Sword & Sorcery Stories You Might Have Missed IX

If you missed the last one…

Alaric the Witchborn

“Born to Exile” by Phyllis Eisenstein (F&SF, August 1971) is the first tale of Alaric, a heroic fantasy set in a Medieval world. (Later collected by Arkham House.) The witch boy goes to the city of Castle Royale to ply his trade as a minstrel. His master, Dall, had been well-liked in previous years. Dall was sadly murdered by bandits. Alaric finds favor with the king and becomes a hanger-on.

The king has two children, the prince, Jeris, who Alaric learns swordplay with. And the princess Solinde, who he falls in love with. Others at the castle are the jester Gunter, who is Alaric’s ally, and Medron the court wizard, who is not.

Alaric, like all witches, has the power to teleport away in a crisis. The people of the land hate and fear witches, burning them at the stake. Alaric hides his ability but things go wrong when Solinde arranges for them to sleep together.

The princess’s nurse, Brynit, rats her out to the king. When caught, Alaric teleports away and it looks like Brynit is lying. She will suffer demotion so she goes to Medron for help. The wizard charges Alaric with witchcraft. Alaric’s friends come to his rescue, proving him guilty of deflowering the princess but not witchcraft. He is banished instead.

Malkar the Barbarian

“Death God’s Doom” by E. C. Tubb (Witchcraft & Sorcery #9, 1973) is a prequel to “The Sword in the Snow” which I discussed here. Unlike the later story, this one works better for me. Malkar and his friends lie in prison, the only survivors of King Seer’s army. Malkar is pulled out of the cell by Queen Ishma. The barbarian says he can not do the queen’s will while his lord lives.

Ishma shows Malkar Lord Seer in his prison. The entire cell is a gigantic bowl which is heated to a red-hot temperature. The king walks about the floor in agony. Malkar steals a guard’s spear and ends the monarch. He is to be put in Seer’s place but he lies to Ishma, saying he did it to protect her from a dying curse Seer would have placed on her. The two have an intimate moment where Malkar realizes the beautiful Ishma is possessed by the spirit of an evil hag, Carcillarmen.

Malkar’s new favor does not keep him out of the clutches of Feethan the high priest. Malkar is sacrificed to the god Phang. This involves placing him on a large black disk. Before plunging into the trans-dimensional hell, he grabs an arcane sword that is nearby. Armed with this weapon, Malkar holds off the weird nightmares of Phang’s dimension. Eventually he is returned to the temple’s altar. Armed and unbound, he goes to free his companions, including the wizard, Thagamista.

The heroes realize they must free Ishma from the hag’s spirit so they seek out her mummy. Unfortunately, once they have the coffin they are captured by Feethan and the possessed queen. They are taken to the sacrificial chamber. But Thagamista tells the fighters to wait. The god Phang has been rejected by Malkar’s escape from the transdimension and the god has left. This means his servants all suffer a terrible fate they try to steam by sacrifice by to no avail. Carcillarmen’s mummy fights a short battle with her captive and loses. Feethan and all his henchmen turn into grotesque slime. The day is won and the free Misha asks Malkar to be her king. He accepts but by the next story he is a wandering barbarian again.

Felimid the Bard

“My Sendings Return” by Keith Taylor is not one of the original “Dennis More” stories that appeared in Fantastic. This third tale in the book Bard (1981) was added when the stories were gathered for the book publication. As such I consider it a “Keith Taylor” story and not a “Dennis More” story. Such hair splitting aside, it is another excellent tale of Felimid of Eire.

Felimid and Regan leave the Forest of Andor for the Romanized town of Calleva. Felimid at great risk since the last time he had been there he had an argument with the heir apparent, Prince Justin. For his rudeness Fel had mocked him in song. The wanderers go to the house of friends, Veronica and her family. While sleeping, a thief comes into the house and steals Fel’s magic sword, Kincaid. The thief used a Corpse Candle or “Hand of Glory” to lull them all to sleep. Fel visits the local hangman to verify the theft of a hanged thief’s body, an essential ingredient.

Fel goes in search of a friend to lend his sword and horse and runs into Justin. The bard steals a horse and flees. Five riders come after him but the prince outdistances his fellows. Fel jumps him when his horse fails to make a jump. The two struggle but Fel wins, snapping the prince’s arm. Armed and on a horse, he rides off to find the witch who probably made the Corpse Candle.

He finds the hag, and her dead grandson, who had stolen the sword. Four men killed him for and rode off. Kincaid is a cursed weapon in anyone hands except Fel’s. The hag sends her familiar, a talking crow named Brandubh to help him search. The trail is long involving several murders and the killing of a giant weasel. Fel eventually meets up with his old friend, Kyle. After disarming him, the two agree to work together to go to a village of Downsmen to retrieve the sword from the man who killed his friends for it.

