The Spirit Gate (33 page)

And what of fire? She
turned and looked around. The fire burned on the beach behind her, sending
gleaming salamanders into the suddenly dark sky. She moved closer to the fire
and could see, within it, little lizards of ivory white that burned but didn’t
seem to be consumed. She reached out and grasped the final symbol.

oOo

Kassia woke, jerking upright on a rush of adrenaline and
victory. Fish, snake, salamander, and bird. She gave Honorius’ pages a fierce grin. She had but to determine which names to use for
those symbolic animals and the order in which to speak them and she would have
access to the spell.

There were yet some hours of darkness left and she availed
herself of them, falling into bed with her clothes on. She got only a few hours
of sleep, for Beyla was an early riser and woke her for breakfast. After the
meal, Kassia, eager to probe the spell further, bid Beyla spend the hours
before his own classes with Shagtai, but he begged to be allowed to stay with
her and watch as she attempted the spell.

“It
was wonderful,” he enthused, “when
you came to visit me and Shagtai that time. You were all covered with light and
flickering like a candle.”

“Well,
before I can do anything like that again, I’ve some studying to do. That won’t be very wonderful, I’m afraid.”

“But
I want to help,” he begged, and so she explained to him that she sought the names of four
catalysts for a special Squared spell.

Brow furrowed, Beyla asked, “What’s
a cat-a-list?”

“It’s a spirit that makes
the spell work, that gives it the push that tells it which direction to take.”

“You
mean like when you tug on a kite string?”

“Just
like that. What I must do is find the names of the four spirits that are a
catalyst for this spell.”

“But
can’t a spirit
have more than one name?”

“Most
have at least two—a
celestial name and an earthly one. One given by Mat, the other by Itugen.”

“Celes-ti-al,” Beyla repeated. “That
means from heaven “

Kassia nodded.

“How
will you know which one is right?”

“I
hope I’ll just
feel it.”

Beyla pulled himself upright and folded his hands before
him, looking most studious. “What
can I do, mama?”

“Do
you think you can read well enough to find me some names in this compendium?”

He nodded, eager for the chance to show off and she handed
him the large, metal bound book.

“I
need the names for fish, salamander, snake and bird.”

He blinked at her. “I
know some of those. Except for salamander. I don’t know a name for that. Shagtai uses the others to
make his kites.”

Kassia ogled. “Shagtai
uses spirits in building his kites?”

“Sure.
That’s all right,
isn’t it? His
father and grandfather were shamans, so I suppose that makes him one too. I
asked him why he wasn’t
a Mateu, and he told me that an old soldier-shaman doesn’t make a very good Mateu.” He paused, his dark eyes
getting a far-away look in them. “You
know what I think? I think it’s
because the Mateu didn’t
save his family. And they should have.”

Kassia put a hand to his cheek. “Lukasha told me about Shagtai’s family. The Tamalids
sent armed men to Lorant. They killed many people. Perhaps there was nothing he
could do.”

“You
can always do
something
,” insisted Beyla. “You
tell me that all the time. And if magic isn’t for doing things that can’t be done another way, then what good is it?”

Kassia chuckled at the earnest little face and ruffled her
son’s snowy hair.
“Pragmatic little
soul. You’re
right, of course. Both times. So now, let’s see if we can’t do something that can’t be done another way. Tell me the names you know
for fish and I’ll
write them down.”

Between Beyla’s
knowledge, her own and the compendium, Kassia had soon compiled a list of names
for the four spirits. There was only one celestial name, but several earthly
ones apiece. Kassia’s
faith in her own sensitivity was realized; she was strongly drawn to particular
names, knowing, the moment her inner voice spoke them, that they held the power
the equations required. In the end, the list was whittled down to eight names:
Fish was Ryba and Piscis; Snake was Meander and Labyrinth; Salamander was
Savitar and Hearthfire; Bird was Phoenix and Welkin.

Some of the names were very old—words rendered in a language Kassia suspected was
the mother or grandmother of her own. Others, like Hearthfire and Piscis and
Welkin, were companionable and familiar. She’d used them to light fires, catch fish (and
customers), and dry her washing on still, humid days.

