The Spirit Gate (40 page)

Kassia’s
heart staggered slightly and she whispered through stiff lips, “Where have you sent
him?”

“To
Khitan province. His task is to shield the Gherai Khan from arcane intrusion.”

He might as well have plunged her into ice water. Was that
the “arcane step” he had taken to assure the kagan’s
dissuasion?

Seeing her obvious fear, Lukasha put a hand on her shoulder.
“My dear Kiska,
Zakarij is a young man of outstanding ability. Do you actually think he would
let the Mongols see him?”

“No,
I suppose not, I just . . . He’ll have to be so close to the Khan for the shield
to work and I . . . we . . .”

Lukasha smiled, his eyes kindling. “Yes, I know. Zakarij tells me you are to be wed. I
shall be pleased to perform your bonding incantation . . . when
this is all over.”

She hugged him for that and went to her room, her emotions a
swirl of quiet chaos. She intended to nap, but instead found herself taking up
her favorite reading material. Marija’s
life, too, seemed to be taking a more positive turn, for she was installed as a
Mateu, and in her first year in that role, met the man she would marry, the
Mateu Zbaraz. Kassia read with interest at first, but before long, weariness
overcame her and she slept, dreaming of a woman in Mateu’s vestments—a
woman that was at once Marija and herself.

oOo

The Mongol camp was on the move. Yurts were pulled down
and stowed in an amazingly small measure of time, soldiers mounted fleet
chargers, women and children scurried to horseback howdahs and travois piled
with their meager belongings. Zakarij, from his vantage point among an
outcropping of rocks, concentrated on the man who, for all his diminutive size,
was obviously the master of all this. He was a handsome man. A man upon whom
command sat easily. If Master Lukasha was correct, he was also a man being
driven by demons that did not arise from within him.

It was on the Gherai kagan that Zakarij concentrated his
senses then. He tried to block the supposed source first, just to see if it
might work this time. It did not. Not only did his attempt to break the flow of
energies between the Mongol and his unseen assailant fail, but he could feel the
arcane thread that bound the two, feel it as if it were made of lightning. It
was just as Kassia had told him, it was not Benedict . . . and
yet, somehow, it was.

Confused by that paradox, he gave the ward a slight twist,
using Bastion, the wall of stone, as his catalyst, but the wall was useless;
the alien magic slipped through it as if his wall were made of mesh. He
frowned, his eyes picking out his target amid the chaos below. Perhaps if he
tried something more general—a
different kind of ward. That, at least, would keep him from having to bide so
near the Tartar leader. But his target was moving. There was no time. The Khan
was mounted now, glancing about, surveying the activity around him. Any moment
he might call for his forces to move out.

Moving with all speed, Zakarij described a mandorla in the
soft earth, hoping that would give his shield extra potency, then he set the
ward. He knew the moment the catalyst left his lips that it was too stretched,
too weak. The invisible spirit fabric began to tear as soon as it took form.
Zakarij tried again, this time with Bastion as a catalyst, but the heavy
earthen spirit could not be molded into such a form. It collapsed.

As Zakarij hesitated, uncertain how to proceed, he felt a
sudden, unnameable change in the spell that seemed to surround the Mongol
leader. Below, the kagan reined in his horse and turned his face to the wooded
slope where the Aspirant had concealed himself. Zakarij’s heart all but stopped in his chest, for it seemed
to him that the warrior was staring directly at him. He swiftly shored up his
own shield and withdrew into the trees.

He removed himself several hundred yards into the ever
thickening forest and there described a mandorla on the ground. Placing himself
in the middle of it, he was obliged to let loose of the ward that shielded him
from the eyes of others so that he might perform the Traveling spell that would
take him back to Tabor . . . and Kassia. He could only pray she
had some idea of what might be done to stop the Gherai. He had raised his hand
to the elemental necklace at his throat—Lukasha’s refinement on the
spell balls—had
opened his mouth to begin the spell when he was surrounded by Tartar horsemen.

His concentration shattered, he threw up a shielding spell
intended to obscure him from sight. Its success was written on the faces of the
horsemen ringing him. In a welter of confusion, they cried out, gesturing and
looking to their leader for direction.

