The Spirit Gate

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  “I’m not sure. I think so. Why?” She desperately wanted to rub her eyes.

  He didn’t answer her, but took her hand, as Michal had done earlier, and pressed it to the mandorla badge on his robe in such a way that both their finger tips lay over the heart of the figure. Above their joined hands, hung a necklace with four large beads—one blue glass, one silver, one copper, one gold. “Speak the equation with me, Kiska. I will set the course.”

  With blind trust, her heart pounding, Kassia murmured the words of the incantation. Before she could blink, she was lost in a swift flood of silent light and motion and found herself, only a moment later, enveloped in complete darkness.

  Afraid to move, her eyes useless, she opened her other senses to the darkness. The sounds of night insects came to her, the scents of earth and foliage. She realized they were in a wood, the trees deciduous, the ground damp with a sprinkling of fresh rain. And there was wood smoke rising sweetly from nearby along with the soft sounds of conversation and restless horses.

  “Where—?” Kassia started to whisper, but her Master, barely visible as a white blur in the darkness, raised his hand to his lips.

  Then he took her hand and pressed it against something made of rough fabric that gave beneath her touch. A tent, she realized, or a yurt. His hand left hers to make a circling gesture in the hair above his head, and she realized he had set a screening ward.

  Now Lukasha broke the silence. “We are in the camp of the Gherai kagan. In fact, this is his yurt. He is even now within, asleep. Tell me, Kassia, do you feel the imprint of Benedict’s magic here?”

  She considered that, reaching about her with feelers of sense, probing the sleeping Mongol, the men whose laughter she could hear beyond the yurt on its nether side. Her brow furrowed. There was . . . something. An odd residue in the air like dew on a morning leaf. But was it Benedict?

  “I can’t tell,” she murmured. “Maybe if he were awake . . .”

  Silently, Lukasha placed a hand against the fabric wall of the yurt and made a circular gesture with the flat of his hand. Words escaped him in brief hiss of sound. The barrier seemed to evaporate, going from solid to transparent in a matter of seconds. He stepped through the bespelled breach, pulling Kassia after him.

  Within, the tent was nearly as dark as the night without, lit only by firelight that trickled through seams around its door flap and a tiny, dying flame that curled in a brazier at the center of the enclosure. A man slept in a bed of fleeces, his face turned toward the guttering flame. Beside him lay a woman, her naked arm flung across his back.

  “Listen carefully, Kassia,” Lukasha told her. “Be prepared to perform the Traveling spell the moment I give the word. Can you do that?”

  “If I work out the equation right up to the last catalyst and hold it for completion . . .”

  A smile touched his lips. Before she could guess what he meant to do, his arm raised and lowered in a throwing motion and the dying fire exploded with intense heat and light. She cried out, startled, then nearly leapt out of her skin when the Mongol kagan sat up with the swiftness of a cat and produced a sword seemingly from thin air. Regaining her composure, she ignored the babble of sound that poured from the waking woman. She set the Traveling spell in motion then, concentrating on the man, she reached out to him, feeling around him, gently brushing his mind.

  There! There was something. It was different than what she had sensed around Michal, yet strangely akin. She couldn’t be sure it was Benedict; the strange directionless passion might even come from the kagan himself.

  She opened her mouth to tell her Master what she had sensed, when she realized that the woman and man were both staring at them, that the woman was getting ready to scream. Lukasha created a pouch of silence in which to receive the scream; it went nowhere to be heard by no one. The man, sword in hand, leapt to his feet, his roar of rage going to the same soundless void.

  “I am Master Lukasha Dalibori, Mateu,” said Lukasha evenly. “And this, the Mistress Kassia Telek, a powerful sorceress and medicine woman. You trespass, noble Khan. You trespass on the sacred ground of Mat and Itugen. God and Goddess bid you leave.”

