The Lost Book of the White by Cassandra Clare

CHAPTER SEVENTEENHeibai Wuchang

IT WASN’T A BETRAYAL, MAGNUStold himself; not really. But he knew that he would never get a chance to do what he wanted to do, with the Shadowhunters along with him. He could probably have convinced them to let him and Alec go together, but… as much as he didn’t want to admit it, Alec would be a liability in this situation too, for what he had in mind.

And Alec would never let him go on his own.

Alec would be right, probably.

But Magnus knew what he was doing. At least, he thought he knew what he was doing.

Alec slept on in the pitch-black of the cathedral office. It had been perhaps five hours since they had fallen asleep, but when Magnus woke up, he had done so feeling energized, rested, ready to go.

He would go and come back before Alec even noticed, he told himself.

Magnus had always been good at seeing in the dark, and in the last few days his vision had become even keener. He needed no illumination to guide him as he dressed in the lightless room, careful to remain quiet as he strapped his shoulder harness on.

With a gesture, a darkened surface appeared before him, a shimmering mirror. In that dark glass, Magnus saw his own face. He saw the darkness writhing at his throat and in his eyes. The worst was the razor gleam of his teeth, the way they seemed to pull his face into an entirely new shape.

Magnus knew a mundane story about a witch’s mirror that had broken into pieces: when a piece lodged in a child’s heart, that heart would turn to ice. He could feel the magic of the thorn twisting in his chest, as if it were a key opening a door he’d tried to keep shut. He didn’t need to glance down at his hands to see the veins standing out in red and black, or the marks of chains growing stronger. He could feel the subtle, terrible alteration of his being as his blood itself changed.

He had to do something. This was something.

Before he left, he held out a hand and gestured toward himself. Slowly, without a sound, Black Impermanence rose into the air from where Alec had carefully laid it down next to him. Careful not to disturb Alec or even the blankets, Magnus turned the sword in the air and floated it toward him. He held his breath, but in a moment Fan Wujiu was in his hand. He waited to see if he would explode; the smiths hadn’t said anything about being worthy to wield both swords at once.

Nothing happened. Maybe the Alliance rune, he thought, made him able to wield Alec’s sword. Maybe the rules were slipperier than some faeries had let on. Maybe both. He started breathing again and carefully placed the Black Impermanence on his back, next to its twin.

At the door he turned and looked back at Alec. And at the top of the stairs to the nave, he looked for a long time at the breathing quiet of Xujiahui. They were in the depths of Hell, and this cathedral was only the shadow of something real. Nevertheless Magnus felt the hush of holiness, of faith like a light in the darkness. It pervaded the cavern of the church, even here a sanctuary. Perhaps their last sanctuary.

FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO, MAGNUShad had only one friend in the world: Ragnor Fell. Ragnor had taught him what it was to be a warlock: power, yes, the ability to twist space and time to your own ends, yes, but also loneliness, constant danger, a life of wandering. A warlock would never find a warm welcome, Ragnor told him. Even other Downworlders would not trust him. Shadowhunters could capture him, torture him, kill him with impunity. Vampires had clans and werewolves had packs and faeries had courts, but a warlock stood always alone.

There was a time when Magnus found himself in the city of Leonberg. Magnus did not like Leonberg. He had seen very little of the Holy Roman Empire, but based on his experience here, he was prepared to call it grossly overrated: the weather cold and damp, the food heavy and dull, the people suspicious and parochial. He had come at the request of a minor landholder who wanted Magnus to improve his crop yields and the fecundity of his pigs, for much more coin than such magic deserved. Magnus had executed the task in a matter of about fifteen minutes, and now sat drinking insipid beer in the garden of an insipid bar. This bar had a lovely view of Leonberg’s prison tower, which squatted like an angry troll under a gunmetal sky. He sighed, he drank, he dreamed of magic as yet unmade that would allow him to disappear from this place and reappear in a warm, cozy place, perhaps Paris, or somewhere in southern Italy.

