Solis Celek
Lunae Matek
Martis Itugenek
Mercurii Mercurek
Jovis Jovek
Veneris Venerek
Saturni Saturnek
The Ten Darughas of Polia
Bytomierz
Khitan
Kuyavia
Masovia
Odra
Pomerania
Radomierz
Sandomierz
Silesia
Teschen
Tatuan Holy Days
The Feasts of Seasons (holy days upon which offerings are made):
New Year (Vernal Equinox), Martius 21: First Feast of Seasons, celebrated the Celek nearest the Equinox. This festival includes dancing, music and storytelling and Polian villages are decorated with greenery and early blooming flowers.
Summer Solstice, Junius 21: Second Feast of Seasons, celebrated the Celek nearest the Solistice. This is a particularly musical festival with much pageantry such as kite flying, fireworks and parades through the streets of village or town accompanied by bells, gongs and drums.
Autumnal Equinox, Septembris 21: Third Feast of Seasons, celebrated the Celek nearest the Equinox. This festival includes dancing, music and storytelling and Polian villages are decorated with fruits of the harvest. A bonfire is started in the village square or market.
Winter Solstice, Decembris 21: Fourth Feast of Seasons, celebrated the Celek nearest the Solstice. A bonfire is lit to remind all of the bounty of the past harvest. Stories are told and songs sung to Mat and Itugen. This is a more sober celebration with much prayer, and introspection that is intended to lead to spiritual rebirth at the New Year.
Other Festivals
The Planting (Feast), Aprilis 10: celebrated 20 days after the New Year, this feast begins with the celebration of the Wedding of Mat and Itugen. It is customary for couples to marry and consummate their unions on this date to assure blessings.
The Reaping (Feast), Septembris 21 through Octobris 1: beginning with the Third Feast of Seasons, this annual festival celebrates the Harvest. The bonfire set up at the Equinox is tended and kept burning throughout The Reaping.
The Order at Lorant
The levels in the religious order of the Polian religion:
Initiate
This is the general student at Lorant who may or may not have magical ability. Initiates are schooled in history, religion and the arcane as well as in the more practical aspects of magic such as divination, medicine and meteorology.
Apprentice
An Initiate is graduated into the ranks of the Apprentices once his ability has brought him to the attention of the Headmaster or any other Mateu at Lorant. The Initiate is recommended for Apprenticeship by an instructor, the recommendation is then accepted or denied by the Headmaster and the Sacred Circle. An Initiate rises to Apprenticeship during a ceremony called Commencement. (This is led up to by a process called The Selection.)
Aspirant
Once an Apprentice has served a Master faithfully for a number of years, that Master may recommend that they aspire to the station of Mateu if it seems their magical abilities warrant it. The Aspirant pursues his own unique form of magic rather than what is purely derivative of, or under the direction of his Master. The quality of this magic will determine if the Aspirant is invested with the title and signs of the Mateu. Once the determination of merit is made, the Aspirant must pass an examination, during which he displays his abilities and learning to the Sacred Circle. The ceremony that passes one from Apprentice to Aspirant is called The Accession.
Priest
Priesthood is generally bestowed upon those Apprentices or Aspirants whose magic is simply not strong enough to elevate him to the station of Mateu. Generally, the suitability of a student for Mastery is demonstrated well enough during apprenticeship for the Circle to make a determination, although there have been those who spent several years as Aspirants before settling for the priesthood. The priest's purview is the purely spiritual. He does not concern himself with the arcane arts at all. Priests are made during The Ordination.
Mateu
When an Aspirant is found worthy by the Sacred Circle, he is celebrated in a ceremony called The Investiture at which time he is officially welcomed to the ranks of the Mateu. He may elect to teach at Lorant or elsewhere, to serve a village city, enter the court of a darughachi as House Mateu or apply to the court of the King himself. The Zelimirid Household has several Mateu serving it.
Types of Spells
The four primary elements are earth, air, fire and water. Spells using these in different combinations have specific names.
Twinned spell or Duet: A spell that uses two elements that are allied to the same force (i.e. Earth or Sky).
Opposed spell or Battle: A spell that uses two elements allied to opposing forces.
Triad: A spell making use of three elements. A Triad is very difficult for the Mateu to perform. The Itugenic element must be handled via subtractive magic
Squared spell or Square: A spell using all four primary elements. Squared spells are impossible for the Mateu to handle, since they have not access to the spirits the shai invoke.
An Elemental Table
ELEMENT SPIRIT CLASS ALLY
copper (green) Rez light earth, Itugen
gold (red) Liene light fire, Itugen
silver (yellow) Carka light air,Mat
cobalt (blue) Inok light water, Mat
glass light air, Mat
stone heavy earth, Itugen
iron heavy water, Mat
shell light water, Mat
bone of hunter heavy fire, Itugen
bone of grazer light earth, Itugen
bone of fish light water, Mat
bone of bird light air, Mat
clay neutral earth, Itugen
Copyright & Credits
The Spirit Gate
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Book View Café 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61138-448-2
Copyright © 2014 Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
First published: Baen Books, 1996
Cover illustration © 2014 by unholyvault
Production Team:
Cover Design: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Proofreader: Dave Trowbridge
Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Digital edition: 20141115vnm
www.bookviewcafe.com
Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
P.O. Box 1624, Cedar Crest, NM 87008-1624
About the author
Maya became addicted to science fiction when her dad let her stay up late to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still. Mom was horrified. Dad was unrepentant. Maya slept with a night-light in her room until she was 15.
