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

  “I . . . I mix potent potions, and—”

  “Love potions?” The bat-thing seemed almost to sneer.

  Exior knew when he was beaten. Furious, he turned on his heel to leave the room, the tower, Mylakhrion’s palace, the whole ridiculous idea behind him—and found his way blocked by two more giant chiropters. They did not speak but merely stood as statues in the arched entrance, their men’s faces observing through speculative eyes Exior where he paused in confusion.

  Finally, from behind the youth, the inverted one spoke again: “He who acts in haste often acts foolishly—and regrets at leisure. How do you answer that?”

  Exior turned sharply upon his examiner. “He who accepts insults and taunts from his inferiors is an even bigger fool!” he hotly retorted.

  The bat-thing righted itself upon its perch. “And do you consider Mylakhrion’s favourite familiar your . . . inferior?” Its voice was the merest whisper now—the hiss of a dry leaf blown across a graveyard slab—but its human eyes were bright, hard and unblinking.

  “That face you wear,” said Exior K’mool, his words coming cracked from a throat suddenly dry as dust, “once sat upon a man’s shoulders. Fool I may be, but my life and limbs are my own and I speak with my own voice. In short, I am still a man—and better a foolish man than some hybrid horror spawned of a wizard’s—” And there he broke off, for the three were laughing at him, baying dinningly where they faced him, their booming laughter echoing loudly in the great room.

  Astonished, and because there seemed little else to do, Exior waited until they were done and the one on the perch once more addressed him. “Mylakhrion,” the creature finally informed him with a strange smile, “likes humility and honesty in a man, as I believe I have mentioned aforetime. He also likes a little spunkiness, on occasion—but not too much, for that might be mistaken for audacity. Forwardness and fools he will not suffer, but cowardice he abhors! You have done well, Exior K’mool—and now my master will see you.”

  And all three familiars nodded as one creature, just as Exior had seen it in his dream.

  “SEER, BE SEATED,” said Mylakhrion, and the youth at once recognised his voice as being one and the same with that of the bat-thing.

  Mylakhrion sat upon his night-black throne and studied Exior minutely, coldly, with no emotion whatever visible in his straight-backed mien. His silver eyebrows were thin and turned sharply upward at the temples, and beneath them his eyes were of that same palest blue as the Outer Immensities glimpsed ofttimes by Exior in his dreams. Strange those eyes and almost vacuous, but at the same time filled with terrible lore and a knowledge forbidden to common men and middling mages alike.

  His hands, where they protruded from the bell-like cuffs of his robe and rested upon the arms of his throne, were long and thin and their nails sharply pointed; their colour, as that of his much wrinkled face and sandaled feet, was a pale umber like unto certain parchments. A cold old man, Mylakhrion, and his gaze even colder. He trained that gaze upon Exior as the youth sat down upon a tiny stool close to the somewhat raised dais where sat the sorcerer himself.

  The apartment was starkly bare in comparison with that “room of repose” wherefrom Exior had been guided to this even loftier chamber. It had a balcony with a balustrade of marble gargoyles, opening upon a frightfully vertiginous view (a wintry vista, despite the true season) of some drear and windswept desert where mounds of rubble hinted of extensive ruins. Exior did not recognise the scene, and he was sure that it lay not anywhere in the vicinity of Humquass.

  Now there was no king in all Theem’hdra who would normally allow the house of a common man to overshadow his own; but Mylakhrion was distinctly uncommon, and besides, he required a place higher than any other to facilitate his far-seeing, and for the propitiation of elementals of the air; and so Morgath had never voiced complaint. But the plain fact of the matter was that the sorcerer liked to be remote from mundane men; and where better than high in this forbidding and precipitous palace tower, this veritable aerie of a room?

  Exior had been brought here by the three familiars, and their spokesman had accompanied him into the room through great brazen doors. Once Exior was safe inside, however, the bat-thing had quickly departed; whereupon Mylakhrion had appeared from the balcony to climb the three small steps of the dais to his throne of polished jet.

