The passage beyond was a mirror of the one into which the secret passage had emptied. It was just like the passage they'd found when getting into the cathedral, wide and well lit, with a carpet running along the center and the walls decorated with many paintings, banners, buntings, and tapestries. He kept an eye on that empty passageway as Keritanima and Allia slipped across the Nave unseen.
"There are no guards," Tarrin noted to Keritanima as they waited for Allia.
"There never are," she whispered back. "The priests are trained to fight. They serve as their own guards."
"But they should have men stationed in the halls," he told her.
"You can tell them if you want," she said with a wink. "I'm rather glad that they don't. If they did, this would be alot harder."
It very nearly ended a moment later. Just as Allia rejoined them, one of the doors in the passageway creaked open. Keritanima had just started down the passageway, and she quickly opened the closest door to her and ducked inside, which had been the very first door leading from the Nave. Tarrin and Allia fled inside with her, and they found themselves in a small room filled with long racks holding black robes similar to what the young men and overseer in the Nave had been wearing.
"Idea," Keritanima said, looking at them.
"Bad idea," Tarrin said as his ears picked up footsteps stopping just in front of the door Allia had just closed. His heart jumped a bit in his chest when he realized that the man was about to open the door!
– Hide!- Keritanima signed quickly, and they scattered. Tarrin had the easiest of it, for he simply changed form and got behind the door as it opened. He didn't see where Keritanima and Allia went, but when the light flooded in from the hallway, blocked by the shadow of a man, there was no sign of them. The man, a middle aged man of tall stature and a balding ring of gray hair on his head, stepped in wearing a simple black robe of a rougher weave than the ones hanging in the room. Tarrin hid in the shadows at the corner of the room, his black fur melding with the darkness, ready to shift back and attack the man, should he catch sight of his hidden sisters. But that proved to be unnecessary. He removed his robe calmly and pulled one of the others off the wall, showing no sign that he had seen any activity in the room. Hanging his robe in its place, he then tied the new robe around his waist and filed out as calmly as he had come in.
"That was nervous," Keritanima whispered as she came out from behind a robe rack.
"That was too close," Allia agreed with an explosive sigh, coming out from behind another.
Tarrin shifted back and looked at his sisters. "How far do we have to go, Kerri?" he asked in a hushed voice.
"About fifty paces, then we turn into a side passage," she replied. "I think we could make it, wearing these robes."
"We may as well," Tarrin shrugged.
They stepped out wearing the robes. Tarrin and Keritanima looked a little strange, for their tails did create a bit of a bump in the seat of the robes, and Tarrin almost stepped on his twice as it tried to find a place to hang without being scrunched up against something. Keritanima's lushly furred, luxuriantly bushy tail was causing her even more problems. Tarrin finally wound his tail around his waist to get it out of the way.
It was a very nervous fifty paces. That side of the cathedral was alot busier than the other side had been, and the trio had passed by no more than three groggy, sleepy priests as the men moved towards the Nave. Luckily for them, the three men had not given them a very close look. They heard more activity behind them, and Tarrin dared to look back. Men were coming out of the doors they were passing, priests being called to the Nave by that bell that had nearly scared his tail off. They didn't look at the three of them that closely, but more than one gave them a second glance. Maybe because they were going the wrong way.
They reached a four way intersection in the passageway, and the three of them turned up into one that no men were coming out of. Keritanima was staring at the wall, counting her steps under her breath, and Tarrin and Allia were just following her blindly. She stopped, looked towards the men filing past the intersection, then motioned at the wall beside her with a gloved hand.
It took them only a moment to find the button that opened the secret door, but this one had no man-smell to make it obvious. It was Allia's keen eyes that spotted it, a very dust-choked little spot on the wall between two stones that held the button that opened the door. And unlike the first one, this door squeaked loudly in protest as it opened. The noise made the hair on Tarrin's tail frizz, and he desperately looked back towards the intersection to see if anyone else had heard it. Keritanima dove in almost as soon as it began to open, and Tarrin and Allia piled in after her.
As the door squealed closed, Tarrin looked down the dank passage. It was pitch black, and unlike the first one, this one was filled with cobwebs and smelled heavily of mold and stagnation. Keritanima touched the Weave and created her little ball of light again, and it illuminated a rubble-strewn passage with an uneven floor, the skeletal remains of rats and other creatures, and thickly covered in cobwebs.
"This is a good sign," Keritanima said. "Maybe the priests don't know about the hidden chamber."
"How could they forget?" Tarrin asked. "They're right on those plans you got."
"It took me a while to find those, Tarrin, and how often do these men look at the plans?" Keritanima asked calmly. "As long as the place isn't crumbling around them, they probably never think of looking at things like engineering plans. Maybe they just stopped using this section, and it was forgotten over the years. Remember, brother, the cathedral is almost five hundred years old."
"I didn't know it was that old," he said.
She nodded. "Let's move. Time's wasting."
It was slow going, because they had to tear down cobwebs and avoid stepping on things that crunched. The passage was in disrepair, and the slick floor, littered with debris, made footing treacherous. They turned into a side passage, and went down a flight of dilapidated stairs that took them underneath the cathedral's main level. The passage ended in a slimy stone door with a pull ring. Keritanima pulled on it, and it opened into a similarly eroded passageway. It lacked the cobwebs and the dead rats, but it did have the crumbling mortar in the walls. Tarrin felt a strange twinge as they entered the new passageway.
"The door is secret from this side," Keritanima noted curiously. "I wonder why."
"Who knows?" Tarrin asked.
"This passage shows signs of recent travel," Allia said, pointing to a bootprint in the dank lichen decorating a stone on the floor.
"Let's hope we don't find whoever made that," Keritanima said. "This way," she pointed, and they started in the same direction as they bootprint had gone.
The passageway turned twice, and ultimately led to a large door bound with a bolt and two chains, and it was locked three times. They also found the owner of that boot. It was a lone priest, by the tattered remains of a black robe decorating the skeletal body, looking to be long dead. Long enough for mold to grow on the bones. There was no sign as to what killed the man. It was as if he simply died when he reached this place.
The twinging Tarrin felt was stronger, and he realized that it was coming from the door. He reached out with his senses, and could almost feel the magic tied up into the door. Keritanima had just knelt by the door, and was reaching out for the first lock with a pick in her hands.
Tarrin pulled her away from the door hurriedly, making her sit down hard on her own tail. She gasped and glared at him, but didn't shout. "What did you do that for?" she demanded in a harsh whisper.
"The door is magical," he warned her. "It may be trapped."
Keritanima gave him a speculative look, then he felt both her and Allia touch the Weave and assense the door. "There is a very, very old spell on it," she agreed. "Hundreds of years, by the way it settled into the stone."