H.P. Lovecraft. The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written Autumn? 1926-22 Jan 1927
Published in Beyond the Wall of Sleep, Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1943,
p. 76-134
Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times
was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it.
All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples,
colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains
of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets
marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues
in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red
roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It
was a fever of the gods, a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of
immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous
unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that
balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of
almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things and the maddening need to
place again what once had been an awesome and momentous place.
He knew that for him its meaning must once have been supreme; though in
what cycle or incarnation he had known it, or whether in dream or in
waking, he could not tell. Vaguely it called up glimpses of a far
forgotten first youth, when wonder and pleasure lay in all the mystery of
days, and dawn and dusk alike strode forth prophetic to the eager sound of
lutes and song, unclosing fiery gates toward further and surprising
marvels. But each night as he stood on that high marble terrace with the
curious urns and carven rail and looked off over that hushed sunset city
of beauty and unearthly immanence he felt the bondage of dream's tyrannous
gods; for in no wise could he leave that lofty spot, or descend the wide
marmoreal fights flung endlessly down to where those streets of elder
witchery lay outspread and beckoning.
When for the third time he awakened with those flights still undescended
and those hushed sunset streets still untraversed, he prayed long and
earnestly to the hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the
clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste where no man treads. But the
gods made no answer and shewed no relenting, nor did they give any
favouring sign when he prayed to them in dream, and invoked them
sacrificially through the bearded priests of Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose
cavern-temple with its pillar of flame lies not far from the gates of the
waking world. It seemed, however, that his prayers must have been
adversely heard, for after even the first of them he ceased wholly to
behold the marvellous city; as if his three glimpses from afar had been
mere accidents or oversights, and against some hidden plan or wish of the
gods.
At length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset streets and
cryptical hill lanes among ancient tiled roofs, nor able sleeping or
waking to drive them from his mind, Carter resolved to go with bold
entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the icy deserts through
the dark to where unknown Kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned with
unimagined stars, holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of the Great
Ones.
In light slumber he descended the seventy steps to the cavern of flame and
talked of this design to the bearded priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah. And the
priests shook their pshent-bearing heads and vowed it would be the death
of his soul. They pointed out that the Great Ones had shown already their
wish, and that it is not agreeable to them to be harassed by insistent
pleas. They reminded him, too, that not only had no man ever been to
Kadath, but no man had ever suspected in what part of space it may lie;
whether it be in the dreamlands around our own world, or in those
surrounding some unguessed companion of Fomalhaut or Aldebaran. If in our
dreamland, it might conceivably be reached, but only three human souls
since time began had ever crossed and recrossed the black impious gulfs to
other dreamlands, and of that three, two had come back quite mad. There
were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that
shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered
universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost
confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity - the
boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and
who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst
the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous
whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance
slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic Ultimate gods, the blind,
voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other gods whose soul and messenger is the
crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.
Of these things was Carter warned by the priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah in
the cavern of flame, but still he resolved to find the gods on unknown
Kadath in the cold waste, wherever that might be, and to win from them the
sight and remembrance and shelter of the marvellous sunset city. He knew
that his journey would be strange and long, and that the Great Ones would
be against it; but being old in the land of dream he counted on many
useful memories and devices to aid him. So asking a formal blessing of the
priests and thinking shrewdly on his course, he boldly descended the seven
hundred steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber and set out through the
Enchanted Wood.
In the tunnels of that twisted wood, whose low prodigious oaks twine
groping boughs and shine dim with the phosphorescence of strange fungi,
dwell the furtive and secretive Zoogs; who know many obscure secrets of
the dream world and a few of the waking world, since the wood at two
places touches the lands of men, though it would be disastrous to say
where. Certain unexplained rumours, events, and vanishments occur among
men where the Zoogs have access, and it is well that they cannot travel
far outside the world of dreams. But over the nearer parts of the dream
world they pass freely, flitting small and brown and unseen and bearing
back piquant tales to beguile the hours around their hearths in the forest
they love. Most of them live in burrows, but some inhabit the trunks of
the great trees; and although they live mostly on fungi it is muttered
that they have also a slight taste for meat, either physical or spiritual,
for certainly many dreamers have entered that wood who have not come out.
