The Spirit Gate (16 page)

“What?
No, ‘thank you,
Master,’ just ‘what
will Zakarij think?’”

He was teasing her, not unkindly. She smiled. “I merely mean that I
wouldn’t want to . . .
infringe on his rights and privileges. I . . . am not sure
Zakarij likes me much as it is. I would hate to cause him to resent me more.”

“I
don’t believe he’ll resent you, Kassia.
He is an Aspirant. More and more he has his own path to follow. He will be
examined at the Solstice, which will be upon us in little more than a month’s time. Besides, what
I need done now, Zakarij cannot do. As I said, in some things, you will be my
teacher. Then too, there is this—among
the secrets I showed you, there are things only your eyes and mine have seen.
Zakarij does not know of them, nor any Mateu, nor even the ubiquitous Damek.
For that reason, I ask that you reveal nothing of what I have shown you or said
to you here today. These are our secrets, Kiska. Yours and mine.”

She went away from him with a warm flush of excitement,
anticipation and affection suffusing body and soul. There was another element
there as well, something sharp and chill and bitter. Something Kassia did not
yet recognize as fear.

Kassia’s
days in Master Radman’s
class were at an end. This pleased Matim and Gavmat much, for they supposed
that she had been dismissed. Master Radman did not disabuse them of the idea
and, of course, they wanted the happy details of her expulsion. He replied
simply that Master Lukasha had told him she would no longer be attending the
Mysteries class.

Ari knew all, for she was in Kassia’s confidence. She was torn between keeping a tender
and juicy secret and (thereby proving to herself that she could) and wiping the
satisfied smirks from the young men’s
faces on the spot. She decided to be forbearing, knowing that the two would one
day see Kassia in her Apprentice’s
tunic. Ari prayed she’d
be present when it happened.

The event occurred much sooner than she expected. After a
frustrating mid-day break, at which Kassia did not appear, Ari moped her way to
Religion. The class had not yet started; Gav and Mat were holding court in the
far corner of the room when Kassia glided in, face shining, wearing tunic and
leggings of azure, on her shoulder a badge of the four primary colors arranged
in a cross.

At first no one noticed her, for she also wore a loose
velvet hat into which her hair was tucked. She was just one Apprentice in a
room that often contained one or two. Then Ari recognized her and gasped, “Kassia!” Conversation ceased; even Brother Sisa started and stared, and Gav and
Matim, seconds before convinced they were rid of the arrogant shai, realized
she had once again circumvented the rules of order to which they were slaves.

Kassia, meanwhile, had no intention of upstaging Brother
Sisa. She seated herself at the back of the group and spent the class time in
silent attention, not speaking unless spoken to by Sisa himself. That did
little to soothe her adversaries. Before class was over, they had decided that
Kassia Telek’s
headlong flight upward must be checked.

oOo

”Absolutely
livid,” said Ari, describing Gavmat’s
face. “And Matim
as white as a Mateu’s
skirts. It’s odd,
isn’t it, how
people react so differently to bad news?” She giggled, destroying the
serious expression on her face. “They’ll make trouble. Even
I can feel that.”

Kassia glanced at her sideways, slowing her pace very
slightly. “You
know them better than I do. What might they do? Are they pranksters?”

Ari narrowed her eyes against the glare of sun on bleached
stone and pursed her lips. “Oh,
if Matim were left to his own devices he’d likely come up with some stupid and embarrassing
prank, but Gavmat’s
not likely to be nearly so childish. I expect he’ll lodge a formal protest. He could reasonably
argue, I suppose, that you were made Apprentice ahead of them when they were
due. Well, Matim’s
overdue, actually. There are only a limited number of Apprenticeships, after
all.”

Kassia put out a hand to stop her friend before they entered
Shagtai’s domain.
“What do you
think, Ari? You’re
also overdue, as you put it. Does it anger you that I’ve been . . . promoted so quickly?”

“I’m happy for you,
Kassia. I’m sure
you deserve your Apprenticeship.” Her mouth curved up in a sly smile. “Of course, I suppose you could be spelling Master
Lukasha to make him promote you. But if you can do that, well, I’d say you deserve to
be made Apprentice, anyway.”

Kassia smiled. “That
may be, but I asked how you felt about it. Aren’t you the least bit angry?”

“Yes,
I’m angry. At
myself. If I’m
overdue for Apprenticeship, it’s
my own fault for not having any magic in me. I’m sad, too. Our friendship means a lot to me. Your
help means a lot to me. I’m
going to miss both.”

