Elysia (5 page)

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Surely we should have made every effort to decipher the legends of their doors long before now? Titus, our greatest scholars, linguists, calligraphers and cryptographers have worked on those inscriptions for a thousand years! It is only through the work of such masters as Esch that we recognized the pattern in the first place. Aye, and his work progresses well - work which I have only disturbed in order to bring him here so that the Dchi-chis, too, may know of the doom hanging over us all. And so I hope to hasten him and others of his race in their work . .

`Why not simply wait for them to wake up?' Crow asked.

`Who can say how long their waking will take or if it will be soon enough? Indeed, we might contact them in their dreams, but their minds are different; to disturb their hibernation might be to destroy them. We cannot risk
that.'

Crow nodded, frowned, said: 'But still you haven't told me what Henri has to do with all of this. How
exactly
do you intend to use my friend, Kthanid? What is it you need my permission to do? And remember: it was you promised him a welcome here.'

Yet again Kthanid's mental groan.
'I remember it well enough, Titus Crow. But as you well know, there's no royal road into Elysia. Still and all, yes, I greatly desire for him to come here now - but by a route extraordinary?

Dark suspicions growing, Crow waited, and:

`First let me say this,'
Kthanid continued.
'The last
dine
Cthulhu rose him up, we put him down. If it goes our way, this time will be the same. If not - '
Crow sensed a mental shrug.

But something which had been bothering the Earthman at the back of his mind now surfaced. 'That's it!' he cried. `That's what puzzles me. If you had the measure of the Great Old Ones way back there at the dawn of time, and if you beat them then, why not use the same process over again? After all, they've been prisoned for billions of years while your science has gone on, improving almost to infinity. So how can they possibly form any real threat now?'

`Their threat comes in two forms,'
said Kthanid,
patient
as ever
'Against Elysia and us Elder Beings, whom they detest and are sworn to destroy, and against your Earth and the lesser worlds and planes of existence. We in Elysia are far from helpless against them, but what of the rest of the sane, ordered universe? Aye, and against us they have a great advantage: for while they may kill or try to kill us, our laws utterly forbid us to kill them!'

`I begin to understand,' said Crow. 'You may defend yourselves defend Elysia, Earth, the other places - but you may not attack, not kill. You can only trap them, prison them as before. And you don't know where they'll strike first, right?'

`That is correct, and so we would like to be able to
direct
their first strike! More of that in a moment, for that's where your friend de Marigny comes in - with your permission. Without it- then we must seek another way. But first let me explain something else:

`You have asked why we do not use the same forces - the same methods - against the evil Great Old Ones that were used before. The answer is this: that we are no longer certain exactly
how
we defeated them?

Crow was utterly dumbfounded. 'But you were part of it you engineered it - you
are
the self-same Elder Gods, the same great scientists who brought them down! Are you saying you've forgotten how you achieved your victory?'

`That is precisely-what I am saying! Oh, we remember the last million years with considerable clarity, but what of the three and a half
thousand
million years before that?'

While Crow absorbed that fantastic thought, that vision of eons, so he felt the E
l
der God searching delicately in his mind for parallels: looking for ways to make his meaning clear. And finally:

'No single atom of my body is the same - every single one
of
them has regenerated many times - in three and a half billion years! Memory? Do you remember your first week of
life on
the planet Earth? Listen, in a time of your planet's history which I consider yesterday, many peoples spoke Latin and who remembers how it was spoken now? Certain scholars guess. Some of them fairly closely. Your "ancient" Egyptians built great pyramid tombs, and who is there "today" to say how they built them? Your scholars guess. Indeed, you have only recently rediscovered their writing! And what man of you remembers the time when the Elder Gods shaped themselves like men and came down to mate with your daughters, which made you great? Not a one; it is the merest echo of a legend. But indeed there were giants in the land in those days. Yes, I have forgotten!'

Still Crow's mind, keen as any, could not accept it. 'There are no records?'

'Records? Do not think thoughts atme of primitive books and tapes and plastic disks, Titus Crow! The finest memory crystals turn to dust in a billion years. Metals transmute. Sand becomes stone and is worn down to sand again. Indeed, entire worlds may be born and die in that span! The records are gone, forgotten, erased, eroded, extinct. Now, like man, we live with myths and legends . .'

'Except the N'hlathi.'

'Exactly, for they have "lived" only a few hours out of each ten thousand years. Their minds are the original minds and uncluttered, uneroded. They remember everything. And the legends are writ on their sealed chamber doors.'

Suddenly Crow felt infinitely tiny before this mighty Being and the concepts he conjured. 'You've. -literally forgotten more than my entire race shall
ever
learn,' he mumbled then. 'And yet you call me here to ask my permission ... for what?'

And at that point Kthanid told him how he would 'use' de Marigny. Crow
might
have argued, might
even
have denied him. The dangers to his friend would be ... enormous! But at least Henri would have a chance, however slim. He'd taken slim chances before, run the gantlet and lived to tell the tale; and as Kthanid had pointed out, there was no royal road into Elysia.

Finally, after long moments of thought, Crow nodded, said: 'I'll ride your Great Thought to de Marigny, Kthanid. Yes, and I'll tell him what I must tell him.'

The Eminence seemed to sigh, nodded gravely.
'I thank you, Titus Crow. Indeed, all Elysia thanks you. But before that there are things that must be done, messages to be run. Now stay here beside me and hear what I shall tell my messengers, and then we shall think a Great Thought to carry you to Borgia.'

He motioned and the curtains hissed open, and the sounds of the assembled peoples of Elysia flooded in. Then Kthanid called certain of them to attend him ..

