The Ancient Enemy Read online

  Of course it was her, because Vli Shuzt was going on the colony expedition as well, something she was quite bitter about. Her husband was captain of the Growler, and she must go where he was sent.

  But there was a great power attached to being captain of a departing colony ship. If necessary, the captain could request that anyone of social rank beneath that of the imperial purple join the expedition. Such persons, once they had been requested in writing under seal, could not refuse.

  Of course, there were safety measures inhibiting this custom. If a captain reached too high above himself, he would be assassinated by the Hand of Aeswiren, which governed these matters in its own silent, implacable way.

  Alas, Filek Biswas had no such protection.

  "Old Klegg wept when I told him. He will now have to do his own work. It's been years since he ran the hospital. He was very gloomy when I left."

  "What does he have to worry about?" cried Chiknulba. "He will still be here in the city. He will be able to order a cup of hot tea at any time of day or night. We will be at the ends of the world digging ditches. Trying to stay alive through the first winters."

  "We will lose everything," he mumbled, staring blankly at the large comfortable rooms of his house.

  "And you will be only a second surgeon?"

  His eyes came back to hers.

  "I will be under some drunken, worthless navy surgeon. Some oafish sot with a filthy surgery and a callous attitude toward the patients."

  He would be a nothing.

  "And what will we be?"

  They would be women, slammed shut in the claustrophobic world of the women's deck of a ship, at sea for many months.

  Lady Chiknulba took to her room, where she wept into her pillow all night, unconsolable.

  In her own room Simona stood out on the balcony and felt the warm wind blow across her skin. There was a grand view across to the Temple Plaza. The city glowed in the rays of the setting sun; the first lights were being lit. Cooking fires sent up a reek from the residential neighborhoods. The upper classes were bathing and being dressed for dinner. On the great avenues the coaches would soon be in motion carrying wealthy patrons to the theaters. Tomorrow would be the solstice festival. Even the women of the upper classes would be out tomorrow, crowding at the viewing galleries around the temple.

  A thousand hearts would be offered to the Great God, He Who Eats. Later the pinatas would be smashed in every household while wine was poured and musicians took up the wild, skirling tanburi music of ancient Shasht.

  All this color and excitement would become no more than a memory. Once they'd embarked on the expedition they would never be allowed to return. They would have to rebuild their lives in the new world, wherever it was.

  Her life with her tutors and her friends would be over. The leisured, intellectually stimulating life led by her mother and father would be replaced by a hard, plaincloth colonial existence, with lots of religious ceremonies to keep the faithful in line.

  The sophisticated parties, the music, the poetry, all the arts of great Shasht, would be forgotten. They'd have nothing to read except what they could take with them. For music they'd have military bands thundering away, nothing delicate, nothing beautiful for its own sake.

  And Shesh Zob?

  Simona broke down at last and felt the tears running furiously. She would be torn forever from her beloved forest on their country estate. All her freedoms would be gone. The walls of purdah would close around her with an iron grip.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER NINE

  Two years after the famous battle on Mount Hex, Thru Gillo returned to Warkeen Village from Highnoth. He had grown tall for a mot, at least five and a half feet, and though he had filled out a little, he remained slim and hard-fleshed, but his young face had a somewhat stern cast to it, disfigured by the pale scars down the left side. It could be a little off-putting until one became used to him. At least his eyebrows had grown back, though they were never as bushy as before.

  Older folk marked him at once as the product of Highnoth. They recognized the inner strength behind his calm exterior.

  Young chooks ran from the tall stranger with the scarred face while giving squawks of alarm.

  "Hey, young chooks," cried their elders, "that's Thru the bat-mot, the striker of the white ball like no other. You'll see. He been to Highnoth, far far away, the place of the Ancient Ones. He has learned the secrets."

  There were other graduates of Highnoth in the village. Old Penki Inors was one, usually to be found sitting outside the tavern, white-furred with age, hands resting on his walking stick.

  "And how is Master Cutshamakim?" said Penki.

