The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune by Robert E. Howard (hot novels to read .txt) đź“–
- Author: Robert E. Howard
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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.
At last the king rose with a sigh and took his departure still
wondering. And Kull came again to the House of a Thousand Mirrors; day
after day he came and sat for hours before the mirror. The eyes looked
out at him, identical with his; yet Kull seemed to sense a difference—a
reality that was not of him. Hour upon hour he would stare with
strange intensity into the mirror; hour after hour the image gave back
his gaze.
The business of the palace and of the council went neglected. The
people murmured; Kull’s stallion stamped restlessly in his stable, and
Kull’s warriors diced and argued aimlessly with one another. Kull
heeded not. At times he seemed on the point of discovering some vast,
unthinkable secret. He no longer thought of the image in the mirror as
a shadow of himself; the thing, to him, was an entity, similar in
outer appearance, yet basically as far from Kull himself as the poles
are far apart. The image, it seemed to Kull, had an individuality
apart from Kull’s, he was no more dependent on Kull than Kull was
dependent on him. And day by day Kull doubted in which world he really
lived; was he the shadow, summoned at will by the other? Did he
instead of the other live in a world of delusion, the shadow of the
real world?
Kull began to wish that he might enter the personality beyond the
mirror for a space, to see what might be seen; yet should he manage to
go beyond that door could he ever return? Would he find a world
identical with the one in which he moved? A world, of which his was
but a ghostly reflection? Which was reality and which illusion?
At times Kull halted to wonder how such thoughts and dreams had come
to enter his mind, and at times he wondered if they came of his own
volition or—here his thoughts would become mazed. His meditations were
his own; no man ruled his thoughts, and he would summon them at his
pleasure; yet could he? Were they not as bats, coming and going, not
at his pleasure but at the bidding or ruling of—of whom? The gods? The
Women who wove the webs of Fate? Kull could come to no conclusion, for
at each mental step he became more and more bewildered in a hazy fog
of illusory assertions and refutations. This much he knew: that
strange visions entered his mind, like flying unbidden from the
whispering void of non-existence; never had he thought these thoughts,
but now they ruled his mind, sleeping and waking, so that he seemed to
walk in a daze at times; and his sleep was fraught with strange,
monstrous dreams.
“Tell me, wizard,” he said, sitting before the mirror, eyes fixed
intently upon his image, “how can I pass yon door? For of a truth, I
am not sure that that is the real world and this the shadow; at least,
that which I see must exist in some form.”
“See and believe,” droned the wizard. “Man must believe to accomplish.
Form is shadow, substance is illusion, materiality is dream; man is
because he believes he is; what is man but a dream of the gods? Yet
man can be that which he wishes to be; form and substance, they are
but shadows. The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream—that is
real, that is immortal. See and believe, if you would accomplish,
Kull.”
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 Spearslayer, 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 Spearslayer, 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.
THE END
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