The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [250]
Jondalar had noticed her amulet before, but, watching her hold it in both her hands with closed eyes, he wondered what significance it held. She seemed to handle it with reverence, almost as he would handle a donii. But a donii was a carefully sculpted figure of a woman in all her motherly abundance, a symbol of the Great Earth Mother, and the wondrous mystery of creation. Certainly no lumpy leather pouch could hold the same meaning.
Ayla took up the bone hammer again. In order to cleave a flake from the core that would have the same dimension as the flat oval top, but with sharp straight edges, there was one important preliminary step—a striking platform. She had to detach a small chip that would leave a dent at the edge of the flat face that had a surface perpendicular to the flake she ultimately wanted.
Grasping the nucleus of the flint firmly to hold it steady, the woman took careful aim. She had to gauge the force as well as the placement: not enough and the chip would have the wrong angle, too much and she would shatter the carefully shaped edge. She took a breath and held it, then brought the bone hammer down with a sharp tap. The first was always important. If it went well, it presaged good luck. A small chip flew away, and she let herself breathe again when she saw the indentation.
Changing the angle at which she held the core, she struck again, with more force. The bone hammer landed squarely in the dent, and a flake fell away from the prefabricated core. It had the shape of a long oval. One side was the flat surface she had made. The reverse side was the inner bulbar face, which was smooth, thicker at the end that was struck, and narrowed down to a razor-sharp edge all the way around.
Jondalar picked it up. “This is a difficult technique to master. You need strength and precision both. Look at the edge! This is not a crude tool.”
Ayla expelled a tremendous sigh of relief and felt the warm glow of accomplishment—and something more. She had not let the Clan down. In truth, she represented them better because she was not born to the Clan. Though he would have tried, this man, so skilled in the craft himself, had he been observing a member of the Clan, would have been too aware of the performer to objectively judge the performance.
Ayla watched him turning the flake of stone over in his hand, then, suddenly, felt a peculiar inner shift. She was gripped by an uncanny chill, and seemed to be observing the two of them from a distance, as though she were outside herself.
A vivid memory burst upon her of a time when she had experienced a similar disorientation. She was following lighted stone lamps deep into a cave and she watched herself clutching at the damp stone as she was inexplicably drawn toward a small lighted space screened by thick columns of stalactites in the heart of the mountain.
Ten mog-urs were sitting in a circle around a fire, but it was The Mog-ur—Creb himself—whose powerful mind, amplified and assisted by the drink Iza had told Ayla how to make for the magicians, discovered her presence. She had consumed the powerful substance too, unintentionally, and her mind was reeling out of control. It was The Mog-ur who drew her back from the deep abyss within, and took her with him on a frightening and fascinating journey of the mind back to primordial beginnings.
In the process, the greatest holy man of the Clan, whose brain was unique even among his own kind, forged new pathways in her brain where only vestigial tendencies had been. But while it resembled his, her brain was not the same. She could move back with him and his memories to their mutual beginning, and through each stage of development, but he could not go as far when she came back to herself—and went a step beyond.
Ayla did not understand what had hurt Creb so deeply, she only knew it had changed him, and their relationship. Nor did she understand the changes he had wrought, but for an instant she felt with utter certainty