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[apart from reformatting, and a few comments styled like this, the entire article is taken from a website; I absolutely detest the popup hell that is Angelfire and lycos.com, but this guy has put a lot of effort in his site, so look around for more on Robert E. Howard’s various stories there.]
Seven witches standing in the road
Stirring up the future with the legs of a toad
They’ve got the wine, and I’ve got the time
And isn’t it sublime to lay down your load
— Jim Spheeris: “Seven Virgins” [sic]
Robert E. Howard’s Kull is truly one of the most interesting protagonists to spring from the venerable Texan’s creative mind. This series begins with a brash, impulsive barbarian who siezes a foreign throne, then progresses to gain the feel of his kingship, and finally is led to moodily contemplate many things that most people take for granted. Interestingly enough, the stories have never been arranged in a manner that illustrates this, and a chronology can most definately be deduced from the growth and change of his personality. First however, let’s examine the world that existed at Kull’s time.
According to Howard’s essay, “The Hyborian Age,” his fictional historians, the Nemedian Chroniclers, knew little of this time. If they had journeyed out into the eastern ocean to one of at least two of the islands of Lemuria still above the waves at that time, they would have been able to fill in the gaps in their knowledge.
One of those islands was Valla, upon which was the city of Na-hor, apparently a region of high altitude during the time of Mu. The story of the “Crimson Kingdom”, as it was called, is recounted in Howard’s aborted novel, The Isle of the Eons.
A manuscript found in that story details a history of the world up through Kull’s time. This manuscript was written by the priest, Nayah, who later went mad; so parts of it can be assumed to be inaccurate.
Using this, brief references in “The Hyborian Age”, evidence found in some of the Kull stories, and some guesswork it is possible to reconstruct a picture of the world during and prior to Kull’s time.
Mu was apparently the seat of civilization and certainly the most advanced country of its heyday. Mu was a large continent (with at least 20 “great cities”, whatever that meant) in what is now called the Pacific Ocean.
They had a pantheon of gods, including two whom Kull frequently swore by: Valka, revealed here as the god of fertility and growth, and later, of sea and land; and Hotath, the god of war. Other gods were the Moon-Woman and her sisters (referred to as the Star Maidens); Zukala, the disposer of souls (about whom Howard wrote a series of poems); and the Strange God, the god which is Unknown. However the first god worshipped appears to be Xultha the ape-man. Later he was replaced by Poseidon (with whom I’m sure most readers are familiar). By now some civilization has spread throughout the world. The human race had reached what was later to become known as the Thurian Continent (modern Eurasia). At this time the bulk of modern-day Africa was under the seas, as was the Americas except for their top-most peaks which were islands upon which the Picts lived. The human beings on these lands were still savages and were engrossed in the waging of great wars to throw off the yoke of hideous creatures that ruled the lands before the human advent: winged humanoids (referred to by gender as either harpies or bat-men), werewolves and various others referred to in “The Shadow Kingdom” as demons and goblins. As these wars were nearing an end, Nyulah the usurper seized the throne of Mu and, aided by the priest, Nayah, replaced the worship of Poseidon with that of “The First God”, Xultha. Under the guidance of Nayah and his minions the worship of the ape-god spread throughout the known world except for a region on the main continent already known as “Valusia” where mankind had not yet rose to challenge their masters, the serpent people, whom they even worshipped. Already the northwestern section of that continent was referred to as “The Seven Empires,” a name carried on into Kull’s day. This may be why it is so difficult to ascertain which of the nations of Kull’s time constitutes the seven empires as apparently this is a name that went on to represent the Thurian civilization as a whole.
It was soon after this that Mu sank leaving only its highest peaks above the water. These peaks became known as the Lemurian Isles (though even in Kull’s time these were still sometimes referred to as “Mu”).
With this sinking, the worship of Xultha waned, though other gods of the Mu pantheon, especially Valka and Hothath, were worshipped; or at least sworn by.
After the sinking of Mu, their settlements on the mainland were soon overthrown by wandering barbarians. On the northwest quarter of the continent these nomads, the Thurians, settled and took control of this area from the Elder Race of Mu. Under Thurian control these countries grew slowly into great civilizations. The serpent people were finally beaten (or so it appeared) at this time. The names of some of the Thurian countries are mentioned in “The Hyborian Age”: Valusia, the westernmost; Grondar, the easternmost; Verulia, which apparently bordered Valusia, for, in “Swords of the Purple Kingdom,” they attempt to remove Kull from the throne; Commora, which may also have bordered Valusia, for “The Hyborian Age” mentions that after Kull’s time Valusia fought great wars with them; Kamelia and Thule, of which no information is given in either the essay or the Kull stories to place them — though of course we have the ancient legends of Thule to tell us of that very unusual land. The longer untitled fragment (best known as “Riders Beyond the Sunrise”) mentions three other countries: Zarfhaana, the only kingdom between Valusia and Grondar; Thurania, which is south of Zarfhaana; and Farsun, which is southwest of Valusia. At this time the remnants of the Serpent people dwelt outside the Thurian kingdoms (although they’d infiltrated them to a great extent). There are several other areas inhabited by non-Thurian civilizations, as well as areas where groups of savages live. Only three non-Thurian nations are named: the Celts and the Kaa-U, with which the Thurians have contact, and Zhemri, with which they don’t. Cave dwelling savages are said to live in the north. A mysterious pre-human civilization dwells in the south. One of the non-Thurian civilizations dwelling on the east coast are the ancestors of the Stygians of Conan’s time. The latter are mentioned as having some contact with the Lemurians.
Most patently this is an imaginary history of the world created by Howard for fictional purposes. Readers who are offended by its lack of accuracy may assume that Howard’s pre-historical and historical fantasies occur on some sort of alternate world with a somewhat different history than that of Earth. This would also explain some of the anachronisms such as can be found in the Bran Mak Morn series.
One of the things that Howard seems to have done with the series is to examine laws and customs in general, particularly in regard to ones that could readily be judged as ridiculous or unnecessary. As the vehicle for this theme Howard chose laws that dealt with marriage, and five stories depend heavily on this: “Exile of Atlantis,” The Longer Untitled Fragment, “The Cat and the Skull.” “By This Axe I Rule!” and “Swords of the Purple Kingdom.” The stories most probably occur in this order.
