The Land of Painted Caves (49 page)

The entrance to the cave was at the north end of the abri under a short section of overhanging ledge, which was weathering and shedding pieces of broken rock that were beginning to pile up in front of the opening that led inside the wall of stone.

The Zelandoni had put some wood, tinder, and a fire-making drill and platform along with some stone lamps into a backframe that he slipped off near the firepit. Then he began to organize the materials. When she saw what he was doing, Ayla reached into a leather pouch hanging from her waist thong and retrieved two stones. One was a strong piece of flint in a sturdy blade shape, the other a walnut-sized chunk of stone with a silvery-brassy metallic luster. A groove had been worn into the shiny stone from being struck repeatedly by the flint blade.

“Will you allow me to start a fire?” Ayla asked.

“I’m pretty good at it. It won’t take me long,” the Zelandoni said as he started to cut a notch in the platform for the pointed end of the wooden drill he would twirl between his hands.

“She can do it faster,” Willamar said with a grin.

“You seem very sure,” the young Zelandoni said, beginning to feel a bit competitive. He was rather proud of his fire-making skill. There were few who could make a fire from scratch faster than he could.

“Why don’t you let her show you,” Jonokol said.

“Fine,” the young man said, then stood up and backed away. “Go ahead.”

Ayla knelt down by the dark, cold fireplace, then looked up. “May I use your tinder and kindling, since it’s here?” she asked.

“Why not?” the local Zelandoni said.

Ayla piled the light, dry tinder together, then bent down close to it. She struck the iron pyrite with the flint, and the young Zelandoni thought for a moment that he saw a flash of light. Ayla struck again, this time drawing off a large spark that landed on the desiccated, easily flammable material and brought forth a bit of smoke that she started blowing on. In a moment there was a small flame, which she fed with more tinder, then slightly larger pieces, then kindling, then small wood. When it was established, she sat back on her heels. The young Zelandoni stood with his mouth agape.

“You’ll catch flies that way,” the Trade Master said, grinning.

“How did you do that?” the young local Zelandoni asked.

“It’s not that difficult with a firestone,” Ayla said. “I’ll show you before we leave, if you’d like.”

After a few more heartbeats to let the surprising fire-making display settle in, the First spoke up. “Let’s get the lamps lit. I notice you brought some—are there also some stored here?”

“Usually. It depends on who was here last,” the young man said as he retrieved three shallow bowls gouged out of the local limestone from his backframe, “but I don’t count on it.” He also took out a small rawhide packet of wick materials and a hollow aurochs horn from a young animal—much more manageable than the huge horns of a mature adult specimen—with the open end covered by several layers of nearly waterproof intestine tied on with sinew. Inside was softened grease. He also had some torches made of leaves, grasses, and other vegetation tied tightly around a stick while they were still green enough to be pliable, left to dry for a short while, then dipped in warm pine pitch.

“Is it a very big cave?” Amelana asked. She was slightly nervous in deep caves, especially if they were difficult.

“No,” the local Zelandoni said. “There’s only one main room with a passage leading to it, a smaller side room on the left, and an ancillary passage on the right. The most sacred areas are in the principal room.”

He poured a little softened grease into each of the three stone lamps, added mushroom wicks, then catching fire with a twig, used it to light the wicks once they had drawn up some of the fuel. He also lit one of the torches, then quickly put everything into his backframe again and shouldered it. He led the way into the cave, holding the torch high. One of the hunters brought up the rear to make sure no one got into trouble or fell behind. It was a large group and if it hadn’t been a reasonably accessible cave, the First would not have allowed so many people to go in at one time.

Ayla was near the front, with the First and Jondalar behind her. She glanced down and noticed a broken piece of flint on the ground, and not far beyond another blade of flint that appeared whole, but she left them both. Once they were beyond the narrow entrance passage, the cave opened out in both directions.

“On the left is just a constricted little tunnel,” the young Zelandoni said. “The right leads down to the ancillary passage. We’ll go straight ahead, more or less.”

