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Title: The Powder of Hyperborea
Date of first publication: 1958
Author: Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961)
Date first posted: July 2 2012
Date last updated: July 2 2012
Faded Page eBook #20120704

This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                       THE POWDER OF HYPERBOREA

                        by CLARK ASHTON SMITH


     _The theft of the thirty-nine girdles of virginity! A newly
     translated legend from the days before Atlantic, on the world's
     first inhabited continent._


Let it be said as a foreword to this tale that I have robbed no man who
was not in some way a robber of others. In all my long and arduous
career, I, Satampra, Zerios of Uzuldaroum, sometimes known as the
master-thief have endeavored to serve merely as an agent in the rightful
redistribution of wealth. The adventure I have now to relate was no
exception; though as it happened in the outcome, my own pecuniary
profits were indeed meager, not to say trifling.

Age is upon me now. And sitting at that leisure which I have earned
through many hazards, I drink the wines that are heartening to age. To
me, as I sip, return memories of splendid loot and brave nefarious
enterprise. Before me shine the outpoured sackfuls of _djals_ or
_pazoors_, removed so dexterously from the coffers of iniquitous
merchants and moneylenders. I dream of rubies redder than the blood that
was shed for them; of sapphires bluer than depths of glacial ice; of
emeralds greener than the jungle in spring. I recall the escalade of
pronged balconies; the climbing of terraces and towers guarded by
monsters; the sacking of altars beneath the eyes of malign idols or
sentinel serpents.

Often I think of Vixeela, my one true love and the most adroit and
courageous of my companions in burglary. She has long since gone to the
bourn of all good thieves and comrades; I have mourned her sincerely
these many years. But still dear is the memory of our amorous,
adventurous nights and the feats we performed together. Of such feats,
perhaps the most signal and audacious was the theft of the thirty-nine
girdles.

These were the golden and jeweled chastity girdles, worn by the virgins
vowed to the moon god Leniqua, whose temple had stood from immemorial
time in the suburbs of Uzuldaroum, capital of Hyperborea. The virgins
were always thirty-nine in number. They were chosen for their youth and
beauty, and retired from service to the god at the age of thirty-one.

The girdles were padlocked with the toughest bronze and their keys
retained by the high-priest who, on certain nights, rented them at a
high price to the richer gallants of the city. It will thus be seen that
the virginity of the priestesses was nominal; but its frequent and
repeated sale was regarded as a meritorious act of sacrifice to the god.

Vixeela herself had at one time been numbered among the virgins but had
fled from the temple and from Uzuldaroum several years before the
sacerdotal age of release from her bondage. She would tell me little of
her life in the temple; I surmised that she had found small pleasure in
the religious prostitution and had chafed at the confinement entailed by
it. After her flight she had suffered many hardships in the cities of
the south. Of these too, she spoke but sparingly, as one who dreads the
reviving of painful recollections.

She had returned to Uzuldaroum a few months prior to our first meeting.
Being now a little over age, and having dyed her russet-blonde hair to a
raven black, she had no great fear of recognition by Leniqua's priests.
As was their custom, they had promptly replaced her loss with another
and younger virgin, and would have small interest now in one so long
delinquent.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the time of our fore-gathering, Vixeela had already committed various
petty larcenies. But, being unskilled, she had failed to finish any but
the easier and simpler ones, and had grown quite thin from starvation.
She was still attractive and her keenness of wit and quickness in
learning soon endeared her to me. She was small and agile and could
climb like a lemur. I soon found her help invaluable, since she could
climb through windows and other apertures impassable to my greater bulk.

We had consummated several lucrative burglaries, when the idea of
entering Leniqua's temple and making away with the costly girdles
occurred to me. The problems offered, and the difficulties to be
overcome, appeared at first sight little less than fantastic. But such
obstacles have always challenged my acumen and have never daunted me.

