Outlanders 39 Hydra's Ring, page 23
"As you should," Brigid replied, rubbing the side of tier face. After a few seconds of silent glaring, she sighed. "We're both a little stressed out."
Erica smiled bitterly and touched her eye patch. "A little?'
"Hey, you two!" Kane called down. "You expect us to carry you or what?"
Brigid glanced up to see an irritated Kane a score of yards above them. Neither he, Lakesh nor Grant had witnessed the scene between her and Erica. "We're taking a little breather," she shouted up. "Go on up without us."
"That's not going to happen," Kane countered. "You've got the food."
Erica and Brigid both shook their heads in weary exasperation at the same time and resumed the climb. The stairway led into a short tunnel under a retaining wall. They made their way up the steep slant, boots slipping on the wet stones. The stairs climbed through the passage and onto a rock-strewed plateau. The path widened into a miniature walled plaza, a flagstone path winding among the colorful pavilions. The five people followed the path toward the pagoda, moving in single file. There was the smell of wet vegetation in the air, and the faintest whiff of wood smoke.
The pavilions, arched bridges and red gates were like half-remembered dreams of imperial China, from a time of armored warriors, feudal castles, lords and ladies of the courts. The sound of bells in the air was constant, Thousands of them hung from the edges of the pagoda's tiled roof, clung to spires and girded the golden dome, they chimed with each passing breeze.
As they drew closer to the pagoda, Lakesh commented, "Chinese temple courtyards were built with traditional concepts of the five elements that were believed to constitute the universe and the eight diagrams of divination in mind. The underlying concepts of yin and yang, harmony and balance, and the feng shui principles of geomancy dominate all architectural activity—hence the preference for concentric or symmetrical construction."
"Yeah, I remember you talking about all that geomancy stuff from the Cambodian op," Grant said. "I thought I'd forgotten most of it."
Lakesh smiled. "You'd be surprised at the volume of information the mind can retain, friend Grant."
"Not really," he said darkly.
The arched entranceway did not have doors, so they strode in. The interior of the pagoda was cool, cavernously hollow and dim. The diluted late-afternoon sunlight slanted in from high openings, but did not illuminate much beyond where the shafts fell. Moving quietly, the five people walked through a huge audience hall with ancient frescoes on the walls, mosaic tiles on the floor and massive serpentine columns supporting the ceiling. Dead leaves were piled in corners like the nests of wild animals Here and there the walls showed blackened soot streaks from cooking fires.
Two huge pillars stretched up to the ceiling. Gilded and jeweled carvings of ferocious, horn-headed demons guarded both of them. Ragged banners emblazoned with intricate calligraphy hung from the high crossbar, their colors faded. Between the columns, a broken prayer wheel lay amid a smashed row of stone tiger-dogs and a tipped-over statue of Buddha. To reach the opposite doorway, they had to pass between the pillars and wend their way through the wreckage.
Erica tilted her head up, gazing at the banners. "The Pillars of Heaven?" she murmured.
"I don't think anybody has been here in a while," Brigid said, unconsciously lowering her voice. "It almost looks like the place has been deliberately defiled."
"Who would do that?" Kane inquired, eyes darting from shadow to shadow.
"Perhaps someone who is protesting heaven," Lakesh whispered.
Then six dark figures lunged at them through the gloom. Kane sprang back and flexed his wrist tendons. The Sin Eater seemed to appear out of nowhere, but the rushing figures paid no attention to it. With a grunt of surprise, Grant unholstered his own pistol.
Their attackers were very short, scarcely more than four feet tall, squat and bowlegged, with sallow yellow skin and sated eyes in their ugly, pushed-in bulldog faces. Matted, coarse black hair was knotted at the backs of their heads. They wore only red-dyed leather loincloths, and bizarre tattoos writhed over their ropy limbs and torsos.
Although small in stature, their arms rippled with knotted sinew and stringy muscle tissue. The dwarves snarled and hissed as they attacked, armed only with slender rods of ebony or some smooth black wood about two feet long, knobbed at both ends. The round balls gleamed with jade inlays.
"The Ba!" Erica shrilled in astonishment. "Have to be!"
