The Spirit Gate Read Online Free PDF Page B

upon them and this year hopes were higher than ever
before. There had been much rain, but no flooding, the new growth in the
forests was lush, the soil regaining its fertility.
    It was a new year for Kassia, too, though she planted
nothing. She was plying a trade now, and therefore must have a suitable
offering—something
more than the little vials of herbals she had left at their altar at Solstice.
    “I’m going to give
firebirds,” Beyla told her as they made the journey to Dalibor’s village cesia.
    Across the Pavla Yeva they went, on the new bridge of stone
and wood, past the tangle of uprooted trees and debris on its opposite shore,
through the stark, silent forest with its wraith-trees, and up the long, rocky
hill—Little Holy
Hill, they called it in deference to the larger mount upon which Lorant sat.
    They were part of a procession of worshipers, each bringing
to their God and Goddess a small portion of what was theirs by right. Ahead of
them, Mistress Devora carried a fine, big loaf of braided bread—the best of the
morning’s batch,
Kassia knew. She also knew that, somewhere behind, the Kovar family carried one
of the little bronze figurines Blaz had taken to having his oldest boy make in
practice for the day when he would run the forge. Generally, they were flawed;
Bohdan’s hand was
not yet as sure as his sire’s;
but they represented whatever Blaz considered his most important job of the
year past.
    Kassia took a deep breath of the forest’s damp air with its
warring scents of decay and vitality, and fingered the contents of her pocket.
There was a vial of herbal there—a
headache remedy that had sold well during her brief tenure in the marketplace—and a silver alka. It
wasn’t enough—wasn’t even appropriate.
She was selling the future; the money was only a result. The Mateu, she knew,
didn’t frown on
people leaving money at the altar, but her mother had.
    “Kiska,” she’d
said, “the Gods
don’t ask for
much from us here—that
we love them, that we think of them as we would think of our parents. If you
asked me for a part of myself, would I give you a mere coin?”
    Kassia and Beyla joined the line of worshipers now winding
up the last hundred yards of rutted path to the sacred place atop the hill and
took their place at the fringes of the gathering. She still didn’t know what she had to
give in this New Year.
    The worship leader today was a priest; the Mateu only came
to the village cesia during the high holy days and the harvest festival. Kassia
was too young to remember when there had been a priestess at worship as well.
Some villages still had them, but it was rare; public sentiment had so turned
against Itugen’s
daughters during the dark days of the Tamalid empire, that women were all but
banned from performing rites on the hilltops of Polia. Kassia’s own mother might
have been a Mateu had things been different, but Itugen’s blessing hat been withdrawn from the shai—no, from the entire land.
    The priest was of middle age—a weary-looking soul, whose devotions seemed not to
revive him in the least. He called the blessing of Mat down upon the assemblage
then implored Itugen to grant a bountiful year. After reminding his flock that
a new year meant new beginnings and a blossoming of hope, he led them in the
chants.
    Kassia watched his lined face when she could see it around
the shoulders of the man in front of her. She suspected that if someone were to
interrupt him in the midst of his litany, he would never be able to start up
again. It was all rote to him, and she doubted he would know what hope was if
it reared up and kissed him on the nose. Her mouth twisted in a wry grimace.
The poor man had no doubt lived most of his life under the oppression of the
Tamalids. For him, hope must be a dim memory at best. Kassia turned her head to
find Beyla perched in a tree just behind her. He saw her and smiled.
    You will know hope as more than a word , she told
him silently.
    When