The Spirit Gate (4 page)

“If
Kassia pays rent, we can afford—”

Kassia could stand no more. To be talked around was bad
enough; to be talked about and around at the same time was unbearable. She held
up her hands, wanting nothing more than to verbally thrash Blaz Kovar within an
inch of his disagreeable life, willing to forego that pleasure only for her
sister’s sake.

“Please
stop! Blaz, I know you’ve
not welcomed Beyla and me these last three years. It was only for Aska you let
us stay. Well, I’ve
not been happy either. It pains me to be the cause of discord between you.
Because of that I’m
only too happy to leave. But if you’re
of a mind to take this little bit of money I’ve earned—”

“Ah!
Now it’s only ‘a little bit of money’. A moment ago it was this great treasure!”

“It’s a lot of money to
me, brother-in-law, but in Ursel Trava’s
eyes it’s less
than a month’s
rent. If you want it, you’re
welcome to it, but know that if you take it, it’ll be that much longer I’ll be forced to stay under your thatched roof.”

Blaz’s
mouth screwed itself into an wizened blotch. “Fine. Keep your damned witch money, if it’ll get you out of here
sooner. I want you out before the month’s
up, Kassia Telek. Stay one day longer and I will have some of your so-called
earnings.” Abandoning his supper, the blacksmith stomped around the table and out
of his house into the night.

In their tiny room later that night, Kassia counted her day’s earnings while Beyla
slept. She began the task on a flood of fierce elation, sifting the coins—silver, copper, and
semi-precious stone—through
her fingers. She, Kassia Telek, had earned this money, money that would pay her
way out of Blaz Kovar’s
house. Her elation soon faded; her entire collection of coins came to only
about a quarter of the twenty rega she needed for rent.

She pondered her situation for a moment, idly staring at the
gleaming bits of metal and stone, then shook herself. Stupid Kassia! Of course
you can’t earn an
entire month’s
rent in the space of one day—who
could? Tomorrow, you will go back and earn more, and more the day after that. A
week’s work for
Ursel Trava’s
rent is not so much, and then . . . And then, she realized, she
must work for food, for clothing, for household necessities. She must have the
time to prepare food, gather wood, care for Beyla and educate him.

She rubbed her cheek, feeling suddenly exhausted, and
wishing, not for the first time, that she had been talented enough to learn her
husband’s craft.
But clay would not obey her clumsy fingers. That had been amusing in the days
when Shurik was alive to tease her about her tortured-looking pots and wilted
bowls; now it added itself to her burden of bitter grief.

Suddenly angry, Kassia gathered up the motley collection of
coins and dumped them into a much-mended pot atop the little hutch that held
her clothing and Beyla’s.
Tomorrow
,
she told herself.
Tomorrow, I will raise my prices and bring back more
.

As she curled herself upon her straw-stuffed mattress, she
thought of Mistress Devora. “You
should cast your own fortune,” the baker had said, and perhaps she was right. But to Kassia Telek, an
unknown and uncertain future was better than a frightening one clearly seen.
She had long had the sense that the village of Dalibor would not contain her,
but what life could she have elsewhere?

She fell asleep to dream of places both strange and
terrifying, where everything moved with the swiftness of the Pavla Yeva in
flood.

oOo

The next morning Kassia fed Beyla and performed her chores
in a rush, anxious to be off to the marketplace again. When she came close to
breaking yet another serving pot, her sister rescued it with able hands and
shooed her away from the house.

“To
market with you!” she said, laughing. “Here’s some money and a
little list of the things I need. If Blaz asks, I’ll tell him you’re out doing the day’s shopping.”

Relieved, Kassia obeyed, taking Beyla with her.

“Mama,
what is it you do in the marketplace?” he asked as they walked, hand-in-hand, through the village.

“I
divine,” she said. “I
tell people’s
fortunes.”

He squinted up at her. “Can you teach me to do this also, so I can earn
money for our rent?”

She shook her head. “You’re a child, Beyla. You
oughtn’t have to
worry just yet about earning our rent.”

“But
mama, Fedor is learning his father’s
trade. He helps in the forge almost every day.” He glanced away across the
road in the direction of Blaz Kovar’s
smithy. “He
hardly has time to play with me any more.”

