And the ego, let it find itself wheresoever it may be borne—by fate or otherwise—throughout all the universe; by the “Law of Attraction” promptly is covered by an envelope commensurate to its needs and requirements for functioning in that environment.
And so I was once again an embodied ego, and I must say that I was in nowise proud of my appearance.
For after all, the Silver One was right. I am an Earthling; and as such I am as capable of hate as I am capable of love. Nay, within me are forever the two natures; as they are in all others. But in the shining city of light, I towered half as tall again as upon earth and shone with a clear brightness—while now I found myself, where the hate nature predominated, dwarfish, stunted, distorted, ugly in face and form and hue!
That I was strong in spirit goes without saying, and is no vanity on my part, because no spiritual weakling can ever hope to reach to the high status I held in our earthly Order. Our drastic tests and ordeals have sent many more aspirants to madhouses than have ever attained to the inner mysteries.
And so that strength of spirit was like to prove my undoing; for I sensed within me all the potentialities of a most malignant fiend! Worse, it was only by most strenuous efforts that I could remember clearly that Silver One and her mission upon which I had been sent.
And then I realized that I dared not think too strongly of her. No, the thought did not cause me to hate her; but was rather a comfort and a sort of stay whereto I might hold fast—but I feared that if I let my thoughts be too deeply tinged with her image, the fact would betray me to some of the inhabitants of this plane. And then the least that could ensue would be failure, and my ambitious spirit aspired to succeed.
It seemed a great, barren, rocky plain whereon I found myself. It was inexpressibly dreary and devoid of anything resembling towns or villages or even single habitations, so far as eye could reach. And of beings, either bipedal or quadrupedal, I could perceive none.
“When in doubt—take the initiative!”
That is an old maxim upon earth. Likewise it is sound philosophy. I did not know what to do nor where to go, so—I raised my voice in a shout! Rather, it was a most dismal howl—such a miserable, croaking bellow as I had never before thought I could emit!
But it did its work. Did it altogether too well! So well, in fact, that I came near to ending right there and then, before I had got fairly started.
Out from a gaping hole beneath a huge drab-colored boulder near by burst a monster. It was part lizard, part toad, part serpent; yet none of these words describes the repulsive outrage to the eyes! The thing was not so large in girth when it emerged—not much bigger round than a vat or large hogshead. But once it drew all its loathly length free, it developed an amazing power of expansion. It swelled, bloating until it was big enough to make a bulk equal to that of four or five elephants.
Straight at me it charged so swiftly that I could not hope to avoid it.
Wallowing, squirming, hopping, writhing, tumbling and rolling—its gait was a queer medley of all these compounded.
Swiftly I stooped, caught up a rock and noted that the rock grew hot even as I took it into my grasp, but at that moment I failed to get the significance of this. I dashed the stone fairly into the nightmare horror that must for want of better words be called the creature’s “face”.
Undoubtedly that hot rock must have hurt; for the thing made a mumbling, hissing, whistling outcry of pain and rage. But the puny missile only served to arouse its anger, and it accelerated its speed toward me. The awful, ghastly head darted suddenly and—in one gulp I was swallowed!
Urgh! Such sensations! Those blubber lips had no sooner closed over me than I went sick all through. It was in no wise “fear”, only repugnance, disgust. The thing’s mouth was filled with sharp corrugations much like the teeth of a rasp or a file. Its breath was a loathsome, putrescent exhalation. And as with a single contractile movement of its throat-muscles it shot me downward, I felt a viscous slime besmearing me from head to foot, sticky, clinging, clammy, repulsive as rubber cement!
Plup! I landed, fortunately, on my feet in its nearly empty stomach. It nearly strangled me to breathe, but I had to breathe, or choke—and either way, there was little to choose—merely the way of choking!
Well, I tried breathing! It was not pleasant, but I did it, some way. But my sole emotion was wrath.
There was no fear about it. I was just plain mad! Mad all through! Frenzied with hate! To think that this confounded thing had dared—actually dared, swallow me!
