From the Tamora Pierce Wiki
Magic Steps is the first installment in Tamora Pierce's second quartet set in the Emelanese Universe, called The Circle Opens. In this set of books the four young mages, Sandrilene fa Toren, Trisana Chandler, Daja Kisubo and Briar Moss, by now fourteen years old, separate and find their own way in life. This first volume centers around Sandry. Set more than three years after the end of Briar's Book, Sandry meets a boy, Pasco Acalon who has ambient dance magic. She must teach him control as well as hunt murderers who are slaughtering members of the Rokat family using the dangerous unmagic.
[edit] Plot Summary
When her three foster-siblings leave Summersea to travel the world with their teachers, Sandry and her teacher, Lark, remain alone in Winding Circle Temple. After her uncle, Duke Vedris, suffers a severe heart attack, Sandry leaves Discipline cottage to live with and care for him.
While out riding with her uncle, Sandry makes two discoveries: the murder of
Jamar Rokat, a myrrh trader, part of the war between organized crime families
Rokat and
Dihanur, and a boy named Pasco Acalon, whose dancing is visible to Sandry's magical vision as imbued with ambient magic.
Sandry, a newly accredited mage, discovers that one of the responsibilities implicit in her mage's medalion is a duty towards any newly-discovered mage who has no teacher. When she finds that ambient dancing magic is so rare as to be unheard of, she is forced to teach Pasco to control his magic himself, while Lark puts her in contact with Yazmín Hebet, a non-mage dancer and an old friend of hers who takes Pasco as her student. Between the two of them they must teach Pasco how to dance spells and convince his strict family of harriers, Summersea's local police, that such a seemingly-frivolous education is necessary.
When the perpetrators of the Rokat murders are discovered to be using Unmagic, the rare and deadly counter-magic that swallows energy and kills those who use it, Sandry and Pasco find out that they are the ones best suited to capturing the murderers. Sandry, the only known person with the ability to spin pure magic, spins a net of unmagic and Pasco dances the murderers magically into it. However, he is caught in the net. Sandry was forced to kill the murderers to save Pasco. With the murderers dead, Sandry takes on new responsibilities at the Duke's Citadel and leaves Discipline forever.
[edit] Characters
[edit] Nobles
[edit] Dedicates of Winding Circle
[edit] Commoners
[edit] Rokat family
[edit] Dihanur family
[edit] External links
[edit] See also
