The Clock of Dreams, page 2
part #3 of Titus Crow Series
Thus, while his subconscious body hurtled through the star-voids within the spacetime-defying matrix of the great clock, de Marigny’s dreaming mind was present in that very Hall of Crystal and Pearl which Titus Crow had described to him in so much detail. And he saw that Crow had painted an almost perfect picture of that magnificently alien palace beneath the ice of Elysia’s ‘polar’ regions.
Here was the massive high-arched ceiling, the Titan-paved floor of great hexagonal flags, the ornate columns rising to support high balconies which glowed partially hidden in rose-quartz mists and pearly hazes. And everywhere were the white, pink, and blood hues of crystal, strangely diffused in all those weird angles and proportions that Crow had spoken of. Even the hall’s centerpiece – the vast scarlet cushion with its huge, milky crystal ball – was just as Crow had described it. And of course, Kthanid was there, too …
Kthanid the Eminence, Elder God and cousin to Great Cthulhu – indeed of the same strain of cosmic spawn that bred the Lord of R’lyeh – moved massively in the Cyclopean hall. His body was mountainous! And yet his folded-back, fantastic wings trembled in seeming agitation as Kthanid paced the enormous flags, his great octopoid head, with its proliferation of face-tentacles, turning this way and that in what was plainly consternation.
But for all that this Being was alien beyond words, what might easily have been horrific was in fact magnificent! For this great creature, bejeweled and glittering as though dusted with diamonds, stared out upon the hall through huge eyes that glowed like molten gold; eyes filled with compassion and love – yes, and fear – almost impossible to imagine as existing within so terrible a fleshly house. And those eyes returned again and again to peer intently at the lustrous crystal upon its scarlet cushion.
It was because of Kthanid’s eyes that de Marigny knew – was certain – that there was nothing to fear here, and he knew too that this was much more than merely a dream. It was as if he had been called into the Elder God’s presence, and no sooner had this thought occurred to the dreamer than the Eminence turned and stared straight at him where his disembodied being ‘stood’ invisible within the vast subterranean vault.
‘Henri-Laurent de Marigny,’ a rumbling but infinitely kindly voice spoke in the dreamer’s mind. ‘Man of Earth, is it you? Yes, I see that it is. You have answered my summons, which is good, for that was a test I had intended to set you before – before –’ The mental voice faded into uncertain silence.
‘Kthanid,’ de Marigny spoke up, unsure as to how to address the mythical Being, ‘I see that you are … disturbed. Why have you called me here? Has the trouble to do with Titus Crow?’
‘With Titus, yes, and with Tiania, whom I love as a father. But come,’ the great voice took on urgency, ‘look into the crystal and tell me what you see.’
Disembodied, nevertheless de Marigny found that he was capable of movement. He followed Kthanid to the edge of the great cushion, then moved on across its silken expanse to the center. There the huge, milky crystal ball reposed, its surface opaque and slowly mobile, as a reflection of dense clouds mirrored in a still lake.
‘Look!’ the Eminence commanded yet again, and slowly the milky clouds began to part, revealing …
The dreaming de Marigny gazed upon a scene that filled him with icy dread, a scene he could understand even less than he could believe it. The crystal on its scarlet cushion now burned with red fires of its own, and dark shadows danced as flames leaped high above four hugely flaring, blackly-forged flambeaux. These torches stood at the corners of a raised dais or altar, atop which a great reddish mass – a living, malignant jewel at least three feet across– pulsed evilly as it reflected the ruddy light of the torches. The thing seemed to be an impossibly vast ruby; and guarding it, patroling the round-cobbled square in which the dais stood, were several squat, strangely-turbaned figures with awful wide-mouthed faces. At their belts these guardsmen wore viciously curving scimitars, and as they moved about the foot of the raised altar de Marigny saw that they paused occasionally to torment two ragged figures whose limbs were roped to irons hammered into the steps of the dais.
The horror and sick shock that de Marigny experienced had its source in these two figures; for one of them was certainly his great friend of olden adventures, Titus Crow, while the other – ruddily illumined in the light of the flaring flambeaux, fantastically beautiful even in her present distress– must be the girl-goddess Tiania, late of Elysia. Then, as suddenly as it had come, while de Marigny tried desperately to commit all the vision’s details to memory, the milky clouds rolled back across the crystal’s surface and all was gone.