“Ari,
no, no and no!” Kassia threw an arm about the girl’s shoulders. “You’re
full of magic! Your poetry is magic. And you’ll have both my friendship and my help as long as
you want them. You’ll
be an Apprentice too, Arax-itu,” she said, and felt a swift certainty leap to her heart along the fingers
that rested on Ari’s
arm. “You
will
be,” she added, putting conviction into her voice.

Ari glanced over at her, half-shy, half-sly. “I wish you could find
time to tutor me.”

“I’ll find time.” Kassia started them moving toward Shagtai’s.

He was putting an elaborate tail on a fish kite when they
entered the workshop. Beyla, watching as his “uncle” Shagtai explained how to braid the streamers, jumped up and ran to give
his mother a hug.

“Oh,
mama, you look so fine in your new costume!”

Shagtai looked up from his work long enough to fix Kassia
with a measuring gray gaze. When he had looked her up and down, his lined face
inscrutable, he grunted and turned back to his fish tail. “So, it’s Apprentice now, is
it?” he said, and that was all.

It was fortunate, Kassia thought, that Master Lukasha was
more impressed with her than Shagtai was. Of course, he expected to be
impressed—that
much was obvious. The tests he gave her the first full day she spent as his
Apprentice were fairly straightforward. Using the shai spells she had indexed,
she found hidden objects, read a tablet that was concealed within a box, and
held fire in the palm of her hand.

Lukasha had called Zakarij in to witness these things and
initial a testament to their having been performed without mundane trickery.
Kassia was not sure why he did this, but supposed it must meet some official
requirement. With that done, Lukasha set Kassia to work annotating some of the
material she had previously indexed, and excused himself to attend a meeting of
the Sacred Circle.

Zakarij dutifully stayed to oversee Kassia’s work, she at the
Master’s writing
desk beneath the library window, he at his own table beneath the shelves. She
had been at her task for perhaps an hour when she realized he was watching her.
Reluctant, defiant, she looked up to meet his gaze.

He spoke the instant their eyes brushed, as if the words
were spilled from him by force. “How
do you hold fire in the palm of your hand?”

Kassia glanced down at the hand in question. Presently, it
held a reed pen and rested in a colorfully fractured spot of sunlight. She
caught her shrug before she inadvertently implied that anyone ought to know
that much about “Itugenic” spells.

“It’s probably one of the
first things mother taught me. I’ve
known that spell since I was ten or eleven.” She smiled wryly. “A good trick for a
little girl who’s
afraid of the dark. Beyla—” She caught herself on the verge of revealing the boy’s talent. Only Devora
had even an inkling of his real abilities.

“Beyla.
That’s your son,
isn’t it?” Zakarij’s
dark gaze was questioning—a
half-smile played about his full mouth.

Kassia nodded and made a dismissive gesture. “I was just going to
say that Beyla’s
a lot braver than I was at his age. He’s
not afraid of much of anything.”

The funny smile-not-smile on Zakarij’s lips hovered a moment longer—long enough to make
Kassia uneasy—then
he shook his head and patted the papers he worked over into a neat stack. Their
eyes met again, hers consternated, his musing.

What
? Kassia wanted to shout.
What
about me do you find so very amusing
?

As if he’d
heard the annoyed mental bleat, he said, “It’s
strange, you know. We’re
of an age, you and I, but I’ve
barely lived and you . . . you seem to have had several
lifetimes. You had a secret childhood and a public one, you’ve lived as a beloved
daughter, as a man’s
wife, as a child’s
mother. You’ve
been unwelcome in your own village; outcast by your own family. And now you’re here—Initiate to Apprentice
in barely a month’s
time. And I . . . Until I came here, I lived all my life in my
family’s home,
cared for, loved, approved, taught I could have whatever I wanted if I but
wanted it enough. Seven years I’ve
been here, Apprentice, Kassia. Seven years of slowly progressing toward a goal.
I think I live life at a normal rate of speed for a man of twenty-four, but
you, Kassia—you
live in a whirlwind.”

She was utterly bereft of any sense of his mood or intent.
He was as opaque as Lukasha—no,
more so, for the Mateu’s
smiles and frowns resonated in her heart. Zak’s were closed doors denying her access to whatever
lay behind them.

“Could
you teach someone else to control fire?” he asked his neat pages.

