Magic and Blood

A new character to introduce to you, and a major one! Please let me know what you think.

Chapter two: Sam

Cassia watched as the stack of paper toppled off Sam's desk for the second time in as many minutes. It was possible that he was just particularly clumsy today, but the sudden burst of activity from the pages as he reached for them made that unlikely. It looked like a wind was blowing only by his desk. He huffed in frustration. She put down the cup she was washing, and went to help.

Crouching, she gathered the paper into a pile for him. "Get you gift under control," she hissed, covering her words with a loud shuffle of paper to conceal them from anyone else. "You're going to do some damage otherwise." This close, when she concentrated, she could feel the bursts of power flaring off him like little puffs of electricity brushing her skin.

"What do you mean?" he whispered back, puzzled. Was it possible- did he not know he was gifted? No, she thought, far more likely that he was unwilling to admit that he was, and have to register.

"Come with me," she muttered, setting his paperwork firmly back on his desk, well away from the edge to try to prevent further mishap. The frustration of a third time sorting it out would do nothing to calm his magic.

He was still looking at her in confusion, but followed her out obediently. The tiny office she shared was luckily empty. "What's going on?" Cassia asked him. "Your gift is flaring out- why is your control slipping?"

"Gift? I don't have magic," he snapped. "I'm not even Tortallan."

She sighed. "Sam, I hate this new Tortallan registration as much as the next person. I'm not going to turn you in- as long as you get yourself under control. The last thing we need is a magic flare when there are students around!"

"I seriously have no idea what you mean," he replied. "I'm not Tortallan. I don't have magic." He turned to the door, reached for the handle, and promptly fell to the floor. He clutched his head in his hands, gasping in pain. "What's happening?" he choked out.

She knelt beside him, releasing the catch on her bracelet. It was a silver chain, containing amethyst and citrine within the links. The citrines captured magical power, and the amethysts protected and stabilised it. The whole thing was finished off with tiny runes to bind the power etched into the silver. Cassia used it to store extra reserves of power. She folded it in her hands, pulling the energy inside it into herself with a few practiced breaths. "Here," she said, pooling the jewelry into one of his palms, closing his fingers around it before he raised the hand to his head again. "This will help. Imagine a well of light inside you, where your heart is. try to slow and deepen your breathing, and with every exhale, imagine a little piece of the light flowing down your arm, into your hand, and out into the bracelet."

She counted out his breaths for him, keeping her voice as low and soft as she could. At least a library was a quiet enough place that there wasn't anything to distract him.

After about six breaths, she could see him relaxing. Within a minute, he'd dropped his hands away from his head, and after two, there was a faint glow as the bracelet took on his excess power. "Feeling better?" she asked softly. He opened his eyes and looked at me.

"Yes. What happened? What was that?" he looked down, and noticed the fading glow in the stones he held. He yelped and dropped the bracelet, the links clinking as they hit the floor.

"That's your gift," she explained gently. "Your magic was out of control, overflowing. By siphoning some off, you brought it down enough to stop acting up. The flying paper and the pain in your head were just your gift flaring."

"I've been having headaches for a month," he admitted. "But I still don't understand how I can have magic. You must be wrong."

"Are you sure one of your parents isn't Tortallan?" she asked. "Half blood tortallans can inherit the gift- I did. And it can skip multiple generations, so even if your parents or grandparents aren't gifted, they may still carry the ability to pass it on."

"So it's hereditary?" he asked.

"Yes. It follows family lines- the colour of the gift corresponds to the line it comes from. Sometimes it manifests in the colour of eyes as well. The gift can always be traced back through lineage. It simply doesn't manifest of it's own accord."

"But neither of my parents it Tortallan. They never told me they were Tortallan. They're from Coventry." An application of her own gift told her he was telling the truth. As far as he knew, he was not Tortallan.

"Where do your parents live?" she asked. "Can we go to visit them?"

"I still live at home, with my mum," he admitted. "but how can I ask her that? If they've never told me, there must be a reason!" His voice rose in consternation.

"I can ask," she soothed, worried that he was starting to panic again. "Will she be home tonight? If I come home with you, would that be okay? And where do you live, anyway.

He named a nearby town, only about twenty minutes away. "Do you want to come straight over with me when we finish then?" he asked.

She glanced at the clock. "If that's okay. It's half past four now, so you'd better let them know you'll have company. I need to go and finish up some work, but I'll come and find you at five?"

He nodded, and tried to hand her back the bracelet. "Keep it," she advised. "Until we sort out your magic and get some barriers up, you can repeat the same exercise to draw off your power. It can hold more than you put in it by a long way."

