His burial had been so secret that an army had slaughtered anyone they saw on their journey to the tomb, as well as the two thousand servants who helped bury him. They rode a thousand horses over his final resting place to trample the earth and even diverted a river over its top. That first army had then been ambushed by another to silence them, and legend told the second army had died by suicide after that battle, so that no man alive would know its location.

So Cade assumed it was a safe bet there was something worth hiding there. Attila’s could wait.

A crash of stone on stone pulled Cade from his thoughts, and he hurried over to view the open sarcophagus’s contents. To his disappointment, there was only a mummy within, bereft of jewelry of any kind. There was, however, a cleaner patch of cloth, the outline of where a pendant had once sat upon the man’s chest.

“Worthless,” Atticus spat.

Cade was disappointed but not surprised. “I bet this place was robbed before Abaddon transported it here,” Cade said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Damn,” Amber said. “Let’s hope the others haven’t been robbed too.”

“What, you mean these places were dug up in the past to rob them?” Scott asked.

Cade nodded. “Mostly around the same time they were built, but there was a lot of tomb robbing by Europeans in the past few centuries too. You know why there are so few intact mummies around?”

Scott shook his head.

“Because Europeans used to eat them all. For medicine, aphrodisiacs. You know, people were still eating mummies in the roaring twenties.”

Scott looked down at the mummy and retched.

“And on that lovely note, shall we get on with it?” Amber asked.

Cade turned and gripped his torch. “All right,” he said, staring into the dark confines of Genghis’s tomb. “Let’s raid some tombs.”

CHAPTER

49

Cade was the first to enter Genghis’s tomb, torch held in one hand, gun in the other.

He was the first person to enter this place in centuries, and it still amazed him that it was possible. To walk where men had walked so long before. To see the lost grave of a man who had shaped the history of the world.

What took him by surprise was the simplicity of the room he had entered. It was a round antechamber with yellowing white walls.

Paintings, peeling though they were, were layered over the top of the walls, inscribed directly onto the crumbling plaster. Yet despite their apparent age, the colors remained vivid.

They were Chinese in style, and this was no surprise to Cade. The Mongols had pillaged China, such that even the poorest Mongol was clothed in silk and Chinese finery. The best minds of China had been put to work for the empire, acting as their engineers, scientists, academics, and administrators. It was likely skilled Chinese slaves who had built this place.

As Cade lifted his torch higher, he saw they were in a domed room, not unlike the roof of a Mongol-style tent. And beneath him … was gold.