“Exile of Atlantis” is undoubtedly the first Kull story as it is the only one that occurs prior to his gaining the crown of Valusia. The Longer Untitled Fragment would probably be next of the marriage-themed stories, as here Kull is seen as being brash and impulsive. “The Cat and the Skull” would be the next of these, as Kull is seen as being more contemplative, asking many philosophical questions, and at the end of the story he actually grants the girl, Delcardes, permission to marry, at least temporarily negating the law. Next would come “By This Axe I Rule!,” as here Kull is no longer tolerant of laws that enslave him and will not let him govern his people as he sees fit. And last of these would be “Swords of the Purple Kingdom,” where he does not grant a young woman permission to marry her lover; not because of the law, but because the girl’s father is Kull’s friend. The father forbides the marriage and Kull doesn’t wish to go against the will of his friend. Mention is made in this story of events in “By This Axe I Rule,” or “Axe” would be the last of these five.
Another element in the stories that leads to setting them in a different order than that published is that Kull is the brashest at the beginning of his rule and “The Screaming Skull of Silence” and the Longer Untitled Fragment would seem to occur here. The more meditative stories (and poem), “The Mirrors of Tuzan Thune,” “The King and the Oak” and “The Striking of the Gong” would logically appear near the end of the series.
Another factor is Kull’s growing friendship with Brule, the Pictish warrior. Brule is introduced in “The Shadow Kingdom” and appears in all the stories of Kull as king except for “Kings of the Night,” in which he is mentioned, the poem “The King and the Oak,” and the two stories in which Kull does not appear on stage, “The Altar and the Scorpion” and “The Curse of the Golden Skull.” “The Altar and the Scorpion” occurs sometime after “The Shadow Kingdom” but probably early in the series, while “The Curse of the Golden Skull” has no internal evidence as far as placement in the Kull series (though Rotath could be the ventriloquist hinted at in “The Cat and the Skull”), but because part of the story happens in a contemporary setting, it is desirable to place it at the end as an epilogue to the series.
Kull’s friendship with Brule can be used in placing the last three stories: “The Black City” occurs somewhat early in the series, as Brule behaves formally towards the Atlantean. In the events of “Kings of the Night” Kull is again seen as brash and as someone who acts quickly (however, we are told by Gonar, the Pictish shaman, that travelling through time as Kull does in that story will indeed have some effect on him). The Shorter Untitled Fragment occurs after Kull and Brule have become very good friends, though it is not so late in the series that Kull is seen to be only somewhat contemplative at this point.
Thus the stories can probably be arranged in the following order:
This brief story introduces Kull to the reader and is the only one to take place prior to his becoming king. Here Kull is a young savage who, until taken in by the Sea-Mountain tribe of Atltantis (the only tribe mentioned in this story), was a wild creature and, like any other animal running wild in the jungles, was unable to speak the language of human kind. Apparently he has spent more time with the tigers, whom we are told he “ran with,” than any other animal, though wolves, leopards, deer and buffalo also are mentioned as inhabiting the continent. It is later revealed in the saga that the Tiger is his totem.
The materials available to the Atlantians, or at least their ability to use them, was not great at this period: They have bows and arrows, wooden chains, and Kull carries a flint dagger. They also have spears and appear able to manufacture ships or boats of some kind, and these are large enough to travel to the Thurian continent and for the Atlantians to war with the Lemurian pirates. Nor do they appear to wear much in the way of clothing, only Kull’s attire is mentioned, and that is a leopard-skin loin-cloth.
Although the Atlantians may worship a pantheon, only Valka is mentioned. Khor-nah says that man is Valka’s mightiest creation (remember that, according to The Isle of the Eons, Valka is the god of fertility and growth).
The primitive Atlantian culture is somewhat stiffling in true barbaric tradition. Each legend is accepted as reality, no matter how absurd. And the traditions of the Atlantians are not only respected, but are considered holy, each myth assuming the form of some kind of ultimate truth. Kull however, being raised by an animal and not as a member of an Atlantian tribe, has no respect for these traditions and myths. And where he knows one to be a lie he quite frankly says so, which displeases the culture-bound savages he has fallen in with. They believe that if a legend has existed for so long, then it obviously must be true. Kull’s attitude here foreshadows the disregard for Valusian law he later shows. Probably as a result of his feral origins Kull is a hard pragmatist. The legends of the Sea-Mountain tribe and the laws of Valusia are not regarded with any kind of respect whatsoever, but rather judged on their own merits and dismissed if found wanting. Kull’s pragmatism is illustrated with this point: “Animals are neither gods nor fiends, but men in their way without the lust and greed of the man—.” It is a common conceit among the human race to want to believe that it is special or better than its animal brethern, and to this most creation myths apply.
The differences between the tribes and Kull come to a head when a tribesman’s daughter, Sareeta, who has married one of their enemies, is shipwrecked and ends up back with her tribe. The latter, in blood-lusting vengeance, decides that the girl must die and set out to brutally burn her at a stake. Kull would rescue the girl if he could. He can’t understand why this girl’s own people would hate her for her choice of husband. There is no way he can rescue her however, instead he grants her a swift and merciful death which she silently agrees to, and then flees his tribe aided by his good friend Am-ra. The theme of friendship is to play an important part in the Kull saga, especially in regard to him and Brule.
In this story we see that Kull is deeper of chest than his muscular friend, Am-ra, and we are told also that Kull is the fastest runner in the tribe. So already we have the athletic, rebelous kind of hero that often appears as a Robert E. Howard protagonist.
It is interesting to note that Kull is somewhat obsessed with reaching the City of Wonders, capital of Valusia. He mentions early in the story that he would like to see it and then later dreams of the city in the following evocative passage:
Through the mists of his sleep echoed faintly and far away the golden melody of trumpets. Clouds of radient glory floated over him; then a mighty vista opened before his dreamself. And a great concourse of people stretched away into the distance, and a thunderous roar in a strange language went up from them. there was a minor note of steel clashing, and great shadowy armies reined to the right and the left; the mist faded and a face stood out boldly, a face above which hovered a regal crown — a hawk-like face, dispassionate, immoble, with eyes like the gray of the cold sea. Now the people thundered again: “Hail the king! Hail the king! Kull the king!
