The City of Sand

by Tianxia Bachang

  He was quite the storyteller, regaling the crowd with tales of how good life was in the northeast, with so many delicious things to eat—not like this desert, which had only sand and more sand, and even if you shot a goat and cooked it, you’d probably find a grain of sand in every mouthful. Where we came from, there was such abundance, you could hold out a club and a deer would run into it; birds flew straight into your cooking pot. Just imagine what a blissfully free life that was.

  The students were mostly city slickers who ate up that garbage. Julie humphed and said, “The desert has plenty of good things too, not to mention just as many varieties of plants and animals as the forest. And the Taklimakan Valley might be the lowest point of the basin, but you could also call it the peak of ancient civilization. What do your woods have, except deer and bears?”

  I worried they were going to start fighting, so I quickly asked Kai to come check the perimeter with me. Outside, the moon looked like something from a painting, and there were so many stars everything was covered in silvery light.

  “Go easy on Julie,” I told him.

  “Easy? She thinks she’s better than us. If she weren’t a girl, I’d have ripped off her head and used it as a football already.”

  I smiled. “Okay, you don’t have to like her, but please don’t rip her head off. I want her to be around to pay our wages. Twenty thousand American dollars! Think about it!”

  I tilted my head back to look at the sky, which was brilliantly clear. Suddenly, I noticed the Vast Door star in the center, the Left Auxiliary star and the Right Guardian star gleaming brightly in a right-angled triangle. In its center were the sun star and the moon star, side by side. Such a perfect alignment couldn’t be a coincidence.

  I’d never dabbled in astrological feng shui before, but for the sake of this expedition, I would have to learn very quickly. Even looking up at it now, all the secrets from the ancient book flashed up in my mind, superimposing themselves upon the night sky.

  I ran back to my rucksack and got my compass, then hurried again to the roof to triangulate the stars. Sure enough, the good-fortune ones were all focused on that ancient well. This was my first practical attempt at doing this, and while I felt uncertain, I thought I’d probably gotten it right. The Sixteen Mysteries of Yin-Yang Feng Shui was no ordinary book, and I was sure I’d followed its rules precisely. So did that mean the ancient graves were here? Some people do say that tombs should be near water.

  Professor Chen was delighted at the news. He and his students rushed to the well and clamored to go down and have a look. I talked it over with Julie, and we decided that someone could be lowered down the deep shaft on a double harness.

  That someone could only be me. No room for carelessness—I strapped on my gas mask and made sure I had a flashlight, whistle, military surplus spade, and knife, then secretly slipped my black donkey hoof and gold-hunter’s talisman into a pocket. Making sure the rope was taut, I told the others my signal: I would flash my light in a circle three times. The first time I did that, they would stop lowering me, and the second time they’d pull me up. The whistle would be a backup, in case the well was too deep for the flashlight to be seen.

  As I descended, the mouth of the well grew murky, and soon I was in a glowing bubble surrounded by pitch darkness. The desert temperature drops at night, and in the damp of the well, the cold seemed to penetrate my bones. The walls were too slippery to get a grip on. It was said that this well was even older than the city itself—that the citadel had been built around it. A freezing gust of air blasted me. I swung my flashlight toward it and saw a stone door set into the shaft.

  Shining the light above me, I blew my whistle for good measure. I hadn’t gone down that far, maybe fifty feet or so; they could probably have heard me if I’d shouted. The rope stopped, leaving me right at the level of the door. The icy wind was coming from the cracks around it. I pushed hard. It felt heavy and thick, and there was no lock of any kind, yet it wouldn’t budge. It would have to be pried open.

  I signaled again to be pulled up, then told the others what I’d seen. Professor Chen was intrigued. “Strange. It could be that this isn’t a mausoleum, but some sort of secret passage. No one would build a tomb into the side of a well.”

  Kai stepped forward and blustered, “What’s the use in guessing? Let’s see for ourselves. I’ll go down and smash that door in.”