Forty minutes later, Cassia leant against the door jamb of his office, watching him shut down his computer and fuss with various items on his desk. "Anyone would think you were stalling for time," she commented wryly. He blushed. "Sam! You're nervous!" She grinned. "Don't worry, I won't bite!"

"I know," he said quietly. "I've just… never brought a girl home before. My mum might get the wrong impression."

"Don't worry, I have no intention of misleading her," she assured him.

He smiled, still looking worried, and stood up. "Well, I suppose you'd better follow me home then," he said.

"A confession: I don't drive. You okay to give me a lift?"

"You don't drive?" he repeated, confused, locking the door behind them.

"Nope. Tried to learn, hated it. It makes me angry, and i'm not very safe when i'm angry. I've had my share of magic flares too."

"What is your magic, anyway?" he asked. "I think there are different kinds of magic?"

"Yes, they're called talents. I'm a truth teller and a battle mage. Battle magic isn't very useful, day to day, but certain aspects of it help me with things- i'm good at protections, for example, and healing, to an extent, is part of battle magic, since battles usually include injuries. I use my truth telling far more- it lets me know when people are lying, or a danger to me, and it can let me alter people's perceptions of things slightly. I can make them forget things, or hear things that aren't physically there."

"That sounds a bit… scary," he admitted, unlocking a little blue car. He swept a pile of chocolate wrappers, two newspapers and a book off the passenger seat so she could get in.

"It definitely has it's uses, but you may be relieved to know I don't use it much to influence people, or to access their thoughts unless I have to."

"Access their thoughts? As in read minds?" He sounded shocked, and rightly so. People had often found that element of truth telling shocking. Sometimes, the thought of having someone else in your mind could be more worrying than the knowledge that Cassia was able to stop whole armies.

"Actually reading minds takes a lot of power. It's easier to hear what people actually want me to hear, but there aren't many truth tellers who can access thoughts that their subject doesn't want to share."

"Are you one of those that can?" he asked quietly.

"I am," she admitted, "but it exhausts me, so I don't exactly do it for fun."

He drove in silence for a while, obviously digesting this information. Cassia watched the fields roll past, waiting for him to ask his next question.

"So," he said at length, "what kind of magic do I have?"

"I have no idea yet," she replied, pleased that he was talking in definites now, apparently accepting his gift. "The easiest way to find out is a sensor mage- they can tell what talents other mages have. Other than that, you can just test various types of magic to see what works."

"Why would you test it instead of seeing a sensor mage?" he asked. "Sounds like it would take a while."

"Sensing is a rare talent, more so than either of mine, and truth tellers aren't exactly ten a penny. A lot of gifted people may not know a sensor, and since most mages have their gifts noticed in childhood, the things they can do develop naturally. I set my crib on fire a few times- my father thought I was a fire mage at first, but when I started telekinetically hurling objects as missiles when I got upset, he figured out that I was a battle mage. Truth telling was easy- there was no way I was going to believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. I gather having a child that screamed when you told an untruth wasn't pleasant."

The corners of Sam's mouth quirked in a little grin. She was probably right, he thought. He pulled the car into the driveway of an average semi detached house, and turned the car off, but didn't immediately move. "I'm frightened," he admitted quietly.

"What's there to be afraid of?"

"Maybe I'm adopted, maybe my parents aren't my parents."

"Even if that's the case, they're still your parents," Cassia assured him. "The people who raise you and love you are your family. Blood may be thicker than water, but it's love that matters." She laid one hand on his, resting on the gearstick, and he looked up at her and smiled wanly.

"Here goes," he said, and climbed out.

Sam's mother had invited Cassia to stay for tea almost before she got through the front door. Sam muttered something about getting changed and left her with his smiling, hospitable, but slightly confused mother, Katie.

"Sam's never brought a girl home before," she whispered conspiratorially, leading Cassia through to the living room.

"So he said," Cassia replied. "But he hasn't brought me home in any romantic capacity, I assure you."

Katie's face fell a little. She worried about her son never finding love. "Still, it's nice to meet a colleague of his. He doesn't talk about people at work much- I worry about him being shy."

"He is shy, but well liked," Cassia assured her. "This may be easier if I just explain exactly why I'm here, instead of leaving you guessing. I'm presuming Sam hasn't told you?" Katie shook her head, so Cassia took a deep breath and continued. "I'm Cassia of Susannah Lake- a Tortallan. I've noticed that Sam is gifted, but he insists that he has no Tortallan ancestry. I'm sorry if I uncover any family secrets, but if you or his father are Tortallan, or your parents were, I need to know. The gift has never been seen in someone from the new world with no gifted ancestry. If it's somehow manifesting, that's something worrying."

