Now the ancient masonry became denser and better preserved. Peering into shadowy, silvan distances, Jorian saw pieces of megalithic wall and the stumps of tumbled towers. Here a structure had been invaded by the roots of a tree growing out of its top, groping downwards between the individual stones and prying them apart, like the tentacles of some vegetable octopus, until the tree supported the remains of the structure rather than the building the tree. There rose a megalithic wall, bedight with sculptured reliefs in riotous profusion. Intricately carven towers of sandstone blocks loomed up through the forest, their tops lost in the masses of greenery overhead. Trees grew out of a monumental staircase, whose massive blocks their roots had heaved and tumbled.
Sinister, scowling stone faces peered out from behind the fronds of palms and ferns. An immense statue, fallen and broken into three pieces, lay among ruined walls and towering tree trunks, its finer details largely hidden by splotches of moss. For a while, the animals walked along a raised causeway paved with large, square slabs of slate and supported on either hand by cyclopean walls made of blocks weighing hundreds of tons.
On either hand stretched endless galleries bounding vast, overgrown courtyards. The entrances to these galleries were stone portals lacking the true arch. Instead, the openings were headed by corbelled arches, each course of masonry overhanging the one beneath until they met at the top, forming tall isosceles triangles. Among the sculptures that decorated the walls of these galleries, Jorian glimpsed scenes of armies on the march, demons and gods in supernatural combat, dancing girls entertaining kings, and workers at their daily tasks.
A flock of small green parrots rose from the ruins and whirred away, screaming. Monkeys scampered over the tottering roofs. Little lizards, some green with purple throats, some yellow, and some of other hues, scuttled over the stones. Huge butterflies came to rest on the tumbled masonry, fanning the air with their gold-and-purple wings before flitting away once more.
"What ruin is this?" Jorian asked.
"Culbagarh," groaned the wizard. "Can we stop here? I shall soon be dead else."
"Methinks we've gained a few hours upon them," said Jorian, dismounting at the base of a headless statue. The head that belonged to the statue lay nearby, but so covered with moss and mold that its precise nature was not evident. As he helped Karadur, groaning, down from the ass, Jorian said: "Tell me about this Culbagarh."
While Jorian staked out the animals where long grass grew in a ruined courtyard and prepared a frugal meal, Karadur told the story:
"This city goes back to the kingdom of Tirao, which preceded the empire of Mulvan. When the last king of Tirao, Vrujja the Fiend, came to the throne, his first concern was to have all his siblings slain, lest any should aspire to usurp his seat. This massacre later became the usual procedure in Mulvan and is now a custom hallowed by time. But in the days of Vrujja—more than a thousand years ago—it caused much comment.
"Hearing of the fate in store for him, one of these brothers, Naharju, gathered his followers and fled eastward into the wilds of Komilakh. They marched eastward for many leagues, until they came to a few scattered ruins, on this very spot. Those ruins were, however, much less extensive than these about us and more dilapidated, because this earner city had stood abandoned much longer than the mere thousand-odd years since of the fall of Culbagarh.
"None in Prince Naharju's party knew what city those scattered stones were the remains of, although some opined that this had been a city of the serpent people ere they migrated thence into the denser jungles of Beraoti. Amid these scanty ruins stood a worn, moss-grown altar, and beyond the altar the remains of a statue, so weathered that none could be certain what sort of creature it had depicted. Some thought it a figure of an ape-man, like unto the ape-men who are the native inhabitants of Komilakh, and of whom the party had caught glimpses. Others thought the statue not that of one of the higher animals at all, but something nearer to a spider or a cuttlefish.
"Naharju had with him a priest of Kradha the Preserver, to minister to the spiritual needs of his people. It seemed to Naharju that preservation of their lives was the most urgent task confronting the refugees and that, therefore, Kradha were the most suitable god to worship. A modern theologian might argue that Vurnu, Kradha, and Ashaka are all merely aspects or avatars of the same godhead; but in those days thinkers had not yet reached such heights of metaphysical subtlety.
"On the first night they spent in the ruins, the priest, whose name was Ayonar, had a dream. In this dream, he reported, the god whereof the ruined statue had been the image appeared unto him. The folk pressed Ayonar for a description of this god—whether it had the form of a man, an ape, a tiger, a crab, or what; but when Ayonar tried to answer their questions, he turned pale and stuttered so that nothing intelligible came forth. And when they saw that merely to think about the appearance of this god so troubled their holy priest, they left off questioning him and asked instead, what this god demanded of them.
"So Ayonar told the people that the god was named Murugong, and he had indeed been the god of the folk who had dwelt in the city ere it became a ruin, and that he was the chief god of Komilakh and never mind what the priests of Tirao said about their holy trinity's ruling the world. Komilakh was his; other gods, despite their ecumenical pretensions, knew better than to quarrel with him. Therefore Naharju's colonists had better worship him and forget all other gods.
"Then it transpired that Murugong was worshiped with exceedingly barbarous and bloody sacrifices, wherein a chosen victim was flayed alive on his altars. Murugong had explained to Ayonar that, not having tasted the pain of such a sacrifice for thousands of years, he was nigh unto starvation, and they should find a victim to flay right speedily.
"Naharju and his men were troubled, for such usages had long been abandoned in Tirao, and they were not eager to take them up again, let alone to slay one of their own in this uncouth manner. So they took counsel, and whilst they disputed, the priest Ayonar said: 'May it please Your Highness, I have thought how to gratify the mighty Murugong and preserye our own skins intact. Let us go into the forest, seize one of the ape-men, and sacrifice it in the manner prescribed. For, if not so intelligent as a true man, the ape-man stands high enough in the scale of life so that it will suffer quite as acutely as any human being. And, since Murugong thrives on the pain of his victims, he should be just as well satisfied as if one of us had perished in this manner.'
"The men of Naharju's faction agreed that the priest had spoken sound sense, and a hunting party was made up at once. After the ape-man had been devoted to the god, Murugong appeared unto Ayonar in a dream and said he was well pleased with the sacrifice and would adopt the Tiraonian refugees as his chosen people as long as they continued the sacrifices. And so it went for many years. Under Naharju and his son of the same name, the people waxed in numbers and built the city of Culbagarh on the ruins of the older, nameless city.
"Meanwhile the leading men of Tirao, desperate over the enormities of Vrujja the Fiend, sought for a prince to head a rebellion against their sovran. They had trouble in this, for that Vrujja had made a clean sweep of his kinsmen, executing them unto third and fourth cousins and sending men to murder those who had fled to Novaria and other barbarian lands.
"At length, however, the rebels discovered a chief of the desert-dwellers of Fedirun, night Waqith, who boasted one-thirty-second part of royal Tiraonian blood in his veins. And they invited him to invade Tirao and become king in Vrujja's room. The invasion went briskly, for most of Vrujja's men deserted. Soon Vrujja was slain in an interesting manner that perturbs me too much to describe, and Waqith was crowned king.