SS Reading 4 The Charnel God

A reading from Rob Poyton of our favourite story from Season Four, The Charnel God.
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Transcript

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Strange shadows. The Carcassonne Smith podcast The Charnel God by Clark Ashton Smith.

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One. Mordigan is the god of Zulba Saiya, said the innkeeper with uncuous solemnity. He has been the god from years that are lost to man's memory in shadow deeper than the subterranes of his black temple. There is no other god in Zulba Saiya, and all who die within the walls of the city are sacred to Mordigan. Even the kings and the optimates of death are delivered into the hands of his muffled priests. It is the law and the custom, and the priests will come for your bride. But Eleth is not dead, protested the youth Farium for the third or fourth time, in piteous desperation. Her malady is one that assumes the lying likeness of death. Twice before she has lain insensible, with a pallor upon her cheeks and a stillness in the very blood that could hardly be distinguished from those of the tomb. And twice she has awakened after an interim of days. The innkeeper peered with an air of ponderous unbelief at the girl who lay white and motionless as a moaned lily on the bed in the poorly furnished attic chamber. In that case you should not have brought her into Zubasaia, he averred, in a tone of owlish irony. The physician has pronounced her dead, and her death has been reported to the priests. She must go to the temple of Mordigian. But we are outlanders, guests of the knight. We have come from the land of Zilak, far in the north, and this morning we should have gone through Tarsun, towards Farad, the capital of Yoros, which lies near to the southern sea. Surely your god could have no claim upon Elaf, even if she were truly dead. All who die in Zulbahasai are the property of Mordigan, insisted the Taverner sententiously. Outlanders are not exempt. The dark moor of his temple yawned eternally, and no man, no child, no woman throughout the years has evaded its yawning. All mortal flesh must become in due time the provender of the god. Fariam shuddered at the oily and portentous declaration. Dimly have I heard of Mordigion as a legend that travellers tell in Zilak, he admitted. But I had forgotten the name of his city, and Elath and I came ignorantly into Zulbar Saiya. Even had I known, I should have doubted the terrible custom of which you inform me. What manner of deity is this? Who imitates the hyena and the vulture? Surely he is no god but a ghoul. Take heed lest you utter blasphemy, admonished the Ingeba. Mordigian is old and omnipotent as death. He was worshipped in former continents, before the lifting of Zophit from out the sea. Through him we are saved from corruption and the worm, even as the people of other places devote their dead to the consuming flame, so we of Zulbar Zair deliver ours to the God. Awful is the fane, a place of terror, an obscure shadow untrod by the sun, into which the dead are born by his priests, and are laid on a vast table of stone to await his coming from the nether vault in which he dwells. No living men other than the priests have ever beheld him, and the faces of the priests are hidden behind masks of silver, and even their hands are shrouded, that men may not gaze on them that have seen Mordigian. But there is a king in Zulbar Zair, is there not? I shall appeal to him against his heinous and horrible injustice. Surely he will heed me. Fenghuar is the king, but he could not help you even if he wished. Your appeal would not be heard. Mordigian is above all kings, and his law is sacred. Hark, for already the priests come. Farium, sick at heart with the charnal terror and cruelty of the doom that impended for his girlish wife in this unknown city of nightmare, heard an evil, stealthy creaking on the stairs that led to the attic of the inn. The sound drew nearer with inhuman rapidity, and four strange figures came into the room, heavily garbed in funereal purple and wearing huge masks of silver graven in the likeness of skulls. It was impossible to surmise their actual appearance, for even as the taverner had hinted, their very hands were concealed by fingerless gloves, and the purple gowns came down in loose folds that troweled about their feet like unwinding sear cloths. There was a horror about them, of which the macabre masks were only a lesser element, a horror that lay partly in their unnatural crouching attitudes and the beastlike agility with which they moved, unhampered by their cumbrous habiliments. Among them they carried a curious beer made from interwoven strips of leather and with monstrous bones that served for frame and handles. The leather was greasy and blackened as if from long years of mortuary use. Without speaking to Farium or the innkeeper, and with no delay or formality of any sort, they advanced toward the bed on which Elaith was lying. Undeterred by their more than formidable aspect and wholly distraught with grief and anger, Farium drew from his girdle a short knife, the only weapon he possessed. Disregarding the minotory cry of the taverner, he rushed wildly upon the muffled figures. He was quick and muscular, and moreover was clad in light close fitting raiment, such as would seemingly have given him a brief advantage. The priests had turned their backs upon him, but as if they had foreseen his every action, two of them wheeled about with the swiftness of tigers, dropping the handles of bone that they carried. One of them struck the knife from Fariam's hand with a movement that the eye could barely follow in its snakey darting. Then both assailed him, beating him back with terrible flailing blows of their shrouded arms, hurling him half across the room into an empty corner. Stunned by his fall, he lay senseless for a term of minutes. Recovering dazedly, with eyes that blurred as he opened them, he beheld the face of the stout taverner stooping above him like a tallow coloured moon. The thought of Elaith, more sharp than