Katie blanched. Cassia continued on regardless. "I know there are Tortallans avoiding the registration laws for one reason or another. I'm not here in any capacity to report you, or make you register, but an untrained, unguarded gift can be very dangerous. Sam's starting to flare, and it's unpredictable. He could seriously hurt himself or someone around him. He needs training."

Katie jumped up and started pacing. Sam peeked into the room, seemingly decided that he had no choice but to come in, then perched on the edge of the sofa.

"What would happen to him, if he is gifted?" Katie quietly asked.

Cassia shook her head. "It's not if. He is gifted. I don't quite know why it's taken this long to manifest- the gift usually shows itself in toddlerhood. He needs to be trained."

"I paid someone to take his magic away," Katie whispered. "Why did it come back?"

Cassia closed her eyes and sighed. He'd been leeched. It explained why he hadn't shown signs of the gift until now. Whoever had been siphoning off his magic had obviously stopped recently- either they had another source, or they had died. Leeching magic was illegal, and morally repugnant. The gift was tied to life force in mages, so taking too much magic could literally kill them, as surely as draining blood. The gifted had protections and limits placed on their magic as children, to make sure they didn't overextend, and Cassia wasn't the only mage to carry small stores of her own siphoned magic around, in case she needed them in times of crisis. It also explained why Sam's gift grew outside the amount he could hold- his magic didn't know it's own limits, having probably never reached them in years, and having not developed capacity over time.

"Does his gift come from you?" Cassia asked Katie quietly. Sam's mother shook her head. "So his father's Tortallan?"

"Yes," she said, "But Sam, I'm sorry, your dad isn't actually… that is… well, I had an affair. Your dad doesn't know," she finally blurted

Cassia glanced at Sam, looking for his reaction. She knew it was close to what he had first presumed, that he was adopted, but perhaps an even more hurtful lie. He was wide eyed, unsure. She pressed Katie further. "Who is Sam's biological father, Katie? Do you still know him?"

She sobbed. "No, we lost contact. I was on holiday, just a couple of weeks at the seaside. He was married too, had a baby, but he and his wife weren't getting on. One thing led to another… he left me his phone number. When I had Sam, I rang, I told him. He came to visit a couple of times, and the last time he came, Sam started playing with these balls of light. James told me… he explained. His daughter had the magic too, he said, even though he didn't. He helped me find someone to take the magic away."

"Do you know the rest of his name?" Cassia asked.

"Greene," she said. "James Greene. I have a photo, somewhere…" she was diggin in a drawer in the sideboard. Cassia's ears were ringing, but she knew that Katie was telling the truth. "We used to talk, once or twice a year, but he stopped calling, oh, about seven or eight years ago," she said, handing Cassia a photo.

"He stopped calling because he died. This is my father."

Cassia concentrated on bringing her body back under her control, bringing her heart rate and breathing down. Slowly, the ringing in her ears quietened, and she began to think. Both Katie and Sam were silent.

"Sam, I think you need to come home with me," she said at last. "Whoever was leeching your gift has stopped for some reason, and if the Susannah Lake gift came through as strongly in you as it did in me, you could cause some serious damage."

Katie gasped, and moved to hug her son, but he pushed her away. "You lied to me!" he spat. His fingers were sparking.

"Sam!" Cassia crossed the room in two strides, grabbing his shoulders. "You need to calm down. Breathe." If proof was needed that their gifts were from the same source, here it was: the tiny lightning bolts around his hands were bright turquoise. Hoping that his magic would be similar enough to hers, Cassia took his hands in hers.

The magic running through her felt like a low level electric shock- not painful, but surprising nonetheless. 'Sam, breathe,' she projected into his mind. 'Just like before.'

She could feel his anger closing through him. He made no effort to conceal his thoughts. They didn't form coherent sentences. 'Lies. Stole it. Lied!' In direct contact with him, Cassia couldn't help but hear. His gifted mind was completely unprotected, and the blood and gift ties made it harder to block out his thoughts.

Cassia had never had any reason to leech someone else's gift from them before. But she knew how to place her own magic into objects, like the bracelet, and knew how to pull the power back out. The act of pulling power out of Sam was similar enough.

Sam was calming down, and his thoughts were retreating as he waves of power stopped crashing over him. He sunk to the sofa, his knees shaking.

"You… you were glowing!" Katie breathed. "Both of you- glowing blue!"

