The Lost Book of the White

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 FIRST to 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.”