by John Hart
A pre-dawn blare on a hollowed bone trumpet from the biggest cave summoned the young to its gaping maw. From lodges and hollows across the wide combe youths and boys shuffled down to the green in front of the cliff face. He of the horned headgear directed them in, helped by other elders clad and muffled in skins. There was quite a throng already entering as Urrell slipped in behind them, stooping a little not to be noticed. He was older and taller than most.
What to expect, none knew. Fearful tales recounted by old men, wont to redouble the content of their own far-off initiation rites, were no help. The boys and youths crowded together for comfort, in the grip of a fear which no bravery, no crowing, no boasting can allay – the fear of an unknowable yet inevitable ordeal to come.
Urrell’s eyes soon accustomed themselves to the interior. Caverns, he realised, held less fear for him than for most of his companions due to his visits to caves with Agaratz. Despite which, this cavern astonished him. In size, judged by lights placed in crevices and on ledges all around, it could easily have swallowed Agaratz’s funeral cavern along with the cave of the honeycombs. The light came, Urrell saw, from little clay lamps like those cave painters used – a wick burning smokily from the edge of a puddle of fat in a palm-sized holder. The air reeked of them. Several hundred pairs of frightened eyes flickered to right and left at the impenetrable blackness overhead; at black gaps where other caverns led off from the main hall; at what unimaginable horrors and trials those caverns held; at things no quivering mind could conjure with, any more than a sleeper can control the nightmare that engulfs him.
They were herded by figures dressed in skins, complete with animal heads, antlers and claws. Some wore pelts of creatures no-one had ever seen. Each guardian carried an antler swinging by his side from a thong in his belt, a pierced antler such as the one Urrell recalled from the hoard of ancient objects Agaratz stored in their home cave. He had wondered then at its purpose. Here they seemed to be some kind of a symbol of power, perhaps a power itself packed with poodooec. As though in answer to these thoughts, the leader stepped on a rock and started to whirl his antler overhead on the end of its thong, swooping it within a finger’s breadth of the cowering heads bunched in front of him. The instrument whirred through the air, ever faster, ever nearer, driving heads down till a tine struck a boy’s skull and sent him flying to the ground among the others’ feet. All around him Urrell smelt the fear of the cringeing mass, and he vividly recalled his own terrors of the abyss of the tusks.
He had been a boy then. Now he was grown, a healer, a player of music, strong with his own poodooec, so that the terror rising amid these cowering, shoving youths drew only disdain from him. And as for the guardians of the cavern, their faces masked behind animal skins, wielding their whirrers, he intended to observe them without drawing attention to himself, and to pit his own power against theirs. In the gloom he would not be noticed, whereas he would be able watch them, high above their prey on stones or stands.
When their herders deemed they had instilled terror enough into the troop of youths they began barking orders at them, with snarls and yells meaningless to Urrell who waited to see what the outcome of all this might be. It soon came. The animal-men hived off groups of youths, parting them from the packed mass with shoves and prods from their antlers, using these like staves of office. Each grouplet was driven off towards a side cave, those that Urrell had noticed on arrival, and disappeared within. He was one of the last to be rounded up, with the remaining four or five others, all practically out of their wits with fear, eyes staring, mouths dribbling, nether clouts none too clean.
They were shoved into a small chamber, unlit, and left there. Instinctively Urrell found the wall and edged round it in search of openings or any features, but the surface was unbroken. While he felt his way round, the others were whispering and moaning in a huddle somewhere in the middle, unused to total dark. There was nothing to which their eyes could become accustomed, not a glimmer to comfort their minds. They whimpered like small children. Meanwhile Urrell continued round the chamber wall, intent on finding clues as to why they were held there. His fingertips would tell him if anything was engraved on the walls, even a trace of painting, but they felt nothing. When he was something like halfway round, the floor grew wet underfoot. He went on feeling his way, ignoring the terror of his fellows, convinced the wet had to enter by some gap or hole which might explain why they were herded there. So, fingering his way he came to what seemed to be the source of the wet cave floor, a sort of alcove with water oozing from it. The recess was about an arm’s length deep where, reaching in, his fingers traced water trickling down a slimy surface of spongy contours so flesh-like that he flinched back as from a body.
