Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(176)

"Maybe look in them?" Kit suggested.

Ty gave him a long, considering look, with a tinge of surprise to it. Kit caught just a flash of his gray eyes as he turned back to examine the tapestries again. Each one showed a scene from what looked like a medieval landscape: castles, long stone walls, towers and roads, horses and battle. Ty stopped in front of one that showed a high hedge, in the middle of which was an arched opening. Through the opening the sea was visible.

He put his hand against it, a hesitant, questioning gesture. There was a flare of light. Kit darted forward as the tapestry shimmered, turning glimmering and colorful as a slick of oil.

Ty glanced again at the drawing he held, then turned, his other hand outstretched to Kit. "Don't be so slow."

Kit reached for him. His fingers closed around Ty's, warm and firm under his grasp. Ty stepped forward, into the Portal, the colors parting and re-forming around him-he was half invisible already-and his grip tightened on Kit's, pulling him after.

Kit held on tightly. But somewhere in the whirling chaos of the Portal, his hand ripped free of Ty's. An irrational panic seized him, and he shouted something out loud-he wasn't sure what-before the Portal winds cartwheeled him through a shadowy doorway and spit him out into cold air, onto a slope of damp grass.

"Yes?" Ty was standing over him, witchlight in hand. The sky behind him was high and dark, shimmering with a million stars.

Kit stood up, wincing. He was getting used to Portal travel, but he still didn't like it.

"What is it?" Ty's gaze didn't meet Kit's, but he looked him over, as if checking for injuries. "You were saying my name."

"Was I?" Kit glanced around. Green lawns sloped away in three directions, and rose in the fourth to meet a large gray church. "I think I was worried you were lost in the Portal."

"That's only happened a few times. It's statistically very unlikely." Ty raised his witchlight. "This is the Cornwall Institute."

In the distance, Kit could see the glimmer of moonlight on black water. The sea. Above them the church was a heap of gray stone with broken black windows and a missing front door. The spire of the church stabbed upward into swirling clouds, lit from behind by the moon. He whistled through his teeth. "How long has it been abandoned?"

"Only a few years. Not enough Shadowhunters to man all the Institutes. Not since the Dark War." Ty was glancing between the drawing in his hand and their surroundings. Kit could see the remains of a garden gone to seed: weeds growing up among dead rosebushes, grass far too long and in need of cutting, moss covering the dozens of statues that were scattered around the garden like victims of Medusa. A horse reared into the air beside a boy with a bird perched on his wrist. A stone woman held a dainty parasol. Tiny stone rabbits peeked through weeds.



       
         
       
        

"And we're going inside?" Kit said dubiously. He didn't like the look of the dark windows. "Wouldn't we be better off coming during the day?"

"We're not going inside." Ty held up the drawing he'd brought. In the witchlight, Kit could see that it was an ink sketch of the Institute and the gardens, done during daylight hours. The place hadn't changed much in the past two hundred years. The same rosebushes, the same statues. It looked as if the drawing had been done in winter, though, as the boughs of the trees were skeletal. "What we need is out here."

"What do we need?" said Kit. "Indulge me. Explain what this has to do with my idle comment about ravens being unreliable."

"It would be unreliable. The thing is, Malcolm didn't say the raven was alive, or a real bird. We just assumed."

"No, but-" Kit paused. He'd been about to say it didn't make any sense to give your messages to a dead raven, but something about the look on Ty's face silenced him.

"It actually makes more sense for them to have just left the messages in a hiding place," said Ty. "One they could both get to easily." He crossed the grass to the statue of the boy with the bird on his wrist.

A little jolt went through Kit. He didn't know much about birds, but this one was carved out of glossy black stone. And it looked a lot like drawings he'd seen of ravens.

Ty reached around to run his fingers over the stone bird. There was a clicking noise, and a squeak of hinges. Kit hurried over to see Ty prying open a small opening in the bird's back. "Is there anything in there?"

Ty shook his head. "It's empty." He reached into his pocket, retrieved a folded-up piece of paper, and dropped it into the opening before sealing it back up again.