The Valley of Horses (31 page)

Suddenly, the leather thongs snapped, and with the jolt the carrying baskets, overbalanced by the long heavy spear shafts, tilted up. In open-mouthed astonishment, Ayla watched the overwrought horse race furiously ahead. The contents of the carrying baskets were dumped on the ground, except for the securely fastened spears. Still attached to the baskets cinched around the mare, the two long shafts were dragging along behind her, points down, without hindering her speed at all.

Ayla saw the possibilities immediately—she’d been racking her brain trying to think of a way to get the deer carcass
and the lion cub back to the cave. Waiting for Whinney to settle down took a little more time. Ayla, worried that the horse might harm herself, whistled and called. She wanted to go after her, but was afraid to leave either deer or lion cub to the tender mercies of hyenas. The whistling did have an effect. It was a sound Whinney associated with affection, security, and response. Making a large circle, she veered back toward the woman.

When the exhausted and lathered young mare finally drew near, Ayla could only hug her with relief. She untied the harness and cinch and examined her carefully to make sure she was unhurt. Whinney leaned against the woman, making soft nickers of distress, her forelegs spraddled, breathing hard and quivering.

“You rest, Whinney,” Ayla said when the horse stopped shaking and seemed to calm down. “I need to work on this anyway.”

It didn’t occur to the woman to be angry because the horse had bucked, run away, and dumped her things. She didn’t think of the animal as belonging to her, or under her command. Rather, Whinney was a friend, a companion. If the horse panicked, she had good reason. Too much had been asked of her. Ayla felt she would have to learn the horse’s limits, not attempt to teach her better behavior. To Ayla, Whinney helped of her own free will, and she took care of the horse out of love.

The young woman picked up what she could find of the basket’s contents, then reworked the cinch-basket-harness arrangement, fastening the two spears the way they had fallen, points down. She attached the grass mat, which had been wrapped around the deer, to both poles, thus creating a carrier platform between them—behind the horse but off the ground. She lashed the deer to it, then carefully tied down the unconscious cave lion cub. After she relaxed, Whinney seemed more accepting of the cinches and harnesses, and she stood quietly while Ayla made adjustments.

Once the baskets were in place, Ayla checked the cub again and got on Whinney’s back. As they headed toward the valley, she was astounded at the efficiency of the new means of transporting. With just the ends of the spears dragging on the ground, not a dead weight snagged by every obstacle, the horse was able to haul the load with much greater ease, but Ayla did not draw an easy breath until she reached the valley and her cave.

She stopped to give Whinney a rest and a drink, and she checked on the baby cave lion. He still breathed, but the wasn’t sure he would live. Why was he put in my path? she wondered. She had thought of her totem the moment she saw the cub—did the spirit of the Cave Lion want her to take care of him?

Then another thought occurred to her. If she hadn’t decided to take the cub with her, she would never have thought of the travois. Had her totem chosen that way to show her? Was it a gift? Whatever it was, Ayla was sure the cub had been put in her path for a reason, and she would do everything in her power to save his life.

“Jondalar, you don’t have to stay here just because I am.”

“What makes you think I’m staying just for you?” the older brother said with more irritation than he meant to show. He hadn’t wanted to seem so touchy about it, but there was more truth to Thonolan’s comment than he wanted to admit.

He’d been expecting it, he realized. He just didn’t want to let himself believe his brother would actually stay and mate Jetamio. Yet, he surprised himself with his immediate decision to stay with the Sharamudoi, too. He didn’t want to go back alone. It would be a long way to travel without Thonolan, and there was something deeper. It had prompted an immediate response before, when he had decided to make a Journey with his brother in the first place.

“You shouldn’t have come with me.”

For an instant, Jondalar wondered how his brother could know his thoughts.

“I had a feeling I’d never go back home. Not that I expected to find the only woman I could ever love, but I had a
feeling I’d just keep going until I found a reason to stop. The Sharamudoi are good people—I guess most people are once you get to know them. But I don’t mind settling here and becoming one of them. You’re a Zelandonii, Jondalar. No matter where you are, you will always be a Zelandonii. You’ll never feel quite at home any other place. Go back, Brother. Make one of those women who have been after you happy. Settle down and raise a big family, and tell the children of your hearth all about your long Journey and the brother who stayed. Who knows? Maybe one of yours, or one of mine, will decide to make a long Journey to find his kin someday.”

