by R. Lee Smith
Mara listened to all this, probing deeper when the whim took her, too restless to pay attention for long. When she got dressed, so did Devlin, hurriedly splashing after her as she went up for breakfast. He skulked in her shadow until she’d cleared her customary place at the center table, then dove in and grabbed at the platters. The other acolytes knocked him away, but he kept his stolen bounty and retreated with it to a safe distance to eat.
Mara watched him as she scraped mold from a block of cheese. One had to admire his ability to take advantage of any situation with such a complete lack of shame.
‘So do rats, dearest,’ Horuseps thought,
**And rats survive where people die.** Mara tossed the cheese to her own personal rat, smiling when Devlin snatched it out of the air.
‘I hope you won’t be offended when I observe you’re not the charitable sort. What do you get out of it, I wonder?’
**His gratitude, for one.**
Horuseps remained a black silhouette with glowing eyes at the Master’s backlit table, but she felt his smirk inside her mind. ‘Yes, it’s always amusing to lord oneself over one’s devoted followers, but what will you do with him?’
Mara shrugged. **It’s useful to me to have someone who knows his way around.**
His eyes flashed once, illuminating his unsmiling face. ‘As well as I do?’
**Don’t be jealous, Horuseps. He’s nothing. He could never take your place in my heart.**
‘It isn’t my jealousy that should concern you.’
But behind that pointed reprimand, Mara was intrigued to detect a genuine thread of envy after all. He was aware of it, even amused by it, and did his best to crush it down deep where he believed she couldn’t sense it, but it was there. He liked being the one she came to when she needed to walk in dark places. To be replaced in this, even in this, by a human galled him.
Mara ate her bread and watched Horuseps stare out across the dining hall at Devlin. He armored his mind, making it difficult to see his thoughts clearly amid the chaos of a few hundred others, but the shadows they cast in the Mindstorm were predatory ones. It was a small thing for a Master of the Scholomance to rid himself of a student, and Devlin was more insignificant than most.
Mara tapped her crust on the table, thinking, then burst out laughing.
Horuseps looked at her.
**You are jealous!** she crowed, sending him careful waves of delight. **I don’t believe it! Not even of Kazuul, who’s actually fucked me—** She breathed a few expert images underneath that thought. **—but of him!**
‘Don’t be absurd,’ he told her, thinking (and believing the thought originated with him) of Kazuul’s rough hand on her white breast, the bestial sounds he must have made with every thrust. He remembered all on his own watching her in her cell, the arching of her naked throat as she came, and the way she’d thought…of him.
He did not forget about Devlin. Horuseps did not forget anything. But he did release the hooks of his ominous interest and dismiss him from the surface of his mind. It was good enough for Mara.
The bells rang. The noise of the dining hall doubled as students engaged their last battles over crumbs and bones, and the drumming of a few hundred feet made their way to the door. Mara waited as she always did for the crowds to thin, picking at what was left of breakfast and smiling at the Master’s table. She made it a point to ignore Devlin, and eventually he, afraid of falling under a demon’s notice in the rapidly emptying room, ducked out and was gone.
“You’ve lost your little friend,” Horuseps observed.
“Have I?” She glanced around, then shrugged. “Just as well. He has his uses, but he tends to cling.”
“A wise strategy. Anything could happen to him outside of your protection.”
“I’m not here to protect him,” she said, and stood up.
Horuseps rose as well, his eyes fixed on her. “Another search?”
“The same search.” She couldn’t resist needling him a little, with his mind so full of her. “Do you still wish me luck?”
He thought about that for what seemed a long time. “I suppose I do,” he said at last, and laughed. “We all want what is in our own interest. My desires may be more selfish than yours, but in my own defense, they’re also more altruistic.”
And on that enigmatic word, he left her, so Mara went out to find Devlin and begin.
* * *
They searched the lyceum. Devlin knew all the instructors of higher arts who taught the ways to combine the three she’d mastered. The doors weren’t difficult to open, compared with those of Kazuul or the Oubliette, and the demons within all seemed to know her and expect her. Like Dalziel, they allowed her to descend into their private chambers, where most kept harems of one or two ambivalent women in some form or another.
She sat for a while in the last theater after seeing the two not-Connies hidden away in the lair below, watching without interest as the demon who taught there demonstrated Sight and Malleation by twisting the bones of some hapless bastard on the dais. He was one of Kazuul’s breed; the ladies below, quite human, had been Malleated to look like Zyera and Letha. His resentment that this was now known seethed through every word of his lesson. “Carve not with thy hand,” he murmured, glaring at Mara as he opened a hole right through the man’s chest. Apart from some understandable queasiness, the man felt nothing. “But with thy mind alone.”
Just as Ruk had told her. And Horuseps, for that matter, who had so often mentioned that Sight was essential to the application of every art. She couldn’t understand why so many students here, who had presumably mastered both, had such trouble with this lesson.
Then again, maybe if she knew how to use Sight properly, she’d have found Connie by now. Mastery wasn’t really mastery here, it was just a word they used to keep would-be wizards complacent in their captivity.
