The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
H. P. Lovecraft
Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he
snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it
blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble,
silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and
wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in
gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked
gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It was a fever of the gods, a fanfare of
supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds
about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that
balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished
memory, the pain of lost things and the maddening need to place again what once had
been an awesome and momentous place.
He knew that for him its meaning must once have been supreme; though in what cycle or
incarnation he had known it, or whether in dream or in waking, he could not tell. Vaguely
it called up glimpses of a far forgotten first youth, when wonder and pleasure lay in all
the mystery of days, and dawn and dusk alike strode forth prophetic to the eager sound of
lutes and song, unclosing fiery gates toward further and surprising marvels. But each
night as he stood on that high marble terrace with the curious urns and carven rail and
looked off over that hushed sunset city of beauty and unearthly immanence he felt the
bondage of dream's tyrannous gods; for in no wise could he leave that lofty spot, or
descend the wide marmoreal fights flung endlessly down to where those streets of elder
witchery lay outspread and beckoning.
When for the third time he awakened with those flights still undescended and those
hushed sunset streets still untraversed, he prayed long and earnestly to the hidden gods of
dream that brood capricious above the clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste
where no man treads. But the gods made no answer and shewed no relenting, nor did they
give any favouring sign when he prayed to them in dream, and invoked them sacrificially
through the bearded priests of Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose cavern-temple with its
pillar of flame lies not far from the gates of the waking world. It seemed, however, that
his prayers must have been adversely heard, for after even the first of them he ceased
wholly to behold the marvellous city; as if his three glimpses from afar had been mere
accidents or oversights, and against some hidden plan or wish of the gods.
At length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset streets and cryptical hill lanes
among ancient tiled roofs, nor able sleeping or waking to drive them from his mind,
Carter resolved to go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the
icy deserts through the dark to where unknown Kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned with
unimagined stars, holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of the Great Ones.

In light slumber he descended the seventy steps to the cavern of flame and talked of this
design to the bearded priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah. And the priests shook their
pshent-bearing heads and vowed it would be the death of his soul. They pointed out that
the Great Ones had shown already their wish, and that it is not agreeable to them to be
harassed by insistent pleas. They reminded him, too, that not only had no man ever been
to Kadath, but no man had ever suspected in what part of space it may lie; whether it be
in the dreamlands around our own world, or in those surrounding some unguessed
companion of Fomalhaut or Aldebaran. If in our dreamland, it might conceivably be
reached, but only three human souls since time began had ever crossed and recrossed the
black impious gulfs to other dreamlands, and of that three, two had come back quite mad.
There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final
peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach;
that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the
centre of all infinity - the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare
speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time
amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of
accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and
absurdly the gigantic Ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous,