The Spirit Gate

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  “As you know, Benedict is working his will strongly on the Gherai Khan. If nothing is done, the Horde will move again, striking further into Khitan province or even moving into Teschen.”

  “What can we do? I’ve yet to discover any hint of arcane ability among Benedict’s colleagues or staff. Even Kassia is unable to block this new intrusion.”

  Lukasha fixed him with an appraising gaze, a frown growing between his brows. “You have become very fond of our Kiska, have you not?”

  Heat crept up the back of Zakarij’s neck. Dear Mat, he was blushing! “Yes, Master, I have.”

  “Does she return this fondness?”

  Zakarij nodded. “It’s rather more than fondness, Master. I love her. And she, for some mysterious reason, loves me. We wish to be married when we return to Dalibor . . . if Beyla will have me as a father.” Lukasha’s expression was so grim, it raised a chill across Zakarij’s back. “Do you disapprove, Master?”

  Lukasha shook his head. “Not at all, Zakarij. It’s only that I find myself about to ask you to undertake a very dangerous task. Benedict is controlling the Gherai Khan. I need you to go to Khitan province. I need you, not to block, but to place a tight shield around the Mongol lord. Do you think you can do this?”

  An elemental shield was an extension of the energies of the one who wielded it. As such, it had to be controlled directly and closely. “I would have to get very near him,” Zakarij said. “Even then . . .”

  “I see no alternative.”

  Zakarij would sooner have thrust his hand into a fire than refuse his Master’s request. Uncertain of his powers, frightened of the unknown, he packed up his wits, carefully constructed a Traveling spell and went to Khitan.

  oOo

  Within the royal wing, the corridors were paneled with golden-warm oak and lit by frequent, if narrow, windows and even more frequent ensconced candles. Kassia saw the hand of Master Antal in those, for it was obvious the mellow puffs of flameless light glowed without consuming the pristine wicks. There were flowers here, as well, kept forever fresh and aromatic in nearly invisible bubbles of enchantment. Their perfume mingled pleasantly with something spicy, giving Kassia the impression she was passing through trailing banners of incense smoke. It was unutterably pleasant, and she would have gladly lingered here, for she dreaded meeting Zelimir.

  Still, by the time the royal courier, a spritely young man named Sapieha, had led her to the colorful gilded doors of the King’s most private chambers, she was fully in control of her trepidations. She did not doubt that Michal Zelimir was truly fond of her. She also believed him to be a man of honor. She could only pray that fondness and honor would not allow him to demand her unwilling compliance.

  The King’s dresser had just settled a wrap of white silk about his lord’s shoulders when Kassia entered. He was a courtly creature a good head shorter than the king and as he exited the chamber he fixed Kassia with a gaze at once curious and censuring, reminding her once again that she was a peasant, regardless of her education or aspirations. His superior expression brought Damek to mind and Kassia smiled involuntarily.

  “Forgive Komar. In his mind he is the king and I the servant.”

  “He reminds me of someone at home,” she said and bid herself relax when Zelimir motioned her to a seat upon a broad padded couch near a tall set of atrium doors. They were open just now and a balmy breeze wafted into the room stirring the air pleasantly. She moved to the couch, but was distracted, before she could sit, by the view she was afforded of the King’s private garden.

  “Would you like to see it?”

  He was directly behind her, his breath fanning the hair that lay across her shoulders. With a will, she kept herself from pulling away.

  “Very much.”

  The garden, full of exotic flowering plants and artfully sculpted shrubs, was beautiful in the extreme. She marveled at everything, forgetting for a measure of time the suffocating embrace of Michal Zelimir’s attentions. At length, they entered a vine draped arbor, moving single file through a curtain of ivy that obscured the palace. Kassia gasped in renewed wonder at the corridor of living green that lay ahead, its walls and ceiling shot through with muted sunlight. Before she could turn to him, an exclamation of pleasure on her lips, Zelimir’s hands were on her shoulders, drawing her back against him.