“Beyla,
Fedor is older than you are, and bigger.”

“He’s only one year older,
and he’s bigger
because he works in the forge. He’s
going to be a blacksmith just like his father.”

While you
, Kassia thought,
have no father to
be like
. Her heart felt leaden in her chest. “I suppose we could ask your uncle Blaz if he’d teach you the family
trade along with his sons.” And faint hope he’d
agree.

“But
that’s
his
family trade, not mine. I don’t
want to follow his trade. I want to follow yours.”

Kassia laughed. “I
don’t have a
trade, Beyla.”

“Yes
you do. You’re an
augur. I heard aunt Aska say so. Teach me how to be an augur too.”

“I
don’t know . . .”

“What
about spells? I can do spells.”

She looked at him sharply. “You what?”

His glance was sly. “You
let the fire go out last Matek. You forgot to bank it down. I know how angry
uncle Blaz gets when that happens. I saw you start it up again.”

She stopped in the middle of the cobbled way and turned to
stare at him. “You
saw me . . .”

“I
thought it was very clever of you, mama. Uncle Blaz never knew. I liked what
you did with those little firebirds. So, I taught myself to do it too.”

Kassia didn’t
know whether to be aghast, amazed or anxious. “You taught yourself . . .?”

He nodded, pride gleaming in his dark eyes. “Shall I show you?” He brought his hands up between them, fingertips touching and ready to
fly open.

She caught his hands, stilling the spell she could feel
tingling, incredibly, beneath her palms. “Not here! Itugen mine, Beyla! You mustn’t do those things in
public! Has anyone ever seen you . . . make a spell?”

“Only
Lenci. I made some of the little firebirds for her once. She thought they were
pretty.”

“She
didn’t tell
anyone?”

He shrugged. “Well,
she told Fedor and Bohdan, but they didn’t believe her. They laughed. They don’t have much
imagination, do they?”

He surprised a laugh out of his mother with that, and
smiled, pleased with himself. Kassia shook her head and started them walking
again, toward the market. “All
right, little Mateu, since you’ve
discovered your gift, it only seems right that I should teach you how to use
it. But you must not tell anyone the things I teach you. And you mustn’t show Lenci any more
firebirds. The next person she tells may believe her.”

“I’m not a Mateu,” Beyla told her solemnly. “I’m shai, like my
mother.”

oOo

Kassia was unable to raise her prices, so the day was no
more lucrative than the first, but she told herself that only meant it would
take a little longer than she had expected to make the necessary money. By the
end of the week, she had collected only fifteen rega and some small change.
That made it hard to be optimistic. If she must work for ten days to earn the
rent . . .

No, she told herself stubbornly, that left plenty in which
to earn the remainder of their living expenses. Besides, there were still her
herbals. She sold those, too, in the marketplace of Dalibor, while Beyla acted
as a shill, using his unusual appearance and winsome manners to draw people to
the white-haired woman with the handcart full of herbal potions who would
handle some personal belonging, stare into their souls and tell them what of
their foreseeable future she thought they might wish to hear.

She saw the watchful Mateu again on several occasions—at least she thought
it was the same one who’d
stared at her that first day. She thought, once, that he meant to speak to her,
but the well-timed appearance of a customer held him at bay. She was glad of
that; it would have galled her to be chided by one of the sorcerer-priests in
such a public place.

When the day of worship arrived Kassia thought deeply about
what she would take to the
cesia
to offer to Itugen and
Mat. It was no ordinary worship day, but marked the first Celek of the New
Year. Planting season was upon them and this year hopes were higher than ever
before. There had been much rain, but no flooding, the new growth in the
forests was lush, the soil regaining its fertility.

It was a new year for Kassia, too, though she planted
nothing. She was plying a trade now, and therefore must have a suitable
offering—something
more than the little vials of herbals she had left at their altar at Solstice.

“I’m going to give
firebirds,” Beyla told her as they made the journey to Dalibor’s village cesia.

Across the Pavla Yeva they went, on the new bridge of stone
and wood, past the tangle of uprooted trees and debris on its opposite shore,
through the stark, silent forest with its wraith-trees, and up the long, rocky
hill—Little Holy
Hill, they called it in deference to the larger mount upon which Lorant sat.

