TEXT:  The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft  Written Autumn? 1926-22
  Jan 1927  Published in Beyond the Wall of Sleep, Sauk City, WI: Arkham House,
  1943, p. 76-134  Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city,
  and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace
  above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples,
  colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of
  prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets
  marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in
  gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and
  old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. h was a fever of
  the gods, a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals.
  Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as
  Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept
  up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of
  lost things and the maddening need to place again what once had been an
  awesome and momentous place.  He knew that for him its meaning must once have
  been supreme; though in what cycle or incarnation he had known it, or whether
  in dream or in waking, he could not tell. Vaguely it called up glimpses of a
  far forgotten first youth, when wonder and pleasure lay in all the mystery of
  days, and dawn and dusk alike strode forth prophetic to the eager sound of
  lutes and song, unclosing fiery gates toward further and surprising marvels.
  But each night as he stood on that high marble terrace with the curious urns
  and carven rail and looked off over that hushed sunset city of beauty and
  unearthly immanence he felt the bondage of dream's tyrannous gods; for in no
  wise could he leave that lofty spot, or descend the wide marmoreal fights
  flung endlessly down to where those streets of elder witchery lay outspread
  and beckoning.  When for the third time he awakened with those flights still
  undescended and those hushed sunset streets still untraversed, he prayed long
  and earnestly to the hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the
  clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste where no man treads. But the gods
  made no answer and shewed no relenting, nor did they give any favouring sign
  when he prayed to them in dream, and invoked them sacrificially through the
  bearded priests of Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose cavern-temple with its pillar
  of flame lies not far from the gates of the waking world. It seemed, however,
  that his prayers must have been adversely heard, for after even the first of
  them he ceased wholly to behold the marvellous city; as if his three glimpses
  from afar had been mere accidents or oversights, and against some hidden plan
  or wish of the gods.  At length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset
  streets and cryptical hill lanes among ancient tiled roofs, nor able sleeping
  or waking to drive them from his mind, Carter resolved to go with bold
  entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the icy deserts through the
  dark to where unknown Kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned with unimagined
  stars, holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of the Great Ones.  In light
  slumber he descended the seventy steps to the cavern of flame and talked of
  this design to the bearded priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah. And the priests shook
  their pshent-bearing heads and vowed it would be the death of his soul. They
  pointed out that the Great Ones had shown already their wish, and that it is
  not agreeable to them to be harassed by insistent pleas. They reminded him,
  too, that not only had no man ever been to Kadath, but no man had ever
  suspected in what part of space it may lie; whether it be in the dreamlands
  around our own world, or in those surrounding some unguessed companion of
  Fomalhaut or Aldebaran. If in our dreamland, it might conceivably be reached,
  but only three human souls since time began had ever crossed and recrossed the
  black impious gulfs to other dreamlands, and of that three, two had come back
  quite mad. There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as
  that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered
  universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost
  confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity - the
  boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who
  
  gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the
  muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of
  accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly,
  awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic Ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless,
  tenebrous, mindless Other gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos
  Nyarlathotep.  Of these things was Carter warned by the priests Nasht and
  Kaman-Thah in the cavern of flame, but still he resolved to find the gods on
  unknown Kadath in the cold waste, wherever that might be, and to win from them
  the sight and remembrance and shelter of the marvellous sunset city. He knew
  that his journey would be strange and long, and that the Great Ones would be
  against it; but being old in the land of dream he counted on many useful
  memories and devices to aid him. So asking a formal blessing of the priests
  and thinking shrewdly on his course, he boldly descended the seven hundred
  steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber and set out through the Enchanted
  Wood.  In the tunnels of that twisted wood, whose low prodigious oaks twine
  groping boughs and shine dim with the phosphorescence of strange fungi, dwell
  the furtive and secretive Zoogs; who know many obscure secrets of the dream
  world and a few of the waking world, since the wood at two places touches the
  lands of men, though it would be disastrous to say where. Certain unexplained
  rumours, events, and vanishments occur among men where the Zoogs have access,
  and it is well that they cannot travel far outside the world of dreams. But
  over the nearer parts of the dream world they pass freely, flitting small and
  brown and unseen and bearing back piquant tales to beguile the hours around
  their hearths in the forest they love. Most of them live in burrows, but some
  inhabit the trunks of the great trees; and although they live mostly on fungi
  it is muttered that they have also a slight taste for meat, either physical or
  spiritual, for certainly many dreamers have entered that wood who have not
  come out. Carter, however, had no fear; for he was an old dreamer and had
  learnt their fluttering language and made many a treaty with them; having
  found through their help the splendid city of Celephais in Ooth-Nargai beyond
  the Tanarian Hills, where reigns half the year the great King Kuranes, a man
  he had known by another name in life. Kuranes was the one soul who had been to
  the star-gulls and returned free from madness.  Threading now the low
  phosphorescent aisles between those gigantic trunks, Carter made fluttering
  sounds in the manner of the Zoogs, and listened now and then for responses. He
  remembered one particular village of the creatures was in the centre of the
  wood, where a circle of great mossy stones in what was once a cleaning tells
  of older and more terrible dwellers long forgotten, and toward this spot he
  hastened. He traced his way by the grotesque fungi, which always seem better
  nourished as one approaches the dread circle where elder beings danced and
  sacrificed. Finally the great light of those thicker fungi revealed a sinister
  green and grey vastness pushing up through the roof of the forest and out of
  sight. This was the nearest of the great ring of stones, and Carter knew he
  was close to the Zoog village. Renewing his fluttering sound, he waited
  patiently; and was at last rewarded by an impression of many eyes watching
  him. It was the Zoogs, for one sees their weird eyes long before one can
  discern their small, slippery brown outlines.  Out they swarmed, from hidden
  burrow and honeycombed tree, till the whole dim-litten region was alive with
  them. Some of the wilder ones brushed Carter unpleasantly, and one even nipped
  loathsomely at his ear; but these lawless spirits were soon restrained by
  their elders. The Council of Sages, recognizing the visitor, offered a gourd
  of fermented sap from a haunted tree unlike the others, which had grown from a
  seed dropt down by someone on the moon; and as Carter drank it ceremoniously a
  very strange colloquy began. The Zoogs did not, unfortunately, know where the
  peak of Kadath lies, nor could they even say whether the cold waste is in our
  dream world or in another. Rumours of the Great Ones came equally from all
  points; and one might only say that they were likelier to be seen on high
  mountain peaks than in valleys, since on such peaks they dance reminiscently
  when the moon is above and the clouds beneath.  Then one very ancient Zoog
  recalled a thing unheard-of by the others; and said that in Ulthar, beyond the
  
  River Skai, there still lingered the last copy of those inconceivably old
  Pnakotic Manuscripts made by waking men in forgotten boreal kingdoms and borne
  into the land of dreams when the hairy cannibal Gnophkehs overcame
  many-templed Olathoe and slew all the heroes of the land of Lomar. Those
  manuscripts he said, told much of the gods, and besides, in Ulthar there were
  men who had seen the signs of the gods, and even one old priest who had scaled
  a great mountain to behold them dancing by moonlight. He had failed, though
  his companion had succeeded and perished namelessly.  So Randolph Carter
  thanked the Zoogs, who fluttered amicably and gave him another gourd of
  moon-tree wine to take with him, and set out through the phosphorescent wood
  for the other side, where the rushing Skai flows down from the slopes of
  Lerion, and Hatheg and Nir and Ulthar dot the plain. Behind him, furtive and
  unseen, crept several of the curious Zoogs; for they wished to learn what
  might befall him, and bear back the legend to their people. The vast oaks grew
  thicker as he pushed on beyond the village, and he looked sharply for a
  certain spot where they would thin somewhat, standing quite dead or dying
  among the unnaturally dense fungi and the rotting mould and mushy logs of
  their fallen brothers. There he would turn sharply aside, for at that spot a
  mighty slab of stone rests on the forest floor; and those who have dared
  approach it say that it bears an iron ring three feet wide. Remembering the
  archaic circle of great mossy rocks, and what it was possibly set up for, the
  Zoogs do not pause near that expansive slab with its huge ring; for they
  realise that all which is forgotten need not necessarily be dead, and they
  would not like to see the slab rise slowly and deliberately.  Carter detoured
  at the proper place, and heard behind him the frightened fluttering of some of
  the more timid Zoogs. He had known they would follow him, so he was not
  disturbed; for one grows accustomed to the anomalies of these prying
  creatures. It was twilight when he came to the edge of the wood, and the
  strengthening glow told him it was the twilight of morning. Over fertile
  plains rolling down to the Skai he saw the smoke of cottage chimneys, and on
  every hand were the hedges and ploughed fields and thatched roofs of a
  peaceful land. Once he stopped at a farmhouse well for a cup of water, and all
  the dogs barked affrightedly at the inconspicuous Zoogs that crept through the
  grass behind. At another house, where people were stirring, he asked questions
  about the gods, and whether they danced often upon Lerion; but the farmer and
  his wile would only make the Elder Sign and tell him the way to Nir and
  Ulthar.  At noon he walked through the one broad high street of Nir, which he
  had once visited and which marked his farthest former travels in this
  direction; and soon afterward he came to the great stone bridge across the
  Skai, into whose central piece the masons had sealed a living human sacrifice
  when they built it thirteen-hundred years before. Once on the other side, the
  frequent presence of cats (who all arched their backs at the trailing Zoogs)
  revealed the near neighborhood of Ulthar; for in Ulthar, according to an
  ancient and significant law, no man may kill a cat. Very pleasant were the
  suburbs of Ulthar, with their little green cottages and neatly fenced farms;
  and still pleasanter was the quaint town itself, with its old peaked roofs and
  overhanging upper stories and numberless chimney-pots and narrow hill streets
  where one can see old cobbles whenever the graceful cats afford space enough.
  Carter, the cats being somewhat dispersed by the half-seen Zoogs, picked his
  way directly to the modest Temple of the Elder Ones where the priests and old
  records were said to be; and once within that venerable circular tower of
  ivied stone - which crowns Ulthar's highest hill - he sought out the patriarch
  Atal, who had been up the forbidden peak Hatheg-Kia in the stony desert and
  had come down again alive.  Atal, seated on an ivory dais in a festooned
  shrine at the top of the temple, was fully three centuries old; but still very
  keen of mind and memory. From him Carter learned many things about the gods,
  but mainly that they are indeed only Earth's gods, ruling feebly our own
  dreamland and having no power or habitation elsewhere. They might, Atal said,
  heed a man's prayer if in good humour; but one must not think of climbing to
  their onyx stronghold atop Kadath in the cold waste. It was lucky that no man
  
  knew where Kadath towers, for the fruits of ascending it would be very grave.
  Atal's companion Banni the Wise had been drawn screaming into the sky for
  climbing merely the known peak of Hatheg-Kia. With unknown Kadath, if ever
  found, matters would be much worse; for although Earth's gods may sometimes be
  surpassed by a wise mortal, they are protected by the Other Gods from Outside,
  whom it is better not to discuss. At least twice in the world's history the
  Other Gods set their seal upon Earth's primal granite; once in antediluvian
  times, as guessed from a drawing in those parts of the Pnakotic Manuscripts
  too ancient to be read, and once on Hatheg-Kia when Barzai the Wise tried to
  see Earth's gods dancing by moonlight. So, Atal said, it would be much better
  to let all gods alone except in tactful prayers.  Carter, though disappointed
  by Atal's discouraging advice and by the meagre help to be found in the
  Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan, did not wholly
  despair. First he questioned the old priest about that marvellous sunset city
  seen from the railed terrace, thinking that perhaps he might find it without
  the gods' aid; but Atal could tell him nothing. Probably, Atal said, the place
  belonged to his especial dream world and not to the general land of vision
  that many know; and conceivably it might be on another planet. In that case
  Earth's gods could not guide him if they would. But this was not likely, since
  the stopping of the dreams shewed pretty clearly that it was something the
  Great Ones wished to hide from him.  Then Carter did a wicked thing, offering
  his guileless host so many draughts of the moon-wine which the Zoogs had given
  him that the old man became irresponsibly talkative. Robbed of his reserve,
  poor Atal babbled freely of forbidden things; telling of a great image
  reported by travellers as carved on the solid rock of the mountain Ngranek, on
  the isle of Oriab in the Southern Sea, and hinting that it may be a likeness
  which Earth's gods once wrought of their own features in the days when they
  danced by moonlight on that mountain. And he hiccoughed likewise that the
  features of that image are very strange, so that one might easily recognize
  them, and that they are sure signs of the authentic race of the gods.  Now the
  use of all this in finding the gods became at once apparent to Carter. It is
  known that in disguise the younger among the Great Ones often espouse the
  daughters of men, so that around the borders of the cold waste wherein stands
  Kadath the peasants must all bear their blood. This being so, the way to find
  that waste must be to see the stone face on Ngranek and mark the features;
  then, having noted them with care, to search for such features among living
  men. Where they are plainest and thickest, there must the gods dwell nearest;
  and whatever stony waste lies back of the villages in that place must be that
  wherein stands Kadath.  Much of the Great Ones might be learnt in such
  regions, and those with their blood might inherit little memories very useful
  to a seeker. They might not know their parentage, for the gods so dislike to
  be known among men that none can be found who has seen their faces wittingly;
  a thing which Carter realized even as he sought to scale Kadath. But they
  would have queer lofty thoughts misunderstood by their fellows, and would sing
  of far places and gardens so unlike any known even in the dreamland that
  common folk would call them fools; and from all this one could perhaps learn
  old secrets of Kadath, or gain hints of the marvellous sunset city which the
  gods held secret. And more, one might in certain cases seize some well-loved
  child of a god as hostage; or even capture some young god himself, disguised
  and dwelling amongst men with a comely peasant maiden as his bride.  Atal,
  however, did not know how to find Ngranek on its isle of Oriab; and
  recommended that Carter follow the singing Skai under its bridges down to the
  Southern Sea; where no burgess of Ulthar has ever been, but whence the
  merchants come in boats or with long caravans of mules and two-wheeled carts.
  There is a great city there, Dylath-Leen, but in Ulthar its reputation is bad
  because of the black three-banked galleys that sail to it with rubies from no
  clearly named shore. The traders that come from those galleys to deal with the
  jewellers are human, or nearly so, but the rowers are never beheld; and it is
  not thought wholesome in Ulthar that merchants should trade with black ships
  from unknown places whose rowers cannot be exhibited.  By the time he had
  
  given this information Atal was very drowsy, and Carter laid him gently on a
  couch of inlaid ebony and gathered his long beard decorously on his chest. As
  he turned to go, he observed that no suppressed fluttering followed him, and
  wondered why the Zoogs had become so lax in their curious pursuit. Then he
  noticed all the sleek complacent cats of Ulthar licking their chops with
  unusual gusto, and recalled the spitting and caterwauling he had faintly
  heard, in lower parts of the temple while absorbed in the old priest's
  conversation. He recalled, too, the evilly hungry way in which an especially
  impudent young Zoog had regarded a small black kitten in the cobbled street
  outside. And because he loved nothing on earth more than small black kittens,
  he stooped and petted the sleek cats of Ulthar as they licked their chops, and
  did not mourn because those inquisitive Zoogs would escort him no farther.  It
  was sunset now, so Carter stopped at an ancient inn on a steep little street
  overlooking the lower town. And as he went out on the balcony of his room and
  gazed down at the sea of red tiled roofs and cobbled ways and the pleasant
  fields beyond, all mellow and magical in the slanted light, he swore that
  Ulthar would be a very likely place to dwell in always, were not the memory of
  a greater sunset city ever goading one onward toward unknown perils. Then
  twilight fell, and the pink walls of the plastered gables turned violet and
  mystic, and little yellow lights floated up one by one from old lattice
  windows. And sweet bells pealed in. the temple tower above, and the first star
  winked softly above the meadows across the Skai. With the night came song, and
  Carter nodded as the lutanists praised ancient days from beyond the filigreed
  balconies and tesselated courts of simple Ulthar. And there might have been
  sweetness even in the voices of Ulthar's many cats, but that they were mostly
  heavy and silent from strange feasting. Some of them stole off to those
  cryptical realms which are known only to cats and which villagers say are on
  the moon's dark side, whither the cats leap from tall housetops, but one small
  black kitten crept upstairs and sprang in Carter's lap to purr and play, and
  curled up near his feet when he lay down at last on the little couch whose
  pillows were stuffed with fragrant, drowsy herbs.  In the morning Carter
  joined a caravan of merchants bound for Dylath-Leen with the spun wool of
  Ulthar and the cabbages of Ulthar's busy farms. And for six days they rode
  with tinkling bells on the smooth road beside the Skai; stopping some nights
  at the inns of little quaint fishing towns, and on other nights camping under
  the stars while snatches of boatmen's songs came from the placid river. The
  country was very beautiful, with green hedges and groves and picturesque
  peaked cottages and octagonal windmills.  On the seventh day a blur of smoke
  rose on the horizon ahead, and then the tall black towers of Dylath-Leen,
  which is built mostly of basalt. Dylath-Leen with its thin angular towers
  looks in the distance like a bit of the Giant's Causeway, and its streets are
  dark and uninviting. There are many dismal sea-taverns near the myriad
  wharves, and all the town is thronged with the strange seamen of every land on
  earth and of a few which are said to be not on earth. Carter questioned the
  oddly robed men of that city about the peak of Ngranek on the isle of Oriab,
  and found that they knew of it well.  Ships came from Baharna on that island,
  one being due to return thither in only a month, and Ngranek is but two days'
  zebra-ride from that port. But few had seen the stone face of the god, because
  it is on a very difficult side of Ngranek, which overlooks only sheer crags
  and a valley of sinister lava. Once the gods were angered with men on that
  side, and spoke of the matter to the Other Gods.  It was hard to get this
  information from the traders and sailors in Dylath-Leen's sea taverns, because
  they mostly preferred to whisper of the black galleys. One of them was due in
  a week with rubies from its unknown shore, and the townsfolk dreaded to see it
  dock. The mouths of the men who came from it to trade were too wide, and the
  way their turbans were humped up in two points above their foreheads was in
  especially bad taste. And their shoes were the shortest and queerest ever seen
  in the Six Kingdoms. But worst of all was the matter of the unseen rowers.
  Those three banks of oars moved too briskly and accurately and vigorously to
  be comfortable, and it was not right for a ship to stay in port for weeks
  
  while the merchants traded, yet to give no glimpse of its crew. It was not
  fair to the tavern-keepers of Dylath-Leen, or to the grocers and butchers,
  either; for not a scrap of provisions was ever sent aboard. The merchants took
  only gold and stout black slaves from Parg across the river. That was all they
  ever took, those unpleasantly featured merchants and their unseen rowers;
  never anything from the butchers and grocers, but only gold and the fat black
  men of Parg whom they bought by the pound. And the odours from those galleys
  which the south wind blew in from the wharves are not to be described. Only by
  constantly smoking strong thagweed could even the hardiest denizen of the old
  sea-taverns bear them. Dylath-Leen would never have tolerated the black
  galleys had such rubies been obtainable elsewhere, but no mine in all Barth's
  dreamland was known to produce their like.  Of these things Dylath-Leen's
  cosmopolitan folk chiefly gossiped whilst Carter waited patiently for the ship
  from Baharna, which might bear him to the isle whereon carven Ngranek towers
  lofty and barren. Meanwhile he did not fall to seek through the haunts of far
  travellers for any tales they might have concerning Kadath in the cold waste
  or a marvellous city of marble walls and silver fountains seen below terraces
  in the sunset. Of these things, however, he learned nothing; though he once
  thought that a certain old slant-eyed merchant looked queerly intelligent when
  the cold waste was spoken of. This man was reputed to trade with the horrible
  stone villages on the icy desert plateau of Leng, which no healthy folk visit
  and whose evil fires are seen at night from afar. He was even rumoured to have
  dealt with that High-Priest Not To Be Described, which wears a yellow silken
  mask over its face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone monastery. That
  such a person might well have had nibbling traffick with such beings as may
  conceivably dwell in the cold waste was not to be doubted, but Carter soon
  found that it was no use questioning him.  Then the black galley slipped into
  the harbour past the basalt wale and the tall lighthouse, silent and alien,
  and with a strange stench that the south wind drove into the town. Uneasiness
  rustled through the taverns along that waterfront, and after a while the dark
  wide-mouthed merchants with humped turbans and short feet clumped steathily
  ashore to seek the bazaars of the jewellers. Carter observed them closely, and
  disliked them more the longer he looked at them. Then he saw them drive the
  stout black men of Parg up the gangplank grunting and sweating into that
  singular galley, and wondered in what lands - or if in any lands at all -
  those fat pathetic creatures might be destined to serve.  And on the third
  evening of that galley's stay one of the uncomfortable merchants spoke to him,
  smirking sinfully and hinting of what he had heard in the taverns of Carter's
  quest. He appeared to have knowledge too secret for public telling; and
  although the sound of his voice was unbearably hateful, Carter felt that the
  lore of so far a traveller must not be overlooked. He bade him therefore be
  his guest in locked chambers above, and drew out the last of the Zoogs'
  moon-wine to loosen his tongue. The strange merchant drank heavily, but
  smirked unchanged by the draught. Then he drew forth a curious bottle with
  wine of his own, and Carter saw that the bottle was a single hollowed ruby,
  grotesquely carved in patterns too fabulous to be comprehended. He offered his
  wine to his host, and though Carter took only the least sip, he felt the
  dizziness of space and the fever of unimagined jungles. All the while the
  guest had been smiling more and more broadly, and as Carter slipped into
  blankness the last thing he saw was that dark odious face convulsed with evil
  laughter and something quite unspeakable where one of the two frontal puffs of
  that orange turban had become disarranged with the shakings of that epileptic
  mirth.  Carter next had consciousness amidst horrible odours beneath a
  tent-like awning on the deck of a ship, with the marvellous coasts of the
  Southern Sea flying by in unnatural swiftness. He was not chained, but three
  of the dark sardonic merchants stood grinning nearby, and the sight of those
  humps in their turbans made him almost as faint as did the stench that
  filtered up through the sinister hatches. He saw slip past him the glorious
  lands and cities of which a fellow-dreamer of earth - a lighthouse-keeper in
  ancient Kingsport - had often discoursed in the old days, and recognized the
  
  templed terraces of Zak, abode of forgotten dreams; the spires of infamous
  Thalarion, that daemon-city of a thousand wonders where the eidolon Lathi
  reigns; the charnel gardens of Zura, land of pleasures unattained, and the
  twin headlands of crystal, meeting above in a resplendent arch, which guard
  the harbour of Sona-Nyl, blessed land of fancy.  Past all these gorgeous lands
  the malodourous ship flew unwholesomely, urged by the abnormal strokes of
  those unseen rowers below. And before the day was done Carter saw that the
  steersman could have no other goal than the Basalt Pillars of the West, beyond
  which simple folk say splendid Cathuria lies, but which wise dreamers well
  know are the gates of a monstrous cataract wherein the oceans of earth's
  dreamland drop wholly to abysmal nothingness and shoot through the empty
  spaces toward other worlds and other stars and the awful voids outside the
  ordered universe where the daemon sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in chaos amid
  pounding and piping and the hellish dancing of the Other Gods, blind,
  voiceless, tenebrous, and mindless, with their soul and messenger
  Nyarlathotep.  Meanwhile the three sardonic merchants would give no word of
  their intent, though Carter well knew that they must be leagued with those who
  wished to hold him from his quest. It is understood in the land of dream that
  the Other Gods have many agents moving among men; and all these agents,
  whether wholly human or slightly less than human, are eager to work the will
  of those blind and mindless things in return for the favour of their hideous
  soul and messenger, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. So Carter inferred that
  the merchants of the humped turbans, hearing of his daring search for the
  Great Ones in their castle of Kadath, had decided to take him away and deliver
  him to Nyarlathotep for whatever nameless bounty might be offered for such a
  prize. What might be the land of those merchants in our known universe or in
  the eldritch spaces outside, Carter could not guess; nor could he imagine at
  what hellish trysting-place they would meet the crawling chaos to give him up
  and claim their reward. He knew, however, that no beings as nearly human as
  these would dare approach the ultimate nighted throne of the daemon Azathoth
  in the formless central void.  At the set of sun the merchants licked their
  excessively wide lips and glared hungrily and one of them went below and
  returned from some hidden and offensive cabin with a pot and basket of plates.
  Then they squatted close together beneath the awning and ate the smoking meat
  that was passed around. But when they gave Carter a portion, he found
  something very terrible in the size and shape of it; so that he turned even
  paler than before and cast that portion into the sea when no eye was on him.
  And again he thought of those unseen rowers beneath, and of the suspicious
  nourishment from which their far too mechanical strength was derived.  It was
  dark when the galley passed betwixt the Basalt Pillars of the West and the
  sound of the ultimate cataract swelled portentous from ahead. And the spray of
  that cataract rose to obscure the stars, and the deck grew damp, and the
  vessel reeled in the surging current of the brink. Then with a queer whistle
  and plunge the leap was taken, and Carter felt the terrors of nightmare as
  earth fell away and the great boat shot silent and comet-like into planetary
  space. Never before had he known what shapeless black things lurk and caper
  and flounder all through the aether, leering and grinning at such voyagers as
  may pass, and sometimes feeling about with slimy paws when some moving object
  excites their curiosity. These are the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, and
  like them are blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and
  thirsts.  But that offensive galley did not aim as far as Carter had feared,
  for he soon saw that the helmsman was steering a course directly for the moon.
  The moon was a crescent shining larger and larger as they approached it, and
  shewing its singular craters and peaks uncomfortably. The ship made for the
  edge, and it soon became clear that its destination was that secret and
  mysterious side which is always turned away from earth, and which no fully
  human person, save perhaps the dreamer Snireth-Ko, has ever beheld. The close
  aspect of the moon as the galley drew near proved very disturbing to Carter,
  and he did not like the size and shape of the ruins which crumbled here and
  there. The dead temples on the mountains were so placed that they could have
  
