The Fantasy Vampires of Clark Ashton Smith

The vampires of Clark Ashton Smith are something different in the pages of Weird Tales. “The Unique Magazine” had plenty of tales of the undead. Memorable vampire authors include Thorp McClusky with “The Loot of the Vampire”, Edmond Hamilton writing as Hugh Davidson gave us “Vampire Village” and “The Vampire Master”, Seabury Quinn wrote of vampires both with his occult detective, Jules de Grandin and without. Even Robert E. Howard had his, “The Horror From the Mound” (Weird Tales, May 1932).

But Clark Ashton Smith’s vampires all live in the enchanted realms of Averoigne, Zothique and others. These are creatures of fantasy as much as they are beings of horror. Most are female, as well, usually referred to as the Greek “Lamia”. All are enchanters and blood-drinkers.

Campbell on Clark Ashton

Ramsey Campbell in his introduction to Nightshade’s second volume of CAS stories: The Door to Saturn (2007) pinpoints Smith’s vampires:

They [horror elements] never seem to be the main point, and to focus on them is like paying attention only to the familiar seeming instruments in a profoundly strange orchestra. The narrative voice often describes the most appalling scenes as dispassionately as it describes the most gorgeous ones. They’re often the same, in fact—the standard lumber of horror stories, all the decrepit old houses and possessed children and cosmopolitan vampires, fades to relative mundanity beside Smith’s vaultingly glamorous dooms.

Smith wrote in the Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror genres. Some of his less Fantasy-oriented tales have vampiric monsters in them. “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis” (Weird Tales, May 1932), “The Invisible City” (Wonder Stories, June 1932), have blood-drinking aliens, “Genius Loci” (Weird Tales, June 1933) is the story of a place so haunted it is like a vampire, preying upon its visitors. “The Flower Women” (Weird Tales, May 1935) has strange vegetable females who feed on blood. I have not included these metaphorical vamps, but stuck to the undead type.

The End of the Story

“The End of the Story” (Weird Tales, May 1930) has Christophe Morand from Tours getting stranded in a storm. He takes refuge at the abbey of Perigon. The abbot Hilaire offers the traveler food, warmth and a chance to see the very impressive library. The monk shows Christophe a secret compartment with a forbidden manuscript. All Christophe can think about is that six page manuscript. The next morning he spies a ruin from his window. This is the famous Chateau Faussesflammes that Smith mentions in all his Averoigne stories. Later the guest sneaks into the library and reads that palimpsest.

The story concerns a Gerard, Comte de Venteillon, who is about to marry the beautiful demoiselle, Eleanor des Lys. Gerard meets a satyr in the woods. He is going to kill the satanic creature, being a good Christian, but stops when it offers to tell him a secret. We don’t know what this message is, but Gerard leaves his home and goes to Faussesflammes, never to return. At the ruin, he finds a triangular stone that opens a stairway into the ground. He enters and we never learn what happens to him. This lack of “the end of the story” (our title) makes Christophe (and the reader) want to go see for himself.

Christophe Explores

Christophe sneaks off to the chateau ruins, opens the secret staircase and enters. He passes through wet and nasty tunnels until he comes to another world, literally. He has left Averoigne for a Greek paradise. There he meets Nycea, a beauty who loves him. They lie together.

When Christophe wakes he sees Father Hilaire, bearing holy water and prayers. The monk calls Nycea a vampire, a lamia. She flees, but tells her guest that if he looks hard and is patient, they shall meet again. The monk dispels the illusion around them. There is no paradise, only cold ruins. Hilaire has saved his life, but Christophe is not thankful. As he writes down his adventure, he wants only to find Nycea again.

Smith suggests that if Christophe could have seen Nycea without illusions she would be a snake monster. The author also works in a nice Robert W. Chambers reference. His classic The King in Yellow (1895) has a story about The Demoiselle of Lys.

Sadastor

“Sadastor” (Weird Tales, July 1930) is a prose poem with a vague story. The demon Charnadis and a lamia are atop Mophi at the source of the Nile. The female monster is unhappy because her deadly reputation has meant she has not had a lover in a fortnight. Charnadis tells her a sad story to distract her. Smith gets poetic describing how the demons traveled through space and time to a planet where he finds the oceans dried up and a siren trapped in its last waters. Her name is Lyspial. She misses the centuries when she drowned sailors. The demon offers to take her to a new planet, but she can not. She must die with her planet. Her fate so depresses Charnadis he has to seek out a vampire to break his mood. Charnadis says the lamia should cheer up. Her fate is much less terrible than Lyspial’s.

