by R. Lee Smith
Light, pale and unflickering, cut through the blackness in twin points above her. Green light. Kazuul’s eyes.
He was sitting at the foot of the bed. Perched on it like a gargoyle, his feet comfortably dug into the stone edging and his hands clasped together and carelessly dangling between his bent knees. He watched her fight for clarity without moving, without speaking. His expression was one of the very mildest interest.
Mara fumbled for the edge of a blanket. Trying to shift it brought on a cramping wave of shakes. She dropped back as boneless as a sack of mud and lay sweating on her back. Her mind whirled and fogged, but she refused to let it grow dark on her. When she was sure she wasn’t going to pass out again, she slapped defiantly at the blanket and pushed it off as far as her arm could reach.
“Hm.” Kazuul leapt agilely to the ground and walked past her, out of sight. He pulled the blanket back up as he went. Bastard.
She wanted to ask him questions. Her brain felt clogged and questions were the best way to armor herself out of the appearance of weakness, but she couldn’t think of any. At least, none she didn’t already know the answers to. Where was she? In Kazuul’s private chambers, she could see that. How did she get there? How else, but that he brought her? Why? Hell, he probably didn’t know himself. It was always amusement with these guys. What happened?
What did happen? She remembered the attack, remembered the surge of terrible rage that cut its way into and out of her with such violence, but what happened, really?
“H-how—” Mara croaked, and convulsed in racking coughs.
Something wet pushed into her mouth. A bit of rag, soaked in heavily-watered wine. She sucked and swallowed, coughed again, and spat it weakly out. “How did I get hurt?” she rasped.
“How indeed, thou fool,” Kazuul said tolerantly. “This is what comes of thee tripping idly through this lesson or that without care for content. Magic is energy, young one. There stands the most basic equation, and as necessary to all sorcery as thine own letters are to all thine education. Magic is energy, and thou didst deplete all around thee. All around and all within thee. The last of thy killing will came from thine own breath and body. Fool. That said—” Kazuul dipped the rag in wine and replaced it firmly in her mouth. “—thou didst give an inspiring demonstration of thy will.”
“I didn’t want to kill them.”
“Nay? In that event, thou hast shown catastrophic failure.” He huffed out one irritated laugh and drizzled water across her cheeks with flicks of his claws. “Thine is the path of high magic, Mara. Do not apologize for its use. It shames us both.”
She tried to sit up and couldn’t, then only lay there, gasping and nauseous. “I’m not here…to impress…you.”
“Ah, well I know it.”
That was all for a while. Mara faded in and out, gathering strength in the Panic Room until she dared sink down into her body and try in vain to make it obey her. She knew Kazuul was aware of her efforts, knew he was laughing inside, and could do nothing about it. She was helpless in his lair, a lamb in the grip of an indulgent wolf.
“How many?” she asked finally.
“Didst thou not keep a count?”
“I—” barely saw them. But no, she had given him enough to play with. “No,” she said instead, closing her eyes.
His hand stroked across her brow, caressing her and the mind beneath. “Nine, at ultimate reckoning.”
“N-no!” She tried to open her eyes and couldn’t, tried to sit up and could only twitch once under the torturous burden of the blankets. Nine? “No, that’s not…There were only five!”
“Shall I tell thee the ways in which they suffered their deaths?”
She didn’t want to know, but refusal was a trap, so she nodded.
“He whose bones thou madest jelly, ultimately suffocated under the weight of his fallen flesh. Thou must forgive me,” he added, with a quiet roll of laughter. “There is a certain humor about the circumstance, in that he knew the Words by which his form may have been repaired…if only he had a jawbone with which to speak them. Is that not irony?”
“Technically, I think it’s just unfortunate,” Mara muttered. “For irony, there would have to be…a kind of pun in it…to make a disparity…between his intention and the result.”
“Ah. Unfortunate then, but amusing all the same. Also swiftly demised was he whose blood wast made to salt. Master Dalziel wished me to express his great pleasure, may I add. Salt of flesh shall be a classically-used Transmutation now gone inexplicably out of fashion, and yet one thou didst superbly execute.” He caught himself, then chuckled. “Pun unintentional.”
