IX
The moment I rounded the corner, I had to stop, when I saw a crying little boy of about seven, his sweet face pale from tears; he rubbed his eyes with his tiny fists plaintively and whimpered. With concern, natural for anyone at such an encounter, I leaned to him, asking, “Little boy, where are you from? Were you abandoned? How did you happen here?”
He sobbed and remained silent, looking up at me and terrifying me with his stare. His skinny body shook, his little feet were dirty and bare. As much as I was driven to the place of danger, I could not abandon a child, especially since he kept quiet, from fatigue or fear, and only trembled and recoiled at my every question, as if from a threat. I stroked his hair and looked into his tear-filled eyes, but he could only hang his head and cry. “Little friend,” I said, having decided to knock on some doors to see if anyone would take the child in. “Wait here, I’ll be back soon, and we’ll find your wayward mommy.” But to my surprise, he seized my hand, not letting go. There was something base and wild in his effort; he even skidded along the sidewalk a bit when I jerked my hand away with sudden suspicion. His lovely face was twisted, squeezed into a tense grimace. “Hey you!” I shouted, trying to wrestle my hand free. “Let go!” And I pushed him away. No longer crying and still silent, he stared at me with his enormous black eyes; then he stood and, tittering a bit, walked so fast that I started in surprise. “Who are you?” I yelled with a threat in my voice. He giggled and, picking up the pace, disappeared around the corner, and I still stared for a while in that direction, feeling like I had just been bitten, until I remembered myself and ran as quickly as a man chasing a tram. My breath caught and I had to stop twice, and walked for a bit, then ran again, and when out of breath walked in an insane gait, as quick as a run.
I reached Konnogvardeysky Boulevard when a girl passed me, glancing at me with an expression of a straining memory. She was about to keep walking when I recognized her with an internal push, the delight of salvation. My call and her exclamation rang out in unison, and she stopped with an expression of sweet annoyance.
“But it’s you!” she said. “I can’t believe I did not recognize you! I almost walked by until I saw your agitation. How tormented you look, how pale!”
A great bewilderment yet a great calm descended over me. I looked at this nearly lost face with faith in complex and meaningful coincidences, with a radiant and acute shyness. I was so overwhelmed, so internally startled by her in my journey to find her; but the end of my trek had been already presented to me by my impatient imagination, and now I felt torn—it would be sweeter for me to have found her there.
“Listen,” I told her, not looking away from her trusting eyes, “I was rushing to your place. It’s not too late.”
She interrupted me and led me aside by my sleeve. “Now it’s too early,” she said meaningfully. “Or late, however you want to look at it. It’s light out, but it is still night. And you should come by in the evening, do you hear? And I will tell you everything. I thought a lot about our relationship. Please know: I love you.”
It was as if the clock had stopped. That moment, my heart no longer beat with hers. She could not, should not have said this. With a sigh I let go of the small fresh hand holding mine and stepped back. She looked at me, her face ready to tremble with impatience. That expression skewed her features—tenderness became dullness, her eyes darted sharply.
I breathed a hollow laugh and wagged my finger. “No, you won’t trick me,” I said. “She is there. She is sleeping now, and I will wake her. Go away, foul creature, whoever you are.”
Flutter of a handkerchief quickly thrown before my very face was the last thing I saw clearly. Then there were narrow spaces between trees, sometimes showing a running female figure, sometimes indicating that it was I who was running as hard as possible. The clocktower of the square was already visible. The gates were down and the bridges were just starting to rise; far away, by the opposite embankment, a black tugboat was spewing smoke, straining the cable of the barge. I jumped over the gates and crossed the bridge at the last moment, when the rift had already split the tram rails. My flying leap was met by the swearing and screaming of the watchmen, but, barely glancing at the shining sliver of water below, I was already far from them and I ran until I reached the gates.
X
Then, or rather a bit later, the moment from which I could reconstruct going backward my desperate and dimmed act, took place. First of all I saw the girl, standing by the door, listening, her hand extended toward me as people do when asking or demanding for us to sit still. She wore a summer coat; her face looked alarmed and sad. She was sleeping just before I got there. I knew that, but the circumstances of my arrival slipped away from me, like water in a closed fist, the moment I tried to string everything together. Obeying her alarmed gesture, I kept sitting quietly, waiting for the results of her intent listening. I tried to discern its meaning in vain. Just a bit more and I could have made the decisive effort to overcome my extreme weakness, I wanted to ask what was happening now in this large room when, as if guessing my intention, the girl turned her head, frowning and wagging her finger. Then I remembered that her name was Susie, that someone who exited here called her by that name and told her, “We need absolute silence.” Was I sleeping or just scattered? Trying to solve this question, I looked down to see that the bottom of my coat was torn. But it was undamaged when I hurried here. My confusion became surprise. Then everything shook and as if drained out, stirring up the light; blood rushed to my head and a deafening crack, like a gunshot next to my ear, then a shout, “Halt!” someone behind the door yelled. I jumped up, sucking in air. From behind the door, a man in a gray housecoat appeared, showing the girl, who took a step back, a small board on which, crushed by an arced wire, a giant black rat, broken in two, hung. Its teeth were bared, its tail limp.
