THE NECRONOMICON ~ The Cthulhu Revelations (14 page)

This is the path to the revelation.

~

To the weft of these frayed and few shared secrets, I wove in the revelations of my new mentor, Fatimah.

What I learned of the legends of death, of reincarnation, of resurrection and the transmigration of souls from vessel to vessel, all of these whispers told me that I should seek the city of Irem for my answers.  But Irem was lost beneath the sands, and I had yet to find any tablet or inscription which claimed to speak of its kings, its towers, its region, or any other intimation that might lead me to its ruin within the Real.  There were fables of Irem everywhere, but never histories.

I remained undaunted.  If Ghuls were not fables themselves, but merely a secret hidden from virtually the entirety of Man, could not Irem be real as well?  Who could say where a legend would die, and with its shimmering and its fading unveil its own reality?

The more I learned of Irem, however, the older the legends became.  Disparate secrets often joined together when I asked Fatimah if separated truths which I would learn of held any relation to one another.  She taught me much of those elder lands which had been glorious and verdant in the age before the deserts had overthrown the works of man and conquered all.  She told me too of lost Sumeru-land, of Akkad, of Babilu and Eridu and Nippur of the Lord-Wind upon the ziggurat.

Fatimah knew many elder names which appeared within codex, scroll, or cenotaph.  I guess now at the sources of her convictions, but that black wellspring—despite all my own adventures—remains beyond my full understanding.

I respect the secrecy of her past.  I question it not.

~

Have I not told of her?  My scrolls are written in the torments of the night.  Each written is an exegesis of the Blackened Codex, the essences of Azathoth:  a purging of my anguish into vessels of page and ink.  These scrolls are confessions of absolution.  Rarely do I return to one when I can begin another.

Nepenthe.

~

Of Fatimah, then, the sagacious and the blind:

She was one of the “errant-falcons,” those noble servants who are now called “graspers.”  These are the clever souls who purchase goods from rival caravans, sealing pacts of barter which leave both the giver and the receiver believing that they have triumphed in the trade.  She was one of the few such who was craftier than good Saheed himself.

The caravan she served was not solely led, as was Saheed’s.  It was a conclave of seven merchants, and its treasures were far lesser than those of the White Stallion.  For where the caravan of Saheed reveled in wealth and majesty, the Caravan of the Seeking Vulture was an arcane gathering which prized secrecy and knowledge more than spice.

As a buyer for the conclave of the Seeking Vulture, Fatimah’s purchases were ones in which she always knew what she was acquiring, while those who bartered with her only guessed at the secrets they gave away.  I never found a language, dead or tribal or mother tongue, which Fatimah did not know.  However blind, she was a master of procuring artifacts dug up from the sands:  shards of pottery, corners of alabaster wall, shattered mosaics, heads of decapitated idols.  Everything she purchased was ancient and mysterious, and every piece bore glyphs or graven writing of some kind.

Fatimah dealt primarily in stone.  Being blind she could not read of the codex or the scroll, but each carved piece of tablet spoke through her fingers of many elder and wondrous things.

She had dealings with Saheed, from what little I understand, many times.  Ere Saheed came to Yathrib, she would unladen his burden of the few things which he carried which were of “questionable” value.  Always, these ruined pieces bore inscriptions as I have told.

Despite her craft and guile, Fatimah still had need for a guide who possessed the gift of sight.  That night of my destiny, she had come to make her dealings with Saheed, trading spice for the shards of an obelisk.  But there at Saheed’s rest, her guide boy—a wretched fool, superstitious of her ability to walk alone at times despite her blindness—had abandoned her at the White Stallion’s banners and fled into the desert.  Thus was she alone, with Saheed in his rush to Yathrib and no one capable of leading her back to the camp of the Seeking Vulture.

No one, that is, but me.

~

The boy had been a fool to abandon her.  A young man could learn much from such a cunning and fearless survivor as Fatimah.  She was a blessing, that she should find me.

That night when I said my farewells to Fikri and kissed Saheed upon his brow, I left in my newly-assumed role as Fatimah’s guide.

And why did I leave?  What had decided me was one whisper, which she spoke into my ear after I had first refused her employ:

“I am of the Cabal of the Ghul.”

