THE NECRONOMICON ~ The Cthulhu Revelations (16 page)

And who is he?

This question of mine only passed in silence.

But there was hope, Naram-gal said to me.  While Nyarlathotep forbade resurrection to the Ghuls; among mortals, he actually tempted men with hints of rebirth and immortality.  In ancient texts of Babilu, old when Naram-gal himself had been a boy, an inscribed passage did speak of the truths of resurrection, of souls being reborn in another flesh.  A body could not rise with the soul which had cast it off locked back inside it, no; for such led only to madness and willful destruction.  But the soul could be deceived, and lured against its will into a
second
flesh.  A second vessel.  Adaya, Naram-gal did tell me, would never possess her own beauty again, and her face would not be her own.  But her mind, and her memory, and her love would so return.

Perhaps if I brought Adaya back to life in another woman’s body, she would in time forgive me?  What travesties could not be healed in the name of love?

Naram-gal asked of me, “And would you do this, Al-Azrad?”

I said that I would, and I would entreat my Adaya to forgive me and to remain.  As I asked of the incantations held in this lost codex of Babilu, Naram-gal did silence me.  He said:

“The paths into the labyrinth cast before the willing by Nyarlathotep are never simple, Abd.  Already I have told too much.  The Lord in Ebon himself will test your faith.  And we Ghuls?  We do not yet know if you will reveal the secret of our existence to anyone, child.  And should you dare to, you will die.  And I know too, the worse fate for
your
soul would be to understand that in death you are powerless, and certain never to find your beloved Adaya again.  Ask me little, but take what I offer you.  The greater gifts of wisdom will come from the Lord in Ebon himself.  He will toy with you, and you must wander far to pay his price.  Do you understand this, all I have foreseen?”

I did not.  But I believed then that I could learn to understand.

I asked what black oath, what vow of secrecy I could voice to Naram-gal, to swear to him that I would tell no one of the Ghuls, and my asking this alone did seem to please him.  It is only in the years after I witnessed his destruction that I dare to write of this in the scrolls, and even now I know the Cabal may claim vengeance upon me for my treachery in doing so.

I have taken great pains to ensure that these scrolls will never be found until long after I am dead.

~

But the other Ghuls did seem uncertain of my faith.  I looked back to Fatimah, who had risen to stand outside their circle.  She made no motion to come to me, nor to betray what she herself believed.

This mattered not.  Naram-gal was pleased, and he came nearer to me.  He bade me open my right hand, and he touched there with the heat of an ancient claw.  So did I take the blood oath of the Ghuls that night in the Battlefield of the Saif.  I drank a droplet of my own blood, and as I was commanded, I did let the black tongue of Naram-gal drinketh of my palm.  To which he said only, “A taste of eternity.  Now you are not a
child
to Fatimah, but a brother.”

Naram-gal then bade me kneel upon the sands.  Crouching, he whispered to me, “The lore that I will give you now shall not be inscribed in any codex of the earth.  This I require of you, else I should be compelled to destroy you as my own errant child.  For now you are mine.  Of the secret you seek, you must entreat the lorekeeper of our clan, our Anata.  Until that time, if you would resurrect your Adaya, there are visions you must behold.  Take this black amethyst, and hold it while you are sleeping.  My wisdom then, that which cannot be voiced, will come to you.  Speak not of this, nor strive to understand, or the aether of the dreamings will fade away from your mind.  Do not question,
feel
.  And do not be such a fool as to believe that reclaiming your Adaya from death will be a sacred revelation.  No.  You must create your incantation to bring her forth; your spell will be a nonesuch, a love song for her alone.  Reincarnation of the ashen is no matter of arcane formulae, it is an eidolon of love, and your entreaty shall be unique.  We will meet again, Abd, and sooner than you believe.  Contemplate these sorrows as you journey alone to Gerrah.”

And I asked of him, “Alone?  What do you mean?”

And Naram-gal stood tall.  He called out to the woman who stood behind me, “It is done.  Fatimah, come forward for thy blessing which thou hast begged for.”

And Fatimah came forward, an expression of absolute serenity and peace upon her face.  I tried to touch her, and while my fingertips silked upon her sleeve, she did not seem to feel me.  I let her by.

She then cried out, “I am ready, O Naram-gal!  May I be born anew!  As I have walked for a lifetime with your gift of second sight, may I see the moon with my own eyes for the first and only time!  A Ghul, reborn, I will crawl and rise before you!  For the first night since I was the exiled daughter of Ajid,
may I see!”

