pilgrimage

'' in the shadows of that tavern carter saw a squat form he did not like, for it was unmistakably that of the old slant-eyed merchant he had seen so long ago before in the taverns of dylath-leen, who was reputed to trade with the horrible stone villages of leng ... which no healthy folk visit and whose evil fires are seen at night from afar ... and even to have dealt with that high-priest not to be described, ... this man seemed to show a queer gleam of knowing when carter asked the traders of dylath-leen about the coldwaste and kadath; ... he slipped wholly out of sight before carter could speak to him; ...

'' that night carter camped in a roadside meadow beneath a great lygath-tree to which he tied his yak, and in the morning resumed his northward pilgrimage ... on the second night he camped in the shadow of a large black crag, tethering his yak to a stake driven in the ground ... and on the third morning he came in sight of the first onyx quarry, ... and greeted the men who there laboured with picks and chisels ... the third night he spent in a camp of quarry men whose flickering fires cast weird reflections on the polished cliffs to the west ... in the morning he bade them adieu and rode on into the darkening north, ... turning back to wave a last farewell, he thought he saw approaching the camp that squat and evasive old merchant with slanting eyes, whose conjectured traffic with leng was the gossip of distant dylath-leen. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the dreamquest of unknown kadath.