“Your sister is not only a worthless, accursed shai dreamer,” he told Asenka, “but a liar as well. I want her out of my house now—this very night!”
Furious, Kassia packed her things and Beyla’s and walked to Janka’s house to ask for a place to stay. “For only a week, no more,” she assured her eldest sister. “I’ll find us a place of our own then. With an Initiate’s stipend, I can surely afford one of Ursel Trava’s hovels.”
But Janka, not surprisingly, turned her away. “I told Aska she was a fool to take you in, but she wouldn’t believe me. You’ve caused nothing but strife in Blaz Kovar’s household. It wouldn’t surprise me to know you’ve laid a curse on that house, as surely as you laid one on the house of our father, as surely as you laid one on your own house. I don’t know what sort of daydreams you’re selling, Kassia, but you’ll not peddle them here, not even for one week. I’ll not have a liar about my children.”
“I’m not lying,” Kassia defended herself wearily. “I am to be initiated at Lorant. Master Lukasha himself signed my name in the book and accepted me.”
“Now I know you’re lying. No Initiate is accepted without testing to determine worthiness. Celka Tanu’s son applied at Lorant not three months ago. He barely made it in. There were theological tests, history tests, a test to see if he had any magic in him. Did they give you any tests?”
Kassia reached the end of what little patience she had. Yes, she needed Janka’s help. Yes, Janka was her sister, but it had always been this way between them—the one goading, the other reacting in blind anger. So now, Kassia summoned every shred of arrogance she could muster.
“They didn’t need to test me. Master Lukasha, himself, has been watching me. He told me my power was being wasted in Dalibor. He was going to ask me to come up to Lorant to study and he made me an Initiate without so much as a question.”
Janka had laughed, showing strong, white teeth. She had a beautiful smile, did Janka. “Ah, Kassia, if you’re not a liar, then you’re a madwoman. I don’t suppose that should surprise me, considering all the misfortune you’ve brought upon yourself . . . and those around you.”
Kassia’s arrogance shattered, loosing white-hot fury. “Damn you, sister! I did not cause that flood! Nor did our mother cause that flood. Our households were destroyed because we lived on the northern shore, and we lived on the northern shore because the people of this village—people like you, Janka Telek—would not let us live among them. If it’s anyone’s fault that our father and my husband are in the bosom of Itugen, it is yours. Yours and your husband’s and all the other cruel and bigoted people of Dalibor.”
She had left then, not giving her sister a chance to reply. But she had seen the expression on Janka’s face and knew that recalling it would bring her more satisfaction than guilt.
It was nearly dark when she found herself at the door of Devora’s bakery, not sure why she was there. When Devora appeared to answer her knock, hands coated with flour, she was struck mute, unwilling to ask for favors, but the older woman ushered her into the shop and prompted her.
“Why, Kassia! I was surprised not to see you today. How’s it gone for you at market?”
“Not as well as I expected.” Kassia took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “It went better at Lorant.” She dove into the story then, since Devora wanted all of it, and in the end, she didn’t have to beg favors. They were freely offered.
“I don’t know what that Blaz Kovar uses for brains,” Devora said, shaking graying curls, “I sometimes suppose it to be the same as he sits on.”
Kassia laughed, partially with relief, partially because she’d secretly had the same thought about her brother-in-law. “He believes he’s protecting his family from my curse.”
“Oh? A curse that hasn’t taken effect in three years? Well, and what does your sister Janka think?”
Kassia bit back a snide retort and said mildly, “Much the same thing. That I might doom her family with my very presence.”
“Well, I’ve no such superstitions. Look, now. It’ll be dark as pitch in less than an hour. Why don’t you and I go and get Beyla and your things and get you settled into my parlor?”
“Mistress Devora, are you sure you want to do this? It’s such an imposition—to take up your whole parlor—”
The baker got to her feet with an alacrity that always surprised Kassia, given her age and stature. “Nonsense. That parlor is a luxury pure and simple. I lived without it for many years before my youngest son married away to Tabor. It’s more bedroom than parlor anyway what with that trundle bed and all. It’ll be happy to have a little boy sleeping in it again.”