Away in the time-clock, still hurtling through the star-voids half a universe away in space and time, de Marigny’s recumbent form sweated, tossed and turned; while in the great Hall of Crystal and Pearl his disembodied subconscious turned imploringly to Kthanid the Eminence to ask: ‘But what does it mean? Where are they? And how did this–’
‘Hold!’ The great Being turned abruptly and for a moment his huge eyes were slits, glittering with something other than compassion or love. Kthanid was every inch a God, and de Marigny sensed that for a moment he had been very close to witnessing the release of awesome energies. The Elder God’s frustration was a living force that the dreamer felt as surely as his waking body would feel the warmth of sunlight or the chill of a bitter wind. Then the golden eyes blinked rapidly and Kthanid’s towering form trembled violently as he fought to bring his emotions under control. ‘Hold, de Marigny,’ the mental voice finally rumbled again, this time less forcefully, ‘and I will explain all. But understand that every wasted moment increases their peril…’
Then the great voice seemed almost to become resigned, as if giving a telepathic shrug. ‘Still, what other way is there? I must tell you as much as I know, for of course you are their one hope of salvation. Indeed, you will be the instrument of that salvation – if you are able. Have you the strength, de Marigny? Are you the man Titus Crow believes you to be? Would you really presume to enter Elysia? I tell you now, I am not unjust – but I love those two. Bring them back to me, and I will welcome you to Elysia as a son. Fail me, and –’ again the mental shrug, ‘and you remain a child of Earth all your days – if you live through your ordeal!’
‘Whatever needs to be done to help Titus Crow – yes, and his Tiania – I’ll try to do it,’ the dreamer fervently answered. ‘Wherever I need to go, I’ll go there.’
‘You will need to do more than merely try, de Marigny, and indeed there is far to go. When I have told you all I am able to tell, then you must be on your way – immediately.’
‘And my destination?’
‘Earth!’
‘Earth?’ the dreamer gaped. ‘But –’
‘Earth, yes, for your own homeworld is the only safe steppingstone to your ultimate destination, to the place where even now Titus Crow and Tiania face unknown terrors.’ For a brief moment Kthanid paused, then he turned his golden eyes in the dreaming de Marigny’s direction. ‘Obviously your mind is receptive to telepathic attraction, man of Earth, else I could not have called you here to Elysia. But tell me, can you dream? Can you truly dream?’
‘Can I dream? Why, I –’
‘Your father was a great dreamer.’
‘Titus Crow has told me much the same thing, but –’ de Marigny began, then paused as an astounding thought came to him. ‘Are you trying to tell me that Titus and Tiania are –’
The great Being nodded: ‘Yes, they are trapped in Earth’s dreamworld, de Marigny. To find them, free them, and return them to Elysia unscathed, that is your quest. One man against all Earth’s dreamworld – which is also the land of her nightmares!’
II
Dreams of Doom
‘There is a way,’ the Eminence continued, ‘by means of which I can rapidly impress upon your mind all that I know of your … destination. It may be unpleasant in that you could be left with a headache, but other than that it is not dangerous. There is also a way to speed the process up immeasurably, and … But no, I fear your mind is not ready for that. It would probably destroy you.’
‘Crow has told me how you – revealed – certain things to him,’ de Marigny answered. ‘Right here in this hall, I believe. I am ready for whatever it is you have to do to me.’
‘Titus Crow’s capacity was unbelievably high, even taking into account the fact that the strains of Eld ran strong in his blood. With him the process was very quick, almost instantaneous, but I would not dare to attempt such a process with you. That is not to belittle you, de Marigny: it is simply that if you are incapacitated, then nothing can save Titus Crow and Tiania. But in any case, your education will not take too long; my knowledge of Earth’s dreamland is regrettably limited. The reason for this will soon become amply clear to you. Now come to me…’
As the dreamer drifted toward the alien Eminence, so that great Being’s face-tentacles seemed to reach out to touch his disembodied mind. ‘Steel yourself,’ came Kthanid’s warning in the instant before contact was made.