His reverie was disrupted by a commotion from the direction of the prison. A group of men in local livery were dragging a disheveled woman out. They hustled her around the side of the prison and vanished from sight. As they did, Magnus noted that the woman was glamoured, and that under the glamour she had blue skin.

He sipped his beer. His hand shook. In his mind, Ragnor’s voice told him sternly that he should look out for himself, that he had nothing to gain from risking his own well-being for a stranger.

He sipped his beer again.

With an abrupt decisive movement, he slammed his glass down on the table, stood up, cursed loudly in Malay, French, and Arabic, and strode purposefully in the direction of the prison and the blue warlock.

Centuries later, he could still remember her screams as her hair caught fire. He broke into a run as he heard a man’s voice sternly proclaim that by the order of the Leonberg judiciary, the woman was guilty of witchcraft and cavorting with devils, and was therefore sentenced to be put to death by the flame.

There were a few locals there to gawk, but witch burning was no longer much of a novelty in these parts, and the day was unpleasant. Nobody got in Magnus’s way as he charged toward the bonfire, now spreading orange gouts of flame well above the blue warlock’s head. Nobody stopped him as he spoke words of magical protection, unsure whether they would even work, or as he braced a boot on the stacked crackling wood and vaulted up into the pyre.

His flesh may have been protected, but his clothes immediately caught fire. He shrugged off the discomfort and grasped hold of the ropes binding the woman, dissolving them with sparks of blue magic. The woman wheeled her gaze toward him and caught sight of his cat’s eyes. She had a look of terror mingled with surprise as he wrapped his arms around her and made to leap off the pyre.

“Hello,” he murmured in her ear. “When we hit the ground, please roll back and forth to put the flames out.”

Without waiting for her reply, he jumped, taking her with him. They thudded into the cold mud next to the bonfire. While it did put out the flames, by the time they stood up their clothes were blackened and falling off, a development Magnus had not anticipated. He could, of course, summon up new clothing, but these didn’t seem the sort of people in front of whom it was wise to do magic.

The soldiers overseeing the execution had been frozen in bewilderment so far, but now were recovering themselves and drawing their swords.

Magnus looked at the woman. “Now what?” he shouted over the roar of the fire and the exclamations of the crowd.

The woman goggled at him. “Now what?” she yelled. “This is your rescue!”

“I’ve never done this before!” he yelled back.

“How about we run?” the woman suggested. Magnus stared at her stupidly for a moment, and she shook her head. “Good God, I’ve been rescued by an idiot!” She turned toward the crowd and held out her hands, and billows of blue smoke emerged from her palms, spreading in thick clouds quickly. The soldiers’ yelling became more confused.

“Yes! Good idea!” Magnus said. The woman rolled her eyes and ran. Magnus followed, wondering how fast they could find shelter and whether that tailor in Venice would have enough of that brocade material to make him a replacement for his coat.

Ragnor caught up with them many hours later, at a tavern on the road to Tübingen. By that point they had found new clothes and Magnus had learned some things about the woman he’d rescued. Her name was Catarina Loss; she had come to Leonberg to treat an outbreak of plague; she had been caught laying glowing hands on a patient and had been immediately arrested as a witch. Leonberg, she explained, was just mad for witch burning.

“Everywhere in Europe is mad for witch burning,” Ragnor said, ill-tempered. He was angry at Magnus, but equally obviously liked Catarina, and the two of them had quickly fallen into as pleasant a rapport as Magnus had with either of them. Unfortunately, their favorite topic so far was how stupid Magnus had been for attempting the rescue.

“I saved your life!” he protested.

“And a very careful, understated saving it was,” Ragnor said. “How do you think I found you? Within minutes the whole area was buzzing with rumors of a vile magician swooping through the sky over Leonberg on a black cloud, flying through flame and carrying a foul witch out of the fire meant to sanctify her.”

“So we stay out of the Holy Roman Empire for a while.” Magnus shrugged, grinning. “I won’t miss it.”

“It takes up half of Europe, Magnus.”

