“Ugh,” groaned Jack. “Seriously?”
“What?” Gwen tore a strip of silk from the skeleton’s linen undershirt and wrapped it around the end of the bone. “We’ll need a torch, right?” She dipped her stolen thighbone into one of the pots of burning oil and walked along the arches, taking a closer look at the animals. Red dust glittered within the black rock. “This really was a ruby mine.”
“It’s this one.” Jack crossed ahead of her to the third arch, pointing at the birdlike carving above it. “A hawk guards against tomb raiders. I’ll bet that part of the legend works on multiple levels.” Without waiting for a response, he took a step through the doorway.
Gwen yanked him back by the collar as a giant stone pillar came crashing down behind the arch, missing him by inches. Sparkling black dust rolled out into the chamber. They both retreated to the center.
“How . . . did you . . . know?” asked Jack, coughing in the dust.
“I . . . figured out . . . what this is,” Gwen coughed back. She patted her coat, sending up more sparkling dust, and waved a hand in front of her face to fend it off. “It’s a zodiac. Twelve animals for a twelve-year cycle, same as the Chinese—year of the rabbit, year of the monkey, and all that.”
“So we’re looking for the animal sign Temujin was born under. Any idea what it was?”
“Not the slightest. But now we know it’s not a hawk, don’t we? Besides, I think that one looks more like a chicken.” She swung the torch in a wide arc so that the light passed over the other animals. “We’re not even sure when Temujin was born. 1161? 1162, perhaps? Even if we did, neither of us knows the corresponding signs.” She glanced down, frowning at the smooth black rock beneath their feet. “Perhaps you could spark and see which door Tanner took.”
It was worth a try. Jack crouched down, pressing his palm against the stone. Static. He shook his head. “Maybe if I use the zed.”
“No. We’re not that desperate.”
“Aren’t we?”
Gwen pursed her lips at him.
“Fine.” Jack stood and paced along the carvings, feeling like an art critic in the world’s most dangerous museum. “Monkey . . . ox . . . tiger . . . I’ve seen this group before. This is the menagerie from all those pictures of Genghis Khan in the count’s library.” He thought he had something, but his excitement waned when he came to the fifth arch. A cobra glared down at him, like the one he had faced on the hillside. He shook his head. “Never mind. I didn’t see any snakes in—”
Didn’t see. As those words passed Jack’s lips, a phrase came back to him—something Ash had told him during the Hunt.
Sometimes the best clue is the one that you don’t see.
“That’s it.” He grabbed Gwen by the arm, pulling her to the cobra’s arch. “In each picture, the artist drew a complete Mongolian zodiac. But Temujin himself represented his own sign, rather than the animal. Temujin was the cobra.”
“Are you sure?” Gwen cautiously extended the torch through the doorway. Despite the firelight, nothing was visible beyond the first few feet. “Your last guess didn’t go so well.”
“This time it’s not a guess,” said Jack, and he stepped into the darkness.
Chapter Fifty-Six
NO GIANT STONES came crashing down. No spears or darts shot out of the walls. And not one single tarantula appeared.
There were, however, a lot of bones.
The tunnel widened and Jack and Gwen followed a long, descending curve, as if spiraling down around the outer wall of a cylinder. Their steps took on a wooden echo, and a sweep of the torch showed ancient planks beneath their feet. On either side lay piles of cattle bones, with yokes at their necks and big wooden wheels between each pair.
Jack eyed a horned skull that looked like it belonged in a Hollywood western. “So they left cows behind as extra guards?”
Gwen elbowed him. “Those were oxen. And the wheels were for the carts they pulled. Temujin’s men left him some transportation for the afterlife.”
The afterlife. What sort of afterlife had been waiting for a man who had killed millions?
Jack glanced over at Gwen. “Do you think Tanner could really harness the spirit of Genghis Khan?”