  "He sends his blessing, old Penki. And I would add my own. It is good to see you still in good health."

  "Glad to see you came back, young Thru Gillo. I heard all kinds of tales about you down in the Farblow Hills."

  "Oh, you don't want to be listening to wild tales, old Penki."

  "Not much else to do, now, young Thru Gillo. Unless you get back on the village team and liven them up. Shocking style of play they have right now. Very slack fielding. Haven't won in weeks."

  There was also Derai Hux, who was a little younger than Ware Gillo, and the father of two daughters. Derai greeted him with the same calm smile and inquired as to Cutshamakim's health. Since Cutshamakim had been in perfect health for ten times ten thousand years, it was clearly no more than a matter of form.

  In Cart Lane Thru found a gang of roosters out to welcome him home. At the front was Tucka, of course, and right behind him were Pok and Tikka Tonk and Chum and Ruddo, the noisiest males in chooktown.

  "Back at last!"

  "Yes, friends, I'm back in the village. Do you think people will accept it? Will they let me back?"

  Wings flapped, and big chooks jumped on the spot and cackled.

  "Everyone glad that Thru Gillo back in village."

  "Especially the team. They need you."

  "Need you bad."

  "I hear that, and maybe I can help them, if I haven't lost the touch the Spirit gave me. And how are things in your house, Tucka?"

  "Two new chicks hatched this year. Another egg on the way. We going to be busy chooks around here."

  Pok dikka dikka Pokaduk, ruling rooster of the Pokaduk clan, pushed his way past Tucka.

  "A new chick hatched this year. Pokaduk house is pretty noisy."

  "Goodness, Pok, it already was. Hey, there, Tikka Tonk..."

  "Hey, Thru Gillo, mot of the bat!"

  Of course, not everyone in the village was as pleased to see him as the chooks. One evening in the town tavern he found himself only a few feet away from Pern Treevi. Pern was now locked in a dispute with the Gillo family over the seapond held by Ware. Pern looked at Thru, his lip curled, and he muttered something insulting.

  Thru smiled, long used to Pern's dislike.

  "Would you like to repeat that so I can hear it?"

  Pern's sneer flattened and his eyes glared back at Thru, but he said nothing.

  "Talking to yourself, were you?"

  "Leave me alone, Gillo."

  Thru was daring him to step closer, or even outside for a little knuckle play. Pern had lost in the old schoolyard fights, and wasn't interested in trying that again. Pern turned away to where his friend Lem Frobin was standing. Frobin gave Thru a hard stare, Thru returned it with his habitual smile. Frobin and Treevi moved away.

  Back in his home, he threw himself into the work of the farm. It was springtime, and there was planting to be done. Snejet soon remarked on the fact that Thru's planting was now perfect. All the waterbush for that spring was planted in a mere six days.

  He rejoined the village team for bat and ball. Even the mot he displaced, Hemper Fravo, agreed to the move. Hemper would get back in, as soon as someone was injured. Meanwhile they had the hitting of Thru back in their arsenal, and Warkeen began beating the villages for miles around. Thru even set a few records, stroking in forty-eight runs in one match a
gainst the Barstool Runners, a well-known outfit from Yonsh.

  Chooks hanging around the ball games called him Scars and cheered every time he connected and sent the small white ball hurtling away toward the distant boundary.

  Ware noticed that Thru had become much more serious about archery practice, too. In the mornings, almost every day, he found his oldest son shooting at a target over two hundred paces away. Thru now carried a dozen steel points in his quiver, and all his arrows were fully fletched.

  Ware Gillo was impressed. Suddenly he found himself wishing he had gone to Highnoth when he was young. And yet, Ware had never felt the pull to do that when he was young. He had always wanted to farm, to improve his holdings.

  The two hunted rabbits together one day. Ware rarely bothered to shoot since Thru was more accurate by far at the longer ranges. They took a brace and one extra. Old Aunt Paidi was alone now and needed help to make ends meet.

