Elysia (23 page)

Lith was no more!

The time-clock was very nearly impervious to all forces and pressures. It had survived, even escaped from, the lure of black holes; it had breached all known temporal and spatial barriers; it had journeyed in weird
intermediate, even
subconscious dimensions. But even so, it had never before encountered
forces
like those which worked on it now. Ardatha Ell had warned de Marigny not to resist; now, even if he would resist, he could not. Time did not allow. The time-clock itself did not allow. Its controls no longer worked. It
,
was a *twig whirled along a gutter in a cloudburst, a canoe caught in the maelstrom.

Light and heat and radiation — even a little matter — exploded outward in such a holocaust of released ENERGY that the clock was simply carried along on its shock wave. For those within — because they were enclosed in an area which was timeless, and yet, paradoxically everywhere and when — it was acceleration without gravity, without the fatal increase in mass which Earthly physics
would otherwise demand. But it was more than that. Space-time's fabric was wrenched by Azathe's rebirth and instant death; it was torn, finally ripped asunder. All dimensions of the continuum became one in a crazy mingling, became a new
state.
Barriers Man's science had not even guessed at went crashing, and crashing through the chaos of their collapse came the time-clock.

And it came -

- Into Elysia!

Elysia, yes, but no longer that magical place as described by Titus Crow. De Marigny saw this as soon as the whirling of his psyche settled and his mundane senses regained control. For this was Elysia with all of the magic removed.

Rain lashed the time-clock where it sped of its own accord high above a land grey and sodden. Black clouds scudded in boiling banks, turning the rays of a synthetic sun to the merest glimmer. The sky-islands and palaces floated on air as before, but no transports came and went, no iridescent dragons sped on bone and leather wings through the lowering skies. The aerial roadways of the cities carried no traffic; the streets below shone dully, empty of life; there did not appear to be
any life
in all Elysia.

But then the scanners told de Marigny how he erred, the scanners and Moreen and Exior's combined cry of warning. There
was
life here, behind him, even now bloating monstrous in the wake of the clock!

The blow fell on de Marigny like a crashing, crushing weight. He saw, and was shattered by the sight. For in one soul-destroying moment he saw exactly how, exactly why, the clock's scanners and sensors were now full of the sight and sound and presence of these things:
the massed hordes of the Cthulhu Cycle — including and led by Cthulhu himself!

It was as simple as this: they had followed him through the breach! He who had sought only to assist Elysia, had doomed her! Cthulhu was free, he was here, and The Searcher had
led
him here!

It was all so obvious, so very obvious. Everything de Marigny had done since Titus Crow rode his Great Thought to him in Borea might have been designed to draw Cthulhu's attention. Ithaqua the Wind-Walker had doubtless known de Marigny was seeking Elysia; Nyarlathotep, in both his primal and current forms, he too had known; the Hounds of Tindalos had known; and because all of them reported directly to Cthulhu, so too the Lord of R'lyeh. And where better to strike their first blow against universal sanity than Elysia? And how better to get there than by following de Marigny, whose place in Elysia was assured?

`I've betrayed you!' de Marigny cried then in his agony, through clenched teeth. `All of you ... all Elysia!'

'Oh,. Henri, Henri!' Moreen clung to him sobbing.

'Nor
he put her gently aside. 'I came here to fight, and I can
still
fight!' With his mind he reached out for the time-clock's weapons.

`They won't work for you, Henri,' Exior K'mool shook his head. 'See, the clock has a mind of its own now. It flees before this hideous army. And they follow on, determined to hound us down, and whoever awaits us at the end of our journey.'

Exior was right the clock's weapons would not fire, the space-time machine
^-
refused to respond to de Marigny's touch. And faster than its unimaginable pursuers — answering some unknown; unheard summons — it sped on. across Elysia, across the once-Frozen Sea, where now the ice bucked and heaved and waterspouts gouted skyward, toward its goal, the Icelands, where dwelled Kthanid in the heart of Elysia's mightiest glacier. The Hall of Crystal and Pearl: de Marigny saw it again in his mind's eye as once he had seen it in a prophetic dream, that throneroom of

Kthanid, spokesman of the Elder Gods themselves. And how would that mighty beneficent Kraken greet him now, he wondered, whose ambition had brought ruin on all Elysia?

