The Spirit Gate

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  Kassia had turned away in disappointment when she heard the creak of wood behind her. She turned, mouth putting on a smile for the Master, but that was not who stared at her from the bottom of the spiral stair. A dark young man fixed her with a black, penetrating gaze, his full mouth set and sober. He was, she guessed, about her age and wore the pale blue of an Aspirant.

  Her smile had slipped a bit under his regard. She steadied it. “Hello, I’m Kassia Telek. You must be Zakarij.”

  He nodded confirmation, but said nothing.

  Kassia came just short of cursing her white hair. His eyes had stuck there and seemed unable to move beyond it. “Is Master Lukasha here?”

  The Aspirant’s eyes dropped finally to her face, holding it for a long moment before he replied. “No. The Headmaster is out just now. I’m not sure where he is. What did you need?”

  Kassia shook the sensation that Zakarij’s regard was something with physical weight and strength, and faltered to answer. “I . . . I was merely wondering if he might help me invest an amulet.”

  “An amulet?” The lightless eyes swept her attire, a midnight Initiate’s tunic and leggings of the same color. “You’re only an Initiate. What do you want with an amulet?” He gave his head a quick shake. “I mean to say, you can’t be studying such things in class.”

  “Oh, no. We’re not. I . . . I had rather a personal reason for wanting to invest one. Someone I wanted to protect from fire.”

  His eyes lifted to her hair again. “Fire,” he murmured. “Then the Master is right . . . the veil has been lifted.”

  “I can control fire.” The words sounded defensive even to Kassia’s ears.

  His mouth quirked wryly. “Well, then, you can’t need my help. I can’t control it.”

  “But you probably could invest an amulet, and I can’t do that. So, you see, I do need help. Maybe yours?” She tried the smile again. It didn’t work.

  “As I said, I don’t know where Master Lukasha is right now, and I certainly don’t think he’d be in favor of my teaching an Initiate how to invest an amulet.”

  “I’m not a regular Initiate,” Kassia told him. “I’m shai. Investing amulets is just the sort of thing I came here to learn.”

  “That may be, but I’d say what you need to learn are discipline and order. Otherwise Lukasha wouldn’t have put you in Master Radman’s class.”

  Kassia made an impatient gesture. “That’s all for show, anyway, isn’t it? This equation, that equation. It’s all just forms. I have my own forms. My own . . . equations. They work.”

  “So you think you’re ready to put on an Apprentice’s robe, is that it?”

  “Master Lukasha did speak to me about doing the work of an Apprentice.”

  Zakarij nodded, eyes glinting like polished jet. “He spoke to me about it too. You’re to be my assistant, which means that in the work you do for me, you will adhere to my forms.”

  Kassia was speechless. Unwilling to say or do anything that would further poison the Aspirant against her, she dipped her head in acquiescence, hiding the mutiny in her eyes.

  After a moment more of studying her, Zakarij stepped from the staircase and moved to set the stack of books he held on the large reading table. “Are you finished with classes for the day?”

  Kassia nodded, her eyes devouring the books.

  “Are you free to start your work now? The Master wants these books indexed by content. Oh, but your son is here, isn’t he?”

  “Not today. He’s helping Mistress Devora in her bakery. But I do need to get to the marketplace before sunset.”

  “Sunset is several hours away, yet. I think you can at least start your work. I assume you can read.”

  Kassia’s eyes snapped to Zakarij’s face. “Of course, I can read!”

  “Swiftly?”

  “Swiftly.”

  “Good. You’ll need to.”

  She spent almost two hours with the books while Zakarij moved about the shelves or up and down the stairs. She kept hoping that Master Lukasha would return from wherever he had gone so she could ask him about the amulet. There was also in her head the perverse desire that this Aspirant see the regard in which Lukasha held her—the respect he had for her native abilities.

  Master Lukasha did not come and, in the end, Kassia even forgot to watch after his coming. The books had captured her. Their words, rich with arcane meaning, had bespelled her. They were laced with shai magic. They spoke of things her mother had told her, but that she never suspected might have been recorded before the Sun went down upon the shai, before the veil fell.

