作者: raiderho@smth.edu.cn
標題: II. Ivory silverharpe(轉寄)
時間: Fri May 7 08:14:00 2004
II. Ivory
The Master of Iria of Westpool, Birch, didn't own
the old house, but he did own the central and
richest lands of the old domain. His father, more
interested in vines and orchards than in quarrels
with his relatives, had left Birch a thriving property.
Birch hired men to manage the farms and wineries
and cooperage and cartage and all, while he
enjoyed his wealth. He married the timid daughter
of the younger brother of the Lord of Wayfirth, and
took infinite pleasure in thinking that his daughters
were of noble blood.
The fashion of the time among the nobility was to
have a wizard in their service, a genuine wizard
with a staff and a grey cloak, trained on the Isle of
the Wise, and so the Master of Iria of Westpool got
himself a wizard from Roke. He was surprised how
easy it was to get one, if you paid the price.
The young man, called Ivory, did not actually have
his staff and cloak yet; he explained that he was to
be made wizard when he went back to Roke. The
Masters had sent him out in the world to gain
experience, for all the classes in the School cannot
give a man the experience he needs to be a wizard.
Birch looked a little dubious at this, and Ivory
reassured him that his training on Roke had
equipped him with every kind of magic that could
be needed in Iria of Westpool on Way. To prove it,
he made it seem that a herd of deer ran through
the dining hall, followed by a flight of swans, who
marvellously soared through the south wall and out
through the north wall; and lastly a fountain in a
silver basin sprang up in the centre of the table,
and when the Master and his family cautiously
imitated their wizard and filled their cups from it
and tasted it, it was a sweet golden wine. "Wine of
the Andrades," said the young man with a modest,
complacent smile. By then the wife and daughters
were entirely won over. And Birch thought the
young man was worth his fee, although his own
silent preference was for the dry red Fanian of his
own vineyards, which got you drunk if you drank
enough, while this yellow stuff was just
honeywater.
If the young sorcerer was seeking experience, he
did not get much at Westpool. Whenever Birch had
guests from Kembermouth or from neighboring
domains, the herd of deer, the swans, and the
fountain of golden wine made their appearance. He
also worked up some very pretty fireworks for warm
spring evenings. But if the managers of the
orchards and vineyards came to the Master to ask if
his wizard might put a spell of increase on the pears
this year or maybe charm the black rot off the
Fanian vines on the south hill, Birch said, "A wizard
of Roke doesn't lower himself to such stuff. Go tell
the village sorcerer to earn his keep!" And when the
youngest daughter came down with a wasting
cough, Birch's wife dared not trouble the wise
young man about it, but sent humbly to Rose of Old
Iria, asking her to come in by the back door and
maybe make a poultice or sing a chant to bring the
girl back to health.
Ivory never noticed that the girl was ailing, nor the
pear trees, nor the vines. He kept himself to
himself, as a man of craft and learning should. He
spent his days riding about the countryside on the
pretty black mare that his employer had given him
for his use when he made it clear that he had not
come from Roke to trudge about on foot in the mud
and dust of country byways.
On his rides, he sometimes passed an old house
on a hill among great oaks. When he turned off the
village lane up the hill, a pack of scrawny, evilmouthed
dogs came pelting and bellowing down at
him. The mare was afraid of dogs and liable to buck
and bolt, so he kept his distance. But he had an eye
for beauty, and liked to look at the old house
dreaming away in the dappled light of the early
summer afternoons.
He asked Birch about the place. "That's Iria," Birch
said - "Old Iria, I mean to say. I own the house by
rights. But after a century of feuds and fights over
it, my granddad let the place go to settle the
quarrel. Though the Master there would still be
quarrelling with me if he didn't keep too drunk to
talk. Haven't seen the old man for years. He had a
daughter, I think."
"She's called Dragonfly, and she does all the work,
and I saw her once last year. She's tall, and as
beautiful as a flowering tree," said the youngest
daughter, Rose, who was busy crowding a lifetime
of keen observation into the fourteen years that
were all she was going to have for it. She broke off,
coughing. Her mother shot an anguished, yearning
glance at the wizard. Surely he would hear that
cough, this time? He smiled at young Rose, and the
mother's heart lifted. Surely he wouldn't smile so if
Rose's cough was anything serious?
