The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (153 page)

Hugo.

Clary ducked to crouch behind a pillar as Malachi climbed the dais steps. There was something unmistakably furtive in the way he glanced from side to side. Apparently satisfied that he was unobserved, he drew something small and glittering from his pocket and slipped it onto his finger. A ring? He reached to twist it, and Clary remembered Hodge in the library at the Institute, taking the ring from Jace’s hand …

The air in front of Malachi shimmered faintly, as if with heat. A voice spoke from it, a familiar voice, cool and cultured, now touched with just the faintest annoyance.

“What is it, Malachi? I’m in no mood for small talk right now.”

“My Lord Valentine,” said Malachi. His usual hostility had been replaced with a slimy obsequiousness. “Hugin visited me not a moment ago, bringing news. I assumed you had already reached the Mirror, and therefore he sought me out instead. I thought you might want to know.”

Valentine’s tone was sharp. “Very well. What news?”

“It’s your son, Lord. Your
other
son. Hugin tracked him to the valley of the cave. He may even have followed you through the tunnels to the lake.”

Clary clutched the pillar with whitened fingers. They were talking about Jace.

Valentine grunted. “Did he meet his brother there?”

“Hugin says that he left the two of them fighting.”

Clary felt her stomach turn over. Jace, fighting Sebastian? She thought of the way Sebastian had lifted Jace at the Gard and flung him, as if he weighed nothing. A wave of panic surged over her, so intense that for a moment her ears buzzed. By the time the room swam back into focus, she had missed whatever Valentine had said to Malachi in return.

“It is the ones old enough to be Marked but not old enough to fight that concern me,” Malachi was saying now. “They didn’t vote in the Council’s decision. It seems unfair to punish them in the same way that those who are fighting must be punished.”

“I did consider that.” Valentine’s voice was a bass rumble. “Because teenagers are more lightly Marked, it takes them longer to become Forsaken. Several days, at least. I believe it may well be reversible.”

“While those of us who have drunk from the Mortal Cup will remain entirely unaffected?”

“I’m busy, Malachi,” said Valentine. “I’ve told you that you’ll be safe. I am trusting my own life to this process. Have some faith.”

Malachi bowed his head. “I have great faith, my lord. I have kept it for many years, in silence, serving you always.”

“And you will be rewarded,” said Valentine.

Malachi looked up. “My lord—”

But the air had stopped shimmering. Valentine was gone. Malachi frowned, then marched down the dais steps and toward the front doors. Clary shrank back against the pillar, hoping desperately that he wouldn’t see her. Her heart was pounding. What had all that been about? What was all this about Forsaken? The answer glimmered at the corner of her mind, but it seemed too horrible to contemplate. Even Valentine wouldn’t—

Something flew at her face then, whirling and dark. She barely had time to throw her arms up to cover her eyes when something slashed along the back of her hands. She heard a fierce caw, and wings beat against her upraised wrists.

“Hugin! Enough!” It was Malachi’s sharp voice.
“Hugin!”
There was another caw and a thump, then silence. Clary lowered her arms and saw the raven lying motionless at the Consul’s feet—stunned or dead, she couldn’t tell. With a snarl Malachi kicked the raven savagely out of his way and strode toward Clary, glowering. He caught hold of her by a bleeding wrist and hauled her to her feet. “Stupid girl,” he said. “How long have you been there listening?”

“Long enough to know that you’re one of the Circle,” she spat, twisting her wrist in his grasp, but he held firm. “You’re on Valentine’s side.”

“There is only one side.”
His voice came out in a hiss. “The Clave is foolish, misguided, pandering to half men and monsters. All I want is to make it pure, to return it to its former glory. A goal you’d think every Shadowhunter would approve of, but no—they listen to fools and demon lovers like you and Lucian Graymark. And now you’ve sent the flower of the Nephilim to die in this ridiculous battle—an empty gesture that will accomplish nothing. Valentine has already begun the ritual; soon the Angel will rise, and the Nephilim will become Forsaken. All those save the few under Valentine’s protection—”

“That’s murder! He’s murdering Shadowhunters!”

