THE NECRONOMICON ~ The Cthulhu Revelations (33 page)

“Adaya,” I whispered to the night.

And to the nothingness.

SCROLL L

For the Love of Adaya

From that moment until the dawn, I did prepare for my passage to Damascus, the city of the jasmine blossom and the idolaters of Jesual, the Christ; Jerusalem, cradle of the triad of faiths besieged; Gaza, the carved-out rind of all the ancient treasures of Canaan; and Alexandria, the gateway to all of Khom, empress of Egypt.

Would the Lord in Ebon guide my way to the Sinai?  Would he strive to guide the way of my life entire?

I did not care.  He knew that I would betray him, and yet he gifted me with shards of all the powers I would need.  For now, our fates were intertwined and when he said that he did love me, I knew this to be true.  In losing Adaya, I had lost my fear of death.  I knew that I would become mighty, and feared, and suffer and know the ends victory.  All caring ceased as I set my feet upon the path of the forsaken, the hopeless and the exalted.

I knew that once Najeed was dead, I would seek out Hetshepsu; and if I did live on, I would journey south up the River Nilus to the shadow throne of Klocha herself.  If Adaya was cursed to wander upon this earth for all eternity, perhaps, I told myself, she would forgive and she would come with me.

It comforts me, even now, to believe that this is true.

Would she forgive me for all that I had done, if love had been the reason for my obsession?  I cannot erase the past, nor the abomination of my sin.  But I can learn, I can show mercy to the worthy, and I can pray that the good and righteous vengeance I shall mete may serve in some measure to balance the scales of my damnation.

Saved or damned, whatever my fate might be, I did not care.  I knew only that my sole hope to be with my Adaya had drifted into the west, into the land of Khom where the Pharaohs lie entombed and forever dreaming.  I would serve Nyarlathotep not to do
his
will, but to do my own and to destroyed Najeed and the Cult of Cthulhu.  From the Lord in Ebon I would steal the secrets of eternity, and live forever with my Adaya in the Empire of the Blackened Mind.

If she could only live on in dream, so be it.  I would take my true flesh and live in the Lands of Dream as well only to be at her side. 
There
we would be real and be as one.  If she would be caged in a single world, the Otherness of the Real, I would make that cage a cage of gold.

~

And in that time, that now of Tadmur?  Adaya is dead and wandering.

But what is mere Death before the throne of Love?  In worshipping Nyarlathotep, how can I not come to know the glorious power of passage unto dream; and there, the rising of my love in the Real of Otherness, the sacred miracle of reincarnation?

Should she choose, I will sleep in the Palace of Nothingness and there she will to come me.  My princess, and so my Queen.

I wait for her.  Every night there I dream.

The Song of Tadmur,

Of the Departure

O Adaya,

Forgive.  Endure the silence,

Embrace the hope that I may free you.

Should I triumph,

Your death shall be as nothing.

In Khom and before the gateway

To the Empire of the Blackened Mind,

The deeper netherworld

Where no priest shall ever

Dare deny you passage,

There I will carry you

Across the thresholds of the nether

Into our paradise, where by my hand

Sarnath itself shall be raised once more ...

For thy pleasure, for thy greater glory.

In miracle, I as the master of my will,

May you return to my embrace.

~

Pray, will you come to me,

Live again forever as my bride?

Our joy together shall be immortal.

Hand in hand, dancing, laughing,

Ever-lost in the palace of the songbirds ...

As Amytis in her Hanging Gardens,

As Nebuchadnezzar in his love’s enchantment,

You and I shall walk

The onyx streets, and so reflect in every pool,

And ever live as one.

This I swear to you.

~

Whether I be absolved of my transgressions,

Or be judged by the Lord in Ebon,

I will be thy champion.

I will fear no evil.

I go forth.  I wake.  I rise.

~

For that is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons, even Death may die.

~

HERE ENDETH CODEX I, NECRONOMICON.

CODA

By Professor Kelly

So ends the first four years in my interminable labors, in decrypting the John Dee manuscript of the Olaus
Necronomicon
.  I never believed that I would live to write this Coda to the work; but having done so, and in translating so many of the scrolls, I have found myself too intrigued by the life of Abd Al-Azrad to do anything but continue in my endeavors.

As haunting and disturbing as Codex I has proven itself to be, I find that it still entices me to read it yet again.  Whenever I come at last to the end, Al-Azrad’s famous couplet seems to reveal another secret of its meaning.

Throughout this project, perhaps the most troubling of all the revelations I have made is this one:  despite Al-Azrad’s evils, and all his vile deeds, I feel myself empathizing with him at every turn.

And what did happen, after all?  Lovecraft told us only that Al-Azrad worshipped Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.  How can this be, when Codex I ends with him serving the treacherous Nyarlathotep, and swearing to destroy the Cult of Cthulhu?  Did he find Najeed in Egypt, and slay him there?  Did he earn the favor of Hetshepsu and the sorceress Klocha, and delve his way into the Dreamlands where Adaya could live again?

There is so much to tell, much more remains.

The immensity of the
Necronomicon
itself is daunting.  This first Codex, some 80,000 words, represents perhaps one tenth of
Al Azif
in its entirety.  There are thousands more pages to decrypt.  This work manifests all that remains of the first 50 scrolls of the epic work.  I am decoding the scrolls in order, a task of many years.  In measuring the lacunae in John Dee’s ciphered pages, I believe there to be some 500 such scrolls in all.

Codex II, which Dee has entitled VEILS OF NYARLATHOTEP, is now in preparation.  From what I understand, it tells of Al-Azrad’s passage into Egypt; his hunting of Najeed; the secrets of the Deep Ones who lurk below the marshes of Faiyum; the assassin war against the Cult of Cthulhu; the secrets of the Sphinx, the Pyramids, Queen Nitocris and Nephren-Ka; Al-Azrad’s time in Hadoth; Hetshepsu, the Eater of Dust; the betrayal of the Lord in Ebon; and the occult revelations of the greatest sorceress of Al-Azrad’s age, Klocha the Unbeholden.

As I continue the work, I am certain that I will find oblique passages which shall further inform Codex I, THE CTHULHU REVELATIONS; and I still hope that I may find those sections which were torn or sliced out of Dee’s original grimoire.  There are also the lost scrolls which Dee and my ancestor Edward Kelley had never beheld.  Too, there are missing parts of the Greek
Nekronomikon
which Olaus Wormius never knew.  For these missing fragments, I am ever searching; and everything that I find will be included in Codex I and its future revisions.

I am grateful to you, the reader, for taking this journey with me into darkness.  When Codex II has been decoded and prepared, despite all danger, I will publish it as well.

Cthulhu slumbers, dead and dreaming.  The world must know what is to come.

Until then, may you sleep well, and may all your dreams of Sarnath and R’lyeh belong to you alone.  Farewell.

~

KDK

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