She started her writing career sketching science fiction comic books in the last row of her grade school classroom. She was never apprehended. Since then her short fiction has been published in Analog, Amazing Stories, Century, Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Paradox and Jim Baen’s Universe. Her novelette, The White Dog, was a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award.
Her debut novel, The Meri (Baen), was a Locus Magazine 1992 Best First Novel nominee. She is a sometime collaborator with Michael Reaves, with whom she’s penned three Star Wars novels, and a Del Rey original, Mr. Twilight. Their collaboration, Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a New York Times Bestseller.
Maya lives in San Jose where she writes, performs, and records original and parody (filk) music with her husband and awesome musician and music producer, Chef Jeff Vader, All-Powerful God of Biscuits. The couple frequently serves as Guest of Honor at science fiction/fantasy conventions and at filk music gatherings, and has been honored with Peg
asus Awards for Best Parody and Best Performer. They’ve produced five music albums: RetroRocket Science, Aliens Ate My Homework and Grated Hits(parody), and the original music CDs Manhattan Sleeps and Mobius Street. To top it off, they’ve also produced three musical children: Alex, Kristine, and Amanda.
Other Books by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Coruscant Nights Book Four)
Del Rey / Lucas Books, 2013
with Michael Reaves
STAR WARS: SHADOW GAMES
Del Rey/Lucas Books, 2011
with Michael Reaves
The Mer Cycle:
THE MERI
TAMINY
THE CRYSTAL ROSE
A PRINCESS OF PASSYUNK
Book View Cafe, 2010
TACO DEL AND THE FABLED TREE OF DESTINY
Book View Cafe, 2010
SHAMAN (A Collection of Short Science Fiction)
Book View Cafe, 2013
ALL THE COLORS OF TIME (A Collection of Short Science Fiction)
Book View Cafe, 2014
About Book View Café
Book View Café is a professional authors’ publishing cooperative offering DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world. With authors in a variety of genres including mystery, romance, fantasy, and science fiction, Book View Café has something for everyone.
Book View Café is good for readers because you can enjoy high-quality DRM-free ebooks from your favorite authors at a reasonable price.
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Book View Café authors include New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award winners, World Fantasy and Rita Award nominees, and winners and nominees of many other publishing awards.
www.bookviewcafe.com
Sample Chapter: A Princess of Passyunk
One: If Market Street Flooded
“If Market Street ever flooded,” said Stanislaus Ouspensky, “South Philly would be an island.”
He contemplated this possibility over a bowl of chicken soup in a postage-stamp-sized deli on South Tenth Street between Cross and Tasker.
Across the counter, the deli’s owner, Izzy Davidov, looked up from the newspaper spread across the worn linoleum of his countertop and raised a graying eyebrow. “How so?”
Ouspensky straightened from his soup and flung his arms wide, dripping chicken broth across the counter. “Just look. Water on three sides; history on the fourth. All it would take is a little push”—he demonstrated on the lone matzo ball still bobbing in the bowl—“and we’re cut off from the present. Because Time gets confused in South Philly.”
At the end of the counter closest to the door, Ganady Puzdrovsky and his best friend, Yevgeny Toschev, locked eyes over their root beer. The boys had heard Mr. Ouspensky hold forth on this subject before and knew that Mr. Ouspensky believed Time flowed into Philly and eddied there, unable to find a way out again. At least, that’s what he claimed to believe.
Stanislaus Ouspensky, who had lived in a walk-up on 20th Street across from Connie Mack Stadium since the Creation, had watched many baseball games from his rooftop before the notorious ‘spite fence’ went up in ’35. To Ganady and Yevgeny he had privately intimated that because of these so-called time-eddies, he could still watch them. At the ambiguous age of sixteen—stranded midway between childhood and adulthood—neither boy could completely discount the claim. Neither was sure he wanted to.
“Confused?” repeated Izzy, eyeing the golden beads of liquid on his previously spotless countertop. “How does Time get confused?”
“Abigail Adams’s Bed and Breakfast is how,” said Mr. Ouspensky. “The Betsy Ross Museum is how. Time slides down the Broad Street Line and finds these places, and it eddies around them and gets stuck. Do you know what you get when Time gets stuck?”
“No,” said Izzy, rattling his paper. “But I suspect you will tell me.”
“Windows into the past. Windows into history. That’s what you get.” He glanced at the two boys out of the corner of his eye and winked, making them parties to his theory.
As indeed, they were. Thanks in large part to Mr. Ouspensky and his philosophical ramblings, their Philadelphia was not circumscribed by the neat grid of streets or a modern façade. Their Philly wasn’t merely trapped in Time, it was sinking back into it.
