The Spirit Gate (21 page)

She liked the work, but for the sake of Marija’s journal she would
gladly have taken the morning off. It was hard to concentrate at first, but
immersed in the task, she soon ceased to hear the call of the missing diary.

She and Zakarij vested a glass orb with the most sensitive
web spell they could concoct. She was pleased to have had a large part in that
sensitivity, for it was her innate ability to catch whispers of emotion that
allowed her to name the proper catalyst. It was Zakarij who gave the glass its
ability glow in changing colors depending upon what emotions were detected.

By way of a test, they took the vested globe through the
student library, watching the little orb turn red, gold, green, blue as it
sensed anger, pleasure, affection, unhappiness in turns. It turned purplish and
muddy if it caught a lie, black if it sensed hatred. Ultimately, it was Kassia
who tested that emotion. Thoughts of Ursel Trava produced only a murky brown,
but recalling how three members of her family had died for prejudice called out
a pure blue-black. Watching the orb return to its normal clear state, Kassia
realized she no longer knew where to direct that hatred.

“Excellent
work!” Lukasha praised them when he saw the finished orb at work. “Now, we must put this
spell into a more suitable receptacle.”

“What
do you mean, Master?” Kassia asked, rolling the small spell ball in her hands. “Why would this be
unsuitable?”

“Can
you picture our king sitting among his council with this in his pocket, taking
it out to consult it every minute or so? Or perhaps wearing it around his neck?
No, we need the web spells to be vested in objects that none would suspect.”

Zakarij was nodding thoughtfully. “Like a ring, perhaps, or a bracelet?”

“A
figurine on the council table,” suggested Kassia. “Or . . .
a mirror?”

Lukasha nodded. “Good
ideas, all. And it is these ideas and others like them that we will take to
Tabor to show the king how the Mateu serve him.”

“We?” repeated Kassia quickly, but Zakarij silenced her with a glance and
asked, “Do you
mean to travel to Tabor soon, then, Master?”

“I
mean we will travel to Tabor. All three of us. I have important tasks for both
of you.”

Zakarij, as always, was impassive, but Kassia’s heart kicked with
swift elation.

“You,
Zakarij, I wish to act as my liaison to the priesthood in the capital. I want
to know how things are with them; I want to know what problems they face, any
issues they would raise before the Sacred Circle. You will also act as my
amanuensis.”

Zakarij gave Lukasha a low bow and Kassia could feel the
glow of gratitude slip through his usually strict guard. She didn’t wonder at that,
Zakarij had told her that Damek, as Lukasha’s scribe, was almost always the one who accompanied
him to Court to gather communication from the Mateu and priests in Tabor.

“Thank
you, Master,” Zakarij said, “I
will do my best to collect a complete report.”

“Of
course you will, Zak,” Lukasha told him, then turned to Kassia. “You, Kassia, will help me present these new spells
of diplomacy to King Zelimir.”

She was nearly undone at that. Going to Tabor when she’d never set foot out
of this narrow valley, never traveled any further afield than Ohdan, was
exciting enough. Being asked to participate in a presentation to the king was
beyond even her most spectacular fantasies.

“I,
Master? I will help you?”

“Yes,
you. Who better?”

Kassia glanced at Zakarij, tried to read the emotion behind
the opaque eyes. There was nothing. He had set up his guard again.

“Why,
Zakarij, surely,” she said, “or . . .
or Damek.”

“Damek
has about as much magic in him as a tree stump—no, less—for
a tree stump yet has roots to Itugen. Besides, Damek’s duties here will keep him from accompanying me
this time. And as to Zakarij—his
work is determined by his knowledge of our institutions. He will know what
questions to ask Master Antal and Brother Bohumat, and he will understand the
answers. You are doing well in your study and use of magic, Kassia, but you do
not yet understand all of what it is to be Mateu. It is not magic, alone, any
more than motherhood is merely the bearing of the child. Once you have brought
him forth, you must raise him.”

That reminded Kassia forcefully that she had a child of her
own who was not a metaphor. “What
of Beyla?” she asked. “Must
I leave him?”

