Thunderhead

52

BLACK SANK DOWN BESIDE THE DEAD FIRE, exhausted and soaked through. The belated rain beat its regular cadence upon his shoulders; not as furiously as it had an hour before, but steadily, with large, fat drops. He paid it no heed.

Although the initial surge of the flood had abated, the water continued to roar down the center of the valley, its brown moiling surface like the muscled back of some monstrous beast. Distantly, he watched its wide course, around and over stranded trees, arrowing for the mouth of the smaller slot canyon at the far end of the valley. There, in the confined space, the violence of the water returned, and huge spumes of froth and spray leaped up toward the cloud-heavy sky.

For almost two hours they had hovered at the water’s edge. Sloane had made a valiant rescue effort: roving the banks, spanning the flood with rescue ropes, scanning the water ceaselessly for survivors. Black had never seen such a heroic attempt. Or such a believable piece of acting, for that matter. He passed a hand over his eyes as he sat hunched forward. Perhaps it wasn’t an act; right now, he was too tired to care.

Eventually, all except Sloane had gravitated away from the water’s edge to the camp. The remaining drysacks, scattered by the wind, had been organized; the tents repitched and restaked; the riot of twigs and branches cleared away. Nobody had spoken, but all had lent a hand. It was as if they had to do something, anything, constructive; anything was easier to endure than standing uselessly, staring at the rushing water.

Black sat back, took a deep breath, and looked around. Beside him, in neat rows, lay the gear that had been intended for the trip home: still packed and ready to be hauled out, a silent mockery of the portage out the slot canyon that had never happened. Nothing else remained to be done.

Bonarotti, taking his cue from Black, came over and silently began to unpack his kitchen gear. This, more than anything else, seemed to be a mute statement that hope had been lost. Pulling out a small ring burner and a propane shield, he put on a pot of espresso, protecting it from the rain with his body. Soon Swire came over, looking shocked and subdued. Sloane followed after a few minutes, walking silently up from the rushing waters. Bonarotti pressed a cup of coffee into each of their hands, and Black drank his gratefully, gulping it down, feeling the warmth of the coffee trickle into his aching limbs.

Sloane accepted her cup from Bonarotti, turning her amber eyes toward him. Then she looked at Swire, and then—more significantly—at Black, before returning her gaze to the cook. At last, she broke the silence.

“I think we have to accept the fact that nobody survived the flood.” Her voice was low and a little unsteady. “There just wasn’t time for them to make it through the slot canyon.”

She paused. Black listened to the rush of the water, the patter of rain.

“So what do we do now?” Bonarotti asked.

Sloane sighed. “Our communications gear is destroyed, so we can’t radio for assistance. Even if a rescue mission is mounted, it would take them at least a week to reach the outer valley, maybe more. And our only way out has been blocked by water. We’ll have to wait until it goes down. If the rains continue, that could mean a long time.”

Black glanced around at the others. Bonarotti was looking at Sloane, hands protectively cradling his mug of coffee. Swire was staring blankly, still dazed by what had happened.

“We’ve done everything we can,” Sloane went on. “Fortunately, most of our gear survived the flood. That’s the good news.”

Her voice dropped. “The bad news—the terrible news—is that we’ve lost four teammates, including our expedition leader. And about that, there’s nothing we can do. It’s a tragedy I think none of us yet can fully comprehend.”

She paused. “Our first duty is to mourn their loss. We will have time, in the days and weeks ahead, to remember them in our thoughts. But let’s take a minute now to remember them in our prayers.”

She lowered her head. A silence fell, broken only by the sound of water. Black swallowed. Despite the dampness around him, his throat was painfully dry.

After a few minutes, Sloane looked up again. “Our second duty is to remember who we are, and why we came here. We came here to discover a lost city, to survey it and document it. Luigi, a few minutes ago, you asked what we should do now. There’s only one answer to that. As long as we’re trapped in here, we must carry on.”

She paused to take a sip of coffee. “We cannot allow ourselves to become demoralized, to sit around doing nothing, waiting for a rescue that may or may not come. We need to keep ourselves occupied in productive work.” She spoke slowly and deliberately, taking time to look around at the small group with each new sentence. “And the most productive work of all is still to come: documenting the Sun Kiva.”

At this, the faraway look left Swire’s face. He glanced at Sloane in surprise.

“What happened today was a tragedy,” Sloane continued, more quickly now. “But it’s within our power to keep it from becoming something even worse: a tragic waste. The Sun Kiva is the most miraculous find of a miraculous expedition. It’s the most certain way to ensure that Nora, Peter, Enrique, and Bill are remembered not for their deaths but for their discoveries.” She paused. “It’s what Nora would have wanted done.”

“Is that right?” Swire spoke up suddenly. The surprise and confusion had left his face, replaced with something uglier. “What Nora would have wanted, you say? Tell me, was this before or after she fired you from the expedition?”

Sloane turned to him. “Do you have an objection, Roscoe?” she asked. Her tone was mild, but her eyes glittered.

“I have a question,” Swire replied. “A question about that weather report of yours.”

Black felt his gut seize up in sudden fear. But Sloane simply returned the cowboy’s gaze with a cool one of her own. “What about it?” she asked.

“That flash flood came down twenty minutes after you reported clear weather.”

Sloane waited, staring at Swire, deliberately letting the uncomfortable tension build. “You of all people know how localized, how unpredictable, the weather is out here,” she said at last, more coldly now.

Black could see the faltering certainty in Swire’s face.

“There’s no way of knowing just where the water came from,” Sloane continued. “The storm could have come from anywhere.”

Swire seemed to digest this for a moment. Then he said, in a lower tone: “You can see a whole lot of anywhere from the top of that canyon.”

Sloane leaned toward him. “Are you calling me a liar, Roscoe?”

There was something so subtly menacing in her silky tone that Black saw Swire draw back. “I ain’t calling you nothing. But last I heard, Nora said we wasn’t to open up that kiva.”

“Last I heard, you were the horse wrangler,” Sloane said icily. “This is a decision that does not concern you.”

Swire looked at her, his jaw working. Then he stood up abruptly, drawing away from the group.

“You say Nora will be remembered if we open this kiva,” he spat out. “But that ain’t true. It’s you that’ll be remembered. And you damn well know it.”

And with that, he walked out of camp and disappeared among the cottonwoods.

53

BLACK PULLED HIMSELF UP THE LAST RUNG of the rope ladder with a grunt and stepped onto the rocky floor of Quivira, slinging the small bag of equipment beside him. Sloane had gone ahead, and was waiting at the city’s retaining wall, but on impulse Black turned around once again to survey the valley. It was hard to believe that, barely four hours before, he had stood at this same spot and witnessed the flash flood. Now, afternoon light, fresh and innocent, glowed off the walls of the canyon. The air was cool, and perfumed with moisture from the rain. Birds were chirping. The camp had been cleaned up and supplies moved to high ground. The only signs of the catastrophe were the torrent of rushing water that divided the small valley like a brown scar, and the appalling wreckage of trees and earthen bank that lay along and within it.

He turned away and approached Sloane, who had arrayed her gear along the retaining wall and was giving it a final inspection. He noticed that she had snugged the camp’s spare pistol into her belt.

“What’s that for?” he asked, pointing at the weapon.

“Remember what happened to Holroyd?” Sloane replied, eyes on the gear. “Or the gutted horses? I don’t want any nasty surprises while we’re documenting that kiva.”

Black paused a moment, thinking. “What about Swire?” he asked.

“What about him?”

Black looked at her. “He didn’t seem too enthusiastic about all this.”

Sloane shrugged. “He’s a hired hand. He has nothing to say that anybody would want to hear. Once our find becomes known, it’ll be front-page news across the country for a week, and in the Southwest for a month.” She took his hand, gave it a squeeze, smiled. “He’ll fall into line.”

Bonarotti came into view at the top of the ladder, the oversized .44 hanging from his side, digging tools slung over his shoulder. Sloane withdrew her hand and turned to retrieve her gear.

“Let’s go,” she said.

With Bonarotti beside him, Black followed Sloane across the central plaza toward the rear of the dead city. He could feel his heart beating fast in his chest.

“Do you really think there’s gold in that kiva?” Bonarotti asked.

Black turned to see the cook looking over at him. For the first time that he could recall, Black saw animation, even strong emotion, in the man’s face.

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I can’t think of any other conclusion. All the evidence points to it.”

“What will we do with it?”

“The gold?” Black asked. “The Institute will decide, of course.”

Bonarotti fell silent, and for a moment, Black scrutinized the man’s face. It occurred to him that he really had no idea what motivated a man like Bonarotti.

It also occurred to him that, in all his constant dreaming about the kiva, he had never once thought about what might happen to the gold after the kiva was opened. Perhaps it would be put on display at the Institute. Perhaps it would tour the museum circuit, as King Tut’s treasure had. In point of fact, it didn’t really matter; it was the find itself—the initial moment of discovery—that would make him a household name.

They made their way through the Crawlspace to the narrow passageway, then ducked into the inner sanctum. Sloane set up two portable lamps beside the kiva, aiming them at the rock-filled entrance. Then she stood back to prepare the camera while Black and Bonarotti laid out the tools. As if from a distance, Black noticed that his movements were slow, careful, almost reverent.

And then, in unison, the two men turned toward Sloane. She fixed the oversized camera to a tripod, then returned their glances.

“I don’t need to emphasize the importance of what we’re about to do,” she said. “This kiva is the archaeological find of several lifetimes, and we’re going to treat it as such. We’ll proceed by the book, documenting every step. Luigi, you dig the sand and dust away from the doorway. Do it very carefully. Aaron, you can remove the rubble and stabilize the doorway. But first, let me take a couple of exposures.”

She ducked behind the camera, and the dark cavern was illuminated by a quick series of flashes. Then she stepped away and nodded.

As Bonarotti picked up a shovel, Black turned his attention to the rock pile that covered the kiva’s entrance. The rocks had been jammed into place without mortar, and were clearly without archaeological significance; he could remove them by hand, without having to resort to time-consuming excavation techniques. But they were heavy, and the muscles of his arms soon began to grow tired. Although the rock pile itself was curiously free of the dust that had settled so thickly over the rest of the kiva’s surface, Black still found breathing difficult: Bonarotti’s shoveling quickly raised a choking cloud around the kiva’s entrance.

Sloane maintained a supervisory position well back from the kiva, taking an occasional photograph, jotting notes in a journal, recording measurements. Every now and then she would caution Bonarotti against growing too eager. Once she even barked at Black when a stray rock fell against the kiva wall. Almost imperceptibly, she had taken over the role of leader. As he worked, Black realized that perhaps he should be annoyed by this; he had more experience and seniority by far. But he was now too caught up in the excitement to care. He had been the one to first speculate on the kiva’s existence. He had been the one to find it. And his many future publications on the gold of the Anasazi would make that abundantly clear. Besides, he and Sloane were a team now, and—

His thoughts were cut short by a racking cough. He stepped back from the doorway for a moment, wiping his face with his sleeve. The dust had risen to a miasmic thickness, and in the center of it all was Bonarotti, toiling with his shovel. Slanted columns of dust hung in the beams of artificial light. It was a scene worthy of Breughel. Black looked over at Sloane, perched some distance away on a rock, scribbling her observations. She looked up at him and flashed a brief, wry smile.

Taking a few more deep breaths, he waded back in. The upper tier of rocks had been removed, and he began to work on the course below them.

Suddenly he stopped. Behind the rocks, he could now make out a patch of reddish brown.

“Sloane!” he called. “Take a look.”

In a moment, she was beside him. She waved away the dust and took several closeups with a handheld camera.

“There’s a mud seal behind these rocks,” she said. Eagerness elevated her contralto voice to an artificially high pitch. “Clear the rocks away, please. Be careful not to damage the seal in the process.”

Now that Black had cleared the top of the doorway, the going was easier. Within minutes, the seal was fully exposed: a large square of clay stamped against what seemed to be a layer of plaster. A reversed spiral had been molded into the seal.

Once again, Sloane came forward to investigate.

“This is odd,” she said. “This seal looks fresh. Take a look.”

Black examined the seal more carefully. It was definitely fresh—too fresh, he thought, to be seven hundred years old. The mortared door, filled with rocks, had worried him from the start: the door just looked too invasive to be part of the original sealed structure. And it was odd that the omnipresent dust had not settled on the rocks massed in front of the door. For a moment, calamitous despair threatened to settle on his shoulders.

“It’s impossible that anyone was here before us,” Sloane murmured.

Then she looked at Black. “This sealed doorway has been extremely well protected. There are several feet of stones sheltering it from the elements. Right?”

“Right.” Black felt the despair vanish instantly, the excitement returning. “That could explain why the seals look so fresh.”

Sloane took some more photographs, then stepped back. “Let’s keep going.”

His breath coming in short, excited gasps, Black redoubled his efforts at clearing the wall of rocks.

54

FAR ABOVE THE FLOOD-RAVAGED CANYON OF Quivira, the domes and hollows of the wide slickrock plateau were warmed by the late afternoon sun. Gnarled juniper trees dotted the strange landscape, and Mormon tea bushes, wild buckwheat, and a sprinkling of purple verbena grew in sandy patches. Small, steep gullies intersected the landscape, winding through the red sandstone, the deeper potholes along their rock beds still shimmering with rainwater. Here and there, hoodoo rocks stood above the land, capped with a darker stratum of stone, like foul dwarfs crouching among the trees. To the east, another, smaller rainstorm was advancing. But here, a thousand feet above the Quiviran plateau, the sky was still pleasantly flecked with shredded bits of cloud, turning from white to yellow in the aging light.

In a hidden gully along the plateau, two pelted, masked figures moved in stealthy silence. Their progress was halting, furtive, as if they were unused or unwilling to move about in daylight. One stopped briefly, crouched, drank from a pothole. Then they moved on again, angling toward a patch of deep shade beside a fin of rock. Here, they stopped squatting on their haunches.

Reaching into the folds of his fur pelt, one of the skinwalkers removed a buckskin bag. Silver conchas clinked with the movement. The figure produced a human calvarium, filled with dry, shriveled pellets, like gray buttons. The second skinwalker produced another skull bowl and a long, shriveled root in roughly the shape of a twisted human being, laying it on the sand beside the first skull. Both began to chant in low, quavering tones. An obsidian knife flashed as the tips were cut off the dry root.

They worked swiftly and silently. A hand, decorated with white clay strips, caressed the wrinkled pellets. Then the skinwalker cupped one, two, and finally three of the pellets in his palm, pushing them through the mouthhole of his mask in rapid succession. There was a loud swallowing sound. The second figure repeated the action. The chanting grew faster.

A tiny twig fire was built, and wisps of smoke curled around the sheltering rock. The root was cut lengthwise into thin strips, smoked briefly in the fire, and set aside. Feathers were placed in the fire, slowly curling, crackling, and melting. Next, several live iridescent beetles were placed atop the embers, to jitter, die, and parch. They were removed, placed in the second skull bowl, crushed into flakes, and mixed with water from a leather bag.

The bowl was raised toward the north, the chanting even faster now, and the figures drank in turn. The strips of root were placed back on the fire, where they curled and turned black, sending up an ugly stream of yellow smoke. The figures bowed their heads over the fire, breathing heavily, rasping in the smoke. The chanting had now become a frenzied ditty, a low, fast quavering sound like the buzzing of cicadas.

The new storm advanced from the east, drawing a shadow across the landscape. Reaching once again into his matted pelt, the first skinwalker threw handfuls of creamy datura flowers into the fire. They quickly shriveled, releasing billows of smoke into the darkening air. The figures bent over the smoke, inhaling greedily. The air of the plateau was suddenly perfumed with the intensely beautiful scent of morning glories. The pelted backs began to quiver, and the silver conchas clinked violently.

A hand rose once again, sprinkling black pollen in the four cardinal directions: north, south, east, and finally west. The skull bowl was now empty, all its shriveled contents ingested. One of the figures raised its head to the sky, a heavy stream of mucus running from beneath the buckskin mask, two palsied hands raised. The chanting, angry now, rose in volume and urgency.

And then, quite suddenly, silence fell. The last wisps of smoke drifted across the face of stone. And with terrible swiftness the figures were gone, racing like black shadows across the landscape, disappearing down the end of the Priest’s Trail into the gloom of the valley of Quivira.

55

ROSCOE SWIRE SAT ATOP A BROKEN BOULDER, turning a worn headstall around in his hands, poetry notebook lying forgotten on the rock beside him. He was profoundly agitated. Not far away, near the edge of the rushing water, stood a large cottonwood, listing and swaying as the pressure of the passing water tore at its roots. Long, thin loops of flotsam dangled from several of the lower branches.

Swire knew those loops for what they were: the gray, ropy guts of a horse. One of his horses. And because of their well-developed herd attachment, he knew that if one were killed, all must have been killed.

The valley had grown dark, but the sky above was still painfully bright. The place seemed suspended between night and day, caught in that mysterious stasis that occurred only in the deepest canyons of Utah.