And the Ghuls rose with moans of passion, and they set upon her.

~

They tore her apart.  They ripped of her belly, and fed upon her entrails as she shrieked.  She did not die.  They would not let her.  They drank of her blood, and kissed her with seizing jaws, and poured the mingled blood, Ghul-Fatimah, back down into her throat.  Her flesh, ever healing through this horrid metamorphosis, was shredded anew and still she did not die.

But oh, how she did scream.

And Naram-gal cackled in delight as she submitted to her end, her own rising, and I—faltering, shocked and heartbroken with horror—fled screaming into the desert.

Of the blood-price of my own obsession, I had only just begun to understand.

SCROLL XXVI

The
Habrud
of Anata,

And How I Did Come to Learn

The Arts of Necromancy

I did reach the city of Gerrah, in the end.  I even espied Gauhar in the streets, trading his last ream of scrolls and bartering for camels.  I was too ashamed to face him, or even to let him know that I had survived; for I knew that he would implore me to know Fatimah’s fate, and that I could never speak of such a thing.  My grief was too great.

And so it would remain for many years.

~

Another year passed as I sought the more elusive secrets of Adaya’s resurrection.  The black amethyst of Naram-gal brought me dreams which I could not remember.  I knew only that they were sinister, and beautiful, and I woke bathed in sweat and scented with the candle-fires of distance spaces, candles which had burned within the Empire of the Blackened Mind.  In waking, the scents of that world would cling to me.

True to my word—in those nights, if no longer—I did not strive to understand the jewel’s visions.  I only let them wash over me, and in the nights I would cry out Fatimah’s name.

I was by then one of the most experienced caravan scouts in the lands to the south of the Euphrates.  I earned gold and spice not only as a singer and a guide, but as a warrior as well.  Something had changed in me, in allowing Naram-gal to partake of my blood.  I was faster, bolder, deadlier.  Something far worse had changed in me in seeing Fatimah torn apart, a Ghul undying.

~

At times, when I closed my eyes, I would for a moment still see my surroundings despite being blind ... bathed in scarlet, as a Ghul would see.  And fear became something foreign to my soul, a part of me which was dying, which I longed to taste again.  I found the remnants of my fear in battle, and in the thrill of killing thieves, but nothing more.

Fear was no longer a force to overwhelm me, but rather a spice to be tasted, and to be reveled in for its rarity.

But I did learn many ways to kill, and with each thief’s death my soul grew more remote, more a mirage than a reflection of my being.

I learned much—too much—of the desert, its caravans, its riches, its fallen kingdoms and towns and tribes and the ancient superstitions.  I learned the tales which were untrue, and those which were of the forbidden Real which lesser mortals dared not whisper of.  To every city I explored I was an exile, welcome nowhere but respected and feared by many.  Still young in years but more ancient than the eldest caravan masters whom I served, I became a
malik
, a chieftain of the desert, lording over a tribe of one.

I traveled as far north as Thaj of the Grecian pillars and the shrines of Aphrodite; as far west as Tabuk beyond Khaybar, city of the crystal mosque; and even so far south as Marib again, near to where my Adaya was laid to rest.  But never did I return to her, for I feared the temptation of being so near to her remains.  I would not defile the grave, for the jewel of Naram-gal had whispered that such would sever her restless spirit from this world forevermore.

And however near, I never did return to great Sana’a, nor to Zarzara, for my heart’s bitterness was there.

~

The next glimpse of a Ghul I did receive was when I was guiding the Caravan of the Black Scarab from Hadhramaut into the emptiness of the Khali.

Sleeping in my tent, with my back to an escarpment which sheltered my fire’s dying cinders from the wild winds of that night, I woke to withered and leathery claws clamped over my face.

I could not scream.  My honed senses had failed me, and my attacker had cunningly waited for the winds to hide his scent.  Once my eyes flashed open and I tried to breathe, the amber-and-foetor stench of the stranger was overpowering.

A voice which breathed with the echoes of ages whispered into my ear, “Do not scream.”

It was Naram-gal.

I relaxed, holding my breath in a desperate attempt to keep from inhaling the great Ghul’s stench as he released and then crouched over me.  He said, “Well met we are once more, little chosen one.  Have you forgotten what I told you?  The omen rises.  I have swayed the great one of our clan to mentor you in your quest, child Adb.  You will learn the arts of necromancy from my clan’s own Matriarch, Adaya.  Or, in failing as her apprentice, you will die.  She waits for you beneath the world.  It is time.”

