by Donald Tyson
You will not know what question to ask on the first occasion, nor even on the tenth; yet if you have patience to serve her, over time you will acquire knowledge, and this may be used to direct your questions more precisely, so that the longer you remain with this witch, the more precious her answers become. The lore of the Old Ones is known to her, and the places where they are worshipped in the farness of the world, both on the land and in the oceans. Some of the geography she reveals is unknown to scholars, and may appear fabulous, such as the vast frozen waste that lies far to the south. For how could there be ice in the southern part of the world? Yet all that she speaks is true, and can be confirmed by diligent seeking.
Question her wisely, and she will tell of the seven great lords and of their origin between the stars; of their battle with the even more ancient beings known as the Elder Things who dwelled long upon our lands before the Old Ones came and drove them into the sea; of the fungous creatures of Yuggoth who in ages past traveled here from beyond the sphere of Saturn to mine the minerals of this world; of the time dancers from Yith who put on bodies of their choosing when venturing to distant aeons; of the froglike servants of Dagon; of the dread shoggoths, most mighty of all creatures that are fabled to live beneath the surface of the earth.
When you are ready to depart from her service, take care to conceal your intention, for she will surely try to murder you. There is by her sleeping place a pyramid of human skulls, sucked clean of all their flesh, taken from those who have served her in the past. Let it be a warning to the wise seeker after wisdom. Do not attempt to escape from the caverns by the narrow way you entered, for it would require so much wriggling and clawing at the earth that I’thakuah would hear and would seize you by the feet before you could win the surface. Then she would surely slay you, for her long arms are stronger than the arms of any ten men, and her fingers are like the pincers of an ironsmith.
There is another way of escape that leads downward, into corridors and chambers below the caverns. If you search for it with diligence, it will be found, but conceal your knowledge of this opening from the witch lest she suspect your intentions. Wait until she is snoring in sleep, and steal away from her side to enter the lower portal. It is too narrow to admit her bulk. Once safe within the entrance, you can laugh at her frustration and tell her what you truly think of her ugliness. She will throw bones at you but her aim is poor. Do not tarry too long, however, for if she begins to chant a curse, as is more than likely, you must be far enough away from her that by holding your hands over your ears you can block out the sound of the final words of the chant, and in this way render the curse powerless.
eep under the ruins of once-beautiful Irem, deeper even than her cisterns and catacombs, lies a city constructed of chambers and corridors that were carved from solid rock. Its origin is older than the race of man, and it has no name. Not even the subterranean things that dwell within it know what to call it; not even the ghosts of its former inhabitants remember. It may be that the founding of Irem of the many pillars atop this place was mere chance; or, as seems probable, it may be that the ancient race of beings who inhabited the lost city, in their last stage of decay employed some magic to cause water to flow upward from the depths of the earth, thus insuring that Irem would be located above in order to gain a constant supply of fresh meat, for that they were eaters of men there is no doubt. Human bones and skulls litter the corridors, most of them the smaller bones of children or infants.
The ceilings of the interlocking chambers are low, for the inhabitants made their progress by crawling on their four limbs, rather than upright after the manner of human movement. The greenly glowing ceiling of each room and hall provides a light for the normal vision equal to the light of a single candle, but in the utter blackness of the depths it is brighter than day. Paintings of many colors decorate the walls of the chambers, their pigments upraised from the surface of the stone and textured to the touch, so that they seem to stand forth with a reality more than pictorial, and when gazed upon for several minutes, their subjects waver and give the appearance of motion and life, so uncanny is the skill of the ancient artists.
In these decorations is contained the history of this unknown race, which a wise man may read like the words in a book if he takes the time to study them. They were creatures like in shape to the crocodiles of the river Nile, but with longer limbs and shorter tails, and with skulls domed and large. The forelegs of the creatures ended in slender fingers suitable for the manipulation of tools, and it is evident that they could bend upward and support themselves upon their hind legs and tails when using these hands. They possessed great wealth. All of the figures in the murals are shown wearing elaborate gold and bejeweled collars and headbands, and their brown bodies are draped in costly robes of the brightest colors. It may be that they did not depict their slaves, but only their nobles.
The oldest paintings on the walls show a distant time when they lived upon the surface of our world in cities of soaring towers connected by slender causeways, the like of which has never been erected by men. Around these cities grew forests of gigantic trees inhabited by monstrous beasts. A horrifying cataclysm destroyed the monsters of the forests and blackened the skies, casting the cities into darkness and driving the race beneath the surface of the earth. Deep in the protective caverns they prospered, and learned to raise their own foods and create their own light. Truly, the ingenuity of these beings is a marvel to contemplate.
The murals degenerate in quality as they illustrate later epochs in the history of the reptilian race. Slowly it slipped into decay and declined in numbers, until at last only this single underground city remained. When humanity built the towers of Irem in the valley above, secret cults began to worship the lower dwellers with offerings and sacrifices. The paintings show the sultans of the city of Irem ruthlessly seeking out these cults and executing their members, but the worship continued even until the fall of city.
