Plains of Passage (38 page)

It was the first time that Ayla had seen the full magnitude of the enormous river, and though he had been that way before, Jondalar had seen it from a different perspective. They were stunned, held by the sight. The awesome expanse seemed more like a flowing sea than a river, the shimmering, roiling surface betraying but a hint of the great power hidden within its depths.

Ayla noticed a broken branch moving toward them, hardly more than a stick carried along by the deep, swift current, but something about it caught her attention. It took longer than she expected to reach them, and as it drew near, she caught her breath in surprise. It was not a branch at all; it was a complete tree! As it floated serenely by, Ayla stared in wonder at one of the largest trees she had ever seen.

“This is the Great Mother River,” Jondalar said.

He had traveled her entire length once before, and he knew the distance she had traveled, the terrain she had crossed, and the Journey still ahead of them. Though Ayla didn’t entirely comprehend all the implications, she did understand that, gathered together in one place for the last time, at the end of her long Journey, the vast, deep, powerful Mother River had reached her culmination; this was as Great as she would ever be.

   They continued upstream beside the brimming waterway, leaving the steamy river mouth behind, and with it many of the insects that plagued them, and they discovered that they were leaving the open steppes as well. The broad grasslands and flat marshes gave way to undulating hills covered with extensive woodlands interspersed with green meadows.

It was cooler in the shade of the open woods. This was such a welcome change that when they came upon a large lake surrounded by trees near a beautiful green meadow, they were tempted to stop and make camp though it was only the middle of the afternoon. They rode alongside a creek toward a sandy shore, but as they neared, Wolf began
a low growl deep in his throat and, with hackles raised, assumed a defensive posture. Both Ayla and Jondalar scanned the area, trying to see what was disturbing the animal.

“I don’t see anything wrong,” Ayla said, “but there is something here that Wolf doesn’t like.”

Jondalar looked at the inviting lake once more. “It’s early to make camp, anyway. Let’s just go on,” he said, turning Racer aside and heading back toward the river. Wolf stayed behind a while longer, then caught up with them.

As they rode through the pleasant wooded regions, Jondalar was just as happy that they decided not to stop early at the lake. During the afternoon, they passed several more lakes of various sizes; the area was full of them. He thought he should have known that from his previous passage down the river, until he remembered that he and Thonolan had come downstream in a Ramudoi boat, only stopping at the edge of the river occasionally.

But more than that, he felt that there ought to be people living in such an ideal location, and he tried to remember if any of the Ramudoi had talked about other River People living downstream. He didn’t bring up any of his thoughts to Ayla, though. If they weren’t making themselves known, they didn’t want to be seen. He couldn’t help but wonder, however, what had caused Wolf to react so defensively. Could it have been the scent of human fear? Hostility?

As the sun was beginning its descent behind the mountains that loomed large in front of them, they stopped at a smaller lake that was a catch basin for several rivulets coming from higher ground. An outlet led directly to the river, and large trout and river-dwelling salmon had swum upstream into the lake.

Ever since they reached the river and added fish on a regular basis to their diet, Ayla had occasionally worked on a net she was weaving, similar to the kind Bran’s clan had used to catch large fish from the sea. She had to make the cordage first, and she tried out several kinds of plants that had stringy, fibrous parts. Hemp and flax seemed to work particularly well, though hemp was rougher.

She felt she had a large enough section of netting to try it out in the lake, and, with Jondalar holding one end and she the other, they started some distance out and walked back toward the shore pulling the net between them. When they pulled in a couple of big trout, Jondalar became even more interested, and he wondered if there was a way to attach a handle to the netting so one person could catch a fish without wading into the water. The thought stayed on his mind.

In the morning they headed for the mountain ridges strung out ahead through a rare, rich, and diverse woodland. The trees, a wide
assortment of deciduous and coniferous varieties, that, like the plants of the steppes, were distributed in a mosaic pattern of distinctive woods, broken by meadows and lakes, and in some lowlands, peat bogs or marshes. Certain trees grew in pure stands or in association with other trees or vegetation depending on minor variations in climate, elevation, availability of water, or soil, which could be loamy or sandy or sand mixed with clay, or several other combinations.

