Page 51 of The Tribes of Magic
“But that’s all they are, Savannah. Legends and stories. I’ve never met anyone who can actually travel between worlds, between realms. None of the Knights can do it. Neither can any other Dreamweavers in the Many Realms.”
“But you can’t know that. The Many Realms are vast. And, really, is there any difference between traveling between dimensions and traveling between realms?”
“There’s a big difference. The dimensions are stacked on top of one another. So you aren’t really traveling far. Or at all, in fact. You’re staying in one place, just going deeper.”
“If you can go deep enough, you can go far enough. It’s just a different kind of distance,” I pointed out. “Kato sent the Cursed Ones all the way to Shadow Fall.”
“That is a rare power indeed, Savannah, and it requires a lot of magic. Kato can do it because he’s a Polymage—and, well, because he’s Kato. He’s been training hard since the day he was Chosen, and it shows in the spells he can do and the magic he’s mastered.”
“So it’s just a matter of training hard?”
“It’s not that simple. Even Kato doesn’t have enough magic to make a portal between realms. It requires far too much power.”
“But if someone were to accumulate that much power?—”
“They couldn’t.”
“But if they were, Orion. Then they could do the spell?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure such a spell is even possible. And I certainly don’t know how anyone could have thatmuch magic. We’re talking about going between whole worlds, Savannah. Can you imagine just how much power that would require?”
“I think I can.”
I thought back to the battle at the Spirit Tree—and the amount of power I’d needed to teleport from one end of the Park to the other. Maybe Orion was right. Maybe it was impossible. And yet…
“What about the Spirit Trees?” I asked Orion. “They move people between realms all the time.”
“Yes, and no one understands much about how the Spirit Trees’ magic works. All we know is it has something to do with the spirits’ magic.”
“So if we figured out how the Spirit Trees work, maybe we could figure out how to teleport between worlds?” I asked.
“Maybe. And that’s abigmaybe. The greatest minds in the Many Realms have spent millennia studying the Spirit Trees’ magic, and they haven’t figured it out. What makes you thinkyoucan do it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. That perky persistence you mentioned earlier? Or, as Eris called it, dogged persistence. If there’s a way, I’ll figure it out.”
Despite my lofty claims, I actually wasn’t so sure about that. All I knew was Conner was trapped out there, cut off from Gaia because of the General’s witch hunt. If there was a way to get to him, to bring him home, I had to find it. Because if I didn’t, he might be trapped out there forever.
CHAPTER 3
RACE TO THE TOP
We continued the Dreamweaver exercises for the rest of the morning. And then it was our lunch break. For Bronte and Dutch, that meant an opportunity to squeeze in more physical fitness. They decided to take a run to the Magic Emporium, and I joined them. The alternative was hanging out with five Apprentices who didn’t like me very much. I’d rather run midday in Australia’s scorching summer sun.
Which I did. It was hard to keep up with Dutch and Bronte, particularly when they were locked in a heated competition to see which one of them was the fastest. Huffing and puffing, I pulled up the rear in a very distant third place.
“Hurry up, Savannah! You want to impress the General, don’t you?” Bronte’s breathing was hardly even elevated.
Neither was Dutch’s. “She’ll never move up the Scoreboard like that.”
“She doesn’t seem to be giving it a full one hundred percent,” Bronte agreed.
“I can…hear you guys…you know,” I puffed out.
“Really? From all the way back there?” Dutch chuckled.
I made an inhuman growling noise. It was all I could manage in my current state of absolute misery.
“Only half a kilometer to go, Savannah!” Bronte sounded way too cheerful for someone exercising this hard.
