The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath | Page 7

of infamous Thalarion, that daemon-city of a
thousand wonders where the eidolon Lathi reigns; the charnel gardens of Zura, land of
pleasures unattained, and the twin headlands of crystal, meeting above in a resplendent
arch, which guard the harbour of Sona-Nyl, blessed land of fancy.
Past all these gorgeous lands the malodourous ship flew unwholesomely, urged by the
abnormal strokes of those unseen rowers below. And before the day was done Carter saw
that the steersman could have no other goal than the Basalt Pillars of the West, beyond
which simple folk say splendid Cathuria lies, but which wise dreamers well know are the
gates of a monstrous cataract wherein the oceans of earth's dreamland drop wholly to
abysmal nothingness and shoot through the empty spaces toward other worlds and other
stars and the awful voids outside the ordered universe where the daemon sultan Azathoth
gnaws hungrily in chaos amid pounding and piping and the hellish dancing of the Other
Gods, blind, voiceless, tenebrous, and mindless, with their soul and messenger
Nyarlathotep.
Meanwhile the three sardonic merchants would give no word of their intent, though
Carter well knew that they must be leagued with those who wished to hold him from his
quest. It is understood in the land of dream that the Other Gods have many agents moving

among men; and all these agents, whether wholly human or slightly less than human, are
eager to work the will of those blind and mindless things in return for the favour of their
hideous soul and messenger, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. So Carter inferred that the
merchants of the humped turbans, hearing of his daring search for the Great Ones in their
castle of Kadath, had decided to take him away and deliver him to Nyarlathotep for
whatever nameless bounty might be offered for such a prize. What might be the land of
those merchants in our known universe or in the eldritch spaces outside, Carter could not
guess; nor could he imagine at what hellish trysting-place they would meet the crawling
chaos to give him up and claim their reward. He knew, however, that no beings as nearly
human as these would dare approach the ultimate nighted throne of the daemon Azathoth
in the formless central void.
At the set of sun the merchants licked their excessively wide lips and glared hungrily and
one of them went below and returned from some hidden and offensive cabin with a pot
and basket of plates. Then they squatted close together beneath the awning and ate the
smoking meat that was passed around. But when they gave Carter a portion, he found
something very terrible in the size and shape of it; so that he turned even paler than
before and cast that portion into the sea when no eye was on him. And again he thought
of those unseen rowers beneath, and of the suspicious nourishment from which their far
too mechanical strength was derived.
It was dark when the galley passed betwixt the Basalt Pillars of the West and the sound of
the ultimate cataract swelled portentous from ahead. And the spray of that cataract rose to
obscure the stars, and the deck grew damp, and the vessel reeled in the surging current of
the brink. Then with a queer whistle and plunge the leap was taken, and Carter felt the
terrors of nightmare as earth fell away and the great boat shot silent and comet-like into
planetary space. Never before had he known what shapeless black things lurk and caper
and flounder all through the aether, leering and grinning at such voyagers as may pass,
and sometimes feeling about with slimy paws when some moving object excites their
curiosity. These are the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, and like them are blind and
without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts.
But that offensive galley did not aim as far as Carter had feared, for he soon saw that the
helmsman was steering a course directly for the moon. The moon was a crescent shining
larger and larger as they approached it, and shewing its singular craters and peaks
uncomfortably. The ship made for the edge, and it soon became clear that its destination
was that secret and mysterious side which is always turned away from earth, and which
no fully human person, save perhaps the dreamer Snireth-Ko, has ever beheld. The close
aspect of the moon as the galley drew near proved very disturbing to Carter, and he did
not like the size and shape of the ruins which crumbled here and there. The dead temples
on the mountains were so placed that they could have glorified no suitable or wholesome
gods, and in the symmetries of the broken columns there seemed to be some dark and
inner