  Now in that dim and sparsely furnished place, with only the light from the balcony to relieve the gloom—and that a dim and dingy light—Exior K’mool and Mylakhrion the Mighty gazed each upon the other, would-be wizard and Supreme Sorcerer alike. And whatever the thoughts of the youth in the presence of this legended enchanter, they were soon cut short as Mylakhrion commenced his own examination.

  “So, young man, and you would be my apprentice, would you? Well, then, there is more I must know about you; what suffices for my familiars may not satisfy me. First let me tell you of the work, and then you must say if you are still interested; after which and depending upon your decision, I may ask you to perform a small task for me. If you perform well—and only if the task is completed to my satisfaction—then you shall be my apprentice. That may be to look too far ahead, however, for you might not care much for the work.”

  Mylakhrion paused for long moments and turned his strange eyes to the grey, racing clouds beyond the gargoyle balusters. The sharp nail of one of his fingers tapped for a little while, thoughtfully, upon the hard arm of his throne. Then, without returning his gaze to Exior, finally the wizard said:

  “The hours will be long, and when there are not enough of them for any one day I shall make more. Never have nothing to do. And you must put aside fear; I have no room for it. There will be liches here to take horrid advantage of one who is afraid, for I am a necromancer. But as well as the dead, I call up spirits black and white, demons and devils and saints alike. I hold intercourse with ghouls, gaunts and wraiths, with werewolves, gnomes and jinnees; aye, for there is much to be learned from them. And remember: just as idle hands wither, so slothful minds mortify. I converse at length with Demogorgon; from time to time I sleep with succubus and have fathered lamia, harpy, vampire and elf. And all of them—my wives, children and changelings—they occasionally visit me. They call me master, and so shall you, and I am a hard taskmaster. Tasks are not allowed to remain unperformed; nothing which may be done today is ever done tomorrow. And for all that I have done; still I am unchanged. Aged, yes, but a man still—and mortal! And I seek immortality, Exior K’mool, which is why you are here: to lessen the burden and save time for me. For once time is fled, who may recall it? And again I say to you, remember: stitches in time save myriads! You will assist me not alone in many small tasks—be my messenger, potwatcher, my sweeper, linguist, my rune-reader, seer—but in great works and experiments also. And of all my knowledge shall you partake, learning and growing wise in the ways of magick. BUT—” (and abruptly the wizard paused, leaving Exior breathless as if he himself had spoken all of these words) “a warning! Never never seek to subvert my cause, change my course or deliberately and maliciously do anything to cause me discomfort, neither of mind nor of body! And if you are a good apprentice, then, when I am no more—” And again he paused.

  In a little while, as Exior sat and fought to still his trembling, Mylakhrion turned his eyes back to the youth. “And are you still interested?”

  Unable to find words, Exior merely nodded.

  II

  As night drew on and the sun sank down behind the mountains, Exior smelled a great storm blowing up and hurriedly sought shelter. He tethered his yak just within the mouth of a small cave hidden in the lee of wind-carved crags, then carefully checked to ensure that this was not the lair of some wild beast. Grumbling as he worked and occasionally cursing, he lighted a fire in a hollow place and brewed himself a pot of tea.

  Six months ago he had looked back from his tail-end position in an escorted caravan leaving Humquass and smiled as he watched the walls of the city slowly merging into the southern horizon; since
when he had not smiled a great deal, had faced dangers galore and covered thousands of miles in the performance of Mylakhrion’s “small task”—which still remained unperformed. Now Exior had reached the end of his ability to endure any more hardship, the end of his tether, and he ought also to have reached the end of his journey. But . . .

  “Go west,” Mylakhrion had instructed him. “Cross the Eastern Peaks, pass between the Nameless Desert and the Mountains of Lohmi, follow the sun over wide and rolling plains to the foothills of the Great Circle Mountains, and there turn your feet northward. Keeping the foothills on your left hand, follow the edge of the plain and in the space of two days you will find a city lost in the desert sands.

  “At the edge of the city’s ruins lying closest to the foothills, there you will spy the broken fang of a once great tower, and in its base a door. Now listen carefully, Exior K’mool, for this is most important. Deep beneath the tumbled tower, hidden in a catacomb of caves, there within a secret chamber you will find a Great Book. It is locked and lies upon a pedestal of onyx. Bring me that book, Exior K’mool, and thereafter be known as Mylakhrion’s apprentice!

