“You can always do something,” insisted Beyla. “You tell me that all the time. And if magic isn’t for doing things that can’t be done another way, then what good is it?”
Kassia chuckled at the earnest little face and ruffled her son’s snowy hair. “Pragmatic little soul. You’re right, of course. Both times. So now, let’s see if we can’t do something that can’t be done another way. Tell me the names you know for fish and I’ll write them down.”
Between Beyla’s knowledge, her own and the compendium, Kassia had soon compiled a list of names for the four spirits. There was only one celestial name, but several earthly ones apiece. Kassia’s faith in her own sensitivity was realized; she was strongly drawn to particular names, knowing, the moment her inner voice spoke them, that they held the power the equations required. In the end, the list was whittled down to eight names: Fish was Ryba and Piscis; Snake was Meander and Labyrinth; Salamander was Savitar and Hearthfire; Bird was Phoenix and Welkin.
Some of the names were very old—words rendered in a language Kassia suspected was the mother or grandmother of her own. Others, like Hearthfire and Piscis and Welkin, were companionable and familiar. She’d used them to light fires, catch fish (and customers), and dry her washing on still, humid days.
She took them, one and all, to her dais where she had gathered spell balls of gold, silver, copper and cobalt-colored glass—one for each element. She chose the familiar, much-used earthly names first and began her spell, standing in the center of the golden circle, facing the eastern horizon. Beyla watched raptly and applauded when her form winked out before his eyes.
Kassia, thinking of Shagtai’s rooftop, found herself staring at its flickering image through a veil of fiery snow. She gritted her teeth and set her whole will to the spell, but the flickering would not stop. Finally, she let the spell collapse and sat down on her dais with a thud.
Beyla was looking at her with a ridiculously sober look on his young face. “Have you forgotten something?”
“I suppose I must have,” she said, chuckling.
She pulled herself to her feet, suddenly feeling every hour of missed sleep and went to her work table to study Honorius’ notes again.
“I faced east—that was where the Sun rose last time I looked.” She smiled at Beyla’s solemn nod. “‘Where two worlds meet,’” she murmured. “I’m supposed to stand where two worlds meet. I assumed that meant the dais.”
“Isn’t the cesia where heaven and earth meet? That’s two worlds, isn’t it?”
Grinning, Kassia pulled her son into her arms and gave him a bear hug. “At this rate, little one, you’re going to surpass your mother before she even becomes an Aspirant.”
He put his chin on her hip and beamed up at her. “Am I helping?”
She kissed the tip of her finger and set it to his nose. “You’re helping.”
They were unable to use the cesia until the sun had set. There was no moon by which to worship and no candlelight ceremonies scheduled for that evening. After a day of distracted waiting, Kassia was only begrudgingly aware of what a blessing that was. After sunset, while the dim gleam of twilight still lay along the tops of the western mounts, Kassia and Beyla entered the drowsing cesia and made obeisance at the altar.
Kassia chose to stand exactly there, facing west, as she laid out her spell balls—one to each point of the compass—and began her equations, carefully stressing the earth and air elements by placing the Snake and Bird catalysts before the others. Her goal this time was her own studio and she held it in her mind with a fierceness born of exhaustion and frustration.
As before, her form gleamed and flickered and, as it did, she called upon Welkin, Labyrinth, Hearthfire, and Piscis, kicking with all her will. Her son’s face, turned toward her and mirroring her determination, was white in the spectral light of her spell. Then he disappeared, and the cesia with him. She saw her studio, a bespelled flame flickering just where she had left it in the center of her dais. Just as she was congratulating herself on her success, the spell shimmered and collapsed and she was back again at the altar.
Beyla sat down on the step at the altar’s foot and put his chin in his hand. “I guess I didn’t help so much after all.”
Kassia shook her head. “Don’t be disappointed in yourself, Beyla. I’m the one that can’t seem to make these equations work. Here, let me try the celestial names. They’re bound to be stronger. Pater Honorius said something about different levels of power. Maybe the spell just doesn’t work any better than that using the earthly names.”
