Chapter Nineteen Viola #2
Our walk continues for what feels like hours.
My feet are raw, and I periodically swallow my own saliva to alleviate the dryness of my mouth.
Occasionally, a ghost breaks the tether, but I weave it back into the river.
At first, it takes some time, but by the fourth stray ghost, I make quick work of the weave.
Perhaps, the ghosts took pity on me. They saw how awful I am at magic, and they’ve decided to leave me alone.
Go. A voice, silver and purple—the colors of Arcane and Illusion— barrels through my calm mind palace. I’m about to lead it into the river when it speaks again. Go. I know this voice. I’ve known it since it chained me to the catacombs at Dearly Departed. Victor.
“Go where?” I ask.
Where the stone meets the sea, he answers. I echo his answer to Archyr.
“The ancient burial chamber,” he explains. “It’s where the… untainted lines were buried. It also houses ancestral relics, most of which are retired or only used for rituals.”
My stomach flips. It makes me sick that this place even exists. Some-how, before I came to Gorhail, I convinced myself that mages were above the common prejudice of nonmagi. But they share the same ignorance and the same misguided hate. In the end, humans are all the same.
“The founders of Gorhail believed that magic lines couldn’t be merged in order to maintain the potency of magic,” Archyr continues.
“It’s nonsensical, and times have changed.
No one uses these burial chambers anymore.
Most mages are buried at the crypt in Riverview; some, like my parents, in their home cemeteries. ”
For a moment, I forget where we are, and I contemplate asking him about his parents, what they were like, what jobs they had, and other mundane questions. But small talk isn’t for us.
At last, we reach a small empty chamber. “Is this it?” I ask. “They must not have had a lot of people to bury.”
Archyr lets out a low chuckle, and my eyes flick to his mouth. “If I remember Lyria’s map, we have one more tunnel to cross after this.”
Moonlight filters through the small cracks in the stone above, illuminating the room.
Other than the two doors across from each other, this room is completely empty.
If I forget the smell of rot and seawater, the chamber is almost cozy.
There are no bones here, only damp limestone. What more could I ask for?
Corvi. A gruff, dark voice sneaks in behind me. It doesn’t sound human nor ghost; it sounds like a bit of both, grounded with a texture that’s rough at the edges.
I whirl, thinking Archyr is playing a prank. When he returns a blank look, the hairs on my neck stand on end. This voice has no color.
Rhea? they ask. The voice knows Nan.
“Viola,” I reply curtly. “Her gran—”
You have magic now, child? Confusion colors the voice’s question.
They must be thinking about Olivia. Then again, they wouldn’t know Olivia unless she had been down here before.
My beautiful sister, who used to hate walking in mud, who would refuse to take out the trash.
What happened to you, that you had to come through these tunnels that reek of death and decay?
“Has she…” I pause, weighing my question carefully in case I get only one. “Have I been down here before?”
The voice cackles. It crawls through my bones, rooting me in place. They are dead, I tell myself. The dead can’t do anything to me.
A second Corvi. It laughs again. Oh wicked, clever Rhea. The voice glides around me, slick in a poisonous nectar. I’ll give you this one for free.
The veil that separates life and death holds secrets better left unsaid. Meddling with ghosts comes at too high a cost. For every ask is a price twice the worth. The voice sings in a honey-like sweetness.
I repeat the words to Archyr, and his face twists. “You shouldn’t ask them questions. They’ll take something from you.”
I heard the words, too, but I need to know if Olivia has been down here and why. It could clue me on her death.
“Why—” I defy, looking straight at Archyr.
“Why was Olivia Corvi in the catacombs?” Archyr runs a hand over his face. “I can’t hear them, so…”
The voice chuckles like a small child this time, yet I can tell it’s the same entity. I always thought Lyria would be the first Archyr to grace my catacombs. What a surprise.
I repeat the words, and Archyr rolls his eyes. “Be quick about it.”
Nothing like his mother, this boy, the voice scoffs.
I purse my lips to hide a smile. I imagine Mrs. Archyr would have been like Lyria: kind, funny, and good-natured—nothing like the man standing before me, pressing me for answers with a glare that threatens to slice my throat.
The moment I tell him what the voice said, his eyes darken, and he steps in front of me. “You knew Mom?” he tries.
The voice drones, The wearer of the Imortalis gets a single question. Choose wisely.
“They say you only get one question,” I whisper. His eyebrows furrow, and he mutters a curse.
