The clan of the cave bear_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [170]
The leader looked at the serious face of the magician. Then he stood up straighter, and firm resolution replaced the indecision in Brun’s eyes.
“I’ll go get the men,” he gestured.
The women had been told to stay away from the back of the cave, not even to look in that direction. Iza noticed Brun get the men, but she ignored it. Whatever they were doing was their business. She wasn’t sure what made her glance up just as two men, faces painted red with ochre, rushed toward Ayla. Iza felt herself tremble. What could they possibly want with Ayla?
The girl hadn’t even noticed the men going with Brun. She was rummaging through baskets and stiff rawhide containers piled in disordered confusion behind the hearth farthest from the mouth of the cave, looking for yams. When she saw the red-painted face of the leader suddenly appear in front of her, she gasped with surprise.
“Do not resist. Do not make a sound,” Brun signaled.
She didn’t become frightened until she felt the blindfold, but she was petrified when they nearly lifted her off the ground as they dragged her away.
The men were apprehensive when they saw Brun and Goov bringing the girl. They knew no more than the women of the reason for the ceremony Brun and Mog-ur were planning, but unlike them, the men knew their curiosity would eventually be satisfied. Mog-ur had only warned them not to make a single gesture or sound after they seated themselves in a circle behind the stones brought out from the small cave, but the warning gained force when he passed out two long cave bear bones to each man to be held crossed like an x in front of him. The danger must be great indeed if they needed such extreme protection. They began to get an inkling of the danger when they saw Ayla.
Brun forced the female to sit in the open space in the circle directly opposite Mog-ur, and sat down behind the girl. At the magician’s signal, Brun removed her blindfold. Ayla blinked to clear her vision. In the light from the torches, she could see Mog-ur seated behind a cave bear skull and the men holding the crossed bones, and she huddled down with fear, trying to sink lower into the ground.
What have I done? I haven’t touched a sling, she thought, trying to remember if she had committed some terrible crime that would supply a reason for her being there. She couldn’t think of a thing she had done wrong.
“Do not move. Do not make a sound,” Mog-ur warned again.
She didn’t think she could if she wanted to. Wide-eyed, she watched the magician pull himself up, lay his staff down, and begin the formal motions entreating Ursus and the totemic spirits to watch over them. Many of the gestures were unfamiliar to her, but she stared in rapt attention, not so much for the meaning of the symbols Mog-ur was making as for the old magician himself.
She knew Creb, knew him well, a crippled old man who hobbled awkwardly when he moved, leaning heavily on his staff. He was a lopsided caricature of a man, one side of his body stunted, muscles atrophied with disuse, the other side overdeveloped to make up for the paralysis that forced him to depend on it so heavily. In the past she had noticed his graceful motions when he used the formal language for public ceremonies—abbreviated by the absence of one arm, yet in some indefinable way fraught with subtleties and complexities, and fuller in meaning. But the motions of the man standing behind the skull showed a side of the magician she never knew existed.
Gone was the awkwardness. In its place were hypnotically powerful rhythms of motion flowing smoothly, compelling the eyes to look. The movement of hand and subtle posture