The Lost Book of the White

“It takes up half of Europe, Magnus.”

“Very overrated, Europe.”

Catarina interrupted this to put a hand on Magnus’s arm. “Thank you, though, truly,” she said. “It is terrible to be a warlock in these times.”

“I am fairly new to the experience myself,” said Magnus. “But Ragnor here says we must go our own ways.”

“We can rescue one another, though,” said Catarina. “Since no one else will rescue us. Not other Downworlders, not mundanes, and certainly not Shadowhunters.”

“May they all rot in hell,” put in Ragnor. But his expression softened. “I’ll go fetch us a great deal more to drink. And I’m not against traveling together, for safety. For now. I don’t generally hold with making friends.”

“And yet,” said Magnus, “you were my first friend.”

Catarina gave him a small smile. “Perhaps I will be your friend too. Someone has to stop you from making a complete fool of yourself.”

“Hear, hear,” said Ragnor, draining his glass. “You’re an idiot.”

“I like him,” Catarina told Ragnor. “There is something righteous about someone who doesn’t turn away from danger, even when he should. Someone who sees suffering and will always choose to plunge into the flames.”

By morning, they were all friends. The whole world had changed since then, but that hadn’t changed.

* * *

MAGNUS’S KNOWLEDGE OF SHANGHAI GEOGRAPHY was a little rusty, and he was turned around in the starless emptiness of Diyu, but since he could apparently fly now, he let himself drift over the reversed city until he found what he was looking for.

The temple was small and, like everything else in Diyu, ruined. It had been a humble building to begin with, a simple one-room structure of ochre-stained brick walls, its roof plain and undecorated. Back in actual Shanghai, it had probably been built for a single family.

There was a mark across the side, a slash of black paint that looked familiar. It was the same design that had been graffitied on the side of the modern apartment complex that the Tracking rune had led them to, in their initial hunt for Ragnor.

Magnus climbed the steps and peered into the open front door.

The room inside was fairly bare. An oil lamp hung from the ceiling, illuminating the plain wooden chair where Ragnor sat, glaring, in a shabby robe belted over trousers. He had evidently been expecting Magnus.

“You stole my blankets,” he said sourly.

“And a couple of pillows,” Magnus said. “You know how hard it is to find any kind of textiles in this place?”

“I know very well,” said Ragnor. “Unless you like sleeping on old tapestries crispy with bloodstains.”

Magnus looked more closely around the room. There was a simple platform in one corner, which Magnus assumed had been Ragnor’s bed before Magnus had stolen all the linens off it. There was a small wooden table, on which was, not surprisingly, the Book of the White. Ragnor’s chair had been placed facing the front door, as if Ragnor had been sitting and waiting for hours. He might have been.

Magnus stood in the doorway. He hadn’t really made a plan that went further than this. “I wouldn’t have guessed that you would have done it,” he said cautiously. “Taken the third thorn of your own free will, I mean.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.” Ragnor’s eyes gleamed. “When it came to it, I decided that I didn’t want to die. Nor should you.”

“Well,” said Magnus, casting his gaze around at the dingy interior of the temple. “Now that I’ve seen the perks that come with the job, how could I resist?”

Ragnor sighed.

Magnus could stand it no longer. “When you faked your death. In Idris. You told me you would contact me,” he blurted. “And then you didn’t. I assumed—”

“You assumed that Sammael had caught me,” said Ragnor. “You were right, of course.”

“I assumed you were dead,” Magnus said.

Ragnor shrugged. “I could have been. For a while, I might as well have been.”

It was so strange, talking to Ragnor like this. He sounded like—well, he sounded like Ragnor, Magnus’s first and oldest friend, who had done more than anyone to make Magnus into who he was. But Magnus could see the star of red light gleaming against Ragnor’s chest, and he knew that as gruff and familiar as Ragnor’s demeanor might be, he had become Sammael’s creature, maybe irrevocably.

His curiosity was too great not to continue this conversation, though he knew he might not have time, that perhaps Shinyun or Sammael even now knew he was here. But he had to know. The question had eaten at him for too long now. “What happened?” he said.

“Shinyun happened,” Ragnor said. “Take a seat.”

There was another plain wooden chair next to the open door, and Magnus dragged it over and sat across from Ragnor, like he was interviewing him on a talk show.

