“I am your slave, my lord.” And she sank to her knees meekly, but the smile of her scarlet mouth was cunning behind Kull’s back and the gleam of her narrow eyes was crafty.
KULL came to the house of Tuzun Thune, beside the Lake of Visions. Wide and blue stretched the waters of the lake and many a fine palace rose upon its banks; many swan-winged pleasure boats drifted lazily upon its hazy surface and evermore there came the sound of soft music.
Tall and spacious, but unpretentious, rose the House of a Thousand Mirrors. The great doors stood open and Kull ascended the broad stair and entered, unannounced. There in a great chamber, whose walls were of mirrors, he came upon Tuzun Thune, the wizard. The man was ancient as the hills of Zalgara; like wrinkled leather was his skin, but his cold gray eyes were like sparks of sword steel.
“Kull of Valusia, my house is yours,” said he, bowing with old-time courtliness and motioning Kull to a throne-like chair.
“You are a wizard, I have heard,” said Kull bluntly, resting his chin upon his hand and fixing his somber eyes upon the man’s face. “Can you do wonders?”
The wizard stretched forth his hand; his fingers opened and closed like a bird’s claws.
“Is that not a wonder–that this blind flesh obeys the thoughts of my mind? I walk, I breathe, I speak–are they all not wonders?”
Kull meditated awhile, then spoke. “Can you summon up demons?”
“Aye. I can summon up a demon more savage than any in ghostland–by smiting you in the face.”
Kull started, then nodded. “But the dead, can you talk to the dead?”
“I talk with the dead always–as I am talking now. Death begins with birth and each man begins to die when he is born; even now you are dead, King Kull, because you were born.”
“But you, you are older than men become; do wizards never die?”
“Men die when their time comes. No later, no sooner. Mine has not come.”
Kull turned these answers over in his mind.
“Then it would seem that the greatest wizard of Valusia is no more than an ordinary man, and I have been duped in coming here.”
Tuzun Thune shook his head. “Men are but men, and the greatest men are they who soonest learn the simpler things. Nay, look into my mirrors, Kull.”
The ceiling was a great many mirrors, and the walls were mirrors, perfectly jointed, yet many mirrors of many sizes and shapes.
“Mirrors are the world, Kull,” droned the wizard. “Gaze into my mirrors and be wise.”
Kull chose one at random and looked into it intently. The mirrors upon the opposite wall were reflected there, reflecting others, so that he seemed to be gazing down a long, luminous corridor, formed by mirror behind mirror; and far down this corridor moved a tiny figure. Kull looked long ere he saw that the figure was the reflection of himself. He gazed and a queer feeling of pettiness came over him; it seemed that that tiny figure was the true Kull, representing the real proportions of himself. So he moved away and stood before another.
“Look closely, Kull. That is the mirror of the past,” he heard the wizard say.
Gray fogs obscured the vision, great billows of mist, ever heaving and changing like the ghost of a great river; through these fogs Kull caught swift fleeting visions of horror and strangeness; beasts and men moved there and shapes neither men nor beasts; great exotic blossoms glowed through the grayness; tall tropic trees towered high over reeking swamps, where reptilian monsters wallowed and bellowed; the sky was ghastly with flying dragons and the restless seas rocked and roared and beat endlessly along the muddy beaches. Man was not, yet man was the dream of the gods and strange were the nightmare forms that glided through the noisome jungles. Battle and onslaught were there, and frightful love. Death was there, for Life and Death go hand in hand. Across the slimy beaches of the world sounded the bellowing of the monsters, and incredible shapes loomed through the steaming curtain of the incessant rain.
“This is of the future.”
Kull looked in silence.
“See you–what?”
“A strange world,” said Kull heavily. “The Seven Empires are crumbled to dust and are forgotten. The restless green waves roar for many a fathom above the eternal hills of Atlantis; the mountains of Lemuria of the West are the islands of an unknown sea. Strange savages roam the elder lands and new lands flung strangely from the deeps, defiling the elder shrines. Valusia is vanished and all the nations of today; they of tomorrow are strangers. They know us not.”
“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. Aye, we, too, trampled the shoulders of lost tribes in our advance. You, who have come from the green sea hills of Atlantis to seize the ancient crown of Valusia, you think my tribe is old, we who held these lands ere the Valusians came out of the East, in the days before there were men in the sea lands. But men were here when the Elder Tribes rode out of the waste lands, and men before men, tribe before tribe. The nations pass and are forgotten, for that is the destiny of man.”
“Yes,” said Kull. “Yet is it not a pity that the beauty and glory of men should fade like smoke on a summer sea?”
“For what reason, since that is their destiny? I brood not over the lost glories of my race, nor do I labor for races to come. Live now, Kull, live now. The dead are dead; the unborn are not. What matters men’s forgetfulness of you when you have forgotten yourself in the silent worlds of death? Gaze in my mirrors and be wise.”
Kull chose another mirror and gazed into it.
“That is the mirror of the deepest magic; what see ye, Kull?”
“Naught but myself.”
“Look closely, Kull; is it in truth you?”
Kull stared into the great mirror, and the image that was his reflection returned his gaze.
“I come before this mirror,” mused Kull, chin on fist, “and I bring this man to life. This is beyond my understanding, since first I saw him in the still waters of the lakes of Atlantis, till I saw him again in the gold-rimmed mirrors of Valusia. He is I, a shadow of myself, part of myself–I can bring him into being or slay him at my will; yet”–he halted, strange thoughts whispering through the vast dim recesses of his mind like shadowy bats flying through a great cavern–“yet where is he when I stand not in front of a mirror? May it be in man’s power thus lightly to form and destroy a shadow of life and existence? How do I know that when I step back from the mirror he vanishes into the void of Naught?
“Nay, by Valka, am I the man or is he? Which of us is the ghost of the other? Mayhap these mirrors are but windows through which we look into another world. Does he think the same of me? Am I no more than a shadow, a reflection of himself–to him, as he to me? And if I am the ghost, what sort of a world lives upon the other side of this mirror? What armies ride there and what kings rule? This world is all I know. Knowing naught of any other, how can I judge? Surely there are green hills there and booming seas and wide plains where men ride to battle. Tell me, wizard who are wiser than most men, tell me, are there worlds beyond our worlds?”
“A man has eyes, let him see,” answered the wizard. “Who would see must first believe.”
THE hours drifted by and Kull still sat before the mirrors of Tuzun Thune, gazing into that which depicted himself. Sometimes it seemed that he gazed upon hard shallowness; at other times gigantic depths seemed to loom before him. Like the surface of the 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.