The Scholomance (45 page)

Bastard.

Mara found an
empty room in the garderobe and relieved herself, still not thinking, but as
she rinsed her hands afterwards, for whatever reason, her eye wandered back to
watch her own yellow stream take itself away through the garderobe’s hole into
the cistern below.

It sounded like
a fairly deep drop. She remembered thinking that before. And the sound of water
falling into it echoed loudly, as if it fell into a fairly wide room. She had
thought that too.

Mara wiped her
hands on her robe and walked over to the hole, ignoring the stench as best she
could. She looked down, but the light from the room’s one blister-lamp didn’t
reach far inside. And really, how badly did she want to see what was down
there? A long drop? It kept the gasses and the smell under some sort of
control. A wide room? So all four sub-chambers of the garderobe emptied into
one big reservoir. What did she think, that Connie had flushed herself down the
toilet?

Well…not this
toilet. Mara prodded at the edge of the hole with her foot, then placed her
foot directly over it. With her heel on the rim, her toes could just touch the
opposite side. Nothing human was getting down there. Not in one piece anyway,
although if someone were dismembered…

But as she stood
there, the sound of falling water changed subtly, from the high flat smack of
liquid dropping onto liquid, to the dull patter of a solid interrupting mass.

Mara moved her
foot and aimed her mind down the hole.

She felt no one.

‘There’s
something alive down there,’ she thought, and yes, she could remember thinking
that once as well.

“Mara?”

“Devlin,” she
answered, still gazing thoughtfully downwards.

“Um…what are you
doing?”

“Where does all
the water go, do you know?”

“Why would I
know that?”

“Why doesn’t it
fill up the cistern and overflow?”

“I don’t know. I
guess there’s vents, like in the bath.”

“And where is
the water coming from?”

“Rain?”

“Every day?” she
pressed. “All year? At this rate?”

“How should I
know? Maybe there’s a reservoir up top somewhere. Maybe its runoff from an
underground river or something. What does it matter?” He joined her at the hole
and also poked a sandal at it. “She’s not down there.”

“How can you be
sure? Haven’t you ever heard something move down there?”

“Hey.” Devlin
turned around and gave her a serious, frowning look. “I heard things moving
around in the Oubliette with me too, but I knew I was alone there. Did you know
that one of the first symptoms of prolonged confinement is hallucinations? Closely
followed by paranoia. It’s this place, okay? She’s not down there.”

His confidence
was oddly soothing, no matter how certain she was. She allowed it to sway her
for now and followed him out, but as she left, the sound of falling water changed
again, as of that large body moving out of the stream.

They took the
back stair up to the dining hall, the one that led past the kitchens, with
Devlin chattering in her ear the whole way about claustrophobia and caves and
people he’d seen go, you know, totally batshit in here, some of them after
years of doing okay, right up until they started screaming and clawing at their
eyes. One guy he saw actually took a potato—

Mara tuned it
out. The kitchen doors were closed, and there was another room she’d never
seen. Come to think of it, where were they getting all this food? Not just the
meat, but the rest of it? The awful gruel, the grain for the bread, the milk
and the rennet for the cheese, all the fresh fruits which the Masters enjoyed
well outside of their season? She guessed someone could be using the art of
Growth for some of it, but even if true, where was he doing it? There had to be
a garden somewhere, perhaps on the outside, and that meant another way out of
the mountain.

Mara paused by
the last kitchen door and tried to open it. The latch turned in her grip, and
then someone took it firmly on the other side and held it. Feeling through the
stone was futile. She and the unseen other held their halves of the door and
waited.

“We’re not
allowed in there,” Devlin said behind her.

Mara let it go,
frustrated. “I’ve looked everywhere we are allowed.” She watched the latch
rotate back to its former position and then heard the faint click of a
lockplate engaging. “How am I supposed to find her when—”

Kazuul. Kazuul,
of course. She was supposed to go to Kazuul for permission, and after she’d
properly subjugated herself, he might consider it.

“Bastard,” Mara
spat, and started walking again.

Devlin cringed
back.

