Mists of Dawn (54 page)

With
startling
suddenness,
things
began
to
happen. The
shaman,
as
far
as
Mark
could
tell,
stood
quite
still in
the
center
of
the
chamber.
The
chamber
was
otherwise
empty.
But
weird
songs,
chants,
and
screams
filled the
air,
coming
from
the
ceiling,
the
floor,
the
corners. Voices
came
from
nowhere
at
all,
and
not
only
voices of
humans.
Bison
snorted,
horses
nickered,
lions
roared, and
grim
trumpetings
that
could
only
have
come
from mighty
mammoths
echoed
through
the
cave.

Mark
shivered.
In
spite
of
himself,
he
edged
back toward
the
light.
Something
snarled
right
behind
him and
he
stopped
abruptly.
Ventriloquism,
his
mind whispered,
but
he
was
growing
nervous
nonetheless. This
shaman
knew
his
stuff;
he
was
good.

An
eerie,
violet
light
filled
the
cavern.
Mark
was startled.
Radioactive
rocks?
Some
kind
of
glowing
mineral?
He
didn’t
know,
but
he
could
see
that
the
painted man
now
had
a
long
coat
on.
And
in
his
hands
was something
large,
white,
and
gleaming.
A
skull.

Not
just
a
skull,
either.
A
monster
skull,
with
two huge
curving
tusks
of
ivory.
The
thing
was
enormous. Mark
wondered
wildly
how
in
the
world
the
shaman was
holding
it
up,
and
decided
that
it
must
be
suspended
on
a
rope
of
some
kind
that
he
could
not
see in
the
gloom.
The
shaman
looked
straight
at
him,
his eyes
gleaming.

“Mark,”
he
intoned,
his
voice
like
blue
ice
in
the empty
chamber.
Then
his
eyes
looked
down
at
the
skull in
his
hands.
“Quaro,”
he
said
distinctly.
“Mammoth.”

Mark
watched
intently.
The
shaman
took
his
hands off
the
skull
and
it
hung
whitely
in
mid-air.
A
rope,
Mark
reminded
himself
in
desperation,
a
rope.
A
knife appeared
in
the
shaman’s
hand
as
if
by
magic,
and
he whipped
it
around
in
a
blazing
arc
into
the
skull
of die
mammoth.

The
skull
disappeared.
That
was
all.
Disappeared.

Mark
gasped,
and
realized
for
the
first
time
that
he had
been
holding
his
breath.
He
thanked
his
lucky
star that
he
knew
enough
anthropology
and
Indian
lore
to interpret
what
he
had
just
witnessed.
Unless
he
was very
much
mistaken,
the
import
of
what
he
had
seen was
simple
enough,
in
theory
at
least.
He
had
come into
the
tribe,
seeking
status
as
a
member.
Very
well. The
tribe,
naturally,
wanted
no
weaklings,
no
incompetents.
Mark
had
to
prove
himself
first.
How?
In
a way
that
would
leave
no
doubt
of
his
manhood.
He
had
to
kill
a
mammoth.

That,
Mark
knew,
was
easier
said
than
done.
It
was out
of
the
question
that
he
could
kill
a
mammoth
with a
pistol
shot,
even
with
a
.45.
He
did
not
know
how these
people
went
about
hunting
the
giant
monsters— surely
not
just
with
a
bow
and
arrow—but
he
could only
hope
that
they
didn’t
do
it
alone;
he
would
need plenty
of
help.
He
had
a
feeling,
however,
that
he would
not
be
asked
to
do
anything
impossible.
He simply
had
to
show
that
he
could
do
what
any
other man
of
this
time
could
do—no
more
and
definitely
no less.
That,
too,
he
knew,
would
take
some
doing.