Making his way along dank tunnels and stairways that were wells of solid blackness, he at last came to a heavy door fantastically carved, which he felt must be the crypt wherein was secreted the gold of the ancient worshippers. He pressed the toad-jewel against it at several places and finally the door gaped wide.
"And the treasure?" I broke in eagerly.
He laughed in savage self-mockery.
"There was no gold there, no precious gems--nothing"--he hesitated--"nothing that I could bring away."
Again his tale lapsed into vagueness. I gathered that he had left the temple rather hurriedly without searching any further for the supposed treasure. He had intended bringing the mummy away with him, he said, to present to some museum, but when he came up out of the pits, it could not be found and he believed that his men, in superstitious aversion to having such a companion on their road to the coast, had thrown it into some well or cavern.
"And so," he concluded, "I am in England again no richer than when I left."
"You have the jewel," I reminded him. "Surely it is valuable."
He eyed it without favor, but with a sort of fierce avidness almost obsessional.
"Would you say that it is a ruby?" he asked.
I shook my head. "I am unable to classify it."
"And I. But let me see the book."
He slowly turned the heavy pages, his lips moving as he read. Sometimes he shook his head as if puzzled, and I noticed him dwell long over a certain line.
"This man dipped so deeply into forbidden things," said he, "I can not wonder that his fate was so strange and mysterious. He must have had some foreboding of his end--here he warns men not to disturb sleeping things."
Tussmann seemed lost in thought for some moments.
"Aye, sleeping things," he muttered, "that seem dead, but only lie waiting for some blind fool to awake them--I should have read further in the Black Book--and I should have shut the door when I left the crypt--but I have the key and I'll keep it in spite of hell."
He roused himself from his reveries and was about to speak when he stopped short. From somewhere upstairs had come a peculiar sound.
"What was that?" He glared at me. I shook my head and he ran to the door and shouted for a servant.
The man entered a few moments later and he was rather pale.
"You were upstairs?" growled Tussmann.
"Yes, sir."
"Did you hear anything?" asked Tussmann harshly and in a manner almost threatening and accusing.
"I did, sir," the man answered with a puzzled look on his face.
"What did you hear?" The question was fairly snarled.
"Well, sir," the man laughed apologetically, "you'll say I'm a bit off, I fear, but to tell you the truth, sir, it sounded like a horse stamping around on the roof!"
A blaze of absolute madness leaped into Tussmann's eyes.
"You fool!" he screamed. "Get out of here!" The man shrank back in amazement and Tussmann snatched up the gleaming toad-carved jewel.
"I've been a fool!" he raved. "I didn't read far enough--and I should have shut the door--but by heaven, the key is mine and I'll keep it in spite of man or devil."
And with these strange words he turned and fled upstairs. A moment later his door slammed heavily and a servant, knocking timidly, brought forth only a blasphemous order to retire and a luridly worded threat to shoot any one who tried to obtain entrance into the room.
Had it not been so late I would have left the house, for I was certain that Tussmann was stark mad. As it was, I retired to the room a frightened servant showed me, but I did not go to bed. I opened the pages of the Black Book at the place where Tussmann had been reading.
This much was evident, unless the man was utterly insane: he had stumbled upon something unexpected in the Temple of the Toad. Something unnatural about the opening of the altar door had frightened his men, and in the subterraneous crypt Tussmann had found something that he had not thought to find. And I believed that he had been followed from Central America, and that the reason for his persecution was the jewel he called the Key.
Seeking some clue in Von Junzt's volume, I read again of the Temple of the Toad, of the strange pre-Indian people who worshipped there, and of the huge, tittering, tentacled, hoofed monstrosity that they worshipped.
Tussmann had said that he had not read far enough when he had first seen the book. Puzzling over this cryptic phrase I came upon the line he had pored over--marked by his thumb nail. It seemed to me to be another of Von Junzt's many ambiguities, for it merely stated that a temple's god was the temple's treasure. Then the dark implication of the hint struck me and cold sweat beaded my forehead.
