Anaphylaxis (Medicine and Magic Book 5)

by SA Magnusson

  I glanced over at Aron. There was another benefit to coming here, especially with Aron. It was possible that in doing so, he might be able to recover what he’d lost, might be able to finally remember who he was. I didn’t know if he would—or if it were possible—but if anyone knew of some way to help Aron, it would be Solera, wouldn’t it?

  “Crossing a barrier placed by Solera will be challenging,” Gran said.

  “I’ve tried, but I’m not strong enough.”

  “No, because you are looking for brute force,” Gramps said, grinning at me. “You’ve always been more of a brute force kind of person, especially when it came to magic. In this, I think we need to try a different approach.”

  “What sort of approach?”

  “Barriers have weaknesses. You must have experienced that when holding your own barrier and feeling that there were times when it would be overpowered.”

  I nodded. Most of the time, it came when I was growing tired from holding it.

  “If we attack in more than one place, we can possibly make it weak enough that we can break it down. We will have to act at the same time, and in doing so, it will give us only a few moments. As soon as they realize the barrier has fallen, they will likely solidify it.”

  “Or withdraw it and trap us inside,” I said.

  “Don’t be such a downer, Katie,” Gramps said.

  I looked at the other two boats. “Are there powerful enough mages with you for this?”

  “It’s not so much about power as it is about location of the strike. Watch.”

  Gramps motioned to the mage on the other boat nearby, and they drifted closer. He said something, though I couldn’t hear over the sound of the engine, and then he moved to motion at the other boat on our other side. He pointed, and the mage seemed to understand. The boats separated, drifting down the barrier, and then they paused, stopping in front of a section of it. Gramps raised his hand and the spell began to build within him. As it did, he pointed.

  The spell exploded from three mages at the same time, crashing into the barrier. When it struck, there came the same sparks that I’d seen before. I reached out, searching to see if there was any change in the barrier, but it was still there.

  “Again!” Gramps yelled.

  Once more, the spell slammed into the barrier. The sparks spread, working along the surface of the barrier and combining together.

  “Again!”

  The spell slammed into the barrier a third time.

  It didn’t seem as if they would drop the barrier, not with as much force as they were using. I quickly summoned my sword and sent power flowing through it, striking the middle of the sparks.

  The barrier shattered, fragments sparkling down toward the ground.

  “Now,” I said.

  The fans revved up and we raced across where the barrier had been.

  A part of me worried what might happen if Solera replaced the barrier. Now that we’d crashed it once, I had to believe that we could do so again, but what would happen if they trapped us between two layers of barrier? I had attempted something similar, and with enough power—and Solera, along with this other mage, clearly had enough power—they would be able to trap us. It was possible they could even force us into the water.

  Then the boats reached the shore.

  We jumped out, crawling from the boat onto the shore. My boots crunched along the stone, and surprisingly, there was a sense of warmth in the air.

  Energy crackled around me, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that it came from the sense of magic flowing all throughout the island. As I stood on the shores, I could feel the diverted energy from the ley lines, and as much as I wanted to ignore it, I wondered if I could pull on that power, using it myself to add to my magic, or would it lead to me ending up injured the same way as I had before?

  “This place is quite unique,” Barden said.

  “I’m not sure that unique describes it. It’s a place of power, and only Solera can use it,” Gran said.

  “Solera and your granddaughter,” Barden said. He smiled as he did, watching me.

  “We need to keep moving,” Aron said.

  I looked over, hoping for a spark of recognition, something that would tell me that he remembered being here, but there was nothing. He kept gripping his sword, and I had to admit that it was good to see him carrying a sword again, especially after he had seemed so off for so long. There was something… right… about it. I found that ironic, especially considering how I had felt when I’d first seen Aron, the reaction I had when I’d come across him, thinking that it was strange for there to be someone carrying a sword openly in the city.

  “Do you remember being here?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember anything about this place, but I feel the power.”

  “You feel it?” Gran asked.

  “It’s unsettling. It’s drawing us.”

  I studied Aron. Why would he feel it but no one else besides me? Was it because I had been the one to restore him?

  But then, I had used the power of the ley lines in order to do so. I had drawn upon the Mississippi, thinking that if nothing else, we could use that power to try and salvage him, but when that had not been enough, I had tried a different approach, one that had failed.

  “How are you doing?” I asked Barden. We would need his power, I had little doubt. Even if it was only to confine the strange mage while I took on Solera.

  “Weakened, but I will do what I can, Dr. Michaels.”

  “I don’t doubt that you will. I just wanted to know how much I’ll have to be saving your ass.”

  “It’s like that now, is it?”

  “I had to save you once already.”

  “And I recall having come to you more than once at your request.”

  Gran was watching Barden and I, and I ignored her. There was a disapproving glare in her eyes, and I decided that I didn’t care. I trusted Barden. He had been helpful, so he deserved that trust from me. It was the same way that he trusted me.

