“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—”
“Not now, Morrígan!” snapped Yarlaith, his foul mood returning. “We have a lot of work to do, and a very sick patient who requires our undivided attention.”
Morrígan turned to leave. Scowling, she walked through the cavern, past disembodied limbs and torn-up corpses, severed with surgical precision. Several alchemy stations were set up along the length of the cavern, as not to have ingredients from different blood potions contaminating each other.
Of all the bloodied and broken cadavers, only her mother’s body remained intact inside her coffin, still fresh and beautiful from the funeral ceremony.
This is what it’s all for. Morrígan approached the coffin. This is why we’re defying the Church and defiling these bodies. Grave-robbing, illegal blood potions. When we wake you, it’ll all be worth it.
From behind the coffin, a large black rat emerged, trotting along the ground with its nose held up in the air.
“Stupid rodent,” she muttered as she reached for a glass bottle from a wooden shelf overhead. She had seen that same rat many times before; once it had even climbed into her mother’s coffin before she chased it away. Morrígan slowly raised her hand, readying the bottle, when it stopped and looked up at her. Morrígan hurled the glass bottle across the room, but the rat darted out of the way into the safety of the darkness. With a crash, the glass smashed against the foot of the coffin.
“Gods, Morrígan!” said Yarlaith, scowling. “At this rate, I’ll barely have a lab left by the time we’re done. Go, do as I asked. Now!”
Morrígan cursed the rat as she left the workshop. She took a short tunnel down to a trap door with a ladder dangling from the ceiling. She emerged headfirst into her uncle’s study, but it had been a long time since he had studied in it. Most of the books had been removed from their shelves for ease of access in the workshop, and even his favourite chair had been brought down into the caves.
The clinic itself was dark, and Mrs. Mhurichú was asleep across the way. A special leather mask covered her face, as to prevent the spread of infection. She looked like a great bird, lying there in the darkness, the respirator hooked like a beak. Yarlaith had stored all sorts of herbs and spices in there to keep the consumption in, but they did nothing to keep Mrs. Mhurichú’s snores out.
Morrígan crossed the clinic towards a small alchemy lab built into the wall and went to work in silence.
