The Scholomance (50 page)

He had arms, two
of them, and hands with fingers that dripped off the ends at various points and
to various lengths, coiling and curling off his wrists in that same lazy,
lavender way that went with the rhythm of his hips.

He had a long
neck, very long, and a ridiculously small head perched atop it, somewhat
elongated, with two black eyes that wrapped around the sides of his skull
almost to meet again in back. He had no mouth, or at least not on his head, but
there was a long, bloodless gash on his bare chest that emitted a distracted
sort of humming as he moved to the podium, and it was from that gash that his
low, reedy voice emitted when he said, “I see new faces, don’t I?”

Of all the
demons she had seen, and she knew she hadn’t seen them all, he looked the least
demonic, in the sense of evil as physical form. Perhaps for that reason, Mara
felt the strongest impulse thus far to beware him.

“Astregon, is
it?” Dalziel ran one of this horrible hands thoughtfully along the lips of his
chest-slit the way another teacher might stroke a beard. “It’s been awhile.”

Devlin hehe’d
nervously and made meaningless gestures. His desire not to be singled out
overwhelmed every other thought in the room.

“And you brought
a friend. Gracious. I think I know you.” The demon sashayed around his podium
and right to the lip of his dais, staring intently up the risers into Mara’s
face. He was quiet for a long time, long enough for Mara to feel the pale
tendrils of his thoughts slithering clumsily along the Panic Room walls. He
didn’t react to the obstruction, didn’t even seem to know it was there. A
telepath, but not a good one. Something about his mind felt unfinished…primitive.

“Well,” he said,
withdrawing. “I was warned. Come down. Children, begin your studies. Quietly,
please, quietly.”

He was turning
away, back to his private chambers. Come down? Was this part of the class?

Devlin, as
baffled as she, was no use to her. She left him nervously eying the other
students and climbed the risers down to the dais. Dalziel had already slithered
out of sight. She had to walk quickly to catch up, and she couldn’t help
wondering as she did why he had stairs at all when a ramp would be so much
easier for him to navigate. She pushed the thought at him, then sent it into
him, but he did not respond. His mind flinched and rolled a little, like a
freshly-severed tentacle will if touched, but that was all.

“Does my
appearance repel you?” he asked suddenly.

“I haven’t been
here long. I’m still adjusting,” she replied, prodding at his mind again.

“Ah. I sensed…not
discomfort, precisely…but then, I come as something of a shock to many. I am
not offended. I know that I am among the least human of all my brothers and
sisters. Do you like it here?”

And what kind of
a question was that? Too stunned by its audacity to answer right away, Mara
instead aggressively tested for sincerity. The demon’s mind wrapped hers,
neither attacking nor defending itself, and was impossible to read.

Dalziel
hesitated on the stair and looked back. “Are you…I hardly know how to ask…Are
you
feeling
me?”

“I thought you
were a telepath.”

“Ah. No. I have
some…small sensory skill. No doubt you sense this. But it is more a kind of
sight than true mentalism.”

“Like the Sight
that Horuseps teaches?”

“Not at all. If
I may draw a personally abhorrent analogy, it is as the sight of a serpent,
which sees deeper into the light than human eyes. What you sense in me is, I’m
sure, what Kazuul calls my crude empathic spark. It is enough to glean the
names from my students and keep me from the appearance of ignorance. Appearances
are so important here…but I don’t need to tell you that.”

“No,” Mara
agreed. “Appearances may not be all that matter, but they’re high up on the
list.”

“Quite. Here, my
private chambers. Mind the last step.”

The step, which
was no more or less treacherous than any other, was easy to mind. The curtain
cutting across it was white and filmy, and he’d left several lights burning in
the room beyond. Like a gentleman, he moved ahead to sweep the hanging cloth
aside. He even bowed, but his eyes remained with her, and his thoughts behind
their layers of blind tentacles were anxious.

The room was
smaller than Kazuul’s. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Kazuul’s
chambers were truly iconic, filled with so many curtains and pillars and carved
stone screens that it was impossible to see the whole thing at once from any
angle. But then, he was Kazuul. And this was Dalziel.

