An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

Carter and the ghouls reach the kingdom of the gugs. They seek to ascend a cliff to the enchanted wood, but encounter an enormous gug, fifteen feet high and with a mouth that opens vertically. At that moment, however, the gug is attacked by a swarm of ghasts, and this allows Carter and his escorts to go forth and reach an enormous tower with huge stone steps leading up. After “aeons of climbing” they reach the summit, going through a stone trapdoor just before a gug can capture them. At this point the ghouls leave Carter to return to their own realm. As he is making his way through the enchanted wood, he overhears zoogs planning a war of revenge upon the cats, who had killed several zoogs when Carter was at Ulthar. Carter realizes that he must foil the plan, so he summons the cats and informs them of the zoogs’ scheme.

Carter follows the river Oukranos to Kiran and Thran, and there boards a galleon to Celephaïs. He describes to the mariners the face on Mt. Ngranek, and the mariners tell him that people matching that description are found in a faraway twilight land called Inganok, close to Leng. After passing by Hlanith, Carter comes to Celephaïs, where he meets his old friend Kuranes. But Kuranes, although now a king, longs for his old home. Trevor Towers, in England, and suggests that Carter’s “sunset city” may not be as satisfying as he thinks.

At length a ship from Inganok docks at the harbor, and Carter is thrilled to see “living faces so like the godlike features on Ngranek.” Carter takes passage on their ship and eventually comes to the onyx city of Inganok. He is unnerved to see again the slant-eyed merchant who had drugged him in Dylath-Leen, but the latter disappears before Carter can speak to him. Carter wishes to talk with the onyx-miners in the north, so he hires a yak for the purpose and makes his way to the quarries. Ascending the black cliffs higher and higher, Carter reaches the crest and sees, far in the distance, what appears to be an enormous range of black mountains, but is in fact a series of gigantic onyx figures, “their right hands raised in menace against mankind.” From their laps Carter sees arising a black cloud of shantak-birds. In front of him he sees the slant-eyed merchant astride a yak and leading a horde of shantaks. The merchant compels Carter to mount one of the birds, and they fly through space to the doorway of a windowless stone monastery in Leng. Carter is led before a “lumpish figure robed in yellow silk…and having a yellow silken mask over its face,” whom Carter realizes as the “highpriest not to be described, of which legend whispers such fiendish and abnormal possibilities.” At one point the priest’s mask slips, and the brief glimpse of the face impels Carter to flee madly through the labyrinthine corridors of the monastery. Without warning he slides down an almost vertical burrow and, seemingly miles below, finds himself in a ruined city that he recognizes is Sarkomand.

Carter sees a glow ahead, and approaching carefully he sees that it is a campfire near the seashore, where a black galley from the moon is docked; around the campfire Carter sees a group of the toadlike moon-beasts, who have captured his

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erstwhile ghoul escorts. Carter realizes that he must summon help, so he goes down an immense set of spiral staircases; but as he is slipping down the steps, he is caught up by night-gaunts. Now aware that the night-gaunts are in league with the ghouls, Carter utters a ghoul-cry and tells the nightgaunt to take him back to Pickman and his cohorts. Explaining the situation to the ghouls, he sees them arraying themselves for battle, each ghoul jumping astride a night-gaunt and flying toward the seashore where the captured ghouls are being held. Another battle ensues, with the ghouls and night-gaunts eventually victorious. The ghouls decide to exterminate the garrison of the toadlike creatures, and they board a captured galley with the night-gaunts and defeat the moon-beasts and their almost-human slaves in a titanic struggle.