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I've been playing Minecraft on and off since Beta. I understand if this admission causes you to close this tab. My friends and I were there from when the world was still just a flat expanse, and I remember realizing that it was five in the morning and my eyes were bloodshot because I'd stayed up all night at my friend Mitch's house in college. This was before Minecraft was forever claimed by nine year-olds; for a while, it seemed to be almost exclusively engineering majors playing it and making complicated redstone circuits. Every few years my friends and I will make a server and play on it for a few weeks before we get bored. There's this moment that happens inevitably when you're playing Minecraft. Someone's going to turn on the cheats to allow themselves flight, or infinite building materials, or invincibility or whatever. And that's the death-knell for a Minecraft game. Suddenly, the work to build something cool isn't there anymore. The fun dries up (for me, anyway) almost instantaneously.  I think that might be how Kane feels in the short story "Misericorde." I'm pretty confident I'm the first person (and probably the last) to talk about the dark sword-and-sorcery anti-hero Kane and Minecraft in the same blog post, but I promise I'm going somewhere. "Misericorde" is maybe going to end up being a lesser Kane story for me. It's got some interesting suspense going for it as Kane operates as an assassin. A well-to-do woman approaches him with four lives she needs snuffed out, and the coin to pay for it. She remarks about criminals having their own code, and Kane replies with this: "Certain rules of the game are essential," Kane replied. "Otherwise it isn't a game. For the true adept, wealth is not the object. If I am offered a fee to perform a certain assignment, I will not accept that fee until I have accomplished it. Taking a fee by force - or accepting an assignment without the certainty that it will be carried out - would be pointless, a bore." There's that old enemy of Kane: boredom. I feel like this makes a lot of sense for someone who is immortal. When there are no stakes in your life, you must invent stakes and establish boundaries for it to have meaning. Kane, being physically imposing and nigh-invincible, wouldn't have a very fun or interesting time just shooting someone with an arrow from far away or killing someone to take their money. When you have infinite smooth cobblestone, building a gigantic pagoda isn't as fun anymore. You simply must mine. As Kane completes his contracts, he does so in an interesting way each time. Instead of a brutal kill scene, he ends each one by telling his mark to "come with" him. There's some sorcery involved that keeps it interesting.
It's compelling to me that when Kane is doing normal things like having a girlfriend or conversing with a poet, he can be incredibly cruel. But when killing people and stealing their souls, he's remarkably civilized about it. The word "misericorde" means "compassion," so I supposed that makes sense. I don't think I liked "Misericorde" as much as some other Kane stories, but it still has some good, horror-themed adventure in it. It's just a bit more tropey and predictable than most.
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 I am running out of applicable Kane images for these articles. So today I'm just going to repeatedly regale you with covers for "Death Angel's Shadow." Oooh. Ahh. "Cold Light" unfurls itself like it's sledding down a mountain: slowly at first, gaining speed until it becomes one of the most action-packed, epic Kane stories I've read yet. I say that now, but it is so hard to pick favorites among these things. Genuinely, it does start a little slowly. Kane is experiencing one of his bouts of lethargy. Boredom has just about defeated him and he lazily escapes to a desolate part of the world, clopping his horse into an all but dead town in the region of Demornte. Demornte's an odd little setting: bordered by inhospitable desert on all sides, it's a stretch of lush, green country that's seemingly inhabited by one city, called Sebbei. It would be a great little place to visit except for the fact that everyone here walks around like the living dead. That is to say, some time ago, a plague swept through Sebbei, killing all but a few hundred of its residents, and now the city is calcified in its misery. Every reaction from the townspeople is no stronger than a shrug of the shoulders.  