The Voidal did nothing. He stood, defying Ybaggog and defying the shoggoths, which now writhed, delirious with pleasure at seeing their lord coming. They began to press forward as if eager to kiss that awesome thing, so that Snare drew back, trapped between their squirming wall and the gate. The Voidal fought to control his own mind, for this extremity of madness in which he found himself threatened to engulf even him. Yet he must see which way the Dark G.o.ds would move. He retained his will, knowing that had he sought it, he could have cut a way through the shoggoths and left. Who had summoned him, and why? Elfloq knew, but he and Orgoom were flat to the ground, faces buried in the dust in fear.

At that moment, the shoggoths parted to allow someone through and the figure that stepped into the arena to face the Voidal was a familiar one to the dark man. "Shatterface," he said. "But even you would not have called me, knowing the price."

"No, I did not call you. Your hand of death will not reach for me!" cried the figure, pointing to the right hand of his adversary. Shatterface pulled out the weapon that had been given to him. "Through the gate!" he screamed, swinging the blade. It sang with the hate of a thousand maddened voices, and the Voidal jerked backwards, no longer unmoved. He knew the sword, for it was the Sword of Madness, and he had every reason to fear it. So this was the answer to these riddles-the Dark G.o.ds wanted the blade in him, for it would rob him of everything that he had won back from them. This was the fate they had planned. He pulled his own sword out from its scabbard, but it was a mere tool, cold steel without supernatural power.

Shatterface saw this and laughed. He came forward with a cry. "Through the gate!" he shouted again. "Go to your appointed prison!"

The Sword of Madness swung down, but the Voidal was nimble and slipped past its frightful bite. Elfloq took to the air, but could not move far away from the scene of the battle, gripped as he was in the spells of the priest. Snare watched the two swordsmen nervously, knowing that Ybaggog would soon be at the very portal. Beyond it now an immense mouth had opened, an Abyss into infinity, and from it issued the most overpowering stench, as of a thousand rotting h.e.l.ls.

The Voidal was now no more than a few yards from the lip of the gate, and Shatterface knew that in a moment he would have his prize. He thrust forward and the Voidal's sword shattered like gla.s.s into a million splinters. Shatterface prepared for the critical blow and as his blade came screaming in, a blur of movement from the left of the Voidal caught them unawares. Orgoom had lunged forward and his sickle fingers caught and turned the Sword of Madness, so that shrieking sparks flew into the air. Snare cried out in fury as Orgoom was flung to the very lip of the gate. A splinter of the Sword had lodged in the Gelder's hide, and his eyes bulged as the evil in it seeped into him.

"Vermin!" screamed Snare. "Traitor. Ubeggi will punish you-"

But Orgoom was not interested in the hated Ubeggi. As he got to his knees like a drunkard, he saw beyond him the t.i.tanic maw of Ybaggog. The Voidal dragged him back from the immeasurable drop. "My thanks, Gelder, but you have chosen the wrong moment to announce your fealty."

Shatterface came on, pinning the Voidal to the very gate so that the wet blood smeared him. The shoggoths were seething forward like hounds after blood. Behind them Elfloq hovered, too afraid to help. He looked down at the rocky terrain, longing to flee across it. To his amazement he saw movement and presently figures there. Instantly he recognised Drath and the two travellers from the South, who were watching the terrible fight in horror.

Elfloq flitted down. "You must save him!" he cried. "They mean to feed him to Ybaggog-"

"You told us he would destroy the Devourer," said Umatal, face seamed with horror at what he had seen.

Drath was whispering to the shadows, and Elfloq abruptly saw to his disgust that the night was crawling with cats. All of Ulthar must have turned out, for there was a veritable tide of the creatures surrounding the hollow and the ma.s.sed shoggoths. The familiar flew upwards. "What are these?"

"That gate must be closed," called Drath. "It is the shoggoths who hold it open. Whatever your master is supposed to be able to do, it is evidently no use against Ybaggog. I cannot destroy him, but the gate must be closed."

"Yes, yes!" burbled Elfloq. "An excellent idea. Excellent. How?"

Drath turned to Umatal and Ibidin. "Between us, we must command our servants." He indicated the cats.

Umatal nodded. "Yes. Our servants-whatever the cost. Begin at once."

