"I'll bake the squash for supper. I think I can manage something involving stones and coals, but it might turn out a little burnt. There isn't much of anywhere to build a fire, though."
"What are you talking about?" With a gesture of his good hand, Kieran indicated the expanse of stone around them.
"You mean, in here? But this is some kind of temple. I don't want to make any... thing... angry."
Kieran grinned. "Hell, I pissed in the stream last night 'cause I couldn't get down the steps. I don't seem to be cursed."
"You did what?" Ash looked horrified for a second, but he couldn't keep it up. He let out a giggle. "You have no respect for anything, do you?"
"Almost."
"But still -- I didn't tell you this before because I didn't want to alarm you, but when you... when you died, for a minute, then just before you came back, the air got really cold in here. I mean, I could see my breath. And then the ground gave this little shimmy, almost like an earthquake."
"I know. I saw it."
"You... saw it?" Ash leaned closer, fascinated and frightened. "Tell me."
Kieran shook his head. "I don't understand, really. Or remember very well. But I was here... all over the place, I sort of occupied this whole space. And I wasn't really me. I was something else, or part of something else, and... you realize I wasn't in any shape to remember anything, I didn't have a brain to remember with... I got the impression that I -- this other me, this bigger me -- I'd been around for a long time. A long time. I mean, hundreds of years, maybe thousands." He looked down, and realized his hand had started trembling. "Help me lie down?"
Ash lowered him gently onto the pillow that was actually his rolled coat, then rested a hand on his forehead, smoothing back the strands of hair that tickled his face. "So you were really outside your body?"
"I was outside my mind, Ashes. I could almost see it. All these twisty swirly -- ideas, fibers of ideas, symbols? I can't, there are just no words, but it was intense, the bigger part of me wasn't real happy with the part that belonged to the body. Like it had been a big waste of time or something. This big part scared the living shit out of me, it was like an animal's mind, like some big meat-eating animal, it had no conscience. It was primitive. It was disgusted by me, like I was a bug crawling on it. But at the same time, I was that big mind, and I could see so far into the past I was nearly blind with it..." He bit his lip, as something seemed to stir in his memory, something nauseatingly large and powerful. A sea monster in tar. "I think it was a carnivore. Not literally. I mean, I think it was a thing -- I was a thing -- that ate other minds. Or had done, in the past. And I was scared that I couldn't eat the -- this me -- because it was too prickly.
"That all went by really fast, but then I could sort of see, only it wasn't in pictures, not like with eyes, more like that sense of space you get with having a Talent, when you kind of know where stuff is even in the dark. But this was really clear. I could see things -- heat, I could see sounds -and you were just off your head, yelling and crying, and I could taste the craziness in you. The fucked-up thing is that it tasted good. Not good exactly -- good like pepper. Like liquor, how it burns, and I really liked it, and at the same time I couldn't stand it, and I was so sorry to be doing that to you... there was something else in you, Ash. I don't know if I was seeing your soul, or your magic, or what, but it looked all scrunched down and knotted. Then... somehow I decided to come back. I couldn't leave you. So I grabbed all the energy I could find, and I kind of knocked the sickness out of my body to make room, and --" He waved vaguely. "I think it was partly a dream. Maybe anyone with a death Talent can do that -- come back, if there's anything to come back to. But I just have this really vivid image of you looking up, and your eyes are so bloodshot that the blue part seems to be glowing..."
"It's all right now. It's over now."
"I know. The worst part was being cut off from you. No, the worst part was that I was sure you were planning to kill yourself. Were you?"
Ash looked away. "Yeah," he whispered.
"That's not okay, Ash! What if you'd done it before I could make it back, and I came back for nothing?"
"For nothing?" Ash echoed in quiet disbelief.
"And even if you could somehow be sure, before you did it -- I won't ask why you'd want to but -
- but I wouldn't want you to, I'd want you to keep going, maybe then there'd be somebody in the world that remembered me as something besides a waste of skin." He grabbed Ash's hand and squeezed it as hard as he could, which wasn't very hard. "Promise you'll put all that suicidal bullshit out of your head. Promise, if something else happens to me, you won't --"
"I'm not sure I can." Ash tried a smile, but it didn't look right. "I was really not in control of my faculties. Sorry. This is a burden on you, I know. Maybe we should talk about something else."
"Okay. For now. Later, I'm going to make you promise."
Ash scrubbed his hands down his face. "Are you up to having your bandage changed? Or do you want to rest a bit first?"
"Go ahead."
It was difficult not to keep talking about the subject he'd agreed to drop. Not that he planned on getting killed, but the world was a dangerous place, and the thought of Ash following him into the grave -- especially now that he had an idea how strange and lonely death would be -- he couldn't stand it. But a minute later, Ash found something that distracted them both.
"This is unbelievable."
"What is?" Kieran ducked his chin as far as it would go, but couldn't see the wound.
