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

by Lumley, Brian

  Slowly he explored each room of the place, cellars to lofty spires, and as he did so his eyes grew more accustomed to the dimness and showed him a weird and singular thing. Each of the castle’s rooms contained a bed of the finest cushions and silks, and at the foot of each bed great piles of clothing lay. There were boots and sandals and buskins, cloaks and capes, jackets and jerkins; trews, kilts and breeches; turbans, hoods and fancy titfers; shirts and kerchiefs and gauntlets and every thinkable item of manly attire—but nothing suitable for a woman. Why!—here were wardrobes for a hundred, nay, two hundred men . . . But where were those men? Who had they been?

  Again Tharquest became sore afraid, glancing nervously about him, holding tight to the pommel of his simple sword and thinking on what he knew of the queen of this shadowed and unpeopled pile, the lamia Orbiquita. Dilquay had told him how, though she only took her prey at night, she would often assume human form in the hours of daylight to forage about and spy out the land for suitable victims. Possibly that was what she was even now about, and, heartened by the thought that he was at least alone in the castle, Tharquest engaged upon a systematic search of the place for the treasure fabled to lie hidden therein.

  . . . Long into the afternoon he searched, finding neither jewels, gold nor wealth of any sort; neither priceless miniatures nor gilt-framed masterpieces. Not a single solitary coin did he find, but he did come across a room in which a great table stood fresh prepared and laden as for a banquet. There were great platters of meat and smaller dishes containing toothsome morsels and sweetmeats; flagons of white, red and green wine, and one as pure and clear (or so the wanderer thought) as the glass-grape wine of olden Chlangi; exotic fruits of every size and shape and colour; oysters, shrimps, lobsters and crabs; cocktails of flowers served with the black honey of ocean-girt Ardlanthys—the sort of banquet a man might order prepared for his guests on the day of his wedding . . .

  . . . Aye, and in certain parts, the night of his funeral!

  And feeling hungry, Tharquest tasted of the foods and sipped of the wines, finding all delightful to the palate and very satisfying. Then, uplifted physically and relaxed mentally, he set to and bound him up some torches from turbans in the piles at the feet of the beds in the various rooms. These he dipped in tureens of scented oil at the banquet table, and for torch handles he used wooden legs broken from chairs in that same room. Night was coming on apace now, and the Klühnite, without having noticed how weary he had gradually grown since sipping of the various wines, suddenly found himself tired.

  III

  Soon the sun sank down into the realm of Cthon and Tharquest, for the nonce, gave up his torchlit searching and wandering through the castle’s rooms. He found himself a high room with only one door and one slitlike window. The door he braced against opening with a rough wedge of wood at its bottom before lying back on his bed of cushions and silks, his simple sword within easy reach of his right hand. Thus, in the flickering light of a scented turban-torch, the adventurer closed his heavy eyes in reluctant sleep.

  And a strange dream came to him, wherein Tharquest wandered amidst green forests and swam in blue and sparkling pools of winelike water. A nymph there was, too—of silken tresses, with eyes deeper than the unplumbed Pool of Xthyll, slim and with flesh of living marble—who led him to her orchid bower and held out her arms to him.

  Dying, the torch sputtered and gave off oily fumes as the dreamer turned in his bed and reached out avid, hungry hands over the ruffled silks—

  —Tharquest coughed as the fumes reached him, coughed and choked and his mind began to rise up from abysses of sleep. Desperately he stretched out his arms and his body to the fading, wavering nymph within her evaporating bower—and contacted horror!

  Horned and warty skin, rough as bark to his touch! Protruding nodules and suppurating sores! Breasts flabby, slimy and writhing! Hands with nails like claws of great crabs, and panting breath in his face smelling worse than the effluvia of the Burial Catacombs of Hroon! This, then, was the lamia Orbiquita!

  Tharquest leapt shrieking awake, simple sword in trembling right hand, his left hand thrusting out a fresh torch to catch the embers of its dying brother. Flaring light—and a Thing that grew bat-wings even as he gazed in morbid fascination, launching itself from the bed to the window, pausing there for a moment in the slitlike opening to glare lustfully at him, then sliding off into the night with a hideous cackle and rustle of leathern membranes!

