Clary recognized Brother Zachariah among the group. They stood in a silent line, blocking Clary and Jace’s farther ingress into the City.
Why have you come here, daughter of Valentine and son of the Institute? Clary wasn’t sure which of them was speaking to her inside her head, or if all of them were. It is unusual for children to enter the Silent City unsupervised.
The appellation “children” stung, though Clary was aware that as far as Shadowhunters were concerned, everyone under eighteen was a child and subject to different rules.
“We need your help,” Clary said when it became apparent Jace wasn’t going to say anything. He was looking from one of the Silent Brothers to the other with a curious listlessness, like someone who had received countless terminal diagnoses from different doctors and now, having reached the end of the line, waited without much hope for a specialist’s verdict. “Isn’t that your job—helping Shadowhunters?”
And yet we are not servants, at your beck and call. Nor does every problem fall under our jurisdiction.
“But this one does,” Clary said firmly. “I believe someone is reaching into Jace’s mind—
someone with power— and messing with his memories and dreams. Making him do things he doesn’t want to do.”
Hypnomancy, said one of the Silent Brothers. The magic of dreams. That is the province of only the greatest and most powerful users of magic.
“Like angels,” said Clary, and she was rewarded by a stiff, surprised silence.
Perhaps, said Brother Zachariah finally, you should come with us to the Speaking Stars.
This was not an invitation, clearly, but an order, for they turned immediately and began walking into the heart of the City, not waiting to see if Jace and Clary followed.
They reached the pavilion of the Speaking Stars, where the Brothers took their places behind their black basalt table. The Mortal Sword was back in its place, gleaming on the wall behind them like the wing of a silver bird.
Jace moved to the center of the room and stared down at the pattern of metallic stars burned into the red and gold tiles of the floor. Clary watched him, feeling her heart ache.
It was hard to see him like this, all his usual burning energy gone, like witchlight suffocating under a covering of ash.
He raised his blond head then, blinking, and Clary knew that the Silent Brothers were speaking inside his mind, saying words she couldn’t hear. She saw him shake his head and heard him say, “I don’t know. I thought they weren’t anything but ordinary dreams.”
His mouth tightened then, and she couldn’t help wondering what they were asking him.
“Visions? I don’t think so. Yes, I did encounter the Angel, but it’s Clary who had the prophetic dreams.
Not me.”
Clary tensed. They were getting awfully close to asking about what had happened with Jace and the Angel that night by Lake Lyn. She hadn’t thought about that. When the Silent Brothers pried into your mind, just what did they see? Only what they were looking for? Or everything?
Jace nodded then. “Fine. I’m ready if you are.”
He closed his eyes, and Clary, watching, relaxed slightly. This must have been what it had been like for Jace to watch her, she thought, the first time the Silent Brothers had delved into her mind. She saw details she hadn’t noticed then, for she had been caught inside the nets of their minds and her own, reeling back into her memories, lost to the world.
She saw Jace stiffen all over as if they had touched him with their hands. His head went back. His hands, at his sides, opened and closed, as the stars on the floor at his feet flared up with a blinding silver light. She blinked away tears from the brightness; he was a graceful dark outline against a sheet of blinding silver, as if he stood in the heart of a waterfall. All around them was noise, a soft, incomprehensible whispering.
As she watched, he went to his knees, his hands braced against the ground. Her heart tightened. Having the Silent Brothers in her head had nearly made her faint, but Jace was stronger than that, wasn’t he? Slowly he doubled in on himself, hands gripped against his stomach, agony in every line of him, though he never cried out.
Clary could take it no longer—she darted toward him, through the sheets of light, and went on her knees next to him, throwing her arms around his body. The whispering voices around her rose to a storm of protest as he turned his head and looked at her. The silver light had washed out his eyes, and they looked flat and as white as marble tiles. His lips shaped her name.
And then it was gone—the light, the sound, all of it, and they knelt together on the bare floor of the pavilion, silence and shadow all around them. Jace was shaking, and when his hands released each other, she saw that they were bloody where his nails had torn the skin. Still holding him by the arm, she looked up at the Silent Brothers, fighting back her anger. She knew it was like being furious at a doctor who had to administer a painful but lifesaving treatment, but it was hard—so hard—to be reasonable when it was someone that you loved.
There is something you have not told us, Clarissa Morgenstern, said Brother Zachariah. A secret you both have been keeping.
An icy hand closed around Clary’s heart. “What do you mean?”
The mark of death is on this boy. It was another of the Brothers speaking—Enoch, she thought.
“Death?” said Jace. “Do you mean I’m going to die?” He didn’t sound surprised.
We mean that you were dead. You had passed beyond the portal into the shadow realms, your soul untethered from your body.
Clary and Jace exchanged a look. She swallowed. “The Angel Raziel—,” she began.
Yes, his mark is all over the boy as well. Enoch’s voice was without emotion. There are only two ways to bring back the dead. The way of necromancy, the black sorcery of bell, book, and candle. That will return a semblance oflife.ButonlyanAngel of God’s ownright hand could place a human’s soulback into their bodyas easilyas life was breathed into the first of men. He shook his head. The balance of life and death, of good and evil, is a delicate one, young Shadowhunters. You have upset it.
“But Raziel’s the Angel,” said Clary. “He can do whatever he wants. You worship him, don’t you? If he chose to do this—”
Did he? asked another of the Brothers. Did he choose?
“I . . .” Clary looked at Jace. She thought, I could have asked for anything else in the universe. World peace, a cure to disease, to live forever. But all I wanted was you.
We know the ritual of the Instruments, said Zachariah. We know that he who possesses them all, who is their Lord, may request of the Angel one thing. I do not think he could have refused you.
Clary set her chin. “Well,” she said, “it’s done now.”
Jace gave the ghost of a laugh. “They could always kill me, you know,” he said. “Bring things back into balance.”
Her hands tightened on his arm. “Don’t be ridiculous.” But her voice was thin. She tensed further as Brother Zachariah broke away from the tight group of Silent Brothers and approached them, his feet gliding silently over the Speaking Stars. He reached Jace, and Clary had to fight the urge to push him away as he bent down and placed his long fingers under Jace’s chin, raising the boy’s face to his. Zachariah’s fingers were slim, unlined—a young man’s fingers. She had never given much thought to the ages of the Silent Brothers before, assuming them to be all some species of wizened and old.
Jace, kneeling, gazed up at Zachariah, who looked down at him with his blind, impassive expression. Clary could not help but think of medieval paintings of saints on their knees, gazing upward, their faces suffused with shining golden light. Would that I had been here, he said, his voice unexpectedly gentle, when you were growing up. I would have seen the truth in your face, Jace Lightwood, and known who you were.
Jace looked puzzled but didn’t move to pull away.
Zachariah turned to the others. We cannot and should not harm the boy. Old ties exist between the Herondales and the Brothers. We owe him help.
“Help with what?” Clary demanded. “Can you see something wrong with him—
something inside his head?”
When a Shadowhunter is born, a ritual is performed, a number of protective spells placed upon the child by both the Silent Brothers and the Iron Sisters.
The Iron Sisters, Clary knew from her studies, were the sister sect of the Silent Brothers; even more retiring than their brethren, they were in charge of crafting Shadowhunter weapons.