Asenka joined in at this point, defending her younger sister. “Bey’s no trouble, Blaz. In fact, he’s a great help to me; he watches Lenci so I can get things done about the house. The bedding can be done after dinner.”
“Shouldn’t have to be. What sort of woman leaves her child unattended and gads off to the marketplace like a footloose maiden?”
“The sort of woman,” said Kassia, “who’s just been told she must find her own place to live. The sort of woman who must now figure out how to pay the price of rent when she has no family business to fall back on.”
Blaz’s smile was not in the least conciliatory. “Did you? Figure out how to pay your rent?”
“I did, thank you, brother-in-law. I found a very satisfying way to pay my rent. Using the talent Itugen gave me.” She reached into her pocket, grabbed a handful of coins and dumped them onto the table. The children jumped at the sound of metal and stone on wood, then stared round-eyed.
“Oh, Aunt Kiska!” breathed Etouard, the youngest boy. “What a lot of money! I’ve never seen a rega piece before. May I hold it?”
She nodded curtly, her eyes still on Blaz’s, waiting for his censure.
He surprised her, leaving the issue of how she’d earned the money completely alone. “You’d not have shown us this, I’ll bet, if I hadn’t goaded you. You’d have hidden it somewhere and never let us know it was.”
She and Asenka were both scowling at him. “Why should it matter that I show it to you,” Kassia asked, “as long as I have it?”
Blaz laughed unpleasantly. “You’d let your sister believe you a poor unfortunate when you had money to contribute to this household—”
“Blaz Kovar!” Asenka was on her feet. “You’ve made me toss my own sister out of our house and now you want to attach the money she needs to start her own home? Whatever are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking of what this family needs to—”
“We need no more than what we have. It’s what you want that’s driving you, husband. The blacksmith’s house must be the grandest on the row. It must have red tiles and silk carpets and clear glass windows. Would you have Kassia pay for those things? Well, fine then. Let her stay here.”
“There’s no room.”
“Make room. Build a new room for Kassia and Beyla.”
“We can’t afford—”
“If Kassia pays rent, we can afford—”
Kassia could stand no more. To be talked around was bad enough; to be talked about and around at the same time was unbearable. She held up her hands, wanting nothing more than to verbally thrash Blaz Kovar within an inch of his disagreeable life, willing to forego that pleasure only for her sister’s sake.
“Please stop! Blaz, I know you’ve not welcomed Beyla and me these last three years. It was only for Aska you let us stay. Well, I’ve not been happy either. It pains me to be the cause of discord between you. Because of that I’m only too happy to leave. But if you’re of a mind to take this little bit of money I’ve earned—”
“Ah! Now it’s only ‘a little bit of money’. A moment ago it was this great treasure!”
“It’s a lot of money to me, brother-in-law, but in Ursel Trava’s eyes it’s less than a month’s rent. If you want it, you’re welcome to it, but know that if you take it, it’ll be that much longer I’ll be forced to stay under your thatched roof.”
Blaz’s mouth screwed itself into an wizened blotch. “Fine. Keep your damned witch money, if it’ll get you out of here sooner. I want you out before the month’s up, Kassia Telek. Stay one day longer and I will have some of your so-called earnings.” Abandoning his supper, the blacksmith stomped around the table and out of his house into the night.
In their tiny room later that night, Kassia counted her day’s earnings while Beyla slept. She began the task on a flood of fierce elation, sifting the coins—silver, copper, and semi-precious stone—through her fingers. She, Kassia Telek, had earned this money, money that would pay her way out of Blaz Kovar’s house. Her elation soon faded; her entire collection of coins came to only about a quarter of the twenty rega she needed for rent.
She pondered her situation for a moment, idly staring at the gleaming bits of metal and stone, then shook herself. Stupid Kassia! Of course you can’t earn an entire month’s rent in the space of one day—who could? Tomorrow, you will go back and earn more, and more the day after that. A week’s work for Ursel Trava’s rent is not so much, and then . . . And then, she realized, she must work for food, for clothing, for household necessities. She must have the time to prepare food, gather wood, care for Beyla and educate him.
