The Night Land

. And surely it is all so strange and wonderful to set out, that I could

almost despair with the contemplation of that which I must achieve; for

there is so much to tell, and so few words given to man by which he may

make clear that which lies beyond the sight and the present and general

knowings of Peoples.

How shall you ever know, as I know in verity, of the greatness and

reality and terror of the thing that I would tell plain to all; for we,

with our puny span of recorded life must have great histories to tell,

but the few bare details we know concerning years that are but a few

thousands in all; and I must set out to you in the short pages of this

my life there, a sufficiency of the life that had been, and the life

that was, both within and without that mighty Pyramid, to make clear to

those who may read, the truth of that which I would tell; and the

histories of that great Redoubt dealt not with odd thousands of years;

but with very millions; aye, away back into what they of that Age

conceived to be the early days of the earth, when the sun, maybe, still

gloomed dully in the night sky of the world. But of all that went

before, nothing, save as myths, and matters to be taken most cautiously,

and believed not by men of sanity and proved wisdom.

And I, ...how shall I make all this clear to you who may read? The thing

cannot be; and yet I must tell my history; for to be silent before so

much wonder would be to suffer of too full a heart; and I must even ease

my spirit by this my struggle to tell to all how it was with me, and how

it will be. Aye, even to the memories which were the possession of that

far future youth, who was indeed I, of his childhood's days, when his

nurse of that Age swung him, and crooned impossible lullabies of this

mythical sun which, according to those future fairy-tales, had once

passed across the blackness that now lay above the Pyramid.

Such is the monstrous futureness of this which I have seen through the

body of that far-off youth. And so back to my telling. To my right, which was to the North, there

stood, very far away, the House of Silence, upon a low hill. And in that

House were many lights, and no sound. And so had it been through an

uncountable Eternity of Years. Always those steady lights, and no

whisper of sound--not even such as our distance-microphones could have

discovered. And the danger of this House was accounted the greatest

danger of all those Lands.