And then – and then Bernard saw a violet flash, something that he had never seen before...

A man that has magically travelled from Bernard's future wants to help him avoid his mistakes, but Bernard finds that destiny has a mind of its own.

Part 2 of 2.

Written by: Jonathan Cohen

Narrated by: Joe Cruz

A Faustian Nonsense production.

To read the full transcript for this episode, go to https://thelavendertavern.captivate.fm/episode/the-scrying-eye-part-2

Content warnings: tobacco, alcohol

Transcript

This is Part Two of The Scrying Eye. In Part One, Bernard, a young man with a gift for cooking, is visited by Radolf, claiming to be from his future. Radolf has three ‘testaments’ – proofs, he says that Bernard will be unhappy in life and unhappy in love…unless he does as Radolf says. Bernard becomes a painter and prepares himself to work on the Scrying Eye, a magical device that Radolf had used to project himself back into the past. In the meantime, Bernard falls in love with old-fashioned Kedrin, although if Radolf’s predictions are correct, their relationship is doomed. Kedrin is on the town council, and at an important meeting about the Scrying Eye, a woman from the opposing party has just shot an arrow at Kedrin…

​

-- And Bernard raced forward without thinking and pushed the woman as hard as he could, as hard as he had thrown the rock in the forest, and she struck the ground. But the arrow still flew through the council chamber and struck a man, and the man fell.

​

Kedrin, Bernard thought. My heart.

​

There was a silence as the members drew back from the slain man, and Bernard saw that it was not Kedrin after all. He felt guilty for a moment that he was rejoicing that another man had been killed, but all thought stopped a moment later.

​

Kedrin, cradling the man, withdrew the arrow from him and held it up. It was split in two.

​

Men and women crowded around Bernard, thanking him, holding down the woman who had fired the arrow, talking and shaking their heads. He felt surrounded by a great stillness. The dead man – Farah – was the leader of the conservative faction, Bernard knew. It had only been his own intervention which had diverted time’s arrow…

​

For the split arrow was the same one as the second testament in Radolf’s pouch.

​

“They want me to take over the conservative faction now that Farah is dead,” Kedrin mused later that night at their home. It was as if he had to keep talking, keep moving to prove to himself that he was yet alive. “But nobody can replace him. We’re going to lose the vote against the Eye.”

​

Bernard wanted to laugh. The vote! Of course they would lose the vote. The Scrying Eye must be built. His life had been cast in iron from the moment Radolf had come back to him all those years ago. “A failed relationship,” Radolf had said. If time itself could not be changed, how could he ever hope to keep Kedrin?

​

Nobody blamed Bernard for Farah’s death, and he was encouraged to take some time to himself. Contemplating Radolf and his past made Bernard think of Blayed, his old instructor. He decided to visit the painting academy and talk to her.

​

A warm spring wind blew through the windows of the painting academy, and Blayed was marching about like a soldier, as always. She was much older and gray, but still as wise and wily as ever. She eyed him with a vinegar expression: “My old student. What prompts you to visit your older tutor?”

​

He had brought his newer paintings with him, the best ones. They were rolled up and tied with a leather strap, and he took them out and asked her to look at them.

​

“You’re a respected illustrator,” Blayed said acidly. “Do you still need my approval?”

​

She sighed and placed the paintings on a table. He watched as she flipped through them, saying nothing. At last, she rolled them up again, tied them off, and gave them back to him.

“It is good that you are not following the latest fashions,” she said. “It must be Kedrin’s influence.” He smiled, pained.

​

“You capture the events of history well,” she added. 

​

“But?” Bernard asked.

​

“There is no ‘but.’ You capture the events well.”

​

“Buuuut,” Bernard said, “my heart is not in it?”

​

Blayed sighed. “Did you bring a lunch, Master Bernard?” He could not recall her ever calling him Master.

​

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Bernard said, and drew out from his satchel a small box. He opened it: a riotous combination of colours and textures and scents, spirals of meat and twists of bread, carrot curls and radish roses. With the sauces and colours, it suddenly occurred to Bernard that it resembled nothing so much as an artist’s easel.