  glorified no suitable or wholesome gods, and in the symmetries of the broken
  columns there seemed to be some dark and inner meaning which did not invite
  solution. And what the structure and proportions of the olden worshippers
  could have been, Carter steadily refused to conjecture.  When the ship rounded
  the edge, and sailed over those lands unseen by man, there appeared in the
  queer landscape certain signs of life, and Carter saw many low, broad, round
  cottages in fields of grotesque whitish fungi. He noticed that these cottages
  had no windows, and thought that their shape suggested the huts of Esquimaux.
  Then he glimpsed the oily waves of a sluggish sea, and knew that the voyage
  was once more to be by water - or at least through some liquid. The galley
  struck the surface with a peculiar sound, and the odd elastic way the waves
  received it was very perplexing to Carter.  They now slid along at great
  speed, once passing and hailing another galley of kindred form, but generally
  seeing nothing but that curious sea and a sky that was black and star-strewn
  even though the sun shone scorchingly in it.  There presently rose ahead the
  jagged hills of a leprous-looking coast, and Carter saw the thick unpleasant
  grey towers of a city. The way they leaned and bent, the manner in which they
  were clustered, and the fact that they had no windows at all, was very
  disturbing to the prisoner; and he bitterly mourned the folly which had made
  him sip the curious wine of that merchant with the humped turban. As the coast
  drew nearer, and the hideous stench of that city grew stronger, he saw upon
  the jagged hills many forests, some of whose trees he recognized as akin to
  that solitary moon-tree in the enchanted wood of earth, from whose sap the
  small brown Zoogs ferment their curious wine.  Carter could now distinguish
  moving figures on the noisome wharves ahead, and the better he saw them the
  worse he began to fear and detest them. For they were not men at all, or even
  approximately men, but great greyish-white slippery things which could expand
  and contract at will, and whose principal shape - though it often changed -
  was that of a sort of toad without any eyes, but with a curious vibrating mass
  of short pink tentacles on the end of its blunt, vague snout. These objects
  were waddling busily about the wharves, moving bales and crates and boxes with
  preternatural strength, and now and then hopping on or off some anchored
  galley with long oars in their forepaws. And now and then one would appear
  driving a herd of clumping slaves, which indeed were approximate human beings
  with wide mouths like those merchants who traded in Dylath-Leen; only these
  herds, being without turbans or shoes or clothing, did not seem so very human
  after all. Some of the slaves - the fatter ones, whom a sort of overseer would
  pinch experimentally - were unloaded from ships and nailed in crates which
  workers pushed into the low warehouses or loaded on great lumbering
  vans.  Once a van was hitched and driven off, and the, fabulous thing which
  drew it was such that Carter gasped, even after having seen the other
  monstrosities of that hateful place. Now and then a small herd of slaves
  dressed and turbaned like the dark merchants would be driven aboard a galley,
  followed by a great crew of the slippery toad-things as officers, navigators,
  and rowers. And Carter saw that the almost-human creatures were reserved for
  the more ignominious kinds of servitude which required no strength, such as
  steering and cooking, fetching and carrying, and bargaining with men on the
  earth or other planets where they traded. These creatures must have been
  convenient on earth, for they were truly not unlike men when dressed and
  carefully shod and turbaned, and could haggle in the shops of men without
  embarrassment or curious explanations. But most of them, unless lean or
  ill-favoured, were unclothed and packed in crates and drawn off in lumbering
  lorries by fabulous things. Occasionally other beings were unloaded and
  crated; some very like these semi-humans, some not so similar, and some not
  similar at all. And he wondered if any of the poor stout black men of Parg
  were left to be unloaded and crated and shipped inland in those obnoxious
  drays.  When the galley landed at a greasy-looking quay of spongy rock a
  nightmare horde of toad-things wiggled out of the hatches, and two of them
  seized Carter and dragged him ashore. The smell and aspect of that city are
  beyond telling, and Carter held only scattered images of the tiled streets and
  
  black doorways and endless precipices of grey vertical walls without windows.
  At length he was dragged within a low doorway and made to climb infinite steps
  in pitch blackness. It was, apparently, all one to the toad-things whether it
  were light or dark. The odour of the place was intolerable, and when Carter
  was locked into a chamber and left alone he scarcely had strength to crawl
  around and ascertain its form and dimensions. It was circular, and about
  twenty feet across.  From then on time ceased to exist. At intervals food was
  pushed in, but Carter would not touch it. What his fate would be, he did not
  know; but he felt that he was held for the coming of that frightful soul and
  messenger of infinity's Other Gods, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. Finally,
  after an unguessed span of hours or days, the great stone door swung wide
  again, and Carter was shoved down the stairs and out into the red-litten
  streets of that fearsome city. It was night on the moon, and all through the
  town were stationed slaves bearing torches.  In a detestable square a sort of
  procession was formed; ten of the toad-things and twenty-four almost human
  torch-bearers, eleven on either side, and one each before and behind. Carter
  was placed in the middle of the line; five toad-things ahead and five behind,
  and one almost-human torch-bearer on either side of him. Certain of the
  toad-things produced disgustingly carven flutes of ivory and made loathsome
  sounds. To that hellish piping the column advanced out of the tiled streets
  and into nighted plains of obscene fungi, soon commencing to climb one of the
  lower and more gradual hills that lay behind the city. That on some frightful
  slope or blasphemous plateau the crawling chaos waited, Carter could not
  doubt; and he wished that the suspense might soon be over. The whining of
  those impious flutes was shocking, and he would have given worlds for some
  even half-normal sound; but these toad-things had no voices, and the slaves
  did not talk.  Then through that star-specked darkness there did come a normal
  sound. It rolled from the higher hills, and from all the jagged peaks around
  it was caught up and echoed in a swelling pandaemoniac chorus. It was the
  midnight yell of the cat, and Carter knew at last that the old village folk
  were right when they made low guesses about the cryptical realms which are
  known only to cats, and to which the elders among cats repair by stealth
  nocturnally, springing from high housetops. Verily, it is to the moon's dark
  side that they go to leap and gambol on the hills and converse with ancient
  shadows, and here amidst that column of foetid things Carter heard their
  homely, friendly cry, and thought of the steep roofs and warm hearths and
  little lighted windows of home.  Now much of the speech of cats was known to
  Randolph Carter, and in this far terrible place he uttered the cry that was
  suitable. But that he need not have done, for even as his lips opened he heard
  the chorus wax and draw nearer, and saw swift shadows against the stars as
  small graceful shapes leaped from hill to hill in gathering legions. The call
  of the clan had been given, and before the foul procession had time even to be
  frightened a cloud of smothering fur and a phalanx of murderous claws were
  tidally and tempestuously upon it. The flutes stopped, and there were shrieks
  in the night. Dying almost-humans screamed, and cats spit and yowled and
  roared, but the toad-things made never a sound as their stinking green ichor
  oozed fatally upon that porous earth with the obscene fungi.  It was a
  stupendous sight while the torches lasted, and Carter had never before seen so
  many cats. Black, grey, and white; yellow, tiger, and mixed; common, Persian,
  and Marix; Thibetan, Angora, and Egyptian; all were there in the fury of
  battle, and there hovered over them some trace of that profound and inviolate
  sanctity which made their goddess great in the temples of Bubastis. They would
  leap seven strong at the throat of an almost-human or the pink tentacled snout
  of a toad-thing and drag it down savagely to the fungous plain, where myriads
  of their fellows would surge over it and into it with the frenzied claws and
  teeth of a divine battle-fury. Carter had seized a torch from a stricken
  slave, but was soon overborne by the surging waves of his loyal defenders.
  Then he lay in the utter blackness hearing the clangour of war and the shouts
  of the victors, and feeling the soft paws of his friends as they rushed to and
  fro over him in the fray.  At last awe and exhaustion closed his eyes, and
  
  when he opened them again it was upon a strange scene. The great shining disc
  of the earth, thirteen times greater than that of the moon as we see it, had
  risen with floods of weird light over the lunar landscape; and across all
  those leagues of wild plateau and ragged crest there squatted one endless sea
  of cats in orderly array. Circle on circle they reached, and two or three
  leaders out of the ranks were licking his face and purring to him consolingly.
  Of the dead slaves and toad-things there were not many signs, but Carter
  thought he saw one bone a little way off in the open space between him and the
  warriors.  Carter now spoke with the leaders in the soft language of cats, and
  learned that his ancient friendship with the species was well known and often
  spoken of in the places where cats congregate. He had not been unmarked in
  Ulthar when he passed through, and the sleek old cats had remembered how he
  patted them after they had attended to the hungry Zoogs who looked evilly at a
  small black kitten. And they recalled, too, how he had welcomed the very
  little kitten who came to see him at the inn, and how he had given it a saucer
  of rich cream in the morning before he left. The grandfather of that very
  little kitten was the leader of the army now assembled, for he had seen the
  evil procession from a far hill and recognized the prisoner as a sworn friend
  of his kind on earth and in the land of dream.  A yowl now came from the
  farther peak, and the old leader paused abruptly in his conversation. It was
  one of the army's outposts, stationed on the highest of the mountains to watch
  the one foe which Earth's cats fear; the very large and peculiar cats from
  Saturn, who for some reason have not been oblivious of the charm of our moon's
  dark side. They are leagued by treaty with the evil toad-things, and are
  notoriously hostile to our earthly cats; so that at this juncture a meeting
  would have been a somewhat grave matter.  After a brief consultation of
  generals, the cats rose and assumed a closer formation, crowding protectingly
  around Carter and preparing to take the great leap through space back to the
  housetops of our earth and its dreamland. The old field-marshal advised Carter
  to let himself be borne along smoothly and passively in the massed ranks of
  furry leapers, and told him how to spring when the rest sprang and land
  gracefully when the rest landed. He also offered to deposit him in any spot he
  desired, and Carter decided on the city of Dylath-Leen whence the black galley
  had set out; for he wished to sail thence for Oriab and the carven crest
  Ngranek, and also to warn the people of the city to have no more traffick with
  black galleys, if indeed that traffick could be tactfully and judiciously
  broken off. Then, upon a signal, the cats all leaped gracefully with their
  friend packed securely in their midst; while in a black cave on an unhallowed
  summit of the moon-mountains still vainly waited the crawling chaos
  Nyarlathotep.  The leap of the cats through space was very swift; and being
  surrounded by his companions Carter did not see this time the great black
  shapelessnesses that lurk and caper and flounder in the abyss. Before he fully
  realised what had happened he was back in his familiar room at the inn at
  Dylath-Leen, and the stealthy, friendly cats were pouring out of the window in
  streams. The old leader from Ulthar was the last to leave, and as Carter shook
  his paw he said he would be able to get home by cockcrow. When dawn came,
  Carter went downstairs and learned that a week had elapsed since his capture
  and leaving. There was still nearly a fortnight to wait for the ship bound
  toward Oriab, and during that time he said what he could against the black
  galleys and their infamous ways. Most of the townsfolk believed him; yet so
  fond were the jewellers of great rubies that none would wholly promise to
  cease trafficking with the wide-mouthed merchants. If aught of evil ever
  befalls Dylath-Leen through such traffick, it will not be his fault.  In about
  a week the desiderate ship put in by the black wale and tall lighthouse, and
  Carter was glad to see that she was a barque of wholesome men, with painted
  sides and yellow lateen sails and a grey captain in silken robes. Her cargo
  was the fragrant resin of Oriab's inner groves, and the delicate pottery baked
  by the artists of Bahama, and the strange little figures carved from Ngranek's
  ancient lava. For this they were paid in the wool of Ulthar and the iridescent
  textiles of Hatheg and the ivory that the black men carve across the river in
  
  Parg. Carter made arrangements with the captain to go to Baharna and was told
  that the voyage would take ten days. And during his week of waiting he talked
  much with that captain of Ngranek, and was told that very few had seen the
  carven face thereon; but that most travellers are content to learn its legends
  from old people and lava-gatherers and image-makers in Baharna and afterward
  say in their far homes that they have indeed beheld it. The captain was not
  even sure that any person now living had beheld that carven face, for the
  wrong side of Ngranek is very difficult and barren and sinister, and there are
  rumours of caves near the peak wherein dwell the night-gaunts. But the captain
  did not wish to say just what a night-gaunt might be like, since such cattle
  are known to haunt most persistently the dreams of those who think too often
  of them. Then Carter asked that captain about unknown Kadath in the cold
  waste, and the marvellous sunset city, but of these the good man could truly
  tell nothing.  Carter sailed out of Dylath-Leen one early morning when the
  tide turned, and saw the first rays of sunrise on the thin angular towers of
  that dismal basalt town. And for two days they sailed eastward in sight of
  green coasts, and saw often the pleasant fishing towns that climbed up steeply
  with their red roofs and chimney-pots from old dreaming wharves and beaches
  where nets lay drying. But on the third day they turned sharply south where
  the roll of water was stronger, and soon passed from sight of any land. On the
  fifth day the sailors were nervous, but the captain apologized for their
  fears, saying that the ship was about to pass over the weedy walls and broken
  columns of a sunken city too old for memory, and that when the water was clear
  one could see so many moving shadows in that deep place that simple folk
  disliked it. He admitted, moreover, that many ships had been lost in that part
  of the sea; having been hailed when quite close to it, but never seen
  again.  That night the moon was very bright, and one could see a great way
  down in the water. There was so little wind that the ship could not move much,
  and the ocean was very calm. Looking over the rail Carter saw many fathoms
  deep the dome of the great temple, and in front of it an avenue of unnatural
  sphinxes leading to what was once a public square. Dolphins sported merrily in
  and out of the ruins, and porpoises revelled clumsily here and there,
  sometimes coming to the surface and leaping clear out of the sea. As the ship
  drifted on a little the floor of the ocean rose in hills, and one could
  clearly mark the lines of ancient climbing streets and the washed-down walls
  of myriad little houses.  Then the suburbs appeared, and finally a great lone
  building on a hill, of simpler architecture than the other structures, and in
  much better repair. It was dark and low and covered four sides of a square,
  with a tower at each corner, a paved court in the centre, and small curious
  round windows all over it. Probably it was of basalt, though weeds draped the
  greater part; and such was its lonely and impressive place on that far hill
  that it may have been a temple or a monastery. Some phosphorescent fish inside
  it gave the small round windows an aspect of shining, and Carter did not blame
  the sailors much for their fears. Then by the watery moonlight he noticed an
  odd high monolith in the middle of that central court, and saw that something
  was tied to it. And when after getting a telescope from the captain's cabin he
  saw that that bound thing was a sailor in the silk robes of Oriab, head
  downward and without any eyes, he was glad that a rising breeze soon took the
  ship ahead to more healthy parts of the sea.  The next day they spoke with a
  ship with violet sails bound for Zar, in the land of forgotten dreams, with
  bulbs of strange coloured lilies for cargo. And on the evening of the eleventh
  day they came in sight of the isle of Oriab with Ngranek rising jagged and
  snow-crowned in the distance. Oriab is a very great isle, and its port of
  Bahama a mighty city. The wharves of Bahama are of porphyry, and the city
  rises in great stone terraces behind them, having streets of steps that are
  frequently arched over by buildings and the bridges between buildings. There
  is a great canal which goes under the whole city in a tunnel with granite
  gates and leads to the inland lake of Yath, on whose farther shore are the
  vast clay-brick ruins of a primal city whose name is not remembered. As the
  ship drew into the harbour at evening the twin beacons Thon and Thal gleamed a
  
  welcome, and in all the million windows of Bahama's terraces mellow lights
  peeped out quietly and gradually as the stars peep out overhead in the dusk,
  till that steep and climbing seaport became a glittering constellation hung
  between the stars of heaven and the reflections of those stars in the still
  harbour.  The captain, after landing, made Carter a guest in his own small
  house on the shores of Yath where the rear of the town slopes down to it; and
  his wife and servants brought strange toothsome foods for the traveller's
  delight. And in the days after that Carter asked for rumours and legends of
  Ngranek in all the taverns and public places where lava-gatherers and
  image-makers meet, but could find no one who had been up the higher slopes or
  seen the carven face. Ngranek was a hard mountain with only an accursed valley
  behind it, and besides, one could never depend on the certainty that
  night-gaunts are altogether fabulous.  When the captain sailed hack to
  Dylath-Leen Carter took quarters in an ancient tavern opening on an alley of
  steps in the original part of the town, which is built of brick and resembles
  the ruins of Yath's farther shore. Here he laid his plans for the ascent of
  Ngranek, and correlated all that he had learned from the lava-gatherers about
  the roads thither. The keeper of the tavern was a very old man, and had heard
  so many legends that he was a great help. He even took Carter to an upper room
  in that ancient house and shewed him a crude picture which a traveller had
  scratched on the clay wall in the old days when men were bolder and less
  reluctant to visit Ngranek's higher slopes. The old tavern-keeper's
  great-grandfather had heard from his great-grandfather that the traveller who
  scratched that picture had climbed Ngranek and seen the carven face, here
  drawing it for others to behold, but Carter had very great doubts, since the
  large rough features on the wall were hasty and careless, and wholly
  overshadowed by a crowd of little companion shapes in the worst possible
  taste, with horns and wings and claws and curling tails.  At last, having
  gained all the information he was likely to gain in the taverns and public
  places of Baharna, Carter hired a zebra and set out one morning on the road by
  Yath's shore for those inland parts wherein towers stony Ngranek. On his right
  were rolling hills and pleasant orchards and neat little stone farmhouses, and
  he was much reminded of those fertile fields that flank the Skai. By evening
  he was near the nameless ancient ruins on Yath's farther shore, and though old
  lava-gatherers had warned him not to camp there at night, he tethered his
  zebra to a curious pillar before a crumbling wall and laid his blanket in a
  sheltered corner beneath some carvings whose meaning none could decipher.
  Around him he wrapped another blanket, for the nights are cold in Oriab; and
  when upon awaking once he thought he felt the wings of some insect brushing
  his face he covered his head altogether and slept in peace till roused by the
  magah birds in distant resin groves.  The sun had just come up over the great
  slope whereon leagues of primal brick foundations and worn walls and
  occasional cracked pillars and pedestals stretched down desolate to the shore
  of Yath, and Carter looked about for his tethered zebra. Great was his dismay
  to see that docile beast stretched prostrate beside the curious pillar to
  which it had been tied, and still greater was he vexed on finding that the
  steed was quite dead, with its blood all sucked away through a singular wound
  in its throat. His pack had been disturbed, and several shiny knickknacks
  taken away, and all round on the dusty soil' were great webbed footprints for
  which he could not in any way account. The legends and warnings of
  lava-gatherers occurred to him, and he thought of what had brushed his face in
  the night. Then he shouldered his pack and strode on toward Ngranek, though
  not without a shiver when he saw close to him as the highway passed through
  the ruins a great gaping arch low in the wall of an old temple, with steps
  leading down into darkness farther than he could peer.  His course now lay
  uphill through wilder and partly wooded country, and he saw only the huts of
  charcoal-burners and the camp of those who gathered resin from the groves. The
  whole air was fragrant with balsam, and all the magah birds sang blithely as
  they flashed their seven colours in the sun. Near sunset he came on a new camp
  of lava-gatherers returning with laden sacks from Ngranek's lower slopes; and
  
  here he also camped, listening to the songs and tales of the men, and
  overhearing what they whispered about a companion they had lost. He had
  climbed high to reach a mass of fine lava above him, and at nightfall did not
  return to his fellows. When they looked for him the next day they found only
  his turban, nor was there any sign on the crags below that he had fallen. They
  did not search any more, because the old man among them said it would be of no
  use.  No one ever found what the night-gaunts took, though those beasts
  themselves were so uncertain as to be almost fabulous. Carter asked them if
  night-gaunts sucked blood and liked shiny things and left webbed footprints,
  but they all shook their heads negatively and seemed frightened at his making
  such an inquiry. When he saw how taciturn they had become he asked them no
  more, but went to sleep in his blanket.  The next day he rose with the
  lava-gatherers and exchanged farewells as they rode west and he rode east on a
  zebra he bought of them. Their older men gave him blessings and warnings, and
  told him he had better not climb too high on Ngranek, but while he thanked
  them heartily he was in no wise dissuaded. For still did he feel that he must
  find the gods on unknown Kadath; and win from them a way to that haunting and
  marvellous city in the sunset. By noon, after a long uphill ride, he came upon
  some abandoned brick villages of the hill-people who had once dwelt thus close
  to Ngranek and carved images from its smooth lava. Here they had dwelt till
  the days of the old tavernkeeper's grandfather, but about that time they felt
  that their presence was disliked. Their homes had crept even up the mountain's
  slope, and the higher they built the more people they would miss when the sun
  rose. At last they decided it would be better to leave altogether, since
  things were sometimes glimpsed in the darkness which no one could interpret
  favourably; so in the end all of them went down to the sea and dwelt in
  Bahama, inhabiting a very old quarter and teaching their sons the old art of
  image-making which to this day they carry on. It was from these children of
  the exiled hill-people that Carter had heard the best tales about Ngranek when
  searching through Bahama's ancient taverns.  All this time the great gaunt
  side of Ngranek was looming up higher and higher as Carter approached it.
  There were sparse trees on the lower slopes and feeble shrubs above them, and
  then the bare hideous rock rose spectral into the sky, to mix with frost and
  ice and eternal snow. Carter could see the rifts and ruggedness of that sombre
  stone, and did not welcome the prospect of climbing it. In places there were
  solid streams of lava, and scoriac heaps that littered slopes and ledges.
  Ninety aeons ago, before even the gods had danced upon its pointed peak, that
  mountain had spoken with fire and roared with the voices of the inner
  thunders. Now it towered all silent and sinister, bearing on the hidden side
  that secret titan image whereof rumour told. And there were caves in that
  mountain, which might be empty and alone with elder darkness, or might - if
  legend spoke truly - hold horrors of a form not to be surmised.  The ground
  sloped upward to the foot of Ngranek, thinly covered with scrub oaks and ash
  trees, and strewn with bits of rock, lava, and ancient cinder. There were the
  charred embers of many camps, where the lava-gatherers were wont to stop, and
  several rude altars which they had built either to propitiate the Great Ones
  or to ward off what they dreamed of in Ngranek's high passes and labyrinthine
  caves. At evening Carter reached the farthermost pile of embers and camped for
  the night, tethering his zebra to a sapling and wrapping himself well in his
  blankets before going to sleep. And all through the night a voonith howled
  distantly from the shore of some hidden pool, but Carter felt no fear of that
  amphibious terror, since he had been told with certainty that not one of them
  dares even approach the slope of Ngranek.  In the clear sunshine of morning
  Carter began the long ascent, taking his zebra as far as that useful beast
  could go, but tying it to a stunted ash tree when the floor of the thin wood
  became too steep. Thereafter he scrambled up alone; first through the forest
  with its ruins of old villages in overgrown clearings, and then over the tough
  grass where anaemic shrubs grew here and there. He regretted coming clear of
  the trees, since the slope was very precipitous and the whole thing rather
  dizzying. At length he began to discern all the countryside spread out beneath
  
  him whenever he looked about; the deserted huts of the image-makers, the
  groves of resin trees and the camps of those who gathered from them, the woods
  where prismatic magahs nest and sing, and even a hint very far away of the
  shores of Yath and of those forbidding ancient ruins whose name is forgotten.
  He found it best not to look around, and kept on climbing and climbing till
  the shrubs became very sparse and there was often nothing but the tough grass
  to cling to.  Then the soil became meagre, with great patches of bare rock
  cropping out, and now and then the nest of a condor in a crevice. Finally
  there was nothing at all but the bare rock, and had it not been very rough and
  weathered, he could scarcely have ascended farther. Knobs, ledges, and
  pinnacles, however, helped greatly; and it was cheering to see occasionally
  the sign of some lava-gatherer scratched clumsily in the friable stone, and
  know that wholesome human creatures had been there before him. After a certain
  height the presence of man was further shewn by handholds and footholds hewn
  where they were needed, and by little quarries and excavations where some
  choice vein or stream of lava had been found. In one place a narrow ledge had
  been chopped artificially to an especially rich deposit far to the right of
  the main line of ascent. Once or twice Carter dared to look around, and was
  almost stunned by the spread of landscape below. All the island betwixt him
  and the coast lay open to his sight, with Baharna's stone terraces and the
  smoke of its chimneys mystical in the distance. And beyond that the
  illimitable Southern Sea with all its curious secrets.  Thus far there had
  been much winding around the mountain, so that the farther and carven side was
  still hidden. Carter now saw a ledge running upward and to the left which
  seemed to head the way he wished, and this course he took in the hope that it
  might prove continuous. After ten minutes he saw it was indeed no cul-de-sac,
  but that it led steeply on in an arc which would, unless suddenly interrupted
  or deflected, bring him after a few hours' climbing to that unknown southern
  slope overlooking the desolate crags and the accursed valley of lava. As new
  country came into view below him he saw that it was bleaker and wilder than
  those seaward lands he had traversed. The mountain's side, too, was somewhat
  different; being here pierced by curious cracks and caves not found on the
  straighter route he had left. Some of these were above him and some beneath
  him, all opening on sheerly perpendicular cliffs and wholly unreachable by the
  feet of man. The air was very cold now, but so hard was the climbing that he
  did not mind it. Only the increasing rarity bothered him, and he thought that
  perhaps it was this which had turned the heads of other travellers and excited
  those absurd tales of night-gaunts whereby they explained the loss of such
  climbers as fell from these perilous paths. He was not much impressed by
  travellers' tales, but had a good curved scimitar in case of any trouble. All
  lesser thoughts were lost in the wish to see that carven face which might set
  him on the track of the gods atop unknown Kadath.  At last, in the fearsome
  iciness of upper space, he came round fully to the hidden side of Ngranek and
  saw in infinite gulfs below him the lesser crags and sterile abysses of lava
  which marked olden wrath of the Great Ones. There was unfolded, too, a vast
  expanse of country to the south; but it was a desert land without fair fields
  or cottage chimneys, and seemed to have no ending. No trace of the sea was
  visible on this side, for Oriab is a great island. Black caverns and odd
  crevices were still numerous on the sheer vertical cliffs, but none of them
  was accessible to a climber. There now loomed aloft a great beetling mass
  which hampered the upward view, and Carter was for a moment shaken with doubt
  lest it prove impassable. Poised in windy insecurity miles above earth, with
  only space and death on one side and only slippery walls of rock on the other,
  he knew for a moment the fear that makes men shun Ngranek's hidden side. He
  could not turn round, yet the sun was already low. If there were no way aloft,
  the night would find him crouching there still, and the dawn would not find
  him at all.  But there was a way, and he saw it in due season. Only a very
  expert dreamer could have used those imperceptible footholds, yet to Carter
  they were sufficient. Surmounting now the outward-hanging rock, he found the
  slope above much easier than that below, since a great glacier's melting had
  
