The Spirit Gate (52 page)

She had no doubt he would do it. And she had no doubt he
thought it his special task to accomplish. He was drunk with the power he had
discovered, and Kassia prayed his inebriation would make him weak.

oOo

Kassia’s
return to Dalibor was not a happy occasion. She dreaded having to lay her
report before Lukasha, loathed the feeling of wretched impotence that gripped
her as she watched her master withdraw into himself. He was silent for a long
time, then sat at his work table, heavily, as if his legs would no longer hold
him.

“So,
we have come to this. The proud kingdom that was purchased with the blood of
thousands of Polian heroes will soon be no more than a ring on the finger of
the Frankish High Bishop.”

“Is
there nothing we can do, Master?”

He looked at her strangely, eyes piercing. In that moment,
Kassia felt as if he read every page of her being. Then his eyes slid away from
hers. He shook his head, his mouth twisted with bitterness.

“Return
to your studies, Kiska. The God only knows how long you will have with them.”

Their interview ended there, and Kassia went away feeling
drained and sorrowful. In the days following more worrisome news came out of
Tabor. Sultan Mehmet, in outrage over the treatment of his kinswoman and stung
by the Polian monarch’s
alliance with Avignon, chased the Mongols out of Zemic only to claim it for
Turkey. Then his forces took the Sandomierzan river port of Kaminiec and drove
her Polian defenders back across the Teschen border.

The nights brought their own disquiet. Kassia’s dreams were dark,
murky pools of viscous motion full of threat and fear. Beyla, too, was
affected, and woke as many as three times in a single night, shrieking with
terror. On their third sleepless night, Kassia went in to her son’s room to find him
staring at the ceiling as if he expected it to open up and swallow him whole.

Quaking and crying, he grasped her arms in a vise-like grip.
“Mama! Make him
stop! Please make him stop!”

“Beyla,
this is only a bad dream. Just hold me and it will pass.”

He shook his head. “Make
him stop, Mama!”

“Who,
Beyla? Make who stop?”

“Master
Lukasha. Please, Mama. He’s
trying to open the gate.”

The words struck a chill to her very soul. He couldn’t mean— “What
gate, Beyla?”

He shook her arm and looked up into her face with an
intensity of expression no child his age should possess. “The gate has to stay
shut, Mama. Master Shagtai said so. It can’t be opened or things will get all mixed up and
twisted.”

“Beyla,
I don’t think
Master Lukasha would open the gate. He knows how dangerous it is.” She said the words more to soothe herself than to soothe her son.

“Are
you sure?” he asked, but there was doubt in his eyes.

She took a deep breath. “I’ll
go talk to Master Lukasha in the morning. I’ll ask him if he’s working with the spell—”

“Now,
Mama. Please go now.”

“He’ll be asleep.”

“He’s not asleep. He’s working magic. That’s what woke me up.”

She nodded. “Yes.
All right. I’ll
go now. You try to go back to sleep.”

She left a spirit flame burning in his room and went to draw
on a light wrap. She had intended to walk down to her Master’s studio, but
something made her decide on a less obvious approach. She went to her own locus
and sent herself silently to a place in his aerie that was always in shadow—a deep niche between
two apothecary shelves near the head of the staircase.

Beyla had been right, of course. She had only wanted to
doubt him because her heart loathed to accept what he had revealed as the
source of their mutual nightmares. Master Lukasha worked in the glow of spirit
lamps, his eyes bright, his face intent on the objects that littered his work
table. Next to him stood Damek, looking no where near as eager as his Master,
but faithfully clutching the glass bowl in which the hapless wood-creep
resided. His eyes were on the iron ball in Lukasha’s hands.

“Shall
I . . . shall I dispose of the snake?”

“Keep
it. We may need to create a new spell ball if this one fails and I doubt you
would find any pleasure in crawling about the forest in search of another
snake.”

He capped the ball as he spoke, fixing the metal stopper
into place with a spell. Damek, face pale, went to return the snake’s bowl to a shelf
along the western wall while his master stepped back from his work to wipe his
hands on a bit of cloth. The way clear, Kassia could see that there were now
four spell balls assembled on the table—iron,
glass laced with silver, copper, and the glass ball colored vivid blue by
cobalt.—the one
that contained Shurik’s
earring.

