David Sakmyster - The Mongol Objective

He didn’t want anything to do with this place or this search, this quest of Montross’s. He just wanted to wake up back home in his room surrounded by all his books, even those comics and graphic novels his mom frowned on despite Dad’s insistence that they contained some basic literary merit. A boy needed his heroes.

Alexander even wished he could be back in Egypt, in Alexandria at the huge library where he got such a thrill every day being able to sneak into that private elevator with his mother and go all the way down to the secret bottom level. It had all been so exciting, the most perfect life a little boy with a curious mind could ask for. To be loved by two equally interesting and mysterious parents, spending time with each at their exotic homes, and sometimes, most happily, at holidays or on his birthday, together. But, in just one day, it had all been stolen from him.

The reality hadn’t yet sunk in. Instead, he felt that at thousands of miles away he was suddenly too far removed to feel anything. To grieve for his mom, for the life he had. To do anything but try to cling to memories he already felt were fading away. The touch of her, the way she smelled, her giggling laughter when she let him tickle her feet.

Something settled in the cargo area behind him under all their gear, and Alexander sat up and was about to look when Montross barked at him to turn around and buckle up. They were leaving the city, heading off-road into the steppes.

Alexander looked out in awe of the vastness of this terrain, the open grasslands, the few lakes and rivers and the rolling hills stretching far to the north, where the white-capped peaks bordering Siberia glittered pristinely under a fiercely blue sky. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he’d been told by the guide, that in another two months this would all be covered with snow and ice and they’d have no chance to make this trip.

They made a slight turn and there was a hill, steeper than the others, with an enormous likeness of a man’s face upon it.

“There he is,” Montross said, pointing. “Genghis Khan.”

“His portrait,” said the guide, “laid out in white stones for all of Ulaan Baatar, and Mongolia’s visitors, such as yourselves, to see.”

Alexander blinked, keeping an eye on the image of Mongolia’s national hero as long as it was visible, until they left the main road and started on the bumpy trail northeast.

Toward Burkhan Khaldun, the Sacred Mountain.

Lulled by the jarring, bumpy ride, and exhausted from fitful naps on the plane, Alexander thought briefly about the mysterious woman who had come with them. Nina. He hadn’t seen her since the airport, but knew she was up to something, doing her own recon maybe with those military men who had left the sub with them.

At first, Alexander had hoped the stern-faced customs officials would identify Montross from law enforcement alerts or something, or would see that Alexander wasn’t along willingly, and someone would rescue him, but Montross apparently knew what he was doing. A lot of money changed hands, and the right officials nodded and let them go on their way, no questions asked.

So here he was, alone with his mother’s murderer. He was halfway around the world, so far from his home and his father. Hoping, believing that his dad and Phoebe, and the rest of the Morpheus Initiative, with all their psychic abilities, would be able to find him. Hopefully they’d succeed in no time at all. In fact, Alexander thought, they were probably on their way right now.

That gave him a little comfort, and with the Khan’s face still in his mind, Alexander yielded to the embrace of sleep, hoping for a dreamless slumber-anything except what came, gingerly at first, then surging on full-tilt.

Visions.

The nine ox-tail standard, carried high and charging into battle ahead of fifty thousand men on horseback, thundering over the snow-covered plains. A second contingent swarms along the eastern ridge and rains arrows down upon the hapless army caught in the valley, surrounded on all sides.

High above it all, wrapped in a blue cloak as the snow turns to a freezing rain, Temujin sits on a muscled black steed. The Khan’s hooded eyes follow the battle with rote interest, as if this was but another annoyance, an obstacle to overcome on the way to a far greater destiny… towers, domes and minarets covered with colorful mosaic tiles, glimmering in the desert sun, crumbling under the Mongol assault as monstrous catapults launch huge misshapen blocks into the air and over the walls of Koneurgenc, the capital of the Kwarizhm Empire. A hailstorm of epic proportions, the sky darkens as the rain of stones pummel into the stalwart edifices of this ancient city, reaching all the way to the Imperial Palace, where Mohammad huddles in prayer even as his soldiers race out to defend their lord, only to be cut down in a fusillade of arrows and an avalanche of boulders. Walls topple, towers crumble like cardboard game pieces, and soon the city burns.

Miles away, on a dune surrounded by his standard bearers, the ox-tails blowing in the hot wind, Temujin lowers his head and lets his smile form. “Now is the time,” he tells his chief. “In the terms of surrender, offer to spare the women and children only if the Sultan delivers me the contents of the tomb of ancient Cyrus, and only once I have obtained the key.”

“ Surely,” says the chief, “Mohammad will deny its existence.”

“ Then I will deny him his,” Temujin replies. “And after we have massacred everyone inside those walls, I will still find it. The agents of Blue Heaven have decreed that I should become the world’s savior. But first, I must be its conqueror.” His eyes cloud over with visions distant and epic. “And I must have that key.”

“ What then, master? You spoke of the other two keys. Do we go to Bodrum?”

Temujin blinks. “Not yet. We know that one is safe at the remains of the great Mausoleum. It will be there when we need it. No, first, we must go to…”

… A crystal blue sea, a harbor filled with multi-colored sails and vessels of all types, and a sprawling city.

Alexandria.

Temujin rides hard, at the vanguard of a hundred men, thundering through the city, out through the Gate of the Moon and charging into the red-sand desert toward a distant outpost.

He glances back ruefully at the tower on the distant harbor, the once-proud Lighthouse. The Pharos. Two-thirds of its former size only, already wracked by earthquakes, it still stands proud and resolute, mocking him. Mocking his earlier attempt to plumb its secrets.

“ Failure,” he mutters…

… as men holding torches and descend a dark stairway, passing two huge statues and stand before a wall etched with seven symbols.

He climbs back up the stairs, having commanded his men to turn the symbols, hoping what the old Chinese philosopher told him about the alchemical combinations will work.

But while the door opens, it isn’t enough. Only a trick, a ruse. A test-one that has found him wanting. Forty men die. Some burned to death, others drowned. Forty is enough. The Pharos is too strong, and Temujin is not worthy-not yet. But he will be. When the world is his, when the keys are his. Then, maybe then, he will try again. He will truly earn the Way into the Pharos, the path to the ultimate treasure.

So now he rides, his horse kicking up sand and creating dervishes that his followers burst through and scattered. Finally, he arrives at a small collection of huts, altars, stones and markers.

He dismounts before his horse even stops, running ahead, outpacing his men who finally catch up with him at an unassuming hillock under a mass of large stones no different from dozens of others.

Temujin reaches into his burka and pulls out a scroll, which he promptly unrolls, revealing a crudely drawn map. “Here!” he shouts. “It is just as I drew in my vision. Here, beside six other markers, between two blank obelisks.