The Spirit Gate (22 page)

She knelt upon the dais in the growing light of morning,
running trembling hands over the fine, dark wood between the metal bands. After
a moment of search, she found a small aberration in the pattern of the
floorboards—a
round peg head of a lighter wood, little bigger than the tip of her middle
finger, set flush with the floor where the corners of four pieces of parquetry
met. She brushed over it with her finger tips, then, sensing no arcane locks,
pressed it lightly. With a tiny snick of sound, it depressed, then popped
upward. Gripping it carefully, she slid it from its place. The four polished
squares rose slightly and, inserting her finger into the empty peg hole, she
pulled gently upward. One square rose like the lid of a box, revealing a dark
space beneath. Kassia called up a spirit flame and, cradling it in her hand,
she peered into the recess.

The shape within was box-like and covered in burgundy silk.
It was certainly the right size and shape to be a book. Barely breathing, she
lifted it from its hiding place, extinguished her flame and carried it to the
northern facing windows. Weak sunlight aided her sight as she unwrapped the
package. It was indeed a book—small,
but thick, with fine, soft pages. The fat spine was leather, the rest carved
and polished wood, and inlaid into the slightly warped front cover was the name
Marija
Boh-itu Ohdani
.

Maritius 22:
Today was my first full day as an
Initiate. I had planned to write such wonderful things about Lorant and the
Mateu and my classmates, but I am too tired to lift this little reed. Ah, well,
Little Book, until tomorrow . . .

Maritius 30:
Well, it’s
not tomorrow, Little Book. You can see what day it is. Every night I mean to
write of wonderful things, and every night I am too tired to lift my pen. Until
tonight. Well, I am still very tired, but tonight I have got to write about
Master Boleslas.

Master Boleslas is a prodigious man. He is tall, like the
century oak in the cesia at Ohdan. And he is wide, like the standing stone
behind the altar there. And he is wise, like the Lord Mat, Himself. He is like
my father, and because of that, I think I will love him very much. I hope,
already, that someday I may be his Apprentice, though I
’
ve
heard it put to him that I
’
ve started my journey too late to
ever be any more than a priestess. Can seventeen really be so old?

Maius 1:
Master Boleslas
—
The
Wise, I call him
—
is a marvel. He gives lessons as one would tell stories
and, in that way, he is more like my father than I first imagined. I asked him
why he teaches in this way and he told me
—
I barely believe it
—
that
his father was a village Storyteller before he married and came to Dalibor.
Wonders! My own father is Storyteller of Ohdan and, were I not shai I most
certainly would have followed him in that. I believe I have found the perfect
teacher. Dear, wise man
—
he will make learning what I must
learn here a joy.

Junius 24:
Can you believe it
’
s
been over a month since I last wrote, Little Book? I am still in a constant
state of weariness from all the things Master Boleslas and my other instructors
are trying to cram into my head. But I am learning. Here is my secret delight
—
My
Wise Master has spoken to me, just this day, of working on a special spell
outside of class. A Duet, he called it, which, of course, is a spell making use
of two complementary elements. Well, Little Book, I am on my way. I pray every
night to both Itugen and Mat that I am someday privileged to become the Wise
Boleslas
’
very own Apprentice.

oOo

Kassia paused and glanced up into Arax-itu’s beaming face. The
other girl laughed and said, “She
sounds like you, doesn’t
she? Barely an Initiate and already anticipating Apprenticeship.”

Kassia blushed, her face hot despite the dappling of shade
from the trees that overgrew the eastern wall of the college courtyard. “I wasn’t anticipating Apprenticeship
when I came here, Ari. In fact, I had no real reason to believe I’d be accepted. Marija
was said to be too old at seventeen, and here I am, nearly twenty-five and a
mother. But I had to try, or my magic would have withered within me. I’d still be sitting in
the market square trying to peddle potions and fortunes to people who didn’t trust me.”

“So,
you succeeded beyond your expectations. It sounds like Marija did too.” Ari shook her head. “It’s absolutely amazing
to hear Marija of Ohdan’s
own words and thoughts. She’s
a legend, almost a goddess, you’d
think, to hear Master Yesugai speak of her. Yet, she writes . . .
thinks . . . as any girl would. Except,” she amended, laughing, “that she can actually
wield magic. I’m
a fifth year Initiate and I can barely perform a Duet.”

