Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred (44 page)

aving reached the great city of Damascus, and having time to indulge in its pleasures and partake of its advantages, the traveler may decide to make it his home and forego wandering, even as did the writer of this book many years ago. Numerous are the ways that lead to Damascus, and few are the prizes that cannot be obtained within its walls or that fail to make their way through its gates, for it is a center of trade for all the lands of the world. The traveler who spent his youth seeking in distant lands for arcane wisdom and rare objects may conclude that it is wiser to allow these things to find their way to him. Wealth is a lodestone, and that which is desired is drawn to it like bits of straw.

The road that begins in the nation of Yemen, and winds its way across the trackless Empty Space and through the passageways of the nameless city beneath Irem, over the Red Sea to Egypt from its Delta to its Cataracts, from Alexandria to the barren plains of Babylon, and at last to the glittering city of Damascus, is long and hard, yet replete with wonders, and which traveler is so base as to regret following it? No so the writer of this book, whom I declare openly to be Abdul Alhazred, a poet by birth of Yemen, who walked it joyously in his youth and who now resides at his ease in Damascus in just such a great house in the Lane of Scholars as has been described.

With poignant melancholy of heart he remembers the intimacies of the
Roba el Khaliyeh,
who reveals her secrets so reluctantly to her lovers, but in her harshness teaches well the lessons that must be learned if breath is to be retained in the body. Upon the rock of those cruel but necessary lessons he built the house of his life, and by guile and craft acquired the wisdom of the portals and the knowledge of the Elder Seal. With courage and cunning he pillaged the forbidden secrets of the deep places of the world, and stole the language of the Old Ones and the shapes of their seals, yet no malice of sorcery, no power of gods or demons, no assassin of men was equal to the task of halting his quest. Which other scribe would dare to reveal the matters written in these pages, for even to speak of these things would be certain death to one unprotected by wards of magic of the greatest potency. Fools call him mad because he speaks of mysteries beyond their comprehension; he laughs defiance at the vulgar and uses them as his cattle, and cares nothing for their opinion, for he is truly beyond all hurt.

By his necromancy he has rendered himself deathless, and though he appears outwardly to age, his body remains forever youthful and strong. If, by some mischance, his body were shattered into pieces, and death came upon him in such a way that it could not be forestalled, he would rise again, such is the command he has of the arts of the grave; for from his essential salts he would rise, and the bones that once wore flesh would be clothed in flesh anew. He fears not the assassins of the Sons of Sirius, who ever seek to penetrate his walls as punishment for his theft of their precious scrolls, for his walls are impregnable to men; nor does he concern himself with the wandering bands that worship Shub-Niggurath who threaten him because of his revelation of the secrets of her covenant; the malice of the captive spawn of Cthulhu, which has never forgiven him for his betrayal beneath the library of the monastery of the magi, is his amusement, for what power has that being entrapped within its iron cage?

For as long as his essential salts persist upon the face of this world, so long shall the poet endure and mock his enemies in verse. There is no death that would erase his substance so utterly that he cannot arise renewed and reborn. It is in this dual assurance of impregnability and immortality that he offers his journey of life within these pages, which are illuminated for the wise but remain shadowed from the gaze of fools. Here are secrets found in no other book, for they are known to no other man. Their purchase is beyond price, but it is the whim of the poet to scatter them upon the dust, and through the future years, like precious pearls, either to be gathered up by men of perception or trodden beneath the hooves of swine.

You who read this book first will bless the name Alhazred; yet when you read it for the second time will you curse his name bitterly and lament with tears that you ever held it; yet there are a few who will read it a third time and give blessing once again, and to those few all doors lie open.