Felimid goes first to the village of Ogan the Strong to discover the surly and unlikable Besdath has returned wounded. He has blamed the deaths of his friends on a rival tribe. Kyle shows up a few days later and is captured for ransom. Fel takes part in stopping a cattle raid while Besdath plots his end. Ultimately, Kyle betrays the killer and Fel and villagers pursue Besdath after he kills his wife, Cein, and blames it on the bard. The tale ends after Fel and Besdath fight it out alone. The bard returns Prince Justin’s sword, having retrieved Kincaid after many deaths and much sorrow. It is the crow, Branduhn who betrays them to Ogan and the pair have a hard ride to safety.

The lengthy chase is more rambling than the stories that appeared in the magazine but makes a great way to explain why Regan wasn’t in “The Atheling’s Wife”. She chooses to remain with Veronica and her family.

Jenna and Skada

“Light Sister, Dark Sister” by Jane Yolen (Heroic Visions, 1983) was the opening segment of what would later become the Great Alta trilogy, Sister Light, Sister Dark (1988), White Jenna (1989) and The One-Armed Queen (1998). Yolen plays with the way stories are told by offering the Myth version, the Legend Version, the Story version and finally the History version of the same events. The third one is the one that readers will remember best, as it tells of Jenna and her shadow-sister, Skada, and how they scaled a cliff to get to the prison holding her lover, Carum Longbow. A handful men have attempted the rescue and are prisoner too. Jenna/Skada take on the jailer, Lord Kalas and win the day.

You might not think of Jane Yolen when you say Sword & Sorcery (or heroic fantasy) but this series is most certainly one that will please S&S fans. Yolen, of course, has written plenty of great non-S&S Fantasy as well.

Sister Ayala the Cleric

“Inglaf’s Dream” comes from a magazine sometimes overlooked as a source for S&S: Dragon Magazine. From June 1976 to June 2006 (Issues #1-344) this magazine for AD&D gamers also featured fiction, usually one story per issue. As the 1970s moved into the 1980s magazines that published Sword & Sorcery grew fewer and fewer. By the 1990s, they were few and far between. In this way, The Dragon was a bit of a haven for outright S&S. You have to put up with many gamisms (like references to game mechanics and such) but the stories at least were heroic fantasy. Authors included noteworthy talespinners such as Gardner F. Fox, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Neal Barrett Jr., Ardath Mayar, Ben Bova, Rob Chilson, Esther M. Friesner, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Fritz Leiber, L. Sprague de Camp, George R. R. Martin, Terry Brooks and John Gregory Betancourt as well as a whole new generation of future writers like Adam-Troy Castro, Diane Duane, R. A. Salvstore, Jean Rabe, Ed Greenwood, Tracy Hickman, Troy Denning, Robert E. Vardeman, Paul J. McAuley and many others. TSR was paying well and writers responded to that.

“Inglaf’s Dream” (Dragon Magazine #96, April 1985) by Ama Darr Rogen has a group of adventurers who are celebrating their success in the field. Sister Ayala, the party’s cleric, notices that the warrior Inglaf is depressed. She presses him to tell her, using the magic spell of Adjure to force him to spill. He tells her he is haunted by dreams in which he sees the party as a line of small figurines and god-like players move them about. Ayala may regret her intrusion because she now has the dreams too.

Rogen does a good job of a self-referential AD&D story. This was hardly new though, as Andre Norton built an entire novel around the idea called Quag Keep back in 1978. Gary Gygax showed her how to play D&D before she wrote it. Rogen, in her story, does well at making such a vision horrific and not silly.

Tara and Torr

“Fire and Ice” by Kenneth Bulmer (Fantasy Tales, 1989) is a direct sequel to “Naked as a Sword” (Fantasy Tales, Summer 1977). Torr and Tara Vorkun take a dangerous pass through the mountains. They see strange carvings before they are attacked by wolves. Using their swords, Lycheaper and Kastrater, they kill many wolves before entering a cave to escape.

The cave is fulled with stone statues of warriors and creepy giant bats. The bats land on the statues’ heads and bring them to life. The stone warriors kill the last of the wolves before going after the Vorkuns.

Torr holds off the impenetrable warriors as Tara breaks through a wall of stalagmites and stalactites. The humans flee but the path ends at a room filled with coffins. The stone giants are coming. There is no escape. There is a hole but it is far too small to fit through.

Tara must use her magic but she can only do that if she is naked. The air is too cold. She will freeze to death. Torr solves the problem by setting the mummies on fire. They must hurry because the evil spirits of the mummies, once in the bats, now go into the dust to form a gigantic worm. Tara’s magic shrinks her brother and herself to fit through the tiny gap. They escape to find the other end of the pass.

This story is the third with these characters. Before the two Fantasy Tales stories, there was the novel Swords of the Barbarians (1970). I suspect the book was named that to capitalize on the current Conan trend since the novel is actual more Edgar Rice Burroughs Sword & Planet pastiche. The two stories barely seem related but are. Bulmer’s style is pretty grand. The entire tale is thick with excitement and Pulpy goodness. Unusual by 1989 when finer writing was replacing thud & blunder.

Well, I hope that will satisfy your short story hunger for awhile. Until next time…