The Key to the Treasure! And the temple's treasure was the temple's god! And sleeping Things might awaken on the opening of their prison door! I sprang up, unnerved by the intolerable suggestion, and at that moment something crashed in the stillness and the death-scream of a human being burst upon my ears.
In an instant I was out of the room, and as I dashed up the stairs I heard sounds that have made me doubt my sanity ever since. At Tussmann's door I halted, essaying with shaking hand to turn the knob.
The door was locked, and as I hesitated I heard from within a hideous high-pitched tittering and then the disgusting squashy sound as if a great, jelly-like bulk was being forced through the window. The sound ceased and I could have sworn I heard a faint swish of gigantic wings. Then silence.
Gathering my shattered nerves, I broke down the door. A foul and overpowering stench billowed out like a yellow mist. Gasping in nausea I entered. The room was in ruins, but nothing was missing except that crimson toad-carved jewel Tussmann called the Key, and that was never found. A foul, unspeakable slime smeared the window-sill, and in the center of the room lay Tussmann, his head crushed and flattened; and on the red ruin of skull and face, the plain print of an enormous hoof.
Arkham
Weird Tales (August 1932)
Drowsy and dull with age the houses blink
On aimless streets the rat-gnawed years forget-
But what inhuman figures leer and slink
Down the old alleys when the moon has set?
The Fire of Asshurbanipal
Yar Ali squinted carefully down the blue barrel of his Lee-Enfield, called devoutly on Allah and sent a bullet through the brain of a flying rider.
“Allaho akbar!”
The big Afghan shouted in glee, waving his weapon above his head, “God is great! By Allah, sahib, I have sent another one of the dogs to Hell!”
His companion peered cautiously over the rim of the sand-pit they had scooped with their hands. He was a lean and wiry American, Steve Clarney by name.
“Good work, old horse,” said this person. “Four left. Look–they’re drawing off.”
The white-robed horsemen were indeed reining away, clustering together just out of accurate rifle-range, as if in council. There had been seven when they had first swooped down on the comrades, but the fire from the two rifles in the sand-pit had been deadly.
“Look, sahib–they abandon the fray!”
Yar Ali stood up boldly and shouted taunts at the departing riders, one of whom whirled and sent a bullet that kicked up sand thirty feet in front of the pit.
“They shoot like the sons of dogs,” said Yar Ali in complacent self-esteem. “By Allah, did you see that rogue plunge from his saddle as my lead went home? Up, sahib; let us run after them and cut them down!”
Paying no attention to this outrageous proposal–for he knew it was but one of the gestures Afghan nature continually demands–Steve rose, dusted off his breeches and gazing after the riders, now white specks far out on the desert, said musingly: “Those fellows ride as if they had some set purpose in mind–not a bit like men running from a licking.”
“Aye,” agreed Yar Ali promptly and seeing nothing inconsistent with his present attitude and recent bloodthirsty suggestion, “they ride after more of their kind–they are hawks who give up their pr
ey not quickly. We had best move our position quickly, Steve sahib. They will come back–maybe in a few hours, maybe in a few days–it all depends on how far away lies the oasis of their tribe. But they will be back. We have guns and lives–they want both. And behold.”
The Afghan levered out the empty shell and slipped a single cartridge into the breech of his rifle.
“My last bullet, sahib.”
Steve nodded. “I’ve got three left.”
The raiders whom their bullets had knocked from the saddle had been looted by their own comrades.
No use searching the bodies which lay in the sand for ammunition. Steve lifted his canteen and shook it.
Not much water remained. He knew that Yar Ali had only a little more than he, though the big Afridi, bred in a barren land, had used and needed less water than did the American; although the latter, judged from a white man’s standards, was hard and tough as a wolf. As Steve unscrewed the canteen cap and drank very sparingly, he mentally reviewed the chain of events that had led them to their present position.
