Thunderhead (Nora Kelly #0)

by Douglas Preston

A thunderhead was developing over the mountains, dark beneath but topped with a spreading crown of brilliant white.

Quivira in their language means “The House of the Bloody Cliff.”

“There’s enough information in a single Anasazi pot to occupy a researcher for his entire career. Perhaps it’s not a matter of unimportant sites, but unimportant archaeologists.”

It was the cosmography that still ran through most present-day southwestern Native American religions: the black mountain in the north, the yellow mountain in the west, the white mountain in the east, and the blue mountain in the south.

“Perimortem?” asked Smithback. “Yes. Broken not before death, and not long afterward, but about the time of death.”

the priests of the city were infecting prisoners or slaves with the disease, waiting for them to die, and then processing their bodies to make corpse powder.

Swire’s sixth sense had been honed over many hard years of wrangling horses in wild, sometimes hostile country. He had learned to trust his life with it.