The Spirit Gate (25 page)

There was nothing in what he said of Damek’s horrid insinuations
about a fleshly liaison, which seemed, at this moment, a perfectly absurd idea.
Who was she that the King of Polia should even contemplate such an association?
Yet, she felt that whatever Michal Zelimir’s station in his own realm, in the spiritual realm
she had found a friend.

The council meeting was unexceptional, to outward appearances.
Subjects ranged from the trivial to the critical. The upcoming Solstice
celebration was discussed, which Bishop Benedict pointedly referred to as the
Feast of the Annunciation. When he proposed a far more somber observance than
the traditional Polian festival, the king countered by asking how the
announcement of his Lord’s
impending birth could possibly be a somber occasion. He ultimately decided that
if the Bishop wanted a solemn mass, he could certainly hold one; the rest of
Tabor would celebrate as was its custom, with feasting, dancing, costumed plays
and a festival of kites and balloons outside the city walls.

A petition was read expressing the desire of Odra province
to separate from Polia in favor of becoming part of the Empire that now pressed
its western borders. Protection from aggression was the reason given for the
request. It was presented by the signatory darughachi and a handful of dukes
and magnates. A second petition from two small principalities along the kingdom’s southeastern flank,
meanwhile, also begged protection—in
the form of admission to Zelimir’s
kingdom. One of Zelimir’s
ministers wryly suggested that two for one was not such a bad deal and ought to
be considered. To the second petition, the king and his advisors were favorably
disposed, the first was tabled, pending further inquiry of the provincial
governor and his lords. Throughout the council, Zelimir glanced at his
web-spelled bracelet with eyes that never betrayed his own thoughts or
feelings.

Inevitably, the subject of suitable wives was raised and a
handful of new candidates introduced by means of portraiture. Michal Zelimir
viewed them all with the same bland disinterest. The only emotion he showed
during the entire proceeding was when Bishop Benedict announced that the
Lombard candidate, the duchess Fiorella Maria Orsini, would be arriving in
Tabor within the week. Above his dark beard, Zelimir’s face reddened perceptibly and, with a voice
brittle with irritation, he asked the Bishop why the daughter of a Lombard noble
should travel all the way to Tabor on a whim.

“No
whim, Majesty,” Benedict replied. “She
has a brother attached to my offices as a cleric. It is not so strange that she
might wish to visit him.”

“How
convenient,” said Zelimir pointedly, “that
her visit is timed so perfectly. She’ll
be able to celebrate the Solstice with us—or the Annunciation, as you prefer.”

“Yes,
it is rather a happy coincidence,” Benedict countered mildly. “Perhaps,
you will cause her journey to be doubly blessed.”

“She
must be supremely confident of her charms,” said Fedor Ziemovit,
darughachi of Sandomierz, “to
travel to Tabor before even receiving an invitation.”

Benedict smiled. “I
told you, she travels to visit her brother. Her invitation from our king will
have missed her by some days. Your words imply you think her vain; I must
assure you that Fiorella Maria Orsini is the essence of feminine humility. So
humble is she, I fear I have no portrait to show.”

Oji Batu of Khitan darugha wrinkled his flat nose and made a
snuffling sound. “Humble!
Ugly is more like. We seek a mate for a king, not a prize boar. Why should he
import a questionable prize when there are so many beautiful daughters of the
realm close at hand?” The governor warmed quickly to his defense of Polian women. “In Tabor alone there
are scores of women and girls who can outshine anything imported from Lombardy.”

“Oji.” Zelimir’s
voice held more humor than censure.

Oji Batu’s
fist struck the table. “It
is fitting that you should marry a daughter of Polia, my lord. I beg you, do
not dilute your proud blood with the waters of a foreign river!”

Zelimir smiled. “Oji,
my blood is already dilute—thanks,
in part, to our common ancestors and your illustrious namesake. Polia is a
kingdom of mongrels. What blood is foreign to a mongrel?”

The bishop smiled, his pleasure at Zelimir’s equanimity obvious.
Master Antal was determined to dampen it. “I’m
certain the envoy from Byzantium will be much cheered by that sentiment,
Majesty.”

