“Yes, yes,” Alec said. “We’re going.” He began herding them toward the doors.
“Also,” the goblin continued, “this isn’t a lending library. Those books are for sale, and now we’ll have to reshelve all of them—”
Magnus had been slowly buttoning his shirt back up. Now he turned and put his hand on the goblin’s shoulder in a friendly manner. The faerie looked at it as if it were a poisonous snake. “Sir, my apologies for my companions,” he said. “I take full responsibility. They were only helping me with some of my research. I’m Magnus Bane, High Warlock of New York, and I’m going to buy all of these.”
The goblin looked suspicious. “I know of you. You’re only the High Warlock of Brooklyn.”
“Technicalities,” said Magnus. “The point is, sir—may I know your name?”
The goblin sniffed. “Well, if you must know. It’s Kethryllianalæmacisii.”
“Really?” said Magnus. “Well, anyway, Keth—may I call you Keth?”
“You may not.”
Magnus pressed on. “If you’ll just ring all of these up and have the bill sent to the Spiral Labyrinth. The books can be delivered to the Mansion Hotel, if you will.”
Simon had helpfully piled the books into a single large stack and presented them to Kethryllianalæmacisii, who staggered a bit under the weight, but was clearly not about to lose a decent-size sale to the Spiral Labyrinth. “Of course, Mr. Bane,” he said, through clenched teeth. “But if that’s all, my staff and I would appreciate—”
“Yes,” said Magnus, “we were just leaving.”
“Sorry,” said Simon to the goblin, who made a hissing noise at him.
Looking a bit dazed, Tian led them out of the store. When the doors opened, a bird in a cage above it sang a snatch of song, haunting and sweet. “Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild!”
On the steps outside, Alec said to Magnus, “Can you really bill things to the Spiral Labyrinth?”
“Let’s find out!” Magnus said. “Now, I’ve heard the one with chains must arm himself, so Tian, lead the way.”
CHAPTER TEN The Black and White Impermanence
THEY FOLLOWED TIAN THROUGH UNFAMILIAR streets of the Shadow Concession. Vines stretched in dense tangles between the buildings, forming a kind of canopy over their heads. The light that filtered through to the street below was cool and gentle. The group passed a selkie selling silkie chicken soup, and a fey-made river garlanded with moonflowers in which mermaids sang. Magnus stopped walking and smiled at them, listening. He wanted to see his child. He wanted to crawl into bed with Alec and cuddle and sleep. He let the song flow through his mind, reminding him of visits to China long before any of his companions’ grandparents’ grandparents were born. He closed his eyes, and after a moment felt Alec’s hand on his back—not hurrying him on, just connecting to him.
“ ‘Chun Jiang Hua Yue Ye,’ ” he said to Alec. “ ‘A Night of Blossoms on a Moonlit Spring River.’ A song older than me.”
He began humming to himself, his eyes still closed. Let the others wait. Why had he never brought Alec here just for a visit? If his friends weren’t in danger, he would have drawn Alec down to dance by the glowing river’s edge, teaching him the words and the tune.
Instead, the one with chains had to arm himself.
* * *
THERE WAS NO MISTAKING THE smithy for any other building. It stood just off the main square of the Sunlit Market, and it was surrounded by a fearsome wall of dozens of long spears lashed together. Which made sense, Alec thought.
Tian led them through a gate in the fence, which opened to his touch with a chime like faerie bells. As they passed through, Jace ran his finger over one of the wavy spearheads admiringly, and Tian noticed.
“Look how the curves of each blade are identical,” he said. “The skill of these smiths is unparalleled anywhere in China.”
“Would you say those are qiang or mao?” Jace said.
Tian looked surprised. “Maybe mao? But you’d have to ask the smiths. You know Chinese weapons?”
“Jace knows all the weapons,” said Clary in a long-suffering tone, but she smiled.
