DARK DESTROYER, by Adrian Cole

A Voidal Story

In those scattered dimensions that comprise the chaotic omniverse, there are legends that speak of the one who walks in the void, a terrible being who can be summoned to work power, but at a grim cost to the one who calls him.

And there have always been those whose jealousy of this Voidal’s power has led them to seek his downfall, his eternal imprisonment, where madness will chain him.

One such envious god was Ubeggi,1 the Weaver of Wars.

I

In Ulthar, the city of cats, two swarthy men sat at a table in an inn, talking softly and looking out through the window at the buildings of the city that dropped away below them. In the distance, moonlight fractured the winding river Skai and beyond that the shifting enigma of the dreamscape pushed forward silently, tonight oppressive and alive with evil portents. Things flapped across the sky darkly and silently: the dreams of the inhabitants of Ulthar were not pleasant ones.

The first of the men wore a strange hat (as a priest might) and upon his cloak were sewn unusual figures with human bodies and the heads of varying animals—cats, hawks, rams and lions, marking the man and his colleague as travellers from the far South, whose mysteries were famous in Ulthar, where cats are sacred. In this high inn where the men sat, no one had spoken to them, and indeed the few patrons had already left, while all the cats that lived here—and there were many scores—gathered around them, purring and fussing like servants anxious to please. From time to time one of the men would reach down and dig with gentle fingers into the fur of an animal, or stroke its sleek coat. The silent innkeeper, Drath, was a little uneasy, but pleased, knowing that it was through these Southern wanderers that Ulthar had become a shrine to cats.

“There are signs here, too,” said Umatal, taller of the men. He sipped at the strong Ulthar wine. “Everywhere.”

“Just so,” nodded Ibidin, his stockier companion, turning from the table to study the lower town. “Ybaggog’s dreams are a far-reaching curse. Such dreams as flit about these skies are poisoned by this awesome god. I heard in the market today that seven men across the river were found dead in their beds, killed by the grim nightmares that beset them. It was unquestionably the doing of Ybaggog. These dreams are not confined to this realm, Umatal. They spread. It is murmured in hidden places that even the priests of the Old Ones are afraid for their gods.”

“Say nothing of the Old Ones,” replied Umatal. “Even in Ulthar, their ears catch every breath.”

“How are we to be rid of the Dark Destroyer? What possible means are we to employ to thwart its purpose?”

“Its purpose! Pah! How can we comprehend its purpose?”

“Enough to know that Ybaggog is called, Devourer of Universes.”

“We may have to sacrifice universes to kill him.”

They said no more for a while, knowing that their own gods (and indeed, all gods that they knew of) went in fear of Ybaggog. Ibidin nervously chinked the silver coins in his pocket; he had not earned many this season, for few people in Ulthar wanted the benefit of his fortune telling. As the men subsided into their grim thoughts, more shadows crossed the moon. The men jerked up, a symptom of how afraid they were, for such nocturnal things were common in Ulthar and not usually worthy of concern.

“Something approaches,” said Umatal, drawing back. Around him, fifty cats arched their backs and hissed in unison. Ibidin pulled a short, curved knife from his belt, lurching up from the table. Presently a small, squamous figure alighted on the windowsill and peered in with huge eyes. It was not unlike the frightful night gaunts, but was too squat and small, and a few moments were all that were needed to outline its evident trepidation.

“Begone!” growled Umatal, as if chasing off a wayward crow.

“Your pardon, masters,” came the reply. “But is this the inn of Drath, sixth cat master of the northern heights?”

A figure had come out of the shadows behind the table, holding and stroking a cat, and with a smaller one perched on its shoulder. All the cats in the inn had subsided, purring softly again and gazing dreamily at the odd visitor. “Aye,” said Drath. “What do you seek here?”

“I am Elfloq,” said the figure, hopping in a frog-like way on to a table, narrowly missing a jug of wine. “Are these two lords your only guests?” He appeared to be searching out more guests with those bulbous, saucer-like eyes, though there were only the cats, creatures of which he did not approve. One of them extended an exploratory claw and came close to hooking it into the scaled hide of the familiar. Elfloq opened his wings in readiness to flit upwards to the rafters.

“We are not lords,” said Ibidin. “But by the beard of Ozmordrah, what are you?”

Elfloq seemed relieved. “Then I am first.” He kept himself out of reach of the cats, sitting birdlike in the windowsill, poised for flight if need be. “You must listen to me, for there is little time before they come.”

“Who?” said Drath.

“Evil ones. Dreadful forerunners of an even greater evil. Dark and dire, foul and hideous to look upon—beings who will work frightful misery upon Ulthar and all the cities of the dreamworld.”

“You babble, little frog,” said Umatal. But his smile was very thin. “Who are these devils you speak of?”

“One is half-man—fat and blue-skinned, with hooked talons for hands and feet, and the face of a devil. He is shifty and foul-lipped—smelling of the gutters and with the eyes of a madman—”

“It seems to me,” chuckled Drath, “that this description would easily fit yourself, apart from the hue of your skin.”

Elfloq ignored this remark. “The other is tall, bent over and like a lean wolf with eyes that burn and hands that would rob the dead. His very presence fills the air with darkness, and he is a priest of the most abominable gods. His mother, they say—”

“Enough!” snarled Umatal. “Here, my friends, is yet another victim of the mad dreams that permeate this realm. He looks much like something from a bad dream himself! Away! Go out and annoy a street hound or one of the little wharflings on the Skai waterfront.”

“I cannot leave. I am forced here by sorcery. I must wait for them,” persisted Elfloq. He shuddered as he thought of the words of Ubeggi, the Weaver of Wars, from whom he had recently come. That meddlesome god had sent him here, warning him that if he did not do his bidding, Elfloq’s fate would be incalculably horrible. “But you have little time. I speak of real evil. These terrible ones are the slaves of something infinitely more vile. I speak of Ybaggog, the Dark Destroyer.”

Umatal’s hand shot out and gripped Elfloq by the throat, pulling him across the table. Cats screeched and leapt back, leaving fur dancing in the air. “Ybaggog!” snarled Umatal. “What do you know of him?”

“He sends his envoys here. They must be eradicated.”

“How do you know of this?” said Ibidin.

Elfloq wriggled, but was caught like a hooked fish. “Ah—my master. He is a great sorcerer. He is engaged in a tumultuous cosmic struggle with Ybaggog, dedicated to wiping out the Destroyer’s minions.”

“Who is this master of yours?”

“He is known as the Voidal.”

The travellers from the South glared at each other.

“Who?” they said in unison, baffled.

“Have you not heard of him?” piped Elfloq, struggling for breath.

Umatal and Ibidin shook their heads.

“That is because he shrouds himself in mystery and legend, so that he is not taken by his enemies, chief among whom is Ybaggog.”

“There are a thousand sorcerers on every world. What makes your master so powerful?” asked Umatal suspiciously.

“Should you meet him, you would know at once.”

“And where is he?” said Ibidin.

“Ah,” said Elfloq, with what he intended to be a theatrical pause. “He waits without. Ready for the summons.”

The men turned to the inn door, but Elfloq shook his head. “Not in this realm. He walks in the void between universes.”

“Indeed?” said Umatal sceptically.

“Then call him,” said Ibidin. “If he can help us, call him!”

Elfloq masked his terror at that particular thought, and shook his head. “I cannot, sirs, as I am his slave. It is I who do his bidding, not he mine. He would not obey me.”

Umatal’s eyes narrowed. “Why should I perform a convocation rite about which I understand nothing? I know of men who have summoned up demons and of the prices they have had to pay. You summon him.”

