The Spirit Gate (34 page)

“So,
he knows what you’re
trying to do.”

Kassia felt suddenly overly warm. “Not exactly. The Window spell, yes. He knows about
that, but the other, the Traveling spell . . . I haven’t told him about
Marija’s journal,
and now it needs translating, so—”

Zakarij frowned. “Why
haven’t you told
him? Surely, you should. He’s
your Master, Kassia. You shouldn’t
withhold things from him.”

“I
know. It’s just . . .
I really feel . . . a special bond with Marija. I wanted to be
the first one to read her diary. The first one to know all about her. At first
I thought it was unimportant, just a woman’s diary. And now . . . now I want to
prove myself. I know its foolish, childish, irresponsible, but I was afraid if
I showed the journal to anyone, I’d
have to give it up.”

He cocked his dark head to one side. “You’re
telling me about it. Aren’t
you afraid I’ll
take it away from you?”

She blinked at him, feeling oddly adrift. “No. But then I’m really awfully tired
and probably not thinking straight.
Will
you take it away from
me?”

“Of
course not. But neither, I think, would Master Lukasha if you were as honest
with him as you’ve
been with me.”

“You
won’t tell him
will you? I should do it. Tomorrow. First thing.”

“I
agree. No, I won’t
whisper a word.” He rose and stood before her chair, looking down at her, his expression
maddeningly opaque.

“What?” she murmured. “What?”

In answer, he leaned forward, put his hands on the arms of
her chair and brushed her forehead with his lips. “Sleep well, Apprentice,” he whispered and moved out
of sight.

Kassia heard her door close and the latch snick into place.
Odd. Her forehead felt warm where his lips had touched it. She put a hand over
the spot. Warm. And a similar warmth fluttered in her heart and in a spot
somewhat lower. Both were sensations she had always identified with Shurik. She
recognized them as affection and desire.

Well
, she thought absently,
do I feel guilty?
Should I? Should I be afraid? Or happy? Should I be happy?

Her gaze lay, unfocused, on the mantelpiece with its
gracefully interwoven designs. She should get some rest, that’s what she should do,
but first she’d
have to will her eyes away from the fluid curves of the mandorla at the heart
of the design. She recalled her visit to the Frankish church, where she had
seen that same design in the stained glass window above the altar. The Messiah
had sat in the center of it. What had Joti said they called it? A
vesica
piscis
—a “fish heart.” Strange. She tried to shake the image from her head, but it would not
leave. And, as she fought to tear her eyes from the mandorla, a voice whispered
insistently in her inner ear,
Where two worlds meet
.

It hit her like a thunderclap, leaving her feeling stunned
and stupid. Beloved God! Why hadn’t
she seen it before?
The heart of the mandorla was where two worlds met.
The worlds celestial and material, of sky and earth, of Mat and Itugen, of
Mateu and shai. Where the Christ in Pater Julian’s window sat enthroned was where heaven and earth
met, because
he
was where heaven and earth met. The “heart of the Lotus,” Shagtai called it—the
place in the Universe the Buddha occupied.

Kassia sank back into her chair on a great outflow of
breath, awed that the symbol should prove so universal, and understanding, on
some level not quite conscious, how important that made it.

In the face of such a galvanizing force, exhaustion gave up
its fight for possession of her body. She was out of her seat and back in her
studio in moments, her spell balls and spells in hand. She took her place at
the heart of the mandorla, between the silver arc and the gold, and laid out
her spell, and this time—
this
time—the
celestial names lifted her into a corridor of unearthly beauty. It might have
been made of glass or of clear, frozen water. She saw it for only an instant,
for that was how long it took her to reach her destination, the cesia.

This time she did not collapse unceremoniously to the
ground. This time she did not find herself yanked back again from whence she’d come as if attached
by a bowstring. The sandy stone floor of the holy place was solid beneath her
slippered feet and the night wind whispered congratulations into her burning
ears and tickled her nose with its cool perfume.

She looked up at the star-studded night sky and breathed a
prayer of thanksgiving into the night breeze. Then she carefully drew a
mandorla before the altar in a tracery of light, stood at its heart, and
returned herself to her chambers for a much-needed sleep.