  For an hour then Tharquest busied himself, hanging drapes of cloaks and capes at the window and strengthening the fortification of the door by forcing a second wedge in at its top. Eventually, satisfied that he had done all he could to ward off any further attempts at his seduction and destruction by the lamia, the Klühnite sat back upon his bed and surveyed the results of his work in the flickering torchlight. Now that the job was done, he gave thought to what had passed and how close he had been to unutterable horror.

  But eventually Tharquest’s trembling limbs and quaking soul calmed, until, as his heart slowed its wild beating and his eyes began to ache with the strain of glaring about the room at the leaping shadows, the drugged wine of the lamia again brought down the ramparts of his awareness. The lids of his eyes slowly lowered, his terror-taut muscles slackened and his breathing slowed, his head fell to his chest and his body toppled gently over backward until he lay flat on the bed with his simple sword close beside him.

  Some time passed while Tharquest sank deeper into sleep, and the second coming of the lamia Orbiquita went completely unbeknown to the slumbering Klühnite. She came as a twist of smoke, issuing in at the crack of the door, forming . . . forming . . .

  Again in his dream the wanderer chased his laughing nymph through exotic forests ribboned with sparkling winestreams and pools, and again she led him to her bower of orchids, reaching out to him and pouting prettily and moving her body most seductively.

  Tossing and turning in his bed, moaning in his sleep and whispering words of love remembered of many an adventure of old, Tharquest reached out his hands and found the beautiful body of the nymph. And at this the lamia rejoiced greatly, for she had altered her form (an art at which she was greatly adept) to that of a young girl, that she might better fool the handsome young wanderer. Violently he pulled her toward him—and in so doing caused his sword to fall with a clatter from the bed to the floor.

  Tharquest heard the sword fall—even through his dreaming flesh-lust he heard it—and his sleeping mind was distracted from its course. Too, in the semi-awareness of his disturbed dream, he now discovered peculiarities: that the flesh his hands had found was cold as the spaces between the stars, and that the breath issuing into his face carried the same carrion stench he had known before! And abruptly he remembered where he was and what he was about.

  Again the Klühnite came awake, leaping from his suddenly repellent bed. In mid-leap he plucked up his fallen sword in barely articulate hand, snatching at the low-burning torch on the wall. There upon the bed as he held the torch out at trembling arm’s length, lay the perfect form of the nymph of his dreams! One shaky yet resolute step took him to the bedside, but even as he gritted his teeth to thrust his sword into the girl’s side her body turned to smoke, streaming swiftly out under the door and leaving only the echo of an awful chuckle behind—that and the memory of a horror that had seemed to rot even as its substance became smoke!

  More weary than ever but determined now to fortify the room as fully as possible, Tharquest lit a third torch, then stumbled about stuffing linings torn from capes and jackets into the cracks of the door and blocking the window slit completely with other articles of clothing. By the time he had finished the drug in his blood had reached its peak of potency and it was as much as he could do to keep his eyes open. The room swam and seemed to blur before him as he mazedly sought his bed of silks and cushions . . .

  As the adventurer fell once more asleep, the lamia was already on her way back to her castle. She had flown into the Desert of Sheb to certai
n caves she knew—caves that went down to the very pits at Earth’s core, where red imps leap from one lava pool to the next—and there she had warmed her chill and loathly flesh by hell’s own fires that the imitation of life thus imbibed might better fool the man come to seek her treasures.

  Still hot from hell she burned when she flapped down atop her pile. Aye, even so hot as to leave cloven prints burning in the stones of those ramparts—but much of her heat was lost as she formed herself into a pool of water to seep into the cracks of the stone and down, down toward Tharquest’s room.

  Again he was oblivious of her coming, slumbering on as tiny droplets of lamia-formed moisture gathered on the ceiling and ran down the walls.

  . . . Yet even sleeping and dreaming, the Klühnite was now cautious. Without truly remembering the reasons for his reticence, nevertheless he followed his laughing nymph carefully. Such caution could not last, however, for was he not Tharquest the Rake, known in seventeen cities for his audacity and impudence and banned forever from fourteen of them through those same improprieties? When the nymph held out her arms to him he went to her, whispering false words of love to a yet more faithless lover, courting her as the tiny male courts the bloated black widow spider, reaching out his hands for her . . .

