by Brian Lumley
'I think,' said de Marigny with feeling, piloting the clock into the future, 'that if that was Theem'hdra, then I've had all I want of it!'
'What of Loxzor?' asked Moreen.
'Eh?' said Exior. 'But surely you heard me warn him, child? Never a mind so contrary, so warped, as Loxzor's. And never a man so doomed.'
`Oh?' said de Marigny.
Exior nodded. 'The mind-slime has lost us, but Loxzor's spell calls for a victim. Such black magic as he used carried its own retribution. The slime now follows him ...'
'And no escape?' Moreen was full of pity.
`None,' Exior shook his head. 'It will, follow him to the end and take him, just as it would have taken me but for your intervention.'
There was a long silence, then Moreen said: 'I sensed him as a cruel creature, but still he was a man. It seems a monstrous way for a man to die.'
To put the matter in its correct perspective, and also to clear the air, de Marigny said, 'As Exior points out, Loxzor brought it on himself. The best thing to do is forget him. After all, he's already a million years dead.'
And that was that ...
'How did you get in that mess?' de Marigny asked Exior when they were well underway.
'It's a long story,' said Exior.
'Tell me anyway.'
Exior shrugged. 'As a boy,' he began, 'I was apprenticed under Phaithor Ull. In his dotage, Phaithor sought immortality - we all do - and made himself the subject of several thaumaturgies. One morning when I went to wake him, he was a heaping of green dust on his bed, all spread out in the shape of a man. His rings were in the `hand' formed of the dust, as was his wand. It, too, fell into dust the moment I took it up.
'Later I served Mylakhrion, however briefly. To test my worthiness, he sent me on a quest. I was to find and return to him a long-lost runebook. I succeeded - barely! My reward: Mylakhrion gave me his palace, made me mage to Morgath the then King of Humquass. And off he went to seek immortality! Strange how men want to live forever, eh?'
De Marigny smiled, however wryly, and nodded. 'Some men seek to slow time down, yes,' he said. 'Others speed it up!'
'Eh? Oh, yes! Your time-clock, of course. Very droll! But to continue:
'Eventually I, too, began to feel the weight of my years. Humquass was forsaken, except for me. The city fell into decay. Years went fleeting. Naturally and unnaturally I too sought immortality. I went to Tharamoon hoping to find Mylakhrion. His potions and ointments and fountain of vitality had held the years back a little, but not entirely. Perhaps by now he'd discovered the secret, maybe he'd even share it with me. So I thought. But in Tharamoon, when I found Mylakhrion's tower, it too was a ruin. Mylakhrion's bones lay broken at its base.
'I searched the place top to bottom, brought back with me all I could of his paraphernalia: books and cyphers, powders, elixirs, unguents and the likes. And I read Mylakhrion's works most carefully. His diary, too ...
`He had fallen foul of Cthulhu, who sleeps and dreams and makes men mad. Do you know of Cthulhu?'
Too much!' de Marigny frowned.
'To know his name is too much!' said Exior. 'Mylakhrion had promised to do Cthulhu's bidding in return for immortality. But when that most monstrous of the Great Old Ones ordered that which might free the, prisoned demons of his evil order . Mylakhrion refused! For which Cthulhu killed him. Mylakhrion had broken. the pact - Cthulhu broke Mylakhrion.'
De Marigny nodded. 'That's a familiar pattern,' he said. 'And you fell for it too, eh?'
Exior hung his head. 'Indeed. Foolish old Exior K'mool, who thought himself mightier than Mylakhrion. I made the same pact, for I was sure I could defend myself against Cthulhu's wrath. As you have seen, there was no defence - except this. Flight into the future.'
Something bothered de Marigny. 'But you had made a form of agreement, a contract with Cthulhu. And did you get your immortality? It seems unlikely, for if we hadn't come along in the time-clock you'd be dead. If you can die you're hardly immortal.'
Exior looked up and slowly smiled. A wondering smile, very peculiar. 'But I am not dead,' he, pointed out. There was something about his voice ...
De Marigny said: 'Tell me, just exactly what did Cthulhu tell you about immortality? How were you to make yourself immortal?'
