Shadowhunter’s Codex

by Cassandra Clare

  In addition, for security reasons new Portals may not be opened directly into Alicante. Despite the partially demonic origin of the Portal, Shadowhunters have grown used to its convenience, and so typically Portals are opened to the outskirts of Alicante, outside the walls. The only exception is the permanent Portal in the Gard. Shadowhunters often grumble about it, but the prohibition remains: Portals are created by warlocks, and while we are allied with warlocks as a group, we could not leave a hole in our defenses that would allow any possible rogue to open a Portal directly into our sanctum sanctorum.

  FEATURES OF ALICANTE

  The city is found in a shallow valley and divided by its river. The construction is mostly in gold- and honey-colored stone, with red tile roofs. Alicante rises up the side of a steep hill on one side, and its houses pile atop one another. From the river, canals have been dug, of which the largest is Princewater Canal. The new Shadowhunter is encouraged to stroll down Princewater Street and stand upon Oldcastle Bridge, from which the sound of the lapping water of the canal will accompany your excellent view of both the Gard and the Great Hall.

  Apart from its unusual demon towers, Alicante is a city of canals. Since wells must be kept shallow to avoid piercing the adamas veins below the city, and the adamas provides a similar problem for Roman-style aqueducts, for many hundreds of years most fresh water was brought into the city by a series of artificial canals, crossed by Alicante’s distinctive arched stone bridges. Today a network of underground pipes allows for running water in most Alicante homes, and its canals remain as reminders of an older age and as a charming feature of the city.

  THE DEMON TOWERS

  The demon towers of Alicante are Idris’s most dramatic physical feature, a true wonder of the world. With the towers soaring into the sky like the finials of a heavenly crown, formed of pure adamas, it seems impossible that they could have been made by human hands. And in fact our history teaches us that they were not: The accounts of Jonathan Shadowhunter that have come down to us suggest that they were brought into being by Raziel, and that they grow out of a thick vein of adamas placed by Raziel under the earth to be mined for our Nephilim weapons and tools.

  Raziel’s words to Jonathan Shadowhunter include, in addition to the discussion of the Mortal Instruments, a mention of “a gift I bring to you upon the Earth.” It’s been often thought that this refers to the carving (and warding) of Idris out of the wilderness in the southern part of the Holy Roman Empire, but others have argued that it refers to the demon towers.

  All Shadowhunters should look to the demon towers to remind themselves of their appointed station. These warded spires are a constant reminder that we are chosen and protected by the Angel, and that we are not entirely alone in our mission.

  The demon towers have stood unchanged since the time of the very first Shadowhunters. Unlike with all other examples of worked adamas, their glow does not diminish with use, and their power has no need of being refreshed. Scholars have worked to determine why this might be, and whether the towers behave like normal adamas in other ways—whether they could be disabled by a dark ritual, whether they could be Marked, and so on. The towers remain the greatest lasting mystery of Raziel, and one that those in Alicante will find themselves contemplating as they pass under the towers’ shadows. Next Codex revision—demon towers less majestic and mysterious. More reminder of bad stuff.

  Yeah, this part seems a little naive now.

  THE GARD

  The Gard is the official meeting place of the Clave. It is the home of the Consul and Inquisitor and their families, and it is where the Law is made and debated. When the Clave is officially in session, only adult Shadowhunters are allowed onto its grounds.

  The building is of dark stone and is basic in its architecture—a simple fortress, built for safety and supported on all sides by undecorated pillars. (Undecorated by architectural features, that is; the pillars are of course extensively inscribed with protective Marks.) Four demon towers, smaller than the ones that guard the city, rise from the four cardinal points of the building. Legend tells us that it was to the center of these demon towers that Raziel brought Jonathan Shadowhunter before telling him, “This is where your work shall begin.” The Gard is thus believed to be on the site of the original small settlement that became Alicante, although the original structures are long gone; earlier generations did not have the reverence for history that we do now.

