|
I.
After mine sojourn in the city of the
Alexandrians I removed myself apart from the habitations of men, and repaired at
length into the trackless deserts of Arabia Felix, alone but for two of my
students in the Art Sorcerous, the youth Mouli, who was of prodigious strength
and as fearless as any lion, and the more studious Ismail; together we
contemplated the desolation of the sandy wastes and studied the wheeling of the
constellations in the measureless firmament, and sought into the secrets of
Nature.
I was consumed by an avid thirst to
uncover the lore of age-forgotten Antiquity, and for this purpose we guided our
camels across the sands of that immense desolation known to the Ancients as the
Roba El Khaliyeh, the Empty Space, for that on the maps of the geographers it is
naught but a blank on the written page; for in the vastness of the southern
parts of that Desert there protrude from the sands the hoary bones of an Elder
city that was old ere the first stones of Memphis were laid and whilst the
bricks of Babylon were yet unbaked.
Thither did I wend my way, in fullest
cognizance of the fact that there are terrible primal arcana of Earth that are
better left unknown, and dread secrets unhuman that none may know and yet have
peace, and Secrets beyond even these that render whomsoever unriddleth them as
forever alien unto the tribe of Men and doom him to walk alone on Earth, for he
who learns such Secrets must pay the fee thereof.
And we came at length, and in the
fullness of Time, to where the nameless city stands, its colossal wreckage
knee-deep in the drifting sands. Nameless it is in very sooth, for there is no
legend so old as to give it a name, or to remember it in the bygone ages of its
greatness, and even the fearless desert tribes shun it as did their sires and
grandsires before them, unto that forgotten time when first the Children of Men
came drifting into these desolate parts of the World, as the sand drifts beneath
the desert wind.
That first night did we camp beneath
the glitter of the stars and the cold glory of the Moon, and ere I sought my
rest an urging o'ertook me and I scribbled down a line or two of verse, as I had
not done these many years aforetime. The next day, and for days thereafter, we
traced the crumbling foundations of houses older than the First Pyramid, and of
streets that once had known the tread of beings that were not men, but nowhere
did we discern aught in the manner of carving or ornamentation or charactery
that might yield up a clue as to the nature of Them that had raised this mighty
ruin: but that they were not of the Children of Men was horribly apparent, for
doorways and portals were taller and narrower than afford easy access to
humankind, and in lieu of flights of steps there were to be found queer sloping
planes and descending ramps. Old beyond the dreams of humankind were these
sombre ruins, whose shards of wall or broken stumps of colonnades thrust out of
the drifted sand as might dead bones from an ill-made grave, and empty windows
leered and mocked us as forlornly as would the empty eye sockets of a skull. I
had visited this nameless city amidst the sands once before, and knew somewhat
of its mysteries, but not all of them, wherefor was I eager to plumb these
mysteries to their uttermost depths. And it became ever more apparent, as we
scratched away the sand and laid bare the mouldering and age-rotted stones, that
here were the remains of an antiquity that transcended History and even Myth,
and the sense of utter alienage grew ever more frightful the more we
searched: and I became possessed of the desire to prove this wreckage of more
wholesome age than so it did appear to be, but nowhere could I discover some
sign or device to prove that the city had been fashioned by men like myself, and
even something in certain of the proportions and dimensions of the
ruin hinted at a frightful, and incalculable, and prodigious, and pre-Adamite
age.
II.
Now neither of my young companions, not
Mouli nor Ismail, seemed able to sense the utter and horrible alienage of the
nameless city, for to such as them a ruin was but a ruin and stone was stone, by
Whomever set in place or however many aeons ago. In part this insensitivity of
my disciples pleased me, for I found it I comforting, and betimes I cursed mine
own imagination that, mayhap, painted horrors where horrors were not found. But
I bethought me of certain other primordial cities that I had seen and visited
during the years of my wanderings to and fro upon the Earth, of that dreadful
City of Evil under its ancient curse, that city the Bedoines of the desert
whisper of as Beled-el-Djinn, the City of Devils, which the Turks call Kara-Shehr,
the Black City, where a gem of nameless ancientry goeth ever clutched in the
withered claws of a Mummy crouched upon a centuried throne; and I bethought me,
too, of Irem the City of Pillars, and of my wanderings in Mesopotamia where
stand the ruins of Sarnath the Doomed the which is amongst the eldest of the
cities built by men, and of its ill-rumoured neighbor, the gray stone city Ib,
which was never raised by the hands of men.
And there came to me one day the youth
Ismail with a discovery that might well prove the key to the mysteries of the
nameless city, for he had found portions of the colossal wreckage where the very
bedrock upon which had the city anciently been reared rose clear of the clinging
sands that else choked and smothered so many of the ruins. And here I perceived
with elation the facades of houses or temples whose interiors might well
preserve many carvings, else eroded by the whispering sands; and by the light of
our flaring torches beheld certain signs chiseled into the naked stone of what
had perchance been a temple or shrine of the Antediluvians whose hands had
reared the ruins. And there were tunnels hewn deeper into the rock which bore
obscure shrines or tables of cryptic nature, but whose runnels, hideously
stained rust-red, hinted at abominable rites of living sacrifice to black gods
of madness out of the abysm of Time.
For days and nights we searched on
through this veritable labyrinth of rooms and chambers of uncertain and dubious
nature hewn by centuries of unthinkable labour out of the solid stone. And we
came at length into a vast rotunda whose sloping walls and oddly-angled roof and
strangely-shapen buttresses seemed designed according to the precepts of some
geometry not remotely Euclidian, like unto a chamber from some distant sphere or
alien dimension of space. Here blew from unguessable recesses beyond a stinking
wind of super-Arctic rigor, uncanny and inexplicable in this southern place; and
here, too, I found for the first time the age-gnawed remnants of prehistoric
art, for faded trace of flaking paint adorned the sloping walls, and misshapen
stone altars or tables that held a mazeof curvilinear grooves or markings, which
charactery (if charactery indeed it was!) bore little or no resemblance to any
form of writing known to me, save for the more ancient and indecipherable
portions of the crumbling Pnakotic manuscripts, those parts thereof that are far
too ancient to be read.
And ever there blew that cold and fetid
wind. . . .
III.
We came at length through those winding
and labyrinthine ways into a vast, arch-roofed chamber like a tomb, wherein were
many stone coffins arrayed about the walls; but these were not contrived after
the manner of ancient Aegypt but were longer and narrower, and the stone Faces
upon the coffin-lids were hideously suggestive of a reptilian ancestry, in that
they bore one and all the scaly and rugose hide and elongated saurian muzzles of
horribly sentient crocodiles. And I bethought me then of that
crocodile-headed beast-god of old Aegypt, even of Sebek, and wondered within the
adyts of mine heart whether or no that grim, cruel cultus of Antiquity had not
found its primal roots here, in these fetid stone labyrinths of the nameless
city. . . .
And in the very midst of this chamber
of stone coffins stood an uncouth idol of green stone, hewn very much in the
likeness of the lids of the coffins, save in that it stood balanced on clawed
feet, with bowed legs, balancing upon a long, sharp-ridged spine; and its head
was saurian in lineaments, with black, cold, unwinking gems for eyes. And there
was a sign hewn on the base of the statue that I had seen graven in green stone
once before, and that in immemorial Ib; and I knew the meaning thereof, and
shuddered within my soul at the knowing, for it was the name of Mnomquah;
the Ib-things worshipped Him once, they whom we call the Thunn'ha and who are
among His minions, and whose leader is named Bokrug.
Ever was He among those enemies of
humankind we call the Old Ones, They who came seeping down from the stars when
the Earth was young. They who ruled it once in another space and time, and who
hunger always to repossess Their ancient dominion; and when the Elder Gods came
voyaging hither to wreak Their vengeance upon Their rebellious Servants, it was
Mnomquah They sealed up in the Moon's cavernous heart, and there to this day He
walloweth loathsomely amidst the sluggish waves of the Black Lake of Ub-both in
the unholy and unlitten abyss of Nug-yaa.
Now the Ib-things, the
Thunn'ha, were
squamous and batrachian, although they went upright on their hind legs like unto
the Children of Men, whereas the former inhabitants of this nameless city, as it
would seem from their likenesses hewn upon the lids of the prehistoric stone
coffins, were saurian rather than toadlike; but more than a few of the Old Ones
have as Their minions or servitors many dissimilar Races, as Him Who Is Not To
Be Named enjoys the service of the Byakhee and of the Abominable Mi-Go, and Yet
Others; wherefor it seemed very likely to me that this nameless city had once
been an outpost or fortress of Mnomquah in the dim-far-forgotten days when the
World was very young and all of this Earth was under the heel of the Old Ones,
of Mnomquah and His Brethren. And I breathed silent thanksgiving to Yog-Sothoth
and to Tsathoggua that those days were long over, when the squalid, reptilian
servitors of Mnomquah ruled over the quaking fens and steaming seas of the
new-made Earth. . . .
And we rested that night amidst the
noisome caverns, being too wearied in flesh and spirit to return to the more
wholesome air of the upper world; and I would that we had not been so wearied,
but had gone back to the surface, where the dead bones of the nameless city
stare at the cold eye of the Moon.
IV.
And then there came to me my disciple,
Ismail, with word that a vast stone slab had been found in one of the nethermost
adyts of these endless caverns, and that there was set in the midst thereof a
massy ring of age-eaten bronze; and I bethought me of just such a slab that we
had found in the flooring of the Black Mosque, whereof I have aforetime writ;
and trepidation came upon me, aye, and fear and trembling, and I rose up and
bade Ismail that we should not disturb whatever Nethermost Secrets might lurk
beneath the base of this great hill of rock; but he made relation that even as
we spoke the mighty thews of stalwart Mouli were to work at prising up the slab
to discover What lay beneath . . . then did I know fear and trembling in very
sooth; but by then it waa too late for fear.
And there came to our ears from some
distance a noise like the sounds of a Battle, and the shouting of strong Mouli
rose above the clamour; and all the while there was another sound which liked me
not, and it was even as the clicking of clawed feet, and the slithering of
saurian tails, and a hissing like unto the voice of reptiles. And then I knew,
and caught up Ismail and led him forth from that darksome and accursed place of
fetid caverns, where ever and forever there blew from unguessable depths beneath
our feet the noisome breath of the panting Pit.
And we came at length forth through the
labyrinth and out into the blessedness of the open air in a pale, wan dawning;
but at our very heels, from the gloomy caverns beneath, came That which pursued.
And a crawling, hideous, loping horde of deformed and dwarfish degenerated
creatures, with great cruel claws on hindlimbs and forelimbs, and a rugose,
green hide upon their loathsome bodies, and the great snouts of saurians
grinning with white, sharp, pointed fangs. And I shrieked and knew the
red, mangled, pitiful thing they bore upon uplifted claws like a dreadful banner
to be all that remained of Mouli, young Mouli. . . and I knew then that the
Elder Age has not perished from the Earth, and that likewise there are dread,
unhuman Survivals that have straggled down through the aeons, none knoweth how;
monstrous, blasphemous Entities that have slept or lain in secret crypts and in
remote places for unhallowed ages, governed by neither logic nor reason as we
know it, to be awakened from their agelong sleep by whomsoever knoweth the
Rites, the Signs, and the Words (for they die not but shall be until the Ending
of all things), or roused to wakefulness by the rash, unknowing intruder.
And this hissing,
chittering, hideous
horde would have flung themselves upon us, gnawing, rending and tearing with
those cruel white fangs, had it not been for the merciful light of Day, the
which the antediluvians, who had dwelt in the dark bowels of the Earth for
countless aeons, could not endure. And as we fled on our camels from that
accursed and nameless city where an ancient Foulness yet lives and hideously
thrives, did I bethink me of that scrap of verse that I penned that first night
when we came nigh unto the nameless city; and my soul shuddered at its prophecy:
That is not dead which can
eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even Death may die.
THE NOTES:
It has become apparent that the early
members of the Lovecraft Circle made extensive use of the Fifth Narrative.
Lovecraft himself used it as his source for "The Nameless City", and
it is interesting to compare the two texts and see how very little he actually
took from Dee's English version: virtually no more than an image here and there,
a line or two elsewhere. Under Lovecraft's hand the plot diverges considerably
from the Alhazredic text; also, Lovecraft made a slight error when in that tale
he wrote "It was of this place that Abdul Alhazred the mad poet dreamed on
the night before he sang his unexplainable couplet." (The text clearly
states that Alhazred wrote the famous couplet on the night that he and his two
followers arrived at the Nameless City.)
It had puzzled me that Lovecraft made
no use whatsoever of the Old One, Mnomquah, either in "The Nameless
City" or anywhere else. The explanation may lie in the fact that the
English Necronomicon was never published, but laboriously copied in
longhand, generation after generation; it is more than likely that whatever copy
Lovecraft used was either fragmentary, or that age and neglect had obliterated
many words, passages, even entire pages.
Lovecraft also made an oblique
reference to the Fifth Narrative in his History and Chronology of the
Necronomicon, in which he states, Alhazred "spent ten years alone in
the great southern desert of Arabia . . . and found beneath the ruins of a
certain desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than
mankind."
Two other of Lovecraft's colleagues (at
least) also had access to the Fifth Narrative, Robert E. Howard and William
Lumley. Howard remarks in his story "The Fire of Asshurbanipal", of
"the ancient, ancient City of Evil spoken of in the Necronomicon of
the mad Arab Alhazred --- the city of the dead on which an ancient curse rested.
Legends named it vaguely: the Arabs called it Beled-el-Djinn, the City of
Devils, and the Turks, Kara-Shehr, the Black City."
William Lumley, Lovecraft's friend and
sometime revision client, also saw the Fifth Narrative, or quotations from it,
at least, for in his story "The Diary of Alonzo Typer" (which
Lovecraft later revised for publication), Lumley quoted almost verbatim two
passages from the Dee version: the first beginning with the phrase "There
are terrible primal arcana of Earth, . . ." the second beginning,
"Likewise there are dread unhuman survivals that have straggled down
through the aeons . . ."
It is important to note here that these
quotations from the Fifth Narrative were not inserted into the text of
"Alonzo Typer" by Lovecraft, since they appear in Lumley's original
version of the story, recently unearthed and published.
|