  Kassia, captivated, dutifully recorded the contents of the books on sheets of paper until Lukasha’s Aspirant Apprentice told her she should go if she wanted to get to the marketplace before sunset. But Kassia lingered of her own volition, and when she left, she had to run.

  Ursel Trava was just dropping the awning at the front of his booth when Kassia reached him. The sight of her in her Initiate’s robe caused an amazing race of expressions across his face. He buried them in his beard.

  “When first I heard you’d become an Initiate, I didn’t believe it. What can the state of our religion be if they let the likes of you into the house of the Gods?”

  “What can the state of your mind be, Ursel Trava?” Kassia retorted. “You would have let the likes of me into your house! Worse, you’d have had me in your bed. “

  Trava’s lips wriggled beneath his beard. “I suppose you now think you’re above that offer.”

  “As I ever was.”

  ”So why are you here?”

  “I still need a house. I have forty rega. Or has the price gone up again?”

  Trava scratched at his cheek, then pushed a bit of beard into the corner of his mouth. Chewing it ruminatively, he gazed across the darkening market square, blinking a little against the smoke of evening fires.

  “Sorry Mistress, but I’ve no cottage you could afford.”

  “But I’ve got—”

  “Has no one told you that it’s unwise to insult the man you’ve asked to put a roof over your head?”

  “I’ve got forty rega!” she insisted, holding the money out to him on the flat of her palm.

  The black eyes fixed on her face. “I’m not interested in your money, Kassia Telek, as I’ve tried to make plain. You’ve heard my terms.”

  “Your terms?”

  “The terms by which I’d have you under a roof of mine. But you think you’re too important to consider old Ursel, don’t you? All full of that shai pride. Well, I’ll be willing to wager that your time among the Mateu will knock the pride right out of you, White Mother. Then maybe you’ll recall that I offered for you before you ever wore this.” He grasped the paiza that dangled from its thong around her neck and gave it a sharp tug, nearly pulling Kassia against him. “You think because this thing names your name and calls you ‘Initiate’ it means something in the world. Well, you’re not Mateu yet, nor shall you ever be, I’m thinking.”

  He flipped the paiza into the air. It fell with a thud against Kassia’s breast.

  “I’ll tell you once more, Kassia Telek—you need a man and your boy, a father. It’s his needs you should be seeing to, not foisting him off on the baker woman while you play at being a mage.”

  Tirade at an end, Ursel Trava turned his back on her and trundled away into the smoke and shadow.

  “Well, that’s a long face,” Devora said, when Kassia entered her kitchen some time later. “Supper’s ready, and Beyla fit to burst. He finished his first kite this morning and brought it home for you to see.”

  Kassia sat heavily on one of Devora’s sturdy kitchen chairs. “I do neglect him, don’t I? I do foist him off on you while I . . . while I waste my time and Master Lukasha’s.”

  “May Mat blink,” murmured Devora. “Whatever’s brought this on?”

  “I saw Ursel Trava this evening. I tried to rent a house from him, but he won’t let me one.” She grimaced and rubbed her arms, though the room was war
m as fresh bread. “Of course, I did insult him.”

  “What has that to do with Beyla?”

  “He said Beyla needs a father, not a mother who’s playing at being Mateu. Maybe he’s right.”

  “Oh, and he’s the father Beyla needs, I suppose? Aye. I know what Ursel Trava thinks about a good many things. I don’t believe for a moment that he’s right about any of it. He’s taken a fancy to you, is all—and to the idea that you could serve him well. Oh, not just as a wife, mind you, but as a teller of fortunes and a weaver of spells.”

  Kassia sighed. “Well, at any rate, it was stupid of me to anger him. Now, he won’t rent me a house.”

  “And what do you need with a house? You’ve got a place to live.”

  Kassia’s startled glance met Devora’s immovable one. “Devora, I can’t continue to—to live off you—”

  “You’re not living off me. You do my shopping, you lend your boy to my bakery, you pay me a bit of rent.”

