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Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is not quite accurate to label The Shadow Kingdom, which introduced Weird Tales readers to King Kull in the August 1929 issue (the untitled vignette many of us first met as Exile of Atlantis, with its glimpse of the Kull who would be king, was not published until 1967), the original sword-and-sorcery story. To do so is to overlook an earlier masterpiece, Lord Dunsany’s 1910 The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth, in which a swordsman invades the hellish, dragon-guarded stronghold of an archmage.
“Poets always hate those in power and turn to dead ages for relief in dreams.”
Furthermore, to say that The Shadow Kingdom is the first American sword-and-sorcery story is to mean much more than simply the first such story authored by an American. American concerns populate and animate much of the series.
alluding without allegorizing?
Howard was a superb writer in part because he was a superb reader; he stole from the best and then transcended the thefts by transmuting the swag.
The sun was setting. A last crimson glory filled the land and lay like a crown of blood on the snow sprinkled peaks.
This tale must be true because it has been handed down from generation unto generation longer than men remember. What always was, must always be.” “I don’t believe it,” said Kull. “These mountains always were but some day they will crumble and vanish. Some day the sea will flow over these hills–”
Animals are neither gods nor fiends, but men in their way without the lust and greed of man–”
Kull reined his stallion about and started toward the palace at an easy gait, discussing the review with the commanders that rode with him, using not many words, but saying much.
“The army is like a sword,” said Kull, “and must not be allowed to rust.”
Aye, shame to Valusia that a barbarian sits on the Throne of Kings.”…
Kull reflected long upon the strange state of affairs that made him ally of ancient foes and foe of ancient friends.
He knew men, and he knew that to gain his end he must smite straight with this tigerish barbarian, who, like a wolf scenting a snare, would scent out unerringly any falseness in the skein of his word-web.
The tapestries rustled, and suddenly Kull felt like a naked child before the inscrutable wisdom of the mystic past.
Kull felt warmly a sense of comradeship with this member of an enemy tribe. Like rival leopards turning at bay against hunters, these two savages made common cause against the inhuman powers of antiquity.
for man is still an ape in that he forgets what is not ever before his eyes.
Such is their power that it is now death to repeat the old legends of the snake-people, and people bow again to the serpent god in new form;
“The statecraft of the Seven Empires is a mazy, monstrous thing,”
A face looked at them, a pair of luminous great eyes, that seemed to hold all the tortures of a million centuries.
How could a man be so many different men in a lifetime? For Kull knew that there were many Kulls and he wondered which was the real Kull. After all, the priests of the Serpent merely went a step further in their magic, for all men wore masks, and many a different mask with each different man or woman; and Kull wondered if a serpent did not lurk under every mask.
“This is insanity!” he whispered. “Am I Kull? Do I stand here or is that Kull yonder in very truth and am I but a shadow, a figment of thought?”
THERE comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem and upon the fingers of the women sparkle drearily like the ice of the white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester’s bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh.
“Time strides onward,” said Tuzun Thune calmly. “We live today; what care we for tomorrow–or yesterday? The Wheel turns and nations rise and fall; the world changes, and times return to savagery to rise again through the long ages. Ere Atlantis was, Valusia was, and ere Valusia was, the Elder Nations were.
However, Kull was too much the savage to connect the insult with the bearer; it must remain for civilized rulers to wreak vengeance on courtiers.
The emperor of Zarfhaana will never allow you to bring such a force as you named into his realm.” “Then I will ride over the ruins of Zarfhaana’s cities,” was Kull’s grim reply. “Men avenge their own insults in Atlantis–and though Atlantis has disowned me and I am king of Valusia–still I am a man, by Valka!”
Kull handed over the bracelet with no more than a faint smile betraying his contempt of mankind’s way of lulling their conscience into the path of their desire; refusing to admit that they violated their own moral senses, even to themselves.
“Nay. Grondar ends here. Here is the end of the world; beyond is magic and the unknown. Here is the boundary of the world; there begins the realm of horror and mysticism. This is the river Stagus and I am Karon the Ferryman.”