“Sammael was looking for me,” Ragnor said. “He was still mostly Void, and looking for a demon realm in which he could become embodied and make his plans. My name reached his ears.”

“I remember,” Magnus said. “So you faked your death during the Mortal War and fled.”

“Quite. Most people didn’t believe it could be the real Sammael who had returned, but Shinyun did. She found me, and she stuck me in a cage.”

“A cage?” said Magnus.

“A cage,” confirmed Ragnor. “It was not my most dignified moment. This was before Shinyun had sworn fealty to Sammael, you understand. But she knew about him. She knew about the way he’d been banished, knew he was able to return in brief, faint bursts. Knew he’d been looking for me. I was the bait she thought she could attract his attention with.” He smiled bitterly. “It worked.”

Magnus was uncomfortably aware of the concept of “bait” as a central axis of his and his friends’ own plan.

Ragnor went on. “She told me about how she had met you and Alec Lightwood, how she had been rejected by Asmodeus. How, in the end, you took pity on her. And rather than bringing her to the Spiral Labyrinth, or letting the Nephilim have her, Alec let her go.”

Magnus let out a deep breath. “Alec is the one who let her go,” he said, “because he is a better person than almost anyone else I know. He told me about it when we got home from Italy. I think we both hoped that Shinyun would take that mercy as an opportunity to rethink her choices. To think about a different path than just seeking the most powerful entity available and declaring her loyalty to it.”

“Well, it didn’t work,” Ragnor snapped, in a way that was so ordinary for him that Magnus almost smiled. “Shinyun understood that mercy to be from both of you, and she understood it as a pointed message about your power over her. A mockery of her. That holding her life in your hands, and letting her go, was toying with her. The way a cat toys with a rat.”

“What did you think?” Magnus said quietly.

Ragnor snorted. “I thought you had done her a totally undeserved favor, and the least she could do was show some gratitude. She didn’t like that.”

“I bet she didn’t,” said Magnus.

“When Lilith died, it drove Sammael from the Void and into Shinyun’s arms. So to speak. He ordered Shinyun to recover the Svefnthorn. And you know what happened next.” Ragnor shifted in his chair. “Shinyun and Sammael came to me together, with the thorn. Before Sammael struck me the first time, he told me it would increase my power, and that I would need that power to find him a realm. I refused, because at that time I did not fully grasp either Sammael’s or the thorn’s power and thought that some other path might exist than serving him. It didn’t, of course.”

Magnus said nothing.

“He struck me a second time, drawing a Greek cross upon my heart. I felt power surge within me. It was… a heady experience. I became briefly intoxicated with power and burst the bars of my cage. I meant to make my escape, but Sammael stopped me.” He smiled, as if nostalgic for a beloved memory. “I should have known better than to challenge him.

“Shinyun demanded to be thorned as well. Sammael allowed her to take the thorn, but he explained the way the thorn’s magic worked: that she would need a third strike, and to become his servant forever, or the thorn would burn her very life out. She grabbed the thorn and took the third wound upon her without hesitation.”

“And you?” said Magnus.

“I resisted, of course,” Ragnor said. “I was frustrated, and willful, and did not yet understand the situation. Once I did, I took the thorn willingly. I did not want to die, after all.” He gave Magnus a stern look. “You do not want to die either, Magnus. There is no reason to martyr yourself to the cause of the angels just to make a point. We are Lilith’s creatures, after all, you and I, and it is fitting that we serve her eternal consort.”

“I won’t betray Alec,” Magnus said. “Or Max.”

“There’s no need to betray Max,” Ragnor scoffed. “He is Lilith’s child just as much as either of us. He would thrive, on Sammael’s Earth. As for Alec… well, that’s your mistake, I suppose. I told you long ago, many times, that the life of a warlock is a lonely one, and that pretending otherwise leads only to sorrow. And now here is that sorrow, come for you as we both always knew it would.”

Magnus was silent, watching the play of light on the bare floor. After a long time, Ragnor sighed. “The rest of the story you can guess. I used my increased power, I found Diyu for Sammael, he took it over, and he began his preparations for war.”

“Ragnor.” Magnus leaned forward. “Even if I can’t save myself… I can save you. You don’t need to remain here in Diyu. You don’t need to serve Sammael—or anybody else. I can free you.” I think. Maybe. He stood up from the chair, and slowly he drew the two swords, the White Impermanence and the Black, from where they were strapped to his back.