.. Some little time later four 'messengers' went out from the Hall of Crystal and Pearl and made their ways at once and swiftly to various parts of Elysia. One of these was the Thermal Being previously noted by Titus Crow among the throng, another a gossamer-winged, insect-like and ephemeral creature who carried a memory-crystal hurriedly prepared by Kthanid; both of these flew under their own power to the Corridor of Clocks beneath the soaring Blue Mountains.

Of the two remaining messengers: one was Tiania herself, who flew Oth-Neth to The Tree in the Gardens of Nymarrah; the other was a Dchi-chi pupil of Esch, specializing in the cryptic codes, enigmatic and riddlish conversation

of wizards, who flew a gravity-defying airform to the spherical aerie of Ardatha Ell at the uppermost limits of Elysia's atmosphere.

In the Corridor of Clocks, the Thermal Being paused before a huge time-clock of near-indestructible glass. The four curious hands on its great dial were tipped with gold to make them more conspicuous, but their
motion
about the hieroglyphed dial was utterly eccentric for all that, which is the way of such devices. The Thermal Being considered his instructions one last time; he would carry them out to the letter, not returning to Elysia until... until this thing with the Great Old Ones was finished. Which meant that he might never return. So be it.

All done, he opened and entered the time-clock, flew it out of the subterranean corridor, up over the Blue Mountains, to a point in the upper atmosphere where clock and passenger both blinked out of existence in this plane and so left Elysia. And his destination was far, far away in the deepest voids of space ...

The clock chosen by the fragile fairy-insect creature was a small grey metal cube of nine-inch sides more conveyance than
vehicle
proper, and featureless except for the inevitable dial with its four bizarrely wandering pointers —into which he placed Kthanid's memory-crystal before whistling a sequence of instructions which the dock, in some mysterious way
_;
accepted. For all its unspectacular appearance, this leaden cube was a very special clock indeed: it was not constructed to operate in the physical space-time continuum at all but in those subconscious dimensions formed by the minds of all creatures who dream. It was, quite literally, a dock of dreams, a mechanical monitor of many of the dreamlands of the psycho-sphere. And it, too, had a special quest: to seek out .and deliver its cargo to a very special mechanical being. No sooner were the whistled instructions concluded than the grey cube grew less solid, became transparent, finally disappeared in a rush of displaced air. Satisfied, the insect creature took wing and departed ...

And in the same moment that the dream-clock passed from Elysia's conscious world, high above her cities and oceans and fields, Esch's favourite student approached the silver sphere which was Ardatha Ell's retreat. The comb-headed creature flew his airform close to the wind-riding, highly reflective surface of the sphere, adjusted his vehicle's controls to 'hover,' rapped upon a curved silver panel with the bony knuckles at the end of a vestigial wing.

'Who knocks?' the sphere dolefully inquired after a moment, asking its question in three mechanically-created languages, all of which the Dchi-chi understood.

`No one,' he at once answered, likewise in triplicate, knowing how much Ardatha Ell would appreciate so cryptic a statement.

`No one knocks, and speaks to me in three tongues? Well, then, the equilibrium is maintained, for I am not at home.'

The Dchi-chi did not even pause to consider this (Kthanid had already apprised him of the wizard's absence, at least of his part-absence) but said: `I meant that I am no one in the great scheme of things, as I'm sure you well know, wizard. But my message is from a definite someone.' This time he had used only one language, the English of Earth, widely known in Elysia.

`And am I acquainted with this someone?'

'Should I name him, or would you prefer to fathom his identity?'

`You may couch his name in terms, if it please you.'

Knowing that it would please Ardatha Ell even more, the Dchi-chi said: 'Very well, let me say that if your cap was a conical titfer of white wizardry, his would be a crown of mighty beneficence.'
do not wear a head garment,' said the sphere, speaking for Ardatha Ell.

`Nor does he.'

'Hmm!'
said the sphere, thoughtfully. 'He is mighty, he sends out messengers to do his bidding, he is good, and if he wore a crown it would be a kindly one. Heil Clues galore — and an anagram, too! "Kind hat," indeed! Kthanid!'

'Excellent!' declared the Dchi-chi.

`What's more,' said the sphere, 'you are a Dchi-chi and likely one . of Master Esch's best pupils. This is a simple deduction: who else but a Dchi-chi would be adept in so many tongues, and practised in the curious ways of wizards to boot? Oh, you are Dchi-chi, certainly, but not the very master. No, for while your riddle was merely middling,
his
are ever desperately difficult.'

'Still, I do my best,' answered his visitor with a shrug.

'Indeed, and who could ask more of you than that?' agreed the sphere on behalf of Ardatha Ell. 'And now you may enter.'

The curved panel opened outwards and formed a ramp with steps, which the Dchi-chi climbed without hesitation. And: 'Use my house as you will,' the machine voice continued, as the bird-man made his way down a shiny metal corridor toward the centre, 'even though, as you were warned aforetime, I myself am not at home and so may not welcome you.'

'Nor likely to be at home,' answered the other, arriving at Ardatha Ell's innermost apartments. 'Not yet for a while, anyway. But tell me pray: since you are not here, where then are you?'

'In the manse of Exior K'mool, a sorcerer late of Theem'hdra in the primal planet Earth, now Lord of Lith in Andromeda. We amuse ourselves with cryptical conjecturings ...'

'Pray offer your friend my compliments,' said the Dchichi, staring about in amazement, 'and tell him that if ever he has need of a half-decent linguist - '

'What?' Ardatha Ell chuckled. 'Why, Exior K'mool was unriddling the stars when your remote ancestors, were eggs in the nest of Archaeopteryx! But say, what bothers you now?'

'Only this,' answered the Dchi-chi with something of a gulp, 'that apparently the greater part of you is here after all!'