Wanderers, soldiers of fortune, thrown together by chance and attracted to each other by mutual admiration, he and Yar Ali had wandered from India up through Turkistan and down through Persia, an oddly assorted but highly capable pair. Driven by the restless urge of inherent wanderlust, their avowed purpose–which they swore to and sometimes believed themselves–was the accumulation of some vague and undiscovered treasure, some pot of gold at the foot of some yet unborn rainbow.
Then in ancient Shiraz they had heard of the Fire of Asshurbanipal. From the lips of an ancient Persian trader, who only half believed what he repeated to them, they heard the tale that he in turn had heard from the babbling lips of delirium, in his distant youth. He had been a member of a caravan, fifty years before, which, wandering far on the southern shore of the Persian Gulf trading for pearls, had followed the tale of a rare pearl far into the desert.
The pearl, rumored found by a diver and stolen by a shaykh of the interior, they did not find, but they did pick up a Turk who was dying of starvation, thirst and a bullet wound in the thigh. As he died in delirium, he babbled a wild tale of a silent dead city of black stone set in the drifting sands of the desert far to the westward, and of a flaming gem clutched in the bony fingers of a skeleton on an ancient throne.
He had not dared bring it away with him, because of an overpowering brooding horror that haunted the place, and thirst had driven him into the desert again, where Bedouins had pursued and wounded him.
Yet he had escaped, riding hard until his horse fell under him. He died without telling how he had reached the mythical city in the first place, but the old trader thought he must have come from the northwest–a deserter from the Turkish army, making a desperate attempt to reach the Gulf.
The men of the caravan had made no attempt to plunge still further into the desert in search of the city; for, said the old trader, they believed it to be the ancient, ancient City of Evil spoken of in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Alhazred–the city of the dead on which an ancient curse rested.
Legends named it vaguely: the Arabs called it Beled-el-Djinn, the City of Devils, and the Turks, Kara-Shehr, the Black City. And the gem was that ancient and accursed jewel belonging to a king of long ago, whom the Grecians called Sardanapalus and the Semitic peoples Asshurbanipal.
Steve had been fascinated by the tale. Admitting to himself that it was doubtless one of the ten thousand cock-and-bull myths mooted about the East, still there was a possibility that he and Yar Ali had stumbled onto a trace of that pot of rainbow gold for which they searched. And Yar Ali had heard hints before of a silent city of the sands; tales had followed the eastbound caravans over the high Persian uplands and across the sands of Turkistan, into the mountain country and beyond–vague tales, whispers of a black city of the djinn, deep in the hazes of a haunted desert.
So, following the trail of the legend, the companions had come from Shiraz to a village on the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf, and there had heard more from an old man who had been a pearl-diver in his youth. The loquacity of age was on him and he told tales repeated to him by wandering tribesmen who had them in turn from the wild nomads of the deep interior; and again Steve and Yar Ali heard of the still black city with giant beasts carved of stone, and the skeleton sultan who held the blazing gem.
And so, mentally swearing at himself for a fool, Steve had made the plunge, and Yar Ali, secure in the knowledge that all things lay on the lap of Allah, had come with him. Their scanty supply of money had been just sufficient to provide riding-camels and provisions for a bold flying invasion of the unknown.
Their only chart had been the vague rumors that placed the supposed location of Kara-Shehr.
There had been days of hard travel, pushing the beasts and conserving water and food. Then, deep in the desert they invaded, they had encountered a blinding sand-wind in which they had lost the camels. After that came long miles of staggering through the sands, battered by a flaming sun, subsisting on rapidly dwindling water from their canteens, and food Yar Ali had in a pouch. No thought of finding the mythical city now. They pushed on blindly, in hope of stumbling upon a spring; they knew that behind them no oases lay within a distance they could hope to cover on foot. It was a desperate chance, but their only one.
