Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (56 page)

“Oh well, I assure you, I’ve been
totally discreet,” Spates said, as they walked into the main upper hall, which
was lined with an elegant Brussels carpet. “The
we
besides me is my colleague from Boston, Mister Rice, the
linguist I spoke to you about. After we parted in Las Vegas, I went straight to
him with the letters you gave me, and wouldn’t you know it, I was right. They
were indeed Tsath-yo characters. Warren, that is, Mister Rice, confirmed it
straight away. He was able to complete the job in about a month, but he
contacted me in New Jersey in a state of great excitement. He blackmailed me a bit,
the cad, said he would only relinquish the translations personally to the man
who had requested them. I told him you had asked for discretion, but Warren’s a
very insistent sort, and since he paid both our fares and agreed to split
accommodations and food, well…”

“You’re a windy sort, aren’t you?”
Belden said, when Spates stopped to catch his breath.

“Ah, as to your associate here,
Mister Belden,” Spates said. “I do apologize. But you did ask for discretion
after all, and you never mentioned him. Or you, sir,” Spates said, looking to
Faustus and extending his hand. “Professor Arthur William Wallace Spates,” he
gushed, when Faustus took it.

“Faustus Montague,” Faustus said
slowly. “Just what’s all this about, Rider?”

The Rider explained the correspondences
he had taken from Sheardown, taking care to only mention the man’s name in
Spates’ presence, and not the circumstances by which he’d obtained them.

“And you say they’re written in
Tsath-yo?” Faustus asked.

“You’re familiar with it?” Spates
asked, as they reached room twelve.

“Intimately,” the old man said,
frowning at the Rider in a
you-might-have-saved-us-all-a-lot-of-trouble
way.

“Well, you and Warren will have much
to talk about,” Spates said, rapping once on the door, and then flinging it
open.

The appointments were as regal as
the rest of the hotel, with oil paintings decorating the papered walls, an
inviting spring mattress on a big four poster, and a finely patterned toilet
stand.

From one of the walnut chairs,
Warren Carter Rice, a stocky, light haired man in a modest dark suit rose
through a fog of pipe smoke and plucked its originator, a wood meerschaum, from
his lips.

Spates made the round of
introductions and then arranged the chairs about the room for them to sit.

“Ah,” Spates said, clearing his
throa. “May I stay? Warren hasn’t been very forthcoming with any of this to his
credit, and I’ve been living with the suspense for quite some time now.”

The Rider shrugged.

“Alright, Arthur. You deserve that
and I can’t give you anything else.”

Belden was left without a place and
contented himself with pouring a snifter of some caramel colored fluid from a
carafe on the dresser.

“Mister Rider,” Warren Rice began, “let
me begin by saying, I was quite skeptical about Arthur’s claim that he had
obtained a set of modern correspondences written in the Tsath-yo alphabet. It’s
quite an archaic system, and I could number those in the scholarly community
with knowledge of it on one hand.”

Faustus sighed at this, and produced
his own pipe and tobacco, and laid his hat upon the table.

The Rider knew what he was thinking.
How put out would he be when they finally told him about the scroll?

Rice reached into a valise next to
his chair and produced the packet of letters, laying them on the table.

“Sure enough, these are the genuine
article, written by two men I had never heard of, in a region of the United
States I have never visited, and demonstrating a command I did not know existed
outside of my own expertise.”

“What do they say?” the Rider asked,
leaning forward.

“Well sir, the contents are what
induced me to impose upon Arthur to tell you myself. He had informed me that
they were of a sensitive nature. That was certainly no understatement, if the
veracity of these letters is to be believed.”

In his way, Rice was as long winded
as Spates, but being American, in a more drawn out, deliberate way. Why didn’t
he get to the point?

“Time is of the essence, Mister
Rice,” the Rider began.

“In that you are in the right. Now,
of course I only have one half of the correspondence, but according to the
Mister Lord (here the Rider paused, but of course, Rice had translated ‘Adon’
into its English equivalent, ‘Lord’), the author of these letters, you have
only until September the twenty second of this year, in fact.”

The Rider and Faustus looked at each
other.

“That confirms it then,” Faustus
said.

It confirmed a great many things.

“You already know of this Hour of
Incursion?” Rice asked.

“We know something of it,” Faustus
said. And he related all they did know.

“Is it real?” Rice asked. “Is it all
real? The Great Old Ones?”

“Everything is real,” Faustus said,
smoking his pipe.

Rice rose then and drew out a pocket
handkerchief, dabbing at his forehead.

“I’m sorry. Please, give me a moment.
It’s just that, to have studied these things so long under the pretense that it
may be only pseudo-science, and then to have it confirmed!”

“What do the letters say about the
Hour of Incursion?” the Rider asked.

“A great deal. A great deal indeed,”
said Rice. “The key to bringing it about is in a manuscript called
The Infernalius
.”

The Rider looked again to Faustus,
who shook his head.

“No, it’s doubtful you would have
heard of it. I’ve never heard of it myself. It’s because it doesn’t exist,” said
Rice, excitedly. “That is, not altogether.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are many grimoires that have
been thought long lost to time,” Rice said, clasping his hands behind his back
and pacing the room. “
The Book of Eibon,
the Cthaat Aquadingen, the Necronomicon
…”

“So,
The Infernalius
is lost,” the Rider finished.

“No sir, as I say, not altogether.
According to your Mister Lord, The Infernalius was dictated in antediluvian
prehistory by an entity known as The Dark Man to a Hyperborean wizard called
Svidren Gargalesh.”

The Dark Man again. Nyarlathotep.
That creature was everywhere.

