The Secret Passages

On his first evening at Déynáir, Chris gets lost in the corridors of the castle. He leans wearily against a wall, and one of the stones gives way. The wall slides aside, and behind it a narrow staircase leads down, lit by small bluish stones in the wall. It ends at a door into the First-Year Room.

Ahra has heard about the passages. Rumour has it that they are impossible to find. That same evening he and Chris promise each other to find every one of them before they leave the castle. The promise turns out to be more binding than either of them had expected: it is a stone oath.

The Map

Chris and Ahra search in the evenings, and Retia insists on joining them. There is no finished map, so Retia draws one herself from memory. She uses a pencil and the back of a menu from the dining hall. Ahra keeps the accounts and draws the routes in with a piece of red chalk he has taken from an empty classroom. He puts a small cross at every place they have examined. Retia has the best sense of direction and always goes first.

Chris finds the hidden doors in a way the others can’t. The passages smell of old Dherak, a faint metallic note beneath the stone’s own smell, and he follows it. The very first time, though, it was the ring round his wrist that turned warm.

Most evenings they find nothing. They walk for hours in dark corridors, knocking and listening, and Chris counts those evenings among his best all the same.

Later the passages become a way out at night. Surain leads Chris out through a passage he hasn’t found himself, and on another night Chris makes his way out into the garden through one of those they have mapped.