Kull: Exile of Atlantis

by Howard, Robert E.

  They halted before the castle that crouched there like a dark monster and Kuthulos again essayed to argue with the king.

  “Kull, consider! If you burst that seal, you may loose upon the world a monster whose might and frenzy no man can stay!”

  Kull, impatient of restraint, waved him aside. He was in the grip of a wayward perverseness, a common fault of kings, and though usually reasonable he had now made up his mind and was not to be swerved from his course.

  “There are ancient writings on the seal, Kuthulos,” he said. “Read them to me.”

  Kuthulos unwillingly dismounted and the rest followed suit, all save the common soldiers who sat their horses like bronze images in the pale sunlight. The castle leered at them like a sightless skull, for there were no windows whatever and only one great door, that of iron and bolted and sealed. Apparently the building was all in one chamber.

  Kull gave a few orders as to the disposition of the troops and was irritated when he found he was forced to raise his voice unseemingly in order for the commanders to understand him. Their answers came dimly and indistinctly.

  He approached the door, followed by his four comrades. There on a frame beside the door hung a curious appearing gong, apparently of jade–a sort of green in shade. But Kull could not be sure of the color for to his amazed stare it changed and shifted, and sometimes his gaze seemed to be drawn into great depths and sometimes to glance extreme shallowness. Beside the gong hung a mallet of the same strange material. He struck it lightly and then gasped, nearly stunned by the crash of sound which followed–it was like all earth noises concentrated.

  “Read the writings, Kuthulos,” he commanded, again, and the slave bent forward in considerable awe, for no doubt these words had been carved by the great Raama himself.

  “That which was may be again,” he intoned, “then beware, all sons of men!”

  He straightened, a look of fright on his face.

  “A warning! A warning straight from Raama! Mark ye, Kull, mark ye!”

  Kull snorted and drawing his sword, rent the seal from its hold and cut through the great metal bolt. He struck again and again, being aware of the comparative silence with which the blows fell. The bars fell, the door swung open.

  Kuthulos screamed. Kull reeled, stared–the chamber was empty? No! He saw nothing, there was nothing to see, yet he felt the air throb about him as something came billowing from that foul chamber in great unseen waves. Kuthulos leaned to his shoulder and shrieked–and his words came faintly as from over cosmic distance:

  “The silence! This is the soul of all Silence!”

  Sound ceased. Horses plunged and their riders fell face first into the dust and lay clutching at their heads with their hands, screaming without sound.

  Kull alone stood erect, his futile sword thrust in front of him. Silence! Utter and absolute! Throbbing, billowing waves of still horror! Men opened their mouths and shrieked but there was no sound!

  The Silence entered Kull’s soul; it clawed at his heart; it sent tentacles of steel into his brain. He clutched at his forehead in torment; his skull was bursting, shattering. In the wave of horror which engulfed him Kull saw red and colossal visions–the Silence spreading out over the earth, over the Universe! Men died in gibbering stillness; the roar of rivers, the crash of seas, the noise of winds faltered and ceased to be. All Sound was drowned by the Silence. Silence, soul destroying, brain shattering–blotting out all life on earth and reaching monstrously up into the skies, crushing the very singing of the stars!

  And then Kull knew fear, horror, terror–overwhelming, grisly, soul-killing. Faced by the ghastliness of his vision, he swayed and staggered drunkenly, gone wild with fear. Oh gods, for a sound, the very slightest, faintest noise! Kull opened his mouth like the grovelling maniacs behind him and his heart nearly burst from his breast in his effort to shriek. The throbbing stillness mocked him. He smote against the metal sill with his sword. And still the billowing waves flowed from the chamber, clawing at him, tearing at him, taunting him like a being sensate with terrible Life.

  Ka-nu and Kuthulos lay motionless. Tu writhed on his belly, his head in his hands, and squalled soundlessly like a dying jackal. Brule wallowed in the dust like a wounded wolf, clawing blindly at his scabbard.

