Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (31 page)

The hidden valley is thick with forest and filled with many strange birds and beasts not to be encountered anywhere else, though none of them are noxious to man. So tame are these creatures, they approach unafraid until they are near enough to grasp in the hands and strangle, offering the traveler a ready supply of fresh meat. In addition, the valley has many fig trees and nut trees, so that food of various kinds is to be had in abundance. The still air is mild, and laden with the scent of spices. Indeed, there is no more pleasant land in the world.

Within the forest dwells a gentle tribe that flees the arrival of travelers and hides among the trees until they have departed. These barbarians are small of stature and dark-skinned from the sun, for it is their custom to go about naked save for a few strings of amber and crystal beads on their necks and arms, and brightly colored flowers braided in their long hair. When questioned by means of signs made with the hands, they declare in their musical language that the valley is their land, which they call Edena. It can only be the Eden described in the Hebrew holy book Bereshit.

They are a primitive race possessing no knowledge of necromancy, and they fear violence, so they may be safely ignored, as it is unlikely they will offer any threat to a visitor from outside their land, particularly if he takes the trouble to demonstrate upon the throat of one of their larger young men the use of a knife. In spite of their nakedness, they have a strange grace in their way of walking and an incongruous pride in their own imagined importance that makes them amusing to observe. Their vacated huts contain stores of fruits and nuts, freeing the traveler from the trouble of foraging for food in the forest. Of fire they know nothing, and their tools are of stone. Nor do they possess any form of writing or pictorial expression. At dusk they sing to each other, and it may be that they use these songs to teach their children. Their greatest skill is in the making of baskets, at which they excel to such an extent that the weave of their baskets is like the weave of fine cloth.

Deep within the shelter of the tallest and oldest trees of the forest is a small clearing of bare earth that has at its center a black obelisk of the height of a man, rising from the center of a stone disk that is like a great millstone. The disk is of the common stone of the valley, but the obelisk is alien to that region. Its four sides are stained with the rust of dried blood, and this same stain colors the stone wheel that supports it, for the primitives adore the black stone as their god and offer a sacrifice of blood to it daily. They will not eat one of the wild pigs that flourish in such abundance in the forest unless it has had its throat slashed with a stone knife against the black pillar before the assembled multitude of the tribe. Their god must eat before the people feed, and this is their manner of homage. Having no means to cook meat, they consume it raw in thin strips, but pounded with dried herbs to soften its texture.

It is strange to witness a sacrifice of blood made by such a passive and timid race, but they do it to turn aside the imagined wrath of their god, to whom they give the name Yad in their own tongue, though whether this is a proper name or merely a title of respect is not easily determined. When they speak the name, they bow their heads and point to the sky as though fearful to look up; they do this both night and day, so that it is evident that their god is neither the sun nor the moon but the heavens itself, or something that dwells in the heavens.

Near the cliffs at the eastern end of the valley rises an enclosure in the midst of a small plain of tall grasses. It possesses four walls each as high as the tallest palm, and five thousand paces in length. The walls are seamless and are formed from a kind of black glass, smooth and cold to the touch, that does not transmit the light of the sun. One of the tributaries of the spring that waters the valley floor flows beneath the corner of the west wall of this enclosure. Also set within its west wall is a gate made from black wood having the hardness of iron, bound with iron straps and hinges, that is forever sealed from the inside.

If one of the barbarian men is captured and compelled by force to walk toward the gate, he begins to tremble and cry out repeatedly the words
poamala yaida raas
and the words
oxiayal teloc,
his distress mounting until at last he falls upon his face on the ground and can by no means of persuasion be made to go nearer. To avoid the gate is the strongest motivation of all this race, which they acquire at an early age. Even beasts of low intelligence learn to avoid that which causes them pain, for the dog flinches from a stone in the hand and the wolf will not approach an open fire. The man of wisdom can gain knowledge from the beasts of the field by observing their ways, and should notice that at the base of the gate the flowers grow highest. He does well to avoid any close approach to the black gate, and will on no account touch it with his bare hand.

A door is not the only passage into a locked house. Although there is no gap between the waters of the stream and the base of the wall where the stream enters the enclosure, by holding the breath in the lungs and pulling with the hands over the rough stones in the bed of the stream it is possible to pass beneath the foundation of the wall and emerge on the other side unharmed. So the fish pass from the valley to the enclosure, and from the enclosure to the valley, and so also a man may pass, if he emulates a fish.

he dense forest within the enclosure is much like that of the rest of the valley, save that it is marked by winding stone pathways for walking beneath the trees. The paving stones of the paths are broader than the height of a man, but so closely joined that not a blade of grass grows between them. They are overhung by the trees on either side so that they are in perpetual shadow. From within the forest may be heard the songs of strange birds and the cries of beasts, but the traveler should resist the urge to explore the dark trees for it is an easy matter to become lost under their canopy and to wander in circles.

