“Yarlaith,” asked Morrígan, all too aware of how he hated to be disturbed from his work. “I know how important all this is, I really do. I just think that I’m not all that equipped to help you, to really help you, unless I know how to perform magic of my own.”
“I already told you, it wouldn’t make a difference,” he said, not looking up.
“You did,” said Morrígan. “But you promised, Yarlaith. Back after the beadhbhs attacked. You promised you’d help me learn.”
“But now you’re helping me. As this is far more important than learning the basics of the Six Schools. I’ve taught you alchemy, haven’t I?” He glanced up at her as he turned a page of his notebook.
“Yes,” said Morrígan, with a sigh. Of course, alchemy was one of the Six Schools, but it was hardly magic. More like cooking. “But surely I need to know the basics too.”
“And what makes you say that?”
“Well, if something were to go wrong with the fire crystals, or the balanth serum, how could I even begin fixing them without knowing how they work? And if something did go wrong, I probably wouldn’t even be aware of it.”
Yarlaith paused. “You’ve been making blood potions for almost a month now. Are you telling me you don’t know how focus-crystals work?”
“I know that they produce magic, like Pyromancy, and—”
“Focus-crystals do not produce magic.” Yarlaith shut his notebook with a slam. He stood and walked past Morrígan, then picked a crystal from the alchemy workstation. It shimmered with a faint crimson glow between his fingers. “They are nothing but empty vessels. Repeated instances of tiny structures that a mage can alter based on his or her own needs.”
The crystal slowly turned from red to blue in Yarlaith’s hands. He tossed it to Morrígan; as she caught it, she realised that its heat had vanished and was replaced with a numb, freezing aura.
“You changed it,” she said. “It’s giving off Hydromancy now….”
“All I did was alter the structures that make up this crystal, and now the instructions for performing red magic have been replaced with those for blue magic.”
“Instructions? What instructions?”
The question escaped her lips before Morrígan had a chance to prevent herself from appearing ignorant. She expected Yarlaith to grow irritated with her questioning, but instead he smiled.
“Consider that you and I were separated by darkness over a large distance, and the only means we had of communicating was with a single torch. I would easily be able to communicate two messages with the torch. Lit and unlit. On and off. One torch can provide two discreet signals. Do you follow?”
Morrígan nodded, realising that some warmth had returned to Yarlaith’s voice. From the reading and writing lessons he had given to Morrígan and her friends when they were children, it was clear that Yarlaith took great joy in teaching, especially through meandering metaphors.
“Now, if I was in possession of two torches, and we had agreed on a code beforehand, how many messages could I relay?”
Morrígan thought about it for a second.
On-off, off-on. Both on… both off.
“Four?” she said, not entirely confident in her answer.
“Yes!” exclaimed Yarlaith. “So, you can see that more torches would allow me to portray a more complex message. With three torches, this number increases to eight. With four, we get sixteen!”
He picked another red crystal off the table. The fiery glow vanished, and the crystal began pulsing with white light, some flashes long, some short.
“With five torches, we’d have enough combinations to communicate a message based on letters of the alphabet, with several more to spare for punctuation. This is the basis of crystallography. If we take one crystal, divide it carefully in half, then one side will mirror the actions of the other. I can alter the structures inside one crystal to resonate with a certain pattern, and the other will mimic the actions. Crystallographers can use this principle to relay messages across very long distances, instantaneously, in what we call waves.”
Morrígan looked at the pulsating crystal, her mind reeling with the revelation that she now understood the basis of something as mundane as crystal-waves, something she had taken for granted all her life.
“Here is where things get interesting,” said Yarlaith. “Returning to our analogy, five torches would let us relay thirty-two different signals. However, if we were to have ten torches, we could communicate a thousand different signals. If we had a thousand different torches….”
He paused, as if he knew Morrígan’s mind would itself strain with the implications.
“This is how crystals store information. By switching on and off the repeated structures inside, complex instructions can be written. Crystals hold far more ‘torches’ than a thousand, however. The number of switches alone inside a single crystal vastly outnumbers what a Human mind is capable of comprehending. Thus, the complexity of the instructions they can carry are enough to store and perform specific spells. I generate blue crystals for Fearghal’s stores, freezing the air to prevent his meat from spoiling. The Reardon brothers use red crystals for their forge, and most of the villagers in Roseán own some white crystals to heal themselves of minor injuries if I am not around.”
