“You aren’t going to leave me to drown!”
The astonishing thought distracted Annja from the floodwaters until they rose above the tops of her waterproofed shoes. Their touch was as cold as the long-dead Emperor’s.
“At least leave me my pack!” Annja shouted, jumping up and swiping ineffectually at the dangling rope-end. She only succeeded in making it swing. She fell back with a considerable splash.
“I’m afraid not,” the woman called. “You have to understand, Ms. Creed. There are two ways to do things—the hard way and the easy way.”
Annja stood for a moment with the water streaming past her ankles. The words were so ridiculous that her mind, already considerably stressed by the moment, simply refused to process them.
Then reality struck her. “Easy?” she screamed. “Not Easy Ngwenya?”
Annja stared. The chill water reached her knees. She stood, utterly overwhelmed by the realization that she had just been victimized by the world’s most notorious tomb robber.
Titles in this series:
Destiny
Solomon’s Jar
The Spider Stone
The Chosen
Forbidden City
The Lost Scrolls
God of Thunder
Secret of the Slaves
Warrior Spirit
Serpent’s Kiss
Provenance
The Soul Stealer
Gabriel’s Horn
The Golden Elephant
Rogue Angel™
The Golden Elephant
Alex Archer
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
1
Tomb of the Mad Emperor
“Oops,” Annja Creed said as she felt something give beneath the cleated heel of her Red Wing walking shoe.
The floor of the passageway was caked inches thick in dust. Annja couldn’t see the trigger. She had sensed more than heard something like a twig snapping.
Already in motion, Annja dived for the floor. She heard a grind, a rumble, a rusty creaking. Then with a hefty metallic sound something shot from the stone walls above her.
Catching herself on her hands, Annja looked around by the light of her bulky hand lantern, which lay several feet ahead of her. She spotted three bronze spears spanning the two-yard-wide corridor a yard above the floor. They were meant to impale any unwary intruder. That included her.
Annja shook her head. “Emperor Lu may or may not have been crazy,” she muttered. “But he sure was paranoid.”
The echoes of her words chased each other down the slanting corridor, deep into the earth’s dark recesses.
C AUTIOUSLY A NNJA WIGGLED forward. As her weight came off the hidden floor plate the spears began to retract into the walls. By the time she reached her lantern they had vanished. The stone plates that covered the ports through which the spears had thrust out swung back into place.
Coughing on the dust she had stirred up doing her snake act, Annja sat up and shone her light on the walls. She could see no sign of where the spears had come from. The walls had been painted with some kind of murals, perhaps once quite colorful. They had faded to mere swirls and suggestions of faint color. They worked to camouflage the trap, though.
She shook her head and picked herself up. “Got to move,” she told herself softly as she dusted off the front of her tan shirt and khaki cargo pants. This would be her only shot. With the construction of a giant dam nearby, the floodwaters were rising. By tomorrow they would make the subterranean tunnels unsafe.
With redoubled caution she made her way deeper into the lost emperor’s tomb.
The corridor walls were hewed from a yellow limestone. Tests showed it had been quarried in some hills several miles away. The passageway air was cool and dry. It smelled of stone and earth.
Some indeterminate distance down, as Annja began to feel the weight, not just of years, but
