Lovecraft, H P - The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadadth

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The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

by H. P. Lovecraft

Written Autumn? 1926-22 Jan 1927

Published in Beyond the Wall of Sleep, Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1943, p. 76-134

Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he

snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it

blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined

marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed

gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and

ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red

roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It was a fever of the

gods, a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung

about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and

expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense

of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things and the maddening need to place

again what once had been an awesome and momentous place.

He knew that for him its meaning must once have been supreme; though in what cycle or

incarnation he had known it, or whether in dream or in waking, he could not tell. Vaguely

it called up glimpses of a far forgotten first youth, when wonder and pleasure lay in all

the mystery of days, and dawn and dusk alike strode forth prophetic to the eager sound of

lutes and song, unclosing fiery gates toward further and surprising marvels. But each

night as he stood on that high marble terrace with the curious urns and carven rail and

looked off over that hushed sunset city of beauty and unearthly immanence he felt the

bondage of dream's tyrannous gods; for in no wise could he leave that lofty spot, or

descend the wide marmoreal fights flung endlessly down to where those streets of elder

witchery lay outspread and beckoning.

When for the third time he awakened with those flights still undescended and those

hushed sunset streets still untraversed, he prayed long and earnestly to the hidden gods of

dream that brood capricious above the clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste

where no man treads. But the gods made no answer and shewed no relenting, nor did they

give any favouring sign when he prayed to them in dream, and invoked them sacrificially

through the bearded priests of Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose cavern-temple with its

pillar of flame lies not far from the gates of the waking world. It seemed, however, that

his prayers must have been adversely heard, for after even the first of them he ceased

wholly to behold the marvellous city; as if his three glimpses from afar had been mere

accidents or oversights, and against some hidden plan or wish of the gods.

At length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset streets and cryptical hill lanes

among ancient tiled roofs, nor able sleeping or waking to drive them from his mind,

Carter resolved to go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the

The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

icy deserts through the dark to where unknown Kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned with

unimagined stars, holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of the Great Ones.

In light slumber he descended the seventy steps to the cavern of flame and talked of this

design to the bearded priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah. And the priests shook their pshent-

bearing heads and vowed it would be the death of his soul. They pointed out that the

Great Ones had shown already their wish, and that it is not agreeable to them to be

harassed by insistent pleas. They reminded him, too, that not only had no man ever been

to Kadath, but no man had ever suspected in what part of space it may lie; whether it be

in the dreamlands around our own world, or in those surrounding some unguessed

companion of Fomalhaut or Aldebaran. If in our dreamland, it might conceivably be

reached, but only three human souls since time began had ever crossed and recrossed the

black impious gulfs to other dreamlands, and of that three, two had come back quite mad.

There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final

peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach;

that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the

centre of all infinity - the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare

speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time

amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of

accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and

absurdly the gigantic Ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other gods

whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

Of these things was Carter warned by the priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah in the cavern of

flame, but still he resolved to find the gods on unknown Kadath in the cold waste,

wherever that might be, and to win from them the sight and remembrance and shelter of

the marvellous sunset city. He knew that his journey would be strange and long, and that

the Great Ones would be against it; but being old in the land of dream he counted on

many useful memories and devices to aid him. So asking a formal blessing of the priests

and thinking shrewdly on his course, he boldly descended the seven hundred steps to the

Gate of Deeper Slumber and set out through the Enchanted Wood.

In the tunnels of that twisted wood, whose low prodigious oaks twine groping boughs and

shine dim with the phosphorescence of strange fungi, dwell the furtive and secretive

Zoogs; who know many obscure secrets of the dream world and a few of the waking

world, since the wood at two places touches the lands of men, though it would be

disastrous to say where. Certain unexplained rumours, events, and vanishments occur

among men where the Zoogs have access, and it is well that they cannot travel far outside

the world of dreams. But over the nearer parts of the dream world they pass freely,

flitting small and brown and unseen and bearing back piquant tales to beguile the hours

around their hearths in the forest they love. Most of them live in burrows, but some

inhabit the trunks of the great trees; and although they live mostly on fungi it is muttered

that they have also a slight taste for meat, either physical or spiritual, for certainly many

dreamers have entered that wood who have not come out. Carter, however, had no fear;

for he was an old dreamer and had learnt their fluttering language and made many a

treaty with them; having found through their help the splendid city of Celephais in Ooth-

The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills, where reigns half the year the great King Kuranes, a

man he had known by another name in life. Kuranes was the one soul who had been to

the star-gulls and returned free from madness.

Threading now the low phosphorescent aisles between those gigantic trunks, Carter made

fluttering sounds in the manner of the Zoogs, and listened now and then for responses. He

remembered one particular village of the creatures was in the centre of the wood, where a

circle of great mossy stones in what was once a cleaning tells of older and more terrible

dwellers long forgotten, and toward this spot he hastened. He traced his way by the

grotesque fungi, which always seem better nourished as one approaches the dread circle

where elder beings danced and sacrificed. Finally the great light of those thicker fungi

revealed a sinister green and grey vastness pushing up through the roof of the forest and

out of sight. This was the nearest of the great ring of stones, and Carter knew he was

close to the Zoog village. Renewing his fluttering sound, he waited patiently; and was at

last rewarded by an impression of many eyes watching him. It was the Zoogs, for one

sees their weird eyes long before one can discern their small, slippery brown outlines.