“Very overrated, Europe.”

Catarina interrupted this to put a hand on Magnus’s arm. “Thank you, though, truly,” she said. “It is terrible to be a warlock in these times.”

“I am fairly new to the experience myself,” said Magnus. “But Ragnor here says we must go our own ways.”

“We can rescue one another, though,” said Catarina. “Since no one else will rescue us. Not other Downworlders, not mundanes, and certainly not Shadowhunters.”

“May they all rot in hell,” put in Ragnor. But his expression softened. “I’ll go fetch us a great deal more to drink. And I’m not against traveling together, for safety. For now. I don’t generally hold with making friends.”

“And yet,” said Magnus, “you were my first friend.”

Catarina gave him a small smile. “Perhaps I will be your friend too. Someone has to stop you from making a complete fool of yourself.”

“Hear, hear,” said Ragnor, draining his glass. “You’re an idiot.”

“I like him,” Catarina told Ragnor. “There is something righteous about someone who doesn’t turn away from danger, even when he should. Someone who sees suffering and will always choose to plunge into the flames.”

By morning, they were all friends. The whole world had changed since then, but that hadn’t changed.

MAGNUS’S KNOWLEDGE OF SHANGHAI GEOGRAPHYwas a little rusty, and he was turned around in the starless emptiness of Diyu, but since he could apparently fly now, he let himself drift over the reversed city until he found what he was looking for.

The temple was small and, like everything else in Diyu, ruined. It had been a humble building to begin with, a simple one-room structure of ochre-stained brick walls, its roof plain and undecorated. Back in actual Shanghai, it had probably been built for a single family.

There was a mark across the side, a slash of black paint that looked familiar. It was the same design that had been graffitied on the side of the modern apartment complex that the Tracking rune had led them to, in their initial hunt for Ragnor.

Magnus climbed the steps and peered into the open front door.

The room inside was fairly bare. An oil lamp hung from the ceiling, illuminating the plain wooden chair where Ragnor sat, glaring, in a shabby robe belted over trousers. He had evidently been expecting Magnus.

“You stole my blankets,” he said sourly.

“And a couple of pillows,” Magnus said. “You know how hard it is to find any kind of textiles in this place?”

“I know very well,” said Ragnor. “Unless you like sleeping on old tapestries crispy with bloodstains.”

Magnus looked more closely around the room. There was a simple platform in one corner, which Magnus assumed had been Ragnor’s bed before Magnus had stolen all the linens off it. There was a small wooden table, on which was, not surprisingly, the Book of the White. Ragnor’s chair had been placed facing the front door, as if Ragnor had been sitting and waiting for hours. He might have been.

Magnus stood in the doorway. He hadn’t really made a plan that went further than this. “I wouldn’t have guessed that you would have done it,” he said cautiously. “Taken the third thorn of your own free will, I mean.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.” Ragnor’s eyes gleamed. “When it came to it, I decided that I didn’t want to die. Nor should you.”

“Well,” said Magnus, casting his gaze around at the dingy interior of the temple. “Now that I’ve seen the perks that come with the job, how could I resist?”

Ragnor sighed.

Magnus could stand it no longer. “When you faked your death. In Idris. You told me you would contact me,” he blurted. “And then you didn’t. I assumed—”

“You assumed that Sammael had caught me,” said Ragnor. “You were right, of course.”

“I assumed you were dead,” Magnus said.

Ragnor shrugged. “I could have been. For a while, I might as well have been.”

It was so strange, talking to Ragnor like this. He sounded like—well, he sounded like Ragnor, Magnus’s first and oldest friend, who had done more than anyone to make Magnus into who he was. But Magnus could see the star of red light gleaming against Ragnor’s chest, and he knew that as gruff and familiar as Ragnor’s demeanor might be, he had become Sammael’s creature, maybe irrevocably.

His curiosity was too great not to continue this conversation, though he knew he might not have time, that perhaps Shinyun or Sammael even now knew he was here. But he had to know. The question had eaten at him for too long now. “What happened?” he said.

