"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."

"That still doesn't make much sense," he said dubiously. "I mean, if you can never do some things-"

"I did not say never," she smiled. "There are some very advanced techniques we can learn to allow us to weave spells beyond our natural ability to create. Channeling is the most common. But we still cannot exceed that very basic limitation that our own bodies place upon us, and many of our techniques only allow us to step just so far above that natural limitation."

"Oh, alright," he said. "That makes sense. No, wait. If you draw the magic inside you, and then you weave it together and release it, then why didn't the strands come out of you when you unravelled that strand over there?"

She laughed lightly. "My dear one, you make this so easy. You see immediately what I must work to make others understand. Remember when I said that one part of the Weave is connected to all others?" He nodded. "I become a doorway of sorts, dear one. The power I draw in is a direct proportion to the power of the Weave that I can directly affect. When I draw a flow into me and build up its energy, I can release that energy wherever I choose. Magic is a very simple power, Tarrin. It will follow the path of least resistance. If the place I choose is closer to another strand than it is to me, the magic will travel to that strand and then push out the flows to that point." She reached up a hand and put it through the strand over her head. "When we draw in our power, when we touch the Weave, we become a living part of it," she told him. "The flows that draw from the Weave and enter me also connect me to the Weave, and magic will flow much easier through flows and strands than it will across empty air. Almost always, you will see weaves extend from strands to the point of effect. That energy must flow through me and to that place, and if it a shorter distance from that place to a nearby strand, then that is the path that the energy will take."

"Why do you have to build up power, when it's already there?" he asked.

"How do you mean?"

"You say that you build up power inside you, then it leaves you and then goes where you tell it to go. Then you weave that power together and form a spell. Why not just try to weave it together over there in the first place? That way, you don't have to draw anything in."

"A thought, but it will not quite work, dear one. When I weave together flows somewhere else, I'm trying to affect the magic over there with the magical power I have inside me. In effect, I'm pushing a line of blocks, trying to get the end block to fall off the edge of a table. By pushing at this end, I can make the block on the far end fall off the table. The Weave measures the power I have inside me against the weave I'm trying to build, and if it is enough, I can push out that energy and weave it together to do what I want it to do. I cannot push any more power into the Weave than what I currently hold, so, to again put it in terms of water, the water I carry in a bucket cannot fill up a barrel. If the weave I am trying to build requires a barrel of water, it will not work. If it only requires a bucket, it will work. If it only requires a glass of water, and I try to fill it with a bucket of water-"

"It overflows."

She shook her head. "It never gets the chance to overflow. Because the weave is triggered once it has enough power and I weave it together, the excess energy has nothing to do, and it is disspated through the Weave. The proper term is that it is absorbed by the Weave."

"So…to stay on the water, it's like filling a glass over a waterfall," he said. "The water that flows over the glass just drops back into the stream."

"Precisely," she said with an approving nod. "You do suffer a bit of a backlash, because that power partially rebounds back into you. It is not pleasant, so you learn quickly not to try to put more magic into a weave than it can safely hold."

"Safely?"

She chuckled. "Yes. If you charge a weave's flows without weaving them together and allowing them to expend the energy you charge into them, they can release that energy in totally random ways. It is called a wildstrike, and the effects can be spectacular. The power of the Weave itself can blow through a ruptured flow, like a torrent of water blasting from a hole in a dam. That is one of the reasons this room is so bare. And these walls are sufficiently reinforced by magical wards and physical buttressing."

"And that's the danger you warned me about," he surmised.

"One of them, yes," she said. "Toying with Sorcery without experience or guidance can be deadly.

"You seem to understand the generalities of weaving flows, but there are some restrictions of which you must be aware. There are only three true strictures when it comes to weaving flows, Tarrin," she said. "Firstly, you cannot weave where you cannot see. That is our range. While you can weave some flows without seeing what you are doing, and indeed there are many that must be woven inside objects, where you cannot see what you do, but you cannot direct them at anyone or anything unless you can see it. You cannot weave flows trying to paralyze someone on the far side of a closed door, nor can you weave in the dark unless you can see your target's location. You do not necessarily have to see his face or form, but you must be able to see enough of him to know where he is. But no matter what, you cannot create flows at great distances, whether you know someone is there or not. The reason for this is complex, but it comes down to perspective. Since you are 'seeing' the flows woven together, it means that flows that are exceptionally tiny are impossible to create. People at great distances appear tiny, so to affect them from such a distance means that, in relation, you are trying to weave flows in a tight space."

"In other words, Dolanna, accuracy is dictated by distance. The farther away a target is, the harder it is to hit it. And once something is outside of bowshot, you just can't get anything there. It always falls short."