by R. Lee Smith
Replacing it in its protective chest, Mara left the portcullis for the Oubliette. The victorious bear whose test it had been had nerved himself to creep out at last. She found him huddled in the robes just outside, hiding his face against the sleeping acolyte’s side as Mara passed and holding very still. Whatever. The acolyte would wake up on his own sooner or later and who would be there to say that Mr. Bear hadn’t willed his doors open fairly?
Re-entering the library took more willpower, but she was across and up the stairs in seconds. She met no one in the tunnels, heard no sound apart from her own footsteps. She felt no mind…until she came out in the ephebeum.
Mara gasped and swung a scant instant before Horuseps murmured, “Out for a stroll, my dear?”
His blown-glass body gleamed in the darkness, illuminating nothing but his own self, fading to black at his hips. He stepped away from the wall where he’d been leaning, uncrossed his arms, draped one of them casually over her shoulders and began to walk, not towards her cell, but to the wide stair that led to the Nave. “It is forbidden for students to wander out of hours. I believe I’ve mentioned this.”
“Will there be a tribunal?” Mara asked. Her voice didn’t shake; she was proud of that. Her mind flexed. She’d never really used it as a weapon before, not a real weapon, but no toy slap would do now.
“Oh, it isn’t that forbidden,” Horuseps said dismissively, waving his other hand. “But where were you?”
“The Great Library.”
His arm tightened on her shoulders, although his tone remained light. “Now it is that forbidden to borrow books.”
“I didn’t take anything.” And before he could question her further, she said, “Were you waiting for me?”
“Oh yes.”
“Why?”
“Need you ask?”
Was this about Kazuul? “Humor me,” she said.
He glanced at her, and behind his sly smile, Mara clearly heard his desire to dangle his purpose over her, to torture her, however casually, for the few short minutes he had, but no. He would tell her and his reason for doing so had less to do with a generous nature than his recollection of the easy way in which she’d pierced his mind the last time she believed she’d been dared to do so. If he gave her cause, she would do it again. She was so much stronger now, so soon…
“I’m sorry,” Mara said, genuinely surprised. “Are those supposed to be secret thoughts?”
Horuseps removed his arm and darkness dropped between their minds. “How good of you to bring the deficit to my attention,” he said. “Although perhaps not very wise. There’s very little more enticing to me than an honest streak running through a delightfully amoral soul. You’ve been warned.”
“Warned,” she repeated scornfully. “You’re the Master here. If you see something enticing, demand it.”
“You shameless flirt. This way.”
Across the Nave, through an open door, down yet another winding passageway. There were no lights here. Mara followed the white cut of the demon’s body in the blackness, letting one hand trail along the damp tunnel wall for balance. Her feet, badly burned by the icy floors below the library, hurt terribly, but she refused to limp. He had a reason for all this and her intuition told her it would be worth the hassle, but still she didn’t entirely rule out the possibility of a trap.
“Here,” said Horuseps, pausing before one of the rare closed doors of the Scholomance. It opened at his touch and a blister-lamp within came to a slow and sullen life. “Your diligence inspired me,” the demon said as he drew aside to let her enter. “I have been searching the private chambers of my fellow Masters. I found her among Malavan’s harem.”
Dark brown hair spilled in curls off the end of the stone ledge where the girl lay. It didn’t quite serve for a bed. Her arms overhung the sides. Her fingers twitched, about every four seconds, as steady as a metronome. The hands were too small, not just to be Connie’s, but to be real. Like the tiny feet at the end of the girl’s twitching, elegant legs, they were sized for a child on the body of a woman. Her breasts were not large, but perfectly-formed and perfectly-placed upon her delicate torso. Her waist was too small, her hips too rounded, her sex as hairless and smooth as Mara’s own. In fact, apart from the glossy curls growing from the girl’s head, she had no hair at all, no scars, no blemishes or birthmarks, nothing to disturb the perfect whiteness of her body. As for the face…there was none.
