The Spirit Gate (46 page)

She turned with as much dignity as she could muster and
strode from the room to flee down the elegant hallway to the public rooms of
the palace. Her mind sprinted at a rabbit’s pace. She would find Master Antal and let him
know of the Khan, of her request of Zelimir and of his refusal to accept it.
Then she would go home, for there was nothing else she could accomplish here.

She found Antal at the Tabori Residence with his band of
city Mateu and a handful of Aspirants and Apprentices. Her tale of cutting the
Bishop off from Pater Julian raised their spirits considerably, for they
suddenly believed that they had only to determine who Benedict might use as a
focus in order to block him. Kassia’s
next revelation blotted out that small sense of victory. The realization that
they could ameliorate the effects of sorcery and not of politics was a numbing
one.

“Still,” said Antal, “we
can leave Benedict without puppets to play. We will cut him off,” he promised. “We
will leave him no place to turn.”

Kassia chose the cesia as the place from which to execute
the spell that would return her to Dalibor. Before the gleaming altar, she
genuflected and offered a brief but heartfelt prayer that whatever decision her
king made, it would truly be made for the good of his people, and not out of
passion or weakness.

“Your
pagan gods are deaf, shai. They cannot help you now, nor can they save your
soul from the hell it so richly deserves.”

Kassia turned to face Benedict, her fists clenching and
unclenching at her sides. She hated him, she realized, and the acknowledgement
of that hatred stunned and repelled her. She wanted to do him violence; she
wanted to fly to Lorant and hide from the darkness in her heart.

“We
pray to the same God, Bishop,” she told him. “I’ve never known Him to
be hard of hearing.”

“If
you believe that lie, then you must believe that it is you He listens to. You
are mistaken.”

“Am
I? Can you reach Michal Zelimir just now? Can you use your sanctuary as a place
in which to focus your sorcery?”

His face reddened. “I
perform no sorcery. I am given the power of the Holy Spirit. That is the weapon
I wield. That is why, though you have profaned the sanctuary of my Lord, I will
yet triumph over you.”

“You
have followed me into this pagan place of worship to tell me this?”

“I
have chosen this place to confront you so you understand that your pagan
shrines do not unnerve me. I am not afraid of you, shai. Far from it. For the
violence you have done my priest, for the violation of a holy place, you will
pay a heavy price. Nor will your precious king be spared. If he does not submit
to the guidance of the Spirit, he will be forever lost.”

“If
he does not wed Fiorella Orsini, you mean.”

He inclined his head, his lips forming an arc that was only
vaguely like a smile. “If
he gives his heart to the Spirit, it will lead him to Fiorella.”

“His
heart has led him to Zofia Varyusha. I found them together when I arrived.” Kassia enjoyed the seizure of sheer rage that took his face.

“At
least,” he growled, “he
has abandoned the absurd idea of making you his consort.”

It was a moment of choice and she chose perversity. “Not at all. He would
make Zofia his wife and me his concubine. That way I may always be at his side.”

The red of the Bishop’s face sharply contrasted the white of his robes. “That will not happen.
You have ruined one priest and defiled his sanctuary. Don’t over estimate the
importance of that, I warn you. As a Knight of the Church, my powers are
infinite.”

He left her then, but she could feel him watching as she
drew out a mandorla of ethereal light and sent herself back to Lorant. She
should have set up the spell in his precious church, she thought, as she
watched the flickering scenes behind the corridor’s translucent walls. The thought was unworthy and
she knew it, but just now, when she was so impotent, the anger felt good.

Aprilis 8, Tamal 1-3—
Zbaraz
is dead.

I am amazed I can even write the words. He died in his own
studio while attempting to put a stop to what his wife unknowingly unleashed
nearly four years ago. He was such a brave fool. We were both fools to think
the Tamalids a force without magic. To imagine they could be easily bespelled.
I will never underestimate the northern shaman again.

