The Spirit Gate

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  Not so alien after all, Zakarij thought.

  When they had finished, Zakarij expelled a long pent-up breath and glanced down at the still unconscious priest. “Will it be enough?”

  Kassia’s eyes were still on the mandorla. “It will have to be, Zakarij. I don’t know what else to do. Now we must find Benedict.”

  “Now we must return to Lorant.” She opened her mouth to protest, but Zakarij raised a finger to her lips. “You promised your son.”

  He watched as weariness overcame her native stubbornness. She nodded. “Lorant,” she agreed.

  They used the mandorla above the altar to create the Squared spell, and forming the words of the equation together, they traveled home. So weary was Zakarij that for once he paid no notice to the world that beckoned from behind the shimmering tunnel wall.

  oOo

  ”Damek! Hear me!”

  His Master’s voice jarred him out of a sound sleep and frightened him, he was sure, out of a year of slumber. When his heart had stopped pounding and his skin had ceased to feel like the belly of a dead fish, he swallowed, cleared his throat and said, “Here, Master. Only do let me wake myself.”

  The apparition looked upon him with affectionate scorn and waited for him to rouse himself, rise and put on a linen robe against the cool of the mountain summer night. Then it said, “I’ve a task for you, Damek. A very important task.”

  Deep in Damek’s soul, a well of satisfaction began to fill. The Master was asking for him, not for the clever Kassia or the loyal, plodding Zakarij.

  “What can I do for you, Master?”

  “I need you to go to my studio and do some research for me. Possibly, I will also need to have you assemble some items. Some ingredients for a spell.”

  Damek puzzled. “Master, I’m not an Apprentice. Shouldn’t Kassia or Zakarij be doing this for you?”

  “They’ve done quite enough this evening, I think, and deserve a rest. They can only be pushed so far. What I need from you, Damek, is your unquestioning loyalty. Will you give it?”

  “Master, you have no need even to ask.” He was already heading for the door. Behind him, the bright window closed as silently as it had opened, leaving his room empty.

  Lukasha’s effigy was awaiting Damek when he reached the studio. There his Master instructed him to locate a compendium of organic elements. He had trouble finding it in the neat, but over-full studio, and his Master’s patience was beginning to fade by the time he finally opened it atop the work table.

  “Come Damek, don’t dawdle. You must look up information on serpents.”

  “Serpents?”

  “There is at least one species of poisonous snake whose venom has been used in ages past for geomancy. If it has ever been used by the Mateu or the shai, it should be listed in that book. Find it for me.”

  He did find it, after nearly twenty minutes of search. “A wood-creep, it’s called here.”

  “Describe it to me.”

  “Green, with gold and black lengthwise striping. It often lives at the base of deciduous trees where there are rotting roots or debris.”

  Within his window of brilliance, Lukasha nodded. “Very good. You must capture such a serpent for me.”

  Damek’s heart jolted painfully. “Capture—? Master, you jest. I wouldn’t know how to begin.”

  “Then have Shagtai do it for you. I need the snake.”

  “What am I to tell Shagtai about why I am asking him to catch a poisonous snake?”

  “Tell him nothing. He’s used to such odd requests from the Mateu. Let me tell you what else I will need—the ash of bone that has been consumed by fire, the feather of a raptor that has been dipped in the blood of the bird’s kill. There will be more when I’ve deciphered this last riddle.”

  Damek blanched. He had never, in all his years of service to Master Lukasha, had from him such a shopping list. “Master,” he said, “where am I to get burnt bone?”

  “There was a fire in the upper town not so long ago.”

  Damek took a deep breath and tried to steady himself. “You are suggesting I might . . . sift through the debris? Master, I don’t think anyone was killed.”

  Lukasha’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not what you told Kassia. I suspected it was a lie. Damek, people cook food and eat it. Burn some chicken bones, if you have to. It’s not that difficult.”

  “But, a blood-stained feather? Snake venom? How am I to get these things? What am I to do with them? Perhaps my energy would be better spent trying to decipher this riddle of yours. What is it, please?”

