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Файл:The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
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THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH
Look then back to earth, and you will see shining the deathless altar-fl ame of Ired–Naa from the sacred roof of a temple.
That temple is in your desiderate sunset city, so steer for it
before you heed the singing and are lost.
“When you draw nigh the city steer for the same high parapet whence of old you scanned the outspread glory, prodding
the Shantak till he cry aloud. That cry the Great Ones will hear
and know as they sit on their perfumed terraces, and there will
come upon them such a homesickness that all of your city’s
wonders will not console them for the absence of Kadath’s
grim castle and the pshent of eternal stars that crowns it.
“Then must you land amongst them with the Shantak, and
let them see and touch that noisome and hippocephalic bird;
meanwhile discoursing to them of unknown Kadath, which
you will so lately have left, and telling them how its boundless
halls are lovely and unlighted, where of old they used to leap
and revel in supernal radiance. And the Shantak will talk to
them in the manner of Shantaks, but it will have no powers of
persuasion beyond the recalling of elder days.
“Over and over must you speak to the wandering Great
Ones of their home and youth, till at last they will weep and
ask to be shewn the returning path they have forgotten. Thereat can you loose the waiting Shantak, sending him skyward
with the homing cry of his kind; hearing which the Great Ones
will prance and jump with antique mirth, and forthwith stride
after the loathly bird in the fashion of gods, through the deep
gulfs of heaven to Kadath’s familiar towers and domes.
“Then will the marvellous sunset city be yours to cherish and inhabit for ever, and once more will earth’s gods rule
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HOWARD LOVECRAFT
the dreams of men from their accustomed seat. Go now —
the casement is open and the stars await outside. Already
your Shantak wheezes and titters with impatience. Steer for
Vega through the night, but turn when the singing sounds.
Forget not this warning, lest horrors unthinkable suck you
into the gulf of shrieking and ululant madness. Remember
the Other Gods; they are great and mindless and terrible, and
lurk in the outer voids. They are good gods to shun.
“Hei! Aa-shanta ‘nygh! You are off! Send back earth’s
gods to their haunts on unknown Kadath, and pray to all space
that you may never meet me in my thousand other forms. Farewell, Randolph Carter, and beware; for I am Nyarlathotep,
the Crawling Chaos.”
And Randolph Carter, gasping and dizzy on his hideous
Shantak, shot screamingly into space toward the cold blue
glare of boreal Vega; looking but once behind him at the clustered and chaotic turrets of the onyx nightmare wherein still
glowed the lone lurid light of that window above the air and
the clouds of earth’s dreamland. Great polypous horrors slid
darkly past, and unseen bat wings beat multitudinous around
him, but still he clung to the unwholesome mane of that
loathly and hippocephalic scaled bird. The stars danced mockingly, almost shifting now and then to form pale signs of doom
that one might wonder one had not seen and feared before;
and ever the winds of nether howled of vague blackness and
loneliness beyond the cosmos.
Then through the glittering vault ahead there fell a hush of
portent, and all the winds and horrors slunk away as night
things slink away before the dawn. Trembling in waves that
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THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH
golden wisps of nebula made weirdly visible, there rose a timid
hint of far-off melody, droning in faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. And as that music grew, the Shantak
raised its ears and plunged ahead, and Carter likewise bent to
catch each lovely strain. It was a song, but not the song of any
voice. Night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when space
and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were born.
Faster fl ew the Shantak, and lower bent the rider, drunk
with the marvel of strange gulfs, and whirling in the crystal coils of outer magic. Then came too late the warning of
the evil one, the sardonic caution of the daemon legate who
had bidden the seeker beware the madness of that song.
Only to taunt had Nyarlathotep marked out the way to
safety and the marvellous sunset city; only to mock had that
black messenger revealed the secret of these truant gods
whose steps he could so easily lead back at will. For madness and the void’s wild vengeance are Nyarlathotep’s only
gifts to the presumptuous; and frantick though the rider
strove to turn his disgusting steed, that leering, tittering
Shantak coursed on impetuous and relentless, fl apping its
great slippery wings in malignant joy and headed for those
unhallowed pits whither no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nether-most confusion where bubbles and
blasphemes at infi nity’s centre the mindless daemon-sultan
Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud.
Unswerving and obedient to the foul legate’s orders, that
hellish bird plunged onward through shoals of shapeless lurkers and caperers in darkness, and vacuous herds of drifting entities that pawed and groped and groped and pawed; the name-
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HOWARD LOVECRAFT
less larvae of the Other Gods, that are like them blind and
without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts
Onward unswerving and relentless, and tittering hilariously to watch the chuckling and hysterics into which
the risen song of night and the spheres had turned, that
eldritch scaly monster bore its helpless rider; hurtling and
shooting, cleaving the uttermost rim and spanning the outermost abysses; leaving behind the stars and the realms of
matter, and darting meteor-like through stark formlessness
toward those inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond
time wherein Azathoth gnaws shapeless and ravenous amidst
the muffl ed, maddening beat of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed fl utes.
