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He first visits the land of the zoogs, “furtive and secretive” creatures who live in burrows or in the trunks of trees. They do not know where Kadath is, but one elderly zoog has heard that a copy of the “inconceivably old Pnakotic Manuscripts” is at Ulthar and that it tells much about the gods. So Carter makes his way to Ulthar, beyond the river Skai, where the friendly cats cluster about him. Carter seeks the patriarch Atal, who long ago had ascended Mt. Hatheg-Kla in the company of Barzai the Wise, in order to look upon the gods; only Atal had come down. Carter drugs Atal with the zoogs’ moon-wine, so that Atal becomes talkative: he tells Carter of a great image of the gods (called the Great Ones or the gods of earth) carved on Mt. Ngranek, on the isle of Oriab; if Carter were to see this image, and then look for similar images among the races of dreamland, he would probably find the gods. The gods, after all, were fond of marrying the daughters of men and producing offspring who had divine blood in their veins and divine features on their countenances.
At Atal’s urging, Carter joins a caravan bound for Dylath-Leen, a great city on the Southern Sea. Arriving there, he hears that ships from Baharna, a city on Oriab, came occasionally to trade at Dylath-Leen. These ships had an unsavory reputation, for they would merely exchange enormous rubies for hordes of black slaves. Presently such a ship comes into the harbor, and Carter speaks to one of the merchants on it; but the merchant plies Carter with drugged wine, and he is taken aboard the ship as a prisoner. Carter suspects that the ship is in league with the Other Gods, who under the aegis of the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep protect the mild gods of earth. The ship sails between the Basalt Pillars of the West, and then leaps into the air and lands on the moon, eventually docking at a peculiar city on a “leprous-looking coast”; on the shore are huge grayish-white toadlike creatures moving cargo and slaves off the ships. Other creatures, turbaned and approximately human in outline, are also seen. Two of the toad-creatures seize Carter and take him to a dungeon, and later he is led in a procession, surrounded by both the toads and the almost-human entities. Suddenly Carter hears the yell of a cat, and he realizes that the moon is where all cats come at night. Carter, knowing the cats’ language, utters a cry for help; and there ensues a battle between the cats on one side and the toad-creatures and almost-humans on the other side. The cats prevail and then make a gigantic leap back to earth, Carter safely carried along in their midst.
Carter finds himself back at Dylath-Leen and this time boards a ship for the isle of Oriab. Reaching the port of Baharna, Carter undertakes the arduous ascent of Mt. Ngranek; finally attaining the farther side of it, he is astounded at the enormous face carved thereon. But mingled with his awe is recognition, for Carter knows that he has seen likenesses of that face in the taverns of the seaport Celephaïs, ruled by King Kuranes. Carter knows he must head there, but before he can climb down the mountain he is plucked by hideous winged creatures with no faces—the night-gaunts. They bear him beyond the Peaks of Thok and leave him in the vale of Pnath, “where crawl and burrow the enormous bholes.” Carter is, however, aware that bholes are terrified of ghouls, and he has had dealings in the past with ghouls—specifically with one ghoul named Richard Upton Pickman, who used to be a man. Carter summons the ghouls, who lower an enormous rope ladder up which he climbs to the top of a crag. The ghouls take
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Carter to Pickman, who “had become a ghoul of some prominence in abysses nearer the waking world.” Carter outlines his plan to get to the enchanted wood and thence to Celephaïs, but Pickman tells him that to do so he will have to pass through the kingdom of the gugs, “hairy and gigantic,” and their enemies, the ghasts. Pickman gives Carter a handful of ghouls to accompany him to the gugs’ kingdom and has Carter disguise himself as a ghoul.
Carter and the ghouls reach the kingdom of the gugs. They seek to ascend a cliff to the enchanted wood, but encounter an enormous gug, fifteen feet high and with a mouth that opens vertically. At that moment, however, the gug is attacked by a swarm of ghasts, and this allows Carter and his escorts to go forth and reach an enormous tower with huge stone steps leading up. After “aeons of climbing” they reach the summit, going through a stone trapdoor just before a gug can capture them. At this point the ghouls leave Carter to return to their own realm. As he is making his way through the enchanted wood, he overhears zoogs planning a war of revenge upon the cats, who had killed several zoogs when Carter was at Ulthar. Carter realizes that he must foil the plan, so he summons the cats and informs them of the zoogs’ scheme.
Carter follows the river Oukranos to Kiran and Thran, and there boards a galleon to Celephaïs. He describes to the mariners the face on Mt. Ngranek, and the mariners tell him that people matching that description are found in a faraway twilight land called Inganok, close to Leng. After passing by Hlanith, Carter comes to Celephaïs, where he meets his old friend Kuranes. But Kuranes, although now a king, longs for his old home. Trevor Towers, in England, and suggests that Carter’s “sunset city” may not be as satisfying as he thinks.
At length a ship from Inganok docks at the harbor, and Carter is thrilled to see “living faces so like the godlike features on Ngranek.” Carter takes passage on their ship and eventually comes to the onyx city of Inganok. He is unnerved to see again the slant-eyed merchant who had drugged him in Dylath-Leen, but the latter disappears before Carter can speak to him. Carter wishes to talk with the onyx-miners in the north, so he hires a yak for the purpose and makes his way to the quarries. Ascending the black cliffs higher and higher, Carter reaches the crest and sees, far in the distance, what appears to be an enormous range of black mountains, but is in fact a series of gigantic onyx figures, “their right hands raised in menace against mankind.” From their laps Carter sees arising a black cloud of shantak-birds. In front of him he sees the slant-eyed merchant astride a yak and leading a horde of shantaks. The merchant compels Carter to mount one of the birds, and they fly through space to the doorway of a windowless stone monastery in Leng. Carter is led before a “lumpish figure robed in yellow silk…and having a yellow silken mask over its face,” whom Carter realizes as the “highpriest not to be described, of which legend whispers such fiendish and abnormal possibilities.” At one point the priest’s mask slips, and the brief glimpse of the face impels Carter to flee madly through the labyrinthine corridors of the monastery. Without warning he slides down an almost vertical burrow and, seemingly miles below, finds himself in a ruined city that he recognizes is Sarkomand.
Carter sees a glow ahead, and approaching carefully he sees that it is a campfire near the seashore, where a black galley from the moon is docked; around the campfire Carter sees a group of the toadlike moon-beasts, who have captured his
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erstwhile ghoul escorts. Carter realizes that he must summon help, so he goes down an immense set of spiral staircases; but as he is slipping down the steps, he is caught up by night-gaunts. Now aware that the night-gaunts are in league with the ghouls, Carter utters a ghoul-cry and tells the nightgaunt to take him back to Pickman and his cohorts. Explaining the situation to the ghouls, he sees them arraying themselves for battle, each ghoul jumping astride a night-gaunt and flying toward the seashore where the captured ghouls are being held. Another battle ensues, with the ghouls and night-gaunts eventually victorious. The ghouls decide to exterminate the garrison of the toadlike creatures, and they board a captured galley with the night-gaunts and defeat the moon-beasts and their almost-human slaves in a titanic struggle.