The Spirit Gate (5 page)

They approached the central altar hand-in-hand and bowed
nine times to the place where once the Tree had stood—the Tree whose roots were in the earth and whose
branches reached to heaven. The Great Fires, sparing not even this holy place,
had taken it. In its place grew a fine sapling. It flourished here, its
branches reaching heavenward, a child of Itugen raising its arms for its Father’s acceptance, seeking
union, seeking to bridge the gap between Earth and Sky.

When they had risen from their last genuflection, Beyla
turned to his mother and asked, “May
I go first, mama?”

Kassia nodded. Smiling, Beyla looked down, his eyes intent
on his hands. He worked his little magic in silence, his lips moving, but
uttering no sound, hands cupped as if they caged a butterfly. Then, swiftly, he
flung them up and out. A shower of bright motes exploded from his fingertips,
swirling upward over the altar stone, spiraling, growing, subtly changing
shape.

Kassia’s
eyes followed them almost awfully, these tokens of her child’s latent ability. How
strange, she thought, that what had all but withered in her mother had taken
root in her and blossomed in her child. But no, she realized, it was not just
Beyla. She could feel the tingling of ancient magics in her own soul as well,
hear them singing through her spirit. Polia was coming alive slowly, achingly,
and so was the shai magic within Itugen’s
daughters . . . and sons.

The firebirds had flown above the crown of the Tree by now—above the tops of the
highest tree-ruins—and
hung against the azure backdrop of heaven before extinguishing themselves and
fanning away on the wind. Kassia lowered her eyes to her son, where he stood,
head back, eyes peering into Mat’s
realm, his face beaming. She wanted everything for him at that moment. She
wanted him to go beyond being a village curiosity, a reminder of a dark past.
She wanted him not to have to hide his talents in some shabby hovel along the
river road.

Beyla stepped aside to let her approach the altar, then
reached out to take her hand. She stooped for a moment to take up a handful of
earth. In it was both ash and good, dark soil. She held it up to the sky. “Mat, Itugen. I have
nothing to give you this day of beginnings. I give you all I have—my future.”

“How
will you do that, mama?” Beyla asked later as they wound their way down from the cesia. “How will you give Mat
and Itugen your future?”

“I
don’t know yet,
Beyla. But perhaps if I listen very hard, they will tell me.”

oOo

Kassia tried to listen all that night as she lay in her
bed. She prayed to dream of what her next move should be, but she didn’t remember her dreams—if indeed she’d had any to remember—and the morning’s light brought a
gloom that was alien to Kassia. Perhaps her gesture at the cesia had been
foolish or even arrogant. Perhaps the God and Goddess were disappointed in her.

The feeling returned from time to time as she plied her
trade in the marketplace that week. She was able to banish it only when new
customers flocked to her cart to hear her shallow predictions (she never looked
very deeply into their life-stream) and cross her palm with silver, stone or
copper. The elegantly dressed men wearing the oblong
paiza
of
the royal court were the most generous customers. One or two of them were
repeat customers from the previous week and she was obliged to sort among their
future possibilities for something new to tell them. They, in turn, regaled her
with stories of life at court and travel by closed carriage or howdah. She
envied them—not
their wealth or their rich clothing (although that did have its appeal)—but their autonomy. In
the service of the king, they worried not after their rent, they came and went
as they pleased, and they didn’t
have to look after someone else’s
laundry or marketing. Asenka’s
household chores took Kassia away from the marketplace more than she would have
liked, and it was to that she attributed the slow growth of her savings.

Still, at week’s
end, she was feeling much better about her lot. This was not so bad, she told
herself, this selling of glimpses forward. The God and Goddess seemed to be in
favor of her chosen path; they sent her customers to divine for, and the
silently watchful Mateu had never said anything to her, though he’d had many
opportunities. So it was with a modicum of smugness that she took the twenty
rega she finally collected to Ursel Trava’s booth.

“Mister
Trava,” she said, “I
have come to rent a cottage from you.”

He eyed her from beneath thick brows and scratched at his
beard. “Have you,
now. And what have you brought me for rent, Mistress Telek?”

