On the following day Carter walked up the Street of the
Pillars to the turquoise temple and talked with the High-Priest. Though
Nath-Horthath is chiefly worshipped in Celephais, all the Great Ones are
mentioned in diurnal prayers; and the priest was reasonably versed in their
moods. Like Atal in distant Ulthar, he strongly advised against any attempts
to see them; declaring that they are testy and capricious, and subject
to strange protection from the mindless Other Gods from Outside, whose
soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. Their jealous hiding
of the marvellous sunset city shewed clearly that they did not wish Carter
to reach it, and it was doubtful how they would regard a guest whose object
was to see them and plead before them.
No man had ever found Kadath in the past, and it might
be just as well if none ever found it in the future. Such rumours as were
told about that onyx castle of the Great Ones were not by any means reassuring.
Having thanked the orchid-crowned High-Priest, Carter
left the temple and sought out the bazaar of the sheep-butchers, where
the old chief of Celephais' cats dwelt sleek and contented. That grey and
dignified being was sunning himself on the onyx pavement, and extended
a languid paw as his caller approached. But when Carter repeated the passwords
and introductions furnished him by the old cat general of Ulthar, the furry
patriarch became very cordial and communicative; and told much of the secret
lore known to cats on the seaward slopes of Ooth-Nargai. Best of all, he
repeated several things told him furtively by the timid waterfront cats
of Celephais about the men of Inquanok, on whose dark ships no cat will
go.
It seems that these men have an aura not of earth about
them, though that is not the reason why no cat will sail on their ships.
The reason for this is that Inquanok holds shadows which no cat can endure,
so that in all that cold twilight realm there is never a cheering purr
or a homely mew. Whether it be because of things wafted over the impassable
peaks from hypothetical Leng, or because of things filtering down from
the chilly desert to the north, none may say; but it remains a fact that
in that far land there broods a hint of outer space which cats do not like,
and to which they are more sensitive than men. Therefore they will not
go on the dark ships that seek the basalt quays of Inquanok.
The old chief of the cats also told him where to find
his friend King Kuranes, who in Carter's latter dreams had reigned alternately
in the rose-crystal Palace of the Seventy Delights at Celephais and in
the turreted cloud-castle of sky-floating Serannian. It seemed that he
could no more find content in those places, but had formed a mighty longing
for the English cliffs and downlands
of his boyhood; where in little dreaming villages England's
old songs hover at evening behind lattice windows, and where grey church
towers peep lovely through the verdure of distant valleys. He could not
go back to these things in the waking world because his body was dead;
but he had done the next best thing and dreamed a small tract of such countryside
in the region east of
the city where meadows roll gracefully up from the sea-cliffs
to the foot of the Tanarian Hills. There he dwelt in a grey Gothic manor-house
of stone looking on the sea, and tried to think it was ancient Trevor Towers,
where he was born and where thirteen generations of his forefathers had
first seen the light. And on the coast nearby he had built a little Cornish
fishing village with
steep cobbled ways, settling therein such people as had
the most English faces, and seeking ever to teach them the dear remembered
accents of old Cornwall fishers. And in a valley not far off he had reared
a great Norman Abbey whose tower he could see from his window, placing
around it in the churchyard grey stones with the names of his ancestors
carved thereon, and with a moss somewhat like Old England's moss. For though
Kuranes was a monarch in the land of dream, with all imagined pomps and
marvels, splendours and beauties, ecstasies and delights, novelties and
excitements at his command, he would gladly have resigned forever the whole
of his power and luxury and freedom for one blessed day as a simple boy
in that pure and quiet England,
that ancient, beloved England which had moulded his being
and of which he must always be immutably a part.
So when Carter bade that old grey chief of the cats adieu,
he did not seek the terraced palace of rose crystal but walked out the
eastern gate and across the daisied fields toward a peaked gable which
he glimpsed through the oaks of a park sloping up to the sea-cliffs. And
in time he came to a great hedge and a gate with a little brick lodge,
and when he rang the bell there hobbled to admit him no robed and annointed
lackey of the palace, but a small stubby old man in a smock who spoke as
best he could in the quaint tones of far Cornwall. And Carter walked up
the shady path between trees as near as possible to England's trees, and
clumbed the terraces among gardens set out as in Queen Anne's time. At
the door, flanked by stone cats in the old way, he was met by a whiskered
butler in suitable livery; and was presently taken to the library where
Kuranes, Lord of Ooth-Nargai and the Sky around Serannian, sat pensive
in a chair by the window looking on his little seacoast village and wishing
that his old nurse would come in and scold him because he was not ready
for that hateful lawn-party at the vicar's, with the carriage waiting and
his mother nearly out of patience.
