The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [270]
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. After 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