Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  “We are the same,” I agreed.

  My words seemed to comfort him. He died with his eyes open, reflecting the starlight, a breath still issuing from his mouth.

  I stood between the bones of the corpses and stared around at the bodies of the ghouls, distorted by their death agonies. Not one survived. How had the men of the caravan known which poison would be effective, and how had they possessed it? They must have procured the poison for just this purpose at some village or oasis on their journey. It was a terrible retribution. The Black Spring Clan was no more. No, I corrected myself, that is untrue—I am Black Spring Clan.

  So sorry, my love, I am so sorry.

  “You could not have known, Sashi. It is fate.”

  Had I possessed the strength, I would have taken all the members of the clan back to the pit, but I was starving and the pit was three days away. I could not bear to think of the vultures feasting on the corpses, as they surely would when the smell of death reached them, so I searched the hills until I found a cave large enough for my purposes. Through the last of the night and all through the following day I carried or dragged the ghouls into the cave, arranging the bodies in rows so that they lay one on top of the other. When all except Gor was in the cave, I closed its mouth with large stones, which I rolled into place with the last of my strength. Then I found a shadow to lie in and slept.

  When I awoke it was dark. Gor’s corpse lay beside me, bound up in the shrouds that had held the bodies of the children. It was not heavy on my shoulder. The bodies of ghouls are lightly framed except for their bellies, which are large to hold several days of meat, in the same way the camel holds a reservoir of water. By traveling both beneath the stars and the sun, I reached the pit in the night of the second day, my water exhausted, my belly still hungry.

  I drank deep from the black cold water of the spring. It was necessary to see to my own hunger, or I would not be able to finish what I intended. Hunting was easy at the spring, since it was the only open source of water for many miles. I killed a snake and a desert rat and ate their flesh. Humans can eat anything, Gor had once said to me. That is our strength.

  Unwrapping his body in the cave of the dead, I stood over it and let the muse that has always been a part of me find the words to sing in his honor. How long I sang, I could not tell, but my voice became hoarse, and the darkness gave way to dawn. When I had used all the words to praise him, I cut a small portion of flesh from his back, where I judged the poison would be weak, and ate it. The bitterness was slight. I would not have vomited the flesh, even had it been strong. With my dagger I sliced the flesh from his limbs and trunk, and set it aside, then cut through the sinews that connected the bones. His brain and eyes I drew forth with the wooden spoon that was kept for the purpose within the cave. I piled the bloody bones with care on the bone heap of his ancestors, but his skull I bound around my waist over my thawb with a piece of cord from the shrouds. The binding raised the hem of the garment from the ground.

  What will you do, my love?

  “We will see why the earth moans so piteously in the depths,” I told Sashi with determination. Until that instant, I had not realized what I planned.

  The great cavern was as I remembered it, rock sides glowing with chill radiance, when Gor and I had viewed it together from the ledge. I began to descend the awkward steps that wound around its curving interior, so broad and deep that each was an effort for human legs. From time to time a thundering moan issued up from the darkness. This should have aroused fear, but my heart was empty. I felt an impatience to reach the bottom, so that I could learn the secret that had forever been lost with the ghouls who had ventured down the stair before me. Gor’s father had been the bravest of his clan, but he had never descended into the bowels of the earth, nor had Gor walked this path. Now I walked it for him, and with him.

  For hours I descended the stair. The journey was monotonous, and the cavern appeared to have no bottom. Before long the vaulted roof had been lost in darkness above, just as the depths were concealed in shadow below, so that it was all but impossible to be aware that progress was being made. My legs ached. How much more they would complain on the ascent, I thought, and laughed softly. No one had ever ascended the stair.

  The unvarying tedium coupled with my fatigue lulled me into a kind of dream, so that I nearly stepped onto empty space before I realized that the stair had ended. Not ended, I corrected myself, falling backward from the abyss. I could see it continuing further down the vertical wall of the cavern. There was a great gap where many of the projecting stones that formed the steps had fallen away. In the pallid light shining from the rock, I could see the irregular broken patches where the treads of the stairs had once joined the side of the cavern. The stairs had been shorn away as though from some titanic impact.

