In our last segment I mention four great stories I would want you to enjoy. This time the sentiment is more, well if you don’t read these, you haven’t missed much. Of course, I know these things are subjective so I will try to show why I feel this way. All these stories are a better read than most mainstream fiction.
“The Sword in the Snow” by E. C. Tub appeared in Weird Tales, but not the Farnsworth Wright, not even the Dorothy McIlwraith Weird Tales. It appeared in the Fall 1973 in what are known as the California issues edited by Sam Moskowitz.
Malkar of Meard, a traveling mercenary, falls foul of a pack of wolves in the forest and has a desperate running battle with them on horseback. The man and his mount are saved when they see a light and ride for it. A magical spell drives the wolves off and Malkar sees he has found an inn. Sargash the innkeeper sets him up with food and a bath. Malkar wanders into the common room and plays dice with a group of men. He proves a gambler is cheating them.
During the gambling he meets Nieeda the serving girl. She offers him company but he puts her off. When he returns to his room he finds her waiting. Malkar finds her body and perfume enchanting and he no longer resists. While they make love he finds he is losing control. He knows magic is being used against him. He demands to be released.
When Nieeda doesn’t, he stabs her with a knife. He finds himself on the snow, the inn gone. All an illusion:
“A puddle of yellow ichor stained the snow a yard from his feet. A slimed trail of the same hue led to where a hole gaped in the snow. As he watched something moved within the orifice, a mass of writhing tendrils, a polyp-like thing with clawed appendages and plates of bony armour. For a moment it heaved and then, Nieeda’s face stared at him with all of its remembered beauty.” (“The Sword in the Snow ” by E. C. Tubb)
Nieeda is not a woman but a disgusting squidgy that has eaten his horse and now wants to eat him. He kills the creature even when it tries to take female form again. With no horse left, Malkar makes the best of things, and eats the dead animal before walking on.
In an intro blurb Moskowitz reports how he came across Tubb’s story. “Originally written for and sold to a still-born British Fantasy magazine entitled SWORD AND SORCERY, it went down the drain when plans for the publication were cancelled. Fortunately, we were given the opportunity to read the story subsequently, and snapped it up…”
I’m not quite sure why the excitement. Tubb’s tale is well told but offers nothing new. The wolves are familiar. The tavern is familiar. Even the monster is familiar if you’ve read “A Martian Odyssey” by Stanley G. Weinbaum or “Shambleau” by C. L. Moore (who Moskowitz mentions in the intro). Tubb’s tale is no worse than what John Jakes or Gardner F. Fox were producing around the same time. But no better either. Moskowitz probably bought it out of nostalgia.
“The Higher Heresies of Oolimar” originally appeared in Flashing Swords #1 edited by Lin Carter for Dell Books 1973. It is the only dud in a collection by masters. In it Amalric the Man-God is sent by his dieties to meet a wizard who will go on a quest with him. He finds Ubonidus the magician in the goblin-haunted hills, where the Man-God uses his bronze staff to kill the horde. Together the two men fly on a giant bumblebee called a hlagocyte, and land in the city of Oolimar for rest.
They are arrested as heretics then subdued by a crystal ball of gas shot from a catapult. Their prison is luxurious and well-stocked. They are subjected to religious rewiring but finally choose to escape. Ubonidus summons his bird-like familiar, Roquat, and he gives them the answer to escape.
This story clearly demonstrates that Lin Carter was writing a novel in segments (to be entitled Amalric). The tone of the Amalric stories is comical, a distinct difference from Carter’s Thongor tales. The names of the towns and cities are created with a Dunsanian verboseness which adds to the humor.
Personally I don’t care for humorous Fantasy and found the comic asides and “funny” but illogical actions of the hero jolted me out of the story. Amalric has a magic staff that will allow them to escape but he doesn’t even think to use it until Ubonidus’s familiar reminds him. The weird religion of the Oolimarines was fun but shouting heresies at soldiers to disarm them is again illogical. Why don’t the guards shoot them from a distance with arrows?
