The Scholomance by R. Lee Smith Read Free Book Online

always more difficult to reach through solid objects, particularly heavy
minerals. If there were very many tunnels occupied by this fraudulent little
coven, she might have a tough time finding Connie even on the inside. All the
same…
    Mara did not
often experience doubt, but here was a situation that went well beyond the
normal crowd of people with the petty lies and desires she was accustomed to
feeling. She had a rough idea of what was going to happen when the sun went
down, because Mr. Murder had seen it all before, but after that?
    Outside, the
wind blew. The tent shook, deafening her physical ears. In the Panic Room, Mara
listened to the uncertain babble of minds both near and excited, and distant
and dismayed. They were nerving themselves up to meet the Devil out there, and
she knew that she must either join them or walk away and leave Connie’s last
letter unanswered.
    Around her neck,
a cheap heart-locket hung as it had for half her life. Eight bucks worth of stainless
steel and gold paint…Did it really buy the rest of her life?
    The Americans
were mustering, shrugging into backpacks and harnesses, planning a joint
ascent. They didn’t know each other, didn’t trust each other, but felt, perhaps
not unduly, that they stood a better chance of success that way. E Pluribus
Unum and all that. Forty billion nickels couldn’t be wrong.
    And that was
pretty selfish, yes, but it had to be nobler than Mara, hiding in a tent and
cold-bloodedly considering the abandonment of her one and only friend. After
coming all this way, oblivious to cost and inconvenience, that she could permit
herself to succumb to hesitation now grated on her. Succumb, ha, she’d thrown
herself at it, wallowed in it, and why? Because she couldn’t guarantee an
outcome. Of all the world, Connie had called out to her—not her family, not her
priest, not the police, but only her—and here she sat, looking for a better
reason than that to save her.
    Mara dropped
down into her body and found it smiling. She guessed her mind was made up. It
was half past four and the sun was going down. Time to climb.
    The last ray of
sunlight left the sky as Mara zipped her empty tent up and walked to the shores
of the lake where the others had loosely gathered. The sky held on to color for
another minute more, turning the mountains to shadows and the clouds to clots
of blood, and then it just seemed to give up and die. Darkness came with hungry
speed after that, eating the rest of the overcast light and giving nothing back—no
moon, no stars, only darkness. The Americans moved closer together without
seeming to be aware of it. The other hopefuls shifted further apart, eyeing one
another. Mara put her backpack down by her feet and waited.
    Stillness. In
the distance, the lost and hunting stragglers grew louder as their emotion
turned to desperation, but here at the foot of the mountain over Lake Teufelsee,
the minds of the pilgrims of the Scholomance quieted to a subaudible hum of
wordless anticipation.
    ‘The killing is
about to start,’ Mara thought suddenly, and frowned.
    Sound, low, more
felt than heard. It groaned upwards against the soles of Mara’s boots, then
passed away into the hissing trees. The wind wheeled abruptly about, sending
stinging sheets of rain into her face and plastering the tossing mane of her
hair to her skull in seconds. That sound again, like rusted gears at the core
of the Earth, like the explosion of some undersea volcano, like the death knell
of a dragon. The Americans, pale even under their deaths-head makeup, huddled
closer. One of the others broke then, broke and ran, muttering incoherent
excuses in a language no one else knew. At the very edge of Mara’s perceptions,
Mr. Murder’s brain sent out a plaintive pulse of anger, loss, and a piercing
relief that wore Mara’s face. He would not be back next year, nor any other
year. He would never look again upon the golden light of the UnderEarth, or
drink from the cup of Solomon.