by Brian Lumley
His compassion, yes, which even now worked against him like an acid, betraying him in what he must do, filling him with - guilt! Crow felt it flowing out from him, and was astonished. `Kthanid, what is it? Why have you brought me here? What is it you want me to do, which at the last you can't tell me face to face?'
`What I want you to do? Nothing. It is what I must do, for which I need your permission!'
Impossible! Crow's mind itself must be deceiving him. Kthanid needed his permission before he could perform some act?
`Titus, in your homeworld you had a friend, the man de Marigny. A good man; I myself sent him questing after you and Tiania when you were trapped in the lands of Earth's dreams. Aye, and I promised him a welcome in Elysia, even as a son, if only he return you both alive and sane to me from your travails.'
Crow nodded. 'He did those things. More, we purged the dreamlands of certain evils - though in the end that was as much your victory as ours.'
Kthanid gave a mental groan and turned his great head away. 'You cannot know the pain your words bring me .
`What?' Crow was at first bemused - then mortally afraid. The blood drained from him in a moment. 'Henri?' he whispered, 'Something has happened to Henri?'
`No, no,' the great Being was quick to answer. 'Be at ease over his well-being. He is well, I promise you. Indeed, soon I shall ask you to ride a Great Thought to him, in Borea on the rim of the bitter ether winds.'
Crow relaxed a little, allowed himself a sigh of relief. `Then you intend to keep your promise, bring him here? Whatever it is that threatens Elysia, I can assure you that de Marigny will be a useful force against it!'
`Useful, yes,' again Kthanid nodded. And: 'Bring him here? Use him? Ah! and indeed I intend to use him - but in such a way! And that is why I need your permission.'
Crow frowned, shook his head. `Kthanid, I don't think I fully -'
'Let me remind you,' Kthanid broke in, 'of things-you know well enow but perhaps have forgotten - or at least put to the back of your mind-during your time in Elysia.'
And then the great Being used a skill of his to throw into Crow's mind a mass of detail, a host of memories revived, and all so thick and fast that even the mind of Titus Crow reeled at this assault on his senses; at the assault itself, and in the face of the evils it conjured.
He was reminded of the ongoing struggle between the intelligent races of the multiverse and the prime Forces of Evil, those- prisoned beings of the Cthulhu cycle:
Yog-Sothoth, 'the all-in-one and one-in-all' - a slime-thing frothing forever behind his shielding congeries of iridescent power-globes, co-existent with all time and conterminous in all space stood high in their ranks; likewise
Ithaqua the Wind-Walker, stalker between the stars; and Hastur the Unspeakable, half-brother and bitter rival to Cthulhu, dweller in the ill-omened Lake of Hall in the Hyades. Crow knew and had had dealings with all of them, so that Kthanid's sendings merely reinforced his knowledge of them.
He knew the others of this vile pantheon, too, some of them standing on a par with the prime powers, others lower in the scheme of things or subservient to the principal beings and forces. There was Yibb-Tstll: gigantic, grotesquely manlike lord of an alien dimension beyond the borders of sanity; and Shudde-M'ell, nest-master of the subterranean Cthonians of primal Earth; and Cthugha, whose thermal flux had reversed itself and so deranged the once ordered working of his radioactive mind. There was Darn, fish-god of the Philistines and the Phoenicians and ruler over the Deep Ones, degenerate subaqueous (and sub-human, or once-human) servants of Cthulhu and his ilk. Nyogtha, too, and Thar, Lloigor, Tsathoggua and Bugg-Shash
The list went on, menacing and monstrous, but central and towering over all, always there was Cthulhu, 'an utter contradiction of all matter, force, and cosmic order,' whose lunatic telepathic sendings from R'lyeh in the deep Pacific were of such morbid potency that they were responsible for much of Earth's madness, and almost all of men's nightmares in the land of Earth's dreams.