“Svidren divided the text into seven
fragments which were then inserted into seven books. I have a list,” he said,
digging in his pockets. He produced a crumpled scrap of paper and read, ticking
off the titles on his fingers as he went, “
The
Book of Eibon, the Book of Karnak, the Testament of Carnamagos, the Ponape
Scripture, de Vermiss Mysteriis
, and the
Scroll of Thoth-Amon
.”

“What!
De Vermiis Mysteriis
?” Spates interrupted. “Didn’t Prinn write that
in 1542?”

“According to Mister Lord, the
fragments weren’t physically transcribed,” said Rice. “Svidren cast a spell
which dispersed the seven sections into time. They came down to the authors of
each of these works through the collective consciousness, or perhaps through
what some call the Akashic records, whenever and wherever they lived. Sort of
like one of those time-locked bank safes, set to open and diffuse their
knowledge in plenty of time for September 22nd 1882. It is very likely the
various authors weren’t even aware of their inclusion. Instructions for
assembling the hidden book were encoded and placed within the original Arabic
Necronomicon
, millennia later by Abdul
Alhazred.”

“Ingenious,” Spates remarked.

“Quite ingenious,” Rice agreed. “The
code Svidren used is indecipherable to all but those who are actively looking
for it. The inner circle of the Order of the Black Dragon.”

“What is the Order of the Black
Dragon?” Faustus asked.

“This Mister Lord and Doctor
Sheardown, they are conspirators in a grand plot to bring about the Hour of
Incursion. Mister Lord writes of belonging to a secret tradition sworn to bring
about that end. They name themselves The Order of the Black Dragon. This Doctor
Sheardown, to which Mister Lord addresses all the letters, appears to be some
sort of initiate, whereas Mister Lord is of a higher rank.”

Spates was bouncing his skinny knee,
eager to contribute.

“The Great Old Ones are said to
influence certain men through their dreams,” Spates said excitedly, “inspiring
them to unbar the gates that shut them out and usher them into this world. I’ve
long suspected this to be a world wide phenomenon, that there may be numerous
cults all working towards the same end, each with its own secret method of
doing so, each with its own patron Outer God.”

“The Order of the Black Dragon,”
Rice went on, “according to Mister Lord, is dedicated to the liberation of
Krefth Daal Zuur, the Blind Black Dragon. That Which Strains Against Its Chains.”

“What is Kreth Daal Zuur?” the Rider
asked both men.

Spates shook his head, baffled.

“His nature is unrevealed in the
letters,” Rice said, returning to his seat and spreading the letters on the
table. “But Mister Lord states there is a ritual contained within The
Infernalius that will somehow free the Blind Black Dragon, and cause him to
rise.”

“
The
Treatice on the Left Hand Emanation
tells about a Blind Dragon which will
bring Lilith and Samael together,” the Rider said, musing. “Maybe this ritual
can free Samael from his prison somehow.”

Rice looked blankly at them, but
Faustus ran with the thought.

“Then Samael is instrumental in
freeing this Krefth Daal Zuur.”

“Samael?” Spates repeated, grinning
in his excitement. “As in, the Angel of Death? Really?”

The Rider frowned. Spates was
getting too involved in this now, and he had brought this poor linguist in too.
He glanced at Faustus. The old man seemed to share his sentiment.

“So we’re looking for fragments of a
book?” the Rider asked Rice, ignoring Spates’ excited outburst.

“It’s too late for that, I’m afraid,”
Rice said. “Mister Lord apparently spent a great deal of resources in time,
money, and manpower to track down the fragments. The Scroll of Thoth-Ammon was
to be the last, and Doctor Sheardown’s purpose. Mister Lord directed him to
search some heretofore undiscovered writings of Cotton Mather and a certain
witch trial transcription, which he believes pointed towards the scrolls
whereabouts. A Keziah Mason is mentioned as having had some part in spiriting
it away, to an island on the Miskatonic River, which he refers to as Themystos.
He writes in this last letter, apparently a response to news from Doctor
Sheardown,” he said, rifling through the stack of yellowed correspondences
quickly until he came to the page he sought.

“Congratulations,
my pupil! The final piece of the puzzle is at last in your hand. You are
ordered to sell the six precious boxes which contained the scroll and spare no
expense in delivering it. Do not tarry. When next we meet, the Hour of
Incursion will be inevitable.
”

Faustus leaned back in his chair.

“Then Adon has already found all the
other pieces, and we may assume, The
Necronomicon
as well.”

The Rider smiled uncontrollably.

“Well, maybe not the
last
piece.”

Faustus narrowed his eyes at the
Rider.

“What else have you kept from me?”

“Sheardown didn’t take Adon’s
advice. Maybe he chintzed on the travel arrangements, decided to pocket the
money. He never kept his appointment,” the Rider said. “We have the scroll. I
assume the
Scroll of Thoth-Amon
.”

Everyone at the table sat back,
breathing a relieved sigh, then chuckled at their shared reaction. Spates and
Rice shook hands, first with themselves, and then with the Rider.

Even Faustus allowed a momentary
laugh, but he was the first to sober.

“Then the scroll must be destroyed,
now that we know its purpose.”

“I agree,” said the Rider.

“Makes sense to me,” Belden chimed
in, glad to make a contribution in between gulps from the nearly drained
carafe.

“But,” Rice said. “Gentlemen, you’re
talking about destroying a major archaeological relic for all time. Surely not.
What about posterity?”

“What posterity will there be if
these maniacs get a hold of the scroll?” the Rider countered.

“Well,” Spates began, tactfully,
folding his hands and settling into his chair, “maybe there is something to be
said on both sides of the argument…”

“Academics,” Faustus grumbled,
knocking out his pipe in the ashtray and putting it away. He rose from his
chair and put on his hat, gruffly. “You’d better say your goodbyes,” he said to
the Rider.

The Rider took the old man’s meaning
and reached across the table, shaking each of the two scholar’s hands once more
in turn.