The ceremony itself was as bad as she expected it to be. She towered over the other first year Initiates and caused quite a stir among participants and audience alike. More embarrassing still, her sister Asenka was in the crowd along with Fedor and Lenci. But perhaps worst of all was the host of higher level Initiates, Apprentices and Aspirants, still glowing from their own Commencement and Accession ceremonies, who gaped and pointed and whispered.
Kassia, the unwilling target of those stares and whispers, was barely able to make it through the brief Induction, during which she, along with her classmates, intoned the Initiates’ pledge (”I will, O Mat, to learn Thy will . . .”), and received a wooden paiza with the fish and star symbol of the Lorant Initiate impressed upon it. “Kassia Telek,” it styled her, beneath the ornate fish with its star-filled mouth, “daughter of Jedrus Telek and Jasia Antavas of Dalibor, Teschen province. Widow of Shurik Cheslaf of Ohdan, a mother, Initiate and shai.” She had never worn a paiza before, and it afforded her one of the few moments of honest pleasure she took from the Induction.
Afterward, she searched the small crowd of people for Master Lukasha, but he was nowhere in sight. Evidently, he had not made it back from Tabor after all. Disappointed, Kassia accepted her sister’s warm wishes, took her son by the hand and went home.
It was Beyla, as usual, who gave her another moment she would remember without discomfort. They were just passing beneath the great archway of Lorant’s front gates when the boy squeezed her hand. “I’m proud of you, mama,” he said. “I think papa and Itugen must be proud of you, too. You’re much better at magic than at pots.”
Kassia laughed and swept her son into her arms. “Oh, let’s hope so, Beyla. Let’s hope so.”
oOo
Lukasha returned from Tabor road-weary and contemplative. The two states didn’t go well together. Tired, the sorcerer’s mind refused to stay where he put it, instead leaping here and there and fixing on inconsequential things—the bright blue roof of the royal yam closest to Dalibor, the way the fleet of kites over the gables of Lorant became a fleet of fishing vessels such as he had seen on the deep waters of the Yeva river at Tabor. He would ponder the developments in the Zelimirid court later when he was rested, when his mind was prepared to be more obedient.
Damek was working in Lukasha’s private library when at last the Mateu set foot in it again. He got himself a cup of hot tea (as black a brew as he could make) and sat down to hear his aide’s report. At its end, he’d still not heard of what concerned him most just now and, so, prompted the other man.
“And what of Kassia? How did she fare her first week at Lorant?”
Damek’s narrow face closed in on itself. “I expect she did well enough. I have heard no ill reports . . . except, of course, that the other Initiates are afraid of her.”
“Afraid? Why should they be afraid of gentle Kassia?”
Damek uttered a sharp sound that may have been intended as a laugh. “Gentle? I might not have used that word. The woman is too arrogant by half—and stubborn. I suppose that comes of her being three years widowed with no prospects. But its her white hair that alarms them. They’ve heard stories about the shai witches.” He shrugged as if it were of no consequence.
“Well, then, I suppose we’ll have to keep her clear of the younger students until they become used to her presence. Where is she?”
Damek’s expression became even more guarded. “In class, at this hour.”
“Class?” Lukasha glanced at the time-scale just outside the window. “Whose class have you placed her in?”
Damek toyed with his pen. “Master Tamukin’s.”
Lukasha stared at him in bemusement. “You put her in with the first year Initiates? What were you thinking?”
“That she was a first year Initiate,” said Damek dryly.
“She is not the usual first year Initiate, and well you know it. She was born with what our first year students must struggle to develop. She was tutored from childhood in the mysteries they may never comprehend.”
“She’s untested. Untried. I thought it best—”
“You thought it best to make her uncomfortable here. Very well, Damek, I suppose she may learn something from that; she can’t be learning much in her classes. Has she complained about her assignment?”
“I said she was stubborn.”
“That’s no answer.”