  Fortunately for Tharquest, the drug was now past its greatest strength and fast waning in potency, and the warnings of past, sleep-fogged encounters with this nymph lingered yet in the eye of his inner memory. Her flesh was warm, true, and her body smooth and having none of rough lumps or pustules—but as he moved his body towards her and made to kiss her lips . . .

  That horrendous smell!

  In the nick of time, with no instant to spare, again the adventurer leapt from the arms of that poisonous princess of passion, leapt from her to catch up his sword and smite again and again at the bed . . . which was suddenly wet with liquid so that his blade came away dripping. And the droplets from his sword mixed with the moisture soaked through the now empty bed to the stone floor beneath, and the entire living pool swiftly flowed away down a narrow crack in the stonework and was gone. Again an eerie chuckle floated back to the shuddering Klühnite.

  Very frightened but clearer in his mind now that the drug was dead and absorbed into his system, Tharquest saw that while the torch in the wall burned so low as to give very little light, yet there was a secondary light in the room. Its source was the windowslit where his raiment barricade had started to settle and slip. He tore the piled garments away, and there in the east a golden glowing haze already showed on the horizon. The sun was not yet up, but it would not be long.

  Only thinking to be out of the place, Tharquest ripped away the silken wadding and wooden wedges from the door. He passed with a shaky laugh out into the castle’s corridors, showing a flash of his former impudence as he sought himself the most magnificent cloak and boots he could find in exchange for his own tatters. Down the stone steps he went, simple sword secure in its scabbard, and as he reached the great outer door—then came his reward!

  IV

  Even as he made to leave the pile, a stone flag in the wall near the door pivoted outward revealing an inner cavity, and out from the hole cascaded the most fantasic treasure the wanderer could ever have dreamed of.

  Tourmaline, turquoise and topaz; onyx, opal and pearl; garnet, jade and emerald; rose quartz, zircon and lapis lazuli; ruby, sapphire and bloodstone; diamond, aquamarine and amethyst—jewels and precious stones of every sort and size! And gold! And silver! Coins of every realm on Earth, and some, Tharquest fancied—because of their shapes and the images graven upon them—from yet more distant places. Strings of black pearls big as marbles; crowns and tiaras and diadems of alien design; jeweled daggers and golden effigies of strange gods—an endless stream of untold wealth, all flowing out upon the floor!

  And so Tharquest knew he had won, and it was a matter of only a few seconds to fill his pockets with some of the choicest pieces, a continent’s ransom. Thus, well weighted down with fantastic jewels and priceless bric-a-brac, the wanderer passed from the castle of Orbiquita, and as the golden glow grew yet brighter beyond the far horizon he made his way quickly to his tethered mare. Freeing the animal’s rope rein, he was about to mount when he heard his name called. Glancing about, he soon saw the shepherd girl approaching in a hooded cloak through the silent trees.

  “Tharquest!” she gasped, peering fearfully about. “Oh, Tharquest, I feared you would be lost—that the lamia would devour you—and so I had to come here to know for certain. I thought never to see you again!”

  He smiled his audacious smile and bowed low, doffing his hat and flicking his luxurious cloak. “The lamia is defeated,” he cried, “and was there ever any doubt but that this was the way it must be? Did you truly believe that I might fail? And riches—” He dipped into a pocket and tossed the girl a glowing green gem even as green as her eyes and of a like size. “Why!—what could that bauble alone not buy?”

  “Oh, Tharquest, Tharquest!” She clapped her hands in delight and glowed with pleasure, holding her prize up to the far dim light beyond the trees, and peering into its green-fire depths. Then, as she bowed low in acceptance of the gift, the Klühnite glimpsed once more those soft delights first viewed in her father’s cot, and he remembered her parting words of the previous afternoon.

  Aye, and she must have recognised that look in his eyes, for she laughed and twirled about, her hands to the fastenings of her cloak. And lo!—when next she faced him that cloak lay at her feet and she stood naked and coyly blushing there in the silent glade.