Firstly, there was the problem of entrance without detection and serious
mayhem at the hands of the sickle-armed priests who guarded Leniqua's
fane with baleful and incorruptible vigilance. Luckily, during her term
of temple service, Vixeela had learned of a subterranean adit, long
disused but, she believed still passable. This entrance was through a
tunnel, the continuation of a natural cavern located somewhere in the
woods behind Uzuldaroum. It had been used almost universally by the
virgins' visitors in former ages. But the visitors now entered openly by
the temple's main doors or by posterns little less public; a sign,
perhaps, that religious sentiment had deepened or that modesty had
declined.

Vixeela had never seen the cavern herself but she knew its approximate
location. The temple's inner adit was closed only by a flagstone, easily
levitated from below or above, behind the image of Leniqua in the great
nave.

Secondly, there was the selection of a proper time, when the women's
girdles had been unlocked and laid aside. Here again Vixeela was
invaluable, since she knew the nights on which the rented keys were most
in demand. These were known as nights of sacrifice, greater or lesser,
the chief one being at the moon's full. All the women were then in
repeated request.

Since, however, the fane on such occasions would be crowded with people,
the priests, the virgins and their clients, a seemingly insurmountable
difficulty remained. How were we to collect and make away with the
girdles in the presence of so many persons? This, I must admit, baffled
me.

Plainly, we must find some way in which the temple could be evacuated,
or its occupants rendered unconscious or otherwise incapable during the
period needed for our operations.

I thought of a certain soporific drug, easily and quickly vaporized,
which I had used on more than one occasion to put the inmates of a house
asleep. Unfortunately the drug was limited in its range and would not
penetrate to all the chambers and alcoves of a large edifice like the
temple. Moreover it was necessary to wait for a full half hour, with
doors or windows opened, till the fumes were dissipated; otherwise the
robbers would be overcome together with their victims.

There was also the pollen of a rare jungle lily, which, if cast in a
man's face, would induce a temporary paralysis. This too I rejected.
There were too many persons to be dealt with, and the pollen could
hardly be obtained in sufficient quantities.

At last I decided to consult the magician and alchemist, Veezi Phenquor,
who, possessing furnaces and melting-pots, had often served me by
converting stolen gold and silver into ingots or other safely
unrecognizable forms. Though skeptical of his powers as a magician, I
regarded Veezi Phenquor as a skilled pharmacist and toxicologist. Having
always on hand a supply of strange and deadly medicaments, he might well
be able to provide something that would facilitate our project.

We found Veezi Phenquor decanting one of his more noisome concoctions
from a still bubbling and steaming kettle into vials of stout stoneware.
By the smell I judged that it must be something of special potency; the
exudations of a polecat would have been innocuous in comparison. In his
absorption he did not notice our presence until the entire contents of
the kettle had been decanted and the vials tightly stoppered and sealed
with a blackish gum.

"That," he observed with unctuous complacency, "is a love-philter that
would inflame a nursing infant or resurrect the powers of a dying
nonagenarian. Do you--"

"No," I said emphatically. "We require nothing of the sort. What we need
at the moment is something quite different." In a few terse words I went
on to outline the problem, adding:

"If you can help us, I am sure you will find the melting down of the
golden girdles a congenial task. As usual, you will receive a third of
the profits."

Veezi Phenquor creased his bearded face into a half-lubricious,
half-sardonic smile.

"The proposition is a pleasant one from all angles. We will free the
temple-girls from incumbrances which they must find uncomfortable, not
to say burdensome; and will turn the irksome gems and metal to a
worthier purpose--notably, our own enrichment." As if by way of
afterthought, he added:

"It happens that I can supply you with a most unusual preparation,
warranted to empty the temple of all its occupants in a very short
time."

Going to a cobwebbed corner, he took down from a high shelf an
abdominous jar of uncolored glass filled with a fine grey powder and
brought it to the light.

"I will now," he said, "explain to you the singular properties of this
powder and the way in which it must be used. It is truly a triumph of
chemistry, and more devastating than a plague."

We were astounded by what he told us. Then we began to laugh.

"It is to be hoped," I said, "that none of your spells and cantrips are
involved."

Veezi Phenquor assumed the expression of one whose feelings have been
deeply injured. "I assure you," he protested, "that the effects of the
powder, though extraordinary, are not beyond nature."

