by R. Lee Smith
“So…there is a cup.”
He interrupted his unconcerned nibbling of Zyera’s coral-crusted cheek to cast a withering glance her way. “Yes. There is a cup.”
“Did Solomon make it or just own it?”
The other Masters were watching them, all with nearly identical expressions of amusement. No matter what they might have thought of her, they all relished the sight of Horuseps in interrogation. He knew it, played to it, but his mind grew increasingly dark to her, and cold.
“I’m sure he considered it his personal symbol of power, particularly while he was here, but whether he crafted it himself or ordered his alchemists to create it…or plundered it from some other lord’s treasury, I’ve no idea. I wouldn’t have thought it noteworthy enough for its legend to survive so many centuries. It’s really rather a dull thing to look at.”
His use of tense intrigued her. “Is it still here?” she asked, brushing the last bread crumbs off her robe.
Horuseps looked away, his lips tightening, and endured Zyera’s giggles with an expression of pained resignation. “Perhaps I should show you. Would that satisfy your curiosity?”
“Probably not, but it sounds like a good way to kill an hour.”
“Very well then.” Horuseps dropped a kiss on Zyera’s bristling brow and stood up. “Follow me.”
“Now? Don’t you have class soon?”
“I’m sure my students will eventually notice my absence and find another theater in which to prove hopelessly inadequate. Your wishes prevail. Come.”
They left the dining hall and went out into the Nave, where students who had lost the battle for a handful of gruel skulked on their way either to the lyceum or back to the ephebeum. They all bowed to the demon, but there were a lot of dirty looks for Mara beneath the respectfully-lowered hoods.
“You’re gaining a reputation,” Horuseps remarked.
“I’ve had one most of my life.”
“But not here.” Horuseps glanced at her, sighed, and said, “Dear child, if I may make an observation, you act as though this place is no different from any other you have known. It is. You act as though the humans who inhabit it are no more dangerous than the humans you have always lived among. They are. You act as though there are protections in place to hold order over them, but all protections come through the Masters, and you are deliberately avoiding the one who offers you shelter.”
“That’s three observations.”
He sighed again and gave her head a pat. “No one likes a know-it-all, darling. I merely wished to warn you that surviving the dislike of your peers is slightly more difficult when your peers do in fact want to kill you. Take a little care, Bitterness. Who will you save when you are yourself laid low?”
“I feel the love, Horuseps. I do.”
“Ah well. All babes must burn their hands before they truly understand fire. So it must be with even you. Here.” Horuseps waved, and one of the Nave’s many closed doors sparked and opened for him. The tunnel beyond descended into darkness, its stone walls riddled with dripping calcite formations like thousands of melted candles, blowing back the breath of neglect.
The now-familiar blister-lamps were in the ceiling and they began to glow as Horuseps moved forward, throwing shadows around him in a dark starburst. She walked behind him, shamelessly admiring the way his tall, angular body rose whitely out of the dark, knowing he was listening by the single arch smile he sent back at her over one shoulder, although he did not comment. His silence, and the silence of his mind, began to weigh on her as they left the Nave and all other minds behind. The Mindstorm quieted, became indistinct, ominous.
“It’s very pretty here,” Mara said finally, studying the rock formations as she passed them. “Why do you keep it closed off?”
“To prevent the weak from wandering. The doors are shut,” Horuseps added, nodding towards a sealed archway branching away from the main passage. “But not locked. We encourage those with the will for it to explore. There are so many secret tests in these quiet corners.”
“Does anybody live down here?”
“Nothing human and no Masters, but it would not surprise me to come across the lair of something or another. The darkness appeals to many of the lesser creatures who populate the mountain.”
“Like the hounds?”
“The hounds, no. They live under the close watch of Master Suti’ok.” He glanced at her. “No one else can control them.”
“Not even Kazuul?”
“Does it comfort you to think of his power as finite? But no. He could kill them, but that would distress Suti’ok. Our lord is so considerate of our feelings,” he concluded tartly.
“Are the hounds demons?”
Horuseps appeared to think about it. “Demon-stock,” he judged at last.
“Are you breeding them?”
“Not deliberately.” He gave her another glance, one a little darker than the last. “You recall that it is not forbidden for Masters to enjoy fornications with students.”
“On the contrary, it seems to be one of your privileges.”
“Understand that it is never our intention to breed one of the degenerate kinds that dwell among us,” Horuseps said with impressive sincerity. “But having done so, we are compelled to care for them, even the more unpredictable of them.”
“If they’re so unpleasant to be around, why would you risk it at all?”
“I could fuck you a thousand times and never father of you,” he said bluntly. “Ten thousand times. You, indeed, and every other human female who resides with you at this hour.”
“Is that an explanation or an offer?”
“You tease.” But he smiled. “The pleasure outweighs the inconvenience, and so we prey upon our students freely and accept whatever rare consequence may follow. However, if we rescinded the law which holds humans from mating without restraint, we would see every sow made a mother by the end of the year.”
“You could be right.”
