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

by Lumley, Brian

  “There is but one question of ultimate importance to men,” gloomed Mylakhrion, “and its nature is such that they usually do not think to ask it until they draw close to the end of their days. For in their youth men cannot foresee the end, and in their middle span they dwell too much upon their lost youth; ah, but in their final days, when there is no future, then they give mind to this great question. And by then it is usually too late. For the question is one of life and death, and the answer is this: yes, Teh Atht, by great and sorcerous endeavour, a man might truly make himself immortal . . .

  “As to your riddle, that is easy. The answer is that I am indeed immortal! Even as the Great Ones, as the mighty furnace stars, as Time itself, am I immortal. For ever and ever. Here you have called me up to answer your questions and riddles, knowing full well that I am eleven hundred years dead. But do I not take on the aspect of life? Do my lips not speak? And is this not immortality? Dead I am, but I say to you that I can never truly die.”

  Then Mylakhrion spread his arms wide, saying; “All is answered. Farewell . . .” And his outline, already misted and dim, began to recede deeper still into Zha-weed distances, departing from me. Then, greatly daring, I called out:

  “Wait, Mylakhrion my ancestor, for our business is not yet done.”

  Slowly he came back, reluctantly, until his silhouette was firm once more; but still, as always, his visage was hidden by the swirling mists, and only his dark figure and the gold-glowing runes woven into his robes were visible. Silently he waited, as silently as the tomb of the universe at the end of time, until I spoke yet again:

  “This immortality of yours is not the sort I seek, Mylakhrion, which I believe you know well enow. Fleshless, bodiless, except for that shape given you by my incantations and the smoke of the Zha-weed, voiceless other than when called up from the land of shades to answer my questions . . . what is that for immortality? No, ancestor mine, I desire much more from the future than that. I want my body and all of its sensations. I want volition and sensibility, and all normal lusts and passions. In short, I want to be eternal, remaining as I am now but incorruptible, indestructable! That is immortality!”

  “There is no such future for you, Teh Atht!” he immediately gloomed, voice deeply sunken and ominous. “You expect too much. Even I, Mylakhrion of Tharamoon, could not—achieve—” And here he faltered and fell silent.

  I perceived then a seeming agitation in the mist-wreathed phantom; he appeared to tremble, however slightly, and I sensed his eagerness to be gone. Thus I pressed him:

  “Oh? And how much did you achieve, Mylakhrion? Is there more I should know? What were your experiments and how much did you discover in your great search for immortality? I believe you are hiding something from me, o mighty one, and if I must I’ll smoke the Zha-weed again!—aye, and yet again—leaving you no rest or peace until you have answered me as I would be answered!”

  Hearing me speak thus, Mylakhrion’s figure stiffened and swelled momentarily massive, but then his shoulders drooped and he nodded slowly, saying: “Have I come to this? That the most meagre talents have power to command me? A sad day indeed for Mylakhrion of Tharamoon, when his own descendant uses him so sorely. What is it you wish to know, Teh Atht of Klühn?”

  “While you were unable to achieve immortality in your lifetime, ancestor mine,” I answered, “mayhap nathless you can assist me in the discovery of the secret in mine. Describe to me the magicks you used and discarded in your search, the runes you unravelled and put aside, the potions imbibed and unctions applied to no avail, and these I shall take note of that no further time be wasted with them. Then advise me of the paths which you might have explored had time and circumstances permitted. For I will be immortal, and no power shall stay me from it.”

  “Ah, youth, it is folly,” quoth he, “but if you so command—”

  “I do so command.”

  “Then hear me out and I will tell all, and perhaps you will understand when I tell you that you cannot have immortality . . . not of the sort you so fervently desire.”

  And so Mylakhrion told me of his search for immortality. He described for me the great journeys he undertook—leaving Tharamoon, his island-mountain aerie, in the care of watchdog familiars—to visit and confer with other sorcerers and wizards; even journeys across the entire length and breadth of Theem’hdra. Alone he went out into the deserts and plains, the hills and icy wastes in pursuit of this most elusive of mysteries. He visited and talked with Black Yoppaloth of Yhemnis, with the ghost of Shildakor in lava-buried Bhur-Esh, with Ardatha Ell, a traveller in space and time who lived for a while in the Great Circle Mountains and studied the featureless, vastly cubical houses of the long-gone Ancients, and with Mellatiquel Thom, a cousin-wizard fled to Yaht Haal when certain magicks turned against him.

