The Spirit Gate (39 page)

Her thoughts were interrupted by their sudden arrival at the
end of Zelimir’s
quest. It was a cedared glade of such perfect beauty that it took Kassia’s breath away. There
was a tiny crystal stream and a rock strewn pond surrounded by a carpet of soft
green grasses. The palace and the city it ruled were forgotten in this place of
velvet and diamonds. She felt as one bespelled, knowing she should not be here,
yet unable to withdraw or flee.

He led her into the glen, drawing her behind him on a
circuit of the pool, lifting her over the stream to deposit her in a dappled
patch of sunlight. He turned her to face him then, and lifted his hands to her
hair. “You are
the natural spirit of this place, Kassia. You belong here.” His eyes were bright, intent on her face. “Say you will stay.”

She started to shake her head, but he imprisoned it between
his two hands and would not allow the negative gesture. He put his face close
to hers, eyelids drooping sensuously.

“Lie
with me in the grass, Kiska,” he whispered. “I
have dreamed of lying with you in the grass. Of your hair spread like white
silk on the green earth.”

“Please,
my lord . . .” Her mouth struggled to form words.

He covered it with his own. Again she felt the strange,
frenetic passion building up in him like lightning in a cloud. It traveled from
his lips to hers, quivering between them like storm static, tingling on her
skin. He was shaking with it, was drowning in it, and when he raised his head from
the kiss, his eyes showered her with it, trying to drown her as well. Stunned,
mesmerized, Kassia struggled to fight through the numbing sensations that
assailed her will.

When he would lower his mouth to hers again, she raised a
hand to his lips to stop him. “Please,
Mishka—”

“Please,
Kassia,” he countered, kissing the palm of her hand. “I must have you with me. Always. I would make you
my lover in every sense of the word.”

She shook her head, trying to dig beneath the amorous
hysteria. “I can’t be your lover,
Mishka. I don’t
love you.”

There was a moment of frozen silence and then the taut
energy resumed its quivering grasp. “Love
will come. Lie with me, Kassia.”

Kassia closed her ears to the strangely drugging words. “I love Zakarij, my
lord. I will marry Zakarij.”

“It
matters not,” he murmured against her hair. “You’re mine already. You
were mine the moment you stepped across my threshold. I am your king. I order
you to love me. Obey me, Kassia.” He was tightening his grip now, shifting his weight, preparing to bear
her to the grass beneath their feet.

A part of her considered giving up this foolish fight. He
was her king. Who would condemn her for obedience? He needed her, loved her. On
the verge of wilting, she thought of Zakarij. Even he would not condemn her—she would condemn
herself.

But, no. This was wrong. These thoughts were alien to her,
and it came as powerfully as revelation that
they
were
not
her
thought
s. Neither was this Michal Zelimir speaking, acting. It was
someone—something—other. They were both
in the grasp of some powerful magic.

Panicked, she threw up a ward against Benedict. As with the
Gherai Khan, it had absolutely no effect. Michal twisted, sweeping her feet
from beneath her. Then, coming to his knees in the sward, he bore her backwards
to the ground.

Kassia struggled to herd her wits into frantic order. Of
course it wasn’t
Benedict, bespelling Zelimir like this. Nor could it be someone who shared his
aims. How stupid! He would be the last one in the entire realm to want its king
to make either wife or concubine of a shai peasant. It was someone else. Some
unknown.

Imprisoned beneath the King’s body, Kassia pulled her senses together and cast
a tight shielding ward around both of them, drawing it in a close hemisphere
over the glade. Then she went completely limp in his arms, offering neither
resistance nor encouragement.

His lips were on her eyes, her lips, her neck. His fingers
twined themselves in her hair, tangling the thick tresses. Then, suddenly, he
was still, his breath coming in slow, deep bursts like a man who has returned
from the brink of drowning.

Kassia sighed in relief and dared to close her eyes. She
offered a silent prayer of thanks to Mat, whose spirits she had invoked to set
the protective spell. A moment later, Michal Zelimir released her and rolled
away. She opened her eyes and sought him. He had gone to the lip of the pool
and now held wet hands to his face, his eyes on his own reflection in the
water. After a moment Kassia rolled to her knees and crawled to sit next to
him, a part of her mind occupied with shoring up the shield.

