The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2 page)

All this happened in about two seconds, and to the surviving assassin’s credit, his reaction was to charge across the bed and the corpse on it, to dive toward Er Shi Huangdi, who met the motion of the assassin’s downward dagger with the hilt of his own, and used the momentum—and a helping hand—to flip the would-be killer up and over his head. But the assassin landed on his feet, catlike, and sprang at once into action.

So did the Emperor.

The close-quarters duel with daggers produced sharp clangs that made a frantic, dissonant music as these two skilled warriors met in a knife fight for the ages. Shadows on the tent walls under the flickering candlelight reflected actions so swift and deft, the most skilled dancers and acrobats would have bowed in deference.

But this tough young assassin, his forehead scarred with his cult’s brand, was no match for the Emperor, who cut the man’s wrist, leaving a deep searing slash, popping fingers open and sending the intruder’s dagger flying.

Now, for the first time, the disarmed assassin flinched and the Emperor spun and kicked and sat his opponent down rudely in a chair. Within a moment, Er Shi Huangdi held his dagger’s tip to the visitor’s sternum.

The commotion finally brought in a frowning, concerned, if sleep-frazzled General Ming Guo, sword drawn, followed by a strangely serene Li Zhou and a coterie of eunuch guards.

To his seated foe, the Emperor—pressing the tip of the dagger into the man’s flesh—demanded, “Who sent you, dog? Tell me and I may yet let you live.”

The assassin swallowed. “The Governor . . . the Governor of Chu.”

And now the Emperor smiled and his eyes turned strangely languid. “Good,” he murmured. “Good.”

Ming Guo, not following, glanced in confusion at Head Minister Li Zhou, who merely stood with folded arms and a faintly smiling countenance.

The Emperor withdrew the threat of the dagger point, then stepped away, turning his back to his prisoner as he said, “I bring peace and order to the land . . . and this is how my people repay me?”

From a sleeve, the assassin flicked a knife and, with this new weapon in his hand, launched himself at the Emperor . . .

. . . who, almost casually, without looking, back-handed his dragon dagger into the attacking man’s heart, not even bothering to turn and see his opponent gasp and crumple into a pile of dying flesh.

Ming Guo, distraught, dropped to his knees before his Emperor. “I have failed you, my lord!”

“No.”

“But I have!”

“No, my good and faithful servant.” The Emperor’s smile now was serenely benign. “I was well aware of this plot. I was prepared to welcome my guests.”

Ming Guo frowned up at Er Shi Huangdi. “You
knew?
And yet you said nothing? You allowed it to go on?”

The Emperor’s smile turned wry as his eyes met those of his head minister. But his words were for his general: “I wanted a war . . . and now I have one.”

Ming Guo, still on his knees, seemed to catch up, all at once. He nodded. “Yes, my lord. No one can deny you the right of retaliation.”

“Dawn will be here soon,” Er Shi Huangdi said. He was already heading out of the palacelike tent. “Get on your feet, my friend. We will ride for Chu.”

Over the weeks and months ahead, the Emperor used the provocation of his attempted assassination to launch what would become a reign of terror and destruction.

In his tent, on the table given over to the terra-cotta map, the Emperor would move small clay figurines of war, game pieces representing his vast army before whom lay the rest of China. Then on the battlefield, he would lead the flesh-and-blood versions of those terra-cotta toy soldiers in a life-and-death game of conquest.

What was a cold game in the planning became a hellish reality to the vanquished—when the capital city of Chu burned, citizens scattered and ran, hoping to avoid the Emperor’s soldiers, who routinely arrested the men, separating them from their women and children. No province was spared as the army of Er Shi Huangdi rolled across the land, raping, pillaging, an unstoppable, merciless killing machine.

No one in the inner circle dared challenge the warrior Emperor, though secretly his general, Ming Guo, felt no pride in these brutal endeavors. The valiant general had not helped defeat barbarian hordes in order to become a barbarian himself. He would watch with hidden disgust and secret shame as the Emperor, astride a black stallion, personally supervised executions, as if the deaths of these poor unimportant souls were necessary to feed the flames of Er Shi Huangdi’s burning ambition.

