The Spirit Gate (48 page)

“I’m sorry, Master,” she said.

He made a dismissive gesture and turned away from them. “I understand now why
Honorius and Marija both sought to hide the spell. My only question is why they
did not completely destroy it and obliterate all mention of it.”

“We
wondered that as well,” Kassia admitted. “Marija
only says that she felt she had already overstepped her bounds by presuming to
use it, and felt she had no right to destroy what was, at its source, a
spiritual creation of Mat and Itugen.”

Lukasha gestured toward the journal, still in Kassia’s hands. “These books contain
the evidence of what you say?”

Kassia nodded, holding the journal out to him, the excised
pages tucked beneath the back cover. He took it, then held out the other hand
for the Bible, which was in Zakarij’s
possession. “Perhaps
it is time someone did take responsibility for the destruction of such a magic.
Leave these with me. When I’ve
studied them, I’ll
decide what’s to
be done. You two have shouldered more than your share of this. Think of it no
more.” He set the books down on his work table and smiled. “Celek is but days
away, yet I think we might arrange a dual Investment/Accession ceremony for a
new Mateu and a new Aspirant.”

Exhilarated and warmed, Kassia threw her arms around her
Master and embraced him fervently. Even in this moment of great frustration, he
could still think of someone else, could consider her feelings and Zakarij’s.

“Poor
Kiska,” he said as she released him. “I
hope you do not think too badly of your fallen heroine. I often think we are
unfair to make of anyone a legend.”

She shook her head and murmured something vague, but his
words struck her. She hadn’t
thought of how her personal feelings for Marija Boh-itu were affected by this
rush of discovery. Now she did. She had come to love this woman she had never
known, had come to think of her as a sister rather than a legend. So now, she
did not so much see a hero who had fallen as a sister who had erred through
human weakness. If she dared use the Twilight spell, Kassia thought, she would
return to Marija’s
youth and warn her against curiosity and arrogance.

oOo

The remainder of the week was pleasant enough. Kassia and
Beyla spent much time in the midst of Zakarij’s family. She visited Asenka, who was beside
herself with joy, and Janka who was grudgingly congratulatory. Devora baked her
adopted daughter and grandson a wealth of beautiful things, and promised more
for the wedding ceremony. Shagtai fashioned kites to celebrate their rise in
station and announce their wedding. Lukasha, true to his word, said no more
about the situation in Tabor, nor did he mention what decision he had come to
regarding the Twilight magic. Neither Kassia nor Zakarij asked.

On Celek eve, the courtyard at Lorant was awash in streamers
and overflown with kites and banners. The great gates were thrown open and all
the village invited to enter them. Asenka brought her family—even her husband was
in attendance, more for the free food and drink, Kassia suspected, than out of
any sense of family. At the hour of sunset, all congregated in the cesia for
the dual ceremony. There, with the great stone columns awash with fiery light,
Kassia ascended to the rank of Aspirant, then looked on with loving pride as
Zakarij, dressed in the gleaming white robes of his new station, was invested
as a Mateu.

“It’s a strange feeling,” he confided in Kassia as he prepared to assume his new duties. “I’ve spent so much of my
life studying for this, serving Master Lukasha. It’s hard for me to grasp that I’m no longer in
preparation. I am a Mateu. I only wish I felt I was deserving of it.”

“What
do you mean?” Kassia asked him. “Of
course you’re
deserving of it. Look at what you’ve
done to protect the king.”

“None
of which I could have done without you. You’ve tutored me, encouraged me, given me insights
into things that were mysteries before. You even once saved my life.”

“And
so? Haven’t you
done the same for me?”

“When
have I saved your life?”

“If
I had not loved you, Zakarij, I think I would have let Michal Zelimir make a
concubine of me. I would have let him convince me it was my duty. I think I can
say you saved my life . . . and Beyla’s. I hate to think what might become of a shai
concubine’s fey
son once there were legitimate heirs to fear him.”

Zakarij ceased ordering his books for the move to his new
personal offices and came to take her in his arms. “Might you have loved Michal Zelimir?”

