by Donald Tyson
High above my head I noticed at intervals glowing irregular masses, as if some kind of moss grew upon the rock. A portion of one glowing cluster detached itself and circled downward through the air toward me on silent wings. It was shaped somewhat like a bat, but having long forelimbs with great claws like daggers and a sinuous tail that rippled like the body of a serpent upon the air as it flew. Evidently it thought I could not see it, since it came directly toward me with its claws extended. I drew my dagger and as I dodged aside cut upward into its belly. Its shriek of pain filled the darkness, and I felt wet upon my fingers. The thing flapped awkwardly to rise from where I stood and flew away, dripping out its life blood with each beat of its wings.
I raised my hand and tasted on the tip of my tongue the blood that had spilled down my dagger blade. The bitter foulness nearly made me retch. Spitting it out, I wiped both my hand and the broad blade clean on the pebbles at my feet. High in the air, others of the creature’s own kind attacked it, striking with their talons and circling away repeatedly until at last it fell to the cavern floor. They flew down like the vultures of the desert and began to tear it to pieces with their beaks. If its flesh was as poisonous as its blood, which I had no reason to doubt, they were welcome to the carcass.
Leaving them to their feast, I made my way around a line of connected natural pillars that formed a kind of curved wall arising from the floor of the cavern. Four glowing masses lay on the ground before me. I thought they were ancient logs, and began to walk past. The one nearest stirred and lifted itself from the pebble bed on four short legs. I stopped, and in the intervals between my heartbeats heard the dry rustle of breathing. Looking upon the thing directly, I saw that it was one of the inhabitants of the underground city. It appeared a great deal more threatening than it had in the wall paintings that depicted its form. Its jaws were shorter than those of a crocodile, but massively muscled and filled with pointed teeth. Intelligence of a kind glowed from the eyes set on either side of the prominent dome of its skull. The other three creatures lifted themselves upon their legs and began to move around me, with the intention of cutting off my retreat.
I pulled my dagger and slashed the air in what I hoped was a menacing manner. The monsters ignored the gesture. Cursing, I put it away and formed the Elder Sign with my right hand. Even as I did so, I wondered if the things could see in the darkness, or if they hunted by smell. The Elder Sign provoked no more response than the dagger. My curses gained a purpose, as I added the name I’thakuah to them. Was there any creature that did fear the sign she had shown to me? In desperation, I tried to think of some token or act that the creatures would respect. If they could not see, perhaps they could hear.
“Yog-Sothoth protect me, Cthulhu protect me,” I cried into the darkness. “My lord Nyarlathotep, guard the life of your faithful servant.”
At the pronunciation of the name of the dark man, the creatures made hissing noises and scampered back several paces. Evidently they could hear, and this Old One was not unknown to them.
“Yes, Nyarlathotep is my lord. I serve his will and he protects me in all things.”
Inwardly, I hoped voicing the name of the god would not invoke him, as I had no more wish to meet him than the crocodile monsters.
They withdrew a short distance and gathered to converse, speaking in a language of grunts and snorts punctuated by the snap of their jaws. I waited patiently, wondering if I could outrun their short legs. Their movements were surprisingly quick. I noticed that, unlike their depictions on the city murals, they were naked and wore no jewelry or adornments. Nor did they carry tools or weapons. That they were descended from the original builders of the city I could not doubt, since the resemblance was exact.
When I stepped to one side, they ran in front of me and blocked my path, though not so aggressively as at first. Again I tried to walk around them, and this time they allowed me to go forward unhindered, but fell into step on either side and behind me. Feeling like a herded goat, I went forward with as much a display of confidence as I could manage, on the assumption that if they could not see it in my posture, they would hear it in my steps. In this way they guided me along. I might have run in a different direction, but my curiosity was aroused, and I wanted to learn what they intended.
We made our way toward the edge of the cavern, where the wall met the floor at an angle and formed a kind of roof. Here, the stones were heaped up in a long ridge, so that behind them there was a cave within the larger cavern. As I approached this hill of pebbles, more of the creatures appeared at its crest, emerging from the sheltered space behind it. They descended the side of the hill without hesitation, snuffing the air with their snouts. One came quite close to me and nipped with its jaws the air beside my left hand, but my guards warned it away with grunts, swishing their thick tails across the loose stones so that they rattled. There were perhaps two dozen of the creatures, all approximately the same size. I saw no young, and could not distinguish male from female.
They turned themselves expectantly to the crest of the hill and waited. After a few minutes, a crocodile slightly larger than the others, robed in a tattered cloak of some woven cloth and wearing a jeweled metal bracket on the dome of its head that resembled a kind of crown, descended slowly. It paused at each few steps as though tired, but none of the others moved to assist it. One of my escorts spoke to it at length in their grunting tongue, and it regarded me in silence. With an effort, it reared itself up on its hind legs and tail so that its head was on the same level as mine, and stood swaying, as though unaccustomed to the posture.
“Are you a man of Irem?”
Its words were slurred and strangely accented, but I had no difficulty understanding them. They were articulated somewhere in the creature’s throat, not with its mouth as we pronounce our words.
