Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (27 page)

The tale of the great library of Alexandria—how it contained more books than any other library in the world; how it was the wonder of scholars, who traveled from distant cities to study its manuscripts; and how under the aggressions of the Romans it was burned and all its books lost—is so well-known that it need not be repeated. In one respect the story of the library is inaccurate, for when it burned, not all its books were destroyed. Many scribes and nobles of the city ran into the flaming building before the collapse of its roof and saved armloads of precious parchment and papyrus scrolls. Even after the passage of centuries, these are still to be found in this city, offered for sale by Greeks and Jews who deal in rare books, and on some the soot and scorching of the flames is still visible.

The rarest of these works, scarce whispered about since so few of those who trade in books know of its existence, is a papyrus scroll on a roller of polished human thighbone written in the language of the Old Ones, though its letters are Greek. It is a copy of a book that is older than the race of man, and in it is described the history of the Old Ones and their war against the Elder Things, but its subject alone is not what makes it so precious. Each line of the language of the Old Ones is translated by a line in the Greek tongue written immediately below it. By study of this scroll it is possible to learn the speaking of words of power in the tongue of the Old Ones, and it is for this reason that the work is more sought after than any other book by men versed in arcane wisdom.

The Jew who possesses the scroll will not sell it, for it has become his livelihood. However, for an extraordinary amount of gold he will permit carefully selected scholars to copy the text over a span of one day and night. Longer than this he is unwilling to allow the precious work to remain outside its guarded vault; nor will he permit one who pays for this privilege to hire a scribe to do the work, but the scholar himself must set pen to paper and make the copy in his own hand under careful watch, in a place that is fortified against the intrusion of thieves. None who copy the scroll know of its location, since it is a part of their agreement that they be led blindfolded and alone to the place where the work is done. They go at midnight and return at midnight the following night, with as much of the work as they are able to transcribe; for the work is long and difficult, and it is the vexation of many who pay the price that they must leave it before they have completed their copies.

Each man that reproduces the scroll swears a potent oath never to reveal its contents or its existence to any other, for the owner does not wish his price to be diminished by competition; but the reason he gives is that the work is too dangerous to risk the corruption of its contents by repeated transcription from imperfect copies.

To seal their oath, the purchasers of the work impress the print of their thumbs on a parchment contract using their own blood. There are those who in distant lands have laughed at this oath, and have attempted to sell copies of the work, but they invariably meet with misfortune, and any copies they have made are quickly lost or destroyed by seemingly natural events. Indeed, it is a great risk to so much as mention the existence of the book, so that among the scattered few who know of its existence, seldom is found one willing to talk about it.

Those seeking this work who have the wealth in gold to purchase it, for the owner will accept no payment other than gold, should inquire about it in the inn that is on the street extending past the ancient temple of Hermes, which is at present little more than a ruin, as the cedar beams of its roof have fallen after centuries of neglect. The sign of the inn is the Green Peacock, and the proprietor will not answer questions about the book, but if he is shown sufficient gold to meet the required price, and has reason to believe that your inquiry is in earnest, he will speak to a man who is able to contact the owner of the book, who you will never meet face to face, nor will you ever learn his name. Until the matter is decided, you should take a room at the inn and have care to sleep under its roof each night.

If your request to purchase a day to copy the work is rejected, you must flee for your life from Alexandria, for if you linger you will surely be murdered, and three days of waiting is sufficient to decide the issue; however, if the owner accepts your offer of payment, you will not know it until midnight on the second or third night after speaking to the keeper of the inn, when a man who has his face veiled will awaken you from sleep and accept your payment of gold, then place a hood over your head and guide you to the house where the book is to be copied.

Parchment, pens, and ink of the finest quality will await you there, all more than sufficient for your needs. A lamp burns on the table as you enter the room where the work will be done, but at your request as many as three lamps will be provided, and the attendants keep these carefully trimmed and filled with oil. The window of the chamber is always shuttered, so that you cannot know if it is day or night. Before being allowed to see or touch the scroll, one of the attendants will bring a basin of clear water in which you are required to wash your hands, and a linen cloth for drying your fingers.