Eventually, the demon decided they’d wasted enough of his time, and with a muttered curse and impatient wave, ordered them all out. Mara stood with the rest of them, but the demon beckoned, and so she stayed behind as the other students filed out. She waited while he sculpted his assistant’s body back into its original form, aware of Devlin pacing in the hall each time the doors opened for another departing student. The demon was aware of him as well, and let her know with a dour grunt and deliberate thoughts of disapproval. Another telepath. Another good one, even.
The demon finished and sent the man away, shrugging into his robe as he ran up the risers, all his human thoughts on dinner. Once the door had shut on him and every other living mind, the demon turned his glare on Mara. “Didst thou not know that Horuseps had laid eyes already upon my harem?”
“I know what he told me,” she answered. “I wanted to see for myself.”
His lip curled ever so slightly. “Thou art securely in our lord’s favor and so thy freedoms are assured, but were thee not so, I would mark thee for this day’s insolence. My bedmates are not for thee to sanction.”
Her first reaction was not a charitable one, but even she could be diplomatic when she had to be. “I’m sorry if I offended you,” she said, inclining her head in a stiff-necked bow. “But since none of you seem to know whether or not you’ve seen my friend, how else am I supposed to find her except to look?”
The demon grunted and eyed her as he put away the other tools of his instruction. Behind the well-armored fortress of his mind, he very deliberately showed her his resentment, his power, and his willingness to do her harm. “My back yet bends to Kazuul,” he said, slamming it all away. “But I will risk even his wrath shouldst thou dare to trespass here again. Go thou, and know my doors are shut to thee.”
She went, feeling his eyes on her like spears at her back all the way up the risers to the door. If he wanted to believe he was scaring her off, she’d let him. She took his warning seriously, but she was also aware that his reasons, such as they were, had not been entirely honest ones. Beneath his calculated anger and disdain had been the faintest shadow of unease, and the l
ingering echo of frustrated desire. His back did bend to Kazuul, and so he sent her away because he could stand to do it once, maybe even twice, but if had to see her much more than that, not even Kazuul’s will could keep him off her.
She supposed she should feel flattered.
Devlin was still pacing in the hall when she emerged, and his relief at seeing her unharmed was like a hammer straight to her head. “What took you so long?” he demanded, jogging up to join her.
“See if you can complete this sentence. ‘None of your fucking blank.’” She glanced at him, decided he was sorry enough, and said, “Do you know of any more Masters I’m eligible to see?”
He shook his head, staring glumly at his feet. He wished he could think of something to say that wouldn’t piss her off. It didn’t occur to him to just wish she’d be nicer.
“Well, how much trouble am I likely to get in if I just start opening doors?”
“Are you serious? Of course you’re serious,” he amended hurriedly under her withering stare. “But, come on, are you crazy?”
“Is that really so much better than serious?”
“Why would you deliberately do something you know you shouldn’t do, here of all places?”
“Behaving myself isn’t finding her. Has anyone ever been sent to a tribunal for sneaking in to the higher classes?”
“I’m sure they’d start if someone did it a dozen times in one day! How far do you think you can push them before they—”
“Push back?”
“Rip you open, is what I was going to say! What is wrong with you? Why aren’t you afraid of these people?”
“Oh come now,” said Horuseps, gliding out of the shadowed corridor ahead of them with dreamlike suddenness. He smiled at Mara as Devlin bowed nervously. “Whatever is there to be afraid of? And Mara, my darling, where are you off to?”
“Back to my cell,” she answered him, a little surprised by the question.
“No one expects you?”
That was even more surprising. She showed it, raising both eyebrows and lifting her chin. “Who would be expecting me? If there’s a chess club in this place, I’ve missed the meetings.”
He acknowledged the joke, such as it was, with a thin smile and came a little closer. His eyes shifted to Devlin and narrowed. The lights that moved inside them irised small and very bright. He said nothing, but Devlin backed up at once, bowing the whole time in what should have been a comical way if only it were not so terrified. “I do hope I’m not interrupting you,” he murmured, watching Devlin turn and run.
Mara listened the slap of oversized sandals recede, smiling crookedly up at Horuseps. Jealous. Unreal. “Hypothetically,” she said, “how much trouble would I be in if I let myself into all the higher learning theaters, whether or not I’d mastered their arts?”
He looked at her at last and raised one eyebrow. “I swore upon my own immortal life to inspect the harems on your behalf and it was done. Don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you,” she lied evenly. “Not them. No offense, but you took a few days to do it. Someone might have moved her.”
“If that were the case, then this ‘someone’ shall certainly move her again, because no one can make a thorough search of every theater in a single day. And mine, dearest, was far more thorough than yours could ever be.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“It’s not for me to answer. I suppose special dispensation could be arranged…and you know by whom.” He glanced down the passage, his long arms sliding out of their customary crossed position to beckon her to him. “But if you’re in no rush to ask him, perhaps you’d care to accompany me on a small errand?”