"Anybody speak their language?" Grant demanded as the dwarves formed a circle around them. They spun the rods around above their heads in hazy, humming circles. The five people moved back to back, all of them drawing their weapons.
"I don't think there is a Ba language," Lakesh said, voice tight with tension. "Perhaps a local or tribal dialect, but they haven't spoken yet."
Neither Kane nor Grant wanted to shoot the stunted people, since they and their friends were the trespassers. The two men had killed enough indigenous peoples in their years as Magistrates and preferred now to find alternatives to violence if possible. However, it didn't appear as if the dwarves intended to give them another option. One of them charged forward, keening a war cry, black rod held out before him like a spear.
Grant fired first with a sound like a giant clapping his huge hands once. A 240-grain round caught the Ba in the chest and sent him reeling away to thud against one of the columns and slide down to the littered floor, leaving a smear of scarlet on the wood in his wake.
Then the dwarves were on them like rabid wolves. They were exceptionally swift and agile and very adept in the use of the rods. One laid a knob along Kane's wrist with a flickering stroke like that of a striking serpent. The black ball seemed only to graze his sleeve, but the shock of the blow numbed his arm from wrist to shoulder. He couldn't depress the trigger stud of his Sin Eater.
He snarled, "Watch it! Those things are like shock-sticks!"
Even as he spoke, another rod struck Brigid's forearm, at the clump of ganglia on the inside of her elbow, and she cried out as her TP-9 fell spinning from her suddenly useless fingers. Her handgun clattered against the floor tiles, but she was not helpless. She had fought for her life many times in the past few years and been taught every trick of dirty fighting known by Grant and Kane. She kicked a dwarf in the groin and, as he reflexively bent to clutch at his crotch, she brought a knee up into his throat. He went down, gagging and clawing at his neck.
At the same time, Grant squeezed off another shot, the round catching one of the stunted creatures in the right knee. The dwarf 's high-pitched scream rose toward the ceiling and he dropped to the floor, plucking at his maimed leg. If he didn't die from blood loss or shock, Grant felt certain he would be crippled.
As he bent to snatch up Brigid's autopistol, an ebony knob slammed against his temple with agonizing force, sending crimson flares of pain lancing through his skull and down into his neck. He was only dimly aware of falling, fighting to stay conscious.
Lakesh cried out in pained anger as a rod struck the barrel of his Colt, and a numbing shock was transmitted through the steel, into his hand, streaking up his arm to the shoulder socket. The pistol dropped from his nerveless fingers. "Those aren't just pieces of wood!"
"No," Erica blurted in a voice breathless with fear. "They're the keys to the mausoleum!"
Kane opened his mouth to voice a question, but it turned to a hoarse cry as scalding agony lanced through his left leg from the back of his knee to his thigh. The muscles felt like they were seizing, the veins injected with molten lead. His leg buckled and he went down, barely able to catch himself on his left hand, his paralyzed right arm hanging at his side like a slab of frozen beef.
Erica's toy-like Makarov cracked like the snapping of twigs, and two of the half-naked little men flailed backward, slapping at themselves. A black baton clattered to the tiles and rolled across the floor. Brigid stretched out an arm to grab it, but she caught a blur of movement from behind her. She twisted aside, taking the impact of a knob on her right hip. Pain shivered through her, but if the rod had struck squarely where it had been aimed, the impact could have cracked her spine.
Still, she reeled clumsily, overwhelmed by the sudden, stunning pain. She stumbled against Erica, who caught her and kept her from falling, but she was also prevented from shooting again.
Lakesh snatched the length of wood up, briefly examined it and swung it at a dwarf who had crept too close, smacking the hinge of his jaw with a knobbed tip. Although the blow landed solidly, Lakesh was surprised at the force with which the little man's head was jerked around.
The whole lower portion of his face skewed sidewise, the point of his chin skidding around and taking up position beneath his right earlobe. His teeth spewed from his mouth like a handful of corn mixed in with a torrent of blood. Life went out of his eyes with suddenness of a candle flame being extinguished.
"The thing transmits some sort of electromagnetic jolt on contact!" Lakesh exclaimed wonderingly. "Repeated hits are probably fatal."
"You think?" Grant bit out, shambling erect, kneading the side of his head. Reaching down, he secured a grip on the collar of Kane's coat and hauled him upright.