  left a generous space with loam and ledges. To the left a precipice dropped
  straight from unknown heights to unknown depths, with a cave's dark mouth just
  out of reach above him. Elsewhere, however, the mountain slanted back
  strongly, and even gave him space to lean and rest.  He felt from the chill
  that he must be near the snow line, and looked up to see what glittering
  pinnacles might be shining in that late ruddy sunlight. Surely enough, there
  was the snow uncounted thousands of feet above, and below it a great beetling
  crag like that. he had just climbed; hanging there forever in bold outline.
  And when he saw that crag he gasped and cried out aloud, and clutched at the
  jagged rock in awe; for the titan bulge had not stayed as earth's dawn had
  shaped it, but gleamed red and stupendous in the sunset with the carved and
  polished features of a god.  Stern and terrible shone that face that the
  sunset lit with fire. How vast it was no mind can ever measure, but Carter
  knew at once that man could never have fashioned it. It was a god chiselled by
  the hands of the gods, and it looked down haughty and majestic upon the
  seeker. Rumour had said it was strange and not to be mistaken, and Carter saw
  that it was indeed so; for those long narrow eyes and long-lobed ears, and
  that thin nose and pointed chin, all spoke of a race that is not of men but of
  gods.  He clung overawed in that lofty and perilous eyrie, even though it was
  this which he had expected and come to find; for there is in a god's face more
  of marvel than prediction can tell, and when that face is vaster than a great
  temple and seen looking downward at sunset in the scyptic silences of that
  upper world from whose dark lava it was divinely hewn of old, the marvel is so
  strong that none may escape it.  Here, too, was the added marvel of
  recognition; for although he had planned to search all dreamland over for
  those whose likeness to this face might mark them as the god's children, he
  now knew that he need not do so. Certainly, the great face carven on that
  mountain was of no strange sort, but the kin of such as he had seen often in
  the taverns of the seaport Celephais which lies in Ooth-Nargai beyond the
  Tanarian Hills and is ruled over by that King Kuranes whom Carter once knew in
  waking life. Every year sailors with such a face came in dark ships from the
  north to trade their onyx for the carved jade and spun gold and little red
  singing birds of Celephais, and it was clear that these could be no others
  than the hall-gods he sought. Where they dwelt, there must the cold waste lie
  close, and within it unknown Kadath and its onyx castle for the Great Ones. So
  to Celephais he must go, far distant from the isle of Oriab, and in such parts
  as would take him back to Dylath-Teen and up the Skai to the bridge by Nir,
  and again into the enchanted wood of the Zoogs, whence the way would bend
  northward through the garden lands by Oukranos to the gilded spires of Thran,
  where he might find a galleon bound over the Cerenarian Sea.  But dusk was now
  thick, and the great carven face looked down even sterner in shadow. Perched
  on that ledge night found the seeker; and in the blackness he might neither go
  down nor go up, but only stand and cling and shiver in that narrow place till
  the day came, praying to keep awake lest sleep loose his hold and send him
  down the dizzy miles of air to the crags and sharp rocks of the accursed
  valley. The stars came out, but save for them there was only black nothingness
  in his eyes; nothingness leagued with death, against whose beckoning he might
  do no more than cling to the rocks and lean back away from an unseen brink.
  The last thing of earth that he saw in the gloaming was a condor soaring close
  to the westward precipice beside him, and darting screaming away when it came
  near the cave whose mouth yawned just out of reach.  Suddenly, without a
  warning sound in the dark, Carter felt his curved scimitar drawn stealthily
  out of his belt by some unseen hand. Then he heard it clatter down over the
  rocks below. And between him and the Milky Way he thought he saw a very
  terrible outline of something noxiously thin and horned and tailed and
  bat-winged. Other things, too, had begun to blot out patches of stars west of
  him, as if a flock of vague entities were flapping thickly and silently out of
  that inaccessible cave in the face of the precipice. Then a sort of cold
  rubbery arm seized his neck and something else seized his feet, and he was
  lifted inconsiderately up and swung about in space. Another minute and the
  
  stars were gone, and Carter knew that the night-gaunts had got him.  They bore
  him breathless into that cliffside cavern and through monstrous labyrinths
  beyond. When he struggled, as at first he did by instinct, they tickled him
  with deliberation. They made no sound at all themselves, and even their
  membranous wings were silent. They were frightfully cold and damp and
  slippery, and their paws kneaded one detestably. Soon they were plunging
  hideously downward through inconceivable abysses in a whirling, giddying,
  sickening rush of dank, tomb-like air; and Carter felt they were shooting into
  the ultimate vortex of shrieking and daemonic madness. He screamed again and
  again, but whenever he did so the black paws tickled him with greater
  subtlety. Then he saw a sort of grey phosphorescence about, and guessed they
  were coming even to that inner world of subterrene horror of which dim legends
  tell, and which is litten only by the pale death-fire wherewith reeks the
  ghoulish air and the primal mists of the pits at earth's core.  At last far
  below him he saw faint lines of grey and ominous pinnacles which he knew must
  be the fabled Peaks of Throk. Awful and sinister they stand in the haunted
  disc of sunless and eternal depths; higher than man may reckon, and guarding
  terrible valleys where the Dholes crawl and burrow nastily. But Carter
  preferred to look at them than at his captors, which were indeed shocking and
  uncouth black things with smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces, unpleasant horns
  that curved inward toward each other, bat wings whose beating made no sound,
  ugly prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly and
  disquietingly. And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed, and never smiled
  because they had no faces at all to smile with, but only a suggestive
  blankness where a face ought to be. All they ever did was clutch and fly and
  tickle; that was the way of night-gaunts.  As the band flew lower the Peaks of
  Throk rose grey and towering on all sides, and one saw clearly that nothing
  lived on that austere and impressive granite of the endless twilight. At still
  lower levels the death-fires in the air gave out, and one met only the primal
  blackness of the void save aloft where the thin peaks stood out goblin-like.
  Soon the peaks were very far away, and nothing about but great rushing winds
  with the dankness of nethermost grottoes in them. Then in the end the
  night-gaunts landed on a floor of unseen things which felt like layers of
  bones, and left Carter all alone in that black valley. To bring him thither
  was the duty of the night-gaunts that guard Ngranek; and this done, they
  flapped away silently. When Carter tried to trace their flight he found he
  could not, since even the Peaks of Throk had faded out of sight. There was
  nothing anywhere but blackness and horror and silence and bones.  Now Carter
  knew from a certain source that he was in the vale of Pnoth, where crawl and
  burrow the enormous Dholes; but he did not know what to expect, because no one
  has ever seen a Dhole or even guessed what such a thing may be like. Dholes
  are known only by dim rumour, from the rustling they make amongst mountains of
  bones and the slimy touch they have when they wriggle past one. They cannot be
  seen because they creep only in the dark. Carter did not wish to meet a Dhole,
  so listened intently for any sound in the unknown depths of bones about him.
  Even in this fearsome place he had a plan and an objective, for whispers of
  Pnoth were not unknown to one with whom he had talked much in the old days. In
  brief, it seemed fairly likely that this was the spot into which all the
  ghouls of the waking world cast the refuse of their feastings; and that if he
  but had good luck he might stumble upon that mighty crag taller even than
  Throk's peaks which marks the edge of their domain. Showers of bones would
  tell him where to look, and once found he could call to a ghoul to let down a
  ladder; for strange to say, he had a very singular link with these terrible
  creatures.  A man he had known in Boston - a painter of strange pictures with
  a secret studio in an ancient and unhallowed alley near a graveyard - had
  actually made friends with the ghouls and had taught him to understand the
  simpler part of their disgusting meeping and glibbering. This man had vanished
  at last, and Carter was not sure but that he might find him now, and use for
  the first time in dreamland that far-away English of his dim waking life. In
  any case, he felt he could persuade a ghoul to guide him out of Pnoth; and it
  
  would be better to meet a ghoul, which one can see, than a Dhole, which one
  cannot see.  So Carter walked in the dark, and ran when he thought he heard
  something among the bones underfoot. Once he bumped into a stony slope, and
  knew it must be the base of one of Throk's peaks. Then at last he heard a
  monstrous rattling and clatter which reached far up in the air, and became
  sure he had come nigh the crag of the ghouls. He was not sure he could be
  heard from this valley miles below, but realised that the inner world has
  strange laws. As he pondered he was struck by a flying bone so heavy that it
  must have been a skull, and therefore realising his nearness to the fateful
  crag he sent up as best he might that meeping cry which is the call of the
  ghoul.  Sound travels slowly, so it was some time before he heard an answering
  glibber. But it came at last, and before long he was told that a rope ladder
  would be lowered. The wait for this was very tense, since there was no telling
  what might not have been stirred up among those bones by his shouting. Indeed,
  it was not long before he actually did hear a vague rustling afar off. As this
  thoughtfully approached, he became more and more uncomfortable; for he did not
  wish to move away from the spot where the ladder would come. Finally the
  tension grew almost unbearable, and he was about to flee in panic when the
  thud of something on the newly heaped bones nearby drew his notice from the
  other sound. It was the ladder, and after a minute of groping he had it taut
  in his hands. But the other sound did not cease, and followed him even as he
  climbed. He had gone fully five feet from the ground when the rattling beneath
  waxed emphatic, and was a good ten feet up when something swayed the ladder
  from below. At a height which must have been fifteen or twenty feet he felt
  his whole side brushed by a great slippery length which grew alternately
  convex and concave with wriggling; and hereafter he climbed desperately to
  escape the unendurable nuzzling of that loathsome and overfed Dhole whose form
  no man might see.  For hours he climbed with aching and blistered hands,
  seeing again the grey death-fire and Throk's uncomfortable pinnacles. At last
  he discerned above him the projecting edge of the great crag of the ghouls,
  whose vertical side he could not glimpse; and hours later he saw a curious
  face peering over it as a gargoyle peers over a parapet of Notre Dame. This
  almost made him lose his hold through faintness, but a moment later he was
  himself again; for his vanished friend Richard Pickman had once introduced him
  to a ghoul, and he knew well their canine faces and slumping forms and
  unmentionable idiosyncrasies. So he had himself well under control when that
  hideous thing pulled him out of the dizzy emptiness over the edge of the crag,
  and did not scream at the partly consumed refuse heaped at one side or at the
  squatting circles of ghouls who gnawed and watched curiously.  He was now on a
  dim-litten plain whose sole topographical features were great boulders and the
  entrances of burrows. The ghouls were in general respectful, even if one did
  attempt to pinch him while several others eyed his leanness speculatively.
  Through patient glibbering he made inquiries regarding his vanished friend,
  and found he had become a ghoul of some prominence in abysses nearer the
  waking world. A greenish elderly ghoul offered to conduct him to Pickman's
  present habitation, so despite a natural loathing he followed the creature
  into a capacious burrow and crawled after him for hours in the blackness of
  rank mould. They emerged on a dim plain strewn with singular relics of earth -
  old gravestones, broken urns, and grotesque fragments of monuments - and
  Carter realised with some emotion that he was probably nearer the waking world
  than at any other time since he had gone down the seven hundred steps from the
  cavern of flame to the Gate of Deeper Slumber.  There, on a tombstone of 1768
  stolen from the Granary Burying Ground in Boston, sat a ghoul which was once
  the artist Richard Upton Pickman. It was naked and rubbery, and had acquired
  so much of the ghoulish physiognomy that its human origin was already obscure.
  But it still remembered a little English, and was able to converse with Carter
  in grunts and monosyllables, helped out now and then by the glibbering of
  ghouls. When it learned that Carter wished to get to the enchanted wood and
  from there to the city Celephais in Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills, it
  seemed rather doubtful; for these ghouls of the waking world do no business in
  
  the graveyards of upper dreamland (leaving that to the red-footed wamps that
  are spawned in dead cities), and many things intervene betwixt their gulf and
  the enchanted wood, including the terrible kingdom of the Gugs.  The Gugs,
  hairy and gigantic, once reared stone circles in that wood and made strange
  sacrifices to the Other Gods and the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, until one
  night an abomination of theirs reached the ears of earth's gods and they were
  banished to caverns below. Only a great trap door of stone with an iron ring
  connects the abyss of the earth-ghouls with the enchanted wood, and this the
  Gugs are afraid to open because of a curse. That a mortal dreamer could
  traverse their cavern realm and leave by that door is inconceivable; for
  mortal dreamers were their former food, and they have legends of the
  toothsomeness of such dreamers even though banishment has restricted their
  diet to the ghasts, those repulsive beings which die in the light, and which
  live in the vaults of Zin and leap on long hind legs like kangaroos.  So the
  ghoul that was Pickman advised Carter either to leave the abyss at Sarkomand,
  that deserted city in the valley below Leng where black nitrous stairways
  guarded by winged diarote lions lead down from dreamland to the lower gulfs,
  or to return through a churchyard to the waking world and begin the quest anew
  down the seventy steps of light slumber to the cavern of flame and the seven
  hundred steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber and the enchanted wood. This,
  however, did not suit the seeker; for he knew nothing of the way from Leng to
  Ooth-Nargai, and was likewise reluctant to awake lest he forget all he had so
  far gained in this dream. It was disastrous to his quest to forget the august
  and celestial faces of those seamen from the north who traded onyx in
  Celephais, and who, being the sons of gods, must point the way to the cold
  waste and Kadath where the Great Ones dwell.  After much persuasion the ghoul
  consented to guide his guest inside the great wall of the Gugs' kingdom. There
  was one chance that Carter might be able to steal through that twilight realm
  of circular stone towers at an hour when the giants would be all gorged and
  snoring indoors, and reach the central tower with the sign of Koth upon it,
  which has the stairs leading up to that stone trap door in the enchanted wood.
  Pickman even consented to lend three ghouls to help with a tombstone lever in
  raising the stone door; for of ghouls the Gugs are somewhat afraid, and they
  often flee from their own colossal graveyards when they see them feasting
  there.  He also advised Carter to disguise as a ghoul himself; shaving the
  beard he had allowed to grow (for ghouls have none), wallowing naked in the
  mould to get the correct surface, and loping in the usual slumping way, with
  his clothing carried in a bundle as if it were a choice morsel from a tomb.
  They would reach the city of Gugs - which is coterminous with the whole
  kingdom - through the proper burrows, emerging in a cemetery not far from the
  stair-containing Tower of Koth. They must beware, however, of a large cave
  near the cemetery; for this is the mouth of the vaults of Zin, and the
  vindictive ghasts are always on watch there murderously for those denizens of
  the upper abyss who hunt and prey on them. The ghasts try to come out when the
  Gugs sleep and they attack ghouls as readily as Gugs, for they cannot
  discriminate. They are very primitive, and eat one another. The Gugs have a
  sentry at a narrow in the vaults of Zin, but he is often drowsy and is
  sometimes surprised by a party of ghasts. Though ghasts cannot live in real
  light, they can endure the grey twilight of the abyss for hours.  So at length
  Carter crawled through endless burrows with three helpful ghouls bearing the
  slate gravestone of Col. Nepemiah Derby, obit 1719, from the Charter Street
  Burying Ground in Salem. When they came again into open twilight they were in
  a forest of vast lichened monoliths reaching nearly as high as the eye could
  see and forming the modest gravestones of the Gugs. On the right of the hole
  out of which they wriggled, and seen through aisles of monoliths, was a
  stupendous vista of cyclopean round towers mounting up illimitable into the
  grey air of inner earth. This was the great city of the Gugs, whose doorways
  are thirty feet high. Ghouls come here often, for a buried Gug will feed a
  community for almost a year, and even with the added peril it is better to
  burrow for Gugs than to bother with the graves of men. Carter now understood
  
  the occasional titan bones he had felt beneath him in the vale of
  Pnoth.  Straight ahead, and just outside the cemetery, rose a sheer
  perpendicular cliff at whose base an immense and forbidding cavern yawned.
  This the ghouls told Carter to avoid as much as possible, since it was the
  entrance to the unhallowed vaults of Zin where Gugs hunt ghasts in the
  darkness. And truly, that warning was soon well justified; for the moment a
  ghoul began to creep toward the towers to see if the hour of the Gugs' resting
  had been rightly timed, there glowed in the gloom of that great cavern's mouth
  first one pair of yellowish-red eyes and then another, implying that the Gugs
  were one sentry less, and that ghasts have indeed an excellent sharpness of
  smell. So the ghoul returned to the burrow and motioned his companions to be
  silent. It was best to leave the ghasts to their own devices, and there was a
  possibility that they might soon withdraw, since they must naturally be rather
  tired after coping with a Gug sentry in the black vaults. After a moment
  something about the size of a small horse hopped out into the grey twilight,
  and Carter turned sick at the aspect of that scabrous and unwholesome beast,
  whose face is so curiously human despite the absence of a nose, a forehead,
  and other important particulars.  Presently three other ghasts hopped out to
  join their fellow, and a ghoul glibbered softly at Carter that their absence
  of battle-scars was a bad sign. It proved that theY had not fought the Gug
  sentry at all, but had merely slipped past him as he slept, so that their
  strength and savagery were still unimpaired and would remain so till they had
  found and disposed of a victim. It was very unpleasant to see those filthy and
  disproportioned animals which soon numbered about fifteen, grubbing about and
  making their kangaroo leaps in the grey twilight where titan towers and
  monoliths arose, but it was still more unpleasant when they spoke among
  themselves in the coughing gutturals of ghasts. And yet, horrible as they
  were, they were not so horrible as what presently came out of the cave after
  them with disconcerting suddenness.  It was a paw, fully two feet and a half
  across, and equipped with formidable talons. Alter it came another paw, and
  after that a great black-furred arm to which both of the paws were attached by
  short forearms. Then two pink eyes shone, and the head of the awakened Gug
  sentry, large as a barrel, wabbled into view. The eyes jutted two inches from
  each side, shaded by bony protuberances overgrown with coarse hairs. But the
  head was chiefly terrible because of the mouth. That mouth had great yellow
  fangs and ran from the top to the bottom of the head, opening vertically
  instead of horizontally.  But before that unfortunate Gug could emerge from
  the cave and rise to his full twenty feet, the vindictive ghasts were upon
  him. Carter feared for a moment that he would give an alarm and arouse all his
  kin, till a ghoul softly glibbered that Gugs have no voice but talk by means
  of facial expression. The battle which then ensued was truly a frightful one.
  From all sides the venomous ghasts rushed feverishly at the creeping Gug,
  nipping and tearing with their muzzles, and mauling murderously with their
  hard pointed hooves. All the time they coughed excitedly, screaming when the
  great vertical mouth of the Gug would occasionally bite into one of their
  number, so that the noise of the combat would surely have aroused the sleeping
  city had not the weakening of the sentry begun to transfer the action farther
  and farther within the cavern. As it was, the tumult soon receded altogether
  from sight in the blackness, with only occasional evil echoes to mark its
  continuance.  Then the most alert of the ghouls gave the signal for all to
  advance, and Carter followed the loping three out of the forest of monoliths
  and into the dark noisome streets of that awful city whose rounded towers of
  cyclopean stone soared up beyond the sight. Silently they shambled over that
  rough rock pavement, hearing with disgust the abominable muffled snortings
  from great black doorways which marked the slumber of the Gugs. Apprehensive
  of the ending of the rest hour, the ghouls set a somewhat rapid pace; but even
  so the journey was no brief one, for distances in that town of giants are on a
  great scale. At last, however, they came to a somewhat open space before a
  tower even vaster than the rest; above whose colossal doorway was fixed a
  monstrous symbol in bas-relief which made one shudder without knowing its
  
  meaning. This was the central tower with the sign of Koth, and those huge
  stone steps just visible through the dusk within were the beginning of the
  great flight leading to upper dreamland and the enchanted wood.  There now
  began a climb of interminable length in utter blackness: made almost
  impossible by the monstrous size of the steps, which were fashioned for Gugs,
  and were therefore nearly a yard high. Of their number Carter could form no
  just estimate, for he soon became so worn out that the tireless and elastic
  ghouls were forced to aid him. All through the endless climb there lurked the
  peril of detection and pursuit; for though no Gug dares lift the stone door to
  the forest because of the Great One's curse, there are no such restraints
  concerning the tower and the steps, and escaped ghasts are often chased, even
  to the very top. So sharp are the ears of Gugs, that the bare feet and hands
  of the climbers might readily be heard when the city awoke; and it would of
  course take but little time for the striding giants, accustomed from their
  ghast-hunts in the vaults of Zin to seeing without light, to overtake their
  smaller and slower quarry on those cyclopean steps. It was very depressing to
  reflect that the silent pursuing Gugs would not be heard at all, but would
  come very suddenly and shockingly in the dark upon the climbers. Nor could the
  traditional fear of Gugs for ghouls be depended upon in that peculiar place
  where the advantages lay so heavily with the Gugs. There was also some peril
  from the furtive and venomous ghasts, which frequently hopped up onto the
  tower during the sleep hour of the Gugs. If the Gugs slept long, and the
  ghasts returned soon from their deed in the cavern, the scent of the climbers
  might easily be picked up by those loathsome and ill-disposed things; in which
  case it would almost be better to be eaten by a Gug.  Then, after aeons of
  climbing, there came a cough from the darkness above; and matters assumed a
  very grave and unexpected turn.  It was clear that a ghast, or perhaps even
  more, had strayed into that tower before the coming of Carter and his guides;
  and it was equally clear that this peril was very close. Alter a breathless
  second the leading ghoul pushed Carter to the wall and arranged his kinfolk in
  the best possible way, with the old slate tombstone raised for a crushing blow
  whenever the enemy might come in sight. Ghouls can see in the dark, so the
  party was not as badly off as Carter would have been alone. In another moment
  the clatter of hooves revealed the downward hopping of at least one beast, and
  the slab-bearing ghouls poised their weapon for a desperate blow. Presently
  two yellowish-red eyes flashed into view, and the panting of the ghast became
  audible above its clattering. As it hopped down to the step above the ghouls,
  they wielded the ancient gravestone with prodigious force, so that there was
  only a wheeze and a choking before the victim collapsed in a noxious heap.
  There seemed to be only this one animal, and after a moment of listening the
  ghouls tapped Carter as a signal to proceed again. As before, they were
  obliged to aid him; and he was glad to leave that place of carnage where the
  ghast's uncouth remains sprawled invisible in the blackness.  At last the
  ghouls brought their companion to a halt; and feeling above him, Carter
  realised that the great stone trap door was reached at last. To open so vast a
  thing completely was not to be thought of, but the ghouls hoped to get it up
  just enough to slip the gravestone under as a prop, and permit Carter to
  escape through the crack. They themselves planned to descend again and return
  through the city of the Gugs, since their elusiveness was great, and they did
  not know the way overland to spectral Sarkomand with its lion-guarded gate to
  the abyss.  Mighty was the straining of those three ghouls at the stone of the
  door above them, and Carter helped push with as much strength as he had. They
  judged the edge next the top of the staircase to be the right one, and to this
  they bent all the force of their disreputably nourished muscles. Alter a few
  moments a crack of light appeared; and Carter, to whom that task had been
  entrusted, slipped the end of the old gravestone in the aperture. There now
  ensued a mighty heaving; but progress was very slow, and they had of course to
  return to their first position every time they failed to turn the slab and
  prop the portal open.  Suddenly their desperation was magnified a thousand
  fold by a sound on the steps below them. It was only the thumping and rattling
  