She did show her palms to me, and there were the scarred tattoos of the four fanged skulls, the symbols which I had first seen upon the hands of the serene one, Aharon.

~

Of my time with the Seeking Vulture I will say little, for now.  But Fatimah, as we headed north and then east into the great wastes seeking artifacts and the scatterings of fallen kingdoms, she was my shelter and second mother and I was entranced by her.

There was a time south and east of Yathrib that we were ambushed by the territorial skirmishers of a superstitious wasteland tribe which feared the banners of our caravan, the Seeking Vulture, bird of death.  Fatimah was wounded by a stray arrow ere the guards routed the tribesmen back into the desert.  I bandaged her arm, for although the blood of desert women clots quickly, moisture is imperative and I knew that to not sew and cauterize the wound could well mean her life.

The merchants of the caravan insisted that the guard captain, Haidar, be the one to heal her; but Fatimah early revealed her favor for me by saying that she would allow herself to be touched by me alone.

And so with reluctance and some little respect, the caravan master among the seven merchants, Gauhar, entrusted her to my care.  She born pain more bravely than any women I have ever known, and many of the guards I deemed to be less courageous than she.

~

As I finished binding linens about her forearm and gave her water, she asked me who had given me the spices which Saheed had been so curious to know the origins of.  I told her the truth, of my time with Aharon in Jumani-Sab’a, the Place of the Seven Pearls.  She asked me of Zarzara, a name which I had not offered her, and asked me if I had seen the Watcher upon the dune.

I did say yes.  And when she asked me what is the Watcher’s name, and I answered Naram-gal, she did say, “You speaketh true, and thus you are this prophet Aharon’s chosen.  I believe in you.  I will share with you that sparse lore of the Ghuls which I believe my mentor would allow me.  For the rest, you must learn it from them for yourself, should you dare to feast with them.”

And I asked, who is your mentor?  And she, “He is of the eldest among the Ghuls of Khom, and his name is Hetshepsu, Eater of Dust.  He is the desert strider, he is eternal.”

This name meant nothing to me then, but would come to be one deeply fated in my life and indeed in my own survival.  The trials I suffered as a man in Khom were horrific and many, and I shall speak of them in time.

(These intriguing adventures of Al-Azrad in Egypt and the spice-land of Punt are told of in Codex II, which is currently in preparation as the texts are being decrypted by Professor Kelly at Miskatonic University.)

~

Over the next several moons
(months?)
, as the caravan moved and we dug at various sites for the tablet shards and potsherds which were Fatimah’s treasure and the lifeblood of the Seeking Vulture, she told to me many things.

We spoke of the
Alu
, the daemon of night, who slays the man who wandereth as a fool into the wasteland.  The Alu slays by devouring the soul, and leaving the horrific husk of man—as a Lazarus, if you will—to live on in anguish, feeling everything and nothing.  Such men, Fatimah told me, are marked by an accursed shadow which the Ghuls greatly fear, and a man enmasked in the Shadow of Alu they will neither hunt nor touch.

We spoke of the
Asakku
, the daemon which causeth madness, revealing visions to man which are true but not of this world.  Such visions slayeth not, yet lead the beholder to tear his own eyes out in a desperate bid to free himself from the dread affliction of black prophecy.

We spoke of the
Gallu
, the daemons of the netherworld, they who are the guides or killers of dreamers lost within the Vale of Pnath.  Such are now called Ghasts, they who become accursed, forsaking the ancestral grimoires they once protected and thus forgetting all they were.  These the festering and degenerate, once mighty, now know only the ravening hunger for human flesh.

We spoke of
Huwawa
, the terrible and leonine, bestial guardian of the Forest Enchanted:  the cedar paradise which Adaya named the Eden-lost, that which brims upon the Empire of the Blackened Mind and veils the glorious cities which rise beyond it in cloud and spire.  The face of Huwawa is made only of the entrails of his prey, and he is the caster of radiances from the eye of the wrathful gods:  gods who set this cruelest glory upon him as a gift.

~

In time as Fatimah grew to trust me and so to depend on me to guide her in the ruins, she spoke to me with some reluctance of the
Jinn
.  Thus I learned of the sibilance,
Al Azif
, and came to understand why the childhood vision of the locust had meant so much to me.

