The Lost Book of the White

by Cassandra Clare

  In the kitchen, Raphael Santiago was sitting on the counter, swinging his legs back and forth.

  “Raphael,” Magnus said in surprise. “But you’re dead.”

  Raphael gave him a withering look. “I’ve always been dead,” he said. “You never knew me when I was alive.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Magnus admitted, “but I mean now you’re dead and not moving around anymore. You’re gone. You let yourself be killed in Edom, rather than kill me.”

  Raphael furrowed his brow. “Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like me.”

  Magnus fumbled at the dishwasher, trying to open it, but his talons were in the way. “Could you give me a hand?” he asked.

  Raphael sarcastically applauded.

  “You’ve gotten grumpier since Sebastian killed you,” Magnus remarked. “Which honestly I would not have thought was possible.”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly want to die. I didn’t deserve to die,” Raphael said. “I was immortal! I was supposed to live forever. And as it turned out, I didn’t even make it to a full mortal human life span.”

  “You didn’t, did you,” said Magnus. He managed to hook one claw under the lip of the dishwasher and, bending awkwardly, levered it open. It was not his most graceful moment, but he couldn’t feel too embarrassed in front of Raphael, who, after all, was dead.

  “How’s Ragnor?” Raphael said. He was still swinging his legs back and forth from his perch on the counter. It was a very un-Raphael thing to do, and it made Magnus want to shout at him to stop, but that seemed crazy. “Still dead as well?”

  “No,” said Magnus, but then he stopped. How was Ragnor? When he’d last seen Ragnor, it had been in—

  —Diyu.

  He reached for the cup and the bowl, awkwardly balancing them in his glowing hands. “I have to bring these to Max,” he said.

  “Try not to claw him up too much,” Raphael advised, and Magnus winced. He turned to leave the kitchen, and the cup and bowl slipped from his hands. Though they were definitely plastic—a matched set covered in apples that was Max’s favorite—when they hit the tile floor of the kitchen, they shattered into thousands of sharp splinters, as though they had been crystal.

  “Whoa!” said Raphael. “I’ll just stay up here for now.”

  The broom was in Max’s room. Magnus walked through the shards and felt them cutting up his bare feet (but why were his feet bare?). He looked behind him as he made his way back up the hallway and saw that he was leaving two trails of blood on the hall rug.

  At least I still bleed normal blood, he thought.

  “Alec?” he said, and Alec came around the corner with Max, now in the front carrier that they’d used to carry him around the streets of Brooklyn in their first few months with him. Max had outgrown the carrier a month or so ago, and they’d been meaning to get a new one. Maybe this was the new one? It looked like the old one.

  Also, Max definitely didn’t fit. But that was because he had changed. His horns, just adorable little nubs only a few minutes ago, were now jagged spikes, black and shiny like Magnus’s talons. A whiplike tail emerged from behind him, hairless like a rat’s. It swayed back and forth dangerously, like the tail of a cat preparing to strike.

  And his eyes. Magnus couldn’t quite describe what was going on with Max’s eyes. When he tried to look at them, it was like scratches formed on the inside of his retinas. He had to look away.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Alec.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Magnus said desperately. “It’s just… warlocks… sometimes you don’t know…”

  “You didn’t tell me,” said Alec. He sounded flat.

  “I didn’t know,” said Magnus. He began to back away down the hall, stepping again on the shards he’d left behind when he’d approached Alec and Max just now. New jabs of pain arced through his feet.

  Alec lifted Max out of the carrier and held him up to look into his face. “I can deal with the claws, and the horns, and the fangs,” he said. “But I don’t know how to deal with this.”

  He turned Max back around to show Magnus. Max’s face was a frozen mask, expressionless, vacant. But that isn’t his warlock mark, Magnus thought. He looks like… like…

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Lady of Edom

  ALEC WONDERED FOR A MOMENT if he was dreaming, as Shinyun descended through the space where once a rose window had been set.

  He had seen her floating, arms extended, framed in the empty circle, and thought she was a statue for a moment. There was a statue outside the rose window of the real cathedral in the real Shanghai, he remembered.

