The Earth's Children Series 6-Book Bundle

by Jean M. Auel

  The sturdy frame was constructed of poles made from slender trees. The thicker butt ends had been buried in the ground; the tops were bent together and joined. Leather hides covered the frame on the outside, but the entrance flap he had seen from inside was barred on the outside with a gatelike closure that could be secured shut with lashings.

  Once inside, he continued his examination of the structure. It was completely bare, lacking even a sleeping pallet. He could not stand up straight, except in the very middle, but he bent over to get close to the side, then walked slowly around the small, dark space, studying it very carefully. He noticed that the hides were old and torn, some in such shreds that they seemed almost rotten, and they had been only roughly sewn together, as though done in a hurry. There were gaps at the seams through which he could see some of the area beyond his cramped quarters. He lowered himself to the ground and sat watching the entrance of the earthlodge, which was open. A few people walked past, but none entered.

  After a time, he began to feel an urge to pass his water. With his hands tied, he could not even bare his member to relieve himself. If someone didn’t come and untie him soon, he would wet himself. Besides that, his wrists were getting raw where the ropes were rubbing. He was getting angry. This was ridiculous! It had gone far enough!

  “Hey, out there!” he shouted. “Why am I being held like this? Like an animal in a trap? I have done nothing to harm anyone. I need my hands free. If someone doesn’t untie me soon, I will wet myself.” He waited for a while, then shouted again. “Someone out there, come and untie me! What strange kind of people are you?”

  He stood up and leaned against the structure. It was well made, but it gave a little. He stepped back and, aiming with his shoulder, ran into the framing, trying to break it down. It gave a little more, and he rammed it again. With a feeling of satisfaction, he heard a piece of wood crack. He stepped back, ready to try again, when he heard people running into the earthlodge.

  “It’s about time someone came! Let me out of here! Let me out of here now!” he shouted.

  He heard the rustlings of someone unlashing the gate. Then the entrance flap was thrown back to reveal several women holding spears aimed at him. Jondalar ignored them and pushed his way out of the opening.

  “Untie me!” he said, turning to the side so they could see him raising up the hands that were tied behind his back. “Get these ropes off me!”

  The older man who had helped him drink water stepped forward. “Zelandonii! You … far … away,” he said, obviously struggling to remember the words.

  Jondalar hadn’t realized that in his anger, he had been speaking in his native tongue. “You speak Zelandonii?” he said to the man with surprise, but his overwhelming need came first. “Then tell them to get these ropes off me before I make a mess all over myself.”

  The man spoke to one of the women. She answered, shaking her head, but he spoke again. Finally she took a knife out of a sheath at her waist, and with a command that made the rest of the women surround him with pointing spears, she stepped forward and motioned him around. He turned his back to her and waited while she hacked at his bindings. They must need a good flint knapper around here, he couldn’t help but think. Her knife is dull.

  After what seemed forever, he felt the ropes fall away. Immediately he reached to unfasten his closure flap, and, too much in need to be embarrassed, he pulled out his organ and frantically looked for a corner or some out-of-the-way place to go. But the spear-holding women would not let him move. In anger and defiance, he purposely turned to face them and, with a great sigh of relief, let his water come.

  He watched them all as the long yellow stream slowly emptied his bladder, steaming as it hit the cold ground and raising up a strong smell. The woman in command seemed appalled, though she tried not to show it. A couple of the women turned their heads or averted their eyes; others stared in fascination, as if they’d never seen a man pass his water before. The older man was trying very hard not to smile, though he couldn’t hide his delight.

  When Jondalar was through, he tucked himself back in and then faced his tormentors, determined not to let them tie his hands again. He addressed himself to the man. “I am Jondalar of the Zelandonii, and I am on a Journey.”

  “You Journey far, Zelandonii. Maybe … too far.”

  “I have traveled much farther. I wintered last year with the Mamutoi. I am returning home now.”

  “That’s what I thought I heard you speaking before,” the old man said, shifting into the language in which he was much more fluent. “There are a few here who understand the language of the Mammoth Hunters, but the Mamutoi usually come from the north. You came from the south.”

