Robert Price - Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos

He pointed down the broad street to the great building which reared at the other end, a colossal, brooding edifice whose columns and walls of solid black stone blocks defied the winds and the sands of time. The drifting, obliterating sea washed about its foundations, overflowing into its doorways, but it would require a thousand years to inundate the whole structure.

“An abode of devils,” muttered Yar Ali, uneasily.

“The temple of Baal!” exclaimed Steve. “Come on! I was afraid we’d find all the palaces and temples hidden by the sand and have to dig for the gem. But this was the highest point in the city.”

They strode up the broad way, and Yar Ali, utterly fearless in the face of human foes, glanced nervously to right and left, half expecting to see a horned and fantastic face leering at him from behind a column. Steve himself felt the sombre antiquity of the place, and almost found himself fearing a rush of bronze war chariots down the forgotten street, or to hear the sudden menacing flare of bronze trumpets. The silence in dead cities was so much more intense, he reflected, than that on the open desert.

They came to the portals of the great temple. Rows of immense columns flanked the wide doorway, which was ankle deep in sand, and from which sagged massive bronze frameworks that had once braced mighty doors, whose polished woodwork had centuries ago rotted away. They passed into a mighty hall of misty twilight, whose shadowy stone roof was upheld by columns like forest trees. The whole effect of the architecture was one of awesome magnitude, and sullen, breathtaking splendor, like a temple built by sombre giants for the abode of dark gods.

Yar Ali walked fearfully as if he expected to awake sleeping gods, and Steve, without the Afridi’s superstitions, yet felt the gloomy majesty of the place lay sombre hands on his soul.

No trace of a footprint showed in the deep sand on the floor; half a century had passed since the affrighted and devil-ridden Turk had paced these silent halls. That there were Bedouins in the littoral Steve knew, but it was easy to see why those superstitious sons of the desert avoided this haunted city — and haunted it was, not by actual ghosts, perhaps, but by the shadows of lost splendors.

As they trod the sand of the hall which seemed endless, Steve pondered many questions: how did those fugitives from the wrath of frenzied rebels build this city? Why did they choose this spot? How did they pass through the country of their foes — for Babylonia lay between Assyria and the Arabian desert. Yet there had been no other place for them to go, reflected Steve; east lay Syria and the sea and north and west swarmed “the dangerous Medes,” those fierce Aryans whose aid had stiffened the arm of Babylon to smite her foe to the dust.

And whence came the stone that went into this city’s building? Surely, as Yar Ali had said, once this was fertile country, watered by oases; and doubtless in the broken country they had passed over the night before, there had been quarries in the old days.

Then what had caused the city’s downfall? Did the encroachment of the sands and the filling up of the springs cause the people to abandon it, or was it already a city of silence before the sands crept over the walls? Did the downfall come from within or without? Did civil war blot out the inhabitants, or were they overthrown by some powerful foe from the desert? Steve shook his head in baffled chagrin. The answers to those questions were hidden and lost in the mazes of forgotten ages.

“Allaho akbar!” They had traversed the great shadowy hall and at its further end they came upon a hideous black stone altar, behind which loomed an ancient god, bestial and horrific. Steve shrugged his shoulders as he recognized the monstrous aspect of the image — aye, that was Baal, on whose black altar in other ages many a screaming, writhing naked victim had offered up the quivering soul. The idol embodied in its utter, abysmal and sullen bestiality the whole soul of this demoniac city. Surely, thought Steve, the builders of Nineveh and Kara-Shehr were cast in another mold than the people of today. Their art and culture were too ponderous, too grimly barren of the lighter aspects of humanity, to be wholly human. Their architecture was of highest skill, yet of a massive, sullen and brutish nature beyond the ken of modern man.

The adventurers went through a narrow door that opened in the end of the hall close to the idol, and came into a series of wide chambers, connected by column-flanked corridors. Along these they strode, and came at last to a wide stairway. Here Yar Ali halted.

“Wait a bit, sahib, we have dared much. Is it wise to dare more?”

Steve, a-quiver with eagerness, yet understood the Afghan’s mind.

“You mean we shouldn’t go up these stairs?”

“We have wandered into the castle of devils, Steve sahib; any moment a djinn may bite our heads off.”

“Well,” said Steve, “we’re dead men anyhow. But I tell you — you go on back through the hall and watch for Arabs while I go upstairs.”

“Watch for a wind on the horizon,” responded the Afghan gloomily, shifting his rifle and loosening his long knife in its scabbard. “No Bedouin comes here. Lead on, sahib. Thou’rt mad after the manner of all Franks, but I would not have thee face the djinn alone.”

So the companions mounted the massive stairs, leaving their footprints in the dust that sifted deeply there. At the top they came into a wide circular chamber. This was lighted much better than the rest of the temple, by windows and by light that poured in from the high, pierced ceiling. But another light lent itself to the illumination. Both saw it at the same instant and both shouted in amazement.

A marble throne stood on a sort of stone dais, at the top of a short flight of broad steps, and on this throne glimmered something that caught the light of the sun and shed a crimson glow all about. The Fire of Asshurbanipal!

Even after they had found the city, Steve had not really allowed himself to believe that they would find the stone. Yet there it was, shimmering among a heap of bones on the marble throne — a great ruby, as big as a pigeon’s egg!

Steve sprang across the chamber and up the steps. Yar Ali was at his heels, yet when Steve would have taken up the ruby, the Afghan laid a hand on his arm.

“Let us not be hasty, Steve sahib,” said the big Muhammadan. “A curse lies on these ancient things. Else why has this rare gem lain here untouched in a country of thieves for so many centuries? It is not well to disturb the possessions of the dead.”

“Bosh,” this from Steve. “Superstitions. The Bedouins were scared by the tales that have come down to them from their ancestors. They mistrust cities anyway, and no doubt this one had an evil reputation in its lifetime. And nobody except Bedouins have ever seen this place before — except that Turk, who was probably half-demented with suffering.

“You can see for yourself that the ‘skeleton hand’ stuff was an embellishment — those bones are crumblin’. They may be the bones of a king — maybe not. Anyway, no tellin’ how long they’ve been here. The dry desert air preserves such things indefinitely. May be Assyrian, or most likely Arab — some beggar that got the gem and then died on that throne, for some reason or other. Look, only the skull is anything like whole, and it’ll turn to dust if I touch it.”

He stretched forth his hand, but again Yar Ali halted him; the Afghan’s eyes were uneasy. He seemed to be listening.

“I heard a sound, sahib,” he muttered. “For the last few minutes I have heard stealthy noises as if ghosts or dead men were stealing upon us. Harken! Is that not the sound of beings mounting the stairs?”

Steve wheeled, alert.