I never even thought of the probable physical consequences to myself once the digestive processes within the beast commenced. My sole reaction was a demoniacal desire to wreak vengeance. I wanted to rend, tear, wrench and utterly destroy by torments unbelievable, this ugly monstrosity!
Apparently hate is a creative force, in its own plane. At least sufficiently so to enable the hater to supply himself with the means of destruction.
For no sooner had I formulated the wish than I found myself holding a fearful and wonderful weapon firmly grasped in both hands.
It had a short, thick, metal handle immensely strong; and at one end were half a dozen hooks, razor-sharp on the inner edges. Actually, the thing looked exactly like a metal hand and arm with sickle-shaped blades in place of fingers—and the intensity of my wrath turned the metal instrument and claws red-hot! Even in my extremity, I recall grinning with malevolent satisfaction as I contemplated the devilish contraption!
Whirling the thing above my head like a miner with a many-pointed pickax, I set to work. I have said enough! There are some things too repulsive to write down for human eyes to read. Suffice it to say that long before actual harm had occurred to myself, I was once more free. And the thing, with a great, gaping, ragged hole torn in its side, was tumbling about seeking me, to wreak vengeance in its turn. But I had disappeared from its sight, having fled into a thicket of bushes near by. They looked a safe hiding place enough!
Oh, yes! they looked innocuous, but every leaf and twig and branch and stalk and trunk were covered with an impalpable powder which rose in faint clouds about me and then settled again—mostly on me!
We’ve a little plant growing on Earth. It’s called the “Nettle.” We’ve another called “Ivy”—“poison-ivy” some name it. Take a good-sized wisp of each and thrash your bare flesh with them until the tingling blood suffuses the surface skin. Let the effects take well—and you will have some dim idea as to what that dust did to me.
I burst from that thicket like a partridge from a covert! Not far from where I came out in such a hurry, I perceived a pool of water. I was too frenzied by that time to think ahead or exercise any caution, so I made straight for the pool and plunged in. I wanted to soothe my flesh from the agony of that burning dust as well as to cleanse it from the pollution of that beast-thing’s interior, some of whose secretions still besmeared me in streaks and spots.
But I plunged out of that hole of water much more expeditiously than I had plunged into it! Had I stayed another instant, I had been cooked; for the fluid was scalding hot!
In agony I rushed from there as rapidly as my leg muscles could betake me, knowing that if I moved fast enough the passage of my body through air would equal a breeze blowing against me were I standing still. The idea was good, and I really derived a slight benefit from it. But it got me, after all, into fresh trouble.
For I had not run far when behind me I heard the soft pad-pad-pad of pursuing feet, and, glancing back over my shoulder, I perceived to my horror that a horde of creatures like earth-wolves, only twice as large, were chasing me!
I had laid my claw-club weapon on the brink of the scalding pool when I jumped in—and had not waited to pick it up and take it with me when I jumped out again, being in too great haste to depart; so I had nothing wherewith to fight.
I thought longingly of the guns of earth. But that failed to work like my desire while I was in the beast-thing’s inwards. For this time, I was afraid! And fear is seld
om positively destructive. But, run as I would, the brutes were fast overtaking me!
I tripped, fell forward, and became the center of a worrying, snapping, snarling pack of four-legged demons; and every one of them had the rabies, to judge from the foam-froth flying and slavering from their mouths!
In one brief, lightning-like flash, I saw a vision of myself lying there—a badly torn, lacerated, mangled thing; writhing in all the anguish of hydrophobia, yet unable to die. The goddess? How could she aid, let alone rescue me, here on this plane, where, she herself had stated it, she dared not let her servitors come? At the least, I had failed her—and as a failure, I knew that I deserved anything that might happen to me.
Suddenly, cutting through my terror and despair, I heard a volcanic eruption of crashing, searing oaths, spoken in good plain English! And accompanying the tirade of blasphemy, I heard the thud and the unmistakable chuck of edged weapons chopping into flesh and bone. I caught the snarls and yelps of fear and pain; the howls of rage and the dying whines and whimpers of the wolves that had harried me—
Powerful hands seized me and yanked me to my feet. I was in agony, bitten all over, yet still able to stand, albeit shakily. Dazedly I stared, and well I might!