  But then she came floating in and Jace let out a long, frustrated groan. Alec knew how he felt. Had their escape, their daring fall from the bridge, been pointless, if Shinyun could just casually meet them shortly after they arrived?

  Sometime during their descent from the bridge, Magnus’s eyes had fluttered back in his head and closed. The three Shadowhunters had panicked, preparing to plummet freely downward, but luckily the spell had held. As the tenebrous shapes of Diyu’s mirror of Shanghai grew more distinct below them, they had seen the cathedral. It was exactly St. Ignatius’s shadow: every detail the same but with all color drained out of it, a picture in washes of dark grays and blacks. It was, thankfully, not literally upside down.

  Magnus’s protective cloud had brought them to a landing on the church grounds next to one of the transepts, the side arms of the massive cross that formed the overall shape of the building. There was a small side door there, and they helped Magnus inside and arranged him on one of the carved wooden benches they found. Once he was at rest, the magic faded from his palms, and he breathed steadily, as though asleep.

  They hadn’t been inside the real cathedral, but the interior of the shadow cathedral was sufficiently cathedral-like that Alec thought it was probably laid out the same way. It was strange to go from the eerie inhumanity of Diyu to the very distinct humanity of a Catholic church; at first glance they could have been in France or Italy, or even New York. Only once they walked around, and saw the elaborate wood carving of the pews, the distinctly Chinese tile running down the middle of the nave, did the unique character of Xujiahui come across. Except, Alec realized, for any holy symbol, or saint, or angel, which were missing. There were empty niches and picture rails all over where such things must have been in the original cathedral, but here they had been wiped away. Apparently Yanluo hadn’t been a fan. Alec supposed Sammael wouldn’t be either.

  Returning to Magnus, Alec found him still breathing steadily and, to all appearances, napping. He put his hand on Magnus’s shoulder and gave it a little shake. When Magnus didn’t react, he gave him a slightly harder shake. He tried to be careful—startling Magnus didn’t seem wise either—but no amount of speaking Magnus’s name or touching him invoked any reaction.

  “Come on, wake up,” Alec said urgently. He jiggled Magnus’s knee.

  “We could throw some water on him,” suggested Clary.

  “I don’t think there’s any water,” said Jace. “Maybe Magnus can conjure some up. Some food, too.”

  “If we can wake him up,” said Clary.

  “Wake up!” Alec said again, and then they heard the rustle of movement and turned to see Shinyun descending toward them through the blank hole where a window should have been.

  She landed lightly, her elongated limbs folding under her, giving her an eerie insectile appearance. Jace drew his spear, and Clary her dagger. Alec continued to nudge Magnus, more and more desperately.

  “I don’t want to fight,” Shinyun called out. Nobody moved to put their weapons away.

  She approached, and they stood their ground. “Is Magnus… asleep?”

  “It’s been a long day,” said Alec dryly.

  “He suffers without the third thorn,” she said.

  “He’d choose to die.”

  “It’s very interesting,” said Shinyun, “how many people choose not to die, when the final decision comes.” She eyed them. “It’s
usually because they worry about the effect it will have on others.”

  “Not a problem for you, I guess,” said Jace.

  “No,” she agreed. “I understand the nature of power too well to allow myself the kind of sentimental attachments that tether most people to the world. A world that will fail them, in the end.”

  “You’re wrong,” Magnus said faintly.

  Alec helped him sit up. He blinked his eyes, larger and more luminous than they had been, so familiar to Alec and yet becoming more alien with every passing hour.

  “You’re wrong,” Magnus said again. “Those so-called sentimental attachments—they are where strength comes from. Where real power comes from.”

  “It amazes me,” said Shinyun, “that you would think that, even after living four hundred years. After outliving so many. Knowing you’ll outlive all of them.” She gestured at the Shadowhunters.

  “Not at this rate,” Magnus said lightly, gently running a hand down his front, as if checking to make sure all his organs were still inside.

  Shinyun ignored this. “You know that time is a cruel joke, that it takes everything from us eventually. Time is a machine for turning love into pain.”

