The Mortal Instruments - Complete Collection (260 page)

Jace was a good speaker, Clary thought with a sort of pain at her heart, in the same way that Valentine had been. She and Sebastian were behind him now, facing the plain and the crowd on it; she could feel the stares of the gathered Shadowhunters on both of them.

“Yes. Ruling it.” He smiled, a lovely easy smile, full of charm, edged with darkness. “Raziel is cruel and indifferent to our sufferings. It is time to turn from him. Turn to Lilith, Great Mother, who will give us power without punishment, leadership without the Law. Our birthright is power. It is time to claim it.”

He looked sideways with a smile as Sebastian moved forward. “And now I’ll let you hear the rest of it from Jonathan, whose dream this is,” said Jace smoothly, and he retreated, letting Sebastian slide easily into his place. He took another step back, and now he was beside Clary, his hand reaching down to twine with hers.

“Good speech,” she muttered. Sebastian was speaking; she ignored him, focusing on Jace. “Very convincing.”

“You think? I was going to start off ‘Friends, Romans, evildoers…’ but I didn’t think they’d see the humor.”

“You think they’re evildoers?”

He shrugged. “The Clave would.” He looked away from Sebastian, down at her. “You look beautiful,” he said, but his voice was oddly flat. “What happened?”

She was caught off guard. “What do you mean?”

He opened his jacket. Underneath he was wearing a white shirt. It was stained at the side and the sleeve with red. She noticed he was careful to turn away from the crowd as he showed her the blood. “I feel what he feels,” he said. “Or did you forget? I had to
iratze
myself without anyone noticing. It felt like someone was slicing my skin with a razor blade.”

Clary met his gaze. There was no point lying, was there? There was no going back, literally or figuratively. “Sebastian and I had a fight.”

His eyes searched her face. “Well,” he said, letting his jacket fall closed, “I hope you’ve worked it out, whatever it was.”

“Jace… ,” she began, but he had given his attention to Sebastian now. His profile was cold and clear in the moonlight, like a silhouette cut out of dark paper. In front of them Sebastian, who had set down his crossbow, raised his arms. “Are you with me?” he cried.

A murmur ran around the square, and Clary tensed. One of the group of Nephilim, an older man, threw his hood back and scowled. “Your father made us many promises. None were fulfilled. Why should we trust you?”

“Because I will bring you the fulfillment of my promises now. Tonight,” Sebastian said, and from his tunic he drew the imitation Mortal Cup. It glowed softly white under the moon.

The murmuring was louder now. Under its cover Jace said, “I hope this goes smoothly. I feel like I didn’t sleep last night at all.”

He was facing the crowd and the pentagram, a look of keen interest on his face. His face was delicately angular in the witchlight. She could see the scar on his cheek, the hollows at his temples, the lovely shape of his mouth.
I won’t remember this,
he had said.
When I’m back—like I was, under his control, I won’t remember being myself.
And it was true. He had forgotten every detail. Somehow, though she had known it, had seen him forget, the pain of the reality was acute.

Sebastian stepped down off the rock and moved toward the pentagram. At the edge of it he began to chant.
“Abyssum invoco. Lilith invoco. Mater mea, invoco.”

He drew a thin dagger from his belt. Tucking the Cup into the curve of his arm, he used the edge of the blade to slice into his palm. Blood welled, black in the moonlight. He slid the knife back into his belt and held his bleeding hand over the Cup, still chanting in Latin.

It was now or never. “Jace,” Clary whispered. “I know this isn’t really you. I know there’s a part of you that can’t be all right with this. Try to remember who you are, Jace Lightwood.”

His head whipped around, and he looked at her in astonishment. “What are you talking about?”

“Please try to remember, Jace. I love you. You love me—”

“I do love you, Clary,” he said, an edge to his voice. “But you said you understood. This is it. The culmination of everything we’ve worked toward.”

Sebastian flung the contents of the Cup into the center of the pentagram.
“Hic est enim calix sanguinis mei.”

“Not
we
,” Clary whispered. “I’m not part of this. Neither are you—”

Jace inhaled sharply. For a moment Clary thought it was
because of what she’d said—that maybe, somehow, she was breaking through his shell—but she followed his gaze and saw that a spinning ball of fire had appeared in the center of the pentagram. It was about the size of a baseball, but as she gazed, it grew, elongating and shaping itself, until at last it was the outline of a woman, made all of flames.