  “If you heard me speaking before, why didn’t you come? I’m sure there’s been some misunderstanding. Why was I tied up?”

  The old man shook his head, Jondalar thought with sadness. “You will find out soon enough, Zelandonii.”

  Suddenly the woman interrupted with a spate of angry words. The old man started to limp away, leaning on a staff.

  “Wait! Don’t go! Who are you? Who are these people? And who is that woman who told them to take me here?” Jondalar asked.

  The old man halted and looked back. “Here, I am called Ardemun. The people are the S’Armunai. And the woman is … Attaroa.”

  Jondalar missed the emphasis that had been put on the name of the woman. “S’Armunai? Where have I heard that name before … wait … I remember. Laduni, the leader of the Losadunai …”

  “Laduni is leader?” Ardemun said.

  “Yes. He told me about the Sarmunai when we were traveling east, but my brother didn’t want to stop,” Jondalar said.

  “It’s well you didn’t, and too bad you are here now.”

  “Why?”

  The woman in command of the spear holders interrupted again with a sharp order.

  “Once I was a Losadunai. Unfortunately, I made a Journey,” Ardemun said as he limped out of the earthlodge.

  After he left, the woman in command said some sharp words to Jondalar. He guessed that she wanted to lead him someplace, but he decided to feign complete ignorance.

  “I don’t understand you,” Jondalar said. “You’ll have to call Ardemun back.”

  She spoke to him again, more angrily, then poked her spear at him. It broke the skin, and a line of blood trickled down his arm. Anger flared in his eyes. He reached over and touched the cut, then looked at his bloody fingers.

  “That wasn’t necess—” he started to say.

  She interrupted with more angry words. The other women circled him with their weapons as the woman walked out of the earthlodge; then they prodded Jondalar to follow. Outside, the cold made him shiver. They went past the palisaded enclosure, and though he couldn’t see in, he sensed that he was being watched through the cracks by those inside. The whole idea puzzled him. Animals were sometimes driven into surrounds like that, so they couldn’t get away. It was a way of hunting them, but why were people kept there? And how many were in there?

  It’s not all that large, he thought, there can’t be too many in there. He imagined how much work it must have taken to fence in even a small area with wooden stakes. Trees were scarce on the hillside. There was some woody vegetation in the form of brush, but the trees for the fence had to come from the valley below. They had to chop the trees down, trim them of branches, carry them up the hill, dig holes deep enough to hold them upright, make rope and cord, and then tie the trees together with it. Why had these people been willing to put forth so much effort for something that made so little sense?

  He was led toward a small creek, largely frozen over, where Attaroa and several women were overseeing some young men who were carrying large, heavy mammoth bones. The men all looked half-starved, and he wondered where they found the strength to work so hard.

  Attaroa eyed him up and down once, her only acknowledgment of him, then ignored him. Jondalar waited, still wondering about the behavior of these strange people. Aft
er a while he became chilled, and he began moving around, jumping up and down and beating his arms trying to warm himself. He was getting more and more angry at the stupidity of it all, and, finally deciding he wasn’t going to stand there any longer, he turned on his heel and started back. In the earthlodge, at least he’d be out of the wind. His sudden movement caught the spear wielders by surprise, and when they put up their phalanx of points, he pushed them aside with his arm and kept on going. He heard shouts, which he ignored.

  He was still cold when he got inside the earthlodge. Looking around for something to warm himself, he strode to the round structure, ripped off the leather cover, and wrapped it around him. Just then several women burst in, brandishing their weapons again. The woman who’d pricked him before was among them, and she was obviously furious. She lunged at him with her spear. He ducked aside and grabbed for it, but they were all stopped in their tracks by harsh and sinister laughter.

  “Zelandonii!” Attaroa sneered, then spoke other words that he didn’t understand.

  “She wants you to come outside,” Ardemun said. Jondalar hadn’t noticed him near the entrance. “She thinks you are clever, too clever. I think she wants you where she can have her women surround you.”