  “I also need ‘a thing possessed by a victim of the all-devouring fish’. Does that make any sense to you?”

  Damek’s brain was blank. “No, Master, it does not. Perhaps if I understood what you expected me to do with these things . . .”

  His Master’s voice was tight with suppressed irritation. “I was going to have you construct some spell balls for me.”

  “Spell balls? Me?” He shook his head. “Master, I really must protest—”

  Lukasha sighed. “Yes, of course you must. I’m a fool. I should be doing this myself, not delegating it. The spell is too important, its correct performance too critical.”

  He was talking to himself now, and Damek closed the compendium with a snap. “Why haven’t you simply come here to complete the spell yourself?”

  “Why indeed?” asked Lukasha, and vanished from sight.

  Damek waited a moment to see if the window would open again. When it did not, he returned to his room, thereby missing the spectacular sight of his Master stepping into his studio through a doorway of pure light.

  oOo

  Lukasha had spent long, dark moments preparing for his journey to Dalibor. Agonizing. He was not even certain he could make the leap without Kassia.

  No, that wasn’t quite true. He could perform the spell, he could forge the magic, but then the terror would take him. It had caught him once, unexpectedly, in the midst of a journey. The horrid, glassy, squirming walls of the corridor had collapsed about him and he landed in some unknown place. It had taken him the better part of an hour to complete the journey.

  It was not pure fear that assailed Lukasha in the corridor. It was tempered with fascination. The translucent walls with their flickering colors and alien shapes beckoned as they repelled. He was at war with himself as he slid along that tunnel; he was at war with something Other. There was power in the corridor—watching, perhaps, through the glazed walls. He feared it would devour him, was terrified of it; yet, in the briefest of flashes, he almost yearned to be devoured.

  He knew he must attempt the spell. Neither Kassia nor Zakarij were here to help him, nor was he inclined to reveal to either that he could barely bring himself to perform the spell alone. He prayed; he gathered his mental, spiritual and physical resources; he spoke the equation in a firm voice; he flung the catalysts into the mix as if they were weapons of defense; he closed his eyes and stepped out into darkness.

  Moments later, he was in his own studio at Lorant, quaking, for no matter how good were his intentions to keep his gaze from the pressing walls of the corridor, they would open against his will and he would see the unnameable things behind the seemingly feeble barrier.

  He brought light to the room with a gesture. The compendium was right where Damek had left it, and he opened it, verifying what Damek had told him of the wood-creep. He knew that falcons nested in the lush forest around Lorant—the feather should pose no great problem. Nor should the ash. But the last demand puzzled him—a thing possessed by a victim of the all-devouring Fish. He had heard of huge fish in the sea who were said to devour fishermen whole, but . . .

  After turning the words in his mind for a time to no avail, he came to the conclusion that he was taking the instruction too literally. The all-devouring Fish was perhaps not literally a fish. Its name was Maelstrom, the sea-whirl. Light dawned. Maelstroms were devourers of ships and men. If that was the intent, then the meaning was clear; he needed somethi
ng owned by a drowning victim. He thought of Kassia and smiled. Would she be gratified to know that the death of her father and husband might not have been in vain?

  Weary, he promised himself a few hours of sleep. Then, he would see to fulfilling the needs of the spell.

  oOo

  Morning found Kassia strolling the woodland path that ran past Lorant’s cesia into the depths of the sacred wood, appreciating the beauty of a day that sounded like an avian symphony and smelled like incense. The air was warm and moist and she was unabashedly reveling in it—and in being home. She was also procrastinating, putting off the moment when she and Zakarij must return to Tabor to report to Master Lukasha. Zakarij still slept, and she told herself it was his waking she waited for.

  She was beyond surprise to see her Master coming toward her along the path from the deeper wood. He had a canvas bag in one hand and was humming to himself. Lukasha waved and smiled when he saw her, and she responded with delight, running to meet him.

  “Master, you’re home! I thought you were still in Tabor.”