the thrust of a dagger, brought him back to agonizing consciousness. Fearfully he scanned the shadowy room and saw that the seremented priests were gone, that the bed was vacant. He heard the oratund and sepulchral croaking of the taverner. The priests of Mordigan are merciful. They make allowance for the frenzy and distraction of the newly bereaved. It is well for you that they are compassionate and considerate of mortal weakness. Fariam sprang erect, as if his bruised and aching body was scorched by a sudden fire. Pausing only to retrieve his knife, which still lay in the middle of the room, he started toward the door. He was stopped by the hand of the hostela, clutching greasily at his shoulder. Beware, lest you exceed the bounds of the mercy of Mordigan. It is an ill thing to follow his priests, and a worse thing to obtrude upon the deathly and sacred gloom of his temple. Farium scarcely heard the admonition. He wrenched himself hastily away from the odious fingers and turned to go. But again the hand clutched him. At least pay me the money that you owe for food and lodging ere you depart, demanded the innkeeper. Also there is the matter of the physician's fee, which I can settle for you now if you will entrust me with the proper sum. Pay now, for there is no surety that you will return. Fariam drew out the purse that contained his entire worldly wealth, and filled the greedily cupped palm before him with coins that he did not pause to count. With no parting word or backward glance, he descended the mouldy and musty stairs of the worm eaten hostlery as if spurred by an incubus, and went out into the gloomy serpentine streets of Zulbar Saire. Perhaps the city differed little from others, except in being older and darker, but to Farium, in his extremity of anguish, the ways that he followed were like subterrene corridors that led only to some profound and monstrous charmil. The sun had arisen above the overjutting houses, but it seemed to him that there was no light other than a lost and doleful glimmering such as might descend into mortuary depths. The people, it may have been, were much like other people, but he saw them under a malefic aspect, as if they were ghouls and demons that went to and fro on the ghastly errands of a necropolis. Bitterly in his distraction, he recalled the previous evening when he had entered Zulba Saiya at twilight with Elaith, the girl riding on the one dromedary that had survived their passage in the northern desert, and he walking beside her, weary but content. With the rosy purple of afterglow upon its walls and couplers, with the deepening golden eyes of its lit windows, the place had seemed a fair and nameless city of dreams, and they had planned to rest there for a day or two before resuming the long, arduous journey to Farad in Yoros. This journey had been undertaken only through necessity. Farium, an impoverished youth of noble blood, had been exiled because of the political and religious tenets of his family, which were not in accord with those of the reigning emperor Kelepos. Taking his newly wedded wife, Farium had set out for Yoros, where certain allied branches of the house to which he belonged had already established themselves and will give him a fraternal welcome. They had travelled with a large caravan of merchants going directly southward to Tarsun. Beyond the borders of Zilak, amid the red sands of the Kaloshian waste, the caravan had been attacked by robbers who had slain many of its members and dispersed the rest. Farium and his bride, escaping with their dromedaries, had found themselves lost and alone in the desert, and failing to regain the road toward Tar Sun, had taken inadvertently another track leading to Zulbar Saire, a ward metropolis on the southwestern verge of the waste, which their itinerary had not included. Entering Zulbar Sair, the couple had repaired for reasons of economy to a tavern in the humbler quarter. There, during the night, Elaith had been overcome by the third seizure of the cataleptic malady to which she was liable. The earlier seizures, occurring before her marriage to Farium, had been recognized in their true character by the physicians of Xilac, and had been palliated by skillful treatment. It was hoped that the malady would not recur. The third attack, no doubt, had been induced by the fatigues and hardships of the journey. Farium had felt sure that Elaith would recover, but a doctor of Zulbar Saiya, hastily summoned by the innkeeper, had insisted that she was actually dead, and, in obedience to the strange law of the city, had reported her without delay to the priests of Mordigan. The frantic protests of the husband had been utterly ignored. There was, it seemed, a diabolic fatality about the whole train of circumstances through which Elaith, still living, though with that outward aspect of the tomb which her illness involved, had fallen into the grasp of the devotees of the Charnel god. Farion pondered this fatality almost to madness as he strode with furious, aimless haste along the eternally winding and crowded streets. To the cheerless information received from the taverner, he added, as he went on, more and more of the tardily remembered legends which he had heard in Zylac. Ill and dubious indeed was the renown of Zulbar Sair, and he marvelled that he should have forgotten it and cursed himself with black curses for the temporary but fatal forgetfulness. Better it would have been if he and Elaith had perished in the desert rather than enter the wide gates that stood always open, gaping for their prey, as was the custom of Zulbar Saire. The city was a mart of trade where outland traders came but did not care to linger, because of the repulsive cult of Mordigan, the invisible eater of the dead, who was believed to share his provinder with the shrouded priests. It was said that the bodies lay for days in the dark temple and were not devoured till corruption had begun, and people whispered of fouler things than necrophagism, of blasphemous rites that were solemnized in the ghoul ridden vaults and nameless uses to which the dead were put before Mordigian