She thrust out her hands. “Twenty rega, as you require.”

He nodded, eying the money. “Yes, I’ve
seen you out plying your shai trade. But I no longer require twenty rega for my
cottages. I now require . . .” He tilted his shaggy head
sideways. “ . . .forty.”

Kassia felt hot and cold in waves. “Forty! But that’s twice as much! It will take me twice as long to
earn it.”

Trava shrugged broad, slightly stooped shoulders. “That’s as it may be,
Mistress. But my price is forty.” He turned away then, to see to a customer who would no doubt find that
the price of the scythe he wanted had suddenly tripled, and Kassia, twenty rega
still clutched in her hands, returned to her cart.

“What’s wrong, mama?” Beyla asked her. “You’re all emptied out.”

She set a hand to his hair, feeling nothing but the pale
silk beneath the tips of her fingers. Emptied out, indeed. “Mister Trava has
raised the rent for his cottages. I must make more money.”

Beyla frowned. “I’m sorry, mama. I wish
I could help. Maybe you should go to Lorant.”

She glanced at him sharply. “What makes you say that?”

“Mistress
Devora says that’s
where you belong if you’d
only look to it. I think I’d
like living at Lorant, wouldn’t
you?”

Kassia laughed. Mistress Devora, indeed. Not above using her
child to make a point with her. “I’m not sure anyone
lives at Lorant but the Mateu and some of the priests, Beyla. There’d certainly be nothing
there for the likes of us.”

“Then
what will we do? We can’t
live with aunt Aska any more. Uncle Blaz doesn’t like us.”

She put her arm around him. “We’ll
think of something.”

“Can’t we ask Itugen and
Mat what we should do? You told me grandmother used to say that a question put
to Itugen was a question answered.”

She opened her mouth to say she had asked Itugen, but she
realized as her mind framed the words that her questions had been shallow
things. She did not meditate on them at all, which was rather like asking your
neighbor how she did this fine morning, then turning away before you heard her
answer.

“I
will ask Itugen,” she promised him. “The
next chance I get, I’ll
go up to the cesia and reflect on what we must do.”

Yet somehow the next week went by without her finding that
chance. There was too much to do to help Asenka with her household, and more
money to be earned—money
the marketplace refused to yield. For instead of growing, as she had
confidently expected, Kassia’s
business dwindled. Dalibor, it seemed, was not large enough to support a full
time augur.

She decided she must go up-town to seek out more moneyed
clients who didn’t
frequent the lower village. She left Beyla at home, though he complained
mightily at being denied a close look at houses not built by the hands of those
who dwelt in them. Alone, she sat at New Dalibor’s large public fountain in the heart of its flagged
central square, and waited with her little cart while people passed by and
either ignored her or glanced at her with curiosity or disdain. Houses and
shops of stone, brick and wood towered on every side—two and one half stories, some of them—making her feel
overwhelmed and small. She fought the feeling down and drew herself up regally.
She was her mother’s
daughter. She was White-haired Kassia, shai.

One passer-by touched the brim of his hat and called her “little queen,” but no one approached to see what it was she sold. After awhile she
began to call out, “Fortunes
read! See your future, mistress/sir?” That got one or two to stop by, and their presence at her cart drew a
few more, but when they had gone, she once again received only rude stares. She
began singing after that, first merely setting her hawking to melody, then
reeling off little folk tunes. That brought her some small change, mostly
copper rezes brought by small, shy children whose parents remained aloof at the
fringes of the fountain square.

It occurred to her, at last, that being shai, she had
certain magics at her disposal. She might try a spell song, she thought, to
draw customers to her. The thought made her feel wretched at first, but as the
day wore on and hunger gnawed and her little pile of coins grew hardly at all,
she buried her scruples and sang a fishing spell her mother hat taught her,
changing the incantation slightly in the hope that it would draw people.

It seemed not to work at first, but then she noticed a knot
of young women watching her from across the way. Several had children at their
sides or in their arms. She singled one out—a pale girl with red hair and a bundled infant—and smiled at her,
breaking her song only long enough to call, “Good-day, mistress. Wouldn’t you like to know your baby’s fortune?”

