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Zedong grew afraid. The horses ran faster, thundering over the road as fear filled them.
“Help!” Zedong called out. “Help me!”
Inside the carriage, he bounced vigorously, slamming against the walls and the cushioned seats. He fumbled the door open and gazed outside, thinking of trying to climb up to the driver’s seat.
Twenty feet ahead, one of the warriors toppled from his mount with an arrow deep between his shoulder blades. Only then did Zedong see two other riderless horses running after the carriage.
One of the warriors in front of the carriage wheeled his mount around and spurred the animal to speed. “Get back inside the carriage!” the man yelled.
Zedong wanted to retreat to safety, but he wished to know what was happening. Gazing behind the carriage, he spotted a slim rider dressed in black. The rider drew back an arrow and let fly.
The warrior who’d gone to engage the enemy gazed down at the arrow that suddenly jutted from his chest. While he still seemed lost in his astonishment, he slid from the saddle. His right foot didn’t clear the saddle straps and his body was dragged across the broken terrain.
The surviving two warriors approached more carefully, riding low over their horses. They closed on the rider in black.
Ignoring them, the rider urged his mount on. He slid the bow over one shoulder and pushed himself into a crouch on the horse’s bare back, balanced one foot in front of the other.
Before Zedong realized what the rider was doing, he’d vaulted from his mount to the top of the carriage. Zedong screamed shrilly and dodged back inside the carriage. Glancing through the back window, he watched helplessly as the final two riders went down to arrows.
Seconds later, while Zedong quivered in fear, the carriage came to a stop.
The rider was at the side of the carriage. He held a sword in his hand as he opened the door.
“Out,” the rider demanded.
Certain that he’d been held up by one of the many thieves that made travel so dangerous in the area, Zedong obeyed. He tripped on the step and fell to his hands and knees. Before he could stand, a blade was pressed to his throat.
The clouds cleared the face of the full moon in that moment. Surprise filled Zedong when he realized that the thief was a woman. A fox mask covered her facial features.
“Who are you?” Zedong demanded, using the imperious voice that he employed whenever he was on the emperor’s business.
She didn’t answer. The sword never moved.
“I represent the emperor,” Zedong threatened. “Your life is forfeit for killing the imperial guardsmen.”
“One more life,” the fox-faced woman said, “won’t matter, then, will it?”
Zedong had time to think only briefly of the curse the old woman had called down on him. It took a moment more to realize that the woman before him might not have been wearing a mask at all and might have been one of the legendary fox spirit women who drained men of their lives.
His throat was cut before he knew it. Then blackness filled his vision.
1900 A.D .
Huddled beneath a thick wool blanket that stank of wet donkeys, Dr. Heinrich Lehmann, a university professor at Berlin University, cursed in the four languages he knew.
“Steady on, Lehmann,” one of the older men at the dig site advised, shouting to be heard over the roar of the storm. “We’ll be out of this shortly.”
Lehmann ignored the man. He hadn’t cared for any of the men Dr. Hedin had employed for the dig. All of them were coarse and vulgar, nothing like the educated men he’d gone to school with.
The windstorm howled and dirt thudded against his blanket.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Lehmann asked.
“Every now and again,” the man yelled. He was American, thick and swarthy from equatorial digs. He spat on the ground at their feet. “It’s worse in Egypt.”
Long minutes later, the windstorm passed.
Lehmann threw the heavy weight of the blanket off. Dust obscured his spectacles. He removed them and cleaned them with his handkerchief. Tall and lean, he was in his twenties, his body stripped of any spare flesh by hard work. He wore jodhpurs, boots and a khaki shirt that was wet with sweat.
Only a few feet away, Hedin doffed his own blanket and looked around. With his glasses and hair in disarray, coated in dust, the Stockholm professor looked like some kind of rodent burrowing out of the dry lands.
“Look!” Hedin pointed.
Staring off to the left where the professor was pointing, Lehmann was amazed. Where piles of loose earth had been, the broken remnants of a city stabbed up at the dusty sky.
“I knew it was here.” Hedin’s voice barely contained the excitement that filled him.
Lehmann couldn’t believe it. Even though Hedin had already achieved several finds in China, in fact had been one of the few Western archaeologists to be allowed into the area, Lehmann had begun to think that Loulan City was nothing more than a fictional reference.
But that would have meant the gold was fictional as well. Lehmann couldn’t accept that. He knew about the City of Thieves. Hedin didn’t. The Swedish professor had been assigned to map out Asia and to trace the history of the Silk Road, the trade route used for centuries to ferry silk out of China and import Western goods.
“I see it, Dr. Hedin.” Lehmann smiled in acknowledgement. The Stockholm professor was only in his midthirties, not much older than Lehmann.
Gazing into the sky, Hedin shook his head. “We need to move quickly. In case Mother Nature decides to take back what she’s so freely given.”
Lehmann reached for his pack and shovel. Dust and grit rubbed his skin under his clothes, promising yet another uncomfortable day. He pushed the discomfort from his mind, remembering only the legend of the gold and the fox spirit that had stolen the emperor’s gold nearly two thousand years before.
