Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series

by Cassandra Clare

  “This is nonsense,” Malachi said crisply. “Valentine is not interested in destroying Nephilim.”

  “But he doesn’t think anyone who associates with Downworlders is worthy of being called Nephilim,” Clary insisted. “Look, your war isn’t against Valentine. It’s against demons. Keeping demons from this world is your mandate, a mandate from heaven. And a mandate from heaven isn’t something you can just ignore. Downworlders hate demons too. They destroy them too. If Valentine has his way, he’ll spend so much of his time trying to murder every Downworlder, and every Shadowhunter who’s ever associated with them, that he’ll forget all about the demons, and so will you, because you’ll be so busy being afraid of Valentine. And they’ll overrun the world, and that will be that.”

  “I see where this is going,” Malachi said through gritted teeth. “We will not fight beside Downworlders in the service of a battle we can’t possibly win—”

  “But you can win it,” Clary said. “You can.” Her throat was dry, her head aching, and the faces in the crowd before her seemed to meld into a featureless blur, punctuated here and there by soft white explosions of light. But you can’t stop now. You have to keep going. You have to try. “My father hates Downworlders because he’s jealous of them,” she went on, her words tripping over one another. “Jealous and afraid of all the things they can do that he can’t. He hates that in some ways they’re more powerful than Nephilim, and I’d bet he’s not alone in that. It’s easy to be afraid of what you don’t share.” She took a breath. “But what if you could share it? What if I could make a rune that could bind each of you, each Shadowhunter, to a Downworlder who was fighting by your side, and you could share your powers—you could be as fast-healing as a vampire, as tough as a werewolf, or as swift as a faerie knight. And they, in turn, could share your training, your fighting skills. You could be an unbeatable force—if you’ll let me Mark you, and if you’ll fight with the Downworlders. Because if you don’t fight beside them, the runes won’t work.” She paused. “Please,” she said, but the word came almost inaudibly out of her dry throat. “Please let me Mark you.”

  Her words fell into a ringing silence. The world moved in a shifting blur, and she realized that she’d delivered the last half of her speech staring up at the ceiling of the Hall and that the soft white explosions she’d seen had been the stars coming out in the night sky, one by one. The silence went on and on as her hands, at her sides, curled themselves slowly into fists. And then slowly, very slowly, she lowered her gaze and met the eyes of the crowd staring back at her.

  17

  THE SHADOWHUNTER’S TALE

  Clary sat on the top step of the Accords Hall, looking out over Angel Square. The moon had come up earlier and was just visible over the roofs of the houses. The demon towers reflected back its light, silver-white. The darkness hid the scars and bruises of the city well; it looked peaceful under the night sky—if one didn’t look up at Gard Hill and the ruined outline of the citadel. Guards patrolled the square below, appearing and disappearing as they moved in and out of the illumination of the witchlight lamps. They studiously ignored Clary’s presence.

  A few steps below her Simon was pacing back and forth, his footsteps utterly soundless. He had his hands in his pockets, and when he turned at the end of the stairs to walk back toward her, the moonlight glossed off his pale skin as if it were a reflective surface.

  “Quit pacing,” she told him. “You’re just making me more nervous.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I feel like we’ve been out here forever.” Clary strained her ears, but she couldn’t hear more than the dull murmur of many voices coming through the closed double doors of the Hall. “Can you hear what they’re saying inside?”

  Simon half-closed his eyes; he appeared to be concentrating hard. “A little,” he said after a pause.

  “I wish I were in there,” Clary said, kicking her heels irritably against the steps. Luke had asked her to wait outside the doors while the Clave deliberated; he’d wanted to send Amatis out with her, but Simon had insisted on coming instead, saying it would be better to have Amatis inside, supporting Clary. “I wish I were part of the meeting.”

  “No,” Simon said. “You don’t.”

  She knew why Luke had asked her to wait outside. She could imagine what they were saying about her in there. Liar. Freak. Fool. Crazy. Stupid. Monster. Valentine’s daughter. Perhaps she was better off outside the Hall, but the tension of anticipating the Clave’s decision was almost painful.

  “Maybe I can climb one of those,” Simon said, eyeing the fat white pillars that held up the slanted roof of the Hall. Runes were carved on them in overlapping patterns, but otherwise there were no visible handholds. “Work off steam that way.”

  “Oh, come on,” Clary said. “You’re a vampire, not Spider-Man.”

  Simon’s only response was to jog lightly up the steps to the base of a pillar. He eyed it thoughtfully for a moment before putting his hands to it and starting to climb. Clary watched him, openmouthed, as his fingertips and feet found impossible holds on the ridged stone. “You are Spider-Man!” she exclaimed.

  Simon glanced down from his perch halfway up the pillar. “That makes you Mary Jane. She has red hair,” he said. He glanced out across the city, frowning. “I was hoping I could see the North Gate from here, but I’m not high enough.”

  Clary knew why he wanted to see the gate. Messengers had been dispatched there to ask the Downworlders to wait while the Clave deliberated, and Clary could only hope they were willing to do it. And if they were, what was it like out there? Clary pictured the crowd waiting, milling, wondering. . . .

