gods, and even one old priestess who had scaled a great mountain to behold them dancing by moonlight. She had failed, though her companion had succeeded and perished namelessly.
So Randy Carter thanked the Zoogs, who fluttered amicably and gave her another gourd of moon-tree wine to take with her, and set out through the phosphorescent wood for the other side, where the rushing Skai flows down from the slopes of Lerion, and Hatheg and Nir and Ulthar dot the plain. Behind her, furtive and unseen, crept several of the curious Zoogs; for they wished to learn what might befall her, and bear back the legend to their people. The vast oaks grew thicker as she pushed on beyond the village, and she looked sharply for a certain spot where they would thin somewhat, standing quite dead or dying among the unnaturally dense fungi and the rotting mould and mushy logs of their fallen sisters. There she would turn sharply aside, for at that spot a mighty slab of stone rests on the forest floor; and those who have dared approach it say that it bears an iron ring three feet wide. Remembering the archaic circle of great mossy rocks, and what it was possibly set up for, the Zoogs do not pause near that expansive slab with its huge ring; for they realise that all which is forgotten need not necessarily be dead, and they would not like to see the slab rise slowly and deliberately.
Carter detoured at the proper place, and heard behind her the frightened fluttering of some of the more timid Zoogs. She had known they would follow her, so she was not disturbed; for one grows accustomed to the anomalies of these prying creatures. It was twilight when she came to the edge of the wood, and the strengthening glow told her it was the twilight of morning. Over fertile plains rolling down to the Skai she saw the smoke of cottage chimneys, and on every hand were the hedges and ploughed fields and thatched roofs of a peaceful land. Once she stopped at a farmhouse well for a cup of water, and all the dogs barked affrightedly at the inconspicuous Zoogs that crept through the grass behind. At another house, where people were stirring, she asked questions about the gods, and whether they danced often upon Lerion; but the farmer and her wile would only make the Elder Sign and tell her the way to Nir and Ulthar.
At noon she walked through the one broad high street of Nir, which she had once visited and which marked her farthest former travels in this direction; and soon afterward she came to the great stone bridge across the Skai, into whose central piece the masons had sealed a living human sacrifice when they built it thirteen-hundred years before. Once on the other side, the frequent presence of cats (who all arched their backs at the trailing Zoogs) revealed the near neighborhood of Ulthar; for in Ulthar, according to an ancient and significant law, no woman may kill a cat. Very pleasant were the suburbs of Ulthar, with their little green cottages and neatly fenced farms; and still pleasanter was the quaint town itself, with its old peaked roofs and overhanging upper stories and numberless chimney-pots and narrow hill streets where one can see old cobbles whenever the graceful cats afford space enough. Carter, the cats being somewhat dispersed by the half-seen Zoogs, picked her way directly to the modest Temple of the Elder Ones where the priests and old records were said to be; and once within that venerable circular tower of ivied stone - which crowns Ulthar's highest hill - she sought out the patriarch Atyl, who had been up the forbidden peak Hatheg-Kia in the stony desert and had come down again alive.
Atyl, seated on an ivory dais in a festooned shrine at the top of the temple, was fully three centuries old; but still very keen of mind and memory. From her Carter learned many things about the gods, but mainly that they are indeed only Earth's gods, ruling feebly our own dreamland and having no power or habitation elsewhere. They might, Atyl said, heed a woman's prayer if in good humour; but one must not think of climbing to their onyx stronghold atop Kadath in the cold waste. It was lucky that no woman knew where Kadath towers, for the fruits of ascending it would be very grave. Atyl's companion Banni the Wise had been drawn screaming into the sky for climbing merely the known peak of Hatheg-Kia. With unknown Kadath, if ever found, matters would be much worse; for although Earth's gods may sometimes be surpassed by a wise mortal, they are protected by the Other Gods from Outside, whom it is better not to discuss. At least twice in the world's history the Other Gods set their seal upon Earth's primal granite; once in antediluvian times, as guessed from a drawing in those parts of the Pnakotic Manuscripts too ancient to be read, and once on Hatheg-Kia when Barza the Wise tried to see Earth's gods dancing by moonlight. So, Atyl said, it would be much better to let all gods alone except in tactful prayers.