  “Why don’t I do it?” I suggested. “You’re so heavy the rope might snap.”

  This time we made a rope ladder so the others could come down after I’d gotten the door open. We decided that the professor, Julie, and Sa Dipeng would follow me, while Kai and the others would stay up top.

  I went first, crowbar at the ready. The door must have been in frequent use at one point—its frame was heavily scuffed—but after staying shut for centuries, it required a fair bit of effort to get it open again, especially as I was swinging from a rope and couldn’t get much leverage.

  Behind the door was a brick tunnel, sturdily built and spacious, stretching into inky darkness. I called up for the other three to come, and soon we were standing in the tunnel. Julie gave us all pills to prevent oxygen deprivation, and we strapped on our gas masks.

  Passing through another two doors, we made it fifty yards down the passage before reaching a final one, sealed tight, inscribed with some strange animal and sealed with animal skin. We had to chip the leathery skin off piece by piece before the door would open.

  Behind it was a stone room, maybe twenty feet wide and ten feet high. The four of us could stand in it without feeling cramped. Despite the generous proportions, the place felt stifling. White bones littered the floor. They looked like animal bones, and they were so fragile they splintered as soon as our feet touched them. In all four corners were dozens of wooden poles, from which hung desiccated human bodies, all young men, from the looks of them.

  Julie, the professor, and I were used to this sort of thing, but Sa Dipeng was so terrified at the sight of the corpses that he couldn’t speak. He stood close to the professor and followed him when he moved, not daring to be on his own.

  Julie examined one of the bodies. “How awful. These must have been slaves or prisoners,” she said, sighing. “Barbaric.”

  Professor Chen agreed. “This looks like an important figure’s funeral ritual. In ancient Gumo, it was the custom to bring criminals out into the desert and tie them up till they died of thirst and all the moisture left their corpses. Then the wind-dried bodies were strung up here, smeared with blood from slaughtered animals. Let’s have a look—the actual tomb must be nearby.”

  We explored, tapping on the stone walls—all solid—trying to find the hidden space. It was Julie who noticed something odd about the floor. I swept aside the bone fragments, and sure enough, a large stone slab covered in carvings was revealed, metal rings at either end.

  I called Sa Dipeng over to help me lift it, but his whole body was trembling so hard he couldn’t. Trying not to laugh, I told him to go back up and send Hao Aiguo down instead. Looking relieved, he fled. As soon as he’d left, Professor Chen muttered, “That boy. No guts. He’ll never make an archaeologist.”

  Julie and I lifted the stone slab and tossed a flare down. In the glow, we saw a chamber about the size of the one we were in, with an unusual coffin right in its center—it was perfectly square and had no carvings on it at all. I’d never seen anything like it, and even Professor Chen with all his learning couldn’t shed any light on the matter.

  Hao Aiguo showed up, his eyes glowing at the sight. He was the first to leap into the pit, darting everywhere, clearly overjoyed. Up till now, I’d thought of him as a fusty old scholar, but he suddenly seemed like a little child. He was so excited he was almost dancing.

  The rest of us climbed down too, and we all exclaimed at what we saw: the four walls of the vault were covered with dazzling, delicate paintings. Professor Chen zeroed in on one of them. “Look here—this is the Jingjue Kingdom,” he told us.

  I
was most interested in the valuable grave goods—such a large coffin must hold quite a few good things. Of course, I wasn’t about to start grave robbing in front of the professor and the others, but I was eager to take a look. Already I was hoping this aristocrat’s tomb would be at least as richly laden as the one in the Liao caves. Yet the professor seemed determined to ignore the coffin, focusing on those drawings instead, so I had to listen patiently as he and Hao Aiguo discussed them.

  The first few in the series made it clear that the tomb belonged to a Gumo prince—Gumo being one of Jingjue’s vassal states, which meant its residents were forced to give Jingjue large amounts of treasure, cattle, and slaves every year. The prince had gone to see the queen of Jingjue, pleading for the freedom of his people, but after three visits, he hadn’t seen her face once. Being the reincarnation of a sun god, the prince wasn’t going to put up with that. He sneaked back alone into Jingjue, determined to murder the evil queen—but then he discovered a secret.

