by Paula Guran
“Oh, and the ghasts,” she nodded. “I shouldn’t neglect to mention them. Terrible, vile, creeping beasts with a bite so venomous none can survive it. The gugs, the architects of Zin, hunted them, and probably hunt them still. But the gugs fear them as well.”
Now the eyes of the children were wide, and occasionally they glanced over their shoulders towards the fire or upwards at the autumn night pressing against the windows of the room.
“Oh, but I have strayed terribly, haven’t I,” said the peddler, and she frowned and knitted her brows, feigning mild exasperation with herself. “Must be the wind brushing around the eaves of the house making my mind wander so.”
“Aunty, we don’t mind,” the tow-headed girl whispered, and the other children nodded in unison.
“That’s all well and good, but, we’ll be here until cock’s crow if I keep nattering on that way. Where was I?”
“Isobel was already pregnant,” said the boy who’d spoken before.
“Yes. Yes, that was it. Isobel, the Queen of Bones and Rags, was pregnant by her brother, and when Isaac Glyndwr Snow learned this he feared it would be the death of him. Everything was unfolding precisely as the prophecy had promised. For the first time ever he grew distant from his sister and withdrew from her, becoming ever more secretive, spending long hours alone or in the company of his concubines. He took to drink and to chasing the Dragon, trying to smother his worries in the embrace of opium. As Isobel’s belly swelled, his scheming, anxious mind swelled with plots and designs by which he might prevent the fulfillment of the prophecy and cheat his own undoing.
“He would kill his sister. Yes. That’s exactly what he had to do. Even though he truly did love Isobel, and even though he knew full well he’d never, ever, ever love another woman, he had to do murder against her. Because, you see, he loved himself far more. Still, the King of Bones also understood that he must take care to proceed with the utmost caution. For though it was true there was no end of ghouls so fanatically loyal to him they’d gladly turn assassin even against their queen, it was also true he had enemies. The inhabitants of Thok were, by and large, a conquered, broken lot, and many were the ghouls who despised the twins and named them usurpers and conspired in secret, drawing plots against the Crown. Isaac Snow’s advisors warned him even the fires of the Basalt Madonna might not save him should there be open revolt. For before, he and Isobel had possessed the element of surprise. They’d never have that advantage again.
“Worse, there were rumors that some among the dissidents had begun making sacrifices to – well, I’ll not say that name here, but I mean the dæmon sultan who serves the blind, insane chaos at the center of the universe. No one ought ever speak that name.”
The children looked disappointed, and the tow-headed girl muttered to herself.
“Anyway, the King of Bones had made up his mind,” continued the peddler, “and nothing could dissuade him from the cold and heartless resolve of his decision. He would see Isobel dead, and he chose the method, and he chose the hour. It was with an especial shame that he cowardly set another to the task. At first he’d intended to do the deed himself, which only seemed right and good to his twisted ideas of right and good. But his advisors convinced him it was much more prudent to order her death by another’s hand. Then, afterwards, he could have the killer tried and publicly executed, and there would be fewer questions about the queen’s sad fate. If it were discovered that the Qqi d’Tashiva had murdered the mother of the child who would deliver all Ghūl-kind and lead them to victory against the Djinn—”
“There’d have been a terrible count of angry ghouls,” the tow-headed girl said.
The peddler nodded, not bothering to complain about yet another interruption.
“Indeed. It’s no small thing to destroy the hope of an entire people, even if the people are so foul a bunch as the ghouls.”
One of the children yawned, and the peddler asked, “Should I stop here? It’s getting late, after all, and you three by rights should be in your beds.”
“No, Aunty, please,” said the tow-headed girl, and she thumped the boy who’d yawned smartly on the back of his head. “We’re not tired, not at all. Please, do go on.”
“Please,” murmured the boy who’d yawned, who was now busy rubbing his head.