Swire glanced toward his notebook, toward the eulogy to Hurricane Deck he’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to write. He thought of Hurricane Deck: his three-day chase, the spirit of that magnificent horse. Arbuckles: dim, friendly, capable. He thought of all the horses he had lost on this trip, each one with its own personality, and of all the little things that had made up his life with them. The quirks, the peculiar habits, the trails they had ridden . . . it was almost more than he could bear.

And then his thoughts turned to Nora. More than once, she had made him very angry. But he had been forced to admire her bravery, the occasional recklessness of her determination. It was a terrible way to die. She would have heard her own death coming, would have known exactly what it meant.

He glanced around the valley, a vista of deepening purples, greens, and golds beneath a bright turquoise sky. It was a beautiful place. And yet it was malevolent in its beauty.

His eyes swivelled up in the direction of the hidden city. To think those three were up there now, opening the kiva as if nothing had happened. They would get the glory. And Nora would get a memorial plaque, nailed onto some wall at the Institute. He spat disgustedly, sighed, and turned to collect his notebook.

Then he stopped and looked around again at the darkened canyon. Except for the rumbling of water and the occasional birdsong, everything was quiet.

But instinct told him he was being watched.

Slowly, he reached over for the notebook. Turning a few pages, he sat back with an air of indifference, pretending to read the scribbled lines.

The feeling did not go away.

Swire’s sixth sense had been honed over many hard years of wrangling horses in wild, sometimes hostile country. He had learned to trust his life with it.

His right hand dropped to the holster and rested easily there, confirming the presence of the gun. Then the hand rose again, this time to thoughtfully stroke his mustache. The roar of the water echoed and re-echoed off the canyon walls, magnified and distorted. The edge of another storm cloud was moving into the sky, staining the turquoise an ugly shade of gray.

He casually slipped the notebook into his pocket. Then, just as casually, he slipped the trigger thong out of its catch.

He waited. Nothing.

He rose to his feet, using an extended stretch as an excuse to take another look around. Again, nothing. Yet his instincts were rarely wrong. Perhaps it was his imagination. To say he’d had a tough afternoon would be putting it mildly.

Still, he felt a presence. More than that: he felt stalked.

Swire wondered what could be after him. There had been no wolves or mountain lions in the valley before, and none sure as hell had come in today. Perhaps it was human. But who? Nora and the others who had entered the slot canyon were dead. And the rest of them were busy with the kiva. Besides, none of them would want to—

With a flash, he realized who it must be. He was confused, in shock from the day’s events, or he would have realized it before. They were the ones who had killed his horses. The bastards who had gutted his animals.

And now they were coming for him.

A surge of anger pushed away his rising apprehension. He couldn’t roll back time; he couldn’t save his horses, or prevent Nora from entering the canyon. But he could sure as hell do something about this.

The rock was not a good place to be. Lightly, he hopped off and strolled out into the open, glancing around, looking for a place from which to defend himself. On the surface the valley looked unchanged; but here, in the open, he could feel the presence more strongly.

His eyes moved toward a small grove of gambel oaks near the far end of the valley. Twelve hours before, the trees had been fifty feet from the water. Now, they were at its edge.

He nodded slowly to himself. From there, the water would be advantageously at his back. And the oaks would hide him from view. They wouldn’t know where he was among the trees. But he would have a view out across the benchland. It would give him time for several clear shots.

He began strolling down toward the river, his shoulder blades crawling with the sense of hidden eyes. When he was halfway to the grove, he stopped, spat out his tobacco, and hiked up his pants, in the process loosening the gun in its holster. It was only a .22 magnum long barrel, but it had the advantage of high accuracy in repeated shots. A good gun for the kind of work he had in mind.

He paused in the gathering gloom. This would be his last chance for a good look at the valley before entering the trees, and he wanted to sense which direction his stalkers might come from. By daylight, there were few hiding places in the valley. But as night neared, the number grew: stands of cottonwoods and chamisa, areas in dark shadow. And yet, he saw no unusual movement, nothing out of place.

Once again, he questioned his instincts. They were still screaming: Run, hide! A few raindrops began to fall, splattering heavily in the sand. His heart beat faster as his apprehension grew. He was not a man to walk away from a fight. But it was hard, not knowing who you were fighting, or from where they would come, or if in the end they were just your imagination, after all. He tried to remind himself that these were the bastards that had killed his horses. But as his thoughts returned to the horses, he saw them again in his mind’s eye: ritually sliced, feathers protruding from the glazed dead eyes, the grayish-blue guts wound in spirals. What kind of monsters could do that . . .

He started forward again, quickening his pace toward the copse. Once he almost turned around, heart beating fast, but he checked himself in time: he must not show that he knew they were there.

A few more steps brought him into the stand of the oaks. Moving quickly to the far side, he crouched, then swivelled around, putting his back to the water. It was dark beneath the hanging limbs, and water dripped onto his head and back. The sound of the flood seemed magnified in the close space: it bore down on him confusingly, coming in from all sides. He shook his head to clear it, taking a step backward as he did so. He was at the very edge of the flood now, and the water gurgled through the tree trunks, curling and tugging around his boots. He moved back yet again, slowly, his boots making a light plashing noise.

With a dull, hollow thud of fear, he realized it had been a mistake to retreat to this grove. Darkness was descending so swiftly on the canyon that he could make out little beyond the dense thicket of trees. He waited, shivering slightly, feeling the coldness of the water creep into his boots. His eyes widened as he tried to separate the shapes of the trees from each other, to distinguish them in the damp, dark gloom.

Now he slipped his gun out of the holster, waiting. He took another step back into the swirling water. It surged a little higher, and a distant, detached part of him noted that the flood was coming up again. His anger was no longer a comfort; now all he felt was cold, naked fear. It was too dark to see anything. If only he could hear, he might be able to act: but the sound of the water was like a heavy cloak, depriving him of his most valuable sense. All he had left, in fact, was smell. And even that wasn’t working properly: by some trick of his overcharged brain, he felt surrounded by the beautiful, delicate scent of morning glories.

Just then, to his left, he saw a terrible movement of shadow: a violent wrenching of black upon black. Too late, he realized the things had been in the grove all the time, watching and waiting, while he came to them. He raised the gun with a cry, but the shot went wild and the weapon tumbled into the flood. As the muzzle flare died away, Swire saw—or thought he saw—the blade of a knife, impossibly black and cold, slicing down through the night.

56

IN THE DEPTHS OF THE HIDDEN CAVERN, BLACK carefully edged a penknife beneath the uppermost clay seal, his arms shaking with exhaustion and excitement. He turned one hand, trying to apply an even pressure to the seal, but his aching fingers twitched and the seal popped free, along with a piece of the plastered door.

“Easy,” Sloane said from her position behind the large camera, some distance away.

Black craned his neck toward the small hole, but it was too small and uneven to make out anything within. From the valley outside the city, there was a faint, muffled crump of distant thunder.

Black coughed into his hand, then again, more violently, finding flecks of mud in the phlegm. He shook it away in disgust and returned to the stone facade. Bonarotti, who had now dug away the piles of sloping dust around the kiva door, joined him in the work.

In another half hour, a second seal came into view. Enough courses of stone had now been removed to expose over three feet of plastered door. Sloane came forward to take a series of photographs. Then she stepped back out of the pall of hanging dust, scribbling in her notebook. Black slid his knife beneath the second seal, pried it carefully away from the underlying plaster, and set it aside. All that now stood between him and the crowning validation of his theory was a thin, featureless wall of plaster and mortar. He reached down for a pick, hefted it in his bruised hands, then swung it toward the wall.

A piece of plaster fell away. Black swung the pick again, then again, enlarging the hole considerably: a dark, ragged rectangle in the glare of the lights. Excitedly, he dropped the pick.

Instantly, Sloane returned to his side. Taking a flashlight from her pocket, she thrust it deep into the hole, pressing her face against the plaster. Black saw her body tense. She remained still for a minute, perhaps more. Then she withdrew, silently, her face alive with excitement. Black grabbed the light from her unresisting hand and crowded forward.

The feeble yellow gleam of the small flashlight could barely penetrate the murk within. But as he played it about, Black felt his own heart swell. Everywhere the glint of gold. . . . The yellow glimmer filled the kiva, winking and flashing everywhere, on the floor, on the stone banco that ran around the perimeter: the rich mellow shine of a thousand curvilinear golden surfaces.

Violently, Black withdrew his hand. “Break it down!” he cried. “It’s stuffed with gold!”

“By the book, Aaron,” Sloane said sharply, but the exhilaration in her voice belied caution.

He seized the pick and resumed working along the top of the doorway. Grabbing a second pick, Bonarotti stood beside him, driving it furiously into the adobe in time with Black’s own blows. Soon, the hole grew to more than two feet square. Black stopped to jam his entire head into the opening, wedging his shoulders hard, trying to force his body through, swinging Sloane’s flashlight back and forth. But their picks had roused so much dust within the kiva that all he could see were faint golden glimmers.

The flashlight beam failed and he pulled himself back out, throwing it down in disgust. “More!” he gasped.

Outside the city, another muffled crump of thunder punctuated the obbligato whisper of rain. But Black heard nothing except the sound of his pick on plaster, and the ragged hiss of his breath in the close air. Reality faded into a dream. A strange sensation filled his head, and he realized he could no longer feel his arms as they wielded the pick.

The dreamlike sense grew stronger, almost frighteningly strong, and he staggered back from the kiva, trying to clear his head. As he did so, he felt an overwhelming tiredness. He glanced first at Bonarotti, who was still swinging his pick in a regular, metronomic cadence; then at Sloane, waiting behind, her body still tensed with expectation.

There was a sudden crumpling of plaster, and Black swivelled his head toward the kiva. A large chunk of adobe had come free, breaking into earth-colored chunks on the rocks below. And now Black saw that the hole was definitely large enough to admit a person.

He picked up one of Sloane’s lanterns and moved forward. “Get out of my way,” he said, peremptorily shoving Bonarotti aside.

The cook staggered back, dropped the pick, then turned to face Black, his eyes narrowing. But Black ignored him, desperately trying to angle the lantern beam into the dusty hole.

“Step aside,” came Sloane’s voice from behind him. “I said, step aside, both of you.”

Bonarotti hesitated a moment. Then he took a pace back. Black followed, surprised by the sudden cold edge to Sloane’s voice.

Sloane came forward, taking another series of shots. Then she looped the camera around her neck, turned to Black, and took the lantern from his hands.

“Help me in,” she said.

Black placed his hands on her hips, pushing upward as she scrambled over the rocks and into the hole. He could see her light striping wildly across the kiva’s ceiling. Then, suddenly, it receded to a mellow glow. He followed quickly, scrabbling up the rocks, wriggling through the rough hole and sliding down the inner side, face-first, sprawling in an ungainly muddle, spitting out mouthfuls of dust. A distant part of him thought that this was not exactly how Howard Carter would have gone about it.

Sloane had dropped the lantern, and it lay on its side in the dust. Trembling with excitement, Black rose to his feet, grabbed the curved metal of the lantern’s handle, and hoisted it upward. His arm ached with the motion, and electric pains went through his lungs each time he drew in breath. But he barely noticed: this was the moment of ultimate discovery; the defining moment of his entire life.

Bonarotti had climbed in beside him, but Black paid him no mind. Everywhere, from all sides, the gleam of gold sprang out of the murk. Almost snorting with excitement, he bent forward and seized the closest object—a dish, filled with some kind of powder.

Instantly, he knew something was wrong. The dish in his hand was light, the material warm to the touch: not like gold, at all. Tossing the powder from the bowl, he brought it closer to his face.

Then he straightened up, flinging the object away with a sob.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sloane cried.

But Black did not hear her. He looked around the Sun Kiva with a sudden, wild desperation: grabbing things, dropping them again. It was all wrong. He staggered, fell, then rose with an effort. The bottomless disappointment, after such feverish hopes, was more than he could comprehend. Mechanically, he glanced at his companions. Bonarotti stood motionless beneath the ragged hole, a thunderstruck look on his dust-caked face.

Then Black slowly turned his eyes toward Sloane. In his pain and unutterable dismay, he could not quite comprehend that her face, instead of despair, reflected shining, complete vindication.

57

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW HOW MUCH TIME had passed before—at long, long last—Nora felt a cool gush of air stir the damp hair on her forehead. Slowly, the memory of where she was and what had happened returned. Her head throbbed mercilessly as she gulped at the fresh air.

There was a dead weight pushing against her back. She struggled, and the weight moved slightly, allowing a dim light to filter into the cavity. The roar in the canyon had now abated to a deep-throated, thunderous vibration that rattled her gut. Or perhaps it was just her water-clogged ears that were muffling the sound.

Uncramping her legs and turning painfully around inside the cavity, she saw that the dead weight against her back was Smithback. Now he was lying on his side, motionless. His shirt lay across his chest in torn ribbons. The light was very dim inside the cavity, but as she peered more closely she noticed, with horror, that his back was as lacerated as if it had been brutally lashed. The leading surge of the flood had passed over them while they were jammed in the rock shelter; Smithback had shielded her—and taken the brunt of the water’s force—with his own back.

Nora gently laid her head on his chest, placing a trembling hand on his face as she listened. The heartbeat was faint, but at least it was there. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she kissed his hands, his face. His eyelids struggled open, the eyes beneath glassy and dull. After a moment, the eyes focused. His mouth moved soundlessly, his face screwing up into a rictus of pain.

Over his shoulder, beyond the lip of their little crawlspace, she could see the flood about five feet below them, now a smooth sheet of water, surging, falling, and surging again. It had fallen since the first intense rush. And yet Nora was surprised to see that the water seemed to be rising again, not falling. Rivulets were trickling down the sides of the canyon and dripping outside the mouth of the cavity, and she realized that it must be raining hard again in the upper watershed. It was not just their little space that was dark: it was growing dark outside, as well. She must have been unconscious for hours.

“Can you sit up?” she asked. At the effort to speak, a pain stabbed through her temples.

Smithback struggled, wincing and breathing hard. The movement brought small streams of fresh blood trickling down across his stomach and onto his thighs. As Nora helped him into a sitting position, she got a better look at the damage that had been done to his back.

“You saved my life,” said Nora, squeezing his hand.

“It’s not saved yet,” he gasped, shivering.

Carefully, she peered out from their shelter, scanning the rock face above for some hint of handholds. It was polished smooth; there was no way to climb farther up. She looked back down, thinking. They had to get out of the crawlspace, that was certain. They could not spend a night in there. If the temperature continued to drop, Smithback might become hypothermic. And if the water rose farther—or if another flood surge came through—they could not hope to survive. But there was no way out.

No way, except to launch themselves into the current and hope for the best.

The current just beneath their shelter was fast but smooth, a laminar flow that moved straight down the polished walls of the narrow canyon. She watched pieces of debris flashing by, all trending toward the center. If they could make it out into the middle of the current, they might be able to ride it through the slot and into the valley without being battered against the canyon walls along the way.

Smithback watched her, the lines around his mouth tightening as he followed her train of thought.

She returned the look. “Can you swim?” she asked.

Smithback shrugged.

“I’m going to bind us together,” she said.

“No,” he protested. “I’ll only drag you down.”

“You saved my life. Now you’re stuck with me.” Carefully, she peeled off the tattered remnant of his shirt, ripped off the sleeves, and twisted them into a short tether. Leaving as much slack as possible, she tied one end to her left wrist, and the other end to Smithback’s right.

“This is a crazy—” Smithback began.

“Save your breath for the ride. Now look, we’re only going to get one chance at this. It’s getting dark, we can’t wait any longer. The most important thing is to stick as much to the middle as possible. That won’t be easy, because the canyon is so narrow. So when you find yourself getting too close to one of the walls, lightly kick away from it. The most dangerous moment will be when the flood drops us into the valley. Once we’re there, we’d better head for the shore damn quick. If we get swept through into the far canyon, we’re done for.”

Smithback nodded.

“Ready?”

Smithback nodded again, eyes narrow, lips white.

They waited for a surge to subside. Then Nora looked at Smithback, their eyes locking as she took tight hold of his hand. There was a moment’s hesitation. And then, together, they slid out into the flood.

Nora’s first impression was of the water itself: mind-numbingly cold. The second was of the current: it was shockingly strong, infinitely stronger than it had appeared from the rock cavity. As they tore along, she realized there was no chance of controlling their descent: all she could do was struggle to keep from colliding with the murderous walls, blurring past sometimes a foot, sometimes mere inches away. The surface of the water boiled and churned, full of tiny particles of wood and plant material dancing hysterically around them. Deeper, a chaos of gravel and sand churning in the turbulence battered her legs. Smithback struggled beside her, crying out once when the gnarled root of a tree collided with his shoulder.

A harrowing minute passed. And then Nora saw light ahead; a vertical notch of gray amid the rushing darkness. The canyon wall came dangerously close, and she pushed it away with a desperate kick. Suddenly they were soaring out of the canyon, riding a huge hump of water that sailed over the scree slope and collapsed into a boiling pool. There was an angry roar and Nora felt herself tumbled under the waves. Jerking on the improvised cord, she frantically propelled them upward, breaking the surface. Looking around and spitting water, she was horrified to see they had already traveled halfway through the valley. Only a few seconds’ ride ahead of them lay the narrow crevice at the far end of the valley, the flood boiling and sucking into it with a furious confusion of sound. Then they were briefly caught in a swirl that propelled them into the slacker water near shore.

