The House of Cthulhu: Tales of the Primal Land Vol. 1 Page 8

  Came the scrape of keel on grit, and down from his dragon’s head leapt Zar-thule to the sullen shallow waters, and with him his captains and men, to wade ashore and stride the night-black strand and wave their swords . . . and all for naught! Lo, the island stood quiet and still and seemingly untended . . .

  Only now did the Sacker of Cities take note of this isle’s truly awesome aspect. Black piles of tumbled masonry festooned with weeds from the tides rose up from the dark wet sand, and there seemed inherent in these gaunt and immemorial relics a foreboding not alone of bygone times; great crabs scuttled in and about the archaic ruins and gazed with stalked ruby eyes upon the intruders; even the small waves broke with an eery hush, hush, hush upon the sand and pebbles and primordial exuviae of crumbled yet seemingly sentient towers and tabernacles. The drummers faltered, paused and finally silence reigned.

  Now many of them among these reavers recognised rare gods and supported strange superstitions, and Zar-thule knew this and had no liking for their silence. It was a silence that might yet yield to mutiny!

  “Hah!” quoth he, who worshipped neither god nor demon nor yet lent ear to the gaunts of night. “See—the guards knew of our coming and are all fled to the far side of the island—or perhaps they gather ranks at the House of Cthulhu.” So saying, he formed him up his men into a body and advanced into the island.

  And as they marched they passed them by other prehuman piles not yet ocean-sundered, striding through silent streets whose fantastic facades gave back the beat of the drummers in a strangely muted monotone.

  And lo, mummied faces of coeval antiquity seemed to leer from the empty and oddly-angled towers and craggy spires, fleet ghouls that flitted from shadow to shadow apace with the marching men, until some of those hardened reavers grew sore afraid and begged them of Zar-thule, “Master, let us get us gone from here, for it appears that there is no treasure, and this place is like unto no other. It stinks of death—even of death and of them that walk the shadow-lands.”

  But Zar-thule rounded on one who stood close to him muttering thus, crying, “Coward!—Out on you!” Whereupon he lifted up his sword and hacked the trembling reaver in two parts, so that the sundered man screamed once before falling with twin thuds to the black earth. But now Zar-thule perceived that indeed many of his men were sore afraid, and so he had him torches lighted and brought up, and they pressed on quickly into the island.

  There, beyond low dark hills, they came to a great gathering of queerly carved and monolithic edifices, all of the same confused angles and surfaces and all with the stench of the pit, even the fetor of the very pit about them. And in the centre of these malodorous megaliths there stood the greatest tower of them all, a massive menhir that loomed and leaned windowless to a great height, about which at its base squat pedestals bore likenesses of blackly carven krakens of terrifying aspect.

  “Hah!” quoth Zar-thule. “Plainly is this the House of Cthulhu, and see—its guards and priests have fled them all before us to escape the reaving!”

  But a tremulous voice, old and mazed, answered from the shadows at the base of one great pedestal, saying, “No one has fled, O reaver, for there are none here to flee, save me—and I cannot flee for I guard the gate against those who may utter The Words.”

  At the sound of this old voice in the stillness the reavers started and peered nervously about at the leaping torch-cast shadows, but one stout captain stepped forward to drag from out of the dark an old, old man. And lo, seeing the mien of this mage, all the reavers fell back at once. For he bore upon his face and hands, aye, and upon all visible parts of him, a grey and furry lichen that seemed to crawl upon him even as he stood crooked and trembling in his great age!

  “Who are you?” demanded Zar-thule, aghast at the sight of so hideous a spectacle of afflicted infirmity; even Zar-thule, aghast!

  “I am Hath Vehm, brother-priest of Voth Vehm who serves the gods in the temples of Yaht Haal; I am Hath Vehm, Keeper of the Gate at the House of Cthulhu, and I warn you that it is forbidden to touch me.” And he gloomed with rheumy eyes at the captain who held him, until that raider took away his hands.