“Very well then,” said the peddler, and she set her pipe aside, for it had gone out partway through her description of the Lower Dream Lands. “So, the king commanded that his sister die, and he chose the ghoul who would cut her throat while she slept. He told none but those closest to him, a handful whom he trusted and believed were beyond any act of treachery. But he was mistaken. The Qqi Ashz’sara was every bit as wicked and distrustful and perfidious as her brother, and she’d taken precautions. She’d placed a spy, a ghoul named Sorrow, within her brother’s inner circle. Sorrow was as noble a ghoul as a ghoul may be, which is to say not particularly, but he was in love with his queen, and Isobel did not doubt that he would gladly perish to protect her, should it come to that.”
“That’s a very strange name,” said the tow-headed girl.
“He was a ghoul,” replied the peddler. “Would you expect he’d be named George or Juan Carlos or maybe Aziz? His name was Sorrow, a name he’d found on a gravestone stolen from a cemetery in the World Above and brought into the World Below.”
“But you said,” cut in the boy who’d yawned, “that the Djinn had banished the Ghūl to—”
“—as a whole, yes. I said that, and they did. However, always have there been those few who braved the wrath of the Djinn, hiding among women and men of the Waking World, infesting catacombs and cemeteries.”
“Oh,” said the boy, clearly confused.
“As I was saying,” the peddler began again, “Isobel Snow trusted this one ghoul to bring her word of her brother’s doings, and as soon as Sorrow learned of the plot to murder the queen, he scampered back to her with the news.”
“Scampered?” asked the tow-headed girl.
“Yes. Scampered. Ghouls do that. They lope and they creep and they scamper. And as the latter is the more expedient means of getting about, Sorrow scampered back to Isobel to warn her she and her unborn child were in very terrible danger. Isobel listened, not desiring to believe it was true, but also never supposing that it wasn’t. The twins were, as is generally the case with twins, two peas from the same ripe pod, and she admitted to Sorrow that in her brother’s place she likely would have made the same decision. Sorrow advised her that she had two options. She could try and make a stand, possibly rallying the very ghouls who would see the King and Queen both deposed, currying their favor with promises that she would abdicate and by pointing out that she was, after all, the mother of the prophesied messiah. Or she could run.”
“I’d have run,” said the boy who’d yawned.
“But you’re a poltroon,” replied the boy on the tow-headed girl’s right. “You always run from a fight.”
“Yes, well, have you never heard that discretion is the better part of valor? The greater wisdom lies in knowing when the odds are not in your favor, and Isobel Snow knew the odds were not in hers. So she dispatched Sorrow to enlist the aid of another earthborn ghoul, one who had once been a man of the Waking World, a man named Richard Pickman. In the century since Pickman had arrived in Thok, he’d risen to a station of some prominence among the ghouls, and during the Ghūl War he’d fought against the Snows. Afterwards, he’d gone into hiding, but Sorrow knew his whereabouts, and he knew also that Pickman possessed the influence to arrange the queen’s hasty escape, and that for the right price he would help.”
“But wasn’t he afraid?” asked the tow-headed girl.
“Undoubtedly, but he didn’t believe the prophecy and was convinced that the coming of the albino twins was no more than a coincidence. He was of the opinion that the two were grifters and humbugs who’d seen a chance to exploit ignorance and superstition, and they’d seized it. He certainly did not believe that the infant who’d be bor
n of their union would be the ghouls’ deliverance. In fact, Richard Pickman doubted that there ever had been a war with the Djinn. He was a heretic of the first order, an unbeliever through and through. It wasn’t that he was sympathetic to Isobel’s plight. No. More that he was convinced that as long as her child lived, Isaac Snow would be weakened by his fear of their off spring. And, too, Pickman conjured that the brother’s confidence would be weakened if he failed to murder his sister. Neither of the Snows were accustomed to failure.
“They were extremely arrogant,” said the boy who’d yawned. He rubbed at his eyes and petted a ginger kitten that was curled on the floor near him.
“Sure he was,” nodded the peddler, “and more than words ever can convey. It did not cross his mind that his plot would be foiled, once he set it in motion. They say that the first thing he felt upon receiving the news that one of his confidants, a ghoul named Sorrow – and not George or Juan Carlos or maybe Aziz – had lain in wait for the King’s butcher and gotten the upper hand, the very first expression Isaac Snow’s face showed that night was not rage, but amazement that he could possibly have failed.”
“Serves him right,” says the tow-headed girl.
