Magnus felt fairly sure it was a terrible idea to let Ragnor perform unspecified magic on them in his current state, even if he said he was going to help them. For all they knew, he would “help” them by killing them; that was usually the way this kind of thing went. But he didn’t have a chance to decide what to do about it, because Ragnor suddenly stumbled forward, blasted in the back by a new jolt of scarlet lightning.
Alec looked over at Magnus, who quickly said, “That wasn’t me.”
“Ragnor!” They all looked up to see Shinyun, floating in the sky near where Ox-Head and Horse-Face still tumbled lazily in circles. Ox-Head looked like he had fallen asleep. “You will not betray our master.”
Shinyun, like Ragnor, had changed in appearance significantly. Her arms and legs were longer, spindlier, giving her a spiderlike look. There was a white aura surrounding her, and though her face was as expressionless as ever, her eyes blazed and glowed with a purplish flame within. Her cloak was cut low over her chest, revealing clearly the X of the thorn’s cuts below her throat.
Ragnor had recovered and stood to face Shinyun. “You’re making things more complicated,” he said, in a lecturing tone. “Much more complicated than they need to be. I’m going to take these… unexpected factors”—this while waving generally at Magnus and his friends—“and return them to Earth, and then we can get on with things the way we’re supposed to.”
“Hey,” said Magnus, “I’ve always wanted to be an unexpected factor.”
“You used to be an unexpected factor all the time,” Clary said.
“Used to?”
“Well,” she said, “eventually we started expecting you.”
Shinyun’s eyes glittered dangerously. “You fool. You think they’ll just leave us alone if you send them back? You think they’ll just let us reopen the Market Portal, not try to come back here? The complication is already done. Now we must deal with it.”
“Now you must deal with it,” Ragnor said grumpily. “Dragging them into this was your idea. I’m here to clean up your mess.”
Shinyun held her hands up and magic gathered there, the way it had for Ragnor a few minutes ago. She floated toward him. “You forget yourself,” she said through gritted teeth. “I am Sammael’s first and favorite follower. If not for me, you would never have known the glory of his presence. You would have been swallowed up with all the rest. Show some respect and some obedience.”
“I’ll show you respect,” Ragnor muttered, and leaped at Shinyun, magic blazing out of his hands.
The two warlocks flew into the sky together and commenced brawling with each other. They were clearly both much more interested in besting the other than in dealing with the Shadowhunters.
“We could just leave,” suggested Jace. “Start over the bridge…”
Magnus felt stuck to the spot, watching one of his oldest friends and one of his more recent enemies clash. They looked less like people and more like mythological creatures. Ragnor went to impale Shinyun with his horns, and Shinyun grabbed them with her spiderlike limbs. They grappled and wrestled across the sky. Bolts of scarlet lightning flew. The two of them continued to yell at one another, but their words were indistinguishable under the sound of the fighting.
“Come on,” Tian said. “We can make for the pit while they’re distracted.”
“If we’re going to rescue Isabelle and Simon,” Magnus said, “I have to try to rescue Ragnor, too.”
“He can’t be rescued,” Tian said firmly. “He’s taken the thorn three times. He’s part of Sammael now.”
Magnus looked at Alec helplessly. “I have to try.”
Nobody knew what to do. Magnus stared at the melee above him. Tian’s gaze was fixed on the mountain beyond the bridge, and Jace and Clary and Alec waited. Maybe someone would win the fight, Magnus thought, and break the stalemate.
“They’re quite a sight, aren’t they?” said an unfamiliar voice. Magnus looked over to see that they had been joined by a person they didn’t know. He was young-looking, white and slight of build, narrow of face, and he was dressed as though he were a student backpacker who was unaccountably making his way through Diyu: ragged plaid shirt, torn jeans. His hands were shoved in his pockets, like he was watching a parade pass by. A rare lost soul of Diyu? Magnus thought.
The only truly strange thing about the man—other than his being present at all—was the old-fashioned Tyrolean hat he wore, in green felt. Sticking straight up out of the band of the hat was a large golden feather, easily a foot long. Magnus was not sure he was pulling it off, but he appreciated the ambition.
