THE SHELTERS OF STONE

"Yes, like you. The Mammoth Hearth was his, and for Those Who Serve The Mother. Most people choose the Mammoth Hearth, or feel they have been chosen. Mamut said I was born to it." She flushed a little and looked aside, feeling rather embarrassed to be talking about something that had been given, which she hadn't earned. It made her think of Iza and how carefully the woman had tried to train her to be a good Clan woman.

"I think your Mamut was a wise man," Zelandoni said. "But you said you learned your healing skills from a woman of the people who raised you, this Clan. Don't they do anything to mark their healers, to give them status and recognition?"

"I was given a certain black stone, a special sign to keep in my amulet when I was accepted as a medicine woman of the Clan," Ayla said. "But they don't make a mark like a tattoo for medicine woman, only for totem, when a boy becomes a man."

"How do people recognize one when they need to call upon a healer for help?"

Ayla hadn't thought about that before. She paused to consider it. "Medicine women don't have to be marked. People know. A medicine woman has status in her own right. Her position is always recognized. Iza was the highest ranked woman in the clan, even higher than Bran's mate."

Zelandoni shook her head. Ayla obviously thought she had explained something, but the woman didn't understand. "I'm sure that's true, but how do people know?" : •

"By her position," Ayla repeated, then tried to clarify. "By the position she takes when the clan goes somewhere, the place she stands when she eats, by the signs she uses when she… talks, by the signals that are made to her when she's addressed."

"Isn't that all so awkward? This cumbersome use of positions and signs?" Zelandoni asked.

"Not for them. That's the way people of the Clan talk. With signs. They don't talk with words as we do," Ayla said.

"But, why not?" Marthona wanted to know.

"They can't. They can't make all the sounds we do. They can make some, but not all. They talk with their hands and their bodies," Ayla tried to explain.

Jondalar could see the bewilderment of his mother and kin growing, and Ayla getting more frustrated. He decided it was time to cut the confusion.

"Ayla was raised by flatheads, mother," he said.

There was a stunned silence.

"Flatheads! Flatheads are animals!" Joharran said.

"No, they're not," Jondalar said.

"Of course they are," Folara said. "They can't talk!"

"They can talk, they just don't talk the way you do," Jondalar said. "I can even talk their language a little, but of course Ayla is much better. When she said I taught her to speak, she meant it." He glanced at Zelandoni; he'd noted her earlier expression. "She forgot how to speak whatever language she knew when she was a child, she could only speak the Clan way. The Clan are flatheads, flatheads call themselves the Clan."

"How could they call themselves anything, if they talk with their hands?" Folara asked.

"They do have some words," Ayla repeated, "they just can't say everything. They don't even hear all the sounds we make. They could understand, if they started young, but they're not used to hearing them." She thought about Rydag. He could understand everything that was said, even if he couldn't say it.

"Well, I didn't know they called themselves by any name," Marthona said, then she thought of something else. "How did you and Ayla communicate, Jondalar?"

"We didn't, at first," he said. "In the beginning, of course, we didn't need to. Ayla knew what to do. I was hurt and she took care of me."

"Are you telling me, Jondalar, that she learned from flatheads how to heal that cave lion mauling?" Zelandoni said.

Ayla answered instead. "I told you, Iza came from the most respected line of medicine women in the Clan. She taught me."

"I find all this about intelligent flatheads very difficult to believe," Zelandoni said.

"I don't," Willamar said.

Everybody turned to look at the Trade Master.

"I don't think they are animals at all. I haven't for a long time. I've seen too many in my travels."

"Why haven't you said something before?" Joharran asked.

"It never came up," Willamar said. "No one ever asked and I never thought about it that much."

"What changed your mind about them, Willamar?" Zelandoni asked. This brought out a new aspect. She was going to have to put some thought into this startling idea Jondalar and the foreign woman had presented.

"Let me think. The first time I began to doubt they were animals was many years ago," Willamar began. "I was south and west of here, traveling alone. The weather had changed quickly, a sudden cold snap, and I was in a hurry to get home. I kept going until it was almost dark, and camped beside a small stream. I planned to cross in the morning. When I woke up, I discovered I had stopped right across from a party of flatheads. I was actually afraid of them-you know what you hear-so I watched them closely, to be prepared in case they decided to come after me."

"What did they do?" Joharran asked.