“Then why use them at all?”
“Sometimes, perhaps all one wants is a glimpse of something.”
After a moment of prayer and reflection, she got to her feet and, armed with the celestial names of the four spirits, she tried the spell again. It made a difference, but Kassia was not quite prepared for the way it was manifested. She expected to have a clearer view of her studio, perhaps, or to be rid of the flickering. What happened instead was that she winked out in the cesia with the sensation of being sucked into the air, only to be dumped painfully onto the hard wooden boards of her dais. She cried out at the collision of knee and hip with the solid surface and heard an answering gasp from the darkened room.
In the second or so before the bespelled air sucked her back up again, she looked up into the soft blaze of her spell and saw Zakarij standing in the doorway to her rooms, his hands out-flung as if to shield his eyes from her light.
“Oh, dear,” she said, and was gone, landing in an ungraceful heap at the foot of the cesia’s altar.
“Mama,” said Beyla close to her ear. “That time you were really gone.”
She hobbled a little on the way back to their rooms, silly, non-sequitur thoughts tumbling through her head. Poor Zakarij. Such abject shock. She swallowed a chuckle and wondered if he’d be waiting for her when she and Beyla returned. Liniment. She hoped she had some liniment. Otherwise, she was going to have aching joints by morning. Morning.
Really must get Beyla to bed. Much too late for a little boy to be up haunting holy places. I am haunted by Marija.
Zakarij was waiting for them when they returned, standing in the middle of their parlor, his face ashen. “What . . . what were you doing?”
Kassia let a chuckle escape and rubbed her sore hip. “Trying to earn my Aspirant’s badge.”
He shook his head. “I don’t—”
“Let me get Beyla to bed. I’ll explain.”
Beyla didn’t think much of that plan. He wanted to help explain to Zakarij what they’d done that evening, and would not go to bed until he had extracted from his mother a promise that she’d tell the Aspirant how much he’d helped her. When she had tucked him in, she closed his door and returned to the parlor where Zakarij had set a fire (a woodless one, she noted) and started some tea brewing in her hearth kettle.
“So,” he said, sitting back in a hearthside chair. “Explain to me how you . . . disappeared from your studio.”
She opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated. “First, you explain why you appeared in my studio.”
“I just wanted to tell someone how my first day of Investiture examinations went. Forgive me, but when you didn’t answer my knock, I thought you must be in your studio, so I let myself in.”
“It didn’t occur to you that I might be asleep at this hour?”
He laughed. “You, Kassia? Asleep before midnight? Doubtful.”
“So tell me your news.”
“I’d much rather hear yours.”
She gazed at him blankly, her weary mind suddenly unable to recall what he meant.
“Poof?” he said and made a vanishing gesture with his fingers.
“I’m trying to perform a spell that will help Master Lukasha keep better contact with King Zelimir. I thought what I was doing would let him see all the way to Tabor. But it looks as if there’s a bit more to it than that.”
He leaned back even further in the chair. “You came up with this yourself?
”
She blushed. “Not quite. I . . . I found Marija of Ohdan’s journal. Her personal journal. While I was reading it, I found a reference to a travel spell the monks would use to go to Tabor and back. No week on the trail, no horses, no saddle sores, no exhaustion and, best of all, no time spent getting there. I realized some of the papers she referred to were in Master Lukasha’s collection—they were the very papers I was supposed to be translating, and now I had a key to them . . . I thought.”
“The spell worked.”
She shook her head, which was beginning to feel as if it contained a sodden rag instead of a brain. “It didn’t work. I can’t control it, no matter how hard I try. I’ve got the right catalysts, the equations seem to be correct, but somehow I just can’t get it to be stable. Pater Honorius—that’s the monk whose notes I’m using—said you must perform the spell standing where two worlds meet.”
Zakarij sat forward, elbows on knees, the hearth’s spirit flame turning his rapt face to gold. His eyes seemed bottomless to Kassia and she was taken by the wild thought that she would be sucked up by them just as she’d been consumed by her half-broken spell.
