Chapter 4
The argument had lasted over half an hour. Vicky's raised tone had echoed around the temple, a counterpoint to Daniel's more reasonable timbre. Her eyes had flashed angrily at him time and again. He knew she was uncomfortable in this location, though she wouldn't say why, but he had to stay. There was a mystery here that demanded his attention, and he would remain, alone if necessary. It was that final threat that had ended the row.
"You can't. You don't understand the jungle, you don't know your way back, they would find your corpse buried under the creepers within a month!"
"Look, Vicky," he began reasonably, "believe it or not I can take care of myself. I've been on digs far worse than this, I've made it through sand storms, hurricanes, and things you just couldn't imagine."
"We made a bargain, Doctor Jackson. If you stay, then I'll stay." She turned on her heel and marched away from him, her back telling him all that he needed to know about her anger.
"Thanks!" he called after her. He hadn't missed the sudden bleak look that had flitted across her face, nor the way her shoulders had pulled back as though to stiffen her resolve. Something about this place disturbed Vicky greatly, something that she was unwilling to give voice to. Daniel turned to the wall, then back to Vicky's still visible back, torn between two mysteries. Archaeology won out.
For the next hour he crawled along the edge of the massive fortification. Nearly all the outer wall was intact. Though some had fallen and been claimed by the jungle, a lot of the reliefs still existed. And, at regular intervals along each wall, there were blocks almost identical to the one they had found through the Stargate. He paced back around the perimeter, one block every fifty paces. As he stared at the designs Vicky called out a discovery.
"Doctor Jackson, there is a design on this altar." She had dug a little way around the block where the stone had burrowed into the ground. There, below the runnels, was a carved letter or design that had all her attention.
She had been avoiding him since the argument earlier, and he had not shown her the designs he had found on the half-buried blocks. Now he grabbed her hand and dragged her over to the wall.
"Like these?" he asked excitedly.
"Yes. What are they, Doctor Jackson? I've not seen this on any ruin in this jungle, though there is something vaguely familiar about them."
"I know. They have a lot of the characteristics of Egyptian script. See this one? It's almost, but not quite, the word for delight. And this other," he dragged her further along the wall where the next block seemed to hold a similar design, "this is so tantalisingly close to 'Ma'at' that it has to be related somehow."
Daniel had not realised he still held Vicky's hand, and was surprised when she unntangled herself from his grip. "Sorry," he apologised quickly, but then his attention was drawn back to the designs.
"You're right. And this one," now it was Vicky's turn to point out the strange symbols. "This one is death, am I right, Doctor…"
"Daniel, please. And yes, you are right. You read Egyptian?"
"I studied, for a while."
Reluctance edged every line of her body, barriers slammed down between them. Daniel backed off, knowing that this was not the right time to inquire into her background. But she was definitely a mystery he wanted to get to the bottom of.
The day passed rapidly and way too soon for his liking Daniel had to abandon his task of ripping the tenacious creepers from the walls. Now and then, as he worked, a slight chill would whisper through the ruins and the strange runes would seem to echo that coldness for a fraction of a second. Each time he just missed touching the chilled stone. It frustrated him, but sent a thrill through him as well. Vicky had said she felt the phenomenon was something almost other worldly. And she could be right, he had thought to himself. And yet he had no inclination to get in touch with the SGC, at least not until he could prove that this would be of interest to them. After all, it could just be their heightened imagination. This place certainly seemed to affect both their moods and perceptions.
It was an excuse, and he knew it. The block sitting in Sam's lab could have been the twin of this one, apart from the design etched into its sides. The dimensions were the same, the colour was the same, but he couldn't face his friends just yet. Not yet.
By the end of the day, Daniel, with Vicky's help, had pulled the creepers away from about one hundred feet of the wall. Once he had spotted the first, the rest were easy to find, but it was not in him to miss any part of the wall. So, with an aching back from his crouched position, he stood and surveyed his handiwork. Not displeased with his progress, he picked up Nick's journal and used the remains of the daylight to sketch the glyphs he had uncovered so far. Thankfully Nick's last few pages were unused, as though waiting for this moment.
As darkness fell, the chill of night combined with the tense atmosphere of the temple and drew the two companions closer to the fire. Even with his fleece and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, Daniel still felt cold. Temperatures dropped by maybe ten degrees at night; but this bone numbing cold was unusual. And it seemed limited to the confines of the ruins. He had made a trip up to the stream shortly before nightfall and had noticed a sudden rise in the temperature as he stepped onto the trail they had made that morning. It was one more mystery to add to the others swirling in his mind. With the crackle of the fire in their ears, the two weary explorers turned in for the night.
Stygian gloom lay all around them. Soft whispers echoed down the tunnel that threatened to engulf him and his companions. Beside him Daniel could hear the soft whoosh of breath being exhaled. Then light exploded around them, consuming them. Screams ricocheted along the corridor, fire burst from the zat gun in his hand, blood spattered against his skin. Then he was running for the tunnel's end, footsteps pounding behind him, Sam's voice urging him forward, raking fire past him into the enemy running full pelt toward them. He skidded around the corner and came to a sudden halt. The tunnel was gone now, around him were the red mines of hell. He was surrounded by despair and pain. A guard raised his whip even as Daniel raised his hand to fire, but there was now no weapon in his hand. Staring at the beast of a human, Daniel flung himself between the guard and his victim, cringing in anticipation of the whip's lash against his unprotected back. But the scene melted before him, and he was crouched on the floor of a tent, Sha're's beautiful face inches from his own, her body blackened where Teal'c's staff weapon had hit in that fatal blow. The love he had seen in her eyes in that last instant nearly crushed him. He reached for her, wanting to touch her one last time but she melted from his view even as his hand whispered across hers. The museum was cold and austere, just the way he remembered it. Across the marble flooring his parents were overseeing the placement of a large block to top off the exhibit they had worked on for so long. Daniel wanted to scream out to them, stop them from moving under that huge piece, knowing that whatever he did, he could not stop the inevitable.