They were part of a procession of worshipers, each bringing
to their God and Goddess a small portion of what was theirs by right. Ahead of
them, Mistress Devora carried a fine, big loaf of braided bread—the best of the
morning’s batch,
Kassia knew. She also knew that, somewhere behind, the Kovar family carried one
of the little bronze figurines Blaz had taken to having his oldest boy make in
practice for the day when he would run the forge. Generally, they were flawed;
Bohdan’s hand was
not yet as sure as his sire’s;
but they represented whatever Blaz considered his most important job of the
year past.

Kassia took a deep breath of the forest’s damp air with its
warring scents of decay and vitality, and fingered the contents of her pocket.
There was a vial of herbal there—a
headache remedy that had sold well during her brief tenure in the marketplace—and a silver alka. It
wasn’t enough—wasn’t even appropriate.
She was selling the future; the money was only a result. The Mateu, she knew,
didn’t frown on
people leaving money at the altar, but her mother had.

“Kiska,” she’d
said, “the Gods
don’t ask for
much from us here—that
we love them, that we think of them as we would think of our parents. If you
asked me for a part of myself, would I give you a mere coin?”

Kassia and Beyla joined the line of worshipers now winding
up the last hundred yards of rutted path to the sacred place atop the hill and
took their place at the fringes of the gathering. She still didn’t know what she had to
give in this New Year.

The worship leader today was a priest; the Mateu only came
to the village cesia during the high holy days and the harvest festival. Kassia
was too young to remember when there had been a priestess at worship as well.
Some villages still had them, but it was rare; public sentiment had so turned
against Itugen’s
daughters during the dark days of the Tamalid empire, that women were all but
banned from performing rites on the hilltops of Polia. Kassia’s own mother might
have been a Mateu had things been different, but Itugen’s blessing hat been withdrawn from the shai—no, from the entire land.

The priest was of middle age—a weary-looking soul, whose devotions seemed not to
revive him in the least. He called the blessing of Mat down upon the assemblage
then implored Itugen to grant a bountiful year. After reminding his flock that
a new year meant new beginnings and a blossoming of hope, he led them in the
chants.

Kassia watched his lined face when she could see it around
the shoulders of the man in front of her. She suspected that if someone were to
interrupt him in the midst of his litany, he would never be able to start up
again. It was all rote to him, and she doubted he would know what hope was if
it reared up and kissed him on the nose. Her mouth twisted in a wry grimace.
The poor man had no doubt lived most of his life under the oppression of the
Tamalids. For him, hope must be a dim memory at best. Kassia turned her head to
find Beyla perched in a tree just behind her. He saw her and smiled.

You will know hope as more than a word
, she told
him silently.

When the chants were done, the priest stepped down from the
tumble of stones that formed the village shrine and disappeared into the forest
behind it, no doubt to make his way back to Lorant from whence he’d come. The villagers
moved, then, to approach that hallowed spot—where Sky met Earth and kissed her—there to leave their
offerings one by one or family by family. Kassia and Beyla hung at the fringes,
Beyla larking about the trees, Kassia pondering her offering.

“Look,
mama,” said Beyla, suddenly beside her and tugging at her skirts. “Mister Trava has
brought an entire plough to give Itugen.”

Kassia glanced up at the shrine. Indeed, Mister Trava had
brought an entire plough as his offering. It was a fine oak plow with a forged
blade painted bright green—Itugen’s color—and he clearly intended
that all see it as his two oldest sons carried it into the circle of stones.
Trava was not the only citizen of Dalibor so ostentatious, and others followed
him quickly, laying their own offerings out, eyes sweeping the crowd to see who
took note. There was no ritual order to the giving of gifts, even at the New
Year, but it had become tradition for the grandest gifts to be given first, by
those with the greatest resources.

Kassia and Beyla waited while the hilltop clearing emptied.
When the last villager had trickled away down the slope, they came to the
altar. The Sun was high by now, and the encircling jumble of huge, rough-cut
stones seemed dark in comparison with the bright glade beyond. Beyla, as
always, marveled at the array of gifts—large
and small, fine and poor—that
lay everywhere within the shrine’s
embrace.