Page 28 of The Tribes of Magic (Paragons #3)

A MAGICAL COMBINATION

W hen I came to, Kato was leaning over me. At first, I thought I was hallucinating, but as my vision cleared and the feeling returned to my limbs, I came to the conclusion that no hallucination could hurt this much.

“Seven? Are you all right?” Kato’s hand touched down on my forehead, skin to skin. He’d removed his glove.

“No. Not really,” I groaned.

I sat up slowly. As soon as he saw what I was doing, he placed his arm around my back for support. And it was a good thing he did. I was feeling so woozy, I nearly tipped over.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“One of the Crows came up behind you and knocked you out. I arrived on the scene right about then, and the Crows scattered. I would have taken chase, but I had to make sure you were all right. You were semi-conscious but not altogether aware, and you were coughing up blood.”

I touched my lips.

“I gave you a potion, and that stopped the coughing. And the bleeding. But the Crows got away.”

“Crows?”

“The Black Crows, a band of human mercenaries. They’re supposed to have a secret base hidden somewhere inside the Fortress, but no one has ever found it. The General has me tracking their movements. He got word they’ve been hired to move mysterious Government supplies.”

“Yes, Brett told me an extra secret shipment of Government supplies arrives in the Park every night, after the district gates close for the day. By morning, the supplies are gone. The mercenaries bring them to a Government warehouse. This can’t be legit.

If it were, why all the cloak-and-dagger games?

Why hire mercenaries to move them? Why move them secretly at night? It’s weird, right?”

“It’s weird,” Kato agreed. “Have you learnt anything else?”

“Yes. A few days ago, Brett saw the mercenaries loading the supplies into a truck. The mercenaries took chase, and Brett had to go into hiding in the woods. Again, why chase him if this is all above board?”

“Who’s Brett?”

“A Fixer who works in the Park. I was talking to him right before the mercenaries arrived and dragged him off. Oh, no!” I scrambled to my feet, perhaps a little too fast. A sudden wave of dizziness hit me when the blood rushed straight to my head.

Kato steadied me. “Careful.”

“The Crows took Brett. He knows what they’ve been up to. I think…” I gulped. “I think they’re planning on killing him so he doesn’t talk. We have to rescue him!”

“Take a second to catch your breath first, Seven.”

“We don’t have a second. Didn’t you hear me? They’re going to kill him. We have to save him!”

He pulled a small flashlight out of his armor and flashed it in my eyes. I recoiled, blinking rapidly.

“You don’t appear to have a head injury—or any other major injuries anymore—but I want you to take this just to be safe.” Kato handed me a small vial of pale amber liquid. It looked like apple juice, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t apple juice.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“A potion.”

“I thought you already gave me a potion.”

“And now I’m giving you another one. Take it, Seven. It will cure anything the last one missed and also take care of your pain.”

“What pain?” I winced.

“Nice try. Take the potion. It’s good for you.”

I popped the cap and took a sip. The potion tasted like bubblegum with an odd aftertaste of mint. It worked almost immediately. My pain faded. My dizziness faded too.

“Ok, I took it. Now can we go save Brett?”

“We have to find him first. Give me a moment. I’ll do a tracking spell.”

Kato grabbed one of the sticks off the ground, one with a particularly pointy tip. He used that pointy tip to carve strange symbols in the dirt.

“That’s the tracking spell?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m trying to track the Crows’ life force. That’s a Sorcery spell, hence the writing.”

Each kind of magic was cast differently.

Sorcerers wrote their spells. Alchemists crafted their spells.

Metamorphs performed their spells through body movements, like dance or martial arts.

Nymphs used song and music—or even humming, as I’d done earlier when I’d manipulated the sticks and branches.

Dreamweavers could feel the strands of otherworldly magic around us and weave them together into intricate shapes and patterns, like a complex version of Cat’s Cradle.

Elves performed magic by literally performing; they acted out their magic, like an actor on stage, using a combination of voice, body, and eye movements to cast their spells.

I watched Kato write out his tracking magic symbol. Cross them out. Write out more symbols. Cross them out too. He kept going, write and scratch, write and scratch. He was quickly running out of space to write.

“Did you find them?”

“No. I can feel them, but I can’t feel where they are. They must have anti-magic gear designed to block tracking spells. I don’t have enough power to break through.”

“You’re the most powerful Knight there is, Kato. If you don’t have enough magic to break through, no one...”

That’s when it hit me.