“Why am I more Zelandonii than you? What makes you think I couldn’t be just as happy here as you?”

“You’re not in love, for one thing. Even if you were, you’d be making plans to take her back with you, not to stay here with her.”

“Why don’t you bring Jetamio back with us? She’s capable, strong minded, knows how to take care of herself. She’d make a good Zelandonii woman. She even hunts with the best of them—she’d get along fine.”

“I don’t want to take the time, waste a year traveling all the way back. I’ve found the woman I want to live with. I want to settle down, get established, give her a chance to start a family.”

“What happened to my brother who was going to travel all the way to the end of the Great Mother River?”

“I’ll get there someday. There’s no hurry. You know it’s not that far. Maybe I’ll go with Dolando the next time he trades for salt. I could take Jetamio with me. I think she’d like that, but she wouldn’t be happy away from home for long. It means more to her. She never knew her own mother, came close to dying herself with the paralysis. Her people are important to her. I understand that, Jondalar. I’ve got a brother a lot like her.”

“What makes you so sure?” Jondalar looked down, avoiding his brother’s gaze. “Or of my not being in love? Serenio is a beautiful woman, and Darvo,” the tall blond man smiled and the worry lines on his forehead relaxed, “needs a man around. You know, he may turn out to be a good flint knapper one day.”

“Big Brother, I’ve known you a long time. Living with a woman doesn’t mean you love her. I know you’re fond of
the boy, but that’s not reason enough to stay here and make a commitment to his mother. It’s not such a bad reason to mate, but not to stay here. Go home and find an older woman with a few children if you want—then you can be sure of having a healthful of young ones to turn into flint knappers. But go back.”

Before Jondalar could reply, a boy, not yet into his second tea years, ran up to them out of breath. He was tall for his age, but slender with a thin face and features too fine and delicate for a boy. His light brown hair was straight and limp, but his hazel eyes gleamed with lively intelligence.

“Jondalar!” he exhaled. “I’ve been looking all over for you! Dolando is ready and the river men are waiting.”

“Tell them we come, Darvo,” the tall blond man said in the langauge of the Sharamudoi. The youngster sprinted ahead. The two men turned to follow, then Jondalar paused. “Good wishes are in order, Little Brother,” he said, and the smile on his face made it plain he was sincere. “I can’t say I haven’t been expecting you to make it formal. And you can forget about trying to get rid of me. It’s not every day a man’s brother finds the woman of his dreams. I wouldn’t miss your mating for the love of a donii.”

Thonolan’s grin lit up his whole face. “You know, Jondalar, that’s what I thought she was the first time I saw her, a beautiful young spirit of the Mother who had come to make my Journey to the next world a pleasure. I would have gone with her, too, without a struggle … I still would.”

As Jondalar fell in behind Thonolan, his brow furrowed. It bothered him to think his brother would follow any woman to her death.

The path zigzagged its way down a steep slope in switchbacks, which made the descent more gradual, through a deeply shaded forest. The way ahead opened up as they approached a stone wall that brought them to the edge of a steep cliff. A path around the stone wall had been laboriously hewn out of the face wide enough to accommodate two people abreast, but not with comfort. Jondalar stayed behind his brother as they passed around the wall. He still felt an aching sensation deep in his groin when he looked over the edge at the deep, wide, Great Mother River below, though they had wintered with the Shamudoi of Dolando’s Cave. Still, walking the exposed path was better than the other acess.

Not all Caves of people lived in caves; shelters constructed on open sites were common. But the natural shelters of rock were sought, and prized, especially during the winter’s bitter cold. A cave or rock overhang could make desirable a location that would otherwise have been spurned. Seemingly insurmountable difficulties would be casually overcome for the sake of such permanent shelters. Jondalar had lived in caves in steep cliffs with precipitous ledges, but nothing quite like the home of this Clave of Shamudoi.