“A Mateu’s dais is supposed to be that,” he said.
“I tried my dais. I flickered like a candle flame. Beyla thought maybe Honorius had meant a place of worship—a church to him, a cesia to us. So I tried the cesia. I think the spell was stronger, but not much. So I tried a second set of catalysts and that’s when you saw me get dumped on my dais.”
The corner of Zak’s mouth twitched. “So the second set of catalysts changed it from a viewing spell to a traveling spell.”
Kassia nodded, feeling the barest wash of enthusiasm. “Pater Honorius wasn’t jesting when he said there were levels of increasing power.”
“What levels were those?”
“To see, to be and to control.”
“I understand the first two. But to control what?”
Kassia took a deep breath. Her sleep-deprived lungs ached. “I don’t know. Oh, Zak. I am so tired.”
Zakarij leaned further forward and put out a hand to press her back in her chair. “I’ll leave you to get some sleep. But tell me, have you told Lukasha about any of this?”
“Mmm, well . . . he saw me accidentally do the Window spell at Tabor.” She chuckled sleepily. “Right in front of Mishka and all his would-be brides. I looked right through into Shagtai’s workshop and he and Beyla got a glimpse of the King’s audience hall.”
“So, he knows what you’re trying to do.”
Kassia felt suddenly overly warm. “Not exactly. The Window spell, yes. He knows about that, but the other, the Traveling spell . . . I haven’t told him about Marija’s journal, and now it needs translating, so—”
Zakarij frowned. “Why haven’t you told him? Surely, you should. He’s your Master, Kassia. You shouldn’t withhold things from him.”
“I know. It’s just . . . I really feel . . . a special bond with Marija. I wanted to be the first one to read her diary. The first one to know all about her. At first I thought it was unimportant, just a woman’s diary. And now . . . now I want to prove myself. I know its foolish, childish, irresponsible, but I was afraid if I showed the journal to anyone, I’d have to give it up.”
He cocked his dark head to one side. “You’re telling me about it. Aren’t you afraid I’ll take it away from you?”
She blinked at him, feeling oddly adrift. “No. But then I’m really awfully tired and probably not thinking straight. Will you take it away from me?”
“Of course not. But neither, I think, would Master Lukasha if you were as honest with him as you’ve been with me.”
“You won’t tell him will you? I should do it. Tomorrow. First thing.”
“I agree. No, I won’t whisper a word.” He rose and stood before her chair, looking down at her, his expression maddeningly opaque.
“What?” she murmured. “What?”
In answer, he leaned forward, put his hands on the arms of her chair and brushed her forehead with his lips. “Sleep well, Apprentice,” he whispered and moved out of sight.
Kassia heard her door close and the latch snick into place. Odd. Her forehead felt warm where his lips had touched it. She put a hand over the spot. Warm. And a similar warmth fluttered in her heart and in a spot somewhat lower. Both were sensations she had always identified with Shurik. She recognized them as affection and desire.
Well, she thought absently, do I feel guilty? Should I? Should I be afraid? Or happy? Should I be happy?
Her gaze lay, unfocused, on the mantelpiece with its gracefully interwoven designs. She should get some rest, that’s what she should do, but first she’d have to will her eyes away from the fluid curves of the mandorla at the heart of the design. She recalled her visit to the Frankish church, where she had seen that same design in the stained glass window above the altar. The Messiah had sat in the center of it. What had Joti said they called it? A vesica piscis—a “fish heart.” Strange. She tried to shake the image from her head, but it would not leave. And, as she fought to tear her eyes from the mandorla, a voice whispered insistently in her inner ear, Where two worlds meet.
It hit her like a thunderclap, leaving her feeling stunned and stupid. Beloved God! Why hadn’t she seen it before? The heart of the mandorla was where two worlds met. The worlds celestial and material, of sky and earth, of Mat and Itugen, of Mateu and shai. Where the Christ in Pater Julian’s window sat enthroned was where heaven and earth met, because he was where heaven and earth met. The “heart of the Lotus,” Shagtai called it—the place in the Universe the Buddha occupied.