Kuranes, clad in a dressing gown of the sort favoured
by London tailors in his youth, rose eagerly to meet his guest; for the
sight of an Anglo-Saxon from the waking world was very dear to him, even
if it was a Saxon from Boston, Massachusetts, instead of from Cornwall.
And for long they talked of old times, having much to say because both
were old dreamers and well versed in
the wonders of incredible places. Kuranes, indeed, had
been out beyond the stars in the ultimate void, and was said to be the
only one who had ever returned sane from such a voyage.
At length Carter brought up the subject of his quest,
and asked of his host those questions he had asked of so many others. Kuranes
did not know where Kadath was, or the marvellous sunset city; but he did
know that the Great Ones were very dangerous creatures to seek out, and
that the Other Gods had strange ways of protecting them from impertinent
curiosity. He had learned
much of the Other Gods in distant parts of space, especially
in that region where form does not exist, and coloured gases study the
innermost secrets. The violet gas S'ngac had told him terrible things of
the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, and had warned him never to approach the
central void where the daemon sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in the dark.
Altogether, it was not well to meddle with the Elder Ones;
and if they persistently denied all access to the marvellous sunset city,
it were better not to seek that city.
Kuranes furthermore doubted whether his guest would profit
aught by coming to the city even were he to gain it. He himself had dreamed
and yearned long years for lovely Celephais and the land of Ooth-Nargai,
and for the freedom and colour and high experience of life devoid of its
chains, and conventions, and stupidities. But now that he was come into
that city and that land,
and was the king thereof, he found the freedom and the
vividness all too soon worn out, and monotonous for want of linkage with
anything firm in his feelings and memories. He was a king in Ooth-Nargai,
but found no meaning therein, and drooped always for the old familiar things
of England that had shaped his youth. All his kingdom would he give for
the sound of Cornish
church bells over the downs, and all the thousand minarets
of Celephais for the steep homely roofs of the village near his home. So
he told his guest that the unknown sunset city might not hold quite that
content he sought, and that perhaps it had better remain a glorious and
half-remembered dream. For he had visited Carter often in the old waking
days, and knew well the lovely
New England slopes that had given him birth.
At the last, he was very certain, the seeker would long
only for the early remembered scenes; the glow of Beacon Hill at evening,
the tall steeples and winding hill streets of quaint Kingsport, the hoary
gambrel roofs of ancient and witch-haunted Arkham, and the blessed meads
and valleys where stone walls rambled and white farmhouse gables peeped
out from bowers of verdure. These things he told Randolph Carter,
but still the seeker held to his purpose. And in the end they parted each
with his own conviction, and Carter went back through the bronze gate into
Celephais and down the Street of Pillars to the old sea wall, where he
talked more with the mariners of far ports and waited for the dark ship
from cold and twilight Inquanok, whose strange-faced sailors and onyx-traders
had in them the blood of the Great Ones.
One starlit evening when the Pharos shone splendid over
the harbour the longed-for ship put in, and strange-faced sailors and traders
appeared one by one and group by group in the ancient taverns along the
sea wall. It was very exciting to see again those living faces so like
the godlike features of Ngranek, but Carter did not hasten to speak with
the silent seamen. He did not know
how much of pride and secrecy and dim supernal memory
might fill those children of the Great Ones, and was sure it would not
be wise to tell them of his quest or ask too closely of that cold desert
stretching north of their twilight land. They talked little with the other
folk in those ancient sea taverns; but would gather in groups in remote
comers and sing among themselves the
haunting airs of unknown places, or chant long tales
to one another in accents alien to the rest of dreamland. And so rare and
moving were those airs and tales that one might guess their wonders from
the faces of those who listened, even though the words came to common ears
only as strange cadence and obscure melody.