What then followed was meaningless to Elfloq, except that he knew the men were communicating in some strange way with the ocean of cats that now lapped at the hollow. They were weird creatures, these cats, with wolf-like eyes, and lean, sleek bodies, claws sharpened and oddly gleaming, souls burning with some secret inner fire fed by a G.o.d as dark as those that slept on the dreamworld of Ulthar. A hundred of these silent predators sprang from the night upon the last line of shoggoths, and the battle began. Claws tore and slashed like small swords, and the shoggoths swung and lumbered about c.u.mbersomely, s.n.a.t.c.hing up scores of the cats as they caught them, but for each one they crushed, a hundred more melted into being, until the hollow was boiling with sound and furious activity. Wave after wave of cats poured down from the hill as if a vent into a world of cats had been opened, and the shoggoths were ripped to the ground, overrun and slashed to shreds.

Snare rushed forward, forgetting for a moment the coming of the Old One, and in a matter of minutes found himself knocked to his knees by a dozen screaming cats. They tore his cloak of flesh from his shoulders and dug into him, slashing for his eyes. His fists beat at them, but they cut at him and bit him, so that he tumbled and rolled almost to the feet of the Voidal.

So much damage had the avalanche of cats done, that Shatterface himself felt the next rush of small bodies. A score of cats were on his back, trying to tear him down, but he willed himself forward. A shoggoth, its limbs severed and hanging from it in tatters, lumbered forward and fell through the gate, exploding as it dropped through s.p.a.ce. Snare was trying to rise, but Orgoom swung an arm at him, ripping open his chest in b.l.o.o.d.y weals. The priest tried to shield himself, but the Gelder cut at him with terrible efficiency. Snare fell, his head and shoulders through the gate. There, balanced upon the edge of nightmare, he screamed. Orgoom swung down his arm with the power of madness and sliced clean through Snare's neck. The head plummeted out into the rising mouth of the Old One, and as it turned end over end, the mouth still gave vent to an extended scream.

Orgoom rose just in time to witness disaster, for Shatterface was propelled forward, smashed by the tenacity of the cats that sought to drag him down, and the Voidal could not avoid the thrust of the Sword of Madness. It tore through his flesh and ripped into and through his middle, bursting out of his back, though there was no shower of blood. Orgoom knelt there in amazement as the dark man clutched the terrible sword, and it was then that the frightful screams began. Shatterface was pulled to the ground, covered by the cats, and they began ripping at him in a blur of talons.

Elfloq flew as close to the gate as he dared and there saw the horror of what had happened. The Voidal's face twisted and pulled as he cried out in pain and madness, the Sword doing its terrible work. It would not come loose. The hand of the Voidal could not free it-the Dark G.o.ds would have their way. Back staggered the dark man, crashing into Orgoom, and in a moment, before Elfloq could swoop down, both had fallen outwards and were plunging far down into the maw beyond the gate. Ybaggog had claimed them.

At once the darkness beyond the gate closed down, and the stones fell, leaving only a view of the dusty Mutterings and the memory of what had raged there. Elfloq flew up and away from the body of Shatterface, leaving the cats to pull from it the still-pulsing organs.

III.

Orgoom felt as though all the powers in the omniverse were alternately pulling and then squeezing his entire body so that it throbbed in agony as if it would burst and scatter itself before reforming and disappearing into itself. His general direction seemed to be down, although everything about him span so much that his senses had become disjointed. Fountains of stars vomited upwards and then spread outwards, curling and winking out. Gradually this maelstrom of light confined itself to his head, sinking into it, expanding, then dissolving into darkness. All that he was aware of then was the sickening sensation of spinning, but at least he was on the ground. Eventually he moved, discovering that the ground was spongy, a thick, brackish mora.s.s. Pale light splotched the scene around him, which was some unsightly dark plain, broken only by rounded humps of black rock, or possibly fungoid growth, he could not say which. The region stank like the worst sewers that he had ever experienced its vapours almost tangible as they wove upwards.

He sat up, trying to sc.r.a.pe off some of the muck that had splattered him, and gazed about him. Either he was under some evil night sky, or he was in an enormous cavern of unprecedented proportions. There were shadows high above him, and as they seemed to be hanging, he guessed the latter, glad that he could make out no details. It was then that he recalled his fall through the gate-could he be inside Ybaggog? If so, then this around him was an enclosed universe. Such things existed.

