{"id":6100,"date":"2023-01-08T21:30:10","date_gmt":"2023-01-08T21:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6100"},"modified":"2023-01-08T21:31:08","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T21:31:08","slug":"the-stairs-in-the-crypt-by-clark-ashton-smith-lin-carter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6100","title":{"rendered":"The Stairs in the Crypt<\/em><\/strong> by Clark Ashton Smith & Lin Carter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Stairs in the Crypt<\/em><\/strong> by Clark Ashton Smith & Lin Carter (Fantastic<\/em>, August 1976) opens with the death (\u201cthe inexorable termination of his earthly existence\u201d) of the necromancer Avalzaunt, and his subsequent entombment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

If the pupils of Avalzaunt assumed that they had taken their last farewells of their master, however, it eventuated that in this assumption they were seriously mistaken. For, after some years of repose within the sepulchre, vigor seeped back again into the brittle limbs of the mummified enchanter and sentience gleamed anew in his jellied and sunken eyes. At first the partially-revived lich lay somnolent and unmoving in a numb and mindless stupor, with no conception of its present charnel abode. It knew, in fine, neither what nor where it was, nor aught of the peculiar circumstances of its untimely and unprecedented resurrection.
On this question the philosophers remain divided. One school holds to the theorem that it was the unseemly brevity of the burial rites which prevented the release of the spirit of Avalzaunt from its clay, thus initiating the unnatural revitalization of the cadaver. Others postulate that it was the necromantic powers inherent in Avalzaunt himself which were the sole causative agent in his return to life.
After all, they argue, and with some cogence, one who is steeped in the power to effect the resurrection of another should certainly retain, even in death, a residue of that power sufficient to perform a comparable revivification upon oneself. These, however, are queries for a philosophical debate for which the present chronicler lacks both the leisure and the learning to pursue to an unequivocal conclusion.\u00a0 p. 83<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I guess you\u2019ll either like this mannered, discursive, and droll stuff (as I did) or you won\u2019t. If you are in the former group then the rest of the story will treat you of an account of how Avalzaunt waits for a ghoul pack to break into his tomb to release him, swears them into thraldom, and then seeks out the sustenance his post-life body now requires\u2014human blood and gore. During these depredations Avalzaunt becomes more and more swollen as the undead can neither digest nor excrete \u201cthe foul and loathly sustenance whereon they feed\u201d.
Eventually, after working his way through several of his former apprentices, and preying on the fat monks of Cambora, he is (spoiler) finally stopped by the silver knife-wielding abbot in an Grand Guignol ending that sees everything Avalzaunt has consumed spew out of his body (think of a bloodier and messier version of Monty Python<\/em>\u2019s Mr Cresote sketch).
I suspect many will find this an overwritten and ridiculous story, but I thought it was an entertaining pastiche of Smith\u2019s work.1<\/sup>
*** Good. 3,600 words. Story link<\/a>.

1. Ted White\u2019s introduction states:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Lin Carter, working from Clark Ashton Smith\u2019s extensive legacy of notes, outlines, lists of titles and story-fragments, has collaborated posthumously with Smith (who died in 1961), creating new stories\u2014two of which appeared in the briefly-revived Weird Tales<\/em>, and the third, \u201cThe Scroll of Morloc\u201d, here (October, 1975). Here is the fourth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I suspect the whole (or most of the) story is probably Carter\u2019s apart from the plot idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Stairs in the Crypt by Clark Ashton Smith & Lin Carter (Fantastic, August 1976) opens with the death (\u201cthe inexorable termination of his earthly existence\u201d) of the necromancer Avalzaunt, and his subsequent entombment: If the pupils of Avalzaunt assumed that they had taken their last farewells of their master, however, it eventuated that in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1404,1403],"tags":[527,24,1405,206,1406,1407,12],"class_list":["post-6100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clark-ashton-smith","category-lin-carter","tag-527","tag-3-2","tag-clark-ashton-smith","tag-fantastic","tag-lin-carter","tag-necromancers","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6100"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6108,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6100\/revisions\/6108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}