“Done?” asked Damek all but licking his lips. “Now what?” This, when Lukasha nodded.

“Now,
I rest. I must be at my best when I try this spell. There is much power here. I
must be ready to harness it. In the morning, I will try to open the Spirit
Gate.”

Damek glanced at him sharply. “Try? Is there any chance you will fail?”

“The
key to handling a Squared spell, old friend, is balance. Balance between the
Itugenic forces and the Matic; between the earthly and celestial; between fire
and water. That is an easy balance for one like Kassia to master. She was born
with the forces of the Earth aligned within her soul, and with a door inside
her that opened onto the Sky. For her, the balance was natural; she had only to
learn the words, the equations—the
balance received them. For me, it’s
different. I have no natural balance. Geomancy has been a closed door to me—to all Mateu—since Arik Tamal led
his troops across our northeastern borders. Even before then it was . . .
more difficult to handle. The forces of Itugen are at once wild and civilizing.
An anomaly, is it not?”

He chuckled at the look of puzzlement on Damek’s face. “The answer to your
question Damek is ‘yes’. There is every chance I will fail. Let me share something with you.
Something I doubt anyone else even suspects. I can barely perform the Traveling
spell that Kassia uses with such ease. When I can, I have her perform the spell
with me, speaking the incantations in cadence. Only that assures my success.
Not only is the spell difficult, but performing it . . .
disorients my soul to such an extent that I often cannot bring myself to use
it.”

Damek nodded. “The
night Kassia and Zakarij found the Bible. You bade me watch them because you
were afraid to make the journey.”

“Not
afraid,” said Lukasha sharply. “No,
not afraid. You see, the things that exist in that nether zone between here and
there . . . they are strangely seductive. I am not sure man was
ever meant to see them.”

From her hiding place, Kassia could see Damek’s throat work
spasmodically as he tried to take in what his Master had told him. He gulped
several times in quick succession, then spoke, his voice tottering unsteadily. “Will you require
Kassia’s help
with this Spirit Gate?”

“I
doubt she’d give
it willingly. She is much afraid of this spell.”

“And
yet, if to have success . . .”

“Yes,
to have success . . . Tomorrow I will attempt the spell on my
own. If I cannot harness it, I may have no choice but to task Kassia with it.
Even then, I can’t
guarantee that it will work. According to what we have pieced together, the
Spirit Gate has ever had but one master. I have no idea how it will react to
having two.”

“How
far into your confidence will you take the woman?” Damek asked. “Will you reveal what
you intend to do with this spell once you have control of it?”

Master Lukasha turned his face into the light of his spirit
lamp and gave Damek a smile that twisted Kassia’s heart in her chest.

“That
would be foolish, wouldn’t
it? Am I a fool, Damek?”

“No,
Master, you are not.”

Both men left the studio shortly after that, while Kassia
hunkered in the dark between the shelves, eyes squeezed shut, arms drawn around
her knees, fists clenched, terrified that she would sob and give herself away.
In the silence that followed their departure; in the absence and emptiness that
pressed in on her, Kassia managed to uncoil rock hard muscles and climb to her
feet. In darkness lit only by moonlight falling through the skylights overhead,
she moved to the work table where she stood gripping the edges of the worn
surface and praying for clarity and calm. Her heart ached from the heavy blow
it had taken, in her head an empty void had sprung into being.

After some moments of trembling stillness, she conjured a
tiny spirit flame and gazed down upon her Master’s handiwork. The spell balls glittered in the light
of flame and moon and Kassia did not need Beyla to tell her that the magic they
contained was bitter and chill. For a moment she thought she would gather them
up and destroy them. Or she would take Beyla and leave Dalibor, leaving her
Master to founder in the Twilight spell.

That was foolish, for it would do nothing to change
situation that faced Polia, and Lukasha could track her down anywhere if he
chose.

I
’
m no fool, either
, she told
herself, and felt a spark of determination kindle within her. There had to be
something more constructive she could do, but she needed help to discover what
it was. She thought of Shagtai and knew, without doubt, that her best chance of
help lay in that quarter. After returning to check on Beyla, she went to the
kite master’s
cottage, determined to wake him if she must.

