"Guban expressed his gratitude to me, Jondalar, but it was subtle, as it had to be."
"It must have been subtle. I didn't see it," Jondalar said, looking surprised.
"He communicated directly to me, not through you, and he paid attention to my opinions. He allowed his woman to speak to you, which acknowledged me as her equal, and since he has a very high status, so was hers. He thought very highly of you, you know. Paid you a compliment."
"He did?"
"He thought your tools were well made and he admired your workmanship. If he hadn't, he would not have accepted the walking sticks, or your token," Ayla explained.
"What would he have done? I accepted his tooth. I thought it was a strange gift, but I understood his meaning. I would have accepted his token, no matter what it was."
"If he had felt it was not appropriate, he would have refused it, but that token was more than a gift. He accepted a serious obligation. If he did not respect you, he would not have accepted your spirit piece in exchange for his; he values his too much. He would rather have an emptiness, a hole, than accept a piece of an unworthy spirit."
"You're right. There are many subtleties to those Clan people, shades of meaning within shades of meaning. I don't know if I'd ever be able to sort it all out," Jondalar said.
"Do you think the Others are any different? I still have trouble understanding all the shades within shades," Ayla said, "but your people are more tolerant. Your people do more visiting, more traveling than the Clan, and they are more used to strangers. I'm sure I've made mistakes, but I think your people have overlooked them because I'm a visitor and they realize the customs of my people may be different."
"Ayla, my people are your people, too," Jondalar said, gently.
She looked at him as if she didn't quite understand him at first. Then she said, "I hope so, Jondalar. I hope so."
The spruce and fir trees were thinning out and becoming stunted as the travelers climbed, but even though they could see past the vegetation, their route along the river took them beside outcrops and through deep valleys that blocked their view of the heights around them. At a bend in the river, an upland stream fell into the Middle Mother, which itself came from higher ground. The marrow-chilling air had caught and stilled the waters in the act of falling, and the strong dry winds had sculpted them into strange and grotesque shapes. Caricatures of living creatures captured by frost, poised to begin a headlong flight down the course of the long river, seemed to be waiting impatiently, as if knowing the turning of the season, and their release, was not far off.
The man and woman led the horses carefully over the jumbled broken ice, and around to the higher ground of the frozen waterfall, then stopped, spellbound, as the massive plateau glacier loomed into view. They had caught glimpses of it before; now it seemed close enough to touch, but the stunning effect was misleading. The majestic, brooding ice with its nearly level top was farther away than it seemed.
The frozen stream beside them was unmoving, but their eyes followed its tortuous route as it twisted and turned, then ducked out of sight. It reappeared higher up, along with several other narrow channels spaced at irregular intervals that leaked off the glacier like a handful of silvery ribbons trimming the massive cap of ice. Far mountains and nearer ridges framed the plateau with their rugged, sharp-edged, frozen tops, so starkly white their undertones of glacial blue seemed only to reflect the clear deep hue of the sky.
The twin high peaks to the south, which for a while had accompanied their recent travels, had long since passed from view. A new high pinnacle that had appeared farther west was receding to the east, and the summits of the southern range that had traced their path still showed their glistening crowns.
To the north were dual ridges of more ancient rock, but the massif that had formed the northern edge of the river valley had been left behind at the bend where the river turned back from its most northern point, before the place where they had met the people of the Clan. The river was closer to the new highland of limestone that had taken over as the northern boundary as they climbed southwest, toward the river's source.
The vegetation continued to change as they ascended. Spruce and silver fir gave ground to larch and pine on the acid soils that thinly covered the impervious bedrock, but these were not the stately sentinels of lower elevations. They had reached a patch of mountainous taiga, stunted evergreens whose crowns held a covering of hard-packed snow and ice that was cemented to the branches for most of the year. Though quite dense in places, any shoot brave enough to project above the others was quickly pruned by wind and frost, which reduced the tops of all the trees to a common level.
Small animals moved freely along beaten tracks they had made beneath the trees, but large game forged trails by main force. Jondalar decided to veer away from the unnamed small stream they had been following, one of many that would eventually form the beginning of a great river, and take a game trail through the thick fringe of dwarfed conifers.
As they approached the timberline, the trees thinned out and they could see the region beyond that was completely bereft of upright woody growths. But life is tenacious. Low-growing shrubs and herbs, and extensive fields of grassy turf, partly buried under a blanket of snow, still flourished.
Though much more expansive, similar regions existed in the low elevations of the northern continents. Relict areas of temperate deciduous trees were maintained in certain protected areas and at the lower latitudes, with hardier needled evergreens appearing in the boreal regions to the north of them. Farther north, where they existed at all, trees were usually dwarfed and stunted. Because of the extensive glaciers, the counterparts of the high meadows that surrounded the perpetual ice of the mountains were the vast steppes and tundras, where only those plants that could complete their life cycles quickly survived.
Above the timberline many hardy plants adapted to the harshness of the environment. Ayla, leading her mare, noticed the changes with interest, and she wished she had more time to examine the differences. The mountains in the region where she had grown up were much farther south, and because of the warming influence of the inland sea, the vegetation was primarily of the cold temperate variety. The plants that existed in the higher elevations of the bitterly cold arid regions were fascinating to her.
Stately willows, which graced nearly every river, stream, or brook that sustained even a trace of moisture, grew as low shrubs, and tall sturdy birches and pines became prostrate woody growths that crawled along the ground. Blueberries and bilberries spread out as thick carpets, only four inches high. She wondered if, like the berries that grew near the northern glacier, they bore full-size but sweeter and wilder fruits. Though the bare skeletons of withered branches gave evidence of many plants, she didn't always know what variety they were, or how familiar plants might be different, and she wondered how the high meadows would look in warmer seasons.
Traveling in the dead of winter, Ayla and Jondalar did not see the spring and summer beauty of the highlands. No wild roses or rhododendrons colored the landscape with blooms of pink; no crocuses or anemones, or beautiful blue gentians, or yellow narcissus were tempted to brave the harsh wind; and no primroses or violets would burst with polychrome splendor until the first warmth of spring. There were no bellflowers, rampions, worts, groundsels, daisies, lilies, saxifrages, pinks, monkshoods, or beautiful little edelweiss to ease the bitter cold monotony of the freezing fields of winter.