Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  The next time I attempt soul travel, I will need to adopt a more comfortable sitting posture, I reflected. That there would be a next time, I had no doubt. I could never leave this place until my curiosity had been satisfied concerning all seven portals. At present, the pangs of hunger outweighed the lust for knowledge. I left the round chamber in search of rats.

  Those that lived in the halls of the city were smaller and more wary than the rats dwelling in the cisterns, but months of practice had made me skillful in hunting the creatures, and it was not long before I caught one. I ate its flesh and eyes, then caught another and did the same. Their blood was not as wholesome as the blood of the rats in the cisterns, but I knew it would suffice. My body had adapted to the lack of pure water and was able to tolerate the blood and fluids of the creatures despite their salts. The third rat that I caught I cut into strips and stored away in a rag for later use.

  How long I remained in the unnamed city I had no way to measure, but I traveled through each of the seven portals in the star chamber many times, seeking to perfect my knowledge of the places on the other side. I learned that the grassland plateau was called Leng in the language of its inhabitants. Each time I went there, I entered a different body, but always a body of the herders, never the body of a shaman or a priest of the monastery. Charms of magic such as the hound of green stone worn around the necks of the shamans had the power to prevent the displacement of a soul. I approached the monastery only once, and was rewarded by a glimpse of its priests standing along the top of its wall. One of them killed the female herder whose body I wore with a bolt of force that was similar to lightning, but not before I saw that the robed priests were of a different race than the herders, and had short horns growing from their heads.

  As I began to comprehend the working of the soul portals, and to gain knowledge of their destinations, I realized that they spanned both distance and time. At least two of the places were not even of this world, but the others, strange though they were, seemed to be located on the earth, either as it presently was or as it had been in the past.

  One portal led to a fantastic city beneath three suns of different colors that made the air shimmer with the changing hues of the rainbow from moment to moment. It opened on to a high balcony edged by a metal balustrade of strange cast images depicting the inhabitants of the city. They possessed no fear of heights for they were able to fly through the air on their wings that spread like fans from the seams of their barrel-shaped bodies. I was never able to control them. Their minds were too powerful. Indeed, they seemed amused at my efforts, and spoke among themselves in their curious piping language, which I could not understand since I was not in full possession of my soul vessels. They were obsessed with their own forms, and placed their images throughout their city, as men might place religious icons.

  Another portal opened on a great island city on the eve of its destruction by revolution. I could not control its inhabitants, though they were human, but was forced to watch at each visit as the sun crossed the afternoon sky, and the war began that would cast the island beneath the waves with the rays of its terrible crystalline weapons. Upon the third or fourth visit to this place, I realized that it must be the Atlantis written about by the Greek philosopher Plato. Why the reptilian creatures of the nameless city were so fascinated with its downfall was not clear, but it occurred to me that they might be studying the energy weapons that wrought such utter destruction during the brief uprising of its slaves.

  One gate opened on a world without a sun, but with a great moon many times the size of our own that was deep purple in color. The creatures who dwelt there were crab-like in appearance, the hard shells of their bodies covered in a white fungus that resembled fur. Yet another portal led deep beneath the ocean to the ruins of a great city upon a hill. At the crown of the submerged hill rose an obelisk covered with strange hieroglyphics, and even more curious, the same branching sign that was carved into the circle at the center of the green stone disk in the round star chamber was set as a seal upon the vast door of the monolith. I explored it in the bodies of deep-dwelling sea creatures with many tentacles, but learned little of its enigma.

  Another gate gave entrance to a vast palace that was located high on the peak of a mountain. The throne room was like an enormous cavern with a floor of polished onyx, and walls and columns inlaid with shimmering jewels. It contained not one, but many thrones arranged in a series of crescents, and those who sat in them were gods and goddesses. Some were giants, while others were no larger than men. Their faces shone with radiance, their features were pure and perfect, and their voices beautiful to hear, yet they seldom spoke and never laughed. Thousands of attendants, some of human form and others monstrous in shape, served these curiously silent and morose deities. A brooding oppression hung over their heads, and more than once while inhabiting the body of an attendant, I saw a god stop in conversation and glance upward with apprehension, as though fearing some punishment from above for imprudent words.

  Wondering what could cast such gloom over so exalted an assembly, I decided to explore the upper rooms of the palace at the first opportunity. The attendants were closely watched and given constant tasks to perform, so it was not always possible to move freely. When, after passing through the portal, I found myself inhabiting the body of a young man with no immediate work who was not under observation from the overseers, I slipped out of the throne room into the back passageways of the palace and found a narrow wooden stair that led to its summit. It was a servant’s stair. I was familiar with such passages from my life in the palace at Yemen. All great houses have hidden halls and stairwells to allow slaves to move about unobtrusively and perform their work.

