"The Eye of Tandyla" is a fantasy story by American writer

L. Sprague de Camp Lyon Sprague de Camp (; November 27, 1907 – November 6, 2000) was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and works of non-fiction, including biog ...

, part of his

Pusadian series The Pusadian series is a sequence of fantasy stories by L. Sprague de Camp, begun in the early 1950s and written under the influence of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. The series, also known as the Poseidonis series, prefigured the numerous sw ...

. It was first published in the magazine ''

Fantastic Adventures ''Fantastic Adventures'' was an American pulp fantasy and science fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1953 by Ziff-Davis. It was initially edited by Raymond A. Palmer, who was also the editor of ''Amazing Stories'', Ziff-Davis's other scien ...

'' for May, 1951, and first appeared in book form in de Camp's collection ''

The Tritonian Ring and Other Pusadian Tales ''The Tritonian Ring and Other Pusadian Tales'' is a 1953 collection of stories by American science fiction and fantasy author L. Sprague de Camp, first published in hardcover by Twayne Publishers. An E-book edition was published as ''The Tritonia ...

'' (

Twayne Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, west of Detroit. It has been a division of Cengage since 2007. The company, formerly known as Gale Research and the Gale G ...

, 1953). The story has also appeared in the magazine '' Fantastic'' for November 1965, the anthologies '' Time Untamed'' (1967), ''The Magic of Atlantis'' (1970), '' Wizards'' (1983), and ''The Mammoth Book of Seriously Comic Fantasy'' (1999) (also published as ''The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy II''), and the de Camp omnibus collection ''Lest Darkness Fall/Rogue Queen/The Tritonian Ring and Other Pusadian Tales'' (2014). It has also been translated into

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

, Spanish, Italian,

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and Russian.

Plot summary

The sorcerer Derezong Taash, in the service of King Vuar the Capricious of Lorsk, is ordered to steal a magical gem from the temple of the goddess Tandyla in Lotri. The jewel is set as an eye in the goddess's statue. Together with his apprentice Zhamel Seh, Taash undertakes the errand, which goes suspiciously well; its guardians almost seem to want it stolen, while the gem itself appears to want to stay with him. With a sense of foreboding, Taash decides he must return his prize to the temple while tricking the king into thinking he has truly supplied it, thus becoming unwittingly embroiled in a plot against the throne that reaches to the very heart of the royal family. Chronologically, "The Eye of Tandyla" is the second of de Camp's Pusadian tales, and the first to feature his protagonists Derezong Taash and Zhamel Seh. It is set some generations after ''

The Tritonian Ring ''The Tritonian Ring'' is a heroic fantasy novel written by L. Sprague de Camp as part of his Pusadian series. It was first published in the magazine '' Two Complete Science Adventure Books'' for Winter, 1951, and first appeared in book form in ...

'', King Vuar of Lorsk being stated in the book to be a descendant of that novel's King Zhabutir.

Setting

In common with the other Pusadian tales, "The Eye of Tandyla" takes place in a prehistoric era during which a magic-based Atlantian civilization supposedly throve in what was then a single continent comprising Eurasia joined with Africa, and in the islands to the west. It is similar in conception to

Robert E. Howard Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906June 11, 1936) was an American writer. He wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subge ...

's Hyborian Age, by which it was inspired, but more astutely constructed, utilizing actual Ice Age geography in preference to a wholly invented one. In de Camp's scheme, the legend of this culture that came down to classic Greece as "Atlantis" was a garbled memory that conflated the mighty Tartessian Empire with the island continent of Pusad and the actual Atlantis, a barbaric mountainous region that is today the

Atlas mountain range An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic ...

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eye of Tandyla, The Fantasy short stories Short stories by L. Sprague de Camp 1951 short stories Works originally published in Fantastic Adventures Pusadian series