The Ancient Enemy

by Christopher Rowley

  ARNA 01

  THE ANCIENT ENEMY

  Christopher Rowley

  MAP OF THE NORTHERN LANDS

  PROLOGUE

  One day Simona realized that the old blind woman who scrubbed the pavements in their neighborhood was a human being. It happened in an instant. One moment the old scrubber was just another slave, a creature less important than Lad, her mother's pet dog. The next moment she was visibly human. Behind the huge black X that had been burned across it, the ruined face was like Granny's, except that it wasn't nearly as beautiful.

  Simona was perhaps six, perhaps seven, and already she was reading well, and her written script improved with every week's tuition. She lived in the wonderful, whitewashed house at the head of the short street, West Court. She saw the scrubber from her window most days, but on this day she saw her as she never had before.

  The old woman was tethered to her trough at night in a small shed at the end of the lane. There she slept on a narrow cloth pallet with her biggest brush for a pillow.

  Simona wondered what a scrubber dreamed of. The world beyond her chain and little shed? Her former life? It was impossible to know. Little girls, no matter how intelligent, could not go up to the scrubber and ask her what her dreams were about. If you did that, then the "Hand" that mother spoke about, always with a finger to her lips, would come and take you away. You would never be seen again.

  She tried to share her newfound knowledge with her parents. "The old scrubber is a woman, like Granny!", she blurted out that night. But they looked at her blankly. They accepted the existence of the different grades of slaves without question, as did everyone else. There were house slaves, like Minni the cook, and Dubbi the houseboy, and there were lower grades as well, such as poor creatures like the old scrubber. It was a fact of life.

  Shasht was a great city, where gleaming marble thrust triumphant to the sky. But in its shadows existed an army of menial slaves who performed all the necessary tasks to keep it polished. They were virtually invisible to their betters.

  For Simona, though, the world was never quite the same after that revelation. Some spark of compassion had been awakened in her heart. For a while she was fascinated by all the slaves of the lowest rank, the "animal-slaves." When she and her mother left the house in a covered carriage, she looked out the screened window and studied the prodigiously large young men chained to the shafts who pulled them along.

  As the years passed, without ever discussing it with anyone, Simona came to understand that the scrubbers reinforced the authority of the lawgivers. If you disobeyed them, they could break you to the level of an animal, nothing more than a beast of burden.

  She never forgot that.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  One fine day in the fifth moon of the year, Thru Gillo slipped away from his chores on the family polder. He was sixteen and in love, and he had more serious business in mind than weeding the waterbush beds. There was a warm breeze up from the south that ruffled the fur on his face and the side of his head, and he opened his good wool shirt to let the wind cool him.

  "Where you go, Thru?" said Tucka dukka Tuckra, the leading chook rooster on the Gillo farm. "Where Thur go on such a fine sunny day?"

  But Thru wouldn't answer, he just hummed and smiled and went on up the lane while the big bird watched him go with a wondering eye.

  You could ignore a chook's questions, but you couldn't hope to fool a chook, not when your mission involved a matter of the heart.

  "Thru got himself on the hook," Tucka of the Tuckra tribe said as he went back to the quest for earwigs nesting in the waterbush. The other chooks looked up, clucked, and went back to work.

  Away from Warkeen Village, Thru hiked up the path to Cormorant Rock, his heart bursting with joy. He was in love with a sweet little mor named Iallia Tramine and was convinced she loved him back. Life had never seemed so wonderful.

  Ahead loomed the sharp spike of Cormorant Rock, from the top of which one could see the islands of Alberr in the west.

  As he went he mulled over what he would say to Iallia when he saw her later that day. He planned to tell her what he had been thinking the last week or so, that he truly loved her and her alone and wished to wed her. They would be mot and mor, wed together by the words of the Book of the Holy Spirit, to have children and hold land, to work polder and make it grow.