His nightmare continued, around and around, pulling the terrors from his hidden places, pushing them to prominence, not letting him turn from them until he suddenly surged from sleep, his breath coming in huge gulps as he fought back the emotions that threatened to swamp him. His senses were limited to the pounding of his heart and the thunder of his blood surging in his ears, deafening him to every other noise. He could almost feel the non-existent weapon's weight in his hand, smell the tang of freshly spilled blood, see the bright eyes of his latest victim staring at him in horror and pain.
Daniel's eyes sought the comfort of the fire's embers even as his heartbeat slowly returned to normal. Shaking, he ran a hand over his sweat soaked face, willing himself back to some semblance of normality. As his blood pressure dropped his hearing returned, and with it the sounds of Vicky's sobs.
Peering across the fire to where she lay, he could see she still slept, and yet she was crying so hard that tears glistened visibly in the fire's glow. Moving carefully, not trusting his equilibrium just yet, Daniel made his way to her side. If their sleep was being disturbed by this place, and if his dreams were anything to go by, Vicky was in the throws of one mother of a nightmare. Not sure what to do to ease her out of it, he lay one hand on her shoulder and called her name. It made no impact, except that her distress seemed to worsen. In the back of his mind he seemed to remember that you shouldn't wake someone who was sleepwalking, but what about nightmares? Could he cause more harm than good if he shook her awake? Her distress woke his ready compassion but he just didn't know what to do to help.
Suddenly Vicky jerked upright, eyes wide with terror, not seeing anything or anyone around her. Daniel wasn't even sure she was awake, the blind look in her eyes seemed to indicate she was still in her nightmare's grip. He tentatively touched her shoulder again as her body shook with the force of her tears. Moving closer he stroked her face with his fingers, calling her name again, her lack of response beginning to scare him now.
"Vicky?" Gently he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. She was shuddering with the cold and reaction to the visions tearing her apart, but she suddenly turned to him, her face burrowing into his shoulder. He cradled her head with one hand while he dragged her blanket around her with the other, then he pulled her closer, his face resting against her sweat soaked hair as his hand moved soothingly across her back. Murmuring softly to her, Daniel did his best to bring her back from whatever demons were tormenting her. His own nightmares had been with him for many years and in some way they had been losing their affect on him, until recently that was. Even though it was he that was attempting to give comfort, he found that her presence in his arms was gradually taming the turmoil he was experiencing. He pulled her a little closer, letting her warmth seep into him like a healing balm.
The change came rapidly, one moment Vicky was holding on to him as though he were her lifeline, the next she had gasped and pulled away from him, eyes alert and wary above her tear stained cheeks.
"Are you okay?" Daniel asked, reluctant to break contact with her, his hand still resting on her back. "You were having a nightmare which, if it was anything like mine…" He shook his head, trying to remove the post dream images from his own mind.
A cold wind blew across the compound and they both shivered. Vicky, her eyes now lowered from his, drew her blanket closer and closed her eyes, then opened them quickly as though her nightmares still lived behind her lowered lids.
Daniel stood and retrieved more wood to put on the fire, banking it up until it burned brightly, taking some of the chill from the air. Her silence worried him; Vicky wasn't the quiet type, at least not when something bothered her. This retreat into herself wasn't good. Though he had been guilty of the same withdrawal time and again, he knew better than to encourage it in someone else.
He dropped down beside her again, leaving a small space between them yet hopefully close enough to offer comfort.
"Vicky, I don't know what you were dreaming about, but I need to know if this place is causing the phenomenon, or whether it's just our own unease. I've had my fair share of bad dreams over the years, but nothing like this."
Vicky's eyes remained firmly on the firelight, her sculptured profile not giving anything away. But Daniel could see that the knuckles of her hands were almost white where she gripped the blanket's edge. Whatever her demons were, they were with her now even as were his own.
"Perhaps if I tell you something of mine?" he began reluctantly. Shifting to a more comfortable position, his eyes too rested on the dancing flames. It was harder than he had thought. There was so much about him that this woman didn't know, couldn't know, and yet it was vital to understand some at least of who he was if she were to comprehend the affect the dreams had had.
"There has been one dream, one nightmare that has been with me for a while now," he murmured softly. "I'm with friends, we are somewhere alien, dark. From out of nowhere we are attacked. I have a weapon, it changes night to night, but each time the dream ends the same. I kill someone. I never see who but…" He took a deep breath, finally uttering out loud the fear that had haunted him every night. "I'm pretty sure I kill one of my team. That it's my fault that one of them dies. By my hand. Tonight… tonight I saw it all again, time after time. And it wasn't just that one," he rushed on, not wanting to dwell on the images that had sprung to life in the flames. "My wife…She was killed in front of me. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I tried…" His words trailed off, this was too hard. With the dreams still vivid in his mind's eye just the thought of Sha're brought a lump to his throat and tears to his eyes.
