The Scholomance (27 page)

“Obviously, it’s
not that easy.”

“Oh, the pure
hell of it is, it
is
that easy. It simply isn’t a power we possess. Only
humans know the ways of opening Gates and building Roads, and they have
forgotten how. Just as our magic eludes their minds, so does that one elude
ours.” He was quiet for a moment. “That
one
,” he breathed, staring at
the wall. And a little later, “
All
of us.” At last, he shook his head
and said, “There again, behold the indisputable work of God.” He glanced
around, his eyes lighting here or there as he studied the contents of the Reliquary.
“Have you seen enough?”

“I suppose so. Have
you shown me enough?”

“In this room,
yes.” He caressed her cheek, then straightened up and clasped his long hands
together. “You can, if you like, continue to search the tunnels without, as I
know you’re keen to find your poor lost lamb, but if she has found her way here
below, the story shan’t end well. We don’t come down here often.”

“I would like to
look, thank you.”

He waited a
moment, then laughed again, a far more natural laugh for him—one that was sly
and filled with unspoken humor. “I note you do not gallantly urge me on about
my own business, however.”

“I want my story
to end well.”

A strange look
came over his face, a strange feeling rippled across the well-armored surface
of his mind. “One man’s happy ending is another’s tragedy, they say. It all
depends upon one’s perspective.”

“I’m only
interested in my own.”

“I see. Well,
one can always hope. Even here…” Horuseps joined her out in the hall and looked
back into the little room, his hand raised to close the rock over it. It seemed
to Mara that his gaze rested on the little skull, and grew pensive again,
eerily handsome in his gravity. “Even here, we are allowed hope. I’m not
certain yet if that’s one of God’s little jokes…or His gift.”

This side of him
fascinated her.

After a moment,
he stirred, lowered his hand, and let the rock roll soundlessly in and seal
itself. Horuseps smiled down at her—a broad, beaming smile—and gestured on
ahead. “Any door you will, dear Mara,” he invited. “We’ll look for her
together.”

*
         
*
         
*

A thorough
search lasted all day and left Mara exhausted both physically and mentally. Horuseps,
as good as his word, took her patiently turn by turn throughout the secret
passages beneath the Nave, only returning to that cathedral-like cavern after
the last of them had been opened, lit, and examined. They found artifacts from
ancient lives in the form of candles, broken cups and bowls, even a heavy
tarnished ring which Horuseps remarked was the signet by which they once
denoted the acolytes, before they’d hit on the idea of different colored robes.
They found several students hidden away to engage in furtive, often brutal acts
of sex, although thankfully, none of it was of the sort that would have meant a
tribunal. They found the skeletal remains of two others, both so decayed by
time as to make her certain neither one could have been Connie. They even found
the stash of some unknown student’s stolen library books, which Horuseps picked
up and carried with him. But at last, there were no more tunnels to walk
through, no more doors to open. She simply wasn’t down here.

“This makes no
sense,” Mara snapped, limping over to a bench so that she could see the damage
a day-long barefoot hike had done instead of just feel it. “She has to be here
somewhere!”

“Agreed. Yet try
not to be so discouraged—my, that looks painful—you have already seen more of
the school than most of your peers, and there is still much left to search. And
really, this is a good sign—here, child, let me see it.” Horuseps put his books
on the bench and knelt before her. Taking one of her sore feet into his cool,
thin hands he gently began stroking it. “It takes determination and great
effort to elude my eyes. If your little friend was merely lost, one of us would
have surely found her by now. That we have not—” He released her foot, whole
and pink and pain-free, and picked up the other. “—would seem to indicate that
she must be actively hiding herself.”

“Or someone else
is hiding her.”

“It amounts to
the same thing, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t mean a
friend. I mean maybe someone took her and put her someplace. Maybe she can’t
get to where we’d find her.”

“Oh, I’m sure
that isn’t true.”

He’d lied to
her. She couldn’t see his real thoughts, but she knew the lie when he spoke it
and his hands were still stroking her feet. She’d heard him lie like that
before, when he’d said he didn’t know why his fellow Master had chosen to spare
the life of the doomed girl at the tribunal. This time, she wasn’t about to let
it go.

