The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [399]
Farther south, gleaming in the sun like giant shards of broken alabaster, the exalted crags of the central zone, almost a separate range within the great mass of uplifted earth, soared high above the nearer heights. As the travelers continued their climb toward the higher western chain within the complex range, the silent march of the central mountains followed their progression, watched over by a brooding pair of jagged peaks towering far above the rest.
To the north, across the river, the ancient crystalline massif rose steeply, its undulating surface occasionally overtopped by rocky crags and covered by block fields with raised meadows in between. Looking ahead, westward, higher rounded hills, some topped with small icy crowns of their own, reached across the frozen river, no boundary to frost, to join the ice of the younger folded ridges of the southern range.
Dry, powdery snow drifted down less frequently as their Journey took them closer to the coldest part of the continent, the region between the farthest northern extension of the mountain glacier and the southernmost reaches of the vast, continent-spanning ice sheets. Not even the windy loess steppes of the eastern plains could match the severity of its bitter cold. The land was saved from the desolation of frozen ice sheets only by the moderating maritime influence of the western ocean.
The highland glacier they planned to go over, without the air warmed by the unfrozen ocean keeping the encroaching ice at bay, could have expanded and become impossible to cross. The maritime influences that allowed passage to the western steppes and tundras also kept the glaciers away from the land of the Zelandonii, sparing it the heavy layer of ice that covered other lands at the same latitude.
Jondalar and Ayla fell easily back into their traveling routine, although it seemed to Ayla that they had been traveling forever. She longed to reach the end of their Journey. Memories of the quiet winter in the earthlodge of the Lion Camp flashed into her mind as they plodded forward through the monotony of the winter landscape. She recalled small incidents with pleasure, forgetting the misery that had overshadowed her days the whole time when she’d thought that Jondalar had stopped loving her.
Although all their water had to be melted, usually from river ice rather than snow—the land was bleak and barren with few snowdrifts—Ayla decided there were some benefits to the freezing cold. The tributaries to the Great Mother River were smaller, and frozen solid, making them easier to cross. But they invariably hurried across the right-bank openings because of the fierce winds that roared through valleys of the rivers and streams. These blasts funneled frigid air from the high-pressure areas of the southern mountains, adding windchill to the already freezing air.
Shivering even in her heavy furs, Ayla felt relieved when they finally made it across a wide valley to the protective barrier of nearby higher ground. “I’m so cold!” she said through chattering teeth. “I wish it would warm up a little.”
Jondalar looked alarmed. “Don’t wish that, Ayla!”
“Why not?”
“We have to be across the glacier before the weather turns. A warm wind means the foehn, the snow-melter, that will break the season. Then we’ll have to go around to the north, through Clan country. It will take much longer, and with all the trouble Charoli has been causing them, I don’t think they will be very welcoming,” Jondalar said.
She nodded with understanding, looking across to the north side of the river. After studying it for some distance, Ayla said, “They have the better side.”
“What makes you say that?