  Kull could almost see the form of the Silence now, the frightful Silence that was coming out of its Skull at last, to burst the skulls of men. It twisted, it writhed in unholy wisps and shadows, it laughed at him! It lived! Kull staggered and toppled, and as he did his outflung arm struck the gong. Kull heard no sound but he felt a distinct throb and jerk of the waves about him–a slight withdrawal, involuntary, just as a man’s hand jerks back from the flame.

  Ah, old Raama left a safe-guard for the race, even in death! Kull’s dizzy brain suddenly read the riddle. The sea! The gong was like the sea, changing green shades, never still, now deep and now shallow–never silent.

  The sea! Vibrating, pulsing, booming day and night–the greatest enemy of the Silence. Reeling, dizzy, nauseated he caught up the jade mallet. His knees gave way but he clung with one hand to the frame, clutching the mallet with the other, in a desperate death grip. The Silence surged wrathfully about him.

  Mortal, who are you to oppose me, who am older than the gods? Before Life was I was, and shall be when Life dies. Before the invader sound was born, the Universe was silent and shall be again. For I shall spread out through all the cosmos and kill Sound–kill Sound–kill Sound–kill Sound!

  The roar of Silence reverberated through the caverns of Kull’s crumbling brain in abysmal chanting monotones as he struck on the gong–again–and again–and again!

  And at each blow the Silence gave back–inch by inch–inch by inch. Back, back, back. Kull renewed the force of his mallet blows. Now he could faintly hear the far-away tinkle of the gong, over unthinkable voids of stillness–as if someone on the other side of the Universe were striking a silver coin with a horse-shoe nail. At each tiny vibration of noise, the wavering Silence started and shuddered. The tentacles shortened, the waves contracted. The Silence shrank.

  Back and back and back–and back. Now the wisps hovered in the doorway and behind Kull men whimpered and wallowed to their knees, chins sagging and eyes vacant. Kull tore the gong from its frame and reeled toward the door. He was a finish fighter–no compromise for him. There would be no bolting the great door upon the horror again. The whole Universe should have halted to watch a man justifying the existence of man-kind, scaling sublime heights of glory in his supreme atonement.

  He stood in the doorway and leaned against the waves that hung there, hammering ceaselessly. All Hell flowed out to meet him, from the fright thing whose very last stronghold he was invading. All of the Silence was now in the chamber again, forced back by the unconquerable crashings of Sound–Sound concentrated from all the sounds and noises of earth and imprisoned by the master hand that long ago conquered both Sound and Silence.

  And here Silence gathered all its forces for one last attack. Hells of soundless cold and noiseless flame whirled about Kull. Here was a thing, elemental and real. Silence the absence of sound, Kuthulos had said–Kuthulos who now grovelled and yammered empty nothingnesses.

  Here was more than an absence–an absence whose utter absence became a presence–an abstract illusion that was a material reality. Kull reeled, blind, stunned, numb, almost insensible from the onslaught of cosmic forces upon him; soul, body and mind. Cloaked by the whirling tentacles, the noise of the gong died out again. But Kull never ceased. His tortured brain rocked but he thrust his feet against the sill and shoved powerfully forward. He encountered material resistance, like a wall of solid fire, hotter than flame and colder than ice. Still he plunged forward and felt it give–give.

  Step by step, foot by foot he fought his way into the chamber of death, driving the Silence before him. Every step was screaming, demoniac torture; every foot was ravaging Hell. Shoulders hunched, head down, arms raising and falling in jerky rhythm, Kull forced
his way, and great drops of blood gathered on his brow and dropped unceasingly.

  Behind him men were beginning to stagger up, weak and dizzy from the Silence that had invaded their brains. They gaped at the door, where the king fought his deathly battle for the universe. Brule crawled blindly forward, trailing his sword, still dazed, and only following his stunned instinct which bade him follow the king though the trail led to Hell.