… And immediately gates of strange knowledge opened in de Marigny’s mind, through which streamed fantastic visions of nighted myth and legend, released from Kthanid’s mental storehouse of lore concerning Earth’s dreamland. And though it was perfectly true that the Eminence knew comparatively little of that subconscious dimension, still it seemed to the disembodied Earthman that the Elder God must surely be omniscient in the ways of human dreams.
For as rapidly as his mind could accept it, de Marigny became heir to a wealth of information previously known only to certain seasoned travelers in dreamland, a dimension whose very fabric existed for and was sustained only by the minds of Earth’s dreamers. He saw the continents, hills and mountains, rivers and oceans of dream, her fabulous countries, cities, and towns, and he saw the peoples who inhabited those ethereal regions. Amazingly, he even recognized some of the places he saw, remembering now adventures believed forgotten forever in olden dreams, just as the night is forgotten in the light of dawn’s rays.
And so knowledge passed from the mind of the great Being into the mind of Henri-Laurent de Marigny. He was shown the Cavern of the Flame where, not far from the gates of the waking world, the bearded, pshent-bearing priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah offer up prayers and sacrifices to the capricious gods of dream that dwell in the clouds above Kadath. Yes, and an instant later, whirled away to the Cold Waste, he even glimpsed Kadath itself, forbidden to men, but was offered no guarantee of that hideous region’s location. Not even Kthanid knew for certain in which area of spacetime Kadath lay.
Snatched away from Kadath in the space of a single heartbeat, de Marigny traversed the seven hundred steps to the Gates of Deeper Slumber; and beyond those steps the Enchanted Wood with its furtive Zoog inhabitants was made known to him. He was given to understand how the Zoogs – small and brown and indeterminate as they were – might be very important to his quest, for they were not unintelligent and their knowledge of Earth’s dreamland was prodigious. Moreover, the Zoogs were reputed to have access even to the waking world, knowing me two places where the dimensions of dream and reality merge; though mercifully, in consideration of their doubtful appetites, they could not journey far beyond the mysterious places of their own dimension.
Then the Enchanted Wood and its burrow-dwelling Zoogs were gone, and de Marigny was shown the resplendent city of Celephais in the valley of Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills. And he knew that Kuranes, himself once a legendary dreamer, reigned in Celephais, and that King Kuranes was renowned in all the lands of dream as the only man ever to transcend the star-gulfs and return sane. Gazing down upon Celephais from on high, de Marigny saw the glittering minarets of that splendid city and the galleys at anchor in the blue harbor, and Mount Aran where the ginkgos swayed in the breeze off the sea. And there was the singing, bubbling Naraxa with its tiny wooden bridges, wending its way to the sea; and there the city’s bronze gates, beyond which onyx pavements wound away into a maze of curious streets and alleys.
But de Marigny was given precious little time to study Celephais, for no sooner had he glimpsed the city and its surrroundings than he was whirled away, high over the Cerenarian Sea, whose billows rise up inexplicably to the heavens. There, among fleecy clouds tinted with rose, he was shown sky-floating Serannian, the pink marble city of the clouds, builded on that ethereal coast where the west wind flows into the sky; and he marveled at dream’s wonders as he saw below, through breaks in roseate clouds, hills and rivers and cities of a rare beauty, dreaming gorgeously in brilliant sunshine.
And once again the scene quickly changed – so rapidly, indeed, that de Marigny was thrown in an instant from daylight into darkness – and now he knew that the land below him was none other than the icy desert plateau of Leng, and he saw the horrible stone villages whose balefires flared up so evilly. Then, coming to him on an icy wind that seemed to freeze his very soul, he heard the rattling of strange bone instruments and the whine of cursed flutes, while a distant chanting of monstrous implications chilled him further yet.
For a moment, peering down in starkest horror, he thought he saw some inhuman thing writhing and blazing upon a stake in the heart of one of these balefires, while in the red shadows around monstrous figures jerked and cavorted to the hellish, wind-whipped music. De Marigny knew that the thing in the fire – whatever it was – screamed hideously as it roasted, and he was glad that the icy, howling wind kept those screams from him; and more glad when suddenly he was rushed away once more to other, less terrible visions.
