The Partridge didn’t dare touch the lock but looked at it very carefully, and sure enough, it was built right into the door, which meant the slightest touch could set something off. He broke into a cold sweat. He was normally so calm, but today for some reason he was losing his cool. Maybe because if World’s End hadn’t spotted the danger, he’d probably be dead by now.
Meanwhile, the monk had worked it out. “The white-jade door is a ruse. Never mind how pretty it is, it’s a fake. You won’t get in that way. This tomb isn’t large, but it’s impressively designed. The only way in is from below. No matter how ingenious the Western Xia people were, you can’t get away from feng shui. If my calculations are right, these paving stones should move—probably the only entrance.”
The Partridge did as he instructed and lifted slab after slab, and sure enough, a large tunnel was revealed, leading to the chamber behind that jade door. The Western Xia subterfuge was no match for the experienced eye of a reverse dipper like World’s End.
Still leading the way with his steel umbrella, the Partridge walked slowly in with the other two behind him. An enormous black object, shaped like a beehive, was suspended from the ceiling of the tunnel. They couldn’t tell what it was—by the light of the cylinder, it could have been stone or jade. Best to stay away—they sidled around it without touching it.
The darkness seemed to lighten once they got in. The room, twenty yards wide, was full of jewels of all sorts, gleaming and reflecting the glowing cylinder. The most eye-catching was a coral tree in the center of the room, draped with baubles and gems. Sure enough, these were extraordinary treasures. There were also countless scrolls and trunks both big and small. Everything valuable from the Western Xia palace had been moved into this space.
Father Thomas was bug-eyed, and he began pestering World’s End to let him take one or two objects with him. Any of these things could be sold for enough to build several churches, places where street urchins could come for a meal and to learn about Christ.
World’s End replied, “That’s a laudable aim, but these are national treasures, and we can’t touch them. My family has some money, and I’m happy to put some toward your church. Us spiritual workers might as well use our money for good; it’s not like leaving our gold and silver behind will be any use.”
For his part, the Partridge was blind to all these glittering artifacts—he only cared about getting his hands on the eye of the divine. The rest might as well be weeds that he’d trampled across in his search. Abruptly, he froze. Pointing behind World’s End, he said, “We’re in trouble. There’s a dead person there.”
World’s End spun around, startled. He hurried over, and sure enough, a pile of bones lay in a corner of the chamber. This skeleton was quite a bit taller than a regular human being, its white bone hand clutching a bunch of keys. Behind it was a dark Buddha of a thousand hands, neither stone nor jade. When the Partridge held the glowing cylinder up to it, it absorbed all the light. The contrast between this darkness and the gleaming white bones was chilling.
World’s End felt his heart sink. “This isn’t good. It’s the new moon tonight; the Buddha’s eye is shut. All our charms will have lost their effectiveness. If there are evil spirits here, then this tomb will soon be our tomb too. But the strangest thing is, how could there be this statue with a thousand hands and eyes—a dark Buddha?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The bleached bones had already given the Partridge an uneasy feeling. The monk’s solemn tone told him this was serious. He asked what the Buddha signified.
“The eye of the moon is shut tonight,” said World’s End, “and evil is afoot. At times like this, when yang is weak and yin is strong, that’s when strange things take place. Who would dare go reverse dipping on such a night? I thought this was an empty grave, but now here’s a skeleton, and even more ominous, a thousand-eyed Buddha. This statue is no ordinary object. There are surely dark forces at work here. Normally, we’d defend ourselves with black donkey hooves and rice, but they’ve lost their power for now. We should leave.”
The Partridge was reluctant to go with his mission unfinished, but he could tell how dangerous this was. He nodded. As they rushed back toward the tunnel, Father Thomas, desperate to get out, pulled out the candle the Partridge had given him earlier to light the way.
World’s End yelled, “No!” and pulled him back. At the same moment, a vast plume of black fog rose from the hole in the ground. If the American priest had been a tiny bit closer, it would have swept him up, and he’d surely have met his maker. The fog was poison. World’s End was familiar with it; many graves had such a mechanism, and one of them must have bumped into it. Luckily, the monk had enough experience to realize what was happening, and he dragged the priest out of the way in time.
The fog must have been infused with centipede venom, because it lingered like a solid black mass, refusing to disperse. More and more of it was pumping out of the tunnel. The three men gulped down scarlet antipoison pills, though the gold-hunting medication was mostly used to combat toxic fumes from corpses. How they would fare against something this virulent was anybody’s guess.
With the fumes slowly taking over the room, the trio slowly backed into the corner where the skeleton was. It didn’t matter that this was a dead end—the Partridge’s whirlwind digger would be able to get them out, but not before the poison got hold of them. They had to find a way to stop the fog from advancing.
Nothing in the Partridge’s skills or World End’s experience had prepared them for this. If it had been regular poison gas, they’d have held their breath and slowed their heartbeats till they managed to get out, but this thick miasma was clearly too powerful for that. Where was it coming from?
