The Spirit Gate (14 page)

“So,
will you test her, as you said, or was that also for Aspirant Zakarij’s benefit?”

“No.
I intend to test her, Damek. To see if she can use these spells she has
indexed.”

“If
she can?”

Lukasha smiled. “Are
you willing to concede that possibility? Well, if she can, then I will have to
tell Zakarij that he must make room for a prodigy.”

Damek’s
eyes all but started from his head. “You
would make an Apprentice of her?”

Lukasha’s
smile faded. “Damek,
you aren’t
listening to me. What Zakarij has achieved through years of education and
performed by craft, Kassia owns by birthright and force of spirit. Magic is not
a vestment she wears, or a process she has mastered. It lives in her.”

Damek’s
lips took on the look of a wizened cherry. “You seem so certain, yet you know so little of her—”

“I
know everything about her, Damek. Since the moment I first saw her shivering in
our forecourt with her white-haired boy-child huddled in her arms, I have taken
it upon myself to learn everything there is to know. Would you hear how her
great-grandmother was one of the most accurate augurs Dalibor valley has ever
produced? How, in the first year of the Tamalid reign, her grandmother became
the first female of her line
not
to bear the mark of the
shai? Or how her family was forced to live on the lower bank of the Pavla Yeva
because after the Fires, the town would not have her mother among its citizens?

“Would
you hear how her father and husband braved the censure of Dalibor to stand
beside the women they loved while her eldest brother and sister disowned them?
I’m sure you
remember the village gossip about the floods three years past—that Mat had sent
retribution against the shai for their lack of fidelity to his Goddess.
According to these enlightened souls, Kassia and her mother, Jasia, were
responsible for the loss of their own husbands. She has been an outcast, Damek.
Acceptance has been denied her everywhere. Until now. I accept her, Damek. Even
if you will not.”

“She
is that important to you?”

Lukasha settled on Damek a look that chilled his bones to
the marrow. “To
us
.
She is important to
us
—to
all of Polia. In dreams, I have seen this. I trust my dreams.”

Damek inclined his head. “Then I will attempt to tolerate her, Master. I do
not say it will be easy, or that I will ever like her. But I will try.”

Lukasha chuckled. “Hard-hearted
Damek. Then I suppose your toleration will have to be sufficient.”

oOo

Damek’s
hostility and Zakarij’s
skepticism aside, Kassia felt very good about her brief tenure at Lorant. She
did well in class, Master Radman genuinely liked her (which necessarily meant
that certain members of her class did
not
like her), and she even
had a few close friends. That, as pleasant as it was, took some getting used
to. She had only just become accustomed to Devora’s close presence in her life and now gratefully
made room for Arax-itu and Shagtai.

She was ecstatic in her work for Master Lukasha, even if it
must be done under the watchful eye of Zakarij. Best of all, she was daily exposed
to the magic that was her mother’s
legacy. She found she understood it, and amazed herself with the depth of that
understanding. Reading the incantations, she saw not a mere framework of words,
but a vibrant fabric of living magic. The incantations were as much poetry to
her as they were to Ari. They breathed in her soul, vibrated her spirit, filled
her heart with dizzying pleasure. She wanted to lap them up, absorb the
newness, the wonderful nuances of the written spells. She had suspected the
Mateu must have written records of the incantations they used, but the reality
was overwhelming in sheer wealth and volume. That shai magics were included in
the record amazed and thrilled her.

By far her biggest surprise was that she comprehended the
Mateu sorcery almost as thoroughly as she did the shai. What she did not grasp
intellectually during her sojourns in Lukasha’s private library was sorted out in her dreams.

Alas, there was a negative balance. Because she was shai,
she sensed the uncertain mixture of prejudice, awe and resentment that clouded
the air whenever she was around Gavmat and Matim. Their behavior was now cool
and aloof, now argumentative. They were always trying to trip her up in class
or make her look stupid or slow. They rarely succeeded—a thing that gave her a certain amount of pride.
They were only mischievous, not malevolent, so she wasted no anxiety on the
situation. She merely watched the two young men from the corner of her eye, the
way a sister might watch the surreptitious plotting of her younger brothers.
Hence, it came as a complete surprise when the youths showed somewhat darker
intent.

