Glancing through the volume I was surprised to discover that, regardless of the large size of the quarto pages (which were about nine and one-half by twelve inches), rather less wordage appeared on each page than you might have expected from its proportions. This was due to the deep margins and gutters used by the printer, and also to the thick and clumsy black-letter type. Curious, I counted the words on two or three pages at random, finding them to average about three hundred and seventy-five words each.
The narratives contained in the first book, being personal accounts from the early years of Alhazred’s own career of various uncanny experiences and magical or occult experiments, did not occupy me for very long. I soon turned to the page at which Dr. Armitage had inserted the first marker, which was page 177, midway into Book IV. and began slowly to translate the old Latin, with considerable help from a crumbling, yellowed manuscript of Dee's English version of the same passage, which Dr. Armitage had set out for me and which I was often forced co consult on some of the more-difficult parts. The page read as follows, as best as I can recalclass="underline"
There is no curse that has no cure and no ill against which no remedy exists. The Elder Gods dwell remote and aloof from the affairs of men, yet They have nut abandoned us to the wrath of Them from Outside and Their abominable minions: for within the five-pointed star carven of gray stone from ancient Mnar lies armor against witches and demons, against the Deep Ones, the Dholes, the Voormis, the Tcho-Tcho, the Abominable Mi-Go, the Shoggoths, the Valusians, and all such peoples and beings who serve the Great Old Ones and Their spawn; but it is less potent against the Great Old Ones Themselves. He who possesses the five-pointed star shall find himself able to command all beings who creep, swim, crawl, walk, or fly, even to the Source from which there is no returning. In the land of Yhe as in great R’lyeh, in Y'ha-nthlei as in Yoth, in Yuggoth as in Zothique, in N’kai as in K'n-yan, in Kadath-in-the-Cold-Waste as at the Lake of Hali, in Carcosa as in Ib, it shall have power; but even as the stars wane and grow cold, even as suns die and the spaces between the stars grow more great, so wanes the power of all things—of the five-pointed star-stone as of the spells put upon the Great Old Ones by the benign Elder Gods: and there comes a time, as once there was a time, when it shall be shown that:
But the time is not yet come, and still the star-stone from Mnar, marked with that sigil that is the Elder Sign, holds strong against the rage of Them it prisons, and against the wiles of those servants and minions who would set their masters free.
This passage, I must confess, meant but little to me. I had seen “Mnar” and “the Elder Sign” mentioned in the copy of von Junzt I had been reading on the train, but I had no inkling as to what these terms were supposed to mean.
The second passage which Dr. Armitage had marked with a slip of paper came a bit earlier in the volume, about midway through the seventeenth chapter of Book III, commencing on page 142. Recalling that Cryptic note in Dr. Blaine’s hand, Cf. NEC. III. xvii, which I had noticed in the Xothic file, I realized with some excitement that this must be the key and central reference to which he had with such urgency directed my attention. It was considerably lengthier than the other entry, so I copied it out on the sheaf of notepaper which Dr. Armitage had so thoughtfully supplied, and studied it later during my homeward journey to such an extent that my memory retains it word for word. It went thusly:
Of the coming-down of the Great Old Ones from the stars, it is written in the Book of Eibon that the first who came hither was the black thing, even Tsathoggua, who came hence from dim Cykranosh not long after the creation of life on this planet. Not through the starry spaces came Tsathoggua, but by the dimensions that lie between them, and of his advent upon this planet, the place thereof was the unlitten and subterraneous gulf of N’kai, wherein whose gloomy depths he lingered for innumerable cycles, as Eibon saith, before emerging into the upper world. And after this it was the Great Cthulhu came hither next, and all his Spawn from distant Xoth, and the Deep Ones and the loathsome Yuggs who be their minions; and Shub-Niggurath from nightmare-rumored Yaddith, and all they that serve her, even the Little People of the Wood.
But of the Great Old Ones begotten by Azathoth in the prime, not all came down to this Earth, for Him Who Is Nor To Be Named lurks ever on that dark world near Aldebaran in the Hyades, and it was his sons who descended hither in his place. Likewise, Cthugha chose for his abode the star Fomalhaut, whereupon he begat the dread Aphoom Zhah; and Cthugha abideth yet on Fomalhaut, and the Fire-Vampires that serve him, but as for Aphoom Zhah, he descended to this Earth and dwelleth yet in his frozen realm. And terrible Vulthoom, that awful thing that be brother to black Tsathoggua, he descended upon dying Mars in his might, which world he chose for his dominion ....
I could not help shuddering at the incoherent raving of the madman who had broken the silence of the ages, to speak of such abominations. But the passage held little that I had not already learned, so I skipped on down the page until my attention was arrested by the following passage:
Now it is also written of those of the Begotten of Azathoth who abide not within the secret places of the Earth, that when the Great Old Ones came down from the stars in the misty prime They brought the image and likeness of their brethren with Them. In this wise, it was the Outer Ones that serve Hastur the Unspeakable, brought down the Shining Trapezohedron from dark Yuggoth on the Rim, whereupon had it been fashioned with curious art in the days ere the Earth had yet brought forth its first life. And it was through the Shining Trapezohedron, that is the very talisman of dread Nyarlathotep, that the Great Old Ones summoned to Their aid the might of the Crawling Chaos in the hour of Their great need, what time the Elder Gods came hither in Their wrath.
Likewise, it was the Deep Ones who carried to this world the awful likeness of serpent-bearded Byatis, son of Yig, whereby was He worshipped, first by the shadowy Valusians before the advent of man on this planet, and yet later by the dwellers in primal Mu ....
This, obviously, was the information Dr. Blaine had desperately urged me to read. True, it corroborated the information I had already learned in the quotation from Ludvig Prinn, included in the Copeland notes. I read on, and with mounting excitement.
For the Great Old Ones had foreseen the day and the hour of their need, when that they must summon to Their side those of their awesome Brethren who had taken far worlds for the place of their abiding, and had brought hither these images for this very purpose. Now of these star-made eidola, little there is that is known to men; it is said they were wrought by strange talismanic art, and that the sorcerers and the wizards of this terrene sphere are not deemed worthy by the Great Old Ones to be instructed in the secrets thereof.
But it is whispered in certain old, forbidden books an awesome power lurks within such images, and that through them, as through windows in time and space, Those that dwell afar can sometimes be evoked, as They were when that it came to pass, in the fullness of time, the Elder Gods descended on this world in their wrath.