Exior shrugged. 'All a trick!' he snorted. 'The only way I could become immortal was in my children's children. Which is the same for all men, for all creatures, even for the simple flowers of the field. A blade of wheat grows, sheds its seed, dies - and is reborn from its seed. And a man? This was the immortality for which Cthulhu drove so hard a bargain. A man's natural right!'
Moreen had overheard all. `Then perhaps you've succeeded after all,' she said. 'Or if not immortality, something close to it.'
They looked at her. 'He's right, you know,' she said to de Marigny. 'About how you both look alike. Like two petals of the same flower .
`Ridiculous!' said de Marigny. 'There are eons between us.'
She smiled. 'Then that really would be immortality, wouldn't it?'
De Marigny shook his head, said: 'But -- '
- We think we went back into time of our own accord,' she cut him off, determined to make her point, `but what if he really did call us back - to save him? Perhaps Cthulhu didn't cheat him after all, the secret did lie in his children's children. He was saved, made "immortal", by his own descendent - by you, Henri.'
Her reasoning is sound,' said Exior. 'And with luck, I shall yet make myself truly immortal. You seek Elysia, correct? Yes, and so do I - now! Why, Elysia is immortality!'
`That's playing with words,' de Marigny protested - but he remembered that Titus Crow had told him to look in his past. Not the past but his past. And wasn't there something else Crow had said to him long ago: about a spark in de Marigny carried down all the ages, which would flare up again one day in Elysia?
`We can put the girl's theory to the test,' Exior cut in on his thoughts. 'Wizards often run in unbroken lines of descent. You are a wizard, even though you deny it. Oh, you haven't discovered your full potential yet, but it's there. The proof is this: your father would have been another.'
`My father?' de Marigny almost laughed out loud. 'My father was a 20th Century jazz buff who lived in New Orleans! He -' But here the smile died on The Searcher's lips and his jaw dropped. For Etienne-Laurent de Marigny had also been New Orleans' premier mystic and occultist - and even now he was a prominent figure in the land of Earth's dreams.. In short, a magician. In his lifetime and after it. A wizard!
Wide-eyed, de Marigny gazed at Exior K'mool. And Exior gazed at him.
And the time-clock sped into the future ...
`Time travel takes time.' De Marigny grinned and did it again: 'An amazingly accurate alliteration.'
`What's that?' Moreen had been half asleep.
`Nothing,' said de Marigny. 'Sorry I woke you. I was just thinking out loud. About time travel. It takes time.'
Exior approached, his face animated, excited in the clock's soft purple glow. 'Yes, it does,' he agreed, 'if you only use this wonderful device as a conveyance. And of course you must, for the time-clock is vital to you. It has to go where you go.'
`Just what are you getting at?' de Marigny raised an eyebrow. 'And you really shouldn't go wandering about in here on your own. The clock's a death-trap for the unwary. You could end up almost anywhen.
`Precisely my point. You use it as a conveyance, but it could be used as a gateway!'
De Marigny nodded. 'We know that. Titus Crow has used it that way. As for myself: I don't know how to. I've never had to or even wanted to. In any case, if I did use the clock that way, what if I couldn't find my way back again?'
`Exactly!' Exior answered. 'You depend upon the clock — but I don't. The only place I want to be is Ardatha Ell's manse in Lith. And right now I'm wasting time getting there.'
'What?' de Marigny had suddenly realized what Exior was saying. 'Exior, you're out of your mind! I've piloted this ship for more than six years now, an
d I still don't know half of all there is to know about it. And you're telling me that after a few short hours of travel in the clock you plan to use it as a gateway?'
`Henri,' said Exior patiently, 'I unriddle runes, languages, systems. My mind is built that way. Yours, too, but undeveloped as yet. The time-clock's systems are intricate, yes, but not unfathomable. Your friend Titus Crow has done it, and I'm going to do it too — now.'
`Now?' Moreen gasped.
'I only came back to say goodbye for now. For of course, I'll see you both again in the lava-floating manse on Lith.'