  of the slain ghast's hooved body as it rolled down to lower levels; but of all
  the possible causes of that body's dislodgement and rolling, none was in the
  least reassuring. Therefore, knowing the ways of Gugs, the ghouls set to with
  something of a frenzy; and in a surprisingly short time had the door so high
  that they were able to hold it still whilst Carter turned the slab and left a
  generous opening. They now helped Carter through, letting him climb up to
  their rubbery shoulders and later guiding his feet as he clutched at the
  blessed soil of the upper dreamland outside. Another second and they were
  through themselves, knocking away the gravestone and closing the great trap
  door while a panting became audible beneath. Because of the Great One's curse
  no Gug might ever emerge from that portal, so with a deep relief and sense of
  repose Carter lay quietly on the thick grotesque fungi of the enchanted wood
  while his guides squatted near in the manner that ghouls rest.  Weird as was
  that enchanted wood through which he had fared so long ago, it was verily a
  haven and a delight after those gulfs he had now left behind. There was no
  living denizen about, for Zoogs shun the mysterious door in fear and Carter at
  once consulted with his ghouls about their future course. To return through
  the tower they no longer dared, and the waking world did not appeal to them
  when they learned that they must pass the priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah in the
  cavern of flame. So at length they decided to return through Sarkomand and its
  gate of the abyss, though of how to get there they knew nothing. Carter
  recalled that it lies in the valley below Leng, and recalled likewise that he
  had seen in Dylath-Leen a sinister, slant-eyed old merchant reputed to trade
  on Leng, therefore he advised the ghouls to seek out Dylath-Leen, crossing the
  fields to Nir and the Skai and following the river to its mouth. This they at
  once resolved to do, and lost no time in loping off, since the thickening of
  the dusk promised a full night ahead for travel. And Carter shook the paws of
  those repulsive beasts, thanking them for their help and sending his gratitude
  to the beast which once was Pickman; but could not help sighing with pleasure
  when they left. For a ghoul is a ghoul, and at best an unpleasant companion
  for man. After that Carter sought a forest pool and cleansed himself of the
  mud of nether earth, thereupon reassuming the clothes he had so carefully
  carried.  It was now night in that redoubtable wood of monstrous trees, but
  because of the phosphorescence one might travel as well as by day; wherefore
  Carter set out upon the well-known route toward Celephais, in Ooth-Nargai
  beyond the Tanarian Hills. And as he went he thought of the zebra he had left
  tethered to an ash-tree on Ngranek in far-away Oriab so many aeons ago, and
  wondered if any lava-gatherers had fed and released it. And he wondered, too,
  if he would ever return to Baharna and pay for the zebra that was slain by
  night in those ancient ruins by Yath's shore, and if the old tavernkeeper
  would remember him. Such were the thoughts that came to him in the air of the
  regained upper dreamland.  But presently his progress was halted by a sound
  from a very large hollow tree. He had avoided the great circle of stones,
  since he did not care to speak with Zoogs just now; but it appeared from the
  singular fluttering in that huge tree that important councils were in session
  elsewhere. Upon drawing nearer he made out the accents of a tense and heated
  discussion; and before long became conscious of matters which he viewed with
  the greatest concern. For a war on the cats was under debate in that sovereign
  assembly of Zoogs. It all came from the loss of the party which had sneaked
  after Carter to Ulthar, and which the cats had justly punished for unsuitable
  intentions. The matter had long rankled; and now, or at least within a month,
  the marshalled Zoogs were about to strike the whole feline tribe in a series
  of surprise attacks, taking individual cats or groups of cats unawares, and
  giving not even the myriad cats of Ulthar a proper chance to drill and
  mobilise. This was the plan of the Zoogs, and Carter saw that he must foil it
  before leaving upon his mighty quest.  Very quietly therefore did Randolph
  Carter steal to the edge of the wood and send the cry of the cat over the
  starlit fields. And a great grimalkin in a nearby cottage took up the burden
  and relayed it across leagues of rolling meadow to warriors large and small,
  black, grey, tiger, white, yellow, and mixed, and it echoed through Nir and
  
  beyond the Skai even into Ulthar, and Ulthar's numerous cats called in chorus
  and fell into a line of march. It was fortunate that the moon was not up, so
  that all the cats were on earth. Swiftly and silently leaping, they sprang
  from every hearth and housetop and poured in a great furry sea across the
  plains to the edge of the wood. Carter was there to greet them, and the sight
  of shapely, wholesome cats was indeed good for his eyes after the things he
  had seen and walked with in the abyss. He was glad to see his venerable friend
  and one-time rescuer at the head of Ulthar's detachment, a collar of rank
  around his sleek neck, and whiskers bristling at a martial angle. Better
  still, as a sub-lieutenant in that army was a brisk young fellow who proved to
  be none other than the very little kitten at the inn to whom Carter had given
  a saucer of rich cream on that long-vanished morning in Ulthar. He was a
  strapping and promising cat now, and purred as he shook hands with his friend.
  His grandfather said he was doing very well in the army, and that he might
  well expect a captaincy after one more campaign.  Carter now outlined the
  peril of the cat tribe, and was rewarded by deep-throated purrs of gratitude
  from all sides. Consulting with the generals, he prepared a plan of instant
  action which involved marching at once upon the Zoog council and other known
  strongholds of Zoogs; forestalling their surprise attacks and forcing them to
  terms before the mobilization of their army of invasion. Thereupon without a
  moment's loss that great ocean of cats flooded the enchanted wood and surged
  around the council tree and the great stone circle. Flutterings rose to panic
  pitch as the enemy saw the newcomers and there was very little resistance
  among the furtive and curious brown Zoogs. They saw that they were beaten in
  advance, and turned from thoughts of vengeance to thoughts of present
  self-preservation.  Half the cats now seated themselves in a circular
  formation with the captured Zoogs in the centre, leaving open a lane down
  which were marched the additional captives rounded up by the other cats in
  other parts of the wood. Terms were discussed at length, Carter acting as
  interpreter, and it was decided that the Zoogs might remain a free tribe on
  condition of rendering to the cats a large tribute of grouse, quail, and
  pheasants from the less fabulous parts of the forest. Twelve young Zoogs of
  noble families were taken as hostages to be kept in the Temple of Cats at
  Ulthar, and the victors made it plain that any disappearances of cats on the
  borders of the Zoog domain would be followed by consequences highly disastrous
  to Zoogs. These matters disposed of, the assembled cats broke ranks and
  permitted the Zoogs to slink off one by one to their respective homes, which
  they hastened to do with many a sullen backward glance.  The old cat general
  now offered Carter an escort through the forest to whatever border he wished
  to reach, deeming it likely that the Zoogs would harbour dire resentment
  against him for the frustration of their warlike enterprise. This offer he
  welcomed with gratitude; not only for the safety it afforded, but because he
  liked the graceful companionship of cats. So in the midst of a pleasant and
  playful regiment, relaxed after the successful performance of its duty,
  Randolph Carter walked with dignity through that enchanted and phosphorescent
  wood of titan trees, talking of his quest with the old general and his
  grandson whilst others of the band indulged in fantastic gambols or chased
  fallen leaves that the wind drove among the fungi of that primeval floor. And
  the old cat said that he had heard much of unknown Kadath in the cold waste,
  but did not know where it was. As for the marvellous sunset city, he had not
  even heard of that, but would gladly relay to Carter anything he might later
  learn.  He gave the seeker some passwords of great value among the cats of
  dreamland, and commended him especially to the old chief of the cats in
  Celephais, whither he was bound. That old cat, already slightly known to
  Carter, was a dignified maltese; and would prove highly influential in any
  transaction. It was dawn when they came to the proper edge of the wood, and
  Carter bade his friends a reluctant farewell. The young sub-lieutenant he had
  met as a small kitten would have followed him had not the old general
  forbidden it, but that austere patriarch insisted that the path of duty lay
  with the tribe and the army. So Carter set out alone over the golden fields
  
  that stretched mysterious beside a willow-fringed river, and the cats went
  back into the wood.  Well did the traveller know those garden lands that lie
  betwixt the wood of the Cerenerian Sea, and blithely did he follow the singing
  river Oukianos that marked his course. The sun rose higher over gentle slopes
  of grove and lawn, and heightened the colours of the thousand flowers that
  starred each knoll and dangle. A blessed haze lies upon all this region,
  wherein is held a little more of the sunlight than other places hold, and a
  little more of the summer's humming music of birds and bees; so that men walk
  through it as through a faery place, and feel greater joy and wonder than they
  ever afterward remember.  By noon Carter reached the jasper terraces of Kiran
  which slope down to the river's edge and bear that temple of loveliness
  wherein the King of Ilek-Vad comes from his far realm on the twilight sea once
  a year in a golden palanqnin to pray to the god of Oukianos, who sang to him
  in youth when he dwelt in a cottage by its banks. All of jasper is that
  temple, and covering an acre of ground with its walls and courts, its seven
  pinnacled towers, and its inner shrine where the river enters through hidden
  channels and the god sings softly in the night. Many times the moon hears
  strange music as it shines on those courts and terraces and pinnacles, but
  whether that music be the song of the god or the chant of the cryptical
  priests, none but the King of Ilek-Vad may say; for only he had entered the
  temple or seen the priests. Now, in the drowsiness of day, that carven and
  delicate fane was silent, and Carter heard only the murmur of the great stream
  and the hum of the birds and bees as he walked onward under the enchanted
  sun.  All that afternoon the pilgrim wandered on through perfumed meadows and
  in the lee of gentle riverward hills bearing peaceful thatched cottages and
  the shrines of amiable gods carven from jasper or chrysoberyl. Sometimes he
  walked close to the bank of Oukianos and whistled to the sprightly and
  iridescent fish of that crystal stream, and at other times he paused amidst
  the whispering rushes and gazed at the great dark wood on the farther side,
  whose trees came down clear to the water's edge. In former dreams he had seen
  quaint lumbering buopoths come shyly out of that wood to drink, but now he
  could not glimpse any. Once in a while he paused to watch a carnivorous fish
  catch a fishing bird, which it lured to the water by showing its tempting
  scales in the sun, and grasped by the beak with its enormous mouth as the
  winged hunter sought to dart down upon it.  Toward evening he mounted a low
  grassy rise and saw before him flaming in the sunset the thousand gilded
  spires of Thran. Lofty beyond belief are the alabaster walls of that
  incredible city, sloping inward toward the top and wrought in one solid piece
  by what means no man knows, for they are more ancient than memory. Yet lofty
  as they are with their hundred gates and two hundred turrets, the clustered
  towers within, all white beneath their golden spires, are loftier still; so
  that men on the plain around see them soaring into the sky, sometimes shining
  clear, sometimes caught at the top in tangles of cloud and mist, and sometimes
  clouded lower down with their utmost pinnacles blazing free above the vapours.
  And where Thran's gates open on the river are great wharves of marble, with
  ornate galleons of fragrant cedar and calamander riding gently at anchor, and
  strange bearded sailors sitting on casks and bales with the hieroglyphs of far
  places. Landward beyond the walls lies the farm country, where small white
  cottages dream between little hills, and narrow roads with many stone bridges
  wind gracefully among streams and gardens.  Down through this verdant land
  Carter walked at evening, and saw twilight float up from the river to the
  marvellous golden spires of Thran. And just at the hour of dusk he came to the
  southern gate, and was stopped by a red-robed sentry till he had told three
  dreams beyond belief, and proved himself a dreamer worthy to walk up Thran's
  steep mysterious streets and linger in the bazaars where the wares of the
  ornate galleons were sold. Then into that incredible city he walked; through a
  wall so thick that the gate was a tunnel, and thereafter amidst curved and
  undulant ways winding deep and narrow between the heavenward towers. Lights
  shone through grated and balconied windows, and,the sound of lutes and pipes
  stole timid from inner courts where marble fountains bubbled. Carter knew his
  
  way, and edged down through darker streets to the river, where at an old sea
  tavern he found the captains and seamen he had known in myriad other dreams.
  There he bought his passage to Celephais on a great green galleon, and there
  he stopped for the night after speaking gravely to the venerable cat of that
  inn, who blinked dozing before an enormous hearth and dreamed of old wars and
  forgotten gods.  In the morning Carter boarded the galleon bound for
  Celephais, and sat in the prow as the ropes were cast off and the long sail
  down to the Cerenerian Sea begun. For many leagues the banks were much as they
  were above Thran, with now and then a curious temple rising on the farther
  hills toward the right, and a drowsy village on the shore, with steep red
  roofs and nets spread in the sun. Mindful of his search, Carter questioned all
  the mariners closely about those whom they had met in the taverns of
  Celephais, asking the names and ways of the strange men with long, narrow
  eyes, long-lobed ears, thin noses, and pointed chins who came in dark ships
  from the north and traded onyx for the carved jade and spun gold and little
  red singing birds of Celephais. Of these men the sailors knew not much, save
  that they talked but seldom and spread a kind of awe about them.  Their land,
  very far away, was called Inquanok, and not many people cared to go thither
  because it was a cold twilight land, and said to be close to unpleasant Leng;
  although high impassable mountains towered on the side where Leng was thought
  to lie, so that none might say whether this evil plateau with its horrible
  stone villages and unmentionable monastery were really there, or whether the
  rumour were only a fear that timid people felt in the night when those
  formidable barrier peaks loomed black against a rising moon. Certainly, men
  reached Leng from very different oceans. Of other boundaries of Inquanok those
  sailors had no notion, nor had they heard of the cold waste and unknown Kadath
  save from vague unplaced report. And of the marvellous sunset city which
  Carter sought they knew nothing at all. So the traveller asked no more of far
  things, but bided his time till he might talk with those strange men from cold
  and twilight Inquanok who are the seed of such gods as carved their features
  on Ngranek.  Late in the day the galleon reached those bends of the river
  which traverse the perfumed jungles of Kied. Here Carter wished he might
  disembark, for in those tropic tangles sleep wondrous palaces of ivory, lone
  and unbroken, where once dwelt fabulous monarchs of a land whose name is
  forgotten. Spells of the Elder Ones keep those places unharmed and undecayed,
  for it is written that there may one day be need of them again; and elephant
  caravans have glimpsed them from afar by moonlight, though none dares approach
  them closely because of the guardians to which their wholeness is due. But the
  ship swept on, and dusk hushed the hum of the day, and the first stars above
  blinked answers to the early fireflies on the banks as that jungle fell far
  behind, leaving only its fragrance as a memory that it had been. And all
  through the night that galleon floated on past mysteries unseen and
  unsuspected. Once a lookout reported fires on the hills to the east, but the
  sleepy captain said they had better not be looked at too much, since it was
  highly uncertain just who or what had lit them.  In the morning the river had
  broadened out greatly, and Carter saw by the houses along the banks that they
  were close to the vast trading city of Hlanith on the Cerenerian Sea. Here the
  walls are of rugged granite, and the houses peakedly fantastic with beamed and
  plastered gables. The men of Hlanith are more like those of the waking world
  than any others in dreamland; so that the city is not sought except for
  barter, but is prized for the solid work of its artisans. The wharves of
  Hlanith are of oak, and there the galleon made fast while the captain traded
  in the taverns. Carter also went ashore, and looked curiously upon the rutted
  streets where wooden ox carts lumbered and feverish merchants cried their
  wares vacuously in the bazaars. The sea taverns were all close to the wharves
  on cobbled lanes salted with the spray of high tides, and seemed exceedingly
  ancient with their low black-beamed ceilings and casements of greenish
  bull's-eye panes. Ancient sailors in those taverns talked much of distant
  ports, and told many stories of the curious men from twilight Inquanok, but
  had little to add to what the seamen of the galleon had told. Then at last,
  
  after much unloading and loading, the ship set sail once more over the sunset
  sea, and the high walls and gables of Hlanith grew less as the last golden
  light of day lent them a wonder and beauty beyond any that men had given
  them.  Two nights and two days the galleon sailed over the Cerenerian Sea,
  sighting no land and speaking but one other vessel. Then near sunset of the
  second day there loomed up ahead the snowy peak of Aran with its gingko-trees
  swaying on the lower slope, and Carter knew that they were come to the land of
  Ooth-Nargai and the marvellous city of Celephais. Swiftly there came into
  sight the glittering minarets of that fabulous town, and the untarnished
  marble walls with their bronze statues, and the great stone bridge where
  Naraxa joins the sea. Then rose the gentle hills behind the town, with their
  groves and gardens of asphodels and the small shrines and cottages upon them;
  and far in the background the purple ridge of the Tanarians, potent and
  mystical, behind which lay forbidden ways into the waking world and toward
  other regions of dream.  The harbour was full of painted galleys, some of
  which were from the marble cloud-city of Serannian, that lies in ethereal
  space beyond where the sea meets the sky, and some of which were from more
  substantial parts of dreamland. Among these the steersman threaded his way up
  to the spice-fragrant wharves, where the galleon made fast in the dusk as the
  city's million lights began to twinkle out over the water. Ever new seemed
  this deathless city of vision, for here time has no power to tarnish or
  destroy. As it has always been is still the turquoise of Nath-Horthath, and
  the eighty orchid-wreathed priests are the same who builded it ten thousand
  years ago. Shining still is the bronze of the great gates, nor are the onyx
  pavements ever worn or broken. And the great bronze statues on the walls look
  down on merchants and camel drivers older than fable, yet without one grey
  hair in their forked beards.  Carter did not once seek out the temple or the
  palace or the citadel, but stayed by the seaward wall among traders and
  sailors. And when it was too late for rumours and legends he sought out an
  ancient tavern he knew well, and rested with dreams of the gods on unknown
  Kadath whom he sought. The next day he searched all along the quays for some
  of the strange mariners of Inquanok, but was told that none were now in port,
  their galley not being due from the north for full two weeks. He found,
  however, one Thorabonian sailor who had been to Inquanok and had worked in the
  onyx quarries of that twilight place; and this sailor said there was certainly
  a descent to the north of the peopled region, which everybody seemed to fear
  and shun. The Thorabonian opined that this desert led around the utmost rim of
  impassable peaks into Leng's horrible plateau, and that this was why men
  feared it; though he admitted there were other vague tales of evil presences
  and nameless sentinels. Whether or not this could be the fabled waste wherein
  unknown Kadath stands he did not know; but it seemed unlikely that those
  presences and sentinels, if indeed they existed, were stationed for
  nought.  On the following day Carter walked up the Street of the Pillars to
  the turquoise temple and talked with the High-Priest. Though Nath-Horthath is
  chiefly worshipped in Celephais, all the Great Ones are mentioned in diurnal
  prayers; and the priest was reasonably versed in their moods. Like Atal in
  distant Ulthar, he strongly advised against any attempts to see them;
  declaring that they are testy and capricious, and subject to strange
  protection from the mindless Other Gods from Outside, whose soul and messenger
  is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. Their jealous hiding of the marvellous
  sunset city shewed clearly that they did not wish Carter to reach it, and it
  was doubtful how they would regard a guest whose object was to see them and
  plead before them. No man had ever found Kadath in the past, and it might be
  just as well if none ever found it in the future. Such rumours as were told
  about that onyx castle of the Great Ones were not by any means
  reassuring.  Having thanked the orchid-crowned High-Priest, Carter left the
  temple and sought out the bazaar of the sheep-butchers, where the old chief of
  Celephais' cats dwelt sleek and contented. That grey and dignified being was
  sunning himself on the onyx pavement, and extended a languid paw as his caller
  approached. But when Carter repeated the passwords and introductions furnished
  
  him by the old cat general of Ulthar, the furry patriarch became very cordial
  and communicative; and told much of the secret lore known to cats on the
  seaward slopes of Ooth-Nargai. Best of all, he repeated several things told
  him furtively by the timid waterfront cats of Celephais about the men of
  Inquanok, on whose dark ships no cat will go.  It seems that these men have an
  aura not of earth about them, though that is not the reason why no cat will
  sail on their ships. The reason for this is that Inquanok holds shadows which
  no cat can endure, so that in all that cold twilight realm there is never a
  cheering purr or a homely mew. Whether it be because of things wafted over the
  impassable peaks from hypothetical Leng, or because of things filtering down
  from the chilly desert to the north, none may say; but it remains a fact that
  in that far land there broods a hint of outer space which cats do not like,
  and to which they are more sensitive than men. Therefore they will not go on
  the dark ships that seek the basalt quays of Inquanok.  The old chief of the
  cats also told him where to find his friend King Kuranes, who in Carter's
  latter dreams had reigned alternately in the rose-crystal Palace of the
  Seventy Delights at Celephais and in the turreted cloud-castle of sky-floating
  Serannian. It seemed that he could no more find content in those places, but
  had formed a mighty longing for the English cliffs and downlands of his
  boyhood; where in little dreaming villages England's old songs hover at
  evening behind lattice windows, and where grey church towers peep lovely
  through the verdure of distant valleys. He could not go back to these things
  in the waking world because his body was dead; but he had done the next best
  thing and dreamed a small tract of such countryside in the region east of the
  city where meadows roll gracefully up from the sea-cliffs to the foot of the
  Tanarian Hills. There he dwelt in a grey Gothic manor-house of stone looking
  on the sea, and tried to think it was ancient Trevor Towers, where he was born
  and where thirteen generations of his forefathers had first seen the light.
  And on the coast nearby he had built a little Cornish fishing village with
  steep cobbled ways, settling therein such people as had the most English
  faces, and seeking ever to teach them the dear remembered accents of old
  Cornwall fishers. And in a valley not far off he had reared a great Norman
  Abbey whose tower he could see from his window, placing around it in the
  churchyard grey stones with the names of his ancestors carved thereon, and
  with a moss somewhat like Old England's moss. For though Kuranes was a monarch
  in the land of dream, with all imagined pomps and marvels, splendours and
  beauties, ecstasies and delights, novelties and excitements at his command, he
  would gladly have resigned forever the whole of his power and luxury and
  freedom for one blessed day as a simple boy in that pure and quiet England,
  that ancient, beloved England which had moulded his being and of which he must
  always be immutably a part.  So when Carter bade that old grey chief of the
  cats adieu, he did not seek the terraced palace of rose crystal but walked out
  the eastern gate and across the daisied fields toward a peaked gable which he
  glimpsed through the oaks of a park sloping up to the sea-cliffs. And in time
  he came to a great hedge and a gate with a little brick lodge, and when he
  rang the bell there hobbled to admit him no robed and annointed lackey of the
  palace, but a small stubby old man in a smock who spoke as best he could in
  the quaint tones of far Cornwall. And Carter walked up the shady path between
  trees as near as possible to England's trees, and clumbed the terraces among
  gardens set out as in Queen Anne's time. At the door, flanked by stone cats in
  the old way, he was met by a whiskered butler in suitable livery; and was
  presently taken to the library where Kuranes, Lord of Ooth-Nargai and the Sky
  around Serannian, sat pensive in a chair by the window looking on his little
  seacoast village and wishing that his old nurse would come in and scold him
  because he was not ready for that hateful lawn-party at the vicar's, with the
  carriage waiting and his mother nearly out of patience.  Kuranes, clad in a
  dressing gown of the sort favoured by London tailors in his youth, rose
  eagerly to meet his guest; for the sight of an Anglo-Saxon from the waking
  world was very dear to him, even if it was a Saxon from Boston, Massachusetts,
  instead of from Cornwall. And for long they talked of old times, having much
  
  to say because both were old dreamers and well versed in the wonders of
  incredible places. Kuranes, indeed, had been out beyond the stars in the
  ultimate void, and was said to be the only one who had ever returned sane from
  such a voyage.  At length Carter brought up the subject of his quest, and
  asked of his host those questions he had asked of so many others. Kuranes did
  not know where Kadath was, or the marvellous sunset city; but he did know that
  the Great Ones were very dangerous creatures to seek out, and that the Other
  Gods had strange ways of protecting them from impertinent curiosity. He had
  learned much of the Other Gods in distant parts of space, especially in that
  region where form does not exist, and coloured gases study the innermost
  secrets. The violet gas S'ngac had told him terrible things of the crawling
  chaos Nyarlathotep, and had warned him never to approach the central void
  where the daemon sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in the dark.  Altogether, it
  was not well to meddle with the Elder Ones; and if they persistently denied
  all access to the marvellous sunset city, it were better not to seek that
  city.  Kuranes furthermore doubted whether his guest would profit aught by
  coming to the city even were he to gain it. He himself had dreamed and yearned
  long years for lovely Celephais and the land of Ooth-Nargai, and for the
  freedom and colour and high experience of life devoid of its chains, and
  conventions, and stupidities. But now that he was come into that city and that
  land, and was the king thereof, he found the freedom and the vividness all too
  soon worn out, and monotonous for want of linkage with anything firm in his
  feelings and memories. He was a king in Ooth-Nargai, but found no meaning
  therein, and drooped always for the old familiar things of England that had
  shaped his youth. All his kingdom would he give for the sound of Cornish
  church bells over the downs, and all the thousand minarets of Celephais for
  the steep homely roofs of the village near his home. So he told his guest that
  the unknown sunset city might not hold quite that content he sought, and that
  perhaps it had better remain a glorious and half-remembered dream. For he had
  visited Carter often in the old waking days, and knew well the lovely New
  England slopes that had given him birth.  At the last, he was very certain,
  the seeker would long only for the early remembered scenes; the glow of Beacon
  Hill at evening, the tall steeples and winding hill streets of quaint
  Kingsport, the hoary gambrel roofs of ancient and witch-haunted Arkham, and
  the blessed meads and valleys where stone walls rambled and white farmhouse
  gables peeped out from bowers of verdure. These things he told Randolph
  Carter, but still the seeker held to his purpose. And in the end they parted
  each with his own conviction, and Carter went back through the bronze gate
  into Celephais and down the Street of Pillars to the old sea wall, where he
  talked more with the mariners of far ports and waited for the dark ship from
  cold and twilight Inquanok, whose strange-faced sailors and onyx-traders had
  in them the blood of the Great Ones.  One starlit evening when the Pharos
  shone splendid over the harbour the longed-for ship put in, and strange-faced
  sailors and traders appeared one by one and group by group in the ancient
  taverns along the sea wall. It was very exciting to see again those living
  faces so like the godlike features of Ngranek, but Carter did not hasten to
  speak with the silent seamen. He did not know how much of pride and secrecy
  and dim supernal memory might fill those children of the Great Ones, and was
  sure it would not be wise to tell them of his quest or ask too closely of that
  cold desert stretching north of their twilight land. They talked little with
  the other folk in those ancient sea taverns; but would gather in groups in
  remote comers and sing among themselves the haunting airs of unknown places,
  or chant long tales to one another in accents alien to the rest of dreamland.
  And so rare and moving were those airs and tales that one might guess their
  wonders from the faces of those who listened, even though the words came to
  common ears only as strange cadence and obscure melody.  For a week the
  strange seamen lingered in the taverns and traded in the bazaars of Celephais,
  and before they sailed Carter had taken passage on their dark ship, telling
  them that he was an old onyx miner and wishful to work in their quarries. That
  ship was very lovey and cunningly wrought, being of teakwood with ebony
  