“Someone?”

“All
right. Could you teach
me
to control it?”

“I
don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “Would
you like me to try?”

“Yes.” He rose from behind his desk, eyes burning her with sudden heat.

“Now?”

“What
better time?” He moved to the foot of the stair, his gaze never wavering, and gestured
for her to rise.

She glanced upward to where the spiral ended. “Up there? Are you
sure?”

“Apprentice,
we are not disobedient children sneaking into our father’s workshop to profane it. I am an Aspirant and
Master Lukasha’s
First Apprentice.” He laid subtle stress on the rank. “You are charged with both the practice of your art
and obedience to me. Up there,” he gestured with his eyes, “no
one will dare disturb us. Or do you not mind the thought of Damek walking in on
us?”

She hesitated only a moment longer, then came to her feet
and preceded him up the stair. Once in Lukasha’s private sanctum, Zakarij moved immediately to the
dais, where Kassia had performed her “test” earlier that morning, and stepped up onto it. She followed him
reluctantly, still uneasy about using Lukasha’s private studio in his absence, and feeling more
than a little awkward in the role of teacher. Up till now, she had instructed
only Beyla; to teach someone as well-schooled in magic as Zakarij or Lukasha,
who also expected her tutelage, was daunting.

All right, she told herself, teach as if it was your own son
who received the lesson. A deep, quick breath and she placed herself in the
center of the circular platform facing Zakarij.

“All
right now. First, watch me perform the spell. But do more than watch,” she added as his lips parted to protest. “What I mean is, watch with all your senses. Let all
vision enter your eyes; and all sounds, your ears; and all sensations, your
skin; and all whispers of spirit, your heart and soul and mind.” She deliberately made her tones rhythmic, musical, chanting, willing him
to enter such a state of meditation that he could really do these things. “Now,” she repeated, and began the equation. “Isak Itugen. Isak Rez.” She held out her hand, palm
up and repeated the invocation. “Isak
Itugen. Isak Rez.” She saw the fire in her mind—a
tiny, graceful flame in a place of utter darkness. Seeing it, she raised her
palm and blew a breath of air upon it. “Ah
ni
!” She sang the name of the spirit of fire; two tones—one low, the second a fifth
higher. The flame, small, beautiful and bright, rose from her palm to unfurl
within the lamp of her curled fingers.

She heard Zakarij draw in a hissing breath, glimpsed his
hand moving toward the flame. She raised her own free hand in warning. “It will burn.” She looked into his face, yearning to see his envy, his respect. His
opacity frustrated her once again, for though she could read excitement in the
parted lips, the over-bright eyes, she could not see herself as he saw her—white hair a gleaming
aura in the sunlight, flesh burnished bright, fire dancing in her cupped hand
and mirrored in tilted eyes that were nearly black.

He dropped his hand. “I can’t . . .
I didn’t feel a
thing.”

She closed her hand, mentally subtracting air from the spell
and extinguishing the flame. “Let’s try again.”

“Can’t you just tell me—”

“Yes,
but until you
feel
it,
see
it,
hear
it, the words will be meaningless to you. Here, like this.” She stepped closer to him, took his hands in her own and raised them to
face her, palms out. Zakarij jumped as if her touch carried a static charge.
She felt a tingling backwash race up the backs of her arms. She ignored it,
assuming it was some defensive barrier she had accidentally breached. “Close your eyes.
Breathe. Sam-
ha
.”

“What?”

“Buddhist
monks do this. Here.” She moved one of his hands to her diaphragm. “Like this.” She breathed in through her nose, deeply, pulling the air all the way to
the bottom of her lungs. Then she let it out through her lips. His hand,
beneath hers, rose and fell. “Breathe
in—
sam
;
breathe out—
ha
.
Deeply. Slowly. Breathe into your soul. You try.”

She put the hand against his ribs. He breathed, a little
raggedly, but better.

“Again.”

He complied.

“Better.
Now.” She brought their hands up again between them, palms out at shoulder
height, and held him there for a moment, palm to palm, fingers not quite
entwined, bodies a few hand spans apart. A sheer veil of energy vibrated between
and around them, rippling like the cold flames Mat set in the winter sky. Snow
fires, they were called, and it was believed they were a gift to the beloved
Goddess, to warm her till spring. Kassia savored the sensation. It was as if
her body was filled with hot, delicious liquid fire. As if she embraced the
snow fires and was in turn embraced.