by Donald Tyson
Those who wander into their embrace and manage to escape their snare do so under the light of the moon, which shows the path to their frenzied gaze as they flee. Travelers cut by the wraiths during the dark of the moon are doomed, for it is not possible without illumination to run across the rock-strewn valley floor yet avoid stumbling. A lantern or torch is insufficient since these artificial lights do not cast their glow far enough ahead to provide warning of obstacles on the ground. Many are the men who have entered the valley of the dead at night, only to serve as meat for jackals in the first glow of dawn, for what the wraiths leave, the jackals and carrion hawks consume.
everal days’ sail above Thebes, the river Nile becomes difficult to navigate, its course broken by a series of cataracts that necessitate overland travel around the turbulent waters. Between the cataracts progress is made up the river in small boats easily overturned by the crocodiles that lie in wait for them as though for a careless cow that comes to the edge of the river to drink. With swift thrusts of their long tails these fearsome beasts can rise partially from the water to snatch a man from inside a boat, and what they take below the surface is never recovered. For this reason the masters of the boats tie the wing feathers of the bird known as the ibis to the bows, for it is the belief of those who trade along the river that the ibis and crocodile are mortal enemies, and that the crocodile fears the ibis. This is no more than a fable, for men have been snatched from boats that bear the ibis feather and, indeed, having similar feathers tied around their necks.
Above the Second Cataract the men dwelling along the Nile are no longer Egyptian but a black race having its own customs and gods. It is believed by some of our scholars that from this region of the Upper Nile the Queen of Sheba came, who visited Solomon at Jerusalem to sit at his feet and learn wisdom, but the true location of the land of Sheba has been forgotten. The gods of the people are many and savage, in accord with their nature; for the people wear little clothing and speak in a guttural tongue, and they are hostile to strangers in their villages until placated with gifts. Chief among the gods is Bes, a squat, fat savage who has even made his way to Thebes as a token of good fortune. He has no blood tie with the lineage of Egyptian gods but is a vulgar intruder in their land.
Despite their lack of social graces and the absence of notable monuments in stone that would attest to their skill as builders, the black race above the Second Cataract has generated sorcerers as potent as any in the world. They worship Yig in the living form of a great serpent or dragon that is a length of thirty paces from nose to tail, and crushes horses and oxen in its coils before swallowing them whole. This beast is larger than the basilisk but it has no venom, and relies only upon its strength to kill its prey. They also worship Tsathoggua, a god of the Old Ones, though not one of their seven lords, who is adored most often in hot and humid regions where the mud is fertile and thick with creeping things.
Of all the Old Ones, Tsathoggua is the most malicious save only for Nyarlathotep. His form is that of a great toad with the head of a man, having a wide slitted mouth and bulbous eyes. In power he equals or surpasses the lords, but at some distant age he was cast out from their midst and compelled to dwell alone and apart in the nethermost depths of the vaults of Zin, growing ever fatter and more obscene on the rivers of blood shed on his altars by his fanatical inhuman worshippers. The reason for his expulsion from the circle of lords cannot be uttered, for to reveal it is certain death, but it is the cause of the god’s constant and unending hunger, and has bearing on the fall of the Dragon into the Bottomless Pit * * * * * about which no more may be hinted.
Long after the inhuman race that worshipped him in deep caverns had decayed to mindless barbarity, the black statues of Tsathoggua were discovered abandoned in their temples in the vaults of Zin by men who ventured there, and were carried upward, eventually reaching the surface of the earth, where the cult of the toad god waxed mighty in the Black Lands. The thick blood of sacrifices spilled before the malignant gaze of his statue is used to create a kind of living ichor animated by the god and subject to his will. It is unwise to venture within a temple of Tsathoggua, for this viscose sentinel never sleeps.
The shamans of the black race of Khem, as they call the land in their own tongue, have power to control the bodies of the dead, but not after the same manner as the priests of Nyarlathotep at Thebes, for the priests of the Sphinx resurrect the mummies of those long dead to a natural life, so that their souls return to their flesh and they are in every respect as they were before death, but the shamans above the Second Cataract are only able to raise the corpses of those newly dead, and animate their bodies in an unnatural way, by the invocation of demonic spirits that are made by the power of Tsathoggua to dwell in these houses of decaying flesh. The bodies continue to corrupt after given a semblance of life, so that their term of use is limited, and eventually they fall into a putrid mass, yet still moving and aware, for the spirit inhabiting the corpse will not depart until the body has become incapable of movement.
The demons called into the dead flesh give their vessels great strength and are obedient to the shamans who summon them, for only the shamans have the knowledge to destroy these infernal spirits, although other magicians are able to call or banish them. The shamans use such shambling dead to fulfill their purposes among their people, and it is certain that a man who insults a shaman, or refuses to pay the expected offering, will be visited in the night by one of these possessed shells and murdered. This common practice has aroused great hatred among the common people against the shamans, but terror prevents them from acting to rid the land of these outrages. Each village along the river has its own head man and its own shaman and his apprentice, but the shaman rules the head man, who cannot enforce the laws without his concurrence.
