Lin Carter Read online

  THE LIFE OF EIBON

  according to Cyron of Varaad

  by Lin Carter

  THE LIFE OF EIBON ACCORDING TO CYRON OF VARAAD

  I

  The sorcerer Eibon, son of Milaab, was born in the city of Iqqua in the Year of the Red Worm. In that same year the doom whereof the White Sybil had spake a century before came down upon the famous city of Commoriom and the King thereof, Lorquamethros, and all his folk, rose up and fled into the south to establish the city of Uzuldaroum amidst the jungles of Zesh in the land of Pharnath, abandoning forever splendid Commoriom to the abnormality Kyngathin Zhaum.

  This Milaab had been Keeper of the Archives to Xactura, Prince of Iqqua, and long had he been high in the favor of that monarch. But when that the child Eibon had attained to his second lustrum, which was about the time of the death of King Lorquamethros, the ecclesiarchs of the goddess Yhoundeh drave forth the family of Milaab into exile amidst the wilderness of Phenquor with their persecutions, wherefrom the father of Eibon died not long thereafter and the homeless and orphaned child sought refuge with a friendly enchanter, one Zylac, to whom he was apprenticed in the year that King Pharnavootra succeeded to the throne of Uzuldaroum.

  Now this Zylac was a celebrated magician who was then well-entered into the second century of his life, which by his art he had extended to an inordinate length as did Eibon himself in his own time. The mage was then in his one hundred eleventh year, having been born a year before the Sybil came into these parts out of the drear and frozen wastes of Polarion to prophesy concerning that which would in time befall great Commoriom, which is to say the Doom thereof. In his own youth the eminent Zylac had been the foremost of the disciples of Hormagor, the wizard of Abormis, whose curious history was writ down by Eibon in his Chapter the Seventh.

  From his tenth into his three-and-twentieth year did Eibon dwell in the black house of Zylac, which arose on the westernmost shores of Mhu Thulan, the province being at that time barren and uninhabited of men. There did he study the arts of necromancy and the three kinds of magic under the tutelage of that savant who was accounted the foremost in all of Hyperborea during his age. And there in the house of Zylac did Eibon bethink himself secure forever from the vengeance of the inquisitors of Yhoundeh, for that he dwelt afar from the customary habitations of men.

  When that it came to pass, in the fullness of time, that Zylac perished from his imprudent uses of the Zliogmish rituals, as Eibon hath related in his Chapter the First, the youthful sorcerer rose up and fled therefrom, leaving behind him the house of black gneiss on its solitary headland which overlooketh the cold waters of the boreal main. This I consider to have eventuated in the thirteenth year that Pharnavootra reigned in Uzuldaroum. Thus did Eibon commence his wanderings through many lands, at the first alone, but later in the company of a certain Zaljis whom he encountered in Oggon-Zhai. This youth was a fellow-seeker after dubious and occult knowledge, and together this twain sought wisdom wherever it might be found, whether in the eldritch fanes of age-forgotten Utressor or amongst the shadow-haunted tombs of Ulphar. Of the many and uncanny perils encountered by the twain beneath the puYple spires of Mnardis, and of that curious affliction which befell the aged king of Zaroul, I shall say naught: for of these matters hath Eibon himself aforetime writ.

  II

  It was in that year wherein the Empress Amphyrene was crowned that the sorcerer Eibon returned from his travelings to that drear and desolate promontory of Mhu Thulan which fronted upon the sea, and abode once more in the black house of Zylac which time had cleansed of its horror as all things are cleansed by the passage of the years.

  And therein did he abide thereafter for all of the years of his life upon this Earth, as is well known amongst men. For by this time he waxed exceeding great in his fame, and was accounted as eminent as had been the thaumaturge Zylac before him. Throughout the one-and-thirty year reign of that Empress did Eibon strive mightily to perfect himself in his science; and it was in the Year of the Green Spider, when the old Empress succumbed and the Prince Consort ascended to the throne as Emperor Charnametros, that I, Cyron, did become apprenticed to the celebrated Eibon. 1 was then at the terminus of my fourth lustrum and from my natal city of Varaad in the land of Phenquor had I come to study at the feet of the master, for that all of my life had I heard sung the famousness of Eibon.

