The House of Cthulhu: Tales of the Primal Land Vol. 1

by Lumley, Brian

  A great storm raged then such as might attend the end of the world. Banshee winds howled and demon waves crashed over and about Zar-thule’s dragonship, and for two days he gibbered and moaned in the rolling, shuddering scuppers of crippled Redfire before the mighty storm wore itself out.

  Eventually, close to starvation, the one-time Reaver of Reavers was discovered becalmed upon a flat sea not far from the fair strands of bright Theem’hdra; and then, in the spicy hold of a rich merchant’s ship, he was borne in unto the wharves of the city of Klühn, Theem’hdra’s capital.

  With long oars he was prodded ashore, stumbling and weak and crying out in his horror of living—for he had gazed upon Cthulhu! The use of the oars had much to do with his appearance, for now Zar-thule was changed indeed, into something which in less tolerant parts of that primal land might certainly have expected to be burned. But the people of Klühn were kindly folk; they burned him not but lowered him in a basket into a deep dungeon cell with torches to light the place, and daily bread and water that he might live until his life was rightly done. And when he was recovered to partial health and sanity, learned men and physicians went to talk with him from above and ask him of his strange affliction, of which all and all stood in awe.

  I, Teh Atht, was one of them that went to him, and that was how I came to hear this tale. And I know it to be true, for oft and again over the years I have heard of this Loathly Lord Cthulhu that seeped down from the stars when the world was an inchoate infant. There are legends and there are legends, and one of them is that when times have passed and the stars are right Cthulhu shall slobber forth from His House in Arlyeh again, and the world shall tremble to His tread and erupt in madness at His touch.

  I leave this record for men as yet unborn, a record and a warning; leave well enough alone, for that is not dead which deeply dreams, and while perhaps the submarine tides have removed forever the alien taint which touched Arlyeh—that symptom of Cthulhu, which loathsome familiar grew upon Hath Vehm and transferred itself upon certain of Zar-thule’s reavers—Cthulhu Himself yet lives on and waits upon those who would set Him free. I know it is so. In dreams . . . I myself have heard His call!

  And when dreams such as these come in the night to sour the sweet embrace of Shoosh, I wake and tremble and pace the crystal-paved floors of my rooms above the Bay of Klühn, until Cthon releases the sun from his net to rise again, and ever and ever I recall the aspect of Zar-thule as last I saw him in the flickering torchlight of his deep dungeon cell:

  A fumbling grey mushroom thing that moved not of its own volition but by reason of the parasite growth which lived upon and within it . . .

  Tharquest and the Lamia Orbiquita

  From Teh Atht’s Legends of the Olden Runes, as translated by Thelred Gustau from the Theem’hdra Manuscripts.

  I

  NOW THARQUEST THE wandering Klühnite, riding hard from Eyphra in the West where he had angered the High Priest of the Dark Temple of Ghatanothoa by getting his lately-virgin daughter with child, came over the Mountains of Lohmi and spied the once-gilded spires and great walls of Chlangi. Even crumbling Chlangi, which is called the Shunned City.

  Not unfairly is Chlangi named, for indeed her approaches—aye, and her walls, streets and deserted houses—they are shunned. Even now, though many years are fled since the olden runes were writ, still they are shunned . . .

  In Chlangi a robber-king ruled over a rabble of yeggs and sharpers, exacting taxation from the scabby whores and unscrupulous taverners in his protection and allowing such to vend in peace those poisons peculiar to their trades. And Tharquest frowned when he saw the city; for some twenty years gone when scarce a child he had visited the place, which was then wondrous in its opulence and splendid in the colour and variety of visitors come to admire its wonders.

  Then the city had been abustle with honest, thronging merchants, and the wineshops and taverns had sold vintages renowned throughout the known world—especially the pure clear wine pressed with skill from Chlangi’s own glass-grapes. The domes and spires had been gilded over; the high walls white with fresh paint: the roofs red with tiles baked in the ovens of busy builders, and all in all Chlangi had been the jewel of Theem’hdra’s cities.

