After sharing their morning meal, both couples prepared to go their separate ways. When Guban and Yorga were ready, they simply looked at Jondalar and Ayla for a moment, avoiding the wolf and two horses packed with gear. Then, leaning on his crutches, Guban began hobbling away. Yorga fell in behind him.
There were no goodbyes, no thank-yous; such concepts were foreign to the people of the Clan. It wasn't customary to comment on one's departure, it was obvious, and acts of assistance or kindness, especially from kin, were expected. Understood obligations required no thanks, only reciprocity, should it ever be necessary. Ayla knew how difficult it could be if Guban ever had to reciprocate. In his mind, he owed them more than he might ever be able to repay. He had been given more than his life; he had been given a chance to retain his position, his status, which meant more to him than simply being alive – especially if that meant living as a cripple.
"I hope they don't have far to go. Traveling any distance on those walking sticks is not easy," Jondalar said. "I hope he makes it."
"He'll make it," Ayla said, "no matter how far it is. Even without the walking sticks, he would get back, if he had to crawl the whole way. Don't worry, Jondalar. Guban is a man of the Clan. He will make it… or die in the trying."
Jondalar's brow wrinkled into a thoughtful frown. He watched Ayla take Whinney's lead rope; then he shook his head and found Racer's. In spite of the difficulty for Guban, he had to admit he was glad they had refused his offer of riding back to their clan on the horses. There had been too many delays already.
From their campsite, they continued riding through open woods until they reached a high point; then they stopped and looked out over the way they had come. Tall pines, standing straight as sentinels, guarded the banks of the Mother River for a long distance back; a winding column of trees leading away from the legion of conifers they could see below, spreading out over the flanks of the mountains that crowded close from the south.
Ahead their uphill climb temporarily leveled off, and an extension of the pine forest, starting at the river, marched across a small valley. They dismounted to lead the horses into the dense woodland and entered a twilight space of profound and eerie silence. Straight dark boles supported a low canopy of spreading long-needled boughs that blocked sunlight and inhibited undergrowth. A layer of brown needles, accumulating for centuries, muffled both footsteps and hoof-beats.
Ayla noticed a collection of mushrooms at the base of a tree, and she knelt to examine them. They were frozen solid, caught by a sudden frost of the previous autumn that had never let up. But no snow had filtered in to betray the season. It was as though the time of harvest had been captured and held in suspension, preserved in the still cold forest. Wolf appeared beside her and pushed his muzzle into her ungloved hand. She rubbed the top of his head, noticed his steamy breath and then her own, and had a fleeting impression that their small company of travelers were the only things alive.
On the far side of the valley, the climb became precipitous and shimmery silver fir appeared, accented by stately deep green spruce. The long-needled pines became stunted with increasing elevation and finally disappeared, leaving the spruce and fir to march beside the Middle Mother.
As he rode, Jondalar's thoughts kept returning to the Clan people they had met – he would never again be able to think about them as anything other than people. I need to convince my brother. Perhaps he could try to make contact with them – if he is still leader. When they stopped to rest and make some hot tea, Jondalar spoke his thoughts out loud.
"When we get home, I'm going to talk to Joharran about the Clan people, Ayla. If other people can trade with them, we could, too, and he should know that they are meeting with distant clans to discuss the troubles they are having with us," Jondalar said. "It could mean trouble and I would not want to fight the likes of Guban."
"I don't think there is any hurry. It will take a long time for them to reach any decisions. Change is difficult for them," Ayla said.
"What about trading – do you think they would be willing?"
"I think Guban would be more willing than most. He's interested in knowing more about us, and he was willing to try the walking sticks, even if he wouldn't ride the horses. Bringing home such an unusual woman from a faraway clan shows something about him, too. He was taking a chance, even if she is beautiful."
"Do you think she is beautiful?"
"Don't you?"
"I can see why Guban would think so," Jondalar said.
"I guess what a man considers beautiful depends on who he is," she said.
"Yes, and I think you are beautiful."
Ayla smiled, making him all the more convinced of her beauty. "I'm glad you think so."
"It is true, you know. Remember all the attention you got at the Mother Ceremony? Did I ever tell you how glad I was that you picked me?" he said, smiling at the memory.
She recalled something he had said to Guban. "Well, I belong to you, don't I?" she said, then grinned. "It's good that you don't know Clan language too well. Guban would have seen that you were not speaking true when you said I was your mate."
"No, he wouldn't. We may not have had a Matrimonial yet, but in my heart, we are mated. It wasn't a lie," Jondalar said.
Ayla was moved. "I, too, feel that way," she said softly, looking down because she wanted to show deference to the emotions that filled her. "I have since the valley."
Jondalar felt such a fierce surge of love fill him that he thought he would burst. He reached for her and took her in his arms, feeling at that moment, with those few words, that he had experienced a Mating Ceremonial. It didn't matter if he ever had one that would be recognized by his people. He would go through with it, to please Ayla, but he didn't need it. He only needed to get her home safely.