“Not you.” She
stepped out into the roar of the dining hall and glanced towards the Masters’
table, tapping a lackluster greeting at Horuseps.

His answering
thought caressed her without words, preoccupied as he was with his conversation
with Letha, but some part of it still held the spark of sympathy she remembered
from their encounter in the night.

Devlin dove in
at the first table they came to, drilling himself through the throng for a few chunks
of half-burnt, half-bloody meat from a nearly empty bowl. Further down the
table, another platter heaped with leg bones (or perhaps arm bones; she was not
convinced she was looking at an animal’s carcass) rattled back and forth under
the battling bodies of at least six grown men. That was all there was for this
table, four plates to feed maybe two hundred people. It was like that for all of
them…all but the center table, and where half as many students loitered over
three times as much food, but of course, the center table was where the lions
fed.

She headed over,
and they made room for her. A lot of room.

Mara sat, but
didn’t touch the meat. The platter set immediately before her held an entire
ribcage, cracked open and roasted whole, then stuffed with more meat, most of
which clung to smaller shards of unidentifiable bone. It had been picked over
pretty well, but there was plenty of meat left, and there were nine other
platters behind it, evenly spaced along the table, where black-robed acolytes
added to the noise with jeers and cheers and threw their bones at hungry
neophytes.

‘You’re not
eating,’ came the deliberate thought from the Master’s table. Horuseps had
finished his discussion and was watching her. ‘I do hope you’re not expecting a
second meal out of me.’

**Do you do this
on purpose?** Mara sent, watching students fight at the other tables.

‘Of course,’
Horuseps replied. ‘It encourages competition.’

**It encourages
anarchy.**

‘Not at all. Every
mother’s child of them is obedient to a Master’s law. But a hungry student is
always more eager to learn. It’s a teaching aid, really.’

**And yet you’re
trying to feed me.**

‘My dear and
most beloved heart, I don’t want you any more eager to learn.’

Suddenly, in the
Mindstorm, Mara saw a flash of devious intent. She homed in on it to be certain
whoever it was wasn’t coming for her, and using his eyes and hers, was
eventually able to see the very young man in his dirty white robe easing up on
the center table.

He was good. He
fought and scratched and shouted with the rest of them, but it was all
camouflage to mask his true intention. Every buffeting shove he earned helped
him along his way as he eased inch by deliberate inch away from his empty table
and toward the bounty of the other. No one had noticed him yet. Mara did not
stare.

Horuseps was
thinking at her, politely extending a wordless sort of inquiry since he could
not tap for her attention. She gave it to him, but her hesitation had made him
curious. She could see the lights of his eyes gleaming out of his silhouette as
he searched the room. It took him considerably less time to find the clever
gazelle than it had her.

**Don’t let
on,** Mara sent as the demon’s eyes gleamed white.

‘Why would I? These
are always entertaining.’

The boy had made
it as close to the acolyte’s table as a white-robe could get. He paused there,
wrestling with the other neophytes as he nerved himself. His goal was the
platter three up from Mara, which confused her some. There was almost no one
around her and the ribcage within her easy reach was surely a tempting target.

‘Ah, but you, my
ferocious one, are guarding it,’ Horuseps thought. ‘And you have a reputation,
don’t you?’

**He can have it
for all I care.**

‘Firstly, you
really have to eat something. And secondly, if you’re so concerned for his
success, why not put an end to this impending catastrophe and feed him?’

She looked
sharply toward the Master’s table.

‘Feed him,’
Horuseps thought calmly, pouring himself another cup of wine. ‘No one would
stop you, not you. Stand up and drop the feast into his grateful hands. It is
entirely within your power to change the disastrous course of this tragic play.
Who knows? You may even restore his faith in human kindness.’

**I’d never be
able to walk in here again without drawing a mob of whining neophytes,** Mara
sent, annoyed.

‘True, but they
would love you.’

**I’d rather
they feared me and left me alone.**

‘Of course you
do,’ Horuseps replied, his thoughts like a gentle hand stroking through her
hair. ‘Of course.’