Up with the Sun despite her late night, Kassia woke Beyla
by appearing in his room without using the door. After his glee subsided, she
saw to their breakfast, sent him to Shagtai, and prepared to show Zakarij and
Master Lukasha what she had accomplished for her night’s work. At the moment she would normally walk into
Master Lukasha’s
library, she simply appeared there, traversing the ‘glass corridor’ in the wink of an eye.

She exceeded her own expectations. Not only were Zakarij and
Lukasha in the library when she stepped out of thin air, but Damek as well. It
was, Kassia decided, worth every sleepless, frustrating hour she had invested
just to hear his startled bleat and see the stricken expression on his face.
Zakarij seemed more bemused than startled, and Lukasha’s face went from stunned disbelief to obvious
delight.

She told him all about the journal then, and her
experimentation and her deciphering of Pater Honorius’ runes. She showed him the
symbols and the list of celestial and earthly names. Zakarij left off his
examinations and, together with Master Lukasha, they pored over the writings
while Damek hovered in the background, unable to do more than snort and grunt
to vent his displeasure as Kassia described her journey to comprehension.

“Do
you expect us to believe,” he sneered at one point, “that
Marija of Ohdan whispered in your ear?”

Lukasha, not about to let his assistant’s ill will dampen his
pleasure, only laughed. “Damek
the Unimaginative she calls you, and so you are. She stepped out of the ether,
by God! Yet you cavil at a gentle visitation? Go tidy your books and leave the
magic to us.”

Scalded, Damek left the Mateu and his companions to their
task. Lukasha didn’t
even mark his departure; he had already immersed himself in the runes and
notations. He grilled Kassia about the spell’s workings and the path she had followed to
success. With Zakarij in tow, he escorted her to her own studio, from which he
had her demonstrate the spell several more times, his eyes on her every move.

They moved to the journal next, Zakarij lending translations
of the Latin. Of Honorius’ use of catalysts, Marija had written:
Never does he use the word
‘
spirits
’
in
writing of the elements and catalysts. One must mark these words instead:
“
angels
”
,
“
aspects
”
,
“
faces
”
or
“
names
”
.
I once thought him needlessly obscure, before I understood the virtue of
obscurity.

”The
virtue of obscurity?” Lukasha repeated, his voice sharp with frustration. “Is there no indication
of what these catalysts are or why they have been deleted?”

“Pater
Honorius was evidently more than a little afraid of our ‘pagan’ magic,” said Zakarij. “See
how he avoids using the word ‘spirits’ when he speaks of the catalysts? He seemed to have an aversion to
traditional terminology. Perhaps the missing equations called upon Mat and
Itugen themselves. Having seen how Pater Julian reacts to their mention . . .”

Kassia nodded. “Yes,
I see. If the material name of a spirit allows you to
see
a place,
and the celestial name to
go
there, the natural
progression to the third level of power would seem to be the use of a still
higher order of name.”

Lukasha’s
eyes were on Kassia’s
face, but she knew he wasn’t
seeing her. “But
there must be four catalysts. We’ve
both already tried squaring the base elements themselves.”

Kassia’s
heart leapt. “Not
with this formula. Not with the spell balls placed just so and not facing the
proper direction and not from the mandorla.”

Even as she spoke, she went into action, laying out the
spell balls, facing the eastern horizon. She chanted the equation, this time
calling upon Air, Earth, Fire and Water, repeating the order with the names of
their symbolic elements—Asur,
Lien, Rez and Alka.

The result was spectacular. She was overspread by a
brilliant canopy of light that pulsed with all the hues of the called
catalysts . . . but she went nowhere and, though she did catch a glimpse of the cesia at
the Zelimirid palace, the image was more dreamlike than real.

“That
wasn’t it,” she said glumly when she’d
let the canopy fold in on itself.

Lukasha agreed. “Beautiful
but ineffective. The elements are not the key.”

“I
should have expected not. Honorius’ notes make it clear the catalysts are things contained in the forces,
not the forces themselves.”

