text: > descend
  The only exit is the spiral stair, by which you can emerge from the cistern.
  
  > jump
  (Yes, why not? An easier way than to go home, in bitterness.)
  
  You let yourself go, fall-- down, to, through the surface of the water -- fading the deeper you go, losing yourself in the infinite depth, until you come to dark unbeing and cool slumber at the world's heart.
  
  > examine the ocean
  A great expanse of open water, in some places calm, in some rough. Here and there the artist has added sea creatures: the fins of fish, a coil of the Leviathan. Trade ships run before the wind, bent steeply on their courses. And pirates after them.
  
  > examine the pirates
  Almost too small to see, numerous but dwarfed by the ocean itself.
  
  > look at the pirates with the lens
  (A fatalistic gesture, of sorts, since you can't bring yourself to put an actual end to your life. But you're sick of home, and yourself, and mean to flee both.)
  
  And end on a squalid deck, stinking of close-packed bodies and unfresh meat. The horizon tips and sways, and you clutch the railing, trying to find your place, your balance. You had not really even understood that there were such places as this in the world, let alone that you might come to them.
  
  Then someone shouts at you in gutter Spanish, and you reply without thinking. In your glass, a fat English vessel is crowding sail.
  There will be a fine take before nightfall...
  
  > look at new World with the lens
  (A fatalistic gesture, of sorts, since you can't bring yourself to put an actual end to your life. But you're sick of home, and yourself, and mean to flee both.)
  You fall through the magnifying glass, and find yourself-- On a bare strand, between the forest and the open sea. There are no footsteps, no buildings, no signs of harbor or of habitation. Just pale sand, virgin underfoot.
  
  > examine new World
  A thin strip of coastline on the horizon, showing a dense growth of strange trees, and in a few places mountains rising out of the surrounding land. A single plume of smoke rises from this shore, as though to indicate that the land is inhabited, though only just.
  
  Some of the picture is too tiny for you to make out with the naked eye.
  
  > examine the village with the lens
  (A fatalistic gesture, of sorts, since you can't bring yourself to put an actual end to your life. But you're sick of home, and yourself, and mean to flee both.)
  You fall through the magnifying glass, and find yourself-- Where you have no further use for the knowledge gained from books, or any of the hard and tortuous learning that your master practices, with its arcana and its grim secrets.
  
  > examine the trade ships with the lens
  (A fatalistic gesture, of sorts, since you can't bring yourself to put an actual end to your life. But you're sick of home, and yourself, and mean to flee both.)
  
  Barefoot on a sloping deck. The horizon tips unpleasantly. Elation and terror mingle in your gut -- and you puke spectacularly over the side.
  
  > look at the paris with lens
  (A fatalistic gesture, of sorts, since you can't bring yourself to put an actual end to your life. But you're sick of home, and yourself, and mean to flee both.)
  
  You're translated instantly into that bright and shallow world: silks, canopies, masques. Everything you were before takes but a moment to forget. Long hours, work, servitude; the light in Tuscany; your mother's grave.
  
  And then you're gathering your skirts and descending the grand stairs, your slippers silent on the marble.
  
  > look at London
  The fog seems to part a little even as you look. You see the houses of merchants, and men planning expeditions, and the builders of ships, and other things, small but perfect: however closely you look you can't seem to see it all.
  
  > examine London with the lens
  (A fatalistic gesture, of sorts, since you can't bring yourself to put an actual end to your life. But you're sick of home, and yourself, and mean to flee both.)
  
  And suddenly you're on the stage, sleeves of your costume flapping, voice loud: "Nothing of him that doth fade / but doth suffer a sea-change..." No time to think, only to act. The part comes naturally to you: feigned service to a magician-master, trouble, tempest, truth. Your freedom, earned.
  
  Later, undressing in the room behind the stage, you'll remember only that you've forgotten something.
  
  > look at the rome
  The image grows in your eyes as you look: there are the ruins of the ancients, arches and pillars. There are the palaces of the modern princes, and the court of the Pope, with the Pontiff himself on his throne, and all his Cardinals around. And there are other things, too small and fine for you to see.
  
  > examine the rome with the lens
  (A fatalistic gesture, of sorts, since you can't bring yourself to put an actual end to your life. But you're sick of home, and yourself, and mean to flee both.)
  
  And you're standing in a crowded corridor with the light squeezing in the windows. Everywhere around you is the sussurus of speech -- Italian, Latin, whispered French, sibilants and nasals. Your brain reaches for, but cannot wholly grasp, an understanding.
  
  But you are swept along soon enough with the other pawns, children, servants and hangers-on, into a maze of politics and prayer.
  
