"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 connected were bowed towards each other where the ball of intersection rested. The other three were arrow-straight. Tarrin turned in his chair to follow one of them out of the room with his eyes, seeing it disappear into the wall leading into the hallway. "This, dear one, is the Weave," she said in a grand voice. "This is the source of our power. It is what we use in order to create our magic."
"Strings and ropes?" Tarrin asked. "What are they?"
"They are magic, dear one," she said. "Pure magic. They are called strands. They are all connected together in a a great matrix which covers our world. This is the magical conduit through which all magic travels, even the magic of the other orders. Think of them as strands in a spider's web so vast that it cannot be seen by only one person." Dolanna pointed at one that ran beside them, and Tarrin watched as it seemed to unravel before his eyes. Six smaller strands pulled away from the white core, each smaller strand carrying a color. Red, yellow, orange, blue, violet, and indigo. "Do you recognize those?" she asked.
"Yes, they're the six spheres," he replied in wonder. "Where's the seventh one?"
"I cannot draw that sphere out," she told him. "In fact, no one person can. It requires Ritual Sorcery."
"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 connected to the strand from which they were drawn." She made a pointing gesture, and the red flow extended across the room and connected to another strand near the wall, then it separated from the original strand from which it had been pulled. "A flow usually cannot exist unless it is anchored to a strand, but, as you can see, you can transfer a flow from one strand to another."
"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 connected to that strand within the great web of the Weave," she pointed to the two strands she had affected in turn. "There are ways to make a flow stand alone, but we will get into that after you learn the basics. Each flow is independent and unique," she continued, as the red flow and the blue one extended. They touched, even wrapped around themselves, but they didn't join. "They are like oil and water. They will not mix with flows from other spheres. But flows from like spheres will merge," she said. Another red string flowed out from a different strand, and the instant it touched the first one, they joined. The extra bits at the ends of each one simply vanished, and the now-single red flow formed a straight line between the two strands.
"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 connected to the strand with tendrils of red, tendrils that danced like smoke in a gentle breeze. "Doing our magic is not quite as easy as most believe," she said. "It requires two very different steps. First, you draw in the magical energy from the Weave. Then, once you have it, you weave the flows you have drawn into a specific effect. This weave," she held up the small lick of fire, "is very easy to create, for it is only one flow. You can see the flows that tie it to the Weave, which continue to fuel its power. If I cut off that flow of energy-" the tendrils vanished, and then the lick of fire winked out-"the weave is disrupted, and it disappears. Other weaves require many flows used together in order to function, such as Healing. That is a combination of Fire, Water, Earth, and Divine power. They can get very, very complex."
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."
"Hold on," he said. "You said the magic is all in this Weave, right?" She nodded. "Then what makes me any different from anyone else? Everyone keeps saying how much potential I have, but how does it make me different? I mean, if the magic is all outside, why are Sorcerers not equally powerful?"
"A very good question," she said with a smile. "There are several answers. A great deal of a Sorcerer's potential depends on three things. How closely he is tied to the Weave, how much power he can hold, and how much he can safely manipulate. Two of those aspects change with experience. One does not. As a Sorcerer learns more about the Weave, and practices, it brings that Sorcerer in a more intimate contact with the Weave. That Sorcerer can draw energy from it faster, from a wider area, can weave flows together quicker, and can even directly affect the Weave without drawing in. The amount of power a Sorcerer can manipulate also increases over time, as he grows into closer contact with the power that he is controlling. But the amount of power that a Sorcerer can hold, the raw amount of energy that he can safely build up inside, never changes. That is purely an aspect of the person. Some magical weaves require vast amounts of power to be woven correctly and have them work. Those weaves the Sorcerer can learn, but if he was to try to use them, they would kill him. His body would simply burn up trying to contain more power than it can withstand." She shuddered. "That is probably the greatest danger you face as you learn. We call it being Consumed, and it is a ghastly way to die. You are destroyed from the inside out, and nothing, not anything, can stop it once it begins. Those lucky ones that realize what is happening kill themselves before it overwhelms their reason." She patted his hand. "Anyway, what makes you so strong is just that. You have awesome potential, Tarrin. You can hold more power than four Sorcerers linked."