That seemed to be the signal for a chorus of shrieks from his companions. Something or someone was tormenting them. They were being whipped or prodded in the total dark and milling about to avoid the blows. Urrell kept back and waited to discover what would transpire.
He soon saw. One of the masked man-like beings entered with a light. Its feeble illumination revealed a tangle of terrified youths on the floor of the cave, cowering from a half-human half-animal shape, like a huge upright wild boar. It might have been a human or might have been a gryphon from campside stories of creatures that slid along the bottoms of lakes or lurked in the depths of forests for all the quaking youths knew. Urrell, in shadow out of range of the light, leant right back against the cave wall to watch. He felt detached.
With the tines of its whirrer the apparition prodded the youths to their feet. They, half upright, half crawling, were driven towards the recess from which Urrell had just stepped back into the shadows. As the jumbled bunch of fearful youths approached the recess the light disclosed a vague shape inside, glistening with damp. It was the thing Urrell had touched. He edged round behind the group and its tormentor to glimpse what it was – a female, heavy-bellied, over-breasted, so life-like that even Urrell was dumbstruck. In the poor light, a tremor ran over its skin. In front of the figure, squirming, terrified youths, some out of their wits, were being shoved and poked towards the thing. Each had to touch its breasts and belly, run his fingers down the slimy thighs and fall down before it. No words were uttered but the pelt-clad figure’s instructions were clear enough.
This done, the youths were herded towards the other side of the chamber where the faint light revealed a gap wide enough for one at a time to go through. No one wanted to be first. Noises could be heard through the gap, coming from whatever lay beyond. They were more grunts and howls than human sounds. By dint of prodding and pushing by the figure, first one then the others were driven ahead into the cleft towards this, their next ordeal. Urrell hung well back. He felt in control, curious, pitting his wits against those of the cavemen. This sense of control flowed through him, like a new power, in some way connected with the chamber he was about to leave. It was then he heard – he was certain he heard – a long deep gurgling sigh from behind him, from the direction of the squelchy figure in its recess, which sent him hurrying to find the gap and grope his way down.
Faint but steady light in the still air of a large cavern lit up a scene to test the stoutest heart. Sprawled, crouching, trembling, his companions and the youths from other groups were assembled in one large mass. All must have undergone trials in side caves like the one he had witnessed. He hung back to watch what came next.
At some invisible signal, from several openings, bison-headed creatures leapt forward and charged the mass of defenceless youths. Yells echoed amid sobs and cries in the dimness. The beasts seemed half human. Urrell, squinting closely in the gloom, was certain he made out the fore legs of bison, complete with hooves, in several of the creatures that rushed forward on all fours, snorting and tossing their huge heads. Then no sooner had they arrived, knocking down quite a few of the youths, than they turned and disappeared back into their lairs.
Over all this the pelted bull-headed figure reigned, his seven-tined antler whirrer held aloft. He was waitin
g. Dozens of fear-crazed eyes were fixed on him. All they could see would have been what Urrell saw from his place in the darkness: an outsized creature, a man-beast in fur, with power of life and death over them.
The antler came down. On the signal, skin-clad figures sprang from the gloom. With switches they roused the youths from their prostration and drove them towards the back end of the cavern, beyond the range of the few lamps. Those behind, whipped by their tormentors, pushed and shoved those ahead who held back from stepping into total darkness. The seething mass slowly disappeared from Urrell’s view. Not till he of the antler moved to follow did Urrell dare bestir himself, edging round the cave wall and keeping well out of range of the meagre light.