Basically the legend or history of this ancient order of near-immortal beings was this: that at a time so remote in the past as to defy comparison or definition, they had risen up in a body and rebelled against Order, invoking Chaos as the natural condition. After committing an act so heinous that even they themselves were shocked, they fled and hid in various places and on many parallel planes of existence. Outraged, the Elder Gods regrouped, followed on and tracked them down each and every one, 'chaining' them wherever they were found and placing 'spells' to hold them in their prisons or in selected regions of space-time: Hastur in the Lake of Hall in Carcosa, Cthulhu in sunken R'lyeh, Ithaqua to dwell in frozen interstellar winds and above the ice-wastes of Earth's Arctic, Yog-Sothoth and Yibb-Tstll to chaotic continua outside any known design of science or nature, Tsathoggua to black Hyperborean burrows, and likewise Shudde-M'ell and many of his Cthonians to other buried labyrinths in primal Africa.
All commerce was lost between them except for the contact of disembodied thought. In their infinite wisdom and mercy, the Elder Gods had not taken away the mind-powers of the Great Old Ones, but had merely set up barriers to keep the evil potency of such telepathic wave-bands down to a bearable level. Thus, in the loneliness of their punishment, the Great Old Ones could still `talk' to one another, even if the power of such communications was much reduced ...
The flow from Kthanid's mind lessened, finally ceased. And still Crow was puzzled. Why had the great Being shown him these things he already knew so well? Why refresh his memory in these morbid areas? Unless —
`Is de Marigny threatened by the CCD?' he asked. 'Is that what this is all about? Frankly, I don't see how it can be. We've always been under threat, de Marigny and I. No, it must be worse, far worse than that. And how is Henri involved?'
`We are all threatened, Titus,' Kthanid's thoughts were utterly grave now. 'Your Earth, all other worlds of the three-dimensional universe's intelligent races, the parallel places and subconscious planes — even Elysia!'
Crow's eyes widened. 'They've risen again,' he whispered. 'Is that what you're trying to tell me? They're free again, and more powerful than ever. The Great Old Ones are back!'
'Very nearly correct,' Kthanid answered at once. 'But no,
they are not yet "free", as you have it — not yet. But their time is close now; soon they will have the power to be free; even now the constellations move into certain patterns which never should have been. Azathoth, which you knew in your world as the power of nuclear fission, is the betrayer. The mindless- nuclear chaos and confusion which spawned us all is a force of Nature and may not be denied. Out there in the vasty voids, gas clouds gather and Azathoth lights them to suns; stars are born which complete a pattern whose configuration is the one thing come down to us from a time beyond all other times; and yes, it would seem that for. Cthulhu and those you choose to call the Great Old Ones — after all these eons of time — at last the stars are coming right! Look!'
Face-tentacles reaching out toward the huge ball of crystal on the onyx table between them — that milky shewstone whose entire opaque surface seemed slowly mobile, like a reflection of dense clouds mirrored in a still lake —Kthanid showed Crow a distant scene. For as the Earthman stared at the crystal, slowly the milky clouds parted to reveal a picture of an almost sacred place:
Elysia's Vale of Dreams, at the foot of the Purple Mountains far to the south. Tiania had taken Crow there once, to that mysterious place. Mysterious, aye; for there, cut into the royal basalt, were the Thousand Sealed Doors of the N'hlathi, hibernating centipede creatures whose slumbers had already lasted for five thousand years and were not due to be broken for as long again. And the pattern of the doors — each one of which was thirty feet in diameter, sealed with bands of a white metal that no acid might ever corrode — was as the shape of a huge whorl against the face of the mountain, like the spiral of Andromeda.
It is the spiral nebula in Andromeda!' came Kthanid's thoughts in answer to Crow's own, however unspoken.
'Each portal indicates an especially bright star in that mighty whorl. Now let me show you something else — ' and again he reached out with his face-tentacles.
Now, superimposed over these thousand portals to the burrows of the immemorially dreaming N'hlathi, Crow saw Andromeda, how perfectly its principal stars matched the pattern of the doors. 'But see,' Kthanid indicated where Crow should look, 'there are three doors where no stars exist; but at this very moment spatial debris gathers in one of these places, and in the others ancient suns bid for rebirth. Gravity forms mass . . . and soon the raw and elemental power of nuclear genesis- will do the rest. Ah! Seer
For even as Kthanid had spoken, so another star had blazed up, newborn and bright, central in the circular panel of one of the great basalt doors. And now only two spaces remained to be filled ...
