The Spirit Gate

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  “I am not worried about his God, Majesty,” said Batu, “so much as I am worried about his Empire.”

  The assembly broke up then, and Kassia was free at last to go to Master Lukasha, intending to tell him about her morning’s encounter with the king. But she had been bothered by Zakarij’s conspicuous absence from the council chamber and asked, first of all, about that.

  “I’ve sent Zakarij on a mission of utmost importance,” her Master told her. “I must have him to shield someone from Benedict.”

  “Couldn’t he have blocked Benedict as well from here?”

  “You and I have already proven the falsity of that assumption. In this case, it is the target himself who must be warded.”

  Kassia’s heart staggered slightly and she whispered through stiff lips, “Where have you sent him?”

  “To Khitan province. His task is to shield the Gherai Khan from arcane intrusion.”

  He might as well have plunged her into ice water. Was that the “arcane step” he had taken to assure the kagan’s dissuasion?

  Seeing her obvious fear, Lukasha put a hand on her shoulder. “My dear Kiska, Zakarij is a young man of outstanding ability. Do you actually think he would let the Mongols see him?”

  “No, I suppose not, I just . . . He’ll have to be so close to the Khan for the shield to work and I . . . we . . .”

  Lukasha smiled, his eyes kindling. “Yes, I know. Zakarij tells me you are to be wed. I shall be pleased to perform your bonding incantation . . . when this is all over.”

  She hugged him for that and went to her room, her emotions a swirl of quiet chaos. She intended to nap, but instead found herself taking up her favorite reading material. Marija’s life, too, seemed to be taking a more positive turn, for she was installed as a Mateu, and in her first year in that role, met the man she would marry, the Mateu Zbaraz. Kassia read with interest at first, but before long, weariness overcame her and she slept, dreaming of a woman in Mateu’s vestments—a woman that was at once Marija and herself.

  oOo

  The Mongol camp was on the move. Yurts were pulled down and stowed in an amazingly small measure of time, soldiers mounted fleet chargers, women and children scurried to horseback howdahs and travois piled with their meager belongings. Zakarij, from his vantage point among an outcropping of rocks, concentrated on the man who, for all his diminutive size, was obviously the master of all this. He was a handsome man. A man upon whom command sat easily. If Master Lukasha was correct, he was also a man being driven by demons that did not arise from within him.

  It was on the Gherai kagan that Zakarij concentrated his senses then. He tried to block the supposed source first, just to see if it might work this time. It did not. Not only did his attempt to break the flow of energies between the Mongol and his unseen assailant fail, but he could feel the arcane thread that bound the two, feel it as if it were made of lightning. It was just as Kassia had told him, it was not Benedict . . . and yet, somehow, it was.

  Confused by that paradox, he gave the ward a slight twist, using Bastion, the wall of stone, as his catalyst, but the wall was useless; the alien magic slipped through it as if his wall were made of mesh. He frowned, his eyes picking out his target amid the chaos below. Perhaps if he tried something more general—a different kind of ward. That, at least, would keep him from having to bide so near the Tartar leader. But his target was moving. There was no time. The Khan was mounted now, glancing about, surveying the activity around him. Any moment he might call for his forces to move out.

  Moving with all speed, Zakarij described a mandorla in the soft earth, hoping that would give his shield extra potency, then he set the ward. He knew the moment the catalyst left his lips that it was too stretched, too weak. The invisible spirit fabric began to tear as soon as it took form. Zakarij tried again, this time with Bastion as a catalyst, but the heavy earthen spirit could not be molded into such a form. It collapsed.

  As Zakarij hesitated, uncertain how to proceed, he felt a sudden, unnameable change in the spell that seemed to surround the Mongol leader. Below, the kagan reined in his horse and turned his face to the wooded slope where the Aspirant had concealed himself. Zakarij’s heart all but stopped in his chest, for it seemed to him that the warrior was staring directly at him. He swiftly shored up his own shield and withdrew into the trees.