This meant there were times when Izzy’s deli was a tavern at which thieves and pirates gathered in the wee hours. And Saint Stanislaus’ Church was a grand and massive cathedral gone to weed, in which sad monks carried out their daily rites, and at night worked for an unspecified Underground.
“Windows?” repeated Izzy, his eyebrows just visible above the edge of the newspaper. “I’ll tell you what I know about windows, Ouspensky. I know that mine haven’t been washed for above a week thanks to that hulyen, Nikolai Puzdrovsky.”
Ganady snorkeled into his straw, root beer exploding up the sides of the bottle. Hearing his elder brother referred to as a “hellraiser,” even in Yiddish, was not without humor. Lazy, Nikolai might be called, careless, maybe—but a hulyen?
The hulyen himself appeared just then as if magically summoned, stepping through Izzy’s door with the sharp April wind nipping after him. He closed the door in its face and said, “Hey, Mr. O. Hey, Izzy. Can I get a grape soda?”
Izzy’s eyebrows rose again at the sound of his pet name coming from Nikolai’s lips. Neither of the other boys would have dared address him in such fashion, but Nikolai was seventeen and as of this past winter, considered himself to be sufficiently grown up to experiment with such adult privilege.
“How do you do, Mister Puzdrovsky?” asked Izzy mildly. “I’ll be happy to see to your soda as soon as I’ve finished my business with Ganady.”
Ganady’s ears perked up at this, for he had no idea that business was being done with him.
Izzy said, “So, Ganady, since my windows have gone unwashed this week past, I am wondering if you and your young friend might be interested in a bit of work. One could do the windows, one the floors . . .”
Nikolai reverted swiftly to his youth. “Gee, Mr. Davidov, I was going to do them Friday, but . . . well, I had to make up some homework, and then it was getting dark, and you know how Mama is about us being out after dark.”
“My windows don’t know from homework,” said Izzy. “They’re just dirty. Perhaps Ganady doesn’t have homework that must be made up?”
Ganady glanced at Nikolai, whose entire thought process was writ publicly on his lean face. Certainly he wanted the money, but having to do windows on Friday afternoons instead of all the other things that could be done . . .
Nikolai took a deep breath. “I’ll do them Wednesday. I promise. Right after school. Will that be okay, Mr. D.?”
Izzy grunted what Ganady assumed was an affirmative and poked his long nose back into his paper. “You know where the soda is. Help yourself.”
Nikolai did just that, swinging around the end of the counter to the beaten-up little icebox where Izzy kept his cold stuff. He was back out again in a moment, swigging a grape Nehi. “Seen any good ballgames lately, Mr. Ouspensky?” he asked.
“A few,” said the old man coyly, dunking the hapless matzo ball with his spoon. He did not elaborate.
In days past, he would have waxed poetic about the games, but Nikolai was no longer of the inner circle. To Ganady’s chagrin, his elder brother had begun to change with the onset of this, his junior year, until by now, in early April, he seemed as blasé and unimaginative as his peers.
For his part, Nikolai merely grinned, sucked his soda and said, “Mama sent me to bring you home, Ganny. And Eugene’s wanted up at the restaurant.”
Yevgeny’s eyes shot sparks of perfect delft blue onto his freckled cheeks. “Don’t call me that,” he said.
Nikolai shrugged his shoulders. “Suit yourself. All I know is, your Mama wants you to help out in the kitchen.”
Unlike Yevgeny, who resisted Americanization with every fiber of his being, Nikolai had become relentlessly American, his interests running more and more to cars and leather bomber jackets and chinos and high-school dances. Mama and Baba were the only ones at home who could call him “Nikolai” or “Nikki” these days; everyone else must call him “Nick.” He had unilaterally decided that Yevgeny would be “Eugene” instead of “Zhenya” or some other standard diminutive. He had also coined the shortened version of Ganady’s name on the grounds that the Polish version—“Genna”—“sounded girly.” Everyone had taken to using it—even their Mama on occasion. Ganady couldn’t find it in himself to care with anything like the passion Yevgeny did.
Nick said South Philadelphia was an antique or a museum, or worse, a human rummage sale. Further, Ganady and Yevgeny with their heads full of time eddies and magical windows were yentas who might just as well be doing needlework and sharing neighborhood gossip with Baba Irina’s glayzele tey society.
He rarely joined the other boys on their rambles these days, and when he did, Ganady knew he was only along for the ride. He never brought his imagination with him. To hear Nick tell it, the only reason he spent any time with the younger boys at all was to keep them from dropping permanently through one of Ouspensky’s magic windows, leaving him to explain their disappearance to the elder Puzdrovskys.
Root beer bottles drained, the two younger boys followed Nikolai from the deli.
“Saturday?” asked Mr. Ouspensky from behind them.
“Saturday,” said Ganady and Yevgeny in unison.
And Izzy Davidov muttered, “Mr. D!” and rattled his newspaper.
“Saturday, what?” asked Nikolai as the boys made their way up the street.
Ganady shrugged, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, trying to lose the root-beer-bottle chill. “Oh, nothing. We’re um . . .”
The Spirit Gate Page 43
