The Ancient Enemy by Christopher Rowley Page B

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