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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75363 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                          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 75363 ***