Chapter 40 – Probing the Eye

The next evening, Valentina waited until the sounds of Pinfeather Lane had died down, then closed all her shutters and locked them carefully. She had already locked the front door an hour ago.

Then she activated the Essence-dampening patterns in the walls of her study. The conventional ones first, then the more subtle configurations that Vyxara had taught her, the ones designed to ensure that, hopefully, no Essence Weaver passing by outside would perceive even the slightest hint of Essence manipulation.

Instead of the Essence lamp, she had lit a new tallow candle that evening, one she’d bought that afternoon from the candlemaker in her street. It cast a warm, if not particularly bright, light that reminded her of her mother’s kitchen back home in Palewood. It wasn’t good light, but Essence lamps all contained tiny, stabilized patterns that could have disturbed her perception, and she really couldn’t have used that tonight.

“Can we get started?” Vyxara asked.

“In a moment.”

Valentina knelt down next to the workbench and felt for the panel beneath which the iron case lay. She carefully deactivated the protective pattern, unlocked the case, flipped open the lid, and there it was.

The Eye of Deceit.

A bronze cube, no larger than a child’s heart, with eyes engraved into it that all seemed to stare at the viewer at once. In the candlelight, the surface shimmered with a strangely oily sheen.

Valentina placed the box on the work table, next to the sealed vial of Distilled Essence that Hobkin’s contacts had procured. Then she took a step back and activated the Sight.

Her view of the world shifted.

The protective patterns in the walls changed. The conventional ones still glowed with the familiar, clean shimmer that every trained Weaver recognized immediately, but the wafer-thin demonic configurations overlaid upon them looked darker, denser, different. But all of that was nothing compared to what lay inside the iron box.

Viewed up close through the Sight, the Eye of Deceit was no longer simply a bronze cube, but a structure of such complexity that it took Valentina’s breath away. Layer upon layer of interwoven structures, worked deep into the metal itself, so tight and so fine that she could not tell where one ended and the next began.

“A masterpiece,” said Vyxara, and there was a respect in the demon’s voice that Valentina rarely heard from Vyxara.

Valentina took the vial, broke the seal, and placed it open next to the iron case.

“How do we begin?”

“By not activating it. We won’t use it today. First, establish a probing pattern, just a very delicate thread. Then feed a little Distilled Essence into it, but only just enough to extend your perception into the structure of the Eye. Don’t touch it with your hands.”

A probing pattern was a diagnostic technique that was usually used to provide the Essence Weaver with information about spaces that were difficult to reach or, in practical terms, physically impossible to access. It was also occasionally used in healing applications.

Here, she allowed a thin stream of the exquisite Distilled Essence to flow through the configuration into the Eye and through its demonic patterns without activating them.

In doing so, she discovered that the Eye of Deceit did not function as she had assumed. It did not actually manipulate Essence, at least not in the sense that a Weaver manipulated Essence. Instead, it seemed to boil down to the fact that all these interlocking patterns were meant to create something she could only describe as a secondary layer that, in a sense, lay over the user’s natural perception of Essence like a tinted glass pane.

She had already experienced the effect of this artifact firsthand when Faustus had used it against her, and combined with the investigation she was now conducting, she became a better picture of how it probably worked.

The secondary layer could make patterns appear different from what they really were, could even completely hide existing patterns. And it could create the perception of patterns that did not exist at all. Everything Weavers perceived about their surroundings through their Essence perception could be distorted, obscured, or even simply fabricated by the Eye.

“That,” said Vyxara, “is the basic principle of demonic illusion work. Most human Essence Weavers who specialize in illusions ultimately alter the environment anyway, through Lieht and Schate. The more elegant way, and, of course, the infinitely more dangerous one, is to alter the perception of reality instead.”

“So… so this isn’t really an illusion, but… mind control?” Valentina asked.

“Basically, yes. And the result is more powerful because the user doesn’t even realize they’re being deceived at the source of their perception of the world. Skilled Weavers can recognize an illusion as such if they look closely and work thoroughly. But if your own mind tells you that what you’re seeing is real, then you have no tool left to see through the deception.”

That was creepy enough that Valentina was tempted to stop probing right then and there, but just at that moment she found something she hadn’t expected.

The secondary layer wasn’t just projecting onto the user’s mind, it was… making lasting changes there?

It was a subtle and barely perceptible, a truly insidious effect. Every time the secondary layer was active, a trace of it would remain in the user’s Essence perception, like a fingerprint on waxed wood that couldn’t quite be wiped away.

Taken individually, each of these traces was tiny, but Valentina had the impression that they accumulated and were capable of shifting the baseline of perception so slowly and so evenly over time that the user could not possibly notice the shift. Because the instrument with which he would have had to measure the shift was the very same instrument that was being shifted.

The paranoia Faustus had displayed and the nightmares, the growing distrust of everyone and everything, his despair and ultimately even his obsession, with her as Lily…

Valentina withdrew from the probing and broke the probing pattern. Her hands were sweaty, and her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it thudding in her throat.

“Vyxara. Is this happening to me right now? Because of this examination?”

A pause. Not a long pause, but long enough to unsettle Valentina.

“The brief, controlled probing you just performed is not the same as sustained use or permanent possession without safeguards,” Vyxara said cautiously. “And your bond with me provides you with a kind of anchor that an unprotected user would not have. I can detect shifts in your perception that you yourself would not notice, and I can warn you.”

“But?”

“But the risk is never zero. Every session leaves a trace, no matter how small. And the only way you can protect yourself from this is through discipline, limited exposure, and intervals between sessions that are long enough for the effect to fade and not accumulate.”

Valentina nodded slowly. Then her gaze fell on the candle she had lit at the beginning of the session.

The candle had burned down halfway.

A tallow candle of that size would burn down completely in about six hours. And she had used a new candle, she knew that for sure.

But Valentina’s subjective experience told her that she had perhaps worked for an hour. At most.

It was like a bucket of cold water was running down her back. “The candle.”

“Yes. The distortion of time is one of the earliest effects and one of the most insidious. You feel like you’ve been working for an hour, and in reality it’s been three. You should use an hourglass and keep a precise record of the passage of time to counteract this.”

Her first encounter with the Eye had cost her three hours without her even noticing.

What if she’d lost six hours? Or the whole night? What if Innogen had stood at the door tomorrow evening and knocked, and Valentina had believed she’d only just begun?

She took the bronze cube with the wax cloths, put it back in the iron box, closed the lid, locked it, and reactivated the protective pattern. Her hands still trembled slightly as she slid the box back into the cavity under the floorboard and replaced the plank.

Then she sat down at her desk and placed her hands flat on the tabletop until the trembling stopped.

The Eye of Deceit was unsettling, but the knowledge she had gained was valuable. And yet there was still so much to understand. She was still completely in the dark about how the corrupted Essence interacted with the structure of the Eye and what the Eye was truly capable of at full power. And she wanted to know.

“We’ll continue,” said Vyxara, and the demon’s voice was gentle but firm. “But we must be careful. Once a week, no more. You need to buy an hourglass. And when I tell you to stop or take a break, you stop immediately, even if you think you’ve only just begun.”

“Agreed.”