Is it just a dream that happens to come true? Or is it some kind of precognition? If the latter is true is Kull predestined then to be king of Valusia? If so, why? Why should a savage have such a dream in the first place? These questions are open to interpretation though Kull will later state in “The Cat and the Skull” that he doesn’t believe in predestination.
Also of interest is the theme of alienation. After all, Kull does become an exile. The reader is told of the Atlantian, Ascalante, who escaped from being a Valusian slave; but was with the civilized people so long that he forgot his name! This illustrates how contact with a civilization will rob a primitive people of their culture and, in a sense, their identity.
The story is redolent with some of Howard’s marvelous prose. Not purple yet not simple and straightforward either. The way he combines words to special effect is something unique to his style that has never been successfully copied. To wit: “There was a minor note of steel clashing,” and in the story’s opening paragraph, “The sun was setting. a last crimson glory filled the land and lay like a crown of blood on the snow-sprinkled peaks. The three men who watched the death of day breathed deep the fragrence of the early wind which stole up out of the distant forests . . .” (emphasis mine). Essentially, it seems, Howard uses extremely evocative phrases to do in a few words what could take most writers several paragraphs.
By the time of “The Shadow Kingdom,” Kull has become an interesting puzzle of a character. His life, to this point mostly unknown, had much to do in forming his personality.
As previously stated, Kull is a feral child. He was brought up in the wild by tigers. Unlike other feral characters from fiction, Kipling’s Mowgli and Burroughs’ Tarzan, Kull forsakes the wild for the companionship of his fellow humans. In modern times it has been learned that feral children are “unrescuable” from the wilderness ways after the age of six years or so. It can be assumed then that Kull was just under that age when the Sea-Mountain tribe took him in. These feral beginnings made of him the excellent athlete mentioned in “Exile of Atlantis.” These same beginnings also gave him the practical mind that made him question the myths of his adopted tribe. Kull is never ashamed of his origin, but takes the tiger as his totem.
After fleeing Atlantis with his tribe screaming for his blood as a result of the events mentioned in “Exile,” Kull is captured by the Lemurians who make a galley slave of him. This would have further increased his muscular ability and endurance, as well as introducing him to the harsh realities of dealing with a “civilization.”
Kull does manage to escape the Lemurians and does a bit of wandering before reaching Valusia. In the present story the reader is told that Kull had been to the jungles of the south.
In Valusia he begins as an outlaw in the hills. So already he has a disrespect for the laws of Valusia — laws that he will later shatter. However, Kull the outlaw is captured and incarcerated by the Valusians, and shows sufficient fighting skills to become a gladiator in that kingdom’s arenas and later a soldier in its armies. He also has the self-assured strength of character to be a leader and becomes a commander in that nation’s armies; reaching as high a post as outlander barbarians are allowed to reach. The Seven Empires, including Valusia, are waning. The people are soft and idle and decadent, and outsiders like Kull are becoming the new backbone of the Thurian kingdoms.
Kull, being the intelligent though rash man that he is, becomes aware of the petty intrigues and gossips and connivings of the Valusians, and slowly learns to deal with them. Kull regards the Valusians with “carefully hidden, grim amusement.” Finally their decadence and cruelties, especially as exhibited by King Borna, prove too much to bear and Kull strikes for the throne for his own reasons. This story takes place early in Kull’s kingship. He has learned enough of the Valusians’ petty behavior to deal with them to some extent and to play their own “game with them, though many of his subjects still consider him a barbarian intruder.
Probably in his wanderings Kull has not encountered anything of an extremely supernatural nature, for he is quite surprised at the grim horror of the serpent people’s manipulative plot. Even at a point where he’s fought and killed over a dozen of these characters, all disguised as men he knew, when he confronts one who looks like himself, he temporarily loses his grip on reality, doubting whether he or the serpent man is the real Kull. Only Brules’s pragmatic behavior brings Kull back to reality to confront the usurper.
Perhaps one of the aspects that make “The Shadow Kingdom” such a well-crafted story is its use of horror. This is no mere blood-and-thunder adventure. The menace Kull fights is frightening in its evil, maniacal, plotting ways. It is something to be feared and quite clearly Kull and Brule experience genuine fear making them all the more believable as characters. The revelation about the serpent people is accomplished by a rush of “racial memory” that leaves Kull astounded.
There is a distinct lack of violence at the beginning of this story. Not until chapter three is blood spilled, yet the story remains well-paced and interesting.
Another facet of Kull’s character is revealed during the battle with the serpent people. He is an infrequent berserk. During the battle his eyes see a red haze, all his muscles tighten (preventing great loss of blood), his mind is cleared of thought and he becomes a deadly offensive fighter with no thought to his defense. The berserk rage passes once the battle is ended, leaving him somewhat confused.
An important item that Howard handles well in this story is that of the age and decadence of Valusia. It is so ancient that its beginnings are forgotten, its antiquity is a cloying, suffocating thing that reaches out and communicates to Kull that there have been hundreds and thousands of kings that have come and gone, and yet the walls of the City of Wonders remain; and that Kull will not — he is only another king.
Kull is shown as merciful, for although he is informed that Kaanuub is the serpent people’s ally, Kull makes no effort to imprison or execute him.
The question arises as to the remark in this story that Kull has “not yet known the love of women.” Some critics have assumed that this might mean that he has homosexual tendencies. However, there is not enough evidence available to support such a theory. Kull may well be asexual, seeking rather to fulfill his philosophical side; or “love” may imply emotional fulfillment and not a sexual act. The series has to be examined as a whole to look at this apsect of his character effectively.
Ka-Nu, the Pictish emissary, is introduced in this story. He’s a jolly, rambunctious old diplomat who can read his fellow men quite easily. Even Kull is surprised at the old Pict’s statecraft when the ambassador puts himself in Kull’s hands to show that the king can trust this Pict, tribal enemies though they may be. Ka-Nu’s wish is to use Kull’s rule to spread peace and harmony among all humans.