After a moment's meditation he continued: "I believe that I can further
your plan in other ways. After the abstraction of the girdles, there
will be the problem of transporting undetected such heavy merchandise
across a city which, by that time, may well have been aroused by the
horrendous crime and busily patrolled by constabulary. I have a
plan...."

We hailed with approval the ingenious scheme outlined by Veezi Phenquor.
After we had discussed and settled to our satisfaction the various
details, the alchemist brought out certain liquors that proved more
palatable than anything of his we had yet sampled. We then returned to
our lodgings, I carrying in my cloak the jar of powder, for which Veezi
Phenquor generously refused to accept payment. We were filled with the
rosiest anticipations of success, together with a modicum of distilled
palm-wine.

Discreetly, we refrained from our usual activities during the nights
that intervened before the next full moon. We kept closely to our
lodgings, hoping that the police, who had long suspected us of numerous
peccadilloes, would believe that we had either quitted the city or
retired from burglary.

       *       *       *       *       *

A little before midnight, on the evening of the full moon, Veezi
Phenquor knocked discreetly at our door--a triple knock as had been
agreed. Like ourselves, he was heavily cloaked in peasant's homespun.

"I have procured the cart of a vegetable seller from the country," he
said. "It is loaded with seasonable produce and drawn by two small
asses. I have concealed it in the woods, as near to the cave-adit of
Leniqua's temple as the overgrown road will permit. Also, I have
reconnoitered the cave itself.

"Our success will depend on the utter confusion created. If we are not
seen to enter or depart by the rear adit, in all likelihood no one will
remember its existence. The priests will be searching elsewhere.

"Having removed the girdles and concealed them under our load of farm
produce, we will then wait till the hour before dawn when, with other
vegetable and fruit dealers, we will enter the city."

Keeping as far as we could from the public places, where most of the
police were gathered around taverns and the cheaper lupanars, we circled
across Uzuldaroum and found, at some distance from Leniqua's fane, a
road that ran country-ward. The jungle soon grew denser and the houses
fewer. No one saw us when we turned into a side road overhung with
leaning palms and closed in by thickening brush. After many devious
turnings, we came to the ass-drawn cart, so cleverly screened from view
that even I could detect its presence only by the pungent aroma of
certain root-vegetables. Those asses were well-trained for the use of
thieves: there was no braying to betray their presence.

We groped on, over hunching roots and between clustered boles that made
the rest of the way impassable for a cart. I should have missed the
cave; but Veezi Phenquor, pausing, stooped before a low hillock to part
the matted creepers, showing a black and bouldered aperture large
enough to admit a man on hands and knees.

Lighting the torches we had brought along, we crawled into the cave,
Veezi going first. Luckily, due to the rainless season, the cave was dry
and our clothing suffered only earth-stains, such as would be proper to
agricultural workers.

The cave narrowed where piles of debris had fallen from the roof. I,
with my width and girth, was hard put to squeeze through in places. We
had gone an undetermined distance when Veezi stopped and stood erect
before a wall of smooth masonry in which shadowy steps mounted.

Vixeela slipped past him and went up the steps. I followed. The fingers
of her free hand were gliding over a large flat flagstone that filled
the stair-head. The stone began to tilt noiselessly upward. Vixeela blew
out her torch and laid it on the top step while the gap widened,
permitting a dim, flickering light to pour down from beyond. She peered
cautiously over the top of the flag, which became fully uptilted by its
hidden mechanism and then climbed through motioning us to follow.

We stood in the shadow of a broad pillar at one side of the back part of
Leniqua's temple. No priest, woman or visitor was in sight but we heard
a confused humming of voices at some vague remove. Leniqua's image,
presenting its reverend rear, sat on a high dais in the center of the
nave. Altar fires, golden, blue and green, flamed spasmodically before
the god, making his shadow writhe on the floor and against the rear wall
like a delirious giant in a dance of copulation with an unseen partner.

Vixeela found and manipulated the spring that caused the flagstone to
sink back as part of a level floor. Then the three of us stole forward,
keeping in the god's wavering shadow. The nave was still vacant but
noise came more audibly from open doorways at one side, resolving itself
into gay cries and hysterical laughters.