  He was then in his five-and-sixtieth year and by that time was he reckoned the most potent and sagacious of the sorcerers of Hyperborea. For twenty years thereafter did I serve as his lowly apprentice, studying the arts of necromancy and the three kinds of magic, and ever did I find him to be the kindliest of men, as he was the wisest of teachers and the most accomplished of magicians.

  In his person the Master Eibon was slight of build and sallow of complexion, with a round face for ever beardless, his lips adorned with thin and silken and drooping mustachios. His eyes were thoughtful and hooded and amused, and he held himself fastidiously aloof from the ways of men; however, he possessed a whimsical cast of mind and a mocking humor, and was much given to ironic drolleries. I bethink me that few things mattered aught to him, and fewer still he cared for overmuch; and little of life or of the world did he take very seriously, the least of all himself.

  I can see him now, as oftentimes I saw him, a-strolling in his garden of curious trees, his slight form attired in thin robes of silk, bepatterned rose-and-golden after the manner of the weavers of Pnar. With his hands clasped behind his back he would saunter to and fro the length of his pleasaunce, all the while discoursing with subtle wisdom and wry wit upon some deep and arcane topic, his brows wrapt in the immense and voluminous, bescarfed tarboosh which he affected after the fashions of the days of his youth.

  Full many were the disciples of Eibon who came to the house of black gneiss to study thaumaturgy at the master’s feet. But of them all I believe that it was I, Cyron, was the dearest to his heart; and this belief I cherish within mine own. Throughout the empery of Charnametros, and the first years of Saphirion which followed, I abode in the tall house of Eibon. But in the eighth year of Saphirion’s empery, when that 1 was attained to the age of forty, did I part in amicable fashion from my master and eloigned myself hence to the city of Varaad where I dwelt ever after, devoting my years to the practice of wizardry. Many were the merchants and artisans of that city, aye, and the lords and burghers, as well, who vied to purchase their charms and spells, their periapts and divinations, from the wizard Cyron that had learnt his craft from none other than the celebrated Eibon.

  But no more shall I narrate in this vein, lest that it be said of me that I wrote more of the pupil than of the teacher.

  Vardanax was the last of the Dynasty of the Uzuldarines to name himself by the name of Emperor. When he died in the tenth year after his coronation and his sister. Queen Cunambria, succeeded to the throne, it could be seen throughout the land that the cultus of Yhoundeh was grown vast and prodigiously powerful, for the hierophant and grand inquisitor of the elk goddess, one Morghi by name, didst proclaim it far and wide to the faithful that my master Eibon was a depraved and infamous heretic; the which he would else have forborne to do, in fear of Eibon, had he not felt himself secure and confident in the preeminence of his authority.

  The inquisitor Morghi further caused it to be bruited about that my master was given to worship in secret and by stealthy ways the Abomination Tsathoggua, an obscure and suppressed divinity which had formerly enjoyed the celebrance of the aboriginal Voormis in prehuman cycles. These grunting and furry troglodytes, a dwindling vestige of primal Eons, yet lingered as survivors of a forgotten age in the mountainous or remote or bejungled parts of Hyperborea which were by the children of men shunned for that same reason.

  Thus spake the inquisitor Morghi. But it was whis
pered abroad that the persecution of my master was due to other reasons than merely the theological lapse into heretical practices whereof he stood accused. For this Morghi was himself become a thaumaturge of some reknown; but as he ascended in the mastery of the penumbral arts, ever he found to his dis-gruntlement that the great Eibon had transcended his every achievement. Whether from pious horror at the sin of daemonolatry, as he so vociferously claimed, or from the simple jealousy of a lesser magus for one who hath excelled him in the mastery of the uttermost arcana, it was indubitable that the hierophant would never rest until Eibon had expiated his iniquities in a manner sufficiently sanguinary and gruesome as to prove exemplary to all others who wavered withal in their rectitude.

  In the fullness of time I came to fear for my master, for all too well didst I know the somber truth of the imprecations spewed forth upon his name by the fanatical Morghi. In those lustrums which had followed upon the demise of Zylac, during his wanderings through many lands, Eibon had in sooth become a devotee of the obsolete and interdicted cultus of Tsathoggua, as he himself hath writ in his Chapter the Fifteenth. This demon dwells in the gloom of subterranean N’kai, a cavernous region situate beneath the roots of Mount Voormithadreth in the high Eiglophians. And thither did Eibon descend in the daring and valor of his youth, led by Phraaponthus, the shantak-bird, the which beckoned him on, deep and ever deeplier, into the Abyss.

