by R. Lee Smith
Mara went to the first of them, feeling through it as best she could. Something was in there, sure, but like the creatures of the cesspit, ‘something’ was the best that she could do. She took her pulse, found it slightly elevated but essentially okay, and put her hand on the dead/alive door, bracing herself for a fight. It opened readily at her command, and Mara looked inside.
A face floated in the darkness, a face just at eye level, staring back at her. Naked breasts and a moon-white torso hovered in the black.
“Connie?”
No response. The mind within was no louder, no more aware than the door itself.
Mara shifted to one side, trying to let a little more light in around her. She thought at first the person in the cell might be wearing boots and gloves, then realized the person was as naked as she herself. The illusion of clothing was due to the fact that the person’s arms and legs were sunk in stone. Neither was she—for it was definitely a she—standing up as she’d first appeared. Instead, she’d been suspended atop a kind of cradle, her hips and back supported, her thighs spread wide. There was a pisspot between them now, but that clearly wasn’t the primary reason for her position. The woman was pregnant.
Mara eased a step inside the cell and reached out a hand to touch the hard-swollen belly. Something inside moved. Squirmed. The woman’s eyes slowly blinked but did not focus. She was gone as far as she could go while anchored here in stone.
How many cells were there?
Mara backed into the hall and looked again at double rows of doors stretching out to eternity. Realistically, she knew the depth of the hall to be deceptive, that there could not be more than a hundred, maybe two hundred doors, and certainly she had no reason to suspect a pregnant prisoner behind each one, but—
She moved on wooden legs to the next door and opened it on a swollen stomach and pendulous breasts. It wasn’t Connie either, but neither was it wholly human anymore. The fundamental factor, the living mind, the human soul, had been shut away as effectively as the incubator it inhabited.
No heaps of skulls. No writhing tentacles. But the true face of the Scholomance was just as ugly as she’d imagined.
Mara ran to the next cell. Then the next. And the next. Soon, she was careening wildly from one side of the hall to the other, ripping open doors and staring into the glazed thoughtless eyes of the woman trapped inside. She wasn’t really seeing them by the end, just their bellies. She didn’t tap at their emptied minds so much as stab at them with Connie’s name, demanding an answer that never came.
She reached the last door and stood shaking, nearly as numb to it all as to the chill of the mountain. They didn’t allow fornications between students. That made sense. They had to be sure, had to know the baby was their own if they were going to take the trouble to care for its mother. Because they were cared for, clearly. The skin she saw was smooth and free of sores, glowing with good health and excellent nutrition. They took away the hair, of course, hair being a nuisance to keep brushed and clean, but they did care for the body. Because it was making a baby for them.
She was still standing there, locked in these thoughts, when the hand closed gently over her shoulder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Is she here?” Mara asked hoarsely. She did not look around. “Is this what you did to her?”
“I’ve no doubt we tried if indeed we brought her below.” Horuseps released her and stepped around to pull the door softly shut. “But is she? I honestly do not know. I’ve looked for her in my odd hours…so many of us have since your arrival…but there are a thousand doors, young Mara, and the faces behind them are not always what they should be. We have come to suspect she was caught out of her cell after-hours, brought here by one of the nephalim…precious, she could be anywhere.”
“This is the point, isn’t it? Every woman comes here.”
“Yes.”
“And every man feeds the school.”
“Yes.”
“There are no graduates.”
“No. Well, a handful, now and then. To keep our rumor alive. Solomon. Rangard. Von Brukenthal. No one of consequence.”
“One out of ten.” Mara shook her head. “What was the point of that? Why not make it free?”
Horuseps shrugged. “Humans have a tendency to disbelieve in the things which come without cost, even as they covet them. The idea of risk was essential to the lie.”
“Well, Connie’s leaving.”
“Yes.” Horuseps sighed and returned his hands to their usual resting place on his shoulders. “We’re all agreed to that.”
“And so am I.”
He gave her a crooked smile and said nothing.
Mara put her back to the wall and half raised her hands. Anyone looking at them might believe it a pose of badly-acted horror, but Mara was not afraid and this was not a defensive posture. “I really don’t think you can stop me, Horuseps,” she said.
“I’m quite certain I can’t,” he replied, still smiling. “In fact, I’m well aware that you could kill me without either hesitation, effort, or remorse. But you are not leaving this mountain, my dear, and truthfully, it is for the best.”
“The best?” Mara laughed, a high and humorless sound. “I’m sure you think imprisoning all these women and murdering all those men is for the best too!”
“It is.”
She laughed again. She had to. The opportunity to kill him hadn’t come yet.
“I’ll admit it’s only best for us, but then, we are no different in that regard from humans.” The lights in his eyes swung out into a starry ring, then drew together in a tight cluster. “Humans, who believed it was best the that other eleven tribes who shared this world should be eradicated so that their dominance might be assured. So great was this belief that they felt it best that there be a Devil named as our creator, a great master of purest evil, so that the religious hatred stirred against us never be allowed to die. Even today, five thousand years after the dissolution of the Twelve, the name of Horuseps is unknown and I am only ‘demon’. Demon! Who but Man in his arrogance would dare to name another disparate to the love of God?”