“In
a way,” Zakarij observed, “Mat
and Itugen are contained in their creation.”

“But
they are only two,” said Lukasha, “and
there are four catalysts for this spell.”

“Perhaps
they are four names for the God and Goddess,” persisted Zakarij. “Itugen is sometimes
called Milada and Amaliya. Mat is sometimes referred to as Boh. Together they’re known as the King
and Queen of Heaven.”

They tried those names also, and although Kassia felt power
vibrating her body and tingling in her fingertips, and she was able to concoct
a wonderful, glistening shield of iridescent light, her form did not so much as
waver before the eyes of her companions. There was, however, a sudden gathering
of clouds over Lorant, and the flash of light her spell engendered was met by a
flash of lightning outside and followed by a crack of spell-borne thunder. She
quickly allowed the spell to collapse.

“What
happened to this last set of names?” mused Lukasha when they had abandoned their experiments sometime later. “Who could have effaced
them? Pater Honorius?”

“Perhaps
the Tartars did it,” said Kassia, rubbing tired eyes. “Perhaps it offended them in some way. Or perhaps
Pater Honorius effaced them to keep the Tartar shamans from using them. The
third level of power is supposedly the highest—to control. Although . . .” She tugged at her lower lip. “It’s possible Marija didn’t copy them for some
reason.”

“Maybe
they were indecipherable,” suggested Zakarij.

“No,
she would have tried. Maybe, having deciphered them, she hid them somewhere.”

Lukasha shook his head, disappointment heavy in his face. “As useful to us as the
lesser manifestations of this spell can be, I must believe that this highest
level must be even more so, perhaps by an order of magnitude. Kassia, bring me
Marija’s journal,” Lukasha bid her, and she reluctantly obeyed.

Though he examined the journal’s mutilated sections, Lukasha could bring to them
no new insights. Still, Kassia’s
worst fear was not realized; Lukasha did not take the book from her keeping. He
returned it to her with a dual charter, to teach him the Window and Traveling
spells and to probe further for the missing catalysts and their possible uses.

Her Master did not take to the spells with the same facility
she had—a thing
which distressed Kassia almost as much as it surprised her. Was it his age, she
wondered. Was he growing weak? Or was it merely that to a practitioner of
almost pure celestial magic, the use of earth forces, so long dammed away from
anyone’s use,
simply came with more difficulty? The Window spell worked well enough with
sustained practice—though
he seemed to have trouble focusing it across distances further than the next
room—but the
Traveling spell eluded him completely for some time. After nearly a week of
struggle, he at last was able to port himself from room to room in the college
(always in his private rooms), but even that meager success severely taxed his
strength, both mentally and physically.

Surprisingly, he was angry at his self-defined failure. He
had less patience with himself than he ever had displayed with Kassia and she
found herself taking him to task for being too hard on himself.

“Why
should you find this natural? It’s
half shai magic, which is surely the only reason I can do anything with it. You
taught me the rest of it, which wasn’t
easy for me either, at first. I think you should be at least as patient with
yourself as you were with me.”

He laughed and raised a hand against her scolding. “Granted, Kiska mine.
Granted. But this Itugenic magic is so very difficult to control. It’s like trying to put a
bit and bridle on a raging fire.”

“And
aeromancy is easy? I found controlling air like . . . like
trying to catch a breeze in a fish net.”

Lukasha grimaced. “Yes,
I’m sure you did—for all of two minutes.
I’ve been at this
for days. But—” He raised his had again to preempt any further argument. “But I must learn it,
however long it takes me.”

oOo

It took another four days before Lukasha was able to hold
the balance necessary for the use of the Traveling spell. In a week more of
steady improvement, he worked on concentration of will and consistency, until
his handling of earth elements and forces was nearly as smooth as his handling
of celestial ones. He still had a bit of a problem with distance, but not because
of the newness of geomancy. He was loathe to admit it to anyone, even Damek (or
perhaps especially Damek)—because
the true root of his unstable sorcery was his uneasiness at the thought of
traveling such immense distances through a realm he had once thought familiar,
but now realized was utterly alien.