`But ... right now?' de Marigny still couldn't accept it. mean — how?'
Exior smiled, meshed his mind deeper with the clock, deeper than de Marigny had ever dared to go. 'Like this,' he said. His form wavered, broke down into bright points of light, blinked out.
And de Marigny and Moreen stood alone ...
Exior and Ardatha Ell met over the lava lakes. Below, no manse was anywhere visible. Exior, now an extension of the time-clock, slowed himself down, cruised into the future rather than rocketed. His speed was now only a little faster than true time itself. 'No manse,' he said to the other, deeming introductions unnecessary.
`Indeed,' said Ardatha. 'I had assumed it was your place.' `And I thought it was yours!'
No matter, we'll build one.' Ardatha used cohesive magic to draw together a great mass of heat-resistant matter, which formed like a scab on the bubbling lake below. Exior pictured the manse as he had seen it in his shewstone, formed it in two hemispheres, welded them together. The work took moments, but it drained both of them.
`Let's get inside,' said Exior, breaking his connection with the clock and slowing all the way down to normal time. And within the lava-floating manse, after briefly resting, they each constructed rooms to their own tastes. Later still:
`It seems we've known each other for some time,' said Exior, where they sat sipping conjured essence in a room with tinted portals.
'Because we knew it would be, it feels like it has always been,' replied Ardatha Ell. 'In fact, when I explored a little of Lith's future, from Elysia, I was surprised to find your manse er, this place floating here. I had intended to come anyway, you see, as an agent for Kthanid. It seems that Lith, in some manner yet unknown to me, will soon become vastly important.'
'Oh? Could that be, I wonder, because the son of my most remote sons, Henri-Laurent de Marigny, called The Searcher, and Moreen are even now en-route here?'
Ardatha was pleased. 'So they've fathomed all dues, overcome all obstacles, have they? Kthanid foresaw it, of course or at least, that was one of the futures he foresaw. But so many possible futures! Kthanid is incredible! Such computations! Such permutations! But he chose the best future he could, then set about to make it work out that way.'
This conveyed a great deal to Exior's wizard's mind. He drew much more from Ardatha's words than any ordinary man might ever comprehend. 'In my shewstone,' he said after a while, 'I saw that we played a game. It was strange to me. Obviously it had not been invented in my time, though it reminded me of frothy, which is also played on a board.'
`That must have been chess,' Ardatha beamed. 'A favourite of mine!' He conjured a board and pieces. 'Here, let me explain the rules .
They played, and at the same time and for long hours amused themselves with certain matters of cryptical conjecture - hypothetical problems of interest only to magicians - and yet still found time and space to carry on a more nearly normal conversation:
'Your purpose in coming here?' Ardatha eventually asked. 'Apart from carrying out a temporal necessity, of course. That is to say, having seen yourself here - and while obviously you obeyed the omen and came here was that the only reason?' Wizards seldom have only one motive for their actions.
1 seek immortality,' Exior explained. 'I have done so for years. When de Marigny mentioned his goal, Elysia, I saw the answer at once. For as I said to him: Elysia is immortality! And so, since this manse, Lith, and you yourself formed a focal point, a way-station along de Marigny's route ...'
'Hmm!' Ardatha mused. 'And how will you complete the final stage? From here to Elysia, I mean, when the time comes?'
`In the time-clock, with The Searcher and his woman. Won't you join us? Since you already have a place in Elysia, and Lith being such a boring place and all
'I think not,' answered Ardatha Ell. 'You see, I don't know how long I may be called upon to stay here - or even why I'm here except that it was Kthanid's wish that I should come. Also, I rode a Great Thought to this place. My shell - my flesh-and-blood body, that is - is still in Elysia. And so when I return it shall be a simple matter of instantaneous transfer. However, I thank you for your-' He paused abruptly, came stiffly erect in his chair.
'Is there something?' Exior enquired.
Ardatha unfolded his tall, spindly frame, stood up. 'A messenger enters my sky-sphere in Elysia,' he said, his eyes far away. 1 had expected some such. A message from Kthanid. Come, you shall see.'
