“There’s another woman here?”
Lukasha stopped in the middle of the broad hallway. “A girl, really. Younger than yourself. Her family sent her here for an education; she feels called to the priesthood. She’s a bright girl—a brilliant poet and musician. Very devoted, very good at theology and history and undeniably Radman’s pet, else she wouldn’t still be here. Unfortunately, she has trouble grasping even the basic Mysteries a Mateu must have. So, she is in Master Radman’s class, struggling to understand.”
“Then she’ll be in the same studio?”
“Yes. Ari will be a classmate of yours.” He smiled wryly. “Radman’s class is a mixed lot.”
They were indeed. Casimir, who acted as class aide, was Master Radman’s Apprentice. He was a somber young man in his early twenties with wide, green eyes and a mouth that seemed reluctant to smile. Among the novices were Gavmat and Ioakim, an inseparable pair who could not have been more dissimilar. Where Gavmat was small, dark and wiry, Ioakim was tall, lithe and golden. His twin brother, Matim, also a member of Radman’s elite group, was a gawky, over-thin Initiate struggling, Lukasha confided, to become an Apprentice by the summer Solstice when his father had threatened to remove him from Lorant and install him in the family business.
Arax-itu, a tall, willowy girl with at least a yard of blue-black hair and a voice as dulcet as wind through the pines of Lorant, was obviously delighted to see another female student. From the others, Kassia felt a bitter-sweet combination of curiosity, surprise, affability and suspicion. Which came from whom was difficult to sort out.
Master Radman was a great pudding of a man—a man, Kassia suspected, who spent much time in or near the sweet shop she had seen on the square in New Dalibor. He immediately enveloped her in his warm, billowing regard as if she were a lost daughter newly found.
“Ah! This is Kassia!”
He set aside the scroll from which he had been copying figures to a large slate of lightless black and gestured broadly at an ottoman close to his left hand. There was a writing board balanced atop it, along with a thin sheaf of paper and a bundle of reed pens. The other students, most already seated on their hassocks, were grouped in a rough half circle around the rotund Mateu.
“My dear, how good it is to have you here! I must thank Lukasha again for the bounty of having you in my class.” He watched Kassia seat herself, beaming all the while, then added, grasping and squeezing her hand, “It will be so good to feel the earth magic tremble in these stones again. We Mateu can rattle the rafters, but only shai enchantment can shake the earth.”
To be sure, not everyone Kassia met that day offered her as warm a welcome as the amiable Master Radman.
“So,” murmured Gavmat, as he passed by her to gather his own board and pens, “you’re the one,” and Kassia knew she was once again the source of rumor.
Fine, she thought wryly. It wouldn’t do to have my life change too much all at once.
Master Radman delivered the expected lectures on the elements, lingering for a bit on the earth elements and describing how, during the last century, the Mateu had learned to deal with them through subtractive incantations. He noted, with a nod to Kassia, that the shai could deal with these things directly and emphasized how important that direct manipulation of Itugen’s elements could be.
“Let us take, for example, the Great Fires. You are all too young to remember them—indeed, I was little more than a boy, myself. You’ve no doubt studied them in History—or will do so.” He inclined his head toward Kassia. “They ravaged the valley of Dalibor, nearly destroyed Ohdan, and reached almost to the first yam between here and Tabor. The Mateu could do no more than still the winds to slow the fire’s rage, but it was not enough. Shai magic, alone, could have stopped the flames at their source.”
“It seems to me,” said Kassia, trying to keep her voice from betraying nerves, “that shai magic and Mateu magic together would have provided the best solution.”
“Yes, but the shai wouldn’t help, would they?” Gavmat was pointedly not looking at her.
Master Radman frowned. “Is this what Brother Sisa taught you in History, Gavmat?”
“No. He merely said the Mateu magic wasn’t enough. That all they could do was try to stop the wind from blowing and fanning the flames higher. But even that was hard, of course, because the fire made its own wind.” He looked at Kassia now. “Shai wind.”
