The Plains of Passage (Earth's Children 4)

They sighted many large grazing animals, in herds and individually. Horses seemed most prevalent to Ayla, perhaps because she was especially conscious of them, but giant deer, red deer, and, particularly as they reached the northern steppes, reindeer were also abundant. The bison were gathering into large migratory herds and heading south. During one whole day, the great humpy beasts with huge black horns moved over the rolling hills of the northern grassland in a thick, undulating carpet, and Ayla and Jondalar stopped often to watch. The dust rose to cast an obscuring pall over the great moving mass, the earth shook with the pounding hooves of their passage, and the combined roar of the multitude of deep rolling grunts and bawls growled like thunder.

They saw mammoths less often, usually traveling north, but even from a distance the giant woolly beasts commanded attention. When not driven by the demands of reproduction, male mammoths tended to form small herds with loose ties for companionship. Occasionally one would join a female herd and travel with it for a while, but whenever the Journeyers noticed a lone mammoth, it was invariably male. The larger permanent herds were of closely related females; a grandmother, the old and wily matriarch who was their leader, and sometimes a sister or two, with their daughters and grandchildren. The female herds were easy to identify because their tusks tended to be somewhat smaller and less curved, and there were always young ones with them.

Though also impressive when they were sighted, woolly rhinoceroses were most rare and least social. They didn't, as a rule, herd together. Females kept to small family groups and, except during mating, males were solitary. Neither mammoths nor rhinoceroses, except for the young and the very old, had much to fear from four-legged hunters, not even the huge cave lion. The males in particular could afford to be solitary; the females needed the herds to help protect their young.

The smaller woolly musk-oxen, however, who were goatlike creatures, all banded together for protection. When they were under attack, the adults usually packed themselves into a circular phalanx facing outward, with the young ones in the middle. A few chamois and ibex made an appearance as Ayla and Jondalar climbed higher in the hills; they often dropped down to lower ground with the approach of winter.

Many of the small animals were secure for the winter in their nests burrowed deep in the ground, surrounded by stores of seeds, nuts, bulbs, roots, and, in the case of pikas, piles of hay that they had cut and dried. The rabbits and hares were changing color, not to white, but to a lighter mottled shade, and on a wooded knoll they saw a beaver and a tree squirrel. Jondalar used his spear-thrower to get the beaver. Besides the meat, the fatty beaver tail was a rare and rich delicacy, roasted by itself on a spit over the fireplace.

They usually used the spear-throwers for the larger game they hunted. They were both quite accurate with the weapons, but Jondalar had more power, could throw farther. Ayla often brought down the smaller animals with her sling.

Though they didn't hunt them, they noticed that otter, badger, polecat, marten, and mink were also numerous. The carnivores— foxes, wolves, lynxes, and larger cats—found sustenance in small game or the other herbivores. And though they seldom fished on this leg of their Journey, Jondalar knew there were sizable fish in the river, including perch, pike, and very big carp.

Toward evening they saw a cave with a large opening and decided to investigate it. As they approached, the horses did not show any nervousness, which the humans took to be a good sign. Wolf sniffed around with interest when they entered the cave, obviously curious, but no hackles were raised. Seeing the unconcerned behavior of the animals, Ayla felt confident that the cave was empty, and they decided to camp for the night.

After building a fire, they made a torch to explore a little deeper. Near the front were many signs that the cave had been used before. Jondalar thought the scrapes on the walls were either from a bear or a cave lion. Wolf smelled out droppings nearby but they were so dry and old that it was hard to tell what animal had made them. They found large, dry leg bones that had been partly eaten. The way they were broken and the teeth marks made Ayla think cave hyenas had cracked them with their extremely powerful jaws. She shuddered with repugnance at the thought.

Hyenas were no worse an animal than any other. They scavenged the carcasses that had died naturally and the kills of others, but so did other predators, including wolves, lions, and humans, and hyenas were also effective pack hunters. That didn't matter, Ayla's hatred of them was irrational. To her they represented the worst of all that was bad.

But the cave had not been used recently. All the signs were old, including the charcoal in a shallow pit from the fire of some other human visitor. Ayla and Jondalar went into the cave for some distance, but it seemed to go on forever, and beyond the dry front opening there were no signs of use. Stone columns, seemin

g to grow up from the floor or down from the ceiling and sometimes meeting in the middle, were the only inhabitants of the cool damp interior.

When they came to a bend, they thought they heard running water from deep within, and they decided to turn back. They knew the makeshift torch would not last long, and neither of them wanted to go beyond sight of the fading light from the entrance. They walked back touching the limestone walls and were glad to see the drab gold of dry grass and brilliant golden light outlining clouds in the west.

