After a moment of struggle with the fear that still shown in her eyes, the other woman inclined her head and set down her goblet. At the threshold she turned back and said to Zelimir, “I am much impressed, Your Majesty, with your great calm in the face of your friend’s sudden comings and goings. Perhaps someday I shall become accustomed to it.” She slipped out into the garden.
“She’s a brave woman,” Kassia commented. “That’s twice she’s seen someone appear out of the ether and not fled.”
“She’s also exceptionally bright and well-educated. Not at all the provincial daughter I expected. Now, about the Gherai Khan—you’ll be pleased to know the kites brought good news this morning. The Khan withdrew his forces from around Zemic. Reports said the Mongols seemed in disarray.”
Relief made Kassia’s legs wobble. She sat down on one of Zelimir’s finely embroidered couches. “I was right . . . I had hoped.”
Zelimir shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“The Khan was being manipulated, my lord, by a very strong and cunning sorcerer—the Bishop Benedict.”
The king blanched. “He . . . he’s that powerful?”
“He’s learned a very potent trick, Majesty. He is able to control several people at a time by using other willing souls to focus and direct his power.”
Michal Zelimir sat down beside her. “How can he do this?”
“He supplies only raw power. His focal points must give that power motive and direction. They must be fully aware of and in agreement with his purpose; they give his wishes form.”
“He controlled the Gherai Horde through such a willing focus?”
“He controlled Mengli Gherai. That was enough. His focus was Pater Julian.”
Zelimir was incredulous. “The young priest? He seems so . . . inoffensive, so meek.”
“He believes he is doing God’s will and work. In that belief, the meekest of men can become a tyrant.”
“Was he perhaps attempting to control me in the same fashion? Making me feel such animal cravings as I did?” He glanced away from her.
“Master Lukasha suggested that, but it puzzles me. Why would Benedict want you to desire me? He would drive us apart, not force us together.”
Zelimir rose and paced away from her. “Perhaps he reasoned that if I disgusted you, you would refuse to champion me. If so, he reckoned without your loyalty.”
“You didn’t disgust me, Mishka.” She wouldn’t speak of what she had felt.
“No?” He turned and fixed her with a look that awoke uneasiness. “Then is there a chance you might not wed your Aspirant?”
She rose, anger roiling. “Who speaks to me—Michal Zelimir or someone’s puppet?”
He answered anger with anger. “I am no one’s puppet, Kassia. I know my own true feelings for you. They’re stronger than you care to acknowledge.”
“Are you so weak a man that you’d jeopardize your entire kingdom to indulge them?”
“Why do you speak to me so?”
“I want you to understand that I am marrying my Aspirant, Lord. Though I expect by that time I will be the Aspirant and he, a Mateu. We are alike. We share a calling. And we love each other. I want you to understand this.”
“You and I also share a calling, Kassia—the protection of this people. We share our faith, a faith the Bishop Benedict would strip from us.” When she was silent, he added softly, “I am your king, Kassia. I can command what you refuse to offer.”
She nearly choked on the sudden constricting of her throat. “Michal Zelimir would not do that. Perhaps you would.”
Behind his eyes a wall went up. “I would do what is necessary to protect myself and my realm.”
“Then banish the Bishop of Tabor from your court. Send him back to Avignon.”
“And that will end his threat? How can you be certain?”
“I can be certain, my lord, that if he remains here, he will continue to bedevil you—to manipulate you.”
“You’ll protect me from that.”
“He’s reaching you now, even as we argue. Through my blocking ward. I feel it. Can’t you?” She felt a bit guilty for being so willing to use Benedict as a threat. It was not Benedict she felt.
He paled. “You must shield me as you did before. Quickly!”
With a grim nod, she put up the shield, a graceful gesture drawing its invisible walls close about them.
Zelimir relaxed visibly, seating himself across from her in a beautifully lacquered chair. The passionate light in his eyes died. “Why didn’t you do that before?”