Kane finds respite here for a while, and even companionship in the character of Rehhaile, a young blind woman with a "second sight" that allows her to tap into the minds of nearby people and see through them. Hot on Kane's trail is a band of self-styled crusaders and avengers, ready to bring the "cold light of good" and justice to our evil wanderer. Each of them has an understandable bone to pick with the red-headed immortal as he's done them all wrong at some point or another in the past. There are nine of them against Kane's one (two if you count Rehhaile), so they're confident they can take him out. The story paces itself well as we watch Kane dwindle the numbers against him one by one until he's got a more manageable load that he can fight with just his sword. There's a lot going on in "Cold Light," thematically speaking. The crusaders are confident that they are arbiters of justice and uncomplicated good while they kidnap, rape, and attempt to burn the entire city of Sebbei down in pursuit of Kane. By contrast, Kane seems like the good guy here as he's done nothing but lounge by a lake and drink wine since he's arrived. He's befriended Rehhaile and they seem to have a good thing going on. Does that absolve him of his crimes? Of course not; if Putin or Netanyahu or Trump decided to spend the rest of their days sitting by a lake, not hurting anyone else, it doesn't erase the evil that they've already wrought. Still, it inverts the usual order. It's interesting contrasting the toxic, all-consuming revenge-driven action of the "crusaders" against the toxic, do-nothing attitude of the people of Sebbei. In one climactic moment of the story, the gang closes in on Kane in an old warehouse filled with unused medicines covered in dust, symbolic of their ability to do nothing about their problems. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: both are doomed in their own ways! "Cold Light" was incredible. It clearly takes place later in Kane's timeline as he's wondering Lartroxia West. But because other characters mention Carsultyal, I wonder if it takes place a little earlier than some of the stories where Carsultyal is so ancient it's seemingly only remembered by Kane... I read on a very old Dale Rippke blog post that Wagner said all the short stories appear in chronological order in each collection, so that helps me out a bit.  One thing I really admire about Karl Edward Wagner is his restraint. The man is patient. I wonder if this turns some people off of his work; there are long, long scenes in most of the Kane stories I've read so far where people sit in a tavern or by a fire and discuss history, religion, and philosophy. If you wanted nothing but whiz-bang swordplay, you'd be out of luck. We spend most of "Sing a Last Song of Valdese" sitting in a tavern while two priests and a professor debate the above-mentioned subjects. Surrounded by a bounty hunter and a criminal, a drunk and a rich man, they're in pretty motley company. We get a little bit more about the lore of Kane here during the mens' conversation: “Actually the legend of Kane has far darker implications. His name, I have observed, reappears in all ages and all lands. The literature of the occult recurrently alludes to him. In fact, there is an ancient compendium of pre-human glyphics that Kane is said to have authored… Some occult authors contend that Kane was one of the first true men, damned to eternal wandering for some dark act of rebellion against mankind’s creator.” That's so dope. Well, it turns out that not all these men are here by accident and a stunning act of revenge takes place while Kane says little more than a few lines. This narrative is entirely a slow-burn, but it's engaging and eyebrow-raising throughout. Interestingly, there's a character named Mad Hef in this story, and there was a character named Hef in "The Dark Muse," so I spent some time trying to figure out if they're the same Hef. However, Hef dies in "Dark Muse" and this Mad Hef dies in this story, so it couldn't be. Perhaps Hef is a common name bajillions of years ago. As far as I can tell, these Kane stories thus far ("Undertow," "Two Suns Setting," "The Dark Muse," and this) are sort of generally taking place in timeline order.  The Kane of "The Dark Muse" is a very different Kane than the one we see in either "Undertow" or "Two Suns Setting." In "Undertow," he was an absolute bastard. All menace, all the time to his city and to the captive he probably thinks of as a girlfriend, or maybe more accurately, a pet. In "Two Suns Setting," he was remarkably more neutral. He assists another character on a short quest, but not out of altruism, and at least once considers ways that he could steal the spoils of the quest for himself. "The Dark Muse" presents a Kane that is much milder and more intellectual, even though there are flashes of his brutality.  