The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

by Max Allan Collins

  But the Emperor Mummy could see what Alex was up to and a sword materialized in his terra-cotta hand, and he hurled the blade, sending it pinwheeling toward Alex’s back.

  O’Connell dove in and pushed his son out of the way, but caught the sword himself, as it cut through his back rib cage and pushed all the way through like a skewer.

  Alex’s bomb exploded short of its target, the blast sending thundering reverberations throughout the hills and mountains nearby. But the boy’s eyes were elsewhere; his father had collapsed facedown in the snow. And the Emperor Mummy’s sword had returned by magic to his red-clay hand, then retracted into nothing at all.

  From behind her half-a-brick wall, Evy watched, white as the snow around her, moaning, “Oh, God . . . dear God . . .”

  Alex’s scream of sorrow met the echo of the blast and the mountainside reacted, a cornice of icy snow letting loose high up, signaling what was to come . . .

  Jonathan, not helping matters, screamed, “Avalanche!”

  And indeed the shelf of snow and ice was beginning its deadly journey their way, creating an earthquakelike rumbling that froze even the yeti with fear.

  Alex ran to recover his father, or anyway his father’s body, and dragged him toward the entry.

  The Emperor, still up on top of the stupa dome, saw shelf after shelf of snow and ice come rushing toward him, and knew even his powers would be tested here. His mouth opened and he emitted a furious roar as he raised his arms, throwing all of his mystic power at the mountainside.

  Gradually, starting at its base, the avalanche began to slow, more and more snow massing in piles, but those massive white mounds seemed to be struggling against the invisible force that sought to keep the avalanche back, natural and supernatural locked in a savage struggle.

  Lin had edged along the roof and, dragon dagger in hand, was closer now to the distracted Emperor; when she was opposite him, she leaped, dagger raised, but Er Shi Huangdi turned, as if he’d heard the buzzing of a mosquito, and with a glance deflected her—she was flung to a pillar and slid down into a semiconscious pile.

  The living statue that was Er Shi Huangdi returned all of his attention to the tidal wave of snow and ice, concentrating every particle of his fury at it. But after the Emperor Mummy’s momentary distraction, the wall of snow was again speeding unfettered toward the courtyard . . .

  Near the entry, a yeti swooped up Alex and the wounded O’Connell and bore them away, toward a portico. Jonathan, unfortunately, was petrified in horror, like a Pompeii victim, watching the avalanche inexorably heading his way. Deeper into the courtyard, Evy was helping the dazed Lin to her feet, the girl seemingly unaware of the white wall descending. Then another yeti swept in, and hauled them both away in its powerful arms.

  Jonathan couldn’t seem to make his feet and legs work. He spoke what he felt sure would be his final words. “Bloody hell!”

  But his cry was lost in two mingled roars: that of the white tidal wave slamming into the temple, and the shriek of a yeti.

  The terra-cotta mummy received the full brunt of nature’s blow, getting knocked off the stupa and pistoned right through the columns, getting buffeted from one pillar to another like a pinball between bumpers and finally shattering into a thousand rust-brown shards that were quickly lost in a merciless sea of white.

  Another player was attempting to outrun the avalanche, though he was in no shape to be doing so: limping along came a very bedraggled General Yang, looking like he’d already been put through as many indignities as humanly possible.

  But he hadn’t, because a shelf of snow now slammed him down the front staircase and all the way onto the suspension bridge, as the courtyard seemed to spew snow at the beleaguered general. Torqued by cascading white, the bridge snapped and sent Yang tumbling toward the abyss.

  Within minutes, the snow was still again, and the world settled, and quiet reigned. The landscape had a peaceful look, as if nature had held sway here for centuries and no man had set foot since ancient times.

  The courtyard was piled with snow and crisscrossed with fallen trees. Finally a yeti burst from a bank to sniff the air. He took several steps, knee-deep in the stuff, which was many feet in some areas and only inches in others, and, after continuing to sniff for a scent, punched into another bank, fished around, and yanked out Jonathan Carnahan, like a gopher the creature had snagged, holding him one-handed by the leg.

