The Scholomance (23 page)

“Did you find
what you were searching for?” he asked, once the heavy doors were shut on the
shouting. His tone was light, like his hand on her shoulder, gently steering
her at his side.

“I think you
know I didn’t.”

“Do I?”

“Tell me about
Kazuul.”

“Ah.” Horuseps
blew a short, irritated sigh, and then gave her his familiar smile. “Yes. Kazuul.
What would you like to know?”

“What does he
teach?”

Horuseps waved
his hand dismissively before returning it to the small of her back. “He doesn’t
teach anything anymore, darling one. And truthfully, he was never a very good teacher
even when he did. He had something of a temper then…and he’s never suffered
fools with any good grace. And, oh, fools come here just dreadfully often.”

“What
did
he teach, then?”

“I don’t recall.”

“You’re a liar.”

“That I am,”
Horuseps said merrily, and smiled at her. “If you want to know, Bitterness, you’ll
have to ask him. I’d much rather risk your anger over my evasiveness than his
when I betray his confidence. He still has something of a temper, you see.”

“Who is he?”

“A Master of the
Scholomance.”

“How can he be,
if he doesn’t teach?”

“We make an
exception for him.”

“Why?”

“Because he
would kill us if we didn’t.” Horuseps laughed. “Or so he’d have us think. I won’t
test him.”

Down they went
on the wide stair into the ephebeum. A handful of students were here, lining the
walls in small clots, engaged in their own conversations and quiet games. All
of them stood when they saw the demon and bowed.

“I suppose you
asked him about your little lost lamb,” Horuseps said, ignoring them. “But I’m
afraid he hasn’t left his rooms in a very long time.”

“So he said.”

“Did he?” Feigning
nonchalance (and feigning it badly, despite his efforts to keep his mind dark
to her), Horuseps brushed at a patch of ground-in blood and dirt on Mara’s
robe. “And what else did he say?”

“He said he was
my Master and he told me to return.”

Horuseps pursed
his lips just slightly and nodded. “When?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Ah. Well.” Horuseps
gave her a wide, winning smile and a wink. “You could easily keep him dangling
for a year or two, but then, what of your search for the hapless Connie? You’d
ought to go now.”

“Last-bell is
about to ring.”

“I’m sure he’ll
be good enough to give you a bed for the night.”

“For the day.”

“For however long
it takes, dearest. I’ve no personal experience, but I have it on good authority
that a day and a night together are easily within his speed. Whatever else may
be said of him…” His expression lost most of its humor and became something
cold, something bitter. “…he has never done things by halves.”

They walked
together into the tunnel leading to Mara’s cell. Beyond the first corner, where
the lamps were still lit, two men huddled close together, one on his knees
before the other. The one standing had a sharp shard of stone pressed tightly
enough to the other’s neck to draw blood. Engaged as they were, neither one
noticed Mara and Horuseps quietly pass by.

“So how are you
getting along?” the demon inquired once they were clear. “Making friends, I
hope?”

“You are my only
friend,” Mara said with a deliberate lack of feeling.

“You shameless
flirt, you. If I didn’t already have a piece in play for this evening’s
entertainment, I’d be tempted to join you tonight.”

Still teasing,
but not as much as he thought he was. Kazuul had changed all that, somehow.

“You’re a Master
of the Scholomance,” said Mara. “Ditch your date. I’ll make it up to you.”

He cut her a
sharp glance. “You aren’t serious.”

“I might have
been, if you’d actually told me something about Kazuul like I asked. I may be
shameless, but I’m no flirt. I have no scruples whatsoever when it comes to
getting what I want.”

“Is that a fact?”
the demon murmured.

“But since I
gave out all the information, you get nothing from me.” She stopped at her cell
door. “Without your express command, of course.”

He gazed at her,
the lights of his eyes all that moved.

“The Scholomance
is full of tests,” she told him, pulling her robe off to stand naked in her
cell. “This one, you have failed. Good night, Horuseps.” She took a step back
and shut the door.

