The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith (24 page)

Chapter IV:
The Passage to Pnidleethon

Woadley’s brain was filled with a strange dazzlement. Recalling at that moment the half-seen Oriental who had addressed him on the steps of the museum, he stared uncomprehending from his visitor to the corpse.

“Why this hesitation?” said the being, in the tone of a patient monitor. “Were you not conning the necessary spell for the annihilation of such offal when the lama came? You have only to read it aloud from the book if you have already forgotten.”

The runes of the lich-destroying formula returned to Woadley, and his doubt and bemusement passed in a flood of illumination. In a voice that was firm and orotund as that of some elder sorcerer, he recited the incantation of Carnamagos, prolonging and accentuating certain words with the required semi-tones and quavers of vowel-pitch. As the last words vibrated in the lamplit air, the clothing and features of the lama became mantled with a still, hueless flame that burned without sound or palpable heat, rising aloft in a smokeless column, and including even the puddled blood on the Persian carpet. At the same instant, flame clothed the blade of the bloody dagger in Woadley’s hand. The body melted away like so much tallow, and was quickly consumed, leaving neither ash or charred bone nor any odor of burning to indicate that the eerie cremation had ever occurred. The flame sank, flattened, and died out on the empty floor, and Woadley saw that there was no trace of fire, no stain of blood, to mar the intricate design of the carpet. The stain had also vanished from the dagger, leaving the metal clean and bright. With the pride and complacency of a past-master of such gramaries, he found himself reflecting that this was quite as it should be.

Again he heard the voice of his visitor. “Nong Thun was not the least of the terrestrial children of Yamil Zacra; and if he had slain thee and had won the amulet, it would have been my task to attend him later, even as I must now attend thee. For he lacked only the talisman to assure the ultimate burgeoning of his powers and the supreme flowering of his wisdom. But in this contest thou hast proven thyself the stronger, by virtue of those illuminated monads within thee, each of which has retained the cycle-old knowledge of many sorcerers. Now, by the aid that I bring, that which was effluent from Yamil Zacra in the beginning may return toward Yamil Zacra. This, if thou art firm to endure the passage, will be the reward of thy perilous seekings and thy painful dooms in a thousand earthly pre-existences. Before thee, from this world, three wizards only have been transported to Pnidleethon; and seldom therefore is my advent here, who serve as the angel of transition to those wizards of ulterior systems, whom the wandering amulets have sought out and have chosen. For know that the amulet thou wearest is a thing endued with its own life and its own intelligence; and not idly has it come to thee in the temporary nescience to which thou wert sunken….

“Now let us hasten with the deeds that must be done: since I like not the frore, unfriendly air of this Earth, where the seed of Yamil Zacra has indeed fallen upon sterile soil, and where evil blossoms as a poor and stunted thing. Not soon shall I come again; for the fifth and last amulet slumbers beneath the southern sea in long-unknown Moaria, and waits the final resurgence of that continent under a new name when all the others have sunken leaving but ocean-scattered isles.”

“What is your will, O Avalzant?” asked Woadley. His voice was clear and resolute; but inwardly he quaked a little before the presence of the Envoy, who seemed to bear with him as a vestment more than the vertigo-breeding glory and direness of Death. Behind Avalzant, the shelves of stodgy volumes, the wall itself, appeared to recede interminably, and were interspaced with sceneries lit by an evil, ardent luster. Pits yawned in livid crimson like the mouths of cosmic monsters. Black mountains beetled heaven-high from the brink of depths profounder than the seventh hell. Demonic Thrones and Principalities gathered in conclave beneath black Avernian vaults; and Luciferian Powers loomed and muttered in a sky of alternate darkness and levin.

