The House of Shattered Wings

by Aliette de Bodard

  “You heard what Ngoc Bich said,” she said to Isabelle, as they walked toward the postern. “Morningstar wanted a powerful spell to protect the House against something.”

  “It was twenty years ago. I can’t imagine—”

  “It was a threat large enough that Morningstar had to look for help,” Madeleine said. “It could be unrelated to the shadows, but it would be one hell of a coincidence.”

  And he’d disappeared shortly after coming back from the dragon kingdom. So either he was imprisoned somewhere; or he was dead—and, either way, it had to be linked to the spell. If they could find him—if they could get his help . . .

  What was it Ngoc Bich had said? A beseeching. An offering of himself as a burned sacrifice . . .

  A cold wind rose across the ruined gardens, bringing with it a sharp, familiar tang. It took Madeleine an agonizingly long moment to realize it was the animal smell of fresh blood. The clouds over them had darkened, as if a storm were coming; the sun still shone, but its light was weak and sickly: that of a winter’s day, with no power to warm or comfort.

  “Madeleine.” Philippe’s voice was low, urgent.

  “I can see.”

  “No, you can’t. They’re here.” The fear in his voice was bad; what could he be scared of, when he’d seemed to shrug off whatever Asmodeus had done to him?

  “We have to find shelter.”

  “There’s no shelter that will hold against them,” Philippe said.

  They came out of the ground; great splashes of shadow that seemed to move just below the charred earth—circling them, like wolves—large shapes flowing across the walls of the cathedral, extending huge leathery wings.

  Was this what Oris had seen, before he died?

  A burned sacrifice. Forever delivered from darkness.

  Burned offerings.

  A prayer.

  He was offering a prayer to God—and where else would you pray to God, but in a church?

  “The cathedral,” Madeleine said.

  Morningstar wasn’t in the cathedral—not in the razed church that had been searched, again and again and with growing despair, in the past twenty years. But . . .

  “The cathedral didn’t help Oris.” Philippe’s voice was bleak.

  “No, that’s where they came from.” Isabelle rolled up the sleeves of her shirt, staring speculatively at the faint light emanating from her hands.

  If they could find Morningstar, or the refuge he’d hoped for, or the spell he’d cast—something, anything . . .

  There was a sound around them, like a hiss of snakes. Madeleine kept a wary eye on the ground, where the shadows were flowing like ink stains; curling and curving in a slow dance, forming circles with a dot in the center like the one in Emmanuelle’s palm. It was . . . almost beautiful, if one didn’t remember Oris; didn’t remember Samariel; didn’t remember the five corpses in the morgue. Had it hurt, when magic overflowed every cell of a mortal’s body? Or was it like angel essence, a slow, heady feeling of rising power, until all life had burned away?

  “We have to get to the cathedral,” Madeleine said. “Morningstar . . .” She couldn’t voice the thought. He’d been gone for twenty years; what made her think she could find him, when the entire House had failed?

  “Morningstar is gone. He won’t help you,” Philippe said, softly.

  Isabelle looked at Madeleine for a while; then she shook her head. “No, but it’s no worse shelter than elsewhere,” she said. She was running already, moving toward the ruined arches of Notre-Dame.

  Madeleine barely heard them. There was something . . . hypnotic about the circles, some half-remembered thing, perhaps an image she’d seen in Emmanuelle’s library? She watched them coalesce and vanish, watched the single dot like a thousand unblinking eyes. . . .

  “Madeleine!” Philippe’s hands grasped her shoulders, and shook her. “Come on!”

  They ran. After just two steps, Madeleine’s breath seared her lungs, and the desire to stop, to bend over, to cough out phlegm, was an almost unbearable, agonizing weight.

  There was a hiss, like a knot of a thousand snakes; shapes that she couldn’t quite make out, at the edge of her field of vision; vague images of fangs, of huge wings like a drake’s, slowly beating like a dying heart; if she could only turn her head, she would see them clearly; would be able to name what was after them . . . No. She didn’t look back, or aside. She dared not. Like angel essence, this was a power that subsisted on the forbidden.

  Had . . . to . . . run. Had to take in a searing breath, and another one—to put one foot before the other, time and time again. The courtyard wasn’t very large, but it felt as though it contained the entire city now—the postern never growing any nearer.

  “This way,” Isabelle said, somewhere from the left. “Not the postern!”

  Madeleine turned, almost blind. She could feel Philippe, dropping behind to check on her. “I’ll—be—fine,” she breathed through lungs that seemed to have collapsed; but he didn’t hear her. “A few more meters,” he said, softly. “Come on, Madeleine.”

  “Come on, come on, come on.” It was a prayer now, each word stabbing the fabric of Heaven. A shadow loomed over them, solid and reassuring this time, the bulk of the ruined cathedral. There had been a side door, somewhere. . . .

  No time for that. Isabelle had plunged into the ruins; they followed, weaving their way between two walls supporting the shards of stained-glass windows.

  They stood, panting, just under the dais with the throne, the ruined altar only a hand span away. How much protection was it, really? Did God still look at unrepentant Fallen, at desecrated places? Except, of course, that the place had never been deconsecrated; it had simply fallen into ruin with the rest of the House. . . .

  The shadows circled, under the benches, deeper pools of darkness; reaching out tendrils to touch the charred wood, spreading wings on the arches. The hiss was stronger; and behind it she could almost hear—words, a litany like an obscene chanted prayer.

  Philippe had closed his eyes; his face had gone pale and slack, as if he were asleep; but in his outstretched hand a green light was growing stronger and stronger: faint traceries, like lines of power, came and went through the skin of his palm.

  Madeleine took a deep, trembling breath, staring at their surroundings. The glass windows were dark and dull, their colors and brilliance drained away; the remnants of the ribbed vault weighed down on them, like the fingers of a giant hand pressing them down into dust. She forced herself to look away, opening the pendant at her throat. There was nothing in it but scraps of essence; a bare hint of a power that had once been strong. Like the cathedral, she thought, fighting the urge to retch.

  If only they knew where Morningstar was—if only they could call on him—

  But that was impossible. Why had she even suggested they go there? Give it up, Madeleine—no time for fancies or flights of the imagination. When this was done—if they survived, she’d have time to go back into the dragon kingdom—no matter how uncomfortable it was—she’d have time to ask Ngoc Bich what she knew. . . .

  The shadows appeared reluctant to reach the dais. They circled it warily, tentatively sending tendrils to touch the steps; withdrawing as if burned. Perhaps they’d be safe.

  And perhaps she was the messiah come again.

  “They’re waiting,” Philippe said. He hadn’t opened his eyes. The light had now spread to both his hands; he held it against himself, cradling it like a child.

  “For what?” Madeleine said; and wasn’t so sure she wanted to know. “What are you doing?”

  Philippe’s face was pale. “Keeping them at bay. Can’t . . . do much. The power . . . is weak here.”

  Isabelle was kneeling, inscribing a ward across the dais, a blinding radiance streaming from her skin; rushing through the now translucent stone, illuminating every crack and every black
ened spot from within. “They’re shadows,” she said. “Every shadow is cast by something.”

  She’d been right. She didn’t want to know; or to inquire how either of them knew. The noise was stronger now; there were words, if she paid attention; whispered curses, vicious hatred . . .

  “All you hold dear will be shattered; all that you built will fall into dust; all that you gathered will be borne away by the storm. . . .”

  “You said he was here,” Isabelle said. “Where?”

  “I don’t know!” Madeleine said. He’d gone there, yes, twenty years ago; but the church was a ruin now, with barely any shelter she could see. “I didn’t say I had the answers!”

  Philippe was standing, pale, disheveled, before the throne, watching the shadows pool together in the aisle between the ruined benches—a rising smell like rotten fruit, a cold, biting wind that seemed to flay them to the bone. . . . “It’s Morningstar’s dead apprentice—I don’t know who they were, but they died betrayed, and now they’re taking their revenge.”

  “I don’t understand,” Madeleine said. She breathed in the last scrap of essence; tried to believe in the comforting warmth that spread through her belly and lungs.

  “Morningstar betrayed one of his students,” Philippe said. “He loved and cherished them, and then gave them away to buy peace with Hawthorn, left them to rot in the cellars of the House. They died . . . angry.” He shivered.

  No. Morningstar wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t . . . She thought of the leisurely footsteps, the warmth of hands lifting her; the slow, sure sound of his breath. He’d rescued her when he didn’t have to, had welcomed her to the safety of the House. “He wouldn’t . . . ,” she started, and then stopped. It was pointless. He might well have liked her, might well have shown favor to her—on a whim, a moment’s thought on his way to nowhere—but she’d heard enough during her time in Silverspires to know he’d been Fallen through and through.

  Isabelle’s eyes were jewel-hard. “He did it for the House.” On the floor beyond the dais, the shape was becoming clearer and clearer: wings, an elongated face, hands that curled like claws . . . She knew, instinctively, that they didn’t want to be there when it finally became defined. But still . . .

  Still, there was something about that shape; about the leathery wings, the hiss of snakes, the perfect circle . . .

  “Of course. Isn’t that always the excuse? ‘For the House.’” Philippe’s voice was biting. He leaned against the throne, cradling his light between his hands. “Anyway, that’s what they want. The destruction of Silverspires, the deaths of all of us if they can manage it. The unquiet dead.” He laughed, bitterly.

  The death of Silverspires. Violence begets violence, death begets death: a perfect circle around that single point, that unthinkable break in the skin of the world, pressed tight until blood welled up, dark and red and still quivering with the memory of a heartbeat . . . And Madeleine knew where she had seen the circle, after all; not in the medicine thesis, but in the Greek play Emmanuelle had been so painstakingly restoring. Orestes. Clytemnestra. Kin betraying, murdering kin. And what was a House, after all, but an overlarge family? “Not revenge. Justice.”

  “That’s not different,” Isabelle said, forcefully, but Philippe stilled her with a gesture of his hands.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Erinyes,” she whispered. Justice for the murdered, the betrayed, the silenced; the unquiet dead, hungering from beyond the grave. “The Furies. That’s what they summoned.”

  “And that helps? How do you stop them?”

  “I don’t know!” Madeleine said. “It’s not even supposed to be possible!” Sentences from Emmanuelle’s books swam in her head, a jumble of information she could hardly keep a leash on. She knew about the Furies; every child in every House learned about them; but as a remnant of the past, of the things that were gone and could no longer be summoned.

  How did you stop the Furies?

  Spilling blood; granting them revenge . . . all things that seemed beyond them now.

  But . . .

  Morningstar had come there once, to stop them. To cast a spell, Ngoc Bich had said. A ritual of power, to safeguard the House.

  There was nothing here—just broken stained-glass windows, the burned remnants of pews, cracked stone, and cracked columns—nothing that could serve as a shelter or as the basis for a spell.

  Nothing aboveground.

  The Furies were the past; the buried creatures from the history of Paris, so deep they were beyond the reach of Fallen and humans alike—and where else would you defend against them but underground—near the foundations of the House you’d sworn to protect?

  Within the earth. Underground.

  All churches had crypts, and how come she’d never heard of one in Notre-Dame?

  Madeleine closed her eyes, and called up power; scrounged every scrap of it from the rawness of her lungs, from the fragility of her bones—it coalesced within her, drop after drop, her limbs growing cold and heavy with its withdrawal.

  The shadow was peeling itself free of the stone floor; unfurling wings large enough to darken the sun.

  It was now, or never.

  “Morningstar. Show me,” she whispered; and cast everything she had—not at the Fury, but at the throne on its dais—thinking of the darkness under the earth, the musty smell of the grave—willing the cathedral to give up its secrets. . . .

  A thin line of light snaked from where she stood, zigzagging across the stone like a flame dancing on the edge of a paper. It passed from her outstretched hands into the throne; and then expanded outward, blossoming into a huge incandescent flower. There was a blinding light; an explosion that sent her, retching, toward the floor—as the sound of tumbling stones filled her ears.

  “Madeleine?” Isabelle pulled her up—there were other hands, Philippe’s, propping her up. “We have to move.”

  “The . . . Fury . . .” Every word seemed to leave a trail of blood in her mouth.

  “Stunned, but not for long,” Isabelle said. “We have to go.”

  Where? She tried to ask; but then there was no need.

  Behind the dais—where there had once been graven tombstones covered in rubble, with faded litanies beseeching God to have mercy on sinners—there was now a huge, open space gaping like the maw of a monster; and within that darkness, the glimmer of steps, leading down into the bowels of the House.

  * * *

  IT was damp, and quiet; too quiet, like the day, ages ago, when he had crawled into the ancestral chapel and had stood before the altar, feeling the weight of the dead, of his death, like a yoke on his shoulders. There was little light, but the khi current of wood he had called up was enough to walk without stumbling. It wasn’t the darkness of the flowing shadows, though; but rather what was left when the sun turned its face away from the world, with not a hint of fangs or claws or snakes, and only a peaceful, almost contemplative silence.

  Madeleine was a sagging weight between Philippe and Isabelle, her breath going fainter and fainter as time passed; her weight a hindrance. He feared they’d both let go, and she’d tumble down the stairs to Heaven knew where.

  “They haven’t followed us,” Isabelle said, beside him.

  Philippe shook his head. He’d half expected to see ghosts again, but even Morningstar wasn’t there. It was eerily unexpected. The khi currents there weren’t faded as they were in the rest of the House; they gently lapped at one another in a never-ending circle; and there was a vague sense of magic, nothing major. Just . . . silence. Waiting, though he couldn’t have told what for. “They won’t come. Not here.”

  Isabelle took in a sharp breath, but did not ask him how he knew. “But they’ll be waiting outside, won’t they?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why are they trying to kill us?”

  “I don’t know,” Philippe said. He p
ushed his shoulder upward, to readjust Madeleine’s weight. “I’m just the vessel, and probably even less than that.”

  “But you knew what it was.”

  “No, Madeleine did.”

  There was silence, at those words. “Yes. She did.”

  A further silence. He needed to speak up: it was now or never. “Thank you,” he said.

  Isabelle turned, surprised. “Why?”

  “For coming for me.”

  “You mistake me.” Isabelle’s voice was cold, but her hands shook. “I came because Emmanuelle needed you. Because it was the only way.”

  “You’re not a good liar,” Philippe said, before he could stop himself. There was no answer from her; not the explosion he had half dreaded. “You could have come on different terms. Selene gave me up, didn’t she? She thought I was dead. She thought I was guilty.”

  “I don’t care about what Selene thinks.” Isabelle’s voice was low and fierce. “I know you wouldn’t—”

  Wouldn’t he? He wasn’t sure. If it was the way forward; if it could open the way to Annam . . . He was honest enough to know he would do whatever was necessary. “I don’t have your scruples,” he said, though he wasn’t sure if she still had any.

  “No.” Isabelle laughed, shortly and without joy. “You don’t. You’re fortunate.”

  She was Fallen, and she would pull away from him eventually; she would take her cues from Selene and the House. And yet . . .

  She had come back for him. Had argued with Madeleine for him; had casually swept aside all of Selene’s suspicions and doubts as if they meant nothing; and had stood for him over standing for the needs of the House. That counted for something, surely? Surely she wouldn’t turn into another Morningstar or Asmodeus . . .

  They reached the bottom of the stairs, hearing their steps echo in a space that was far vaster than the little they could see. Philippe tried to call more wood to him, but there was nothing there; just that breathless, expectant pause after someone had spoken; an answer, waiting to be uttered.