  “And I am Zar-thule the Conqueror,” quoth Zar-thule, less in awe now. “Reaver of Reavers, Seeker of Treasures and Sacker of Cities. I have plundered Yaht Haal, aye, plundered the Silver City and burned it low. And I have tortured Voth Vehm unto death. But in his dying, even with hot coals eating at his belly, he cried out a name. And it was your name! And he was truly a brother unto you, Hath Vehm, for he warned me of the terrible god Cthulhu and of this ‘forbidden’ isle of Arlyeh. But I knew he lied, that he sought him only to protect a great and holy treasure and the brother-priest who guards it, doubtless with strange runes to frighten away the superstitious reavers! But Zar-thule is neither afraid nor credulous, old one. Here I stand, and I say to you on your life that I’ll know the way into this treasure house within the hour!”

  And now, hearing their chief speak thus to the ancient priest of the island, and noting the old man’s trembling infirmity and hideous disfigurement, Zar-thule’s captains and men had taken heart. Some of them had gone about and about the beetling tower of obscure angles until they found a door. Now this door was great, tall, solid and in no way hidden from view; and yet at times it seemed very indistinct, as though misted and distant. It stood straight up in the wall of the House of Cthulhu, and yet looked as if to lean to one side . . . and then in one and the same moment to lean to the other! It bore leering, inhuman faces and horrid hieroglyphs, all carved into its surface, and these unknown characters seemed to writhe about the gorgon faces; and aye, those faces too moved and grimaced in the light of the flickering torches.

  The ancient Hath Vehm came to them where they gathered in wonder of the great door, saying: “That is the gate of the House of Cthulhu, and I am its guardian.”

  “So,” spake Zar-thule, who was also come there, “and is there a key to this gate? I see no means of entry.”

  “Aye, there is a key, but none such as you might readily imagine. It is not a key of metal, but of words . . .”

  “Magic?” asked Zar-thule, undaunted. He had heard aforetime of similar thaumaturgies.

  Zar-thule put the point of his sword to the old man’s throat, observing as he did so the furry grey growth moving upon the elder’s face and scrawny neck, saying: “Then say those words now and let’s have done!”

  “Nay, I cannot say The Words—I am sworn to guard the gate that The Words are never spoken, neither by myself nor by any other who would foolishly or mistakenly open the House of Cthulhu. You may kill me—even take my life with that very blade you now hold to my throat—but I will not utter The Words . . .”

  “And I say that you will—eventually!” quoth Zar-thule in an exceedingly cold voice, in a voice even as cold as the northern sleet. Whereupon he put down his sword and ordered two of his men to come forward, commanding that they take the ancient and tie him down to thronged pegs made fast in the ground. And they tied him down until he was spread out flat upon his back, not far from the great and oddly fashioned door in the wall of the House of Cthulhu.

  Then a fire was lighted of dry shrubs and of driftwood fetched from the shore; and others of Zar-thule’s reavers went out and trapped certain great nocturnal birds that knew not the power of flight; and yet others found a spring of brackish water and filled them up the waterskins. And soon tasteless but satisfying meat turned on the spits above a fire; and in the same fire sword-points glowed red, then white. And after Zar-thule and his captains and men had eaten their fill, then the Reaver of Reavers motioned to his torturers that they should attend to their task. These torturers had been trained by Zar-thule himself, so that they excelled in the arts of pincer and hot iron.

  But then there came a diversion. For some little time a certain captain—his name was Cush-had, the man who first found the old priest in the shadow of the great pedestal and dragged him forth—had been peering most strangely at his hands in the firelight and rubbi
ng them upon the hide of his jacket. Of a sudden he cursed and leapt to his feet, springing up from the remnants of his meal. He danced about in a frightened manner, beating wildly at the tumbled flat stones about with his hands.

  Then of a sudden he stopped and cast sharp glances at his naked forearms. In the same second his eyes stood out in his face and he screamed as were he pierced through and through with a keen blade; and he rushed to the fire and thrust his hands into its heart, even to his elbows. Then he drew his arms from the flames, staggering and moaning and calling upon certain trusted gods. And he tottered away into the night, his ruined arms steaming and dripping redly upon the ground.

  Amazed, Zar-thule sent a man after Cush-had with a torch, and this man soon returned trembling and with a very pale face in the firelight to tell how the madman had fallen or leapt to his death in a deep crevice. But before he fell there had been visible upon his face a creeping, furry greyness; and as he had fallen, aye, even as he crashed down to his death, he had screamed: “Unclean . . . unclean . . . unclean!”