claimed them. In all outlying places the fate of those who died in Zulba Saiya was a dreadful byword and a malediction. But to the people of that city, reared in the faith of the Ghoulish god, it was merely the usual and expected mode of mortuary disposal. Tombs, graves, catacombs, funeral pyres, and other such nuisances were rendered needless by this highly utilitarian deity. Farion was surprised to see the people of the city going about the common business of life. Porters were passing with bowels of household goods upon their shoulders. Merchants were squatting in their shops like other merchants. Buyers and sellers chaffed loudly in the public bazaars. Women laughed and chattered in the doorways. Only by their voluminous robes of red, black and violet, and their strange, uncouth accents was he able to distinguish the men of Zulbar Saire from those who were outlanders like himself. The murk of nightmare began to lift from his impressions, and gradually, as he went on, the spectacle of everyday humanity all about him helped to calm a little his wild distraction and desperation. Nothing could dissipate the horror of his loss and the abominable fate that threatened Elaith, but now, with a cool logic born of the cruel exigence, he began to consider the apparently hopeless problem of rescuing her from the Ghoul God's temple. He composed his features and constrained his febrile pacing to an idle saunter so that none might guess the preoccupations that racked him inwardly. Pretending to be interested in the wares of a seller of men's apparel, he drew the dealer into converse regarding Zulbar Saiya and its customs, and made such inquiries as a traveller from far lands might make. The dealer was talkative, and Farium soon learned from him the location of the temple of Mordigan, which stood at the city's core. He also learned that the temple was opened at all hours, and that people were free to come and go within its precincts. There were, however, no rituals of worship other than certain private rites that were celebrated by the priesthood. Few cared to enter the Fane because of a superstition that any living person who intruded upon its gloom would return to it shortly as the provider of the god. Mordigan, it seemed, was indeed a benign deity in the eyes of the inhabitants of Zulbahasaire. Curiously enough, no definite personal attributes were ascribed to him. He was, so to speak, an impersonal force akin to the elements, a consuming and cleansing power like fire. His hierophants were equally mysterious. They lived in a temple and emerged from it only in the execution of their funeral duties. No one knew the manner of their recruiting, but many believed that they were both male and female, thus renewing their numbers from generation to generation with no ulterior commerce. Others thought that they were not human beings at all, but an order of subterranean earth entities who lived forever and who fed upon corpses like the god himself. Through this latter belief of late years, a minor heresy had risen, some holding that Mordygian was a mere hieratic figment, and the priests were the sole devourers of the dead. The dealer, quoting this heresy, made haste to disavow it with pious reprobation. Farion chatted for a while on other topics, and then continued his progress through the city, going as forthrightly towards the temple as the obliquely running thoroughfares would permit. He had formed no conscious plan, but desire to reconnoitre the vicinage. In that which the garment dealer had told him, the one reassuring detail was the openness of the fane and its accessibility to all who dared enter. The rarity of visitors, however, would make Farium conspicuous, and he wished above all to avoid attention. On the other hand, any effort to remove bodies from the temple was seemingly unheard of, a thing audacious beyond the dreams of the people of Zorbar Saiya. Through the very boldness of his design, he might avoid suspicion and succeed in rescuing Elaith. The streets that he followed began to tend downward, and were narrower, dimmer, and more tortuous than any he had yet traversed. He thought for a while that he had lost his way, and he was about to ask the passers to redirect him when four of the priests of Mordigan, bearing one of the curious litter like beers of bone and leather, emerged from an ancient alley just before him. The bier was occupied by the body of a girl, and for one moment of convulsive shock and agitation that left him trembling, Farium thought that the girl was Elaith. Looking again, he saw his mistake. The gown that the girl wore, though simple, was made of some rare exotic stuff. Her features, though pale as those of Elaith, were crowned with curls like the petals of heavy black poppies. Her beauty, warm and voluptuous even in death, differed from the blompeness of Elaith, as tropic lilies differ from narcissistic quietly and maintaining a discreet interval, Farium followed the sullenly shrouded figures and their lovely burden. He saw that people made way for the passage of the beer with awed, unquestioning alacrity, and the loud voices of hucksters and chafferers were hushed as the priests went by. Overhearing a murmured conversation between two of the townsfolk, he learned that the dead girl was Arktela, daughter of Khoos, a high noble and magistrate of Zulbar Saiya. She had died very quickly and mysteriously from a cause unknown to the physicians, which had not marred or wasted her beauty in the least. There were those who held that an indetectable poison rather than disease had been the agency of death, and others deemed her the victim of malefic sorcery. The priests went on, and Farium kept them in sight as well he could in the blind tangle of streets. The way steepened, without affording any clear prospects of the levels below, and the houses seemed to crowd more closely as if huddling back from a precipice. Finally, the youth emerged behind his Macabra guides in a sort of circular hollow at the city's heart, where the temple of Mordigan loomed alone, and separate amid pavements of sad onyx and funerary cedars, green and