Bishop Benedict sat up noticeably straighter, though his
smile barely faltered. “What
envoy is that?”

Lukasha, who had maintained silence during the discussion of
brides, hid a slight smile as Antal raised his brows, feigning bemusement. “I’m surprised you have
no intelligence of it. An imam of the faith of the Arabian travels to Tabor to
see the king. A young woman accompanies him. They were at Ratibor less than two
days ago.”

“An
imam? What is an imam that I should mark it?”

“To
his co-religionists, he is a very holy man, Your Grace. One who speaks for God.
The Sultan has evidently determined that Tabor is important enough to warrant
his presence here.”

The bishop subsided then, seemingly disinterested, but
Lukasha had but to peek at the silver band on his wrist to know the lie of
that. In the center of the bracelet, the large, ovoid cabochon glowed a hot,
deep red. The public debate was over, but Lukasha knew, as Bishop Benedict
lingered at the council’s
close, that he intended to continue the argument with Zelimir in private.

Lukasha parted company with Antal, leaving the council hall
to go to his room. There, he moved directly to the polished brass mirror that
hung beside the wardrobe. Swiftly, he invoked God and called upon spirits of
fire, water, air and earth. His lips and hands in motion, his voice a murmur,
he drew Kassia’s
Squared spell to the gleaming surface, adding to it a catalyst of his own
devising. In a breath, the mirror became more than a reflector of the room in
which Lukasha stood. Connected to another place, shapes appeared in it—the silhouettes of two
men, one wearing a jeweled circlet, the other a tall miter. In another breath,
the images took on flesh and color and their words echoed in the Mateu’s head.

“The
Gherai khanate lies just beyond your southeastern borders, Majesty,” said the bishop. “The
protection from such a menace that could be provided by the Holy Empire should
not be underestimated.”

“I
would not presume to underestimate anything about your Empire, Bishop. I am
simply not convinced that yours is a protection we need.”

“You’ve heard the reports
from the frontier. It’s
no surprise you receive petitions from your southern neighbors. They have
witnessed much activity along their borders.”

“So
say the nobles. Yet, to the eyes of trained soldiers, the activity of the
Mongols does not seem particularly threatening. Odd, don’t you think, that they should petition for
admission into a realm they did not believe capable of dissuading the kagan of
the Gherai from ‘inviting’ them into the Horde?”

“The
darughachi of Odra is not so certain of your powers of dissuasion. He sees the
Turks lingering not so very far away and trembles in his sleep and sends his
petitions to the Frankish Church. Which of them is right and which is wrong?”

In the hall downstairs, Michal Zelimir began to pace, removing
himself from the region of the mirror Lukasha had taken care to bespell early
that morning. “And
you would have me link myself to your ‘protection’ by marriage?”

“I
merely point out that having a vital link with the Frankish Empire would most certainly
afford you enough force to dissuade the Gherai and the Turks. Without that
force, I don’t
doubt you could protect the heart of your kingdom, but what of its out-lands?
What of Khitan, eastern Sandomierz and Teschen? What of Odra? What of the two principalities
whose petition you favor granting? Are they to be sacrificed?”

“You
propose to sacrifice Fiorella Orsini.”

“To
become a queen? That is no sacrifice. Besides which, Fiorella Orsini is a true
daughter of the Church. She does what is her duty. If that includes a marriage
to bind her people and yours together, she will comply with radiant
acquiescence.”

“How
would she feel about being married to a pagan, Your Grace?” Zelimir reappeared within the ornate frame of the mirror.

“She
would not marry a pagan, Majesty.”

“Yet
that is what I am, in your eyes.”

“In
name only. You have told me yourself that you accept our Lord’s words as being
divine in origin.”

“A
far cry, Your Grace, from accepting your particular doctrines about Him.”

“I
don’t understand you.” For the first time, Benedict’s
voice betrayed impatience.

“No?
Perhaps the imam from Constantinople will. Perhaps, if I were to marry the
woman he carries in his train, I would have no need of protection from the
Turks. I have no wish to discuss this further. When the time comes for me to
seriously consider the individual candidates for marriage, your Lombard will be
given due attention. But I will judge her by her own merits and, if I marry
her, it will be on my terms. I will not deny my heritage or my God.”