“I’m sure.”
“One, thou didst glove in rock and crush. Two bled out from the wounds thou didst inflict. One didst thou Malleate in divide from crown to groin.” Kazuul poured himself a cup of something from an ewer and drank, looking at her thoughtfully. “I give that one to thy count, though he lived three days ere he made an end of it. One—”
“I don’t want…to hear anymore.”
“As thou wilt. Many there were who survived thy rage, somewhat less than whole. After some discussion amongst us, it was decided not to interfere, although I am told most have managed repair.” He came back to the bed and gave her another sip of wine. “Thou hast not, I think, many more enemies.”
“How did you find me?” Mara asked.
“I am told that pup that hugs thy heels came howling into the lyceum for aid, risking expulsion for that he dared to be about after the tolling of the last bell. There too, we had discussion. It was decided we forgive him the oversight, this once.”
“Who?” She tried again to sit and this time managed, although the exertion left her shaking. “You mean…Devlin?”
Kazuul shrugged. “I do not mark the names or faces of the humans who come here, thou knowest this. One of the many youths of thy same accented tongue, that is all I could determine.”
It had to be Devlin. Naked and bleeding, with needles still imbedded in his flesh and his wrists still tied together, he’d gone for help. Gone to a demon, no less. After last-bell.
“Idiot,” muttered Mara, and tried to get up.
“Art thou so determined to kill thyself?” Kazuul asked, watching her fight back the blanket. “I might have spared thee these pains and left thee where thou didst lay. Down, Mara. Down and rest.”
“I don’t trust your nursing.”
“Nay?” He put his hand on her chest and pressed her suddenly, violently flat. For a moment, he was Proteus; the illusion was so real that she felt the rough scrape of stone under her face, heard laughter in her ears. Then it was worse, because it was Kazuul leaning over her, relishing every fragment of memory that slipped from her control. “Yet here thou dost remain,” he mused.
“Let me up.”
“Nay.”
“Why not, you fucking sadist? Let me go!”
“Six days and nights, I have tended thee, groomed and washed thee, fed thee sips of life. Six days and nights, I have not pried at the unguarded walls of thy mind, nor taken my pleasure of thy delightfully vulnerable body. Now thou wouldst malign my nursing. I am offended.”
The weight behind his hand was stifling. She tried to curse again, but managed only a rattling gasp.
“Thy heart races. Hammers. Quivers. Thou art weakened, Bitter Waters. Admit thee or no, thou art sore in need of succor.” He leaned close, grinning at her from only inches away, and growled, “Succor of me, o Mara.”
She bared her teeth in a hard, furious sneer, then had to gasp for breath again.
“Because I wish it,” he said, as if she’d asked. He flexed his claws on her breastbone, his eyes dipping to watch the sweat bead up on her flushed skin. “Because thou dost despise it.” He nuzzled at her naked throat, slipped his tongue into the hollow of it, and tasted the skin above her jumping vein. “Because suffering comes in many shades. Thine I do find beautiful.”
Mara dragged in a breath, raised her hands, and shoved them against hi
s chest with a Word. She felt its making like a hammer on her spine. Her vision washed to white and bled in again, dimmer than before, and Kazuul stayed right where he was.
“Again,” he purred, his eyes smoldering.
“…damn…you…” She was sinking, her body numb to her will, sinking into the black. She couldn’t even be sure she was talking, but she thought she was because he laughed at her, laughed and kissed her.
She fell from waking with his breath inside her, and the last thought she had—his or hers, she could not tell—was that his breath was sweet.
* * *
Mara lay helpless in the demon’s bed for days without count. She heard the bells, saw day and night interchanged when he had the aerie opened, but could make no sense of either. Sometimes she slept, sometimes dreamed, and at times went deeper than that, back into the black nothing where the fight to regain her consciousness and control had to be waged all over. Every minute she spent in her body was a hell set to the score of her own pounding heart.