  fittings and traceries of gold, and the cabin in which the traveller lodged
  had hangings of silk and velvet. One morning at the turn of the tide the sails
  were raised and the anchor lilted, and as Carter stood on the high stern he
  saw the sunrise-blazing walls and bronze statues and golden minarets of
  ageless Celephais sink into the distance, and the snowy peak of Mount Man grow
  smaller and smaller. By noon there was nothing in sight save the gentle blue
  of the Cerenerian Sea, with one painted galley afar off bound for that realm
  of Serannian where the sea meets the sky.  And the night came with gorgeous
  stars, and the dark ship steered for Charles' Wain and the Little Bear as they
  swung slowly round the pole. And the sailors sang strange songs of unknown
  places, and they stole off one by one to the forecastle while the wistful
  watchers murmured old chants and leaned over the rail to glimpse the luminous
  fish playing in bowers beneath the sea. Carter went to sleep at midnight, and
  rose in the glow of a young morning, marking that the sun seemed farther south
  than was its wont. And all through that second day he made progress in knowing
  the men of the ship, getting them little by little to talk of their cold
  twilight land, of their exquisite onyx city, and of their fear of the high and
  impassable peaks beyond which Leng was said to be. They told him how sorry
  they were that no cats would stay in the land of Inquanok, and how they
  thought the hidden nearness of Leng was to blame for it. Only of the stony
  desert to the north they would not talk. There was something disquieting about
  that desert, and it was thought expedient not to admit its existence.  On
  later days they talked of the quarries in which Carter said he was going to
  work. There were many of them, for all the city of Inquanok was builded of
  onyx, whilst great polished blocks of it were traded in Rinar, Ogrothan, and
  Celephais and at home with the merchants of Thraa, Flarnek, and Kadatheron,
  for the beautiful wares of those fabulous ports. And far to the north, almost
  in the cold desert whose existence the men of Inquanok did not care to admit,
  there was an unused quarry greater than all the rest; from which had been hewn
  in forgotten times such prodigious lumps and blocks that the sight of their
  chiselled vacancies struck terror to all who beheld. Who had mined those
  incredible blocks, and whither they had been transported, no man might say;
  but it was thought best not to trouble that quarry, around which such inhuman
  memories might conceivably cling. So it was left all alone in the twilight,
  with only the raven and the rumoured Shantak-bird to brood on its immensities.
  when Carter heard of this quarry he was moved to deep thought, for he knew
  from old tales that the Great Ones' castle atop unknown Kadath is of
  onyx.  Each day the sun wheeled lower and lower in the sky, and the mists
  overhead grew thicker and thicker. And in two weeks there was not any sunlight
  at all, but only a weird grey twilight shining through a dome of eternal cloud
  by day, and a cold starless phosphorescence from the under side of that cloud
  by night. On the twentieth day a great jagged rock in the sea was sighted from
  afar, the first land glimpsed since Man's snowy peak had dwindled behind the
  ship. Carter asked the captain the name of that rock, but was told that it had
  no name and had never been sought by any vessel because of the sounds that
  came from it at night. And when, after dark, a dull and ceaseless howling
  arose from that jagged granite place, the traveller was glad that no stop had
  been made, and that the rock had no name. The seamen prayed and chanted till
  the noise was out of earshot, and Carter dreamed terrible dreams within dreams
  in the small hours.  Two mornings after that there loomed far ahead and to the
  east a line of great grey peaks whose tops were lost in the changeless clouds
  of that twilight world. And at the sight of them the sailors sang glad songs,
  and some knelt down on the deck to pray, so that Carter knew they were come to
  the land of Inquanok and would soon be moored to the basalt quays of the great
  town bearing that land's name. Toward noon a dark coastline appeared, and
  before three o'clock there stood out against the north the bulbous domes and
  fantastic spires of the onyx city. Rare and curious did that archaic city rise
  above its walls and quays, all of delicate black with scrolls, flutings, and
  arabesques of inlaid gold. Tall and many-windowed were the houses, and carved
  on every side with flowers and patterns whose dark symmetries dazzled the eye
  
  with a beauty more poignant than light. Some ended in swelling domes that
  tapered to a point, others in terraced pyramids whereon rose clustered
  minarets displaying every phase of strangeness and imagination. The walls were
  low, and pierced by frequent gates, each under a great arch rising high above
  the general level and capped by the head of a god chiselled with that same
  skill displayed in the monstrous face on distant Ngranek. On a hill in the
  centre rose a sixteen-angled tower greater than all the rest and bearing a
  high pinnacled belfry resting on a flattened dome. This, the seamen said, was
  the Temple of the Elder Ones, and was ruled by an old High-Priest sad with
  inner secrets.  At intervals the clang of a strange bell shivered over the
  onyx city, answered each time by a peal of mystic music made up of horns,
  viols, and chanting voices. And from a row of tripods on a galley round the
  high dome of the temple there burst flares of flame at certain moments; for
  the priests and people of that city were wise in the primal mysteries, and
  faithful in keeping the rhythms of the Great Ones as set forth in scrolls
  older than the Pnakotic Manuscripts. As the ship rode past the great basalt
  breakwater into the harbour the lesser noises of the city grew manifest, and
  Carter saw the slaves, sailors, and merchants on the docks. The sailors and
  merchants were of the strange-faced race of the gods, but the slaves were
  squat, slant-eyed folk said by rumour to have drifted somehow across or around
  the impassable peaks from the valleys beyond Leng. The wharves reached wide
  outside the city wall and bore upon them all manner of merchandise from the
  galleys anchored there, while at one end were great piles of onyx both carved
  and uncarved awaiting shipment to the far markets of Rinar, Ograthan and
  Celephais.  It was not yet evening when the dark ship anchored beside a
  jutting quay of stone, and all the sailors and traders filed ashore and
  through the arched gate into the city. The streets of that city were paved
  with onyx and some of them were wide and straight whilst others were crooked
  and narrow. The houses near the water were lower than the rest, and bore above
  their curiously arched doorways certain signs of gold said to be in honour of
  the respective small gods that favoured each. The captain of the ship took
  Carter to an old sea tavern where flocked the mariners of quaint countries,
  and promised that he would next day shew him the wonders of the twilight city,
  and lead him to the taverns of the onyx-miners by the northern wall. And
  evening fell, and little bronze lamps were lighted, and the sailors in that
  tavern sang songs of remote places. But when from its high tower the great
  bell shivered over the city, and the peal of the horns and viols and voices
  rose cryptical in answer thereto, all ceased their songs or tales and bowed
  silent till the. last echo died away. For there is a wonder and a strangeness
  on the twilight city of Inquanok, and men fear to be lax in its rites lest a
  doom and a vengeance lurk unsuspectedly close.  Far in the shadows of that
  tavern Carter saw a squat form he did not like, for it was unmistakably that
  of the old slant-eyed merchant he had seen so long before in the taverns of
  Dylath-Leen, who was reputed to trade with the horrible stone villages of Leng
  which no healthy folk visit and whose evil fires are seen at night from afar,
  and even to have dealt with that High-Priest Not To Be Described, which wears
  a yellow silken mask over its face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone
  monastery. This man had seemed to shew a queer gleam of knowing when Carter
  asked the traders of DylathLeen about the cold waste and Kadath; and somehow
  his presence in dark and haunted Inquanok, so close to the wonders of the
  north, was not a reassuring thing. He slipped wholly out of sight before
  Carter could speak to him, and sailors later said that he had come with a yak
  caravan from some point not well determined, bearing the colossal and
  rich-flavoured eggs of the rumoured Shantak-bird to trade for the dextrous
  jade goblets that merchants brought from Ilarnek.  On the following morning
  the ship-captain led Carter through the onyx streets of Inquanok, dark under
  their twilight sky. The inlaid doors and figured house-fronts, carven
  balconies and crystal-paned oriels all gleamed with a sombre and polished
  loveliness; and now and then a plaza would open out with black pillars,
  colonades, and the statues of curious beings both human and fabulous. Some of
  
  the vistas down long and unbending streets, or through side alleys and over
  bulbous domes, spires, and arabesqued roofs, were weird and beautiful beyond
  words; and nothing was more splendid than the massive heights of the great
  central Temple of the Elder Ones with its sixteen carven sides, its flattened
  dome, and its lofty pinnacled belfry, overtopping all else, and majestic
  whatever its foreground. And always to the east, far beyond the city walls and
  the leagues of pasture land, rose the gaunt grey sides of those topless and
  impassable peaks across which hideous Leng was said to lie.  The captain took
  Carter to the mighty temple, which is set with its walled garden in a great
  round plaza whence the streets go as spokes from a wheel's hub. The seven
  arched gates of that garden, each having over it a carven face like those on
  the city's gates, are always open, and the people roam reverently at will down
  the tiled paths and through the little lanes lined with grotesque termini and
  the shrines of modest gods. And there are fountains, pools, and basins there
  to reflect the frequent blaze of the tripods on the high balcony, all of onyx
  and having in them small luminous fish taken by divers from the lower bowers
  of ocean. When the deep clang from the temple belfry shivers over the garden
  and the city, and the answer of the horns and viols and voices peals out from
  the seven lodges by the garden gates, there issue from the seven doors of the
  temple long columns of masked and hooded priests in black, bearing at arm's
  length before them great golden bowls from which a curious steam rises. And
  all the seven columns strut peculiarly in single file, legs thrown far forward
  without bending the knees, down the walks that lead to the seven lodges,
  wherein they disappear and do not appear again. It is said that subterrene
  paths connect the lodges with the temple, and that the long files of priests
  return through them; nor is it unwhispered that deep flights of onyx steps go
  down to mysteries that are never told. But only a few are those who hint that
  the priests in the masked and hooded columns are not human beings.  Carter did
  not enter the temple, because none but the Veiled King is permitted to do
  that. But before he left the garden the hour of the bell came, and he heard
  the shivering clang deafening above him, and the wailing of the horns and
  viols and voices loud from the lodges by the gates. And down the seven great
  walks stalked the long files of bowl-bearing priests in their singular way,
  giving to the traveller a fear which human priests do not often give. When the
  last of them had vanished he left that garden, noting as he did so a spot on
  the pavement over which the bowls had passed. Even the ship-captain did not
  like that spot, and hurried him on toward the hill whereon the Veiled King's
  palace rises many-domed and marvellous.  The ways to the onyx palace are steep
  and narrow, all but the broad curving one where the king and his companions
  ride on yaks or in yak-drawn chariots. Carter and his guide climbed up an
  alley that was all steps, between inlaid walls hearing strange signs in gold,
  and under balconies and oriels whence sometimes floated soft strains of music
  or breaths of exotic fragrance. Always ahead loomed those titan walls, mighty
  buttresses, and clustered and bulbous domes for which the Veiled King's palace
  is famous; and at length they passed under a great black arch and emerged in
  the gardens of the monarch's pleasure. There Carter paused in faintness at so
  much beauty, for the onyx terraces and colonnaded walks, the gay porterres and
  delicate flowering trees espaliered to golden lattices, the brazen urns and
  tripods with cunning bas-reliefs, the pedestalled and almost breathing statues
  of veined black marble, the basalt-bottomed lagoon's tiled fountains with
  luminous fish, the tiny temples of iridescent singing birds atop carven
  columns, the marvellous scrollwork of the great bronze gates, and the
  blossoming vines trained along every inch of the polished walls all joined to
  form a sight whose loveliness was beyond reality, and half-fabulous even in
  the land of dreams. There it shimmered like a vision under that grey twilight
  sky, with the domed and fretted magnificence of the palace ahead, and the
  fantastic silhouette of the distant impassable peaks on the right. And ever
  the small birds and the fountains sang, while the perfume of rare blossoms
  spread like a veil over that incredible garden. No other human presence was
  there, and Carter was glad it was so. Then they turned and descended again the
  
  onyx alley of steps, for the palace itself no visitor may enter; and it is not
  well to look too long and steadily at the great central dome, since it is said
  to house the archaic father of all the rumoured Shantak-birds, and to send out
  queer dreams to the curious.  After that the captain took Carter to the north
  quarter of the town, near the Gate of the Caravans, where are the taverns of
  the yak-merchants and the onyx-miners. And there, in a low-ceiled inn of
  quarrymen, they said farewell; for business called the captain whilst Carter
  was eager to talk with miners about the north. There were many men in that
  inn, and the traveller was not long in speaking to some of them; saying that
  he was an old miner of onyx, and anxious to know somewhat of Inquanok's
  quarries. But all that he learned was not much more than he knew before, for
  the miners were timid and evasive about the cold desert to the north and the
  quarry that no man visits. They had fears of fabled emissaries from around the
  mountains where Leng is said to lie, and of evil presences and nameless
  sentinels far north among the scattered rocks. And they whispered also that
  the rumoured Shantak-birds are no wholesome things; it being. indeed for the
  best that no man has ever truly seen one (for that fabled father of Shantaks
  in the king's dome is fed in the dark).  The next day, saying that he wished
  to look over all the various mines for himself and to visit the scattered
  farms and quaint onyx villages of Inquanok, Carter hired a yak and stuffed
  great leathern saddle-bags for a journey. Beyond the Gate of the Caravans the
  road lay straight betwixt tilled fields, with many odd farmhouses crowned by
  low domes. At some of these houses the seeker stopped to ask questions; once
  finding a host so austere and reticent, and so full of an unplaced majesty
  like to that in the huge features on Ngranek, that he felt certain he had come
  at last upon one of the Great Ones themselves, or upon one with full
  nine-tenths of their blood, dwelling amongst men. And to that austere and
  reticent cotter he was careful to speak very well of the gods, and to praise
  all the blessings they had ever accorded him.  That night Carter camped in a
  roadside meadow beneath a great lygath-tree to which he tied his yak, and in
  the morning resumed his northward pilgrimage. At about ten o'clock he reached
  the small-domed village of Urg, where traders rest and miners tell their
  tales, and paused in its taverns till noon. It is here that the great caravan
  road turns west toward Selarn, but Carter kept on north by the quarry road.
  All the afternoon he followed that rising road, which was somewhat narrower
  than the great highway, and which now led through a region with more rocks
  than tilled fields. And by evening the low hills on his left had risen into
  sizable black cliffs, so that he knew he was close to the mining country. All
  the while the great gaunt sides of the impassable mountains towered afar off
  at his right, and the farther he went, the worse tales he heard of them from
  the scattered farmers and traders and drivers of lumbering onyx-carts along
  the way.  On the second night he camped in the shadow of a large black crag,
  tethering his yak to a stake driven in the ground. He observed the greater
  phosphorescence of the clouds at his northerly point, and more than once
  thought he saw dark shapes outlined against them. And on the third morning he
  came in sight of the first onyx quarry, and greeted the men who there laboured
  with picks and chisels. Before evening he had passed eleven quarries; the land
  being here given over altogether to onyx cliffs and boulders, with no
  vegetation at all, but only great rocky fragments scattered about a floor of
  black earth, with the grey impassable peaks always rising gaunt and sinister
  on his right. The third night he spent in a camp of quarry men whose
  flickering fires cast weird reflections on the polished cliffs to the west.
  And they sang many songs and told many tales, shewing such strange knowledge
  of the olden days and the habits of gods that Carter could see they held many
  latent memories of their sires the Great Ones. They asked him whither he went,
  and cautioned him not to go too far to the north; but he replied that he was
  seeking new cliffs of onyx, and would take no more risks than were common
  among prospectors. In the morning he bade them adieu and rode on into the
  darkening north, where they had warned him he would find the feared and
  unvisited quarry whence hands older than men's hands had wrenched prodigious
  
  blocks. But he did not like it when, turning back to wave a last farewell, he
  thought he saw approaching the camp that squat and evasive old merchant with
  slanting eyes, whose conjectured traffick with Leng was the gossip of distant
  Dylath-Leen.  After two more quarries the inhabited part of Inquanok seemed to
  end, and the road narrowed to a steeply rising yak-path among forbidding black
  cliffs. Always on the right towered the gaunt and distant peaks, and as Carter
  climbed farther and farther into this untraversed realm he found it grew
  darker and colder. Soon he perceived that there were no prints of feet or
  hooves on the black path beneath, and realised that he was indeed come into
  strange and deserted ways of elder time. Once in a while a raven would croak
  far overhead, and now and then a flapping behind some vast rock would make him
  think uncomfortably of the rumoured Shantak-bird. But in the main he was alone
  with his shaggy steed, and it troubled him to observe that this excellent yak
  became more and more reluctant to advance, and more and more disposed to snort
  affrightedly at any small noise along the route.  The path now contracted
  between sable and glistening walls, and began to display an even greater
  steepness than before. It was a bad footing, and the yak often slipped on the
  stony fragments strewn thickly about. In two hours Carter saw ahead a definite
  crest, beyond which was nothing but dull grey sky, and blessed the prospect of
  a level or downward course. To reach this crest, however, was no easy task;
  for the way had grown nearly perpendicular, and was perilous with loose black
  gravel and small stones. Eventually Carter dismounted and led his dubious yak;
  pulling very hard when the animal balked or stumbled, and keeping his own
  footing as best he might. Then suddenly he came to the top and saw beyond, and
  gasped at what he saw.  The path indeed led straight ahead and slightly down,
  with the same lines of high natural walls as before; but on the left hand
  there opened out a monstrous space, vast acres in extent, where some archaic
  power had riven and rent the native cliffs of onyx in the form of a giant's
  quarry. Far back into the solid precipice ran that cyclopean gouge, and deep
  down within earth's bowels its lower delvings yawned. It was no quarry of man,
  and the concave sides were scarred with great squares, yards wide, which told
  of the size of the blocks once hewn by nameless hands and chisels. High over
  its jagged rim huge ravens flapped and croaked, and vague whirrings in the
  unseen depths told of bats or urhags or less mentionable presences haunting
  the endless blackness. There Carter stood in the narrow way amidst the
  twilight with the rocky path sloping down before him; tall onyx cliffs on his
  right that led on as far as he could see and tall cliffs on the left chopped
  off just ahead to make that terrible and unearthly quarry.  All at once the
  yak uttered a cry and burst from his control, leaping past him and darting on
  in a panic till it vanished down the narrow slope toward the north. Stones
  kicked by its flying hooves fell over the brink of the quarry and lost
  themselves in the dark without any sound of striking bottom; but Carter
  ignored the perils of that scanty path as he raced breathlessly after the
  flying steed. Soon the left-behind cliffs resumed their course, making the way
  once more a narrow lane; and still the traveller leaped on after the yak whose
  great wide prints told of its desperate flight.  Once he thought he heard the
  hoofbeats of the frightened beast, and doubled his speed from this
  encouragement. He was covering miles, and little by little the way was
  broadening in front till he knew he must soon emerge on the cold and dreaded
  desert to the north. The gaunt grey flanks of the distant impassable peaks
  were again visible above the right-hand crags, and ahead were the rocks and
  boulders of an open space which was clearly a foretaste of the dark arid
  limitless plain. And once more those hoofbeats sounded in his ears, plainer
  than before, but this time giving terror instead of encouragement because he
  realised that they were not the frightened hoofbeats of his fleeing yak. The
  beats were ruthless and purposeful, and they were behind him.  Carter's
  pursuit of the yak became now a flight from an unseen thing, for though he
  dared not glance over his shoulder he felt that the presence behind him could
  be nothing wholesome or mentionable. His yak must have heard or felt it first,
  and he did not like to ask himself whether it had followed him from the haunts
  
  of men or had floundered up out of that black quarry pit. Meanwhile the cliffs
  had been left behind, so that the oncoming night fell over a great waste of
  sand and spectral rocks wherein all paths were lost. He could not see the
  hoofprints of his yak, but always from behind him there came that detestable
  clopping; mingled now and then with what he fancied were titanic flappings and
  whirrings. That he was losing ground seemed unhappily clear to him, and he
  knew he was hopelessly lost in this broken and blasted desert of meaningless
  rocks and untravelled sands. Only those remote and impassable peaks on the
  right gave him any sense of direction, and even they were less clear as the
  grey twilight waned and the sickly phosphorescence of the clouds took its
  place.  Then dim and misty in the darkling north before him he glimpsed a
  terrible thing. He had thought it for some moments a range of black mountains,
  but now he saw it was something more. The phosphorescence of the brooding
  clouds shewed it plainly, and even silhouetted parts of it as vapours glowed
  behind. How distant it was he could not tell, but it must have been very far.
  It was thousands of feet high, stretching in a great concave arc from the grey
  impassable peaks to the unimagined westward spaces, and had once indeed been a
  ridge of mighty onyx hills. But now these hills were hills no more, for some
  hand greater than man's had touched them. Silent they squatted there atop the
  world like wolves or ghouls, crowned with clouds and mists and guarding the
  secrets of the north forever. All in a great half circle they squatted, those
  dog-like mountains carven into monstrous watching statues, and their right
  hands were raised in menace against mankind.  It was only the flickering light
  of the clouds that made their mitred double heads seem to move, but as Carter
  stumbled on he saw arise from their shadowy caps great forms whose motions
  were no delusion. Winged and whirring, those forms grew larger each moment,
  and the traveller knew his stumbling was at an end. They were not any birds or
  bats known elsewhere on earth or in dreamland, for they were larger than
  elephants and had heads like a horse's. Carter knew that they must be the
  Shantak-birds of ill rumour, and wondered no more what evil guardians and
  nameless sentinels made men avoid the boreal rock desert. And as he stopped in
  final resignation he dared at last to look behind him, where indeed was
  trotting the squat slant-eyed trader of evil legend, grinning astride a lean
  yak and leading on a noxious horde of leering Shantaks to whose wings still
  clung the rime and nitre of the nether pits.  Trapped though he was by
  fabulous and hippocephalic winged nightmares that pressed around in great
  unholy circles, Randolph Carter did not lose consciousness. Lofty and horrible
  those titan gargoyles towered above him, while the slant-eyed merchant leaped
  down from his yak and stood grinning before the captive. Then the man motioned
  Carter to mount one of the repugnant Shantaks, helping him up as his judgement
  struggled with his loathing. It was hard work ascending, for the Shantak-bird
  has scales instead of feathers, and those scales are very slippery. Once he
  was seated, the slant-eyed man hopped up behind him, leaving the lean yak to
  be led away northward toward the ring of carven mountains by one of the
  incredible bird colossi.  There now followed a hideous whirl through frigid
  space, endlessly up and eastward toward the gaunt grey flanks of those
  impassable mountains beyond which Leng was said to be. Far above the clouds
  they flew, till at last there lay beneath them those fabled summits which the
  folk of Inquanok have never seen, and which lie always in high vortices of
  gleaming mist. Carter beheld them very plainly as they passed below, and saw
  upon their topmost peaks strange caves which made him think of those on
  Ngranek; but he did not question his captor about these things when he noticed
  that both the man and the horse-headed Shantak appeared oddly fearful of them,
  hurrying past nervously and shewing great tension until they were left far in
  the rear.  The Shantak now flew lower, revealing beneath the canopy of cloud a
  grey barren plain whereon at great distances shone little feeble fires. As
  they descended there appeared at intervals lone huts of granite and bleak
  stone villages whose tiny windows glowed with pallid light. And there came
  from those huts and villages a shrill droning of pipes and a nauseous rattle
  of crotala which proved at once that Inquanok's people are right in their
  
