Poseidonis by Clark Ashton Smith

Book Details

Poseidonis is a collection of six stories and two poems concerning the end of the civilization of Atlantis, a land of powerful wizards yet not powerful enough to stave off the death of that once mighty realm. Poseidonis is the last remnant of the lost continent.

The Muse of Atlantis

The Last Incantation (1930) – A poetic and fanciful tale about a king who invoked the aid of magic to summon his lost love

The Death of Malygris (1934) – Even in death, the mighty wizard proved himself greater than his peers—a story of weird sorcery

The Double Shadow (1933) – That which cannot be outrun

A Voyage to Sfanomoë (1931) – The brothers Hotar and Evidon left doomed Atlantis and journeyed to the planet Venus

A Vintage From Atlantis (1934) – A fantastic story of a jar of wine, mellowed through many centuries, that was washed ashore on a pirate-infested isle in the West Indies

Atlantis (1912) – A poem

Atlantis (1912) – Alternate version

Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He spent most of his life in the small town of Auburn, California, living in the small cabin built by his parents, Fanny and Timeus Smith. He hated the provincialism of the small town life but rarely left Auburn until he married late in life.

Poseidonis has 1 illustration.

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1. CASmith-Poseidonis.epub

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Excerpt: The Last Incantation

A poetic and fanciful tale about a king who invoked the aid of magic to summon his lost love

MALYGRIS the magician sat in the topmost room of his tower that was builded on a conical hill above the heart of Susran, capital of Poseidonis. Wrought of a dark stone mined from deep in the earth, perdurable and hard as the fabled adamant, this tower loomed above all others, and flung its shadow far on the roofs and domes of the city, even as the sinister power of Malygris had thrown its darkness on the minds of men.

Now Malygris was old, and all the baleful might of his enchantments, all the dreadful or curious demons under his control, all the fear that he had wrought in the hearts of kings and prelates, were no longer enough to assuage the black ennui of his days. In his chair that was fashioned from the ivory of mastodons, inset with terrible cryptic runes of red tourmalins and azure crystals, he stared moodily through the one lozenge-shaped window of fulvous glass. His white eyebrows were contracted to a single line on the umber parchment of his face, and beneath them his eyes were cold and green as the ice of ancient floes; his beard, half white, half of a black with glaucous gleams, fell nearly to his knees and hid many of the writhing serpentine characters inscribed in woven silver athwart the bosom of his violet robe. About him were scattered all the appurtenances of his art; the skulls of men and monsters; phials filled with black or amber liquids, whose sacrilegious use was known to none but himself; little drums of vulture-skin, and crotali made from the bones and teeth of the cockodrill, used as an accompaniment to certain incantations. The mosaic floor was partly covered with the skins of enormous black and silver apes; and above the door there hung the head of a unicorn in which dwelt the familiar demon of Malygris, in the form of a coral viper with pale green belly and ashen mottlings. Books were piled everywhere: ancient volumes bound in serpent-skin, with verdigris-eaten clasps, that held the frightful lore of Atlantis, the pentacles that have power upon the demons of the earth and the moon, the spells that transmute or disintegrate the elements; and runes from a lost language of Hyperborea, which, when uttered aloud, were more deadly than poison or more potent than any philtre.

But, though these things and the power they held or symbolized were the terror of the peoples and the envy of all rival magicians, the thoughts of Malygris were dark with immitigable melancholy, and weariness filled his heart as ashes fill the hearth where a great fire has died. Immovable he sat, implacable he mused, while the sun of afternoon, declining on the city and on the sea that was beyond the city, smote with autumnal rays through the window of greenish-yellow glass, and touched his shrunken hands with its phantom gold, and fired the balas-rubies of his rings till they burned like demonian eyes. But in his musings there was neither light nor fire; and turning from the grayness of the present, from the darkness that seemed to close in so imminently upon the future, he groped among the shadows of memory, even as a blind man who has lost the sun and seeks it everywhere in vain. And all the vistas of time that had been so full of gold and splendor, the days of triumph that were colored like a soaring flame, the crimson and purple of the rich imperial years of his prime, all these were chill and dim and strangely faded now, and the remembrance thereof was no more than the stirring of dead embers. Then Malygris groped backward to the years of his youth, to the misty, remote, incredible years, where, like an alien star, one memory still burned with unfailing luster—the memory of the girl Nylissa whom he had loved in days ere the lust of unpermitted knowledge and necromantic dominion had ever entered his soul.

He had well-nigh forgotten her for decades, in the myriad preoccupations of a life so bizarrely diversified, so replete with occult happenings and powers, with supernatural victories and perils; but now, at the mere thought of this slender and innocent child, who had loved him so dearly when he too was young and slim and guileless, and who had died of a sudden mysterious fever on the very eve of their marriage-day, the mummy-like umber of his cheeks took on a phantom flush, and deep down in his icy orbs was a sparkle like the gleam of mortuary tapers. In his dreams arose the irretrievable suns of youth, and he saw the myrtle-shaded valley of Meros, and the stream Zemander, by whose ever-verdant marge he had walked at eventide with Nylissa, seeing the birth of summer stars in the heavens, the stream, and the eyes of his beloved.

Now, addressing the demonian viper that dwelt in the head of the unicorn, Malygris spoke, with the low monotonous intonation of one who thinks aloud:”

“Viper, in the years before you came to dwell with me and to make your abode in the head of the unicorn, I knew a girl who was lovely and frail as the orchids of the jungle, and who died as the orchids die. . . . Viper, am I not Malygris, in whom is centered the mastery of all occult lore, all forbidden dominations, with dominion over the spirits of earth and sea and air, over the solar and lunar demons, over the living and the dead? If so I desire, can I not call the girl Nylissa, in the very semblance of all her youth and beauty, and bring her forth, from the never-changing shadows of the cryptic tomb, to stand before me in this chamber, in the evening rays of this autumnal sun?”

“Yes, master,” replied the viper, in a low but singularly penetrating hiss, “you are Malygris, and all sorcerous or necromantic power is yours, all incantations and spells and pentacles are known to you. It is possible, if you so desire, to summon the girl Nylissa from her abode among the dead, and to behold her again as she was ere her loveliness had known the ravening kiss of the worm.”

“Viper, is it well, is it meet, that I should summon her thus ? . . . “Will there be nothing to lose, and nothing to regret?”

The viper seemed to hesitate. Then, in a more slow and measured hiss: “It is meet for Malygris to do as he would. Who, save Malygris, can decide if a thing be well or ill?”

Excerpt From: Clark Ashton Smith. “Poseidonis.”