The Spirit Gate (19 page)

She began again, this time constructing the spell she had
done before the Circle—fire
within air, air within water, water within earth-glass. One hand supported the
globe of elements, the other hovered above it, palm down. She tried to recall
how the spell had read on the written page and failed. In the end, she
discarded words, cast out symbols and felt instead for the balance among the
elements within the glass globe. There! She grasped it and turned it inside
out, pushing outward with her will. Earth supported water, water supported air,
air fed fire.

A shimmering envelope of liquid radiance billowed around
her, floating away from its core like one of Shagtai’s fabulous balloon kites. Inside the balloon, she
looked out at what seemed to be a bowl of molten fire. Outside, Lukasha looked
in at the sun.

Kassia held the spell for a full thirty seconds before
letting it fold back in on itself. In that span of time she felt as if she
stood at a confluence of earth and sky, in a gateway perhaps only a shai could
open. When the bright envelope had dispersed, she stood with the empty glass
orb in her hands, amazed. Lukasha rose from the place in which he sat and came
to her, taking her hands in his own.

“Well
done, Apprentice,” he told her. “You
have met and surpassed any expectations I had of you. I will not see you
tomorrow, as it is Celek. When you come again Matek morn, there will be
chambers set aside here for you and Beyla to live in, and a studio in which you
will continue to learn your craft.”

Kassia’s
heart leapt. A place of her own at Lorant! A room, like this room, in which to
do magic. “Thank
you, Master!” she whispered.

Lukasha shook his head. “Do not thank me, Kiska. Thank Itugen for bestowing
Her gifts upon you and Mat for showing you the way here. Believe me, I am
grateful for both. Besides,” he added, taking the spell ball from her numb fingers and returning it
to its place, “I
expect you to earn your place here.”

“How,
Master? How shall I earn it?”

He smiled at her. “In
service to your king. Now, go and make ready. When you return here, your rooms
will be ready for you. And Kassia . . . tell no one of the spell
you performed for me just now. Not Zakarij, not anyone. These things must
remain between us.”

She went away dazed, wondering how she might be of service
to the king and how she could ever make ready for this new chapter in her life.

It was with mixed joy and sadness that Kassia told Devora of
her move to Lorant. The older woman celebrated her good fortune and refused to
allow the prospect of an empty house dampen her delight. There was a special
bread for supper that night, and a meat pie with fresh strawberries. Later,
Kassia lay long abed without sleep. Over and over she recast the Squared spell,
struggling to recapture the moment she stood in the confluence of the elements
as in an open door. An open door, she wondered as sleep claimed her, to what?

Kassia rose early Celek morn and dressed herself as
quietly as she could in her Apprentice’s
garb. Her care did little good; Beyla heard her stirring about and woke wanting
to know where she was off to so early. Hearing that she planned to go early to
the cesia at Lorant, he begged to come along and she, unable to resist the
entreaty in the big, dark eyes, surrendered to them.

“Why
are we going to
two
Matyash?” he asked when he learned she
planned to make her usual pilgrimage to the Little Holy Hill as well.

“I
want to take a special gift to the God and Goddess this morning,” she answered him. “A
gift I can only get in the Lorant Wood.”

“Oh,
what is it, mama?” he asked, but she made him wait.

She caught Lukasha before he left his chambers for the cesia
and put her request to him. She had feared he would think it odd or even
brazen, but he did not. He nodded approvingly and told her to ask Shagtai to
help her with her task. She did that, Beyla chattering happily in her wake, “I knew, mama! I knew
what you were going to do! Let me help, won’t you? I want it to be partly my gift, too.”

In short order, she and Beyla and Shagtai stood beneath the
cool canopy of tall cedars near the college cesia with two shovels and a box of
damp earth. Within the hour they had collected over a dozen tiny trees which
Shagtai carried up to the cesia. There, Kassia was one of the first worshipers
to come forward and make obeisance to Mat and Itugen beneath the Great Tree.

