by Donald Tyson
I knew by experiment that the misshapen body of the witch was too broad to fit into the fissure. Evidently whatever dwelt beyond its opening was too large to pass out. In return for meat it gave her adornments. Yet this was not the only commerce that passed between them.
They began to converse, the thing in the depths talking at length and the witch making short remarks, but more often listening in silence as it spoke. My body tensed as I heard the name Nyarlathotep framed in its inhuman mouth. The witch spoke, repeating the name of the faceless god who stood upon the dunes in the desert and stared up at the darkness of the heavens. A prickling came over my skin when I heard the sound of a flute, until I realized it was made by the voice of the thing in the fissure. The witch answered with a similar piping music, which I reasoned must be another form of language.
The voices ceased, and the sound of a heavy body sliding across loose rubble receded into the depths of the fissure. I began to creep backward and to the side, in the realization that the witch would probably retrace her steps, now that her meeting with the whistling thing was concluded. I heard no sound, which made me nervous, since she had not taken care to move silently on her way to the fissure. Why should she do so now, unless she sensed my presence? Or perhaps she was hunting rats, I told myself to calm my nervousness.
Backing around and stepping over obstructions on the floor of the cistern, I soon became hopelessly lost. The blackness was like liquid pitch poured into the eyes, and the only sounds were the squeak of rats amid the loose rocks and the maddening phantom drip of water that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
Sashi, can you see in this darkness?
Not through your eyes.
What if you leave my body?
If I leave your flesh, I will no longer be able to talk to you.
I understood. If she left me, she could see in the darkness, but she would need to enter my skin once again before she could tell me the way, and that was a matter requiring some effort. It would not be practical for her to guide me across the floor of the cistern if it meant she would have to exit and enter my flesh every dozen paces.
A hiss of breath behind me made me whirl and clutch for my dagger on its baldric. My heel caught against a piece of wood and I stumbled backward in an effort to keep my balance. All at once there was nothing under my sandals but empty space. I uttered a silent curse in my mind when I realized that I had stumbled over one of the beams I had set around the well in the central chamber to warn me of its precipice. I began to fall, and time seemed to lengthen endlessly.
A hand caught my flailing arm at the wrist and stopped my plunge. The huge fingers felt as hard as stone and ground the bones of my forearm together. For a few moments it held me over the abyss while my toes kicked against the side of the well and scrabbled for footholds that did not exist. Slowly I was lifted upward and set onto the paving blocks that lined the floor of the cistern. The foul exhale of the witch touched my cheeks.
“Clumsy fool, this place is dangerous. Follow me and I will lead to where it is safe.”
Silently, I returned my dagger to its sheath. The strength of the witch was even greater than I had imagined. I wanted to kill her, but if she died she could never teach me about the faceless man in black. It was surely more than chance that he haunted my dreams, and also that his name was on the lips of the hag and the clawed thing in the fissure. I must learn more about this god or devil, and why he interested himself in my existence, since I felt with inner certainty that I would meet him again.
Chapter 10
For what seemed the span of several lifetimes but could not have been more than a cycle of the moon, I stayed with the witch, hunting her rats and gathering her wood while I asked my carefully chosen questions. She never lied, or refused to respond, but the length of her answers depended on her capricious moods, which changed without cause from sun to storm. One moment she might be cheerful in her grotesque way, and the next sullen and resentful, as though I had committed an injury against her. That she was mad there was no doubt, but her madness came and left her by turns.
One day I would ask the wrong question, and she would answer it truthfully, and then she would kill me. I became certain in my own mind this was what had happened to all her other disciples whose naked skulls adorned her cave. The unknown question hung over my head like a sword suspended on a single hair, ready to fall at any moment, yet I continued to seek answers, while wondering at the extent of the hag’s knowledge of ancient and secret matters long hidden from the awareness of men. What the schools of scholars and scribes of books had forgotten, or never learned, was known to the creatures that made their abode in the darkness under the earth, and passed on in communication to the witch.
I’thakuah did not object when I accompanied her on her periodic excursions to the fissure, and sat a little distance away on a stone as she haggled with the slithering thing in its depths. She reasoned that I could not comprehend its languages, and so let me listen as they conversed, or sent me to hunt for the rats she used to bargain with it for information or trinkets. Without betraying my interest, I listened with attention. I have always possessed an uncanny skill with tongues, the ability to learn those unknown to me with a swiftness that my royal tutors regarded as a divine gift. Over time the slurred words of the creature in the crack began to make sense in my ears, until at last I could understand its speech as well as the witch. I took care to show no sign of my ability.
The conversation of the slithering thing consisted of talk overheard on its wanderings beneath the world—not the talk of men but of other races older than ours that have inhabited the tunnels and caverns under the surface from a time before our creation. It spoke often of Nyarlathotep, and others of the Old Ones whose names I began to recognize. Nyarlathotep, I learned, was a kind of messenger or emissary of the Old Ones, chosen for this task because he alone could walk upon the surface of our world beneath the stars unharmed by the conflux of their rays, although the other gods were able to endure the surface for brief periods to accomplish specific necessary actions. They preferred to confine themselves to the depths of the seas, or the sumps of the earth, or to withdraw through portals into other realms that lay beyond the sphere of the fixed stars.