Before his mind could burst at contemplating this concept, he saw something stir near him. A body floated face down in the mire and several black shapes from under the mire were worrying at it, trying to drag it under. Before they could succeed, there were submarine bursting sounds, spreading the thick muck in low waves. In a moment the body was left alone. From its back protruded the point of a sword, which moaned softly to itself. This must be the Voidal, mused Orgoom, dead at last.

The Gelder wondered if he had gone mad, for a sliver of the sword must still be lodged in him. Certainly there was nothing sane about this frightful zone. However, he had escaped the frightful Ubeggi, and had sworn to himself that he would serve Elfloq's master. He scurried over the hump of rock and reached for the body. He tugged it ash.o.r.e with his sickle hands, and it moved, dragging itself to its knees, not dead at all. Slowly, like a zombie, the dark man got to his feet, eyes shut, mouth slack. The Sword of Madness gave forth a howl of glee, and the face of the Voidal came alive. Those awful green eyes seemed to be looking out on an invisible and lunatic inner universe. The man began to sn.i.g.g.e.r with obscene mirth so that Orgoom drew back in revulsion. The sounds went on interminably, until at last they subsided into a sequence of monotonous chuckles, meaningless and disquieting. Orgoom had no idea how to act.

"Not stay," he said, comforted by his own voice. The eyes of the Voidal looked at him, but there was no response in them. He had been reduced by the power of the Sword to complete madness. Orgoom turned away, trying to see a way across the empty mire, not knowing where he could go. Overhead he heard the squawks of something large and vile, but there was only the hint of a shadow in this dismal misty light. Shuddering, the Gelder moved on. Mechanically, behind him, the Voidal trudged in awkward pursuit, moved by some unknown force.

Around him in the mire, Orgoom now saw a number of floating corpses, bleached white and partially overgrown with peculiar lumps that had their own strange light. They fed on the dead, for the corpses occasionally turned in the mire, mad faces glaring up at the moonless vaults above, while other corpses were not even remotely human. Yet other things swam in the black waters, keeping away from the sounds that Orgoom's feet made as he splashed loudly on. By keeping as close as he could to the outcrops of rock, the Gelder was able to avoid deep water.

Something dropped from the air and alighted on a hummock nearby. It was black and misshapen, half bird, half beast, and its curved beak opened in silence. Others flapped down, forming a half circle so that only one avenue was open to Orgoom. The Gelder looked along this, not wanting to be herded, but he could see now that the hummocks extended in a chain, like the radius of a wheel, to a point on the horizon. Something dark and ominous loomed there, embedded like a cliff or a high hill. Orgoom had no alternative but to go there-the grim visitors from the sky had made that clear.

The Gelder leapt from one slippery hummock to another, gasping as a number of them flinched under his touch: they were not rocks. Behind him the Voidal came on, tugged by a force that Orgoom did not understand, and the flapping half-birds kept well back from the dark figure, as though one touch would bring death. Ahead of him, Orgoom could see the phosph.o.r.escent ma.s.s of the huge hill more clearly. It rose up from the midst of the mora.s.s, and at once the Gelder understood its importance. It was a living organ, pulsing and throbbing with life, here at the centre of Ybaggog's vitals. Like a citadel, it towered, shimmering with eerie light, the air around it whispering like unseen life. The low rumble of its workings beat like the sound of blood through the terrain.

As Orgoom came under the shadow of those vast walls of knotted flesh, he saw that near the uppermost heights, fronds were lowering quickly, tangled and knotted like the roots of a sprawling saprophyte forest. They rushed down towards the mire, and as they did so, a great wave of filth broke beneath them and out of the murky depths came a sudden rush of elongated yellow growths, groping blindly like fleshy fingers. In moments the two great ma.s.ses of wriggling life had locked in the most frightful contest of strength, so that the mire heaved and spread waves outwards, and the citadel above shook. Great chunks of tendril and yellow flesh were flung out from the entangled ma.s.s and Orgoom stood his ground with difficulty. Above him he could see more of the repulsive blotched fronds dropping down to enjoin the battle, until at last they seemed to have beaten off the terrible threat from below. Like a disjointed, smashed hand, the yellow monster sank back into the muck.

