by H. P. Lovecraft
Atop the tallest of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer
no man to tell that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they once
inhabited; but ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes of
rock and snow, driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till
now only the last remains. When they left their older peaks they took
with them all signs of themselves, save once, it is said, when they
left a carven image on the face of the mountain which they called
Ngranek.
But now they have betaken themselves to unknown Kadath in the cold
waste where no man treads, and are grown stern, having no higher peak
whereto to flee at the coming of men. They are grown stern, and where
once they suffered men to displace them, they now forbid men to come;
or coming, to depart. It is well for men that they know not of Kadath
in the cold waste, else they would seek injudiciously to scale it.
Sometimes when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still night
the peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play
in the olden way on remembered slopes. Men have felt the tears of the
gods on white-capped Thurai, though they have thought it rain; and
have heard the sighs of the gods in the plaintive dawn-winds of
Lerion. In cloud-ships the gods are wont to travel, and wise cotters
have legends that keep them from certain high peaks at night when it
is cloudy, for the gods are not lenient as of old.
In Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, once dwelt an old man
avid to behold the gods of earth; a man deeply learned in the seven
cryptical books of earth; and familiar with the Pnakotic Manuscripts
of distant and frozen Lomar. His name was Barzai the Wise, and the
villagers tell of how he went up a mountain on the night of the
strange eclipse.
Barzai knew so much of the gods that he could tell of their comings
and goings, and guessed so many of their secrets that he was deemed
half a god himself. It was he who wisely advised the burgesses of
Ulthar when they passed their remarkable law against the slaying of
cats, and who first told the young priest Atal where it is that black
cats go at midnight on St. John's Eve. Barzai was learned in the lore
of earth's gods, and had gained a desire to look upon their faces. He
believed that his great secret knowledge of gods could shield him from
their wrath, so resolved to go up to the summit of high and rocky
Hatheg-Kla on a night when he knew the gods would be there.
Hatheg-Kla is far in the stony desert beyond Hatheg, for which it is
named, and rises like a rock statue in a silent temple. Around its
peak the mists play always mournfully, for mists are the memories of
the gods, and the gods loved Hatheg-Kla when they dwelt upon it in the
old days. Often the gods of earth visit Hatheg-Kla in their ships of
cloud, casting pale vapours over the slopes as they dance
reminiscently on the summit under a clear moon. The villagers of
Hatheg say it is ill to climb Hatheg-Kla at any time, and deadly to
climb it by night when pale vapours hide the summit and the moon; but
Barzai heeded them not when he came from neighboring Ulthar with the
young priest Atal, who was his disciple. Atal was only the son of an
innkeeper, and was sometimes afraid; but Barzai's father had been a
landgrave who dwelt in an ancient castle, so he had no common
superstition in his blood, and only laughed at the fearful cotters.
Barzai and Atal went out of Hatheg into the stony desert despite the
prayers of peasants, and talked of earth's gods by their campfires at
night. Many days they travelled, and from afar saw lofty Hatheg-Kla
with his aureole of mournful mist. On the thirteenth day they reached
the mountain's lonely base, and Atal spoke of his fears. But Barzai
was old and learned and had no fears, so led the way boldly up the
slope that no man had scaled since the time of Sansu, who is written
of with fright in the mouldy Pnakotic Manuscripts.
The way was rocky, and made perilous by chasms, cliffs, and falling
stones. Later it grew cold and snowy; and Barzai and Atal often
slipped and fell as they hewed and plodded upward with staves and
axes. Finally the air grew thin, and the sky changed colour, and the
climbers found it hard to breathe; but still they toiled up and up,
marvelling at the strangeness of the scene and thrilling at the
thought of what would happen on the summit when the moon was out and
the pale vapours spread around. For three days they climbed higher,
and higher toward the roof of the world; then they camped to wait for
the clouding of the moon.
For four nights no clouds came, and the moon shone down cold through
the thin mournful mists around the silent pinnacle. Then on the fifth
night, which was the night of the full moon, Barzai saw some dense
clouds far to the north, and stayed up with Atal to watch them draw
near. Thick and majestic they sailed, slowly and deliberately onward;
ranging themselves round the peak high above the watchers, and hiding
the moon and the summit from view. For a long hour the watchers gazed,
whilst the vapours swirled and the screen of clouds grew thicker and
more restless. Barzai was wise in the lore of earth's gods, and
listened hard for certain sounds, but Atal felt the chill of the
vapours and the awe of the night, and feared much. And when Barzai
began to climb higher and beckon eagerly, it was long before Atal
would follow.
