Free The Scholomance by R. Lee Smith Page A

should think.”
    “What’s inside?”
Mara asked, knowing perfectly well he wouldn’t answer.
    Horuseps tsked, put
his long hand on her back and pushed her gently across the threshold into the
lightless room beyond.
    “I’ll see you on
the other side then,” she said, taking her first cautious step into shadows.
    “I’ve no doubt. And
I await you, child, with bated breath.” He bowed, smiling, and then closed the
door on her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
    CHAPTER FOUR

 
    S ilence. Blackness.
    Mara shivered,
waiting. After a while, she reached out and found the door again. The stone was
flat, but rough as sandpaper. There were no carvings on this side. She followed
it to the floor and touched wetness, but not a lot. She followed it up and
could just brush her fingertips across the low ceiling. Slowly, testing each
step with a toe, she walked the perimeter of the room. Twelve paces by
seventeen by fourteen by twenty. Not quite square, then. The floor, not quite
level. But there was a set of double doors, uncarved but still impressive, on
the widest wall. Apart from those two exits, the room seemed featureless.
    But not empty. In
one of the canted corners, Mara’s questing toe knocked into a mass of jumbled
objects, all sort of heaped together and tangled up in cloth. She knelt down
carefully to feel them out, thinking it must be part of the test, and perhaps
it was. Or perhaps just one of the people who failed it.
    Because it was a
person lying there, or had been once. Bones, wet and slimy, still wrapped in
leathery folds of skin and hair, were all that remained now. The whole mess of
it had a waxy feel, as if it had been here long enough to become partially
calcified by the constant dripping of mineral-rich water. The skull had been
crushed, but fairly recently. The broken edges were rough, not waxy. Maybe
someone had stepped on it.
    Mara sat down
beside the remains, a piece of skull still in her hand. She tapped it
thoughtfully against the floor as she considered her options. The demon, Horuseps,
had told her there would be a test. At a guess, she’d have to say that test was
getting out of the examination room. The doors had to open.
    She got up again
and found her way to the double doors. Pushing accomplished nothing apart from
sore arms and shoulders. She found no latch, no seam wide enough to sink her
fingers in and pull. She went around the room a second time, now feeling floor
to ceiling every inch of the way, but found no panel or lever or anything at
all that could be connected to either exit, only a couple of fingernails and
they came right out when she pulled on them. In the ceiling, chill drops of
bitter water seeped through hairline cracks. On the floor, more cracks carried
them away before they could form puddles.
    An untold time
later, exhausted and frustrated, Mara and her bit of skull got cozy in the
corner again. A thought struck. “Hello?” she called, thinking that if this was
it, if all she had to do was ask, she was going to be pissed.
    But no, nothing.
    “Open the door.”
    More nothing.
    “Open the door…please.”
Just in case manners counted for something in this stupid test, like penmanship
back in school.
    Still nothing.
    Okay, back to
the facts. Even if she got the little door to open, she’d only be back in the
hallway with Horuseps, so the answer had to be opening the big ones.
    Mara got up,
carrying her skull-fragment with her, and felt her way to her destination. She
rested her palm flat on the rough face of the unmoving doors and scowled.
    They were out
there, somewhere. People. Minds. Moving about in their little lives and
completely unconcerned with what was going on in here, and every goddamned one
of them had gone through this test and therefore knew how to open the doors. If
only it weren’t for the rock…
    Mara had known
about the muffling properties of minerals for many years. It had been the
mental quiet inside the summer house’s