Review: "The Sorcerer of Rhiannon" by Leigh Brackett

This story was first published in 1942 and is twenty-seven pages in length. The "Rhiannon" of the title does not refer to the woman of Welsh myth but several rises of land in the Martian desert that were once the seat seat of power behind a mighty empire of seven kingdoms, some 40,000 years in the past, when Mars was still a blue planet like Earth and they were islands. The sorcerer of the title bears that description only because his ancient scientific knowledge so far outstrips that of the present that it may as well be sorcery that he practices by comparison to that known by the civilization that currently prevails. Yet the sorcerer is not the hero of this story (at least not at the beginning), nor can he even be called fully alive -- he is a self-preserved consciousness seeking a living sentient form to animate his will and resume an anciently interrupted purpose. Despite the millenia he has slept, he is a Rip Van Winkle with a vengeance, whose ambition and learning lead him only belatedly into the bewilderment that played havoc with Washington Irving's character. His name is (or was) Tobul, and he was a usurping admiral, descended of a half-civilized race of wilderness nomads, eager to overthrow the serene power of a much older civilization and race, which, ironically, had nurtured his race of Martian nomads out of their savagely desperate lives. But the real protagonist of our story is far less glorious. His name is Max Brandon, an Earthman and adventurer who has adapted himself to the harsh Martian environment and who knows his way around the dangerous dealings of the black markets of the illicit collectors and the lethally competitive treasure hunters (not to mention the zealous officers of the law seeking to protect the fragile heritage of Mars and consign the pillagers to the lunar mines of Phobos). But though Brandon is bent on making a living from plundering the lost archaeological remains of Mars' distant glory days, living at the behest of no man, he also retains a latent Romantic longing to somehow know those incredible days that are now dead, aside from the priceless artifacts left behind. At the beginning of the story, we find him in desperate straits, having gotten separated from his aircraft by a sandstorm and on the last of his supplies as he has wandered in search of an oasis he knows deep down cannot exist. He is a man of indomitable will however, and that capacity to push beyond mere physical endurance has made of his body a perdurable vessel of strength. His present fix stems from his survey of a potential topographical marker leading to the lost treasure of Rhiannon, and both his blind wandering and the vacuum force of the sandstorm converge upon the revelation of a long buried Martian galleon, bared of the swallowing sands that filled the ocean beds after they went dry, brought to dismal light for the first time in tens of thousands of years. Its deck is titled just sharply enough that Brandon can clamber aboard, and what he finds in the captain's cabin not only saves his life but leads him on a path to his original goal that is anything but what he originally intended or could have imagined. There are others who come into play, principally two women: one resurrected from the time native to the sorcerer Tobul, by the name of Kymra, of the Prira Cen, the oldest and greatest sentient race to evolve on Mars, and she, Kymra, is the last of her now legendary kind; the other is Sylvia Eustace, a young, fit Earthwoman from a wealthy colonial family who has a tomboyish command of flying machines and the weaponry of survival, a native's understanding of the Martian world, an independent will to match the pride of any man, and who loves Brandon, her "Brandy", enough to marry him and seek to save him from his own foolhardiness. Here are the rich elements of an interplanetary fantasy, brought together by a writer who can turn a phrase of dialogue that revels in the poetry of life-hardened wit, while at the same time evoking a world of poetic vividness and ambient Romantic yearning. In this adeptly wrought tale, Leigh Brackett displays through her storytelling craft her claim to be called the "sorceress" of Rhiannon. After years of languishing in the crumbling remnants of pulp magazines from long ago, this story and others just as wonderful can now be happily found and lastingly bound in this collection: Martian Quest: The Early Brackett. Written by Leigh Brackett. Published by Haffner Press. Copyright 2002.