by P. B. Kerr
Axel took hold of the ladder.
“This ladder might be over seven hundred years old, but it looks safe enough.” He started to climb down. “Everything is amazingly well preserved. But cold. Yes, it’s very cold down here. It’s the cold permafrost on the ground that’s probably kept things preserved for so long.”
“That’s a pity,” said Philippa.
“Why?” asked the professor.
“Our djinn power doesn’t work when we get cold,” said Philippa.
“Let’s hope we’re not here long enough for that to happen,” said John, and climbed down the ladder after Axel.
Philippa left Moby on the top platform and went after her brother.
It was the echo of John’s voice and Moby’s quacking that first told Philippa how big the mausoleum of Genghis Khan really was. And glancing down the ladder herself, she was astonished at the size of the burial chamber. It was huge. Despite this, it wasn’t very long before she started to suffer from the claustrophobia that often afflicts djinn when they find themselves inside confined spaces. But in Philippa’s case, her claustrophobia had more to do with the fact that she was inside a mass grave, an uncomfortable fact that the smell of death and decay in her nostrils only seemed to underscore.
After climbing down the complex series of ladder and platforms, the four explorers found themselves on the floor of the burial chamber.
It was John who made the first two discoveries. It was an ossuary, which is what you call the final resting place of several sets of human skeleton remains. Except that this was no ordinary resting place and no ordinary ossuary, for there were many more than several human skeleton remains in this mausoleum. And while there were too many of the neatly stacked skeletons — most of which were still wearing Mongol armor — for John to count, there were also so many that one particular round number — twenty thousand, to be precise — seemed to present itself immediately to his mind. Indeed, it was more like a pyramid than an ossuary and it now occurred to him that the system of ladders and platforms down which they had just climbed seemed to have been built not only as a means of access up and down the height of the mausoleum but also to keep the carefully built mountain of bones firmly in position.
“You remember all those soldiers the sons of Genghis killed to keep this place a secret?” he said.
“Yes,” said the professor. “Twenty thousand, wasn’t it?”
“I just found them,” said John. “All of them.”
The others came to take a look.
“Incredible,” said the professor. “Like sardines in a tin. They must have been killed as they lay one on top of the other. Absolutely incredible.”
“Horrible is the word I’d have chosen,” said Philippa.
“I’ve never seen such a large pile of bones,” remarked Axel. “It’s like an Everest of human bones.”
John was already walking around the base of the pyramid. “Here,” he said. “I think I found our man.”
They followed him around to the far side of the ossuary to find another skeleton, seated on a throne that was set into the wall of bones. He wore better armor than the dead soldiers who surrounded him in death; but he was no less dead for all that. He wasn’t very much taller than the long sword that lay across his thighs.
“You really think it’s him, little brother?” asked Axel.
Philippa shone her flashlight onto the floor where underneath the dead man’s feet was painted a map of Asia and central Europe, from Peking to the Danube.
“These look like his conquests,” she said. “So who else could it be?”
John bent down to retrieve a piece of shiny wastepaper off the ground. He glanced at it and then put it in his pocket.
A little farther away, they came across what had once been the great khan’s treasury; they knew this because there were wall paintings of stewards and slaves filling chests with coins and jewels, silks, perfumes, and most eloquently, a golden casket with a picture of an exploding volcano on the front.
“The Hotaniya crystals,” said the professor. “They must have been in that golden casket.”
But of this and the other treasures in the tomb of Genghis Khan, there was no sign because all of the chests were gone or empty.
“It looks like everything of value that was here has been stolen by the grave robbers,” said Philippa.
“That’s what grave robbers do, little sister,” said Axel.
“I wonder why they left that sword on his lap,” said John.
The professor inspected the hilt more closely. “For the simple reason that if you were to pull it away, you would bring this entire mountain of bones down upon your head. It’s very cleverly positioned. Look.”
John bent forward to take a closer look at the sword. “Yes, you’re right.” He shrugged. “Ingenious.”
“To protect a rusty old sword?” Philippa frowned. “I think not. More ingenious would have been a way of protecting what was in the khan’s treasury.”
“You sound almost disappointed,” said Axel.
“We’re not out of here yet,” said John.
“Well,” said Philippa. “We’ve confirmed what we always suspected. That one of the things that was here but that is here no longer were those Hotaniya crystals. We’ve also confirmed that someone robbed this grave. And, most probably, that this must have been someone who lived in the age of rubberized tarpaulins.”
“And chocolate.” John held up the wrapper from a bar of chocolate. “It’s the wrapper from a chocolate bar. I found it on the floor here in the treasury.”
“I’m not sure that tells us very much more than we already know,” said Philippa.
“Except that one of the grave robbers has a sweet tooth,” said John. “It tells us that, at least.”
“Someone with a taste for expensive chocolate,” said Axel, examining the wrapper. “It tells us that, too.”
“It’s still not much to have found out,” objected Philippa. “After all this effort.”
“We’re not finished looking yet,” insisted Axel, glancing around the mausoleum for another clue. “Surely.”