  But now the city was shunned by all good and honest men, had been so for ten years, since first the lamia Orbiquita builded her castle nine miles to the north on the fringe of the Desert of Sheb. In that time the gold had been stripped from all the rich roofs and the vines of the glass-grapes beyond the north wall had grown wild and barren and gross so as to flatten their rotting trellises. Arches and walls had fallen into disrepair, and the waters of the aquaducts were long grown stagnant and green with slime. Only the rabble horde and their robber-king now occupied the city within its great walls, and without those walls the ravenous beggars prowled and scavenged for whatever meager pickings there might be.

  And yet Tharquest feared not as he rode his black mare down from the Mountains of Lohmi, for his departure from Eyphra had been of necessity swift and he carried little of value. Even his mare—which he had stolen—wore no saddle upon her back, and her rein was of rope and the bit in her mouth of hard wood.

  Most disreputable, Tharquest looked, with his robes torn and dishevelled in the flight from Zothada’s father, and his eyes all baggy from many a sleepless night’s riding. Still, he had a friend in Chlangi: Dilquay Noth, once an adventurer like himself and now a pimp for the city’s less loathsome whores. At Dilquay’s place he knew he would find food and shelter for the night. Then, in the morning, he would press on for Klühn on the coast, where a rich widow-wife awaited his caresses. In any case, he doubted if the High Priest of Dark Ghatanothoa would follow him here—not into the supposed sphere of ensorcellment of the lamia Orbiquita.

  Himself, Tharquest had small faith in spells and enchantments—what little he had seen of such had been the quackery of village tricksters and stage magicians—and yet indeed in those days such things were. As in all inchoate worlds, Nature had not yet decided which gifts and talents she should let her creatures keep. Or rather, she had experimented and decided that there were lines better not continued. Slowly these discarded strains were disappearing, but every now and then one would be born seventh son of a seventh son of a wizard. And he too, if he remembered the keys, might inherit in addition to the usual five Nature’s tossed-aside talents. Aye, and there were strangely endowed women, too.

  So Tharquest came to Chlangi, and seeing the encampments of beggars without the walls and the way their narrow, hungry eyes gleamed as they fastened on the black flanks of his mount, he quickened the mare’s step until his torn cloak belled in the sun and dust behind him. But the beggars made no move to molest him and he passed them through.

  Into the evening city rode Tharquest, through the rotting wooden remnant of what had once been the mighty West Gate. Then, passing carelessly under a crumbling arch, he was knocked from the back of his mount by a robber who clung spiderlike to the high stonework. Down he went and into the dust, to be hauled dazedly to his feet and disarmed by two more brigands before being dragged before robber-king Fregg.

  When Fregg heard Tharquest’s tale of his escape from the raging Priest of Ghatanothoa he laughed, and his cutthroat courtiers with him. Why! This Klühnite was obviously a brigand no less then they! They liked him for it and directed him out of Fregg’s sagging pile—which was once a most magnificent palace—and on his way to find his friend Dilquay Noth the pimp.

  Dilquay, he soon discovered, was doing well, living in a house not far from the palace wherein he kept his girls. Well-fortified the place and seated atop a small hill, like a castle in its own right and necessarily so; for pimping is a dodgy business in any city, and surely more so in Chlangi the Shunned . . .

  Tharquest approached the great stone house—once the High Court of the long fled King Terrathagon, now the brothel of Dilquay Noth—up a flight of winding, basalt steps, arriving at a great iron-studded door with a little gated window. A rap or
two at the oaken panels with the pommel of his simple sword brought bright blue eyes that peered from within. A gasp of recognition . . . and the door was at once thrown open. There in the spacious doorway, the burly, bearded Dilquay Noth.

  “Tharquest the Wanderer, by my beard!—and bruised and banged about to boot! By all the Dark Gods, but you look beaten, my friend. In and sit you down—and tell me how come your clothes are torn and your face unshaven, you who live by your pretty looks!”

  But for all his words Dilquay was not overly surprised by Tharquest’s sudden appearance in Chlangi. Some nine months gone, when he had heard from a wandering beggar how Tharquest had taken the Sacred Oath of Ghatanothoa to be admitted as a novice to the priesthood in Eyphra, he had straightway sent the same beggar with a note to the adventurer telling of his whereabouts and demanding an explanation. What on Earth was Tharquest—the hero of many a grand defloration—thinking of, Dilquay had wanted to know, binding himself to a Dark God and swearing continence for ever?