  Yet ready as he ever was, the wanderer had learned things that night, and as he leaned forward as if to kiss her his hand secretly fondled the hilt of his simple sword. But no, her breath was sweet as honey, her lips warm with life, her flesh smooth and delightful to the wanderer’s touch. And so Tharquest quickly threw off his robes and they fell together to the green grass in the glade of stirless trees—

  —And the sun not yet up above the horizon!

  And her breath (sweetened by an elixer of Djinni brewed deep in the Desert of Sheb) was sugar as her lips fastened upon him. And her flesh (again warmed by hell’s own fires while red imps skipped across the lava pools) quivered warmly under him. And her body (shaped by that art of which she was adept) opened up beneath him and sucked him in, skin and blood and bone and all, fuel for her fires of lust and horror. And Tharquest gave but a single shriek as he went, hearing in his passing the shrill screaming of his suddenly terrified mare . . .

  LATER, GLUTTED THE nonce and needful of rest, the lamia Orbiquita flapped off on leathern wings in the direction of her shepherd’s cot, there to sleep through the morning and lie in waiting for the next adventurer to happen that way.

  And later still there was tumult in the camps of the starvelings beneath Chlangi’s walls—tumult and the preparation of cooking pots and pans—as a black mare, lathered about her flanks and red-eyed in a fearful and nameless dread, came galloping to her doom.

  To Kill a Wizard!

  THEY COME AND they go, these wizard-slayers,” whispered Mylakhrion to his currently favourite familiar, a one-legged jackdaw of spiteful mien. “Some creep in the night like thieves—” (the ancient mage stifled a yawn, of boredom perhaps)”—others bound boldly over the drawbridge, eyes flashing fire and swords aglint; and there are those who disguise themselves as simple men seeking an old, fatherly magician’s advice.” He chucked the bird gently under its curving beak. “But then, I don’t need to tell you these things, do I? You yourself have slain a wizard or two, in your time.”

  “I have, I have,” croaked the bird, his bright button eyes unblinking, his head cocked to catch his master’s words. “You also, Mylakhrion, I would have slain, were your protections less potent that time.” And there was bitterness in the jackdaw’s croaky voice.

  “Come now, Gyriss,” Mylakhrion softly chastened, his voice like a fall of autumn leaves. “After all this time—how many years?—is there still enmity between us? Yo
u came to Tharamoon seeking to slay me, remember? And I wonder, were our roles reversed, would I still live to talk to you? I doubt it. As to your welfare: who else in all Theem’hdra would procure these good nuts, at today’s prices, in order to pamper a balding, one-legged jackdaw?” He dangled his long fingers in a bowl of almonds.

  “But once I had two good legs,” croaked Gyriss. “And as for nuts—which you magick out of thin air, at no cost at all—why, I ate only the rarest viands and drank only the finest wines!”

  “Wines!” the wizard chuckled. “Choice meats. Whoever heard of a jackdaw eating rare viands? You’re an ingrate, Gyriss, and in a mood tonight, that’s all. Was I ever unkind to you?”

  “Only the once,” came the answer, as sour a croak as ever Mylakhrion heard.

  “Ah! But then it was you or me,” he answered, adjusting the wide sleeves of his rune-embroidered robe. And his voice was colder now. “Anyway, it bores me to review all that. What use to open up old wounds, eh? Now let it be, Gyriss, and come tell me what you make of this.” He nodded toward his great blue-green shewstone of crystal where it was set central at the flat apex of a tripod table all carved of black wood and inlaid with gold and ivory arabesques.

  The jackdaw hopped from its perch to Mylakhrion’s shoulder with scarce a flutter, peered with him at the shewstone which, as the wizard drew an intricate figure in the air with his forefinger, at once grew cloudy as from some eruption of internal aethers.

  “See! See?” said Mylakhrion, as the mists in the crystal ball opened like ethereal curtains upon a bleak and wintry scene. “I’ve been watching him approach for days now, and at last he has reached Tharamoon itself. How say you? Is this not just such a wizard-slayer, come to try his luck?”