One exchange in particular caught my interest. The witch threw a rat into the slit, and for a time there came the sound of gristle and bone cracking between teeth, and the chewing of flesh and sucking of blood. Then silence fell, and I thought the thing had withdrawn.
“The Dark Chaos is restless. He walks each night and searches,” it hissed so softly, I almost failed to hear its words.
“What is he looking for?” I’thakuah demanded.
“Who can know the purposes of the Old Ones? Those who watch him afar from clefts in the rocks say only that he searches. And that he stands and looks up at the stars.”
“He waits for when they are right in their places, and their light becomes pure,” the witch said.
“Perhaps. Or he worries that they will not cleanse themselves soon enough.”
“He fears nothing,” she snapped petulantly.
The creature maintained a moment of silence, as though to avoid argument.
“It is spoken in deep places that an army of men gathers in the north.”
“An army of men,” she said, making a sound of disgust. “What can men do?”
“They study the Old Ones to learn their ways. They seek weapons against them, and prepare themselves for a great battle. This is why the Dark Chaos ponders the stars.”
“Weapons, you say?” The witch considered silently. “What kind of weapons?”
“No one knows. They prepare them in secret behind the walls of their sanctuary.”
“Pah! What weapon can harm mighty Cthulhu, who is deathless? Or Yog-Sothoth, who has no form?”
“Cthulhu lies dead-dreaming.”
“When he rises the ground will tremble.”
The creature made no response. The witch chuckled to herself in reassurance.
“These are fables. My lord fears nothing.”
Again, it seemed to me that the thing in the slit had withdrawn, but the witch did not stir from her place.
“What does he search for?” she muttered in a low croak, speaking as though to herself.
“He walks with head bowed, looking for tracks in the sand,” came the soft voice from the darkness. “At times, he lifts his head to smell the air.”
“Tracks, you say?” The witch considered. “Tracks of men?”
“Who can know the purposes of the Old Ones?”
I’thakuah grunted in disgust, and the creature on the other side of the cleft withdrew, its heavy body sliding over the stones with the sound of a leather cloak drawn across the floor tiles, punctuated by the click of its claws.
I considered what I had learned. The dark man was growing increasingly restless. He walked the desert searching for something, and studied the pattern of the stars with concern. Forces were gathering against his kind, who were vulnerable at this time because some poison in the rays of the stars prevented them from using their great powers to defend themselves. The leader of their armies lay sleeping beneath the sea, or lay dead—I was not certain which, since the word used by the creature seemed to signify both states. One day the stars would align in such a way that the poison would vanish, and the Old Ones could appear on the surface and dwell there as rulers of creation. The concern of the dark man was that an attack would be launched against them before the skies cleansed themselves, while they were still vulnerable. So much I gathered from this conversation and other fragments of talk.
Do you know what the faceless man looks for in the sand? I asked Sashi, speaking within my own mind so that the witch would not hear.
It is said by my kind that he is angry. We flee away whenever we see him approach.
The djinn could tell me nothing, I realized, and neither I’thakuah nor the creature in the cleft knew more on the matter than I had gathered from their words.
The witch left the open space in front of the slit and made her way deeper into the central cistern to hunt. I followed the sounds of her shuffling progress with nervous steps, unable to resist my fascination. When first I had come to the cisterns, I assumed that she could catch rats only with difficulty on her stunted legs, but I had discovered that she knew her own way of ensuring a constant supply of meat.
She began to whistle, a strange keening in the air that mounted and fell with a kind of music, yet never ceased. In some way she was able to sustain the sound while drawing in breath. I felt a prickling on my arms and neck. The whistle exerted a kind of compulsive attraction that I was able to resist only with difficulty, and perhaps only because it was not directed at me. From the darkness came a rustle in the dust as the rats, drawn against their will, approached the hag as though to offer adoration. She waited until they were almost at her feet. The whistle stopped, and before the rats could recover their wits and scurry away, she fell upon the nearest and snapped its neck in her massive hands.
By touch, I gathered bits of wood for the fire as we made our way back to the ledge. It had become evident to me that I’thakuah did not need me for her survival. Why, I sometimes wondered, did she want me with her? Merely to gather wood? That seemed an insufficient reason. Perhaps she welcomed a disciple to whom she could trickle out her wisdom, and thereby make herself feel wise. It must be lonely in the darkness, with no one to talk to but the inhuman thing beyond the cleft in the wall. Yet all her past disciples were dead. A use she might have for them, but it was not a purpose that endured forever.
