Haggopian and Other Stories

I was thirty years old before I saw Dylath-Leen again. I arrived in the evening, when the city was all but in darkness, but I recognised immediately the feel of those basalt flagstones beneath my feet, and, while the last of the myriad lights flickered out in the towers and the last tavern closed, my heart leaped as I turned my suddenly light feet towards the house of Bo-Kareth. But something did not seem right, and a horror grew rapidly upon me as I saw in the streets thickening crowds of carousing, nastily chattering, strangely turbaned people not quite so much men as monsters. And many of them had had their turbans disarrayed in their sporting so that protuberances glimpsed previously only in books of witchcraft and the like and in certain biblical paintings showed clearly through! Once I was stopped and pawed vilely by a group of them who conferred in low, menacing tones. I tore myself free and fled for they were, indeed, those same evil traders of yore, and I was horrified that they should be there in my City of Black Towers in such great numbers!

I must have seen hundreds of those vile—creatures—as I hurried through the city’s thoroughfares; yet somehow I contrived to arrive at the house of Bo-Kareth without further pause or hindrance, and there I hammered at his oaken door until a light flickered behind the round panes of blue glass in the upper sections of that entrance. It was Bo-Kareth himself who eventually came to answer my banging, and he came wide-eyed in a fear I could well understand. Relief showed visibly in his whole aspect when he saw that only a man stood upon his step. Although he seemed amazingly aged—so aged, in fact, I was taken aback, for I did not then know of the differences in time between the worlds of dream and waking—he recognised me at once, whispering my name:

“Grant! Grant Enderby…my friend…my old friend…! Come in, come in…”

“Bo-Kareth,” I burst out, “Bo, I—”

“Shhh!” He pressed a finger to his lips, eyes widening even further than before, leaning out to glance up and down the street before pulling me in and quickly closing and bolting the door behind me. “Quietly, Grant, quietly—this is a city of silence now, where they alone carouse and make their own hellish brand of merry—and they may soon be abroad and about their business.”

“They?” I questioned, instinctively knowing the answer.

“Those you once tried to warn us of—the turbaned traders!”

“I thought as much,” I answered, “and they’re already abroad, I’ve seen them—but what business is this you speak of?”

Then Bo-Kareth told me a tale that filled my heart with horror and determined me never to rest until I had at least attempted to right a great wrong.

It had started a number of years earlier, according to my host—(I made no attempt to pin-point a date; how could I when Bo-Kareth had apparently aged thirty years to my twelve?)—and had involved the bringing to the city of a ruby so gigantic that it had to be seen to be believed. This great gem had been a gift, an assurance of the traders’ regard for Dylath-Leen’s peoples, and as such had been set on a pedestal in the city’s main square. But only a few nights later the horror had started to make itself noticeable. The keeper of a tavern near the square, peering from his windows after locking the doors for the night, had noticed a strange, deep, reddish glow from the giant gem’s heart; a glow which seemed to pulse with an alien life all its own, and when the tavern-keeper told the next day of what he had seen an amazing thing came to light. All the other galley-brought rubies in the city—the smaller gems set in rings, amulets and instruments, and those larger, less ornamental, almost rude stones owned purely for the sake of ownership by certain of the city’s richer gentlemen—had all glowed through the night to a lesser degree, as if in response to the greater activity of their bulky brother. And with that unearthly glowing of the gems had come a strange partial paralysis, making all the people of the city other than the turbaned traders themselves slumbrous and weak, incapable and unwanting of any festivity and barely able to go about their normal duties and businesses. As the days passed and the power of the great ruby and its less regal relatives waxed, so also did the strange drowsiness upon Dylath-Leen’s folks; and it was only then, too late, that the plot was seen and its purpose recognised.