The Lost Book of the White by Cassandra Clare
CHAPTER THIRTEENThe Serpent of the Garden
EVERYONE STARED. SAMMAEL, MAKER OFthe 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. “What 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 FIRSTto 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 war is coming,” said Tian, “no matter what I do. The fight between Sammael and the world. And he will find the Shadowhunters divided, scattered, broken on the lies and secrets they keep from one another. They will either fall—and the world will fall—or they will succeed, and the world will be saved. But at least I will be safe, and Jinfeng with me.”
“That’s his girlfriend,” stage-whispered Sammael.
“We know,” Clary said.
“And if we win?” demanded Jace. “The Clave is just going to take you back? A traitor who supported their enemy?”
“I like to think of myself as more than just an enemy,” Sammael said thoughtfully. “An archenemy at the very least. Perhaps even a nemesis?”
Tian looked stubborn. “I would hope for the Clave’s mercy. I would never hope for Sammael’s.”
“My God,” Clary said. “I think that’s the most selfish thing I’ve heard in my life.”
“Please,” murmured Sammael, “not the G-word.” Clary rolled her eyes.
“I’ve known your family for many generations now,” Magnus said quietly. “The Ke family have always been among the most honorable, generous, noble Shadowhunters I have known. They would be very disappointed in you, Tian. Jem would be very disappointed in you.”
Tian looked up at Magnus, and for the first time Alec saw a glint of defiance in his eye. “But it’s noble to sacrifice for love, isn’t it? I’ve been taught my whole life that that is noble. To sacrifice everything.” He looked at Alec. “That is what I have done. Sacrificed everything for love.”
Alec didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have to speak, though, as Magnus said, loudly, “That… is bullshit, Ke Yi Tian.”
Tian looked taken aback. Even Sammael looked a little taken aback.
Magnus’s magic flared, red and roiling and furious, shining from his chest and from his hands. He didn’t cast any spell, though, just advanced on Tian, a chemical fire raging in his gold-green eyes.
“You are not just some mundane,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “You are a Shadowhunter. You have a duty. A responsibility. You have a high and holy purpose, do you understand me?”
He paused like he was waiting for an answer. Tian opened his mouth after a moment, and Magnus immediately spoke again.
“You are the protector,” he said, “of our world. Ordained by the Angel. Instilled with his fire. Given the gifts of Heaven!” He grabbed Tian’s arm and glared into his eyes. “I know Shadowhunters, Tian. I’ve known them for centuries. I’ve seen them at their best, and at their worst. But I’ve known others, too, Downworlders, mundanes, and if there is one thing that Shadowhunters must understand, it is that they are not like other people.
“They love, they build, they covet wealth—when there is time. When the duty—the solemn duty, the only duty, the barrier dividing the living creatures of Earth from oblivion at the hands of literal, actual pure evil—”
Sammael waved jauntily.
“—allows them to. All love is important. Your love is important. And for some people, their love can be the single most important thing, more important than even the whole world.
“But not for Shadowhunters. Because keeping the whole world safe is not everyone’s reason for being, but it absolutely is yours.”
The flare of magic faded. Magnus lowered his head.
Tian stood silently. He did not reply.
“Yeah,” agreed Clary faintly from behind Alec.
Alec, however, was staring at Magnus. “I didn’t know you felt that way,” he said. To his own ears he sounded stupefied. “I assumed you thought the whole holy warrior business was just silliness.”
“Even I think it’s just silliness sometimes,” offered Jace, “and I’ve literally had evil burned out of my body with heavenly fire.”
Magnus’s expression softened. He stepped back toward Alec, as though he had only just realized how far he had advanced toward Tian and Sammael. “I try not to take things too seriously,” he said to Alec. “You know that. The world is an absurd place, and to take it too seriously would be to let it win. And I still stand by that philosophy. Most of the time. But most of the time,” he added, “I am not standing in front of the actual Father of Demons, in actual Hell.”
“Don’t forget Devourer of Worlds,” Sammael said. “That one is my favorite. I mean, who doesn’t like devouring things? Right?”
