The Ancient Enemy (3 page)

Thru took the warning seriously and put out his fire. He moved off well before dawn and took the short road to Pembri Village, a small place, inhabited by stonecutters. He had no intention of ending up in the bellies of the green-skinned lizard men.

Pembri lay up the Edejj Valley, which had been carved by repeated forays of the ice sheets and had high, steep walls. He hurried his pace. Pyluk hunted with the long spears, hardened in the fire and thrown with great force and accuracy. They were great runners as well, almost the match of mots in that regard. Thru had strung his bow and had his quiver on his hip, the arrows ready to hand, of which a good half dozen had steel points, just in case.

Dark clouds whirled overhead, and a stiff wind came out of the west. The road ran due north for a while straight up a narrow U-shaped valley. He made good time and came over the Stark Pike before noon.

Once again he heard the wolves, this time ahead of him, up on the higher parts of the pike. Again they broadcast a warning: Pyluk were nearby and probably aware of him.

He turned back at once, then climbed the steep gravel slope of a side canyon. It was narrow and twisty, and the walls were nearly vertical on either side. At the back of the space it simply came to an end on a pile of debris washed down by an intermittent waterfall high above.

He climbed. The rock was well bedded, with clear lines between layers. There were many handholds in the chert beds. He got halfway up and ran into a problematical layer of crumbly shale that did not offer handholds. The slope shifted away from the vertical, but the footing was treacherous. Every so often the shale would slide out from under him and a few pieces would go tumbling off the cliff and fall into the canyon below.

At one point he lost his footing and had to dig his fingers into the shale to hang on. Pieces of shale went wicketing down the slope. He was still sliding. If he went all the way down the shale, he'd go off the edge of the steeper cliff below. And then he got a foot into a slight gap and that gave him enough traction to halt the slide. He took a deep breath and started to move back up. A few minutes later he stepped up onto the top of the little cliff. He took a deep breath; it had been close. He turned and looked down into the narrow canyon from which he'd climbed.

He felt his heart hammer in his chest for a moment. Three tall, green pyluk were standing there, great jaws agape, long spears in hand. They looked up at him with hungry eyes, then coughed and rapped their throwing sticks on their spears, a chilling sound. Then they turned and vanished back down the gully.

He had a good head start on them, but they would find a way up in time. He would have to run the rest of the way to be sure. Back above the pike he lifted his own voice in loud cry, thanking the wolves for their timely warning.

Then he ran.

When he arrived in Pembri Village, his news aroused immediate alarm. Small gangs of pyluk were an occasional menace in the Edejj Valley. There were stone carts coming up from Glashoux, and the drivers would be vulnerable to pyluk, who would spear an ox from concealment and then wait to collect it when the cart had freed the dead ox and gone on with its remaining ox taking up the slack. The pyluk would follow and spear the other ox the next day. Then at night the lizard-skinned pyluk would swarm the wagon and kill the mots. Oxen, mots, brilbies, all would go into pyluk bellies.

The folk organized a patrol to set out the next day and track down the pyluk and kill them, or at least chase them out of the valley. That night they set a strong guard on the village and howled to the distant wolf pack of the Edejj to tell them that the presence of the pyluk had been noted.

The village patrol spotted the pyluk trail the next day and chased the three marauders all the way across the valley and up the jambles stones in Soaring Creek. The pyluk eventually escaped by climbing into the wild lands of the higher Drakensberg.

Thru waited in the village for another day until the patrol returned. Then he set out on the last section of his trip, up the Edejj Valley to the watershed and down into the Valley of the Moon. Highnoth lay at the northern end of the valley, where the great mountains of Basht and Redapt faced each other.

The mountain was wreathed in cold mists when Thru arrived at Highnoth late in the morning. He was glad of his cloak, for the damp seemed to go right down to his bones. Like everyone else there, he would have to get used to the cold and the damp.

