Kull jerked loose irritably.
“Leave be.” he snarled, “This cat sent me on a fool’s errand–where is Brule?”
“Kull!”
The king whirled and saw Brule stride through the door, his scanty garments stained by the dust of hard riding. The bronze features of the Pict were immobile but his dark eyes gleamed with relief.
“Name of seven devils!” said the warrior testily, to hide this emotion, “My riders have combed the hills and the forest for you–where have you been?”
“Searching the waters of Forbidden Lake for your worthless carcase.” answered Kull with grim enjoyment of the Pict’s perturbation.
“Forbidden Lake!” Brule exclaimed with the freedom of the savage, “Are you in your dotage? What would I be doing there? I accompanied Ka-nanu yesterday to the Zarfhaanan border and returned to hear Tu ordering out all the army to search for you. My men have since then ridden in every direction except the Forbidden Lake where we never thought of going.”
“Saremes lied to me–” Kull began.
But he was drowned out by a chatter of scolding voices, the main theme being that a king should never ride off so unceremoniously, leaving the kingdom to take care of itself.
“Silence!” roared Kull, lifting his arms, his eyes blazing dangerously, “Valka and Hotath! Am I an urchin to be rated for truancy? Tu, tell me what has occurred.”
In the sudden silence which followed this royal outburst, Tu began:
“My lord, we have been duped from the beginning. This cat, is as I have maintained, a delusion and a dangerous fraud.”
“Yet–”
“My lord, have you never heard of men who could hurl their voice to a distance, making it appear that another spoke, or that invisible voices sounded?”
Kull flushed. “Aye, by Valka! Fool that I should have forgotten! An old wizard of Lemuria had that gift. Yet who spoke–”
“Kuthulos!” exclaimed Tu, “Fool am I not to have remembered Kuthulos, a slave, aye, but the greatest scholar and the wisest man in all the Seven Empires. Slave of that she-fiend Delcardes who even now writhes on the rack!”
Kull gave a sharp exclamation.
“Aye!” said Tu grimly, “When I entered and found that you had ridden away, none knew where, I suspected treachery and I sat me down and thought hard. And I remembered Kuthulos and his art of voice-throwing and of how the false cat had told you small things but never great prophesies, giving false arguments for reason of refraining.
“So I knew that Delcardes had sent you this cat and Kuthulos to befool you and gain your confidence and finally send you to your doom. So I sent for Delcardes and ordered her put to the torture so that she might confess all. She planned cunningly. Aye, Saremes must have her slave Kuthulos with her all the time–while he talked through her mouth and put strange ideas in your mind.”
“Then where is Kuthulos?” asked Kull.
“He had dissapeared when I came to Saremes’ chamber, and–”
“Ho, Kull!” a cheery voice boomed from the door and a bearded elfish figure strode in, accompanied by a slim, frightened girlish shape.
“Ka-nanu! Delcardes–so they did not torture you, after all!”
“Oh, my lord!” she ran to him and fell on her knees before him, clasping his feet, “oh, Kull,” she wailed, “they accuse me of terrible things! I am guilty of dicieving you, my lord, but I meant no harm! I only wished to marry Kulra Thoom!”
Kull raised her to her feet, perplexed but pitying her evident terror and remorse.
“Kull,” said Ka-nanu, “it is a good thing I returned when I did, else you and Tu had tossed the kingdom into the sea!”
Tu snarled wordlessly, always jealous of the Pictish ambassador, who was also Kull’s adviser.
“I returned to find the whole palace in an uproar, men rushing hither and yon and falling over one another in doing nothing. I sent Brule and his riders to look for you, and going to the torture chamber–naturally I went first to to the torture chamber, since Tu was in charge–”
The chancellor winced.
“Going to the torture chamber–” Ka-nanu continued placidly, “I found them about to torture little Delcardes who wept and told all she had to tell but they did not believe her–she is only an inquisitive child, Kull, in spite of her beauty and all. So I brought her here.