“Shinyun happened,” Ragnor said. “Take a seat.”

There was another plain wooden chair next to the open door, and Magnus dragged it over and sat across from Ragnor, like he was interviewing him on a talk show.

“Sammael was looking for me,” Ragnor said. “He was still mostly Void, and looking for a demon realm in which he could become embodied and make his plans. My name reached his ears.”

“I remember,” Magnus said. “So you faked your death during the Mortal War and fled.”

“Quite. Most people didn’t believe it could be the real Sammael who had returned, but Shinyun did. She found me, and she stuck me in a cage.”

“A cage?” said Magnus.

“A cage,” confirmed Ragnor. “It was not my most dignified moment. This was before Shinyun had sworn fealty to Sammael, you understand. But she knew about him. She knew about the way he’d been banished, knew he was able to return in brief, faint bursts. Knew he’d been looking for me. I was the bait she thought she could attract his attention with.” He smiled bitterly. “It worked.”

Magnus was uncomfortably aware of the concept of “bait” as a central axis of his and his friends’ own plan.

Ragnor went on. “She told me about how she had met you and Alec Lightwood, how she had been rejected by Asmodeus. How, in the end, you took pity on her. And rather than bringing her to the Spiral Labyrinth, or letting the Nephilim have her, Alec let her go.”

Magnus let out a deep breath. “Alec is the one who let her go,” he said, “because he is a better person than almost anyone else I know. He told me about it when we got home from Italy. I think we both hoped that Shinyun would take that mercy as an opportunity to rethink her choices. To think about a different path than just seeking the most powerful entity available and declaring her loyalty to it.”

“Well, it didn’t work,” Ragnor snapped, in a way that was so ordinary for him that Magnus almost smiled. “Shinyun understood that mercy to be from both of you, and she understood it as a pointed message about your power over her. A mockery of her. That holding her life in your hands, and letting her go, was toying with her. The way a cat toys with a rat.”

“What did you think?” Magnus said quietly.

Ragnor snorted. “I thought you had done her a totally undeserved favor, and the least she could do was show some gratitude. She didn’t like that.”

“I bet she didn’t,” said Magnus.

“When Lilith died, it drove Sammael from the Void and into Shinyun’s arms. So to speak. He ordered Shinyun to recover the Svefnthorn. And you know what happened next.” Ragnor shifted in his chair. “Shinyun and Sammael came to me together, with the thorn. Before Sammael struck me the first time, he told me it would increase my power, and that I would need that power to find him a realm. I refused, because at that time I did not fully grasp either Sammael’s or the thorn’s power and thought that some other path might exist than serving him. It didn’t, of course.”

Magnus said nothing.

“He struck me a second time, drawing a Greek cross upon my heart. I felt power surge within me. It was… a heady experience. I became briefly intoxicated with power and burst the bars of my cage. I meant to make my escape, but Sammael stopped me.” He smiled, as if nostalgic for a beloved memory. “I should have known better than to challenge him.

“Shinyun demanded to be thorned as well. Sammael allowed her to take the thorn, but he explained the way the thorn’s magic worked: that she would need a third strike, and to become his servant forever, or the thorn would burn her very life out. She grabbed the thorn and took the third wound upon her without hesitation.”

“And you?” said Magnus.

“I resisted, of course,” Ragnor said. “I was frustrated, and willful, and did not yet understand the situation. Once I did, I took the thorn willingly. I did not want to die, after all.” He gave Magnus a stern look. “You do not want to die either, Magnus. There is no reason to martyr yourself to the cause of the angels just to make a point. We are Lilith’s creatures, after all, you and I, and it is fitting that we serve her eternal consort.”

“I won’t betray Alec,” Magnus said. “Or Max.”

“There’s no need to betray Max,” Ragnor scoffed. “He is Lilith’s child just as much as either of us. He would thrive, on Sammael’s Earth. As for Alec… well, that’s your mistake, I suppose. I told you long ago, many times, that the life of a warlock is a lonely one, and that pretending otherwise leads only to sorrow. And now here is that sorrow, come for you as we both always knew it would.”

