Hilko held out the candle before him while he carefully crept to the area. Three arched entrances came into view. The smell of rotting flesh reached them, and they halted. Right below the middle entrance was a large mound of broken stone. Carefully, Hilko held his nose and crept closer. The feeble light revealed a human leg sticking out from beneath the pile of rubble. Stepping around the mound, he saw the dark hole in the cavern's roof.
"Miner's trap, I guess." He said as Silna stepped next to him, holding her nose.
"Probably one of Regaar's henchmen." The woman replied as she picked up a partially burned candle next to the boot. Lighting it with her partner's candle, she pointed to the left arch. "Regaar didn't mention this. I hope we don't have more for us as we go deeper. I guess that's why he just didn't come down here for it himself."
"Yeah, he's not going to risk his neck. He leaves that to fools like us." Hilko's voice echoed in the chamber. "Alright, the tunnel we want looks clear."
Silna noticed her partner staring at the inside of the middle tunnel as they walked by. Entering the shaft to the vault, they cautiously went in single file. Unlike the lower mines where the Guryo lived, the long-lost entry remained dry but dusty. Before long, they reached the opening to the vault. At first, the pair thought something had gone wrong when they came across an enormous pile of boulders and rubble. It appeared the entire roof had collapsed into the mine shaft. The dim light revealed a hole between two large boulders as they looked closer.
"That must be what Regaar's talking about." Hilko turned to the woman. "Give me a boost up and let me check it out."
She glared at him.
"How says you lead? I can check it." Silna pushed past him, pulling herself up and sending down a rock that landed on top of his foot.
"Nalith be cursed!" the man grabbed his foot in pain while the woman laughed. Her backside was above him, trying to squeeze through the fissure. Hilko reached up and smacked her butt in retribution. The woman cursed him.
"Next time, let me lead. I'm better than you at this," Hilko reminded her as he watched her feet disappear into the darkness. Soon her angry face looked down at him.
"Do that again, and I'll knock you out. Now give me your hand."
The runner extended his arm to give her the candle, and then she pulled him up into the fissure. They were inside a small natural chamber created by the falling rock. There was a rift above them, just wide enough to climb through. As he looked around in the feeble light, Hilko determined the shaft continued at a steep angle upward.
"Looks stable enough," he told her sarcastically before turning to Silna.
"Seriously, let me do this. I'm a better climber, and I have more experience with traps."
At first, he thought she would refuse, just to be stubborn. However, after looking at the path above, she nodded.
"Only one way to go. Follow that path, I guess." He started climbing with a determined grin.
Silna watched him as she tried to shake the unsettled feeling she carried. The woman had never gone on a snatch before. While she might have grabbed this work for the hamar, Regaar steered her into the tunnel with Hilko. It did not help that Makra was there as well. After she beat him into submission, he swore revenge on her. Then, Regaar's comment about the Faters tunnel also nagged at her. A vault meant people would find the item missing. After taking a deep breath, she climbed after Hilko.
At the top of the narrowing shaft, a yellow candle suddenly came through the opening on the floor. Hilko's dirty hand held the circle of wax and placed it next to the small hole. The feeble light quickly filled the large rectangular room. The rays reflected from the thousands of mirrored blue tiles along the walls and ceiling.
"Zaarin Gods!" Hilko stared in wonder at the most beautiful display he had ever witnessed. The upper half of his body was out of the gap in the floor.
"Ouch, stop it."
He felt a pinch on his exposed leg skin, followed by her muffled curse for standing on her hand. He scrambled out to stand in wonder at the dazzling display around him.
"Hey, give me a hand." She called out with her upper body stuck getting through the irregular opening.
Hilko tugged on her arm with an annoyed look until Silna finally pulled herself inside the mirrored chamber. She gawked at the majestic beauty around them. The hollowed-out and vaulted room held two golden doors at the single entrance. However, the massive rectangular box made of iron-banded wood resting on stacked layers of marble caught their attention.
"Some vault," Hilko whispered as he looked over the box.
The layers of stone created natural steps around all four sides, while a single heavy chain dangled down from the dark recesses high above them. A bracket connected the chain to the box, causing Hilko to ponder the mechanism as he wandered around the platform.
Silna turned her focus on the painted ceiling, amazed at the stunning, bright-colored figures. Suddenly remembering a scene of two gods fighting with silver swords, she felt a cold chill.
The Chara priests used the room.
She nearly spoke out, but Hilko interrupted her thoughts.
"No, I get it now. This big box is our vault," the smuggler ran up the steps and pounded on the wood with his open hand. "It's hiding whatever's at the top of this platform."