As she thrashed, Nora felt a blow to her midriff, followed by a painful scraping. She reached down into the water, grasping for a hold, while they swung about in the current. She realized it was the top of a stiff juniper bush. She clawed her way across its top, groping downward for a thicker branch, feeling the current tugging at them, trying to tear them away.

“We’re hung up on a treetop,” she said. Smithback nodded his understanding.

Steadying herself, Nora glanced toward shore. It was only fifty feet away, but it might as well have been fifty miles for all the ability they had to swim across the current.

She looked downstream. There was another treetop, this one sticking out of the flood, lashed and shivered by the water. If they let go, they could grab that one. As long as the roots didn’t give way under the tug of the water, there was a third tree, a little farther downstream—and from that they could reach the slacker water near shore.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Stop asking me that. I hate the water.”

She launched into the current, grasped the next tree, then the next, dragging Smithback along, his head barely above water. Suddenly her feet touched bottom, wonderfully solid after the flood. Slowly, she pulled herself up on the muddy bank toward the copse of cottonwoods, Smithback staggering behind her. They sat down heavily amid a whirlwind of splintered branches, Smithback collapsing in pain. Nora undid the twisted rag that bound them, then rolled onto her back, sides heaving, coughing up water.

There was a ragged flash of lightning, followed by the sharp crackle of thunder. She looked up to see that a second, smaller storm had covered the canyon with a counterpane of darkness. Her thoughts turned to the weather report. Clear skies, it had said. How could the report have been so wrong?

The rain grew heavier. Nora turned her face away from it, looking up the ruined bank toward camp. There was something strange about the camp that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Then she understood: it had been carefully set up again, the struck tents repitched, the equipment carefully tarped against the rain.

Makes sense, I suppose, she thought. No one was going anywhere for a long time; at least, not out the slot canyon.

And yet the camp was deserted.

Had the rest of the expedition sought sanctuary in Quivira itself? But if so, why would they still be there, now that the worst of the flood had passed?

She sat up and looked at Smithback, who was lying on his stomach, water and blood trickling together into the sand. He was hurt. But at least he was alive. Not like Aragon. She had better get him to the warmth and safety of a tent.

“Can you walk?” she asked.

He swallowed hard and nodded. She helped him to his feet; he staggered a little, took a few steps, then staggered against her again.

“Just a little farther,” she murmured.

She half dragged, half carried him to the high ground of the deserted camp. Hauling him into the medical tent, she rummaged through the supplies, picking out a painkiller, antibiotic ointment, and gauze bandages. Then she paused to poke her head out of the tent and look around. Once again, she was struck by how deserted the place was. Had they all been swept away? No, of course not: someone had to have repitched the tents. And Sloane and Swire, certainly, would have known right away what was up. They would have made sure everyone got to high ground in time.

She opened her mouth, preparing to call out. But then she shut it again. Some vague instinct she did not understand told her to remain silent.

She withdrew into the tent and looked at Smithback. “How are you doing?” she asked quietly.

“Bloody great,” he said, wincing. “So to speak.”

Looking down at the wet hair plastered over his forehead, Nora felt a sudden welling of affection. “Can you stand moving again?” she asked.

He looked at her. “Why?”

She shook her head. “Because I think we should get out of here.”

She saw the question in his brown eyes.

“There’s something strange going on,” she continued. “And, whatever it is, I’d rather learn more about it from a distance.” She handed him a couple of painkillers, passed him a canteen, then began dressing the horrible lacerations on his back. He stiffened, but did not complain.

“How come you’re not protesting?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” came the slurred response. “Guess I’m numb from the water.”

He was shivering now, his forehead clammy. He’s going into shock, she thought. The rain outside was increasing steadily, and the wind had picked up, buffeting the sides of the tent. She realized, with a dull finality, that there was no way she could move him, at least not now.

“Keep that sleeping bag bundled close,” she said, stroking his cheek. “I’m going to see if I can’t get some hot liquid into you.” Gently tucking the sleeping bag around him, she moved toward the opening of the tent.

“Nora,” came the voice from beneath the sleeping bag, slow and dreamlike.

She turned. “Yes?”

Smithback looked at her. “Nora,” he said again. “You know, after all that’s happened between us . . . well, I’d really like to tell you how I feel.”

She stared at him. Then, gliding closer, she took his hand in hers. “Yes?”

His lips parted in a feeble grin. “I really feel like shit,” came the dry whisper.

Nora shook her head, laughing despite herself. “You’re incorrigible.”

She bent closer and kissed him. Then she kissed him again, a gentle, lingering kiss.

“Please, sir, I want some more,” Smithback murmured.

She smiled at him for a moment. Then, drawing back, she crawled out of the tent, securing its front flap. Hunching her shoulders against the rain, she moved across the camp, heading for the supply cache.

58

SLOANE GODDARD STOOD IN THE MURK OF THE kiva, gazing at the rows of gleaming pots. For a long time, she saw nothing else. It was as if the outer world of time and space had retreated to a vast distance, leaving nothing but this small space behind. As she stared, she forgot everything—Holroyd’s death, the flash flood, Nora and the others, the creeping presence of the horse killers.

Only a few small sherds of black-on-yellow micaceous pottery had ever been found. To see them whole was a revelation. They were transcendentally beautiful, by far the most exquisite pottery she had ever seen. Each piece had been perfectly shaped and formed, and polished with smooth stones to a sensuous luster. The clay they had been made from fired to an intense yellow, but the color had been immeasurably enhanced by the addition of crushed mica to the clay. The resulting pottery shimmered with an internal light, and as Sloane stared at them—at the heaps of bowls and jugs, hunchbacked figurines, skulls, pots, and effigies—she felt they were more beautiful than gold. They had a warmth, a vitality, the precious metal lacked. Each piece had been decorated with geometric and zoomorphic designs of superlative artistry and skill: the entire pictographical history of the Anasazi people, laid out before her.

It was all here, as she had been certain it would be: the mother lode of micaceous pottery. It had been her father’s pet project: over the course of thirty years, he had mapped each rare sherd, traced hypothetical trade routes, searched for the source. Because the number of discovered fragments was so small, he had theorized that this pottery was the single most prized possession of the Anasazi people, and that it was stored in a central, most likely religious, place. Eventually, after mapping the distribution points of all known sherds, he had come to believe its location would be somewhere back in the labyrinthine canyons. Briefly, he had entertained dreams of finding the source himself. But he had grown old and sick. Then, when word of Nora and her father’s letter reached him, hope had sprung anew. Instantly, he realized that Quivira, if it existed, might be the source of the fabulous pottery. It was speculative, of course—much too speculative for a man of his position to publish, or even broadcast. But it was enough to launch an expedition, with his daughter on the team.

Sloane knew she was supposed to have discussed the matter privately, with Nora, if they ever found the city. But, of course, there was no way she would have cued Nora into the great discovery that lay ahead. Nora already had more than her share of the glory. How many times, on the trail to Quivira, had the thought wormed its way bitterly into Sloane’s heart: there she was, taking orders from a second-tier, untenured academic, when by rights she should be the one in command. In the end it would be Nora, and by extension Sloane’s father, who would get all the credit: just another example of her father’s thoughtlessness, his lack of faith in her.

Well, things would be different now. If Nora hadn’t been so selfish, so stubbornly dictatorial, it wouldn’t have had to end this way. But as fate would have it, the discovery would be hers. She was now the leader of the expedition. Hers would be the name forever linked with the discovery of the fabulous pottery. Everyone else—Black, Nora, her father especially—would be subordinate.

Slowly, she came back to the present. From the corner of her eye, she saw Bonarotti, cloaked in silent disappointment, shambling on stiff legs toward the hole he had helped cut. In another moment, he had climbed onto the banco and vanished out into the cavern.

Her eyes swivelled away, over the almost unbelievable abundance of pottery, to a large hole in the floor she had not noticed before. It seemed, inexplicably, to have been freshly dug. But that made no sense: who else but themselves could have been inside this kiva in the last seven hundred years? And who would single-mindedly dig out a few pounds of dust, while ignoring one of the richest troves in all North American history?

But her jubilation was too intense to ponder this for long. Excitedly, she turned toward Black: poor Aaron Black, who had let his own boyish lust for golden treasure blind the mature archaeologist within. She had not tried to correct him, of course: no need to dampen his enthusiasm, when his support had been so important. Besides, once the initial disappointment and embarrassment was past, he would surely realize how infinitely more important the real find was.

What she saw of Black, in the murk of the kiva, shocked her. He looks terrible, she thought. The man’s flesh seemed to have shrunk on his frame. Two red, wet eyes stared hollowly out of a face caked in pale dust that was turning to mud on his sweating skin. In those eyes, she saw a brief, terrifying vision of Peter Holroyd, paralyzed with fear and illness, in the chamber near the royal burial.

Black’s mouth had gone slack, and as he stepped toward her he seemed to stagger. He took another step, reached into a bowl, and took out a necklace of micaceous beads, shimmering golden in the torchlight.

“Pottery,” he said woodenly.

“Yes, Aaron—pottery,” Sloane replied. “Isn’t it fabulous? The black-on-yellow micaceous that has eluded archaeologists for a hundred years.”

He looked down at the necklace, blinking, unseeing. Then, slowly, he lifted it, placing it around her neck with trembling hands.

“Gold,” he croaked. “I wanted to give you gold.”

It took Sloane a moment to comprehend. She watched him try to step forward, teetering in place.

“Aaron,” she said urgently. “Don’t you see? This is worth more than gold. Much more. These pots tell—”

She broke off abruptly. Black’s face was screwed up, his hands pressed to his temples. Sloane took an involuntary step back. As she watched, his legs began to tremble and he sank against the inner kiva wall, sliding down until he was resting on the stone banco.

“Aaron, you’re sick,” she said, a sense of panic displacing her feelings of triumph. This can’t be happening, she thought. Not now.

Black did not respond. He tried to steady himself with outstretched arms, scattering several pots in the process.

Sloane stepped forward with sudden resolution, grasping one of his hands. “Aaron, listen. I’m going down to the medical tent. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She climbed quickly up through the ragged hole and out of the kiva. Then, shaking the dust from her legs, she half walked, half ran, out of the cave, through the Crawlspace and into the silent city.

59

KNEELING BESIDE SMITHBACK, NORA stuffed a flashlight retrieved from the drysacks into her pocket and helped the journalist swallow a small cup of steaming bouillon. Just outside the tent, the portable propane stove ticked and sputtered as it cooled. Taking the empty cup from his hands, she helped him back onto the sleeping bag, stretched a woolen blanket over him, and made sure he was comfortable. She had replaced his soaked shirt and pants with dry ones, and his shock seemed to be passing. But with rain still drumming on the tent, moving him remained pointless. What he needed most, she felt, was some sleep. She glanced at the field wristwatch that had been strapped around the head tentpole. It was after nine o’clock. And yet, inexplicably, nobody had returned to camp.

Her mind turned back to the flash flood. The storm that produced it must have been enormous, awe-inspiring. It seemed inexplicable that anyone standing atop the plateau could have missed it . . .

She rose quickly. Smithback looked up at her with a weak smile.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You get some sleep,” she replied. “I’m going up to the ruin.”

He nodded, but his eyes were already closing. Grasping the flashlight, she slipped out of the tent into the darkness. Switching it on, she followed the cylinder of light toward the base of the rope ladder. Her bruised body ached, and she was as tired as she ever remembered feeling. A part of her half anticipated, half dreaded, what she might find in the ruined city. But Smithback had been cared for, and leaving the valley was now impossible. As expedition leader, she had no choice but to enter Quivira, to learn for herself exactly what was going on.

The raindrops flashed through the yellow beam like fitful streaks of light. As she approached the rock face, she saw a dark figure climb down the ladder and leap lightly to the sand. The silhouette, the graceful movement, was unmistakable.

“Is that you, Roscoe?” Sloane’s voice called out.

“No,” Nora replied. “It’s me.”

The figure froze. Nora stepped forward and looked into Sloane’s face, illuminated in the glare of the flashlight. She saw, not relief, but shock and confusion.

“You,” breathed Sloane.

Nora heard consternation, even anger, in her tone. “Just what is going on?” she asked, trying to keep her voice under control.

“How did you—” Sloane began.

“I asked you a question. What’s going on?” Instinctively, Nora took a step back. Then, for the first time, she noticed the necklace that lay around Sloane’s neck: large beads, obviously prehistoric, glittering yellow—micaceous yellow—in the glow of the light.

As Nora stared at the necklace, what had begun as a smoldering fear burst suddenly into fierce conviction.

“You did it, didn’t you,” she whispered. “You broke into the kiva.”

“I—” Sloane faltered.

“You deliberately entered that kiva,” Nora said. “Do you have any idea what the Institute will say? What your father will say?”

But Sloane remained silent. She seemed stunned, as if still unable to comprehend, or accept, Nora’s presence. She looks as if she’s seen a ghost, Nora thought.

And then, in an instant, she realized that was precisely it.

“You didn’t expect to see me alive, did you?” she asked. Her voice was steady, but she could feel herself trembling from head to foot.

But still, Sloane stood rooted to the spot.

“The weather report,” Nora said. “You gave me a false weather report.”

At this, Sloane suddenly shook her head vigorously. “No—” she began.

“Twenty minutes after you came down from the rim, that flash flood hit,” Nora broke in. “The entire Kaiparowits drains through this canyon. There was a gigantic thunderhead over the plateau, there had to be. And you saw it.”

“The weather report out of Page is a matter of public record. You can check it when we get back . . .”

But as she listened, an image came unbidden to Nora’s mind: Aragon, the flood shredding him to pieces as it pulled him along the pitiless walls of the slot canyon.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll do that. I think I’ll check the satellite images instead. And I know what I’ll find: a monstrous storm, centered directly over the Kaiparowits Plateau.”

At this, Sloane’s face went dead white. Beads of rain were collecting on her wide cheekbones. “Nora, listen. It’s possible I never looked in that direction. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Where’s Black?” Nora asked suddenly.

Sloane stopped, surprised by the question. “Up in the city,” she said.

“What do you think he’ll say when I confront him? He was up on top of that ridge with you.”

Sloane’s eyebrows contracted. “He’s not well, and—”

“And Aragon is dead,” Nora interrupted, speaking in a barely controlled fury. “Sloane, you were going to break into that kiva, no matter what the cost. And that cost was murder.”

The ugly word hung in the heavy air.

“You’re going to prison, Sloane,” Nora said. “And you’ll never work in this field again. I’m going to make sure of that personally.”

As Nora stared at Sloane, she saw the shock, the confusion, in her eyes start to turn to something else.

“You can’t do that, Nora,” Sloane replied. “You can’t.” Her voice was suddenly low, urgent.

“Watch me.”

There was a flash of jagged lightning, followed almost instantly by a great peal of thunder. In that instant, Nora glanced downward, shielding her eyes. As she did, she saw the dull glint of the gunmetal tucked into Sloane’s belt. Looking up quickly again, she saw Sloane watching her. The woman seemed to straighten up, draw a sudden breath. Her jaw set. In a face full of lingering surprise, Nora thought she saw a resolution begin to form.

“No,” she murmured.

Sloane looked back at her, unblinking.

“No,” Nora repeated, more loudly, backing up into the darkness.

Slowly, tentatively, Sloane’s hand dropped toward the gun.

In a sudden, desperate movement, Nora snapped off her light and wheeled away, sprinting into the close, concealing darkness.

The camp lay a hundred yards off—no protection there. Sloane stood between her and the city. And the flood had cut her off from the other side of the valley. In the direction she was headed, that left only one option.

Her mind worked furiously as she ran. Sloane, she realized, was not the kind of person who could bear to lose. If she had refused to even leave Quivira without opening the kiva, was it possible she would allow Nora to take her back to civilization—in shame and humiliation—to face life in ruin? Why did I provoke her like that? Nora raged at herself. How could I have been so stupid? She herself had demonstrated to Sloane exactly how stark her choice was. Nora, effectively, had signed her own death warrant.

She dashed as quickly as she dared along the rocky base of the cliff, making for the landslide at the far end. Fitful tongues of lightning guided her way. Scrambling up the talus of broken boulders, she searched for a hiding place, not daring to use her flashlight for fear of betraying her position. Halfway up the slope she found a suitable hole: narrow, but still large enough to fit a human body. She wedged herself as far inside as she could and crouched in the darkness, gasping for breath, trying to sort things out, raging with frustration and despair.

She glanced around her hiding place. She had managed to crawl fairly deeply into the landslide. Still, it was only a temporary option: it would only be a matter of time before Sloane searched her out. And Sloane had the spare gun.

Her thoughts returned to Smithback, lying asleep in the medical tent, and her hands clenched in anger. He was a sitting duck. But no: there was no reason for Sloane to enter the tent and find him. Even if she did, there was a chance she would not kill him. Nora had to cling to that hope—at least, until she found some way to stop Sloane.

