On this date in 1893, Clark Ashton Smith was born. On this date in 2018, I read and reviewed his story “The Maze of Maal Dweb”. The story’s sequel, “The Flower-Women,” has yet to be covered on the DMR Blog. It’s about time I got around to reviewing it, isn’t it?

“The Maze of Maal Dweb” is the story of a primitive huntsman’s attempt to rescue a maiden from the titular enchanter, the master of the planet Xiccarph. “The Flower-Women” begins with Maal Dweb lamenting:

“I suffer from the frightful curse of omnipotence. In all Xiccarph, and in the five outer planets of the triple suns, there is no one, there is nothing, to dispute my domination. Therefore my ennui has become intolerable… There is but one remedy for this boredom of mine… the abnegation, at least for a while, of that all too certain power from which it springs. Therefore, I, Maal Dweb, the ruler of six worlds and all their moons, shall go forth alone, unheralded, and without other equipment than that which any fledgling sorcerer might possess. In this way, perhaps I shall recover the lost charm of incertitude, the foregone enchantment of peril.”

Original artwork for the cover of Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9. illustrating “The Flower-Women.” Image courtesy of Doug Ellis. — Original artwork for the cover of *Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9.* illustrating “The Flower-Women.” Image courtesy of Doug Ellis.

Through scrying, Maal Dweb discovers a situation on the planet Votalp that draws his interest. After “having removed from his person every charm and talisman, with the exception of two phylacteries acquired during his novitiate,” he makes the interplanetary journey via a mechanical drawbridge that leads to a cloud which allows dimensional travel. (Maal Dweb’s powers seem to include mastery of both super-science and sorcery.)

Once on Votalp, the enchanter encounters a group of semi-intelligent vampiric beings which are half-woman, half-flower. Maal Dweb is able to communicate with them, and they confirm what he had learned earlier: a new race of winged reptilians with highly evolved intellects, the Ispazars, have been abducting the flower-women. Each day at dawn for the past five days the Ispazars have torn a flower-woman from her roots and carried her off to their mountain citadel. Maal Dweb promises to “deal with these miscreants in a fitting manner.”

One of the more interesting things about “The Flower-Women” is that here he is the protagonist, whereas in the previous story he was the villain. Despite his different roles in each story, none of Maal Dweb’s actions are incongruent or inconsistent. It’s a trick not many have attempted, but Smith pulled it off successfully. I’ve tried something similar in my stories of Xaarxool the Necromancer, who appears as either antagonist (“A Twisted Branch of Yggdrasil”), protagonist (“Black Castle of Torture”), or a minor character (“The Valley of Eternal Midnight”), depending on the requirements of the tale.

“The Flower-Women” first appeared in the May, 1935 issue of Weird Tales (actually three years before “The Maze of Maal Dweb” would be published in that magazine). It was most recently reprinted in The Maze of the Enchanter, the fourth volume in Night Shade Books’ collections of Smith’s fantasies.

D.M. Ritzlin is the author of the collection Necromancy in Nilztiria. Nilztiria is a world of adventure and strangeness, peopled by lusty heroes and callous villains. The thirteen sword-and-sorcery stories presented in Necromancy in Nilztiria place the emphasis on sorcery and mix in a touch of gallows humor. Click the cover for more information.