A sudden gust of wind chilled Jondalar, driving away the flush of warmth he had felt and leaving him with a strange ambivalence. He got up and, walking away from the warmth of the small fire, took a deep breath. It left him gasping as the desiccating, freezing air seared his lungs. He ducked behind his fur hood and pulled it tight around his face to allow his body heat to warm the air he breathed. Though the last thing he wanted to feel was a warm wind, he knew such bitter cold was extremely dangerous.
To the north of them the great continental glacier had dipped southward, as though straining to encompass the beautiful icy mountains within its overwhelming frozen embrace. They were in the most frigid land on earth, between the glistening mountain tors and the immense northern ice, and it was the depths of winter. The air itself was sucked dry by the moisture-stealing glaciers greedily usurping every drop to increase their bloated, bedrock-crushing mass, building up reserves to withstand the onslaught of summer heat.
The battle between glacial cold and melting warmth for control of the Great Mother Earth was almost at a standstill, but the tide was turning; the glacier was gaining. It would make one more advance, and reach its farthest southward point, before it was beaten back to polar lands. But even there, it would only bide its time.
As they continued to mount the highland, each moment seemed colder than the one before. Their increasing altitude was bringing them inexorably closer to their rendezvous with ice. Fodder was getting harder for the horses to find. The sere withered grass near the stream of solid ice was flat against the frozen ground. The only snow was made up of hard dry stinging grains, whipped by driving wind.
They rode silently, but after they made camp and were cuddled together warmly within their tent, they talked.
"Yorga's hair is beautiful," Ayla said, snuggling into their furs.
"Yes, it is," Jondalar said, with honest conviction.
"I wish Iza could have seen it, or anyone from Brun's clan. They always thought my hair was so unusual, though Iza always said it was my best feature. It used to be light like hers, but it's darker now."
"I love the color of your hair, Ayla, and the way it falls in waves when you wear it loose," Jondalar commented, touching a strand next to her face.
"I didn't know people of the Clan lived so far away from the peninsula."
Jondalar could tell her mind was not on hair, or on anything close and personal. She was thinking about the Clan people, as he had been earlier.
"Guban looks different, though. He seems… I don't know, it's hard to explain. His brows are heavier, his nose is bigger, his face is more… out. Everything about him seems more… pronounced, more Clan, in a way. I think he is even more muscular than Brun was. He didn't seem to notice the cold as much, either. His skin was warm to the touch even when he was lying on the frozen ground. And his heart beat faster."
"Maybe they've gotten used to cold. Laduni said a lot of them live north of here, and it hardly gets warm at all up there, even in summer," Jondalar said.
"You may be right. They think alike, though. What made you tell Guban you were repaying a kinship debt to the Clan? It was the best argument you could have made."
"I'm not sure. It's true, though. I do owe my life to the Clan. If they hadn't taken you in, you wouldn't be alive, and then neither would I."
"And by giving him that cave bear tooth, you could not have given him a better token. You were quick to understand their ways, Jondalar."
"Their ways are not so different. The Zelandonii are careful about obligations, too. Any obligations left unpaid when you go to the next world can give the one you owe control over your spirit. I've heard that a few of Those Who Serve the Mother try to keep people in their debt, so they can control their spirits, but it's probably just talk. Just because people say things doesn't mean they're true," the man said.
"Guban believes that his spirit and yours are now intertwined, in this life and the next. A piece of your spirit will always be with him, just as a piece of his will always be with you. That's why he was so concerned. He lost his piece when you saved his life, but you gave him one back, so there is no hole, no emptiness."
"I wasn't the only one who saved his life. You did as much as I did, and more."
"But I am a woman, and a woman of the Clan is not the same as a man of the Clan. It is not an even exchange because one cannot do what the other does. They don't have the memories for it."
"But you set his leg and fixed it so he could get back."
"He would have gotten back; I wasn't worried about that. I was afraid his leg wouldn't heal right. Then he wouldn't be able to hunt."
"Is it so bad not to hunt? Couldn't he do something else? Like those S'Armunai boys?"
"The status of a Clan man depends on his ability to hunt, and his status means more to him than his life. Guban has responsibilities. He has two women at his hearth. His first woman has two daughters, and Yorga is pregnant. He promised to care for all of them."
"What if he can't?" Jondalar asked. "What will happen to them?"
"They wouldn't starve, his clan would take care of them, but their status – the way they live, their food and clothes, the respect they are shown – depends on his status. And he would lose Yorga. She's young and beautiful, another man would be glad to take her, but if she has the son Guban has always wanted, she would take him with her."
"What happens when he gets too old to hunt?"
"An old man can give up hunting slowly, gracefully. He would go to live with the sons of his mate, or the daughters if they were still living with the same clan, and he wouldn't be a burden on the whole clan. Zoug developed his skill with a sling so he could still contribute, and even Dorv's advice was still valued, though he could hardly see. But Guban is a man in his prime, and a leader. To lose it all at once would take the heart out of him."
Jondalar nodded. "I think I understand. Not hunting wouldn't bother me so much. I would hate it, though, if something happened to me so that I couldn't work the flint any more." He paused to reflect, then said, "You did a lot for him, Ayla. Even if Clan women are different, shouldn't that count for something? Couldn't he at least acknowledge it?"