  Through his fingertips, through the flesh of her back, she could feel him quiver like a taut bowstring. His breath came quickly and lightly past her ear.

  “Do you like my garden, Kassia?”

  Suddenly overwhelmed by him, she was unable to answer.

  “It could be your garden as well. Our garden.” His hands moved softly up and down her arms, sending static charges through the fine linen that covered them. “Come, let me show you a place.” He moved quickly to take her hand and led her, his face boyish, beneath the canopy of green toward some unknown wonder.

  Kassia, though she all but staggered with relief, was bemused that she could inspire such quaking passion in a man of Michal Zelimir’s sophistication. No, she realized, as she followed him through the garden passage, their fingers linked. This wasn’t right. She had known passion with Shurik, had felt it less than an hour ago in Zakarij’s touch. She knew the feel of passion—from warmth to blazing heat to tiny tongues of sensual fire—this was different.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by their sudden arrival at the end of Zelimir’s quest. It was a cedared glade of such perfect beauty that it took Kassia’s breath away. There was a tiny crystal stream and a rock strewn pond surrounded by a carpet of soft green grasses. The palace and the city it ruled were forgotten in this place of velvet and diamonds. She felt as one bespelled, knowing she should not be here, yet unable to withdraw or flee.

  He led her into the glen, drawing her behind him on a circuit of the pool, lifting her over the stream to deposit her in a dappled patch of sunlight. He turned her to face him then, and lifted his hands to her hair. “You are the natural spirit of this place, Kassia. You belong here.” His eyes were bright, intent on her face. “Say you will stay.”

  She started to shake her head, but he imprisoned it between his two hands and would not allow the negative gesture. He put his face close to hers, eyelids drooping sensuously.

  “Lie with me in the grass, Kiska,” he whispered. “I have dreamed of lying with you in the grass. Of your hair spread like white silk on the green earth.”

  “Please, my lord . . .” Her mouth struggled to form words.

  He covered it with his own. Again she felt the strange, frenetic passion building up in him like lightning in a cloud. It traveled from his lips to hers, quivering between them like storm static, tingling on her skin. He was shaking with it, was drowning in it, and when he raised his head from the kiss, his eyes showered her with it, trying to drown her as well. Stunned, mesmerized, Kassia struggled to fight through the numbing sensations that assailed her will.

  When he would lower his mouth to hers again, she raised a hand to his lips to stop him. “Please, Mishka—”

  “Please, Kassia,” he countered, kissing the palm of her hand. “I must have you with me. Always. I would make you my lover in every sense of the word.”

  She shook her head, trying to dig beneath the amorous hysteria. “I can’t be your lover, Mishka. I don’t love you.”

  There was a moment of frozen silence and then the taut energy resumed its quivering grasp. “Love will come. Lie with me, Kassia.”

  Kassia closed her ears to the strangely drugging words. “I love Zakarij, my lord. I will marry Zakarij.”

  “It matters not,” he murmured against her hair. “You’re mine already. You were mine the moment you stepped across my threshold. I am your king. I order you to love me. Obey me, Kassia.” He was tightening his grip now, shifting his weight, preparing to bear her to the grass beneath their feet.

  A part of her considered giving up this foolish fight. He was her king. Who would condemn her for obedience? He needed her, loved her. On the verge of
wilting, she thought of Zakarij. Even he would not condemn her—she would condemn herself.

  But, no. This was wrong. These thoughts were alien to her, and it came as powerfully as revelation that they were not her thoughts. Neither was this Michal Zelimir speaking, acting. It was someone—something—other. They were both in the grasp of some powerful magic.

  Panicked, she threw up a ward against Benedict. As with the Gherai Khan, it had absolutely no effect. Michal twisted, sweeping her feet from beneath her. Then, coming to his knees in the sward, he bore her backwards to the ground.

  Kassia struggled to herd her wits into frantic order. Of course it wasn’t Benedict, bespelling Zelimir like this. Nor could it be someone who shared his aims. How stupid! He would be the last one in the entire realm to want its king to make either wife or concubine of a shai peasant. It was someone else. Some unknown.