Elfloq tried not to look as though some great beast were about to devour him. This was not working out at all well. Ubeggi had charged him with coming here and summoning the Voidal, but Elfloq was terrified of the consequences. He must trick someone else into doing this. “Very well, release me.” They did so, and at once he flew up into the rafters.

Ibidin cursed and flung his knife, but in the darkness the blade lodged in a thick beam some feet from Elfloq’s membranous wings.

“Send the cats after him!” said Umatal, pulling shut the window. Drath was loath to do as the tall man asked, but he did not argue. He ignited a number of candles, which threw a shimmering and vast shadow of Elfloq on the upper walls. Drath spoke and the cats uncurled. As one they gazed up at the familiar, anticipating an unusual meal.

“No!” cried Elfloq. “You are unwise to distrust me! I mean only to help you. Bring my master here. He will save you all. He will save all Ulthar—all the dreamlands—everything!”

Umatal nodded to Drath, who whispered something. At once the cat horde began leaping up on to tables, flowing out to the shelves and clawing for the beams that would lead them, by stages, to the trapped figure above.

“I will give you a last opportunity to prove your good intent,” called Umatal. “Summon your master yourself.”

Elfloq knew that he had failed, and worse, knew that he could not skip on to the astral realm as he would easily have done under normal circumstances. The spell of Ubeggi bound him to this inn until the Weaver’s other servants came. But where were they? Elfloq felt doubly trapped: as soon as they got here, they would force him to invoke his master. The situation was not an auspicious one. The cats were already up on the beam and crawling along it upon eager bellies. There were many of them.

At that moment there came a heavy knock on the inn door. The men below cursed and Drath looked to them for instructions. The travellers looked up at Elfloq, who shrugged. The cats were motionless, all staring fixedly at Elfloq. Again the hammering on the door came, and then it opened to reveal a tall figure in a scarlet cloak and hood, a man who seemed to appraise the strange situation at once. He shut the door and bolted it, and as he came into the room, the cats drew back from him as if he were a wolf. They began to howl in their awful fashion, and nothing Drath could say would still them.

“You have chosen a bad time to visit this inn,” said Umatal.

“You should thank me,” said the stranger in a hard voice, one that was used to giving commands. He hissed something at the cats and they flattened themselves and amazingly were silent, a uniform movement that brought gasps of shock from the men of the South. Drath looked even more disturbed.

“Thank you?” said Ibidin. “For what?”

“Had you succumbed to Elfloq’s wish and summoned the Voidal, you would doubtless have perished unpleasantly, along with this furry tribe.”

“Then you are not the familiar’s master?” said Umatal.

The scarlet-robed man shook his head. “No.” He looked up at Elfloq. “Come down from that ridiculous perch, Elfloq. The cats will not harm you while I am here.”

Elfloq obeyed. He knew the man to be a Divine Asker, a spokesman of the Dark Gods, those who used his master and who kept him chained to their own grim causes for whatever crimes he had once committed against them. It was not wise to dissemble with an Asker. But what in the many dimensions could one of them want here? Still, it had indeed been a timely intervention.

The familiar stood before the Asker, gazing up at him uncomfortably. Amazingly, the Asker put a hand on the familiar’s shoulder in an almost affectionate way. He turned to the innkeeper and his guests. “Elfloq is known to us. He has a silver tongue, and I know how you value silver.” The Asker took from his blood-red cloak a heavy bag and tossed it on to a table. It thudded down, the coins inside clinking. “Here it is in abundance. Take it.”

Neither Umatal nor Ibidin moved, but their eyes filled with hunger.

“Am I not right in assuming that Elfloq would have been trying to inveigle you into summoning his master?”

“Your esteemed fountain of all holiness does me wrong,” began Elfloq, but the tightening grip on his shoulders silenced him.

“My advice,” went on the Asker, “is to take the silver and go back to your caravan. You are at liberty to remain if you wish, but be warned—those who next come in will not be kind. They are all the familiar said they are, and more.”

Ibidin reached for the bag of silver, but Umatal snatched his hand away. They grunted their goodbyes to Drath and in a moment had left. The Asker went to a table and called on Drath to bring him wine. The cats shifted like grass before the scarlet robe, and soon were hardly visible at the extremities of the room. “Be easy, Drath,” said the Asker. “None of this night’s work need concern you. Elfloq! Sit upon the table here. I have matters to discuss with you.”

Elfloq obeyed. Where were the others? “Master—”

A raised hand stilled him. As he sat before the Divine Asker, he saw the eyes for the first time. They had a sadness about them, as if a good deal of the original hardness in them had gone. “We have a little time before the others come.” The Asker sat forward with a sigh. Elfloq was puzzled. This was not the way in which the Askers behaved—something was certainly amiss with this one.

“I think perhaps, Elfloq, you must have won a special place in the minds of my fellow Askers. Darquementi, our Principal Questioner, has spoken of you more than once. Does this surprise you?”

The Asker could hardly have got a more shocked reaction from Elfloq had he dipped him in boiling oil, but the familiar covered his distress. “Yes, indeed, master. Darquementi is held in great esteem.” Elfloq recalled his brush with the terrifying personage all too clearly.

“Most of the things you do are observed—most. There are times, I imagine, when our eyes are not on you. It is a busy omniverse. At the moment, much is transpiring. Strange forces are working, and we cannot see everything. Why should Darquementi be concerned about you, eh?”

“Because of my master?” said Elfloq, but at once wished he had not.

The Asker laughed softly. “Yes, your forbidden master. The Voidal.”

“Though, of course, he—and thus I—are the slaves of the Dark Gods.”

The Asker gazed across what seemed a vast distance. “I wonder.” After a moment he had recovered himself. “Now, what is this business you are on for the Weaver of Wars? He sent you here to invoke your master, did he not?”

Elfloq knew better than to lie this time. “He did, knowing that it would be the end of me.”

“Apparently he thought so. Well, it does not suit the Dark Gods that you should meet your doom in Ulthar—at least, not through the invoking of your master. However, it does suit the Askers that the Voidal comes here. The Dark Gods have work for him. Ybaggog must be destroyed. Otherwise he will bring to the omniverse an incomparable darkness.”

“Given a little more time, I would have made the men from the South—”

Drath appeared, set down wine and then withdrew solemnly. The Asker smiled at the earnestness of the familiar. “Elfloq, Elfloq, have you learned nothing? You would have sacrificed those men needlessly.”

“But the importance of the task—”

“Which is?”

“Destroying Ybaggog?”

“Is that the will of Ubeggi? To bring the Voidal here to destroy Ybaggog? No, little one. Ubeggi has other designs. Jealous of his power, he wishes to see your dark master locked away forever. And how will that serve your own ambitions, eh?”

Elfloq studied his feet uncomfortably. Did the Askers know everything?

“But what of justice? Do you not respect it, even a shade? The two travellers were harmless, reasonably good men. What sins they have committed may well find them out, but do they deserve to meet the Voidal’s power? Of course not. I realise you acted out of terror, which is understandable. It is a typical ploy of Ubeggi. But you must be fair. Some other person must bring the Voidal here.”

Elfloq leaned closer and whispered, “Drath?”

The Asker laughed aloud and slapped the table. “Stars of the Abyss!”

Elfloq shook his head. “No, not Drath. Foolish of me. You mean Snare, or that double-dealing worm, Orgoom2.”

“Oh, you have no liking for the Blue Gelder?”

“Betrayer! First he serves Ubeggi, then is freed by my master, and now he serves Ubeggi again.”

“And yet he acts as you do, to save his hide. He bends with the winds of chance. Had he not done so, he would not have lived so long. Remember, he does not love Ubeggi, though he may take the guise of a willing slave to him.”

“Snare, then! The vile demon-priest, Ubeggi’s servant. Or that repugnant half-face, who now also serves the Weaver.”