"Guban expressed his gratitude to me, Jondalar, but it was subtle, as it had to be."
"It must have been subtle. I didn't see it," Jondalar said, looking surprised.
"He communicated directly to me, not through you, and he paid attention to my opinions. He allowed his woman to speak to you, which acknowledged me as her equal, and since he has a very high status, so was hers. He thought very highly of you, you know. Paid you a compliment."
"He did?"
"He thought your tools were well made and he admired your workmanship. If he hadn't, he would not have accepted the walking sticks, or your token," Ayla explained.
"What would he have done? I accepted his tooth. I thought it was a strange gift, but I understood his meaning. I would have accepted his token, no matter what it was."
"If he had felt it was not appropriate, he would have refused it, but that token was more than a gift. He accepted a serious obligation. If he did not respect you, he would not have accepted your spirit piece in exchange for his; he values his too much. He would rather have an emptiness, a hole, than accept a piece of an unworthy spirit."
"You're right. There are many subtleties to those Clan people, shades of meaning within shades of meaning. I don't know if I'd ever be able to sort it all out," Jondalar said.
"Do you think the Others are any different? I still have trouble understanding all the shades within shades," Ayla said, "but your people are more tolerant. Your people do more visiting, more traveling than the Clan, and they are more used to strangers. I'm sure I've made mistakes, but I think your people have overlooked them because I'm a visitor and they realize the customs of my people may be different."
"Ayla, my people are your people, too," Jondalar said, gently.
She looked at him as if she didn't quite understand him at first. Then she said, "I hope so, Jondalar. I hope so."
The spruce and fir trees were thinning out and becoming stunted as the travelers climbed, but even though they could see past the vegetation, their route along the river took them beside outcrops and through deep valleys that blocked their view of the heights around them. At a bend in the river, an upland stream fell into the Middle Mother, which itself came from higher ground. The marrow-chilling air had caught and stilled the waters in the act of falling, and the strong dry winds had sculpted them into strange and grotesque shapes. Caricatures of living creatures captured by frost, poised to begin a headlong flight down the course of the long river, seemed to be waiting impatiently, as if knowing the turning of the season, and their release, was not far off.
The man and woman led the horses carefully over the jumbled broken ice, and around to the higher ground of the frozen waterfall, then stopped, spellbound, as the massive plateau glacier loomed into view. They had caught glimpses of it before; now it seemed close enough to touch, but the stunning effect was misleading. The majestic, brooding ice with its nearly level top was farther away than it seemed.
The frozen stream beside them was unmoving, but their eyes followed its tortuous route as it twisted and turned, then ducked out of sight. It reappeared higher up, along with several other narrow channels spaced at irregular intervals that leaked off the glacier like a handful of silvery ribbons trimming the massive cap of ice. Far mountains and nearer ridges framed the plateau with their rugged, sharp-edged, frozen tops, so starkly white their undertones of glacial blue seemed only to reflect the clear deep hue of the sky.
The twin high peaks to the south, which for a while had accompanied their recent travels, had long since passed from view. A new high pinnacle that had appeared farther west was receding to the east, and the summits of the southern range that had traced their path still showed their glistening crowns.
To the north were dual ridges of more ancient rock, but the massif that had formed the northern edge of the river valley had been left behind at the bend where the river turned back from its most northern point, before the place where they had met the people of the Clan. The river was closer to the new highland of limestone that had taken over as the northern boundary as they climbed southwest, toward the river's source.
The vegetation continued to change as they ascended. Spruce and silver fir gave ground to larch and pine on the acid soils that thinly covered the impervious bedrock, but these were not the stately sentinels of lower elevations. They had reached a patch of mountainous taiga, stunted evergreens whose crowns held a covering of hard-packed snow and ice that was cemented to the branches for most of the year. Though quite dense in places, any shoot brave enough to project above the others was quickly pruned by wind and frost, which reduced the tops of all the trees to a common level.
Small animals moved freely along beaten tracks they had made beneath the trees, but large game forged trails by main force. Jondalar decided to veer away from the unnamed small stream they had been following, one of many that would eventually form the beginning of a great river, and take a game trail through the thick fringe of dwarfed conifers.
As they approached the timberline, the trees thinned out and they could see the region beyond that was completely bereft of upright woody growths. But life is tenacious. Low-growing shrubs and herbs, and extensive fields of grassy turf, partly buried under a blanket of snow, still flourished.
Though much more expansive, similar regions existed in the low elevations of the northern continents. Relict areas of temperate deciduous trees were maintained in certain protected areas and at the lower latitudes, with hardier needled evergreens appearing in the boreal regions to the north of them. Farther north, where they existed at all, trees were usually dwarfed and stunted. Because of the extensive glaciers, the counterparts of the high meadows that surrounded the perpetual ice of the mountains were the vast steppes and tundras, where only those plants that could complete their life cycles quickly survived.
