THE SHELTERS OF STONE

As she watched closely, she saw that the light wasn't entirely yellow. To keep still while she studied it, she held her breath. The small fire was rounded in the middle, with the brightest yellow part starting near the end of the wick and tapering up to a point. Inside the yellow was a darker area that began below the end of the wick and narrowed into a cone as it rose up within the bit of fire. Below the yellow, at the bottom where the flame began, the fire had a hint of blue.

She had never looked at the fire of an oil lamp with such intensity before. When she started breathing again, the lambet fire seemed to be playing with the lamp, moving to the meter of the music. As it danced over the glossy surface of the melted tallow, its light reflecting from the fuel, the flame grew more radiant. It filled her eyes with its softly glowing luminescence until she could see nothing else.

It made her feel airy, weightless, carefree, as though she could have floated up into the warmth of the light. Everything was easy, effortless. Sme smiled, laughed softly, the found herself looking at Jondalar. She thought about the life that he had started growing inside her, and a sudden flood of intense love for him welled up and overflowed. He could not help but respond to her glowing smile; as she watched him begin to smile back, she felt happy and loved. Life was full of joy, and she wanted to share it.

She beamed at Mejera and was rewarded with a tentative smile in return, then turned to Zelandoni and included her in the beneficience of her happiness. In a dispassionate corner of her mind that seemed to have distanced itself from her, she seemed to be watching everything with a strange clarity.

"I am getting ready to call Shevonar's elan and direct him to the spirit world," the One Who Was First interrupted her singing to say. Her voice sounded far away, even to her own ears. "After we help him, I will try to find the elan of Thonolan. Jondalar and Ayla will have to help me. Think about how he died, and where his bones are resting."

To Ayla, the sound of her words was full of music that grew louder and more complex. She heard tones resonating from the walls all around her, and watched as the huge donier seemed to become a part of the reverberating chant she sang again, a part of the cave itself. She saw the woman's eyes close. When she opened them, she seemed to be seeing something that was far away. Then her eyes rolled back, showing only whites, and closed again as she slumped forward in her seat.

The young woman whose hand she was holding was shaking. Ayla wondered if it was from fear or if Mejera was simply overwhelmed. She turned to look at Jondalar again. He seemed to be looking at her and she started to smile, but then she realized that he, too, was staring into space, not seeing her at all but something far away inside his mind. Suddenly, she found herself back in the vicinity of her valley again.

Ayla heard something that chilled her blood and set her heart racing: the thundering roar of a cave lion-and a human scream. Jondalar was there with her, inside her, it seemed; she felt the pain of a leg being mauled by the lion, then he lost consciousness.Ayla stopped, her blood pounding in her ears. It had been so long since she had heard a human sound, yet she knew it was human, and something else. She knew it was her kind of human. She was so stunned that she couldn't think. The scream pulled at her -it was a cry for help.

With Jondalar's presence unconscious, no longer dominant, she could feel the others there. Zelandoni, distant but powerful; Mejera, closer but vague. Underlying everything was the music, voices and flutes, faint but supporting, comforting, and the drums, deep and resounding.

She heard the growling of the cave lion and saw its reddish mane. Then she realized Whinney had not been nervous, and she knew why… "That's Baby! Whinney, that's Baby!"

There were two men. She pushed aside the lion she had raised and knelt to examine them. Her main concern was as a medicine woman, but she was astonished and curious as well. She knew they were men, though they were the first men of the Others she could remember seeing.

She knew immediately that the man with the darker hair was beyond hope. He lay in an unnatural position, his neck broken. The toothmarks on his throat proclaimed the cause. Though she had never seen him before, his death upset her. Tears of grief filled her eyes. It wasn't that she loved him, but that she felt she had lost something beyond value before she ever had a chance to appreciate it. She was devastated that the first time she saw people of her own kind, one was dead.