Prologue

May 23, 1764

Spitzbergen Archipelago

The bow of the ship's tender grated across broken shale and frozen sand, making landfall on the rocky island of Spitzbergen. Those aboard had come to seek the counsel of the damned, for even dead men had tales still to tell.

"We shouldn't be here," Poruchik Orlov warned, clutching a Russian Orthodox crucifix to his chest.

Commandant Vasily Chichagov couldn't argue with his lieutenant, but that didn't change matters. "We have our orders," he reminded him with a bitterness as icy as the morning breeze.

Behind them, three large frigates—the Chichagov , the Panov , and the Babayev —rocked amidst shattered ice floes that covered the seas. Though it was spring, the Arctic remained trapped in winter. Most of these waters would not melt until midsummer—if even then.

Vasily clenched his fists as much against the numbing cold as in frustration. He pulled deeper into his fur-lined coat, his lower face wrapped in a wool scarf. He waited for the oars to be stored and the tender to be secured before heading ashore.

While waiting, he glanced back to the trio of ships. The lead one bore his name, which was both an honor and at times an embarrassment. Vasily had joined the Imperial Navy when he was sixteen, quickly gaining fame and rank, and now served as deputy commandant of Arkhangelsk Port on the coast of the White Sea. The three frigates had left the port a fortnight ago. Their assignment was to survey and inspect the whaling camps that were established across this frozen archipelago each spring.

As soon as the seas began to melt, the competition here grew fierce for the best spots—not just by Russians, but also by Norwegian and Swedish whalers. During this volatile period, Vasily's naval forces would maintain order and protect the Russian stations. Within a month's time, after each camp had dug in and established itself, his ships could head home. Skirmishes would continue throughout the summer, but nothing that would require the intervention of Russian imperial forces. After this crucial period of settlement, the whalers would begrudgingly respect one another's stakes and claims. So it had always been, going back two centuries, to the time when Willem Barentsz, a Dutch mariner, discovered these islands while searching for the elusive Northeast Passage to China.

Vasily sighed and stared across the ice-choked seas to the east. Last summer, he himself had tried to find that route, but to no avail.

Gruff voices drew him around to the island. Across the beachhead, men gathered around a bonfire set before a scatter of stone shacks. Arms pointed toward them, surely wondering at the tender's arrival.

According to reports, this station had been set up a month ago. Already, a carcass of a bowhead whale floated in the shallows. Even with its flukes sawed off, its body stretched fifty feet. The tons of blubber flensed from its body lay stacked in dark hillocks. Elsewhere, crews manned copper pots, boiling oil from the fat. Closer at hand, racks dotted the shoreline, hung with drying U-shaped drapes of baleen. Off the beach, the remains of the stripped whale had become a floating feast for hundreds of seabirds, which wildly assailed the carcass with raucous cries.

The presence of the whale continued to serve another purpose. It was the anchor to which this camp was set. With this success, no other crew would dare accost or contest this beachhead. Among this superstitious breed of hard men, it boded ill luck to trespass upon another camp after they'd had a successful hunt.

Even Lieutenant Orlov knew this. "Why have we landed here, Commandant? These whalers seem adequately settled, are they not?"

" Da , but it is not these men we seek."

With the tender secure, Vasily waved Orlov ashore, ignoring the man's curious glance back. Vasily had not shared the true reason they'd come ashore.

As Vasily climbed free of the boat, he absently patted his jacket pocket. It held a letter from Empress Catherine II, written by her own hand. It contained a secret directive that had only been handed to him after his trio of ships had set sail across the White Sea.

The man who had delivered that missive sat at the tender's stern.

As if sensing Vasily's thoughts, Mikhail Lomonosov stood and crossed the boat. He was a sepulchral figure dressed all in black, from heavy frock to a wide brimmed hat. He had kept to his cabin during the journey here, ensconced with books and maps. Only a handful of people knew he had traveled from Saint Petersburg to Arkhangelsk, bearing the empress's decree.