  Then, all and all when they heard this, they remembered the old priest’s words of warning when Cush-had dragged him out of hiding, and the way he had gloomed upon the unfortunate captain, and they looked at the ancient where he lay held fast to the earth. The two reavers whose task it had been to tie him down looked them one to the other with very wide eyes, their faces whitening perceptibly in the firelight, and they took up a quiet and secret examination of their persons; even a minute examination . . .

  Zar-thule felt fear rising in his reavers like the east wind when it rises up fast and wild in the Desert of Sheb. He spat at the ground and lifted up his sword, crying: “Listen to me! You are all superstitious cowards, all and all of you, with your old wives’ tales and fears and mumbo-jumbo. What’s there to be frightened of? An old man, alone, on a black rock in the sea?”

  “But I saw Cush-had’s face—” began the man who had followed the demented captain.

  “You only thought you saw something,” Zar-thule cut him off. “It was only the flickering of your torch-fire and nothing more. Cush-had was a madman!”

  “But—”

  “Cush-had was a madman!” Zar-thule said again, and his voice turned very cold. “Are you, too, insane? Is there room for you, too, at the bottom of that crevice?” But the man shrank back and said no more, and yet again Zar-thule called his torturers forward that they should be about their work.

  THE HOURS PASSED . . .

  Blind and coldly deaf Gleeth the old Moon God surely was, and yet perhaps he had sensed something of the agonised screams and the stench of roasting human flesh drifting up from Arlyeh that night. Certainly he seemed to sink down in the sky very quickly.

  Now, however, the tattered and blackened figure stretched out upon the ground before the door in the wall of the House of Cthulhu was no longer strong enough to cry out loudly, and Zar-thule despaired for he saw that soon the priest of the island would sink into the last and longest of slumbers. And still The Words were not spoken. Too, the reaver king was perplexed by the ancient’s stubborn refusal to admit that the door in the looming menhir concealed treasure; but in the end he put this down to the effect of certain vows Hath Vehm had no doubt taken in his inauguration to priesthood.

  The torturers had not done their work well. They had been loth to touch the elder with anything but their hot swords; they would not—not even when threatened most direly—lay their hands upon him, or approach him more closely than absolutely necessary to the application of their agonising art. The two reavers responsible for tying the ancient down were dead, slain by former comrades upon whom they had inadvertently lain hands of friendship; and those they had touched, their slayers, they too were shunned by their companions and stood apart from the other reavers.

  As the first grey light of dawn began to show beyond the eastern sea, Zar-thule finally lost all patience and turned upon the dying priest in a veritable fury. He took up his sword, raising it over his head in two hands . . . and then Hath Vehm spoke:

  “Wait!” he whispered, his voice a low, tortured croak, “wait, O reaver—I will say The Words.”

  “What?” cried Zar-thule, lowering his blade. “You will open the door?”

  “Aye,” the cracked whisper came, “I will open the Gate. But first, tell me; did you truly sack Yaht Haal, the Silver City? Did you truly raze it down with fire, and torture my brother-priest to death?”

  “I did all that,” Zar-thule callously nodded.

  “Then come you close,” Hath Vehm’s voice sank low. “Closer, O reaver king, that you may hear me in my final hour.”

  Eagerly the Seeker of Treasures bent him down his ear to the lips of the ancient, kneeling down beside him where he lay—and Hath Vehm immediately lifted up his head from the earth and spat upon Zar-thule!

  Then, before the Sacker of Cities could think or make a move to wipe the slimy spittle from his brow, Hath Vehm said The Words. Aye, even in a loud and clear voice he said them—words of terrible import and alien cadence that only an adept might repeat—and at once there came a great rumble from the door in the beetling wall of weird angles.

  Forgetting for the moment the tainted insult of the ancient priest, Zar-thule turned to see the huge and evilly carven door tremble and waver and then, by some unknown power, move or slide away until only a great black hole yawned where it had been. And lo, in the early dawn light, the reaver horde pressed forward to seek them out the treasure with their eyes; even to seek out the treasure beyond the open door. Likewise Zar-thule made to enter the House of Cthulhu, but again the dying heirophant cried out to him:

  “Hold! There are more words, O reaver king!”

