“Sadly true. They came with tanks and bombs and blew up the famous statues, declaring them an insult to Islam.” The professor kept his eyes fixed to the faraway cliffs, clearly trying not to look at the blood surrounding him. Blood that could have been his. He talked more, his voice never changing from its even pitch. Jordan was starting to find it a little creepy. “All that’s left of the former colossi are those empty niches, holding rubble. It’s as if this valley is cursed.”
Jordan noted the professor’s attention had turned from the cliffs to a tall hill that overlooked the tiny village and shadowed this crime scene. He could make out bits of stone walls, pieces of ancient parapets, and sections of towers. It reminded him of a child’s sand castle that had been kicked over and left to the elements. The surface had been worn down by rain and wind and snow, until the entire edifice had dissolved into a misshapen version of itself, crumbled back to sand and rock, with only hints of its past still showing.
“If this valley is indeed cursed,” Atherton continued, “there’s the source. The Muslims named this set of ruins Mao Balegh, which means Cursed City.”
Curiosity piqued in Jordan at his words, along with a trickle of dread. Something about the place unnerved him—and few things made him uneasy.
“What happened to it?” He kept filming. He might as well get more background information from the professor while he was at it.
“Betrayal and massacre. But, like many such stories, it started with a tragic pair of young lovers.” The professor paused, as if waiting for a response from Jordan.
Jordan didn’t have time to humor him. He tried to move a little faster. The valley was losing light fast, and by tomorrow the snow would have covered everything. He hated the thought of having to finish their investigation in the dark, where they might miss something key.
“This city was once one of the richest in all of Afghanistan.” The professor gestured toward the ruins with his casted arm. “It served not only as a monastic center but also as a major trading post for caravans traveling along the Silk Road from Central Asia to India. To protect that wealth, a Shansabani king named Jalaludin built this citadel. For a full century, it was considered impregnable, growing to house over a hundred thousand people. Stories say it was riddled with secret passageways to help defenders attack their enemies. It even had its own underground spring to make it easier to withstand prolonged sieges.”
“So how did it end up like this?” The ruins had clearly fallen a long way since their glory days. Jordan zoomed in on a blood splash, trying to get a clean shot in the bad light.
“Genghis Khan. A Mongol by descent, he wanted to control this valley. So he sent his favorite grandson to negotiate a peaceful takeover, but the young man was killed instead. Then Khan moved his forces into the valley, swearing to slay every living thing in retribution. But once here, even his vast forces couldn’t find a way to breach the citadel.”
Still filming, Jordan took another careful step forward. “He must have found a way. You mentioned something about a betrayal . . .”
The inflectionless voice continued. “And a love story. The king’s only daughter had fallen in love during the months prior to the siege. But her father had refused her desired suitor, decapitating him when they tried to elope. Heartbroken and angry, she left the citadel and went to Genghis Khan under the cloak of darkness. To avenge her love, she showed the Mongols the secret passages, told Genghis Khan where the king’s forces were hiding at the underground spring.”
Jordan listened to the story with half an ear, concentrating on his work, finishing one side. His efforts weren’t as careful as he would have liked, but conditions were worsening. He crossed to the other side of the street, wiped a melted snowflake off the lens, and filmed his way along.
Atherton stood silent for a breath, then suddenly spoke again, as if he had never stopped. “And once Genghis Khan breached those walls, he did as he had promised. He killed everyone in the city, over a hundred thousand people. But he didn’t stop there. It is said he slaughtered every beast of the field, too. It was those dark acts that earned the city the name it bears today.” The professor shuddered. “Shahr-e-Gholghola. The City of Screams.”
“And what happened to the daughter?” Jordan could tell that the professor was a nervous talker. He needed an ancient story to distract him from the reality of what had happened to his colleagues.
“Genghis put her to the sword, for betraying her father. It is said that her bones, along with the bones of the other dead, both man and beast, are still buried within that hill. To this day, they’ve never been found.” Atherton glanced up the bloody trail to a cleft in the mountain a few hundred yards away, and his eye twitched. His voice dropped to an imploring whisper. “But we were close. We had to get as much work done before this winter as we could. We had to. We had to get any historical artifacts unearthed and secured before they risked succumbing to the same fate as the Buddha statues. We had to work fast to get artifacts out. To save them.”
“Could the team have been attacked because of what they found over the last couple of days while you were gone? Maybe some sort of treasure?”
“Impossible,” the professor said. “If the stories are true about this place, Genghis Khan cleared out anything of value before destroying this city. We’ve never found anything valuable enough to kill for. But superstitious tribesmen did not want us to disturb this mountain-size tomb of their ancestors. Stories abound around here of ghosts, djinns, and curses, and they were afraid that we would awaken something evil. Perhaps we did.”
Jordan let out a soft snort. “I’m less worried about dead enemies than I am about live ones.”
He was glad to have the Rangers at their backs. He didn’t trust the professor or the locals here, not even the Afghani trainees under his care. Out here, loyalties shifted in less than a second. Hell, that Shansabani king had lost his kingdom because he couldn’t even trust his own daughter.
He turned from the ruins and stared at a pair of CH–47 Chinook helicopters that sat a kilometer away, snow collecting on their blades, positioned at the edge of the neighboring town of Bamiyan. They had a team of investigators questioning the townspeople. They were all fighting the night.
He turned off the camera. He’d study the video later, but for now he wanted to think, to feel the scene.
What could he tell by the setting? Someone had attacked the archaeologists with a brutality he’d rarely seen. Blood was everywhere. It looked like a knife fight, not a gunfight, blood arcing out in thin spatters from a flurry of cuts, not single blotches as from a bullet wound. But the sheer amount of blood made it hard to be sure.