“How good of you to acknowledge the possibility. We are aware, Mara, that trapping several hundred rapacious males in an enclosed environment with relatively few females and fewer standards of behavior has made for a rather…predatory situation. We have done what we can to make the punishment suitably steep so as to discourage the crime, but honestly, it isn’t as though the females are entirely cast as victims.”
“No, I imagine they’re not. People like to think that women don’t think about sex, but we can be pretty rapacious ourselves.”
She felt his attention waver ever so slightly, and the part of him which he believed hidden from her withdrew even further to consider that, and all the pleasant possibilities which might be implied. Then he let it all go with a dry laugh. “If I wanted you, my Bittersweet, I have only to command your submission.”
“You do want me,” Mara countered. “And you’re not commanding me. Why not?”
“You’re not my taste.”
“I don’t think that’s it. It’s something else. Something to do with Kaz—”
He moved fast when he wanted to. Just a flash of whiteness in a high arc and suddenly her back hit the tunnel wall, his arm was a silver bar bruising her throat, and his eyes were blazing before her like exploding stars. “Are you in my mind, precious?”
“No,” she answered, honestly enough. “You have more windows than doors and you think loudly when you’re not paying attention.”
He stared her down without blinking for a very long time.
“Touching me doesn’t help,” Mara said finally.
He pulled his arm back at once, then frowned and used that hand to slick along his long eyebrows.
“You should know this,” said Mara. “You’re a telepath, I know you are.” And silently, **Why don’t you ever talk this way? Why just put out thoughts for me to read?**
“Or simply to take,” he murmured with an arch sidelong glance.
Mara waited, tapping at him impatiently for an answer.
“Yes,” he sighed, �
�I am a mentalist. Rather a better one than you, I dare say. My touches…are more intimate than I desire to share.”
“I’m hurt,” said Mara, trying to joke.
His smile broadened in a nasty slant. “You would be, if I opened my mind to you fully. You may, in fact, be killed. You have a considerable raw talent, precious, but note my use of the word ‘raw’. Perhaps in time, with training, we will come to some deeper communion, we two. Until then, these pale shadows are all that can be safely shared. Shall we speak now of mentalism and all the ways it has diminished in the bloodlines of this Earth or may we continue on to the reliquary?”
She frowned at him, staring deep into the flickering lights of his eyes. “You’re trying to distract me.”
“More fool I,” he replied with some exasperation. “But ah well, for the sake of our great friendship, I’ll tell you why I shan’t command you to your back, dear Mara, and yes, it does have something to do with Kazuul. You recall that I expressed some sympathy for the plight of the students here, their many hundreds of males and few females.”
“I recall you acknowledging it, I’m not sure I’d call that sympathy.”
“Oh but it is. We Masters are very nearly in the same predicament, to a much smaller ratio, of course. Nevertheless, we are as trapped, and often as frustrated, and we have had many centuries to learn that long after our students have left us, we remain with one another. Yes, I want you. But Kazuul has claimed you.”
Mara felt her eyes narrow. “Oh he has, has he?”
“And the sooner you resign yourself to it, the better for all.”
“Why? Are you hoping for his leftovers?”
“Ha! Kazuul does not share his spoils. Great bone-headed brute,” he murmured, drawing aside into another passageway. “And if you think he’ll tire of the pursuit and move on to simpler prey, he’ll never. Your fate was sealed when you entered his lair. Embrace him and despair, little one.”
Mara snorted.
“Ah, she doesn’t wish to be thought of as the plaything of another,” Horuseps said lightly. “And yet she came here, where all students are at the questionable mercy of those who teach.”
“Kazuul doesn’t teach,” Mara pointed out.
“Even so. It is unwise to provoke him. And besides, were you not just lamenting your lack of fucking? One wonders why you are restraining yourself.”
“What is his big fascination with me?” she asked, genuine frustration bleeding into her voice and her thoughts. “And why is he being so damned persistent when all he has to do is just order me on my back?”
Horuseps walked in silence, his mind black to her.
Scowling, she changed the subject. “What did Solomon make his cup to do?”
“Among other things, he used it to display the soul-stone of his favorite enslaved djinn. Breaking that great race and binding them to mortal service was what he wished to be his ultimate legacy.” Horuseps walked for a while. “Is it?”
“Not really. I guess he’s best known for threatening to cut a baby in half.”
He kept his back to her and his thoughts cloaked, but she could see his eyebrows twitch. “Oddly, I’m not so much surprised by that as perhaps I should be. In any event, merely holding the cup was said, by Solomon himself of course, to give him ultimate power over any demon. He believed it to be the reason we acceded to his wishes when he entered here.”
“Was it?”
“Certainly not. It was just a cup.”
“But you kept it.”
“We did. Solomon, however, kept the djinn.”
The tunnel ended in a rock formation like a frozen waterfall, but Horuseps scarcely paused. He touched the wall and rock bubbled back from his hand at once, opening without sound on a room whose only source of light came, not from a blister-lamp, but from a round mirror propped haphazardly on a jut of rock where the pale light of its glass eye could illuminate the small chamber in its entirety.
“Our Reliquary,” Horuseps said, and stepped inside.