  “Well done, you ugly brute,” Jonathan (dangling upside down) said with genuine gratitude. “A Saint Bernard could not have done better, although it’s true such a beast would no doubt have come equipped with a little barrel of brandy. Wouldn’t happen to have one of those on you, would you?”

  With a dismissive snarl, the yeti dropped Jonathan, as if he were too scrawny a catch to keep. Then the great creature pulled Evy up and out, followed by doing the same for Lin, lifting each out of the snowfield. On their feet again, the two women, unsteady at first, found purchase between drifts, but Evy was clearly alarmed.

  “Rick!” she called. “Rick!”

  The muffled voice that replied belonged not to her husband but her son: “Over here, Mom! Over here!”

  A yeti thrust himself upward out of the snow and revealed an air pocket, where Alex cradled his father. “Come on, Dad! Say something . . .”

  Very weakly, O’Connell replied, “Guess we’ve been . . . in tougher scrapes . . . than this . . .”

  Then his eyes rolled back in his head as what little consciousness he’d had left him.

  A desperate Evy, at his side, put her cheek to his. “Stay with us, darling . . . stay with us . . .”

  “There is only one way,” Lin said.

  All eyes, even the yetis’, went to the slender girl.

  She said, “We must take him to Shangri-la.”

  9

  A Dragon in Shangri-la

  The crevasse at the Gateway to Shangri-la was filled with snow and was now as quiet, as lifeless, as a landscape painting. Peacefulness had settled over an area where recently men with weapons had fought, and a great battle for the soul of the world itself had been waged. Now all that seemed over. A crisis for mankind, with only a few of its number knowing, had been averted.

  Then, as if to give lie to such an assumption, vertical recessions along the top of the snow-packed crevasse began to form, indicating something burrowing underneath, small animals creating berms, perhaps. One after another, the recessions formed and all seemed to angle toward a central spot, like a spiderweb. Had anyone had been above, on the edge of the crevasse, to look down and to witness it, this might have seemed some natural if bizarre phenomenon.

  But it was not.

  The fragments of the terra-cotta mummy, each possessed of dark life, were seeking one another and now, to join in a blast of heat at the center of so much cold, re-formed themselves into a recognizably human, if still terra-cotta, shape.

  The Emperor Mummy rose as if on an elevator up through the surface of the packed snow, and silently surveyed the scene. His eyes fell upon the pitiful if resilient and most certainly battered form of General Yang, holding on to what was left of the suspension bridge, its remnants disappearing into the snow-choked chasm.

  The miraculous reassembly of the shards of Yang’s terra-cotta master had been largely without sound, just whispers of movement in the snow below, and the general had after all been preoccupied just trying to stay alive.

  But when the Emperor called out—“General!”—Yang looked down fifty feet to where, defying all odds, his master stood atop the snowfield, and—ever the zealot—the dangling general nodded and called, “My lord!”

  “Come! Our destiny awaits!”

  Yang nodded dutifully, and awaited more specific instructions, which came in the form of a gesture from the Emperor, creating from the snow a stairway of ice so that Yang could join his master, who had already turned to create a second stairway leading up into the snow-ruined Gateway to Shangri-la.

  Alex O’Connell felt like hell. N
ever in his short life had he been so guilt-ridden; he had treated his father so terribly in recent days, and now the elder O’Connell was on the brink of death, after sacrificing himself for his son.

  In this vast Himalayan world, the members of the O’Connell party—expanded to the improbable tune of three yeti—were just so many specks moving along a passage carved in a sheer cliff. They were on their way to Shangri-la, if Lin was to be believed . . . and of course Alex believed her.

  Even had they wanted to go the way they’d come, that suspension bridge was history now; and the slender girl who could communicate with yeti had assured them that safe passage to Shambhala (as she often called it) was possible, and from there an alternate route back would be available, as well.

  And if Alex wanted his father to survive, Lin had told him in no uncertain terms, a visit to Shangri-la would be Rick O’Connell’s only chance to face adventure another day.

