The Spirit Gate

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  He began a second spell—a Duet of dual purpose. As he worked, he prayed that the God of all would forgive him if, in doing this thing, he overstepped his bounds.

  oOo

  Decembris 12: I think I am in love, Little Book. I haven’t told you this before? No wonder. I didn’t want to jinx it with mention. I don’t think I even mentioned it to myself. His name is Leliwa and he has hair almost as pale as my own. In the marketplace, I mistook him for shai, embarrassing myself terribly. He is the son of an owner of many orchards, so his exposure to either shai or Mateu has been minimal. He made me so angry at first, staring at me as if I was some sort of two headed fish. I trust I’ve made him understand that we are neither freaks nor angels—either of which is an aberration of human nature.

  I spent an entire month hating him. I don’t understand how it can come to this end, that we love each other. I shall very likely bore you, Little Book, for in future I shall write of nothing but Leliwa of Dalibor.

  Kassia yawned and shifted her position in the huge bed. In the midst of reading about Marija’s second year as an Apprentice, she fought sleep as if it were a demon sent to cut her soul loose from her body. Marija’s life fascinated her in both its parallels to and differences from her own. Here, at the point of reading about the other woman’s love, she absolutely did not want to fall asleep. It was like listening to the voice of a friend or a sister, sharing confidences across a candle-lit room—except this room was lit by sorcery and the sister was long dead, living only through the words in an aged book. The confidences could flow only one way across the decades.

  Kassia lay back against her pillows and reflected on how different her experience of the saintly Marija was than anyone else’s, and all because of this tiny, thick volume. She treasured the secret intimacy. Treasured it so much, she had still not told Master Lukasha she had found it.

  Yawning again, she squeezed her eyelids tightly closed and rolled her eyes behind them, hoping to scrub away the grit of hovering sleep. Just a few more paragraphs, she told herself. She wanted to hear more about Leliwa, wanted to know that he was like her Shurik, kind and gentle and loving. Just a few more paragraphs before she slept . . .

  Decembris 17: Leliwa wants to marry me. He has already informed his family and sought his father’s permission. They are apparently more than pleased to have an Apprentice Mateu as a bond-daughter and have sent me a chest full of rich wedding gifts. The evening of Saturnek after e’en prayers I will go to Leliwa’s house to begin planning our wedding. I am glorious with happiness. I have told my Master, and he says he will be pleased to perform the marriage rite on the day of our Lord and Lady’s wedding feast.

  Itugen mine, Aprilus is so far away—must I really wait until then? But I am an Apprentice Mateu, and it is only proper that I share my wedding day with Mat and Itugen.

  Kassia smiled, recalling how her family had felt when she and Shurik informed them that they would not wait for the Wedding Festival to be married. They had met at Solstice, when Shurik Cheslaf brought his wares to Dalibor’s Summer Festival for sale. Love had come immediately—insistently. There was no thought of waiting until the next spring. They were married at the end of the Festival, and Shurik had returned to Ohdan only long enough to bid his family good-bye and collect his belongings for the move to Dalibor.

  She remembered the day as if it were yesterday—the warm summer Sun, the nodding tops of the cedars of Lorant, the incense of their risen sap. Her little family and their few friends gathered about while a young priest led the wedding celebration. Then she and Shurik had run into the woods laughing, seeking a bower in which to consummate their bond. A bower where none could see but the God and Goddess who would bless their union.

  Kassia felt an unexpected flush of sensual pleasure at the memory. She had never thought of Shurik like this in the years since his death. It had been too painful. Now, it was merely insistent, filling her with a sense of need that, after some moments faded to balmy contentment. She let the sensations pull her into a place of slumber where she dreamed of being loved by a man well-versed in love’s rituals. She gave over to the dream, hungry to hold Shurik again, thirsty for his kisses. But it was not Shurik she gave herself to, some detached part of herself insisted. Shurik was dead. Shurik was a face she could not even be certain she remembered. To prove the voice wrong, she sought the face of her lover. He had none.