  > look at the walls
  The squares of precious substances have cut with the greatest care, so that their surfaces are smoothly polished and bevelled. You are unable to determine by what means they have been attached to the stone beneath.
  
  In one place, however, the placard has been moved away and a dark space exposed beneath.
  
  > Go up
  You clamber up through the stilled wheels...
  
  You stand among cogs and gears, many with teeth longer than your forearm; the outer ring of the floor is wholly occupied with these.
  
  But above is a spangled darkness full of music. The moon hangs overhead, and all the constellations, frozen in their places.
  
  > drop all
  ball of yarn: Dropped.
  magnifying glass: You set the magnifying glass down gently.
  workbox: Dropped.
  sturdy key: Dropped.
  delicate key: Dropped.
  tube: Dropped.
  needle: Dropped.
  
  > go north
  You take a deep breath and enter, suppressing your distaste.
  
  You're crouched in a square crawlspace, barely broader than the width of your shoulders. The absence of light makes things particularly unpleasant.
  
  There's a faint draft at the northern end of the tunnel.
  
  > Go north
  There's no room in that direction.
  
  The undressed stone of the walls scrapes at you as you move, which is an extremely unpleasant and distracting sensation.
  
  > enter the mechanism
  That's not something you can enter.
  
  The undressed stone of the walls scrapes at you as you move, which is an extremely unpleasant and distracting sensation.
  
  > Touch mechanism
  The metal is astonishingly cold to the touch, especially for something that has been in such constant motion.
  
  The undressed stone of the walls scrapes at you as you move, which is an extremely unpleasant and distracting sensation.
  
  > Go south
  Tower, Mid-level
  A midpoint in the tower, with doorways east and west, lit from above. The south wall is occupied by a deep niche, in which is a statue of a young man in the Greek mode.
  
  The walls have been sheathed with a variety of fine materials, all exceptionally costly: sheets of beaten gold, squares of lapis lazuli, placards of ruby and adamant. There is a dark, square hole in the north wall where one of these sheets has been removed.
  
  You can see a needle, a tube (which is empty), two keys (a delicate key and a sturdy key), a workbox (which is empty), a magnifying glass and a ball of yarn here.
  
  > take all
  needle: Taken.
  tube: Taken.
  delicate key: Taken.
  sturdy key: Taken.
  workbox: Taken.
  magnifying glass: Taken.
  ball of yarn: Taken.
  
  > look in the gold
  (the sturdy key)
  You find nothing of interest.
  
  > look through lens
  [ Try LOOK THROUGH GLASS AT <thing> ]
  
  > go south
  Stairs lead up and down, and doorways open east and west.
  
  > put the yarn in the dragon
  You put the ball of yarn into the furnace.
  
  > look at the ball
  A glass ball, like those that scryers use.
  
  > look in it
  You peer at the small figure of your master, there at the center of the farseeing glass.
  
  The bending in is startling -- pressure in your head, in your lungs -- and then the release comes suddenly.
  And here you are, at home. He hasn't seen you yet; he's still bent over the bed with its tossed blankets and the lines he tied over you when you slept. You reach down and touch the top of his head.
  
  It is a moment before he recognizes you. "How did you--?" He gestures at the mattress, empty. "You should have come back here."
  
  "I took my own way."
  
  His gaze falls, from your face to the thing gleaming in your left hand, and you see that he knows he will never again send you unwilling on any errand.
  
  > put the box in the dragon
  You put the workbox into the furnace.
  
  > Examine box
  An ordinary round box, but made of metal.
  
  > look in the box
  The workbox is empty.
  
  > put the ball in the dragon
  You can only fit one thing into the furnace at a time.
  
  > take all from dragon
  Removed.
  
  > put the ball in the dragon
  You put the scrying glass into the furnace.
  
  > turn the ear to 4
  It is already set to that position.
  
  > look at the ball
  A large shining ball of metal.
  
  > look in the ball
  You find it hard to see through the opaque material.
  
  > examine the ball with the lens
  You peer at the small figure of your master, there at the center of the farseeing glass.
  
  The bending in is startling -- pressure in your head, in your lungs -- and then the release comes suddenly.
  
  > Juggle ball
  And here you are, at home. He hasn't seen you yet; he's still bent over the bed with its tossed blankets and the lines he tied over you when you slept. You reach down and touch the top of his head.
  
  It is a moment before he recognizes you. "How did you--?" He gestures at the mattress, empty. "You should have come back here."
  
  "I took my own way."
  
  His gaze falls, from your face to the thing gleaming in your left hand, and you see that he knows he will never again send you unwilling on any errand.