  He laughed as she drew up to him and wagged a cautionary finger at her. “Now, Kassia, does this skipping about the wood manifest the decorum necessary for one entering the Aspirancy?”

  Kassia completely forgot anything she might have said to him. “The Aspirancy? What do you mean?”

  “My dear child, your performance these past weeks has been above exemplary. You have bravely and sacrificially defended your king, you have made unheard of strides in your art. I have no reward I can offer save to recommend that you be elevated to the rank of Aspirant immediately. I have plans to hold the installation ceremony at week’s end. Does this please you?”

  “Please me?” Kassia was dumbfounded. “Master, I’m speechless. And honored. And surprised. I never thought that anything I was doing—”

  “Was extraordinary?” His brown eyes crinkled pleasantly at the corners. “No, of course not. Which makes it all the more extraordinary. Most Apprentices are painfully aware of their progress toward the distant goal.”

  “What will Zakarij think? He worked for his Aspirancy for years.”

  “It doesn’t matter what Zakarij thinks. You have eclipsed him. Soon, you will eclipse me.”

  “Master, that’s not possible.”

  “Ah! No false humility. You are a woman of exceptional talent, Kiska. You are a prodigy such as comes along once in several generations. I am thankful I was the one to find you.”

  Kassia ducked her head, blushing more with pride than with humility. “I’m the one who should be thankful, Master. I had come to a dead trail. I was seriously looking at having to marry Ursel Trava.”

  Lukasha laughed and started to move past her on the path. “Never that!”

  She put a hand on his arm, pausing him. “Master, I’ve something important to tell you. Zakarij and I discovered how Benedict has been manipulating the Gherai Khan.” Seeing that she had her Master’s complete attention, she went on. “He was using Pater Julian as an amplifier. There’s a mandorla in the church—a ‘vesica piscis’, he called it. Somehow Benedict set up a . . . a resonance between it and himself and Pater Julian. He passed power to the priest through the mandorla; Pater Julian merely directed it, using the heart of the mandorla as a focal point. It was just like . . . a prism, or a suite of mirrors, amplifying the light source, directing it, focusing it. All Benedict had to do was give unfocused power.”

  Lukasha raised a brow. “You speak of this arrangement in the past tense.”

  She smiled, a little too fiercely, perhaps, but she felt a great deal of satisfaction about last night’s work. “We put a ward on the church, Zakarij and I. On Pater Julian, too, though I doubt he’ll remember it consciously. The Bishop of Tabor will have to find himself a new mirror and prism if he wants to set that work in motion again. And until he does so, he will have to choose who he wishes to manipulate.”

  Her Master’s eyes shone, his pride in her accomplishment obvious. He put an arm about her shoulders, shifting the bag away to the other side. Kassia could swear that something within it moved.

  “You amaze me, Kiska.”

  “It wasn’t just me, Master. I couldn’t have done it without Zakarij.”

  He nodded. “So . . . He is also to be granted an ascent in station.”

  “He passed his examinations?”

  “Yes, and though tradition dictates that since he examined late, he must wait for Equinox for the official ceremony, I think I must consider that it was my tasking him that made his examinations late in the first place. I’m certain I can persuade the Circle to grant him a special dispensation.”

  “Might we be married at the same time?”

  Lukasha glanced away from her, chuckling. “One ceremony at a time, Kiska. I had plans for a great wedding celebration during the Reaping Festival. You haven’t even made public your intentions yet. Don’t you intend to publish the traditional bans?”

  “I suppose we should. It’s only that the harvest seems so far away.”

  “A matter of mere months, child. Don’t be in such a hurry. Besides, we have much to think about now, much to do. Which reminds me that I have something I must ask of you. One more thing among the myriad requests I have already made.”

  “I’m your Apprentice,” she answered him. “It’s my duty to honor your requests.”

  “Yes, and you take your duty very seriously. It is your king that your duty must serve now, Kassia. It is on his behalf that I make this request. It will seem odd to you.” He took the inclination of her head as a sign of acquiescence. “Do you have anything that once belonged to your husband or your father?”