“Why not?” she said lightly, and she went, but she had to wonder why he’d eased into the request at all. Touching his mind tonight was like touching an oil slick: she could see nothing of the thoughts beneath, only cloaking blackness and a hint of alien color that stained even the lightest contact. He didn’t even talk to her, but only walked on ahead and a little to one side, his hands resting on his shoulders and a feminine sway to his stride. It made her curious as to how much of his night he’d spent with Proteus.
Horuseps chuckled, proving that even if he wasn’t talking, he was always listening.
“Well?” she prodded.
“I spent my night in lessons, precious. It’s my day I’ll be spending with Proteus.”
“Congratulations.”
He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “I think you may have left a little piece of yourself behind when you were in him. He’s made a number of startling strides since then.”
“So he’s finally mastered Sight, after only six years.”
“Eight, in fact, for he’s had two since his initial achievement to fumble toward success. And tonight, his reward.” Horuseps laughed again, running his black fingers through his long, white hair. “I can hardly wait.”
“So where are we going?” she asked. “Am I lending you a negligee?”
“Did you bring one?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Then don’t be snide. We’re going to the Great Library. There are a number of books I’ve promised to let him look at when he comes to me tonight.” He glanced at her, again smiling. “You see why I’m bringing you and not him.”
“The Scrivener,” Mara said, swallowing the unpleasantness that came even at the sound of the name.
“No one is immune to his effects, yet you have proven more resistant than most. It may take some time to locate the tomes I seek.”
The library was just as she remembered it, seemingly untouched by time. The same hushed whispers and rustling pages, the same hooded figures moving back and forth, dragging their chains behind them, and the same living mass of awful intelligence at its center, overseeing all with his hundred sightless eyes. Mara stood at the railing outside the lyceum’s archway, just staring, trying to acclimate herself to the poisonous atmosphere of the place up here, where it was thinnest. She could feel the crawl of the Scrivener’s thoughts, mindless as beetles chewing into carrion.
“What is he?” she asked, prolonging the descent the only way she knew how.
Horuseps glanced at her, smiling. “An excellent question. One might ask, what are any of us? What are you, young one? What am I?”
“He’s different from you.”
“Are you not different from any other living thing upon this world? Does not one tree bear many fruit? Is not each one distinct?” Horuseps came to the railing beside her. His long fingers curled around the curved stone cap of the banister. He gazed down upon the Scrivener and lights moved in his eyes. “Yes, he is very different.”
“What is he?” Mara asked again, watching Horuseps now and not the object of her curiosity.
Horuseps only shrugged. “He is the same substance as any of us, only set together in grotesque manner.”
“The same. You mean he’s a demon.”
“Your kind as such a strange love of labels.” He started down, forcing Mara to follow. His hands were always moving, graceful as birds in flight, tapping shoulders and waving away the students who always gathered on the steps to amuse themselves with the agony of the harrowing. “It was not so long ago, as time is reckoned, that I have been called by Man an angel. My children yet are…of a sort.”
“Your children?” She put out surprise for him to sense, although the news wasn’t exactly shocking. “Are they…here?”
“No.” He laughed. “Neither are they where your mythologies would have them be. Yet they can be found, if one is persistent.”
“How many do you have?”
“Many,” was his amused reply, but then he stopped again, now on the second-floor landing, to turn his back on the library below and look at her. They were alone, deep in the stink of the Scrivener’s mind, where even sound warped out of truth, yet Horuseps seemed unaffected. “They resemble me, to some degree.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. They are identical
, each one to the other, and none of them precisely made in my image. They are only half-demon, after all.” He shrugged one shoulder, and braced his hands on the railing behind him, smiling at her. The openness of this posture came as an invitation. She could feel his expectation of her wandering gaze and so she gave it to him, her eyes moving freely down his weirdly smooth chest to the dark, chitinoid plating of his lower half. “Men believe them to be daughters,” Horuseps said, once her eyes reached his denuded groin. “As there are men who believe me a woman. Or should I say, a female. Labels.”
He wanted her to ask him questions—about these children of his, about their mothers, about his own ambiguous gender—but Mara said nothing. Instead, with a calculated spontaneity, she reached out her hand and touched him.
His mind leapt in surprise, as physical in its way as a slap, but apart from a certain sharpening of his eyes, he didn’t move. He watched intently as her hand slipped over the smooth, glassy plane of his chest, moving slowly downward as each untraveled muscle was explored and marked. His thoughts churned behind their oily cover, thoughts of her, of Kazuul, of other things too tangled and too deep to read in safety.
She felt at his hips, just where he changed texture, and reached up with her other hand to stroke his chest. His skin was hard, like glass. He had no nipples, no indication of womanly breasts. Lower down, his armored parts seemed almost stony by comparison, smooth but pitted and heavily creased along plated seams, intensely unpleasant to feel in human form. At the place where his plates joined along his groin, she could see an aperture, very hard, not long and not wide. Just a slit, really, with an especially pliant ridge along its outline.
His thighs opened minutely. She could see the muscles of his arms tighten as he leaned a little more weight on the rail behind him. Otherwise, he remained motionless. He watched, and so Mara looked up and into his eyes as she slipped her finger inside him.
