There was a terrible snapping sound, and Henry went limp. The automaton tossed Henry aside and turned to cuff Charlotte brutally across the face. She crumpled beside her husband’s body as the clockwork creature took a step forward, and seized hold of Brother Micah. The Silent Brother slammed his staff down on the automaton’s hand, but the creature did not even seem to notice. With a rumble of machinery that sounded like a laugh, it reached out and tore the Silent Brother’s throat open.
Blood sprayed across the room, and Cecily did exactly what she had promised herself she would not do, and screamed.
21
BURNING GOLD
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
—William Blake, “Jerusalem”
Tessa’s training at the Institute had never addressed how difficult it was to run with a weapon strapped to your side. With every stride she took, the dagger slapped against her leg, its point scratching her skin. She knew it ought to have been sheathed—and on Will’s belt, probably had been—but there was no use in hindsight now. Will and Magnus were running pell-mell down the rocky corridors inside Cadair Idris, and she was doing her level best to keep up.
It was Magnus who was leading the way, as he seemed to have the best idea where they were going. Tessa had gone nowhere inside the morass of twisty corridors without being blindfolded, and Will admitted he remembered little of his solitary journey of the night before.
The tunnels narrowed and widened again haphazardly as the three of them made their way through the labyrinth, with no seeming rhyme or reason to the pattern. At last, as they moved into a wider tunnel, they heard something—the sound of a distant cry of horror.
Magnus went tense all over. Will’s head jerked up. “Cecily,” he said, and then he was running twice as fast as he had been, both Magnus and Tessa racing to keep up. They hurtled by strange chambers: one whose door seemed splashed with blood, another Tessa recognized as the room with the desk where Mortmain had forced her to Change, and another where a great lattice of metal and copper twisted in an invisible wind. As they raced forward, the sounds of cries and battle grew louder, until finally they burst into a massive circular chamber.
It was full of automatons. Row upon row of them, as many as had poured down on the village the night before while Tessa had watched helplessly. Most of them were still, but a group of them, in the center of the room, were moving—moving and engaged in a fierce battle. It was like seeing all over again what had happened on the steps of the Institute as she had been dragged away—the Lightwood brothers fighting side by side, Cecily swinging a shimmering seraph blade, the body of a Silent Brother crumpled on the floor. Tessa registered distantly that two other Silent Brothers were fighting alongside the Shadowhunters, anonymous in their hooded parchment robes, but her attention was not on them. It was on Henry, who lay, still and unmoving, on the floor. Charlotte, crumpled on her knees, had her arms about him as if she could shield him from the churning battle going on all around them, but Tessa guessed from the whiteness of his face and the stillness of his body that it was too late to shield Henry from anything.
Will darted forward. “No seraph blades!” he cried. “Fight them with other weapons! The angel blades are useless!”
Cecily, hearing him, jerked back even as her seraph blade connected with the automaton she was fighting—and crumbled away like dry frost, its fire gone. She had the presence of mind to duck beneath the creature’s swinging arm, just as Cyril and Bridget plunged toward her, Cyril laying about him with a stout staff. The automaton went down under Cyril’s assault, as Bridget, a flying menace of red hair and steely blades, sliced her way past Cecily to Charlotte’s side, shearing the arms off two automatons with her sword before whirling about, her back to Charlotte, as if she meant to protect the head of the Institute with her life.
Will’s hands were suddenly tight on Tessa’s upper arms. She caught a glimpse of his white, set face as he pushed her toward Magnus, hissing: “Stay with her!” Tessa began to protest, but Magnus caught hold of her, drawing her back even as Will dashed into the melee, fighting his way toward his sister.
Cecily was fending off a massive, barrel-chested automaton with two arms on its right side. Seraph blade abandoned, she had only a short sword to defend herself. Her hair began to slip free of its fastenings as she lunged forward, stabbing at the creature’s shoulder. It roared like a bull, and Tessa shuddered. God, these creatures made such sounds; before Mortmain had changed them, they had been silent—they had been things; now they were beings. Malevolent, murderous beings. Tessa started forward as the automaton fighting Cecily seized the blade of her weapon and jerked it out of her grasp, pulling her forward—she heard Will call out his sister’s name—
And Cecily was caught and thrown to the side by one of the Silent Brothers. In a whirl of parchment robes, he spun to face the creature, staff held before him. As the automaton lurched toward him, the Brother swung out with the staff, with such speed and force that the automaton was knocked back, its chest dented inward. It tried to move forward again, but its body was too badly bent. It gave an angry whir, and Cecily, scrambling back up to her feet, cried out a warning.
Another automaton had loomed up beside the first. As the Silent Brother turned, the second automaton knocked the staff from his hand and seized him, lifting him off his feet, wrapping its metal arms around his body from behind, in the parody of an embrace. The Brother’s hood fell back, and his silvery hair shone out in the dim chamber like starlight.
All the air rushed out of Tessa’s lungs in a single instant. The Silent Brother was Jem.
Jem.
It was as if the world had stopped. Every figure was still, even the automatons, frozen in time. Tessa stared across the room at Jem, and he looked back at her. Jem, in the parchment robes of a Silent Brother. Jem, whose silvery hair, tumbling over his face, was threaded through with black. Jem, whose cheeks were scarred with two matching red cuts, one over each cheekbone.
Jem, who was not dead.
Tessa, jerked from her frozen shock, heard Magnus say something to her, felt him reach for her arm, but she tore away from him and plunged into the melee. He shouted after her, but all she saw was Jem—Jem seizing at the automaton’s arm where it wrapped his throat, his scrabbling fingers unable to find a purchase on the smooth metal. Its grip tightened, and Jem’s face began to suffuse with blood as he strangled. She drew her dagger, slashing out in front of her to clear a path, but she knew it was impossible, knew she couldn’t get to him in time—
The automaton gave a roar and toppled forward. Its legs had been sliced clean through from behind, and as it fell, Tessa saw Will rising from a crouch, a long-bladed sword in his hand. He reached out for the automaton as if he could catch it, prevent its fall, but it had already crashed to the floor, half on top of Jem, whose staff had rolled from his hand. Jem lay still, pinned by the massive machine above him.
Tessa darted forward, ducking under the outstretched arm of a clockwork creature. She heard Magnus shout something from behind her but ignored it. If she could get to Jem before he was badly hurt, even crushed—but as she ran, a shadow fell across her vision. She skidded to a stop, and looked up into the face of a leering automaton, reaching for her with clawed fingers.