Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  “Come back to me, pretty boy, and for the sake of the mark of our lord you bear on your face, I promise not to kill you.”

  “I bear no mark, only scars.”

  She cackled softly.

  “I saw it when you came to me, and knew the dark man had sent you to me to be instructed. For his sake I took care of you.”

  “You would keep me forever, or kill me,” I said.

  I’thakuah began to chant in a language still unknown to me. I realized she was attempting to cast some spell and pressed my hands against the sides of my head, singing so loudly that my lungs felt about to burst. As I sang, I worked my body deeper into the cleft, which became so narrow, no part of my body could avoid the rasp of its sides. The rough stone scraped my back and thighs through the sturdy cotton of my thawb, and I was forced to duck my head and bend my knees to pass under a stone spur that pressed on my skull. The ordeal was brief. Not far beyond the wall of the cistern it widened, so that I could turn my chest to face forward.

  Chill sweat did not cease to prickle my face. Every instant I expected to walk into the claws of the chandr’ah. I dared not hurry, or I might dash my brains out against a projecting point of rock. In the total darkness, with my hands pressed over my ears, there was no way to gain warning of the monster’s approach, and my bellowing song would surely act as a beacon to it, no matter how far it might have strayed away from the cleft.

  At last I risked removing my palm from my left ear. There was only silence. Either I’thakuah had given up, or I was too deep in the fissure to hear her frustrated curses. I continued more quickly, one hand sliding over the wall and the other held out in the air before my face. The floor of the fissure was oddly smooth, and I realized it must be due to the constant dragging of the chandr’ah’s heavy body to and from the entrance over a span of centuries, or even millennia. Every so often my sandals crunched on a piece of bone.

  The floor of the fissure inclined always downward, and bent this way and that until I could no longer tell which direction was back and which was front, other than by the hand that touched the rock side of the passage. I dared not allow it to drop from the wall for more than a few moments, in the fear that I might get turned around and begin to retrace my steps back into the cistern where I’thakuah waited. Walking on the toes of my sandals so as to make little noise, I paused every few steps and listened for the sound of sliding leather, or the click of claws on stone.

  “Are you a gift from I’thakuah?”

  The deep hiss directly in front of my face made me jump back like a startled mouse. I crouched with my dagger in my hand, and wondered if there was anything to be gained by flight back to the cisterns.

  “I am not a gift,” I said in the language used by the creature. “I am a traveler.”

  It stirred its massive body, and I realized it must have sat in silence and waited for me to walk directly up to it. Probably it could see in the darkness.

  “You speak the ancient tongue,” it murmured in a voice like water seething in a pot. “What are you?”

  For a moment I had no answer. My left hand chanced to brush the skull tied at my waist.

  “I am a ghoul, a warrior of the Black Spring Clan.”

  A snuffling sound came on the darkness.

  “You do not smell like a ghoul. You smell human.”

  “True, I was human, but I am human no longer.”

  “Such a thing cannot be,” it said. “No beast can change its essential nature.”

  Relieved that the monster had chosen to converse rather than dine, I explained my unhappy circumstances, and the manner in which the king of Yemen had punished my body. It listened with interest, making slight sounds of attention that were like the puffing of a fire bellows. When it exhaled, a cloud of its hot breath surrounded my face.

  “A good story,” it said as I concluded my tale of woe. “Tell me this, ghoul who was a man, why should I not eat you?”

  I jumped back another step and slashed the air with my dagger, trying to pierce the darkness with my eyes. The black was so thick, I might as well have had my head in a sack. Transferring the dagger to my left hand, I made the Elder Sign with my right.

  The monster made a rumbling noise. It was a moment or two before I recognized it as laughter.

  “Did the witch give you that?”

  “She did,” I admitted.

  “It is true, some of the dwellers in the deep places recognize the sign of the Elder Race, and respect its power, but regrettably for you, I am not among them.”

