The Spirit Gate (49 page)

Benedict smiled. He hadn’t even begun.

“About
the Duchess’ invitation to mass, Your Majesty . . .”

“Yes.
I suppose so. Tell her, I’ll
come.”

“This
news has hit hard, Majesty. I had not thought you were quite so attached to the
young woman. For all that she is an exotic-looking thing, she is, after all, a
commoner.”

“I
had not thought I was quite so attached to her either. It seems I was wrong.” He fixed the Bishop a penetrating look. “I had thought someone was manipulating me to feel
so strongly for her.”

“Who
should do something like that?”

“You,
perhaps?”

Benedict threw back his head and laughed with a gusto that
surprised even himself. “I?
Majesty, I assure you, I am the last person under heaven who would desire a
liaison between the two of you. Would I have a demon marry a saint?”

“I’m no saint, Your
Grace.”

“No.
But you could be if you married a daughter of the Church and brought your
entire populace under its banner. Men have been canonized for less.”

Zelimir’s
gaze dropped to his clasped hands, unfocused. “Right now, the subject of marriage is . . .
extremely unpleasant. Perhaps what I want is diversion . . .
Tell the Duchess Orsini I would be pleased to have her join me and the ladies
Amadiyeh and Zofia for supper this evening in my private quarters.”

The Bishop was stunned to inaction. Finally he murmured, “Her . . .
companion—”

“Of
course. The presence of her chaperone is a given.”

Benedict left the king with his mind galloping. That Zelimir
now intended to take his decision of a consort seriously was obvious. That he
intended to compare the three women was also obvious. Benedict had no idea how
Fiorella would compare to the Turk and the Polian in those things that pleased
a man like Michal Zelimir, but he did understand that she—and therefore he—was being given an
opportunity to affect the king. The Bishop of Tabor would see to it that she
affected him positively in the extreme.

He went straightaway to the modest quarters the visiting
Duchess had been given at her own request, and there, informed her of the King’s desire for her
presence at a private supper.

The young Duchess, seated in the radiance from a sun-filled
window, hands folded demurely in her lap, raised dark brows and said, “Shall I also be in the
company of these other women?”

“I
think this supper is something in the nature of a competition, my dear. Our
king is at last facing the necessity of his marriage head-on. He will no doubt
compare and contrast you. The most important thing is that you will be allowed
close to him again. I shall, with your aid, take every advantage of that
proximity.”

“What
do you mean, take advantage?”

The Bishop rose from his chair and moved across the polished
floor, watching his own reflection—a
vague angelic billow of white in the golden wood. “God has granted me certain powers, my child. Powers
with which I can influence the thoughts and feelings of other men. Powers that
I can channel through other willing souls. When you dine with King Zelimir
tonight, I can grant you the ability to take possession of his thoughts, to
turn them ever toward yourself and away from your adversaries. With my power—which is the power of
the most Holy Spirit—sustaining
you, you can win Michal Zelimir to yourself.”

The girl was staring at him as if he had begun to caper like
a madman. “Magic?
You would involve me in magic? The idea is . . . repulsive, Your
Grace. You would have me coerce the king? Seduce him with black arts?”

The Bishop sighed.
Dear God, how melodramatic the child
is
. “I
speak of theurgy, Fiorella—divine
magic. The magic that flows from our Lord.”

“But,
Your Grace—”

“There
is nothing to be frightened of, child. I am your Bishop. Surely you cannot
believe I would ask you to do anything that runs counter to God’s holy will and
purpose?”

“I
know nothing of such things.”

“Would
you marry Michal Zelimir?”

Her dark eyes met his. No, she would
not
marry
the pagan king, they said eloquently. But her lips quivered and expelled the
lie. “Yes, Your
Grace.”

“That
is all you need to know. But Fiorella, you must really want it.”

