Who Goes There?

A favorite returns. I reviewed a bunch of Fritz Leiber works last December in time for his birthday, which was a decision I both do and do not regret. It’s demanding to binge an author’s stuff like I did, but the good thing about Leiber is that he’s versatile enough that you can hop around his career and find him in different modes: Fritz Leiber the science-fictionist, Fritz Leiber the adventure fantasist, Fritz Leiber the master of urban horror, etc. He made his genre debut in 1939 and for the next half-century would prove to be one of the most reliable writers of his generation, rivaled (in my opinion) only by Theodore Sturgeon and Clifford D. Simak; and of the three, Leiber is the one I enjoy most for the sheer beauty of his prose. Sturgeon can be overwrought, but Leiber has a hard time writing a bad sentence just ignore The Wanderer, all while showing humor and social awareness. Nowadays Leiber does not get as much credit as he deserves, with his fantasy series starring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (incidentally the stars of his debut story) being almost as integral to the formation of American fantasy as Conan—yet so few people bring up these two lovable rogues now.

The early ’50s were an amazing time for science fiction, but not so much for fantasy. There were several attempts to start up hot new fantasy magazines and none of them worked out, folding within a couple years at the most. It’s telling that The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction started out as just The Magazine of Fantasy, but then changed its title after one issue. “The Seven Black Priests” would be the last Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story for four years, and most curiously it saw print in Other Worlds, which was very much an SF magazine. Leiber struggled to get the series published for much of its existence, given that it was a) adventure fantasy, b) rather low fantasy (in that magic doesn’t play much of a part in the world), and c) heavily reliant on short fiction, what with fantasy readers having an irrational fondness for novels that are bloated and meandering.

Placing Coordinates

First published in the May 1953 issue of Other Worlds. “The Seven Black Priests” has never really been anthologized, but it has been collected a couple times and because it’s a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story it’s been available more or less consistently for the past half-century. The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser volume it’s included in, Swords Against Death, is still in print and is available in ebook and paperback from Open Road Media (if you hate yourself and don’t wanna buy an older edition).

Enhancing Image

We start with Our Heroes™ licking their wounds from having lost the loot of a previous adventure; because I haven’t read every Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story I can’t tell if said adventure is from another story or if it’s just something Leiber made up. Anyway, Leiber assumes, given the episodic nature of the series, that we might not’ve run into the best buddies from Lankhmar before, so we’re reintroduced to Fafhrd and the Mouser, the Mouser “clad all in close garments of gray, even to the hood which shadowed his swart features but could not conceal their pug-nosed impudence,” and Fafhrd, “a huge man with wrists thick as a hero’s ankles, yet lithe withal.” Fafhrd is a barbarian, a red-headed giant from a perpetually cold climate, while the Mouser is the short but quick thief. While they fit into RPG character classes, these are individuals who are difficult to confuse with other fantasy characters, especially from that period.

Speaking of cold, the two rogues are now in the Cold Waste, a wintery landscape that’s about as far from Lankhmar and civilization generally as one can get—only, despite appearances, Our Heroes™ are not alone. Within a couple pages we’ve gotten our first action scene, which indeed gets an interior illustration (courtesy of Michael Becker), as the Mouser faces off with a scrawny but feisty man, who goes toe to toe with the well-armed Mouser with just a knife and loincloth. The man is charcoal-black, although the boys suspect at first he might’ve gotten that complexion from the intense coldness of the area. Our Heroes™ send this knive-wielding lunatic tumbling to his death, but there’s an odd glow at the bottom of that dark pit that makes them uneasy; the man might not be dead after all. The boys continue on their way, not wanting to pay the incident too much mind, but “at least one other eye had seen the pulsing glow—an eye as large as a squid’s and bright as the Dog Star.” We may have to worry about more than just the black priests of the story’s title!

The Cold Waste is mostly snow and frozen vegetation, but there’s also a volcano that provides a bit of heat, along with a green hill by the volcano that houses what the black priests are obsessed over. The boys find, on that green hill, a strange idol with words in an ancient and mostly unknown language, along with (most relevant to our treasure hunters) an eye-like gem that is sometimes described as a diamond but which can’t really be one; it would, however, go for a fair price on the market. This whole thing gives off Indiana Jones vibes and personally I would not touch the damn thing, but given that Our Heroes™ are dead broke, the gem will have to do—even minding the priests who are eager to retrieve it. A couple things to note: there’s a long and not-talked-about-enough marriage between colonialism and treasure-hunting, which if you’re a buzzkill who can’t enjoy well-made entertainment would make characters like Indiana Jones and Nathan Drake less sympathatic. Fafhrd and the Mouser steal something which is not theirs, and it doesn’t help that the priests are from Klesh, a jungle-filled country that’s implied to be African-equivalent.

