Author Topic: PseudoPod 770: The Garden of Adompha  (Read 928 times)

Bdoomed

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on: August 20, 2021, 02:38:36 AM
PseudoPod 770: The Garden of Adompha

Author: Clark Ashton-Smith
Narrator: Dr. Hal
Host: Alasdair Stuart
Audio Producer: Marty Perrett

“The Garden of Adompha” originally appeared in Weird Tales, April 1938



Lord of the sultry, red parterres
And orchards sunned by hell’s unsetting flame!
Amid thy garden blooms the Tree which bears
Unnumbered heads of demons for its fruit;
And, like a slithering serpent, runs the root
That is called Baaras;
And there the forky, pale mandragoras,
Self-torn from out the soil, go to and fro,
Calling upon thy name:
Till men new-damned will deem that devils pass,
Crying in wrathful frenzy and strange woe.
—Ludar’s Litany to Thasaidon

It was well known that Adompha, king of the wide orient isle of Sotar, possessed amid his far-stretching palace grounds a garden secret from all men except himself and the court magician, Dwerulas. The square-built granite walls of the garden, high and formidable as those of a prison, were plain for all to see, rearing above the stately beefwood and camphor trees, and broad plots of multi-colored blossoms. But nothing had ever been ascertained regarding its interior: for such care as it required was given only by the wizard beneath Adompha’s direction; and the twain spoke thereof in deep riddles that none could interpret. The thick brazen door responded to a mechanism whose mystery they shared with none other; and the king and Dwerulas, whether separately or together, visited the garden only at those hours when others were not abroad. And none could verily boast that he had beheld even so much as the opening of the door.




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Álex Souza

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Reply #1 on: August 22, 2021, 03:16:35 PM
Dude, that's some powerful prose right there!

I had bought a collection of Smith's stories, but dropped it because I didn't like the first one. Think I'll come back to it now!

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Fenrix

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Reply #2 on: August 23, 2021, 10:00:14 PM
Dude, that's some powerful prose right there!

I had bought a collection of Smith's stories, but dropped it because I didn't like the first one. Think I'll come back to it now!

I strongly recommend the Xothique stories, of which this is part. They are all bleakly decadent Dying Earth genre stories full of necromancers and awful people.

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”