Carter, however, had no fear; for he was an old dreamer and had learnt
their fluttering language and made many a treaty with them; having found
through their help the splendid city of Celephais in Ooth-Nargai beyond
the Tanarian Hills, where reigns half the year the great King Kuranes, a
man he had known by another name in life. Kuranes was the one soul who had
been to the star-gulls and returned free from madness.
Threading now the low phosphorescent aisles between those gigantic trunks,
Carter made fluttering sounds in the manner of the Zoogs, and listened now
and then for responses. He remembered one particular village of the
creatures was in the centre of the wood, where a circle of great mossy
stones in what was once a cleaning tells of older and more terrible
dwellers long forgotten, and toward this spot he hastened. He traced his
way by the grotesque fungi, which always seem better nourished as one
approaches the dread circle where elder beings danced and sacrificed.
Finally the great light of those thicker fungi revealed a sinister green
and grey vastness pushing up through the roof of the forest and out of
sight. This was the nearest of the great ring of stones, and Carter knew
he was close to the Zoog village. Renewing his fluttering sound, he waited
patiently; and was at last rewarded by an impression of many eyes watching
him. It was the Zoogs, for one sees their weird eyes long before one can
discern their small, slippery brown outlines.
Out they swarmed, from hidden burrow and honeycombed tree, till the whole
dim-litten region was alive with them. Some of the wilder ones brushed
Carter unpleasantly, and one even nipped loathsomely at his ear; but these
lawless spirits were soon restrained by their elders. The Council of
Sages, recognizing the visitor, offered a gourd of fermented sap from a
haunted tree unlike the others, which had grown from a seed dropt down by
someone on the moon; and as Carter drank it ceremoniously a very strange
colloquy began. The Zoogs did not, unfortunately, know where the peak of
Kadath lies, nor could they even say whether the cold waste is in our
dream world or in another. Rumours of the Great Ones came equally from all
points; and one might only say that they were likelier to be seen on high
mountain peaks than in valleys, since on such peaks they dance
reminiscently when the moon is above and the clouds beneath.
Then one very ancient Zoog recalled a thing unheard-of by the others; and
said that in Ulthar, beyond the River Skai, there still lingered the last
copy of those inconceivably old Pnakotic Manuscripts made by waking men in
forgotten boreal kingdoms and borne into the land of dreams when the hairy
cannibal Gnophkehs overcame many-templed Olathoe and slew all the heroes
of the land of Lomar. Those manuscripts he said, told much of the gods,
and besides, in Ulthar there were men who had seen the signs of the gods,
and even one old priest who had scaled a great mountain to behold them
dancing by moonlight. He had failed, though his companion had succeeded
and perished namelessly.
So Randolph Carter thanked the Zoogs, who fluttered amicably and gave him
another gourd of moon-tree wine to take with him, and set out through the
phosphorescent wood for the other side, where the rushing Skai flows down
from the slopes of Lerion, and Hatheg and Nir and Ulthar dot the plain.
Behind him, furtive and unseen, crept several of the curious Zoogs; for
they wished to learn what might befall him, and bear back the legend to
their people. The vast oaks grew thicker as he pushed on beyond the
village, and he looked sharply for a certain spot where they would thin
somewhat, standing quite dead or dying among the unnaturally dense fungi
and the rotting mould and mushy logs of their fallen brothers. There he
would turn sharply aside, for at that spot a mighty slab of stone rests on
the forest floor; and those who have dared approach it say that it bears
an iron ring three feet wide. Remembering the archaic circle of great
mossy rocks, and what it was possibly set up for, the Zoogs do not pause
near that expansive slab with its huge ring; for they realise that all
which is forgotten need not necessarily be dead, and they would not like
to see the slab rise slowly and deliberately.