Above the timberline many hardy plants adapted to the harshness of the environment. Ayla, leading her mare, noticed the changes with interest, and she wished she had more time to examine the differences. The mountains in the region where she had grown up were much farther south, and because of the warming influence of the inland sea, the vegetation was primarily of the cold temperate variety. The plants that existed in the higher elevations of the bitterly cold arid regions were fascinating to her.
Stately willows, which graced nearly every river, stream, or brook that sustained even a trace of moisture, grew as low shrubs, and tall sturdy birches and pines became prostrate woody growths that crawled along the ground. Blueberries and bilberries spread out as thick carpets, only four inches high. She wondered if, like the berries that grew near the northern glacier, they bore full-size but sweeter and wilder fruits. Though the bare skeletons of withered branches gave evidence of many plants, she didn't always know what variety they were, or how familiar plants might be different, and she wondered how the high meadows would look in warmer seasons.
Traveling in the dead of winter, Ayla and Jondalar did not see the spring and summer beauty of the highlands. No wild roses or rhododendrons colored the landscape with blooms of pink; no crocuses or anemones, or beautiful blue gentians, or yellow narcissus were tempted to brave the harsh wind; and no primroses or violets would burst with polychrome splendor until the first warmth of spring. There were no bellflowers, rampions, worts, groundsels, daisies, lilies, saxifrages, pinks, monkshoods, or beautiful little edelweiss to ease the bitter cold monotony of the freezing fields of winter.
But another, more awesome sight filled their view. A dazzling fortress of gleaming ice lay athwart their path. It blazed in the sun like a magnificent, many-faceted diamond. Its sheer crystalline white glowed with luminous blue shadows that hid its flaws: the crevasses, tunnels, caves, and pockets that riddled the gigantic gem.
They had reached the glacier.
As the travelers neared the crest of the worn stump of the primordial mountain that bore the flat-topped crown of ice, they weren't even sure if the narrow mountain stream beside them was still the same river that had been their companion for so long. The diminutive trail of ice was indistinguishable from the many frozen little waterways waiting for spring to release their cascading flows to race down the crystalline rocks of the high plateau.
The Great Mother River they had followed all the way from her broad delta where she had emptied into the inland sea, the great waterway that had guided their steps over so much of their arduous Journey, was gone. Even the ice-locked hint of a wild little stream would soon be left behind. The travelers would no longer have the comforting security of the river to show them the way. They would have to continue their Journey west by dead reckoning, with only the sun and stars to act as guides, and landmarks that Jondalar hoped he would remember.
Above the high meadow, the vegetation was more intermittent. Only algae, lichens, and mosses that were typical of rocks and scree could derive a struggling existence beyond the cushion plants and a few other rare species. Ayla had begun to feed the horses some of the grass they carried for them. Without their heavy, shaggy coats and thick undercoat, neither horses nor wolf would have survived, but nature had adapted them to the cold. Lacking fur of their own, the humans had made their own adaptations. They took the furs of the animals they hunted; without them they would not have survived. But then, without the protection of furs and fire, their ancestors would never have come north in the first place.
Ibex, chamois, and mouflon were at home in mountain meadows, including those in more precipitous rugged regions, and frequented higher ground, though usually not so late in the season, but horses were an anomaly at this high elevation. Even the gentler slopes of the massif did not usually encourage their kind to climb so high, but Whinney and Racer were sure-footed.
The horses, with their heads bent low, plodded up the incline at the base of the ice hauling supplies and brownish-black burning stones that would mean the difference between life and death for all of them. The humans, who led the horses to places they would not ordinarily go, were looking for a level spot to set up a tent and make camp.
They were all weary of fighting the intense cold and sharp wind, of climbing the steep terrain. It was exhausting work. Even the wolf was content to stay close rather than to run off and explore.
"I'm so tired," Ayla said as they were trying to set up camp with gusty winds blowing. "Tired of the wind, and tired of the cold. I don't think it'll ever get warm again. I didn't know it could be so cold."
Jondalar nodded, acknowledging the cold, but he knew the cold they had yet to face would be worse. He saw her glance at the great mass of ice, then look away as though she didn't want to see it, and he suspected she was concerned with more than cold.
"Are we really going to go across all that ice?" she asked, finally acknowledging her fears. "Is it possible? I don't even know how we're going to get up to the top."
"It's not easy, but it's possible," Jondalar said. "Thonolan and I did it. While there is still light, I'd like to look for the best way to get the horses up there."
"It feels like we've been traveling forever. How much farther do we have to go, Jondalar?"
"It's still a ways to the Ninth Cave, but not too far, not near as far as we have come, and once we get across the ice, it's only a short distance to Dalanar's Cave. We'll stop there for a while; it will give you a chance to meet him, and Jerika and everyone – I can hardly wait to show Dalanar and Joplaya some of the flint-knapping techniques I learned from Wymez – but even if we stay and visit, we should be home before summer."
Ayla felt distressed. Summer! But this is winter, she thought. If she had really understood how long the Journey would be, she wondered if she would have been so eager to go with Jondalar all the way back to his home. She might have tried harder to persuade him to stay with the Mamutoi.