  “More words?” Zar-thule turned with a frown. The old priest, his life quickly ebbing, grinned mirthlessly at the sight of the furry grey blemish that crawled upon the barbarian’s forehead over his left eye.

  “Aye, more words. Listen: long and long ago, when the world was very young, before Arlyeh and the House of Cthulhu were first sunken into the sea, wise elder gods devised a rune that should Cthulhu’s House ever rise and be opened by foolish men, it might be sent down again—even Arlyeh itself, sunken deep once more beneath the salt waters. Now I say those other words!”

  Swiftly the king reaver leapt, his sword lifting, but ere that blade could fall Hath Vehm cried out those other strange and dreadful words; and lo, the whole island shook in the grip of a great earthquake. Now in awful anger Zar-thule’s sword fell and hacked off the ancient’s whistling and spurting head from his ravened body; but even as the head rolled free, so the island shook itself again, and the ground rumbled and began to break open.

  From the open door in the House of Cthulhu, whereinto the host of greedy reavers had rushed to discover the treasure, there now came loud and singularly hideous cries of fear and torment, and of a sudden an even more hideous stench. And now Zar-thule knew truly indeed that there was no treasure.

  Great ebony clouds gathered swiftly and livid lightning crashed; winds rose up that blew Zar-thule’s long black hair over his face as he crouched in horror before the open door of the House of Cthulhu. Wide and wide were his eyes as he tried to peer beyond the reeking blackness of that nameless, ancient aperture—but a moment later he dropped his great sword to the ground and screamed; even the Reaver of Reavers, screamed most terribly.

  For two of his wolves had appeared from out the darkness, more in the manner of whipped puppies than true wolves, shrieking and babbling and scrambling frantically over the queer angles of the orifice’s mouth . . . but they had emerged only to be snatched up and squashed like grapes by titanic tentacles that lashed after them from the dark depths beyond! And these rubbery appendages drew the crushed bodies back into the inky blackness, from which there instantly issued forth the most monstrously nauseating slobberings and suckings before the writhing members once more snaked forth into the dawn light. This time they caught at the edges of the opening, and from behind them pushed forward—a face
l

  Zar-thule gazed upon the enormously bloated visage of Cthulhu, and he screamed again as that terrible Being’s awful eyes found him where he crouched—found him and lit with an hideous light!

  The reaver king paused, frozen, petrified, for but a moment, and yet long enough that the ultimate horror of the thing framed in the titan threshold seared itself upon his brain forever. Then his legs found their strength. He turned and fled, speeding away and over the low black hills, and down to the shore and into his ship, which he somehow managed, even single-handed and in his frantic terror, to cast off. And all the time in his mind’s eye there burned that fearful sight—the awful Visage and Being of Lord Cthulhu.

  There had been the tentacles, springing from a greenly pulpy head about which they sprouted like lethiferous petals about the heart of an obscenely hybrid orchid, a scaled and amorphously elastic body of immense proportions, with clawed feet fore and hind; long, narrow wings ill-fitting the horror that bore them in that it seemed patently impossible for any wings to lift so fantastic a bulk—and then there had been the eyes! Never before had Zar-thule seen such evil, rampant and expressed, as in the ultimately leering malignancy of Cthulhu’s eyes!

  And Cthulhu was not finished with Zar-thule, for even as the king reaver struggled madly with his sail the monster came across the low hills in the dawn light, slobbering and groping down to the very water’s edge. Then, when Zar-thule saw against the morning the mountain that was Cthulhu, he went mad for a period; flinging himself from side to side of his ship so that he was like to fall into the sea, frothing at the mouth and babbling horribly in pitiful prayer—aye, even Zar-thule, whose lips never before uttered prayers—to certain benevolent gods of which he had heard. And it seems that these kind gods, if indeed they exist, must have heard him.

  With a roar and a blast greater than any before, there came the final shattering that saved Zar-thule for a cruel future, and the entire island split asunder; even the bulk of Arlyeh breaking into many parts and settling into the sea. And with a piercing scream of frustrated rage and lust—a scream which Zar-thule heard with his mind as well as his ears—the monster Cthulhu sank Him down also with the island and His House beneath the frothing waves.