Carter detoured at the proper place, and heard behind him the frightened
fluttering of some of the more timid Zoogs. He had known they would follow
him, so he was not disturbed; for one grows accustomed to the anomalies of
these prying creatures. It was twilight when he came to the edge of the
wood, and the strengthening glow told him it was the twilight of morning.
Over fertile plains rolling down to the Skai he saw the smoke of cottage
chimneys, and on every hand were the hedges and ploughed fields and
thatched roofs of a peaceful land. Once he stopped at a farmhouse well for
a cup of water, and all the dogs barked affrightedly at the inconspicuous
Zoogs that crept through the grass behind. At another house, where people
were stirring, he asked questions about the gods, and whether they danced
often upon Lerion; but the farmer and his wife would only make the Elder
Sign and tell him the way to Nir and Ulthar.
At noon he walked through the one broad high street of Nir, which he had
once visited and which marked his farthest former travels in this
direction; and soon afterward he came to the great stone bridge across the
Skai, into whose central piece the masons had sealed a living human
sacrifice when they built it thirteen-hundred years before. Once on the
other side, the frequent presence of cats (who all arched their backs at
the trailing Zoogs) revealed the near neighborhood of Ulthar; for in
Ulthar, according to an ancient and significant law, no man may kill a
cat. Very pleasant were the suburbs of Ulthar, with their little green
cottages and neatly fenced farms; and still pleasanter was the quaint town
itself, with its old peaked roofs and overhanging upper stories and
numberless chimney-pots and narrow hill streets where one can see old
cobbles whenever the graceful cats afford space enough. Carter, the cats
being somewhat dispersed by the half-seen Zoogs, picked his way directly
to the modest Temple of the Elder Ones where the priests and old records
were said to be; and once within that venerable circular tower of ivied
stone - which crowns Ulthar's highest hill - he sought out the patriarch
Atal, who had been up the forbidden peak Hatheg-Kia in the stony desert
and had come down again alive.
Atal, seated on an ivory dais in a festooned shrine at the top of the
temple, was fully three centuries old; but still very keen of mind and
memory. From him Carter learned many things about the gods, but mainly
that they are indeed only Earth's gods, ruling feebly our own dreamland
and having no power or habitation elsewhere. They might, Atal said, heed a
man's prayer if in good humour; but one must not think of climbing to
their onyx stronghold atop Kadath in the cold waste. It was lucky that no
man knew where Kadath towers, for the fruits of ascending it would be very
grave. Atal's companion Barzai the Wise had been drawn screaming into the
sky for climbing merely the known peak of Hatheg-Kia. With unknown Kadath,
if ever found, matters would be much worse; for although Earth's gods may
sometimes be surpassed by a wise mortal, they are protected by the Other
Gods from Outside, whom it is better not to discuss. At least twice in the
world's history the Other Gods set their seal upon Earth's primal granite;
once in antediluvian times, as guessed from a drawing in those parts of
the Pnakotic Manuscripts too ancient to be read, and once on Hatheg-Kia
when Barzai the Wise tried to see Earth's gods dancing by moonlight. So,
Atal said, it would be much better to let all gods alone except in tactful
prayers.
Carter, though disappointed by Atal's discouraging advice and by the
meagre help to be found in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Seven
Cryptical Books of Hsan, did not wholly despair. First he questioned the
old priest about that marvellous sunset city seen from the railed terrace,
thinking that perhaps he might find it without the gods' aid; but Atal
could tell him nothing. Probably, Atal said, the place belonged to his
especial dream world and not to the general land of vision that many know;
and conceivably it might be on another planet. In that case Earth's gods
could not guide him if they would. But this was not likely, since the
stopping of the dreams shewed pretty clearly that it was something the
Great Ones wished to hide from him.
Then Carter did a wicked thing, offering his guileless host so many
draughts of the moon-wine which the Zoogs had given him that the old man
became irresponsibly talkative. Robbed of his reserve, poor Atal babbled
freely of forbidden things; telling of a great image reported by
travellers as carved on the solid rock of the mountain Ngranek, on the
isle of Oriab in the Southern Sea, and hinting that it may be a likeness
which Earth's gods once wrought of their own features in the days when
they danced by moonlight on that mountain. And he hiccoughed likewise that
the features of that image are very strange, so that one might easily
recognize them, and that they are sure signs of the authentic race of the
gods.