Though only in his fifties, Lomonosov had already earned the civilian status of state councilor—equivalent to that of brigadier general in the army or captain-commander in the navy—outranking even Vasily. The man had achieved this lofty position by proving himself a genius in a wide spectrum of pursuits. He had a long list of accomplishments across esoteric fields: physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography, minerology, even history and poetry.

Lomonosov joined him on the beach. "I've forgotten how frigid it is this far north."

This was not stated as a complaint but spoken with a wistfulness. It reminded Vasily of a detail in the man's biography. Lomonosov hailed from these icy lands. He had been born in the village of Mishaninskaya in the Arkhangelsk Oblast. As a boy, he had traveled with his father, a prosperous fisherman, across these very seas on trade missions. So, this journey here was as much a homecoming for the man as it was in service to the empress.

"Now that we've made landfall," Vasily groused through his scarf to Lomonosov as the councilor joined him, "perhaps you could share what was left unwritten in the empress's letter."

"Once we're alone," Lomonosov stated with a taciturn expression. He pointed to a tall figure approaching them. "That must be Captain Razin, head of the whaling crew."

Vasily agreed. The heavily bearded Cossack appeared oblivious to the cold, wearing only pants and an open-collar shirt. What little skin showed was salt-scarred and burnished to the color of dark copper. There was nothing welcoming in his manner, a sentiment reinforced by a sheathed saber at his side and a holstered pistol over his shoulder.

He spit into the sand before speaking, a heavy gobbet that splattered near Vasily's boot. Orlov took a threatening step forward, but Vasily motioned him back.

"Finally," Razin said, "I sent word of the bodies a month ago. Before much longer, they'll be thawing and stinking. My men won't go near that cursed stretch of beach until they're all hauled off, and I need that space if we hope for a successful hunting season."

"We will secure the dead in short order," Vasily assured the captain. "But first we wish you to show us what you found among them."

Razin sneered, glanced around the five-man party, then mumbled under his breath as he turned away. "Should've burned them all when I had the chance."

Lomonosov heard him. "You were right to send word back to Saint Petersburg. The bodies mark a team from the Imperial Academy, explorers who vanished two years ago while trying to discover the Northeast Passage. You and your crew will be rewarded for your service to Russia."

Razin looked back. "Rewarded how?"

"The recompense will be commensurate with what we find here today and where it might lead."

Razin frowned, clearly struggling with the councilor's verbiage.

Vasily translated. "You'll share in any bounty gained from the recovery of these men."

"As I should," Razin concluded and grunted for them to follow.

Lomonosov turned to Vasily. "Best we limit this first survey to just you and your lieutenant."

Vasily nodded and waved for the other seamen to remain with the tender, then set off with Orlov.

Vasily quickly drew alongside Lomonosov. "Now that there are fewer ears, maybe you could explain the reason behind all this subterfuge. Why does the discovery of a lost crew from the Imperial Academy require a sealed order from Empress Catherine? Many have sought the Northeast Passage, me included."

"It's because this team was dispatched by Catherine herself—and not to search for a route between the Atlantic and Pacific."

Vasily drew Lomonosov farther aside from the other two men. "Then what were they searching for?"

"At the moment, the secrecy is less about what they were searching for and more about what they might have found—especially due to the record that Captain Razin made of their belongings. I was sent to confirm what the captain described and determine the best course of action from here."

Vasily sighed, resigned to the fact that he would have to let this play out.

In silence, they followed Razin across the camp and through oily clouds of boiling blubber. The stench choked the throat and lay thick on the tongue. Once upwind of the station, the air eventually cleared, growing cold and crisp. The sky remained an aching blue, but a dark line at the horizon warned of incoming weather.

They hiked another quarter mile, following high cliffs that bordered the rocky beach. Razin seemed to be leading them nowhere. There was no sign of any dwelling in sight.

Razin finally stopped, lifted an arm, and pointed. "You'll find them in there."

