Sword & Sorcery Favorites You Might Have Missed III

This go-round we are going to focus on old stuff. The range is 1929 to 1970. As always you might look at my selection and think, “Well, everybody’s read that one!” but I have found from people’s comments this is not the case. So let’s harken back to a time when people suffering from the Great Depression were spending their dimes on Pulp magazines…

“The Battle of the Toads” by David H. Keller appeared in Weird Tales, October 1929.

The plot has Cecil, a man who knows his destiny is to be ruler of all Cornwall, visit the Abbe Rousseau where the monks have a strange resemblance to frogs. The priests are satanists, and they require Cecil to help them destroy an enemy. This proves to be another frog inside a glass jar. Cecil’s job is to make sure none of the priests stab their leader in the back while confronting the enemy. A battle of magic between the two takes place but the frog priests ultimately lose, releasing the captive who none other than the devil himself. As a reward the dark master makes Cecil lord of Cornwall.

David H. Keller was a medical doctor who wrote early Science Fiction as well as horror. His foray into Fantasy is the collective stories known as “The Tales of Cornwall”. Four of them appeared in Weird Tales of which this was the first. Two more appeared in obscure SF Pulps and the last in Robert Lowdnes’ Magazine of Horror.

Keller’s fantasy isn’t influenced by Robert E. Howard. This is pretty easy to see just from chronology. “The Shadow Kingdom”, the first true S&S tale had appeared only a month earlier in August 1929. Keller seems to be inspired by James Branch Cabell more than anyone. The sardonic tone is reminiscent of Clark Ashton Smith, years in the future. The sad truth is Keller’s Cornwall stories didn’t seem to have any real influence on later WT writers. Still, it is an intriguing proto-Fantasy tale.

“The Sapphire Goddess” by Nictzin Dyalhis (1934) originally appeared in Weird Tales, February 1934.

A man who is about to kill himself suddenly finds himself whisked off to another dimension by a man named Zarf. He claims to be the man’s royal guard. The earthman finds out that he was once King Karan, his memory wiped by a sorcerer named Djl Grm. The two men are attacked by Vulmin dwarves, which they kill with their swords.

Zarf tells Karan of a rival sorcerer named Agnor Halit, who might remove the spell. They spend the night in a hovel belonging to a strange hybrid named Koto. He is half Rodar, a race of giants living in the Red Wilderness, and an elemental. Karan knights him and makes his Lord of the Red Wilderness, and winning an ally for life. Karan wants to return to Earth to get firearms but Zarf can not send him back. Instead he builds bows and arrows, which are unknown there.

They set out to find Agnor Halit on ostrich-like riding birds. That night they sleep in the ghost-haunted desert. Koto keeps the ghosts at bay by burning resinous gum he finds. Zarf goes to sleep. Koto and Karan go to speak with Koto’s father, a dark cloud with sinister eyes. Koto’s father agrees to transport the trio over the Sea of the Dead, the Hills of Flint, and to the Mountains of Horror, which they must cross themselves. This he does with a sandstorm cloud that deposits them beside the ruins of an ancient and evil city.

There Karan meets the former queen, an evil vampire that wishes to lie with him. When he refuses her she fades away. Karan wakes to find his two friends under a sleep spell. Agnor Halit has come to meet them. He awakens the two so that they can confirm his identity. He promises to restore Karan’s memory if he will do one task for him, go to a whirlpool and dive down into a chamber and claim a shining blue statue that lies there. When they come to the geyser hole it is Koto who goes first, out of loyalty. Zarf follows and Karan has no choice but to follow.

They find a chamber below that houses the statue, along with a multitude of round stones of varying color. These rise up and attack the men. Only when King Karan demands they stop as their rightful king, can he walk way with the prize. Koto’s father and the other wizard Djl Grm are waiting for the three upon their return. Koto defies Djl grm and wins both his king’s praise and his father’s. Koto’s father warns the sorcerer off, saying he will go to war with him if he presses his claim on the statue.

That night the Princess of Hell comes back and tries to seduce Karan again. She raises her phantom city all about him. he refuses again and is tortured by a priest who knows all the pressure points. She torments him further by making him think he is kissing the beauty from the blue statue. It is actually a corpse. Karan is rescued by Agnor Halit, who destroyed the queen and her city ages ago. He punishes her by imprisoning her soul in a poisonous lizard. Agnor Halit is ready to complete their deal. He gets Karan to relinquish all claims to the statue then restores his memory. Karan now remembers that Halit had turned Karan’s queen, Mehul-Ira, into the statue. She wants her king but the wizard presses his claim.