By feel, and by following the receding sound of moans and cries, careful not to stumble or dislodge anything that might betray his presence to whatever lurked in the side caves, Urrell worked his way forward. His groping fingers found loose flakes of stone and he was wondering whether to choose one as a weapon of defence when his hands fumbled on several staves leaning against the rock face. He felt along them, fingering incisions and carvings along their shafts. They were some kind of wands of office. On the heaviest, almost a cudgel, his exploring fingertips found the knob end carved with the head of a mammoth. His hand closed on it, this wand which had awaited his coming for so long in that forlorn passageway. Who might have placed it there? For him? That was not a question he would have asked himself a few moons ago. He would simply have accepted it. Now all his senses were alive to what this meant, sharpened by lack of food, drink, sleep, into a higher awareness of what might lie ahead. In his palm, the mammoth head settled.
Guided by sounds, Urrell moved on. He used the staff as a blind man uses his stick. And like a blind man’s stick it acted as an extension of his arm, feeling its own way. It seemed to lead. He wondered at this, wondering if it was his imagining, or whether his heightened awareness was playing tricks on him. He had never thought like this before. Into his mind’s eye rose the image of Agaratz, of Old Mother behind him, and beyond her his boyhood cave. He saw again the bear’s outline, his trek in the summer warmth, home cave and the savannah. The bison hunt. Rakrak, Piura. They were many journeys away, in another time, beyond any harm from this cavern. While thus lulled – his detachment was suddenly shattered and he was back in the pit, the heaped tusks glinting under the guard of the huge skull perched on its boulder, and he was reliving his shivering boyhood terror as he had shinned up the pine bole to safety and to Agaratz.
His grip tightened on the mammoth carving; his fear receded as he held on, like a flush of fever; he felt well again, out of danger, and went on.
This passage seemed a long one, as far as he could judge in the near-total blackness, twisting and turning into the mountain. With care, led by the wand held before him, he advanced in the wake of the throng of youths, more aware of their smell than of the sounds they made, now fainter with distance while their body reek hung in the still air along with the smeech and reek of guttering lamps in the motionless atmosphere.
He caught up with them, turning a corner. They were crouching and being fed in a sort of dimly-lit hall. Figures in furs, masked, handed the youths morsels that Urrell could not make out. They were allowed to drink from what looked like skins full of liquid. Beyond them he vaguely discerned an overbearing dark shape. Keeping in the shadows, Urrell edged round, alert both to the scene before him and to the sense of an impending event that would explain why the youths had been driven here. He also wanted to make out what the shape might be.
To his surprise the youths were allowed to rest, to drowse. Accordingly, Urrell squatted too, with his back to the cave wall, feeling hunger for the first time at the sight of the food being handed out. He too dozed off.
When movements roused him he saw that the masked figures were urging the youths up to dance, each youth holding a short lance which must have been distributed while Urrell dozed. Their purpose he waited to see, through the dimness of smoky torches stuck in cracks in the cave walls. There was no pipe music for the dancers, just a drumming from somewhere out of sight, on hollow logs or the like. Urrell’s eyes watered from the torch smoke as he watched the jigging mass go round and round the dark shape in the centre, urged on by their masters of ceremony. What the shape was he could still not make out, though it looked animal-like.
No rest was allowed the dancers. They were being goaded to ever greater speed as the drumming grew faster till Urrell realised that they must have been fed a stimulant of some sort with the food, like the fungus Agaratz had given him to chew in the mammoth cave. That would drive them till they fell, with little recollection afterwards of their feat of endurance.
How long the dance went on Urrell had no way of telling. In caves another, slower, time holds sway, or so those old men by the sea had told him when they recounted tales of bygone wonders and monsters. That, they said, is why the dead were laid in hollows in certain deep caverns, so that they could escape into the land of mamu deep in the centre of the earth, beyond time. He had listened round-eyed; now he thought he better understood.
CHAPTER 38
Youths were beginning to fall exhausted amid the feet of the others.
The rhythm became yet faster, as well as louder. Dancers stumbled under the urgency and prodding of the goads. The culmination was close.