  Despite myself, I got sucked into the professor’s story and went closer to listen. Professor Chen walked over to the next panel and stared at it for a long time. “The meaning of this one is odd,” he said. “Look, the prince is hiding in a corner, peering out. In all the pictures so far, the queen’s face has been covered with a veil. In this one, we see her from behind as she raises a hand to lift the veil, and another figure over there—a slave, perhaps?—turns into a wisp of shadow and disappears.”

  Confused, I was going to ask him to explain, when Julie blurted out, “So the queen is a demon?”

  “A demon?” the professor repeated, seeming more intrigued than surprised. “Interesting. Go on.”

  Julie gestured at the murals. “These paintings are all extremely well executed, both artistically and as a form of storytelling. Even without words, they tell the story of this Gumo prince very clearly.”

  I looked closely, and it was as she said. The facial expressions and clothing, the buildings, everything was finely detailed. With even the slightest knowledge of the Western Regions, you’d quickly be able to grasp what was going on.

  “The panel the professor was just talking about is the hardest to understand,” Julie continued. “The queen is removing her veil, and the person she’s facing is drawn with a blurry outline. Everyone else is clearly drawn, while he or she is reduced to a faint silhouette. We don’t know who this is—whether it’s an assassin, or whether the queen herself is eliminating an enemy.”

  “Miss Yang,” I asked, “do you mean that the sight of this woman’s face could cause a person to vanish?”

  “More or less. Or rather, I believe it was anyone she looked at directly.”

  I shook my head. “A whole, living person, disappearing with a single look? That’s…that’s not possible.”

  The professor seemed to see where Julie was going with this, and nodded at her to continue.

  “I don’t have any evidence, but this isn’t a blind guess. When my father was alive, he often read a book called Great Tang Records of the Western Regions by the Buddhist monk Xuanzang. I’ve read it a few times. It’s a compendium of ancient legends from this part of China, mixed in with real incidents. One story talks about a city deep within the desert, inhabited by a tribe from underground that conquered all its neighboring states. After several centuries, the throne passed to a woman, and it was said that her eyes were a direct gateway to the underworld. She only had to glance at an enemy for him to vanish without a trace, never to return. As for where these unfortunate souls ended up, only they could know. She was a tyrant, demanding to be worshiped as a goddess. Anyone who refused was skinned alive. Perhaps her actions displeased some higher power, because a few years later, she caught a mysterious disease and died.

  “The queen’s slaves feared her more than anyone else. When she perished, they joined forces with the neighboring states that she’d had under her thumb, and washed her kingdom with blood. Just as they were about to desecrate her tomb, the sky changed color, and a fearsome sandstorm swallowed both them and the entire city. The queen’s grave, and the countless treasures she’d amassed, were buried beneath the golden sands for centuries, until the dunes shifted and the city came to light once more. A few travelers stumbled upon it, but anyone who tried to take even the smallest item found themselves assaulted by strong winds and thick clouds of sand, leaving them completely lost. No one who tried to steal her possessions was ever able to leave this place.

  “There’s been no record of where this mysterious kingdom with its evil queen might actually have existed. But seeing these pictures today, I think there are too many similarities to the legend for it not to be connected. And it could be that this was no legend but a retelling of actual historical events.”

  Julie pointed at the next few pictures. “We can be sure this is the queen because of her clothing and the buildings behind her, both of which are in the unique Jingjue style. Professor, look at what comes next and you’ll see that my hypothesis has to be right. It’s very clear what happened—the prince failed in his assassination attempt, so he returned home and continued plotting against the queen. Then a mystic from a distant land arrived and told the prince to put a specially made slow-acting poison into the meat of a golden goat, which he should then offer to the queen. The prince did as he suggested and soon heard the news of the queen’s sudden death. Not long after that, the prince died too, of exhaustion. He was buried with his beloved wife. The mystic laid out their tomb, arranging for them to rest beneath the altar of the sacred well.”

