The Spirit Gate (43 page)

“How
can you be so certain?”

“Have
you ever touched anything like them?”

“No,
but that doesn’t
necessarily mean anything. I’m
new to this—ignorant.”

“You
are not ignorant, Kiska. Tell me, what is the essence of shai magic? Is it
destruction, or is it creation?”

She couldn’t
answer, could only stare at the two seemingly innocent pieces of paper, her
heart lying uncomfortably heavy in her chest.

Shagtai crossed to her table and laid his hands upon it. “Don’t give these things to
Master Lukasha,” he implored her quietly. “Don’t woo Twilight.”

She raised her eyes to the weathered face. “I have no choice,
Shagtai. He expects them of me.”

“You
have a choice,” he told her, and there was anger in the single, smoky eye. “You simply pretend you
can avoid making it by passing it to another. You are wrong, Kassia Telek. If
you give these things over to Lukasha, you will have chosen a coward’s path.”

Kassia flushed hot and cold in turns. “I am not a coward! But
I am faithful to my Master. You ask me to betray him.”

“No.
I merely ask you not to betray your world.” He picked up the chisel
Kassia had borrowed for her night’s
work and returned to his own quarters.

Watching him go, she thought she would drown in sudden
indecision. She was vividly reminded of the flood, of swift currents that
sucked away anything and anyone that did not have a sure purchase on shore or
rock or deeply rooted tree. Marija’s
words returned with the memory:
those of us who have sown the
maelstrom
.

Zakarij’s
hand pressed her shoulder, warm and affirming. “I have never known Master Lukasha to work for ill.
I have never known him to utter an impure word or perform a spell that was not
good itself. I have never known him to act unwisely or selfishly.”

Kassia nodded, covering his hand with her own. “Let’s record the names,
then, and return to Tabor. He’ll
be waiting for us.”

He was indeed waiting, and Kassia, with warring reluctance
and eagerness, relinquished the Bible and its twilight contents into his hands,
telling him of the night’s
events. Zakarij provided the list of names he had translated from old Polian
and Lukasha peppered them both with questions about how the spell must work,
recording everything they told him on paper. He was alight with excitement, his
eyes almost feverish in their intensity.

“You
haven’t tried it,
Kassia, have you?” he asked, and Kassia shook her head emphatically.

“The
spell becomes the possession of the sorcerer who wields it. Only that sorcerer
can grant another the right to use the spell. But even if it weren’t . . .” She thought carefully about what she would say. “Master, Shagtai calls these Twilight names. He says
that using them opens the gates of hell. That they’re dangerous, evil. Even Beyla sensed there was
something wrong with them. He said the magic was sour, bitter.”

Lukasha smiled indulgently. “Does that frighten you? Come, Kassia. Will you
cower from these at the behest of a child and an old man? Beyla is a bright
boy, true, but he is still just a boy with a vivid imagination. Shagtai,
meanwhile, has spent his life steeped in shamanism.”

“Master,” Zakarij argued, “Marija
of Ohdan was afraid of this spell, too.”

The Mateu made a dismissive gesture.

“So
afraid,” added Kassia, “that
she ripped pages from her diary, wrote entire entries in Latin and split the
incantations up among several hiding places.”

“I
have no doubt this is a most powerful magic, Kassia,” said Lukasha solemnly. “Too powerful,
apparently, for Marija of Ohdan to handle. By her own admission, she was
ignorant of the processes and the effects of it, and in ignorance, she erred. I
have the knowledge that will protect me from error and you have provided me
with the key to the processes. I will not stumble blindly into this, Kiska. I
will take the time to study it. To learn it. To test it. Trust me.”

Kassia sighed. “I
do trust you, Master, but Beyla is right. This magic is bitter, dark. It
disturbs me.”

“Kassia,
it may be difficult to control. It may take special care to perform. But it
could not be as evil as you fear, else Master Boleslas would not have suffered
it to survive Marija’s
grave mistake, whatever that might have been. He would have required her to
destroy it, not merely forswear using it.”

Kassia glanced at Zakarij, whose face was as opaque as she
had ever seen it. “You’re right, of course.
They didn’t
destroy it. Neither did Pater Honorius.” It was a reasonable conclusion, and Kassia let herself accept it and
feel relief.