There had to be a way. Bonarotti and Swire were out there, somewhere. Unless they were part of the conspiracy, too . . . she shook her head, refusing to let herself follow that line of speculation.

Perhaps she could find a way to sneak back into the camp, steal away with Smithback. But that would mean hours of cautious waiting, and one way or another Sloane would certainly act before then. Nora knew she couldn’t climb up to the rim and escape—not with Smithback behind, injured, in the valley. As she crouched in the darkness and turned over her options, it dawned on her, with a desperate kind of finality, that in fact there were no options at all.

60

BEIYOODZIN MADE HIS WAY ACROSS THE slickrock plateau, far above the valley of Quivira. The heart of a second, smaller storm was passing overhead now, and it was very dark. Beneath his feet, the irregular rock was slick with rainwater, and Beiyoodzin walked with great care. His old feet ached, and he missed the presence of his horse, tethered back in the valley of Chilbah. The Priest’s Trail was impassable for all but the two-legged.

The trail markings were irregular and vague—a small, ancient cairn of rocks here and there—and the way was difficult to make out in the darkness. Beiyoodzin needed all his skill simply to follow it. His eyes were not as strong as they had once been. And he was all too aware that the single most difficult stretch lay ahead: in the tortuous, dangerous descent along the ridge of the narrow slot canyon at the far end of the valley.

He wrapped the sopping cloak tighter and moved on. Though his grandfather had hinted of it, Beiyoodzin had never believed that the Priest’s Trail could be so demanding, or so long. After arrowing up the secret cut in Chilbah Valley, it followed a long, complex route across the high plateau, wriggling for miles through the stunted junipers, in and out of dry washes and steep little ravines. He urged his tired body to move faster. It was late, he knew; perhaps too late. There was no telling what might have happened, or what might be happening, in the valley of Quivira.

Suddenly, he stopped short. There was a smell in the air: a lingering smell of woodsmoke, damp ash, and something else that brought his heart into his mouth. He looked around, eyes wide to the darkness, letting the occasional tongues of lightning guide his way. There it was—in the shadow of a large rock, as he knew it would be—the remains of a small twig fire.

He looked around quickly, carefully, making sure he was alone; making sure the creatures who had made this fire were long gone. Then he crouched, sifting the ash with his fingers. He pulled the remains of root strips, burned and brittle, from the small pile, rubbing them appraisingly between his fingers. Then, brow furrowing, he began to sift more quickly, fingertips impatiently brushing the ash aside. One hand closed on something, and he drew in his breath sharply: the petal of a flower, limp and withered. He brought it to his nose. The scent confirmed his worst fears: beneath the heavy smell of woodsmoke, he could still make out the lingering odor of morning glories.

He stood up, brushing his fingers on his wet trousers in agitation. Once, as a child in the village of Nankoweap, he had seen a terrible thing: a very old man, a bad man, partake of the forbidden datura flower. The man had flown into a rage under the influence of the drug, lashing out violently at all in his path with several times his normal strength. It had taken half a dozen young men of the village to subdue him.

But this was worse. Much worse. Those he was tracking had taken datura in the ancient way, the evil way, mixing it with psilocybin mushrooms, buttons of the mescal cactus, forbidden insects. The unholy spirit would take possession of them, bring great strength to their limbs and a murderous frenzy to their minds; make them oblivious to their own pain, or the pain of others.

Kneeling, he said a brief, fervent prayer in the darkness. Then he rose again and continued down the trail with redoubled speed.

61

BONAROTTI SAT LISTLESSLY ON THE SMOOTH rocky ground of the Planetarium, his back against the unyielding wall, elbows resting on upraised knees. He stared out into the darkness, beyond the curving shelf that hid the great city. The valley was dark, lit infrequently by livid forks of lightning. A thin curtain of water fell across the entire length of the overhanging lip of rock, cloaking the entrance to Quivira. There was no longer any reason to leave the comfort of the dry city. In fact, there was no reason to do anything, except wait out the next several days with as much comfort and as little inconvenience as possible.

He knew that he should feel vastly more disappointment than he did. Initially—during the first minutes of his realization that the secret kiva held, not gold, but merely countless ancient pots—the feeling of dismay and shock had, in fact, been overwhelming. And yet now, here on the outskirts of the city, all he felt was a vast ache in his bones. The gold would not have been his, anyway. He wondered why he had worked so hard, gotten so uncharacteristically caught up in the excitement of the moment. Now his only reward were limbs that felt unnaturally heavy. The butt of the big revolver dug into his right side. Minutes before, he thought he had heard the quick patter of feet running across the central plaza, followed by an angry buzz of conversation in the valley below. But he had not been certain, over the annoyingly steady burble of rain. His ears felt clogged and painful; perhaps he had imagined the sounds. And he felt little interest in exploring further.

With great effort, he dug into his breast pocket for a cigarette, then sounded his trousers for a match. He knew that smoking was forbidden in the ruin, but at the moment he could not have cared less; besides, he somehow felt that Sloane would be more tolerant of such things than Nora Kelly had been. Smoking was about the only comfort he had left in this godforsaken place. That, and the secret cache of grappa he had secreted deep among his cookware.

But the cigarette proved no comfort. It tasted terrible, in fact: like cardboard and old socks. He took it out and peered at it closely, using the fiery tip for illumination. Then he inserted it once again between his lips. Each fresh inhalation of smoke brought stabbing pains to his lungs. With a cough, he pinched it out with his fingers and dropped it into his pocket.

Something told Bonarotti that the fault did not lie with the cigarette. He thought briefly about Holroyd, and how he had looked, in those agonizing minutes before he died. The thought sent a galvanic twitch to his limbs, and he rose instinctively to his feet. But the sudden motion drained the blood from his head; his body grew hot, and a strange low roaring sounded in his ears. He put an arm to the cliff face to steady himself.

He took one deep breath, then another. Then he tried putting one foot in front of the other, gingerly. The world seemed to reel around him, and he steadied himself against the wall again. He had only been seated for fifteen minutes; maybe half an hour, at most. What could be happening to him? He licked his lips, staring out into the center of the city. There was a painful pressure in his head, and the hinges of his jaws throbbed with a mounting ache. The rain seemed to be easing up, and yet its steady, monotonous drone was becoming increasingly irritating to his ears. He began moving toward the central plaza, lurchingly, without purpose. Lifting his feet seemed an act of supreme difficulty.

In the darkened plaza, he stopped. Despite its openness, he felt the three-story roomblocks crowding in on all sides, their blank windows like skeletal eyes, staring stonily at him.

“I feel sick,” he said matter-of-factly, to nobody in particular.

The sound of the drumming rain was torture. Now, his only wish was to escape it: to find someplace dark and still, where he could curl up, and cover his ears with his hands. He turned slowly, mechanically, waiting for another slash of lightning to reveal the city. A blaze of yellow briefly illuminated the doorway of the nearest series of roomblocks, and he shambled toward it to the accompanying sound of thunder.

He paused in the entryway, a brief sense of alarm piercing the haze of sickness and discomfort. He felt that, if he did not lie down immediately, he would collapse to the floor. And yet the blackness of the room before him was so complete, so intense, that it seemed to be crawling, somehow, before his vision. It was a repellent, almost nauseating phenomenon Bonarotti had never seen or imagined. Or perhaps it was the sudden smell that nauseated him: the ripe, sickly sweet scent of flowers. He swayed where he stood, hesitating.

Then a fresh wave of lightheadedness overwhelmed him, and he plodded forward, disappearing into the gloom of the doorway.

62

SQUINTING AGAINST THE LIVID FORKS OF LIGHTNING, Sloane watched Nora vanish into the storm. She had to be heading for the rockslide: there was no place else to hide in the direction she was headed. As she stared after Nora, Sloane could feel the cold unyielding weight of the gun butt, pressing against her palm. But she did not draw the weapon, and she made no move to pursue.

She stood, hesitating. The initial shock of seeing Nora come walking up, alive, out of the gloom was wearing off, leaving turmoil in its place. Nora had called her a murderer. A murderer. Somehow, in her mind, Sloane could not think of herself as that. Playing back the accusation, remembering the look on Nora’s face, Sloane felt a deep anger begin to smolder. Nora had asked for the weather report, and she had given it, word for word. If Nora hadn’t been so headstrong, so stubborn, so insistent on leaving . . .

Sloane took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She had to think things through, act with care and deliberation. She knew Nora was not an immediate physical threat: Sloane herself had the spare gun. On the other hand, Nora might stumble across Swire, or Bonarotti, out there in the night.

She drew the back of her hand across her forehead, scattering raindrops. Where were Swire and Bonarotti, anyway? They weren’t in the city, and they weren’t in the camp. Surely, they wouldn’t be standing around somewhere, in the darkness and pouring rain. Not even Swire was that muleheaded. It made no sense.

Her mind wandered back to the magnificent discovery they had just made. A discovery even more astonishing than Quivira itself. A discovery that Nora had tried to prevent. At this thought, Sloane’s anger increased. Things had been going better than she could ever have hoped. Everything that she had ever wanted was up in that kiva, waiting for her to claim its discovery as her own. All the hard work was done. Bonarotti, even Swire, could be brought around. Sloane realized, almost with surprise, that things had gone too far to turn back: particularly with Aragon and Smithback dead. The only thing that stood in her way was Nora Kelly.

There was a faint cough in the darkness. Sloane pivoted, instinctively yanking the pistol from her belt. It had come from the direction of the medical tent.

She moved toward the tent, pulling her flashlight from a pocket and cupping its end to shield the glow. Then she stopped at the entrance, hesitating. It had to be Swire, or perhaps Bonarotti: there was nobody else left. Had they overheard Nora? Something close to panic washed over her, and she ducked inside, gun drawn.

To her immense surprise, there lay Smithback, sleeping. For a moment, she simply stared. Then understanding flooded through her. Nora had only mentioned Aragon’s death. Somehow, both she and Smithback had survived.

Sloane slid to her knees, letting the flashlight fall away, resting her back against the sopping wall of the tent. It wasn’t fair. Things had been working out so perfectly. Perhaps she could have found a way to deal with Nora. But now Smithback, too . . .

The writer’s eyes were fluttering open. “Oh,” he said, raising his head with a wince. “Hi. And ouch.”

But Sloane was not looking at him.

“I thought I heard shouting just now,” Smithback said. “Or was I just dreaming?”

Sloane waved him silent with her gun hand.

Smithback looked at her, blinking. Then his eyes widened. “What’s with the gun?”

“Will you shut up? I’m trying to think.”

“Where’s Nora?” asked Smithback, suspicion suddenly clouding his face.

At last, Sloane looked back at him. And as she did so, a plan began to take shape in her mind.

“I think she’s hiding in the rockfall at the end of the canyon,” she replied after a moment.

Smithback tried to ease himself up on one elbow, then slumped. “Hiding? Why? What happened?”

Sloane took a deep breath. Yes, she thought quickly: it’s the only way.

“Why is Nora hiding?” Smithback asked again, more sharply, concern crowding his voice.

Sloane looked at him. She had to be strong now.

“Because I’m going to kill her,” she replied as calmly as she could.

Smithback gasped painfully as he again tried to rise. “I’m not following you,” he said, sinking back again. “Guess I’m still delirious. I thought you said that you were going to kill Nora.”

“I did.”

Smithback closed his eyes and groaned.

“Nora’s left me no choice.” As she spoke, Sloane tried to detach herself from the situation, to rid herself of emotion. Everything, her whole life, depended on pulling this off.

Smithback looked at her. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”

“It’s no joke. I’m just going to wait here for her to return.” Sloane shook her head. “I’m truly sorry, Bill. But you’re the bait. She’d never leave the valley without you.”

Smithback made a mighty effort to rise, then collapsed again, grimacing. Sloane checked the cylinder, then closed the gun and snapped the cylinder lock back in place. The weapon had no safety, and she cocked the hammer as a precaution.

“Why?” Smithback asked.

“Incisive question there, Bill,” Sloane said sarcastically, anger returning despite her best efforts. “You must be a journalist.”

Smithback stared at her. “You’re not sane.”

“That kind of talk just makes what I have to do easier.”

The writer licked his lips. “Why?” he asked again.

Suddenly, Sloane rounded on him. “Why?” she asked, the anger rising. “Because of your precious Nora, that’s why. Nora, who every day reminds me more and more of my own, dear father. Nora, who wants to control everything down to the last iota, and keep all the glory for herself. Nora, who wanted to just walk away from the Sun Kiva. Which, by the way, contains an incredibly important find, a treasure that none of you had the faintest conception of.”

“So you did find gold,” Smithback murmured.

“Gold!” she snorted derisively. “I’m talking about pottery.”

“Pottery?”

“I see you’re no smarter than the rest,” she replied, picking up the disbelief in Smithback’s voice. “Listen. Fifteen years ago, the Metropolitan Museum paid a million dollars for the Euphronios Krater. That’s just one beat-up old Grecian wine jug. Last month, a little broken bowl from the Mimbres valley sold at Sotheby’s for almost a hundred grand. The pots in the Sun Kiva are not only infinitely more beautiful, they’re the only intact examples of their kind. But that doesn’t matter to Nora. She told me that, when we get back to civilization, she’s going to accuse me of murder, see that I’m ruined.”

She shook her head bitterly. “So tell me, Bill. You’re a shrewd judge of humanity. I have a choice to make now. I can return to Santa Fe as the discoverer of the greatest archaeological find of the century. Or I can return to face disgrace, and maybe even a lifetime behind bars. What am I supposed to do?”

Smithback remained silent.

“Exactly,” Sloane replied. “It’s not much of a choice, is it? When Nora returns for you, she’s dead.”

Smithback suddenly rose on one arm. “Nora!” he croaked, as loudly as he could. “Stay away! Sloane is waiting here for you with a—”

With a quick movement, Sloane whipped the gun across the side of his head. The writer flopped sideways, groaned, then lay still.

Sloane stared down at him for a moment. Then she glanced around the medical tent. Finding a small battery lamp among the equipment, she snapped it on and placed it in the far corner. Picking up her flashlight and switching it off, she quietly unzipped the tent and slipped outside into the dark.

The tent was pitched near a low, thick clump of chamisa. Slowly, quietly, Sloane crawled into the chamisa, then turned around and lay on her stomach, facing the tent. The lamp within it gave out a subdued glow, cozy and inviting. She was completely concealed within the dark vegetation, and yet she had an unobstructed view of the tent. Anyone approaching it would automatically be silhouetted by the dim light. When Nora returned for Smithback—as Sloane knew she would—her silhouette would make a perfect target.

Her thoughts drifted briefly to Black, sick and alone, waiting for her back at the kiva. She tried to ready herself for what was to come. Once this business was done, she could quickly drag Nora down to the river. In seconds, the current would sweep her into the narrow meat-grinder of a canyon at the far end of the valley. And when Nora’s body reached the Colorado River—eventually—there wouldn’t be enough left for a postmortem. It would be the same as if Nora had been washed out by the flash flood in the first place—as, by all rights, she should have been. No one would know. And then, of course, she’d have to do the same to Smithback. Sloane closed her eyes a moment, unwilling to think about that. But there was no longer any choice: she had to finish what the flood had failed to do.

Resting both elbows on the ground, Sloane eased the pistol forward, balancing it with both hands. Then she settled down to wait.

63

AARON BLACK LAY IN THE KIVA, CONFUSED and horribly frightened. The fitful glow of the dying lamp still faintly illuminated the close, dusty space. But Black’s eyes were shut fast against the darkness, against the overwhelming evidence of his failure. It seemed that hours had passed since Sloane had left, but perhaps it was only minutes: it was impossible for him to tell.

He forced his gluey eyes open. Something terrible was happening; perhaps it had been coming on for a while, and now that the fevered digging had given way to crushing disappointment, it was upon him at last. Perhaps the air was bad. He needed to get out, breathe some fresh air. He mustered the energy to rise, staggered, and with astonishment felt his legs buckle.

He fell back, arms flailing weakly. A pot rolled crazily around him and came to rest against his thigh, leaving a snake’s trail in the dusty floor. He must have tripped. He tried to rise and saw one leg jerk sideways in a spastic motion, muscles refusing to obey. The lantern, canted sideways, threw out a pale corona, suffused by dust.

From time to time, growing up, Black had been tortured by a recurring nightmare: he found himself paralyzed, unable to move. Now, he felt that he was living that nightmare. His limbs seemed to have grown frozen, unwilling or unable to respond to his commands.

“I can’t move!” he cried. And then, with a sudden terror, he realized he hadn’t been able to articulate the words. Air had come out of his mouth, yes—an ugly splutter, and he felt saliva dribbling down his chin—but no words came. He tried again and heard once more the ugly choking rush of air, felt the refusal of his tongue and lips to form words. The terror increased. In a spasm of panic, he struggled unsuccessfully to rise. Weird shapes and writhing figures began crowding the darkness beyond his eyes; he turned to look away, but his neck refused to move. Closing his eyes now only caused the shapes to spring to greater definition.

“Sloane!” he tried to call, staring up into the cloudy dimness, afraid even to blink. But not even the splutter of air came now. And then the lantern flickered again, and went black.