They heard the slapping of feet and more of the dwarves loped out of the murk, but they were armed with makeshift knives and clubs rather than the black batons. Kane clumsily drew his combat knife with his left hand, and Brigid fumbled with her Copperhead, holding it with one hand. The dwarves made a sudden, concerted rush, trying to bowl them over through numbers and momentum.
The five outlanders met the charge with knife, bullets, feet and fists. Within seconds, four little gnarled corpses lay on the floor, crimsoning the tiles.
The surviving dwarves drew back, black eyes glinting with malignant fires. They shuffled in a circle around the foreign interloper's, poised for another charge.
Lakesh, gasping as if he were learning the art of respiration all over again, due to a knobbed baton brushing his solar plexus, said, "I'm going to try something."
"I wish you would," Brigid, said between clenched teeth.
"And do it fucking fast," Kane urged. Sensation was returning slowly to his arm and leg but both limbs felt distant, as if they were separated by miles from the rest of his body.
Reaching into the pocket of his field jacket, Lakesh extended his left hand, fist clenched tightly. The dwarves eyed it apprehensively, but did not retreat.
"Jun Zhu!" Lakesh suddenly shouted.
The Ba people jumped at the words, eyes widening in surprise for a second, then slitting again in suspicion and smoldering hatred. Like a conjurer performing a trick, Lakesh opened his hand with a flourish. The dim light gleamed on the nine Hydra heads of the ring he held between thumb and forefinger.
"Jun Zhu!" he announced again. "Jun Zhu, you ugly little warts."
The dwarves froze in place, staring intently at the ring. Then a hurried, whispered babble passed among them and they withdrew as silently as wraiths, leaving their dead and wounded behind.
Kane squinted into the gloom after them. "Interesting. 'Jun Zhu' were the words Wei Qiang's soldiers were yelling."
Lakesh nodded. "It means 'true monarch.' That, in conjunction with showing the Ba people the ring, made them think we are acting in the true monarch's interests."
Brigid eyed the rod in Lakesh's hand and glanced over at Erica. "You say those sticks are keys to the mausoleum?"
"Yes," she answered, stepping over to pick up another baton that lay on the floor. "They look like the pictures I saw in the scrolls kept in the pyramid."
"And since the Ba people are associated with the role of gatekeepers," Lakesh put in, "the connection seems very obvious now."
Grant scowled, grimaced and rolled his shoulders impatiently. "Can we get the hell out of here and talk more about it outside?"
"I think that's a very good idea," Erica agreed, bending to pick up another of the rods. "I suggest we do it on our way to the Tomb of the Three Sovereigns."
Chapter 27
The trail cutting over the top of the plateau was difficult. Mist clung to the rocky escarpments, and it began to rain again. The downpour pounded them for several miserable minutes, then it ended. A long streak of golden sunshine shot through the rolling clouds, but Kane estimated they had less than an hour of full daylight remaining
The paralyzing effect of the batons had worn off, although Grant occasionally winced and rubbed the side of his head. The analgesics he washed down with a swallow of bottled water hadn't alleviated the pain, only reduced it to a tolerable level.
Tugging back the hood of her cloak, Erica held up four black rods she had retrieved from the pagoda, clicking the knobbed ends together, producing tiny sparks.
Sounding enthralled, Lakesh declared, "I' m guessing that some kind of electronics are built into these things. Micro-circuitry and tiny power packs, maybe like the CEM—chargeable energy modules—that we know the Annunaki employ."
"Yeah, but what good are they?" Grant demanded, still tenderly touching the side of his head. "Why would an emperor build a mausoleum and then make keys so people can get in and loot the place or snatch his body?"
Brigid smiled wanly. "You're forgetting that if Huangti, Shi Huangdi and Wei Qiang are all the same man, there are no bodies in there... but there's probably a lot of valuables, the least of which is the Armor of Immortality."
"Very true," Erica agreed. "Allegedly, the tomb of the Yellow Emperor was the most elaborate in all of Chinese history. To make it difficult for thieves, a series of traps were designed and installed. Only those taken into the confidence of the emperor's family would know the proper path to follow."