As they rode deeper into the highlands north of the great central plain, Ayla and Jondalar noticed more changes. The terrain was becoming pocked with caves, caverns, and sinkholes that ranged from bowl-shaped dips covered with grass, to inaccessible drop-offs that fell to great depths. It was a peculiar landscape that made them feel vaguely uneasy. While surface streams and lakes were rare, they sometimes heard the eerie sound of rivers running underground.

Unknown creatures of warm ancient seas were the cause of that strange and unpredictable land. Over untold millennia, the sea floors grew thick with their settling shells and skeletons. After even longer eons, the sediment of calcium hardened, was lifted high by conflicting movements of the earth, and became rocks of calcium carbonate, limestone. Underlying great stretches of land, most of the earth's caves were formed out of limestone because, given the right conditions, the hard sedimentary rock will dissolve.

In pure water, it is hardly soluble at all, but water that is even slightly acid attacks limestone. During warmer seasons and when climates were humid, circulating ground water, bearing carbonic acid from plants and charged with carbon dioxide, dissolved vast quantities of the carbonate rock.

Flowing along flat bedding planes and down minute cracks at the vertical joints in the thick layers of the calcareous stone, the ground water gradually widened and deepened the fissures. It carved jagged pavements and intricate grooves as it carried the dissolved limestone away, to escape in seepages and springs. Forced to lower levels by gravity, the acidic water enlarged underground cracks into caves. Caves became caverns and stream channels, with narrow vertical shafts opening into them, and eventually joined with others to become entire subterranean water systems.

The dissolving rock below the ground had a profound effect on the land above it, and the landscape, called karst, displayed unusual and distinctive features. As caves became larger, and their tops extended closer to the surface, they collapsed, creating steep-walled sinkholes. Occasional remnants of the cavern roofs left natural bridges. Streams and rivers running along the surface would suddenly disappear into the sinkholes and flow underground, sometimes leaving valleys that had been formed earlier by rivers, high and dry.

Water was becoming harder to find. Running water quickly sank into cavities and potholes in the rocks. Even after a heavy rainfall, the water disappeared almost instantly, with no rivulets or streams running across the ground. Once the travelers had to go to a small pool at the bottom of a sinkhole for the precious fluid. Another time, water suddenly appeared in a large spring, flowed across the surface for a while, then disappeared underground again.

The ground was barren and rocky, with thin surface soil that exposed underlying rock. Animal life was scarce as well. Except for some mouflon, with their tightly curled wool coats thickened for winter, and heavy curling horns, the only animals they saw were a few rock marmots. The quick, wily little creatures were adept at evading their many predators. Whether it was wolves, arctic foxes, hawks, or golden eagles, a high-pitched whistle from a lookout sent them scurrying into small holes and caves.

Wolf tried to follow them in pursuit, to no avail, but since long-legged horses were not normally perceived as dangerous, Ayla managed to down a few with her sling. The furry little rodents, fattened for winter hibernation, tasted much like rabbit, but they were small, and for the first time since the previous summer, they often fished the Great Mother River for their dinner.

At first their uneasiness made Ayla and Jondalar very careful traveling through the karst landscape, with its strange formations, caves, and holes, but familiarity lessened their concern. They were walking to give the horses a rest. Jondalar had Racer on a long lead but let him stop to graze a mouthful of the sparse dry grass now and then. Whinney was doing the same, biting off a mouthful, then following Ayla, though she was not using the halter.

"I wonder if the danger Jeren was trying to warn us about was this barren land full of caves and holes," Ayla was saying. "I don't like it much here."

"No, I don't either. I didn't know it would be like this," Jondalar said.

"Haven't you been here before? But I thought you came this way," the woman said, looking surprised. "You said you followed the Great Mother River."

"We did follow the Great Mother River, but we stayed on the other side. We didn't cross until we were much farther south. I thought it would be easier to stay on this side coming back, and I was curious about this side. The river makes a very sharp turn not far from here. We were heading east then, and I wondered about the highland that forced her south. I knew this would be the only chance I'd ever have to see it."

"I wish you had told me before."

"What difference does it make? We're still following the river."

"But I thought you were familiar with this area. You don't know any more about it than I do." Ayla wasn't quite sure why it bothered her so much, except that she had counted on him to know what to expect, and now she found that he didn't. It made her feel nervous about the strange place.

They had been walking along, involved in the conversation that was edging toward a grievance, if not an argument, and not paying much attention to where they were going. Suddenly Wolf, who had been trotting alongside of Ayla, yipped and nudged her leg. They both turned to look and stopped short. Ayla felt a sudden surge of fright, and Jondalar blanched.