The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,70

Magnus, “but my magic power has been highly intensified.” He stepped back and looked at them. “Okay,” he said. “Everyone bunch up together. Like we’re taking a picture.”

The Shadowhunters seemed puzzled, but they did as they were asked, shuffling toward one another until they were all pressed together closely. They were all standing on the same stone slab now. Behind them, the figures of Shadowhunters were beginning to engage with the demonic horde. Magnus looked to see if Tian was among them, but he couldn’t tell.

Returning to the task at hand, he extended his hands and, with an effort, wrenched the slab out of the ground. It made a terrible grinding noise, but once it was free, it rose cleanly into the air, levitating the Shadowhunters a foot or so off the ground. Bits of gravel and concrete fell in chips, but the slab stayed in one piece. “Okay,” Magnus said. “I’m right behind you. Try to hold on.”

He couldn’t watch. He closed his eyes and crouched down, letting the weight of the slab and its five occupants settle onto the bedrock of his magic.

“Lift with your knees!” suggested Clary.

“Please tell me when this is over,” said Simon.

Magnus felt his magic crackle within him. There was so much. It felt—great. Scary, but great.

A whirlwind blew up around him and the Shadowhunters. It quickly gained speed and strength, widening. Magnus waited for it to become powerful enough… and quickly found it spinning out of his control.

He saw his friends start to look alarmed as the whirlwind became faster and stronger than he’d intended. Soon it was more like a small tornado than the controlled gust he was aiming for. Lightning shimmered within its eddies, angry and red. Alec yelled Magnus’s name, but Magnus couldn’t hear him over the noise.

It was now or never. Magnus gave himself over to his power and, with a great whoop, flung the Shadowhunters and the slab into the air. He went with it, pulled into the cyclone as it roared upward toward the Portal.

The concrete slab spun and tilted, and Magnus saw his friends go flying off it. Clary managed to grab Simon’s arm, and the two spun together, connected but out of control.

The five of them vanished through the Portal, followed by the slab, which rained broken-off hunks of gravel in Magnus’s direction as he rose into the sky behind it.

His momentum would pull him through the Portal no matter what, and he was determined to make the best of the situation. He wrenched his body around in midair and reached out with his hands for Ragnor in one direction and Shinyun in another. The wind caught them, and they too flew toward the Portal, no more in control than Magnus himself.

Tumbling through the air, all three warlocks followed the rocks and the Nephilim through the rupture between the worlds. It glowed like the light coming from Magnus’s chest.

Then a darkness covered them, stronger than any light. There were clouds of smoke, and a cold wind, and then there was nothing at all.

PART III Diyu

CHAPTER ELEVEN The First Court

HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO, MAGNUS had lain sleepless in the City of Bones, among the Silent Brothers. Then as now, peace had seemed an impossibility.

Magnus’s mother had killed herself because of what he was. His stepfather had tried to kill him for it. Magnus had murdered his stepfather instead. He didn’t recall the time after that very well. He’d been out of his mind, his powers out of control, a lost child carrying a storm of magic and rage in his breast. He remembered almost dying of thirst in a desert. He remembered an earthquake; falling rubble; screaming. When the Silent Brothers came, he’d stumbled through a rain of rocks toward their hooded figures, not knowing whether they would teach him or kill him.

They took him away, but even in their city of peace and silence, he dreamed of his stepfather burning. He desperately wanted help, but he had no idea how to ask for it.

The Silent Brothers approached the warlock Ragnor Fell for aid with this wayward warlock child.

The memory of their first meeting was still crystal clear. Magnus had been lying on his bed in the bare stone room the Silent Brothers had given him. They had done what they could, finding a soft, colorful blanket and a few toys for him to make the space more like a child’s bedroom, and less like a prison cell. It was still fairly uncomfortable, not least because