The boy at the
heart of this silent discussion made his move, lunging without a word of
warning over the acolytes at the table.

He caught them
by surprise, but the surprise didn’t last, and before he could snap a rib away
and run, more than a dozen bodies were on him. They used their hands, they used
their stone cups, they used greasy clubs of bone. Long after the boy was down
and scrambling mindlessly to get away, they stayed on him, their laughter as
indiscriminate from howls as their glee was indiscriminate from hate. Black-robes
flew in like crows from the farthest point of the table, abandoning their meal
to get in on the beating, fighting with each other for just one kick. One of
them climbed up on the table, both hands raised, an incomprehensible sound
eating through the Mindstorm as he opened his mouth to shout—

“Enough!”

Silence did not
fall, but the roar did subside until there could be quiet. Neophytes, acolytes,
and even the struggling boy himself stilled and turned towards the Master’s table,
where Malavan reared high, his long foreclaws raised for attack. Contrary to
the furious roar of his voice, his lips were peeled back in an unmistakable
grin, and his enjoyment was a wash of red across Mara’s senses.

Into the quiet,
Horuseps said, “Arts are not to be used in the dining hall. Show some decorum.”

Students eyed
one another. The man standing on the table got down, flushed. The lions backed
away from their kill and let the boy limp back to his own kind, bloodied but
not broken. The noise gradually began to swell again.

‘One of last
year’s crop,’ Horuseps told her, looking after the retreating boy. ‘Not a
promising student despite his natural cunning. A talent for trickery, no matter
how well-developed, can never compensate for intelligence. There’s something
wrong with his mind.’

Mara tapped, and
it was there: a slight dysfunction of thought, like a sparking wire laid across
his ability to concentrate, to remember. Bad enough on the Outside, where
letters would never quite make sense as he read them, numbers never quite add
up, but here? He would never be able to master an art, never even be able to
open a door or turn on one of the lamps. Dumbfounded, she drove deeper, holding
her own memory of the Oubliette out before her to resonate in him, unable to
fathom how he could have possibly survived it.

Cunning,
Horuseps had said, and he surely had that. After a few days, not long at all by
the standards of the Scholomance, he had pried a little rock free from one of
the walls and sharpened it carefully against the wet floor. Then he lay down
where the air was sweet as it blew it through that tiny crack under the door, cut
his palm, and gently blew his blood out to pool on the other side. It took some
time. He was patient. Someone eventually saw it. Someone opened the door to
collect the body. And he walked out.

**Why do you
keep him?** Mara asked, pulling these memories back so that she could watch
them again, still astonished but also grudgingly impressed.

‘Dear child, it
is not for us to judge the worthiness of those who seek us out. We are entirely
indiscriminate.’

**He’s a
puppy,** Mara insisted. **He can’t learn anything. He’s a tribunal just waiting
to happen!**

‘Yes, but it can
be quite a long wait, and he is rather an imaginative little puppy. And what
would you have us do, heartless one? You who wouldn’t spare him a scrap from your
table, you’d have us let him go?’

**I’m not
heartless! And why not?** she demanded. **He’s no threat to you. Even if he
told everyone he met about this place, no one would believe it.**

Across the room,
Horuseps threw back his head and laughed. ‘No human is or has ever been a
threat to us, yet we release no one on their own recognizance. They have every
one of them come to us, sacrificed themselves and others, broken themselves
upon our doorsteps. Who are we to deny them entry after they have suffered so? No,
Bitter One, all who knock may enter, all who enter must bide.’

**He couldn’t
possibly understand what he was getting into.**

‘None of them
do. Precious, you are doing it again, holding us to human standards of
morality. Yes, I know the boy is doomed to answer to the hour of the bells, but
he chose his path. There are thousands like him in the world, tens of thousands
I dare say, with mental defects far more crippling, who yet manage to make
their way in the world without seeking out demonic powers with which to destroy
his enemies. He accepted the terms of his admission. Stupidly, perhaps, but the
same can be said of so many of them. We send no one away without a reckoning.’