Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber

My copy

In our last blog post we discussed stories which have never been printed in a book and which I assume are read today by almost nobody.  Today we talk about stories which have been printed in book form again and again and have been read by millions of people and about which you can read at scores of websites.  For today we continue MPorcius Fiction Log's series of posts on my reread of my 1980s editions of the first six books that tell the saga of Grandmaster Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser with the fourth of those books, Swords Against Wizardry.

Swords Against Wizardry first appeared in 1968, and that edition is advertised as a novel, but Swords Against Wizardry is, in fact, a collection of four stories.  I own the twelfth printing, from 1986.  At the internet archive can be found a scan of a 95¢ edition from 1974--this edition includes a frontispiece by Jeff Jones that my copy lacks.  Rats!  Both copies include a dedication to Harry Otto Fischer, Leiber's friend and the co-creator of F&GM.  In addition, the second story in the book, "Stardock," is dedicated to Poul Anderson and Paul Turner.  Anderson is of himself of course a Grandmaster of science fiction and fantasy, about whose work I have written several times at this here website, but Paul Turner I am not familiar with.  A Paul Turner translated Thomas More's Utopia in 1965, and a Paul Turner (maybe the same one, though I am doubtful) conducted interviews for Vertex magazine in 1973, including an interview of Anderson.  Something of a mystery.

"In the Witch's Tent" (1968)

This German anthology of
fantasy stories includes both "In the
Witch's Tent" and "Stardock"

I think this story was written new for this book, and is a sort of prologue for "Stardock."  In a crummy northern town, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser consult a witch who breathes in opium smoke from a brazier to bring on a prophetic trance.  Leiber goes to town describing how ugly this woman is--her tongue is like a gray maggot, her skin like burned bacon, her teeth like old tree stumps, etc.  The Mouser thinks her magic a scam, but the less cynical Fafhrd is eager to hear her prophecy.  Our heroes never learn what she has to say, however, as her oracular oration is interrupted by an attack on her tent, F&GM the target.  The way F&GM escape the assault is clever and fun, reminding me of the action scenes I so enjoyed in "The Seven Black Priests."  I don't think this little piece (just five pages of text) adds to the plot of the book, but it is entertaining, so, thumbs up!

"Stardock" (1965)

"Stardock" made its debut in Fantastic, in an issue otherwise devoted to reprints--even the cover is a reprint from 1939 by Frank R. Paul!  The reprints inside are from big names like Asimov, Sturgeon, Simak and Emsh (his 1950s illustrations for the Asimov and Sturgeon are included) so maybe people didn't mind all the reprints.  I recall thinking "Stardock" was a better than average F&GM story, and I reread it in the '90s while riding a bus across the country with my wife (then girlfriend), so I remember it reasonably well but am still looking forward to it.

Stardock is a mountain in the Cold Waste, where Fafhrd grew up.  Many legends are told of the mountain, for example, that it is where the gods made the stars and launched them up into the sky.  These legends forbid any mortal man from climbing the mountain.  But a few months ago Fafhrd and the Mouser found in an ancient tower in the desert hundreds of miles away a scrap with a little verse on it, saying that atop Stardock awaits a tremendous treasure.  So they have traveled all this way to seek it.  Strangely, other bold men seem to have learned of the treasure atop Stardock at the same time our heroes did, and are also on their way up the forbidding mountain.

In "In the Witch's Tent" Leiber put a lot of effort into describing the witch's hideous visage, and in this story he gives us all kinds of details of the mountain and the process of our heroes' ascent.  We get a blow-by-blow account as they face a diverse array of bedeviling obstacles--steep climbs, avalanches, monsters, attacks from rival climbers.  This is all compelling--nerve-wracking even.  The most mysterious of obstacles is presented by invisible flying monsters, and the invisible people who ride them.

First edition

At the top many mysteries are revealed.  The race of invisible people is dying out--new blood, virile heroic blood, is needed.  So their king has ordered his men to fly their invisible beasts (much like huge skates or rays, but with many tentacles) about the world, leaving in out of the way places those verses enticing heroes to Stardock.  The king plans to murder respondents and steal their seed without their consent and use it to fertilize his two daughters, but upon seeing Fafhrd and the Mouser while flying their own monster beasts, the princesses contrive to save F&GM's lives and be fertilized the old-fashioned way.  These invisible princesses, though their bodies are in form like those of human women, "are somewhat like queen bees," so that one night of lovemaking is enough to sire an entire race of halfbreeds, hopefully instilled with hybrid vigor.

In "Stardock" Leiber does all the action and adventure stuff very well, and I think the way he depicts the relationship between Fafhrd and the Mouser is another of the story's strengths.  A story about a guy who climbs a mountain, kills monsters and impregnates a princess who doesn't want to tie him down (after all, the world is full of princesses!) obviously fulfills a wish-fulfillment function, but men don't only face frustrations in their career lives and sex lives--making friends and keeping them without compromising your own sense of who you are is another life challenge, and so the warm and manly friendship between Fafhrd and the Mouser, which Leiber skillfully renders so it is touching but not sappy, and actually believable, is very appealing.

