The Spirit Gate (51 page)

Now, Kassia understood the request for the earring, and why
her Master had been so pleased when he saw it was fashioned of silver. He hadn’t needed a relic from
a male member of her family; he had needed a relic from a man dead by drowning.
A victim of the Fish, Maelstrom.

A soft sound below in her Master’s private library made her cringe and clutch the
glass ball to her chest. She held her breath, poised on the edge of flight, but
the sound wasn’t
repeated. Heart hammering, she glanced about, trying to order her thoughts,
trying to consider what to do.

There was a large glass bowl of sorts on the shelf near the
spell balls. In it was a snake. A wood-creep. Next to the tank was the burlap
sack Lukasha had been carrying the day he told her she would be raised to
Aspirant. The snake had no doubt been in that sack—the Earth catalyst whose venom was intended to reside . . .

Her eyes fixed on the iron ball. That day had been weeks
ago. Before she had warned him of the danger inherent in summoning the Spirit
Gate. Yet these balls sat here only half-completed, the snake still curled in
its cage.

Slowly, she brought her racing heart and thoughts under
control. He would not use the spell, surely he would not. He knew its danger.
She was fretting needlessly. Master Lukasha didn’t need a shepherdess. It was their king who was in
urgent need.

She set down the spell balls and moved away from the shelf
toward the studio’s
locus. She must find her master and tell him what she’d sensed from the king. She drew the mandorla
swiftly, threw out a Locator spell. On the edge of completing her incantations
she had a thought for the spell balls. If she freed the snake, if she took the
ball containing Shurik’s
earring . . .

Surely, her Master meant to return it to her anyway.

“What
are you doing in here?”

Damn Damek! How could he sneak up on her like that? She
glared at him over the glow of her mandorla. “I’ve
no time—”

“Sneaking
about your Master’s
studio while he’s
in council—”

“I
must go to him.”

“I
wouldn’t
interrupt. You have nothing so important—”

“I
would let the Circle decide.”

“Decide
what, child?”

Lukasha had appeared behind Damek. Though his face showed
obvious signs of strain, his voice was soft and measured. Around Kassia, the
glow of the mandorla subsided.

“Something’s happened to Mishka—” she began, but he cut her off with a gesture.

“I
know, Kiska. He has come to his decision. He has announced that he will marry
Fiorella Orsini and accept the ‘protection’ of the Frankish Empire.”

Kassia’s
head spun. Yes, she had feared that, but hadn’t let her mind touch the thought, as if her
avoidance might make it cease to be a possibility. “I must go to him,” she murmured. “I must discover what
they’ve done to
him.”

“It
would do no good. Master Antal says they have already set a date to post the
bans—a week from
now on the Lombard’s
sabbath.”

Kassia shook her head, her face feeling as if it had been
blasted by a chill wind. “I’ll go to him. I’ll speak to him. I’ll fight Benedict.”

“What
good will that do, you stupid woman,” snapped Damek, “unless
you’re prepared
to give the king what he wants from you. Oh, but you’re too selfish for that, aren’t you? You have plans
for yourself, don’t
you? You’d be a
Mateu, mistress of your own fate, while your country goes to ruin.”

She blushed and was angry at herself for doing so.
Certainly, wishing to be Zakarij’s
wife instead of the King’s
paramour held no shame. Yet, suddenly she felt both selfish and willful.

“Damek!
What’s done is
done.” Lukasha’s
voice was grim. “There’s nothing more she can
accomplish in Tabor.”

“Master,
you don’t
understand,” Kassia said. “He
had begun to love Zofia. He still claimed to love me. Minutes ago, I felt such
anguish from him. He cried out to me. It must have been the very moment he
announced his betrothal to the Duchess. This isn’t Michal’s
decision, it’s
Benedict’s. The
Bishop has done what he promised. He’s
found another way of manipulating Zelimir.”

A spark of light came into her Master’s eyes. “You’re certain of this?”

“Yes!
He’s being herded
like an animal to a snare.”

Lukasha considered that, his expression distant. “Perhaps it would not
hurt to try just once more . . . but if you can do nothing, then we shall have to reconcile ourselves to
the inevitable, and Polia will slide back into twilight. I pity you, Kassia,
for you were just coming into your own.”

