The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Read online

  Doomed by a double-crossing sorceress to spend eternity in suspended animation, China’s ruthless Dragon Emperor and his ten thousand warriors have laid forgotten for eons, entombed in clay as a vast, silent terra-cotta army. But when dashing adventurer Alex O’Connell is tricked into awakening the ruler from eternal slumber, the reckless young archaeologist must seek the help of the only people who know more than he does about taking down the undead: his parents, Rick and Evelyn O’Connell.

  As the monarch roars back to life, our hero finds his quest for world domination has only intensified over the millennia. Striding the Far East with unimaginable supernatural powers, the Emperor Mummy will rouse his legion as an unstoppable, otherworldly force . . . unless the O’Connells can stop him first.

  THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR

  A Berkley Boulevard Book / published by arrangement with Universal Studios Publishing Right, a division of Universal Studios Licensing, Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Boulevard edition / July 2008

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2008 by Universal Studios Publishing Rights, a division of Universal Studios Licensing, Inc.

  Book design by Tiffany Estreicher.

  The Penguin Group Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguin.com

  ISBN: 0-425-22313-2

  BERKLEY BOULEVARD Berkley Boulevard Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  “People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.”

  —James Hilton

  “Study the past if you would define the future.”

  —Confucius

  “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.”

  —Imhotep

  PROLOGUE

  Emperor of Evil

  EDITOR’S NOTE: The following draws heavily upon the work Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: Myth and Mystery (Bembridge Press, London, 1948) by Dr. Evelyn O’Connell. Among the many accomplishments of Dr. O’Connell, whose doctorate was in the library sciences, were significant contributions to the fields of archaeology and Egyptology. The daughter of noted Egyptologist Howard Carnahan, one of the discoverers in 1922 of the tomb of Tutankhamen, Dr. O’Connell was curator of the Cairo Museum (1925 to 1927) and in her later years held, at various times, the same post at the British Museum in London. In between she wrote a number of well-respected academic works as well as several popular novels that drew upon her experiences on digs and in the field with her well-known husband, explorer Richard O’Connell. The O’Connells raised a son, Alex, who shared his parents’ enthusiasm for antiquities and has followed in the famous footsteps of his parents.

  Long ago, in a time of darkness two hundred years before the birth of Christ, China suffered under the rule of a ruthless emperor—Er Shi Huangdi of the Qin Dynasty. The Emperor’s thirst for power seemed unquenchable, and his willingness to brutally, mercilessly dispatch his foes earned fear for his army throughout the ancient world.

  After vanquishing the barbarians of the north, Emperor Er Shi Huangdi’s army formed a huge encampment among the towering Chinese pyramids of Ningxia, a desertlike region bordering Shaanxi and Gansu. At dusk of the day of their latest great battle, the warriors rested, smells of food cooked over campfires wafting through the peaceful tent city, hearty laughter and drink-fueled braggadocio punctuating the calm.

  Now and then more abrasive sounds threatened the after-battle lull, in particular a line of barbarian captives held in neck stocks and chains and moving along at the request of sharp whipcracks. Thundering past them, an armored messenger on horseback headed toward the enormous black tent whose banners were emblazoned with a three-headed dragon; here the messenger dismounted at a gallop to approach the Emperor’s sentries.

  Within the expansive tent could be found fittings as grand as those of any palace, a black-and-gold interior whose masculine richness was enhanced by the flickering candlelight of wooden chandeliers. Here, in black armor adorned with intricately carved jade and finely molded gold, stood the Emperor, a figure as stoic as a statue, and with angular features just as finely sculpted. Er Shi Huangdi’s eyes, dark and penetrating in the pale oval mask of his face, explored the architectural model displayed on a sprawling table that also included engineering plans of what would one day be known as the Great Wall of China.

  With him, but paying him the respect of distance, were General Ming Guo—tall and somber, his darkeyed demeanor rivaling his emperor’s—and Li Zhou, the boyish, athletic-looking chief eunuch, who despite his youth wore the gold-and-jade medallion of head minister. All were dressed in black, as were the attendants on the periphery numbering twenty much-less-important eunuchs and assorted palace guards.

  When the sentries allowed him entry, the messenger approached not the Emperor but Li Zhou, presenting the scroll to the head minister, who broke the seal and gave what seemed a cursory glance at the Chinese text before passing the message to the Emperor.

  Quickly, Er Shi Huangdi gleaned its contents. Then his eyes raised to those of his head minister and they traded smiles so slight, so brief, that even the nearby General Ming Guo did not catch the exchange.

  Looking at no one, speaking to everyone, the Emperor said, “Leave me.”

  Bows of respect were paid, and the Emperor’s demand heeded, while Er Shi Huangdi himself continued to study the model of the wall he would build, and the map of the lands he would one day rule. Those nearest the Emperor knew that he might stand for hours in quiet, intense contemplation of the plans, the future, that the three-dimensional map suggested.

  The night that followed was clear and crisp with stars that seemed like punctures in the blackness of the sky, letting in pinholes of light from the heavens on the other side. The camp soon settled into near quiet, disrupted only by a few drunken songs from the happy, exhausted warriors, none of whom had the slightest notion that the invaders were about to be invaded.

  Men dressed in black in this camp were no rarity, but these two men in black did not belong here. As they crept across the slumbering encampment, they went unseen until nearing the Emperor’s grand tent, where a sentry caught their movement and was about to call out a query when a third man in black used one hand to slip a knife in the sentry’s back, and another to come around and cover the man’s mouth, turning a cry into a muffled gasp. Then the sentry slipped to the ground, sounding no alarm, forever silent.

  Within the elaborate world of his palacelike tent, the Emperor slept on a surprisingly unpretentious pallet, a soldier-like berth for so powerful a man. He seemed deep asleep and wholly unaware as a blade slit the tent and made an entrance for the trio of assassins, who slipped in low and quick, daggers in hand, already poised to strike.

  The Emperor, at rest, had lost his charismatic presence and seemed almost small, an easy target, a helpless victim. As one assassin took position at the head of the simple bed, behind the intended victim, with the other two assassins on either side of the bed, Er Shi Huangdi might well have been a slumbering youth.

  But he was not.

  And what happened next defied the senses of the men who had come to kill him.

  The Emperor’s eyes snapped open as from under the sheets emerged a sword, which he tossed to his left hand, quickly filling his right with a gold dragon-hilt dagger, which he plunged in a backward stab deep into the chest of the assassin behind him. At the same time, the assassin on the Emperor’s left bedside, lunging in with his own dagger ready to strike, had been pierced by
his intended victim’s sudden sword-in-hand. A second blade struck the already dying assassin in the back, as his compatriot across the bed accidentally stabbed his slumped comrade. Er Shi Huangdi had already vacated the bed, rolling off nimbly, dragon dagger still in hand.

  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 e
ternally 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.