“I was hoping,” said Kassia wearily, “you would find it within yourself to fight him.”
“How can I? I’m no Mateu.”
“You don’t need magic to block a sorcerous intrusion. But you do need awareness . . . and a strong will.”
Zelimir tipped his head back and sighed so deeply Kassia thought the sound had issued from his soul. “I thought I had one, once. Now, I’m not sure.”
She went to him and knelt at his knee, her hand covering his where it rested on the chair arm. “Show me that will; banish Benedict.”
“Kassia, I cannot. For one thing, I couldn’t be certain he’d return to Avignon. He could stop anywhere.”
“Send him with an envoy.”
“He could manipulate an envoy.”
“Then surround him with Mateu.” She squeezed his hand. “It can be done.”
He sat up and leaned toward her, bringing their faces close together. “This is one more case in which I must think as a king, not as a man. Banishing Benedict would be a slap in the face of his Most High Bishop whose troops, even now, press our western borders. My darughachi feel strongly that they would rather have the Franks as an ally than as an enemy. The bulk of my forces are in the southeast, prepared to stand against the Gherai. My western flank is protected only by lightly armed garrisons. And why not? The Frankish Empire has offered no threat.”
“Until now.”
“Until now. How can we defend ourselves against both Frank and Tartar?”
Kassia glanced to the garden doors, through which she could see Zofia and her companion admiring the roses. She could sense Michal’s interest in the young woman, and hated to make so bald a political suggestion but . . . “If the Turks were our allies . . .”
Following her gaze, Zelimir frowned. “Yes, there is that. I have a choice to make, it seems. One that cannot, apparently, be made by my heart.””
“Which would choose Zofia?”
He nodded. “Do I follow my heart or do I choose the path that will put my lands in the least danger? Yet, even if I take Amadiyeh to wife and the Turks as allies, there may be war with the Franks.”
“Do you think their Holy Father would enter into direct conflict with the Sultanate?”
“The Church and the Sultanate are inveterate enemies. There has already been direct conflict between them on other fronts. I would not want Polia to become merely a threshold for greater powers to tramp across in their desire to get at each other. We have the misfortune of being a buffer, Kassia, between Avignon and Byzantium. I have the misfortune of being . . . something in the nature of a sacrifice.”
“There are surely two sides to that coin, Michal. If the Turks also desire a buffer, as you put it, what would they be willing to do to protect it?”
Zelimir smiled mirthlessly. “You see my dilemma.”
“What does your heart tell you to do?”
“My heart. My heart yearns to have a wife it can love. I cannot love Fiorella Orsini. She is as sweet as an under-ripe olive, as pleasant as a winter morn, as bright as an iron ingot. And she is both afraid of and repelled by me. She would suffer my touch for the sake of her Holy Empire but she would never come to savor it. Perhaps, I might come to have some affection for Amadiyeh. She is a sweet girl—too shy, perhaps and too much . . . sequestered. What the Turks admire in a wife . . .” He shrugged, his eyes strayed to the garden doors. “Zofia already has my affection and deep respect. I
think love would follow. And she seems to find me acceptable as a man as well as a statesman.”
He lowered his eyes to Kassia’s face and ran a caressing finger along the length of her jaw. “With the beautiful Zofia as my wife and my dearest Kiska as my lover, my heart’s desire would be completely fulfilled.”
Kassia withdrew from him entirely, body and spirit. “You shame yourself, my lord. And you insult both Zofia Varyusha and me.” She got to her feet. “I have said what I came to say. You have a choice to make. But know this: I will move heaven and earth to help you, shelter you and enable you to protect my people. Even married to Zakarij, I will do that. But if you force me to submit to you, I will be your concubine only and never your lover.”
She turned with as much dignity as she could muster and strode from the room to flee down the elegant hallway to the public rooms of the palace. Her mind sprinted at a rabbit’s pace. She would find Master Antal and let him know of the Khan, of her request of Zelimir and of his refusal to accept it. Then she would go home, for there was nothing else she could accomplish here.
