‘The Tomb Spawn’ – Clark Ashton Smith

It feels like an absolute age since I last looked at a Clark Ashton Smith short story (it was ‘Necromancy in Naat’, back in August, which feels like ages given everything that has happened since then, it’s a funny old life sometimes)  so I thought I’d do something about that today 😊 My trusty copy of ‘The Emperor of Dreams’ still has more than a few stories that I haven’t tried yet so I went through the contents page in a search for anything that caught my eye and ended up settling on ‘The Tomb Spawn’; a story that I read while waiting for the electricity to come back on again… (Which it did, don’t worry!)

‘Evening had come from the desert into Faraad, bringing the last stragglers of caravans. In a wine-shop near the northern gate, many travelling merchants from outer lands, parched and weary, were refreshing themselves with the famed vintages of Yoros. To divert them from their fatigue, a story-teller spoke amid the clinking of the wine-cups…’

With this understated yet atmospheric opening, Ashton Smith leads us into the tale of the wizard king Ossaru and the monster Nioth Khorgai, a monster come down from the heavens and taken into the service of Ossaru (although there is mention that Ossaru does  a few things for Nioth Khorgai as well). We don’t learn an awful lot, to be honest, but that’s ok because this approach gives us a nice little hint of the antiquity of Zothique; this is an old world with a history that goes back further still and I love that Ashton Smith can give us this picture by not saying too much about it. He doesn’t need to, a lot of this history has been clearly been lost and only half lives on in stories that are passed down.

The other reason we shouldn’t be too bothered about the lack of Ossaru and Nioth Khorgai’s tale is that ‘The Tomb Spawn’ isn’t actually their tale, not really. No, this is actually the tale of the brothers Milab and Marabac, two jewel merchants who perhaps should have listened more carefully to the tale instead of just asking about the treasure. Actually, to be fair, reading this story in particular really makes you think about fate and the part that it plays in Ashton Smith’s settings. Maybe Milab and Marabac could have made better choices (with their trade route) but you can’t help but think that they were always going to come across the lost city of Ossaru, no matter what happened.

And that’s just what happens, courtesy of an attack by cannibals that is set against this bleak yet gorgeous backdrop of a landscape so old that it’s not just dead, it’s crumbling under the weight of it’s own years. With the rest of their caravan eaten around them (seriously, the Ghori leave nothing else alive), Milab and Marabac take shelter in a city that they perhaps should have recognised from the story. If they had, I would have liked to think that they would have kept running but no, not this time. At least they weren’t looking for treasure, just food and water and you can’t blame them for that.

What they actually find though is horrifying and typical Ashton Smith really in it’s otherworldliness and relentless dread. You can’t blame Milab for choosing the same fate as his brother to staying in the circle with the Tomb Spawn. At least it was quick! And talking of which, I enjoyed the little ‘twist’ at the end which I’m not going to give away here, you should read it yourself.

‘The Tomb Spawn’ ended up being a great choice of story to get back into Clark Ashton Smith. It’s the kind of ‘Sword and Sorcery’ that you get when absolutely nothing is planned in advance and your players end up in a king’s tomb completely by accident, no less creepy for that approach though.

You can read ‘The Tomb Spawn’, for free, over Here.