A Rendezvous in Averoigne

“A Rendezvous in Averoigne” (Weird Tales, May-June 1931) has the troubadour, Gerard de L’Automne, off to meet Fleurette on a secret assignation. On the way through the woods, he sees a beautiful woman being attacked by strange men. When he tries to help her, he finds himself mysteriously near an old castle. He enters and finds the master, Sieur de Malinbois, a sorcerer who died hundreds of years ago. He also finds Fleurette and her two servants who came with her, Annette, and Raoul.

The captives all sit for a strange meal, in which the food is incredible but unsatisfying, the air dank and funeral. Before they sit down, Malinbois offers to take Gerard’s hornbeam staff. He refuses and keeps it with him. Gerard meets his hostess, the woman from the wood, Agathe. The feasters are served by ghostly attendants who look like the red-eyed men that Gerard saw attacking Agathe. Malinbois and Agathe don’t eat or drink anything.

The guests are taken to their rooms, boys in one, girls in the other. Gerard and Raoul are locked in. They know the vampires have them trapped. Gerard cuts a cross into his hornbeam staff. He sharpens the end to make a long stake. He takes the first watch but a supernatural sleep comes over him. He wakes to find Raoul weak from the loss of blood. His hornbeam staff must have saved Gerard. They also find the door has been left unlocked by a careless vampire.

The Humans Strike Back

Gerard forces Raoul to follow. They go to the women’s room. Annette, like Raoul has been feasted upon. The men go in search of the vampires’ crypt. They must force a heavy slab off the coffins to get to the undead. With the hornbeam spear, Gerard dispatches Malinbois then Agathe. The castle disappears with Agathe’s death. They are in the forest. Only the coffins are real.

This is Smith’s most traditional of vampire stories. The unwilling guest and dispatching vamps scenarios are not new to Weird Tales. The story feels like a re-do of “The End of the Story” but without the doomed ending. We will see these themes again.

The Black Abbot of Puthuum

“The Black Abbot of Puthuum” (Weird Tales, March 1936) is something special. It is probably the closest Smith every came to writing a true Sword & Sorcery story. Two mighty warriors, Zobal the Archer and Cushara the Pike-bearer, along with the fat eunuch Simban, have been charged with retrieving a beautiful young woman for King Hoaraph’s harem. They ride to Izdrel, a land reputed to be ghost and goblin-filled. Zobal has a magic spell cast on his arrows to make them powerful against demons, while Cushara refuses to have his pike blessed.

The exchange for Rubalsa goes according to plan, gold paid to her grandmother, until the return trip. A strange cloud blocks their path. From the darkness comes Ujuk, the Black Abbot, a satanic looking priest who takes them to his abbey in the storm cloud. There they see other monks of evil appearance. They offer to take the men’s weapons but they refuse to give them up. The guests are given food, while the Abbot leers at the lithesome Rubalsa. Zobal says they will ride on the next day. The abbot laughs and says, “We’ll see.” The abbot takes them to their rooms. Simban objects when their host wants to put her in a separate room. The eunuch will sleep on the floor to be close to her.

Later loud neighings are heard. Zobal says he will go see what is going on. He checks their horses but the animals seem fine. He also secures some food and wine for their trip the next day. Returning to his room, Zobal hears an eerie wail. It is a man begging for succor. Zobal, forgetting his friend, goes to the courtyard and finds a ring in the ground. He lifts it, and descends the stairs to a crypt. There he finds the speaker, a skeleton. He is Uldor, the Abbot of Puthuum. He explains the long history of his order. Celibate worshipers of Ojhal, they had fled the empire of Ilcar to the desert. Slowly over time all the brothers of Yoros died, leaving only Uldor.

The abbott was tormented by lamia, but he resisted the vampire women until one came to him disguised as a girl he had loved in youth. They became lovers and from their union Ujuk was born. For this sin, Ojhal sentenced Uldor to eternal life while rotting and decaying. Ujuk imprisoned him in the crypt while he carried on for centuries doing evil and pretending to be the abbot.

