of his mouth. He had cleaned up well, somehow, and smelled less of blood and more of forest streams and gree
nery. ‘I never meant to frighten you like that. It was a moment of panic on my part. Though, in hindsight, it worked.’ A rather smug look crept over his face.
“‘True, I never went down those steps again until Nyarlathotep put them right in front of me and gave me permission. How, though… How did you transform into that?’ The glossy black creature on the landing flashed behind my eyes with its long snout and teeth, its winged front legs and the tentacular whips that sprouted from its back. ‘When all I can muster are…’ I looked absently at my hands where my claws were currently retracted and hidden as ordinary human nails, and dirty ones at that. Claws, teeth and an unhinging jaw seemed crude nothing compared to the creature on the landing.
“‘Transformation is a skill you will likely develop, too, Zyraxes,’ he said with assurance.
“‘I do not want to develop it,’ I argued. ‘Am I not monster enough for you?’
“’No,’ he replied bluntly. ‘You are not. You will have to be more of a monster if you are to fight Nyarlathotep. That is our only option now: to use what he made of us against him.’
“I wanted to argue with him over this philosophy, but he had more valid points. ‘We are damned either way, boy,’ he reminded me. ‘Might as well use it for the best.’
Chapter Twenty-One
“So you were finally at something of an understanding, then?” Howard asks when I go quiet for too long.
My thoughts linger on Malorix as I finger my chin and stare at the tea tray and its contents now all empty, the porcelain grown cold. I return to the chair and settle back down. “Yes, I suppose. I realized that he had grown to have no scruples about his nature and was instead determined to throw it back in Nyarlathotep’s face. He did maintain a moral code when it came to feeding. In fact, on our way to Ilarnek, he revealed to me how he had managed to rarely have to make the kills himself on the earth plane.
“‘Follow the Romans and their wars,’ he said. ‘Follow any wars amongst the tribes of our world. When twilight falls, and the smoke clears from each battle field, there you can dine on the freshly dead, or you might put the worst injured out of their misery. Fear still permeates their skin, lingers in their blood. Disturbingly enough, that is what truly nourishes us, but you can rest in the assurance that you did not cause it.’
“It is all still ghastly to you, I know,” I add to Howard. “What does that make us but ghouls of a certain variety? But there is some satisfaction in knowing that your last thread of humanity has a means to strength that it would not have otherwise.
“Malorix did, however, reveal a certain dark humor when he added, ‘Eh, keep it focused on the Romans as much as you can.’
“‘But there are no Romans here,’ I pointed out. ‘How do you intend to hold down that code when we reach Ilarnek?’
“He gave me that knowing look, a darkly joyful gleam in his eyes and said, ‘You will see.’
“We proceeded on the path and, for a time, he indulged my further questions about the Dreamlands. He told me of the Underworld beneath and that Nodens dwelled there in the Great Abyss, commanding his own band of night-gaunts. I asked why Nodens chose such a dismal sounding home and he explained that after the fall of the Great Ones who pledged themselves to Nyarlathotep, Nodens rebelled and retreated to the Abyss to build his own kingdom. How long ago this happened, Malorix had no sense of that. It was a story lost to deep time, well beyond human memory, and Nodens had never cared to share it with him.
“The woodland road opened upon a meadow and descended into a marshland where a causeway ran through and into the walled city of Ilarnek. From that vantage I could see three structures contained therein that were much like bulky ziggurats in their architecture, all clean lines but also very boxy. The tall bottom story walls angled inward and ascended toward a second level with another tall, angled story. Two of these were smaller and flanked the largest structure which had a stone ramp that ran up to the platform. There was no denying that these were temples, and they were situated in the heart of the city, surrounded by mazes of houses or businesses with flat top roofs, the majority of it in sandstone.
“There was still some daylight to which I squinted and complained. Malorix all but sneered at me and told me to deal with it, that Nyarlathotep despised brilliant sunlight which made it a tool for our own defense. This made sense given that my captor had preferred to keep to the ship’s cabin during the day and even kept reminding me of how blinding and uncomfortable light would be for me. ‘Shade your eyes if you have to, but do not flee from the light, Zyraxes,’ he told me, then he looked over my torn clothes. There was a long rip down the billowing sleeve of my silken undershirt and he tore a long strip off and raised it to my eyes, saying that it would help until I adapted. He tied it on me like a blindfold but the weave through which I peered was loose and sheer enough for me to still see the road. My hearing and sense of smell also heightened automatically, making up for the lowered vision in a way I had not expected.
