The Scholomance by R. Lee Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

He had failed in his pilgrimage and would live
and die as mortal.
    High above them,
the mountain opened. Not as a mouth, which was meant to open, and not as a
door, which had been built to open, but as a wound, torn open suddenly and in
violence. It bled light, unnatural light, like yellow paint poured over the
black rock, illuminating nothing. How done? She didn’t wonder, didn’t care. The
night was not infinite and the climb was not going to be easy.
    Mara’s first
step broke the eerie paralysis that held them all. With a tidal surge, they ran
at the rock and up it, swallowing rain and snarling at each other like animals.
No, she sure didn’t want to be first, unbalanced and fighting for each grip
with that behind her. Mara paused, watching the first lap of this race
run itself to its predestined conclusion.
    The man in the
lead was foreign, unprepared, unequipped. He’d expected stairs, for some
reason. He slipped only a few feet off the ground and fell badly; the snap of
bone seemed louder than his scream, and was ignored. The others swarmed over
him, kicking off his grasping hands and punching at each other. The Americans,
united by language and experience, went up like monkeys, screaming
encouragement over the wind and covering great strides in a well-choreographed
drill of pick, heave, clip, swing, and climb. They angled themselves out over
the lake, directly below the opening and out of the throng. The made great
time, enough to provoke one of the others into prying rock out of the crumbling
cliff-face to throw at them. Once he started, the others took it up, and it was
just a matter of time before one of the missiles—a rock the size of a big man’s
fist—smacked into an American’s skull.
    Mara didn’t hear
that sound, but she was close enough to hear the others shouting when the man
fell. Roped together, he couldn’t fall far, but his weight was enough to stop
the climb. Did they pull him up, check his wound? No. Did they cut him loose,
keep climbing? No. They started throwing rocks too.
    Safely out of the
crossfire, Mara was free to examine the mountain, plan her route, and study the
opening above. There were figures in the light, dark figures in the shape of
men. They stood without moving, watching the carnage from their high vantage. She
could sense them, sort of, but there was something strange about their minds. It
wasn’t that they were protected as much as overlaid by something else,
something foreign. Feeling at them was like looking at an x-ray, seeing bone
(disconcerting enough), but also the ghostly smudges that could be organs,
skin, stones, tumors, and not knowing what any of it meant.
    None of them
were Connie. Connie’s mind was still burned clear in her memory. She didn’t
need to hold it up and compare it to know none of these were she. Nevertheless,
hope that Connie was here somewhere, as yet unseen but able to be saved,
renewed itself in her heart, and if it didn’t exactly give her wings, at least
it gave her the will to keep climbing.
    The Great Rock
Battle was winding down, its opponents exhausted and beginning to remember how
dangerous that was now that they were thirty feet up a jagged cliff with what
could easily be two thousand feet yet to go. The climbing continued.
    Mara opened up
her backpack and started getting ready. Some of the others had brought helmets
with lamps set right in them, and that was a neat trick, but they hadn’t been
selling any in the village store where Mara had bought all her gear. She’d have
to make do with flashlights and duct tape. Sure, it looked goofy—
    The overweight
fellow from France or Switzerland or wherever he was from lost his footing and
fell shrieking to a sudden, silent stop not far from the first guy, who
promptly started getting hysterical again.
    —but it sure
beat climbing blind. Mara switched each light on and taped them tightly to her
body: one over the top of each wrist, and one over the toe of each boot. She
tucked her