The Spirit Gate by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

second doorway to her left bearing the banner of
the Headmaster. Stepping toward it, she fell into a pool of sunlight so
intense, it blinded her.
    Caught in the brilliant flood, she hesitated, floundering in
light and silence. The Initiates’ regard was smothering; it made her break out in a sudden sweat. It was
as if Mat held her under a lamp that they might study her, perhaps judge her
worthiness to be here. The flesh of her back crept. Then someone in the watching
group coughed and Kassia bolted to the Headmaster’s parlor.
    The door was slightly ajar and she rapped at it quickly,
lightly. The sound echoed in the great empty hall like the report of the tiny,
paper-wrapped firecrackers Ursel Trava had purchased all the way from the Shin
Empire for last year’s
Summer Solstice festival. A voice acknowledged her with merciful swiftness and
she stepped into the parlor, half-closing the door behind her.
    The room was not what she expected. Somehow she had thought
the Headmaster’s
parlor would be austere. This room was luxurious, comfortable. Far more
comfortable, Kassia decided, than the angular little man who sat to her right
behind an imposing, carved writing table with his rod-straight back to a wall
full of books and scrolls. Her eyes rising to the buttery parchment and glowing
leather bindings (she had never seen leather in some of those colors), she
forgot the little man until he opened his mouth and expelled a voice like a
rusty pump lever.
    “What
do you want here, young woman?”
    She brought her eyes back to his narrow face and swept the
rapt curiosity from her own. “I . . .
I’ve come about
initiation, sir. Are you the Headmaster?”
    “Do
I look like the Headmaster?” he asked in return, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “Do you see a Mateu’s vestments on me?”
    “No,
sir. I do not.”
    “Then
I am not the Headmaster, who must, necessarily, be Mateu.”
    And bitter, you are, about that, prickly one, Kassia thought, and barely resisted the urge to scratch her nose. “I’d like to see the
Headmaster, then, if I may.”
    “I
am Damek. You will see me. You’ve
come about initiation, you said.” He paused to pick up a quill and open a large, leather-bound volume that
sat to one side on the table. “Very
well. What is the boy’s
name?”
    “There
is no boy. There is me. My name is Kassia Telek and I wish to enroll as an
Initiate. I wish to become a Mateu.”
    The not-Headmaster sat up even straighter (if that were
possible) and closed the book with a thud. “There has not been a female Mateu here since the
death of Marija of Ohdan.”
    “Yes.
So I’ve heard.” Kassia frowned at the closed book, willing him to open it again. To
write her name in it. “I
think it surely must be time for another, Master Damek.”
    His entire face squinted. “It is just Damek. I am Master of nothing. You call
only the Mateu ‘Master’, silly girl. You want
to be an Initiate and you don’t
even know that?”
    “How
can I know what I haven’t
been taught?” Kassia protested. “I
have the shai gifts. I believe I could use them best if I learned the things
Lorant can teach.”
    Damek’s
eyes, black and shiny as obsidian pebbles, darted to her hair and then away as
if its brightness hurt them. “Yes,
I can see that you’re
shai. As to your gifts, I’m
sure we’ve no use
for them here, such as they are. I’ve
heard of you—peddling
your petty magic in the marketplace. I doubt you’ve a legitimate bit of divination or enchantment to
your name. The power leaked out of your kind long ago. Why don’t you go back to your
elixirs and false fortunes and leave the work of Mat and Itugen to those
endowed with spiritual gifts?”
    Stung by the sheer acid in the man, Kassia very nearly did
turn and storm away. Her face burned with embarrassment, her fists clenched in
anger, her heart swelled with the desire to redeem herself. Before she could
bolt, her mind seized on the idea that this might be a test of some