They lit a lamp for the walk up to the Kovar cottage; old Dalibor had no street lamps like her younger twin. Kassia thought that both she and Beyla would very much appreciate sleeping in a happy room.
oOo
The remainder of the week passed slowly for Kassia. She visited the marketplace, managing to earn a few more rega for Ursel Trava, she helped Devora and her daughter about the bakery to earn her keep, she read the kites over Lorant, and often she gazed up the cobbled way toward New Dalibor, agonizing over the red-haired girl and her infant son.
Every thought of them bruised her heart, making her feel weary and impotent. Yet, there was nothing she could do. Any attempt to let her thoughts drift toward them ended in a panicked retreat. Perhaps she could ask Master Lukasha how to be certain that a warning had been heard or a blessing bestowed—oh, and she had thrown blessing upon blessing toward New Dalibor, praying with every fiber of her soul that Itugen and Mat would hear her and shield the unknown child.
“Beneath cupped hands,” she begged Mat during her nightly meditation.
As the new week opened onto Celek morn, Kassia journeyed with Beyla and Devora across the Pavla Yeva, through the ruined forest and up Little Holy Hill to the cesia for Matyash. She had much to celebrate, she knew, and though she was already beginning to tremble in anxious anticipation of the morrow, though she missed one sister and had rejected and been rejected by the other, she had much to be thankful for.
Not the least of which, she thought, glancing aside at the baker woman as they walked beneath the lacework of cedar boughs, was finding out how true a friend Devora was. So, though it was not required of her, she had brought along an offering. It was a book her mother had given her—a volume of meditations Jasia Antavas had received from a saffron-draped monk. It was something rare in Dalibor, where most books resided at Lorant. Those villagers who could read (and there were few of those of Kassia’s age), had never held in their hands anything more than the occasional rough-pressed scroll and crude, twine-bound booklets.
The people of Old Dalibor read the kites of Lorant, the clouds, the wind and the currents of the Pavla Yeva. They studied the autumn fogs that lay in the long river valley and the texture and content of the earth in their fields. They read deer spoor and cat dropping. Those things made them wise in ways the Tabori immigrants were not. But the newcomers had books, and the books contained a new kind of wisdom.
A balance, thought Kassia, hugging her mother’s book to her breast. Wisdom must be a balance of earth and sky. As with most things.
oOo
Matek arrived without fanfare. So excited was Beyla at the prospect of going up to Lorant, he didn’t close his eyes in sleep until near midnight. He was still dreaming deeply when his mother rose to make ready for her first day as an Initiate.
Devora interceded before she could wake him. “Let him rest,” she chided. “He’s had hardly any sleep—though more than you’ve gotten. I’d hate to disturb him.” When Kassia opened her mouth to protest that she couldn’t impose, Devora put a finger to her lips. “None of that. I’ve my own motives for letting sleepy heads lie. I’ll put him to work this morning, you see, and at mid-day he can bring you up some dinner.”
Dinner. Kassia’s mouth twisted. She hadn’t even thought about what she would eat for dinner. That, like the amount of her Initiate’s stipend had lain fo
rgotten beneath her amazement that Master Lukasha had accepted her without quarrel.
If she had any thought that her first day at Lorant was to be as easy as Lukasha’s acceptance of her, Kassia was rudely disappointed. The Master Sorcerer was not even there when she arrived. Instead, she was greeted (if one could call it that) by Damek, and taken without ceremony to the first year studio.
Stepping into the high-ceilinged room, heart hammering and palms sweating, Kassia found herself pinned by the gazes of students and teacher alike. But it was not the intense regard that made her blush to the roots of her snowy hair, it was merely that the average age of the Initiates she faced was closer to Beyla’s than to her own. Except for the class master—a young Mateu Damek introduced as Tamukin—she was the only adult in the class.
She turned to Damek, mouth open to protest, but the little man only smiled. “Here are your classmates, Kassia. I hope you will be comfortable here.”