She rubbed her cheek, feeling suddenly exhausted, and wishing, not for the first time, that she had been talented enough to learn her husband’s craft. But clay would not obey her clumsy fingers. That had been amusing in the days when Shurik was alive to tease her about her tortured-looking pots and wilted bowls; now it added itself to her burden of bitter grief.
Suddenly angry, Kassia gathered up the motley collection of coins and dumped them into a much-mended pot atop the little hutch that held her clothing and Beyla’s. Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow, I will raise my prices and bring back more.
As she curled herself upon her straw-stuffed mattress, she thought of Mistress Devora. “You should cast your own fortune,” the baker had said, and perhaps she was right. But to Kassia Telek, an unknown and uncertain future was better than a frightening one clearly seen. She had long had the sense that the village of Dalibor would not contain her, but what life could she have elsewhere?
She fell asleep to dream of places both strange and terrifying, where everything moved with the swiftness of the Pavla Yeva in flood.
oOo
The next morning Kassia fed Beyla and performed her chores in a rush, anxious to be off to the marketplace again. When she came close to breaking yet another serving pot, her sister rescued it with able hands and shooed her away from the house.
“To market with you!” she said, laughing. “Here’s some money and a little list of the things I need. If Blaz asks, I’ll tell him you’re out doing the day’s shopping.”
Relieved, Kassia obeyed, taking Beyla with her.
“Mama, what is it you do in the marketplace?” he asked as they walked, hand-in-hand, through the village.
“I divine,” she said. “I tell people’s fortunes.”
He squinted up at her. “Can you teach me to do this also, so I can earn money for our rent?”
She shook her head. “You’re a child, Beyla. You oughtn’t have to worry just yet about earning our rent.”
“But mama, Fedor is learning his father’s trade. He helps in the forge almost every day.” He glanced away across the road in the direction of Blaz Kovar’s smithy. “He hardly has time to play with me any more.”
“Beyla, Fedor is older than you are, and bigger.”
“He’s only one year older, and he’s bigger because he works in the forge. He’s going to be a blacksmith just like his father.”
While you, Kassia thought, have no father to be like. Her heart felt leaden in her chest. “I suppose we could ask your uncle Blaz if he’d teach you the family trade along with his sons.” And faint hope he’d agree.
“But that’s his family trade, not mine. I don’t want to follow his trade. I want to follow yours.”
Kassia laughed. “I don’t have a trade, Beyla.”
“Yes you do. You’re an augur. I heard aunt Aska say so. Teach me how to be an augur too.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“What about spells? I can do spells.”
She looked at him sharply. “You what?”
His glance was sly. “You let the fire go out last Matek. You forgot to bank it down. I know how angry uncle Blaz gets when that happens. I saw you start it up again.”
She stopped in the middle of the cobbled way and turned to stare at him. “You saw me . . .”
“I thought it was very clever of you, mama. Uncle Blaz neve
r knew. I liked what you did with those little firebirds. So, I taught myself to do it too.”
Kassia didn’t know whether to be aghast, amazed or anxious. “You taught yourself . . .?”
He nodded, pride gleaming in his dark eyes. “Shall I show you?” He brought his hands up between them, fingertips touching and ready to fly open.
She caught his hands, stilling the spell she could feel tingling, incredibly, beneath her palms. “Not here! Itugen mine, Beyla! You mustn’t do those things in public! Has anyone ever seen you . . . make a spell?”
“Only Lenci. I made some of the little firebirds for her once. She thought they were pretty.”
“She didn’t tell anyone?”
He shrugged. “Well, she told Fedor and Bohdan, but they didn’t believe her. They laughed. They don’t have much imagination, do they?”
He surprised a laugh out of his mother with that, and smiled, pleased with himself. Kassia shook her head and started them walking again, toward the market. “All right, little Mateu, since you’ve discovered your gift, it only seems right that I should teach you how to use it. But you must not tell anyone the things I teach you. And you mustn’t show Lenci any more firebirds. The next person she tells may believe her.”
