Tumbling through the air, all three warlocks followed the rocks and the Nephilim through the rupture between the worlds. It glowed like the light coming from Magnus’s chest.
Then a darkness covered them, stronger than any light. There were clouds of smoke, and a cold wind, and then there was nothing at all.
PART III Diyu
CHAPTER ELEVEN The First Court
HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO, MAGNUS had lain sleepless in the City of Bones, among the Silent Brothers. Then as now, peace had seemed an impossibility.
Magnus’s mother had killed herself because of what he was. His stepfather had tried to kill him for it. Magnus had murdered his stepfather instead. He didn’t recall the time after that very well. He’d been out of his mind, his powers out of control, a lost child carrying a storm of magic and rage in his breast. He remembered almost dying of thirst in a desert. He remembered an earthquake; falling rubble; screaming. When the Silent Brothers came, he’d stumbled through a rain of rocks toward their hooded figures, not knowing whether they would teach him or kill him.
They took him away, but even in their city of peace and silence, he dreamed of his stepfather burning. He desperately wanted help, but he had no idea how to ask for it.
The Silent Brothers approached the warlock Ragnor Fell for aid with this wayward warlock child.
The memory of their first meeting was still crystal clear. Magnus had been lying on his bed in the bare stone room the Silent Brothers had given him. They had done what they could, finding a soft, colorful blanket and a few toys for him to make the space more like a child’s bedroom, and less like a prison cell. It was still fairly uncomfortable, not least because the Silent Brothers themselves were so intimidating. Their kindness to him was at sharp odds with their terrifying eyeless faces, and he’d been trying to stop flinching when they entered the room.
He was finally getting used to the monsters caring for him, and then a new monster walked in. The door scraped open, steel on stone.
“Come now, boy,” said a voice from the door of his cell. “There’s no need to cry.”
A demon, the boy thought frantically, a demon like his parents said he was: skin green as the moss on graves, hair white as bone. His fingers each had an extra joint, and curled grotesquely into claws. Magnus scrambled to sit up and defend himself, an awkward preteen in the middle of an alarming growth spurt, limbs flailing and dangerous magic pouring out of him.
Only Ragnor lifted one of his strange hands, and Magnus’s magic turned to blue smoke, a blaze of harmless color in the dark.
Ragnor rolled his eyes. “It’s very impolite to stare at people.”
Magnus hadn’t expected this alien being to speak his language, but Ragnor’s Malay was smooth and effortless, if accented. “My first impressions are that you have no social grace, and that you are in desperate need of a bath.” He gave a heavy sigh. “I can’t believe I agreed to this. My first lesson to you, boy, is to never play cards against a Silent Brother.”
“What—what are you?” said Magnus.
“I am Ragnor Fell. What are you?”
Magnus could barely find his voice. “He said—she called me—they said I was cursed.”
Ragnor came closer. “And do you always let other people tell you what you are?”
Magnus was silent.
“Because they will always try,” said Ragnor. “You have magic, just like I do.”
Magnus nodded.
“Well, then,” said Ragnor, “here are the most important things I can tell you. People will want to control you because of your power. They will try to convince you they are doing it for your own good. You must be very careful of them.” When Magnus flicked his eyes past Ragnor to the corridor outside his room, Ragnor said, “Yes. Even the Silent Brothers are helping you partly for their own purposes. The Shadowhunters have need of friendly warlocks, even if they might wish they didn’t.”
“Is it wrong?” said Magnus quietly. “That they are helping me?”
Ragnor hesitated. “No,” he said finally. “You are not their responsibility, and they have no guarantees about how you will turn out. You are lucky enough to have been born in a time when Shadowhunters like warlocks, rather than in one of the times in history when they’ve hunted us for sport.”
“So it’s dangerous having magic,” Magnus said.
Ragnor chuckled. “Life is tremendously dangerous whether you have magic or not,” he said, “but yes, especially for people like us. Warlocks don’t age like other humans, but we often die young anyway. Abandoned by our human parents. Burned at stakes by mundanes. Executed by Shadowhunters. This is not a safe world, but then, I know of no safe worlds. You have to be strong to survive in all of them.”
The child who would be Magnus stammered, “How did you—how did you survive?”
Ragnor came over and sat down on the cold earth floor beside Magnus, their backs against a wall of yellowed skulls. Ragnor’s back was broad, and Magnus’s narrow, but Magnus tried to sit up as straight as Ragnor did.