Damek wriggled, glancing aside. “She argued with me a bit when I took her to her first class. After that . . . well, not in so many words. But she is resentful. You can’t help but see it. Ungrateful of her, considering that you inducted her without a proper initiation. I dare say she would have failed the historical standard.”
“She might have. But she would not have failed the Mysteries.”
“I suppose you want to elevate her to another year.”
Lukasha opened his mouth to confirm that, then hesitated. “Not just yet, I think, Damek. Let’s see how she does where she is.”
oOo
She did terribly in Master Tamukin’s class. Oh, not that she didn’t understand the craft or comprehend the mysteries involved. She understood them too well. Tamukin’s simplistic explanations of complex elemental relationships annoyed her almost as much as having to wear the ill-fitting Initiate’s robe in class every day. She quickly determined that her young instructor had a poor understanding of the workings of Itugen. Though he tried to sound as if he knew what he was talking about, the earth elements were obviously a mystery to him. Still, Kassia held her tongue in check, questioning, prompting, but never openly arguing with the Master’s interpretations.
When she bumped into Master Lukasha early in the new week and he asked her how she fared, she bit back the words that wanted to come and smiled agreeably and said that everything was fine. She would not complain to him, she told herself, when it was through his kindness that she was here at all. All she would say of her classes was that she found Religion and History interesting and the Mysteries very easy.
Then, during a discussion of the elemental tables, Master Tamukin told the class that deer bone was a heavy element. Kassia couldn’t stop herself from correcting him. She tried to do it as politely as possible, but knew the moment she opened her mouth that she’d embarrassed the young Mateu terribly.
“I’m sorry, Master Tamukin,” she said, “but don’t you mean ‘light?’”
He paused in his recitation and blinked at her. “Excuse me, Initiate Kassia?”
“You said deer bone is a heavy element. I think you must have meant to say it was a light element.”
“I said heavy, Kassia. I meant heavy. Bone is heavy.”
Kassia tried to ignore the wide-eyed young faces that peered at her where she sat hunkered on a low ottoman at the back of the room, smiling to soften her debate. “The bone of a predator is heavy. The bone of a grazer is light.”
Tamukin consulted The Ways of Itugen to prove her wrong and ended up proving himself wrong instead. She was unsurprised when he held her after class, prepared to accept mild censure and to apologize for not waiting until a more private moment to mention his error. She was not prepared for the words that came out of his mouth.
“I think it would be best if you refrained from speaking out in class, Initiate Kassia. It’s frustrating the other children—excuse me—the other students. How are they to learn if you answer for them? More to the point, how are they to have respect for their teacher if you argue with him in class?”
“I wasn’t arguing, Master Tamukin. You simply mis-spoke and I didn’t want the students to misunderstand. I realize I should probably have waited until the break to bring it to your attention—”
“You undermined my authority, Initiate Kassia. In fact, you undermine it every day. You think I don’t notice that censuring look on your face when I say something with which you disagree? Do you think I am unaware how often you stop yourself from debating a point with me? Do you think I don’t know what it means when you ask leading questions or rephra
se what I’ve said in ways that are . . . more to your liking? I realize you consider yourself somewhat of an expert in geomancy, but in a classroom, there can be only one authority and in this class, that authority is me.” The young Master shook his head. “I can’t imagine what Master Lukasha was thinking when he put you in my class. You can’t learn anything from me—you’re far too sure that your own interpretations are right.”
“Master Tamukin,” Kassia said, keeping her voice tightly controlled, “there is nothing to interpret when it comes to the classification of elements. An element is either light or heavy. In the case of the deer bone, I was right. You read it yourself in The Ways of Itugen. Was I to let the children believe something as fact that wasn’t true?”
Tamukin’s face colored. “I realize you are in an awkward position here, Mistress Telek—you are not only older than all the other students in the class, you are also older than your teacher. But I am the teacher, Initiate; you are the student. I would appreciate it if you would remember that. I expect you to hold your tongue in class from now on. If you wish to contest what I teach, or ask questions, please do so after class.”