Alec followed Tian inside, expecting gleaming walls of weapons in luxuriant display cases. As much as he teased Jace about his weapons obsession, there was a tickle in the back of his mind about faerie bows, and weren’t chain whips a traditional Chinese martial arts weapon? Maybe a gift for Isabelle…
Inside, however, he saw no weapons beautifully displayed—in fact, he saw no weapons at all. Instead a very, very old man and woman sat on stools in an empty stone room, lit by braziers. Between them stood a cook fire, bearing a clay cauldron that the woman was stirring.
The Shadowhunters filed into the room and looked around in confusion.
The man and woman looked up. “Oh, Tian!” said the woman. “These must be your friends.”
“We hear you’re going into Diyu!” said the man.
“We have not decided to do that,” Alec said hastily. “It was under discussion.”
Tian said, “Mo Ye, Gan Jiang, I’d like to introduce—” He took a deep breath and named all of them in a row, from right to left, without taking a second breath. Alec was impressed. “Everyone,” Tian went on, “these are Gan Jiang and Mo Ye, the greatest living faerie weaponsmiths.”
“Nonsense!” said Gan Jiang. “We’re also better than any of the dead ones.”
“We hear you got stuck with a Svefnthorn!” said Mo Ye eagerly. “We have another Svefnthorn in the back somewhere, if you want it.”
“No, we don’t,” said Gan Jiang. “Don’t listen to her. The last time I saw that Svefnthorn, Shanghai wasn’t even founded. It’s somewhere under the mountain, but who knows where? Not me and not her either, I bet.”
“Um, honorable… I’m sorry, I don’t know the right terminology,” Magnus said, “but you said something about the chained one and how I needed to be armed? And, well—” He began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Stop!” said Mo Ye. “No need to disrobe. We already know. Here.” She reached into the clay pot she’d been stirring with both hands and drew from it two swords, neither of which could possibly have fit into the pot. For all their humble surroundings, Alec thought, faeries couldn’t resist a performance.
Mo Ye laid the swords across the top of the clay bowl. They were clearly a match, identical longswords except for their color: one had a blade of deep black obsidian, its hilt shining white metal, and the other was the reverse, its hilt in black and its blade in white.
Magnus looked at them, then up at the faeries. “I’m not really a sword guy,” he said.
“They’re not swords,” said Gan Jiang. “They’re gods.”
“They’re keys,” added Mo Ye.
“No offense,” said Jace, “but they really look like swords.”
“The Heibai Wuchang,” said Gan Jiang. “The Black Impermanence and the White Impermanence.”
Tian said quietly, in an awed tone, “They guide the souls of the dead to Diyu.”
“They did,” said Mo Ye. “Until their master, Yama, was destroyed.”
“That’s Yanluo,” whispered Tian.
“They flew free of Diyu, unfettered and broken—” said Gan Jiang.
“Until we found them and made them into swords,” finished Mo Ye. “You’ll need them,” she added to Magnus, “to guide your soul to Diyu.”
“Again,” Alec said. “We’re really not sure about going to Diyu. We try to avoid hell dimensions whenever possible.”
Gan Jiang smiled at him as if he were a child. “And you’ll need them if you ever want to get out again.”
Magnus hesitated. “I am a man of many talents, but swordplay is definitely not one of them.”
“And I tell you, when it comes time, you won’t need to kill with them,” said Gan Jiang. He examined the group with narrowed eyes. “These are swords of mercy and judgment. You, warlock, must take mercy, the white blade—” Mo Ye picked up White Imper
manence and went behind Magnus, where she began fussily fastening it to his back with a strap and sheath. Alec smiled at Magnus, who had immediately adopted the neutral expression he wore when a tailor was pinning his clothes for alteration.
“And you, Nephilim, will carry the black.” Gan Jiang offered Black Impermanence’s hilt to Alec.
Alec was about to say, Why do I have to be “judgment”? but the moment his hand gripped the sword, the room and the smiths and his friends vanished, and he was in a different place.
A featureless cracked plain, black and pitted, extended forever to an empty horizon. Above it stretched a red sky, hung with a sun too large and dark as blood.
On the plain was Magnus. Or whatever Magnus had become.
He had not become a monster, not really. He didn’t look more like an animal, or a demon. But he had grown to a terrifying height, and when he looked down at Alec, it was with whited-out eyes and no recognition.