  Thus, when Tharquest’s troubles came to a head in Eyphra—or when they came to a belly, as it were—and when the Priestess Zothada’s size had finally given way the Klühnite’s real reasons for desiring a bed within the Temple of Ghatanothoa, then the wanderer had stolen a mare and made for Chlangi, to a friend who would succor him and see him on his way to Klühn and the bright blue sea . . .

  Now, seated in Dilquay’s spacious apartment—better appointed, Tharquest noted, than even Fregg’s hall in the fast-falling palace—they swapped memories of olden adventures. Finally the bearded pimp told of how, after leaving Tharquest’s side to settle with Titi the Whore, he had talked her into giving up her trade and opening a brothel of her own with Dilquay himself to protect her rights. That had been four years earlier, at a time when Chlangi’s streets had still been fairly well filled, but now Dilquay was thinking of leaving the city. This was not, as he explained, for fear of the lamia Orbiquita, but simply for scarcity of trade.

  It was at this juncture that Titi the ample entered; aye, even legendary Titi of a Thousand Delights. Straightway she fell on Tharquest and gave his neck a hug, crying: “Ah!—but I knew that our wanderer, who can sell his services to any hot-blooded woman in all the known world, could never settle to the servicing of a mere God! Why!—I’ve girls here would pay you, if they knew what I know—except you wouldn’t look at them twice, not even for money!” She laughed.

  “Titi,” cried Tharquest, struggling from her grasp. “By Ghatanothoa’s defiled temple, but you’re more beautiful than ever!” He was lying, for Titi had never been beautiful, but there was a camaraderie between them and it was good to see the face—even the slightly pockmarked face—of so old a friend.

  And so, after much drinking and chewing and chatting, came the night. Dilquay and Titi went off to organise their ladies and Tharquest, well feasted of meat and drunk of not unreasonable wine, found himself tucked up in a clean bed in a room of his own. In his reeling, boozy head before he slept, he kept hearing Dilquay’s tales of the lamia Orbiquita, and in his lecherous soul there burned a drunken plan for yet another amorous adventure . . .

  Dilquay had pointed out to Tharquest the fact that none of Chlangi’s robber-men were handsome, and few of them young, and had then gone on to explain why. The lamia Orbiquita had taken all of the strong, young, good-looking men for herself and had left the city to the battle-scarred brigands and whore-poxed pirates who now inhabited her. This was why, Dilquay said, Tharquest himself must soon move on or attract Orbiquita’s attention. For the lamia lusted like a succubus after handsome, strong-limbed men, and was not above stealing into Chlangi in the dead of night on bat wings to lure off the occasional handsome wanderer she might hear was staying there.

  She was said, too, to be beautiful, this lamia—but evil as the pit itself. And it was known that the beauty men saw in her was only an illusion, that the real Orbiquita was a well-poxed horror saved from the rot of centuries only by her own magical machinations. Furthermore, it was told that should any man have strength of will enough to resist the lamia once she had set her black heart upon him, then he could carry off with him all of the hoarded treasures hidden away within her castle.

  . . . Now that would be a real adventure!

  II

  In the morning, lying abed while he properly thought the thing out, finally Tharquest made his decision. He would visit this lamia and stay the night, and the following morn would leave her unsated taking her treasures with him. Dilquay and Titi paled on hearing of this brash scheme, but they could not deter Tharquest with even the direst tales.

  When later that same day the robber-king also heard of the Klühnite’s plans, he laughed and wished him luck and gave him back his twice-stolen mare. Thus, following a midday meal at Dilquay’s, Tharquest set off through the fallen North Gate and pointed his mount’s nose toward the Desert of Sheb. And in their encampments the beggars who saw him take his departure tittered and slapped lean thighs, debating upon how soon the wanderer’s mare would come galloping back alone, lathered and red-eyed, and how then there would be meat again in the camps of the ragged starvelings . . .