  At the top of the stair was a plain door of polished wood with no lock. I opened it, making as little noise as possible, and peered around its edge. When nothing stirred in the space beyond, I pushed it wider and entered. At first there was only darkness, and I had a sense that the walls of the place pressed close on every side, like the walls of a tomb. Gradually, the shadows retreated as my eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom, and I saw that I stood in a curved corridor paneled in ebon, and ringed on its outer wall with great windows of clear crystal. Each window showed a night sky filled with stars that glittered unnaturally bright.

  On hushed feet I walked along the curve of the hallway, tracing its full circle. I glanced fearfully through each window as I passed, but saw nothing except stars. The wall on the other side was featureless save for a single symbol inlaid in ivory or bone at the level of my heart on a panel nearly opposite the door through which I had entered. It had the shape of three interlocking rings. I raised my hand and traced its outline with my fingertip, wondering at its meaning. It shimmered, and my hand passed through the panel. Although I tried to draw my arm out, my body was pulled forward through the wall.

  I found myself in a small chamber with a floor of polished obsidian and walls of unadorned stone blocks. From the center of its vaulted stone ceiling hung a kind of lance with three barbed edges. Its flat black metal glowed, giving off a kind of light that illuminated the chamber well enough for me to see that it was empty. I walked to the center of the room and stood beneath the lance, feeling a sense of familiarity but unable to remember where I had seen it. As I pondered, the silence was broken by a shrill piping, like the notes of a flute, and suddenly I remembered the room in my dream. It was here the dark man had marked my brow with his fingernail.

  The air above my head began to glow and swirl, forming a kind of whirlwind, and I knew that he was coming. With frantic haste I returned back to where I had entered and felt over the surface of the rough stones in the wall with my hands. They bore no mark, and I wondered if I had mistaken the place of my entry into the chamber. My pressing palm slid through the hard block. I had only an instant to cast a glance over my shoulder at the glowing cloud that formed itself into a solid shape, before I was drawn through the wall and out of the c
hamber.

  Stepping lightly to make no sound, I left the hall of windows and closed the wooden servant’s door softly behind me, then descended the stair and returned to the great onyx throne room. The reason for the pervasive gloom of the gods was evident. They feared the wrath of Nyarlathotep. I wondered if it was true, as asserted by I’thakuah, that he compelled them to dance for his pleasure? The thought made me uneasy. When my time in that hallowed place ended, and the star portal drew me back into my own flesh, I never again entered the palace on the mountain, but left it to its unhappy lords.

  The portal that most fascinated me led to a browning grassy plain in the season of early winter, where stood an ancient temple of massive squared pillars set in a ring. It was difficult to imagine how such stones had been erected by human ingenuity, but as impressive as they were, even more amazing were the lintel stones that rested flat across their tops and joined them together. How such great blocks had been lifted high into the air and set above the pillars could not be conceived. Even more massive pillars of a different type of stone stood within the ring, and one lay flat on the sod like a great altar. Remnants showed that a roof had once covered the temple, but nothing remained except some rotting beams that had fallen in from long neglect.

  The race of tattooed barbarians dwelling near the temple wore roughly woven skirts of wool and animal skins, and lived in huts made of mud and sticks that were thatched with reeds. It was plain at first glance that such a crude people, who were scarcely above the level of the beasts, could never have built the temple, yet they continued to worship there and to offer blood sacrifices to the stones. I returned to this winter place repeatedly and sought to discover the mysterious origin and function of the round temple. Each time, I found myself in the body of one of the villagers,

  sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, or a child, and according to the abilities of my vessel, I asked my questions.

  “Father, why do the priests make sacrifices at the temple?”

  It was late in the afternoon, and the sun setting behind the great stones on the horizon cast long shadows across the village. My father, who was both a farmer and a hunter, studied me shrewdly from under bushy brows while fledging an arrow upon his crossed knee. We sat outside our hut, enjoying the last warmth of the sun. No doubt the question surprised him, coming as it did from a girl no more than five years of age. He decided to humor me.

  “Blood feeds the earth, child. The earth is our mother. To keep her fertile, we must feed her.”

  “Would not the blood of a goat do as well as the blood of a man?”

  “If we fed her only the blood of beasts, she would grow restless and unsatisfied, and the ground would quake, and the stones of the hills would roll down and fill up the rivers and lakes.”

  “Then why do we feed her only at the temple?”

  He smiled at me, a gleam of indulgent pride in his eye.

  “You are full of questions today. The temple is the heart of mother earth. Just as our own heart beats and pumps blood to our fingers and toes, so does the temple send the blood of sacrifice to distant lands along lines that spread out from the temple like the lines of a spider’s web spreading from its center.”

  “Why do the priests make sacrifice only on certain days of the year?”

  He dropped his eyes to his work, his patience exhausted.

  “Enough questions. Go inside and help your mother.”

  That was all I learned of the temple while residing in that young vessel, but I had many other opportunities to pursue the matters that interested me.