  geographic rumours. For travellers have heard such sounds before, and know
  that they float only from the cold desert plateau which healthy folk never
  visit; that haunted place of evil and mystery which is Leng.  Around the
  feeble fires dark forms were dancing, and Carter was curious as to what manner
  of beings they might be; for no healthy folk have ever been to Leng, and the
  place is known only by its fires and stone huts as seen from afar. Very slowly
  and awkwardly did those forms leap, and with an insane twisting and bending
  not good to behold; so that Carter did not wonder at the monstrous evil
  imputed to them by vague legend, or the fear in which all dreamland holds
  their abhorrent frozen plateau. As the Shantak flew lower, the repulsiveness
  of the dancers became tinged with a certain hellish familiarity; and the
  prisoner kept straining his eyes and racking his memory for clues to where he
  had seen such creatures before.  They leaped as though they had hooves instead
  of feet, and seemed to wear a sort of wig or headpiece with small horns. Of
  other clothing they had none, but most of them were quite furry. Behind they
  had dwarfish tails, and when they glanced upward he saw the excessive width of
  their mouths. Then he knew what they were, and that they did not wear any wigs
  or headpieces after all. For the cryptic folk of Leng were of one race with
  the uncomfortable merchants of the black galleys that traded rubies at
  Dylath-Leen; those not quite human merchants who are the slaves of the
  monstrous moon-things! They were indeed the same dark folk who had shanghaied
  Carter on their noisome galley so long ago, and whose kith he had seen driven
  in herds about the unclean wharves of that accursed lunar city, with the
  leaner ones toiling and the fatter ones taken away in crates for other needs
  of their polypous and amorphous masters. Now he saw where such ambiguous
  creatures came from, and shuddered at the thought that Leng must be known to
  these formless abominations from the moon.  But the Shantak flew on past the
  fires and the stone huts and the less than human dancers, and soared over
  sterile hills of grey granite and dim wastes of rock and ice and snow. Day
  came, and the phosphorescence of low clouds gave place to the misty twilight
  of that northern world, and still the vile bird winged meaningly through the
  cold and silence. At times the slant-eyed man talked with his steed in a
  hateful and guttural language, and the Shantak would answer with tittering
  tones that rasped like the scratching of ground glass. AlI this while the land
  was getting higher, and finally they came to a wind-swept table-land which
  seemed the very roof of a blasted and tenantless world. There, all alone in
  the hush and the dusk and the cold, rose the uncouth stones of a squat
  windowless building, around which a circle of crude monoliths stood. In all
  this arrangement there was nothing human, and Carter surmised from old tales
  that he was indeed come to that most dreadful and legendary of all places, the
  remote and prehistoric monastery wherein dwells uncompanioned the High-Priest
  Not To Be Described, which wears a yellow silken mask over its face and prays
  to the Other Gods and their crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.  The loathsome bird
  now settled to the ground, and the slant-eyed man hopped down and helped his
  captive alight. Of the purpose of his seizure Carter now felt very sure; for
  clearly the slant-eyed merchant was an agent of the darker powers, eager to
  drag before his masters a mortal whose presumption had aimed at the finding of
  unknown Kadath and the saying of a prayer before the faces of the Great Ones
  in their onyx castle. It seemed likely that this merchant had caused his
  former capture by the slaves of the moon-things in Dylath-Leen, and that he
  now meant to do what the rescuing cats had baffled; taking the victim to some
  dread rendezvous with monstrous Nyarlathotep and telling with what boldness
  the seeking of unknown Kadath had been tried. Leng and the cold waste north of
  Inquanok must be close to the Other Gods, and there the passes to Kadath are
  well guarded.  The slant-eyed man was small, but the great hippocephalic bird
  was there to see he was obeyed; so Carter followed where he led, and passed
  within the circle of standing rocks and into the low arched doorway of that
  windowless stone monastery. There were no lights inside, but the evil merchant
  lit a small clay lamp bearing morbid bas-reliefs and prodded his prisoner on
  through mazes of narrow winding corridors. On the walls of the corridors were
  
  printed frightful scenes older than history, and in a style unknown to the
  archaeologists of earth. After countless aeons their pigments were brilliant
  still, for the cold and dryness of hideous Leng keep alive many primal things.
  Carter saw them fleetingly in the rays of that dim and moving lamp, and
  shuddered at the tale they told.  Through those archaic frescoes Leng's annals
  stalked; and the horned, hooved, and wide-mouthed almost-humans danced evilly
  amidst forgotten cities. There were scenes of old wars, wherein Leng's
  almost-humans fought with the bloated purple spiders of the neighbouring
  vales; and there were scenes also of the coming of the black galleys from the
  moon, and of the submission of Leng's people to the polypous and amorphous
  blasphemies that hopped and floundered and wriggled out of them. Those
  slippery greyish-white blasphemies they worshipped as gods, nor ever
  complained when scores of their best and fatted males were taken away in the
  black galleys. The monstrous moon-beasts made their camp on a jagged isle in
  the sea, and Carter could tell from the frescoes that this was none other than
  the lone nameless rock he had seen when sailing to Inquanok; that grey
  accursed rock which Inquanok's seamen shun, and from which vile howlings
  reverberate all through the night.  And in those frescoes was shewn the great
  seaport and capital of the almost-humans; proud and pillared betwixt the
  cliffs and the basalt wharves, and wondrous with high fanes and carven places.
  Great gardens and columned streets led from the cliffs and from each of the
  six sphinx-crowned gates to a vast central plaza, and in that plaza was a pair
  of winged colossal lions guarding the top of a subterrene staircase. Again and
  again were those huge winged lions shewn, their mighty flanks of diarite
  glistening in the grey twilight of the day and the cloudy phosphorescence of
  the night. And as Carter stumbled past their frequent and repeated pictures it
  came to him at last what indeed they were, and what city it was that the
  almost-humans had ruled so anciently before the coming of the black galleys.
  There could be no mistake, for the legends of dreamland are generous and
  profuse. Indubitably that primal city was no less a place than storied
  Sarkomand, whose ruins had bleached for a million years before the first true
  human saw the light, and whose twin titan lions guard eternally the steps that
  lead down from dreamland to the Great Abyss.  Other views shewed the gaunt
  grey peaks dividing Leng from Inquanok, and the monstrous Shantak-birds that
  build nests on the ledges half way up. And they shewed likewise the curious
  caves near the very topmost pinnacles, and how even the boldest of the
  Shantaks fly screaming away from them. Carter had seen those caves when he
  passed over them, and had noticed their likeness to the caves on Ngranek. Now
  he knew that the likeness was more than a chance one, for in these pictures
  were shewn their fearsome denizens; and those bat-wings, curving horns, barbed
  tails, prehensile paws and rubbery bodies were not strange to him. He had met
  those silent, flitting and clutching creatures before; those mindless
  guardians of the Great Abyss whom even the Great Ones fear, and who own not
  Nyarlathotep but hoary Nodens as their lord. For they were the dreaded
  night-gaunts, who never laugh or smile because they have no faces, and who
  flop unendingly in the dark betwixt the Vale of Pnath and the passes to the
  outer world.  The slant-eyed merchant had now prodded Carter into a great
  domed space whose walls were carved in shocking bas-reliefs, and whose centre
  held a gaping circular pit surrounded by six malignly stained stone altars in
  a ring. There was no light in this vast evil-smelling crypt, and the small
  lamp of the sinister merchant shone so feebly that one could grasp details
  only little by little. At the farther end was a high stone dais reached by
  five steps; and there on a golden throne sat a lumpish figure robed in yellow
  silk figured with red and having a yellow silken mask over its face. To this
  being the slant-eyed man made certain signs with his hands, and the lurker in
  the dark replied by raising a disgustingly carven flute of ivory in
  silk-covered paws and blowing certain loathsome sounds from beneath its
  flowing yellow mask. This colloquy went on for some time, and to Carter there
  was something sickeningly familiar in the sound of that flute and the stench
  of the malodorous place. It made him think of a frightful red-litten city and
  
  of the revolting procession that once filed through it; of that, and of an
  awful climb through lunar countryside beyond, before the rescuing rush of
  earth's friendly cats. He knew that the creature on the dais was without doubt
  the High-Priest Not To Be Described, of which legend whispers such fiendish
  and abnormal possibilities, but he feared to think just what that abhorred
  High-Priest might be.  Then the figured silk slipped a trifle from one of the
  greyish-white paws, and Carter knew what the noisome High-Priest was. And in
  that hideous second, stark fear drove him to something his reason would never
  have dared to attempt, for in all his shaken consciousness there was room only
  for one frantic will to escape from what squatted on that golden throne. He
  knew that hopeless labyrinths of stone lay betwixt him and the cold table-land
  outside, and that even on that table-land the noxious Shantek still waited;
  yet in spite of all this there was in his mind only the instant need to get
  away from that wriggling, silk-robed monstrosity.  The slant-eyed man had set
  the curious lamp upon one of the high and wickedly stained altar-stones by the
  pit, and had moved forward somewhat to talk to the High-Priest with his hands.
  Carter, hitherto wholly passive, now gave that man a terrific push with all
  the wild strength of fear, so that the victim toppled at once into that gaping
  well which rumour holds to reach down to the hellish Vaults of Zin where Gugs
  hunt ghasts in the dark. In almost the same second he seized the lamp from the
  altar and darted out into the frescoed labyrinths, racing this way and that as
  chance determined and trying not to think of the stealthy padding of shapeless
  paws on the stones behind him, or of the silent wrigglings and crawlings which
  must be going on back there in lightless corridors.  After a few moments he
  regretted his thoughtless haste, and wished he had tried to follow backward
  the frescoes he had passed on the way in. True, they were so confused and
  duplicated that they could not have done him much good, but he wished none the
  less he had made the attempt. Those he now saw were even more horrible than
  those he had seen then, and he knew he was not in the corridors leading
  outside. In time he became quite sure he was not followed, and slackened his
  pace somewhat; but scarce had he breathed in half relief when a new peril
  beset him. His lamp was waning, and he would soon be in pitch blackness with
  no means of sight or guidance.  When the light was all gone he groped slowly
  in the dark, and prayed to the Great Ones for such help as they might afford.
  At times he felt the stone floor sloping up or down, and once he stumbled over
  a step for which no reason seemed to exist. The farther he went the damper it
  seemed to be, and when he was able to feel a junction or the mouth of a side
  passage he always chose the way which sloped downward the least. He believed,
  though, that his general course was down; and the vault-like smell and
  incrustations on the greasy walls and floor alike warned him he was burrowing
  deep in Leng's unwholesome table-land. But there was not any warning of the
  thing which came at last; only the thing itself with its terror and shock and
  breath-taking chaos. One moment he was groping slowly over the slippery floor
  of an almost level place, and the next he was shooting dizzily downward in the
  dark through a burrow which must have been well-nigh vertical.  Of the length
  of that hideous sliding he could never be sure, but it seemed to take hours of
  delirious nausea and ecstatic frenzy. Then he realized he was still, with the
  phosphorescent clouds of a northern night shining sickly above him. All around
  were crumbling walls and broken columns, and the pavement on which he lay was
  pierced by straggling grass and wrenched asunder by frequent shrubs and roots.
  Behind him a basalt cliff rose topless and perpendicular; its dark side
  sculptured into repellent scenes, and pierced by an arched and carven entrance
  to the inner blacknesses out of which he had come. Ahead stretched double rows
  of pillars, and the fragments and pedestals of pillars, that spoke of a broad
  and bygone street; and from the urns and basins along the way he knew it had
  been a great street of gardens. Far off at its end the pillars spread to mark
  a vast round plaza, and in that open circle there loomed gigantic under the
  lurid night clouds a pair of monstrous things. Huge winged lions of diarite
  they were, with blackness and shadow between them. Full twenty feet they
  reared their grotesque and unbroken heads, and snarled derisive on the ruins
  
  around them. And Carter knew right well what they must be, for legend tells of
  only one such twain. They were the changeless guardians of the Great Abyss,
  and these dark ruins were in truth primordial Sarkomand.  Carter's first act
  was to close and barricade the archway in the cliff with fallen blocks and odd
  debris that lay around. He wished no follower from Leng's hateful monastery,
  for along the way ahead would lurk enough of other dangers. Of how to get from
  Sarkomand to the peopled parts of dreamland he knew nothing at all; nor could
  he gain much by descending to the grottoes of the ghouls, since he knew they
  were no better informed than he. The three ghouls which had helped him through
  the city of Gugs to the outer world had not known how to reach Sarkomand in
  their journey back, but had planned to ask old traders in Dylath-Leen. He did
  not like to think of going again to the subterrene world of Gugs and risking
  once more that hellish tower of Koth with its Cyclopean steps leading to the
  enchanted wood, yet he felt he might have to try this course if all else
  failed. Over Leng's plateau past the lone monastery he dared not go unaided;
  for the High-Priest's emissaries must be many, while at the journey's end
  there would no doubt be the Shantaks and perhaps other things to deal with. If
  he could get a boat he might sail back to Inquanok past the jagged and hideous
  rock in the sea, for the primal frescoes in the monastery labyrinth had shewn
  that this frightful place lies not far from Sarkomand's basalt quays. But to
  find a boat in this aeon-deserted city was no probable thing, and it did not
  appear likely that he could ever make one.  Such were the thoughts of Randolph
  Carter when a new impression began beating upon his mind. All this while there
  had stretched before him the great corpse-like width of fabled Sarkomand with
  its black broken pillars and crumbling sphinx-crowned gates and titan stones
  and monstrous winged lions against the sickly glow of those luminous night
  clouds. Now he saw far ahead and on the right a glow that no clouds could
  account for, and knew he was not alone in the silence of that dead city. The
  glow rose and fell fitfully, flickering with a greenish tinge which did not
  reassure the watcher. And when he crept closer, down the littered street and
  through some narrow gaps between tumbled walls, he perceived that it was a
  campfire near the wharves with many vague forms clustered darkly around it;
  and a lethal odour hanging heavily over all. Beyond was the oily lapping of
  the harbour water with a great ship riding at anchor, and Carter paused in
  stark terror when he saw that the ship was indeed one of the dreaded black
  galleys from the moon.  Then, just as he was about to creep back from that
  detestable flame, he saw a stirring among the vague dark forms and heard a
  peculiar and unmistakable sound. It was the frightened meeping of a ghoul, and
  in a moment it had swelled to a veritable chorus of anguish. Secure as he was
  in the shadow of monstrous ruins, Carter allowed his curiosity to conquer his
  fear, and crept forward again instead of retreating. Once in crossing an open
  street he wriggled worm-like on his stomach, and in another place he had to
  rise to his feet to avoid making a noise among heaps of fallen marble. But
  always he succeeded in avoiding discovery, so that in a short time he had
  found a spot behind a titan pillar where he could watch the whole green-litten
  scene of action. There around a hideous fire fed by the obnoxious stems of
  lunar fungi, there squatted a stinking circle of the toadlike moonbeasts and
  their almost-human slaves. Some of these slaves were heating curious iron
  spears in the leaping flames, and at intervals applying their white-hot points
  to three tightly trussed prisoners that lay writhing before the leaders of the
  party. From the motions of their tentacles Carter could see that the
  blunt-snouted moonbeasts were enjoying the spectacle hugely, and vast was his
  horror when he suddenly recognised the frantic meeping and knew that the
  tortured ghouls were none other than the faithful trio which had guided him
  safely from the abyss, and had thereafter set out from the enchanted wood to
  find Sarkomand and the gate to their native deeps.  The number of malodorous
  moonbeasts about that greenish fire was very great, and Carter saw that he
  could do nothing now to save his former allies. Of how the ghouls had been
  captured he could not guess; but fancied that the grey toadlike blasphemies
  had heard them inquire in Dylath-Leen concerning the way to Sarkomand and had
  
  not wished them to approach so closely the hateful plateau of Leng and the
  High-Priest Not To Be Described. For a moment he pondered on what he ought to
  do, and recalled how near he was to the gate of the ghouls' black kingdom.
  Clearly it was wisest to creep east to the plaza of twin lions and descend at
  once to the gulf, where assuredly he would meet no horrors worse than those
  above, and where he might soon find ghouls eager to rescue their brethren and
  perhaps to wipe out the moonbeasts from the black galley. It occurred to him
  that the portal, like other gates to the abyss, might be guarded by flocks of
  night-gaunts; but he did not fear these faceless creatures now. He had learned
  that they are bound by solemn treaties with the ghouls, and the ghoul which
  was Pickman had taught him how to glibber a password they understood.  So
  Carter began another silent crawl through the ruins, edging slowly toward the
  great central plaza and the winged lions. It was ticklish work, but the
  moonbeasts were pleasantly busy and did not hear the slight noises which he
  twice made by accident among the scattered stones. At last he reached the open
  space and picked his way among the stunned trees and vines that had grown up
  therein. The gigantic lions loomed terrible above him in the sickly glow of
  the phosphorescent night clouds, but he manfully persisted toward them and
  presently crept round to their faces, knowing it was on that side he would
  find the mighty darkness which they guard. Ten feet apart crouched the
  mocking-faced beasts of diarite, brooding on cyclopean pedestals whose sides
  were chiselled in fearsome bas-reliefs. Betwixt them was a tiled court with a
  central space which had once been railed with balusters of onyx. Midway in
  this space a black well opened, and Carter soon saw that he had indeed reached
  the yawning gulf whose crusted and mouldy stone steps lead down to the crypts
  of nightmare.  Terrible is the memory of that dark descent in which hours wore
  themselves away whilst Carter wound sightlessly round and round down a
  fathomless spiral of steep and slippery stairs. So worn and narrow were the
  steps, and so greasy with the ooze of inner earth, that the climber never
  quite knew when to expect a breathless fall and hurtling down to the ultimate
  pits; and he was likewise uncertain just when or how the guardian night-gaunts
  would suddenly pounce upon him, if indeed there were any stationed in this
  primeval passage. All about him was a stifling odour of nether gulfs, and he
  felt that the air of these choking depths was not made for mankind. In time he
  became very numb and somnolent, moving more from automatic impulse than from
  reasoned will; nor did he realize any change when he stopped moving altogether
  as something quietly seized him from behind. He was flying very rapidly
  through the air before a malevolent tickling told him that the rubbery
  night-gaunts had performed their duty.  Awaked to the fact that he was in the
  cold, damp clutch of the faceless flutterers, Carter remembered the password
  of the ghouls and glibbered it as loudly as he could amidst the wind and chaos
  of flight. Mindless though night-gaunts are said to be, the effect was
  instantaneous; for all tickling stopped at once, and the creatures hastened to
  shift their captive to a more comfortable position. Thus encouraged Carter
  ventured some explanations; telling of the seizure and torture of three ghouls
  by the moonbeasts, and of the need of assembling a party to rescue them. The
  night-gaunts, though inarticulate, seemed to understand what was said; and
  shewed greater haste and purpose in their flight. Suddenly the dense blackness
  gave place to the grey twilight of inner earth, and there opened up ahead one
  of those flat sterile plains on which ghouls love to squat and gnaw. Scattered
  tombstones and osseous fragments told of the denizens of that place; and as
  Carter gave a loud meep of urgent summons, a score of burrows emptied forth
  their leathery, dog-like tenants. The night-gaunts now flew low and set their
  passenger upon his feet, afterward withdrawing a little and forming a hunched
  semicircle on the ground while the ghouls greeted the newcomer.  Carter
  glibbered his message rapidly and explicitly to the grotesque company, and
  four of them at once departed through different burrows to spread the news to
  others and gather such troops as might be available for a rescue. After a long
  wait a ghoul of some importance appeared, and made significant signs to the
  night-gaunts, causing two of the latter to fly off into the dark. Thereafter
  
  there were constant accessions to the hunched flock of night-gaunts on the
  plain, till at length the slimy soil was fairly black with them. Meanwhile
  fresh ghouls crawled out of the burrows one by one, all glibbering excitedly
  and forming in crude battle array not far from the huddled night-gaunts. In
  time there appeared that proud and influential ghoul which was once the artist
  Richard Pickman of Boston, and to him Carter glibbered a very full account of
  what had occurred. The erstwhile Pickman, pleased to greet his ancient friend
  again, seemed very much impressed, and held a conference with other chiefs a
  little apart from the growing throng.  Finally, after scanning the ranks with
  care, the assembled chiefs all meeped in unison and began glibbering orders to
  the crowds of ghouls and night-gaunts. A large detachment of the horned flyers
  vanished at once, while the rest grouped themselves two by two on their knees
  with extended forelegs, awaiting the approach of the ghouls one by one. As
  each ghoul reached the pair of night-gaunts to which he was assigned, he was
  taken up and borne away into the blackness; till at last the whole throng had
  vanished save for Carter, Pickman, and the other chiefs, and a few pairs of
  night-gaunts. Pickman explained that night-gaunts are the advance guard and
  battle steeds of the ghouls, and that the army was issuing forth to Sarkomand
  to deal with the moonbeasts. Then Carter and the ghoulish chiefs approached
  the waiting bearers and were taken up by the damp, slippery paws. Another
  moment and all were whirling in wind and darkness; endlessly up, up, up to the
  gate of the winged and the special ruins of primal Sarkomand.  When, after a
  great interval, Carter saw again the sickly light of Sarkomand's nocturnal
  sky, it was to behold the great central plaza swarming with militant ghouls
  and night-gaunts. Day, he felt sure, must be almost due; but so strong was the
  army that no surprise of the enemy would be needed. The greenish flare near
  the wharves still glimmered faintly, though the absence of ghoulish meeping
  shewed that the torture of the prisoners was over for the nonce. Softly
  glibbering directions to their steeds and to the flock of riderless
  night-gaunts ahead, the ghouls presently rose in wide whirring columns and
  swept on over the bleak ruins toward the evil flame. Carter was now beside
  Pickman in the front rank of ghouls, and saw as they approached the noisome
  camp that the moonbeasts were totally unprepared. The three prisoners lay
  bound and inert beside the fire, while their toadlike captors slumped drowsily
  about in no certain order. The almost-human slaves were asleep, even the
  sentinels shirking a duty which in this realm must have seemed to them merely
  perfunctory.  The final swoop of the night-gaunts and mounted ghouls was very
  sudden, each of the greyish toadlike blasphemies and their almost-human slaves
  being seized by a group of night-gaunts before a sound was made. The
  moonbeasts, of course, were voiceless; and even the slaves had little chance
  to scream before rubbery paws choked them into silence. Horrible were the
  writhings of those great jellyfish abnormalities as the sardonic night-gaunts
  clutched them, but nothing availed against the strength of those black
  prehensile talons. When a moonbeast writhed too violently, a night-gaunt would
  seize and pull its quivering pink tentacles; which seemed to hurt so much that
  the victim would cease its struggles. Carter expected to see much slaughter,
  but found that the ghouls were far subtler in their plans. They glibbered
  certain simple orders to the night-gaunts which held the captives, trusting
  the rest to instinct; and soon the hapless creatures were borne silently away
  into the Great Abyss, to be distributed impartially amongst the Dholes, Gugs,
  ghasts and other dwellers in darkness whose modes of nourishment are not
  painless to their chosen victims. Meanwhile the three bound ghouls had been
  released and consoled by their conquering kinsfolk, whilst various parties
  searched the neighborhood for possible remaining moonbeasts, and boarded the
  evil-smelling black galley at the wharf to make sure that nothing had escaped
  the general defeat. Surely enough, the capture had been thorough, for not a
  sign of further life could the victors detect. Carter, anxious to preserve a
  means of access to the rest of dreamland, urged them not to sink the anchored
  galley; and this request was freely granted out of gratitude for his act in
  reporting the plight of the captured trio. On the ship were found some very
  
  curious objects and decorations, some of which Carter cast at once into the
  sea.  Ghouls and night-gaunts now formed themselves in separate groups, the
  former questioning their rescued fellow anent past happenings. It appeared
  that the three had followed Carter's directions and proceeded from the
  enchanted wood to Dylath-Leen by way of Nir and the Skin, stealing human
  clothes at a lonely farmhouse and loping as closely as possible in the fashion
  of a man's walk. In Dylath-Leen's taverns their grotesque ways and faces had
  aroused much comment; but they had persisted in asking the way to Sarkomand
  until at last an old traveller was able to tell them. Then they knew that only
  a ship for Lelag-Leng would serve their purpose, and prepared to wait
  patiently for such a vessel.  But evil spies had doubtless reported much; for
  shortly a black galley put into port, and the wide-mouthed ruby merchants
  invited the ghouls to drink with them in a tavern. Wine was produced from one
  of those sinister bottles grotesquely carven from a single ruby, and after
  that the ghouls found themselves prisoners on the black galley as Carter had
  found himself. This time, however, the unseen rowers steered not for the moon
  but for antique Sarkomand; bent evidently on taking their captives before the
  High-Priest Not To Be Described. They had touched at the jagged rock in the
  northern sea which Inquanok's mariners shun, and the ghouls had there seen for
  the first time the red masters of the ship; being sickened despite their own
  callousness by such extremes of malign shapelessness and fearsome odour.
  There, too, were witnessed the nameless pastimes of the toadlike resident
  garrison-such pastimes as give rise to the night-howlings which men fear.
  After that had come the landing at ruined Sarkomand and the beginning of the
  tortures, whose continuance the present rescue had prevented.  Future plans
  were next discussed, the three rescued ghouls suggesting a raid on the jagged
  rock and the extermination of the toadlike garrison there. To this, however,
  the night-gaunts objected; since the prospect of flying over water did not
  please them. Most of the ghouls favoured the design, but were at a loss how to
  follow it without the help of the winged night-gaunts. Thereupon Carter,
  seeing that they could not navigate the anchored galley, offered to teach them
  the use of the great banks of oars; to which proposal they eagerly assented.
  Grey day had now come, and under that leaden northern sky a picked detachment
  of ghouls filed into the noisome ship and took their seats on the rowers'
  benches. Carter found them fairly apt at learning, and before night had risked
  several experimental trips around the harbour. Not till three days later,
  however, did he deem it safe to attempt the voyage of conquest. Then, the
  rowers trained and the night-gaunts safely stowed in the forecastle, the party
  set sail at last; Pickman and the other chiefs gathering on deck and
  discussing models of approach and procedure.  On the very first night the
  howlings from the rock were heard. Such was their timbre that all the galley's
  crew shook visibly; but most of all trembled the three rescued ghouls who knew
  precisely what those howlings meant. It was not thought best to attempt an
  attack by night, so the ship lay to under the phosphorescent clouds to wait
  for the dawn of a greyish day. when the light was ample and the howlings still
  the rowers resumed their strokes, and the galley drew closer and closer to
  that jagged rock whose granite pinnacles clawed fantastically at the dull sky.
  The sides of the rock were very steep; but on ledges here and there could be
  seen the bulging walls of queer windowless dwellings, and the low railings
  guarding travelled highroads. No ship of men had ever come so near the place,
  or at least, had never come so near and departed again; but Carter and the
  ghouls were void of fear and kept inflexibly on, rounding the eastern face of
  the rock and seeking the wharves which the rescued trio described as being on
  the southern side within a harbour formed of steep headlands.  The headlands
  were prolongations of the island proper, and came so closely together that
  only one ship at a time might pass between them. There seemed to be no
  watchers on the outside, so the galley was steered boldly through the
  flume-like strait and into the stagnant putrid harbour beyond. Here, however,
  all was bustle and activity; with several ships lying at anchor along a
  forbidding stone quay, and scores of almost-human slaves and moonbeasts by the
  