So thick were the vapours that the way was hard, and though Atal
followed on at last, he could scarce see the grey shape of Barzai on
the dim slope above in the clouded moonlight. Barzai forged very far
ahead, and seemed despite his age to climb more easily than Atal;
fearing not the steepness that began to grow too great for any save a
strong and dauntless man, nor pausing at wide black chasms that Atal
could scarce leap. And so they went up wildly over rocks and gulfs,
slipping and stumbling, and sometimes awed at the vastness and
horrible silence of bleak ice pinnacles and mute granite steeps.
Very suddenly Barzai went out of Atal's sight, scaling a hideous cliff
that seemed to bulge outward and block the path for any climber not
inspired of earth's gods. Atal was far below, and planning what he
should do when he reached the place, when curiously he noticed that
the light had grown strong, as if the cloudless peak and moonlit
meeting-place of the gods were very near. And as he scrambled on
toward the bulging cliff and litten sky he felt fears more shocking
than any he had known before. Then through the high mists he heard the
voice of unseen Barzai shouting wildly in delight:
"I have heard the gods! I have heard earth's gods singing in revelry
on Hatheg-Kla! The voices of earth's gods are known to Barzai the
Prophet! The mists are thin and the moon is bright, and I shall see
the gods dancing wildly on Hatheg-Kla that they loved in youth. The
wisdom of Barzai hath made him greater than earth's gods, and against
his will their spells and barriers are as naught; Barzai will behold
the gods, the proud gods, the secret gods, the gods of earth who spurn
the sight of man!"
Atal could not hear the voices Barzai heard, but he was now close to
the bulging cliff and scanning it for footholds. Then he heard
Barzai's voice grow shriller and louder:
"The mist is very thin, and the moon casts shadows on the slope; the
voice of earth's gods art high and wild, and they fear the coming of
Barzai the Wise, who is greater than they.... The moon's light
flickers, as earth's gods dance against it; I shall see the dancing
forms of the gods that leap and howl in the moonlight.... The light is
dimmer and the gods are afraid...."
Whilst Barzai was shouting these things Atal felt a spectral change in
all the air, as if the laws of earth were bowing to greater laws; for
though the way was steeper than ever, the upward path was now grown
fearsomely easy, and the bulging cliff proved scarce an obstacle when
he reached it and slid perilously up its convex face. The light of the
moon had strangely failed, and as Atal plunged upward through the
mists he heard Barzai the Wise shrieking in the shadows:
"The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in
the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books
of men or of earth's gods.... There is unknown magic on Hatheg-Kla, for
the screams of the frightened gods have turned to laughter, and the
slopes of ice shoot up endlessly into the black heavens whither I am
plunging.... Hei! Hei! At last! In the dim light I behold the gods of
earth!"
And now Atal, slipping dizzily up over inconceivable steeps, heard in
the dark a loathsome laughing, mixed with such a cry as no man else
ever heard save in the Phlegethon of unrelatable nightmares; a cry
wherein reverberated the horror and anguish of a haunted lifetime
packed into one atrocious moment:
"The Other gods! The Other gods! The gods of the outer hells that
guard the feeble gods of earth.... Look away.... Go back.... Do not
see! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses.... That
cursed, that damnable pit.... Merciful gods of earth, I am falling
into the sky!"
And as Atal shut his eyes and stopped his eyes and stopped his ears
and tried to jump downward against the frightful pull from unknown
heights, there resounded on Hatheg-Kla that terrible peal of thunder
which awaked the good cotters of the plains and the honest burgesses
of Hatheg, Nir and Ulthar, and caused them to behold through the
clouds that strange eclipse of the moon that no book ever predicted.
And when the moon came out at last Atal was safe on the lower snows of
the mountain without sight of earth's gods, or of the Other gods.
Now it is told in the mouldy Pnakotic Manuscripts that Sansu found
naught but wordless ice and rock when he did climb Hatheg-Kla in the
youth of the world. Yet when the men of Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg
crushed their fears and scaled that haunted steep by day in search of
Barzai the Wise, they found graven in the naked stone of the summit a
curious and Cyclopean symbol fifty cubits wide, as if the rock had
been riven by some titanic chisel. And the symbol was like to one that
learned men have discerned in those frightful parts of the Pnakotic
Manuscripts which were too ancient to be read. This they found.
Barzai the Wise they never found, nor could the holy priest Atal ever
be persuaded to pray for his soul's repose. Moreover, to this day the
people of Ulthar and Nir and Hatheg fear eclipses, and pray by night
when pale vapours hide the mountain-top and the moon. And above the
mists on Hatheg-Kla, earth's gods sometimes dance reminiscently; for
they know they are safe, and love to come from unknown Kadath in ships
of cloud and play in the olden way, as they did when earth was new and
men not given to the climbing of inaccessible places.
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