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[[Category:Short stories]]
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[[Category:Cthulhu Mythos short stories]]
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[[Category:H.P. Lovecraft works]]
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[[Category:Cthulhu Mythos works]]

Revision as of 22:47, 20 June 2015

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is a short novel by H.P. Lovecraft. 

Story

The novel begins with Randolph Carter, who is plagued with a recurring dream of a "marvellous sunset city," always waking before he gets the opportunity to explore it to his contentment. After dreaming and awakening three times, he prays to the "hidden gods of dream that brood above the clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste where no man treads." Much to his frustration, the gods do not seem to heed his request, and indeed after his prayers his dreams of the sunset city cease entirely.

Determined to reach the city of his dreams, Carter resolves to travel through the dream-scape his mind travels to at night until he arrives at Kadath, whereupon he may personally make his entreaty to the dream-gods. The next time he lightly sleeps and enters the dream-world, he goes to speak with the priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah, and tells them of his decision to travel to Kadath. The priests warn him against ignoring the will of the gods, and claim that no man had ever determined where in space or dreamland Kadath may lie, much less go there in dream. The also warn that only three men in the history of existence had ever managed to travel to the dream-spaces around other planets or solar systems, and two of the three had been driven mad by the ordeal.

Carter determines to go ahead with his quest regardless of the warnings of the priests, and descends the stairs leading to the Gate of Deeper Slumber, which leads to an enchanted forest. The forest is home to the zoogs, a race of small beings who know much about the workings of the dream-world, and in whose "fluttering language" Carter is proficient. Upon consulting the zoogs, Carter finds to his dismay that they do not know where Kadath lies; however, an elder zoog tells him that a copy of the ancient Pnakotic Manuscripts, kept in "Ulthar, beyond the river Skai," contained information about the gods that Carter might find useful.

With a contingent of zoogs following him on his journey, Carter makes his way to the end of the forest, and through the villages and farmlands lining the banks of the river Skai. He eventually arrives at Ulthar, encountering the large population of cats for which the city is known, and consults the elderly sage Atal, who had once seen the gods dancing atop the mountain Hatheg-Kla and returned alive. Atal warns Carter of the dangers of seeking out the gods in their stronghold of Kadath, as mortals risk not only the fury of Earth's dream-gods, but that of the "Other Gods" native to the dreamlands of other worlds. However, Carter uses his cunning and gets Atal drunk, and Atal mentions that on the mountain Ngranek one can find a great carven visage that may represent the form the gods took when coming to dance on Hatheg-Kla. Carter concludes that in order to find his way to the gods' dwelling-place, he must simply find this image and mark its features, then look for those features in the local human populations (for the gods were known to have interbred with men many times in the past).

Carter leaves Ulthar, but without his trailing group of zoogs; the zoogs have all been eaten or driven out by the cats of Ulthar, a fact which causes Carter no remorse due to his love of cats. He joins a caravan merchants leaving Ulthar for Dylath-Leen, and upon arriving at the dark, uninviting city he disembarks to ask the locals for information about the peak of Ngranek. He learns that the carven face is on a particularly difficult face of the mountain, and that two days' ride on zebra-back should get him to the base. He also learns of the mysterious black galleys which regularly dock in Dylath-Leen, with their crews of oddly featured merchants and unseen, superhumanly strong rowers belowdecks. One of these galleys arrives during Carter's stay, and Carter converses with one of the merchants. The merchant seems to have secret knowledge that Carter wishes to know, but the merchant drugs him with his special wine and Carter loses consciousness.

Carter awakens aboard the black galley, which has left Dylath-Leen and is speeding past the neighboring coastal lands. The boat reaches the Basalt Pillars of the West, where the ocean ends in a massive waterfall. The boat sails through the pillars and over the falls, but instead of plunging down the cataract it sails off into the interplanetary space beyond. The boat passes through vast congregations of dark, unseen beings in the void, the "nameless larvae of the Other Gods," and eventually it becomes clear that it is headed for the dark side of the moon. They sail over low villages and land in an oily sea, arriving at a city populated by strange, blind toad-like creatures. He is detained by the moon-beasts and kept in a dark cell for an unknown period of time.

He is eventually called by the moon-beasts and forced to join in a procession underway in a city square, with ten moon-beasts and twenty-four sub-human slaves. As the procession moves out of the city and into the lunar countryside, Carter begins to fear that the moon-beasts are taking him to meet the envoy of the Other Gods, Nyarlathotep, about whom he has heard many horrifying things. Before he is taken any further, however, Carter hears the yowling of a cat, and he remembers having heard the stories of cats traveling to the far side of the moon at night. He yowls in reply, and a horde of cats comes to the rescue, slaying the moon-beasts and their slaves.

Speaking with the cats, Carter learns that they know him well as a friend of their kind, and that the leader of the cat army was in fact the grandfather of a small kitten Carter had fed during his stay in Dylath-Leen. They are interrupted by a warning yowl from a distance off; an outpost of cats has sighted approaching cats from Saturn, who are sworn enemies of the cats of Earth. The swarm of cats masses around Carter and, leaping together into space, ferry him back to Earth's dreamlands and transport him into his room at the inn back in Dylath-Leen.

Characters and Beings Featured

Locations

  • Dreamland
    • Earth
      • Cathuria
      • Celephais
      • Inganok
      • Kadath
      • Leng
      • Sunset City
      • Thalarion
      • Ulthar
      • Xura
      • Zar
    • The Moon