The Spirit Gate (55 page)

Kassia did not spend her day in rest. There was much to
know about the Spirit Gate, and she would know it. Lukasha had taken the spell
balls he had made. A clandestine trip to his studio revealed that he had hidden
them behind the doors of a carefully warded cabinet.

The snake was in his glass bowl. Kassia bespelled the
creature and captured a drop or two of its venom in a tiny glass vial, but
though she prowled about among the jars and boxes on the shelf near the serpent’s bowl, she could find
no trace of the other ingredients. A sudden intuition sent her to the brazier
and crucible her master used in preparing his spell balls. There she found a
residue of ash and several tiny bits of bone. She hastily swept them into a
second vial and returned to her own rooms, where she cut some threads from the
patches in Beyla’s
ill-fitting winter jacket. Patches that had once been part of a coat her
husband had worn.

She had a little stained glass window her father had made.
It depicted a forest glade sprinkled with bright flowers, and cut by the blue
swathe of a mountain stream. She broke out one of the tiny panes—a blossom of pearly
pink—and added it
to her collection of spell-makings.

Last of all, she drew from around her neck the silver locket
that had been her mother’s.
The metal itself was essential to the spell, but Kassia wondered if it might
help to intensify the effects of the other water elements. Her mother’s life, too, had been
forfeited to the flood, if indirectly.

She carried her little trove to her studio, where she set
about gathering up the requisite containers. She decided to make a set of
miniature proportions, like the string of metal and glass talismans she wore to
perform the less potent Window and Traveling spells. She had no ball of iron—she had only gold—and she lacked the
feather of a bird of prey.

As she pondered pounding iron nails into the softer metal to
bolster the spell, Shagtai and Beyla appeared in the doorway to her rooms.
Beyla scampered to his mother’s
side to poke warily at the assembled ingredients, wrinkling his nose.

“The
boy says you will need my help.” The old shaman moved at a more sedate pace to the work table, where he
glanced over Kassia’s
work. “You need
the feather of a kestrel touched by the blood of its prey,” he observed, then proceeded to produce such a feather from a small bag
at his belt.

Kassia couldn’t
believe her eyes. “Where
did you . . .? How . . .?”

“Damek
came to me a little while ago and asked me to find such a thing for a spell his
Master would do. It seemed an odd thing for a Mateu to desire.” He shrugged. “I
found more than was needed for one spell.”

Kassia took the feather, exchanging a fond embrace. “Have you any more
miracles for me, Shagtai?”

“I
have none. You must create your own miracles now. There is no one else to do
it. But I can help you with this.” He inclined his head toward the little spell balls she had gathered . . .

The thought of what she was about to undertake made Kassia’s heart quake, but
Shagtai’s mere
presence was enough to make her work go more quickly. The spell balls, such as
they were, took over an hour to complete, and when they were finished, Kassia
was far from confident they would work. The golden ball, with its quartet of
iron nails, bothered her most, but it contained the requisite venom and Beyla
pronounced it suitably “horrid.”

After bolting down a meal Shagtai brought to her and
insisted she eat, she settled the spell balls about her neck. She entered the
locus of the mandorla then, and held the charms in her cupped hands so that
they sat, each at its proper point on the compass. Then she uttered the words
that would open the Spirit Gate, praying that what control over it she did have
was not so linked to her master’s
that she might not use it alone. Her prayers were resoundingly answered. With
the gleaming vortex whirling before her, she took its awesome magic in trembling
hands and began to learn its ways.

oOo

Through the afternoon and early evening, Kassia worked
with the Portal. She quickly left off visiting future times. They were
difficult to invoke and disturbing to witness. Often she could make no sense of
what she saw, and was forced to close the Gate and clear her aching head. Now,
with dusk swiftly approaching, she retired the spell balls to a chest in her
studio and herself to her outer chambers. Shagtai brought another meal and
together, she, Beyla and the shai kite master ate in near silence as the Sun
sank behind the western hills.