Though it is evident from the abundance of their wall paintings that they preserved and communicated important events through images, the reptilians also pos-
sessed a written script based on sounds. Upon their walls a small number of simple characters is repeated in groups to create words, even as is true of our modern writing; indeed, so similar is the script of these beings to that of human writing, they must have learned it from the citizens of Irem during their centuries of interaction with men. When the foundations of Irem were laid, these creatures had so degenerated that they possessed little to offer our race, but they found ready use for what we had gained by our own ingenuity. So are the mighty fallen and humbled in their despair, until ground to dust by the millstone of ages.
Nothing is shown upon any of the walls concerning the collapse of Irem into pits in the sands. It would be easy to conclude that the breaking of the dome of the great cistern beneath the palace was a sudden and natural event, unrecorded because it was unforeseen and because it precipitated the extinction of the lower dwellers, who in a single day lost their source of meat. However, there is upon the floor of one of the higher corridors of the underground city an object that suggests to the wise traveler a different occurrence. Covered in the dust of ages, a bronze sword rests between the ribs of a skeleton that is not human.
Here is the tale of the sword, the tongue of which speaks without the need for a mouth. The soldiers of Irem found their way into the corridors of the nameless city below, perhaps in pursuit of members of the cult that worshipped the lower dwellers. To prevent their hunted extinction at the swords of men, the last reptilian inhabitants used some vestige of the magic that ages past had caused the waters of the earth to fountain upward into the cisterns to bring the city tumbling down. There is magic that can fissure and shake the earth. Even in their degeneracy, the creatures must have known that they wrought their own destruction, yet such was their hatred of men, they did not hesitate. Their blood ran cold through their hearts, like that of the serpent, with no sun so deep beneath the sand to warm it; the
implacable malice of the crocodile is proverbial. Rather than see their own extinction, they doomed the city of Irem.
fter entering the underground city, if you turn always leftward, keeping the leftmost wall touching your fingertips in the accepted manner of penetrating to the heart of a maze, you will come after a winding and descending progress to a great chamber much larger than the others, having a high and domed roof painted deep blue with pigment made from finely ground lapis lazuli so that it resembles the night sky; scattered densely across the dome are shining pinpricks of light, like stars, giving illumination to the chamber. Each is a colorless, faceted jewel. By what art they glow with so bright a light is not to be comprehended from their inspection, for the source of their radiance lies hidden. The light has a coldness that burns the skin of one remaining too long beneath its rays, and for this reason it is unwholesome to covet these stones. They are arranged to represent constellations that do not resemble those of the heavens, for they are the stars of a night sky other than that of our world.
It is needless to covet these gems, as precious stones of a more ordinary kind may be found lying upon the floors of rooms, partly hidden beneath a carpet of dust, where they were scattered in haste when the dwellers in the nameless city abandoned it. It may be speculated that the dwellers used the colored jewels for commerce, in the way we use copper and silver coins, so many are to be gathered with so little effort. A handful of these stones is sufficient to provision the traveler with abundance, though he may spend years following the caravan roads or voyaging across the seas to the far places of the world.
The entire expanse of the curved wall of the starlit chamber, excepting the gaps of its two open doorways, is covered from floor to the base of the blue dome with raised paintings that depict strange landscapes and unearthly cities. In the center of the floor is a low, circular dais of strange, green stone tending to white through which the light penetrates and reveals milky depths. This single huge stone is of so uncommon a type that most who gazed upon it would fail to identify it, but it can only be the green stone coveted in Cathay with such lust for its health-giving properties. Deeply carved triangles intersect on its surface at irregular angles, so that looking long upon them produces an ache in the head, and in a circle at the center of these interlocking triangles is inscribed the sign of five branches associated with the Elder Race that ruled the earth before the coming of the Old Ones.
At the perimeter of the dais, raised metal pins of the thickness of a fist, unadorned with any markings, may be depressed into the stone with a light pressure. The metal of which they are made would be unfamiliar to our alchemists, but it has resisted tarnish and corrosion through the ages with a nobility akin to pure gold. One pin may be pressed down at a time, and it will remain lowered only for an established interval of hours, after which it returns to its former level. There are seven pins, one for each of the paintings on the wall.
By sitting with legs crossed upon the center of the dais and pressing any of the pins, certain of the glowing jewels in the dome are extinguished, so that only the painting opposite the pin remains illuminated. After a time, the scene depicted takes on life and begins to move. The soul is drawn out of the body and flies across vast spaces to the land of the painting, so that the scene becomes the world. However, the soul does not remain disembodied but takes up residence within an inhabitant of that world, seeing through the eyes of the creature and hearing through its ears. It is possible, with an effort of will, to control some of the beings the soul enters, though others of a higher order of evolution become aware of the attempt and resist violently.
