The Lost Book of the White

He had been embarrassed, when he came to, that he had fallen into some kind of trance. Already the memory of his dream was fading from his mind, and he could remember only tiny snippets: Raphael Santiago’s legs dangling from his kitchen counter. Max holding up his arms to help Alec put his shirt on. Blood trails on the rug.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Shinyun said.

Alec folded his arms. “Then you’ll understand why we wouldn’t trust anything you’d tell us.”

“Would you trust anything we tell you?” Magnus added.

“I would,” said Shinyun, “because you are all so painfully without guile that you think telling me the truth will somehow win me over. Like I will have no choice but to respect your integrity and high principles.”

“Aw,” said Magnus, “you know you respect my integrity and high principles secretly.”

Shinyun let out a long and annoyed groan, a strangely expressive sound coming from her motionless face. “Do you want to know where your friend is or not?”

“Not unless you tell us why you’re offering your help,” Jace said.

“Because I am annoyed,” said Shinyun flatly.

“Annoyed at us? Annoyed at Simon?” said Magnus.

“Annoyed at Sammael,” Shinyun snapped. “For months every moment has been dedicated to his grand master plan, the ultimate payoff for all the work he’s done, all the work I’ve done, and then you show up and he becomes totally distracted by some stupid petty grievance.”

“You mean Simon?” said Clary, aghast. “So Sammael grabbed him when we first came through the Portal? What is Sammael doing to him?”

“And why Simon?” demanded Alec.

“They’ve definitely never met before,” said Jace. “I know Simon goes to some weird parties in Brooklyn, but it’s still impossible.” He glanced at Clary. “It is impossible, right?”

Shinyun threw up her hands. “Ragnor and I are trying our best to implement his schemes for the invasion of the human world, running around this dank pit like lunatics, ordering demons around who are not the most responsive underlings—”

“Yes, yes, hard to find good help these days,” agreed Magnus hurriedly. He stood up, testing his legs. He was fairly steady; it seemed he had already recovered from the outpouring of magic he had committed on their way down to the cathedral. Recharged by the thorn? He couldn’t know. “What is the Father of Demons doing to Simon and why?”

“He has shut himself into some random torture chamber to torment one Shadowhunter who is in no way a direct threat to him. It’s ridiculous. It needs to stop.”

“Agreed,” said Clary immediately. “Point the way.”

“So you’re going to take us to save Simon,” Alec said, making sure he fully understood, “so that Sammael stops being distracted and gets back to the business of destroying the world.”

“Yes,” said Shinyun. “Take it or leave it.”

“Wait,” said Magnus. “I need to ask you something first.”

Shinyun cocked her head a little to the side. “Oh?”

Magnus hated to ask Shinyun any questions about himself, his thorning, his current state. He had no reason to believe her answers, for one thing. And she would use it as an opportunity to lecture him again. But he didn’t understand what was happening to him, and behind that incomprehension lurked fear.

“You said I was suffering from the thorn,” he said, “but that’s not true. I’m getting stronger. My magic is getting more powerful. I don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand?” said Shinyun.

Magnus said, “I don’t understand how, without a third thorning, I die. If you ever had the slightest fleck of mercy in you,” he pleaded, “you have to explain. So at least I know what will happen. Will I suddenly weaken? Will I wither away?”

“No,” Shinyun said. “You will simply take on more and more of the thorn’s power without being fully bound to its master. Your magic will grow stronger, and wilder, and less in your control, and you will become a danger to yourself and the people around you. If they don’t abandon you, they’ll surely die themselves.”

Magnus stared.

“So I’ll feel better and better and better,” he said. “Until I suddenly feel much worse?”

“No,” said Shinyun. “Until you suddenly feel nothing. That is why everyone takes the third thorn. The choice is no choice at all. Now, shall we go get your friend?”

A glow emerged from her chest, the same red as Magnus’s magic. With the ease of a master painting a line, she drew a Portal in the air with her index finger. It opened on a chamber of black obsidian spikes. In the background, a pool of something red bubbled. “Hmm,” she said. She gestured with her finger, and the view through the Portal changed. Now they were looking at a huge white stone plate toward which a gigantic millstone descended. “Not that, either.” She gestured again and then again, flipping through different destinations.

“Hell of Iron Mills… Hell of Grinding… Hell of Disembowelment… Hell of Steaming… Hell of the Mountain of Ice… Hell of the Mountain of Fire…”

“Lots of hells, huh,” said Magnus.