It took Vasily another full breath to spot a shadowy break in the cliff face. It marked the mouth of a cave. He searched the neighboring seas but failed to spot any evidence of a shipwreck. The doomed crew must have abandoned their ship, maybe after it had been trapped and crushed by winter ice. It was a sadly frequent tragedy this far north, one he came close to experiencing himself when he sought out the Northeast Passage. He grimaced as he imagined the crew trekking across the frozen sea to reach land and seeking shelter where they could.

Not that coming here had done them any good .

"I've work to see to," Razin said sourly. "I'll leave it to you crows to pick among the dead."

When no one objected, the captain turned and headed back to the smoke-shrouded camp.

Lomonosov did not wait and set off toward the cave. Vasily and Orlov hurried after him. Once at the entrance, the lieutenant ignited a lantern and lit their way down a short tunnel.

The walls were heavily coated in ice that reflected the lamplight. Meltwater ran underfoot. The tunnel emptied into a small cavern—now an icy crypt. Four bodies were stacked at the threshold, tangled and frozen together, creating a macabre dam across the entrance. The dead men had either been washed there by the tides of melting and freezing waters or perhaps they'd been purposefully stacked there to act as windbreaks for the other five crewmembers who lay sprawled inside the cave.

To enter, Vasily and the others had to climb over the dead men. As they did, hollow eyes stared up at them. Jaws hung open in silent screams, showing blackened tongues and white teeth.

A misstep by Orlov shattered a frozen hand under a bootheel. The lieutenant hurried away, as if fearing retribution from the dead.

Once inside, Vasily fought down his revulsion and circled a ring of stones, dark with ash, marking an old firepit. The crew must have burned their sleds after using them to transport gear and food. Still, at the back of the cavern, one object had been spared the flames. Even as the crew froze to death, they hadn't torched this artifact. It spoke to the value placed upon it.

Lomonosov stepped briskly toward this prize.

Off to the side, Orlov lifted his lantern toward a neighboring wall. A long row of names had been chiseled into the rock, likely an accounting of the crew, an epitaph written by the dead.

A gasp by Lomonosov drew Vasily's attention back around. The councilor stood before the large artifact preserved at the back of the cave. It was a huge horn of ivory, curved, and longer than a man's outstretched arms.

"What is it?" Orlov asked.

"A maimanto tusk," Lomonosov answered. "Also dubbed mammon's horns . Many such finds have been discovered in washed-out riverbeds of the north, often by the Samoyed clans of Siberia. They're believed to be from a long-dead species of sea elephant."

Vasily shrugged. "But why did the crew go to such lengths to drag it here, to protect it?"

Lomonosov waved to Orlov. "The lamp... bring it closer."

Vasily nodded for his lieutenant to follow this instruction. Lomonosov pointed to a section of the tusk.

Across most of its curved length, the coarse exterior husk had been shaved down to the ivory beneath, creating a canvas for an ancient artist. Fine scrollwork had been engraved into the ivory. Unfortunately, age and weather had shattered the handiwork into fragmented pieces.

Still, there remained enough to reveal glimpses of some city, one marked by pyramidal structures.

Lomonosov choked on his words. "It's... it's just as Captain Razin described..."

"But who etched it?" Orlov asked. "Was it one of the crew?"

Lomonosov ignored the question. Even Vasily knew this couldn't be true. This was far older than any of the dead men.

Lomonosov confiscated Orlov's lamp and set about examining the length of the tusk. He illuminated every surface, occasionally revealing other glimpses: a broken tower, a decorated throne, a sliver of a moon.

"What's being depicted here?" Vasily asked.

Lomonosov stiffened and brought the light closer to the ivory. He stared at a section for several breaths—then passed the lamp to Vasily. "Hold this."

After Vasily took the lantern, Lomonosov stepped back and fumbled through the inner layers of his heavy frock. Vasily used the moment to study what had triggered such a reaction in the man.

