The Spirit Gate

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  Her anger would not be banished. Lukasha had betrayed her and had threatened Zakarij. Had twice sent him into a place of danger so he might have a device to use against her. He might have used Beyla, but Beyla was shai, and because he was shai, he was sacred to the Mateu. As sacred to him as was Shagtai, as was she. That did not mean that he would shrink from harming any of them if pushed to it, and that thought alone was enough to put Kassia on her guard. When she flew to Tabor on the morrow, she must prepared to react swiftly to whatever Lukasha did.

  oOo

  ”I saw . . .” Damek lay staring at the ceiling of his parlor. These were the first words he had spoken since his Master had brought him out of Kassia’s studio.

  “What did you see?” Lukasha asked.

  Damek turned his head. The cords of muscle in his neck felt as if they would snap. He squinted, trying to see his master in the semi-darkness. The curtains were drawn and very little light entered from the gray day outside. He could see the glint of that watery light on the Mateu’s eyes, make out his form, but little else.

  “I saw . . . terrible things. What were they?”

  “The future. Or perhaps the past. Or perhaps the present somewhere else.”

  “You . . . crossed the threshold?” A stupid question, he knew what he had seen before he passed out—his master being sucked up into the maw of that infernal Portal as if . . . as if a monster had devoured him.

  “I did a great deal more than that, Damek, and I did it without Kassia. Once she had opened the Gate for me, I no longer needed her.”

  “What was it like?”

  The glitter of Lukasha’s eyes was masked momentarily. “It was . . . terrifying, magnificent, awe inspiring. When I first stepped through the Portal, I thought the walls would collapse and crush me. But they steadied, and I was able to control whence I moved. I saw such things, Damek, as I cannot even describe. I felt as if I flew.”

  Damek sat up. “Master, when you open the Gate again, might I go with you?”

  He laughed. “You, Damek? Step into the maelstrom? Why should you wish to do that, my unimaginative friend?”

  “Perhaps because I am so unimaginative. I would like to fly, if only once in my life.”

  Lukasha leaned close to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, his eyes gleaming. “Then tomorrow you shall fly. Today, I think we must both rest. My travels have wearied me, and you have a knot on the side of your head.”

  After he had gone, Damek lay back on his couch and shivered, though it was far from cold. Tomorrow, he would fly.

  oOo

  Kassia did not spend her day in rest. There was much to know about the Spirit Gate, and she would know it. Lukasha had taken the spell balls he had made. A clandestine trip to his studio revealed that he had hidden them behind the doors of a carefully warded cabinet.

  The snake was in his glass bowl. Kassia bespelled the creature and captured a drop or two of its venom in a tiny glass vial, but though she prowled about among the jars and boxes on the shelf near the serpent’s bowl, she could find no trace of the other ingredients. A sudden intuition sent her to the brazier and crucible her master used in preparing his spell balls. There she found a residue of ash and several tiny bits of bone. She hastily swept them into a second vial and returned to her own rooms, where she cut some threads from the patches in Beyla’s ill-fitting winter jacket. Patches that had once been part of a coat her husband had worn.

  She had a little stained glass window her father had made. It depicted a forest glade sprinkled with bright flowers, and cut by the blue swathe of a mountain stream. She broke out one of the tiny panes—a blossom of pearly pink—and added it to her collection of spell-makings.

  Last of all, she drew from around her neck the silver locket that had been her mother’s. The metal itself was essential to the spell, but Kassia wondered if it might help to intensify the effects of the other water elements. Her mother’s life, too, had been forfeited to the flood, if indirectly.

  She carried her little trove to her studio, where she set about gathering up the requisite containers. She decided to make a set of miniature proportions, like the string of metal and glass talismans she wore to perform the less potent Window and Traveling spells. She had no ball of iron—she had only gold—and she lacked the feather of a bird of prey.

  As she pondered pounding iron nails into the softer metal to bolster the spell, Shagtai and Beyla appeared in the doorway to her rooms. Beyla scampered to his mother’s side to poke warily at the assembled ingredients, wrinkling his nose.

