'Necromancy in Naat' – Clark Ashton Smith

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday, too much other stuff was happening and I ran out of time, Hopefully, this will make up for it...

And so a brief sojourn in Zothique draws to a close, for now anyway. I suspect that if there are more 'Zothique' tales to be found, I'll find them and read them but having read 'Necromancy in Naat', I'm going to take a little break from all that darkness. It's an amazing setting but one that is best supped from sparingly I think. It's all beautifully told but there's a lot of darkness and a lot of hopelessness at the same time which you need to be in a good place to deal with. I would thoroughly recommend you read from it though (there are links, to each story, at the bottom of all these posts).

'Necromancy in Naat' is the last of the three 'Zothique' tales, that I was pointed at, and I read it, this morning, after a heavy last few days (shepherding my kids from A to B...) left me in no fit state to read anything longer. Let me tell you about it, or try to (you'll see what I mean in a bit)...

Yadar, prince of a nomad people in the half-desert region known as Zyra, had followed throughout many kingdoms a clue that was often more elusive than broken gossamer. For thirteen moons he had sought Dalili, his betrothed, whom the slave traders of Sha-Rag, swift and cunning as desert falcons, had reft from the tribal encampment with nine other maidens while Yadar and his men were hunting the black gazelles of Zyra. Fierce was the grief of Yadar, and fiercer still his wrath, when he came back at eve to the ravaged tents. He had sworn then a great oath to find Dalili, whether in a slave-mart or brothel or harem, whether dead or living, whether tomorrow or after the lapse of gray years.

Having read three of these short stories, one after another and all in the same setting, it's becoming more and more difficult to say something new about Ashton Smith's style etc (and that's the other reason I'm taking a little break from his tales after this). His prose is amazing and continues to be amazing here, especially with moments like Yadar's first sight of the island of Naat,

From it a shadow was thrown for leagues, darkening still more the sable waters, as if with the fall of untimely night; and in the shadow the foam-crests flashing upon hidden reefs were white as the bared teeth of death. And Yadar needed not the shrill frightened cries of his companions to tell him that this was the terrible Isle of Naat.

If you see anything more forboding than this description then do me a favour and don't tell me ;o) Just turn around and run!

The point is that I'm not really saying anything new here so I don't want to spend too long repeating the same things, as cool as they are. I think the best thing that I can say is that Ashton Smith is just doing he same things that he does so well in his other work. If it isn't broken and all that... ;o)

The plot itself then... I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that when I saw Prince Yadar was on a quest to rescue his lost love... Well... I just knew it wasn't going to end well at all. And having finished the story, I'd say that I was kind of half right and it's funny how things can work out. Yadar may have learned, the hard way, not to trust a necromancer but his ultimate fate, while inevitable, isn't the worst that it could have been. Yadar actually gets what he was after, he's just not alive to enjoy it. But he's 'content' though and that counts as a 'win' in Zothique; a continent where being undead isn't a barrier to fulfilment in life. It's the necromancers that come off worst and I enjoyed the politicking around this that leads to a showdown in Vacharn's chambers. I particularly enjoyed the way that this fight ended up being a series of mishaps that did for three of the four main players. There was nothing 'heroic' here and I really think that's how a fight should be shown, trying to kill the other guy while recovering from 'spur of the moment' mistakes. It works well here.

A gloomy landscape, necromancers who hate each other and a Prince who achieves his heart's desire, kind of. It all fits together to form a dark tale with enough of a twist, at the end, to make me say, 'well played Clark Ashton Smith, well played...' Like I said though, time for a break now.

You can read 'Necromancy in Naat' over Here.