Then white-clad hawks had swooped down on them, out of the haze of the skyline, and from a shallow and hastily scooped trench the adventurers had exchanged shots with the wild riders who circled them at top speed. The bullets of the Bedouins had skipped through their makeshift fortifications, knocking dust into their eyes and flicking bits of cloth from their garments, but by good chance neither had been hit.
Their one bit of luck, reflected Clarney, as he cursed himself for a fool. What a mad venture it had been, anyway! To think that two men could so dare the desert and live, much less wrest from its abysmal bosom the secrets of the ages! And that crazy tale of a skeleton hand gripping a flaming jewel in a dead city–bosh! What utter rot! He must have been crazy himself to credit it, the American decided with the clarity of view that suffering and danger bring.
“Well, old horse,” said Steve, lifting his rifle, “let’s get going. It’s a toss-up if we die of thirst or get sniped off by the desert-brothers. Anyway, we’re doin’ no good here.”
“God gives,” agreed Yar Ali cheerfully. “The sun sinks westward. Soon the coolness of night will be upon us. Perhaps we shall find water yet, sahib. Look, the terrain changes to the south.”
Clarney shaded his eyes against the dying sun. Beyond a level, barren expanse of several miles width, the land did indeed become more broken; aborted hills were in evidence. The American slung his rifle over his arm and sighed.
“Heave ahead; we’re food for the buzzards anyhow.”
The sun sank and the moon rose, flooding the desert with weird silver light. Drifted sand glimmered in long ripples, as if a sea had suddenly been frozen into immobility. Steve, parched fiercely by a thirst he dared not fully quench, cursed beneath his breath. The desert was beautiful beneath the moon, with the beauty of a cold marble lorelei to lure men to destruction. What a mad quest! his weary brain reiterated; the Fire of Asshurbanipal retreated into the mazes of unreality with each dragging step. The desert became not merely a material wasteland, but the gray mists of the lost eons, in whose depths dreamed sunken things.
Clarney stumbled and swore; was he failing already? Yar Ali swung along with the easy, tireless stride of the mountain man, and Steve set his teeth, nerving himself to greater effort. They were entering the broken country at last, and the going became harder. Shallow gullies and narrow ravines knifed the earth with wavering patterns. Most of them were nearly filled with sand, and there was no trace of water.
“This country was once oasis country,” commented Yar Ali. “Allah knows how many centuries ago the sand took it, as the sand has taken so many cities in Turkistan.”
They swung on like dead men in a gray land of death. The moon gre
w red and sinister as she sank, and shadowy darkness settled over the desert before they had reached a point where they could see what lay beyond the broken belt. Even the big Afghan’s feet began to drag, and Steve kept himself erect only by a savage effort of will. At last they toiled up a sort of ridge, on the southern side of which the land sloped downward.
“We rest,” declared Steve. “There’s no water in this hellish country. No use in goin’ on for ever. My legs are stiff as gun-barrels. I couldn’t take another step to save my neck. Here’s a kind of stunted cliff, about as high as a man’s shoulder, facing south. We’ll sleep in the lee of it.”
“And shall we not keep watch, Steve sahib?”
“We don’t,” answered Steve. “If the Arabs cut our throats while we’re asleep, so much the better. We’re goners anyhow.”
With which optimistic observation Clarney lay down stiffly in the deep sand. But Yar Ali stood, leaning forward, straining his eyes into the elusive darkness that turned the star-flecked horizons to murky wells of shadow.
“Something lies on the skyline to the south,” he muttered uneasily. “A hill? I cannot tell, or even be sure that I see anything at all.”
“You’re seeing mirages already,” said Steve irritably. “Lie down and sleep.”
And so saying Steve slumbered.
The sun in his eyes awoke him. He sat up, yawning, and his first sensation was that of thirst. He lifted his canteen and wet his lips. One drink left. Yar Ali still slept. Steve’s eyes wandered over the southern horizon and he started. He kicked the recumbent Afghan.
“Hey, wake up, Ali. I reckon you weren’t seeing things after all. There’s your hill–and a queer-lookin’ one, too.”