  The gates of the Gard are among its most dramatic features; several times taller than a man, they are wrought from a combination of silver and cold iron, and are covered in calligraphic interpretations of Marks. On either side of the gates stand the stone statues, known colloquially as the Guardians. Each is a warrior-angel holding a carved sword and standing above a dying creature meant to represent the demonic enemies of the Nephilim—a reminder that angels are beautiful, but also terrible, and that just as we are in part angel, so are we warriors.

  There is only one Portal open in Alicante, and it is in the Gard, for the use of the Clave in times of emergency. The potential danger of this “back door” is mitigated by this Portal’s being “reverse-warded” in the manner of an Institute’s Sanctuary. That is, Marks block it off as a place outside the protection of wards. The demonic magic involved in Portal construction can function inside this one room of the Gard, much as a vampire could stand safely in the Sanctuary of an Institute. This of course represents a large potential security risk, and so the exact location of the Portal is a closely guarded secret.

  ANGEL SQUARE AND THE GREAT HALL

  One of Alicante’s most picturesque and historically relevant spots is the plaza located at the city’s center, Angel Square, known for the bronze statue of the Angel Raziel that stands at the heart of the square. It is the largest statue of Raziel in the world, although one can find many smaller copies of it in Institutes around the globe. (Many of these claim to be recasts of the original sculpture, and some are, but others are definitely not; this distinction is, however, of interest only to historians of Shadowhunter art and thus will not be addressed in detail here.)

  At the northern end of the square stands the Great Hall of the Angel, built in the eighteenth century as a general meeting hall for all Shadowhunters. This neoclassical edifice, with its long marble staircase and its magnificent pillared arcade, is a symbol of the enduring strength and integrity of the Nephilim.

  In 1872 the Great Hall was used as the location for the historic signing of the First Accords, since Downworlders are not being permitted to enter the Gard. This signing marked the first occasion when Downworlders were permitted into Alicante in large groups; they entered the city through the north gate as is traditional. Since the signing, the building has been commonly referred to as the Accords Hall, and it continues to be used every fifteen years for the revising and signing of the Accords. In other times it is the site of celebrations, ceremonies, weddings, and festivals.

  The majority of the interior of the Hall is taken up by a single large room, the site of these ceremonies; its walls are pale white and its ceiling high, with a large glass skylight that allows natural sunlight in. In the center of the room stands a large fountain in the shape of a mermaid, commissioned and sculpted in 1902 to celebrate the Third Accords, the first of the new century.

  THE ARMORY

  The Armory is an imposing stone stronghold on the eastern side of Alicante, part storehouse, part museum, part research center. It represents the only presence of the Iron Sisters within Idris proper, although visitors rarely see them, since the Sisters spend most of their time below ground level, working on new weapon designs, performing repairs, and the like. The Armory serves the same function for Alicante as the weapons room does for an Institute. The Clave has the authority to take whatever weaponry they need from it to outfit Shadowhunters for conflict within Idris. Those who are not Clave members are restricted to the south wing, which serves as a museum of antiquated weapons no longer in use, and showcases a small collection of weapons made fam
ous in Shadowhunter legend.

  The building was constructed in a medieval style, echoing fortress imagery, with its high stone walls lined in turrets. However, it dates only from the early 1800s and was built in a self-consciously antiquated style. The interior is not at all laid out like a fortress, and the impression that it gives of being able to withstand artillery fire is mostly a surface affectation. The Iron Sisters are protected instead by doing their work in its extensive and labyrinthine basement levels. A passage somewhere in those basement levels is said to lead directly to the Adamant Citadel.

  THE SILENT CITY

  For many Shadowhunters the Silent City is something taken for granted, a home for the Silent Brothers and a complex city of levels and chambers that has always been there, that has been inhabited for eternity. In truth the Silent City constitutes one of the great engineering feats of its millennium, on par with the building of the greatest of mundane cathedrals and temples.

  THE BUILDING OF THE SILENT CITY

  The actual construction of the Silent City was undertaken by the Silent Brothers, and it took roughly four hundred years for the City to attain its current size and reach. It began as a cavern of worked stone in the mysterious non-geographical space beneath Idris, no more than a small council chamber, a small area used as living quarters, and the earliest Shadowhunter graveyard. That is how David the Silent described it. At that point, of course, it would not have been described as a city. It became known to Shadowhunters as the Silent Cloister and was slowly expanded over the first hundred years or so of the Shadowhunters. Although it had become much larger than its original state, it was still more like a great underground manor house than like a city. Residences for the earliest Silent Brothers had been moved to a separate level; the area for gravesites had been, inevitably, expanded; and the Sword-Chamber, as it was then known, was larger and more imposing.

  THE CITY EXPANDS

  In roughly 1300 the first two entrances to the Silent Cloister were built outside Idris: one in what is now the city of Bangalore, in southern India, and one in the city of Heidelberg, in what is now southern Germany. Both were created to allow Silent Brothers much easier access to the extensive research materials those cities contained; the Silent Brothers also began to recruit for their ranks among the mundane monks and scholars who either lived in or traveled to those cities for wisdom.

  At this point construction and expansion of the Silent Cloisters accelerated rapidly. Already by 1402, Council records referred to “That Great City, whose levels we know not and whose secrets the Brothers keep in Silence.” The means by which the Silent Brothers were excavating their city, and even the location on Earth where this extensive city resided, was a closely guarded secret. It remains one of the mysteries that only Silent Brothers are permitted to know. (It’s widely believed that the Iron Sisters assisted in the construction presumably by building devices for digging and construction. The Iron Sisters, however, keep their secrets just as faultlessly as the Silent Brothers.) Specific historical details are few, but we do know that the prisons of the Nephilim were moved from an outbuilding of the Gard in Alicante (now long demolished) to the deepest levels of the City in 1471, and that the council chamber that most Shadowhunters who have visited the City have seen was completed and opened to Shadowhunters in 1536. Construction and expansion continued after that, however. In fact, we cannot say for sure that the Silent Brothers are not still expanding, building their City ever larger; we have no proof either way.

  VISITING THE SILENT CITY

  Most Shadowhunters only ever see the two upper levels of the City—its archives, and its council chamber, where the Soul-Sword resides. There are, however, levels upon levels, plunging deep into the earth. The vast majority of these levels are off-limits to anyone who is not a Silent Brother, and the details of the Silent Brothers’ living quarters, sustenance, laboratories, etc., remain a closely guarded secret. The exceptions are at the lowest depths of the city, where a series of levels holds the necropolis of the Shadowhunters and thousands and thousands of our people are laid to rest. And below these, on the very lowest levels, are the prisons.

  The prisons of the Silent City can hold the living, the undead, and the dead; they are designed to constrain all creatures, however magical. (The exceptions here are demons, who may be powerful enough to break out of even the strongest cells.) Where those guilty of lesser violations may be incarcerated in Alicante, or in the keeps of Institutes, the cells of the Silent City are reserved only for the worst of Lawbreakers and the most dangerous of wrongdoers. Pray that you never need see them yourself.

  * * *

  SILENT CITY: NOT A TRANSIT HUB!

  Since there are entrances to the Silent City all over the globe, one might reasonably ask whether the city provides Shadowhunters with a convenient route for travel. One could presumably travel quickly between distant places by, say, entering the Silent City in New York City and exiting in Tokyo. Indeed, Silent Brothers do use the Silent City’s entrances in this fashion, so that they can be rapidly deployed where they are needed. Iron Sisters, too, are permitted to use the City this way, although they are rarely seen outside their Citadel. Regular Shadowhunters are not permitted, by tradition and Law, to use the City as a glorified train station. The general consensus is that this would not be a good idea, as it would likely involve passing through parts of the Silent City that the Nephilim who are not Brothers would find too horrifying to experience without losing their minds. This may or may not be true, but the Silent Brothers have done nothing to deny the rumors.