Brule is also introduced. The man destined to be Kull’s friend is newly come to the mainland to serve under Ka-Nu. Brule is one of Pictdom’s elite warrior class, the Spear-Slayers. He too has something of contempt for the civilized kingdom he finds himself in, commenting that “The guards of Valusia are blind buffaloes.” Something of the Pictish culture is revealed here; they don’t tell lies, they use a curved sword and their favorite sword-stroke is an upward disembowling thrust. Brule swears by Valka; apparently the worship of this diety is widespread. The friendship between Kull and Brule truly begins with their promise to slay each other, if need be, to prevent their souls from becoming enslaved by the serpent men. The friendship grows as they fight side-by-side against these minions of the Old Ones.
“The Shadow Kingdom” is a powerfully written story of adventure and horror, tightly plotted; and chronicling the rash, enigmatic Kull’s early days of kingship.
This story is as different from the standard S&S fare as one could want to get. Ah, if only Robert E. Howard’s imitators had had as muc imagination as Howard himself. Howard experimented in the Kull stories far more than he did in any other series. He had not yet defined the Sword-’n’-Sorcery genre to the extent that he did in his later Conan tales.
“The Mirrors of Tuzan Thune” opens with a quote from Edgar Allen Poe, whose own story “Berenice” is similar to “Mirrors” in its sense of unreality. This is part of a longer quote from a poem that Howard had used in a previosuly discussed story, “Kings of the Night”:
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule;
From a wild weird clime that lieth sublime
Out of space — out of time.”
This creates a curiosity, because Thule was one of the Thurian kingdoms. Actually Thule appears to have been a mythic land originally written about by Diodorus, Strabo, Procopius and others. Thule (or Ultima Thule, see above, “ultimate dim Thule”) was thought to have been a large island in the Artic, ten times the size of Great Britain. It was a land of infertile soil whose air consisted of sea water and oxygen.
Every year a strange phenomenon takes place in Thule. At the time of the summer solstice, the sun never sets; rather, it stays in the sky until the winter solstice is reached. Then for a period of forty days and nights, it remains hidden. The inhabitants of the island spend that long night asleep as they cannot do anything in the pitch-dark.
Among the several tribes that inhabit Thule is one called the Scritifines. The Scritifines lead a life similar to that of beasts. They never dress or wear shoes, drink wine or till the earth. Like savage animals they hunt the large creatures that inhabit the forests of Thule. Sometimes in winter the Scritifines will cover themselves with the skin of these wild creatures, and they extract marrow from the creatures’ bones to feed their babies who are never given milk. As soon as a child is born, he is hung from a tree in a leather cradle, a piece of marrow is stuck in his mouth and his mother leaves with her husband to join in the hunt.
The members of another tribe are known for the large number of gods and demons they worship, which they say inhabit every stone, river and tree. To these beings they offer human sacrifice, by slaughtering the victim at the altar, impaling him on a tree or throwing him down a crevasse.
Another, more friendly tribe, is noted for its exquisite hydromel, or mead, prepared from the abundant honey made by its bees.
Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc.
New York, 1980; p. 374
For being a marvelous fantasy, this story makes a sorry statement as to the conditions of Kull’s mind. His questions are not philosophical, as many readers at first believe; but rather they are childish, silly questions, reflecting just the effect that Kull’s feral upbringing and his trip through time had upon him.
Kull is not however painted as the being nasty heavy-handed barbarian; as in this story he is seen as showing an act of kindness to a girl of the elder race who was used as a tool by Tuzan Thune. Also, once again Kaanuub is shown to be endeavoring in treasonous behavior but nothing much is done about it.
The main strength of this story is its illusionary feel. Absent in the narrative are the hard, concrete, battle-heavy writing that one associates with Howard. Rather the reader follows the protagonist through believable mental subjegation as Kull is brought further and further each day under the spell of the mirrors. This is a great story full of the best of Howard’s writing.
Points of interest:
• Sea again used as a reference when describing a highly polished surface (this was previously done with the gong in “The Screaming Skull of Silence,” here it is done with Tuzan Thune’s mirrors).
• Brule owns a galley.
• The City of Wonders is probably near the sea, as Brule mentions tides.
• Kull is left, at the end of this story, being even less sure of reality than he was before. (Things just get worse, don’t they?)
This story, besides being the third marriage-themed tale, also examines Kull’s pride. In the preceeding story, the Atlantean exile was not ashamed to admit his bestial beginnings or that he actually felt fear. In the present episode he is not offended by the insult to Valusia (and therefore himself) generated by the fact that the countess, Lala-ah, has run off with a foreigner in disrespect for the traditions of Valusia. Kull even listens with “scant interest” to the account of her departure. However, he is offended by the remarks of Fenar the Farsunian, and the king takes off in a pique to pursue the offender and achieve retribution of some sort.
This is a story in which Howard criticizes civilization heavily. Even Tu, Kull’s chief counselor, admits that “civilization is a network and a maze of precedence and custom.” The guard Kull bribes at Taluna reconciles his own conscience to believe that he is doing no wrong. The 400 men that ride with Kull are either Pictish barbarians or the less civilized hillmen from Zalgara (most Valusians are too decadent to serve efficiently in the military). When a nobleman delivers Fenar’s rude message to Kull, the King does not blame the bearer of the message: “Kull was too much the savage to connect the insult with the bearer; it must remain for civilized rulers to wreck vengeance on couriers.” According to the border gaurd, Kull sets out to right the wrong done to him because he is a barbarian; a Valusian would have sent an emissary to do it. Tu is used to previous kings, and so expects the angered Kull to start killing everyone in his rage until it subsides, but the reader is told only a civilized man would do that.
In many ways Kelkor, the Lemurian barbarian, is the perfect savage and not Kull.
Kelkor has such self-control, confidence and assertiveness that Kull envies him. Kelkor’s birth bars him from high command of the Red Slayers, yet he is portrayed as being the most cool-headed, calm and intelligent member of the cast. So much so that somewhere in this series, Kull ignores the law and gives Kelkor the high command in spite of custom and precedence (Howard does this off-stage, of course).
More about Brule is also revealed by Howard: the Pict is a chieftain, controlling at least 100 Pictish warriors. The mutual respect between the king and the Pict has grown to such an extent that Tu sends for Brule to bring the king from his rage.