The growths from the ramparts withdrew upwards in silence, and soon all was still again. An abrupt movement beside him awakened Orgoom and he turned to see a diminutive being. It was naked, pale and shivering, its face torn by suffering and fear. Orgoom immediately brandished a sickled hand at it and it cowered so convincingly that the Gelder felt no threat from it.

"Who are you?" he hissed at the shrunken creature.

"I am No-Name. You must come with me."

"Where?"

"Up there. To the heart of Ybaggog. The City of the Screaming Eyes. I am your guide."

Orgoom looked behind him. The Voidal stood, eyes glazed, seeing nothing of this world, waiting. "Not safe," Orgoom pointed to the waters where the yellow horror had sunk.

"There is time before the next dream comes."

"What dream?"

No-Name also pointed to the waters. "From the marshes come the Sendings of the Old Ones, Dreams sent by them to attack Ybaggog's heart, for they wish to destroy him, whom they hate. Ybaggog is their master and will rule them all. He sends down powers of his own from above, the Eaters of Sleep, and they break up the Sendings. Come quickly." He darted away and Orgoom followed, not wanting to, but even less liking the prospect of staying out here in the mire with the Dreams.

No-Name found a path, a twisted and solidified artery that had once trailed out from the heart, and he and Orgoom walked along it and into an opening through a stone tangle of similar old veins. Behind them, the Voidal followed. They could hear the sword's low laughter. For a long time they climbed in the darkness, and below them dropped a bottomless well, crossed and criss-crossed of veins and stretched fibres, some hard as stone, others glowing with fluid. Orgoom had to close his mind to the stench and the echoing sibilant sounds, the cold gusts of air and the suggestive throb of movement that confirmed his presence inside a living organ.

At last they came out into the upper tiers. They gave forth a dim glow, and the Gelder saw that from the piles of living flesh yawned doorways and windows that had not been cut from it, but which had grown naturally, although they were distorted and set at strange angles. No-Name explained that the City of the Screaming Eyes was a place for the servants of the G.o.d, who went about his work here mindlessly, none knowing what purpose he served. "Ybaggog brings captives to the mire from the many universes outside himself," said No-Name. "I go down and fetch some of them in. You and the other one are fortunate, for you have been chosen to be servants, too. Those who remain in the mires and the pits are no more than fodder. Soon you will have your own secret task to perform."

Orgoom could think of nothing to say, so he sat disconsolately on an outcrop of tissue. He realised that the bizarre citadel was apparently solid here in its centre, while its outer bastions were alive with the terrible Eaters of Sleep. It disturbed him to think of them and to know that he sat upon the living G.o.d. The Voidal lurched before him, an automaton. Orgoom had thought of trying to pull the Sword of Madness from him, but nothing would induce him to touch the haft that protruded from the dark man's gut.

Instead, Orgoom watched the comings and goings of the remarkable citadel. From time to time a skulking figure would emerge from darkness and shuffle warily across the tilted plaza, always carrying some bundle. These figures all had the most frightful eyes, wide and staring as though they had looked on the ultimate vision of h.e.l.l. They were mostly hybrids: some wriggled on short legs like lizards, others flopped, breathing through gills, while yet more hopped on elongated limbs and had arms like fronds. None of them retained more than a semblance of humanity, and Orgoom felt pity for them, for he had been transformed by the evilness of Ubeggi, though not so gruesomely as most of these nightmares. They went about their mad work silently, and the objects that they carried were even more strange than they were-Orgoom was sure that he saw living things squirming in those arms, and severed members of beasts. Whatever purpose they were at, only the deformed mind of Ybaggog knew it, and Orgoom was glad that he did not have to know.

Presently a group of three beings arrived, entering the plaza from one of the twisted doorways. Their upper bodies were smooth-skinned and human, but their lower halves were segmented like the bloated bodies of huge maggots. They wriggled across the ground and came together, mouths working in silence, huge eyes staring vacantly. One of them swung something in a hand and another s.n.a.t.c.hed it; in a few moments they had parted and wriggled off again on their grim errand, but in the brief minutes they had been here, Orgoom had seen enough of the object to know that it had been the head of Snare. Its eyes had been as wide and as alive as those of the others in this place.

