The Shadow Kingdom | Page 5

Enough. An escort waits outside to ride to the
palace with you, lord."

Kull rose. "But you have told me nothing."
"Tush. How impatient are youths!" Ka-nu looked more like a
mischievous elf than ever. "Go you and dream of thrones and power
and kingdoms, while I dream of wine and soft women and roses. And
fortune ride with you, King Kull."
As he left the garden, Kull glanced back to see Ka-nu still reclining
lazily in his seat, a merry ancient, beaming on all the world with jovial
fellowship.
A mounted warrior waited for the king Just without the garden and Kull
was slightly surprised to see that it was the same that had brought
Ka-nu's invitation. No word was spoken as Kull swung into the saddle
nor as they clattered along the empty streets.
The color and the gayety of the day had given way to the eerie stillness
of night. The city's antiquity was more than ever apparent beneath the
bent, silver moon. The huge pillars of the mansions and palaces
towered up into the stars. The broad stairways, silent and deserted,
seemed to climb endlessly until they vanished in the shadowy darkness
of the upper realms. Stairs to the stars, thought Kull, his imaginative
mind inspired by the weird grandeur of the scene.
Clang! clang! clang! sounded the silver hoofs on the broad, moon-
flooded streets, but otherwise there was no sound. The age of the city,
its incredible antiquity, was almost oppressive to the king; it was as if
the great silent buildings laughed at him, noiselessly, with unguessable
mockery. And what secrets did they hold?
"You are young," said the palaces and the temples and the shrines, "but
we are old. The world was wild with youth when we were reared. You
and your tribe shall pass, but we are invincible, indestructible. We
towered above a strange world, ere Atlantis and Lemuria rose from the
sea; we still shall reign when the green waters sigh for many a restless
fathom above the spires of Lemuria and the hills of Atlantis and when
the isles of the Western Men are the mountains of a strange land.

"How many kings have we watched ride down these streets before Kull
of Atlantis was even a dream in the mind of Ka, bird of Creation? Ride
on, Kull of Atlantis; greater shall follow you; greater came before you.
They are dust; they are forgotten; we stand; we know; we are. Ride,
ride on, Kull of Atlantis; Kull the king, Kull the fool!"
And it seemed to Kull that the clashing hoofs took up the silent refrain
to beat it into the night with hollow re-echoing mockery; "Kull-the-king!
Kull-the-fool!"
Glow, moon; you light a king's way! Gleam, stars; you are torches in
the train of an emperor! And clang, silver-shod hoofs; you herald that
Kull rides through Valusia.
Ho! Awake, Valusia! It is Kull that rides, Kull the king!
"We have known many kings," said the silent halls of Valusia.
And so in a brooding mood Kull came to the palace, where his
bodyguard, men of the Red Slayers, came to take the rein of the great
stallion and escort Kull to his rest. There the Pict, still sullenly
speechless, wheeled his steed with a savage wrench of the rein and fled
away in the dark like a phantom; Kull's heightened imagination
pictured him speeding through the silent streets like a goblin out of the
Elder World.
There was no sleep for Kull that night, for it was nearly dawn and he
spent the rest of the night hours pacing the throne-room, and pondering
over what had passed. Ka-nu had told him nothing, yet he had put
himself in Kull's complete power. At what had he hinted when he had
said the baron of Blaal was naught but a figurehead? And who was this
Brule who was to come to him by night, wearing the mystic armlet of
the dragon? And why? Above all, why had Ka-nu shown him the green
gem of terror, stolen long ago from the temple of the Serpent, for which
the world would rock in wars were it known to the weird and terrible
keepers of that temple, and from whose vengeance not even Ka- nu's
ferocious tribesmen might be able to save him? But Ka-nu knew he was
safe, reflected Kull, for the statesman was too shrewd to expose himself

to risk without profit. But was it to throw the king off his guard and
pave the way to treachery? Would Ka-nu dare let him live now? Kull
shrugged his shoulders.

3. They That Walk the Night
The moon had not risen when Kull, hand to hilt, stepped to a window.
The windows opened upon the great inner gardens of the royal palace,
and the