She found Antal at the Tabori Residence with his band of city Mateu and a handful of Aspirants and Apprentices. Her tale of cutting the Bishop off from Pater Julian raised their spirits considerably, for they suddenly believed that they had only to determine who Benedict might use as a focus in order to block him. Kassia’s next revelation blotted out that small sense of victory. The realization that they could ameliorate the effects of sorcery and not of politics was a numbing one.
“Still,” said Antal, “we can leave Benedict without puppets to play. We will cut him off,” he promised. “We will leave him no place to turn.”
Kassia chose the cesia as the place from which to execute the spell that would return her to Dalibor. Before the gleaming altar, she genuflected and offered a brief but heartfelt prayer that whatever decision her king made, it would truly be made for the good of his people, and not out of passion or weakness.
“Your pagan gods are deaf, shai. They cannot help you now, nor can they save your soul from the hell it so richly deserves.”
Kassia turned to face Benedict, her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides. She hated him, she realized, and the acknowledgement of that hatred stunned and repelled her. She wanted to do him violence; she wanted to fly to Lorant and hide from the darkness in her heart.
“We pray to the same God, Bishop,” she told him. “I’ve never known Him to be hard of hearing.”
“If you believe that lie, then you must believe that it is you He listens to. You are mistaken.”
“Am I? Can you reach Michal Zelimir just now? Can you use your sanctuary as a place in which to focus your sorcery?”
His face reddened. “I perform no sorcery. I am given the power of the Holy Spirit. That is the weapon I wield. That is why, though you have profaned the sanctuary of my Lord, I will yet triumph over you.”
“You have followed me into this pagan place of worship to tell me this?”
“I have chosen this place to confront you so you understand that your pagan shrines do not unnerve me. I am not afraid of you, shai. Far from it. For the violence you have done my priest, for the violation of a holy place, you will pay a heavy price. Nor will your precious king be spared. If he does not submit to the guidance of the Spirit, he will be forever lost.”
“If he does not wed Fiorella Orsini, you mean.”
He inclined his head, his lips forming an arc that was only vaguely like a smile. “If he gives his heart to the Spirit, it will lead him to Fiorella.”
“His heart has led him to Zofia Varyusha. I found them together when I arrived.” Kassia enjoyed the seizure of sheer rage that took his face.
“At least,” he growled, “he has abandoned the absurd idea of making you his consort.”
It was a moment of choice and she chose perversity. “Not at all. He would make Zofia his wife and me his concubine. That way I may always be at his side.”
The red of the Bishop’s face sharply contrasted the white of his robes. “That will not happen. You have ruined one priest and defiled his sanctuary. Don’t over estimate the importance of that, I warn you. As a Knight of the Church, my powers are infinite.”
He left her then, but she could feel him watching as she drew out a mandorla of ethereal light and sent herself back to Lorant. She should have set up the spell in his precious church, she thought, as she watched the flickering scenes behind the corridor’s translucent walls. The thought was unworthy and she knew it, but just now, when she was so impotent, the anger felt good.
Chapter Eighteen — Epiphany
Aprilis 8, Tamal 1-3—Zbaraz is dead.
I am amazed I can even write the words. He died in his own studio while attempting to put a stop to what his wife unknowingly unleashed nearly four years ago. He was such a brave fool. We were both fools to think the Tamalids a force without magic. To imagine they could be easily bespelled. I will never underestimate the northern shaman again.
Master Boleslas was right, of course, they would not have harmed us had we not tried to interfere with their consolidation of the lowlands. They were no threat to Dalibor, a small village in an out-of-the-way mountain valley, but they were a threat to the rest of Polia, and that we could not abide. I should have been the one killed, for it was in my stead Zbaraz attempted to ward the Tamalid shaman from the secrets of Lorant. It was my arrogance and stupidity, my idiot’s campaign of arcane interference, that led them here to seek those secrets.