Much to my surprise, most of "The Dark Muse" consists of Kane and an entourage of men sitting in a tavern, having a few drinks and discussing poetry. Kane's poet friend Opyros has been having some writer's block when it comes to his most recent verses, but Kane's eager to hear the next lines he's been drumming up, and is even willing to help him shake off his block. It's oddly tender for Kane to be almost patient and understanding with Opyros because, honestly, Opyros seems kind of hard to be around. I play in punk bands and I'm a bit of a barfly, so I've known lots of his "tortured artist" types. People with obvious talent, some charm, and a hell of a good night on offer, but you know that if you lend them five bucks, you're not going to see it back. Opyros strikes me like a lot of guys who've offered me keys with stuff on them and one day have a breakdown where they quit all their bands but actually end up doing much better for themselves eventually. It makes me wonder why Kane would spend time with the obvious hot-mess addict; it doesn't seem like he would suffer tomfoolery. Perhaps Wagner saw a bit of himself in Opyros. From what I gather, Wagner was a hard drinker and died of alcoholism at the young age of 48. I wonder if he saw a little bit of his own future in Opyros- someone who burns really brightly and then overdoes it while still wickedly productive. Who knows. Ultimately, Kane leads Opyros to some great risk with possible great reward in the dream realm and fights off a giant shadow bat. Since he's left Carsultyal and refers to its declining years as something in the past, it must take place after "Undertow" and "Two Suns." This story's not quite as incredible as the first two I read, though don't get me wrong, it's still a great time. I'd say that its main draw is seeing such a different side of Kane, who still feels like the same character, which is clearly another testament to Karl Edward Wagner's immense talent as a writer.   Kane has left the city of Carsultyal. Perhaps it's more appropriate to say that he's abandoned it. The vibrant growth and vigor that he saw in the city for about a century has seemingly died, and mankind's first great city has apparently atrophied in the eyes of Kane and now he's running away from his greatest enemy: boredom. This story seems to take place after the events of "Undertow," with Kane having firmly set up shop in Carsultyal in that story. As Kane wanders through an inhospitable desert, he meets the agreeable giant Dwassllir. Around fifteen feet in height, Dwassllir's cloak is more like a tent to Kane.  The first half of this narrative is eaten up by a discussion between the comparatively diminutive Kane and his temporary friend, and this was some of the shit that drew me to Kane in the first place. Dwassllir reminisces about a "heroic age," an age when his race of giants were young, vital, and dominant. That age is long past, and few giants remain. Kane represents a very different epoch. Immortal as he is, Kane argues for the new civilization of man. With the young civilizations of man growing aggressively, he marvels at his own people's accomplishments. He's careful not to push back too hard against Dwassllir seeing as the giant could probably rend him in two. I can't help but feel as though this conversation holds more weight than ever today. Dwassllir laments that humanity refuses to live in harmony with nature and instead reshapes the world to itself; while its creations are impressive, it seems like that's what humanity cares for above all else, at the expense of the natural world. It turns out that Dwassllir longs so much for the glory days of his people that he's actually looking for an ancient king's tomb. Once there, Wagner's descriptive prose kicks into high gear. This unassuming break in a wall of rock represents the highest point of Dwassllir's dying civilization, and it does indeed contain the body of the ancient king he was looking for. Multiple mishaps and cave-ins stand in the way between the dual-ruby-encrusted crown and our protagonist pair, but they manage to have a page-turning adventure. As an old enemy takes Dwassllir's life, Kane places the crown gingerly on his head: we see a much kinder side of Kane in this story as opposed to "Undertow." Perhaps this brings the story's title into play. Kane's race is obviously built in a way that will destroy itself- Dwassllir says as much when he notes that we are nothing without our "crutches" of horses and houses and weapons. But at the same time, his ancient race of giants was strong, harmonious with nature, and prosperous, they have died a slow but inexorable death, ending here with Dwassllir's life. I think Robert E. Howard would be proud at Karl's conclusions here. The suns of both civilizations are setting, no matter how hard you try. "Mankind will be master of this world. In only a few centuries I've seen our civilization grow from a sterile paradise, from scattered barbaric tribes to a vast and expanding empire of cities; villages, and farms. Ours is the fastest rising civilization ever to burst upon the world." Dwassllir is looking terminally (and somewhat pathetically) backward. Kane is looking endlessly forward. Both are doomed in their own ways.
