Chapter 4

It was some kind of gatehouse, built half into the side of the mountain, mostly intact; Ronon had slept in much worse places, so he was fine with it. He saw that there was a half-hearted kind of stream too, running down the side of the road, so that was water sorted. Teyla said it must have been beautiful, the stream probably made to run over a series of waterfalls, it and the road running beneath a big arch. The remains of the arch lay on the road, just obstacles to be climbed over as far as Ronon was concerned, but McKay stopped, and brushed away some dirt and pointed at some lettering.

"What's it say?" Ronon asked.

"It just says 'Welcome'," replied Rodney.

"Friendly kinda place, then," said John.

"This is not normal Ancient script," Teyla said. "The letters are unusual shapes."

Ronon, not interested, wandered a little way up the steep road, wondering if there was anything to burn. A fire'd be good, he thought.

"Ha! Yes!" He heard Rodney enthusing. "I think it's the Ancient equivalent of comic sans. A friendly typeface for their welcome sign!"

Ronon turned round. There'd be nothing to burn; too far above the treeline for much to grow. Just the lichens the sheep-things lived off. We could eat those, he thought, the lichens as well as the sheep-things, if we had to.

"A friendly welcome," John said, thoughtfully. "Isn't that a bit... weird? I mean, thinking about Helia and her crew."

"Yes, well, they may have been a standoffish bunch, but they'd come straight from the war with the Wraith. This place, I think, was built in more innocent times."

"Well, whatever the standard of luxury used to be, here in Ancient Disneyworld, we have canteens to fill and a camp to set up," said John.

Ronon strode back down the road, now in shadow, and losing the day's warmth fast. He'd unconsciously been scanning the area for signs of grenza, and had seen some probable claw-marks, but they were old; nothing that made his senses twitch. Water, food, shelter; the words ran through his head, and he was glad, as he had been so many times now, that these concerns were not his to bear alone.

oOo

The wind had risen; it whistled and shrieked and howled through the broken ruins so that Teyla could almost believe that the inhabitants had returned as vengeful spirits, intent on making their presence, and their displeasure, known. Occasionally Teyla heard, and actually felt in her chest, a deep, reverberant tone, sonorous and dark, and she guessed it was the remains of the great, broken, metallic dome, not far above their gatehouse, ringing out in the gale.

They had erected their two tents, although the roof of the little building was mostly intact, cut, as it was, partly into the bedrock of the slope. They would need the extra protection of the tents, and Teyla was glad of her meal, heated by one of the strange packets, which just required a sprinkling of water to cause the chemicals within to begin warming. Very convenient, especially where there was no firewood, and even where there was fuel, one did not always want to give away one's position by producing smoke. Surely the packets were wasteful of resources, though? Teyla frowned, but still enjoyed the taste and the warmth of her beef stew.

She looked up at her teammates, each perched on a chunk of masonry, trying to eat their meals by flashlight, except Ronon, who seemed to be able to manage just as well in the dark. Rodney had finished his entrée and was squinting at a small packet.

"I can't tell whether this is some kind of drinks powder, or I've just totally crushed my crackers."

Ronon reached over and stuck his finger in the packet and then in his mouth.

"Strawberry milkshake," he said.

"Oh, thank you so much, Conan, for that additional 'essence of caveman'. That's just what it needed!"

Teyla smiled and then looked at John, expecting him to join in the usual back and forth of mildly irritated squabbling, which seemed to constitute a large part of the team's bonding. He didn't seem to be listening, though; he had stopped eating and was staring blankly at the ground. Teyla shuffled her stone block closer to his. She trained her flashlight on one of the small packets of her MRE: Skittles, their jarringly bright colours and intense sweetness obviously not beneficial, but, nevertheless, a guilty pleasure. She opened them, and held the packet out to John, illuminating it with her flashlight. He was still lost in thought, so she nudged him, gently, with her elbow.

"John?"

"Oh. Teyla. Er... No, thanks, I'm still on the... erm, whatever this is. Macaroni, I think."

Teyla took one of the purple Skittles, which were her favourites. She popped it into her mouth and the almost shocking sweetness and artificial fruit flavour exploded on her tongue.

"You are deep in thought, John. What about?"

"Uh, well... I was just wondering..." He paused and stirred his meal a few times. Teyla waited. "I was wondering if they'd been culled yet," he said quietly.

Teyla sighed and took another Skittle. A green one. She knew that John was referring to the people they had met on their last mission, the dreadful mission that had left them all traumatised and on the verge of starvation.

"We all wonder about that," she said, sadly. "It is very probable that they have."

"Yeah, I think so too." He began eating again, half-heartedly.

"Some will survive, John. Some will have escaped off-world."

"Yeah, and they'll have left some," he said bitterly. "As breeding stock. Like animals."

"So it has always been," Teyla replied, softly. "For as long as anyone can remember."

They were silent for a moment. Between the howling gusts of wind, Teyla could hear Rodney trying to persuade Ronon to swap his marble cake for Rodney's vanilla.