“Shatterface? Neither he nor Snare would be foolish enough to call up the dark man.”

“Then who?”

The Asker took a hurried drink of wine and became silent for a few moments.

Elfloq stared at him. “You will call him? You? Ah, then as an Asker, you must have the power to revoke the curse that falls on he who—”

But the Asker was shaking his head. “No, I must take the consequences.”

Elfloq was staggered. “You do this willingly?” This was a trick. There was some devious, underhand scheme running through this.

“I will do it,” said the Asker. “I will tell you why, even though you may not believe me.” He drank again of the wine, then pushed it away. “My name is Vulparoon, and once I was the highest of the high in the order of the Ascendant Mages. I was called to the Divine Askers3 and after a long initiation joined them and served at Holy Hedrazee. I did the work of the Dark Gods, the Punishers, and for a long time I did nothing to earn their displeasure. However, Darquementi remarked to me one day that I was considered a moderate, and that I did not seem to seek out evil and crush it as devotedly as one of my calling should. My absolute dedication was in question. I came before the Most High of the Askers, and I reeled under their probes. I was found lacking. The Dark Gods, they told me, are never to be questioned, always to be obeyed, and all that is done in their name is just and fair. Their enemies are to suffer, endlessly, until they decree otherwise. Just as your master, the Voidal, pays for his sins by walking eternity. Serve as an Asker should, they told me, or go from Hedrazee.”

“They rejected you?”

“In a way. But you see, they are just. Even in sending me out, they have given me the chance to atone.”

“For your sin of moderation, if it is a sin, they sent you here to invoke my master!”

“It was not an order. I do this of my own free will.”

“Why not flee? You are free of them.”

“Am I?”

Elfloq did not have to answer.

“I will flee afterwards. You see, I know the dilemma of the Askers. They fear this Voidal. It is not easy for them to keep him locked up inside the void they have made for him. They want him shut away, just as Ubeggi does. Devoured by the one who dreams out there, and whom all fear. If Ybaggog consumes the Voidal, I need fear no penalty for summoning him.” He strode to the door and in a moment was gone.

Elfloq was surprised by what seemed to have been a genuine show of affection, something he rarely met. But he snapped out of his semi-trance and was about to pursue Vulparoon when he saw others arriving. Hunched in the doorway was the gangling Snare, a cruel smile on his white face. He was pulling at the ear of a Blue Gelder, whom Elfloq knew to be Orgoom, and Snare twisted the ear so that the ugly creature tumbled into the inn. He was as small as Elfloq, with a blue, hairless skin, his eyes wide, his once human hands turned into terrible sickles, the work of his master, Ubeggi, whom he had once tried to desert.

“Greetings, master,” stammered Elfloq, shuffling backwards and banging into a table. “All is as Ubeggi wished. My erstwhile master comes.”

Snare spat, his eye catching the shadowed movement of Drath. “Here! Food and wine! The working to bring us here has exhausted me. Though you got here fast enough, familiar! Tried to flee my web, eh? Bruised your wings?” His long neck dipped down, his hideous face leering as though it would turn the very cats to stone.

“I wouldn’t be so foolish,” Elfloq answered with feeling. “I’ve waited patiently.”

Drath quietly set cold meat and more wine down and Snare wolfed the food. He scowled at the innkeeper. “Is this true? Or did he try to flap his way out of my trap?”

Drath smiled. “He wasted a little effort, no more.”

Snare laughed bitterly, spitting out particles of food. He pointed to the familiar.

“To business! Invoke your master. Do it at once.”

Elfloq had retreated as far as the window ledge and hopped up on to it again. “I knew how invaluable time was, master. Already he is summoned.”

“Again!” snarled the tall one, rising and flinging a tankard at Elfloq. It shattered against stone and several cats hissed in the dark. As soon as Snare saw them, he hunched down as if about to be attacked. “Damn these creatures! Can’t you get them out of here, innkeeper?”

Drath made no move to do so, but spoke softly to them.

“Ask him,” said Elfloq. “Ask him if my master is coming.”

Snare scowled horribly at Drath. “Well? Has he done it? Did he perform his disgusting ritual while awaiting us?”

Drath studied Elfloq for a moment, then nodded.

Snare strode to the innkeeper, mindful of the restless legion of cats that had been reforming since Vulparoon’s exit. “So he’s done it, has he? Then you’ll know the name that he called on, eh? What was it?”

Drath ignored Elfloq’s frantic mime behind Snare’s long back. “I heard only one word.”

“Yes?”

“Voidal.”

Snare whipped round and fixed Elfloq with a withering gaze. “So you spoke the truth for once!”

“Of course.”

“Excellent!” Snare turned upon the wretched Orgoom. “Time for you to earn your part in this, Gelder. Remember that Ubeggi has offered to restore you, to make you a man once more, if you serve him as you ought. I must go and prepare. Shatterface will soon be here. Wait for him and be sure that Elfloq does not try to wriggle away. There’s more work for that scum yet.” Snare guzzled the last of the wine and went to the door, kicking out at a cat that had strayed near him, and then was gone.

At once Elfloq rushed over to Orgoom. “Let us hurry away before Shatterface arrives.”

But Orgoom barred the way, flashing his curled sickles. “We wait.”

Elfloq drew back, appealing to Drath. “Tell him to stand aside.”

Drath came to them. “I understand little of what is happening, but I spoke for you just now, familiar. Perhaps I was atoning for almost letting the cats have you. Now I am curious about your master, this Voidal, whom so many people wish to inconvenience.”

“He is all-powerful. He will destroy Ybaggog, and after that, the Weaver himself. The Gelder is foolish to think Ubeggi is stronger.”

Orgoom’s face was set. “We wait.”

“You wait,” said Elfloq. “I wish to leave.”

“Why?” said Drath. “Since the Voidal is your master.”

Orgoom nodded. “You said he would be my master. I meet him and see.”

The door opened yet again. Elfloq hopped back with an inadvertent squeak as the new visitor stepped forward. It was Shatterface. His steel helm gleamed, only the hellish eyes visible, his tall body encased in linked mail.

“You are expected,” said Drath. “If you can do the things that your servant here promises, all Ulthar should welcome you, demon or otherwise.”

Shatterface turned his mask upon the man. “Where is Snare?”

“This is not my master,” said Elfloq, trying to inject a great deal of meaning into his voice, and indeed, Drath was quick to understand. This, he guessed, must be the last of the black envoys that the familiar had spoken of to the travellers from the South.

“Snare prepares way,” said Orgoom.

“Quite,” said Elfloq. “Why not sit and take wine?”

Shatterface did not answer, but he sat.

“Voidal coming,” said Orgoom.

Shatterface turned to him like a hound at bay.

“Invoked already?” He wrenched out his sword, and it sang evilly as he pointed it at Elfloq. “You’d like me to wait, wouldn’t you, familiar? I’ve not forgotten how your interference once cost me my prize, the restoration of my face. I should cut out your vitals and feed them to you—”

“Better to go!” Elfloq cried. “Ubeggi’s plans will come to nothing if the Voidal arrives and finds you.”

Shatterface lowered the frightful weapon. “The Dark Gods have put this blade in my hands. It is the Sword of Madness. When the time is ripe, familiar, I will have your head for a lamp.” He got up and marched away into the night.

“Strange company you keep,” said Drath. “Who is he?”

“He was once a god,” said Elfloq. “The most beautiful god of all, but vanity undid him. The Dark Gods punished him by destroying his face and by dispersing one half of it throughout the omniverse. Once they promised him they would return it if he helped them to destroy the Voidal. He failed them—”

“You were involved?”

“As a mere onlooker,” Elfloq said modestly. “But I fear that the Dark Gods have given him yet another chance to strike at my master, with the Sword of Madness.”