Urrell strove to guess what it might be, peering with smarting eyes through the smoky air. He had almost stepped beyond the shadows to get a better look when, to a crescendo of drumming and a resounding yell from the masked figures, the mass of youths, as though caught in a spell, turned towards the shape and stabbed it repeatedly with their spears. The act released them and they stared around. Some spears stayed embedded in the shape. Some lay where they were dropped, as the mass of youths allowed themselves, almost sheepishly, to be led away down a tunnel, leaving Urrell with the whole vast chamber to himself, somewhat surprised at his own composure. He collected a guttering torch and approached the shape, sniffing the acrid smell of humans mixed with grease, the earthen floor churned and filthy from so many feet.
Close up, the shape was that of a bison, in clay, thrice life size, and covered along the back with a bison hide complete with head and horns. Urrell walked right round it, holding up his failing torch and his mammoth wand. Stab marks in the clay flanks were plain to see. He even pulled out a lance to see how deep it went and leapt back, startled, when liquid seeped from the wound. He screwed up his courage to look more closely. In the poor light he could not be sure whether it was blood or not that oozed.
The overhang. His boyhood fear of the unseen creature in the den.
On his neck the small hairs rose. Shivers seized him and he would have fled headlong down a combe had there been one, a boy again gripped by untellable fears. For the first time since entering the caverns he felt the huge strangeness of where he was, entirely alone, deep in the earth. The others had gone. Suddenly he longed for human company – theirs. He was about to hasten off in their wake when he heard, from an unimaginable distance, but in the opposite direction, the unmistakable trumpeting harrumph – he quivered – of a mammoth. He listened again. It had gone. Then it came again, the blare he knew from Agaratz’s mimickries.
It was a summons.
Urrell’s wand drew him on. He collected several torches from their niches, burning low but making a tolerable light, enough to show him that yet another gallery led off from the hall of the bison. It had been from deep inside that the mammoth sound had come. He entered, eager, and for the first time since the start of the trials and tests felt a presence steering him. His strength grew; he felt neither hunger nor thirst; no more was he that frightened boy.
It was a long gallery, with twists, turns, narrows – and total silence. Had he heard the sound? He had been in no doubt what it was, but had he really heard it? To venture so deep into an unknown gallery, with a poor light likely to burn out, was a folly, yet the head of his staff, warm in his palm, lent him confidence and
seemed to tug him forward.
He tapped the side of the tunnel with its tip as he went, more for company from the tap than guidance. His light was still strong enough to see by. He knew anyway that, light or no light, he would go forward, that he could find his way back in pitch dark under the guidance of the wand, with a new-found confidence and sense of direction that the wand, or something else in the cavernous silence, seemed to give him.
The air was quite still, neither cold nor threatening, just the deep chill of a cave atmosphere. Though he scrutinised the cave wall as he went for any signs of engravings, dots, dashes, devices, within the patch of light his torch cast, he found nothing. He, Urrell, was treading where none had trodden before.
Lost in this thought he turned a bend and was stopped by a wall of pure cold. One step forward and the cold rose so dense it felt like an ice-sheet; one step back and he was in the cave air again, bearable in his light furs. He tried again. Again the ice–cold air barrier stopped him short, making him blink. In his hand the wand hung limp, an ordinary stick, powerless beyond the barrier. His last torch had sputtered out.
As this was happening his eyes were becoming aware of a faint luminosity beyond the cold, of a greenish-blue tint in the air, as if filtered through a wall of ice. He began to make out shapes, a bulky one with other smaller ones grouped round it.
Their outlines became clearer. In the centre the bulky shape took the form of a huge beast, encircled by humans or semi-humans, devotees swaddled in furs. Then it came to him why he, Urrell, had been guided hither to see this, for before him stood a full-grown cow mammoth. As he stared and squinted in the faint light, she raised her trunk and trumpeted a huge blaring note which reached him, despite her apparent nearness (he could even make out the creature’s long eyelashes), from a great distance. He heard this remote signal – meant for him? — and watched as, having delivered it, she cumbersomely turned round and strode away out of sight followed by her escort of humanish beings. They raised their short, clumsy spears in a sort of salute, whether to him or to something else out of sight ahead, he would never know. Then they were gone with their puzzling yet familiar gait. His impulse to follow them was cut dead by the barrier of pure cold. With them faded the faint light.