  He removed himself several hundred yards into the ever thickening forest and there described a mandorla on the ground. Placing himself in the middle of it, he was obliged to let loose of the ward that shielded him from the eyes of others so that he might perform the Traveling spell that would take him back to Tabor . . . and Kassia. He could only pray she had some idea of what might be done to stop the Gherai. He had raised his hand to the elemental necklace at his throat—Lukasha’s refinement on the spell balls—had opened his mouth to begin the spell when he was surrounded by Tartar horsemen.

  His concentration shattered, he threw up a shielding spell intended to obscure him from sight. Its success was written on the faces of the horsemen ringing him. In a welter of confusion, they cried out, gesturing and looking to their leader for direction.

  The kagan’s eyes never left him. When he moved, seeking physical cover, they followed him. He bolted and ran, weaving into the deeper underbrush, praying the kagan’s horse could not follow. He headed downslope, thinking the scramble over uneven ground would be easier for him than for a hoofed pursuer.

  He wished it were dark—darkness might afford him more cover. Then he did more than wish. Pausing only momentarily, he invoked Mat and loosed a storm spell into the sky. The winds heard him and obeyed. The forces Mat commanded danced and reeled, and clouds gathered, dark and threatening, overhead. The forest greens and golds melted into a field of grays. Zakarij sought their anonymity. He could hear the tumbling of rocks from above him, and the deep chuffing of a horse. He tried to melt into the shadows—a difficult thing given that his tunic was the color of a summer sky.

  His wild journey came to an abrupt halt where the woods were cut by a broad slab of solid rock. He glanced upslope. The treeless platform seemed to rise all the way to the crown of the hill. He glanced downslope. There it ended in a jumble of broken granite.

  “Sorcerer!”

  Zakarij gasped, jerking his head around. He saw nothing. Heard nothing. The voice came to him again, borne on his bespelled wind.

  “Sorcerer! I will not harm you! Surrender to me for you cannot hide!”

  Ignoring the words, Zakarij scrambled downslope along the tree line toward the rocky maze below. He kept his mind on his goal, trying to deny the sounds of pursuit. Rain began to fall. Zakarij blessed it and kept moving, slipping and sliding his way to what he hoped would be a sanctuary. The pile of boulders were slick with rain by the time he reached them. He threw himself at them with abandon, scrambling over the rough surfaces to find himself atop a maze. Rising uncertainly to a half-crouch, he searched for anything that would offer cover.

  He sensed more than heard the approach of his pursuer and gave his back trail a hasty glance. Lightning flashed, illumining the slope. He thought he saw a glint of metal, a blur of movement among the trees some thirty yards behind him. It was in trying to keep his eyes on that movement as he crept forward over the rocks that he made a disastrous misstep. The solid rock disappeared from beneath his feet and he tumbled head first into a seemingly endless crevasse.

  Chapter Sixteen — Maelstrom

  At the end of a painful eternity, Zakarij lay in darkness so profound he knew it was not entirely the result of his meager sorcery. Somewhere far above him was a narrow slash of dark gray-blue. He had no real idea how long he had lain there—only the darkness of the sky hinted that it may have been hours. At any moment he expected to see the silhouette of the Khan blocking his narrow window. That did not happen. Nothing happened.

  After a while he took stock of himself and was relieved to find that nothing was broken, though he ached and stung and bled in a number of places. With some effort, he w
as able to pull himself into a crouching position and from there, stretched painfully upright. He was in a chimney of sorts—a narrow, sheer tube of rock that offered him no hand hold. Nor, he realized, did it offer him any place to describe a mandorla from which to issue a Traveling spell.

  At the same moment that depressing thought struck him, so did a wave of pain and vertigo. He staggered, striking his forehead against the rocks. Somehow he managed to lower himself to the floor of the chimney without further injury. The effort was enough to completely sap his strength. His senses reeled and the already gloomy place seemed to grow even darker. He was losing consciousness; he could feel the numbing gray creeping up on him. Desperate, he let his thoughts go to Kassia.

  oOo

  A solid thump awakened Kassia from her dreams. She sat up too suddenly, winced at the stiffness in her neck, and struggled to orient herself. Had someone knocked at her door? She swung her feet to the floor, listening. When the thumping wasn’t repeated, she felt around in search of her shoes and found, instead, Marija’s journal. It was on the floor where it had fallen, open, standing upright on its top edge. She reached down and fetched it, smoothing some bent corners, checking to make sure the binding hadn’t torn. It hadn’t. But it had come unstitched along the top edge.