  “The boy says you will need my help.” The old shaman moved at a more sedate pace to the work table, where he glanced over Kassia’s work. “You need the feather of a kestrel touched by the blood of its prey,” he observed, then proceeded to produce such a feather from a small bag at his belt.

  Kassia couldn’t believe her eyes. “Where did you . . .? How . . .?”

  “Damek came to me a little while ago and asked me to find such a thing for a spell his Master would do. It seemed an odd thing for a Mateu to desire.” He shrugged. “I found more than was needed for one spell.”

  Kassia took the feather, exchanging a fond embrace. “Have you any more miracles for me, Shagtai?”

  “I have none. You must create your own miracles now. There is no one else to do it. But I can help you with this.” He inclined his head toward the little spell balls she had gathered . . .

  The thought of what she was about to undertake made Kassia’s heart quake, but Shagtai’s mere presence was enough to make her work go more quickly. The spell balls, such as they were, took over an hour to complete, and when they were finished, Kassia was far from confident they would work. The golden ball, with its quartet of iron nails, bothered her most, but it contained the requisite venom and Beyla pronounced it suitably “horrid.”

  After bolting down a meal Shagtai brought to her and insisted she eat, she settled the spell balls about her neck. She entered the locus of the mandorla then, and held the charms in her cupped hands so that they sat, each at its proper point on the compass. Then she uttered the words that would open the Spirit Gate, praying that what control over it she did have was not so linked to her master’s that she might not use it alone. Her prayers were resoundingly answered. With the gleaming vortex whirling before her, she took its awesome magic in trembling hands and began to learn its ways.

  oOo

  Through the afternoon and early evening, Kassia worked with the Portal. She quickly left off visiting future times. They were difficult to invoke and disturbing to witness. Often she could make no sense of what she saw, and was forced to close the Gate and clear her aching head. Now, with dusk swiftly approaching, she retired the spell balls to a chest in her studio and herself to her outer chambers. Shagtai brought another meal and together, she, Beyla and the shai kite master ate in near silence as the Sun sank behind the western hills.

  She thought of Zakarij then, wondering how he fared in Ratibor and considering whether she should let him know what was happening in his absence. No, she decided. It would do neither of them any good for him to find himself in the midst of this. Shagtai’s words had been true—this was her doing, her responsibility. When the Spirit Gate opened again the next evening, her battle must be a solitary one.

  “Remember what you struggle for, Kassia.” Shagtai spoke as if divining her thoughts.

  In truth, it had never occurred to her before that he might very well be able to do just that. He went on, on his face a dance of shadow and light from the spirit flames that hovered about them in the parlor.

  “When the time comes for you to act, do not hesitate. You yet dread harming your master. It is a thing you must be able to face.”

  “Doesn’t that make me as wrong as he is? Doesn’t that make me as much a force for evil?”

  Shagtai fixed her with his good eye. “Do you attack a foe? Do you precipitate a battle?”

  “No.”

  He raised a finger before his face. “If you act only
in defense of others, you need never fear the wrath of the God.”

  “Lukasha thinks he acts in defense of all of Polia.”

  “Lukasha has made of himself a sword. You must become a shield.”

  Kassia took a deep, quaking breath. A shield. Tomorrow she would hold immense destructive power in her hands. Somehow she must not let herself be tempted to use it.

  oOo

  Damek came for her an hour before sunset. She was unprepared for the revelation that her master intended to drag him with them through the Portal. The idea was displeasing, but paled in comparison to the other features of this insane circumstance. Kassia put up no argument, and did not bridle at Damek’s smug remarks. Master Lukasha seemed to find his caustic commentary amusing.

  This time, they set up the spell in Lukasha’s studio. He had gained in confidence over night and felt, Kassia gathered, that using his own locus would afford him greater control over the spell. She had dressed for the occasion in an Aspirant’s ceremonial robes of palest blue, even affecting the white and gold stole that was only worn for the most holy of celebrations. Beneath that stole, the solid weight of her concealed spell balls lay heavily over her heart. She had arranged them in a diamond pattern and woven a mounting of copper, silver and gold wire to hold them in place.