The geography and culture of the pre-cataclysmic world is further explored: “The crags of Atlantis rose stark and gaunt; her cliffs were barren and rugged.” Of Valusia, the reader is informed that the streets were cobblestoned, and that the Red Slayers wore bronze armor and carried lances and that their horses wore silver horseshoes. It is also learned that Valusia’s marriage temple is called “Merama’s.” Kull swears by Honen, Holger, Hotath and Helfara; some are gods and some are demons.
While in the events following “The Shadow Kingdom” the serpent people are more or less crushed, not all of their allies are vanquished; and so Thulsa Doom, the necromancer, makes his first stage appearance.
His chosen victim is, of course, Kull, the barbarian king. Kull’s personality is further outlined in this story. Kull is not interested in women, and comments on Delcardes’ plight, “I have naught to do with a woman’s mating” — does this perhaps have a double meaning? Probably not.
Also in this story Kull is seen to doubt predestination and to be of short patience. The reader is informed that kingship is difficult and is introduced to four priorities: war, conquest, keeping the throne, learning the customs and thoughts of the people he’s ruling.
There are many comments about savagry and barbarism being better than civilization: “Kull is warned by some primal instinct,” “elemental magic of the savage, the magic of decadency,” “The rot of civilization has not yet entered your soul and our charms may not harm you.”
The second paragraph of the story paints a better portrait of the stable of Kull and his supporting players than at first seems apparant:
Kull was skeptical, and Tu was wary and suspicious without knowing why, but years of counter-plot and intrigue had soured him. He swore testily that a talking cat was a fraud, a swindle, and a delusion; and maintained that should such a thing exist, it was a direct insult to the gods, who ordained that only man should enjoy the power of speech.
Indeed the character of Tu is here more fully fleshed out than in any other of the stories: he is suspicious, torturing someone is his first answer to any problem (not much better than Kull prefering to be confronted by action as posed to the maze of his kingly duties), Tu has seen several kings come and go and is beginning to become exasperated with putting up with them.
A bit more of the history and geography of the pre-cataclysmic word are revealed in this story:
1. Valka and Hotath are sworn by; these gods were mentioned in The Isle of the Eons.
2. Valusians came out of the east to trample the old race. The old race originally came out of the ocean (i.e.: Across the ocean — note that Saremes the cat is one of the old race too).
3. Tals are the Valusian units of exchange.
4. An old wizard of Lemuria was a ventriloquist (Rotath?).
5. Brule still used a curved sword in the Pictish manner, not the straight Valusian sword he later adopted.
6. The Forbidden Lake, which is near the City of Wonders, is also in the Zalgaran foothills.
7. According to Atlantian legends, in the old times beasts had talked to men — as also mentioned in the Conan story, “Beyond the Black River.”
8. There are shrines never built by human hands.
9. Cats were exhalted in old times.
It is easy to assume that Delcardes’ name was suggested by that of the French philosopher, Descartes; notice the similarity of Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum” (I think, therefore I am) using the self as the basis or verifying the existence of reality; and the sea king’s words to Kull when the latter asks where the Enchanted Land is actually located:
You are at the center of the universe as you are always. Time, place, and space are illusians, having no existence save in the mind of man which must set limits and bounds in order to understand. There is only one underlying reality, of which all appearances are but outward manisfestations, just as the upper lake is fed by the waters of the real one.
And a dozen death-blots blotched him
On jowl and shank and huckle,
And he knocked oh his skull with his knuckle
And laughed — if you’d call it laughter —
At the billion facets of dying
In his outstart eyeballs shining.
This verse “heading” with its archaic use of language is an interesting preface to another of Howard’s well-told horror stories. If silence is treated as a living thing in this story, in this heading it is a disease appearing on cheek, shin and ankle. The protagonist of this heading raps on his skull, reaffirming his existence, and laughs at the fading spectre he has just defeated.
Most likely the events in this story occur three to four months after those in “The Shadow Kingdom.” As many of the serpent people as have been discovered have been exterminated, though possibly there are many in hiding waiting to strike back at the king. Kull seems to have recovered from the brief moment when he lost touch with reality from seeing a duplicate of himself in “The Shadow Kingdom.” Here he is again brash, confident and headstrong.
Probably the last thing Kull needed to hear at this time, though, are the solipsist ramblings of Kuthulos, the slave. Solipsism is the theory that nothing but the self exists, and therefore the self is the only object of real knowledge. After the doubts of existence Kull had in the second story, to be exposed to a philosophy of this reality-doubting type could prove to be destructive to the king. Fortunately Kull is much more interested in visiting the site of Raama’s battle with Silence than he is in listening to Kuthulos’ maunderings.
The fact that a rash adventurer should slowly evolve into the contemplative ruler that Kull will later become is quite a puzzle, but not an inexplicable puzzle. Being raised by animals as Kull was, his mind did not have to deal with the complexities of human existence; the part of his brain that would handle such problems, the neo-cortex, never developed. This would have made Kull unable to handle complex situations and ideas, as in “The Shadow Kingdom” where the reader learns that Kull prefers straight-forward action to the plotting and counter-plotting necessary to serve as king. This lack of development would result in personality disturbances and the kind of impulsiveness that Kull exhibits throughout the series. (Howard refers to this as a “wayward perverseness” in the present story.) Occaisionally the cortex would take on the work that the underdeveloped neo-cortex should, but it could not do the job as well; so Kull’s “shrewd” dealings with his subjects take more mental work on his part than they would from most other people. Note that it wearies Kull just to think how long Raama has been dead.
Since Ka-Nu’s spies knew of the serpent people’s plot in “The Shadow Kingdom,” it is likely to assume that his spies also helped Kull ferret out the bulk of his enemies that were skulking about the countryside. Most probably though, all of the serpent men were not located. As a result of his aid Ka-Nu becomes welcome at Valusian court. He is someone whose service Kull trusts.
Brule is referred to as Ka-Nu’s right hand man and was probably sent to the mainland not just to be another of Ka-Nu’s agents, but rather Brule has leadership abilities and is a high ranking member in the Pictish Embassy. Brule is also accepted into the Valusian court, by Kull at least, and the friendship between the two begins to grow. First though, Brule’s respect for the king deepens, as later in the story he is seen as willing to follow Kull into Hell. Brule has apparently travelled through Valusia somewhat, as he is familiar with the location of the Skull of Silence.