"But not when this place was built, though," said John, taking out his pack of crackers. "What do you think it was?" Teyla held the flashlight while he squeezed something onto them; cheese spread, or peanut butter, she couldn't tell.

"I think perhaps it was a place of pilgrimage," Teyla said.

John made a questioning noise, his mouth full of cracker.

"The route from the lower lands is long, and must have been walked," she said. "Perhaps it was meant to encourage spiritual contemplation before arrival at the sanctuary."

"So they'd get here and then ascend? Maybe. I'm going with holiday resort. We'll find a spa, maybe a nightclub." He bit into another cracker.

Teyla finished her Skittles and tidied away her empty packaging, wondering what they would find in this mysterious place on its faraway peak. And, flinching at the sudden screech of the wind through a gap in the stonework, she wondered what the night would bring.

oOo

Rodney took the first watch, which was actually the best one, because then he'd have the rest of the night for sweet, unbroken, dreamless sleep, he thought, listening to the shrieking gale and watching as the tents shivered and shook around their occupants. Yeah, right.

He put his head out of the door, caught a furious blast of freezing cold air in his face and then rapidly withdrew. His legs ached from the climb; in fact most of him ached from the climb and he'd probably be stiff as a board in the morning. He wanted to sit down, but knew he'd probably fall asleep, even sitting on one of the uncomfortable stone blocks. He checked his watch again; another hour to go, then he could wake Teyla. The shrieking of the wind rose higher and for a heart-freezing second he thought he heard the eerie cry of a grenza mixed with the shrieks. He stood, motionless, listening hard, trying to pick out threads of sound. Should he wake Sheppard? No, he must have imagined it; it was surely just the wind.

Rodney barely moved for the rest of his watch, his senses on full alert, and so when he woke Teyla and crawled into the tent he shared with John, he fell, exhausted, into dreamless sleep.

oOo

Teyla had felt Rodney's disquiet and knew he had been disturbed by something, even though he'd responded that it was 'just the wind,' when she had asked. Just the wind it may well have been, but most people's instincts were more reliable than they knew, especially in the dark of an unfamiliar night; thousands of years of evolution had seen to that, in her galaxy as well as Rodney's. She stood and listened and tried to tune into her environment, hearing the multi-toned breath of the wind, feeling its sudden variations, from a light tickle to a fierce, scouring rush. She put her hands on the stone wall and, through her fingers, felt not only its vibrations, but its resilience and its long, long history. There was nothing that jarred her senses; just the dark and the cold and the wind.

Teyla turned on her flashlight and watched the beam as it bobbed around the interior of the building; it was a square, boxlike structure, that had probably had another room, stepped down the steep slope. The doorway opened out into an area that would have been beneath the broad arch. She wondered who had worked in this little space. Had they lived here too? Had they welcomed weary pilgrims, or had they taken or sold tickets and organised bookings for activities? Perhaps they had snapped their fingers to call a guide to take visitors to their accommodation.

The sound of rock clattering on rock, brought Teyla's thoughts swiftly back to the present. It came again, and she tried to judge the direction and proximity of the sound. She turned to face the doorway, and, in the faint light of the newly-risen moon, she could see the ruined archway amid heaps of loose stone and the low remains of walls. Nothing moved. Then there was a scrape, from behind her and she spun and the beam of her flashlight bounced wildly around the room, falling only on the tents, the bare floor, the blank stone walls. Teyla moved further into the room and stood, listening, straining her senses, hearing only the relentless gusts of wind.

oOo

Noises in the night; howling, shrieking, rock on rock, claw on stone. Ronon stood, outside the gatehouse, against the wall, in the deep shadow cast by the moon, sentry-like, still, silent, alert, his blaster ready in his hand. Come, he thought, Come if you want. I'm ready. But nothing came.

oOo

John took one hand away from his P90 to rub the stubble on his jaw; if they could get a better campsite organised tonight, maybe he'd shave. Or maybe not. He shifted, hearing the crunch and scrape of loose chips under his boots. The wind had dropped, as seemed to be its normal pattern round here. Normal patterns were good to know; things you could plan for, rely on.

The sky was definitely lighter now; faintly grey, so maybe the total cloud cover they'd had yesterday morning was another normal pattern. John imagined taking a Jumper up and breaking through the cloud and out into the sunshine. That was one of the best bits of flying; get high enough and the weather's always good. That was probably a metaphor for life, or something, but John was more interested in having a quick scout up the road, now that it was just light enough to see any obstacles.

It was steep and rough, and in places water ran over the surface before it joined and ran down the channel at the side of the road. John felt his stiff muscles stretching as he moved and the bruises from his fall the day before protesting. He took one hand at a time off his P90 and wiggled his fingers, testing the flexibility of his scraped hands, but never taking his eyes off his surroundings. He stopped and looked up at the great building with its huge shattered dome and the sloping expanse of broken rock between him and it; what had this area been? Terracing, of some kind he thought, tracing the faint suggestion of regular layers in the chaos. Maybe pools and the water running down from one terrace to the next, some trees for shade. John vaguely remembered playing in a garden like that, a long time ago. His family had been visiting someone important and he'd been told to be on his best behaviour. Discovering their garden of terraces and waterfalls, he'd gone on a climbing expedition; it hadn't ended well.