“Lilith,” Sebastian said in a ringing voice. “As you called me forth, now I call you. As you gave me life, so I give life to you.”

Slowly the flames darkened. She stood before them all now, Lilith, half again the height of an ordinary human, stripped naked with her black hair waterfalling down her back to her ankles. Her body was as gray as ash, fissured with black lines like volcanic lava. She turned her eyes to Sebastian, and they were writhing black snakes.

“My child,” she breathed.

Sebastian seemed to glow, like witchlight himself—pale skin, pale hair, and his clothes looked black in the moonlight. “Mother, I have called you up as you wished of me. Tonight you will not just be my mother but mother to a new race.” He indicated the waiting Shadowhunters, who were motionless, probably with shock. It was one thing to know a Greater Demon was going to be called, another to see one in the flesh. “The Cup,” he said, and held it out to her, its pale white rim stained with his blood.

Lilith chuckled. It sounded like massive stones grinding against one another. She took the Cup and, as casually as one might pick an insect off a leaf, tore a gash in her ashy gray wrist with her teeth. Very slowly, sludgy black blood trickled forth, spattering into the Cup, which seemed to change, darkening under her touch, its clear translucence turning to mud. “As the
Mortal Cup has been to the Shadowhunters, both a talisman and a means of transformation, so shall this Infernal Cup be to you,” she said in her charred, windblown voice. She knelt, holding out the Cup to Sebastian. “Take of my blood and drink.”

Sebastian took the Cup from her hands. It had turned black now, a shimmering black like hematite.

“As your army grows, so shall my strength,” Lilith hissed. “Soon I will be strong enough to truly return—and we shall share the fire of power, my son.”

Sebastian inclined his head. “We proclaim you Death, my mother, and profess your resurrection.”

Lilith laughed, raising her arms. Fire licked up her body, and she launched herself into the air, exploding into a dozen spinning particles of light that faded like the embers of a dying fire. When they were gone completely, Sebastian kicked at the pentagram, breaking its continuity, and raised his head. There was an awful smile on his face.

“Cartwright,” he said. “Bring forth the first.”

The crowd parted, and a robed man pushed forward, a stumbling woman at his side. A chain bound her to his arm, and long, tangled hair hid her face from view. Clary tensed all over. “Jace, what is this? What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he said, looking ahead absently. “No one’s going to be hurt. Just changed. Watch.”

Cartwright, whose name Clary dimly remembered from her time in Idris, put his hand on his captive’s head and forced her to their knees. Then he bent and took hold of her hair, jerking her head up. She looked up at Sebastian, blinking in terror and defiance, her face clearly outlined by the moon.

Clary sucked in her breath.
“Amatis.”

Luke’s sister looked
up, her blue eyes, so much like Luke’s, fastening on Clary. She seemed dizzied, shocked, her expression a little unfocused as if she’d been drugged. She tried to start to her feet, but Cartwright shoved her back down. Sebastian started toward them, the Cup in his hand.

Clary scrambled forward, but Jace caught her by the arm, pulling her back. She kicked at him, but he’d already swung her up into his arms, his hand over her mouth. Sebastian was speaking to Amatis in a low, hypnotic voice. She shook her head violently, but Cartwright caught her by her long hair and jerked her head back. Clary heard her cry out, a thin sound over the wind.

Clary thought of the night she’d stayed up watching Jace’s
chest rise and fall, thinking how she could end all this with a single knife blow. But
all this
hadn’t had a face, a voice, a plan. Now that it wore Luke’s sister’s face, now that Clary knew the plan, it was too late.

Sebastian had one hand fisted in the back of Amatis’s hair, the Cup jammed against her mouth. As he forced the contents down her throat, she retched and coughed, black fluid dripping down her chin.

Sebastian yanked the Cup back, but it had done its work. Amatis made an awful hacking sound, her body jerking upright. Her eyes bulged, turning as dark as Sebastian’s. She slapped her hands over her face, a wail escaping her, and Clary saw in astonishment that the Voyance rune was fading from her hand—fading to pallor—and then it was gone.

Amatis dropped her hands. Her expression had smoothed and her eyes were blue again. They fastened on Sebastian.

