The Last Hieroglyph

by Clark Ashton Smith

  Mildred was half-pushed, half-carried, and made to stand on an indented pedestal at the right hand of the armed entity. She faced a deeply bowing congregation of reptilians in the nave, which appeared lit by sunlight between pillars at the rear.

  Still bewildered, she perceived that a man had entered at the left and had paused in front of the dart-bearer. For a while she failed to realize that the man was Jon: his features seemed blurred with the faces of others she had known, had liked or disliked in former years. An impulse of sudden hatred made her raise the black knife, and she was about to fling it toward him.

  She never knew what checked her. Perhaps the hypnotic command implanted in her mind had suddenly been reversed. She paused, while the dart-bearer lifted his weapon and hurled it violently at Jon, piercing his shirt at the side as he dodged agilely with muscles trained by a multitude of tasks.

  Something (perhaps a remaining part of the hypnosis) told her that the dart-bearer was Rasasfa, priest of an ultra-planetary sect. She leapt from the pedestal and stabbed him deeply in the side. Almost simultaneously, in his convulsive struggles, he scratched her breast with the dart-point before he dropped.

  Jon and Mildred both underwent a strange hallucination, identical in all details, which they could never afterward forget. They had the sense of falling immeasurably, plunging through uncharted depths and dimensions, to hang insecurely poised on the verge of an alien hell, from which pointed flames, obscenely writhing monsters, dragon-like creatures with several heads and bodies, reached upward around their feet and sometimes over-towered them, breathing a fetid stench. Not the least horror was Rasasfa, standing close at hand, and thrusting with his dart at the monsters. And they, in turn, seemed to assail him with a special menace and venom, looming far up and lengthening fantastically into the skyless vault. He paid no attention to the humans, appearing oblivious of their presence.

  At last the lurid glow, like ashen embers, dimmed in the depths. The figures grew vaporous, and broke up like wind-blown clouds, trailing and mingling and finally vanishing. Jon and Mildred stood alone on the precipice, which tottered and fell apart.

  They awoke in the nave. The crowd had vanished. The reptile had dropped his dart but was still writhing. Pierced in a vital part by Mildred’s knife, he was dying very slowly, as snakes die.

  They found their way from the temple, meeting no one. Jon had picked up the dart and carried it. The sun had abandoned the skies, leaving a multitude of stars, among which hung the nebula. Using a small pocket-compass, of which his captors had not deprived him, they left the city. The place lay entirely dark and silent, as if deserted by its inhabitants; and quitting its narrow, tortuous streets, they returned toward the mountains. They surmised that the slaying of Rasasfa had wrought profound terror. Doubtless the people had believed him a supernatural or immortal being.

  They traveled across a semi-desert land. The sun finally rose, and leaned over them, warm until evening. They followed the compass toward a magnetic pole in what they liked to believe was the north. The air was very cold at night, and they slept a few hours in each other’s arms.

  Fearing pursuit, they peered often backward at the city, which sank gradually on the horizon. Presently they found the tracks of the reptile people going city-ward from the mountains, often deeply printed because of the weight of the unconscious humans whom they carried. No doubt there were other cities in this world; but Jon and Mildred were glad to forgo any curiosity concerning them. Their one experience had been enough for several lifetimes.

  They had suffered severely from thirst and hunger during that outward trip. There had been a few brackish pools from which they drank sparingly, hoping that the contents were rain-water; and a few bushes bearing a sourish red fruit of which they ate a small amount.

  Late in the second afternoon the footsteps led them to the hollow in which Jon had been digging when they were captured by the falling net. Their tools and sacks and thermos lay where they had left them, their captors plainly thinking these appurtenances of no particular account. They saw with relief that the space-flier still occupied its shelf above.

  The coffee was still warm in the thermos. They gulped some of it down eagerly. Then Jon resumed his digging while Mildred remained on the ridge watching the remote city, which seemed to waver and flicker like a mirage. Jon had filled one of the sacks with crude carborundum and was beginning to uncover the zysturium when Mildred cried out in warning. Hastily he climbed the ridge beside her, taking with him the dart-weapon and a pistol snatched from his pack.