  I peered downward, feeling disappointment. The damage did not appear recent. No sign of the floor of the cavern was visible at the end of the shadowed cylinder of its walls. Another moan rumbled up from the depths, mocking me. The gap was far too wide to leap across, and the wall between the two ends of the stair looked smooth apart from the marks of the tools that had cut the great cavern from the earth.

  Something stirred at the opposite side of the gap in the stair, and I narrowed my eyes to better see through the dimness. There was a kind of gray bulge attached to the wall of the cavern just above the steps on the far side of the gap. I had not noticed it before because its color was almost identical to the color of the wall itself. As I looked upon it, the rounded side slowly opened, and a creature of nightmare stepped forth.

  How does a man describe what the mind refuses to see? It was in size twice my height, and of the color of polished jet so that its limbs shone with a luster in the wall glow. Its chitinous body was shaped all in angles and folding lengths, like the body of a mantis. Four limbs supported it from the stones of the stairs, and two smaller limbs waved before its face as though testing the air. In its tear-shaped head numerous tiny eyes glittered. A ring of ropelike tentacles surrounded its mouth, which opened and shut from the sides and dripped a kind of dark ichor.

  The thought came to me that I should flee, but I reflected that the same great gap that kept me from descending further prevented the monster from ascending. What a blessing this gap was to the men who dwelt on the surface of the earth, if such things as this lived in its depths. How fortuitous that the stair had become divided.

  “You are not the thing that rumbles in the depths,” I told it in a loud voice, seeking to raise my courage, for the sight of the monster stirred a tickle of fear within me.

  “You are different from the others,” it hissed and sighed, its mandibles clacking.

  The words, though clearly expressed, were not in any language known to me, yet I understood their meaning in my mind.

  “I am Alhazred, of the Black Spring Clan.”

  “You are not the same. Your shell is white instead of black.”

  “The others were ghouls. I am a man.”

  “I will feed on you as I fed on those who came before you.”

  I forced a laugh from my throat.

  “You cannot ascend.”

  “True, I cannot ascend,” the monster agreed.

  It came into my mind to wonder why, if the thing could not cross the gap, no ghoul had ever returned up the stair.

  With a whizzing like that of flat stones flung through the air, the ring of black tentacles around the mouth of the monster spun out and surrounded me. They felt like wire when they wrapped themselves about my arms and legs, and I know I would never break loose from them by force. They were eight in number. Effortlessly, they lifted me from my feet and drew me across the gap toward the opening and shutting jaws of the nightmare. I cursed myself in my mind for my stupidity. It was not difficult now to imagine how the ghouls had died.

  Heat radiated from its armored body. It transferred me f
rom its mouth tentacles to its forelimbs with surprising delicacy and held me close to its glittering little eyes to examine my head. I felt the exhaust of its breath on my cheek as it pulled me toward its mouth. It stopped and held me motionless, regarding my face.

  “You bear the mark of Nyarlathotep,” it said.

  Remembering my dream, I touched my forehead, which was smooth and unblemished.

  “I have no mark. It was a dream.”

  It ignored my words.

  “You belong to Nyarlathotep,” it said to itself in its strange clicking language, as though meditating in its own mind what to do with me.

  Before I could speak in response, it returned me to its black tentacles and extended me across the gap in the stair to set me on the steps with a light touch.

  “Tell your master that Nee’sak’hela always repays her debts.”

  “I have no master,” I shouted in anger.

  The chitinous thing turned away as though I had said nothing and entered the gray bulge on the wall above the stair. The aperture of the sack closed like an anus behind its body. A deep groan echoed up from the depths of the cavern, vibrating the stone beneath my sandals. For a while I stood staring at the place where the thing had vanished, but when it failed to emerge, I realized that I had been dismissed without ceremony, as a man dismisses a small child or pet animal, and would gain no second audience for my unanswered questions. With weary legs, I turned and began the long climb.

