Chapter Fourteen Sylas
Fueled by the magic of the catacombs, the Poisoned Stairwell has a mind of its own. Wandering the passageway without an aspier is strongly discouraged. Aspiers keep ghosts at bay.
Note: Whisperers should avoid the Poisoned Stairwell. Ghost paralysis is the leading cause of death of whisperers at Gorhail.
fourteen | sylas
Sylas!” Lyria exclaims as the door closes behind the Mortemagi. “A whisperer cannot navigate the Poisoned Stairwell alone.”
“She’ll learn.” I shrug.
What Viola Corvi does or doesn’t do no longer concerns me.
I tried to be nice. If she upheld her end of the bargain, I was prepared to help her find her sister’s killer.
More because of my promise to Sierra than to her and my own interest in avenging Beau’s death, but the sentiment is somewhere in there.
Instead of exuding gratitude, she had to give me lip.
I tried to forgive her incompetence, but she kept dangling the location of Beau’s body over my head, with no intention of helping.
I don’t know why I expected any different from a Mortemagi; they’re all self-serving.
“She doesn’t have an aspier to guide her and ward her from the ghosts.” Lyria throws her hands in the air. “She’ll be dead within the hour. You know how dangerous these passages are for whisperers, let alone an untrained one.”
I’m not the one who told her to skip mage school for twelve years. “Excellent.” I clasp my fingers together. “She’ll be dead in time for her sister’s funeral tomorrow. Perhaps they’ll consider burying a mage in the nonmagi cemetery.”
If she dies, the bond will break, and I will be free of this gnawing need to protect her. Paltro never mentioned any of this before strong-arming me into bonding with her.
Lyria curses at me as she stalks to the black door. Her bleeding heart will be her downfall. Corvi is a Mortemagi. All of them are the same. Children of Grimm. Murderers.
Forget Mom, Lyria acts as if Mortemagi don’t have the highest number of rogue mages becoming poachers. The same poachers Gryff risks his life fighting every day. The same poachers that killed our father and probably our brother, too.
“I need Railesza.” Lyria extends her arm. “In case Viola is hurt and needs healing.”
“No.”
“You are ridiculous.”
“Mom was—”
“Enough! Mom this, Mom that! How long will you use her death to justify your hatred? You’re about to let an innocent woman die,” she seethes.
I’ve never seen my sister this angry before.
She glares at me, then lets out a heavy sigh.
“We honor our parents through our choices, Sylas. And right now, Mom would be so disappointed in you.”
I flinch, swallowing my retort. Lyria shakes her head, looking away. We’ve never argued like this before, and I don’t know how to react. I should be angry, but at the same time, she’s right. Both our parents would be ashamed of my actions.
“Sylas.” She levels my stare, lowering her shaky voice. “If anything, do it for Beau. Viola is now our only hope at giving him a proper burial. The longer his body is gone… Sylas, I don’t want him to be lost in the Underiver. He deserves to join our family in the Underworld.”
My teeth grind at the quiver in her voice as she mentions Beau.
I am a selfish idiot. Beau’s body has been gone for a few days.
If I recall Delaney’s class in Year One at the academy, if we can’t bury him before his body starts to decompose, he will be lost between the realms of life and death forever, without an identity.
Thankfully, unlike nonmagi, mage bodies start to decompose after a week—or, if we’re lucky and Silver injected him with frost venom, we’ll find him intact.
Unless another whisperer appears on our doorstep, Corvi is far too valuable, at least until she leads us to Beau’s body and figures out how to speak to his ghost.
“Don’t you want to find his killer, Sylas?” Lyria sighs. “You know that no other whisperer will work with you.”
We could always bribe a random whisperer with a hefty sum, but we don’t have much time, and Corvi already knows where Beau’s body is. But it’s not the reason I’ll go find the Mortemagi. Lyria didn’t even need to bring up Beau to convince me; she hit a sore spot when she brought up our parents.
“I’ll go.” Sighing, I drag my feet to the Poisoned Stairwell.
It’s so dark I can only make out the silhouette of my hands.
I stare at the candles, but they don’t adjust their brightness.
What a great day for the stairwell to be moody!
This passageway spans around the whole institute—she could be anywhere.
Right then, Railesza wakes up, her yellow-green eyes sharp. She takes in her surroundings, before hissing to the right. “We’ll talk about your shifting loyalty later.” I glare at my aspier. “But thank you.”