He dismissed her then, to go to Religion. She was late, which got her into some small trouble with Brother Sisa, and she was distracted in class, which drew still more censure. By the end of the day, she could take no more; she got to Lukasha’s parlor as fast as her legs would carry her, not even pausing to take off her robe and put it in her classroom chest. She found Damek in the outer office (guarding the door, she thought uncharitably), and asked to see the Master.
Lukasha’s aide looked at her disdainfully, making her feel even more awkward in her child’s robe than she already did. “What is your business here, Initiate Kassia? The Master is busy.”
“I need to speak to him about my classes,” she told him, clenching her fists behind the folds of her robe.
“Oh? And what is wrong with them?”
“They’re too easy.”
Damek’s face wrinkled with perverse delight. “Too easy? What tremendous arrogance. I’m sure it would hardly matter to Master Lukasha—”
“Damek, you’re doing it again.” Lukasha, standing just inside the doorway to his private library, followed his voice into the room. Though it was full of gentle humor, Damek twitched as if he’d been stung. “Let her come through into the library, if you please. Her opinions do matter to me, you see.”
Heartened, Kassia afforded Damek a cool glance and followed the Mateu through to his private chamber. He sat behind his writing table and gestured for her to take a chair across from it.
”Now, tell me, Kassia, why you are dissatisfied with your classes—by the way, hasn’t Damek done anything about that robe yet? Surely there’s been enough time to have another made that will fit you.”
“As far as I know,” Kassia told him, crumpling the hated hem in her hands, “there’s been no effort to have another made. I think perhaps Damek doesn’t expect me to be here long.”
“Well, we’ll just have to set him straight about that. I expect you’ll be here for quite some time.” Lukasha smiled at her, warming the room. “Now, tell me about your classes.”
She blurted out the entire story then—being the only adult in a class full of children, the embarrassing Induction ceremony, Tamukin’s repeated misstatements about the earth magics, the incident that led to her being banned from speaking in class.
“I’m not learning anything, Master Lukasha,” she finished bluntly. “I could teach a class at that basic a level. Please place me somewhere else. I want to learn.”
Lukasha sat back in his chair, fingers steepled before his face, looking, to Kassia’s eyes, stern and musing. “You feel you have been unjustly treated by Master Tamukin?”
Kassia, sitting arrow straight in her own chair, considered the question seriously. “Yes, sir,” she said finally. “I do think he treated me unjustly. He read things into both my words and my silences that were not there.”
“You made him look foolish before his students,” Lukasha observed.
“I didn’t mean to. I only meant that they shouldn’t be misinformed. Pardon me for saying so, Master, but Master Tamukin seems to know very little about the earth elements.”
Lukasha’s eyes glinted with humor. “Consider yourself pardoned, Initiate. You’re right. Tamukin doesn’t know much about the earth elements. None of the younger Mateu knows much about them. They haven’t been part of our vocabulary for some time, you see. What we know about geomancy comes from books. You, Kassia, are the first practitioner of earth magic to walk these halls for a very long time.”
“That’s why you wanted me here.” The words were out of Kassia’s mouth before she could consider them, but Lukasha confirmed them with a nod.
“You are also right about your place here. You are already too advanced to sit among the first year Initiates. Accordingly, I’m going to place you elsewhere. From now on, you will study the Mysteries with the senior Initiates, though I want you to continue with your theology and history courses. And . . . when you are not in class, you will work with me.”
Kassia felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “With you, Master? But why? In . . . in what capacity?”
Lukasha shrugged. “You will maintain my working notes—organize them, transcribe them and so on. You will care for and organize my implements and books, index spells . . . the sort of thing that junior Apprentices usually do.”
“Apprentices?” Kassia’s voice oozed out in a hushed whisper.
Lukasha raised a cautionary finger. “Now, now. I didn’t say you were to be my Apprentice, only that you would have some of the duties of one. I have an Apprentice at the moment—Zakarij is his name. You haven’t met him yet. He’s an Aspirant and is often busy with his own journey and studies. You will take over his more . . . mundane duties.”