“Are
you all right?” she asked him.

He uttered a bark of disbelieving laughter. “I undertake to
dishonor you and you ask if I’m
all right? What are you, Kassia Telek? If I were a Frank I’d call you a saint.” He laughed again. “Dear
God, I’ve tried
to seduce a saint.”

“I’m no saint.” She put a hand on his shoulder, keeping it there though he tried to
flinch away. “Listen
to me, Mishka. This has not been your fault. None of it. Someone is trying to
enchant you.”
To
enchant both of us
, she thought, but didn’t say it. Now that her fear was past, anger had
begun to take its place. She heard it in her own voice.

He glanced at her sharply. “Benedict?”

“No.
I don’t think so.”

“If
not Benedict, then who?”

“I
don’t know. And
because I don’t
know, I can’t
block the source of the spell. I can only place a shielding ward around you.”

“How
long will it last?”

She shook her head. “I’m not certain. If I
could attach it to something—vest
it in something—it
might last much longer.”

He held up the wrist that bore the webbed bracelet. “Could you attach it to
this?”

“I
could. But you’d
have to wear it every moment.”

“What
about me? Couldn’t
you just attach the ward to me?”

Kassia smiled crookedly. “Well, King Mishka, this is a change of heart. Is
this the same man who told Master Lukasha only weeks ago that he needed no
arcane protections?”

“This
is a man who has had his passions turned against him. I am chastened, Kassia, I
accept whatever protection you are willing to give.”

She nodded. “Give
me your hands,” she said, holding out her own to receive them. He complied and watched
her face as she articulated an incantation that bound her shielding spell to
him as surely as if he wore it about his neck on a chain.

“I
feel no differently,” he told her when she was finished.

“Good.
That’s as it
should be.” She started to get to her feet, but he rose more quickly and drew her up
into a light embrace.

“You
say some unknown enchants me, Kassia, but that’s only a partial truth. You’ve enchanted me as well. Even your clever ward can’t shield me from that.
I believe I would make you my wife, if I could. But . . . what
you said about wedding Zakarij—is
it true, or did you merely say it to dissuade me?”

“It’s true.”

“Well,
you may tell him for me that he has earned the undying envy of his king.” He bowed to her and bestowed a chaste kiss on her hand.

oOo

The council session was a council of war. The darughachi
of Khitan’s
immediate neighbors—Sandomierz
to the north, and Teschen to the west—already
had their defensive forces in the field. They now petitioned the king to launch
a full scale counter attack, using every ounce of Polian military strength in
the hope of driving the Horde out again. Zelimir and Bogorja both balked at the
idea of flooding the southeastern provinces with troops while leaving their
remaining borders virtually unprotected, but the darughachi protested that if
the Mongols were allowed to gut the country, those borders would be all that
remained to her.

Bishop Benedict did not lose the opportunity to press
Zelimir to make a pact with Avignon. Now, as never before, other voices joined
his. Faced with absorption into the Gherai Horde, the southern governors and
nobles were only too willing to make allies of whomever had the greatest
resources for their defense. Ironically it was Oji Batu, who before had spit
upon the idea of a Polian-Frankish alliance, leading the cry for its
establishment.

A harried, but unmanipulated Chancellor Bogorja loudly
fought the idea that such a pact must be sealed with a marriage bond, a thing
which brought a very sour look to the Bishop Benedict’s face. Kassia, seated in her place at Zelimir’s right hand, found
the Bishop’s eyes
on her a number of times and knew he must suspect her of meddling with his
spells. She nearly smiled; he would be surprised to know that it was Master
Antal, seated unobtrusively among the provincial representatives, who shielded
his attempts to coerce the Chancellor.

Three times the Bishop asked Zelimir to exclude Kassia from
the consultation. Three times the king refused. At the third refusal, Benedict
erupted in fury.