  At last, Lukasha was ready to begin the spell. His intelligence from Master Antal informed him that the celebration of Zelimir’s betrothal was already begun—the guests and courtiers had entered the great hall and now awaited their King’s pleasure.

  The trio stood upon his dais with Damek between them, Kassia carefully facing to the east so that her spell balls would be in the right orientation to the compass points. Ruddy light from the waning Sun poured through the high windows and washed around them, making Lukasha’s eyes gleam ruby as he began the invocation.

  Kassia matched cadence with him, beat for beat, word for word, inflection for inflection. The Spirit Gate was hers when she commanded it alone, but she was yet uncertain how much control her Master had over its forces. She was certain only that he could direct it once it had been opened. With that in mind, she hurried the name of Maelstrom again, so little that Lukasha, intent on the spell, did not mark it. But as the Portal roared open, Kassia saw Damek’s head jerk toward her, suspicion covering his face.

  No matter, she told herself wryly as they stepped out into chaos, given what was about to happen to him, Damek would be fortunate if he could even speak when they reached their destination.

  Lukasha brought the three of them to Zelimir’s great hall with an immense physical display. With the roar of a thousand winds and a hundred seas and a myriad fires, the Spirit Gate opened before king Zelimir and his court like a titanic golden blossom. In its throat was an inferno; its mouth spewed spirit sparks upon the polished floors. It was like riding the Sun, and a glance at those who shielded their eyes from its radiance, proved it must be like looking upon that same ball of flame.

  On the dais that seated the royal party, Zelimir came to his feet, still holding the hand of his cowering betrothed. After a moment of hesitation, Chancellor Bogorja and Bishop Benedict rose as well.

  “What is this, Master Lukasha?” the king asked, surprisingly calm for a man who was gazing down the throat of eternity. “Have you come to celebrate my betrothal or to denounce it?”

  Without taking his eyes from his king, Lukasha nodded to Damek, who carefully removed himself from the mouth of the Gate and hastened to the dubious shelter of one of the huge pillars flanking the royal dais.

  “I have come to do neither, Mishka. But I must ask—do you truly intend to go through with this marriage of politics?”

  “You mistake me, Mateu. It will be more than a marriage of state that binds Fiorella and myself. I have come to need her. To care for her and love her as once you purposed I love your apprentice, Kassia.”

  “You will not reconsider?”

  “No, Mateu. I will not.”

  Master Lukasha nodded, his eyes drifting closed over the flaming chaos they mirrored. “I grieve, Mishka,” was all he said, but the iron voice held no grief.

  Kassia’s spine stiffened and she turned to see what was happening within the Gate. An image was frozen on the distorted walls of the vortex, a scene so barren and lifeless that Kassia could scarcely believe it belonged to this world. She realized at once what Lukasha intended to do. A prison, he had called the Gate. This was the prison he intended for his king.

  Kassia whispered a counter as her master gave his command, blocking the catalyst he fed to the Gate—a catalyst that would have sucked the king and every person seated near him through the flaming abyss and into oblivion.

  Around them the Portal roiled, its outer edge rippling in the backwash of their sudden confrontation. Lukasha was stunned only momentarily. He realized immediately who opposed him, and turned on Kassia in wordless fury, loosing a sorcerous assault on her. She countered with one of her own, a Shield of pure fire elementals that turned her master’s magic aside. She felt its chill bite, though, and knew that he, too, had been practicing Twilight enchantments.

  She had no will to fight him. With its mad fury roaring in her ears, she stepped back into the Spirit Gate and let herself be sucked from the hall. Without a moment’s hesitation, Lukasha followed her, and made it through the Portal a second before it closed with a sound like the cracking of a whip.

  Kassia led her Master on a wild chase through corridors of time and light and darkness, took him through places of utter chaos and of obscene order. She fled to the future this time, hoping she might lose him, or at least confuse him. She lit and lingered where roads of molten stone were lit by spirit lamps and traveled by hissing creatures with tiny suns for eyes. She stumbled across battlefields where clanking, growling monsters fired bolts of smoke and flame and where the devastation made the wars of the Tamalids look like the play of children. She watched a gigantic tower ride a plume of flame into the heavens and she saw metal birds that roared like the wind among the clouds.