“Not
true,” Kassia objected. “You
did one yesterday that made even Gavmat’s
eyes pop.”

Ari smiled. “That
was good, wasn’t
it? I’ve you to
thank for it. Master Radman says I’m
getting a feel for the arcane. I hope he’s right. I think I might actually make it past
Solstice. I have to perform a Triad for my Commencement requirement. I was
hoping you’d be
able to help me with it . . .”

Kassia glanced across the courtyard, through Shagtai’s kite-string forest,
to the college. “I
can’t, Ari. I’d like to, but Zakarij
and I are working on some special spells for Master. And when we’re done, we’re going to Tabor.”

Ari’s
momentary disappointment was washed away on a flood of astonishment. “Tabor? You’re going to Tabor?
With Master Lukasha?”

“And
Zakarij.” She shook her head, still incredulous. “The Master wants me to aid him in presenting some
new spells to the king.”

Ari leaned closer, eyes gleaming. “What sort of spells? Are they part of what you’ve been working on
late into the night in your studio?”

“Yes
and no. And I really can’t
talk about them. I’m
sorry.”

Ari straightened and shrugged. “That’s
all right. Though I really would like to know; I won’t bother to pretend I’m not curious . . . I’ve yet to see the
inside of your studio.” She was toying with the curly end of a lock of hair, studying it most
intently.

Kassia chuckled. “Yes,
I can show you my studio. If you’d
like to see it.”

Ari was on her feet in a second. “I thought you’d never ask! Can we go now? I’ll have to go back to class
soon and—” Before she could finish the sentence, the chime sounded to call the
students back to their studies. Her face fell.

Kassia came to her feet. “Tonight? After supper?”

A quick, eager smile, and Ari was gone, hurrying across the
courtyard as fast as her feet would carry her. Kassia watched for a moment,
then tucked Marija’s
little diary into the pocket of her tunic. Ari might find the journal exciting,
but she was vaguely disappointed in it. She’d had time to read only a page or so of the cramped
script before breakfast, and so far it seemed to be no more than a girl’s private diary—and not a very
constant one at that. Marija sometimes went months without a single entry, or
passed entire seasons off in a single sentence. In flipping through the pages,
Kassia had also noticed some later notations in what she took to be Latin, and
others were in a script she didn’t
know. There were also a number of blank pages at the end of the diary. Alone,
now, and curious, she started to withdraw the book from her pocket, thinking
she might take but a moment to have a closer look at it.

“Difficult,
was it, little mother?”

Startled, she turned to see Damek peering at her from
beneath the arbor that separated the main courtyard from the meditation garden
that lay between the college and the cesia. “I don’t
know what you mean.”

“It
must be very trying for you to know your Master’s secrets without being able to bare them to your
young friend. How much longer can you keep doing that, I wonder?”

“I
can keep doing it as long as Master Lukasha asks me to. Of course, I’d like to share some
of my . . . discoveries with Arax-itu. But it’s clear that I can’t. So I won’t.”

“Oh,
but surely if you revealed only a little—perhaps mentioned the purpose of the Squared spell
you performed, or told her with what you and Zakarij have vested rings and
mirrors and such, or why Master Lukasha is taking you, of all people, to Tabor.”

“I
would mention none of those things, nor have I. As you point out, they are my
Master’s secrets.”

Damek’s
mouth pulled into a grim line. “Why
do I not believe that? Come, girl, admit it. You’ve already told her these things, haven’t you? Don’t lie to me—what secrets have you
shared with her?”

She was at the point of protesting her innocence further
when she poked through the veil of her own outrage and read the intent behind
Damek’s attack.
She fixed him with a cool, quelling gaze. “You are a poor inquisitor, Damek. If Lukasha hasn’t told you what
research I’m
doing, if he hasn’t
shared his plans for our trip to Tabor, you’ll not hear of either from me.”

