The Spirit Gate (53 page)

“So
now, I must accept it.”

“Is
that a question, or an admission?”

She tried to smile. “Both.” She got to her feet. “Master
Lukasha plans to try the spell tomorrow morning.”

“He
will fail because he expects to fail. Then he will demand that you help him.
You must do this.”

“If
I help him, we will both pronounce the equation. What will that do to the Gate?
Will it suffer itself to have two masters?”

Shagtai tilted his head to one side. “These things are unanswerable, Kassia. No one has
ever done what you are about to do. I believe your being shai will give you an
advantage. Perhaps that will be enough. Perhaps not.”

oOo

Morning brought with it no feeling of refreshment. Kassia
woke as the first rose of sunrise flushed the eastern hills. Beyla woke with
her, and neither of them was surprised when Shagtai appeared at their door.

“I
will watch the boy,” he said, and Kassia sent a prayer of thanks to Mat and Itugen for such a
friend.

She sought Zakarij next, hastening to his rooms only to find
him gone. His bed had been slept in, but hastily left, and she fretted over
what that could mean. It was while she was worrying over Zakarij that she
sensed something stirring above and knew that her Master had entered his
studio. She hadn’t
much time. Glancing around she caught sight of a mirror on one wall. Coupled
with a Window spell, it allowed her to peer in where she dared not go in
daylight.

The smaller mirror in Lukasha’s studio was on a stand. Canted at an angle, it
gave Kassia a peculiarly tilted vantage point, as if the room were off kilter.
She ignored the initial disorientation that caused and concentrated on giving
the skewed image sound.

“Why
are you even attempting this, if you’re
so certain to fail?” whined Damek. Carrying a basket containing his Master’s set of spell balls,
he filled the mirror in Zakarij’s
room.

Lukasha was out of sight, but Kassia could see his shadow
where it lay across his assistant’s
shoulder. “There
is always a chance I might succeed. More to the point, I want to commit this
equation to memory, learn its every nuance. I must neither stammer nor halt
when I perform this spell in power.”

They set up the spell balls then, and Lukasha stood in the
center of the mandorla that now marked the locus of his dais. He began the
incantations then, beginning with invocations that Kassia had never heard
before, invocations that did not call on Mat or Itugen, but only on the four
spirits of the Twilight spell—Abyss,
Shaitan, Harmattan and Maelstrom. The words sent a chill through her, though
her Master was only practicing now, murmuring the words without placing the
necessary will behind them. But he was finding his cadence, and Kassia,
well-used to the way Lukasha composed and recited his equations, found it with
him.

This was critical, she knew, for in all spells the
pronouncement of the final catalyst was what set the spell in motion, what
drove it from the state of resting,
nanat
, to
ananat
,
motion. It was the combined force of all invocations and catalysts that gave it
power; it was the will of the sorcerer that gave it direction. At the uttering
of the final catalyst, at the mention of the name of the Fish, the spell would
be set in motion by the one who uttered that word of power first. Kassia knew
that the stewardship of the Spirit Gate hung on that name, Maelstrom.

Several times Master Lukasha intoned the words, each time
saying them more smoothly and with more confidence, and Kassia began to fear he
might be able to carry the spell off without her. She could feel the coiled
power in him, and it made her quake. At last the Mateu roused himself from the
meditative state into which he’d
entered, and moved to take the spell balls from the silent Damek. One after
another, he set them at the four points of the compass. He had Damek light
incense. He returned to his locus.

Kassia held her breath as he spoke the opening invocations: “Isak Abyss, Well of
eternity . . . Isak Shaitan, Hunter of souls . . .
Isak Harmattan, Scourging Fire . . . Isak Maelstrom, Devourer of
spirit.”

He moved smoothly to the rest of the equation, laying out
the elements in their balance, always speaking the name of the water spirit
last. He mouthed the final set of catalysts, repeating the Twilight names, but
this time his voice commanded rather than beseeched them.