But after another thirty minutes they still hadn’t found anything that might have provided an answer as to the identity of the grave robbers.
But there was a last discovery in the mausoleum, and it was the professor who made it after patrolling the walls of the mausoleum.
“Only the roof and the ladder system are man-made,” he said. “The walls and the ground underneath the floor are natural.”
“Natural?” Axel laughed. “How ironic.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?” asked Philippa, shivering.
“Yes,” said the professor. “All this time we thought we were in a man-made pit, and we’re not. Fantastic. And, as you say, Axel, kind of ironic, yes.”
“Will someone please tell me what this is?” demanded John.
“Certainly,” said the professor. “We appear to be inside a volcano.” He laughed. “Well, how marvelous. We’re in a volcano. And given the size of that plateau, we’re in what may be the largest volcano in all of Mongolia.”
CHAPTER 37
THE OLGOI-KHORKHOI
That’s a comforting thought,” said Philippa.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry,” said the professor. “This one is from ten thousand years ago. And like the animals that used to populate the earth at that time — the dodo, the giant lemurs, the moa, the elephant bird, Haast’s eagle, the Mongolian death worm, and two species of Malagasy hippopotamus — this particular volcano is extinct. Like those other Mongolian volcanoes I was telling you about earlier. Bus-Obo and Khanuy Gol. I doubt this one has erupted for at least ten or twelve thousand years.”
“Haast’s eagle,” said Axel. “That was a true raptor, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right,” said the professor. “The largest eagle ever to have existed. At least twice the size of any eagle that exists today.”
“I think I might have met one of those
before,” said John.
“Really?” said Axel.
“Remind me to tell you about it,” said John.
“Only not now, eh?” said Philippa. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’m freezing to death in this dreadful place.”
They climbed back up the ladders to the top platform where they had found the skeleton of Dunbelchin’s baby camel.
“I almost feel that one should offer the poor creature a decent burial,” said John.
“That’s just the camel in you,” said Philippa. “And in case it slipped your mind, it was buried. Here. For almost eight hundred years.”
“You know what I mean,” said John.
“Not really,” admitted Philippa. “But if it makes you feel better, then take it with you.” She picked up Moby and put him under her arm.
John looked at the camel bones, of which there were a great many and decided to take only a thigh bone. He did not take the bone as a souvenir but as a keepsake of a memory that was now precious to him. Strictly speaking, this was Dunbelchin’s memory but in John’s mind it was difficult to know where his memory ended and the camel’s began.
Axel climbed to the hole that led up to the surface. “Did you really see a Haast’s eagle?” he asked.
“Actually, no,” said John.
“I thought not,” said Axel.
“It was a Rukhkh,” said John. “But it might easily have been related to the bird you were describing.”
“It must have been a pretty big rook,” said Axel as he climbed out of the hole.
“Not that kind of rook,” said John. “Actually, it was a prehistoric Quetzalcoatlus. A large pterodactyloid that could have picked up an elephant as easily as an owl takes a field mouse.”
Axel started to ask where John had seen this bird, but his words were immediately swallowed up by a very loud scream of pain that was accompanied by a flash of blue light. This was followed by a profound silence.
“What was that?” said the professor.
“Axel?” called John. “You okay?”
There was no answer.
John was about to poke his head out of the hole to see what had happened when Philippa restrained him.
“Remember what Nimrod said,” she whispered. “About booby traps.”
Remaining in the hole, they called Axel’s name again, and hearing no reply they called Groanin and then Nimrod, from whom no answer came.
The professor fumbled in his pocket and took out his Brunton compass. “The mirror,” he explained. “I can hold it up to the edge of the hole and take a look outside without the risk of injury.”
Sweeping the compass around the circumference of the excavation’s lip, he stopped and then closed his eyes for a moment.
“What is it?” asked John. “What can you see?”
“Axel,” he said quietly. “He’s dead.”
“What?” Philippa gulped loudly. “No, he can’t be. How do you know he’s dead? Here, let me have a look.”
“He’s dead,” insisted the professor as Philippa took the Brunton from his numb hand and held it up to take a look out of the hole herself.
What she saw left her feeling both horrified and then astounded.
Axel’s incinerated body lay smoking and wholly unrecognizable on the ground a few feet from the excavation. And there was no doubt in her mind that the professor was right. Axel was quite dead. But the cause of his death still eluded them all. Steeling herself against the tears she wanted to shed, for she was more immediately concerned for Nimrod and Groanin than for her own grief, she continued to use the Brunton mirror to survey the scene on the surface of the plateau for some explanation of what had happened.
And then she saw the culprit. It was a thing easily seen under the lights of the barn ceiling. Bright red and about ten feet long, it appeared to be a very large and disgusting-looking worm with spiked projections at both ends.
“This Mongolian death worm you mentioned earlier,” she said to the professor. “Sadly, I don’t think it’s as dead as the dodo.”
She handed the professor the Brunton compass and when he had taken a look for himself, he handed the compass to John.
