by Garth Nix
‘Oh dear Father in heaven,’ whispered MacNeacail. It must be a demon. He reversed his sword and held it by the blade, the hilt in front of him to make a cross. ‘Save me.’
Not like Shelalhael or Ophaniel, who flutter about me here. Long ago, the Parisii called me a god. Later, in the book Enoch wrote, he named me Archangel.
This revelation did not calm MacNeacail, but he did take up a more usual grip on his sword.
Are you to conclude the compact?
MacNeacail kicked the monk harder, no matter that he was a prince of the blood.
Are you to conclude the compact?
‘Ah, yes,’ said MacNeacail.
But you do not know how.
‘No … I do not.’
It is simple enough. The throne of ice is my worldly temple. When I am called to inhabit my temple, my worshippers may ask my favor. It is usual to ask me to protect the city for whoever rules it, or wishes to do so. That is the compact I made long ago, MacNeacail.
‘You know my name now?’
He sensed the archangel’s amusement. It was like remembering an uncle’s distinctive laugh from some festive occasion of his childhood, something forgotten that had risen to the surface, unbidden.
I have looked inside your head, Gerard MacNeacail. It has been a very long time since I looked inside a mortal’s head…
‘MacNeacail …’
It was the monk, spitting blood-specked foam from his lips as he spoke.
‘Tell Bellinus to protect the city in the name of His Majesty, King Louis! Quickly! The English prepare to fire their mine!’
‘But Louis is not yet king!’ protested MacNeacail. ‘I serve King Henri!’
‘Fool!’ hissed the monk. ‘Henri is sick and dying. You must—’
Whatever the monk was going to say was lost in a titanic blast of noise and fury. MacNeacail was knocked down by the explosion, and then as he struggled to get up, the earth gave way beneath his feet and he was drawn down into a newborn ravine that extended from the collapsing southern wall to just underneath the mosaic. Bricks rained down around him as he struggled to claw his way out of the dirt.
Just as he got his upper body free of the gripping soil, the throne of ice slowly toppled over and fell upon him. MacNeacail had only a moment to twist and roll so that he was in front of the seat, instead of being instantly crushed to death by the back or the lower half of the throne.
But that meant he was balled up in a hole in the ground, under a huge block of ice, and he shared that small, shifting space with the awful, unknowable thing that was Bellinus.
He did not look at it, and he shrank away from it the little distance that he could.
So the compact is no more, said Bellinus. I shall return to ************.
The last word was not something MacNeacail could comprehend. Hearing it created a pressure inside his head, such a pressure that he thought his skull would explode and his eyes burst like punctured wineskins. But he knew he had a duty to perform. He must somehow make Bellinus remain, to protect the city, in the name of the King.
‘Stay,’ he said, and reached out, as if he might hold the angel back.
As he touched it, MacNeacail’s heart stopped. He felt it halt, felt the sudden absence of rhythm. A terrible pain filled his chest and he tried to scream, but only a pathetic, rattling croak came out.
An instant later, he died.
The pain and the bewilderment immediately stopped, and MacNeacail felt the sudden warmth of summer sun on his skin, welcome after the long winter. He stood up out of his body, left the hole, and walked up an unseen slope into the sky.
He looked down as he climbed, watching his friends engage the Englishmen who had emerged through the hole in the wall. The monk, or rather, Charles de Guise, lay with his head crushed under one corner of the throne, very evidently dead. Gallagher was alive, on his knees, digging furiously at the middle of the throne. Curiously, MacNeacail could now also see Shelalhael, hovering in the air above the priest.
The guardsmen had the Englishmen well in hand, MacNeacail noted with approval. The enemy had obviously mistimed the mine, since most were blackened and in rags, and kept falling over, their balance lost with deafness. It was surprising, given their national fascination with blowing things up, but perhaps De Guise’s angel had intervened.
The dueling figures below got rapidly smaller as MacNeacail found himself several hundred feet above the courtyard and rising, giving him a hawk’s-eye view of the city. There was still quite a commotion on the Pont Neuf. It appeared that the troops of the city watch had thought a common disturbance was in progress and in their attempts to quell the imagined uproar had actually started a riot. A barge had also run into one of the piers, though this was probably the method of delivery for the Spanish monkey-soldiers. Behind him, the great bourdon bell of Notre Dame was tolling, though whether this was for the riot or to mark the hour, he did not know.
Very well, said Bellinus, inside MacNeacail’s head.
‘What?’ asked MacNeacail idly. He could not see Bellinus, but he could sense his presence. The archangel was next to him, one great wing brushing his shoulder. The nearness did not trouble him now, nor did anything else. He felt completely calm, more so than he had ever done before.
I will stay.
MacNeacail screamed as the pain came back and he plummeted earthward like a flung stone, far faster than he had risen. Inside an instant, he was back in his body, and pressed into the mud, with the rapidly melting throne of ice above him.
There is work to be done upon you, said Bellinus.
The pain in his chest went away and with a galvanic thump,MacNeacail’s heart started to beat. He sighed in relief, then screamed again as his eyes were burned by a terrible fire, a fire that entered into his brain and threatened to entirely consume everything that defined his consciousness and identity.
It is complete.
With these words, the pain disappeared, leaving MacNeacail sobbing, choking, and threshing in a pool of mud. Water was flooding over his face, and the dread of drowning lent him strength as he tried to claw a tunnel out from under the ice. Then he felt a hand brush his, and he gripped it with panicked strength and so was drawn out of his entombment by Father Gallagher.
Leaving MacNeacail gasping facedown on the flagstones, Gallagher kneeled beside him and whispered urgently, ‘Did De Guise reaffirm the compact? In whose name?’
The Scotsman coughed or almost vomited up a mouthful of dirty water, then slowly turned his head. The priest gasped and bit the knuckle of his hand, rapidly crossed himself, then tore a broad strip from his sleeve and bound it tight around MacNeacail’s eyes.
‘What … what are you doing?’ rasped MacNeacail. He reached up to strip the blindfold away, but stopped as he saw that it did not impede his vision. He could see straight through the cloth.
Hiding our eyes, said Bellinus. Our silver eyes.
‘Silver … my eyes … but I am not a priest …’
I have decided to accompany you, MacNeacail. We shall look after the city together.
‘Is Bellinus with you?’ whispered Gallagher. He was holding the silver egg. The cross was whirring around the dial like the vanes of a storm-swept windmill.
MacNeacail nodded slowly.
‘Say nothing to anyone!’ said Gallagher.
‘I don’t … I don’t understand what has happened,’ said MacNeacail.
‘The impossible,’ said Gallagher shortly. ‘An ancient entity – one some would call an archangel – has chosen to companion you, which has not occurred for a thousand years, and you are not even ordained! And the angel is Bellinus, the guardian of Paris! The city has lost its greatest defender! We must go to Cardinal Richelieu, he has great knowledge of angelic—’
‘No,’ said MacNeacail. He looked at Gallagher and saw into his subtle mind, saw all the cunning schemes and stratagems that the priest was part of, and the multiple masters he served, as he prepared for the passing of Henri and the decline of
Sully, and the consequent rise of Louis, the Dauphine Helen, and her Cardinal. ‘We must go to the King. Whatever has happened to me, I am still the King’s man.’
He slowly stood up and looked around. De Vitray was standing upon the rubble of the breached wall, supervising the guardsmen as they dispatched the mortally wounded Englishmen and tied up the survivors. The throne of ice had almost entirely melted, so that there was merely a muddy waterhole where it had been.
Only part of the mosaic had survived. A sliver of the sun, smeared with mud.
‘For such a city,’ MacNeacail said, ‘it is very small, this heart.’
It is not the heart that makes a city, said Bellinus. It is the head.
‘Where is the head?’ asked MacNeacail. He thought of the Louvre, where the King resided, though the power there was fading as Henri sank toward his death.
It is not a place, answered the archangel. It is all the people. Come, let us walk amongst them. It is long since I looked at Paris through mortal eyes.
MacNeacail nodded and clutched at Gallagher’s shoulder. He felt the priest flinch, and Shelalhael also, as they felt some small part of the power of Bellinus in his touch.