  The hooded Lin and Jonathan—yakless now—were leading the way. Up ahead was another gorge with its own small, rather unreliable-looking wooden bridge. Two yeti were carrying the unconscious O’Connell on a stretcher Lin had made with the help of these creatures, using pine boughs interwoven with fragments of Tibetan prayer flags. Evy walked alongside her husband, holding his lifeless hand. Alex was on the other side, his gut knotted with guilt.

  “Faster!” Alex urged, his voice reverberating through the nearby gorge. “We need to go faster!”

  “I say, nephew,” Jonathan said gently, “another avalanche wouldn’t help any of our situations.”

  When they crossed the precarious bridge over a seemingly bottomless drop, the little party did so fearlessly—even Jonathan. They’d seen enough, and survived enough, to take peril rather more casually.

  Past the bridge, still on the narrow carved-out path, ever upward they went, until finally Lin spied an outcropping of rocks. “We’re here!”

  The outcropping marked the small mouth of a cave, and through that mouth and into that cave was where Lin led them. But none of the O’Connell party, even after all they had witnessed on this and other expeditions, could have been prepared for what they saw.

  Though the passage into the cave was cramped, it quickly opened into a vast cathedral of a cavern. Along the left wall, with its head toward them as they entered, was a slumbering statue of Buddha no larger than the Queen Mary. On the other walls were carved-out native statues and dwellings like those of cliff-dwelling Indians back in America.

  But for all this, what stood at the center of the natural chamber was the most impressive. Haloed in sunlight pouring in from the far side of the cave, which had at one time collapsed to reveal the out-of-doors, was an open pavilion in the Tibetan style, with pillars and a stupa-style roof, a storybook structure surrounding and protecting the serene blue of a pool, shimmering incongruously in the midst of this amphitheater of rock, refracting rainbows of light.

  Evy thought, The Pool of Eternal Life! Her husband might yet survive . . .

  Her son echoed this, pointing and shouting, “The pool!”

  The yeti lowered the stretcher to the rocky floor as an excited Alex dashed into the cavern, making a beeline for the pavilion. In a blur, a figure in flashing green came streaking from above and landed in front of him, drawing a sword from a back sheath.

  Alex froze and saw before him a striking if cold-eyed woman, a streak of white in the otherwise ponytailed-back dark hair—in her thirties perhaps, but blessed with a timeless beauty.

  Alex’s estimate of the woman’s age was off somewhat: he had no way to recognize her, or to realize just how timeless her beauty was; but the woman in the green flowing robes with the sword in hand ready to dispatch him was Zi Yuan, the sorceress who had, two thousand years before, cursed Er Shi Huangdi—to his terra-cotta doom.

  Before he could react, Alex found Lin at his side, and the younger woman was meeting that sword blade with the edge of the dragon dagger, making a metallic clunk that echoed in the yawning chamber.

  The woman looked sharply at Lin, who with her free hand dropped her fur-lined hood to give this guardian of the pavilion a better look at the one who’d dared interrupt her defense.

  Then Lin dropped to her knees, in supplication, and touched the woman’s slippers tenderly. Zi Yuan stared down in utter shock, then gently raised the girl up, tears in both their eyes.

  In an ancient strain of Mandarin, Zi Yuan said, “Lin, my little love.”

  “Mother.”

  And the two women embraced. They had not seen each other in some time—in fact, in many centuries.

  The yeti, accompanied by Evy, were bringing up Alex’s father on the stretcher to where Zi Yuan could see their human cargo, who was groaning, as if death were moments if not minutes away.

  Evy stepped forward and said, quietly, “Would you please help him?”

  In English, Zi Yuan said, “You are friends of my daughter, and you are welcome here.”

  Alex and his mother exchanged startled glances, but Evy had the presence of mind to say, “We are very grateful. What may we call you?”

  “Zi Yuan.”

  The yeti deposited O’Connell on his stretcher near the edge of the pool within the simple interior of the pavilion. Zi Yuan herself administered the Elixir, cupping it in one hand from the blue pool and gently pouring it onto O’Connell’s bloody wound.

  Li Yuan asked, “Who harmed this man?”

  Evy, nearby, said, “This man is my husband, Rick O’Connell. Some might not believe it, but I have a notion you will have no problem when I say that that wound came from a sword wielded by an ancient Chinese Emperor, who now walks the earth as a terra-cotta monster.”