"Let's go take a closer look at that glacier," Jondalar said, "and plan the best way to get up on it. Then we should make sure we have everything and are ready to cross the ice."
"We'll have to use some of the burning stones to make a fire tonight,"
Ayla said. "There's nothing to burn around here. And we'll have to melt ice for water… we shouldn't have any trouble finding enough of that."
Except for a few shaded pockets of negligible accumulation, there was no snow in the area where they camped, and there had been very little for most of their trek up the slope. Jondalar had only been that way once before, but the whole area seemed much drier than he remembered. He was right. They were in the rain shadow of the highland, the back side; the sparse snows that did fall in the region usually arrived a little later, after the season had begun to turn. He and Thonolan had run into a snowstorm on their way down.
During the winter, the warmer, water-laden air, riding the prevailing winds coming from the western ocean, rose up the slopes until it reached the large level area of cold ice with high pressure centered over it. Having the effect of a giant funnel that was aimed at the high massif, the moist air cooled, condensed, and turned to snow, which fell only on the ice below, feeding the hungry maw of the demanding glacier.
The ice covering the entire worn and rounded top of the ancient massif spread the precipitation over the whole area, creating a nearly level surface, except at the periphery. The cooled air, milked dry of liquid, dropped low and raced down the sides, bringing no snow beyond the edges of the ice.
As Jondalar and Ayla hiked around the base of the ice looking for the easiest way up, they noticed areas that seemed newly disturbed, with dirt and rocks gouged up by prongs of advancing ice. The glacier was growing.
In many areas, the ancient rock of the highland was exposed at the foot of the glacier. The massif, folded and uplifted by the immense pressures that had created the mountains to the south, had once been a solid block of crystalline granite that incorporated a similar highland to the west. The forces that pushed against the immovable old mountain, the most ancient rock on earth, left evidence in the form of a great rift, a fault that had cleaved the block asunder.
Directly across toward the west, on the opposite side of the glacier, the massif's western slope was steep, and matched by an east-facing parallel edge across the rift valley. A river flowed along the middle of the broad valley floor of the fault trough protected by the high parallel sides of the cracked massif. But Jondalar planned to head southwest, to cross the glacier diagonally and come down a more gradual grade. He wanted to cross the river nearer its source high in the southern mountains, before it flowed around the glaciered massif and through the rift valley.
"Where did this come from?" Ayla asked, holding up the object in question. It consisted of two oval wooden disks mounted in a frame that held them rigid and fastened fairly close together, with leather thongs attached to the outside edges. A thin slit was cut the long way down the middle of the wooden ovals for almost the full length, nearly dividing them in half.
"I made it before we left. I have one for you, too. It's for your eyes. Sometimes the glare of the ice on the glacier is so bright that you can't see anything but white – people call it snow-blind. The blindness usually goes away after a while, but your eyes can get awfully red and sore. This will protect your eyes. Go ahead, put it on," Jondalar said. Then, seeing her fumble with them, he added, "Here, I'll show you." He put the unusual sunshields on and tied the thongs behind his head.
"How can you see?" Ayla asked. She could just barely make out his eyes behind the long horizontal slits, but she put on the pair he gave her. "You can see almost everything! You just have to turn your head to see to the side." She was surprised; then she smiled. "You look so funny with your big blank eyes, like some kind of strange spirit… or a bug. Maybe the spirit of a bug."
"You look funny, too," he said, smiling back, "but those bug eyes could save your life. You need to see where you are going up on the ice."
"These mouflon-wool boot liners from Madenia's mother have been so nice to have," Ayla commented as she put them in a handy place to get at them easily. "Even when they're wet, they keep your feet warm."
"We may be grateful to have the extra pair when we're on the ice, too," Jondalar said.
"I used to stuff my foot-coverings with sedge grass, when I lived with the Clan."
"Sedge grass?"
"Yes. It keeps your feet warm and dries fast."
"That's useful to know," Jondalar said, then picked up a boot. "Wear the boots with the mammoth-hide soles. They're almost waterproof and they're tough. Sometimes ice can be sharp, and they're rough enough so you won't slip, especially on the way up. Let's see, we'll need the adze to chop up ice." He put the tool on top of a pile he was making. "And rope. Good strong cord, too. We'll need the tent, sleeping furs, food, of course. Can we leave some of the cooking equipment? We won't need much on the ice, and we can get more from the Lanzadonii."
"We'll be using traveling food. I won't be cooking, and I decided to use the big skin pot attached to the frame that we got from Solandia to melt the ice for water, and put it directly over the fire. It's faster that way, and we don't have to boil the water. Just melt it," Ayla said.
"Be sure to keep a spear with you."
"Why? There are no animals on the ice, are there?"
"No, but you can use it to prod ahead of you to make sure the ice is solid. What about this mammoth hide?" Jondalar asked. "We've carried this with us ever since we started out, but do we need it? It's heavy."
"It's a good hide, nice and pliable now, and a good waterproof cover for the bowl boat. You said it snows on the ice." She really hated to throw it away.
"But we can use the tent as a cover."
