Statuesque beauties

In my Peek Beneath the Duct Tape on Octopus Vulgaris, I mentioned Clark Ashton Smith as a contemporary of Lovecraft whose work I'd enjoyed in my teens. I also noted that I hadn't read his stuff in years, and that I wasn't sure whether it would stand up to my adult scrutiny or not, but pretty nearly his entire oeuvre was now available online for free at The Eldritch Dark.

Well, some time after I wrote that post, I did stop by and re-read a couple of stories I remembered liking. I found myself as intrigued as ever by Smith's imagination, but also very turned off by his language. If you think Lovecraft is bad with his "cyclopean" this and "eldritch" that, just take a look at how many esoteric adjectives Clark Ashton Smith can pack into a single sentence! I only read a couple of his stories, then gave up and left the site sadder but wiser.

But then last week, totally out of the blue, I remembered another story of his that I'd liked, remembered it name and all: "The Maze of Maal Dweb." And what I remembered fed so nicely into my current fetish fantasies that I decided to go back and read that one again, too.

I'm glad I did. The ridiculously baroque language fades into background noise after awhile, and then you're left with a story queasily reminiscent of certain half-remembered nightmares - but with that good squick edge that Lovecraft lacks but Smith owns in spades.

The basic plot is this: Tarzan-like Tiglari sets out to rescue his (unrequited) love interest from the clutches of the sorcerer/dictator Maal Dweb, who periodically summons beautiful young women to his keep for unknown purposes. Oh, you think you can guess what Maal Dweb wants with his captives, but you're wrong. This is what Tiglari sees when he finally makes it inside the sorcerer's keep:

The doors on either side of the hall, with cunningly mated valves of ebony and ivory, were all closed. At the far end Tiglari saw a thin rift of light in a somber double arras. Parting the arras very slowly, he peered through into a huge brilliantly lit chamber that seemed to be the harem of Maal Dweb, peopled with all the girls that the enchanter had summoned to his dwelling. It seemed, in fact, that there were hundreds, leaning or lying on ornate couches, or standing in attitudes of languor or terror. Tiglari discerned in the throng the women of Ommu-Zain, whose flesh is whiter than desert salt; the slim girls of Uthmai, who are molded from breathing, palpitating jet; the queenly topaz girls of equatorial Xala; and the small women of Ilap, who have the tones of newly greening bronze. But among them all he could not find the lotus-like beauty of Athlé.

Much he marveled at the number of the women and the perfect stillness with which they maintained their various postures. They were like goddesses that slept in some enchanted hall of eternity. Tiglari, the intrepid hunter, was awed and frightened. These women — if indeed they were women and not mere statues — were surely the thralls of a death-like spell. Here, indeed, was proof of the sorcery of Maal Dweb.

However, if Tiglari were to continue his search, he must traverse that enchanted chamber. Feeling that a marble sleep might descend upon him at the crossing of the sill, he went in with held breath and furtive leopard-like paces. About him the women preserved their eternal stillness. Each, it seemed, had been overcome by the spell at the instant of same particular emotion, whether of fear, wonder, curiosity, vanity, weariness, anger or voluptuousness. Their number was fewer than he had supposed; and the room itself was smaller: but metal mirrors, paneling the walls, had created an illusion of multitude and immensity.

I think you can see how this passage has influenced at least a couple of my own stories, whether I remembered it consciously or not. And then there's this one, when Tiglari finally spots his beloved again while fighting his way through a maze of monstrous plants:

With the senses of one who drowns in nightmare, he heard the startled cry of a woman. Above the tilted flowers he beheld a strange scene which the hitherto impenetrable maze, parting as if by magic, had revealed. Fifty feet away, on the same level as the onyx pavement, there stood an elliptic dais of moon-white stone at whose center the maiden Athlé, emerging from the labyrinth on a raised, porphyry walk, had paused in an attitude of wonder. Before her, in the claws of an immense marble lizard that reared above the dais, a round mirror of steely metal was held upright. Athlé, as if fascinated by some strange vision, was peering into the disk. Midway between the pavement and the dais, a row of slender brazen columns rose at broad intervals, topped with graven heads like demoniac Termini.

Tiglari would have called out to Athlé. But at that moment she took a single step toward the mirror, as if drawn by something that she saw in its depths; and the dull disk seemed to brighten with some internal, incandescent flame. The hunter's eyes were blinded by the spiky rays that leapt forth from it for an instant, enveloping and transfixing the maiden. When the dimness cleared away in whirling blots of color, he saw that Athlé, in a pose of statuesque rigidity, was still regarding the mirror with startled eyes. She had not moved; the wonder was frozen on her face; and it came to Tiglari that she was like the women who slept an enchanted slumber in the harem of Maal Dweb. Even as this thought occurred to him, he heard a ringing chorus of metallic voices that seemed to emanate from the graven demon heads of the columns.

'The maiden Athlé,' announced the voices in solemn and portentous tones, 'has beheld herself in the mirror of Eternity, and has passed beyond the changes and corruptions of Time.'

Pretty fantastic, eh? And that's not even getting into what happens to Tiglari himself. The poor guy could hardly have fared worse in one of my stories. But you'll have to read The Maze of Maal Dweb for yourself to find out about that. Enjoy.

Oh, and by the way, the pictures in this post really don't have much to do with "The Maze of Maal Dweb" because I just couldn't find any pictures that illustrated the story...well. So instead I chose some pics I found at least evocative of the story. The first two are by Boris Vallejo and come from the the same site where I get most of my Sorayama pictures, if you want to go exploring: D4rkw00d.NeT (And if you do go, I also recommend the galleries of Julie Bell, Arantza, and Jacek Yerka). The third is a Sorayama pic not from that site, but one I've had on my hard drive for so long that I no longer remember where I found it.