Kassia knew there was something afoot when Ioakim came
flying through the classroom door one morning into an animated huddle with his
brother. Class had not yet begun, nor had Master Radman entered the room.
Kassia was on her hassock near the black wall, trying to explain Beyla’s spell for “firies” to Ari. It was the prickle of hair rising at the back of her neck that
alerted her to the whispered conference near the door. The next thing she knew,
Matim was at her elbow, his twin hovering nervously behind him.

“Please,
Matim,” Ioakim was saying, “I
only—”

Matim held up a silencing hand and fixed a piercing blue
glaze on Kassia. “Is
it true?”

She glanced at Ari, who shrugged. “Is what true?”

“That
you were made Initiate without applying and going through Confirmation.”

Kassia was at a total loss. She knew, of course, that there
must be some formalities of initiation that she had bypassed (as if she could forget
when Damek reminded her nearly every day), but assumed that since she had
applied and been accepted by the Headmaster himself, all that was irrelevant.
She opened her mouth to say as much, when she realized the confrontation had
gathered a wider audience. A puzzled Casimir was peering at her over the top of
Ari’s head while
Gavmat had crowded into Matim’s
shoulder.

“Where
did you hear this?” he asked the Initiate.

Matim gestured back over his shoulder. “From Ioakim. Tell them
Ioakim. Tell them what you told me.”

The boy quailed as all eyes turned to him. “Matim, please, I only
said—”

“I
applied to Master Lukasha to be accepted as an Initiate here,” Kassia interrupted. “He
accepted me himself. Since he’s
the Headmaster, I had no reason to question him.”

“How
did he accept you? What did he say?” Gavmat’s
eyes were hard, shiny flints.

“He
said . . . that I should be studying at Lorant and that he was
pleased I had come to him. Then he opened the Book of Registry and wrote, ‘Kassia Telek of
Dalibor, shai, accepted as Initiate this third day of Aprilis in the year
Zelimir 2-4’. I remember the exact words because they mean much
to me.”

“He
wrote you in as an accepted Initiate? Without consulting the Sacred Circle?” Gavmat turned on Ioakim. “Where
is her name in the Book? On what page?”

Ioakim swallowed noisily. Kassia couldn’t help but feel pity
for him. “On the
Page of Acceptance.”

“How
did you find this out?”

“I
went to the Headmaster’s
office to speak to Damek, but he wasn’t
there. The Book of Registry was on his desk, opened to the applicant’s page. Her name wasn’t on it. So I . . .
I turned back to the Page of Acceptance and it . . . was there.
Just the way she said.”

Matim and Gavmat were both glaring at her as if she had done
something reprehensible. “You
never went through the Confirmation ceremony, did you?” asked the former.

Kassia straightened her spine and looked Matim directly in
his blue eyes. “No,
I didn’t, Matim.
But that was through no choice of mine. If Master Lukasha had sought to test
me, if he had required me to go through some ceremony, of course I would have
obeyed him. He didn’t
test me. He simply wrote my name in the Book.” She managed to keep all
childish tones of pride out of her voice.

“He
should have consulted the Circle,” opined Matim.

“Over
the acceptance of a Initiate?” That was Casimir. “I
think they have more important things to discuss, Matim.”

“I
don’t care who
discusses it!” snarled Gavmat. “It’s insulting! It’s outrageous! We had
to go through evaluations and interviews and ritual acceptance. Why has she
been allowed to forego those things? She went through nothing to arrive here!”

“I,” Kassia said, rising to meet her adversary eye to eye, “went through
twenty-four years of hiding my abilities—of hiding myself so I wouldn’t distress the neighbors or frighten their
children. I went through twenty-four years of covering my white hair with a
scarf so people wouldn’t
be reminded of the Fires or the droughts or the evil Tamalids. I practiced my
magic in secret and sold it in the marketplace as if it were hammered out in a
smithy or thrown upon a wheel.”

“What
did you do to make Lukasha take you in?” asked Matim, voice laden with poison.

“All
I offered was my talent. He seemed to think that was sufficient to buy me a
place here. What did your father pay?” From the corner of her eye she saw Ari’s face go a guilty crimson.

