Clark Ashton Smith: "The Tomb-Spawn," "The Black Abbot of Puthuum," and "Necromancy in Naat"

As you know, Bob, we here at MPorcius Fiction Log have been spending a lot of our time reading stories from 1930s issues of seminal speculative fiction magazine Weird Tales.  But some worthwhile stories have slipped through the cracks, including tales by one of the finest of the Weirdies, Californian poet Clark Ashton Smith.  In our last blog post, about a 1938 issue of Weird Tales, we read "The Garden of Adompha," one of Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories.  Let's read three more tales of wizardly goings-on in the environs of Zothique, grisly tales of horror that debuted in Weird Tales in the mid-Thirties but which for whatever reason I have skipped in the course of my quixotic quest to read at least one story from every 1930s issue of the great magazine of the bizarre and unusual. 

(NB: I am reading today's stories in scans of the original magazines in which they debuted; versions closer to Smith's original vision, based on Smith's manuscripts and free of editorial alterations, are available in the 21st century collections edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger.)

"The Tomb-Spawn" (1934)

This is a good sword-and-sorcery horror story with great images and metaphors.  

Milab and Marabac are brothers, jewel merchants who travel across the desert from town to town with a caravan.  In the first part of "The Tomb-Spawn" they are entertained by a storyteller.  This guy relates a legend of nigh-forgotten times, when a sorcerer king tamed a monster from the stars, confining it in an underground vault and feeding it young women and young men; in return, the monster provided the monarch knowledge of other worlds as well as valuable advice.  When the monster died the wizard king cast protective spells upon its tomb, and when he himself expired, his servants carried out his wish to be buried with the monster.  The storyteller tells Milab and Marabac that the location of the city in which this drama took place is lost to history.

In the second part of the story, M & M's caravan is ambushed by half-human cannibals; by luck, M & M escape with their lives, but with neither their wares nor sorely needed supplies.  Pursued by the cannibals, the jewel merchants flee across the desert, hungry and thirsty, and come to a mysterious ruined city which we readers of course recognize as the city of the long dead wizard king and his pet space monster.  The third part of the story relates the horrific encounter of the merchants with the living dead amalgam of the sorcerer and alien creature--who will survive?

I like it.  "The Garden of Adompha" had outré bestial and necrophiliac sex as one of its themes, and the physical combining of individuals of different species as another, and Smith includes these same themes, the former subtly, the latter explicitly, here in "The Tomb-Spawn."  Yuck!  You can find "The Tomb-Spawn" in various Smith collections, including 1964's Tales of Science and Sorcery and the 1989 French translation of that collection, Morthylla.

"The Black Abbot of Puthuum" (1936)

Here we have an entertaining sword and sorcery adventure.

Cushara the pike man and Zobal the archer are two of King Hoaraph's most trusted and most experienced soldiers, so when the King hears of a beautiful girl in some distant outlying province and assigns an obese eunuch to go out there to buy the girl for his harem, he sends Cushara and Zobal along to serve as an escort--after all, between the capital and that province is a wasteland reputedly inhabited by giant goblins and haunted by demons.  

The trio secures the beautiful girl, with whom both Cushara and Zobal fall in love.  On the way home the party is confronted by an inexplicable black cloud; the cloud drives them across the desert to the residence of Ujuk, a "negro monk" of "immense girth and tallness" with "deeply slanted" eyes, "purple blubbery lips," and finger nails and toe nails that are three-inch long talons.  While the girl and eunuch sleep in the monastery, and Cushara stands guard over them, Zobal is drawn to the monastery's catacombs by a mysterious voice!  Down in the crypt, what appears to be a corpse addresses the archer.  This tortured being is the father of Ujuk!  A thousand years ago, this black wizard monk, a worshipper of the maiden goddess Ojhal and abbot of this very monastery, Puthuum.  After living celibate for centuries, he was seduced by a she-devil who then gave birth to his monstrous child, Ujuk.  For abandoning his vow, Ojhal cursed him to suffer eternal life as a decaying corpse, his sorcerous powers of vision making him an eternal witness to the crimes of his half-demon son Ujuk, devourer of men and rapist of women!  