Kassia had opened her mouth to retort, but Master Radman gave her a warning glance. “Where did you learn that the shai refused to stop the fires?”
“My father. He’s a mason, you know. His father was a woodcutter. After the fires there was no wood to be cut, except what was around Lorant, which is sacred. Father said the shai let the fires eat the valley.”
If she could have reached the ignorant pup, Kassia would have smacked him. As it was, she thanked Itugen that he was seated safely out of reach and tried to speak moderately. “That’s not true. My mother was shai—the only one left in the village. She tried to stop the fires. But she couldn’t. The earth wouldn’t speak to her; the fire wouldn’t listen.”
Master Radman stopped Gavmat before he could utter whatever taunt quivered on his half-open lips. “The fire wouldn’t listen,” he agreed. “And because of that, much of Dalibor valley became a charcoal heap. So you see, the control of the earth elements is no small thing.”
No small thing. Kassia remembered that later in the day as she stood on the flat rooftop of Shagtai’s little apartment with the narrow valley of Dalibor laid out below her like a multicolored carpet. Beneath the steely sky, amid the gray of ash and the black of the skeletal forest, were splashes of color—the blue-green ribbon of river, the brighter green of young spring grass and adolescent saplings, the rich browns of new wood. Here and there were even flashes of blooming hues—pinks, reds, violets—as wildflowers struggled amid the wastes.
Itugen, Kassia knew, was as much a creator as she was a destroyer. To replace what her fires carried up into the skies, she brought forth anew from the soil. Even the ashes of destruction fueled rebirth.
A patter of renewed rain took her below to Shagtai’s workshop where he showed Beyla how to construct a kite frame of light wood. The workshop, with its orderly clutter of tools and twine, sticks and fabric, had become a sanctuary to Kassia’s son. He liked helping Devora in the bakery, enjoyed watching buns and breads take shape, but he was in love with the kites. He had names for his favorite ones—the ones that resembled animals—and already he was learning their language.
Now, eyes on his work, tongue tip peeking from the corner of his mouth, Beyla looked the perfect kite master’s Apprentice.
Shagtai glanced up from the kite he was repairing and jerked his head toward the inner room. “There’s a pot of hot water on the fire. Tea’s in the red lacquer box over the hearth.”
Kassia nodded, accepting the chore, and let herself into Shagtai’s private quarters. She found the tea where he’d said it would be, put it into a little metal ball and poured hot water into the beautiful enameled pot the kite master claimed to have brought from a land of dragons and gods. Into the water, the tea ball went, while Kassia wondered idly what kind of spell one could weave with a metal spell ball full of tea leaves.
While the tea steeped she let her eyes wander over the little suite of rooms. Where she stood was a kitchen-parlor. With her back to the raised hearth, she could see the odd box-like bed in which Shagtai slept, a sack chair and a second fire pit with an ottoman drawn close to it. In one corner of the room was a large black lacquered box set on end with its double-hinged lid opened to reveal a red velvet interior. Curious, Kassia moved to give it a closer look.
There was a censer before the box, while within it stood a group of small figures made of wood, stone and metal. The censer implied veneration, but Kassia couldn’t imagine what the statues represented that Shagtai should venerate them.
“Are you making the tea or not?”
Startled, Kassia turned to find Sh
agtai regarding her from the door to his workshop. “I was just . . .” She gestured lamely at the box. “What is it?”
“It is a shrine,” said Shagtai. “It is where I perform my daily devotions.”
“What are the little figures?”
Shagtai moved to stand beside her, wiping his hands methodically on a piece of rag. He glanced from the shrine to Kassia’s face. “These are onghot—they represent my ancestors. And . . . my loved ones who wait for me.”
Kassia frowned at the dark censer, finding no words in which to frame her puzzlement. Finally she said, “The scriptures say that only Mat and Itugen are to be worshipped.”
“I offer these veneration and prayer, not worship. That I give to the God, alone. Do the scriptures also say that you should not love the memory of your parents or your husband?”
