both Evolutions, at first only when Rianna was present, but eventually alone in his bedchamber. There, too, he worked on the Spell of the Insinuating Eye. Turjan knew about the latter and let him continue, as long as he also spent time with the appropriate preceding books. The Insinuating Eye had little potential for damaging the practitioner; it simply allowed him to see things that were far away.
At the creator’s end, the Eye occupied an onyx ring the size of the circle made by the tips of his thumb and forefinger set together, and at the far end it manifested as a fuzzy loop floating in air. His initial attempts to control it resulted in wild oscillations of the view from the forest to the river to the sky. Soon, though, he learned to hold it steady no matter how quickly he moved it, and to adjust distance and direction with delicate precision. In most places, the smoky loop appeared to go unnoticed. Certainly, when he practiced spying on Boreal Verge, neither his father nor Fluvio paid it any attention.
Bosk led Turjan to believe that homesickness was his motive for generating the Eye, but his true goal was the hall of Chun the Unavoidable. He had little trouble locating the ruins north of Kaiin, and the hall, the only undamaged structure there, was easy enough to identify. He circumnavigated the exterior, watching for Chun to emerge, and when twice he glimpsed the creature from afar, he immediately terminated the spell, each time allowing some days to pass before taking up his vigil again. When the singularly grotesque Chun, wearing a cape studded with golden-irised eyeballs, came forth a third time, Bosk observed him recede beyond the city before attempting to slide the Eye inside.
The hall was a surprisingly spare dwelling, with a few pillars supporting the roof and walls as pale and blank as alabaster. There was no couch, no hearth, no curio cabinet; its sole furnishing was a small, round table set in an alcove opposite the entrance. Upon the table rested a graceful tourmaline vase, green below and magenta above. But there was no golden thread wrapped about its slender neck.
Sharply disappointed, Bosk searched the hall again, to no avail.
At supper that night, Turjan looked so long and so silently at Bosk that the boy squirmed in his chair. “Have I done something wrong, sir?”
“I received a visitor this afternoon,” said Turjan.
Bosk waited, both curious and apprehensive.
“I believe you know something of him. Chun the Unavoidable.”
Bosk stopped breathing.
“He asked that you leave off spying on him. He said it in stronger terms, but that is the gist. We spoke of Chun when you first arrived, and now I realize that I did not sufficiently warn you against him. Fortunately, you are safe within these walls. However, he did require payment for his discomfiture. Breathe, boy, else you’ll fall over in a faint.”
Bosk gulped air. “Sir…do you intend to dismiss me?”
“We all do foolish things occasionally. We can hope none of them cost us more than a vat-grown golden eye.” One side of his mouth quirked. “It seemed an appropriate exchange for your use of that other Eye.”
“Then…you don’t intend to dismiss me?”
Turjan leaned back in his chair. “On the contrary, I am pleased you were able to use the Eye so well. Therefore, this is not such a negative as you might think. Now, what were you seeking at Chun’s hall”
“Nothing,” said Bosk. “It was simply experimentation.”
Turjan sighed. “It is early in your apprenticeship to lie to your master. Subterfuge, I expect.” He glanced at his daughter, who immediately looked down at her plate. “But outright lying is a poor basis for a master-student alliance.”
Bosk straightened his back. “Sir, I was seeking a golden thread ripped from a tapestry.”
“Ah. Lith.”
Bosk nodded. “But he did not seem to have it.”
“I believe I suggested that Lith was a lady to be avoided.”
“I owe her my life, sir. I would prefer not to remain in her debt.”
“Or perhaps she saved you in order to establish that debt?”
Bosk turned that over in his mind, and he did not find it an outrageous suggestion. Even so, he could not forget the sadness in Lith’s eyes as she spoke of Ariventa. “At any rate,” he murmured,” I don’t know what else I can do for her. Unless Chun can be persuaded to reveal its location, the thread is gone.” He gazed at Turjan hopefully. “Perhaps another golden eye?”
“I would prefer not to deal with Chun again, young Bosk.”
“The Twk will know where the thread is,” said Rianna.
Bosk turned to her.
“You’ll have to pay them, of course.”
The boy looked back at Turjan. “You know the things they covet. I will repay you, I swear it.”
“This is your endeavor, young Bosk,” said Turjan. “Continue your studies. Perhaps someday you will find a way to achieve your desire.”
“Perhaps,” said Bosk, but he felt helpless.
He thought of Lith that night, as he had on many a night. But recalling the fear he had felt at the possibility of dismissal, he also thought of his own home. Would they have welcomed him back, as Turjan once assured him, or was his father as glad as Fluvio to be rid of him? As the ageing sun was just beginning to illuminate his bedchamber, he decided to send the Insinuating Eye to Boreal Verge, perhaps to find some evidence one way or the other. Morning twilight showed his old room just as he had left it; not even dust had accumulated, as if the place were being held in readiness for his return. For a moment, that made him feel better; then he realized that the servants would never allow any part of the manse to become dusty.
He did feel the touch of homesickness then. The memories of his childhood were in that room — a handful of green serpentine pebbles, collected on his first journey to the mines, a few fragile bird skulls, found under a shrub on the estate, a cup he had molded from clay and fired in a makeshift kiln. The cup was blackened and cracked, remnant of the flames that had spread from the kiln and destroyed the outbuilding he had been using as his workshop. His father had not been happy about that.
He shifted the Eye close to the pebbles. He wished now he had taken one with him. Such a small thing, it would have fit easily in his pocket. Through the Eye, it seemed close enough to touch. With the tip of one finger, he tapped at the space within the onyx ring, expecting some sort of resistance, but there was none. He pressed his finger into it, and when he withdrew, the finger seemed unharmed, and so he pushed more boldly, trying to touch the pebbles, but they were farther away than they seemed. He pulled out his knife and slipped it through the ring, but the point fell short. He ran downstairs to the kitchen, where a sleepy cook was just beginning to prepare rolls for the morning meal and had no objection to lending him a pair of kitchen tongs and a skewer the length of a sword. Both fit through the ring, but only the skewer could reach the pebbles, and it was so difficult to control that it knocked several to the floor. He pulled it back, wondering if he could fasten a pouch to its tip or daub it with some sort of glue. Neither notion seemed likely to work. He could think of only one other possibility.
He propped the onyx ring against his pillow and slid his copy of the Second Evolution of Mazirian’s Diminution into his pocket. Then he shrank himself to doll size and stepped through the ring. He only had to dip his head slightly to fit.
That single step revealed a tunnel, cool and dark, with walls slick as polished metal. The far end was no longer the clear view of his old room that had been visible to full-size Bosk; rather, it was merely a speck of light in the far distance. He moved toward it, hands braced against the walls, the curved floor making for uncertain footing in the darkness. The speck expanded slowly, and after a time he could discern a blur of green within it, which he guessed must be the pebbles. He walked faster and finally began to run. The light loomed, and he emerged from the tunnel and fell headlong over one of the pebbles, boulder-size to his shrunken self. He clutched at it, the breath knocked out of him. The pebble had not moved at the impact, and he realized that he did not have the strength to transport any of the stones back to Miir. But he did not care. He felt triumphant at merely making the journey. He was a true sorcerer now. He pulled himself up to sit on the pebble and contemplate his old room grown huge.
A soft noise startled him. It might have been the door opening, perhaps a servant coming in to clean. He did not wait to find out. He turned to the faint gray ring of the Eye, dived into it, and ran. He stumbled a few times on the curve of the tunnel floor, and once his head grazed the ceiling, but he managed to reach Miir. Leaning against the pillow, he reached into his pocket for the Second Evolution.
It was gone.