The cursed abbot implores Zobal to put him out of his misery, and explains how he can perform both this act of mercy and put an end to the evil career of the diabolical Ujuk.  Smith does a good job with the scenes of sorcery and violence that follow.  The eunuch is killed in the fracas, but so is Ujuk, and Cushara, Zobal, and the girl survive--the woman even narrowly preserves her virginity from Ujuk!  Cushara and Zobal decide to abandon their mission of bringing the woman to King Hoaraph, and in the twist ending the fighting men draw lots (Ujuk's talons) to determine which of them will possess her, but she scoffs at this procedure and chooses one of the them of her own free will.  You go, girl.        

Among the collections in which "The Black Abbott of Puthuum" would reappear are Genius Loci and Other Tales (1948) and its two-volume 1987 French translation, Le dieu carnivore.      

"Necromancy in Naat" (1936)

Here we have a story that has reappeared in sword and sorcery anthologies edited by Michael Parry (in 1977 under the pen name Eric Pendragon) and D. M. Ritzlin (in 2020.) 

As in life, in Smith stories the pursuit of women is an endless source of trouble, and "Necromancy in Naat" relates the climactic adventure of Yadar, nomad prince, who has been searching the world for his fiancé, who months ago was captured by raiders along with other women of his tribe while Yadar and the other men of the tribe were out hunting.  Yadar is pursuing vague rumors as a passenger on a merchant ship when the vessel is blown off course and finds itself captive of an infamous and irresistible ocean current, the Black River, that is said to lead to the island of Naat, home of necromancers and their undead servants.

The ship runs aground on breakers on the coast of Naat and is totally destroyed.  Yadar is the only survivor, thanks to an adept swimmer, an undead woman who brings him safely to shore--this animated corpse turns out to be none other than Yadar's lost fiancé!  A ship carrying her met the same fate as that upon which Yadar was a passenger, and her drowned body was brought back to a terrible half life by three of the fell sorcerers who lord it over this island and their staff of the living dead.

In the house of the three necromancers--a father and two sons, all incredibly old--the nomad prince learns why he was spared death.  Tribes of black cannibals live on the other side of the island, and Yadar is forced to watch as one of these savages, a particularly robust specimen held in captivity by the wizards, is entirely drained of blood by a slinky weasel-like monster that emerges from a hole in the floor.  This disgusting rodent is the senior necromancer's familiar, and Yadar is made aware that he will be on the menu come the creature's next monthly meal!    

His ability to fight or escape inhibited by hypnotic spells, Yadar spends weeks on the island, hanging around his beloved, though her flesh is cold, her eyes are dull, she does not breathe, and her speech consists merely of repeating stuff Yadar or the necromancers, who employ her as a pearl diver, say to her.  As the end of the month approaches, the two sons enlist Yadar in a scheme to murder their father, of whose centuries-long rule they have tired.  They promise Yadar a ship and a crew of undead sailors should the desperate venture come off--the nomad prince will also be permitted to take away the animated corpse of his fiancé (they add to these inducements the suggestion that, if she does not get off the isle, decrepit old Dad will use Yadar's beloved as a sex toy.)  

The sneak attack on the senior necromancer miscarries and Smith regales the reader with a long gruesome description of the horrible fight of the brothers and Yadar against the eldritch patriarch and his vampiric familiar that will thrill lovers of gore.  Yadar is killed, but the surviving son raises him from the dead, and Yadar and his beloved spend eternity together as dim-witted animated corpses, toiling on the island of necromancers.

Good--Parry and Ritzlin were right to republish this memorable and striking piece of work.

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Three stories about the regrettable cheating of death, sickening body modification and disgusting sexual relationships that move at a brisk pace and are full of striking images, horrendous violence and clever sentences; here we have proof that Clark Ashton Smith really is the master of the weird that everybody is always telling you he is.  Conventional wisdom confirmed!