Chain of Gold

Standing just behind where the demon had been was Jesse.

He held the sword that had hung on the wall in the tiny coffin-room. Though there was ichor on the blade and spattered on the ground at his feet, there were no stains on his clothes, or on his bare hands. The sky was black above: his green eyes glittered as he slowly lowered the sword.

“Jesse,” Lucie breathed. “I—”

She broke off as Grace took a staggering step forward. Her gaze darted from Lucie to Jesse and back again, her expression incredulous. “But I don’t understand,” she said, gripping one hand with the other. “How can you see Jesse?”

* * *

James had thought Matthew and Cordelia still might try to prevent him, but after he explained—the words echoing in his own ears as he told them how he had put the pieces of it all together—he knew that they would not. Both stared at him with drained, pale faces, but neither made a move to stand between him and the gateway.

Matthew—disheveled, dirty, still with his incongruous spats on—drew himself up, his chin high. “Then, if you must go, I will go with you,” he said.

James’s heart broke. How could he do this to Matthew? How could he contemplate dying in a place Matthew could never follow him to?

And yet.

“It won’t work,” he said softly. “No one can follow me into the shadows, Math. Not even you.”

Matthew walked swiftly toward the archway, even as James called out to him in sharp alarm. He reached out to touch the empty space below the arch, where the green ground of the cemetery turned to ash and grayness.

His hand bounced back as if he had slammed it into glass. He turned back to face his companions, and Cordelia saw that he was shaking.

“Cordelia, do you have rope?” he said.

Cordelia still had the rope they had used to climb to Gast’s window. Matthew took it from her; as James and Cordelia looked on, mystified, he secured one end of the rope around James’s waist.

Despite the shaking of his hands, he tied an excellent knot.

The other end of the rope he secured around his own waist.When he was done, he looked steadily at James. “Go on, then,” he said. “If something happens—if you need us to pull you back through—tug on the rope three times.”

“I will,” James said. He turned to Cordelia; he was standing so close to the archway that the outline of his left side seemed grayed out, as if he were a sketch that was rapidly being erased. “Cordelia—”

Cordelia leaned over and kissed James swiftly on the cheek. She saw him blink and touch his fingers to the spot in surprise. “Come back,” she said.

James nodded. There was nothing more for any of them to say. With a last look behind him, James stepped through the archway and disappeared.

* * *

The world beyond the archway was black and gray. James moved first through amorphous shapes, and then into a place where a path wound between dunes of dry sand. The air was thick and acrid and tasted of smoke, and dust seemed to blow ceaselessly through the air, forcing him to shield his eyes with one hand.

Just above him, he could see a hole in gray-black clouds, and strange constellations of stars. They gleamed like the eyes of spiders. Some distance away, clouds had gathered and black rain was falling.

His only comfort was the rope around his waist. Like all Shadowhunter rope, its reach was much longer than it appeared: it unrolled and unrolled behind him with no sign of running out. He kept tight hold of it with his right hand: somewhere on the other end were Matthew and Cordelia.

After some time, the landscape changed. For the first time he saw the ruins of what had once been a civilization. Broken pillars littered the dry ground, along with the crumbling remains of old stone walls. In the far distance he thought he could make out the shape of a watchtower.

The path curved around a dune. When James emerged from the other side, he could see the tower more clearly. It rose like a spear against the torn sky. In front of him was a square surrounded by the ruins of walls, and in the middle of the square stood a man.

He was dressed all in white, like a mourning Shadowhunter. His hair was a pale gray color, though he did not look old: it was the color of doves’ feathers, cut unfashionably long. His eyes were a familiar steel gray. James recalled the illustration of the princes in the book he had studied, but those had been monstrous depictions: this was a Prince of Hell showing himself in his most human form. He looked like a statue carved by a divine hand: his features were ageless, handsome, everything in balance. It was possible to see in his face the terrible beauty of the fallen. Even his hands looked as if they had once been shaped for acts of divinity: for prayer and holy war at once.

“Hello, Grandfather,” James said.

The demon came toward him, smiling courteously. The acrid wind ruffled his pale hair. “You know who I am, then?”

“You are Belial,” said James.