“You’re pretty sanctimonious for a guy who is mutilating, raping, and murdering people.”
“I haven’t always,” he said quietly. “But now I am the last of my tribe and my children are impure. I have not seen another face like mine in better than three thousand years. I think that I am doomed, young Mara, but perhaps I am wrong. There are seventeen females here seeded of my matings. I will not let loose even one of them while a chance remains, however slight, that I shall see another Horuspex.”
“Are you afraid I’ll tell your secret, is that it? You think if I leave, I’ll bring a new Crusade on you?”
“No.” He paused, his head tilting to regard her from a new angle. “No,” he said again. “But will you walk with me, child?”
“Where?”
“To the Hall of the Twelve.”
“Why?”
“Would you leave without seeing everything?”
“You’ve already said I’m not leaving. Why should I walk with you to my prison?”
Horuseps turned away as calmly as if she’d given enthusiastic agreement, and after a moment, her heart burning, she did follow him. He led her back down the hall, across the outer chamber, and down another stair, and when he reached the bottom, he raised his hand. Light came at once, from hundreds of lamps whose arms and legs and slack, dead faces had never been concealed, evenly spaced along a door-lined corridor that stretched out seemingly to the horizon. He glanced at her, started walking.
Mara approached the first door.
“They’re all the same,” Horuseps said, his voice floating back at her in echoes as he walked on.
She opened it anyway. She opened all of them. In every dull pair of eyes, she looked for Connie; in every stuporous mind, she searched for recognition. There was never any response, not even the faintest flicker from even one broken mind. Horuseps got further and further aw
ay from her at his same unhurried pace, until at last she stopped opening them and moved to catch up.
He put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shrug it off.
“Are they all here?” she asked at last.
“In this corridor? No. It is only one of eight, although,” he said with a little wave, “we have only just begun to stock the eighth.”
“Stock.”
“Unfortunately, it isn’t quite as simple as looking for the newest acquisitions in the newest tunnel. They get moved around some, you see, as one or another of us take an interest, and they’re rarely put back where we find them.”
“How many are you keeping?” she asked.
“All there are. We do not allow them to die of age until their wombs have been exhausted. Those you see here have not been proved and likely never will be.” Horuseps shrugged. “Not every woman can carry our seed. Others might conceive of one of the Tribes, but not another. We really aren’t sure why this should be.”
“So you pass her around.”
“We do what must be done.”
“What happens then?”
“The breeding is difficult. Many terminate themselves unborn. Many more are born dead. Of those who draw breath…” Horuseps shook his head, fingers twitching on his shoulders. In his mind, he saw the black-eyed, white-skinned Hori, his children. “The Scholomance has stood more than three millennia, dearest one. We have seen eighty-two, true-born. The rest, all human or nephalim, useless to us.”
“I meant the women. What happens to them?”
“Ah. The women.” Horuseps gestured and opened a door without stopping. The blonde inside stared vacantly back at Mara as she passed. “If they are proved, if they can conceive of us, they are moved to the quickening chambers and bred to exhaustion.”
“Or to death.”
“If you knew their fate, why ask?”
“You deserve to be damned.”
His eyes flashed, bright enough to leave scars of color over Mara’s vision. Softly, he said, “If all there were within this mountain were to die, all this moment, all at once, still it would be less than Man himself kills in even one of your countries, on any given day.”
They reached the end of the hall and still no Connie, but here at least was another stair leading down, another place to look. Mara left the demon’s side, marching on ahead.
“There were twelve tribes who came to Earth in the first days,” said Horuseps behind her. “Man was neither first nor last, neither greatest nor least, yet he alone wrote the books of history. We are the broken tablets, The Lost Eleven, the tribes Man scattered. There.”
The stair opened and the lamps lit on a wide, perfectly round room, set with eleven symmetrical alcoves, with the stair to pair the odd man out. In each recess stood a stone statue in the shape of a different demon, and at the center of the room, taller than all of them, a man made of rock polished to a high silvery gleam, beautifully formed, his face lifted to the vaulted ceiling. Mara turned back, but Horuseps blocked her way, grimly staring her down.
“I don’t care about any of this,” she snapped. “All I want is my friend!”
“It costs you nothing to listen.”
“It doesn’t gain me anything, either!”
“So sure, are you?”
Mara snarled out a sigh and stomped down into the Hall. “Fine. Educate me. Hurry up.”
Horuseps bent low, courteous even now, at the end of it all. He waved to the first statue. “First to enter Eden was Lilith, progenitor of the tribe of Letha. Our Letha is all that remains.”
Mara dutifully looked. The statue did resemble Letha somewhat, about as much as she herself resembled the Statue of Liberty, except that there were a lot less teeth on the statue’s breasts and belly, and the long quills flowing down her back were more delicate, graceful.
“Then came the tribe of Golgotha,” said Horuseps, moving her firmly on to the next, where the spike-studded image of a Kazuul-like demon glared back at her. “Of whom many descendants linger on here, in the mountain. The tribe of the Horuspex followed after, and after them, the tribe of Zyeer, and of the Ochali. They were all made separate of each other, each to their own form and their own nature. Then came Adam.”
