Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

  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 Spear-slayer, 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 Spear-slayer, 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.

  SOLOMON KANE

  A late 16th/early 17th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a somber-looking man that wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. His adventures, published mostly in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, often take him from Europe to the jungles of Africa and back.

  Howard describes him as a sombre and gloomy figure of pale face and cold eyes, all of it shadowed by a slouch hat. He is dressed entirely in black and his weaponry usually consists of a rapier, a dirk and a brace of flintlock pistols. During one of his latter adventures his friend N’Longa, an African shaman, gives him a juju staff that serves as a protection against evil, but can easily be wielded as an effective weapon. It is revealed in another story, ‘The Footfalls Within’, that this is the mythical Staff of Solomon, a talisman older than the Earth and unimaginably powerful, much more so than even N’Longa knew.

  Film poster for the 2009 film adaptation featuring James Purefoy as Kane

  CONTENTS

  RED SHADOWS; OR, SOLOMON KANE

  SKULLS IN THE STARS

  RATTLE OF BONES

  RED SHADOWS; OR, SOLOMON KANE

  First published in Weird Tales, August 1928

  CONTENTS

  I. — THE COMING OF SOLOMON

  II. — THE LAIR OF THE WOLF

  III. — THE CHANT OF THE DRUMS

  IV. — THE BLACK GOD

  V. — THE END OF THE RED TRAIL

  I. — THE COMING OF SOLOMON

  THE MOONLIGHT shimmered hazily, making silvery mists of illusion among the shadowy trees. A faint breeze whispered down the valley, bearing a shadow that was not of the moon-mist. A faint scent of smoke was apparent.

  The man whose long, swinging strides, unhurried yet unswerving, had carried him for many a mile since sunrise, stopped suddenly. A movement in the trees had caught his attention, and he moved silently toward the shadows, a hand resting lightly on the hilt of his long, slim rapier.

  Warily he advanced, his eyes striving to pierce the darkness that brooded under the trees. This was a wild and menacing country; death might be lurking under those trees. Then his hand fell away from the hilt and he leaned forward. Death indeed was there, but not in such shape as might cause him fear.

  “The fires of Hades!” he murmured. “A girl! What has harmed you, child? Be not afraid of me.”

  The girl looked up at him, her face like a dim white rose in the dark.

  “You — who are — you?” her words came in gasps.

  “Naught but a wanderer, a landless man, but a friend to all in need.” The gentle voice sounded somehow incongruous, coming from the man.

  The girl sought to prop herself up on her elbow, and instantly he knelt and raised her to a sitting position, her head resting against his shoulder. His hand touched her breast and came away red and wet.

  “Tell me.” His voice was soft, soothing, as one speaks to a babe.

  “Le Loup,” she gasped, her voice swiftly growing weaker. “He and his men — descended upon our village — a mile up the valley. They robbed — slew — burned—”

  “That, then, was the smoke I scented,” muttered the man. “Go on, child.”

  “I ran. He, the Wolf, pursued me — and — caught me—” The words died away in a shuddering silence.

  “I understand, child. Then — ?”

  “Then — he — he — stabbed me — with his dagger — oh, ble
ssed saints! — mercy—”

  Suddenly the slim form went limp. The man eased her to the earth, and touched her brow lightly.

  “Dead!” he muttered.

  Slowly he rose, mechanically wiping his hands upon his cloak. A dark scowl had settled on his somber brow. Yet he made no wild, reckless vow, swore no oath by saints or devils.

  “Men shall die for this,” he said coldly.

  * * *

  II. — THE LAIR OF THE WOLF

  “YOU ARE A FOOL!” The words came in a cold snarl that curdled the hearer’s blood.

  He who had just been named a fool lowered his eyes sullenly without answer.

  “You and all the others I lead!” The speaker leaned forward, his fist pounding emphasis on the rude table between them. He was a tall, rangy-built man, supple as a leopard and with a lean, cruel, predatory face. His eyes danced and glittered with a kind of reckless mockery.

  The fellow spoken to replied sullenly, “This Solomon Kane is a demon from Hell, I tell you.”

  “Faugh! Dolt! He is a man — who will die from a pistol ball or a sword thrust.”

