The Scholomance (22 page)

The doors didn’t
budge, not even to hum this time, but Mara, without any hesitation, slipped her
hands down to the curved horns of the pleading demon, and pulled them easily
apart. She was not surprised. It was impossible that any intelligence could
hear that word and not obey. Late that night, she would think this hugely
conceited of herself, but at the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable. She
pulled the doors open and stood between them and felt, just for a moment, ready
to take whatever hidden thing laired within and crush it in her fist.

‘I’m here to
find Connie,’ she thought, and that tight, feral sense of triumph faded. Connie.
Right. This wasn’t a challenge, but a search. She let go of the doors.

Air breathed
over her in one long, slow draft, but only once. It brought with it a musty
smell, reminding her in a vague way of attics or basements—a dark place, where
forgotten things gathered dust.

Very dark. In
the dim glow spilling in from the hall, Mara could make out the pregnant bulge
of another lamp on her right, but it wasn’t working at the moment. Moving
slowly, testing each step, Mara felt her way through the doors and along the
rock wall until her fingers brushed over the waxy lump of the blister-lamp. Light
was slow in coming and it guttered badly when it did, but it was illumination
enough to make out the next lamp, and the next, until she had awakened all five
set in the wide outer ring of this classroom.

Because that was
just what this was, another theater. No bigger, and not really more impressive
than any of those below her in the lyceum. Disappointed, Mara climbed carefully
down the risers to the empty dais, then turned at the bottom and looked up at
her footprints in the dust. They were deep, deep enough to cast shadows in the
bottom. She was the first person to walk here in years, in centuries maybe.

They’d closed it
off for some reason. Maybe the demon who taught here had died, or left the
mountain, or moved on to another part of it to work. Strange, that they wouldn’t
salvage any of his stuff, she thought, as she ran her eyes over shelves of
glass jars and boxes, books and archaic objects, all heavily-grimed with
neglect.

This was likely
to be her only chance to fully explore a theater. Mara headed for the stair
behind the Master’s dais. It was wide, steep, and dropped down into absolute
black—too inviting to resist. She had very little light, none at all after she’d
rounded the second corner, but she went slow and kept her hands on the wall,
hoping at each step to come across one of the blister-lamps.

After an
eternity of climbing down in a black spiral, she finally caught a glimmer of
light at the bottom. It grew as she approached, enough to make out an open
doorway, covered in layers of hanging curtains, no less. They waved in the grip
of a cold breeze, spilling out slivers of tantalizing light with each lazy
billow of crimson, black, and gold.

‘This is it,’
Mara thought, with no real idea of what ‘it’ was. She crossed the final
distance in a few short steps, letting determination lead her when common sense
might fear to tread. The curtains were thick and old, but although ragged, they
didn’t have that greasy/fuzzy feel of neglected fabric. When she passed between
them, they tried to cling to her, and she was compelled to move completely out
of their reach, not into daylight, but into a natural light all the same.

The draft, of
course. The freshness of the air she breathed. These things had been obvious to
her, but the moon held her transfixed. The far wall was open, the whole of it,
without a ledge or even a rail to keep idle wanderers from stepping off and
into oblivion. Mara went, mindful of the danger, but she had to go. The moon
would be no closer, really, for her few extra steps, but she went. She had
forgotten it was so beautiful. She had forgotten how the stars would shine. And
they were no different here, in the Scholomance’s mountain of secret arts, than
they were out the window of her bedroom in her mother’s house. Somehow, that
didn’t seem fair.

Nothing
happened, nothing changed, but the air grew somehow denser. She wasn’t alone
here. She knew she wouldn’t be.

“They told me
the time between first-bell and last was daytime,” she said.

Her voice didn’t
ring boldly out into the room. The open air pushed it back. The stone walls
swallowed it. It was the voice of an insect.

His was far more
impressive—deep and rolling, relaxed, even amused, but never human, never that.

“Days are that by
which mortals measure time’s passage. For simplicity’s sake, we call it so. As
our students seeth not the sky, what harm?”