So the cavern
was smaller, but by no means tiny. It had room enough for the bed, for those
long gaming tables, for bookshelves stocked with volumes, not one of which
seemed to have a thing to do with arthomancy or the binding of efreet. The
walls had a sculpted, almost organic look, all swoops and arches. There was no
aerie, but there was a glass window, opaque just enough to admit sunlight if it
were daytime, which it was not.

And there was a
woman here, propped up on pillows with the blankets around her waist, reading a
magazine. She wore a black robe, had her hair elaborately pinned, and did not
look at Mara.

“My Star,” said
Dalziel, gesturing. The woman turned a page and read, ignoring them. “My harem,
if you like.”

Mara stared at
her, then at him. She could not imagine how the two could possibly fit together
and absolutely did not want to tap at either of them and find out.

“It is an
arrangement we have…perfectly within the laws. She takes a lesson each day at
my hand, and at the end of ten years, or should she master my art, I’ll have to
say goodbye.”

The woman
glanced up, her expression of cool indifference marred by even colder anger,
but then returned to reading.

“In the
meantime, she is here, away from the…” Dalziel brushed his hands over his
unblinking eyes fastidiously. “…unpleasantness of her peers. And I have some
companionship throughout the dreary daylight hours.” He spread his arms. His
fingers dangled like worms. “She’s perfectly free to leave, and she’s not been
misplaced, by you or anyone. Star, you’re making me look quite bad. Say
something.”

“Something,”
said the woman on the bed.

Dalziel sighed. Faint
irritation gusted across the Mindstorm and was gone. “Well, she’s in a bit of a
mood, but I assure you, she’s no prisoner.”

He might have
said more, but stood quietly aside when Mara approached the bed. She had the
impression of trepidation from him as she fingered the soft, girly fabrics of
the bedding, but neither of them interrupted her. Mara said, mildly enough,
“Where did you get the magazines?”

The woman
glanced at the demon. Dalziel stroked his chest and said, “Humans bring them
here. She likes to keep abreast of things. Recent things.”

“I was under the
impression all our possessions are waiting to be returned to us.”

The woman
frowned slightly. She hadn’t thought of that.

“Somewhat
manhandled,” Dalziel said. It felt like a lie. He knew she was psychic, knew
she’d know, and that disturbed him. He hadn’t foreseen the question and that
disturbed him even more.

Mara took hold
of the blankets and pulled them back all together, all at once. She expected to
see a chain, or some other proof of imprisonment. She didn’t, but she stared
anyway.

“It isn’t what
you think,” Dalziel said quietly.

The woman
smirked, turned a page, and ignored them.

She had no legs.
No, not strictly true. She had the muscle and the bones, however grossly
rearranged they were. She had her skin still, even the rough circles where her
knees had been. She had toenails, soft and grossly out of shape, but still
there to be seen. She had something…she just didn’t have legs.

“Is this Transmutation
or Malleation?” Mara asked, looking at the long, white tubes lying in the bed. Her
voice did not shake. She was calm.

“Some of each.”

“This is her
lesson?”

“It’s a work in
progress,” said the woman dryly. The foot that still had toes—if that’s what
those thin, boneless, tentacles were—rippled up and over the ankle of the
other, which ended neatly and digitless in a rounded point.

“Did you agree
to this?” Mara demanded, and felt again that faint puff of annoyance, from both
of them this time.

“He likes to do
it with someone like him,” the woman said. She put down her magazine, still
with that bitter half-smile, and pulled up her robe, all the way up, so that
Mara could see not only the perfectly smooth and denuded patch of skin between
her serpentine legs, but the slick and slightly pulsating bloodless slit that
opened between her small, mostly vestigial breasts. There was a clitoris at the
crown of it.

The woman
dropped her robe, picked up her magazine, smiled.

Mara looked at
the demon.

“Surfaces
changes,” he said. “Far more cosmetic than you might think. Easily restored,
when our time is done.”

“And nobody
asked you,” the woman remarked.

Mara thought
about that. Eventually, she nodded. “I apologize for intruding on your
privacy,” she said.

