H.P. Lovecraft. The Other Gods
The Other Gods
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 14 August 1921
Published November 1933 in The Fantasy Fan, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 35-38.
Atop the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer not
man to tell that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they once
inhabited; but ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes of rock
and snow, driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till now only
the last remains. When they left their old peaks they took with them all
signs of themselves, save once, it is said, when they left a carven image
on the face of the mountain which they called Ngranek.
But now they have betaken themselves to unknown Kadath in the cold waste
where no man treads, and are grown stern, having no higher peak whereto to
flee at the coming of men. They are grown stern, and where once they
suffered men to displace them, they now forbid men to come; or coming, to
depart. It is well for men that they know not of Kadath in the cold waste;
else they would seek injudiciously to scale it.
Sometimes when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still of the
night the peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play
in the olden way on remembered slopes. Men have felt the tears of the gods
on white-capped Thurai, though they have thought it rain; and have heard
the sighs of the gods in the plaintive dawn-winds of Lerion. In
cloud-ships the gods are wont to travel, and wise cotters have legends
that keep them from certain high peaks at night when it is cloudy, for the
gods are not lenient as of old.
In Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, once dwelt an old man avid to
behold the gods of earth; a man deeply learned in the seven cryptical
books of earth, and familiar with the Pnakotic Manuscripts of distant and
frozen Lomar. His name was Barzai the Wise, and the villagers tell of how
he went up a mountain on the night of the strange eclipse.
Barzai knew so much of the gods that he could tell of their comings and
goings, and guessed so many of their secrets that he was deemed half a god
himself. It was he who wisely advised the burgesses of Ulthar when they
passed their remarkable law against the slaying of cats, and who first
told the young priest Atal where it is that black cats go at midnight on
St. John's Eve. Barzai was learned in the lore of the earth's gods, and
had gained a desire to look upon their faces. He believed that his great
secret knowledge of gods could shield him from their wrath, so resolved to
go up to the summit of high and rocky Hatheg-Kla on a night when he knew
the gods would be there.
Hatheg-Kla is far in the stony desert beyond Hatheg, for which it is
named, and rises like a rock statue in a silent temple. Around its peak
the mists play always mournfully, for mists are the memories of the gods,
and the gods loved Hatheg-Kla when they dwelt upon it in the old days.
Often the gods of earth visit Hatheg-Kla in their ships of clouds, casting
pale vapors over the slopes as they dance reminiscently on the summit
under a clear moon. The villagers of Hatheg say it is ill to climb the
Hatheg-Kla at any time, and deadly to climb it by night when pale vapors
hide the summit and the moon; but Barzai heeded them not when he came from
neighboring Ulthar with the young priest Atal, who was his disciple. Atal
was only the son of an innkeeper, and was sometimes afraid; but Barzai's
father had been a landgrave who dwelt in an ancient castle, so he had no
common superstition in his blood, and only laughed at the fearful cotters.
Barzai and Atal went out of Hatheg into the stony desert despite the
prayers of peasants, and talked of earth's gods by their campfires at
night. Many days they traveled, and from afar saw lofty Hatheg-Kla with
his aureole of mournful mist. On the thirteenth day they reached the
mountain's lonely base, and Atal spoke of his fears. But Barzai was old
and learned and had no fears, so led the way up the slope that no man had
scaled since the time of Sansu, who is written of with fright in the moldy
Pnakotic Manuscripts.
The way was rocky, and made perilous by chasms, cliffs, and falling
stones. Later it grew cold and snowy; and Barzai and Atal often slipped
and fell as they hewed and plodded upward with staves and axes. Finally
the air grew thin, and the sky changed color, and the climbers found it
hard to breathe; but still they toiled up and up, marveling at the
strangeness of the scene and thrilling at the thought of what would happen
on the summit when the moon was out and the pale vapours spread around.
For three days they climbed higher and higher toward the roof of the
world; then they camped to wait for the clouding of the moon.
For four nights no clouds came, and the moon shone down cold through the
thin mournful mist around the silent pinnacle. Then on the fifth night,
which was the night of the full moon, Barzai saw some dense clouds far to
the north, and stayed up with Atal to watch them draw near. Thick and
majestic they sailed, slowly and deliberately onward; ranging themselves
round the peak high above the watchers, and hiding the moon and the summit
from view. For a long hour the watchers gazed, whilst the vapours swirled
and the screen of clouds grew thicker and more restless. Barzai was wise
in the lore of earth's gods, and listened hard for certain sounds, but
Atal felt the chill of the vapours and the awe of the night, and feared
much. And when Barzai began to climb higher and beckon eagerly, it was
long before Atal would follow.
