he had learned something. It seemed very little for the many weeks he had been studying,
The next day, a Twk-man arrived during the midday meal. He was a tiny creature, no larger than Bosk’s littlest finger, greenish of skin, wearing a gauzy smock, and mounted on a dragonfly. As she did occasionally, Rianna’s mother had joined the apprentices in the roof garden, and all the flowers had turned their petals to her, but when the Twk-man alighted, they tilted to him instead. T’sain offered her hand, the dragonfly leaped to it, and she held it close to her ear and nodded at something its rider said in a soft, buzzing voice. Then steed and rider flashed to the flowers, where the tiny man gathered pollen from a dozen blossoms and stowed it in two sacks behind his legs.
“Dandanflores,” T’sain explained to Bosk. “Chieftain of the Twk people. They know all of the news of Ascolais.”
“The last time he visited,” said Rianna, “he told us you were coming.”
The Twk chieftain made a circle around Bosk’s head and flew off.
“Do they range far north?” Bosk asked.
“Not as far as Boreal Verge,” said T’sain.
“Ah.”
“Your family is too far away, Bosk.”
“Oh, I was just curious.” He did feel a twinge of disappointment, though.
“If you ever do want news from the Twk,” said Rianna, “you must pay for it.”
T’sain nodded. “They are as much merchants as your family, though their goods are less tangible.”
He considered that. “What sort of payment would be appropriate for such a small creature?”
“They like our pollen,” said T’sain, “as you saw.”
“And I make them clothes of spider silk, the softest in the world,” said her daughter. She frowned. “Now that you’ve seen one, don’t you think they would enjoy living in my doll house?”
“If I were one of them, I would.”
“We have discussed this before,” Rianna’s mother said, and her words were directed at Bosk rather than at her daughter. “The Twk have their own lives, and what they choose must be respected. They are neither toys nor slaves.”
Rianna bent her head over her food. “You’re right, of course. It’s just that…creating living toys is so difficult.”
Later, in the library, where both of them spent far more than the mornings Turjan required, Rianna said to Bosk, “Would you like to visit my doll house again?”
“Perhaps this evening. Just now, I’m trying to unravel one of Phandaal’s simpler spells.”
“Which?” She craned to see his book.
“The Insinuating Eye.”
“That is advanced for your stage of knowledge.”
“I’ve been reading ahead, trying to discern some overall structure to sorcery.”
“Father says there is no overall structure, that all is haphazard.”
“Phandaal thought there was structure.”
“Laccodel says Phandaal thought there was structure, which is not at all the same.”
Bosk sighed. “There are principles.”
“I see no great connections among them.”
“You are not even ten years old!” Bosk exclaimed. And then, at her injured expression, he said, “Forgive me. We are both very young in sorcery. What can we know?”
“You are younger than I,” she said in a low voice, and she slammed her book shut and left the room.
When she did not return, he descended to the doll house chamber and found her sitting crosslegged on the floor, the miniature castle open before her. She was arranging tiny platters in the drawers of a tiny sideboard. She did not look up at him.
He sat down beside her. “I truly am sorry.”
She did not speak.
He shifted to one knee. “I beg your forgiveness, Lady Rianna.”
After a long moment, she said, “I know a great deal more than you do.”
“Of course you do. It’s why I depend upon you to help me.” He eased back to a sitting position and gestured toward the sideboard. “Can I help you with this?”
She shook her head. “Your hands are too clumsy.”
“I wish they were not.”
She shut the last drawer with the tip of one finger. “Do you really want to do something for me?”
“I’ll do whatever you ask.”
She looked at him at last, sullenness fading from her lips. “I’ll teach you a spell if you’ll promise not to tell Father. He’d say you’re not ready for it.”
“You have my promise,” said Bosk.
“It’s Mazirian’s Diminution.”
“The one you are studying.”
“Yes. I’ll teach you the First and Second Evolutions, and you must commit both to memory. Both.”
“And they will accomplish…?”
She smiled just a trifle then. “A visit to my doll house.”
“Ah,” he said. “Diminution. Of course.”
“Will you do it?”
He thought of the amethyst dust he had taken such pride in creating. It seemed like nothing now. “Yes!”
The spells were complex, requiring certain pauses, certain intonations, and a few sounds that did not quite seem human. Memorizing them was by no means simple. Yet after little more than an hour of drill, Bosk felt he had them. To be certain, he wrote them on a scrap of vellum, following Laccodel’s model syllabary, and tucked it into his pocket.
“I’ll go first,” said Rianna, and in a matter of heartbeats, she had shrunk to the size of the Twk-man.
Bosk gasped. Knowing it would be effective and seeing it happen were very different things.
Rianna’s voice was tiny, piping, though he knew she must be shouting. “Come along!”
He took a deep breath and uttered the spell. He began to feel dizzy. As the walls of the tower chamber seemed to rush upward all around him, he fell to his knees, fighting to control his churning stomach. In a moment, though, the room steadied, the dizziness faded, and Rianna was beside him, helping him stagger to his feet. Nearby, the miniature castle was huge, and the ceiling of the chamber was as far away as the sky. Bosk took a few wobbling steps and laughed with the sheer joy of accomplishment. His stride was as firm as ever by the time he and Rianna entered the doll house version of Miir.
Bosk found their exploration beguiling. Everything was familiar yet simultaneously strange and wonderful. He would have lost himself in the place and stayed until dark to see the lights bloom, but Rianna was concerned that one of her parents might appear to fetch them to supper, and she fairly dragged him out. He was glad, then, that he had the scrap of vellum, for he had forgotten some of the reversal spell. Rianna cautioned him to stand well away from the gate for the process, and she herself trotted even farther off. While she sprouted upward like some impossible plant, he went over the sounds silently half a dozen times, listening to them in his mind.
“Bosk, we have to go to supper,” said Rianna, and her voice was so loud he had to press his hands over his ears to bear it.
He needed three tries to get the spell right, but he finally saw the duplicate of Castle Miir shrink away from him and the ceiling of the tower chamber slam downward. He lost his balance again, and Rianna pulled at him with both hands to keep him from tumbling into her creation.
“The dizziness will be less with practice,” she said. “Now tell me, apprentice Bosk, what do you truly think of my doll house?”
“Rianna,” he said, “you and your doll house are astonishing.”
She seemed pleased with that answer, and he guessed that he had finally been forgiven for his affront. He went to supper smiling, and when Turjan asked why he was so cheerful, he said only that he thought his studies were going well.
He liked Mazirian’s Diminution, his first major spell, and over the next few weeks, he practiced to perfect