She thought of Zakarij then, wondering how he fared in
Ratibor and considering whether she should let him know what was happening in
his absence. No, she decided. It would do neither of them any good for him to
find himself in the midst of this. Shagtai’s words had been true—this was her doing, her responsibility. When the
Spirit Gate opened again the next evening, her battle must be a solitary one.

“Remember
what you struggle for, Kassia.” Shagtai spoke as if divining her thoughts.

In truth, it had never occurred to her before that he might
very well be able to do just that. He went on, on his face a dance of shadow
and light from the spirit flames that hovered about them in the parlor.

“When
the time comes for you to act, do not hesitate. You yet dread harming your
master. It is a thing you must be able to face.”

“Doesn’t that make me as
wrong as he is? Doesn’t
that make me as much a force for evil?”

Shagtai fixed her with his good eye. “Do you attack a foe? Do you precipitate a battle?”

“No.”

He raised a finger before his face. “If you act only in defense of others, you need
never fear the wrath of the God.”

“Lukasha
thinks he acts in defense of all of Polia.”

“Lukasha
has made of himself a sword. You must become a shield.”

Kassia took a deep, quaking breath. A shield. Tomorrow she
would hold immense destructive power in her hands. Somehow she must not let
herself be tempted to use it.

oOo

Damek came for her an hour before sunset. She was
unprepared for the revelation that her master intended to drag him with them
through the Portal. The idea was displeasing, but paled in comparison to the
other features of this insane circumstance. Kassia put up no argument, and did
not bridle at Damek’s
smug remarks. Master Lukasha seemed to find his caustic commentary amusing.

This time, they set up the spell in Lukasha’s studio. He had
gained in confidence over night and felt, Kassia gathered, that using his own
locus would afford him greater control over the spell. She had dressed for the
occasion in an Aspirant’s
ceremonial robes of palest blue, even affecting the white and gold stole that
was only worn for the most holy of celebrations. Beneath that stole, the solid
weight of her concealed spell balls lay heavily over her heart. She had
arranged them in a diamond pattern and woven a mounting of copper, silver and
gold wire to hold them in place.

At last, Lukasha was ready to begin the spell. His
intelligence from Master Antal informed him that the celebration of Zelimir’s betrothal was
already begun—the
guests and courtiers had entered the great hall and now awaited their King’s pleasure.

The trio stood upon his dais with Damek between them, Kassia
carefully facing to the east so that her spell balls would be in the right
orientation to the compass points. Ruddy light from the waning Sun poured
through the high windows and washed around them, making Lukasha’s eyes gleam ruby as
he began the invocation.

Kassia matched cadence with him, beat for beat, word for
word, inflection for inflection. The Spirit Gate was hers when she commanded it
alone, but she was yet uncertain how much control her Master had over its
forces. She was certain only that he could direct it once it had been opened.
With that in mind, she hurried the name of Maelstrom again, so little that
Lukasha, intent on the spell, did not mark it. But as the Portal roared open,
Kassia saw Damek’s
head jerk toward her, suspicion covering his face.

No matter
, she told herself wryly as they stepped
out into chaos, given what was about to happen to him, Damek would be fortunate
if he could even speak when they reached their destination.

Lukasha brought the three of them to Zelimir’s great hall with an
immense physical display. With the roar of a thousand winds and a hundred seas
and a myriad fires, the Spirit Gate opened before king Zelimir and his court
like a titanic golden blossom. In its throat was an inferno; its mouth spewed
spirit sparks upon the polished floors. It was like riding the Sun, and a
glance at those who shielded their eyes from its radiance, proved it must be
like looking upon that same ball of flame.

On the dais that seated the royal party, Zelimir came to his
feet, still holding the hand of his cowering betrothed. After a moment of
hesitation, Chancellor Bogorja and Bishop Benedict rose as well.

“What
is this, Master Lukasha?” the king asked, surprisingly calm for a man who was gazing down the
throat of eternity. “Have
you come to celebrate my betrothal or to denounce it?”

Without taking his eyes from his king, Lukasha nodded to
Damek, who carefully removed himself from the mouth of the Gate and hastened to
the dubious shelter of one of the huge pillars flanking the royal dais.

