“Is that why you trust us?” Clary asked, touched. “You think we save people?”
Emma toed the carpet with her boots. Then she looked up. “I knew about you,” she said to Jace, blushing. “I mean, everyone knows about you. That you were Valentine’s son, but then you weren’t, you were Jonathan Herondale. And I don’t think that meant anything to most people—most of them call you Jace Lightwood—but it made a difference to my dad. I heard him say to my mom that he’d thought the Herondales were all gone, that the family was dead, but you were the last of them, and he voted in the Council meeting for the Clave to keep looking for you because, he said, ‘The Carstairs owe the Herondales.’?”
“Why?” Alec said. “What do they owe them for?”
“I don’t know,” Emma said. “But I came because my dad would have wanted me to, even if it was dangerous.”
Jace huffed a soft laugh. “Something tells me you don’t care if things are dangerous.” He crouched down, putting his eyes on a level with Emma’s. “Is there anything else you can tell us? Anything else they said?”
She shook her head. “They don’t know where Sebastian is. They don’t know about the Edom thing—I mentioned it when I was holding the Mortal Sword, but I think they just thought it was another word for ‘Hell.’ They never asked me if I thought it was a real place, so I didn’t say.”
“Thanks for telling us. It’s a help. A huge help. You should go,” he added, as gently as he could, “before they notice you’re gone. But from now on the Herondales owe the Carstairs. Okay? Remember that.”
Jace stood up as Emma turned to Clary, who nodded and led her over to the window where Jace had been sitting earlier. Clary bent down and hugged the younger girl before reaching over to unlatch the window. Emma clambered out with the agility of a monkey. She swung herself up until only her dangling boots were visible, and a moment later those were gone too. Jace heard a light scraping overhead as she darted across the roof tiles, and then silence.
“I like her,” Isabelle said finally. “She kind of reminds me of Jace when he was little, and stubborn, and acted like he was immortal.”
“Two of those things still apply,” said Clary, swinging the window shut. She sat down on the window seat. “I guess the big question is, do we tell Jia or anyone else on the Council what Emma told us?”
“That depends,” said Jace. “Jia has to bow to what the whole Clave wants; she said so herself. If they decide that what they want is to toss us into a cage until Sebastian comes for us—well, that pretty much squanders any upper hand this information might give us.”
“So it depends on if the information’s actually useful or not,” said Simon.
“Right,” said Jace. “Alec, what did you find out?”
Alec pulled the book out from behind him. It was an encyclopedia daemonica, the sort of book every Shadowhunter library would have. “I thought Edom might be a name for one of the demon realms—”
“Well, everyone’s been theorizing that Sebastian might be in a different dimension, since he’s untrackable,” said Isabelle. “But the demon dimensions—there are millions of them, and people can’t just go there.”
“Some are better known than others,” said Alec. “The Bible and the Enochian texts mention quite a few, disguised and subsumed, of course, into stories and myths. Edom is mentioned as a wasteland—” He read out loud, his voice measured. “And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch. Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever.” He sighed. “And of course there’s the legends about Lilith and Edom, that she was banished there, that she rules the place with the demon Asmodeus. That’s probably why the Endarkened were talking about sacrificing Mark Blackthorn to her in Edom.”
“Lilith protects Sebastian,” said Clary. “If he was going to go to a demon realm, he’d go to hers.”
“?‘None shall pass through it forever and ever’ doesn’t sound very encouraging,” said Jace. “Besides, there’s no way to get to the demon realms. Traveling from place to place in this world is one thing—”
“Well, there is a way, I think,” said Alec. “A pathway that the Nephilim can’t close, because it lies outside the jurisdiction of our Laws. It’s old, older than Shadowhunters—old, wild magic.” He sighed. “It’s in the Seelie Court, and it is guarded by the Fair Folk. No human being has set foot on that pathway in more than a hundred years.”
13
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
Jace was prowling the room like a cat. The others watched him, Simon with one eyebrow cocked. “There’s no other way to get there?” Jace asked. “We can’t try to Portal?”
“We’re not demons. We can Portal only within a dimension,” said Alec.
City of Heavenly Fire
Cassandra Clare's books
- City of Ruins
- Invincible (A Centennial City Novel)
- City of Fae
- City of Lost Souls
- CITY OF GLASS
- City of Fallen Angels
- CITY OF BONES
- CITY OF ASHES
- City of Lost Souls
- Velocity
- Ascendancy of the Last
- Blood of Aenarion
- Broods Of Fenrir
- Burden of the Soul
- Caradoc of the North Wind
- Cause of Death: Unnatural
- Dark of the Moon
- Demons of Bourbon Street
- Edge of Dawn
- Eye of the Oracle
- Freak of Nature
- Heart of the Demon
- Lady of Devices
- Lance of Earth and Sky
- Last of the Wilds
- Legacy of Blood
- Legend of Witchtrot Road
- Lord of the Wolfyn
- Of Gods and Elves
- Of Wings and Wolves
- Prince of Spies
- Professor Gargoyle
- Promise of Blood
- Secrets of the Fire Sea
- Shadows of the Redwood
- Sin of Fury
- Sins of the Father
- Smugglers of Gor
- Sword of Caledor
- Sword of Darkness
- Talisman of El
- Threads of Desire (Spellcraft)
- Tricks of the Trade
- Visions of Magic
- Visions of Skyfire
- Well of the Damned
- Wings of Tavea
- Wings of the Wicked
- A Bridge of Years
- Chronicles of Raan
- Dawn of Swords(The Breaking World)
- A Draw of Kings
- Hunt the Darkness (Guardians of Eternity)
- Lord of the Hunt
- Master of War
- Mistfall(Book One of the Mistfall Series)
- The Gates of Byzantium
- The House of Yeel
- The Oath of the Vayuputras: Shiva Trilogy 3
- The Republic of Thieves #1
- The Republic of Thieves #2
- Edge of Dawn
- A Quest of Heroes
- Mistress of the Empire
- Servant of the Empire
- Gates of Rapture
- Reaper (End of Days)
- This Side of the Grave
- Magician's Gambit (Book Three of The Belgariad)
- Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files
- Murder of Crows
- The Queen of the Tearling
- A Tale of Two Castles
- Mark of the Demon
- Sins of the Demon
- Blood of the Demon
- The Other Side of Midnight
- Vengeance of the Demon: Demon Novels, Book Seven (Kara Gillian 7)
- Cold Burn of Magic
- Of Noble Family
- Wrath of a Mad God ( The Darkwar, Book 3)
- King of Foxes
- Daughter of the Empire
- Mistress of the Empire
- Krondor : Tear of the Gods (Riftwar Legacy Book 3)
- Shards of a Broken Crown (Serpentwar Book 4)
- Rise of a Merchant Prince
- End of Days (Penryn and the End of Day #3)
- Servant of the Empire
- Talon of the Silver Hawk
- Shadow of a Dark Queen
- The Cost of All Things
- The Wicked (A Novella of the Elder Races)
- Night's Honor (A Novel of the Elder Races Book 7)
- Born of Silence
- Born of Shadows
- Sins of the Night
- Kiss of the Night (Dark Hunter Series – Book 7)
- Born Of The Night (The League Series Book 1)