  Chapter 8

  There was nothing to keep me in the pit of the Black Spring. Even had I felt inclined to remain there, sooner or later a raiding party from the Red Hill Clan would come, and when they found me they would kill me. I had been content merely to live from one night to the next, taking what fierce joy I could find in the hunt, but the death of the ghouls made me question why the fates had blighted my life and filled it with so much sorrow. Was it a punishment for my transgression, or a test of my resourcefulness? That I had managed to endure for so long despite the hardships of my circumstances seemed more than natural.

  As I leaned over the waters of the spring in the light of early morning, using its surface for an obsidian mirror while I shaved off the stubble of my beard with the edge of my knife, I studied my reflection. Hair and eyebrows had grown back upon my head, and the wounds on my cheeks were no more than thin scars. Suppose it were possible through the arts of necromancy to restore my face and body to wholeness? Could I then return to the world of men and live as a man? Perhaps even find a way to become reunited with Narisa? I dismissed these thoughts with bitter laughter, yet they would not entirely withdraw from my mind.

  One last time I slept in my little cave, then filled my water skin at the spring and set forth at twilight toward the northwest. I had eaten the white spiders, and my head swam with their power.

  Where are you going, my love?

  “Long ago you told me that the nameless lost city contains treasures and secrets.”

  That is so.

  “Once while hunting, I spoke of the nameless city, and Gor pointed to a line of hills and said it lay behind them, although he was afraid to take me there. He called the place Irem.”

  How can a nameless city have a name?

  “That is a mystery,” I agreed. “We will seek the answer together.”

  I traveled quickly across the darkening sands after the manner of ghouls, by turns walking and running. It was, I had discovered, the way to cover the greatest distance in the shortest time with the least expenditure of strength. A dozen steps I walked, then a dozen steps I ran, and did this over and over as the ground fled beneath my sandals.

  The land in this region of the Empty Space was more desolate than elsewhere. It is a strange truth that windblown sand can by its mere shape express sensuality, or peace, or restlessness. In this place the sands held the shape of sorrow. My inner pain was perfectly mirrored by its tortured starlit forms, so that I felt at one with the desert, as though it had shaped itself to echo my heartbeat.

  On the crest of a dune a man dressed in a black robe stood with his back turned, gazing across the desolation. His body revealed itself by the silhouette it cut in the starry heavens. I stopped running and stood silent, my breaths stilled in my throat. The sight of his tall form on the dune awoke a sense that I had seen the same scene before, but when I tried to remember where, it eluded my thoughts. What man would walk alone across the desert at night? He must be mad. It was only later that it occurred to me that I was a man, walking across the desert at night, alone. At the time, instinct prevailed, and I saw only meat. I drew my dagger and approached on soft steps up the gentle slope of the dune.

  As I raised my blade to plunge it between his shoulders, he turned, and I recognized the faceless figure of my dreams. My limbs stiffened and became heavy, as though cast in molten lead. I found it impossible to move. Black silk covered his features within his hood, if indeed he possessed features. I quailed inwardly at the thought. So he was real after all, just as Gor had told me. What else had he said? That it was bad luck to encounter Nyarlathotep walking abroad across the sands. I heard his breath beneath the caul, like a distant wind, and felt it cold against my cheeks. Two points of light glittered beneath the silk. He lifted his bony hand, the skin like black leather, and extended it toward my face, and I sensed that he intended to slay me. I babbled the first thing that came into my head.

  “Nee’sak’hela pays her debts!”