She guides me down several flights of stairs.
My skin prickles from the sharp drop in the temperature, and the sudden pitch-blackness slows my steps.
We must be close to the catacombs or the Underiver—it’s still odd to me that the gates to the Underworld are below Gorhail, at the very end of a river.
Something brushes against me. My breath hitches, the hairs on the nape of my neck stand. Raiku awakens and slithers down my leg to the floor.
When I was a boy and still scared of the dark, Dad used to tell us our aspiers could see ghosts and ward us against them. The tale was probably to quell our fears. I chose to believe the story then, but now, I know it rings true.
Raiku leads me down a narrow hallway I’ve never seen before, and the darkness lets up; the floor is covered in moss, the walls paneled with decaying wood.
I look up, and gulp. The ceiling looks like it’s coated in a thick liquid that never stops moving, but it’s still so dark I can’t make out the color.
Railesza slithers to my hand, her head moving left and right.
The closer we approach, the frames of three doors come into view.
All three are plain mahogany, with red, silver, and navy handles. The three House colors of Gorhail.
Raiku paces in front of the middle door with the silver handle. I knock. Nothing. I knock on the left one, then the right one. Still nothing. Railesza hisses, and Raiku responds with a harsher hiss. What is this place?
“Sylas Archyr, son of the House of Poison.” A silky voice echoes. “Behind these doors are three things you desire.”
I step back.
The Poisoned Stairwell has a mind of its own, echoing the mind of its designer, the Second Founder of Gorhail, also one of the four founders of the House of Arcane.
Helna Azgar was the master of trickery; everything she worked on was a puzzle, a riddle, a game.
She designed and built the Poisoned Stairwell for Arkani and Aspieri to navigate through Gorhail during the age of Grimm, and it saved so many mages from capture, while keeping Grimm’s army of Mortemagi away.
While it meant that the good Mortemagi couldn’t use the passageway on their own, Aspieri and Arkani banded together to help them.
This was the last time in history that all three Houses worked so closely together.
Suddenly, it clicks. I remember an Arkani Magister talking about it sometime in Year Two. I stand in front of Helna Azgar’s Doors of Desire.
“One door holds your parents,” the voice sings. “One door holds your brother.”
A trick. Mom and Dad are dead. I saw both their bodies, bawled as their coffins were lowered into the ground, mourned them for days that blurred into nights. And Beau… Beau died in my arms.
“One door holds the woman you seek.”
Curiosity holds my tongue. I know my parents and brother are dead, but I would give anything to see even an illusion of them… to hear Mom laugh again after twenty years chipped away the memory of her voice.
A faint, sinister laugh takes over the void.
I jerk around, but there’s no one here except me.
Something moves under my feet, and I look down at the moss crawling around my boots.
At the same time, a drop of liquid lands on my arm, right next to Raiku’s nose.
He hisses. I wipe it and bring my hand closer to my face.
Blood. I stagger backward. The door has a ticking clock, it seems, and I don’t have long to make a decision.
Three of them are already dead, but one is alive.
“Where is the Mortemagi?” My shoulders tense, ready for another trick, but the middle door opens, and I walk in.
Nothing could have prepared me for what is in front of me.
Corvi stands in the middle of a clearing I don’t recognize, in conversation with a woman with a large tattoo on her arm. One arrow, four lines. A mage poacher.
In here, it’s midafternoon, and the sun bounces off the large leaves of a few dwarf trees by a pond, the habitual noise of the forest whistling with the wind.
I take two steps forward, both my aspiers on alert, but Corvi and the poacher don’t seem to notice me.
The foul woman says something, and Corvi pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket and hands it to the poacher.
Railesza hisses, and I glare at her. I move closer, behind one of the tall trees, my arm brushing against the smooth bark. Where did the door take me? The bark of this tree is thin and black—trees like these don’t grow in Bale.
“We need more relics,” whispers the woman.
“I need more time,” Corvi answers, shifting her weight.
I move. Railesza hisses again, and this time Raiku joins her.
Could Sierra have been right? What if Corvi is a fraud?
What if Olivia never had a sister, and this stranger is the one behind the three deaths?
It would make sense, especially that she refused to give me information about Beau.
She claims to be a whisperer, but she’s not spoken to a single ghost when the Poisoned Stairwell crawls with them.