There were only a few others in the cesia at this hour—Apprentices and
Aspirants mostly, who performed their devotions before the general citizenry
arrived. She saw Zakarij sitting in meditation beside the eastern access. His
contemplation was interrupted by the gentle stir Kassia caused when she
appeared before the altar with her box full of seedlings and her soil-stained
leggings.

Before the altar, beneath the Great Tree, she hesitated,
feeling a familiar chill; the Aspirant’s
eyes were on her, curious. She shook the profound awareness of his regard and
continued to make her nine genuflections toward altar and Tree. She then
approached the altar, empty but for a few gifts of flowers and illuminated
prayer scrolls, and held up her hands toward the branches of the Cedar. Her
prayer was silent and private; none but the Recipients of the prayer would hear
it. Her gift was a small, bright flame which she called to her cupped hands and
left burning atop the polished slab when she took her trees and left through
the northern access.

Shagtai insisted on carrying the box of seedlings up the
Little Holy Hill to the village cesia. When she clucked about his age, he said
stiffly that he was not as old as he appeared to be, then fell silent. It was
late enough, by the time they reached the place, that a good many villagers
were there, including, Kassia noted wryly, both her sisters and their families.
The priest had already performed devotions and retired, and the few citizens
who were inclined to give offerings on a Celek that did not require it went
forward to lay them upon the altar or at the base of the Tree. As was her
habit, Kassia waited until everyone else had gone, though this time, some
lingered as if to see what she would do with her box of trees.

She took her turn at the altar with Shagtai and Beyla,
dedicating the little cedars to the God and Goddess. That done, they rose and,
with the shovels Beyla had brought along, began to dig in the ashy soil beyond
the cesia’s tall
stones. They had planted no more than a handful of trees when Asenka and her
children appeared with two more shovels and fell to work along side them. They
had planted about ten of the cedars when Devora arrived with a big basket of
bread, cheese and water. When the planting was done, they stopped to eat. In an
atmosphere of celebration, they finished their meal and travelled back through
the forest.

Kassia, looking about her as they descended the hill, saw
that green was finally beginning to dominate what had been a landscape of stark
gray, black and brown. It cheered her, but no more than when her nephews and
little Lenci gave her big hugs and Asenka threw her arms around her and told
her how proud she was to see her in Apprentice blue.

“Blaz
will not even speak of you,” she said. “And
Janka, who was so certain you lied, nearly fainted the first time she saw you
in Initiate’s
dress. I think she nearly swooned again today.”

It did Kassia’s
heart good to hear of their discomfiture at her success. On some level she realized
it was inappropriate to gloat so, but gloat she did, all the way back to the
bakery.

oOo

Except for the two feather mattresses Devora insisted
Kassia and Beyla take with them to Lorant, their belongings fit into a couple
of old trunks. Shagtai came down from the Hill just after sunrise Matek morn
with a cart and pony, and drove them up to the college as dawn peered at them
from behind the eastern mounts. Devora, with a basket of fresh bread, insisted
on coming along to help Kassia set up their rooms. Kassia felt unable to utter
enough “thank you”s to repay the older
woman’s
generosity, but she said them anyway and punctuated them with fond embraces.

Lukasha was waiting for them in the college courtyard when
they arrived, and led the way through Lorant’s still halls to the place Kassia and Beyla would
call their own. The rooms were in the eastern wing, which was older by far than
its western twin. The halls were dark and narrow with vaulted ceilings rendered
invisible by their own gloom. Oil lamps hung in niches along the ancient stone
walls, decorating the stone above them with long, black smudges of greasy soot.
Kassia made a mental note to see if she couldn’t use a fire spell to light the corridor instead of
the mundane combination of oil and wick, and wondered how long one of those
spells could maintain itself once the sorcerer who set it had stopped paying
attention.

She was beginning to find the sheer weight of the old
building depressing when Lukasha stopped to open a set of thick, iron-bound doors
on the left hand side of the hallway. Watery light poured across the open door
sill to fall upon the worn stone floor of the corridor and collide with its
opposite wall. Lukasha walked into the wash of light; Kassia, Beyla, Devora and
Shagtai followed.

