Kerrick nodded in agreement without understanding the significance of the painting at all. It was a good likeness, as was the black mastodon on the bowl. All of the paintings were most realistic. He reached up and touched the deer, saying deer aloud at the same time. The dark-haired hunter did not seem interested. Instead he stepped back into the sunlight and waved Kerrick after him.

Kerrick wanted to stop and look at all the fascinating activity taking place, but the other hurried him along to one of the notched logs that stretched up the cliff face. He clambered up to the ledge above, then waited for Kerrick. The climb was an easy one. There was a dark opening behind the ledge with a chamber of some kind beyond. They had to stoop to enter. There were pots and other articles on the stone floor, a heaped pile of skins to the rear. The white-clad hunter spoke and a thin voice answered from the skins and furs.

When Kerrick looked more closely he saw that someone was there, a slight figure that lay under the coverings with just the head visible. A seamed and wrinkled face. The lips worked in the toothless mouth and the whispering voice spoke again.

“Where do you come from? What is your name?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the chamber, Kerrick saw that the old one’s skin, though dark with age, was as fair as his, the eyes blue. The hair that might once have been light was now gray and sparse. When the thin voice spoke again he listened and could understand most of the words. Not Marbak as he knew it, but more like that spoken by Har-Havola’s sammad from beyond the mountains.

“Your name, your name,” the order came again.

“I am Kerrick. I come from beyond the mountains.”

“I knew it, yes I did, your hair so light. Come closer so Huanita can see you. Yes, you are Tanu. See, Sanone, did I not tell you I could still speak as they do?” The weak voice rustled with dry laughter.

Kerrick and Huanita talked then, Sanone, for that was the dark hunter’s name, listening and nodding approval though he could not understand a word. Kerrick was not surprised to discover that Huanita was a woman, captured by hunters when she had been a young girl. Everything that she said was not clear and she tended to ramble. Many times she fell asleep while talking. Once when she awoke she talked to him in Sesek, the language of the Sasku, as these dark-haired people called themselves, and grew angry when he did not respond. Then she called for food and Kerrick ate as well. It was late afternoon by the time Kerrick broke off.

“Tell Sanone I must return to my sammad. But I will be back here in the morning. Tell him that.”