He tried to scream, but nothing happened. Sloane was supposed to be bringing medicine. Where was she? In the close darkness, the hallucinations were all around him, babbling, whispering: twisted creatures; grinning skulls, teeth inlaid with bloody carnelians; the clinking of skeletons moving restlessly around the kiva; the flickering of fires and the smell of roasting human meat; the screams; the victims gargling their own blood.

It was too terrible. He could not close his eyes, and they burned with an internal pressure. His mouth was locked open in a scream that never came. At least he still recognized the shapes around him as hallucinations. That meant he wasn’t too far gone to tell reality from unreality . . . but how unspeakably dreadful it was to not feel anything; not to know any longer where his limbs were lying, whether or not he had fouled himself; to lose some profound internal sense of where his body was. The panic of paralysis, that dream-fear out of his worst nightmares, washed over him yet again.

He couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. Was Nora really dead? Was he himself also dying, in the horrible darkness of this kiva? Had Sloane and Bonarotti really been inside the kiva with him? Perhaps they were going to Aragon for help. But no—Aragon was dead, like Nora.

Aragon, Smithback, Nora . . . and he had been as guilty of their deaths as if he had pulled the trigger. He hadn’t spoken up, down there in the valley. He’d let his own desire for immortal fame, for that ultimate discovery, get the better of him. He groaned inwardly: clearly, nobody would come to help, after all. He was alone in the darkness.

Then he saw another light, very faint, almost indivisible from the darkness. It was accompanied by a rustling sound. His heart surged with fresh hope. Sloane was returning at last.

The light grew stronger. And then he saw it, through the film of his sickness: fire, strangely disembodied, moving through the darkness of the kiva, dropping sparks as it went. And carrying this burning brand was a hideous apparition: a single figure, half-man, half-animal.

Black fell into renewed despair. Not a rescue. Just another hallucination. He wept inwardly; he wailed in his mind; but his eyes remained dry, his body flexed and immobile.

Now the apparition was coming toward him. He smelled juniper smoke, mixed with the ripe, sweet scent of morning glories; he saw in the flickering light the glittering black of an obsidian blade.

Distantly, he wondered where such an image, where such an unexpected scent, could have come from. Some grotesque recess of his mind, no doubt; some dreadful ceremony that perhaps he’d read about in graduate school, long forgotten and now, in the extremity of his delirium, resurrected to haunt him.

The figure bent closer, and he saw its blood-stiffened buckskin mask, eyes fiery behind the ragged slits. Surprisingly real. The coldness of the blade on his throat was astonishingly real, as well. Only a person who was as gravely ill as he was, he knew, could hallucinate something so . . .

And then he felt the unyielding knife blade trace a hard cold line across his neck; felt the abrupt wheeze of his own air, the gush of hot blood filling his windpipe; and he realized, with transcendent astonishment, that it was not a hallucination, after all.

64

SLOANE WAITED, EVERY MUSCLE TENSED, LISTENING with rapt concentration. There was a break in the storm, and the rain had slowed to an occasional patter. Cupping her watch to shield the glow, she briefly illuminated it: almost ten thirty. The sky had broken into patches of light as tattered clouds swept past a gibbous moon. Still, it was mostly dark—dark enough for a person to think she could creep into camp unobserved.

She shifted, rubbing her elbows. Once again, she found herself wondering what had happened to Swire and Bonarotti. No one had appeared at the mouth of the city. And they obviously weren’t in camp. Perhaps they’d never left Quivira in the first place, and were even now back in the kiva, watching over Black. In any case, it was best they were not around. Nora couldn’t hide forever. Soon, she would be coming for Smithback.

Sloane returned her gaze to the tent and its thin, small glow, like a canvas lampshade in the center of the dark landscape. The camp remained still. Concentrating on dismissing all irrelevant noise, she waited, ready to distinguish the sound of Nora’s approach from the distant rush of the swollen creek. Ten minutes went by, then fifteen. The moon fell once more behind ragged clouds. The rain came on again, accompanied by distant thunder. It was more difficult than she could have imagined, waiting here like this, gun in hand. She felt an undercurrent of rage: partly at Nora, but partly at her father. If he had trusted her, put her in charge of the expedition, none of this would have happened. She suppressed the sweep of dread that came over her as she contemplated what was about to happen—what she was being forced to do.

She forced her thoughts back toward the limitless wonders that awaited in the secret city. She reminded herself once again there was no other way. Even if she managed to beat Nora’s accusations somehow, they would ruin her forever. And in his heart, her father would know . . .

It came at last: the crackle of a twig. The soft chuff of a foot, placed carefully in wet sand. And then another; at least, she thought she heard another, against the distant call of the river and the soft patter of rain.

Someone was sneaking up to the tent; someone exercising exceptional care.

Sloane hesitated momentarily; she didn’t know Nora had such capacity for stealth. But nobody else, she knew, would be approaching the tent so cautiously.

She took a breath, opening her mouth as if to speak. For a moment, she considered calling out to Nora: to give her one more chance, to forget Aragon, the weather report, everything. But then she remembered the look on Nora’s face—the word murderer, uttered between clenched teeth—and she remained silent.

With a slight pressure of her thumbs and middle fingers, she raised the muzzle of the .38, relaxing her hands to absorb the recoil. She was a decent shot; at this range, there was no chance of missing. It would be quick, and probably painless. Within two minutes, both Nora and Smithback would be in the river, moving inexorably toward the narrow slot at its far end. If there was ever any question, she could always tell the others she had been shooting at a snake.

She waited, barrel leveled steadily. The steps were so quiet, and spaced so far apart, Sloane could not tell if they were approaching or receding. And then at last a shadow interposed itself between her and the tent.

Sloane breathed out slowly through her nostrils. The shadow was too tall to be bandy-legged Swire, and too short to be Aaron or Bonarotti. It could only be Nora. The shadow deepened slightly as it glided around the side of the tent, hovering outside the door.

Carefully, Sloane aimed the gun, centering on the shadow. This was it, then. She suspended her breathing, timed the shot to the interval between heartbeats, and squeezed the trigger.

The short-barreled weapon jerked back violently in her hands as the shot reverberated down the canyon. There was a gasp; the sound of spasmodic kicking; a brief, retreating scrabble. When her eyes cleared, the silhouette had disappeared from the dim light of the tent and all was silent.

She crept out of the chamisa and rose to her feet. It was done. She realized she was shaking violently but made no attempt to control it. Snapping on her light, keeping the gun drawn, she came forward. She hesitated at the side of the tent, momentarily unwilling to see the destruction her gun had wrought. Then, with a deep breath, she stepped forward.

Instead of Nora’s body lying before the tent, broken and bleeding, there was nothing.

Sloane’s hands went slack in consternation, and she fought to maintain her grip on the gun. She looked down at the sand before her, horrified. How could she possibly have missed? It was practically a point-blank shot. Could the gun have misfired? She swivelled her light around, looking for something, anything, that could explain.

And then, in the sand at the far edge of the tent, the cone of light caught something. It was a thick gout of blood. And, beside it, a partial bloody footprint in the damp earth.

Sloane peered more closely. The print did not belong to Nora—or, it seemed, to any other human being. It looked, in fact, like a clawed forepaw.

She drew back and glanced around, swinging her flashlight as she did so. There, caught in the beam behind her, was Nora, sprinting across the valley toward her and the camp. As the moon peered briefly through the rainclouds, Nora caught sight of Sloane, and stopped short; then veered away quickly, angling now toward the rope ladder that led up to the city. The shot had flushed her from the rock pile, but in the worst possible way.

Sloane raised the gun in her direction, then lowered it again. Nora had not approached the tent, after all. So what had she shot?

As she slowly circled the camp with her light, something resolved itself against the farthest row of tents. Sloane staggered in disbelief.

The cold light had fallen across a terrifying apparition. It stood, humped and ragged, staring silently back at her. Red eyes bored like dots of fire through holes cut into a buckskin mask. Wild painted designs of white along the legs and arms were spattered crimson with blood. Its pelt steamed in the humid air.

Instinctively, Sloane took a step backward, panic and disbelief struggling within her. This was what she had shot. She could see the great wound in its midriff, the blood shining black in the moonlight. And yet it remained standing. More than that: as its chest heaved slowly, she could see that it was very much alive.

Though the revelation took only a split second, to Sloane it seemed as if time had come to a standstill. She could hear her heart beating a frantic cadence in her ribs.

And then, with terrifying, deliberate malevolence, the creature took a step toward her.

Instantly, panic took over. Dropping the flashlight, Sloane wheeled and ran. For a moment, the kiva, the flood, everything was forgotten in her desire to escape this monstrous vision. This was the thing that massacred the horses, desecrated Holroyd’s body . . . then she thought of Swire and Bonarotti, and suddenly her legs were churning even faster, the night air tearing in and out of her lungs.

Now she could barely make out Nora, climbing toward the city. Desperately, Sloane veered to follow, keeping her eyes locked on the ladder, running with reckless abandon, trying with all the power of her will to ignore the awful, low, flapping sounds of the pelted thing as it came racing up the darkness behind her.

65

NORA HEAVED HERSELF OVER THE RIM, scrambled to her feet, and sprinted away from the edge of the cliff. Vaulting over the retaining wall, she dashed across the central plaza into the deeper darkness beneath the shadow of the roomblocks.

She came to a stop, leaning against a wall, sobbing, sides heaving. As if from a great distance, she heard the steady beating of rain. She paid it no heed. A single, fleeting image was burned into her mind: Sloane, standing outside the door to Smithback’s tent after the sound of that terrible shot. She had found Bill, and killed him. For a moment, the pain and despair were so overwhelming that Nora considered simply walking out into the plaza and letting Sloane gun her down.

A peal of thunder boomed, echoing again and again beneath the vast dome. Just being in the city made her feel sick. Her gaze traveled first to the far wall of the plaza, then back toward the roomblocks and the granaries. There, black upon black, yawned the maw of the Crawlspace. She flitted toward the rear of the plaza, careful not to raise any dust. Perhaps she could lure Sloane inside the Crawlspace, then ambush her, take the gun . . .

She pulled up short, breathing hard. This was stupid; she was panicking, making bad decisions. Not only was the Crawlspace a potentially deadly bottleneck, it was loaded with fungal dust.

There was a fresh slash of lightning, and she turned back to see Sloane scramble over the top of the rope ladder, pistol in hand.

“Nora!” she heard Sloane call out wildly. “Nora, for God’s sake, wait!”

Nora wheeled, diving away from the plaza, back toward the curved rear wall of the city.

Another tongue of lightning ripped the distant landscape, briefly illuminating the ancient city in indigo chiaroscuro. A second later, there was a crack of thunder, followed almost immediately by a second sound, shockingly loud in the close confines: the sound of gunfire.

Keeping to the darkest shadows, moving as swiftly as she dared, Nora crept along the stone wall toward the old midden heap. Careful not to trip over Black’s tarps, she moved along the edge of the city, approaching the dark bulk of the first tower.

The sound of running footsteps rang out against stone. Nora shrank quickly behind the pole ladder propped against the tower, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell where the footsteps had come from. She needed time to think, to determine a plan of action. Now that Sloane was in the city, perhaps there was a way for her to sneak back to the ladder, descend into the valley, get Smithback, and . . .

Footsteps again, much louder now; gasping breath; and then, coming around from the front side of the tower, was Sloane.

Nora glanced around in fresh desperation: the midden heap, the back alley leading to the Crawlspace, the benchland trail that led out to the narrow circuit above the valley. Every one was a dead end. There was nowhere left to run. Slowly, she turned back toward Sloane, steeling herself for the inevitable: the roar of the gun, the sudden lance of pain.

But Sloane was crouched at the base of the tower, peering cautiously around its front edge. Her left hand was clenched against her heaving chest; her gun hand was pointed, not at Nora, but out into the darkness of the plaza.

“Nora, listen,” Sloane gasped over her shoulder. “There’s something after us.”

“Something?” Nora echoed.

“Something horrible.”

Nora stared at Sloane. What kind of a trick is this? she wondered.

Sloane remained crouched, gun pointed out into the plaza. She glanced back at Nora for a moment, and even in the darkness Nora could see fear, disbelief, nascent panic in the almond eyes.

“For God’s sake, watch behind us!” Sloane begged, returning her own gaze to the plaza.

Nora looked quickly back down the direction from which she’d run. Her mouth had gone dry.

“Listen, Nora, please,” she heard Sloane whisper, struggling to get her breathing under control. “Swire and Bonarotti have disappeared. I think we’re the only ones left. And now, it’s after us.”

“What’s after us?” Nora asked. But even as she phrased the question, she realized she already knew the answer.

“If we separate, we’re dead,” Sloane said. “The only chance we have is to stick together.”

Nora stared out into the darkness, past the midden heap, toward the granaries and the hidden maw of the Crawlspace. She struggled to keep the panic from clamping down and freezing her limbs. The woman at her back, she knew, had brought tragedy to the expedition; caused Aragon’s death; murdered Smithback in cold blood. But right now, she could not afford to think about that. Now, she could think only of the dreadful apparition that, at any moment, could come scuttling toward her out of the black.

The city was full of recesses in which they could hide. But hiding in the dark was not the answer. It would be just a matter of time until the skinwalker tracked them down. What they needed was some defensible place where they could hold out for at least a while. Daybreak might afford a fresh set of options. . . .

In that instant, she realized that there was nowhere to go. Nowhere, except up.

“The tower,” she said.

Sloane turned quickly to her. The question in her eyes disappeared as she followed Nora’s gaze toward the structure that reared above them.

Grasping the pole ladder, Nora scrambled up to the small second-story rooftop. Sloane followed, kicking the ladder away behind her. They dashed through the low crumbling doorway and into the enfolding darkness of the great tower.

Nora paused within, digging out her flashlight and shining it into the rectangle of darkness above them. The sight was terrifying: a series of rickety pole ladders, balanced on ledges of projecting stone, rising into the darkness. To climb, she would have to place one foot on a series of projecting stones that ascended the inside wall, and the other foot on the notches of the poles. There were three series of ladders, one above the other, separated by the narrow stone shelves that ran around the inner walls of the tower. It had been deliberately designed to be the most precarious climb possible.

On the other hand, if they could just reach the redoubt at the top, they might be able to hold the skinwalker off. The Anasazi had built this tower for a single purpose: defense. Sloane had a gun. And they might even find a cache of stones at the top that could be lobbed down into the tower.

“Go on!” Sloane whispered urgently.

Nora checked her flashlight. Its beam was growing feeble. But she had no choice: they could not make the climb in total darkness. Sliding the lit flashlight into her shirt pocket, she reached for the first pole, testing its sturdiness. Taking a deep breath, she placed a foot in the first notch. Her other foot went on the first small stump of rock, projecting from the tower wall across from the notch. She hoisted herself up, spreadeagled over open space. She climbed as fast as she dared, trying not to think of the swaying of the pole under her weight, creaking with dry rot and shedding powdered wood. Sloane followed behind, her frantic climbing shaking the brittle structure still further.

Reaching the first platform, Nora stopped to catch her breath. As she crouched, gasping, she heard a faint clatter from outside the tower: the sound of a pole ladder being thrust up against adobe walls.

Instantly, Nora leaped for the second pole, Sloane following. She scrambled upward, vaulting up the swaying pole, listening to the crackling and splitting of wood beneath her feet. This ladder felt much less secure than the first. As she neared the top, she felt its supports beginning to give way. She threw herself onto the second shelf, gasping and crying.

Just then, she heard the patter of footsteps below. A dark form momentarily blotted out the dim rectangle of light at the entrance to the tower. Beside her, Sloane cursed under her breath.

For an instant, Nora found herself unable to move, as the terror of the encounter in the abandoned ranch house returned to her in full force. Then she was shocked back to the present by the deafening blast of a pistol shot. The echoes died crazily within the confines of the tower. Heart in her mouth, Nora angled the flashlight downward. The figure was swarming up the first ladder, swift and sure. Sloane raised her weapon again.

“Save your bullets for the top!” Nora cried. She urged Sloane onto the third and final ladder, its ancient geometry faint in the beam of her light.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sloane whispered.

But Nora simply pushed her up the ladder without a word. It was time to take a desperate chance.

Taking a firm hold on the stone shelf, she drew her leg back and kicked at the bracing of the second pole as hard as she could. She felt it shudder with the impact. She kicked at it a second time, then a third. Below, she could hear a desperate scrabbling as the figure rode the shaking structure. Summoning all her strength, Nora kicked at the pole once again. With a shriek of rending wood, the pole lurched outward about six inches, whipsawing itself into a notch of rock. Nora heard a muffled roar from below. Chancing another look down, she saw the skinwalker lose its grip and begin to fall away toward the base of the tower. Then, catlike, it lashed out, grasping a set of supports. It clung there for a moment, swinging in and out of the dying beam of Nora’s light. Then, with careful deliberation, it began climbing toward her again. Nora kicked out once more, trying to knock the pole away completely, but it was now jammed fast.

She leaped for the third pole and climbed, arms and legs protesting, toward the third shelf and the hole leading to the redoubt at the top of the tower. Moments later she was onto the ledge. From the small room beyond, Sloane reached out a hand to help her in.

