The first incantation Teclis of Ulthuan ever cast, the Spell of the Invisible Eye came from a book of conjurations belonging to his aunt, Lady Malene. He borrowed without permission from her personal library in the Emeraldsea Palace, and cast it upon a standing mirror in his shared apartment with Tyrion. The sixteen year old Teclis found it easy to derive from first principles the knowledge to cast said-spell, despite being "an untrained lad" and the spell being "a third order spell of transvisualization." It would be from this very spell that his aunt would come to say: "you are either a wonderful liar, or the greatest natural mage who has ever lived." Later Tyrion was to remember that her words had the force of a prophecy.[1a]
The spell itself allows one to use a reflective surface to see remote areas, and then move one's viewing in any direction. When properly cast, a chill is felt in the air as one's fingers ripple and hands twist into odd gestures, the caster speaking in an archaic form of Elvish. The mirror mists over, and the outline of everything on its surface becomes shadow and blurres before vanishing altogether. Then, the surface ripples and settles till seeming to change back to normal. With a gesture akin to spinning a top, the caster can cause the image to turn. Another can cause the image to show the back of the caster. Indeed, it was as if looking through the eye of some great roving beast. The spell can even move past solid objects such as walls or doors. However, as was proven when Lady Malene came into view storming down a hallway, this spell can be detected by other mages, as well as dispelled, much to the pain of the caster.[1a]
Description
- "It just all fits together. There is a unity to it and when you understand that you can do almost anything. You change your own internal state, you touch the winds of magic, you tap their power, you change your state again, and shape the forces with your mind, your words, your gestures and all the time what you're really doing is altering the world."
- —Teclis, to Tyrion[1a]
Within the book, Teclis revealed to Tyrion that the spell was depicted as lines of words separated by multiple straight lines marked with what appeared to be musical notes. At first, Tyrion mistook it for a song, but Teclis explained how the words were the incantation, the first line of symbols below showing right-hand gestures, and then the line below that were left-hand gestures, and the final line showing inflections. These inflections were a sort of "twist of the mind" that one must perform to touch the power of the spell in the right way - violent, sad, passive and so on. "Like a mood" said Tyrion, to which Teclis considered and vaguely agreed.[1a]
Trivia
- Teclis would use this very spell to commune with Asuryan during the siege of said-deity's Shrine by N'Kari. The only difference being that instead of a mirror, the sixteen year old would use the Flame of Asuryan itself as a focus. He did so by pulling power purified by the sacred flame from the air around him, weaving it into a thin filament of light that he could extend down the well that connected the Flame and the mortal world - with the being known as Asuryan in the other. With invisible fingers of magic, he would probe the rent in the fabric of reality until he could find the place where it was holed. Once done, he would push the line of energy through and extend it as far as he could. Much like a fisherman dropping a line into deep, still waters. The effort nearly killed him, wracked with pain as the sudden and shocking contact made Teclis scream out in agony.[1b]
Source