“They who would return, take a single pace forward,” said he. The metal ranks sat motionless as statue. “They ride, Kull,” grinned Brule. A fierce pride rose in the king’s savage soul. He spoke a single sentence, a sentence which thrilled his warriors more than an accolade. “Ye are men.”
“You are young and strong,” said the lake-king. “The rot of civilization has not yet entered your soul and our charms may not harm you, because you do not understand them. Then we must try other things.”
For Kull knew that beings who slay may be slain by steel and he was unafraid. A figure of threat and doom, bloody and terrible he loomed above them.
“Swear not by gods or devils,” Kull broke in. “Give your word as a true man.”
“And I believe you, for you are different from any earthly man I ever knew. You are a real king and what is greater, a true man.”
Go now, king, for you are a true man even though you be the first wave of the rising tide of savagery which shall overwhelm the world ere it recedes.”
“Raama,” said Ka-nu, “long ago shut a spectre of silence into a great castle and sealed him there for all time.”
He struck again and again, being aware of the comparative silence with which the blows fell. The bars fell, the door swung open.
The gong blew into a million vibrating fragments! And Silence screamed!
How could he know of an elder world sorcery great enough to serve undying hate, by lending that hate a concrete substance, impervious to Time’s destructions?
But about each of the three was that indefinable something which sets the superior man apart and shatters the delusion that all men were born equal.
“But why does Ridondo hate Kull?” “Because he is a poet, and poets always hate those in power, and turn to dead ages for relief in dreams. Ridondo is a flaming torch of idealism and he sees himself as a hero, a stainless knight, which he is, rising to overthrow the tyrant.”
“He sings songs that make men mad. Hang him in his jester’s garb to the highest tower in the city. Let him make rhymes for the vultures.” Kull shook his lion head. “No, Brule, he is beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. He hates me, yet I would have his friendship. His songs are mightier than my sceptre, for time and again he has near torn the heart from my breast when he chose to sing for me. I will die and be forgotten, his songs will live forever.”
Because he is a warrior and not a politician, because his swordsmanship helps him now not at all, his throne is rocking beneath him.” “And he is very unhappy.” “Not all the time,” smiled the big man. “Sometimes when he slips away alone and takes a few hours holiday by himself among the woods, he is almost happy. Especially when he meets a pretty girl like–” The girl cried out in sudden terror, slipping to her knees before him: “Oh, sire, sire, have mercy! I did not know–you are the king!” “Don’t be afraid.”
“By this axe I rule! This is my sceptre! I have struggled and sweated to be the puppet king you wished me to be–to king it your way. Now I use mine own way! If you will not fight, you shall obey! Laws that are just shall stand; laws that have outlived their times I shall shatter as I shattered that one! I am king!”
This is the price a nation must pay for decaying–the strong young people come in and take possession, one way or another.
“Out of a night of blood and terror, joy and happiness are born.” The barbarian king grinned and shouldered his stained and notched axe. “Life is that way, Count; one man’s bane is another’s bliss.”
It was old when Atlantis and Lemuria sank into the sea. It was given to Brule, the Spear-slayer, first of my line, by the Atlantean Kull, king of Valusia, in the days when the world was young. But shall that profit us now?” “Who knows?” asked the wizard obliquely. “Time and space exist not. There was no past, and there shall be no future. NOW is all. All things that ever were, are, or ever will be, transpire now.
A thousand men camped here, yet the only sounds were occasional low guttural intonations. The silence of the Stone Age rested in the souls of these men.
This man was surely one from some far land–yet in his every look and action there was a vague hint of a greater difference than mere distance of space–a hint of alien Time, of misty abysses and gigantic gulfs of eons lying between the black-haired stranger and the men with whom he walked and talked.
Bran Mak Morn stood just in front of Kull. So they faced each other, he whose kingdom was yet unborn, and he whose kingdom had been lost in the mists of Time for unguessed ages. Kings of darkness, thought Cormac, nameless kings of the night, whose realms are gulfs and shadows.
Whom the gods destroy they first make mad–Cormac had never heard the phrase but it came to him that the great Sulius was a fool. Roman arrogance!
This was the first time the Roman legions had met with that unbreakable formation–that oldest of all Aryan battle-lines–the ancestor of the Spartan regiment–the Theban phalanx–the Macedonian formation–the English square.