“No, of course not, but—”
“In this way, I love the memory of my parents and the parents of my parents. In this way, I offer them my respect. It is not wise to neglect one’s ancestors or to forget one’s past. You are shai. Is this not because your mother was also shai?”
Kassia’s frown melted. “Yes. And she, because her grandmother was shai.”
Shagtai nodded. “One is what one is because of his or her ancestors. It is unwise to forget this. Come, let’s have our tea.” He grinned crookedly, his visible eye narrowed to a slit. “It should be strong enough by now.”
Kassia thought much about her conversation with Shagtai as the week progressed. She thought much about what her heritage had made her, more about what she had made of her heritage. Control of the earth elements, as Master Radman had said, was no small thing, yet she had done nothing with it but small things. She told herself that was by circumstance. Much of the knowledge passed down to her through her mother and great-grandmother was merely that—knowledge, without the spark of life that would make it real and effective. The spark had left her great-grandmother late in life and had abandoned her grandmother altogether. Its return had been almost too late for Jasia Antavas; though she was shai, her powers had never developed to their full potential, and her daughter, Kassia, had grown up not really understanding the scope or import of her own gift.
Later that week, as if some higher power felt the need to emphasize her lack of understanding, Master Radman asked Kassia for the precise equation she would use to bring light into a darkened room.
Kassia had never dealt with precise equations, but was reluctant to admit as much. Instead she tried to put words to a process that was second nature to her. “Well, sir, first, I would decide where I wanted the light to reside. A glass bottle or a clay bowl . . .”
“A spell ball, perhaps?”
Kassia smiled apologetically. “I suppose if I had one I’d use it, but I’ve never had one.”
Gavmat shook his head and someone else muttered something too softly to hear. In response, Master Radman touched a finger lightly to his lips. “So you would use what, then?”
“Usually a bowl or cup or bottle. My father was a glass-maker, so my mother taught me to spell using the cups and bottles he made. For light I’d take a cup colored red by gold. I would hold the cup and call upon Itugen and fire—”
“That’s fire, Kassia,” Radman observed over the renewed murmuring of his other students. “I asked about light.”
Sensing the sudden twitching edge of tension in the room, Kassia frowned. She was reluctant to say that she rarely made use of pure light and hadn’t codified how she went about getting it. She was going to have to think on her feet.
“There is now fire in the cup,” she ad-libbed. “I breathe into the cup of fire and call upon Mat. Then I think of the night and the moon and when I remove the fire . . . there is only light in the cup.”
“And no more fire?” asked Radman.
“And no more fire.”
“I don’t believe her,” said Gavmat. “How can she handle fire?”
“Because she’s shai,” answered Master Radman. “Shai can handle fire.”
“But, she didn’t use a standard equation,” Gavmat persisted. “You’ve always told us how important it is to get the equations right.”
“Gav makes a good point,” said Casimir quietly, his pen poised above a fresh sheet of paper. “How can this meet with success?”
In response, Radman roused himself from his contemplation of Kassia’s face to go to the slate. With the tip of one finger, he began to write there with letters and symbols of light.
“Ah, but you see, it is a standard equation. Look. She takes a vessel tinted by gold to the color of fire—gold, of course, is an Itugenic element.” He scribbled the word vessel on the lightless surface, then added, beneath it, spell ball. He followed this with the sign of addition. “Next, she invokes Itugen.” He added the words Isak Itugen to the equation and the symbol for equation. “She now has fire.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kassia could see several of the others shaking their heads. Her temper rustled.
“Next,” Radman continued, after drawing a symbol for fire, “she adds the catalyst for light, for which she has appropriately chosen air.” He glanced at the circle of watchful students. “Why is that an appropriate choice, Ioakim?”
The boy blinked pale eyes and answered, “Because it is Mat’s primary element.”
“Very good. Ioakim is right—air is Mat’s primary element, and therefore the strongest Kassia could have chosen. And, having made use of this catalyst, she then invokes Mat, Himself.”
Isak Mat, he wrote.
