The Scholomance (17 page)

She took a few
steps to placate him, then swung back. “Who was it?” she called.

He too paused
and turned back. “I beg your pardon?”

“Which one of
you spoke for her?”

“Whyever would
you assume it was a Master?”

“Please. No
student would ever argue with one of you over something like this. Was it you?”

“I? No.” He gave
her another of those speculative stares and finally smiled. “It was Master
Kharnath. I can’t think you’ve met, so the information is utterly meaningless
to you.”

“Why did he do
it?”

“Is it so
impossible to believe one of us capable of mercy and affection?”

“Yes. Why did he
do it?”

“I believe he
was fucking her,” he replied mildly. He reached up and passed a hand over his
left eyebrow, then returned it to his shoulder. “Does that satisfy you,
darling?”

She thought
about it and slowly shook her head. “It doesn’t follow.”

“No?”

“She’s gone
either way, so why not let her die? And don’t try that mercy/affection line on
me twice.”

“You disappoint
me. I suppose that was bound to happen eventually, but I confess it comes as a
blow.” Horuseps came towards her, his head canted and motionless at each step. “We
do feel, Mara. Perhaps not in the same fashion or to so stirring a height as
humankind, but we feel. The baser emotions come easiest, I admit that, but lust
does not preclude love. Whether Kharnath truly cared for her, I do not know,
but he asked that her life be spared. And one life, after all, means little one
way or the other. To humor him, we spared her.”

He knew, though.
Everything he said sounded plausible, but what he did not say spoke louder. She
could see only the broadest outlines of his thoughts behind his curtained mind,
not enough to guess whether that dark blot under the water were a rotting log
or a hungry crocodile, but she did know that he knew why this Kharnath had
saved Alanza’s life and he was not surprised by the reason, whatever the reason
was.

At the same
time, it felt like truth when he said his kind could have affection. At least,
it felt like truth that he was disappointed when she said he did not.

She sensed that
she could be sure, just dive in and take an unclouded look at him before he
pushed her back out—if he could—but she was not wholly impervious to the memory
of the hollow man’s mouth opening and closing one last time. She did nothing.

“It’s early yet.
If you’ve other observations to make, perhaps you’d better return to my
quarters and make them at your leisure.” Horuseps lifted one arm and swept it
back in a grand invitation, smirking at her. “One may upon occasion bend the
lesser of our rules, but it is a right that can be earned only with time. Formidable
as you are, you may not wander at your will.”

She acknowledged
this with a nod, but held up a hand to decline his offer. “Some other time. I’ll
wait for the bell in my own cell.”

“Pity. We might
have passed the time so pleasantly.”

“So I could be
dragged across the Nave screaming that you’d seduced me?”

“It amuses me
that you assume my interests are physical. Have you never heard of pleasant
conversations? Besides which, fornications are only forbidden between students.”

“How unfair.”

“We are your
Masters, my dear, not your equals.”

“Then order me
to join you.”

His eyes flashed
brilliantly white for just an instant. “Is that a challenge, little one?” he
asked, his lips barely moving, frozen in his smile.

“Maybe it’s a
test. Why should you have all the fun?”

“Mmm.” His
fingers twitched, and his smile broadened. “Then I say goodnight. I give no
orders at the whim of a student, no matter how precious she may be.”

“Goodnight then.”

He was watching
as she walked away, and letting her know with what carnal delights he might
otherwise have relished her company, but the rock took away the crawling of his
thoughts in just a few dozen steps and then she was alone again.

Alone.

Her feet slowed,
then stopped. There were no echoes, not of her footsteps, nor of lingering
minds, and in that awful silence, she considered turning back. An hour or two
in the company of a demon was better, infinitely better, than silence.

Mara found her
way back to her cell and shut herself in. She sat on the floor and withdrew
from the discomfort of the cold, flat stone to the numb oblivion of the Panic
Room. She switched off the monitors, hovered in space, and watched the
Mindstorm’s distant thunder and flash. It was not in Kimara Warner’s character
to miss people or to wish for companionship or to feel lonely. She only knew
that there was something misplaced inside of her. She switched the monitors
back on and waited out the time until first-bell, wondering what was wrong.