No effort had been made to organize the contents of the room. Where there was space, a ledge or shelf had been pulled out of the wall and made only as level as needed to keep the artifacts it carried from falling. No two were exactly alike in width or depth; no two were exactly aligned to any other. The anarchy of it hurt the eyes, distracting her from the objects themselves.
There were a handful of idols—animals mostly, some abstract, and many plainly meant to mimic the forms of demons from the Scholomance itself—and even fewer body parts—a withered hand, a very small skull whose eyes were filled with gold, a fetish of hair-wrapped bones, and a whole pile of irregular lumps which were either dried organs or gall bladder stones—but most were rather ordinary. There were many mirrors, ranging from polished rock to silver-backed glass to ornately-molded brass, and with the exception of the one radiating feebly above her, all were dark, their reflections warped by age and neglect. There were knives of every shape and substance. There were stone spheres by the dozen, heaps of rings and crowns, and many, many cups.
She got no sense at all that she might be surrounded on every side by mystical talismans. There were a few here or there she might expect to see in a museum, but the rest of them were, at best, gift-shop fodder for a medieval faire, and at worst, utter junk. This was something of a disappointment, and she let him feel it.
“Humans,” said Horuseps, picking up one of the cups, “are of limitless imagination. If you knew me better, you would better appreciate my admiration. Nevertheless, when it comes to arming themselves against the supernatural, there is something in them that screams for practicality of form. It is as if…” He turned the cup over in his hands, his expression growing distant as the lights of his eyes focused into a single bright point. “…as if even they cannot believe in what they are making, or in what they are making it to combat, and so they must be certain of a dual purpose. To fall back on, as it were.” He looked at her. “Would you like to see my favorite?”
Mara shrugged.
Horuseps handed her the cup and picked up the fetish. He handled it with touching care, arranging it in the center of his palm where he could trace the flow of hair as it wrapped around and through the bones. “It pretends to be nothing but what it is. Even the most innocent child need only look at it to know its business is not with this world.”
“What was it supposed to do?”
“What else? Protect its bearer from the will of demons. Useless, of course. Still, I like it.”
“Do any of these things work? Besides that,” she added, thumbing up at the glowing mirror.
“Even that isn’t doing what it was intended to. Oh, some of them might have had some small ability once upon a time, but most of these are merely foci for ignorant minds that once believed themselves sorcerers. Scrying stones and pointing sticks…toys for infant magicians.”
“And this?” Mara raised the cup he’d given her. “I assume it’s Solomon’s.”
“It was indeed. But it’s quite powerless now, my dear.”
She studied it in silence. Finely made and gilt with gold, it had a deep well and thick stem, every inch of it a vehicle for the gems fixed to its surface, but the largest setting was empty. A place-marker for the imprisoned djinn, she supposed, but it still didn’t look much like a magical artifact, just a really gaudy cup. “Among other things,” she murmured.
“Yes, Solomon often claimed that the cup protected him from all poisons, restored his youth and vigor, and that if he caught the reflection of the sun inside it as he drank, he was able to see and speak with God. A great liar, even for his time. An excellent quality of kings.” Horuseps reached out a finger to run along the cup’s rim, but didn’t take it from her. “Cut a babe in half, did he?”
“Threatened to.”
“Ah.”
To her mild astonishment, the idea seemed to sincerely repel him. He was a demon, wasn’t he?
“There are degrees of evil,” Horuseps said distractedly, and glanced up with a t
hin smile. “I have, of course, seen many infants murdered in my lifetime, by parents who believed they could not spare its food, by priests who believed it would curry divine favor, and by fools, who hoped to curry mine.”
His tone was light enough and his expression seemed benign, but the mood behind his mental armor blackened and churned. Any reply might be dangerous. Mara said nothing.
“I shouldn’t take it so seriously, I know. Humans can so easily replace the young they dash upon the altar, and really, it doesn’t matter whether you kill them at thirty years of age or thirty days…or even thirty minutes. Human lives are tenuous at the best of times. All the same…” His attention drifted. He gazed without expression at the small skull on its stone shelf. “I can imagine no God who could reward the bloodletting of babes. Only Man could rationalize such a thing, try to use it to give him power. Small wonder we kill them with impunity.”
Mara busied herself with the cup.
“I suppose there’s a paradox in that,” Horuseps said after a while.
“A small one, maybe. Like Kazuul, who wanted to know how old I was.” She half-smiled at the memory. “He said he wouldn’t lie with children, and him all of four thousand years old.”
“And yourself,” Horuseps remarked. “To dare even this dark place for want of one true friend. The longer I live, the more I think there is no absolute evil, no absolute good…only the little fancies of those with power, exercising it over those without.”
“Do you believe in God?” Mara asked.
He cast her a glance and an acerbic smile. “I rather have to, being what I am. Shadows cannot exist apart from light.”
“Oh, so today you’re a biblical demon. The last time I asked, that was just a word ignorant people used for any inhuman being. What’ll it be next time?”
“Hm. I’ve passed myself off quite successfully as an alien before.” He checked her, found her unsmiling, and rolled one shoulder in his boneless shrug.