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“Hmm,” Belial said. There was a hunger in his expression now. A look that twisted James’s insides with nausea. “We seem to have reached an agreement.”
“Not yet.” James shook his head. “I require something more formal. You’re a Prince of Hell. You must vow on Lucifer’s name.”
Belial chuckled. “Ah, the Lightbringer. You had better hope, Nephilim, that you never have cause to meet him.” He flung out his arm, his white robe swirling around him like smoke. “I, Prince Belial, Lord of Edom, of the First Nine, do swear on the name of Lucifer, He that is everything, that I will not cause harm to befall any of those dear to my blood grandson James Herondale. May I be struck into the Pit if such comes to pass.”
He looked at James; his eyes were wide and black and flickering, dark and empty as the end of all hope. “Now, come here, boy,” he said. “It is time.”
33 A FORTRESS FOILED
A fortress foiled, which reason did defend,
A siren song, a fever of the mind,
A maze wherein affection finds no end,
A raging cloud that runs before the wind,
A substance like the shadow of the sun,
A goal of grief for which the wisest run.
—Sir Walter Raleigh, “A Farewell to False Love”
To Ari’s surprise, she and Anna reached the heart of the Silent City without seeing a single Watcher. They had started out keeping to the shadows, checking doors and archways before passing from one room to another, and communicating only in hand gestures. But as their map led them up from the prisons through the living quarters and on past the libraries and the Ossuarium, they exchanged puzzled glances. They had seen not a soul, nor heard so much as a mouse scrabbling behind a wall since their arrival.
“Where are they all?” Anna murmured. They were passing through a tunnel, which widened out into a large square. At each cardinal point of the square rose a spire of carved bone. Alternating squares of red and bronze, like a checkerboard, made up the floor. Their witchlights gave the only illumination; the torches set in brackets along the walls had long burned out.
“Perhaps out in London,” Ari said. Her witchlight danced over a pattern of silver stars set into the floor. “They have no real need to occupy the Silent City, I suppose.”
“I would have thought they would at least be on guard against anyone entering,” said Anna. “Let me see the map again.”
They bent their heads over it. “We are in the Pavilion of Truth, here,” Ari said, pointing. “Usually the Mortal Sword would be on the wall—”
“But it’s in Idris, thankfully,” said Anna. “Here—through these rows of mausoleums—it’s marked on the map. Path of the Dead.”
Ari nodded slowly. As she fell into step beside Anna, she thought it seemed as if she’d barely taken a real breath since they’d entered the Silent City. The scent on the air—ashes and stone—was a cold reminder of the previous time she’d been here, when she had nearly died from the poison of a Mandikhor demon. The experience had not given her any desire to return.
They continued through stone halls that led them to a vaulted room filled with mausoleums, many with Shadowhunter names or symbols carved above their stone doors. They cut down a narrow path between CROSSKILL and RAVENSCROFT and ducked through a narrow dark archway like a keyhole—
And found themselves in a long corridor. Long was barely enough of a descriptor: witchlight sconces on both sides of the tunnel formed an arrow of light that receded until the distance was too far for human eyes. Something about it made Ari shudder. Maybe it was only that the rest of the Silent City’s tunnels had a more organic quality, often following unusual paths that Ari had assumed were accidents of geology. But this one felt alien and strange, as if a vein of peculiar magic ran beneath its floor of stone.
As they made their way down it, they passed runes carved into the walls: runes of death and mourning, but also runes of transformation and change. There were other runes too, bearing the sort of odd patterning that Ari saw when a Portal was made. They seemed to flare up as Anna and Ari neared them, before receding into the shadows. These, Ari suspected, were the runes that made the tunnel what it was: a telescoped version of real distance, a peculiar shortcut through time and space that would allow them to—at least, as they would perceive it—walk from London to Iceland in less than a day.
Every once in a while they would pass a door with a rune carved into it, or a narrow passageway that snaked off into the dark. There was no sound but their footsteps until Anna said, “You know, when I was a child, I thought I would be an Iron Sister.”
“Really?” said Ari. “It seems like quite a lot of routine, for you. And a lot of taking orders.”
“Sometimes I like taking orders,” said Anna, sounding amused.
“No flirting in the Silent City,” Ari said, though she felt a little shiver down her spine, as she always did when Anna teased her. “I am fairly sure that there is a Law about it.”
“I thought I would like to make weapons,” Anna said. “It seemed the opposite of wearing dresses and going to parties. In any case, it only lasted until I found out I would have to go live on a lava plain. I asked my mother if I would still be able to get my favorite chocolates there, and she said she doubted it very much. So that was enough for me.” She paused, all lightness gone from her voice. “Do you hear that?”
Ari nodded grimly. The sound of footsteps came from up ahead—many footsteps, marching in a regular tread. She narrowed her eyes but could see only shadows—and then a flash of something white. Watchers’ robes.
“Quick,” Ari whispered. They were near one of the narrow passageways leading off the tunnel; she caught hold of Anna’s sleeve and ducked into it, pulling Anna after her.
The passage was barely wide enough for both of them to stand facing each other. Ari could hear the sound of marching feet getting louder, an odd reminder that though the Chimera demons possessed the bodies of Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters, they were not them; they did not have their powers or skills.