  “We should spread out and be prepared for—”

  Magic built and I reacted instinctively before Sharon had a chance to finish. I wrapped a bubble of a barrier around all of us, swooping it around the entirety of the collected mages. A spell slammed into my barrier and I pushed back.

  “What was that?” Gran asked.

  “That was an attack.”

  “Who’s attacking us?”

  “I can’t tell,” I said. “But it’s not the same mage we encountered in the park.”

  “How do you know?” Sharon asked.

  “Because I can’t tell when she’s using magic.”

  Gran frowned and cast a spell, swirling magic around herself. Gramps and several of the other mages followed, preparing for the possibility that they might need to attack. I should have been more prepared myself. It had been a mistake to not be holding a barrier when we stepped onto the shoreline. I’d been focused on getting through Solera’s barrier and hadn’t focused on the need for anything more, including the possibility that I would need to be ready to fight.

  Everything on this island was controlled by Solera, which meant that everything here posed a threat to us. We had to be prepared for anything that might happen. That included any other mages in service of Solera. We already knew that there were some. Maybe they were like Aron and had developed an obligation for something, a price that she had placed upon them, or maybe they were like the mage we had fought near the shoreline, a woman who I suspected had opposed us because she wanted power from Solera.

  “You can lower your defenses, Katie,” Gramps said.

  “What?”

  He patted me on the arm. “We don’t need you to protect all of us. You’ll extend yourself too much and too soon.”

  I looked over and nodded. Withdrawing the barrier, I kept it surrounding myself. “How about you and your people?” I asked Barden.

  “A protective spell does not require a great amount of strength to for
m,” Barden said.

  “How about to maintain it?”

  “If we find ourselves under attack, we might need to retreat. I will let you know.”

  I started forward, ignoring Sharon’s protestations. I could just imagine that she thought that as a leader among the mage council, she should be allowed to take the lead, but I wasn’t about to follow someone who had never been on Solera’s island before. Aron stayed with me. As we walked, I looked for evidence of the attacker but saw nothing. Someone had struck us, though I couldn’t find where they had come from.

  “Does anything remind you of your time here?” I asked him.

  “Nothing.”

  “I get the sense that you had been here more than once or twice,” I said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Just that you had a familiarity with Solera and her island. I thought that perhaps you might know.”

  “It’s like everything. I want to remember, but most of those memories aren’t there.”

  “Most?”

  “Occasionally I have a sense of familiarity.”

  “Such as when?”

  “Such as—”

  Another spell struck, slamming into my barrier. Two of the mages near us went staggering backward. I shifted the orientation of my barrier, spreading outward, creating a layer between the mages with me and whoever might be attacking.

  Another spell struck my barrier. I held it, feeling the strain, and forced my way forward.

  There were other followers of Odian, but I had the suspicion that the dark-haired mage led them. We had to get past these others to get to her.

  “Katie?”

  I glanced back at Gramps. Worry wrinkled the corners of his eyes. “There is significant power here.”

  “There was power when we faced the Great One, too.”

  “This is different.”

  “How so?”

  “That was a single spell. How much are you going to be able to withstand?”

  “As much as it takes. If we can get to the center of her island, I can connect to her power.”

  “That’s your plan?” Gran asked.

  “To start with, at least until I understand what’s going on,” I said. “I know that I can use that power while you take care of the others.”

  “That power is dangerous. It connects you to a part of the Veil that you shouldn’t reach.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re taking it from another place and another magical user.”

  “What?”

  “Power on the other side of the Veil has consequences, much like it would have consequences on this side of the Veil,” Gran said. “And taking from whatever store you did, borrowing from whatever it was that Solera offered, places you into danger.”

  I didn’t know how that could be. I’d borrowed power from the other side of the Veil before, connecting through the summons that Barden had placed, and there hadn’t seemed to be any danger in that. It had required power, and it had required a connectivity that I still didn’t know how it worked, but there wasn’t any danger to it, not that I had felt.

  “I don’t think you’re right about that,” I said.

  “Katie—”

  Another spell slammed into my barrier. Sparks shot off the surface, looking something like fireworks going off on the Fourth of July. I managed to hold onto the barrier, but the connection grew weaker.

  If we continued to face an attack like this, I might not be able to withstand it for much longer.

  I glanced over at Barden. “I’m going to have to withdraw my barrier.”

  “We will take care of ourselves. You don’t have to protect all of these master mages.” He smiled at me slightly. “Though I suspect the caretaker in you feels otherwise.”

  “I just reacted instinctively.”

  “Because you have power. In time, you will have knowledge and you’ll understand that sometimes you need to conserve that power.”

  “Are you suggesting that I can’t save everyone?”

  “I’m suggesting that you learn to balance your power with what is realistic.”

  “I refuse to accept what’s realistic and what’s not.”

