The Beast of Averoigne

"The Beast of Averoigne" is a short story by Clark Ashton Smith, set in Averoigne, his semi-historical province of France. It first appeared in the May 1933 issue of Weird Tales.
It tells the story, through a series of manuscripts and letters, of an uncanny beast that ravages the province of Averoigne in the summer of 1369, particularly in the vicinity of the Abbey of Périgon.
The conclusion of the story strikes a particularly Lovecraftian note:
== Characters ==
* Abbott Théophile: The chief monk of Périgon, who leads the hunt for the beast, unaware that he is the host for the creature. Brother Gérôme notes that "a strange illness devours him as if with perpetual fever," leaving him with "hollow cheeks and burning eyes".
* Brother Gérôme: The "humblest monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Périgon," he is the first to see the beast in the woods outside the abbey, and writes an account of the sighting at the behest of Théophile. He is later killed by the beast in his cell.
* Sister Therèse: A nun of the Benedictine convent at Ximes, she is Théophile's actual sister, and he confides in a letter to her the strange spell that seems to come over her each night. She too is killed in her cell by the beast.
* Brother Constantin: The cellarer of Périgon, who saw the beast climbing the abbey wall near Théophile's window.
* Luc le Chaudronnier: A student of the occult who lives at Ximes, who knows "spells that summon or dismiss evil demons and other spirits." He is enlisted by Théophile and the town marshall of Ximes to defeat the beast, which he does by freeing the entity confined in the Ring of Eibon. His appellation means "cauldon-maker," used of a coppersmith or tinker. He seals his account in a brazen box in a hidden chamber of his house so that "the good renown of the holy Théophile should suffer no calumny."
== Locations ==
* Périgon: The center of the depredations of the beast, all attacks occurring within five hours' travel of the abbey there. The cloister of Abbott Théophile and of brothers Gérôme and Constantin.
* Ximes: A major town of Averoigne. Home to Luc le Chaudronnier and the Benedictine convent wherein Sister Therese lives. 
* Ste. Zénobie: The village Gérôme is returning from when he first sees the beast. The cemetery there is despoiled as one of the creature's first outrages; a peasant girl there is its final victim.
* La Frênaie: Another place where the beast hunted victims.
* Isoile: Averoigne's main river formed one edge of the beast's range.
* Faussesflammes: The ruined castle, reputed to be the haunt of vampires, is searched for signs of the beast.
== The Beast ==
Gérôme offers this description of the creature, which "belonged to a race of stellar devils that had not visited the earth since the foundering of Atlantis":
The creature glows with an unearthly light, shifting from "pale as a corposant" (i.e., the electrical phenomenon called St. Elmo's fire) to "venomous green" to "wrathful red."
The beast is responsible for the deaths of 50 people in the summer of 1369, consuming in every case the victim's spinal fluid. It appears just as a red comet appears in the sky in the constellation Draco.
== The Ring of Eibon ==
The beast is defeated with the aid of an artifact known as the Ring of Eibon, said to come from the ancient land of Hyperborea. It was "made of a redder gold than any that the earth yields in latter cycles," and bore "a great purple gem, somber and smouldering, whose like is no longer to be found." The gem was a prison for "an antique demon...a spirit from pre-human worlds and ages" bound to the gem by the wizard Eibon so that the entity "would answer the interrogation of sorcerers."
Hyberborea, like Averoigne, is a pseudo-historical location in which Smith set a series of stories; Hyperborea is more or less supposed to be Greenland before the Ice Age. Eibon was its most powerful wizard (and Smith's most famous character from that setting), remembered as the author of the Book of Eibon.
== Publication History ==
Since its initial appearance in Weird Tales, "The Beast of Averoigne" has appeared in several collections of Smith's fiction, starting with Lost Worlds (Arkham House, 1944). It is included in both The Averoigne Archives (Pickman's Press, 2019) and The Averoigne Chronicles (Hippocampus Press, 2021). It was selected for The Red Brain: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Dark Regions Press, 2017), edited by S. T. Joshi.Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "Title: The Beast of Averoigne".
== References ==
Category:Clark Ashton Smith works
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Averoigne Cycle