In a far earlier age, the earth’s crust of sedimentary sandstone, limestone, and shale had been uplifted into ice-capped peaks. But harder crystalline rock, spewed from erupting volcanoes caused by the same upheavals, was intermixed with the softer stone. The entire plain through which the two brothers had traveled the previous summer, that had once been the basin of a vast inland sea, was hemmed in by the mountains. Over long eons the outlet of the sea eroded a path through a ridge, which had once joined the great range on the north with an extension of it to the south, and drained the basin.

But the mountain gave way only grudgingly through the more yielding material, allowing just a narrow gap bounded by obdurate rock. The Great Mother River, gathering unto herself her Sister and all her channels and tributaries into one voluminous whole, passed through the same gap. Over a distance of nearly a hundred miles, the series of four great gorges was the gate to her lower course and, ultimately, her destination. In places along the way she spread out for a mile; in others, less than two hundred yards separated walls of sheer bare stone.

In the slow process of cutting through a hundred miles of mountain ridge, the waters of the receding sea formed themselves into streams, waterfalls, pools, and lakes, many of which would leave their mark. High on the left wall, close to the beginning of the first narrow passage, was a spacious embayment: a deep broad shelf with a surprisingly even floor. It had once been a small bay, a protected cove of a lake, hollowed out by the unwavering edge of water and time. The lake had long since disappeared, leaving the indented U-shaped terrace high above the existing water line; so high that not even spring floods, which could change the river level dramatically, came close to the ledge.

A large grass-covered field edged to the sheer drop-off of the shelf, though the soil layer, evidenced by a couple of
shallow cooking pits that went down to rock, was not deep. About halfway back, brush and small trees began to appear, hugging and climbing the rugged walls. The trees grew to a respectable size near the rear wall, and the brush thickened and clambered up the steep back incline. Close to the back on a side wall was the prize of the high terrace: a sandstone overhang with a deep undercut. Beneath it were several shelters constructed of wood, partitioning the area into dwelling units, and a roughly circular open space, with a main hearth and a few smaller ones, that was both an entrance and a gathering place.

In the opposite corner was another valuable asset. A long thin waterfall, dropping from a high lip, played through jagged rocks for a distance before spilling over a smaller sandstone overhang into a lively pool. It ran off along the far wall to the end of the terrace, where Dolando and several men were waiting for Thonolan and Jondalar.

Dolando hailed them when they appeared around the jutting wall, then began descending over the edge. Jondalar jogged behind his brother and reached the far wall just as Thonolan started down a precarious path alongside the small stream that dropped down a series of ledges to the river below. The trail would have been impossible to negotiate in places except for narrow steps tediously chiseled out of the rock, and sturdy rope handrails. As it was, the cascading water and constant spray made it treacherously slick, even in summer. In winter it was an impassable mass of frozen icicles.

In the spring, though it was inundated with heavier runoff and icy patches which threatened footing, the Sharamudoi—both the chamois-hunting Shamudoi, and the river-dwelling Ramudoi, who formed their opposite half—scampered up and down like the agile goatlike antelope that inhabited the steep terrain. As Jondalar watched his brother descend with the reckless disregard of one born to it, he thought Thonolan was certainly right about one thing. If he lived here all his life, he would never get used to this access to the high shelf. He glanced at the turbulent water of the huge river far below and felt the familiar ache in his groin, then took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and stepped over the edge.

More than once he was grateful for the rope as he felt his foot slip on unseen ice, and he expelled a deep sigh when he reached the river. A floating dock of logs lashed together,
swaying with the shifting current, was welcome stability by comparison. On a raised platform that covered more than half the dock were a series of wood structures similar to the ones under the sandstone overhang on the ledge above.

Jondalar exchanged greetings with several inhabitants of the houseboats as he strode along the lashed logs toward the end of the dock where Thonolan was just getting into one of the boats tied there. As soon as he got in, they shoved off and began pulling upstream with long-handled oars. Conversation was kept to a minimum. The deep, strong current was urged on by spring melt, and, while the river men rowed, Dolando’s men kept an eye out for floating debris. Jondalar settled back and found himself musing on the unique interrelationship of the Sharamudoi.