He quickly loped to his room and Exior followed on behind. There they seated themselves before Ardatha's shewstone, in which a picture had already formed. A Dchi-chi stood at the threshold of Ardatha Ell's inner sanctum in his sky-floating sphere high over Elysia. Ardatha himself - or his body - lay suspended on a gravitic bed of air in the centre of the room. All was silent until the Elysian wizard's Lith facet made a six-fingered pass, and then the scene came alive with conversation:
`I beg to differ,' came a voice from some mechanical source, but dearly Ardatha's voice, or a good imitation. 'The lesser part, surely? For his recumbent shell here is only the flesh of Ardatha Ell. The mind - which is greater by far, which is more truly me — that is in Exior K'mool's manse in Andromeda.' And so the conversation continued, as we have previously seen, while in Lith Exior and Ardatha looked on. Until finally the Dchi-chi passed his message.
In Lith Ardatha absorbed that message, reeled for a moment, then frowned mightily. And from the shewstone he heard himself say: 'There, all done. Aye, and this is an important task Kthanid has set .me. You should have said so before now, little bird, instead of posing and parroting.'
There followed the matter of the Dchi-chi's exit from Ardatha's sphere his hasty, somewhat fearful exit —after which, chuckling good-naturedly, the wizards in Lith returned to their game of chess.
And in a little while: 'What was Kthanid's message?' Exior asked.
`It contained the reason for my being here,' Ardatha answered. 'Which is this: that I keep a vigil.' He won the game in three moves, produced a wand which elongated into a rod six feet long, stuck its ferrule in the floor and bent his ear to the silver handle. He seemed to listen to something for a moment, straightened up, smiled grimly. 'A vigil, aye,' he repeated.
And then he explained in greater detail ...
In Elysia all was ready, all preparations made. Kthanid —only Kthanid — had retained a measure of surveillance on the outside multiverse, and now even he was 'blind' to occurrences beyond Elysia's boundaries. Nothing physical or mental departed from or entered into Elysia. No Great Thoughts went out, no travellers returned; no telepathic transmissions were sent or received; no time-clocks plied the limitless oceans of time and space. Elysia lay silent, hidden, secret, more mythical than ever before ...
And yet, because Kthanid himself was of the flesh and the mind of the Great Old Ones, he was not entirely closed off, not totally insulated from their activity. In his own incredib!e dreams he heard echoes from outside. The massed mind of the Great Old Ones — their use of telepathy, their 'Great Messenger', Nyarlathotep, which , carried their thoughts between them in their various prison environs — would occasionally impinge upon Kthanid's mind; and then, in snatches however brief, he would learn what they were about.
When de Marigny and Moreen had. left Borea in the time-clock — and when Ithaqua had tormented certain minds to extract information from them, which was then passed on to the rest of the Great Old Ones, particularly Cthulhu Kthanid had
known it. He had known, too, of the loss of countless Tind'losi Hounds in a black hole, and of the saving of Sssss. From Earth's dreamlands, echoes had reached him of damage inflicted on Cthulhu's plans to further his infiltration of Man's subconscious mind, and one shriek of mental fury and frustration had signalled a strike against Nyarlathotep 'himself.
Most of which had been anticipated
And between times:
In the Vale of Dreams the gigantic N'hlathi had emerged from their immemorial burrows to graze on the seeds of great poppies, and even now a team of Dchi-chis attempted communication with them. Even more ominous, the N'hlathi were seen to be harvesting poppy seed, storing the great green beads in their burrows. And those burrows themselves were now seen for what they really were; for when the seals on the N'hlathi doors had sprung and the doors had opened, then those massive cylinders — the `burrows' themselves — had slowly unscrewed from the basalt cliffs. More than mere hibernation cells, those cylinders: thirty feet in diameter and sixty feet long, of a white metal unknown even to Elysia's science, they had commenced to give off certain hyper-radiations — the selfsame energies which powered Elysia's time-clocks! The burrows of the N'hlathi were time-clocks — which they now provisioned as for flight!
As for the pattern those doors had duplicated, the great whorl of Andromeda and the emergence of certain stars of ill-omen there: