Chapter 21
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“Oh,” ry said. There didn’t seem to be much else to
say. “How many other worlds are there?”
“No one knows. Hundreds? Millions, maybe.”
“And they’re all—dead worlds? Used up?” ry felt her
stomach drop, though it might have been only the jolt as
they rolled up and over a purple Mini. “That seems so
sad.”
“I didn’t say that.” The dark orangey light of city haze
spilled in through the window, outlining his sharp profile.
“There are probably other living worlds like ours. But
only demons can travel between them. Because they’re
mostly noncorporeal, partly, but nobody knows exactly
why. Plenty of warlocks have tried it, and it’s never
worked. Nothing from Earth can pass through the
wardings between the worlds. If we could,” he added,
“we might be able to block them froming here, but
nobody’s even been able to figure out how to do that. In
fact, more and more of them areing through. There
used to be only small demon invasions into this world,
easily contained. But even in my lifetime more and more
of them have spilled in through the wardings. The ve
is always having to dispatch Shadowhunters, and a lot
of times they don’te back.”
“But if you had the Mortal Cup, you could make more,
right? More demon hunters?” ry asked tentatively.
“Sure,” Jace said. “But we haven’t had the Cup for years
now, and a lot of us die young. So our numbers slowly
dwindle.”
“Aren’t you, uh …” ry searched for the right word.
“Reproducing?”
Jace burst outughing just as the carriage made a
sudden, sharp left turn. He braced himself, but ry
was thrown against him. He caught her, hands holding
her lightly but firmly away from him. She felt the cool
impress of his ring like a sliver of ice against her sweaty
skin. “Sure,” he said. “We love reproducing. It’s one of
our favorite things.”
ry pulled away from him, her face burning in the
darkness, and turned to look out the window. They were
rolling toward a heavy wrought-iron gate, trellised with
dark vines.
“We’re here,” announced Jace as the smooth roll of
wheels over pavement turned to the jounce of
cobblestones. ry glimpsed words across the arch as
they rolled under it: NEW YORK CITY MARBLE
CEMETERY.
“But they stopped burying people in Manhattan a
century ago because they ran out of room—didn’t they?”
she said. They were moving down a narrow alley with
high stone walls on either side.
“The Bone City has been here longer than that.” The
carriage came to a shuddering halt. ry jumped as
Jace stretched his arm out, but he was only reaching
past her to open the door on her side. His arm was
lightly muscled and downed with golden hairs fine as
pollen.
“You don’t get a choice, do you?” she asked. “About
being a Shadowhunter. You can’t just opt out.”
“No,” he said. The door swung open, letting in a st of
muggy air. The carriage had drawn to a stop on a wide
square of green grass surrounded by mossy marble
walls. “But if I had a choice, this is still what I’d choose.”
“Why?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow, which made ry instantly
jealous. She’d always wanted to be able to do that.
“Because,” he said. “It’s what I’m good at.”
He jumped down from the carriage. ry slid to the
edge of her seat, dangling her legs. It was a long drop to
the cobblestones. She jumped. The impact stung her
feet, but she didn’t fall. She swung around in triumph to
find Jace watching her. “I would have helped you down,”
he said.
She blinked. “It’s okay. You didn’t have to.”
He nced behind him. Brother Jeremiah was
descending from his perch behind the horses in a silent
fall of robes. He cast no shadow on the sun-baked
grass.
Come, he said. He glided away from the carriage and
theforting lights of Second Avenue, moving toward
the dark center of the garden. It was clear that he
expected them to follow.
The grass was dry and crackling underfoot, the marble
walls to either side smooth and pearly. There were
names carved into the stone of the walls, names and
dates. It took ry a moment to realize that they were
grave markers. A chill scraped up her spine. Where
were the bodies? In the walls, buried upright as if they’d
been walled in alive …?
She had forgotten to look where she was going. When
she collided with something unmistakably alive, she
yelped out loud.
It was Jace. “Don’t screech like that. You’ll wake the
dead.”
She frowned at him. “Why are we stopping?”
He pointed at Brother Jeremiah, who hade to a halt
in front of a statue just slightly taller than he was, its
base overgrown with moss. The statue was of an angel.
The marble of the statue was so smooth it was almost
translucent. The face of the angel was fierce and
beautiful and sad. In long white hands the angel held a
cup, its rim studded with marble jewels. Something
about the statue tickled ry’s memory with an uneasy
familiarity. There was a date inscribed on the base,
1234, and words inscribed around it: NEPHILIM:
FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNO.
“Is that meant to be the Mortal Cup?” she asked.
Jace nodded. “And that’s the motto of the Nephilim—the
Shadowhunters—there on the base.”
“What does it mean?”
Jace’s grin was a white sh in the darkness. “It means
‘Shadowhunters: Looking Better in ck Than the
Widows of our Enemies Since 1234.’”
“Jace—”
It means, said Jeremiah, “The descent into Hell is easy.”
“Nice and cheery,” said ry, but a shiver passed over
her skin despite the heat.
“It’s the Brothers’ little joke, having that here,” said Jace.
“You’ll see.”
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She looked at Brother Jeremiah. He had drawn a stele,
faintly glowing, from some inner pocket of his robe, and
with the tip he traced the pattern of a rune on the
statue’s base. The mouth of the stone angel suddenly
gaped wide in a silent scream, and a yawning ck hole
opened in the grassy turf at Jeremiah’s feet. It looked
like an open grave.
Slowly ry approached the edge of it and peered
inside. A set of granite steps led down into the hole,
their edges worn soft by years of use. Torches were set
along the steps at intervals, ring hot green and icy
blue. The bottom of the stairs was lost in darkness.
Jace took the stairs with the ease of someone who finds
a situation familiar if not exactlyfortable. Halfway to
the first torch, he paused and looked up at her. “Come
on,” he said impatiently.
ry had barely set her foot on the first step when she
felt her arm caught in a cold grip. She looked up in
astonishment. Brother Jeremiah was holding her wrist,
his icy white fingers digging into the skin. She could see
the bony gleam of his scarred face beneath the edge of
his cowl.
Do not fear, said his voice inside her head. It would take
more than a single human cry to wake these dead.
When he released her arm, she skittered down the
stairs after Jace, her heart pounding against her ribs. He
was waiting for her at the foot of the steps. He’d taken
one of the green burning torches out of its bracket and
was holding it at eye level. It lent a pale green cast to
his skin. “You all right?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The stairs
ended in a shallownding; ahead of them stretched a
tunnel, long and ck, ridged with the curling roots of
trees. A faint bluish light was visible at the tunnel’s end.
“It’s so … dark,” she saidmely.
“You want me to hold your hand?”
ry put both her hands behind her back like a small
child. “Don’t talk down to me.”
“Well, I could hardly talk up to you. You’re too short.”
Jace nced past her, the torch showering sparks as he
moved. “No need to stand on ceremony, Brother
Jeremiah,” he drawled. “Lead on. We’ll be right behind
you.”
ry jumped. She still wasn’t used to the archivist’s
silentings and goings. He moved noiselessly from
where he had been standing behind her and headed
into the tunnel. After a moment she followed, knocking
Jace’s outstretched hand aside as she went.
ry’s first sight of the Silent City was of row upon row
of tall marble arches that rose overhead, disappearing
into the distance like the orderly rows of trees in an
orchard. The marble itself was a pure, ashy ivory, hard
and polished-looking, inset in ces with narrow strips
of onyx, jasper, and jade. As they moved away from the
tunnel and toward the forest of arches, ry saw that
the floor was inscribed with the same runes that
sometimes decorated Jace’s skin with lines and whorls
and swirling patterns.
As the three of them passed through the first arch,
somethingrge and white loomed up on her left side,
like an iceberg off the bow of the Titanic. It was a block
of white stone, smooth and square, with a sort of door
inset into the front. It reminded her of a child-size
yhouse, almost but not quite big enough for her to
stand up inside.
“It’s a mausoleum,” said Jace, directing a sh of
torchlight at it. ry could see that a rune was carved
into the door, which was sealed shut with bolts of iron.
“A tomb. We bury our dead here.”
“All your dead?” she said, half-wanting to ask him if his
father was buried here, but he had already moved
ahead, out of earshot. She hurried after him, not
wanting to be alone with Brother Jeremiah in this
spooky ce. “I thought you said this was a library.”
There are many levels to the Silent City, interjected
Jeremiah. And not all the dead are buried here. There is
another ossuary in Idris, of course, muchrger. But on
this level are the mausoleums and the ce of burning.
“The ce of burning?”
Those who die in battle are burned, their ashes used to
make the marble arches that you see here. The blood
and bone of demon yers is itself a powerful protection
against evil. Even in death, the ve serves the cause.
How exhausting, ry thought, to fight all your life and
then be expected to continue that fight even when your
life was over. At the edges of her vision she could see
the square white vaults rising on either side of her in
orderly rows of tombs, each door locked from the
outside. She understood now why this was called the
Silent City: Its only inhabitants were the mute Brothers
and the dead they so zealously guarded.
They had reached another staircase leading down into
more twilight; Jace thrust the torch ahead of him,
streaking the walls with shadows. “We’re going to the
second level, where the archives and the council rooms
are,” he said, as if to reassure her.
“Where are the living quarters?” ry asked, partly to
be polite, partly out of a real curiosity. “Where do the
Brothers sleep?”
Sleep?
The silent word hung in the darkness between them.
Jaceughed, and the me of the torch he held
flickered. “You had to ask.”
At the foot of the stairs was another tunnel, which
widened out at the end into a square pavilion, each
corner of which was marked by a spire of carved bone.
Torches burned in long onyx holders along the sides of
the square, and the air smelled of ashes and smoke. In
the center of the pavilion was a long table of ck
basalt veined in white. Behind the table, against the
dark wall, hung an enormous silver sword, point down,
its hilt carved in the shape of outspread wings. Seated
at the table was a row of Silent Brothers, each wrapped
and cowled in the same parchment-colored robes as
Jeremiah.
Jeremiah wasted no time. We have arrived. rissa,
stand before the Council.
ry nced at Jace, but he was blinking, clearly
confused. Brother Jeremiah must have spoken only
inside her head. She looked at the table, at the long row
of silent figures muffled in their heavy robes. Alternating
squares made up the pavilion floor: golden bronze and a
darker red. Just in front of the table was arger square,
made of ck marble and embossed with a parabolic
design of silver stars.
ry stepped into the center of the ck square as if
she were stepping in front of a firing squad. She raised
her head. “All right,” she said. “Now what?”
The Brothers made a sound then, a sound that raised
the hairs up all along ry’s neck and the backs of her
arms. It was a sound like a sigh or a groan. In unison
they raised their hands and pushed their cowls back,
baring their scarred faces and the pits of their empty
eyes.
Though she had seen Brother Jeremiah’s uncovered
face already, ry’s stomach knotted. It was like looking
at a row of skeletons, like one of those medieval
woodcuts where the dead walked and talked and
danced on the piled bodies of the living. Their stitched
mouths seemed to grin at her.
The Council greets you, rissa Fray, she heard, and it
was not just one silent voice inside her head but a
dozen, some low and rough, some smooth and
monotone, but all were demanding, insistent, pushing at
the fragile barriers around her mind.
“Stop,” she said, and to her astonishment her voice
came out firm and strong. The din inside her mind
ceased as suddenly as a record that had stopped
spinning. “You can go inside my head,” she said, “but
only when I’m ready.”
If you do not want our help, there is no need for this.
You are the one who asked for our assistance, after all.
“You want to know what’s in my mind, just like I do,” she
said. “That doesn’t mean you can’t be careful about it.”
The Brother who sat in the center seat templed his thin
white fingers beneath his chin. It is an interesting
puzzle, admittedly, he said, and the voice inside her
mind was dry and neutral. But there is no need for the
use of force, if you do not resist.
She gritted her teeth. She wanted to resist them, wanted
to pry those intrusive voices out of her head. To stand
by and allow such a vition of her most intimate,
personal self—
But there was every chance that had already happened,
she reminded herself. This was nothing more than the
excavation of a past crime, the theft of her memory. If it
worked, what had been taken from her would be
restored. She closed her eyes.
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