"That's true… but," Ayla said, pursing her lips, considering… Then she noticed something else. "Where did you get those torches?"
"From Laduni. We'll be up before sunrise and will need light to pack. I want to reach the top of the plateau before the sun is very high, while everything is still frozen solid," Jondalar said. "Even when it's this cold, the sun can melt the ice a little and it will be difficult enough to reach the top."
They went to bed early, but Ayla couldn't fall asleep. She was nervous and excited. This was the glacier that Jondalar had talked about from the beginning.
"Wha… What's wrong?" Ayla said, startled wide awake.
"Nothing's wrong. It's time to get up," Jondalar said, holding up the torch. He pushed the handle into the gravel to support it, then handed her a cup of steaming tea. "I started a fire. Here's some tea."
She smiled, and he looked pleased. She had made his morning tea nearly every single day of their Journey, and he was delighted that he'd gotten up first, for once, and made tea for her. Actually, he'd never gone to sleep. He hadn't been able to. He'd been too nervous, too excited, and too worried.
Wolf watched his humans, his eyes reflecting the light. Sensing something unusual, he capered and pranced back and forth. The horses were frisky, too, full of snorting, nickering, and vibrato blowing with clouds of steam. Using the burning stones, Ayla melted ice for water and fed them grain. She gave Wolf a cake of Losadunai traveling food along with one for her and Jondalar. By the light of the torch, they packed the tent, the sleeping furs, and a few implements. They left a few odds and ends behind, an empty container of grain, a few stone tools, but at the last moment Ayla threw the mammoth hide over the brown coal in the bowl boat.
Jondalar picked up the torch to light the way. Taking Racer's lead rope, he started out, but the firelight was distracting. He could see a small lighted circle in the immediate vicinity, but not much beyond, even when he held it up high. The moon was nearly full, and he began to feel he could find their way better without the fire. The man finally threw it down and walked ahead in the dark. Ayla followed, and in a few moments their eyes adjusted. Behind them the torch still burned on the graveled ground as they moved away.
In the light of a moon that lacked only a sliver from being full, the monstrous bastion of ice glowed with an eerie, evanescent light. The black sky was hazy with stars, the air brittle and crackling with cold; an amorphous ether charged with a life of its own.
As cold as it was, the freezing air had a deeper intensity as they neared the great wall of ice, but Ayla's shiver was caused by the thrill of awe and anticipation. Jondalar watched her glowing eyes, her slightly open mouth as she took deeper, faster breaths. He was always aroused by her excitement, and he felt a stirring in his loins. But he shook his head. There was no time now. The glacier was waiting.
Jondalar took a long rope out of his pack. "We need to tie ourselves together," he said.
"The horses, too?"
"No. We might be able to support each other, but if the horses slip, they'll take us with them." As much as he would hate to lose either Racer or Whinney, it was Ayla he was most concerned about.
Ayla frowned, but she nodded her agreement.
They spoke in hushed whispers, the silent brooding ice quieting their voices. They didn't want to disturb its hulking splendor or warn it of their impending assault.
Jondalar tied one end of the rope around his waist and the other end around Ayla, coiling up the slack and putting his arm through to carry it on his shoulder. Then each of them picked up the lead rope of a horse. Wolf would have to make his own way.
Jondalar felt a moment of panic before he started. What could he have been thinking of? What ever made him think he could bring Ayla and the horses across the glacier? They should have gone the long way around. Even if it took longer, it was safer. At least they would have made it. Then he stepped on the ice.
At the foot of a glacier there was often a separation between the ice and the land, which created a cavelike space beneath the ice, or an overhanging ice shelf that extended out over the accumulated gravels of glacial till. At the place Jondalar chose to start, the overhang had collapsed, providing a gradual ascent. It was also mixed with gravel, giving them better footing. Starting from the collapsed edge a heavy accumulation of gravel – a moraine – led up the side of the ice like a well-defined trail and, except near the top, it did not appear too steep for them or the sure-footed horses. Getting over the top edge could be a problem, but he wouldn't know how much of one until he got there.
With Jondalar leading the way, they started up the slope. Racer balked for a moment. Although they had trimmed it down, his large load was still unwieldy and the shift in elevation from a moderate to a steeper grade unsettled him. A hoof slipped, then caught hold, and with some hesitation the young stallion started up. Then it was Ayla's turn, and Whinney dragging the travois. But the mare had hauled the pole drag for so long, across such varied terrain, that she was accustomed to it, and, unlike the large load Racer carried on his back, the wide-spaced poles helped to steady the mare.
Wolf brought up the rear. It was easier for him. He was lower to the ground and his callused paws provided friction against slipping. But he sensed the danger to his companions and followed behind as though guarding the rear, watchful for some unseen menace.
In the bright moonlight, reflections from jagged outcrops of bare ice shimmered, and the mirrorlike surfaces of sheer planes had a deep liquid quality, like still black pools. It was not difficult to see the moraine that was spilling down, like a river of sand and stones in slow motion, but the night lighting obscured the size and perspective of objects and hid small details.