I need no further evidence of my own wickedness than this: My husband is dead and my poor baby daughter, now fatherless, is as completely normal as any other child in the valley. No one could look at Milada, with her dark hair and pale eyes, and suspect even for a moment that her mother was shai. I must count that as a blessing in this grievous time. Though she will do no magic, the Tamalid shamans will not notice her among the other children of Dalibor. Perhaps that is just as well. They seem indifferent to ordinary folk, but they are insatiably curious about those of us whom they regard as shamans.
The most awful thing is this: I sometimes wonder if using, again, the very powers that I abused to begin this could end it. If, at any time while Zbaraz struggled to find a magic potent against Kesar Tamal and his disorganized forces, I had opened the Spirit Gate, might I have saved him? Might I have kept the barbarian brigands from reaching into this sacred valley? Was the promise I made to Master Boleslas more important than Zbaraz’s life?
A more horrible question than these haunts me—that I hide behind that promise. That it’s my own fear that keeps me from this awful magic and not at all my sense of honor.
Dear Itugen! I am so completely wretched! If it were not for Milada, I swear I would end my own life.
Zakarij stared at the words on the torn-out page for a long time, his weary, distracted mind refusing to comprehend what they told him. He tried to concentrate on what Marija had said about the Spirit Gate, but found his thoughts slipping aside to inconsistencies in her history. Her account of the indifferent attitude of so-called “disorganized forces” hardly tallied with the savage and well-ordered Tamalid machine that had pounced upon Dalibor with the clear design of decimating it, breaking the shai and reducing the Mateu to impotence.
And who was Kesar Tamal? History recorded that it was Arik Tamal who set himself up as emperor over what had been a small republic with a handful of loosely knit provinces.
He retrieved his thoughts from that distraction and put it back to the main trail. That Marija blamed herself for the swift descent of the Tamalids on Polia was obvious from earlier readings. But that she reckoned she held the power to somehow put a stop to the bloody conquest boggled him. It could only mean one thing: Marija had found the key to the Squared spell after all, and had known how to use it.
Did Lukasha also realize this? He had held the Bible for a brief time—though he’d shown little interest in it. Had he also come across these pages tucked into its cracked binding? Their cond
ition—their very presence—suggested otherwise. It seemed that if Lukasha knew Kassia had found the first set of excised pages in the spine of the journal from which they’d been torn, he had forgotten it. Zakarij had not.
He raised his head to glance up at the ceiling of Kassia’s studio. The time-teller at its apex shot a shaft of bright light about halfway up the sloping eastern plane. Late afternoon. He wished desperately that Kassia would return from Tabor. He was worried about her. Afraid that she would throw herself into direct conflict with the Tabori Bishop. He was unwilling to admit that he was also afraid she would succumb to Michal Zelimir.
He went back to the journal, hoping for some further clue about the nature of the spell Marija was so terrified of using. She might have made some early mistake out of ignorance for lack of the key, but it was perfectly clear that her terror of the spell did not abate once she possessed both the knowledge and the resources to perform it.
oOo
Aprilis 23, Tamal 1-3—I have found—oh, what have I found? I can scarcely believe it, but after all I have seen, I have no reason to distrust either Pater Honorius’ scholarship or his truthfulness. In the very pages of his Bible is the most wonderful and terrifying secret of the Squared spell. How cleverly he hid it. How he must have agonized over even noting it. In the Book of Proverbs—
That entry had ended abruptly, the page torn completely in half. A blank wall. Zakarij picked up the next page, smoothed it and read, as if it might yield anything more than it had the last time he’d read it.
I must do this. I must. Oh, Milada, if I never return to you, know that I love you. Oh, Itugen, oh, Mat. If what I am about to do runs counter to your will, I beg you to forgive me. I am a guilty soul who must expiate its guilt; I have a heart who cannot countenance the loss of its lover. I pray that when I return—if I return—I will step into a world different than the one I now leave.
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