  The lords of the barbarians spoke in the language of the Romans, and by listening to their conversations I discovered that the place was an island that the Romans had called Albion due to the whiteness of its sea cliffs, for in the Latin tongue albus means white. Rome conquered the isle in the time of Julius Caesar and made it a part of the Empire. It was said by the common men and women that a priesthood called druids had built the temple, but some of the lords disputed this belief, on the grounds that the few druids who remained were all poets, not builders. After many transitions through the portal, it became clear to me that the barbarians knew nothing of the making of the temple or its use.

  The priests who ruled the land worshiped a god they called Janus, having two faces, one for arrival and the other for departure. I remembered from my reading that Janus was a Roman god, and reasoned that the name had merely been applied to an older god of the temple with similar attributes. Janus was the god of portals, and the lord of the Old Ones who presided over the gateways between worlds was Yog-Sothoth. If Yog-Sothoth was the true god of the round temple, as I suspected, then it must be a great gateway.

  I wasted many visits in the futile effort to learn the way of opening the gate, but the religion of the people had fallen to such a decadence that it consisted of nothing more than a set of superstitious observances to avert disasters. The priests knew only that the stones of the temple must be fed with the blood of human sacrifice on particular days of the year, or great rumblings and shakings of the ground would take place all over the world that would result in much loss of life. They looked upon themselves as guardians of the health of mother earth, and viewed the soil beneath their feet as a living being that was everywhere connected by common feeling. However misplaced their efforts, their devotion to what they perceived as their sacred duty was admirable.

  In all my visits to Albion I had never found myself in the body of a priest, and naturally assumed that the priests of the isle were protected from such intrusion, as had been true of the shamans of Leng. Imagine my surprise when, after flying through the soul portal to the isle in the usual way, I found myself inside the body of the high priest, standing within the temple before the altar stone, the sacred dagger of sacrifice raised over my head in both my hands. I knew I must be the high priest because no one else could wield the sacred blade of polished obsidian. Before me on the altar lay a naked youth, staring up at my face with terrified blue eyes. Curling hair that shone like spun gold hung low on his forehead and covered his ears. His arms were bound and extended above his head by a taunt leather cord, held firmly in the hands of a young priest at one end of the stone. A similar cord held his bound ankles, so that his body stretched helplessly across the surface of the stone.

  The silence seemed to echo, as though someone had just stopped speaking. I lowered the dagger slightly and glanced around in confusion. The people stood in two crescents on either side of the altar stone, watching with solemn eyes. In addition to the two priests who held the youth on the stone, six other priests in white linen robes stood beside me, three on either side. I had witnessed similar gatherings around shallow pits dug outside the circle of the temple, into which were cast the freshly slain corpses of sacrifices, but this was the first sacrifice I had seen on the great altar. Turning to the east, I noticed that the red sun was just rising above the plain.

  A few of the men who stood across the stone with hands clasped and heads bowed peered at me curiously. At my right shoulder, a priest cleared his throat. I turned to him, and he nodded meaningfully, a slight frown upon his serious features. I recognized him as the second in the hierarchy of the sect. The realization came that I was the man who had been speaking, and that I had not finished the litany. I cursed to myself and rifled through my memory for the words I had overheard uttered on the occasions of other sacrifices. If I could complete the words, I had no qualms about performing the sacrifice. I was curious to see what, if anything, would happen on what must be one of the high holy days of the year.

  “We offer to the mother of all life the blood of her child, that the redness of the soil shall never fade or blacken . . .”

  I ceased to speak when I saw the second priest shake his head in horror, and the other priests stare at me with mouths gaping. Troubled murmurs arose from the crowd of assembled villagers. A different litany was used for this high rite, a
nd having never witnessed it, I had no shadow of a notion what it might be. Desperately wondering what to do, I decided to feign sickness as a cover for my strange behavior. With a moan I lowered the obsidian blade and pretended to stumble. Just before I fell, I caught myself on one hand on the edge of the altar.

  The transformation in those around me was immediate. Faces that had held uncertainty and concern turned first white with shock, then red with rage. With homicidal cries the priests beside me drew their daggers and lunged. The wide blade of black glass fell from my hands and embedded itself in the frozen turf at my feet. I had no place to flee, so I leapt upward onto the altar stone, straddling the terrified naked youth. He scrambled off the stone on bound hands and feet, no longer kept in place by the leather cords of the priests, who were intent only on my death. They ringed the stone, slashing at my dancing legs with their blades, but careful not to touch the stone with their own bodies. What would happen were I to be killed while away from my flesh, I did not know, but I feared the death of the high priest would prevent my return to the star chamber.

  One blade cut through my right palm as I caught it, and laid open the flesh down to the bone. Another stabbed my left hip, and a third passed between my ribs just under my heart. Crying out in agony, I fell to my hands and knees on the stone. The daggers rose above me like a thicket of thorns. The progress of time slowed. In my mind I saw the seal of Yog-Sothoth, and remembered the words of opening spoken to me upon the desert by the dark man of my dreams, so many months ago.

  “Aye, Yog-Sothoth!” I cried, making the seal of the god upon the surface of the altar stone with the blood that streamed down my finger. “Na f’tng ha-ngloa yah!”