The Spirit Gate (23 page)

“The
royal Palace,” Zakarij offered, as if he had read her thoughts. “It has the largest cesia in the ten provinces. The
pillars are carved with the likenesses of Mat and Itugen in thirty-six of their
elemental forms.”

By the time they rode through Tabor’s massive gates, the Sun had all but disappeared.
Only the tops of the tallest buildings burned with its waning fire, while
mortal flames flared in the shadows of dusk. The city overwhelmed. Every street
and alley was lined with buildings so tall Kassia was forced to tilt her head
back to see their eaves. Until riding this street, Lorant’s college was the
tallest building she had ever seen. These stood shoulder to shoulder, forming
an almost unbroken wall from one dissecting street to another.

But as impressive as Tabor’s sights, were its sounds and smells. Both were
sharp, pungent—the
smells of cooking, of animals, of people, of the nearby river; the hard clack
of their horses’ hooves on the cobbled street, the rattle of wagons, the babble of what
seemed a myriad voices. Kassia observed everything with voracious curiosity,
her head swiveling from side to side. Passers-by returned her inquisitive stare
in kind, surprised to see a woman in Apprentice’s garb.

She had thought Lorant grand, and this city beyond her
imagination, but neither prepared her for her first sight of the royal Palace.
Riding beneath the tiled and gilded arch in the inner walls, she cast her gaze
straight ahead, and so got the full effect of broad steps that ran up to
immense front doors and a wide expanse of pale gray stone that soared up and
up. She let her eyes glide up to the dizzying height of the tallest tower, to
the distant sweep of its blue and gold onion-shaped dome.

“Is
that real gold?” she whispered, half to herself.

“And
lapis,” said Master Lukasha. “The
Tamalids had a sense of beauty, if nothing else.”

As the Emperor’s
guards watched benignly, they were greeted in the broad plaza before the palace
by the Mateu, Master Antal, and Joti Subutai, an Apprentice of perhaps twenty
whose blue black hair and pronounced almond-shaped eyes spoke of the same
Mongol heritage that marked Kassia and Beyla’s features. They were pleasant and polite, but
beneath their cordial greeting was some nervousness.

They said nothing as they set royal servants to caring for
their guests’ horses and porting their meager baggage. They spoke only of weather and
the upcoming Solstice as they conducted Kassia and her companions to their
quarters within the Palace. It was just as well; Kassia was certain she’d have lost all track
of any real conversation in the brilliance and splendor of Zelimir’s habitation.

Installed at last in her own room—a room that made even Marija of Ohdan’s large chambers seem
poor—she stared
from her window over the high walls to the twilight city and tried to sort out
in her head the whirl of pale stone and rich cloth, of soaring arches and
mysterious corridors that had flowed about her as she followed their hosts
through the palace.

She was just thinking of tearing her eyes away from the
starlit, lamplit night and unpacking her leather valise when Zakarij tapped on
her half-open door and bid her come with him to Lukasha’s room. Once there, she was once more in the
company of Master Antal and his Apprentice, who proceeded to report on the most
important of the recent occurrences at court.

Chief among them were matters involving two of Polia’s nearest neighbors.
The Gherai Horde had lain for so long beyond Polia’s southeastern frontier that it had almost ceased
to be noticed, yet suddenly two outlying principalities were pleading for
admittance to Zelimir’s
realm as a means of protecting their borders from incursions by Tartar forces
that Polian intelligence indicated had not so much as twitched in uncounted
years. In reaction, the darughachi of the tiny southeastern province of Khitan
had begun to agitate for Zelimir to raise an army against the freshly perceived
Tartar threat. Indeed, even the governor of Tabor’s darugha of Sandomierz was seized with a fresh
wariness of the Mongols. Meanwhile, Odra, the small darugha just west of Teschen,
was seeking annexation by the Frankish Empire, also pleading protection against
aggression as the reason.

“None
of it makes sense to me,” sighed Master Antal. “And
I will be one of those King Zelimir calls upon shortly for wisdom in these
matters. At the moment, I have none to give.”

Master Lukasha, who had been listening attentively, asked, “And how is Zelimir?”