Magnus was silent, watching the play of light on the bare floor. After a long time, Ragnor sighed. “The rest of the story you can guess. I used my increased power, I found Diyu for Sammael, he took it over, and he began his preparations for war.”

“Ragnor.” Magnus leaned forward. “Even if I can’t save myself… I can save you. You don’t need to remain here in Diyu. You don’t need to serve Sammael—or anybody else. I can free you.” I think. Maybe. He stood up from the chair, and slowly he drew the two swords, the White Impermanence and the Black, from where they were strapped to his back.

He had a hunch. It was a very vague hunch, but he’d acted on less. Rarely when the stakes were this high, though.

He briefly worried Ragnor would attack him, but the other warlock didn’t move. “If by that you mean you can kill me, I think you’ll find you can’t, here in Diyu.” Ragnor’s voice was melancholy. “I am under too much of Sammael’s protection, and this place too full of his power.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” said Magnus, although he had to admit that if someone said that to him while pointing two swords at him, he probably wouldn’t believe them.

“Even if you could release me from the thorn,” Ragnor said, “you cannot save me. I have done too much, under Sammael’s command, to atone for now. Neither the Spiral Labyrinth nor Idris would ever allow me my freedom, even if the Archangel Michael came down and slew Sammael a second time, in front of my eyes.” He looked curious. “I hope that wasn’t your plan.”

“No,” said Magnus. He turned the swords so that he was holding them with the flats of both blades toward the sky. “Do you know these swords?”

“I don’t,” Ragnor grumbled, “but I bet you’re going to tell me about them.”

“This one,” said Magnus, holding up the black sword, “says that there is no salvation for evildoers. This one”—he held up the white—“says that those who atone will be at peace.”

“So they contradict one another,” said Ragnor. “Is that meant to be somehow meaningful?”

But Magnus wasn’t listening closely. He felt his magic flow in and through the swords, and he thought, Heibai Wuchang. Master Fan, Master Xie. Your home has been taken, and the magic of the Svefnthorn flows through this place, where it was never meant to be. Your king Yanluo is gone, and he will not return. But if you drive the Svefnthorn from this warlock before you, I will release you back into Diyu, to serve it however you desire. Only do this one thing for me.

After a moment, Ragnor said dryly, “Is something supposed to be happening? Your eyes are closed.”

Magnus felt the swords jerk in his hands.

His eyes flew open. A glow had formed around the swords, not the crimson radiance of the thorn’s magic but something totally different, white smoke and black smoke intermingling in the air between them.

The swords wished to be together. Magnus felt them pull toward each other, like magnets. He watched in fascination as they transformed, from inert, inanimate objects to moving, visibly living things. As though they had never been inanimate at all, but only sleeping.

Magnus hoped they didn’t mind too much that they had been stuck through a number of disgusting demon bodies in the past couple of days.

He released the hilts of both swords, and they drifted in the air toward one another, each seeking its mate.

In the middle they joined, blade alongside blade, and then they began to bend and twist around one another. Ragnor was simply staring at the swords, a look of utter astonishment on his face. He made eye contact with Magnus, and Magnus shrugged to indicate he didn’t know what was happening either.

Light poured from the swords, and as their spinning and writhing ceased, Magnus could see that where there had been two there was now only one sword. He was sad to note that it was not actually twice the size of the other swords, but it was impressive regardless. The entire hilt was bright black horn, with the cross guard carved into twisting shapes that quite closely resembled Ragnor’s horns—his old horns, not the new spiked monstrosities that the thorn had made. The blade was of bone, smooth and long and, Magnus could tell, very sharp.

He had just enough time to admire the sword’s beauty before it plunged forward and ran Ragnor through.

Ragnor was thrown backward, his robe falling open. Magnus could see the third thorn mark now, a line cutting through the “Greek cross” of the first two wounds. The sword had plunged into the center of the convergence of scars, light shimmering out from the place the metal entered Ragnor’s flesh.