  And always during these great wanderings he collected runes and cantrips, spells and philtres, powders and potions and other devices necessary to his thaumaturgical experiments. But never a one to set his feet on the road to immortality. Aye, and using vile necromancy he called up the dead from their ashes, even the dead, for his purposes. And this is something I, Teh Atht, have never done, deeming it too loathsome and danger-fraught a deed. For to talk to a dream-phantom is one matter, but to hold intercourse with long-rotted liches . . . that is a vile, vile thing.

  But for all his industry Mylakhrion found only frustration. He conversed with demons and lamias, hunted the legendary phoenix in burning deserts, near-poisoned himself with strange drugs and nameless potions and worried his throat raw with the chanting of oddly cacophonic invocations. And only then did he think to ask himself this question:

  If a man desired immortality, what better way than to ask the secret of one already immortal? Aye, and there was just such a one . . .

  Then, when Mylakhrion spoke the name of Cthulhu—the tentacled Great One who seeped down from the stars with his spawn in aeons past to build his cities in the steaming fens of a young and inchoate Earth—I shuddered and made a certain sign over my heart. For while I had not yet had to do with this Cthulhu, his legend was awful and I had heard much of him. And I marvelled that Mylakhrion had dared seek out this Great One, even Mylakhrion, for above all other evils Cthulhu was legended to tower like a menhir above mere gravestones.

  And having marvelled I listened most attentively to all that my ancestor had to say of Cthulhu and the other Great Ones, for since their nature was in the main obscure, and being myself a sorcerer with a sorcerer’s appetite for mysteries, I was most desirous of learning more of them.

  “Aye, Teh Atht,” Mylakhrion continued, “Cthulhu and his brethren: they must surely know the answer, for they are—”

  “Immortal?”

  For answer he shrugged, then said: “Their genesis lies in unthinkable abysses of the past, their end nowhere in sight. Like the cockroach they were here before man, and they will supersede man. Why, they were oozing like vile ichor between the stars before the sun spewed out her molten children, of which this world is one; and they will live on when Sol is the merest cinder. Do not attempt to measure their life-spans in terms of human life, nor even geologically. Measure them rather in the births and deaths of planets, which to them are like the tickings of vast clocks. Immortal? As near immortal as matters not. From them I could either beg, borrow or steal the secret—but how to go about approaching them?”

  I waited for the ghost of my dead ancestor to proceed, and when he did not immediately do so cried out: “Say on then, forebear mine! Say on and be done with beguiling me!”

  He sighed for reply and answered very low: “As you command . . .

  “At length I sought me out a man rumoured to be well versed in the ways of the Great Ones; a hermit, dwelling in the peaks of the Eastern Range, whose visions and dreams were such as were best dreamed far removed from his fellow men. For he was wont to run amok in the passion of his nightmares, and was reckoned by many to have bathed in the blood of numerous innocents, ‘to the greater glory of Loathly Lo
rd Cthulhu!’

  “I sought him out and questioned him in his high cave, and he showed me the herbs I must eat and whispered the words I must howl from the peaks into the storm. And he told me when I must do these things, that I might then sleep and meet with Cthulhu in my dreams. Thus he instructed me . . .

  “But as night drew nigh in this lonely place my host became drowsy and fell into a fitful sleep. Aye, and his ravings soon became such, and his strugglings so wild, that I stayed not but ventured back out into the steep slopes and thus made away from him. Descending those perilous crags only by the silvery light of the Moon, I spied the madman above me, asleep yet rushing to and fro, howling like a dog and slashing with a great knife in the darkness of the shadows. And I was glad I had not stayed!

  “Thus I returned to Tharamoon, taking a winding route and gathering of the herbs whereof the hermit had spoken, until upon my arrival I had with me all the elements required for the invocation, while locked in my mind I carried the Words of Power. And lo!—I called up a great storm and went out onto the balcony of my highest tower, and there I howled into the wind the Words, and I ate of the herbs mixed so and so, and a swoon came upon me so that I fell as though dead into a sleep deeper by far than the arms of Shoosh, Goddess of the Still Slumbers. Ah, but deep though this sleep was, it was by no means still!