Kuthulos the slave is an interesting character. Intelligent, the wisest man in the empire, given a philosophical bent, yet he is a slave. Probably he is a combination story-teller/tutor and ends up in the possession of whoever needs him the most.
Kuthulos’ story on the day the events of “The Screaming Skull of Silence” takes place involves Raama. This legendary figure is described as the greatest mind of all ages. Raama was the pragmatic sort of magic-user that the members of the turn-of-the-century Golden Dawn sought to become as opposed to the imbecilic mummer of the “sword & sorcery” story. He is described as having some ages ago freed humanity from the grasp of unknown demons and raised the race to its heights. These demons were probably the beings that the Elder Race had to defeat in order to take possession of the Thurian continent. Considering the way lore and legends are borrowed and changed from one race to the other, it may well be that Raama is the “Vraama” that Rotath swears by in “The Curse of the Golden Skull.”
This telling of the Day of the King’s Fear, as it came to be known, reveals this tale to be yet another well-written horror story. The villain of this piece is Silence. So rather than a magician or a legendary creature or whatever, the menace is provided by what is usually considered to be an abstract. Yet here it gains tangibility and slowly becomes a fearful menace of such calibre as to turn Kull’s entourage into nearly-screaming maniacs. (It’s interesting that Kull, who was the closest to this “monster,” was the only one with the strength to combat it.)
Opposed to Silence there is a gong of sound, embodying another abstract. The gong is like the sea, its green depths are never silent, never still, always changing. Yet the sea symbolically represents the restless side of the personality and the lower emotions. a person’s temper is like the waves of the sea, foaming, roaring, striking out blindly; much like an impetuous Kull does in these early adventures.
Kuthulos’ early ramblings about Silence being an absense of something are ironic in a story in which Silence manifests itself as something nearly solid that actually screams by the story’s end. The erudite slave, also ironically, becomes a slavering idiot during the onslaught of Silence, making this story a perfect parable of a Civilization falling away before the onslaught of a supernature. The tale is tightly plotted with all the elements contributing significantly to its climax.
Most likely this story was written more as an intellectual exercise than as a commercial piece of writing. Yet it offers a philosophy that reinforces that offered in other Kull stories; and that is, as Robert Weinberg has put it, that “all is illusion and nothing has meaning in an infinite universe which is incomprehensible to finite man.”
If there had been a Kull, his actions would have had no effect on the way we live our lives today. History has a muting effect on the actions of any man, even a great king. What will be the end result of our actions in 100,000 years? What will our achievements have been? Nothing! All is folly, eventually. What we believe, what we do, what morals we live by — will all prove to be pointless. Even if one of us achieves the notoriety of a great figure in history, our possible effect on long term history will have been nil. If Kull had been a real king and not a fictional construct, he would have been forgotten entirely, not remembered by anyone.
The philosophies that Howard offers through the “very old man” in this story are immensely interesting. Paramount among these are the “world within worlds” theory, serving to make the infinite more vast (if that’s possible) and complex. If a king in Kull’s time would seek to raise his land from a state of civilized decadency — what would those actions matter if that kingdom were, after all, only a part of a grain of sand on some unknown beach in the macrocosm. There is also a passage which seems to promote Howard’s recurrent theme of reincarnation, or perhaps even predestination: “You are a part of that great ocean which is Life, which washes upon all shores, and you are as much a part of it in one place as in another, and as sure to eventually flow back the Source of it which gave birth to all Life.”
The standard Kull chronology places this story as the third Kull tale. In some ways it is preferable to place this story here so that someone reading the stories in this order does not encounter a story without Kull on stage until here in the saga.
We don’t know how Howard had intended the longer untitled fragment or “The Black City” to end, but it’s easy to assume that Kull decides to began an extensive campaign, not only to wipe out the last of the serpent people, but also any of the religions still utilizing human sacrifice. He is also persecuting any worship of the elder gods. These actions would set the stage for the present story.
Thuron, like the later-encountered Rotath of Lemuria, is one of the elder race. He is described as being a cadaverous giant, a tall gaunt man with glimmering eyes, heavy brows, a thin gash of a mouth, metallic laughter and lean powerful hands. His movements are snake-like. Thuron is the high priest of the Unnamable One, known as the Black Shadow, one of “the terrible gods . . . [that] came from forgotten worlds and lost realms of blackness.” (Cthulhu Mythos followers, take note!) Thuron has opposed the descendants of the hero, Gonra, for some time now. They’ve voted against him in council, and he is seeking revenge by trying to sacrifice them to the Black Shadow in the Temple of Everlasting Darkness.
Gonra was an ancient hero who spilled blood for the scorpion god in ages past when Atlantean savages would have defiled the shrine. Gonra died in the service of that deity and the priests promised that Gonra’s descendants would be granted protection by the scorpion god. Thuron confronts the current descendant of Gonra and his lover in the temple of the scorpion god and is about to drag them off to sacrifice them when a bit of irony occurs: He dies from a scorpion bite when “no scorpion has been seen in the city for longer than men remember.” The scorpion god has obviously kept his vow. It’s odd that such a negative, deadly beast should prove to be the “hero” of this tale, rescuing the descendant and his lover.
Another bit of irony is that Kull’s Atlantean ancestors are not shown in a favorable light, revealing a bit of objectivity on Howard’s part.
Evidently this story culminates a series of battles that Kull has had to go through to put an end to these demonic religions. One can imagine many bravely-fought battles and supernatural encounters, ending with the friendship between Kull and Brule growing, ending with the presentation to Brule of certain gifts mentioned in “Kings of the Night.”
For the sake of convenience, we can presume that on the way back from the previous adventure Kull and his entourage stopped at the resort city of Kamula. For that is where we next find them. Kull, Brule, the Pict Grogar, and the Valusian Monaro are all there in this sleepy mountain city.
In Kamula Kull finds no peace. Grogar disappears into a hiden doorway in a wall and Monaro is murdered by a mysterious unseen piper.
Grogar the Pict is described as never having looked at a woman. Although homosexuality was known to be practiced in many ancient societies, Howard seems to have been possessed with the idea of asexual, ascetic males during the time in which he wrote the Kull stories.
