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They started across the plain of ice, preceded by their long shadows. Before the sun was very high, they were sweating in their heavy clothes. Ayla started to remove her hooded outer fur parka.
"Take it off, if you want," Jondalar said, "but keep yourself covered. You can get a bad sunburn up here, and not just from above. When the sun shines on it, the ice can burn you, too."
Small cumulus clouds began to form during the morning. By noon they had drawn together into large cumulus clouds. The wind started picking up in the afternoon. About the time Ayla and Jondalar decided to stop to melt snow and ice for water, she was more than happy to put her warm outer fur back on. The sun was hidden by moisture-laden cumulonimbus that sprinkled a light dusting of dry powder snow on the travelers. The glacier was growing.
The plateau glacier they were crossing had been spawned in the peaks of the craggy mountains far to the south. Moist air, rising as it swept up the tall barriers, condensed into misty droplets, but temperature decided whether it would fall as cold rain or, with just a slight drop, as snow. It was not perpetual freezing that made glaciers; rather, an accumulation of snow from one year to the next gave rise to glaciers that, in time, became sheets of ice that eventually spa
Just below the soaring spires of the southern mountains, too steep themselves for snow to rest upon, small basins formed, cirques that nestled against the sides of the pi
Firn did not form at the surface, but deep in the cirque, and when more snow fell, the heavier compact spheres were pushed up and over the edge of the nest. As more of them accumulated, the nearly circular balls of ice were pressed together so hard by the sheer weight above that a fraction of the energy was released as heat. For just an instant, they melted at the many points of contact and immediately refroze, welding the balls together. As the layers of ice deepened, the greater pressure rearranged the structure of the molecules into solid, crystalline ice, but with a subtle difference: the ice flowed.
Glacier ice, formed under tremendous pressure, was more dense; yet at the lower levels the great mass of solid ice flowed as smoothly as any liquid. Separating around obstructions, such as the soaring tops of mountains, and rejoining on the other side – often taking a large part of the rock with it and leaving behind sharp-peaked islands – a glacier followed the contours of the land, grinding and reshaping it as it went.
The river of solid ice had currents and eddies, stagnant pools and rushing centers, but it moved to a different time, as ponderously slow as it was massively huge. It could take years to move inches. But time didn't matter. It had all the time in the world. As long as the average temperature stayed below the critical line, the glacier fed and grew.
Mountain cirques were not the only birthplaces. Glaciers formed on level ground, too, and once they covered a large enough area, the chilling effect spread the precipitation out of the anticyclone fu
Glaciers were never entirely dry. Some water was always seeping down from the melting caused by pressure. It filled in small cracks and cra
The glaciers in the mountains to the south had spread out from their high peaks, filled the valleys to the level of high mountain passes, and spilled through them. During an earlier advancing period, the mountain glaciers filled the deep trench of a fault line separating the mountain foreland and the ancient massif. It covered the highland, then spread across to the old eroded mountains on the northern fringe. The ice receded during the temporary warming – which was coming to an end – and melted in the lowland fault valley, creating a large river and a long, moraine-dammed lake, but the plateau glacier on the highland they were crossing stayed frozen.
They could not build a fire directly on the ice and had pla
While they were stopped, the sun disappeared entirely behind heavy clouds, and before they started on their way again, thick snow began falling with grim determination. The north wind howled across the icy expanse; there was nothing on the whole vast sheet covering the massif to stand in its way. A blizzard was in the making.
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As the snowfall thickened, the force of the wind from the northwest suddenly increased. It slammed into them with a blast of cold air that shoved them along as though they were no more than an insignificant piece of the horizontal curtain of white that surrounded them.
"I think we'd better wait this out," Jondalar shouted to be heard above the howl.
They fought to set up their tent while the icy blasts seized the small shelter, tore the stakes out of the ice, and left the tent billowing and flapping. The violent, sinewy wind threatened to rip the sheet of leather from the grasp of the two puny living souls trying to make their way across the ice, daring to present an obstacle to the furious, snow-choked blizzard raging across the flat surface.
"How are we going to keep the tent down?" Ayla asked. "Is it always this bad up here?"
"I don't remember it blowing this hard before, but I'm not surprised."
The horses were standing mutely, their heads down, stoically enduring the storm. Wolf was close beside them, digging out a hole for himself. "Maybe we could get one of the horses to stand on the loose end and hold it down until we get it staked," Ayla suggested.
With one thing leading to another, they came up with a makeshift solution, using the horses as both stakes and tent supports. They draped the leather tent over the backs of both horses, then Ayla coaxed Whi