In this place Christendom has no hold, nor is the faith of Islam known among this savage race. There are a scattered few who practice the ways of Moses, for the faith of the Hebrews has spread from the land of Ethiopia that lies to the east, where it has endured for centuries. How the laws of Moses became established so far south of Jerusalem is a mystery, but many assert that the Queen of Sheba, when she returned from her visit with Solomon, brought back his faith and instituted its practice. Hebrew charms are to be seen worn around the necks of the common people, who have no understanding of what the letters represent, and most frequent is the name of God with four letters, called by the Greeks tetragrammaton, which simply signifies four letters.
During the day the possessed dead lie in boxes or in shallow holes beneath the earth, which does not inconvenience them for they have no need to breathe and are immune to discomfort. When the shaman who created them wishes to send them out to do his will, he summons them to him by means of a small whistle made from the thinner bone of the human forearm. The shamans regard these whistles as precious objects and never remove them from the thong around their necks. They can produce three notes that are thin and high-pitched, like the cries of soaring birds, but by varying the length and order of the notes, the sounds they make are infinite in number. To the common people of this race, no sound in the night is more terrifying than the whistle of a shaman.
After the walking corpse is called up from its repose, the shaman leads it to the house or other place where is to be found his intended victim, and gives to the corpse an object that has had close contact with the flesh of the man the possessing demon is intended to slay. Hair and nail parings are most often used, but a sweat-stained garment, a sandal, or even a dried piece of excrement will also serve. From the contact which this object once had with the person, the demon inhabiting the corpse knows who it is to kill, and proceeds directly to the unfortunate man; nor will any opposition or subterfuge turn it from its purpose, for though it moves awkwardly it never tires or ceases to pursue its intention until it has accomplished the shaman’s desire.
A young warrior who had offended the shaman of his village by refusing to pay the offering of gold demanded by the shaman managed to avoi
d his fate for eleven days by constant flight, during which he paused neither to eat nor to sleep, but on the twelfth night exhaustion overcame him, and the corpse walker summoned by the shaman, much putrefied and deformed by the long days spent lying in the ground under the sun and walking the paths beneath the moon, and riddled with crawling beetles and worms, strangled him in his sleep so that the exhausted youth awoke into death.
Only the shamans themselves are immune from the assassins they make, for a certain music played on the bone whistle sends the demon that inhabits the corpse flying away with a ghastly cry, and the empty human shell collapses to the ground. In this way shamans cannot prey upon their own kind, but all others—from the lowest beggar to the king of the land—are in jeopardy from their displeasure. Consequently they are treated with an exaggerated respect and accorded a dignity that is quite comical by the leaders of their race, for they are usually naked and unwashed, with their long hair plastered with mud and their faces painted. Even so, it is invariably the king who prostrates himself before the leader of the shamans, not the head shaman who grovels at the feet of the king. The leaders of the land use the arts of the shamans to discover their enemies and kill them, and in no other land is assassination by the arts of magic so assiduously practiced.
A traveler to Khem who is versed in the arts of necromancy and resolute in heart will do well to capture and abduct one of these shamans, and through torture learn the music that separates the demon from its dead husk. After killing the man and taking the bone whistle from around his neck, he will thereafter be enabled to inquire into the practices and secrets of the shamans without fear that a vitalized corpse will be sent to murder him; even so, precautions must be taken to prevent admission to the sleeping place without the raising of an alarm, for it is the sly practice of these unnatural creatures to creep upon their prey while they sleep; for this cause every shaman sleeps only while his apprentice wakes and watches.
hose departing Egypt by sea commonly do so through the port of Alexandria, established many centuries ago by the Greek conqueror of the same name during his occupation of this land. In the days of the caesars it was the greatest city of Egypt, but in recent generations its grandeur has departed and its harbor has been allowed to fill with silt, yet despite this neglect it remains the gateway for many who come to Egypt from distant lands across the sea. In other cities of the Nile, those from foreign lands are looked upon with distrust, and the locals shun communication with them, but in Alexandria a dozen different tongues may be heard by a man who stands in the market square. The most common language of the city is still Greek, for the city was built by Greeks and settled by Greeks, and many ancient and honorable families that served the administrations of the Ptolemies yet remain.
The tale of the great library of Alexandria—how it contained more books than any other library in the world; how it was the wonder of scholars, who traveled from distant cities to study its manuscripts; and how under the aggressions of the Romans it was burned and all its books lost—is so well-known that it need not be repeated. In one respect the story of the library is inaccurate, for when it burned, not all its books were destroyed. Many scribes and nobles of the city ran into the flaming building before the collapse of its roof and saved armloads of precious parchment and papyrus scrolls. Even after the passage of centuries, these are still to be found in this city, offered for sale by Greeks and Jews who deal in rare books, and on some the soot and scorching of the flames is still visible.