“First,” declared Avalzant, in reply to Woadley’s question, “it will be needed for thee to doff this sorry raiment which thou wearest, and to stand before me carrying naught but the talisman; since the talisman alone among material objects may pass with thee to Pnidleethon. The passage is another thing for me, who fare at will through ultimate dimensions, who tread the intricate paths and hidden, folded crossways of gulfs unpermitted to lesser beings; who assume any form desired in the mere taking of thought, and appear simultaneously in more than one world if such be requisite…. It was I who spoke to thee on the stairs before the museum; and since then, I have journeyed to Polaris, and have walked on the colossean worlds of Achernar, and have fared to outermost stars of the galaxy whose light will wander still for a thousand ages in the deep ere it dawn on the eyes of thy astronomers…. But such ways are not for thee; nor without my aid is it possible for thee or for any inhabitant of Earth to enter Pnidleethon.”

Submissively, while the Envoy was speaking, Woadley had begun to remove his garments. Hastily and with utter negligence, he flung the dark, conservative coat and trousers of tweed across an arm-chair, tossed his shirt, tie, socks and under-garments on the pile, and left his shoes lying where he had removed them. Trifling as it may have seemed, this negligence was a potent proof of the change he had undergone; for such disorder would have been unthinkable to the neat and somewhat fussy bibliophile.

Presently he stood naked from heel to head before Avalzant, the amulet glowing darkly in the palm of his right hand. Only with the utmost dimness was he able to prevision the ordeal before him; but he trembled with its imminence, as a man might tremble on the shore of uncrossed Acheron.

“Now,” said Avalzant, “it is needful that I should wound thee deeply on the bosom with my spear. Art fearful of this wounding? If so, it were well to re-clothe thyself and remain amid these volumes of thine, and to let the talisman pass into hardier hands.”

“Proceed.” There was no quaver in Woadley’s voice, though sudden-reaching talons of terror clawed at his brain and raked his spinal column like an icy harrow.

Avalzant uplifted the strange, blue-gleaming weapon he bore, till the stream of sparks that poured ceaselessly from its point was directed upon Woadley’s bare bosom. The neophyte was aware of an electric prickling that wandered over his chest as Avalzant drew the weapon in a slow arc from side to side. Then the spear was retracted and was poised aloft with a sinuous, coiling movement of the arm-like member that held it. Death seemed to dart like a levin-bolt upon Woadley; but the apparent lethal driving-power behind the thrust was in all likelihood merely one more test of his courage and resolution. He did not flinch nor even close his eyes. The terrible, blazing point entered his flesh above the right lung, piercing and slashing deeply, but not deeply enough to inflict a dangerous wound. Then, while Woadley tottered and turned faint with the agony as of throbbing fires that filled his whole being, the weapon was swiftly withdrawn.

Dimly, through the millionfold racking of his torment, he heard the solemn voice of Avalzant. “Even now, it is not too late, if thy heart misgive thee; for the wound will heal in time and leave thee none the worse. But the next thing needful is irrevocable and not to be undone. Holding the amulet firmly with thy fingers, thou must press the graven mouth of the monster into thy wound while it bleeds; and having begun this part of the process, thou hast said farewell to Earth and hast forsworn the sun thereof and the light of the sister planets, and hast pledged thyself wholly to Pnidleethon, to Yamil Zacra—and Yuzh. Bethink thee well, whether or not thy resolution holds.”

Woadley’s agony began to diminish a little. A great wonder filled him, and beneath the wonder there was something of half-surmised horror at the strange injunction of the Envoy. But he obeyed the injunction, forcing the sickle beak and loathsome wattled mouth of the double-sided profile into the slash inflicted by Avalzant, from which blood was welling profusely on his bosom.

Now began the strangest part of his ordeal; for, having inserted the thin edge of the carving in the cut, he was immediately conscious of a gentle suction, as if the profile-mouth were somehow alive and had started to suck his blood. Then, looking down at the amulet, he saw to his amazement that it seemed to have thickened slightly, that the coin-flat surface was swelling and rounding into an unmistakable convexity. At the same time, his pain had altogether ceased, and the blood no longer flowed from his wound; but was evidently being absorbed through what he now knew to be the vampirism of the mineral monstrosity.