"It's closed. It's completely healed over. Does this hurt?" Ash touched the place, gently. Then, when Kieran shook his head no, poked it a little harder.
"Ow. That one hurt."
"Okay, then this will hurt some too, but I have to test it." Hands walked along his collarbone, testing the join.
"Weird," Kieran said. "You know what it feels like? It feels like there's no break at all. It just feels bruised."
"All I can find is a little bump. I want to leave your arm in the sling for a while longer, so you don't rebreak it. But I think you're healing incredibly fast, all of a sudden. I'd better get these stitches out before they turn into a novel form of tattoo."
"Do you think maybe you're healing me?"
"Me?" Ash looked up from snipping the loops of thread. "But I don't have a healing Talent."
"Maybe you do. Maybe that was what I saw balled up inside you."
Ash shook his head. "I wish. I think you're doing it yourself. This is going to feel weird, now -- I don't have a tweezers and I can't get a grip with my fingers, so I'm going to have to use my teeth."
"Whatever works."
Patiently, he sat still while Ash pulled the stitches out. The sensation was actually rather pleasant, for all it hurt a little. Everything seemed more vivid today. When he'd first discovered this place, it had been during a rare cold snap, one of those times that came along every two or three winters when night's frost stayed on the ground all day, and high clouds grayed the world.
Hard pellets of snow had been spitting down on and off. He'd been up on the high ground, trying to find something to eat, and had stumbled on this place from above. A small herd of deer, and the shelter the temple provided, had kept him alive until the cold broke.
He hadn't explored the temple much. He knew the part he could see from here -- a warehouse-like space supported by fat pillars every twenty feet or so, with a mouth-shaped hole in the back wall that poured out water. There were paintings on the walls, but only toward the back were any of them even recognizable as human figures, and it was impossible to guess what they were doing or who they were meant to be. He hadn't explored the two side passages, having lacked a lantern. His most vivid recollection of the four or five days he'd spent in the place was of running into a thicket of wild rose, rich with the glossy red ovals of rose hips, which he had eaten. It was off to the left, he thought, the south end of the valley. He'd made a circuit of the area, and judged the valley to be an oblong
about a mile wide and a bit less than two miles long.
Now, instead of a browned landscape salted with dirty white at the roots, he saw a green paradise. Grass and wildflowers spread the open places; beneath tall pines and cottonwoods, thicker vegetation grew, viny tangles and thorny shrubs. Here and there a lone acacia stood. On the north side, where the slope was gentle, irregular swathes of other plants made strange textures of green; he couldn't see, at this distance, what they were, but he guessed that was where Ash had found the vegetables. Someone had planted a kitchen garden there, once upon a time.
And in the rockier places, the wild roses grew. As he watched, half distracted by the sensation of Ash's lips and teeth nudging the new scar on his back, he saw a dark speck appear on the crest of the hill.
Apprehension made him tense enough that Ash sensed it, and stopped. But it wasn't a man, he realized when the speck started down the slope, two others coming up and over behind it. "I think," he said slowly, "that our dinner has arrived."
"Where?" Ash peered along Kieran's pointing finger, but shook his head.
"Those brown things. I think those are deer."
"I can't tell. These glasses aren't quite right. I'll get one for you, though, if they are. You'll have to give me some pointers -- that one I got the other day was a lucky shot."
"Huh. They'll see you coming a long way off. Might be better to wait until they get closer."
"But they'll eat all the veggies!"
Kieran laughed. "Wouldn't you rather have venison than eggplant?"
"We'll need both, if we're going to get our strength back."
"Okay. All I can tell you is, go really slow, and stop whenever they notice you. Hold still until they forget about you, then move again. Deer have really short memories. Oh, and stay downwind."
"I knew that much already. I'll finish with the stitches later." He took his rifle and trotted away.
Kieran quickly lost interest in watching him stalk the deer. It would take him quite a while to get close enough. To pass the time, Kieran had a go at standing up, and discovered that he was barely dizzy at all. Much of his earlier shakiness must have been due to hunger. He wrapped one of the blankets around his waist as a kilt -- it hardly hurt at all to use his right hand now, as long as he didn't try to hold any weight with it -- and went exploring.
First he explored the packs and saddlebags. Ash had done his usual neat-freak job of things, and Kieran was pleased to see that this included laying out all their weapons in plain view and easy reach, fully loaded, with spare ammunition nearby. He'd also done some laundry. Kieran found his leather pants turned inside out and laid flat in a patch of sunlight, his shirt and an extra blanket and all the spare bandaging materials washed and drying. What food they had was carefully stowed. There was nothing left in quantity but coffee, sugar, salt, and flour; only about one meal's worth of beans and rice remained.
Kieran set the remaining beans soaking in the skillet. If Ash didn't bag a critter, they could at least fill their stomachs tonight.
A different pack contained non-consumables. Complimenting himself on his foresight, Kieran took a candle out of one of the two boxes of a dozen he'd got from the store in Smith. He lit it, tucked the remaining matches in the waist of his kilt, and went to have a look around.
