Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (8 page)

It is needless to covet these gems, as precious stones of a more ordinary kind may be found lying upon the floors of rooms, partly hidden beneath a carpet of dust, where they were scattered in haste when the dwellers in the nameless city abandoned it. It may be speculated that the dwellers used the colored jewels for commerce, in the way we use copper and silver coins, so many are to be gathered with so little effort. A handful of these stones is sufficient to provision the traveler with abundance, though he may spend years following the caravan roads or voyaging across the seas to the far places of the world.

The entire expanse of the curved wall of the starlit chamber, excepting the gaps of its two open doorways, is covered from floor to the base of the blue dome with raised paintings that depict strange landscapes and unearthly cities. In the center of the floor is a low, circular dais of strange, green stone tending to white through which the light penetrates and reveals milky depths. This single huge stone is of so uncommon a type that most who gazed upon it would fail to identify it, but it can only be the green stone coveted in Cathay with such lust for its health-giving properties. Deeply carved triangles intersect on its surface at irregular angles, so that looking long upon them produces an ache in the head, and in a circle at the center of these interlocking triangles is inscribed the sign of five branches associated with the Elder Race that ruled the earth before the coming of the Old Ones.

At the perimeter of the dais, raised metal pins of the thickness of a fist, unadorned with any markings, may be depressed into the stone with a light pressure. The metal of which they are made would be unfamiliar to our alchemists, but it has resisted tarnish and corrosion through the ages with a nobility akin to pure gold. One pin may be pressed down at a time, and it will remain lowered only for an established interval of hours, after which it returns to its former level. There are seven pins, one for each of the paintings on the wall.

By sitting with legs crossed upon the center of the dais and pressing any of the pins, certain of the glowing jewels in the dome are extinguished, so that only the painting opposite the pin remains illuminated. After a time, the scene depicted takes on life and begins to move. The soul is drawn out of the body and flies across vast spaces to the land of the painting, so that the scene becomes the world. However, the soul does not remain disembodied but takes up residence within an inhabitant of that world, seeing through the eyes of the creature and hearing through its ears. It is possible, with an effort of will, to control some of the beings the soul enters, though others of a higher order of evolution become aware of the attempt and resist violently.

The experience of soul travel is unlike any sensation of physical movement, for it produces a feeling of endless falling through an abyss of colors, shapes, and sounds that can only be experienced in dreams, and is terrifying beyond endurance to the mind unprepared for its rigors. It is wise to fast for one full day before attempting any of the portals. Confusion and dizziness can lead to loss of control of the processes of the body as it waits for the return of the soul upon the dais. Although the mind is elsewhere during its flights, the body reacts with a kind of sympathetic resonance, so that what is done to the mind may express itself in the flesh; and herein lies a danger, for the death of the host into which the soul precipitates itself after passing through a portal will invariably cause the death of the soulless body of any except the most potent wizard, as the connection between soul and body, tenuous and weak though it seems, cannot be broken without grave consequences.

Use of the starlit chamber for soul travel attracts the shades of those who in life walked on four limbs through the corridors of the past. They gather about the dais as moths flock to the flame of an oil lamp, restlessly circling and glaring with hate-filled eyes as though at an act of desecration. Their jaws work silently as they roar out their fury, but no sound reaches the ears, for they have been dead such a numberless span of aeons that their voices have faded to silence. Only if the white spiders of second vision are chewed can these pale shades be seen, yet even if the sight is not enhanced, a chill draft of air may be felt, stirred into motion by their flailing, clawed forelegs. The triangles interlocking on the dais restrain the shades, and prevent their claws and teeth from extending above the edge of the circular platform of stone, but it is to be doubted that they could cause harm to living flesh even where they are free to advance, so attenuated is their substance.

It is yet another property of the triangles that the vermin in the city, those serpents, scorpions, and rats forever crawling the corridors, are kept at bay and rendered unable to bite or sting the traveler who sits enraptured on the green stone while his soul flies to distant lands. Even the flesh-eating bats cannot cross the boundary of the dais after it has been awakened by pressure upon one of its seven pins. In this the makers of the place demonstrated wisdom, for though the ghosts are impotent, the voracious vermin would devour a motionless and entranced man down to his very bones before his soul could return.

