The House of the Worm

CHAPTER III Xiurhn

Opposite the grim onyx temple of Unattainable Desires, in the Street of the Pantheon in Hazuth-Kleg, sacred to the Moon, there stood long the low, terrible house of Skaa that figures oddly in myth. Skaa dwelt all alone in her terrible house and worshipped her carven idols, and chanted and lighted unwholesome candles and made the Voorish sign. But there are those who do not scruple to consult witches, and Thish was used to dealing with persons of doubtful character in his business, which was nothing less than robbery.

He had heard it whispered by certain jewel-merchants, before his knotted cords silenced them completely, that the gem of immeasurable worth is kept by the Night in fabled Mhor. He heard it first in Celephais, from a fat jeweller seeking to buy his own life with that peculiar knowledge, and Thish had not trusted his whimperings. But in Vornai he was less sure, and in Ulthar’s scorpion-guarded shops he wondered whether it might be true, and in the yak caravan on Kaar’s sunny plain he could doubt no longer; the ruby-merchants who come to Dylath-Leen he robbed not. The truth and other pertinent matters, he knew, might be read in the mouldering Pnakotic Manuscripts wherein is recorded all things it is better that men should not know, but he did not wish to pay the Guardian’s price to peruse that hateful tome. Less perilous would be to consult one who had already paid the Guardian’s price.

In that low house shadows dwelt, despite the Bickerings of a little oddly-painted clay lamp. Thish did not like the way those shadows behaved, and Skaa’s eyes that shone like the nethermost stars of some nameless gulf were less than reassuring. He entered by that disturbing door which stands open at all seasons between dusk and dawn, and did what was expected of clients, and in turn was told what he wished to know. For beyond the unknown East, mumbled Skaa, there must certainly lie that great, silent vale which is the Night, whence he sends forth his shades at evening to slay the bleeding sun, and whither flee all dreams when the sun returns at dawning. And in that shadow-guarded vale (if one may believe the queer sayings of them that mouth strange secrets to any who may hear) is the high, haunted tower of stone wherein the myth Xiurhn sits and mutters dreams to himself and watches over the gem of immeasurable worth. As no other in the World is this gem, for it was made by the craft of the Other Gods as supplication to the mindless daemon sultan Azathoth, and cut in a semblance of some droll blending of sloth and vampire bat whose pulpy, sinister head is slyly concealed behind its folded wings. It is better that mortals do not think of it, for the Other Gods are not as men (whose tiny souls are bound to them by silver threads), but find earthly focus in certain horrible links, and the noxious soul of Xiurhn haunts the Dark Jewel. It would not be pleasant to meet Xiurhn or his soul, and the Other Gods have shocking methods of punishment. Yet it is known that the yellow-skulled priests of Yuth possess a talisman they anoint in adoration of N’tse-Kaambl, that is useful in protecting those who would profane what belongs to the Other Gods. And Skaa told how one might come to Yuth and the talisman; and casting at the witch’s webbed feet his payment in opals, Thish hurried out into the winding cobbled streets beneath the stars.

When Skaa opened the little bag and found only pebbles, for Thish was a robber of note, she drew a pattern known to the skull-faced priests of Yuth and nailed it to the brow of her messenger, who made an obeisance and vanished in a rustle of leathery wings. She described then a sign in the dark with her forefinger above the worthless rocks to change them into opals, and gave no more thought to the thief.

In seven nights a stealthy shadow passed on stockinged feet through the third and most secret vault of that abhorred monastery where the priests of Yuth celebrate the mass of Yuth with curious torments and prayer. When the yellow-skulled priests found the strangled witch with the knotted cord still about her throat and the talisman gone from its proper place on the altar, they only laughed softly and returned to their curious tortures.

That even the East must end if one only travels far enough, all sane men know, despite what philosophers may say; but Thish on his journey watched the four seasons of Earth come in file down through the fields of man and the fields that know him not, come each and pass and come again. And queerer and queerer grew the lands as one rode further East. Beyond the last of Six Kingdoms Thish beheld the dark, mordant forests of trees whose knotted roots fasten like leeches to the mould and moan and bleach the earth, and in whose loathly shadows the inquisitive brown Zoogs caper and leer; and evil bogs whose pale, luminous blooms are foetid with swollen worms having astonishing faces. The deserts on the thither side of Gak are all strewn with the gnawed, untidy bones of absurd chimeras. Thish spent a week in crossing those deserts, and day by day prayed to his gods that the gnawers might remain comfortably hidden. Beyond the deserts is the city it is not well to enter, for the portcullis mimes teeth entirely too well to be canny. And upon a time Thish led his famished zebra across the barren, stony ridge which is the East’s farthest border, and peered down to see the Night lapping evilly below, a sluggish, viscid pool in fabled Mhor.

There he turned free his zebra. Already the bleeding sun failed at his back, and then sinister Night would rush terribly up from that vale with strange intent, and Thish did not need to be told what hellish spawn might lurk in the dusk athirst for that which he could ill afford. He lighted a little oddly-painted clay lamp that did not belong to him, and sitting down on a broad, flat rock, with his back to the stone and his jewelled sword at his side, he drew his cloak up to his eyes and waited. But Thish did not have to wait long… For then with many a subtle flap and whisper the shadows sprang, amid a bitter cold of the star-spaces. An object with clammy feelers and wings splattered against his brow. Queer half-glimpsed shapes of nightmare clamoured just beyond his feeble light, he heard the brief, frenzied screams of his zebra out in the dark with the titter he hoped but did not really believe was the wind. Ther that shadowy horde had wriggled obscenely over the high ridge and into the World beyond, and Thish was left all alone to creep down the treacherous slope, bearing his lamp before him. The very stones oozed a horrible dew of fluid shadows, and were pitted everywhere with fiendish burrows, and the burrows were not always unoccupied. Thish stumbled more often than he must have liked, for the little lamp could not dispel the blackness, only its vile children, and once his hand slipped down into one of the burrows… Later he found those worn steps at the base of the tower, where something began to slither nastily behind him, snuffling in the dark and disturbing ancient bones. Thish was glaa he could not see what he suspected. He could only gibber a meaningless prayer to the talisman in his pocket, and froth and scramble madly up the dizzy stair on his hands and knees in the dark, while the little suspicious noises behind him got bigger and bigger, and something wet twisted the lamp from his nerveless fingers and swallowed it with bestial slobberings and panted on his neck until his bleeding hands found the brazen tower door and pulled it shut behind him. Something knocked on the door and chuckled ominously.

Crouching there in the dark with his sword and mumbling to himself, of a Dark Jewel of immeasurable worth kept by the Night in fabled Mhor, of amorphous Xiurhn, whose noxious soul it is, who sits in a high tower in the dark and talks with those Other Gods whose methods of punishment the thief had most reason to fear, but who cannot abide the talisman sacred to that goddess N’tse-Kaambl whose splendour hath shattered worlds, Thish in the dark of his own shattered mind never knew when that talisman left his fingers at the silent beck of the yellow-skulled priests…

And then Xiurhn came downstairs with his soul to answer that persistent knocking.