To Carter’s credit, he tried this thing a decade before Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels. Carter’s fight with the goblins is one of the most gruesome fight scenes I’ve ever read in a S&S story. Perhaps he meant it to be “over-the-top” violence? Ubonidus’s name may have been inspired by Robert E. Howard’s Red priest, Nabonius in “Rogues in the House”.
“The Curious Customs of Turjan Seerad” is the sequel to the last story and appeared in Flashing Swords #3 edited by Lin Carter for Dell Books in 1976.
Having escaped from Oolimar, Amalric and Ubonidus descend from their drunken bumblebee mount to land in an oasis in the night. There they are attacked by ojanzolla trees before meeting the friendly Turjan nomads. These extravagant savages feed and house the travelers with robust hospitality.
But things go south when the king shows his prize possessions to Amalric and Ubonidus. When they say they are beautiful the king must give them to his guests. Being oblivious they do this three times until the king loses it and has them arrested. The two escape with ease because the Turjans can’t imagine anyone not following the rules of hospitality.
This tale of Amalric proves to be even less satisfying than the first. There is no real strife in the story and only one fight scene between Amalric and the Ojanzolla tree. These creatures were probably inspired in part by William Hope Hodgson’s killer trees in The Boats of ‘Glen Carig’ which Carter selected for the Ballantine Fantasy series. The weakness of this story may have given Lin Carter the message that the book wasn’t going well so he abandoned it.
“The Shadow of a Demon” originally appeared Dragon Magazine, August 1976 then in Years’ Best Fantasy #3 edited by Lin Carter for DAW Books 1976. This story is the first of a series of ten tales about Niall appearing in TSR magazines.
Niall the Far Traveling comes to Angalore, a city ruled by the evil sorcerer Maylok. He meets a strange girl named Lylthia who has a secret. She goes to Maylok’s castle after magically putting Niall to sleep. The barbarian wakes to find her gone and realizes she has gone to Maylok’s. He tries to get hired as a mercenary but is turned away. He arranges to sail out on the morrow with the ship Hyssop.
Returning after dark, Niall sneaks into the castle, and down into the wizard’s underground chambers. He finds Lylthia’s dead body, then the wizard. His armed men battle with Niall and eventually overtake him. He is cruelly chained in a cell. A shadow comes to him:
“Once more that thistledown softness touched him and now he glanced sideways, and his flesh crawled for a moment. The shadow was with him. It was little more than a deeper darkness against the blackness of the dungeon, but he could make it out. Was this some fiend sent by Maylok to bring him some undreamed-of torment? But no. Or if it was, it did nothing but stare at him.” (“The Shadow of a Demon” by Gardner F. Fox)
The shadow dissolves his chains. Swordsman and shadow seek out the sorcerer, interrupting him during a dangerous spell. Niall finds himself in a red-fire hell dimension where the shadow has become Lylthia, but not quite for she is actually The Demon-Queen Emelkartha. She tortures Maylok and tells him how he will suffer for a very long time for his crimes against demon kind. Emelkartha returns Niall to his own world but not before a kiss, one that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
This story reads like a Conan pastiche that failed to make it into the canon. Fox has written Conan-esque fiction in two series, Kothar the Barbarian Swordsman and Kyrik, Sorcerer-Swordsman. He also wrote the first true Sword & Sorcery comic, “Crom the Barbarian” back in 1950 as well as several pieces for Warren magazines and the occasional bit for Marvel.
“The Garden of Blood” by Roger Zelazny originally appeared in Sorcerer’s Apprentice #3, Summer 1979. Now I am loath to include Zelazny because he wrote some very good S&S stories in the 1960s but this story isn’t one of them.