  At the Rocky Canyon just before the Rock he slipped down the shore trail and came out below on the sandpit where the stream ran out to the sea. Here the sea lilies grew up in dense patches every spring.

  He kicked off his boots, stripped off his wool trousers and shirt, and stood there; lean, hard-fleshed, covered in soft grey fur except for the center of his face and forehead. He was grown now, a mot entering his prime. He and Iallia would make a fine couple.

  He ran down the beach and dived in headfirst, enjoying the cold shock of immersion. He swam well, he always had, and was out on the lily beds in a few strong kicks. He swam down to the seabed and cut a half dozen long-stemmed seaflowers with his knife. Their iridescent green-and-blue heads would shine softly all through the night.

  The old conger eel who lived in the wreck of a fishing boat close by saw the lithe young mot working on the bottom inshore and thought briefly about satisfying his perpetual hunger. But the eel also knew that mots carried sharp knives and were dangerous to approach. There were mackerel offshore, and when they chased the small fish inshore with the tide he would feed with greater safety.

  Thru noticed the big conger at the limit of his vision offshore and dismissed the threat. The eel was fifteen feet long and as thick as his waist, but it knew better than to try a mot equipped with steel.

  He pulled to the surface, flipped onto his back and lazily kicked in toward shore. He reached the shingle and laid out his sea lilies one by one. Their soft green colors were muted and cool in the daylight, but at night they would glow for Iallia. She always exclaimed at the sight of sea lilies, even more than for roses.

  He dried himself by a vigorous shake and then some running up and down the strand before he donned his clothes and boots. He gathered up the lilies, now quite dry, and put them in his shoulder basket.

  Iallia with her soft, dark fur, her flashing bright grey eyes, with that way of looking at him, so open and yet so concealed, would be waiting for him this afternoon. He'd given her his note at morning school the day before. She would know to be at the Game Tree by the fourth hour after the noon.

  Thru wanted to lie with Iallia and make love. He wanted to lie with her every day forever and forever. And she wanted to lie with him, at least that's what she'd whispered the last time they'd snuggled.

  That had been after the game with Snoyps Pond. Warkeen Village had won by sixteen runs at the old Game Tree. Thru had stroked a dozen runs himself. Iallia was just thrilled to be on his arm, snuggling with him in full view of her female friends.

  Oh! The jealousy that would beat in the hearts of the prettiest mors in the village when they saw Iallia hugging with Thru Gillo!

  They'd been snuggling since the festival at midwinter. At the big dance on Treevi pond, Iallia had danced close with him and afterward exchanged nuzzles and kisses during the walk home. Now it was early summer, and Iallia was always with Thru after a game.

  From the beginning of the season in the third month, when the ground thawed out and dried, the younger folk of Warkeen played the great bat-and-ball game around the Game Tree. Thru Gillo had shown promise the previous year, playing for the junior team and scoring 280 runs in the season. This year he was the new star of the senior side and already a hero to all the youngsters in Drant.

  Iallia's soft kisses and feminine wiles had him completely infatuated. He was sixteen, young f
or marriage, but like so many youngsters in his position he just knew that they would get by on love alone. He would borrow the gold to buy enough polder to get started. A quarter acre, perhaps a third, would be enough.

  The thought of snuggling with soft, sexy Iallia brought on other thoughts, and he prayed to the Spirit for help in waiting until marriage before making love to Iallia. Sometimes being with her left him so aroused that he stayed awake half the night struggling not to think of her.

  He looked up as he returned to the top of the canyon. The sun was over the zenith already. He turned south and moved along at a steady jog through the woods, startling a small herd of deer, who plunged away into the undergrowth. His father might have missed him in the polder, but Thru didn't care for once. He had his own life to sort out. At length he crossed Bear Hill, and there below him was Dristen Valley, with the green polder land snaking along the riverside. On that intensively farmed paddy depended the whole civilization of the Land.

