Yet there was a time that Kull knew Fear, stark, terrible and unreasoning, and his marrow weakened and his blood ran cold. So men speak of the time of Kull’s Fear and they do not speak in scorn nor does Kull feel any shame. No, for as it came about the thing rebounded to his undying glory.
Thus it came to be. Kull sat at ease on the throne of society, listening idly to the conversation of Tu, chief councillor, Ka-nu, ambassador from Pictdom, Brule, Ka-nu’s right-hand man, and Kuthulos the slave, who was yet the greatest scholar in the Seven Empires.
“All is illusion,” Kuthulos was saying, “all outward manifestations of the underlying Reality, which is beyond human comprehension, since there are no relative things by which the finite mind may measure the infinite. The One may underlie all, or each natural illusion may possess a basic entity. All these things were known to Raama, the greatest mind of all the ages, who eons ago freed humanity from the grasp of unknown demons and raised the race to its heights.”
“He was a mighty necromancer,” said Ka-nu.
“He was no wizard,” said Kuthulos, “no chanting, mumbling conjurer, divining from snakes’ livers. There was naught of mummery about Raama. He had grasped the First Principles, he knew the Elements and he understood natural forces, acted upon by natural causes, producing natural results. He accomplished his apparent miracles by the exercise of his powers in natural ways, which were as simple in their manners to him, as lighting a fire is to us, and as much beyond our ken as our fire would have been to our ape-ancestors.”
“Then why did he not give all his secrets to the race?” asked Tu.
“He knew it is not good for man to know too much. Some villain would subjugate the whole race, nay the whole universe, if he knew as much as Raama knew. Man must learn by himself and expand in soul as he learns.”
“Yet, you say all is illusion,” persisted Ka-nu, shrewd in state-craft but ignorant in philosophy and science, and respecting Kuthulos for his knowledge. “How is that? Do we not hear and see and feel?”
“What is sight and sound?” countered the slave. “Is not sound absence of silence, and silence absence of sound? The absence of a thing is not material substance. It is–nothing. And how can nothing exist?”
“Then why are things?” asked Ka-nu like a puzzled child.
“They are appearances of reality. Like silence; somewhere exists the essence of silence, the soul of silence. Nothing that is something; an absence so absolute that it takes material form. How many of you ever heard complete silence? None of us! Always there are some noises–the whisper of the wind, the flutter of an insect, even the growing of the grass, or on the desert the murmur of the sands. But at the center of silence, there is no sound.”
“Raama,” said Ka-nu, “long ago shut a spectre of silence into a great castle and sealed him there for all time.”
“Aye,” said Brule, “I have seen the castle–a great black thing on a lone hill, in a wild region of Valusia. Since time immemorial it has been known as the Skull of Silence.”
“Ha!” Kull was interested now. “My friends, I would like to look upon this thing!”
“Lord king,” said Kuthulos, “it is not good to tamper with what Raama made fast. For he was wiser than any man. I have heard the legend that by his arts he imprisoned a demon–not by his arts, say I, but by his knowledge of the natural forces, and not a demon but some element which threatened the existence of the race.
“The might of that element is evinced by the fact that not even Raama was able to destroy it–he only imprisoned it.”
“Enough.” Kull gestured impatiently. “Raama has been dead so many thousand years that it wearies me to think on it. I ride to find the Skull of Silence; who rides with me?”
All of those who listened to him, and a hundred of the Red Slayers, Valusia’s mightiest war force, rode with Kull when he swept out of the royal city in the early dawn. They rode up among the mountains of Zalgara and after many days’ search, they came upon a lone hill rising sombrely from the surrounding plateaus and on its summit a great stark castle, black as doom.
“This is the place,” said Brule. “No people live within a hundred miles of this castle, nor have they in the memory of man. It is shunned like a region accursed.”
Kull reined his great stallion to a halt and gazed. No one spoke and Kull was aware of the strange, almost intolerable stillness. When he spoke again every one started. To the king it seemed that waves of deadening quiet emanated from that brooding castle on the hill. No birds sang in the surrounding land and no wind moved the branches of the stunted trees. As Kull’s horsemen rode up the slope, their footfalls on the rocks seemed to tinkle drearily and far away, dying without echo.
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.