Her relief was short-lived. As she and Zakarij prepared to
leave their Master’s
rooms, Chancellor Bogorja thunderously begged admittance. With a face as pale
as his cream-colored stole, he told them, “The Gherai have laid siege to the Khitani capital.”

The palace corridors were dark and empty as Zakarij and
Kassia hurried along them, making for Pater Julian’s church.

“How
can you be sure?” Zakarij panted, his battered legs forcing him to limp. “How can you be sure he’ll be there?”

“He’ll be there,” Kassia said firmly. “It’s his sanctuary, his
safe haven. More than that, he believes in the magic of the place and its
icons.”

“If
Benedict is merely using him as a focus, does it matter what he believes?”

They stepped out into an open courtyard now, the moon high
overhead, its silver light spread over everything like a fine coat of gleaming
dust.

“When
I faced the Khan, Zakarij, Pater Julian was there. Not just a spirit puppet of
Benedict, but Julian himself. When he saw the magic I had done he became
alarmed and made the sign of the cross.”

“I’ve seen Benedict do
that as well.”

Kassia shook her head. “When Benedict does it, it’s a formality, a ceremony—precise, careful, considered. When Pater Julian
does it, it’s . . .
almost a reflex. He throws it up as a shield, the way you or I might throw out
a ward.”

They entered the church through an ancillary door in the
northern end of the transept. Even from that vantage point they could see that
Pater Julian was indeed there, kneeling before the altar, his eyes uplifted to
the great window above and behind it.

Silently the two moved along the outer aisle, hoping they
were beyond the priest’s
peripheral vision. Zakarij doubted he would have seen them if they’d popped out of the
baptismal only a foot or two from where he kneeled. He was a thrall of a magic
so strong, she could almost see its threads binding him. Zakarij followed
Kassia along the narrow wall to where the transept joined the main sanctuary at
right angles. They were behind the priest and to his left, and could clearly
see the stained glass window at which he gazed. The dual rings of the mandorla in
which the lordly Figure sat glowed with an eerie light, a light that seemed to
shimmer and pulse as if echoing the breath and heartbeat of the man who gazed
upon it.

Zakarij’s
pressed a hand to Kassia’s
shoulder, drawing her to the floor behind a row of pews. “What do we do?” he mouthed.

“We
have to break his concentration,” she pantomimed back, making a breaking gesture with her hands. “Cut him off from
Benedict.”

Before he could worry about where Benedict might be, she had
risen again and was moving to the main aisle behind the oblivious priest. She
signaled Zakarij to come up behind the man, and gestured her own intention to
circle to the front. He could only nod and follow her lead. In seconds she had
covered the short distance to the altar and circled the baptismal, bringing
herself into Pater Julian’s
line of sight. The priest did nothing. She moved to stand directly in front of
him, cutting off his view of the window. Zakarij felt the break between the
priest and his power source as something tangible.

Eyelids fluttering rapidly, mouth open, Julian struggled to
focus his eyes on Kassia. “You!” he gasped, at the same time making the sign of the cross with one hand.

Kassia was right, Zakarij thought, he performed the movement
differently than did his Bishop. So differently, a casual observer might even
interpret it as a different gesture.

Now the priest scrambled to his feet, fumbling with
something within the billowing sleeves of his robe. “You will have no success here, sorceress. I wield a
magic stronger than any you could hope to possess. Be gone!” He emphasized the bold pronouncement by producing a cross-shaped amulet
on a long, beaded chain. This he thrust into Kassia’s face. She, blinking, raised a hand to repel him.

When no destructive magic sailed at her from the amulet, she
lowered her hand and spoke to him in a firm, gentle voice. “I think you are not a
violent man by nature, Pater Julian. An experienced soldier would use something
more deadly than his prayer beads to do battle.”

His face blanched and he stared at the rosary as if it had
suddenly become something unfamiliar. “I
said, be gone!” he repeated, and this time, touched the amulet to the side of Kassia’s neck.

Zakarij only just kept himself from leaping to her defense;
she stopped him with a tiny shake of her head.

“Please,
Pater Julian. Listen to me,” she said. “You’re Polian. Why do you
allow the Bishop Benedict to use you against your own people?”

