‘Sadastor’ – Clark Ashton Smith

Page Count: Four pages and about four lines.

I found ‘Sadastor’ in the collection ‘Out of Space & Time: Volume 2’ but if you can’t find a copy, you can always read it over at ‘Eldritch Dark’ (Link). It takes barely any time at all to read but is definitely worth the time you put into it. Quick thoughts follow (you’re really not going to get much more than that from a story that’s only a few pages long…)

‘Sadastor’ is ‘the tale that was told to a fair lamia by the demon Charnadis as they sat together on the top of Mophi, above the sources of the Nile, in those years when the sphinx was young’. It’s a lot more than that though, of course it is. We’ve got a beautifully told travelogue through the outer realms of Clark Ashton Smith’s universe and it’s a universe of wonders that you feel privileged to have been shown. The journey may only be a few paragraphs long but Ashton Smith literally fits an entire universe into those few paragraphs, seemingly without any effort at all. And the end result may well hold dark secrets at its heart but it is just so gorgeous to look at and wander through. You may not want to live there yourself (and I don’t think that I would) but just to have seen it is enough.

And there is darkness out there amongst the stars, ‘where, with a thousand names and a thousand images, undreamt-of Evil is served and worshipt in unsurmisable ways.’ The Mythos is alive and well in Ashton Smith’s corner of the universe; he just treats his readers with a little more respect. Maybe cosmic evil isn’t so above us after all, we just need to see it to understand fully. Maybe…

But ‘Sadastor’ is more than just that as well with a wry streak of humour running through it (from where I was sat, anyway) that really shows us the true nature of the demon telling the story. You see, the Lamia was ‘was vexed, for her beauty was grown an evil legend in both Thebais and Elephantine; so that men were become fearful of her lips and cautious of her embrace, and she had no lover for almost a fortnight.’ We’re looking at a full on Lamia tantrum here so what does the demon do? He only goes and regales her with a tale of how much sex he got in his flight through the stars (and if you believe our demon, it was a lot).

Not only that, Charnadis takes us to the secret right at the heart of the planet Sadastor and while the reader gets to share in the grief of the Siren (some things in the universe are familiar, no matter where you go), our demon basically tells the Lamia to get over herself, the Siren is going through ‘a plight that was infinitely more dolorous and irremediable than thine own.’ And maybe the demon is right, did the Lamia need to hear it though? That’s almost besides the point, we’re being shown that while a demon may come across as comforting, it will always remain true to its nature and be spiteful at the very least. It just made me chuckle that underneath all the beautiful descriptions, Ashton Smith seems to have set this up just to give Charnadis a chance to be a real bastard.

Give ‘Sadastor’ a read then (no matter the format you find it in), it will only take a few minutes out of your day but I guarantee you’ll be better off for it.