*
         
*
         
*

At the tolling
of the bell, Mara got up. It took some doing. Her limbs, stiff and bruised,
were even slower to respond now than they had been in the night. Her body,
unrested, felt heavy and difficult to balance. Her first experimental steps
sent her clumsily up against the cell wall to rub at her feet until they felt a
little less like blocks of wood.

When she finally
managed to hobble out into the tunnel, it was silent. Most of the doors she
passed on her long way to the ephebeum were still locked and uninhabited, but a
few opened on empty rooms. She paused now and then to look in on them,
unashamedly handling the sparse possessions she found and examining the
adaptations these strangers had made with what magic they’d managed to pick up.
Almost all of them had tried to make a softer bed, either by stacking spare
robes or by scraping out a pit to fill with grainy sand. Some had even widened
the interior of the cell, making quite a large space for themselves, but she
saw no tool marks in the rock to indicate how. One of the cells had a ledge
carved in to act as a kind of table; he or she had shaped little chess pieces
and was well on the way to checking an opponent who may or may not exist. Another
had drawn over damned near every inch of the walls, mostly crude cartoons
wherein monstrous penises spat improbably huge puddles of semen over goliath
breasts. She didn’t touch the furnishings in that room. One cell held a neat
row of three skulls, one of them with hair. Another, a deeply-carved stone box.
But the vast majority were as empty and featureless as her own.

Well, hers wasn’t
going to stay that way. Finding Connie may take a while, especially if she was
only allowed to search during certain hours. She might as well build a bed as
sleep on the stone and resent it. Idle hands and all that. She was altogether
too close to the Devil to be tempting him with a workshop.

There! Someone
ahead of her. Two someones, arguing the principles of entropic decay in the
human life-force. She couldn’t hear their words, only the drift of their
thoughts, until the passage opened up and Mara stepped out into the ephebeum. The
debate raged on; the two students thus engaged did not notice Mara until she
came within arm’s reach of them, and when they did, they were immediately unified
by expressions of scorn.

Mara hadn’t
intended to speak to them. There was no need. She’d tapped at their minds as
soon as she’d sensed them and already knew neither one knew Connie by name. Short
of ripping through their memories day by day, looking for her face, that was
all she could do. And if it came to that, she’d do it, but it was bound to be a
lengthy process that would leave some scars (it may, in fact, leave pudding in
place of a brain, she didn’t know) so it needed to be a last resort. Their
contempt needled her, but contempt could be ignored. On the other hand, his, “Ah,
the whore of the harrowing,”
that
needed an answer.

Mara turned
around. She was cool, calm. “Excuse me?” she said, knowing what was coming.

The man she
faced shrugged elaborately as his debate partner sniggered. “I understand. This
place.” He glanced around. “It breeds desperation in the weak-minded. And you,
a woman, it is easy for you to buy favor. It is intuitive. But tell me, does
the Scrivener even
have
a cock?”

“I see.” Mara
smiled thinly. “
I
must be a whore, because
you
can think of no
other way to escape the harrowing.”

He shrugged
again. His companion laughed, imagining her over the Scrivener’s desk, every
orifice plugged by the monster’s loathsome, boneless body. It was making him
hard.

“Of course, it
is Horuseps who tests the harrowed,” Mara said. “Did I fuck him, too?”

“Him?” The man’s
honest confusion curdled into deeper derision. “Master Horuseps is no ‘him’.”

They shared
laughter, richly amused by this woman, this girl who sought mysteries above her
station and did not know how to look at the truth of her own eyes. Mara, who
had been inside the demon’s mind, and knew damned well he was male, let them
laugh. She wasn’t here to educate them or to argue with them. “In any event, I’m
speaking,” she said. “So it should be obvious even to you that I came through
the harrowing honestly.”

“I’m sure,” the
man purred, while the donkey beside him brayed anew.