  The double doors of the Hall cracked open. A slim figure slipped through the gap, closed the door, and turned to face Clary. She was in shadow, and it was only when she moved forward, closer to the witchlight that illuminated the steps, that Clary saw the bright blaze of her red hair and recognized her mother.

  Jocelyn looked up, her expression bemused. “Well, hello, Simon. Glad to see you’re . . . adjusting.”

  Simon let go of the pillar and dropped, landing lightly at its base. He looked mildly abashed. “Hey, Mrs. Fray.”

  “I don’t know if there’s any point in calling me that now,” said Clary’s mother. “Maybe you should just call me Jocelyn.” She hesitated. “You know, strange as this—situation—is, it’s good to see you here with Clary. I can’t remember the last time you two were apart.”

  Simon looked acutely embarrassed. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  “Thank you, Simon.” Jocelyn glanced at her daughter. “Now, Clary, would it be all right for us to talk for a moment? Alone?”

  Clary sat motionless for a long moment, staring at her mother. It was hard not to feel like she was staring at a stranger. Her throat felt tight, almost too tight to speak. She glanced toward Simon, who was clearly waiting for a signal from her to tell him whether to stay or go. She sighed. “Okay.”

  Simon gave Clary an encouraging thumbs-up before vanishing back into the Hall. Clary turned away and stared fixedly down into the square, watching the guards do their rounds, as Jocelyn came and sat down next to her. Part of Clary wanted to lean sideways and put her head on her mother’s shoulder. She could even close her eyes, pretend everything was all right. The other part of her knew that it wouldn’t make a difference; she couldn’t keep her eyes closed forever.

  “Clary,” Jocelyn said at last, very softly. “I am so sorry.”

  Clary stared down at her hands. She was, she realized, still holding Patrick Penhallow’s stele. She hoped he didn’t think she’d meant to steal it.

  “I never thought I’d see this place again,” Jocelyn went on. Clary stole a sideways glance at her mother and saw that she was looking out over the city, at the demon towers casting their pale whitish light over the skyline. “I dreamed about it sometimes. I even wanted to paint it, to paint my memories of it, but I couldn’t do that. I thought if you ever saw the paintings, you might ask questi
ons, might wonder how those images had ever come into my head. I was so frightened you’d find out where I was really from. Who I really was.”

  “And now I have.”

  “And now you have.” Jocelyn sounded wistful. “And you have every reason to hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, Mom,” Clary said. “I just . . .”

  “Don’t trust me,” said Jocelyn. “I can’t blame you. I should have told you the truth.” She touched Clary’s shoulder lightly and seemed encouraged when Clary didn’t move away. “I can tell you I did it to protect you, but I know how that must sound. I was there, just now, in the Hall, watching you—”

  “You were there?” Clary was startled. “I didn’t see you.”

  “I was in the very back of the Hall. Luke had told me not to come to the meeting, that my presence would just upset everyone and throw everything off, and he was probably right, but I so badly wanted to be there. I slipped in after the meeting started and hid in the shadows. But I was there. And I just wanted to tell you—”

  “That I made a fool out of myself ?” Clary said bitterly. “I already know that.”

  “No. I wanted to tell you that I was proud of you.”

  Clary slewed around to look at her mother. “You were?”

  Jocelyn nodded. “Of course I was. The way you stood up in front of the Clave like that. The way you showed them what you could do. You made them look at you and see the person they loved most in the world, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Clary said. “How did you know?”

  “Because I heard them all calling out different names,” Jocelyn said softly. “But I still saw you.”

  “Oh.” Clary looked down at her feet. “Well, I’m still not sure they believe me about the runes. I mean, I hope so, but—”

  “Can I see it?” Jocelyn asked.

  “See what?”

  “The rune. The one that you created to bind Shadowhunters and Downworlders.” She hesitated. “If you can’t show me . . .”

  “No, it’s all right.” With the stele Clary traced the lines of the rune the angel had showed her across the marble of the Accords Hall step, and they blazed up in hot gold lines as she drew. It was a strong rune, a map of curving lines overlapping a matrix of straight ones. Simple and complex at the same time. Clary knew now why it had seemed somehow unfinished to her when she had visualized it before: It needed a matching rune to make it work. A twin. A partner. “Alliance,” she said, drawing the stele back. “That’s what I’m calling it.”

  Jocelyn watched silently as the rune flared and faded, leaving faint black lines on the stone. “When I was a young woman,” she said finally, “I fought so hard to bind Downworlders and Shadowhunters together, to protect the Accords. I thought I was chasing a sort of dream—something most Shadowhunters could hardly imagine. And now you’ve made it concrete and literal and real.” She blinked hard. “I realized something, watching you there in the Hall. You know, all these years I’ve tried to protect you by hiding you away. It’s why I hated you going to Pandemonium. I knew it was a place where Downworlders and mundanes mingled—and that that meant there would be Shadowhunters there. I imagined it was something in your blood that drew you to the place, something that recognized the shadow world even without your Sight. I thought you would be safe if only I could keep that world hidden from you. I never thought about trying to protect you by helping you to be strong and to fight.” She sounded sad. “But somehow you got to be strong anyway. Strong enough for me to tell you the truth, if you still want to hear it.”