Crouching beneath the low ceiling, Nora swept her flashlight around the room. It was tiny, perhaps four by six feet. Above her head, a small ragged hole led up onto the roof of the tower. A disarticulated skeleton lay in a heap against one wall. Her heart sank as she saw there were no stones, no weapons—nothing they could use to defend themselves except a few useless bones.

But they still had the gun.

Shielding the flashlight, Nora leaned back out into the cool dark shaft of the tower. Two bobbing red eyes reflected the feeble beam: it was on the second ladder again, and coming inexorably closer.

She shrank back into the redoubt and looked at Sloane. A pale face stared back at her, drawn with fear and tension. Beneath it, the necklace of micaceous beads gave off a faint golden sheen. Nora cupped her hand over the light. A part of her could not fully comprehend what was happening: stuck here, with the woman who had caused the death of her friends, while a creature out of nightmare was climbing toward them. She shook her head, trying to clear it.

“How many bullets?” she whispered, shining the veiled light toward Sloane.

Mutely, Sloane held up three fingers.

“Listen,” Nora went on, “There’s no time left. I’ll turn off the light, and we’ll wait here in the opening. When it’s close, I’ll aim the beam, and you fire. Okay?”

Sloane suppressed a cough, nodded urgently.

“We’ll only have time for one shot, maybe two. Make them count.”

She snapped off her light, and together they moved toward the opening of the redoubt. As Nora inched out cautiously, she became acutely aware of every sense: the cool air rolling up from the darkness of the tower, the hard metal of the flashlight in her hand, the smell of dust and decay from the redoubt.

And the sound of scrabbling claws on wood, growing closer, ever closer.

“Get ready,” she whispered.

She waited a moment, then another, then she snapped on the light.

And there it was below her, terrifyingly close. With an involuntary cry, she took in the petrifying image: musky wolfskin; feral eyes; tortured, howling mask.

“Now!” she cried, even as the roar of the gun drowned out her voice.

In the faint beam, she saw the skinwalker jerk to one side, pelt flying wildly about him.

“Again!” she shouted, fighting to keep the dwindling pinpoint of light on the twisting figure. There was another blast, superimposed by a muffled howl from below. As the light guttered out Nora saw the figure crumple in on itself and fall away, swallowed by the well of darkness.

She dropped the useless flashlight into the gulf and listened. But there was nothing: no groan, no rasping intake of breath. The faint glowing rectangle of doorway far below them betrayed no movement, no twisted shadow.

“Come on!” Sloane said, pulling her back into the redoubt and urging her toward the hole in the ceiling. Grasping the adobe framework, Nora pulled herself up onto the roof. She backed away from the opening as Sloane came up behind, gasping and coughing.

Here, far above the ruins of Quivira, it was cool, with a faint breeze. The dome of the alcove was only a few feet above her head, a rough, fractured surface. Nora stood motionless, exhausted. There was no parapet on the tower; the roof ended in open space. Beyond it, the city lay stretched out below her feet. The moon was struggling to show itself behind an expanse of fast-scudding rainclouds, and there was the whisper of rain. The pale illumination, waxing and waning, gave the roomblocks, towers, and plazas a fleeting spectral glow. Moist air brushed her cheek, stirred her hair. She heard a faint flutter of wings, a low wind in the valley. Somewhere out in that valley lay Smithback’s body.

She turned quickly toward Sloane. The woman was kneeling at the opening in the roof, gun drawn, staring intently downward. Nora came over, and together they waited in tense silence. But no sound or movement came from the darkness below.

At last, Sloane stood and backed away. “It’s over,” she said.

Nora nodded absently, still staring into the dark cavity, her thoughts clouded, her mind troubled.

For what seemed several minutes, they stood motionless, overwhelmed by the furious emotion of the chase. Then, at last, Sloane snugged the gun into her belt.

“So what now, Nora?” she asked huskily.

Nora looked up at her, slowly, uncomprehending.

“I just saved your life,” Sloane went on slowly. “Isn’t that going to count for something?”

Nora could not bring herself to speak.

“It’s true,” Sloane said. “I saw that storm. So did Black. But I didn’t lie about the weather report. You gave me no choice.” There was a sudden flash of anger in the almond eyes. “You were willing to abandon everything, keep the glory to yourself—” A sudden racking cough cut short the sentence. Nora could see Sloane fighting to keep her voice calm.

“I’m not proud of what I did,” she went on. “But it had to be done. People have died for far lesser causes than this. The true wrong was yours: walking away, ready to deprive the world of the most glorious pottery ever made by man.”

“Pottery,” Nora repeated.

“Yes. The Sun Kiva was full—is full—of black-on-yellow micaceous pottery. It’s the mother lode, Nora. You didn’t know it. You didn’t even suspect it. But I knew.”

“I knew there was no gold in that kiva.”

“Of course there wasn’t. Neither one of us ever really believed that. But all those ancient reports weren’t totally fabricated—not really. It was a translational blip.”

Sloane leaned forward. “You know the value of black-on-yellow micaceous. No intact examples have ever been found. That’s because they’re all here, Nora. They were the true treasure of Anasazi. And they’re more than just pots. I’ve seen them. The designs are unique—they tell, in pictographic form, the entire history of the Anasazi. That’s why they were made and hoarded here, and nowhere else: knowledge is power. They hold the answers to all the great mysteries of southwestern archaeology.”

For a moment, Nora froze at these words. The horror and danger were forgotten as she thought of the magnitude of such a discovery. If this is true, she thought, then it makes all of our other discoveries seem like . . .

And then Sloane coughed, drawing the back of her hand across her mouth. The climb seemed to have drained all the energy from her: she seemed pale, her breathing rapid. Instantly, Nora returned to the present. The sickness is coming on her, she thought.

“Sloane, the entire back of the city—especially the Sun Kiva—is full of fungal dust,” she said.

Sloane frowned, as if doubting she had heard correctly. “Dust?”

“Yes. That’s what killed Holroyd. The skinwalkers are using it for corpse powder.”

Sloane shook her head impatiently. “What are you doing—trying to distract me with bullshit? Don’t change the subject. I’m talking about the greatest discovery of the century.”

Sloane fell silent for a moment. Then she began again. “You know, we could keep the mistaken weather report between ourselves. We could forget about what happened to Aragon, forget the storm. This find is bigger than all that.” She looked away. “You can’t possibly understand what it means to me—what it would have meant to me—to be the sole discoverer. To have my name go down in history beside Carter and Wetherill. If it weren’t for me, we would have left this place, the pottery undiscovered, ripe for looting by—”

“Sloane,” Nora said, “the skinwalkers weren’t after the pottery. They wanted to keep us away from it.”

But Sloane put her hand up for silence. “Listen to me, Nora. Together, we could give this great gift to the world.” She drew a ragged breath. “If I’m willing to share this with you, then surely you can forget what’s happened here today.”

Nora looked at Sloane, her tawny face dappled in the moonlight. “Sloane—” she began, then stopped. “You don’t get it, do you? I can’t do that. It’s not about archaeology anymore.”

Sloane stared at her, wordlessly, for a moment. Then she placed her hand on the butt of her gun. “It’s like I told you, Nora. You leave me no choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

Sloane drew the gun quickly, pointing it at her. “Right,” she said. “Endless fame, or a lifetime in disgrace? That’s not a choice.”

There was a brief silence as the two women stood, facing each other. Sloane coughed once again; a sharp sound.

“I didn’t want things to end up like this,” she said, more calmly. “But you’ve made it clear it’s either you or me. And I’m the one holding the gun.”

Nora said nothing.

“So turn around, Nora. Walk to the edge of the roof.”

Sloane’s voice had grown very quiet. Nora stared at her. In the pale light, the amber eyes were hard and dry.

Her gazed still locked on Sloane, Nora took a step backward.

“There’s only one bullet left in the chamber. But that’s all I’ll need, if it comes down to that. So turn around, Nora. Please.”

Slowly, Nora turned around to face the night.

Open space stretched out before her, a vast river of darkness. Across the narrow valley, Nora could make out the dark violet of the far wall of cliffs. She knew she should feel fear, regret, despair. And yet the only emotion she was aware of was a cold rage: rage at Sloane, for her pathetic, misplaced ambition. One bullet . . . she wondered, if she threw herself to one side, whether she stood a chance in hell of dodging that bullet. She tensed, readying herself for sudden movement.

Sloane shifted behind her. “Step off the roof,” she said.

But still Nora stood, eyes and ears open to the night. The storm had passed. She could hear the frogs calling from below, the hum and drone of insects going about their nocturnal business. In the intense stillness, she could even hear the blood as it rushed through her veins.

“I’d rather not shoot you,” she heard Sloane say. “But if I have to, I will.”

“Damn you,” Nora whispered. “Damn you for wrecking the expedition. And god damn you for killing Bill Smithback.”

“Smithback?” The tone in Sloane’s voice was one of such surprise that, despite herself, Nora turned toward it. As she did, she saw a form suddenly emerge from the hole in the roof: a dark, matted shape, wolf pelt twisting around naked painted skin. Pale light glistened off a crimson patch of fur that stained the figure’s midriff.

Sloane pivoted as the thing rushed at her with a great howl of vengeance. There was a flash of moonlight on the gun, the arc of a knife, and both figures went down, rolling frantically in the loose dirt of the tower roof. Nora dropped to her knees and crawled crablike away from the edge, eyes riveted to the struggle. In the moonlight, she could see the figure, burying the black knife again and again into Sloane’s chest and stomach. Sloane cried out, twisting and thrashing her body. With a supreme effort, she tried to pull herself away. She half rose, gun hand swiveling around desperately, only to be pulled down again. There was a terrible thrashing, another anguished cry from Sloane. The blade flashed down and the gun fired at last, blowing the knife into hundreds of glittering slivers of obsidian. With a howl, the dark shape flung itself upon her. There was a final thrash, a puff of dust: and then both figures were gone.

Nora rushed quickly to the edge, peering down in horror as the bodies, locked together, landed in the sand at the bottom of the tower, flew apart, then rolled off the edge of the city. Before the moon buried itself once again behind the clouds, it winked briefly off Sloane’s pistol as it spun lazily, end over end, into the unfathomable night.

Trembling, Nora pulled herself back, sprawled across the floor, breathing hard.

They had not killed the skinwalker, after all. It had hidden itself somewhere within the blackness of the tower, waiting for the right moment in which to strike. Then, it had attacked Sloane with a single-mindedness so furious Nora could barely comprehend it. And now, that skinwalker was dead. And so was Sloane.

But it was not the chase up the tower, or even the encounter on the roof, that filled her with absolute terror. In the desperate struggle, one crucial fact had slipped her mind. Two figures in wolfskins had assaulted her in the ranch house, on that clear Santa Fe night, barely three weeks before. And that meant only one thing.

There was another skinwalker, loose somewhere, in the valley of Quivira.

66

HER BREATH COMING IN GASPS, NORA moved toward the hole in the tower roof. She lowered herself, as quietly as she could, into the small redoubt below. On hands and knees, she crawled toward the lip of the chamber, then looked slowly over the edge. It was pitch black in the tower; she sensed, rather than felt, the vast emptiness below her. She heard nothing save for the rush of water in the valley beyond—the maddening, unceasing babble that disguised other, stealthier, sounds.

Her arms trembled, the thought of descending, sightless, through the complex labyrinth of ancient wood was terrifying. Yet even more terrifying was the thought of remaining here, inside the tower, waiting for something to come for her. Now that she had no weapon—now that there was no possible way to defend herself—the tower had become a deathtrap from which she had to escape.

She struggled to regulate her breathing. Extending one foot over the ledge, she swept it gingerly from side to side until she found the first notch of the topmost ladder. Moving carefully forward, she eased her weight onto the old framework, keeping one hand on the shelf until she knew she had a firm foothold. Then, with extreme caution, she began to descend, one notch at a time. She could feel a chill wind rising up from below, caressing her legs. The wind rose, and the tower creaked and ticked in response. Pebbles came clattering past her, their echoing fall reminding her of the abyss below.

At last her foot reached the firmness of the second shelf. She paused for a second, trying once again to steady the wild rise and fall of her chest. But she could not remain here: poised between roof and floor, she was even more vulnerable. Groping in the darkness, fingers extended, she reached for the top of the detached second ladder. Once again, she began the descent, limbs balanced between the creaking wooden pole and the stone protrusions.

Just as she was about to reach for the next shelf, she froze. There had been a sound, she thought: the soft hollow sound of a footfall. She waited, listening, in the darkness. But there was nothing more, and with relief she slid down onto the safety of the shelf.

One more ladder. Steadying herself, she reached for it, tested it. Then, as carefully as before, she descended first one notch, then another, and then another.

Suddenly, she felt the pole give with a dry crack. The entire wooden structure seemed to shudder around her. Immediately, she pushed herself away from the pole and dropped the last ten feet, hitting the stone floor with a mighty impact. Needles of pain lanced through her knees and ankles as she scrambled to her feet and stumbled through the low doorway onto the adjacent rooftop. She glanced around, shaking with exertion and fear. But there was nothing: the city seemed perfectly silent and deserted.

She had to get to the valley. At least there, she might have a chance. Perhaps Sloane had been wrong. Perhaps Swire and Bonarotti were still alive. If she could hide until daylight, she’d have a better chance of finding them. There was safety in numbers. She might even be able to locate Sloane’s gun, lying somewhere in the darkness of the valley floor. And there was always the hope, remote as it was, that Smithback’s gunshot wound was not fatal . . .

Nora brushed her hand across her face with a sob. She could not allow herself to think about that; not now.

Keeping as low as possible, she crept across the roof and peered down the ladder that leaned against it. The way below seemed clear. Swinging herself over the edge, she descended as quickly as she dared, then paused to look around. Nothing.

She paused once again. The city seemed silent and asleep. The moon, alternately emerging from and disappearing behind the racing clouds, painted uncertain fingers of light across the roomblocks. And yet her instincts told her that something was wrong.

Cautiously, keeping against the wall of the tower, she moved around toward the front of the city and peeked around the corner. One at a time, objects came into view, lit by the fitful glow of the moon: the retaining wall, the central plaza, the ghostly outline of roomblocks.

Once again, a sense of imminent danger washed over her. And this time she realized what it was: borne on the fitful midnight wind came the faint scent of morning glories.

Almost without knowing what she was doing, she fell back, away from the tower and into the darkness along the edge of the city. She found herself running with a reckless speed, heedless of obstacles. There was no plan in her mind. She felt simply an animal panic to get away: to race for the deepest, most secret place she could find.

Dark alleys, low mounds of rubble, angular adobe structures flashed by in the faint moonlight as she ran. Suddenly, she caught herself short. To the right were the squat, low forms of the granaries. And directly before her, its low maw a rectangle of deeper darkness, was the entrance to the Crawlspace. Inside, she knew, the blackness would be complete. There might be a hiding place in there, perhaps inside the roomblocks of the secret city itself.

She began to move forward, then stopped. Pursuer or no, she would not allow herself to enter the Crawlspace, and its lethal payload of dust, ever again.

Instead, she turned and dashed into the alley alongside the granaries. Halfway down the alley’s gentle curve, she stopped at a notched pole ladder, leaning against the rearward set of roomblocks. Grasping at the dry wood, she climbed as quietly as she could to the second-floor setback. Stepping onto the roof, she pulled the ladder up behind her. At least that would slow the skinwalker down, buy her a few more seconds of time.

She shook her head, forcing the panic away, trying to keep her thoughts clear. The clouds moved once again over the moon. Only the river spoke. Quivira was silent, watching, under a shroud of darkness.

She moved across the rearward set of roofs, past a long row of keyhole doorways. Bats flitted from the recesses of the city, flicking through the shadows on their way to the valley. Except for a few central roomblocks that ran from the front of the city to the back, most of the buildings were cul-de-sacs. She thought of hiding inside one of the roomblocks, then quickly dismissed the idea; out here, in the city proper, it would only be a matter of time until she was hunted down. Better to keep moving, to wait for an opportunity to descend into the valley.

She crept along the row of open doorways, then paused at the corner of the roomblock, listening.

A sudden footfall invaded the darkness. Nora looked around wildly; with the sound of the river echoing through the vault, it was almost impossible to tell where the sound had come from. Had the skinwalker followed her around to the granaries, and was it even now slipping up behind? Or was it lying in wait somewhere in the plaza, biding its time until she crept toward the rope ladder?

There was another noise, not as faint as the last. It seemed—she thought—to have come from below. Dropping to her stomach, Nora crawled to the side of the roof, and cautiously peered over the edge into the pool of darkness. Empty.

She rose to her feet, the smell of flowers stronger now: overripe, sickly sweet. Her heart was hammering violently in her chest. She backed away from the parapet, and as she did so she heard the rattling sound of the pole ladder being placed against its flanks. Quickly, she ducked into the nearest set of roomblocks.

She pressed herself against the wall, gasping for breath. Whatever she did, wherever she went, she was at a disadvantage. The skinwalker was faster than she was, and far stronger. It was at home in the dark. She realized that it would never allow her to escape from the valley.

There was only one possibility. She had to even the playing field, to minimize the threat. And that meant finding a weapon.