Evergreen trees preferred north-facing slopes and sandier soils and, where the moisture was sufficient, grew to great heights. A dense forest of huge spruces, soaring to a hundred sixty feet, occupied a lower slope that blended into pines that seemed to reach the same height but, though tall at a hundred thirty feet, were growing on the higher ground just above. Tall stands of deep green fir made way for thick communities of high, fat, white-barked birch. Even willows reached over seventy-five feet.

Where the hills faced south and the soil was moist and fertile, large-leaved hardwoods also attained amazing heights. Clusters of giant oaks with perfectly straight trunks and no spreading branches, except for a crown of green leaves at the top, climbed to over a hundred forty feet. Immense linden and ash trees reached nearly the same height, with magnificent maples not far behind.

In the distance ahead, the travelers could see the silvery leaves of white poplars mixed in with a stand of oaks, and when they reached the place, they found the oak woods alive with breeding tree sparrows nesting in every conceivable cranny. Ayla even found nests of the sparrows with eggs and young birds in them, built inside the nests of magpies and buzzards, that were themselves inhabited by eggs and young. There were also many robins in the woods, but their young were already fledged.

On the slanted hillsides, where breaks in the leafy canopy allowed more sunlight to reach the ground, undergrowth was luxuriant, with flowering clematis and other lianas often trailing down from the high branches of the canopy. The riders approached a stand of elms and white willows covered with vines climbing up their trunks and trailing plants hanging down. There they found the nests of many spotted eagles and black storks. They passed aspens quivering over dewberries and thick sallows near a stream. A mixed stand of majestic elms, elegant birches, and fragrant lindens marching up a hillside, overshadowed a thicket of edibles that they stopped to gather: raspberries, nettles, hazel brush with not-quite-ripe hazelnuts, just the way Ayla liked them, and a few stone pines bearing rich, hard-shelled pine nuts within their cones.

Farther on, a stand of hornbeams crowded out beeches, only to be replaced by them again later on—and one fallen giant hornbeam,
thickly covered with a yellow-orange coating of honey mushrooms, set Ayla to picking in earnest. The man joined her in collecting the delicious edible fungi she found, but it was Jondalar who discovered the bee tree. With the help of a smoky torch and his axe, he climbed a makeshift ladder made from the fallen trunk of a fir with the stumps of sturdy branches still attached, and he braved a few stings to collect some honeycombs. They gobbled up most of the rare treat then and there, eating the beeswax and a few bees along with it, laughing like children at the sticky mess they made of themselves.

These southern regions had long been the natural preserves of temperate trees, plants, and animals, crowded out by the dry, cold conditions of the rest of the continent. Some pine species were so ancient that they had even seen the mountains grow. Nurtured in small areas favorable to their survival, the relict species were available, when the climate changed again, to spread quickly into lands newly open to them.

   The man and woman, with the two horses and the wolf, continued their westward direction beside the broad river, heading toward the mountains. Details were becoming sharper, but the snowy ridges were an ever-present sight, and their progress toward them was so gradual that they hardly noticed that they were getting closer. They made occasional forays into the hills of the wooded countryside to the north, which could be rugged and steep, but for the most part they stayed close to the level plain near the trench of the river. The terrains were different, but the wooded plains had many plants and trees in common with the mountains.

The travelers realized they had come to a major change in the character of the river when they reached a large tributary rushing down from the highlands. They crossed it with the help of the bowl boat, but shortly afterward they came upon another fast river just as they were making a swing around to the south, where the Great Mother River had come from after skirting the lower end of the range. The river, unable to climb the northern highlands, had made a sharp turn and broached the ridge to reach the sea.

