Douglas Preston - Thunderhead

Emerging out of the inky blackness of the rocks, the figures topped out on the sandstone plateau in which the valley of Quivira was hidden. Far below, in the long valley behind them, a horse nickered and stamped in agitation. But this evening they had left the horses unharmed, just as they had slipped past the cowboy who guarded them without running a knife across his throat. He sat there still, hand on his gun, the ground around him damp with tobacco juice. Let him sit; his time would come soon enough.

Now, with animal stealth, they scuttled along the wide mesa far above the valley floor. Though the moon laid a dappled byway across the sandstone, the figures avoided the faint light, keeping to the shadows. The heavy animal pelts on their backs draped down over their sides, dragging along the rough rock beneath them. The figures moved on, silent as ghosts.

After an eternity of movement they stopped, as if possessed of a single mind. Ahead, a well of darkness loomed: the tiny valley of Quivira. Far below, at the base of the canyon, the little stream shimmered in the moonlight. From the higher ground away from the stream, a faint glow arose from the dying campfire, and the even fainter smell of woodsmoke reached the figures peering down from the canyon rim.

Their eyes moved from the fire to the dim figures that lay around it.

Several tents ringed the camp, pallid in the dim moonlight. A number of bedrolls lay near the campfire, seemingly flung down at random. With the tents closed and darkened, it was impossible to count the number of the company. They stared long, bodies motionless. Then they eased forward along the brow of rock.

With consummate stealth they moved along the top of the canyon, pausing now and then to look down toward the sleeping expedition. Occasional sounds drifted up from below: the call of an owl, the babble of water, the rustle of leaves in a night breeze. Once, a belt of silver conchas clinked around the midriff of one of the figures; otherwise, they made no noise in the time it took to reach the top of the rope ladder.

Here the figures paused, examining the communications equipment with intense interest. A minute passed, then two, without movement.

Then one of the figures glided to the edge of the cliff face and gazed down the thin ladder. It disappeared back beneath the brow of rimrock. The figure looked out, into the valley. He was almost directly above the camp now, and the glow of the fire, eight hundred feet below, seemed strangely close, an angry nugget of red in the darkness. A low, guttural sound rose out from deep within his frame, at last dying away into a groan that resolved itself into a faint, monotonous chant. Then he turned back toward the equipment.

In ten minutes, their work there was done.

Slinking further along the rimrock, they made their way to the end of the canyon. The ancient secret trail wormed down through a cut in the rimrock, descending toward the narrow canyon at the far side of the Quivira valley. The trail was perfectly concealed against the rock, and terrifyingly precipitous. The faint sounds of the waterfall echoed up below them, the water thrashing and boiling its way on the long trip down to the Colorado River.

In time, the figures reached the sandy bottom. They moved stealthily out of the curtain of mist, past the rockfall, then along the base of the canyon wall, keeping in the deeper darkness of moonshadow. They stopped when they neared the first member of the expedition: a figure beyond the edge of the camp, sleeping beneath the stars, pale face looking deathlike in gray half-light.

Reaching into the matted pelt that lay across his back, one of the figures pulled out a small pouch. It was made of cured human skin, and in the glow of the moon it gave out an otherworldly, translucent sheen. Loosening the leather thong around it, the figure reached inside and, with extreme caution, drew out a disk of bone and an ancient tube of willow wood, polished with use and incised with a long reverse spiral. The disk flashed dully in the moonlight as he turned it over once, then again. Then, placing one end of the tube to his lips, he leaned toward the face of the sleeping figure. There was a sudden breath of wind, and a brief cloud of dust flowered in the moonlight. Then, with the tread of ghosts, the two figures retreated back toward the cliff face, disappearing once again into the woven shadows.

37

COUGHING, PETER HOLROYD WOKE abruptly out of dark dreams. Some stray breeze had chased dirt across his face. Or more likely it was dust from the day’s work, he thought blearily, still weeping out of his pores. He wiped his face and sat up.

It had not been the dust alone that awakened him. Earlier, there had been a sound: a strange cry, borne faintly on the wind, as if the earth itself were groaning. He might have thought he’d dreamed the noise, except that nothing remotely like it had ever existed in his imagination. He was aware that his heart was racing.

Gripping the edges of his bedroll, he looked around. The half-moon threw zebra stripes of silvery-blue light across the camp. He glanced from tent to tent, and at the still black lumps of bedrolls. Everything was still.

His eyes stopped at a spot on a small rise, perhaps twenty yards from the campfire. Usually Nora would be at that spot, sleeping. Tonight she was gone—gone with Smithback. Many times during the desert nights Holroyd had found himself looking in her direction. Wondering what it would be like to creep over and talk to her, tell her how much all this meant to him. How much she meant to him. And, always, the last thing he wondered was why he just never had the guts to do it.

Holroyd lay back with a sigh. Even if Nora had been around, though, tonight he had no desire to do anything but rest. He was bone-tired; more tired than he remembered ever being in his life. In Nora’s absence, Sloane had directed him to clear away a tidal wave of sand and dust that had risen up against the back wall of the ruin, not far from Aragon’s Crawlspace. He hadn’t understood why he needed to dig that particular spot; there were many sites in the front of the ruin that had yet to be studied. But Sloane had brushed off his questions with a quick explanation about how important pictographs were often found at such sites at the rear of Anasazi cities. He was surprised at how quickly and completely, after Nora left, Sloane assumed command. But Aragon had been working by himself in a remote corner of the city, his face dark and severe; apparently, he’d made yet another disturbing discovery, and he was too preoccupied to pay attention to anything else. As for Black, he seemed to yield up all critical sense in Sloane’s presence, automatically agreeing with whatever she said. And so, from morning until dark, Holroyd had wielded a shovel and a rake. And now it seemed to him that, even after a month’s worth of baths, he’d never get all the dust out of his hair, nose, and mouth.

He stared up at the night sky. There was a funny taste in his mouth, and his jaw ached. The beginning of a headache was forming around his temples. He didn’t know what he’d expected to do on the expedition, but his vague romantic notions of opening rich tombs and deciphering inscriptions seemed a far cry from the endless grunt work he’d been doing. All around lay fantastic ruins of a mysterious civilization, while they were immersed in gridding this and surveying that. And moving piles of empty sand. He was sick of digging, he decided. And he didn’t like working for Sloane. She was too aware of her perfection and the influence she cast on others, too willing to use her charm to get what she wanted. Ever since the confrontation with Nora at Pete’s Ruin, he’d felt on his guard when she was around.

He sighed, closing his eyes against the pressure in his head. It wasn’t like him to be this grouchy. Normally, he only got grumpy when he was coming down with something. Sloane was all right, really; she was just outspoken, used to getting her way, not his type. And it didn’t matter if he was digging sand or breaking rocks. The important thing was he was here —here at Quivira, at this miraculous, mythical place. Nothing else mattered.