Again, this story is a departure from the Sword-n-Sorcery story. All violence, except for a single solitary bite of a snake (and what was probably some bad language) is off stage. This tale, because of its jump to contemporary times makes a desireable epilogue to the Kull series. It also leads the reader to hope that Kull regained his mental state and continued to rule Valusia wisely and with reasonably more intellegence than he had shown before.
Rotath of Lemuria curses nearly everything, including his own bones as he adds new lists of gods to ones already discussed. He names Hotath and Helgor, Ra and Ka and Valka (Ka, according to the Egyptians, is the bird of creation), Vramma and Jaggtanoga and Kamma (Kana is the Hindu god of sex and love) and Kulthas (the Lemurian form of Cthulhu?), the Black Gods (the Old Ones?), the Ape Lords (see my intoduction to this essay), and Shumma-Gorath (whom I believe was a Mythos character). That should be a pantheon or two — aye what?
Even though Kull is referred to as a “barbarian chief” that could be the way one of the elder race looks with distaste upon the Seven Empires. Of great interest to the researcher is the proportioning of Rotath. Like other characters in this series, he is one of the Elder Race, in fact the description of his skeleton matches the antagonist of “The Altar and the Scorpion.” The 20th Century scientist’s revulsion of Rotath’s skeleton plays nicely against the admiration Bran Mak Morn showed towards Kull on the Atlantian’s trip through time.
All is all, the Kull series is an invigorating and enjoyable read, playing Howard’s philosophy of “The Natural Man” against some really fine writing. Kull, we hope, lived on to enjoy many fine adventures.
This is the briefest of Howard’s three Kull fragments, but at the same time it may well be considered one of the most important, if for no other reason than that it offers a strong case for a “philosophy of the individual”:
“. . . about each of the three [men] was that indefinable element which sets the superior man apart and shatters the delusion that all men were born equal.”
The three men gathered around a gaming board at the beginning of this story are all “born leaders”. They are agressive individuals who are leaders of men. They have attained positions of prestige and power. These are positions that each of the men deserve, including Brule, this story’s protagonist.
In this story alone Brule is no longer a supporting player. The brusque formal Pict takes the main stage as much is revealed about himself and the people that reared him.
Most Picts are brown- or black-eyed; but Brules’s eyes are blue, hinting that his origins are not totally Pictish. And though he’s been in Valusia for years at the time of this story, he is still a savage: “Years in Valusia . . . had given him a veneer of culture, education and reserve. But beneath that veneer burned the black blind savage of old.”
The warrior elite of Brule’s race are distinguished by three horizontal scars on their chest, these are scars that Brule earns as a young man in events related in this story. By this time he’s become a commander of these warrior-elites, the Spear-Slayers.
This story is the most powerful of the law-oriented stories in this series. The reader finds Kull a virtual slave to the laws, unable to govern as he sees fit; Kull is made to sit by and watch the eons-old laws command the king and the kingdom. The laws have always existed, the king is told, and they always will. Kull becomes, however, the literal shatterer of laws.
In the present story, Kull is confronted by a couple who wish to marry, but because of a technicality of the law, are unable to do so. After exploring all avenues with the would-be groom, Seno Val Dor, Kull is informed that the law concerning such things is unchangable; but when Val Dor is responsible for saving Kull’s life, Kull shatters the tablet with the law upon it, declaring himself to be state and law.
This is the ultimate statement of the individual. Freedom of choice is of paramount importance. The longer a society or civilization exists, the more customs and traditions it garners, until the individual is not allowed to be unique — but rather is forced to fit the mold by playing the roles society demands of each one of us. Kull, as a barbarian, was able to see this in Valusia; and, as an outsider, he was able to shatter the laws without fear of divine reprisal.
Kull’s throne is not secure for all of this. The outlaw, Ardyon, had honey-combed the empire with sedition, and not even the outlaw’s death will allow Kull a comfortable seat upon the throne for some time.
In spite of his supreme statement of the individual, Kull is not a raging bull. In this story is exhibited his kindness towards women, something also seen in “Exile of Atlantis” and “The Mirrors of Tuzan Thune” (even though it is revealed here that Kull has never been a lover). He also allows Kaanuub and others boasting descent from the old dynasty to live, something that most kings in Kull’s position would not have done. Nor has he yet closed the doors to the City of Wonders’ Temple of the Serpent; another sign of an extremely tolerable temperment.
That same temperment allows him to believe that “a great poet is greater than any king.” Kull also is seen to have always dreamed of capturing a throne, not just to have had the single dream discussed in “Exile of Atlantis.” Yet it is stated that Kull and Brule have spent most of their lives in Valusia; that inordinate amount of time spent in Valusia had not allowed Kull to comprehend its statecraft. Here, like in many stories in this series, it is seen that the matter of how to govern Valusia is a mystery to the Atlantian. A mystery that even the victory described in this story may not help him to solve.
This is the last of the marriage-themed Kull stories. And as such it surprisingly offers no solution to laws that infringe on the rights of the individual, except perhaps that it is not always necessary to break laws to achieve one’s aims.
A young foreign nobleman is the object of the affections of the daughter of one of Kull’s friends. But since the young man is a foreigner, the girl needs permission from either the king or her father to marry the man. Neither is forthcoming. However, the young man saves the lives of both his beloved and Kull, thus earning the gratitude of the father as well as his permission for them to marry.
Though built slightly on circumstance this is a well-plotted story, with enough intrigue and characterization to carry the story its length. The nephew of Tu, Kull’s chief councelor, is in debt and agrees to hand Kull over to Verulian spies; but at the young man’s death, a man both Kull and Brule liked, Tu is blamed for being so cheap with the man and driving him to such extremes.
The events of this story take place on a hot summer evening some time after the events in “By This Axe I Rule!” The Picts now heavily back Kull, and well that is, for Verulia is plotting against him. Kull feels that when he was a commander the Valusians were able to overlook his foreign birth, but now with him as king in place of the cruel Borna, they find the fact that Kull was not born in Valusia to be intolerable. But Kull is “Wise in the ways of men and women” and manages to keep his crown though the throne rock beneath him. It is shown in this story that mere braun is not all that is necessary to achieve one’s goals, much less save one’s own life. If not for Dalgar, Brule, or a band of Picts, Kull would have been killed; but Kull has been able to instill loyalty in those about him.