  The woman’s eyes flashed. “Er Shi Huangdi,” she said.

  Evy, Alex and Jonathan all exchanged glances. Then Zi Yuan rose and said, “Your loved one is out of danger now.”

  Evy knelt and kissed her husband’s forehead, then gazed up at Zi Yuan with happy, tearful eyes. “How can I thank you?”

  The woman bowed slightly. “You already have.”

  Off to one side, Alex and Lin stood together and he was staring at her, considering this “young” girl in a whole new light.

  He said, “Then . . . Shangri-la is your home?”

  “Yes.”

  Jonathan, close enough to hear without trying, thought, And here I thought the girl talking to yeti was a bit odd . . .

  To Evy, Zi Yuan said, “Your husband must rest now.”

  She indicated her own dwelling nearby, carved out of the rock, and led Alex, Lin and Evy, bearing the stretcher, to a stone stairway up into it. Jonathan had been having a look at the pavilion, walking around the exterior of it, touristlike, and stumbled onto a view of the far section where the cave wall had long ago given way to reveal a vista beyond.

  He gaped in awe. “Bloody hell . . . It’s paradise.”

  The cold snowy world from which the O’Connell party had come was nowhere to be seen—this was a perfect spring day under a nearly cloudless blue sky, a heaven on earth ringed with endless silken waterfalls, a breathtaking landscape of flowers and greenery and sunshine.

  When Jonathan turned around to tell everybody about this Elysium, he saw they had trooped up stairs carved out of the cavern into a similarly carved-out dwelling space. He followed and was soon at his sister’s side, tending to O’Connell.

  Minutes later, Alex, Zi Yuan and Lin strode back down the stairs to speak.

  Lin’s mother’s face was taut with urgency. She said to her daughter, “Did the dragon dagger pierce the Emperor’s heart?”

  Lin shook her head. “No, Mother. I have failed you.”

  But Zi Yuan stroked her daughter’s cheek and gazed upon her with compassion. “I should never have let my vengeance become your burden . . . but you were not to involve mortals in these affairs.”

  Lin gestured toward the dwelling, and nodded toward Alex. “If not for their bravery, the Emperor would have found the pool.”

  “And yet he still may, no
w that he has risen.”

  Alex jumped in with a grin. “Excuse me, ma’am, but don’t worry about ol’ clayface. He’s at the bottom of a gorge in a million terra-cotta pieces.”

  Zi Yuan shook her head. “If he was not killed by the dragon dagger, then he is not dead.”

  Alex frowned. “How can you be so sure?”

  Her chin raised; light winked off golden earrings. “Because I am the one who cursed him. I enchanted his own dagger and dispatched the only person who could be trusted to watch over his crypt while I stood sentry over this sacred pool.”

  Frowning in curiosity, Alex asked, “If I’m not out of line . . . ? What did the Emperor do to make you hate him so much? To make him worthy of such a curse?”

  Her face was placid and so was her tone, but in Zi Yuan’s eyes, fires of vengeance burned. “He murdered the only man I ever loved—Lin’s father. For that I cursed him . . . and his army, as well.”

  Zi Yuan held out her hand and Lin gave her the dragon dagger. She stared at its blade, her bitterness reflecting back at her.

  “I would have died, too,” Zi Yuan said, “at the monster’s hands . . . and yes, he was a monster even before I cursed him . . . but the yeti found me, and brought me to this pool.”

  Though math had never been his strong suit, Alex knew something was adding up strange. He turned to Lin and asked, “So, uh. . . how long exactly were you guarding the Emperor’s tomb?”

  Calmly, without expression, as matter-of-fact as answering a phone, Lin said, “Two thousand years.”

  Alex drew in a breath. His eyes widened. He let out the breath.

  Lin steeled herself.

  Zi Yuan had more important concerns. She was moving into the cathedral of rock, heading back toward the entrance through which the O’Connell party had come.

  “The Emperor must not reach the pool,” she was saying, “or he will have the power to raise his entire army . . . You two stand guard here, at the pool itself. I will take first watch at the entrance.”