  “But know too, young man, that the dangers will be many and the way long and hard . . . Now, how do you say?”

  Once more, like a fool, Exior had agreed; and shortly thereafter he joined a caravan heading north. After eight days he left the caravan and struck out over the eastern range, crossing in a week. Another month took him to the Nameless Desert, and another saw him in the long grasses of the central plains. There his horse was bitten by an adder and he was obliged to proceed on foot. Two more months and autumn was drawing to a close; and now along with winter the Great Circle Mountains loomed, in whose foothills Exior met with friendly nomads and bought from them his yak. Five more weeks took him to the borders of the Desert of Ell, and for three days now he had been wandering northwest between desert and foothills.

  By now he should have sighted Mylakhrion’s lost city, but so far it remained lost. Lost, too, Exior K’mool, if he continued for very much longer with his quest. His water was low, food down to crusts; there was little or no grass for his beast—which in any case was old and tired—and worst of all the days were growing shorter and the skies darker with the rapid approach of winter. Indeed, before finding his refuge for the night, Exior had recognised the bleak and wintry landscape as that seen from Mylakhrion’s tower room, and the clouds which fled ever south were those same clouds he had thought peculiar to the sky over the sorcerer’s palace. Obviously Mylakhrion had spied out the way for him; why, then, had he failed to find the lost city?

  That night, dreaming, the youth saw a great fang of stone rising from drifted sand and tumbled blocks. His dream was recurrent, but each time his slumbering spirit approached the visioned pile so the howling gale would startle him to wakefulness in his blanket, that or the cry of his frightened beast where it stood trembling in the lightning-illumined door of the cave. Mercifully the storm’s direction was away from Exior’s refuge, for its fury was such that it moved a vast amount of sand and both man and beast might easily have been entombed.

  As it was, rising cold, tired and hungry from his troubled and fitful slumbers, Exior saw that the storm had blown itself out; also that he had been presumptuous to doubt those directions given him by Mylakhrion. For now, where great waves of sand had stretched to the horizon, the scattered remnants of a once mighty city lay uncovered to his bleary gaze. And not far off, within a stone’s throw, a certain shattered spire drew his eyes as a northstone draws a nail. Without doubt this was that tower of which Mylakhrion had foretold, beneath which Exior would find the maze of caves and eventually the secret chamber and volume of ancient magick!

  The youth fed himself and his beast as best he could, drank a little from his leather bottle and dampened the yak’s nose and mouth, then walked the animal beneath wintry morning skies to the base of the crumbling but still massive monument. Alas, in the sand drifted against its base he could find no door; but above, almost within reach, fallen blocks revealed a dark hole somewhat wider than his shoulders.

  Now before proceeding any farther, Exior made a pause and gave some thought to one other thing Mylakhrion had told him. There might well be a “guard,” the ancient magician had warned, a spirit or demon set to watch over the secret room and its book; for the book contained such powerful magick that whosoever possessed it could make himself mighty above all men. It had belonged to a great sorcerer and necromancer, that book, but in a war of wizardry he had been obliged to flee the city in the desert and the book had been left behind. Even as he fled, the city was brought to a great ruin by his enemies, and thus it had remained to this day.

  That had all been more than five hundred years ago, however, and only recently, through his own thaumaturgies, had Mylakhrion discovered again the lost city and fathomed its ancient secrets. And by now the “guard,” if indeed such existed, must be much diminished through time and disuse; and surely Exior should have no trouble with a magick grown so small and centuries-shrivelled . . .

  Well, perhaps not; but nevertheless Exior frowned worriedly as he made torches, piled stones and finally climbed until he could squeeze in through the hole in the wall of the tower. Cobwebby gloom met his eyes, and dusty, spiralling steps that wound down into darkness. He took one last look out through the hole at the drear landscape of tumbled blocks and fallen, shattered pillars—a landscape which now seemed much more friendly than the gloomy bowels of this ages-old tower—lighted a torch and commenced his descent.

  Round and down he went, brushing aside or burning cobwebs out of his way; and tiny scurrying things moved aside for him, and dust trickled from ledges where the centuries had piled it; and only the gloom and the winding steps descending ever deeper into bowels of fetid earth . . .