Mara turned
toward him, not fast. He rose from his lazy crouch in the shadows just as
slowly, as deliberately. The carving on the door had been a very good likeness
after all. His skin was grey and rough even to look at, like living stone,
raised and thick where the ivory spikes pierced through. His hair was black and
very fine, and waved out behind him in the same breeze that moved the curtains.
His eyes glowed green, just a little.

“Shall I
disrobe?” he asked, indicating the ornate buckle of his plated belt.

“Disrobe?” Mara
echoed, frowning.

“So I must
assume, as thou hast come to my bedchamber.” He motioned, and true enough,
there was a bed, crafted in a wide oval, with a stone lip all around and great
bat-wings looming at its head.

Mara raised her
eyebrows. “Do you sleep?” she wondered.

“Nay, not often,”
the demon replied affably. “Yet I do fuck, and one must have one’s comforts.” He
cocked his head, spreading his mouth in a wide, humorless smile. “Thou dost not
flee, nor rebuke, nor submit to me. How curious. I suppose thou hast some
request to make. Speak it.”

“Is that my
prize for finding you?” Mara asked.

“Thy life and
mine indulgence should satisfy thy wish for prizes,” he answered. He came toward
her, his eye roving freely as he circled and came to a stop before her,
bringing his gaze up with aggressive insolence to at last meet her own. There,
for an instant, his smile splintered. His nostrils flared. Slowly, his
indulgent smirk melting into a look of narrowed disbelief, he reached up and
touched a claw to the thin skin below her left eye.

She didn’t
flinch.

The demon looked
at them, each one in its turn, then at her altogether for a very long time. Suddenly,
he smiled. “I see the glint of gold at thy slender throat,” he said, taking
back his hand. His breath on her face was hot, like an animal’s. “Thou must
belong to someone, to have won such privilege. And yet thou art here, come
seeking me.”

“I wasn’t
looking for you.”

“Nay?” He
straightened and folded his arms, smiling that tolerant smile. Up close, it had
a distinctly predatory shine. “Then who?”

“A student,”
Mara said. “She came here two years ago, a woman my age…perhaps you’ve seen
her.”

“Nay,” he said,
flicking his fingers on one bicep in an offhand wave of dismissal. “I have seen
no students for many years. Centuries, perhaps. None save thee, o fearless one.”

“Why not? Did
you stop teaching?”

He closed his
eyes and opened them again. It was not quite a blink. His smile never shifted,
but his eyes glowed brighter. “I tired of that game,” he told her. “Perhaps too
soon. Thy manner is much changed from those I once knew…the world has moved on,
and thou art new-come to it, I think. How many years hast thou?”

“Why?”

“I do not lie
with children, no matter how prettily they do beseech me at my bedside.”

“After centuries
of retirement, you’d be robbing the cradle even if I said ‘a hundred,’” Mara
countered. “So what difference does it make?”

He uttered a
low, noncommittal sound and eyed her again, unabashed in his scrutiny. “And how
art thou called, thee of so many years?”

“You’re the
Master here. You can call me what you like. Why all the questions?”

He chuckled,
still inspecting the shape beneath her voluminous robes. “I wished to see how
thou wouldst answer, and so I have. Even silence telleth secrets here. Evasiveness
doth scream them. Yet I will have thy name.”

And then she
felt him, reaching his mind like a hand into hers, open so as to snatch
something out. He struck the solid wall of her Panic Room. She waited to see shock
broaden the features of his inhuman face, but it never showed. He looked
thoughtful, only that, and even a little pleased.

“It’s Mara,” she
said.

His eyes flashed
and focused sharply on her.

“And what do I
call you?” she continued.

He did not
answer right away. It took a long time for the surprise to fade out of his
features, leaving behind a narrow wariness like a stain. This was not a demon
like Horuseps or Malavan, whose minds were strange and difficult to grasp but
essentially pliant. If she’d wanted to, she knew she could open Horuseps like
an oyster and take whatever meat there was, but she’d never get far with her
treasure and she knew that too. This demon…his mind was perfectly black to her,
perfectly armored. Here was a telepath, she realized. Not like Horuseps, who
knew she was reading him and sometimes put thoughts out for her to take, but a
true telepath with a Panic Room of his own, only his was a Stronghold, a
Fortress. She would get nothing from him but what he chose to tell her.