“There’s really quite enough violence around here,” the man went on in a mild-mannered tone, “without those two scuffling like unruly children. Don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry,” said Magnus, “but who are you? Have we met?”
“Oh!” said the man, in apologetic tones. “How dreadfully gauche of me. I know you, of course. Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn! Your reputation precedes you even here. And Shadowhunters! I love Shadowhunters.”
He extended his hand. “Sammael,” he said with a gentle smile. “Maker of the Way. Once and Future Devourer of Worlds.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Serpent of the Garden
EVERYONE STARED. SAMMAEL, MAKER OF the Way, Once and Future Devourer of Worlds, smiled at them blandly.
“Once and Future…,” said Alec.
“Devourer of Worlds,” Sammael repeated. “Meaning I devoured worlds in the past, and I plan to devour more worlds at some point in the future. The sooner the better.”
He was interrupted by yet another crackle of lightning in the sky and looked up at Ragnor and Shinyun, neither of whom seemed to have noticed that he was there. He gave them a fatherly look, sympathetic but frustrated.
“Ragnor,” he said. “Shinyun.” He spoke in the same casual, quiet tone, but both of the warlocks instantly stopped and jerked their heads around at the sound of his voice.
“My master,” called Shinyun.
“Go to your rooms,” Sammael said mildly. He snapped his fingers, and with a loud crack Ragnor and Shinyun both disappeared from the sky.
“As I was saying,” Sammael said into the ensuing silence, “it’s been a long time since I devoured a world. I might even be a little rusty,” he added with a chuckle. “But your friend Ragnor was good enough to find me this place!” He gestured around him. “Kind of a fixer-upper, of course. But so much potential! A massive engine of demonic power, run on the fuel of human suffering. It’s just so… classic!”
He smiled broadly at them, then turned his attention to Magnus specifically.
“Magnus Bane,” he said. “Not just High Warlock but an eldest curse! You know how many of those there are?”
When no one answered, he frowned. “That was not a trick question. The answer is, there can never be more than nine in the whole world: the eldest child of each of us Princes of Hell.”
“Who’s your eldest child?” Alec said.
Sammael looked surprised. “Well, that’s nice,” he said. “People so rarely take any interest in me. I don’t have one,” he confided. “I’ve been gone for so long that the last of my children on Earth disappeared centuries ago. That’s something I’ll have to work on, when I get back there.” He examined Magnus. “Have you given any thought to the thorn? I’d be happy to give you the third strike myself, if I can wrestle the thing out of Shinyun’s hands. She’s very possessive of it, you know.”
Magnus realized that, without thinking of it, he had brought his hand to the wound on his chest. The chains on his arms throbbed painfully. “I’m not interested in joining your little club, if that’s what you mean.”
“It is,” said Sammael, but he didn’t sound particularly upset. “And since the alternative is death, my little club will win no matter what. But I have to say, you’d make an excellent addition to the organization. We don’t have an eldest curse yet.”
He leaned forward and spoke in a confidential tone. “Wha
t I’d suggest is, when you’re powerful enough, you just kill Shinyun and take her job. You’d get to work with your buddy Ragnor!”
Clary said, “Magnus is already on a team.”
“Our team,” clarified Jace.
“Yes, I gathered that. My goodness,” Sammael said, taking them in, “Shadowhunters. This is very, very exciting.”
“Because you hate Shadowhunters and want to torture us, I assume,” said Jace.
Sammael laughed. Magnus would have expected his laugh to be frightening, or at least intimidating, but he seemed legitimately amused, even friendly. “Are you kidding? I love Shadowhunters. I made you.”
“What?” said Alec. “Shadowhunters are made by Raziel.”
“Or by other Shadowhunters,” put in Jace.
“Are you kidding?” Sammael said, entertained. “Raziel would never have bothered if I hadn’t let all those demons into your world in the first place! You exist because of me!”
Clary and Jace exchanged confused looks. “But we were created to defeat your demons,” Jace said. “Doesn’t that mean we’re, you know… enemies?”
