As the first gray light of dawn began to show behind the eastern sea, Zar-thule finally lost all patience and turned upon the dying priest in a veritable fury. He took up his sword, raising it over his head in two hands—and then Hath Vehm spoke:
“Wait,” he whispered, his voice a low, tortured croak, “wait, O reaver—I will say The Words.”
“What?” cried Zar-thule, lowering his blade. “You will open the door?”
“Aye,” the cracked whisper came, “I will open the Gate—but, first, tell me: did you truly sack Yaht-Haal the Silver City and raze it with fire and torture my brother-priest to death?”
“I did all that,” Zar-thule callously nodded.
“Then come you close.” Hath Vehm’s voice sank low. “Closer, O reaver king, that you may hear me in my final hour.”
Eagerly the Seeker of Treasures bent him down his ear to the lips of the ancient, kneeling down beside him where he lay—and Hath Vehm immediately lifted up his head from the earth and spat upon Zar-thule!
Then, before the Sacker of Cities could think or make a move to wipe the slimy spittle from his brow, Hath Vehm said The Words; aye even in a loud and clear voice he said them—words of terrible import and alien cadence that only an adept might repeat—and at once there came a great rumble from the door in the beetling wall of weird angles.
Forgetting for the moment the tainted insult of the ancient priest, Zar-thule turned to see the huge and evilly carven door tremble and waver and then by some unknown power move or slide away until only a great black hole opened where it had been. And lo, in the early dawn light, the reaver horde pressed forward to seek them out the treasure with their eyes; aye, even to seek out the treasure beyond the open door. And Zar-thule too made to enter the House of Cthulhu, but again the dying hierophant cried out to him:
“Hold! There are more Words, O reaver king!”
“More Words?” Zar-thule turned and the priest, his life ebbing quickly, smiled mirthlessly at the sight of the furry gray blemish that crawled upon the barbarian’s forehead over his left eye.
“Aye, more Words! Listen: long and long ago, when the world was very young, before Arlyeh and the House of Cthulhu were first sunken into the sea, wise elder gods devised a rune that should Cthulhu’s House ever rise and be opened by foolish men, it might be sent down again—aye, and even Arlyeh itself sunken deep once more beneath the salt waters. Now I say those other Words!”
Swiftly the king reaver leapt, his sword lifting, but ere that blade could fall Hath Vehm cried out those other strange and dreadful Words; and lo, the whole island shook in the grip of a great earthquake. Now in awful anger and fear Zar-thule’s sword fell and hacked off the ancient’s whistling and spurting head from his ravened body; but even as the head rolled free, so the island shook itself again, and the ground rumbled and began to break open.
From the open door in the House of Cthulhu, whereinto the host of greedy reavers had rushed to the treasure, there now came loud and singularly hideous cries of fear and torment . . . and of a sudden and even more hideous stench. And now Zar-thule knew truly and truly indeed there was no treasure.
Great ebony clouds gathered swiftly and livid lightning crashed; winds rose up that blew Zar-thule’s long black hair over his face as he crouched in horror before the open door of the House of Cthulhu. Wide and wide were his eyes as he tried to peer beyond the reeking blackness of that namelessly ancient aperture—but a moment later he dropped his great sword to the ground and screamed; aye, even the Reaver of Reavers screamed. For two of his wolves had appeared from out of the darkness, more in the manner of whipped puppies than true wolves, shrieking and babbling and scrambling frantically over the queer angles of the orifice’s mouth . . . but they had emerged only to be snatched up and squashed like grapes by titanic tentacles that lashed after them from the dark depths beyond! And these rubbery appendages drew the crushed bodies back into the inky blackness, from which there instantly issued forth the most monstrously nauseating slobberings and suckings before the writhing members once more snaked forth into the dawn light. This time they caught at the edges of the opening, and from behind them pushed forward—a face!
Zar-thule gazed upon the enormously bloated visage of Cthulhu, and screamed again as that terrible Beings awful eyes found him where he crouched—found him and lit with an hideous light!
The reaver king paused, frozen, for but a moment—and yet long enough so that the ultimate horror of the thing framed in the titan threshold seared itself upon his brain—before his legs found their strength. Then he turned and fled; speeding away and over the low black hills and down to the shore and into his ship which he somehow managed, even single-handed and in his frantic terror, to cast off; and always in his mind’s eye there burned that fearful sight, the awful Visage and Being of Lord Cthulhu.
There had been the tentacles, springing from a green pulpy head about which they sprouted like lethiferous petals about the heart of an obscenely hybrid orchid; a scaled and amorphously elastic body of immense proportions, with clawed feet fore and hind; long narrow wings ill-fitting the horror that bore them in that it seemed patently impossible for any wings to lift so fantastic a bulk—and then there had been the eyes! Never before had Zar-thule seen such evil rampancy expressed in the ultimately leering malignancy of Cthulhu’s eyes!
And Cthulhu was not finished with Zar-thule, for even as the king reaver struggled madly with his sail, the monster came across the low hills in the dawn light, slobbering and groping down to the very water’s edge. Then, when Zar-thule saw against the morning the mountain that was Cthulhu, he went mad for a period; flinging himself from side to side of his ship so that he was like to fall into the sea, frothing at the mouth and babbling horribly in pitiful prayer—aye, even Zar-thule whose lips never before uttered prayers—to certain benevolent gods of which he had heard. And it seems that these kind gods, if indeed they exist, must have heard him!
Illustration by Mike Garcia.
With a roar and a blast greater than any before, there came the final shattering that saved Zar-thule’s mind, body, and soul, and the entire island split asunder; even the bulk of Arlyeh breaking into many parts and settling into the sea. And with a piercing scream of frustrated rage and lust—a scream which Zar-thule heard with his mind as well as his ears—the monster Cthulhu sank Him down also with the island and his House beneath the frothing waves.
A great storm raged then such that might attend the End of the World; banshee winds howled and demon waves crashed over and about Zar-thule’s dragonship, and for two days he gibbered and moaned in the rolling, shuddering scuppers of crippled Redfire before the mighty storm wore itself out.
Eventually, close to starvation, the one-time Reaver of Reavers was discovered becalmed upon a flat sea not far from the fair strands of bright Theem’hdra; and then, in the spicy hold of a rich merchant’s ship, he was borne in unto the wharves of the city of Klühn, Theem’hdra’s capital.
With long oars he was prodded ashore, stumbling and weak and crying out in his horror of living—for he had gazed upon Cthulhu! The use of the oars had much to do with his appearance, for now Zar-thule was changed indeed, into something that in less tolerant parts of the world might certainly have expected to be burned! But the people of Klühn were kindly folk; they burned him not but lowered him in a basket into a deep dungeon cell with torches to light the place and daily bread and water that he might live until his life was rightly done. And when he was recovered to partial health and sanity, learned men and physicians went to talk with him from above and ask him of his strange affliction, of which all in all stood in awe.