  AFTER EIGHT MILES, by which time the castle of Orbiquita was a dark-spired outline against the early horizon—an outline reflecting neither beam of sunlight nor, indeed, any light at all, standing magically shaded even in the hot sun—Tharquest came to a shepherd’s cot. He was thirsty by then and so tethered his mare and knocked upon the door of the rude dwelling. Pleasantly surprised was he when the door was opened by a young and gorgeous girl of long limbs, raven hair and great green eyes that looked upon him coyly as their owner bade him enter.

  So Tharquest entered and seated himself and was given water. Then, his thirst quenched, he asked of the girl her man’s whereabouts. His question came of sheer habit, for in Tharquest’s life men—particularly husbands—were hazards to be avoided wherever possible. But she only laughed (showing teeth like pearls) and twirled girlishly about (showing limbs like marble cut by a master sculptor) and told him that she had no man. She lived with her father who was out after strayed sheep and not expected back for two days at least.

  Now any man would have been tempted, and Tharquest sorely so, but he wanted to get on and reach Orbiquita’s castle and earn his fortune. Remembering this through the flesh-lust that suddenly gripped him, he stood up and begged the lady’s pardon but he must be gone, at which she bowed low (displaying breasts curved and golden as the full moon) and inquired of his destination. On discovering Tharquest’s intentions her great green eyes opened very wide and she all but burst into tears, deploring his plans for wealth and greatness and pleading with him thus:

  “Oh, wanderer, you are surely handsome and strong and brave—but yet more surely are you mad! Know you not the power of this lamia?”

  “I have heard,” Tharquest answered, “how Orbiquita has the means to show herself as a great and ravishing beauty, when in truth she is ugly and ancient and loathsome. But I have also heard how, if a man resist her enticements—presented succubus-like in the night—he might walk off unscathed in the light of day with all the treasures he can carry, even with the wonderful treasures of her grim castle. This I intend to do, for the lamia can only take her victims during those hours when the sun is down, and I do not intend to sleep. I shall stay awake and keenly attentive, wary of all things within yon castle’s walls.”

  “Oh, Tharquest, Tharquest,” she pleaded, “I have seen so many such as you pass by here, though none so godly of form, and have given them water to succor them on their way. But—”

  “Aye, go on, lass.”

  “Always it is the same. They go to the castle full of high inspiration and bravado, but only their horses—flanks lathered, eyes burning red in awful fear—ever return! For the lamia is never satisfied with a piece of a man but takes all of him, fuel for her fires of lust and horror. No, you must not go to the castle, fair Tharquest, but stay here with me and share my bed this night. I’m so lonely here and often a
fraid. And in the morning, then return you whole and happy to the Shunned City; and perhaps, if I who have little experience of men please you, take me with you? . . .”

  And again Tharquest was warmed and felt a great temptation. But here he had a novel thought: was he not yet to be tempted by the lamia Orbiquita herself? And must he not resist such temptation for his life? Why!—if a mere shepherd girl might so readily set his senses spinning, what chance would he have against the succubus-like creature of the castle? No, let the girl be criterion for his intended night’s continence; and Tharquest, swinging himself athwart the black flanks of his mare, laughed as he offered up a blasphemous blessing to Dark Ghatanothoa.

  “May your gods protect you then, Tharquest,” the girl called after his belling, tattered cloak.

  “I have no gods,” he called back, “save perhaps Shub-Niggurath, black ram with a thousand ewes.” And he laughed.

  “I’ll wait for you,” she cried. “Then, should you win your riches, your continence need not be extended beyond endurance . . .”

  A SHORT WHILE later Tharquest came to the lamia’s castle. The brooding, shrouded pile was girt around with strangely motionless trees, and as the wanderer had noted from afar, even standing in the sun it was oddly shaded. Beneath the trees by a narrow, silent streamlet he tethered his mare, proceeding on foot across the moat to the massive door. With the castle’s turreted spires looming darkly above, he felt more than a little afraid, and he peered cautiously in at the open door. All was gloom and cobwebby dimness within, but the thought of the great reward soon to be his and the knowledge that the lamia only took her lusty nourishment at night bore up the wandering Klühnite’s spirits.