The bowl boat proved its usefulness again in crossing the second tributary, though they had to travel upstream from the confluence along the adjoining river until they found a less turbulent place to cross. Several other smaller streams entered the Mother just below the turn. Then, following the left bank around, the journeyers made a slight jog to the west and another swing back around. Though the great river was still on their left, they were no longer facing mountains. The range was now on their right and they were looking due south at
dry open steppes. Far ahead, distant purple prominences hugged the horizon.

Ayla kept watching the river as they traveled upstream. She knew that all the tributaries were carried downstream and that the great river was now less full than it had been. The broad expanse of running water did not appear any different, yet she felt that the waters of the Great Mother were diminished. It was a feeling that went deeper than knowing, and she kept trying to see if the immense river had altered in any noticeable way.

Before long, however, the huge river’s appearance did change. Buried deep beneath the loess, the fertile soil that had begun as rock dust ground fine by the huge glaciers and strewn by wind, and the clays, sands, and gravels deposited over millennia by running water, was the ancient massif. The enduring roots of archaic mountains had formed a stable shield so unyielding that the intractable granite crust, which had been forced against it by the inexorable movements of the earth, had buckled and risen into the mountains whose icy caps now glistened in the sun.

The hidden massif extended under the river, but an exposed ridge, worn down with time though still high enough to block the river’s exodus to the sea, had forced the Great Mother to veer north, seeking an outlet. Finally, the ungiving rock grudgingly surrendered a narrow passage, but before she gathered herself together with its tight constraints, the huge river had run parallel to the sea across the level plain, languidly spread out into two arms interlinked by meandering channels.

The relict forest was left behind as Ayla and Jondalar rode south into a region of flat landscape and low rolling hills covered with standing hay, next to a huge river marsh. The countryside resembled the open steppes beside the delta, but it was a hotter, drier land with areas of sand dunes, mostly stabilized by tough, drought-resistant grasses, and fewer trees even near water. Brush, primarily wormwood, wood sage, and aromatic tarragon, dominated the stands of woody growth that were trying to force a meager existence from the dry soil, sometimes crowding out the dwarfed and contorted pines and willows that clung close to the banks of streams.

The marshland, the often-flooded area between the arms of the river, was second in size only to the great delta and as rich with reeds, swamps, water plants, and wildlife. Low islands with trees and small green meadows were enclosed by muddy yellow main channels or side lanes of clear water filled with fish, often unusually large.

They were riding through an open field quite near the water when Jondalar reined in Racer to a halt. Ayla pulled up beside him. He smiled at her puzzled expression, but before she spoke he silenced her with a
finger to his lips and pointed toward a clear pool. Underwater plants could be seen waving to the motion of unseen currents. At first she saw nothing unusual; then, gliding effortlessly out of the green-tinged depths, an enormous and beautiful golden carp appeared. On another day they saw several sturgeon in a lagoon; the giant fish were fully thirty feet long. Jondalar was reminded of an embarrassing incident involving one of the tremendously large fish. He thought about telling Ayla, then changed his mind.

Reed beds, lakes, and lagoons along the river’s meandering course invited birds to nest, and great flocks of pelicans glided by on uplifting currents of warm air, barely flapping their broad wings. Toads and edible frogs sang their evening chorus, and sometimes provided a meal. Small lizards skittering over muddy banks were ignored by the passing travelers, and snakes were avoided.

There seemed to be more leeches in these waters, making them more wary and selective of the places they chose for swimming, though Ayla was intrigued by the strange creatures that attached themselves and drew blood without their knowing it. But it was the smallest of the creatures that were the most troublesome. With the swampy marsh nearby, there were also insects to plague them, more it seemed than before, sometimes forcing them and the animals into the river just to get relief.

The mountains to the west pulled back as they neared the southern end of the range, putting a wider sweep of plains between the great river they were following and the line of craggy crests marching south with them on their left flank. The snow-covered chain ended in a sharp bend, where another branch of the range, going in an east-west direction and defining the southern boundary, met the branch beside them. Near the farthest southeast corner, two high peaks jutted above all the rest.