He was not asleep, he was at prayer before his shrine, and
Kassia had the impression he had expected her. She knew without doubt he had
been awakened by the same foreboding that had frightened Beyla and brought
nightmares to her own sleep.

He beckoned to her as she entered his parlor, and she moved
to stand beside him at the shrine. “Master
Lukasha plans to open the Spirit Gate,” she said baldly, watching the smoke of Shagtai’s incense wend its way heavenward.

“Yes.”

“I
must do something.”

“Yes,
you must.”

She turned her head to look at his craggy profile. “What, Shagtai? What
shall I do? I thought if I destroyed the spell balls—”

“He
would only recreate them.”

She took a deep breath. “He thinks he will need me to help with the spell.
If I fled—”

“He
would find you. He is a man driven by his past. He will not rest until he feels
the future is assured.”

“Driven
by his past? What do you mean?”

“Tamal
was a monster. Your Master has told you how the stones of Lorant were bathed in
the blood of his victims. That monster devoured my wife and child and other
innocents merely to prove to the Mateu that he was their master as he was Polia’s master.”

She shivered, recalling the stories she had heard from
Lukasha and others.

“That,” said Shagtai, “is
your Master’s
past. That drives him. Twilight has put a power within his reach—”

“That
can alter the past,” Kassia finished. “I
must stop him from using the spell, Shagtai. If he uses the spell, there’s no way to tell what
will happen.”

“He
will not let himself be stopped.”

“Then
I must destroy all trace of the spell.”

“It
is too late for that. You must help him, as he desires.”

She stared at the side of his face. “What do you mean, it’s too late?”

He turned, finally, and met her eyes. “The magic of the
Spirit Gate is known. When it was not known, when there were pieces of it
hidden, then there was a chance of going back. There is no going back now. Now,
you must go forward. Now, the Gate must be opened. The one who opens it will be
its master. So, it must be mastered by one who can control it without abuse.
You are the one who must, in the end, possess the Spirit Gate, Kassia Telek.
You are the one who must open it.”

“I?”

“You
made it known.”

“So
it’s my destiny
to—to—”

“To
be its Mistress. I pray you will be a wiser Mistress than Marija of Ohdan.”

A wave of vertigo brought Kassia to her knees. “I’ve been no wiser so
far. Like Marija, I let my curiosity rule me. I dug and dug at this mystery
until I unearthed it. Now I wish I could put it back in its grave.”

“It
was perhaps not meant to remain in its grave. Have you not felt led to do what
you have done?”

“Led
or driven, as Master Lukasha is driven. That doesn’t make what I’ve done right.”

“Perhaps,
perhaps not. But what you do from here on,
must
be right. And it must be
the will of God.”

She shook her head. “It’s too much. I can’t—”

“Who
else will do it? Beyla? Zakarij?”

“You?”

His gaze on her was fierce. “I did not unearth this mystery. I did not wake the
past. I did not make this thing my destiny.”

He hunkered down beside her and brought his face very near
hers. She could smell wood smoke on him and incense.

“You
must own the Gate, Kassia. You are the only one who knows its real danger.”

“That’s not true. You
comprehend it, Zakarij comprehends it—”

“I
am too old. Zakarij is not shai. The only other is Beyla and he is too young
and not yet fully trained. Only the shai can control this power. It was never
meant for others.”

She looked at him then—really looked at him—and realized something that had never occurred to
her before: Shagtai’s
hair was not white because of his age.

“How
much of this did you know? Did you know all along of the Spirit Gate?”

“Only
of its existence. Its invocation was hidden from me just as it was hidden from
you. This I do know: A shai must possess the knowledge of the Gate. But, as you
have seen, even the shai can abuse it. It was meant to be handed down—a secret knowledge
given by mother to daughter.” He canted his head, and added. “Or
son. But with the coming of Batu Khan, the chain was broken. Marija might have
healed it, but she was, perhaps, not wise enough. Her daughter was not shai.
There was no one to accept the burden of the Gate.”