  It began to slide forward, grinding the pebbles beneath its belly and scratching the dirt with its claws.

  “Wait! I bear the mark of the dark man on my face.”

  Something so cold that it burned closed around my waist and drew me forward. I stabbed and cut at the encircling ring with my dagger, but the sharp blade might as well have been made from wood, and slid harmlessly from the hide of the creature. Grasping at the cold flesh, I realized with terror that it was some kind of giant hand, but one possessed of only two fingers and a thumb. The breath of the thing blew into my face like the snort of a horse as it bent near to study me. I saw, or thought I saw, two dim objects glowing with a faint green in the air before me, and realized they must be the eyes of the chandr’ah, burning with their own internal fire.

  “He has marked you on the inside of your skull,” it said at last. “Why would he do that?”

  “Clearly, he has chosen me to fulfill an important task,” I replied with a show of anger. “He will not be pleased if you prevent its accomplishment.”

  I hoped the creature would not ask what task I was to perform, since I had no answer. It spent what seemed a long time in consideration. At last, its massive fingers relaxed and slid from around my waist.

  “Go in peace, servant of the Dark Chaos, and be mindful of your steps. There are things dwelling below that respect neither the Elder Sign nor Nyarlathotep.”

  It slid and contracted itself against one side of the passage so that I had barely enough room to squeeze past its bulk. The sliding touch of its leathery side as I worked my way down its length made me tremble, but it was impossible to avoid. When I was free of its loathsome press, I paused and turned.

  “Tell I’thakuah she is a lying hag.”

  “For what reason?” it rumbled, slithering away down the passage. “She knows this already. Everyone knows I’thakuah is a liar. Only a fool would trust her.”

  I continued along the floor of the fissure in the opposite direction until the sounds of the monster’s movements faded to silence.

  Chapter 11

  The complete absence of light made the journey through the fissure seem endless. I passed an opening on the right that led almost straight downward, and exhaled a reptilian odor of dankness. For a few moments I paused and considered whether to follow it, but the smell was not to my liking, so I continued forward. Beyond this rightward opening the floor of the fissure became more irregular, indicating that the chandr’ah usually took the right-hand path. With slow and cautious steps I felt the ground in front of my feet. The mishap at the well had made me timid about testing the way ahead before walking into the darkness. Just as I was wishing, for perhaps the tenth time, that I had taken the white spiders earlier, so that I would have the benefit of the luminous shells in the rock walls to guide me, I saw a faint green glow ahead.

  As I approached the light, it became stronger and showed me that the natural fissure had given way to an artificial passage cut through the rock with vertical walls and a gently arched ceiling. I rounded a bend in the passage, and my eyes were dazzled by brightness. It shone out of a small doorway at the end of the passage that was so low, I was forced to crawl through it on my hands and knees. The ceiling of the chamber beyond was high enough that I could almost stand upright, if I kept my head bowed forward. The glow emanate
d from the ceiling. It could not have been very strong, but to my eyes, accustomed as they were to weeks of total darkness, it seemed for the first few minutes like the noonday sun.

  The room was not large, and empty save for a single stone slab in its center, but it raised the hairs on my neck and made my heart quicken. There was something alien in its dimensions, something unsuitable and uncouth, that evoked a primal and undefined apprehension. The doorway through which I had crawled and the identical opening in the opposite wall were too low and wide, the ceiling was too low, even the stone slab that had the look of a sacrificial altar was nearer the floor than it should have been. Either the room had been cut for a race of dwarfs, or it was made to accommodate bodies not even remotely human in shape.

  Dust of ages lay thick over the floor except where the chandr’ah had dragged its long body around the altar and through the opposite doorway on its explorations. A gleam caught my eye from the corner of the room. I knelt and saw that it was a jewel, very pale in color but beautifully faceted.

  “The treasure of the nameless city,” I murmured, picking up the stone and placing it in a pocket of my robe.

  Even as promised, my love.

