The Choice of Magic - Michael G. Manning Page 0,52
his grandfather. “Lord Nerrow offered to sponsor me.”
The old man scanned the page quickly then tossed the letter to the ground. “I should have expected something like this.”
“He also examined me to make sure I had the necessary potential.” After the words left his mouth, though, a second thought came to him. Why would he have expected that?
Arrogan snorted. “I bet that frustrated him. You’re far enough along now that I doubt he got much of a read on you.”
“He tried to seize my source, like you just did, but he couldn’t do it,” said Will, watching his grandfather’s reaction carefully.
The old man frowned. “That would have been bad, but he failed, eh? Hah! I knew the fool didn’t have it in him. The sorcerers these days are sloppy, even worse than those milksop mages they train at Wurthaven.” He eyed Will. “You look like you have some questions. Go ahead.”
“Why can you do it when he couldn’t?” asked Will immediately.
Arrogan nodded. “The training you’re undergoing has greatly increased your control over your turyn. Not only is it smaller, it’s vastly harder for another mage to seize control of it now. In general, that trick is something only done to apprentices or non-mages, because if the target has good control of his own turyn, it’s a waste of time. For it to work the one attempting it has to have much better discipline than the target.”
“So I’m done with it?” said Will hopefully.
“Not at all,” replied the old man. “I won’t be satisfied until you can do far better than that. At the rate we’re going, it will be another year or longer before I judge you ready for the next phase of training.”
Will groaned. “That last time you squeezed it down, I could barely move, any further and I’ll collapse!”
“And yet you’re walking and talking just fine now, aren’t you?” pointed out his mentor.
“That’s the part I don’t understand,” said Will. “Not only that, but they were able to see my overall turyn and they said it seemed relatively normal.” He pointed at the newly respelled candle with its tiny flame. “But that would indicate it’s anything but normal. How is that?”
His grandfather sighed. “I wasn’t going to explain this until later, but I suppose it won’t hurt to tell you now. I told you before that normal people use their turyn to walk, talk, move, you get the idea, but you’re at a point where you are no longer allowing yourself enough to do much of anything. If your turyn was like this when you started, you’d be flat on your back. You might even be unconscious.”
“Then how am I moving?” asked Will.
Arrogan grinned. “That’s the trick. You aren’t using your own turyn anymore. By gradually starving your body of what it needs, it has begun to take turyn from your environment and use that energy in its place.”
“Huh?”
“Here, look at this. It’s easier to show than to explain.” His grandfather lifted his right hand and a few seconds later a small flame similar to the candle flame appeared. “Let’s pretend this is your native turyn, the energy you produce on your own. Watch.” The flame turned blue and shrank until it was much smaller, while faint streams of energy flowed in toward it, forming a second flame, orange in color, that enveloped the original one.
“You’re drawing in external turyn,” said Arrogan. “The blue is you; the orange is what you’re absorbing from your environment. The colors are just to show that they’re different. Ordinarily, you can’t use turyn that isn’t your own, but your body is adjusting—it’s learning to convert that external turyn.” As he spoke, the outer flame shifted, becoming blue like the tiny inner flame. “This is what you’re doing, the reason why you are able to function. It’s also why those idiots couldn’t see your source. It’s too small, and the outer flame conceals it.”
Will felt as though he was on a verge of a new understanding, but he still had questions. “So the reason he couldn’t take control of my turyn was because it was small?”
“Yes and no,” said his grandfather. “The actual size of isn’t as important as the fact that you’ve developed much stronger discipline and control over it. Even though that sorcerer doesn’t compress his own source doesn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t be just as hard to control. Although, in my opinion, learning this technique is one of the best ways to develop true strength of will.”