My cup was still held high, and I drained it, for somehow the grim
revelation was not entirely unexpected. A strange glow thrilled through
my veins, and I laughed aloud for the evil delight that was in me. The
others laughed too, a deep-throated merriment like the barking of
wolves--tortured laughter from men stretched on the rack, mad laughter
in hell! And all through the hazy cavern came the clamor of the devil's
brood! Great figures that towered many spans high rocked with thundering
glee, and the flying things tittered slyly overhead. And out over the
vast expanse swept the wave of frightful mirth, until the half-seen
things in the black waters sent out bellows that tore at my eardrums,
and the unseen roof far overhead sent back roaring echoes of the clamor.
And I laughed with them, laughed insanely, until I dropped exhausted
into my seat and watched the scarred man at the other end of the table
as he spoke.
"You are worthy to be of our company, and worthy to eat at the same
board. We have pledged each other, and you are one of us; we shall eat
together."
And we fell to, tearing like hungry beasts at the succulent white meat
in the jeweled trenchers. Strange monsters served us, and at a chill
touch on my arm I turned to find a dreadful crimson thing, like a
skinned child, refilling my goblet. Strange, strange and utterly
blasphemous was our feast. We shouted and laughed and fed there in the
hazy light, while all around us thundered the evil horde. There was hell
beneath Castle Kralitz, and it held high carnival this night.
* * * * *
Presently we sang a fierce drinking-song, swinging the deep cups back
and forth in rhythm with our shouted chant. It was an archaic song, but
the obsolete words were no handicap, for I mouthed them as though they
had been learned at my mother's knee. And at the thought of my mother a
trembling and a weakness ran through me abruptly, but I banished it with
a draft of the heady liquor.
Long, long we shouted and sang and caroused there in the great cavern,
and after a time we arose together and trooped to where a narrow,
high-arched bridge spanned the tenebrous waters of the lake. But I may
not speak of what was at the other end of the bridge, nor of the
unnamable things that I saw--and did! I learned of the fungoid, inhuman
beings that dwell on far cold Yuggoth, of the cyclopean shapes that
attend unsleeping Cthulhu in his submarine city, of the strange
pleasures that the followers of leprous, subterranean Yog-Sothoth may
possess, and I learned, too, of the unbelievable manner in which Iod,
the Source, is worshipped beyond the outer galaxies. I plumbed the
blackest pits of hell and came back--laughing. I was one with the rest
of those dark warders, and I joined them in the saturnalia of horror
until the scarred man spoke to us again.
"Our time grows short," he said, his scarred and bearded white face like
a gargoyle's in the half-light. "We must depart soon. But you are a true
Kralitz, Franz, and we shall meet again, and feast again, and make merry
for longer than you think. One last pledge!"