Onward — onward — through the screaming, cackling,
and blackly populous gulfs — and then from some dim blessed
distance there came an image and a thought to Randolph
Carter the doomed. Too well had Nyarlathotep planned his
mocking and his tantalising, for he had brought up that which
no gusts of icy terror could quite efface. Home — New England — Beacon Hill — the waking world.
“For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder
is only the sum of what you have seen and loved in youth . . .
the glory of Boston’s hillside roofs and western windows afl ame
with sunset; of the fl ower-fragrant Common and the great
dome on the hill and the tangle of gables and chimneys in
the violet valley where the many-bridged Charles fl ows drowsily . . . this loveliness, moulded, crystallised, and polished by
years of memory and dreaming, is your terraced wonder of elusive sunsets; and to fi nd that marble parapet with curious urns
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THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH
and carven rail, and descend at last those endless balustraded
steps to the city of broad squares and prismatic fountains, you
need only to turn back to the thoughts and visions of your
wistful boyhood.”
Onward — onward — dizzily onward to ultimate doom
through the blackness where sightless feelers pawed and slimy
snouts jostled and nameless things tittered and tittered and tittered. But the image and the thought had come, and Randolph
Carter knew clearly that he was dreaming and only dreaming,
and that somewhere in the background the world of waking
and the city of his infancy still lay. Words came again —“You
need only turn back to the thoughts and visions of your wistful boyhood.” Turn — turn — blackness on every side, but
Randolph Carter could turn.
Thick though the rushing nightmare that clutched his
senses, Randolph Carter could turn and move. He could move,
and if he chose he could leap off the evil Shantak that bore him
hurtlingly doomward at the orders of Nyarlathotep. He could
leap off and dare those depths of night that yawned interminably down, those depths of fear whose terrors yet could not
exceed the nameless doom that lurked waiting at chaos’ core.
He could turn and move and leap — he could — he would —
he would — he would.
Off that vast hippocephalic abomination leaped the doomed
and desperate dreamer, and down through endless voids of
sentient blackness he fell. Aeons reeled, universes died and
were born again, stars became nebulae and nebulae became
stars, and still Randolph Carter fell through those endless
voids of sentient blackness.
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HOWARD LOVECRAFT
Then in the slow creeping course of eternity the utmost cycle of the cosmos churned itself into another futile completion,
and all things became again as they were unreckoned kalpas before. Matter and light were born anew as space once had known
them; and comets, suns and worlds sprang fl aming into life,
though nothing survived to tell that they had been and gone,
been and gone, always and always, back to no fi rst beginning.
And there was a fi rmament again, and a wind, and a glare of
purple light in the eyes of the falling dreamer. There were gods
and presences and wills; beauty and evil, and the shrieking of
noxious night robbed of its prey. For through the unknown
ultimate cycle had lived a thought and a vision of a dreamer’s
boyhood, and now there were remade a waking world and
an old cherished city to body and to justify these things. Out of
the void S’ngac the violet gas had pointed the way, and archaic
Nodens was bellowing his guidance from unhinted deeps.
Stars swelled to dawns, and dawns burst into fountains of
gold, carmine, and purple, and still the dreamer fell. Cries rent
the aether as ribbons of light beat back the fi ends from outside. And hoary Nodens raised a howl of triumph when Nyarlathotep, close on his quarry, stopped baffl ed by a glare that
seared his formless hunting-horrors to grey dust. Randolph
Carter had indeed descended at last the wide marmoreal
fl ights to his marvellous city, for he was come again to the fair
New England world that had wrought him.
So to the organ chords of morning’s myriad whistles,
and dawn’s blaze thrown dazzling through purple panes by
the great gold dome of the State House on the hill, Randolph
Carter leaped shoutingly awake within his Boston room. Birds
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THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH
sang in hidden gardens and the perfume of trellised vines
came wistful from arbours his grandfather had reared. Beauty
and light glowed from classic mantel and carven cornice and
walls grotesquely fi gured, while a sleek black cat rose yawning from hearthside sleep that his master’s start and shriek
had disturbed. And vast infi nities away, past the Gate of
Deeper Slumber and the enchanted wood and the garden
lands and the Cerenarian Sea and the twilight reaches of Inquanok, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep strode brooding
into the onyx castle atop unknown Kadath in the cold waste,
and taunted insolently the mild gods of earth whom he had
snatched abruptly from their scented revels in the marvellous sunset city.
Литературно-художественное издание
Top 100 Classic Books
Howard Lovecraft
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
Выпускающий редактор: H. Головлева
Компьютерная верстка: А. Дятлов
Художественное оформление: Е. Чернова
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Проект осуществлён с помощью технологий
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