  “So thought Jean, Juan and La Costa,” answered the other grimly. “Where are they? Ask the mountain wolves that tore the flesh from their dead bones. Where does this Kane hide? We have searched the mountains and the valleys for leagues, and we have found no trace. I tell you, Le Loup, he comes up from Hell. I knew no good would come from hanging that friar a moon ago.”

  The Wolf strummed impatiently upon the table. His keen face, despite lines of wild living and dissipation, was the face of a thinker. The superstitions of his followers affected him not at all.

  “Faugh! I say again. The fellow has found some cavern or secret vale of which we do not know where he hides in the day.”

  “And at night he sallies forth and slays us,” gloomily commented the other. “He hunts us down as a wolf hunts deer — by God, Le Loup, you name yourself Wolf but I think you have met at last a fiercer and more crafty wolf than yourself! The first we know of this man is when we find Jean, the most desperate bandit unhung, nailed to a tree with his own dagger through his breast, and the letters S.L.K. carved upon his dead cheeks. Then the Spaniard Juan is struck down, and after we find him he lives long enough to tell us that the slayer is an Englishman, Solomon Kane, who has sworn to destroy our entire band! What then? La Costa, a swordsman second only to yourself, goes forth swearing to meet this Kane. By the demons of perdition, it seems he met him! For we found his sword-pierced corpse upon a cliff. What now? Are we all to fall before this English fiend?”

  “True, our best men have been done to death by him,” mused the bandit chief. “Soon the rest return from that little trip to the hermit’s; then we shall see. Kane can not hide forever. Then — ha, what was that?”

  The two turned swiftly as a shadow fell across the table. Into the entrance of the cave that formed the bandit lair, a man staggered. His eyes were wide and staring; he reeled on buckling legs, and a dark red stain dyed his tunic. He came a few tottering steps forward, then pitched across the table, sliding off onto the floor.

  “Hell’s devils!” cursed the Wolf, hauling him upright and propping him in a chair. “Where are the rest, curse you?”

  “Dead! All dead!”

  “How? Satan’s curses on you, speak!” The Wolf shook the man savagely, the other bandit gazing on in wide-eyed horror.

  “We reached the hermit’s hut just as the moon rose,” the man muttered. “I stayed outside — to watch — the others went in — to torture the hermit — to make him reveal — the hiding-place — of his gold.”

  “Yes, yes! Then what?” The Wolf was raging with impatience.

  “Then the world turned red — the hut went up in a roar and a red rain flooded the valley — through it I saw — the hermit and a tall man clad all in black — coming from the trees—”

  “Solomon Kane!” gasped the bandit. “I knew it! I—”

  “Silence, fool!” snarled the chief. “Go on!”

  “I fled — Kane pursued — wounded me — but I outran — him — got — here — first—”

  The man slumped forward on the table.

  “Saints and devils!” raged the Wolf. “What does he look like, this Kane?”

  “Like — Satan—”

  The voice trailed off in silence. The dead man slid from the table to lie in a red heap upon the floor.

  “Like Satan!” babbled the other bandit. “I told you! ’Tis the Horned One himself! I tell you—”

  He ceased as a frightened face peered in at the cave entrance.

  “Kane?”

  “Aye.” The Wolf was too much at sea to lie. “Keep close watch, La Mon; in a moment the Rat and I will join you.”

  The face withdrew and Le Loup turned to the other.

  “This ends the band,” said he. “You, I, and that thief La Mon are all that are left. What would you suggest?”

  The Rat’s pallid lips barely formed the word: “Flight!”

  “You are right. Let us take the gems and gold from the chests and flee, using the secret passageway.”

  “And La Mon?”

  “He can watch until we are ready to flee. Then — why divide the treasure three ways?”

  A faint smile touched the Rat’s malevolent features. Then a sudden thought smote him.

  “He,” indicating the corpse on the floor, “said, ‘I got here first.’ Does that mean Kane was pursuing him here?” And as the Wolf nodded impatiently the other turned to the chests with chattering haste.

  The flickering candle on the rough table lighted up a strange and wild scene. The light, uncertain and dancing, gleamed redly in the slowly widening lake of blood in which the dead man lay; it danced upon the heaps of gems and coins emptied hastily upon the floor from the brass-bound chests that ranged the walls; and it glittered in the eyes of the Wolf with the same gleam which sparkled from his sheathed dagger.

