“We are ill-prepared,” Tian said.

“You think?” yelled Alec.

Light burst in the sky, above the fray. Alec ignored it, assuming it was just more demons arriving, but then he noticed that Magnus had lowered his sword and was looking up, an unreadable expression on his face.

He looked, and from the blinding light, now dissipating into afterimage, came a horned creature. This one was also green, but a deeper green than the Jiangshi or the guardians they’d been fighting. Huge ram’s horns extended from its head, white as bone, and it wore a black cloak that billowed as it descended to the ground. Even Ox-Head and Horse-Face had stopped to watch it.

And then Alec realized. It was Ragnor Fell.

* * *

RAGNOR LANDED AMONG THEM. NOBODY spoke for a moment.

Ox-Head broke the silence, raising his ax tentatively and lowing. Without looking at him, Ragnor raised his hand and waved them upward, and both Ox-Head and Horse-Face were lifted twenty feet into the air, held in a reddish cloud. They flailed around within it but succeeded only in spinning slowly end over end in the air. Horse-Face began to bellow loudly, and Ragnor, with a flash of annoyance that reminded Magnus of the Ragnor he knew, twitched his hand again. The sound stopped abruptly.

Magnus cleared his throat. “So, I suppose this is what I have to look forward to, with the thorning? Bigger horns, mostly?”

Ragnor said, in a voice whose familiarity was unsettling, coming out of his much-altered face, “I’m only here to talk.”

Nobody put their weapons away. “So talk,” said Alec.

“Are you still Sammael’s henchman?” said Jace. “Let’s start with the basics.”

“Look,” said Ragnor. “Everything is already spinning out of control. None of you are supposed to be here. None of this was part of the plan.”

“You always did like a plan,” noted Magnus.

“So I’m going to help you get out of here,” Ragnor went on.

Next to Magnus, Alec breathed a long sigh of relief. “Ragnor,” he said, “that’s great. With you on our side, we can—”

“Shinyun was never supposed to thorn Magnus,” Ragnor went on, ignoring Alec. (This, too, struck Magnus as normal behavior for the Ragnor he knew.) “She never asked permission or even thought about what it would mean for the rest of the plans.” He looked scornful. “Any idiot should have realized that with your… close ties to the Nephilim, involving you would add an infinity of complications.” He looked around at the assembled Shadowhunters with an expression of distaste.

“Yes, Shinyun is clearly deranged,” agreed Alec. “So—”

“I can’t do anything about the thorning,” Ragnor said to Magnus. “No one can. It’s not reversible. But I can help you find your way out of here. You’re far too much a threat to my master’s plans, you see.”

Magnus’s heart sank. “Your master.”

Ragnor looked surprised. “Yes. I believe the whole situation with the Svefnthorn was explained to you already, Magnus. You never pay attention to details. That’s always been your besetting sin. My master,” he went on, “does not need some hero Shadowhunters and a rogue warlock wandering through his realm, confusing the situation and messing things up. So if you’ll allow me.” He raised his hands and crimson magic, the twin of Magnus’s, burst forth in his palms, which bore the same spiked-circle pattern that Magnus’s did.

Magnus felt fairly sure it was a terrible idea to let Ragnor perform unspecified magic on them in his current state, even if he said he was going to help them. For all they knew, he would “help” them by killing them; that was usually the way this kind of thing went. But he didn’t have a chance to decide what to do about it, because Ragnor suddenly stumbled forward, blasted in the back by a new jolt of scarlet lightning.

Alec looked over at Magnus, who quickly said, “That wasn’t me.”

“Ragnor!” They all looked up to see Shinyun, floating in the sky near where Ox-Head and Horse-Face still tumbled lazily in circles. Ox-Head looked like he had fallen asleep. “You will not betray our master.”