In Valusian society women have much freedom, though not by twentieth century standards. They have much more rights than their contemporaries in the eastern empires.
By this time Brule has forsaken the curved sword of the Picts for the straight one of the Valusian army.
This is the only poem in the Kull cycle, and, depending upon the reader’s interpretation, it paints a pretty sorry picture of Kull. Even though Howard leaves it to the reader’s interpretation, the plot runs that Kull is riding through the forest to the sea at night, and, in the light of the moon, he imagines that the trees of the forest attack him. So Kull ends up fighting the trees (haha) all night until dawn when he realizes that trees don’t uproot themselves to fight upstart kings. As a matter of fact, their message to Kull is similar to that he receives from the buildings of the City of Wonder in “The Shadow Kingdom.” Generally that message is one of the inpermanance of mankind as opposed to rocks or trees.
The final impression the reader has is that indeed Kull did imagine the whole thing. Note “Kull thought” from line eight and “As from a nightmare dream” from line 23.
Once again, or still, the reader experiences Howard as a wordsmith as “shadows slew the sun.” This command of the language, this unpurple prose, this instant imagry is the real secret to Howard’s success, not just his questionable use of violence.
[Note: I have put this story in the Bran Mak Morn series.]
It is during the events between “Swords of the Purple Kingdom” and the present story that Kull probably met Gonar, the Pictish wizard. Confronting such worshippers and their magic-practicing priests as he would have, Kull needed aid from from a supernatural source. And likely Ka-Nu would have summoned Gonar from the Pictish Isles, for it probably also benefited the Picts somewhat to rid themselves of certain cults that threatened (to one extreme or another) their relationship with the Seven Empires. Kull has spent enough time with Gonar and built enough of a comradery with him that when the wizard tells Kull that the king is about to have a very strange dream, Kull questions him to no great extent but does as he says.
Herein the most complete physical description of Kull throughout the entire saga is given. He is notably quite different from anyone else appearing in the story, partially because of 100,000 years of evolution: “He was [. . .] massive and lithe — tigerish. But his features were not as theirs, and his square-cut, lionlike mane of hair was black [. . .] Under heavy brows glittered eyes gray as steel and cold as ice. His bronzed face, strong and inscrutable, was clean-shaven, and the broad forehead betokened a high intellegence just as his firm jaw and thin lips showed will-power and courage. But more than all, the bearing of him, the unconscious lionlike stateliness, marked him as a natural king, a ruler of men.”
Kull’s attire is also described. His sandals are of a curious make. He wears a broad belt with a great gold buckle. His gold headband (a golden circlet) is “strangely worked,” and since it stops a blow in the story, probably it is Valusian steel with gold plating. His armor is a pliant coat of strongly-meshed mail which hangs to his knees. His straight sword is so finely made that its durability and strength startles the onlookers to his battle with the Viking: “Cormac [. . .] wondered at this sword that could thus slice through scale-mail. And the blow that gashed the shield should have shattered the blade. Yet not a notch showed in the Valusian steel!”
Kull talks of his own time briefly, still believing that Bran Mak Morn and the others are dream figures, mentioning Brule, Tu, Kelkor and Kananu. It is revealed that Valusia was greater than Rome, though if “greater” meant size, wealth, majesty, or something else is not revealed.
Brule and Bran and the Pictish people are discussed. Brule was a bit taller and a bit broader of shoulder than Bran, otherwise there is little difference between the two. Bran and most of his chiefs have not inter-married with another race as their tribesmen have. Thus he is lithely built and of medium height, while his subjects are “strange and abhorrent to look upon.” They are stocky and mishapen with faces of bestial ferocity, having sloping brows and matted hair. They also have “knotted limbs.” Bran’s line, the Mak Morn, or Morni, traces their ancestry back to Brule (who was not even married at this point in Kull’s life), who referred to his tribe as the Borni — not much of a change in names for 100,000 years of savagery. Bran’s tribe was the Wolf-Clan people.
The gem that Bran wears in his crown is said to have been a gift from Kull to Brule “after a strange battle in a grim land.” It is older than “this world,” it was old when Atlantis and Lemuria sank. It is also somewhat magical, being described as “a magnet that draws down the eons.”
As for the present Gonar, the Pictish shaman, he too is an interesting and complex man. He puts on a hoodoo show to convince the other Picts of certain victory, yet is a sane and reserved man when not requested to wear his mask of pretense. He seriously believes in his arts though, and claims to commune with his ancestor of Kull’s time via dreams.
Gonar reveals much prehistory in this and the other Bran Mak Morn stories, some of it not coinciding with facts presented in “The Hyborian Age”; yet which would be accurate — facts forgotten and distorted in 100,000 years of savagery, or items written down by the Nemedian Chroniclers, who were probably prejudiced against the Picts anyway? He does agree with the essay when he mentions “The Picts [. . .] dwelt in the isles which now form the mountain peaks of a strange land upon the Western Ocean. . . .” [Of course “The Hyborian Age” was written after all these stories, and in it Howard completely reinvents his pre-history for the Conan tales.]
While trying to convince Kull to fight for the Picts, he presents a pragmatic view of the present, “now is all,” might-haves, could-haves, and used-to-bes are meaningless. Yet he also questions reality in a way that Kull has heard before and will probably hear again, to his own detriment, “. . . But is not all a dream? How reckon you but that your former life is but a dream from which you have just awakened.” Though this statement is necessary to make Kull accept the upcoming battle with the Romans seriously, it doesn’t do his mind much good. Both he and Bran convince Kull that the fate of Pictdom rests on this battle.
All this adds up to having a great effect on Kull, and if one considers the consequences of a few very interesting events: Kull is told by his friend, Gonar, that he is going to have a very unusual dream (the king sleeps armored yet); in that dream he is begged to take part in a battle with an empire he has never heard of and to treat that battle as if it were real. He then awakes to still have all the wounds he recieved in his dream battle, his armor hacked to shreds. That would have an unsettling effect on anyone, but more especially upon Kull. Even the Gonar of Bran’s time knew that saying “and all time and space seemed like a dream of Ghosts to him, and he wondered thereat all the rest of his life.”