The Spirit Gate Read Online Free PDF

has time to play with me any more.”
    “Beyla,
Fedor is older than you are, and bigger.”
    “He’s only one year older,
and he’s bigger
because he works in the forge. He’s
going to be a blacksmith just like his father.”
    While you , Kassia thought, have no father to
be like . Her heart felt leaden in her chest. “I suppose we could ask your uncle Blaz if he’d teach you the family
trade along with his sons.” And faint hope he’d
agree.
    “But
that’s his family trade, not mine. I don’t
want to follow his trade. I want to follow yours.”
    Kassia laughed. “I
don’t have a
trade, Beyla.”
    “Yes
you do. You’re an
augur. I heard aunt Aska say so. Teach me how to be an augur too.”
    “I
don’t know . . .”
    “What
about spells? I can do spells.”
    She looked at him sharply. “You what?”
    His glance was sly. “You
let the fire go out last Matek. You forgot to bank it down. I know how angry
uncle Blaz gets when that happens. I saw you start it up again.”
    She stopped in the middle of the cobbled way and turned to
stare at him. “You
saw me . . .”
    “I
thought it was very clever of you, mama. Uncle Blaz never knew. I liked what
you did with those little firebirds. So, I taught myself to do it too.”
    Kassia didn’t
know whether to be aghast, amazed or anxious. “You taught yourself . . .?”
    He nodded, pride gleaming in his dark eyes. “Shall I show you?” He brought his hands up between them, fingertips touching and ready to
fly open.
    She caught his hands, stilling the spell she could feel
tingling, incredibly, beneath her palms. “Not here! Itugen mine, Beyla! You mustn’t do those things in
public! Has anyone ever seen you . . . make a spell?”
    “Only
Lenci. I made some of the little firebirds for her once. She thought they were
pretty.”
    “She
didn’t tell
anyone?”
    He shrugged. “Well,
she told Fedor and Bohdan, but they didn’t believe her. They laughed. They don’t have much
imagination, do they?”
    He surprised a laugh out of his mother with that, and
smiled, pleased with himself. Kassia shook her head and started them walking
again, toward the market. “All
right, little Mateu, since you’ve
discovered your gift, it only seems right that I should teach you how to use
it. But you must not tell anyone the things I teach you. And you mustn’t show Lenci any more
firebirds. The next person she tells may believe her.”
    “I’m not a Mateu,” Beyla told her solemnly. “I’m shai, like my
mother.”
    oOo
    Kassia was unable to raise her prices, so the day was no
more lucrative than the first, but she told herself that only meant it would
take a little longer than she had expected to make the necessary money. By the
end of the week, she had collected only fifteen rega and some small change.
That made it hard to be optimistic. If she must work for ten days to earn the
rent . . .
    No, she told herself stubbornly, that left plenty in which
to earn the remainder of their living expenses. Besides, there were still her
herbals. She sold those, too, in the marketplace of Dalibor, while Beyla acted
as a shill, using his unusual appearance and winsome manners to draw people to
the white-haired woman with the handcart full of herbal potions who would
handle some personal belonging, stare into their souls and tell them what of
their foreseeable future she thought they might wish to hear.
    She saw the watchful Mateu again on several occasions—at least she thought
it was the same one who’d
stared at her that first day. She thought, once, that he meant to speak to her,
but the well-timed appearance of a customer held him at bay. She was glad of
that; it would have galled her to be chided by one of the sorcerer-priests in
such a public place.
    When the day of worship arrived Kassia thought deeply about
what she would take to the cesia to offer to Itugen and
Mat. It was no ordinary worship day, but marked the first Celek of the New
Year. Planting season was