It wasn’t ruined, wasn’t torn or mangled beyond recognition. It was gone, wiped clean, a perfect porcelain blank. The brow was high and smooth and regally rounded down into heart-shaped cheekbones and chin, but she had no features, apart from a tiny pointed nose, which was the girl’s only means of respiration. It was beautiful, that was the worst of it, beautiful in its macabre inhumanity, a face that epitomized anonymity in perfection.
“It isn’t her,” said Mara.
“Are you certain?”
Mara tapped at the mushy remains of the girl’s mind. There were no more thoughts, no true memories, but there were impressions, as with every mind, a kind of sediment built up after years of existence that were absolutely unique to each individual, and it endured even after the existence itself had been rendered obsolete. “It’s not Connie,” she said again. But it had been someone.
“Pity. I’m afraid I was rather harsh with Malavan. Now I shall have to apologize.”
“You’re not taking her back to him?”
“Not this instant, but yes, I might as well. For certain, she’s not much use elsewhere.” Horuseps lifted the girl’s dangling hand and arranged it on her soft, white belly, but its twitching soon dislodged it. “Malavan has been warned, of course, not to fill his harem from the student body, but—”
“No one noticed.”
“No.” He met her eyes without apology, as if daring her to push the matter.
She’d always found it difficult to let a dare go. “Will there be a tribunal?”
The demon’s long eyebrows twitched up in surprise. “Against a Master?”
“He broke the law, didn’t he?”
“It’s really more of a suggestion. Besides, it’s entirely possible that the girl was herself punished for breaking the lesser of our laws…perhaps he caught her out of her cell before first-bell.”
“Or perhaps he just liked the look of her feet.”
Horuseps gave her a quick smile. “So you noticed that, did you? Ah well, we all have our own affectations.”
“What are yours?”
“Oh, I’m quite boring, I assure you, especially compared to some. Master Uulok, for example, favors amputees.”
Mara opened her mouth to ask how many amputees could possibly have made the climb up the steep mountainside, and then realized that was exactly his point. “Let me guess. There’s no law against that, either.”
Horuseps shrugged.
“Do the students here have any rights at all?” Mara demanded, beginning to lose her temper in spite of every effort to rein it in.
“They had the right to stay away,” Horuseps replied mildly. “But gave it up to enter here. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but as someone or another once said, they knew it wasn’t nursery school.”
Mara looked at the faceless girl, at her flawless skin and perfect beauty. She had been made into a doll, as near to inanimate as any living thing could be. She served only one purpose now, to be an object of admiration, a vessel of lust. And it was not a crime.
“If this had been Connie,” Mara said slowly, watching the delicate hands jump and dance. “What would have happened next?”
“Next?”
“Yes, next. The interval between me discovering my best friend transformed into Master Malavan’s cock-sleeve and me leading her out of this mountain. Next.”
“Leading,” Horuseps echoed, looking at the twitching doll with something like amusement.
Mara’s temper slipped again. Holding on to it had a weight now. She was beginning to tremble from the exertion of keep
ing it. “Yes, leading,” she said, somewhat hoarsely, although still calm, still in control. “Because, you see, if there were no way to restore her from this condition, it would be the same as finding her dead.”
“I suppose so.” He began to look slightly disturbed, as if this scenario had not yet occurred to him. He too considered the body of the girl on the slab. “The human mind is remarkably pliable. What Malavan dismantled could, I’m certain, be repaired.”
“By you?”
“Sadly, my talents lie elsewhere. But any of the tribe of Ochalis could engender her healing, if properly motivated.”
“Then fix her.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Fix her!” Mara pointed and the faceless girl’s whole body bucked once, as if in response. “Find one of these tribesmen and fix her!”
Horuseps, looking pained, raised his hands in a kind of entreaty. “Dear child—”
“He shouldn’t have done it, you said so yourself!”
