The Scholomance (75 page)

“You son of a
bitch!” she shouted. “Do you think I’m impressed? Do you think I’m
scared
?”

He glanced back
at the rock she’d thrown, baffled but restrained, and came a step towards her.

“Don’t you touch
me! You’re a thug! You’re a murdering thug!” She yanked another missile out of
the floor under her hand and threw that too. He slapped it aside, his head
cocked, frowning. “You think you can scare me because you can kill his
children
!?”

His eyes dropped
to her hand and flared. He came for her fast then, seized her wrist, and licked
once at the bloody stain. His grip tightened. He spat, released her, and was
gone in a bang of imploding air.

Mara gaped at
the place where he had just been standing, then scrambled up and raced back out
the way she’d come. She couldn’t catch him, she knew, and couldn’t stop him
even if she could, but neither could she just walk away from the events she
kept stupidly setting in motion.

Down through the
lyceum, shoving students out of her way, Mara ran. The sound of Suti’ok’s howls
could no longer be heard, not even when she could see the lights of the killing
chamber. She burst in, certain of what she would see, and saw instead Kazuul
kneeling beside the same dead hound she had. Suti’ok was still there, cradling
the same limp body, watching with silent tears streaming from his eyes as
Kazuul inspected the wounds.

Mara stopped
again in the doorway, breathing hard from fury and exertion. They must have
heard her, but neither demon spared her a glance, and she backed up, unsure of
herself. Kazuul’s hand was at the hound’s neck, and his hand was much, much
bigger than the marks left from the killing claws. One of the survivors brushed
at her hand. She patted it without thinking and the other three pressed up
close.

“What would thee
have?” Kazuul asked finally.

“My sons, alive
again!” snarled Suti’ok. “Nay? Then give me blood for blood, one death to
answer every unearned death around me!”

Kazuul grunted
and let go of the dead hound’s neck. Its head smacked wetly back onto the floor
and he stood up. “What within my power?”

“Within thy
power? Nay, within thy whim! Offer just what thou wouldst give, naught! I know
better than to expect justice for the low-breed from thee!” Suti’ok spat, and
groped to pull the dead hound more fully into his arms. “Whenever have I
protested the offenses in which I am mired? How many centuries have I swallowed
the souring of high-born insult and never vomited it out at thee? Thou hast made
my sons
hounds
and set me among them for the sin of my bloodline, to
wallow with them in blood and ignominy, and now! Now I have not shown enough
shame to suit thee and so thou wilt murder them to teach me humility!”

“Thou wert not
the target of this attack.” Kazuul looked Mara’s way, his expression dark and
distracted. The hounds pressed themselves to the ground and slunk away. “Dispose
of thy dead. Tend to thy living. Take no further vengeance in this matter.”

“I’ll take it
and be damned to thee!” roared the other, tears dripping from his wolfish jaws
like drool. “Let my accursed line end here if it be so much a burden to thee! I
did not offer thee my oaths to see my sons made prey for the high-born!”

“Thou hast
served me well all these years,” said Kazuul calmly, walking toward Mara and
the door. “Trust me now to serve thee.”

Suti’ok bared
his fangs furiously at Kazuul’s back, then looked around him, beginning and
ending with the body in his arms, and his hatred crumbled. Kazuul caught Mara’s
arm in a hard grip as the other demon’s sobs rose up to fill the air. They left
him weeping, his clawed hands gently moving over the dead hound’s face, trying
in vain to close the glazed and bulging eyes while the surviving nephalim came
to press their shivering sides against him and add their voices to his howl.

Kazuul did not
speak to her, not one word as he climbed three levels of the lyceum and then
turned aside. His grip was molten iron, burning through her robe. His step was
quick and sure. He was not in the Mindstorm. He was calm.

Letha had two
students with her upon the dais, amusing herself by watching them pit Allure
against one another. Flushed and straining and struggling to hold on to
heterosexuality, the two men battled motionlessly and in silence, the only ones
who failed to notice when Kazuul burst in through the open doors and gave Mara
a shove to one side. They remained staring glazedly at each other when Letha
looked up and saw him.