She dreaded waking. Kazuul was always there, feeding her sips of watered-down wine, or alternatively, a salty and bitter broth whose primary ingredient she suspected to be blood. When she refused to swallow from the cup he put against her lips, he calmly sipped at it himself, then rolled atop her and passed the stuff from his mouth to hers with all his weight crushing down on her. There was no fighting him. Even as she gathered strength in the Panic Room, she could feel his arms around her, his infernal heat warming her limp and undefended body. At times, she heard him whispering in her ear, felt him licking at her naked throat or combing carefully through her hair with his claws. She could protest none of it.
Gradually, and not without great internal effort, she began to win the battle. Her sleep became a place of rest and not some claustrophobic black prison she could not escape. The drumming of her pulse first slowed, then faded, and finally the yellow light of danger bled itself away from her monitors, showing her only a body in a state of over-exertion. She began to hold the cup when her brought her wine, and to push it away when he brought the broth.
Although still a long way from normal, she knew her strength was returning, and that meant it was time to start planning the next step in her search. She hadn’t seen every part of the mountain yet, but in this state, made breathless by the act of swallowing or groaning with the effort to roll over under her own power, she could not imagine how to go about it. She wanted it over, that was all. She wanted it done. And for the first time in all these years, Mara felt the slow, sour crawl of resentment as she thought of Connie—her first, best, and only friend—who had run stupidly off to this horrible place and then had the nerve to cry for rescue.
The bells rang once. Mara listened without opening her eyes. First-bell. A brand new day. Somewhere below her, students were flooding into the dining room to fight for mouthfuls of food. And soon Kazuul would come with a bowl of broth, and that meant him bearing down on her from above, his mouth wedging hers open, his laughter rumbling against her chest, because she absolutely refused to drink the stuff by choice. For now, she drowsed, too tired to sit up. When the hand brushed at her cheek, she did not respond, laying as one dead across Kazuul’s rumpled bedding.
Only when the same fingers trailed down her throat, did she realize the smooth and graceful touches couldn’t possibly be coming from Kazuul’s rock-rough hands, but she didn’t have the strength to care. The fingers stroked along her shoulders and then down, pushing the sweat-damp sheets ahead of them, baring her chest to the chill air. Someone both sighed and hummed—Horuseps. Identification came as the prickling of fine hairs at the nape of her neck—and the hand slipped brazenly around her breast.
“Mind thyself,” Kazuul growled good-naturedly from somewhere in the room. “Control thy hand, else I have it off for thee.”
“Brute. Tyrant.” The demon’s breath puffed warm against her cheek. He’d bent, snuffling at her maybe, or—
His tongue lit on her lower lip, moistening her chapped mouth with swift, fluttery, hungry licks. Mara did not react, although she did feel a faint and exhausted sort of surprise. Horuseps hummed again, right there into her open mouth, and as gooseflesh crawled along her limp body, he eased his tongue into her and swirled it around her mouth. Mara’s throat clicked, convulsively swallowing, and she gagged a little. Horuseps withdrew, but not far. His fingers at her breast skimmed across her nipple, stiffening it just before he sucked it into his mouth. Mara made a sound, her lips twitching in a moue of sleeping disgust. She tried to roll over and couldn’t, not without waking up all the way.
“I envy you,” Horuseps said, and gave her breast a last wet pull before taking himself and his touches away. “There lies a heady wine.”
“Shalt thou have another reminder to keep thee chaste? I can leave thee a lasting scar if thou must have one.”
“Forgive, I pray you. I am easily overcome by helplessness.” His voice receded as he straightened up, but his hand stayed with her, caressing her in thoughtless, greedy patterns. “It was my fault, Master. Entirely.”
“Aye?” Kazuul sounded preoccupied, unconcerned.
“I never thought they’d band together like that. They never have before. I provoked them.”
“Soonest begun, swiftest done. T’was bound to happen, and I never doubted she would survive it.”
“Nor I.” Horuseps’s slender hand trailed along her belly before coming to rest on her thigh. “She is recovering nicely, isn’t she?”
Kazuul grunted.
“How delightfully resilient she is.” Horuseps slipped the back of his hand up between her breasts, gave her a pat, and moved away, his voice receding. “And how ferocious. Would you have thought her capable of it already?”