  Kassia, stunned, yet was able to glimpse the fleet tide of emotions that passed behind the Mongol’s dark eyes. Fear, but only momentary. Awe, disbelief. Belief followed in quick succession by anger and frustration. Then, as if a door had flung open, came a steely, implacable resolve to resist. The other emotions rose up in a brief battle and lost. The cold resolve won out. It was, Kassia realized, a resolve external to the kagan, whose impulse told him to respect beings that could materialize out of the ether. It bore Benedict’s signature, and yet was warped in some indefinable way. Perhaps it was the distance.

  The kagan spat upon the floor of the yurt. “That is for your sacred ground,” he said in deliberate but clear Polian. “Your alien gods mean nothing to me.”

  That feeling again, as if he struggled against the words even as they left his mouth. “Yes,” whispered Kassia just beneath her breath. “Yes, it’s Benedict . . . somehow. I’m sure of it but—”

  “Block him,” Lukasha murmured, his eyes still on the Mongol, then aloud, “They will mean something to you if you continue to harass their people.”

  As the Mongol spat a second time to underscore his fearlessness of foreign gods, Kassia threw up a barrier around him. Nothing happened. The stream of alien power still flowed to him through her ward; she could feel it—almost see it.

  “I can’t block him!” she whispered.

  Lukasha stiffened perceptibly. “This is sacred ground you have soiled with your impudence, kagan,” he told the Mongol. “It will spit back at you.”

  Mengli Khan leapt forward, sword raised and ready to strike, but as swift as he was, Lukasha was swifter. “The spell, Kassia!”

  At the moment she uttered the last catalyst for the Traveling spell he traced a mandorla on the ground about them with a beam of pure light and clothed the opening doorway in a fantastic ring of fire and cloud. In less time than it took to expel a sigh of relief, Kassia found herself in the chambers she had inhabited during their last visit to Tabor, Lukasha still at her side.

  “Benedict?” he asked her. “Or have we some new adversary?”

  She grimaced. “I’m not sure. It felt like Benedict . . . yet it didn’t. And I can still block Benedict from reaching the king, yet this intrusion was proof to that.” She shook her head. “If it is Benedict—and my every instinct tells me it must be him—I can’t imagine how he’s doing it . . . unless he has a second sorcerer among his entourage. To manipulate the Gherai kagan from such a distance, and Bogorja and Zelimir as well . . . it would be impossible for one man.”

  “What we accomplished tonight seemed impossible little over a month ago.” Lukasha’s voice matched his face for grimness. “Well, whether he has help or no, Benedict is a dangerous adversary. One we must face.” He glanced at her, seeming to notice for the first time the doubt in her eyes. He grasped her arms, turning her toward him. “You must help me in this thing, Kassia. I can’t do this without you. Alone of all the students I have ever had, you have the talent, the will, the affinity for the spirit world that would make you equal to this task. Don’t fail me, Kassia. Don’t fail Mishka. Don’t fail yourself.”

  “No, Master,” she whispered.

  She nearly collapsed when he pulled his hands away and left her to prepare for sleep or sleeplessness, whichever the night would bring. Exhausted, she crawled into her night robe and began to brush her hair. She was standing at the tall chamber window, doing less brushing than toying with her confusion, when she heard a soft sound behind her—the slip of fabric on fabric. She turned, too tired to feel more than lethargic alarm, to find Zakarij standing in the center of her room.

  For a long moment, the two stood in stunned silence, staring at each other, then Zakarij pressed a trembling hand to his chest and expelled a pent up breath. “I’m here. I can barely believe it, but I’m here.”

  Ka
ssia sighed, relaxing. “Zakarij, why are you here?”

  “You said you would be back tonight. When you didn’t come . . .”

  “I have been known to take care of myself.”

  He gave her a hooded look. “I don’t doubt it, but Beyla was worried about you. I promised him I would try to find out where you were. I knew a Locator spell—”

  “That was no Locator spell.”

  “I . . . thought I might try . . . this one.”

  “It seems to work very well.”

  He smiled fleetingly. “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”

  “Beyla was worried about me?” Kassia moved to a hearthside chair and sat in it.

  “And Devora and Shagtai . . . and me.”

  “What might have happened to me here, with Lukasha?”