No, this isn't Conan, but perhaps you'll indulge me. Because I'm a sucker to rule all suckers, I recently spent $182 on a copy of Midnight Sun: the Complete Stories of Kane. That was the cheapest copy out there! Kane has recently become fascinating to me from afar. Every Frazetta painting I've seen and every short article I've read about him has made me realize that I have to read about Wagner's quasi-Biblical sorcerer. His Conan novel The Road of Kings was pretty great, so why not?  Midnight Sun opens with the short story "Undertow," which is an interesting first blush with this redheaded, left-handed, immortal Kane. It's really more of the story of Dessylyn, a young woman who's somehow ended up in Kane's sphere of influence, desperate to leave it. Kane is a powerful figure in the city of Carsultyal, but it's not like he's an elected official or influential businessman; he sort of looms from his tower and his specter infects the city with fear. Everyone seems to shudder at mere mention of the name Kane. The narrative is constructed interestingly out-of-order, folding back on itself to slowly reveal what takes place when. It creates a circle at the end when it reveals that its contextless first scene takes place a few hours after the end of the book. Ultimately, it's set in two time periods, perhaps months or years apart, in which Dessylyn tries her best to escape Kane, but her inability to do so hints at the story's title. She first tries to woo a young barbarian named Dragar to save her via his strength and naïve sense of purpose, but Dragar ends up spitting out his last word along with a mouthful of blood. The other time period at hand is some undetermined while later, where it seems like Dessylyn has tried her luck with other would-be saviors. In this instance, it's the much less-impressive Mavrsal, captain of a rickety-ass ship with no crew. He makes Dragar look like Superman in comparison. As Dessylyn attempts to get both men to rescue her, it's surprising that Kane doesn't really appear in the story until the final third. He mostly exists as this creeping darkness at the edges for the rest of it. When Kane finally appears, he's in full villain mode. I frequently hear people describe Kane as an anti-hero, but that would be a serious stretch, at least in the context of this story. In two brutal fight scenes, Kane shows off his power, complete with mirthless smiles.  While Dessylyn, Dragar, and Mavrsal are all well-drawn for the limited screen time they have and the temporal construction of the story is inventive, my favorite part was what Wagner does to us once Kane actually enters the picture. He's in the middle of working necromancy, seemingly crafting something like a youth potion for Dessylyn so that she won't age - as he doesn't - listening to her beg him to let her go. What Kane responds with was a great piece of character writing. Despite how despicable Kane is (and he is despicable), I suddenly sympathize with Kane in this moment. "You'll stay with me because I love you, and your beauty will not fade, Dessylyn. In time you may understand. Did you ever wonder at the loneliness of immortality? Have you ever wondered what must be the thoughts of a man cursed to wander through the centuries? A man doomed to a desolate, un-ending existence - feared and hated wherever men speak his name. A man who can never know peace, whose shadow leaves ruin wherever he passes. A man who has learned that every triumph is fleeting, that every joy is transient. All that he seeks to possess is stolen away from him by the years. His empires will fall, his songs will be forgotten, his loves will turn to dust. Only the emptiness of eternity will remain with him, a laughing skeleton cloaked in memories to haunt his days and nights. Now, of course I don't think Kane's right to keep Dessylyn locked away with him forever. I'm actively rooting for her to leave him. But, for a moment, I kind of get where Kane's coming from. Wagner is able to distill in that passage how a god might feel toward his subjects. Do you and I feel bad when we cut a rose from the garden to put it into a vase? Do you even have a second thought when you step on a bug outside? It's an interesting thought experiment that's tempting you to empathize with both sides.
It's a fantastic short story. It's a great way to start my Kane journey. |
AuthorHey, I'm Dan. This is my project reading through the career of everyone's favorite sword-and-sorcery character, Conan the Cimmerian, in chronological order. 
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