With their backs to the stone wall, they stared helplessly as their doom rushed at them. But the Partridge rallied. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Pressed against the wall, he felt something cold against his back. When he turned his head, he saw a lamp fixed to the wall, probably the long-burning light designed to hang over the coffin.
There was no coffin, just the lamp on the wall. Something was wrong. The feng shui rules stated that such lamps should be three feet, three and one-third inches from the ground, but this was half an inch lower than that, and pointing downward. It must have been a hidden mechanism. If they pulled it back up into place, the wall would flip over, revealing the secret chamber behind it. These rooms were where the most important grave goods were kept, so that even if thieves did manage to break in, they wouldn’t get the best stuff.
The fog was growing thicker now, and at the last possible moment, the Partridge grabbed the lamp and yanked it up sharply. It moved easily, and with a grinding noise, the wall behind them suddenly revolved, sending bits of dirt flying so they were speckled with it.
The inner room had a lower ceiling. The wall completed its turn and clicked into place, bringing the thousand-hand Buddha and skeleton with it. There were no piles of jewels here, just a locked box.
Before looking at what they’d uncovered, the Partridge quickly pried a couple of tiles from the floor, then scooped up the dirt beneath to fill in the spaces around the revolving wall. They couldn’t risk any poison seeping in. He was heartened to find the soil loose and springy. He would be able to dig them out in a couple of hours, and there was enough air in here to keep them going till then.
After a lifetime of reverse dipping, World’s End was used to narrow rooms like this. Seeing the Partridge get his tools out and start digging an escape tunnel, the monk sat cross-legged and, running his prayer beads through his fingers, sank into meditation.
As the Partridge worked away, Father Thomas couldn’t help asking World’s End, “Did you notice something in the black fog outside? It didn’t look like poison.”
World’s End slowly opened his eyes. “What?” he said quietly. “You saw it too?”
Father Thomas nodded. “In the last
second before the wall spun us around, I saw a human figure in the fog. It looked like the Buddha. Could it be…”
Hearing this, the Partridge stopped his digging and looked up. He’d seen the figure just before they’d entered this room.
World’s End thought about it, then pointed at the dark Buddha statue. “According to legend, this is an evil spirit worshiped by ancient people. The cult that followed him was wiped out by the government in the late Tang dynasty, and yet here in a Western Xia tomb, there’s a dark Buddha statue. It’s probably made of putrid jade from ancient Persia. This is a rare stone, and despite the name, it’s not a type of jade at all. They say any person or animal who touches it will find their organs turning to liquid, their flesh melting off until nothing’s left but bones. And then their soul will be chained to the dark Buddha, trapped here forever.”
The Partridge looked at the bones. “This skeleton might once have been a loyal attendant who chose to stay behind to guard the treasure, only he touched the putrid jade and died. Maybe that black fog wasn’t poison, but…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence for them to know what he meant.
World’s End urged the Partridge and Father Thomas not to go anywhere near the Buddha, and to dig that tunnel out as quickly as possible. If the dark Buddha was messing with them, this inner chamber wouldn’t keep them safe. His eye was drawn again to the keys in the skeleton’s hand. He grabbed them, then the locked box—perhaps the eye of the divine was in there, and perhaps these keys would open it. No way to know except by trying.
The monk lit a candle. He tried the keys, and sure enough, one of them fit. The Partridge was a few yards into his tunnel by now, and when he stuck his head back out to clear the dirt away, he saw the open box and stopped his work to look inside. All it contained, though, was a dragon fossil carved with strange writing.
He’d allowed his hopes to rise, and this was like having a bucket of cold water poured over him. He stood there, the disappointment stinging, and then there was a sudden tickle in his throat, and before he knew what was happening, he was spitting a mouthful of blood onto the dragon fossil.
World’s End jumped back. He’d known the Partridge was too passionate and took things too seriously, so great emotion could indeed make him vomit blood. Afraid the Partridge would faint, the monk asked Father Thomas to hold on to him.
Turning, World’s End caught sight of the dark Buddha, whose eyes had suddenly blinked open, dozens of them, shining in the gloom, glaring malevolently at the trio.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Father Thomas stared in horror at the Buddha’s open eyes, all of them white with no pupils. “What…what are those? When did those eyes open? Are they eyes or giant maggots?”
And now those eyes were emitting a thick black fog, so dense it was almost solid. In the flickering candlelight, they watched as this mist coalesced into a blurry shape: a second dark Buddha. The priest got out his flask of holy water, which he splashed at the creature. Although it had been moving sluggishly, it reacted swiftly, a gap appearing in its center so the liquid passed harmlessly through without touching it, splashing on the ground. The hole happened to be in the center of the dark Buddha’s face, making it look like a vast mouth had opened, roaring at the three men.
Realizing the fog monster was afraid of holy water, the Partridge yelled at the American to try again, but Father Thomas shouted back, “That’s all I had!”
“The foreign priest has the right idea,” World’s End said. “Sacred artifacts frighten it. The new moon must have passed, so our charms will work again. Watch me.” As he spoke, he snapped the string of his prayer beads and flung the beads at the black fog.