  So the altar above us had existed before this vault. The story on these walls dovetailed exactly with the one in Julie’s book. The professor looked at her differently now, as if realizing she wasn’t just a photographer, but had also inherited the scholarship of her archaeologist father. Thinking of his old friend, lost in the desert, a tear came to his eye.

  “Don’t be sad. We’ve done well—this will help us understand a great deal more about Jingjue,” Julie said to him. “I’m sure we’ll find the ancient city before too long. My father’s watching over us, I know.”

  I cursed myself. Instead of satisfying them enough to stop the journey, this discovery had made them more determined than ever to keep going. If I’d known this would happen, I’d have kept quiet about the stone door.

  Suddenly remembering something, I turned to Julie. “Miss Yang, earlier you said that the queen was the most beautiful woman in all of the Western Regions, and all the other ladies faded before her like stars before the sun. How could you also say she’s a demon? And if she really is one, aren’t we asking for trouble by looking for her tomb?”

  “That’s a legend,” replied Julie. “And I’ve added my own deductions to it, but it’s still not a fact. That’s how archaeology works: it’s a mixture of mythology, records, artifacts, and some informed guesswork. The more data we have, the closer we get to the historical truth—but all we can ever do is get closer and closer to it. History will never be captured completely. In ancient times, people knew very little about the world, and some things that seem commonplace to us would have appeared demonic or divine to them. Even though we’re more advanced, there are still things we can’t explain with science. I don’t think ghosts and demons actually exist; they’re just phenomena that we aren’t yet scientifically advanced enough to understand.”

  “So how can we explain the queen making people disappear just by looking at them?”

  “There was a case a few years ago in Kansas, a state in America,” she said. “A twelve-year-old boy had the strange ability to make tiny objects vanish in thin air if he stared directly at them. His neighbors thought he was a monster. His parents were worried too, so they asked the government doctors to cure him.”

  I’d never heard about this, but I don’t even know much about what’s happening here in China, never mind all the way over in America.

  “Scientists studied the boy,” Julie continued, “and discovered that his brain waves were somehow able to combine with
his visual nerves to teleport objects by creating a connection to a parallel dimension. Only one in three billion people have this power. Finally, a researcher fixed a magnetic helmet onto the boy’s head, and within a year he’d lost this ability. The US Army tried to detain the boy to study his brain, but there was a public outcry and it was forced to drop its plan.”

  This story didn’t reassure me at all. I wasn’t afraid of dying, but what if we got to the evil queen’s tomb and we found ourselves getting zapped into some parallel dimension? I decided to stay alert and to force a retreat at the first sign of danger. I didn’t think these scholars would dare go against me if I insisted.

  After all that talk, we seemed to have finally exhausted the topic of the wall paintings. This seemed like a good moment for me to respectfully turn to the professor and ask if he’d like to take a look inside the coffin.

  Professor Chen batted the suggestion away. “Absolutely not! This is the Gumo prince and his consort’s grave, a national treasure,” he said firmly. “We don’t have the right equipment. If we broke the seal, the coffin and its contents would start to deteriorate. The only course of action is to inform the authorities and apply for permission to excavate the tomb, or better yet, for it to receive formal protection. Aiguo will take all the evidence we need, and I’ll write the report myself.”

  It seemed I wouldn’t be getting a look at the contents of this coffin. I knew the professor was right, but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. No alternative now but to climb back up into the altar room with the rest of them.

  According to the professor, the animal skins sealing the door were there to keep out the moisture of the well, preserving the dry atmosphere. We had no way of replacing them, seeing as there were no large animals around apart from the camels, which we weren’t about to start slaughtering. In the end, we shut the door and covered the cracks with layers of tape, hoping that would do the job.