Daniel shifted uncomfortably, forcing himself to continue. "It didn't stop there though. God, it was like walking through some weird impressionist painting. Every bloody awful event in my life held up for me to review, to relive. Last night I dreamed about the sacrifices that took place here. That didn't seem too weird. But tonight… If this happens to everyone who comes here I can understand the way the porters reacted."
He almost didn't catch her words, so quietly had she spoken and so focussed had he become on the flames licking eagerly at the wood he had added to the pile.
"My father died somewhere in the jungle. I was at University when it happened. An anonymous call to my dorm told me to go home, that something had happened to my father. I didn't believe it at first. I phoned the house every hour all day long. Father was not on any trip, at least not that he had told me about, and he always did so that I wouldn't worry."
Vicky pulled the blanket a little closer, sending a quick, searching glance at Daniel's riveted face, then returned her eyes to the firelight.
"When I got home the next day, the police were waiting for me. They took me to the morgue. His body had been mutilated, his heart ripped out of his chest."
Tears were streaming silently down her face now; she bent her head to her knees, resting her forehead on the dark material. Daniel moved closer, laying his hand lightly on her back, not knowing what to do or say.
"I'm so sorry, Vicky." His eyes rested speculatively on the almost invisible mound of the fallen altar, a horrible thought echoing in his head. "It didn't happen here?"
The blanket muffled her voice as she continued her story. "No, he was found close to our hacienda." Her face lifted to finally look at him. "You asked what I dreamed of, Doctor Jackson. I dreamed of the death of my father."
"When did this happen?" he asked quietly. Now that he had her talking he didn't want to break the link they had forged through their mutual experience.
"Two years ago. There had been rumours for years that some of the old practices had been revived. Superstition runs rife in some of the more out of the way villages. There are communities up here that shun the western world, believing that that the Gods will protect them. Father had come across an altar that was still in use - animals, not people, or so he believed. But that had been years before. I was in my last year at the University when it happened."
"The police…?"
Vicky shook her head. "They tried, perhaps, but they found no one to blame. Somewhere out here is my father's murderer." She was quiet for a moment; Daniel held his breath waiting for her to continue. Her tear drowned eyes turned to him eventually. "This is the first time I have come into the jungle since it happened."
Her courage moved him. To be reminded at every temple they had passed, at every altar that still stood, of the death of her father must have been incredibly difficult. He understood the desire to avoid anything that could remind you of such terrible loss. When Sha're had died, something inside of him had wanted him to crawl away, find some dark hole and bury himself in it. Every time he walked through the Stargate after that had been a struggle. Before, when he had passed through that liquid circle it had been with the hope of finding his wife, of finding a way to break through and save her from the prisoner she had become. Now there was no hope, it had died along with Sha're in that opulent tent. And part of him had died too. The past years had been one long struggle to find some equilibrium in his life. On the few occasions when he had allowed his heart to feel a little warmth, it had been summarily snatched from him. He had been burned too many times to ever allow the wall he had erected to be breached. And yet, he felt himself drawn to the woman next to him. Reluctantly, inexorably, he made himself pull back from her, withdrawing his hand from her back under the pretence of putting another piece of wood to the fire. He did not replace it.
"Why did you decide to come now, on this trip?"
Vicky wiped away the last of her tears with the back of her hand, pulling herself up, and wrapping the blanket a little tighter around herself before answering.
"I wasn't sure I was going to do this trip. I had been turning down one offer after another until they had all but dried up. I'd been working as a translator for the past six months; it seemed the easiest way to earn a living. I'm fluent in ten languages, read a few more, but the opportunities were few and far between. I never returned to University to take my finals so a post with a museum or on a dig was out of the question. Money was tight and yours was a good offer. But even so I hadn't decided until I met you."
Daniel had always found it hard to keep his emotions from his face, and his surprise must have shown.
Vicky's tentative smile settled on him warmly and it was all he could do to quash the sudden flutter within himself. There was no way he was going to let this woman into his heart, absolutely no way.
***
Next morning, as soon as the sun had begun to rise and they could see the clearing around them, they moved camp to outside the temple walls. They hadn't discussed the move, but each had known that another night within the compound would be detrimental to their mental well being.
"Look, Vicky, I think you should leave me here to finish this up. It won't take me too long to uncover the other stones, once I have that done I'll come back down."
"No."
His raised brows had no effect on her. "No? Just like that? After last night I'm not sure either of us should stay, but I can't leave this place until I have at least noted all the symbols. Then I can come back with a proper team and…"
She moved quickly to stand in front of him, her presence almost intimidating despite her diminutive size. "No one comes back here. This place should be destroyed, and give the jungle time enough it will vanish. And I won't leave you here alone. Either we both leave, or we both stay."
"But if this place is the cause of the nightmares…"
"Then it will affect you whether you are alone or not." She waited a bare second, not giving him time to gather a suitable reply. "And with two of us to do the work, we can leave that much quicker. I studied archaeology at University. I specialised in the Mayan peoples. Together we can notate all that we need and get away from this place as soon as possible."
"Why didn't you tell me before?" Daniel felt faintly aggrieved that he had struggled all the previous day alone, when he had help on hand.
Vicky shrugged. "Most of my clients don't want help and, to be truthful, I wasn't sure if you were an archaeologist at all until yesterday."
"But you knew who I was, you knew about Nick. Why did you doubt me?" Puzzled, Daniel watched her face for any clues.