Mara rolled her
eyes and turned around, moving toward the stair. “You may enjoy games,” she
said pointedly, not slowing. “I expect my questions answered.”

“Thou hypocrite,”
he said without sting. He didn’t follow her, but after she’d passed the
curtains and had her foot on the first step, suddenly called, “I am Kazuul, to
mortal tongue. So thou mayest call me.” When she paused, he added, “So much
thou wouldst learn at thy first clever inquiry, so hear it first from me, Mara.
Know thy Master. Know Kazuul and return.”

His last words
were spoken in tones of unmistakably sensual intensity, a purr and not a growl.
She wanted to say something, if only ‘We’ll see about that,’ but she knew how
it would sound. Against the thunderous baritone of the demon’s voice, the most
rebellious words in the world could only be reedy and petulant. It hadn’t been
wise to spar with him in the first place. She wouldn’t compound the error now. She
left him without speaking, and suffered the low, indulgent laughter he sent
after her with fire burning in her chest.

*
         
*
         
*

“Did you find
her?” Devlin shouted.

He had to shout.
Third-bell had rung. This was the dining room. The Scholomance’s thousand
students squabbled over their dinner (or breakfast, considering what the hour
must be), which Mara again did not eat. She had been hungry enough on hearing
the bell, but once here, all appetite had left her. What was not killed by the
disgusting table manners of her fellow students had been thoroughly ruined by
the meal itself: wide platters sparsely piled with ribcages snapped open and
stuffed with even less appetizing hunks of unidentified meat and bone, all
undercooked and shiny with grease and blood. Looking at this, it was impossible
not to remember the dead man of the tribunal—had it only been just this
morning? Or evening. Or whatever. ‘For all I know, you’re eating them,’ she’d
said, and Horuseps had only smiled and murmured, ‘For all you know.’

“Mara! Hey,
Mara! Did you find your friend?” Devlin bellowed. So great was his anxiety, his
need to connect, that he reached across the table where he’d wedged himself in
shortly after she sat down, and shook her sleeve for attention, just like a
toddler to his preoccupied mother.

He hadn’t
forgiven her for their little exchange earlier, but after a few lonely hours
and one good cry, he had done the human thing and simply rewritten all the
parts he didn’t like, gradually convincing himself that her tone hadn’t been
quite so sharp and that anything that could be seen as, well, mean when taken
out of context had in fact been spoken out of concern by someone who clearly
wasn’t much of a people-person.

This part was
true. Mara wasn’t.

Now she shook
her head, mostly to shut him up without doing the indignity of bellowing back
at him like a sick sea lion.

“Well, don’t get
too discouraged!” Devlin shouted cheerfully. “I’ve been here a long time
already and I still hardly know anyone. We’re not, like, friendly.” He lunged
for another chunk of meat, took several punches for his trouble, and
relinquished it, rubbing grease into his cheek with a hurt expression. “Anyway,”
he continued, “This is a big place. And it’s just your first day. If you want,
I can help you look.”

Mara got up and
headed for the door.

‘You really must
eat something,’ came to her in the silkily silent voice of Horuseps, watching
from the Master’s table. ‘If the meat is not to your liking, I could perhaps
arrange better fare…a private meal, perhaps, in my chambers.’

Mara paused and
looked back at him. It surprised him some. His teasing offer had been just
that, teasing, and he’d thought she’d know it, which of course she had. Seeing
her stop as if considering it first startled, then intrigued him. He considered
it as well, but oddly, not as the right of a Master towards his beholden, but
as something furtive, something forbidden to be savored against the threat of
discovery.

**I went to the
top of the lyceum today,** she sent to him, ending that speculation.

He studied her,
closing off the good-humored openness of his mind. At length, he stood, rested
his hands on his shoulders, and glided toward her. The tables quieted a little
as he neared them, but such was the nature of the dining hall that it could never
be very quiet unless everyone shut up, so the roar went on. No, even Horuseps
couldn’t make it quiet, but what he did do was send Devlin—who had every
intention of trip-trapping at Mara’s heels all the way back to her cell—scuttling
back to the table instead. For that alone, Mara could afford to play his game. She
fell into step beside him and the two of them went out into the Nave together.