Ragnar found this stone in great, but looted, Rome—deep in an underground crypt where a Christian saint had been buried. On the dead saint’s chest was a cross set with four precious gemstones. Four German warriors divided them among themselves and went their separate ways. Ragnar, who went north and joined the Vikings, was incredibly lucky—more than once a minute before certain death, he managed to escape!
Anya Uglova, to whom the dying archaeologist gave the silver reliquary he’d found in the ancient burial, with the instruction to cherish it like an eye’s pupil, at first simply forgot about it. But when strange things began to happen to her—attacks and attempts to rob her—Anya remembered the reliquary. Her friend Agniya Ivolgina, who by the will of fate became the keeper of three of the four stones missing since ancient times, took the archaeologist’s find in her hands and immediately understood that life had once again brought her together with the sacred secret of the Apostle Peter…