Now the use of all this in finding the gods became at once apparent to
Carter. It is known that in disguise the younger among the Great Ones
often espouse the daughters of men, so that around the borders of the cold
waste wherein stands Kadath the peasants must all bear their blood. This
being so, the way to find that waste must be to see the stone face on
Ngranek and mark the features; then, having noted them with care, to
search for such features among living men. Where they are plainest and
thickest, there must the gods dwell nearest; and whatever stony waste lies
back of the villages in that place must be that wherein stands Kadath.
Much of the Great Ones might be learnt in such regions, and those with
their blood might inherit little memories very useful to a seeker. They
might not know their parentage, for the gods so dislike to be known among
men that none can be found who has seen their faces wittingly; a thing
which Carter realized even as he sought to scale Kadath. But they would
have queer lofty thoughts misunderstood by their fellows, and would sing
of far places and gardens so unlike any known even in the dreamland that
common folk would call them fools; and from all this one could perhaps
learn old secrets of Kadath, or gain hints of the marvellous sunset city
which the gods held secret. And more, one might in certain cases seize
some well-loved child of a god as hostage; or even capture some young god
himself, disguised and dwelling amongst men with a comely peasant maiden
as his bride.
Atal, however, did not know how to find Ngranek on its isle of Oriab; and
recommended that Carter follow the singing Skai under its bridges down to
the Southern Sea; where no burgess of Ulthar has ever been, but whence the
merchants come in boats or with long caravans of mules and two-wheeled
carts. There is a great city there, Dylath-Leen, but in Ulthar its
reputation is bad because of the black three-banked galleys that sail to
it with rubies from no clearly named shore. The traders that come from
those galleys to deal with the jewellers are human, or nearly so, but the
rowers are never beheld; and it is not thought wholesome in Ulthar that
merchants should trade with black ships from unknown places whose rowers
cannot be exhibited.
By the time he had given this information Atal was very drowsy, and Carter
laid him gently on a couch of inlaid ebony and gathered his long beard
decorously on his chest. As he turned to go, he observed that no
suppressed fluttering followed him, and wondered why the Zoogs had become
so lax in their curious pursuit. Then he noticed all the sleek complacent
cats of Ulthar licking their chops with unusual gusto, and recalled the
spitting and caterwauling he had faintly heard, in lower parts of the
temple while absorbed in the old priest's conversation. He recalled, too,
the evilly hungry way in which an especially impudent young Zoog had
regarded a small black kitten in the cobbled street outside. And because
he loved nothing on earth more than small black kittens, he stooped and
petted the sleek cats of Ulthar as they licked their chops, and did not
mourn because those inquisitive Zoogs would escort him no farther.
It was sunset now, so Carter stopped at an ancient inn on a steep little
street overlooking the lower town. And as he went out on the balcony of
his room and gazed down at the sea of red tiled roofs and cobbled ways and
the pleasant fields beyond, all mellow and magical in the slanted light,
he swore that Ulthar would be a very likely place to dwell in always, were
not the memory of a greater sunset city ever goading one onward toward
unknown perils. Then twilight fell, and the pink walls of the plastered
gables turned violet and mystic, and little yellow lights floated up one
by one from old lattice windows. And sweet bells pealed in. the temple
tower above, and the first star winked softly above the meadows across the
Skai. With the night came song, and Carter nodded as the lutanists praised
ancient days from beyond the filigreed balconies and tesselated courts of
simple Ulthar. And there might have been sweetness even in the voices of
Ulthar's many cats, but that they were mostly heavy and silent from
strange feasting. Some of them stole off to those cryptical realms which
are known only to cats and which villagers say are on the moon's dark
side, whither the cats leap from tall housetops, but one small black
kitten crept upstairs and sprang in Carter's lap to purr and play, and
curled up near his feet when he lay down at last on the little couch whose
pillows were stuffed with fragrant, drowsy herbs.