“Neither
will Fiorella.”

“I
would not require her to.” Zelimir moved again out of the tableau. This time he did not return.

Lukasha let the spell collapse and moved to sit at the
window to contemplate all he had heard. He was heartened by Michal Zelimir’s strong words, but
that did not make him complacent. Men of strong words could be dissuaded if
those words were not rooted in their souls. He did not doubt that the Gherai
Tartars could be a real threat. At the very least, they could be made to seem
like one. It was clear that Jagiello Starza, the Bishop Benedict, was a more
immediate danger.

Lukasha considered the courses available to him, none of
which offered certainty. He liked uncertainty less than he liked certain
courses that were forbidden to him. He weighed options, balancing this against
that—the
supposedly good against the theoretically evil—and chose a path. It was not a path he was entirely
comfortable walking, but it saved him the agony of inaction. Turning from his
window, he began preparation for a spell he had never before performed.

oOo

The palace was a place of wonders for Kassia. Childlike,
she wandered its halls, absorbing the beauty of form in stone, wood, metal and
glass. Her wanderings were not precisely aimless, for she was hoping to find
the church she had heard now existed within the royal Court.

She discovered it at the rear of the rambling palace on the
opposing corner from the cesia’s
hill. It sat in its own triangular courtyard, its ornate front doors facing the
top corner. The building itself seemed to be L-shaped; a mass of complex facets
and soaring arcs thrust upward from the stones of the court, terminating in a
pair of spires that vied with the palace’s onion-shaped domes for a place on the Tabori
skyline.

Kassia entered the church by the large main doors, whose
hand-carved basilisks were being repurposed into something else—exactly what, she
couldn’t tell in
their present state. It looked as if the workman had merely stepped away for a
moment; carving tools lay beside a box on the threshold and curls of shaved
wood were scattered about among them. Stepping over the tools, she found
herself in a large vestibule and pushed through a second set of doors into the
main sanctuary.

She was met by a confusion of angle and curve, shadow and
light. The long, narrow sanctuary was breathtakingly beautiful, but different
than any place of worship she had ever seen. Stained glass windows of various
degrees of complexity and artfulness poured a myriad shades of light into the
vaulted chamber. Some were sophisticated depictions of scenes Kassia assumed
must be from Frankish legend; though one seemed to show the wedding of Mat and
Itugen and another the original Festival of Names during which the God and
Goddess bestowed their attributes upon all created things. Others among the
colored glasses were more primitive, the areas of vivid color barely
distinguishable as people or animals. Kassia assumed those must have been
produced decades or even centuries ago. They were not nearly so fine as her
father’s work.

She hadn’t
come here to criticize the craft of the place. Curiosity had driven her—a desire to see the
sanctuary in which the bishop worshiped, thereby to understand how he thought.
The Frankish cesia was a forest of precise angles and minutely calculated
curves. Its arches were at once soaring and restrained, its colors vivid, yet
solemnly rich. It was a regimented place of neatly marching benches and, at the
head of it all, a precisely placed altar over which was centered the most impressive
window of all. But it was not the size of the window that caught Kassia’s eye, or its vivid
colors—white,
gold, red, purple, green and blue—it
was the fact that the dominant design of the window was a mandorla of white and
gold, just like the ones that graced her rooms and studio at home. In the heart
of the mandorla sat a crowned and enthroned man in royal purple and red.

She was fascinated by the appearance of what she had thought
to be a uniquely Polian symbol in a Frankish sanctuary. She dared to approach
the altar, moving silently up the long central aisle toward the altar. This
feature was not unlike the familiar cesia. The altar, in its cupped grotto, was
similar in size and shape to the one at Lorant, and was covered with a small
host of short, fat candles in multi-colored glass cups. She wondered if the
colors were significant of the supplicant’s wishes, as they were in Polian worship. She had
been told magic was not practiced in this faith. Perhaps the color of the
candle’s cup
meant nothing.