Kthanid turned his great head from the crystal, and at once milky clouds rolled as before across its surface. And: `So you have seen for yourself,' said the Elder, God, 'how time narrows down for us.'
Crow kept his patience, knew that Kthanid constructed his case this way the better for him to grasp the whole picture. And sure enough:
`Another portent,' said the golden Kraken in a little while. 'The giant poppies put up their shoots in the Vale of Dreams. Aye, and the N'hlathi stir in their burrows. It would seem that their ten-thousand-year cycle is broken. Soon the N'hlathi will waken and graze on the seed of the poppy, but utterly out of their season. And it is a matter of legend that this has only ever once happened before — when Cthulhu and his cohorts rose them up against universal sanity! And so you can see, this too is a bad omen .
Now Crow must speak; he controlled his mental agitation, tried to ask only ordered, logical questions: 'Then the N'hlathi are harbingers of doom? I've heard it said that the history of the giant centipedes has never been written, their tongue never understood, the inscriptions on their doors never deciphered, not even by the Dchi-chis. But since they would seem to have had knowledge of this now imminent coming of the Great Old Ones, to such an extent that they deliberately, correctly forecast the pattern of this fantastic omen, as a warning, surely -'
- Surely we should have made every effort to decipher the legends of their doors long before now? Titus, our greatest scholars, linguists, calligraphers and cryptographers have worked on those inscriptions for a thousand years! It is only through the work of such masters as Esch that we recognized the pattern in the first place. Aye, and his work progresses well - work which I have only disturbed in order to bring him here so that the Dchi-chis, too, may know of the doom hanging over us all. And so I hope to hasten him and others of his race in their work . .
`Why not simply wait for them to wake up?' Crow asked.
`Who can say how long their waking will take or if it will be soon enough? Indeed, we might contact them in their dreams, but their minds are different; to disturb their hibernation might be to destroy them. We cannot risk that.'
Crow nodded, frowned, said: 'But still you haven't told me what Henri has to do with all of this. How exactly do you intend to use my friend, Kthanid? What is it you need my permission to do? And remember: it was you promised him a welcome here.'
Yet again Kthanid's mental groan. 'I remember it well enough, Titus Crow. But as you well know, there's no royal road into Elysia. Still and all, yes, I greatly desire for him to come here now - but by a route extraordinary?
Dark suspicions growing, Crow waited, and:
`First let me say this,' Kthanid continued. 'The last dine Cthulhu rose him up, we put him down. If it goes our way, this time will be the same. If not - ' Crow sensed a mental shrug.
But something which had been bothering the Earthman at the back of his mind now surfaced. 'That's it!' he cried. `That's what puzzles me. If you had the measure of the Great Old Ones way back there at the dawn of time, and if you beat them then, why not use the same process over again? After all, they've been prisoned for billions of years while your science has gone on, improving almost to infinity. So how can they possibly form any real threat now?'
`Their threat comes in two forms,' said Kthanid, patient as ever 'Against Elysia and us Elder Beings, whom they detest and are sworn to destroy, and against your Earth and the lesser worlds and planes of existence. We in Elysia are far from helpless against them, but what of the rest of the sane, ordered universe? Aye, and against us they have a great advantage: for while they may kill or try to kill us, our laws utterly forbid us to kill them!'
`I begin to understand,' said Crow. 'You may defend yourselves defend Elysia, Earth, the other places - but you may not attack, not kill. You can only trap them, prison them as before. And you don't know where they'll strike first, right?'
`That is correct, and so we would like to be able to direct their first strike! More of that in a moment, for that's where your friend de Marigny comes in - with your permission. Without it- then we must seek another way. But first let me explain something else:
`You have asked why we do not use the same forces - the same methods - against the evil Great Old Ones that were used before. The answer is this: that we are no longer certain exactly how we defeated them?