For a week the strange seamen lingered in the taverns
and traded in the bazaars of Celephais, and before they sailed Carter had
taken passage on their dark ship, telling them that he was an old onyx
miner and wishful to work in their quarries. That ship was very lovey and
cunningly wrought, being of teakwood with ebony fittings and traceries
of gold, and the cabin in which the
traveller lodged had hangings of silk and velvet. One
morning at the turn of the tide the sails were raised and the anchor lilted,
and as Carter stood on the high stern he saw the sunrise-blazing walls
and bronze statues and golden minarets of ageless Celephais sink into the
distance, and the snowy peak of Mount Man grow smaller and smaller. By
noon there was nothing in sight save the gentle blue of the Cerenerian
Sea, with one painted galley afar off bound for that realm of Serannian
where the sea meets the sky.
And the night came with gorgeous stars, and the dark ship
steered for Charles' Wain and the Little Bear as they swung slowly round
the pole. And the sailors sang strange songs of unknown places, and they
stole off one by one to the forecastle while the wistful watchers murmured
old chants and leaned over the rail to glimpse the luminous fish playing
in bowers beneath the sea.
Carter went to sleep at midnight, and rose in the glow
of a young morning, marking that the sun seemed farther south than was
its wont. And all through that second day he made progress in knowing the
men of the ship, getting them little by little to talk of their cold twilight
land, of their exquisite onyx city, and of their fear of the high and impassable
peaks beyond which Leng was said to be. They told him how sorry they were
that no cats would stay in the land of Inquanok, and how they thought the
hidden nearness of Leng was to blame for it. Only of the stony desert to
the north they would not talk. There was something disquieting about that
desert, and it was thought expedient not to admit its existence.
On later days they talked of the quarries in which Carter
said he was going to work. There were many of them, for all the city of
Inquanok was builded of onyx, whilst great polished blocks of it were traded
in Rinar, Ogrothan, and Celephais and at home with the merchants of Thraa,
Flarnek, and Kadatheron, for the beautiful wares of those fabulous ports.
And far to the north, almost in the cold desert whose existence the men
of Inquanok did not care to admit, there was an unused quarry greater than
all the rest; from which had been hewn in forgotten times such prodigious
lumps and blocks that the sight of their chiselled vacancies struck terror
to all who beheld. Who had mined those incredible blocks, and whither they
had been transported, no man
might say; but it was thought best not to trouble that
quarry, around which such inhuman memories might conceivably cling. So
it was left all alone in the twilight, with only the raven and the rumoured
Shantak-bird to brood on its immensities. when Carter heard of this quarry
he was moved to deep thought, for he knew from old tales that the Great
Ones' castle atop unknown
Kadath is of onyx.
Each day the sun wheeled lower and lower in the sky, and
the mists overhead grew thicker and thicker. And in two weeks there was
not any sunlight at all, but only a weird grey twilight shining through
a dome of eternal cloud by day, and a cold starless phosphorescence from
the under side of that cloud by night. On the twentieth day a great jagged
rock in the sea was sighted from
afar, the first land glimpsed since Man's snowy peak
had dwindled behind the ship. Carter asked the captain the name of that
rock, but was told that it had no name and had never been sought by any
vessel because of the sounds that came from it at night. And when, after
dark, a dull and ceaseless howling arose from that jagged granite place,
the traveller was glad that no stop had
been made, and that the rock had no name. The seamen
prayed and chanted till the noise was out of earshot, and Carter dreamed
terrible dreams within dreams in the small hours.
Two mornings after that there loomed far ahead and to
the east a line of great grey peaks whose tops were lost in the changeless
clouds of that twilight world. And at the sight of them the sailors sang
glad songs, and some knelt down on the deck to pray, so that Carter knew
they were come to the land of Inquanok and would soon be moored to the
basalt quays of the great town
bearing that land's name. Toward noon a dark coastline
appeared, and before three o'clock there stood out against the north the
bulbous domes and fantastic spires of the onyx city. Rare and curious did
that archaic city rise above its walls and quays, all of delicate black
with scrolls, flutings, and arabesques of inlaid gold. Tall and many-windowed
were the houses, and carved on
every side with flowers and patterns whose dark symmetries
dazzled the eye with a beauty more poignant than light. Some ended in swelling
domes that tapered to a point, others in terraced pyramids whereon rose
clustered minarets displaying every phase of strangeness and imagination.
The walls were low, and pierced by frequent gates, each under a great arch
rising high above the general level and capped by the head of a god chiselled
with that same skill displayed in the monstrous face on distant Ngranek.