Master Boleslas was right, of course, they would not have harmed
us had we not tried to interfere with their consolidation of the lowlands. They
were no threat to Dalibor, a small village in an out-of-the-way mountain
valley, but they were a threat to the rest of Polia, and that we could not
abide. I should have been the one killed, for it was in my stead Zbaraz
attempted to ward the Tamalid shaman from the secrets of Lorant. It was my
arrogance and stupidity, my idiot’s
campaign of arcane interference, that led them here to seek those secrets.

I need no further evidence of my own wickedness than this: My
husband is dead and my poor baby daughter, now fatherless, is as completely
normal as any other child in the valley. No one could look at Milada, with her
dark hair and pale eyes, and suspect even for a moment that her mother was
shai. I must count that as a blessing in this grievous time. Though she will do
no magic, the Tamalid shamans will not notice her among the other children of
Dalibor. Perhaps that is just as well. They seem indifferent to ordinary folk,
but they are insatiably curious about those of us whom they regard as shamans.

The most awful thing is this: I sometimes wonder if using,
again, the very powers that I abused to begin this could end it. If, at any
time while Zbaraz struggled to find a magic potent against Kesar Tamal and his
disorganized forces, I had opened the Spirit Gate, might I have saved him?
Might I have kept the barbarian brigands from reaching into this sacred valley?
Was the promise I made to Master Boleslas more important than Zbaraz’s life?

A more horrible question than these haunts me—that I hide behind
that promise. That it’s
my own fear that keeps me from this awful magic and not at all my sense of
honor.

Dear Itugen! I am so completely wretched! If it were not for
Milada, I swear I would end my own life.

Zakarij stared at the words on the torn-out page for a long
time, his weary, distracted mind refusing to comprehend what they told him. He
tried to concentrate on what Marija had said about the Spirit Gate, but found
his thoughts slipping aside to inconsistencies in her history. Her account of
the indifferent attitude of so-called “disorganized
forces” hardly tallied with the savage and well-ordered Tamalid machine that had
pounced upon Dalibor with the clear design of decimating it, breaking the shai
and reducing the Mateu to impotence.

And who was Kesar Tamal? History recorded that it was
Arik
Tamal who set himself up as emperor over what had been a small republic with a
handful of loosely knit provinces.

He retrieved his thoughts from that distraction and put it
back to the main trail. That Marija blamed herself for the swift descent of the
Tamalids on Polia was obvious from earlier readings. But that she reckoned she
held the power to somehow put a stop to the bloody conquest boggled him. It
could only mean one thing: Marija had found the key to the Squared spell after
all, and had known how to use it.

Did Lukasha also realize this? He had held the Bible for a
brief time—though
he’d shown little
interest in it. Had he also come across these pages tucked into its cracked
binding? Their condition—their
very presence—suggested
otherwise. It seemed that if Lukasha knew Kassia had found the first set of
excised pages in the spine of the journal from which they’d been torn, he had
forgotten it. Zakarij had not.

He raised his head to glance up at the ceiling of Kassia’s studio. The
time-teller at its apex shot a shaft of bright light about halfway up the
sloping eastern plane. Late afternoon. He wished desperately that Kassia would
return from Tabor. He was worried about her. Afraid that she would throw
herself into direct conflict with the Tabori Bishop. He was unwilling to admit
that he was also afraid she would succumb to Michal Zelimir.

He went back to the journal, hoping for some further clue
about the nature of the spell Marija was so terrified of using. She might have
made some early mistake out of ignorance for lack of the key, but it was
perfectly clear that her terror of the spell did not abate once she possessed
both the knowledge and the resources to perform it.

oOo

Aprilis 23, Tamal 1-3—
I
have found—oh,
what have I found? I can scarcely believe it, but after all I have seen, I have
no reason to distrust either Pater Honorius’ scholarship or his
truthfulness. In the very pages of his Bible is the most wonderful and
terrifying secret of the Squared spell. How cleverly he hid it. How he must
have agonized over even noting it. In the Book of Proverbs—

That entry had ended abruptly, the page torn completely in
half. A blank wall. Zakarij picked up the next page, smoothed it and read, as
if it might yield anything more than it had the last time he’d read it.

