Sword & Sorcery Stories You Might Have Missed XIII

If you missed the last one…

“The Seal of Zaon Sathla” by Lin Carter was first published in Carter’s anthology, The Magic of Atlantis (1970). Now Lin wrote many stories in his career but this one is more intriguing to me than most.The plot follows Tirion the Glad Magician as he goes to the magicians’ annual fair to buy magical items. There he finds the Seal of Zaon Sathla, a sigil that grants complete immunity to the one who wears it. There are only two in the whole world. Using his Gyian cloak and a sleep charm, he breaks into the vendor’s tent only to find the Thaumturgae is awake. Because he wears the other sigil! Tirion dies after three blasts from a magic wand.

We have two intersections with other fiction here. The first is Carter uses references to the work of Clark Ashton Smith to tie this tale of Atlantis to Hyperborea. He specifically mentions Ommum-Vog from Smith’s “The Ice Demon” (Weird Tales, April 1933). He also names the Thurian continent and the wizard Sharajsha from his Thongor novels. This tale is the pin that connects two great Fantasy series. That Carter would choose Smith’s old Weird Tales series is not surprising since Carter would finish several Smith outlines for new material.

The second connection is the familiarity of the story’s scenario when compared to Lin’s two tales in the Magic in Ithkar shared world anthologies by Andre Norton and Robert Adams. In Volume 2 (1985) Carter published “Geydelle’s Protective”, about a mage who tries to steal from another and meets a terrible end. The second story reads almost exactly the same with the names changed. It even includes the same big reveal in italics. A case of self-plaguarism, or to be kinder, a rewrite without obvious improvement.

“The Ogyr of the Snows”  by Martin Hillman appeared in Douglas Hill’s Warlocks and Warriors (1971) (not to be confused with Warlocks and Warriors (1970) by L. Sprague de Camp.) Hill explains that this story is an excerpt from a Sword & Sorcery novel still in progress. Sadly, Hillman never published it and this chapter is all we got.

The story begins with Farrach the Half-Pike and the wizard Rheged entering the mountains. Rheged declares at the first that he doesn’t like these mountains. Farrach asks him if he likes any mountains. He admits he does not. Farrach carries half of a broken pike that he has sworn he will use to kill the man who slayed his family. He uses it like an axe.

The duo come across a strange footprint in the snow. It’s not a yeti but an ogyr. (“Ogyrs are like Onyons.“) Later Rheged casts a Vision of Blood spell to see the future. It looks pretty bad, with the wizard being enveloped in blood and pain. Despite the vision, they proceed into the rugged range, finding less and less food. Farrach becomes desperate and climbs a peak to steal the eggs of a wyvern he discovers. (Hillman’s wyvern is not a Welsh dragon with only one set of legs but a feathery bird more like a roc.)

The ogyr strikes at last, attacking Rheged. Farrach comes with his half-pike but the beast has skin so hard that nothing can pierce it. He is defeated and the wizard is dragged off to the cave for supper.  The warrior realizes that he won’t be able to kill the ogyr with his weapon so he comes up with another plan. He retrieves the wyvern eggs he dropped, and uses one to lure the bird to the ogyr’s cave.

Standing outside, Farrach calls the ogyr to battle. It comes and again the half-pike is not sufficient to deal a death blow. But Farrach throws the remaining egg at the ogyr as the wyvern descends, removing the threat for good. He pulls Rheged out of the cave and staunches his wounds. They move on to more adventures we never get to read.

“The Reaping” by Ardath Mayhar is from Andrew J. Offutt’s  Swords Against Darkness IV (1979). Unlike all the other stories here, Mayhar tells it in the first person. Elah is a young woman, the last of her family who goes in search of her father. Her six brothers have tried and failed before her. The Sorcerer holds her father in the Caverns Enspelled. Armed with her father’s sword, Reaper, and a magical jewel from her mother, Elah ventures into the labyrinth, killing beasts sent against her, defeats an undead warrior who proves to be her eldest brother. She releases him from his spiritual enslavement. Later she finds the five others, releasing them as well.