  Thereinto he descended in search of such tenebrous and demon-guarded lore as might only be had from the vile and unspeakable lips of That which abideth from the eldermost beginnings of the Earth unto this very hour amidst the putrescence of the Pit. And what he sought, he gained: for the Abomination Tsathoggua is equivocal and ambiguous of mind, and doth not invariably view all mortal men with malign or anthropophagic intent, but taketh, betimes, an odd quirksome liking for some of they who descend thither to the place whereat He wallows, in quest of Elder Lore.

  Thus had I cause enough and more to entertain fears for my master, knowing that like his father afore him he had hearkened to the whisperings of the Black Thing that squatteth in the gloom of N’kai. Oft, indeed, had he urged upon me that I should betake myself thither and do likewise, for only thus (he would solemnly reiterate) are the Ultimate Mysteries to be plumbed. But ever, and that steadfastly, did I decline to do this: for I am of Varaad, and from that day, now ages gone, when first our ancestors came hither into these parts from dreamy Kamula amidst the Hills of Zalgara in time-forgotten Thuria, fled before the coming-down of the warlike Atlanteans, have we Varaadishmen worshipped the tribal goddess of our forefathers. From that far day to this have we staunchly adhered to our tutelary totem, which be, as all men know, Ixeera the cat goddess. Mayhap it be true that the goddess be naught more than the primal fetish of my race, as mine own master hath oftentimes admonished; but ever have

  I devoutly numbered myself among her celebrants. Even now, as 1 indite these words with reed-pen cut from the fronded calamus, dipt in the inky exhudations of the squid, one of Ixeera’s small and supple felidae rubs its round and silken head athwart my knee with many affectionate slumbrous purrings. Not for such as I, the worshipping of Tsathoggua!

  IV

  But to return to my History: in ordinary times ‘twould have been of scant concern to such as Eibon of Mhu Thulan, did the frenzied zealots of Yhoundeh rave against him spitefully, for he dwelt afar off at the uttermost extremity of Mhu Thulan, and all that region from Pnar to the polar sea hath never been subject to the magistracy of Iqqua.

  But in the past hundred year or such, the cult of Yhoundeh had risen to ascendancy; not only in Iqqua, where it first displaced and then drave out the antique worship of quaint, ichthyoidal little Qualk, the kindly god of fishermen; but also in the great city of Oggon-Zhai, where of old the folk thereof made homage to Kathruale, whose fanes be now neglected overmuch; in Zuth and Naroob, too; until at length all of the land of Zab-damar which fronts upon the sea groaned beneath the dominion of the ecclesiarchs of the elk goddess.

  And ever since Prince Tuluum followed his aged grandsire, Xactura, to the throne of Iqqua, have the priests of Yhoundeh wielded both the power temporal and the power spiritual over that sea-affronting realm: and in the reign of Raanor, who succeeded Tuluum, the princedom of the Iq-quasians laid claim to Mhu Thulan, or to those parts thereof the which bordered upon their country to the north, which is to say the westernmost portion of the province, and established jurisdiction and authority over that desolate region formerly untenanted by men, if not in sooth dominion thereover. The present Prince, Pharool, second of that name, had yielded supinely to the encroaching usurpations of the hierophant as meekly as ever did the four sovereigns which preceeded him. Thus had Morghi not only the sanctions of law but also the royal prerogative to indict the Master Eibon, the which authorities he was not overlong to employ against him.

  It was in the vernal month of the Year of the Black Tiger, in the third lustrum of Queen Cunambria’s reign, when my master came suddenly and in secret during the nocturnal hours unto my lapis minaret which overgazeth the glories of Varaad. Seven-and-forty years had transpired since last 1 had clasped his hand, or looked into his smiling and hooded and cynical eyes, or heard his wry, humorous, once-familiar mode of speech; but in all that time, whilst that I had grown grey and infirm and was much stricken in years, he had not altered by a whit. Albeit that he was then attained unto the prodigious age of one hundred and two-and-thirty, having by thence eclipsed by no fewer than eight years the span achieved by the venerable Zylac, he seemed nonetheless still nimble and slim, unbent by age, his sly and mocking visage smooth and unlined, and his deep sardonic eyes undimmed.