A thousand
emotions crossed that perfect face. Not one of them was guilt. She settled on
an expression of lazy indifference and watched through cat’s eyes as Kazuul
descended the risers. “My lord,” she murmured, and smiled in welcome.

He slapped her.

Students got up
and streamed very quietly out the door, all but the two upon the dais, ignoring
and ignored by everyone.

“Serpent of the
tree!” spat Kazuul, and slapped her again when she tried to speak. “Obscene
stain! Unclean thing!”

Letha’s lips
were bleeding. She stared at the smears this left on her trembling
fingertips—like drops of pure silver over her bronze skin—and then at him, in
shock. “Whenever didst thou make law it were forbidden to slay nephalim?”

He thrust a claw
to her face, very close to her innocent eyes. “Mind thy words, or blood for
blood, I’ll feed thy own, newborn and bleating, to the hounds thee left living.”

It was not
possible for Letha to pale, but she grew very quiet all at once, all
affectation gone from her posing. She stood small in Kazuul’s shadow, her
beautiful quills flat to her body, and watched him pace around the staring
students and back to her again.

“A cunning
ploy,” he said, calm once more. “One I was never meant to see. Never would the
son of Suti dare my chambers to cry the evil to my face. And never didst thou
imagine she would.”

Letha’s gaze
flicked to Mara, stabbing at her for a split-second of hate.

Kazuul smiled
coldly. “Aye. Straight to me. To revile me for my murderous will, as fearless
in her fury as thou wert craven.”

Letha blotted
her lips, shrugged one rounded shoulder. “I throw myself upon thy mercy, o
master, as I perceive ‘tis useless to protest in the presence of thy pet.”

“Again,” said Kazuul,
his eyes narrowed, “or I shall give thy fate unto the hands of Suti.”

Letha sent
another furious, fearful glance toward Mara, and then, shivering under Kazuul’s
steady stare, she lowered herself to her knees. “My apology, lord.”

“Lower. On thy
belly. Show me the scales of thy true form, viper.”

Her breast
heaving, Letha bent and finally lay flat. The acoustics of her teaching hall
brought her broken whisper easily to Mara’s ear, one word: “Forgive.”

Kazuul studied
her in silence as time crawled and the two students stared each other down. At
last he crouched, his claws relaxed between his bent knees, his head on one
side. “If I must lose one,” he said quietly, “I would rather preserve the
faithful low-born than the treacherous high. Hear me very well.”

“I hear thee,
master,” Letha whispered.

“I will cast
thee out into this changed world.”

“Forgive, I beg
thee.”

“I will never
have thee back.”

“O my beloved
lord, I have offended thee and do repent.”

“To wander, as the
mother of thy line was cursed to wander, or die as she ultimately died, the
slave of Man.”

“I pray thee,
forgive the foolish and indifferent act of thy most loyal servant.”

“Thou hast
killed my last affection for thee,” said Kazuul and stood. “Make apology to him
whom thou hast harmed, and manufacture some sincerity for if he demandeth it of
me, he shall have thy half-born daughters from this day onward. Aye,” he said,
as she clutched at his ankle with a wail. “To slake his throat with blood or to
catch the dead seed of his surviving sons, I care not. They are nephalim and
deserveth my love no better than their duplicitous dam.”

Letha shrank
back, shivering, and Kazuul kicked her outstretched hand away. “Forgive!” she
cried as he walked away. “Upon my hands, I beg thee! I beg thee, o lord!”

Kazuul took Mara
by the arm again and brought her with him out into the hall. The theater doors
closed behind him at his gesture, cutting away Letha’s pleas. He stared
straight ahead for a long time and finally faced her. “Why didst thou assume
t’was my vengeance?” he asked quietly.

Mara pressed her
lips together and shut her mind to him.

He looked away. “So.”

“Am I supposed
to fall upon my hands next?” she asked, feeling her face burn. “Or do you want
to wait until there’s another audience before you step on me?”

He said nothing.
He was calm.

“I’m not sorry,”
she insisted.

He reached up
wordlessly and carved a line across his heart. Blood poured, slowed, and soon
stopped, but he left the stain on his breast. It gave her no pleasure to see
it. If anything…it hurt.

“Return to me,”
he said at last.

“Why should I?”