  A half dozen of the reptile men, climbing noiselessly, were hard upon them. All were armed with darts. They paused uncertainly when Jon brandished Rasasfa’s weapon, as if realizing its weird powers and superiority to their own. Then they resumed their advance. Jon dropped two of them with the pistol, which was a sort of flame-thrower, and short-ranged. The others fell back and concealed themselves behind boulders. They had estimated closely the range of the flame-thrower.

  “Take over while I get some of the zysturium,” Jon instructed, giving Mildred the pistol. She obeyed, while Jon finished laying bare the needed element and partly filled his other sack. He attached the tools and sacks to his shoulder-band, and telling Mildred to follow, began his escalade toward the space-flier.

  It was a close race, especially in rounding the cataract. He heard the snap and hiss of the pistol and Mildred’s cry of triumph as at least one of their pursuers fell back.

  At length, half blinded by sweat, with heart and lungs heaving stertorously, he was climbing the flier’s ladder. Pushing his loads through the manhole, he hung at one side, and made sure that Mildred preceded him, snatching the pistol from her hand as she went past. One of the reptile-men had started to mount the ladder, but dropped into the ravine when Jon fired. Jon went through the manhole and made fast the outer and inner lids.

  They worked on their repairs for much of that night, hearing the baffled cries of the reptiles and the futile crash of their weapons against the hull and windows.

  The furnaces had done their fusing, and the rod was welded and left to cool.

  At earliest morning they took off and regained the outer skies.

  APPENDIX ONE:

  STORY NOTES

  Abbreviations Used:

  AHT Arkham House Transcripts: a set of transcriptions and excerpts from the letters of H. P. Lovecraft prepared by Donald Wandrei and August Derleth after Lovecraft’s death in preparation for what would be five volumes of Selected Letters (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965–1976).

  AWD August W. Derleth (1909–1971), Wisconsin novelist, Weird Tales author, and co-founder of Arkham House.

  AY The Abominations of Yondo (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1960).

  BB The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1979).

  BL Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

  CAS Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961).

  DAW Donald A. Wandrei (1908–1987), poet, Weird Tales writer and co-founder of Arkham House.

  DS The Door to Saturn: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Two. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007).

  EOD Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bio-Bibliography by Donald Sidney-Fryer et al. (West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1978).

  ES The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume One. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2006).

  FFT The Freedom of Fantastic Things. Ed. Scott Connors (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2006).

  F&SF The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a digest magazine founded in 1949 by Anthony Boucher and Robert Mills.

  FW Farnsworth Wright (1888–1940), editor of Weird Tales from 1924 to 1940.

  GL Genius Loci and Other Tales (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1948).

  HPL Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937), informal leader of a circle of writers for Weird Tales and related magazines, a
nd probably the leading exponent of weird fiction in the twentieth century.

  JHL Clark Ashton Smith Papers and H. P. Lovecraft Collection, John Hay Library, Brown University.

  LL Letters to H. P. Lovecraft. Ed. Steve Behrends (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1987).

  LW Lost Worlds (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1944).

  ME The Maze of the Enchanter: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Four. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2009).

  MHS Donald Wandrei Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.

  OD Other Dimensions (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1970).

  OST Out of Space and Time (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1942).

  PD Planets and Dimensions: Collected Essays. Ed. Charles K. Wolfe (Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1973).

  PP Poems in Prose (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1965).

  RA A Rendezvous in Averoigne (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1988).

  RHB Robert H. Barlow (1918–1951), correspondent and collector of manuscripts of CAS, HPL, and other WT writers.

  SHSW August Derleth Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library.

  SL Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith. Ed. David E. Schultz and Scott Connors (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 2003).

  SS Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith. Ed. Steve Behrends with Donald Sidney-Fryer and Rah Hoffman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989).

  ST Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, a pulp edited by Harry Bates in competition with WT.