Uldor offers a trade. For death from one of Zobal’s enchanted arrows, the archer will receive the knowledge of how to kill Ujuk and the twelve monks who serve him. A talisman around the skeleton’s neck will provide protection from illusions. Zobal agrees and uses three of his arrows, which he can not retrieve but must leave in Uldor’s corpse, to seal the deal.

He returns to Cushara. They hear screaming in Rubalsa’s room. They find Simban dead. They try to enter the room but the vampires have placed a magic wall between them. Using his talisman, Zobal dispels the force field and enters. The charm is so powerful it removes the illusion of the castle’s walls, showing it to be a ruin. The vampires attack and the battle is on! The attackers overwhelm Cushara. Zobal sights Ujuk and fires a single arrow at his breast. The half-demon master dies. All twelve of his servants die too, allowing Cushara to stand. His heavy armor saved him from their knives. Zobal explains that the monks were actually an illusion created by Ujuk.

Having won the day, Zobal decides to not deliver Rubalsa to the king. The men draw lots for her, the loser promising to tend the winner. They will go to a land beyond Hoaraph’s control. Rubalsa has something to say about this deal, complaining she was not consulted. She chooses Cushara.

If I didn’t know better I would say Smith had Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd & Gray Mouser in mind when he created Zobal and Cushara. The only problem is they were still four years away from appearing in Unknown. Perhaps Smith was inspired by E. R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros (1922) as Leiber was.

The Death of Ilalotha

“The Death of Ilalotha” (Weird Tales, September 1937) has Lord Thulos returning to Tasuun to find his lover, Ilalotha, the queen’s lady-in-waiting, has died of a broken heart. He discovers her on a bier. As he kisses her goodbye, he could almost believe she is not quite dead. Queen Xantlicha sees him and is jealous of the dead woman. She tells Thulos to come to her at midnight. He says he will. Returning to Ilalotha’s body, he thinks she stirs and tells him to meet her at her tomb at midnight. Her body is taken away and placed in a sarcophagus.

Thulos is conflicted. Which woman does he meet? He convinces himself that Ilalotha is alive and will need someone to rescue her. He goes to her tomb. Xantlicha sees him go and follows, taking a poisoned dagger and a lamp. When she enters the tomb she finds Lord Thulos lying on his back, his life slipping away. When Xantlicjha raises the lantern she sees the creature that is feeding on him, its hand thrust into his body. She screams, drops the knife and lamp, and runs from the tomb, hopelessly insane.

Virgil Finlay, in his story illustration, drew what he thought Ilalotha looks like. Smith doesn’t actually describe it.

The Enchantress of Sylaire

Talk about your lost opportunities. Margaret Brundage, cover artist, does one of her rare interior drawings. In a story filled with werewolves, lamia and numerous fantastic sights, we get a muddled picture of two men and a silver mirror. Sigh.

“The Enchantress of Sylaire” (Weird Tales, July 1941) is one of Smith’s longer vampire stories, but it is worth it. Anselme is rejected by the beautiful but fickle, Dorothee, only daughter of Sieur des Fleches. He goes into the wood to become a hermit. There he encounters an equally beautiful woman, Sephora. He watches her bath in a forest pool. Anselme sees a black wolf lurking by the shore. He calls out to save the woman. She laughs. The wolf is a pet named Malachie. Sephora lives in a ruined tower in Sylaire. She takes Anselme there. The two become lovers. The wolf is jealous. Sephora sends it away, but warns Anselme about the animal.

The next morning Anselme goes for a hike. He sees the wolf again. The animal digs up wild garlic and eats it. This causes the beast to change into a man. Malachiedu Marais is a werewolf. He explains that he became a lycanthrope when Sephora tricked him into drinking from an enchanted pool. He warns Anselme to flee for Sephora is an evil lamia. She will drain him of his youth then dispose of him with her magic.

Now forewarned, Anselme sees the servants of Sephora are vampires. He talks to Sephora about his meeting. She gives her version of events, saying Malachie was her lover but he is an evil sorcerer. He has said these things out of jealousy. She gives Anselme a vial of water from the enchanted pool to cure the wolf. She also gives him an enchanted sword.

Anselme goes in search of Malachie. He finds him in a cave littered with dead animals. The wolf eats garlic again but only half transforms. Again he warns of Sephora’s lies, giving Anselme a silver mirror that shows what is true. Anselme manages to put the vial of pool water in Malachie’s kettle.