Leiber narrowly avoids turning the adventure into something that might be deemed too problematic, but I’ll say for now that at least the priests are not described in demeaning language that would normally be reserved for stereotyped black characters; they are, however, the butt of a couple jokes about clerics, which is more understandable. I’m not sure if Leiber was an atheist (he probably was), but there’s some playful ribbing of organized religion here that serves as both entertainment and which illustrates Our Heroes™ as anti-establishment. One of my favorite recurring elements of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories (and this applies to Conan as well) is that hierarchical figures are always viewed as, at best, aloof and untrustworthy. Fafhrd and the Mouser are always looking out for themselves and each other, and maybe their girlfriends if they happen to have those, but they don’t serve any particular authority figure.

For shits and giggles, here’s my favorite exchange:

“The seven black priests— ” Fafhrd muttered.

“The six,” the Mouser corrected. “We killed one of them last night.”

“Well, the six then,” Fafhrd conceded. “They seem angry with us.”

“As why shouldn’t they be?” the Mouser demanded. “We stole their idol’s only eye. Such an act annoys priests tremendously.”

It’s a funny.

“The Seven Black Priests” is the shortest Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story I’ve covered for this site thus far, and it’s both the simplest and most abstract. There aren’t any named characters aside from the boys, and indeed the only actors are the boys and the priests—plus a third party I’ve alluded to but whom I will not get deep into until the next section. The Cold Waste is a bit of a unique location because of the juxtaposition of the snowy landscape with the volcano, but the closest we get to shelter are caves. The plot is also pretty simple, with it being a protracted fight over a gem which itself may or may not have plans of its own. Normally I have a hard time following action in writing, but of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories I’ve covered I actually think this one is the easiest to get invested in if you’re not familiar with the series already; it’s a novelette, so it’s not exactly short, but it’s straightforward and because it has a small cast it shows Our Heroes™ doing what they do best without need for prior knowledge.

There Be Spoilers Here

Fafhrd was the one to take the gem, and since then he’s been acting a little weird at night; as if possessed he talks in a way that’s totally out of character for him, which should send the Mouser warning signs but because this story has to go on a bit longer the Mouser decides to not do anything about it for the time being. Given the known presence of supernatural objects in the world of the series I would’ve just assumed the gem that’s supposed to represent some ancient and evil god is haunted as shit, but that’s just me. One by one the priests get killed off, yet that doesn’t remove the problem of what to do with the gem, which as the story progresses compels Fafhrd to do things that strike the Mouser as unusual. It’s implied from the hieroglyphs on the idol that the priests have journeyed to the Cold Waste to pay respects to their god and prevent it from causing unspeakable mayhem, which if you put it that way makes the boys sound like the real villains, although a) the priests attacked first, and b) the boys could not have known initially what powers the gem had. Sometimes treasure is just treasure.

By the climax of the story it’s become clear that the gem plans to use Fafhrd as its puppet and kill the Mouser to complete its ritual, for “it needs the blood of heroes before it can shape itself into the form of man.” The Mouser is ultimately left with a choice: kill Fafhrd and take the gem for himself, or spare Fafhrd but destroy the gem. It’s a pretty easy choice on paper, actually. What makes Fafhrd and the Mouser heroic is not the fact that they do sometimes save people’s skins, but it’s that their love for each other always pulls them through in the end. Aside from its anti-authority stance, I find myself going back to the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories because they present a harsh low fantasy world where friendship redeems. You could even say that, for Our Heroes™, friendship is magic. Leiber rejects the toxic notion that men, in order to prove their “manliness,” must be ruthless and self-serving, instead giving us two undoubtedly masculine men who nevertheless unabashedly love each other. The Mouser destroys the gem and thus kills the mad god who had haunted the Cold Waste for centuries, but more importantly he does it for the sake of his best friend. Unlike most fantasy, male friendship is shown to be a magical power, even for two rogues who are no more wizardly than you and me.

A Step Farther Out

It’s a fun time! Yeah, I don’t have too much to add. This is the shortest and simplest Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story covered thus far and it certainly feels like that. “The Seven Black Priests” must’ve seemed like an odd choice for Other Worlds readers, but it must’ve also been like a puddle in a desert for those who liked heroic fantasy and, in the early ’50s, were getting precious little of it. While it’s not as ambitious as some of the other Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories I’ve read, or even reviewed, Leiber rarely disappoints with this series and he’s a wordsmith the likes of which we rarely see in old-school genre fiction. It’s guys being dudes in an exotic locale and there’s nothing wrong with that.

See you next time.