"Anyone can say who they are, Doctor. You don't look much like any other client I have had. To tell the truth, I thought you looked more military."
Daniel couldn't help it, laughter spilled from him, and once he started he could not stop. Above his head birds scattered in all directions as his mirth carried across the jungle.
"Oh, don't let Jack hear you say that!" and he was off again, laughing so hard tears were running down his face. Reaction to the night before perhaps, but it felt so good to let some healthy emotion run riot through him.
"I'm sorry," he gasped finally, wiping his face. "Ahhh, oh wow, that was… cathartic."
"Who's Jack?"
Vicky's question quenched the laughter in him as his nightmare surfaced. He grimaced slightly then spoke. "Jack is the head of my, ah, team. Research mainly."
It wasn't exactly a lie; a lot of their missions could be considered research in its broadest sense.
Her bright eyes rested on him speculatively. "Weapons?"
So, she had been listening to his discourse the night before. He had said too much maybe while his barriers had been so low. "It can get a little dangerous where we go. So, shall I remove the creepers and you sketch the glyphs or do you prefer to work a wall each?"
She took his change of subject in good part. "You can do that wall you started yesterday, I'll start clearing and notating that one over there."
For the rest of the morning they worked in companionable silence. Just the occasional grunt of exertion as one or other of them dragged tenacious creepers from their death grip on the rough wall, or the gentle flick of pencil on paper as they faithfully copied the tantalisingly half familiar designs, broke the quiet.
Daniel was on the last section of his wall when he came across his find. The block was the same size as all the others but seemed to have retained a small amount of paint. Something that had been missing on all the other pieces. Mud had crept up the face, hiding a good two thirds of the design from his view. He needed his tools, and returned to the campsite to retrieve the wooden box.
Vicky found him some fifteen minutes later still standing by the now cold fire, the box open and neglected at his feet, his eyes locked to the stone that rested in his palm. Her touch on his arm snapped him out of his reverie.
"I'm sorry, Doctor Jackson, but you didn't seem to hear me."
"You know, I really wish you'd call me Daniel," he murmured almost under his breath. She heard him though, and gave a tiny shake of her head.
"You were here so long I thought I had best see if you were all right. What's that?"
Daniel's gaze moved back to the stone, his eyes immediately beginning to trace the etched design. He had been staring at it for what seemed a lifetime, and now, as his gaze wandered over the surface, he thought he saw what had been nagging at him since Teal'c had presented him with the gift. It was not just one extremely complicated design that he was looking at, but a series of them, one interlinking with another; to be overlaid by another still, and on and on. Like seeing a book's pages one on top of another, each visible and yet invisible as words blurred.
"I think," he said slowly, "this may hold the key to the symbols on the walls." Now that he had the idea he found it almost impossible to remove his attention from the stone, as one by one the ideograms seemed to surface.
Vicky peered over his arm and looked for herself. "I don't see the connection."
It was her scent and proximity that broke the stone's spell, as he became all too aware of the vibrant woman standing so close. For once, the thrall of the past did not overwhelm his sense of the here and now. He cleared his throat quietly.
"I think that the symbols on the wall are all on this stone. If you look closely you can just make out the individual designs. See here," he pointed to the middle section where the glyph that looked so like Ma'at was engraved.
"Where did it come from?" Vicky queried, her finger tracing the design.
"A friend gave this to me. Unfortunately he didn't know its provenance, just that his father had brought it back from his… travels."
"His father was an archaeologist too?" Vicky asked in all innocence.
Daniel's tight grimace added to Vicky's confusion as he spoke. "Ah, no, not exactly."
Daniel knew that now was the time to end this trip, to go back to civilisation, get in touch with the SGC and have someone out to check the site, it seemed that yet another alien race had been by for a visit. As the years went by, Daniel had begun to think that Earth was just a way station for every passing alien race. Stop off there for a while, grab some of the natives; weather's nice, you'll have a great time. With his mind going off at a tangent, he could imagine 'wish you were here' postcards with that picture of Earth from space on every one.
"Let's finish up the wall I'm working on. Want to help?" And no, he wasn't going to examine his motives too closely for wanting Vicky inches away from him for the rest of the afternoon.
It was painstaking work. Try as they might, some of the paint flaked away at the barest touch of the fine instruments. But by evening they had almost all of it uncovered. Not only did this block differ in that it was painted, but it held more than one symbol. Daniel had straight away gone to the second wall, working quickly around the stones until he found a matching one on that wall, just past where Vicky had reached. And again on the other two walls.
"Do you have a compass?" Daniel shouted across the darkening temple ruins.
The stones lined up perfectly for each compass point. Sighing in satisfaction, he made his way back through the middle of the ruins, past where the fallen altar stood. The oval depression caught his attention. The sun, setting behind him, poured its last rays onto that one section of the toppled granite. In his pocket the stone knocked against his leg. Sliding his hand around the stone Daniel pulled it out and rubbed the design with a gentle thumb then looked speculatively at the indentation. He could almost hear Jack's voice echoing in his head saying 'Daniel, what have I told you about touching stuff. Now put it back!'
Insatiable curiosity got the better of his common sense - again. The stone fitted perfectly into the depression and Daniel held his breath, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. No burst of lightning struck him down, no alien appeared from out of the ether, fireworks did not light up the sky. He pulled Teal'c's gift out of the altar and made his way back to the camp site where Vicky was already making their evening meal, feeling vaguely disappointed.