  Imprisoned beneath the King’s body, Kassia pulled her senses together and cast a tight shielding ward around both of them, drawing it in a close hemisphere over the glade. Then she went completely limp in his arms, offering neither resistance nor encouragement.

  His lips were on her eyes, her lips, her neck. His fingers twined themselves in her hair, tangling the thick tresses. Then, suddenly, he was still, his breath coming in slow, deep bursts like a man who has returned from the brink of drowning.

  Kassia sighed in relief and dared to close her eyes. She offered a silent prayer of thanks to Mat, whose spirits she had invoked to set the protective spell. A moment later, Michal Zelimir released her and rolled away. She opened her eyes and sought him. He had gone to the lip of the pool and now held wet hands to his face, his eyes on his own reflection in the water. After a moment Kassia rolled to her knees and crawled to sit next to him, a part of her mind occupied with shoring up the shield.

  “Are you all right?” she asked him.

  He uttered a bark of disbelieving laughter. “I undertake to dishonor you and you ask if I’m all right? What are you, Kassia Telek? If I were a Frank I’d call you a saint.” He laughed again. “Dear God, I’ve tried to seduce a saint.”

  “I’m no saint.” She put a hand on his shoulder, keeping it there though he tried to flinch away. “Listen to me, Mishka. This has not been your fault. None of it. Someone is trying to enchant you.” To enchant both of us, she thought, but didn’t say it. Now that her fear was past, anger had begun to take its place. She heard it in her own voice.

  He glanced at her sharply. “Benedict?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “If not Benedict, then who?”

  “I don’t know. And because I don’t know, I can’t block the source of the spell. I can only place a shielding ward around you.”

  “How long will it last?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not certain. If I could attach it to something—vest it in something—it might last much longer.”

  He held up the wrist that bore the webbed bracelet. “Could you attach it to this?”

  “I could. But you’d have to wear it every moment.”

  “What about me? Couldn’t you just attach the ward to me?”

  Kassia smiled crookedly. “Well, King Mishka, this is a change of heart. Is this the same man who told Master Lukasha only weeks ago that he needed no arcane protections?”

  “This is a man who has had his passions turned against him. I am chastened, Kassia, I accept whatever protection you are willing to give.”

  She nodded. “Give me your hands,” she said, holding out her own to receive them. He complied and watched her face as she articulated an incantation that bound her shielding spell to him as surely as if he wore it about his neck on a chain.

  “I feel no differently,” he told her when she was finished.

  “Good. That’s as it should be.” She started to get to her feet, but he rose more quickly and drew her up into a light embrace.

  “You say some unknown enchants me, Kassia, but that’s only a partial truth. You’ve enchanted me as well. Even your clever ward can’t shield me from that. I believe I would make you my wife, if I could. But . . . what you said about wedding Zakarij—is it true, or did you merely say it to dissuade me?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Well, you may tell him for me that he has earned the undying envy of his king.” He bowed to her and bestowed a chaste kiss on her hand.

  oOo

  The council session was a council of war. The darughachi of Khitan’s immediate neighbors—Sandomierz to the north, and Teschen to the west—already had their defensive forces in the field. They now petitioned the king to launch a full scale counter attack, using every ounce of Polian military strength in the hope of driving the Horde out again. Zelimir and Bogorja both balked at the idea of flooding the southeastern provinces with troops while leaving their remaining borders virtually unprotected, but the darughachi protested that if the Mongols were allowed to gut the country, those borders would be all that remained to her.

  Bishop Benedict did not lose the opportunity to press Zelimir to make a pact with Avignon. Now, as never before, other voices joined his. Faced with absorption into the Gherai Horde, the southern governors and nobles were only too willing to make allies of whomever had the greatest resources for their defense. Ironically it was Oji Batu, who before had spit upon the idea of a Polian-Frankish alliance, leading the cry for its establishment.