Now the black and shimmering horror had swollen like a glutted bat, filling his whole hand as he still held it firmly. But he felt no alarm, no weakness or revulsion whatever, only a vast surge of infernal life and power, as if the amulet, in some exchange that turned to demoniacal possession, were returning a thousandfold the draught it had made upon him. Even as the thing grew and greatened on his breast, so he in turn seemed to wax gigantic, and his blood roared like the flamy torrents of Phlegethon plunging from deep to deep. The walls of the library had fallen unheeded about him, and he and Avalzant were two colossi who stood alone in the night; and upon his bosom the vampire stone was still suckled, enormous as behemoth.

It seemed that he beheld the shrunken world beneath him, the rondure of its horizons curving far down in darkness against the abyss of stars, with a livid fringe of light where the sun hovered behind the eastern hemisphere. Higher and vaster still he towered, and his whole being seemed to melt with unsufferable heat, and he heard in himself a roar and tumult as of some peopled inferno, pouring upward with all its damned to overflow the fixed heavens. Then he was riven apart in a thousand selves, whose pale and ghastly faces streamed about him in the momentary flashing of strange suns. The sorcerers of Ur and Egypt, of Antillia and Moaria; necromancers of Mhu Thulan and shamans of Tartary; witch and enchantress of Averoigne, Hecatean hag, and sybil from doomed Poseidonis; alchemist and seer; the priests of evil fetiches from Niger; the adepts of Ahriman, of Eblis, of Taranis, of Set, of Lucifer—all these, resurgent from a thousand tombs in demonomaniacal triumph, were riding the night to some cosmic Sabbat. Among them, like a lost soul, was the being who had called himself Oliver Woadley. And upon the bosom of each separate self, as well as upon that of Woadley, a talismanic monster was suckled throughout the black, appalling flight on deeps forbidden save to the stars in their lawful orbits.

D
AWN OF
D
ISCORD

  ime was a dimension of space: time was a closed curve, without beginning or end, and space was curved, endless, yet finite. Or so John King had told himself, during those years of study. But now, with war threatening to overwhelm the world, King was through with theory. He was going back into time—or space—or both, if his equations did not lie. And he was going to stop war at its origin.

He took off his acid-stained smock and put on a khaki shirt, breeches, laced boots. King was incongruous among the switchboards and oscillation tubes, the retorts and electric furnaces of the laboratory in the old house on top of Russian Hill; he looked like a man ready to invade the jungle, and he was tall and lean and fit enough for such a task.

One look at the broad bay, at the housetops far below him, at the bridges that spanned the water; one pang of regret as he paused at the door of adventure. His fanatic devotion to science had kept him a stranger to women, and though he resolutely kept them from his thoughts, he wished that he could be sure of returning. There was a shapely blonde girl who must work in an office nearby; he had tried not to notice her on his way to the restaurant where he ate during the afternoon breathing spell.

Then he turned toward the time-traveling machine which was to take back an age when there was no such thing as war. Arrived there, King would cut war off at its root.

The machine had thick metal walls, and was shaped like a bathysphere; its glass ports were built to resist enormous pressure, and it was powered by atomic energy. This would be nothing like the flight of an airplane or rocket ship; there would be no travel in the ordinary sense of the word, for King was putting himself into a magnetic field which would reverse time. This would not be like any three-dimensional journey that any man had ever made.

The self-locking door closed behind him. King wanted to look back once more at the present, but he feared that he would falter; so he stepped to the control levers and the dials that filled all the bulkheads. Two people could have found room beside him, provided they were slender.

He closed the switch; a surge of power shook the machine, and the daylight that came in through the ports became green, then a grey blur. Every atom of his body threatened to leap into space on its own account. King felt knifing pains, a horrible giddiness, and a fear beyond reckoning. Suppose he could not find his way back? Suppose he became an exile from time and space?