  Kull forced the Silence back, step by step, feeling it growing weaker and weaker, feeling it dwindling. Now the sound of the gong pealed out and grew and grew. It filled the room, the earth, the sky. The Silence cringed before it, and as the Silence dwindled and was forced into itself, it took hideous form that Kull saw yet did not see. His arm seemed dead but with a mighty effort he increased his blows. Now the Silence writhed in a dark corner and shrunk and shrunk. Again, a last blow! All the sound in the Universe rushed together in one roaring, yelling, shattering, engulfing burst of sound! The gong blew into a million vibrating fragments! And Silence screamed!

  The Striking of the Gong

  The Striking of the Gong

  Somewhere in the hot red darkness there began a throbbing. A pulsating cadence, soundless but vibrant with reality, sent out long rippling tendrils that flowed through the breathless air. The man stirred, groped about with blind hands, and sat up. At first it seemed to him that he was floating on the even and regular waves of a black ocean, rising and falling with a monotonous regularity which hurt him physically somehow. He was aware of the pulsing and throbbing of the air and he reached out his hands as though to catch the elusive waves. But was the throbbing in the air about him, or in the brain inside his skull? He could not understand and a fantastic thought came to him–a feeling that he was locked inside his own skull.

  The pulsing dwindled, centralized, and he held his aching head in his hands and tried to remember. Remember what?

  “This is a strange thing,” he murmured. “Who or what am I? What place is this? What has happened and why am I here? Have I always been here?”

  He rose to his feet and sought to look about him. Utter darkness met his glance. He strained his eyes, but no single gleam of light met them. He began to walk forward, haltingly, hands out before him, seeking light as instinctively as a growing plant seeks it.

  “This is surely not everything,” he mused. “There must be something else–what is different from this? Light! I know–I remember Light, though I do not remember what Light is. Surely I have known a different world than this.”

  Far away a faint grey light began to glow. He hastened toward it. The gleam widened, until it was as if he were striding down a long and ever widening corridor. Then he came out suddenly into dim starlight and felt the wind cold in his face.

  “This is light,” he murmured, “but this is not all yet.”

  He felt and recognized a sensation of terrific height. High above him, even with his eyes and below him, flashed and blazed great stars in a majestic glittering cosmic ocean. He frowned abstractedly as he gazed at these stars.

  Then he was aware that he was not alone. A tall vague shape loomed before him in the starlight. His hand shot instinctively to his left hip, then fell away limply. He was naked and no weapon hung at his side.

  The shape moved nearer and he saw that it was a man, apparently a very ancient man, though the features were indistinct and illusive in the faint light.

  “You are new come here?” said this figure in a clear deep voice which was much like the chiming of a jade gong. At the sound a sudden trickle of memory began in the brain of the man who heard the voice.

  He rubbed his chin in a bewildered manner.

  “Now I remember,” said he, “I am Kull, king of Valusia–but what am I doing here, without garments or weapons?”

  “No man can bring anything through the Door with him,” said the other, cryptically. “Think, Kull of Valusia, know you not how you came?”

  “I was standing in the doorway of the council chamber,” said Kull, dazedly, “and I remember that the watchman on the outer tower was striking the gong to denote the hour–then suddenly the crash of the gong merged into a wild and sudden flood of shattering sound. All went dark and red sparks flashed for an instant before my eyes. Then I awoke in a cavern or a corridor of some sort, remembering nothing.”

  “You passed through the Door; it always seems dark.”

  “Then I am dead? By Valka, some enemy must have been lurking among the columns of the palace and struck me down as I was speaking with Brule, the Pictish warrior.”

  “I have not said you were dead,” answered the dim figure. “Mayhap the Door is not utterly closed. Such things have been.”

  “But what place is this? Is it paradise or Hell? This is not the world I have known since birth. And those stars–I have never seen them before. Those constellations are mightier and more fiery than I ever knew in life.”

  “There are worlds beyond worlds, universes within and without universes,” said the ancient. “You are upon a different planet than that upon which you were born, you are in a different universe, doubtless in a different dimension.”