Master Antal wagged his head. “Stubborn. I have spoken to him countless times
about the need for him to review his bridal candidates before they die of old
age. He has agreed that the eligible women should be gathered in Tabor at the
Solstice Festival for his review. That, naturally, has caused even more
disgruntlement in some quarters than his original refusal to review them at
all.”

“Solstice?
That soon?”

Antal produced something between a smile and a grimace. “He has indicated that
those candidates who cannot appear by that day may find themselves . . .
passed over by the royal eye.”

“That’s less than two weeks
away, how does expect the foreign candidates—” The look in Master Antal’s eye halted him. “You imply that our
dear king attempts to . . . limit the field in his own fashion?”

Antal waggled his head. “I didn’t
ask. The king has spoken.”

Lukasha shook his head. “He is a mule, but when the mule decides to move, it
defies all conceptions of speed. I suspect the candidates are myriad even
without the foreign ones.”

“I
believe each darugha has produced at least one. So, I might add, has our
bishop. Of course, his candidate would have to have left her home weeks ago to
make the journey in time for Solstice. Therefore, I suppose we may rule her
out. I have had it confirmed from the fourth stage yam from Ratibor that an
envoy travels from Constantinople with an imam and several mullahs—I had never thought to
have an imam in Tabor. And, unless our intelligence is badly mistaken, a bride
candidate travels with them. It is said a young woman makes the journey with
the envoy, under close guard.”

“You
know nothing about her?”

“Only
that she is Turkish. Ah! But we do know that the bishop’s offering is a young woman of Lombard origins—a duchess who will,
according to Bishop Benedict, give Polia an amicable connection to the Frankish
Empire.”

“Ah,” was all Lukasha said. “I
thought we were ruling her out.”

Antal dropped a troubled gaze to his hands. “The Bishop Benedict
seems to have a great deal of influence with Zelimir. Certainly more than the
last man to hold his office. I’m
afraid he might convince the king to await the Frank’s arrival.”

“Afraid?” repeated Kassia.

Antal glanced at her. “Marriage to her would forge an overt alliance with
the Frankish Church. I am . . . uneasy about what that might
mean. The Church has not looked kindly upon other faiths. There has been some
proselytization, a few conversions, some . . . sectarian friction.”

Lukasha nodded, his expression troubled. “Have you asked these
converts why they should wish to abandon their ancestral beliefs?”

Joti Subutai opened his mouth to answer, anger flushing his
cheeks, but Antal held up a restraining hand. “We have. The Sajo magnate is among the converts. He
claims political expediency. What he means, of course, is that if the Frankish
Empire should lean heavily on little Polia, and he were a man of her Church, he
might not be crushed. Ultimately, our king may decide the issue by marriage.”

Joti Subutai drew his lips back in what was nearly a snarl. “He would never marry a
Frank. We are pagan to them—evil,
and in the eyes of their Church, irredeemably lost. Our faith means nothing to
them. We will all go to some-some everlasting fiery—”

“Joti!” said Antal sharply and his Apprentice subsided.

Joti lowered his head and murmured, “I am sorry, Master. It is only that I fail to see
such a vast difference in our beliefs. They believe the God speaks; we believe
It speaks. We give adoration to Mat and Itugen; they love their God, and His
consort, Mariam. I don’t
see why such divergence can’t
be . . . tolerated, accepted.”

“You,” Lukasha said reaching over to pat the Apprentice’s knee, “are
not able to look at this through the bishop’s eyes. Perhaps you might engage him in
conversation about these divergences, as you call them.”

“What
good would that serve?”

“It
is always wise to understand the motivations of one’s adversary.”

oOo

Kassia had barely a clear thought after the meeting with
Master Antal and Joti. She sensed in Lukasha a dark watchfulness, in Zakarij, a
vague apprehension. She added both to her own anxiety. The palace at night was
as silent as the surrounding countryside was alive with sound, and Kassia
feared sleep would be just as reluctant to visit her here. Seeking solace, she
murmured her prayers, then pulled out Marija’s journal and surrounded herself with a soft glow
of light by which to read.