“We are definitely enemies,” confirmed Magnus.
“I mean, you’re holding two of us in your torture chambers right now,” put in Alec, through clenched teeth.
For the first time, Sammael’s smile faded, though his friendly tone didn’t change. “Well, in a very small number of cases, there might be something personal between us. But dear me, no. I mean, we’re on opposite sides of the Eternal War, certainly, but you’re… well, you’re the loyal opposition! I’m happy to wait for the real game to begin. It wouldn’t do to destroy you before that.”
“Then what about them?” Alec said, gesturing to Ox-Head and Horse-Face, who continued to float haplessly in their bubble cloud, twenty feet in the air and a little distance away.
“Nothing wrong with a test,” Sammael said. “Nothing that any Nephilim who are going to put up a decent fight couldn’t handle. Speaking of which, they did fail, it seems, so—”
He shrugged and waved a hand at the guardians. As the Shadowhunters watched, both Ox-Head and Horse-Face became wide-eyed and began flailing again, more violently than before. They seemed to be in some distress.
“They’re not even mine, you know,” Sammael added. “They just came with the realm.”
The two demons thrashed about, visibly in pain. Magnus found himself feeling sorry for them, even though they were literally demons from Hell, and even though they had been actively trying to kill him and his friends only a few minutes ago. It was their helplessness, their confusion.
Sammael shook his head as if sympathizing with their plight, and then made a wrenching motion with his hands, and both Ox-Head and Horse-Face came apart in pieces.
It was terribly grisly, even for Magnus. There was no magical glow, no bright flash to obscure what was happening. The two demons simply fell apart, their heads and limbs tearing from their bodies, their torsos splitting into several parts. In a shower of flesh and ichor, the wet chunks of what had recently been Ox-Head and Horse-Face fell to the blasted black ground of Diyu in a series of dull, sickening thuds.
Magnus looked back at Sammael, who seemed surprised at the reaction of his audience. The Shadowhunters had unanimously returned to their initial looks of wary horror; these had faded somewhat in the face of Sammael’s strange friendliness, but were back now. “Don’t look like that,” Sammael said. “They’re not even really gone. They’re Greater Demons and they’re from here; they’ll just regenerate somewhere else in this maze of a place eventually.”
“Still, though,” said Clary in a small voice.
Sammael held out his hands. “They failed, so they had to be disciplined. I don’t see why it’s any concern of yours. You were trying to kill them a few minutes ago yourselves, if I recall.”
Tian was being very quiet, Magnus noted. He wondered whether the young Shadowhunter hadn’t been prepared to encounter one of the most powerful demons in history. Magnus did have to admit that his friends were perhaps more blasé about confronting yet another Prince of Hell than most would be. They had encountered Asmodeus a few years ago, for instance. He surreptitiously looked over at Tian but couldn’t read his expression.
Turning back to Sammael, he said, “So the demons are gone, Shinyun and Ragnor are gone, it’s just you and us. You could just kill us all if you wanted, but you haven’t. So what now?”
Sammael said, “Clearly, you should go back the way you came and return to your world. I’m not entirely ready to start the war yet, but in fairness to me, you’ve all had a thousand years to prepare, and I’ve had only a tiny fraction of that. So, go back—you can just reopen the Portal you closed up so messily when you came in—and I’ll see you on the battlefield soon enough!”
He waved good-bye, as if this concluded the conversation.
“We can’t go,” Alec said. He sounded apologetic, which was a little funny, considering who he was talking to. “We have to rescue our friends.”
Sammael squinted at him, as though he couldn’t follow what Alec was saying. “How will you find your friends, though, little Nephilim? Diyu has thousands upon thousands of hells. I haven’t even been to all of them yet. Frankly,” he said, putting his hand next to his mouth like he was sharing a secret, “I’ve heard once you’ve seen about ten thousand of them, the other seventy thousand or so are pretty much just minor variants on those.”
“You’re not the first to be interested in Diyu,” said Magnus. “Tian here has been studying Diyu for years. He knows his way around.”