Magnus dropped down to his knees immediately, next to Ragnor. His old friend didn’t seem able to see him—his eyes were staring straight ahead, filmed with a white blindness. Ragnor’s back arched, and the sword began to slide deeper into his chest, sinking slowly down. An acrid cloud of red mist drifted upward from the wound. It became denser and fuller, and then it was pouring from Ragnor’s eyes, too, and his nostrils, and his open mouth.

Magnus leaned back. He didn’t know if breathing the magic fog was actually a problem, but he thought it was better not to risk it.

The sword penetrated through Ragnor’s chest up to the hilt, and then just kept going, the hilt, too, passing through his chest as if through water. The red mist came out of his chest in spasmodic coughs, and then the sword was gone, and the red mist dissipated, and Ragnor was still.

For a moment, there was only the sound of Magnus’s breathing, terribly loud in his own ears.

But Ragnor wasn’t dead. His chest, Magnus saw, was rising and falling. Not a lot. Not powerfully. But enough.

After what felt like a very long moment, Ragnor blinked his eyes open. He looked around until his gaze found Magnus, over to his right.

“You,” said Ragnor, “are a terrible fool.”

Magnus cocked his head, unsure what this statement said about Ragnor’s current evil-or-not-evil status. He did note that Ragnor’s horns were back to their normal size. His eyes and his teeth, also, seemed more familiar.

“You had the power of gods in your hands,” Ragnor said. “They spoke to me. You could have wielded them in any number of ways against Sammael. And you wasted them on, of all things, un-thorning me.”

Magnus laughed, unable to stop himself. He leaned over and grabbed Ragnor into a tight bear hug.

“I assume,” said Magnus after a moment, “that you’re tolerating being hugged for this long because you are suffused with your love for me as your dearest friend and also your savior, and not because you are too weak to get away.”

“Think what you like,” said Ragnor.

Magnus pulled away and examined Ragnor’s chest from several angles. The thorn scars were, as far as he could tell, completely gone. Unfortunately, so were the swords.

Ragnor drew himself up onto his elbows. “The Black and White Impermanence,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Where in all the realms of this universe did you get them?”

“You’ll forgive me,” said Magnus, “if I don’t say. I’m only around seventy-five percent sure you’re no longer under Sammael’s thrall.”

Ragnor shook his head somberly. “It was the wrong call, Magnus. Saving me. You’d have been better off using the power of the Heibai Wuchang to stop Sammael, or even to delay him or change his plans. I’d be better off left behind here. I told you, I’ve done too many things that cannot be atoned for.”

Magnus held up his two palms and mimed balancing a scale. “No salvation for evildoers. Those who atone, be at peace. I’m sorry, Ragnor, but the death gods have decided, and they say, be at peace.”

“Do you believe everything death gods tell you?” said Ragnor sternly.

Magnus helped him to his feet. “Are they gone, do you think? Did I… did I use them up?”

Ragnor said, “You can’t keep a god down, Magnus. They are Black and White Impermanence. You know, impermanent. After a time they’ll re-form in Diyu, I’m sure.” He looked around at the temple, as though he’d just noticed how dilapidated and grimy it was.

“Ragnor,” Magnus said, “was stealing the Book of the White absolutely necessary? Did Sammael demand it?”

Ragnor looked over at the Book on the table and started, as though he had forgotten it was there. Then he turned back to Magnus and barked a laugh. “No. It was Shinyun’s idea.”

Magnus’s eyebrows went up. “He doesn’t want it?”

“Well, no, he does,” Ragnor allowed. “He wants us to use it to weaken Earth’s wards, the ones put in place after he tried to invade the first time. So he can get back in.” He gave a wry look. “But Shinyun was very committed to the idea of retrieving it.”

“Because she wanted to come visit me?” Magnus said.

