Caleb and Phoebe helped Orlando up, pulling him away from Commander Chang and the other soldiers. They were just recovering when they heard the two gunshots echoing through the access tunnel.
Phoebe stopped what she was doing. “Uh oh.”
Holding his side, Orlando coughed and spit up blood. “I think I just got my ass kicked for nothing. I’m sorry.”
Caleb waited, and then his heart sank when he saw Renee climb back down the ladder.
“I think,” Phoebe whispered, “you should have taken that chance up there.”
“What chance?” Orlando asked.
Caleb was holding his head. “Qara wanted me to set off the warriors when I reached you. If I had acted, she might still be alive.”
“Ah.” Orlando combed back his hair. “Well, I’m inclined to thank you for your restraint. Not sure if I was up for dodging arrows.”
“Move,” Renee ordered, motioning with her gun. “I’m not wasting any more time with fanatics. Or psychics.”
Caleb started splashing ahead. “You seem to be forgetting who got you this far.”
“And you’re forgetting who has the weapons.”
“Oh, you won’t let us forget that.” Leading his sister and Orlando, Caleb waded cautiously ahead, with small steps. “Phoebe,” he whispered. “Can you see anything? Orlando? How about you? Are we good here?”
“Far as I could tell,” Orlando said, “the path was the only thing I saw. Just follow along and we should be copasetic until the end.”
“Phoebe?” He looked back and saw, with some surprise, that his sister and Orlando were holding hands.
“Hang on,” she said and closed her eyes. Cocked her head, then peered out. “All clear. But at the end, like Orlando said, there’s something. We go up, and there’s a portal. And beyond that I see something bad. Blood, a lot of it. Death.”
“Ours?” Orlando asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Traps?” Renee asked, right beside them now.
“No. Not that I can see. Although, I’m not sure how the portal opens.”
“Maybe we need Qara,” Orlando suggested.
“Well,” said Renee, “that option’s no longer available to us. You’ll get us in, or we blow it open.”
“Not too smart,” Caleb said. “Unless you want a cave-in.”
“I’m confident you’ll figure it out. Now move.”
After nearly thirty minutes of trudging through water that gradually numbed their feet, the cold traveling up their legs, they rounded a bend and came to a complete dead end. Just a blank wall.
One soldier approached cautiously, then abruptly disappeared. Lights blasted at his last location and they highlighted his escaping air and submerged body, thrashing as he sank into the murky depths.
“Gone,” Chang whispered, standing at the end of a rounded pit in the floor, shining the light down into the pool. “I see no bottom.”
All the flashlight beams then turned up, converging on a rounded, twenty-foot-wide barrier, a circular door above the pit. The center was a pure black onyx material that absorbed the light. The outside frame was an exotic marble structure etched with more script all the way around.
Orlando whispered. “Anyone watch Stargate?”
“Huh?” Renee asked.
“Never mind. But since you killed our translator, what do we do?”
“Stand back.” Renee said. “Chang, set the C-4.”
“But we cannot reach door. Nothing to stand on.”
“Then position it carefully as far in as you can. We’ll blow the area around it.”
Caleb shook his head. “Wait, give us a chance.” He was shining his light about the corridor, checking the ceiling, the walls, even stabbing it into the water, looking for switches or levers.
“Hurry,” Renee said. “You’ve got until the charges are set.” She glanced at Chang, who was busy with their packs, assembling the explosives.
“Ten minutes.”
Renee crossed her arms and nodded to Caleb and Phoebe. “You heard the man. Do your stuff in ten minutes, or I do it my way.”
Phoebe pulled Orlando closer to her, took both his hands and got up on her tippy-toes to whisper in his ear. “We’ve got to cover for Caleb, so let’s do this.”
“A little hard to concentrate,” he said, “with you so close. My thoughts are kind of running amok.”
“They can run amok later. The door. Now. How do we open it? Think about nothing else.” She withdrew her lips from his ear.
“Easier said than done.”
She closed her eyes as Caleb splashed over to them. “Give it a try, big brother. Whatever comes.”
“All right.”
But that was all she heard, as the surroundings melted away and the water around her feet dried up…
“ It is ready, my lord Ogadai.”
A man stands in the shadows behind the smoking torches.
“ The markings around the door…”
“ As you instructed, master. The scribes have written the curses your father chose. The usual horrors to be visited on any who choose to violate the mausoleum beyond.”
“ And the door, once set?”
“ Can be opened only from the other side.”
“ And only when Temujin rises.”
David Sakmyster
The Mongol Objective [Oct 2011]
The man nods. “For he will need a way out, should life be restored.”
“ Pray,” said Ogadai, “that his spirit prefers the next world to this one. But if not, at least his city awaits. He may rule here as he wishes.” He lowers his head. “Seal the door, and let us depart.”
Phoebe’s eyes bolted open, and she stared at Orlando.
“Crap,” Orlando said. “I didn’t see anything about the way in from this side.” He nodded grudgingly to Renee. “You’re going to need to blow it open.”
“Unless,” said Phoebe, “Montross is already up there.”