“I forgive thee.
I forgive even the son of Suti.” He shut his eyes briefly, opened them without
expression. “Return.”

“And if I
don’t?”

A hint of
frustration marred the careful quiet of his mind. “Did I not keep every trust
to thee? And didst thou not swear to me thy faithfulness?”

“I was as
faithful to you as you were to me,” she shot back.

He spat out a
snarl, started to stalk away, and then rounded on her and came back. “T’was not
my bidding brought her to my chambers!”

“Well, you sure
weren’t bidding her get her tongue off you either! I came back to you, Kazuul,
and you let her put her hand up your skirt, so don’t you talk to me about
faithfulness!” Now it was her turn to walk away, and just like him, she swung
around after only a few steps to shout, “It would have been Malavan if I could
stomach the thought of him! It would have been anyone as long as it wasn’t
you!”

“Thou art mine,”
he said, burning his stare into the wall above her head. It was not an argument
as he said it, not a weapon, but an implacable statement of fact. “Lie down
where thou wilt, thou art ever mine.”

“Watch me walk
away,” she hissed, and spun around to do just that.

There was a flat
snap of collapsing air behind her and suddenly he was in front of her, catching
the neck of her gown in his fist and pulling her violently forward into the
light of his furious eyes. “Thou art mine,” he said again, softly and with
dangerous intensity. “I am thy lord, thy mate and Master! I am the sovereign
god of all this mountain! Thou hast not a breath upon thy lips nor free thought
behind thine eyes thou owest not to my benevolence!”

“Ha!” she
shouted. It was the best she could do.

His lip curled. He
released her with a shove. “Thou hast sundered mine oath to thee,” he said. “Yet
I do forgive thee, and press thee not for what easily I might take. What
further proof wouldst thou have of my love? Return to me.”

“Never!” Mara
shouted, vaguely aware of how ridiculous that had to sound against his quiet
voice, how she had to look facing up against this hulking, bone-studded,
utterly self-assured demon. There were lights flickering all over the Mindstorm
now; students and teachers together coming out of their theaters to watch this
lopsided melodrama play out, and still she could not control her stupid mouth. “Get
yourself a new dog!”

He thought about
that, his toe-claws gouging at the ground. Then, warily: “Demandest thou…some
apology?”

The offer struck
her like a slap. “I don’t believe anything you say,” she managed, backing away
from him.

“I have been too
long in my solitary habits,” he said, advancing on her. “Forgive me, o my
beloved. Say that thou dost forgive, as thou art already forgiven. I cast out
words I do not measure, but I would not hurt thee for all this Earth. Not for all
the kingdoms of Men nor even the love of God.”

“Shut up!” she
shouted. “Shut up with that! Just stop it!”

Kazuul stopped. He
stood tensely, watching her shake on her feet and glare at him, and then,
slowly, he lowered himself to one knee. Students crept closer, demons drew
back, and Kazuul only knelt and reached out his empty hand. **Return,** he sent,
piercing her rising panic with his calm, determined thoughts. **I shall forsake
all others if thou wilt only return.**

His open hand
mesmerized her, eclipsing all other sight, all other thought. His open hand,
and how it would feel wrapping around her own. His strength, his heat, his
stone-rough skin. His forgiving hand.

Mara’s bare foot
struck a jut of rock. She stumbled, stared at him, then turned and ran.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

H
e could have found her if he wanted to. She
kept away from her cell, and never stayed too long in any one place, but she
always seemed to come back to the lyceum in the end. She could have called it
her search, but she knew better. She’d run from him and now she was hiding, and
as much as she hated herself for both, she knew he could have found her easily.
But why should he pursue her when all the mountain was his trap?

Too often during
that long day and the day that followed, she found herself at the foot of the
winding stair, searching the heights of the lyceum with her eyes and her mind,
but he was never there. He tortured her with his distance, tortured her with
the memory of his damned hand. Nothing he’d done yet had been half so chilling,
and she didn’t know why. All she knew was that it didn’t feel like just
forgiveness in that outstretched hand, it felt like finality. She could step up
and meet him shout for shout in even the worst of his rages without hesitation,
but she shrank from him quiet on his knees, and she feared his open, empty
hand.