And as the fires of their scorched cities fought the night, long lines of prisoners in neck stocks would be marched in, past the Emperor, who watched on prancing horseback, and then lined up ten at a time to kneel at chopping blocks. The executioners would raise axes above the necks of the captives and, at the Emperor’s signal, would swing the blades savagely down—an all-too-familiar crunch followed by the thump of blade meeting wood echoing in the night . . . and in Ming Guo’s conscience.

The general knew that the Emperor would not stop until he ruled all under heaven, and yet the great ruler seemed somehow childlike as he moved the terra-cotta game pieces on the big table in his tent. Now the clay soldiers had been moved north and south from the Himalayas to the China Sea.

The Emperor enslaved his vanquished enemies and forced them to build his great wall, soldiers in armor supervising workers in rags. Breaking rocks, shoveling dirt into pits, ramming the earth, laying bricks, swinging massive granite blocks into place, these warriors-turned-slaves endured months of brutal work, spurred by the spears of their supervisors. Their reward would be rides in carts to quarries where—when it was time for the Emperor to move on to the next construction site—the exhausted slaves would be dumped screaming into pits. Such workers would build a section of the Emperor’s great wall, and then be buried beneath it—no need to transport slave labor when more slave labor awaited.

The job was as ambitious as it was grandiose, but soon the Great Wall of China stretched as far as the eye could see, its ramparts patrolled by the Emperor’s armored, spear-wielding warriors, their bravery in battle replaced by cruelty to their captives. The remarkable feat took twenty years, and the final tribute to the historic elfort—and the godlike man behind it—was the construction of a mammoth stone bust of the Emperor in warrior garb atop a turreted temple devoted not to any deity, but to Er Shi Huangdi himself.

The severe, accurate likeness, up a massive flight of stone stairs, seemed to survey the Emperor’s domain, not just the Great Wall but the sprawling capital city nearby. Broad, tree-lined thoroughfares all led to the same place: the palace, a formidable structure that seemed more fortress than royal dwelling, which was perhaps fitting, as Er Shi Huangdi was no benign potentate, rather a brutal dictator, a reality his people had long since accepted but which still compelled his trusted general, Ming Guo, to live in private shame.

A ramp from the Great Wall led to an area where the Emperor’s golden chariot and its steeds were being attended by slaves and palace guards outside a stone temple. In the subterranean chamber below not just the temple but the Great Wall itself, the Emperor dutifully studied the dark arts with the help of five mystics, each of whom represented one of the five elements—fire, water, earth, wood and metal.

The Emperor’s mystics taught him well. In much less time than the Great Wall had taken, Er Shi Huangdi had attained an impressive mastery of those five elements. The dark underground chamber that served as the Emperor’s school had at one end a waterwheel and an enormous clockwork astrolabe—an astronomical instrument used to study the position of the stars and sun. The domed ceiling was a grotesque bas-relief consisting of corpses of enemies of the Emperor, vanquished warriors condemned to eternally support the Great Wall above.

Older now, his still-youthful face cut by an elegant goatee, his lithe form again in black jade-encrusted armor, Er Shi Huangdi walked down a fire-bordered pathway to ascend a stairway to the Altar of the Five Elements, around which stood the mystics who schooled him in the manipulation of the physical world. Below, on the periphery of the chamber, were head minister Li Zhou and a small coterie of eunuch priests, heads bowed.

The Emperor moved to the circular altar at which were stations representing and containing (in bowllike recessions on its surface) each element. Nearest him, one such recession swirled with fire . . .

. . . and into this, the Emperor dipped his palms to bring back blazing handfuls of flame, which he began to mold, his flesh unscathed, as if the licking yellow-and-blue tongues were harmless, and to him they were. He fashioned a burning ball, bounced it in one hand, then with a nod raised water from its receptacle to encircle, and enshroud, the flames he held without quenching them; and when water turned to steam, his gesture turned it to ice.

And now, within that ball of ice, flames danced, as the watching mystics solemnly smiled, pleased with their pupil.

Er Shi Huangdi, who sought ever-more-powerful ways to satisfy his own longing for complete control of everything and everyone, also smiled; but not in the enigmatic, wise way of his teachers—more like a child with a new toy.

“I will use my dark powers,” he said, “to curse the souls of my enemies. Let them hold up my Great Wall for all eternity!”

