A Night in the Lonesome October (18 page)

    
I did turn my head to the rear in time to see the rectangle fade behind us, paling stones and grass within it.
 
Dotted about the place where it had been, as well as about ourselves, droplets of rain and a few leaves and strands of grass hung in the air.
 
Or perhaps we were all falling together, or rising, depending on...

    
Graymalk gave a little wail, then looked about.
 
I felt her relax after that, then she said, "It is important that we not be parted here."

    
"You know where we are?" I asked.

    
"Yes.
 
I'm sure I will land on my feet, but I don't know about you.
 
Let me move around onto your back.
 
We'll both be more comfortable that way."

    
She worked her way about my neck then, finally settling into a position behind my shoulders.
 
She did retract her claws as she settled.

    
"Where," I said, "are we?"

    
"I see now that something tried to help me as we were being swept forward," she said.
 
"This is not of a piece with the lightning stroke.
 
But the way was opened and he seized it as a means of rescue.
 
Possibly there is even more to it than that."

  
  
"I'm afraid I don't understand you," I told her.

    
"We are between our place and the Dreamworld now," she said.

    
"You have been here before?"

    
"Yes, but not _right_ here recently."

    
"It feels as if we could drift here forever."

    
"I suppose that we could."

    
"So how do we go ahead, or go back?"

    
"My memories of this part are all scattered.
 
If we do not like where we find ourselves, we withdraw and try again.
 
I will try it now.
 
Call to me if anything too unnatural occurs."

    
With that, she grew silent, and while I waited for whatever sequel was to ensue I thought back over the events which had brought us to this place.
 
It struck me as odd that her mere disparaging mention of the Elders had not only been heard, but that whichever had taken umbrage thereby had been strong enough to do something about it.
 
True, the power was rising in this, a most powerful time, but I wondered at such profligacy with it when there must have been multitudes of better uses to which it might be put, unless it were simply another instance of that famous inscrutability which I sometimes think is to be better understood as childishness.
 
Then a possibility struck sparks deep within my mind, but I had to let it go, unexamined, as alterations began about me.

    
There came a brightening from overhead, nothing as patent as a single light source, but an increasing contrast to the darker area below my feet.
 
I said nothing about it to Graymalk, for I had resolved not to address her, barring emergencies, until she spoke.
 
But I studied that light.
 
There was something familiar about it, from driftings off and awakenings perhaps. . . .

    
Then I realized it to be an outline, as on a map, of a continent or island, perhaps two or more, hanging there, as in a skiey distance, overhead.
 
This did peculiar things to my orientation, and I struggled to alter my physical relationship to it.
 
I moved my legs and twisted, trying to turn my body so as to look downward rather than up at it.

    
It was almost too easy, for there followed an immediate turning.
 
The view became clearer, the land masses larger, as we seemed to drift nearer, topographical features resolving themselves against a field of blue, wispy swirls of cloud hung above prominences, along coasts, a pair of large islands surmounted by great peaks between the two greater masses, to the west, if what seemed upward along the vertical axes were indeed north.
 
No reason that it should be, of course, nor, for that matter, that it shouldn't.

    
Graymalk began to mutter then, in a flat, affectless tone, ". . . To the west of the Southern Sea lie the Basalt Pillars, beyond them the city of Cathuria.
 
East, the coast is green and home to fishers' towns.
 
South, from the black towers of Dylath-Leen is the land of white fungi where the houses are brown and have no windows; beneath the waters there, on still days, one can see the avenue of crippled sphinxes leading to the dome of the great sunken temple.
 
To the north again, one may behold the charnel gardens of Zura, place of unattained pleasures, the templed terraces of Zak, the double headlands of crystal at the harbor of Sona-Nyl, the spires of Thalarion. . . ."

    
As she spoke we came even nearer, and my attention was taken from spot to spot along the coasts of that sea, those features somehow magnified across the distances, so that I beheld things with the vision of dreaming; though a part of me was baffled by this arcane phenomenon, yet another accepted with a feeling more of memory than discovery.

    
". . . Dylath-Leen," she mused, "where the wide-mouthed traders with the strange turbans come for their slaves and gold, anchoring black galleys whose stench only the smoking of thagweed can kill, paying with rubies, departing with the powerful oar strokes of invisible rowers.
 
Southwest then to Thran of the sloping alabaster walls, unjoined, and its cloud-catching towers all white and gold, there by the River Shai, wharves all of marble. . . .

    
"And there lies the granite-walled city of Hlanith, on the shores of the Cerenerian Sea.
 
_Its_ wharves are of oak, its houses peaked and gabled. . . .

    
"There, the perfumed jungle of Kled," she went on, "where lost, ivory palaces sleep undisturbed, once home to monarchs of a forgotten kingdom.

    
". . . And up the Oukranos River from the Cerenerian Sea slope the jasper terraces of Kiran, where the king of Ilek-Vad comes once a year in a golden palanquin, to pray to the god of the river in the seven-towered temple whence music drifts whenever moonlight falls upon it."

    
We moved steadily closer as she spoke, drifting now over vast regions, brown, yellow, green. . . .

    
". . . Bahama is eleven days sailing from Dylath-Leen, most important port on the island of Oriab, the great lighthouses Thon and Thal at its harbor's gate, quays all of porphyry.
 