Inside, the room was still and cool. Nora glanced quickly around. A pile of war god masks stood in one corner, crimson mouths twisted and leering in the faint moonlight. The air smelled of pack rats and mold. She crept through the next doorway into another room, darker than the first, feeling along the walls, letting her memory of the place guide her steps.

Cautiously, she felt her way into the third room. A shaft of pale light came through a crack in the roof, and there they were: a stack of fire-hardened wooden spears, ending in razor-sharp obsidian tips. She hefted a few, selected the two lightest, and moved out of the room into a narrow passageway.

She felt her way along the wall, moving toward the next room in the block. Her memory of the location of the spears had been more or less correct; she also recalled that this system of rooms had an entrance at the front as well as the back. But there were many hundreds of rooms in Quivira, and she could not be certain.

Locating the doorframe, she ducked into the next room. Here, gray light filtered from the far doorway. With a small glimmer of relief, Nora realized she must be close to the front of the structure. She moved into the darkest corner and waited, listening.

By now, the skinwalker would have followed her into the roomblocks. Nora rested the spear on her shoulder. It felt puny, insubstantial, in her sweaty fist. Perhaps it was the height of folly for her to think she could do anything to save herself. But the only other option was to do nothing, to wait in terror for the inevitable end. And she knew that—however quick and strong the skinwalkers were—they were also mortal.

She tensed at the faint sound of a footfall in the room beyond. The sound of the river was muffled here, inside the roomblocks, and she strained to listen. There was another faint noise. The reek of flowers grew overpowering. Struggling to keep her wits about her, Nora raised the spear. A shadow, black upon black, seemed to fill the doorway. With an involuntary shout, she heaved the spear with all the strength she could muster. Immediately, she jumped away, running through the far door into the last room of the block. There had been no sound, no cry; but she thought she had heard the deep, flat sound of the spear sinking into flesh.

She stumbled forward, out the doorway and onto the flat roof along the front of the structure. Not daring to pause for a breath, she glanced about for a way down.

There was a sudden scrabbling sound behind her, then a heavy weight fell across her back, forcing her violently to the ground. Crying out in pain and surprise, she tried to struggle away. A heavy pelt of fur, dank with sweat and the ghastly stench of rotting flowers, fell across her face. She looked up to see the masked head rear back over her, spear bobbing from one shoulder. An arm raised up, obsidian knife flashing.

With a tremendous effort she pulled herself to one side. There was a searing pain in her calf as the knife struck a glancing blow. Without pausing, she tumbled headfirst off the roof of the roomblock. Landing in a pile of sand, she scrambled to her feet and ran into the protective shadow of the first-floor blocks. She was aware that she whimpered as she moved. Her leg throbbed, and she could feel the wet gush of blood running down around her ankle.

From behind came a heavy thump, as of a large body leaping to the ground. She ducked into the doorway of the nearest room, then half ran, half limped through a series of galleries to a small, dark chamber. Clouds had temporarily veiled the moon, but she knew that beyond this chamber lay the central plaza. She knelt in the close darkness, thinking furiously. A rancid smell of blood filled her nostrils: she must have been cut far deeper than she thought.

A brief running patter brought her to her feet. Any minute, and the moon would reappear from behind the clouds. It would be the work of thirty seconds to follow the trail of blood directly to her. And then, the thick smell of blood would be replaced by the wonderful, terrible, scent of flowers.

As if on cue, a ghostly aura crept across the walls of the room as moonlight slanted once again into the city. Nora tensed herself for what would be her final run across the plaza to the retaining wall. Deep down, she was well aware that she could never make it in time. But she could not bear to sit in this room, cornered like a rat, awaiting a brief, brutal end.

She took a deep breath, then another. Then she swivelled to face the doorway leading out of the room.

And froze.

In the far corner, illuminated by the sepulchral moonlight, lay Luigi Bonarotti. His glazed eyes were wide open in a sightless stare. In the dim light, he seemed bathed in an even deeper shadow of blood. Nora took in the outrageous, horrifying details: fingers cut off, unbooted feet torn away, head partially scalped. She fell to her knees and covered her mouth, gagging.

As if from a great distance, she heard the skinwalker moving in the alley behind the roomblocks.

She sat up quickly, her gaze returning to Bonarotti. There, still holstered around his waist, was the monstrous gun.

She leaped for it, fumbled with the catch, and pulled it from the holster. A .44 magnum Super Blackhawk, deadly as hell. She wiped the bloody grip on her jeans, then scurried back against the wall as another footstep sounded, closer.

With terrible speed, the skinwalker appeared in the doorway, thick pelt fluttering. The white spots along its midriff glowed blue in the moonlight, and red angry eyes stared at her from behind the slits in the buckskin mask.

For an instant, it eyed Nora silently. Then, with a low growl, it sprang forward.

In the confines of the small adobe room, the blast of the .44 was deafening. She closed her eyes against the blinding flash, letting her elbows and wrists absorb the mighty kick. There was a frenzied howl. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fired a second time at the sound. Ears ringing, she scrambled in the direction of the doorway, then tripped and fell sprawling out into the central plaza. Quickly, she rolled onto her back and pointed the gun toward the doorway. The skinwalker was framed within it, crouching, arms gripping its midriff. She could hear fluid pattering to the ground as terrible wounds in its chest and stomach overloaded the thick pelt with blood. It straightened, saw her, and leaped with a snarl of rage and hatred. She fired a third time directly into the mask and the force of the massive bullet stopped the figure in mid-air, jerking the head back, whirling the body sharply to one side. Raising herself to one knee, Nora fired again, then again, the mask disintegrating into wet shreds. The smell of blood and cordite filled the air. The skinwalker thrashed heavily in the dust, whirling and jerking in a frenzied dance, bone and matter glowing in the moonlight, small jets of arterial blood rising in an erratic cadence, a low furious cry gurgling in its throat. But still Nora pulled the trigger, again and again and again, the hammer falling on empty chambers with a click that could not be heard above her own cries.

And then, after a long time, came silence. Painfully, Nora raised herself to her feet. She took two steps toward the retaining wall, faltered, stepped forward again. Then she sank back to the ground, laying the gun aside. It was over.

There, at the stone doorstep of the ruined city, she wept silently.

67

AFTER SEVERAL MINUTES, NORA ONCE again rose unsteadily to her feet. The valley of Quivira lay bathed in a faint silver light. Dark jewels winked and played across the dappled surface of the quickly flowing river. Behind her, the bulk of the ancient city watched in stony silence.

Hesitantly, like a sleepwalker, she made her way to the front of the ruin. She went a few paces, then stopped. There, a few feet away from the retaining wall, was Sloane’s body, lying broken and crumpled in the sand. Nora took a step closer. The amber eyes were black and sightless, overlaid with a dull sheen of moonlight. The sand around her was soaked in blood. Nora shuddered, then glanced away, looking automatically for the body of the skinwalker.

It was nowhere to be seen.

A sharp current of fear brought her fully alert once more. She looked around more carefully. There, in the sand half a dozen feet from Sloane, was a large, distorted hollow: a thrashed-out depression, smeared and sprinkled with blood. A silver concho lay in the sand beside it. But there was no skinwalker body. She took an instinctive step back, hand rising to her mouth, eyes searching the dark city. But there was nothing.

She ran to the rope ladder and climbed painfully down, still in shock. Reaching the bottom, she looked around, waiting. There was the medical tent, its beckoning orange glow now extinguished. Nora felt a sob rising in her throat. Looking in the tent would be the most painful thing she could imagine. Still, she had to know for herself if Smithback was dead.

She sprinted through the moonlight toward the camp, angling toward the medical tent, her torn calf protesting at every step. It was worse than she could have ever feared: the inside of the tent had been torn to ribbons, equipment and supplies strewn about, the sleeping bag shredded. There were spatters of blood everywhere. But there was no body.

Sobbing more loudly now, Nora backed away, staggering in the shimmering moonlight. “Damn you!” she cried, turning slowly in the darkness. “God damn you!”

And then she felt a thin, but incredibly strong, arm slide its way over her shoulders and clamp down across her mouth and neck. For a moment, she struggled frantically. Then she went limp, unable to struggle further.

“Hush,” whispered the quiet, gentle voice into her ear.

The grip loosened and Nora turned, her eyes widening in wonder. It was John Beiyoodzin.

“You!” she gasped.

In the moonlight, the old man’s braids seemed to be painted with quicksilver. He touched a finger to his lips. “I have your friend hidden at the far end of the valley.”

“My friend?” Nora said, not understanding.

“Your journalist friend. Smithback.”

“Bill Smithback? He’s alive?”

Beiyoodzin nodded.

Relief and unexpected joy flooded through her, and she gripped Beiyoodzin’s hands with newfound strength. “Look, there’s somebody else still missing. Roscoe Swire, our wrangler—”

Something in Beiyoodzin’s expression stopped her from continuing. “The man who watched your horses,” he said. “He is dead.”

“Dead? Oh no, no, not Roscoe . . .” She turned her head away.

“I found his body by the river. The skinwalkers got him. Now we must go.”

He freed himself and began to turn away, gesturing for her to follow. But she put a restraining hand on his arm.

“I killed one of them up in the city,” she said. “But there’s another one. He’s wounded, but I think he’s still alive.”

Beiyoodzin nodded. “I know,” he said simply. “That is why we must leave at once.”

“But how?”

“I know a secret trail. The one the skinwalkers themselves use to get in and out of the valley. It is extremely difficult. But we must get you and your friend away from this place.”

Beiyoodzin began moving rapidly and noiselessly through the dappled shadows, out of camp and back toward the overhanging cliff face. Using the darkness of the rock wall for cover, they made their way past the rockfall to the far end of the canyon, where the swollen river tumbled into the narrower slot canyon, disappearing in a violent waterfall. The sound of water was much louder here, and the entire mouth of the canyon was covered in the usual pall of mist. Without pausing, Beiyoodzin stepped through the curtain of spray and disappeared. Hesitating just a moment, Nora followed.

She found herself on a small, sloping ledge of rock. The trail, chiseled into the rock, started directly behind the curtain of spray and went down, a few feet above the roaring cataract. Here in the narrow canyon, the reflected moonlight was dim, and Nora moved across the slippery, moss-covered rock with care. A false step, she knew, would send her over the edge: into the rushing waters, the narrow labyrinth of stone, and certain death.

After a few moments, the trail flattened out onto a ledge. Billows of cold mist rose from the tumbling water, encircling her like a cloak. Here, the constant presence of moisture had created a bizarre microclimate of mosses, hanging flowers, and dense greenery. Moving to one side, Beiyoodzin parted a veil of lush ferns, and in the gloom beyond Nora could just make out Smithback, sitting, arms clasped around himself, waiting.

“Bill!” she cried, as he rose in astonishment, joy sweeping over his face.

“Oh my God,” he said. “Nora. I thought you were dead.” Embracing her weakly, he kissed her, then kissed her again.

“How are you?” she asked, touching the ugly welt on the side of his forehead.

“I ought to thank Sloane. That sleep did me wonders.” But his weak voice, and the ragged cough that followed, belied his words. “Where is she? Where are the others?”

“We must keep moving,” Beiyoodzin said urgently.

He pointed ahead, and Nora followed his gesture. She could make out the dim narrow trail leading upward along the canyon face, zigzagging through the clefts and pinnacles of rock, squirreling up crevasses. In the pale light of the moon, it looked terrifying: an insubstantial, spectral path, intended for ghosts, not humans.

“I’ll go first,” whispered Beiyoodzin to Nora. “Then Bill. And then you.”

He looked at her for a moment, searchingly. Then he turned and began to climb, keeping his weight toward the wall of the canyon, moving up the slope with surprising nimbleness for one so old. Smithback grasped a handhold, and, trembling, pulled himself up behind. Nora followed.

They made their way slowly and painfully up the precipitous trail, careful to avoid the slippery moss and algae that clung to the ledges underfoot. The roar of the waterfall echoed up from below, a heavy vibration that churned the air. Nora could see that Smithback was barely able to pull himself up; each step required all his strength.

Terrifying minutes later, they were out of the microclimate. The slot canyon was narrowing, and the resulting loss of moonlight made progress even more difficult. Some distance ahead, at the limit of vision, Nora could see the trail make a sharp switchback and disappear around a corner. At the bend, a small parapet of rock led out over the roaring cataract below.

“How are you doing?” she asked Smithback.

He didn’t answer at first. Then he gasped, coughed, and gave a thumbs up.

Suddenly, Beiyoodzin stopped short, raising a warning hand over his shoulder.

“What is it?” Nora asked as she stopped, renewed fear sending her heart hammering.

Then she, too, caught the sweet scent of morning glories on the freshening breeze. Wordlessly, she looked at Beiyoodzin.

“What is it?” Smithback said.

“He’s following us up the trail,” Beiyoodzin said. The years suddenly seemed to show on his drawn face. Without another word, he resumed his climb.

They followed him as quickly as they could up the precipitous cliff face. Nora bit her lip against the pain of her wounded leg. “Faster,” Beiyoodzin urged.

“He can’t go any—” Nora began. Then she stopped short.

Ahead of them, at the sharp bend in the trail, a shape had appeared: a clot of black against the dimly shining rockface. The heavy pelt steamed, and the fringe of fur along its bottom edge was caked in blood. It took a shambling step toward them, then stopped. Sick with fear and horror, Nora could hear the rasping breath being sucked in through the blood-soaked mask. Through the dimness, she thought she could make out red pinpricks of eyes, glowing with anger, pain, and malice.

Unexpectedly, Beiyoodzin moved forward. Reaching the outcropping of rock before the switchback, he stepped out onto it carefully. The skinwalker watched him, motionless. Digging into his clothing, Beiyoodzin drew out his medicine bag, tugged it open, and reached inside. Never taking his eyes from the skinwalker, he sprinkled a small, almost invisible, line of pollen and cornmeal onto the narrow ledge between them, chanting softly.

As Nora watched in silent dread, the skinwalker took a step forward, toward the line of pollen. Beiyoodzin spoke a word: “Kishlinchi.”

The skinwalker stopped, listening. Beiyoodzin shook his head in sorrow. “Please, no more,” he said. “Let it end here.”

Still the skinwalker waited. Now, Beiyoodzin held an eagle feather outstretched before him. “You think evil has made you strong. But instead it has made you weak. Weak and ugly. Evil is the very absence of strength. I am asking you to be strong now, and end all this. This is the only way to save your life, because evil always burns itself up in the end.”

With a growl of anger, the skinwalker unsheathed an obsidian knife. It took a step forward, breaking the line of pollen, and raised the knife, standing within striking distance of Beiyoodzin’s heart.

“If you will not come back with me, then I beg you to stay here, in this place,” Beiyoodzin said quickly, his voice cracking. “If evil is your choice, then stay with evil. Take the city, if you must.” He nodded in Nora’s direction. “Take these outsiders, if nothing else will satisfy your blood lust. But leave the people, leave the village, alone.”

“What are you saying?” Smithback cried in outraged surprise. But neither the skinwalker nor Beiyoodzin seemed to hear. Now, the old man reached deeper into his clothes and pulled out another buckskin bag: much older, worn almost to a paper thinness, its edges trimmed in silver and turquoise. Nora stared from Beiyoodzin to the medicine bag and back again, feelings of anger, fear, and betrayal mixing within her. Stealthily, she placed a hand on Smithback’s elbow, urging him to move slowly back down the trail, away from the confrontation.

“You know what this is,” Beiyoodzin said. “This bag holds the Mirage Stone of the Fathers. The most treasured artifact of the Nankoweap People. Once, you treasured it, too. I offer it to you as earnest of my promise. Stay here, trouble our village no more.”

Slowly, reverently, he opened the bag, then held it forward, his outstretched hands trembling, whether from fear or age Nora could not tell.

The skinwalker hesitated.

“Take it,” Beiyoodzin whispered. The matted figure moved forward and reached for it, leaning outward.

Suddenly, with lightning speed, Beiyoodzin thrust the open bag toward the skinwalker.

A heavy cloud of dust erupted from within, flying up into the figure’s mask, spraying in long gray lines across the bloody pelt. The skinwalker roared in surprise and outrage, twisting around, tugging violently at the mask, growing more and more off balance. With the agility of a cat, Beiyoodzin leaped from the outcropping of rock back onto the trail. The skinwalker kicked frantically, teetering a moment at the edge of the precipice. Then it went over with a howl of fury. Nora watched the plunge into the violet, moon-drenched shadows: matted pelt flapping crazily, limbs scrabbling at the air, mask pulling free as the blood-curdling cry meshed with the roar of the flood beneath. And then, suddenly, it was gone.

There was a moment of stasis. Beiyoodzin looked at Nora and Smithback, and nodded grimly.

Painfully, Nora helped Smithback up the trail toward Beiyoodzin. He stood at the switchback, looking down into the abyss.

“I’m sorry to have scared you like that,” he said quietly, “but sometimes, the only defense left us is to play the coyote, the trickster.”

Still looking downward, he reached out and took Nora’s hand in his. The old man’s grasp was as cool, light, and dry as a leaf.

“And so much death,” he murmured. “So much death. But at least the evil has burned itself out.”