The argument had lasted over half an hour. Vicky's raised tone had echoed around the temple, a counterpoint to Daniel's more reasonable timbre. Her eyes had flashed angrily at him time and again. He knew she was uncomfortable in this location, though she wouldn't say why, but he had to stay. There was a mystery here that demanded his attention, and he would remain, alone if necessary. It was that final threat that had ended the row.
"You can't. You don't understand the jungle, you don't know your way back, they would find your corpse buried under the creepers within a month!"
"Look, Vicky," he began reasonably, "believe it or not I can take care of myself. I've been on digs far worse than this, I've made it through sand storms, hurricanes, and things you just couldn't imagine."
"We made a bargain, Doctor Jackson. If you stay, then I'll stay." She turned on her heel and marched away from him, her back telling him all that he needed to know about her anger.
"Thanks!" he called after her. He hadn't missed the sudden bleak look that had flitted across her face, nor the way her shoulders had pulled back as though to stiffen her resolve. Something about this place disturbed Vicky greatly, something that she was unwilling to give voice to. Daniel turned to the wall, then back to Vicky's still visible back, torn between two mysteries. Archaeology won out.
For the next hour he crawled along the edge of the massive fortification. Nearly all the outer wall was intact. Though some had fallen and been claimed by the jungle, a lot of the reliefs still existed. And, at regular intervals along each wall, there were blocks almost identical to the one they had found through the Stargate. He paced back around the perimeter, one block every fifty paces. As he stared at the designs Vicky called out a discovery.
"Doctor Jackson, there is a design on this altar." She had dug a little way around the block where the stone had burrowed into the ground. There, below the runnels, was a carved letter or design that had all her attention.
She had been avoiding him since the argument earlier, and he had not shown her the designs he had found on the half-buried blocks. Now he grabbed her hand and dragged her over to the wall.
"Like these?" he asked excitedly.
"Yes. What are they, Doctor Jackson? I've not seen this on any ruin in this jungle, though there is something vaguely familiar about them."
"I know. They have a lot of the characteristics of Egyptian script. See this one? It's almost, but not quite, the word for delight. And this other," he dragged her further along the wall where the next block seemed to hold a similar design, "this is so tantalisingly close to 'Ma'at' that it has to be related somehow."
Daniel had not realised he still held Vicky's hand, and was surprised when she unntangled herself from his grip. "Sorry," he apologised quickly, but then his attention was drawn back to the designs.
"You're right. And this one," now it was Vicky's turn to point out the strange symbols. "This one is death, am I right, Doctor…"
"Daniel, please. And yes, you are right. You read Egyptian?"
"I studied, for a while."
Reluctance edged every line of her body, barriers slammed down between them. Daniel backed off, knowing that this was not the right time to inquire into her background. But she was definitely a mystery he wanted to get to the bottom of.
The day passed rapidly and way too soon for his liking Daniel had to abandon his task of ripping the tenacious creepers from the walls. Now and then, as he worked, a slight chill would whisper through the ruins and the strange runes would seem to echo that coldness for a fraction of a second. Each time he just missed touching the chilled stone. It frustrated him, but sent a thrill through him as well. Vicky had said she felt the phenomenon was something almost other worldly. And she could be right, he had thought to himself. And yet he had no inclination to get in touch with the SGC, at least not until he could prove that this would be of interest to them. After all, it could just be their heightened imagination. This place certainly seemed to affect both their moods and perceptions.
It was an excuse, and he knew it. The block sitting in Sam's lab could have been the twin of this one, apart from the design etched into its sides. The dimensions were the same, the colour was the same, but he couldn't face his friends just yet. Not yet.
By the end of the day, Daniel, with Vicky's help, had pulled the creepers away from about one hundred feet of the wall. Once he had spotted the first, the rest were easy to find, but it was not in him to miss any part of the wall. So, with an aching back from his crouched position, he stood and surveyed his handiwork. Not displeased with his progress, he picked up Nick's journal and used the remains of the daylight to sketch the glyphs he had uncovered so far. Thankfully Nick's last few pages were unused, as though waiting for this moment.
As darkness fell, the chill of night combined with the tense atmosphere of the temple and drew the two companions closer to the fire. Even with his fleece and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, Daniel still felt cold. Temperatures dropped by maybe ten degrees at night; but this bone numbing cold was unusual. And it seemed limited to the confines of the ruins. He had made a trip up to the stream shortly before nightfall and had noticed a sudden rise in the temperature as he stepped onto the trail they had made that morning. It was one more mystery to add to the others swirling in his mind. With the crackle of the fire in their ears, the two weary explorers turned in for the night.
Stygian gloom lay all around them. Soft whispers echoed down the tunnel that threatened to engulf him and his companions. Beside him Daniel could hear the soft whoosh of breath being exhaled. Then light exploded around them, consuming them. Screams ricocheted along the corridor, fire burst from the zat gun in his hand, blood spattered against his skin. Then he was running for the tunnel's end, footsteps pounding behind him, Sam's voice urging him forward, raking fire past him into the enemy running full pelt toward them. He skidded around the corner and came to a sudden halt. The tunnel was gone now, around him were the red mines of hell. He was surrounded by despair and pain. A guard raised his whip even as Daniel raised his hand to fire, but there was now no weapon in his hand. Staring at the beast of a human, Daniel flung himself between the guard and his victim, cringing in anticipation of the whip's lash against his unprotected back. But the scene melted before him, and he was crouched on the floor of a tent, Sha're's beautiful face inches from his own, her body blackened where Teal'c's staff weapon had hit in that fatal blow. The love he had seen in her eyes in that last instant nearly crushed him. He reached for her, wanting to touch her one last time but she melted from his view even as his hand whispered across hers. The museum was cold and austere, just the way he remembered it. Across the marble flooring his parents were overseeing the placement of a large block to top off the exhibit they had worked on for so long. Daniel wanted to scream out to them, stop them from moving under that huge piece, knowing that whatever he did, he could not stop the inevitable.
