THE SHELTERS OF STONE

Suddenly Ayla perceived a feeling that she'd had before, but not for a long time: a sense of foreboding came over her. Ever since the Clan Gathering, where Creb had learned in some inexplicable way that she was different, she had sometimes felt this peculiar fear, this strange disorientation, as though he had changed her. She felt a tingling, a prickling, a goosebump-raising nausea and weakness, and she shivered as her memory of a darkness deeper than any cave became real. In the back of her throat she tasted the dark cool loam and growing fungus of ancient primeval forests.

An angry roar shattered the silence, and the watching people jumped back with fear. The huge cave bear pushed at the gate to the cage and sent it crashing to the ground. The maddened bear was loose! Broud was standing on his shoulders; two other men were clinging to his fur. Suddenly one was in the monstrous animal's grip, but his agonized scream was cut short when a powerful bear hug snapped his spine. The mog-urs picked up the body and, with solemn dignity, carried it into a cave. Creb, in his bearskin cloak, hobbled in the lead.

Ayla stared at a white liquid sloshing in a cracked wooden bowl. She felt an anxious worry, she had done something wrong. There wasn't supposed to be any liquid left in the bowl. She held it to her lips and drained it. Her perspective changed, a white light was inside her, and she seemed to be growing larger and looking down from high above at stars blazing a path. The stars changed to small flickering lights leading through a long endless cave. Then a red light at the end grew large, filling her vision, and with a sinking, sickening feeling, she saw the mog-urs sitting in a circle, half-hidden by stalagmite pillars.

She was sinking deeper into a black abyss, petrified with fear. Suddenly Creb was there with the flowing light inside her, helping her, supporting her, easing her fears. He guided her on a strange trip back to their mutual beginnings, through salt water and painful gulps of air, loamy earth, and high trees. Then they were on the ground, walking upright on two legs, walking a great distance, going west toward a great salty sea. They came to a steep wall that faced a river and a flat plain, with a deep recess under a large overhanging section; it was the cave of an ancient ancestor of his. But as they approached the cave, Creb began fading, leaving her.

The scene grew hazy, Creb was fading faster, was nearly gone. She scanned the landscape, searching desperately for him. Then she saw him at the top of the cliff, above his ancestor's cave, near a large boulder, a long, slightly flattened column of rock that tilted over the edge, as though frozen in place as it was about to fall. She called out, but he had faded into the rock. Ayla felt desolate; Creb was gone and she was alone. Then Jondalar appeared in his place.

She sensed herself moving with great speed over strange worlds and felt the terror of the black void again, but it was different this time. She was sharing it with Mamut, and the terror overcame both of them. Then faintly, from far away, she heard Jondalar's voice, full of agonized fear and love, calling to her, pulling her back and Mamut as well, by the sheer strength of his love and his need. In an instant she was back, feeling chilled to the bone.

"Ayla, are you all right?" Zelandoni said. "You're shivering."

Chapter 27

"I'm fine," Ayla said. "It's just cool in here. I should have brought something warmer." Wolf, who had been exploring the new cave, had appeared at her side and was pushing against her leg. She reached down and felt his head, then kneeled down and hugged him.

"It is cool, and you are pregnant. You feel things more," Zelandoni said, but she knew there was more to it than Ayla was saying. "You know about the meeting tomorrow, don't you?"

"Yes, Marthona told me. She will be coming with me, since I have no mother of my own to come," Ayla said.

"Do you want her to come?" Zelandoni asked.

"Oh, yes. I was grateful that she offered. I didn't want to be the only woman there without a mother, at least someone who is like a mother," Ayla said.

The First nodded. "Good."

People were getting over their first feelings of awe at the new cave and were beginning to move around in it. Ayla saw Jondalar walking the length of the large room with purposeful strides, and smiled. She knew that he used his body to measure, she had seen him do it before. The width of his clenched fist was one measurement, the length of his hand another. He used his open arms to gauge spaces, and he often paced off distances by naming his steps with the counting words. That was why she had started doing it. He looked into the gallery at the back, holding his torch high, but didn't enter.