The Lost Book of the White

She inhaled sharply. “Okay… he’s alive, at least.”

“You think he went wherever Ragnor and Shinyun went?” Alec said to Magnus.

He expected Magnus to say who knows again, but the warlock’s expression had sharpened, and he looked a little more present again. “It’s possible,” he said.

“He definitely came through the Portal,” said Jace. “I saw him.”

Isabelle looked stricken. “He didn’t want to come,” she said. “To Shanghai, I mean. He thought something terrible would happen. I told him he was being ridiculous.” She pushed her tangled dark hair away from her face, her lips trembling.

“Iz,” said Alec. “We’ll find him.”

“We’ll have to figure out how to get back home ourselves,” said Jace. “And we have no idea how to do that, either.”

“And we can’t leave without the Book of the White,” put in Alec. “And we have to save you,” he added to Magnus.

“And we have to rescue Ragnor,” Magnus said.

They all looked at him. “Magnus,” Clary said gently, “we need to be rescued from Ragnor.”

“He’s not himself,” said Magnus. “He’s under Sammael’s control. I’m not leaving him like that. If there’s a way to save me, there’s a way to save him.”

After a moment, Jace nodded. “Right,” he said. “So we need to find the Book of the White, find Ragnor, defeat Ragnor, save Ragnor, find Simon, save Simon, figure out what Sammael’s up to, neutralize Shinyun, and destroy the permanent Portal between Diyu and Shanghai.”

“I thought we just did that last one,” said Isabelle, looking up at the scar in the sky. “Besides—it looks like Ragnor and Shinyun have figured out how to open a big hole between Diyu and our world any time they want.”

“Which begs the question,” said Jace, “if they can do that, why doesn’t Sammael just come through with them?”

Magnus templed his fingers together. “If Sammael could come into our world, he would,” he said. “So there’s some reason he can’t pass from Diyu to Earth yet. Probably something to do with the way he was banished. But I don’t know what it is.”

Jace looked around them, hands on his hips. “Maybe there’s an information booth somewhere. You know, like, ‘Welcome to Hell’?”

Magnus regarded him darkly.

“Well, we can’t just stay here on this rock,” said Alec. “Isn’t Diyu supposed to be a whole bureaucracy with judges and courts and torture chambers? That can’t all be gone, can it?”

“Hang on,” said Magnus, and launched himself into the air. Alec watched him, disconcerted. Magnus couldn’t fly, not normally, but now he was doing it without visible effort. The Svefnthorn in action, he supposed.

In the silence, they watched Magnus swoop around above the stony expanse. Clary put her hand on Isabelle’s shoulder, and Isabelle gave her a worried look. “We’ll find Simon,” Clary said. “He has no part in any of this stuff. There’s no reason for him to be in danger.”

“Sure,” said Isabelle faintly. “He’s only lost in Hell.”

Nobody had anything to say to that, and they stood in silence for another minute, until Magnus landed again, his coat billowing out around him elegantly as he descended. Even in a demonic underworld, Alec thought, Magnus had panache.

“This way,” he said, and led them off in what seemed to Alec an arbitrary direction. They all followed, bemused.

After a few minutes of walking, during which the landscape didn’t change or even suggest that they were going anywhere, Magnus stopped and gestured to the ground. “Voilà,” he said.

Below them, invisible from any distance beyond a few feet, there was a large rough opening in the ground. Stone stairs descended from it in a spiral.

“Where do they go?” said Clary.

Magnus gave her a look. “They go down,” he said, and started to descend the steps.

Clary gave him a look. “The only person who might have appreciated that reference,” she said, “is the one we’re trying to rescue.”

Magnus said easily, “Your comment suggests that you, too, appreciated it in your way.”

“At least we’ll die sassy,” muttered Isabelle as she followed them.

Alec followed too, his mind uneasy.

* * *

THE STAIRCASE WAS HUNDREDS OF steps long, turning back and forth in a zigzag that kept them going more or less vertically straight down. There was no railing, of course, but Magnus had no idea what would happen if someone fell. He could catch them with his magic, he reasoned, but he hoped it didn’t come to that.

For a while, the stairs vanished into haze and smoke below them, with no end. But gradually a huge square shape came into focus below, and as they approached, Magnus realized he was looking down on a walled city.