  With him he bore a plentitude of books and scrolls, of graven tablets and of folios, the which I recognized to be the choicest and most valuable tomes and treatises from his librarium; and these he beseeched me to preserve against theft or harm and to keep safe against the occasion of his return. There were amongst this trove many a tome or document of sorcerous lore most precious and exceeding rare���aye, precious beyond the dreams of avarice and rare above the keenest aspirations of the bibliophile. And when I inquired of Eibon wherefor I shouldst ward these books and scriptures, he but grimly smiled and answered, saying. So that they fall not into the hands of Morghi! And, these admonitions having spake, he said naught more, but bade me a brief farewell. And never again thenceafter did I look upon his face, or leastwise not with the eyes of the flesh. For not long after this did there come down upon him the ireful Morghi, and the henchmen of Morghi, whereupon befell the strange and full marvelous evanishment of Eibon from the bourns of men, and with him Morghi, too, whereat the world still wonders.

  V

  In the years which followed upon the heels of these events, have I toiled over the scrolls and volumes of Eibon, and perused the dark and terrible volumes of equivocal lore thus bequeathed into my keeping. Not the least amongst the which were the Voormish Tablets, whereon of old the dreadful arcana of the troglodytes wast engraven by uncouth and bestial paws; and that which is still decypherable by men of the Pnakotic Manuscripts; and the Kadath Record, whose nightmare pages contain much that is suggestive of an authorship in no wise to be considered remotely human nor even mammalian; and those of the Rituals of Yhe which survive into our epoch to preserve those black myths which are the terrible legacy of elder Mu; and the Parchments of Pnom, containing both the Greater and the Lesser Exorcisms of that magus, together with his unwholesome speculations into the true origin of man, with disturbing hints of a parentage cosmical, awesome, blasphemous and, happily, unproven.

  There were amongst these full many of the profound and incommensurable writings of Eibon himself, and treatises upon the supermundane sciences, together with a scripture of inordinate length concerning the Descent of Tsathoggua and His Brethren out of the venerable Pnom; which is to say naught of the veritable and unquestioned Grimoire of Eibon, into whose more tenebrous pages I have looked but once, then nevermore: for an old man needeth his rest and t
here be that within the testaments of Eibon which would render for ever unendurable the dreams of a mere Cyron.

  His folios contained redactions of that which his abstruse and recondite studies into antiquarian matters had uncovered concerning the lives and times of the primal magi of former cycles. Well and fondly do I remember these fables from the years I knelt at the master’s feet imbibing wisdom; for it had ever been his wont to relate these to his students in the nature of parables or cautionary tales, in obvious hope that we might learn from the several quaint and, betimes, gruesome ends which had befallen these unfortunate savants, to exhibit in our own practice of sorcery a restraint and a prudence superior to theirs.

  It became in time apparent from a scrutiny of these parchments that he had been in the midst of assembling them into a sequential narrative, which labors were interrupted by the untimely persecutions of Morghi. I betook upon myself the tasks of completing that which had been begun.

  Time passed, as wast ever time’s way, and my master returned not to resume his customary habitation in that house of black gneiss upon its drear and solitudinous promontory whose steep and precipitous shores are washed-about by the cold waves of the ultimate polar sea. Nor would he return ever again from whence he had fled, for at length did I ascertain by mine art the curious and unlikely termination of his career, in penumbral spheres remote from our own, and of that which transpired in the far and fabulous bourns which lie beyond the ill-rumored tablet of ultra-telluric metal whereof the elder magi whisper much, and little that be wholesome, and the which wast known of old as the Door to Cykranosh.

  This uncanny Portal had been a gift made unto Eibon by the dark divinity whose votary he had long accounted himself, even the dire and dubious Tsathoggua; the daemon had made present of it, saying, in a manner sly and cryptic, that in the uttermost extremity of his need my master should find it as a Door the which leadeth to a far haven of safe repose. But what the Black Abomination spake not of, was that once a man passeth therethrough, he can never return thereby again. Of these mysteries did I inquire of my master’s own spirit, conjured by mine art into a wizard’s speculuum of black steel as he himself had taught me aforetime, therefore I know whereof I speak; but of these matters I shall speak no more in this place, for I have elsewhere writ an account of the latter days of Eibon, and of that Door to Cykranosh, and the prodigies thereof, in a narrative set down in mine own poor words, the which have I added herein as Chapter the Twentieth.