This huge Magnus brought his bare arms up, and Alec could see iron chains, affixed to a spiked ball punched through each of his palms. The chains receded behind Magnus into a storm of smoke and flame that trailed behind him.
Magnus still had the freedom of movement to bring his hands together. Jagged, gleaming shards of pinkish-red magic began to coalesce between his hands, and Alec could feel the ground rumble and the power begin to gather.
He held the Black Impermanence before him, and he understood beyond any doubt that only he could wield it. Only he could make the judgment, if it came to it. If Magnus was overcome by the thorn, by Sammael.
Also, the thought of this version of Magnus, all emotion absent, burning with power, wielding a sword of judgment, was a little terrifying.
He held the sword before him, pointing it toward the dark god that had been Magnus, and he said, “Magnus, if you know me, speak to me.”
Then he was back in the stone room. Gan Jiang was watching him keenly.
“Obviously I know you,” Magnus said worriedly. “Are you all right?”
Alec looked at Gan Jiang, and he nodded. “He’s fine,” he said. “Bit of a moment with the sword, I think.”
“I think your husband’s been tested,” Mo Ye said brightly to Magnus. “Good news! He passed.”
Magnus looked at Alec with concern.
Alec felt himself blush. “We’re not married,” he said apologetically as he strapped the sword to his back.
“You’re not married yet,” Isabelle piped up.
Gan Jiang laughed. “Do you see rings on our hands? And yet Mo Ye and I have been married since before the sea was salt.” He leaned into Alec. “Stay with him,” he said in a confidential tone.
“I plan to,” said Alec.
“Excellent!” Gan Jiang barked. “Now, you must go. We are closing for supper.”
This was so abrupt that they all stood around dumbly for a moment.
“You don’t have ears?” Mo Ye said. “Get out! We’re closed! You’re needed in the Market!”
They hustled Magnus and the Shadowhunters out of the room and back onto the street. Somehow, in the short time that they had been inside the faerie smithy, the sun had dropped below the buildings, and it was full dusk. An orange glow passed over the buildings and the trees, and a warm breeze blew gently, carrying the scent of flowers and of the food stalls at the Market nearby.
The door slammed shut, and Alec heard the sound of several latches and bolts being thrown.
“That was surprisingly similar to visiting my grandparents,” Simon said after a moment. “Except they would have fed us.”
“What happened in there, Alec?” Jace said.
“I had a vision,” Alec said slowly.
“A vision of what?” said Isabelle.
“Of what would happen if we fail to stop Sammael, I think.”
Jace said, “Did it give you any insight? Into what we should do?”
Alec was looking at Magnus. “Not fail.”
“All right,” said Jace. “We’ve got research, we’ve got swords. What’s our next step?”
“Signs are pointing toward us needing to know more about Diyu,” said Isabelle. “We could start checking the possible locations for the old Portal. What do you think, Tian?… Tian?”
They all looked around. Tian had definitely been in the smithy with them, but he was gone. Alec realized he hadn’t seen the young Shadowhunter since before they had taken the swords.
There was a burst of light from the sky above the central Market square. A purple afterimage flashed in Alec’s eyes, and he blinked, trying to clear it. Not far away, someone began to scream.
* * *
THEY WERE BARELY ARMED. THEY weren’t wearing gear. They hadn’t applied combat runes. Magnus had one of their two swords, and he hadn’t swung a sword in decades. In fact, he could barely figure out how to untangle it from the complicated shoulder harness Mo Ye had strapped to his back.
But they all ran toward the Market square anyway.
The place was chaos. Downworlders ran helter-skelter in all directions, looking for refuge or escape. Market stall grates and shutters slammed closed. Silhouettes scattered in the dim light; Magnus could hardly tell what was happening on the ground. Far above them, a blackish glow throbbed, like a circle cut out of the sky. It was almost the size of the square itself. And out of the circle came demons.
“It’s a Portal,” said Isabelle, her black hair whipping in the wind.
“A dimensional Portal,” yelled Clary, over the sound of chaos. “Not a normal one—this one goes to another world—”
Diyu. They all knew it without saying the word, even before Ragnor and Shinyun stepped free of the Portal and hovered in the air before them, their arms raised and red magic crackling between them. It was the same color that Magnus’s magic had become.
