The Spirit Banner (19 page)

* * *

B
ACK IN THE TUNNEL
behind them, the others quickly worked out a plan. Because they had the most climbing experience, Vale and Williams were given the task of rappelling back down the cliff and cutting down three to four reasonably straight trees that could be used to bridge the gap. Davenport and Nambai would use their position to play guard during the process, alerting the others if there was any sign of Ransom or his men. After stripping the branches off the trunks, Williams and Vale would drag the trees over to the base of the cliff where Davenport and Nambai would haul them up into the tunnel with the extra climbing ropes they still carried in their packs.
With the four of them together again in the tunnel, they would push the trunks across the gap, then bind them together to create a makeshift bridge.
They knew there was a considerable amount of work ahead of them, but after coming this far, none of them, Nambai included, wanted to miss out on the final discovery.
Selecting the trees was the easy part, as the area below the cave mouth was full of reasonably straight conifer trees. With only small camp hatchets available for use, it took the two men some time to cut down the trunks and trim off the branches. Once they had, they carried them to the base of the cliff and tied one of the climbing ropes to each end of the first log.
At the signal from Williams, Davenport and Nambai hauled each log up the side of the cliff and set them down inside the cave mouth.
Once all four logs had been brought up, Vale and Williams rejoined the others inside the cave.
The foursome took a short break, eating some food and drinking a lot of water to replenish what they had sweated out during their efforts. In the midst of their meal a sudden booming sound reverberated through the cavern.
The same thought went through all of their minds.
Another trap!
Their meal forgotten, they jumped to their feet and began pushing the logs out over the gap, working as quickly as possible to complete the bridge and go to the aide of their companions.

* * *

M
ASON'S HAND PUSHED
against the door, but it didn't open as expected. Instead, it sank several inches into its frame and then stopped.
"What the heck?" Mason said, more to himself to Annja.
Annja wasn't listening to him, however. She'd already turned to face the corridor behind them, every muscle tensed as she waited for whatever was coming.
And come it did.
A low grinding sound filled the corridor and the bottom edges of the left- and right-hand walls fell backward, revealing a long, narrow opening running the length of the passageway.
Water began to pour out of those openings with a loud rushing roar, and in less than a minute both Annja and Mason were standing ankle-deep in freezing-cold water as more flooded into the room by the second.
"The other door!" Annja shouted above the din.
They rushed for the entrance they'd passed through previously, their feet splashing through the water that was rapidly flooding the passageway around them.
Before they had even gone halfway down the tunnel a stone slab slid down from a hidden recess in the ceiling and blocked the door.
Mason continued running and threw himself at the barrier. Maybe he was hoping he could shatter it or something; Annja didn't know. What was clear was the water was still rising, up to midcalf now, and it would probably continue to do so until it reached the ceiling.
If they were still here at that point, they would be beyond caring.
Mason tried again, slamming himself against the stone wall, but it had as much effect as a mosquito would to an elephant.
He looked back at her, his expression clearly letting her know his efforts were futile.
They weren't getting out that way, that was for sure.
Annja spun around, taking in everything in the corridor, looking for the solution, the way out. Her gaze fell on the carving of the Khan and the ivory wheel beneath it. Her rudimentary knowledge of the Uighur script, which was used to write the Mongolian tongue, told her that the arrangement of letters on the wheel translated into gibberish.
Why put a series of letters there if they didn't actually spell anything? she wondered.
"Come on!" she shouted over the roaring of the water, and took off back down the length of the corridor without waiting to see if Mason was following.
Reaching the door at the other end, she discovered that despite her height she could not reach the ivory wheel. Mason had already figured out her quandary, however, and bent over so that she could climb up on his back. From there, he leaned against the door, using it for support while she clambered all the way up until she was standing on his shoulders and found herself directly opposite the disk. This close she could see that there was a small arrow just below the image of the Khan, pointing down at the disk.
"I don't know what you're doing, but whatever it is, you'd better hurry," he shouted up to her. In that short time since the flooding had started, the water had already risen over Mason's knees.
Despite having hung there for centuries, it only took a gentle push to get the disk moving. Working quickly, Annja spun the disk like a combination lock, lining up each letter in the name
Temujin
with the arrow below the carving.
She looked down, noting that the water was now up to the middle of Mason's chest, and said, "Try the door."
With his hands already against it to help in holding Annja up, all Mason had to do was push.
Nothing happened.

* * *

B
Y LAYING THE TREE TRUNKS
on the floor one at a time and pushing from behind, they were able to slide each of them across the gap without too much difficulty. The rope in Davenport's pack was sacrificed and cut into shorter strips, which were then used to tie the ends of the logs together in an effort to keep them from sliding away from one another.
Vale volunteered to make the crossing first and he did so by shimmying across the makeshift bridge while seated on the logs with a leg hanging down on either side. His position spread his weight out as much as possible and helped keep the logs from separating beneath him by trapping them between his thighs.
Once he was across, he took several strips of rope he'd carried over with him and used those to bind the other end of the logs together.
With a man holding down either side of their makeshift bridge, the others followed Vale's example and crossed to the far side as quickly as possible.
Nambai was the last one to cross and the older man did it with more panache than any of his younger colleagues. Standing and walking across as though it was something he did every day of the week, he strolled along the narrow causeway with a gaping void to either side that would have given a mountain goat second thoughts.
Fresh lit torches in hand, they hurried after their colleagues, afraid that they might already be too late.
They passed through the first room and into the short tunnel beyond, only to find that the door at the other end of the tunnel was blocked by a large slab of stone.
Pushing against it got them nowhere and it was clear from the size of the stone that attempting to lift it, particularly without the proper tools to give them leverage, would be an act of futility.
A roaring noise could be heard on the other side, and once Davenport thought he heard Annja's voice, but it was too hard to tell for sure. They banged on the stone, shouted at those they believed to be on the other side, but to no avail.
If Mason and Annja were on the other side, they were trapped good and proper.