“Where do you
think she is, Horuseps?”

“I’m sure I don’t
kn—” He looked sharply at his hands, then up at her. He let go of her foot. “Know,”
he finished smoothly, and smiled. “There. All better.”

“Do you think
she’s dead?”

He merely looked
at her, his smile slipping by degrees until he was entirely serious. He sighed.
“It’s possible,” he said quietly. “I shan’t lie to you.”

“Not about that,”
she observed. “Then where is she? I know you have an idea.”

“I have many,
and therefore, I refuse to speculate.” He glanced upwards and a second later,
the bells rang, four of them. His mouth twisted, not into a victorious smile,
which would have made her dead positive he had rung them himself, but in what
sure felt like sincere irritation. He stood up as the first students poured
into the Nave from the dining room, assuming his stateliest pose while
attempting to continue the conversation without raising his voice. “What I will
tell you now is that students die here quite often.”

“Because you
kill them.”

“Some, yes. But
by no means all, or even most. By far the greatest killer is illness or
infection. Did you not wonder why it is always I who opens the portcullis,
Mara? It is so that I can See the blood that is drawn from each aspirant, and
cull death before it finds us. I’m sure it helps, but the damp, the chill, the
mingling of so many peoples in such close quarters…all conspire to breed
virulent, deadly disease. Were we to make a count even now, we would find not
one human in five wholly free of it. Then we have the rock.” He reached out to
give the wall behind her a pat. “Slick at times, jagged at others, and always
unforgiving. Bones break, wounds fester, and students die.”

“Let’s not
forget those who kill each other,” Mara said.

“Indeed, no. Nor
those who kill themselves, although I daresay these are also well in the
minority. There are humans of a predatory nature here, but well they know that
when their prey are made extinct, they will have no one to feed on but other
predators…perhaps stronger predators. And so they are careful, darling Mara, to
let their rabbits slip the snare after they’ve had their fun. As for the
suicides, well, it is fear of death which keeps our students so long among us.”

“And how many
students hide from you?”

“How am I to
answer that? I hadn’t yet realized we were missing the two whose unfortunate
remains are cluttering up our saculleum. As I have mentioned, precious, there
simply aren’t that many students we notice at all.”

“Then what’s the
point of threatening them with a tribunal if they cut too many classes? What,
do you just pick a guy at random and say—”

He held up a
hand with a stern expression and she let that one go without finishing it,
although she could feel her temper rising right to the limits of her control. “We
have no need,” Horuseps said, frowning at her. “Our students hang themselves
without our rope, dearest.”

“But how can you
tell?” she demanded. “If everyone is so beneath your notice, how can you be
sure?”

“It is difficult
to explain to one without Sight…You!” His mind reached out past her, snatching
at one of the students surrounding them. “Human called Enoch, come here.”

An older,
bearded man in a white robe came skulking forward at the command, his back bent
and hands pale where they pressed together.

“Now,” said
Horuseps, knotting his fingers impersonally in the man’s hair and pulling him
upright. “When I brought this distinguished gentleman out of his harrowing, I
set a mark upon him, invisible, indelible. Here.” Horuseps touched one inky
fingertip to the point between and just a bit above the man’s eyes. “The mark
fades fairly swiftly, however. Each day, it must be renewed by passing through
a Master’s door into the theater of his art. If ever I, or any other Master,
were to discover a student in whom the mark of study has gone entirely dark, we
have only to make a note of
 
it. Here.” Now
he gestured at the neophyte’s cheek, just below his eyes. “Upon the day of
Opening, these marks of truancy are forgiven, the slate struck clean. Our fine
friend here has somehow managed to allot himself three days truancy in a very
short span of time. Naughty boy.”

The neophyte’s
eyes bulged. Mara tapped at him, frowning, and sure enough, he had spent three
days sneaking down to the highest levels of the library to read rather than
attend class.

“You can see
this?” Mara asked dubiously. She looked, but no angle, no flex of mental
effort, nothing permitted her any special vision.

