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Lina clung to a jagged slice of floor that still remained, crying out and swinging her legs into open space below. Maddock mentally kicked himself for not keeping a closer eye on her. Clearly she was not used to this type of work. She was accustomed to studying artifacts brought back to her from places such as this, not to being part of locating and retrieving them.
“False floor!” Maddock yelled down to her.
She surprised him with her response. “Yes, I managed to discover that on my own.”
At least she’s a little more collected than I gave her credit for, Maddock thought.
“Heads up!” Maddock turned in the direction of Bones’ voice in time to see a rope flying his way. He caught it and immediately unraveled it enough to drop one end down to Lina, who let out a curse.
“Cazzo! My phone, it fell!”
“Never mind that right now. Grab the rope.”
Lina’s hand swiped out and clawed the rope to her body just as the remaining sliver of floor gave way.
“Brace yourself!” Maddock heard Bones cry out. He dropped to the floor, legs out in front of him, heels digging into the cave floor against Lina’s sudden weight free-falling at the other end of the rope. Bones moved swiftly to wrap the slack rope around one of the stalagmites., winding it around until it would support the stress.
“Got it, you can let go.”
Maddock did so, tentatively at first—moving his hands just off the rope to see if it would hold. After seeing it didn’t budge, he stood and walked to the edge of the new opening. “Lina?”
“I’m okay!” her voice echoed up. “I’ve got the rope. And I think I can see the ground. I’m going to lower myself down.”
“Lina, wait for us!” Maddock sprang into action, tying a new line around another of the stalagmites and then dropping down into the pit. Bones followed suit from another stalagmite, lest they put too much weight on a single one. Together Maddock and Bones descended right through the shattered false floor, not bothering to stop and test their weight on what remained of it. As they slid down the ropes they caught sight of a glow far below—Lina’s fallen cell phone.
Maddock paused as he neared the end of his rope, which still dangled in mid-air. But he could see the ground wasn’t that far below his feet, it was just that it sloped sharply. The flashlight had landed here but then rolled down to more level ground somewhere out of sight below, where only the weak part of its spreading beam could be seen.
He looked over at Lina, dangling a few feet away from the stalagmite Bones had tied her off to, and Bones, some distance away from her. “I’ll go first, then you, Bones. Lina, you go last so we can help break your fall if need be. The drop isn’t far but landing on a slope is tricky. You have to be ready to roll as soon as you hit. Ready?”
Maddock counted down from three and let go of the rope. He landed facing sideways to the slope—right leg further down the hill than his left. He lost his balance and went down but was able to dig a heel into the dirt—the ground was still dirt, his mind somehow registered—stopping himself from rolling all the way down. All the way down to what, he didn’t know, so as soon as he regained his footing he shone his light down the incline. He saw only that it leveled out onto a spacious passage that led out of sight.
“I see a big passageway down here. Bones, come on down. I’m out of the way.”
As soon as he finished his sentence he heard the thud of his friend’s feet hitting the uneven subterranean ground. Bones began to roll downhill but Maddock reached out an arm and halted his downward progress.
“It’s all downhill from here. Right, Maddock?” Bones grinned as he dusted off his pant legs.
“Let’s hope so. Come on.”
Lina dropped down last, and immediately retrieved her phone, which she declared dead. “You will have to call my land line if you need me.”
With bigger priorities than a phone on the men’s minds, they moved along the passageway down into the depths. Maddock led the way with Bones and Lina right behind him. When they reached the bottom, Lina picked up her fallen flashlight and the three of them moved into the darkness ahead. The passageway was a natural one, but up ahead was something clearly constructed by humans. Maddock was the first to reach it but Bones was first to comment.
“A freaking door! No way!” A stone door with an iron ring in the face was set into what would otherwise be the end of the long passageway.
The three of them examined the surfaces all around it, above and below, but could detect no signs of a trap.
“Could it really be this easy?” Bones asked. “Behind this door is the vault?”
Maddock shrugged. “Only one way to find out.” He and Bones both put a hand on the large ring and pulled.
He hadn’t expected his first attempt to succeed. Surely there was some hidden locking mechanism they’d have to overcome. But, to his surprise, he felt it give. Slowly, with a grating rumble, the door swung outward.
Maddock shone his light inside and his heart raced as the beam of his light fell upon a stylized eagle, a popular symbol among the Visigoths, carved on the far wall. But his moment of excitement dissolved into disappointment as he looked around.
“Now we know why it was so easy.” The lackluster tone of Bones’ voice registered his disappointment even more than his words. “It’s a vault, all right. But it’s empty.”
They stepped inside and Maddock encouraged them to take a look around the empty chamber anyway, but as expected, they found nothing. No treasure, no clues, no hidden passages or trapdoors. There was nothing here. It was a dead end.
“I can’t believe we went through all of that trouble only to get down here and find an empty room,” Lina said.
“I had a bad feeling when I saw the door was unlocked,” Bones said.
Maddock leaned up against one of the walls while he mulled over their options. “What do you think happened here? This space is obviously a vault.” He looked around at the low chamber comprised of tons of solid rock, deep beneath the ground. At the stout door set into the base of it.
“Do you think somebody got here first?” Bones asked. “Cleaned the place out?”
Lina shook her head. “Things like that don’t remain a secret. In modern times, antiquities like this appear on the black market. If it happened centuries ago, it would have become part of local legend. But there’s never been so much as a whisper.”
“Let’s think about the treasure itself,” Maddock said. “If Athaulf took the treasure, it’s safe to say he probably divided it among the Visigoths.”
Bones threw up his hands and gesticulated to the empty room. “Why would they bother to build a vault if they weren’t going to hide any treasure in it?”
Lina looked around thoughtfully before answering. “I think maybe they did hide it here. They couldn’t take the treasure along on their planned invasion of Sicily and North Africa, so they built this vault for safekeeping. Then, when the fleet sank and Alaric died, they divided the treasure and moved on.”
“And the clue with the menorah?” Bones asked.
Maddock thought he knew. “They needed to keep the treasure hidden until they returned for it, but they were going to war. They couldn’t risk the secret keepers dying, so they left behind a clue that could lead those in the know back to this place.”
Bones grimaced. “This sucks.”
Maddock raised a finger in the air. “There is one bright spot to all this. It proves the legend is true and that Alaric’s grave is out there somewhere. We just have to find it.”