She stopped walking and looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head and continued on. “I don’t think you can trap a person’s spirit, or harness it for your own use. But you and I both know that gems capture sight and sound.” She passed the torch along the black wall. Red dust sparkled within. “Perhaps this mine’s particular brand of balas ruby absorbs and projects negative emotion too—evil, if you like. If anything is trapped in the fourth ruby, I think it’s a big ball of greed, hatred, and malice. Not some dead general’s ghost.”
The tunnel made a ninety-degree bend, and they arrived at the entry to a second chamber, as perfectly round as the first but much larger, with a strange gutter around the periphery and a rock ceiling carved in the sloped style of a circus tent. Silks covered the walls, along with golden shields and silver helmets set with jade and opal.
“It’s a yurt,” said Gwen, halting with her toes hanging over the gutter. “I get it now. They’re all yurts.”
“A what?”
“A yurt, Jack. A Mongolian tent, like the round tent in that photograph of your great-great-grandparents.” She held the torch out into the room. “Look at the slope of the ceiling, the silks on the walls. Tombs mirror the houses of the living, and Genghis Khan would have spent his last years in a collection of tents that looked like this on the inside—a mobile palace.”
Jack looked back over his shoulder at the passage behind them. “That’s what the oxen and the cart wheels were for, to pull his palace.”
“Both in life and in death,” said Gwen. “In life, the palace yurts would have been arranged in a circle for defense. I think these tomb yurts are arranged vertically, instead.”
The black rock floor bounded by the circular gutter was carved with the same zodiac creatures they had seen in the chamber above. The eleven lesser animals played or hunted between the body segments of a giant cobra that spiraled outward to a doorway on the opposite side. “Vertically,” Jack repeated, eyeing the door. “So the tomb chamber will be . . .”
“Directly below us. Yes.”
“Then that’s where we’ll find Tanner and the antidote.” Jack set off across the room. He made it halfway to the center before he heard a resounding crack. The floor groaned beneath him. “What’s happening?” He turned and thought he saw Gwen rising, along with the entryway. But that wasn’t quite right. Gwen wasn’t going up. He was going down.
The floor was one giant stone disk, balanced on a point.
Chains ripped free from the silk coverings on the walls, pulled by the low side of the disk, and rattled down through holes at the edge of the ceiling. An instant later, water poured from spouts farther up. Jack ducked and covered under the onslaught of a freezing shower and then watched the water work its way ominously through the carvings. The extra weight gathering in the gutter tilted the disk farther, so that he could barely keep from sliding down. Beneath the edge he saw the dull gleam of bronze spikes.
“The other side, Jack!” shouted Gwen, waving the torch. “Run to the other side.”
He raced up the slope of playing beasts, but not fast enough. The disk reversed, and momentum carried it past the balance point too quickly for him to make the door. More chains ripped from the walls on the far side. Before they could unleash another frigid torrent, Jack backpedaled to the center. The disk wobbled. The water behind him spread through the gutter, distributing its weight. The room settled, leaving him inside the central curl of the cobra’s tail.
“It’s a balance table.” Gwen pointed at a total of eight spouts in the ceiling. “Tilting it in any direction brings down water, making things worse.”
Jack shivered, soaked to the bone with water from the mountain stream above them. “Really? I hadn’t noticed. Now what?”
“Now we figure out how to
beat it.”
Gwen had not left solid ground, and common sense told Jack she ought to stay there. He thrust his chin at the tunnel behind her. “Toss me the torch and head back to the surface to wait for Ash and Sadie.”
“Not on your life, Jack Buckles. Just give me a second to think.”
He didn’t have a second. Most likely, Tanner’s ankle thrusters had dried out and he had simply flown across the disk, getting farther ahead. For all Jack knew, he had already recovered the fourth ruby and was preparing to take over the nearest army. China? Russia? Jack needed a quick solution. “It’s balanced now. What if I run to the other side?”
“Won’t work. I think those chains operating the water gates were a little sticky after eight hundred years. That gave you some extra time when you first walked out. It won’t be so easy the second time.”
