Imperial tombs of the Western Xia
Ningxia province, Pan-Asian Empire
May 5th, 1940
’Well, here we are, “Doctor Belloq”!’ Klaus Falken said with irony and threw out his hands to encompass the crude-looking stone pyramids that were the Imperial necropolis of the Western Xia dynasty. ‘Now what?’
Indiana Jones smiled, full of himself. ‘All in due time, “Professor Fauconnier”, all in good time.
“Belloq” and “Fauconnier” had been their aliases ever since they arrived in Shanghai with the French liner
Normadie, carrying forged French passports and letters of introduction from the
Musée national des Arts asiatiques-Guimet as procurers of antiquities with a considerable budget. The currency-starved Pan-Asian authorities, represented by the custom officials, had had very few objections to wealthy neutrals spending their cash inside the Empire. After that, their journey had been surprisingly uncomplicated. The Pan-Asian Empire had brought peace and even a measure of law and order to the Chinese interior, but the kind of Police-state control that would have made their travelling impossible in, for example, Nazi Germany was still a far cry beyond the Imperial capabilities.
The two archaeologist had taken a train from Shanghai to Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia province and there they had rented a truck and bought some digging equipment. Driving due west from Yinchuan, they had arrived in the small town of Xiganqu, in the foothills of the Helan mountains, where they had found cheap lodging in a local flophouse and some local farm boys to help with any digging. The next day, they had driven the short distance to the ancient Imperial necropolis of the Tangut, or Western Xia Empire. And still Falken had no idea of exactly what they were looking for.
‘Wich one is the tomb of Li Xian, Emperor Modi?’, Indy asked, letting his gaze wander from from one pyramid-like mound of stones to another.
Falken, like Indy dressed in a leather jacket, wide-brimmed hat, sturdy pants and laced mountain boots, barely needed to consider the question before pointing at one pyramid, markedly smaller than the others. Not for nothing was he the leading expert in the world on these tombs, which he had visited in the late -20s.
‘Emperor Modi? That one – but now I’ve had it with your mysteriousness, Indy! Ever since we left Mexico, you’ve kept me guessing about why you think you’ll find the real tomb of Genghis Khan here, of all places. I’ve come this far on faith alone I’ve stayed away from drink… well, except for that unfortunate calvados binge on the
Normandie… but considering I had spent the better part of two years pickling myself, I think a lapse or two was only to be expected. Don’t you think I deserve some answers?’
Indy said nothing at first, but led Falcon and the four Chinese diggers towards the indicated pyramidoid structure.
‘All right, I guess I have savoured it enough. Here’s my idea: Li Xian, the last Western Xia Emperor ruled in the Tangut capital while army of Genghis Khan besieged it, and when he surrendered, it was only to be executed. His tomb was then used to hide that of Genghis Khan.’
‘Please, elucidate all you want!’ Falken said with shining eyes. ‘For the world I wouldn’t miss to hear how you reached THAT conclusion, considering that Genghis died in Sichuan, not here, and BEFORE the execution of Li Xian.’
‘You know your field, Professor. Yes, Genghis had left a third of his army to besiege Ningxia, detached a corps under Ögedei against the Jin Chinese and led the remainder against the Song Chinese in Sichuan, where he died. The body, presumably in that fancy silver coffin I saw in New York, was brought back to his homeland to be interred. And it’s approximately around then when Ögedei Khan suddenly decides to have Li Xian, the captive Western Xia Emperor, executed. Do you see what I’m thinking, Professor Falken?’
The German frowned, thinking deeply for a second or two. ‘So you’re saying that when the funeral caravan reached this place, the body of Genghis was taken out of the silver coffin and buried here in the Western Xia necropolis, after which the unfortunate Li Xian was bumped off and buried, with his customary pyramid, on top of Genghis’s tomb in order to hide it?’
Indy smiled happily. ‘Shifty of him, wasn’t it?’ Turning to the chinese diggers, he shouted in passable Mandarin. ‘We’ll set up camp over there, and then we’ll start digging in deep under that pyramid!’
