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"I'm getting pretty good at this." |
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"Pat yourself on the back later. What do you see?" |
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"You sure you want to know?" |
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"What could be worse than what we've already been through?" Kyna asked. |
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He took the book of matches from his pocket and set fire to the torch sticking out at an angle from a hole in the wall. |
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"Oh shit!" she whispered. |
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The cave was an immense crypt. The walls were covered with thousands of hand-carved petroglyphs and the ceiling was streaked as black as the night sky with the soot from an untold number of torches. Some of the ancient murals and been tinted with plant dyes that time had faded like the pages of an ancient comic book, and down the center of the cavern was a depression made by the passage of thousands of bare feet. On either side of this depression, as far as the eye could see, were hundreds upon hundreds of raised burial platforms made from saplings that had been lashed together with hemp and raised aloft on four wobbly poles driven into the bedrock. Most of these ersatz catafalques were decorated with eagle and hawk feathers; others were draped with disintegrating animal hides or ancient weapons. Hundreds of the platforms had collapsed under the weight of the years and Anasazi corpses, scattering heaping piles of bones, skulls and teeth three to four feet deep upon the chamber floor. The place stank of dry rot, dust and time, and it was so quiet that the flame on the torch sounded like sheets of plastic wrap being crumpled. |
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Cyrus lit a second torch from the flames of the first and walked over to the first body. |
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What is it about death that fascinates us so? he wondered, staring down at the remarkably well-preserved face. |
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"Look at those cheekbones, that marvelous forehead," Kyna said. "Who do you think he was?" |
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"You know more about this stuff than I do. But from the jewelry and bone vest, I'd say he was probably a medicine man." |
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"Medicine man? You mean he's another witch doctor?" |
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