The Spirit Gate by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff Read Free Book Online Page A

chest
like something dead and cold. She wanted Beyla, wanted to feel the silk of his
hair beneath her cheek, wanted to hear the sound of his breath and the rhythm
of his heart. She took her cart and went home, knowing New Dalibor had rejected
her and her presumptions of augury. She held Beyla in her arms until he could
no longer be still, and that night she talked to Itugen.

Chapter Three — Lorant
    Kassia woke to the creep of watery morning light through
her tiny window and opened her eyes to find that she half lay against the wall
in the corner of the room, her legs beneath the blanket that swaddled her, her
hands limp in her lap, but still cradling her mother’s locket. The little oil lamp she had lit for her
meditations had burned completely down. She thanked the Goddess it hadn’t set fire to the
rush-strewn floor.
    The thought brought a swift stab of guilt and the unwelcome
memory of the red-haired woman and her baby. Kassia rubbed her breast-bone as
if she might massage away the sudden twist of pain.
    “Please,
Itugen,” she murmured, “Please
make her be careful of fire.” At
least more careful than I am.
    She glanced over at the pallet where Beyla lay, silver
sun-dapples dancing and shimmering on his hair, thanking God and Goddess that
he was healthy . . . and that his mother had not burned down her
sister’s house.
    She stretched stiffened muscles and tried to remember her
evening’s
meditations. She had pleaded with Itugen and Mat for guidance, prayed for it
with every fiber of her being. Their answer . . .
    She glanced down at the locket in her hands, frowning. Their
answer had come in dreams. She closed her eyes and strove to remember. The
marketplace. The disappointment. The Mateu. The Mateu had been in her dream and
he had spoken to her. She had stood in the marketplace on the sun-baked
cobbles. Through the crowd she had seen the Mateu coming toward her. As he
neared all buyers and sellers and lookers faded to nothingness, leaving Kassia
alone in the plaza with the sorcerer-priest.
    He met her face to face. His lips moved. His hands gestured.
She willed herself to hear him, to understand, but his words tangled themselves
in the air. She expected censure, ridicule. She didn’t want to hear that.
    Then marketplace was peopled again and the air was filled
with the babble of their voices. The Mateu took her shoulders and turned her to
where her own cart sat. She saw herself seated there, reading the fortune of
one of the young priests-to-be. The Mateu murmured something in her ear, but
above the rumble of the market, it could not be heard. He shook her then, and
turned her face to his and spoke again. Now, finally, she heard him.
    “What
is the end of this?” he asked her. “What
results are gotten here? Whose good is served?” He shook her again. “Look around you,
Kassia Telek.”
    She did look around her and she saw that her divination had
no effect. She told partial truths calculated to put money in her hands. These
things did not change lives. She had changed only one life today; there, as if
to accuse her, was the red-haired mother with her tiny bundle, watching her
across the market square.
    Kassia opened her eyes, swallowing against the lump in her
throat. Because of her, a heart that had known joy and contentment would now
know constant fear. But, she argued with herself, that fear might increase the
mother’s
vigilance—the
child might be saved because of her. But she couldn’t be certain. She had spoken from raw intuition,
not from knowledge, and that was both dangerous and foolish.
    Kassia pulled herself to her feet, wrapped her blanket about
her shoulders, and moved stiffly to the window. Though the morning was chill,
she pulled open the lattice and gazed up over the tops of houses to the Holy
Hill, where Lorant’s
kites bobbed high in the smoke-laden breeze. She searched for a little blue
bird-shaped kite with a golden tail, and found it. It had been a long time
since a shai