“Now, Kull, Delcardes spoke truth when she said Saremes was her guest and that the cat was very ancient. True; she is a cat of the Old Race and wiser than other cats, going and coming as she pleases, but still a cat. Delcardes had spies in the palace to report to her such small things as the secret letter which you hid in your dagger sheath and the surplus in the treasury–the courtier who reported that was one of her spies and had discovered the surplus and told her before royal treasurer knew. Her spies were your most loyal retainers and the things they told her harmed you not and aided her, whom they all love, for they knew she meant no harm.
“Her idea was to have Kuthulos, speaking through the mouth of Saremes, gain your confidence through small prophesies and facts which anyone might know, such as warning you against Thulses Doom. Then, by constant urging you to let Kulra Thoom marry Delcardes, to accomplish what was Delcardes’ only desire.”
“Then Kuthulos turned traitor,” said Tu.
And at that moment there was a noise at the chamber door and guards entered haling between them a tall, gaunt form, his face masked by a veil, his arms bound.
“Kuthulos!”
“Aye, Kuthulos.” said Ka-nanu, but he seemed not at ease and his eyes roved restlessly, “Kuthulos, no doubt, with his veil over his face to hide the workings of his mouth and neck muscles as he talked through Saremes.”
Kull eyed the silent figure which stood there like a statue. A silence fell over the group, as if a cold wind had passed over them. There was a tenseness in the atmosphere. Delcardes looked at the silent figure and her eyes widened as the guards told in terse sentances how the slave had been captured while trying to escape from the palace down a little used corridor.
Then silence fell again and more tensely as Kull stepped forward and reached forth a hand to tear the veil from the hidden face. Through the thin fabric Kull felt two eyes burn into his conciousness. None noticed Ka-nanu clench his hands and tense himself as if for a terrific struggle.
Then as Kull’s hand almost touched the veil, a sudden sound broke the breathless silence–such a sound as a man might make by striking the floor with his forehead or elbow. The noise seemed to come from a wall and Kull crossing the room with a stride, smote against a panel, from behind which the rapping sounded. A hidden door swung inward, revealing a dusty corridor, upon which lay the bound and gagged form of a man.
The dragged him forth and standing him upright, unbound him.
“Kuthulos!” shrieked Delcardes.
Kull stared. The man’s face, now revealed was thin, and kindly like a teacher or philosophy and morals.
“Yes, my lords and lady,” he said, “That man who wears my veil stole upon me through the secret door, struck me down and bound me. I lay there, hearing him send the king to what he thought was Kull’s death, but could do nothing.”
“Then who is he?” All eyes turned toward the veiled figure and stepped forward.
“Lord king, beware!” exclaimed the real Kuthulos, “He–”
Kull tore the veil away with one motion and recoiled with a gasp. Delcardes screamed and her knees gave way; the councillors pressed backward, faces white and the guard released their grasp and shrank horror-struck away.
The face of the man was a bare white skull, in whose eyes sockets flamed livid fire!
“Thulses Doom!”
“Aye, Thulses Doom, fools!” the voice echoed cavernously and hollowly, “The greatest of all wizards and your eternal foe, Kull of Atlantis. You have won this tilt but, beware, there shall be others.”
He burst the bonds on his arms with a single contemptuous gesture and stalked toward the door, the throng giv
ing back before him.
“You are a fool of no discernment, Kull,” said he, “else you had never mistaken that other fool, Kuthulos, for me, even with the veil and his garments.”
Kull saw that it was so, for though the twain were alike in height and general shape, the flesh of the Skull-faced wizard was like that of a man long dead.
The king stood, not fearful like the others, but so amazed at the turn events had taken that he was speechless. Then even as he sprang forward, like a man waking from a dream, Brule charged with the silent ferocity of a tiger, his curved sword gleaming. And like a gleam of light it flashed into the ribs of Thulses Doom, piercing him through and through so that the point stood out between his shoulders.
