The Ice-Demon

"The Ice-Demon" is a fantasy short story by Clark Ashton Smith, originally published in the April 1933 issue of Weird Tales. It is part of his Hyperborea series, connected to the Cthulhu Mythos.
==Synopsis==
A hunter named Quanga, along with two jewelers named Hoom Feethos and Eibur Tsanth, travels north of his native land of Iqqua, into the frozen Mhu Thulan, to search for the lost rubies of King Haalor.
Fifty years before, Haalor had ventured into the frozen land with a small army, and had the wizard Ommum-Vog conjure an artificial sun in the sky to melt the ice and reclaim the lands. However, as the ice-sheet started to melt, the water was covered by a mysterious fog which encircled the men and behaved like a living being. Some of those who ran away glanced back and saw their companions, including Haalor and Ommum-Vog, frozen inside a wall of newly-formed ice. The incident recalls legends about ice that acts like a sentient entity, and kills men by freezing, impaling, or entombing them.
Quanga and the jewelers find an ice cave in which Quanga's late brother, Iluac, claimed that he had found the bodies of Haalor's party. The entrance is shaped like a maw, with icicles for fangs. Deep inside, they find the bodies of Haalor's men sealed within the translucent walls of ice, including the king himself, his robes decorated with rubies and other gems.
Working with a pickaxe, the men free the body of the king from the ice and retrieve the precious gems. However, a large icicle falls from the ceiling above and kills Eibur Tsanth. At this moment, Quanga and Hoom Feethos realize that the chamber has narrowed in size considerably since they got in, and the entrance of the cave appears to be much farther away and smaller than before.
Quanga manages to crawl through the small opening and leaves the cave, but Hoom Feethos gets stuck and moans about ice-teeth crunching him. Before Quanga can help him, he realizes that the icicles have grown, one of them now impaling Hoom Feethos' body, which bleeds profusely. In an impulse, Quanga grabs the pouch of gemstones that Hoom Feethos had dropped and runs away, but realizes that the ice-covered ground is changing, until the plain transforms into an upward slope. Even the sky appears different, and the sun seems more distant. Looking back, Quanga sees a mirrored image of what he could see in front of him: another slope and another, equally remote sun (the story identifies this as the real atmospheric phenomenon known as parhelia).
Despite his fear, Quanga continues to climb upward, assailed by frigid winds. The ice on the ground changes into several menacing forms, as if to mock him, and mixed into the ice he sees actual human body parts: the faces and limbs of all those who had disappeared in the northern country in the years before. At last, Quanga reaches the end of the slope and everything seems to return to normal, including the ground's inclination and the sun.
Quanga heads towards the volcanic peaks, hoping to escape the ice's reach. Once there, he falls asleep on a meadow next to a stream. However, he wakes up and notices that the air is much colder than it should be at this close proximity to the geysers. A living shadow engulfs him, and he feels extraordinary cold. On the next morning, Quanga's body lies dead and frozen solid.
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Clark Ashton Smith works
Category:Hyperborean Cycle