Shinyun, like Ragnor, had changed in appearance significantly. Her arms and legs were longer, spindlier, giving her a spiderlike look. There was a white aura surrounding her, and though her face was as expressionless as ever, her eyes blazed and glowed with a purplish flame within. Her cloak was cut low over her chest, revealing clearly the X of the thorn’s cuts below her throat.

Ragnor had recovered and stood to face Shinyun. “You’re making things more complicated,” he said, in a lecturing tone. “Much more complicated than they need to be. I’m going to take these… unexpected factors”—this while waving generally at Magnus and his friends—“and return them to Earth, and then we can get on with things the way we’re supposed to.”

“Hey,” said Magnus, “I’ve always wanted to be an unexpected factor.”

“You used to be an unexpected factor all the time,” Clary said.

“Used to?”

“Well,” she said, “eventually we started expecting you.”

Shinyun’s eyes glittered dangerously. “You fool. You think they’ll just leave us alone if you send them back? You think they’ll just let us reopen the Market Portal, not try to come back here? The complication is already done. Now we must deal with it.”

“Now you must deal with it,” Ragnor said grumpily. “Dragging them into this was your idea. I’m here to clean up your mess.”

Shinyun held her hands up and magic gathered there, the way it had for Ragnor a few minutes ago. She floated toward him. “You forget yourself,” she said through gritted teeth. “I am Sammael’s first and favorite follower. If not for me, you would never have known the glory of his presence. You would have been swallowed up with all the rest. Show some respect and some obedience.”

“I’ll show you respect,” Ragnor muttered, and leaped at Shinyun, magic blazing out of his hands.

The two warlocks flew into the sky together and commenced brawling with each other. They were clearly both much more interested in besting the other than in dealing with the Shadowhunters.

“We could just leave,” suggested Jace. “Start over the bridge…”

Magnus felt stuck to the spot, watching one of his oldest friends and one of his more recent enemies clash. They looked less like people and more like mythological creatures. Ragnor went to impale Shinyun with his horns, and Shinyun grabbed them with her spiderlike limbs. They grappled and wrestled across the sky. Bolts of scarlet lightning flew. The two of them continued to yell at one another, but their words were indistinguishable under the sound of the fighting.

“Come on,” Tian said. “We can make for the pit while they’re distracted.”

“If we’re going to rescue Isabelle and Simon,” Magnus said, “I have to try to rescue Ragnor, too.”

“He can’t be rescued,” Tian said firmly. “He’s taken the thorn three times. He’s part of Sammael now.”

Magnus looked at Alec helplessly. “I have to try.”

Nobody knew what to do. Magnus stared at the melee above him. Tian’s gaze was fixed on the mountain beyond the bridge, and Jace and Clary and Alec waited. Maybe someone would win the fight, Magnus thought, and break the stalemate.

“They’re quite a sight, aren’t they?” said an unfamiliar voice. Magnus looked over to see that they had been joined by a person they didn’t know. He was young-looking, white and slight of build, narrow of face, and he was dressed as though he were a student backpacker who was unaccountably making his way through Diyu: ragged plaid shirt, torn jeans. His hands were shoved in his pockets, like he was watching a parade pass by. A rare lost soul of Diyu? Magnus thought.

The only truly strange thing about the man—other than his being present at all—was the old-fashioned Tyrolean hat he wore, in green felt. Sticking straight up out of the band of the hat was a large golden feather, easily a foot long. Magnus was not sure he was pulling it off, but he appreciated the ambition.

“There’s really quite enough violence around here,” the man went on in a mild-mannered tone, “without those two scuffling like unruly children. Don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry,” said Magnus, “but who are you? Have we met?”

“Oh!” said the man, in apologetic tones. “How dreadfully gauche of me. I know you, of course. Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn! Your reputation precedes you even here. And Shadowhunters! I love Shadowhunters.”

He extended his hand. “Sammael,” he said with a gentle smile. “Maker of the Way. Once and Future Devourer of Worlds.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Serpent of the Garden

EVERYONE STARED. SAMMAEL, MAKER OF the 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!”