Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (6 page)

Without warning or sign, the city was destroyed in a great cataclysm that cast down its pillars and domes and covered them with sand, killing all the inhabitants. The legend states that it was the judgment of God upon the wickedness of the people, but few men know the real cause of its downfall. The secret is only to be learned by going there and looking, and Irem has been lost to the world for longer than the histories of man can tell. It was one of the places of the earth so long inhabited that those who dwelled there forgot why it had first been founded. Now it is only a scattering of dusty mounds and broken pillars, the mystery of its destruction as deep as the secret of its creation.

The eaters of the dead know the location of Irem, but they will not go there, and only lead the traveler so far as the outer slopes of the hills surrounding the valley that holds its ruins. Even so, it can be found by a man possessing the secret of the white spiders of the radiant fungi. Eat three and wait for nightfall outside the hills of the valley of the city of many towers. In the darkness you will see glowing across the sands an ancient caravan road that cannot be perceived under the sun with normal sight. It enters the valley between two hills. Follow it, and you will hear faintly on the breeze the sounds of stones rolled beneath the hoofs of walking camels and the tinkle of silver and brass from the bridles, the creak of hemp ropes and oiled leather, and perhaps the murmur of voices. All these sounds come from the distant past and must be disregarded, for they are a snare for the imagination of the unwary. Those who heed them too closely drift into a dream and awake walking beside the camels of the caravans, forever lost to their own time.

The silver band of the caravan road leads into the fallen gate of the city, of which there is no sign remaining. Yet beneath the light of the full moon may sometimes be discerned a pale arch of translucent stones, the shade of the gateway that collapsed so many ages ago. Enter the gate. The tops of pillars appear as worn stones, for they project no more than a cubit above the sand, and wind storms have rounded and cut them beyond recognition. Scattered are fragments of pottery and glass, easy to find since they glow under the moon to one who has awakened the second sight.

Continue on past a hill on the left side and you will come upon a shallow but broad hollow, much like a sinkpit in the sand. Descend its slope and stand in the center. Know that you stand in the center of the fallen city, where rose the palace of the king. The shaking of the ground that felled the towers began in this place, and drew the palace under the surface so that no trace of it remains exposed. Yet stand and listen. Hear you the sifting of sand? It is faint, and may easily be mistaken for the sound of a beetle walking across a dune. Seek it out, and there you will find in a deeper hollow that is shadowed from the moon—a small opening resembling the den of an animal.

Now you must determine whether you choose to enter, or to walk from the hollow and leave the ruins of fallen Irem. The way within is perilous, not merely for the flesh but for the reason. It may be that only a man already mad can enter the cisterns below Irem and bear to look upon what dwells in its darkness without seeking death as an escape from the horror. Only he can enter who becomes one with the serpent, extending his arms and writhing with his belly; nor can a fat man enter at all, but only he who has gone long without much food. The channel is like the passageway of birth, and yields with reluctance only after much effort.

After you have won your struggle and fallen within, you will find a cave, the sand-strewn floor of which slopes downward. All is darkness, but the shells of tiny sea creatures embedded in the rocks glow to the second sight and give sufficient illumination to go forward. As the cave descends it widens and broadens. Faint in the distance is the drip of water, and water may be plainly smelled, though no water is to be found. The cave at last opens into a vast space the limits of which cannot be seen, for the glow from the shells in its walls has not the strength to provide sight more than a dozen paces.

Rats dwell there that are of unusual bigness. They may be recognized by the soft rustle of their scabrous, naked tails as they move over one another, and they have no fear of the stranger but eagerly scurry forward to nip at exposed flesh; but they are wise in the ways of the desert, and soon recognize one who is a lover of the Empty Space, and thereafter they keep a courteous distance. Their meat is lean but filling, and good to the taste, and particularly succulent are their eyes.

The traveler soon discovers by pacing the curved wall of the dark cavern that it opens outward at intervals into other similar spaces, which also have their several openings, so that the entire ground beneath Irem is found to be not sand and rock, but voids whose arching roofs are held up by natural rock pillars. It was in truth the collapse of one of these caverns that drew the palace of the king beneath the surface, and the upheaval of the earth that caused that collapse brought about the toppling of the domes and towers of the city. All this may be reasoned out in days of darkness and silence broken only by the rustle of rats and the drip of phantom water that is never to be found. The blood of the rats is sweet, and is sufficient.

n the darkness beneath the earth, time does not pass as it passes under the daily cycle of the sun. The hours lengthen and drag with the weight of years. On occasion when conditions in the heavens conspire at certain charged places in the bowels of this sphere, the progress of time is halted, or so drawn out that it appears to have utterly ceased. A falling droplet of water may be contemplated in its fullness as it hangs suspended in the air as though a polished bead of crystal on a silken thread.