Kassia nodded, trying to digest the changes. “I see. Well, I . . . I thank you all the same, Master. I’m relieved to know I won’t have to pretend at childhood any longer. Damek led me to believe you intended for me to be with the first year Initiates.”
Lukasha chuckled. “Damek is a man of great orderliness and little imagination. Protocol is very important to him. I think he rather resents the fact that you did not come to Lorant via his system of proprieties.” He cocked his head to one side, his gaze shrewd. “You may find others who bear you the same resentment.”
“Like Master Tamukin?”
The Mateu laughed. “Master Tamukin likes a prodigy as well as the next man—as long as that prodigy isn’t showing him up in class. Now, I want you to come here first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll take you to your new classes myself.”
She could only nod and smile and try to keep fast hold on the swelling of wonder in her breast. Prodigy, he had called her.
“Oh, and Kassia . . .”
At the door to Damek’s domain, she turned to find the Mateu had risen and was holding out to her a small book bound in red leather. She recognized it immediately; it was the little book of meditations her mother had given to her.
“You left this on the altar at Matyash two weeks past. I wish to return it to you.”
“But I meant it as an offering—”
He came to her and pressed the little volume into her numb hands. “Nonsense. It will do more good if you read this man’s words and meditate upon them. He was undoubtedly a Master in his own time.”
Kassia nodded. “Mother thought so. It was given to her by a Buddhist monk traveling to Tabor to speak to Emperor Tamal the Second.”
Lukasha’s smile was forlorn. “I can’t believe he fared well in that court. He was wise to leave the book with your mother. Among the Tamalids it most certainly would have been despised and destroyed.”
“Perhaps he knew that.” Kassia gazed down at the book. “Do you think Mat and Itugen spoke to this Buddha? Or . . . through him?”
“Mat and Itugen speak to us however we will hear them. Many are the voices; one is the message.”
Lukasha returned the smile. “Then your mother was a wise woman. I wish I had known her better, but she was . . . very ill during the short time your family spent within these walls. I heard she died soon after.”
“Of a broken heart,” murmured Kassia, her smile fading. “My father died in the flood. And my husband.”
Lukasha looked at her then as if he could see into her very soul and said the oddest thing: “Yet, because of that, you are here with us now.”
The words had given her a strange chill, but repeating them to herself later, she realized they were true. If half her family hadn’t died and the other half all but abandoned her, she would not have been driven to the gates of Lorant.
If she had known the end at the beginning, she wondered, would she still have grieved so? Yes; no foreknowledge could have lessened so great a loss—but she might not have been so hopeless these last three years, so indecisive, so . . . useless.
Now she could be of use in the world. She would study and meditate and learn how to control the forces within and around her. She would be careful with her magic, careful. The mother at the fountain stood before her mind’s eye. Careful, she told herself again, and certain.
Chapter Five — The Mysteries
The third day of the week the skies opened and poured forth rain. Though it was the normal course of Polian spring, still Kassia eyed it with unease, praying it was not also a portent.
Just before dawn she made her soggy way up to Lorant, where Damek grudgingly awarded her a Initiate’s tunic of midnight blue with a sunburst embroidered on one shoulder. There was a pair of soft leggings to wear beneath the knee length tunic and to Kassia, who had worn nothing but the full skirts of a village girl, the masculine garb felt strange, though not uncomfortable. Damek, seeing her discomfiture, made no apology; he seemed to take perverse pleasure in it.
It was Lukasha who apologized as he led Kassia to meet her new professor of Mysteries, Master Radman. “So few women have walked the halls of Lorant,” he told her, “that we have neither clothing nor quarters for them. Years ago, there were female Initiates and Sister Mateu. Some shai, like Marija of Ohdan and yourself, most not. Most were like our young Arax-itu—Ari, they call her.”
The Spirit Gate Page 7