  A closer look made Kassia’s breath stop in her throat. A bit of linen paper peeked out of the open gap. She tugged at it gently and it came free. In her hand was a flat roll made up of two small pages—pages torn from the journal and hidden here. Frowning, trembling, Kassia read the entries.

  Maius 24: The monks conduct their lives by the light of their own venerable scripture, which they call a Bible. Master Boleslas tells me this is a Greek word that means “book.” It’s a collection of books, actually, written and compiled over centuries, much as our own religious writings have been. Pater Honorius evidently set much store by this volume of collected wisdom, and even credited the physical book itself with some arcane powers. Most notably he spoke of it as if it might protect him from the evils he imagined himself to be surrounded by.

  I have found Pater Honorius’s Bible. (How cool my words look on paper!) Zbaraz teases me that the Book, which I found in the library beneath what used to be the monastery’s chapel altar, has eclipsed even our wedding which we celebrated the same day. He extracted a promise from me to set the book aside for a time and I have kept that promise with a difficulty I shall never admit to my husband. At the first opportunity (when Zbaraz finally relinquishes me for a moment!) I will examine it further.

  Junius 5: Clever Honorius! I never would have expected my dear monk to be so good at deception. The wooden front cover of his Bible is hollowed out and in it is contained a list of elemental names that I believe will allow access to the third, most powerful level of the Traveling spell. Many of these names I have never seen before. I am not even sure to which elements some of them pertain. I should note that this discovery will surely affect not just the Far Vision and Traveling spells, but any that require squared elementals. I am full of both excitement and disappointment. Disappointment because the key to the use of these names was, according to my monk, secreted in the back cover or this same Bible. The back cover, alas, is missing, having either been accidentally or intentionally torn away.

  There was some more about Zbaraz at the end of the page which ended in mid-sentence. The second page contained an undated partial entry from what Kassia guessed was a later time period.

  Master Boleslas has asked that I cease my work with the names I unearthed. He needn’t have asked me. After last night, I would have gladly wished them into oblivion, and myself with them. Forgive me, gracious God, for I fear I have unleashed a storm in Polia. I have—

  The next words were effaced, scratched over roughly with ink, so that the paper was slightly abraded. Kassia had already tried a number of arcane tricks to bring lost sentences to light—now, as she stared at the damaged page, it occurred to her to try something utterly mundane. She called on a spirit lamp, and tilting the page so that the light from the lamp fell obliquely across the page, she squinted at the words there. She was just able to make out the letters R, e, and t. “I have ret . . .” Further along the line she found the words “Bible” and “to.”

  Kassia turned the page over. Here Marija chronicled the first reports from Tabor of the Tamalid incursions, and made one cryptic comment. “In the pages of Honorius’ Bible,” she wrote, “it speaks of ‘reaping the whirlwind’. I believe that is a fitting punishment for those of us who, like Honorius, have sown the maelstrom. But, dear God, why must all be punished for the sin of one?”

  I have returned the Bible to its place. Was that was Marija had written?

  Kassia closed the journal, leaving the torn pages tucked within. If Marija had returned the Bible to its place, surely that could only mean the place she found it—the altar in what was now Lorant’s library. Bolting from her chair, Kassia sent a thought before her to locate her Master and discovered that he was in his own rooms. She went there, heart racing, Marija’s journal in hand, and shared her thoughts with him. She was pleased, even relieved, when he asked her to return to Lorant immediately to find Honorius’ holy book.

  “I don’t wish you to be long absent, Kassia,” he told her. “But this could afford us the power we need to rid our king of outside interference.”

  “Master, it’s clear from her notes that Marija made some sort of horrible mistake that, as she put it, sowed a maelstrom. I don’t understand what that means, but . . .”

  “But you fear we shall make the same mistake?” He shook his head. “No, Kassia. We shall not. Have faith.”

