Haggopian and Other Stories

It was then, as I left the little green cottages and neatly fenced farms and shady shops of the suburbs behind me, as I pressed more truly into the city proper, that I received a shock so powerful my soul almost withered within me.

I had allowed myself to become interested in the old peaked roofs, the overhanging upper storeys, numberless chimney-pots and narrow, old cobbled streets of the city, so that my attention had been diverted from the path my feet followed, causing me to bump rudely into someone coming out of the narrow door of a shop. Of a sudden the air was foul with shuddersome, well-remembered odours of hideous connection, and my hackles rose as I backed quickly away from the strangely turbaned, squat figure I had chanced into. The slightly tilted eyes regarded me curiously and a wicked smile played around the too wide mouth.

One of Them! Here in Ulthar?

I mumbled incoherent apologies, slipped past the still evilly grinning figure, and ran all the rest of the way to the Temple of the Elder Ones. If there had been any suggestion of half-heartedness to my intentions earlier there was certainly none now! It seemed obvious to me the course events were taking. First it had been Dylath-Leen, now an attempt at Ulthar—where next? Nowhere, if I had anything to say of it.

The Temple of the Elder Ones stands round and towering, of ivied stone, atop Ulthar’s highest hill; and there, in the Room of Ancient Records, I found the patriarch I sought—Atal of Hatheg-Kla; Atal the Ancient. He sat, in flowing black and gold robes, at a centuried wooden bench, fading eyes studiously lost in the yellowed pages of a great aeon-worn book, its metal hasps dully agleam in a stray beam of sunlight striking in from the single high window.

He looked up, starting as if in shock as I entered the musty room with its myriad book-shelves. Then he pushed his book away and spoke:

“The Priest of the Temple greets you, stranger. You are a stranger, are you not?”

“I have seen Ulthar before,” I answered, “but, yes, I am a stranger here in the Temple of the Elder Ones. I come from the waking world, Atal, to seek your help…”

“You—you surprised me. You are not the first from the waking world to ask my aid. I thought at first sight that I knew you of old. How are you named and in what manner might I serve you?”

“My name is Grant Enderby, Atal, and the help I ask is not for myself. I come in the hope that you might be able to help me rid Dylath-Leen of a certain contagion; but since coming to Ulthar today I have learned that even here the sores are spreading. Are there not even now in Ulthar strange traders from no clearly named land? Is it not so?”

“It is so,” he nodded his venerable head. “Say on.”

“Then you should know that they are those same traders who brought Dylath-Leen to slavery—an evil, hypnotic slavery—and I fancy that they mean to use the same black arts here in Ulthar to a like end. Do they trade rubies the like of which are found in no known mine in the whole of dreamland?”

Again he nodded: “They do; but say no more—I am already aware. At this very moment I search for a means by which the trouble may be put to an end. But I work only on rumours, and I am unable to leave the temple to verify those rumours. My duties are all important, and in any case, these bones are too old to wander far. Truly, Dylath-Leen did suffer an evil fate; but think not that her peoples had no warning! Why, even a century ago the city’s reputation was bad, through the presence of those very traders you have mentioned! Another dreamer before you saw the doom in store for the city, speaking against those traders vehemently and often; but his words were soon forgotten by all who heard them and people went their old ways as of yore. No man may help him who will not help himself! But it is the presence of those traders here in Ulthar which has driven me to this search of mine. I cannot allow the same doom to strike here—whatever that doom may be—yet it is difficult to see what may be done. No man of this town will venture anywhere near Dylath-Leen. It is said that the streets of that city have known no human feet for more than twenty years, nor can any man say with any certainty where the city’s peoples have gone.”