  waterfront handling crates and boxes or driving nameless and fabulous horrors
  hitched to lumbering lorries. There was a small stone town hewn out of the
  vertical cliff above the wharves, with the start of a winding road that
  spiralled out of sight toward higher ledges of the rock. Of what lay inside
  that prodigious peak of granite none might say, but the things one saw on the
  outside were far from encouraging.  At sight of the incoming galley the crowds
  on the wharves displayed much eagerness; those with eyes staring intently, and
  those without eyes wriggling their pink tentacles expectantly. They did not,
  of course, realize that the black ship had changed hands; for ghouls look much
  like the horned and hooved almost-humans, and the night-gaunts were all out of
  sight below. By this time the leaders had fully formed a plan; which was to
  loose the night-gaunts as soon as the wharf was touched, and then to sail
  directly away, leaving matters wholly to the instincts of those
  almost-mindless creatures. Marooned on the rock, the horned flyers would first
  of all seize whatever living things they found there, and afterward, quite
  helpless to think except in terms of the homing instinct, would forget their
  fears of water and fly swiftly back to the abyss; bearing their noisome prey
  to appropriate destinations in the dark, from which not much would emerge
  alive.  The ghoul that was Pickman now went below and gave the night-gaunts
  their simple instructions, while the ship drew very near to the ominous and
  malodorous wharves. Presently a fresh stir rose along the waterfront, and
  Carter saw that the motions of the galley had begun to excite suspicion.
  Evidently the steersman was not making for the right dock, and probably the
  watchers had noticed the difference between the hideous ghouls and the
  almost-human slaves whose places they were taking. Some silent alarm must have
  been given, for almost at once a horde of the mephitic moonbeasts began to
  pour from the little black doorways of the windowless houses and down the
  winding road at the right. A rain of curious javelins struck the galley as the
  prow hit the wharf felling two ghouls and slightly wounding another; but at
  this point all the hatches were thrown open to emit a black cloud of whirring
  night-gaunts which swarmed over the town like a flock of horned and cyclopean
  bats.  The jellyish moonbeasts had procured a great pole and were trying to
  push off the invading ship, but when the night-gaunts struck them they thought
  of such things no more. It was a very terrible spectacle to see those faceless
  and rubbery ticklers at their pastime, and tremendously impressive to watch
  the dense cloud of them spreading through the town and up the winding roadway
  to the reaches above. Sometimes a group of the black flutterers would drop a
  toadlike prisoner from aloft by mistake, and the manner in which the victim
  would burst was highly offensive to the sight and smell. When the last of the
  night-gaunts had left the galley the ghoulish leaders glibbered an order of
  withdrawal, and the rowers pulled quietly out of the harbour between the grey
  headlands while still the town was a chaos of battle and conquest.  The
  Pickman ghoul allowed several hours for the night-gaunts to make up their
  rudimentary minds and overcome their fear of flying over the sea, and kept the
  galley standing about a mile off the jagged rock while he waited, and dressed
  the wounds of the injured men. Night fell, and the grey twilight gave place to
  the sickly phosphorescence of low clouds, and all the while the leaders
  watched the high peaks of that accursed rock for signs of the night-gaunts'
  flight. Toward morning a black speck was seen hovering timidly over the
  top-most pinnacle, and shortly afterward the speck had become a swarm. Just
  before daybreak the swarm seemed to scatter, and within a quarter of an hour
  it had vanished wholly in the distance toward the northeast. Once or twice
  something seemed to fall from the thing swarm into the sea; but Carter did not
  worry, since he knew from observation that the toadlike moonbeasts cannot
  swim. At length, when the ghouls were satisfied that all the night-gaunts had
  left for Sarkomand and the Great Abyss with their doomed burdens, the galley
  put back into the harbour betwixt the grey headlands; and all the hideous
  company landed and roamed curiously over the denuded rock with its towers and
  eyries and fortresses chiselled from the solid stone.  Frightful were the
  secrets uncovered in those evil and windowless crypts; for the remnants of
  
  unfinished pastimes were many, and in various stages of departure from their
  primal state. Carter put out of the way certain things which were after a
  fashion alive, and fled precipitately from a few other things about which he
  could not be very positive. The stench-filled houses were furnished mostly
  with grotesque stools and benches carven from moon-trees, and were painted
  inside with nameless and frantic designs. Countless weapons, implements, and
  ornaments lay about, including some large idols of solid ruby depicting
  singular beings not found on the earth. These latter did not, despite their
  material, invite either appropriation or long inspection; and Carter took the
  trouble to hammer five of them into very small pieces. The scattered spears
  and javelins he collected, and with Pickman's approval distributed among the
  ghouls. Such devices were new to the doglike lopers, but their relative
  simplicity made them easy to master after a few concise hints.  The upper
  parts of the rock held more temples than private homes, and in numerous hewn
  chambers were found terrible carven altars and doubtfully stained fonts and
  shrines for the worship of things more monstrous than the wild gods atop
  Kadath. From the rear of one great temple stretched a low black passage which
  Carter followed far into the rock with a torch till he came to a lightless
  domed hall of vast proportions, whose vaultings were covered with demoniac
  carvings and in whose centre yawned a foul and bottomless well like that in
  the hideous monastery of Leng where broods alone the High-Priest Not To Be
  Described. On the distant shadowy side, beyond the noisome well, he thought he
  discerned a small door of strangely wrought bronze; but for some reason he
  felt an unaccountable dread of opening it or even approaching it, and hastened
  back through the cavern to his unlovely allies as they shambled about with an
  ease and abandon he could scarcely feel. The ghouls had observed the
  unfinished pastimes of the moonbeasts, and had profited in their fashion. They
  had also found a hogshead of potent moon-wine, and were rolling it down to the
  wharves for removal and later use in diplomatic dealings, though the rescued
  trio, remembering its effect on them in Dylath-Leen, had warned their company
  to taste none of it. Of rubies from lunar mines there was a great store, both
  rough and polished, in one of the vaults near the water; but when the ghouls
  found they were not good to eat they lost all interest in them. Carter did not
  try to carry any away, since he knew too much about those which had mined
  them.  Suddenly there came an excited meeping from the sentries on the
  wharves, and all the loathsome foragers turned from their tasks to stare
  seaward and cluster round the waterfront. Betwixt the grey headlands a fresh
  black galley was rapidly advancing, and it would be but a moment before the
  almost-humans on deck would perceive the invasion of the town and give the
  alarm to the monstrous things below. Fortunately the ghouls still bore the
  spears and javelins which Carter had distributed amongst them; and at his
  command, sustained by the being that was Pickman, they now formed a line of
  battle and prepared to prevent the landing of the ship. Presently a burst of
  excitement on the galley told of the crew's discovery of the changed state of
  things, and the instant stoppage of the vessel proved that the superior
  numbers of the ghouls had been noted and taken into account. After a moment of
  hesitation the new comers silently turned and passed out between the headlands
  again, but not for an instant did the ghouls imagine that the conflict was
  averted. Either the dark ship would seek reinforcements or the crew would try
  to land elsewhere on the island; hence a party of scouts was at once sent up
  toward the pinnacle to see what the enemy's course would be.  In a very few
  minutes the ghoul returned breathless to say that the moonbeasts and
  almost-humans were landing on the outside of the more easterly of the rugged
  grey headlands, and ascending by hidden paths and ledges which a goat could
  scarcely tread in safety. Almost immediately afterward the galley was sighted
  again through the flume-like strait, but only for a second. Then a few moments
  later, a second messenger panted down from aloft to say that another party was
  landing on the other headland; both being much more numerous than the size of
  the galley would seem to allow for. The ship itself, moving slowly with only
  one sparsely manned tier of oars, soon hove in sight betwixt the cliffs, and
  
  lay to in the foetid harbour as if to watch the coming fray and stand by for
  any possible use.  By this time Carter and Pickman had divided the ghouls into
  three parties, one to meet each of the two invading columns and one to remain
  in the town. The first two at once scrambled up the rocks in their respective
  directions, while the third was subdivided into a land party and a sea party.
  The sea party, commanded by Carter, boarded the anchored galley and rowed out
  to meet the under-manned galley of the newcomers; whereat the latter retreated
  through the strait to the open sea. Carter did not at once pursue it, for he
  knew he might be needed more acutely near the town.  Meanwhile the frightful
  detachments of the moonbeasts and almost-humans had lumbered up to the top of
  the headlands and were shockingly silhouetted on either side against the grey
  twilight sky. The thin hellish flutes of the invaders had now begun to whine,
  and the general effect of those hybrid, half-amorphous processions was as
  nauseating as the actual odour given off by the toadlike lunar blasphemies.
  Then the two parties of the ghouls swarmed into sight and joined the
  silhouetted panorama. Javelins began to fly from both sides, and the swelling
  meeps of the ghouls and the bestial howls of the almost-humans gradually
  joined the hellish whine of the flutes to form a frantick and indescribable
  chaos of daemon cacophony. Now and then bodies fell from the narrow ridges of
  the headlands into the sea outside or the harbour inside, in the latter case
  being sucked quickly under by certain submarine lurkers whose presence was
  indicated only by prodigious bubbles.  For half an hour this dual battle raged
  in the sky, till upon the west cliff the invaders were completely annihilated.
  On the east cliff, however, where the leader of the moonbeast party appeared
  to be present, the ghouls had not fared so well; and were slowly retreating to
  the slopes of the pinnacle proper. Pickman had quickly ordered reinforcements
  for this front from the party in the town, and these had helped greatly in the
  earlier stages of the combat. Then, when the western battle was over, the
  victorious survivors hastened across to the aid of their hard-pressed fellows;
  turning the tide and forcing the invaders back again along the narrow ridge of
  the headland. The almost-humans were by this time all slain, but the last of
  the toadlike horrors fought desperately with the great spears clutched in
  their powerful and disgusting paws. The time for javelins was now nearly past,
  and the fight became a hand-to-hand contest of what few spearmen could meet
  upon that narrow ridge.  As fury and recklessness increased, the number
  falling into the sea became very great. Those striking the harbour met
  nameless extinction from the unseen bubblers, but of those striking the open
  sea some were able to swim to the foot of the cliffs and land on tidal rocks,
  while the hovering galley of the enemy rescued several moonbeasts. The cliffs
  were unscalable except where the monsters had debarked, so that none of the
  ghouls on the rocks could rejoin their battle-line. Some were killed by
  javelins from the hostile galley or from the moonbeasts above, but a few
  survived to be rescued. When the security of the land parties seemed assured,
  Carter's galley sallied forth between the headlands and drove the hostile ship
  far out to sea; pausing to rescue such ghouls as were on the rocks or still
  swimming in the ocean. Several moonbeasts washed on rocks or reefs were
  speedily put out of the way.  Finally, the moonbeast galley being safely in
  the distance and the invading land army concentrated in one place, Carter
  landed a considerable force on the eastern headland in the enemy's rear; after
  which the fight was short-lived indeed. Attacked from both sides, the noisome
  flounderers were rapidly cut to pieces or pushed into the sea, till by evening
  the ghoulish chiefs agreed that the island was again clear of them. The
  hostile galley, meanwhile, had disappeared; and it was decided that the evil
  jagged rock had better be evacuated before any overwhelming horde of lunar
  horrors might be assembled and brought against the victors.  So by night
  Pickman and Carter assembled all the ghouls and counted them with care,
  finding that over a fourth had been lost in the day's battles. The wounded
  were placed on bunks in the galley, for Pickman always discouraged the old
  ghoulish custom of killing and eating one's own wounded, and the able-bodied
  troops were assigned to the oars or to such other places as they might most
  
  usefully fill. Under the low phosphorescent clouds of night the galley sailed,
  and Carter was not sorry to be departing from the island of unwholesome
  secrets, whose lightless domed hall with its bottomless well and repellent
  bronze door lingered restlessly in his fancy. Dawn found the ship in sight of
  Sarkomand's ruined quays of basalt, where a few night-gaunt sentries still
  waited, squatting like black horned gargoyles on the broken columns and
  crumbling sphinxes of that fearful city which lived and died before the years
  of man.  The ghouls made camp amongst the fallen stones of Sarkomand,
  despatching a messenger for enough night-gaunts to serve them as steeds.
  Pickman and the other chiefs were effusive in their gratitude for the aid
  Carter had lent them. Carter now began to feel that his plans were indeed
  maturing well, and that he would be able to command the help of these fearsome
  allies not only in quitting this part of dreamland, but in pursuing his
  ultimate quest for the gods atop unknown Kadath, and the marvellous sunset
  city they so strangely withheld from his slumbers. Accordingly he spoke of
  these things to the ghoulish leaders; telling what he knew of the cold waste
  wherein Kadath stands and of the monstrous Shantaks and the mountains carven
  into double-headed images which guard it. He spoke of the fear of Shantaks for
  night-gaunts, and of how the vast hippocephalic birds fly screaming from the
  black burrows high up on the gaunt grey peaks that divide Inquanok from
  hateful Leng. He spoke, too, of the things he had learned concerning
  night-gaunts from the frescoes in the windowless monastery of the High-Priest
  Not To Be Described; how even the Great Ones fear them, and how their ruler is
  not the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep at all, but hoary and immemorial Nodens,
  Lord of the Great Abyss.  All these things Carter glibbered to the assembled
  ghouls, and presently outlined that request which he had in mind and which he
  did not think extravagant considering the services he had so lately rendered
  the rubbery doglike lopers. He wished very much, he said, for the services of
  enough night-gaunts to bear him safely through the aft past the realm of
  Shantaks and carven mountains, and up into the old waste beyond the returning
  tracks of any other mortal. He desired to fly to the onyx castle atop unknown
  Kadath in the cold waste to plead with the Great Ones for the sunset city they
  denied him, and felt sure that the night-gaunts could take him thither without
  trouble; high above the perils of the plain, and over the hideous double heads
  of those carven sentinel mountains that squat eternally in the grey dusk. For
  the horned and faceless creatures there could be no danger from aught of earth
  since the Great Ones themselves dread them. And even were unexpected things to
  come from the Other Gods, who are prone to oversee the affairs of earth's
  milder gods, the night-gaunts need not fear; for the outer hells are
  indifferent matters to such silent and slippery flyers as own not Nyarlathotep
  for their master, but bow only to potent and archaic Nodens.  A flock of ten
  or fifteen night-gaunts, Carter glibbered, would surely be enough to keep any
  combination of Shantaks at a distance, though perhaps it might be well to have
  some ghouls in the party to manage the creatures, their ways being better
  known to their ghoulish allies than to men. The party could land him at some
  convenient point within whatever walls that fabulous onyx citadel might have,
  waiting in the shadows for his return or his signal whilst he ventured inside
  the castle to give prayer to the gods of earth. If any ghouls chose to escort
  him into the throne-room of the Great Ones, he would be thankful, for their
  presence would add weight and importance to his plea. He would not, however,
  insist upon this but merely wished transportation to and from the castle atop
  unknown Kadath; the final journey being either to the marvellous sunset city
  itself, in case of gods proved favourable, or back to the earthward Gate of
  Deeper Slumber in the Enchanted Wood in case his prayers were
  fruitless.  Whilst Carter was speaking all the ghouls listened with great
  attention, and as the moments advanced the sky became black with clouds of
  those night-gaunts for which messengers had been sent. The winged steeds
  settled in a semicircle around the ghoulish army, waiting respectfully as the
  doglike chieftains considered the wish of the earthly traveller. The ghoul
  that was Pickman glibbered gravely with his fellows and in the end Carter was
  
  offered far more than he had at most expected. As he had aided the ghouls in
  their conquest of the moonbeasts, so would they aid him in his daring voyage
  to realms whence none had ever returned; lending him not merely a few of their
  allied night-gaunts, but their entire army as then encamped, veteran fighting
  ghouls and newly assembled night-gaunts alike, save only a small garrison for
  the captured black galley and such spoils as had come from the jagged rock in
  the sea. They would set out through the aft whenever he might wish, and once
  arrived on Kadath a suitable train of ghouls would attend him in state as he
  placed his petition before earth's gods in their onyx castle.  Moved by a
  gratitude and satisfaction beyond words, Carter made plans with the ghoulish
  leaders for his audacious voyage. The army would fly high, they decided, over
  hideous Leng with its nameless monastery and wicked stone villages; stopping
  only at the vast grey peaks to confer with the Shantak-frightening
  night-gaunts whose burrows honeycombed their summits. They would then,
  according to what advice they might receive from those denizens, choose their
  final course; approaching unknown Kadath either through the desert of carven
  mountains north of Inquanok, or through the more northerly reaches of
  repulsive Leng itself. Doglike and soulless as they are, the ghouls and
  night-gaunts had no dread of what those untrodden deserts might reveal; nor
  did they feel any deterring awe at the thought of Kadath towering lone with
  its onyx castle of mystery.  About midday the ghouls and night-gaunts prepared
  for flight, each ghoul selecting a suitable pair of horned steeds to bear him.
  Carter was placed well up toward the head of the column beside Pickman, and in
  front of the whole a double line of riderless night-gaunts was provided as a
  vanguard. At a brisk meep from Pickman the whole shocking army rose in a
  nightmare cloud above the broken columns and crumbling sphinxes of primordial
  Sarkomand; higher and higher, till even the great basalt cliff behind the town
  was cleared, and the cold, sterile table-land of Leng's outskirts laid open to
  sight. Still higher flew the black host, till even this table-land grew small
  beneath them; and as they worked northward over the wind-swept plateau of
  horror Carter saw once again with a shudder the circle of crude monoliths and
  the squat windowless building which he knew held that frightful silken-masked
  blasphemy from whose clutches he had so narrowly escaped. This time no descent
  was made as the army swept batlike over the sterile landscape, passing the
  feeble fires of the unwholesome stone villages at a great altitude, and
  pausing not at all to mark the morbid twistings of the hooved, horned
  almost-humans that dance and pipe eternally therein. Once they saw a
  Shantak-bird flying low over the plain, but when it saw them it screamed
  noxiously and flapped off to the north in grotesque panic.  At dusk they
  reached the jagged grey peaks that form the barrier of Inquanok, and hovered
  about these strange caves near the summits which Carter recalled as so
  frightful to the Shantaks. At the insistent meeping of the ghoulish leaders
  there issued forth from each lofty burrow a stream of horned black flyers with
  which the ghouls and night-gaunts of the party conferred at length by means of
  ugly gestures. It soon became clear that the best course would be that over
  the cold waste north of Inquanok, for Leng's northward reaches are full of
  unseen pitfalls that even the night-gaunts dislike; abysmal influences
  centering in certain white hemispherical buildings on curious knolls, which
  common folklore associates unpleasantly with the Other Gods and their crawling
  chaos Nyarlathotep.  Of Kadath the flutterers of the peaks knew almost
  nothing, save that there must be some mighty marvel toward the north, over
  which the Shantaks and the carven mountains stand guard. They hinted at
  rumoured abnormalities of proportion in those trackless leagues beyond, and
  recalled vague whispers of a realm where night broods eternally; but of
  definite data they had nothing to give. So Carter and his party thanked them
  kindly; and, crossing the topmost granite pinnacles to the skies of Inquanok,
  dropped below the level of the phosphorescent night clouds and beheld in the
  distance those terrible squatting gargoyles that were mountains till some
  titan hand carved fright into their virgin rock.  There they squatted in a
  hellish half-circle, their legs on the desert sand and their mitres piercing
  
  the luminous clouds; sinister, wolflike, and double-headed, with faces of fury
  and right hands raised, dully and malignly watching the rim of man's world and
  guarding with horror the reaches of a cold northern world that is not man's.
  From their hideous laps rose evil Shantaks of elephantine bulk, but these all
  fled with insane titters as the vanguard of night-gaunts was sighted in the
  misty sky. Northward above those gargoyle mountains the army flew, and over
  leagues of dim desert where never a landmark rose. Less and less luminous grew
  the clouds, till at length Carter could see only blackness around him; but
  never did the winged steeds falter, bred as they were in earth's blackest
  crypts, and seeing not with any eyes, but with the whole dank surface of their
  slippery forms. On and on they flew, past winds of dubious scent and sounds of
  dubious import; ever in thickest darkness, and covering such prodigious spaces
  that Carter wondered whether or not they could still be within earth's
  dreamland.  Then suddenly the clouds thinned and the stars shone spectrally
  above. All below was still black, but those pallid beacons in the sky seemed
  alive with a meaning and directiveness they had never possessed elsewhere. It
  was not that the figures of the constellations were different, but that the
  same familiar shapes now revealed a significance they had formerly failed to
  make plain. Everything focussed toward the north; every curve and asterism of
  the glittering sky became part of a vast design whose function was to hurry
  first the eye and then the whole observer onward to some secret and terrible
  goal of convergence beyond the frozen waste that stretched endlessly ahead.
  Carter looked toward the east where the great ridge of barrier peaks had
  towered along all the length of Inquanok and saw against the stars a jagged
  silhouette which told of its continued presence. It was more broken now, with
  yawning clefts and fantastically erratic pinnacles; and Carter studied closely
  the suggestive turnings and inclinations of that grotesque outline, which
  seemed to share with the stars some subtle northward urge.  They were flying
  past at a tremendous speed, so that the watcher had to strain hard to catch
  details; when all at once he beheld just above the line of the topmost peaks a
  dark and moving object against the stars, whose course exactly paralleled that
  of his own bizarre party. The ghouls had likewise glimpsed it, for he heard
  their low glibbering all about him, and for a moment he fancied the object was
  a gigantic Shantak, of a size vastly greater than that of the average
  specimen. Soon, however, he saw that this theory would not hold; for the shape
  of the thing above the mountains was not that of any hippocephalic bird. Its
  outline against the stars, necessarily vague as it was, resembled rather some
  huge mitred head, or pair of heads infinitely magnified; and its rapid bobbing
  flight through the sky seemed most peculiarly a wingless one. Carter could not
  tell which side of the mountains it was on, but soon perceived that it had
  parts below the parts he had first seen, since it blotted out all the stars in
  places where the ridge was deeply cleft.  Then came a wide gap in the range,
  where the hideous reaches of transmontane Leng were joined to the cold waste
  on this side by a low pass trough which the stars shone wanly. Carter watched
  this gap with intense care, knowing that he might see outlined against the sky
  beyond it the lower parts of the vast thing that flew undulantly above the
  pinnacles. The object had now floated ahead a trifle, and every eye of the
  party was fixed on the rift where it would presently appear in full-length
  silhouette. Gradually the huge thing above the peaks neared the gap, slightly
  slackening its speed as if conscious of having outdistanced the ghoulish army.
  For another minute suspense was keen, and then the brief instant of full
  silhouette and revelation came; bringing to the lips of the ghouls an awed and
  half-choked meep of cosmic fear, and to the soul of the traveller a chill that
  never wholly left it. For the mammoth bobbing shape that overtopped the ridge
  was only a head - a mitred double head - and below it in terrible vastness
  loped the frightful swollen body that bore it; the mountain-high monstrosity
  that walked in stealth and silence; the hyaena-like distortion of a giant
  anthropoid shape that trotted blackly against the sky, its repulsive pair of
  cone-capped heads reaching half way to the zenith.  Carter did not lose
  consciousness or even scream aloud, for he was an old dreamer; but he looked
  
  behind him in horror and shuddered when he saw that there were other monstrous
  heads silhouetted above the level of the peaks, bobbing along stealthily after
  the first one. And straight in the rear were three of the mighty mountain
  shapes seen full against the southern stars, tiptoeing wolflike and
  lumberingly, their tall mitres nodding thousands of feet in the aft. The
  carven mountains, then, had not stayed squatting in that rigid semicircle
  north of Inquanok, with right hands uplifted. They had duties to perform, and
  were not remiss. But it was horrible that they never spoke, and never even
  made a sound in walking.  Meanwhile the ghoul that was Pickman had glibbered
  an order to the night-gaunts, and the whole army soared higher into the air.
  Up toward the stars the grotesque column shot, till nothing stood out any
  longer against the sky; neither the grey granite ridge that was still nor the
  carven mitred mountains that walked. All was blackness beneath as the
  fluttering legion surged northward amidst rushing winds and invisible laughter
  in the aether, and never a Shantak or less mentionable entity rose from the
  haunted wastes to pursue them. The farther they went, the faster they flew,
  till soon their dizzying speed seemed to pass that of a rifle ball and
  approach that of a planet in its orbit. Carter wondered how with such speed
  the earth could still stretch beneath them, but knew that in the land of dream
  dimensions have strange properties. That they were in a realm of eternal night
  he felt certain, and he fancied that the constellations overhead had subtly
  emphasized their northward focus; gathering themselves up as it were to cast
  the flying army into the void of the boreal pole, as the folds of a bag are
  gathered up to cast out the last bits of substance therein.  Then he noticed
  with terror that the wings of the night-gaunts were not flapping any more. The
  horned and faceless steeds had folded their membranous appendages, and were
  resting quite passive in the chaos of wind that whirled and chuckled as it
  bore them on. A force not of earth had seized on the army, and ghouls and
  night-gaunts alike were powerless before a current which pulled madly and
  relentlessly into the north whence no mortal had ever returned. At length a
  lone pallid light was seen on the skyline ahead, thereafter rising steadily as
  they approached, and having beneath it a black mass that blotted out the
  stars. Carter saw that it must be some beacon on a mountain, for only a
  mountain could rise so vast as seen from so prodigious a height in the
  air.  Higher and higher rose the light and the blackness beneath it, till all
  the northern sky was obscured by the rugged conical mass. Lofty as the army
  was, that pale and sinister beacon rose above it, towering monstrous over all
  peaks and concernments of earth, and tasting the atomless aether where the
  cryptical moon and the mad planets reel. No mountain known of man was that
  which loomed before them. The high clouds far below were but a fringe for its
  foothills. The groping dizziness of topmost air was but a girdle for its
  loins. Scornful and spectral climbed that bridge betwixt earth and heaven,
  black in eternal night, and crowned with a pshent of unknown stars whose awful
  and significant outline grew every moment clearer. Ghouls meeped in wonder as
  they saw it, and Carter shivered in fear lest all the hurtling army be dashed
  to pieces on the unyielding onyx of that cyclopean cliff.  Higher and higher
  rose the light, till it mingled with the loftiest orbs of the zenith and
  winked down at the flyers with lurid mockery. All the north beneath it was
  blackness now; dread, stony blackness from infinite depths to infinite
  heights, with only that pale winking beacon perched unreachably at the top of
  all vision. Carter studied the light more closely, and saw at last what lines
  its inky background made against the stars. There were towers on that titan
  mountaintop; horrible domed towers in noxious and incalculable tiers and
  clusters beyond any dreamable workmanship of man; battlements and terraces of
  wonder and menace, all limned tiny and black and distant against the starry
  pshent that glowed malevolently at the uppermost rim of sight. Capping that
  most measureless of mountains was a castle beyond all mortal thought, and in
  it glowed the daemon-light. Then Randolph Carter knew that his quest was done,
  and that he saw above him the goal of all forbidden steps and audacious
  visions; the fabulous, the incredible home of the Great Ones atop unknown
  