She took them, one and all, to her dais where she had
gathered spell balls of gold, silver, copper and cobalt-colored glass—one for each element.
She chose the familiar, much-used earthly names first and began her spell,
standing in the center of the golden circle, facing the eastern horizon. Beyla
watched raptly and applauded when her form winked out before his eyes.

Kassia, thinking of Shagtai’s rooftop, found herself staring at its flickering
image through a veil of fiery snow. She gritted her teeth and set her whole
will to the spell, but the flickering would not stop. Finally, she let the
spell collapse and sat down on her dais with a thud.

Beyla was looking at her with a ridiculously sober look on
his young face. “Have
you forgotten something?”

“I
suppose I must have,” she said, chuckling.

She pulled herself to her feet, suddenly feeling every hour
of missed sleep and went to her work table to study Honorius’ notes again.

“I
faced east—that
was where the Sun rose last time I looked.” She smiled at Beyla’s solemn nod. “‘Where two worlds
meet,’” she murmured. “I’m supposed to stand
where two worlds meet. I assumed that meant the dais.”

“Isn’t the cesia where
heaven and earth meet? That’s
two worlds, isn’t
it?”

Grinning, Kassia pulled her son into her arms and gave him a
bear hug. “At
this rate, little one, you’re
going to surpass your mother before she even becomes an Aspirant.”

He put his chin on her hip and beamed up at her. “Am I helping?”

She kissed the tip of her finger and set it to his nose. “You’re helping.”

They were unable to use the cesia until the sun had set.
There was no moon by which to worship and no candlelight ceremonies scheduled
for that evening. After a day of distracted waiting, Kassia was only
begrudgingly aware of what a blessing that was. After sunset, while the dim
gleam of twilight still lay along the tops of the western mounts, Kassia and
Beyla entered the drowsing cesia and made obeisance at the altar.

Kassia chose to stand exactly there, facing west, as she
laid out her spell balls—one
to each point of the compass—and
began her equations, carefully stressing the earth and air elements by placing
the Snake and Bird catalysts before the others. Her goal this time was her own
studio and she held it in her mind with a fierceness born of exhaustion and
frustration.

As before, her form gleamed and flickered and, as it did,
she called upon Welkin, Labyrinth, Hearthfire, and Piscis, kicking with all her
will. Her son’s
face, turned toward her and mirroring her determination, was white in the
spectral light of her spell. Then he disappeared, and the cesia with him. She
saw her studio, a bespelled flame flickering just where she had left it in the
center of her dais. Just as she was congratulating herself on her success, the
spell shimmered and collapsed and she was back again at the altar.

Beyla sat down on the step at the altar’s foot and put his
chin in his hand. “I
guess I didn’t
help so much after all.”

Kassia shook her head. “Don’t
be disappointed in yourself, Beyla. I’m
the one that can’t
seem to make these equations work. Here, let me try the celestial names. They’re bound to be
stronger. Pater Honorius said something about different levels of power. Maybe
the spell just doesn’t
work any better than that using the earthly names.”

“Then
why use them at all?”

“Sometimes,
perhaps all one wants is a glimpse of something.”

After a moment of prayer and reflection, she got to her feet
and, armed with the celestial names of the four spirits, she tried the spell
again. It made a difference, but Kassia was not quite prepared for the way it
was manifested. She expected to have a clearer view of her studio, perhaps, or
to be rid of the flickering. What happened instead was that she winked out in
the cesia with the sensation of being sucked into the air, only to be dumped
painfully onto the hard wooden boards of her dais. She cried out at the
collision of knee and hip with the solid surface and heard an answering gasp
from the darkened room.

In the second or so before the bespelled air sucked her back
up again, she looked up into the soft blaze of her spell and saw Zakarij
standing in the doorway to her rooms, his hands out-flung as if to shield his
eyes from her light.

“Oh,
dear,” she said, and was gone, landing in an ungraceful heap at the foot of the
cesia’s altar.

“Mama,” said Beyla close to her ear. “That
time you were really gone.”

She hobbled a little on the way back to their rooms, silly,
non-sequitur thoughts tumbling through her head. Poor Zakarij. Such abject
shock. She swallowed a chuckle and wondered if he’d be waiting for her when she and Beyla returned.
Liniment. She hoped she had some liniment. Otherwise, she was going to have
aching joints by morning. Morning.