The kagan’s
eyes never left him. When he moved, seeking physical cover, they followed him.
He bolted and ran, weaving into the deeper underbrush, praying the kagan’s horse could not
follow. He headed downslope, thinking the scramble over uneven ground would be
easier for him than for a hoofed pursuer.

He wished it were dark—darkness might afford him more cover. Then he did
more than wish. Pausing only momentarily, he invoked Mat and loosed a storm
spell into the sky. The winds heard him and obeyed. The forces Mat commanded
danced and reeled, and clouds gathered, dark and threatening, overhead. The
forest greens and golds melted into a field of grays. Zakarij sought their
anonymity. He could hear the tumbling of rocks from above him, and the deep
chuffing of a horse. He tried to melt into the shadows—a difficult thing given that his tunic was the
color of a summer sky.

His wild journey came to an abrupt halt where the woods were
cut by a broad slab of solid rock. He glanced upslope. The treeless platform
seemed to rise all the way to the crown of the hill. He glanced downslope.
There it ended in a jumble of broken granite.

“Sorcerer!”

Zakarij gasped, jerking his head around. He saw nothing.
Heard nothing. The voice came to him again, borne on his bespelled wind.

“Sorcerer!
I will not harm you! Surrender to me for you cannot hide!”

Ignoring the words, Zakarij scrambled downslope along the
tree line toward the rocky maze below. He kept his mind on his goal, trying to
deny the sounds of pursuit. Rain began to fall. Zakarij blessed it and kept
moving, slipping and sliding his way to what he hoped would be a sanctuary. The
pile of boulders were slick with rain by the time he reached them. He threw
himself at them with abandon, scrambling over the rough surfaces to find
himself atop a maze. Rising uncertainly to a half-crouch, he searched for
anything that would offer cover.

He sensed more than heard the approach of his pursuer and
gave his back trail a hasty glance. Lightning flashed, illumining the slope. He
thought he saw a glint of metal, a blur of movement among the trees some thirty
yards behind him. It was in trying to keep his eyes on that movement as he
crept forward over the rocks that he made a disastrous misstep. The solid rock
disappeared from beneath his feet and he tumbled head first into a seemingly
endless crevasse.

At the end of a painful eternity, Zakarij lay in darkness
so profound he knew it was not entirely the result of his meager sorcery.
Somewhere far above him was a narrow slash of dark gray-blue. He had no real
idea how long he had lain there—only
the darkness of the sky hinted that it may have been hours. At any moment he
expected to see the silhouette of the Khan blocking his narrow window. That did
not happen. Nothing happened.

After a while he took stock of himself and was relieved to find
that nothing was broken, though he ached and stung and bled in a number of
places. With some effort, he was able to pull himself into a crouching position
and from there, stretched painfully upright. He was in a chimney of sorts—a narrow, sheer tube of
rock that offered him no hand hold. Nor, he realized, did it offer him any
place to describe a mandorla from which to issue a Traveling spell.

At the same moment that depressing thought struck him, so
did a wave of pain and vertigo. He staggered, striking his forehead against the
rocks. Somehow he managed to lower himself to the floor of the chimney without
further injury. The effort was enough to completely sap his strength. His
senses reeled and the already gloomy place seemed to grow even darker. He was
losing consciousness; he could feel the numbing gray creeping up on him.
Desperate, he let his thoughts go to Kassia.

oOo

A solid thump awakened Kassia from her dreams. She sat up
too suddenly, winced at the stiffness in her neck, and struggled to orient
herself. Had someone knocked at her door? She swung her feet to the floor,
listening. When the thumping wasn’t
repeated, she felt around in search of her shoes and found, instead, Marija’s journal. It was on
the floor where it had fallen, open, standing upright on its top edge. She
reached down and fetched it, smoothing some bent corners, checking to make sure
the binding hadn’t
torn. It hadn’t.
But it had come unstitched along the top edge.

A closer look made Kassia’s breath stop in her throat. A bit of linen paper
peeked out of the open gap. She tugged at it gently and it came free. In her
hand was a flat roll made up of two small pages—pages torn from the journal and hidden here.
Frowning, trembling, Kassia read the entries.