Mara looked again at the human sculpture standing at the heart of all these demons. Adam’s face, washed with reverence and adoration, gazed into the light of a blister-lamp. His hands, raised in worship, had been shaped with an eye for detail she would have thought could only come from a loving craftsman. Or, she supposed, a hateful one.
“After him, the lesser tribes: the Suti and the Shen, the Uulok and Belial, the Dal, and of course, the Malavanon. The world was big enough for all of us.” Horuseps seemed transfixed by his own image in its dark recess. He walked where Mara walked in the room, but his eyes were always on his stone copy. “I’ll not say there was peace between us, but certainly there was no war. We drifted apart, each to our own pleasures. We wandered. We made kingdoms. We found Gates where Adam’s line had opened them and we traveled across whole worlds. All was well with us.”
They ended up before the stair again, facing the silvery statue of Adam. Horuseps kept his hand firmly around her arm, but otherwise seemed calm, even very slightly pleased, as if her ill-tempered and impatient reaction were the very best outcome he could have hoped for…better, even.
“Fine,” she said now, tugging vainly at his enclosing hand. “I’ve seen it. I’m enlightened. Let go.”
“It was Kazuul who foresaw the inevitable end of things,” Horuseps said, not without a certain sense of irony. “And as most of our kind either fled to the presumed safety of other worlds or fought and died in the God-wars of Man, he gathered together his scattered tribesmen and conquered them. A necessary delay, for what he was about to put forward would require unwavering support and loyalty in the face of a shocking proposal: the building of what was to become the Scholomance.”
“What has this got to do with anything?” Mara exploded.
Horuseps patted her head as if she were nothing more than a little dog, barking about his ankles. “And while his people labored under the monumental task he’d set them, Kazuul set about a great journey, a quest if you will, to bring together in one place as many of the Eleven as could be found, and safely preserve them within his haven. It took many years, and many battles, but he refused to end his search until he had secured them all, even if there were only one—” His fingers stroked along his shoulder as he gazed at his statue. “—to be found.” He was quiet a while. “He suffered many wounds.” Another pause, a little longer this time, his manner introspective but never quite still. “I owe that great whoreson my life,” he said at last, still in the same serene tone.
“Horuseps, damn it, where is Connie?”
“Patience, sweetling. One small moment more. The greatest ages of all Creation are made up of the smallest moments.” He smiled at her, but wearily, then took a breath and went on. “When he had gathered all that remained of the Lost upon Earth, he brought us to this place, at the time the most isolated and inhospitable to Adam’s kind. He made us a mountain and a place of our own, and he made himself lord over it, and required that we all recognize his right to rule over us. Then he gave us three laws, and made us swear upon our own immortal lives to adhere to them, and we did, every one of us, and from that day unto this one, every true-born that comes to us has sworn as well.”
Mara swung around and tried to leave. He stopped her, his hand catching at her arm and shooting a warning bolt of pain deep into her bones, even as he bent his head in apology.
“We swore that we would never kill one another,” Horuseps said. “We swore never to use arts against one another for any reason. And we swore never to take a woman born of the Lost Tribes save by her consent. Even Kazuul made that promise, at Letha’s behest, else she and Zyera refused to join him and be made brood-sows for all the mountain’s lusts.”
“And how many humans did he force to take their place?” Mara demand
ed. “To service you and your poor, persecuted tribes?”
“None, at first. That was my idea,” Horuseps said calmly, tightening on her wrist when she jerked away from him in surprise. “And it was many centuries in coming. As for Kazuul, well, perhaps he believed that more of our kind would come when they heard of this place. I give him the benefit of that doubt, although none ever did. But between the two of us, in all honesty, I don’t think he ever gave the matter of breeding much thought. For his tribe, females just had a way of materializing before the strong and whatever else he may be, he has always been one of the strong. And when there were no females readily at hand, still there were always humans, and for a time, they were content to throw their daughters at us to keep us off their cattle, and I’m sure he made good use of them, and I’m sure that there were young.
“Can you not understand how it was for us?” Horuseps asked with a kind of exasperation. “Can you see that we never ate the fruit of Adam’s tree, we had never left Eden in our hearts? We did not mark the difficulties of breeding nor the quality of our offspring, but in innocence believed we could do what we pleased and never perish. We had been saved, and now, surely, our young would come again.”
“Through humans.”
“It was necessary,” Horuseps said.
“If you say so.”
“Our tribes were, as were all the civilizations of the age, profoundly male-dominated. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we have only Zyera and Letha, each the last of her kind.” He glanced toward the first statue. “Letha was quite right to fear subjugation. There were many, in those first years, who fell to the oaths they had forsworn.”
Mara felt a frown tickling at her lip in spite of her growing impatience with Horuseps and this whole stalling tactic of his. “Zyera…” she said. “Mother of the Scrivener…I assumed his father was human, one of the students here…but I was wrong, wasn’t I?”