His hand, still clutching his beads, was shaking. He lowered
it. “What I do,
what my blessed Bishop does, is for the good of this people. I do the bidding
of the Lord.”

“Your
Lord bids you incite the Gherai Khan to murder innocent Khitanis? Just this
evening we received news that he has besieged the city of Zemic. Can this be
the will of your Lord?” She gestured at the window behind her. “Your faith teaches love and sacrifice. Yet, the
Bishop makes you a weapon with which he sacrifices innocent lives. Every moment
you give yourself over to him, allow him this use, you cause untold suffering.”

The priest winced as if in pain and raised both hands to
ward her away. “You
are a daughter of Lucifer. You seek to subvert me. Like the Serpent in the
garden, you seek to force my lips to taste evil fruit.”

The Serpent
, thought Zakarij, fleetingly,
whose
venom boils up from the bowels of the earth
.

As if she’d
heard his thoughts, Kassia flicked Zakarij a glance and went on. “I try to reason with
you. To make you see that the aims of your Lord and the Bishop of Tabor are at
odds. Your Lord would have you convert by loving example; the Bishop would do
it by force. He would enslave our king and our people.”

“Service
to the Lord God isn’t
slavery! It is peace and purpose.”

“Yes,
Pater. It is both peace and purpose, which you’ve come to by an act of faith and will. Would you
be an instrument by which others are forced to accept what you love, not by
faith and will, but by threat and pain?”

He stared at her, blinking, and Zakarij thought the poor
priest had actually listened. But in an instant, a curtain of resolve had
lowered itself over his face. He shook his head vehemently and began backing
away from Kassia, circling toward the baptismal, closer and closer to Zakarij,
whose presence he’d
still not recognized.

“You
lie, sorceress. Bishop Benedict is charged with the spiritual salvation of all
these souls. He does what is best for their spiritual welfare. Their suffering
here is immaterial. And you . . .” His shaking hands came to
rest atop the ewer that sat next to the baptismal bowl. “ . . . you are trying to distract me
from my purpose. But I will not be distracted.” With those brave words,
Pater Julian picked up the golden ewer and flung its contents into Kassia’s face.

Zakarij stifled a cry, while Kassia gasped in surprise and
whisked wetness from her hair and tunic, but that was obviously not the
reaction Pater Julian had expected. He gaped at her as if she had suddenly
transformed herself into the Serpent he so feared. His hands gripped the bowl
again.

“How . . .
how is it you are not burned?”

“Burned?” Kassia asked, still brushing at the front of her tunic. “By water?”

“It’s holy water. It
should . . .”

The priest’s
eyes made a frantic circuit of the altar area, trying to re-establish contact
with the mandorla. Kassia lifted her hand and blocked him with a gleaming ward
that completely obscured his view. Panic, pale and dewy, covered his face and
he began to murmur prayers, closing his eyes and making the sign of the cross
over and over.

“How
can we ward him?” Zakarij asked. “How
can we keep Benedict from reaching him?”

Pater Julian’s
chanting ended abruptly in a high-pitched yelp. He spun to face the unknown
other, upsetting the baptismal completely and sending the golden bowl to the
floor in a spray of water. Then, with a sound that was both sigh and whimper,
he fell to the floor in a dead faint.

Zakarij stepped to the altar to stand beside Kassia. She had
turned from the poor priest’s
senseless body and was gazing up at the glowing Christ sitting within its
twinned circles.

“Is
there anything we can do here?” he asked her. “Is
there any way we can keep Benedict from using this man . . . and
this place for his sorcery?”

“This
is a holy place. It isn’t
natural that it be used for dark magic or made a tool of destruction. The place
creates its own wards. If we can but reach them . . .”

Zakarij nodded, sensing the truth of that. He leaned over to
pick up the golden ewer and place it back on the baptismal pedestal, then let
his eyes lift and roam from stained glass to stained glass. The only light in
them now was reflected from the candles lining the altar; the colors were night
colors, somber, muted.

“We
are surrounded by holiness,” he murmured, and as he said the words, visualized a great web of pure,
benign light weaving, warp and woof, between all the glazed scenes. A glance at
Kassia’s face
assured him that she saw it too.