Brule regained his blade with a quick wrench as he leaped back, then, crouching strike again were it necessary, he halted. Not a drop of blood oozed from the wound which in a living man had been mortal. The Skull-faced one laughed.
“Ages ago I died as men die!” he taunted, “Nay, I shall pass to some other sphere when my time comes, not before. I bleed not for my veins are empty and I feel only a slight coldness which shall pass when the wound closes, as it is even now closing. Stand back, fool, your master goes but he shall come again to you and you shall scream and shrivel and die in that coming! Kull, I salute you!”
And while Brule hesitated, unnerved, and Kull halted in undecided amazement Thulses Doom stepped through the door and vanished before their very eyes.
“At least, Kull,” said Ka-nanu later, “You have won your first tilt with the Skull-faced one, as he admitted. Next time we must be more wary, for he is a fiend incarnate–an owner of magic black and unholy. He hates you for he is a satellite of the great serpent whose power you broke; he has the gift of illusion and of invisibility, which only he posseses. He is grim and terrible.”
“I fear him not.” said Kull, “The next time I will be prepared and my answer shall be a sword thrust, even though he be unslayable, which thing I doubt. Brule did not find his vitals, which even a living being dead man must have, that is all.”
Then turning to Tu,
“Lord Tu, it would seem that the civilized races also have their tambus, since the blue lake is forbidden to all save myself.”
Tu answered testily, angry because Kull had given the happy Delcardes permission to marry whom she desired:
“My lord, that is no heathen tambu such your tribe bows to; it is a matter of state-craft, to preserve peace between Valusia and the lake-beings who are magicians.”
“And we keep tambus so as not to offend unseen spirits of tigers and eagles.” said Kull, “And therein I see no difference.”
“At any rate,” said Tu, “You must beware of Thulses Doom; for he vanished into another dimension and as long as he is there he is invisible and harmless to us, but he will come again.”
“Ah, Kull,” sighed the old rascal, Ka-nanu, “Mine is a hard life compared to yours; Brule and I were drunk in Zarfhaana and I fell down a flight of stairs, most damnably bruising my shins. And all the while you lounged in sinful ease on the silk of the kingship, Kull.”
Kull glared at him wordlessly and turned his back, giving his attention to the drowsing Saremes.
“She is not a wizard-beast, Kull,” said the Spear-slayer, “She is wise but she merely looks her wisdom and does not speak. Yet her eyes fascinate me with their antiquity. A mere cat, just the same.”
“Still, Brule,” said Kull, admiringly, stroking her silky fur, “Still, she is a very ancient cat, very.”
The King and the Oak
(Draft)
Before the shadows of the night before the dawn lay dead
King Kull rode out of Kolderkon to make a king a bed;
Oh, bitter was the couch he made, doom black and ghastly red.
Before the shadows slew the sun the kites were soaring free
And Kull rode down the forst road, his red sword at his knee;
And winds were whispering ’round the world: “King Kull rides to the sea.”
The sun died crimson in the sea, the long grey shadows fell,
The moon rose like a silver skull that wrought a demon’s spell
For in its light great trees stood up like specters out of Hell.
In spectral light the trees stood up inhuman monsters dim,
Kull thought each trunk a living shape, each branch a knotted limb,
And strange unmortal evil eyes flamed terribly at him.
The branches writhed like knotted snakes, they beat against the night,
And one great oak with swayings stiff stupendous in his sight,
Tore up its roots and blocked his way, grim in the ghostly light.
They grappled in the forest way, the king and grisly oak;
Its great limbs bent him in their grip, but never a word was spoke;
And useless in his iron hand, his stabbing dagger broke.
And all about the frenzied king, there sang a dim refrain
Frought deep with seven million years of evil, hate and pain:
“We were the lords ere man had come, and shall be lords again.”
At dawn the king with bloody hands strove ’gainst a silent tree;
As from a drifting dream he woke; a wind blew down the lea,
And Kull of high Atlantis rode silent to the sea.