“And I teach
others to See, also. Run along, Enoch. In the same manner, each instructor
marks his students indelibly for each year of attendance. We don’t have to
remember them,” he concluded as the neophyte raced off down the wide stair to
the ephebeum. “We have only to read what’s written. The irony of this is that
if a student were only to
stay
truant, he could avoid his tribunal indefinitely.
Perhaps your Connie knows this.”

“Perhaps.”

“But you don’t
believe it.” Horuseps studied her out of the corner of his eyes as he watched
the students clear the stair. “You don’t have a very high opinion of your
little lamb’s intelligence, do you?”

“She’s here, isn’t
she?”

Horuseps
chuckled.

“Connie always
did have more enthusiasm than study-smarts,” Mara admitted. “And enthusiasm can
take you only so far. If you haven’t got anything to back it up, you end up…”

“Here?”

“In a bad way,
regardless of where.”

“You’re here,”
Horuseps observed with a small smile.

“I cheated my
way through school,” Mara answered. “I don’t have any more brains than Connie,
but I’m not enthusiastic either. I think it evens out.”

“I see.” The
Nave was nearly empty now, and Horuseps looked up again with that same
distracted, annoyed expression. “Forgive me, Bittersweet, I’ve kept you far
longer than was my intent. I release you to your bed of hunger and to sleep.” He
bowed low, and turned away.

“Won’t you offer
to take me back to your place and feed me?”

His mental armor
was so well-prepared that she couldn’t even tell if she’d surprised him. He
glanced back, his brows twitching, but his smile was only polite. “I’m afraid I
must decline your most intriguing offer tonight. I’ve business elsewhere.” He
started away, paused, then said, “If you seek the comforts of cup and platter,
perhaps Kazuul could accommodate you?”

“I’m hurt. You’re
throwing me over.”

His smile
remained, still polite, only slightly strained. “It is complicated,” he said.

“How so?”

“Because you
complicate them.” He bowed again, placed his hands to his shoulders, and swept
away.

She wasn’t alone
long.

“Hey!”

Mara sighed. She’d
felt him in the crowd, of course, and knew that he’d been lurking behind a
pillar, but she had rather hoped that he would move on without her.

“Hey!” A hand
caught her sleeve and tugged it. “Hey, I saved you some dinner. Where were you
all day?”

“Busy.” Mara
headed for her cell. Her overused legs still ached, particularly in the knees,
but her feet felt great.

“Doing what? Here.
I was worried about you,” Devlin continued as Mara gazed contemplatively into
her hand, dripping now with greasy chunks of much-handled meat. “Someone said
they saw you leaving with Master Horuseps this morning and he never showed up
at class.”

“Why was anyone
even watching? And do you have any bread? I can’t eat this.”

“Um…no, but I
have a…a…Christ, I don’t know. A turnip? Is this a turnip?”

“It might be a
parsnip,” said Mara doubtfully, exchanging the meat for the knobby root he
offered.

“Some kind of
nip, I dunno. And what do you mean, ‘Why were they watching’?” Devlin gave her
look of scorn that would have done Le Danse proud. “People notice you, and even
if they didn’t, they’d for damn sure notice Horuseps. Where did you go?”

“He was helping
me look.”

Devlin gave her
a blank stare. “For what?”

“For Connie, you
ass.”

“No, I meant for
what as in, what for? Why was he helping you? Masters don’t help.”

“I don’t know. Maybe
it amused him. Maybe it was the first time anyone had asked. I don’t really
care.” The parsnip, or whatever it was, was hard as wood in her hand. She
tucked it into her sleeve, ignoring the urgent snarls of her stomach,
determined not to wolf anything until she got to her own private cell.

“Did you find
her?” Devlin asked, trotting at her heels.

“Is she standing
here, you idiot?”

“That doesn’t
mean you didn’t find…I mean,” he amended hurriedly, when she gave him a black
stare, “She might have been hurt.”

His evasiveness
reminded her of Horuseps. She replayed some of his conversation as she walked,
and finally said, “Have you ever been sick, Devlin?”