Now he was relieved to behold the templed terraces of Zak, abode of forgotten dreams, where many of his own youthful dreams lingered still, gradually fading as all dreams must in the end. But before he could look too long or wistfully at Zak’s dim visions, he felt himself borne irresistibly onward, to pass beneath twin headlands of crystal – which rose up to meet high overhead in a resplendent arch; and then he found himself above the harbor of Sona-Nyl, blessed land of fancy. But since it could not have been deemed too important that he should look long upon Sona-Nyl, once again he was snatched away, without pause, on across the Southern Sea toward the Basalt Pillars of the West.
Now, some say that splendid Cathuria lies beyond the spot where those black columns tower from the ocean; but wiser dreamers are sure that the pillars are only a gateway, one which opens to a monstrous cataract where all dream’s oceans fall abysmally away into awful voids outside the ordered universe. De Marigny knew these things at once, and he might have had the answer to the enigmatic problem had he not found himself once more suddenly and without warning whirled away to the Enchanted Wood. Patently there was something else in that dark place that Kthanid would appraise him of, for now he found himself in an exceptionally unfrequented part of the wood, where even the Zoogs rarely ventured … and he was soon given to understand the reason for their caution.
Here the great squat oaks were very much thinned out, all of them dead or dying, and the whole area seemed covered with unnaturally luxuriant fungi, springing up from the dead ground and the mush of fallen, rotten trees. And there was a twilight and a silence here such as might have existed since time began; and in a sort of clearing a tremendous slab of stone lay on the forest’s floor, bearing in its center a Titan iron ring all of three feet in diameter.
As de Marigny was shown the strange moss-obscured runes graven into the vast slab’s surface, so the timeless quiet and oppressiveness of the place seemed to swell beyond endurance. He gazed upon those graven runes and, finally understanding, shuddered; for while one set of the glyphs was patently designed to keep something down beneath the slab, a second rune seemed to have the power to cancel out the first.
Then de Marigny’s very soul shrank down within him, as if some monstrously alien symbol had been held out to it. And now he seemed to hear his own voice repeating a warning couplet from Abdul Alhazred’s abhorrent Necrononticon:
‘That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die …’ And he knew that there must be something singularly evil and damnable here, a connection between this hideous slab lost in an ensorcelled wood … and all the dread demons of the Cthulhu Cycle of Myth!
De Marigny was already more than well-acquainted with the CCD (the Cthulhu Cycle Deities, so designated by the Wilmarth Foundation) and now in an instant, faster titan Kthanid might have implanted such knowledge in his mind, there flashed through his memory the pantheon as he knew it:
First there was dread Cthulhu, prime member of the CCD, prisoned in drowned R’lyeh somewhere in the vast and unknown depths of Earth’s inscrutable Pacific. Then, there was Yogg-Sothoth, the ‘all-in-one-and-one-in-all,’ a creature hideous beyond imagining – so monstrous indeed that his true shape and aspect are forever hidden, behind a mask or congeries of iridescent globes – who inhabits a synthetic dimension created by the Elder Gods to be his eternal prison. Since Yogg-Sothoth’s prison dimension lies parallel to both time and space, it is often obscurely hinted of him mat he is coexistent with the entire span of the former medium and coterminous in all the latter.
Then, high and low in the ranks of the CCD and their minions, mere were the following: Hastur the Unspeakable, an elemental of interstellar space and air, and allegedly half brother to Cthulhu; Dagon, an ancient aquatic survival worshipped once in his own right by the Philistines and the Phoenicians, now lord and master of the suboceanic Deep Ones in their various tasks, chiefly the guarding of R’lyeh’s immemorially pressured tombs and sunken sepulchers; Cthylla, Cthulhu’s ‘secret seed,’ his daughter; Shudde-M’ell, Nest-Master of the insidious Cthonian Burrowers Beneath; the Tind’losi Hounds; Hydra and Yibb-Tstll; Nyogtha and Tsathoggua; Lloigor, Zhar and Ithaqua; Glaaki, Daoloth, Thamuth-Djig, and many, many more.