“I’m not a Mateu,” Beyla told her solemnly. “I’m shai, like my mother.”
oOo
Kassia was unable to raise her prices, so the day was no more lucrative than the first, but she told herself that only meant it would take a little longer than she had expected to make the necessary money. By the end of the week, she had collected only fifteen rega and some small change. That made it hard to be optimistic. If she must work for ten days to earn the rent . . .
No, she told herself stubbornly, that left plenty in which to earn the remainder of their living expenses. Besides, there were still her herbals. She sold those, too, in the marketplace of Dalibor, while Beyla acted as a shill, using his unusual appearance and winsome manners to draw people to the white-haired woman with the handcart full of herbal potions who would handle some personal belonging, stare into their souls and tell them what of their foreseeable future she thought they might wish to hear.
She saw the watchful Mateu again on several occasions—at least she thought it was the same one who’d stared at her that first day. She thought, once, that he meant to speak to her, but the well-timed appearance of a customer held him at bay. She was glad of that; it would have galled her to be chided by one of the sorcerer-priests in such a public place.
When the day of worship arrived Kassia thought deeply about what she would take to the cesia to offer to Itugen and Mat. It was no ordinary worship day, but marked the first Celek of the New Year. Planting season was upon them and this year hopes were higher than ever before. There had been much rain, but no flooding, the new growth in the forests was lush, the soil regaining its fertility.
It was a new year for Kassia, too, though she planted nothing. She was plying a trade now, and therefore must have a suitable offering—something more than the little vials of herbals she had left at their altar at Solstice.
“I’m going to give firebirds,” Beyla told her as they made the journey to Dalibor’s village cesia.
Across the Pavla Yeva they went, on the new bridge of stone and wood, past the tangle of uprooted trees and debris on its opposite shore, through the stark, silent forest with its wraith-trees, and up the long, rocky hill—Little Holy Hill, they called it in deference to the larger mount upon which Lorant sat.
They were part of a procession of worshipers, each bringing to their God and Goddess a small portion of what was theirs by right. Ahead of them, Mistress Devora carried a fine, big loaf of braided bread—the best of the morning’s batch, Kassia knew. She also knew that, somewhere behind, the Kovar family carried one of the little bronze figurines Blaz had taken to having his oldest boy make in practice for the day when he would run the forge. Generally, they were flawed; Bohdan’s hand was not yet as sure as his sire’s; but they represented whatever Blaz considered his most important job of the year past.
Kassia took a deep breath of the forest’s damp air with its warring scents of decay and vitality, and fingered the contents of her pocket. There was a vial of herbal there—a headache remedy that had sold well during her brief tenure in the marketplace—and a silver alka. It wasn’t enough—wasn’t even appropriate. She was selling the future; the money was only a result. The Mateu, she knew, didn’t frown on people leaving money at the altar, but her mother had.
“Kiska,” she’d said, “the Gods don’t ask for much from us here—that we love them, that we think of them as we would think of our parents. If you asked me for a part of myself, would I give you a mere coin?”
Kassia and Beyla joined the line of worshipers now winding up the last hundred yards of rutted path to the sacred place atop the hill and took their place at the fringes of the gathering. She still didn’t know what she had to give in this New Year.
The worship leader today was a priest; the Mateu only came to the village cesia during the high holy days and the harvest festival. Kassia was too young to remember when there had been a priestess at worship as well. Some villages still had them, but it was rare; public sentiment had so turned against Itugen’s daughters during the dark days of the Tamalid empire, that women were all but banned from performing rites on the hilltops of Polia. Kassia’s own mother might have been a Mateu had things been different, but Itugen’s blessing hat been withdrawn from the shai—no, from the entire land.
The priest was of middle age—a weary-looking soul, whose devotions seemed not to revive him in the least. He called the blessing of Mat down upon the assemblage then implored Itugen to grant a bountiful year. After reminding his flock that a new year meant new beginnings and a blossoming of hope, he led them in the chants.