Lukasha put a gentle hand to the side of her face. “I’m afraid you must,
Kiska. But he shall have Shagtai to look out after him if you will, though you
have other friends you might trust more.”

Kassia, trying not to show how affected she was by the
thought of separating from Beyla, shook her head. “There is no one I trust more than Shagtai.”

“Then
I shall speak to him about it immediately.”

“When
shall we go?” Kassia asked. “How
long shall we be away?” She felt Zakarij’s
eyes on her and wriggled in discomfort. She knew she sounded desperate.

“When
we have completed our work with the web spells to my satisfaction, we will
prepare to go. I will have Shagtai send news of our arrival before us so the
king may prepare for us at Court. We will not stay in Tabor much above a week,
I promise you.”

Not much above a week. Kassia’s heart felt as if it were made of iron. She had
never been separated from Beyla for more than a few hours at a time. But she
knew her quaking was not for her son; it was for herself. He would miss her,
certainly, but he would be fabulously happy with Shagtai and his fleet of
kites.

“Don’t be so tragic,
Kassia. It won’t
be so long.”

She looked up to find Zakarij watching her. “Over two weeks with
travel time,” she corrected. “I’ve never spent an
entire day away from my little boy.”

“He
loves Shagtai. He’ll
miss you, but he’ll
be safe and happy in our kite master’s
workshop. You know that.”

She nodded, wondering how he knew so much about Beyla’s relationship with
Shagtai.

“Tabor
will take your breath away and steal your senses. She’s a beautiful city, Kassia. A real city.
Seventy-five thousand people, I’m
told. She sits at the confluence of the Yeva and the Wista, where the river
channels are wide and deep as they sweep about her. There are boats and barges,
even pleasure craft. And there’s
a cesia that takes up the entire crown of a hill, and another adjoining the
King’s palace
that’s fully the
size of Lorant entire. You shouldn’t
miss an opportunity like this, Kassia—to
go before King Zelimir, himself. Lukasha has chosen you for great things. Don’t take that lightly.”

“I
would never take it lightly. It’s
just that . . . things are happening so fast.”

“For
all of us. In eight years I have learned a lot of flash and a little substance.
In one day, you taught me to handle fire.” He looked at her in that
maddening way that made her feel as if she had neglected to dress or put on
skin, and appeared about to say more. But something caused his mouth to close
and his eyes to withdraw. “We
should get something to eat. The Master will want us to put in a full afternoon
on these web spells.”

She nodded and went to find Beyla, to tell him her news,
leaving Zakarij to find his way to the commons alone.

oOo

Lukasha looked over the list he had compiled of items that
could be effectively vested with the web spells and was highly pleased. Not
only were the spells apparently working flawlessly, but Zelimir would be
certain to find the play of colors in otherwise mundane objects extremely
entertaining. He would likely not take it nearly as seriously as his Mateu
adviser would. For the king, a new toy; for Lukasha, a new way of protecting
him from the insincere, unscrupulous and possibly dangerous people who
surrounded him.

The list contained household items such as candlesticks and
mirrors and silver bowls and baskets of ornamental glass fruit. It included
personal effects such as hairbrushes and ceremonial daggers and even a pen made
of glass in which the user could see the ink in its clever reservoir. It
included jewelry. But there was one thing it did not contain, for Lukasha was
not certain how the item could be either had or vested. He had never tried the
spell he was now contemplating. He thought perhaps no Mateu ever had. Whether
he was able to even attempt it might not be his decision, but Kassia’s. It seemed he must
ever be resigned to rest his hopes for Polia upon others.

oOo

Weary. She was truly weary. Kassia pulled a light shawl
around her shoulders and settled in before her warm hearth with a cup of hot
tea. The vesting of web spells was coming quite well. Any and all of the
objects they used held the spell and, if their experiments were any proof, they
would require minimal maintenance by the Mateu at Court.

Her personal research had not gone quite so smoothly; she
had found several more spells relating to doorways, corridors, conduits and the
like, and she had shown them to Lukasha, but he did not seem terribly
impressed. There was something missing, he said. These were barely a cut above
the mundane—an
incantation to pierce fog, another to allow the user to talk through a solid
wall—nothing that
would allow someone to see from Dalibor to Tabor through a veil of miles.

