Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (7 page)

There is another way of escape that leads downward, into corridors and chambers below the caverns. If you search for it with diligence, it will be found, but conceal your knowledge of this opening from the witch lest she suspect your intentions. Wait until she is snoring in sleep, and steal away from her side to enter the lower portal. It is too narrow to admit her bulk. Once safe within the entrance, you can laugh at her frustration and tell her what you truly think of her ugliness. She will throw bones at you but her aim is poor. Do not tarry too long, however, for if she begins to chant a curse, as is more than likely, you must be far enough away from her that by holding your hands over your ears you can block out the sound of the final words of the chant, and in this way render the curse powerless.

eep under the ruins of once-beautiful Irem, deeper even than her cisterns and catacombs, lies a city constructed of chambers and corridors that were carved from solid rock. Its origin is older than the race of man, and it has no name. Not even the subterranean things that dwell within it know what to call it; not even the ghosts of its former inhabitants remember. It may be that the founding of Irem of the many pillars atop this place was mere chance; or, as seems probable, it may be that the ancient race of beings who inhabited the lost city, in their last stage of decay employed some magic to cause water to flow upward from the depths of the earth, thus insuring that Irem would be located above in order to gain a constant supply of fresh meat, for that they were eaters of men there is no doubt. Human bones and skulls litter the corridors, most of them the smaller bones of children or infants.

The ceilings of the interlocking chambers are low, for the inhabitants made their progress by crawling on their four limbs, rather than upright after the manner of human movement. The greenly glowing ceiling of each room and hall provides a light for the normal vision equal to the light of a single candle, but in the utter blackness of the depths it is brighter than day. Paintings of many colors decorate the walls of the chambers, their pigments upraised from the surface of the stone and textured to the touch, so that they seem to stand forth with a reality more than pictorial, and when gazed upon for several minutes, their subjects waver and give the appearance of motion and life, so uncanny is the skill of the ancient artists.

In these decorations is contained the history of this unknown race, which a wise man may read like the words in a book if he takes the time to study them. They were creatures like in shape to the crocodiles of the river Nile, but with longer limbs and shorter tails, and with skulls domed and large. The forelegs of the creatures ended in slender fingers suitable for the manipulation of tools, and it is evident that they could bend upward and support themselves upon their hind legs and tails when using these hands. They possessed great wealth. All of the figures in the murals are shown wearing elaborate gold and bejeweled collars and headbands, and their brown bodies are draped in costly robes of the brightest colors. It may be that they did not depict their slaves, but only their nobles.

The oldest paintings on the walls show a distant time when they lived upon the surface of our world in cities of soaring towers connected by slender causeways, the like of which has never been erected by men. Around these cities grew forests of gigantic trees inhabited by monstrous beasts. A horrifying cataclysm destroyed the monsters of the forests and blackened the skies, casting the cities into darkness and driving the race beneath the surface of the earth. Deep in the protective caverns they prospered, and learned to raise their own foods and create their own light. Truly, the ingenuity of these beings is a marvel to contemplate.

The murals degenerate in quality as they illustrate later epochs in the history of the reptilian race. Slowly it slipped into decay and declined in numbers, until at last only this single underground city remained. When humanity built the towers of Irem in the valley above, secret cults began to worship the lower dwellers with offerings and sacrifices. The paintings show the sultans of the city of Irem ruthlessly seeking out these cults and executing their members, but the worship continued even until the fall of city.

Though it is evident from the abundance of their wall paintings that they preserved and communicated important events through images, the reptilians also pos-

sessed a written script based on sounds. Upon their walls a small number of simple characters is repeated in groups to create words, even as is true of our modern writing; indeed, so similar is the script of these beings to that of human writing, they must have learned it from the citizens of Irem during their centuries of interaction with men. When the foundations of Irem were laid, these creatures had so degenerated that they possessed little to offer our race, but they found ready use for what we had gained by our own ingenuity. So are the mighty fallen and humbled in their despair, until ground to dust by the millstone of ages.

Nothing is shown upon any of the walls concerning the collapse of Irem into pits in the sands. It would be easy to conclude that the breaking of the dome of the great cistern beneath the palace was a sudden and natural event, unrecorded because it was unforeseen and because it precipitated the extinction of the lower dwellers, who in a single day lost their source of meat. However, there is upon the floor of one of the higher corridors of the underground city an object that suggests to the wise traveler a different occurrence. Covered in the dust of ages, a bronze sword rests between the ribs of a skeleton that is not human.

Here is the tale of the sword, the tongue of which speaks without the need for a mouth. The soldiers of Irem found their way into the corridors of the nameless city below, perhaps in pursuit of members of the cult that worshipped the lower dwellers. To prevent their hunted extinction at the swords of men, the last reptilian inhabitants used some vestige of the magic that ages past had caused the waters of the earth to fountain upward into the cisterns to bring the city tumbling down. There is magic that can fissure and shake the earth. Even in their degeneracy, the creatures must have known that they wrought their own destruction, yet such was their hatred of men, they did not hesitate. Their blood ran cold through their hearts, like that of the serpent, with no sun so deep beneath the sand to warm it; the implacable malice of the crocodile is proverbial. Rather than see their own extinction, they doomed the city of Irem.

fter entering the underground city, if you turn always leftward, keeping the leftmost wall touching your fingertips in the accepted manner of penetrating to the heart of a maze, you will come after a winding and descending progress to a great chamber much larger than the others, having a high and domed roof painted deep blue with pigment made from finely ground lapis lazuli so that it resembles the night sky; scattered densely across the dome are shining pinpricks of light, like stars, giving illumination to the chamber. Each is a colorless, faceted jewel. By what art they glow with so bright a light is not to be comprehended from their inspection, for the source of their radiance lies hidden. The light has a coldness that burns the skin of one remaining too long beneath its rays, and for this reason it is unwholesome to covet these stones. They are arranged to represent constellations that do not resemble those of the heavens, for they are the stars of a night sky other than that of our world.