Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“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.

“And it was then that she gathered an army from the people of Serannian to march against the despotic Qqi d’Tashiva and end his tyranny. Also women and men from Cydathria did she rally to her cause, and from Thran Kled, and the tribes of the Stony Desert and Oonai and even the fearsome shi’earya of the faraway hills of Implan. She took up the weapon her mother and father had used to crush the Old Kingdom of the Ghūl, and on a midsummer’s night she led her army down into Zin and across the Vale of Pnath. There she was joined by another army, rebel ghoul soldiers who followed Richard Pickman, the earthborn ghoul and once-man. Pickman had become an outspoken foe of the King of Bones and Rags and had long since fled Thok to avoid the gallows. The night gaunts and what remained of the race of gugs also followed her when she rode out to meet her father’s army in the abyss below the mountains. The battle was brief, for Elspeth Snow chose to unleash the fires roiling inside the Madonna. When she was done, her field of victory was a scorched plain where stone had been melted to slag, and of the bones of her enemies not even ash remained.”

The tow-headed girl stopped chewing her lower lip long enough to ask, “And what of the King? Did she slay her father?”

“Ah, what of the King. This is where our tale begins to fray, for none seem certain precisely what became of him. Sure, some do say that Elspeth slew her father outright. Others claim that he survived and was taken prisoner and locked in the catacombs deep below the throne room where he’d once ruled. Some would have us believe that he was banished simply and unceremoniously to the World Above to live always among human men and women, stripped of all his power. There is, however, another account of his fate and, I believe, one that more likely is nearer the truth of the matter.”

“And what is that?” asked the boy who’d yawned, but who was now wide awake and who, the peddler suspected, might not sleep at all that night.

“There is a story I heard the one time I ventured as far as Sinara — I dislike traveling through the Garden Lands, but that one time I did, and, by the way, it is said that soldiers of Sinara were also among those who joined with Elspeth — there is a story I heard there from a very old woman who once had been a priestess in a temple of the Elder Ones. Before that, she’d been a pirate and a smuggler, and before that — well, as I said, she was very old. She’d lived a long and strange life and knew many peculiar tales.

“We sat together in the back of a tavern on the banks of the River Xari, a tavern that served the wharves and all the shady, disreputable sorts one finds dockside, and she told me another version of the fate of Isaac Glyndwr Snow. She said, between fits of coughing and long drinks of whisky — for she was ill and did, I learned, soon after we spoke succumb to her tubercular sickness — that Elspeth took pity on him, for, at the last she saw before her a father. Sure now, children, I grant this is the oddest of all the twists and turns of my story, but often the course of history is many times odder than any fable or fairy tale.”

The peddler closed her eyes, taking care here to say only that part fit for the ears of youngsters and, too, only that part she would not in days to come find herself ruing having said. When she opened her eyes, the hearth fire seemed much brighter than it had before, and it ringed the three children like a halo.

“C’mon then,” said the boy on the tow-headed girl’s right side. “Aunty, what was it the woman in the tavern told you?”

The girl glared at him. “Don’t be rude, or she might decide not to say.”

“I ought not,” said the peddler. Her voice was rubbed thin by the telling of so long a tale, and it sounded to her ears weak and worn thin. “Sure, I should keep it between me, myself, and I. And the cats, of course, for cats know all, or so proclaim the wizened priests and priestesses of Ulthar.”

“Please,” said the girl. “We’ll tell no one else. I swear. It will be our secret.”

“It has been my experience,” replied the peddler, “that children are not especially good at keeping secrets.” She laughed quietly and chewed at the stem of her pipe. “But I will tell you all I know, which is, I have no doubt, not as much by half as you three would wish to hear.” The peddler shifted in the chair, and her back popped loudly.

“The sickly woman in Sinara claimed that her own father had stood with Elspeth Snow in the Battle of the Vale of Pnath, and that he had ridden with her after the defeat of the King of Bones and Rags, down winding, perilous canyon roads to witness the sundering of the onyx gates of the royal city of Amaakin’šarr. There he watched as the Twilight’s Wrath — this is the sobriquet Isobel had been given by her troops — confronted her father on the torch-lined steps of the palace. His guards bowed before her, praying she would spare their lives. But the Qqi d’Tashiva drew his sword against her and stood his ground. In the decades since his sister’s escape he’d known only loneliness and regret, not one single hour of joy, and what was the loss of his life when he’d already lost the kingdom he’d hoarded at the cost of his only love?

“‘Father,’ said Isobel Snow to him, ‘will you not now cast aside your folly and old misdeeds? Will you not put down your blade that I will not have to cause you further harm than already I have?’

“The King of Bones and Rags, he sneered hatefully and advanced towards her, blue eyes blazing, his sword glinting in the light of the flickering torches. There was naught remaining in him but bitterness and rage. ‘Do not call me Father, whore, for you are your mother’s bitch and none of mine. Now, come down off your horse and face me.’

“Elspeth Snow, Twilight’s Wrath, the Maiden of Serannian — for she was called that, as well — did not dismount, as she desperately did not wish to slay the man who’d sired her, no matter his crimes against her mother and against the ghouls and all of the denizens of the Underworld. In her heart, she knew mercy, which Isobel had taught her, having learned it herself from the actions of Pickman and Sorrow. Did they not have fair cause to slay her, rather than aid in her escape? Sure. She had been half the author of their pain and the subjugation of their race. But even the black hearts of ghouls may feel pity.