blackened as if with the undeparting Charnel shadows bequeathed by dead ages. The edifice was built of a strange stone, hued as with the blackish purple of carnal decay, a stone that refused the ardent lustre of noon and the prodigality of dawn or sunset glory. It was low and windowless, having the form of a monstrous mausoleum. Its portals yawned sepulchrally in the gloom of the cedars. Farion watched the priests as they vanished within the portals, carrying the Gelak Taylor like phantoms who bear a phantom burden. The broad area of pavement between the recoiling houses and the temples was now deserted, but he did not venture to cross it in the blare of betraying daylight. Circling the area, he saw that there were several other entrances to the Great Fane, all open and unguarded. There was no sign of activity about the place, but he shuddered uncontrollably at the thought of that which was hidden within its walls, even as the feasting of worms is hidden in the marble tomb. Like a vomiting of charnels, the abominations of which he heard rose up before him in the sunlight. And again he drew close to madness, knowing that Elaith must lie among the dead, in the temple, with the foul umbrage of such things upon her, and that he, consumed with unremitting frenzy, must wait for the favorable shrouding of darkness before he could execute his nebulous doubtful plan of rescue. In the meanwhile she might awaken and perish from the mortal horror of her surroundings. Or worse even than this might be fall, if the whispered tales were true. three Abnanthar, sorcerer and necromancer, was felicitating himself on the bargain he had made with the priests of Mordigan. He felt, perhaps justly, that no one less clever than Abnanthar could have conceived and executed the various procedures that had made possible this bargain, through which Arctela, daughter of the proud Kraos, would become his unquestioning slave. No other lover, he told himself, could have been resourceful enough to obtain a desired woman in this way. Arctela, betrothed to Alos, a young noble of the city, was seemingly beyond the aspiration of a sorcerer. Abnanthar, however, was no common hedge wizard, but an adept of long standing in the most awful and profound arcana of the Black Arts. He knew the spells that kill more quickly and surely than knife or poison at a distance. And he knew also the darker spells by which the dead can be reanimated even after years or ages of decay. He had slain Arc Taylor in a manner that none could detect, with a rare and subtle involtuation that had left no mark, and her body lay now among the dead in Mordigan's temple. Tonight, with the tacit connivance of the terrible shrouded priests, he would bring her back to life. Abnanthar was not native to Zulbar Saiya, but had come many years before from the infamous half mythic isle of Sotar, lying somewhere to the east of the huge continent of Zathiq. Like a sleek young vulture, he had established himself in the very shadow of the Charnel Fain and had prospered, taking to himself pupil and assistance. His dealings with the priests were long and extensive, and the bargain he had just made was far from being the first of its kind. They had allowed him the temporary use of bodies claimed by Mordygian, stipulating only that these bodies should not be removed from the temple during the course of any of his experiments in necromancy. Since the privilege was slightly irregular from their viewpoint, he had found it necessary to bribe them, not, however, with gold, but with the promise of a liberal purveyance of matters more sinister and corruptible than gold. The arrangement had been satisfactory enough to all concerned, cadavers had poured into the temple with more than their usual abundance ever since the coming of the sorcerer. The god had not lacked for Provinder, and Abnanthar had never lacked for subjects on which to employ his more bowelful spells. On the whole, Abnanthar was not ill pleased with himself. He reflected moreover that aside from his mastery and magic and his slightful ingenuity, he was about to manifest a well nigh unexampled courage. He had planned a robbery that would amount to dire sacrilege, the removal of the reanimated body of Arctela from the temple. Such robberies, either of animate or exanimate corpses, and the penalty attached to them were a matter of legend only, for none had occurred in recent ages. Thrice terrible, according to common belief, was the doom of those who had tried and failed. The necromancer was not blind to the risks of his enterprise, nor, on the other hand, was he deterred or intimidated by them. His two assistants, Narcai and Vembasith, apprised of his intention, had made with all due privity the necessary preparations for their flight from Zorbazia. The strong passion that the sorcerer had conceived for Ark Taylor was not his only motive, perhaps, in removing from that city. He was desirous of change, for he had grown a little weary of the odd laws that really served to restrict his necromantic practices while facilitating them in a sense. He plans to travel southward and establish himself in one of the cities of Tar Sun, an empire famous for the number and antiquity of its mummies. It was now sunset time. Five dromedaries, bred for racing, waited in the inner courtyard of Abnanthar's house, a high emouldering mansion that seemed to lean forward upon the open circular area belonging to the temple. One of the dromedaries would carry a bow containing the sorcerer's most valuable books, manuscripts, and other impedimenta of magic. Its fellows would bear Abnanthar, the two assistants, and Ark Taylor. Narcai and Venbal Sith appeared before their master to tell him that all was made ready. Both were much younger than Abnanthar, but like himself, they were outlanders in Zulbar Saire. They came of the swart and narrow eyed people of Nut, an isle that was little less infamous than Sotar. It is well, said the necromancer, as they stood before him with lowered eyes after making their announcement. We have only to await the favourable hour. Midway between sunset and moonrise, when