  She woke, feeling strange, feeling as if she was not alone here. Her spirit flame still burned, floating in the air next to the bed. She scanned the room with bleary eyes. For the briefest moment, she imagined the mirror across from the foot of her bed was aglow with a soft, spectral light. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. The glow, if it had ever existed, was gone.

  Sighing for the loss of the dream, Kassia extinguished her reading light, snuggled down beneath the blankets, and returned to sleep. She recalled no other dreams, but felt as if she was floating in a river of magic that eddied around her, lapping, swirling, tugging her this way and that. She had no choice but to let the river take her where it would.

  Morning found her refreshed, feeling radiant, gleaming. She washed, dressed, and went out to the cesia for her morning devotions. Zelimir was already there, kneeling in the grass. She hesitated, but he had sensed her presence and turned to look at her. He smiled and beckoned.

  “I am not the sole owner of this cesia,” he told her when she had drawn near. “It is here for all the citizens of my court, yourself included. Or perhaps, for you especially.” He gestured for her to kneel beside him.

  “You flatter me, Majesty,” she murmured, coming to her knees in the dewy grass.

  “Never. I speak only what is in my heart.”

  Kassia performed her genuflections then prayed silently for a while, trying to ignore the man next to her. But she could feel his eyes on the side of her face.

  “Majesty,” she murmured at length, “you are not doing your devotions. I have distracted you.”

  “What makes you think I’m not doing my devotions, Apprentice Kassia?”

  She could hear the smile in his voice. “Majesty . . .”

  “Mishka. My name is Mishka.”

  “You are my king.”

  “You are my shai protector, a daughter of Itugen. Certainly a higher station than my own. Now, I am most certainly distracting you. Please, continue your devotions.”

  He did not stare at her after that, and she was able to complete her prayers without further interruption. But when she rose, he rose with her, and walked beside her back toward the palace.

  “Have you broken fast yet?” he asked as they neared the gallery from which Kassia had entered the garden.

  “No, sire, I have not.”

  “Then you shall breakfast with me this morning.” He raised a hand against her protest. “As you so pointedly reminded me earlier, I am your king. You should not disappoint me.”

  She smiled and inclined her head in acquiescence. When she raised it, she saw that the Bishop of Tabor had come out onto the stone gallery to meet them. There was no mistaking the disapproval on his face.

  “Your Majesty, I must speak with you on a matter of some urgency.”

  Michal Zelimir made a dismissive gesture. “Later, Your Grace.”

  The Bishop fixed him with a most intent gaze, a gaze that raised the hair on the back of Kassia’s neck and made her face feel prickly as if from a fire’s heat. She felt as if unseen forces prowled around and between them, tugging, prodding.

  “It is a political matter, Majesty,” the Bishop said I really think—”

  “I really think that Kassia and I must have some breakfast. I don’t function at all well until I’ve been fed. I will speak to you later.” He took Kassia’s arm then, and swept her into the palace, past the furious gaze of Bishop Benedict.

  Glancing back over her shoulder, she met the Frankish cleric’s eyes. They were cold, baleful, but the strangeness she had felt from them before was gone. She shrugged away the tingling sensation that p
ranced across her shoulders, and let Michal Zelimir lead her to the morning meal.

  oOo

  Lukasha felt Benedict looking for him. It was an odd feeling, a tingling at the back of the neck, a sudden desire to glance around for prying eyes. He was not precisely spoiling for a fight with the Frankish bishop, but neither was he shy of him. He left the solitude of Master Antal’s private library and found his way down to the atrium that ran the length of the grand reception hall’s western side. Benedict was there, in conversation with Joti Subutai who, seeing the Mateu out of the corner of his eye, immediately turned and motioned toward him. Benedict followed the gesture with his eyes and fixed Lukasha with a cold gaze. He dismissed the Apprentice with a curt nod and made his way to Lukasha’s end of the atrium, his gait rigid.

  “Master Lukasha, I must speak with you. Privily.”