  After what seemed an inordinately long time, Exior reached the bottom and found himself in a great cavern whose walls were honeycombed with tunnels and caves. On guard against whatever might be lurking down here, he was making to explore the largest of these passages when a great rumbling roar froze him in his tracks. A belch of animal fury, the warning had issued from that very tunnel he had been on the point of entering. Trembling in every limb, Exior lighted a second torch and stuck it in the sandy floor, then drew his sword and waited for whatever it was that prowled these eerie excavations: doubtless that “guard” of which Mylakhrion had forewarned.

  In a little while the demon appeared and jerked forward on spindly legs into the central hall. Half-spider, half-bat that being, and twice as big as a man to boot. With curving fangs like white scythes, and eyes big as saucers, the thing loomed over Exior and glared down at him; and finally, with a voice that rumbled volcanically and brimstony breath, it spoke:

  “What do ye here, little man? This is a forbidden place. Begone!”

  Exior shook his head in dumb defiance and held out his torch and sword before him. And finding his voice, he said: “I run an errand for my master, and you shall not stop me.”

  “And what is the nature of your errand?” questioned the demon.

  “To find a room and a runebook,” said Exior with many a gulp. “Also, to take that book back to my master.”

  “I know room and book both!” the creature answered. “Aye, and I guard them well. Wherefore it is plainly my duty to eat ye . . . or would ye care to play a game with me?”

  “A game?” replied Exior, who vastly preferred any alternative to being eaten.

  “Ye shall have a choice,” the demon explained. “Go now and I shall do ye no harm, but if ye stay ye must play my game. If ye win the game ye may take the book and I at last may rest—but if ye lose . . .”

  “Then?” Exior prompted, his heart in his mouth.

  “Why, then I shall eat ye!” answered the monster with a great coughing laugh.

  “And what is the nature of this game?” asked Exior, wondering where best to strike the beast to bring it down, and whether he had the strength for such a stroke.

&
nbsp; “I shall say ye a riddle,” the demon replied, “and ye must tell me its meaning.”

  Now Exior’s mind grew alert as he readied it for the trial; for there never had been a riddle or rune whose meaning eluded him for long, and despite his great fear he could not refuse the demon’s challenge. “So be it,” he said, “let’s hear your riddle.”

  The spider-bat laughed again, then very rapidly and in a loud, clear monotone said:

  “TI DNAMMOC I . . . MOOR TERCES EHT OT EM DAEL DNA, ERA YLLAER UOY SA UOY EES EM TEL WON, EMAG EHT NOW GNIVAH . . . EM MRAH TON YAM DNA NOISULLI ERA UOY . . . SESSENKAEW RUOY DNA, NOMED UOY WONK I!”

  To which Exior at once and excitedly replied, “My answer is: ‘I know you demon, and your weaknesses. You are illusion and may not harm me. Having won the game, now let me see you as you really are, and lead me to the secret room. I command it!’ ”

  The demon gave a great cry (of relief, Exior suspected) and immediately shrank down into the shape of a tiny lizard which wriggled away into the mouth of one of the tunnels. It paused to look back, whereupon Exior lighted a third torch and followed on behind. In a little while the lizard led the way to a door of brass and squeezed beneath it. When Exior shoved the door open on squeaking hinges, the tiny creature had disappeared.

  The room was circular, domed and starkly bare; except for its pedestal of onyx and the Great Book which lay upon it, thick with the dust of five long centuries and more. Quickly Exior crossed to the pedestal and laid his trembling hands upon the great, jewel-crusted cover. He blew away the dust and gazed awestruck at old leather inlaid with ivory, jade, gold and fabulous gems; and at the hasps and lock, green with age and neglect; and last but not least at the weirdly-wrought key where it lay beside the priceless volume.

  And he remembered what Mylakhrion had told him: that in this book were writ the secrets of suns and moons, times past and times as yet unborn, and all the wonders of wizards dead and gone and the lore of darkling dimensions beyond the familiar three. Knowledge enough to make a man mighty above all other men. And Exior picked up the key and turned it protestingly in the ancient lock.