And again the mystics smiled, and nodded with respect and admiration and pride.

Later, in the palace, the Emperor studied the table with its terra-cotta map—and terra-cotta warriors—that had accompanied him across thousands of miles through hundreds of battles, its arrangement now reflecting all that he had achieved. The three-dimensional map, on a table expanded now to twenty feet by twenty feet, was lined with a network of roads and canals connecting new cities throughout all of China, garrisoned with his clay-soldier army.

And yet beyond China, past his Great Wall, lay uncharted territory—other lands remaining to be conquered.

Er Shi Huangdi realized that all his grand ambitions could not be achieved in one lifetime. One enemy remained to be defeated, the most powerful enemy of all.

Death itself.

The Emperor reached throughout his kingdom for anyone who might know of a sorcerer privy to arts even darker than those of Er Shi Huangdi’s own mystics. A slave stepped forward with news of one such wizard in a distant province, and was rewarded with a quick death, which was as close as Er Shi Huangdi came to mercy.

With his personal guard of twelve, Ming Guo—still the Emperor’s most trusted general—rode through the palace gates, setting out to find this wizard. After months of riding, the journey ended at a rugged escarpment and a looming complex of buildings, some wood, some stone. The central and most impressive of these—though not the largest structure—was a templelike affair straddling a narrow gorge. The only access was a narrow staircase carved from the rock of the steep slope.

Leaving his soldiers behind, Ming Guo made the climb.

Soon the general was stepping cautiously into a cramped chamber dwarfed by its own massive wooden beams, which were part of the structural design that allowed it to straddle the gorge. He found himself in what was clearly an ancient apothecary.

In the dimly lighted gloom, on the stone floor, were smoking vats and billowing vials; all around were shelves rife with boxes and jars of mysterious ingredients, and urns everywhere, with some vessels hanging by twine from the inverted V of the ceiling. Smells were acrid here, sweet there, and unfamiliar everywhere.

Down at the far end of the chamber, Ming Guo could make out a figure; but it was not that of a wizard. This was, perhaps, the wizard’s assistant, a striking woman with high cheekbones and large, dark eyes, in a purple robe that, while faded, was no less beautiful. Her long dark hair curved around her angular, intelligent face to spill down over one shoulder. Her form was slender yet shapely enough that the robe could not hide all of her charms.

She looked up sharply yet casually as she ground a pestle into a small mortar, obviously at work on some potion or other. “We do not often have visitors from Qin province.”

As he crossed the room, sidestepping jars and pots, Ming Guo asked, “Who has told you I am from Qin province?”

Her smile was faint and, it seemed to Ming Guo at least, ethereal.
“You
have. Just now. You are a soldier? A general?”

“I am.” He was at the base of the small platform on which her preparation table rested. He looked up at her; she looked down at him.

“You are surprised that I am a woman.”

“Perhaps. But not all surprises are unpleasant.”

She smiled again but her eyes returned to her work. “You seek my father.”

“I do, if your father is the great wizard whose skills have reached the ears of the Emperor.”

She said nothing, working the pestle into the mortar. Then: “My father died some years ago. I, Zi Yuan, have taken up his mantle.”

“He had no sons?”

“No. Just an unworthy daughter.”

Unworthy or not, the wizard’s daughter already had Ming Guo under her spell, though no magic had been involved other than the chemistry that can pass between a man and woman in one electric moment.

“My emperor seeks to extend his life,” Ming Guo said, “beyond that of the normal confines of human existence.”

Zi Yuan raised an eyebrow as she watched her work. “That is beyond my powers,” she admitted. “That would have been beyond even my father’s powers.”

Ming Guo bowed. “I regret to hear this.” Then his eyes raised to hers. “I would have enjoyed the journey back to Qin province with you as my travelling companion.”

Again she smiled and something pleasantly wicked came into it. “Well . . . perhaps I
could
help your emperor . . .”

And two months later, in the throne room of the fortresslike palace, Ming Guo presented Zi Yuan to Er Shi Huangdi.

“Wizards are men,” the Emperor said as he lifted her chin with his finger, clearly struck by her radiance, “but you are not a man. And yet . . . I am not disappointed.”