Appendices
ATLANTEAN GENESIS
by Patrice Louinet
Between 1926 and 1930, Robert E. Howard began thirteen stories featuring Kull, Atlantean king of Valusia, completing ten. However only three of those tales saw print in Howard’s lifetime: The Shadow Kingdom (Weird Tales, August 1929), The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune (Weird Tales, September 1929), and Kings of the Night (Weird Tales, November 1930), the last a Bran Mak Morn story co-starring the Atlantean king.
These three stories were particularly well received by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright and by the readers, if the commentaries found in the magazine’s letters section (sometimes years after the stories had appeared) are any indication. Howard Phillips Lovecraft held these stories in very high esteem and even suggested in a 1934 letter that Howard write more tales about the character. Howard replied, in his deceptively deprecatory tone: “Thanks for the kind things you said about the Kull stories, but I doubt if I’ll ever be able to write another. The three stories I wrote about that character seemed almost to write themselves, without any planning on my part; there was no conscious effort on my part to work them up. They simply grew up, unsummoned, full grown in my mind and flowed out on paper from my finger tips. To sit down and consciously try to write another story on that order would be to produce something the artificiality of which would be apparent.”
Howard’s stories, at least all the major ones, required much more work and elaboration than the Texan was willing to concede, and the Kull series was no exception. For instance, Howard worked on the second Kull story for over a year. But when he was telling Lovecraft that he was unable to write a Kull story anymore, Howard was probably telling the truth. He had started to lose his grip on the character by 1929 and had discarded him completely after a series of false starts and unsold stories. In 1932, Howard had recycled one of the last-written Kull stories–By This Axe I Rule!–in order to create a new series, centering around a certain grim Cimmerian warrior. The two characters have little in common except their imposing physiques, but the background for the two series is similar: barbarian characters evolving in kingdoms or empires from earth’s mythical past, confronted, in one way or another, by decaying civilizations–Kull by his adopted country, Conan by the Hyborian kingdoms. Conan had replaced Kull, and Howard found it impossible to write about a character who no longer represented a vehicle through which he could express his ideas.
What Howard was unaware of, in spite of the unusual critical praise these three stories received over the years, was that he had given birth to a new subgenre of literature, since dubbed “Heroic Fantasy,” “Epic Fantasy,” or “Sword and Sorcery”–denominations as
unsatisfying as they are reductive. The mixing of historical (or pseudo-historical) elements with elements of fantasy was nothing new; on the contrary it harked back to the very beginnings of literature. What Howard brought to the form was to modernize it, getting rid of the chivalrous aspects, flowery language, and stilted personalities, writing violent tales in a realistic style that reflected Howard’s environment and that of his readership. Critic George Knight once argued very convincingly, “Because his most popular creations are his fantasy tales, Howard is put into the category of ‘fantasy writer,’ yet…the most interesting aspect of his fiction is not the fantasy but the realism–a realism springing from Howard’s class, environment, beliefs, and the age in which he wrote.”
The Kull stories (and this is also true for the Conan series) are thus “realistic fantasy tales.” Unlike his predecessors and unlike the immense majority of his successors, Howard set his stories in universes not so much imaginary as they are forgotten: he wrote about our world and his themes are universal ones. Kull’s serpent-men-infected Valusia is no more fantastic than Shakespeare’s ghost-haunted Elsinore, yet who would think of labeling Hamlet as “Sword and Sorcery”?
In 1932, when he initiated his Conan series, Howard wrote an essay, The Hyborian Age, which explains how this particular phase of mankind’s past has now been forgotten. In a letter sent with the essay, Howard explained his need for realism in writing fantasy stories: “Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to advance any theory in opposition to accepted history. It is simply a fictional background for a series of fiction-stories. When I began writing the Conan series a few years ago, I prepared this ‘history’ of his age in order to lend him and his sagas a greater aspect of realness.”
Interestingly enough the essay begins with the destruction of what was Kull’s universe: