The House of Cthulhu: Tales of the Primal Land Vol. 1 Read online

  Will this vileness never end?

  Yours—

  Teh Atht.

  V

  Aeries of Hreen Castle;

  Nest of the Fanged Hawk;

  First Day of the Season of the Sun;

  Dawn—

  Illustrious Engineer of Illusions,

  Most happily I report my continued good health, despite all the spells doubtless cast against me by those unknown agencies of which every sorcerer in all Theem’hdra now goes in dread fear and loathing. Without a shadow of a doubt I owe my well-being in great part to you . . . for which reason I trust that you, too, are well and that no evil has befallen you?

  Your tomb-bat messenger from Syphtar’s sepulcher reached me safely, carrying its precious rune, and in the tenth day following my receipt of the same I at last translated the thing from the glyphs in which you had so cleverly enciphered it. Aye, for I am now familiar with your system, Teh Atht, and I marvel at the magnitude of a mind that could devise so mazy a cryptogram! It was not so very difficult, however, once I had broken the code that hid from my eager eyes the 9th S., for it would appear that all your codes are cast in pretty much the same mold. You may now rest easy in the knowledge that your spell shall not fall into alien hands, and that the need to supply me with a key to the code no longer exists . . .

  Moreover, before I commenced the inscribing of this letter here in this high place, I made the necessary signs as the sun came up and I said the words of the rune, and lo!—now I am protected against all evils. All thanks to you, Teh Atht, who succored me in my hour of greatest need.

  Yours in the Discovery of Mysteries—

  Hatr-ad.

  VI

  Chamber of Infirmity—

  Third Day of the Sun—

  Hour of the Tide’s Turning.

  Honourable Hatr-ad,

  Overjoyed as I am to hear of your own continuing good health, alas, I cannot report a similar condition in myself. Indeed no, for I am the victim of several severe disorders—which by their very nature I know to be most unnatural! Unnecessary to go into details, but sufficient to say that I am unwell. Even unto death am I, Teh Atht, unwell . . .

  Only the most powerful of unguents and nostrums keep me alive (for my spells no longer work and I am obliged to rely upon merely common cures) so that even the writing of this letter is an ordeal to one whose hands tremble and jerk in unendurable agony as his body festers and rots! If you could see me, Hatr-ad, I believe you would shriek and run from the horror I am become—and I am completely at a loss to remedy the matter of my own free will.

  Thus my letter is a plea, that you put aside whatever else engages you at this time and weave your most beneficent sorceries on my behalf—else I am done for! For without a shadow of a doubt those same fell forces of which you forewarned are upon me, and lo—I am at their mercy!

  My decline commenced almost immediately upon receipt of your last—which, bat-borne and innocent in itself, was nevertheless like some harbinger of doom—and as it progresses so it accelerates. It would seem as though a combination of plagues, cankers and contagions are upon me, and without outside help I am doomed to an hideous death even within the space of ten days, possibly less. How this can possibly be when I am protected by the Rune of Power I am again at a loss to say. The evil which is abroad in Theem’hdra is powerful indeed!

  I can write no longer. The pus that seeps from my body’s pores threatens to foul the vellum upon which I scrawl this final plea: that you spare no single second but come immediately to the assistance of—

  Thine in Ultimate Torment,

  Teh Atht . . .

  VII

  Hreen Castle—Imperial Residence of:

  Hatr-ad. Mightiest Magician in all Theem ‘hdra—

  First Night of the Full Moon;

  Hour of Gleeth ‘s Blind Smiling on the Eastern Range.

  Doom-Destined Teh Atht—

  Not without a modicum of remorse do I, Highborn Hatr-ad, inscribe this final epistle—the last you shall ever read! Indeed, of all other sorcerers in Theem’hdra, you were the one I most respected: for if ever a man were sufficiently gifted to oppose me in my great ambition—of which I was often wont to boast during our apprenticeship in old Imhlat the Idiot’s tutelage—then you were that man. Or so I thought . . .

  Perhaps my words recall to your obviously age-enfeebled mind that ambition of mine? Aye, I’m sure they do, for oft and again I swore that one day I would make of myself the most powerful sorcerer in all the land. That day is now at hand, Teh Atht, and you above all other men have assisted me in the realization of my dream.

  Now, too, it is plain to me that I ranked you o’er high among magicians, for who but a fool would give away a spell of ultimate protection?—and in so doing rob himself of that very protection! Aye, Teh Atht, for surely you have guessed by now that I am the origin and the source of the terror over Theem’hdra? Surely you are now aware whose spells they are that bring down the land’s sorcerers in their prime, that rot you yourself in your bed, where even now you lie impotently awaiting death? Nor can that death be so very far away now; indeed, it amazes me that you survive, if you survive, to read this letter!

  Even now I would not openly betray myself thus had not word reached me of your confinement, and of the fact that your throat has rotted so that you speak not, and that your body is so wasted that you are barely capable of the feeblest stirrings. Yet, if your very eyes are not utterly dissolved away, you will be able to read this, for I have written it in one of your own codes that no other may know of my triumph.

  But what pleasure is there in an empty victory, Teh Atht? For surely my triumph would be empty if in the end none remained to know of it? Thus I now reveal all to you, that before you die you may know of Hatr-ad’s victory, of his ambition fulfilled. For surely now I am indeed the greatest sorcerer in all Theem’hdra!

  My thanks, Teh Atht, for your inestimable aid in this matter, without which I might yet be sorely pressed to bring about the desired result. Now you may rest your festering eyes, my old and foolish friend, in the final sleep. Go, and find peace in the arms of Shoosh, Goddess of the Still Slumbers . . .

  Yours for the Dream of a New Age of Magickal Empire,

  Hatr-ad the Mighty.

  VIII

  Room of Red Revenge;

  Apartments over Klühn;

  Day of Recovering,

  Hour of Truth!

  O Most Misguided, Miserable Hatr-ad—

  Heartless one, I fear that your odious ambitions are come to an end—and better for Theem’hdra and all her more worthy wizards were that ending not protracted. Therefore let me linger not over the matter but get to its root with all dispatch.

  For you were unmasked, o murderer, long before you chose to show your true face. Nathless it was deemed only fair and just that the truth be heard from your own lips before sentence was passed. The truth is now known . . . and I have been chosen to pass sentence.

  Even now I can hardly ponder the enormity of your crimes without feeling within myself a gnawing nausea, that so vile and monstrous a man could guise himself as “friend” in order to go about his death-dealing devilments!

  Murderer! I say it again, and the punishment shall fit the crime . . .

  As to why I bother to write this when your fate will speak volumes of its own, there are reasons. Mayhap amongst your retainers, cronies and familiars there are those who, lusting after similar lordly stations, would carry on your fiendish business in your wake? To them, I, Teh Atht, address this warning—mazed in no cypher but writ in the clear, clean glyphs of Theem’hdra—that it suffice to set their feet upon more enlightened paths.

  As for enlightenment: allow me now to unravel for you the more tangled threads of this skein, that you may see yourself as do we, whose sorceries are deemed white (or at worst grey) against your black!

  To begin:

  Throughout all Theem’hdra I have my informants, who work under no duress but are all beholden to me in one w
ay or another. From them, barely in advance of your first letter, I learned of the dissolution of Druth, the demise of devil-diseased Dhor, the eerie exanimation of Ye-namat, and even the terrible termination of old Imhlat the Teacher.

  Now, it were perhaps no surprise had but one or even two of these old comrades gone the way of all flesh; it is not uncommon for sorcerous experiments to go sadly amiss, and the dead men were crafty sorcerers all. But four of them?

  Moreover I found it a singularly suspicious circumstance that Hatr-ad—who never found reason to communicate with me before, and of whom I had heard precious little of merit in the long years since our mutual apprenticeship—should be so quick off the mark to recognise the advent of malevolent powers and warn me of them.