  The chests were empty, their treasure lying in a shimmering mass upon the bloodstained floor. The Wolf stopped and listened. Outside was silence. There was no moon, and Le Loup’s keen imagination pictured the dark slayer, Solomon Kane, gliding through the blackness, a shadow among shadows. He grinned crookedly; this time the Englishman would be foiled.

  “There is a chest yet unopened,” said he, pointing.

  The Rat, with a muttered exclamation of surprize, bent over the chest indicated. With a single, catlike motion, the Wolf sprang upon him, sheathing his dagger to the hilt in the Rat’s back, between the shoulders. The Rat sagged to the floor without a sound.

  “Why divide the treasure two ways?” murmured Le Loup, wiping his blade upon the dead man’s doublet. “Now for La Mon.”

  He stepped toward the door; then stopped and shrank back.

  At first he thought that it was the shadow of a man who stood in the entrance; then he saw that it was a man himself, though so dark and still he stood that a fantastic semblance of shadow was lent him by the guttering candle.

  A tall man, as tall as Le Loup he was, clad in black from head to foot, in plain, close-fitting garments that somehow suited the somber face. Long arms and broad shoulders betokened the swordsman, as plainly as the long rapier in his hand. The features of the man were saturnine and gloomy. A kind of dark pallor lent him a ghostly appearance in the uncertain light, an effect heightened by the satanic darkness of his lowering brows. Eyes, large, deep-set and unblinking, fixed their gaze upon the bandit, and looking into them, Le Loup was unable to decide what color they were. Strangely, the mephistophelean trend of the lower features was offset by a high, broad forehead, though this was partly hidden by a featherless hat.

  That forehead marked the dreamer, the idealist, the introvert, just as the eyes and the thin, straight nose betrayed the fanatic. An observer would have been struck by the eyes of the two men who stood there, facing each other. Eyes of both betokened untold deeps of power, but there the resemblance ceased.

  The eyes of the bandit were hard, almost
opaque, with a curious scintillant shallowness that reflected a thousand changing lights and gleams, like some strange gem; there was mockery in those eyes, cruelty and recklessness.

  The eyes of the man in black, on the other hand, deep-set and staring from under prominent brows, were cold but deep; gazing into them, one had the impression of looking into countless fathoms of ice.

  Now the eyes clashed, and the Wolf, who was used to being feared, felt a strange coolness on his spine. The sensation was new to him — a new thrill to one who lived for thrills, and he laughed suddenly.

  “You are Solomon Kane, I suppose?” he asked, managing to make his question sound politely incurious.

  “I am Solomon Kane.” The voice was resonant and powerful. “Are you prepared to meet your God?”

  “Why, Monsieur,” Le Loup answered, bowing, “I assure you I am as ready as I ever will be. I might ask Monsieur the same question.”

  “No doubt I stated my inquiry wrongly,” Kane said grimly. “I will change it: Are you prepared to meet your master, the Devil?”

  “As to that, Monsieur” — Le Loup examined his finger nails with elaborate unconcern— “I must say that I can at present render a most satisfactory account to his Horned Excellency, though really I have no intention of so doing — for a while at least.”

  Le Loup did not wonder as to the fate of La Mon; Kane’s presence in the cave was sufficient answer that did not need the trace of blood on his rapier to verify it.

  “What I wish to know, Monsieur,” said the bandit, “is why in the Devil’s name have you harassed my band as you have, and how did you destroy that last set of fools?”

  “Your last question is easily answered, sir,” Kane replied. “I myself had the tale spread that the hermit possessed a store of gold, knowing that would draw your scum as carrion draws vultures. For days and nights I have watched the hut, and tonight, when I saw your villains coming, I warned the hermit, and together we went among the trees back of the hut. Then, when the rogues were inside, I struck flint and steel to the train I had laid, and flame ran through the trees like a red snake until it reached the powder I had placed beneath the hut floor. Then the hut and thirteen sinners went to Hell in a great roar of flame and smoke. True, one escaped, but him I had slain in the forest had not I stumbled and fallen upon a broken root, which gave him time to elude me.”