Gray appeared to be taking no chances. They had no time for accidents or falls. He planted each piton with great care into cracks in the ice, drilling the eyebolts deep. He kept three limbs on the wall at all times, moving steadily, stringing a line as he went.
Three-quarters of the way up, Gray reached high and tested a split in the ripple of ice with his ax—only to have an entire section fall away from the wall. Like a glacier calving, it broke and plummeted below, crashing with a resounding boom. Ice boulders scattered all the way to the parked ATVs.
Gray lost his hold and fell to his last piton, swinging from the rope, but it held. He got his feet back to the ice and continued his ascent with even more care. Finally he reached the top and pulled himself up with the ice ax, digging in with his crampons, into the frozen tunnel.
A moment later, a light bloomed up there, turning the waterfall into rippling blue glass. His head popped back out, and Gray waved a flashlight.
“Passage goes on!” he called down. “Let me secure a line! Kowalski, help Vigor into a climbing harness!”
In short order, Gray had a rope running through an eyebolt screwed into the roof of the tunnel. Kowalski hooked Vigor to one line. By pulling on the other, the big man practically hauled him up the waterfall. Vigor did his best to help, pushing off pitons or grabbing the next.
With hardly any effort, he found himself on his belly next to Gray in the tunnel. Vigor looked down its throat. It looked like a chute drilled through the heart of a sapphire crystal.
“Let’s go,” Gray said, crawling on his hands and knees. “Stick behind me.”
The passage rose at a slight angle upward, making the traverse across the ice flow treacherous. Its surface was slippery, trickling with cold water. One mistake and someone could go body-sledding back down the tunnel and shoot out into the open.
Another fifteen yards and the ice rose so high in the tunnel that Gray had to slide on his belly, squirming like a worm to continue on. Vigor waited at the bottleneck, suddenly feeling claustrophobic.
Gray’s voice echoed back. “It opens past the squeeze! You need to see this!”
Spurred by the excitement in his voice, Vigor repeated Gray’s action, wiggling his way through the pinch. Near the end, a hand clamped onto his wrist and pulled him the rest of the way out, like a cork out of a bottle.
Vigor found himself standing in another cavern, atop a frozen pond. To his left, the shore of the pond rose in a sheer cliff of bedrock, maybe four meters high. Gray pointed his flashlight’s beam to a set of stairs cut into it long ago. The way appeared to lead to a ledge up top.
“C’mon,” Gray said.
They scaled with care. Gray used his ax to clear a few steps of thicker ice, until finally they reached the top.
Gray offered his arm to help Vigor to his feet, but he ignored Gray and stood up, staring at the far wall. Through a thin crust of blue ice, he saw an arched set of black doors.
Vigor gripped Gray’s arm, needing his solidity to make sure what he was seeing was real. “It’s the entrance to Genghis Khan’s tomb.”
8:48 A.M.
Gray didn’t have time to stand on ceremony or savor the discovery. Using the butt of his steel ax, he cracked and scraped at the shell of ice covering the doorway. Huge sheets fell with every strike, the door ringing with each blow, indicating it was metal. In less than a minute, he had the doorway clear.
The archway was no taller than his head.
As Gray brushed the hinges clean, Vigor touched the surface reverentially. He had his own flashlight out and shone the beam at a spot where Gray’s ax had pocked the metal door.
“It’s silver under the layer of black tarnish!” Vigor said. “Like the box holding the bone boat. But look, where the door is gouged deep, I can see splintered wood under the metal. The silver is only plated on the surface. Still . . .”
Vigor’s eyes glowed brightly.
With the crude hinges cleared, Gray swung a latch up that held the double doors closed. He offered Vigor the honor of pulling them open.
Plainly holding his breath, Vigor grasped the handle and yanked hard. With a grinding of ice crystals still in the hinges, the doors parted and opened wide.
Vigor fell back from the sight.
It wasn’t what they had been expecting.
While nearly empty, it was no less astonishing.
A circular gold chamber glowed before them. Floor, roof, walls . . . all were covered in rosy-yellow metal. Even the inner surfaces of the doors were plated with gold, not silver.
Gray allowed Vigor to step inside first, then he followed.
Everywhere the gold had been sculpted and carved by skilled artisans. Across the roof, gold ribs led to a circular ring. The walls held posts of gold. The intent of the design was obvious.
“It’s a golden yurt,” Gray said. “A Mongolian ger.”
Vigor stared back at the archway. “And when the door is closed, it forms a solid vault. We’re standing symbolically inside the third box of St. Thomas’s reliquary.”
Gray remembered the skull and book had been sealed in iron, the boat in silver, and now they were inside the final chest, one of gold.
Vigor moved to the right, as if nervous to enter any deeper. “Look at the walls.”
Affixed to each sculpted gold post were what appeared to be jeweled torch holders. Gray reached for one, only to realize it was a crown. He searched the circular space. They were all crowns.
“From the kingdoms Genghis Khan conquered,” Vigor said. “But this isn’t Genghis Khan’s tomb.”
Gray had recognized the same as soon as the doors had opened. This was no sprawling necropolis, full of the riches and treasures of the ancient world. There were no jeweled sepulchers of Genghis and his descendants. That waited still to be found, possibly back in those Mongolian mountains.
Vigor spoke in hushed tones. “These crowns were left to honor the man whose crypt this is.”
Vigor headed along the edge of the room, clearly still working up the courage to move deeper. His arm pointed to the walls between the posts, to the art depicted there. The bright surfaces had been hammered and worked into vast masterpieces. The style was clearly Chinese.
“It was typical for tombs during the Song dynasty to depict the life of the crypt’s occupant,” Vigor said. “This is no exception.”
Gray noted the first panel to the right of the door showed a stylized mountain, surmounted by three crosses. Weeping figures trailed down the hillside, while an angry sky warred above.
The next showed a man on his knees, reaching toward the wounded flank of another floating over him.