The woman glanced nervously at her companions, but took a
tentative step nearer. Kassia murmured another line of the fishing spell, then
reached an exploring finger of sense toward the child.

“Maybe
he’ll be a priest
or a minister of the royal court.” She shifted her attention to the woman, licking at her thoughts.
Pregnant women and new mothers were easier to read than most people; she’d known that since she
was a little girl. Itugen’s
force was strong in them. “Or
a musician. Perhaps he will be a famous musician.”

With a final glance at her friends, the woman came to her,
arms protectively sheltering her baby. “How
much, White Mother? How much for a reading?”

“One
alka if you have so much.”

“And
if I don’t?”

“Less,
mistress. Whatever you can afford to pay. I have a child too, and he must be
fed.” She felt guilty the moment the words were out of her mouth. It was the
truth, but it was also a brazen bid for sympathy.

“I
have an alka,” the woman said and, shifting her tiny bundle to one side, she fished a
coin from the pocket of her fine woolen skirt. She held it out to Kassia who
took it and stood, putting it in her own pocket.

“May
I see the child?” she asked.

The woman nodded, a smile beginning at the corners of her
mouth. She was proud of her little boy. He was the image of her husband. He was
her greatest joy. Kassia smiled in return, folding back the soft blue blanket
that covered the baby’s
face to peer in at him. He slept, tiny and perfect in his warm cocoon, his
fingers curled beneath his chin, lower lip twitching in a milky dream.

“His
name is Yarodan,” the mother murmured, and Kassia could feel the love radiating from her
soul.

“He’s beautiful,” she said and gazed at the infant, touching him gently with her senses . . .
and feeling nothing. She nearly sighed aloud with frustration. What if she
couldn’t read the
child—what then?
Did she make something up? Concentrating as hard as she could, she reached her
hand in to touch the baby’s
soft cheek.

The cold that grabbed at her heart ripped her breath away.
She choked on a gasp of horror and pulled her hand back, trembling, trying
desperately to school her face to a calm she didn’t feel. But before she could break the touch, her
heart had twisted in her breast and her face had given her away.

“What
is it?” The woman stared at her, smile slipping away. “What do you see?”

Kassia wrenched her gaze from the baby’s face, but found she
could not meet his mother’s
eyes. Nor could her mouth form words. What could she say—that she saw nothing, that her precious child had
no future?

The woman grasped her arm, shook her. “Tell me, White Mother!
Tell me what you see?”

“He . . .
he’ll . . .” Kassia shook her head. “Mistress,
I can’t—”

“You
beast!” the woman cried, eyes prying at her face. She pulled the baby close to
her bosom, waking it. “You’re going to tell me
what—that my
little Yarodan will sicken and die? Why? So you can sell me one of your useless
elixirs? Is that your game, shai witch?”

“No,
mistress, please. Let me touch him again, let me see what I may see. Perhaps
there is a way—”

“Oh,
why not one of these?” The woman jerked her head toward the cartful of little bottles and
satchels. “Surely
you’ve something
there you can sell me to cure my baby’s
ills?”

“No,
mistress. I’ve no
potion for him. He has no ills. What will happen will happen suddenly.”

The woman’s
face twisted and terror, stark and consuming, glittered in her pale eyes. “Witch! Liar! You want
to sell me a potion, that’s
all. Well, fine! I’ll
buy a potion.” Her hand fumbled toward her pocket again. The baby bleated and began to
cry. His mother pulled money from her pocket and threw it upon the ground. She
was sobbing now. “Tell
me which potion, White Mother! What may I give my son?”

“Give
him love,” Kassia said, trembling. “Give
him care.” Her hand lifted again toward the child, but his mother drew him back,
stepping away, unable to believe that Kassia did not mean to trick her into
buying some poultice or elixir.

God, please
! Kassia prayed.
Itugen mine,
please! Let me touch him. Let me see
—

What she saw, as the woman pressed the child to her breast
and turned to leave was the startled look on the tiny face that peeked, for only
a moment from the folds of the blue blanket. Flame. A wall of flame. “Fire!” Kassia cried after the retreating form. “Mistress, please! Beware the flame!”