  “A pittance!” Kassia objected.

  “Not to me. Every bit helps. Besides, I was getting lonely here with my own young ones grown and gone. Evenings can be empty without another soul to talk to or a child to read to.” She gave a quick shake of her head and turned away to set a bowl on the table. “So let’s hear no more talk of moving out—at least not until they offer you an Apprentice’s rooms up at Lorant.”

  Kassia laughed. “An Apprentice’s rooms! Somehow, I don’t think that will happen any time soon.”

  “Mama!”

  Kassia turned her head just as she was broad-sided by her boy. He gave her a fierce hug then dropped back to grasp her hand.

  “Come see, mama! Come see the kite Shagtai helped me make! It’s a beautiful kite, mama, you’ll see!”

  He dragged her, laughing, to their little parlor room where she saw that it was, indeed, a beautiful kite. The body of the kite was green with gold ribbons woven through it and it sported a green and gold tail made of a fabric as gossamer as a butterfly’s wing.

  “It’s a dragon,” Beyla informed her. “Shagtai says there are dragons in the east that fly over the land and protect it from evil. They build castles for the dragons to live in there. I’d like to go there and see them, wouldn’t you?”

  Kassia looked down at her son and felt a sudden wash of sweet misery. She dropped to her knees beside him and took him by the shoulders, turning him away from the kite so she could look directly into his eyes.

  “I want what will make you happy, Beyla. I want what you want. If I ask you, will you tell me what you want?”

  “Besides going to see the dragons?”

  “Besides that.”

  “I want you to be Mateu. And I want to be Mateu.” He chewed on the inside of his lip a slight frown coming over his smooth brow. “Do Mateu get to build kites?”

  “I suppose if they want to. Are you sure that’s what you want? Are you sure you don’t want a father and a house of our very own? Are you sure you wouldn’t want me to be home with you instead of up at Lorant?”

  The questions seemed to bemuse him. “Papa’s gone, mama. He’s in the arms of Itugen. Not even a shai or a Mateu can bring back somebody who’s gone to Itugen. And I like staying here with Mistress Devora. She likes us too, she said so. I don’t want to be home all day; I want to go to Lorant too, and make magic kites with Uncle Shagtai.” His eyes got very round, suddenly. “Oh, mama, are you lonely? Would you like it better if I didn’t play with Shagtai all the time? I could go into the college and wait for you when you get out of class and come walk you home every night.”

  Kassia was laughing, by now, at her so-serious child. “No, Beyla, no! I’m happy that you like to be with Shagtai, and Devora, too, it’s just that Mister Trava—”

  His golden face went nearly as white as his hair. “Please don’t marry Mister Trava, mama. He scares me for you.”

  “Scares you?”

  Beyla’s generous mouth had narrowed to a tight line. “He doesn’t feel good. There’s something mean in him.”

  “Then, you’re happy the way things are?”

  Beyla gave her such a look as to make her doubt that it was a child standing before her. “I wish papa hadn’t died. Or grandpapa, or grandmama. I wish the magic would always be here and that people couldn’t make it go away. I’d be happy if it was like that. But this is good, too.”

  “Yes, it is,” Kassia agreed and hugged her son to her breast. She could hear Devora calling them and swept the little boy up into her arms. “Come, great maker of dragons. It’s time for our supper.”

  oOo

  The weeks of spring bled toward summer as Kassia studied and worked and debated points of magic and religion with her fellow students. Life took on a comfortable routine in which even Damek played a commodious role. Everyone, Kassia supposed, needed at least one soul in their lives who tested their patience beyond endurance.

  The first time the Headmaster’s assistant had come across her studying the books she was supposed to be indexing, he showered her with scorn.

  “You’ve been assigned a job, Initiate,” he told her waspishly. “I suggest you do it. The Master’s books will not get indexed until next year with you staring moon-eyed at them.”

  “I find the texts interesting,” Kassia retorted.

  Damek snorted volubly. “I doubt you even understand half of what you read, you obnoxious woman. Interesting, indeed!”