  “The monster must have dropped it while carrying similar trinkets to give to the witch.”

  I crawled through the opening on the far side of the altar and found another long corridor with doorways along its sides that branched into rooms and halls. They had a more habited appearance than the antechamber with the altar. The walls of the rooms were covered in a patterned plaster with the texture and appearance of carved stone, into which had been impressed abstract geometric designs. The floors were tiled in bright colors. Remnants of furniture remained, but scattered in disorder as though the inhabitants of the rooms had been forced to make a hasty departure. There were chairs and couches of unnatural shape, massively constructed and low to the floor. Some were made of the same hard black wood that lay littered in the cisterns, while others were of cast bronze that had gone green with age. In one room I found a cracked hand mirror, and in another some kind of curved scraper the purpose of which I could not even guess.

  Everywhere the dragging track of the chandr’ah showed in the thick dust over the tiles of the floors. It had explored all the rooms in its search for trinkets with which to buy rats from the witch. Marks of vermin were absent from the dust. The monster had exhausted its food supply, which explained its eagerness to receive the offerings of I’thakuah. Following its track through a low arch, I could not suppress a cry.

  Jewels lay scattered across the dust, so many that I had to step with care to avoid them. They glittered with many colors, brightness undimmed by the passage of centuries. In a corner lay an overturned silver chest, the source of this outpouring. I picked up the box and more jewels tumbled out. I laughed and filled my hands with them. With this wealth, I could return to the cities of my own race. No man is an outcast who has money, regardless of his deformity. I gathered the bulk of the jewels and tied them into one of the shroud rags I carried, then concealed them securely within a pocket of my thawb.

  Another discovery in a room near the end of the central corridor made me pause. In the dust beside a kind of flat bed, the wooden frame alone of which survived, lay a skeleton with a sword between its ribs. It could not have been the skeleton of a man, even a man severely deformed. The skull was much too large and elongated, the arms and legs unnaturally short and angled incorrectly from the spine. The straight bronze blade of the sword was leaf-shaped and deeply pitted with corrosion, and the leather wrapping of its hilt had perished. The blade had snapped a hand’s breadth from its point, but the broken tip was not to be found among the bones. Picking up the weapon, I tried its hilt. It was of unconventional design, but there was no doubt that it had been fashioned for the hand of a man. With regret, I tossed it aside. It might once have been a useful weapon, but was of little value without its point. How anyone had managed to swing it in battle beneath the low ceiling of the room was difficult to imagine.

  A heavy door of cast iron occupied the end of the main corridor, the first door of any kind that I had seen. It had jammed partway open and was not to be moved, and it was only with difficulty that I squeezed my body through the gap. A similar corridor lay on the other side, well illuminated by the greenish glow from the ceiling. It no longer seemed so bright to my eyes, or so green, for I had become accustomed to the color and was ceasing to notice it. With relief I saw that the dust lay undisturbed down the length of the passage. Evidently the chandr’ah had not been able to move the iron door, and was too large to slip through its opening. For the first time since leaving the cisterns I ceased to worry about what slithered behind me, and was able to devote all my anxiety to what might hide waiting in front.

  There was a subtle difference in the chambers and connecting halls on the far side of the iron door. The ceilings were higher, allowing me to walk upright. At intervals, bright frescos decorated the walls. The disordered furnishing of the chambers appeared more costly in appearance, and the rooms were larger. Still there were no individual doors dividing room from room. Whatever creatures had dwelt in these halls had not valued privacy. I found more jewels, and gold in the form of small rectangular blocks. A few of the gold pieces I pocketed, but left the gemstones where they lay scattered, since I could not easily carry more.

  The deadness of the air began to unnerve me. Even my footfalls were muffled in the thick dust. Nothing stirred. It was a distinct relief to notice the tracks of rats and spiders in the dust. At least I was not the only living thing in these empty spaces. The signs of these vermin increased as I progressed deeper into the unnamed city. I descended a stairway with steps too shallow and broad for human feet, and discovered a lower level of halls and rooms very similar to the level that lay above. The city was like a great maze, but by observing my footprints in the dust there was little chance of becoming lost.