Silna hurried to join him at the top of the platform as he gave the wood a halfhearted push, knowing it would not budge.
"It's not moving without that chain lifting it. We have to find the winch." He backed down a step, looking around the chamber. "It'll be like that old drawbridge near the docks."
"We shouldn't be here!" she stated while watching him.
Hilko glanced over at her.
"You might have told him that yesterday. Anyway, Regaar has it right so far. Someone doesn't want anyone to get inside this vault. Do you want to return to Regaar with nothing?"
She shook her head, her eyes avoiding his as she looked back at the ceiling.
"I'm climbing up to figure out how this thing works. You check over by the entrance doors for something that we can use as a lever. Also, listen for movement around on the other side. If I can get that chain to move, it will make some noise as we raise this thing to see underneath it. The noise might bring in guards. Let me know what you find."
Silna slowly backed down the steps, watching him crawl to the top of the wooden structure; then she quickly made her way to the entrance. With balance and skills developed from crawling and climbing buildings to smuggling goods, Hilko easily crawled up the metal links. He reached for the pulley, leading the chain to a shaft that went through the rock. He slid down the chain until he reached the top of the vault, thoroughly discouraged.
"The chain goes into another area and makes it impossible to lift the top of that box from this room. Cursed pufta didn't say anything about this," he told Silna when she came back from the entrance.
"I'll lay odds that whoever found the floor hole didn't bother to look too hard."
"Nobody appears waiting outside the door," she replied. "I don't think Regaar realized this is a Faters vault. I've seen those symbols in a temple once. Maybe that person we found earlier knew about it, but he died first."
She was more than stunned than Hilko and her mind spun while thinking of a way to avoid Regaar's anger.
"I don't know what we'll tell him, but he's bound to hate our discovery."
Nodding, Hilko looked up one last time, then climbed down from the top. His mind started working through the options. "We're not going to lift it without getting to the other room. That leaves us with ether going through this wood or underneath it."
Silna tried pounding on the wood with the side of her fist, then shook her head. "Too thick for anything but a battering ram." She gave him a thin smile. "You don't have one of those handy?"
"Yes, I'll go back and drag one in," Hilko replied as he backed down one step. Something about the stone platform caught his eye. He crouched down to see cracks on one side of the thin marble slabs that made up the platform.
Seizing upon a thought, Hilko focused on the corner of the steps where the metal edge rested. As he suspected, the long cracks in the mortar showed. Falling to his knees, he pulled his dagger and chipped away at the narrow mortar line underneath.
"What are you doing?" Silna stepped closer.
"Bring over the candle," he replied, not stopping to explain.
Chunks of white material fell on the marble step as the man stabbed away. Silna brought over a candle, watching as Hilko worked to widen the cracks caused by the weight of the wood and iron vault.
Unfortunately, the thin metal blade Hilko used made slow progress. He glanced around before returning to his work.
"See if you can find something like a pike or bar of metal. The weight of this box has cracked through the stone. I think they used some brick underneath this marble slab. Maybe we can get out of this alive by tunneling under."
Silna pointed at a rack of polished weapons.
"How about those?"
Halberds lined the wall in formation with polished ax blades topping a long spike. They waited for polished guards to pull the weapons from their wooden stands. He smiled at the idea, and the pair hurried over.
After pulling up the long weapon, half again taller than Silna, he looked over the thick metal top.
"Those might do, but we'll need to shorten the halberd," he pointed out.
"Here, let me have it."
Taking the weapon back to the vault steps, Silna used her weight to break the shaft near the top as he brought over another halberd.
Soon, the pair were digging and prying at the mortar, quickly knocking away the veneer of stone underneath the vault edge. Hilko smiled when he saw the red brick. It quickly fell apart as the pair of thieves slammed the pike tops between the mortar and brick. Before long, they opened a hole wide enough for the thin man to slide inside the wooden structure, hiding the valuables inside.
A green glow along with yellow reflections from the hazy candlelight showed him a table in the middle of the darkness. Silna called out for him to help her enlarge the hole. He laid his candle to one side and used his weapon to remove another line of bricks. While Silna pulled herself inside, Hilko took his candle to the glowing orb of light.
A square, gilded altar stood on the gilded table. Around the top, golden religious ornaments lay scattered around candle holders and incense jars. However, the item of particular interest was a large orb that glowed with a green shimmer. The crystal's glow intensified when Hilko stepped closer. Soon, he saw a swirling fog appear inside the crystal. His eyes focused on the movement inside the globe; he heard Silna gasp as she stopped next to him.
"It's the Nalith!"