“Easy?” Jack let out a short laugh. Nothing about that had been easy. “How about this? I’ll back up as you come out. Like a counterbalance.”
To his surprise, she didn’t argue. Gwen took a great big step out onto the disk, and Jack took a hurried step backward. The disk groaned and began to rise on his end. Gwen was too far from the balance point and he was too close. Water rained down. She dropped the torch, covering her head and rushing forward. “Not working!”
Jack jogged backward until the disk reversed, trying to salvage their effort, but the water running through the carvings made the balancing act far too complex. The disk overshot, tipping Gwen way up.
They ran to the center, straight for each other, and Jack tackled Gwen against the steepening slope. He dug his fingers into the carvings to hold them there. Behind him, he could hear the water spilling out over the gutter onto the spikes below. Everything stopped. Neither of them dared to breathe.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
“WELL . . . THIS IS COZY,” whispered Gwen.
The bone torch went tumbling past them, and the cracks and clanks of its demise echoed up from the spikes below. “Yeah,” said Jack. “I was gonna say ‘terrifying.’ But okay.”
They were in trouble. If Jack shifted his weight down, the disk would tilt farther and they would fall. If he clawed his way up, the disk would reverse, and momentum would carry it far enough to send them rolling down the other way, head over heels. He eyed the grooves of the snake carving. Maybe if he could work his way along the cobra, hand over hand, they could turn around. Then it hit him. “The cobra.”
“What?”
“The cobra is the solution. This is just another zodiac puzzle, like the chamber above.”
Gwen gave a tiny, ultracautious nod. “If you say so.”
She didn’t sound too confident, but the disk wasn’t going to wait for Jack to explain himself. It let out a deep, disturbing creak.
“Just hold my hand and run when I tell you.” With great effort, he clawed his way up about a foot, hauling her with him. It was enough to start a reversal of the tilt, and as soon as the disk reached a manageable angle, he yanked Gwen to her feet. “Now!”
They raced along the snake, spiraling outward toward the broad hood at the edge of the disk. It worked. By running in a circle, they kept the table in a constant state of reversal, wobbling like a penny. The oscillations stayed a step behind them, and so did the water raining down. The silk walls rose and fell on every side.
“Jump!”
Jack lifted Gwen’s hand and they dove through the arch, tumbling down a set of steps and rolling to a stop at the edge of a cliff. Dust and gravel went flying over the edge. He scrambled back, dragging her with him. For the next few seconds, he sat there, trying to determine if the ground was still swaying, or if it was just him.
There was light in the new chamber. After a time, they helped each other up and peered over the cliff, into an ancient mine. Where the black rock walls in the upper chamber had glittered with red dust, here they sparkled with full-blown rubies, some as big as Jack’s thumb. More pots of burning oil sat in alcoves—a sure sign that Tanner had already come through—illuminating a steep path of switchbacks and ladders that led down through the strange underworld to whatever waited below.
But Jack saw another option.
He tilted his head toward a big woven basket, hanging from a sloped pulley system. “We could take the fast way down.”
“Not on your life.” Gwen tugged on the ropes, sending up a small cloud of dust. “If the bottom doesn’t fall out of this moldy basket before we leave the cliff, the line will definitely break. And then where will be? That path is our best—” In midsentence, Gwen’s face went slack, freckles falling. She was no longer looking at Jack, but through him, toward the previous chamber.
He heard a monstrous groan.
The disk had continued to wobble after their leap, and Jack had tuned out the noise, assuming it was settling. It hadn’t dawned on him that the opposite might be true. He turned in time to see the giant disk reach vertical, slide off its balance point, and crash into the pit, breaking into three pieces. The center section, the size of a tanker truck, fell straight toward the exit and their little cliff.
“Go, go, go!” Jack shoved Gwen backward over the lip of the basket and dove in beside her, knocking the whole thing over the ledge. It dipped down as chunks of stone carved with zodiac animals went flying. Half of a stone monkey sailed over the basket. Jack could swear he saw it wave.