Maius 24:
The monks conduct their lives by the light of their
own venerable scripture, which they call a Bible. Master Boleslas tells me this
is a Greek word that means “book.” It’s a
collection of books, actually, written and compiled over centuries, much as our
own religious writings have been. Pater Honorius evidently set much store by
this volume of collected wisdom, and even credited the physical book itself
with some arcane powers. Most notably he spoke of it as if it might protect him
from the evils he imagined himself to be surrounded by.

I have found Pater Honorius’s Bible. (How cool my words look on paper!) Zbaraz
teases me that the Book, which I found in the library beneath what used to be
the monastery’s
chapel altar, has eclipsed even our wedding which we celebrated the same day.
He extracted a promise from me to set the book aside for a time and I have kept
that promise with a difficulty I shall never admit to my husband. At the first
opportunity (when Zbaraz finally relinquishes me for a moment!) I will examine
it further.

Junius 5:
Clever Honorius! I never would have expected my dear
monk to be so good at deception. The wooden front cover of his Bible is
hollowed out and in it is contained a list of elemental names that I believe
will allow access to the third, most powerful level of the Traveling spell.
Many of these names I have never seen before. I am not even sure to which
elements some of them pertain. I should note that this discovery will surely
affect not just the Far Vision and Traveling spells, but any that require
squared elementals. I am full of both excitement and disappointment.
Disappointment because the key to the use of these names was, according to my
monk, secreted in the back cover or this same Bible. The back cover, alas, is
missing, having either been accidentally or intentionally torn away.

There was some more about Zbaraz at the end of the page
which ended in mid-sentence. The second page contained an undated partial entry
from what Kassia guessed was a later time period.

Master Boleslas has asked that I cease my work with the names I
unearthed. He needn’t
have asked me. After last night, I would have gladly wished them into oblivion,
and myself with them. Forgive me, gracious God, for I fear I have unleashed a
storm in Polia. I have—

The next words were effaced, scratched over roughly with
ink, so that the paper was slightly abraded. Kassia had already tried a number
of arcane tricks to bring lost sentences to light—now, as she stared at the damaged page, it occurred
to her to try something utterly mundane. She called on a spirit lamp, and
tilting the page so that the light from the lamp fell obliquely across the
page, she squinted at the words there. She was just able to make out the
letters R, e, and t. “I
have ret . . .” Further along the line she found the words “Bible” and “to.”

Kassia turned the page over. Here Marija chronicled the
first reports from Tabor of the Tamalid incursions, and made one cryptic
comment. “In the
pages of Honorius’ Bible,” she wrote, “it
speaks of ‘reaping
the whirlwind’. I
believe that is a fitting punishment for those of us who, like Honorius, have
sown the maelstrom. But, dear God, why must all be punished for the sin of one?”

I have returned the Bible to its place.
Was that
was Marija had written?

Kassia closed the journal, leaving the torn pages tucked
within. If Marija had returned the Bible to its place, surely that could only
mean the place she found it—the
altar in what was now Lorant’s
library. Bolting from her chair, Kassia sent a thought before her to locate her
Master and discovered that he was in his own rooms. She went there, heart
racing, Marija’s
journal in hand, and shared her thoughts with him. She was pleased, even
relieved, when he asked her to return to Lorant immediately to find Honorius’ holy book.

“I
don’t wish you to
be long absent, Kassia,” he told her. “But
this could afford us the power we need to rid our king of outside interference.”

“Master,
it’s clear from
her notes that Marija made some sort of horrible mistake that, as she put it,
sowed a maelstrom. I don’t
understand what that means, but . . .”

“But
you fear we shall make the same mistake?” He shook his head. “No, Kassia. We shall
not. Have faith.”

She did have faith—in
Lukasha, in Zakarij. She wanted to have faith in herself. That was harder,
though there were few she would admit it to. Returning to her chambers, she
tried to quell the gnawing anxiety in the pit of her stomach with a murmured
prayer before putting on the elemental necklace Lukasha had fashioned for her
and laying out her mandorla. She was standing in the confluence of the two
rings when she knew that Zakarij needed her. Darkness flooded her head; there
was cold and pain. And then, nothing.