Orgoom made to question No-Name on this, but the little figure was scrambling to its feet as if in answer to some unheard call. "It is time for us to go. You are to be given your tasks." He said no more, but went to another opening that was like the trap to a drain. Orgoom followed, the dark man plodding behind. Now they were going down a curling tunnel, where Orgoom guessed dark blood had once rushed. Set in the walls were orifices that opened and closed in silence, their function a mystery to the Gelder, though he kept well away from them. Across narrow spans the figures went, and Orgoom saw deep drops into darkness and heard the grinding and hammering of colossal organs deep below. It was like transversing the inside of a world, so vast and horizonless was its extent.

When they had come to the bottom of a steeply inclined tunnel, No-Name turned and pointed to the valve-like door ahead of them. "I go no further."

"What is beyond?" asked Orgoom, suspicious and ready to use his awful clawed hands. He had no wish to become the slave of Ybaggog and go about as those in the citadel did.

"It is a portal that looks out over the vast s.p.a.ces of Ybaggog's mind. There his dreams sail past and he will chose one for you both, and in the reading of it, you will have your tasks. You and the man must go out and accept the Seeing."

Orgoom hissed and leapt back, almost colliding with the Voidal. "All this way for that? Not Orgoom!" he cried vehemently. Rather he would go back into Ubeggi's service than bow to this monstrous deity.

No-name suddenly rushed past both Gelder and the Voidal and ran back up the tunnel. He turned. "I have done my duty. Ybaggog is not to be denied. You cannot keep from him his due." With that he fled, leaving the bemused Orgoom watching. The Gelder had no idea how to act, but on no account would he go through the valve to the place beyond. He had seen quite enough of Ybaggog's revolting visions. Thus there was only one direction to take, and he began the cautious walk back up the tunnel. He had not gone far, however, when he saw movement beyond. No-Name must be returning.

But it was not him.

Something was squirming down the tunnel, clumsy and uncertain of its progress. It was a creature with an ovoid body that resembled a huge slug, with dangling limbs that were more like fins than arms. From the centre of its body rose a long neck, and upon this grew the head, like a bizarre fruit. It was human, but grown three times its normal size. Orgoom saw the staring eyes first, but as the thing came slithering down the tunnel, blocking it entirely, he recognised the head of Snare. It had been given a new and blasphemous life. As it saw the Gelder, it laughed evilly, its voice that of the man who had been Ubeggi's slave. "No escape, Gelder! Not here."

Orgoom readied both hands, prepared to tear this disgusting abomination to pieces, but would it be possible? Could he destroy it? He waited, shaking with terror, and the thing that Snare had become drew closer, moved only by the fires of its madness.

Behind him, Orgoom heard the valve hiss open and beyond it could sense the great void that was the dreaming mind of Ybaggog, the h.e.l.l of h.e.l.ls. The Voidal was moving towards it. Orgoom turned, shielding his eyes, and tried to catch his sickles in the cloak of the dark man, but the fabric was like mist. The Gelder could not stop him.

Snare screamed with maniacal glee. "You cannot save him! He belongs to Ybaggog now. The Dark G.o.ds have thrown him out-they have no power here! Only Ybaggog can command. Follow him, Gelder! Follow him and plunge into the deeps of the Dark Destroyer. Drink!" Snare flicked out a whip-like tongue and Orgoom slashed it in half with a lightning chop. But the awful mouth spat out more of them. Orgoom slashed again, but as each severed part fell, it wriggled back and was absorbed by the round bulk of Snare's body.

The Voidal was through the orifice and stood beyond, eyes facing whatever was out there. Inside his body, the Sword of Madness began an awful gush of sound, twisted and painful, a crescendo of all that was frightful. The blade turned and shivered as if it, too, endured agonies. Orgoom's ears threatened to burst as he lurched back to the tunnel wall and crouched there, almost melting into the walls. They seemed to be made of pulp, shuddering as if vibrating to the din made by the sword, as though its appalling sounds cut deep into them. Snare struggled on past Orgoom, no longer interested in the huddled Gelder.

There was a timelessness about the Voidal's encounter with the void. Ybaggog's wild dreams and nightmares floated across the pit of his mind like vast naval fleets, some drifting across to the Voidal, whose own tormented mind was closed in on itself, chained up by the madness lodged in his vitals. The first of the Sendings enveloped the dark man, and something of its power seeped through. Huge aerial monsters were tearing and ripping at each other, scattering stars in their wake and crushing whole universes as they struggled in the wildest regions of the omniverse. G.o.ds roared their fury and burst asunder, while billions of their servants fused into rivers of molten light that poured away into the abysses of oblivion. Entire pantheons were reduced to cinders as G.o.d after G.o.d perished, and the spreading plague of horrors sp.a.w.ned by the lunacy of Ybaggog devoured and devoured. In the memory of the Devourer of Universes, every struggle of the G.o.ds of the omniverse still reverberated, locked into a repeated cycle of perpetualness. All was confusion, chaos, tumult and turmoil, and on this ghastly diet, Ybaggog thrived.

Yet the Sword of Madness had built its own wall of turmoil around the walls of the Voidal's seething mind, so that as the visions came, staggering in their immensity, they struck the eyes of the Voidal and shattered like ice images before the steel hammers of a madman. Ybaggog's universe shook to its roots, the entire length of it reverberating to the impact.

The Dark G.o.ds had not allowed for such a confrontation, for the Voidal picked out from the slivers of smashed image many things that had meaning for him. Shards of memory gleamed there and he s.n.a.t.c.hed them avidly, repairing them until new visions came to him. As the mad G.o.d sent more of his awesome dreams across the void, the Voidal snared at will the pieces that he wanted. As long as the Sword inside him countered the oncoming Sendings, he was in command.

The Snare creature rushed through the valve, made aware by Ybaggog of what had happened. The mad G.o.d commanded its beast. It wrapped its broken fronds around the hilt of the Sword of Madness and pulled, shrieking deafeningly as it did so. Orgoom could not watch as the sword fought like a living serpent to remain in the body of the Voidal. Snare pulled and pulled, inching the weapon out, his flesh charring, his limbs shriveling and dropping off. Yet gradually the sword came out, until a last heave brought it free. Snare's mouth opened wide in a crazed laugh of triumph, and then that ghastly head burst in a welter of smoking gore. Within moments the body began to rupture and then it, too, burst, its leaking remains flung far out into the void of Ybaggog's dreams.

Orgoom tore free from the wall of the tunnel, which had been absorbing him like a sponge. He saw the Sword of Madness fall at the feet of the Voidal, and looked up at the dark man. The latter stood with his back to Ybaggog's lunatic void and abruptly looked down at the weapon with an intensely evil smile. In a moment he had picked it up and caressed it. He stared at Orgoom, and in that look the Gelder knew more terror than in anything he had yet lived through.

"Orgoom," said the Voidal. "The Sendings have not broken your mind."

"No, master," said the Gelder, shivering anew. Plainly the Voidal was far from mad, and no prisoner.

"Do not look at what lies behind me." The Voidal said no more. Ybaggog must have understood now that the dark man was at his mercy, for he began to send out across that black s.p.a.ce the most terrible of his visions. The Voidal could feel it coming like a tidal wave of lunacy, but he was ready. He raised up the sword in his right hand, grinning at the hand that was his own and no longer moved by the will of his tormentors, and waited. Eagerly.

At last he span round. His eyes were closed as he flung the weapon, and it tore like a blazing sun across the interstellar vastness of that black mind, its point seeking the vision that raced to meet it.

"To your feet!" the Voidal shouted, gripping Orgoom's elbow and lifting him. They were both racing up the tunnel as the impact came. It was as if a score of universes had met and fused themselves. Soon the consequent explosion came: Ybaggog's mind writhed and tore itself apart in the chaos that followed. His body felt the rigours of an immense seizure, followed by more, greater than the first.

"What happens?" cried Orgoom, stumbling but still running.

"Ybaggog's power is disintegrating, smashed by a greater one." The Voidal laughed horribly. "I have seen it." He said no more, but laughed again. It was no longer the laughter of a madman, but laughter that spoke of some unimaginable secret, something that only the dark man knew of, for in that laughter there was confidence that a G.o.d might envy.

When they came to the plaza, they found that all of Ybaggog's servants had burst like fruit, and the heart of the G.o.d was pumping madly, turning huge parts of itself to stone and dust. These cracked and tumbled. Orgoom whimpered in terror at the thought of what must happen to him, but the Voidal gazed at the carnage with a terrible smile.

