A Quick Trip to a Really Weird Underworld

Read/Watch 'em In Order #102

The October 1938 issue of Weird Tales brought us the third (and penultimate) story about Elak of Atlantis, written by Henry Kuttner. As with the previous Elak story, this one snagged a cover illustration. Farnsworth Wright, the editor of Weird Tales, must have liked these stories. Or at least felt that the vivid and unusually imagery in the stories made for great illustrations.

In "Beyond the Phoenix," Elak and his perpetually drunken sidekick Lycon are working as bodyguards for the king of the city of Sarhaddon. A wizard named Xandar lures them away from the king before sending in a team of assassins. Xandar wants to usurp the throne, release an ancient evil being named Baal-Yagoth and spend his time on the throne torturing people. Xandar is not a nice person.

The king is killed and Elak, Lycon and the king's beautiful daughter have to make a quick getaway on the king's funeral barge. The barge, though, does a bit more than simply travel over water. It's designed to take dead kings back to the land of the Phoenix from which legends say the first king of Sarhaddon came.

So Elak and his allies end up in a very, very strange place, where two powerful maybe-humans are locked in a power struggle, with one of them allying herself with Xandar to release Ball-Yagoth upon the world. Elak is pretty much drafted to help stop this, so he'll have his work cut out for him.

The Elak of Atlantis stories continue to be good, with vivid prose carrying us along through clever and unusual plots. This one is a bit weaker than the first two--it ends a little to abruptly and Elak doesn't get to be as proactive as a hero in a sword-and-sorcery tale should be. At key moments, he's simply being ordered or compelled to take action by a god. Because of this, he's simply not as cool as he was in the first two tales. But this criticism is subjective--if taken on its own without direct comparison to the previous tales, it is entertaining.

We'll see how Elak does in the last story from this series.