the priests are at their supper in the Nethereditum, we will enter the temple and perform that which must be done for the rising of Arctela. They feed well tonight, for I know that many dead grow ripe on the great table in the upper sanctuary. And it may be that Morgigian feeds also. None will come to watch us at our doings. But master, said Nagai, shivering a little between his robe of macarat red, is it wise after all to do this thing? Must you take the girl from the temple? Always ere this, you have contented yourself with the brief loan that the priests allow, and have rendered back the dead in a required state of exanimation. Truly is it well to violate the law of the god? Men say that the wrath of Mordigan, though seldom loosed, is more dreadful than the wrath of all other deities. For this reason, none has dared to defraud him in latter years, or attempt the removal of any of the corpses from his fame. Long ago, it is told, a high noble in the city bore hence the cadaver of a woman he had loved, and fled with it into the desert. But the priests pursued him, running more swiftly than jackals, and the fate that overtook him is a thing whereof the legends whisper but dimly. I fear neither Mordigia nor his creatures, said Abnanthar, with a sort of solemn vainglory in his voice. My dromedaries can outrun the priests, even granting that the priests are not men at all, but ghouls, as some say, and there is small likelihood that they will follow us. After their feasting tonight they will sleep like gorged vultures. The morrow will find us far on the road to Tasun ere they wake. The master is right, interpolated Venbasif. We have nothing to fear. But they say that Mordigan does not sleep, insisted Nargai, and that he watches all things eternally from his black vault beneath the temple. So I have heard, said Abnanthar with a dry and learned air, but I consider that such beliefs are mere superstition. There is nothing to confirm them in the real nature of corpse eating entities. So far I have never beheld Mordigian either sleeping or awake, but in all likelihood he is merely a common ghoul. I know these demons and their habits, they differ from hyenas only through their monstrous shape and size and their immortality. Still I must deem it an ill thing to cheat Mordigian, muttered Nargai beneath his breath. The words were caught by the quick ears of Abnanthar. Nay there is no question of cheating. Well have I served Mordian and his priesthood, and amply have I larded their black table. Also, I shall keep in a sense the bargain I have made concerning Arctela, the providing of a new cadava in return for my necromantic privilege. Tomorrow the youth Alos, the betrothed of Arctela, will lie in her place among the dead. Go now and leave me, for I must devise the inward invultuation that will rot the heart of Alos like a worm that awakens at the core of fruit. four To Farion, fevered and distraught, it seemed that the cloudless day went by with the sluggishness of a corpse clogged river. Unable to calm his agitation, he wandered aimlessly through the thronged bazaars till the western towers grew dark on a heaven of saffron flame, and the twilight rose like a grey and curdling sea among the houses. Then he returned to the inn where Elaith had been stricken and claimed the dromedary which he had left in the tavern stables. Riding the animal through dim thoroughfares, lit only by the covert gleam of lamps or tapers from half closed windows, he found his way once more to the city centre. The dusk had thickened into darkness when he came to the open area surrounding Mordigian's temple. The windows of mansions fronting the area were shut and lightless as dead eyes, and the fane itself, a colossal bulk of gloom, was rayless as any mausoleum beneath the gathering stars. No one, it seemed, was abroad, and though the quietude was favourable to his projects, Farium shivered with a chill of deathly menace and desolation. The hooves of his camel rang on the pavement with a startling and preternatural clangor, and he thought that the ears of hidden ghouls listening alertly behind the silence must surely hear them. However, there was no stirring of life in that sepulchral gloom. Reaching the shelter of one of the thick groups of ancient cedars, he dismounted and tied the dromedary to a low-growing branch. Keeping among the trees, like a shadow among shadows, he approached the temple with infinite wariness, and circled it slowly, finding that its four doorways, which corresponded to the four quarters of the earth, were all wide open, deserted, and equally dark. Returning at length to the eastern side on which he had tethered his camel, he emboldened himself to enter the blackly gaping portal. Crossing the threshold, he was engulfed instantly by a dead and clammy darkness, touched with the faint fetor of corruption, and a smell as of charred bone and flesh. He thought that he was in a huge corridor, and feeling his way forward along the right hand ball, he soon came to a sudden turn, and saw a bluish glimmering far ahead, as if in some central aditum where the hall ended. Massy columns were silhouetted against the glimmering, and across it, as he drew nearer, several dark and muffled figures passed, presenting the profiles of enormous skulls. Two of them were sharing the burden of a human body which they carried in their arms. To Farium, pausing in the shadowy hall, it appeared that the vague taint of putrescence upon the air grew stronger for a few instants after the figures had come and gone. They were not succeeded by any others, and the fan resumed its mausolean stillness. But the youth waited for many minutes, doubtful and trepidant before venturing to go on. An oppression of mortuary mystery thickened the air and stifled him like the noisome effluvia of catacombs. His ears became intolerably acute, and he heard a dim humming sound, a sound of deep and viscid voices indistinguishably blent that appeared to issue from crypts beneath the temple. Stealing at length to the hall's end, he peered beyond into what was obviously the main sanctuary, a low and many