Page 20 of Immortals and Ink

The monk leaned on his broom. "I'm not going to stop you from going into the crypts. I'm going to keep sweeping. If you damage anything down there, I'll notice and tell the priest in the morning. If you don't, I'll say nothing. Are we in agreement?"

Arslan inclined his head. "We are, Father. Thank you."

"Go on about your business then."

They went before he changed his mind. The stairs down into the crypts were narrow and spiraled tightly. Alexis paused when he hit protection wards he hadn't expected.

"How interesting. Someone actually figured out how to do wards properly," he murmured.

The wards were old, hostile, and had been laid by someone who expected thieves to try to rob the place. The wards bit at Alexis's skin the moment he set foot on the third step.

"I feel them," Arslan said, placing a hand to the stone.

"I expected some kind of protection magic, but the kind that priests make with prayers. These aren't like that at all. They are older."

Arslan's face lit up. "How old?"

"Older than the church above us. Someone laid these before the church was built, perhaps when the ground under our feet was a temple to another god…no, a goddess," Alexis replied and crouched down to touch the floor. Magic hummed under them. He closed his eyes and caught a whiff of incense, torches, and barking dogs. "Ah, there it is. This site was once a temple to Hekate. It's her priestess's magic. The wards think we are grave robbers."

"There are some I know in the city who still pay her homage who are going to be very interested to learn this," Arslan replied. "Can you get us through, or should I send them a message?"

"I can break them, but I'll need your help," Alexis said and stood up once more.

They spent five minutes on the third step of the spiral stair, heads bent together, whispering. Alexis taught Arslan a small, layered spell of passage that Nereus had taught him when he was a young apprentice.

The spell required two magicians, because the first wards of the old city had been laid to require two priestesses to lift. They spoke the layered spell together, and the wards on the stairs peeled open like the petals of a flower being encouraged into bloom.

The crypt at the bottom of the stairs was an antechamber that had three passages leading from it. The left went to the porphyry hall of the imperial tombs, which Alexis wasn't interested in tonight. The right led to a series of smaller vaults where the city's bishops had traditionally been buried.

The center passage was the one they wanted. Builders had dug it in the fourth century and enlarged during the Justinian renovation, when the side chamber Alexis needed to find had been walled up, plastered, painted, and forgotten.

"The wall we want is a little further, on the left-hand side. The hidden space is behind a painting of Saint Matthias."

"Why are you describing it to me rather than finding it yourself?" Arslan asked.

"Because I'm probably going to be useless from the moment we reach it."

Arslan's eyes narrowed. "Explain, please, Alexis."

"If the fragment is real, and if it's in that casket, then it's highly likely the magic of it and the magic in me are going to recognize each other," Alexis said, struggling to find the right way to describe it. "I don't know what form that recognition will take. It has been nine thousand years since I last stood near a piece of the altar. I don't know what will happen after all this time. Orichalcum in such a form was always more sensitive to magic, and who knows what it has absorbed. I'm telling you in advance because I may not be clear enough to let you know if something happens. If I seem to be somewhere else, work around me. Get the casket out. Keep me moving. Don't leave me in the crypt."

"I now have about a hundred more questions, but I know we don't have time," Arslan stated, putting his hands on his hips. "Don't worry. I won't leave you in the crypt. I promise."

"Thank you. I don't like the idea of being another thing that priest sweeps around for years," Alexis replied, earning a surprised bark of laughter from Arslan.

It didn't take them long to find a bad painting of Saint Matthias healing a leper. The saint had been painted by someone who didn't understand halos or noses or lepers, for that matter.

Alexis laid his hand on the plaster below the painting and sent his magic through it.

"Hollow," he said, his pulse starting to pick up in excitement. "Behind perhaps a handspan of plaster and brick. Can you open it?"

"Hmm, I haven't tried it before on something like this, but I don't see why not." Arslan closed his eyes and placed his hand on the wall where Alexis's had been. His magic swirled around him, and a moment later the plaster flaked away from the wall in a slow, controlled disintegration, a drift of white dust falling at their feet like the finest snow. In under a minute, the painting came off in one solid piece. The bricks behind it cracked along their mortar and opened in a chamber smaller than a wardrobe.

At the center, resting on a small plinth of Egyptian granite, was a single lead casket, no bigger than a loaf of bread. Arslan took the casket and opened it to look inside.

Fire and gold swirled out. Alexis couldn't move as he went hot and then cold. Arslan was saying something, but he couldn't make it out.

A long tolling note was coming from the casket and speaking to something at the very bottom of him that had been asleep and had now woken up, snarling.