The Spirit Gate (56 page)

Kassia’s
universe came to a shivering halt. She could no longer defend Polia or Zelimir.
Suddenly there was only Beyla to be defended. She shuddered, lowered her arms
from their defensive posture and waited to see what Lukasha would do next.

“What
is this?” demanded Zelimir from his dais.

“Treason,
Majesty,” said Lukasha. “This
woman would topple you from your throne.”

“A
lie!”

Kassia whirled to see Zakarij striding toward her across the
polished floor of the hall. She was relieved to see him, terrified that he had
just given Lukasha a second weapon to use against her.

“Kassia,” Zakarij continued, approaching the royal table, “has ever been your loyal friend. It is Master
Lukasha who plots treason.”

“I
am no traitor!” Lukasha’s
face was aflame, while he gripped the cloth of Beyla’s shirt so hard, his knuckles shone white beneath
the flesh of his hands. “You
are traitor to your own people, Michal Zelimir, who would take an alien queen
to his bosom. Who would force her religion upon this nation. Who would suffer
the twisted magic of this man”—he
jerked his head toward Benedict—“to
shepherd his senses. Who would turn away those faithful ones who seek only his
prosperity. You have erred. You have looked into your enemy’s eyes and seen a
friend, and have imagined your friend to be an enemy. It is time for you to pay
for that mistake.”

Both Kassia and Zakarij strained forward at those words, but
Lukasha gave Beyla a rough shake, making him cry out. “Do nothing foolish!” he cried and raised his free
hand, his fingers curling about the set of spell balls he still held there.

Beyla moved even more quickly. Like little wings, his hands
fluttered upward, releasing a shower of sparks. The sparks took on bird-shape
and, in the twinkling of an eye, Lukasha’s head and shoulders were mobbed by a flock of
firebirds the size of finches. Their tiny, bright beaks pecked at his eyes and,
though there was no danger of them harming him, he tried to swat them away.
Letting Beyla go, he covered his face with both hands and set up a defensive
ward.

As the boy sprang away into Zakarij’s arms, Kassia acted, desperately trying to pull
the Portal closed. But her Master’s
power over it was enough. A gesture of his hand, a pulse of his will and,
though it writhed and rippled, the Gate remained open. Kassia strengthened the
shield she had set over the king. She felt Zakarij raise a ward about himself
and Beyla, and could sense that Antal and his brethren had cast their own
reflective protections.

It was then that Benedict, clutching the golden cross that
hung from a jeweled chain about his neck, lay a shimmering sheet of protection
over the royal party. He placed himself outside the Shield, hovering at its
rim, watching Mateu and Aspirant with bright eyes.

Lukasha’s
gaze was on Kassia. “You
would betray me, Kiska?”

“You
betrayed
me
,
Master. You betrayed Zakarij. You would betray our king.”

“What
is any one life compared to the lives of an entire people? Would you see this
nation trampled under foot? Would you see its shrines desecrated and its
religion reviled? Would you raise your son in a place where he is considered a
witch or a demon?”

Hot tears slipped down Kassia’s cheeks, fracturing the brightness of the Spirit
Gate into a haze of glory. “What
you’re doing won’t stop that. It will
only make matters worse. The Empire will over-run us.”

“The
Empire cannot respond to what it doesn’t
know and can’t
understand. The news it hears of this will be what I choose to tell.”

“You,
Master? I thought the fate of a nation was too great a thing to rest in the
hands of one man.”

“The
Sacred Circle will rule this land. With this power we shall hold off all
would-be conquerors. We will defend Polia.”

“As
you defend her now?” asked Zakarij. “By
murder?”

“Not
murder!” cried Lukasha. “Banishment.
I do what must be done! I hadn’t
the courage before—I
was weak and unwilling. I am neither of those things now. The line of Zelimir
ends here. My only sorrow is that your life must end with it, Kiska. You too
can open the Spirit Gate. I cannot suffer you to live.”

He leapt back into the Gate’s maw; it received him with a churning hiss of
color and light. He raised both hands and Kassia could feel the hot core of
power building up within him, drawing the substance of the Gate to his command.
She raised her own hands as if to counter-attack, but there was no weapon she
possessed that could assail him.