Dilvish and Black come to the ruins of a village where once Dilvish had spent a pleasant few days. When they find an altar in a field of flowers:
“They passed through a grove of trees, came into the clearing. Large, poppylike blossoms, blue, white, yellow—the occasional red—moved almost as high as Black’s shoulder, swaying on hairy, finger-thick stalks. They faced the sun. Their heavy perfumes hung in the air.” (“The Garden of Blood” by Roger Zelazny)
A magical transformation happens: the heroes are sent back in time to when the town was invaded and destroyed. Black also is changed from a demon horse into a large dark-haired warrior. Dilvish and Black try to rescue the local priestess of the earth goddess, Manata, but fail to do so.
They fight a savage battle which ends when they return to their time. They see that the red flowers are the spirits of the invaders. Dilvish destroys them. Manata thanks them. As they ride away Dilvish can swear he hears the flowers scream as he killed them.
“Garden of Blood” was the first Dilvish story to appear in Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Zelazny reprinted all the older stories in later issues. One of the second phase of Dilvish stories, no longer concerned with Dilfar or the past, “Garden of Blood” is a fast-paced adventure in the Howard style that stands alone. Dilvish uses his sword but it is no longer described as being unusual or invisible.
For this tale, the author converted Black into a man so that the two heroes could fight side by side, ala Fafhrd and Grey Mouser. Very much a story for fantasy rpgers, having lots of action and a mystery or puzzle in it. This adaptation for a gaming audience weakens the story and introduces elements that aren’t really germane to the over-all saga.
“The Creature in the Crypt” by Robert M. Price originally appeared in Young Thongor (2012). Adrian Cole tells in the foreword:
“Robert Price, joint executor of the Lin Carter estate, himself a worthy scribe and editor, has written “Silver Shadows” from a title Lin coined for a Thongor tale he never got around to writing and has written “The Creature in the Crypt” from an abandoned Thongor synopsis. There is an even deeper irony here, for this story was published by Lin Carter as “The Thing in the Crypt,” a Conan yarn and part of the Conan volume,10 although it actually began life as a plot for the Thongor saga!”
Thongor is being pursued by Tandolos hounds and must escape them by climbing up a cliff and into a cave. Inside the cave he finds all manner of wonders from statues of gods to ghostly librarians. It is only when he finds the throne with its skeletal occupant that he gets in trouble.
The skeleton has a sword which Thongor tries to take, activating a spell that turns the bones into a blue giant with three eyes:
“And when Thongor could see it again, the head was massive and proud, blueskinned like that of the fabled Rmoahal nomads of the east, skull as bare as before save for a single oily black braid. The ears were pointed and bore silver hoop-rings. The nostrils flared. The eyes bulged slightly, and there were three of them, one perched above the others, moving concurrently with them in his direction. The powerful form began to
rise, one arm hefting the huge sword, a second reaching out for Thongor, and an additional pair emerging from concealment as a great cloak swept back from them. The crown again rode his brow.” (“The Creature in the Crypt” by Robert M. Price)
They battle until Thongor sees a shield that matches the sword. In the surface of this shield he sees the monster’s real form and smashes it to dust. Now possessing the sword and shield, and the lich’s crown, he is tempted to sit in the chair and become the next wraith. He throws them away and flees the crypt.
This story is just another version of “The Thing in the Crypt”. The copyright page of Young Thongor (2012) states the story is based on a title by Lin Carter. “…In the last few years, I have taken up the fallen banner of Lin Carter’s Thongor of Lemuria saga. Lin appointed me his literary executor, and so I feel that carrying on Thongor’s adventures is within my prerogative…” Price manages some Mythosian references with The Hounds of Tindalos and Chaugnar Faugn (very nice!). This story is interesting only from a scholarly or completist point-of-view.
So there you have it. Five so-so stories you may want to read — or not. Next time, back to the good stuff with Janet Fox, Karl Edward Wagner, Manly Wade Wellman, Andrew J. Offutt, Kenneth Bulmer and Keith Taylor.
Really enjoyed these S&S stories, even when bad they’re still interesting reads !
The title is a bit ironic. I enjoyed them on some level too.