Son of the Dawn is the first short story in Ghosts of the Shadow Market: An Anthology of Tales, co-written by Cassandra Clare and Sarah Rees Brennan.
Description
The Lightwoods, the Shadowhunters who run the New York Institute, are expecting a new addition to their family: the orphaned son of their father's friend, Jace Wayland. Alec and Isabelle aren't too sure they want a new brother, and their parents are not assuaging their fears, too occupied with the dark news that Raphael Santiago, second-in-command of the New York vampire clan, has brought from the Shadow Market.[1]
Characters
- Brother Zachariah
- Raphael Santiago
- Lily Chen
- Ragnor Fell
- Isabelle Lightwood
- Alec Lightwood
- Robert Lightwood
- Maryse Lightwood
- Jace Wayland
- Catherine Ashdown
- Max Lightwood
Mentioned only:
- Magnus Bane
- Aldous Nix (alluded to)
- Camille Belcourt (alluded to)
- Will Herondale
- Tessa Gray
- Brother Enoch
- Michael Wayland
- Aline Penhallow
- Jia Penhallow
- Hodge Starkweather
- Whitelaw family
Information
The following are non-spoilery information revealed or shared prior to its initial release:
- This is the only installment that does not chronologically follow the next installment.[2]
- This story is set in New York City, when the young Jace first arrived and met Izzy and Alec.
- Raphael is the de facto head of the New York vampire clan at the time of this story. Raphael is friendly with Tessa[3] and knows enough about Jem that he feels he can approach him at the Shadow Market when he needs Shadowhunter aid in dealing with a truly vile threat to his city. More of how Raphael and Lily worked as a team, and the different ways they both respond to meeting Jem, will be seen.
- This installment has parts told from Isabelle's POV.
Snippets
"It's shallow," Alec said after a moment, "but our parents really would want to know. Mom could put an iratze on—"
"No! It's better for your parents not to know it happened at all. It was just bad luck one of them got me. I'm a good fighter,” Jace protested sharply.
He was so vehement it was almost alarming. If he hadn't been eleven, Isabelle would have thought he was worried they might send him away for being an inadequate soldier.
“You're obviously great," said Alec. "You just need someone to have your back."
He put his hand lightly on Jace's shoulder as he spoke. It was a small gesture Isabelle would not even have noted, except for the fact she had never seen Alec reach out like that to anyone who was not family and that Jace Wayland went perfectly still at his touch, as if he was afraid the tiniest movement would scare Alec away.
“Does it hurt a lot?" Alec added sympathetically.
"No," Jace Wayland whispered.
Isabelle thought it was perfectly clear Jace Wayland would claim having his leg cut off did not hurt, but Alec was an honest soul.
"Okay," said her brother, "Let me grab a few things from the infirmary. Let's deal with this together.”
Alec nodded in an encouraging fashion and went to fetch supplies from the infirmary, leaving Isabelle and this weird bleeding boy alone together.
“So you and your brother seem...really close,” Jace said.
Isabelle blinked. "Sure."
What a concept, being close to your family. Isabelle refrained from being sarcastic as Jace was both unwell and a guest.
“So...I guess you're going to be parabatai," Jace ventured.
"Oh, no, I dont think so," said Isabelle.
"Jonathan?" Maryse remarked. "Does anyone ever call you anything else?"
"No," said Jonathan Wayland. "My father used to tell a joke about having another Jonathan, if I wasn't good enough."
Isabelle did not think that was much of a joke.
"I always think that naming one of our kids Jonathan is like the mundanes calling kids Jebediah," said Isabelle's mother.
"John," said her father. "Mundanes often call their kids John."
"Do they?" asked Maryse, and shrugged. "I could have sworn it was Jebediah."
"My middle name is Christopher," said Jonathan. "You can—you can call me Christopher if you like."
Maryse and Isabelle exchanged a speaking look. She and her mother had always been able to communicate like this. Isabelle thought it was because they were the only girls, and special to each other. She could not imagine her mother telling her anything she would not want to hear.
"We're not going to rename you," said Mom softly.
Isabelle was not sure if her mother was sad that Jonathan thought they would do that, give him a different name as if he was a pet, or sad that he would let them.
"Maybe a nickname," Maryse proposed. "What would you think of Jace?"
Every world contains other worlds within it. People wander through all the worlds they can find, searching for their homes.
Some humans thought their world was the only world there was. Little did they know of other worlds as close to their own as a room, or the demons trying to find a door through to them, and the Shadowhunters who barred those doors. Still less did they know of the Downworld, the community of magical creatures who shared their world and carved out their own little space therein.
Every community needs a heart. There had to be a common area where everyone could gather, to trade for goods and secrets, to find love and riches. There were Shadow Markets, where Downworlders and those with the Sight met, all over the world. Usually they were held outside.
Even magic was a little different in New York.
The abandoned theater on Canal Street had stood since the 1920s, silent witness to but not part of the blaze of activity that was the city. Humans who did not have the Sight passed by its terra-cotta façade in a hurry about their own affairs. If they spared the theater a look, they thought it as dark and still as ever.