Unexpectedly, the monster didn’t react. In fact, it didn’t even seem to notice the beads, which simply went through it as it continued to advance. Crestfallen, World’s End could only mutter, “That’s so peculiar. My Buddhism has no effect. Could it be less powerful than Western holy water?”
The fog stopped, as if an invisible wall were in its way. It turned toward the candle, which they’d left at the far end of the room.
“What is it?” shouted Father Thomas.
The Partridge had seen the same thing. “The fog…”
Then all three men at once: “The candle!”
The candle had caused the temperature of the air around it to rise! Whatever it was made of, the black fog was like a moth seeking out flames, and the candle was attracting it. It was some kind of substance that lay dormant, coming to life only when sufficient heat was applied, then rampaging through the space until everything hotter than room temperature had been eliminated.
Sure enough, the fog now sought out the candle as its first target. Although formless, it seemed to have some mass, and in an instant it had squashed the flame out. The room was now pitch-dark.
The men knew they were in trouble. This fog would now look for the next-warmest objects, and that happened to be the human beings.
Once the trio had worked out what triggered the fog, it was easy to divert it: they lit every candle they had and lured it to the far corner, away from the revolving wall. There was no time to finish digging the tunnel out; their best bet was to clear a path back to the main chamber, leaving the miasma stuck here behind the jade door.
As they fled toward the revolving wall, World’s End scooped up the dragon fossil. It had all kinds of strange symbols on it, some of which looked like the eye of the divine. Perhaps this would give some clue to its whereabouts. In any case, it must be a valuable object to be stored in this secret inner chamber.
The Partridge and Father Thomas were already at the wall, yelling at World’s End to hurry. As soon as he joined them, they pulled the sconce lever and it started turning, only to creak to a halt halfway through. The mechanism was jammed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
As the wall stopped moving, the black fog in the main room, which had been drifting aimlessly, suddenly found its target and formed a giant face zooming toward the three men. Meanwhile, the cloud behind them, having extinguished the candles, was also hurtling toward them. They were hemmed in, two deadly masses closing in on them from either direction with a fearsome rumbling.
“Quick!” shouted World’s End. “Light a candle to lead them away.” The Partridge reached forlornly into his bag, but they’d used up their entire supply.
They were inches from their doom now. Luckily, the Partridge wasn’t the sort of person to let himself get turned into a skeleton.
He suddenly remembered the coral tree draped with jewels in the center of the room. What if he could use his flying-tiger claws to haul them onto the tree’s branches? The rope was sturdy enough to support the weight of ten people, so three should be no problem. The question was whether the tree would be equally strong.
No time to worry about that. He sent his claws shooting out so they hooked onto the top branch and swung around it a few times till they were secure.
Clutching the rope, he called to World’s End and Father Thomas to hold on tight and keep their legs up in the air. Not waiting for an answer, he yelled, “Now!” A tug of the rope and they were soaring through the air, leaving the jammed revolving wall behind them.
As soon as their feet left the ground, both banks of fog surged forward and met at the spot where the three men had been just a moment ago. Father Thomas stared, petrified, his teeth chattering so badly he couldn’t even form the words to a prayer. Holding his legs as high as he could, he thought frantically that if the rope didn’t snap, it would surely be a miracle.
The coral tree swayed alarmingly. In midair, the trio suddenly felt a jerk. Father Thomas didn’t dare open his eyes, but the other two turned back and saw that the skeleton had somehow attached itself to one of World’s End’s feet. The old monk let out a sharp breath at the sight.
At that moment, the tree branch groaned and snapped in two. The three men crashed to the g
round. Luckily, they’d gotten clear of the fog, landing just beyond it. The Partridge grabbed his companions and urgently pulled them away. But now his left hand was numb—it had touched the fog.
As he watched, the flesh on his hand dissolved, leaving only white bones. The muscles of his arm were going too, the rot slowly creeping upward from his wrist, raw pain clutching every one of his nerves. If he didn’t find a way to stop this, soon his whole body would go the same way. But with the fog so close to them, the main thing was to escape.
Enduring the awful pain, the Partridge grabbed Father Thomas and World’s End.
Father Thomas shrieked and jumped up, patting himself all over. He hadn’t been touched at all, but he was looking at the stark white bones that were the Partridge’s left arm. World’s End was unconscious—probably from hitting his head when they landed. The Partridge had to manhandle him toward the tunnel.
Beads of sweat were running down the Partridge’s forehead from the agony, while the flesh was gone almost up to his elbow. The only remedy was the same as for a venomous snakebite, but there was no time to chop off his own arm. Their exertions had raised their body temperatures, and the fog was drawing closer and closer. With his right hand, the Partridge pulled out his pistol and sent five shots thudding into the dark Buddha’s body.
The fog was now attracted to the heat of the muzzle, and it swarmed in that direction. Almost fainting from the pain, the Partridge muttered to Father Thomas, “Let’s go.”
They jumped down into the tunnel, carrying World’s End between them. Again they were confronted with the suspended black rock, only now they knew what it was—the source of the first cloud of black fog. That must have been when Father Thomas lit his candle in this passageway.
The Dragon Ridge Tombs Page 18