She flushed. “Your
Grace, I—”

He held up a restraining hand. “I know this is not what you might have hoped your
future would hold—exile
to a foreign land, marriage to a pagan man, a life surrounded by the coarse and
the impure. But for the sake of these souls, Fiorella . . .
Think of it. You would be doing the greatest work of the Church—the work of salvation.
As Queen of Polia, you would bring the healing of salvation first to your
husband, and then to all these poor benighted souls. Had you stayed in Lombardy
and married some nobleman, certainly your creature comforts would have been
greater, you would have remained in the bosom of your family, been surrounded
by the familiar and the comfortable, but you would not win for yourself the
crown of living martyrdom which is being offered to you now.”

“It
would be that great a thing?” she murmured, obviously somewhat intrigued with the idea.

“History
will record your selfless deed, child. The Church will call you blessed.
Perhaps it will even proclaim you . . . a saint. Surely
converting a pagan king constitutes a miracle.”

Her lips parted and behind the dark eyes a spark of
determination glinted. She raised her chin and met him eye to eye. “What must I do, Your
Grace?”

He nodded. “Good.
You have passed a spiritual test this day, Fiorella, but a new one is being
prepared for you even now.” He seated himself again on the chair opposite her, drawing it up so that
their knees were nearly touching. “Now,
let’s begin. Give
me your hand. I want you to close your eyes and free your mind from all worry
and distraction. There is nothing here but the sound of my voice. Listen to the
sound of my voice, Fiorella . . .”

When he left her chambers two hours later, the Bishop
Benedict mused that Fiorella Orsini might prove to be an even more perfect
vessel for his power than Pater Julian had been. He had thought unquestioning
willingness the key to the success of a channel, but he now suspected that the
Lombard’s
rock-like will and stoic sense of duty would serve him even better. That he had
discovered in her a secret passion for religious importance could prove a great
bonus. The evening would tell. If she did her job well, Michal Zelimir would be
blind-sided, for he never would expect an attack from that unimposing quarter.
By the time his shai guard dog realized who the real attacker was, hiding
behind the diminutive Lombard, he hoped to have the king wedged firmly between
a raging flood and a fire.

He took himself off to his own quarters then where he would
prepare a second assault on a completely different front.

oOo

Lukasha did not need Master Antal’s bleating to tell him of the Gherai Khan’s sudden renewal of
aggression against the farms and villages of Zelimir’s southern-most darugha. He heard the piteous
mental screams of a handful of Mateu who had ventured there with their
Apprentices from the northeastern province of Sandomierz in an attempt to aid
the victims of the first Mongol inroad.

There were shai there, too, he realized. Young women like
Kassia and, like Kassia, just coming into their powers. The Khan did not kill
them. They were White Mothers. A rare and wonderful commodity. They would live,
but among the Tartars it was unlikely their powers would ever come to fruition.
He raged at the loss and waste, lying awake in his darkened room.

In a while, he called up a spirit light—not a flame such as
Kassia used, but something more akin to bottled sunlight. The flame she
conjured so easily still resisted him. As he prepared to rise, it came to him
with a cold, bitter thrill that though Itugen awoke, though Her daughters began
to revive and Her lands with them, the Bishop Benedict had the means to put it
all at naught. If the Tartars persisted, if the Franks overcame, if Polia fell
to become a land once more divided, crushed, oppressed, all would be as it was
before. Fires, followed by icy storms that brought no rain. Drought. Famine.
Disease. Bloodshed. Itugen would turn Her face away a second time.

Lukasha groaned aloud. It struck him like a leaden weight—Polia’s future could well be
as grim as her past.

No. He could not allow it. This time he would not stand idly
by and watch his homeland be trampled under foreign feet. This time he had a weapon.
He had only to learn its use. That would take a little time yet, he knew, but
he would do it. Until then . . .

The Mateu threw himself out of bed with a will, drew on a
lightweight robe and left his private quarters. Across his public office he
went, to his more private one, from there, up to his studio. He didn’t have all the
catalysts yet for a purely Twilight spell, but he had two that were in
opposition to each other. That was enough to form a powerful Twilight Battle, a
pairing much stronger than the aeromantic Duets he had used for so many years.

