The Scholomance (62 page)

“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
wise 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 flinched,
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.

“I know,” she
said, and thought, ‘I never used to be either.’ But there was no point in
dwelling on that now. She had the whole rest of her life to look back and see
where this place had ruined her. “You actually ran for help.”

He hesitated,
afraid to claim the truth for fear of it being misinterpreted as a grasping
effort to win back her good grace.

“I can’t
misinterpret a memory, Devlin,” she said patiently, and he jumped up and backed
to the wall.

“You just did it
again!”

“Yes,” said
Mara. “I’m pretty much always doing it.”

“But…I mean…If
you…”

“If I can read
minds,” Mara translated, “Why do I bother asking questions?”

He nodded,
shock-eyed and pale.

“Because it puts
the answers right up on the surface. Just jumping in cold to look for something
is the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

“Oh.” And then,
by God, the circle closed. “Can you teach me to do it?”

“No.”

“Please?
Please
!
I swear I won’t bother you anymore! I’ll never say another word, just—”

“I’m not saying
I won’t this time, Devlin. I’m saying I can’t. I’ve tried.”

“With her,” he
said, meaning Connie.

“Yes.”

He was quiet,
inside and out. Slowly, he came back to the bed, scratching at his sleeves in
that neverending dance of nervousness he had. “Maybe I’ll be better than her. Maybe
I have, like, a knack.”

“I think if that
were true, you’d have proved it by now,” Mara said, as gently as possible. “The
power I have and the powers they teach here seem to have a lot in common. How
many arts have you studied, Devlin?”

He dropped his
gaze, miserable. He did not count the classes for her, but they spooled out
regardless: Growth, Allure, Imbuing, Sight, Transmutation, Malleation,
Divination, Entropy, Force, every one of them with an eye towards escape and
none with any effect. He had pursued them so stupidly—attending three or even
five classes every day for so long that he was now banned from three of them, and
one of these was Growth, which meant he would only keep getting older. Until he
died in here.