Shadows Out of Time

All the captive intelligences spent some of their time in conversations with fellow inmates (for he had again come to view the Great Race that way, despite their generally humane treatment). All of them were glad enough to share information about themselves, but little of it made any sense to Crom-Ya. He had never heard of the places from which his fellows came. What and where were “Yaddith”? “Barsoom”? “Tond”? “Chicago”? Their personal names were scarcely less strange: “Alhazred,” “Curwen,” “Tillinghast,” “Peaslee.” The revelations vouchsafed by natives of other eras and even other planets, were fascinating, but they seemed to Crom-Ya as tall tales told to spellbound children. On the other hand, the undeniable fact of his presence here attested to the truth of their stories. So the barbarian set about learning whatever he could about the weapons and military tactics of other eras and worlds. If he could take it home with him when his sentence was served, he might be able to use this knowledge to achieve greater victories and greater honor than ever before.

The rest of their hours were perforce occupied in recording in journals all they knew and remembered of the worlds and peoples they came from. The Great Race’s object in all this archiving was ostensibly simply to amass knowledge for its own sake. But the canny Crom-Ya could not help suspecting there was more to it. What must become of this vast store of accumulated information on the day, should it arrive, when, for fear of their fabled nemeses, they should vacate the rugose cone-bodies their alien minds had long inhabited? It would all be for naught. Surely that must be obvious to beings with such great intelligence. Why would they waste the time? Perhaps they weren’t. It seemed more likely they were gathering information about civilizations they might consider as refuges once Doomsday should arrive.

Suppose, then, that the Great Race chose Crom-Ya’s native world and era for their new environment? The very thought amused him. His world was one of ceaseless conflict, battle, and rapacity. From his observations of the Great Race, he surmised that the unvarnished truth about what they referred to as the Hyborian Age would make it an unlikely choice for them. After all, they lived in terror of an ever-threatening, unseen force, preferring to flee rather than to offer the most basic resistance. So in his chronicling of his era, Crom-Ya made sure to regale the reader with the bloodiest, pitiless, atrocities he knew of. The truth must be more daunting to them than any fearsome tall tales he might concoct.

Crom-Ya began to pay more attention to overheard fragments of conversations about the ancient enemies of the Great Race, whom they called the Blind Beings, whose advent they so feared. It seemed they were already present! They dwelt in the cavernous spaces far beneath the massive complexes of the Great Race. This fact placed everything in a new light. He had gathered that these Blind Beings, blind because invisible since sight requires a reflective optical surface, were pursuing the Great Race across time and space for unknown reasons, and that they had not yet discovered their enemies’ hiding place. But if instead they had already reached the retreat of the Great Race, that meant the Race had somehow been able to defeat and confine them. It was not their arrival upon earth but rather their possible escape from captivity that their cone-shaped captors feared.

It was not in the Cimmerian’s nature merely to wait and hope. He now saw a new course of action opening before him: he must somehow find the guarded portal to the underground realm of the invisible whistling octopi.

Gates to the Graves of the Gods

Crom-Ya embarked upon an exhaustive search throughout the domain of the cone race. He hoped to find one of the sealed doors to the subterranean prison. He dared not inquire about it, nor could he locate any map or records. One day it occurred to him that he had never left the confines of the city of the Great Race. He had not even thought about it. As far as he was concerned, he was twice imprisoned: in the repugnant alien body that he bore, and in the dwelling place of his captors. He had no real idea of what might be seen outside the megalithic structures with their peculiar hexagonal floor tiles and great, wide ramps. The place was alien enough; the outside world must be stranger still. But now he found himself of a different mind. The outside environs, so full of mysteries, might be equally replete with resources and opportunities.