Crow was utterly dumbfounded. 'But you were part of it you engineered it - you are the self-same Elder Gods, the same great scientists who brought them down! Are you saying you've forgotten how you achieved your victory?'
`That is precisely-what I am saying! Oh, we remember the last million years with considerable clarity, but what of the three and a half thousand million years before that?'
While Crow absorbed that fantastic thought, that vision of eons, so he felt the Elder God searching delicately in his mind for parallels: looking for ways to make his meaning clear. And finally:
'No single atom of my body is the same - every single one of them has regenerated many times - in three and a half billion years! Memory? Do you remember your first week of life on the planet Earth? Listen, in a time of your planet's history which I consider yesterday, many peoples spoke Latin and who remembers how it was spoken now? Certain scholars guess. Some of them fairly closely. Your "ancient" Egyptians built great pyramid tombs, and who is there "today" to say how they built them? Your scholars guess. Indeed, you have only recently rediscovered their writing! And what man of you remembers the time when the Elder Gods shaped themselves like men and came down to mate with your daughters, which made you great? Not a one; it is the merest echo of a legend. But indeed there were giants in the land in those days. Yes, I have forgotten!'
Still Crow's mind, keen as any, could not accept it. 'There are no records?'
'Records? Do not think thoughts atme of primitive books and tapes and plastic disks, Titus Crow! The finest memory crystals turn to dust in a billion years. Metals transmute. Sand becomes stone and is worn down to sand again. Indeed, entire worlds may be born and die in that span! The records are gone, forgotten, erased, eroded, extinct. Now, like man, we live with myths and legends . .'
'Except the N'hlathi.'
'Exactly, for they have "lived" only a few hours out of each ten thousand years. Their minds are the original minds and uncluttered, uneroded. They remember everything. And the legends are writ on their sealed chamber doors.'
Suddenly Crow felt infinitely tiny before this mighty Being and the concepts he conjured. 'You've. -literally forgotten more than my entire race shall ever learn,' he mumbled then. 'And yet you call me here to ask my permission ... for what?'
And at that point Kthanid told him how he would 'use' de Marigny. Crow might have argued, might even have denied him. The dangers to his friend would be ... enormous! But at least Henri would have a chance, however slim. He'd taken slim chances before, run the gantlet and lived to tell the tale; and as Kthanid had pointed out, there was no royal road into Elysia.
Finally, after long moments of thought, Crow nodded, said: 'I'll ride your Great Thought to de Marigny, Kthanid. Yes, and I'll tell him what I must tell him.'
The Eminence seemed to sigh, nodded gravely. 'I thank
you, Titus Crow. Indeed, all Elysia thanks you. But before that there are things that must be done, messages to be run. Now stay here beside me and hear what I shall tell my messengers, and then we shall think a Great Thought to carry you to Borgia.'
He motioned and the curtains hissed open, and the sounds of the assembled peoples of Elysia flooded in. Then Kthanid called certain of them to attend him ..
.. Some little time later four 'messengers' went out from the Hall of Crystal and Pearl and made their ways at once and swiftly to various parts of Elysia. One of these was the Thermal Being previously noted by Titus Crow among the throng, another a gossamer-winged, insect-like and ephemeral creature who carried a memory-crystal hurriedly prepared by Kthanid; both of these flew under their own power to the Corridor of Clocks beneath the soaring Blue Mountains.
Of the two remaining messengers: one was Tiania herself, who flew Oth-Neth to The Tree in the Gardens of Nymarrah; the other was a Dchi-chi pupil of Esch, specializing in the cryptic codes, enigmatic and riddlish conversation
of wizards, who flew a gravity-defying airform to the spherical aerie of Ardatha Ell at the uppermost limits of Elysia's atmosphere.
In the Corridor of Clocks, the Thermal Being paused before a huge time-clock of near-indestructible glass. The four curious hands on its great dial were tipped with gold to make them more conspicuous, but their motion about the hieroglyphed dial was utterly eccentric for all that, which is the way of such devices. The Thermal Being considered his instructions one last time; he would carry them out to the letter, not returning to Elysia until... until this thing with the Great Old Ones was finished. Which meant that he might never return. So be it.