  “Then I am certainly dead.”

  “What is death but a traversing of eternities and a crossing of cosmic oceans? But I have not said that you are dead.”

  “Then where in Valka’s name am I?” roared Kull, his short stock of patience exhausted.

  “Your barbarian brain clutches at material actualities,” answered the other tranquilly. “What does it matter where you are, or whether you are dead, as you call it? You are a part of that great ocean which is Life, which washes upon all shores, and you are as much a part of it in one place as in another, and as sure to eventually flow back to the Source of it, which gave birth to all Life. As for that, you are bound to Life for all Eternity as surely as a tree, a rock, a bird or a world is bound. You call leaving your tiny planet, quitting your crude physical form–death!”

  “But I still have my body.”

  “I have not said that you are dead, as you name it. As for that, you may be still upon your little planet, as far as you know. Worlds within worlds, universes within universes. Things exist too small and too large for human comprehension. Each pebble on the beaches of Valusia contains countless universes within itself, and itself as a whole is as much a part of the great plan of all universes, as is the sun you know. Your universe, Kull of Valusia, may be a pebble on the shore of a mighty kingdom.

  “You have broken the bounds of material limitations. You may be in a universe which goes to make up a gem on the robe you wore on Valusia’s throne or that universe you knew may be in the spider web which lies there on the grass near your feet. I tell you, size and space and time are relative and do not really exist.”

  “Surely you are a god?” said Kull curiously.

  “The mere accumulation of knowledge and the acquiring of wisdom does not make a god,” answered the other rather impatiently. “Look!” A shadowy hand pointed to the great blazing gems which were the stars.

  Kull looked and saw that they were changing swiftly. A constant weaving, an incessant changing of design and pattern was taking place.

  “The ‘everlasting’ stars change in their own time, as swiftly as the races of men rise and fade. Even as we watch, upon those which are planets, beings are rising from the slime of the primeval, are climbing up the long slow roads to culture and wisdom, and are being destroyed with their dying worlds. All life and a part of life. To them it seems billions of years; to us, but a moment. All life. And a part of life.”

  Kull watched fascinated, as huge stars and mighty constellations blazed and waned and faded, while others equally as radiant took their places, to be in turn supplanted.

  Then suddenly the hot red darkness flowed over him again, blotting out all the stars. As through a thick fog, he heard a faint familiar clashing.

  Then he was on his feet, reeling. Sunlight met his eyes, the tall marble pillars and walls of a palace, the wide curtained windows th
rough which the sunlight flowed like molten gold. He passed a swift, dazed hand over his body feeling his garments and the sword at his side. He was bloody; a red stream trickled down his temple from a shallow cut. But most of the blood on his limbs and clothing was not his. At his feet in a horrid crimson wallow lay what had been a man. The clashing he had heard, ceased, re-echoing.

  “Brule! What is this?! What happened?! Where have I been?”

  “You had nearly been on a journey to old king Death’s realms,” answered the Pict with a mirthless grin as he cleansed his sword. “That spy was lying in wait behind a column and was on you like a leopard as you turned to speak to me in the doorway. Whoever plotted your death must have had great power to so send a man to his certain doom. Had not the sword turned in his hand and struck glancing instead of straight, you had gone before him with a cleft skull, instead of standing here now mulling over a mere flesh wound.”

  “But surely,” said Kull, “that was hours agone.”

  Brule laughed.

  “You are still mazed, lord king. From the time he leaped and you fell, to the time I slashed the heart out of him, a man could not have counted the fingers of one hand. And during the time you were lying in his blood and yours on the floor, no more than twice that time elapsed. See, Tu has not yet arrived with bandages and he scurried for them the moment you went down.”

  “Aye, you are right,” answered Kull, “I cannot understand–but just before I was struck down I heard the gong sounding the hour, and it was still sounding when I came to myself.

  “Brule, there is no such thing as time, nor space; for I have travelled the longest journey of my life, and have lived countless millions of years during the striking of the gong.”