In Zakarij’s
room, Kassia could feel the will Lukasha put behind the spell, and it was
almost enough. The air around Lukasha’s
dais seemed to vibrate; the image in Zakarij’s mirror blurred and wavered. There was a sound
like the howling of the wind and a slow whorl of mist rose from the dais to
embrace the trembling Mateu. Sound and movement grew and for a moment, it
seemed that a great vortex had opened above his head. He raised his eyes to the
growing maw, his hands up as if they might defend him, his mouth open in awe or
terror.

Damek’s
screams joined the roaring of the whirlwind. Kassia covered her ears against
them and prayed this moment would soon be over. Her prayer was answered
swiftly. With a sound like a peal of thunder, the vortex convulsed and
collapsed, leaving Master Lukasha on his knees in the center of his dais, his
hands covering his face.

Kassia was stunned. Should she go to him? Perhaps he was now
ready to give up this insanity. Damek, now tugging at his Master’s sleeve, was
gibbering for him to do so.

“Master,
please, leave this off! Stop now, while we still have life! Dear God and
Goddess, leave off!”

Any hope Kassia had of Damek’s plea being heeded vanished when Lukasha uncovered
his face and raised his eyes to his assistant’s pale face. He was transformed, lit from within by
an indescribably fierce light.

“Bring
Kassia to me,” he said.

“What
will you do?”

“Bring
her. I must work quickly. The Frankish sabbath is almost upon us. I must make
sure of this thing.”

“Did . . .
did it open? Was that what I saw? Oh, Master, it was horrible!”

“Horrible?” Lukasha chuckled. “No,
Damek, not horrible. Magnificent and terrible.”

“What
did you see?”

“I
saw events, Damek. Events which, if reached and altered, might change the very
world we live in. Have you ever wondered what Polia might have been like if
Zelimir the First hadn’t
died quite so young? Or if Michal’s
brother, and not he, had inherited the throne?”

“The
king? You would replace the king? I thought we worked to save him.”

Lukasha gave the other man a terrible look. “He is beyond
salvation. He is a weak and political man, easily swayed by his sensual
appetites. To eliminate Benedict is to merely make room for yet another
manipulator—a
Khan, a Sultan, a would-be Queen, a council of advisers hardly worthy of the
name. It is ludicrous that the fate of a people must rest in the hands of one
weak man. Polia deserves a stronger king. A man more like his father. A man who
would be guided by the Sacred Circle.”

“Do
you seriously think his brother, Tadeusz, would make a more suitable ruler?
Tadeusz hasn’t
left Radom since he entered the priesthood.”

“If
Michal had failed to survive to adulthood, Tadeusz would never have been
allowed to enter the priesthood. He was ever a contemplative and strong-willed
man. One who listened to the Sacred Circle when it spoke to him. It is the
Circle that should guide Polia, not some amorphous council whose every member
is bent on protecting its dogmatic differences. Now, bring Kassia to me. Tell
her I wish to speak to her on a matter of utmost urgency.”

Kassia allowed the Window spell to dissolve and left Zakarij’s rooms to stroll with
falsely lazy steps toward the offices of her Master. Her heart was a Battle of
fire and ice. Would the rage melt the sorrow, or would the sorrow consume the
rage? Her Master, whom she had loved as she might have loved her own father,
had become a stranger before her watching eyes. She wished she had never seen
what she had seen. She wished she had never come to Lorant. She wished she
dared use the Spirit Gate to go back in time and put right all the things that
had gone wrong—the
flood, the fires, the deaths of those she loved. If that could be done, she
might still be living in that little cottage across the river with Shurik at
her side. Tabor and its glories would be just a daydream.

And Zakarij would be
unknown
.

The thought wounded her so, that it brought her up short in
the middle of a main corridor, a sob caught in her throat.
Shurik,
forgive me
, she thought, and forced herself to move forward again. No,
she had learned the lesson that Marija had not. Kassia Telek would not toy with
time, no matter what the consequences.

Damek accosted her just as she emerged into the great
entrance hall, informing her with surly haste that her master had need of her.
She asked after Zakarij then, not much hoping that he’d tell her anything, and was surprised when Damek
said, “Lukasha
has sent him to Ratibor to receive news of the Turkish occupation of Zemic and
Kaminiec.”