  She kept her mind apart from these sights and sounds, ignoring the looks of astonishment and terror on faces she barely glimpsed. Her mind was feverishly at work, for she had no plan, but only played for time. She must end this chase somewhere—but where? She could choose Lukasha’s barren plain and there battle him. Or perhaps she could outflank him and return to Tabor to ward Zelimir and his court. If she could convince Antal and the other Mateu to throw in with her, perhaps even solicit Benedict’s aid . . . The problem was time. She must reach Tabor far enough ahead of Lukasha to acquire allies.

  She caught herself on a sudden realization. She was thinking too small. This was a time Portal—she knew that, yet after all she had seen and was seeing, she persisted in thinking of it in three dimensional terms—as a merely spatial phenomenon. Here was a fourth dimension. It was into this dimension her control must expand.

  Kassia returned herself to the Zelimirid palace moments before her original arrival with Lukasha and Damek. Now, she stepped out of the open Gate alone. There was no Damek. There was no Lukasha. There was only an astonished Zelimir and a court thrown into sudden chaos. Kassia drew upon the Spirit Gate, itself, to create the strongest ward she had ever raised. It was a Squared ward, presided over by the Dragon, Harmattan, and the Serpent, Abyss. She shivered as the magic left her fingertips.

  On the royal dais, King Zelimir came slowly to his feet. “Kassia? What magic do you plot against me now?”

  She opened her mouth to tell him she plotted nothing, but her voice was drowned in a sudden rending of the air. With an inhuman groan, the Spirit Gate rippled, its inner reaches giving birth to a storm. Out of the storm stepped Master Lukasha, Beyla struggling in his arms. Hard by the pillar closest to the royal table, Damek winked silently into sight.

  Kassia’s universe came to a shivering halt. She could no longer defend Polia or Zelimir. Suddenly there was only Beyla to be defended. She shuddered, lowered her arms from their defensive posture and waited to see what Luka
sha would do next.

  “What is this?” demanded Zelimir from his dais.

  “Treason, Majesty,” said Lukasha. “This woman would topple you from your throne.”

  “A lie!”

  Kassia whirled to see Zakarij striding toward her across the polished floor of the hall. She was relieved to see him, terrified that he had just given Lukasha a second weapon to use against her.

  “Kassia,” Zakarij continued, approaching the royal table, “has ever been your loyal friend. It is Master Lukasha who plots treason.”

  “I am no traitor!” Lukasha’s face was aflame, while he gripped the cloth of Beyla’s shirt so hard, his knuckles shone white beneath the flesh of his hands. “You are traitor to your own people, Michal Zelimir, who would take an alien queen to his bosom. Who would force her religion upon this nation. Who would suffer the twisted magic of this man”—he jerked his head toward Benedict—“to shepherd his senses. Who would turn away those faithful ones who seek only his prosperity. You have erred. You have looked into your enemy’s eyes and seen a friend, and have imagined your friend to be an enemy. It is time for you to pay for that mistake.”

  Both Kassia and Zakarij strained forward at those words, but Lukasha gave Beyla a rough shake, making him cry out. “Do nothing foolish!” he cried and raised his free hand, his fingers curling about the set of spell balls he still held there.

  Beyla moved even more quickly. Like little wings, his hands fluttered upward, releasing a shower of sparks. The sparks took on bird-shape and, in the twinkling of an eye, Lukasha’s head and shoulders were mobbed by a flock of firebirds the size of finches. Their tiny, bright beaks pecked at his eyes and, though there was no danger of them harming him, he tried to swat them away. Letting Beyla go, he covered his face with both hands and set up a defensive ward.

  As the boy sprang away into Zakarij’s arms, Kassia acted, desperately trying to pull the Portal closed. But her Master’s power over it was enough. A gesture of his hand, a pulse of his will and, though it writhed and rippled, the Gate remained open. Kassia strengthened the shield she had set over the king. She felt Zakarij raise a ward about himself and Beyla, and could sense that Antal and his brethren had cast their own reflective protections.