"Nothing to do with us, that lot at the old place,"
Birch said, displeased. The tactful Ivory asked no
more. But he wanted to see the girl as beautiful as
a flowering tree. He rode past Old Iria regularly. He
tried stopping in the village at the foot of the hill to
ask questions, but there was nowhere to stop and
nobody would answer questions. A wall-eyed witch
took one look at him and scuttled into her hut. If he
went up to the house he would have to face the
pack of hellhounds and probably a drunk old man.
But it was worth the chance, he thought; he was
bored out of his wits with the dull life at Westpool,
and was never slow to take a risk. He rode up the
hill till the dogs were yelling around him in a frenzy,
snapping at the mare's legs. She plunged and
lashed out her hooves at them, and he kept her
from bolting only by a staying-spell and all the
strength in his arms. The dogs were leaping and
snapping at his own legs now, and he was about to
let the mare have her head when somebody came
among the dogs shouting curses and beating them
back with a strap. When he got the lathered,
gasping mare to stand still, he saw the girl as
beautiful as a flowering tree. She was very tall, very
sweaty, with big hands and feet and mouth and
nose and eyes, and a head of wild dusty hair. She
was yelling, "Down! Back to the house, you carrion,
you vile sons of bitches!" to the whining, cowering
dogs.
Ivory clapped his hand to his right leg. A dog's
tooth had ripped his breeches at the calf, and a
trickle of blood came through.
"Is she hurt?" the woman said. "Oh, the traitorous
vermin!" She was stroking down the mare's right
foreleg. Her hands came away covered with bloodstreaked
horse sweat. "There, there," she said. The
brave girl, the brave heart." The mare put her head
down and shivered all over with relief. "What did
you keep her standing there in the middle of the
dogs for?" the woman demanded furiously. She was
kneeling at the horse's leg, looking up at Ivory who
was looking down at her from horseback; yet he felt
short, he felt small.
She did not wait for an answer. "I'll walk her up,"
she said, standing up, and put out her hand for the
reins. Ivory saw that he was supposed to dismount.
He did so, asking, "Is it very bad?" and peering at
the horse's leg, seeing only bright, bloody foam.
"Come on then, my love," the young woman said,
not to him. The mare followed her trustfully. They
set off up the rough path round the hillside to an
old stone and brick stableyard, empty of horses,
inhabited only by nesting swallows that swooped
about over the roofs calling their quick gossip.
"Keep her quiet," said the young woman, and left
him holding the mare's reins in this deserted place.
She returned after some time lugging a heavy
bucket, and set to sponging off the mare's leg. "Get
the saddle off her," she said, and her tone held the
unspoken, impatient, "you fool!" Ivory obeyed, halfannoyed
by this crude giantess and half-intrigued.
She did not put him in mind of a flowering tree at
all, but she was in fact beautiful, in a large, fierce
way. The mare submitted to her absolutely. When
she said, "Move your foot!" the mare moved her
foot. The woman wiped her down all over, put the
saddle blanket back on her, and made sure she was
standing in the sun. "She'll be all right," she said.
"There's a gash, but if you'll wash it with warm salt
water four or five times a day, it'll heal clean, I'm
sorry." She said the last honestly, though
grudgingly, as if she still wondered how he could
have let his mare stand there to be assaulted, and
she looked straight at him for the first time. Her
eyes were clear orange-brown, like dark topaz or
amber. They were strange eyes, right on a level
with his own.
"I'm sorry too," he said, trying to speak carelessly,
lightly.
"She's Irian of Westpool's mare. You're the wizard,
then?"
He bowed. "Ivory, of Havnor Great Port, at your
service. May I -"
She interrupted. "I thought you were from Roke."
"I am," he said, his composure regained.
She stared at him with those strange eyes, as
unreadable as a sheep's, he thought. Then she
burst out: 'You lived there? You studied there? Do
you know the Archmage?"
"Yes," he said with a smile. Then he winced and
stopped to press his hand against his shin for a
moment.
"Are you hurt too?"
"It's nothing," he said. In fact, rather to his
annoyance, the cut had stopped bleeding. The
woman's gaze returned to his face.
"What is it - what is it like - on Roke?"
Ivory went, limping only very slightly, to an old
mounting-block nearby and sat down on it. He
stretched his leg, nursing the torn place, and looked
up at the woman. "It would take a long time to tell
you what Roke is like," he said. "But it would be my
pleasure."
"The man's a wizard, or nearly," said Rose the
witch, "a Roke wizard! You must not ask him
questions!" She was more than scandalized, she
was frightened.
"He doesn't mind," Dragonfly reassured her. "Only
he hardly ever really answers."
