Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (9 page)

The common people of Leng worship the shamans, but the shamans worship Yog-Sothoth, the master of the portals who is at oneness with all time and space, and who manifests as a conflux of the spheres of the heavens, glowing with all colors simultaneously. Learn wisdom and worship Yog-Sothoth if you would transcend the limits of distance and the barrier of time, and would be a far traveler in the myriad of worlds; worship him if you would defy death itself and live beyond your allotted years, for Yog-Sothoth holds the keys to all the gates, even the gate of death. The shamans adore him with the following prayer that can only imperfectly be rendered into our tongue:

“Aieei-k’tay!
Heed my cry, Yog-Sothoth, by your secret name I adore thee, by your true name I offer obeisance in return for your sufferance, the utterance of which is death. On my knees I beg the gift of slavery in your service, O Herder of Ages. Accept my offering of blood, flesh, and bone, and the torment of this soul that I have bound for your pleasure. Set free the gates, Lord of Transitions, that my voice may spread the glory of your greatness, borne upon the wings of the
k’tay
that guards the descent of my fathers. I acknowledge your supremacy and bear witness of your greatness in the hall of reckoning beyond the stars.
Aieei-k’tay, Yog-Sothoth, aieei-k’tay.”

he City of Heights, as it may be called, is the original home of the Elder Race, more ancient even than the Old Ones, who traveled to our world long before the creation of man. Here they erected a new city in imitation of that familiar place, and this second home may still be seen in its ghostly outlines in the mists on the plateau of Leng. As monumental as it appears to human eyes, it is but a low and unworthy shadow of the original, which shimmers beneath the heat of three suns on their distant world. Whether this place can be reached in the body is unknown, although some have said that by means of certain angles that cut channels through the substance of space itself, and by the careful preparation of the flesh with herbal concoctions, travel is to be had to this distant world without recourse to soul flight; but whether a living man could survive such a flight can only be demonstrated by the attempt.

The bodies of the Elder Ones appear awkward and unnatural to our perceptions, yet they move with rapidity on their five lower limbs with splayed feet triangular in shape. Their gray trunks are leathery and hard to the touch, and are ribbed with vertical ridges. From them extend flexible arms that are much like the branches of a tree. Between the ridges expand translucent gray wings that open from the bottom to the top like a fan. They enable flight both through air and the emptiness between the stars, and their rhythmic beatings speed the progress of these creatures under water. At times the inhabitants open them to the rays of their suns, to enjoy the warmth.

The eyesight of these monsters is excellent, but because it permits seeing both before and behind, to which men are unaccustomed, it requires a period of acclimatization before it may be used to good effect. The immediate impression is that of one image laid on top of another, as though a painter had executed a second work of art directly on top of the first in such a way that both could be seen. After a short while this disorientation of the eyes passes, and they serve as admirable instruments with which to appreciate the beauty of the city.

Although the City of Heights has no proper name recognized by our race, it might well be called the city of colors, so resplendent is the light of this world. The largest sun is red, that of middle size yellow, and the smallest, which is scarcely bigger than Venus at her nearest approach, is a blazing bluish-white that cannot be looked upon without the eyes of the inhabitants becoming dazzled. These three colors interact without being blended, so that one moment the sky is pink, the next blue, the next a delicate shade of green, and so on, changing with rapidity from one hue to the next, and making all that is seen in the city below seem to dance and flicker with the reflected rays of finely cut jewels.

The bright towers are tall beyond the power of the mind to comprehend, for their tops are set within the clouds, yet from a distance they do not appear so high, for they are not slender spires such as we are accustomed to make when we wish to project a building into the heavens, but of massive thickness and square corners. So finely set are the stones, these soaring artificial mountains appear to be carved from single blocks. Their uncivil shapes defy the earth, for some are wider at the tops than at their bases, and have immense flat surfaces upon which the Elder Ones promenade and converse with one another in their shrill piping voices that sound much as do our flutes.

They excel in pictorial representation, but delight most in depicting their own forms, as though their very shape were to them a holy thing; or that by reproducing it in their paintings and carvings they could draw assurance from it as from something perfect in an imperfect universe. Everywhere it adorns their walls, their fountains, even the balustrades of their high balconies, for they love the heights and seldom venture into the shadows between the bases of their buildings, or into the dense jungle that lies at the borders of this vast city. It may be for this reason that it has acquired the title City of Heights among the deep dwellers of our world and the few men who converse with them.

Paintings in their numerous galleries show their coming to our world when both its dry surface and its seas were still devoid of life, so that not a blade of grass grew upon the lands and no fish swam in the waters. They are equally at home in water or air, and took their initial abode upon our world under the waves as a living place less hostile to their flesh than the harsh rays of our sun, which in that ancient time was hotter and more burning. It was this very harshness of the sun that prevented the growth of life on the rocks. Not that our sun is brighter than the three suns of their heavens, but as they say in conversation between themselves while gazing at images of our world, because our higher zone of air lacked a barrier to the rays that weakens their force.

To make the oceans more pleasant, the Elder Ones created many types of living things. When long aeons had passed, and our air became thicker, plants began to grow upon the rocks, and later still, insects crawled and flew among them. The Elder Ones emerged from the waves and built their new city, where Leng now resides beyond the mountains of the east. For a period of time much greater than the existence of our race, they lived untroubled, pursuing their studies and creations, for they are curious creatures who seek to know all the mysteries of the worlds they have opened.

Then came the armies of Cthulhu that drove them back into the seas and destroyed their city. After the passage of a span of time that cannot be measured by our arithmeticians, since there is no word for so large a number of years, the Elder Ones again emerged from the depths and built a new city upon the ruined foundation of the old, in the land that lies at the southernmost extremity of our world; for over time this land had floated upon the great subterranean ocean from the north to the south. Here they remained until the coming of the ice, when they again returned to the sea.

All these matters are to be gathered from their paintings and their speech with each other, but not easily, for the bodies of the Elder Ones cannot be controlled as can the bodies of most other vessels. They do not appear to resist the effort to make them walk this way or that, but merely to be unaware of it; however, from certain amused remarks that pass between them, it is likely that they know when they are inhabited by a visiting soul traveler, but that this occurrence is of so little importance that they choose to ignore it.

Much of their time is expended in intellectual discussion, for their minds are keener than those of any other living being attainable through the portals. Yet they also delight in describing among themselves various bloody tortures inflicted on several kinds of living things bred expressly for this purpose. Torture is to them a form of high art and their chief recreation. The creatures who suffer to amuse them are bred to enhance their sensitivity to pain, so that their writhings are more strenuous. The quality of the artistry and the entertainment, for it is both, is determined by how severe it can be made without cutting short the life of the performer.

A blasphemous thing must be written, the utterance of which would cause outrage and death in both the lands of the Prophet and those of the Cross. It is whispered that the Elder Ones, who were skilled in the making of all manner of things both inert and living, are the creators of mankind. They made numerous forms of life to fill up the barren lands of our world, and we were only one among many. Why they created us is unknown to our scholars, nor has it been heard uttered by the Elder Ones, but it should be considered that when they refer to mankind in their conversations it is always with a kind of piping laughter, as though the mere mention of our name amuses them. It is perhaps no accident that in our anatomy the organs of reproduction are combined with the organs of excretion, whereas these organs are widely separated on the bodies of the Elder Ones.