The spring wasn't as interesting as it should have been. It was just a hole in the wall where water fell out. Some painted shapes above it looked like they were meant to be storm clouds. The water ran in a sheet down the wall to fill a basin paved with pale limestone, which narrowed down into the channel that crossed the temple and went outside. He felt there should have been some carvings or something around it, but there weren't. The central two files of pillars had carvings, but they were just geometric designs. It was like the place had been left unfinished; no, more like the builders had cut corners. Rushed? Broke? Didn't care?
Passages led out from the back two corners. Doorless openings, on a more human scale than the rest of the place, they led into utter darkness. He tried the left-hand one first. Trying to summon up a sense of awe at his ancestors' engineering greatness, he could only manage a feeling that he was sneaking around in somebody's house while the owner was on vacation.
The hallway dead-ended about thirty feet in. Disappointed, he tried the other one, expecting it to do the same. But here, he found a wonder. Colors glittered and danced in the light of his candle.
Not faded parades of figures, like the ones in the main room, but dense blocks of text interspersed with jewel-like scenes of frenetic detail. The text was in the old symbol-script that he couldn't read. That was all right, though, because just looking at these pictures would occupy him indefinitely.
The first one he brought his candle close to depicted a city in a valley. The artist had simplified it to a few buildings, but they way they were jammed together on top of each other made it clear they symbolized a great metropolis. A river, painted deep lapis blue, ran at the city's foot. Bright flags flew from its heights. The sun still had some gold leaf clinging to it.
Another picture showed a leopard killing a rabbit. The leopard wore a jeweled collar. In the background, a smiling woman in an elaborately draped and girdled gown directed the leopard with a gesture of her hand.
Another was full of tiny human figures, each one wearing a conical helmet and carrying a spear, each spear decorated by intricately drawn lacings and wrappings, all different.
He could make out no sense of narrative flow, no matter which direction he read the pictures.
Some seemed to show important people, kings or gods, because certain figures were drawn larger than others. Many showed only animals or vegetation; a few were filled with abstract geometric shapes. He recognized one of these geometrics as being a stylized wind knot, which implied the others had symbols hidden in them as well. There was an entire book's worth of writing in this place, which piqued his curiosity, got him thinking about hunting up some old guy who could still read this stuff.
At the end of the hall was a closed door. It had once been lacquered red, but it was faded now, cracked in many places; when he touched it the whole thing came apart. Jumping back to get out of the way extinguished his candle. He groped out another match, stopped himself from striking it on the wall lest he harm the paint, struck it on the floor instead and relit the candle. And let his jaw fall open in wonder.
Gold. There was gold in there. Great masses of it.
Stepping carefully over the splintered remnants of the door, he entered a glittering vault of color and shine. Vases, boxes, candleholders, incense burners, and all manner of smooth-polished objects stood in ranks from wall to painted wall, and all of them shone with the same buttery gleam. The colors of these walls' paintings were even brighter, and the human figures they depicted were not marching straitly through history, but celebrating and fighting and dancing and fucking and dying in ornate profusion.
But the centerpiece of the room, which it was hard to look away from, was a life-sized statue of a young man reclining on a couch piled with cushions. It seemed to be carved of limestone, but beneath all the paint and ornament it was hard to tell. Even more than the gold things, this seemed to be a lost treasure. The subject's body was posed realistically, his kilt draped in such a way that Kieran could guess it was linen edged with cloth-of-gold rather than some other fabric, the tiny braids of his long hair were each individually carved; it was almost as if a real boy had been frozen in stone. If so, he seemed to have enjoyed the process. The unnaturally beautiful face held a serene expression, tinged with just a hint of a sardonic smile. He was crowned with a wreath of poppies. Kieran wondered how the sculptor had managed to get their petals so paper-thin without breaking the stone, until he worked up the courage to step closer, and saw that the flowers were actually, of all things, glass.
Kieran closed his weak right hand around the bullet hanging at his throat. He wanted Ash to come see this, and wondered if it was possible to send a message. He didn't want to turn his back on
the statue for fear it would -- he wasn't sure what. Disappear, or wake... it disturbed him. It made him think of the spiritual predator he had halfway been in the moments of his death.
How long he looked at it, he didn't know. Eventually he heard Ash say his name and muttered some reply; he couldn't bring himself to yell.
Some time later Ash stood beside him, caught by the statue into ignoring the gold just as Kieran had been. The carving looked new; none of the paint had worn or chipped, not one gem had fallen from the golden armbands and anklets the reclining figure wore. The skin had been painted reddish-brown, the hair black, the eyes darkly outlined. The ends of the tiny braids had been crosshatched to make them look like bundled hair. Someone had adored the subject of this statue, to spend such effort on detail. It must have been a king, or a god... Kieran was afraid he knew which god it was meant to be.