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Title: The eater of souls
Author: Henry Kuttner
Release date: February 13, 2025 [eBook #75363]
Language: English
Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1937
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EATER OF SOULS ***
The Eater of Souls
By HENRY KUTTNER
_A five-minute tale of a strange entity on a distant world._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales January 1937.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
They tell it in Bel Yarnak, in a language not of Earth, that a
malignant and terrible being once dwelt in that incredible abyss
named the Gray Gulf of Yarnak. Not on earth, nor on any planet that
spins about any star in the skies we know, is Bel Yarnak; but beyond
Betelgeuse, beyond the Giant Stars, on a green and joyous world still
in its lusty youth are the towers and silver minarets of this city.
Nor are the dwellers in Bel Yarnak anthropoid nor in any way man-like;
yet there are fires during the long warm nights in curious hearths,
and wherever in this universe there are fires there will be tales told
about them, and breathless listeners to bring contentment to the heart
of the teller of tales. The Sindara rules benignantly over Bel Yarnak;
yet in the old days fear and doom lay like a shroud over the land, and
in the Gray Gulf of Yarnak a brooding horror dwelt loathsomely. And a
strange enchantment chilled the skies and hid the triple moons behind a
darkened pall.
For a being had come to glut its evil hunger in the land, and those
who dwelt in Bel Yarnak called it the Eater of Souls. In nowise could
this being be described, for none had seen it save under circumstances
which precluded the possibility of return. Yet in the gulf it brooded,
and when its hunger stirred it would send forth a soundless summons,
so that in tavern and temple, by fireside and in the blackness of
the night some would rise slowly, with a passionless look of death
upon their features, and would depart from Bel Yarnak toward the Gray
Gulf. Nor would they ever return. It was said that the thing in the
gulf was half a demon and half a god, and that the souls of those whom
it slew served it eternally, fulfilling strange missions in the icy
wastes between the stars. This being had come from the dark sun, the
hydromancers said, where it had been conceived by an unholy alliance
between those timeless Ancients who filter strangely between the
universes and a Black Shining One of unknown origin. The necromancers
said other things, but they hated the hydromancers, who were powerful
then, and their rune-casting was generally discredited. Yet the Sindara
listened to both schools of mages, and pondered upon his throne of
chalcedony, and presently determined to set forth voluntarily to the
Great Gulf of Yarnak, which was reputed to be bottomless.
The necromancers gave the Sindara curious implements made of the
bones of the dead, and the hydromancers gave him intricately twisted
transparent tubes of crystal, which would be useful in battling the
Eater of Souls. Thereafter the necromancers and the hydromancers
squatted on their haunches in the city gate and howled dismally as
the Sindara rode westward on his gorlak, that fleet but repugnantly
shaped reptile. After a time the Sindara discarded both the weapons
of the hydromancers and the necromancers, for he was a worshipper of
Vorvadoss, as had been each Sindara in his time. None might worship
Vorvadoss save the Sindara of Bel Yarnak, for such is the god's
command; and presently the Sindara dismounted from his gorlak and
prayed fervently to Vorvadoss. For a time there was no response.
Then the sands were troubled, and a whirling and dancing of mist-motes
blinded the Sindara. Out of the maelstrom the god spoke thinly, and his
voice was like the tinkling of countless tiny crystal goblets.
"Thou goest to doom," Vorvadoss said ominously. "But thy son sleeps in
Bel Yarnak, and I shall have a worshipper when thou art vanished. Go
therefore fearlessly, since god cannot conquer god, but only man who
created him."
* * * * *
Speaking thus cryptically Vorvadoss withdrew, and the Sindara, after
pondering, continued his journey. In time he came to that incredible
abyss from which men say the nearer moon was born, and at its edge he
fell prone and lay sick and shuddering, peering down into mist-shrouded
emptiness. For a cold wind blew up from the gulf, and it seemed to
have no bottom. Looming far in the distance he could just discern the
further brink.
Clambering up the rough stones came he whom the Sindara had set out
to find; he came swiftly, making use of his multiple appendages to
lift himself. He was white and hairy and appallingly hideous, but his
misshapen head came only to the Sindara's waist, although in girth
his spidery limbs rendered a shocking illusion of hugeness. In his
wake came the souls he had taken for his own; they were a plaintive
whispering and stirring in the air, swooping and moaning and sighing
for lost Nirvana. The Sindara drew his blade and struck at his enemy.
Of that battle sagas are still sung, for it raged along the brink for
a timeless interval of eternity. In the end the Sindara was hacked
and bleeding and spent, and his opponent was untouched and chuckling
loathsomely. Then the demon prepared for his meal.
Into the Sindara's mind came a whisper, the thin calling of Vorvadoss.
He said: "There are many kinds of flesh in the universes, and other
compounds which are not flesh. Thus doth the Eater of Souls feed."
And he told the Sindara of the incredible manner of that feeding, of
the fusing of two beings, of the absorption of the lesser, and of the
emergence therefrom of an augmented half-god, while the uncaged soul
flew moaning in the train of those who served the being. Into the
Sindara's mind came knowledge and with it a grim resolve. He flung
wide his arms and welcomed the ghastly embrace, for Vorvadoss had also
spoken of the manner in which the doom might be lifted.
The thing sprang to meet him, and an intolerable agony ground
frightfully within the Sindara's bone and flesh; the citadel of his
being rocked, and his soul cowered shrieking in its chamber. There on
the edge of the Gray Gulf of Yarnak a monstrous fusion took place,
a metamorphosis and a commingling that was blasphemous and horrible
beyond all imagining. As a thing disappears in quicksand, so the being
and the Sindara melted into each other's body.
Yet even in that blinding agony a sharper pain came to the Sindara
as he saw across the plain the beauty of this land over which he had
ruled. He thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as this
green and joyous land of his, and a pain was in his heart, a sense of
empty loss and an aching void which could not ever be filled. And he
looked away to the black evil eyes of the Eater of Souls that were but
inches away from his own, and he looked beyond the being to where cold
emptiness lay gray and horrible. There were tears in his eyes and a
gnawing ache in his heart for the silver minarets and towers of Bel
Yarnak, that had lain naked and beautiful beneath the glowing light of
the triple moons, for he should never see that place any more.
He turned his head again, and for the last time, blinded with his tears
and with his doom upon him. As he leaped forward he heard a frightful
despairing shriek, and then half-god and man were spinning dizzily
downward, seeing the precipice rushing up past them. For Vorvadoss had
said that thus, and only thus, could the spell be lifted.
And the cliff wall curved inward as it swept down, so presently it
receded into the dim gray haze, and the Sindara fell in empty mist and
into final unstirring darkness.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EATER OF SOULS ***
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