My memory was jolted from its terrifying state by the blow and the scream, and it crossed the dark void. I immediately grasped and held on too much. My senses spoke. My internal gaze returned to the beginning of the scene, reliving the chain of my efforts. I remembered climbing over the gates, too afraid to knock lest I attracted a new danger, how I crossed the doorway and rang the doorbell for the third story. But the argument behind the doors—the argument that went long and worrisome, when a man’s and a woman’s voice argued whether to let me in—I had forgotten completely. I only restored it later.
All these not completely fitting images appeared with the speed of a glance through a window. The old man carrying the rat trap had a dense gray cap of short hair, round like the cup of an acorn. Sharp nose, shaven thin lips wearing an intractable expression, bright pale eyes and tufts of sideburns on his pink face, ending in the forward-jutting chin, sunken into a blue scarf, would be of interest to a portraitist, a connoisseur of strong character lines.
He said, “You are seeing the so-called black Guinea rat. Its bite is very dangerous. It causes a slow rot of the living body, turning the one so bitten into an assemblage of tumors and boils. This rodent species is quite rare in Europe, but sometimes steamships carry them here. The “free passage” you heard of last night, is an artificial gap I created near my kitchen to experiment with different trap designs; two last days the passage has indeed been free, since I was too engrossed in Aert Aertus’s The Cellar of a King Rat, a book quite rare. It was printed in Germany four hundred years ago. The author was burned at the stake for heresy in Bremen. Your tale….”
Then I already told them everything I meant to. But I still had some doubts. I asked, “Did you take any precautions? Do you know the nature of this danger, since I don’t quite understand it?”
“Precautions?” Susie said. “Which precautions are you talking about?”
“Danger,” the old man started but stopped as soon as he glanced at Susie. “I don’t understand.”
There was a slight impasse as the three of us traded expectant looks.
&n
bsp; “I am saying,” I started, uncertain, “that you must be careful. I think I already said this but forgive me, I cannot quite remember what I did say. It seems to me now that I was in a deep swoon.”
The girl looked at her father and then at me, with a puzzled smile. “How can it be?”
“He is tired, Susie,” the old man said. “I know insomnia. Everything was said, and the measures have been taken. If I call this rat,” he dropped the trap at my feet with the satisfied mien of a hunter, “if I call it ‘The Redeemer,’ you will understand.”
“It’s a joke,” I objected, “and a joke of course appropriate for the profession of a Ratcatcher.” As I said it, I remembered a small plaque under the doorbell. It said:
“RATCATCHER”—Extermination of rats and mice—I. Iensen. Phone 1-08-01
I saw it when I entered.
“You are joking, since I don’t think that this Redeemer would cause you too much trouble.”
“He is not joking,” said Susie. “He knows.”
I compared these two gazes, to which I responded with a smile of vain guesses—the gaze of youth, filled with genuine conviction, and the gaze of old but clear eyes, filled with hesitation at whether to continue the conversation in this manner.
“I will let Aert Aertus tell you something about these matters for me.” The Ratcatcher left and returned with an old book bound in leather, with a red edge. “Here’s an excerpt you can laugh at or contemplate, whatever you please.”
“This treacherous and glum creature possesses the abilities of a human mind. It also commands the mysteries of the underground where it dwells. It has the power to change its appearance, showing itself as a human being with arms and legs, wearing clothes, having a face, eyes, movements similar to a man, and not at all inferior to his—like his complete but false image. Rats can also inflict incurable disease, using the ways available only to them.
They are aided by death, famine, war, floods, and invasions. Then they gather under the sigils of mysterious transformations, acting as people, and you would talk to them without knowing who they are. They steal and sell with gains surprising for an honest laborer, and they fool with their shiny clothes and soft speech. They kill and burn, swindle and lie in wait; they surround themselves with luxury, eat and drink their fill, and have everything in abundance. Gold and silver are their favorite spoils, as well as gemstones they keep in treasuries underground.”
“But enough reading,” said the Ratcatcher, “and you of course have already guessed why I translated this particular passage. You were surrounded by rats.”
But I already knew. Sometimes we prefer to keep quiet to let the new impression, uncertain and torn by other considerations, find a reliable foothold. Meanwhile the furniture covers shone under the daylight spilling from the windows, and the first voices of the street sounded clear, as if they were in the room. Again I was sinking into oblivion. The faces of the girl and her father grew distant, becoming hazy apparitions limned by transparent fog. “Susie, what’s wrong with him?” a loud question rang out. The girl came closer, hovering somewhere near me but I could not see where exactly because I could not turn my head. Suddenly my forehead grew warm from a woman’s hand pressing against it, just as the surroundings, their lines twisted and blurred, disappeared in a chaotic mental avalanche. Wild, deep sleep abducted me. I heard her voice, “He is sleeping”—the words to which I woke up after thirty nonexistent hours.
