The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,111

Alliance rune, he thought, made him able to wield Alec’s sword. Maybe the rules were slipperier than some faeries had let on. Maybe both. He started breathing again and carefully placed the Black Impermanence on his back, next to its twin.

At the door he turned and looked back at Alec. And at the top of the stairs to the nave, he looked for a long time at the breathing quiet of Xujiahui. They were in the depths of Hell, and this cathedral was only the shadow of something real. Nevertheless Magnus felt the hush of holiness, of faith like a light in the darkness. It pervaded the cavern of the church, even here a sanctuary. Perhaps their last sanctuary.

* * *

FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO, MAGNUS had had only one friend in the world: Ragnor Fell. Ragnor had taught him what it was to be a warlock: power, yes, the ability to twist space and time to your own ends, yes, but also loneliness, constant danger, a life of wandering. A warlock would never find a warm welcome, Ragnor told him. Even other Downworlders would not trust him. Shadowhunters could capture him, torture him, kill him with impunity. Vampires had clans and werewolves had packs and faeries had courts, but a warlock stood always alone.

There was a time when Magnus found himself in the city of Leonberg. Magnus did not like Leonberg. He had seen very little of the Holy Roman Empire, but based on his experience here, he was prepared to call it grossly overrated: the weather cold and damp, the food heavy and dull, the people suspicious and parochial. He had come at the request of a minor landholder who wanted Magnus to improve his crop yields and the fecundity of his pigs, for much more coin than such magic deserved. Magnus had executed the task in a matter of about fifteen minutes, and now sat drinking insipid beer in the garden of an insipid bar. This bar had a lovely view of Leonberg’s prison tower, which squatted like an angry troll under a gunmetal sky. He sighed, he drank, he dreamed of magic as yet unmade that would allow him to disappear from this place and reappear in a warm, cozy place, perhaps Paris, or somewhere in southern Italy.

His reverie was disrupted by a commotion from the direction of the prison. A group of men in local livery were dragging a disheveled woman out. They hustled her around the side of the prison and vanished from sight. As they did, Magnus noted that the woman was glamoured, and that under the glamour she had blue skin.

He sipped his beer. His hand shook. In his mind, Ragnor’s voice told him sternly that he should look out for himself, that he had nothing to gain from risking his own well-being for a stranger.

He sipped his beer again.

With an abrupt decisive movement, he slammed his glass down on the table, stood up, cursed loudly in Malay, French, and Arabic, and strode purposefully in the direction of the prison and the blue warlock.

Centuries later, he could still remember her screams as her hair caught fire. He broke into a run as he heard a man’s voice sternly proclaim that by the order of the Leonberg judiciary, the woman was guilty of witchcraft and cavorting with devils, and was therefore sentenced to be put to death by the flame.

There were a few locals there to gawk, but witch burning was no longer much of a novelty in these parts, and the day was unpleasant. Nobody got in Magnus’s way as he charged toward the bonfire, now spreading orange gouts of flame well above the blue warlock’s head. Nobody stopped him as he spoke words of magical protection, unsure whether they would even work, or as he braced a boot on the stacked crackling wood and vaulted up into the pyre.

His flesh may have been protected, but his clothes immediately caught fire. He shrugged off the discomfort and grasped hold of the ropes binding the woman, dissolving them with sparks of blue magic. The woman wheeled her gaze toward him and caught sight of his cat’s eyes. She had a look of terror mingled with surprise as he wrapped his arms around her and made to leap off the pyre.

“Hello,” he murmured in her ear. “When we hit the ground, please roll back and forth to put the flames out.”

Without waiting for her reply, he jumped, taking her with him. They thudded into the