Before me stood a man clad in the armor of the period of the First Crusade! He was tall, broad-shouldered, huge of body and thick of arms and thighs; and repugnantly brutal in features, although he was grinning at me from out the opening of his helmet. Yet that grin was not all goodfellowship. Partly it was malicious.
“Why!” he roared in a bull’s voice. “Art an Earthling, man; e’en as I be myself?”
I nodded assent, noting as I strove to control my trembling limbs that the beasts were either all sorely wounded or fled; and that his followers were crowding about, staring at me quite as curiously as I was gazing at them.
Evidently they were from all planets and of all periods and races. None of them was at all prepossessing to look upon. Every countenance bore either ferocity or malignancy or both writ largely. I admit that as I looked at them I experienced greater fear than I had so far felt—their horrific weapons were enough to frighten anyone—swords, barbed spears, war-axes, clubs and things I can not name, not knowing the arms of the different planets.
But I strove to brazen the matter out. Turning to the huge leader, I held out my hand in the age-old gesture of our race, intending to clasp hands with him; the while I began expressing my thanks, my gratitude for this timely rescue.
“Well for me that you came when you did,” I began, and got no farther. He stared down at my hand outstretched in amity; then with a snarl he caught my wrist, turned my hand palm upward, and deliberately, insultingly, spat into it; while a look of utter venom disfigured his bestial countenance still farther than nature had done.
“Well for thee?” he roared mockingly. “Little we cared for thee, thou oaf, thou fool! ’Twas but the hate we bear for the beasts! It did please us to cheat them of their sport!”
Utterly taken aback, I knew not what to say. Before I could formulate anything my arms were pinned from behind and bound thus; a noosed cord was thrown about my neck, the other end being held fast by the most bestial-faced, apelike, lumpish-looking lout it has ever been my bad luck to behold—and we started for where I knew not.
What ghastly tortures did they intend inflicting? I wondered. The mail-clad leader caught my thought, read it accurately, and sneered in my face.
“Fear not,” he jibed. “The dainty Earthling shall come to no harm at the hands of my sweet babes”—by which he meant his villainous crew of followers, I supposed—“not but that we would enjoy dalliance with thee,” he went on vindictively; “but all who come to this realm must be brought before our lord intact!” I shuddered at the sinister implication of that last word, and noting it, he burst into a hoarse, braying laughter.
But in truth they did me no actual harm; although they did heap upon me every insult, contumely and indignity their depraved intelligences could devise. So that it was in anything but a spirit of pleasurable anticipation that I wended along with that crew, my pace accelerated every so often by a vicious yank from the ugly specimen holding the other end of the noosed cord about my neck.
Very evidently, when I volunteered for the service I was now engaged in carrying out, I had let myself in for something. And just as obviously, I was getting it, full measure and running over!
The sole gain that I could see lay in the fact that I was being taken directly to the presence of the one personage I most greatly desired to meet—albeit that promised to prove as detrimental as anything that could possibly happen. For there was little doubt as to the reception I might expect. Something unpleasant, unquestionably. No chance of its being otherwise. So, as I have said, my mood was the reverse of happy.
* * * *
Eventually I found myself standing surrounded by the ugly-natured crew just outside the lofty walls of a great city. The mail-clad leader was holding parley with the guards who apparently kept watch and ward at a small, narrow, arched doorway.
What passed of countersign and password between them I know not, but in another moment we were admitted. I had braced myself in anticipation of a renewal of petty annoyances from the inhabitants once we were within the city, but nothing of the sort happened.
Obviously, they were too accustomed to seeing captive arrivals from the various planets to pay attention to such, except to glower, malignant, as we passed. But by that time I had been fully impregnated with the all-pervading aura, so returned glare for glare; hate for hate; nor felt shame that I should feel so.
