"The House of Haon-Dor" by Clark Ashton Smith

This isn't a full story, it's just a fragment. Yes, it really ends mid-sentence like that. Just as it was starting to get interesting. Dagnabit!

Apparently there are many places in the US southwest that are named "Gold Canyon", including multiple places in California. I guess that's not really surprising given the Gold Rush of 1849. There are also Gold Canyons in Nevada and Arizona, and probably other places that we aren't interested in.

A reference to the Rosicrucians! If you've been following along my channel of late, we recently completed "Zanoni" which is all about the Rosicrucians. At some point everything starts to reference everything else, and because we've read through so many things by now, we start to get some of the references!

Although we don't know the full intention of the author with this story, it should be noted that if this is meant to be part of the Hyperborea cycle (just assumed, but not an unreasonable assumption given the reference to Haon-Dor we had in "The Seven Geases"), and Hyperborea is said (in "Ubbo-Sathla") to have been part of Greenland, then why is this story set in California? How does Haon-Dor's house end up way over thousands of miles west of Greenland? *boggle* Well, we'll just never know.

The picture used is of the Gold Canyon Trail by Jim A.

The Gold Canyon pictured is one close to Los Angeles, so probably not the one in the story which is presumably close to San Francisco, of which there is such a one in the real world. But I'm guessing it mostly all looks about the same regardless, so good enough.

I gave an AI art generator another try, but still couldn't get anything satisfactory. For all the great things I keep seeing about it, and how artists all feel so threatened by it, I don't get it. It isn't working for me!

To follow along: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/92/the-house-of-haon-dor-%28fragment%29