From above, it could have been a city on Earth, albeit a city on Earth in ancient times. There was an outer wall in stone, marked at regular intervals by towers that, Magnus was sure, were the tops of gates in and out, although outside the walls was the same dark void that surrounded everything else. Inside was a series of courtyards separated from each other by red-roofed buildings that resembled courthouses or palaces.

As they got closer, it became clear to Magnus that he was looking at an abandoned place. All was silent. Nothing moved. When the angle allowed them to get a better look at the towers, Magnus could see that most of them were broken, and here and there on the ground far below, huge boulders of fallen rock blocked the streets.

It seemed at first as if they would descend right into the heart of the ruined city, but this was an optical illusion; when they reached the ground level, they could see that the staircase let them off outside the walls.

The five of them stepped off the final steps into a stone-paved courtyard, just as silent as the plain they’d left above. On three sides the courtyard seemed to end and fall off into nothing, but on the fourth side, two massive que towers stood. Their architecture was traditionally Chinese—“traditional” meaning a couple thousand years ago—elaborately carved and topped by flat roof tiles like broad-brimmed hats. As they neared the towers they could see that both were assembled from hundreds, even thousands of bones, from animals and humans alike. One tower shone bleached white, and the other gleamed in ebonized black. Between them, a path curved back and forth like a serpent, leading to an opening in the city walls through which all was dark.

Their steps echoed emptily. The silence was oppressive, the air completely still. They all walked down the winding path; there seemed to be no other way to go. Alec had drawn Black Impermanence and was carefully holding it in front of him, but nothing happened as they passed between the que towers.

Magnus wasn’t sure what he’d expected when they entered the city walls. The path dead-ended at another large rectangular courtyard, paved in stone. At the far end of the courtyard rose a white, half-timbered building with a hipped red roof, whose doors had been thrown wide. Red paper lanterns, unlit, dangled from the eaves. There was no way around the building; they would have to pass into it, and hopefully through it, before they could continue on.

Once inside, Magnus was reminded oddly of a hotel lobby. Tall stone pillars held up a ceiling so high that it vanished into haze, in a large open space that appeared designed to hold many people at once.

On both sides of the room, tapestries had been hung between a series of tall bronze poles. It looked to Magnus like they had once illustrated some tale, or maybe provided a suggestion of the punishments offered deeper into the realm, but now, other than the occasional face that could be made out, they were indecipherable, covered with dried bloodstains, frayed and torn at the bottom, and faded with age. At the far end of the room was a large but plain wooden desk, with a neat stack of dusty, rotted books and a pile of parchments flaked away to almost nothing. Behind the desk, a tiled wall depicted a surprisingly ordinary pattern of chrysanthemums.

There was no movement, no activity, no wind. Magnus’s breathing rang loudly in his own ears; his and his companions’ footfalls sounded like knocks upon a massive stone door.

Magnus walked toward the desk, uncertain, and as he did, he saw motion—a thick, stubby tentacle, green-black, appeared from below and flopped onto the desktop.

The Shadowhunters froze. Magnus heard a whisper and the corner of his eye caught the glow of a seraph blade being kindled.

A second tentacle joined the first, then a third. They shifted around on the desktop, leaving bits of slime. Then, acting in concert, they pressed down against the desk and levered into view a slimy head and torso, which rose until the creature was standing up. The tentacles slurped back off the desk and slapped on the stone floor wetly.

The demon had close-set green eyes and a vertical slit instead of a nose or mouth. It opened this slit and made a loud, gurgling noise, thick with slime, which might have been a roar or a yawn.

“Is that a Cecaelia demon?” Jace said, incredulous.

“Mortals!” intoned the demon, in a voice like a drowning man. “Welcome to Youdu, capital city of the hundred thousand hells! Here in the First Court the sins of your life will be tallied, and your punish—” He stopped and squinted at them. “Wait, I know you. Magnus Bane! What are you doing in Diyu, of all places?”

Alec said, “What?!” in a very loud voice.

“How do you know me, demon?” demanded Magnus, but a memory was already creeping into his mind, from a few years back. Early in his and Alec’s relationship… a client who wanted something to do with mermaids…

The demon was looking over at Alec. “Hey, is that Alec? So you two crazy kids made it work! Congratulations, guys, really.”

“Elyaas,” said Magnus weakly. “You’re Elyaas, aren’t you?”

“Magnus,” said Alec, using his most reasonable voice. “How are you and this demon acquainted?”