  The hand stopped. For a moment it hung motionless, and I saw the gleam of a star reflected in the stone of one of the rings that sheathed its elongated fingers. A shadow like the wing of a hawk crossed my eyes, and he was gone. My trembling legs refused to support me. I fell to my knees, relief so great that silent tears sprang from my eyes and streamed down my cheeks, wondering if I had merely dreamed again of the faceless wanderer. When I stood and looked down at the sand, I knew it was no dream. Footprints led up the dune from the opposite side. They ended in front of my dust-covered toes, only a step away. Whatever made them had been solid, but had vanished into the air. Wondering at this strange meeting, so soon after the monster in the cavern voiced the name of the ancient god, I continued on my quest for the forgotten city.

  The moon in her last quarter had just risen when I saw the hills indicated by Gor. I approached them at a walk as I studied the sheer walls. They were more ramparts than hills, and there seemed no pass through their barrier. I began to circle them, seeking some opening or a way of climbing over their peaks. As I walked, I became aware that the ground beneath my feet glowed faintly. It was like the glow of the caravan road, but less bright.

  My head hummed pleasantly from the effect of the spiders, so it was some time before I noticed the sounds that accompanied me on the still night air. Over the soft crunch of my sandals came the faint grind of pebbles beneath the hooves of camels, the jingle of a bridle bell, the rub of leather against leather, the flutter of cloth in the breeze. These sounds grew more distinct as I walked in a kind of dream. I knew them at once, having heard them many times. They were the sounds of a caravan. Yet it was obvious that no caravan had traveled this ancient road for centuries.

  The drug of second sight dulled my curiosity. I looked idly around, and saw with faint surprise that a man walked beside me leading a heavily laden camel. The edges of both flickered with pale radiance. He observed me watching him and nodded with a knowing glance. He spoke but no words came from his moving lips. Looking away, I saw a wagon before me, and almost at the same instant I heard its wheels grinding the sand. A babble of voices arose from somewhere in front of its obscuring bulk. With growing wonder, I glanced over my shoulder and saw more wagons and more camels with men seated upon them or leading them. The clothes of the men were strangely cut, of a style I had never seen. Evidently the caravan was rich, for they wore much silver and gold.

  With each passing moment their forms grew more solid, and I bot
h heard and saw them with increasing clarity. The sharp scent of camel dung filled the air. It was strange that none of the men showed surprise at my sudden appearance among them. They seemed to accept me without comment as one of their own. I might have continued to walk with them, and no doubt would be walking with them still, had I not noticed that as the men and camels and wagons grew more solid, the desert on either side of the ancient caravan road became transparent and pale.

  With a curse I shook myself from my dreaming trance and thrust through the bulk of the camel on my left. I felt it separate and reform after my passage like smoke as I stumbled off the glowing strip of ground. At once the ghostly caravan vanished as though it had never existed, and the night fell silent, save for the quiet drone of beetles. What might have happened had I continued to walk the road, I cannot know, but there are many kinds of portals, and not all take the form of whirlwinds.

  I followed the road more carefully toward the hills, walking beside it but avoiding its touch against my feet, and suddenly what had by a trick of angles appeared sheer rock in the moonlight opened into a narrow pass that cut through the hills like the blade of a knife.

  So narrow was the pass, two laden camels could not have walked along it side by side. The rock walls above the pass leaned inward and nearly touched. As I entered beneath them, the soft flutter of bats came from their heights as they hunted the unseen but ever-present buzzing beetles. Shadows lay deep at the bottom of the pass as it wound its way through the hills, but the ground offered no pitfall. It had been beaten flat and smooth by centuries of travelers. No doubt the very ghost caravan I had seen on the road had walked between these stone buttresses long ago, when its men possessed bodies of flesh.

  The way ahead widened and brightened, and I discovered that within the ring of cliffs lay a small valley. The pass was located at its narrow end at a slight elevation. I stood gazing across the valley floor, and wondered to see a glowing city of many tall pillars and towers that rose up from the sand like some fable of paradise. Though the city covered no great extent, the perfection of its shining white spires was a marvel to behold. A wall surrounded it, and in the wall was set a pointed gate of impressive dimensions. I could not be certain in the moonlight, but I thought I saw the measured pacing of guards as they walked the top of the wall on either side of the projecting arch of the gate.