by Brian Lumley
Now indeed those stars were very nearly right; in fact, only one more was needed to complete the pattern. Its . location was well known to Kthanid, its condition, too. For this was a dying star, but a star with a difference. It was the second of twins, the first of which had already self-destructed, and it harboured in its core the seed of universal chaos.
The name of this star?
It was Lith, of course. Lith, where even now Ardatha Ell kept vigil, monitoring the fatal foetal pulse of that which might well signal a new beginning or a monstrous end ...
3 The Stars are Right!
When de Marigny slipped the time-clock sideways in space-time and entered their manse in Lith, Exior K'mool and Ardatha Ell were waiting for him. Nor did they fail to note the wisps of greenish mist, materializing into a thin, vapid slime that clung in a sticky layer to the windows of the upper dome, which he brought with him out of the past. The manse was rune-protected, however, and constructed of near-impervious materials, so that they were mainly unconcerned. But Exior sniffed and commented:
`So Loxzor's follow-me spell was effective after all, at least in part. A little of Cthulhu's mind-slime managed to follow the time-clock, and so has found me again. Much weakened now, I note. Why, I could banish it with a simple "get-thee-gone".'
'Let it be,' said Ardatha Ell. 'It changes nothing — indeed, we may even benefit ...'
De Marigny and Moreen emerged cautiously from the clock, found the wizards waiting. The final stages of their trip had not been uneventful: Tind'losi Hounds had chased them for seven million years, ignoring the time-clock's weapon in a manner de Marigny had never seen before, in a suicidal way that had puzzled and worried and wearied him. They had lost countless thousands tracking him, and had only given up the chase when he reverted to three-dimensioned space over Lith.
But now the time-travellers squared up, nodded their tired acknowledgment to Exior, gazed up in awe at Ardatha Ell.
'Crow's friend,' that towering, slender, powerful person nodded, returning de Marigny's gaze; but though he spoke to them, Moreen and her Earthman noted that his lips moved never a fraction. 'De Marigny The Searcher — and Moreen, whose innocence and beauty shall surely whelm all Elysia. Eventually ... ' And still his lips hadn't moved.
Moreen blushed and smiled at his compliment, but de Marigny frowned. 'Eventually?' he repeated the wizard's word. 'Soon, we had hoped.'
Ardatha inclined his sharp-featured head. 'Well, it's true that the futures are narrowing down,' he said, 'but until a thing is we can never be entirely certain that it will be. Only the past is fixed, and even that is not entirely immutable.'
'Ahem!' said Exior. 'Best remember, Ardatha, that their ways with words are not our ways. Their thoughts run straighter courses than ours.'
He was right in more ways than one; by now de Marigny's thoughts were more than ever one-tracked. `Ardatha,' he pressed, 'you know why we're here. You yourself hail from Elysia. If anyone can help us get there — '
— Wait!' said Ardatha, holding up a six-fingered hand. 'Waste no more words, Searcher, the matter is out of my hands — and out of yours — now. Now we can only wait.'
`Wait?' de Marigny cast a puzzled glance at Moreen, who was equally mystified. 'Wait here, on Lith? But wait for what?'
'For whatever will be,' the wizard answered. Bending his ear to his silver-handled sensor, he listened patiently for a moment or two to the strengthening pulse in Lith's core. 'Aye, for what will surely be,' he repeated. 'One thing I can tell you, Searcher,' and he straightened up. 'It won't be a long wait. No, not long at all.' And more than that he would not, must not, say ...
De Marigny slept and dreamed.
In weed-festooned, submarine R'lyeh, Cthulhu's groping face-tentacles reached for and almost found him before he fled screaming into time. Bat-winged, like flapping black rags of evil, the Hounds of Tindalos awaited him there, came winging out from the corkscrew towers of Tindalos itself at de Marigny's approach. To escape them he transferred from time to space, found himself on the shore of a vilely lapping lake somewhere in the Hyades. Turning his gaze from the waters of that lake to the sky, he saw the black stars burning and knew at once where he was. Along the shoreline, coming his way, a Thing in yellow flopped, and in the waters something monstrous floundered! De Marigny wrenched himself free of the place, where even now the Lake-of Hales waters broke in a lashing of loathsome tentacles. Hastur wallowed in The Searcher's wake . . . And now de Marigny wandered in unknown space and time lost and alone in some weird parallel dimension. But alone for a moment only. For now, surging out of nameless vacuum, came a frothing, liquescent, blasphemous shapelessness that masked its true horror behind a congeries of iridescent globes and bubbles the primal jelly seething forever 'beyond the nethermost angles' — Yog-Sothoth, the Lurker at the Threshold!