He held the torch high and Ayla looked back. She saw people filing into the enlarged space. Interspersed among them were three lights, three people holding the stone lamps. In the absolute black inside the cave, the torch and small fires appeared to shed much more light than seemed possible, especially now that her eyes were adjusting to the darkness. As they continued, the passage ahead veered slightly to the left and back again to the right, but the way was essentially straight. After a slight widening, the passage narrowed and the Zelandoni stopped. He held the torch high toward the left wall and Ayla saw claw marks.

“At some time bears have hibernated in this cave, but I have never seen them,” the young man said.

Just beyond them, some large rocks had fallen from the wall or ceiling, requiring everyone to go single file. On the other side of the rocks, the Zelandoni again held the torch toward the left. On the wall were the first definitive signs that people had been there before: looping, swirling traces done with the fingers adorned the space. A little farther and the passageway opened out again.

“On the left is the secondary room, but there’s not much in there except red and black dots in certain places,” the Zelandoni said. “Though they don’t seem to be much, they are very meaningful, but you have to belong to the zelandonia to understand. We’ll go straight ahead.”

He went on straight ahead and after a little jog to the right, he stopped in front of a panel that contained finger traces in red ocher and six black fingerprints. The next panel was more complex. The young man held up the torch while people crowded around. There were what appeared to be human figures, but they were vague, almost ghostlike, and there were deer all interspersed with dots. It was very enigmatic, spiritual, numinous, and it gave Ayla a chill. She was not alone. It suddenly became very still. She realized she hadn’t noticed that people had been quietly talking until they stopped.

The left wall had a small projection, a protrusion. Behind it was a niche that spread out into a panel. The first thing she noticed were two magnificent megaceroses painted in black outline, one superimposed on the other. The one in front was a male carrying an imposing rack of palmate antlers. His neck was thick with the muscles needed to support such a heavy load. His head seemed small in comparison to the powerfully built neck. The hump on his withers, more like a black bump, which she knew from butchering the giant deer, was a tight bundle of tendons and sinew that was also necessary to support the weight of the antlers he carried on his head. The megaceros behind the first one also displayed the powerful neck and the hump on the withers, but there were no antlers. She thought it could have been a female, but she believed it was probably another male who had shed his antlers after the fall rut. After the mating season, there was no need for the grand display that showed his enormous strength and attracted the females, and he would need to conserve his energy reserves to survive the glacial winter that would soon be upon them.

She had looked at the two megaceroses for quite a while before she suddenly saw the mammoth. It was inside the body of the first giant deer, and it wasn’t a complete mammoth, just the line of the back and head, but the distinctive shape was enough. It made her wonder which was painted first, the mammoth or the megaceros. Seeing it made her look more closely at the rest of the wall. Above the back of the first megaceros, in front of the head of the second, two additional animals were painted in black outline, and again they were not complete. There was a side view of the head and neck of a mountain goat with its two horns that arched back, and a front view of just the horns of a different mountain goat–like animal, which she thought might be an ibex or a chamois.

Advancing a little farther, they came to another section of animals painted in black outline, which contained another megaceros with his giant antlers. There was also part of a smaller deer, a wild mountain goat, and the suggestion of a horse with the stand-up mane and the beginning of the back, and another figure that was more surprising and frightening. It was a partial figure, just the lower body and legs that looked human, with three lines either going into or emanating from his backside. Were they meant to be spears? Was someone suggesting that a human had been hunted with spears? But why put something like that on the wall? She tried to recall if she had ever seen an animal represented with spears in it. Or was it meant to represent something else, something coming out of the body? The lower back was not the most logical place to aim in order to hunt something. A spear in the buttocks, or even the lower back, was not likely to be fatal. Maybe it was meant to show pain, a pain in the back that hurt as much as a spear.

She shook her head. She could make all the guesses she wanted to, but that wouldn’t bring her any closer to the real reason. “What do those lines in that figure mean?” she asked the local Zelandoni, pointing to the painting that was suggestively human.

“Everyone asks,” he said. “No one knows. It was done by the Ancients.” Then he turned to the First. “Do you know anything about it?”