“Why was Olivia Corvi here?” His eyes don’t leave mine. His jaw is tight, as if he’s questioning himself for wasting his one question on me. Why did he? My mind starts racing, pulling me in places I cannot be.
Olivia Corvi didn’t come here alone, didn’t come here seeking. I may be the guardian of the catacombs, but my lips have been sealed by magic more ancient than me.
Instead of wondering whether Olivia came here with the killer, my mind is stuck on Archyr spending his only question on me. I cannot let this debt go unpaid. I won’t let him have any leverage on me.
“Why was Sylas Archyr’s mother in the catacombs?” I blurt, wincing when my cuff burns, the metal searing against my skin. Archyr’s gaze cuts to me, his eyes narrowing in anger or confusion, I am not sure.
Lilyana Ronin came to retrieve something old and something gold, something that gives and something that lives.
Lilyana. The name catches in my throat; it’s so beautiful.
My gaze drifts to Archyr, who looks at me as if I hold the answer he’s been waiting for all his life.
Then it hits me why Nan told me that the last words of the dead were sacred.
They hold the power to alter the fabric of the living.
I am but a vessel, carrying messages, potentially ruining people’s lives.
I repeat the words. My debt has been repaid, and he can stop being a distraction. The sooner I find Olivia’s killer, the sooner I can leave.
“Mom didn’t always have Raiek,” he says so quietly I barely hear him. “Why would my mother trade her aspier for a Founder’s relic? They were supposed to be locked away.”
“Where are the other two Founder’s relics?” I ask without thinking, and my cuff burns again. I didn’t mean to ask the voice, I meant to ask Archyr.
Sileas Ronin’s aspier is around Sylas Archyr’s neck, the Arkani Coin is buried deep in Aurignan, and Faro’s Cuff, it drawls. Faro’s Cuff is long gone.
The voice is short now. Did I ask the wrong question? Something raw and cold rattles my bones, and I know we need to leave. For all I know, the guardian may decide to sandwich us between the walls of this chamber.
“Thank you for your help,” I say out loud, ushering Archyr out into the tunnel. The guardian’s voice grunts behind me, echoing through the emptiness ahead of us.
“Did you know that Faro’s Cuff is missing?”
He halts abruptly, the chamber a few steps behind us. I wish he’d stopped farther away, in case the guardian decides to murder us.
“This makes no sense. After the founders trapped Grimm in it, the cuff was locked away under my ancestor’s statue next to Paltro’s office, because he argued that his bloodline would never betray him by retrieving the cuff.”
“Who is Grimm?” I ask. I don’t recall seeing that name in any of Nan’s books.
Archyr shakes his head.
“Only the worst mage to come out of Gorhail. He was a Mortemagi who abused his power, murdering hundreds in the name of magical freedom. He wanted all mages to be able to use the blood arts—trade their lifeblood for magic—so we could progress as a society. But the blood arts are a slippery slope. Grimm is the primary reason magic is restricted, and after that purists lobbied DOTS for further restrictions, like requiring all crossmages to register with DOTS and seal half of their magic.”
I know blood Mortemagi exist—I read about them through the margins of Nan’s journals—but never understood how they worked, only the harm they caused. “What are the blood arts?”
Archyr recoils, looking at me like my question is sacrilegious.
Then he sighs. “When you trade some of your years to live—your lifeblood— in exchange for magic from the Gods. Mortemagi can summon the un-dead from the ground and control corpses; that’s how the puppets work.
Arkani can stretch the limits of their magic, able to practice it without requiring dust.” He pauses, then quietly adds, “Aspieri are the only mages who can’t use lifeblood magic. It doesn’t work with our aspiers.”
“There’s honor in not bowing to the blood arts,” I say softly. His gaze lingers on me, but I cannot lose my focus, so I turn my attention forward. In these rare moments of honesty, I wonder if his hatred of Mortemagi stems from a misconception that we are all like Grimm.
The narrow tunnel in front of us drips from the roof.
It’s only water, I tell myself. It’s… Gods, save us.
It’s seawater. We must be so deep in the catacombs that we’ve reached the part that stretches into the ocean, but it only means we’re getting closer to the burial chamber.
We’re still only two steps out of the guardian’s chamber, when a huge slab slides down, slamming on the ground, shutting us out.
My heart leaps out of my chest. Had we not moved, it would have crushed us.