She was disappointed, of course. Even more disappointed that
her search of Marija’s
rooms had failed to turn up the missing journal. She and Beyla had entered into
the hunt with vigor and anticipation, only to give up with only half the search
complete. Beyla was now sound asleep in his cozy room, and Kassia was so tired
she could barely move.

She savored the fragrance of the tea and the moist heat of
its steam in her face. Her gaze wandered about the room, her mind lazily
cataloguing places she had not yet searched. In here there was only the
bedstead and the area around the fireplace. Her eyes roamed back to that
feature. It was a beautiful piece of work—simple in design, but elegant. The fire board was
of a dark, gleaming wood, while the mantelpiece beneath it was inlaid with a
wonderfully worked carving of pale, polished stone. She followed the ornate
patterns through the steam rising out of her cup. Firelight gilded them from
below and made the symbols seem to dance.

They were elemental symbols, she realized. The four
primaries were worked in at the heart of the carving, their secondaries and
tertiaries arrayed around them. At the very center of it all were the joined
circles—the
mandorla—that
appeared on every Mateu’s
shoulder, and which Marija had chosen to be inlaid into the floorboards of her
studio dais. The carving blurred before Kassia’s eyes and she felt her hands, still braced around
the cup, dip toward her lap.

Enough of this
, she thought.
This
tea can
’
t possibly revive me. I
’
m going to bed
.

Yawning, she pulled herself to her feet and shuffled to the
bed. She stripped down to her under-linens and tumbled into the welcome
mattress, remembering only at the last minute to reach out a thought to douse
the spirit-lit candles in the room. She was asleep almost before her head
touched the mattress and relived her search of the rooms in dreams, driven by
the fear that she might have missed something. She spent dream time in the
studio, too—their
studio, hers and Marija’s—standing on the dais
in the center of the golden western circle she used as her locus. She thought
of it as the shai locus and the silver as the Mateu. Always, she stood in the
heart of the golden ring, facing its opposite. It had become a sort of
semi-superstitious protocol to her; not being Mateu (yet), she felt she hadn’t the right to enter
that domain.

Her dreams ended where her evening had, before the hearth,
staring at the dance of symbols captured in the mantelpiece. The mandorla’s twin, joined circles
seemed to gleam in the wash of firelight.

That image stayed with her to waking and beyond, for the
next morning as she pulled herself upright and, stretching, reached for her
robe, she saw the mandorla upon the velvet coverlet that lay across her legs.
She put out a hand, but found the image to be insubstantial. Glancing aside at
the window, she realized it was a shadow cast by a pattern in the iron work
that held the panes in place. The faint light of dawn had thrown it across her
lap, where it snuggled like a sleeping cat.

She remembered dreaming of the mandorla, then. She pondered
it as she rose, dropped her feet to the silk carpet by her bed and realized
that she was standing upon yet another mandorla worked into the rug. She lit
the fire and several lamps simultaneously, not even bothering to think before
flinging the spell from her fingertips. Firebirds soared and lit and Kassia,
gazing around the shadowed room, felt as if she was seeing it clearly for the
very first time.

The image was everywhere, repeated over and over in weave
and carving and metal work. Without stopping to put stockings upon her feet,
she hurried into the studio, knowing without doubt that the pattern was neither
random nor merely decorative. Marija had chosen this symbol for a reason, this
confluence of earth and sky. Had she chosen it because she, herself, was a
confluence of earth and sky?

Lukasha’s
dais, with its embedded circles, was typical of a Mateu spelling stage. Only
Marija of Ohdan had used the mandorla. Kassia stared at the conjoined rings
until her eyes blurred. She always stood in the confines of the golden circle,
but she was suddenly certain Marija had not done so. She would have used the
very center of the dais—the
place where the two rings merged.

Cautiously, Kassia stepped up onto the dais and moved from
the golden ring across the silver boundary so that she stood in the heart of
the mystical figure. Almost at once, she felt it—a trill of warm, clear energy, a singing pulse of
something magnificent that ran from earth to sky and back again. In the same
blink of time, she also knew that the dais held other secrets as well; the
journal she sought, her inner eye told her, was beneath her feet.