  Lukasha motioned toward a hearth on the inner wall of the atrium around which a group of chairs had been drawn. The hearth was cold at this hour of the day, but the Sun, falling through the thick glass panels overhead, warmed the long hall. He seated himself, casually pushing the sleeve of his robe above the be-webbed silver bracelet on his left wrist. Not, he thought wryly as Benedict sat opposite him, that he would need it. The other man was radiant with antipathy.

  “Please,” Lukasha said, “speak freely.”

  “This woman you have brought to Tabor—who is she? What is she?”

  “She is Kassia Telek—my Apprentice.”

  “She is a sorceress.”

  “She is shai. There is a difference.”

  “I fail to see it.”

  “The shai are pledged to harm no one. They are souls with extraordinary gifts—”

  “So Pater Julian tells me. Your shai Apprentice visited our church yesterday and cast some hellish spell upon our altar.”

  Lukasha quirked a brow. “‘>Some hellish spell?’”

  “She placed a flame upon the altar that the Pater was only barely able to put out with the aid of the Holy Spirit.”

  “Hmm. The same power Kassia invoked to set it.”

  “You blaspheme, but I will not convict you—my Lord will convict you. As he will convict your sorceress. I can do nothing for your souls, for they are lost. But I will do what I can for my King’s soul.”

  “Your king? Is not your king the Most High Bishop of Avignon?”

  “In a spiritual sense, yes. But I am a citizen of this land and I will not see it brought to ruin. I see what you try to do, Mateu. I know why you have brought this woman to Tabor and presented her to Zelimir. You think he might marry her, as she is one of his own. You think you might control him through her.”

  Lukasha’s lips twitched. “I think nothing of the sort. I brought her here that she might protect him.”

  “You will take her away.”

  “Will I?”

  “You will.”

  “Perhaps if I take her away, Zelimir will refuse all others. Perhaps he will seek her out. What then?”

  “He cannot marry a village sorceress.”

  “She is far more than that, Bishop. She is my Apprentice. By the new year she will be an Aspirant. Then a Mateu. Among our people—among Zelimir’s people—there is no higher station. She is every bit as noble as your Orsini duchess and has spiritual powers beyond your reckoning.”

  “There is nothing spiritual about her. She is a danger to Michal Zelimir’s immortal soul. Take her away.”

  “When she has done what I brought her here to do.”

  “I warn you, Mateu—”

  Lukasha rose. “Of what, Your Grace? Of Divine retribution? Of the power of your prayers—or of your hatred? My prayers also have power. God listens, yes, even to the prayers of the so-called ‘pagan’. He sent Kassia to me when I despaired of ever seeing the rift between the Mateu and the shai repaired. He sent her to Zelimir when I despaired of him finding any woman of more than passing interest.”

  “If he marries her, his soul will be lost and his realm unprotected.”

  Lukasha chuckled. “Oh, hardly that. The state of his soul will be, as always, between himself and his God. Let us just say of his realm that its protection would come from a power more potent than Frankish armies.”

  Now Benedict came to his feet as well. “I will fight you.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Lukasha said and bowed to the other man. “You will excuse me, Your Grace. I have promised my Apprentice a tour of the city.”

  At the far end of the solarium, where it met the corridor, Lukasha chanced a glance back at the other man. Benedict was looking after him with a gaze that threatened frostbite even at this distance. The cold was palpable enough to make the Mateu raise a reflexive ward wall against it.

  Smiling grimly, Lukasha took himself out of sight. His adversary would summon the fires of his hell if he knew how successfully Kassia had won the King’s favor—if he had been party to the conversation that had transpired between Lukasha and Zelimir only moments before in Master Antal’s library. There the young king had poured out his heart to his old friend, and by Benedict’s reckoning, his soul was already lost. He was falling heels over head in love with the snowy-haired enchantress, could no more resist her mesmerizing pull than he could the urge to sleep or wake or dream.

  Lukasha had sympathized with him: How sad that she had appeared in his life on the eve of his having to make a political marriage; how regrettable that she was of no political importance, that she would make, in the eyes of many, an unsuitable match. Although, Lukasha had mused aloud, the shai would soon regain the stature they had achieved before the Tamalid horrors began. What might seem unsuitable now would in future be a most desirable union.