De Marigny screamed again as the thing covered him, folding him into its mass -
- And found himself like a child in Moreen's arms, awake, hugged safe to her. bosom.
`Henri! Henri!' she rocked him. 'What was it? A dream?'
He shuddered, sat up on his bed in the room Ardatha and Exior had made for them. 'A ... a dream? A nightmare!' He hugged her, forced himself to stop trembling. 'Just a nightmare. Yes, that's all it was ...' But in his mind he could still hear the thin chittering of the Hounds, the black gurgling of Hali, and frothing and seething of Yog-Sothoth, and the — laughter? — of Cthulhu in his watery sepulchre; all of these sounds, withdrawing now as he came more fully awake.
'I came to wake you,' Moreen said, 'and found you shouting and tossing. Henri, Ardatha wants you. He says it's nearly time.'
De Marigny got up at once, followed her a little unsteadily into the communal room. Ardatha Ell was there, his ear pressed to the silver handle of his elongated wand. Exior was also present, but he stood much closer to the time-clock. Both magicians were plainly excited, agitated.
'Ardatha,' de Marigny began, `Moreen tells me that you -'
'Yes, yes,' said the wizard, cutting him short. And: 'Sit, please sit, both of you. Now, I have a tale to tell - which in itself contains something of an explanation, if you can unriddle it but just so much time in Which to tell it. The stars are coming right, de Marigny - do you know what that means?'
De Marigny drew a sharp breath, let it out more slowly. 'Yes,' he said, 'only too well.'
'They are coming right ... now,' Ardatha nodded, 'at any moment. We shall have -' he snapped his fingers, - that much warning!'
De Marigny looked blank, shook his head. 'I -'
"This star, Lith itself, is the final one in the pattern,' Ardatha said. 'And Lith is about to nova, perhaps supernova!' Even as he spoke the manse rocked, and beyond the tinted windows geysers of molten rock vented fire and steam at a madly boiling sky of smoke and bilious gases. As the floor tilted back to a level keel, de Marigny jumped to his feet, grasped Moreen's hand and headed for the dock.
`Wait!', cried Ardatha Ell, his mouth a thin, hard and immobile slit in his face. 'You may not run from this, Searcher - not if you want to enter Elyria!'
De Marigny paused, turned and stared hard at the tall magician. 'I don't run for my own sake, Ardatha Ell. You'd better get that fact fixed firmly in your head. And you'd better talk fast too, while I'm still here to hear you. I don't know about you and Exior, but if this dead sun is about to explode, Moreen and I - '
'It is the way to Elysia!' again Ardatha cut him off.
De Marigny opened the clock's door and purple light streamed out.
'Go on then, flee!' Ardatha Ell shouted from a closed mouth. 'Time yet for you to get away, Searcher. Run - and lose everything!'
'Hear him out,' croaked Exior K'mool. 'At least hear him out, son of my sons. You cannot imagine how much depends upon it.'
De Marigny held Moreen close. The interior of the clock was but a step away. 'Go on then,' he said. 'We're listening.'
Ardatha sighed, put his ear back to the sensor for a moment, again straightened up. The manse rocked
again, but less violently. Ardatha waited for the disturbance to cease before beginning. Then -
'Once long ago, where now the Milky Way sprawls its myriad stars against the sky, there was nothing. And there, to that vacuous region, came Azathoth.