His nightmare continued, around and around, pulling the terrors from his hidden places, pushing them to prominence, not letting him turn from them until he suddenly surged from sleep, his breath coming in huge gulps as he fought back the emotions that threatened to swamp him. His senses were limited to the pounding of his heart and the thunder of his blood surging in his ears, deafening him to every other noise. He could almost feel the non-existent weapon's weight in his hand, smell the tang of freshly spilled blood, see the bright eyes of his latest victim staring at him in horror and pain.
Daniel's eyes sought the comfort of the fire's embers even as his heartbeat slowly returned to normal. Shaking, he ran a hand over his sweat soaked face, willing himself back to some semblance of normality. As his blood pressure dropped his hearing returned, and with it the sounds of Vicky's sobs.
Peering across the fire to where she lay, he could see she still slept, and yet she was crying so hard that tears glistened visibly in the fire's glow. Moving carefully, not trusting his equilibrium just yet, Daniel made his way to her side. If their sleep was being disturbed by this place, and if his dreams were anything to go by, Vicky was in the throws of one mother of a nightmare. Not sure what to do to ease her out of it, he lay one hand on her shoulder and called her name. It made no impact, except that her distress seemed to worsen. In the back of his mind he seemed to remember that you shouldn't wake someone who was sleepwalking, but what about nightmares? Could he cause more harm than good if he shook her awake? Her distress woke his ready compassion but he just didn't know what to do to help.
Suddenly Vicky jerked upright, eyes wide with terror, not seeing anything or anyone around her. Daniel wasn't even sure she was awake, the blind look in her eyes seemed to indicate she was still in her nightmare's grip. He tentatively touched her shoulder again as her body shook with the force of her tears. Moving closer he stroked her face with his fingers, calling her name again, her lack of response beginning to scare him now.
"Vicky?" Gently he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. She was shuddering with the cold and reaction to the visions tearing her apart, but she suddenly turned to him, her face burrowing into his shoulder. He cradled her head with one hand while he dragged her blanket around her with the other, then he pulled her closer, his face resting against her sweat soaked hair as his hand moved soothingly across her back. Murmuring softly to her, Daniel did his best to bring her back from whatever demons were tormenting her. His own nightmares had been with him for many years and in some way they had been losing their affect on him, until recently that was. Even though it was he that was attempting to give comfort, he found that her presence in his arms was gradually taming the turmoil he was experiencing. He pulled her a little closer, letting her warmth seep into him like a healing balm.
The change came rapidly, one moment Vicky was holding on to him as though he were her lifeline, the next she had gasped and pulled away from him, eyes alert and wary above her tear stained cheeks.
"Are you okay?" Daniel asked, reluctant to break contact with her, his hand still resting on her back. "You were having a nightmare which, if it was anything like mine…" He shook his head, trying to remove the post dream images from his own mind.
A cold wind blew across the compound and they both shivered. Vicky, her eyes now lowered from his, drew her blanket closer and closed her eyes, then opened them quickly as though her nightmares still lived behind her lowered lids.
Daniel stood and retrieved more wood to put on the fire, banking it up until it burned brightly, taking some of the chill from the air. Her silence worried him; Vicky wasn't the quiet type, at least not when something bothered her. This retreat into herself wasn't good. Though he had been guilty of the same withdrawal time and again, he knew better than to encourage it in someone else.
He dropped down beside her again, leaving a small space between them yet hopefully close enough to offer comfort.
"Vicky, I don't know what you were dreaming about, but I need to know if this place is causing the phenomenon, or whether it's just our own unease. I've had my fair share of bad dreams over the years, but nothing like this."
Vicky's eyes remained firmly on the firelight, her sculptured profile not giving anything away. But Daniel could see that the knuckles of her hands were almost white where she gripped the blanket's edge. Whatever her demons were, they were with her now even as were his own.
"Perhaps if I tell you something of mine?" he began reluctantly. Shifting to a more comfortable position, his eyes too rested on the dancing flames. It was harder than he had thought. There was so much about him that this woman didn't know, couldn't know, and yet it was vital to understand some at least of who he was if she were to comprehend the affect the dreams had had.
"There has been one dream, one nightmare that has been with me for a while now," he murmured softly. "I'm with friends, we are somewhere alien, dark. From out of nowhere we are attacked. I have a weapon, it changes night to night, but each time the dream ends the same. I kill someone. I never see who but…" He took a deep breath, finally uttering out loud the fear that had haunted him every night. "I'm pretty sure I kill one of my team. That it's my fault that one of them dies. By my hand. Tonight… tonight I saw it all again, time after time. And it wasn't just that one," he rushed on, not wanting to dwell on the images that had sprung to life in the flames. "My wife…She was killed in front of me. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I tried…" His words trailed off, this was too hard. With the dreams still vivid in his mind's eye just the thought of Sha're brought a lump to his throat and tears to his eyes.