“Not everything is about you, Magnus,” Ragnor said sternly. “Although yes, Shinyun has… complicated feelings where you’re concerned. But I think she wanted the Book for her own purposes. She may be Sammael’s favorite pet, but I know her, and she definitely is playing her own game, separate from Sammael’s.”

“That’s exactly what I said!” Magnus exclaimed, gratified. “I said those exact words, ‘playing her own game.’ So, what game? A hedge against the possibility of his failure?”

“Setting the stage for her own success,” Ragnor said. He stood up. “My stars,” he said, “I can’t believe I accepted this kind of accommodation just because I was willing to serve Sammael. What a dump.”

“I can’t promise it’s any more comfortable,” said Magnus, “but let me take you back to Saint Ignatius. Well, Reverse Saint Ignatius. All the Shadowhunters are taking sanctuary there.”

Ragnor hesitated. “I suppose I must,” he said. “Atonement has to begin somewhere. And Sammael isn’t going to just let me go back home.” He looked a bit lost. “My home…,” he said. “I can’t return there anyway.”

“Let’s go,” Magnus said. “We can discuss your future when we get there.”

Ragnor retrieved the Book of the White. He pressed it into Magnus’s hands, and Magnus took it. He didn’t feel like he was finally receiving one of his possessions back; he felt like this was just the latest laying of this burden on his shoulders. Nevertheless, he carefully shrank the Book down to a manageable size and tucked it away in his pocket.

As soon as they left down the path away from the temple, Magnus could tell that Ragnor was in a weakened state. He walked slowly and placed his feet carefully, as though he wasn’t sure they would reliably obey him.

After a few minutes of walking in silence, in the dark, with Magnus at least fairly sure they were headed the right way, Ragnor spoke up. “Magnus, I don’t know any way to undo the thorning. Now that the swords are gone, I don’t know how it could be drawn out of you. Or Shinyun, for that matter, not that she wants it removed. You’ll still be stuck with the choice, soon enough, to join Sammael or die.”

“Then I’ll die,” said Magnus.

“You won’t,” said Ragnor with a sigh. “No one chooses to die, when there is a choice to live. You rationalize. You justify.”

Magnus said nothing. There had been a change in the dead air of Diyu. Where before all had been stillness and oppressive silence, now a slight wind had picked up. It blew faint white noise into the silence, and unpleasantly hot air in irregular gusts around Magnus’s face. Ragnor noticed it too, his head lifting when it started, but after a moment his eyes returned to the ground and he resumed walking.

“So,” Ragnor said, “Max.” He cleared his throat. “Your son.”

“He’s named after Alec’s brother,” Magnus said. “The one who was killed by Sebastian.”

Ragnor gave him a wry look. “Did you know, Sammael showed up in the first place because he was trying to reach Valentine Morgenstern’s son, Sebastian? Lilith suggested that Sammael seek him out. Said they had similar goals. Anyway, apparently Sebastian was dead well before Sammael could have found him. That would have been interesting.”

“ ‘Interesting’ is one way to describe it,” said Magnus. He paused. “Ragnor. One thing that happened, that you probably don’t know.” He just had to say it quickly. “Raphael… he died.”

Ragnor stopped walking, and Magnus stopped beside him. All around them blew the faint, dry wind of Diyu, smelling of iron and char.

“Valentine’s son, Sebastian,” Magnus said. “He, uh, he took over Edom.”

“Oh, I know,” Ragnor said, his eyebrows raised. “I didn’t hear the end of it. You think Sammael would be here if he could be in Edom? He loves it there. But—Raphael.”

Magnus took a deep breath. “Sebastian was holding us both prisoner. He ordered Raphael to kill me. Raphael refused. Sebastian killed him.” He looked at Ragnor, who appeared to be going through all the stages of grief at once, his expression flashing rapidly stunned surprise, sorrow, anger, thoughtfulness, and back. “He was paying back his debt to me, he said. For saving his life.”

Ragnor took a long breath and collected himself. “Every war has a body count,” he said bitterly. “And if you live long enough, you’ll see too many friends become part of that body count. Poor Raphael. I always liked him.”