She shook her head. “No.
Only I hadn’t
expected to love anyone after Shurik. A companionable relationship with a king
might not have struck me as such a bad thing.”

“Companionable?
From what I observed, Michal Zelimir’s
feelings for you were a good deal more than companionable. I can’t pretend not to
understand,” he added and kissed her.

All concerns about Michal Zelimir melted away in that
gentle, sensual assault. She gave herself over to the kiss, to the feel of his
arms about her, to the caress of his hands. “Magician,” she called him, when at last he raised his head, and he laughed.

A week later, Kassia had almost forgotten about Tabor. If
there was bad news from that quarter, or good, Master Lukasha did not share it
with her. He spent a great deal of his time closeted with Damek, who seemed
even more smug than usual, if that were possible.

A strange disquiet intruded into Kassia’s idyllic existence.
She told herself it was guilt at leaving her Master to shoulder the worries of
the realm alone. Finally, she undertook to contact Master Antal herself and
received a hopeful report. Though he had tried, Benedict seemed unable to
manipulate those of Zelimir’s
advisers the Tabori Mateu had undertaken to protect. Further, things between
the king and the girl from Bytomierz seemed to be quite amicable. Any day now,
Master Antal told her, he expected to see their wedding kites flying over the
courtyard.

Pleased at the report, Kassia returned to the contemplation
of her own wedding kites, which were due to be raised that very day. A month
from then, at the Reaping, she and Zakarij—Master Zakarij, now—would be wed. It seemed that the Bishop of Tabor
was not such an awesome foe as she had feared.

The couple released their wedding kites as the Sun rose to
its zenith. White and pale blue trimmed with gold, the two kites, joined by a
gauzy golden sash, gave public testimony to private joy. Kassia held one
string, Zakarij the other, while Beyla looked on, his face wreathed in smiles.
He shared Kassia’s
kite, a golden symbol placed on both fabric flanks to indicate that the woman
of the pale blue kite had a son. Both kites carried stylized information about
the couples’ families, ages and station in life. Kassia, her eyes on the kite,
fingered the shiny new paiza that hung on a silken cord around her neck.
Aspirant Kassia, it called her, of the family Telek. When she married Zakarij,
that would also be added to the jade lozenge.

There was a brief ceremony, during which words were spoken,
a song was sung, and the couple braided their kite strings together before
turning them over to Shagtai. Master Lukasha seemed content and at ease, and
even the old kite master smiled. Kassia could not remember feeling so complete
or so happy, and felt a brief pang of guilt that, for a longer time than she
could have imagined, she had ceased to think of Shurik Cheslaf. She sent a
prayer of thanksgiving heavenward, and took Beyla to the garden for his
lessons.

“Mama,” he said as they passed beneath the arbor in the garden wall, “when you and Zak are
married, may I call him ‘Da?’”

She gazed at him for a long moment, tears pressing for
release. “I’m sure he’d love to hear you
call him ‘Da’.” She led him to the stone bench within the circle of late summer roses,
pulled him into her lap and began to speak to him about the balance in creation
between Mat and Itugen. In the back of her mind she spared a thought for Michal
Zelimir, far away in Tabor, and wondered what he would think when the news of
her wedding reached him.

oOo

Benedict’s
stomach rebelled noisily beneath the brocaded panel of his vestments. It had
been in a high state of agitation since his confrontation with the shai in her
so-called holy place. So had his soul and spirit. They were far more quiet
about it, however, and caused him considerably less pain. He was furious to
have been so soundly thwarted by the disjointed efforts of the Daliboran Mateu
and his coterie of sirens and devils. Pater Julian was so badly frightened as
to be useless; he couldn’t
even bring himself to enter his own sanctuary, and Benedict had had to replace
him during mass with a neophyte priest fresh out of the University of Paris.