The peddler shrugged. “Perhaps, if one excuses Isobel her own crimes and makes of her a hero merely because she’d fallen out of favor with her brother. Regardless, after the assassin was slain, Pickman, Sorrow, and several other ghouls led her from the palace and out of Thok, down narrow mountain trails and across the bhole-haunted Vale of Pnath. At last they gained the vaults of ruined Zin, that haunted city of the gugs, and went straightaway to a mighty central tower, the tallest among twice a hundred towers so tall no one could, from the ground, ever hope to glimpse the tops of those spires. They pushed open its enormous doors, which bore the sigil of Koth – a dreadful, awful bas-relief neither Isobel Snow nor Sorrow dared gaze upon – and I should tell you, children, that the history of that tower is a shuddersome tale in its own right, one all but lost to antiquity.”
“Maybe you’ll tell it next time,” said the boy on the tow-headed girl’s left.
“Maybe,” replied the peddler. “We shall see. Anyhow, beyond that forbidding entryway was a stair that wound up and up and up . . . and up . . . to a massive trapdoor carved of slick black stone. It is said two hard days’ climbing were necessary to at last reach the top of those stairs and that the strength of all the ghouls present was only barely enough to lift open that trapdoor. But open it they did, and so it was that Isobel Snow, Queen of Bones and Rags, Qqi Ashz’sara, slipped through her brother’s icy fingers and fled to the Upper Dream Lands. Of the ghouls, only Sorrow went with her, the others turning back with Richard Pickman, who, as I’ve said, hoped her escape would be the beginning of the end for Isaac Snow’s reign. Pickman had instructed Sorrow to lead the Queen in Exile through the Enchanted Wood to the River Xari, where a barge would be waiting to bear them down to the port city of Jaren, from whence they could book safe passage across the shimmering sea to Serannian. Sure, even Isaac Snow would never be half so bold as to venture so many leagues from the Underworld, much less attempt to breach the high walls of the island kingdom of Serannian.”
“The people of Serannian let them enter?” the tow-headed girl asked skeptically. “A ghoul and an albino half-ghoul?”
“You’d not think so, would you? But, see, the lords of Serannian were kindly,” answered the peddler. “And as I have told you, there were generals and leaders of men who’d learned of the Snows’ discovery of the long lost Qqi d’Evai Mubadieb and of the strife that followed, and how they feared the twins might not be content to rule the Lower Dream Lands. So they saw the arrival of Isobel Snow and news of the division between king and queen as a good omen, indeed. Moreover, there is a thing I have not yet revealed, probably the most important part of the tale, the pivot on which turns its plot.”
Each of the three children sat up a little straighter at that, for how could anything be more important than the ghoul queen’s flight?
“When Isobel Snow departed the peaks of Thok and the palaces of the royal necropolis, she took with her the Basalt Madonna.”
There was a collective gasp from the peddler’s audience, and she felt the smallest rind of satisfaction at that. If she had to tell this story, at least the gravity of it was not being lost on the listeners, and at least she knew she was not slipping in her skill as a spinner of yarns. She wanted to rekindle her pipe, but this was no place to interrupt herself. She was getting very near the end.
“But if she had the weapon, why did she not turn it against her brother?” asked the boy on the tow-headed girl’s right.
“I don’t know,” said the peddler. “No one knows, no one now living. Perhaps she didn’t fully comprehend how, or possibly she was unable to use the Madonna without him. It may have required the two of them together. Or perhaps she simply loved Isaac too much to destroy him.”
“Or she was afraid,” whispered the boy who’d yawned.
“Or that,” said the peddler. “Whatever the reason, she didn’t use it against him. She carried it away with her, and by the time Isaac Snow discovered this she was far beyond his reach. When she arrived at Serannian she and Sorrow were arrested and taken to the Council of Lords to whom she told her story and to whom she revealed the Qqi d’Evai Mubadieb. She asked for sanctuary, and it was granted. And this even though she refused to surrender the Basalt Madonna to the men and women of that city on the sea. So, it was there her daughter was born, whom she named Elspeth Isa Snow. There in the shining bustle and safety of Serannian it was that Elspeth grew to be a woman, a strong and fiercely intelligent woman, I should add. Indeed, in the spring of her nineteenth year she was offered a seat on the Council, which she accepted. That same year her mother succumbed to a disease of the blood that had plagued her and her brother since birth, and—”
“Aunty, you didn’t mention that before,” interrupted the tow-headed girl.