He didn’t leave.
She’d suspected he wouldn’t. And although she was aware of him standing just
outside, watching through the small slot window that ventilated her cell, she
put him wholly from the surface of her mind as she spread out both her robes
for a bed and lay down on top of them. She wanted him to feel dismissed, but it
wasn’t her he thought of at all as his gaze lingered, but Kazuul. He thought
about Kazuul, not so loudly or precisely that she could see those thoughts
clearly, but his mind was troubled, conflicted by casual desire, by the
certainty of pain, by his own dark sense of humor. He knew he was being played,
especially when she rolled onto her back, spread her legs, and began lazily to
stroke herself, but he didn’t leave.

This wasn’t the
sort of thing she did for her own pleasure—getting a man was easy enough, and
she too had never seen the point in doing things by halves—but enough men found
it a vital part of the sexual experience that she’d learned to do it well. She
gave him her best performance now, all innocence and exhibition as she touched
herself, putting every shivering new-felt sensation out on the surface for him
to see.

Her body became
a stranger’s as she explored it. Her breasts had to be fondled, her nipples
pinched to points while she licked her empty lips. Down over her writhing belly
to her pubis, where she let the first little moan spoil her silence. His mind
was her camera; she watched herself open to her own questing fingers and shared
his quick hot leap of lust, darker perhaps, but the same as any man’s. She drew
it out for him as much as she ever could, tracing tiny circles over her
clitoris as she stroked the soft folds of her bare labia (briefly, a
distraction: she had never grown hair there, had always remained child-smooth. This,
like her strange, ice-pale eyes, and perhaps even her telepathy, had always
seemed very obviously a continuance of the same basic genetic fault, and it did
not disturb her). It never took her long to warm up, and when she parted
herself with eager fingers, it was to show him the shine of her ready oils.

‘I don’t know
what you think you’re accomplishing with this endearing demonstration,’
Horuseps thought archly (each word pulsing with its own inner lining of heat), ‘but
it isn’t working.’

She pretended
not to hear him, filled the surface of her mind with only this—with the slick,
tight welcome of her pussy, the chip-hard thrust of her nipples, the ache of
need now throbbing in her core, a need bitterly unrequited by only her
well-practiced hand.

‘Not at all,’
the demon reiterated, but not so firmly as he had first done.

She gave no hint
that his mind had registered. Hers was aflame with the first of several peaks,
but it was not enough. She thought of him—not him outside her door of course,
but him in all his funny little poses, the essential Horuseps, he of the
moon-white body and black-stained hands. In her mind, she clasped that glassy
body to hers (
he must be male I know he is o for his cock in me right now
),
and she thrust her fingers hard and fast inside her, groaning at the unfairness
of it all.

The sight of
herself in exultation burned in him at her suggestion, and then was stolen away
as he swung away from the door and stared instead at the fading light of the blister-lamp
in the tunnel. ‘She can’t be serious,’ he thought, no longer addressing her,
but black with disbelief all the same, and quite a heavy hint of resentment as
well, resentment seething with Kazuul’s name.

Nicely spent for
the moment, Mara rolled her body in stretching completion and ended on her
side, gathering in a fold of her robe to use for a pillow. “No, I’m not,” she
said. “But I can fake it with the best of them. Come in, Horuseps. Tell me
about Kazuul. I can make you very welcome.”

He was quiet for
so long, his mind so dark behind the stone door, that she briefly wondered if
he’d gone away and left her. Then he spoke, not dangling out thoughts for her
to grasp, but out loud, where, although he made an effort, he could not quite
disguise his angry, unfulfilled lust, or his genuine amusement. “I’ll tell you
this much, darling Mara,” he said. “You belong here. And you belong with him.”

She was sure he
left her then, because he laughed as he walked away, and because the lamp at
last died for an empty hall. Still, it felt like a victory and a good start. Mara
gathered up a little more pillow, dropped down into the Panic Room, and put
herself to sleep.

*
         
*
         
*

It began
sometime after last-bell rang, which was right about when she’d expected it. He
probably thought she was asleep and defenseless. Actually, she was asleep, but
she was never without defenses.