Kassia watched his lined face when she could see it around the shoulders of the man in front of her. She suspected that if someone were to interrupt him in the midst of his litany, he would never be able to start up again. It was all rote to him, and she doubted he would know what hope was if it reared up and kissed him on the nose. Her mouth twisted in a wry grimace. The poor man had no doubt lived most of his life under the oppression of the Tamalids. For him, hope must be a dim memory at best. Kassia turned her head to find Beyla perched in a tree just behind her. He saw her and smiled.
You will know hope as more than a word, she told him silently.
When the chants were done, the priest stepped down from the tumble of stones that formed the village shrine and disappeared into the forest behind it, no doubt to make his way back to Lorant from whence he’d come. The villagers moved, then, to approach that hallowed spot—where Sky met Earth and kissed her—there to leave their offerings one by one or family by family. Kassia and Beyla hung at the fringes, Beyla larking about the trees, Kassia pondering her offering.
“Look, mama,” said Beyla, suddenly beside her and tugging at her skirts. “Mister Trava has brought an entire plough to give Itugen.”
Kassia glanced up at the shrine. Indeed, Mister Trava had brought an entire plough as his offering. It was a fine oak plow with a forged blade painted bright green—Itugen’s color—and he clearly intended that all see it as his two oldest sons carried it into the circle of stones. Trava was not the only citizen of Dalibor so ostentatious, and others followed him quickly, laying their own offerings out, eyes sweeping the crowd to see who took note. There was no ritual order to the giving of gifts, even at the New Year, but it had become tradition for the grandest gifts to be given first, by those with the greatest resources.
Kassia and Beyla waited while the hilltop clearing emptied. When the last villager had trickled away down the slope, they came to the altar. The Sun was high by now, and the encircling jumble of huge, rough-cut stones seemed dark in comparison with the bright glade beyond. Beyla, as always, marveled at the array of gifts—large and small, fine and poor—that lay everywhere within the shrine’s embrace.
&n
bsp; They approached the central altar hand-in-hand and bowed nine times to the place where once the Tree had stood—the Tree whose roots were in the earth and whose branches reached to heaven. The Great Fires, sparing not even this holy place, had taken it. In its place grew a fine sapling. It flourished here, its branches reaching heavenward, a child of Itugen raising its arms for its Father’s acceptance, seeking union, seeking to bridge the gap between Earth and Sky.
When they had risen from their last genuflection, Beyla turned to his mother and asked, “May I go first, mama?”
Kassia nodded. Smiling, Beyla looked down, his eyes intent on his hands. He worked his little magic in silence, his lips moving, but uttering no sound, hands cupped as if they caged a butterfly. Then, swiftly, he flung them up and out. A shower of bright motes exploded from his fingertips, swirling upward over the altar stone, spiraling, growing, subtly changing shape.
Kassia’s eyes followed them almost awfully, these tokens of her child’s latent ability. How strange, she thought, that what had all but withered in her mother had taken root in her and blossomed in her child. But no, she realized, it was not just Beyla. She could feel the tingling of ancient magics in her own soul as well, hear them singing through her spirit. Polia was coming alive slowly, achingly, and so was the shai magic within Itugen’s daughters . . . and sons.
The firebirds had flown above the crown of the Tree by now—above the tops of the highest tree-ruins—and hung against the azure backdrop of heaven before extinguishing themselves and fanning away on the wind. Kassia lowered her eyes to her son, where he stood, head back, eyes peering into Mat’s realm, his face beaming. She wanted everything for him at that moment. She wanted him to go beyond being a village curiosity, a reminder of a dark past. She wanted him not to have to hide his talents in some shabby hovel along the river road.
Beyla stepped aside to let her approach the altar, then reached out to take her hand. She stooped for a moment to take up a handful of earth. In it was both ash and good, dark soil. She held it up to the sky. “Mat, Itugen. I have nothing to give you this day of beginnings. I give you all I have—my future.”
The Spirit Gate Page 3