  TSS Tales of Science and Sorcery (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964).

  VA A Vintage from Atlantis: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Three. Ed. Scott Connors and Ron Hilger (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2007).

  WS Wonder Stories, a pulp published by Hugo Gernsback and edited first by David Lasser and then Charles D. Hornig.

  WT Weird Tales, Smith’s primary market for fiction, edited by FW (1924–1940) and later Dorothy McIlwraith (1940–1954).

  The Dark Age

  When Clark Ashton Smith wrote “The Dark Age,” he intended to submit it to the Clayton Astounding, which had changed its policy to include a few occult-type stories.1 It was finished by May 2, 1933, when he described the story as “my lousiest in many moons, largely, no doubt, because of the non-fantastic plot, which failed to engage my interest at any point. The one redeeming feature is the final paragraph, which takes a sly, underhanded crack at the benefits (?) of science.”2 We have not been able to locate any letter of rejection for this story, so it is not known if it was rejected under the auspices of the dying Clayton regime at Astounding or by the incoming editorial team of F. Orlin Tremaine and Desmond Hall that had already accepted “The Demon of the Flower” for the December 1933 issue.

  Hugo Gernsback sold Wonder Stories to Leo Margulies’ Better Publications on February 21, 1936. Mort Weisinger, who would later edit Superman during the so-called Silver Age of comics, took over from Charles D. Hornig as editor.3 It is not known if Smith was invited to contribute or if he just sent in the typescript on his own initiative, but CAS wrote to Virgil Finlay that “The sale of a pseudo-science short to Thrilling Wonder Stories at $55.00 [along with the sale of a carving] brings my September [1937] income to $62.50! If such sales continue, I shall become a bloated plutocrat!”4 “The Dark Age” appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories for April 1938. This appearance was accompanied by a brief essay by Smith entitled “The Decline of Civilisation”:

  “The Dark Age” was written to illustrate how easily scientific knowledge and its resultant inventions could be lost to the human race following the complete breakdown of a mechanistic civilization such as the present one. The tale seems far from fantastic or impossible; and I have tried to bring out several points and to emphasize the part played by mere chance and by personal emotions and reactions.

  I have shown the old knowledge conserved by a select few, the Custodians, who, in the beginning, are forced to isolate themselves completely because of the hostility displayed by the barbarians. Through habit, the isolation becomes permanent even when it is no longer necessary; and with the sole exception of Atullos, who has been expelled from the laboratory-fortress by his fellows, none of the Custodians tries to help the benighted people about them.

  In the end, through human passion, prejudice, misunderstanding, the Custodians perish with all their lore; and the night of the Dark Age is complete. The reader will note certain ironic ifs and might-have-beens in the tale. Other points that I have stressed are the immense, well-nigh insuperable difficulties met by Atullos in his attempt to reconstruct, amid primitive conditions, a few of the lost inventions for the benefit of the savages; and the total frustration of Torquane’s studies and experiments through mere inability to read the books left by his dead father.

  Also I have shown how a chemical, such as gunpowder, might be used by one who had learned its effects but was wholly ignorant of its origin and nature.5

  Smith would later collect the tale in AY. The current text is based upon an undated typescript among the Clark Ashton Smith Papers held by the John Hay Library of Brown University.

  1. See ME pp. 317–318.

  2. CAS, letter to AWD, May 2, 1933 (ms, SHSW).

  3. See Mike Ashley and Robert A. W. Lowndes, The Gernsback Days: A Study of the Evolution of Modern Science Fiction from 1911 to 1936 (Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2004): 249–250.

  4. CAS, letter to Virgil Finlay, September 27, 1937 (SL 317).

  5. PD 55.

  The Death of Malygris

  When Smith completed “The Death of Malygris,” he mentioned to a fan correspondent that it contained “much genuine occultism and folklore,”1 as can be seen from the following story idea found in the Black Book:

  Malygris, in death, lies incorrupt in his black tower and still tyrannizes over Susran. Maranapion, his enemy, a rival sorcerer, instigated by the king of Poseidonis, undertakes to free the land from his spell. Employing the invultuation principle [the insertion of pins into a wax figure in order to bring harm to the person symbolized by the figure], he makes an image of Malygris from synthetic flesh, and causes the image to rot, thus producing a corresponding decay in Malygris himself. Afterwards, Maranapion, invading the black tower to exult over the decay of his ancient foe, is cursed by the rotting corpse, and begins while still alive to putrefy in the same fashion as the dead man. The companions of Maranapion flee, leaving him in the tower with Malygris.2

  When Farnsworth Wright rejected “The Death of Malygris,” the words were by now all too familiar to Smith: “This seems more like a prose poem than a story; and we have learned from experience that our readers do not take to this type of story when it is more than three or four pages long. It is a beautiful thing, however, and the rhythmic prose fairly sings at times, but I don’t think the average reader would care for it at all.” He added this rather unhelpful piece of encouragement: “I think you would have something very, very fine if you would write this narrative to blank or rimed verse, but I don’t know where you would find a market for it.”3 August Derleth commiserated with Smith, adding that Wright “gives me a godawful pain every once in a while. Makes me feel definitely homicidal.”4

  H. P. Lovecraft thought very highly of the story. He wrote to Robert Bloch that “Klarkash-Ton’s ‘Malygris’ is splendid—& it is just like the capricious Brother Farnsworth to turn down a thing like that! The thing is pure poetry in places—indeed, the Dunsanian style suits C.A.S. more than it does me.”5 He called the story “a gorgeous bit of onyx & ebony prose-poetry in which the crawling menace advances as to the sound of evil flutes & crotala.”6

  After Wright accepted “The Flower-Women” upon resubmission, Smith decided to “try him again with ‘The Death of Malygris,’ a better tale than ‘The F.W.’ There is no excuse for his not accepting it.”7 Wright not only accepted “The Death of Malygris,” but he commissioned Smith to draw an illustration for it as well. When
this appeared in the April 1934 issue, Smith wrote to Lovecraft that he was “inclined to think it the best of my W.T. illustrations so far.”8 Robert E. Howard wrote to Smith after the tale’s publication that “the Malygris story came up to expectations splendidly. In some ways I liked the illustration even better than that of ‘The Charnel God,’ though both were fine.”9 “The Death of Malygris” appears in both LW and RA. The current text is based upon an undated carbon copy at JHL.

  1. CAS, letter to Lester Anderson, June 20, 1933 (ms, private collection).

  2. BB 15.

  3. FW, letter to CAS, May 16, 1933 (ms, JHL).

  4. AWD, letter to CAS, May 27, 1933 (ms, JHL).

  5. HPL, letter to Robert Bloch, June 9, 1933 (in Letters to Robert Bloch, Ed. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz [West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1993]: p. 20).

  6. HPL, letter to CAS, June 14, 1933 (ms, JHL).

  7. CAS, letter to AWD, July 12, 1933 (SL 211).

  8. CAS, letter to HPL, c. late January 1934 (SL 247).

  9. Robert E. Howard, letter to CAS, May 21, 1934 (Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard 1933–1936, Ed. Rob Roehm [Robert E. Howard Foundation Press, 2008]: p. 208).

  The Tomb-Spawn

  A plot synopsis for this story may be found in the Black Book under the title of “The Tomb of Ossaru”:

  A desert-buried tomb in Yoros where a strange being from an alien world was interred by the wizard he had served and was surrounded by an inner zone of enchantment rendering him incorruptible, and an outer zone causing instant death and decay in any who might intrude. Two merchants, travelling through Yoros, are pursued by robbers, and take refuge in a ruined building. The pavement gives way beneath them—and they [are] precipitated into the Tomb of Ossaru. One falls in the inner zone beside the seated incorruptible monster—and the other in the outer zone. While the first, in horror, is watching the decay of his companion, Ossaru awakes and proceeds to devour him.1