I had been carried to the crammed neighboring room, onto a real bed, after which I learned that I “was very light for a man.” Someone took pity on me; a room in the neighboring apartment was given to me the very next day. There is no accounting for the future. But it is up to me to make it akin to the moment when I felt the warm hand on my forehead. I must earn trust.
And now—not another word.
Robert Ervin Howard (1906–1936), or Robert E. Howard, was born in Peaster, Texas, and had a passion for oral storytelling. He began writing around the age of nine and made his first professional sale at eighteen. Despite having a professional career of only twelve years, Howard’s passion for words led him to write more than one hundred short stories. Many know him as the creator of Conan the Barbarian, the wanderer Solomon Kane, and the Godfather of the fantasy subgenre known as sword and sorcery. He was a dynamic storyteller and thus little wonder that his characters remain popular, many of which have been featured in films. “The Shadow Kingdom” was originally published in 1929 in the magazine Weird Tales. Part of Howard’s popular Kull of Atlantis series and set in the fictional Thurian Age, it is an immensely creative work brimming with suspense and paranoia.
The Shadow Kingdom
Robert E. Howard
1. A KING COMES RIDING
THE BLARE OF THE TRUMPETS grew louder, like a deep golden tide surge, like the soft booming of the evening tides against the silver beaches of Valusia. The throng shouted, women flung roses from the roofs as the rhythmic chiming of silver hosts came clearer and the first of the mighty array swung into view in the broad, white street that curved round the golden-spired Tower of Splendor.
First came the trumpeters, slim youths, clad in scarlet, riding with a flourish of long, slender golden trumpets; next the bowmen, tall men from the mountains; and behind these the heavily armed footmen, their broad shields clashing in unison, their long spears swaying in perfect rhythm to their stride. Behind them came the mightiest soldiery in all the world, the Red Slayers, horsemen, splendidly mounted, armed in red from helmet to spur. Proudly they sat their steeds, looking neither to right nor to left, but aware of the shouting for all that. Like bronze statues they were, and there was never a waver in the forest of spears that reared above them.
Behind those proud and terrible ranks came the motley files of the mercenaries, fierce, wild-looking warriors, men of Mu and of Kaa-u and of the hills of the east and the isles of the west. They bore spears and heavy swords, and a compact group that marched somewhat apart were the bowmen of Lemuria. Then came the light foot of the nation, and more trumpeters brought up the rear.
A brave sight, and a sight which aroused a fierce thrill in the soul of Kull, king of Valusia. Not on the Topaz Throne at the front of the regal Tower of Splendor sat Kull, but in the saddle, mounted on a great stallion, a true warrior king. His mighty arm swung up in reply to the salutes as the hosts passed. His fierce eyes passed the gorgeous trumpeters with a casual glance, rested longer on the following soldiery; they blazed with a ferocious light as the Red Slayers halted in front of him with a clang of arms and a rearing of steeds, and tendered him the crown salute. They narrowed slightly as the mercenaries strode by. They saluted no one, the mercenaries. They walked with shoulders flung back, eyeing Kull boldly and straightly, albeit with a certain appreciation; fierce eyes, unblinking; savage eyes, staring from beneath shaggy manes and heavy brows.
And Kull gave back a like stare. He granted much to brave men, and there were no braver in all the world, not even among the wild tribesmen who now disowned him. But Kull was too much the savage to have any great love for these. There were too many feuds. Many were age-old enemies of Kull’s nation, and though the name of Kull was now a word accursed among the mountains and valleys of his people, and though Kull had put them from his mind, yet the old hates, the ancient passions still lingered. For Kull was no Valusian but an Atlantean.
The armies swung out of sight around the gem-blazing shoulders of the Tower of Splendor and 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.” So down the street they rode, and Kull gave no heed to any of the whispers that reached his hearing from the throngs that still swarmed the streets.
“That is Kull, see! Valka! But what a king! And
what a man! Look at his arms! His shoulders!”
And an undertone of more sinister whispering:
“Kull! Ha, accursed usurper from the pagan isles.” “Aye, shame to Valusia that a barbarian sits on the Throne of Kings.”
Little did Kull heed. Heavy-handed had he seized the decaying throne of ancient Valusia and with a heavier hand did he hold it, a man against a nation.
After the council chamber, the social palace where Kull replied to the formal and laudatory phrases of the lords and ladies, with carefully hidden grim amusement at such frivolities; then the lords and ladies took their formal departure and Kull leaned back upon the ermine throne and contemplated matters of state until an attendant requested permission from the great king to speak, and announced an emissary from the Pictish embassy.
The Big Book of Classic Fantasy Page 134