Falken was glad Indy seemed entirely preoccupied with the upcoming dig. During the voyage, he had been very depressed at the news from the war, where the United States now not only had lost control of Los Angeles and San Diego, but the Pan-Asians had broken through at Sacramento and kept pushing north along the West Coast. America was in dire peril indeed. Falken decided to “forget” to pack up the radio. It would do his friend good to forget about anything but archaeology for a few days.
****
A few hours into the second day, one of the Chinese diggers sprang up from the pit snaking in under Li Xian’s modest pyramid.
‘The Honourable Doctor Belloq! Come quickly! We have found a wall!’ he shouted in Mandarin.
Indy and Falken quickly moved into the tunnel, which was suddenly cleared of Chinese peasants. Sure enough, behind a residual caking of dry, white earth, a decrepit brick wall was apparent at the end of the tunnel.
‘Break it down!’ Indy ordered, but the peasant boy shook his head, paling.
‘Honourable Doctor, I, your insignificant servant, regret to say that it’s very bad luck to break into the tombs of the Emperor’s of Old!’
'I can't argue with that...' Indy muttered in English, before turning to other archaeologist. ‘Do you think this is what we’re looking for, Professor Fauconnier?’ Indy asked, as always when in front of Pan-Asians, in French. Both scholars could easily read medieval French manuscripts, but their spoken modern French wasn’t quite on par with their understanding of the written language. Indy’s wasn’t quite as bad as Falken’s but odds were that the Chinese wouldn’t spot the accent anyway, given that the odds that they understood the language at all were slim.
Falken nodded. ‘It’s clearly under the tomb of Emperor Li Xian. I don’t know that it is a tomb or if it is, who’s buried there but it can’t be a Western Xian Emperor. Their tombs don’t go this deep – I would know, I’ve excavated a few of them.’
Indy turned back to the frowning digger and sighed. ‘Oh, all right, here’s your pay. Tell the others to come collect theirs too.’
Seeing the five Jiao notes in Indy’s hand, the farmboy brightened considerably. ‘Thank you, Doctor Belloq! Good Luck!’
After an improvised pay line had formed and dissolved and Indy had paid out five Jiao to each, he and Falken were left alone at the entrance to the pit, while the diggers marched off singing happily.
‘Very considerate of you, Doctor Jones.’, Falken said dryly. ‘Of course, this means we’ll have to break down the wall ourselves.’
‘I wouldn’t have it any other way, Professor Falken. Let’s get to it.’
An hour later, the pickaxes had finished their destructive labour and the brick wall crashed inwards, letting out a jet of foul-smelling air.
Indy leaned into the opening with his electric torch. ‘Now I know how Howard Carter must have felt!’ he said eagerly.
To his dismay, the cone of light illuminated only another brick wall about a metre distant. Looking left and right, the space between the two walls ended wit a turn. A check of the roof proved the roof to be made up of narrow vaults. Indy frowned in puzzlement. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s a passageway surrounding the burial chamber itself!’ Falken whispered. ‘A bit like an Egyptian Russian-doll sarcophagus!’
‘But what would be the point?’
Falken didn’t answer, but began to pull down more stones from the edge of the hole. Carefully, but with barely restrained eagerness, the two archaeologists enlarged the hole in the wall until they could both walk through.
‘Careful now!’ Indy whispered, despite knowing that nothing could very well hear him inside the tomb. ‘An ancient tomb can be a very deadly place, and doubly so if it was constructed by who I think. Stay behind me and let me make sure it’s safe. Don’t touch anything!’
‘Fine Indy, this kind of thing is your area of expertise, after all.’
Picking one direction at random, Indy walked right, very slowly and checking the stone-tiled floor, the walls the roof for every step. The place was completely unadorned, which spoke against an imperial tomb, but he saw a series of orange-sized holes in the roof he didn’t like. Still, directing the beam of the torch into them revealed nothing except that they turned to run parallel with the curvature of the roof after some ten centimetres. As he advanced, nothing came out of them – no burning acid, no poisonous cloud of gas, nothing.
