Free Magician’s End by Raymond E. Feist Page B

I think I understand.’
    Kulgan stopped and said, ‘What, Pug?’
    ‘Perspective,’ said Pug softly. ‘This world is vast, and it is but a tiny part of a much larger universe. I feel humbled.’
    Kulgan nodded. He put his hand on his former student’s shoulder. ‘Greatness, smallness, these are relative concepts, Pug, and it is important to remember that. But this doesn’t change the fundamental reality that what stands before you is a challenge that seems trivial compared to the vastness of which you speak.’ He narrowed one eye in an expression Pug had seen a thousand times before, one that showed he was coming to the point of a lesson. ‘But though the task before you seems trivial, the consequences may be anything but trivial in reality.’ He nodded. ‘More than once I’ve taught you the lesson of the keystone, the one brick that when removed can bring the entire building down upon your head.’
    He pulled out his unlit pipe, a long churchwarden in style, and tapped Pug on the chest with it. ‘Just be outside the building when you do it,’ he laughed.
    Pug tried to enjoy the mirthful tone, but inside he felt darkness gathering. ‘What I’ve lost sight of is the fundamentals of magic.’
    ‘Probably not,’ suggested Kulgan, ‘but rather the simple roots of even the most complex causality; you look at a chaotic outcome, well, it’s easy to overlook that it may have begun with the simplest cause. A stray spark from this pipe I hold could eventually lead to a conflagration that would destroy this entire forest,’ he added with a sweep of his hand.
    ‘And amid the chaos,’ Kulgan continued, ‘it’s also easy to lose sight of multiple causes of an event. Consider a storm that lashes the Far Coast. You know from the time you were a boy that often the worst storms are not a single storm, but a convergence of two, one coming down the coast from the frigid north, the other sweeping in from the south-west where it’s warm and turbulent.’ He left his pipe dangling from his mouth as he linked both hands together, fingers intertwined, and twisted his hands in a wrenching motion. ‘Together they combine to be so much more than each was separately.’ He took his pipe from his mouth and tapped Pug on the shoulder with the tip. ‘Which then leads us back to where each storm comes from …’
    ‘I’m still not seeing this,’ said Pug. ‘But I’m getting a sense of it.’
    ‘It’s about the fundamentals of things, Pug. What is the nature of a storm?’
    ‘I’m not sure what you’re asking. It’s a storm?’
    Kulgan sighed. ‘It’s all that time on Kelewan. Had you the knack for what those Tsurani call the Lesser Path of Magic …’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, had you studied weather magic—’
    Pug remembered a long conversation he had had with an elven Spellweaver named Temar. ‘Equipoise,’ said Pug, and Kulgan stopped talking.
    A slow smile spread out over the old teacher’s face. ‘Equipoise? Go on.’
    ‘Storms are the most extreme examples of nature seeking balance, equipoise. There’s too much energy built up in one place and it seeks …’ He shook his head. ‘The sphere! All different energy states. The difficulty of moving from one to another because of that. The magic needed to survive in higher states or lower states.’
    Kulgan nodded. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about specifically, but if I’m guessing right, you’re on the right path.’
    ‘If you come to a higher energy state place, such as this one—’ Pug waved his hand in a circle, indicating the entire world, ‘you need protection so that you don’t absorb energy too fast, don’t burn up from it. If you go to a lower state world, the entire environment sucks the energy right out of you, like a spider sucks an insect dry in its web.’
    ‘There you have it, then,’ said Kulgan. ‘Your first clue, I expect. This all has something to do with the energy states of the sphere … whatever that may