Pulp Fantasy Library: The Eye of Tandyla

My feelings about L. Sprague de Camp are complex, to put it mildly. A cultured and erudite man, as well as a talented writer, De Camp played a key role in promoting Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian during the 1950s and '60s. At the same time, I think it's fair to say that De Camp never really understood Conan or (especially) Howard and, in the process of promoting both, he canonized some of his misunderstandings to such an extent that they're still commonly accepted to this day (e.g. REH killed himself because he was a grief-stricken momma's boy). As an admirer of Howard's body of work and a student of his life and thought, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that De Camp's distortions didn't color my opinion of him. Yet, as I noted above, De Camp was a genuinely accomplished writer whose own works reveal considerable skill and imagination, not mention exercising influence over Gary Gygax's vision of Dungeons & Dragons.

A good example of De Camp's solo fantasy writings (as opposed to his collaborations with Fletcher Pratt) are the stories of the Pusadian cycle. Beginning with The Tritonian Ring in 1951, De Camp chronicles a prehistoric civilization akin to Howard's own Hyborian Age, except that it is – in De Camp's mind, at least – better informed by real world history, anthropology, and geology. The civilizations of the Pusadian Age derive, in part, from Plato's description of Atlantis in his dialogs, Timaeus and Critias, but De Camp was well read enough to borrow extensively from other sources as well, creating a plausible and coherent sword-and-sorcery setting that is both clever and fun. 

I meant it when I said that De Camp was talented and his flair comes through very clearly in "The Eye of Tandyla," the second story in this series, first published in the May 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures. The story concerns Derezong Taash, court sorcerer to King Vuar the Capricious. The sorcerer, we are told "was at peace with himself and the world, for nobody had tried to murder him for ten whole days, by means natural or otherwise." That passage is a good example of De Camp's style in this story, which reminds me of a less morbid and more whimsical version of Clark Ashton Smith, Indeed, "The Eye of Tandyla" as a whole strikes me as broadly "Smithian," no doubt explaining my liking for it. 

Derezong is soon summoned into the presence of his royal master, who has a task for him.

King Vuar said: "Good my lord, my concubine Ilepro, whom I think you know, has  a desire that you alone can satisfy."

"Yes, Sire?" Jumping to a wrong conclusion, Derezong Taash goggled like a bullfrog in spring. For one thing, King Vuar was not at all noted for generosity in sharing his women, and for another thing, of the royal harem, Derezong had the least desire to share Ilepro.

The king said: "She wishes that jewel that forms the third eye of the goddess Tandyla. You know that temple in Lotor?"

"Yes, Sire." Although he retained his blandest smile, Derezong's heart sank to the vicinity of his knees. This was going to prove even less entertaining than intimacy with Ilepro.

King Vuar adds that he wishes Derezong to retrieve the jewel by stealth, since he has no desire for a war with the kingdom of Lotor. Reluctantly, the sorcerer sets off for Lotor, taking his over-eager apprentice Zhamel Seh with him – "Action! Excitement!" Zhamel exclaims, after being told of Derezong's mission, swishing the air with his sword. 

Once in Lotor, Derezong makes preparations to enter the temple of Tandyla surreptitiously and steal the jewel, along the way learning some details of the setting, such as the fact that, according to Derezong anyway, the goddess Tandyla "was a mere blind to cover dark rites concerning the demon Tr'lang, who in elder days had been a god in his own right." It's clear that De Camp took a stronger interest in the minutiae of the Pusadian Age than Howard ever did of his Hyborian Age, which, as a RPG referee, I find endearing.

Together, Derezong Taash and Zhamel Seh follow through with their plan, making their way to the temple unseen and, by means both magical and mundane, succeed in obtaining the jewel. They even fend off a pair of warriors tasked with guarding the statue of the goddess, much to the relief of Derezong, a short, pudgy old man who had worried about just such an occurrence. It's at this point that a new worry enters the mind of the sorcerer: the theft was too easy. The more he thinks about it, the more certain he is that something is badly amiss and that his entire mission to Lotor, including the stealing of the Eye of Tandyla, was a ruse of some sort, though he did not yet know to what end or who had orchestrated it.

"The Eye of Tandyla" is a delightful sword-and-sorcery romp, peopled by interesting and amusing characters and filled with equal parts derring-do and humor. Reading the story, I had no doubts as to why Gygax thought so highly of De Camp and numbered his works among those listed in Appendix N. Likewise, I think I gained better insight into just what De Camp had hoped Howard's tales of Conan could have been, however misguided that hope was. As I mentioned earlier, "The Eye of Tandyla" recalled something Clark Ashton Smith might have written in one of his lighter moods. It's a fast-paced, fun story with some interesting bits of world building and I enjoyed reading it greatly.