Michael Moorcock - The Bane of the Black Sword.jpg

Michael Moorcock is one of the authors who always impresses me with creative ideas when it comes to magic and supernatural elements. His Eternal Champion stories are loaded with sorcerous weirdness. Throughout the cycle, we encounter not only his own breeds of various mythical beings, but also patron demons, elemental spirits, cosmic monsters, strange races, Lords of Chaos and countless creatures of multiversal netherworlds. I would venture to say that these fast-paced adventure tales often visit the supernatural realm even more frequently than most. When one of the many Eternal Champion incarnations (whether it be Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon, Erekosё, etc.) are faced with a struggle against wizardry, they often retaliate with their own magical abilities or allies. The stories still contain enough ‘hack and slash’ to satisfy any hardcore S&S aficionado, but unlike Conan and the like, who tend to battle sorcery with wits and cold steel—it’s usually magic against magic with Moorcock’s heroes.

A prime example of this happens in one of my favorite scenes from The Bane of the Black Sword, in the story “The Stealer of Souls.”

The tale features Theleb K’aarna, the sorcerer of Pan-Tang. Probably one of the most remembered villains from the Elric saga, he appears in several of the main books. Theleb K’aarna is quite a fun character. With his oiled, ebon locks, jutting beard, and flamboyant garb, he is a powerful yet somewhat clumsy wizard driven by conquest, lust, jealousy and greed. For all his skill in magic, he has a weak side that often proves to be his downfall. The sorcerer is infatuated with Queen Yishana of Jharkor who can get him to do anything she wishes just by showing him some affection. Elric has taken Yishana as a lover before, and so K’aarna is extremely jealous of him. Although Elric was responsible for the death of her brother Dharmit, Yishana still has strong feelings for the albino Prince. In addition to desiring vengeance and wanting to kill Elric because of constant attempts to thwart the sorcerer’s plans, Theleb K’aarna also wants him out of the way in order to continue his pathetic love affair with the Queen.

From sorcerous battles at sea, to cosmic encounters with tiger-men in the Sighing Desert, Elric has already had several dealings with Theleb K’aarna throughout the previous two books, and at this point, the two despise each other very much. Elric has now sworn oaths of vengeance upon the sorcerer on several separate occasions—in Lormyr, Nadsokor, and Tanelorn, as well as in Jharkor. Theleb K’aarna is well of aware of the pale emperor’s might, and knows it will eventually destroy him if not stopped. He needs to devise a plan in order to lure Elric to him, and somehow separate him from his runesword Stormbringer. This way, the albino will be rendered helpless, and can easily be captured. In order to achieve this, he will need aid from a certain being…

A demon called Quaolnargn.

Theleb K’aarna stands within a pentacle and begins the ritual. He has obtained a stolen lock of Elric’s white hair, and uses it to entice the demon during the summoning. He must open a gateway to draw Quaolnargn into his plane.

“Now it stirred. It heard its name carrying over the barriers which normally blocked its way to the Earth. The calling of the name effected a temporary pathway through those intangible barriers. It stirred again, as its name was called for the second time…”

Theleb K’aarna now has control over several powerful and malevolent demons. This is not the first time he has brought one of them into this plane to unleash against Elric. The wizard shudders in dread, and begins to feel much guilt and remorse for summoning the dark entity. He tries to convince himself that he is truly a man of peace, and that it is his avaricious love for Yishana that has caused him to go mad. He reckons that all the destruction he has wrought is only due to circumstance, and it is the Queen’s fault that he should be forced to harness and bring forth these demons. Pondering how he could let his obsessive lust for her drive him so far down the dark path, he laments, and wishes he had never met her.

“When the pathway was opened to it, it could feed. It did not eat flesh and it did not drink blood. It fed on the minds and souls of adult men and women. Occasionally, as an appetizer, it enjoyed the morsels, the sweetmeats as it were, of the innocent life-force which it sucked from children. It ignored animals since there was not enough awareness in an animal to savour. The creature was, for all its alien stupidity, a gourmet and a connoisseur. Now its name was called for the third time. It stirred again and flowed forward. The time was approaching when it could, once again, feed…”

Meanwhile, Elric has been hired by a group of merchants from Bakshaan to assassinate their rival—the wealthy tradesman Nikorn. After learning that Theleb K’aarna is in the service of Nikorn, Elric jumps at the chance to take on the job. In order to storm the hated merchant’s palace, he seeks out his exiled Melnibonéan kinsmen who are camped nearby. They agree to join him, despite the fact that he previously betrayed them—pillaging and destroying the Young Kingdoms in a raid on Imrryr just five years prior. Elric now rides forth beside his countrymen once again, bearing the proud banner of their fallen kingdom, and leading two hundred warriors along with a caravan of war machines toward the castle.

As they near a forest, Stormbringer begins to quiver and moan at his side. Elric starts to feel a beckoning presence. Commanding the caravan to halt, he tells the men that there is something ahead which only he can deal with, and bids them to wait outside the glade for him to return before venturing on.

As Elric enters the dark forest, he is struck by feelings of great trepidation. Using the inherited witch-sight of his forefathers, he senses that some great demonic power is near, and begins to call on the Chaos Lord Arioch for help. Black clouds roll in and torrents of blinding rain lash out. Quaolnargn suddenly appears in the form of an obscene toad-thing with slimy claws. It has a huge gaping mouth, and towers over Elric. The creature’s appearance actually reminds me much of the Cynkranoshian God Zothaqqua from Clark Ashton Smith’s Hyperborean Mythos.

The demon attacks, and a fight between the two begins. Elric eventually lunges himself on top of the creature, and buries Stormbringer into the quivering flesh of the thing’s back. This is when something strange takes place. Rather than gaining strength from the runesword’s soul-quenching—as usually happens when the albino kills an enemy—Elric feels a terrible, unnatural pain, as he realizes that the opposite is happening; this time it is his soul that is actually being absorbed and devoured by the demon through Stormbringer. The agonized emperor rages in terror and calls forth the name of Arioch again as his life force is taken. Unfortunately, it is too late for any aid to be summoned. Quaolnargn vanishes, and Elric falls to the ground—drained of strength, and completely helpless.

Before Elric can recover, Theleb K’aarna arrives with his servants and Nikorn’s warriors. The sorcerer of Pan Tang takes Stormbringer from the albino’s weakened grasp. Reveling in his victory, he commands the servants to lock away the deadly weapon. He then orders that Elric be taken to Yishanna’s quarters so he can humiliate him in front of her.

Inside the palace, the imprisoned Elric struggles to reunite with Stormbringer, while outside, his Melnibonéan kinsmen make plans to take action. Things soon heat up as the tables are turned in this epic adventure.

As I mentioned earlier, Moorcock features and endless amount of ultra-imaginative creatures, and cosmic entities in these yarns. So many, that they can be hard to recall. Quaolnargn is one that I’ve always seemed to remember, and I believe it is because of the description of his summoning. The occult elements bring forth a dark atmosphere that just grabs me. Also, Theleb K’aarna’s emotional struggle during the ritual suddenly makes him seem like a much deeper, and more human character—something we don’t often get to experience with sword and sorcery villains.

Matthew Knight is the vocalist, guitarist and songwriter of the US epic heavy metal band ETERNAL WINTER. The band has recently finalized the recording sessions for the forthcoming album, Archaic Lore Enshrined: Songs of Savage Swords and Dark Mysticism and it is soon to be released. Matthew has also recently collaborated with Howie K. Bentley and Byron A. Roberts to co-write a gothic-inspired sword and sorcery novel called Karnov: Phantom-Clad Rider of the Cosmic Ice, available now from DMR Books.