  “I understand a good deal more than half,” Kassia replied coolly. “I’ve known some of these spells since I was a child. I’ve just never seen them written out like this before.”

  “Twaddle! You’re just pretending. Trying to impress Zakarij and make Lukasha believe you’re actually getting some work done. I ought to tell him how you daydream over the pages—mooning over young Zakarij, no doubt.”

  Kassia flushed redder than the tail of Shagtai’s newest kite. “I’m doing no such thing. Tell Master Lukasha whatever you like. If he questions me, he’ll only find out that I do understand what I’m ‘mooning over’.”

  Hearing the door to the outer office groan mildly on its ancient hinges, Damek snorted a second time and departed, passing Zakarij in the doorway. Kassia jerked her eyes back down to her work, her face hot with frustration. The Aspirant stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her through his bottomless eyes, his lips set in an expression that could have passed for either a smile or a grimace of wry amusement.

  “So, do you?”

  “Do I what?” The words came out in a soft snarl.

  “Understand what it is you moon over?”

  Heat flared again in her cheeks. So, he’d eavesdropped, had he? Well, fine. Let him think she was a stupid pretender, if he wanted. “I think so.”

  “And were you?”

  She looked up at him now, her eyes challenging. “Was I what?”

  “Mooning, of course.”

  “I was . . . reading. Am I forbidden to read these?” She gestured at the stack of scrolls she now worked at indexing.

  “Not at all.” He moved around the table to stand at her shoulder and look down at the pages she’d inscribed.

  Her skin crept and little hairs stood up on the back of her neck. She hated having someone staring over her shoulder like that, but kept her tongue from wagging out anything that would be taken as disrespect. Behind her, Zakarij grunted softly and lowered his arm past her head, his finger resting on the last line she’d written some twenty minutes ago. Could he tell how long she’d been sitting here digesting spells and theories?

  The finger traced a winding path through the other entries. “Are you sure these are correct?”

  The question was unexpected enough to leave Kassia momentarily speechless.

  “Show me this one.” He tapped a reference to an incantation for the dowsing of metals—specifically gold and copper, both elements of Itugen.

  Kassia opened the scroll in question and directed Zakarij’s attention to the last set of incantations on the yellowed page. “This is it. You can
see, here, these two invocations and catalysts . . .”

  “Those are for Itugenic elements?”

  Itugenic. As often as she’d heard the term in class, Kassia doubted she would ever get used to using scholarly terms for spiritual things.

  “Yes, see? This is the spirit for gold, and this for copper.” She pointed to the names Lien and Rez where they appeared in the incantations.

  “You’re certain?”

  Kassia sighed, glancing up at him over her shoulder. “Look, if you’d prefer to join Damek in despising me . . .”

  Zakarij’s eyebrows disappeared beneath the fringe of dark hair that lay across his forehead and, for the briefest second, Kassia thought she had surprised him. “I don’t despise you, Initiate. I just want you to understand that you’re to write down here only what you’re certain of. I don’t think it’s wise for you to persist in believing that Damek despises you. Damek just lacks the imagination to contemplate that you might actually be as gifted as Lukasha thinks you are.”

  “So I’ve been told,” said Kassia wryly. “Well then, Aspirant Zakarij, you may join Damek the Unimaginative in believing I’m merely pretending. Or you may show my work to Master Lukasha and let him validate it.”

  Zakarij stepped away from the table, his face averted. “I’m not sure he could. None of us here has been able to ferret meaning out of some of those passages—including that one.”

  He left Kassia shivering in her pool of watery sunshine, her eyes unfocused on the page of incantations.

  Chapter Six — The Magics

  From the studio atop his offices, Lukasha could see over the treetops of Lorant to the flood plain of the Yeva river, miles to the northeast. He could see the kites above the first yam telling of royal envoys shuttling to and from Tabor. He recalled a time when those envoys came armed, to take hostages from among the people of Dalibor, to threaten the Mateu with the death of innocents. He had seen death then—death he could not avert because the magic he and his brethren wielded by that late hour was simply not enough to either impress Tamalid emperors or stop them.