“Then if the Dark Gods and Ubeggi are united against your master,” said Drath, “the odds would not seem to be very good, wouldn’t you say?”

Neither of them had noticed the deepening shadow in the corner of the inn furthest from the embers of the fire. The cats stirred and arched themselves at something there, and Elfloq knew at once what had happened: the summons of the Asker had not gone unanswered. Orgoom drew back, more fretful than the cats. In a moment the darkness cleared a little to reveal a man sitting at the table, his attire blacker than that of the sky outside. Drath shuddered, recognising at once the power locked inside that form.

“Master!” cried Elfloq, hopping to the side of the Voidal.

“Elfloq? Have you been working your trickery again?”

“You wrong me, master, as always.”

“Indeed? How did I come here? Where is this place?”

Drath came forward. “You are in Ulthar, the city of cats.”

The Voidal nodded, though this meant nothing to him. He stared at the unhappy visage of Orgoom. “I know you.”

The Blue Gelder was shivering, shaking his head.

Elfloq grinned. “Orgoom, master. You once saved him from Ubeggi’s wrath. For which the Weaver has not forgiven you, but for which Orgoom repays you by going back to that vile heap of—”

“Yes, I recall some of my past. It is more of a dream. Orgoom is a renegade? Was it you that summoned me, Gelder? If so, you may have cause to regret it.”

“It was me,” interrupted Elfloq at once.

The Voidal scowled at him impatiently. “Silence, imp. Who was it?”

“But it was me!” insisted Elfloq.

The dark man looked at him with mounting annoyance. “It could not have been you, Elfloq. I told you once before that if you ever summoned me, it would be your undoing.”

“Yes, master. Indeed you did. But it was me.”

The Voidal stared at him for a long time. He knew that Elfloq was lying, for he understood clearly the complete terror in which the little familiar held him. Elfloq would never have invoked him, under pain of a dozen grim deaths. They had shared too many dark deeds. No one knew more than Elfloq of the dark man’s powers. The Voidal assumed that Elfloq, therefore, was hatching yet more schemes and lying for a deliberate reason. For the time being he would pretend to accept this. “It was you?”

“Quite so, master.”

“I see. Then I am bound by the laws of the Dark Gods whom I serve to obey your wishes. What am I to do for you?”

“I will tell you,” came the voice of Snare, grating along the walls of the night. He stood by the door, slick with sweat, panting with exertion. “Elfloq takes my commands.”

Elfloq was at that moment sorely tempted to command the Voidal to destroy Snare, Orgoom, Shatterface and Ubeggi, but remembered barely in time that as he had not himself summoned the Voidal, he had no power to command him. Instead, Elfloq nodded meekly. “Yes. You must obey Snare. That is my wish.”

The Voidal knew that this gangling, insect-like man, Snare, had not summoned him, but still he played along with Elfloq’s ruse. There would be time to find out its twists—after all, the familiar sought power, but in the past had unearthed useful secrets for the Voidal. What news would he have for him this awakening? “Very well. What am I to do?”

“I have prepared a place, Voidal. I have opened the walls of the dreamscape and made a place. There is to be a Mass of sacrifice. Elfloq and Orgoom are to be the neophytes. I am to be the priest.”

“And what will you sacrifice?” said the Voidal.

“You will see. Let us go to the prepared place.”

Drath watched them leave: Snare, the two small figures, and lastly the dark man, who had made no move, no sign of refusal, as if he had no real interest in the fate that the strange group had prepared for him. Was this enigmatic being going to be the saviour of Ulthar? If this could be true, then he was a man to respect. Drath had no respect for the hideous Snare, nor for the Blue Gelder, but had instantly taken to the triple-tongued familiar. He had taken the small one’s side, and it had been the familiar who had come and warned them of the grim harbingers of the Dark Destroyer. Perhaps it would not be a bad thing to keep abreast of the activities of the party. Drath spoke to several of his many cats, and they slunk out into the darkness of Ulthar on silent feet, as fleeting and intangible as dreams.

II

Snare had chosen his place of sacrifice with great care. Some miles from Ulthar was an open plain, called simply the Mutterings. It was dusty and sparsely dotted with scrubby plants and heather, as though the rocks spurned the advance of the woods around the city. In a natural hollow that faced the open plain, Snare had set up his half moon of spells, daubing rocks in his own blood, and in the centre of the chosen place he had sorcerously erected two huge monoliths and had set upon them a third block for a lintel. This gate, splotched in heiroglyphs and grotesque figures, faced outwards, an eye upon the plain. Those whispering creatures that Snare had invoked to help him prepare this place had withdrawn back to the grim regions from which he had conjured them, so that now all was silent, drenched by the bright glow of Ulthar’s staring moon.

Into the hollow came the party. Snare went to the centre of the place and turned to the Voidal, who had made no attempt whatsoever to forego coming here. He seemed either bemused or intrigued and Snare wondered at his apparent obedience. Snare also wondered at the thoughts of Elfloq, who had as yet done nothing to hinder him. Ubeggi had warned him that the familiar was no more trustworthy than Ybaggog himself—the Weaver had told Snare to destroy Elfloq when the working was done.

“All is almost ready,” said Snare, who had now opened a pack and brought out a robe made of skin, embroidered with the same frightful things that were on the gate.

“There is one particular ingredient missing,” ventured Elfloq. “The…uh…the sacrifice.”

Snare laughed unpleasantly. “I have not forgotten. But first, there are places for you and Orgoom by those stones. Go to them.” He pointed to some flat rocks at either side of the hollow and the two smaller figures went to them, both looking over their shoulders this way and that, as though from the hill behind them would arise any amount of demons and unsavoury acolytes of the evil Snare. Orgoom, whose face was so ugly to look upon that it was impossible to read real emotion there, appeared to be accepting this all even more indifferently than the Voidal. Elfloq doubted that his own nerves would hold out much longer, and wanted to scream his desperation to escape.

Snare stood beside the dark man, evidently cautious of him. “You deserve an explanation,” he said sarcastically.

The Voidal shrugged. “For some time now I have accepted that I am not moved by chance. There is no reason for me to quit your rituals. For the moment, I am curious.”

Snare frowned deeply. “You are willing to help?” It did not seem possible.

“My will has no weight. The powers that move me will force my arm.”

Snare turned suspiciously to Elfloq. “Is this so?”

“Indeed,” the familiar said, with a bow. “I have only to command him. And as I am utterly in your power, lord, just as he is in the power of the Dark Gods, your will is to be obeyed.”

The Voidal enjoyed this odd speech from Elfloq, who was telling him—quite clearly and implicitly—what was expected of him, even though there was no truth in what he said. But why in the omniverse, thought the dark man, should I trust the little monster? In spite of the sinisterness of their situation, the dark man would like to have laughed. But who, he pondered yet again, did summon me?

“I ask only one thing of you,” said Snare. He pointed to the gate. “When the moment is right, you must walk through that gate.”

Again the Voidal shrugged. “As you wish.”

Snare stared at him for a while, but then moved away. He had donned his robe and soon had started to chant something. At once the air hummed. Snare looked at the outcrops of rock behind the hollow. Somewhere out there, Shatterface would be waiting. Snare flung up his arms and stood before the gate. He looked vulnerable to Elfloq, who would love to have seen the Voidal attack him, but he dared not tamper with whatever forces were at work. He felt certain Vulparoon must be somewhere hereabouts, intent on bringing ruin to Snare and his schemes.