There is its canal to Lake Yath, of the ruined city.
 
It flows through a tunnel with granite doors.
 
The hill-people ride zebras. . . .
 
Westward lies the Valley of Pnoth, amid the peaks of Throk.
 
There the slimy _dholes_ burrow among the mountains of bones, cast refuse of ghouls from centuries of their feasting. . . .
 
That peak to the south is Ngranek, two days' ride on zebraback from Bahama, if one would brave the _night-gaunts_.
 
Those who dare Ngranek's slopes will come at last to a vast face carved there, with long-lobed ears and pointed nose and chin.
 
It does not appear to be happy.

    
". . . And back to the northern land, fine Ulthar lies near the River Shai, beyond a great stone bridge in whose arch a living man was sealed when it was built, thirteen hundred years ago.
 
It is a city of neat cottages and cobbled streets where wander cats without number, for the enlightened legislators of long ago laid down laws for our protection.
 
A good, kind village, where travelers take their ease and pet the cats, making much of them, which is as it should be.

    
". . . And there is Urg of the low domes, a stop on the way to Inquanok, frequented by onyx miners. . . .

    
". . . And Inquanok itself, terrible place near the waste of Leng, its houses like palaces with pointed domes and minarets, pyramids, gold walls black with scrolls and swirling with inlays of gold, fluted, arched, capped with gold.
 
Its streets are of onyx, and when the great bell sounds it is answered by the music of horns and viols and chanting voices.
 
High up its central hill lies the massive temple of the Elder Ones, surrounded by its seven-gated garden of pillars, fountains, pools wherein luminous fish sport themselves and reflections of tripods from the temple balcony shimmer and dance.
 
The temple itself bears a great belfry atop its flattened dome, and when the bell sounds masked and hooded priests emerge, bearing steaming bowls to lodges beneath the ground.
 
The Veiled King's palace rises on a nearby hill.
 
He rides forth through bronze gates in a yak-drawn chariot.
 
Beware the father of Shantak-birds who dwells in the temple's dome.
 
Stare too long and he sends you nightmares.
 
Avoid fair Inquanok.
 
No cat may dwell there, for many of its shadows are poison to our kind.

    
". . . And there is Sarkomand, beyond the Leng Plateau.
 
One mounts salt-covered steps to its basalt walls and docks, temples and squares, column-lined streets, to the place where the sphinx-mounted gates open to its central plaza and two monumental winged lions guard the top of the stairwell leading to the Great Abyss."

    
We drifted even lower now, and it was as if I could hear the winds that blow between the worlds as she continued her litany of Dreamworld geography.

    
". . . On the way to Kadath we cross the terrible wasteland of Leng, where, in the great windowless monastery surrounded by monoliths, dwells the High Priest of Dreamworld, his face hidden by a yellow silk mask.
 
His building is older than history, bearing frescoes of the story of Leng; barely human creatures dance amid gone cities, the war with the purple spiders, the landing of the black galleys from the moon. . . .

    
". . . And we pass Kadath itself, enormous city of ice and mystery, capital of this land. . . .

    
". . . Coming at last to fair Celephais in the land of Ooth-Nargai on the shores of the Cerenerian Sea. . . ."

    
Now we swooped very low, above a snowcapped peak.

    
". . . Mount Aran," she intoned, and I saw ginkgo trees upon its lower reaches; then, in the distance, marble walls, minarets, bronze statues.
 
"The Naraxa River joins the sea here.
 
There in the distance lie the Tanarian peaks.
 
That turquoise temple down the Street of Pillars is where the high priest worships Nath-Horthoth.
 
And so we find our way to the place where I have been summoned."

    
We dropped steadily then, to touch the bright-cut onyx-stone of the street.
 
Immediately, there were sounds about us once again other than the wind, breezes that I could feel.
 
Graymalk leaped from my back, alighting beside me, shook herself, and stared.

    
"You wander these lands in dreams of catnappery?" I said.

    
"Sometimes," she replied, "and sometimes elsewhere.
 
And yourself?"

    
"I think that sometimes I might have."

    
She turned in a complete circle, paused, then began walking.
 
I followed.

    
We walked for a long while; none among the merchants and camel drivers or orchid-wreathed priests disturbed our passing.

    
"There is no time here," she remarked.

    
"I believe you," I answered, and sailors passed us from the pink-vapored harbor and sunlight sparkled upon the streets, the minarets.
 
I saw no other dogs about, smelled none.

    
In the distance, a blinding spectacle came into view and we made our way toward it.

    
"The rose-crystal Palace of the Seventy Delights," she said, "whence he has called."

    
And so we walked toward it, and it was as if a part of me normally awake were sleeping and part of me normally asleep were awake, a reversal which led to easy acceptance of wonder, to easy forgetting of daylong movements and concerns these past several weeks.

    
The crystal palace grew before us, gleaming like a piece of pink ice, so that I looked past it rather than directly at it.
 
Our way became more quiet as we approached, and the sun was warm.

    
When we came into its precincts, I beheld a small, gray form, the only other living thing in sight, sunning itself on the terrace before the palace, head upraised, regarding us.
 
Graymalk led us that way.
 
It proved to be an ancient cat, lying on a square of black onyx.