It was a mighty city, I must say that. It seemed, in a way, much as the cities of the Middle Ages in Europe appeared; and that type anyone can imagine for himself, so I shall not bother to describe farther.
Finally after marching through dismal streets we entered a lofty, gloomy building, which, I judged aright, was the palace of the Archfiend. And a few minutes later, I was standing in his very presence. I had prepared myself to confront a demon—and I found myself facing a gentleman, a prince! He wore a darkly vivid red robe; and about his head, in place of crown or other insignia of his rank, there played a faint but clearly perceptible nimbus of scintillant flame of lurid crimson, garish purple, and somber sinister blue.
He was seated on a wondrously hideous yet highly ornamented throne of bronze which glimmered and gleamed with all the tints and shades of all the metalline oxides. His finely shaped head rested negligently on his hand, his elbow propped on the broad arm of his throne-seat; and his deep, lustrous eyes swept me from head to foot in one all-inclusive, penetrating glance.
A single wave of his hand was sufficient. No spoken command, yet that hateful gang who had made me prisoner departed, hastily, as though glad to get away.
Those behind his throne and to either side barely glanced at me, for to them I was but an Earthling; and they, one and all, were nobles and dignitaries of the court of a terrible regnant prince of the powers of evil. And they were too great, in a way, to descend to petty levels.
“What sent thee to my realm, Earthman?”
His voice was quiet, low, pleasantly modulated. He gazed at me with no manifestation of aught save such mild curiosity as might be expected from a ruler granting audience to any newcomer in his territory.
For a fraction of a second I was at a loss for the right words in which to reply without arousing suspicions that might result awkwardly for me—then I remembered a bit of advice I had once received long ago: “When wishing to deceive—tell the truth. No one will believe it!”
“It was a women sent me,” I replied sulkily, playing my part, and noted an expression of wearied disdain flicker momentarily over his almost classically regular countenance.
“Only that?” he murmured, contemptuous. “So many Earthmen—” and a wave of his hand finished the remark for him. Then, as though having decided to get what poor sport from me might be had, he probed farther.
“But what did she do to thee?�
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“Let me love her,” I growled as if envenomed by bitter memories.
“Ah,” ho commented, gravely courteous. “I see! She let thee love her; then—refused thy love?”
“No!” I retorted savagely. “She accepted it!” Which was all true enough, but might be interpreted two ways.
“Then, since, because of her, thou hast suffered?” One, hearing, would have deemed him pitying, sympathetic.
“I have recently suffered very greatly,” I replied, sulkily, as at first. Then I added, deliberately, insolently, moved thereto by one of those bursts of inspiration which at times come to even the dullest—“And now, O Prince of Hate, I have said all I will!”
He stared, as did his courtiers thronging the dais! Very probably, not in ages had any ego dared defy him thus, show such independence. It seemed, strangely enough, to please even while it apparently angered him. An enigmatic light glittered in his eyes, and he nodded reflectively.
I braced myself, expecting some terrific outburst; but again I was disappointed. He made no reply to my insolence, nor did he comment thereon. Merely he caught the eye of one standing near; and that one hastily bent the knee before him.
“Take this Earthman and find for him quarters here in the palace;” he commanded. “Let him have such comforts as may please him. He has my favor. I will make him my personal attendant! Depart!”
As this last evidently meant me as well, we left the throne room together and as we went, I fancied I heard a quickly suppressed, low-pitched murmur of amazement from the assembled courtiers. My guide’s first remark to me fully confirmed this idea.
“Never before has our Master showed such treatment to any who have stood before him, let alone an Earthman; for above all others he hates thy world the worst!”
“Why?” I queried.
“Nay,” he responded, grumpily, “I know not. Nor,” he added, as afterthought, “do I care! Nor is it any affair of thine!”
I returned his ugly stare with interest, and in mutual animosity we reached the rooms that were, for so brief a time, to be my abode. And here with no word of farewell nor other courtesy, my guide left me to shift for myself.
The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK™, Vol. 4: Nictzin Dyalhis Page 10