“But they’re children!” she whispered.
Damek’s smile didn’t waver. “They’re first year Initiates, Kassia. Just as you are. I assure you, they’ve all been tested and found to be of superlative quality.” Which you have not, said the glittering eyes. “They can all read, they—”
“I know,” Kassia interrupted him, cheeks burning, “I taught some of them, myself.”
Damek’s lashes fluttered in momentary surprise, then he shrugged. “Yes, well . . .”
“I want to speak to Master Lukasha. Surely he can’t mean for me to sit in a class full of children.”
The smug smile slipped back into place. “Master Lukasha isn’t here just now. He was called away to Tabor yesterday morning. He said he’d try to be back in time for Induction next Celek.”
“Induction?”
“Of course, you wouldn’t have known since your admission was . . . well, hardly conventional. The first week of your courses here will be mostly orientation. The next worship day, there will be a ceremony in the college cesia and you and your classmates will be officially initiated . . .” He looked her up and down, then sighed. “It may be difficult to find a robe that will fit you. Initiates are usually so much younger.” He dipped his head then, and left her alone with her gaping classmates.
Kassia’s first week at Lorant was a blur of frustration, boredom and loneliness. Except for one or two, her fellow first year Initiates kept her at suspicious arm’s length. Some of them seemed honestly afraid of her. Even among those she had tutored in reading and writing, there was fear; they’d never seen her without her hair decorously covered with either scarf or snood. Now, they whispered behind her back and fled before her face.
Her only friend at Lorant, it seemed, was the old kite master, Shagtai. Her first day, when she had retreated to the courtyard during a break to find sun and solitude, he had been there tending his kites and had shared a bit of his strong, black tea. It was both bitter and sweet and made Kassia’s tongue all but curl up in her mouth, but she so appreciated the gesture, that she drank every last drop.
Devora appeared with Beyla at mid-day, bringing her a lunch of bread and honey and Shagtai produced another pot of deadly tea and a story for Beyla. When Kassia left them to return to class, an enthralled Beyla was following his new friend through the forest of kite strings and begging to learn how to fly them.
The last school day of the week ended early so that the Initiates might take their Induction robes home and have them altered in time for the Celek day ceremony. As for Kassia, there was no amount of alteration that would make the child’s gown of deep blue with its crescent moon badge and scattering of embroidered stars fit her adult frame.
“I’m very sorry,” Master Tamukin had said in all sincerity, “but it’s the only one we have that would even come close to fitting you. It was made for a rather . . . large young man several years ago, but unfortunately, he was also quite . . . short.” The young sorcerer’s eyes were suddenly aswim with mirth-born mist. He cleared his throat in lieu of laughing. “If you’d come to us in a rather more traditional fashion, we might have had time . . .” He shrugged apologetically and Kassia took the little robe and hurried away before she said something she’d later regret.
Now, the robe wadded in her hands, she barely kept herself from running all the way back down the Holy Hill to the village. The wind that stirred the trees and fluttered about her face seemed alive with tension. It lapped at her until she wanted to scream or cry or turn her “firebirds” loose in Damek’s office to set it aflame. She threw herself into Devora’s shop and plowed through into the kitchens only to hesitate in the doorway, her face plaintive and angry.
“Mother of Spirits!” exclaimed Devora, glancing up from a lump of dough she was kneading into submission. “Has old Damek insulted you again?”
Kassia produced the Induction robe from behind her back. “I’m supposed to wear this to the Induction tomorrow.”
Devora eyed it expressionlessly, then turned back to her kneading. “Ay, that’d be tradition, right enough. The little ones always wear the night sky and the stars.”
Kassia waved the thing in the air. “But that’s the trouble, Devora. I’m not a little one! Look at it! It’ll come only to my knees—it’s supposed to be a gown, not a tunic!”
Devora stopped kneading and wiped flour coated hands on her apron. “That’s not what this is really about, is it—an Induction gown?”