  “No, that sleep was—unquiet! I saw the sepulcher of Cthulhu in the Isle of Arlyeh, and I passed through the massive and oddly-angled walls of that alien stronghold into the presence of the Great One Himself!”

  Here the outlines of my ancestor’s ghost became strangely agitated, as if its owner trembled uncontrollably, and even the voice of Mylakhrion wavered and lost much of its doomful portent. I waited for a moment before crying: “Yes, go on—what did the awful Lord of Arlyeh tell you?”

  “. . . Many things, Teh Atht. He told me the secrets of space and time, the legends of lost universes out beyond the limits of man’s imagination; he outlined the hideous truths behind the N’tang Tapestries, the lore of dimensions other than the familiar three. And at last he told me the secret of immortality!

  “But the latter he would not reveal until I had made a pact with him. And this pact was that I would be his priest for ever and ever, even until his coming. And believing that I might later break free of any strictures Cthulhu could place upon me, I agreed to the pact and swore upon it. In this my fate was sealed, my doom ordained, for no man may escape the curse of Cthulhu once its seal is upon him . . .

  “And lo, when I wakened I did all as I had been instructed to attain the promised immortality; and on the third night Cthulhu visited me in dreams, for he knew me now and how to find me, and commanded me as his servant and priest to set about certain tasks. Ah, but these were tasks which would assist the Great One and his prisoned brethren in breaking free of the chains placed upon them in aeons past by the wondrous Gods of Eld, and what use to be immortal forever more in the unholy service of Cthulhu?

  “Thus, on the fourth day, instead of doing as bidden, I set about protecting myself as best I could from Cthulhu’s wrath, working a veritable frenzy of magicks to keep him from me . . . to no avail! In the middle of the fifth night, wearied nigh unto death by my thaumaturgical labours, I slept, and again Cthulhu came to me. And he came in great anger—even great anger!

  “For he had broken down all of my sorcerous barriers, destroying all spells and protective runes, discovering me for a traitor to his cause. And as I slept he drew me up from my couch and led me through the labryinth of my castle, even to the feet of those steps which climbed up to the topmost tower. He placed my feet upon those stone stairs and commanded me to climb, and when I would have fought him he applied monstrous pressures to my mind that numbed me and left me bereft of will. And so I climbed, slowly and like unto one of the risen dead, up to that high tower, where without pause I went out onto the balcony and threw myself down upon the needle rocks a thousand feet below . . .

  “Thus was my body broken, Teh Atht, and thus Mylakhrion died.”

  As he finished speaking I stepped closer to the swirling wall of mist where Mylakhrion stood, black-robed and enigmatic in mystery. He did not seem so tall now, no taller than I myself, and for all the power he had wielded in life he no longer awed me. Should I, Teh Atht, fear a ghost? Even the ghost of the world’s greatest sorcerer?

  “Still you have not told me that which I most desire to know,” I accused.

  “Ah, you grow impatient,” he answered. “Even as the smoke of the Zha-weed loses its potency and the waking world beckons to you, so your impatience grows. Very well, let me now repeat what Cthulhu told me of immortality:

  “He told me that the only way a mere man, even the mightiest wizard among wizards, might perpetuate himself down all the ages was by means of reincarnation! But alas, such as my return would be it would not be complete; for I must needs inhabit another’s body, another’s mind, and unless I desired a weak body and mind I should certainly find resistance in the person of that as yet unborn other. In other words I must share that body, that mind! But surely, I reasoned, even partial immortality would be better than none at all. Would you not agree, descendant mine? . . .

