Atop
the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer not man
to tell that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they once inhabited;
but ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes of rock and snow,
driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till now only the last
remains. When they left their old peaks they took with them all signs of
themselves, save once, it is said, when they left a carven image on the
face of the mountain which they called Ngranek.
But
now they have betaken themselves to unknown Kadath in the cold waste where
no man treads, and are grown stern, having no higher peak whereto to flee
at the coming of men. They are grown stern, and where once they suffered
men to displace them, they now forbid men to come; or coming, to depart.
It is well for men that they know not of Kadath in the cold waste; else
they would seek injudiciously to scale it.
Sometimes
when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still of the night the
peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play in the
olden way on remembered slopes. Men have felt the tears of the gods on
white-capped Thurai, though they have thought it rain; and have heard the
sighs of the gods in the plaintive dawn-winds of Lerion. In cloud-ships
the gods are wont to travel, and wise cotters have legends that keep them
from certain high peaks at night when it is cloudy, for the gods are not
lenient as of old.
In Ulthar,
which lies beyond the river Skai, once dwelt an old man avid to behold
the gods of earth; a man deeply learned in the seven cryptical books of
earth, and familiar with the Pnakotic Manuscripts of distant and frozen
Lomar. His name was Barzai the Wise, and the villagers tell of how
he went up a mountain on the night of the strange eclipse.
Barzai
knew so much of the gods that he could tell of their comings and goings,
and guessed so many of their secrets that he was deemed half a god himself.
It was he who wisely advised the burgesses of Ulthar when they passed their
remarkable law against the slaying of cats, and who first told the young
priest Atal where it is that black cats go at midnight on St. John's Eve.
Barzai was learned in the lore of the earth's gods, and had gained a desire
to look upon their faces. He believed that his great secret knowledge
of gods could shield him from their wrath, so resolved to go up to the
summit of high and rocky Hatheg-Kla on a night when he knew the gods would
be there.
Hatheg-Kla
is far in the stony desert beyond Hatheg, for which it is named, and rises
like a rock statue in a silent temple. Around its peak the mists
play always mournfully, for mists are the memories of the gods, and the
gods loved Hatheg-Kla when they dwelt upon it in the old days. Often
the gods of earth visit Hatheg-Kla in their ships of clouds, casting pale
vapors over the slopes as they dance reminiscently on the summit under
a clear moon. The villagers of Hatheg say it is ill to climb the
Hatheg-Kla at any time, and deadly to climb it by night when pale vapors
hide the summit and the moon; but Barzai heeded them not when he came from
neighboring Ulthar with the young priest Atal, who was his disciple.
Atal was only the son of an innkeeper, and was sometimes afraid; but Barzai's
father had been a landgrave who dwelt in an ancient castle, so he had no
common superstition in his blood, and only laughed at the fearful cotters.
Banzai
and Atal went out of Hatheg into the stony desert despite the prayers of
peasants, and talked of earth's gods by their campfires at night.
Many days they traveled, and from afar saw lofty Hatheg-Kla with his aureole
of mournful mist. On the thirteenth day they reached the mountain's lonely
base, and Atal spoke of his fears. But Barzai was old and learned
and had no fears, so led the way up the slope that no man had scaled since
the time of Sansu, who is written of with fright in the moldy Pnakotic
Manuscripts.
The
way was rocky, and made perilous by chasms, cliffs, and falling stones.
Later it grew cold and snowy; and Barzai and Atal often slipped and fell
as they hewed and plodded upward with staves and axes. Finally the
air grew thin, and the sky changed color, and the climbers found it hard
to breathe; but still they toiled up and up, marveling at the strangeness
of the scene and thrilling at the thought of what would happen on the summit
when the moon was out and the pale vapours spread around. For three
days they climbed higher and higher toward the roof of the world; then
they camped to wait for the clouding of the moon.
For
four nights no clouds came, and the moon shone down cold through the thin
mournful mist around the silent pinnacle. Then on the fifth night,
which was the night of the full moon, Barzai saw some dense clouds far
to the north, and stayed up with Atal to watch them draw near. Thick
and majestic they sailed, slowly and deliberately onward; ranging themselves
round the peak high above the watchers, and hiding the moon and the summit
form view. For a long hour the watchers gazed, whilst the vapours
swirled and the screen of clouds grew thicker and more restless.
Barzai was wise in the lore of earth's gods, and listened hard for certain
sounds, but Atal felt the chill of the vapours and the awe of the night,
and feared much. And when Barzai began to climb higher and beckon
eagerly, it was long before Atal would follow.