  She did have faith—in Lukasha, in Zakarij. She wanted to have faith in herself. That was harder, though there were few she would admit it to. Returning to her chambers, she tried to quell the gnawing anxiety in the pit of her stomach with a murmured prayer before putting on the elemental necklace Lukasha had fashioned for her and laying out her mandorla. She was standing in the confluence of the two rings when she knew that Zakarij needed her. Darkness flooded her head; there was cold and pain. And then, nothing.

  She hesitated only a moment; the list of names could wait. She murmured a hurried Locator, followed it with the Traveling spell. In a slur of insistent darkness and light, she skated to a dark, wooded hillside in Khitan.

  The breeze was unseasonably chill and bore the scent of recent rain. There was solid granite beneath her feet and a vault of stars overhead, and somewhere below in that black gash only a few feet away was Zakarij. She called to him at first, hoping he might hear her, but there was no reply. Next, she sat down at the edge of the narrow crevasse and felt about with her feet, hoping to find some way down, but there was no foothold there.

  Fear building, she scrambled to her feet and called fire to her fingertips, holding her hand out over the cleft. The fire gave her a mellowly lit view of a steep descent; beyond about five feet, there was darkness. She let loose of the flame, pitching it gently to let it float downward, guiding it through the maze. When it had descended some ten feet, she sent a second ball of light after it. A moment later she saw him, lying about fifteen feet below her in a tiny slit of rock. Her heart sank, there was no way she could fit into that same space, no room to work her spell. His eyes were closed, but before she could quite despair of rousing him, they fluttered open to stare at the flame that danced in mid-air just above his face

  “Kassia!”

  She couldn’t hear his voice, but his lips formed her name and she felt the explosion of his relief. He tried to rise, failed twice, and finally managed to pull himself into a half-sitting position.

  “Can you climb out?” she asked, knowing the answer before she saw the careful negative gesture of his head. Her mind scrambled for a solution. There was only one she could think of. “Listen, Zakarij. Are you wearing the necklace? The elementals?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “I’m going to start a Traveling spell up here. I need you to try to match your equation t
o mine—do you think you can do that?”

  “I . . . I can try.”

  She heard him that time; the sound of his voice relieved some of her anxiety. “Good. Hold the elementals in your hands. Look at me. Watch my lips so you get the cadence right. I’m going to try to build a mandorla in the air above you. I think it might work. I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work.”

  She wasn’t sure whether she was babbling or just trying to be encouraging. She thought Zakarij smiled.

  “All right then,” she said and carefully drew a mandorla about her feet. Then she turned and described a second one down in the crevasse just above the spot where Zakarij lay. It was a shaky construct, narrow and wobbly looking, but the rings were complete, and they crossed just so, leaving Zakarij centered at their heart.

  “Now, Zakarij. The incantation.”

  They mouthed the words together—the invocations, the elements, the catalysts. As she opened her lips to pronounce the final name, Piscis, the name of the Fish, a sharp noise behind her brought her head sharply up and around. A man stood behind her not more than twelve feet away on the ridge of bare rock. A Tartar. In the light of her blazing mandorla, she recognized him easily. It was the Gherai Khan.

  Panic struck her like a physical force, nearly driving her to her knees. She raised her hands and threw out an ill-conceived defensive spell, at the same time uttering the final catalyst. Between her and the Mongol, a wall of fire roared up out of the rocks, licking toward heaven. The Khan half turned, shielding his eyes with one hand, making a hasty and oddly familiar warding gesture with the other. That was the last thing Kassia saw before the rocky hillside dissolved in a swirl of liquid motion.

  Moments later, she was surrounded by familiar, curving walls. She was at Lorant, in her own studio, in the locus of her dais, with Zakarij prone but conscious at her feet.

  Within the hour he was bathed, bandaged, dressed in fresh clothes and fed on a hearty stew of Shagtai’s devising. All through Kassia and Shagtai’s medical ministrations, Kassia related what she had found in Marija’s journal; by the time Zakarij’s energy had renewed itself, he was more than ready to expend it in a search of the library.