The Scholomance

by R. Lee Smith

  “How canst thou be fit to the rigors of study if thou art not to the rigors of my bed?”

  “It’s a risk…” she gasped, struggling upwards. “I’m willing…to take.”

  He was waiting at the top, of course, filling the stairway. His mouth twisted as he watched her climb. His eyes, dimly glowing, narrowed with grim satisfaction as she found each shaking step and trembling handhold.

  She stopped out of arm’s reach and found a place on the wall where she could lean and catch her breath. She didn’t look at him.

  “I might easily prove to be immoveable,” he remarked.

  “You don’t want to turn this into a contest,” Mara said wearily.

  “Contest? If ever t’was such, ‘tis ended. Thou art mine.”

  “Your own, your property, your whatever. I remember, I was there.” She passed a hand over her eyes and pinched hard at the bridge of her nose until her vision stopped swimming. “I lie a lot, Kazuul.”

  His eyes sparked. He rose, deliberately towering over her and putting every impressive bulge of muscle on display. His toe-claws scraped ruts in the stone beneath him. His bony spikes clacked ominously together as he rolled his shoulders. “I do not.”

  “Oh please.”

  “Someday thou wilt see that I have ever spoken truth to thee.”

  “And on that day, perhaps I’ll listen to you. Doubt it, though. I’m a horrible cynic, even my own mother thinks so. I’ll probably just focus on what few lies you did tell and reject you out of spite. I’m better at that than humility.”

  His lip curled. It wasn’t a smile.

  “Are you going to move?” Mara asked. “Or are we going to have it out right here on the stairs?”

  “To what effect?” he asked scornfully.

  “I can’t possibly put up much of a fight yet, so either you’ll have to let me pass or you’ll end up killing me.”

  “Ha! Thou showest thy true intent too easily. Never would thee abandon thy fool’s quest!”

  “I’ve been here twenty days that I know of, and God alone knows how many more,” said Mara. “I don’t love anyone anymore. I just want to see you lose. So fuck you, fuck her, and fuck the whole damned mountain.”

  He stared at her, his frown growing just at the edges of her perception, like a trick shadow in a painting. His mind touched hers, touched ice and stone, and withdrew, leaving behind a residue of his uncertainty. “Thou liest,” he said finally.

  “Yes,” she said. “I told you I did that. But I had you going for a while there. Or is this the lie? Let me go, Kazuul. You know I’ll be back.”

  “Do I indeed, thou fraud?” He took half a step back, though. Not enough to let her by, unless she physically climbed over him, but half a step all the same. “Tonight?”

  “Not a chance. Not until I’m fit for your ‘rigors,’” she added more gently, and the green fire of his fury dimmed, mollified. “It could be awhile. Don’t push me.”

  So much for pacifying him. His wrath exploded through the Mindstorm, hitting her in the Panic Room like a great fist that shook even those long-anchored walls (but didn’t break them, and she supposed he could if he wanted to). “For when it ceaseth to fall in thy favor—!” he snarled, vacating the stairway to slash at a column in the empty classroom. It smashed apart in a heavy cloud of dust and he stalked away to sulk in the debris.

  “This stopped being fun a long time ago,” Mara said, limping out onto the dais. “I keep coming back anyway.

  He settled moodily on his haunches, glaring at her as he picked through chunks of stone for something large enough to crush in his fist.

  “There’s just something about you. Something more than just good sex. I suppose,” she said with a dry smile, “I’m not as immune as I like to think I am to your single-minded pursuit of me. It’s irritating as hell, but still flattering.”

  He grunted.

  As tired as she was—her health monitor in the Panic Room was already creeping back to a state of high alert and she wasn’t even out of the theater yet—Mara turned around and hobbled back to him. She put a hand on his shoulder, gripping the base of his self-mutilated spine for balance, and kissed him. He flinched away a little, and then came back hard, disguising his surprise with far more familiar aggression, catching her wrist and holding it just a little too tight. “Stay,” he rumbled, doing his best by a smoldering stare which only emphasized his anger, his frustration, and his sheer size. “Stay with me and be mine one night. Thou hast given me but bitter sips. Layest thou before me thy feast and let me revel.”