“Seven?”

I looked at him. “No one Knight has enough magic to break through the Crows’ anti-magic defenses, but maybe two Knights can. Or, actually, one Knight and one Apprentice.”

“The two of us. You want the two of us to combine magic,” he realized.

“Yes!”

“Two people cannot combine their magic into a single spell. It’s just not possible.”

“According to the Paragons’ spellbook, it is possible.”

“You found a spell for combining magic in the Paragons’ spellbook?”

“I did. And now we’re going to try it.” I turned to face Kato, holding out both my hands. I felt a rush of supercharged magic when he took them. “Whoa. That’s intense.”

I looked down at the symbols on the ground. They all lit up at once, bright and gold, like the sun was shining through them. Power hit me, raw and wild. The earth began to shake. I planted my feet wider and held on to Kato. Smoke rose from our joined hands.

“Can you sense where the Crows are?!” Everything was shaking so hard, I had to shout so he could hear me.

“I’m getting closer! Closer…”

Earth exploded out of the ground like a violent geyser. The trees were bending in the wind. The sky was growing darker by the second. Lightning crashed down, splitting a tree trunk straight down the middle.

“Now would be a good time, Kato!”

The sky howled. The earth groaned. A tree let out a long, slow creak, like a ship caught in a storm, then it fell, hitting the ground with a resounding boom that sent shockwaves up my legs.

“I can feel it!” I shouted.

That shockwave had done something to me. It had snapped me into step with the tracking spell. I was stepping, stepping, stepping…but my feet weren’t touching the ground. Kato and I were hovering.

There was another flash. A slingshot. A crash. A cry of surprise.

I was tangled up with someone. A pile of someones, actually. One of them kicked me in the ribs.

“Ouch!” I jumped back, freeing myself.

Four mercenaries lay on the ground, trapped beneath a glowing net. Their arms and legs were tucked in like they were afraid to touch it.

Kato’s gaze panned across the Crows. “Nice net, Seven.”

“I don’t even remember casting it.”

“Do you remember getting a fix on their location?”

“Yes.”

“And teleporting us here?”

“Kind of? I wasn’t exactly in control of myself.” I gave him a sheepish smile.

Kato could have used this as an opportunity to lecture me about self-control and discipline, but he gave me a reassuring smile instead. “It worked out all right in the end. See? There’s your friend, safe and sound.”

I looked where he pointed. Brett sat on the ground, his back pressed against a tree trunk. He looked tired, but his eyes were focused, and his nose had stopped bleeding. A slow smile curled his lips when his eyes fell upon the mercenaries trapped beneath the magic net.

I walked over to Brett and helped him to his feet. “You ok?”

“Yes. Thanks to you.”

Kato had his phone out. He was telling the General he’d caught the Crows. In all the commotion, he’d forgotten to flip up the visor of his helmet to hide his face.

Brett was staring at him. “So that’s the famous White Knight? He looks so…young.”

“All the Knights are young.”

“I know. The oldest ones are my age. Four years ago, I went to the Spirit Tree too, hoping the spirits would pick me. Hoping they would give me magic. But they didn’t. I didn’t get to be a Knight. Too bad. I would have liked to have magic.”

When Brett spoke of magic, there was a weight to his words. A reverence. It made me wonder about something.

“Is that why you talked to me earlier, by the river when I was building a fence? Because I was using magic?”

“I’ve built a lot of fences, Savannah. I’ve seen a lot of other people make fences too. But I’ve never seen anyone make a fence by humming. I was curious.”

“So curious that you came out of hiding just to talk to me? How did you know I wasn’t one of the bad guys?”

“Oh, I know all about you, Savannah Winters. I’ve heard the stories people tell about you.

I’ve seen the reports on the news. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.

I know you’re honorable and good and all those things Knights are supposed to be.

That’s why I came out of hiding. Yes, I wanted to talk to you about magic, but most of all, I knew you would protect me from the people hunting me. ”

“I tried to, but really, you’re safe because of Kato.”

“The White Knight.” Brett watched Kato put away his phone and walk toward us.

Kato flipped down his visor so his face was completely obscured.

“We should head back into town so we can get Brett something to eat,” I said. “I bet he hasn’t had a decent meal in days.”

One of the Watchers’ big, black SUVs rolled up on the gravel trail and came to a stop. The doors opened. Three men in black body armor stepped out. The fourth person was a woman, and I knew her face.

“You’re the woman from the kitchen.”