Finally she comes to the prison where her father, Ranth, sits. The Sorcerer has created a spell no man can undo. Unfortunately for the wizard, he has left half of humanity out of his spell. Since Elah is a woman, she passes easily. As she takes Ranth out, she seals each doorway behind her with a magical seal. The wizard is imprisoned is his own underground tunnels forever.

Now all those familiar with The Lord of the Rings (who isn’t?) knows this idea from Eowyn’s defeat of the Lord of the Nazguls. Mayhar uses it well in what is an immediate and compelling tale. Her choice of first person voice is as Offutt says:

It seems to me that there’s an excellent instinct at work in “The Reaping”; it seems to me that it is told just right and at just the right length.

“Bones” by P. C. Hodgell is from Elsewhere III (1984) edited by Terri Windling & Mark Alan Arnold. I’ve wanted to read P. C. Hodgell for some time and finally have. The wait was worth it. Jame, who goes by the handle of “Talisman”, breaks into Polyfertes’ mansion to steal a worthless gem. She does this to prove her skill and to satisfy a challenge given by a young thief named Patches. The theft doesn’t go entirely well, as Jame has to jump from the second storey, avoid a guard with a spear, and ultimately, escapes during an earthquake.

That’s just the warm-up. Jame works for the supreme thief, Penari, who lives in a maze. The building is dangerous but Jame knows her way. She finds her master under the fallen furniture. She also finds the giant snake, Monster, in the chandelier, and a tiny gargoyle running around. Penari asks about the bones of the dead builder of the Maze, Master Rugen. He sends her to retrieve the bones that have been scattered about the tunnels. She fails to find any, only a medallion that bears an architect’s tool.

This leads her to an entire mock city where Rugen designed the metropolis. Anything that happens to the mock-up happens to the real city of Tai-tastigon. This is what has been causing the earthquakes. Jame returns to the Maze to find Master Rugen has returned from the dead because of his rivalry with Penari. The gargoyle is his familiar, Quezal. The master thief had allowed the architect to become lost and starve to death. His specter wants the blue prints that Penari kept from him.

Hodgell’s tale reminds me of Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Return of the Sorcerer” (Strange Tales, September 1931)with the severed limbs of a rival that creep for revenge. Penari and Rugen’s feud ends in a happier way, keeping the tone lighter than a Smith tale. I will be diving into Hodgell’s Kencyrath novels next. She is a fine writer of Sword & Sorcery.

“Edyth Among the Trolls” by Lois Tilton (Sword & Sorceress VIII (1991) has a young woman living with a bunch of trolls. She is protected from them by an amulet that makes them see her as one of them. She is searching for a legendary arm-ring that might be among the trolls’ hoard. We get to see her eat a dead rat rather than the rotten meat of the monsters.

One night the trolls go out to hunt and Edyth is followed by a baby troll. When humans arrive with dogs, she saves the troll child and goes off with the men. She is discovered by her fellow apprentice, Magni, in time to save her from two suspicious villagers. He pulls the amulet off her neck, returning her full memory. The magical necklace had a fault in it that impaired her mind. She returns to her magical master, Nemian, to learn she is being reassigned to live with wyverns.

I suspect that Tilton is a fan of John Bauer (as so many of us are). Perhaps the image above inspired her, though Marion Zimmer Bradley admits the hero of the tale was originally named Edric, and a man. Tilton had submitted it for MZB Fantasy Magazine. A little editing and the hero becomes Edyth. (Which argues the question: are female characters simply men in drag?) Whatever the case, I found the tale a little weak, more like the opener of a novel about an apprentice who acts as a spy among monsters. Maybe Tilton wrote such a book? I believe most of her work is in the Horror line.

Conclusion

Well, until next time, keep reading those little nuggets of heroic fantasy where ever you find them. Not all the good stuff is in novel form. (I feel a post coming on about the preponderance of Fantasy in novel form…) The 1970s is a pretty easy vein to mine with the 1980s growing less so. The 1990s can be thin but the stuff you dig up can be a real gem here and there.