The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune, Robert E. Howard [chrome ebook reader TXT] 📗

sea was the mirror

of Tuzun Thune; hard as the sea in the sun’s slanting beams, in the

darkness of the stars, when no eye can pierce her deeps; vast and

mystic as the sea when the sun smites her in such way that the

watcher’s breath is caught at the glimpse of tremendous abysses. So

was the mirror in which Kull gazed.

 

At last the king rose with a sigh and took his departure still

wondering. And Kull came again to the House of a Thousand Mirrors; day

after day he came and sat for hours before the mirror. The eyes looked

out at him, identical with his; yet Kull seemed to sense a difference—a

reality that was not of him. Hour upon hour he would stare with

strange intensity into the mirror; hour after hour the image gave back

his gaze.

 

The business of the palace and of the council went neglected. The

people murmured; Kull’s stallion stamped restlessly in his stable, and

Kull’s warriors diced and argued aimlessly with one another. Kull

heeded not. At times he seemed on the point of discovering some vast,

unthinkable secret. He no longer thought of the image in the mirror as

a shadow of himself; the thing, to him, was an entity, similar in

outer appearance, yet basically as far from Kull himself as the poles

are far apart. The image, it seemed to Kull, had an individuality

apart from Kull’s, he was no more dependent on Kull than Kull was

dependent on him. And day by day Kull doubted in which world he really

lived; was he the shadow, summoned at will by the other? Did he

instead of the other live in a world of delusion, the shadow of the

real world?

 

Kull began to wish that he might enter the personality beyond the

mirror for a space, to see what might be seen; yet should he manage to

go beyond that door could he ever return? Would he find a world

identical with the one in which he moved? A world, of which his was

but a ghostly reflection? Which was reality and which illusion?

 

At times Kull halted to wonder how such thoughts and dreams had come

to enter his mind, and at times he wondered if they came of his own

volition or—here his thoughts would become mazed. His meditations were

his own; no man ruled his thoughts, and he would summon them at his

pleasure; yet could he? Were they not as bats, coming and going, not

at his pleasure but at the bidding or ruling of—of whom? The gods? The

Women who wove the webs of Fate? Kull could come to no conclusion, for

at each mental step he became more and more bewildered in a hazy fog

of illusory assertions and refutations. This much he knew: that

strange visions entered his mind, like flying unbidden from the

whispering void of non-existence; never had he thought these thoughts,

but now they ruled his mind, sleeping and waking, so that he seemed to

walk in a daze at times; and his sleep was fraught with strange,

monstrous dreams.

 

“Tell me, wizard,” he said, sitting before the mirror, eyes fixed

intently upon his image, “how can I pass yon door? For of a truth, I

am not sure that that is the real world and this the shadow; at least,

that which I see must exist in some form.”

 

“See and believe,” droned the wizard. “Man must believe to accomplish.

Form is shadow, substance is illusion, materiality is dream; man is

because he believes he is; what is man but a dream of the gods? Yet

man can be that which he wishes to be; form and substance, they are

but shadows. The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream—that is

real, that is immortal. See and believe, if you would accomplish,

Kull.”

 

The king did not fully understand; he never fully understood the

enigmatical utterances of the wizard; yet they struck somewhere in his

being a dim responsive chord. So day after day he sat before the

mirrors of Tuzun Thune. Ever the wizard lurked behind him like a

shadow.

 

Then came a day when Kull seemed to catch glimpses of strange lands;

there flitted across his consciousness dim thoughts and recognitions.

Day by day he had seemed to lose touch with the world; all things had

seemed each succeeding day more ghostly and unreal; only the man in

the mirror seemed like reality. Now Kull seemed to be close to the

doors of some mightier worlds; giant vistas gleamed fleetingly; the

fogs of unreality thinned; “form is shadow, substance is illusion;

they are but shadows” sounded as if from some far country of his

consciousness. He remembered the wizard’s words and it seemed to him

that now he almost understood—form and substance, could not he change

himself at will, if he knew the master key that opened this door? What

worlds within what worlds awaited the bold explorer?

 

The man in the mirror seemed smiling at him closer, closer—a fog

enwrapped all and the reflection dimmed suddenly—Kull knew a sensation

of fading, of change, of merging…

 

“Kull!” the yell split the silence into a million vibratory fragments!

 

Mountains crashed and worlds tottered as Kull, hurled back by the

frantic shout, made a superhuman effort, how or why he did not know.

 

A crash, and Kull stood in the room of Tuzun Thune before a shattered

mirror, mazed and half blind with bewilderment. There before him lay

the body of Tuzun Thune, whose time had come at last, and above him

stood Brule the Spearslayer, sword dripping red and eyes wide with a

kind of horror.

 

“Valka!” swore the warrior. “Kull, it was time I came!”

 

“Aye, yet what happened?” The king groped for words.

 

“Ask this traitress,” answered the Spearslayer, indicating a girl who

crouched in terror before the king; Kull saw that it was she who first

sent him to Tuzun Thune. “As I came in I saw you fading into yon

mirror as smoke fades into the sky, by Valka! Had I not seen I would

not have believed you had almost vanished when my shout brought you

back.”

 

“Aye,” muttered Kull, “I had almost gone beyond the door that time.”

 

“This fiend wrought most craftily,” said Brule. “KULL, do you not now

see how he spun and flung over you a web of magic? Kaanuub of Blaal

plotted with this wizard to do away with you, and this wench, a girl

of the Elder Race, put the thought in your mind so that you would come

here. Ka-na of the council learned of the plot today; I know not what

you saw in that mirror, but with it Tuzun Thune enthralled your soul

and almost by his witchery he changed your body to mist—”

 

“Aye.” Kull was still mazed. “But being a wizard, having knowledge of

all the ages and despising gold, glory, and position, what could

Kaanuub offer Tuzun Thune that would make of him a foul traitor?”

 

“Gold, power, and position,” grunted Brule. “The sooner you learn that

men are men whether wizard, king, or thrall, the better you will rule,

Kull. Now what of her?”

 

“Naught, Brule,” as the girl whimpered and groveled at Kull’s feet.

“She was but a tool. Rise, child, and go your ways; none shall harm

you.”

 

Alone with Brule, Kull looked for the last time on the mirrors of

Tuzun Thune.

 

“Mayhap he plotted and conjured, Brule; nay, I doubt you not, yet—was

it his witchery that was changing me to thin mist, or had I stumbled

on a secret? Had you not brought me back, had I faded in dissolution

or had I found worlds beyond this?”

 

Brule stole a glance at the mirrors, and twitched his shoulders as if

he shuddered. “Aye, Tuzun Thune stored the wisdom of all the hells

here. Let us be gone, Kull, ere they bewitch me, too.”

 

“Let us go, then,” answered Kull, and side by side they went forth

from the House of a Thousand Mirrors—where, mayhap, are prisoned the

souls of men.

 

None look now in the mirrors of Tuzun Thune. The pleasure boats shun

the shore where stands the wizard’s house, and no one goes in the

house or to the room where Tuzun Thune’s dried and withered carcass

lies before the mirrors of illusion. The place is shunned as a place

accursed, and though it stands for a thousand years to come, no

footsteps shall echo there. Yet Kull upon his throne meditates often

upon the strange wisdom and untold secrets hidden there and wonders…

 

For there are worlds beyond worlds, as Kull knows, and whether the

wizard bewitched him by words or by mesmerism, vistas did open to the

kings gaze beyond that strange door, and Kull is less sure of reality

since he gazed into the mirrors of Tuzun Thune.

THE END