  “But there’s so much fun to be had on the way,” murmured Magnus. He shook his head. “You can say it prettily, but that doesn’t make it true.”

  Shinyun sighed. “I didn’t come here to argue philosophy with you, Magnus.”

  “I didn’t think you did,” Magnus said. “I guess I assumed you came here to taunt us and lecture us.”

  “No,” said Shinyun, a frown in her voice. “I came to tell you where to find your friend Simon.”

  * * *

  “WHY IN THE WORLD,” SAID Magnus, “would you do that?”

  He had been embarrassed, when he came to, that he had fallen into some kind of trance. Already the memory of his dream was fading from his mind, and he could remember only tiny snippets: Raphael Santiago’s legs dangling from his kitchen counter. Max holding up his arms to help Alec put his shirt on. Blood trails on the rug.

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Shinyun said.

  Alec folded his arms. “Then you’ll understand why we wouldn’t trust anything you’d tell us.”

  “Would you trust anything we tell you?” Magnus added.

  “I would,” said Shinyun, “because you are all so painfully without guile that you think telling me the truth will somehow win me over. Like I will have no choice but to respect your integrity and high principles.”

  “Aw,” said Magnus, “you know you respect my integrity and high principles secretly.”

  Shinyun let out a long and annoyed groan, a strangely expressive sound coming from her motionless face. “Do you want to know where your friend is or not?”

  “Not unless you tell us why you’re offering your help,” Jace said.

  “Because I am annoyed,” said Shinyun flatly.

  “Annoyed at us? Annoyed at Simon?” said Magnus.

  “Annoyed at Sammael,” Shinyun snapped. “For months every moment has been dedicated to his grand master plan, the ultimate payoff for all the work he’s done, all the work I’ve done, and then you show up and he becomes totally distracted by some stupid petty grievance.”

  “You mean Simon?” said Clary, aghast. “So Sammael grabbed him when we first came through the Portal? What is Sammael doing to him?”

  “And why Simon?” demanded Alec.

  “They’ve definitely never met before,” said Jace. “I know Simon goes to some weird parties in Brooklyn, but it’s still impossible.” He glanced at Clary. “It is impossible, right?”

  Shinyun threw up her hands. “Ragnor and I are trying our best to implement his schemes for the invasion of the human world, running around this dank pit like lunatics, ordering demons around who are not the most responsive underlings—”

  “Yes, yes, hard to find good help these days,” agreed Magnus hurriedly. He stood up, testing his legs. He was fairly steady; it seemed he had already recovered from the outpouring of magic he had committed on their way down to the cathedral. Recharged by the thorn? He couldn’t know. “What is the Father of Demons doing to Simon and why?”

  “He has shut himself into some random torture chamber to torment one Shadowhunter who is in no way a direct threat to him. It’s ridiculous. It needs to stop.”

  “Agreed,” said Clary immediately. “Point the way.”

  “So you’re going to take us to save Simon,” Alec said, making sure he fully understood, “so that Sammael stops being distracted and gets back to the business of destroying the world.”

  “Yes,” said Shinyun. “Take it or leave it.”

  “Wait,” said Magnus. “I need to ask you something first.”

  Shinyun cocked her head a little to the side. “Oh?”

  Magnus hated to ask Shinyun any questions about himself, his thorning, his current state. He had no reason to believe her answers, for one thing. And she would use it as an opportunity to lecture him again. But he didn’t understand what was happening to him, and behind that incomprehension lurked fear.

  “You said I was suffering from the thorn,” he said, “but that’s not true. I’m getting stronger. My magic is getting more powerful. I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t understand?” said Shinyun.

  Magnus said, “I don’t understand how, without a third thorning, I die. If you ever had the slightest fleck of mercy in you,” he pleaded, “you have to explain. So at least I know what will happen. Will I suddenly weaken? Will I wither away?”

  “No,” Shinyun said. “You will simply take on more and more of the thorn’s power without being fully bound to its master. Your magic will grow stronger, and wilder, and less in your control, and you will become a danger to yourself and the people around you. If they don’t abandon you, they’ll surely die themselves.”