  Ware made sure to take these moments slowly and to the full. For father and son would not have many more, something told him. His first son had grown up to be an unusually wise and gifted young mot. Soon, this most precious youth would move on to a wider world. Ware knew it in his heart. But he would have the memory of these times, when they were two mots together out hunting on the heath.

  When they walked home, the evening light was bending golden gleams across the woods and fields. They discussed the major problem facing the family, Pern Treevi's claim against the seapond.

  "Advocate Reems suggests that we will win. The deeds that Pern offers to back his claim are worthless. Only one of them refers to our seapond, and it does not confer inheritance rights. The deed that we have, from grandfather Thru, has full inheritance rights, with all names filled out and signed upon. Unshakable, says Reems."

  "Sounds strong enough to me."

  "It is strong, but there is one weakness. The Ugerbuds."

  The Ugerbuds were the brilby clan that were also attached to that particular seapond. Every seapond had as partners in it a family or clan of brilbies. Brilbies were so big, so strong, and so good at swimming that they naturally undertook seapond work.

  "We are still at odds with the Ugerbuds, I take it."

  "Brilbies always cut a hard deal, but the Ugerbuds went too far. Half and half alike is the share. None of this percentages of whelk and percentages of mussel. I want no whelks in our pond."

  "No whelks, of course. But brilbies always want to have whelk; they love the meat."

  "And we get whelks going after the mussels and the clams. Still, it is a good seapond. We have farmed it for eighty years or more."

  "How does Pern think he can win? Even Ugerbuds cannot dispossess you."

  "But with their ancestral rights they can influence the judge and perhaps get him to offer us another seapond as compensation. But it would never be as good as ours, so we better not come up before a judge who likes brilbies more than usual."

  "Pern must have had rights to a seapond, what happened to them?"

  "Pern gave up his right to his own family seapond, when he swapped it all for the big field he set that house in."

  "Seemed like a waste of a fine field to me."

  "I heard that his pretty young wife wanted a fine house for her own. Wasn't content to bunk up in the old Treevi house."

  "So Pern built a big house for Iallia?"

  "Well, maybe. I tend to think Pern built it for himself. He gives himself airs does young Pern. He intends to buy a lot of polder, expand his waterbush production to make commercial quantities, and remake Warkeen Village into a thread-and-cloth town."

  "There's not enough cloth on the market from the Braided Valley?"

  "Not to mention Fauste and Mauste."

  Thru thought again.

  "But it is true that it can make a town powerfully prosperous. Lot of folk would come to live here. Work in the mills."

  "All polder and no field. No beach, all seapond."

  "Right, it would mean too many people. Warkeen is a village. So is Juno and Yonsh and every other place on the Dristen. Why should it grow to be a town?"

  "Because Pern Treevi wants to be rich." Ware's disapproval was plain in his voice.

  "That field does have a strong stream running beside it," said Thru.

  "Comes out of the springs up on the hill above."

  "So that'll run his mill, and he'd get folks from all around to come and live here?"

  "I suppose. Have to build some houses. Be popular with the brilbies, see," said Ware.

  "I do, and that's where we could have trouble with the Ugerbuds. Brilbies get a lot of work if Pern gets his way."

  "But what they don't see is that Pern would also bring in more brilbies, too. They'd be attracted from poor parts of the coast. So there'd be a lot of competition for the Ugerbuds."

  "So nobody would win but Pern Treevi. Doesn't sound like much of a plan to me."

  Ware nodded. "Pern isn't the most popular mot in this village right now, that's for sure."

  One day Thru turned a corner in the village and found himself face-to-face with Iallia. She was alone, carrying a basket of flowers, fresh cut from her mother's garden. It was the first time he had seen her so closely since before that terrible day.

  "Hello, Thru," she said while she took in the changes in him.

  Thru merely gave her a nod in reply. He had nothing to say to her.

  "Thru Gillo, won't you speak to me? Stay a while."

  "I think not."

  "Don't you still love me, Thru?"

  "No, Iallia, I do not."