Daniel shifted uncomfortably, forcing himself to continue. "It didn't stop there though. God, it was like walking through some weird impressionist painting. Every bloody awful event in my life held up for me to review, to relive. Last night I dreamed about the sacrifices that took place here. That didn't seem too weird. But tonight… If this happens to everyone who comes here I can understand the way the porters reacted."
He almost didn't catch her words, so quietly had she spoken and so focussed had he become on the flames licking eagerly at the wood he had added to the pile.
"My father died somewhere in the jungle. I was at University when it happened. An anonymous call to my dorm told me to go home, that something had happened to my father. I didn't believe it at first. I phoned the house every hour all day long. Father was not on any trip, at least not that he had told me about, and he always did so that I wouldn't worry."
Vicky pulled the blanket a little closer, sending a quick, searching glance at Daniel's riveted face, then returned her eyes to the firelight.
"When I got home the next day, the police were waiting for me. They took me to the morgue. His body had been mutilated, his heart ripped out of his chest."
Tears were streaming silently down her face now; she bent her head to her knees, resting her forehead on the dark material. Daniel moved closer, laying his hand lightly on her back, not knowing what to do or say.
"I'm so sorry, Vicky." His eyes rested speculatively on the almost invisible mound of the fallen altar, a horrible thought echoing in his head. "It didn't happen here?"
The blanket muffled her voice as she continued her story. "No, he was found close to our hacienda." Her face lifted to finally look at him. "You asked what I dreamed of, Doctor Jackson. I dreamed of the death of my father."
"When did this happen?" he asked quietly. Now that he had her talking he didn't want to break the link they had forged through their mutual experience.
"Two years ago. There had been rumours for years that some of the old practices had been revived. Superstition runs rife in some of the more out of the way villages. There are communities up here that shun the western world, believing that that the Gods will protect them. Father had come across an altar that was still in use - animals, not people, or so he believed. But that had been years before. I was in my last year at the University when it happened."
"The police…?"
Vicky shook her head. "They tried, perhaps, but they found no one to blame. Somewhere out here is my father's murderer." She was quiet for a moment; Daniel held his breath waiting for her to continue. Her tear drowned eyes turned to him eventually. "This is the first time I have come into the jungle since it happened."
Her courage moved him. To be reminded at every temple they had passed, at every altar that still stood, of the death of her father must have been incredibly difficult. He understood the desire to avoid anything that could remind you of such terrible loss. When Sha're had died, something inside of him had wanted him to crawl away, find some dark hole and bury himself in it. Every time he walked through the Stargate after that had been a struggle. Before, when he had passed through that liquid circle it had been with the hope of finding his wife, of finding a way to break through and save her from the prisoner she had become. Now there was no hope, it had died along with Sha're in that opulent tent. And part of him had died too. The past years had been one long struggle to find some equilibrium in his life. On the few occasions when he had allowed his heart to feel a little warmth, it had been summarily snatched from him. He had been burned too many times to ever allow the wall he had erected to be breached. And yet, he felt himself drawn to the woman next to him. Reluctantly, inexorably, he made himself pull back from her, withdrawing his hand from her back under the pretence of putting another piece of wood to the fire. He did not replace it.
"Why did you decide to come now, on this trip?"
Vicky wiped away the last of her tears with the back of her hand, pulling herself up, and wrapping the blanket a little tighter around herself before answering.
"I wasn't sure I was going to do this trip. I had been turning down one offer after another until they had all but dried up. I'd been working as a translator for the past six months; it seemed the easiest way to earn a living. I'm fluent in ten languages, read a few more, but the opportunities were few and far between. I never returned to University to take my finals so a post with a museum or on a dig was out of the question. Money was tight and yours was a good offer. But even so I hadn't decided until I met you."
Daniel had always found it hard to keep his emotions from his face, and his surprise must have shown.
Vicky's tentative smile settled on him warmly and it was all he could do to quash the sudden flutter within himself. There was no way he was going to let this woman into his heart, absolutely no way.
***
Next morning, as soon as the sun had begun to rise and they could see the clearing around them, they moved camp to outside the temple walls. They hadn't discussed the move, but each had known that another night within the compound would be detrimental to their mental well being.
"Look, Vicky, I think you should leave me here to finish this up. It won't take me too long to uncover the other stones, once I have that done I'll come back down."
"No."
His raised brows had no effect on her. "No? Just like that? After last night I'm not sure either of us should stay, but I can't leave this place until I have at least noted all the symbols. Then I can come back with a proper team and…"
She moved quickly to stand in front of him, her presence almost intimidating despite her diminutive size. "No one comes back here. This place should be destroyed, and give the jungle time enough it will vanish. And I won't leave you here alone. Either we both leave, or we both stay."
"But if this place is the cause of the nightmares…"
"Then it will affect you whether you are alone or not." She waited a bare second, not giving him time to gather a suitable reply. "And with two of us to do the work, we can leave that much quicker. I studied archaeology at University. I specialised in the Mayan peoples. Together we can notate all that we need and get away from this place as soon as possible."
"Why didn't you tell me before?" Daniel felt faintly aggrieved that he had struggled all the previous day alone, when he had help on hand.
Vicky shrugged. "Most of my clients don't want help and, to be truthful, I wasn't sure if you were an archaeologist at all until yesterday."
"But you knew who I was, you knew about Nick. Why did you doubt me?" Puzzled, Daniel watched her face for any clues.