At his work table, he lifted a velvet cover from a pair of
spell balls and picked them up, one in each hand. Fire was in his right hand—a gleaming copper ball
which contained a fine powder of ash. Water was in his left—a translucent glass of
sea blue which held the relic of Kassia’s
drowned husband.

On his dais, he stood and faced the south. In that direction
and slightly eastward were arrayed the forces of the Gherai Horde. Further
south still, lay a natural enemy of the pillaging Mongols. It was upon this
enemy that Lukasha focused his entire attention. With a single spell, he
reached across the miles and spoke to the soul of the slumbering Sultan of
Turkey.

The spirit of Fire, Harmattan, fought him to exhaustion, but
the water was a Mateu’s
natural element; Maelstrom obeyed his every thought and kept Harmattan, the
Dragon, under control. The Sultan was his, and in that possession, Lukasha
breathed into him the burning desire to beat the Tartars back from the gateway
to Europe.

He was intent on the battle that would soon be joined. So
intent, he did not realize that a battle had also been joined closer at hand.

oOo

Fiorella moved in an aura of power. It made her skin
tingle, heightened her awareness of every sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.
She was in constant amazement of this magic—most especially of its effects. She had not quite
gotten used to the way the pagan king looked at her now. That made her skin
tingle too. She reminded herself every time he would brush the back of her
fingers with his lips that she did this for the glory of the Church.

Loathing. She felt for this man such loathing, it was all
she could do not to tremble herself to her knees the first time he held her
gaze just a moment too long. And when, during that first, unforgettable supper,
with the lovely Turk and the fiery Polian looking on, he had helped her rise to
her feet, she thought her womb had folded in on itself. She could still feel
the imprint of his hand upon her upper arm—the pressure of his fingers about her own.

She remembered the look on the Polian girl’s face when the man
she no doubt thought was hers, repeatedly turned from her to Fiorella. That
look of bemused hurt was the sweetest thing in the entire encounter. It was
what had made Fiorella realize that the power Bishop Benedict had invested in
her was real. For a moment, it hadn’t
mattered that Michal Zelimir’s
touch was as sharp as the kiss of a dagger.

The agony had only gotten worse. The bishop assured her it
would pass, but it had not. Five days, and it had not. She burned when the
Polian king spoke to her, longing to wriggle out from under his voice as a
rabbit escapes a half-closed snare. They were alone now for brief periods of
time—this at the
bishop’s approval—and during those
periods, she must work at drawing the king toward her, when her every instinct
told her to thrust him away.

At night, she would lie abed in the dark of these alien
rooms and pray for her own failure. For the goal of Benedict’s plan was her
marriage to Zelimir, a marriage that she fully expected would bring about
torture of body and soul. She knew her prayers were destined to go unanswered.
She could feel the power gliding over and around her. Even now, even as she
tried to sleep, little tongues of flame danced through her and tickled her
skin.

A sob caught in her throat. She would marry Michal Zelimir
and he would possess her. She tried to imagine it—because she must be prepared, she told herself—but her imagination
failed her. In the end she would sleep, extrapolating on the brush of warm lips
across her cool palm. Her dreams offered her no sanctuary.

oOo

The Bishop of Tabor stood in the throne room of the king
where, not long before, had stood an envoy from Khitan and the darughachi of Teschen,
giving grim reports of the confrontation in central Khitan between Mongol and
Polian forces.

“You
are losing Khitan, Your Majesty,” Benedict told him. “And
you will lose Teschen too, if you do not act quickly. The Gherai Khan will not
stop until he has struck at the heart of your kingdom and devoured it.”

He paused to study the pale face of the man seated in the
throne. When he spoke again, his voice was softer, gentler. “Think, my son. The
forces of the Khan will eventually meet the Imperial Frankish armies. It is
inevitable. When they have been met, they will be pushed all the way back to
the Crimea. The difference lies in this: that thousands of Polians will have
died, your capital will lie in ruins and you will very likely be dead, as well.
I offer you a chance to beat back the Gherai at the border of Teschen. A chance
to save countless lives, yours included.”

Michal Zelimir made no answer, but merely gripped the arms
of his throne until his knuckles were white.