“I was lucky,” Ragnor said. “That’s how most warlocks survive. We’re the lucky ones—the ones who were loved. My family were mundanes with the Sight, who knew a little of our world. They thought a green child might be a faerie changeling, and we didn’t find out differently until later. Even when they did, they loved me still.”
The Silent Brothers had spoken to Magnus in his mind, had taught him a little of where warlocks came from, how demons broke through into the world, forcing or tricking humans into bearing their children.
“And what about your father?”
“My father?” Ragnor echoed. “You mean the demon? I don’t call that a father. My father raised me. The other, the demon, has nothing to do with me.
“I know you weren’t one of the lucky ones,” Ragnor went on. “But we are warlocks. We live forever, and that means sooner or later, we are alone. When others call us the spawn of demons, try to use our power for their own ends, envy us, fear us, or simply die and leave us, we must decide ourselves what we shall be. Warlocks name ourselves, before someone else can name us.”
“I’ll choose a name,” said the boy.
“Then no doubt we will get to know each other better.” He looked Magnus up and down. “Your second lesson: the Silent Brothers don’t need to wash themselves or their clothes, but you do. You very much do.”
The boy laughed.
“Let’s keep ourselves sparkling clean from now on, shall we?” Ragnor suggested. “And for God’s sake, get some nice clothes.”
Later, Ragnor would say he wished he’d never come to the City of Bones that day, and he’d never intended for Magnus to go so far overboard with the clothes. And of course he’d never foreseen the invention of cosmetic glitter.
Magnus had hoped to find peace in the Silent City, but now he understood that such peace was impossible. He could only ask his questions. He hoped Ragnor would give him some of the answers, and then Magnus would give himself a name.
* * *
“MAGNUS!”
Alec heard his own voice, echoing out into the desolate space that extended around and above him.
Hell was empty.
Alec lay on his back, out of breath but at least conscious. He’d blacked out as he tumbled through the Portal, he had no idea for how long. He lifted himself up on his elbows, expecting it to hurt, but he seemed uninjured.
There was nothing here. The sky was absent of stars or moons or clouds—no, there was no sky whatsoever. There was no depth or distance, no shades or colors, just a sea of uniform claustrophobic void from horizon to horizon.
Blinking, he sat up and looked around. He was on a vast, blank expanse of gray stone, flat but uneven, with large fissures here and there. The landscape was featureless, rolling away to empty horizons in all directions. The other Shadowhunters were scattered around him, no one farther than maybe fifty feet away. Jace was already standing—of course—and had somehow, miraculously, managed to retain a grip on the spear he’d taken from the smithy. The others were in various stages of rising to their feet. Nobody seemed to be hurt.
Magnus was standing a short distance away from all of them, looking up. Alec followed his gaze and saw a knot of magic in the sky, tangled and chaotic, like a wound sewn up in haste on the battlefield. It crackled blackly, but no demons were emerging from it.
Alec rose and went over to join his boyfriend. He put his hand on Magnus’s shoulder. Magnus said, still looking at the messy suture in the sky, “It’s not pretty. But I think it’ll hold.”
Alec pulled Magnus into a tight embrace and held him for a moment, feeling the warmth of his body and the soothing sound of his breathing against him. Then he stepped back. “Shinyun?” he said. “Ragnor?”
“They were right behind me,” Magnus said. There was fatigue in his voice, and Alec wondered how much his whirlwind had taken out of him. “I would swear on my life they came through the Portal right behind me. But they didn’t appear on this side.”
“Well, Sammael is the Master of Portals and the master of Ragnor and Shinyun,” Alec offered. “So maybe they went somewhere else.”
“Who knows,” said Magnus flatly. Despite their success, he sounded defeated.
Isabelle’s voice, behind them, suddenly called out, “Simon?”
Alec turned. Isabelle, Clary, and Jace were coming over to join them—all of them looking like they’d been through a windstorm—but there was no sign of Simon.
Clary spun around. “Simon? Simon?”
They all looked around them, but it wasn’t like there was a hiding place on the bare rock that surrounded them. Simon was gone.
They all looked at Clary. She was holding her arms around herself, her face very pale. Jace put his hand on her back.
“Look for him,” he said gently. “Inside yourself.”
As Clary closed her eyes, Alec remembered a time, long ago, when Sebastian had taken Jace, and he had searched in vain inside himself for the spark that was his parabatai. Watching Clary now, he remembered the pain.