“I
don’t understand,
Master. What do you mean?”

“The
Tamalids crushed the spirit of Polia. When they did, the harshest spiritual
oppression fell upon the shai, though it affected us all eventually. Now,
Bishop Benedict proposes to bring us to our knees again, though his methods and
motives will be different. This may affect the Mateu more than it does the
shai, but it will affect us all in the end. Once again, will the balance of
nature be upset. Once again, will disaster sweep through our lands.”

“Must
it really be so terrible? Arik Tamal had his own reasons for hating Polians—the shai most
especially—but
the Bishop of Avignon has no reason to hate us. Perhaps Bishop Benedict’s behavior has
prejudiced us. Perhaps the Empire will treat us with tolerance.”

“You
have studied some of its history, Kiska. You’ve heard the cries of those in the western duchies
who tried to withstand the changes the Frankish Empire wrought in their lives.
Have you any reason to expect tolerance now?”

She had not. Yet, she had to hope. She left her Master to
his dark musings and went to tell Zakarij that she must return to Tabor once
again. He resisted the idea forcefully; she argued him down. Then, she leapt
through her glassy corridor to the welcoming palace cesia.

The king, when she found him, was in his private parlor with
Fiorella at his side and the Bishop Benedict reading to them from a tablet. She
had been forced to leap into her magical doorway twice to get there; courtiers
who before had welcomed her now barred her from their lord’s chambers. So, her
entrance was sudden and unannounced. Fiorella let out a little cry, Michal
leapt to his feet, the Bishop raised his hand as if to set a ward.

Michal sat down again, slowly, and placed his hand over
Fiorella’s. “Why are you here?” he asked, and his voice held none of the warmth it usually held when he
spoke to her.

“I
would speak to you alone, Mishka.”

“How
dare you address your king so?” asked Fiorella, a spark coming into her dark eyes.

“He
is my king, but he is also my friend.” Kassia turned to that friend, but still saw no hint of warmth in his expression.

“Your
conception of friendship is a strange one, Aspirant,” he told her. “Friend does not
usually conspire against friend, nor attempt to deceive.”

Kassia shook her head. “I’ve
deceived no one. I’ve
never conspired against you and never would.”

“No?
You and your master have not plotted to keep the Bishop Benedict from advising
me? You have not conspired to keep Fiorella from finding favor in my eyes?”

“We
sought that she should not find
false
favor. We sought that
you be allowed to make your own decisions and not be manipulated into them by
another.” She glanced pointedly at the Bishop.

“Ah,
by another, yes. But neither you nor your master balked at manipulating me
yourselves.”

This was maddening. “What
are you saying? To what manipulation do you refer?”

Zelimir rose. “I
refer to the way you gamed with me—pulling
me to you, then pushing me away. Seducing me, then telling me you loved
another. I refer to the way your master impressed upon me such desire for you
that I lost all self control, while you pretended it was some unknown person,
and hinted it might be Bishop Benedict working upon me.”

Kassia was stunned. The Bishop’s success seemed complete. To have the king
believing such lies . . . “I never tried to seduce you, Majesty. Nor would
Master Lukasha do what you claim. Has the Bishop told you this?”

“The
Bishop Benedict has proven to me that what you gave me as a ward was no ward at
all, but a spell that intensified whatever Master Lukasha chose to assault me
with. He showed me how faithless a friend you are. He showed me how you treated
with the Khan. How Lukasha bespelled me.”

“How?
How could he show you this?”

“He
has a mirror of time. A mirror that can show what has happened in the past. He
showed me your visit to the Gherai Khan. He showed me Lukasha working his will
on me during your first visit here. While we tarried in that moonlit stable, he
stood aside and cast a spell over me until I could no more resist you than a
starving man could resist bread.”

For the briefest moment, Kassia could see her Master,
shadow-wrapt, spinning secret magic around the unsuspecting Zelimir. Secret
magic she had assumed was from the Bishop, though that had made little sense.
She shook herself. She couldn’t
think that. It had to have been some plot by the Bishop. Perhaps he had acted
on the king, knowing all along he would twist the blame to Lukasha. She had to
believe that; the alternative was absurd.