“Can we hurry this up?” said Alec.

Shinyun gave them a withering look and kept browsing.

“Hell of Worms, Hell of Maggots, Hell of Boiling Sand, Hell of Boiling Oil, Hell of Boiling Soup with Human Dumplings, Hell of Boiling Tea with Human Tea Strainers, Hell of Small Biting Insects, Hell of Large Biting Insects, Hell of Being Eaten by Wolves, Hell of Being Trampled by Horses, Hell of Being Gored by Oxen, Hell of Being Pecked to Death by Ducks—”

“What was that last one?” said Jace. Shinyun ignored him.

“Hell of Mortars and Pestles, Hell of Flensing, Hell of Scissors, Hell of Red-Hot Pokers, Hell of White-Hot Pokers, ah! Here we are.” Through the Portal seemed to be a limestone cave, dense with stalactites and stalagmites, a great mouth of fangs. Loose iron chains lay scattered across the ground like a nest of sleeping snakes.

“What’s that one called?” Alec said.

“No idea,” said Shinyun. “Hell of Wasting Time Torturing Someone Unimportant. Go through before I regret this.”

They kept their weapons at the ready and passed single file through the Portal into the cave.

The interior of the cathedral had been dank and musty, but cool. By contrast, the cave was scorchingly hot, and dry like the inside of an oven. Magnus followed Alec, Jace, and Clary as they picked their way around the stalagmites jutting from the ground toward an open area a little distance away. He noticed, to his mild surprise, that Shinyun had followed them through the Portal and trailed behind them.

After a short walk Sammael came into view, pacing back and forth, hands behind his back as though he were deep in thought. Magnus looked around, but it took a moment before he was able to spot—

“Simon,” Clary whispered, her voice a dry thread.

In the center of the clearing, Simon hung, spread-eagle. His wrists were manacled to iron chains that stretched to the ceiling of the cave, his ankles similarly chained to great iron hasps sunk into the ground. Only as Magnus got closer did he see that being chained up was the least of Simon’s problems.

A dozen sharp blades hung around Simon, hovering in the air. They whirled and shifted, now random, now in patterns—clearly operating at Sammael’s will.

Simon had several slashes across his body already, and as they watched, one of the knives lurched at tremendous speed and cut across his arm. He winced, his eyes closed, but Magnus could see he was using all his energy to hold himself very, very still, as the other blades danced inches from him.

Besides the suspense, Simon must already have been in tremendous pain, but he was silent, his jaw set, even as blood dripped down his skin. His eyes had opened wide when Clary cried out: he stared at his friends now, almost blindly, as if he feared they might be a dream.

Sammael turned and started, but as if pleasantly surprised. “You’re just getting the full tour of this place, huh?” he said. “I don’t know, I like some of it, but Yanluo and I have a very different design sensibility. Luckily, this is only a temporary situation until I move to your world and take that as my realm.”

Clary lunged at Sammael; Jace caught at her arm, hauling her back. Her teeth were bared. “What are you doing to Simon?” she snarled. “What did he ever do to you? You’ve never even met him before.”

Sammael laughed heartily. “What a question! No, this gentleman and I hadn’t met before earlier today. I noticed him coming through the temporary Portal my warlocks opened at the Sunlit Market and had him brought here. Because, you see, I know of him. I know a lot about him. We’re just getting started knowing each other now.”

Clary called out, “Simon, are you all right?”

Without changing his tone, Sammael said, “Simon, if you answer her, I will put out your eye.”

Simon, wisely, remained silent, and Magnus realized that Sammael really was just getting started. Cutting Simon up a little, threatening him with whirling magic knives, wasn’t Sammael’s torture. It was an appetizer. An amuse-bouche. This was Diyu. He could cut Simon up for a good long while before he moved on to worse things.

Sammael scowled at Simon, and Magnus was surprised by the look of real, pure hatred that crossed Sammael’s face. Magnus had begun to wonder if Sammael was so removed from being a person that he was more like Raziel—a force of will beyond understanding, incapable of human emotions like pettiness or spite. He had thought that maybe Sammael was less like a demon and more like a weather pattern, or a god, too monumental and too unearthly to be comprehended.

But now he realized he had been wrong. Sammael was in every way capable of human hatred. In every facet of his expression, he hated Simon.

“I know that he was not always of the Nephilim,” said Sammael. “I know that he was born a mere mundane, but that he then became one of the Night’s Children. And in that form, he committed the greatest of crimes.