  He'd made good time on the return journey, and he stopped for a dip in the river to wash off the dust of the road before going into the village. He was still too early to expect Iallia to meet him at the Tree. But his heart was in such a state of expectancy and impatience that he simply couldn't wait any longer, and so he went down the lane, under the line of graceful old lime trees, and then directly to the Tramine house.

  The Tramines were a big family, well placed with polder and fields. Their house was a long rambling affair, covered in yellow stucco and thickly thatched. At the rear was an extensive garden, which reflected the work of generations of Tramine females.

  He knocked at the kitchen door and found Mousey, the family's youngest maiden aunt, at work rolling out noodles. Her big grey eyebrows shot up at the sight of him and when he asked where Iallia was she looked down and did not speak.

  "Pray do not tell me that she is unwell," he said in sudden anxiety.

  "Oh no, it is nothing like that," said Mousey, before she stopped, too embarrassed to continue. Mousey turned back to her noodles, the set of her shoulders suggesting that she would not speak to him again.

  Puzzled, Thru slipped outside and took the limestone walk toward the rose garden. He knew that was Iallia's favorite spot.

  To his surprise she wasn't there. The sundial was all alone in front of the bed of red roses trained up the trellis. Stymied, he paused and wondered what to do. And then he heard giggling from a secluded little nook beyond the old hedge. The giggling was a familiar sound. Iallia giggled just like that when she and Thru were snuggling.

  Thru stepped forward at once, ducked around the hedge corner, and came to a halt so suddenly he almost toppled backward.

  Iallia was there, but she was not alone. Pern Treevi was with her, his arms wrapped around her.

  Pern Treevi was sixteen and the leader of a pack of younger mots from the wealthy end of the village. Pern had a special hatred for Thru Gillo, because Thru had always found a way to beat him in games. Pern and Thru had fought memorable battles in the schoolyard when they were younger.

  As Thru watched Iallia and Pern kiss and snuggle he felt his senses whirl, his world shatter beneath him and fall away.

  He stumbled back behind the hedge, still gripping the sea lilies in his hand. They had not seen him. His former infatuation, now fallen like ice from a winter sky, lay in ruins behind him.

  More throaty giggles came from behind the hedge.

  Closing his eyes against what he had seen, he ran back through the gardens and blundered into a small yard where Iallia's mother was handing out to the chooks. She looked up and understood at once what had happened. So did the chooks.

  Her heart went out to him, a fine upstanding youngster, but at the same time her mother's heart was whispering that Pern Treevi was a much better catch for Iallia. The Treevis were the wealthiest family in Warkeen. They held a third of the village polder and were rich from selling grain and waterbush to the cities.

  She stood there, watching him with her arms folded. The chooks understood the situation at once and were chuckling to each other about bent tail feathers and a young rooster who'd obviously been "dusted off."

  But Thru didn't even notice her. The sea lilies he had held so tightly fell from his grip one by one, and he slipped out the gate like a ghost.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Thru slid into a melancholy from which none of his friends could shake him. He became reclusive, taking long hikes up into the hills, living wild for a week at a time. He spent so much time up on Huwak Mountain that he became acquainted with the resident wolf pack, which he watched hunting elk on the high meadows and chasing rabbits in the valleys. He knew each individual and had names for all of them, from Uncle Grey down to Blackbird, the little female with the dark tip to her tail. Their primary den was up beyond the high meadows on a shelf of rock overlooking the deep valley of the Huw River, and he heard them howl most nights. Their howling was a kind of language, he realized, with different moods on different nights. When he returned from these trips into the wild he was always very quiet, seeming to fade into the woodwork at home.

  Other times he would work absentmindedly in the polder. His weeding was obsessively good, but his planting had become haphazard, and his sister had to redo most of it. Planting waterbush took a particular swift hand movement to sink the stalk of the new plant into the surface of the polder to a depth of about an inch. It required a precise stroke every time, and it required concentration. Thru just didn't have that anymore, except for one place, on the game field.

  Even as his parents grew worried about him, he turned to the game for a way out of his sorrow and humiliation.