“There is nothing specifically mentioned in the Histories or Elder Legends, but I can say this,” the First said. “The meaning of any of the images in a Sacred Site is seldom obvious. You know yourself that when you travel to the spirit world, things are seldom what they seem. The fierce can be tame, the gentlest, the most ferocious. It’s not necessary for us to know what something in here means. We already know it was important to the one who put it there, or it would not be here.”

“But people always ask. They want to know,” the young man said. “They make guesses and want to know if they are true, if they guessed right.”

“People should know, you don’t always get what you want,” the First said.

“But I’d like to tell them something.”

“I’m telling you something. It’s enough,” the woman said.

Although she had been tempted, Ayla was glad now that she hadn’t been the one to ask what the young man had asked. The First always said anyone could ask her any question, but Ayla had noticed before that the woman who was her mentor could make a person feel less than bright for asking certain questions. The thought occurred to her that while anyone could ask her any question, it didn’t mean she could necessarily answer every question that she was asked. But as the First she couldn’t exactly say she didn’t know. It wasn’t what people wanted to hear from her, and even if she didn’t always answer the question, she never lied. Everything she said was true.

Ayla didn’t lie either. Children of the Clan learned early that their way of communicating made lying nearly impossible. After she met her own kind of people, she noticed that people had trouble keeping track of lies, and it seemed to her that lying was more trouble than it was worth. Perhaps, instead, the First had developed a way to avoid answering a question by making the one who asked question his own intelligence for asking. Ayla found herself turning aside and smiling to herself, thinking she had deduced something significant about the powerful older woman.

She had. The First saw her turn away, and caught the glimpse of a smile she had tried to hide. She thought she guessed the reason, and was glad Ayla had turned aside. She didn’t mind that her acolyte learned some things on her own, but it was best not to make an issue of them. The time might come when she would have to employ similar strategies.

Ayla turned her attention back to the wall. The young Zelandoni had moved on and was now holding his torch up to show the next section, which had a pair of goats and some dots. Beyond that were two more goats, some dots, and some curved lines. Some of the animals, and lines and dots, were in red, some in black. They were entering a little antechamber with five black and red dots and in the back some red dots and lines. They came back out of the opening of the niche, and turned a corner. On the wall on the other side there was another human-like figure with lines going into or emanating from it, seven of them going in all directions. It was a very roughly drawn figure, hardly even recognizable as human, except it really couldn’t be anything else. There were two legs indicated, two very short arms, and a misshapen head drawn in black outline. She wanted to ask the First what it meant, but she probably didn’t know either, though she might have some ideas. Perhaps later they could talk about it. Four mammoths painted in red were also in this section, very simplified, sometimes only suggested, just enough to identify the animal. There were also the horns of a goat and more dots.

“If we go to the middle of this room, we can see the whole wall, especially if the ones with lamps stay near it,” the local Zelandoni said.

They all shuffled around until they were in position to see the entire display; then they looked at the entire wall of painted panels. At first there was some shuffling and clearing of throats, a few murmurs and whispers, but soon everything was still as the people focused on the stone wall that they had studied closely. When they saw all the images together, they began to feel the sense of the mystical potential the bare rock had acquired. For a moment in the flickering flames and wispy smoke of the lamps, the figures seemed to move and Ayla had the impression that the walls were transparent, that she was seeing through the solid stone and catching a vague glimpse of some other place. She felt a chill, then blinked a few times and the wall became solid again.

The Zelandoni led them out again, pointing out a few places where there were dots and marks on the walls. As they moved out of the decorated area of the cave, and got closer to the entrance, the daylight that penetrated the space made the cave seem more clear. They could see the shape of the walls and the rocks that had fallen to the ground. When they stepped out of the cave, the light seemed exceptionally bright after all that time in the dark. They squinted and closed their eyes, waiting for them to adjust. It took a while before Ayla noticed Wolf, and a moment longer before she saw his agitation. He yipped at her and started in the direction of the living shelter, then turned around and headed back toward her and yipped before he trotted the other way again.