“Of course. I
understand—” He took her elbow in his soft hand as he led her to the stair,
allowing her to feel that they were not boneless after all, no more than the
body of a snake. “—one has a need to be certain. And some of my, ah,
lesser-evolved cousins can be, well, unscrupulous when meeting their baser
desires. I shan’t name names. But now that you’ve seen her for yourself, I’m
sure you’ll be off about your business.”

“My business is
in your class today.”

“Is it?”

“Tell me about Transmutation.”

“Certainly,” he
said, relief throbbing through his touch. “But first, perhaps you should tell
me. What is Transmutation?”

Mara considered
it—the word itself, what little she’d gleaned from the students waiting above
them with their teaching aides in their hands, the woman’s slithery and
distended legs. “It’s turning something into something else,” she said. “Like
rock into sand.”

“How marvelously
refreshing,” said the demon. “Usually it’s, ‘lead into gold.’ But then,
Horuseps told me you had an unusual mind.”

“Horuseps talks
about me?” That was an unpleasant thought.

“He came to
inspect my chambers recently, and to make an examination of my harem, such as
she is.” Dalziel’s oversized eyes rippled in a faceless moue of annoyance. “She’s
quite a good conversationalist ordinarily, and can even be charming when she
sets her mind to it, but she’s having difficulties with her lessons and doesn’t
think she’ll master them in time. She wants me to arrange an extension.”

“You won’t leave
her like that if she can’t change herself back,” Mara said sharply, stopping on
the stair.

“Certainly not.”
He glided on a little further, paused, and came back to her. “Nor will I flaunt
the laws of this school simply for that she shares my bed. There are no
extensions.”

“How long does
she have left?”

“Four years yet.
Really, she’s made wonderful progress.”

“Do you think
she’ll master it?”

He hesitated,
one hand reaching up to stroke at the lips of the gash in his chest. “No,” he
admitted. “There are some things she does quite well, if not without effort,
and she may be able to speak the Word eventually, but she will never master the
art. She lacks the capacity to make connections, and she will always need me or
someone like me to make them for her.” He sighed, breath blowing light and sour
through his chest into Mara’s face. “Which she seems to feel is only her due. As
is so often the case with those who come here.”

He took a few
sashaying steps, then paused and looked back again. “Horuseps says you are
different.”

“Does he?” Mara
felt her lips twisting in a rueful smile, even as she poked in vain at the
tenebrous fathoms of Dalziel’s mind. “Well, if he told you I was a good
student, he lied.”

“Oh no. He never
said that.”

They climbed the
stairs in silence and, with the light of the theater at last in sight, Mara
gave in to her pricklish curiosity and caught at the demon’s indescribably
unpleasant arms. “What did he say?” she asked.

Dalziel’s eyes
rippled at he gazed at her. The slit in his chest breathed and finally said,
“That I should expect you. That you were seeking a certain human and that it
could possibly be dangerous to cross you in your search.”

“Dangerous.”

“Possibly, he
said. And having met you, I dare say he’s right. I can count on the fingers of
one hand—” He displayed them, squirming in the air. “—how many students have
ever touched me of their own volition.”

She released his
arm with a frown, and he started back up the stairs.

“A student who
will do that, the first day she has seen me in all my repulsive truth, is a
student who may do anything. I suppose we’ll see. For now, I see no harm in
humoring you.”

“Humoring me,”
she repeated, beginning to smile as she followed him into the theater.

“You and, of
course, the Master you serve. I’ve no doubt it tickles him to see you so
engaged in studies, and for today, you will be my pupil. It is well within my
own interests to teach you well. Please.”

He gestured, and
Mara stepped up off the dais and climbed the risers to take her seat beside
Devlin, ignoring his furtive whispers. If he wanted to know what was down there
so badly, he could walk on down and look for himself.

“And now, class,
for the benefit of our newcomers…” Dalziel raised his hands, and when he had
the respectful silence he was after, turned to face her and Devlin together. “A
return to the fundamentals. What would you say is the principle element of Transmutation?”