“I think you’re right,” said the professor. “It was supposed to live in the Gobi desert, but frankly, I always thought it was little more than a harmless legend.”
“Not anymore,” said John.
“Poor Axel,” whispered Philippa.
“Yes, indeed,” said the professor. “Poor Axel. He was like a son to me. A very dear son. How am I going to tell his poor wife?”
“I don’t want to sound insensitive, Professor,” said John, “but that won’t be a problem unless we can figure a way of getting out of this hole without being killed by that thing.” He took another look at the mirror on the Brunton. “It seems to be guarding the entrance to this excavation. But let’s make sure of that, eh?”
He took the baby camel’s bone, hurled it out of the excavation and up into the air, and then watched the reflection of how the red worm reacted to this in the little mirror.
The reaction was instant. The worm reared up on its end, whereupon its intestine-like body rippled like a wave and directed a bright blue pulse of electricity at the bone, which, being very old, was affected only slightly. But the worm’s behavior was clear enough; anything that came out of the hole was likely to be attacked by the worm.
“It seems to behave exactly like an Electrophorus electricus,” said the professor. “An electric eel, which is of course not a true eel at all, but a fish. Instead of generating a current of electricity that conducts through water, this worm generates a current that travels through air, like a bolt of lightning. An electric eel can generate up to five hundred volts, which could be fatal to a human being. Given what happened to Axel, this looks much more powerful than that. Perhaps ten times as powerful.”
“Fascinating,” said John. “But what are we going to do about it? Anyone who lifts his head through that gopher hole is liable to find himself with a permanent haircut.”
“Can’t you use your powers to get us out of here?” said the professor. “To kill it?”
“I’m afraid that when we get cold our powers desert us for a while,” explained John.
The professor nodded. “I remember you telling me.”
“Which,” added Philippa, “could be some time given how cold it’s getting. I’m freezing.”
“Me, too,” said John.
“Where’s Nimrod?” said the professor. “Why doesn’t he fix that horrible thing?”
“I wish I knew the answer to that,” said John. “I really do. After what happened to Axel, I’m really worried about him, and Groanin, too.”
“These eels,” said Philippa. “You seem to know a lot about them. Is electric eel a delicacy in Iceland, too? Like rotting shark?”
“No. The electric eel lives mostly in the fresh waters of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers. I was down there a few years ago to observe Ubinas, which is the most active strato-volcano in Peru. And I spent some time on the river with local Indians. They eat them. For them, they’re a delicacy. But I didn’t have any.”
“You surprise me,” said Philippa.
“Wait a minute,” said John. “If the Indians killed an electric eel, they must have worked out a way of not getting hit with five hundred volts.”
“Oh, they did,” said the professor. “But it takes time. I believe that what they do is to make the eels keep discharging electric current until they tire. The organs generating the eel’s electric power simply runs out at which point they can be safely handled — for a while, anyway. But as you can imagine, that’s a difficult judgment to have to make.”
“So maybe we have to tire this one out in the same way,” said John. “Until it’s no longer generating so much power.”
Philippa who was already reading John’s mind saw the beginnings of his plan.
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” she said. “We could use some of those bones from the dead camel an
d, if necessary, the ossuary, and keep throwing them out of the excavation until the death worm tires itself out.”
“And then what?” asked the professor. “Even a smaller amount of electricity from that thing could leave you lying stunned on the floor.”
“Good point,” admitted John.
“Well, we certainly can’t stay here,” said Philippa.
“I think we’ll have to until we can think of a way of protecting ourselves against the death worm’s power,” said the professor.
They sat down on the platform and tried to think of a way forward. The professor rubbed his growing beard, which helped him think; John tapped on his own head with a knuckle, which helped him think, sometimes; and Philippa pulled her feet toward her and stretched the muscles on the backs of her legs, which served to concentrate her mind wonderfully because almost immediately she nodded and said that maybe she had half the answer.
“Axel was wearing leather boots, right?” she said.
“Oh, yes,” said the professor. “He bought them in England. Axel was very proud of his English boots.”
“Maybe so.” Philippa lifted her foot and showed off her own boot. “But rubber soles are better when it comes to insulating us from direct contact with the earth’s magnetic field, right?”
“A bit, yes,” said the professor. “But not enough to stop you from getting hurt, I’d have thought. No, you need something else. Some way of insulating your whole body.”
Again they thought for a moment.
Suddenly, John punched the flat of his hand. “I’ve got it,” he said. “The tarpaulin covering this hole is rubberized. If we can wrap the thing in the rubber tarpaulin, then, perhaps, we can safely handle it.”
“Brilliant,” said Philippa. “Of course. That’s the only solution.”
“I’ll have to go,” said John.
“Why you?” asked Philippa, hauling the tarpaulin down into the hole.
“Because I’m also wearing rubber-soled boots,” said John. “In fact, if anything, my rubber soles are thicker than yours.”
“There’s a hole in it,” said the professor. “There’s a hole in the tarpaulin.”