  “Of course, I would want a body—or part of one—close in appearance to my own, and a mind to suit. Aye, and it must be a keen mind and curious of mysteries great and small: that of a sorcerer! And indeed it were better if my own blood should flow in the veins of—”

  “Wait!” I then cried, searching the mist with suddenly fearful eyes, seeking to penetrate its greyness that I might gaze upon Mylakhrion’s unknown face. “I . . . I find your story most . . . disturbing . . . my ancestor, and—”

  “—and yet you must surely hear it out, Teh Atht,” he interrupted, doom once more echoing in his voice. And as he spoke he moved flowingly forward until at last I could see the death-lights in his shadowy eyes. Closer still he came, saying:

  “To ensure that this as yet unborn one would be all the things I desired of him, I set a covenant upon my resurrection in him. And this condition was that his curiosity and sorcerous skill must be such that he would first call me up from the Land of Shades ten times, and that only then would I make myself manifest in his person . . . And how many times have you called me up, Teh Atht?”

  “Ten times—fiend!” I choked. And feeling the chill of subterranean pools flowing in my bones, I rushed upon him to seize his shoulders in palsied hands, staring into a face now visible as a reflection in the clear glass of a mirror. A mirror? Aye! For though the face was that of an old, old man—it was nonetheless my own!

  And without more ado I fled, waking to a cold, cold morn atop the Mount of the Ancients, where my tethered yak watched me with worried eyes and snorted a nervous greeting . . .

  BUT THAT WAS long ago and in my youth, and now I no longer fear Mylakhrion, though I did fear him greatly for many a year. For in the end I was stronger than him, aye, and he got but a small part of me. In return I got all of his magicks, the lore of a lifetime spent in the discovery of dark secrets.

  All of this and immortality, too, of a sort; and yet even now Mylakhrion is not beaten. For surely I will carry something of him with me down the ages. Occasionally I smile at the thought and feel laughter rising in me like a wind over the desert . . . but rarely. The laughter hardly sounds like mine at all and its echoes seem to linger o’erlong.

  Lords of Morass

  NO GREATER GOLDSMITH in all Theem’hdra than Eythor Dreen, whose works in that wondrous metal, particularly his sculptures, were admired by all and sundry but only ever commissioned by kings, who alone could afford them. Kings, aye . . . and the occasional sorcerer.

  Since I myself have always found transmutation tedious (while the alchemy is simplicity itself, the consumption of time and energy is enormous!), and because Eythor had guaranteed me a massive discount on his gold, I commissioned him to amass and fashion the required amount in a likeness of myself.

  This was no act of vanity, but in those days I wa
s often the target of lesser magicians whose malicious sorceries were ever disturbing my experiments and studies; and so I required an effigy of myself upon which all such injurious spells and curses might spend themselves in my stead. The scarred and pitted condition of that sculpture now—as if worked upon by mordant liquids and seared by weird energies—surely stands mute witness to my wisdom in this matter . . . but that is all aside.

  In order to do the job justice, Dreen came to stay with me for some little time in my apartments over the Bay of Klühn; which was where he told me the following tale. I have no reason to doubt a single word of it, but the reader may judge for himself.

  Teh Atht . . .

  I

  We were on the central plain, Phata Um and I, following a streamlet towards its source somewhere in the Great Circle Mountains. Far to the north lay the Desert of Ell, and to the south, not too far away, the Nameless Desert of dark repute. We panned for gold in the silty basins below gentle falls, wherever bends occurred in the stream, and whenever the surrounding formations looked auriferous to our prospectors’ eyes.

  Initially we had worked a middling vein in the Mountains of Lohmi, fleeing south empty-handed when a band of robbers out of Chlangi discovered our diggings, stole our gold and ran us out of camp. All was not lost, however, for we managed to retain a camel, two yaks and most of our equipment—not to mention our lives! And so we decided to wend our way to the Great Circle Mountains, follow them north to the River Marl and so up into Khrissa. From there a boat would take us home to Eyphra . . . if we could afford our passage on such a vessel.

  Setting out across the plain, we prospected as we went and eventually came upon the streamlet, there finding a few small nuggets. Now gold has been, is now and always will be a curse upon mankind. Men will kill for it; women sell themselves for it; its lure is irresistible. It brings dreams sweeter than opium and its colour has trapped the warmth and lustre of the very sun. It has a marvellous malleability all its own, and its great weight is that of the pendulum of the world! What could we do, Phata Um and I? We followed the stream, of course, and we found more nuggets. And the farther west we proceeded, the more and bigger nuggets we found.