Around them the darkness throbbed and heaved. Out on the plain there was a rippling movement and as the chant of the priest grew in volume, earth and night sky merged as though a huge window had been opened to infinity. Elfloq gasped, for he could see through the gate, which looked out not across the Mutterings, but into the pitch darkness of deep space. A few tiny points of light dotted it. Around the gate the Mutterings had become obscured by a pink mist, and from this miasma issued far sounds, dreadful grunts and groans as of a multitude of souls in dire torment. Elfloq could also hear the rumblings from under the ground. He was trying to catch the words of Snare, but they were meaningless, as though created for a tongue that was not altogether human. Snare’s body was gyrating, twisting and turning as if his bones were made of liquid, and grey bolts of light—terrible black spells—shot out from the arena formed by the hollow.

By now the appalling sounds from out on the plain had swirled close and surrounded them all. The ground shook and cracked. Up from the rocks came weaving shadows, and long sickly fronds and curling tendrils rose there, each tipped with a puckered mouth, like starving predators about to feast. The stench rose like that on a bloody field of battle when the vultures feed, and the sounds from these visitors grated on the very soul. Yet the Voidal studied this spawning of chaos calmly, apparently unmoved. He had seen far more terrible things than this. Yet it seemed to Elfloq that Snare had wrenched the Mutterings out of the dreamworld and plunged it into the void of its own universe.

Snare called out to the things in the night, his bestial face contorted by a hideous smile of triumph and lust, so that the beings he had drawn up from madness came lurching forward. In all his foul speech, Elfloq recognised one word—‘shoggoth’—and knew then that these unspeakable entities were Snare’s servants, harbingers of the feared Old Ones, whom even the gods shunned. Elfloq saw also, by the light of the moon, that the mouth of the priest had become pendulous, a miniature of the frightful mouths of the things he had invoked. The shoggoths swarmed, forming a half circle, pressing forward in their scores, sickly pale and blotched like fungi, limbs wriggling at the moon as if they would tear it from the sky. Some distance from the Voidal and the mad priest, the shoggoths stopped, the sounds issuing from them disgusting and mind warping.

Snare turned to face the gate into darkness and began a new incantation. Slowly, one by one, the shoggoths gave voice to the same incantation, so that it swelled obscenely, and it seemed to Elfloq that the sounds were being eaten up by the gateway, as though it drew them to it as a hole draws water. Out into that pit rushed the chant, and as it did so, the stars beyond flickered and flared, until one of them grew and burst, showering the darkness there with red embers. Snare’s incessant chanting changed pitch, forming itself into one word, long and drawn out in a stentorian voice that could not have belonged to a mere man, as if a god spoke through the priest. The word, twisted and inhuman, was ‘Ybaggog’. The shoggoths added to the sound, so that the name crashed out like the weight of a world, rocking the gate and reverberating outwards into the deep vault beyond. The fabric of that darkness now rippled like a silk curtain then broke as something incomprehensibly vast drifted across it. Ybaggog had been awakened.

The priest reeled back from the sight of the approaching monster, face slippery with exertion, hands by his side. His eyes were wide, for there was no disguising his terror. What he had drawn up was possibly the most evil entity in the omniverse. He was beside the still impassive Voidal. “Ybaggog comes. You must destroy him.”

“Is that why I am here?”

“Yes. Go through the gate. Destroy him before he devours everything.”

The Voidal felt no divine, irresistible compunction to do this thing. He looked at Elfloq, who was gibbering with terror behind the rock on which he was supposed to be standing. Could the familiar really have imagined that the Voidal would benefit by doing this?

“I command you!” snarled the priest, his fear at its limit. Behind him the shape of the Dark Destroyer thickened and solidified, a gargantuan being, alive and thrashing in the black universe in which it bathed.

The Voidal did nothing. He stood, defying Ybaggog and defying the shoggoths, which now writhed, delirious with pleasure at seeing their lord coming. They began to press forward as if eager to kiss that awesome thing, so that Snare drew back, trapped between their squirming wall and the gate. The Voidal fought to control his own mind, for this extremity of madness in which he found himself threatened to engulf even him. Yet he must see which way the Dark Gods would move. He retained his will, knowing that had he sought it, he could have cut a way through the shoggoths and left. Who had summoned him, and why? Elfloq knew, but he and Orgoom were flat to the ground, faces buried in the dust in fear.

At that moment, the shoggoths parted to allow someone through and the figure that stepped into the arena to face the Voidal was a familiar one to the dark man. “Shatterface,” he said. “But even you would not have called me, knowing the price.”

“No, I did not call you. Your hand of death will not reach for me!” cried the figure, pointing to the right hand of his adversary. Shatterface pulled out the weapon that had been given to him. “Through the gate!” he screamed, swinging the blade. It sang with the hate of a thousand maddened voices, and the Voidal jerked backwards, no longer unmoved. He knew the sword, for it was the Sword of Madness, and he had every reason to fear it. So this was the answer to these riddles—the Dark Gods wanted the blade in him, for it would rob him of everything that he had won back from them. This was the fate they had planned. He pulled his own sword out from its scabbard, but it was a mere tool, cold steel without supernatural power.

Shatterface saw this and laughed. He came forward with a cry. “Through the gate!” he shouted again. “Go to your appointed prison!”

The Sword of Madness swung down, but the Voidal was nimble and slipped past its frightful bite. Elfloq took to the air, but could not move far away from the scene of the battle, gripped as he was in the spells of the priest. Snare watched the two swordsmen nervously, knowing that Ybaggog would soon be at the very portal. Beyond it now an immense mouth had opened, an Abyss into infinity, and from it issued the most overpowering stench, as of a thousand rotting hells.

The Voidal was now no more than a few yards from the lip of the gate, and Shatterface knew that in a moment he would have his prize. He thrust forward and the Voidal’s sword shattered like glass into a million splinters. Shatterface prepared for the critical blow and as his blade came screaming in, a blur of movement from the left of the Voidal caught them unawares. Orgoom had lunged forward and his sickle fingers caught and turned the Sword of Madness, so that shrieking sparks flew into the air. Snare cried out in fury as Orgoom was flung to the very lip of the gate. A splinter of the Sword had lodged in the Gelder’s hide, and his eyes bulged as the evil in it seeped into him.

“Vermin!” screamed Snare. “Traitor. Ubeggi will punish you—”

But Orgoom was not interested in the hated Ubeggi. As he got to his knees like a drunkard, he saw beyond him the titanic maw of Ybaggog. The Voidal dragged him back from the immeasurable drop. “My thanks, Gelder, but you have chosen the wrong moment to announce your fealty.”

Shatterface came on, pinning the Voidal to the very gate so that the wet blood smeared him. The shoggoths were seething forward like hounds after blood. Behind them Elfloq hovered, too afraid to help. He looked down at the rocky terrain, longing to flee across it. To his amazement he saw movement and presently figures there. Instantly he recognised Drath and the two travellers from the South, who were watching the terrible fight in horror.

Elfloq flitted down. “You must save him!” he cried. “They mean to feed him to Ybaggog—”

“You told us he would destroy the Devourer,” said Umatal, face seamed with horror at what he had seen.

Drath was whispering to the shadows, and Elfloq abruptly saw to his disgust that the night was crawling with cats. All of Ulthar must have turned out, for there was a veritable tide of the creatures surrounding the hollow and the massed shoggoths. The familiar flew upwards. “What are these?”

“That gate must be closed,” called Drath. “It is the shoggoths who hold it open. Whatever your master is supposed to be able to do, it is evidently no use against Ybaggog. I cannot destroy him, but the gate must be closed.”

“Yes, yes!” burbled Elfloq. “An excellent idea. Excellent. How?”

Drath turned to Umatal and Ibidin. “Between us, we must command our servants.” He indicated the cats.

Umatal nodded. “Yes. Our servants—whatever the cost. Begin at once.”