  “I don’t know.” Clary thought of the images the angel had showed her, how terrible they had been. “I know I was angry with you for lying. But I’m not sure I want to find out any more horrible things.”

  “I talked to Luke. He thought you should know what I have to tell you. The whole story. All of it. Things I’ve never told anyone, never told him, even. I can’t promise you that the whole truth is pleasant. But it is the truth.”

  The Law is hard, but it is the Law. She owed it to Jace to find out the truth as much as she owed it to herself. Clary tightened her grip on the stele in her hand, her knuckles whitening. “I want to know everything.”

  “Everything . . .” Jocelyn took a deep breath. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “How about starting with how you could marry Valentine? How you could have married a man like that, made him my father—he’s a monster.”

  “No. He’s a man. He’s not a good man. But if you want to know why I married him, it was because I loved him.”

  “You can’t have,” Clary said. “Nobody could.”

  “I was your age when I fell in love with him,” Jocelyn said. “I thought he was perfect—brilliant, clever, wonderful, funny, charming. I know, you’re looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind. You only know Valentine the way he is now. You can’t imagine what he was like then. When we were at school together, everyone loved him. He seemed to give off light, in a way, like there was some special and brilliantly illuminated part of the universe that only he had access to, and if we were lucky, he might share it with us, even just a little. Every girl loved him, and I thought I didn’t have a chance. There was nothing special about me. I wasn’t even that popular; Luke was one of my closest friends, and I spent most of my time with him. But still, somehow, Valentine chose me.”

  Gross, Clary wanted to say. But she held back. Maybe it was the wistfulness in her mother’s voice, mixed with regret. Maybe it was what she had said about Valentine giving off light. Clary had thought the same thing about Jace before, and then felt stupid for thinking it. But maybe everyone in love felt that way.

  “Okay,” she said, “I get it. But you were sixteen then. That doesn’t mean you had to marry him later.”

  “I was eighteen when we got married. He was nineteen,” Jocelyn said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Oh my God,” Clary said in horror. “You’d kill me if I wanted to get married when I was eighteen.”

  “I would,” Jocelyn agreed. “But Shadowhunters tend to get married earlier than mundanes. Their—our—life spans are shorter; a lot of us die violent deaths. We tend to do everything earlier because of it. Even so, I was young to get married. Still, my family was happy for me—even Luke was happy for me. Every one thought Valentine was a wonderful boy. And he was, you know, just a boy then. The only person who ever told me I shouldn’t marry him was Madeleine. We’d been friends in school, but when I told her I was engaged, she said that Valentine was selfish and hateful, that his charm masked a terrible amorality. I told myself she was jealous.”

  “Was she?”

  “No,” said Jocelyn, “she was telling the truth. I just didn’t want to hear it.” She glanced down at her hands.

  “But you were sorry,” Clary said. “After you married him, you were sorry you did it, right?”

  “Clary,” Jocelyn said. She sounded tired. “We were happy. At least for the first few years. We went to live in my parents’ manor house, where I grew up; Valentine didn’t want to be in the city, and he wanted the rest of the Circle to avoid Alicante and the prying eyes of the Clave as well. The Waylands lived in the manor just a mile or two from ours, and there were others close by—the Lightwoods, the Penhallows. It was like being at the center of the world, with all this activity swirling around us, all this passion, and through it all I was by Valentine’s side. He never made me feel dismissed or inconsequential. No, I was a key part of the Circle. I was one of the few whose opinions he trusted. He told me over and over that without me, he couldn’t do any of it. Without me, he’d be nothing.”

  “He did?” Clary couldn’t imagine Valentine saying anything like that, anything that made him sound . . . vulnerable.

  “He did, but it wasn’t true. Valentine could never have been nothing. He was born to be a leader, to be the center of a revolution. More and more converts came to him. They were drawn by his passion and the brilliance of his ideas. He rarely even spoke of Downworlders in those
early days. It was all about reforming the Clave, changing laws that were ancient and rigid and wrong. Valentine said there should be more Shadowhunters, more to fight the demons, more Institutes, that we should worry less about hiding and more about protecting the world from demonkind. That we should walk tall and proud in the world. It was seductive, his vision: a world full of Shadowhunters, where demons ran scared and mundanes, instead of believing we didn’t exist, thanked us for what we did for them. We were young; we thought thanks were important. We didn’t know.” Jocelyn took a deep breath, as if she were about to dive underwater. “Then I got pregnant.”

  Clary felt a cold prickle at the back of her neck and suddenly—she couldn’t have said why—she was no longer sure she wanted the truth from her mother, no longer sure she wanted to hear, again, how Valentine had made Jace into a monster. “Mom . . .”

  Jocelyn shook her head blindly. “You asked me why I never told you that you had a brother. This is why.” She took a ragged breath. “I was so happy when I found out. And Valentine—he’d always wanted to be a father, he said. To train his son to be a warrior the way his father had trained him. ‘Or your daughter,’ I’d say, and he’d smile and say a daughter could be a warrior just as well as a boy, and he would be happy with either. I thought everything was perfect.