The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,65

Night of Blossoms on a Moonlit Spring River.’ A song older than me.”

He began humming to himself, his eyes still closed. Let the others wait. Why had he never brought Alec here just for a visit? If his friends weren’t in danger, he would have drawn Alec down to dance by the glowing river’s edge, teaching him the words and the tune.

Instead, the one with chains had to arm himself.

* * *

THERE WAS NO MISTAKING THE smithy for any other building. It stood just off the main square of the Sunlit Market, and it was surrounded by a fearsome wall of dozens of long spears lashed together. Which made sense, Alec thought.

Tian led them through a gate in the fence, which opened to his touch with a chime like faerie bells. As they passed through, Jace ran his finger over one of the wavy spearheads admiringly, and Tian noticed.

“Look how the curves of each blade are identical,” he said. “The skill of these smiths is unparalleled anywhere in China.”

“Would you say those are qiang or mao?” Jace said.

Tian looked surprised. “Maybe mao? But you’d have to ask the smiths. You know Chinese weapons?”

“Jace knows all the weapons,” said Clary in a long-suffering tone, but she smiled.

Alec followed Tian inside, expecting gleaming walls of weapons in luxuriant display cases. As much as he teased Jace about his weapons obsession, there was a tickle in the back of his mind about faerie bows, and weren’t chain whips a traditional Chinese martial arts weapon? Maybe a gift for Isabelle…

Inside, however, he saw no weapons beautifully displayed—in fact, he saw no weapons at all. Instead a very, very old man and woman sat on stools in an empty stone room, lit by braziers. Between them stood a cook fire, bearing a clay cauldron that the woman was stirring.

The Shadowhunters filed into the room and looked around in confusion.

The man and woman looked up. “Oh, Tian!” said the woman. “These must be your friends.”

“We hear you’re going into Diyu!” said the man.

“We have not decided to do that,” Alec said hastily. “It was under discussion.”

Tian said, “Mo Ye, Gan Jiang, I’d like to introduce—” He took a deep breath and named all of them in a row, from right to left, without taking a second breath. Alec was impressed. “Everyone,” Tian went on, “these are Gan Jiang and Mo Ye, the greatest living faerie weaponsmiths.”

“Nonsense!” said Gan Jiang. “We’re also better than any of the dead ones.”

“We hear you got stuck with a Svefnthorn!” said Mo Ye eagerly. “We have another Svefnthorn in the back somewhere, if you want it.”

“No, we don’t,” said Gan Jiang. “Don’t listen to her. The last time I saw that Svefnthorn, Shanghai wasn’t even founded. It’s somewhere under the mountain, but who knows where? Not me and not her either, I bet.”

“Um, honorable… I’m sorry, I don’t know the right terminology,” Magnus said, “but you said something about the chained one and how I needed to be armed? And, well—” He began unbuttoning his shirt.

“Stop!” said Mo Ye. “No need to disrobe. We already know. Here.” She reached into the clay pot she’d been stirring with both hands and drew from it two swords, neither of which could possibly have fit into the pot. For all their humble surroundings, Alec thought, faeries couldn’t resist a performance.

Mo Ye laid the swords across the top of the clay bowl. They were clearly a match, identical longswords except for their color: one had a blade of deep black obsidian, its hilt shining white metal, and the other was the reverse, its hilt in black and its blade in white.

Magnus looked at them, then up at the faeries. “I’m not really a sword guy,” he said.

“They’re not swords,” said Gan Jiang. “They’re gods.”

“They’re keys,” added Mo Ye.

“No offense,” said Jace, “but they really look like swords.”

“The Heibai Wuchang,” said Gan Jiang. “The Black Impermanence and the White Impermanence.”

Tian said quietly, in an awed tone, “They guide the souls of the dead to Diyu.”

“They did,” said Mo Ye. “Until their master, Yama, was destroyed.”

“That’s Yanluo,” whispered Tian.

“They flew free of Diyu, unfettered and broken—” said Gan Jiang.

“Until we found them and made them into swords,” finished Mo Ye. “You’ll need them,” she added to Magnus, “to guide your soul to Diyu.”

“Again,” Alec said. “We’re really not sure about going to Diyu. We try to avoid hell dimensions whenever possible.”

Gan Jiang smiled at him as if he were a child. “And you’ll need them if you