‘Lead me,’ he said, for he knew there was sense in Gallagher’s warning to keep his eyes bound. ‘Let us look upon the city, as we go to see the King.’
Ambrose and the Ancient Spirits of East and West
AMBROSE FARNINGTON WAS NOT PARTICULARLY well equipped to live an ordinary life. An adventurer in the Near East before the Great War, the war itself had seen him variously engaged in clandestine and very cold operations in the mountains between Turkey and Russia; commanding an infantry battalion in France and Belgium; and then, after almost a day buried in his headquarters dugout in the company of several dead and dismembered companions, as a very fragile convalescent in a nursing home called Grandway House in Lancashire.
Most recently, a year of fishing and walking near Fort William had assisted the recovery begun under the care of the neurasthenic specialists at Grandway, and by the early months of 1920 the former temporary Lieutenant-Colonel Farnington felt that he was almost ready to reemerge into the world. The only question was in what capacity. The year in the Scottish bothy with only his fishing gear, guns, and a borrowed dog for company had also largely exhausted his ready funds, which had been stricken by his remaining parent’s ill-timed death, his father putting the capstone on a lifetime of setting a very bad example by leaving a great deal of debt fraudulently incurred in his only child’s name.
Ambrose considered the question of his finances and employment as he sorted through the very thin pile of correspondence on the end of the kitchen table he was using as a writing desk. The bothy had been lent to him, with the dog, and though both belonged to Robert Cameron, a very close friend from his days at Peterhouse College in Cambridge, his continued presence there prevented the employment of bothy and dog by a gamekeeper who would usually patrol the western borders of Robert’s estate. Besides, Ambrose did not wish to remain a burden on one of the few of his friends who was still alive.
It was time to move on, but the question was on to what and where?
‘I should make an appreciation of my situation and set out my qualities and achievements, Nellie,’ said Ambrose to the dog, who was lying down with her shaggy head on his left foot. Nellie raised one ear, but made no other movement, as Ambrose unscrewed his pen and set out to write on the back of a bill for a bamboo fishing rod supplied by T. H. Sowerbutt’s of London.
‘Item One,’ said Ambrose aloud. ‘At twenty-nine, not excessively aged, at least by time. Item Two, in possession of rude physical health and … let us say … in a stable mental condition, provided no underground exercise is contemplated. Item Three, a double-starred First in Latin and Greek, fluent in Urdu, Classical Persian, Arabic, Spanish, French, German; conversant with numerous other languages, etc. Item Four, have traveled and lived extensively in the Near East, particularly Turkey and Persia. Item Five, war service …’
Ambrose put down his pen and wondered what he should write. Even though he would burn his initial draft on completion, he was still reluctant to mention his work for D-Arc. Even the bare facts were secret, and as for the details, very few people would believe them. Those people who would believe were the ones he was most worried about. If certain practitioners of some ancient and occult studies discovered that he was Agent Çobanaldatan, the man who had so catastrophically halted that ceremony high on the slopes of Ziyaret Daǧı, then …
‘I suppose if I am not too specific, it can’t matter,’ Ambrose said to Nellie. He picked up the pen again, and continued to speak aloud as he wrote.
‘Where was I … war service … 1914 to 1915. Engaged by a department of the War Office in reconnaissance operations in the region of … no, best make it “the East.” Returned in 1916, posted to KRRC, rose to brevet Lieutenant-Colonel by May 1918, commanded the 8th Battalion, wounded 21st September, 1918, convalescent leave through to 5th March, 1919 … no, that looks bad, far too long, will just make it “after convalescent leave” resigned temporary commission … how do I explain this last year? Writing a paper on the Greek inscriptions near Erzerum or something, I suppose, I do have one I started in ’09 … Let’s move on …’
He paused as Nellie raised both ears and tilted her head toward the door. When she gave a soft whine and stood up, Ambrose pushed his chair back and went to the window. Gently easing the rather grimy curtain aside, he looked out, up toward the rough track that wound down from the main road high on the ridge above.