  Hearing that, Michal had rallied to a declaration of stubborn purpose, then sobered. There were ties to be strengthened, alliances to be forged. He could not overlook his marriage as a tool of diplomacy. Would she accept concubinage? He would dismiss all others—easily. Already, they were forgotten. Then, perhaps in the future if, as Lukasha said, the shai retrieved their status, he might marry her.

  Lukasha cautioned him; Kassia was no mere village lass to be used and discarded. She wielded power even she could not imagine. To marry another while loving her would be sure to breed trouble, personally and politically. What of her son, Beyla? What place would he hold in the Zelimirid Court? What would his life be like when blood heirs were born to the man to whom he would look to as a father?

  Michal had left the Mateu more uneasy of mind than when he had found him. “I must speak to Kassia,” he said. “Soon.”

  “Don’t be reckless, Mishka,” Lukasha told him. “Who knows? Among your potential brides there may be one who will steal your heart absolutely.”

  But Michal Zelimir could not be convinced. There was only Kassia. The more his thoughts dwelt with her, the truer that became. In the end, Lukasha had agreed that he would speak to his Apprentice and try to determine where her heart lay. He would do more than that. He would try to convince Kassia to view a suit by the king with favor. There was a good possibility he would fail in that . . . without arcane assistance. He wondered if the magic that had worked so well on a mere man like Michal Zelimir would have any effect on Kassia Telek.

  oOo

  Decembris 19: I found the most peculiar reference today in the writings of Pater Honorius to traveling between here and Tabor (Sandomir, he called it). He wrote, “I will be in Sandomir tomorrow.” But the entry is dated, and the location of its writing given as Jasna Gora (his name for Lorant). I am left to wonder how Pater Honorius can travel from Jasna Gora/Lorant to Sandomir/Tabor in a single day. Pater Honorius has some peculiar ideas about things metaphysical, but I’d never suspect him of madness. If I wasn’t seeing Leliwa tonight, I’d be able to read further in the old monk’s papers.

  It seems I have lied about writing of nothing but Leliwa. There are yet other things that interest me.

  Kassia stared at the entry for a long moment, wondering what to make of it—feeling, she suspected, much as y
oung Marija must have when she made it. Had Pater Honorius made a slip of the tongue, or was there some arcane means by which he could go from Dalibor to Tabor in a single day? Heart beating a bit faster, she scanned ahead in the diary, seeking other places where Marija mentioned the monk’s name. At length she found one.

  Januarius 5: It seems Pater Honorius was not merely being absent minded or sloppy of pen. According to his journal, the monks regularly traveled between here and Tabor, apparently often going to and fro in the same day. Imagine that! They took it as much for granted as I might take a stroll to the Pavla Yeva, and yet, here am I, Dalibor-bound unless I care to make a week long journey. I asked Master Boleslas about the reference, but he was as stunned as I was—he’d never heard of such a thing. Which leaves me with the question: Why do we no longer possess this knowledge? Was the spell destroyed by the arrival of the Khan, or was it something known in particular by the monks that was never part of our magic at all?

  I somehow doubt this last conclusion—Pater Honorius has made such a point of how contact with the local shaman and shai so greatly increased his knowledge of the arcane arts. To hear Honorius (or rather to read him), you’d think all the monks ever did was construct wards to protect themselves from the ill effects of using the local magic they dabbled in. Master Boleslas has charged me with finding whatever I can of the monk’s work. I don’t believe he holds out much hope of my success. He is of the firm opinion that the monks must have destroyed their store of knowledge to keep it from falling into the hands of Batu Khan and his shamans. But I dare to hope it is only well-hidden.

  Kassia’s heart skipped a beat. Here she sat, over half a century later, charged with what was essentially the same task—ferreting out the ancient knowledge—and facing the same questions Marija had faced so long ago. She savored the connection for only a moment, then bowed over the book once again, intent on finding any further references to the traveling spell. She was interrupted by a tap on her chamber door. Slipping the journal into the pocket of her azure surcoat, she rose from the window seat and went to receive her visitor.