“Wait!” Alexander said, shaking his head. “I see something.” He closed his eyes, after ripping off his gas mask and taking in deep breaths. The air was clearer now, smelling of something fresh and pure blowing over the walls. “Water,” he said. “A lot of it, just past the gate.”
“A ‘sunless sea,’” Montross whispered. “Coleridge.” He glanced back. “It couldn’t have been the river he was talking about, and it surely wasn’t anything topside. But beyond these walls…”
“A sea,” Alexander repeated. “And I think it’s fresh, not like that river.”
Montross nodded. “You’re right. Genghis created an underground Venice. His city, his mausoleum. It’s half-submerged. Instead of a moat on the outside of his castle-city, he built the moat on the inside, an enormous lake, enclosed by forty-foot-high walls.”
Nina scanned the area above the wall where now she could just make out a series of glowing lights, and as her eyes adjusted, shapes appeared: towers and domes, long spires and lonely minarets. She pointed. “I think Caleb’s team made it to the other side at least. Look. Flares.”
“So what happens,” Hiltmeyer asked, “if you blow open the gate?”
Montross scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Out comes the sea?” He glanced left and right, shining his flashlight. High walls in either direction beyond the tunnel from which they’d just arrived. Walls that met other walls of Genghis’s city.
“We drown,” Alexander guessed. “That’s what happens.”
“Back in the boat,” Montross said. “We’ll latch ourselves down.”
“Wait, I’ve got a better idea,” Nina said. She dug into the supplies and pulled out a coil of rope and a grappling hook. “Why not just go over the wall?”
They chose a section of the wall unguarded at the top and Montross climbed up first, followed by Hiltmeyer. Alexander went next, hauled up by Hiltmeyer as Montross supervised.
When he got to the top and clambered over, standing on the five-foot-wide precipice, he felt like he was standing on China’s Great Wall, gazing out into the gloom over an ancient city. His eyes followed a pathway below, bathed in a flickering radiance, a bridge over the sea, winding in a serpentine fashion and branching out into smaller avenues, connecting the various palaces and halls, reaching distant temples and monasteries, which in turn had tributaries joining other domed buildings and structures whose purpose eluded any guesses he could come up with. All around these silent buildings lay the darkness of the subterranean sea. Placid, motionless. Reflecting the towers and domes in the faint light of the scarlet flares burning high above.
In the flickering light, Alexander could only shake his head in wonder. And then he let his roaming eyes focus and follow the length of the wall as it stretched into the shadows and circled around the great city. Across the dismal sea, he could picture his father somewhere on the opposite wall, staring out over the vast gulf of crimson-tinted shadows, over the final resting place of the great Khan, and across to Alexander.
Just hold on, Dad. We’re coming. I’ll find you.
“There,” said Nina, pointing down over the wall. “We can lower ourselves to the walkway.”
“I don’t like the looks of that,” Hiltmeyer said, squinting. Extending from about half-way up on the gate’s interior below, the walkway-thoroughfare was made up of a series of great blocks, connected to each other by short arched bridges. “I’m not psychic like you guys, but I suspect those blocks might fall into the sea when we step on them.”
“And,” voiced Alexander meekly, “maybe there are piranhas in there. Or sharks. I hate sharks.”
Montross shone his light down on the first section, then over the bridge. “If it’s a trap, I don’t see what can be done to avoid it.”
“Unless,” said Nina, “we’re meant to swim.”
Alexander shuddered. “With the piranhas?”
“Or,” she continued, “we bring up the boat, then drop it on this side and just row over to his mausoleum.”
“And just where is this mausoleum supposed to be?” asked Hiltmeyer.
Montross unzipped his pack and reached in for the Emerald Tablet. Took it out and held it up. “Turn off the lights for a second. I want to try something.”
They did, and the bridge went dark while Nina shifted her aim, watching the colonel stiffen in the green radiance.
Alexander’s eyes adjusted, and then he saw something strange. Like a reflection of the tablet itself, something flickering in the distance. It came from a large rounded structure surrounded by immense pillars and defended on all sides by water, except for a lone pathway from the center avenue.
The light — actually a pair of lights — came from a window in the upper reaches of the dome.
“There,” said Montross. “That’s where we’re going. There’s his mausoleum.”
Alexander whispered, “I’m guessing those lights are your keys.”
“It would seem so.” Montross lowered the artifact. “They’re responding to the tablet, I imagine, and to the one around my neck. Now, Alexander. A quick glimpse, and let’s see if old Genghis has any more diabolical tricks up his sleeve.”
At that moment, with Nina’s attention fixed on the distant lights of the mausoleum, Colonel Hiltmeyer took his chance. All his anger, fear and drive for revenge exploded at once. He lunged, striking Nina, roaring into her, gripping her under the shoulders and flipping her over the wall.
Before Alexander even heard the splash, the big colonel had raced past him, leaping for Montross.
A second before it happened, Montross had gotten a flash, a glimpse of Hiltmeyer charging him, bowling him over, grabbing him by the neck.
So late! Usually the visions came long before any such threat of death. But recently, with so many crisscrossing events and track-jumping, the future was being constantly rewritten, and his sight took a hit.
Better late than never, he thought, grunting as Hiltmeyer struck him. He had managed to lift the arm holding the tablet and to grip it tighter. He absorbed the impact, letting Hiltmeyer bash him against the rampart, and then, with one big effort, he brought the tablet down on the colonel’s head.
Not enough force to kill him, but enough to daze him, and with that slight loosening of his grip, Montross slipped around, raising the tablet again for another strike.
Hiltmeyer rolled onto his back, bent his knees and kicked out, catching Montross in the gut and knocking him to the floor. The Ruger had fallen and was kicked across the stones in the melee to where Alexander stood, too shocked to move.
In a flash, Hiltmeyer was on Montross, this time slamming a knee into his stomach and bringing a fist down, hard, against his cheek. Then another to the mouth. Hiltmeyer was an enraged bear, striking again and again and—
— until the shot bellowed through the cavern, echoing across the walls, domes and among pillars.
Hiltmeyer staggered to his feet, then shuffled backward. It looked like he was choking himself, except for the dark liquid streaming from between his fingers. His eyes were open in wide shock, staring into the gloom, to the area above the shaking light held in Alexander’s hand — opposite the hand holding the smoking Ruger.
Which promptly fell, released from trembling fingers.
Montross craned his neck and looked past the swelling on his face. He spit out blood and grinned. “Thanks, kid.”