  Then when I gave thought to all you had written, it dawned on me that indeed I had suffered certain discomforts of late; nothing serious but . . . headaches and creaking joints and bouts of dizziness now and then. Could they have been the residue of malicious spells sent against me and deflected by the protections which are ever present about my apartments?

  If so, who had sent these spells and why? To my knowledge I had no dire enemies, though certain acquaintances might be trifling jealous of me. Indeed, such was my mode of life, and my days so free of troubles, that I had often thought me to relax the magickal barriers that surrounded me—it were such a bother to keep them renewed. Now I was glad I had not done so!

  Then my thoughts returned to you, Hatr-ad; even to Hatr-ad, whose boasting in the Halls of Nirhath, where Imhlat the Teacher instructed us, was not forgotten but sounded suddenly loud and ominous in the ears of memory. Your boasting, and your off-stated ambition . . .

  Years by the score had gone by since then, but do ambitions such as yours ever really die?

  Now Tarth Soquallin, even Tarth the Hermit, wandering wizard of the deserts and mountains, had always been a great and true friend of mine, and if it were true that some nameless terror was bent upon the destruction of Theem’hdra’s sorcerers—particularly those who had studied under Imhlat—how then had Tarth fared in this monstrous coup?

  Well, he and I had long since devised a means by which I might know of his approximate whereabouts at any given moment. In a cupboard unopened for seven years, after much searching, I found the device: a pebble, not unlike a north-stone which, when dangled at the end of a thread, would always point out Tarth’s direction. Discovering him to be in the west, and by the agitation of the pebble knowing him to be not too far removed, I reasoned he must be upon the Mount of the Ancients and to that region sent one of my eagles with a hastily inscribed message. (It seemed to me both easier and speedier to contact him directly than to inform you of his location that you yourself might then “warn” him of the so-called “nameless terror.”)

  Lo, the answer came back within a day and a night, saying that indeed he, too, had suffered minor pains and irritations, but pointing out that while he was not properly protected, as I was, nathless an evil agency would find it hard going to do him lasting harm, since he was so constantly on the move. A spell let loose to find its own way is far less potent than one directed to the known haunts of its recipient!

  Furthermore, Tarth agreed to a little necessary deception. This was simply to let it be known that he was dead of strange sorceries, and to assist me in the speedy dissemination of this information by use of his disciples. Ah!—and how swiftly indeed word of Tarth’s “demise” reached you, Hatr-ad (whose agents were doubtless on the lookout for just such news?), and how graphic the details of his disappearance, all bar his wand and rings and his teeth of gold!

  Aye, and that was the end of Tarth’s aches and pains—though this was not to be discovered for awhile—for what use to send out death-dealing spells against a man already dead? Eh, Hatr-ad?—

  In the meantime I did several things. I worked swiftly, for I did not wish to delay o’erlong in answering your letter, but in the end my plan worked well enow. First, I sent off a request to an informant of mine in Thinhla, that he employ a certain system (in the use of which I also instructed him) to detect any hurtful magickal emanations from Hreen Castle. Second, I sent further messages of warning to Ikrish Sam of Hubriss, to Khrissa’s nameless Lord-High Ice-Priest, and to many another sorcerer, advising all to disengage quietly from their normal affairs and “disappear,” and also to put about soft-muted tales of doom, disease and death. Third, I answered your letter, sending you an addled version of the Ninth Sathlatta and couching it in cyphers which I knew you would eventually break—but not too soon . . .

  Still and all, my suspicions were as yet unfounded, the evidence against you all circumstantial—though I did deem it strange that the unknown Agency of Doom had not yet taken you yourself, when it had already accounted for men who were by far your sorcerous superiors!—and so I refrained from taking any premature action against you. After all, why should you write to me in the first place—and possibly alert me to your own dark hand in the horror—if indeed you yourself were not in mortal fear of the nameless thing? . . . Unless you were simply seeking some other way to do away with me, since patently the initial attack had done nothing more than discomfort me. Aye, and word had come to me by then that there were certain strangers in Klühn who daily made discreet inquiries in respect of my health. (Men of Thinhla, as it later became known!)