  “What if I don’t want to go outside?” Jondalar said.

  “Then she’ll probably have you killed here and now.” The words were said by a woman, speaking in perfect Zelandonii, without even a trace of an accent! Jondalar shot a look of surprise in the direction of the speaker. It was the shaman! “If you go outside, Attaroa will probably let you live a little longer. You interest her, but eventually she’ll kill you anyway.”

  “Why? What am I to her?” Jondalar asked.

  “A threat.”

  “A threat? I’ve never threatened her.”

  “You threaten her control. She’ll want to make an example of you.”

  Attaroa interrupted, and though Jondalar didn’t understand her, the barely restrained fury of her words seemed to be directed at the shaman. The older woman’s response was reserved but showed no fear. After the exchange, she spoke again to Jondalar. “She wanted to know what I said to you. I told her.”

  “Tell her I’ll come outside,” he said.

  When the message was relayed, Attaroa laughed, said something, then sauntered out.

  “What did she say?” Jondalar asked.

  “She said she knew it. Men will do anything for one more heartbeat of their miserable lives.”

  “Perhaps not anything,” Jondalar said, starting out, then he turned back to the shaman. “What is your name?”

  “I am called S’Armuna,” she said.

  “I thought you might be. Where did you learn to speak my language so well?”

  “I lived among your people for a time,” S’Armuna said, but then she cut off his obvious desire to know more. “It’s a long story.”

  Though the man had rather expected to be asked to give his identity in return, S’Armuna simply turned her back. He volunteered the information. “I am Jondalar of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii,” he said.

  S’Armuna’s eyes opened with surprise. “The Ninth Cave?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. He would have continued to name his ties, but he was stopped by the look on her face, though he could not fathom its meaning. A moment later her expression showed nothing, and Jondalar wondered if he had imagined it.

  “She’s waiting,” S’Armuna said, leaving the earthlodge.

  Outside, Attaroa was sitting on a fur-covered seat on a raised platform of earth, which had been dug from the floor of the large semisubterranean earthlodge just behind her. She was opposite the fenced area, and, as he walked past it, Jondalar sensed again that he was being watched through the cracks.

  As he drew near, he was sure the fur on her seat was from a wolf. The hood of her parka, thrown back off her head, was trimmed with wolf fur, and around her neck she wore a necklace made primarily of the sharp canine teeth of wolves, although there were some from arctic fox, and at least one cave-bear tooth. She was holding a carved staff similar to the Speaking Staff Talut had used when there were issues to be discussed or arguments to be resolved. That stick had helped to keep the talk orderly. Whoever held it had the right to speak, and when someone else had something to say, it was necessary first to ask for the Speaking Staff.

  Something else was familiar about the staff she held, though he couldn’t quite place it. Could it be the carving? It bore the stylized shape of a seated woman, with an enlarging series of concentric circles representing breasts and stomach, and a strange triangular head, narrow at the chin, with a face of enigmatic designs. It wasn’t like Mamutoi carving, but he felt he’d seen it before.

  Several of her women surrounded Attaroa. Other women he hadn’t noticed before, only a few of them with children, were standing nearby. She observed him for a while; then she spoke, looking at him. Ardemun, standing off to the side, began a stumbling translation into Zelandonii. Jondalar was about to suggest that he speak Mamutoi, but S’Armuna interrupted, said something to Attaroa, then looked at him.

  “I will translate,” she said.

  Attaroa made a sneering comment that made the women around her laugh, but S’Armuna did not translate it. “She was speaking to me,” was all she said, her face impassive. The seated woman spoke again, this time to Jondalar.

  “I speak now as Attaroa,” S’Armuna said, beginning to translate. “Why did you come here?”

  “I did not come here voluntarily. I was brought here, tied up,” Jondalar said, while S’Armuna translated almost simultaneously. “I am on my Journey. Or I was. I don’t understand why I was tied up. No one bothered to tell me.”