  Magnus stared.

  “So I’ll feel better and better and better,” he said. “Until I suddenly feel much worse?”

  “No,” said Shinyun. “Until you suddenly feel nothing. That is why everyone takes the third thorn. The choice is no choice at all. Now, shall we go get your friend?”

  A glow emerged from her chest, the same red as Magnus’s magic. With the ease of a master painting a line, she drew a Portal in the air with her index finger. It opened on a chamber of black obsidian spikes. In the background, a pool of something red bubbled. “Hmm,” she said. She gestured with her finger, and the view through the Portal changed. Now they were looking at a huge white stone plate toward which a gigantic millstone descended. “Not that, either.” She gestured again and then again, flipping through different destinations.

  “Hell of Iron Mills… Hell of Grinding… Hell of Disembowelment… Hell of Steaming… Hell of the Mountain of Ice… Hell of the Mountain of Fire…”

  “Lots of hells, huh,” said Magnus.

  “Can we hurry this up?” said Alec.

  Shinyun gave them a withering look and kept browsing.

  “Hell of Worms, Hell of Maggots, Hell of Boiling Sand, Hell of Boiling Oil, Hell of Boiling Soup with Human Dumplings, Hell of Boiling Tea with Human Tea Strainers, Hell of Small Biting Insects, Hell of Large Biting Insects, Hell of Being Eaten by Wolves, Hell of Being Trampled by Horses, Hell of Being Gored by Oxen, Hell of Being Pecked to Death by Ducks—”

  “What was that last one?” said Jace. Shinyun ignored him.

  “Hell of Mortars and Pestles, Hell of Flensing, Hell of Scissors, Hell of Red-Hot Pokers, Hell of White-Hot Pokers, ah! Here we are.” Through the Portal seemed to be a limestone cave, dense with stalactites and stalagmites, a great mouth of fangs. Loose iron chains lay scattered across the ground like a nest of sleeping snakes.

  “What’s that one called?” Alec said.

  “No idea,” said Shinyun. “Hell of Wasting Time Torturing Someone Unimportant. Go through before I regret this.”

  They kept their weapons at the ready and passed single file through th
e Portal into the cave.

  The interior of the cathedral had been dank and musty, but cool. By contrast, the cave was scorchingly hot, and dry like the inside of an oven. Magnus followed Alec, Jace, and Clary as they picked their way around the stalagmites jutting from the ground toward an open area a little distance away. He noticed, to his mild surprise, that Shinyun had followed them through the Portal and trailed behind them.

  After a short walk Sammael came into view, pacing back and forth, hands behind his back as though he were deep in thought. Magnus looked around, but it took a moment before he was able to spot—

  “Simon,” Clary whispered, her voice a dry thread.

  In the center of the clearing, Simon hung, spread-eagle. His wrists were manacled to iron chains that stretched to the ceiling of the cave, his ankles similarly chained to great iron hasps sunk into the ground. Only as Magnus got closer did he see that being chained up was the least of Simon’s problems.

  A dozen sharp blades hung around Simon, hovering in the air. They whirled and shifted, now random, now in patterns—clearly operating at Sammael’s will.

  Simon had several slashes across his body already, and as they watched, one of the knives lurched at tremendous speed and cut across his arm. He winced, his eyes closed, but Magnus could see he was using all his energy to hold himself very, very still, as the other blades danced inches from him.

  Besides the suspense, Simon must already have been in tremendous pain, but he was silent, his jaw set, even as blood dripped down his skin. His eyes had opened wide when Clary cried out: he stared at his friends now, almost blindly, as if he feared they might be a dream.

  Sammael turned and started, but as if pleasantly surprised. “You’re just getting the full tour of this place, huh?” he said. “I don’t know, I like some of it, but Yanluo and I have a very different design sensibility. Luckily, this is only a temporary situation until I move to your world and take that as my realm.”

  Clary lunged at Sammael; Jace caught at her arm, hauling her back. Her teeth were bared. “What are you doing to Simon?” she snarled. “What did he ever do to you? You’ve never even met him before.”