1
“Do you do this often, Miss Creed?”
Taking her eyes from the thick expanse of the Eldorado National Forest ahead of her, Annja Creed glanced at her hiking companion. “Not often,” she admitted. “Generally only when someone has piqued my curiosity.”
“And I have done that?”
Annja Creed smiled. “You have.” She’d only known the man for a handful of hours. They’d met briefly in nearby Georgetown, California, to arrange for the hiking trip. Before that they’d had conversations online for almost three weeks.
Genealogy wasn’t Annja’s field of study. When Huangfu Cao had first approached her about trying to find the final resting place of his ancestor, Annja had decided to turn the man down. As a result of the cable network show she co-hosted, she often received cards, letters, and e-mail requests to help strangers track down family legends. The death of Huangfu’s ancestor—though a brutal and interesting story—was too recent to warrant her attention or expertise.
At least, that was what she’d thought until Huangfu had sent descriptions of that ancestor’s prized possessions. One of them had caught her eye enough to draw her to California on a cold day in March to go traipsing down old roads that had once led to gold mining towns long gone bust.
Huangfu Cao looked like he was in his early thirties, but Annja didn’t bother to guess. She was wrong more often than not. He was five feet ten inches tall, matching Annja in height. But he was thin and angular, contrasting with her full-figured curves. His khaki pants held crisp creases. He wore a dark blue poly-fill jacket against the wind and dark sunglasses to offset the bright afternoon sunlight.
Dressed in a favorite pair of faded Levis tucked into calf-high hiking boots and a black long-sleeved knit shirt under a fleece-lined corduroy jacket, Annja was comfortable in spite of the March chill that hung in the afternoon air. She wore her chestnut-colored hair under a baby blue North Carolina Tar Heels cap she’d fallen in love with at one of the airports she’d passed through in her recent travels. Blue-tinted aviator sunglasses took the glare out of the day. Her aluminum frame backpack carried numerous supplies, as well as her notebook computer, but it was well-balanced and she hardly noticed the weight.
“I’m glad you were interested,” Huangfu said.
“Let’s just hope we get lucky,” Annja said as she scanned the forest before her, barely able to make out the old mining trail they followed.
A century and a half earlier, wagons had carved deep ruts in the land and left scars that would last generations.
“You’re in very good shape.” Huangfu adjusted his backpack. When he spoke, his breath was gray in the cool air for just a moment until the breeze tore it away.
Huangfu was in good shape, as well. Annja knew that because the pace she’d set had been an aggressive one. The man hadn’t complained or fallen behind. When she’d realized what she was doing and that she should have been going more slowly, she’d expected to find him out of breath and struggling to keep up. Instead, he’d been fine.
“I have to be in good shape in my profession.” Annja rethought that. “Actually, I don’t have to be, but I want to be. It comes in handy.” Especially when someone’s trying to kill me. That had occurred far too much lately. Ever since she’d found the last piece of Joan of Arc’s sword in France.
Before that, before Roux and Garin had entered her life, Annja had never once considered the possibility that she might ever have been connected to Joan of Arc. The sword, or maybe it was Annja herself these days, seemed to draw trouble like a magnet.
That was the downside, however. The upside was that whatever karma she presently lived under was taking her places she’d only dreamed of.
“I didn’t think television people actually needed to exercise. Only that they look so.” Huangfu smiled, showing that he meant no disrespect.
“Television isn’t exactly my profession.” Even though she’d been hosting spots on Chasing History’s Monsters for a while now, Annja still felt embarrassed. But doing the show allowed her to go more places than she would have been able to on her own as an archaeologist. Television shows tended to be better funded than the universities that would have hired her as a professor.
Likewise, the show had given Annja more international recognition than the hundreds of articles, monographs, and couple of books she’d written. She knew many of those publishers wouldn’t have considered her work if she hadn’t had the large underground fan base Chasing History’s Monsters had provided. And more of those published pieces had been for laymen than for professionals.
Unfortunately, the recognition was a double-edged sword. Many people tended to think of her as a television personality first and an archaeologist second. Annja never thought of herself that way. What she often gained in access she lost in credibility.
“It wasn’t the television personality I asked to help me—it was the archaeologist,” Huangfu said.
Annja smiled a little. She still wasn’t sure if Huangfu was flirting with her or simply being disarming. She was wrong about that more often than not, too. “Thank you,” she finally said.
They walked for a time. Annja took out the GPS device in her coat pocket and checked their location.
“Do you get many offers to do something like this?” Huangfu opened his canteen and took a sip of water.
“To go looking for someone’s ancestors?” Annja replaced the location device and uncapped her own canteen. “I do get a number of offers.”
“Do you answer them all?”
“No. I wouldn’t have time,” Annja replied.
Huangfu smiled. “Then what was it about my offer that interested you?”
“The family heirloom you’re looking for. That interested me.”
