Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (32 page)

If the foolish traveler who has thrown away his chance for the wisdom of ages on the lust for a single jewel moves without hesitation as she approaches, he may have time to flee to the eastern wall of the enclosure and hurl himself into the depths of the stream that rushes beneath it while fire rains around him and his skin blisters.

The passage beneath the eastern wall is longer than that beneath the west, for the wall presses close against the base of the hills, and the stream does not immediately reemerge but continues under the rocks for some little way through a cavern.

Once the wall has been passed, there is found air to breathe in this lightless channel, and eventually the swift flood of the stream carries the traveler out into the sun again, beyond the limits of the valley of Eden. It is an easy matter to proceed on foot along the course of this tributary, which leads after the journey of a day and a night to the banks of the river Tigris and the monastery of the magi.

he monastery of the magi stands upon a low hill overlooking the meeting place of two tributaries of the river Tigris, surrounded by a cultivated grove of date palms and fruit trees. It is a large walled compound built from clay bricks, with many tiers of flat roofs and four square towers rising at its corners that act both as defensive fortifications and platforms upon which to make observations of the heavens. Its solitary gate opens to the east and overlooks a broad plaza beyond which lies the conjunction of the river, where there are well-constructed docks for the mooring of boats. Fields of grain stretch behind the building to the west, tended by a small village of farmers who dwell completely outside the monastery walls in their own simple huts, but who serve the needs of the monks and those who have commerce with them, and in this way prosper.

In times of war, or when the land is ravaged by bandit tribes, the villagers gather up their grain and livestock and move inside the gate of the monastery, where they are protected. The monastery has never fallen under the assault of hostile armies, for its walls are formidable and the monks defend it with vigor, being expert both in the use of the bow and the sword. Deep wells and great cisterns beneath the building, together with large storehouses of grain, allow it to resist even a prolonged siege from a determined foe.

Those who travel the river rely upon the monastery both as a trading center and as a secure port where they can deposit their wares in the confidence that they will remain unmolested. It is a center of arcane learning, the greatest in all the world, attracting scholars from far lands who pay large sums for the privilege of living with the monks and studying their teachings. To these students the monks entrust their outer wisdom, but they reserve their inner knowledge to members of their own order. Merchants and foreign scholars abide in buildings that lie outside the monastery walls, for the monks admit no one through their gate except in the dire necessity of war, when their sense of charity compels them to offer sanctuary to the helpless.

They call themselves the Sons of Sirius, and worship as the manifest expression of their god the star
Al Shi'ra
,
the Dog Star of the Egyptians that burns so cold and blue in the firmament. Each monk takes a vow of chastity upon admission to the order, and offers his worldly possessions to the order as his pledge. Whether he is a poor laborer with only one cloak or a wealthy merchant with tens of ships and many houses, he gives all, for the wealth of the monastery is shared in common, and no monk enjoys any luxury that is not available to the least and most recent of members.

The religious beliefs of these monks are strange and difficult to determine upon slight acquaintance, for they resist speaking of them before outsiders and know them so well among themselves that they have no need to discuss them. They believe themselves to be the descendents of the priest caste of the magi who served in the court of Darius the Great of Persia. How they came to this remote place, and whether they built the monastery with their own hands or found it already here and improved it for their own purposes, is not talked about among them, and it may be that the monks themselves do not know these matters, they occurred so many generations ago. They follow neither the teachings of Jesus nor those of Mohammed, although they honor both prophets as inspired by divine light. No idols or images receive their adoration, nor do they have altars as we know them, or make sacrifices, but worship the stars themselves and the higher principles that inhabit them.

Their training is austere and warlike. Each day the monks, from the most slender youth to the oldest graybeard among them, put on armor and exercise upon the grounds within the walls of the monastery, where they practice in the use of the sword and shield, and in accuracy with the bow. They also strengthen their bodies by lifting stone weights and running about the perimeter of the monastery lawns. Their food is plain and of small quantity. Chiefly they subsist on boiled barley, fowl, fruits, butter, milk, fish, and eggs, for they avoid the consumption of red meat. They sleep no more than five hours a day after midnight, for the hours of darkness before midnight they spend in studying and adoring the heavens from their high places, of which there are an abundant number upon the rooftops of the monastery buildings.

In one respect their teachings resemble those of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, for they maintain that any form of excess is to be avoided, and that moderation is the chief virtue of mankind. They demonstrate through the use of historical examples that all the hardships and disasters of our race have been the result of immoderate passions or actions committed in reckless haste, and assert that for so long as the mind rules the heart, order continues, but that so soon as the heart overthrows the mind, the result is chaos. They seldom laugh among themselves or raise their voices in anger, and are never to be seen running unless during exercise or when some dire peril makes haste unavoidable.

The leader of the order in the present generation is a man named Rumius, by birth a nobleman of Persia who came to this meeting place of the river Tigris as a boy, having been sent here by his family in recognition of his precocious intellect, for he could read Greek at the age of five and Hebrew at eight. His present age is difficult to determine, for his back is unbent and his body as strong as that of an athlete, but his flowing hair and long beard both have the whiteness of milk. He is of uncommon stature, so that the heads of most men rise only to his shoulders, yet is slender of limb. His blue eyes and straight nose look more Greek than Persian, so that it may be suspected that his parentage is not of pure blood, but mixed; indeed, so great is his sagacity and beauty, it might almost be thought that he carried the blood of the sons of God.

traveler to the monastery of the magi is free to purchase such teachings as the monks dispense outside the gate to those who gather each day in the paved square. No student is refused provided he behaves in a decorous manner and attends the lessons with silence; even women are permitted to sit at the feet of the monks, who teach by means of lectures, either standing and declaiming before their scholars, or walking up and down as they speak. The younger monks alone fulfill the task of teachers, as though it were a matter of too small importance to occupy the time of the elders. They teach logic, rhetoric, poetics, geometry, history, writing, and arithmetic. Absent from their lectures are references to magic or the arcane arts, astronomy, geomancy, or theology. Concerning the nature of the cosmic spheres and the stars of the heavens, which make up their own chief study, they say nothing.

It is soon apparent to the traveler who is well versed in necromancy and the secret wisdom of this world that nothing of importance is to be gained by sitting at the feet of the teachers outside the gate. Even as the jewels of a monarch are not left scattered about the flagstones, but are kept safe within an ironbound strongbox, the true wisdom of the Sons of Sirius is preserved within the walls of the monastery itself and never set on display for the eyes of the vulgar. Yet the monks are accustomed to admit none within the gate but those of their order, and to gain admission to the order is a work of many months.