His wizened mouth nearly sucked itself into a vortex of
white wrinkles. “You
impudent witch! How dare you accuse me of such subterfuge and clumsiness! I
have always been and will always be completely in the Master’s confidence. There is
nothing he does not discuss with me. You take vested objects to Zelimir. I know
that. He discussed it with me at length. I know also that he hopes to find
Zelimir a consort who will be able to protect him, body and soul, from the
machinations of his ministers. Perhaps that is why you are going. Have you
thought of that? Perhaps the Master means for you to become King Zelimir’s concubine.”

The flesh on Kassia’s
face felt as if it would melt from the sudden heat of embarrassment and anger. “That,” she said, as coolly as she could manage, “is the most ridiculous and insulting suggestion I’ve ever heard. I
should go this moment and tell Master what you said to me.”

Damek’s
face paled momentarily, but in a second he had recovered himself. “Do that,” he said, sweetly acid, “and
he will know you’ve
been discussing his most private plans with others. What will he think of you
then, I wonder?”

He did not wait for an answer to that rhetorical question,
but slipped back into the garden, leaving Kassia to stew over his words.

oOo

Kassia did not speak to Lukasha of her confrontation with
Damek. During the week they spent in final preparation for their journey to
Tabor, they talked only of spells and wards and the vesting of talismans.
Kassia’s excitement
and dread increased apace. Excitement, because she was going to wonderful
Tabor, to the court of the king, dread because she must part from Beyla.

For his part, Beyla had only one or two moments of anxiety
over their impending separation. His over-riding reaction to it was wistful
envy, and he asked—no
less than a hundred times, Kassia thought—if he could please come along. But Shagtai had
offered to teach him the art of building and flying balloon kites and, by the
time she mounted her horse for the trek to the first yam, he had decided that
compensation was quite sufficient.

Kassia had read about the first quarter of Marija’s journal in fits and
starts. It maintained its personal tone, sporadically chronicling the other
woman’s advances
in the magics, but offering no earth-shaking insights. As Kassia had thought,
some of the latter passages of the book were written in Latin, a language she
could not read. The other script, she still did not recognize, but when she ran
her finger across the lines of letters, they . . . tickled. That was the only
way she could describe it. She thought they might be bespelled in some way.

She knew Zakarij could read Latin, but enlisting his aid
would mean having to take him into her confidence. She had told no one but Ari
of the journal and knew her secrecy was silly, girlish. Still, it was pleasant
to have secrets, even unimportant ones. During the trip to Tabor, her reading
came to a complete halt; the book stayed in her saddle bags where neither
Zakarij nor her Master could see it.

The journey took five days, most of which they traveled at a
relaxed trot, stopping each night to camp in the sheltered and guarded confines
of a royal way station. Kassia found sleep with difficulty. The land was
different—low and
rolling, covered with grass and occasionally farms with varied crops. During
the day, it lulled; at night, its alien sounds—its whispers and bird calls—inspired curiosity and unease.

The third day of the journey, they began following the
course of a broad, slow-moving river. Lukasha told her it was the Yeva, to
which their own Pavla Yeva was a tributary, but it did not sing and chuckle
like the Pavla Yeva. It murmured so softly in the darkness so that she must
strain her ears to hear it. She was thoroughly exhausted when, late on the
fifth day, as the sun settled below the horizon, they topped a long, low rise
between a majestic double row of century oaks and saw the city of Tabor laid
out below like a red and gold tapestry between two shining ribbons of deep
blue-green.

Kassia was awe struck. She had read of Tabor, had tried to
imagine it, but ultimately, her fantasies had not even approached the reality.
Its sheer size, the number of homes and shops and streets, was astonishing; the
wall that encircled it must be miles and miles in length; and just now it was
beginning to sparkle like a jewel as points of firelight flared to life in its
dusky recesses.

Even from here, Kassia could see it was divided into
distinct quarters. In the midst of each one, a curving dome of earth and grass
rose from among the clutter of buildings, each with a single, massive tree
dominating its crowning cesia. The stones atop the verdant hillocks were most
likely white, but just now, at the hour of sunset, they blazed red-gold with light
borrowed from the Sun. At the center of the orderly chaos was a walled complex
of large buildings—a
city within a city—and
at its heart was the largest hill of all, wearing a tiara of sun-washed gold
and copper.