“Then—ah, then she shows a real understanding of subtractive magic. She invokes Night—that is, Darkness . . . and the Moon, the remover of Darkness . . . and ends by removing the fire itself.”
“Why not just use the fire to make light?” Arax-itu’s voice was breathless and hushed, as if she’d actually seen Kassia perform the bit of magic they discussed.
“Not safe,” said Casimir, scribbling Radman’s equation on a piece of paper. “Fire’s very dangerous. Especially since we can’t control it.” He stopped in mid-scrawl and stared at Kassia.
Radman was beaming at her. “Good. Now, Kassia, what if I were to ask you for an equation that would lift a large rock out of a farmer’s field?”
The morning continued in this way, but Kassia was only half aware of what was said and done. A new awareness that had been tapping at her brain for days had finally gained admittance. She could control fire. She could create it with a word; she could just as easily put it out. She had known that for years without realizing what it meant. But if she could control it, could she not create an amulet that would protect someone from it? She’d never tried investing an amulet with anything more than a vague blessing, but perhaps Master Lukasha would be willing to help.
At the mid-day break before her religion class, Kassia intended to go straight to the Headmaster’s offices to enlist his aid, but Arax-itu was at her side the moment she stepped out into the courtyard.
“How do you do it?” the younger woman asked. “How do you grasp it all so easily? Master Radman’s equations make my head hurt.”
Kassia paused, abandoning the idea of approaching Master Lukasha in favor of getting to know Lorant’s only other female Initiate. “I suppose it comes naturally to me. Although, I have to admit, I don’t think of spells as equations.”
“Then how do you think of them?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I think of them as . . . well, prayers or meditations. I just . . . do what makes sense.”
Arax-itu sighed. “None of it makes sense to me. This plus that equals thus, thus plus this equals that, then subtract two of these and you get a ball of light.” She shook her head, dragging curls the color of a raven’s wing across the shoulders of her deep blue robe. “Why can’t magic be less like mathematics and more like poetry?”
“Why shouldn’t it be like poetry?” Kassia asked.
Arax-itu’s pale brow drew into a puzzled frown. “What do you mean?”
Kassia nodd
ed to where the kite master herded his airborne charges. “If Shagtai were to perform spells, he’d probably think of them as kites and string and air currents. Maybe you need to think of them as poetry.”
“Poetry.” The girl mouthed the word as if it was, itself, an invocation. “You mean that the spell is . . . like a sentence? And the . . . the elements in it are like words and letters?”
Kassia nodded, her eyes still on Shagtai’s kites. “Yes. Yes, exactly that. Spells are like sentences. Or songs. Or whole poems. They have rhythm and meaning and . . .” She shrugged. “Balance.”
Arax-itu awarded her with a quick laugh and a brilliant smile. “You know what my mother told me just last week? ‘Now, Ari,’ she said, ‘can spells really be any more complicated than cooking recipes?’ Recipes! I thought she was being terribly irreligious, and since recipes didn’t make any more sense to me than equations, I didn’t understand what she meant. But now I do. She was putting it in terms she understood. Maybe if I do the same thing . . .” She shrugged and smiled. “It couldn’t hurt.”
They ate their mid-day meal together, listening to Shagtai tell stories of the strange things he’d seen in his journeys eastward, and sharing his bittersweet tea. Kassia thought about how she could make an amulet against fire for a stranger’s child and Arax-itu thought about the ways in which magic was like poetry.
oOo
It was not until the next afternoon that Kassia was able to get to Master Lukasha’s offices. Blessedly, Damek was not in the outer office, so Kassia slipped quickly through to the Headmaster’s inner chambers. The door was slightly ajar, giving her a view of the very bottom of the steep, curving stair that led up to his private studio. She could see no one. Made brazen by her sense of urgency, she slid into the room. Mellow afternoon sunlight painted it with warm patterns of light and shadow that caressed the colorful assortment of books on their neat rows of wooden shelves. No one browsed among the books; no one sat at the table beneath the large mullioned window.
The Spirit Gate Page 8