So thick were the vapours that the way was hard, and though Atal followed
at last, he could scarce see the gray shape of Barzai on the dim slope
above in the clouded moonlight. Barzai forged very far ahead, and seemed
despite his age to climb more easily than Atal; fearing not the steepness
that began to grow too great for any save a strong and dauntless man, nor
pausing at wide black chasms that Atal could scarce leap. And so they went
up wildly over rocks and gulfs, slipping and stumbling, and sometimes awed
at the vastness and horrible silence of bleak ice pinnacles and mute
granite steeps.
Very suddenly Barzai went out of Atal's sight, scaling a hideous cliff
that seemed to bulge outward and block the path for any climber not
inspired of earth's gods. Atal was far below, and planning what he should
do when he reached the place, when curiously he noticed that the light had
grown strong, as if the cloudless peak and moonlit meetingplace of the
gods were very near. And as he scrambled on toward the bulging cliff and
litten sky he felt fears more shocking than any he had known before. Then
through the high mists he heard the voice of Barzai shouting wildly in
delight:
"I have heard the gods. I have heard earth's gods singing in revelry on
Hatheg-Kla! The voices of earth's gods are known to Barzai the Prophet!
The mists are thin and the moon is bright, and I shall see the gods
dancing wildly on Hatheg-Kla that they loved in youth. The wisdom of
Barzai hath made him greater than earth's gods, and against his will their
spells and barriers are as naught; Barzai will behold the gods, the proud
gods, the secret gods, the gods of earth who spurn the sight of man!"
Atal could not hear the voices Barzai heard, but he was now close to the
bulging cliff and scanning it for footholds. Then he heard Barzai's voice
grow shriller and louder:
"The mist is very thin, and the moon casts shadows on the slope; the
voices of earth's gods are high and wild, and they fear the coming of
Barzai the Wise, who is greater than they... The moon's light flickers, as
earth's gods dance against it; I shall see the dancing forms of the gods
that leap and howl in the moonlight... The light is dimmer and the gods
are afraid..."
Whilst Barzai was shouting these things Atal felt a spectral change in all
the air, as if the laws of earth were bowing to greater laws; for though
the way was steeper than ever, the upward path was now grown fearsomely
easy, and the bulging cliff proved scarce an obstacle when he reached it
and slid perilously up its convex face. The light of the moon had
strangely failed, and as Atal plunged upward through the mists he heard
Barzai the Wise shrieking in the shadows:
"The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the
sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or
of earth's gods... There is unknown magic on Hatheg-Kla, for the screams
of the frightened gods have turned to laughter, and the slopes of ice
shoot up endlessly into the black heavens whither I am plunging... Hei!
Hei! At last! In the dim light I behold the gods of earth!"
And now Atal, slipping dizzily up over inconceivable steeps, heard in the
dark a loathsome laughing, mixed with such a cry as no man else ever heard
save in the Phlegethon of unrelatable nightmares; a cry wherein
reverberated the horror and anguish of a haunted lifetime packed into one
atrocious moment:
"The other gods! The other gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard
the feeble gods of earth!... Look away... Go back... Do not see! Do not
see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses... That cursed, that damnable
pit... Merciful gods of earth, I am falling into the sky!"
And as Atal shut his eyes and stopped his ears and tried to hump downward
against the frightful pull from unknown heights, there resounded on
Hatheg-Kla that terrible peal of thunder which awaked the good cotters of
the plains and the honest burgesses of Hatheg, Nir and Ulthar, and caused
them to behold through the clouds that strange eclipse of the moon that no
book ever predicted. And when the moon came out at last Atal was safe on
the lower snows of the mountain without sight of earth's gods, or of the
other gods.
Now it is told in the moldy Pnakotic Manuscripts that Sansu found naught
but wordless ice and rock when he did climb Hatheg-Kla in the youth of the
world. Yet when the men of Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg crushed their fears
and scaled that haunted steep by day in search of Barzai the Wise, they
found graven in the naked stone of the summit a curious and cyclopean
symbol fifty cubits wide, as if the rock had been riven by some titanic
chisel. And the symbol was like to one that learned men have discerned in
those frightful parts of the Pnakotic Manuscripts which were too ancient
to be read. This they found.
Barzai the Wise they never found, nor could the holy priest Atal ever be
persuaded to pray for his soul's repose. Moreover, to this day the people
of Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg fear eclipses, and pray by night when pale
vapors hide the mountain-top and the moon. And above the mists on
Hatheg-Kla, earth's gods sometimes dance reminiscently; for they know they
are safe, and love to come from unknown Kadath in ships of clouds and play
in the olden way, as they did when earth was new and men not given to the
climbing of inaccessible places.