"Of course not!"
"Why of course not?"
"Because he's a wizard! Because you're a woman,
with no art, no knowledge, no learning!"
"You could have taught me! You never would!"
Rose dismissed all she had taught or could teach
with a flick of the fingers.
"Well, so I have to learn from him," said
Dragonfly.
"Wizards don't teach women. You're besotted."
"You and Broom trade spells."
"Broom's a village sorcerer. This man is a wise
man. He learned the High Arts at the Great House
on Roke!"
"He told me what it's like," Dragonfly said. "You
walk up through the town, Thwil Town. There's a
door opening on the street, but it's shut. It looks
like an ordinary door."
The witch listened, unable to resist the lure of
secrets revealed and the contagion of passionate
desire.
"And a man comes when you knock, an ordinarylooking
man. And he gives you a test. You have to
say a certain word, a password, before he'll let you
in. If you don't know it, you can never go in. But if
he lets you in, then from inside you see that the
door is entirely different - it's made out of horn,
with a tree carved on it, and the frame is made out
of a tooth, one tooth of a dragon that lived long,
long before Erreth-Akbe, before Morred, before
there were people in Earthsea. There were only
dragons, to begin with. They found the tooth on
Mount Onn, in Havnor, at the centre of the world.
And the leaves of the tree are carved so thin that
the light shines through them, but the door's so
strong that if the Doorkeeper shuts it no spell could
ever open it. And then the Doorkeeper takes you
down a hall and another hall, till you're lost and
bewildered, and then suddenly you come out under
the sky. In the Court of the Fountain, in the very
deepest inside of the Great House. And that's where
the Archmage would be, if he was there..."
"Go on," the witch murmured.
That's all he really told me, yet," said Dragonfly,
coming back to the mild, overcast spring day and
the infinite familiarity of the village lane, Rose's
front yard, her own seven milch ewes grazing on
Iria Hill, the bronze crowns of the oaks. "He's very
careful how he talks about the Masters."
Rose nodded.
"But he told me about some of the students."
"No harm in that, I suppose."
"I don't know," Dragonfly said. "To hear about the
Great House is wonderful, but I thought the people
there would be - I don't know. Of course they're
mostly just boys when they go there. But I thought
they'd be..." She gazed off at the sheep on the hill,
her face troubled. "Some of them are really bad and
stupid," she said in a low voice. "They get into the
School because they're rich. And they study there
just to get richer. Or to get power."
"Well, of course they do," said Rose, "that's what
they're there for!"
"But power - like you told me about - that .isn't
the same as making people do what you want, or
pay you -"
"Isn't it?"
"No!"
"If a word can heal, a word can wound," the witch
said. "If a hand can kill, a hand can cure. It's a poor
cart that goes only in one direction,"
"But on Roke, they learn to use power well, not for
harm, not for gain."
"Everything's for gain some way, I'd say. People
have to live. But what do I know? I make my living
doing what I know how to do. But I don't meddle
with the great arts, the perilous crafts, like
summoning the dead," and Rose made the handsign
to avert the danger spoken of.
"Everything's perilous," Dragonfly said, gazing now
through the sheep, the hill, the trees, into still
depths, a colorless, vast emptiness like the clear sky
before sunrise.
Rose watched her. She knew she did not know
who Man was or what she might be. A big, strong,
awkward, ignorant, innocent, angry woman, yes.
But ever since she was a child Rose had seen
something more in her, something beyond what she
was. And when Irian looked away from the world
like that, she seemed to enter that place or time or
being beyond herself, utterly beyond Rose's
knowledge. Then Rose feared her, and feared for
her.
"You take care," the witch said, grim. "Everything's
perilous, right enough, and meddling with wizards
most of all."
Through love, respect, and trust, Dragonfly would
never disregard a warning from Rose; but she was
unable to see Ivory as perilous. She didn't
understand him, but the idea of fearing him, him
personally, was not one she could keep in mind.
She tried to be respectful, but it was impossible.
She thought he was clever and quite handsome, but
she didn't think much about him, except for what
he could tell her. He knew what she wanted to
know and little by little he told it to her, and then it
was not really what she had wanted to know, but
she wanted to know more. He was patient with her,
and she was grateful to him for his patience,
knowing he was much quicker than she. Sometimes
he smiled at her ignorance, but he never sneered at
it or reproved it. Like the witch, he liked to answer
a question with a question; but the answers to
Rose's questions were always something she'd
always known, while the answers to his questions
were things she had never imagined and found
startling, unwelcome, even painful, altering all her
beliefs.