  “I said no.”

  He released an ear-splitting roar into her face and let her hand go like he was throwing it at her, then stomped away. He crouched down next to the ruined column and scored at it with his claws, thinking, while she dragged herself up the first of the ten tall steps that led out of his theater. “Thou art a student here,” he said at last. “Thou hast no right to refuse an instructor.”

  “Last I’d heard, you weren’t teaching anymore,” she pointed out, and climbed another riser.

  “Dost thou defy me?”

  A mild question, incuriously asked, but there was a threat in it that he didn’t bother to hide. Mara managed a third stair and then sat on it to rest. He was watching her, his eyes half-lidded, giving every appearance of lazy unconcern even as his claws still dug furrows in the broken stone of what had been a whole column just minutes ago.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Give me the order.”

  Something flickered in his eyes. The same something, maybe, that made his thoughts move briefly close to the unbreachable surface. She could feel them, even if she couldn’t see them clearly, and she didn’t think he was showing them off on purpose. On the principle that it really was uncertainty and not anger she was sensing, Mara pressed the advantage.

  “Go on, then. Say it like an instructor would. You know I can’t refuse you and stay here. You know I’m not leaving without Connie. So give me an order.”

  He continued to say nothing. His mind was in motion, circling hers like a snake, and she studied it now in all its dangerous color. In the twisting surface of the Mindstorm, she read only the muted flash and color of the hundreds of students moving about here in the mountain; in Kazuul himself, she could see nothing but the well-built mental walls of an ancient, unpleasant mind. There was something else underneath, something every bit as real, something that seemed sharp and, if not quite desperate, at least honed to a terrible intensity, something he thought was still entirely hidden.

  “I won’t let you keep me,” Mara said, and managed a smile in spite of her exhaustion. “But you know I’ll be back.”

  He cursed in a language unknown, but vile enough to stab painfully at her brain—a curse in the truest sense, nearly a Word in its own right—and stood up. “Go then. Yet again, I give thee lead over me when I would be far better served to work my will, ravish thee, and leave thee to lick thy wounds on the morrow.”

  “You’re a real soft touch, all right,” sighed Mara, turning her back on him to face the risers.

  “I am,” he said, directly behind her. He seized her by the waist suddenly and spun her, not around and to him, not dashing her away, but with him in unreal motion as he leapt through layers of space and stone to the ephebeum. He let her drop there and stood over her with a brooding expression as she clawed for the strength to stand. “Yet here I leave thee, among the wolves that did run thee once to ground. Think well, Bitterness, before thou biddest me depart.”

  “Mara?”

  Her teeth bared themselves and Mara heaved herself up. “I’m fine, Devlin. Goodbye, Kazuul.”

  The demon turned a cold and speculative eye upon the unbrushed and rumpled figure skirting out of the ephebeum’s morning crowd. His nostrils flared. His face hardened. “Who is this who calls to thee?”

  “Leave him alone, he’s harmless,” said Mara, walking again in the hopes that he would follow, but Kazuul didn’t budge.

  “Horuseps was wi
se to send this pup away before he summoned me.” Kazuul snorted hard, scraping at the ground once with his foot and carving grooves as easily as if he stood in wet mud. “Had I seen the motive behind the mind, I would not have agreed to forgive him.”

  “He’s nothing!”

  “Nothing, aye. Harmless, I disbelieve it. He is not so obvious as I, yet his intentions are much the same. Dost thou not see with what fumbling, frantic desire he pursueth thy good favor? Here.” Kazuul reached out and callously gripped Devlin’s head in one hand, pushing him towards Mara. “His last night’s memories are yet fresh, like the painting of his seed when his sweat-rimed hand became thee.”

  “Leave him alone, I said!”

  Devlin, bent as rigidly as a pocketknife in respect to a Master, flushed a deep, splotchy red, too terrified to be angry, too mortified to be anything but. Kazuul’s grip tightened, but then he let go with a curt shove, sending Devlin to the ground in a bruising heap. “Another lost lamb?” asked Kazuul. “Thou hast too great an affection for them.”

