User:DoctorWho42/The Seven Geases

"The Seven Geases" is a short story by American author Clark Ashton Smith as part of his Hyperborean cycle, and first published in the October 1934 issue of Weird Tales.

Publication history
According to Emperor of Dreams: A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography (1978) by Donald Sidney-Fryer, "The Seven Geases" was first published in the October 1934 issue of Weird Tales. It was included in the books Lost Worlds (1944) and Hyperborea (1971).

Plot
Lord Ralibar Vooz, a magistrate of Commoriom, holds a hunting party in the Eiglophian Mountains. Their target is the Voormis who are described as "subhuman savages" who live in the mountains. They search for the Voormis but can't find them. Climbing into one of the caverns, Vooz finds a sorcerer Ezdagor who was doing a ritual. Upset over the interruption, Ezdagor casts a "geas" or curse of Vooz. The curse compels him to fight the Voormis unarmed and descend deeper into the underworld to offer himself as a sacrifice to the god Tsathoggua. Accompanying Vooz, Ezdagor assigns an archaeopteryx Raphtontis. Led by Raphtontis, Vooz is compelled to walk past the Voormis who hurl refuse at him until he meets Tsathoggua. Tsathoggua is still sated from his last sacrifice and instead offers Vooz to the spider-god Atlach-Nacha. Traversing a web bridge, Vooz meets Atlach-Nacha who also refuses him as it cannot spend time unwrapping him from his armor. Atlach-Nacha refers Vooz to the wizard Haon-Dor. Haon-Dor decides he is too small for his subjects (who live in the walls and floor of his magic palace) to feast on and thus sends Vooz to the serpent people for their experiments. The serpent people find Vooz too unsuitable for their studies and refer him to the Archetypes. On his way to the cavern of the Archetypes, he is briefly eaten by a tyrannosaur but escapes. The shadowy Archetypes are disgusted with Vooz as they view his humanity as a perversion of themselves but send him to Abhoth. Abhoth is a great writhing mass that creates obscene monsters. The Archetypes think he might be more similar to Abhoth. However, Abhoth doesn't agree with the Archetypes and decide to send him back to the surface. When Vooz makes the way back, he is followed by a few of Abhoth's monsters. While traversing one of Atlach-Nacha's web bridges on the way back, Vooz falls into the depths and disappears.

Reception
Reviewing Lost Worlds in the 1983 book The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, E. F. Bleiler recommended the "best stories are "The Seven Geases", "The Isle of the Torturers", "Necromancy in Naat", which may well be Smith's three best weird stories."