On a hill in the centre rose a sixteen-angled tower greater than all the
rest and bearing a high pinnacled belfry resting on a flattened dome. This,
the seamen said, was the Temple of the Elder Ones, and was ruled by an
old High-Priest sad with inner
secrets.
At intervals the clang of a strange bell shivered over
the onyx city, answered each time by a peal of mystic music made up of
horns, viols, and chanting voices. And from a row of tripods on a galley
round the high dome of the temple there burst flares of flame at certain
moments; for the priests and people of that city were wise in the primal
mysteries, and faithful in keeping the rhythms of the Great Ones as set
forth in scrolls older than the Pnakotic Manuscripts. As the ship rode
past the great basalt breakwater into the harbour the lesser noises of
the city grew manifest, and Carter saw the slaves, sailors, and merchants
on the docks. The sailors and merchants were of the strange-faced race
of the gods, but the slaves were squat, slant-eyed folk said by rumour
to have drifted somehow across or around the impassable peaks from the
valleys beyond Leng. The wharves reached wide outside the city wall and
bore upon them all manner of merchandise from the galleys anchored there,
while at one end were great piles of onyx both carved and uncarved awaiting
shipment to the far markets of Rinar, Ograthan and Celephais.
It was not yet evening when the dark ship anchored beside
a jutting quay of stone, and all the sailors and traders filed ashore and
through the arched gate into the city. The streets of that city were paved
with onyx and some of them were wide and straight whilst others were crooked
and narrow. The houses near the water were lower than the rest, and bore
above their curiously
arched doorways certain signs of gold said to be in honour
of the respective small gods that favoured each. The captain of the ship
took Carter to an old sea tavern where flocked the mariners of quaint countries,
and promised that he would next day shew him the wonders of the twilight
city, and lead him to the taverns of the onyx-miners by the northern wall.
And evening fell, and
little bronze lamps were lighted, and the sailors in
that tavern sang songs of remote places. But when from its high tower the
great bell shivered over the city, and the peal of the horns and viols
and voices rose cryptical in answer thereto, all ceased their songs or
tales and bowed silent till the. last echo died away. For there is a wonder
and a strangeness on the twilight city of
Inquanok, and men fear to be lax in its rites lest a
doom and a vengeance lurk unsuspectedly close.
Far in the shadows of that tavern Carter saw a squat form
he did not like, for it was unmistakably that of the old slant-eyed merchant
he had seen so long before in the taverns of Dylath-Leen, who was reputed
to trade with the horrible stone villages of Leng which no healthy folk
visit and whose evil fires are seen at night from afar, and even to have
dealt with that High-Priest Not
To Be Described, which wears a yellow silken mask over
its face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone monastery. This man
had seemed to shew a queer gleam of knowing when Carter asked the traders
of DylathLeen about the cold waste and Kadath; and somehow his presence
in dark and haunted Inquanok, so close to the wonders of the north, was
not a reassuring thing. He
slipped wholly out of sight before Carter could speak
to him, and sailors later said that he had come with a yak caravan from
some point not well determined, bearing the colossal and rich-flavoured
eggs of the rumoured Shantak-bird to trade for the dextrous jade goblets
that merchants brought from Ilarnek.
On the following morning the ship-captain led Carter through
the onyx streets of Inquanok, dark under their twilight sky. The inlaid
doors and figured house-fronts, carven balconies and crystal-paned oriels
all gleamed with a sombre and polished loveliness; and now and then a plaza
would open out with black pillars, colonades, and the statues of curious
beings both human and fabulous. Some of the vistas down long and unbending
streets, or through side alleys and over bulbous domes, spires, and arabesqued
roofs, were weird and beautiful beyond words; and nothing was more splendid
than the massive heights of the great central Temple of the Elder Ones
with its sixteen carven sides, its flattened dome, and its lofty pinnacled
belfry, overtopping all else,
and majestic whatever its foreground. And always to the
east, far beyond the city walls and the leagues of pasture land, rose the
gaunt grey sides of those topless and impassable peaks across which hideous
Leng was said to lie.
