The Maze of the Enchanter (60 page)
Read The Maze of the Enchanter Online
Authors: Clark Ashton Smith
Tags: #Fantasy, #Short Stories, #Fiction
But, hearing her far, infrequent whisper, I behold a vision of vast auroras, on continents that are wider than the world, and seas too great for the enterprise of human keels. And at times I stammer forth the strange tidings that she brings: though none will welcome them, and none will believe or listen. And in some dawn of the desperate years, I shall go forth and follow where she calls, to seek the high and beatific doom of her snow-pale distances, to perish amid her indesecrate horizons.
A
PPENDEX
F
OUR:
T
HE
D
WELLER IN THE
G
ULF:
A
DDED
M
ATERIAL
Smith added over a thousand words to the story to satisfy Gernsback and Lasser’s requirement for more “scientific motivation.” This was accomplished through an additional character, a terrestrial explorer named John Chalmers who had earlier fallen victim to the Dweller and its troglodytic worshippers. Smith inserted the following material after the paragraph beginning “Between the thick and seemingly topless pillars” on page 102:
T
he queer, unnatural drowsiness seemed to increase upon the Earth-men as they stared at the image. Behind them, the Martians thronged with a restless forward movement, like worshippers who gather before an idol. Bellman felt a clutching hand on his arm. Turning, he found at his elbow an astounding and wholly unlooked-for apparition. Though pale and filthy as the cave dwellers, and with gaping orbits in lieu of eyes, the being was, or had formerly been, a man! He was barefooted, and was clad only in a few rags of khaki that had seemingly rotted away with use and age. His white beard and hair were matted with slime, were full of unmentionable remnants. Once, he had been as tall as Bellman; but now he was bowed to the height of the dwarfish Martians, and was dreadfully emaciated. He trembled as if with ague, and an almost idiotic look of hopelessness and terror was stamped on the wreck of his lineaments.
“My God! who are you?” cried Bellman, shocked into full wakefulness.
For a few moments, the man gibbered unintelligibly, as if he had forgotten the words of human speech, or could no longer articulate them. Then he croaked feebly, with many pauses and incoherent breaks, “You are Earth-men! They told me you had been captured... even as they captured me.... I was an archaeologist once.... My name was Chalmers... John Chalmers. It was years ago.... I don’t know how many years. I came into the Chaur to study some of the old ruins. They got me—these creatures of the pit.... I have been here ever since. There is no escape.... The Dweller takes care of that.”
“But who are these creatures? And what do they want with us?” queried Bellman.
Chalmers seemed to collect his ruined faculties. His voice became clearer and steadier.
“They are a degenerate remnant of the Yorhis, the old Martian race that flourished before the Aihais. Everyone believes them to be extinct. The ruins of some of their cities are still extant in the Chaur. As far as I can learn (I am able to speak their language now), this tribe was driven underground by the dehydration of the Chaur, and they followed the ebbing waters of a sub-Martian lake that lies at the bottom of this gulf. They are little more than animals now, and they worship a weird monster that lives in the lake... the Dweller... the thing that walks on the cliff. The small idol that you see on the altar is an image of that monster. They are about to hold one of their religious ceremonies; and they want you to take part in it. I am to instruct you.... It will be the beginning of your initiation into the life of the Yorhis.”
Bellman and his companions, listening to the strange declaration of Chalmers, felt a mixture of nightmarish revulsion and wonder. The white, eyeless, filthy-bearded face of the creature before them seemed to bear a hint of the same degradation that they saw in the cave-dwelling people. Somehow, the man was hardly human. But, no doubt, he had broken down through the horror of his long captivity in darkness, amid an alien race. They felt themselves among abhorrent mysteries; and the empty orbits of Chalmers prompted a question that none of them could ask.
“What is this ceremony?” said Bellman, after an interval.
Come, and I’ll show you.” There was a queer eagerness in Chalmer’s broken voice. He plucked at Bellman’s sleeve, and began to ascend the pyramid with an ease and sureness of footing that bespoke a long familiarity. Like dreamers in a dream, Bellman, Chivers, and Maspic followed him.
This material was inserted after the paragraph beginning “Unclean and bestial as a figment of some atavistic madness...” on page 103:
“And this thing really exists?” Bellman seemed to hear his own voice through a creeping film of slumber, as if another than himself had spoken, and had roused him.
“It is the Dweller,” mumbled Chalmers. He leaned toward the image, and his outstretched fingers trembled above it in the air, moving to and fro as if he were about to caress the white horror. “The Yorhis made the idol long ago,” he went on. “I don’t know how it was made.... And the metal they moulded it from is like nothing else.... A new element. Do as I am doing... and you won’t mind the darkness so much.... You don’t miss your eyes or need them here. You’ll drink the putrid water of the lake, you’ll eat the raw slugs, and raw blind fish and lake-worms, and find them good.... And you won’t know if the Dweller comes and gets you.”
Even as he spoke, he began to caress the image, running his hands over the gibbous carapace, the flat reptilian head. His blind face took on the dreamy languor of an opium-eater, his voice died to inarticulate murmurs, like the lapping sound of a thick liquid. About him, there was an air of strange subhuman depravity.
Several mentions of Chalmers were inserted after this point. The final significant mention of Chalmers occurs after the paragraph beginning “Whether he passed from these obscure nightmares...” on page 104. Whereas in our text the Earth-men stumble across the half-eaten body of one of the Martians, in the version published in
Wonder Stories
it was Chalmers who fell prey to the Dweller.
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PPENDIX
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IVE:
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Table of Contents
The Third Episode of Vathek: The Story of the Princess Zulkaïs and the Prince Kalilah
Appendix Two: Alternate Ending to “The White Sybil”
Appendix Three: The Muse of Hyperborea
Appendex Four: The Dweller in the Gulf: Added Material
Table of Contents
The Third Episode of Vathek: The Story of the Princess Zulkaïs and the Prince Kalilah
Appendix Two: Alternate Ending to “The White Sybil”
Appendix Three: The Muse of Hyperborea
