We reached the house of Megaros the Hermit, two days later. At first we thought it a ruin we had somehow not noticed when we were in the search band. Then I recognized the fruit trees - now dead and twisted. The sides of the well had collapsed, the stones broken by frost-wedging - or determined violence. The walls were blackened and the roof had fallen in.
“We’re too late!” my heart sank. “Those bastards!”
“No,” Fogrim got off his horse. “This is old, Gerard. This is very old.”
We drew our blades and approached.
Sand was heaped against the side of the well and the house. I peeped down the well: it was choked with plants covered in grey thorns and barbed, bright green, leaves. Insects buzzed about, riding the humid air of the well’s micro climate. Something like a large, black, crab moved, thirty feet down.
“This was used as an offering tree,” said Juskar, standing under a tall, dead, fig tree. It was taller than I had remembered. The sign of Tsathoggua had been cut into the bark. A pair of old, dark, shackles, preserved in the desert’s dryness, hung from two branches. Below them, scattered and half-buried in sand, were old, cracked bones. Juskar knelt and dug in the sand. Moments later, he pulled out a human skull, sand spilling from its sockets.
“He had two slaves, yes?” he tossed the skull away. It cracked on a stone and rolled aside.
“Perhaps he offered them to Tsathoggua,” said Fogrim.
“But he was Runa,” replied Juskar.
“I’m not so sure of that,” I said.
I stepped through the doorway - the heavy, wooden door had long since fallen inwards. The table was still there, covered in baked clay tablets and greened bronze boxes. Broken statuary lay on the floor, returning to common stone. I tried to pull a scroll from the collapsed remains of a bookshelf. It cracked and turned to dust, falling between my fingers.
This had been the only serious repository of knowledge, historical, arcane, and forbidden, that I had found on Hyperborea. It was fitting then that it didn’t really exist.
How had I come here when it was so different? Had it changed in that time - or had I travelled through time? Had Megaros mapped the pathways of Aymund to other worlds, and had that changed him? Or, was he an avatar of another being, altogether?
In the center of the room, not there when I had first visited, was a bronze statue of Tsathoggua. They workmanship was excellent - it could have been cast by a brilliant but mad Greek or Renaissance sculptor. It showed him as a squatting horned, pot-bellied frog. The head was closer to a bat’s. It seemed to stare at me - but it didn’t seem menacing. Was it indifferent?
Perhaps it was amused.
“These are safe,” Juskar stood at the table, an opened casket in front of him. He lifted up a scroll and unrolled it with care. He put it down and checked another casket. It had a stack of bound parchments, they made the sound of old, cracking paper as he handled them. They did not disintegrate.
“We’re taking these,” I stepped over a fallen roof beam and stepped towards the statue.
“It is just old books and tablets,” Juskar shrugged. “What are they worth?”
“More than you can imagine.”
“It will slow us down,” Fogrim put away his blade. “The longer we are in the old city, the more danger we are in. We came to help your friend, and he is gone. Let us make haste to safety now.”
“This is why we have been safe. It’s why we have been lead here.”
“We were not lead,” said Fogrim.
“Then why do we see it as it is now, and now as it was then?”
He said nothing.
“Come on. This is all literally packed and ready to go. Let’s load the slaves.”
The bronze statue watched as we set about bagging fire-hardened clay tablets and binding metal boxes in stacks. My slaves strained, backs bent under their new loads. Juskar and Fogrim drew their whips and I unpacked a Mi-Go shock prod. We would not travel any slower.
I built a crude sled out of the remains of a door, and tied six slave girls to it using lines secured around their waists. With great difficulty, we moved the statue on to the sled.
“I’m surprised you guys are okay with this,” I stepped away from the sled, dusting my hands. “You know. Since it’s not a book.”
Neither of them seemed to find this remarkable.
“It is a statue of your god,” said Juskar. He prodded a slave at the head of a coffle with his whip. She moved forward, the other nine girls on the coffle following, the chains at their throats swinging.
“It’s not my god,” I smiled and shook my head.
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You make his mark,” said Fogrim. “you came to bring aid to one of his worshipers. Now you are collecting the remains of his temple to build a new one.”
“Guys, none of that means I worship Tsathoggua!”
They looked at each other and smiled.
“He denies it, like a messiah,” said Juskar. He sounded proud.
We left the ruin. Then, the ruins. Then Darfur, altogether. Good bye, wondrous and beautiful land. May I walk in your highlands and look upon your ancient, peaceful forests again, soon.