  Zakarij moved to sit across from her, his face lit only dimly by the very mundane hearth lamps she had lit. “Benedict might have happened to you. Or perhaps Michal Zelimir.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Zakarij raised his hand. “Never mind. It’s enough to know you’re safe and sound.” He cocked his head to one side and studied her. “You’re exhausted. What’s happened?”

  Memory brought Kassia upright in her chair. She leaned forward, elbows on knees, lowering her voice. “Benedict is not only influencing the king, he’s manipulating some of his courtiers as well. And . . . I can scarcely believe this, Zakarij, but he’s somehow found a way to take hold of the Gherai Khan, himself.”

  “Take hold of him? What do you—?” Now Zakarij leaned forward as well until their foreheads nearly met. “You mean Benedict brought on the incursion into Khitan?”

  “I think so. I’m almost positive of it.”

  “How can he do that? Even a Mateu could only influence one individual at a time—were it permissible to do so. What sort of magic does this man control?”

  “I don’t know. If I knew, maybe I could block it more effectively.”

  Zakarij passed her a look that was slyness itself. “There are ways we could find out.” He started to rise.

  Kassia was beyond endurance. She wilted back into her chair. “Oh, please, Zakarij. I must sleep. Morning will come too soon as it is, and I’ve had enough traveling for one day. I’ve already been from Dalibor to Tabor to Khitan and back again.”

  “Khitan?”

  “Lukasha took me to see the kagan. So I could tell if he was being manipulated by magic. He is.” She yawned. She was slipping from the grasp of consciousness even as she spoke. “He is,” she repeated, and slept.

  She awoke the next morning in the soft comfort of her bed and felt deliciously warmed by the thought that Zakarij must have so carefully arranged her pillows and nestled her among them. She assumed he must have returned to Dalibor in the night, and was surprised to find that instead, he had gone directly to their Master’s room to make his presence known and had drawn the task of trying to discover if there was, indeed, more than one sorcerer sent them from Avignon.

  They broke fast together in Master Antal’s private quarters, a pleasant little manor in the shadow of the palace’s eastern wall. There, Master Lukasha announced that he had devised a plan to protect the king from Benedict’s manipulations. It was a plan that devolved entirely on Kassia’s ability to teach others to block the bishop’s touch.

  “Teach you?” she repeated, feeling suddenly stupid.

  “You’ve taught me much more complicated things, child,” Lukasha reminded her. “I had thought Antal might block Chancellor Bogorja while Zakarij and the other Aspirants and Mateu at court could provide protection for other individuals near Zelimir. How did you block the bishop before?”

  Kassia took a deep breath and considered that. She had never been asked to define or describe the process. “I . . . I imagined a wall between the bishop and Zelimir. An elemental wall. I was with the king the first time I did it. That was when I formed the image.”

  Lukasha nodded. “What incantations do you use? What equations?”

  “I . . . there are none.” Embarrassment made her cheeks burn . . .

  Antal’s brows squirmed into a frown. “You have no incantations? How can that be?”

  Kassia lifted a wing of white hair back from her forehead. “I don’t know. I simply form the image and put it where I want it.”

  Lukasha and Antal shared a glance, then Lukasha said. “Well, there is surely an equation that goes with this spell and we shall find it. If we dissect the elements, we’ll discover the spirits that control them.”

  They spent the next hour or so doing just that, after which Kassia worked to teach them the spell. It was not very hard after all; the Mateu and their Apprentices seemed to comprehend the principles behind the spell well enough, but the proof would be in the doing. Though they took turns practicing on each other—blocking suggestions and thoughts—they would not have the opportunity to prove themselves until Zelimir convened his court.

  That moment was delayed. Zelimir was reported to have had a “bad night,” and so the conspirators were forced to dally until their king called for them. Zakarij and Kassia strolled the cesia’s lush gardens, a part of Kassia’s mind ever aware of her adversary.

  “How can you tell,” asked Zakarij as if he sensed her mental division, “when Benedict is working his will on Zelimir?”

  She chuckled and shook her head. Once again, she had to ponder her own processes. “I hold a constant awareness of the king,” she said at last. “When Benedict intrudes on him, I feel it.”