Cat lovers--and everybody knows SF people love cats--will enjoy the fact that F&GM bring with them up the mountain an "ice-cat" the size of a cheetah, and there are plenty of scenes of affection and camaraderie between this feline and our human heroes.  (Believably enough, the cat declines to accompany Fafhrd and the Mouser when they make their narrow escape from Stardock and the princesses' murderous male relatives, instead opting to stick around with the princesses in the lap of luxury that is their invisible castle.) 

"Stardock" handles many of the same themes as "The Jewels in the Forest" (fighting men are attracted to a deadly trap by scraps of text, fight each other, and discover jewels connected to the stars) and "When the Sea-King's Away" (not-quite human girls want to have sex with F&GM but before this desire can be consummated the women must outwit their king and F&GM must navigate a perilous milieu and fight weird monsters) but is better than those earlier tales.  I can enthusiastically endorse this one--nine out of ten invisible glow-in-the-dark jewels!

"The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar" (1968)

A version of "The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar" appeared in Fantastic in the same year that Swords Against Wizardry was published.  This is another issue consisting mostly of reprints, including a reprinted cover.  I guess times were tough for Fantastic, though this issue does include a new story by the critically acclaimed James Tiptree, Jr.  "The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar" has been reprinted in a few anthologies, including 1976's Kingdoms of Sorcery edited by Lin Carter and Sean Richards' 1981 The Barbarian Swordsmen, which somewhat obliquely advertises the Milius/Schwarzenegger Conan film and Quest for Fire, the French caveman movie bolstered by contributions from English geniuses Anthony Burgess and Desmond Morris.

"The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar" feels like it was written to act as a bridge between "Stardock" and the next story, "Lords of Quarmall," showing how the heroes lost the invaluable jewels gained in the last story and how they got themselves mixed up in the adventure chronicled in the next story.  (The magazine version of the story leaves out all references to Quarmall, however.)  "The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar" is also a story about sexual relationships, and the differences between men and women: women manipulate and dominate men through lies, trickery and the deployment of their sexual favors, and we see that while what men truly relish is not reward but challenge and triumph, women love love love money and seek the easiest possible means of acquiring it.  Joanna Russ's character Alyx makes a brief appearance; in the story's last line she silently deplores Fafhrd's behavior.  You might say this story is in a tense dialogue with feminism: on the one hand it shows women of ability contending with men as equals and besting them, depicting men who look down on women or consider them as sex objects getting their comeuppance.  On the other hand, the story suggests that the goals of women and their means of achieving them are not creditable or admirable, and that men should perhaps build their lives around relationships with other men and strive to secure those relationships from destabilizing desires, like those for money and women.

Remember how I told you "Stardock" was a believable depiction of an ideal male friendship?  Well, at the start of "The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar" we get more of the "believable" and less of the "ideal" when we learn that F&GM are not getting along so well, quarreling on the long road back to Lankhmar over how to sell the odd gems they acquired atop Stardock.  So, they split up the gems and in Lankhmar go their separate ways.  They meet up again when on the same night they each try to sell their share of the jewels to different fences who happen to live next door to each other.  (This kind of paralellism, which at times feels like a joke, perhaps suggests F&GM share a soul--remember how in "Induction" Leiber hinted that the men were "two long-sundered matching fragments of a greater hero"--even when separated they are living the same lives.)  Fafhrd's fence is a woman who has sex with all her clients as part of her process of assessing whether they are worthy business associates.  The Mouser believes he is dealing with a blind man who has as his assistant a beautiful young woman.  The Mouser considers Fafhrd foolish for dealing with a woman, and in response Fafhrd basically calls him a sexist.

Both men are tricked by the women and robbed of the jewels for which they risked their lives a hundred times on Stardock.  (It turns out there is no blind fence--that assistant just impersonates him by throwing her voice in the dark room where "he" meets potential sellers.)  Leiber comes up with more or less clever ways in which F&GM have carefully prepared themselves to avoid being robbed, and the women's strategies of overcoming these precautions.  In a pivotal scene we observe the two women alone, apparently lesbian lovers, bragging about their success and laughing at the foolishness of men and their desire for adventure.  The women plan on going on vacation to the beach.

When they realize their jewels have been stolen, Fafhrd and the Mouser are too ashamed over having been beaten by women to stay in Lankhmar and try to get their treasure back.  Each separately contracts with an agent from the city of Quarmall to perform some services there.  (In the magazine version the Mouser just disappears and Fafhrd just gets drunk and falls asleep in a tavern.)

This story isn't bad, but it is perhaps more interesting for its dramatization of ideas about gender than its fantasy/adventure elements.

"The Lords of Quarmall" (1964)

The 95¢ edition of Swords Against Wizardry may have that Jeff Jones drawing that my $2.95 edition lacks, but my edition has an Author's Introduction dated October 19, 1973 in which Leiber describes how in 1936 his friend Harry Otto Fischer started "The Lords of Quarmall" but did not finish it.  Leiber identifies by page number and description all the sections Fischer wrote, and tells us he finished the story himself 25 years later.  "The Lords of Quarmall" first appeared in two parts in Fantastic--the editorial in the issue with Part One quotes Leiber extensively and tells us a little about Fischer and his career and friendship with Leiber.

