“Reading your thoughts is no challenge,” the man added. “Keep that in mind when we reach our destination.”
They climbed past several more of the square-roofed pit houses and finally scrambled the last little bit up to a gate that pierced the northern wall. The two-story building could be seen rising above the eastern wall, its shape faintly bathed in rose light from a dying fire. Pit houses, like stubby sentinels, crowded around the wattle-and-daub walls of the great kivas. Several stone granaries could be seen, their doorways darker squares in the night.
“In here.” The man indicated a pit house; he hitched his slow way up a ladder leaned against the wall. He paused, panting, as he stepped onto the roof. “Oh, and leave that hide outside, will you? It bears the smells—both yours and hers—of rutting humans. I would prefer to breathe less irritating air.”
Wrapped Wrist nodded and lowered the hide to the ground. As he started up the ladder, the man added, “Too bad I can’t leave your stench outside as well.”
Wrapped Wrist stepped onto the roof, taking a quick glance at the stars. They frosted the inky sky, giving way to a ragged horizon of blackness where the mountains thrust jaggedly upward.
The old man had already climbed down into the interior. Wrapped Wrist, baited by his last opportunity to run, reluctantly grabbed the polished poles of the ladder and climbed down. The sweet scent of piñon smoke rose around him as he descended into the warm interior.
He hadn’t spent much time atop the Dog’s Tooth. He knew that the kiva keepers and Priests lived here, ensuring that the roofs were repaired, that packrats and mice didn’t invade, and that the weeds didn’t grow around. The keepers kept the plaster fresh and made sure that nothing profaned the sacred grounds.
His feet thumped onto hard dirt. A dim red glow came from the fire pit, but other than that he could see nothing but the four roof supports in the reddish hue. Whatever was going to happen wasn’t going to be pleasant. But if it turned ugly? Did he dare defend himself? And if he did, where was that going to end? In a clan feud?
Cloth rustled, and a handful of sticks clattered onto the coals. The place smelled like roasted sage leaves. Warmth began seeping into his pores after the night’s chill.
Flames, as if alive, suddenly leapt up around the sticks. Wrapped Wrist was facing the south wall, so the first thing he saw was the sandstone slab that deflected the gusts of wind that sometimes jetted out of the ventilator. Next he took in the bench, plastered in white clay. A series of small figurines rested atop it. To either side of the ventilator were Dance masks, one of a buffalo face, the other an eagle’s. Large white jars had been placed in a row on the floor. Each was sealed with a juniper-wood lid.
“You are not familiar with such places?” the voice asked from behind him.
Maybe the best defense was to make the first threat. Wrapped Wrist turned, raising a finger in preparation to launch into the old man—and stopped cold.
For a moment, all he could see was the shining white eye. It seemed to glow with a light of its own, like a pebble of frosted ice. That single terrible eye dominated the old man’s face. Where the man’s left eye should have been, a black pit extended back into the skull. Dark and wrinkled, the man’s face puckered around that gaping orbit. Even his long nose appeared warped out of shape, as if repelled by the white orb, and drawn toward the dark socket.
In that instant Wrapped Wrist knew fear as he had never known it. His mouth went dry, his knees weak. A runny sensation loosened his guts.
The old man grinned, the expression pulling the lines of his ancient face into monstrous shapes.
“Old White Eye,” Wrapped Wrist rasped through a tight throat.
“Ah, so you do know me. That’s something, little though it might be in your case.”
Gods, how could he have found me and Gentian? How did he walk across half the mountain, blind as a desert mole?
“There are other ways to see … not that a young man with your apparent inclinations would be interested in them.”
“You do hear my thoughts!” Wrapped Wrist cupped a hand around one of the ladder rungs, ready to scramble up and out the smoke hole into the safety of the night.
“I find it to be no challenge, simple boy. Now, let loose of that ladder or I’ll have that oversized prize you enjoy so much shriveled into a potter’s coil before I’m through.”
Wrapped Wrist’s fingers slipped off the worn rung, and he fought the urge to cup his suddenly vulnerable male parts. “What do you want?”
“What stories do they tell about me?”
His tongue seemed thick in his mouth. “That you are not really human. That you talk to the dead. Some people call you a witch. It is said that the animals tell you things, and you speak their languages. Some say you were dead yourself once, and after four days, you came back to life.”