Inside he was greeted first by a friendly mot named Meu, a native of Dronned, who was to become a good friend while they were at Highnoth. The Assenzi themselves were amazing little beings, smaller and thinner than mots, looking almost like herons in their grey coats and black cloaks. But it was their eyes, twice the size of a mot's eye, that were the most striking thing about their thin faces. They peered in at one with such intelligence and understanding that it was a little frightening at times. You never thought you could keep secrets from such a being.

The place itself was nothing but ruins. Gigantic ruins, of buildings so large as to be cities in themselves. Some were nothing but hills of rubble covered in trees, but others still partially stood, lurching up hundreds of feet into the air. Great slabs of fallen wall material lay about their feet, but the legs of these giant warriors of stone still stood. And within them were areas that had been kept habitable, for aeons, by the wit of the Assenzi and the labor of their students.

Of all the Assenzi, Thru came to know Uzzieh Utnapishtim the best. Utnapishtim taught history, mathematics, and astronomy. Thru enjoyed the first and the last and struggled motfully with the mathematics. His efforts brought a twinkle to Utnapishtim's ancient eyes.

Then there was Master Graedon, the engineer. He was the Assenzi who maintained the physical plant, what was left of it, that kept them alive. Thru worked without complaint on many of the hardest jobs that winter, which earned him a place in Graedon's metallurgy class. There he was privileged to forge a sword for himself.

From Master Sassadzu he learned kyo and the art of weaving. Kyo included archery, and Thru became a very useful mot with his bow.

And from great Cutshamakim, the spiritual leader of the Assenzi, he learned that there were things that were unknowable, that just were.

He also learned how to adjust to a diet stripped down to its essentials. They weren't that far wrong in the Land when they said that the Assenzi lived on cold air and imagination. Gone were the hot pies and chowders from his mother's kitchen. Gone was the habit of dining in the manner of the Land. A bowl of porridge and sour butter became a luxurious dinner. And to wash down their twice-baked biscuit, there was usually nothing more than guezme tea or water. Thru got used to being hungry.

The kyo class met Master Sassadzu on an open gallery. At the slight sound of the command from the Master, they would spin on the spot, slant their upper bodies back with the smoothness of the cobra, and snap the foot out with the speed of the striking snake. The movement was fluid, the feet arriving in space in front of them with near unanimity. Sassadzu would watch, then let them return to rest. He would show them the motion again. His own slight form seemed to become almost a liquid as he sliced his foot through the arc of contact.

They summoned their sense of the Spirit, felt the strength rise through their waists and gather in their shoulders.

"Now!"

A bend, a smoother stroke, the foot seeming to flow out, unstoppable.

Cutshamakim's lessons were taken in his room usually, a veritable library in a warm part of the Red Brick tower. Sometimes they were taken outside though, where they practiced holding a handful of snow in their hands, watching it melt to water, and then drinking the water. The hand got so cold! The water tasted so delicious afterward.

"Why is it good sometimes to feel the cold?" asked Thru.

"Because it shows us that we are alive."

Utnapishtim's history class was another popular one. One day close to the end of the class, young Belloc, a Farblow Hills mot, raised his hand.

"Utnapishtim?" The Assenzi preferred not to be called Master by their pupils.

"What is it, Belloc?"

"I have heard it said that Man the Cruel came from a star beyond the constellation of the Calf."

"There is a school of opinion that believes this. There is no evidence either way."

Salish, from Sulmo, asked next. "You remember Man the Cruel, Utnapishtim?"

"I do."

"I sometimes think it cannot have been as bad as it says in the Book. Was it really like that?"

"Not all men were cruel, Salish."

"They teach us that there were good men, the men who raised us up."

"They raised you up, my fine young mot. That they did. The ancient men they raised you up."

"And before then there are no memories, and we did not know anything."

"Before then you were animals and had no need of long memories. The High Men remade you in their image. Just as they made us to watch over you."

"And we live in the Garden of Eden."

"That is one way to describe it."

"And we have always lived in it."

"No, young Salish. You have not been listening to Master Acmonides. For a long time the world was frozen. There was ice a mile deep over the northland. The ice ground the mountains down. The ice filled the Valley of the Moon, and Highnoth was walled in by ice that towered over these walls."