They could not see the haze of faerie light that turned the gutted amphitheater and bare concrete halls to gold. Brother Zachariah could.
He walked, a creature of silence and darkness, through halls with sunshine yellow tiles, panels of gold and red blazing on the ceiling above him. There were busts grimy with age set in alcoves along the walls, but for tonight faeries had coaxed flowers and ivy to twine around them. Werewolves had set little twinkling charms depicting the moon and stars in the boarded windows, lending brightness to the decayed red curtains still hanging in the arched frames. There were lamps with casements that reminded Brother Zachariah of a time long ago, when he and all the world had been different. In one vast echoing theater room there hung a chandelier that had not worked in years, but tonight warlock magic had encompassed each bulb with a different-colored flame. Like burning jewels, amethyst and ruby, sapphire and opal, their light created a private world that seemed both new and old, and restored the theater to all its former glory. Some worlds only lasted one night.
If the Market had the power to lend him warmth and illumination for only a night, Brother Zachariah would have taken it.
A persistent faerie woman had tried to sell him a love charm four times. Zachariah wished such a charm would work on him. Creatures as inhuman as he did not sleep, but sometimes he lay down and rested, hoping for something like peace. It never came. He spent his long nights feeling love slip through his fingers, more a memory by now than a feeling.
Brother Zachariah did not belong to the Downworld. He was a Shadowhunter, and not only a Shadowhunter but one of the cloaked and hooded brotherhood dedicated to arcane secrets and the dead, sworn and runed to silence and withdrawal from any world. Even his own kind often feared the Silent Brothers, and Downworlders usually avoided any Shadowhunter, but the Downworlders were used to the presence of this particular Shadowhunter at Markets now. Brother Zachariah had been coming to Shadow Markets for a hundred years, on a long quest that even he had begun to believe would be fruitless. Yet he continued searching. Brother Zachariah had little enough, but one thing he did have was time, and he had always tried to be patient.
Tonight, though, he had already been disappointed. The warlock Ragnor Fell had no word for him. None of his few other contacts, painstakingly gathered over the decades, had attended this Market. He was lingering not because he was enjoying this Shadow Market, but because he remembered enjoying Markets once.
They had felt like an escape, but Brother Zachariah hardly remembered the wish to escape from the City of Bones, where he belonged. Always in the back of his mind, cold as a tide waiting to wash all other things away, were the voices of his brothers.
They were urging him home.
Brother Zachariah turned under the glitter of diamond-paned windows. He was leaving the Market, making his way through the laughing, bargaining crowd, when he heard a woman’s voice saying his name.
"Tell me again why we want this Brother Zachariah. The normal Nephilim are bad enough. Angel in the veins, stick up the butts, and I bet with Silent Brothers it’s a whole staff. We definitely can’t take him out for karaoke."
The woman was speaking in English, but a boy’s voice replied to her in Spanish: "Quiet. I see him."
It was a pair of vampires, and as he turned, the boy lifted a hand to attract Zachariah’s attention. The vampire with his hand up looked fifteen years old at most, and the other like a young woman about nineteen, but that told Zachariah nothing. Zachariah still looked young too.
It was unusual for a strange Downworlder to want his attention.
"Brother Zachariah?" asked the boy. "I came here to meet you."
The woman whistled. "Now I see why we might want him. Helloooo, Brother Mackariah."
Did you? Brother Zachariah asked the boy. He felt what would once have been surprise, and now was at least intrigue. Can I be of any use to you?
"I certainly hope so," said the vampire. "I am Raphael Santiago, second in command of the New York clan, and I dislike useless people."
“What do the initials mean? On your staff. Do all Silent Brothers have them?”
They looked together at the staff. The letters were worn by time and Zachariah’s own flesh, but they had been struck deep into the wood in the precise places where Zachariah would put his hands on them when he fought. So, in a way, they would always be fighting together.
The letters were W and H.
No, said Brother Zachariah. I am the only one. I carved them into the staff on my first night in the City of Bones.
“Were they your initials?” the boy asked, his voice low and a little timid. “Back when you were a Shadowhunter, like me?”
Brother Zachariah still considered himself a Shadowhunter, but Jonathan clearly did not mean any offense.
No, said Jem, because he was always James Carstairs when he spoke of what was dearest to him. Not mine.
Gallery
Trivia
- The title of the story is a reference to Lucifer.[4] In the Book of Isaiah's Hebrew text, Lucifer is at times referred to as "son of the dawn"—or son of the morning—next to his more known title הילל בן שחר, "morning star".[5]
- It is somehow connected to Forever Fallen, both installments with titles referencing Lucifer and both featuring Jace Herondale as a prominent character.[4]
References
- ↑ Son of the Dawn | Simon & Schuster
- ↑ https://tmisource.com/2017/11/02/exklusives-interview-mit-cassandra-clareexclusive-interview-with-cassandra-clare-gereng/
- ↑ http://cassandraclare.tumblr.com/post/171542944679/hi-cassie-i-was-wondering-what-sort-of-a-role
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "... there is indeed a connection between the titles “Son of the Dawn” and “Forever Fallen”!" Cassandra Clare on Tumblr
- ↑
Lucifer on Wikipedia