Jondalar set a slow and cautious pace, carefully leading his horse around obstructions. Ayla was more concerned with finding the best path for the horse she was leading than she was for her own safety. As the slope became steeper, the horses, unbalanced by the sharper incline and their heavy loads, struggled for footing. When a hoof slipped as Jondalar tried to lead Racer up a precipitous rise near the top, the horse neighed and tried to rear.
"Come on, Racer," Jondalar urged, pulling his lead rope taut, as if he could pull him up by sheer brute strength. "We're almost there, you can do it."
The stallion made an effort, but his hooves slipped on treacherous ice below a thin layer of snow, and Jondalar felt himself pulled back by the lead rope. He eased up on the rope, giving Racer his head, and finally let go altogether. There were things in the pack he would hate to lose, and even more, it would pain him to lose the animal, but he feared the stallion could not make it.
But when his hooves found gravel. Racer's slide stopped, and with no restraint on him, he lifted his head and plunged forward. Suddenly the stallion was over the edge, adroitly stepping over a narrow crack at the end of a crevasse as the way leveled out. Jondalar noticed that the color of the sky had shifted from black to deep indigo blue, with a faint lightening of the shade on the eastern horizon, as he stroked the horse and praised him warmly.
Then he felt a tug on the rope over his shoulder. Ayla must have slipped back, he thought, as he gave her more slack. She must have reached the steep rise. Suddenly the rope was slipping through his hand, until he felt a strong tug at his waist. She must be holding on to Whinney's lead rope, he thought. She's got to let go.
He grabbed the rope with both hands and shouted, "Let go, Ayla! She'll pull you down with her!"
But Ayla didn't hear, or if she did, she didn't comprehend. Whinney had started up the incline, but her hooves could find no purchase and she kept slipping back. Ayla was holding on to the lead rope, as though she could keep the mare from falling, but she was sliding back, too. Jondalar felt himself being pulled dangerously close to the edge. Looking for something to hold on to, he grabbed Racer's lead rope. The stallion neighed.
But it was the travois that checked Whinney's descent. One of the poles caught in a crack and held long enough for the mare to get her balance. Then her hooves plunged through a snowdrift that held her steady, and she found gravel. As he felt the pull ease, he let go of Racer's lead. Bracing his foot against the crack in the ice, Jondalar pulled up on the rope around his waist.
"Give me a little slack," Ayla called out, as she held on to the lead rope while Whinney pushed forward.
Suddenly, miraculously, he saw Ayla over the edge, and he pulled her the rest of the way. Then Whinney appeared. With a forward vault, she scrambled up past the crack and her feet were on the level ice, the poles of the travois jutting out into the air and the bowl boat resting on the edge they had surmounted. A streak of pink appeared across the early morning sky, defining the edge of the earth, as Jondalar heaved a great sigh.
Wolf suddenly bounded up over the edge and raced over to Ayla. He started to jump up on her, but, feeling none too steady, she signaled him down. He backed off, looked at Jondalar and then the horses. Lifting his head and starting with a few preliminary yips, he howled his wolf song loud and long.
Although they had climbed up a steep incline and the ice had leveled out, they were not quite on the top surface of the glacier. There were cracks near the edge, and broken blocks of expanded ice that had surged up. Jondalar crossed a mound of snow that covered a jagged, splintered pile behind the edge, and finally he set his feet on a level surface of the ice plateau. Racer followed him, sending broken chunks bouncing and rolling in a clattering fall over the edge. The man kept the rope attached to his waist taut as Ayla traced over his last steps. Wolf raced ahead while Whinney followed behind.
The sky had become a fleeting and unique shade of dawn blue, while coruscating rays of light radiated from just behind the edge of the earth. Ayla looked back over the steep incline and wondered how they had made it up the slope. From their vantage point at the top, it didn't look possible. Then she turned to go on, and she caught her breath.
The rising sun had peeked over the eastern edge with a blinding burst of light that illuminated an incredible scene. To the west, a flat, utterly featureless, dazzling white plain stretched out before them. Above it the sky was a shade of blue she had never seen in her life. It had somehow absorbed the reflection of the red dawn, and the blue-green undertone of glacial ice, and yet remained blue. But it was a blue so stunningly brilliant that it seemed to glow with its own light in a color beyond description. It shaded to a hazy blue-black on the distant horizon in the southwest.
As the sun rose in the east, the faded image of a slightly less than perfect circle that had glowed with such brilliant reflection in the black sky of their predawn awakening hovered over the far western edge; a dim memory of its earlier glory. But nothing interrupted the unearthly splendor of the vast desert of frozen water; no tree, no rock, no movement of any kind marred the majesty of the seemingly unbroken surface.
Ayla expelled her breath explosively. She hadn't known she was holding it. "Jondalar! It's magnificent! Why didn't you tell me? I would have journeyed twice the distance just to see this," she said in an awed voice.
"It is spectacular," he said, smiling at her reaction, but just as overwhelmed. "But I couldn't tell you. I've never seen it like this before. It's not often this still. The blizzards up here can be spectacular, too. Let's move while we can see the way. It's not as solid as it seems, and with this clear sky and the bright sun, a crevasse could open up or an overhanging cornice give way."