“Our
visit to the Khan was to determine why he suddenly chose to attack our borders.
A thing he did because he was being manipulated by the Bishop through Pater
Julian. Didn’t I
reveal that to you? It is this man who deceives you, Mishka. He has wanted to
drive a wedge between us since the moment we met. He’s wanted to alienate you from Master Lukasha.
Apparently, he has succeeded.”

“Master
Lukasha himself has caused this alienation, Aspirant. Now, I would ask you to
leave.”

Desperate to throw off the bonds with which Benedict held
him, Kassia moved to kneel at Zelimir’s
feet, taking his hands in her own. He trembled and Fiorella gasped, but he did
not withdraw from her, and his gaze locked on her face as if his eyes were
powerless to look elsewhere. Thanking God for that mercy, Kassia tried to force
a Shield about them, but could not. The combined wills of Benedict and his
protege were more than she could deflect without more knowledge of how they
worked their magic.

“Mishka,
hear me. If you marry Fiorella, you must accept her faith.”

“I
already accept her faith.”

“Yes,
but she does not accept yours.”

“That
isn’t important.
The preservation of Polia is important.”

She tightened her grip on his hands. “Will it be preserved? Or will it slide back into
the same kind of darkness the Tamalids brought—forced to exist beneath another power’s domination? Your
father fought with every ounce of his being to free this land of Tamalid rule.
Will you undo all he did during his lifetime? Would you see Polia cut off from
the blessings of Mat and Itugen?”

The Bishop, gimlet eyes on the king’s face, moved forward to break Kassia’s hold on Zelimir’s hands, and pull her
forcibly away. He loomed over her as she huddled on the floor, his expression
triumphant.

“Polia
no longer needs the blessings of its pagan gods, White Mother. With the
marriage of these two, it will begin, at last, to receive the blessings of the
one true God and of His Church. Your mission here is fruitless. Return to your
master and tell him he has failed. God has won the soul of Michal Zelimir. You
cannot have it.”

Kassia shook off the Bishop’s unwelcome grasp and reached again for Zelimir’s hands. This time, he
jerked away from her touch. Beneath the sleeve of his tunic, she could just see
the silver of the webbed bracelet she had vested for him months before. She
pointed at it.

“If
you wish to know who your true friends are, Mishka, you’ve only to look at that. What does it tell you
about me? What does it tell you about this man?”

Like one sleepwalking, Zelimir raised his arm and slid the
sleeve back to gaze at the bracelet’s
tell-tale gem as if he’d
never seen it before. He glanced at Kassia; the jewel glowed a deep green. His
eyes moved to Fiorella; the stone whirled with muddy reds and oranges. He
turned to Benedict . . .

“This
is nonsense, my lord.” The Bishop made a delicate grasping gesture with one hand. “The bracelet was given
to you by this woman. Naturally, it will tell you what she wants it to tell
you.”

Michal’s
lips tightened and he winced as if in the grip of sudden pain. Wordlessly, he
pulled the silver band from his wrist and dropped it to the floor. Then he rose
and led his betrothed from the room, leaving Kassia kneeling on the floor.

She got slowly to her feet, burningly aware of the eyes on
her. Benedict leaned close to her ear.

“You
are a fool, shai. There is nothing destined for you this moment but humiliation
and damnation. I will personally see to it that Lorant is returned to the
Damascene Order and that you and your pagan arts are outlawed on Polian soil.” The Bishop leaned closer to Kassia and took her arm in a painful grip. “Women have been burned
at the stake for less than you have done, White Mother. Be very careful, or
Zelimir may begin to think that a sorceress such as yourself should not be
suffered to live.”

“You
dare condemn me when you use the very same magic?”

His eyes widened. “The
power I wield is nothing like—”

“Come,
Bishop, let’s
have some honesty between sorcerers. You direct the elements just as I do. You
conjure spirits and call them ‘angels’ or ‘names
of God’. Whatever you call them, they are the same spirits I invoke.”

He let go of her arm. “Get out. Tell your master he has failed. Tell him I
will come to Lorant soon and rebuild the monastery there. I shall burn your
cesia to its roots and sow salt upon the raw earth. Then, I shall raise a great
edifice to the Lord upon the spot.”