And from the shadow, their enmity toward mankind burned undimmed.
Millennia drifted past in a swift kaleidoscopic panorama. Continents rose and fell; the seas gave birth to new lands. Steaming, reptile-haunted swamps dwindled into cold and lifeless deserts. Teeming and chaotic jungles rose into stately hardwood forests. Jagged mountains of adamantine rock erupted from the earth; endless horizons of steel-blue ice rolled over their broken fangs and left only rotted mounds of rubble.
On the night of their fateful confrontation, old Gonar had conjured a vision similar to that which passed before Bran Mak Morn’s mazed eyes.
Bran now recognized the fabled history of his race, the Picts-the First Race.
He watched the evolution of the brutish ape-men into lean and panther-quick savages, skilled in the working of flint and the hunting of game. Millennia swept before him. The Picts dwelt in peace upon the western isles, learned the arts of civilization. Time and again the First Race took up their weapons to defend their land from the still-evolving ape-men of the great forests to the south and the east of their isles-or to drive away the invading canoe-fleets of the half-human raiders of Lemuria, shark-hided anthropomorphic beings who had bypassed part of the evolutionary scale to evolve directly from the ancient seas.
Again the earth shuddered beneath cataclysms that sundered continents. Lemuria sank beneath the boiling sea. The western isles lifted above the waves, the mountain range of a new and inhospitable land. The Picts fled to the forests of the east and the south, hurled back into savagery.
Then there passed a bewildering panorama of changing continents and evolving races, of encroaching ice fields and ceaseless racial drifts. New races sprang forth to do battle with one another. Kingdoms and empires, cities and civilizations, marching armies and warring fleets-all flashed past like the scarcely glimpsed patterns of drifting snowflakes. Only the Picts remained a constant feature in this storm ofimages.
And in the shadow, the serpent-folk waited…
Only in lost and hidden regions of the earth did some few of the serpent-folk survive. On a far continent of the west their last great city stood for centuries after the Picts had driven them from the lands of men. Finally that last city fell before the furious onslaught of yellow-skinned warriors Bran sensed were the descendants of the primeval Lemurians. The survivors of that final massacre retreated into caverns beneath their valley floor-there to degenerate into bestial monstrosities not dissimilar to the vermin who now burrowed beneath the moors of Caledon. They worshipped a feathered serpent, carven of clear crystal, and a giant jewel not unlike the Black Stone, save that it burned steadily with sinister light of alien hue. Unspeakably foul were their rites and sorceries. Bran saw that their priests had power to reanimate the dead; there were other blasphemies which his mind could not grasp.
And in the realm of the Picts, the serpent-folk cunningly struck back at mankind through their evil craft. Their sorceries developed innate powers of hypnotism to terrible potency. Among the rising kingdoms of this lost age, kings and great warriors died through stealth-and in their places walked serpent-folk who had assumed the exact guise of the slain. Kingdom warred against barbarian kingdom in that dawn age-nations rose and fell-evil cults flourished and withered. And time and again when some key figure of some history-molding struggle at last died beneath the weapons of his enemies-in death that corpse assumed the hidden features of the serpent-folk. For theirs had become a shadow kingdom, and man was not always ruled by man.
In lost Atlantis where the shadow kingdom assumed its deadliest power, the serpent-folk worshipped in their temple a green jewel of some unearthly crystal, and through its sorcery the rising kingdoms of man all but became slave states ruled by serpents in the guise of men. Then through the shifting phantasmagoria strode a giant warrior whose smouldering visage was known to Bran Mak Morn-King Kull of Atlantis, king of fabled Valusia. Beside him stalked a Pictish warrior whose features at first seemed the image of Bran Mak Morn, though taller and broader of shoulder. This man Bran knew to be his own ancestor, Brule the Spear-slayer, on whose finger blazed the strange red gem that now glowed from Bran Mak Morn’s iron crown. Another imposing figure-a white-bearded wizard who bore a vague resemblance to Gonar. This man, Bran surmised, was Gonar’s ancestor, alike named Gonar, the greatest wizard of that lost age.
Together the three legendary heroes defied the sinister power of the serpent-folk. Through treacherous assassinations and momentous battles the serpent-folk sought to destroy King Kull. But the courage and craft of Kull and his companions proved stronger than the stealth and cunning of the serpent-folk. In a final great battle the serpent-folk made their last bold bid to seize mastery over mankind. It was for them a last stand. Kull and his armies-men of the new kingdoms and warriors of Pictdom-crushed the serpent-folk, hunted down their fleeing remnants. Some few fled beneath the earth and back into desolate corners of distant lands. The power of the serpent-race was broken.
Yet again, vast cataclysms shook the earth. Kingdoms plunged into the seas, and cloud-reaching waves ripped whole nations into tossing foam. Such monstrous tidal waves rolled over Atlantis. Part of Atlantis sank beneath the ocean depths; yet another portion of the land withstood to rear its sombre mountains over broad beaches, awash with the drift and jetsam of the drowned kingdoms. Though this survival of Atlantis yet brooded above the unsailed seas, a wizard’s curse doomed the lost isle to remain unknown to the tribes of mankind, until an age when certain portents should be fulfilled.
Again the men of the First Race were plunged into abject barbarism-while such as survived of the Pre-Cataclysmic nations fell into even more abysmal savagery. Again from brutish caves and apish nests in treetops, mankind crawled back along the path to civilization. New races and new kingdoms emerged from this, the Hyborian Age-and chief among these nations were the indomitable warriors of Pictdom. For the men of the First Race once again rose from savagery-albeit with each re-emergence their climb had not been quite so high as before the fall.
In the ghastly comedy of human history, once more new nations rose and flourished, proud cities spread across the land. And as always, new armies marched and burned; nations were massacred, and forest and desert devoured the rotting ashes of cities. The Picts waged war or made alliances with such of the new kingdoms accordingly as the mindless web of destiny might interweave their histories. For a space the hordes of Pictdom swept all armies before them, following the dreams of empire of an invincible warrior Bran knew to be the legendary Gorm, greatest of the Pictish kings in the eon-spanning history of that race. Gorm, who forged a conquering empire from the savage clans of Pictdom, who overthrew the civilization of the Hyborian Age. Gorm, whose saga Bran Mak Morn brooded upon every hour of his life.
The Picts were conquerors of the Hyborian Age. Their empire spanned the civilized world, halting only at the mountains of Cimmeria in the north and the Aesir-ruled lands of Nemedia to the east, dissipating on other far-flung frontiers into incessant warfare with other barbarian tribes. But the Pictish conquerors did not rebuild from the ashes of fallen civilization. Theirs was an empire of barbarism and constant wars fought over the ruins.
Ages passed. Again the ice-fields rumbled southward. New tribes marched before the glaciers, waged battles with the Picts. Tribal drifts swept across the snow-buried ruins of the Hyborian civilizations. New races emerged, old races died. More often their blood mingled to weld new nations of wandering nomadic warriors. Barbarism established its bloody mastery over the arrogant conceit of civilization. Barbarism, the natural state of mankind. Barbarism, an age of constant flux in which the men of the First Race waged a losing battle against the new tribes of man.