What then followed was meaningless to Elfloq, except that he knew the men were communicating in some strange way with the ocean of cats that now lapped at the hollow. They were weird creatures, these cats, with wolf-like eyes, and lean, sleek bodies, claws sharpened and oddly gleaming, souls burning with some secret inner fire fed by a god as dark as those that slept on the dreamworld of Ulthar. A hundred of these silent predators sprang from the night upon the last line of shoggoths, and the battle began. Claws tore and slashed like small swords, and the shoggoths swung and lumbered about cumbersomely, snatching up scores of the cats as they caught them, but for each one they crushed, a hundred more melted into being, until the hollow was boiling with sound and furious activity. Wave after wave of cats poured down from the hill as if a vent into a world of cats had been opened, and the shoggoths were ripped to the ground, overrun and slashed to shreds.

Snare rushed forward, forgetting for a moment the coming of the Old One, and in a matter of minutes found himself knocked to his knees by a dozen screaming cats. They tore his cloak of flesh from his shoulders and dug into him, slashing for his eyes. His fists beat at them, but they cut at him and bit him, so that he tumbled and rolled almost to the feet of the Voidal.

So much damage had the avalanche of cats done, that Shatterface himself felt the next rush of small bodies. A score of cats were on his back, trying to tear him down, but he willed himself forward. A shoggoth, its limbs severed and hanging from it in tatters, lumbered forward and fell through the gate, exploding as it dropped through space. Snare was trying to rise, but Orgoom swung an arm at him, ripping open his chest in bloody weals. The priest tried to shield himself, but the Gelder cut at him with terrible efficiency. Snare fell, his head and shoulders through the gate. There, balanced upon the edge of nightmare, he screamed. Orgoom swung down his arm with the power of madness and sliced clean through Snare’s neck. The head plummeted out into the rising mouth of the Old One, and as it turned end over end, the mouth still gave vent to an extended scream.

Orgoom rose just in time to witness disaster, for Shatterface was propelled forward, smashed by the tenacity of the cats that sought to drag him down, and the Voidal could not avoid the thrust of the Sword of Madness. It tore through his flesh and ripped into and through his middle, bursting out of his back, though there was no shower of blood. Orgoom knelt there in amazement as the dark man clutched the terrible sword, and it was then that the frightful screams began. Shatterface was pulled to the ground, covered by the cats, and they began ripping at him in a blur of talons.

Elfloq flew as close to the gate as he dared and there saw the horror of what had happened. The Voidal’s face twisted and pulled as he cried out in pain and madness, the Sword doing its terrible work. It would not come loose. The hand of the Voidal could not free it—the Dark Gods would have their way. Back staggered the dark man, crashing into Orgoom, and in a moment, before Elfloq could swoop down, both had fallen outwards and were plunging far down into the maw beyond the gate. Ybaggog had claimed them.

At once the darkness beyond the gate closed down, and the stones fell, leaving only a view of the dusty Mutterings and the memory of what had raged there. Elfloq flew up and away from the body of Shatterface, leaving the cats to pull from it the still-pulsing organs.

III

Orgoom felt as though all the powers in the omniverse were alternately pulling and then squeezing his entire body so that it throbbed in agony as if it would burst and scatter itself before reforming and disappearing into itself. His general direction seemed to be down, although everything about him span so much that his senses had become disjointed. Fountains of stars vomited upwards and then spread outwards, curling and winking out. Gradually this maelstrom of light confined itself to his head, sinking into it, expanding, then dissolving into darkness. All that he was aware of then was the sickening sensation of spinning, but at least he was on the ground. Eventually he moved, discovering that the ground was spongy, a thick, brackish morass. Pale light splotched the scene around him, which was some unsightly dark plain, broken only by rounded humps of black rock, or possibly fungoid growth, he could not say which. The region stank like the worst sewers that he had ever experienced its vapours almost tangible as they wove upwards.

He sat up, trying to scrape off some of the muck that had splattered him, and gazed about him. Either he was under some evil night sky, or he was in an enormous cavern of unprecedented proportions. There were shadows high above him, and as they seemed to be hanging, he guessed the latter, glad that he could make out no details. It was then that he recalled his fall through the gate—could he be inside Ybaggog? If so, then this around him was an enclosed universe. Such things existed.

Before his mind could burst at contemplating this concept, he saw something stir near him. A body floated face down in the mire and several black shapes from under the mire were worrying at it, trying to drag it under. Before they could succeed, there were submarine bursting sounds, spreading the thick muck in low waves. In a moment the body was left alone. From its back protruded the point of a sword, which moaned softly to itself. This must be the Voidal, mused Orgoom, dead at last.

The Gelder wondered if he had gone mad, for a sliver of the sword must still be lodged in him. Certainly there was nothing sane about this frightful zone. However, he had escaped the frightful Ubeggi, and had sworn to himself that he would serve Elfloq’s master. He scurried over the hump of rock and reached for the body. He tugged it ashore with his sickle hands, and it moved, dragging itself to its knees, not dead at all. Slowly, like a zombie, the dark man got to his feet, eyes shut, mouth slack. The Sword of Madness gave forth a howl of glee, and the face of the Voidal came alive. Those awful green eyes seemed to be looking out on an invisible and lunatic inner universe. The man began to snigger with obscene mirth so that Orgoom drew back in revulsion. The sounds went on interminably, until at last they subsided into a sequence of monotonous chuckles, meaningless and disquieting. Orgoom had no idea how to act.

“Not stay,” he said, comforted by his own voice. The eyes of the Voidal looked at him, but there was no response in them. He had been reduced by the power of the Sword to complete madness. Orgoom turned away, trying to see a way across the empty mire, not knowing where he could go. Overhead he heard the squawks of something large and vile, but there was only the hint of a shadow in this dismal misty light. Shuddering, the Gelder moved on. Mechanically, behind him, the Voidal trudged in awkward pursuit, moved by some unknown force.

Around him in the mire, Orgoom now saw a number of floating corpses, bleached white and partially overgrown with peculiar lumps that had their own strange light. They fed on the dead, for the corpses occasionally turned in the mire, mad faces glaring up at the moonless vaults above, while other corpses were not even remotely human. Yet other things swam in the black waters, keeping away from the sounds that Orgoom’s feet made as he splashed loudly on. By keeping as close as he could to the outcrops of rock, the Gelder was able to avoid deep water.

Something dropped from the air and alighted on a hummock nearby. It was black and misshapen, half bird, half beast, and its curved beak opened in silence. Others flapped down, forming a half circle so that only one avenue was open to Orgoom. The Gelder looked along this, not wanting to be herded, but he could see now that the hummocks extended in a chain, like the radius of a wheel, to a point on the horizon. Something dark and ominous loomed there, embedded like a cliff or a high hill. Orgoom had no alternative but to go there—the grim visitors from the sky had made that clear.

The Gelder leapt from one slippery hummock to another, gasping as a number of them flinched under his touch: they were not rocks. Behind him the Voidal came on, tugged by a force that Orgoom did not understand, and the flapping half-birds kept well back from the dark figure, as though one touch would bring death. Ahead of him, Orgoom could see the phosphorescent mass of the huge hill more clearly. It rose up from the midst of the morass, and at once the Gelder understood its importance. It was a living organ, pulsing and throbbing with life, here at the centre of Ybaggog’s vitals. Like a citadel, it towered, shimmering with eerie light, the air around it whispering like unseen life. The low rumble of its workings beat like the sound of blood through the terrain.

