The Poisoned Sword
A warning from the sword and sorcery maestro Fritz Leiber about resorting to unjust means
“The forces black magic evokes are like two-edged poisoned swords with grips studded with scorpion stings. Only a strong man, leather-handed, in whom hate and evil are very powerful, can wield them, and he only for a space.”
- Fritz Leiber, “The Unholy Grail”
Fritz Leiber marked a turning point in the sword and sorcery genre - not least of all because it was he who coined this name for these kinds of darker fantasy tales. H.P. Lovecraft’s writing circle included Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, who as well as writing horror in a Lovecraftian vein also wrote historical or pseudo-historical adventures blending swashbuckling sword fights with dark magic. Inspired by these pulp writers, Leiber sent his first short story to Lovecraft for critique. Set in the ancient Phoenician port of Tyre, it was peppered with references to Elder Gods and all sorts of Lovecraftian quirks (such as terrible sentence structure). Lovecraft wrote back and suggested excising the references to his horror mythos entirely. But Leiber kept, and continued to write about, the story’s two central characters: Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.
The first tale of these two inseparable adventurers appeared in print in 1939, and the last in 1988. Up until the 60s, Leiber was practically the only person writing sword and sorcery tales - and his influence on later writers was significant. The co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax, singled out Leiber’s stories as his favourite, Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion saga pick up the baton from Leiber, and Terry Pratchett’s city of Ankh-Morpork is directly inspired by Leiber’s Lankhmar. Building on the imaginative visions of the original dynasty of pulp fantasists, Leiber’s greatest contribution (as Moorcock attests) was to elevate the standards for dialogue in fantasy stories by creating characters with virtues and flaws whose banter was full of charm and personality.
First published in 1962, “The Unholy Grail” serves as a prequel to the Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser stories. It is the only tale to feature solely the Mouser, then called ‘Mouse’, and tells of his apprenticeship to the wizard Glavas Rho. Mouse wavers between committing to ‘white magic’ or taking the darker path. When his master is slain by the Duke who rules the forest and has forbidden all sorcery, Mouse unleashes a deadly curse upon the Duke, that dooms him to a slow demise. Mouse is badly injured, but is rescued by the Duke’s daughter, Ivrian (also secretly Glavas Rho’s apprentice). However, they are both captured and Mouse is tortured in the Duke’s dungeons. There he unleashes the darkest of magic to escape in the full knowledge that this may well rebound upon him... This doom reaches its climax in the Nebula and Hugo winning novella “Ill Met in Lankhmar” that saw print eight years later in 1970.
What marks out the work of the great fantasy writers like Leiber is the way their stories evoke metaphors that play out in the fantastical but reflect our own concerns. Here, the theme focuses on how we choose to act. The means we deploy in order to achieve our goals are not something we can afford to ignore - it is how we choose to act, and not merely the purposes we pursue, that weigh heavily on the justice or injustice of our behaviour. As Leiber speaks of dark sorcery in this tale, none can bring about death without walking on the edge of the abyss and dripping your own blood into it. Thus dark means - black magic in Leiber’s tale - are like poisoned swords with scorpion stings upon their grips. They not only cause great harm to those they are used against, they also harm whomever opts to wield them.
As I’ve often observed, the familiar phrase ‘the ends cannot justify the means’ is problematic since it is precisely the ends that must justify the means. This is the very definition of ‘means’. But the point of the adage remains true: good ends cannot justify wicked means. As Leiber puts it in “The Unholy Grail”, to resort to the darkest of methods requires both that you strain your soul, and also that you stain it, leaving an indelible mark upon your conscience and personality. The danger in justifying our actions by focussing on the justice of our cause or the nobility of what we seek to attain is that this serves as a distraction, a rationalisation. The only defence against the corruption of the poisoned sword is never to pick it up.