  The question did seem odd. “I . . . yes. I have a small set of jars my father made for me, and a little stained glass window he gave me as a gift upon my wedding.”

  “I was thinking more of something he might have kept on his person.”

  She frowned. “I have nothing. But of Shurik, I had some clothing and jewelry. A cap and a vest I gave to my sister Asenka for her oldest boy, and an earring he wore on worship days.”

  “You have the earring, still?”

  She nodded.

  “I need it, Kassia. I need it to complete a spell ball I must construct. Might I have it?”

  She was unable to say ‘no’ and she was unable to ask what spell he meant to perform that could need something from a male member of her family. She merely nodded again and received her Master’s gratitude. They went straightaway to her rooms where she found the earring and handed it over to him.

  “If I can return it to you, I will,” he told her, then asked, “Tell me, Kassia, how long do you think it will take for the Bishop Benedict to arrange for another focus? How long before he begins to play with the Gherai again?”

  “I wish I knew, Master. But I’ve no idea of the strength of his powers or where he draws them from. He was directing Chancellor Bogorja too, at times, though his hold there seemed weaker than on the Khan.”

  “He must be removed from court. I only wish we could make Mishka see that.” He looked at her obliquely. “You might convince him, Kassia.”

  “I?”

  “Come, child. You forget—he has revealed his heart to me.”

  She was shaking her head vehemently. “You don’t understand. That wasn’t Mishka. It was someone else, working through him, much as Benedict worked through Pater Julian.”

  His eyes locked with hers; his face paled. “You have sensed this manipulation?”

  “Several times. Mishka loves me in his fashion, I know. But it’s not the animal passion you saw that one time. Someone moved him to behave that way.” They moved me, she thought, but couldn’t say it aloud.

  “Benedict?”

  “I thought not. Although, since seeing what he was able to do with Pater Julian, I’m not quite so sure he couldn’t. I just can’t believe he would. It makes no sense. Surely, it’s someone else.”

  “You’ve no idea who?”

  “None.”


  He gazed down at the mandorla worked into the carpet in the middle of her parlor. “Yet, when you felt of the magic Benedict used on the Khan, you thought it was someone else. If he could create and alien presence through the priest, perhaps he can also do it through others. Perhaps it is one of these others you sensed in Mishka.”

  Kassia nodded, her heart suddenly chilled despite the warmth of the day. “This one is stronger than Pater Julian then, for the scent of Benedict wasn’t on him.” She looked up at him, feeling the beginnings of desperation. “And I suspect the focus must be very near the king.”

  Lukasha put a hand on her shoulder and looked deep into her eyes. “Kassia, you must convince Mishka to send Benedict away from his court.”

  “Surely, he’d listen to you—”

  “No. I am too reminiscent of his father, may the Goddess overshadow his soul. He resists me; he games with me. But you, Kiska, you he will listen to. Go to him at once. Make him send Benedict away.”

  She took time only to tell Zakarij and Beyla where she was going and why, and to argue against them going with her. Then she went to her studio and set up the spell. Her destination was the parlor to which she had once been escorted for a meeting with Zelimir, for it was here her locator spell revealed him to be. What it did not reveal was the unfamiliar presence of another.

  The Zofia Varyusha was clearly terrified by Kassia’s sudden appearance, but she neither cowered nor cried out. She stood her ground at the Emperor’s side, a gleaming silver goblet in her trembling hands. Zelimir stepped forward protectively, then, seeing who had appeared in such a miraculous fashion, allowed both relief and pleasure to show in his face.

  “Kassia! What’s happened? Have you—?” He broke off, glancing over his shoulder at his wide-eyed guest.

  “I’ve come with some news about the Gherai Khan,” Kassia told him. “If I might have a moment?”

  “Of course. Zofia,” he addressed the other young woman, “perhaps you would join your companion in the garden?” He gestured toward the open atrium doors, through which Kassia could see an elderly woman, in her colorful Bytomierzan garb, sitting on a stone bench in the mellow sunshine.