  “I hope that doesn’t come back to haunt us.”

  Another spell slammed into two of the nearby mages. Both of them went flying backward. It gave me a sense of direction, and I searched for where the attacks were coming from. I couldn’t see them, though I could feel them. Why should that be?

  Were they masking their spells?

  Or was there some other way that they could conceal themselves here?

  It was Solera’s place, which meant that her rules would apply. It was entirely possible that she had some way of concealing everyone she wanted to on her island.

  So far, she hadn’t been able to conceal the sense of power emanating from the island. If she could mask that, she could mask magic and then I’d be in trouble.

  Trees rose up the deeper we went into the island. All of them had lost their leaves, but they were still tall and wide enough that they made it difficult for us to tell where anyone might be hiding within them.

  “We need to find whoever’s attacking us,” Aron said.

  “There’s probably more than one person,” I said. “There were quite a few others out within the city setting these runes.”

  As I said it, another spell struck, this from the opposite direction than the last.

  The mages targeted were thrown nearly twelve feet, and they got up slowly, but not before another attack struck them.

  When it was over, neither mage moved.

  I hurried over to them, quickly checking for a pulse, thankful that both still lived.

  “I could—”

  Gran rested a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t need to do anything. They will recover. Trust that those with you have their own abilities.”

  I looked over. There was no sense of the chill of death, so I had to believe that they weren’t so injured that they couldn’t recover, but it didn’t make it any easier to leave them. If there was something that I could do, some way that I could help them, I felt almost compelled to do so, but that wasn’t for me to do.

  Letting out a heavy sigh, I turned to face the direction the attacks had come from. I had to identify their origins. When I did, we could remove the threat, and then what?

  And I still had to face Solera and the other mage.

  What if there were more like that insanely powerful mage?

  Turning back toward the forest, I recognized the trail that I had taken the last time I was here. It was one that guided me toward the center of Solera’s land, a way that would offer a chance to reach the pool of power there.

  I pointed and we started down that way. As we went, the attacks began to increase. Every so often, magic would slam around us. Most of those near the front of the procession were strong enough to withstand them, though a few people near the rear were scattered, sent tumbling away from the onslaught.

  The temptation was there to surround the others with my barrier. It was strong enough to withstand these attacks, though perhaps that was the intent. Whoever was assaulting us might know that I would be willing to defend them, and might use that against me, trying to weaken me.

  Perhaps it wasn’t that I had to fight them. I had to unmask them.

  I should’ve thought about it sooner, and had used it often enough to unmask hidden mages that I don’t know why I didn’t try before now, but I summoned the sword, drawing power, letting it spread out from us.

  “There,” Gramps whispered, nodding to his left.

  “What is it?” Gran asked.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out the direction of the attacks, and see if there was some ways to uncover what they’re using to mask themselves, but it wasn’t until Katie did… whatever it was she did… that I was able to see them,” he said.

  I held onto the spell, maintaining the connection to my magical sword, and mages sent streaks of power shooting away from us
in all directions.

  Even Barden and Darvish, along with the dark mages with them, got in on it. They continued to attack, combining their efforts, and finally, everything fell quiet.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “For now,” Barden said. “That’s an interesting spell you have.”

  “The sword?”

  “It’s more than a sword, though.”

  “I was only trying to mimic the sword that I lost.”

  “I seem to remember that sword.”

  “I—”

  Something struck me, sending me backward, but Gran and Gramps were there, catching me.

  I hadn’t detected a spell, which meant…

  “It’s the mage,” I shouted, solidifying my barrier.

  The woman stalked forward, suddenly visible. She was dressed in a long jacket that flowed toward the ground. She held something in her hand—and it took a moment for me to realize that it was a sword. There was something about it that was familiar.

  Because it was my sword.

  How could she have that?

  And how could she use it?

  I didn’t have a chance to question her. Gran gasped and I looked over. Her face was white and her eyes were wide.

  “Anna?” she whispered. She reached for Gramps, gripping his arm. “Oh, Veran, it’s our Anna.”

  The woman frowned, but I ignored it, my heart skipping wildly in my chest.

  Anna was my mother’s name.

  20

  Gran tried to take a step forward, but the woman flicked her wrist, and whatever spell she used sent Gran flying away. She struck a tree. I waited, afraid that the cold of death would come for her, but it wasn’t there. Gramps took a step forward, but I encased him in a spell just as the woman slammed her power into him.

  This wasn’t my mother. It couldn’t be.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” the woman said.

  “Anna? What are you doing? Where have you been?” Gramps asked. He strained against my hold on him, and I was afraid that if I let go, he would do something foolish—something along the lines of what Gran had done.

  “That’s not her, Gramps.”

  “It is her, Katie. I’d recognize her anywhere.”

  “It’s not. She knows my name, and if it were her, she wouldn’t have attacked me.”