Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (30 page)

t the fall of dusk, after the setting of the sun and when the stars begin to appear, the beast emerges from the sewers to hunt. The bold traveler, who follows its progress through the tunnels and exits the pit at its heels, may choose this moment to mount upon its back between its outspread wings, which it fans in the air to strengthen after having held them cramped to its back. A man who wears an engraving of the Elder Seal about his neck as a talisman may dare to do this, for to such a man the beast submits. If he has no talisman around his neck, he must form and hold the Elder Seal all the while he is astride the beast or it will turn and rend him. His weight is as nothing to the creature, who carries him upward above the highest mountains in its quest for food.

It is the habit of the beast to haunt the roads and caravan routes, and to circle the outskirts of villages and cities. At times its ranging flight carries it over the river Euphrates, where even the pilots of cargo boats are not safe from its strike. When it spies its prey it folds its wings and stoops like a hawk. Near to the ground it suddenly spreads its wings and stretches downward its taloned forelegs. The traveler must take great care to hold to its back with tenacity or he will surely be thrown off. The hapless and unwary man below is snatched into the air with the ease by which a mother lifts an infant from its cradle, and before he can cry out the talons of the monster tighten and pierce his breast and slay him.

At once, while the meat is still fresh and dripping with blood, the beast seeks a secure rock flat or dune of sand upon which to feast. Its beak tears the flesh from the corpse in long strips, leaving only naked bones and the skin that covers the hands, feet, and head, as there is not enough meat on these parts of the body to interest it. The skull it cracks with its beak so that it may devour the brain. How the soul of the dead enters the beast is not apparent, but it may be consumed along with the blood, for the blood is the seat of the soul in the body.

After feasting the beast makes a strange pilgrimage of mysterious purpose, for it flies to a lonely mountain in the desert that is flat upon its peak and there alights before a standing stone. The stone is as large as those in the temple of Albion, but black in color rather than blue. From the time it arrives until shortly before the rising of the sun it circles the stone and makes homage before it, crouching its body and bowing down its many heads as though in worship, and the voices of the heads fall silent. No mark is cut upon the stone, and no sign is to be found upon the peak that shows the hand of man. The souls devoured by the beast are ignorant of its nightly purpose, but the wisest of them all, the wizard Balaka, speculates that it is the place of the creature’s making, and that in coming to the mountain it returns to its first home.

The flat land of the mountaintop is barren save for small tufts of browning grasses that grow between the rocks and a kind of plant that Balaka calls u’mal that is to be found nowhere else in the world. The u’mal is tough and dry, and grows close to the rocks amid the grass. It bears a tiny white flower that resembles a star. When pulled from the earth, its thickened root is exposed, and in this root lies its virtue. The dried root, chewed in the mouth together with fresh human blood, heals all diseases, even those that are invariably fatal. The root alone is insufficient, and the blood must be drawn from a living human body other than the man who seeks the remedy, for his own blood will not serve to empower the root. The juice of the root when mingled in the mouth with blood becomes fiery and courses through the limbs, driving the disease before it and expelling it from the body, so that the work of healing is only a matter of a few minutes.

The u’mal could not grow upon the peak without the nightly visits of the beast. In its circumambulations of the standing stone it drops its dung upon the rocks and windblown sand, and makes them fertile for this rare plant. Nor can it be harvested except by a man who rides the beast, for the peak where it grows is unknown, and an inspection of its slopes reveals that they are impossible to climb even were its location to somehow be determined. It may be that the peak lies beyond the boundaries of the earthly sphere, for the air upon the peak has a curious vital quality not to be found elsewhere, and it is known that some of the children of Shub-Niggurath have the power to span the spaces between worlds.

As much of the u’mal root as can be conveniently carried should be gathered while the beast circles the stone in its worship. Even when dried and kept for months or years, it does not lose its virtue. Those who know of it are willing to pay vast sums to possess the merest fragment, and a man who keeps a good supply for his own use is immortal, as the root not only cures any disease of the flesh but counters the effects of old age and renders the body youthful, when it is chewed regularly once every cycle of the moon. The root cannot make an old man look young in the face, or heal disfiguring scars, but it renders him energetic in his limbs so that he can do the work of a young man, and also it makes him youthful in his virile member so that he can performs feats of sensual congress that are only possible in youth, unless by some ill chance he has suffered the indignity of castration.

When the beast ceases to adore the stone, and approaches the edge of the peak to spread wide its wings, it is time to mount once more upon its back, for this is the sign that it prepares for flight. In the pale glow of the sky it flies east, for the horizon is brighter before it than behind, but so early is the hour that nothing can be distinguished in the lands that pass below except the vague shadows of sharp peaks that rise up like the blades of swords and daggers. Hastening at the end of its journey, it crawls into the pit by the east gate of Babylon just as the first ray of the sun is breaking upon the stones of the fallen pillars. Such is the monotonous cycle of its life, though in truth it is no more dull than the lives of many men, who toil from dawn to dusk for their masters and receive scant reward for having given over the fruits of their labor and the precious and irreplaceable strokes of their hearts.

rom the ruins of Babylon the seeker of mysteries will do well to turn his face east across the rocky lands to the river Tigris, where dwell the remnants of the royal caste of the magi. No men greater in wisdom inhabit this world, for they have gathered the secrets of both east and west and combined it in a single teaching. The way is arduous by foot, but less daunting upon one of the camels that may be obtained from the village of Azani south of the ruins.

In the spring of the year at the time of the equinox, sit upon your camel at the east gate of Babylon and fix your eyes upon the rising sun at morning. Ride directly toward the place of its ascent on the horizon until dusk, without stopping to eat or rest until darkness has fallen. Do this each day for three days, and you will come at the sunset of the third day upon the mouth of a narrow pass in a range of rocky hills. It cannot be seen except in the slanting rays of the setting sun, which reveal the shadow of its slit. The heat rising from the rocks makes the air dance, so that the mouth of the pass appears to open and shut, as though speaking.

The finding of the pass is no easy matter, even for one who knows its location. It is guarded by a powerful and ancient glamour that turns the mind away when the gaze falls upon it, so that it is both seen yet remains unseen. Only a man versed in the arts of magic can sense this spell and willfully resist, yet few even among the greater wizards possessing potency in their art are able to overcome its seductive veil, so subtle yet insistent is its ray upon the eyes.

Enter between the rock walls of the pass, which is so narrow that only a single camel can go in at one time, and it will lead into a narrow defile that eventually opens into a broad and pleasant valley of fertile lands. High cliffs rise all around it, making access impossible except from the pass to the west. From a prominence in the western part of the valley bubbles a spring of clear water that divides into four streams flowing in four directions. These water the rich, dark soil before combining at the eastern end of the valley to flow in a single course into a cave, where they vanish beneath the earth; for the floor of the valley is sloped gently down from west to east.