The pulleys squealed.
The basket picked up speed.
“Where are the brakes?” cried Gwen.
There were no brakes. With a tooth-jarring crunch, the basket reached the end of its line and tipped over. Both children tumbled out. Jack fell into a cart. Gwen crashed down onto the rock behind it. Jack leaned out, straining to reach her, but he was already headed down the path, wheels squeaking.
“Jump,” called Gwen, pushing herself up on an elbow. “Get out before it’s too late.”
As if he hadn’t thought of that.
Jack was already trying to get his legs underneath him for a leap to safety. But in the process, he saw a two-story archway below, guarded on either side by statues of cobras. That had to be the entrance to the burial chamber. A great hawk was carved above it, wings spread. His favorite hawk keeps watch for tomb raiders. It did work on multiple levels. Too bad there wasn’t time for an I-told-you-so.
Only one switchback remained between Jack and the chamber. And at the turn ahead, the path curved up against the wall like a quarter pipe at a skate park.
He could make it.
Tanner would have heard all that racket. He would be ready for them, and if Jack was on foot, the professor could use the Timur Ruby to stop him in his tracks. But no ruby, cursed or otherwise, could stop a speeding mine cart.
Jack pulled himself up to a crouch and reached into his pocket, taking out the zed.
“Don’t, Jack!” shouted Gwen from the path above. “That thing will kill you!”
He didn’t care.
He shifted his weight to guide the cart through the switchback, willing the wooden wheels to hold together. It worked. The cart straightened out on the final leg of the path. The professor stepped into view between the cobras, stretching out his hand and looking up with a wicked grin.
His jaw dropped.
“That’s right,” said Jack, drawing his sword. “This is how I roll.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
THE CART SMASHED into the chamber steps, sending Jack flying. He lowered a shoulder and plowed into Tanner, and the two crashed into the platform together. Jack was the first to his feet. He leveled his blade. “Don’t move.”
He checked Tanner’s legs for the ankle thrusters, but it seemed the professor had dumped them at the entrance, along with his jacket, shoes, and socks. Tanner sat there, leaning against Temujin’s sarcophagus, wearing only his wool pants and the gold mail shirt with the triangle of rubies. The center spot remained empty.
The attack had carried Jack to the center of the yurt—the final resting place of Genghis Khan. The sarcophagus lay on a rai
sed platform of white marble with a waterfall raining down behind it. The lid, an effigy of the warrior-emperor, was slightly askew. Bronze poles stood at the head and foot, topped with horsehair banners—one dyed black, the other white.
“Black for war. White for peace,” said Tanner, inclining his head toward each banner.
“I said don’t move.” Jack shook the sword at him.
But Tanner showed no sign of fear. “Men like Genghis Khan and Tamerlane understood that you had to make war to make peace, Jack. They understood that the world is a better, safer place when it’s ruled by one man with an iron fist.”
“Shut. Up.” Jack wasn’t playing. The prickling in his flesh—the growing numbness—was getting worse by the second. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold himself together. “Take off that device. Slowly. If you wave so much as a pinkie finger in my direction, this blade is going straight through your neck.”
Tanner laughed, his voice merging with the buzzing in Jack’s head. “I don’t think so. You won’t kill me.”
“You really want to take that chance?” Jack extended his arm to press the sword’s tip right up against the man’s jugular.
But his arm did not actually extend. The sword didn’t move.
His eyes darted from the rubies to the professor’s hands. In the past, Tanner had held up a palm when using the Timur Ruby. This time he hadn’t lifted a finger.
“You misunderstand me, boy.” Tanner stood, as casually as an elderly gentleman getting up from his favorite chair. “You have enough darkness inside to run me through, I’ve no doubt about that. But you won’t kill me because you don’t have the strength to overcome my power.” He opened his right fist. The fourth ruby lay in his palm.
The Fourth Ruby Page 20