Day by day, as they talked in the old stableyard of
Iria, where they had fallen into the habit of
meeting, she asked him and he told her more,
though reluctantly, always partially; he shielded his
Masters, she thought, trying to defend the bright
image of Roke, until one day he gave in to her
insistence and spoke freely at last.
"There are good men there," he said. "Great and
wise the Archmage certainly was. But he's gone.
And the Masters . . . Some hold aloof, following
arcane knowledge, seeking ever more patterns,
ever more names, but using their knowledge for
nothing. Others hide their ambition under the grey
cloak of wisdom. Roke is no longer where power is
in Earthsea. That's the Court in Havnor, now. Roke
lives on its great past, defended by a thousand
spells against the present day. And inside those
spell-walls, what is there? Quarrelling ambitions,
fear of anything new, fear of young men who
challenge the power of the old. And at the centre,
nothing. An empty courtyard. The Archmage will
never return."
"How do you know?" she whispered.
He looked stern. The dragon bore him away."
"You saw it? You saw that?" She clenched her
hands, imagining that flight.
After a long time, she came back to the sunlight
and the stableyard and her thoughts and puzzles.
"But even if he's gone," she said, "surely some of
the Masters are truly wise?"
When he looked up and spoke it was with a hint of
a melancholy smile. "All the mystery and wisdom of
the Masters, when it's out in the daylight, doesn't
amount to so much, you know. Tricks of the trade -
wonderful illusions. But people don't want to believe
that. They want the mysteries, the illusions. Who
can blame them? There's so little in most lives that's
beautiful or worthy."
As if to illustrate what he was saying, he had
picked up a bit of brick from the broken pavement,
and tossed it up in the air, and as he spoke it
fluttered about their heads on delicate blue wings, a
butterfly. He put out his finger and the butterfly
lighted on it. He shook his finger and the butterfly
fell to the ground, a fragment of brick.
"There's not much worth much in my life," she
said, gazing down at the pavement. "All I know how
to do is run the farm, and try to stand up and speak
truth. But if I thought it was all tricks and lies even
on Roke, I'd hate those men for fooling me, fooling
us all. It can't be lies. Not all of it. The Archmage
did go into the labyrinth among the Hoary Men and
come back with the Ring of Peace. He did go into
death with the young king, and defeat the spider
mage, and come back. We know that on the word
of the king himself. Even here, the harpers came to
sing that song, and a teller came to tell it."
Ivory nodded gravely. "But the Archmage lost all
his power in the land of death. Maybe all magery
was weakened then."
"Rose's spells work as well as ever," she said
stoutly.
Ivory smiled. He said nothing, but she knew how
petty the doings of a village witch appeared to him,
who had seen great deeds and powers. She sighed
and spoke from her heart - "Oh, if only I wasn't a
woman!"
He smiled again. "You're a beautiful woman," he
said, but plainly, not in the flattering way he had
used with her at first, before she showed him she
hated it. "Why would you be a man?"
"So I could go to Roke! And see, and learn! Why,
why is it only men can go there?"
"So it was ordained by the first Archmage,
centuries ago," said Ivory. "But ... I too have
wondered."
"You have?"
"Often. Seeing only boys and men, day after day,
in the Great House and all the precincts of the
School. Knowing that the townswomen are spellbound
from so much as setting foot on the fields
about Roke Knoll. Once in years, perhaps, some
great lady is allowed to come briefly into the outer
courts. .. Why is it so? Are all women incapable of
understanding? Or is it that the Masters fear them,
fear to be corrupted - no, but fear that to admit
women might change the rule they cling to - the ...
purity of that rule."
"Women can live chaste as well as men can,"
Dragonfly said bluntly. She knew she was blunt and
coarse where he was delicate and subtle, but she
did not know any other way to be.
"Of course," he said, his smile growing brilliant.
"But witches aren't always chaste, are they? Maybe
that's what the Masters are afraid of. Maybe
celibacy isn't as necessary as the Rule of Roke
teaches. Maybe it's not a way of keeping the power
pure, but of keeping the power to themselves.
Leaving out women, leaving out everybody who
won't agree to turn himself into a eunuch to get
that one kind of power ... Who knows? A she-mage!
Now that would change everything, all the rules!"
She could see his mind dance ahead of hers,
taking up and playing with ideas, transforming them
as he had transformed brick into butterfly. She
could not dance with him, she could not play with
him, but she watched him in wonder.
