Sandry's Book (circle of Magic, #1)

The first book in Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic quartet introduces four young misfits in a fantasy world of temples, seafaring merchants, and hidden power, each rescued from crisis by the same wandering mage.

Lady Sandrilene fa Toren, a young noble, is trapped in a windowless storeroom in the Palace of Black Swans in Zakdin, Hatar. Her nurse, a member of the Traders, a seafaring merchant people, hid her there during a smallpox epidemic and was killed before she could return. As her oil lamp dies, Sandry desperately braids silk thread and somehow calls light into it. She remains in darkness until a mage named Niklaren Goldeye, called Niko, locates the concealed room and rescues her. In the Pebbled Sea, a young Trader girl named Daja Kisubo drifts on a hatch cover, the sole survivor of her family's ship. She spots a suraku, a copper-lined Trader survival box, floating out of reach, and when she beckons, the box floats to her hand. Niko finds her three days later. In Hajra, a street thief called Roach faces a life sentence of hard labor after his third arrest. Niko intervenes with a royal letter and offers the boy a choice: the docks or apprenticeship at Winding Circle Temple in the realm of Emelan. Roach chooses the temple and takes a new name, Briar Moss. In Ninver, Capchen, Trisana Chandler, a merchant girl with copper-red hair and spectacles, has been passed from relative to relative after her parents gave her up. When her fury at taunting dormitory girls peaks, a gust of wind tears through the room, leaving only her bed untouched. The next morning, her rage summons a hailstorm that shatters windows. Niko recognizes hidden power and agrees to escort her to Winding Circle.

Niko arranges placement for each child at the temple. Sandry's great-uncle, Duke Vedris IV, the ruler of Emelan, agrees she should live at Winding Circle, a renowned center of learning and magic. The Trader Council declares Daja trangshi (outcast), blaming her as a lone survivor for carrying bad luck, and gives her an unmarked staff she must always carry. Niko protests but is overruled. On the road north, Niko lures Briar toward the temple by mentioning its famous gardens, where dedicates, the temple's resident members, grow plants inside buildings. Aboard ship, Tris catches globes of Runog's Fire, a ghostly flame that clings to masts during storms, in her bare hands.

At Winding Circle, none of the children fit into the dormitories. Sandry defends Daja against jeering students. Daja is attacked by a group of students, and Honored Moonstream, the temple's Dedicate Superior, moves her to Discipline cottage for safety. Briar draws hidden knives against dormitory boys who falsely accuse him of theft and is expelled to Discipline for carrying weapons. Tris is sent there after a lightning bolt strikes near the building during a meeting about her behavior; Moonstream sends Sandry as well.

The cottage is run by two Earth dedicates: Lark, a warm weaver, and Rosethorn, a sharp-tongued gardener. Briar resents living with girls, Daja bristles at non-Traders, and Tris distrusts everyone. Niko confiscates Briar's knives and begins teaching all four to meditate in the Hub, Winding Circle's central tower. During a tour of the Hub, Tris discovers that the voices she has heard all her life, voices her family insisted were imaginary, are real: In the hearing room, trained initiates listen to the same distant conversations carried on the wind. The revelation brings her overwhelming relief.

Individual mentorships form as each child discovers an affinity. Lark introduces Sandry to spinning with a drop spindle; fibers move toward her on their own, clinging to her hands. Daja, drawn to the smithies despite Trader taboos against craftwork, meets Frostpine, a master smith and Fire dedicate who offers to teach her. When an apprentice drops red-hot iron, Daja catches it barehanded, her palms unburned. Niko teaches Tris about weather, warning her never to tamper with Nature's forces. Briar senses a small, sick tree in the greenhouse of Dedicate Crane, a territorial Air initiate, and steals it before dawn. Rosethorn negotiates a truce with Crane, trading a prized tomato plant for the miniature tree. Called a shakkan, it is a form of living art shaped by gardeners in the distant land of Yanjing. Rosethorn explains that the shakkan stores magic and chose Briar by calling to him.

A trip to the Summersea market reveals their power publicly. Sandry attacks boys torturing a puppy, and the others join the fight. Tris tries to magically dump seawater on the attackers but loses control, creating a waterspout that rampages into the square. Tris holds it at bay until Lark uses her drop spindle, spinning counterclockwise, to unravel it. Duke Vedris fines the boys for animal cruelty and confines Tris to Winding Circle until she controls her power. The children adopt the puppy, naming him Little Bear. On the ride home, Niko explains that their power manifests through everyday things, such as thread, metal, plants, and weather, rather than through traditional magery, which is why conventional testers missed it.

Summer deepens past Midsummer. The children's daily routine of chores, meditation, lessons, and evening spinning gradually softens their edges. Niko is called to the Hub to sort through a flood of omens with the temple's seers and returns after two weeks looking haggard. He reveals that a major earthquake will strike Ragat Island the following day. Warnings have been sent, but Niko is uneasy about a cryptic message from Honored Huath, the head of Wave Circle Temple in Ragat, who told Moonstream only that she might be surprised.

The next morning dawns hazy and hot. The children chase Little Bear into a cliff cave and explore deeper than ever before. The ground heats, and a massive earthquake strikes. The ceiling collapses, trapping them in a tiny hollow with their lamp crushed. Sandry, terrified of the dark from her ordeal in Hatar, begins to panic. Daja projects a magical survival box around them, drawing on her memory of the suraku. Tris senses a far larger quake approaching, laced with foreign magic, and channels small land-waves to open air vents.

Sandry retrieves her first spun thread, which has four evenly spaced lumps, and her drop spindle. She asks each person to pour part of themselves into one of the lumps, then spins, drawing a magical fiber from each friend into a single thread that strengthens all their powers. Daja reaches deep below for molten heat and melts ore into wire, weaving it around their shelter. Briar connects to his shakkan on the surface, which offers its stored magic, and calls the roots of every plant in Winding Circle to form a protective basket. Tris channels dangerous energy away. The main quake hits, enhanced by Huath's failed attempt to trap its power in crystals, which only amplified the force until it broke free. Coal catches fire overhead; Tris floods it with seawater. Their hollow shifts through the ground and comes to rest.

Their teachers extract them into the Hub's heartfire chamber, bruised and exhausted. Niko reveals that Huath and all of Wave Circle Temple perished. Back at Discipline, each child tends to what matters most: Daja polishes her suraku, Briar checks his shakkan, and Sandry places her spindle and the four-lumped thread, which has woven its own loose ends into a closed ring, on a shelf. The other three secretly fill a round crystal with steady, unflickering light using their combined magic. They present it to Sandry at midnight so she will never fear the dark again. Sandry, in tears, tells them she could not ask for better friends.