THE NECRONOMICON ~ The Cthulhu Revelations (17 page)

Abashed, I knelt as she circled before me.  I avoided her eyes and held my hands open, where she touched the palms with her claw.

And she did say, “Good.  I am Anata, Mother of All.  Of all these children, the Clan of the Shattered Jaw, I am the elder Matriarch, mother to Naram-gal.  I have chosen to abdicate my rightful eminence to him, so that I can remain here among my tablets and my grimoires.  I no longer hunt in the lands above.  The moon and I, once lovers, now are strangers.  I know little of your world as it is now, impetuous Abd.  But I do remember love, and necromancy is the art of my Cabal.  I ask of you only this, for I know Fatimah once asked you as well:  your Adaya, would you die for her?”

I said that I would, but as she was already among the dead, I would die for her only if I believed that doing so would bring me to her once again.

This bold answer seemed to startle and then amuse the crone Anata, and as she considered me, I dared to ask:  “If I kill myself, would I wander as a spirit?  In all the wastelands of this world, would I find her?”

Anata answered, “Destiny is not so simple.  Those who die by another’s hand and are beloved, indeed they do wander the desolate world, lingering in their severance from love.  Invisible, felt, such spirits roam amongst us.  They wander the sands unseen for an age, an age which to them seems only a moment.  Beyond Death, what is the measure and meaning of Time?  What is a moment to the dead?  A year?  A century?  For some decades, perhaps, the restless dead doth linger.  And then they rise and go ... whither knows?”

“I believe, for myself, they rise and fade to coalesce before the throne of the Lord in Ebon, Nyarlathotep.  There they are judged, finding eternity or nothing.  Others of my clan insist that there is a Kingdom of Heaven, and that frozen Kadath is proof that gods of mercy and of beauty do exist.  All I
know
, truly, is that after their one ‘moment’ of anguished wandering, the restless dead do fade from our own world.”

I waited, for Anata had not answered me.  I believed she regarded me then and there not as a fool, but as a child who wanted to understand and yet could not.  It was as if I had asked her if fire burned; and in her fashion, she had answered me.  But there was more.

Pleased with my trembling silence, Anata said further, “Your own life, Abd?  A suicide?  Know you that suicides are bereft of reason in the afterlife.  Should you kill yourself, Abd, you would wander as a spirit for your one ‘moment,’ yes; but forever without your love, without your memory.  If you were to open your veins and rise into the Kingdom of the Restless, and if there your Adaya were ever to find you, you would not know her.  You would see her only as a stranger.  She would remember you, your love, your vows, your anguish, your youth together, yes; and you?  You would remember nothing.”

This was a far greater horror than I had ever imagined.  To find my Adaya, and to be so torn from myself that I would not remember her at all?  I bowed my head, and Anata gasped in wonder as one and then another of my tears fell to the sand.

She crouched, and lapped the dust which held my tears.

She whispered, “A gift, I thank you.  Al-Azrad, chosen of Aharon and Fatimah, do you wish for me to teach you all I know?  The prophecies of Naram-gal are ever-shifting, for mortals are creatures of freedom’s chaos, not of Fate.  Your choices have brought you here, and whether you will survive my teaching, I do not know.  But should you truly want the art beyond all, I can give to you many of the secrets which you will need to chain your Adaya in the lashes of resurrection.”

“Should you desire, I will teach you all that I know of the
ars
and
necromantis
.  And the last of the lore which I do not possess?  Much will come from the Lord in Ebon himself, should you prove worthy.  But I know much.  I know where two of your secrets lies.  To fashion your own spell of resurrection, you would need
two
sets of ancient discs, each graven with the secrets of lost ages.  There was a time when mortals did not live a single life as they do now.  The
younger
of those discs would lie in the tombs of Babylon.  The
second
set of discs, those more ancient, lie still in the tombs of the Serpent People.”

“With my teachings and the discs from those two Kingdoms, your mastery would nearly be complete.  Then would you know secrets of resurrection which even I cannot fully understand.  For the rest, you must stand before Nyarlathotep and plead your worth to him.”