The only comfort he took in all of this was that neither the
Mateu nor their shai seductress had recognized the source of his power, naively
assuming he would deal only in theurgy, and never have recourse to the
so-called ‘black
arts’. He hoped that would prove a costly mistake on their part. If they knew
half of what he did about the ways of the ancient Polian shamans, they would
surely recognize that his arcane powers arose from the same general source as
did their own. The only difference was that Benedict cared very little what
time of the magical “day” he called upon—Light,
Darkness and Twilight were all the same to him. The distinction between the
pagan Heaven, Earth and Hell was, to him, just so much superstition. His
strength was in the recognition of that fact; he could make use of the letter
of the shaman’s
art without believing one bit in its spiritual foundation. He doubted any Mateu
he had met could say the same, and it was that belief that hindered them from
using the great well-spring of magic that lay, quite literally, just under
their noses.

It was not so much a matter of what they
could
not do, as of what they
would
not.

Benedict had never revealed his study of shamanistic
practices, of course, for it might have been construed as sacrilege or even
blasphemy on his part. He had, in his younger days, been sent to the monastery
of Zielona Gora. It was a cold, dreary, boring place hemmed in by the
oppressive crags of the surrounding mountain range. There was nothing for him
to do but pray, meditate, read, or do penance for neglecting one or more of the
former sacred obligations. He found he enjoyed reading more than the other
monkish pastimes. In that rarefied social atmosphere, a young Benedict found
the scribblings of the monastery’s
earliest inmates of extreme interest.

He bided his time just now, waiting for an opportunity to
glide through Zelimir’s
gradually weakening ward. It worried him that the longer he waited, the closer
to the king his pagan princess insinuated herself. He tapped the veil of
resistance now and again, looking for a weak spot in its invisible fabric. He
did that now as he moved toward a meeting with the king, but discovered no such
weakness.

The meeting was formal. Zelimir kept his distance from the
Bishop and insisted that Chancellor Bogorja be in the room at all times. The
subjects were various; the celebration of Advent, still several months away;
the special mass Fiorella wished to celebrate on the next sabbath; her
additional request that the king join her for mass and for the morning meal
afterward.

He was waiting for Zelimir’s reply when they were interrupted by a courier
with the morning’s
news, just brought in from the watch tower. Cursing the interruption, Benedict
gritted his teeth while Chancellor Bogorja read the list of messages that had
been relayed by kite from the nearest yam. He curled his lip in distaste when
the announcement of the marriage of Aspirant Kassia Telek to the newly invested
Mateu Zakarij was made, found his eyes pulled to Zelimir’s face by unexpected intensity of the younger man’s reaction. His
Majesty was pale as the infernal stones of his cesia and began to tremble,
whether with loss or rage, Benedict could not tell.

“Majesty?” He interrupted the oblivious Bogorja’s droning to lay a gentle hand on the Emperor’s arm. “Majesty, are you
unwell?”

The Chancellor stopped reading and glanced at his lord’s ashen face. “Sire! What is wrong?”

Zelimir made an effort to collect himself, then laughed
brittlely. “Only
sick of love, Chancellor.” He took a deep breath. “Somehow
I didn’t believe
she was serious about her Aspirant. I see I was wrong.”

“The
Lady Kassia, you mean, my lord?”

Zelimir nodded, then gestured for Bogorja to leave the
messages and depart. “I’ll read the rest of it
later. I’m not in
the mood for more good tidings at the moment.”

The Chancellor hesitated. “Are you certain you wish me to leave, Majesty?” He glanced pointedly at Benedict.

The Bishop was oblivious to Bogorja’s ill will, marveling, instead, at what his secret
senses told him about the King’s
state of mind. With the news of Kassia’s
impending marriage had come a distinct, almost audible crack in the invisible
armor she had placed around Michal Zelimir. The Bishop nearly gasped aloud at
the realization that Zelimir, himself, had been partially in control of the
ward. So, the little witch was learning to use others to externally focus her
spells. He wondered if she even realized what she had done.

Now, there was a chink in the armor she had given Zelimir.
He had, for the merest moment, ceased to feed the ward his desire for its
existence. In that moment, it had faltered.

“Yes,
yes. Go ahead,” Zelimir was saying. He made the dismissive gesture again, an almost
petulant expression on his face. “I
still have some things to discuss with the Bishop.”

Bogorja bowed and left, throwing Benedict a parting glare,
as if he suspected his king was being manipulated by the ecclesiastic.