“No, it’s . . . it’s about . . . this whole week. I’m not learning anything, Devora. My mother taught me what these first years are learning when I was younger than they are. You should have heard Master Tamukin’s opening speech.” She affected a somber, lugubrious tone and said, in a sing-song voice, “It is not the wo-ord that is good or e-evil, nor is it the element that lies bee-hi-ind the word, nor is it the sentence the wo-ords form. It is only in-tent that may be good or ill, only pur-pos-s-se—and that is contained nowhere but in the invocation. This is why we are careful to invoke only Mat and the Lady Itugen and why if you are caught carelessly uttering invo-ca-tions as if they were imp-recations, you will be quickly disciplined. A day or two alone in a cell with your own thoughts should give you ample time to meditate on your err-or.”
Devora’s mouth was a solemn line, but her eyes twinkled. “And of course, you knew this.”
“Of course, I knew it! I knew everything Master Tamukin said. But to them, to the little ones, it’s all new. So when he asks a question of the class, I’m usually the only one who remembers the answer. It doesn’t do the children any good to hear me answering all the Master’s questions. None of us is learning anything. Least of all me.”
Devora’s eyebrows rose. “None of it is new to you?”
“Well, the Religion class is good, although Brother Sisa has to simplify a lot of things for the children.”
“Children,” Devora repeated. “At twelve and thirteen? My son worked full time in the bakery when he was twelve—knew everything about baking I did. I never had to simplify for him.”
Kassia stubbornly missed the point. “Well, that’s the difference, isn’t it? My mother was shai; I was raised with spells and elemental equations. Honestly, Devora, I could teach that class. I don’t belong there as a student.”
“Evidently, Master Lukasha thinks you do, or he wouldn’t have put you there. Have you talked to him about it?”
Kassia pecked at a star on her Induction robe. “He isn’t there. He got called away to the court of the king. Damek is the only one I could go to about this and he’s made it very clear that Master Tamukin’s first year class is exactly where he wants me.”
Devora shrugged. “Well, then. It doesn’t sound as if there’s any more you can do for the moment. Just learn what you can where you can and hope you get put ahead soon.” She thrust her hands back into her dough and began kneading it with much spirit. “Now, you’d probably best start supper. I’ve got some chores Beyla can do, too. Where is he?”
Kassia stared at Devora, coloring from the tip of her toes to the roots of her
hair. Beyla! He was still up at Lorant, probably wondering where in creation his mother had gone and why she hadn’t come to Shagtai’s workshop to collect him.
Devora awarded her with a wry shake of the head. “You forgot him, didn’t you? Well, supper can be a little late tonight. Go on up and get him. Leave that Induction robe with my sewing things. I’ll see what we can do with it after we’ve eaten.”
Chastened, Kassia hurried back through town and up the forested hill to Lorant. Beyla, rapturously drawing in a kite that had outlived its message, had only just noticed how late it was when she got there, but her tardiness had not escaped Shagtai. As she left, arm around her son’s shoulders, he gave her a disconcerting appraisal with his good eye.
“Keep your head about you, Initiate,” he told her, then went back to his kites.
oOo
On Celek morn, Kassia donned the starred Induction robe and set out for Lorant with Beyla in tow. Beneath what was, on her, a knee-length tunic, she wore a skirt of simple midnight blue that Devora had stayed up quite late to help her sew.
She was awed by the cesia at Lorant. It sat at the very peak of the Holy Hill in a grove of majestic cedars, the most ancient and spectacular one of all overshadowing its gleaming, polished altar. No incense was needed here, for the cedars provided their own, and the gray and white stones that framed the access points shone gold and silver in the dappled sunlight. Between the accesses, which looked to the four points of the compass, tiers of granite benches rose where the worshipers sat on Celek and where the Sacred Circle met in fine weather.
Compared to this true House of God, the poor sanctuary across the narrow valley was hovel. No wonder that the village priests looked crushed to have to practice devotions there. It was like asking God and Goddess to enter a shepherd’s shed when they might worship in a royal palace. The comparison depressed her.
The Spirit Gate Page 6
