“Looks like it continues a ways!” Gray called back.
He headed deeper upon Temur’s instructions. The tunnel grew larger, the walls sweeping to the sides, the ceiling rising higher. About thirty yards in, the sea tunnel ended at a large cavern, a cathedral of ice. Glistening blue-crystal chandeliers filled the domed roof, while diamond columns rose all around.
As they entered, the pressure of their passage made the ice beneath them groan and pop, the sound amplified and echoed by the sheltering walls. A few fragile branches of the chandeliers broke free and shattered to the ice, tinkling away with a dance of shards.
Across the room, a thick curtain of ice flowed in heavy ripples down the far wall, where a spring-fed waterfall had frozen over. A few trickles still ran down its surface, polishing the ice to a quartz shine, before freezing below.
Closer at hand, in the middle of the floor, a darker stain marred the pristine surface, marking a hole through the ice to the open water below. The steeply sloped sides were stained, worn in some places to form small chutes.
Gray had caught sight of a sleek brown body sliding down one of them as they had first entered. This must be a breathing hole for the most famous mammal of Baikal Lake, the nerpa seal.
With nowhere else to go, Gray stopped his ATV. Kowalski and Vigor joined him, flanking him on either side.
“Where are we?” Kowalski asked.
Temur answered, “This is a birthing chamber for our Baikal seals, where pups will be sheltered in deep winter. It is considered very special to our people. It is said we are descended from the spirit of such hardy, noble creatures.”
“But why have you brought us here?” Gray asked, searching around. He wasn’t in the mood for the full Baikal nature tour, not with the clock ticking down.
“Because Elder Bayan told me to bring you to this cave,” Temur said. “That is all I know. I do not know why he asked me to do so.”
Gray turned to Vigor, who looked equally baffled.
“Maybe the old guy just likes seals,” Kowalski commented.
“Or it’s a test,” Vigor said. “All Genghis Khan’s other sites were well hidden, often where land meets water, like this. But they were made somewhat easier to find because of the drought in Hungary or the ecological disaster of the dry Aral Sea.”
“Well, nothing has changed in this region for millions of years,” Gray said. “We’re getting no free passes here.”
“So it would seem.”
Gray searched the ice-encrusted room, forcing himself to remain calm, realizing one fact. The shaman had not sent them here entirely without resources. Gray remembered Bayan instructing Temur where to take them. It was done with only a few words, yet Temur knew exactly where to go. That could only mean one thing.
“Temur, do your people have a name for this cavern?”
He nodded. “In our native language it is Emegtei, which means a woman’s belly,” he said, pantomiming a swelling on his own stomach.
“A womb,” Gray said.
“Yes, that’s right,” Temur said. He then bowed and backed away. “I hope you find what you seek. But I must now go.”
“My friend can drive you back to Burkhan Cape,” Gray offered, motioning to Kowalski.
Temur shook his head. “Not necessary. I have family not far.”
As the man departed, Vigor motioned to the breathing hole, drawing back Gray’s attention. “A womb. That makes sense. This place is a birthing chamber for the island’s spirit animal.”
Gray shook his head, not disagreeing. In fact, he was sure the monsignor was right. Instead, he was taking a different tack. “Vigor, didn’t you say that Olkhon Island is where Genghis Khan’s own mother was from?”
His eyes widened upon him. “That’s right!”
“So this sacred spot could have been chosen as some symbolic representation of where Genghis originated.”
“His spiritual womb,” Vigor conceded.
Kowalski frowned at the icy cavern. “If you’re right, then his mom must have been one frigid—”
Gray cut him off. “This must be the right place.”
“But how does that help us?” Vigor asked.
Gray closed his eyes, picturing this chamber as a womb, the tunnel to the sea a birth canal, flowing outward with life.
But life doesn’t start in the womb . . .
It first needs a spark, a primal source.
According to Vigor, Genghis Khan was technologically ahead of his time, and while he might not have known about the fertilization of sperm and eggs, the scientists of his time surely knew about gross human anatomy.
Gray climbed from his ATV, grabbed his flashlight from his pack, and headed across the room, careful of the ice, giving the breathing hole a wide berth. He pointed his flashlight along the back wall, following that frozen flow upward, noting the rivulets of water still trickling across its surface.
Twenty-five feet above his head, he discovered the source of the spring. A black hole marked another tunnel, half full of ice where the spring-fed flow had frozen over.
Vigor understood. “Symbolic of a woman’s fallopian tube.”
Down which life flows to the womb.
“I’ve got pitons and climbing gear in my pack,” Gray said. “I should be able to scale the fall and reach that tunnel.”
As he turned back, he read the desire in Vigor’s eyes and clapped his old friend on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. Once up there, I can rig a line. We’ll go together.”
They rushed back to the ATV, and Gray began assembling what they would need.
Vigor shivered and stamped his feet against the cold, but excitement shone in his eyes as he stared at the tunnel. “That passage up there must be seasonally locked.”
Gray frowned. “What do you mean?”
“In spring and summer, that hole is probably flooded, gushing with water, making it impossible to enter and traverse. Only in winter, when it’s all frozen over, is the tunnel open and accessible.”
Gray paused to consider this. “Could they have done that on purpose? The date on the skull marked the coming apocalypse as November, a winter month.”
Vigor bobbed his head. “They might have been limiting access, preserving the treasure inside until the season when it was best needed.”
After fitting his boots with spiked crampons, Gray straightened with a coil of climbing rope over his shoulder and a harness in hand, fitted with pitons and an ice ax.
Only one way to find out.
8:32 A.M.
Vigor watched Gray ascend the ice wall, holding his breath, a hand at his throat. Be careful . . .