Then he looked up at her, and Nora saw kindness and compassion, as well as an infinite sadness, in his eyes.

For a moment, there was silence between them. Then Beiyoodzin spoke.

“When you are ready,” he said, in a small, clear voice, “let me take you to your father.”

Epilogue

Moving at a steady, easy pace, the four riders made their way up the canyon known as Raingod Gulch. John Beiyoodzin, atop a magnificent buckskin, led the way. Nora Kelly followed, riding abreast of her brother, Skip. The massive form of Teddy Bear padded alongside, his back almost grazing the bellies of the horses as he weaved in and out beneath them. Bill Smithback brought up the rear, his unruly hair imprisoned beneath a suede cowboy hat. The exhausting course of antibiotic treatment he and Nora had undergone ended two weeks before, but beneath the hat brim the writer’s skin was still struggling to regain a healthy color.

The late August sky was sprinkled with light cumulus clouds, drifting over a field of brilliant turquoise. Wrens flitted about, filling the sweet little canyon with their bell-like cries. A merry stream, shaded by fragrant cottonwoods, ran sparkling across a bed of soft sand. At almost every bend in the canyon were small alcoves, Anasazi dwellings tucked inside them: none more than two or three rooms, but lovely in their humble perfection.

Nora let her horse keep its own pace, concentrating on nothing but the sun beating down on her denimed legs, on the murmur of water nearby, on the swaying of her mount. Every now and then, she smiled to herself as she heard Smithback behind her, leveling curses at his balky mount, who stopped frequently to nibble a patch of clover or bite off the top of a thistle, completely ignoring the dire threats and imprecations of his rider. The man just had no talent with horses.

She realized how lucky she was to have him here; how lucky she was to be here herself. Briefly, her thoughts returned to their struggle out of the wilderness a month earlier: Smithback weak, Nora herself growing steadily weaker as the fungal infection took hold. If Skip and Ernest Goddard had not met them halfway down the trail with fresh horses—and if there had not been a powerboat waiting at the trailhead, or helicopters idling at Page—they would probably have died. And yet, for a time, Nora almost thought it would have been easier to die than to tell Goddard the news: how their incredible discovery had turned into such a terrible personal tragedy for him.

Here, thirty-odd miles northwest of the ruin of Quivira, the countryside seemed built on a smaller scale: friendly, verdant, well-watered. John Beiyoodzin had paused in his long story—he had paused frequently during the ride, giving his narrative time to sink in.

As they rode on through the sunlit silence, Nora allowed her thoughts to move gradually from Goddard to her own father, and of what she had so far been able to piece together of his own last trip up this canyon. He had taken very little from Quivira. In fact, far from being a pothunter, he had carefully refilled what excavations he had made in a way that would have pleased even Aragon. But in doing so, he had exposed himself to a concentration of the fungal dust, and grown sick. Riding north in hopes of finding help, his sickness had worsened to the point where he could hardly sit his horse. Nora wondered how he would have felt. Would he have been terrified? Resigned? As a child, she remembered hearing him say that he wanted to die in the saddle. And he had done just that. Or almost: eventually becoming too sick to ride, he had dismounted. Then he turned his horses free and waited to die.

“It was my cousin who found the body,” Beiyoodzin said, resuming his story. “It was lying in a cave at the top of a small rise. Seemed to have been there about six months. The coyotes couldn’t reach it, so it hadn’t been disturbed.”

“How did your cousin find it?” Skip asked.

“Looking for a lost sheep. He saw some color in the rock-shelter, climbed up to take a look.” Beiyoodzin paused to clear his throat. “Next to the body was the notebook—the one Nora has now. Sticking out of the front shirt pocket was a letter, stamped and addressed. And beside him was a satchel holding the skull of a mountain lion, inlaid in turquoise. So my cousin went back to Nankoweap, and he was a talker, and soon the entire village knew of the dead white man in the canyon to the south. And because of the turquoise skull, they also knew this white man had found the city we had kept secret for so many years.”

His voice trailed away for a moment before returning, softer, more thoughtful. “This was not a city of our ancestors. Those few who had been there—my grandfather was one—said it was a city of death, of oppression and slavery, of witchcraft and evil. There are stories in our past of a people who came out of the south, who enslaved the Anasazi, and forced them to build these great cities and roads. But they were destroyed by the very god who gave them power. Most who went to the city came back with ghost sickness and soon died. That was many, many years ago. None of my people have returned to the city since. Until recently.”

Beiyoodzin deftly rolled a cigarette with one hand. “The discovery of the body caused a problem for the tribe, because the secret of the city lay with the body of the man. To reveal the presence of the body would be to betray the secret of the city.”

“Why didn’t you just destroy the letter and notebook?” Nora asked.

He lit the cigarette, inhaled. “We believe that it is extremely dangerous to handle the effects of the dead. It is a sure way to get ghost sickness. And we all knew what the white man had died from. So, for sixteen years, the body lay there. Unburied. It just seemed that the simplest thing to do was to do nothing.”

Beiyoodzin stopped his horse abruptly and turned toward Nora. “That was wrong. Because we all knew that the body in the cave had a family. That somebody loved him, wondered where he had gone and whether he was still alive. It was cruel to do nothing. Still, doing nothing seemed the easiest, safest course of action. But doing nothing caused a small imbalance. And this imbalance grew, and grew, until it ended in you coming here and all these terrible killings.”

Nora reined in her own horse beside Beiyoodzin’s. “Who mailed the letter?” she asked quietly. It was the question she had been burning to ask for many, many weeks.

“There were three brothers. They lived in a trailer outside our village with their alcoholic father. The mother had run off with someone years before. These were smart boys, though, and they all got scholarships and went down to Arizona for college. They were hurt by this contact with the outside world, but hurt in very different ways. Two of the boys dropped out and came back early. They were disgusted with the world they had found, and yet changed by it. They had grown restless, angry, eager for the kind of wealth and power that you can’t come by in a village such as ours. They no longer fit in with the rest of my people. They began turning from the natural way of things, searching out forbidden knowledge, learning forbidden practices. They found an old man, an evil man—a cousin of the man who murdered my grandfather. He helped them, revealed to them the blackest of all the arts. The village began to shun them, and they in turn rejected us. In time, they turned to the greatest taboo of all—the ancient ruins—and eagerly picked up what dark hints of its history still remained among our village.

“The third brother graduated and came back home. Like the other two, there were no jobs here for him, and no hope of finding one. Unlike his other brothers, he had converted to the Anglo religion. He despised our beliefs and our fear of ghost sickness. He thought we were superstitious and ignorant. He knew of the body in the cave, and he felt that to leave it there was a sin. So he searched out the body, carefully arranged the man’s possessions, covered the body with sand, planted a cross. And he mailed the letter at a trading post.”

Beiyoodzin shrugged. “Of course, some of this is just my guess. I’m not sure why he sent the letter. He couldn’t have known if it would ever reach its destination, sixteen years after it had been written. Maybe it was to atone for a wrong he perceived. Or maybe he was angry at what he thought were our superstitions. Perhaps he did the right thing, I don’t know. But what he did caused a terrible break with the other two brothers. There was drinking, there was an argument. They accused him of betraying the secret of the city to the outside world. And the two brothers killed the third.”

Beiyoodzin fell into another silence. He turned his horse’s head and they resumed their slow journey up the canyon, the horses splashing across the stream at each bend. At one turn they surprised a mule deer, which ceased drinking and raced away from them along the bed of the stream, sending up crystal cascades of water that glittered and fell back through the sun-drenched air.

“Those two brothers rejected anything to do with the Anglo world outside. But they also rejected the good ways of the people. They saw the evil city as their own destiny. Based on the whispered stories of our people, they eventually found the greatest secret of all—the hidden kiva—and entered it. They would have broken inside only once—not for its treasures, of course, but for its lode of corpse powder. It would be their own weapon of fear and vengeance. Afterwards, they would have carefully resealed the kiva, in the proper manner.” He shook his head. “They wanted to protect its secrets—the secrets of the entire city—at all costs. In all but name, they had already been transformed into eskizzi—witches. And with the killing of their brother, the transformation was complete. In our belief, the final requirement in becoming a skinwalker is to murder someone you love.”

“Do you think they actually had supernatural powers?” Skip asked.

Beiyoodzin smiled. “I hear the doubt in your voice. It is true that the forbidden roots they chewed gave them great strength and great speed, the ability to absorb pain and bullets without feeling. And I know the white people think witchcraft is a superstition.” He looked at Skip. “But I have seen witches in Anglo society, too. They wear suits instead of wolfskins. And they carry briefcases instead of corpse powder. As a boy, they came and took me to boarding school, where I was beaten for speaking my own language. Later, I saw them come among our people with mining contracts and oil leases.”

As they rounded another bend, the canyon gave way to a small grove of cottonwoods. Beiyoodzin halted, and motioned for them all to dismount. Turned loose, the horses wandered off to graze the rich carpet of grass along the stream. Teddy Bear leaped onto a large rock and stretched out, looking for all the world like a lion, keeping guard over his pride. Skip walked over to Nora and placed his arm around her shoulders.

“How are you doing?” he asked, giving her a squeeze.

“I’m okay,” she said. “You?”

Skip looked around, took a deep breath. “A little nervous. But actually, pretty good. To be honest, I don’t remember feeling better.”

“I’ll thank you to take your paws off my date,” said Smithback, ambling over and joining them. Together, they watched as Beiyoodzin untied his medicine kit from the saddle strings, examined it briefly, then nodded toward a gentle path that led up the side of the hill to a small rounded shoulder of rock. Above, Nora could see the rockshelter where their father’s skeleton lay.

“What a beautiful place,” Skip murmured.

Beiyoodzin led the way up the path and over the last little hump of slickrock. Nora paused at the top, suddenly reluctant to look inside. Instead, she turned and let her gaze fall over the canyon. The rains had brought up a carpet of flowers—Indian paintbrush, sego lilies, datura, scarlet gilia, desert lupines. After much discussion, the two children of Padraic Kelly had decided to leave the body where it lay. It was in the redrock country he loved so well, overlooking one of the most beautiful and isolated canyons of the Escalante. No other gravesite could provide more dignity, or more peace.

She felt Skip’s arm around her shoulder again, and she turned at last to face the shelter.

In the dim light of the interior, she could make out her father’s saddle and saddlebags carefully lined up along the back wall of the rockshelter, the leather cracked and faded with age. Beside them was the turquoise skull, beautiful yet vaguely sinister, even here, far from the evil pall of the Rain Kiva. Beneath a thin layer of sand lay her father’s bones. In places the wind had blown the sand away, revealing bits of rotten cloth, the dull ivory of bone, the curve of the cranium; she could see that he had died looking down into the valley below.

Nora stared for a long time. Nobody spoke. Then, slowly, she reached into her pocket. Her fingers closed over a small notebook: her father’s journal, taken from the body by the witch she had shot and restored to her by Beiyoodzin. She opened it and removed a faded envelope she had placed between the pages: the letter that had started it all.

The letter had been addressed to her mother, written just before he had entered the city. But the last entry in Padraic Kelly’s journal had been addressed to his children, written after his discovery of the city, in this very rockshelter while he lay dying. And now, in the presence of both her father and Skip, Nora began to read his last words.

She stepped forward, stopping at the foot of the grave. The cross was still there, two twisted pieces of cedar lashed with a rawhide thong. She felt Smithback’s hand come forward to grasp her own, and she returned the pressure gratefully. After the horror of the last days at Quivira, and even in his own sickness and pain, the writer had been a kind, quiet, and steady presence. He had accompanied her to Peter Holroyd’s memorial in Los Angeles, where she had left his own battered copy of Endurance beside the stone marker that stood in the stead of a grave: his body had never been found. Smithback had returned with her for a memorial service for Enrique Aragon on Lake Powell, when they boated out to the site where, beneath a thousand feet of water, Aragon’s beloved Music Temple lay.

In time, she knew, they would return to Quivira. A handpicked team from the Institute, armed with respirators and environmental suits, would make careful video documentaries of the site. Sloane’s discovery—the micaceous pottery of transcendent beauty and value—would be carefully studied and documented back at the Institute, under the direction of Goddard himself. And perhaps, in time, Smithback would even write an account of the expedition—or, at least, the part of the expedition that would not bring unendurable pain to Goddard.

She sighed deeply. Quivira would wait for her. There was no chance of its location ever being divulged, or becoming public knowledge—the poisonous dust would make sure of that. Almost all those who knew of its location—with the exception of the Nankoweap—were now dead. Those who lived, she knew, would keep its secret.

Nora watched as Beiyoodzin leaned over the skeleton, untied the little buckskin bag, and bowed his head. Pinching out some yellow cornmeal and pollen, he sprinkled it on the body and began a soft, rhythmical chant, beautiful in its simple monotony. The others bowed their heads.

When the chant was done, Beiyoodzin looked at Nora. His eyes were shining, his creased face smiling. “I thank you,” he said, “for letting me put this to rest. I thank you for myself, and for my people.”

It was Skip’s turn. He took the letter from Nora, turning it over and over in his hands. Then he knelt down, gently smoothed the sand away, and placed it into the pocket of his father’s shirt. He remained kneeling for a moment. Then he slowly stood up and returned to Nora’s side.

Nora took a deep breath, steadied her hands. Then she turned to the final entry in her father’s journal and began to read.

To my dearest and most wonderful children, Nora and Skip,

By the time you read this, I will be gone. I have been stricken with a disease, which I fear I contracted in the city I discovered: the city of Quivira. Although I cannot be sure this will ever reach you, I must believe in my heart that it will. Because I want to speak to you through this journal one last time.

If it is within your power, let the great ruins of Quivira lie undisturbed and unknown. It is a place of evil; I know that now, even from my own brief exploration. It may well be the cause of my death, though I do not understand why. Perhaps some knowledge is better left alone, to die and return to the earth, just as we do.

I have just one request to make each of you. Skip, please don’t drink. It runs in the family, and, I promise you, you won’t be able to handle it. I could not. And, Nora, please forgive your mother. I know that in my absence, she may blame me for what has happened. When you are grown, forgiveness will be difficult for you. But remember that, in a way, she was right to blame me. And—in her own way—she has always loved you deeply.

This is a beautiful place to die, children. The night sky is filled with stars; the stream splashes below; a coyote is sounding in a distant canyon. I came here for riches, but the sight of Quivira changed my mind. In fact, I left no mark of my passage there. And I have taken one thing only from it, and that was meant for you, Nora, as proof your father really found the fabled city. For it was there that I learned, for the first time, that I had left my real, my true successes—the two of you—far behind in Santa Fe.

I know I have not been a great father, or even a good father, and for that I am truly sorry. There is so much I could have done as a father that I didn’t. So let my last act as a father be to tell you this: I love you both. And I will love you always, forever and ever, from eternity to eternity. My love for you burns brighter than all the thousands of stars that carpet the sky above my head. I may die, but my love for you never will.

Dad

Nora fell silent and closed her eyes. For a moment, the entire canyon seemed to drop into reverential silence. Then she looked up, shut the notebook, and carefully placed it on the ground beside her father. She turned and gave Smithback a tearful smile.

Then the four of them made their way down the faint path, to the waiting horses and home.

Authors’ Note

The archaeology of this story is speculative in places. However, it is grounded in fact. The history of the Anasazi, the mystery of the Chaco collapse and the abandonment of the Colorado Plateau, the long-sought evidence of a Mesoamerican connection, the use of radar to locate prehistoric roads—as well as the cannibalistic and witchcraft practices described herein—are based on actual research findings. In addition, one of the authors, Douglas Preston, has traveled and lived among southwestern Indian peoples, as recounted in his nonfiction work Talking to the Ground.

The authors made use of information from a number of other publications, the most important of which include: Clyde Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft; Blackburn and Williamson, Cowboys and Cave Dwellers; Basketmaker Archaeology in Utah’s Grand Gulch; Crown and Judge, eds., Chaco and Hohokam: Prehistoric Regional Sytems in the American Southwest; Kathryn Gabriel, Roads to Center Place: A Cultural Atlas of Chaco Canyon and the Anasazi; James McNeley, Holy Wind in Navajo Philosophy; David Roberts, In Search of the Old Ones; George Pepper, Pueblo Bonito; Hester, Shafer, and Feder, Field Methods in Archaeology; Lynne Sebastian, The Chaco Anasazi; Levy, Neutra, and Parker, Hand Trembling, Frenzy Witchcraft, and Moth Madness; Mauch Messenger, ed., The Ethics of Collecting Cultural Property; Chris Kincaid, ed., Chaco Roads Project, Phase I: A Reappraisal of Prehistoric Roads in the San Juan Basin; Tim D. White, Prehistoric Cannibalism at Mancos; Christy Turner, Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest; and Farouk El-Baz, “Space Age Archaeology,” Scientific American, August 1997.

It should be noted that the Nankoweap tribe is wholly fictitious, as is the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute. The witchcraft practices and beliefs described herein are not intended to negatively depict or portray the beliefs of any existing culture. All the characters, events, and most of the places portrayed in this novel are also entirely fictitious products of the authors’ imaginations.