Koto deals with the sorcerer, first by denying that Karan relinquished his claims to his wife, just a statue, which she was no longer. To really finish him, he throws the poisonous lizard down his throat and kills him. Koto convinces his father to return them all to Koto’s hovel. The king and queen are reunited and spend the night alone.

After the second page all Science Fiction elements disappear and a fantasy tale unfolds. Is it Sword & Sorcery? It feels very much like the later work of Lin Carter. I would call it proto-heroic fantasy. Written in 1933 it may have been inspired in part by Howard’s Conan stories but it doesn’t really feel that way. The plotting is much more tongue-in-cheek. (For instance, the flying stones giving up when Kin Karan commands them to. Too easy to be taken very seriously.) Mike Ashley calls Dyalhis “over-rated”. I have to agree. His quest and setting are like bad Dungeons & Dragons. Until you remember when he wrote it. Lord Dunsany, A. Merritt and Robert E. Howard were the only real forerunners. It’s hard to imagine where this tale came from. For some reason Donald A. Wolheim changed the title when he reprinted it in the Avon Fantasy Reader.

“Turutal” by Ray Capella originally appeared in Amra v2 #32, March 1965.

Arquel and a boat load of Kothian mercenaries (under Jerruz the Red-beard) plunge down the River Styx. Their prisoner Arquel escapes them. On the way they see the Ituri, a weird race of undead creatures and accidentally sacrifice one of their own in the Pool of the Ituri, releasing them.

The mercenaries land on the island of Turutal (mostly because a Stygian priest has brought his allies, fierce black warriors to guard the banks of the river, making landing impossible.) The mercenaries are forced into defending the tower from the returning Ituri by the Stygian who has holed up in the top tower. This wizard can kill using a mystical wind that smashes men against walls or drops them to their deaths.

Jerruz and his men kill the Ituri at first but slowly plan to kill the wizard when Arquel returns. Arquel sneaks slowly up to the top tower and fights the Stygian, who turns into a giant snake. Jerruz and his cross-bowmen and Arquel manage to kill the priest, who returns to his natural form, that of a four-armed lizard man. With the priest’s death the ituri are free to return to Turutal and die a long awaited death. The mercenaries and Arquel escape on the ituri’s metal boats. The black warriors on the banks allow them to escape, no longer beholdedn to the dead priest.

One of the Arquel tales that appeared in Amra, George Scithers’ fanzine, then was reprinted in 1970 in Warlocks and Warriors. Set in Conan’s Hyborian age, L. Sprague de Camp introduced Capella with: “…’Turutal’ is one of a series of stories about Arquel which he originally wrote for his own amusement but which turned out, somewhat to his surprise, to be up to professional standards…” I am glad to confirm de Camp’s assessment for much “fan-fic” does not reach such standards. Perhaps the best thing is that Capella does not pastiche Conan but writes his own thing in Howard’s setting.

“The Bells of Shoredan” by Roger Zelazny (1966) originally appeared in Fantastic, March 1966.

Dilvish, as an heir of the house of Selar, is the only man who can ring the Bells of Shoredan and raise the phantom hosts that lie in Rahoringhast. When Lylish surrounds Dilfar and the siege appears dire, Dilvish sets off on Black to reach the bells and raise the ghost army to save the city. He has to avoid the guards around enemy’s camp which he does easily. He has to cross a desert where ghoulish phantoms circle about him trying to drive him insane. But he arrives at the ruined city of Rahoringhast but Black can not go with him up the stairs to the thirteen towered castle for his demon-nature is prevented.

Dilvish goes but not alone for a priest of Babrigore meets him. His name is Korel and he has been doing penance there. The Priests of Babrigore are friendly to Jelerak for they housed and nursed him after he was fallen down when he fought a terrible monster there. (This battle was the beginning of his turning from good to evil.) Korel and Dilvish walk up the long stairs to a chamber at the top of the castle.

As soon as Dilvish arrives he sees the god Hohorga lying in a pile of his entrails and his men surrounding Selar, who they cut down and kill. The vision disappears. This vision only happens when an heir of Selar enters the room. Dilvish opens the door to the tower where the Bells of Shoredan are kept. When he does a black smoke appears with two red eyes in it. It is Cal-Den, the demon who tortured Dilvish in Hell before his escape. Dilvish and Cal-Den fight. The demon savages Dilvish about the head, smashes his sword and throws him against the wall. Dilvish’s hand falls on an unseen weapon. It is the invisible sword of Selar. With this he kills Cal-Den, then goes up the bell tower to ring the bells and summon the ghost army.

