Ironside swept his palm across his body and a fan of needles came at Noah's chest.
Noah dove under them and came up on one knee, and he let the white chi come.
It came up out of the middle of him like heat from a stove. It filled his chest and ran down his right arm until his forearm glowed white.
Then he reached out with the pull at the back of his mind, the one Lila had taught him, and dragged the outside in. The courtyard was thick with energy. Red chi came pouring in out of the stone and the dead grass and the air itself, cold and heavy, and he packed all of it into the same arm.
It hurt. It always did.