Whether due to this curiosity of time or some other effect, the cause of which is not evident to apprehension, the creatures that dwell within the deepest caverns can live for spans of years that are only associated under the sun with the oldest of trees. They grow wizened in appearance but they do not die. This is only true of larger forms of life, for the smaller things endure no longer than their surface brethren. It may be that the extension of years is a function of reason, for it is true that all the creatures of long life encountered in the caverns possess at least some semblance of intelligence, and many have the power of speech, though the languages they use are those of lost ages and may only with difficulty be understood by a scholar of tongues. The mouths of these things are ill suited to shape the words of human speech, and their ancient minds struggle to conceive our thoughts.

Beneath Irem there dwells a creature that was once human, but is no more of our race. Humanity is not a quality that persists unchanged and unquenched through eternity, but is limited by the circumstances of place and time, and this being of darkness lost all human nature uncounted ages past, before the city of many towers fell to its ruin. She may be called a witch, though this term and gender possess little significance, for she is so changed that no trace of the attributes of a woman remain on her stunted and deformed body, and her witchcraft is not the art practiced in the habitations of human beings.

The name of the thing is I’thakuah, and she speaks in many ancient tongues, one of which is the primordial source of our own. By comparing the old words with the new, and by signs and gestures, she may be interrogated, for she holds vast storehouses of knowledge that are more precious than any earthly treasures. She has listened to the murmurings and chitterings of the dwellers in the deeper gulfs, and has learned their tongues, and from them stolen secrets. These she does not divulge willingly, but in return for offerings of food and other necessities she will trade her knowledge. She is grown bent with the years and hunting is difficult for her twisted limbs, though when required she can move with startling swiftness, and it is wise to sit three or more paces from her when listening to her tales of elder times.

In return for the fresh carcass of a rat she will answer a single question; therefore, take care to ask wisely. She does not lie, but neither does she offer without prompting her most precious knowledge. In this way she contrives to keep those who are her students with her, that she may continue to have fresh meat and other needed articles such as water and fire, whenever she may wish them. She is jealous of beauty in others, and in sudden fits of madness may seek to slay her benefactors if their faces offend her, for her eyes have grown accustomed to the blackness and she sees as if under the sun; but one who has been disfigured in the face has nothing to fear from her capricious malice, for she finds the lack of a nose and ears amusing. Her laughter is dry, like the squeal of a rusty hinge, and it doubles her stunted body so that her forehead almost touches the ground.

How long I’thakuah has lived in the caverns, she does not remember; neither does the memory remain of whose daughter she was before she retreated from the sun. On all other matters, her mind remains keen. Her eyes glitter, small and black, in the leathery wrinkles of her face, resembling those of insects. Though she has no teeth, her gums have become hardened, allowing her to tear chunks from raw meat and chew them. Her strength is unnatural, and has its greatest concentration in her hands. If by chance she is able to lock her fingers around a man’s throat, no force of prying or blows will loosen them until she has snapped his neck. She goes naked save for a ragged cloak of wool that she hugs close around her hunched shoulders.

You will not know what question to ask on the first occasion, nor even on the tenth; yet if you have patience to serve her, over time you will acquire knowledge, and this may be used to direct your questions more precisely, so that the longer you remain with this witch, the more precious her answers become. The lore of the Old Ones is known to her, and the places where they are worshipped in the farness of the world, both on the land and in the oceans. Some of the geography she reveals is unknown to scholars, and may appear fabulous, such as the vast frozen waste that lies far to the south. For how could there be ice in the southern part of the world? Yet all that she speaks is true, and can be confirmed by diligent seeking.

Question her wisely, and she will tell of the seven great lords and of their origin between the stars; of their battle with the even more ancient beings known as the Elder Things who dwelled long upon our lands before the Old Ones came and drove them into the sea; of the fungous creatures of Yuggoth who in ages past traveled here from beyond the sphere of Saturn to mine the minerals of this world; of the time dancers from Yith who put on bodies of their choosing when venturing to distant aeons; of the froglike servants of Dagon; of the dread shoggoths, most mighty of all creatures that are fabled to live beneath the surface of the earth.

When you are ready to depart from her service, take care to conceal your intention, for she will surely try to murder you. There is by her sleeping place a pyramid of human skulls, sucked clean of all their flesh, taken from those who have served her in the past. Let it be a warning to the wise seeker after wisdom. Do not attempt to escape from the caverns by the narrow way you entered, for it would require so much wriggling and clawing at the earth that I’thakuah would hear and would seize you by the feet before you could win the surface. Then she would surely slay you, for her long arms are stronger than the arms of any ten men, and her fingers are like the pincers of an ironsmith.