“We need to get inside.” She turned and her eyes were nearly glowing in the darkness. “I can feel something.”
“What?”
“Space.” Her voice was nearly a whisper as she spread her arms and hugged the wall. “So much space.”
33
They entered the church in silence, their shoes left on the rock platform outside. Daniel’s eyes swept across the pitch-black church, and he reached for a long yellow candle, lighting it before he swung the light over the space.
Tenzin’s immediate impression was that Sadia had a keen eye. The church was odd, different on a level she had trouble articulating, though she’d spent time in hundreds of Orthodox Christian churches in the span of her life. The interior space was broken into three rooms, an altar placed almost directly in front of the doorway in the main room with another smaller space going off to the left. In the far corner, she saw a black cut in the rock that led to the church of Rafael.
The air moved around her, curling and teasing her with secrets. It had whispered its mysteries to her from within the rock walls outside, beckoning her to discover the corners where it lived.
“Sadia was right.” She turned in a circle, looking up at the high ceilings. “This wasn’t always a church.”
“A palace?” Ben took a long rope candle from Daniel, lit it, and began exploring. “You said there was space beneath us, Tenzin. I can’t feel it though.”
“Kick back the rug,” the earth vampire suggested. “Feel the floor.”
The earth vampire was smarter than he appeared.
Daniel rolled back a corner of the rug near a wooden door on the back wall and pressed his hands to the earth. “There’s a solid meter of rock beneath us, but then there’s a chamber.” He shook his head. “I want to look for a tunnel; there has to be one.”
There was one. In fact, there were several.
Her eyes were drawn to a door high on the back wall of the church with stairs leading upward. “That doorway smells of bread.”
Daniel looked at her. “Yes, there’s a sacred bakery beyond it.”
“What makes bread sacred?” Ben asked.
Tenzin ran a hand along the walls and felt for the space within the rock. “There are many cultures in which bread is sacred. You’re familiar with the Eucharist ceremony, but bread is considered sacred by Wiccans and many pagan cultures as well. Egyptians considered bread essential to life.”
Daniel said, “The bakery here feeds the priests and the monks mostly.”
“Gotcha.”
A whisper of movement captured her attention. “Stop and listen.” Tenzin raised a hand and closed her eyes. “Feel where the air is traveling.”
Ben walked to Tenzin and pulled back another corner of the rug, moving a large drum that was placed in a corner of the church that wasn’t a church. He bent down and placed his hands on the ground. “I still can’t feel anything.”
“Trust me?”
He looked up and met her eyes. “Always.”
“This way.” She followed a tendril of wind that drifted toward Daniel. The earth vampire had already spotted where that air was traveling even though she hadn’t said a word.
She spoke to wind, he to earth. And that earth had shown the vampire a rounded square hole cut deep into the rock and covered by a wooden door closely fitted to the stone passage and secured with a heavy iron lock.
“Can you open it?” Dan asked Ben.
“Give me a little room.” Ben knelt down and took the lockpicks from his pocket. They looked delicate against the dark iron, but within minutes, Ben had the lock open and removed from the door.
With Daniel, Ben slowly pulled up until the heavy wood door swung up and over to reveal a wide, round hole dug into the bedrock of the mountain.
“It’s a hole in the ground,” Ben said.
“No.” Daniel leaned forward. “It’s a doorway.”
“There’s no door.”
“You are mistaken, my friend.” Daniel put his hands on the bottom of the pit and dug his fingers into the rock as if it were no harder than clay. “It’s designed to be opened from the bottom, or there’s some mechanism we can’t see.”
He lifted the rock straight up, revealing a finely cut slab angled slightly so it wouldn’t fall through the passageway it revealed.
“Give me that candle.” Daniel held out his hand, and Tenzin passed him a long lit rope candle, which he lowered into the passageway before he looked up. “There are footholds carved into the side.”
“Is it damp?” Tenzin forced her voice to remain steady. Something within the rock called to her even though she despised being underground. She saw the candle flicker as the air moved over it.
It’s not damp. The earth is not close to my mouth. Feel the space between the rock.
“It’s dry.” Ben looked up. “And the air smells fresh. There has to be an outlet on the other end, Tenzin. It’s not a closed passageway.”
She nodded. “Daniel goes first.”
“No objection,” Daniel said. “I’ll call when I reach a floor or if I get into trouble.” The man handed the candle to Ben, then slowly lowered himself into the passageway before he reached up and took the light again. “It’s tight. We better hope there’s a better exit, because I think I’ll have to widen the rock if we try to go back up this way, and that would be noticeable.”
“Okay.” Ben was watching the darkness as Daniel disappeared. “So we look for an alternate exit. Got it.”
“The air movement would indicate that there is another exit,” Tenzin said.
Daniel didn’t speak for a long time, but minutes later, he called up. “Ben? Tenzin? I think… you better come down here.”
“How big is the space?” Ben looked at Tenzin.
“Once you get through the tunnel, there’s space.” A long silence. “Quite a bit of space.”
Ben stared at Tenzin, but she had nothing to add.
“We go down,” she said. “Like you said, it’s not a closed passageway.”
He jumped up and went to close the door of the church. “We’re probably not coming back this way.”
I certainly hope not.
Tenzin knew there was something waiting for them. She knew it the same way she knew her father feared her and Ben never had. “We go down.” She moved to the passageway. “I’ll go first.”
All three of them stared at a wooden chest standing roughly four feet high on a platform in the center of the cavern and covered in rich purple cloth and animal skins. It was nearly four feet long and about three feet wide. Near the base of the chest were two long, reinforced poles, one on either side.
“Is it?” Daniel’s voice was small.
“I… Maybe?” Ben shuffled closer to her side. “Tenzin?”
Tenzin cocked her head and stared at it, her mind racing. The object under the heavy veils positively oozed with power, more than she’d ever thought possible. It was similar to amnis but carried a different flavor when it reached her mind.
“It’s powerful.” That was all she could say about it. All she knew for certain.