`Born in billions of tons of cosmic dust, in matter forged by gravity, in the slow seepage of massively heavy metals toward a universal centre, he was a Nuclear Chaos. And the report of his coming went out to the farthest stars, so that even now its echoes have not died away! But while Azathoth was of Nature, a true power without sentience, still he spawned others which had sentience: he was not only, in a sense, the Father of all "life" as we know it, but also of certain thermal, rather thermonuclear beings.' Ardatha paused, shrugged, continued:
'I will not go into nuclear genealogy here; your scientists will one day fathom it in their own way, define it in their own terms - if they tread warily. But just as there may be intelligence in air, and in water, in earth and even in space, so may there be intelligence in fire.. Alas, but nuclear fire transmutes all things: metal into liquid or gas or other metals, life into death, time into space and vice versa. Its massive release warps space-time itself. Yes, and it transmuted the thermal beings, too. They themselves were changed by their own chaos of energy. Sanity into madness! They became as mad and ungovernable as the unthinking Father who spawned them. Mercifully their insanity is self-destructive: they are born mad, and on the instant annihilate themselves — and, unfortunately, all who stand near. Which is the reason why even the Beings of the Cthulhu Cycle fear them ...
`So, what shall we call such creatures, who, when they are "summoned" or born, can turn worlds to cinders and rekindle dying suns to nuclear furnaces? In eons past they were named the Azathi — Children of Azathoth. Now, I have said that they die in the instant of their birth, which is self-evident. But if they can be kept — or keep themselves — in a prolonged or extended foetal condition, then their excess 'madness', their energy, may be drawn off and used. Unwittingly, men have been doing this since the construction of the first atomic pile; though of course theirs is only a synthetic form of the actual Azathoth life-force itself, without the sentience of the Azathi. But not only men have used — are using — this awesome power!
'Long ages past Cthulhu saw a use for such primal forces. He calculated the angles between the Nggr, the Hang and the Nng, fathomed the warp-energy required to release him and his brethren and their allies from their prisons. Then he searched far and wide in time and space, seeking to learn that precise place and moment when the stars would be almost right, when with a little assistance the space-time matrix might be caused to warp sufficiently to break his bonds. And he saw that eventually, in Andromeda; just such an almost-perfect pattern would form itself. A vast equation, complete but for two missing qualities or quantities — forces which Cthulhu himself must insert into the equation. The Azathi, of course!
'Cthulhu knew that at least three of Azathoth's primal children had controlled or contained themselves. Oh, they were mad but not so mad as to will themselves to annihilation. He searched the void for them, at last found two. We shall call them Azatha and Azathe, and they were all the Lord of R'lyeh required to put his eon-formed plan into being, to set ticking his unthinkable cosmic time-bomb! As for Azathu, the third of Azathoth's primal children: he could not be found, perhaps he had after all become unstable, detonated in some remote region.
`But Azatha and Azathe remained, out there in the deepest, darkest reaches, forging ever outward in abysses beyond man's wildest reckoning. And Cthulhu reached out after them sent his Great Messenger, Nyarlathotep, to parley with them — and made a pact. It was this: that they return, locate themselves in the hearts of certain suns, remain dormant down all the eons and wait on his instructions. Then, at a time of his choosing, he would awaken them, let them be fulfilled, give them glory and life-everlasting, free them of their elemental madness! His reward? — the very multiverse would see how great are the works of Cthulhu, who causes stars to blaze up at his coming!
`Since then ... the stars have wheeled in their inexorable courses, the pattern has formed, the time is nigh. A little while ago a star exploded, became a super-nova on Andromeda's far flank. That was Azatha. And in the heart of Lith, at this very moment ..
De Marigny, despite his urge to get away, had been fascinated by Ardatha Ell's story. Now he completed the wizard's tale: 'Azathe?'
Ardatha nodded. 'And the pattern will be complete. All chains broken, all "spells" unspelled. The Great Old Ones will be free.'
Moreen spoke up: 'But how can that possibly help us? We seek Elysia, from which place Henri hopes to fight the Great Old Ones, assist in their destruction.'
'Wait!' Ardatha commanded. He listened yet again to his wand and his eyes grew huge. 'Soon now!' he hissed. 'Very soon!'
Exior,' said de Marigny, his voice tense, 'get in the clock. You, too, Moreen.'
Outside, beyond the windows, the lava lake had grown calm. It was an utterly unnatural calm, producing a leaden oppressiveness that came right through the walls of the manse to those within. The lava swirled slowly, sluggishly, red-veined under a crumbling crust of black rock and ash; the smoke- and gas-clouds churned low overhead; in the distance, lightning raced in weird patterns along the underside of the clouds, springing sporadically to strike the sullenly shuddering surface.