  Her brows rose at this. "You lie. You will always be mine. I know I held your heart in my hand."

  "You did not want it. It no longer lies there. That is not the way of the Spirit."

  "Bah, you were in Highnoth too long. You have lost your balls. Don't you get hard at night thinking of snuggling with me like we used to?"

  "No, I do not Iallia. You are Pern's now."

  Something went cold in her eyes.

  "Those old creatures up there took your Spirit. You are not worth breeding with."

  She left him, anger evident in every movement.

  He shrugged and went on. It no longer affected him. That callow young motling was no more.

  Ual waited a good long while before she approached her son. "Will you wear waterweed this summer? Is there a mor that you desire?"

  "Ah, no, Mother. I do not think I will do that this year."

  "Why ever not? You are not too young to wed and start building your own family."

  "I am not ready, that is why. It is too soon since I returned from Highnoth. I would be poor company for any female right now."

  "All you have to do is listen to her, like any other mot. Let me suggest a pond for your waterweeds."

  Thru knew her motives were pure enough. It was strange, especially to Thru himself, that he didn't want to attend waterweeding. It was a way of gathering together that brought on a different kind of intimacy. When lovemaking grew out of the waterweeds ceremonies and parties it grew on the strongest basis, for to be naked with each other was to be with the Spirit. Pretense and artifice were stripped away, and mot and mor responded to each other more naturally.

  But he just didn't want to go this year. After Highnoth, where he had learned to control his sexual passions, he had achieved a sense of calm control. Underneath that he was a little frightened at releasing those emotions again. No doubt it was a result of being hurt so badly by Iallia's treachery. However, he had learned that delaying some things was not so bad an idea.

  "The Meeders have many pretty mors your age that are coming up. Might want to think about that, son of mine."

  Ual would have been overjoyed to wed her son Thru to a distant cousin in the Meeder clan, her own birth-family.

  Thru listened with one ear. He was thinking about Dronned more and more. Master Sassadzu had spoken highly of his weaves, and had even bought one of Thru's "Chooks and Beetles" for the Highnoth weaving gallery itself. That had encourage
d Thru to consider the life of a free weaver. In Dronned he would rent rooms to live and work in, and sell his products in the open market at festival times. That appealed to him more than the quiet life of Warkeen.

  Ware had warned him that the standards were high in the Guild Crafts in Dronned.

  "It may not be quite so easy to gain entry to the Guild as you think."

  Thru was not to be deterred.

  "If my work is good enough, surely that will be enough?"

  "Well, perhaps, but the guilds are exclusive. The city is treacherous, my son."

  As summer wore on and time became more abundant, Thru set up a loom and started weaving in earnest. He produced a bold new pattern of large waterbush leaves, entwined with lilies, greens upon a pale blue of washed cornstalk. The waterbush leaves were worked in with bush fiber, bush stem, and watercane split and peeled. For the green leaves he used twisted marsh grass. The result was a dramatic image, worked up to a high level of definition. The mats were the sort that would be placed in the best room and kept for years.

  Once finished, the mats were wrapped in rough paper and stored in Ware's carpentry shop, which had racks and flats of many different kinds available. Thru was working up mats that were two arms' widths wide and three long, finishing each one in about five days, and he estimated he would have perhaps nine or ten ready by the time he set off to Dronned. That might earn him enough to get through the winter. He would find a room in a boardinghouse and a room in a work-house. He would need studio space to work. Eventually, perhaps, he would even expand and hire a youngster to prep the bush fiber and marsh grass for him.

  So while Ual schemed to pair him with one of several young female cousins, Thru dreamed of a very different style of life in the city down the coast.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was a glorious day in midsummer and a considerable crowd had gathered at the ball field in Warkeen. Warkeen Village was playing a team put up by Meever's Tavern. The pretty young mors of the village gathered at the fence or took seats on the raised benches. Around them clustered young mots eager to make an impression. The older members of the crowd, mostly mots who'd played the game in their youth, were grouped behind protective netting close to the batting tree.