"Now," whispered Veezi Phenquor.

I drew from a side-pocket the vial he had given us and pried away the
wax with a sharp knife. The cork, half-rotten with age, was easily
removed. I poured the vial's contents on the back bottom step of
Leniqua's dais--a pale stream that quivered and undulated with uncanny
life and luster as it fell in the god's shadow. When the vial was empty
I ignited the heap of powder.

       *       *       *       *       *

It burned instantly with a clear, high-leaping flame. Immediately, it
seemed, the air was full of surging phantoms--a soundless, multitudinous
explosion, beating upon us, blasting our nostrils with charnel fetors
till we reeled before it, choking and strangling. There was however no
sense of material impact from the hideous forms that seemed to melt over
and through us, rushing in all directions, as if every atom of the
burning powder released a separate ghost.

Hastily we covered our noses with squares of thick cloth that Veezi had
warned us to bring for this purpose. Something of our usual aplomb
returned and we moved forward through the seething rout. Lascivious blue
cadavers intertwined around us. Miscegenations of women and tigers
arched over us. Monsters double-headed and triple-tailed, goblins and
ghouls rose obliquely to the far ceiling or rolled and melted to other
and more nameless apparitions in lower air. Green sea-things, like
unions of drowned men and octopi coiled and dribbled with dank slime
along the floor.

Then we heard the cries of fright from the temple's inmates and visitors
and began to meet naked men and women who rushed frantically through
that army of beleaguering phantoms toward the exits. Those who
encountered us face to face recoiled as if we too were shapes of
intolerable horror.

The naked men were mostly young. After them came middle-aged merchants
and aldermen, bald and pot-bellied, some clad in undergarments, some in
snatched-up cloaks too short to cover them below the hips. Women, lean,
fat or buxom, tumbled screaming for the outer doors. None of them, we
saw with approbation, had retained her chastity girdle.

Lastly came the priests, with mouths like gaping squares of terror,
emitting shrill cries. All of them had dropped their sickles. They
passed us, blindly disregarding our presence, and ran after the rest.
The host of powder-born specters soon shrouded them from view.

Satisfied that the temple was now empty of its inmates and clients, we
turned our attention to the first corridor. The doors of the separate
rooms were all open. We divided our labors, taking each a room, and
removing from disordered beds and garment-littered floors the cast-off
girdles of gold and gems. We met at the corridor's end, where our
collected loot was thrust into the strong thin sack I had carried under
my cloak. Many of the phantoms still lingered, achieving new and
ghastlier fusions, dropping their members upon us as they began to
diswreathe.

Soon we had searched all the rooms apportioned to the women. My sack was
full, and I had counted thirty-eight girdles at the end of the third
corridor. One girdle was still missing; but Vixeela's sharp eyes caught
the gleam of an emerald-studded buckle protruding from under the
dissolving legs of a hairy satyr-like ghost on a pile of male garments
in the corner. She snatched up the girdle and carried it in her hand
henceforward.

We hurried back to Leniqua's nave, believing it to be vacant of all
human occupants by now. To our disconcertion the High Priest, whose name
Vixeela knew as Marquanos, was standing before the altar, striking blows
with a long phallic rod of bronze, his insignia of office, at certain
apparitions that remained floating in the air.

Marquanos rushed toward us with a harsh cry as we neared him, dealing a
blow at Vixeela that would have brained her if she had not slipped
agilely to one side. The High Priest staggered, nearly losing his
balance. Before he could turn upon her again, Vixeela brought down on
his tonsured head the heavy chastity girdle she bore in her right hand.
Marquanos toppled like a slaughtered ox beneath the pole-ax of the
butcher, and lay prostrate, writhing a little. Blood ran in rills from
the serrated imprint of the great jewels on his scalp. Whether he was
dead or still living, we did not pause to ascertain.

