The Scholomance by R. Lee Smith Page A

and his black-robed assistant picked it up. The incestuous Mr. Micheals
took two steps after the demon, bent unexpectedly to vomit down his own front,
and then had to stagger to catch up.
    At the next
table, Mara watched as the scene played itself out again. The initiate to whom
Horuseps addressed himself did not respond, not even when touched. He/She just
kept writing. Horuseps waited and finally moved on. His assistant gathered the
tray, vomited again, and this time fell sluggishly over in the mess.
    Horuseps,
without turning, raised an arm and laconically waved to the stairwell. Mara
tracked the general path of his beckoning hand and saw a silent group of
students whispering at each other. One of them came forward, easing down the
stairs with a look of repugnance, as if she were stepping into a pool of hot
human waste and not a library. The newcomer made her way to her fallen
colleague, covered her ears briefly, then picked up the tray and its strange
artifacts, and moved quickly to the demon’s side.
    The next initiate
listened closely to whatever Horuseps had to say, then looked at the tray. His
face, even the little bit Mara could see of it, was a portrait of anguish—a
drowning man looking at a bit of rope dangling just out of reach. Hesitant at
first, then with a sudden desperate rush, he reached out and took the shark’s
tooth. He looked at Horuseps—the demon merely watched, smiling—and placed it
with a shaking hand on top of the frog.
    Horuseps glanced
back and locked eyes with Mara, as if to see for himself that she was paying
attention. His smile broadened when he saw she was. Then, without warning, he
swept his clawless fingers across the initiate’s face, shearing it open to the
bone. The initiate fell back, arms raised and wildly waving. One of his eyes
split and poured down his cheek, through his cheek, and out his screaming
mouth. He spat, retched, then seized the chains connecting him to this terrible
place and began yanking and beating at them in a state of pure hysteria. His
fingers broke. One of them may have gotten caught in a link and ripped clean
off, but he was not aware of it and so Mara couldn’t be sure. He scratched and
pulled and screamed and screamed, and Horuseps moved on, holding out his hand delicately
for his assistant to wipe clean on her sleeve.
    Movement. Mara
jerked around and saw the Scrivener leaning out over his desk, his head
unerringly aimed at the shrieking, thrashing man on the library floor. The
front of his body spewed out an arm to take his weight as he shifted himself
forward. He grunted again, a sound of grotesque eagerness, then muttered and
sank back behind the desk, temporarily lost.
    Another test,
then. She didn’t appear to have passed this one, but at least she hadn’t failed.
Mara looked down. The pen was still in her hand, still resting where it had
stopped on her half-finished page: the formula and ritual for the creation of a
bottle-bred homunculus, translated from whatever this was into English. Time,
turning pages, and candlesmoke would wear away these words someday and some
other aspirant would spend his harrowing copying it over, effortlessly turning
English into his own native tongue. And Horuseps would still be here, playing
his inconceivable games with thimbles and frogs.
    “I play no
games, young one. Not here, at any rate.” A thin, black hand touched the book,
turned it slightly at an angle so that, presumably, he could read it. “Elsewhere,
many.”
    Mara
straightened the book with a curt tug and wrote a few words. It didn’t bother
her that he’d heard those thoughts. It was always wise to keep a few out where
someone could see them, particularly if you know yourself to be in the company
of telepaths. If there was treasure at your feet, one was far less inclined to
dig.
    “You look well,”
Horuseps commented, still standing behind her. “Much better than your fellows,
and heaven knows, some of them have had long enough to acclimate. Who