While the witch ate her meat and tended the fire, I went off to hunt in my own way, with stealth and quickness. The first rat I killed and ate where I stood, then caught and snapped the necks of three more as gifts for I’thakuah, for I wished to ask particular questions that pertained to my departure from this place of endless darkness. I had learned as much as I wished to learn from the witch, or as much as I felt secure in learning. The longer I remained in the cisterns, the greater my sense that she would spring at my throat and try to kill me. The mute testimony of the pyramid of skulls did nothing to allay my growing anxiety.
She nodded and chuckled to herself at her place by the fire when she saw the rats swinging by their tails in my hand. I mounted the ledge and cast them beside her. She let them remain where they fell, watching me with glittering eyes as I took my usual cautious seat on the opposite side of the fire and composed my thoughts. The ember glow, shining upward on her immobile face, lent her ancient features the aspect of carven stone. With no attempt at polite talk, I asked my first question.
“What is the nature and history of the creature that dwells on the other side of the cleft in the wall?”
She grinned sourly at my attempt to combine two questions into one, but did not object.
“Long ago, when the Old Ones came, they found a race already ruling this world,” she began without haste, turning her gaze to the embers of the fire as she searched the depths of her memory. “Some say the first race was always here; others that it came to this world in so ancient a time that nothing lived on the rocks nor in the seas. The Old Ones made war against these Elder Things, shaping life itself into their weapons, and the earlier race fought back in the same way, raising fearsome monsters from the slime and filling them with unnatural awareness, the better to wage battle. The creature beyond the gap in the rock is a chandr’ah, a siege horse you would call it. Were it narrow enough to fit through the crack, it would kill us both in an instant. But I keep it fat with rats, so that it cannot fit.”
She cackled with amusement at her own joke, throwing back her snowy head and showing her blackened gums.
I took a slow breath, reviewing my second question in my mind to make certain I had it worded rightly.
“What is the way to safely bypass the chandr’ah without being injured?”
She answered at once, as though she had expected the question.
“Use the Elder Sign.”
I looked at her with raised brows. She imitated my expression, mirth seething below her features, and met my gaze across the fire. I frowned at her, hoping she would not think of a way to evade my third question.
“What is the way of making the Elder Sign?”
Silently, she raised her right hand and touched her first finger to the tip of her thumb to form a circle. With surprising agility in her long fingers, she crossed her second finger on top of her third, then raised her fifth finger so that it pointed almost straight up into the air. She held this sign out before me so that I could memorize its formation, and when I imitated it with the fingers of my right hand, she nodded.
Something changed in the depths of her eyes, and I realized that I had spoken the fatal question. Each disciple before me had asked the same thing, just before his fleshless skull decorated the trophy pile. I let no hint of my awareness betray my face, but looked aside as though unconcerned. When she lunged, I was ready and sprang to the side off the ledge, my feet running before they touched the dust on the floor of the cistern. I left nothing behind. Always prepared for this day, I had adopted the habit of carrying all my possessions whenever I was awake. I ran directly toward the cleft, avoiding the rubble with the skill of long practice in the dark.
A trilling whistle cut the air behind me and made me stumble. My legs became so weak, I was barely able to walk, and could no longer move them fast enough to run. The shrill note rose and fell, weaving its weird song. With each step my legs grew heavier, until at last I stopped and swayed as though rooted to the stones of the cistern floor, my shivering body damp with icy sweat. It took all my will to resist walking toward the sound that approached ever nearer in the blackness. I heard the shuffle of the hag’s stunted legs through the dus
t.
With sudden inspiration, I clapped my hands over the holes of my ears and began to sing so loudly, my throat became raw in a few moments. It was more bellowing than song, but it was loud enough to drown out the infernal whistle of the witch. My legs regained some measure of their strength, and I stumbled onward across the floor of the great cistern, avoiding obstacles without the need to feel for them since the whole of it was impressed on my memory. My speed was not great, and I wondered if the hag gained on me, but the only way to know would be to remove my hands and listen for her steps, and this I dared not do.
I miscalculated and rebounded from the wall of stone on my shoulder as I twisted in a senseless effort to look behind through the black. The impact knocked my hands away. I heard the whistle of the witch, not close but coming nearer. With desperate haste, I felt across the surface of the rock. The cleft had somehow sealed itself. Crying out in frustration, I felt toward my left side. As the whistling grew ever louder and sapped the strength from my limbs, at last I encountered the familiar gap and with a mad laugh of relief slid my body into it.
The whistling stopped, and I’thakuah began to curse as she realized I had entered the crack. She could not follow. Her body was too bent and grotesque for so narrow a space. Something knocked against my sandal. Leaning awkwardly to the side, I felt and discovered that it was a bone. Too large to be the bone of a rat, it must be the bone of a man. I knew then what the witch had done with the bodies of her disciples, after saving their skulls for her trophy pile. I picked the bone up and threw it over my head behind me out the gap, and was rewarded with a torrent of curses from the witch.
“Find someone else to kill your rats and carry your wood, bitch of Tartarus,” I shouted.
The cursing stopped. There was a silence.