The intersecting paths wind their way to the center of the enclosure, where there is a wide clearing with two low hills that are covered only in grass. Between the hills passes the stream that entered beneath the western wall. Each hill bears on its crown a great tree. The tree upon the northern hill is green with leaves and new growth, and bears abundant red globes of succulent fruit. On the southern hill arises only a bare trunk and naked, twisting limbs bereft alike of leaves and bark. The color of its wood is the color of bleached bone. For countless ages nothing has grown on the tree, but some uncanny property of its wood preserves it from decay.

The fruits upon the lower boughs of the tree growing on the northern hill hang close to the ground and appear easy to pick, but when the tree is approached it will be found to contain innumerable venomous serpents that make their nests and breed their young amid its leaves. In length the mature serpents are less than the forearm of a man, and their black bodies are variegated with bright blotches of color, of which yellow and orange predominate, so that their skins almost resemble the wings of butterflies. The mothers of these vipers are fierce in the defense of their young and will not permit a man to touch the tree in any of its parts. Moreover, their venom constantly drips from their gaping and hissing mouths and falls upon the fruit of the tree, rendering it unfit to eat even were it possible to harvest it without being struck by the serpents.

When dried in the sun, the venom of these serpents becomes a pale blue crystal that may be hammered into fine dust with a stone. It does not lose its potency over time, but even after the passage of years it may be regenerated by mixing the powder in boiled wine. If the blade of a knife or a sword is steeped for a day in the resulting liquid, the merest scratch upon the skin brings swift death. A man struck with such an envenomed weapon experiences shortness of breath, then falls upon the ground in convulsions that do not endure above a minute before life flees from his body. The corpse of one killed in this manner is subject to accelerated putrefaction, and will dissolve into a mass of wet decay within the space of three nights. It is claimed that the greatest virtue of this poison is that it may be extended to an astonishing degree by mixing its crystals with powdered salts, yet its potency does not diminish nor is the manner or term of death altered.

Directly between the hills a small stone bridge spans the stream, permitting easy passage from one side to the other. It is uncommonly wide for a bridge of its length, for in the middle upon its western side has been constructed an elevated platform that is surmounted by a throne of carven stonework of great subtlety and beauty. The high back of the throne bears the shape of folded wings, and between them is set a head of inhuman aspect and proportions. In its forehead glares a single open eye that is formed by a large ruby of surpassing clarity, fixed into a setting of gold. The arms of the throne are carven into the shape of claws similar to those of a hawk.

Few are the travelers who have penetrated the hidden valley of Eden, and fewer still are those bold enough to enter the enclosed garden of black, glass and look upon the wisdom seat. So it is called in the veiled texts of Ibn Schacabao, yet the sage never described its shape, nor is it to be supposed that he saw it with his own eyes. The throne faces east, where the wandering stream that flows between the hills passes out beneath the eastern wall of the enclosure, ft is so directed that at dawn its occupant sees the rising of the sun between the narrowing hills that enclose the eastern end of the valley. The rays of the sun, striking the rounded dome of the ruby on the back of the throne above the head of the occupant of its seat, activate the throne’s power. Of these truths concerning the wisdom seat Ibn Schacabao, called the Boaster by his detractors, knew nothing, for surely he could not have resisted the temptation to hint at their existence.

To sit upon the wisdom seat at the rising of the sun is to experience the omniscience of a god, so potent is its influence upon the mind, for any question or puzzle that might be considered, no matter how complex, becomes at once the plaything of a child. The very number and proportion of space itself may be reckoned and manipulated, and passage gained in an instant to any of the most distant worlds. This is not a function of the seat, but a capacity inherent in the mind that is awakened and enabled by the seat. Were a man patient enough to remain within the enclosure and each day seek answers to his questions at the wisdom seat, in the space of a year he would know all things, and would possess the capacity of the Old Ones themselves.

Sadly, it is the nature of our race to become impatient and to covet. When the attempt is made to pry the ruby set in the back of the throne from its socket with the point of a knife, the guardian of the seat senses this desecration and comes through the edges of space trailing stars in her long hair and crying out with fury so that the air itself trembles and falls in frozen sheets. She comes from the sky, her thousand translucent limbs floating upon the winds like serpents, and in the solitary eye in the dome of her forehead is the blackness between the stars. With her myriad hands she rains down fire upon the ground, blackening and scorching the grasses.