"Look at this," he said.
It was a large blade, longer than his hand, and as wide as his palm, but less than the size of the tip of his small finger in thickness, tapering to a fine sharpness at the edges.
"It's bifacially worked," Laduni said, turning it over. "But how did he get it so thin? I thought working both sides of a stone was a crude technique used for simple axes and such, but this is not crude. This is as fine a piece of workmanship as I've ever seen."
"Wymez made it," Jondalar said. "I told you he was good. He heats the flint before he works it. It changes the quality of the stone, makes it easier to detach fine flakes, that's how he gets it so thin. I can hardly wait to show this to Dalanar."
"I'm sure he will appreciate it," Laduni said.
Jondalar gave it back to Ayla, and she rewrapped it carefully. "I think we'll just take a single tent, more as a windbreak," he remarked.
"What about a ground cloth?" Ayla said.
"We have such a heavy load of rocks and stones, I hate to take any more than we need to."
"A glacier is ice. We might be glad for a ground cover."
"I suppose you're right," he said.
"What about these ropes?"
"Do you really think we need them?"
"I'd suggest you take them," Laduni said. "Ropes can be very useful on a glacier."
"If you think so, I'll take your advice," Jondalar said.
They had packed as much as possible the night before and spent the evening saying their farewells to the people they had come to care for so much in the short time they were there. Verdegia made a point of coming to talk to Ayla.
"I want to thank you, Ayla."
"It's not necessary to thank me. We need to thank everyone here."
"I mean for what you did for Madenia. To be honest, I'm not sure what you did, or what you said to her, but I know that you made the difference. Before you came, she was hiding in a dark corner, wishing she were dead. She wouldn't even talk to me, and she wanted nothing to do with becoming a woman. I thought all was lost. Now, she's almost like her old self, and looking forward to her First Rites. I just hope nothing happens to make her change her mind again before summer."
"I think she will be all right, as long as everyone continues to support her," Ayla said. "That has been the biggest help, you know."
"I still want to see Charoli punished," Verdegia said.
"I think everyone does. Now that everyone has agreed to go after him, I think he will be. Madenia will be vindicated, and she will have her First Rites and become a woman. You will have grandchildren yet, Verdegia."
In the morning they got up early, did their final packing, and came back into the cave for a last morning meal with the Losadunai. Everyone was there to bid them farewell. Losaduna had Ayla memorize a few more verses of lore, and then almost became emotional when she hugged him goodbye. Then he quickly went to talk to Jondalar. Solandia made no qualms about how she felt, and she told them how sorry she was to see them go. Even Wolf seemed to know he would not see the children again, and so did they. He licked the baby's face and for the first time Micheri cried.
But as they walked out of the cave, it was Madenia who surprised them. She had put on the magnificent outfit Ayla had given her, and she clung to Ayla and tried not to cry. Jondalar told her how beautiful she was, and he meant it. The clothes lent her an air of uncommon beauty and maturity and hinted at the real woman she would someday become.
As they mounted the horses, rested now and eager to go, they looked back at the people standing around the mouth of the cave, and it was Madenia who stood out. But she was still young and, as they waved, tears streamed down her face.
"I will never forget you, either of you," she called out, then ran into the cave.
As they rode away, back toward the Great Mother River, which was hardly more than a stream, Ayla thought she would never forget Madenia, or her people either. Jondalar was sorry to say goodbye, too, but his thoughts were on the difficulties they had yet to face. He knew the toughest part of their Journey still lay ahead.
39
Jondalar and Ayla headed north, back toward Donau, the Great Mother River that had guided their steps for so much of their Journey. When they reached her, they turned west again and continued to follow the stream back toward her beginnings, but the great waterway had changed character. She was no longer a huge meandering surge rolling with ponderous dignity across the flat plains, taking in countless tributaries and volumes of silt, then breaking into channels and forming oxbow lakes.
Near her source, she was fresher, sprightlier, a leaner, shallower stream that tumbled over her wide rocky bed as she raced down the steep mountainside. But the westward route of the travelers along the swiftly flowing river had become a continuous uphill climb, one that took them ever closer to their inevitable rendezvous with the thick layer of unmelting ice that capped the broad high plateau of the rugged highland ahead.
The shapes of glaciers followed the contours of the land. Those on mountaintops were craggy tors of ice, those on level ground spread out like pancakes, with a nearly uniform thickness, rising slightly higher in the middle, leaving behind gravel banks and gouging out depressions that became lakes and ponds. At its farthest advance, the southernmost lobe of the vast continental cake of ice, whose nearly level top was as high as the mountains around them, missed by less than five degrees of latitude a meeting with the northern reaches of the mountain glaciers. The land between the two was the coldest anywhere on earth.
Unlike mountain glaciers, frozen rivers creeping slowly down the sides of mountains, the unmelting ice on the rounded, nearly flat highland – the glacier Jondalar was so concerned about still to the west of them – was a plateau glacier, a miniature version of the great thick layer of ice that spread across the plains of the continent to the north.
As Ayla and Jondalar continued along the river, they gained altitude with each step. They made the ascent with an eye toward sparing the heavily laden horses, most often leading them instead of riding. Ayla was particularly concerned for Whinney, who was hauling the major portion of the burning stones that they hoped would ensure the survival of their traveling companions when they crossed the icy surface, a terrain that horses would never attempt on their own.
In addition to Whinney's pole drag, both horses carried heavy packs, though the load on the mare's back was lighter, to compensate for the travois she pulled. Racer's load was piled so high that it was somewhat unwieldy, but even the backpacks of the woman and man were substantial. Only the wolf was free of additional burdens, and Ayla had begun to eye his unfettered movements, thinking that he, too, could carry a share.
"All this effort to carry rocks," Ayla remarked one morning as she shrugged on her backpack. "Some people would think we were strange to be hauling this heavy load of stones up these mountains."
"Many more think we're strange for traveling with two horses and a wolf," Jondalar countered, "but if we're going to get them across the ice, we're going to have to get these stones up there. And there is one thing to be glad for."
"What is that?"
"How easy it will be once we reach the other side."
The upper course of the river traversed the northern foreland of the range of mountains to the south, which was so huge that the travelers had little real sense of its immense scale. The Losadunai lived in a region, just south of the river, of more rounded, massiflike limestone mountains with extensive areas of relatively level plateaus. Though worn down by eons of wind and water, the eroded eminences were lofty enough to bear glistening crowns of ice throughout the year. Between the river and the mountains was a landscape of dormant vegetation overlaying a flysch zone of sandstone. This in turn was covered by a light mantle of winter snow that blurred the lower boundary of the unmelting ice, but the shimmer of glacial blue revealed its nature.