City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)(55)

The images came faster now, like the pages of one of those books where the drawings seemed to move when you flipped them. Clary stood on top of a flight of stairs, looking down a narrow corridor, and there was Luke again, his green duffel bag at his feet. Jocelyn stood in front of him, shaking her head. “Why now, Lucian? I thought that you were dead …” Clary blinked; Luke looked different, almost a stranger, bearded, his hair long and tangled—and branches came down to block her view; she was in the park again, and green faeries, tiny as toothpicks, buzzed among the red flowers. She reached for one in delight, and her mother swung her up into her arms with a cry of terror. Then it was winter on the black street again, and they were hurrying, huddled under an umbrella, Jocelyn half-pushing and half-dragging Clary between the looming banks of snow. A granite doorway loomed up out of the falling whiteness; there were words carved above the door: THE MAGNIFICENT. Then she was standing inside an entryway that smelled of iron and melting snow. Her fingers were numb with cold. A hand under her chin directed her to look up, and she saw a row of words scrawled along the wall. Two words leaped out at her, burning into her eyes: MAGNUS BANE.

A sudden pain lanced through her right arm. She shrieked as the images fell away and she spun upward, breaking the surface of consciousness like a diver breaking up through a wave. There was something cold pressed against her cheek. She pried her eyes open and saw silver stars. She blinked twice before she realized that she was lying on the marble floor, her knees curled up to her chest. When she moved, hot pain shot up her arm.

She sat up gingerly. The skin over her left elbow was split and bleeding. She must have landed on it when she fell. There was blood on her shirt. She looked around, disoriented, and saw Jace looking at her, unmoving but very tense around the mouth.

Magnus Bane. The words meant something, but what? Before she could ask the question aloud, Jeremiah interrupted her.

The block inside your mind is stronger than we had anticipated, he said. It can be safely undone only by the one who put it there. For us to remove it would be to kill you.

She scrambled to her feet, cradling her injured arm. “But I don’t know who put it there. If I knew that, I wouldn’t have come here.”

The answer to that is woven into the thread of your thoughts, said Brother Jeremiah. In your waking dream you saw it written.

“Magnus Bane? But—that’s not even a name!”

It is enough. Brother Jeremiah got to his feet. As if this were a signal, the rest of the Brothers rose alongside him. They inclined their heads toward Jace, a gesture of silent acknowledgment, before they filed away among the pillars and were gone. Only Brother Jeremiah remained. He watched impassively as Jace hurried over to Clary.

“Is your arm all right? Let me see,” he demanded, seizing her wrist.

“Ouch! It’s fine. Don’t do that; you’re making it worse,” Clary said, trying to pull away.

“You bled on the Speaking Stars,” he said. Clary looked and saw that he was right: There was a smear of her blood on the white and silver marble. “I bet there’s a law somewhere about that.” He turned her arm over, more gently than she would have thought he was capable of. He caught his lower lip between his teeth and whistled; she glanced down and saw that a glove of blood covered her lower arm from the elbow to the wrist. The arm was throbbing, stiff, and painful.

“Is this when you start tearing strips off your T-shirt to bind up my wound?” she joked. She hated the sight of blood, especially her own.

“If you wanted me to rip my clothes off, you should have just asked.” He dug into his pocket and brought out his stele. “It would have been a lot less painful.”

Remembering the stinging sensation when the stele had touched her wrist, she braced herself, but all she felt as the glowing instrument glided lightly over her injury was a faint warmth. “There,” he said, straightening up. Clary flexed her arm in wonder—though the blood was still there, the wound was gone, as were the pain and stiffness. “And next time you’re planning to injure yourself to get my attention, just remember that a little sweet talk works wonders.”

Clary felt her mouth twitch into a smile. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. And as he turned away, she added, “And thanks.”

He slid the stele into his back pocket without turning to look at her, but she thought she saw a certain gratification in the set of his shoulders. “Brother Jeremiah,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “you’ve been very quiet all this time. Surely you have some thoughts you’d like to share?”

I am charged with leading you from the Silent City, and that is all, said the archivist. Clary wondered if she were imagining it, or if there was actually a faintly affronted tone to his “voice.”

“We could always show ourselves out,” Jace suggested hopefully. “I’m sure I remember the way—”

The marvels of the Silent City are not for the eyes of the uninitiated, said Jeremiah, and he turned his back on them with a soundless swish of robes. This way.

When they emerged into the open, Clary took deep breaths of the thick morning air, relishing the city stench of smog, dirt, and humanity. Jace looked around thoughtfully. “It’s going to rain,” he said.

He was right, Clary thought, looking up at the iron-gray sky. “Are we taking a carriage back to the Institute?”

Jace looked from Brother Jeremiah, still as a statue, to the carriage, looming like a black shadow in the archway that led to the street. Then he broke into a grin.