Matim’s
reply was dammed by the bustling entrance of Master Radman.

By mid-day break, Kassia was convinced Matim and Gavmat
would join forces to put a curse on her. Black stares met her whenever she
glanced in their direction; angry whispers pelted her whenever her back was
turned. Naturally, she thought irritably, it would not occur to them that she
might have deserved Lukasha’s
immediate acceptance. That she didn’t
need the years of training in the mechanics of something that was second nature
to her. She wondered how they’d
react if Lukasha did make her an Apprentice.

It struck her forcefully then that among the students at
Lorant, Arax-itu was her only friend. The realization depressed her; she hadn’t wanted to alienate
anyone (except, perhaps, for the odious Damek). Rather, she had thought that
here, among those who studied and practiced magic, she would find a community
of kindred souls. That made her friendship with Ari all the more ironic, for
the Poet was seemingly poorer than anyone in natural ability.

In the space of one morning, Kassia fell from the top of her
mountain of attainment to its feet. And, to add to her burden, came the
recognition that she had been so smitten with Lukasha’s books and scrolls she had not pursued the vesting
of an amulet for the stranger’s
baby. That in mind, she gave her apologies to Ari and sent her to dine with
Beyla and Shagtai as had become their habit. Then she went to the Headmaster’s office.

Good fortune smiled; he was actually there, holding
conference with Zakarij. He dismissed the Aspirant, who departed with a
soul-piercing look at Kassia from his enigmatic eyes. She stifled an inward
wriggle and took the chair that Zakarij had vacated.

“Master,” she began, forcing her hands to remain relaxed on her knees. “Master, I have come to
beg a great favor of you.”

Lukasha smiled kindly. “Speak, child. What may I do for you?”

She leaned forward, heart tripping slightly. “Teach me to invest an
amulet.”

Lukasha sap back in his chair, fingers steepled upon his
chest. “Your
instructor will teach you that when the time comes for you to learn it.”

“The
time has come, Master, and passed.” She pressed further forward, hands fisted on the table top. “Please, Master
Lukasha, I need to know this.”

His brow furrowed. “Such
earnestness. Perhaps you will explain why?”

“Before
I came here, I went in to New Dalibor with my . . . to try to
earn some money giving readings. A young woman came to me there . . .
or rather, I called her to me.”

Lukasha’s
brows rose. “You
called her. Using a Summons spell?”

Kassia blushed. “Using
an old fishing spell my mother taught me. I . . . edited it
slightly, hoping it would draw customers instead of fish.”

The Master’s
mouth twitched at its wide corners. “It
worked, I assume.”

Kassia nodded. “The
girl I drew had a baby boy. He was a beautiful little boy—only weeks old. But
when I touched him . . .” She pressed fingers to her
cheek, remembering the soft warmth of the baby’s skin, the icy cold behind it. “I felt a void. I felt
that he would die. In a fire. I so frightened the mother that she took the
child and ran. All I could do was call out a warning and pray she heard it.
Then I . . . I set a blessing on the child, but I don’t know if it reached
him, or if Itugen heard my prayers.” She thrust herself forward again, hands clasped in supplication. “Master, if I could
only be sure that the baby is safe. I can’t bear the thought of his death.”

Lukasha, smiling from the depths of his eyes, laid a hand
over her clasped ones. “Dear
Kassia, how kind your heart is. I wish all who came here possessed such a
heart. If I teach you the investment of amulets what will you do with the
knowledge?”

“I’ll create the
strongest fire ward I can devise and set it in a talisman. Then I’ll find that mother
and give it to her for her child.”

“Do
you think she will accept it from one who has so terrified her?”

“I’d make her accept it.”

“As
you made her accept your warning and your blessing?”

“I
couldn’t be sure
of those things. I could be sure of this.”

Lukasha squeezed her hand. “Dear Kassia, you can never be sure. Had you the
greatest talisman or ward in the world, still there would be doubt. A warded
area can be left. If you invested the very house in which this child lives,
still the fire that took him might occur in a shop or while his mother visited
another home. An amulet, likewise, can be forgotten, lost or stolen. What if
the mother, wearing the amulet, leaves the babe in the care of another?”