'Well,' said de Marigny, one foot on the clock's threshold. 'Is there an answer to Moreen's question? How can the death, or rebirth, of this star help us?'
Ardatha smiled, a strange cold smile. 'You have seen how Cthulhu is a great magician, a fabulous mathematician. Aye, but he is not the only one. The N'hlathi knew Cthulhu's purpose at once, and they fashioned a reminder and a warning in the Vale of Dreams in Elysia. Kthanid is of the very flesh of Cthulhu; when he knew what Cthulhu would do, he set about to maintain a balance. You ask "where is Elysia?" Elysia is where Kthanid and his elder-council desire it to be. When Lith evaporates, space-time will warp and thrust in the direction of Elysia, and your time-clock will be propelled through that warp, that fracture, into Elysia. Don't fight it, de Marigny. Don't try to fly out of it or avoid it. Do nothing! All has been calculated.'
De Marigny knew he must enter the clock, but there was still so much he didn't understand. 'But how do you know all of these things?' he asked. 'How can you be sure?'
Ardatha raised an eyebrow. 'And am I not a magician in my own right? Some of it I have fathomed, unriddled. And some I have had from Cthulhu himself. For have I not eavesdropped on his communications with Azathe? This was Kthanid's reason for sending me here, so that he might know the precise moment when —' He paused, came instantly alert as never before.
Ardatha's wand began to tremble. The tremors rapidly spread themselves to the entire manse; it shuddered, rocked, was shaken as in the fist of some inconceivable colossus.
'Ardatha!' de Marigny cried out loud over the groaning and grinding of the manse. 'Quick, man — get in the clock!'
'I don't need your time-clock, Searcher,' said the wizard. 'But you do. You need it right now. Good luck, Henri!' He snatched up his wand — which at once retracted to its normal size — saluted the time-clock with a strange gesture, disappeared like a light switched off !
Moreen and Exior dragged de Marigny into the time-clock. And after that —
Lith was no more!
The time-clock was very nearly impervious to all forces and pressures. It had survived, even escaped from, the lure of black holes; it had breached all known temporal and spatial barriers; it had journeyed in weird intermediate, even subconscious dimensions. But even so, it had never before encountered forces like those which worked on it now. Ardatha Ell had warned de Marigny not to resist; now, even if he would resist, he could not. Time did not allow. The time-clock itself did not allow. Its controls no longer worked. It, was a *twig whirled along a gutter in a cloudburst, a canoe caught in the maelstrom.
Light and heat and radiation — even a little matter — explo
ded outward in such a holocaust of released ENERGY that the clock was simply carried along on its shock wave. For those within — because they were enclosed in an area which was timeless, and yet, paradoxically everywhere and when — it was acceleration without gravity, without the fatal increase in mass which Earthly physics would otherwise demand. But it was more than that. Space-time's fabric was wrenched by Azathe's rebirth and instant death; it was torn, finally ripped asunder. All dimensions of the continuum became one in a crazy mingling, became a new state. Barriers Man's science had not even guessed at went crashing, and crashing through the chaos of their collapse came the time-clock.
And it came -
- Into Elysia!
Elysia, yes, but no longer that magical place as described by Titus Crow. De Marigny saw this as soon as the whirling of his psyche settled and his mundane senses regained control. For this was Elysia with all of the magic removed.
Rain lashed the time-clock where it sped of its own accord high above a land grey and sodden. Black clouds scudded in boiling banks, turning the rays of a synthetic sun to the merest glimmer. The sky-islands and palaces floated on air as before, but no transports came and went, no iridescent dragons sped on bone and leather wings through the lowering skies. The aerial roadways of the cities carried no traffic; the streets below shone dully, empty of life; there did not appear to be any life in all Elysia.
But then the scanners told de Marigny how he erred, the scanners and Moreen and Exior's combined cry of warning. There was life here, behind him, even now bloating monstrous in the wake of the clock!
The blow fell on de Marigny like a crashing, crushing weight. He saw, and was shattered by the sight. For in one soul-destroying moment he saw exactly how, exactly why, the clock's scanners and sensors were now full of the sight and sound and presence of these things: the massed hordes of the Cthulhu Cycle — including and led by Cthulhu himself!