The Lord of Ebon was an entity of powers vast, one which I scarcely understood.  Rather than betray my ignorance to Anata lest she disown me, I asked her instead:

“And the
discs?
  Did you say there are two strings of engraven discs I would require?”  I longed to know why Anata could not comprehend the entirety of the secret of resurrection.  As a Deathless One, did she lack the desperate passion which is the dark gift of mortality?  I dared not ask.  Instead, I implored her:  “And you
know
of
both
sets of discs?  Where are those of the Serpent People?”

And she said, “Those are the strings which venerate Anar’kai.  At least thirteen sets there were, perhaps more.  Pray that at least one survives.  You will unbury them either in Irem of the Many Pillars, or beneath the city that is nameless.  There are many such discs, yes, for the funerary rites of Serpent People—the viper-striders—were ever lain to rest with their most glorious high priests in death.  These priests each wore their own sacred discs of necromancy, and they were mummified with such treasure held aloft within their claws.  Find their remains, and the discs of the viper-striders will be yours.”

With every answer, I was tormented by a flurry of greater questions.  “And who are the viper-striders?  Are all dead, do any yet remain?  Where is Irem but in fable?  What city is called the nameless?”

Anata halted me, drawing blood from my hand with her yellow claw.  When the blood welled forth from my palm, it showed an uncanny silhouette of the scarred claw mark left there a year before by Naram-gal.

She closed my hand into a fist, and somehow, my wound began to heal.  She considered the scab which was forming upon my palm.  Licking her lips with her black tongue, she said to me:

“Patience, child.  You will learn as you veil yourself in a chaos all your own.  Such is the way of men.  We, the Ghuls, can guide yet never lead you.  Find your answers in the world afar while there is time and your Adaya yet wanders.”

“And the other discs, of man?” I asked.  “These lesser graven discs of the necromancers, how do you know they lie in Babylon?”

Anata answered thus:

“I do
not
know.  As I said, I scarcely know your world, for I no longer hunt beneath the moon.  These caverns of twilight are my sole domain.  This is my home, I am the loremistress of my clan.  But the discs were buried in Babylon when I was young, when I was a maiden and my name was sung in love.  Ghuls would have no need of such trinkets, for we possess an immortality of our own.  There are tombs within the Ziggurat of Babilu, what Naram-gal has called the Tower of Babylon.  It stands in ruins, yet so does it remain.  If no mortal reaver has yet found the tombs, then the discs which you require will remain.  And if not?  Then you will cast an unfinished incantation, and well may die; or, you will find in all your years
where
the discs have gone to.  You kill thieves, yes?  That is what your blood has told to me.  And you delight in it.”

“But why, why are you so fickle with your obsession?  I have given you much, the rest will come in time.  Take what is given to you now.  I will teach you the art, I will share with you the language of Babilu and its ways of incantation.  One night, you may well have the beginnings of your spell to bring your Adaya back to life.  But child?”

And she crouched before me, nearing, so that her ancient and noseless face was level with my own.  Gently, she placed her talons on either side of my face.  I looked into her deep-socketed scarlet eyes.

She asked of me:  “Do you love?  Do you truly want this?”

And I said with all my heart, “Yes.  She is all I have ever wanted.”

And Anata answered, “Then learn with me, Abd.  When you have learned all, leave me.  Find the greater discs of the viper-striders, find the lesser discs of Babel.  From these you will sing your song of songs, you will cast your spell.  Should the Lord in Ebon let it be, Adaya will return to you.  But you may well find that the
price
is what destroys you, rather than the agony of life without her.”

And so did I begin my life underground, as an apprentice of Anata, Matriarch of the Clan of the Shattered Jaw.

~

Hereafter follows all that I learned of the Ghuls and necromancy in my times when I have dwelled within the deep.  I share these secrets not only so that you, reader mine and slave, will know of the darkest powers; but too, so that you will know your potential allies, the Ghuls, and so have from their clans great warriors and consorts in your destruction of Cthulhu’s Cult.

The more of the Ghuls’ secrets you understand, the more likely you are to honor them, and so be seen as worthy of tutelage.

Keep well in mind that few Ghuls are as merciful or as loving as Anata.  Should you seek out the Ghuls of your own age and not know all that I am to speak of, it is likely certain that they will destroy you rather than take you into the fold.