“I said he shouldn’t have taken a student—”
“What, you think he sent for her through the mail? Of course she’s a student!”
“Every Master has the right to take what he desires.”
“He didn’t just take her, God damn it, he changed her! Don’t tell me that’s not wrong!”
“Morality,” Horuseps began, then abruptly came a step closer and dropped to one knee before her, reaching up for her hand as a man proposing. Mara jerked back, but he held his pose, his empty hand outstretched, entreating. “Morality, dearest Mara, is born of human frailty. The perceptions of right and wrong are merely Man’s feeble attempt to protect himself, his property, his life and his way of life. Morality, my darling one, is mortality. It does not apply here.”
Mara looked from him in disbelief to the spastic, silent doll of Malavan’s sex-toy. “Some things are wrong,” she insisted. “Some things are always wrong!”
“No!” He closed the gap between them in a lunge, his bare hand closing like iron around her wrist, and in that touch was only a baffling, overpowering sincerity, and his determination to make her understand a thing so element that it was to him like explaining life’s reliance upon sunlight. “We are not human. We do not require a code of conduct to keep us above the petty hurts of the Earth. We are its Masters and for us, there is no morality but only privilege.”
Mara yanked, but could not break his grip. She slapped at him with her mind instead, and Horuseps released her at once, showing her his empty palms. “You can preach to me all you want,” Mara spat. “But that is not what we agreed to when we got here and you know it goddamn well.”
“Is it wrong for the wolf to feed upon the rabbit?” Horuseps countered in the same patient tone. “Is it sickening to one’s ethical senses when the spider traps and binds the moth? It is the nature of the strong to subdue the weak.”
“Wolves don’t rip off the faces of their rabbits before fucking them into Jello!” Mara shouted. “Don’t feed me this bullshit! It is not the same!”
Horuseps started to speak, then seemed to give up. He sighed, dropped his arms, and rose to his former stately height. “Malavan is, of course, a wretched little deviant who knows better than to prey on those who do not yet deserve punishment. But that does not make what he does with his playthings ‘wrong’. Nevertheless, I will see what can be done to mend this creature’s mind.” He spread his hands, mutely asking if she were satisfied.
She was shaking, she realized. Actually shaking with anger. She’d never been so mad in her life, never. And she hated it, hating losing even this much control. Mara got a lock on her emotions, battled them down, and spoke only when she was confidant her voice would not betray her. “While you’re asking around for a healer,” she said, “you’d better mention that I will be searching every room in this mountain myself, and that includes the private harems of every Master.”
His eyebrows twitched. He frowned, opened his mouth.
“And if I find ‘this creature’ or anyone else like her, hidden under any Master’s bed, may God help him because I will make it my mission to make him as sorry as any of you soulless sons of bitches can be!”
“So be it,” Horuseps said quietly. “But I would advise you to think well, dear Mara, before issuing edicts of this sort. I rather suspect my brothers shall be disinclined to give you all the mountain to take away. Will you sacrifice your Connie to save this one?”
‘Calm down,’ Mara told herself. It wasn’t the time to make demands, and no…this was not the person to make them over.
The faceless woman twitched.
“Do you have one?” Mara demanded, not looking at him. “Is that the reason for all your concern? Have you got a little toy of your own chained to your bed?”
“I? Alas, the centuries have left me thoroughly jaded. I can abide no lover’s company for longer than one night. My bed is as cold and empty as your own. And you should return to it, child. Before the bells ring to expose your unlawful sojourn, return to your cell. Mara.”
She had turned away, but looked back now, as calm as she should be, even when she saw the demon’s hand resting on the girl’s white belly as he would any inanimate object. Horuseps gazed at her, not smiling, and kept his thoughts well-hidden.
“Do not think too harshly of us,” he said at last.
“That’s twice you’ve said that. Why do you care what I think?”