  But then, simultaneous with your second letter, word arrived from Thinhla in respect of Hreen Castle, your own abode, and the veritable miasma of morbid magicks emanating from it! No protective thaumaturgies these, Hatr-ad, but lethal spells of the very blackest natures, and so at last I recognised beyond any further doubt that direful agency whose hand was set against Theem’hdra’s wizards . . .

  Had any such doubt remained in my mind, however, then were it most certainly removed by the mode of messenger you employed: the great Gaunt, the pyrotechnic pigeon and, with your third, my own bat whose wings I now found dusted with potent poisons. You may well have written the last in the aeries of your castle, but surely was it sent to me from some foul crypt beneath Thinhla’s deepest foundations.

  By then though I had already supplied you with Mylakhrion’s most powerful protective spell and a means by which its code might be decyphered and its reversal discovered. Just so, Hatr-ad—and lo, you sent just such a vilely reversed spell against me, thus to weaken me and leave me defenceless in the face of your sly sorceries.

  Well, evil one, the spell could not work against me, for contrary to what you were made to believe, I myself had not used Mylakhrion’s magick! Thus your casting was most easily deflected and turned back upon its very author!

  . . . Aye, and you are utterly defenceless, Hatr-ad, while even now those sorcerers whose doom you plotted conjure spells to send against you; and no use to try Mylakhrion’s rune a second time, for it will only work once for any single person. So you see, o wretch, that there is no avenue of escape from the sentence I now pass—which is: that you shall suffer, even unto death, all of the black magicks you yourself have used or attempted to use in your hideous reign of terror! The list is long:

  From Tarth Soquallin and myself: The Skin-Cracks, Temple-Throbs and Multiple Joint Seizures; from Ikrish Sarn and Khrissa’s Ice-Priest: the Inverted Eyes and the dreaded Bone-Dissolve; and from many another wizard various castings of greater or lesser measure. Moreover we have not forgotten the dead. On behalf of Imhlat, Dhor Nen, Ye-namat and Druth of Thandopolis, we send you the Green Growths, the Evaporating Membranes and, last but not least, the Grey Rot!

  Sentence is passed. You are granted one full day upon receipt of this in which to put your affairs in order, but thereafter until you are no more you shall suffer, in ever-increasing doses, the forementioned afflictions. Waste not your remaining hours in further fruitless malevolencies; spells from all quarters have been cast about you that any such emanations shall only rebound upon you.

  However, I am authorised to remind you that there is one way in which you may yet cheat us all, Hatr-ad; but if you do, at l
east do it gloriously! The towers of Hreen Castle are high, I am told—indeed, they are almost as high as your frustrated, evil aspirations—and gravity is swifter and surer than the knife or pellet of poison . . .

  The choice is yours.

  Cryptically—

  Teh Atht.

  Mylakhrion the Immortal

  THERE WAS A time in my youth when I, Teh Atht, marvelling at certain thaumaturgical devices handed down to me from the days of my wizard ancestor, Mylakhrion of Tharamoon (dead these eleven hundred years), thought to question him with regard to the nature of his demise; with that, and with the reason for it. For Mylakhrion had been, according to all manner of myths and legends, the greatest wizard in all Theem’hdra, and it concerned me that he had not been immortal. Like many another wizard before me I, too, had long sought immortality, but if the great Mylakhrion himself had been merely mortal . . . surely my own chance for self-perpetuity must be slim indeed.

  Thus I went up once more into the Mount of the Ancients, even to the very summit, and there smoked the Zha-weed and repeated rare words by use of which I might seek Mylakhrion in dreams. And lo!—he came to me. Hidden in a grey mist so that only the conical outline of his sorcerer’s cap and the slow billowing of his dimly rune-inscribed gown were visible, he came, and in his doomful voice demanded to know why I had called him up from the land of shades, disturbing his centuried sleep.

  “Faceless one, ancestor mine, o mighty and most omniscient sorcerer,” I answered, mindful of Mylakhrion’s magnitude. “I call you up that you may answer for me a question of ultimate importance. A question, aye, and a riddle.”