The lamplight revealed another scrap of scrollwork, just a sliver, but enough to reveal a trace of writing, one that looked more crudely inscribed, perhaps a hasty addition.

Vasily squinted at the letters. "This writing... it almost looks—"

"Greek," Lomonosov confirmed as he withdrew a small book from an inner pocket. "I believe it's a name. One that has echoed across millennia."

"What name?" Orlov asked, looking warily back at the bodies.

Lomonosov leafed through the pages, then stopped and showed Vasily a passage. "This is written by Pindar, a Greek lyricist of the sixth century B . C ., from the tenth section of his Pythian Odes ."

Vasily frowned and shook his head, failing to understand the significance.

Lomonosov sighed and tapped a finger under a single word in that passage. "Does this not look familiar?"

Vasily stared between what was written on the page and what was engraved on the horn. "It looks like the same word—at least a fragment of it—has been carved into the ivory. But what does it mean?"

"Like I said, it marks a name, a mythic place." Lomonosov returned to study the depiction of the pyramids.

"What place?" Vasily pressed him.

"Hyperborea."

Vasily scoffed with disbelief. All who sailed these seas had heard of the legendary lost continent to the north, a land free of ice, richly forested and populated by a nearly immortal people. Many explorers had gone in search of—

Vasily straightened as understanding struck him. He gave Lomonosov a hard look. "Is that what these poor souls had gone looking for—not the Northeast Passage, but Hyperborea?"

"At the request of Empress Catherine," Lomonosov confirmed.

Vasily clenched a fist. "Then they were doomed from the start."

Lomonosov kept his gaze on the curve of tusk. "It was indeed a daunting task given to them. To quote Pindar, ‘ Neither by ship nor on foot could you find the marvelous road to the meeting-place of the Hyperboreans .'"

"In other words, a fool's errand."

Lomonosov stared at Vasily with a raised brow. "Do you dare call our empress a fool?"

Vasily winced, reminding himself to be more cautious with his words, lest he be hung for treason.

"Catherine is no one's fool," Lomonosov insisted. "In fact, she has done that which no man or woman has ever accomplished." The man shook his head, and his lips thinned, as if reminding himself to be careful with his own words. "Suffice it to say, she did not send them off without any guidance."

Vasily wanted to press this last detail further, but he knew Lomonosov would not relent. So, he changed tack. "Regardless, why does the empress seek out this lost continent? I've heard stories about the inhabitants of Hyperborea, of an elixir that grants centuries of life. Securing such a treasure has been the ambition of many explorers. Is that what she hoped to discover?"

Lomonosov sighed heavily. "Again, you call her a fool without stating it outright. The only immortality she seeks is to lift the Russian Empire to greater prominence, to have us shine brighter than the Europeans who look down upon us as savages. The discovery of Hyperborea—even remnants thereof—would bring far greater glory to the empire than even the discovery of the Northeast Passage."

Vasily doubted this was true, but he returned his attention to the curve of tusk. "And you believe this might be proof that the first expedition had been successful?"

"I... I do not know, but it is a hope. A place to start."

Vasily sensed the weight of the other's words and what he left unspoken. "And you intend for us to finish it."

"That is why Empress Catherine sent me with her decree."

Vasily glanced back at the icy crypt, praying he and his men wouldn't suffer the same fate. He noted Orlov standing to the side, near the tip of the horn. The lieutenant's neck was craned back. He stared not at the tusk, but at the wall behind it.

With the lantern still in hand, Vasily stepped over to Orlov and raised the light. Like the names of the dead chiseled into the cavern wall, someone had chipped out a final warning into the rock.

Orlov read it aloud. " ‘Never go there, never trespass, never wake that which is sleeping . ' "

Vasily turned to Lomonosov. The councilor's gaze remained on the tusk, on the ancient metropolis etched into the ivory. The man's eyes glowed in the lamplight.

In that moment, Vasily knew the truth.

No dead man's warning would stop them.