  “A constant awareness,” Zakarij murmured. “I envy our king more every day.”

  She glanced at him out of the tail of her eye. There was that irritating smile-not-smile again. “Well, you might certainly envy him his home or his gardens or his place of worship. I don’t think I’d envy him his political problems just now.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of any of those things . . . as you well know.”

  “How should I know? You’re a bigger mystery to me by far than Michal Zelimir. You’re so . . . opaque. You close so much of yourself away.”

  “Whereas you don’t?”

  She stopped walking and turned to look at him. “I didn’t think so.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. You do. You hide things deep in your eyes where I can’t reach them.”

  “You want to reach them, do you, Zakarij?”

  He didn’t answer, but his eyes were, for once, transparent as glass, and while Kassia tried to absorb what she read in them, he framed her face with gentle hands, lowered his head and kissed her mouth. It was a touch that left Kassia with no doubt about what either of them felt. Time and place were swept away as surely as if she’d stepped into her bespelled corridor, though there was no swirl of light. She heard the sough of wind and the song of bird and the chatter of courtiers beyond the garden wall as if those things had been suddenly amplified. Passion flooded the kiss—from both sides equally—and she felt his hands drift from face to neck to shoulders, warm, sensuous, caressing, seeking to draw her into a full embrace. On the verge of giving herself over to that embrace, she realized they were being observed.

  She lowered her head, regretfully breaking contact with his lips, and murmured, “Someone’s watching us.”

  He didn’t move apart from her, but merely leaned his forehead against hers, returning his hands to her neck. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I can’t tell who it is.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No.”

  It didn’t matter, she mused, as they continued their walk. If Shurik looked down on them from the world of God, would he disapprove?

  “What will Beyla think of me?” Zakarij asked as they wandered back toward the palace. “Will he accept me?”

  Kassia smiled. “Beyla thinks you’re quite wonderful. He’s said he wishes to be a Mateu just like you . . . and me.”

  “Ah, but there’s a difference between finding someone wonderful when he’s your mother’s friend and finding him wonderful w
hen he suddenly becomes your mother’s husband.”

  Kassia felt a soft tingle of unnameable emotion at the words. She had been without a husband for three years that felt like twenty. She had never thought to have a husband again. That she loved Zakarij she had no doubt, but so different was it from what she had felt for Shurik . . .

  “I doubt Shurik wants you to live your life a widow,” murmured Zakarij, “or to have his son grow up fatherless when there’s someone who will love you both. If I were in Shurik’s place, I wouldn’t want it.”

  Kassia paused below the stone gallery that flanked the palace’s northern wing and peered at Zakarij through narrowed eyes. “Do you plan to continue reading my mind, Aspirant Zakarij? I find it . . . disconcerting.”

  He only smiled at her—as close to a grin as she’d ever seen on his face—and escorted her up the gallery stairs and into the palace. They had crossed the atrium and were approaching the main entry hall with its elaborate stair, when Master Lukasha came upon them. He seemed agitated to Kassia, though there was nothing that she could point to in his manner that told her so. She was instantly alert, wondering if something new had happened to alarm him.

  “Ah, there you are! The king will be in his council chamber soon.” He put his arms about their shoulders and turned to Zakarij. “I have a task for you, my son. A task of critical importance. You must come with me this moment. Kassia, the king wishes to consult with you prior to the council meeting. Find Chancellor Bogorja. He’ll escort you to Zelimir’s quarters.”

  Even with Lukasha between them, Kassia could feel Zakarij stiffen at the mention of the King’s summons. She smiled, thinking how dear it was, marveling at how love for the man had snuck up on her so unobtrusively.

  “At once, Master,” she said and went to discharge her duty.

  oOo

  Lukasha and Zakarij watched Kassia go off to pursue her own mission, then the Mateu escorted the Aspirant to his private quarters.

  “We shall be able to speak here unheard,” he told him. “I’ve warded these rooms against listeners.”

  Zakarij was immediately wary. “What’s wrong, Master? What’s happened?”