The experience of soul travel is unlike any sensation of physical movement, for it produces a feeling of endless falling through an abyss of colors, shapes, and sounds that can only be experienced in dreams, and is terrifying beyond endurance to the mind unprepared for its rigors. It is wise to fast for one full day before attempting any of the portals. Confusion and dizziness can lead to loss of control of the processes of the body as it waits for the return of the soul upon the dais. Although the mind is elsewhere during its flights, the body reacts with a kind of sympathetic resonance, so that what is done to the mind may express itself in the flesh; and herein lies a danger, for the death of the host into which the soul precipitates itself after passing through a portal will invariably cause the death of the soulless body of any except the most potent wizard, as the connection between soul and body, tenuous and weak though it seems, cannot be broken without grave consequences.
Use of the starlit chamber for soul travel attracts the shades of those who in life walked on four limbs through the corridors of the past. They gather about the dais as moths flock to the flame of an oil lamp, restlessly circling and glaring with hate-filled eyes as though at an act of desecration. Their jaws work silently as they roar out their fury, but no sound reaches the ears, for they have been dead such a numberless span of aeons that their voices have faded to silence. Only if the white spiders of second vision are chewed can these pale shades be seen, yet even if the sight is not enhanced, a chill draft of air may be felt, stirred into motion by their flailing, clawed forelegs. The triangles interlocking on the dais restrain the shades, and prevent their claws and teeth from extending above the edge of the circular platform of stone, but it is to be doubted that they could cause harm to living flesh even where they are free to advance, so attenuated is their substance.
It is yet another property of the triangles that the vermin in the city, those serpents, scorpions, and rats forever crawling the corridors, are kept at bay and rendered unable to bite or sting the traveler who sits enraptured on the green stone while his soul flies to distant lands. Even the flesh-eating bats cannot cross the boundary of the dais after it has been awakened by pressure upon one of its seven pins. In this the makers of the place demonstrated wisdom, for though the ghosts are impotent, the voracious vermin would devour a motionless and entranced man down to his very bones before his soul could return.
It will be useful to provide a detailed account of the seven destinations entered from the domed chamber, and of their inhabitants and customs, for the instruction of future visitors beneath Irem.
n the distant lands to the east, beyond great mountains that strive so high to the heavens that air itself is fabled to be absent from their peaks, lies an elevated grassland surrounded by cliffs unclimbable save for a few narrow stairs cut into the rock. It is an uncanny region filled with mysteries, about which is it perhaps better not to write with unguarded words. The land is known in the local tongue as Leng. Its most numerous inhabitants are herders of beasts that resemble shaggy goats. These animals supply all their needs. Their meat is the main diet of the nomads, their dense coats the source of cloth for their garments and round tents. The nomads are short of stature but broad of body, with lungs adapted to the thin air, and sallow of face, with slitted black eyes and bristling black hair. Seldom do they walk, but move from place to place mounted on horses that are not as our own, but are so small that the feet of their riders brush the grass, with bushy manes that stand upright.
Near the center of the plateau upon a slight eminence of ground stands a great monastery of black stones and red tile roofs that is the dwelling for a sect of monks said to worship incomprehensible gods and practice abominations so unnatural and repellent that the inhabitants of the plateau prefer not to speak of them, and even avoid turning their eyes toward the place. The herders fear the monks, who never leave their monastery during the daylight hours and are seldom glimpsed by other men. They are the lords of Leng, and all tribes pay annual tribute to them, yet so indifferent are they to the people and affairs of their realm that their influence is seldom felt, unless at rare intervals when an extraordinary event compels them to act in their own interests. It is whispered that they are not quite human.
The true leaders of the people of Leng are the shamans, who hold great power in their camps by virtue of the terror they inspire. They are known by the blue markings with whic
h their faces are decorated when they reach the age of manhood, and by a small amulet of green jade that they wear about their necks on a thong. It has the shape of a winged beast resembling a great dog, its snout distorted in a snarl of murderous rage. This stone is both a symbol of their power and a sign of their bondage, for once put on they may never remove it, and must wear it even after death, lest the harvesters of souls send collectors in the form of crows and rats and other carrion things to steal their bones and enslave their sleeping essence.
Dogs similar to those carved on these stones haunt the outskirts of the camps, their drawn-out cries sounding across the plain like the lamentations of the damned. These beasts are far larger than our desert dogs, almost the size of a crouching man; they lack the wings shown in the images of the amulets, but are in every other respect identical. Hunting in large packs, they take the weak herd animals for their food and, when they are able, the children and elderly of the nomads. No force of arms serves to keep them at bay, only powerful necromancy employing the corpses of slain warriors, who when animated become the night guardians of the camps.
The winged hounds of the soul stones are jealous protectors, and will smell out the footsteps of any fool who steals such an amulet from its shaman and exact a terrible vengeance. So long as the amulets are worn, the shamans are invulnerable to the consequences of their actions, and may enact any outrage against men or gods with impunity. They fear nothing other than the monks of the monastery, to whom they accord a sullen deference. Alone among the people of Leng they eat no flesh from the herd beasts, but only the flesh of human beings, which they boil in great copper kettles until it is tender, then salt and dry for provisions on their migrations. The common people of the plateau are willing to pay this price for the protection from the dogs, and from other threats less physical, provided by the shamans.