A car was gingerly making its way down toward the bothy, proceeding slowly and relatively quietly in low gear, though not quietly enough to fool Nellie. It was a maroon sedan of recent European make, and it was not a car that he knew. To get here, the driver had either picked or more likely cut off the bronze Bramah padlocks on both the upper gate to the road and the one in the wall of the middle field.
Quickly, but with measured actions, Ambrose went to the gun cabinet, unlocked it with one of the keys that hung on his heavy silver watch-chain, and took out his service revolver. He quickly loaded it and put the weapon and another five cartridges in the voluminous right pocket of his coat, his father’s sole useful legacy, an ugly purple-and-green tweed shooting jacket that was slightly too large.
He hesitated in front of the cabinet, then, after a glance at Nellie and at a very old pierced bronze lantern that hung from a ceiling beam, he reached back into the cabinet for a shotgun. He chose the lightest of the four weapons there, a double-barrel four-ten. Unlike the other guns and against all his usual principles, it was already loaded, with rather special shot. Ambrose broke it, whispered, ‘Melek kılıç şimdi bana yardım’ close to the breech, and snapped it closed.
The incantation would wake the spirits that animated the ammunition, but only for a short time. If whoever came in the maroon car was an ordinary visitor, the magic would be wasted, and he only had half a box of the shells left. But he did not think it was an ordinary visitor, though he was by no means sure it was an enemy.
Certainly, Nellie was growling, the hair up all along her back, and that indicated trouble. But the bronze lamp that Ambrose had found in the strange little booth in the narrowest alley of the Damascus bazaar, while it had lit of its own accord, was not burning with black fire. The flame that flickered inside was green. Ambrose did not yet know the full vocabulary of the oracular lantern, but he knew that green was an equivocal color. It signified the advent of some occult power, but not necessarily an inimical force.
Readying the shotgun, Ambrose went to the door. Lifting the bar with his left hand, he nudged the door open with his foot, allowing himself a gap just wide enough to see and shoot through. The car was negotiating the last turn down from the middle field, splashing through the permanent mud puddle as it came through the open gate and the narrow way between the partly fallen stone walls that once upon a time had surrounded the bothy’s kitchen garden.
Ambrose could only
see a driver in the vehicle, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be others lying low. He raised the shotgun and thumbed back both hammers, suddenly aware of a pulsing in his eardrums that came from his own racing heart. Nellie, next to his leg, snarled, but, well trained as she was, did not bark or lunge forward.
The maroon sedan stopped a dozen yards away. Past the gate, and within the walls of the garden, which might or might not be significant. When he had first moved in Ambrose had planted silver sixpences in every seventh ston, and buried three horseshoes in the gateway. That would deter most of the lesser powers, particularly those already distressed at being so far west of the old Giza meridian. Which meant that his visitor was either mundane or not one of the lesser powers that stalked the earth …
The car door creaked open, backward, and a tall man in a long camel-colored coat with the collar up and a dark trilby pulled down over his ears hunched himself out, his arms and legs moving very oddly – a telltale sign that told Ambrose all he needed to know. As the curious figure lurched forward, Ambrose fired the left barrel at the man’s chest and a split second later, the right barrel at his knees.
Salt splattered across the target and burst into flame where it hit. Hat and coat fell to the ground, and two waist-high creatures of shifting darkness sprang forward, salt-fires burning on and in their mutable flesh.
Ambrose pulled the door shut with one swift motion and slammed down the bar. Retreating to the gun cabinet, he reloaded the shotgun, this time speaking the incantation in a loud and almost steady voice.
A hissing outside indicated that the demons had heard the incantation and did not like it. For his part, Ambrose was deeply concerned that his first two shots had not disincorporated his foes, that they had freely crossed his boundary markers, and that they had gotten to his home without any sign of having aroused the ire of any of the local entities that would take exception to such an Eastern presence.
He looked around the single room of the bothy. The windows, though shut, were not shuttered, and there was probably not enough sunshine for the glass to act as mirrors and distract the demons. If they were strong enough to cross a silver and cold iron border, they would be strong enough to enter the house uninvited, though not eager, which was probably the only reason they had not yet broken down the door or smashed in a window—
