Book excerpt: "The Dark Eidolon" is a sword and sorcery short story by American writer Clark Ashton Smith, forming part of his "Zothique" cycle of stories. It was first published in Weird Tales magazines in 1935 and has been variously republished, notably in the anthology The Spell of Seven, edited by L. Sprague de Camp. Described by de Camp in his introduction to the story as 'one of the most horrible' of Smith's tales, it chronicles the life and death of the dreaded sorcerer Namirrha.