  Kadath.  Even as he realised this thing, Carter noticed a change in the course
  of the helplessly wind-sucked party. They were rising abruptly now, and it was
  plain that the focus of their flight was the onyx castle where the pale light
  shone. So close was the great black mountain that its sides sped by them
  dizzily as they shot upward, and in the darkness they could discern nothing
  upon it. Vaster and vaster loomed the tenebrous towers of the nighted castle
  above, and Carter could see that it was well-nigh blasphemous in its
  immensity. Well might its stones have been quarried by nameless workmen in
  that horrible gulf rent out of the rock in the hill pass north of Inquanok,
  for such was its size that a man on its threshold stood even as air out on the
  steps of earth's loftiest fortress. The pshent of unknown stars above the
  myriad domed turrets glowed with a sallow, sickly flare, so that a kind of
  twilight hung about the murky walls of slippery onyx. The pallid beacon was
  now seen to be a single shining window high up in one of the loftiest towers,
  and as the helpless army neared the top of the mountain Carter thought he
  detected unpleasant shadows flitting across the feebly luminous expanse. It
  was a strangely arched window, of a design wholly alien to earth.  The solid
  rock now gave place to the giant foundations of the monstrous castle, and it
  seemed that the speed of the party was somewhat abated. Vast walls shot up,
  and there was a glimpse of a great gate through which the voyagers were swept.
  All was night in the titan courtyard, and then came the deeper blackness of
  inmost things as a huge arched portal engulfed the column. Vortices of cold
  wind surged dankly through sightless labyrinths of onyx, and Carter could
  never tell what Cyclopean stairs and corridors lay silent along the route of
  his endless aerial twisting. Always upward led the terrible plunge in
  darkness, and never a sound, touch or glimpse broke the dense pall of mystery.
  Large as the army of ghouls and night-gaunts was, it was lost in the
  prodigious voids of that more than earthly castle. And when at last there
  suddenly dawned around him the lurid light of that single tower room whose
  lofty window had served as a beacon, it took Carter long to discern the far
  walls and high, distant ceiling, and to realize that he was indeed not again
  in the boundless air outside.  Randolph Carter had hoped to come into the
  throne-room of the Great Ones with poise and dignity, flanked and followed by
  impressive lines of ghouls in ceremonial order, and offering his prayer as a
  free and potent master among dreamers. He had known that the Great Ones
  themselves are not beyond a mortal's power to cope with, and had trusted to
  luck that the Other Gods and their crawling chaos Nyarlathotep would not
  happen to come to their aid at the crucial moment, as they had so often done
  before when men sought out earth's gods in their home or on their mountains.
  And with his hideous escort he had half hoped to defy even the Other Gods if
  need were, knowing as he did that ghouls have no masters, and that
  night-gaunts own not Nyarlathotep but only archaic Nodens for their lord. But
  now he saw that supernal Kadath in its cold waste is indeed girt with dark
  wonders and nameless sentinels, and that the Other Gods are of a surety
  vigilant in guarding the mild, feeble gods of earth. Void as they are of
  lordship over ghouls and night-gaunts, the mindless, shapeless blasphemies of
  outer space can yet control them when they must; so that it was not in state
  as a free and potent master of dreamers that Randolph Carter came into the
  Great Ones' throne-room with his ghouls. Swept and herded by nightmare
  tempests from the stars, and dogged by unseen horrors of the northern waste,
  all that army floated captive and helpless in the lurid light, dropping numbly
  to the onyx floor when by some voiceless order the winds of fright
  dissolved.  Before no golden dais had Randolph Carter come, nor was there any
  august circle of crowned and haloed beings with narrow eyes, long-lobed ears,
  thin nose, and pointed chin whose kinship to the carven face on Ngranek might
  stamp them as those to whom a dreamer might pray. Save for the one tower room
  the onyx castle atop Kadath was dark, and the masters were not there. Carter
  had come to unknown Kadath in the cold waste, but he had not found the gods.
  Yet still the lurid light glowed in that one tower room whose size was so
  little less than that of all outdoors, and whose distant walls and roof were
  
  so nearly lost to sight in thin, curling mists. Earth's gods were not there,
  it was true, but of subtler and less visible presences there could be no lack.
  Where the mild gods are absent, the Other Gods are not unrepresented; and
  certainly, the onyx castle of castles was far from tenantless. In what
  outrageous form or forms terror would next reveal itself Carter could by no
  means imagine. He felt that his visit had been expected, and wondered how
  close a watch had all along been kept upon him by the crawling chaos
  Nyarlathotep. It is Nyarlathotep, horror of infinite shapes and dread soul and
  messenger of the Other Gods, that the fungous moonbeasts serve; and Carter
  thought of the black galley that had vanished when the tide of battle turned
  against the toadlike abnormalities on the jagged rock in the sea.  Reflecting
  upon these things, he was staggering to his feet in the midst of his nightmare
  company when there rang without warning through that pale-litten and limitless
  chamber the hideous blast of a daemon trumpet. Three times pealed that
  frightful brazen scream, and when the echoes of the third blast had died
  chucklingly away Randolph Carter saw that he was alone. Whither, why and how
  the ghouls and night-gaunts had been snatched from sight was not for him to
  divine. He knew only that he was suddenly alone, and that whatever unseen
  powers lurked mockingly around him were no powers of earth's friendly
  dreamland. Presently from the chamber's uttermost reaches a new sound came.
  This, too, was a rhythmic trumpeting; but of a kind far removed from the three
  raucous blasts which had dissolved his goodly cohorts. In this low fanfare
  echoed all the wonder and melody of ethereal dream; exotic vistas of
  unimagined loveliness floating from each strange chord and subtly alien
  cadence. Odours of incense came to match the golden notes; and overhead a
  great light dawned, its colours changing in cycles unknown to earth's
  spectrum, and following the song of the trumpets in weird symphonic harmonies.
  Torches flared in the distance, and the beat of drums throbbed nearer amidst
  waves of tense expectancy.  Out of the thinning mists and the cloud of strange
  incenses filed twin columns of giant black slaves with loin-cloths of
  iridescent silk. Upon their heads were strapped vast helmet-like torches of
  glittering metal, from which the fragrance of obscure balsams spread in fumous
  spirals. In their right hands were crystal wands whose tips were carven into
  leering chimaeras, while their left hands grasped long thin silver trumpets
  which they blew in turn. Armlets and anklets of gold they had, and between
  each pair of anklets stretched a golden chain that held its wearer to a sober
  gait. That they were true black men of earth's dreamland was at once apparent,
  but it seemed less likely that their rites and costumes were wholly things of
  our earth. Ten feet from Carter the columns stopped, and as they did so each
  trumpet flew abruptly to its bearer's thick lips. Wild and ecstatic was the
  blast that followed, and wilder still the cry that chorused just after from
  dark throats somehow made shrill by strange artifice.  Then down the wide lane
  betwixt the two columns a lone figure strode; a tall, slim figure with the
  young face of an antique Pharaoh, gay with prismatic robes and crowned with a
  golden pshent that glowed with inherent light. Close up to Carter strode that
  regal figure; whose proud carriage and smart features had in them the
  fascination of a dark god or fallen archangel, and around whose eyes there
  lurked the languid sparkle of capricious humour. It spoke, and in its mellow
  tones there rippled the wild music of Lethean streams.  "Randolph Carter,"
  said the voice, "you have come to see the Great Ones whom it is unlawful for
  men to see. Watchers have spoken of this thing, and the Other Gods have
  grunted as they rolled and tumbled mindlessly to the sound of thin flutes in
  the black ultimate void where broods the daemon-sultan whose name no lips dare
  speak aloud.  "When Barzai the Wise climbed Hatheg-Kia to see the Greater Ones
  dance and howl above the clouds in the moonlight he never returned. The Other
  Gods were there, and they did what was expected. Zenig of Aphorat sought to
  reach unknown Kadath in the cold waste, and his skull is now set in a ring on
  the little finger of one whom I need not name.  "But you, Randolph Carter,
  have braved all things of earth's dreamland, and burn still with the flame of
  quest. You came not as one curious, but as one seeking his due, nor have you
  
  failed ever in reverence toward the mild gods of earth. Yet have these gods
  kept you from the marvellous sunset city of your dreams, and wholly through
  their own small covetousness; for verily, they craved the weird loveliness of
  that which your fancy had fashioned, and vowed that henceforward no other spot
  should be their abode.  "They are gone from their castle on unknown Kadath to
  dwell in your marvellous city. All through its palaces of veined marble they
  revel by day, and when the sun sets they go out in the perfumed gardens and
  watch the golden glory on temples and colonnades, arched bridges and
  silver-basined fountains, and wide streets with blossom-laden urns and ivory
  statues in gleaming rows. And when night comes they climb tall terraces in the
  dew, and sit on carved benches of porphyry scanning the stars, or lean over
  pale balustrades to gaze at the town's steep northward slopes, where one by
  one the little windows in old peaked gables shine softly out with the calm
  yellow light of homely candles.  "The gods love your marvellous city, and walk
  no more in the ways of the gods. They have forgotten the high places of earth,
  and the mountains that knew their youth. The earth has no longer any gods that
  are gods, and only the Other Ones from outer space hold sway on unremembered
  Kadath. Far away in a valley of your own childhood, Randolph Carter, play the
  heedless Great Ones. You have dreamed too well, O wise arch-dreamer, for you
  have drawn dream's gods away from the world of all men's visions to that which
  is wholly yours; having builded out of your boyhood's small fancies a city
  more lovely than all the phantoms that have gone before.  "It is not well that
  earth's gods leave their thrones for the spider to spin on, and their realm
  for the Others to sway in the dark manner of Others. Fain would the powers
  from outside bring chaos and horror to you, Randolph Carter, who are the cause
  of their upsetting, but that they know it is by you alone that the gods may be
  sent back to their world. In that half-waking dreamland which is yours, no
  power of uttermost night may pursue; and only you can send the selfish Great
  Ones gently out of your marvellous sunset city, back through the northern
  twilight to their wonted place atop unknown Kadath in the cold waste.  "So.
  Randolph Carter, in the name of the Other Gods I spare you and charge you to
  seek that sunset city which is yours, and to send thence the drowsy truant
  gods for whom the dream world waits. Not hard to find is that roseal fever of
  the gods, that fanfare of supernal trumpets and clash of immortal cymbals,
  that mystery whose place and meaning have haunted you through the halls of
  waking and the gulfs of dreaming, and tormented you with hints of vanished
  memory and the pain of lost things awesome and momentous. Not hard to find is
  that symbol and relic of your days of wonder, for truly, it is but the stable
  and eternal gem wherein all that wonder sparkles crystallised to light your
  evening path. Behold! It is not over unknown seas but back over well-known
  years that your quest must go; back to the bright strange things of infancy
  and the quick sun-drenched glimpses of magic that old scenes brought to wide
  young eyes.  "For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only
  the sum of what you have seen and loved in youth. It is the glory of Boston's
  hillside roofs and western windows aflame with sunset, of the flower-fragrant
  Common and the great dome on the hill and the tangle of gables and chimneys in
  the violet valley where the many-bridged Charles flows drowsily. These things
  you saw, Randolph Carter, when your nurse first wheeled you out in the
  springtime, and they will be the last things you will ever see with eyes of
  memory and of love. And there is antique Salem with its brooding years, and
  spectral Marblehead scaling its rocky precipices into past centuries! And the
  glory of Salem's towers and spires seen afar from Marblehead's pastures across
  the harbour against the setting sun.  "There is Providence quaint and lordly
  on its seven hills over the blue harbour, with terraces of green leading up to
  steeples and citadels of living antiquity, and Newport climbing wraithlike
  from its dreaming breakwater. Arkham is there, with its moss-grown gambrel
  roofs and the rocky rolling meadows behind it; and antediluvian Kingsport
  hoary with stacked chimneys and deserted quays and overhanging gables, and the
  marvel of high cliffs and the milky-misted ocean with tolling buoys
  beyond.  "Cool vales in Concord, cobbled lands in Portsmouth, twilight bends
  
  of rustic New Hampshire roads where giant elms half hide white farmhouse walls
  and creaking well-sweeps. Gloucester's salt wharves and Truro's windy willows.
  Vistas of distant steepled towns and hills beyond hills along the North Shore,
  hushed stony slopes and low ivied cottages in the lee of huge boulders in
  Rhode Island's back country. Scent of the sea and fragrance of the fields;
  spell of the dark woods and joy of the orchards and gardens at dawn. These,
  Randolph Carter, are your city; for they are yourself. New England bore you,
  and into your soul she poured a liquid loveliness which cannot die. This
  loveliness, moulded, crystallised, and polished by years of memory and
  dreaming, is your terraced wonder of elusive sunsets; and to find that marble
  parapet with curious urns and carven rail, and descend at last these endless
  balustraded steps to the city of broad squares and prismatic fountains, you
  need only to turn back to the thoughts and visions of your wistful
  boyhood.  "Look! through that window shine the stars of eternal night. Even
  now they are shining above the scenes you have known and cherished, drinking
  of their charm that they may shine more lovely over the gardens of dream.
  There is Antares-he is winking at this moment over the roofs of Tremont
  Street, and you could see him from your window on Beacon Hill. Out beyond
  those stars yawn the gulfs from whence my mindless masters have sent me. Some
  day you too may traverse them, but if you are wise you will beware such folly;
  for of those mortals who have been and returned, only one preserves a mind
  unshattered by the pounding, clawing horrors of the void. Terrors and
  blasphemies gnaw at one another for space, and there is more evil in the
  lesser ones than in the greater; even as you know from the deeds of those who
  sought to deliver you into my hands, whilst I myself harboured no wish to
  shatter you, and would indeed have helped you hither long ago had I not been
  elsewhere busy,and certain that you would yourself find the way. Shun then,
  the outer hells, and stick to the calm, lovely things of your youth. Seek out
  your marvellous city and drive thence the recreant Great Ones, sending them
  back gently to those scenes which are of their own youth, and which wait
  uneasy for their return.  "Easier even then the way of dim memory is the way I
  will prepare for you. See! There comes hither a monstrous Shantak, led by a
  slave who for your peace of mind had best keep invisible. Mount and be ready -
  there! Yogash the Black will help you on the scaly horror. Steer for that
  brightest star just south of the zenith - it is Vega, and in two hours will be
  just above the terrace of your sunset city. Steer for it only till you hear a
  far-off singing in the high aether. Higher than that lurks madness, so rein
  your Shantak when the first note lures. Look then back to earth, and you will
  see shining the deathless altar-flame of Ired-Naa from the sacred roof of a
  temple. That temple is in your desiderate sunset city, so steer for it before
  you heed the singing and are lost.  "When you draw nigh the city steer for the
  same high parapet whence of old you scanned the outspread glory, prodding the
  Shantak till he cry aloud. That cry the Great Ones will hear and know as they
  sit on their perfumed terraces, and there will come upon them such a
  homesickness that all of your city's wonders will not console them for the
  absence of Kadath's grim castle and the pshent of eternal stars that crowns
  it.  "Then must you land amongst them with the Shantak, and let them see and
  touch that noisome and hippocephalic bird; meanwhile discoursing to them of
  unknown Kadath, which you will so lately have left, and telling them how its
  boundless halls are lovely and unlighted, where of old they used to leap and
  revel in supernal radiance. And the Shantak will talk to them in the manner of
  Shantaks, but it will have no powers of persuasion beyond the recalling of
  elder days.  "Over and over must you speak to the wandering Great Ones of
  their home and youth, till at last they will weep and ask to be shewn the
  returning path they have forgotten. Thereat can you loose the waiting Shantak,
  sending him skyward with the homing cry of his kind; hearing which the Great
  Ones will prance and jump with antique mirth, and forthwith stride after the
  loathly bird in the fashion of gods, through the deep gulfs of heaven to
  Kadath's familiar towers and domes.  "Then will the marvellous sunset city be
  yours to cherish and inhabit for ever, and once more will earth's gods rule
  
  the dreams of men from their accustomed seat. Go now - the casement is open
  and the stars await outside. Already your Shantak wheezes and titters with
  impatience. Steer for Vega through the night, but turn when the singing
  sounds. Forget not this warning, lest horrors unthinkable suck you into the
  gulf of shrieking and ululant madness. Remember the Other Gods; they are great
  and mindless and terrible, and lurk in the outer voids. They are good gods to
  shun.  "Hei! Aa-shanta 'nygh! You are off! Send back earth's gods to their
  haunts on unknown Kadath, and pray to all space that you may never meet me in
  my thousand other forms. Farewell, Randolph Carter, and beware; for I am
  Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos."  And Randolph Carter, gasping and dizzy on
  his hideous Shantak, shot screamingly into space toward the cold blue glare of
  boreal Vega; looking but once behind him at the clustered and chaotic turrets
  of the onyx nightmare wherein still glowed the lone lurid light of that window
  above the air and the clouds of earth's dreamland. Great polypous horrors slid
  darkly past, and unseen bat wings beat multitudinous around him, but still he
  clung to the unwholesome mane of that loathly and hippocephalic scaled bird.
  The stars danced mockingly, almost shifting now and then to form pale signs of
  doom that one might wonder one had not seen and feared before; and ever the
  winds of nether howled of vague blackness and loneliness beyond the
  cosmos.  Then through the glittering vault ahead there fell a hush of portent,
  and all the winds and horrors slunk away as night things slink away before the
  dawn. Trembling in waves that golden wisps of nebula made weirdly visible,
  there rose a timid hint of far-off melody, droning in faint chords that our
  own universe of stars knows not. And as that music grew, the Shantak raised
  its ears and plunged ahead, and Carter likewise bent to catch each lovely
  strain. It was a song, but not the song of any voice. Night and the spheres
  sang it, and it was old when space and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were
  born.  Faster flew the Shantak, and lower bent the rider, drunk with the
  marvel of strange gulfs, and whirling in the crystal coils of outer magic.
  Then came too late the warning of the evil one, the sardonic caution of the
  daemon legate who had bidden the seeker beware the madness of that song. Only
  to taunt had Nyarlathotep marked out the way to safety and the marvellous
  sunset city; only to mock had that black messenger revealed the secret of
  these truant gods whose steps he could so easily lead back at will. For
  madness and the void's wild vengeance are Nyarlathotep's only gifts to the
  presumptuous; and frantick though the rider strove to turn his disgusting
  steed, that leering, tittering Shantak coursed on impetuous and relentless,
  flapping its great slippery wings in malignant joy and headed for those
  unhallowed pits whither no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of
  nether-most confusion where bubbles and blasphemes at infinity's centre the
  mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak
  aloud.  Unswerving and obedient to the foul legate's orders, that hellish bird
  plunged onward through shoals of shapeless lurkers and caperers in darkness,
  and vacuous herds of drifting entities that pawed and groped and groped and
  pawed; the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, that are like them blind and
  without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts  Onward unswerving
  and relentless, and tittering hilariously to watch the chuckling and hysterics
  into which the risen song of night and the spheres had turned, that eldritch
  scaly monster bore its helpless rider; hurtling and shooting, cleaving the
  uttermost rim and spanning the outermost abysses; leaving behind the stars and
  the realms of matter, and darting meteor-like through stark formlessness
  toward those inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time wherein Azathoth
  gnaws shapeless and ravenous amidst the muffled, maddening beat of vile drums
  and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes.  Onward - onward - through
  the screaming, cackling, and blackly populous gulfs - and then from some dim
  blessed distance there came an image and a thought to Randolph Carter the
  doomed. Too well had Nyarlathotep planned his mocking and his tantalising, for
  he had brought up that which no gusts of icy terror could quite efface. Home -
  New England - Beacon Hill - the waking world.  "For know you, that your gold
  and marble city of wonder is only the sum of what you have seen and loved in
  
  youth... the glory of Boston's hillside roofs and western windows aflame with
  sunset; of the flower-fragrant Common and the great dome on the hill and the
  tangle of gables and chimneys in the violet valley where the many-bridged
  Charles flows drowsily... this loveliness, moulded, crystallised, and polished
  by years of memory and dreaming, is your terraced wonder of elusive sunsets;
  and to find that marble parapet with curious urns and carven rail, and descend
  at last those endless balustraded steps to the city of broad squares and
  prismatic fountains, you need only to turn back to the thoughts and visions of
  your wistful boyhood."  Onward - onward - dizzily onward to ultimate doom
  through the blackness where sightless feelers pawed and slimy snouts jostled
  and nameless things tittered and tittered and tittered. But the image and the
  thought had come, and Randolph Carter knew clearly that he was dreaming and
  only dreaming, and that somewhere in the background the world of waking and
  the city of his infancy still lay. Words came again - "You need only turn back
  to the thoughts and visions of your wistful boyhood." Turn - turn - blackness
  on every side, but Randolph Carter could turn.  Thick though the rushing
  nightmare that clutched his senses, Randolph Carter could turn and move. He
  could move, and if he chose he could leap off the evil Shantak that bore him
  hurtlingly doomward at the orders of Nyarlathotep. He could leap off and dare
  those depths of night that yawned interminably down, those depths of fear
  whose terrors yet could not exceed the nameless doom that lurked waiting at
  chaos' core. He could turn and move and leap - he could - he would - he would
  - he would.  Off that vast hippocephalic abomination leaped the doomed and
  desperate dreamer, and down through endless voids of sentient blackness he
  fell. Aeons reeled, universes died and were born again, stars became nebulae
  and nebulae became stars, and still Randolph Carter fell through those endless
  voids of sentient blackness.  Then in the slow creeping course of eternity the
  utmost cycle of the cosmos churned itself into another futile completion, and
  all things became again as they were unreckoned kalpas before. Matter and
  light were born anew as space once had known them; and comets, suns and worlds
  sprang flaming into life, though nothing survived to tell that they had been
  and gone, been and gone, always and always, back to no first beginning.  And
  there was a firmament again, and a wind, and a glare of purple light in the
  eyes of the falling dreamer. There were gods and presences and wills; beauty
  and evil, and the shrieking of noxious night robbed of its prey. For through
  the unknown ultimate cycle had lived a thought and a vision of a dreamer's
  boyhood, and now there were remade a waking world and an old cherished city to
  body and to justify these things. Out of the void S'ngac the violet gas had
  pointed the way, and archaic Nodens was bellowing his guidance from unhinted
  deeps.  Stars swelled to dawns, and dawns burst into fountains of gold,
  carmine, and purple, and still the dreamer fell. Cries rent the aether as
  ribbons of light beat back the fiends from outside. And hoary Nodens raised a
  howl of triumph when Nyarlathotep, close on his quarry, stopped baffled by a
  glare that seared his formless hunting-horrors to grey dust. Randolph Carter
  had indeed descended at last the wide marmoreal flights to his marvellous
  city, for he was come again to the fair New England world that had wrought
  him.  So to the organ chords of morning's myriad whistles, and dawn's blaze
  thrown dazzling through purple panes by the great gold dome of the State House
  on the hill, Randolph Carter leaped shoutingly awake within his Boston room.
  Birds sang in hidden gardens and the perfume of trellised vines came wistful
  from arbours his grandfather had reared. Beauty and light glowed from classic
  mantel and carven cornice and walls grotesquely figured, while a sleek black
  cat rose yawning from hearthside sleep that his master's start and shriek had
  disturbed. And vast infinities away, past the Gate of Deeper Slumber and the
  enchanted wood and the garden lands and the Cerenarian Sea and the twilight
  reaches of Inquanok, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep strode brooding into the
  onyx castle atop unknown Kadath in the cold waste, and taunted insolently the
  mild gods of earth whom he had snatched abruptly from their scented revels in
  the marvellous sunset city. 
  
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Call of Cthulhu/EXTRAS/Novel/The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - H. P. Lovecraft.pdf