The shelters of stone - Jean M. Auel [180]
When they reached the high terrace in front of the caves, two more acolytes met them, a man and a woman. They had been waiting just inside the mouth of the deep cave on the right. Ayla paused for a moment and turned around to see where she had come from. The lofty stone porch overlooked Fountain Creek Valley and part of Grass Valley with its river, and the panorama was impressive, but somehow, when they entered the passage, the closer views within the dark cavity were more daunting.
Especially in daytime, stepping into the cave brought an immediate transformation, a shift in perspective from an open, expansive view to a close, narrow corridor, from stone-reflecting sunlight to disquieting dark. The change went beyond the physical or external. Especially to those who understood and accepted the inherent power of the place, it was a metamorphosis that went from easy familiarity to apprehensive fear, but also a transition into something rich and wondrous.
Only a few feet of the ingress could be seen from the light outside, but as eyes became accustomed to the diminished light at the entry, the rock walls of the constricted passage suggested the way into the shadowy interior. A small vestibule just beyond the opening held a lighted stone lamp resting on a projecting piece of the wall, and several unlit lamps. In a natural stone niche below it were torches. Jonokol and the other young man picked up a lamp, then a thin, dry stick, which they held to the flame of the burning lamp until it ignited. With it, they each lit the moss wicks that were resting against the edge of the bowl of a lamp, opposite the handle, soaking in the slightly congealed fat. The woman lit a torch and beckoned to them.
“Watch your footing,” she said, holding the torch lower to show the uneven floor and the wet, glistening clay that filled in some of the spaces between the rocks that were jutting up. “It can be slippery.”
When they started into the passage, picking their way carefully across the uneven floor, there was still a suggestion of light from the outside. It diminished quickly. After something more than a hundred feet the darkness was complete, held back only by the soft glow of small flames. A sigh of moving air strayed down from the stalactites suspended from the ceiling, bringing a chill of fear as the tiny lights of the lamps flickered. They knew that once into the depths, if the fire went out, a blackness more complete than the darkest night would obscure all vision. Only hands and feet on cold, damp rock could show the way, and might lead only to a dead-end passage rather than the way out.
A deeper black on the right, no longer reflecting the small flames off damp stone walls, indicated that the distance to that side had increased; perhaps a niche or another passageway. Behind them and ahead, the tenebrious gloom was palpable, the blackness almost suffocatingly thick. The wisp of air was the only manifestation of a corridor that led back to the outside. Ayla wished she could reach for Jondalar’s hand.
As they proceeded, the lamps the acolytes carried were not the only light. Several shallow, bowl-shaped stone lamps had been placed on the floor at intervals along the dark corridor, casting a light that seemed amazingly bright in the darkness within the cave. A couple of them were sputtering, however. They either needed more fat to melt into the bowl or a new moss wick, and Ayla hoped someone would tend to them soon.
But the lamps gave Ayla an eerie sense that she had been in this place before,