* * *

"T
RY IT AGAIN
!" Annja shouted down to Mason.
He gave the door another shove.
Still nothing.
Annja swore. What had she missed? Was she using the device incorrectly? Did she need to spin the disk in only one direction? Clockwise? Counterclockwise? Did she have the right password?
She tried the Khan's given name twice more, moving the disk only clockwise the first time and then, when that failed, trying the same thing in the other direction.
It still didn't work.
"Annja?"
She looked down and saw that the water was almost up to Mason's chin.
"Better hurry," he said, looking up at her, a strange calmness in his gaze.
She turned back to the disk. She needed a different password. That had to be it.
But what?
Her thoughts whirled.
What would have been important to the ruler of the known world? Wealth? Power? Territory? His title?
There were too many options, too many choices, and not enough time.
She heard Mason take a deep breath and knew the water had just risen over his face. She had less than a minute or two.
With one last desperate attempt, she tried again. If she was wrong this time, she wouldn't have another chance. Once Mason collapsed she wouldn't be tall enough to reach the disk.
She spun the last letter into place and felt the water creep up over her knees.
Mason had been submerged for a minute and a half.
A grinding noise filled the chamber and the door in front of them burst open, carrying them forward in the rush of the current.

Annja went under in the sudden flood and was swept away from Mason. She felt herself slam into a few objects and got tangled up in them, but couldn't tell what they were as she was carried several yards into the room by the receding waters.
In moments it was over.
Wet, tired and very thankful that she remembered the name of Temujin's first, and favored, wife, Borte, she came to rest on the stone floor.
Something large and heavy lay atop her.
With her torch gone, she opened her eyes into darkness. Her left hand was pinned beneath the weight but she could move her right and she used it to pull her flashlight from the cargo pocket of her pants and turn it on.
A mummified Mongol face stared down at her from just a few inches away, its blackened flesh shrunken against the bones of its skull, its eyes deep in their sockets and dried out like oversized grapes.
Annja screamed.
"Annja!"
The mummy was suddenly pulled away and Annja found herself looking into Mason's concerned face. "Are you okay?" he asked.
She nodded, still too surprised to speak.
Having an eight-hundred-year-old corpse leering at her was not something she'd expected after escaping from the flood.
Mason helped her climb to her feet and together they shone their lights across the space around them.
Mummified Mongol warriors were scattered everywhere around the room, thanks to the force of the now-drained floodwaters. They were all dressed in Mongol battle armor, and many still held the swords and shields they had been posed with so many centuries before.
Annja shone her light into the face of one of the mummies and bent over to take a closer look. The wide gash across his throat had been stitched shut, the haphazard way it had been done removing even the smallest doubt that the repair had been anything but postmortem.
By letting her light play over the other figures nearby, Annja could see the same wounds on each. She suspected they had gone to their deaths knowingly, ready to follow their Khan into whatever world came next, and that only made it all the more unnerving.
Annja had excavated quite a few ancient burial sites in her career. She'd even had the pleasure of seeing the Terra Cotta Army while visiting China and marveling at how the figures had appeared so lifelike. Every single soldier had differing facial features, as if they had been modeled after living individuals. Here, deep in this mountain passage in the heart of the Great Taboo, there had been no need for models at all. These soldiers were real. Here, the honor guard that had probably stood in orderly rank and file had once lived and breathed. It brought a strange and eerie presence to the place, as if the dead had come to life and now walked about the place on silent feet.
Shining their lights down the length of the passage showed another set of wooden doors at the very end, opened by the force of the water that had passed through them.
Without a word Annja and Mason stepped over the tangled ranks of the dead piled up near the doors and crossed the threshold.
The final set of doors opened into a massive, natural cavern. If Annja hadn't been so mesmerized by its contents, she might have amused herself for hours looking at the way nature had carved its own little hideaway from the bare rock.
As it was, she could barely take her eyes from the rows upon rows of warriors organized in regular columns of ten, three to a side.
Like the warriors in the entry hall, these were mummified, as well. So, too, were the steeds on which they rode.
She had found the fabled "sixty," the warriors who had accompanied Genghis Khan's body on its long journey back to the homeland and who had given their lives in order to keep the location of his tomb a secret.
The silent ranks stared back at her and for a moment she could almost feel the challenge in their dead eyes, could almost hear the snort of the horses and the clank of the armor as the warriors moved slightly in their saddles, could feel the anticipation they held as they prepared to ride forth for their Khan.
"Hey!" Mason's hand on her arm brought her back to herself.
"You okay?" he asked. "You looked a little woozy there for a moment."
She smiled what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "I'm fine. Just still catching my breath, I guess."
And as she turned away from him to glance at the soldiers once more, she saw it.
An enormous tent stood all on its own just beyond the squads of mountain warriors. It was easily ten times the size of the
gers
Annja had seen being used outside the city limits and must have required half a dozen carts or more to transport its materials.
Those who'd lived in such a place must have lived like kings.
Or queens.
She knew she was right the minute the thought occurred to her. After all, they had found the sixty members of the missing honor guard, those who supposedly stood watch over the sixty brides, if the message was still to be believed. That meant the massive
ger
had probably been erected to fulfill another element of the prophecy.
It was to be the living quarters for the harem that had followed Genghis into eternity.
Of course, there was only one way to find out.
Taking a deep breath, Annja crossed through the ranks of the dead, mounted the steps leading to the entrance of the
ger
and, pulling back the heavy felt doors, she stepped inside.