  “My affection is my business. And you! Am I supposed to think it’s attractive to watch you bully a student around when you know he can’t fight back?” She could feel the rage trying to creep in, but she was too weak to give it a gripping place. She wasn’t sure if that was a relief or not. “Why don’t you go and humiliate all the other guys who ever whacked off thinking of me, that’ll kill a few years. And maybe by the time you get back, I won’t be quite so disgusted by the sight of you!”

  Kazuul’s expression remained unchanged and hard as granite for a minute or two more, and that was a very long time to stand and stare him down while the yellow light of impending collapse flashed across Mara’s internal vision. But at last, he glanced down at Devlin. His claws flexed. He started to bare his teeth, and then, with surprising swiftness, turned it into a smile. Contemptuous, perhaps, and certainly humorless, but still a smile. He plucked Devlin off the floor, shook him out of his bow, and set him on his feet. “Thou art only too correct, Bitter One. No man must be blamed for the cupidity that taketh him when woman’s pleasure lieth beyond his reach. Forgive that I made mockery of it.”

  Mara tried to huff out a hard laugh and sagged onto the wall instead, breathless and dizzy. She had to get back to her cell. She had to get out of this before she did something irrevocable, like faint again.

  “Yet hear the command of thy Master, human called Astregon, and see my beloved to her lairing place. She is not fit yet to be about on her own power, and I shall take it very personally should her health fail in thy keeping.”

  Mara tried to shove Devlin away when he came hurrying over, but couldn’t. Her hand slapped against him as limp as paper. That was sickening enough. Worse, he followed Kazuul’s orders with intense sincerity, taking her both by the arm and the waist in spite of her furious struggles, escorting her into the maze with all the ardent concern of a young father taking his bride to the maternity ward for a first and difficult birth. But worst of all was Kazuul’s laughter, echoed in uneasy chorus from the sycophantic student body, all of them a witness to her weakness.

  **And never wouldst thou have suffered it,** he thought at her, infuriatingly smug. **Had thee only remained in my care. Thou hast demanded the wage of arrogance. Spend it.**

  **You have a hell of a lot to learn about how to seduce a woman,** she sent back.

  **And thou, much of the ways of Masters. Thou hast not yet seen my cruelty. Remember that, when thou dost ponder the hour of thy return.**

  * * *

  Cell sweet cell. How could stone walls look so inviting after the devastated splendor of Kazuul’s chambers? Mara sank into her bed and pulled an armload of robes over her against the chill. There were quite a few more of them than she remembered. The monitors were flashing now, but she roused herself enough to mumble, “You’ve been sleeping here, haven’t you?”

  “Uh…I’ll go get some water.”

  “You’ve got your own place, damn it.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have a real bed. Besides,” he said hurriedly, “I was protecting your stuff. Do you know what people do here to get an extra robe or a comb? You just lie here and rest, okay? I’m taking care of you.”

  “Go away, Devlin. I’ll be fine.”

  He did, but came back fairly soon, intent on sitting her up and forcing liquid into her. The cold of it was bracing, but the taste, terrible. She’d forgotten how bad the mineral-laden water tasted here. She drank it all, too weak to argue with him, and lay down again, hoping he’d take the hint.

  She should have known better. Devlin never took hints.

  “Are you sleeping?” he whispered.

  She sighed.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  “Do you have to?”

  His hurt fogged the Mindstorm. Mara could hear him picking and scratching at his robe. “I was worried about you,” he said finally. “I guess you’ll tell me that’s dumb.”

  Mara gave up and looked at him. “Seeing how it all turned out, I guess I can’t. Devlin, look, enough with this already. It isn’t working.”

  His mind churned, lighting from possibility to possibility without any hope. Then (she knew he was going to do it almost before he did, but she still couldn’t stop him), he lunged for her. She got an arm up, but that was all, and she didn’t have the strength to shove him away when he fell on her.