Out they swarmed, from hidden burrow and honeycombed tree, till the whole dim-litten

region was alive with them. Some of the wilder ones brushed Carter unpleasantly, and

one even nipped loathsomely at his ear; but these lawless spirits were soon restrained by

their elders. The Council of Sages, recognizing the visitor, offered a gourd of fermented

sap from a haunted tree unlike the others, which had grown from a seed dropt down by

someone on the moon; and as Carter drank it ceremoniously a very strange colloquy

began. The Zoogs did not, unfortunately, know where the peak of Kadath lies, nor could

they even say whether the cold waste is in our dream world or in another. Rumours of the

Great Ones came equally from all points; and one might only say that they were likelier

to be seen on high mountain peaks than in valleys, since on such peaks they dance

reminiscently when the moon is above and the clouds beneath.

Then one very ancient Zoog recalled a thing unheard-of by the others; and said that in

Ulthar, beyond the River Skai, there still lingered the last copy of those inconceivably old

Pnakotic Manuscripts made by waking men in forgotten boreal kingdoms and borne into

the land of dreams when the hairy cannibal Gnophkehs overcame many-templed Olathoe

and slew all the heroes of the land of Lomar. Those manuscripts he said, told much of the

gods, and besides, in Ulthar there were men who had seen the signs of the gods, and even

one old priest who had scaled a great mountain to behold them dancing by moonlight. He

had failed, though his companion had succeeded and perished namelessly.

So Randolph Carter thanked the Zoogs, who fluttered amicably and gave him another

gourd of moon-tree wine to take with him, and set out through the phosphorescent wood

for the other side, where the rushing Skai flows down from the slopes of Lerion, and

Hatheg and Nir and Ulthar dot the plain. Behind him, furtive and unseen, crept several of

the curious Zoogs; for they wished to learn what might befall him, and bear back the

legend to their people. The vast oaks grew thicker as he pushed on beyond the village,

and he looked sharply for a certain spot where they would thin somewhat, standing quite

dead or dying among the unnaturally dense fungi and the rotting mould and mushy logs

The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

of their fallen brothers. There he would turn sharply aside, for at that spot a mighty slab

of stone rests on the forest floor; and those who have dared approach it say that it bears

an iron ring three feet wide. Remembering the archaic circle of great mossy rocks, and

what it was possibly set up for, the Zoogs do not pause near that expansive slab with its

huge ring; for they realise that all which is forgotten need not necessarily be dead, and

they would not like to see the slab rise slowly and deliberately.

Carter detoured at the proper place, and heard behind him the frightened fluttering of

some of the more timid Zoogs. He had known they would follow him, so he was not

disturbed; for one grows accustomed to the anomalies of these prying creatures. It was

twilight when he came to the edge of the wood, and the strengthening glow told him it

was the twilight of morning. Over fertile plains rolling down to the Skai he saw the

smoke of cottage chimneys, and on every hand were the hedges and ploughed fields and

thatched roofs of a peaceful land. Once he stopped at a farmhouse well for a cup of water,

and all the dogs barked affrightedly at the inconspicuous Zoogs that crept through the

grass behind. At another house, where people were stirring, he asked questions about the

gods, and whether they danced often upon Lerion; but the farmer and his wile would only

make the Elder Sign and tell him the way to Nir and Ulthar.

At noon he walked through the one broad high street of Nir, which he had once visited

and which marked his farthest former travels in this direction; and soon afterward he

came to the great stone bridge across the Skai, into whose central piece the masons had

sealed a living human sacrifice when they built it thirteen-hundred years before. Once on

the other side, the frequent presence of cats (who all arched their backs at the trailing

Zoogs) revealed the near neighborhood of Ulthar; for in Ulthar, according to an ancient

and significant law, no man may kill a cat. Very pleasant were the suburbs of Ulthar, with

their little green cottages and neatly fenced farms; and still pleasanter was the quaint

town itself, with its old peaked roofs and overhanging upper stories and numberless

chimney-pots and narrow hill streets where one can see old cobbles whenever the

graceful cats afford space enough. Carter, the cats being somewhat dispersed by the half-

seen Zoogs, picked his way directly to the modest Temple of the Elder Ones where the

priests and old records were said to be; and once within that venerable circular tower of

ivied stone - which crowns Ulthar's highest hill - he sought out the patriarch Atal, who

had been up the forbidden peak Hatheg-Kia in the stony desert and had come down again

alive.

Atal, seated on an ivory dais in a festooned shrine at the top of the temple, was fully three

centuries old; but still very keen of mind and memory. From him Carter learned many

things about the gods, but mainly that they are indeed only Earth's gods, ruling feebly our

own dreamland and having no power or habitation elsewhere. They might, Atal said,

heed a man's prayer if in good humour; but one must not think of climbing to their onyx

stronghold atop Kadath in the cold waste. It was lucky that no man knew where Kadath

towers, for the fruits of ascending it would be very grave. Atal's companion Banni the

Wise had been drawn screaming into the sky for climbing merely the known peak of

Hatheg-Kia. With unknown Kadath, if ever found, matters would be much worse; for

although Earth's gods may sometimes be surpassed by a wise mortal, they are protected

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TheDreamQuestofUnknownKadathTheDreamQuestofUnknownKadathbyH.P.LovecraftWrittenAutumn?1926-22Jan1927PublishedinBeyondtheWallofSleep,SaukCity,WI:ArkhamHouse,1943,p.76-134ThreetimesRandolphCarterdreamedofthemarvelouscity,andthreetimeswashesnatchedawaywhilestillhepausedonthehighterraceaboveit.Allgoldena...

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Lovecraft, H P - The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadadth

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