So of my next ream of scrolls in the amphora beneath this one, unseal the wax, draw forth the papyri, and so fashion the Sixth Gathering, which I have named The Cabal of the Ghul.

GATHERING THE SIXTH

The Cabal of the Ghul

SCROLL XXVII

Of the Eaters of the Dead,

The Seekers for Eternity

Herein I will tell of all I have learned of the honored race of the Deathless Ones, the Eaters of the Dead, the Seekers for Eternity, the Ghuls.  In all my decades of my commingling with their kind—in war, in pursuit, in flight, in parley, in learning and yes, in friendship—I have found them to be not repulsive, but rather
primal
.

Where once I was horrified by them, they now engender only sadness, and even a desire in my heart.  If my destiny were my own, it is likely that I would walk to the oasis of Zarzara in my elder years as did Aharon, sit upon the sands, and let the tribe of Naram-gal feast upon me and make me one of them so that I could finally be at peace.  The dream of R’lyeh would finally be silenced.

But my path is one of vengeance and desire.  I will have my Adaya, and those who murdered her will know that it is
I
who will be their ending.  I am the slayer; and you, reader, in keying yourself with my memories shall be the host to my hateful mind.

~

But that is yet to come.  Here, in my own life, my own thirst for revenge is yet to be fully sated.  I know that in my pursuit I needeth the greatest and most tireless of hunters and seekers to guide my way, and so I am proud to live and breathe to serve the Cabal of the Ghul.

They are a worthy race.  I daresay the Ghuls have more respect for one another, and for brave warriors who defy them, than we ‘mortals’ do for our own kind.  As is the way with every man and woman of our kith, the Kingdom of Man, there are vile Ghuls and there are Kings and Sultans among their kind.  Some are esteemed and gentle, some sagely, some fearful and of timid mien.  Others are vicious and savage, bestial and reveling in blood.  Many are evil, but the noble few forever redeem the race.

And are not men so?

~

But know you this:  the more that you honor the Ghuls and understand of them, the more fated you are to learn from them and not be at war with their ancient kind.  There will be times, in pursuit of wisdom and sanctuary upon and beneath the deserts, that you will have no choice but to destroy them.  But always, this should be the path of last resort.  For as the Ghuls live for centuries, they have prophets among their kind, and they are the masters of our memory and lore.  It is they who are the sacred keepers of Khom and Sumeru, Babilu and Akkad.  Every race of man which has been slaughtered and eradicated from this earth has its own survival in the Kingdom of the Ghul.  Even Hyperborea, Cimmeria, Atlantis, Mu, Thuria, Stygia and on ... the fallen empires of mortals live on in their memory.

Consider:

The lost tablets of Eridu, the codices burned at Alexandria, the hieroglyph chests of Thebes and buried Hadoth itself, all these to some extent are counted among the treasures of the Ghul.  There is an entire other kingdom under the earth, between the Dreamlands and the Real:  a netherworld, where the Ghuls reign and gibber in endless caverns, where forests of crystal and fungus cluster down to sunless seas.  Great temples of the ancients there still remain, beneath us and unbeheld, and there reign on the glories which were lost to us.

Fear them not, but respect them.  Do not flee them, but
find
them.  The Ghuls are the vanguards of your cause.  Bow to them.

And how are you to find that which does not wish to be discovered?

This I will speak of hereafter.  But first, you must know what Ghuls are, their appearance, their weaknesses and their ways.

~

The first signifier of the presence of a Ghul may well be its mephitic stench.  This is not only the fragrance of corpses, but of honey and of spice.  For the cunning Ghuls—those who are not bestial, and there are many such—swathe themselves in fragrant spices, the perfumes of their mortal kindred:  amber, oil of sandalwood, cinnamon, balm of bay leaf, even honey.

The Ghul is stealthy and is rarely heard.  As they keep to the shadows and burrow easily in sand, and hunt forth in the night and even strideth in the sandstorm, they are rarely seen unless they choose to reveal themselves.

When you
see
a Ghul you will know. Their limbs are knobbed and sinewy.  Their bodies are pinched beneath the ribcage, for the organs of the belly are likely to have atrophied or decayed.  They do not feast as we do; their flesh is fungal and porous, and it could be said that the entirety of their spongy body is actually made of entrails.