  Iallia no longer stood at his side after games, but that didn't matter. He closed his eyes to everything except the flight of the little white ball. His wrists moved without conscious thought, and his swing was perfect. During the stroke he floated in a quiet place that lasted for much longer than the split second in which he hammered the ball away toward the boundary.

  His skill with the bat became the stuff of legends that summer. Against Juno Village he rapped out thirty-three runs and Warkeen won by ten. The Warkeen Village team won the championship of Drant County, and from that went on to reach the championship match for all Dronned. Their opponents were the great team fielded by the Laughing Fish, Dronned's most famous inn. Thru struck twenty-one runs in a tense and exacting match of skills, and Warkeen won by a single run.

  The King of Dronned, Belit the Frugal, was watching from his customary place at the boundary. He handed over the Dronned trophy to Kels Geliver, the captain of the Warkeen team, and there was a long outburst of genuine applause from the crowd. The youngsters from Warkeen had played exceptionally well that day.

  Afterward, the Warkeen players and friends and family were all dining at the Laughing Fish as guests of the innkeeper himself, but Thru slipped away from the celebrations. He didn't think he could make casual conversation. He just wanted to be alone.

  He headed through the gate and into the city proper. Dronned was a city of grey-stone buildings, two or even three stories tall, roofed with slate and cut with long, narrow windows. The streets were cobbled and drained down the middle. Where important streets met there was usually a square, with a garden in the center. Thru slipped into one of these carefully tended gardens at the junction of Slope and Seam Streets near the river. He took a seat on a bench in a far corner and sat there thinking. Already the feelings of triumph from winning the championship of all Dronned had faded. Warkeen had played above themselves to win. Some of the catches they'd made had been amazing, and when they'd had to they'd come up with the runs. He'd struck twenty-one runs on his own, keeping them in the game; by rights he should be ecstatic. But instead, he just felt cold and empty. Without the game to fill up his thoughts he returned to a void, where all he could hear were Iallia's happy cries when she was snuggling that day with Pern.

  Thru took a deep breath. He had to move on, he had to put it all behind him, but he was finding it very ha
rd.

  He was still there a few minutes later when some young mots and mors came running noisily up Seam Street and spilled into the little park. Thru was sitting tucked into one corner of the park. The newcomers gathered around the fountain in the middle, clearly in the midst of a wild revel.

  Thru recognized some of them at once. There was Lem Frobin and Tugel Jixxe, who were both part of Pern's clique. Lem was waving a wineskin around, and they were both talking in loud voices. The mors were locals, Dronned mors with the fur on their heads tied up with rows of tiny ribbon bows of blue and red, a fashion of the moment in the town.

  And there was Pern himself, with his arm around the waist of a young mor with very pale fur. She was unusually pretty, and clearly used to being paid attention to by males.

  Thru watched as Pern snuggled openly with this young beauty. Then Lem Frobin offered the wineskin to Pern, who drank and then urged it on the young mor. They all laughed together and a little later Pern and the young mor went off into the bushes at the other end of the park.

  Giggles soon erupted from their depths.

  Sickened, Thru got up and left quietly, mulling it over as he walked up Slope Street. Pern didn't love Iallia the way Thru had. And, he realized with a dull sense of shock, Iallia probably didn't love Pern. What they both loved was the wealth that Pern possessed.

  One day Thru would inherit a share of a polder and a part of a field. Like most young mots, he would have to earn his way through hard work and a little luck. If Iallia wed him, it would be years before she would feel comfortably well-off.

  Iallia was a practical-minded mor, and she was used to a certain level of comfort in her life. Pern Treevi would be well set up by his family with at least one polder, perhaps more, and access to all the extensive family commons.

  And Thru Gillo? He was handsome and wonderful to watch on the game field, but he had hardly anything to his name in the way of polder. And as everyone knew, to have polder was to be wealthy, while to have a field was simply to survive, for only in polder could one grow waterbush.