"Susannah lake magic is turquoise," Cassia corrected. "it's a combination of what's now known as Conte magic, and the Queenscove gift." she looked down at Sam, who was even more pale than usual, but now looked more ready to face the world. "Are you a bit calmer?" she asked.

"Yeah, I feel more normal now."

"I'm sorry, I leeched off some of your magic. it was the fastest way to bring it back down into the ranges you can deal with. Your body went into fight-or-flight, so you produced a lot of extra power."

He nodded, and glanced at his mother, still trying to make herself inconspicuous in a corner. "You said I could come with you?" he asked.

"Of course."

"Let me pack some clothes, then can we go?"

"Yes, we can. I'll ring for a taxi whilst you pack," she offered

"I can drive," he assured Cassia, standing. She didn't look convinced, but he insisted. Driving would take his mind of it, he rationalised, and he wanted to not think about the events of the last few minutes.

"Sit," Cassia said to Katie, when he had gone. "you've had a shock too."

She crept forward to perch on the other end of the sofa to the younger woman. "I only wanted to protect him," she offered.

"I know. Right now, I'm more angry at my own father. he was Tortallan, and he had a duty to Sam. Leeching someone's gift without their consent is terrible, and it's illegal in Tortall. It's one of the laws that was brought in here, to apply to Tortallans, but I hardly imagined that anyone needed telling."

"Did I hurt him?" she asked.

"Yes. No one wants to admit to an affair, and a child from one, but he's furious with you for lying, and for stealing his gift. I'd imagine he'll be able to see your side of it soon enough- just be patient."

"Just look after him," she murmured as Sam clumped down the stairs.

"Ready?" he called from the hall.

Cassia stood. "I will. And thank you for looking after my brother all these years." She quickly folded katie in a brief hug, and went to find Sam. he was slinging his duffel bag into the back of the car, before climbing in and waiting for Cassia to join him. Katie waved, trying to force a smile, but he didn't respond.

They didn't talk about what had happened on the drive home. Sam concentrated on the road and Cassia's directions, banishing thoughts of family from his head. He was still scared about his suddenly appearing new powers though. "So what happens now?" he asked eventually

"We're going to Tortall tomorrow, " Cassia said. "I don't know who might be in Corus at the moment, but hopefully there's a Sensor mage there. Numair is usually at court, and he's the best. He can help with teaching you to deal with your gift too."

"What about work?" he asked.

"Well, it's Friday tomorrow. You're going to call in sick, and I get a lot of leeway these days for stuff like this. There are some Tortallans high up in the college hierarchy, and I have a fief to run. We'll see what happens tomorrow. Maybe we'll have you back at work Monday, maybe not. we'll see. If you need to be off a while, we'll get you signed off."

He laughed, a short, barking laugh. "What would you sign me off with? Say that my magic is sick?"

She shrugged. "Why not? Well, unless you don't want people knowing. We'll find something."

"Will this mean I have to register?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied. "But in return, you get the protection offered by the new laws." The legislation had been amended to add gifted status to the list of traits that could not be discriminated against, like gender and race.

"What would have happened," he said quietly after a while, "If you hadn't noticed?"

She considered the question. "Your reaction this afternoon was extreme, because of the situation you were placed in. But eventually, your magic would have built up to something similar. You'd have started setting fire to things, or flooding them, or whatever form your talents take. If that didn't bleed off enough, you would probably not be able to contain it all, eventually. I've never known anyone to die of an excess of magic, but I don't see why it couldn't happen. Oh, left here… it's down at the end of the road, on the right."

He drew up outside her house. "Thanks," he said quietly. "For not letting me die."

"Silly. Let's go inside."

Sam trailed upstairs after Cassia. She pointed out the bathroom and her bedroom, then led him into the spare room. Between them, they soon had the spare bed made up, but sometime in the process, tears began to trail down Sam's cheeks. After they had spread the duvet out, Cassia perched on the bed and patted the mattress beside her. Sniffling, Sam sat, and she pulled him in, holding him. He tried to squirm away at first, but very quickly decided that he needed the human contact.

"I never knew I had a half brother," Cassia said gently. "but it would appear I have. You were concerned that you'd find out you were adopted. I suppose you were half right."

He buried his head in her shoulder. "What if my dad hates me, because I'm not his?"

"Did you know that I have a stepmother?" she asked. "I'm not hers, by blood, but she loves me as much as her other children. She doesn't understand how I have a life that spans both worlds so she does her best to ignore everything Tortallan, but she still loves me. I would hope that your dad feels the same about you. Like I said earlier, love matters more to families than blood."