“I had not expected for Malorix to be stepping up into the role of teacher as he was doing. Perhaps he was making up for having prevented me this learning experience to begin with. That had certainly gone awry on him despite his good intentions. But his methods were distinctly the opposite of Nyarlathotep’s while still embracing the crux of our nature. I considered this as we crossed the causeway into Ilarnek. We did not completely cloak ourselves to every mind around us as we had with the caravan, but we presented an illusion of two ordinary men in drab clothing going into the city, and I hid the fact that I appeared to be blindfolded. At the gate, where all traffic was monitored, Malorix registered us with different names and said we had come to worship in the Temple of Bokrug.
“I had no idea what this temple was, but I saved any more questions, figuring they would answer themselves along the way if I could only summon the patience. He led me through the exotic cobblestoned streets between warm sandstone walls, past shops selling everything from food to utilities and services. Blacksmiths hammered out horse shoes—among other things that were unknown to me at that time—swords, and other items and even what appeared to be some sort of puzzle game which I saw children playing with on the edge of one forge. I paused then to admire the handiwork of that smith who was also selling swords, the designs on which I thought resembled that hanging on Malorix’s belt. I surmised that Ilarnek must have been one of his common haunts when he had been a more active Dreamer. I continued following him until the narrow street opened upon the square of ziggurats that I had seen from the rise on the edge of the wood with that greater temple flanked by its smaller guardians. By now the sun was beginning to set and I removed the wrapping over my eyes to look upon this hulking wonder of ancient architecture. The walls were set with torch sconces going all the way round each level, and I could see the figures of robed acolytes making their ways around and lighting the torches so that the structure would appear to glow from top to bottom in the cooling light.
“‘We can walk without illusion here,’ Malorix told me, and I was relieved to withdraw my focus and allow for my own appearance, albeit dirty around the edges and in torn clothing. We approached the base of the smaller structure on the right, which had no imposing stairway to its second level. There were two ornately carved, large double doors, their fine craftsmanship somewhat at odds with the plain sandstone of the outer walls. Malorix informed me that this was the scholars’ repository, while the opposite structure was the chapter house for the greater temple complex.
“’I stared at the carvings that appeared to depict some strange sequence of events. The first two panels at the top of the door illustrated what looked like a war underway between humans and something else. There were clearly human warrior figures in armor with spears and swords fighting with creatures that were hunched over with broad faces, bulbous eyes, and webbed feet and hands. They were more amphibious than anything, but they wore crude loin cloths and jewelry and had weapons of their own, giving me the impression that they were intelligent, whatever they
were. The humans clearly outnumbered them and further, it looked more like a slaughter than a war. Something inside me stirred for those poor creatures as my gaze roamed along the intricate relief of their bodies sprawled, dismembered, or still upright but impaled on human spears, others were being pushed into a body of water off a stone peer. In the next panel over, the human army accompanied a sturdy platform wagon which bore a heavy-looking figure upon it.
“This figure further pulled in my attention. It was very reptilian with scales and clawed feet and a fanged snout with horned ridges up the center of the forehead and eyes that looked exceptionally intelligent. All of this detail was compacted into a single stone pillar that was strapped to the wagon.
“The next two panels down on the doors were for a heavy knocker on the left and a small window with an iron screen cover with a shutter from the inside on the right.
“Below the entry panels the scene picked up again with whatever story these were illustrating. On the left there were clusters of finely dressed people and exotic animals from elephants and camels—all packed with loads of riches—crowding into a towering, walled city on one panel with a palace at its center that was built of lush terraces. The next panel over portrayed a huge banquet with a figure at the head of the grand table whose general appearance, as much as the crown on his head, indicated him to be a king. The next panel down portrayed an uproar of some kind. The fine nobles that had been entering the city gate were now fleeing, taking their camels and elephants across a massive bridge, and in their wake the palace stood, though there were a few strange, reptilian faces looking out of the windows, and lizard like creatures also clambered along the walls on all fours, with long, scaly tails. The final panel depicted nothing but a swamp land, with remnants of towers and a fragment of a wall sticking up through the reeds amid swirls of swimming lizards.