The time-clock dipped low and skimmed across ice-cliffs, plunged toward an entrance carved from the permafrost of a vast cavern. But even upon entering the complex of caves and corridors that led to Kthanid's sanctum sanctorum, the clock was slowing down, its scanners dimming, sensors blanking out. The controls were totally dead now, and darkness closing in fast.

`Henri?' In the deepening gloom, still Moreen clung to The Searcher.

`Elysia's finished,' de Marigny felt drained, his voice was cracked. `Even the time-clocks are running down. This place must be their final refuge the refuge of Elysia's peoples, I mean, and of their leaders. If Cthulhu can find them here he can find them anywhere, so why run any farther? This is the end of the line ...' Even as he spoke the clock came to a halt; its door swung open and its now feeble purple glow pulsed out; the three gazed upon the interior of the vast Hall of Crystal and Pearl.

Exior K'mool was first to step out. The clock had come to rest deep inside the enormous clamber, close to the curtained alcove where sat Kthanid's throne. The curtains were drawn now and the throne itself invisible, but still Exior felt the awesome atmosphere of the place, knew that he stood at a crossroads of destiny. The shimmering curtains went up, up and up, to the massively carved arch which formed the alcove's facade. And wizard that he was master of wonders, still Exior went down on his knees before those curtains and bowed his. head. 'The place of the Eminence!'
he
whispered.

De Marigny and Moreen followed him, flanked him, gazed with him as he lifted his head. And as at a signal the curtains swept open!

De Marigny might have expected several things revealed when the curtains swept aside. He might
even
have guessed correctly, if he'd guessed at all. But in fact it had happened too quickly; his mind had not yet adjusted to his whereabouts: the fact that, however disastrously, he finally stood in Elysia; and so the physical presence of what - of
who
he saw there at the head of the great steps behind the curtains, before the throne and beside the onyx table with its huge crimson cushion and shewstone big as a boulder, was simply staggering.

`Henri!'
Titus Crow's face had been drawn, haggard -but it lit up like the sun at the sight of The Searcher. 'Henri - you made it but of course I knew you would. You had to!'

`Titus!' de Marigny tried to say, except nothing came out. On his second attempt he managed a croak, but recognizable anyway. `Titus ...'

It shuddered out of him, that word, that name and in it was contained all the agony of his soul. He swayed, might have fallen. Crow started forward, paused, spoke quickly, forcefully: `Henri, I know how you feel. Like the greatest traitor who ever lived, like Judas himself. I know, because that's how I've been feeling. Forget it. You're no Judas. You're Elysia's greatest hero!'

`What?' de Marigny's brow furrowed; he knew he was hearing things.

`What?' Moreen was equally confused. `A hero?' But Exior K'mool only smiled.

`No time for long explanations, Henri, Moreen,' said Crow. 'You know .what's followed you, who's on his way here - to the Hall of Crystal and Pearl even now. Come up here, quickly! You too, Exior.'

They climbed the steps, de Marigny falteringly, assisted by Moreen and Exior. 'They say a picture's worth a thousand words,' said Crow. `So look at this - for I've lots to say to you and no time to say it all.'

He touched the great crystal and milky clouds at once parted.

They gazed upon Elysia. Upon an Elysia falling into ruinst

The drenched, leaden skies had been empty before, but now they were full of death. The Hounds of Tindalos were everywhere, chittering round and about the aerial palaces, the tall buildings, even the lower structures. They were like a cloud of lice around host beasts: the Beings at the head of that monstrous airborne procession. Cthulhu was there, no longer dreaming but awake, crimson-eyed, evil beyond imagination. Flanking him, on his right, YogSothoth seethed behind his shielding globes, unglimpsed except in the iridescent mucous froth which dripped from him like pus; and to Cthulhu's left, there strode the bloated figure of Ithaqua the Wind-Walker, snatched here in an instant from Borea; beast-god of the frozen winds that howl forever between the worlds. And these were but a few ...