Alec turned and smiled at Tian, but Tian wasn’t smiling back. He really had been totally silent this whole time, Magnus realized.
“Oh, Tian?” said Sammael. “Ke Yi Tian? The Tian standing right there next to you? The Tian of the Shanghai Institute?”
“Yes, obviously that Tian,” said Magnus.
The Shadowhunters were all looking at Tian, who was looking straight ahead of him.
“Tian is my employee,” Sammael said with great glee. “Tian led you right to me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Jace.
“Oh?” said Sammael. “So you thought being led down the realm’s longest pit to the realm’s deepest court was a fine strategy? You thought it was a great idea to go toward Avici?”
Magnus shook his head. “This is just trickery. Childish psych-out stuff.”
“Tian,” Sammael said, almost hopping up and down with excitement, “abandon these idiots, go find Shinyun, and tell her to get started on reopening our Portal to the Market.”
There was a pause, and then Tian, of the august and beloved Ke family, lowered his head with a great sigh and said, “Yes, my master.” He lifted his head back up and said, frustrated, “I could have just stayed with them. You didn’t have to blow my cover now.”
“Well, I thought about you leading them to some oubliette somewhere to rot away,” said Sammael, “and it just seemed very disappointing not to see their expressions when they found out. I just love that moment. Besides, it doesn’t matter: you can abandon them anytime. Leave now, leave later—either way, they starve to death on an infinitely long road that ends at the deepest part of Hell. The warlock dies of his thorn wound or becomes another one of my servants. Nothing’s changed,” he added reassuringly to Tian.
“Tian,” Magnus said in disappointment, his heart sinking.
Tian stepped out of the circle of his fellow Shadowhunters to stand, hunched and bleak, next to Sammael. Sammael let a friendly smile blossom on his face as he slowly reached an arm out, as if they were posing for a picture, and put it around Tian’s shoulder.
* * *
“TIAN.” ALEC WAS THE FIRST to speak. “Why? You owe us that much, at least.” He looked at Sammael, barely keeping his fury in check. “He does.”
Sammael put up his hands. “No, no, go ahead, this part is quite enjoyable for me as well.”
Alec didn’t care. “Well?” he demanded of Tian.
Tian took a breath. “Do you know what it’s like,” he said, his voice ragged, “for your love to be illegal?”
Alec threw up his hands in exasperation. “Tian. Yes!”
“Obviously yes,” put in Jace. “Big-time.”
“No,” said Tian, “you can live with the Downworlder you love, Alec. And you,” he said to Jace, “well, things worked out for you, which is fine, I guess. Otherwise—look, that doesn’t matter.”
“Ha,” said Jace, with the air of one who had won an argument.
Tian turned back to Alec. “You can adopt a child with the Downworlder you love. I, on the other hand, am not allowed to see the Downworlder I love, without breaking the Law. And yes, I know, the Law is hard. It’s too hard. It’s become so hard and brittle that it has begun to break.”
“That’s no excuse—” began Alec.
“Have you looked at the Clave lately?” Tian said, bitterness in his voice. “We are a house divided. A house broken into pieces. There are the ones like you, like me, who would prefer peace, who would prefer to work with all of Downworld, to strengthen all of us. Who would put aside the superstitions and the bigotries of our ancestors.”
“Jem Carstairs is one of your ancestors,” said Magnus quietly. “A man of neither superstition nor bigotry.”
“And the others,” Tian went on. “The paranoid. The suspicious. The ones who want the Shadowhunters to dominate, to crush the rest of Downworld under our rule. And especially the ones who call themselves the Cohort.”
“The Cohort is just a small group of crazy people,” said Jace, incredulous.
“It may be only a few who will identify themselves as such, for now,” said Tian, “but there are far more than you might think who agree with them, when they think only friends are there to hear them speak.”
“So you ally with a Prince of Hell?” said Alec.
Every time someone spoke, Sammael would pull an exaggerated face of shock and amazement. He seemed riveted. Alec wished he would stop, but he didn’t think it would go well if he asked.
The Lost Book of the White Page 22