The captain took Carter to the mighty temple, which is
set with its walled garden in a great round plaza whence the streets go
as spokes from a wheel's hub. The seven arched gates of that garden, each
having over it a carven face like those on the city's gates, are always
open, and the people roam reverently at will down the tiled paths and through
the little lanes lined with grotesque termini and the shrines of modest
gods. And there are fountains, pools, and basins there to reflect the frequent
blaze of the tripods on the high balcony, all of onyx and having in them
small luminous fish taken by divers from the lower bowers of ocean. When
the deep clang from the temple belfry shivers over the garden and the city,
and the answer of the horns and viols
and voices peals out from the seven lodges by the garden
gates, there issue from the seven doors of the temple long columns of masked
and hooded priests in black, bearing at arm's length before them great
golden bowls from which a curious steam rises. And all the seven columns
strut peculiarly in single file, legs thrown far forward without bending
the knees, down the walks that lead to the seven lodges, wherein they disappear
and do not appear again. It is said that subterrene paths connect the lodges
with the temple, and that the long files of priests return through them;
nor is it unwhispered that deep flights of onyx steps go down to mysteries
that are never told. But only a few are those who hint that the priests
in the masked and hooded columns are not
human beings.
Carter did not enter the temple, because none but the
Veiled King is permitted to do that. But before he left the garden the
hour of the bell came, and he heard the shivering clang deafening above
him, and the wailing of the horns and viols and voices loud from the lodges
by the gates. And down the seven great walks stalked the long files of
bowl-bearing priests in their singular
way, giving to the traveller a fear which human priests
do not often give. When the last of them had vanished he left that garden,
noting as he did so a spot on the pavement over which the bowls had passed.
Even the ship-captain did not like that spot, and hurried him on toward
the hill whereon the Veiled King's palace rises many-domed and marvellous.
The ways to the onyx palace are steep and narrow, all
but the broad curving one where the king and his companions ride on yaks
or in yak-drawn chariots. Carter and his guide climbed up an alley that
was all steps, between inlaid walls hearing strange signs in gold, and
under balconies and oriels whence sometimes floated soft strains of music
or breaths of exotic fragrance. Always
ahead loomed those titan walls, mighty buttresses, and
clustered and bulbous domes for which the Veiled King's palace is famous;
and at length they passed under a great black arch and emerged in the gardens
of the monarch's pleasure. There Carter paused in faintness at so much
beauty, for the onyx terraces and colonnaded walks, the gay porterres and
delicate flowering trees
espaliered to golden lattices, the brazen urns and tripods
with cunning bas-reliefs, the pedestalled and almost breathing statues
of veined black marble, the basalt-bottomed lagoon's tiled fountains with
luminous fish, the tiny temples of iridescent singing birds atop carven
columns, the marvellous scrollwork of the great bronze gates, and the blossoming
vines trained along every inch of the polished walls all joined to form
a sight whose loveliness was beyond reality, and half-fabulous even in
the land of dreams. There it shimmered like a vision under that grey twilight
sky, with the domed and fretted magnificence of the palace ahead, and the
fantastic silhouette of the distant impassable peaks on the right. And
ever the small birds and the fountains sang, while the perfume of rare
blossoms spread like a veil over that incredible garden. No other human
presence was there, and Carter was glad it was so. Then they turned and
descended again the onyx alley of steps, for the palace itself no visitor
may enter; and it is not well to look too long and steadily at the great
central dome, since it is said to house the archaic father of all the rumoured
Shantak-birds, and to send out queer dreams to the curious.
After that the captain took Carter to the north quarter
of the town, near the Gate of the Caravans, where are the taverns of the
yak-merchants and the onyx-miners. And there, in a low-ceiled inn of quarrymen,
they said farewell; for business called the captain whilst Carter was eager
to talk with miners about the north. There were many men in that inn, and
the traveller was not long in speaking to some of them; saying that he
was an old miner of onyx, and anxious to know somewhat of Inquanok's quarries.
But all that he learned was not much more than he knew before, for the
miners were timid and evasive about the cold desert to the north and the
quarry that no man visits. They had fears of fabled emissaries from around
the mountains where Leng is said to lie, and of evil presences and nameless
sentinels far north among the scattered rocks. And they whispered also
that the rumoured Shantak-birds are no wholesome things; it being. indeed
for the best that no man has ever truly seen one (for that fabled father
of Shantaks in the king's dome is fed in the dark).