Kassia sank back into her chair on a great outflow of breath, awed that the symbol should prove so universal, and understanding, on some level not quite conscious, how important that made it.
In the face of such a galvanizing force, exhaustion gave up its fight for possession of her body. She was out of her seat and back in her studio in moments, her spell balls and spells in hand. She took her place at the heart of the mandorla, between the silver arc and the gold, and laid out her spell, and this time—this time—the celestial names lifted her into a corridor of unearthly beauty. It might have been made of glass or of clear, frozen water. She saw it for only an instant, for that was how long it took her to reach her destination, the cesia.
This time she did not collapse unceremoniously to the ground. This time she did not find herself yanked back again from whence she’d come as if attached by a bowstring. The sandy stone floor of the holy place was solid beneath her slippered feet and the night wind whispered congratulations into her burning ears and tickled her nose with its cool perfume.
She looked up at the star-studded night sky and breathed a prayer of thanksgiving into the night breeze. Then she carefully drew a mandorla before the altar in a tracery of light, stood at its heart, and returned herself to her chambers for a much-needed sleep.
Chapter Fourteen — Traveling
Up with the Sun despite her late night, Kassia woke Beyla by appearing in his room without using the door. After his glee subsided, she saw to their breakfast, sent him to Shagtai, and prepared to show Zakarij and Master Lukasha what she had accomplished for her night’s work. At the moment she would normally walk into Master Lukasha’s library, she simply appeared there, traversing the ‘glass corridor’ in the wink of an eye.
She exceeded her own expectations. Not only were Zakarij and Lukasha in the library when she stepped out of thin air, but Damek as well. It was, Kassia decided, worth every sleepless, frustrating hour she had invested just to hear his startled bleat and see the stricken expression on his face. Zakarij seemed more bemused than startled, and Lukasha’s face went from stunned disbelief to obvious delight.
She told him all about the journal then, and her experimentation and her deciphering of Pater Honorius’ runes. She showed him the symbols and the list of celestial and earthly names. Zakarij left off his examinations and, together with Master Lukasha, they pored over the writin
gs while Damek hovered in the background, unable to do more than snort and grunt to vent his displeasure as Kassia described her journey to comprehension.
“Do you expect us to believe,” he sneered at one point, “that Marija of Ohdan whispered in your ear?”
Lukasha, not about to let his assistant’s ill will dampen his pleasure, only laughed. “Damek the Unimaginative she calls you, and so you are. She stepped out of the ether, by God! Yet you cavil at a gentle visitation? Go tidy your books and leave the magic to us.”
Scalded, Damek left the Mateu and his companions to their task. Lukasha didn’t even mark his departure; he had already immersed himself in the runes and notations. He grilled Kassia about the spell’s workings and the path she had followed to success. With Zakarij in tow, he escorted her to her own studio, from which he had her demonstrate the spell several more times, his eyes on her every move.
They moved to the journal next, Zakarij lending translations of the Latin. Of Honorius’ use of catalysts, Marija had written: Never does he use the word ‘spirits’ in writing of the elements and catalysts. One must mark these words instead: “angels”, “aspects”, “faces” or “names”. I once thought him needlessly obscure, before I understood the virtue of obscurity.
”The virtue of obscurity?” Lukasha repeated, his voice sharp with frustration. “Is there no indication of what these catalysts are or why they have been deleted?”
“Pater Honorius was evidently more than a little afraid of our ‘pagan’ magic,” said Zakarij. “See how he avoids using the word ‘spirits’ when he speaks of the catalysts? He seemed to have an aversion to traditional terminology. Perhaps the missing equations called upon Mat and Itugen themselves. Having seen how Pater Julian reacts to their mention . . .”
Kassia nodded. “Yes, I see. If the material name of a spirit allows you to see a place, and the celestial name to go there, the natural progression to the third level of power would seem to be the use of a still higher order of name.”
The Spirit Gate Page 25