All of this fascinated Morrígan, of course, but Yarlaith still hadn’t addressed her original request.
“And magic,” she asked. “Can anyone perform it?”
“Well, the first mages were created when Lord Seletoth first set His sights on Alabach so they could fight alongside King Móráin against the Simians. Only people directly descended from those brave men and women can still use magic today. My father, your grandfather, was an accomplished healer, and I’m sure your father could have been too, if he put his mind to it. So, with the right training, you, too, could become a mage.”
Morrígan’s eyes widened. “So, you will teach me?”
Her uncle paused and glanced around the workshop with its bloody bodies strewn across the floor. He picked up a beaker full of water from the alchemy station and placed it on a table before Morrígan.
“Nothing can truly be created or destroyed,” he said, “for Creation is an artform reserved for the Gods. This is the First Law of Magic, and it dictates that we can only manipulate Nature and her fruits, nothing more. If I was to take a tree and burn it, it is not destroyed; its state has simply changed from wood and leaves to ash and smoke. Geomancers can bend and shape iron and stone, but they cannot create what does not already exist. And as a Hydromancer can appear to make water vanish, all they really do is change its state to steam. Go ahead. Try it for yourself.”
Morrígan paused, startled. “What? Just like that? But I don’t know—”
Yarlaith cut her off. “Lord Seletoth relied on us to use magic to fight against the Simian natives. Our escape from the Grey Plague relied on it, as did the founding of this great kingdom. If He had made it so difficult to learn, we never would have come this far.”
He placed a hand on Morrígan’s shoulder. “You were blessed with a soul. It allows you to experience love and happiness in ways Simians can only imagine. It is this same power that allows some of us to use magic. Focus on the water, Morrígan, and harness your emotions to take control of its Nature.”
Morrígan narrowed her eyes and focused on the glass. She pictured it boiling and bubbling, but it remained still. She gritted her teeth and looked inside herself, focusing now on the fear she felt when the beadhbhs attacked, her longing to leave Roseán and seek fame and fortune elsewhere. Somewhere within, it felt as if these thoughts had some sort of manifestation in her being, like tiny weights tied to her heart. As she pulled on those, she suddenly felt a peculiar dampness between her fingers.
Is this it? It certainly didn’t feel very powerful, but something was there, at her fingertips, as if her entire hand was submerged in water.
She balled her hand into a fist, and a tiny ripple formed on the surface of the liquid inside the beaker. Morrígan focused hard on her feelings, on her power, but the sensation of control left her as quickly as it appeared.
“Ah! You’ve got it!” exclaimed Yarlaith. “Try it again, same as before, but this time, concentrate.”
She searched inside once more, to try and recapture whatever power she found, but something else took its place. The troll, the field, her father galloping off into the distance, her mother, beaten to death against the ground… all of these images ignited pain, sorrow, anger and fear within her soul, far stronger than the other weights tied to her heart. The memory of the death of her mother suddenly seemed to materialise as a huge pendulum inside her chest.
Focusing on the pendulum, again, she felt the water particles between her fingers.
Boil it. She conjured up more memories of the day her mother died: the knight, the woman in white, Fionn’s arm being torn from his body. She pushed on the pendulum, and for an instant, she acquired full command over the liquid.
The pendulum lurched violently as it swung back, and Morrígan lost control. Power surged through her body, and with a crack of broken glass, the water exploded into a burst of steam.
“Ah,” said Yarlaith, tentatively, eyes closed, his mouth curling to a smile. “You harnessed power from parts of yourself you have yet to master. Those who have experienced great happiness or sorrow have the potential to become great mages, but only those who learn to control their emotions can truly master the craft.”
Morrígan looked down at the broken glass in a haze. I did it. I used magic. Real magic.
“I can’t say I’m surprised you picked it up so quickly,” Yarlaith continued. “You always were an excellent student. We’ll work on fine tuning your power later. Now, I need you to go prepare Mrs. Mhurichú’s next round of medicine.”
Yarlaith bent down and began picking pieces of glass from the floor; the pressure of the steam had spread them right across the width of the workshop.
“Can’t we start on Pyromancy soon?” asked Morrígan. “I’d help with exploring the catacombs if I could kindle my own—”