“I
have come to do neither, Mishka. But I must ask—do you truly intend to go through with this
marriage of politics?”

“You
mistake me, Mateu. It will be more than a marriage of state that binds Fiorella
and myself. I have come to need her. To care for her and love her as once you
purposed I love your apprentice, Kassia.”

“You
will not reconsider?”

“No,
Mateu. I will not.”

Master Lukasha nodded, his eyes drifting closed over the
flaming chaos they mirrored. “I
grieve, Mishka,” was all he said, but the iron voice held no grief.

Kassia’s
spine stiffened and she turned to see what was happening within the Gate. An
image was frozen on the distorted walls of the vortex, a scene so barren and
lifeless that Kassia could scarcely believe it belonged to this world. She
realized at once what Lukasha intended to do. A prison, he had called the Gate.
This was the prison he intended for his king.

Kassia whispered a counter as her master gave his command,
blocking the catalyst he fed to the Gate—a catalyst that would have sucked the king and
every person seated near him through the flaming abyss and into oblivion.

Around them the Portal roiled, its outer edge rippling in
the backwash of their sudden confrontation. Lukasha was stunned only
momentarily. He realized immediately who opposed him, and turned on Kassia in
wordless fury, loosing a sorcerous assault on her. She countered with one of
her own, a Shield of pure fire elementals that turned her master’s magic aside. She
felt its chill bite, though, and knew that he, too, had been practicing
Twilight enchantments.

She had no will to fight him. With its mad fury roaring in
her ears, she stepped back into the Spirit Gate and let herself be sucked from
the hall. Without a moment’s
hesitation, Lukasha followed her, and made it through the Portal a second
before it closed with a sound like the cracking of a whip.

Kassia led her Master on a wild chase through corridors of
time and light and darkness, took him through places of utter chaos and of
obscene order. She fled to the future this time, hoping she might lose him, or
at least confuse him. She lit and lingered where roads of molten stone were lit
by spirit lamps and traveled by hissing creatures with tiny suns for eyes. She
stumbled across battlefields where clanking, growling monsters fired bolts of
smoke and flame and where the devastation made the wars of the Tamalids look
like the play of children. She watched a gigantic tower ride a plume of flame
into the heavens and she saw metal birds that roared like the wind among the
clouds.

She kept her mind apart from these sights and sounds,
ignoring the looks of astonishment and terror on faces she barely glimpsed. Her
mind was feverishly at work, for she had no plan, but only played for time. She
must end this chase somewhere—but
where? She could choose Lukasha’s
barren plain and there battle him. Or perhaps she could outflank him and return
to Tabor to ward Zelimir and his court. If she could convince Antal and the
other Mateu to throw in with her, perhaps even solicit Benedict’s aid . . .
The problem was time. She must reach Tabor far enough ahead of Lukasha to
acquire allies.

She caught herself on a sudden realization. She was thinking
too small. This was a
time
Portal—she knew that, yet after all
she had seen and was seeing, she persisted in thinking of it in three dimensional
terms—as a merely
spatial phenomenon. Here was a fourth dimension. It was into this dimension her
control must expand.

Kassia returned herself to the Zelimirid palace moments
before her original arrival with Lukasha and Damek. Now, she stepped out of the
open Gate alone. There was no Damek. There was no Lukasha. There was only an
astonished Zelimir and a court thrown into sudden chaos. Kassia drew upon the
Spirit Gate, itself, to create the strongest ward she had ever raised. It was a
Squared ward, presided over by the Dragon, Harmattan, and the Serpent, Abyss.
She shivered as the magic left her fingertips.

On the royal dais, King Zelimir came slowly to his feet. “Kassia? What magic do
you plot against me now?”

She opened her mouth to tell him she plotted nothing, but
her voice was drowned in a sudden rending of the air. With an inhuman groan,
the Spirit Gate rippled, its inner reaches giving birth to a storm. Out of the
storm stepped Master Lukasha, Beyla struggling in his arms. Hard by the pillar
closest to the royal table, Damek winked silently into sight.