“He always liked you,” said Magnus.

“I get the sense,” said Ragnor after a moment of silence from both of them, the roar of the hot wind of Diyu the only sound in the world, “that it is a good thing that Sammael wasn’t able to meet Sebastian.”

“I don’t know if they would have been able to collaborate,” Magnus said. “Neither of them are exactly good team players.”

“How did you come to adopt Max?”

“It’s a long story,” said Magnus, “which I will tell you in full once we are safely out of Hell.”

“Well, tell the short version,” Ragnor said impatiently. He began walking again, and Magnus followed.

“Another warlock baby abandoned,” said Magnus flatly. “Another horrified parent. They left a note that said, ‘Who could ever love it?’ ”

Ragnor snorted. “The oldest warlock story.”

“He was left at Shadowhunter Academy,” Magnus said. “I was a guest lecturer there. We ended up going home with Max.”

“Truly,” said Ragnor, “this is the culmination of your foolish dedication to rescuing people.”

Magnus gave him an incredulous look. “You’re one to talk.”

“Not that I’m not grateful,” Ragnor allowed.

“That’s not what I mean,” Magnus said. “I don’t mean now. I mean you’re one to talk because all those hundreds of years ago, you rescued me. You idiot.”

The wind was picking up and, worryingly, growing hotter. They walked along the darkened streets, past empty black shells of buildings Magnus couldn’t have identified—presumably, they corresponded to buildings in Shanghai, but here they resided in complete shadow and could barely be distinguished from the landscape around them.

Ragnor said gruffly, “Well, at least that’s one more warlock who will grow up with loving parents. Who know about Downworld.” Magnus knew that coming from Ragnor, this was effusive praise. “Pity about the Shadowhunter influence, though.”

“Hey,” said Magnus. “I was taught by the Silent Brothers, you know.”

“Yes, and look how that turned out,” said Ragnor.

Magnus was silent for a time and they walked. Even here in Hell, there was something companionable about walking alongside Ragnor, as he had done so many times before. Even with the thorn burning in his chest, even with no clear way back home.

“I’m going to marry Alec, you know,” he said after a while.

Ragnor raised his eyebrows. “When?”

“I don’t know. Not yet. The Shadowhunters wouldn’t acknowledge it, but we’re hoping that will change.”

“How would it change?” said Ragnor in a dismissive tone.

“Because we’ll change it,” said Magnus.

Ragnor shook his head. He looked weary. Magnus suspected that at some point, the full horror of what he had done would strike Ragnor. Right now he seemed insulated by shock. “Where you got your hopefulness, I have no idea. I certainly didn’t teach that to you.”

“When we can get married and have it recognized, then we’ll do it,” said Magnus. “Only then. When it’s legal for me to marry Alec. For Tian to marry Jinfeng.”

“For Shinyun to marry Sammael,” Ragnor said dryly, and Magnus choked a laugh, until they turned the next corner and the laugh was cut off.

Ahead of them stood St. Ignatius. It was blowing away.

Here, the hot wind they’d felt before was stronger. It danced around their heads, and, whipped into a frenzy, tore pieces of the cathedral loose and hurled them up into the empty sky. Huge chunks of marble and brick tore free, making a racket of grinding, crashing, and scraping noises. One of the two spires was gone, disappeared into the whirlwind. But what really worried Magnus was the roof.

The roof was missing—no, not missing. The roof was now in pieces, free-floating, huge boulders of tile and stone, as though some great creature had come and torn the church open, like a child unwrapping a present. The chunks of roof hung in the wind, suspended and drifting. It was hard to tell for sure, but if Magnus squinted, he thought he could see a human figure flying around the rocks, swooping and climbing.

Ragnor called, “Alec!” and Magnus looked back at the ground, where Alec, his Alec, was running full tilt toward them, soot on his face. He was yelling something, but Magnus couldn’t make it out.

Only as he got closer could he be understood. “The swords!” he was yelling. “We need the swords!”