  On the lower level, signs of habitation became more numerous. In one room upon a low slab of stone that I identified in my own mind as an altar rested a wooden box the length of a man, but wider. Its top was composed of a transparent glass panel that had been broken inward, but its interior stood empty. It was a strange shape for a display case, and I wondered what it had held. The dense wood was beautifully carved and polished. Could all of the altars I had seen be intended to support similar cases? If so, what had become of them?

  The frescos that decorated the walls occupied my attention with the hope that I could determine the appearance of the inhabitants of the underground city. Many were abstract swirls and polygons of bright color, but others depicted in a more natural style strange landscapes of mountain ranges and great forests and fantastic cities of spires rising from dense jungle. One painting showed small figures that had the shape of men, but they were naked and like apes, with hair growing from their bodies and long arms that brushed the ground. The bodies of these ape men did not match the furniture in the chambers of the city.

  In several frescos I noticed the forms of lizards, ceremonially arrayed in colorful robes and jeweled neck bands. They were much like the descriptions I had read of the crocodiles of the Nile, with thick legs extending down from their reptilian bodies, and long snouts filled with teeth, but their heads were domed rather than flat, and some of them were shown standing upright on their hind legs, balancing with the aid of their tails. I dismissed them from my mind as depictions of the god of the race, but some correspondence with something I had seen nagged at my thoughts. At last I realized that the bodies of the brightly clothed reptiles were the same as the skeleton I had found in the upper chambers. I decided they must be a type of pampered pet of the inhabitants of the nameless city, draped in robes and adorned with jewelry in the same way that wealthy noblewomen sometimes put garments on a lapdog.

  Descending even lower into what I sensed was the heart of the city, I came upon a large circular chamber with a domed roof. It was compl
etely unlike any other room, save only that it had two doorways located almost opposite each other, a feature universal throughout the city. Even these were rounded by a tall arch rather than square, and much larger than common entranceways. The vault of the dome was painted a deep blue, and, inset at irregular intervals over its surface, colorless jewels gave off a chill radiance, so that they resembled stars set in the night sky. On the curved wall of the chamber seven frescos had been painted with such vitality of detail and color that they resembled doorways. The paint was textured and raised from the surface of the wall, and when stared at for more than a few moments, it seemed to squirm with its own life.

  A great disk of translucent green stone filled the center of the floor to the height of my knees. Many interlocking triangles were deeply carved in its surface, and in a circle at the center was set a seal unfamiliar to me, somewhat like the branch of a tree, and somewhat like the splayed fingers of the human hand. Seven brass pins stood up at the edge of the green disk, each pin as thick as my wrist and rounded at its top. I noted that they were opposite the frescos, though what function they might be intended to serve was obscure. The chamber had an air of importance that made me think it must be a place of worship.

  Weariness overcame me as I sat on the edge of the green disk, the stone of which had a waxy feel beneath my fingers, similar to that of carnelian. I had gone longer than usual without sleep, though how much longer was impossible to determine in the absence of any indicators of the passage of time. My neck and shoulders ached from walking hunched over under the low ceilings. I decided to sleep before exploring for a way out of the city. Now that I possessed the treasure I had come seeking, I wanted only to leave these halls and chambers as quickly as I could discover a way back to the moonlight and the natural stars of the heavens.

  Something brushed my cheek, like a puff of air. I looked around and saw nothing. In a few moments the sensation repeated itself, and I felt a twinge in my heart, as of some nebulous object passed through my body. I swung my feet up on the dais of green stone and stood, turning slowly on my own axis. A bat flitted silently through one entrance and out the other, but it evaded the space above the stone. I knew the sensations had not been caused by a bat. For several minutes I waited, but the touches did not repeat.