Now, Bishop Benedict chose sides and leapt into the fray,
attacking Lukasha with fire. The streamers of garish lightning, so impressive
to behold, ricocheted benignly off the taut surface of Lukasha’s Shield.

Kassia felt as if a bolt of that lightning had struck her
soul. She dropped her own Shield and reached out to Lukasha, but she did not
attack. Instead, she compounded the ward that fed his Shield, adding to it a
Duet of earth and fire, sealing that with a fiber of Squared Twilight. Her
Master’s Shield
was stronger now than before; nothing could penetrate it . . .
nor, Kassia hoped, could anything escape it.

While Benedict continued to assault the impervious barrier,
a blossom of power opened in Lukasha’s
hands, exploding outward in a flaming torrent. In a heartbeat it reached the
inner wall of the amplified Shield and turned back on itself—on him. The space the
Mateu occupied became a globe of blinding fire, and for a moment, a tiny Sun
existed in the great hall of Zelimir’s
palace. When the moment passed, the Sun was snuffed out, collapsing on its lone
occupant with silent finality.

Kassia let the spell decay. With no one to fight its
closing, the great, golden Portal began to constrict. With a shriek of pure
agony, Damek emerged from his hiding place and threw himself toward the
collapsing maw. Before he could be stopped, before Kassia could gather her
thoughts to reenergize the spell, Damek had flung himself into the vortex. An
instant later it collapsed completely, wiping Damek from sight.

In the profound silence that followed—a silence that seemed to be more than the mere
absence of sound—Kassia
began to quiver. In a moment, she was shaking so hard she could no longer
stand. She slipped to the floor, oblivious to anything around her, insensate
and paralyzed until she felt Beyla in her arms. She embraced him, tightly,
murmuring his name over and over, her voice seeming to come to her from a great
distance.

Gradually, movement returned to the hall. Fiorella began to
cry, quietly at first, then sobbing as if she had endured the tortures of hell.
Other voices, hushed, tentative, trickled into the quiet, filling it, until a
myriad voices rose, asking questions only Kassia could answer. She wanted only
to stay as she was, her arms around her son, Zakarij’s arms around them both; she wanted only to flee to
Lorant. Swamped in the babble of sound, she felt Zakarij stiffen and jerk upright,
sensed a flurry of movement from the dais. She raised her eyes to the source of
the uproar and saw through the shimmer of Zakarij’s hastily raised Shield, that the Bishop of Tabor
was poised to strike at her.

The attack never came. Benedict’s volley was stopped, not by arcane means, but by a
sword in the hand of the king.

“Flinch,
Bishop,” said Zelimir, resting the point of the blade against the cleric’s neck, “and no amount of magic
will save you. You have done enough harm here.”

oOo

”How
did you know to come to me? I was trying very hard not to call out to you.” Kassia looked out at the green of the palace cesia from where she sat
upon the balustrade of the balcony just outside the north-facing atrium.

Beside her, Zakarij stirred with a rustle of Mateu-white
silk. “Shagtai.
When Lukasha took Beyla, he summoned me in Ratibor. You should have called out
to me, Kassia. The moment you realized what Lukasha meant to do, you should
have summoned me.”

She shook her head. “I
couldn’t risk
you, Zakarij. I brought all this about with my meddling and perverse curiosity.
It was my battle. I was the Keeper of the Gate. I am
still
the
Keeper of the Gate.”

“You
might have been killed—”

“Then
Beyla would have been motherless and he would have needed you more than ever. I
couldn’t risk
you.”

He turned her to face him and pulled her down from the low
marble wall into his arms. “You’re a flawed woman,
Kassia. You’re
too stubborn, too reckless and too dear to me to be allowed either of those
tragic imperfections.”

She smiled wanly. “Don’t expect me to change.”

“I’ll compromise. You can
be one of those things, but not both. Which will it be—stubborn or reckless? Choose.”

“Oh,
stubborn, by all means. I am quite willing to give up being reckless.”

He kissed her gently, as if to seal the whimsical bargain,
letting his lips linger on hers. The ache in her heart subsided a little.