“I am not of the city.”
“You are not of A’zani.”
“What is A’zani?”
“This place is A’zani. The place of rushing waters. Or so it was, long ago.”
I understood. The dry river had been called A’zani by the people of Irem.
“No, I am not of A’zani.”
It regarded me as though pondering my words.
“Where do you come from?”
“The desert.”
The creature spoke in its own language to the assembly of its people, and they responded with grunts.
“You speak the name of the lord of chaos,” it said to me.
“I am the servant of Nyarlathotep,” I lied.
The utterance of the god’s name made all the creatures scurry away from me. Even their robed leader withdrew a step before remembering its dignity.
“Have you come to punish us?” There was a note of fatality in its growling throat.
“No. I am a traveler passing through this place.”
The tenseness of the creature’s limbs relaxed and its back sagged. It grunted and clicked a few words, and a similar relief ran through the others like a wave across the water.
“Tell the god whose name is not to be uttered that we have kept faith with him, and have not returned to the city of our ancestors. We remain outside the portal, as we promised.”
“When next I see him, I will convey this message.”
The response of the leader was lost in a roar that came from behind me. I turned and saw a large number of crocodiles rushing toward the hillside. There were twice as many as those that stood placidly around me. Cries of confusion and dismay arose from the gathering. Some turned to confront the charge, while others ran wildly up the hill toward the mouth of the cave, disregarding the harsh commands of the leader.
Had I been perceived as a threat by the attackers, I would surely have died in the first few moments of the battle, but they ignored me as they grappled with others of their own race. I backed slowly away from the midst of the conflict and stood witho
ut moving in the hope that the crocodiles could not see me through the darkness and would miss my scent in the disorder of battle. They were intent only on killing each other. The battle inspired both terror and awe in my heart. The creatures were even more powerful than I had imagined. They grappled with their clawed hands and threw each other upon the ground with their powerful tails. Yet despite the ferocity of the fight, scant blood was drawn. Neither side used weapons, and their thick leather skins protected them from all but the most savage of bites.
The outcome was never in doubt. The attackers overwhelmed the defenders by their superior number and drove them away from the hillside, all save a few who lay bleeding or dead. One of those killed was the leader. Its throat had been torn out in the first savage moments of the battle, and the crocodile that had killed it had put on its cloak and crown, and danced in glee around the corpse. The victors wasted no time in rushing up to the mouth of the cavern. They vanished into its dark hollow, and I wondered what treasure it contained that could explain so brutal and sly an attack. I had not long to wait for an answer. In minutes they emerged, each carrying on its back one of the wooden boxes with a glass lid that held the corpse of an ancestor. They bore them quickly away, not pausing to hunt down the scattered remnants of the defenders.
Before they passed beyond my sight, an angry cry went up from somewhere in front of them, and I saw them cast down their boxes and flee back in confusion, pursued by a force of their own race. The newcomers charged after them with great fury, and though they were less in number, the concentration of their attack unnerved the craven looters, who perhaps had anticipated an easy victory. Cries went up around me as the defeated guardians of the cave rallied together, and the unhappy predators became the prey, caught between two hostile bands. I realized that the attack on the cave had been planned for a time when the force of the defenders was weakest, but the attackers had been surprised by the untimely return of the others, who probably had been off hunting for food.
These hunters made no attempt to catch or slay the attackers. All their concern was for the boxes that lay scattered around in confusion where they had been dumped. They began to carefully tip upright these cases and to brush with gentle fingers the dust from their glasses, all the while making a strange lament that was like a gulping noise deep in their throats. They seemed not to care about those who lay dead or dying from the attack, but only for those who had died centuries ago and lay like dry sticks within their cases.
With quick but careful steps I moved away from the place of battle. None of the creatures looked in my direction, giving me reason to believe they truly were blind in the darkness. Whether there might be any other apart from the slain leader who could speak human language, I did not seek to discover. With their bloodlust aroused, the returned hunting party might be more disposed to kill than to talk, and I was not confident that the name of Nyarlathotep alone was sufficient to ensure my security. I did not stop until I was well beyond the sound of the creatures. I reasoned that my hearing was probably as good as theirs, or better, and if I could not hear their deep grunts, it was unlikely they would hear the crunch of my sandals upon the pebbles.
I stood breathing deeply, thankful for my escape, and wondered which way I should travel. The faint breeze that touched my cheek decided my course. It must come from an opening to the surface, no matter how far away it might lie. I began to follow it, letting it lead me up and down the piled mounds of stones and around the tangled wrecks of ancient tree trunks. How many days I walked, there was no way of reckoning. I continued to eat the white spiders, on the reflection that the ability to see the bat-like things and other threats to my life was more important than the risk of possible poisoning. I found that when I ate only three spiders at each sleep, my body did not reject them.
The soles of my sandals became ragged on the stones, and I grew to loathe the juice of the great spiders on my tongue even though it sustained my life. The journey through the depths seemed without end. Only the faint breeze that touched my lips like a kiss kept me from becoming hopelessly confused in the winding dry riverbed, which twisted from side to side like the body of a serpent, and sometimes bent back upon itself. When I felt that madness must surely descend to carry away my reason beyond all recovery, I saw ahead a light that I had not glimpsed in many months. It was the light of the sky.