Zelazny uses some familiar fantasy tropes in this story. Dilvish, like Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, summons a ghost army. He finds an impromptu weapon just as Beowulf does when he fights Grendel’s mother. The three stories written in the period of 1965-66 form a three-part early history of Dilvish. Through these three stories we see what happened before The Siege of Dilfar, Dilvish rides to warn the city and finally in this story the conclusion of that struggle. Even in “The Bells of Shoredan” you can see Zelazny begin to shed the high-tone Dunsanian mold for the faster moving Howard-like tale. The last of the 1965-1967 period, “A Knight For Merytha” shows the change complete.

“Black Abyss ” by Robert E. Howard and Lin Carter (1967) a posthumous collaboration with Lin Carter, based on this fragment, appeared in King Kull 1967.

Kull is in Tamula, visiting the artists and culture lovers of that city. Brule comes to Kull complaining one of his warrior, Grogar, has disappeared. Brule was looking for him in the Jeweled Room when he spied a secret door closing in the wall. Brule shoved a sword into the crack then posted a guard named Manaro to watch it.

The two go to the Jeweled Room to investigate and find Manaro dead. He has been stabbed to death. Kull pulls the sword out of the wall and opens the secret door. He and Brule descend into a labyrinth which holds a temple where the Tamulians are engaged in terrible rites to worship Zogthuu, the gigantic slug. They rescue Grogar from being sacrificed, then slay Zogthuu with burning oil from the sacrificial braziers.

Howard’s original fragment only goes up to the point where Kull and Brule are investigating the disappearance of Grogar and Manaro. He does include hints that the cause is related to his story “The Valley of the Worm” with weird fluting. Carter picked up on this and writes a very Mythosian ending to the tale. This story was adapted in Savage Sword of Conan #2 (October 1974) by Steve Engelhart and drawn by Howard Chaykin and The Crusty Bunkers.

“The Woman in the Witch-Wood” by Gardner F. Fox originally appeared Kothar-Barbarian Swordsman (1970)

Entering a haunted wood, Kothar comes across Alaine, the former Lady of Shallone. She has been ousted by a wizard named Gorfroi. Kothar agrees to go to Murrd and free the people from Gorfroi. He can do this by getting back a single strand of Alaine’s hair. Alaine is trapped inside the wood by a magic wall that would destroy her if she passed through it.

While sleeping she enchants Kothar’s sword Frostfire. She also shows herself to be none other than the witch Red Lori. Kothar goes to Murrd where all the people live in fear. He meets Mellicent, a barmaid. She explains that at night one person is called magically, through a moon-shaped tatoo, to go to the castle and are never seen again. She tells him that Alaine was only slightly better than Gorfroi. Kothar gives himself a false tattoo with ink and a needle.

In the night a mummy-like wraith comes to give Kothar an actual tattoo. He destroys the monster with his sword. Kothar sees the next victim being drawn to the castle. He knocks the man down and ties him to a tree, then goes to the castle himself. Entering the hall a magical wind carries him off to face a demon that tries to pull him into a void. Whenever he chops it with Frostfire he feels a little of the magic cast on it by Alaine fade.

Kothar goes through a black wizard door and finds himself in a world of insanity. There he is attacked by the wizard-demons of Daemonia. He fights and kills many before the survivors flee, all the while draining his sword of its enchantment. Gorfroi appears as two burning eyes and tries to tempt Kothar with riches, then potions of immortality, agelessness and invulnerabilty. Kothar refuses. Gorfroi laughs and confesses if Kothar had chosen any of the treasures he would have died instantly. Kothar’s attack on the wizards has angered Gorfroi’s masters.

To settle things, Gorfroi must fight Kothar hand-to-hand. Kothar’s blade has been drained of its magic but Gorfroi must face him without magic either. Gorfroi loses, ending up on Kothar’s sword. The Cumberian takes the hair in its case and goes back to Murrd, where he frees the man he tied up. Mellicent reminds him not to trust Alaine. Kothar returns to the wood and gives Alaine the hair. Freed from the spell, she turns Kothar into a dog and leaves the wood. When she crosses the barrier she burns up, cancelling her spells. Kothar has tricked her. The hair is from his horse Greyling. Kothar returns to Murrd and the barmaid Mellicent.

The Cockscomb demon says: “Ifn thagn Gorfroi!” which is awfully reminiscent of Mythos speech. Fox certainly was aware of Lovecraft and may have taken a little inspiration there.