“What a clever boy,” said Belial. “I had taken great care to leave no trace behind me.” His hand described a graceful parabola in the air; his knuckles were like curved hinges. “But then, you are my grandson.”

“But this is not your realm,” said James. “It was Belphegor’s realm, was it not? And you took it from him.”

Belial chuckled benignly. “Poor Belphegor,” he said. “I wounded him quite gravely when he was not expecting it. No doubt he is still floating about in the space between the worlds, trying to find his way home. Not a nice fellow, Belphegor—I wouldn’t waste your sympathy on him.”

“It isn’t sympathy,” said James. “I thought at first perhaps Belphegor was my grandfather. But it didn’t fit. Not quite. Then Agaliarept said that his master’s realm had been taken from him—”

“You met Agaliarept?” Belial seemed highly amused. “What a fellow. We spent some good times together before he got himself trapped in that box. You do move in interesting circles, James.”

James ignored this. “And I started to think, who would steal a whole world? And why?” He watched Belial’s face for any change, but the Prince of Hell betrayed no emotion. “Then I remembered reading a book that mentioned you.”

“Many books mention me,” said Belial.

“This one called you the thief of realms, of worlds. And I—I thought it was a mistake. That it had meant to say you were the greatest thief in all the worlds, in any world. But it was correct, wasn’t it? You steal realms. You stole this realm from Belphegor.” James felt dizzy; his wrist, where Christopher’s nails had scored him, ached and throbbed. “You thought no one would guess you were behind the demon attacks. You thought that if you left traces, they would be ascribed to Belphegor. What I don’t understand is that all my life, you have been showing me this place, this realm—” He broke off, fighting for control. “I see this world whether I wish to or not. But why show me a realm that isn’t yours?”

Belial grimaced. “You are mortal, and you measure out your lives in days and years. We demons measure our lives in centuries and millennia. When I wrested this place from my brother, there were no Shadowhunters. They were not even a thought in Raziel’s stupid pretty little head. Over the centuries I have bent everything in this realm to my will. Every tree, every rock, every grain of sand is under my command, and so, my boy, are you. That is why I brought you here.”

“I came here of my own free will,” said James. “I chose to meet you face-to-face.”

“When did you know I was not Belphegor?”

James felt suddenly weary. “Does it matter? I guessed some of it when the Mandikhor on the bridge spoke to me. There was no reason for a Prince of Hell to want to see me so badly unless we shared blood, and no reason for him to be so cagey about which prince he was unless he was playing some sort of trick. Agaliarept said his master’s realm had been stolen by a more cunning demon, and I had heard my grandfather called Hell’s most cunning prince. When Ariadne spoke, when she called her master the Lord of Thieves, I knew it. The Mandikhor’s master, the thief, the cunning prince, my grandfather—they were one and the same.”

“And who do you think spoke to you through Ariadne, and the others?” said Belial. He waved a lazy hand in the air, and for a moment, James glimpsed the infirmary in the Silent City. The sick were lying motionless in their beds, Jem guarding the archway, his staff in his hand. The room was silent. James could not help but gaze at Christopher, still and bruised-looking. “I had grown tired of your dawdling,” Belial said, lowering his hand. The vision blinked out of existence. “You needed to understand that if you did not come to me, the dying would never stop.”

James thought of Matthew and Cordelia. How they had stared at him in disbelief when he had told them why he had to go through the gateway, why he had no choice. I must meet my grandfather in his realm, whether it is a trap or not. Some traps must be sprung. For if I do not meet him and bargain with him, there will never be an end to this death.

“You are the reason there have been so few demons all these years in London,” said James. Too scared to show their faces, Polly had said. “They stayed away because they were afraid of you. But why?”

“To make you all soft,” Belial said. “The Mandikhor has cut through you like a knife through bread, and why not? You remember nothing of what it means to be warriors.”

“And then you started to let the demons back in,” James said slowly. “To keep us anxious and distracted. Not paying attention.”

Belial flicked sand from his sleeve. “You and your friends seem to have been paying quite a bit of attention.”

James spoke coldly. “We humans are not such fools as you think.”

Belial’s smile widened. “You have me all wrong, child, if you think I feel that humans are foolish,” he said. “They are Heaven’s most beloved creation. ‘In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god,’  ” he quoted softly. “ ‘The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.’   ”