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"I don't understand," he said.
"In simple terms, dear one, you must come here with an open mind," she told him. "In reality, at first, I will not be teaching you. I will only show you how to come into touch with your power, and then explain the sensations you feel and the things that you see. It is very much a personal process, and it differs slightly from Sorcerer to Sorcerer."
"Oh," he said. "So, if I read a book about a Sorcerer and how he does his magic, I'd always remember that," he said.
She nodded. "And if his techniques were incompatible with your power, it would seriously hamstring your ability." She patted his paw fondly. "Now then, let us begin."
For almost the entire day, Tarrin did nothing but learn mental exercises. He learned techniques to clear his mind of u
"Very good," she said as he leaned back in his chair. "Now then, to show you exactly what you'll be doing." She made a gesture, and he felt that peculiar sensation of drawing in. Then several opaque strands of some sort of wispy material slowly faded into view. Two of them came from the ceiling, one from the floor, and the other three from the walls. They crisscrossed the room in seemingly random patterns, but two of them intersected. Where they touched, a tiny ball rested. The strands were white, and they varied in size. One of them was as thin as a grass stalk. One was as thick around as his wrist. They weren't straight either. He noticed that one of them had a definite curve, and the two that co
"Strings and ropes?" Tarrin asked. "What are they?"
"They are magic, dear one," she said. "Pure magic. They are called strands. They are all co
"Yes, they're the six spheres," he replied in wonder. "Where's the seventh one?"
"I ca
"Why?"
"We will explore the why of it later, dear one," she told him. "You have much to learn before we reach that point. Each strand is made up of the seven spheres. They are jumbled all together, and the presence of all of them are what makes the strands what they are. You can see that the six smaller strands, which we call flows, are co
"Did that one lose its red?"
"No, dear one," she said, having the red extend out again. "Not all the Sorcerers alive have enough power to totally deprive a strand of one flow. I only borrowed the tiniest fraction of the flow from the strand, and it will get that back, because this strand is co
"As you can see, strands are not all the same size. This strand, which is small," she pointed, "is no less powerful than that strand, which is large." She pointed to the wrist-thick strand. "But they are different in how fast you can pull the flows from them, and the power that those flows can hold. It is much like having a bottle and a bucket, both full of water. You can draw the water out of the bottle, but it pours much more slowly than you can get the water from the bucket."
"Ah, so I can't draw out magic as fast from the little one as I can from the big one?"
She nodded. "Most Sorcerers do not just draw from one strand, even a larger one," she told him. "We draw flows from all of them around us, all at once. To draw from just one strand would make even the tiniest magical task take hours."
"So, how do you make these little magic ropes make things catch fire?" he asked.
She smiled. "Ever to the point. I have missed you, dear one." She lifted her hand with her palm up, and Tarrin saw little red flows streak out from the strands in the room, and into her. Then he saw red strands flicker from her hands and form into a reddish ball of something in her hand, and then a small lick of flame appeared in her cupped palm. Tarrin saw that the lick of fire was still co
Tarrin leaned back in his chair and thought about it a minute. "So you draw in the magic, then while it's inside you, you put it together in a way that makes something happen, and then you just let it go?"
"Generally speaking, yes, dear one," she replied. "We generalize the process at first, but that is the core of what we do."
"It seems easy."
"It is easy," she said, "if you know what you are doing. Some, like you and your sister, have enough raw potential to seem to be able to use your power unconsciously."