As Orgoom came under the shadow of those vast walls of knotted flesh, he saw that near the uppermost heights, fronds were lowering quickly, tangled and knotted like the roots of a sprawling saprophyte forest. They rushed down towards the mire, and as they did so, a great wave of filth broke beneath them and out of the murky depths came a sudden rush of elongated yellow growths, groping blindly like fleshy fingers. In moments the two great masses of wriggling life had locked in the most frightful contest of strength, so that the mire heaved and spread waves outwards, and the citadel above shook. Great chunks of tendril and yellow flesh were flung out from the entangled mass and Orgoom stood his ground with difficulty. Above him he could see more of the repulsive blotched fronds dropping down to enjoin the battle, until at last they seemed to have beaten off the terrible threat from below. Like a disjointed, smashed hand, the yellow monster sank back into the muck.

The growths from the ramparts withdrew upwards in silence, and soon all was still again. An abrupt movement beside him awakened Orgoom and he turned to see a diminutive being. It was naked, pale and shivering, its face torn by suffering and fear. Orgoom immediately brandished a sickled hand at it and it cowered so convincingly that the Gelder felt no threat from it.

“Who are you?” he hissed at the shrunken creature.

“I am No-Name. You must come with me.”

“Where?”

“Up there. To the heart of Ybaggog. The City of the Screaming Eyes. I am your guide.”

Orgoom looked behind him. The Voidal stood, eyes glazed, seeing nothing of this world, waiting. “Not safe,” Orgoom pointed to the waters where the yellow horror had sunk.

“There is time before the next dream comes.”

“What dream?”

No-Name also pointed to the waters. “From the marshes come the Sendings of the Old Ones, Dreams sent by them to attack Ybaggog’s heart, for they wish to destroy him, whom they hate. Ybaggog is their master and will rule them all. He sends down powers of his own from above, the Eaters of Sleep, and they break up the Sendings. Come quickly.” He darted away and Orgoom followed, not wanting to, but even less liking the prospect of staying out here in the mire with the Dreams.

No-Name found a path, a twisted and solidified artery that had once trailed out from the heart, and he and Orgoom walked along it and into an opening through a stone tangle of similar old veins. Behind them, the Voidal followed. They could hear the sword’s low laughter. For a long time they climbed in the darkness, and below them dropped a bottomless well, crossed and criss-crossed of veins and stretched fibres, some hard as stone, others glowing with fluid. Orgoom had to close his mind to the stench and the echoing sibilant sounds, the cold gusts of air and the suggestive throb of movement that confirmed his presence inside a living organ.

At last they came out into the upper tiers. They gave forth a dim glow, and the Gelder saw that from the piles of living flesh yawned doorways and windows that had not been cut from it, but which had grown naturally, although they were distorted and set at strange angles. No-Name explained that the City of the Screaming Eyes was a place for the servants of the god, who went about his work here mindlessly, none knowing what purpose he served. “Ybaggog brings captives to the mire from the many universes outside himself,” said No-Name. “I go down and fetch some of them in. You and the other one are fortunate, for you have been chosen to be servants, too. Those who remain in the mires and the pits are no more than fodder. Soon you will have your own secret task to perform.”

Orgoom could think of nothing to say, so he sat disconsolately on an outcrop of tissue. He realised that the bizarre citadel was apparently solid here in its centre, while its outer bastions were alive with the terrible Eaters of Sleep. It disturbed him to think of them and to know that he sat upon the living god. The Voidal lurched before him, an automaton. Orgoom had thought of trying to pull the Sword of Madness from him, but nothing would induce him to touch the haft that protruded from the dark man’s gut.

Instead, Orgoom watched the comings and goings of the remarkable citadel. From time to time a skulking figure would emerge from darkness and shuffle warily across the tilted plaza, always carrying some bundle. These figures all had the most frightful eyes, wide and staring as though they had looked on the ultimate vision of hell. They were mostly hybrids: some wriggled on short legs like lizards, others flopped, breathing through gills, while yet more hopped on elongated limbs and had arms like fronds. None of them retained more than a semblance of humanity, and Orgoom felt pity for them, for he had been transformed by the evilness of Ubeggi, though not so gruesomely as most of these nightmares. They went about their mad work silently, and the objects that they carried were even more strange than they were—Orgoom was sure that he saw living things squirming in those arms, and severed members of beasts. Whatever purpose they were at, only the deformed mind of Ybaggog knew it, and Orgoom was glad that he did not have to know.

Presently a group of three beings arrived, entering the plaza from one of the twisted doorways. Their upper bodies were smooth-skinned and human, but their lower halves were segmented like the bloated bodies of huge maggots. They wriggled across the ground and came together, mouths working in silence, huge eyes staring vacantly. One of them swung something in a hand and another snatched it; in a few moments they had parted and wriggled off again on their grim errand, but in the brief minutes they had been here, Orgoom had seen enough of the object to know that it had been the head of Snare. Its eyes had been as wide and as alive as those of the others in this place.

Orgoom made to question No-Name on this, but the little figure was scrambling to its feet as if in answer to some unheard call. “It is time for us to go. You are to be given your tasks.” He said no more, but went to another opening that was like the trap to a drain. Orgoom followed, the dark man plodding behind. Now they were going down a curling tunnel, where Orgoom guessed dark blood had once rushed. Set in the walls were orifices that opened and closed in silence, their function a mystery to the Gelder, though he kept well away from them. Across narrow spans the figures went, and Orgoom saw deep drops into darkness and heard the grinding and hammering of colossal organs deep below. It was like transversing the inside of a world, so vast and horizonless was its extent.

When they had come to the bottom of a steeply inclined tunnel, No-Name turned and pointed to the valve-like door ahead of them. “I go no further.”

“What is beyond?” asked Orgoom, suspicious and ready to use his awful clawed hands. He had no wish to become the slave of Ybaggog and go about as those in the citadel did.

“It is a portal that looks out over the vast spaces of Ybaggog’s mind. There his dreams sail past and he will chose one for you both, and in the reading of it, you will have your tasks. You and the man must go out and accept the Seeing.”

Orgoom hissed and leapt back, almost colliding with the Voidal. “All this way for that? Not Orgoom!” he cried vehemently. Rather he would go back into Ubeggi’s service than bow to this monstrous deity.

No-name suddenly rushed past both Gelder and the Voidal and ran back up the tunnel. He turned. “I have done my duty. Ybaggog is not to be denied. You cannot keep from him his due.” With that he fled, leaving the bemused Orgoom watching. The Gelder had no idea how to act, but on no account would he go through the valve to the place beyond. He had seen quite enough of Ybaggog’s revolting visions. Thus there was only one direction to take, and he began the cautious walk back up the tunnel. He had not gone far, however, when he saw movement beyond. No-Name must be returning.

But it was not him.

Something was squirming down the tunnel, clumsy and uncertain of its progress. It was a creature with an ovoid body that resembled a huge slug, with dangling limbs that were more like fins than arms. From the centre of its body rose a long neck, and upon this grew the head, like a bizarre fruit. It was human, but grown three times its normal size. Orgoom saw the staring eyes first, but as the thing came slithering down the tunnel, blocking it entirely, he recognised the head of Snare. It had been given a new and blasphemous life. As it saw the Gelder, it laughed evilly, its voice that of the man who had been Ubeggi’s slave. “No escape, Gelder! Not here.”

Orgoom readied both hands, prepared to tear this disgusting abomination to pieces, but would it be possible? Could he destroy it? He waited, shaking with terror, and the thing that Snare had become drew closer, moved only by the fires of its madness.

Behind him, Orgoom heard the valve hiss open and beyond it could sense the great void that was the dreaming mind of Ybaggog, the hell of hells. The Voidal was moving towards it. Orgoom turned, shielding his eyes, and tried to catch his sickles in the cloak of the dark man, but the fabric was like mist. The Gelder could not stop him.