So thick
were the vapours that the way was hard, and though Atal followed at last,
he could scarce see the gray shape of Barzai on the dim slope above in
the clouded moonlight. Barzai forged very far ahead, and seemed despite
his age to climb more easily than Atal; fearing not the steepness that
began to grow too great for any save a strong and dauntless man, nor pausing
at wide black chasms that Atal could scarce leap. And so they went
up wildly over rocks and gulfs, slipping and stumbling, and sometimes awed
at the vastness and horrible silence of bleak ice pinnacles and mute granite
steeps.
Very
suddenly Barzai went out of Atal's sight, scaling a hideous cliff that
seemed to bulge outward and block the path for any climber not inspired
of earth's gods. Atal was far below, and planning what she should
do when he reached the place, when curiously he noticed that the light
had grown strong, as if the cloudless peak and moonlit meetingplace of
the gods were very near. And as he scrambled on toward the bulging
cliff and litten sky he felt fears more shocking than any he had known
before. Then through the high mists he heard the voice of Barzai
shouting wildly in delight:
"I have
heard the gods. I have heard earth's gods singing in revelry on Hatheg-Kla!
The voices of earth's gods are known to Barzai the Prophet!
The mists are thin and the moon is bright, and I shall see the gods dancing
wildly on Hatheg-Kla that they loved in youth. The wisdom of Barzai
hath made him greater than earth's gods, and against his will their spells
and barriers are as naught; Barzai will behold the gods, the proud gods,
the secret gods, the gods of earth who spurn the sight of man!"
Atal
could not hear the voices Barzai heard, but he was now close to the bulging
cliff and scanning it for footholds. Then he heard Barzai's voice
grow
shriller and louder:
"The mist is very thin, and the
moon casts shadows on the slope; the voices of earth's gods are high and
wild, and they fear the coming of Barzai the Wise, who is greater than
they. . . The moon's light flickers, as earth's gods dance against
it; I shall see the dancing forms of the gods that leap and howl in the
moonlight. . . The light is dimmer and the gods are afraid. . ."
Whilst
Barzai was shouting these things Atal felt a spectral change in all the
air, as if the laws of earth were bowing to greater laws; for though the
way was steeper than ever, the upward path was now grown fearsomely easy,
and the bulging cliff proved scarce an obstacle when he reached it and
slid perilously up its convex face. The light of the moon had strangely
failed, and as Atal plunged upward through the mists he heard Barzai the
Wise shrieking in the shadows:
"The moon is dark, and the gods
dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath
sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods. . .
There is unknown magic on Hatheg-Kla, for the screams of the frightened
gods have turned to laughter, and the slopes of ice shoot up endlessly
into the black heavens whither I am plunging. . . . Hei! Hei!
At last! In the dim light I behold the gods of earth!"
And
now Atal, slipping dizzily up over inconceivable steeps, heard in the dark
a loathsome laughing, mixed with such a cry as no man else ever heard save
in the Phlegethon of unrelatable nightmares; a cry wherein reverberated
the horror and anguish of a haunted lifetime packed into one atrocious
moment:
"The other gods! The other
gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!
. . . Look away . . . Go back. . . . Do not see!
Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses. . . . That
cursed, that damnable pit. . . . Merciful gods of earth, I am falling
into the sky!"
And
as Atal shut his eyes and stopped his ears and tried to hump downward against
the frightful pull from unknown heights, there resounded on Hatheg-Kla
that terrible peal of thunder which awaked the good cotters of the plains
and the honest burgesses of Hatheg, Nir and Ulthar, and caused them to
behold through the clouds that strange eclipse of the moon that no book
ever predicted. And when the moon came out at last Atal was safe
on the lower snows of the mountain without sight of earth's gods, or of
the other gods.
Now
it is told in the moldy Pnakotic Manuscripts that Sansu found naught but
wordless ice and rock when he did climb Hatheg-Kla in the youth of the
world. Yet when the men of Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg crushed their
fears and scaled that haunted steep by day in search of Barzai the Wise,
they found graven in the naked stone of the summit a curious and cyclopean
symbol fifty cubits wide, as if the rock had been riven by some titanic
chisel. And the symbol was like to one that learned men have
discerned in those frightful parts of the Pnakotic Manuscripts which were
too ancient to be read. This they found.
Barzai
the Wise they never found, nor could the holy priest Atal ever be persuaded
to pray for his soul's repose. Moreover, to this day the people of
Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg fear eclipses, and pray by night when pale vapors
hide the mountain-top and the moon. And above the mists on Hatheg-Kla,
earth's gods sometimes dance reminiscently; for they know they are safe,
and love to come from unknown Kadath in ships of clouds and play in the
olden way, as they did when earth was new and men not given to the climbing
of inaccessible places.!