Carter, though disappointed by Atyl's discouraging advice and by the meagre help to be found in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan, did not wholly despair. First she questioned the old priestess about that marvellous sunset city seen from the railed terrace, thinking that perhaps she might find it without the gods' aid; but Atyl could tell her nothing. Probably, Atyl said, the place belonged to her especial dream world and not to the general land of vision that many know; and conceivably it might be on another planet. In that case Earth's gods could not guide her if they would. But this was not likely, since the stopping of the dreams shewed pretty clearly that it was something the Great Ones wished to hide from her.
Then Carter did a wicked thing, offering her guileless host so many draughts of the moon-wine which the Zoogs had given her that the old woman became irresponsibly talkative. Robbed of her reserve, poor Atyl babbled freely of forbidden things; telling of a great image reported by travellers as carved on the solid rock of the mountain Ngranek, on the isle of Oriab in the Southern Sea, and hinting that it may be a likeness which Earth's gods once wrought of their own features in the days when they danced by moonlight on that mountain. And she hiccoughed likewise that the features of that image are very strange, so that one might easily recognize them, and that they are sure signs of the authentic race of the gods.
Now the use of all this in finding the gods became at once apparent to Carter. It is known that in disguise the younger among the Great Ones often espouse the sons of women, so that around the borders of the cold waste wherein stands Kadath the peasants must all bear their blood. This being so, the way to find that waste must be to see the stone face on Ngranek and mark the features; then, having noted them with care, to search for such features among living women. Where they are plainest and thickest, there must the gods dwell nearest; and whatever stony waste lies back of the villages in that place must be that wherein stands Kadath.
Much of the Great Ones might be learnt in such regions, and those with their blood might inherit little memories very useful to a seeker. They might not know their parentage, for the gods so dislike to be known among women that none can be found who has seen their faces wittingly; a thing which Carter realized even as she sought to scale Kadath. But they would have queer lofty thoughts misunderstood by their fellows, and would sing of far places and gardens so unlike any known even in the dreamland that common folk would call them fools; and from all this one could perhaps learn old secrets of Kadath, or gain hints of the marvellous sunset city which the gods held secret. And more, one might in certain cases seize some well-loved child of a god as hostage; or even capture some young god herself, disguised and dwelling amongst women with a comely peasant maiden as her bride.
Atyl, however, did not know how to find Ngranek on its isle of Oriab; and recommended that Carter follow the singing Skai under its bridges down to the Southern Sea; where no burgess of Ulthar has ever been, but whence the merchants come in boats or with long caravans of mules and two-wheeled carts. There is a great city there, Dylath-Leen, but in Ulthar its reputation is bad because of the black three-banked galleys that sail to it with rubies from no clearly named shore. The traders that come from those galleys to deal with the jewellers are human, or nearly so, but the rowers are never beheld; and it is not thought wholesome in Ulthar that merchants should trade with black ships from unknown places whose rowers cannot be exhibited.
By the time she had given this information Atyl was very drowsy, and Carter laid her gently on
a couch of inlaid ebony and gathered her long locks decorously on her breast. As she turned to go, she observed that no suppressed fluttering followed her, and wondered why the Zoogs had become so lax in their curious pursuit. Then she noticed all the sleek complacent cats of Ulthar licking their chops with unusual gusto, and recalled the spitting and caterwauling she had faintly heard, in lower parts of the temple while absorbed in the old priest's conversation. She recalled, too, the evilly hungry way in which an especially impudent young Zoog had regarded a small black kitten in the cobbled street outside. And because she loved nothing on earth more than small black kittens, she stooped and petted the sleek cats of Ulthar as they licked their chops, and did not mourn because those inquisitive Zoogs would escort her no farther.
It was sunset now, so Carter stopped at an ancient inn on a steep little street overlooking the lower town. And as she went out on the balcony of her room and gazed down at the sea of red tiled roofs and cobbled ways and the pleasant fields beyond, all mellow and magical in the