Here we have one of the bigger members of the Lovecraft Circle with a story that, at first, seems like it doesn’t belong in the book. It’s from his Zothique cycle, which is firmly set in the realm of fantasy. And sure enough, we have a lot of swords (okay, one sword) and sorcery, but there are plenty of horror elements to justify Pelan’s choice.
Once upon a time (or rather, sometime in the far, far, far distant future), on Zothique (“the last continent of Earth”) illuminated by a dying sun, there was a young beggar boy named Narthos. While approaching the kingdom’s prince, a bastard by the name of Zotulla, in order to beg for alms, the boy is very purposely trampled by the prince’s horse. Narthos lives, but he’s stuck with a limp the rest of his life. Eventually tired of this place, he wanders off and becomes an apprentice to a great sorcerer. In turn, Narthos becomes a great sorcerer, and he changes his name to Namirrha. In the meantime, Zotulla is sick of waiting to inherit the throne. He tosses an asp in his father’s bed, and when the king subsequently dies, Zotulla is crowned.
Getting trampled by a snotty prince kind of stuck in Namirrha’s craw, and he’s had a lot of time to plot his revenge. He sneaks back to his hometown while everyone is stark raving drunk at a party thrown by Zotulla, and Namirrha takes up residence as Zotulla’s neighbor. Zotulla is infuriated by this, so he sends soldiers out to learn who this asshole is and have him executed forthwith. However, when they return with information that his new neighbor is a widely feared sorcerer, he thinks twice about starting anything he might not be able to finish. Zotulla then tries to ignore the guy.
Namirrha sets in motion his revenge by sending spirits to haunt Zotulla’s palace with the loud, overwhelming sound of the tramping of charging horses. Plagued by these noises, he asks the resident sorcerer for advice; Namirrha suggests the haunting is a direct result of a wrong the king has no recollection of committing (and surely enough, Zotulla doesn’t recognize the wizard). He invites Zotulla to a party.
Zotulla shows up with his favorite woman, and here’s where the true horrors come in. Not since the Crowley story earlier in this volume have such intimidating, vile imagery paraded on these pages. Namirrha summons the mummies of once-great kings as their table servants . . . and one of them turns out to be the king’s recently deceased father. Lamias and satyrs and skeletons and hairy-shanked she-ghouls are their singing and dancing entertainers, the servants all have worms writhing in their empty eye sockets, and their meal is the “well-minced leavings of [torturers’] wheels and racks; and moreover, my cooks have spiced it with the powerful balsams of the tomb, and have farced it with the hearts of adders and the tongues of black cobras.” The musicians play on lyres made from bones and stringed with sinews taken from cannibals, they play hautboys made from the leg bones of young witches, and they play bagpipes made from the tit-skin of “Negro queens.” Holy shit, that is a fucking party.
At the height of the festivities, Namirrha summons the spirits of giant horses, and they trample the entirety of Zotulla’s kingdom until nothing is left but the giant shards of buildings. The sorcerer then reveals his true identity just before he forces the king out of his body, possesses it, and transforms his legs to those of a horse, which he then uses to trample Zotulla’s favorite woman.
SPOILER ALERT: Namirrha has a problem, because he betrayed a very powerful god in order to get all of this to happen. That god, Thasaidon, comes to Zotulla after he’s been imprisoned in a statue and forced to watch as his woman is trampled. The god explains what’s going on, and then he gives Zotulla the power to fight the sorcerer. As they do battle, and as the woman, still alive, is driven to mad laughter by the sight of this, the giant horses return and trample Namirrha’s house, thereby killing EVERYONE.
Wow. That’s kind of a downer ending. It’s also kind of odd considering how, even though we are meant to feel sympathy for Namirrha and to root him on (even though it takes a pretty big son of a bitch to do what Namirrha does to Zotulla), that Smith turns the tables and makes a kinda-sorta hero out of an asshole like Zotulla. All of this could have been avoided if Zotulla had done what most of us do when a bum asks us for change: we keep walking without ever acknowledging the fellow. But still, it’s a nice statement on the typical revenge story: none of it matters in the end. END OF SPOILERS.
There are some flaws. For example, it’s one of those stories where alien terminology is just thrown at you, and a lot of it is unnecessary information and therefore is hard to retain. The story also suffers because of the tell-don’t-show style. It sounds like a fantasy story with very stiff language, kind of like the way Hollywood thinks all Native Americans sound like when they’re speaking English. As a result, the going is hard, at first. Stick it out. This story is definitely worth it.
[This story first appeared in WEIRD TALES and can be read here.]
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