Quarmall is an underground city ruled by a dynasty of cruel wizards; once Quarmall was a surface city that ruled an empire, but over the centuries its empire shrank until little more than a castle and some vineyards remained.  As the empire receded, the lords of Quarmall built a city underground, now a labyrinth of bewildering depth and breadth.  In the castle on the surface lives the King, currently Quarmal, working his astrologies in his towers and the magicks which draw to Quarmall slaves to satisfy the underground city's voracious appetite for labor.  Below, specially bred slaves walk treadmills that work the fans that draw into the labyrinth's depths, circulate, and then expel the air from above breathed by the king's subterranean-dwelling, mushroom- and rat-eating subjects.  The Upper Levels of underground Quarmall are ruled by Prince Hasjarl, an energetic sadist whose eyes are always closed but who knows all that happens about him, an erratic and emotional man who delights in inflicting tortures.  The Lower Levels are ruled by Prince Gwaay, a man meditative and intellectual.  These brothers hate each other and each covets the throne of Quarmall, but deference to Dad and tradition keeps them from fighting a civil war directly.  Instead, Hasjarl's two dozen magi tirelessly chant and trace runes and work voodoo dolls, endeavoring to infect Gwaay with some manner of curse or disease, while Gwaay's dozen magicians never cease performing the counterspells that keep Gwaay from suffering "the Red Plague," or "The Boneless Death" or any of the other 24 maladies sorcerously projected at him.   

Hasjarl has secretly hired and smuggled into Quarmall a mighty warrior to act as his bodyguard, and, upon hearing rumors of this, Gwaay has similarly contracted the services of a skilled fighting man.  Of course, these experienced killers are Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, though neither knows the identity of his much-speculated-upon opposite number.  As the story begins Fafhrd has been in Hasjarl's employ a week and the Mouser in Gwaay's three days, and they are both bored of life in dim smelly Quarmall and each misses the other's companionship.

Fafhrd, though a pirate and a thief, is fundamentally a decent sort and finds Hasjarl's hobby of torturing people, in particular women, disturbing, and so when King Quarmal commands that his sons attend a dinner with him to hear his latest horoscope, the barbarian from the frozen North takes this opportunity to liberate a woman from the torture chamber.  At the same time, with Gwaay away, the Mouser gets his mitts on a pretty servant girl.  Between the Upper and Lower levels is a sort of no-man's-land of chambers and corridors neither Hasjarl nor Gwaay carefully maintains, and Fafhrd and the Mouser are both lead to this untenanted region by their female companions to have sex.  (More apparently comic paralellism.)  Both of these women have regular boyfriends with whom they customarily rendezvous in this no-man's-land, and Leiber demonstrates how cold and callous life is in Quarmall by having these boyfriends show up only to be summarily killed--the girls then have sex with the outsiders who have slain their lovers before said lovers' bodies have grown cold.

A translation of Swords Against
Wizardry appears in this German collection

This story is long, like 90 pages in Swords Against Wizardry, and there are many scenes in which F&GM do not figure.  King Quarmal casts his horoscope, Hasjarl and Gwaay play chess, Fafhrd reads a history of Quarmall written by Ninguable of the Seven Eyes and the entire test is reproduced for us.  In these long passages written by Fischer we learn in detail the history of Quarmall, the physical appearances and relationships of Quarmal, Hasjarl, Gwaay, Quarmal's half brother and second in command, Flindach, and his head eunuch, Brilla.  The main plot of "Lords of Quarmall" concerns Quarmal's scheme to preserve Quarmall--he fears Hasjarl and Gwaay are too radical and irresponsible to run the subterranean kingdom, but iron tradition prevents a father from killing his sons, so Quarmal concocts a scheme that will get them to destroy each other and open the way for his third son, yet unborn and growing in his favorite concubine's womb, on the throne.  This plan involves disguises and much theatrics (remember Leiber came from a theatrical family and was an actor himself), and within it F&GM are little more than pawns who briefly take center stage.

In the end Quarmal succeeds, Quarmall is preserved, and F&GM, reunited, leave the weird city with the girls.

When I first read "Lords of Quarmall" back in the '80s, I wasn't crazy about it, so many pages being spent on descriptions and machinations which had nothing to do with Fafhrd and the Mouser, who weren't even working together for like 90% of the piece.  Reading it decades later, I can appreciate all the details of how ugly Hasjarl, King Quarmal and Flindach are (Quarmal and Flindach's mother was a mer-woman who bequeathed to them strange eyes) and all the magical stuff.  (The Rube Goldberg nature of Quarmal's plan to get his adult sons to kill each other, the success of which seems to rely on coincidences, still seems a little unbelievable, though.)  This is a good story, though it is somewhat lacking in the things I personally love about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

**********

"Stardock" joins "Lean Times in Lankhmar" and "The Seven Black Priests" as one of the very top Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, and the other three pieces in Swords Against Wizardry certainly have their charms.  More Fafhrd and the Mouser in future installments of MPorcius Fiction Log!