“Because it is a—” Huangfu paused, reflecting. English was not his native language, and he wasn’t as skilled as Annja had expected for someone who worked in international trade circles. He shrugged and shook his head. “I can’t remember what you called it.”
“I was fascinated because of the Scythian art,” she said as she started walking again.
“Yes. You said the Scythians were a nomadic people.”
“They were. In all probability, they were Iranian, but they were known by different names. The Assyrians knew them as the Ishkuzai. The Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus described them as a tribe called the Kimmerioi, which was expelled by the Ishkuzai. The Kimmerioi were also known as Cimmerians, Gimirru in the histories left by the Assyrians.” Annja smiled. “Some people think Robert E. Howard borrowed the Cimmerian culture for his hero, Conan the Barbarian.”
Huangfu shook his head. “I don’t know those names. My ancestors were Chinese.” The words came sharply, edged with barely concealed rebuke.
Evidently Huangfu was, if not somewhat prejudicial, somewhat race conscious. Annja was aware that a number of Asian cultures looked down on each other. Regionalism divided civilization as surely as skin color, religion, and wealth.
“I didn’t mean to infer that they weren’t,” she said.
For just a moment Annja wished she’d passed on the offer to act as guide for Huangfu. She’d spoken the truth when she’d said she regularly got offers to investigate all sorts of esoterica people thought might end up as an episode of Chasing History’s Monsters.
If it hadn’t been for the Scythian art, she’d have passed on this. Looking for dead ancestors didn’t make her Top Ten List.
“The Scythian people traded with the Chinese beginning in the eighth century,” Annja went on. “Probably before that. But archaeologists and historians have been able to track the gold trade to that time period. All I was suggesting was that the design you found in your ancestor’s journals might be older than you think it is.”
Huangfu nodded, mollified to a degree. “Ah, I see. You think helping me find my ancestor might give you more information about the Scythian people.”
“I hope so. It would be a coup if I do. I hope I don’t sound insensitive.”
“Nonsense. I’m here for a man I’ve never met. If it weren’t for my grandfather, I might not be here at all. Are these people you hope to discover more about important?”
The grade went down for a while and became a minefield of broken rock and low brush. “There is a lot we don’t know about the Scythians. Located as they were in Central Asia, trading with China, Greece, what is now Eastern Europe, Pakistan and Kazakhstan—probably other nations, as well—there’s a wealth of history that archaeologists, historians, and linguists are missing.”
Annja took another GPS reading, then corrected their course. She’d confirmed the directions she’d gotten over the Internet with the local Ranger station and with the people in Georgetown, which was a small town only a few miles to the west.
“What do you hope to find?” Huangfu asked.
“The same thing that you do. Some proof that your ancestor was—” Annja stopped herself from saying murdered in Volcanoville just in time “—here.”
Annja followed a small stream through the fringe of the Eldorado National Forest. According to her map, they weren’t far from Otter Creek. Paymaster Mine Road was supposed to be only a short distance ahead.
Tall pines mixed with assorted fir trees. All of them filled the air with strong scents. Sunlight painted narrow slits on the ground. Powdered snow covered patches of the ground. Squirrels and birds met the spring’s challenge, foraging for food in the trees, as well as on the ground.
“He is here.” Huangfu’s face looked cold and solemn. “I intend to bring my ancestor’s bones home, if I am able, and see him properly laid to rest. It is my grandfather’s wish to gather all of our family that we may find.”
Scanning through the forest, Annja found the trail she thought they wanted. The trail rose again with the land.
Everything is uphill out here, she thought.
The park rangers she’d talked to over breakfast in Georgetown had assured Annja the path she planned to trace was an arduous one. Only hikers, horses and bicycles were allowed into the protected areas.
The muddy land was sloughing away under the melting snow. Rainfall for days had turned the ground soft in places. They’d have struggled on bikes and Huangfu had said he wasn’t a horseman so Annja had elected to walk to the location.
“Are we close?” Huangfu asked.
“I believe so. Another mile or so should put us there.” Annja kept walking.
V OLCANOVILLE WAS ONE of the hundreds of towns and mining camps that had sprung up in California after James W. Marshall, an employee of John Sutter’s lumber mill, discovered gold flecks in the tail race in January of 1848. By the end of that year, word had spread and hundreds of thousands of people from around the world had flocked to the most recent member of the United States.
The mining camps and towns had risen up like dandelions, springing full-born almost overnight, then dying in the same quick fashion when the gold ran out or was never found. Hell Roaring Diggings, Whiskey Flat, Loafer’s Hollow, and others had each left behind something of a history in the area. But separating the true stories from those that had been embroidered later, or from the lies they’d been mixed with from the beginning, was almost impossible. As with any history, murder, betrayal, success and failure were all part of the tapestry.
Huangfu gazed at the ramshackle buildings that stood under a thick canopy of trees. Many of the trees showed signs of repeated lightning strikes. Broken limbs, shattered trunks, and places bare of bark were scattered around the site.
Not exactly a place to inspire hope, Annja thought as she turned to Huangfu. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
The man offered her a faint smile. “That’s good. Because at the moment it looks impossible.”
