The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast
The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast follows Yalden, an official sent to restore an embezzled treasury by stealing a monster’s wealth. His protective equipment helps him survive the journey but cannot save him from a welcoming path that is itself a trap. The fantasy combines institutional satire with the defeat of an apparently heroic quest.
4 min read · 696 words
Composition and delayed publication
The collaboration by R. H. Barlow and Lovecraft is dated to 1933 in the composition catalog. Its first publication, according to the Archive's work bibliography, was in the Necronomicon Press booklet The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast and One Other in October 1994, on pages 9–13.
The difference is substantial: 1933 is the writing date, not the publication date of this version. The shared booklet also contains The Slaying of the Monster, another brief collaboration concerned with the inadequacy of heroic claims.
Sources: H. P. Lovecraft Archive — fiction in composition order, The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast — publication data
Zeth’s missing treasury
In the alien city of Zeth, the official Yalden discovers that the deceased keeper Kishan has emptied the treasury through concealed theft. The immediate crisis is administrative corruption, not an attack by the creature whose hoard will become the solution.
Yalden consults Oorn, the city's oracle. The narrator explains that Oorn is an unusual creature captured by priests, who exploit its talent for mimicry and control its pronouncements. The oracle's apparent independence is therefore undermined before Yalden places his trust in it.
The priests interpret its response as an instruction to kill Anathas and replenish the treasury from the monster's wealth. Religious ceremony converts an institutional failure into a dangerous personal mission.
Protection and the journey
Yalden is afraid but also attracted by the possibility of adventure and rescue. Reports disagree about Anathas's form, describing a repulsive shadow, gelatinous mass or monstrous insect. The uncertainty makes the actual encounter more than the confirmation of one stable portrait.
A wizard equips Yalden with protections against hunger, thirst, dangerous minerals and other hazards along the route. These gifts are effective enough to bring him toward the destination. Their limited success should not be rewritten as proof that everything supernatural in the story is fraudulent.
He obtains further directions through capturing a small white worm and bargaining for its release with Sarall, the Lord of Worms. The episode introduces a distinct supernatural intermediary, not another name for Anathas.
The caves and the inaccessible hoard
The monster's remote home bears the remains of earlier treasure seekers as a warning. Believing the occupant absent, Yalden enters and passes through a cramped outer cave into a much finer illuminated chamber.
His progress ends at a vast space whose fiery floor separates him from a richly laden dais. Strange birds move above it, and green salamanders inhabit the heat. The treasure is visible but appears impossible for an ordinary person to reach.
Desperation makes him attempt the crossing. The flames part to provide a cool path, and the surrounding creatures withdraw. Yalden accepts this extraordinary assistance as good fortune, allowing the imagined glory of his return to displace suspicion.
The reversal
Once Yalden reaches the hoard, the safe path closes behind him. Anathas emerges from an opening beyond the dais, revealing a shapeless, gelatinous presence with seven iridescent eyes. Its amusement makes clear that Yalden's apparently successful approach has served the creature's purposes.
The monster taunts him as the hungry salamanders climb toward the dais. The text ends with the fatal trap in operation, without narrating a triumphant escape or a recovered treasury.
The quest fails at the moment that looks most like its accomplishment. Access to the treasure proves to be the bait. Practical preparations protect the traveler from known hazards but cannot correct his interpretation of an unexpectedly easy final passage.
Two kinds of power
The story distinguishes Oorn's manufactured religious authority from Anathas's effective supernatural power. The priests manipulate a creature into functioning as an oracle, whereas the wizard-beast genuinely controls the environment that traps Yalden.
That contrast prevents a simple conclusion that every monster is merely a political fraud. The institutional deception is real, and so is the danger into which it sends the official.
Zeth, Ullathia and the Cave of Three Winds belong to the tale's alien setting. The text does not identify that world with Yekub, place Oorn in a settled hierarchy of Great Old Ones or equate Sarall's worm with a different author's similarly named being.
References
- H. P. Lovecraft Archive — fiction in composition order
Composition dates; question marks and ranges retain the source uncertainty.
- The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast — publication data
- The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast — original text
The fictional narrative is evidence for what the story says, not proof of events in the real world.
At a glance
H. P. Lovecraft; R. H. Barlow
1933
1994
The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast and One Other, Necronomicon Press
Fiction