User:DoctorWho42/The Ice-Demon

"The Ice-Demon" is a short story by American author Clark Ashton Smith as part of his Hyperborean cycle, and first published in the April 1933 issue of Weird Tales.

Publication history
According to Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography (1978) by Donald Sidney-Fryer, "The Ice Demon" was first published in the April 1933 issue of Weird Tales. It was included in the books The Abominations of Yondo (1960) and Hyperborea (1971).

Plot
Quanga the hunter leads an expedition with two jewelers Hoom Feethos and Eibur Tsanth to find lost treasure. Fifty years ago, King Haalor, wizard Ommum-Vog, and soldiers tried unsuccessfully to fight a glacier. Haalor wanted to reclaim Mhu Thulan for his kingdom while Ommum-Vog used magic to melt the ice. Initially it works, the soldiers see the glacier swallow up the king and wizard. Local legends say the ice is sentient. While hunting a giant black fox, Quanga's brother Iluac stumbled across a frozen cavern. In it, the bodies of Haalor, Ommum-Vog, and some soldiers are preserved. Iluac tells Quanga but is later killed by a white bear. Quanga tells two jewelers about the precious stones on the frozen bodies. They agree to the trip as long as they split it. When they find it, Quanga picks away at the ice around Haalor. Quanga retrieves rubies off Haalor's body. An icicle drops on Eibur Tsanth and kills him. The cavern suddenly shrinks. Believing the legends, both Quanga and Hoom Feethos begin to flee. While Quanga leaves through the cavern mouth, it bites down on Hoom Feethos. Quanga flees the frozen wastes as illusions barrage him. Eventually he reaches the Hyperborean valleys but continues for the volcanic peaks because he fears the glacier. A shadow in the sky follows him and he shoots arrows at it. The shadow consumes him and he throws the rubies. The next morning Quanga is frozen and rubies lie above an ice-covered pond.

Recception
Whispers's Fritz Leiber critiqued "Though he pushes repetition too far and approaches cliche in such a sentence [...] as "Deaf, blind, primordial terrors, older than reason, had filled his mind with their atavistic darkness."