“It wasn’t important before. Now it is. Anyway, when Elspeth Snow’s mother died the Basalt Madonna passed into her keeping.”
“And what happened to Sorrow?” the girl asked.
“Oh, he was still there. He was, in fact, ever Elspeth’s dearest friend and confidant. She being one-quarter ghoul herself found his company comforting. But . . . this is not the end of the tale. There’s more.”
“It sounds like the end,” said the boy who’d yawned.
“Very much like the end,” said the tow-headed girl.
“Well, if you wish,” said the peddler, “I can stop here. I am tired, and I—”
“No, no, please,” said the boy on the girl’s right. “Tell the rest. If there is more, then you cannot stop here.”
“And why is that?” the peddler asked him.
“My da says that an unfinished tale in an indecent thing.”
Somewhere in the house a door creaked open and was pulled shut just a little too roughly, and all three of the children started at the noise. The cat in the old woman’s lap opened one eye and looked well and profoundly annoyed at having been awakened.
“So,” said the peddler, who had not jumped at the slamming door, “your da believes that stories have endings, which means he must also believe they have beginnings. Do you believe that, child?”
The boy looked somewhat baffled at her question.
“Well . . . do they not?” he asked her.
“I don’t think so,” she told him. “Then again, I am only a poor peddler who sells oddments and notions and fixes broken wagon wheels and heals warts but . . . no, I do not believe so. Priests and learned scholars may disagree – though I daresay some of them may not. But I would ask you, did our story truly begin when the Snow twins waged their war and conquered Thok and Pnath and all the Lower Dream Lands, or was the beginning when they found the Qqi d’Evai Mubadieb in the Waking World, the World Above, where it had been hidden in a cavern known as Khoshilat Maqandeli, deep in the Arabian wastes? But no, more likely we’d have to say the be
ginning was earlier, the night the twins consummated their incestuous love on an altar they’d fashioned to honor Shub-Niggurath, the All Mother and consort of the Not-to-Be-Named.”
The peddler paused a moment, quietly admonishing herself for having been careless and spoken the name of one of the Great Old Ones, and worse, for having spoken it to three children. She picked up her cold pipe and set the stem between her yellow teeth, chewing at it a moment before continuing.
“Might be,” she said, “or might be, instead, the story began when they were born to Alma Shaharrazad Snow, who went by Hera. Or the night she was led by her mother into a ghoul warren in an earthly city known as Boston to be bedded by a ghoul. Or perhaps it all started much farther back, when the Snows and the Tillinghasts and the Cabots – all the members of that clan – entered into a pact with the ghouls whereby they’d be given riches and power in exchange for bearing half-caste children. Or much farther back still, when the Ghūl foolishly went to war against their ancient enemies, the Djinn. Or—”
“I think we get the idea,” said the tow-headed girl.
“Good,” said the peddler, and she managed a ghost of smile. “Good, for I think that is a very important lesson.”
“So . . . what happened next?” the boy who’d yawned asked. He was now very much awake.
“Well, Elspeth Snow didn’t only grow to be a brilliant woman and a leader of Serannian. She also studied military strategy and became proficient with a sword and a bow and with rifles, too. And she studied the mysteries of the Basalt Madonna as well. She’d learned much of the history of the race of ghouls from Sorrow, who never did come to feel at home in the world of men and longed always to return to Thok. Too much sun. The daughter of Isaac and Isobel Snow loved the old ghoul, and she wished always that he could return, and, for that matter, that she might have a chance to see for herself the lands her mother had once ruled, however briefly. She even desired, they say, to look upon the face of her father. She hated him for the strife he’d caused her mother and Sorrow, but some bit of her also wanted to love him as her mother had. In the end, I cannot say what single thing it was led Elspeth to become a soldier, but become a soldier she did. More than a soldier, she became a captain of the Serannian guard, and, by her thirtieth birthday, she’d risen to the highest rank.