"Anyone can say who they are, Doctor. You don't look much like any other client I have had. To tell the truth, I thought you looked more military."
Daniel couldn't help it, laughter spilled from him, and once he started he could not stop. Above his head birds scattered in all directions as his mirth carried across the jungle.
"Oh, don't let Jack hear you say that!" and he was off again, laughing so hard tears were running down his face. Reaction to the night before perhaps, but it felt so good to let some healthy emotion run riot through him.
"I'm sorry," he gasped finally, wiping his face. "Ahhh, oh wow, that was… cathartic."
"Who's Jack?"
Vicky's question quenched the laughter in him as his nightmare surfaced. He grimaced slightly then spoke. "Jack is the head of my, ah, team. Research mainly."
It wasn't exactly a lie; a lot of their missions could be considered research in its broadest sense.
Her bright eyes rested on him speculatively. "Weapons?"
So, she had been listening to his discourse the night before. He had said too much maybe while his barriers had been so low. "It can get a little dangerous where we go. So, shall I remove the creepers and you sketch the glyphs or do you prefer to work a wall each?"
She took his change of subject in good part. "You can do that wall you started yesterday, I'll start clearing and notating that one over there."
For the rest of the morning they worked in companionable silence. Just the occasional grunt of exertion as one or other of them dragged tenacious creepers from their death grip on the rough wall, or the gentle flick of pencil on paper as they faithfully copied the tantalisingly half familiar designs, broke the quiet.
Daniel was on the last section of his wall when he came across his find. The block was the same size as all the others but seemed to have retained a small amount of paint. Something that had been missing on all the other pieces. Mud had crept up the face, hiding a good two thirds of the design from his view. He needed his tools, and returned to the campsite to retrieve the wooden box.
Vicky found him some fifteen minutes later still standing by the now cold fire, the box open and neglected at his feet, his eyes locked to the stone that rested in his palm. Her touch on his arm snapped him out of his reverie.
"I'm sorry, Doctor Jackson, but you didn't seem to hear me."
"You know, I really wish you'd call me Daniel," he murmured almost under his breath. She heard him though, and gave a tiny shake of her head.
"You were here so long I thought I had best see if you were all right. What's that?"
Daniel's gaze moved back to the stone, his eyes immediately beginning to trace the etched design. He had been staring at it for what seemed a lifetime, and now, as his gaze wandered over the surface, he thought he saw what had been nagging at him since Teal'c had presented him with the gift. It was not just one extremely complicated design that he was looking at, but a series of them, one interlinking with another; to be overlaid by another still, and on and on. Like seeing a book's pages one on top of another, each visible and yet invisible as words blurred.
"I think," he said slowly, "this may hold the key to the symbols on the walls." Now that he had the idea he found it almost impossible to remove his attention from the stone, as one by one the ideograms seemed to surface.
Vicky peered over his arm and looked for herself. "I don't see the connection."
It was her scent and proximity that broke the stone's spell, as he became all too aware of the vibrant woman standing so close. For once, the thrall of the past did not overwhelm his sense of the here and now. He cleared his throat quietly.
"I think that the symbols on the wall are all on this stone. If you look closely you can just make out the individual designs. See here," he pointed to the middle section where the glyph that looked so like Ma'at was engraved.
"Where did it come from?" Vicky queried, her finger tracing the design.
"A friend gave this to me. Unfortunately he didn't know its provenance, just that his father had brought it back from his… travels."
"His father was an archaeologist too?" Vicky asked in all innocence.
Daniel's tight grimace added to Vicky's confusion as he spoke. "Ah, no, not exactly."
Daniel knew that now was the time to end this trip, to go back to civilisation, get in touch with the SGC and have someone out to check the site, it seemed that yet another alien race had been by for a visit. As the years went by, Daniel had begun to think that Earth was just a way station for every passing alien race. Stop off there for a while, grab some of the natives; weather's nice, you'll have a great time. With his mind going off at a tangent, he could imagine 'wish you were here' postcards with that picture of Earth from space on every one.
"Let's finish up the wall I'm working on. Want to help?" And no, he wasn't going to examine his motives too closely for wanting Vicky inches away from him for the rest of the afternoon.
It was painstaking work. Try as they might, some of the paint flaked away at the barest touch of the fine instruments. But by evening they had almost all of it uncovered. Not only did this block differ in that it was painted, but it held more than one symbol. Daniel had straight away gone to the second wall, working quickly around the stones until he found a matching one on that wall, just past where Vicky had reached. And again on the other two walls.
"Do you have a compass?" Daniel shouted across the darkening temple ruins.
The stones lined up perfectly for each compass point. Sighing in satisfaction, he made his way back through the middle of the ruins, past where the fallen altar stood. The oval depression caught his attention. The sun, setting behind him, poured its last rays onto that one section of the toppled granite. In his pocket the stone knocked against his leg. Sliding his hand around the stone Daniel pulled it out and rubbed the design with a gentle thumb then looked speculatively at the indentation. He could almost hear Jack's voice echoing in his head saying 'Daniel, what have I told you about touching stuff. Now put it back!'
Insatiable curiosity got the better of his common sense - again. The stone fitted perfectly into the depression and Daniel held his breath, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. No burst of lightning struck him down, no alien appeared from out of the ether, fireworks did not light up the sky. He pulled Teal'c's gift out of the altar and made his way back to the camp site where Vicky was already making their evening meal, feeling vaguely disappointed.