“I think her capable of anything in this fool’s pursuit of hers.” Kazuul was quiet a moment, then grunted and added, “I did not foresee the killing so soon.”
“You don’t seem particularly displeased by it, either,” Horuseps observed and no, Mara thought, he didn’t. In fact, the satisfaction in Kazuul’s rumbling voice had been rich enough almost to seem sexual. “Perhaps you give her too much liberty.”
“Perhaps.”
Horuseps waited, but when nothing more was forthcoming, he let out a peal of his uniquely nasty laughter. “Well, so long as you’re aware of it, I must be content.”
“Wouldst thou not indulge so tasty a morsel if it lay under thy jaws? Besides,” Kazuul growled, leaping heavily down from wherever he’d been perching, “’tis not forbidden for students to slaughter one another.”
“Nor to assault one another.”
Now it was Kazuul’s hand upon her, the heat and harshness of his skin unmistakable as he pulled the damp sheet back up to her neck. “All was done for cause of her own defense.”
“Yes. This time. And when it becomes revenge? Or leverage, to seek out her little playmate?”
Silence, but Horuseps laughed sharply. Maybe Kazuul had shrugged.
“Oh yes, it is easy to show lenience when she lies here so pretty and vulnerable, or when she spreads those winsome thighs, but you had best begin to concern yourself, my brother. Her power is growing. This time, it slipped from her control. The next time, it may slip from yours.”
“Thy counsel, as always, has been heard. Now leave me.”
A short pause, and then, somewhat stiffly, Horuseps said, “If my words have seemed at all impertinent—”
Kazuul laughed, low and indulgent. “I forgive them, naturally, as I have forgiven thee. Every court needs its jester, free of the lord’s wrath. Go, brother, and go in my good favor.”
“As you wish, my lord.”
She didn’t hear him leave, but there was a faint crackling sound behind her; perhaps he’d Corresponded. In any case, he had to be gone, because Kazuul came and sat on the edge of the bed. Looking at her, maybe. Maybe not.
In the quiet, Mara drowsed again, falling deeper and deeper toward the thick and recuperative sleep. She had almost reached it when some
thing brought her back. Not a sound, nor precisely a sense of thought, but just some vague and severe awareness looming over her. Mara forced her eyes open; Kazuul’s were directly above her, perhaps two inches away.
She frowned. “This is restful for my heart, right?” she croaked.
He grunted and withdrew. “Thou didst not seem to be breathing.”
“I’m fine. In fact…” She sat up and pulled the bedding back. “It’s time for me to leave.”
“Thou art unwell.” Kazuul gave ground reluctantly, circling the bed and watching her efforts to stand through narrowed eyes. “Wounded pride alone stirs thee. Come, wilt thou follow it from my chambers to thy grave?”
She didn’t answer, knowing her voice would not be steady. She stood, weathered a surge of vertigo, and slowly stabilized. One cautious step led to another. She let go of the bed.
Anger began to edge into his exasperation, coming and going like the light from dying coals. “Mara, thou art not the embodiment of thy stubborn will. Lie back. Have I not made a fitting nurse for thee? Hath not mine hand been gentle?”
Mara made her way to the foot of the bed without stumbling. Her robe lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, no doubt unmoved since the moment he’d stripped it off. Mara stooped, labored as an old woman, and picked it up. It stank. She couldn’t bring herself to put it on, so she draped it over the side of a broken pillar and wrapped herself in the smaller piece of a torn curtain instead.
“Dost thou believe I would not drag thee back?” Kazuul demanded, showing the tips of his fangs. He made an obvious effort to calm himself and tried again, first crouching down and then reaching out one empty hand as to assure that he was very small, very safe, unarmed. “Lie back, my Mara. Thou art yet unwell, and if thou admit it not, convince me. Let me lie with thee, and I shall let thee go.”
She croaked laughter and kept walking. The room twisted around her, sapping the strength from her bones, but not her determination. The curtain weighed a hundred pounds. The stairs towered before her, each step a chasm.