“I
must tell you now, Majesty, that you stand no chance whatever of arranging a
pact with the Most High Bishop of Avignon when you have taken a paramour who is
so obviously in league with the Devil himself.”

“The
Devil?” Zelimir repeated, over the wash of general displeasure he felt from the
other man. “You’ve spoken of this
person a number of times in my presence. Who is he that your Holy Emperor fears
him so?”

“The
Holy Father fears no one but God. It is hatred we have for the Devil, my lord,
for he is the essence of evil.”

“You
make two mistakes, Benedict,” said Zelimir, purposely omitting his title. “First, you style Kassia my paramour. That is a
dishonor to the lady. She is my adviser and my friend. Second, you associate
her with evil. That is both a lie and an insult. I must insist that you
apologize to her.”

“I
will do no such thing,” snarled the Bishop. “If
you want the support of Avignon, you will eschew her ‘friendship’. Otherwise, you will stand
alone against the forces of the Gherai. I believe you will find any army you
might amass sadly inadequate to the task of driving them back.”

“Are
you really so certain of that?” asked Bogorja. “Or
is it that you simply would like us not to try? I believe you underestimate
Polian valor, Bishop.”

“Valor
has nothing to do with it. You have sinned against God with your very attitude
toward His envoy.”

“That
being you?”

“That
being me. You would eschew our hand of friendship altogether were it not for
the military protection we offer. We are your salvation—spiritual and material. God attempts to show you
that, but you are hard of hearing and hard of heart. Your fate is in God’s hands, Chancellor.
No physical army you could send against the Gherai Khan will deter him, for he
has become the instrument of the Lord’s
will.”

“You
mean he has become an instrument of your will.” Lukasha spoke for the first
time, seeming to rise from among his nearest neighbors to dominate the council
hall. All eyes turned toward him.

“What
do you insinuate? That I stoop to sorcery? I am a man of God. It is God who
moves the Khan—”

“I
have met the Gherai Khan face to face and have taken his measure. He has been
raised from his own lands and sent marauding by—”

“By
the most high God.”

“By
forces external to himself. I have taken certain steps to make sure he does not
intrude further into Polian territory.”

The Bishop seemed to freeze in his place. Only his lips
moved. “What do
you mean?”

“I
am sure you can have no interest in such things, Your Grace. You are, after
all, a man of God.”

Benedict, his face alive with rage, strode from the council
hall, his robes swirling about him as if caught by a capricious breeze. In the
silence that followed his departure, Zelimir issued the order that whatever
battalions of the royal army had already gathered without the walls of Tabor
should be deployed to Khitan immediately. The provincial troops fielded by the
darughachi would be put under the command of his own field marshal.

“If
we cannot drive the Mongols out of Khitan,” he said, “we will, at the very
least, stand them off from further conquest.”

The council members agreed with muted voices, then Oji Batu
rose from among them and asked, “Is
it true what Master Lukasha has implied? Does this Bishop employ magic against
us?”

Zelimir glanced at the Mateu. “He has been known to employ it against your king.”

Batu growled deep in his barrel chest. “Perhaps he is right
about our forces. Perhaps we will find them inadequate.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Master Antal, “he
even now puts that idea into your head.”

The Khitani blanched and stood down. “Polia has so newly arisen from the suffering meted
out by the Tamalids. What manner of demons are these Christians that they
employ such magic against her?”

Michal Zelimir silenced him with a gesture. “Think not ill of the
Christians, Oji. This is not a matter of religion, but a matter of human
ambition. Our adversary is Bishop Benedict, not his God.”

“I
am not worried about his God, Majesty,” said Batu, “so
much as I am worried about his Empire.”

The assembly broke up then, and Kassia was free at last to
go to Master Lukasha, intending to tell him about her morning’s encounter with the
king. But she had been bothered by Zakarij’s conspicuous absence from the council chamber and
asked, first of all, about that.

“I’ve sent Zakarij on a
mission of utmost importance,” her Master told her. “I
must have him to shield someone from Benedict.”

“Couldn’t he have blocked
Benedict as well from here?”

“You
and I have already proven the falsity of that assumption. In this case, it is
the target himself who must be warded.”