Page 77 of The Tribes of Magic
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.Nowcan 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 maybetwoKnights 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.”