"I think this will not be the end for us, Gelder. Ybaggog will writhe and shudder for eons to come, locked away inside his own mad universe. His Sendings will torment only himself until the distant millenium when he rots at the edge of the omniverse."

"How will we get out?"

"Our work is done. We have all been used, even Ubeggi. The will of the Dark G.o.ds has triumphed here, as I guessed that it would."

The Voidal ignored the terrible sounds of destruction around them and put his hand gently on Orgoom's blue skin. "Go to sleep."

"We meet again?"

"In some other h.e.l.l perhaps."

Within moments the Gelder had slumped down, eyes closed, and soon after that he was gone. For a while the Voidal was left alone to contemplate the broken riddles of his own destiny; then he, too, slipped into the great darkness until the Dark G.o.ds would see fit to wake him again.

EPILOGUE.

The inn was silent, the cats asleep, the embers of the fire burning low. Drath nodded to himself and closed the last of the shutters. Outside there was some kind of disturbance, the air stirred as if by a distant storm, pa.s.sing mercifully beyond Ulthar. The innkeeper thought of the strange company who had visited the inn, their impact on this stranger world. It was over. Tomorrow night, what stranger dreams might come?

Meanwhile, far from Ulthar, Vulparoon the Divine Asker listened with the keen ears of a bird of prey to the remote sounds, almost beyond the limits of hearing. Somewhere a mad G.o.d was falling, as mad G.o.ds did. The Asker smiled for a moment. But then he thought of the burden he carried, the knowledge that he must pay for the summoning he had made in Ulthar. Tomorrow, a week hence, ten years? Better not to know. But, as with death itself, let it be swift, he prayed.

And Elfloq, the errant familiar, popped out on to the astral realm with a grunt of mixed emotion. He was thankfully free of Ubeggi and the revolting Snare, but what of his master? Elfloq squinted into the fog. He would have to begin again. Next time they would, he hoped, meet under more auspicious circ.u.mstances. But with the Voidal, one never knew. Only the Dark G.o.ds really knew anything. Elfloq grimaced. Even in his scheming mind, he did not have the temerity to curse them.

1 Ubeggi first appears in "The Weaver of Wars," a Voidal story published in Weirdbook 23/24 (1988).

2 Elfloq first meets Orgoom in "At the Council of Gossipers," published in Dark Horizons 21 (1980).

3 Elfloq first meets the Divine Askers in "Astral Stray," a Voidal story published in Heroic Fantasy, edited by Gerald Page & Hank Reinhardt, (DAW Books, 1979)

THE DUNWICH HORROR.

by H. P. Lovecraft.

"Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras-dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies-may reproduce themselves in the brain of superst.i.tion-but they were there before. They are transcripts, types-the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect us at all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body-or without the body, they would have been the same.... That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual-that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy-are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence."

-Charles Lamb: "Witches and Other Night-Fears"

I.

When a traveller in north central Ma.s.sachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and gra.s.ses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the spa.r.s.ely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation. Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled, solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strown meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.

Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises.

As the hills draw nearer, one heeds their wooded sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cl.u.s.ter of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not rea.s.suring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the ma.s.sed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.

Outsiders visit Dunwich as seldom as possible, and since a certain season of horror all the signboards pointing toward it have been taken down. The scenery, judged by any ordinary aesthetic canon, is more than commonly beautiful; yet there is no influx of artists or summer tourists. Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding the locality. In our sensible age-since the Dunwich horror of 1928 was hushed up by those who had the town's and the world's welfare at heart-people shun it without knowing exactly why. Perhaps one reason-though it cannot apply to uninformed strangers-is that the natives are now repellently decadent, having gone far along that path of retrogression so common in many New England backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with the well-defined mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy and inbreeding. The average of their intelligence is woefully low, whilst their annals reek of overt viciousness and of half-hidden murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnamable violence and perversity. The old gentry, representing the two or three armigerous families which came from Salem in 1692, have kept somewhat above the general level of decay; though many branches are sunk into the sordid populace so deeply that only their names remain as a key to the origin they disgrace. Some of the Whateleys and Bishops still send their eldest sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though those sons seldom return to the mouldering gambrel roofs under which they and their ancestors were born.