  “Where did you come from?” Attaroa said through S’Armuna, ignoring his comments.

  “I wintered last year with the Mamutoi.”

  “You lie! You came from the south.”

  “I came the long way around. I wanted to visit kin who live near the Great Mother River, at the south end of the eastern mountains.”

  “Again you lie! The Zelandonii live far to the west of here. How can you have kin to the east?”

  “It is not a lie. I traveled with my brother. Unlike the S’Armunai, the Sharamudoi welcomed us. My brother mated a woman there. They are my kin through him.”

  Then, full of righteous indignation, Jondalar continued. It was the first chance he’d had to speak to someone who was listening. “Don’t you know those on a Journey have rights of passage? Most people welcome visitors. They exchange stories, share with them. But not here! Here I was hit on the head and though I was injured, my wound was left untreated. No one gave me water or food. My fur parka was taken from me, and it was not given back even when I was made to go out.”

  The more he spoke, the angrier he got. He had been very badly treated. “I was brought outside in the cold and left standing. No other people on my long Journey have ever treated me like this. Even animals of the plains share their pasture, their water. What kind of people are you?”

  Attaroa interrupted him. “Why did you try to steal our meat?” She was fuming, but she tried not to show it. Although she knew everything he said was true, she didn’t like being told that she was somehow less than others, especially in front of her people.

  “I wasn’t trying to steal your meat,” Jondalar said, denying the accusation vigorously. S’Armuna’s translation was so smooth and quick and Jondalar’s need to communicate so intense, that he almost forgot his interpreter. He felt he was talking directly with Attaroa.

  “You are lying! You were seen running into that herd we were after with a spear in your hand.”

  “I am not lying! I was only trying to save Ayla. She was on the back of one of those horses, and I couldn’t let them carry her along.”

  “Ayla?”

  “Didn’t you see her? She is the woman I have been traveling with.”

  Attaroa laughed. “You were traveling with a woman who rides on the backs of horses? If you are not a t
raveling storyteller, you have missed your calling.” Then she leaned forward and, jabbing her finger at him for emphasis, said, “Everything you’ve said is untrue. You are a liar and a thief!”

  “I am neither a liar nor a thief! I have told the truth and I have stolen nothing,” Jondalar said with conviction. But in his heart he couldn’t really blame her for not believing him. Unless someone had seen Ayla, who would believe that they had traveled by riding on the backs of horses? He began to worry about how he would ever convince Attaroa that he wasn’t lying, that he had not intentionally interfered with their hunt. If he’d known the full extent of his plight, he would have been more than concerned.

  Attaroa studied the tall, muscular, handsome man standing in front of her, wrapped in the hides he had torn from his cage. She noticed that his blond beard was a shade darker than his hair and that his eyes, an unbelievably vivid shade of blue, were compelling. She felt strongly attracted to him, but the very strength of her response dredged up painful memories long suppressed and provoked a powerful but strangely twisted reaction. She would not allow herself to be attracted to any man, because to have feelings for one might give him control over her—and never again would she allow anyone, particularly a man, to have control over her.

  She had taken his parka and left him standing in the cold for the same reason she had withheld food and water. Deprivation made men easier to control. While they still had the strength to resist, it was necessary to keep them tied. But the Zelandonii man, wrapped in those hides he was not supposed to have, showed no fear, she thought. Look at him standing there, so sure of himself.

  He was so defiant and cocky, he had even dared to criticize her in front of everyone, including the men in the Holding. He did not cringe, or plead, or hurry to please her as they did. But she vowed that he would before she was through with him. She was determined to bring him down. She would show them all how to handle a man like that, and then … he would die.

  But before I break him, she said to herself, I will play with him for a while. Besides, he’s a strong man, and he’ll be hard to control if he decides to resist. He’s suspicious now, so I need to make him lower his guard. He needs to be weakened. S’Armuna will know of something. Attaroa beckoned to the shaman and spoke to her privately. Then she looked at the man and smiled, but the smile held such malice that it sent a chill up his spine.