Grant snorted. "It still seems illogical to me."
"If you were a virtually immortal man," Lakesh said, "and wanted access to treasures in your tomb, wouldn't you want to safeguard them?"
After a thoughtful few seconds, Grant said, "I probably wouldn't leave them in places that would attract thieves."
"Actually," Brigid said, "the psychological effect of using a crypt or mausoleum as a vault was probably a strong deterrent against superstitious natives with thieving inclinations."
For the next mile, the path was open and clear. As the sun began to set, the air became cooler and the terrain rockier. Ruins like vague dreams of the ancient past rose from sandstone cliffs that thrust up like the prows of wrecked ships.
The five outlanders strode through a narrow ravine among immense outcroppings of dun-colored stone that were deeply scored and eroded by exposure to the elements. Grant and Kane scanned the perpendicular walls of the gorge. They blinked up at the strange statues cut into the cliffs. They were built to fantastic designs, colossal armored men with grim visages staring down forebodingly, calculated to frighten any who dared to intrude this far.
The path turned to the left, and they passed a shrine holding old Buddhist relics, bones both human and animal and a grinning statue of a devil with a homed head and protruding tongue. Kane felt the back of his neck flush cold.
The path turned sharply to the left and opened up on a flat, swept-clean expanse of ground. All of them came to a halt. They stood, the five of them, staring silently at the building squatting in the center of the barren plain. There was an alien quality about the structure, as if they somehow knew alien hands had raised it, although not even Brigid could have put into words exactly why she felt that way.
Kane drew in his breath and absently chewed on the inside of his cheek, studying the structure intently. It wasn't anything like he expected. Instead of an elaborate pagoda, the building was low, flat roofed and squat and solid, like a somewhat squashed, debilitated mountain rising up out of the ground. It reminded him of the structures he had seen in the underground kingdom of Agartha a few years before.
It did not look like a burial place, but more like a fortress or even a prison, all sharp angles and corners.
The fitted blocks that composed its facade resembled a porous, volcanic stone, glossy black with pitted surfaces.
As they continued to stare at the mausoleum, Kane's sense of dread and awe grew. He forced a half smile to his lips and inhaled deeply through his nostrils. "Smell that?"
"Smell what?" Grant asked, alarmed.
"The lovely aroma of a trap," Kane replied. He glanced at Erica. "This is the place, right?"
She gave him a look of scorn. "What do you think, Einstein?"
Kane affected not have heard her. He stepped forward. "Let's go. Everybody keep their eyes open." He cast Erica a glance. "Feel free to reject half that advice."
The nearer they came to the mausoleum, the vaster it became. At first sight, its dimensions hadn't been impressive, but the closer they moved toward it, the larger it seemed. There were no guards to be seen, nothing that could be interpreted as an alarm system. Kane felt fear rising in him, but he tamped it down, throttling it.
They halted and stared silently at the fifteen-foot-high doors. They appeared to be made of thick slabs of teak. Neither one bore a knob, a latch, a handle or even a sign of a hinge, but both portals were perforated with perfectly round holes, arranged in circles.
"Erica, those holes look to be about the same size as the keys you took from the B a," Brigid said in an unsteady voice.
Stepping closer to the doors, she said quietly, "I was thinking the exact same thing."
Swiftly, she began inserting the knobbed ends of the rods into the holes on the right-hand door. All four of them fit perfectly, but nothing happened. Erica stood and glared in baffled anger at the batons protruding from the perforations.
"Aren't keys supposed to be turned?" Kane ventured.
Erica first shot him a look of contempt, then her brow furrowed. She took the end knobs of the rods and twisted them counterclockwise. A faint electronic chirp and brief flashes from the jade inlays accompanied each turning. "Something's happening anyway," Erica announced.
"Whatever it is," Grant opined dourly, "I'm positive it's not a common feature of ancient Chinese tombs."
A grinding rumble slowly built, and then was overlaid by a series of squeaks, creaks and hisses. Long disused gears, pulleys and hydraulics slowly moved. The left-hand door ponderously began to slide upward. It slid into a baffled slot and caught with a loud click. The black mouth of the portal yawned opened, leading into the throat of a long passage. No one moved or spoke for what felt like a very long time.
