The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith (32 page)

Mammering for twofold murder. (
She goes to the door, closes it, and draws the ponderous metal bars in their massive sockets. Then, with a broidered kerchief and water from a pitcher, she washes the grave-mould from Galeor’s face and hands, and tidies his garments. They embrace. He kisses her, and caresses her cheeks and hair.
)

Ah, your touch

Is tenderer than I have known before….

And yet, alas, your lips, your hands….

Poor Galeor, the grave has left you cold:

I’ll warm you in my bed and in my arms

For those short moments ere the falling sword

Shatter the fragile bolts of mystery

And open what’s beyond.

(Heavy footsteps approach in the hall outside and there is a babbling of loud, confused voices, followed by a metallic clang like that of a sword-hilt hammering on the door.)

(
Curtain
)

SCENE V

The king’s pavilion in the palace-gardens. Smaragad sits at the head of a long table littered with goblets, wine-jars and liquor-flasks, some empty or overturned, others still half-full. Sargo and Boranga are seated on a bench near the table’s foot. A dozen fellow-revelers, laid low by their potations, lie sprawled about the floor or on benches and couches. Sargo and Boranga are singing:

A ghoul there was in the days of old,

And he drank the wine-dark blood

Without a goblet, with never a flagon,

Fresh from the deep throat-veins of the dead.

But we instead, but we instead,

Will drink from goblets of beryl and gold

A blood-dark wine that was made by the dead

In the days of old.

(
A silence ensues, while the singers wet their husky throats. Smaragad fills and empties his flagon, then fills it again.
)

Boranga
(
in a lowered voice
):

Something has ired or vexed

The king: he drinks

Like one stung by the dipsas, whose dread bite

Induces lethal thirst.

Sargo:

He’s laid the most

Of our tun-gutted guzzlers ’neath the board,

And I’m not long above it…. This forenoon

He held much parley with the necromancer

Whose stygian torts outreek the ripened charnel.

Mayhap it has left him thirsty. ’Twas enough

For me when Natanasna passed to windward.

I’m told the king called for incensories

To fume the audience-hall, and fan-bearers

To waft the nard-born vapors round and round

And ventilate with moa-plumes his presence

When the foul mage was gone.

Boranga:

They say that Natanasna

And his asphalt-colored ingle have both vanished,

Though none knows whither. Faraad will lose

One bone for gossip’s gnawing. I would not give you

A fig-bird’s tooth or an aspic’s tail-end feather

For all your conjurers. Let’s bawl a catch. (
They sing:
)

—There’s a thief in the house, there’s a thief in the house,

My master, what shall we do?

The fuzzled bowser, he called for Towser,

But Towser was barking the moon.

(
Enter Baltea, breathless and disheveled.
)

Baltea:

Your Majesty, there’s madness loose from hell.

Smaragad:

What’s wrong? Has someone raped you without leave?

Baltea:

No, ’tis about the queen, from whose bed-chamber

I have come post-haste.

Smaragad:

Well, what about her? Why

Have you left her? Is she alone?

Baltea:

She’s not alone

But has for company a nameless thing

Vomited forth by death.

Smaragad
(
half-starting from his seat
):

What’s all this coil?

A nameless thing, you say? There’s nothing nameless.

I’d have a word for what has sent you here,

Panting, with undone hair.

Baltea:

Well, then ’tis Galeor.

Smaragad:

Hell’s privy-fumes!

He’s cooling underground, if my grave-diggers

Shirked not their office.

Baltea:

And yet he has returned

To visit Queen Somelis, with dark stains

Of earth upon his brow, and goblin torches

Lighting his torrid gaze.

Smaragad
(
standing up
):

Tell me about it,

Though I cannot believe you. Though he be

Quick or dead, by Thasaidon’s dark horns

What does he in the chamber of the queen?

Baltea:

I wot not how he came nor why. But she

Was parleying with him, speaking gentle words

When I ran forth to seek you.

Smaragad:

Sargo, Boranga, hear you this? Attend me,

And we’ll inquire into this nightmare’s nest

And find what’s at the bottom. (
He starts toward the door, followed by the others.
) By all the plagues

Afflicting the five senses, there’s too much

That stinks amid these walls tonight…. Where were

The guards? I’ll prune their ears with a blunt sickle

And douche their eyes with boiling camel-stale

For such delinquency as lets

Goblin or man or lich go by them.

(
Curtain
)

SCENE VI

The hall before Somelis’ bed-chamber. Enter Smaragad, Sargo, Boranga and Baltea, followed by two chamberlains. Smaragad tries the queen’s door. Finding that it will not open, he beats upon it with the hilt of his drawn sword, but without response.

Smaragad:

Who has barred this door? Was it the queen? I vow

That she shall never close another door

When this is broken down. I’ll bolt the next one for her,

And it will be the tomb’s. Boranga, Sargo,

Give here your shoulders, side by side with mine. (
All three apply their weight to the door but cannot budge it. Sargo, more intoxicated than the others, loses his balance and falls. Boranga helps him to his feet.
)

Truly, my stout forefathers built this palace

And all its portals to withstand a siege.

Boranga:

There are siege-engines in the arsenal,

Great rams, that have thrown down broad-builded towers

And torn the gates of cities from their hinges.

With your permission, Sire, I’ll call for one

Together with men to wield it.

Smaragad:

I’ll not have

A legion here to witness what lies couched

In the queen’s chamber. Nor am I accustomed

To beat on closen doors that open not.