pillowred room whose vastness was but half revealed by the bluish fires that glowed and flickered in numerous urn-like vessels borne aloft on slender stelae. Farium hesitated upon that awful threshold, for the mingled odours of burnt and decaying flesh were heavier on the air, as if he had drawn nearer to their source, and the thick humming seemed to ascend from a dark stairway in the floor beside the left hand wall. But the room, to all appearances, was empty of life, and nothing stirred except the wavering lights and shadows. The watcher discerned the outlines of a vast table in the centre, carved from the same black stone as the building itself. Upon the table, half lit by the flaming urns, or shrouded by the umbrage of the heavy columns, a number of people lay side by side, and Farium knew that he had found the black altar of Mordigan, whereupon were disposed the bodies claimed by the god. A wild and stifling fear contended with the wilder hope in his bosom. Trembling, he went toward the table, and a cold claminess wrought by the presence of the dead assailed him. The table was nearly thirty feet in length, and it rose waist high on a dozen mighty legs. Beginning at the nearest end, he passed along the row of corpses, peering fearfully into each upturned face. Both sexes and many ages and differing ranks were represented. Nobles and rich merchants were crowded by beggars in filthy rags. Some were newly dead, and others, it seemed, had laid there for days and were beginning to show the marks of corruption. There were many gaps in the ordered row, suggesting that certain of the corpses had been recently removed. Farim went on in the dim light, searching for the loved features of Elaith. At last, when he was nearing the further end and had begun to fear that she was not among them, he found her. With the cryptic pallor and stillness of her strange malady upon her, she lay unchanged on the chill stone. A great thankfulness was born in the heart of Farium, for he felt sure that she was not dead, and that she had not awakened at any time to the horrors of the temple. If he could bear her away from the hateful pearliers of Zulbair without detection, she would recover from her death simulating sickness. Corsorally he noted that another woman was lying beside Elaith, and recognized her as the beautiful Ark Tailor, whose bearers he had followed almost to the porcels of the fan. He gave her no second glance, but stooped to lift Elaith in his arms. At that moment he heard a murmur of low voices in the direction of the door by which he had entered the sanctuary. Thinking that some of the priests had returned, he dropped swiftly on his hands and knees and crawled beneath a ponderous table which afforded the only accessible hiding place. Retreating into shadow beyond the glimmering shed from the lofty urns, he waited and looked out between the pillar thick legs. The voices grew louder, and he saw the curiously sandal feet and shortage robes of three persons who approached the table of the dead and paused in the very spot where he himself had stood a few instants before. Who they were he could not surmise, but their garments of light and swarthy red were not the shroudings of Mordigan's priests. He was uncertain whether or not they had seen him, and crouching in the low space beneath the table he plucked his dagger from its sheath. Now he was able to distinguish three voices, one solemn and uncuously imperative, one somewhat guttural and growling, and the other shrill and nasal. The accents were alien, differing from those of the men of Zulbar Saiya, and the words were often strange to Farium. Also, much of the converse was inaudible. Here, at the end, said the solemn voice, be swift, we have no time to lighter. Yes, master, came the growling voice, but who is this other? Truly she is very fair. The discussion seemed to take place in discreetly lowered tones. Apparently the owner of the guttural voice was urging something that the other two opposed. The listener could distinguish only a word here and there, but he gathered that the name of the first person was Nargae, and that the one who spoke in nasal shrilling was called Vembasith. At last above the others, the grave accents of the man addressed only as the master were clearly audible. I do not altogether approve. It will delay our departure, and the two must ride on one dromedary. But take her, Venbar Sith, if you can perform the necessary spells unaided, I have no time for a double incantation. It will be a good test of your proficiency. There was a mumbling as of thanks or acknowledgement from Venbar Sith, then the voice of the master. Be quiet now and make haste. To Farium, wondering vaguely uneasily as to the import of this colloquy, it seemed that two of the three men pressed closer to the table, as if stooping above the dead. He heard a rustling of cloth upon stone, and an instant later he saw that all three were departing among the columns and stella in a direction opposite to that from which they had entered the sanctuary. Two of them carried burdens that glimmered pal and indistinctly in the shadows. A black horror clutched at the heart of Farium, for all too clearly he surmised the nature of those burdens, and the possible identity of one of them. Quickly he crawled forth from his hiding place and saw that Elaith was gone from the black table, together with the Gaelark Taylor. He saw the vanishing of shadowy figures in the gloom that zoned the chamber's western wall. Whether the abductors were ghouls or worse than ghouls, he could not know, but he followed swiftly, forgetful of all caution in his concern for Elaith. Reaching the wall, he found the mouth of a corridor and plunged into it headlong. Somewhere in the gloom ahead he saw a ruddy glimmering of light. Then he heard a sullen metallic grating, and the glimmer narrowed to a slit like gleam, as if the door of the chamber from which it issued were being closed. Following the blind wall he came to that slit of crimson light. A door of darkly tarnished bronze had been left ajar, and Farion peered in on a weird, unholy scene illumined by the blood like flames that flared and soared unsteadily from high urns upborne on sable pedestals. The room was full of a sensuous luxury that accorded strangely with the dull funereal stone of that temple of death. There were couches and carpets of superbly figured stuffs, vermilion, gold, azure, silver, and jewelled sensors of unknown metals stood in the far corners. A low table at one side was littered with curious bottles and occult appliances such as might be used in medicine or sorcery. Elaith was lying on one of the couches, and near her, on a second couch, the body of the girl Arc Taylor had been disposed. The abductors, whose faces Farium now beheld for the first time, were busying themselves with singular preparations that mystified him prodigiously. His impulse to invade the room was repressed by a sort of wonder that held him enthralled and motionless. One of the three, a tall middle aged man whom he identified as the master, had assembled certain peculiar vessels, including a small brasier and a censor, and had set them on the floor beside Arc Taylor. The second, a younger man with lecherously slitted eyes, had placed similar impedimenta before Elaith. The third, who was also young and evil of aspect, merely stood and looked on with an apprehensive, uneasy air. Farium divined that the men were sorcerers when, with a deafness born of long practice, they lit the senses and braziers, and began simultaneously the intonation of rhythmically measured words in a strange tongue accompanied by the sprinkling at regular intervals of black oils that fell with a great hissing on the coals in the braziers, and sent up enormous clouds of pearly smoke. Dark threads of vapour serpentined from the senses, interweaving themselves like veins through the dim, misshapen figures as of ghostly giants that were formed by the lighter fumes. A wreak of intolerably acrid balsams filled the chamber, assailing and troubling the senses of Farium, till the scene wavered before him, and took on a dreamlike vastness, a narcotic distortion. The voices of the necromancers mounted and fell as if in some holy pan, imperious exigence, they seemed to implore the consummation of forbidden blasphemy. Like thronging phantoms writhing and swirling with malignant life, the vapours rose about the couches on which lay the dead girl and the girl who bore the outward likeness of death. Then, as the fumes were riven apart in their bowful seething, Farium saw that the pale figure of Elaith had stirred like a sleeper who awakens, that she had opened her eyes and was lifting a feeble hand from the gorgeous couch. The younger necromancer ceased his chanting on a sharply broken cadence, but the solemn tones of the other still went on, and still there was a spell on the limbs and senses of Farium, making it impossible for him to stir. Slowly the vapours thinned like a route of dissolving phantoms. The watcher saw that the dead girl, Arctela, was rising to her feet like a somnambulist. The chanting of Abnonthar standing before her came sonorously to an end. In the awful silence that followed, Farium heard a weak cry from Elaith, and then the exultant growling voice of Embar Sith, who was stooping low above her.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Behold, O Abnonthar, my spells are swifter than yours, for she that I have chosen awakened before Arc Taylor.

SPEAKER_01 45:00

Farium was released from his thraldom as if through the lifting of an evil enchantment. He flung back the ponderous door of darkened bronze that ground with protesting clangers on its hinges. His dagger drawn, he rushed into the room. Elaith, her eyes wide with piteous bewilderment, turned towards him and made an ineffectual effort to arise from the couch. Octaler, mute and submissive before Abnon Thar, appeared to heed nothing but the will of the necromancer. She was like a fair and soulless ultimaton. The sorcerers, turning as Farim entered, sprang back with instant agility before his onset, and drew the short, crawling crooked swords which they all carried. Narcide struck the knife from Farrier's fingers with a darting blow that shattered its thin blade at the hilt, and then Par Sith, his weapon swinging back in a vicious arc, would have killed the youth promptly if Abnanthar had not intervened and bade him stay. Farium, standing furious but irresolute before the lifted swords, was aware of the darkly searching eyes of Abnanthar, like those of some nyctalopic bird of prey. I would know the meaning of this intrusion, said the necromancer. Truly you are bold to enter the temple of Mordigan. I came to find the girl who lies yonder, declared Farium. She is Elaith, my wife, who was claimed unjustly by the god. But tell me, why have you brought her into this room from the table of Mordigan? And what manner of men are you that raise up the dead as you have raised this other woman? I am Abnanthar the Necromancer, and these others are my pupils, Narchai and Dembarsith. Give thanks to Vembarsith, for verily he has brought back your wife from the perliers of the dead, with a skill excelling that of his master. She awoke ere the incantation was finished. Fariam glared with implacable suspicion at Abnanthar. Elith was not dead, only as one in a trance, he avert. It was not your pupil's sorcery that awakened her. And verily, whether Elait be dead or living is not a matter that should concern any but myself. Permit us to depart, for I wish to remove with her from Zulbar Saiya, in which we are only parceling travellers. So speaking, he turned his back on the necromancers and went over to Elaith, who regarded him with dazed eyes, but uttered his name feebly as he clasped her in his arms. Now this is a remarkable coincidence, purred Abnanthar. I and my pupils are also planning to depart from Zulba Saiya, and we start this very night. Perhaps you will honor us with your company. I thank you, said Farim curtly, but I am not sure that our roads lie together. Elaith and I would go toward Tarsun. Now by the black altar of Mordigan, that is a still stranger coincidence. For Tarsun is also our destination. We take with us the resurrected Gerlag Taylor, whom I have deemed too fair for the charnel god and his ghouls. Fariam divined the dark evil that lay behind the oily mocking speeches of the necromancer. Also he saw the furtive and sinister sign that Abnanthar had made to his assistance. Weaponless he could give only a formal assent to the sardonic proposal. He knew well that he would not be permitted to leave the temple alive, for the narrow eyes of Nargae and Vempar Sith regarding him closely were alight with a red lust of murder. Come, said Abnon Thar in a voice of imperious command, it is time to go. He turned to the still figure of Arctela and spoke an unknown word. With vacant eyes and noctambulistic paces, she followed at his heels as he stepped towards the open door. Farium had helped Hilay to her feet and was whispering words of reinsurance in an effort to lull the growing horror and confused alarm that he saw in her eyes. She was able to walk, albeit slowly and uncertainly. Then Barsith and Dark Eye drew back, motioning that she and Farium should precede them, but Farium, sensing their intent to slay him as soon as his back were turned, obeyed unwillingly and looked desperately about for something that he could seize as a weapon. One of the metal braziers, full of smouldering coals, was at his very feet. He stooped quickly, lifted it in his hands, and turned upon the necromancers. Venbal Sith, as he had suspected, was praling toward him with upraised sword and was making ready to strike. Farium hurled the brazer and its glowing contents full in the necromancer's face, and Venbar Sith went down with a terrible smothered cry. Narcai, snarling ferociously, leapt forward to assail the defenseless youth. His scimitar gleamed with a wicked lustre in the lurid glare of the urns as he swung it back from the blow. But the weapon did not fall, and Farium, stealing himself against the appending death, became aware that Narcai was staring beyond him, as if petrified by the vision of some Gorgonian spectre. As if compelled by another will than his own, the youth turned and saw the thing that arrested Nagai's blow. Octela and Abnon Thar, pausing before the open door, were outlined against that colossal shadow that was not wrought by anything in the room. It filled the portals from side to side, it towered above the lintel, and then swiftly it became more than a shadow. It was a bulk of darkness black and opaque that somehow blinded the eyes with the strange dazzlement. It seemed to suck the flame from the red urns and informed the chamber with a chill of utter death and voidness. Its form was that of a worm-shaped column, huge as a dragon, its further coils still issuing from the gloom of the corridor, but it changed from moment to moment, swirling and spinning as if with the vortical energies of dark eons. Briefly it took on the semblance of some demoniac giant with eyeless head and limbless body, and then, leaping and spreading like smoky fire, it swept forward into the chamber. Abnomphthal fell back before it with frantic mumblings of malediction or exorcism. But Arctaylor, howl and slight and motionless, remained full in its path while the thing enfolded her and enveloped her with a hungry flaring until she was hidden wholly from view. Thariam, supporting Elaith, who leaned weakly on his shoulder as if about to swoon, was powerless to move. He forgot the murderous Nargi, and it seemed that he and Elaith were but faint shadows in the presence of embodied death and dissolution. He saw the blackness grow and wax with the towering of fed flame as it closed about Arctela, and he saw it gleam with eddying hues of somber iris like the spectrum of a sable sun. For an instant he heard a soft and flame like murmuring, then quickly and terribly the thing ebbed from the room. Arctela was gone, as if she had dissolved like a phantom on the air. All on a sudden gust of a strangely mingled heat and cold there came an acrid odour such as would rise from a burnt out funeral pyre. Mortigian shrilled Nargae in hysteric terror.

SPEAKER_00 52:42

It was the card Mortigian. He has taken Arctaylor.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

It seemed that his cry was answered by a score of sardonic echoes, unhuman as the howling of hyenas, and yet articulate that repeated the name Mortigian. Into the room from the dark hall there poured a horde of creatures whose violet robes alone identified them in Farium's eyes as the priests of the Gulgod. They had removed the skull-like masks, revealing heads and faces that were half anthropomorphic, half canine, and wholly diabolic. Also, they had taken off the fingerless gloves. There were at least a dozen of them, their curving talons gleamed in the bloody light like hooks of darkly tarnished metals. Their spiky teeth, longer than coffin nails, protruded from snarling lips. They closed like a ring of jackals on Abnanthar and Nargai, driving them back into the furthest corner. Several others, entering tardily, fell with a bestial ferocity on Venbar Sith, who had begun to revive and was moaning and writhing on the floor amid the scattered coals of the Brazier. They seemed to ignore Farium and Elith, who stood looking on as if in some bowful trance, but the hindmost, ere he joined the assailants of Vembar Sith, turned to the youthful pair and addressed them in a hoarse hollow voice, like a tomb reverberate barking.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

Go, for Mordian is a just god who claims only the dead and has no concern with the living. And we, the priests of Mortigian, deal in our own fashion with those who would violate his law by removing the dead from the temple.

SPEAKER_01 54:31

Farium, with Elaith still leaning on his shoulder, went out into the dark hall, hearing a hideous clamour, in which the screams of men were mingled with the growling as of jackals, a laughter as of hyenas. The clamor ceased as they entered the blue-lit sanctuary and passed toward the outer corridor, and the silence that filled Mordigian's fame behind them was as deep as the silence of the dead on the black altar table.