  Desperation was not an effective aphrodisiac. He kissed her like a man who hadn’t done it for eleven years, mashing their mouths together with determination, but the only thing pressing against her thigh was his knee. Struggles were exhausting. Mara flexed her mind for a slap, then let it go unthrown and simply waited him out, limp and utterly indifferent. His passion increased to take up the slack, but ultimately, he noticed her total lack of response and his efforts petered out. He sat up, tugging at his robe and finger-combing his hair, staring fixedly into the corner.

  “Sorry,” he said finally.

  “You’re damned lucky I’m not at my best,” she answered. “I killed the last man who tried that.”

  “I love you,” he told her. He might have used the same tone for a confession to murder.

  “No, you don’t,” Mara sighed. “You just think if I believe it, I’ll help you escape. I don’t. I won’t. Go away.”

  He started crying. God damn it.

  That mindslap flexed again. She still didn’t throw it. That she wanted to was an unpleasant enough testament to her character. The man was thirty-four, eleven years gone in the company of demons and those who served them, and he’d spent who knew how many years before that frying his brain in the drug-of-the-month club while he threw himself at whatever whackjob religion took his fancy. He wasn’t a bad guy, which was amazing, considering the circumstances. He wasn’t insufferable. He wasn’t even weak, necessarily (no one lived eleven years in the Scholomance by being weak). He was just scared.

  “I don’t hate you,” Mara said, even before he could make the accusation out loud. “I just…can’t carry you. Try to understand that.”

  “Understand? I’m supposed to understand? You’re abandoning me here!”

  “You. Abandoned. Yourself. Here.” Mara struggled up into a sitting position, grabbing first at the neck of his robe, and then pointing a shaking finger at him for good measure. “And that is exactly what I won’t carry. Your blame. Get this through your head, Devlin: Your failure to think things through back then does not constitute my problem now.”

  “I can’t stay here!”

  “Then leave.”

  “How?” he howled. “How am I supposed to leave? You just walk in here and start throwing Words around like it’s nothing, but what do I know? My problem? It’s my problem? My problem is that I haven’t learned a damn thing in eleven years! I’m growing old here!” He knocked her hands away only to grab her wrists and yank them up imploringly. “Get me out of here,” he pleaded, giving Mara a nasty jolt. “I was wrong about this place! Please get me out of here!”

  She flin
ched, then came back furiously. “Every person I take with me drops my chances of getting anyone out of here at all!”

  ‘Then take me,’ he thought, but did not dare to say. Mara heard it anyway and stared coldly back at him as he imagined shouting at her that Connie was dead, that it was obvious to everyone but her, that for a woman like Connie to survive even two years here had been nothing short of miraculous in the first place.

  “She’s not dead,” said Mara.

  He drew back.

  “I’d know if she was dead,” she insisted, knowing perfectly well this was untrue and hating it.

  And he thought, without fire and only for an instant, of how it would be to find this mythical Connie and kill her, so that Mara would take him instead and leave. No, no one was ever really nice, if you looked deep enough. At least he felt ashamed afterwards, at least he could look at that awful thought and know it was awful.

  “You know I can read your mind, right?” said Mara wearily.

  He jerked away again, his face flashing white only to fill up again with blotchy color.

  “Oh come on, Devlin. All those one-sided conversations I’ve had with the Masters, the way I hit people without moving my hands, the whole thing with Venice…Jesus, man, how unobservant are you?”

  “I…I…”

  “Relax. I try to hold people accountable for their actions, not their thoughts. I don’t always succeed,” she admitted with a smile. “But I try.

  Devlin just sat there, too terrified to run, capable only of thinking that same murderous thought—him stumbling on Connie, throttling her in the darkness—with even less intent than before, but only stupefied horror. It was like watching a man scratch at a poison oak rash until his skin tore open.

  “Relax, I said.” Mara settled herself again, shaking out the robes and arranging them over her body. Kazuul’s bed had been warmer, drier, and infinitely more comfortable than her own, but she was determined not to regret her choice. “I know you wouldn’t, really.”

  “It just…I…I’m not a killer!” Devlin blurted.