Really must get Beyla to bed. Much too late for a little
boy to be up haunting holy places. I am haunted by Marija.

Zakarij was waiting for them when they returned, standing in
the middle of their parlor, his face ashen. “What . . . what were you doing?”

Kassia let a chuckle escape and rubbed her sore hip. “Trying to earn my
Aspirant’s badge.”

He shook his head. “I
don’t—”

“Let
me get Beyla to bed. I’ll
explain.”

Beyla didn’t
think much of that plan. He wanted to help explain to Zakarij what they’d done that evening,
and would not go to bed until he had extracted from his mother a promise that
she’d tell the
Aspirant how much he’d
helped her. When she had tucked him in, she closed his door and returned to the
parlor where Zakarij had set a fire (a woodless one, she noted) and started
some tea brewing in her hearth kettle.

“So,” he said, sitting back in a hearthside chair. “Explain to me how you . . .
disappeared from your studio.”

She opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated. “First, you explain why
you appeared in my studio.”

“I
just wanted to tell someone how my first day of Investiture examinations went.
Forgive me, but when you didn’t
answer my knock, I thought you must be in your studio, so I let myself in.”

“It
didn’t occur to
you that I might be asleep at this hour?”

He laughed. “You,
Kassia? Asleep before midnight? Doubtful.”

“So
tell me your news.”

“I’d much rather hear
yours.”

She gazed at him blankly, her weary mind suddenly unable to
recall what he meant.

“Poof?” he said and made a vanishing gesture with his fingers.

“I’m trying to perform a
spell that will help Master Lukasha keep better contact with King Zelimir. I
thought what I was doing would let him see all the way to Tabor. But it looks
as if there’s a
bit more to it than that.”

He leaned back even further in the chair. “You came up with this
yourself?”

She blushed. “Not
quite. I . . . I found Marija of Ohdan’s
journal. Her personal journal. While I was reading it, I found a reference to a
travel spell the monks would use to go to Tabor and back. No week on the trail,
no horses, no saddle sores, no exhaustion and, best of all, no time spent
getting there. I realized some of the papers she referred to were in Master
Lukasha’s
collection—they
were the very papers I was supposed to be translating, and now I had a key to
them . . . I thought.”

“The
spell worked.”

She shook her head, which was beginning to feel as if it
contained a sodden rag instead of a brain. “It
didn
’
t
work. I
can’t control it,
no matter how hard I try. I’ve
got the right catalysts, the equations seem to be correct, but somehow I just
can’t get it to
be stable. Pater Honorius—that’s the monk whose notes
I’m using—said you must perform
the spell standing where two worlds meet.”

Zakarij sat forward, elbows on knees, the hearth’s spirit flame turning
his rapt face to gold. His eyes seemed bottomless to Kassia and she was taken
by the wild thought that she would be sucked up by them just as she’d been consumed by her
half-broken spell.

“A
Mateu’s dais is
supposed to be that,” he said.

“I
tried my dais. I flickered like a candle flame. Beyla thought maybe Honorius
had meant a place of worship—a
church to him, a cesia to us. So I tried the cesia. I think the spell was
stronger, but not much. So I tried a second set of catalysts and that’s when you saw me get
dumped on my dais.”

The corner of Zak’s
mouth twitched. “So
the second set of catalysts changed it from a viewing spell to a traveling
spell.”

Kassia nodded, feeling the barest wash of enthusiasm. “Pater Honorius wasn’t jesting when he said
there were levels of increasing power.”

“What
levels were those?”

“To
see, to be and to control.”

“I
understand the first two. But to control what?”

Kassia took a deep breath. Her sleep-deprived lungs ached. “I don’t know. Oh, Zak. I am
so tired.”

Zakarij leaned further forward and put out a hand to press
her back in her chair. “I’ll leave you to get
some sleep. But tell me, have you told Lukasha about any of this?”

“Mmm,
well . . . he saw me accidentally do the Window spell at Tabor.” She chuckled sleepily. “Right
in front of Mishka and all his would-be brides. I looked right through into
Shagtai’s
workshop and he and Beyla got a glimpse of the King’s audience hall.”