The Lost Book of the White (The Eldest Curses #2) - Cassandra Clare Page 0,71

the Silent Brothers themselves were so intimidating. Their kindness to him was at sharp odds with their terrifying eyeless faces, and he’d been trying to stop flinching when they entered the room.

He was finally getting used to the monsters caring for him, and then a new monster walked in. The door scraped open, steel on stone.

“Come now, boy,” said a voice from the door of his cell. “There’s no need to cry.”

A demon, the boy thought frantically, a demon like his parents said he was: skin green as the moss on graves, hair white as bone. His fingers each had an extra joint, and curled grotesquely into claws. Magnus scrambled to sit up and defend himself, an awkward preteen in the middle of an alarming growth spurt, limbs flailing and dangerous magic pouring out of him.

Only Ragnor lifted one of his strange hands, and Magnus’s magic turned to blue smoke, a blaze of harmless color in the dark.

Ragnor rolled his eyes. “It’s very impolite to stare at people.”

Magnus hadn’t expected this alien being to speak his language, but Ragnor’s Malay was smooth and effortless, if accented. “My first impressions are that you have no social grace, and that you are in desperate need of a bath.” He gave a heavy sigh. “I can’t believe I agreed to this. My first lesson to you, boy, is to never play cards against a Silent Brother.”

“What—what are you?” said Magnus.

“I am Ragnor Fell. What are you?”

Magnus could barely find his voice. “He said—she called me—they said I was cursed.”

Ragnor came closer. “And do you always let other people tell you what you are?”

Magnus was silent.

“Because they will always try,” said Ragnor. “You have magic, just like I do.”

Magnus nodded.

“Well, then,” said Ragnor, “here are the most important things I can tell you. People will want to control you because of your power. They will try to convince you they are doing it for your own good. You must be very careful of them.” When Magnus flicked his eyes past Ragnor to the corridor outside his room, Ragnor said, “Yes. Even the Silent Brothers are helping you partly for their own purposes. The Shadowhunters have need of friendly warlocks, even if they might wish they didn’t.”

“Is it wrong?” said Magnus quietly. “That they are helping me?”

Ragnor hesitated. “No,” he said finally. “You are not their responsibility, and they have no guarantees about how you will turn out. You are lucky enough to have been born in a time when Shadowhunters like warlocks, rather than in one of the times in history when they’ve hunted us for sport.”

“So it’s dangerous having magic,” Magnus said.

Ragnor chuckled. “Life is tremendously dangerous whether you have magic or not,” he said, “but yes, especially for people like us. Warlocks don’t age like other humans, but we often die young anyway. Abandoned by our human parents. Burned at stakes by mundanes. Executed by Shadowhunters. This is not a safe world, but then, I know of no safe worlds. You have to be strong to survive in all of them.”

The child who would be Magnus stammered, “How did you—how did you survive?”

Ragnor came over and sat down on the cold earth floor beside Magnus, their backs against a wall of yellowed skulls. Ragnor’s back was broad, and Magnus’s narrow, but Magnus tried to sit up as straight as Ragnor did.

“I was lucky,” Ragnor said. “That’s how most warlocks survive. We’re the lucky ones—the ones who were loved. My family were mundanes with the Sight, who knew a little of our world. They thought a green child might be a faerie changeling, and we didn’t find out differently until later. Even when they did, they loved me still.”

The Silent Brothers had spoken to Magnus in his mind, had taught him a little of where warlocks came from, how demons broke through into the world, forcing or tricking humans into bearing their children.

“And what about your father?”

“My father?” Ragnor echoed. “You mean the demon? I don’t call that a father. My father raised me. The other, the demon, has nothing to do with me.

“I know you weren’t one of the lucky ones,” Ragnor went on. “But we are warlocks. We live forever, and that means sooner or later, we are alone. When others call us the spawn of demons, try to use our power for their own ends, envy us, fear us, or simply die and leave us, we must decide ourselves what we shall be. Warlocks name ourselves, before someone else can