They started across the plain of ice, preceded by their long shadows. Before the sun was very high, they were sweating in their heavy clothes. Ayla started to remove her hooded outer fur parka.
"Take it off, if you want," Jondalar said, "but keep yourself covered. You can get a bad sunburn up here, and not just from above. When the sun shines on it, the ice can burn you, too."
Small cumulus clouds began to form during the morning. By noon they had drawn together into large cumulus clouds. The wind started picking up in the afternoon. About the time Ayla and Jondalar decided to stop to melt snow and ice for water, she was more than happy to put her warm outer fur back on. The sun was hidden by moisture-laden cumulonimbus that sprinkled a light dusting of dry powder snow on the travelers. The glacier was growing.
The plateau glacier they were crossing had been spawned in the peaks of the craggy mountains far to the south. Moist air, rising as it swept up the tall barriers, condensed into misty droplets, but temperature decided whether it would fall as cold rain or, with just a slight drop, as snow. It was not perpetual freezing that made glaciers; rather, an accumulation of snow from one year to the next gave rise to glaciers that, in time, became sheets of ice that eventually spanned continents. In spite of a few hot days, solid cold winters in combination with cool cloudy summers that don't quite melt the leftover snow and ice at winter's end – a lower yearly average temperature – will swing the balance toward a glacial epoch.
Just below the soaring spires of the southern mountains, too steep themselves for snow to rest upon, small basins formed, cirques that nestled against the sides of the pinnacles; and these cirques were the birthplaces of glaciers. As the light, dry, lacy snowflakes drifted into the depressions high in the mountains, created by minute amounts of water freezing in cracks and then expanding to loosen tons of rock, they piled up. Eventually the weight of the mass of frozen water broke the delicate flakes into pieces that coalesced into small round balls of ice: firn, corn snow.
Firn did not form at the surface, but deep in the cirque, and when more snow fell, the heavier compact spheres were pushed up and over the edge of the nest. As more of them accumulated, the nearly circular balls of ice were pressed together so hard by the sheer weight above that a fraction of the energy was released as heat. For just an instant, they melted at the many points of contact and immediately refroze, welding the balls together. As the layers of ice deepened, the greater pressure rearranged the structure of the molecules into solid, crystalline ice, but with a subtle difference: the ice flowed.
Glacier ice, formed under tremendous pressure, was more dense; yet at the lower levels the great mass of solid ice flowed as smoothly as any liquid. Separating around obstructions, such as the soaring tops of mountains, and rejoining on the other side – often taking a large part of the rock with it and leaving behind sharp-peaked islands – a glacier followed the contours of the land, grinding and reshaping it as it went.
The river of solid ice had currents and eddies, stagnant pools and rushing centers, but it moved to a different time, as ponderously slow as it was massively huge. It could take years to move inches. But time didn't matter. It had all the time in the world. As long as the average temperature stayed below the critical line, the glacier fed and grew.
Mountain cirques were not the only birthplaces. Glaciers formed on level ground, too, and once they covered a large enough area, the chilling effect spread the precipitation out of the anticyclone funnel, centered in the middle, to the extreme margins; the thickness of the ice remained nearly the same throughout.
Glaciers were never entirely dry. Some water was always seeping down from the melting caused by pressure. It filled in small cracks and crannies, and when it chilled and refroze, it expanded in all directions. The motion of a glacier was outward in all directions from its origin, and the speed of its motion depended on the slope of its surface, not on the slope of the ground underneath. If the surface slope was great, the water within the glacier flowed downhill faster through the chinks in the ice and spread out the ice as it refroze. They grew faster when they were young, near large oceans or seas, or in mountains where the high peaks assured heavy snowfall. They slowed down after they spread out, their broad surface reflecting the sunlight away and the air above the center turning colder and drier with less snow.
The glaciers in the mountains to the south had spread out from their high peaks, filled the valleys to the level of high mountain passes, and spilled through them. During an earlier advancing period, the mountain glaciers filled the deep trench of a fault line separating the mountain foreland and the ancient massif. It covered the highland, then spread across to the old eroded mountains on the northern fringe. The ice receded during the temporary warming – which was coming to an end – and melted in the lowland fault valley, creating a large river and a long, moraine-dammed lake, but the plateau glacier on the highland they were crossing stayed frozen.
They could not build a fire directly on the ice and had planned to use the bowl boat as a base for the river stones they had brought to build the fire on. But first they had to empty all the burning stones out of the round craft. As Ayla picked up the heavy mammoth hide, it occurred to her that they could just as well use it as a base upon which to build a fire. Even if it scorched a little, it wouldn't matter. It pleased her that she had thought to bring it. Everyone, including the horses, had water and a little food.
While they were stopped, the sun disappeared entirely behind heavy clouds, and before they started on their way again, thick snow began falling with grim determination. The north wind howled across the icy expanse; there was nothing on the whole vast sheet covering the massif to stand in its way. A blizzard was in the making.