“Not murder,” said the Consul. His voice rang with a fanatic’s passion. “Cleansing. Valentine will make a new world of Shadowhunters, a world purged of weakness and corruption.”

“Weakness and corruption aren’t in the
world
,” Clary snapped. “They’re in
people
. And they always will be. The world just needs good people to balance them out. And you’re planning to kill them all.”

He looked at her for a moment with honest surprise, as if he was astonished at the force in her tone. “Fine words from a girl who would betray her own father.” Malachi jerked her toward him, yanking brutally on her bleeding wrist. “Perhaps we should see just how much Valentine would mind if I taught you—”

But Clary never found out what he wanted to teach her. A dark shape shot between them—wings outspread and claws extended.

The raven caught Malachi with the tip of a talon, raking a bloody groove across his face. With a cry the Consul let go of Clary and threw up his arms, but Hugo had circled back and was slashing at him viciously with beak and claws. Malachi staggered backward, arms flailing, until he struck the edge of a bench, hard. It fell over with a crash; unbalanced, he sprawled after it with a strangled cry—quickly cut off.

Clary raced to where Malachi lay crumpled on the marble floor, a circle of blood already pooling around him. He had landed on a pile of glass from the broken ceiling, and one of the jagged chunks had pierced his throat. Hugo was still hovering in the air, circling Malachi’s body. He gave a triumphant caw as Clary stared at him—apparently he hadn’t appreciated the Consul’s kicks and blows. Malachi should have known better than to attack one of Valentine’s creatures, Clary thought sourly. The bird was no more forgiving than his master.

But there was no time to think about Malachi now. Alec had said that there were wards up around the lake, and that if anyone Portaled there, an alarm would go off. Valentine was probably already at the Mirror—there was no time to waste. Backing slowly away from the raven, Clary turned and dashed toward the front doors of the Hall and the glimmer of the Portal beyond.

W
ATER STRUCK HER IN THE FACE LIKE A BLOW. CLARY WENT
down, choking, into freezing darkness; her first thought was that the Portal had faded beyond repairing, and that she was stuck in the whirling black in-between place.

Her second thought was that she was already dead.

She was probably only actually unconscious for a few seconds, though it felt like the end of everything. When she came awake, it was with a shock that was like the shock of breaking through a layer of ice. She had been unconscious and now, suddenly, she wasn’t; she was lying on her back on cold, damp earth, staring up at a sky so full of stars it looked like a handful of silver pieces had been flung across its dark surface. Her mouth was full of brackish liquid; she turned her head to the side, coughed and spat and gasped until she could breathe again.

When her stomach had stopped spasming, she rolled onto her side. Her wrists were bound together with a faint band of glowing light, and her legs felt heavy and strange, prickling all over with intense pins and needles. She wondered if she’d lain on them strangely, or perhaps it was a side effect of nearly drowning. The back of her neck burned as if a wasp had stung her. With a gasp she heaved herself into a sitting position, legs stretched out awkwardly in front of her, and looked around.

She was on the shore of Lake Lyn, where the water gave way to powdery sand. A black wall of rock rose behind her, the cliffs she remembered from her time here with Luke. The sand itself was dark, glittering with silver mica. Here and there in the sand were witchlight torches, filling the air with their silvery glow, leaving a tracery of glowing lines across the surface of the water.

By the shore of the lake, a few feet away from where she sat, stood a low table made out of flat stones piled one on the other. It had clearly been assembled in haste; though the gaps between the stones were packed in with damp sand, some of the rocks were slipping away at angles. Placed on the surface of the stones was something that made Clary catch her breath—the Mortal Cup, and laid crossways atop it, the Mortal Sword, a tongue of black flame in the witchlight. Around the altar were the black lines of runes carved into the sand. She stared at them, but they were jumbled, meaningless—

A shadow cut across the sand, moving fast—the long black shadow of a man, made wavering and indistinct by the flickering light of the torches. By the time Clary raised her head, he was already standing over her.

Valentine.

The shock of seeing him was so enormous that it was almost no shock at all. She felt nothing as she stared up at her father, whose face hovered against the dark sky like the moon: white, austere, pitted with black eyes like meteor craters. Over his shirt were looped a number of leather straps holding a dozen or more weapons. They bristled behind him like a porcupine’s spines. He looked huge, impossibly broad, the terrifying statue of some warrior god intent on destruction.

“Clarissa,” he said. “You took quite a risk, Portaling here. You’re lucky I saw you appear in the water between one minute and the next. You were quite unconscious; if it weren’t for me, you would have drowned.” A muscle beside his mouth moved slightly. “And I wouldn’t concern yourself overmuch with the alarm wards the Clave put up around the lake. I took those down the moment I arrived. No one knows you’re here.”

I don’t believe you!
Clary opened her mouth to fling the words in his face. There was no sound. It was like one of those nightmares where she would try to scream and scream and nothing would happen. Only a dry puff of air came from her mouth, the gasp of someone trying to scream with a cut throat.

Valentine shook his head. “Don’t bother trying to speak. I used a Rune of Silence, one of those that the Silent Brothers used, on the back of your neck. There’s a binding rune on your wrists, and another disabling your legs. I wouldn’t try to stand—your legs won’t hold you, and it’ll only cause you pain.”

Clary glared at him, trying to bore into him with her eyes, cut him with her hatred. But he took no notice. “It could have been worse, you know. By the time I dragged you onto the bank, the lake poison had already started its work. I’ve cured you of it, by the way. Not that I expect your thanks.” He smiled thinly. “You and I, we’ve never had a conversation, have we? Not a real conversation. You must be wondering why I never really seemed to have a father’s interest in you. I’m sorry if that hurt you.”

Now her stare went from hateful to incredulous. How could they have a conversation when she couldn’t even speak? She tried to force the words out, but nothing came from her throat but a thin gasp.

Valentine turned back to his altar and placed his hand on the Mortal Sword. The sword gave off a black light, a sort of reverse glow, as if it were sucking the illumination from the air around it. “I didn’t know your mother was pregnant with you when she left me,” he said. He was speaking to her, Clary thought, in a way he never had before. His tone was calm, even conversational, but it wasn’t that. “I knew there was something wrong. She thought she was hiding her unhappiness. I took some blood from Ithuriel, dried it to a powder, and mixed it with her food, thinking it might cure her unhappiness. If I’d known she was pregnant, I wouldn’t have done it. I’d already resolved not to experiment again on a child of my own blood.”

You’re lying
, Clary wanted to scream at him. But she wasn’t sure he was. He still sounded strange to her. Different. Maybe it was because he was telling the truth.

“After she fled Idris, I looked for her for years,” he said. “And not just because she had the Mortal Cup. Because I loved her. I thought if I could only talk to her, I could make her see reason. I did what I did that night in a fit of rage, wanting to destroy her, destroy everything about our life together. But afterward I—” He shook his head, turning away to look out over the lake. “When I finally tracked her down, I’d heard rumors she’d had another child, a daughter. I assumed you were Lucian’s. He’d always loved her, always wanted to take her from me. I thought she must finally have given in. Have consented to have a child with a filthy Downworlder.” His voice tightened. “When I found her in your apartment in New York, she was still barely conscious. She spat at me that I’d made a monster out of her first child, and she’d left me before I could do the same to her second. Then she went limp in my arms. All those years I’d looked for her, and that was all I had with her. Those few seconds in which she looked at me with a lifetime’s worth of hate. I realized something then.”

He lifted Maellartach. Clary remembered how heavy even the half-turned Sword had been to hold, and saw as the blade rose that the muscles of Valentine’s arm stood out, hard and corded, like ropes snaking under the skin.

“I realized,” he said, “that the reason she left me was to protect you. Jonathan she hated, but you—she would have done anything to protect you. To protect you from
me
. She even lived among mundanes, which I know must have pained her. It must have hurt her never to be able to raise you with any of our traditions. You are half of what you could have been. You have your talent with runes, but it’s been squandered by your mundane upbringing.”

He lowered the Sword. The tip of it hung, now, just by Clary’s face; she could see it out of the corner of her eye, floating at the edge of her vision like a silvery moth.

“I knew then that Jocelyn would never come back to me, because of you. You are the only thing in the world she ever loved more than she loved me. And because of you she hates me. And because of that, I hate the sight of you.”