“Talk to Saremes, Kull, she will grow jealous of me.”
Kull eyed the cat uncertainly. Her fur was long, silky and grey, her eyes slanting and mysterious.
“She is very young, Kull, yet she is very old,” said Delcardes. “She is a cat of the Old Race who lived to be thousands of years old. Ask her her age, Kull.”
“How many years have you seen, Saremes?” asked Kull idly.
“Valusia was young when I was old,” the cat answered in a clear though curiously timbred voice.
Kull started violently.
“Valka and Hotath!” he swore. “She talks!”
Delcardes laughed softly in pure enjoyment but the expression of the cat never altered.
“I talk, I think, I know, I am,” she said. “I have been the ally of queens and the councillor of kings ages before even the white beaches of Atlantis knew your feet, Kull of Valusia. I saw the ancestors of the Valusians ride out of the far east to trample down the Old Race and I was here when the Old Race came up out of the oceans so many eons ago that the mind of man reels when seeking to measure them. Older am I than Thulsa Doom, whom few men have ever seen.
“I have seen empires rise and kingdoms fall and kings ride in on their steeds and out on their shields. Aye, I have been a goddess in my time and strange were the neophytes who bowed before me and terrible were the rites which were performed in my worship to pleasure me. For of eld beings exalted my kind; beings as strange as their deeds.”
“Can you read the stars and foretell events?” Kull’s barbarian mind leaped at once to material ideas.
“Aye; the books of the past and the future are open to me and I tell man what is good for him to know.”
“Then tell me,” said Kull, “where I misplaced the secret letter from Kanu yesterday.”
“You thrust it into the bottom of your dagger scabbard and then instantly forgot it,” the cat replied.
Kull started, snatched out his dagger and shook the sheath. A thin strip of folded parchment tumbled out.
“Valka and Hotath!” he swore. “Saremes, you are a witch of cats! Mark ye, Tu!”
But Tu’s lips were pressed in a straight disapproving line and he eyed Delcardes darkly.
She returned his stare guilelessly and he turned to Kull in irritation.
“My lord, consider! This is all mummery of some sort.”
“Tu, none saw me hide that letter for I myself had forgotten.”
“Lord king, any spy might–”
“Spy? Be not a greater fool than you were born, Tu. Shall a cat set spies to watch me hide letters?”
Tu sighed. As he grew older it was becoming increasingly difficult to refrain from showing exasperation toward kings.
“My lord, give thought to the humans who may be behind the cat!”
“Lord Tu,” said Delcardes in a tone of gentle reproach, “you put me to shame and you offend Saremes.”
Kull felt vaguely angered at Tu.
“At least, Tu,” said he, “the cat talks; that you cannot deny.”
“There is some trickery,” Tu stubbornly maintained. “Man talks; beasts may not.”
“Not so,” said Kull, himself convinced of the reality of the talking cat and anxious to prove the rightness of his belief. “A lion talked to Kambra and birds have spoken to the old men of the sea-mountain tribes, telling them where game was hidden.
“None denies that beasts talk among themselves. Many a night have I lain on the slopes of the forest covered hills or out on the grassy savannahs and have heard the tigers roaring to one another across the star-light. Then why should some beast not learn the speech of man? There have been times when I could almost understand the roaring of the tigers. The tiger is my totem and is tambu to me save in self defense,” he added irrelevantly.
Tu squirmed. This talk of totem and tambu was good enough in a savage chief, but to hear such remarks from the king of Valusia irked him extremely.
“My lord,” said he, “a cat is not a tiger.”
“Very true,” said Kull, “and this one is wiser than all tigers.”
“That is naught but truth,” said Saremes calmly.
“Lord Chancellor, would you believe then, if I told you what was at this moment transpiring at the royal treasury?”
“No!” Tu snarled. “Clever spies may learn anything as I have found.”
“No man can be convinced when he will not,” said Saremes imperturbably, quoting a very old Valusian saying. “Yet know, lord Tu, that a surplus of twenty gold tals has been discovered and a courier is even now hastening through the streets to tell you of it. Ah,” as a step sounded in the corridor without, “even now he comes.”
A slim courtier, clad in the gay garments of the royal treasury, entered, bowing deeply, and craved permission to speak. Kull having granted it, he said:
“Mighty king and lord Tu, a surplus of twenty tals of gold has been found in the royal monies.”
Delcardes laughed and clapped her hands delightedly but Tu merely scowled.
“When was this discovered?”
“A scant half hour ago.”
“How many have been told of it?”
“None, my lord. Only I and the Royal Treasurer have known until just now when I told you, my lord.”
“Humph!” Tu waved him aside sourly. “Begone. I will see about this matter later.”
“Delcardes,” said Kull, “this cat is yours, is she not?”
“Lord king,” answered the girl, “no one owns Saremes. She only bestows on me the honor of her presence; she is a guest. As for the rest she is her own mistress and has been for a thousand years.”
“I would that I might keep her in the palace,” said Kull.
“Saremes,” said Delcardes deferentially, “the king would have you as his guest.”
“I will go with the king of Valusia,” said the cat with dignity, “and remain in the royal palace until such time as it shall pleasure me to go elsewhere. For I am a great traveller, Kull, and it pleases me at times to go out over the world-path and walk the streets of cities where in ages gone I have roamed forests, and to tread the sands of deserts where long ago I trod imperial streets.”
So Saremes the talking cat came to the royal palace of Valusia. Her slave accompanied her and she was given a spacious chamber, lined with fine couches and silken pillows. The best viands of the royal table were placed before her daily and all the household of the king did homage to her except Tu who grumbled to see a cat exalted, even a talking cat. Saremes treated him with amused contempt but admitted Kull into a level of dignified equality.
She quite often came into his throne chamber, borne on a silken cushion by her slave who must always accompany her, no matter where she went.
At other times Kull came into her chamber and they talked into the dim hours of dawn and many were the tales she told him and ancient the wisdom that she imparted. Kull listened with interest and attention for it was evident that this cat was wiser far than many of his councillors, and had gained more antique wisdom than all of them together. Her words were pithy and oracular and she refused to prophesy beyond minor affairs taking place in the every day life of the palace, and kingdom, save that she warned him against Thulsa Doom who had sent a threat to Kull.
“For,” said she, “I who have lived more years than you shall live minutes, know that man is better without knowledge of things to come, for what is to be will be, and man can neither avert not hasten. It is better to go in the dark when the road must pass a lion and there is no other road.”
“Yet,” said Kull, “if what must be is to be–a thing which I doubt–and a man be told what things shall come to pass and his arm weakened or strengthened thereby, then was not that too, foreordained?”
“If he was ordained to be told,” said Saremes, adding to Kull’s perplexity and doubt. “However, not all of life’s roads are set fast, for a man may do this or a man may do that and not even the gods know the mind of a man.”