The locust, she said, is the basest servitor of the Entities who lord over the world invisible, stalking as deathly hunters between the spheres.  It is they who sense the coming of these Horrors, and who take flight in swarms to flee from Them in their stalking of the voids between.  What superstitious men call the Jinn are in truth the mighty Entities eternal, who regard men themselves as insects and who will beckon the Great Cthulhu to rise again.

One night Fatimah whispered that Jinn can beget young upon womankind; and even this, there are those who mate with
men
in their sleep, and thus impregnated the Jinn then go forth into the desert to spawn the most vile and unholy progeny.  To a secret such as this, I feared too much to respond; but in the morning, emboldened I did ask her to explain further and she would say nothing more.

~

The Seeking Vulture traveled long.

When near to the city of Gerrah, I was a wizened young man, knowing much and eager to seek out the Ghuls and entreat them to teach me the arts of necromancy.  Still, my obsession to raise Adaya from the dead was my sole desire.

In those times, I asked Fatimah if the Asakku, if the Gallu, if the Jinn were superstitions or the Real.  She said indeed they all were real and even of the flesh, but they were not known by such simple names, and they were far greater and vastly more powerful that what the superstitions dared imply.

In all our time together, she did not begin to speak of the Ghuls until after the wounding, when I healed her.  And that night I did ask her of them.  She relented, and kissed me upon the brow as if I were her only son.

I was moved to tears, to be loved thus solely for being who I am.  However blind, she knew this.  And she began to tell me all of that which I share hereafter.

(Al-Azrad’s extensive lore concerning his knowledge of the Ghuls is highlighted especially in Gathering the Sixth, The Cabal of the Ghul, which appears later in this work. ~K.)

~

Of the great honors Fatimah bestowed upon me in our time, that kiss was the second in its glory.  The foremost glory I shall inscribe upon the next scroll to come. So shall I tell you of how Fatimah invited me to speak with the mighty one of secrets, Naram-gal.

SCROLL XXIV

Of the Maelstrom

Before the Battlefield of the Saif

The Caravan of the Seeking Vulture wended its way from Khaybar, to the north of Yathrib, south and east to the far port of Gerrah upon the Gulf of the Arvan Rud.  Our journey was wayward, for we halted many times to seek out ruined towns uncovered by sandstorms, to follow the tales of thieves and to rediscover lost oases.  Much of what we found was of great worth to Fatimah and the merchants of the conclave.  Far to the east, in the region of fallen Babylon, the sages and astrologers were certain to pay a dear price for the treasures we raised from tombs and out of the drowning sand.

The journey from Khaybar to Gerrah is a perilous one even still, for the oases there are few and much of the wasteland is trackless and coveted only by the storm.  Some few cairns are to be found upon the higher outcrops, raised by the Seeking Vulture on its former journeys westward, and these did guide our way; but many more of them were toppled by wind or tribe, and still other markers we never did find, despite the maps made by our canny guard captain Haidar.

~

Ever the way was arduous and fearful.  At times we would find pennants planted by superstitious Bedouins; more often, we would find the skeletons of camels and the fallen men who had lost their way.

Where the heat became too great, in the midst of nothingness, we slept in the days and traveled in the night.  We drank our own urine, and melted camel fat, and culled our sweat in scarves only to wring them into our mouths.  Four laborers and two guards died along the way, and at their burial the caravan master Gauhar did say that this was a gentle journey indeed.

Such is the glory of desert riches, the majesty of the wasteland.

And then came the sandstorm of the Jinn.

~

The storm came upon us:

First arose the locusts, hissing frantically in clouds up from the south and far away.  Then, the bitterness of finest ash upon the air.  So fleet and faint were these grains that we could not see them, but far to the south all the sunlight turned to scarlet.

Fatimah the blind was the first to warn us that the storm would be great indeed, a maelstrom of dust and death.  At once the conclave of merchants began to argue and Gauhar could scarcely contain their spiteful quarrels.  Concerns for survival warred with those of greed.  I did learn that day why there were seven merchant leaders of the Seeking Vulture, and neither six nor eight:  three were for digging in and taking shelter, while the other three demanded that we press on and pray to elude the storm with utmost haste.  In such conflicts, the deciding vote of command belonged to Gauhar alone.