  THE ADAMANT CITADEL

  As the Silent Brothers carefully keep the secrets of their City, most Shadowhunters know even less about the Adamant Citadel, the home of the Iron Sisters. In many ways it is simpler, of course, since it is a single fortress rather than an entire city. On the other hand its mysteries are such that, for all we know, it could extend as extensively and as deeply as the Silent City; its inner chambers may be walked by only the Sisters themselves.

  The Adamant Citadel stands on a volcanic plain, a stretch of dried lava beds, black and forbidding; a narrow river of molten lava rings it like a moat. It is reached—like the Silent City—through one of a number of entrances scattered around the world, the oldest of which resides on the lowest floor of the Armory in Alicante. The volcanic activity serves as a convenient defense for the Citadel, of course, but the location was probably selected to provide the Sisters with the extreme heat that they require for their forges.

  The Portals that lead to the Citadel will not take you directly into the fortress, but rather to the volcanic plain, outside the walls. A ring of smooth, unbroken adamas, many times taller than a person, surrounds the Citadel; this ring, which appears to be a single continuous band of adamas, with no signs of mortaring or structural engineering, is an imposing sight, a reminder that the Iron Sisters are not simple blacksmiths but rather are working with seraphic forces that we can barely comprehend. In the walls is set one gate, formed of two gigantic blades that cross each other to form a pointed arch. This gate is normally left open but can be closed and sealed in times of emergency.

  Through the gate, however, the fortress is still well protected. The actual Citadel building can be reached only by crossing a drawbridge, which can be lowered only by a small sacrifice of blood from a female Shadowhunter. The bridge is strewn with knives, embedded blade-upward, which must be carefully avoided. It is therefore not possible to approach the Adamant Citadel in haste; its gates cannot be stormed and its walls cannot be laid siege to.

  The fortress is a dramatic structure, soaring into the gray skies above the lava plain, with a ring of towers around it that call to mind the demon towers of Alicante, though these are more regular and less graceful, having been constructed by the hands of humans. The towers are tipped with glittering electrum, but otherwise the whole structure is of adamas, glowing gently with white-silver light.

  Once in the fortress a visitor would find herself in the antechamber—an
d this is all of the Adamant Citadel that those other than Iron Sisters are permitted to see. The antechamber is a simple room; the walls glow with adamas, as does the floor and the ceiling far above. In the floor is a black circle in which is carved the sigil of the Iron Sisters: a heart pierced by a blade. There are no furnishings or comforts; the Iron Sisters do not appreciate visitors and will endeavor to complete their business as rapidly as possible.

  The walls of the Adamant Citadel are like the lives of the Iron Sisters themselves: hard, unyielding, and strong. Their motto, and the motto of the Citadel, makes this clear: ignis aurum probat. “Fire tests gold.” The Iron Sisters seem pretty awesome.

  If by “awesome” you mean “completely terrifying,” then yes, agreed.

  INSTITUTES OF THE CLAVE

  At first, there was no need for Institutes. For a few dozen years after the birth of the Nephilim, all the Shadowhunters in the world could reach the gates of Alicante in, at most, two or three days’ ride. But we were created to be a global organization, and it quickly became necessary for outposts to be built, places of angelic power where Shadowhunters could organize and remain safe. And so were created the Institutes, the local power bases of the Nephilim.

  Never has the invention of the regional office been treated so melodramatically.

  Institutes function like the embassies of mundane governments. They are Nephilim homes, as much as Idris itself is. Crossing the threshold into an Institute, you are no longer in the country or state or city that the Institute’s building stands in, but are rather in Nephilim land, where our Law is predominant.

  The corollary to this is that Institutes are the responsibility of all Shadowhunters, not just the Shadowhunters who are stationed at a particular Institute or who are a part of the Conclave of that Institute’s region. The oaths we take to protect our lands extend to all Institutes, around the world.