And as if I were nothing more than an empty sack, he threw me over his scaly shoulder and bounded out into the desert wind.

~

There was no time for me to question.  Who was this Anata?  Who among the Ghuls could be greater than Naram-gal?  What had been decided in my name?  Was Fatimah, the eviscerated and my mentor, among the Ghuls as one of the clan as well?  And what of the Sage of the Seven Pearls?  Would I find the man Aharon once again?

But Naram-gal ignored my every entreaty.  Cradling me against his hollowed chest, he rushed into a sandstorm and the scarlet blindness of the night.

~

When at last he slowed and lowered me from his talons, I found myself beneath sand-lost stars in the middle of the Khali wasteland.  A jagged hole gaped in the rocky earth, with trickling cascades of sand falling down from its brim.  Naram-gal leapt down into this hole and beckoned me to enter a deeper and stench-filled cave.

So did I come to the
habrud
, the Ghul lair, of the clan of Naram-gal.

We crawled through warrens carved from the stone of the very earth.  In each burrow that we passed, a lone Ghul sat and gazed at me.  I was expected.  These were the ones who had encircled me in the Battlefield of the Saif, when Fatimah had made her choice to be devoured.  To me the terrors of that night seemed a century ago.

These Ghuls were solemn in the secrets of their existence.  Some feasted on limbs torn from wanderers or hermits, others groomed the ants and the scarabs from the scalps of their lesser brethren.  Skulls of victims served as drinking cups for curdled blood, while painted skulls—of ancestors?  Of the chosen?—were wreathed together with tangles of spiderweb and honored to be hung upon white pedestals of bone.  Everywhere, a strange violet lichen glowed and thrived on the burrow walls, casting its eerie luminescence in a pale imitation of lunar twilight.

In the deepest burrow, the ceiling rose above us, and Naram-gal at last was able to stand.  I followed his example.

An enormous but somehow beetle-like shadow descended, detaching itself from a tiered labyrinth made of tablets and hieroglyphic stones.  This thing neared me, and breathed the scent of my skin.

There stood before me an even more ancient Ghul than Naram-gal, taller and still more gaunt than he.  Its flesh was filled with hollows, where olive-hued mushrooms grew and bloated spiders coursed beneath the skin.

The spider-Ghul crouched, turning its back on me.  Naram-gal followed suit, leaving me alone despite my nearness to these creatures.  The two engaged in a fierce argument, echoing in rasps of the dead tongue of Akkadian.  At last, the spider-Ghul relented, and Naram-gal seemed pleased.  The spider-Ghul spoke to me, and I was taken aback to hear the voice of an old woman, quavering as does a soft wind within the reeds.

She addressed me, “You, Al-Azrad, who seeketh to reclaim your beloved from the realm of the restless dead.  Aharon has spoken well of you.  And surely Fatimah, she swore that you—”

A fool, I rashly interrupted this.  I cried out, “Is Aharon of the deathless?  Is Fatimah among you?  She lives?  Can I see her?”

With the echoes of this, the spider-Ghul regarded me in silence.  Naram-gal grunted a weary sigh and crawled out of the grotto, leaving me to face the wrath of the spider-Ghul alone.  I learned thereafter that he believed the spider-Ghul would devour me for my insolence.  Naram-gal crawled away and left me to my fate.

But once he had gone, the Ghul-crone did smile and laugh softly.  She said to me, “You
are
a passionate one, are you not?  Aharon is to be believed.  Perhaps we will see which black miracles we
can
perform within you, after all.”

I said nothing.

The Ghul-crone drifted down onto all fours, and softly circled me.  As she did so, she whispered, “Aharon is, as you might say, ‘well and yet unwell.’  He quests within the Vale of Pnath.  He braves oblivion for the clan, I say no more.  Fatimah?  She is among our kindred, in the netherworld of the Dreamlands.  By the claw of the soaring Night-gaunt, she will journey to Thalarion, to Xura, she will behold the Sunken City.  She has much to learn.  You cannot be with her again.  No.  But should you choose to slip the black jewel of Naram-gal beneath your tongue, and
dream
of her?  If she then chooses to come to you, that is her right.  Now.  May I speak with you of your destiny, as I tried to do before?”