The rarest of these works, scarce whispered about since so few of those who trade in books know of its existence, is a papyrus scroll on a roller of polished human thighbone written in the language of the Old Ones, though its letters are Greek. It is a copy of a book that is older than the race of man, and in it is described the history of the Old Ones and their war against the Elder Things, but its subject alone is not what makes it so precious. Each line of the language of the Old Ones is translated by a line in the Greek tongue written immediately below it. By study of this scroll it is possible to learn the speaking of words of power in the tongue of the Old Ones, and it is for this reason that the work is more sought after than any other book by men versed in arcane wisdom.
The Jew who possesses the scroll will not sell it, for it has become his livelihood. However, for an extraordinary amount of gold he will permit carefully selected scholars to copy the text over a span of one day and night. Longer than this he is unwilling to allow the precious work to remain outside its guarded vault; nor will he permit one who pays for this privilege to hire a scribe to do the work, but the scholar himself must set pen to paper and make the copy in his own hand under careful watch, in a place that is fortified against the intrusion of thieves. None who copy the scroll know of its location, since it is a part of their agreement that they be led blindfolded and alone to the place where the work is done. They go at midnight and return at midnight the following night, with as much of the work as they are able to transcribe; for the work is long and difficult, and it is the vexation of many who pay the price that they must leave it before they have completed their copies.
Each man that reproduces the scroll swears a potent oath never to reveal its contents or its existence to any other, for the owner does not wish his price to be diminished by competition; but the reason he gives is that the work is too dangerous to risk the corruption of its contents by repeated transcription from imperfect copies.
To seal their oath, the purchasers of the work impress the print of their thumbs on a parchment contract using their own blood. There are those who in distant lands have laughed at this oath, and have attempted to sell copies of the work, but they invariably meet with misfortune, and any copies they have made are quickly lost or destroyed by seemingly natural events. Indeed, it is a great risk to so much as mention the existence of the book, so that among the scattered few who know of its existence, seldom is found one willing to talk about it.
Those seeking this work who have the wealth in gold to purchase it, for the owner will accept no payment other than gold, should inquire about it in the inn that is on the street extending past the ancient temple of Hermes, which is at present little more than a ruin, as the cedar beams of its roof have fallen after centuries of neglect. The sign of the inn is the Green Peacock, and the proprietor will not answer questions about the book, but if he is shown sufficient gold to meet the required price, and has reason to believe that your inquiry is in earnest, he will speak to a man who is able to contact the owner of the book, who you will never meet face to face, nor will you ever learn his name. Until the matter is decided, you should take a room at the inn and have care to sleep under its roof each night.
If your request to purchase a day to copy the work is rejected, you must flee for your life from Alexandria, for if you linger you will surely be murdered, and three days of waiting is sufficient to decide the issue; however, if the owner accepts your offer of payment, you will not know it until midnight on the second or third night after speaking to the keeper of the inn, when a man who has his face veiled will awaken you from sleep and accept your payment of gold, then place a hood over your head and guide you to the house where the book is to be copied.
Parchment, pens, and ink of the finest quality will await you there, all more than sufficient for your needs. A lamp burns on the table as you enter the room where the work will be done, but at your request as many as three lamps will be provided, and the attendants keep these carefully trimmed and filled with oil. The window of the chamber is always shuttered, so that you cannot know if it is day or night. Before being allowed to see or touch the scroll, one of the attendants will bring a basin of clear water in which you are required to wash your hands, and a linen cloth for drying your fingers.
The scroll is carried in a small box of carven ivory bound with beaten silver hinges and clasps. The attendants will not say, or do not know, if the box was made at the same time as the scroll, or was fashioned at a later period to contain it, but the terrifying form
s carved into its lid and sides are unlike any of the beasts that walk the surface of the earth in this age, and match descriptions of similar creatures in the text of the book. The scroll itself is well preserved, showing no signs of the brittleness that so often afflicts old papyrus scrolls exposed to the rays of the sun, and its inks are not faded, but as bright and clear as the day it was penned. At the top is a curious convolute dragon in red, green, and gold, the body of which trails down the left side of the papyrus to its foot. The Greek letters are unusually small, but well formed, making it an easy matter to read them for one with good eyesight.
Not even for an instant will you be alone with the precious scroll; not for the merest moment will the keen gaze of at least one of the two attendants be turned from you as you sit at the table and in a fever of haste seek to duplicate all, yet to avoid errors in transcription. However, the attendants, though they be well armed and ever vigilant, are not well versed in the arts of magic. With a little-known spell muttered under the breath, they can be lulled into a waking trance in which they will believe anything they may be told as though it had truly happened.
The story is related by one who has true knowledge of the matter, and whose words may be trusted, that not many years past a necromancer from our lands cast this glamour over their senses, and so contrived at midnight to leave the sealed chamber with the original scroll in his hand, while his newly made copy remained upon the table. The ensorcered attendants saw, as he wished them to see, the scroll upon the table, and the copy in his hand, but the reverse was true. Because the necromancer did not violate his oath, in that he did not make copies from his own copy of the work, no fatal consequences befell him.