The room faced north, looking out over the courtyard via a
row of tall, mullioned windows. The set farthest to the east, Kassia realized,
were actually doors and led onto a small, stone-walled patio which fed, by a
short flight of steps, to the courtyard below. From both windows and patio,
Shagtai’s fleet
of flying marvels were clearly visible, and Kassia suspected that the bed,
drawn close to the wall of glass, offered a striking view of the kites. The
floors were of thick, worn hardwood and covered by carpets whose faded colors
must have been spectacular when they were first woven. Upon the broad stone
hearth were fleeces, and within the fireplace’s maw, flames danced, pulling the morning chill
from the air. The chamber was large enough to give the area around the hearth
the feel of a separate parlor; the boxed and canopied bed hardly intruded at
all from its windowed corner.

“These
were the chambers of Marija of Ohdan,” Lukasha told her. “I
thought you might like them since you will be the first to take up her place as
the sole shai resident of Lorant. Here, Beyla,” he said to the boy,
beckoning from a doorway next to the fireplace. “I think this must be your room.”

The child was ecstatic. His mother hadn’t mentioned any such
bounty, but there it was, small and cozy and with its own little box-bed and
hearth and a cabinet for his clothes, and a window of his very own in which to
sit and daydream and watch kites.

Kassia was as surprised as her son. “This is a child’s room. Have you done this, Master?”

Lukasha smiled. “I
would like to take credit for it, but I cannot. It was here already—outfitted for Marija’s daughter, Milada.”

Kassia turned to look at him. “Marija had a daughter? What happened to her? Did
she not wish to follow in her mother’s
path?”

“Alas,
she could not. The Tamalid’s
evil dealt Marija a heavy blow; Milada was not shai. Still, she stayed here
with her mother until she was fourteen. Then she married a young man of Arabia,
accepted his religion, and went with him to his home—a place many weeks’ journey beyond this little
valley.” Catching Devora’s
grunt of surprise, he nodded. “Yes,
I am ever made aware, when I encounter folk of diverse tradition, just how
different their customs may be. It is said that Marija’s heart was broken when her daughter departed from
the old ways. She had hoped to see her family flourish here in Dalibor.”

“What
daughter’s mother
would not?” asked Devora rhetorically.

There was a bath chamber attached to the eastern side of the
main chamber—a
luxury Kassia had dimly expected might be afforded a mere Apprentice, but these
were a Mateu’s
rooms. The thought gave her a pronounced thrill of pleasure, causing her to
nearly miss Lukasha’s
explanation of how the water was brought from the ground to the polished stone
basin, or how the garderobe was more advanced than anything even the King’s court had. There
were advantages, he said, to living in a community of sorcerers.

Yes
, Kassia thought, her eyes on the curving wall
of the northeast corner of the main chamber.
One has one
’
s
own studio
.

Lukasha had purposefully saved the circular chamber for the
end of his tour, and now, when Kassia’s
curiosity and anticipation had reached fever pitch, he smilingly escorted her
to the strangely hinged door in the inward arcing eastern wall and opened it. “It is yours now,
Kiska. Your place of study and meditation and achievement.”

She stepped through the door. If she had thought the main
room was bright with glorious light, it was only because she hadn’t this to compare it
to. Rose-amber sunlight poured through the arc of mullioned windows that looked
northeast, and cascaded in warm showers from the skylights cut artfully into
the high, peaked ceiling. There was no clever mural here, but there was no
need; the sky would be visible at any time of day or night in its full glory.
Now, its light spilled over everything in the room, covering it with a coat of
radiance.

Kassia’s
heart beat furiously. There was the table at which Marija of Ohdan had sat and
written out her spells and pondered her philosophies. Here were the cabinets
and chests in which she kept her implements and elements. In the center of the flood
was the dais upon which she had performed her spells and uttered her
incantations, and it was there Kassia was drawn, to stand in the overlap of two
rings of metal—gold
and silver—inlaid
into the dark, red wood. The sun bathed her, warmed her, dressed her in a robe
of glory and crowned her head with a nimbus of palest gold.