Free The Scholomance by R. Lee Smith

grip, but it was steady and more
to the point, it kept its hand solidly wrapped around the locket.
    The demon’s
eyebrows rose again. His head tipped the other way. She felt him in the storm
outside the Panic Room, felt his alien fingers brushing at the walls she’d
built, seeking a crack through which to enter. He didn’t find one. “Most
impressive, child,” he said at last. “Shall I huff and I puff?”
    Mara gathered in
a little of her own strength and sent it out like a stomping foot, shoving him
back from her secret place with more ease than she’d expected.
    The demon’s grip
on her wrist tightened until the monitors lit up on behalf of the tendons
strained to snapping point, the bones that ground together, but his voice
remained low and musing as he said, “You are a better cut than our usual haunch
of meat, yet you can be as easily devoured, I promise you. Indeed, the danger
is greater for that which tastes most sweet.”
    “I won’t take it
off,” she said again. Her voice was rough, worn almost to a whisper by
screaming. It made her sound weak and frightened. Mara was neither.
    The demon leaned
toward her, close enough that she could feel the touch of the light that came
from his eyes—feel it like ants across her skin. Then he closed them and drew
in a savoring breath. His hair rippled and stilled. He sighed and looked at her
again. “Think well how you begin here, child.”
    Mara said
nothing.
      “Hm.” Time did not stop while the demon looked
at her, but it crawled. She could feel its tiny, hooked feet moving down her
spine. But at last, the demon’s smile returned. “The Scholomance is filled with
tests. This one, you have passed.” He opened his hand one finger at a time,
gracefully, and used it to stroke her hair back, smiling wider when she
shivered. “But only because you cheated. Keep your toy. Come with me.”
    The demon turned
away, letting his freakishly long arm drop to close the wooden box that held
Mara’s things before moving out through another doorway into another passage. His
hand drifted along the top of the box as he walked. It made a rasping sound,
too quiet to be abrasive but which raised the gooseflesh on her arms anyway. He
didn’t look back to see if she followed him.
    Mara hesitated,
shivering once in the chill of the room. Her box had no marker, no number,
nothing to distinguish it from the roomful of others supposedly awaiting the
return of their owners.
    It didn’t
matter. None of it did. Only Connie.
    Mara left it and
went after the demon.
    She could see
him easily, glowing like a ghost in the blackness ahead of her. More of those
chitinous plates grew partway up his spine, bisecting the alabaster perfection
of his back, making him easy to follow even though he made no sound.
    “Who are you?”
she called. Her voice did not echo. The rock surrounding them caught her words,
ate them.
    But he heard. He
smiled at her over his shoulder. “You are ambitious indeed to think you can
trap me so easily as that. You’ll find no true names here, young one. That book
is written. I am Horuseps, Master of Sight, at your service.” He twisted to bow
as he walked, a gesture every bit as mocking as his words. “You will see much
of me, if you pass your next test. One can do little if one cannot see.”
    She wanted to
ask him about the others here, the other students as well as teachers, but his
smile was unpleasant, daunting. “Does it mean something?” she asked instead. “Your
name?”
    “Yes,” said
Horuseps. “It means me.”
    There was a door
ahead of them. She didn’t see it until he opened it, and then only because his
eyes flashed and illuminated a bit of the jamb. It had been deeply and
elaborately carved, the jamb, so that it outlined the rather plain face of the
door in a knot of writhing serpents.
    “Within, expect
an exam,” he told her, gesturing in that elegant way he had. “For some, the
first. For others, final. And for you, only one of many, I