Magnus turned to Sammael, one finger raised, and for a moment Alec thought, By the Angel—Magnus is really going to start telling off Sammael, the Serpent of the Garden. He was still overwhelmed. For one thing, it was quite galvanizing to hear your boyfriend deliver a stirring defense of your importance and righteousness. For another, he was having a difficult time thinking of an occasion when Magnus had been hotter.
Sammael shrugged. “Anyway, have fun wandering aimlessly around Diyu until you starve to death. Not the way I’d choose to go, but it’s your life. Magnus, come with me.”
“You have to know,” Alec said, “that there’s no way we’re letting you take him.”
Sammael let out a long groan. “Why do you have to do everything the hard way?” He waved his hand in the general direction of the iron bridge beyond, and in front of it, a circular Portal swirled open. Demons—Ala, Xiangliu, Baigujing—began to emerge from it.
He turned to Tian. “When they’re done with the rest, bring Magnus to me. I’ve got things to do.” He shook his head as if the whole experience had fatigued him, and vanished with a small popping noise.
For a moment, Alec and his friends stared at Tian. Nobody had anything to say.
Magnus, thankfully, broke the silence. “I know we all have a lot of feelings right now—”
“There’s no way you can get through that whole demon army,” Tian said. He sounded weary. “Diyu is home to such an infinitude of demons—and Sammael can command them all.”
“Then we make for the bridge,” Jace said after a moment. “We can’t defeat them, but maybe we can break through them. And then on the staircase they’ll be squeezed into a smaller space, and only a few will be able to attack at a time.”
“Except for the flying ones,” Alec pointed out.
“You have a better idea?”
Alec did not.
Clary turned to Tian. “Are you going to try to stop us?” The words were a challenge. Alec was reminded, not for the first time, that in her own way Clary could be as fierce as Jace.
Tian shook his head. “If I stay here, the demons will just devour me anyway. They can’t tell the difference. Besides, I have to go find Shinyun and pass along my master’s message.”
“Great master you’ve got there,” said Alec. Tian didn’t reply. He gave them a long look and then walked away, moving quickly and purposefully, cutting across the scorched wasteland. The demons ignored him completely. In a short time he had vanished behind their milling crowds.
“Okay,” said Magnus, drawing White Impermanence. “I’ll keep the flying demons off us.”
“Where to?” said Clary.
“Someplace safer than here,” said Jace. “Stay together.”
Together the four of them advanced toward the bridge. At the front, Alec and Jace used their weapons to hold off the demons that got in their way; behind, Magnus blasted anything in the air, and Clary held off the demons that tried to flank them.
It reminded Alec of the classical warfare he’d studied—hoplites, squeezed together for protection, making their way through a hail of arrows. It was agonizingly slow going. Ten minutes of fighting brought them onto the iron bridge, but to Alec it looked like the bridge itself would be another hour to cross, stretching off into the indefinite distance. Next to him, Jace struck out with the spear again and again, his face a mask of sweat and ichor. Alec was sure he looked no better.
Once they were fully on the bridge, the demons changed their strategy. This wasn’t like the earlier fight; the demons were crowded so thickly that they could barely maneuver themselves, and they quickly realized that rather than trying to break past the Shadowhunters’ blades and Magnus’s lightning, they would accomplish their aim just as well by forcing them off the edge of the bridge.
“What happens if we fall?” said Clary.
“Remember what Tian said,” Jace said. “At the bottom of Diyu is the city of Shanghai, reversed. Whatever that means.”
Alec exchanged a look with Magnus, who nodded.
Jace caught their look. “We’re jumping off, aren’t we?”
“I can protect us from the fall,” Magnus said.
“But what about the landing?” Clary said.
“If I only jumped when I knew where I was going to land,” Magnus said, “I would never jump at all.”
And with that he flung himself over the side of the bridge.
“Are we really doing this?” Jace said to Clary.
Clary hesitated, then nodded firmly. “I trust Magnus.”
The two of them, and Alec right after, threw themselves after Magnus. Alec fell backward, watching the bridge recede into the distance, fading into the starless ink of the sky. As he fell he could not help thinking of Tian’s face, his expression cryptic, as he had walked away from fellow Shadowhunters who had trusted him.