Anselme returns to the tower but runs into Dorothee and her men. The girl has been searching the woods for Anselme. She actually does love him and wants him to return. A black wolf attacks from the woods. Anselme kills it with his magic sword. The beast turns into Malachie’s human form. The wolf had eaten from his kettle and been permanently turned into a wolf.

Dorothee thanks Anselme for saving her so bravely. Anselme has her look into the Mirror of Reality. She looks at her true self and screams. She and her men leave the creepy woods. Anselme goes on to the tower. He meets Sephora, shows her the mirror, explains he knows all about her evil. Instead of killing her, he takes her in his arms. He is willing to be her lover whatever the cost.

The Quest of Gazolba

“The Quest of Gazolba’ (Weird Tales, September 1947) is the tale of King Euvoran on a sea voyage to find a mystical bird. This version of the story has no vampires. Dorothy McIlwraith requested a large edit on the tale and only the original version known as “The Voyage of King Euvoran” contains these nasty vamps:

Then, like things of nightmare, the monsters began to invade the hatches and assail the ports, clawing with hellish talons at the men who opposed them. And, being somewhat hampered by their wings, they were driven back with spears and arrows, but returned again and again in a thickening press without number, cheeping with a faint and bat-like sound. It was plain that they were vampires, for whenever they had dragged a man down, as many of them as could gain mouthhold would fasten on him incontinently, and suck his blood till little more remained than a skinful of bones. The upper oar-decks, being half open to the sky, were quickly usurped, and their crews overcome with a hideous swarming; and the rowers in the orlops cried that the sea-water was pouring in through the oar-holes as the ships sank deeper beneath an ever-gathering weight.

The incident is only a few paragraphs but it is hard to imagine the editor of Weird Tales choosing to lose the vampires from what is mostly a lyrical quest tale. The full version appeared for the first time in The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies, Auburn Journal (1933).

Morthylla

“Morthylla” (Weird Tales, May 1953) is a tale of Zothique. Valzain is the apprentice to Famuza in the city of Umbri. Famurza is famous for his sybaritic pleasures. But Valzain has grown tired of the orgies. His thoughts turn to darkness. His poetry is about crypts and death. Famurza jokingly tells him to go to the necropolis and seek out the vampire Morthylla.

Valzain does, and he falls madly in love with the woman, despite never touching her. He visits her every night. After much begging, she agrees to kiss him only slightly on the neck, drawing a little blood. Valzain longs for the vampiric death.

Business takes him to neighboring Psiom. There he borrows money from an usurer. He sees a rich woman walk by. She is Morthylla. He asks where she lives. He is directed to Beldith’s  house. He confronts her. She is not a vampire but a bored, rich person like Valzain. Beldith knows his poetry and is in love with him. Can Valzain have an ordinary relationship with her?

He declines, committing suicide instead. His ghost walks down to the necropolis in a kind of circular repeat of the beginning of the tale. There he meets the real Morthylla. Happy ending? You decide.

The Synopses

“The Youngest Vampire” is a synopsis later published in Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith, Greenwood Press (1989), about a man who buys a farm with four graves. He falls victim to a girl vampire of between ten and twelve. He destroys the monsters in the grave before dying. His will says he too should have a stake driven in his heart. Sadly, this instruction is not followed. “A Misadventure of Don Juan” is another synopsis but much shorter. Don Juan sleeps with a vampire, feels his neck wound and slips away. Smith left many unrendered synopses behind for us to imagine as full stories.

Conclusion

The patterns of these stories repeat certain Gothic themes: illusionary castles, phantom servants, grim meals eaten by prisoners, beautiful but deadly women, underground crypts accessed by secret stairs and lusty sexual encounters. Smith spins the same story in different ways, sometimes with a grim ending, sometimes with a happy one. (Sometimes you can’t be sure which it is.)

The Fantasy vampires of Clark Ashton Smith are little more powerful than the doomed humans of his stories. Smith stands over his worlds, like a mad god, describing things in fine detail, uncaring about mortals and immortals alike. This is his magic. Not to make us cheer for Conan or the hobbits, or quail in fright like the protagonists of Lovecraft, but see the world in a weird, purple glamor, a universe lit by witch-light. It is not a world of love or even hate, but sardonic laughter.