Chains of Ice Read Free

her strength, and he had always admired her.
    Bataar dropped back and joined John. He was short-legged and stocky, with high cheekbones and straight, dark hair. He heard things: the breathing of a lost child, the whisper of a butterfly’s wings. Now, in his quiet voice, Bataar asked, “Can you hear that?”
    John stopped and listened. He heard the tap of feet, the slither of ice down a wall, the soft whistle of some unfelt wind. “Hear what exactly?”
    “Water,” Bataar said.
    The hair rose on the back of John’s neck. He listened again, but heard nothing. “Where?”
    “Ahead of us.” Bataar gestured vaguely forward.
    John thought back. The helicopter that had flown them in had repeatedly circled the mountain valley. The long, massively heavy glacier snaked down from the snowy heights, fractured and rugged, moving ponderously toward the lower elevations. The ice dragged sediment off the surrounding rocky mountains and carried it in long, dirty lines that marred the pristine blue ice with gray. The pilot proved that he’d carried tourists there before when he told them how much the ice had retreated in the last year. “Twenty feet.” He grinned, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “I saw the cave first, a cave my people built thousands of years ago out of stone and ice, and I called your people. I’m good, huh? You pay me?”
    At the time, John had been so amused by the fellow’s open greed he hadn’t bothered to think that they had landed on bare rock where the glacier terminated—and although the glacier was clearly melting, no stream flowed from its base.
    Now Bataar’s words made him realize—somewhere, something within the glacier dammed the outflow.
    “How much water?” John asked.
    “Not much. Not yet. But do you know what will happen when the outflow for this glacier is released?”
    Yes, John knew. It would be a flood of devastating proportions. When it broke through, the glacier, lubricated by the water, would rush forward, obliterating the cave and everything—and everyone—inside.
    “Should we tell Gary?” Bataar was Mongolian. He’d traveled in the Himalayas. He understood their dire situation, had probably understood even before they entered the cave.
    “No. But let’s see if we can hurry them along.” John glanced forward—and the group in front of them had disappeared. He ran forward, Bataar on his heels. An icy wall, painted to resemble a tunnel, suddenly loomed before them, while the passage abruptly opened to the left. John skidded on the ice, his studded boots barely stopping him.
    Bataan slammed into him, and they hit the wall hard.
    The stone slab gave, almost as if it rested against a sponge. Ice rained down from the ceiling, breaking on their faces like shards of glass. Suddenly, John could hear the faint, mocking trickle of water.
    The two men took the low, left opening. Two steps in, and another wall loomed before them. An abrupt right, and they stood with the Chosen Ones staring into a long, narrow chamber illuminated by a diffused blue, glacial light that leaked between the slabs in the walls and through the cracks in the stone ceiling.
    “It looks as if this room was created to collapse like a house of cards,” John said.
    “I wonder what’s holding it together,” Amina said.
    Sun Hee’s dark eyes examined their surroundings. “Superstition.”
    Gary laughed. “Exactly. Foolish superstition.”
    John and Sun Hee exchanged troubled glances. He didn’t think superstition was foolish. Quite the contrary. In battle, he’d seen far too many examples of superstitions fulfilled.
    The floor had been created by stepping-stones separated by ice. At the far end, rough stones had been piled into an altar with a carefully crafted flat stone table. Atop that in a small stone bowl rested a leather bag, stiff and frozen.
    In the rough whisper of a dedicated treasure hunter, Gary asked, “Max, is that it?”
    “It’s not . . .” Max’s eyes half closed and fluttered as if