       *       *       *       *       *

We made our exit without delay. After the fright they had received,
there was small likelihood that any of the temple's denizens would
venture to return for some hours. The movable slab fell smoothly back
into place behind us. We hurried along the underground passage, I
carrying the sack and the others preceding me in order to drag it
through straitened places and over piles of rubble when I was forced to
set it down. We reached the creeper-hung entrance without incident.
There we paused awhile before emerging into the moon-streaked woods, and
listened cautiously to cries that diminished with distance. Apparently
no one had thought of the rear adit or had even realized that there was
any such human motive as robbery behind the invasion of terrifying
specters.

Reassured, we came forth from the cavern and found our way back to the
hidden cart and its drowsing asses. We threw enough of the fruits and
vegetables into the brush to make a deep cavity in the cart's center in
which our sackful of loot was then deposited and covered over from
sight. Then, settling ourselves on the grassy ground, we waited for the
hour before dawn. Around us after awhile, we heard the furtive
slithering and scampering of small animals that devoured the comestibles
we had cast away.

If any of us slept, it was, so to speak, with one eye and one ear. We
rose in the horizontal sifting of the last moonbeams and long
eastward-running shadows of early twilight.

Leading our asses, we approached the highway and stopped behind the
brush while an early cart creaked by. Silence ensued, and we broke from
the wood and resumed our journey cityward before other carts came in
sight.

In our return through outlying streets we met only a few early passers,
who gave us no second glance. Reaching the neighborhood of Veezi
Phenquor's house, we consigned the cart to his care and watched him turn
into the courtyard unchallenged and seemingly unobserved by others than
ourselves. He was, I reflected, well supplied with roots and fruits.

We kept closely to our lodgings for two days. It seemed unwise to remind
the police of our presence in Uzuldaroum by any public appearance. On
the evening of the second day our food supply ran short and we sallied
out in our rural costumes to a nearby market which we had never before
patronized.

Returning, we found evidence that Veezi Phenquor had paid us a visit
during our absence, in spite of the fact that all the doors and windows
had been, and still were, carefully locked. A small cube of gold
reposed on the table, serving as paper-weight for a scribbled note.

The note read:

"My esteemed friends and companions: After removing the various gems, I
have melted down all the gold into ingots, and am leaving one of them as
a token of my great regard. Unfortunately, I have learned that I am
being watched by the police and am leaving Uzuldaroum under
circumstances of haste and secrecy, taking the other ingots and all the
jewels in the ass-drawn cart, covered up by the vegetables I have
providentially kept, even though they are slightly stale by now. I
expect to make a long journey, in a direction which I cannot specify--a
journey well beyond the jurisdiction of our local police, and one on
which I trust you will not be perspicacious enough to follow me. I shall
need the remainder of our loot for my expenses, et cetera. Good luck in
all your future ventures. Respectfully, _Veezi Phenquor._

"POSTSCRIPT: You too are being watched, and I advise you to quit the
city with all feasible expedition. Marquanos, in spite of a well-cracked
mazzard from Vixeela's blow, recovered full consciousness late
yesterday. He recognized in Vixeela a former temple-girl through the
trained dexterity of her movements. He has not been able to identify
her; but a thorough and secret search is being made, and other girls
have already been put to the thumb-screw and toe-screw by Leniqua's
priests.

"You and I, my dear Satampra, have already been listed, though not yet
identified, as possible accomplices of the girl. A man of your
conspicuous height and bulk is being sought. The Powder of the Fetid
Apparitions, some traces of which were found on Leniqua's dais, has
already been analyzed. Unluckily it has been used before both by myself
and other alchemists.

"I hope you will escape.... on other paths than the one I am planning to
follow."


                              THE END

       *       *       *       *       *

    [Transcriber's Note: errors fixed:

    changed "spells and cantraips and involved" to "spells and cantrips
    are involved"

    "Veezi Phenquor' house" to "Veezi Phenquor's house"]

       *       *       *       *       *


           [Transcriber's Note: Publication Information]

                              SATURN

              MAGAZINE OF SCIENCE-FICTION AND FANTASY

           VOL. 1. No. 5                      MARCH, 1958

      THE POWDER OF HYPERBOREA     by Clark Ashton Smith     52



[The end of _The Powder of Hyperborea_ by Clark Ashton Smith]