"Did you live then, Utnapishtim?"

They were at it again, distracting old Utnapishtim and getting him off onto tales from the past. Which was much more fun than writing down the names of the local stars and also helped to prolong the class in a pleasant way, listening to the old Assenzi speak about the ancient world, gone forever beneath the ice.

"Oh yes, young Salish, old Utnapishtim lived then. Utnapishtim first came to life more than one hundred thousand years ago. The ice came four times and retreated each time. Now we think the period of the ice is over for a while."

But young Salish was still pondering something beyond the numbers.

"And when we were animals, we kept no memories. So we can never really know that time."

"Ah, you would not want to, young Salish. That was not a good time for animals. That was the time of Man the Cruel."

When the Assenzi spoke like this Thru always felt the familiar chill run down his spine.

"I am the broken pig." The words came unbidden to his mind, from the prayer for salvation. Several of them were mouthing them, just as they did on Spirit days.

The hanging cow that was torn and ripped.
The dying lamb that was born again.

In years to come, the dark days of deep winter would always bring up memories for Thru of wielding a hammer in the forge while the bellows roared and the coals put out so much heat it felt as if your fur might catch fire.

And on the anvil the bar of iron slowly became a sword blade, two and a half feet in length, an inch and a half across. Thru felt the force of the magic there, where metal changed its nature and in time became a shimmering piece of steel.

Then it was sharpened and polished to a mirrorlike glow.

On graduation night, Graedon presented each of them with a handle and a hilt. At last they wore the swords on their belts, sheathed in newly minted scabbards made of stiffened bush-withe bearing seven layers of lacquer.

"Thank you, Master Graedon, I will always treasure this moment."

Another time that winter, while it was snowing outside, the class sat in rows on the long, green carpet. The room was cold enough that their breath was clearly visible each time they exhaled. Yet they wore little in the way of clothing, with bare sandals on their feet.

"Open your hearts to the sky," said Cutshamakim, sitting on a pad of stone in front of them.

The wind soughed through the ruined latticework of the building above them. The snow was falling again. It was a dry powdery snow, and traces of it were already showing on the floor of the meditation chamber.

"When we breathe we put aside preconditions, we allow ourselves simply to be here. Feel the moment. Breathe in!"

The soft susurration of their breath echoed off the high ceiling.

They repeated the ancient syllables, ending on the great universal hum. Their eyes closed, their fingers forming the circle of wisdom.

In time and perfect accord they drew seven breaths through the left nostril and expelled them from the right. Then they reversed the procedure for the next seven breaths.

The regular soft sound, like a velvet-covered piston broke against the high ceiling, and mingled with the skitter of the falling snow.

Winter passed and left Thru hardened against the cold. He had learned to enjoy the icy dip in the morning when they said their prayers at the shrine. He had come to accept the perpetual hunger and the hard physical labor. He had learned a great deal, and somewhere along the way he had regained a sense of peace. Even his broken heart had become less important, less relevant to him somehow. It was as if he had moved on from that person of the previous summer, so devastated and out of sorts. There was still a void in his center, there was something gone that would never be recovered, but he was no longer crippled by it.

Thru had left his thick jerkin in the cell and wore just a light shirt and a much-patched pair of trousers that were his most comfortable clothes, though he knew his sister and mother would have scolded him for wearing such shabby things.

In Master Sassadzu's gallery, Thru wove a decorative mat, working in waterbush-withe and colored grasses. By tradition carried down for thousands of years there were only a handful of acceptable patterns among weavers of the Land. He had chosen "Chooks and Beetles," a rich pattern with ocher-colored chooks chasing beetles in the center. Around them were shooks of corn in bright yellow and crossed scythes.

In a bold departure from the usual style he had outlined his chooks and beetles in black and given the big birds a jaunty, raffish air. He was quite pleased with the look of them, and was working a bright green grass onto the ground weave to fill out the background.