Why had she ever
stopped to argue with him in the first place? She might as well have painted a
target on her head…or quite a stretch further south. He’d gone and found a
button and now he was going to push it for all he was worth. Mara, who didn’t
honestly care what he called her at the moment, strongly suspected she was
going to hate the sound of his voice before too damn long at all. For now,
however, she kept walking.

“Do not worry,
little slut-child,” the man called after her. “You will have many chances to
grease your pretty holes. I would not have the Scrivener’s leavings in any
case, would you, Loki?”

The laughing
jackass thought about it, in every possible position. “Never,” he said,
wondering where Mara slept at night, wondering how best to follow, how many he
would need to hold her down. They laughed some more, and then took up their old
roles of argument again, this time in a new thread: “She won’t last out the
month, will she, Le Danse?”

“You allow for
an entire month? A week, I say. She’ll run out of cum to drink and die of
thirst.”

The donkey
laughed. “Die of thirst!”

“‘Him,’ she
said. Him! Master Horuseps! How foolish a whore not to recognize the shape of
her own livelihood? Perhaps her eyes were gummed shut.”

“By what, one
wonders.”

“One does
indeed, Loki. Why did such a foolish whore ever come to this place? Who would
expect to find trade in the ephebeum so soon after first-bell?”

Mara turned
around.

“She’s heard
you, Danse. Beware!”

“Her ears are
clean yet. You! Whore! Why are you here?”

“I was looking
for the garderobe,” Mara said.

“Here?” Both
laughed. Loki laughed hardest, slapping at his thighs while sneaking peeks at
his friend. “Here, you silly slut?”

“Here. I
followed the smell of shit.”

Donkey-boy kept
laughing, but his friend stopped cold. “Use your mouth for sucking cocks,” he
said. “Talk gets little girls into trouble.”

‘Be subtle,’
thought Mara, feeling out his intentions. ‘Be calm.’ “A little girl would be
all you could manage. Come put me in my place.”

He wanted to. He
thought he could do it. He knew the Word of Entropy, even if he hadn’t mastered
it yet. He couldn’t speak it correctly each time, but he’d done it before. If
he used it now, he could wither the whore’s flesh, rot her haughty face away
with a touch. But if he tried and failed…as so often he failed…he would have
her laughter to endure, and Loki’s like as not, and then all the school’s by
first-bell tomorrow…

He chose to be
magnanimous. “The garderobe lies through that passage,” he said, tossing his
chin to show the way. “Through the tunnel opposite the bath. It is marked,
idiot.”

The archway
above the tunnel he indicated had been carved by vaguely Egyptian-looking
glyphs: an inverted bowl over a double-row of wavy water lines. A crude
cistern, perhaps. It served to orient her in the windowless room, at least. Mara
went, letting the rock take the whispers first and the men’s thoughts second,
and came quickly to a crossroads with a fairly predictable odor.

She checked, and
found all four short passages leading from this point went to more or less
identical rooms. In each, water emerged from several holes high along one wall
and converged together in a series of channels that flowed across the full
length of the floor, until it dropped down into a narrow, noisome hole, where
it was presumably carried out of the mountain. Disgusting, but functional, and
certainly not as bad as it could have been.

Mara probed the
hall, found herself alone, then hiked her robe and urinated, splashing herself
with clean water in lieu of paper, and covering quickly. She probed again;
someone was coming. The surrounding rock made it difficult to read just who,
but she was reasonably sure this someone was neither Le Danse or laughing-boy
Loki. Hmm, to stay and pretend to be caught unawares, or confront someone who
might just be coming to take a leak?

She’d been
subtle enough for one day. She went out to meet the interloper.

Sallow light
from a glowing blister showed her a woman in a black robe standing at the crossroads,
holding what looked like a white sheet in her arms. The woman turned, and Mara
saw surprise flash over a face she actually knew. It was the woman who had
taken charge of her after she’d been brought into the mountain: Lynn, the black
widow, or Desdemona, as she called herself here.

“So it is you!”
the woman gasped.