Snare screamed with maniacal glee. “You cannot save him! He belongs to Ybaggog now. The Dark Gods have thrown him out—they have no power here! Only Ybaggog can command. Follow him, Gelder! Follow him and plunge into the deeps of the Dark Destroyer. Drink!” Snare flicked out a whip-like tongue and Orgoom slashed it in half with a lightning chop. But the awful mouth spat out more of them. Orgoom slashed again, but as each severed part fell, it wriggled back and was absorbed by the round bulk of Snare’s body.

The Voidal was through the orifice and stood beyond, eyes facing whatever was out there. Inside his body, the Sword of Madness began an awful gush of sound, twisted and painful, a crescendo of all that was frightful. The blade turned and shivered as if it, too, endured agonies. Orgoom’s ears threatened to burst as he lurched back to the tunnel wall and crouched there, almost melting into the walls. They seemed to be made of pulp, shuddering as if vibrating to the din made by the sword, as though its appalling sounds cut deep into them. Snare struggled on past Orgoom, no longer interested in the huddled Gelder.

There was a timelessness about the Voidal’s encounter with the void. Ybaggog’s wild dreams and nightmares floated across the pit of his mind like vast naval fleets, some drifting across to the Voidal, whose own tormented mind was closed in on itself, chained up by the madness lodged in his vitals. The first of the Sendings enveloped the dark man, and something of its power seeped through. Huge aerial monsters were tearing and ripping at each other, scattering stars in their wake and crushing whole universes as they struggled in the wildest regions of the omniverse. Gods roared their fury and burst asunder, while billions of their servants fused into rivers of molten light that poured away into the abysses of oblivion. Entire pantheons were reduced to cinders as god after god perished, and the spreading plague of horrors spawned by the lunacy of Ybaggog devoured and devoured. In the memory of the Devourer of Universes, every struggle of the gods of the omniverse still reverberated, locked into a repeated cycle of perpetualness. All was confusion, chaos, tumult and turmoil, and on this ghastly diet, Ybaggog thrived.

Yet the Sword of Madness had built its own wall of turmoil around the walls of the Voidal’s seething mind, so that as the visions came, staggering in their immensity, they struck the eyes of the Voidal and shattered like ice images before the steel hammers of a madman. Ybaggog’s universe shook to its roots, the entire length of it reverberating to the impact.

The Dark Gods had not allowed for such a confrontation, for the Voidal picked out from the slivers of smashed image many things that had meaning for him. Shards of memory gleamed there and he snatched them avidly, repairing them until new visions came to him. As the mad god sent more of his awesome dreams across the void, the Voidal snared at will the pieces that he wanted. As long as the Sword inside him countered the oncoming Sendings, he was in command.

The Snare creature rushed through the valve, made aware by Ybaggog of what had happened. The mad god commanded its beast. It wrapped its broken fronds around the hilt of the Sword of Madness and pulled, shrieking deafeningly as it did so. Orgoom could not watch as the sword fought like a living serpent to remain in the body of the Voidal. Snare pulled and pulled, inching the weapon out, his flesh charring, his limbs shriveling and dropping off. Yet gradually the sword came out, until a last heave brought it free. Snare’s mouth opened wide in a crazed laugh of triumph, and then that ghastly head burst in a welter of smoking gore. Within moments the body began to rupture and then it, too, burst, its leaking remains flung far out into the void of Ybaggog’s dreams.

Orgoom tore free from the wall of the tunnel, which had been absorbing him like a sponge. He saw the Sword of Madness fall at the feet of the Voidal, and looked up at the dark man. The latter stood with his back to Ybaggog’s lunatic void and abruptly looked down at the weapon with an intensely evil smile. In a moment he had picked it up and caressed it. He stared at Orgoom, and in that look the Gelder knew more terror than in anything he had yet lived through.

“Orgoom,” said the Voidal. “The Sendings have not broken your mind.”

“No, master,” said the Gelder, shivering anew. Plainly the Voidal was far from mad, and no prisoner.

“Do not look at what lies behind me.” The Voidal said no more. Ybaggog must have understood now that the dark man was at his mercy, for he began to send out across that black space the most terrible of his visions. The Voidal could feel it coming like a tidal wave of lunacy, but he was ready. He raised up the sword in his right hand, grinning at the hand that was his own and no longer moved by the will of his tormentors, and waited. Eagerly.

At last he span round. His eyes were closed as he flung the weapon, and it tore like a blazing sun across the interstellar vastness of that black mind, its point seeking the vision that raced to meet it.

“To your feet!” the Voidal shouted, gripping Orgoom’s elbow and lifting him. They were both racing up the tunnel as the impact came. It was as if a score of universes had met and fused themselves. Soon the consequent explosion came: Ybaggog’s mind writhed and tore itself apart in the chaos that followed. His body felt the rigours of an immense seizure, followed by more, greater than the first.

“What happens?” cried Orgoom, stumbling but still running.

“Ybaggog’s power is disintegrating, smashed by a greater one.” The Voidal laughed horribly. “I have seen it.” He said no more, but laughed again. It was no longer the laughter of a madman, but laughter that spoke of some unimaginable secret, something that only the dark man knew of, for in that laughter there was confidence that a god might envy.

When they came to the plaza, they found that all of Ybaggog’s servants had burst like fruit, and the heart of the god was pumping madly, turning huge parts of itself to stone and dust. These cracked and tumbled. Orgoom whimpered in terror at the thought of what must happen to him, but the Voidal gazed at the carnage with a terrible smile.

“I think this will not be the end for us, Gelder. Ybaggog will writhe and shudder for eons to come, locked away inside his own mad universe. His Sendings will torment only himself until the distant millenium when he rots at the edge of the omniverse.”

“How will we get out?”

“Our work is done. We have all been used, even Ubeggi. The will of the Dark Gods has triumphed here, as I guessed that it would.”

The Voidal ignored the terrible sounds of destruction around them and put his hand gently on Orgoom’s blue skin. “Go to sleep.”

“We meet again?”

“In some other hell perhaps.”

Within moments the Gelder had slumped down, eyes closed, and soon after that he was gone. For a while the Voidal was left alone to contemplate the broken riddles of his own destiny; then he, too, slipped into the great darkness until the Dark Gods would see fit to wake him again.

EPILOGUE

The inn was silent, the cats asleep, the embers of the fire burning low. Drath nodded to himself and closed the last of the shutters. Outside there was some kind of disturbance, the air stirred as if by a distant storm, passing mercifully beyond Ulthar. The innkeeper thought of the strange company who had visited the inn, their impact on this stranger world. It was over. Tomorrow night, what stranger dreams might come?

Meanwhile, far from Ulthar, Vulparoon the Divine Asker listened with the keen ears of a bird of prey to the remote sounds, almost beyond the limits of hearing. Somewhere a mad god was falling, as mad gods did. The Asker smiled for a moment. But then he thought of the burden he carried, the knowledge that he must pay for the summoning he had made in Ulthar. Tomorrow, a week hence, ten years? Better not to know. But, as with death itself, let it be swift, he prayed.

And Elfloq, the errant familiar, popped out on to the astral realm with a grunt of mixed emotion. He was thankfully free of Ubeggi and the revolting Snare, but what of his master? Elfloq squinted into the fog. He would have to begin again. Next time they would, he hoped, meet under more auspicious circumstances. But with the Voidal, one never knew. Only the Dark Gods really knew anything. Elfloq grimaced. Even in his scheming mind, he did not have the temerity to curse them.

1 Ubeggi first appears in “The Weaver of Wars,” a Voidal story published in Weirdbook 23/24 (1988).

2 Elfloq first meets Orgoom in “At the Council of Gossipers,” published in Dark Horizons 21 (1980).

3 Elfloq first meets the Divine Askers in “Astral Stray,” a Voidal story published in Heroic Fantasy, edited by Gerald Page & Hank Reinhardt, (DAW Books, 1979)