The secret door opened inward with utter silence, swinging on oiled steel rods that pierced it from the top and the bottom. Keritanima nodded to him with a wink, and they quickly slipped into the dark passageway as the door began to close on its own.
Tarrin felt Keritanima touch the Weave, and a very faint ball of white light appeared over a single finger. "Alright, that was the hard part," she whispered to them. "The first of the rooms we're going to check out is at the end of this passage."
"Lead on, sister," Allia said calmly.
The passage was narrow, cramped, and its stone walls and floor were not as smooth and attractive as the passages outside. Built within the wall, it often cramped down or expanded to follow the contours of rooms that were on the other sides of the walls. There was a smell of mildew and stagnation in the passage, but there was enough man-smell to tell Tarrin that it was travelled with regularity. The stones beneath his pads were slick and clammy, and they were cold enough for him to feel it through the thick pads that protected his feet. There were no cobwebs to be seen, and Tarrin could make out soot stains on the arched ceiling of the passage. No doubt the torch fires burned any cobwebs away.
The passage joined with another that ran off to their right, and it led to a series of stone doors on either side of the widened passage. From that side, it was impossible to tell if the doors were secret on the far side, but Keritanima ignored all of them as she led them along the hallway. She shooed a rat out from underfoot, the animal having no fear of the non-human smells of the invaders. She led them around a corner, and into a hallway that ended in a bronze-gilded door of stone. It had a huge lock on it, running through a pair of eyes that held a thick bronze bolt in place to keep the door from opening, and the door's tarnished appearance hinted that it was not often used.
"This is it," she said, drawing out her lockpicks. She set the little ball of light in midair just over her shoulder and went to work on the lock. It succumbed to her superior skill quickly, and she set it carefully on the floor. Tarrin and Allia turned that bolt eye so it could be drawn, and it made a high-pitched screeching sound as metal grated on stone. Tarrin winced, and Keritanima's ears laid back slightly, then she gave them a glaring look and nodded. Slowly, Tarrin pulled the bolt from its socket in the stone, trying to minimize the squealing and squeaking of the bronze as it ground over stone. But it came loose of the hole in the wall, and he pulled on that bolt like a handle, pulling the door open.
It creaked on unused hinges, and slowly opened into a large room that was kept in utter blackness. Keritanima pointed, and her little ball of light ghosted into the chamber to illuminate it before they entered.
It was a treasure vault. Rows of chests lined the floor, and a shelf on the far side of the room held several large gems and works of art. One of those chests was open, showing a large number of gold and silver coins.
"Well," Keritanima said in a light voice. "Too bad I'm not here for money."
"Why would a church have such wealth?" Allia asked curiously. "Is not their duty to help the poor?"
"Churches are money-making institutions, sister," Keritanima snorted. "Most churches spend as little as possible on things they're supposed to do. Behind their words of god and piety, they're just as greedy as everyone else."
"It is sad," she said.
"That's why I don't follow any god," Keritanima said bluntly. "Their priests are even worse than the nobles, and their gods won't do anything to stop them."
Tarrin wondered what Karas would think of all this. Tarrin wondered if he even knew.
After closing and locking the door back, Keritnaima led them along a series of dark, empty passages towards the middle of the building, approaching the nave and gallery that marked the main cathedral chamber. She led them to a nondescript door of molded wood, protected only by a rusted out lock that disintigrated when Keritnaima put a lockpick in it. Shrugging, the fox Wikuni dropped the remains and opened the door, then sent her little ball of light in to illuminate it.
It was a crypt of some kind. A sarcophagus rested in the middle of the dark, bare chamber, plain stone with no markings, resting on a simple stone slab. That struck Tarrin as odd. According to Eron, the church had a catacomb complex under the cathedral, where their priests and the faithful were often buried in crypts. Why have a single crypt here, in the dank secret tunnels of the cathedral? And why put a lock on the door?
"I wondered where this was," Keritanima whispered.
"What is it?" Tarrin asked.
"That's the tomb of Arbok," she replied. "Arbok was a priest of an evil god that vanished long ago. The priests of Karas executed him for crimes against Karas, then buried him on ground sacred to Karas, so that Arbok's spirit could never have peace. That was their pronouncement of justice on him."
"It is wrong to punish one beyond death," Allia said shortly. "Death is the ultimate punishment."
"Tell that to the priests," Keritanima said. "The priests of Karas have a nasty reputation. They're almost as bad as the priests of Pygas the Avenger when it comes to revenge. But they call it justice," she shrugged. "This means the big room on the other end of the cathedral is probably what we're looking for." She threw her tied hair back over her shoulder, then slashed her tail in the air a few times behind her. "Now comes the hard part."
"What?"
"Crossing the Nave without being seen," she said with an eager grin.
"Miranda was right. You do enjoy this," Tarrin grunted.
She only gave him a wicked smile, then licked him on the cheek as she turned away from the doorway.
Getting across the Nave wasn't as hard as Tarrin thought it would be. The huge chamber, filled with stained glass windows and a huge mosaic on the floor of Karas' symbol, rows and rows of pews separated from the dais and altat by an ornate polished wooden rail, was populated by some ten young men. They were all very young, looking to be acolytes, and they were attended by a single portly man with small round scars pocking his face. The man was short and had greasy hair, and he was dozing in a chair not far from the dais as the young men scrubbed at the floor and pews with soapy water and brushes. All of them were wearing a simple black robe tied with a white belt. The door though which the three non-humans looked was in the far back corner of the massive worship chamber, behind the dais and the altar. The back wall of the Nave was lined with four ornate, gold-inlaid doors. Those were probably doors to private chambers of very high ranking churchmen. Fortunately for them, all the young men and their overseer were on the far side of the huge room.
"One at a time," Keritanima said in a whisper. "Tarrin, you first. That's where we want to go," she told him, pointing to a door on the far wall.
Tarrin nodded, hunkering down, and then shifting into his cat form. He crept out into the huge chamber, noticing the ornate paintings on the ceiling, and he wondered idly how they got the painter up there.
A bell suddenly tolled somewhere over his head, and it scared Tarrin half out of his wits. He fought the wild urge to scramble up and under something, to seek cover, but he realized that nobody could see him. He was behind the dais, and he was so small that he was out of the sight of the men on the other side of it. The bell tolled six more times, and then it fell silent, but Tarrin stayed frozen until he was sure that the loud noise had indeed come to an end.
Staying near the wall, he slunk across the large chamber, quickly and quietly reaching his goal. He shifted back and opened the door, then stepped through it before anyone noticed.