The Scholomance (60 page)

She attacked
them, all of them, every moving thing, and anywhere her hand slapped into skin,
she had a Word ready. Ribs burst through eye sockets. Lungs turned to scales. At
one point, delirious in the grip of rage, she imagined she Malleated the air
itself and drove it like an axe into someone’s skull. Then she stumbled, fell
out of her body into the Panic Room and saw it blazing with the yellow light of
danger. Her heart, her heart—
mygoditsgoingtoburstrightopenpopinmychestlikeameatballoon
—and
then she fell again, out of the Panic Room and into a thick, black ocean.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I
t wasn’t like sleeping and only a little like
fainting in the library had been. She knew she was in trouble, but could do nothing
about it. Eventually she came back to the Panic Room—it sort of bled in around
her out of the black, taking on weight and substance over lengths of time she
could not grasp but suspected were extreme—but nothing changed, even after it
was solidly there and around her. On the monitors, she could see only a vague
impression of her body lying somewhere and she had no control over it at all. She
thought she might be in a coma.

There was
nothing after that, nothing but yellow light in the Panic Room and the
Mindstorm and the endless fight to take back her body and make it wake up. She
was rewarded now and then with clawing spasms, but that was all. Each one left
her with an impression of ground gained in the greater war, however. Only
inches, maybe, but even inches could add up. The Grand Canyon itself could be
measured if you had enough inches.

So Mara fought,
and even if there was no time, she became very dimly aware that she was
winning. Gradually, a sense of sound came to her on the monitors. A sense of
gravity began to weigh on the arms and legs she could not quite move. She
dreamt, off and on, proof of some return to thought. As she railed, she could
hear the inarticulate grunts of effort that, somehow, escaped her slack and
sleeping lips.

And finally,
finally, she dragged herself out.

*
         
*
         
*

Mara heaved up
from a leaden drift of blankets, her hands clawing at the air and feet kicking
sluggishly. Her mouth opened. She yanked in air, heaved it out, and pulled it
in again in the first ragged rhythms of breath. It hurt. Her eyes opened, swam
shut, opened again and wrestled the world into focus. That hurt, too.

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 his 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.