They did not fly but seemed half-supported — suspended on the unbreakable strands of Atlach-Nacha's webs, which even now the spider-thing wove fast as the eye could follow across Elysia's drab skies. Yibb-Tstll was there, and BuggShash, both of them close behind their cousin and master Yog-Sothoth; and Tsathoggua the toad crept apace with Cthulhu's shadow. Hastur, eternal rival of the dread Lord of R'lyeh, kept his distance from the main body of the procession, but still he was present, equally keen for revenge. Dagon cruised amid the icebergs of the now melting Frozen Sea, shattering ice floes as he came, and with him Mother Hydra and certain chosen members of the Deep Ones.

Shoggoths surged across the earth like formless towers of filth, while beneath it ran the steaming tunnels of Shudde-M'ell and his burrowers. And all of them converging on the Icelands, closing with the great glacier which housed Kthanid's immemorial palace.

And wherever they moved, each and every one of them brought destruction: sky-islands plummeted and cities went up in gouts of fire; aerial roadways were sliced through, sent crashing, and once golden forests roared into infernos. The waters of a blue, tropical ocean turned black in moments, and mountains long quiescent cracked open and spewed fire, smoke and stinking tephra

`Hero?' said de Marigny dully, flinching from these scenes of destruction. 'I can write my name on ... on
that,
and you call me a hero?'

Crow grasped his arm, said: 'Let me show you something else, my friend.' Again he touched the shewstone, his hand erasing the scenes of destruction and replacing them.

In the miles-long corridor of clocks, the last of Elysia's exotically diverse peoples and denizens filed into the remaining handful of time-clocks, which then blinked out of existence on this plane. In the Vale of Dreams the last N'hlathi centipede crawled into his life-support canister, his own time-clock, and was gone from Elysia. With him, as with the rest of his race, he carried life-sustaining — life-assuring seeds of the great poppy, to: sow in fresh, far distant fields. High over Elysia, where even now the Tind'losi Hounds streamed ravenously, the silver-sphere manse of Ardatha Ell — in which he had first come to Elysia — slowly faded to insubstantiality, seemed to disappear in drifting wraiths of coloured light. And in the Gardens of Nymarrah, there about the titan wine-glass shape of a Great Tree, a squadron of time-clocks hovered like bees, all perfectly synchronized. In another moment they, too, were gone — and the Great Tree with them. Only the mighty hole which an instant earlier had housed the Tree's taproot remained to show where he had stood.

`He would have been satisfied if we'd taken only his life-leaf,' said Titus Crow. 'Kthanid insisted we take the whole tree.'

`But . . . where to?' de Marigny's mind was still reeling.

`Watch!' said Crow. He put his shoulder to the crystal, and as the three got out of the way toppled it from the table
^-
. It jarred, rang hollowly when it hit the floor, but it didn't break. Then it rolled ponderously across the floor of the dais, clanged down the steps and across the massively paved hall toward the several entranceways. There it finally came to rest, spun sluggishly for a moment and was still.

`Come on,' said Crow. He led the way down the steps to the time-clock. 'We're very nearly finished here,' he said, putting his hands on the clock's panelling. Then he smiled wryly, added, 'A million memories here, Henri.'

De Marigny couldn't believe it. He began to doubt Crow's sanity — maybe even his own. For in the midst of all this, Crow seemed completely calm, unpanicked. `You're thinking of using the time-clock?' The Searcher said. 'But its controls have failed, energy all drained off.'

And Crow's smile was as wide as de Marigny had ever seen it. Incredibly, he suddenly seemed younger than ever! `What, the old dock finished?' And slowly he shook his head. 'Oh, no, Henri. Even now he leeches warp-energy from Elysia's heart. See?' And sure enough, the familiar purple pulse was building in power, the enigmatic light from within streaming out as of old.

`But where can we go?' De Marigny grasped Crow's shoulders. 'Where? They followed me here — they can follow us anywhere!'