Magnus looked up at the Portal. He could see nothing through it, only clouds so dark they were almost black. Long silken threads were emerging from points within it, and down those threads slid dark gray spheres the size of large dogs. As they descended, they unfolded to reveal themselves to be—no surprise, given the day he’d had—huge spiders.
He shot Alec a glance. Alec wasn’t the biggest fan of spiders, and Magnus had grown entertained by his unwillingness to deal with even small ones that showed up in their loft, despite also being a heavily armed angelic warrior.
Now Alec drew Black Impermanence and gritted his teeth. “Let’s see how well this god-key works as a plain old sword.”
Magnus began gathering magic between his hands, disturbed that it was the same color as their enemies’. He was distracted by Ragnor’s deep voice, carrying above the chaos. “The host of Diyu is upon you! The courts have judged you unworthy, and you will suffer the tortures of the dead!”
Simon was frozen, gazing in horror at the spiders descending. Behind them, streams of fog announced the arrival of Ala demons, who swooped down, screaming, to chase Downworlders through the narrow passages of the Market. A pack of hellhounds had appeared and cornered a pixie family. Magnus was about to call out for Simon when Jace ran past him, carrying two of the curved-head pikes from the fence outside the smithy, one in each hand.
“Heads up, Lewis! Sorry, Lovelace!” he yelled, and Simon jerked out of his daze just in time to catch one of the spears. He appeared to take a moment to gather himself, and then he and Jace rushed the hellhounds together. One hellhound let a child fall from its jaws as Jace’s spear bit into its side. The demonic dog yelped and crashed to the ground; the rest of the hounds turned to face them, eyes red and jaws open, baring rows of jagged fangs.
The lead hellhound went down, felled by Simon. Another hound roared and leaped for Jace, who neatly ducked and used the spear handle and the hound’s own momentum to send it crashing through a window.
Xiangliu began to swarm toward Jace and Simon, but Clary quickly appeared to cover them. She lashed out with a glowing seraph blade, whirling around, a blur of light in the fog. In a moment of pause she caught Magnus’s eye, then
looked up at the warlocks above. Magnus understood her meaning—he had to fly up there and engage with them, just as he had in front of the Institute. In this fight, though, nobody had a bow, and he would be exposed in the air, protected only by his own magic.
Isabelle, meanwhile, had gotten pushed back toward a striped canvas tent by a group of the spider demons. She had only a single seraph blade and no parabatai to keep an eye on her. The spiders, sensing her to be vulnerable, leaped. Isabelle spun and kicked one out of the air, but doing so unbalanced her, and she went tumbling back into the tent, which collapsed around her and the spiders.
Magnus cried out and ran toward her, but he needn’t have worried. The body of one of the spider demons suddenly emerged from the mess, impaled like a kebab on the end of a steel strut, part of the structure of the collapsed tent. Isabelle appeared, wielding the strut like a quarterstaff, and knocked two more spiders away. Now she held it ahead of her, keeping the spiders at bay, and with her free hand plucked her seraph blade from its sheath and yelled, “Nuriel!”
The seraph blade blazed. Isabelle spun and turned the attack on the spiders, pushing them back, when Alec appeared, slicing away with Black Impermanence. Ichor flew.
Shinyun landed amid the demons and produced a massive fireball, which she hurled at Jace, Clary, and Simon, who were fighting back-to-back. Magnus, without thinking, flung himself between the fireball and his friends, and the blazing orb smashed into him, where it disappeared, seeming to sink into his chest. Clary saw and her eyes widened.
“Why are you doing this?” Magnus yelled at Shinyun. “These are Downworlders! They are your people!”
Shinyun turned her impassive gaze upon him. “Witness,” she called out, “the opening of a new, permanent path to Diyu!” She drew her hand down, trailing pink flame, and more of the spider demons sprang from her fingers. “Zhizhu-jing, my sisters! This is your world now! Prepare the way for your new master!”
The Lost Book of the White Page 17