“We are long accustomed to taking what we desire,” he said, and turned up one corner of his mouth. “Perhaps I desire your goodwill.”
“You don’t have it,” she said bluntly, killing his little smile. “Not while that—” The girl twitched, as if she heard and knew she was being singled out. “—or anyone like her is shut up with your brothers, and students are ripped apart for cutting class. Not while Connie is missing. You’re no better than they are, Horuseps. You’re no different from Malavan!”
He flinched, not in his face, which remained cool and slightly smiling, but in his mind, where a flinch was far more difficult to cover. He did not blink, simply looked at her, and the longer he looked, the harder it was to hold on to her anger. He did not remind her that he had been at her side searching for Connie under the Nave, but she thought about that anyway. And he had been looking on his own time, hadn’t he? Possibly at some personal risk. At least, he’d been willing to tangle with Malavan when he’d thought this might be Connie, and he’d come to get her right away. Eventually, seething, she had to look away, and the only thing in the room to look at besides him was the faceless, twitching, mindless doll he’d brought her.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said finally. There was no forgiveness in his voice. “I did know of Malavan’s propensity to amuse himself with stolen bodies. And I know there may be others. Certainly, when students go missing in this mountain, they are most often found in a Master’s bed. But you, my bittersweetness, you cannot possibly think to boldly dare those dragons’ dens and have them all out.”
The faceless woman’s breath moved in and out of her, smooth, unconcerned. Her arms jumped, flopped.
“But I will,” Horuseps said.
Mara’s chest squeezed out a single harsh laugh. “Sure you will.”
“I give you my word.”
She wanted to spit on him. She’d never in her life wanted to spit on another living thing, but she could think of nothing that would feel better. She turned around, away from him.
“The vow of an immortal is not the fickle thing of Man,” Horuseps said with real heat, although he did not move. “We lie as pleases us, but when we swear upon our lives to do a thing, it is the end of our lives to renege. This is not a question of morality, child, or virtues, or indecencies. I am giving you my word. I have no desire to die, Mara. Nevertheless, I do swear upon mine own unnatural death that I shall inspect the harems of my brothers. I will turn out any I find that may conceivably be your Connie.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Even so.”
She swung ba
ck to him, her useless hands in fists. “How am I supposed to trust you when you’re so damned proud of living without a conscience? I can’t believe a word you say now! Swear me anything!”
“I acknowledge the paradox,” he said evenly. “Yet morality is, as I have said, mortality. As it means my own mortality to break my given oath, you may believe me now.”
“Even if you were telling me the truth, why would you do it? What do you think I’m going to give you in return?”
He looked at her, his eyes very dark and full of movement. “If I do not take it upon myself to investigate my brothers,” he said at last, “I honestly believe that you will, because you are very young and, at times, mind-swimmingly stupid.”
Mara clamped her jaws shut on her first instinctive reply. She would not lose her temper twice. She was calm.
“So I will go. I will not enjoy it. In fact, I suspect I will be quite cross with you until my vow is satisfied. But I will go, because your life is worth a great deal to someone we both know, and if you insult me by asking whom, I will slap your face.”
“Do you hear me asking?” She knew damned well who.
“Good. Then return to your cell, child. Now. While I still have some affection for you.” He turned and started to gather up the twitching doll.
Mara headed for the door, paused and stood with her head bent and her fingernails digging at her palms. Then she went back to him—I will be calm—stood up on her tiptoes, and kissed his glass-smooth cheek.
He flinched. Hard. And stared at her.
“Thank you,” she told him. “I’m sorry I insulted you. I’m very young and mind-swimmingly stupid and frequently something of a bitch, but I know enough to say thank you when someone sticks his neck out for me.”
She was covering her bases and she thought he probably knew it, even though she kept her motives locked up deep and tight. There was no sense in making an enemy out of Horuseps, particularly over the fate of a total stranger, however horrifically-used that stranger might be. She could kiss ass with the best of them when she had to.