After a few metres he reached a corner and immediately saw that the professor had been right: on the left hand wall, there was an opening leading into an inner chamber. Feeling his heart pound savagely in his chest, Indy peered through the opening with his electric light.
Now the cone of light illuminated a square, low-ceilinged room with the roof supported by thick and crude-looking pillars. In the middle was a large stone sarcophagus with a heavy lid in the same material still in place. Unlike Attila’s tomb, the walls were plain, unadorned.
‘The tomb is untouched!’ Falken breathed. ‘Finally, we’ll know!’
Indy put a restraining hand in front of Falkens chest. ‘Wait! There must be something deadly here, I just know it! Give me a second to check it out.’
Again, with all senses straining to find a clue to the traps he assumed must be protecting the grave, Indy circled the room. Apart from more of the ubiquitous round openings in the roof, he saw nothing. One thing drew his attention away from the search for hidden traps: on the lid of the sarcophagus, two carved Chinese ideograms proudly proclaimed the identity of the occupant: “Lord of the Earth” – Genghis Khan!
Finally, Indy decided there weren’t any traps, or at least not any he’d be able to find before he triggered them.
‘Allright, I think it’s clear. Come and give me a hand with the lid – it looks like it could weigh a tonne.’
The lid, like the sarcophagus, was made of rough, barely polished limestone and thick as an outstreched hand from the tip of the fingers to the wrist. Grunting with effort, the two archaeologists pushed it aside with a deep, scraping sound of stone grinding against stone.
It became immediately apparent that there was no body in the sarcophagus, just four small piles of ochre powder lay at the bottom. Indy also noticed several blocks of carved scripture on the inner surfaces of the sarcophagus – he immediately recognised Han characters, as well as Greek and Latin letters, but there were at least two sets of characters he found utterly alien and somewhat disturbing.
‘What is this…?’ Falken mused. ‘Could the body have been cremated and these are the ashes?’
‘It doesn’t look like it, there are no obvious bone fragments…’ Indy replied. ‘And look at the writing… I think this is like a Rosetta stone – the same message written in different languages… except…’
Falken shook his head. ‘No, not different languages, just different characters or letters. As far as I can tell, it’s the same words written in different manners… Except I don’t understand a word of it. Let’s read it aloud: You go with the latin or greek text and I’ll read the Han, see if it rings any bells for any one of us:’
‘Right, here goes…’ Indy said and both scholars began to read what soon began to sound like some sort of incantation:
‘OGTHROD AI’F
GEB’L – EE’H
YOG-SOTHOTH
‘NGAH’NG AI’Y
ZHRO!’
As they concluded the incantation, suddenly the air grew bitterly cold and dry, as if all moisture and warmth had been drawn out of it. Hardly had Indy closed his mouth before he shouted out a horrified curse and jumped back from the sarcophagus, drawing Falken with him. It was just barely enough to avoid the dripping fangs of the four large, hissing cobras that had suddenly and inexplicably replaced the piles of powder at the bottom of the sarcophagus over which Indy and Falken had been hunched moments ago.
‘Where the Hell did those come from?!’ Indy shouted, shivering from both shock and cold. ‘And who turned off the damn heater!?’ There were clouds forming in front of his mouth and nose.
‘Uh-oh… Indy, look!’ Falken said, pointing at the holes in the roof.
Staring in horrified fascination, Indy watched as out of every opening slithered a great snake similar to those in the sarcophagus. As their heads emerged from the hole, it dragged the rest of the body with it and the snakes fell to the ground in a horrid form of slithering, hissing and angrily snapping rain. The archaeologists recoiled in horror from the nearest snake, finding a spot which for the moment was out of reach of the ophidians.
‘Snakes!’ Indy wailed, swinging his electric torch about with wild eyes. ‘Why does it always have to be snakes!?’
Let that be a lesson to me for posting too quickly after the authAAR.