She did not ask why her Master should have done such a
thing. Zakarij could surely have gotten reports without making a physical
appearance in Ratibor; it was obviously his physical absence here that was
wanted. She followed Damek to her master’s studio where she listened silently to his veiled
demand that she aid him in opening the Spirit Gate.

“I
understand, very well, the danger in what I propose to do,” he told her mildly, his eyes betraying the gentleness of the words. “But I must do
something. Benedict is smug in his certainty that I won’t do what must be done. I will do what I must. I’ll soon hold the power
of time in my hands. If I will, I can use it to make certain Benedict never
becomes Bishop of Tabor.”

The look in his eyes made her skin creep and Kassia feared
he might have sensed her depth of her outrage. Though her soul cried out in
protest, she didn’t
argue with him, but only lowered her gaze and said, “Neither of us has ever known such power.”

“Which
is why I propose that we summon the Gate now, that we learn its ways before we
must use it. You do see that this is the only way we might win?”

She nodded, looking at her clasped hands. “Yes, Master. I do see.
There is no other way.”

He decided they should use Kassia’s studio for the spell. Its history and its
distance from the core of the college made it ideal. Kassia was relieved to
find that Shagtai had taken Beyla to his cottage; she tried concentrate on the
task at hand. She was surprised she could be so calm on the threshold of such a
deed. Yet, she was aware of her aloneness, cut off as she was from Zakarij,
alienated from the man she had regarded as mentor, friend, even parent. She
looked into his face now and wondered if she should have realized the paths his
mind had been taking—the
lengths he was willing to go to in his mission to wrest control of Polia from
the Bishop. He would have sold her into concubinage, and she had no doubt now
that it was Lukasha who had manipulated both Zelimir and herself in such a
humiliating manner. Even her rage at that betrayal could not quite overtake her
sense of guilt.

She shook herself. She was not to blame for Lukasha’s twisted intentions,
but that he now had the means to act on his intentions—for that, she was to blame. She had ignored all
warnings to bring the mystery to light. She had, as Shagtai said, made it
known. What happened now was on her shoulders.

She laid out the spell balls herself, lit spirit flames and
incense. Then, standing face to face with Master Lukasha, she cleared her mind
of everything, preparing to begin the equation. They spoke the words in unison—their intonation in
perfect harmony. They gave the invocations, the incantations, the catalysts—but when the time came
to speak the name of the Fish, Kassia broke cadence and spoke the name an
instant before her Master mouthed it, putting behind it the full force of her
will.

This time there was no building roar, no distant clap of
thunder. This time, the storm exploded from the heart of the mandorla in full
force—a
screaming, elemental vortex—at
its core, a corridor of chaos. To look upon the scenes that lined the walls of
the corridor was to risk becoming lost in them, for unlike the viscous, glassy
walls created by the lesser traveling spell, these were of such transparency,
it seemed the scenes that flickered across them were within physical reach.

In that swirling flood of light and color, Kassia saw things
that were beyond her comprehension, beyond even her imagination. Close at hand
she saw armies of men—or
at least she supposed they were men—dressed
in armor such as she had never seen, carrying what she knew must be weapons,
yet which looked like no weapons she knew. The scene seemed to float before
them, above and around them, then it was gone, followed by a string of images
so incomprehensible, Kassia could not hope to interpret them.

She glanced at her master, who seemed frozen by the sight of
the maelstrom they had summoned. “What
now?” she asked, her voice barely audible above the roar of the spirit storm.

After a long moment, Master Lukasha responded. He closed his
eyes, shook his head as if to clear it, and mouthed words Kassia could not
hear. The storm fell silent, though its light and movement remained as fierce
as before. He looked at her then, his eyes reflecting the glory within the
Gate. They were alight with something else that Kassia couldn’t read—exhilaration, triumph.
She’d hoped for
fear, but her hopes seemed to be in vain. Worse, Lukasha’s silencing of the storm within the Gate fed her
own fear that, despite her attempt at complete mastery, he retained some
measure of control.

“I
would see where this present trouble began,” he said and disappeared into
the vortex. The maw of the Gate closed after him.