​

Blayed looked at the box and nodded. “You are a competent painter,” she said. “But I do wonder where your heart is.”

​

Thinking of Kedrin, Bernard wondered the same thing.

​

“What do you think of The Scrying Eye?” he asked her. The news had finally been announced around town, and discussions were vigorous and intense on both sides. “Will it take away my employ? Will they truly be able to see everything through it?”

​

Blayed shrugged and drew her cloak closer, and he saw afresh how she had aged. “Your parents’ generation needed painters and illustrators,” she said. “Your generation needs painters and illustrators. The day that a giant Eye tells us that we no longer need painters or illustrators…that is the day when I shall retire.”

He left her standing in the courtyard, a soldier still defending her keep.

​

Kedrin, with other council representatives, was to visit other nearby towns and request their investment in The Scrying Eye. Their town would provide intelligence and information to the other towns in exchange for the vast sums of gold that would be needed to build it. It all sounded rather circular to Bernard.

​

“I haven’t been to see my family in some time,” Bernard mentioned to Kedrin. “Would you mind if I stayed in town while you travel?”

​

“Of course,” Kedrin said, somewhat distant. Bernard suspected that Kedrin felt strange about him having saved his life, but they had never discussed it. Kedrin’s mind was now on the Eye, and the council, and the magistrate’s position. Although they shared meals and a bed, there was a distance that Bernard did not like.

​

His parents were also older. Tai was a delightful young woman who had not married and did not plan to. 

​

His mother drew him aside that night and spoke to him in hushed tones. “Your father has contracted the forgetting illness,” she said.

​

Bernard shook his head. “I have been with you and him all day, and I see nothing wrong. He is as he has always been.”

“It takes time for one to see it,” she said, shaking her head. “I tell you that something is wrong.”

​

After dinner, he left his parents to their usual bickering and wandered through the rooms of the small house, stopping at his father’s easel. It had not been used in months; the paints were dry and cracked.

​

“An artist is always working,” Bernard remembered his father telling him, and a chill prickled his spine. Am I misinterpreting the signs, he wondered, or does my father truly have the illness?

​

But he soon forgot about his father, for Kedrin, the council, and the entire city became caught up in the planning, building, and creation of The Scrying Eye.

​

The town had become a city, and the city now had its project. Everyone in the city was involved – from the builders who constructed the giant building that would house the Eye, to the drafters and designers, to the mages of arcane arts who gave the Eye its power, and even the graduates of the cooking academy, who supplied the builders and drafters and designers and mages with food and drink.

​

Bernard’s task was to document the progress of the Eye. He sketched as the builders laid down the foundations, the mages scratched symbols and runes in the Eye’s enormous circle of glass, the city alchemist poured the dyes that swirled and ran across the surface of the Eye, and finally a hundred men and women used ropes and pulleys to lift the Eye into place.

​

The Eye did nothing, and would do nothing, until it was told what to do. One of the mages explained it to Bernard thusly: “If I ask you to cook me a pie, and you have never done so before, you would not be able to cook one. But if I give you a list of steps, very clear and very simple, then you would be able to follow those steps, one at a time in order, and bake a pie. The Eye is similar: It is powerful and can do much, but we must tell it exactly what to do.”

​

The mages and alchemists could not tell the Eye what to do; there were few in the entire world that had the skill of, as Bernard thought of it, “recipe writing.”

​

A young man from several towns over was the only person nearby known for his skill at writing such instructions, and the city council spared no expense at sending a messenger with the promise of a great deal of gold. “Some say that they’re going to offer that man more gold than it took to build the Eye,” Kedrin said darkly one night, tamping the contents of his pipe. He’d taken to smoking an aromatic mixture at night, which Bernard thought made him look even older. “But it is only a rumor.”

​

“I would have thought that the council would have arranged for such an artisan before the Eye was built,” Bernard said as he cleared the dinner dishes in the kitchen. The smell of pipe tobacco – of Kedrin – wafted into the kitchen.

​

“Such is the power of h