Mage-Gift utilizes a type of life-energy to perform various types of true magic, such as teleportation, lightning manipulation, combat magic, and the ability to create shields.
A Mage-Gift can be weak or strong, limiting the amount of magic the person can do. Skilled mages can draw upon lines of power known as ley-lines. These mages are generally called Masters. Those that are even more skilled, called Adepts, can draw upon Nodes, or reservoirs of power.
Even very weak mages generally possess some form of Mage-Sight, the ability to see the use of magic. During the time when true magic was virtually unknown in Valdemar, those with an unidentified Mage-Gift were often thought to have FarSight, and were trained accordingly. In reality, they were actually using Mage-Sight. Herald Kris was one of these.
Blood magic[]
A taboo source of power is Blood magic, which requires causing pain and death. It can give a weak mage extra strength, and gives a strong mage an outside power source that does not use any of their personal energies. Both circumstances tempt people onto the path of the Blood Mage.
However, in addition to all the victims that are killed, blood magic on a large scale can actually poison the land itself. Ancar provided a well-known example of this. It took some time for the land to recover once Tremane took the throne.