When he raised his head a moment later, he said, “Don’t lay the blame for
this thing entirely upon yourself. I was just as headstrong as you were when it
came to pursuing Marija’s
secrets, and just as eager as you were to put them in Master Lukasha’s hands. We must now
decide what to do with the fruits of our cowardice. Perhaps we should do what
our predecessors could not. Perhaps we should destroy all record of the spell.”

Kassia laid her forehead against his shoulder, wishing, with
all her heart that they might do just that. “Shagtai says we must not, and I believe he’s right. It is too
great a magic for any of us to claim the authority to order it destroyed.”

“So,
then we hide it, as those before us have hidden it? Will it once again lie
buried until some curious soul rediscovers it and in ignorance, makes the same
mistake Marija made—the
same mistake we made?”

“No.
This thing must be remembered, Zakarij, and its danger must be well-understood.
Hiding it is not the answer.
Knowing
it is the answer.
Comprehending it is the answer. I will comprehend it and I will teach Beyla to
comprehend it. Shagtai says this is a thing to be passed down from one shai Gate
Keeper to the next and that I am now . . . responsible for it.”

“That’s unfair!” Zakarij objected. “You
weren’t
responsible for Lukasha’s
guilt, or his madness. Nor were you completely responsible for the unearthing
of this magic.”

“Still,
I feel he is right.”

“Kassia . . .”

She looked up into his face. “I feel he is right, Zakarij. And I don’t speak of some mild
intuition. Please, we agreed I might be stubborn.”

He was about to say more, but the sound of someone clearing
their throat several paces away parted them. The king stood in the doorway to
the atrium, looking as if he had aged a decade in the past hours.

“I
would speak to you, Aspirant Kassia, if you would grant me leave.”

Such conciliatory tones from her sovereign were pleasing to
Kassia’s ears,
though she was not certain she should trust them. She bowed and said, “As you wish, Majesty.”

Zakarij merely inclined his head and said, “I’ll go check on Beyla,” then journeyed out into the gardens.

The king gazed at Kassia long enough to make her
uncomfortable before he spoke again. “I
have been a fool. This is not unknown to you.”

She tilted her head this way and that, saying only, “What brings you to
this conclusion, Majesty?”

“Having
a clear head and heart for the first time in many weeks. Bishop Benedict has
been recalled to Avignon, or so he says. I suspect he means only to regroup. He
is taking Fiorella and his handful of priests with him.”

She glanced at him sharply. “I’m
sorry, Sire.”

“Feel
sorry only for Fiorella. She came close to wedding a man who would have grown
to despise her, and she had the most terrifying experience of her young life.
She no longer desires to marry a Polian king, a thing she has made clear to her
Bishop in no uncertain terms. So, he is taking her back to Lombardy. At least,
that is her intention. I’m
unconvinced he will not use his powers of persuasion upon her again. Still, I
think he may have also had the most terrifying experience of
his
life at your hands. I know I did.”

Kassia groaned. “Please,
my lord, don’t
credit me with too much.”

“Call
me ‘Mishka’. It would do much to
retrieve my sense of self and honor.”

She inclined her head. “And what has this terrifying experience taught you,
Mishka?”

“That
I am fonder of you than I knew.” He raised his hand to silence her protest. “But not as Master Lukasha would have had it. Such
fondness, I think, I must give to the woman I would make my Queen—if she hasn’t fled all the way
back to Bytomierz. Ah, even if she’s
done that. You know, Master Lukasha was not entirely wrong in his assessment of
me. I have not worn my father’s
crown well. I will not say I am the spineless weakling your master painted me,
but I have heeded too many advisers and attempted to serve too many interests.
I must get my house in order, Kassia, and I shall. I will make peace with the
Turks on other grounds than marriage.” His eyes searched her face. “What
will you do?”

“I
shall go home and marry. I shall strive to become the best Mateu I can become.
I shall try not to be so reckless, or so I’ve promised Zakarij. Every morning I will pray that
I never be tempted to open the Gate again.”

“Never?
Is there no way to use it to good purpose?”

Kassia turned her eyes outward to the cesia on its perfect
hill. “Perhaps
not for one who is both reckless and stubborn.” She took a deep breath,
hoping it would cleanse the pall of sadness from her soul. “I am the steward of
this magic, and after me, Beyla will be its steward. I’ll have much to do toward educating both of us to
guard it well.”