I emerged between a jumble of great boulders and stood swaying in the cool salt breeze of early morning that swept in from the ocean, for the mouth of the cave was located at the base of a cliff separated from the sea by only a narrow strip of sand. Even though the sun had not yet risen, the light was so intense it made tears gush from my eyes. I closed my lids to slits and laughed aloud from the sheer joy of release from the womb of earth. On stiff knees, the soles of my sandals flapping on the beach, I walked to the edge of the water and let it wash with a cool touch over my toes while I stood staring at the crests of the waves that rolled gently toward me.
Chapter 14
In a daze, eyes clenched against the brightness of the sky, I left my possessions and thawb on the beach and walked naked save for stockings and sandals into the waves of the ocean. When I stood up to my waist, I splashed the cool water over my face, and finally bent and submerged my head completely. I used my fingers to scrub out the dust and fleas and lice from my hair and beard, then washed the rest of my body. A group of sea birds floated upon the water near a jut of rock, some distance from the sand. They watched me with curious tilts of their heads but did not fly away. Laughing to myself from the simple joy of being clean once again, I imitated their cries and made faces at them that must have been horrible to contemplate, although they did not appear disturbed.
Only when my body was scrubbed red did I emerge from the water. I used one of the rags I carried to wipe myself so that the salt of the ocean would not dry on my skin, then stood naked to the knees, enjoying the morning sunlight. Gathering up my thawb, I removed everything from it, including the honey-covered jewelry of the dead girl that was stuck fast in one of the pockets, and washed the garment in the ocean until its original cream color returned by repeatedly wetting it and beating it against a smooth rock that rose above the waves. When it was clean I draped it over flat boulders to dry and rinsed off the jewelry. I shaved my face with my knife in the reflection of a small tidal pool between the rocks, then lay upon the sand on my back. I felt renewed, as though I had died under the earth and been reborn.
From the position of the rising sun, I judged I must be somewhere on the shore of the Sea of Aurmia, that is called the Red Sea, on a deserted part of the coast of Yemen. Were I discovered and recognized, it would mean execution, but there seemed little chance that anyone believed me still alive. I had been sent out to the desert to perish. To be left alone and naked in the Empty Space, without food or water, is to be dead. Only the disfigurement of my face might betray me should I encounter a soldier or officer of the government who had heard the story of my torture. I remembered the dream in which the dark man had given me a spell of glamour to cause my features to appear normal, and wondered if it was a fancy of my imagination.
Untying the cotton rag that held the jewels and gold pieces gathered in the underground city, I examined them in the sunlight. Each stone was of the finest quality. Sold with care, there was sufficient wealth in my two hands to last the remainder of my lifetime. It was more than enough to travel out of this nation, for I had decided to leave Yemen and become a wandering seeker of knowledge in distant lands. There was nothing to keep me here, and every reason to leave. The thought of the dark man, pacing the desert and sniffing the air with his head down in search of footprints, made me nervous. The single encounter with him outside my dreams convinced me that I did not wish to meet him again.
When my thawb dried, I shook it to beat out the sea salt and put it on. The plain but honest cotton threads had stood up well to the ordeals of the desert and the places under the earth, but the same could no
t be said for my sandals, the soles of which flapped as I walked. There was nothing to do but endure it, or go barefoot, since the thin leather of my stockings had worn in holes on the bottoms. The slippery rocks along the shore were sharp enough that I wanted some protection from them, and ragged sandals were better than nothing. Collecting my few possessions, I walked north with the rhythmic plash of the waves on my left hand and the low cliffs on my right.
In late afternoon, just as I began to wonder whether it would be wise to find a place to sleep, I came upon a kind of loading dock built of timbers sunk into the beach to form a shallow box filled with rocks and sand. There were no habitations attached to it. Evidently it had been constructed by the king to allow traders in this sparsely populated region of the coast to transfer their goods to ships, saving them the expense and danger of carrying them overland to a port city. A single ship was tied to the outer side of the dock, and its crew used the crane attached to the dock to transfer bales into its hold. The traders who had deposited the cargo on the dock had already departed. A road extended away from the shore and wound between two hills to disappear from sight. It was marked by the footprints of many camels, still easy to see in the sand, although the wind would surely cover them before nightfall.
As I approached along the margin of the ocean around a headland that put the setting sun over my left shoulder, members of the crew peered at me from beneath their hands, which they raised to shield their eyes against the glare. I made the gestures upon the air the dark man had taught me in my dream, and spoke the word aloud. I saw and felt nothing. Whether the spell worked, I would soon discover. It would be easier to converse with the captain and meet his mariners with a normal face, but if he saw me as the monster I was, I must still attempt to convince him to take me aboard as his passenger. The sight of even the smallest of the jewels I carried would be persuasive, but the thought came to me that it would be better not to display my treasure. There was always a chance the captain might decide to slit my throat and steal it, and little way I could defend myself against so many foes.