Hovering at the
center of the Panic Room, Mara saw the monitor that played out her dreams first
flicker, then subtly darken. She checked her body, but it looked okay. In the
Mindstorm, all remained muted. Nevertheless, someone was there, easing into her
dreams.

Mara touched
down onto her psychic feet and turned up the speakers. There he was, Kazuul,
whispering. Mara double-checked her body again, not just her vitals this time,
but all of it.

There was a hand
upon her stomach, very lightly resting, and it wasn’t hers. He was right next
to her in her cell. He was touching her. And yet, he managed not to be in the
Mindstorm. Now there was a well-cloaked telepath.

It didn’t take
much to influence a dream. His scent, his touch, his voice—he needed no magic
to pour himself into her subconscious mind. On the dream monitor, Kazuul grew
out of mist and shadows and moved toward her. On the body monitor, the hand so
carefully stroking her stomach slipped between her thighs.

How far to let
this go? The cell was really too small and stony to have any kind of
comfortable sex. If that was his intention, he had to expect her to wake up,
which rendered the exquisite care he was taking now sort of pointless. But that
was definitely the direction the dream was going.

Mara studied the
monitors, wondering what to do. She had a lot of voluntary control from the
Panic Room, even while her body slept, but the involuntary stuff stayed out of
her hands for the most part. She couldn’t stop herself from experiencing the
arousal he so expertly orchestrated and the longer she sat here watching, the
worse it got. He was still only petting her, but her mons was already
throbbing, her hips already stuttering in dreamy writhes. When he brushed a
thumb across her lips, she opened them, moaning, and dreamed in embarrassing
detail of going to her knees before him and taking his cock into her mouth.

Whispering, he was
whispering, commanding her to pleasure her Master, and he would reward her.

She was going to
cum soon, there was really nothing she could do about that. Mara drummed her
psychic fingers on the non-glass of the monitor, flexing her mind. The body’s
lips moved; the body’s lungs pushed air out at her will. “Master,” she made
herself sigh.

Kazuul’s laugher
rumbled soft and low against her ears. He pierced her with one clawed finger
and moved it deep and slow, telling her to cum for him.

Mara let it
happen, unmoved by her gyrations or the swift, embarrassing rush of heat that
came out of her in such wet urgency, but before the whole of it could fade, she
stole some control and arched her neck to groan, “Oh,
Horuseps
!” and
then leaned back smugly to listen.

The whispering
stopped. So did the hand at her sex. He stayed that way for quite a long time
as Mara slept the sleep of sexual completion. The next breath he took blew hot
against her cheek as an animal snarl.

“What’s the
matter, Kazuul?” the sleeping body asked, and he jerked away from her. She
could hear the hard crack of his bony spikes hitting the very close confines of
her cell. “Not the name you were hoping for?”

“So,” he
breathed. That was all for a while, and then there was another snarl and he
said, “I ordered thee to return.”

“You invited me,”
she corrected, still sound asleep. “And I’m considering it.”

His growl was
nothing that could have come from a human mouth. The Mindstorm, pictureless,
began slowly to bleed red.

“I was
considering it a lot more favorably before you snuck in here to molest me, I
must admit.”

“Mind thy words,”
he spat. “Thou art not beyond my punishing will!”

“Likewise. Thank
you for a lovely interlude. Now get out of my cell. Oh, and Kazuul…”

He snarled out
some sort of acknowledgement at a short distance, probably standing over her.

“I’m willing to
forgive and forget the horny indiscretions of someone perhaps too far out of
touch to realize what he did was wrong, but now you know. The next time you try
something like this, I’m going to do my best to make you very, very sorry. Please.
Let’s keep this pleasant.”

He grunted. The
door bumped hard against her legs as he opened it (and how had she not noticed
that on his entry?) and slammed shut again.

In the Panic
Room, Mara shook her head and turned her attention back to her dreams, already
smudging out into something new. In her cell, Mara’s body rolled onto its side
and found a way to cushion her head on her arm without too much discomfort,
then stretched out her legs. She saw no reason to wake up, but did wonder how
best to retaliate.