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

knife into her pocket, took a climbing pick from the belt of the
very messily-dead French guy, and started up.

 
    *           *           *

 
    Funny how the
hours fly by when you only have one night to do something. By Mara’s best guess
(and she didn’t put much faith in it), the opening where the figures waited was
a good half-mile over a mostly sheer drop onto the rocky shore of a very deep
lake. A bad climb, particularly when the other climbers were so determined to
see the competition killed, but certainly not one that should take all thirteen
hours of night to complete.
    But an hour went
by, and Mara had gained only two hundred feet. Another hour added scarcely half
that to her total. She had underestimated the cold, the numbness of her frozen
fingers, the watery sensation that would seep into her arms after only a few
minutes, no matter how long she rested. Pain and physical discomfort—conditions
she had grown accustomed to avoiding in the Panic Room—gnawed steadily at her
reserves. She couldn’t hide away from them now. She depended on her tactile
senses too much to leave her body, even for an instant.
    Over the night,
the climbers spread themselves out over the mountain and they were mostly quiet,
laboring under their own efforts rather than undermining anyone else’s. Mara
checked on them as routinely as she checked her own footing, making certain she
didn’t wander within reach. Many stones were thrown. She could sense each one
coming, of course, but there was nothing she could do about it except to try
and protect her head. One of them clipped her in the ear despite her best
efforts, and another hit her hand, necessitating a rapid retreat to a safe jut
of rock where she could rest until she got her grip back. She did not throw
stones back at them. As much nasty pleasure as she knew it would give her to
watch one of the troublemakers plummet to his death, Mara was not a killer.
    The Americans
continued to make the best time, particularly after they cut their injured teammate
free. He fell like a sandbag into the lake, thrashed briefly, and was gone. The
girl didn’t seem any more emotional about it than she’d been when she’d taken
the man into her tent last night. The remaining teammates climbed rapidly,
leapfrogging like experts in spite of the rain and leaving the rest of them far
behind. Half a mile straight up was nothing to those two. They were there well
before midnight.
    At the lip of
their destination, the man stopped and unhooked the girl from his harness. Mara
felt no surprise from anyone. He kicked her in the face; the girl swung her arm
and buried the steel bill of her pick in his thigh. Mara, resting for the
moment on a ledge, raised her arm and shone a spotlight on the battle for
everyone to watch, and everyone did. They made very little sound, no doubt
having exerted themselves too heavily on the climb. The girl took her lumps
like a prizefighter and kept that pick swinging until his thigh was nothing but
raw hamburger squeezed through a denim tube and her face was painted with
blood. Her last blow caught him in the groin and it was all over. He lost his
grip and dropped, managing only a single strangled cry that seemed, to Mara’s
ears anyway, more angry than anything else. He fell, smacking meatily into the
cliff-side twice before breaking on the rocks below. Hoarse, terrified squawks
rolled up the mountain from the man with a broken leg lying at its bottom, and
the girl finished the race alone.
    The other
climbers froze, some of them wailing out protests, but the portal that opened
into the mountainside did not vanish, as some had believed. The light, and the
figures within it, remained.
    Mara, safe on
her ledge, gave in to curiosity. She reached up and tapped at the girl’s mind,
already receding into the mineral-rich baffle of the mountain. She caught a
tangled glimpse of color, light and shadow, the ferocious joy of the victor,
and the taste of blood in her