In all my kingdom, or in Thasaidon’s

Deep tortuous maze of torments multi-circled,

There is no darker gulf than this shut room

Which reason cannot fathom, being shunted

From the blank walls to madness.

Sargo:

Your Majesty,

If this indeed be Galeor, it smells

Of Natanasna, who has called up others

From tomb or trench, inspiriting with demons

Malign or lewd their corpses. There’ll be need

Of exorcism. I would have the priests

Brought in, and rites performed.

Smaragad:

I hardly doubt

That the curst necromancer is the getter

Of this graveyard fetus. But I will not have it

Either your way or Boranga’s. (
Turning to the chamberlains
) Bring to me

Fagots of pitch-veined terebinth, and naphtha.

Boranga:

Sire, what is your purpose?

Smaragad:

You will see full soon.

Baltea:

Your Majesty, bethink you, there are windows

To which armed men could climb by ladders, finding

Ingress to the queen’s room. It may be she’s

In peril from this intruder, who had about him

The air of an incubus.

Smaragad:

Truly, I think

That he is no intruder to the queen

Who has barred these portals. Nor am I a thief

To enter in by a window.

(
The chamberlains return, bearing armfuls of fagots and jars of oil.
)

Pile the wood

Before the door, and drench it with the naphtha. (
The chamberlains obey. Smaragad seizes a cresset from one of the sconces along the hall, and applies it to the fagots. Flames leap up immediately and lick the cedarn door.
)

I’ll warm the bed of this black lechery

That lairs within my walls.

Boranga:

Have you gone mad?

You’ll fire the palace!

Smaragad:

Fire’s the one pure thing

To cleanse it. And for fuel we lack only

The necromancer and his swart catamite.

(
The fire spreads quickly to the curtains of the hallway, from which flaming patches begin to fall. Baltea and the chamberlains flee. A section of the burning arras descends upon Sargo. He reels, and falls. Unable to rise, he crawl away, screaming, with his raiment ignited. A loosened splotch sets fire to the king’s mantle. He flings the garment from him with an agile gesture. The flames eat steadily into the door, and assail its heavy wooden framework. The heat and smoke compel Boranga and Smaragad to stand back.
)

Boranga:

Your Majesty, the palace burns about us.

There’s little time for our escape.

Smaragad:

You tell me

A thing that’s patent. Ah! the goodly flames!

They will lay bare the secret of this chamber

Whose mystery maddens me…. And at the last

There will be only ashes

For the summoning of any sorcerer.

Boranga:

Sire, we must go.

Smaragad:
Be still. It is too late for any words,

And only deeds remain.

(
After some minutes the charred door collapses inward with its red-hot bars, Boranga seizes the king’s arm and tries to drag him away. Smaragad wrenches himself loose and beats at Boranga with the flat of his sword.
)

Leave me, Boranga.

I’ll go and carve the lechers while they roast

Into small collops for the ghouls to eat.

(
Brandishing his sword, he leaps over the fallen door into the flaming chamber beyond.
)

(
Curtain
)

T
HE
H
ASHISH
-E
ATER; OR,
T
HE
A
POCALYPSE OF
E
VIL

Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;

I crown me with the million-coloured sun

Of secret worlds incredible, and take

Their trailing skies for vestment, when I soar,

Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume

The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.

Like rampant monsters roaring for their glut,

The fiery-crested oceans rise and rise,

By jealous moons maleficently urged

To follow me forever; mountains horned

With peaks of sharpest adamant, and mawed

With sulphur-lit volcanoes lava-langued,

Usurp the skies with thunder, but in vain;

And continents of serpent-shapen trees,

With slimy trunks that lengthen league by league,

Pursue my flight through ages spurned to fire

By that supreme ascendance. Sorcerers,

And evil kings predominantly armed

With scrolls of fulvous dragon-skin, whereon

Are worm-like runes of ever-twisting flame,

Would stay me; and the sirens of the stars,

With foam-light songs from silver fragrance wrought,

Would lure me to their crystal reefs; and moons

Where viper-eyed, senescent devils dwell,

With antic gnomes abominably wise,

Heave up their icy horns across my way:

But naught deters me from the goal ordained

By suns, and aeons, and immortal wars,

And sung by moons and motes; the goal whose name

Is all the secret of forgotten glyphs,

By sinful gods in torrid rubies writ

For ending of a brazen book; the goal

Whereat my soaring ecstasy may stand,

In amplest heavens multiplied to hold

My hordes of thunder-vested avatars,

And Promethèan armies of my thought,

That brandish claspèd levins. There I call

My memories, intolerably clad

In light the peaks of paradise may wear,

And lead the Armageddon of my dreams,

Whose instant shout of triumph is become

Immensity’s own music: For their feet

Are founded on innumerable worlds,

Remote in alien epochs, and their arms

Upraised, are columns potent to exalt

With ease ineffable the countless thrones

Of all the gods that are and gods to be,

And bear the seats of Asmadai and Set

Above the seventh paradise.

Supreme

In culminant omniscience manifold,

And served by senses multitudinous,

Far-posted on the shifting walls of time,

With eyes that roam the star-unwinnowed fields

Of utter night and chaos, I convoke

The Babel of their visions, and attend

At once their myriad witness: I behold,

In Ombos, where the fallen Titans dwell,

With mountain-builded walls, and gulfs for moat,

The secret cleft that cunning dwarves have dug

Beneath an alp-like buttress; and I list,

Too late, the clang of adamantine gongs,

Dinned by their drowsy guardians, whose feet

Have felt the wasp-like sting of little knives,

Embrued with slobber of the basilisk,