A movement, just a vague flicker in the corner of his eye had him spinning round, weapon ready. All was still and silent. John stepped forward, his eyes, matched by the muzzle of his gun, moving from side to side, intently focussed, missing nothing. There was a dark entrance, partly fallen, cut into the rock of the mountain. John stopped, to one side of the black opening and listened; silence. He was about to turn when a breath of air brought to him a faint scent of sweet-sour corruption; just a fleeting, unpleasant tang and then it was gone and the pure mountain air blew gently in his face and ruffled his hair. John backed away, flicking quick glances left, right, over his shoulder, wishing he had someone watching his six. They wouldn't split up, he thought. At least two together, all the time. Just in case.

oOo

Rodney would not quite have described himself as 'bright-eyed and bushy-tailed' in the cold of the grey morning, his ZPM-hunting zeal not totally over-riding the aches and pains resulting from the climb and the sheep-trampling of the previous day. However, having rapidly wolfed his breakfast (so rapidly, in fact, that, not only could he not recall what he'd eaten, but he'd also given himself hiccups), he was most certainly raring to go. The tent was stowed away, his pack was, well, packed and he stood outside the gatehouse, open laptop in the crook of one arm, nearly bouncing off what remained of the walls with impatience. He watched John, Ronon and Teyla emerge from the doorway, painfully slowly, it seemed to Rodney, and shoulder their packs (ponderously).

"So!" (hic). "Eminent physicist, check!" (hic). "Energy readings, check!" (hic). "Put the two together, and what do you get?" (hic).

"Indigestion, apparently," said John.

"Chuh!" (hic)

"Seriously, Rodney, calm down!" John said, annoyingly.

Teyla held out her canteen and Rodney sipped, inhaling water and choking through his hiccups, while John did his usual 'danger, danger, everywhere' alarmist speech.

"McKay!"

Rodney jumped. "Yes?"

"Are you listening?"

Rodney gave a nervous half-smile, shrinking slightly under John's narrow-eyed glare. "Um... yes?"

John sighed, heavily. "I said we stay together - no splitting up. And we stay alert. I reckon something's made a home for itself somewhere around here, and that something may well be a grenza. Maybe more than one."

"Oh." Rodney gulped.

"Yes, oh," John said, pointedly. "And that's apart from the danger of falling buildings. We go slow. No rushing ahead. Got it?"

Rodney nodded.

"Okay." John addressed Ronon and Teyla. "We centre on McKay, so he can follow the energy readings. I'm at two, Teyla ten, Ronon six. Let's go."

Rodney moved, at the centre of the triangle, feeling protected but irritatingly restricted. Sheppard was tense and serious and Ronon and Teyla seemed affected by his mood. Yes, grenza were a serious threat, but, hello? Ancient city, temple, leisure complex here! Potential ZPM! Even the thought of grenza couldn't suppress Rodney's excitement.

They came to the open area at the top of the road, its crumbled surface like a face of an ancient stepped pyramid, the terraces nearly worn away by time. Rodney slid his laptop back into his pack to leave his hands free, and they struggled up the slope where it bordered a wall. John insisted on having at least one of the team stationary, weapon at the ready, as the others moved, and so they proceeded in a kind of pincer movement, slowly making their way towards the roofless portico of the domed building. There had been six vast columns fronting the portico, one of which still stood, while the others were reduced to truncated stubs, cut off near the ground. On the wall behind them, some smooth patches of turquoise facing still adhered, but the ground was littered with shattered fragments of the same colour. A trickle of water ran out of the wide doorway and, as Rodney followed John and Teyla inside, he saw that it came from a round pool in the centre of the huge room. The pool was overflowing with water, and a trail of green algae streamed out across the floor, following the path of the overspill. The space was shadowy, the early morning light not yet high enough to send beams down through the broken dome. Rodney's foot slipped on the wet floor and the thudding slap as his other boot landed hard fluttered around the hall like a retreating bird, slowly dissipating in the strange acoustic.

"Where's the water coming from?" asked Ronon, his voice booming as he looked down into the brimming pool.

"Perhaps a natural spring," Teyla speculated.

Rodney took out his laptop again and checked the direction of the energy readings.

"We need to go that way," he said, pointing roughly east. "I'm guessing we'll be heading into the areas cut into the mountain. Maybe a couple of levels lower." He looked up. Broad, high-arched hallways led to the east and west and, to the south, opposite the entrance, was another opening which led to a crumbled flight of stairs and row upon row of buildings, or their remains, which climbed the slope of the mountain.

"C'mon, then," said John, turning toward the eastern corridor.