  A harried, but unmanipulated Chancellor Bogorja loudly fought the idea that such a pact must be sealed with a marriage bond, a thing which brought a very sour look to the Bishop Benedict’s face. Kassia, seated in her place at Zelimir’s right hand, found the Bishop’s eyes on her a number of times and knew he must suspect her of meddling with his spells. She nearly smiled; he would be surprised to know that it was Master Antal, seated unobtrusively among the provincial representatives, who shielded his attempts to coerce the Chancellor.

  Three times the Bishop asked Zelimir to exclude Kassia from the consultation. Three times the king refused. At the third refusal, Benedict erupted in fury.

  “I must tell you now, Majesty, that you stand no chance whatever of arranging a pact with the Most High Bishop of Avignon when you have taken a paramour who is so obviously in league with the Devil himself.”

  “The Devil?” Zelimir repeated, over the wash of general displeasure he felt from the other man. “You’ve spoken of this person a number of times in my presence. Who is he that your Holy Emperor fears him so?”

  “The Holy Father fears no one but God. It is hatred we have for the Devil, my lord, for he is the essence of evil.”

  “You make two mistakes, Benedict,” said Zelimir, purposely omitting his title. “First, you style Kassia my paramour. That is a dishonor to the lady. She is my adviser and my friend. Second, you associate her with evil. That is both a lie and an insult. I must insist that you apologize to her.”

  “I will do no such thing,” snarled the Bishop. “If you want the support of Avignon, you will eschew her ‘friendship’. Otherwise, you will stand alone against the forces of the Gherai. I believe you will find any army you might amass sadly inadequate to the task of driving them back.”

  “Are you really so certain of that?” asked Bogorja. “Or is it that you simply would like us not to try? I believe you underestimate Polian valor, Bishop.”

  “Valor has nothing to do with it. You have sinned against God with your very attitude toward His envoy.”

  “That being you?”

  “That being me. You would eschew our hand of friendship altogether were it not for the military protection we offer. We are your salvation—spiritual and material. God attempts to show you that, but you are hard of hearing and hard of heart. Your fate is in God’s hands, Chancellor. No physical army you could send against the Gherai Khan will deter him, for he has become the instrument of the Lord’s will.”

  “You mean he has become an instrument of your will.” Lukasha spoke for the first time, seeming to rise from among his nearest neighbors to dominate the cou
ncil hall. All eyes turned toward him.

  “What do you insinuate? That I stoop to sorcery? I am a man of God. It is God who moves the Khan—”

  “I have met the Gherai Khan face to face and have taken his measure. He has been raised from his own lands and sent marauding by—”

  “By the most high God.”

  “By forces external to himself. I have taken certain steps to make sure he does not intrude further into Polian territory.”

  The Bishop seemed to freeze in his place. Only his lips moved. “What do you mean?”

  “I am sure you can have no interest in such things, Your Grace. You are, after all, a man of God.”

  Benedict, his face alive with rage, strode from the council hall, his robes swirling about him as if caught by a capricious breeze. In the silence that followed his departure, Zelimir issued the order that whatever battalions of the royal army had already gathered without the walls of Tabor should be deployed to Khitan immediately. The provincial troops fielded by the darughachi would be put under the command of his own field marshal.

  “If we cannot drive the Mongols out of Khitan,” he said, “we will, at the very least, stand them off from further conquest.”

  The council members agreed with muted voices, then Oji Batu rose from among them and asked, “Is it true what Master Lukasha has implied? Does this Bishop employ magic against us?”

  Zelimir glanced at the Mateu. “He has been known to employ it against your king.”

  Batu growled deep in his barrel chest. “Perhaps he is right about our forces. Perhaps we will find them inadequate.”

  “Perhaps,” suggested Master Antal, “he even now puts that idea into your head.”

  The Khitani blanched and stood down. “Polia has so newly arisen from the suffering meted out by the Tamalids. What manner of demons are these Christians that they employ such magic against her?”

  Michal Zelimir silenced him with a gesture. “Think not ill of the Christians, Oji. This is not a matter of religion, but a matter of human ambition. Our adversary is Bishop Benedict, not his God.”