The next day, saying that he wished to look over all the
various mines for himself and to visit the scattered farms and quaint onyx
villages of Inquanok, Carter hired a yak and stuffed great leathern saddle-bags
for a journey. Beyond the Gate of the Caravans the road lay straight betwixt
tilled fields, with many odd farmhouses crowned by low domes. At some of
these houses the seeker stopped to ask questions; once finding a host so
austere and reticent, and so full of an unplaced majesty like to that in
the huge features on Ngranek, that he felt certain he had come at last
upon one of the Great Ones themselves, or upon one with full nine-tenths
of their blood, dwelling amongst men. And to that austere and reticent
cotter he was careful to speak very well of the gods, and to praise all
the blessings they had ever accorded him.
That night Carter camped in a roadside meadow beneath
a great lygath-tree to which he tied his yak, and in the morning resumed
his northward pilgrimage. At about ten o'clock he reached the small-domed
village of Urg, where traders rest and miners tell their tales, and paused
in its taverns till noon. It is here that the great caravan road turns
west toward Selarn, but Carter kept on
north by the quarry road. All the afternoon he followed
that rising road, which was somewhat narrower than the great highway, and
which now led through a region with more rocks than tilled fields. And
by evening the low hills on his left had risen into sizable black cliffs,
so that he knew he was close to the mining country. All the while the great
gaunt sides of the impassable
mountains towered afar off at his right, and the farther
he went, the worse tales he heard of them from the scattered farmers and
traders and drivers of lumbering onyx-carts along the way.
On the second night he camped in the shadow of a large
black crag, tethering his yak to a stake driven in the ground. He observed
the greater phosphorescence of the clouds at his northerly point, and more
than once thought he saw dark shapes outlined against them. And on the
third morning he came in sight of the first onyx quarry, and greeted the
men who there laboured with picks and chisels. Before evening he had passed
eleven quarries; the land being here given over altogether to onyx cliffs
and boulders, with no vegetation at all, but only great rocky fragments
scattered about a floor of black earth, with the grey impassable peaks
always rising gaunt and sinister on his right. The third night he spent
in a camp of quarry men whose flickering fires cast weird reflections on
the polished cliffs to the west. And they sang many songs and told many
tales, shewing such strange knowledge of the olden days and the habits
of gods that Carter could see they held many latent memories of their sires
the Great Ones. They asked him whither he went, and cautioned him not to
go too far to the north; but he replied that he was seeking new cliffs
of onyx, and would take no more risks than were common among prospectors.
In the morning he bade them adieu and rode on into the darkening north,
where they had warned him he would find the feared and unvisited quarry
whence hands older than men's hands had wrenched prodigious blocks. But
he did not like it when, turning back to wave a last farewell, he thought
he saw approaching the camp that squat and evasive old merchant with slanting
eyes, whose conjectured traffick with Leng was the gossip of distant Dylath-Leen.
After two more quarries the inhabited part of Inquanok
seemed to end, and the road narrowed to a steeply rising yak-path among
forbidding black cliffs. Always on the right towered the gaunt and distant
peaks, and as Carter climbed farther and farther into this untraversed
realm he found it grew darker and colder. Soon he perceived that there
were no prints of feet or hooves on
the black path beneath, and realised that he was indeed
come into strange and deserted ways of elder time. Once in a while a raven
would croak far overhead, and now and then a flapping behind some vast
rock would make him think uncomfortably of the rumoured Shantak-bird. But
in the main he was alone with his shaggy steed, and it troubled him to
observe that this excellent yak became more and more reluctant to advance,
and more and more disposed to snort affrightedly at any small noise along
the route.
The path now contracted between sable and glistening walls,
and began to display an even greater steepness than before. It was a bad
footing, and the yak often slipped on the stony fragments strewn thickly
about. In two hours Carter saw ahead a definite crest, beyond which was
nothing but dull grey sky, and blessed the prospect of a level or downward
course. To reach this crest, however, was no easy task; for the way had
grown nearly perpendicular, and was perilous with loose black gravel and
small stones. Eventually Carter dismounted and led his dubious yak; pulling
very hard when the animal balked or stumbled, and keeping his own footing
as best he might. Then suddenly he came to the top and saw beyond, and
gasped at what he saw.