I must do this. I must. Oh, Milada, if I never return to you,
know that I love you. Oh, Itugen, oh, Mat. If what I am about to do runs
counter to your will, I beg you to forgive me. I am a guilty soul who must
expiate its guilt; I have a heart who cannot countenance the loss of its lover.
I pray that when I return—
if
I return—I will
step into a world different than the one I now leave.

The next entry was written by an obviously trembling hand.
Though they were in his own tongue, the words made no sense to Zakarij.

Zbaraz lives. The Tamalids are still in power, but Zbaraz lives.
Only I seem to know anything of his death. To all others, it is as if he was
never gone.

Dear God, I can’t believe what I have done.

Puzzled and frustrated, Zakarij ran a rough hand through his
hair. What did it mean? That Marija of Ohdan had brought her husband back from
the dead? She had spoken of stepping into another world; could that possibly
mean she had crossed into the after-world through what she had called the
Spirit Gate?

He glanced at the Bible where it sat on the corner of Kassia’s work table, looking
forlorn with one cracked wooden cover gutted, the other completely missing.
Picking it up, he began to search for the Book of Proverbs. He found it, and he
found more.

oOo

When Kassia arrived in the heart of her studio, Zakarij
was still sitting at the work table, his head in his hands, the Bible and the
journal opened before him. She barely greeted him, merely murmuring, “I’ve got to see Master
Lukasha,” and heading for the door.

Zakarij moved swiftly to intercept her. “I’ve got something I
need to show you.”

“Can
it wait? I really need to report—”

“It
can’t wait.” He was dragging her to the work table.

“Zakarij . . .”

“It
can
’
t
wait
! Here. Sit.” He pressed her onto the stool he had lately inhabited. “Now listen.” He paced away from her a step or two then back again, his hands making
odd little calming gestures as if he strove to soothe himself. When he faced
her again, he said, “About
two months after Marija’s
daughter, Milada, was born, Zbaraz died.”

Kassia nodded numbly, feeling as stricken as she might if
the news were new, moved more than she thought possible by the news of a death
that occurred so long ago, that her own mother had not yet been born. She had
to remind herself that both these people were dead now.

“He
was killed by the Tamalids while trying to use his magic against them. They
broke into his studio and killed him. Evidently, another of the Mateu, afraid
of what Zbaraz’s
meddling might mean to Lorant, betrayed him.” He shook his head. “That’s irrelevant. Marija
felt she possessed the ability to . . . to put things back the
way they were. To bring her husband back to life. She thought the Squared spell—the Traveling spell—had that power.”

Kassia’s
eyes were as big as copper rezes. “The
Twilight catalysts?”

Zakarij nodded. “She
did something, Kassia. She . . . went somewhere. To another
world, she said. And when she came back, Zbaraz was alive and no one but Marija
recalled that he had died. Not even Zbaraz himself.”

Kassia felt as if her entire being was listening to Zakarij’z words. “But how?”

“She
said the key was in Honorius’ Bible.” He picked up that tattered volume and read from the page that lay open,
translating from Latin into Polian. “To
all things there is an appointed time, and a time to every purpose under the
heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die: a time to plant, and a time to
pluck up that which is planted. A
time to slay, and a time to heal: a time to break down, and a time to build. A time to weep,
and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to cast
away stones, and a time to gather stones: a time to embrace, and a time to be
far from embracing. A
time to seek, and a time to lose: a time to keep, and a time to cast away. A time to rend,
and a time to sew: a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. A time to love,
and a time to hate: a time of war, and a time of peace.” He held the book at an angle
so she could see the page, and pointed to a Latin word. “Do you see how every occurrence of this word is
underlined?”

She nodded.

“The
word is
tempus
—time.”

The realization hit Kassia like a thunderclap. “She traveled in time.
She went back in time to prevent Zbaraz from dying.” A flood of thoughts assailed
her. Her mother and father . . .
Shurik
. But no, there was
Zakarij now, and . . .