She had now reached Marija’s account of her move to Apprenticeship, which had
come within two years of her arrival at Lorant. As Marija had hoped, it was
Master Boleslas who requested her as an Apprentice. Ecstatic, she dove into her
new role with all the eagerness of youth, recording each of a growing list of
achievements in her fat little book. Kassia read of spells she performed—not mere Duets, but
Triads, Quartets, Battles and even Squares—of academic badges she earned, of studies she
enjoyed. Initially, these things piqued Kassia’s interest—Marija’s spells were what she
wanted to hear about—but
what she often got was a discourse on history, a study Marija seemed to enjoy
above all others. Her passionate scribbles contained no end of references to
books and tablets she had unearthed (sometimes quite literally) in the college
library and cesia.

In the middle of her fourth year at the college she wrote:

It seems Lorant was once a monastery peopled by foreign monks.
What must the villagers of Dalibor have thought of that! According to the
writings of a monk named Honorius, the ‘natives’ left them quite alone, which was obviously a relief to the monks. They
also delved into the arcane, referring to it as ‘theurgy’. To distinguish it, again
according to the good Honorius, from the work of the local witches and shamans.

Honorius hid his epistles beneath a stone bench in what is now
the cesia. I might not have found them was I not so scrupulous in my devotion
to order, for it was in replacing a misfiled booklet in the library that the
good Pater’s
crude map fell into my hands.

I shouldn’t
cast aspersions on his artistry; the poor man was obviously distraught—hand quaking terribly.
And no wonder. According to the date on the map, Dalibor—or whatever it was called then—must have been all but
in the hands of the Mongol, Batu. I recall reading one of our own histories of
that time. ‘Batu
kissed Dalibor,’ it said. Ah, there is a wealth of painful irony in that gentle metaphor—a look into the faces
of the villagers today is proof that Batu and his men did far more than kiss. I
cannot help but wonder after Honorius and his colleagues. Did they escape or
did they become martyrs to their faith? I suppose I shall never know.

oOo

Kassia awoke from dreams of Marija and hooded monks and
faceless men on fleet horses, to find the journal still in her hands and
sunlight creeping in at the window. She pulled herself awake, washed, dressed
and braided up her hair before performing her morning devotions. With that
done, she stood at the window for a time, looking out on the waking city. The
buildings seemed to stretch on forever, their rooftops like waves of tile upon
a sea of stone. The smoke of cook fires hung in a pungent fog overall, and even
from this height and distance, she could hear the muffled sounds of the street.

Impatient with waiting for a summons, she finally slipped
out of her room into the corridor. Sunlight poured through the windows at its
northern end while at the other it disappeared into darkness. She headed for
the sunlight, wondering what view might present itself from this side of the
palace. She was not disappointed, for the windows proved to be atrium doors
that opened onto a balcony of pale stone. She pushed through them to find
herself suspended above a garden of such beauty and art that she gasped aloud.
Below was a verdant carpet of grass offset with arrangements of rock and shrub
and vivid flower. The land sloped upward and the shrubs gave way to pyramidal
trees that marched upward in a double row, forming a path which Kassia’s eyes followed. They
were led through a grove of conifers to the top of the great mound where a
crown of white stone rested.

The cesia. Kassia glanced about to see how she might reach
it, and saw, to her right, a break in the balcony’s balustrade. She hastened in that direction and
was rewarded with a flight of steps by which she reached the garden. Her first
impulse was to hurry up the tree-lined path, but her sense of wonder in the
sheer beauty and holiness of the place arrested her. She moved as a dreamer up
the slope, savoring the softness of the dewy carpet, the fragrance of cedar on
the cool breeze and the shimmer of the pale stones of the cesia above.

At length, she reached the double circle of cut and polished
pillars and stood in awe before an altar of such brilliant white that she
thought worshipers at a mid-day observance must not be able to look directly at
it. It was an ornate altar, too, carved and polished, as were the fluted columns
that embraced it. Behind the altar was a magnificent tree—an evergreen with
gracefully sweeping branches and a nodding top. Almost without thinking, Kassia
performed her nine genuflections, then took to the altar a gift of fire and
knelt in meditation at its gleaming base.

She wasn’t
sure how long she had been there when she realized she was being observed. She
knew intuitively that the watcher was not someone known to her, and so tried to
push the awareness aside and concentrate on her meditation. She concentrated so
well that it was only a whiff of some spicy fragrance on the breeze and a
shadow mingled with hers on the grass that alerted her to the person kneeling
beside her.