The path indeed led straight ahead and slightly down,
with the same lines of high natural walls as before; but on the left hand
there opened out a monstrous space, vast acres in extent, where some archaic
power had riven and rent the native cliffs of onyx in the form of a giant's
quarry. Far back into the solid precipice ran that cyclopean gouge, and
deep down within earth's bowels its lower delvings yawned. It was no quarry
of man, and the concave sides were scarred with great squares, yards wide,
which told of the size of the blocks once hewn by nameless hands and chisels.
High over its jagged rim huge ravens flapped and croaked, and vague whirrings
in the unseen depths told of bats or urhags or less mentionable presences
haunting the endless blackness. There Carter stood in the narrow
way amidst the twilight with the rocky path sloping down before him; tall
onyx cliffs on his right that led on as far as he could see and tall cliffs
on the left chopped off just ahead to make that terrible and unearthly
quarry.
All at once the yak uttered a cry and burst from his control,
leaping past him and darting on in a panic till it vanished down the narrow
slope toward the north. Stones kicked by its flying hooves fell over the
brink of the quarry and lost themselves in the dark without any sound of
striking bottom; but Carter ignored the perils of that scanty path as he
raced breathlessly after the flying
steed. Soon the left-behind cliffs resumed their course,
making the way once more a narrow lane; and still the traveller leaped
on after the yak whose great wide prints told of its desperate flight.
Once he thought he heard the hoofbeats of the frightened
beast, and doubled his speed from this encouragement. He was covering miles,
and little by little the way was broadening in front till he knew he must
soon emerge on the cold and dreaded desert to the north. The gaunt grey
flanks of the distant impassable peaks were again visible above the right-hand
crags, and ahead were the rocks and boulders of an open space which was
clearly a foretaste of the dark arid limitless plain. And once more those
hoofbeats sounded in his ears, plainer than before, but this time giving
terror instead of encouragement because he realised that they were not
the frightened hoofbeats of his fleeing yak. The beats were ruthless and
purposeful, and they were behind him.
Carter's pursuit of the yak became now a flight from an
unseen thing, for though he dared not glance over his shoulder he felt
that the presence behind him could be nothing wholesome or mentionable.
His yak must have heard or felt it first, and he did not like to ask himself
whether it had followed him from the haunts of men or had floundered up
out of that black quarry pit.
Meanwhile the cliffs had been left behind, so that the
oncoming night fell over a great waste of sand and spectral rocks wherein
all paths were lost. He could not see the hoofprints of his yak, but always
from behind him there came that detestable clopping; mingled now and then
with what he fancied were titanic flappings and whirrings. That he was
losing ground seemed unhappily
clear to him, and he knew he was hopelessly lost in this
broken and blasted desert of meaningless rocks and untravelled sands. Only
those remote and impassable peaks on the right gave him any sense of direction,
and even they were less clear as the grey twilight waned and the sickly
phosphorescence of the clouds took its place.
Then dim and misty in the darkling north before him he
glimpsed a terrible thing. He had thought it for some moments a range of
black mountains, but now he saw it was something more. The phosphorescence
of the brooding clouds shewed it plainly, and even silhouetted parts of
it as vapours glowed behind. How distant it was he could not tell, but
it must have been very far. It
was thousands of feet high, stretching in a great concave
arc from the grey impassable peaks to the unimagined westward spaces, and
had once indeed been a ridge of mighty onyx hills. But now these hills
were hills no more, for some hand greater than man's had touched them.
Silent they squatted there atop the world like wolves or ghouls, crowned
with clouds and mists and
guarding the secrets of the north forever. All in a great
half circle they squatted, those dog-like mountains carven into monstrous
watching statues, and their right hands were raised in menace against mankind.
It was only the flickering light of the clouds that made
their mitred double heads seem to move, but as Carter stumbled on he saw
arise from their shadowy caps great forms whose motions were no delusion.
Winged and whirring, those forms grew larger each moment, and the traveller
knew his stumbling was at an end. They were not any birds or bats known
elsewhere on earth or in dreamland, for they were larger than elephants
and had heads like a horse's. Carter knew that they must be the Shantak-birds
of ill rumour, and wondered no more what evil guardians and nameless sentinels
made men avoid the boreal rock desert. And as he stopped in final resignation
he dared at last to look behind him, where indeed was trotting the squat
slant-eyed trader of evil
legend, grinning astride a lean yak and leading on a
noxious horde of leering Shantaks to whose wings still clung the rime and
nitre of the nether pits.