“Release her,” Clary’s brother said to Cartwright, his gaze on Amatis. “Let her come to me.”

Cartwright snapped the chain binding him to Amatis and stepped back, a curious mixture of apprehension and fascination on his face.

Amatis remained still a moment, her hands lolling at her sides. Then she stood and walked over to Sebastian. She knelt before him, her hair brushing the dirt. “Master,” she said. “How may I serve you?”

“Rise,” Sebastian said, and Amatis rose from the ground gracefully. She seemed to have a new way of moving, all of a sudden. All Shadowhunters were adroit, but she moved now with a silent grace that Clary found oddly chilling. She stood straight in front of Sebastian. For the first time Clary saw that
what she had taken for a long white dress was a nightgown, as if she had been awakened and spirited out of bed. What a nightmare, to wake up here, among these hooded figures, in this bitter, abandoned place. “Come here to me,” Sebastian beckoned, and Amatis stepped toward him. She was a head shorter than him at least, and she craned her head up as he whispered to her. A cold smile split her face.

Sebastian raised his hand. “Would you like to fight Cartwright?”

Cartwright dropped the chain he had been holding, his hand going to his weapons belt through the gap in his cloak. He was a young man, with fairish hair, and a wide, square-jawed face. “But I—”

“Surely some demonstration of her power is in order,” said Sebastian. “Come, Cartwright, she is a woman, and older than you are. Are you afraid?”

Cartwright looked bewildered, but he drew a long dagger from his belt. “Jonathan—”

Sebastian’s eyes flashed. “Fight him, Amatis.”

Her lips curved. “I would be delighted to,” she said, and sprang. Her speed was astonishing. She leaped into the air and swung her foot forward, knocking the dagger from his grip. Clary watched in astonishment as she darted up his body, driving her knee into his stomach. He staggered back, and she slammed her head into his, spinning around his body to jerk him hard by the back of his robes, yanking him to the ground. He landed at her feet with a sickening crack, and groaned in pain.

“And
that’s
for dragging me out of my bed in the middle of the night,” Amatis said, and wiped the back of her hand
across her lip, which was bleeding slightly. A faint murmur of strained laughter went around the crowd.

“And there you see it,” said Sebastian. “Even a Shadowhunter of no particular skill or strength—your pardon, Amatis—can become stronger, swifter, than their seraphically allied counterparts.” He slammed one fist into the opposite palm. “Power.
Real
power. Who is ready for it?”

There was a moment of hesitation, and then Cartwright stumbled to his feet, one hand curved protectively over his stomach. “I am,” he said, shooting a venomous look at Amatis, who only smiled.

Sebastian held up the Infernal Cup. “Then, come forward.”

Cartwright moved toward Sebastian, and as he did, the other Shadowhunters broke formation, surging toward the place where Sebastian stood, forming a ragged line. Amatis stood serenely to the side, her hands folded. Clary stared at her, willing the older woman to look at her. It was Luke’s sister. If things had gone as planned, she would have been Clary’s step-aunt now.

Amatis.
Clary thought of her small canal house in Idris, the way she had been so kind, the way she had loved Jace’s father so much.
Please look at me,
she thought.
Please show me you’re still yourself.
As if Amatis had heard her silent prayer, she raised her head and looked directly at Clary.

And smiled. Not a kind smile or a reassuring smile. Her smile was dark and cold and quietly amused. It was the smile of someone who would watch you drown, Clary thought, and not lift a finger to help. It was not Amatis’s smile. It was not Amatis at all. Amatis was gone.

Jace had taken his hand from her mouth, but she felt no
desire to scream. No one here would help her, and the person standing with his arms around her, prisoning her with his body, wasn’t Jace. The way that clothes retained the shape of their owner even if they had not been worn for years, or a pillow kept the outline of the head of the person who had once slept there even if they were long dead, that was all he was. An empty shell she had filled with her wishes and love and dreams.

And in doing so she had done the real Jace a terrible wrong. In her quest to save him, she had almost forgotten who she was saving. And she remembered what he had said to her during those few moments when he had been himself.
I hate the thought of him being with you.
Him.
That other me.
Jace had known they were two different people—that himself with the soul scraped out wasn’t himself at all.