It will be useful to provide a detailed account of the seven destinations entered from the domed chamber, and of their inhabitants and customs, for the instruction of future visitors beneath Irem.

n the distant lands to the east, beyond great mountains that strive so high to the heavens that air itself is fabled to be absent from their peaks, lies an elevated grassland surrounded by cliffs unclimbable save for a few narrow stairs cut into the rock. It is an uncanny region filled with mysteries, about which is it perhaps better not to write with unguarded words. The land is known in the local tongue as Leng. Its most numerous inhabitants are herders of beasts that resemble shaggy goats. These animals supply all their needs. Their meat is the main diet of the nomads, their dense coats the source of cloth for their garments and round tents. The nomads are short of stature but broad of body, with lungs adapted to the thin air, and sallow of face, with slitted black eyes and bristling black hair. Seldom do they walk, but move from place to place mounted on horses that are not as our own, but are so small that the feet of their riders brush the grass, with bushy manes that stand upright.

Near the center of the plateau upon a slight eminence of ground stands a great monastery of black stones and red tile roofs that is the dwelling for a sect of monks said to worship incomprehensible gods and practice abominations so unnatural and repellent that the inhabitants of the plateau prefer not to speak of them, and even avoid turning their eyes toward the place. The herders fear the monks, who never leave their monastery during the daylight hours and are seldom glimpsed by other men. They are the lords of Leng, and all tribes pay annual tribute to them, yet so indifferent are they to the people and affairs of their realm that their influence is seldom felt, unless at rare intervals when an extraordinary event compels them to act in their own interests. It is whispered that they are not quite human.

The true leaders of the people of Leng are the shamans, who hold great power in their camps by virtue of the terror they inspire. They are known by the blue markings with which their faces are decorated when they reach the age of manhood, and by a small amulet of green jade that they wear about their necks on a thong. It has the shape of a winged beast resembling a great dog, its snout distorted in a snarl of murderous rage. This stone is both a symbol of their power and a sign of their bondage, for once put on they may never remove it, and must wear it even after death, lest the harvesters of souls send collectors in the form of crows and rats and other carrion things to steal their bones and enslave their sleeping essence.

Dogs similar to those carved on these stones haunt the outskirts of the camps, their drawn-out cries sounding across the plain like the lamentations of the damned. These beasts are far larger than our desert dogs, almost the size of a crouching man; they lack the wings shown in the images of the amulets, but are in every other respect identical. Hunting in large packs, they take the weak herd animals for their food and, when they are able, the children and elderly of the nomads. No force of arms serves to keep them at bay, only powerful necromancy employing the corpses of slain warriors, who when animated become the night guardians of the camps.

The winged hounds of the soul stones are jealous protectors, and will smell out the footsteps of any fool who steals such an amulet from its shaman and exact a terrible vengeance. So long as the amulets are worn, the shamans are invulnerable to the consequences of their actions, and may enact any outrage against men or gods with impunity. They fear nothing other than the monks of the monastery, to whom they accord a sullen deference. Alone among the people of Leng they eat no flesh from the herd beasts, but only the flesh of human beings, which they boil in great copper kettles until it is tender, then salt and dry for provisions on their migrations. The common people of the plateau are willing to pay this price for the protection from the dogs, and from other threats less physical, provided by the shamans.

If you should pass in soul flight through the portal of Leng, you will find your mind within the body of one of its inhabitants, with full power to control that creature as you see fit, and with understanding of its language and the requirements of its life. In this vessel you may wander where you will and learn all that is of interest concerning this place and its ancient history, for Leng is one of the oldest regions of our world, and has remained undisturbed by the cataclysms that at long intervals of time reshape the land and redefine the outline of the seas. It is a misfortune to enter the body of an infant, for the immaturity of the form limits the gathering of information. The body of a shaman, protected by the spirit of the winged hound that is indentured to his soul, cannot be entered; nor can the body of a monk be occupied, for those who dwell within the monastery are guarded by potent charms.

A creature of the depths related an amusing tale concerning a traveler to Leng. The man was a wizard who lived centuries prior to the present age. He passed through the portal and found himself within the form of an infant girl, just as a shaman and his apprentice were placing the child in a cauldron of boiling water. Powerless to resist due to the smallness of his host body, he suffered all the torments of death; more than this, his consciousness remained locked in the flesh of the infant after it was cooked, and he was forced to endure the indignity of being cut apart and consumed piece by piece. Such are the hazards inherent in the practice of wizardry.

In the mornings after a rain, when the mist hangs close to the grasslands and the sun barely glows above the low lines of slate-colored clouds that hug the horizon, the form of a great city with vast towers and oblong habitations of stone may be seen in mirage; for no matter how clear the lineaments of the city, which at times is visible in great fineness of detail, it invariably wavers and vanishes when approached. The shamans tell that it is the city of the Elder Things that once rose where Leng now is, but over the passing of aeons moved with the movements of the earth itself to some distant place far to the south. It is their belief that the ground upon which we walk is not fixed, but floats upon the depths of the sea, and that the winds of ages blow the land across the sea, so that our world is forever rearranged, and what was north becomes south, and what was east becomes west.