The Shadow Kingdom | Page 9

lurked among his cities?
How might he tell the false from the true? Aye, how many of his
trusted councilors, his generals, were men? He could be certain-of
whom?
The secret panel swung inward and Brule entered.

"You were swift."
"Aye!" The warrior stepped forward, eyeing the floor. "There is gore
upon the rug. See?"
Kull bent forward; from the corner of his eye he saw a blur of
movement, a glint of steel. Like a loosened bow he whipped erect,
thrusting upward. The warrior sagged upon the sword, his own
clattering to the floor. Even at that instant Kull reflected grimly that it
was appropriate that the traitor should meet his death upon the sliding,
upward thrust used so much by his race. Then, as Brule slid from the
sword to sprawl motionless on the floor, the face began to merge and
fade, and as Kull caught his breath, his hair a-prickle, the human
features vanished and there the jaws of a great snake gaped hideously,
the terrible beady eyes venomous even in death.
"He was a snake priest all the time!" gasped the king. "Valka! What an
elaborate plan to throw me off my guard! Ka-nu there, is he a man?
Was it Ka-nu to whom I talked in the gardens? Almighty Valka!" as his
flesh crawled with a horrid thought; "are the people of Valusia men or
are they all serpents?"
Undecided he stood, idly seeing that the thing named Brule no longer
wore the dragon armlet. A sound made him wheel.
Brute was coming through the secret door.
"Hold!" Upon the arm upthrown to halt the king's hovering sword
gleamed the dragon armlet. "Valka!" The Pict stopped short. Then a
grim smile curled his lips.
"By the gods of the seas! These demons are crafty past reckoning. For
it must be that one lurked in the corridors, and seeing me go carrying
the carcass of that other, took my appearance. So. I have another to do
away with."
"Hold!" there was the menace of death in Kull's voice; "I have seen two
men turn to serpents before my eyes. How may I know if you are a true

man?"
Brule laughed. "For two reasons. King Kull. No snake-man wears this"-
he indicated the dragon armlet-"nor can any say these words," and
again Kull heard the strange phrase; "Ka nama kaa lajerama."
"Ka nama kaa lajerama" Kull repeated mechanically. "Now, where, in
Valka's name, have I heard that? I have not! And yet-and yet-"
"Aye, you remember, Kull," said Brule. "Through the dim corridors of
memory those words lurk; though you never heard them in this life, yet
in the bygone ages they were so terribly impressed upon the soul mind
that never dies, that they will always strike dim chords in your memory,
though you be reincarnated for a million years to come. For that phrase
has come secretly down the grim and bloody eons, since when,
uncounted centuries ago, those words were watchwords for the race of
men who battled with the grisly beings of the Elder Universe. For none
but a real man of men may speak them, whose jaws and mouth are
shaped different from any other creature. Their meaning has been
forgotten but not the words themselves."
"True," said Kull. "I remember the legends Valka!" He stopped short,
staring, for suddenly, like the silent swinging wide of a mystic door,
misty, unfathomed reaches opened in the recesses of his consciousness
and for an instant he seemed to gaze back through the vastness that
spanned life and life; seeing through the vague and ghostly fogs dim
shapes reliving dead centuries-men in combat with hideous monsters,
vanquishing a planet of frightful terrors. Against a gray, ever- shifting
background moved strange nightmare forms, fantasies of lunacy and
fear; and man, the jest of the gods, the blind, wisdom-less striver from
dust to dust, following the long bloody trail of his destiny, knowing not
why, bestial, blundering, like a great murderous child, yet feeling
somewhere a spark of divine fire . . . Kull drew a hand across his brow,
shaken; these sudden glimpses into the abysses of memory always
startled him.
"They are gone," said Brule, as if scanning his secret mind; "the
bird-women, the harpies, the bat-men, the flying fiends, the wolf-

people, the demons, the goblins-all save such as this being that lies at
our feet, and a few of the wolf-men. Long and terrible was the war,
lasting through the bloody centuries, since first the first men, risen from
the mire of apedom, turned upon those who then ruled the world."
"And at last mankind conquered, so long ago that naught but dim
legends come to us through the ages. The snake-people were the last to
go, yet at last men conquered even them and