The scroll is carried in a small box of carven ivory bound with beaten silver hinges and clasps. The attendants will not say, or do not know, if the box was made at the same time as the scroll, or was fashioned at a later period to contain it, but the terrifying forms carved into its lid and sides are unlike any of the beasts that walk the surface of the earth in this age, and match descriptions of similar creatures in the text of the book. The scroll itself is well preserved, showing no signs of the brittleness that so often afflicts old papyrus scrolls exposed to the rays of the sun, and its inks are not faded, but as bright and clear as the day it was penned. At the top is a curious convolute dragon in red, green, and gold, the body of which trails down the left side of the papyrus to its foot. The Greek letters are unusually small, but well formed, making it an easy matter to read them for one with good eyesight.

Not even for an instant will you be alone with the precious scroll; not for the merest moment will the keen gaze of at least one of the two attendants be turned from you as you sit at the table and in a fever of haste seek to duplicate all, yet to avoid errors in transcription. However, the attendants, though they be well armed and ever vigilant, are not well versed in the arts of magic. With a little-known spell muttered under the breath, they can be lulled into a waking trance in which they will believe anything they may be told as though it had truly happened.

The story is related by one who has true knowledge of the matter, and whose words may be trusted, that not many years past a necromancer from our lands cast this glamour over their senses, and so contrived at midnight to leave the sealed chamber with the original scroll in his hand, while his newly made copy remained upon the table. The ensorcered attendants saw, as he wished them to see, the scroll upon the table, and the copy in his hand, but the reverse was true. Because the necromancer did not violate his oath, in that he did not make copies from his own copy of the work, no fatal consequences befell him.

The Alexandrian owner of the scroll has never spoken of the substitution, and it must be presumed that from that day until the present, those who pay in gold for the right to transcribe this text work from an imposture based on the parchment leaves of this clever scribe and not from the original, which is said to be kept safely concealed somewhere in Damascus. Alas, the necromancer was careless in his penning of the Greek letters, since he knew beforehand that he would leave the shuttered chamber with the original, and his copy contains numerous errors in the pronunciation of the language of the Old Ones that make it of little value, other than as an expensive curiosity.

aving exhausted the possibilities and the hospitality of Egypt, the seeker after arcane wisdom does well to turn his face to the north across the sea, and thence east to the valley between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, where are the monuments and cities of Babylonia, which was great beneath the stars when the world was young. This region is an arid plain from which rise at intervals the temples of the ancients, erected upon mounds of rubble that elevate them above the surrounding land. The mounds are not natural but are the result of countless generations of human habitation, each built upon the ashes of the one that went before it, mute testimony that this land has been the dwelling place of our race longer than any other.

The temples are in the form of pyramids that differ from those of the Egyptians in that their sides are not smooth, but stepped in a multitude of levels, each smaller than the one below it. Nor are they burial places of kings but houses of religion. Upon their flat tops worship was made beneath the night sky, for this people adored the stars as their gods and diligently sought an understanding of their patterns and motions, so that

no race was more versed in the art of astrology. It was they who gave the names to the stars and who first predicted their cyclical turnings.

Their gods are of the heavens, but their demons are of the earth and the places beneath the earth, and they excel in their knowledge of these malevolent beings. Each ziggurat is built on top of a gateway to the lower regions and acts as its seal, preventing the escape of the evil creatures of the depths into the upper world, where they would ravage the land and wantonly slay all who tried to oppose them. By the powers of the upper gods are these gateways sealed, but only for so long as the gods are adored and offered sacrifice. Most of the ziggurats have fallen into disuse and been abandoned, even by the cults of the old gods who remember their purpose, and the locks upon the lower gates have been allowed to decay and have lost their force, so that at times when the moon is dark the evil things below creep upward into the plains and hunt for prey.

Each ziggurat draws baneful force from the depths of the earth, and by its very shape and certain signs carven on stones that are set within it in a precise pattern, it projects its accumulated potency in a ray that traverses no common space such as men know, but the gulfs of time. By great fires lighted on the tops of these temples are the time rays projected. A ray cannot be sent out for more than several minutes, and only at long intervals, for it consumes the force accumulated in its ziggurat over the span of years, and the ziggurat must then be allowed to lie fallow to restore its potential; and this is the reason the Babylonians made many of these monuments, placing them wherever the gates to the infernal regions below the earth gave vent to its dark strength, that they would have rays with which to pierce the veil of time when needed.