"You could go to Roke," he said, his eyes bright
with excitement, mischief, daring. Meeting her
almost pleading, incredulous silence, he insisted:
'You could. A woman you are, but there are ways to
change your seeming. You have the heart, the
courage, the will of a man. You could enter the
Great House. I know it."
"And what would I do there?"
"What all the students do. Live alone in a stone
cell and learn to be wise! It might not be what you
dream it to be, but that, too, you'd learn."
"I couldn't. They'd know. I couldn't even get in.
There's the Doorkeeper, you said. I don't know the
word to say to him."
The password, yes. But I can teach it to you."
"You can? Is it allowed?"
"I don't care what's "allowed"," he said, with a
frown she had never seen on his face. The
Archmage himself said, Rules are made to he
broken. Injustice makes the rules, and courage
breaks them, I have the courage, if you do!"
She looked at him. She could not speak. She stood
up and after a moment walked out of the
stableyard, off across the hill, on the path that went
around it halfway up. One of the dogs, her favorite,
a big, ugly, heavy-headed hound, followed her. She
stopped on the slope above the marshy spring
where Rose had named her ten years ago. She
stood there; the dog sat down beside her and
looked up at her face. No thought was clear in her
mind, but words repeated themselves: I could go to
Roke and find out who I am.
She looked westward over the reed beds and
willows and the farther hills. The whole western sky
was empty, clear. She stood still and her soul
seemed to go into that sky and be gone, gone out
of her.
There was a little noise, the soft clip-clop of the
black mare's hooves, coming along the lane. Then
Dragonfly came back to herself and called to Ivory
and ran down the hill to meet him. "I will go," she
said.
He had not planned or intended any such
adventure, but crazy as it was, it suited him better
the more he thought about it. The prospect of
spending the long grey winter at Westpool sank his
spirits like a stone. There was nothing here for him
except the girl Dragonfly, who had come to fill his
thoughts. Her massive, innocent strength had
defeated him absolutely so far, but he did what she
pleased in order to have her do at last what he
pleased, and the game, he thought, was worth
playing. If she ran away with him, the game was as
good as won. As for the joke of it, the notion of
actually getting her into the School on Roke
disguised as a man, there was little chance of
pulling it off, but it pleased him as a gesture of
disrespect to all the piety and pomposity of the
Masters and their toadies. And if somehow it
succeeded, if he could actually get a woman
through that door, even for a moment, what a
sweet revenge it would be!
Money was a problem. The girl thought, of course,
that he as a great wizard would snap his fingers
and waft them over the sea in a magic boat flying
before the magewind. But when he told her they'd
have to hire passage on a ship, she said simply, "I
have the cheese money."
He treasured her rustic sayings of that kind.
Sometimes she frightened him, and he resented it.
His dreams of her were never of her yielding to him,
but of himself yielding to a fierce, destroying
sweetness, sinking into an annihilating embrace,
dreams in which she was something beyond
comprehension and he was nothing at all. He woke
from those dreams shaken and shamed. In daylight,
when he saw her big, dirty hands, when she talked
like a yokel, a simpleton, he regained his
superiority. He only wished there were someone to
repeat her sayings to, one of his old friends in the
Great Port who would find them amusing. ""I have
the cheese money,"" he repeated to himself, riding
back to Westpool, and laughed. "I do indeed," he
said aloud. The black mare nicked her ear.
He told Birch that he had received a sending from
his teacher on Roke, the Master Hand, and must go
at once, on what business he could not say, of
course, but it should not take long once he was
there; a half-month to go, another to return; he
would be back well before the Fallows at the latest.
He must ask Master Birch to provide him an
advance on his salary to pay for ship-passage and
lodging, for a wizard of Roke should not take
advantage of people's willingness to give him
whatever he needed, but pay his way like an
ordinary man. As Birch agreed with this, he had to
give Ivory a purse for his journey. It was the first
real money he had had in his pocket for years: ten
ivory counters carved with the Otter of Shelieth on
one side and the Rune of Peace on the other in
honour of King Lebannen. "Hello, little namesakes,"
he told them when he was alone with them. "You
and the cheese money will get along nicely."
He told Dragonfly very little of his plans, largely
because he made few, trusting to chance and his
own wits, which seldom let him down if he was
given a fair chance to use them. The girl asked
almost no questions. "Will I go as a man all the
way?" was one.
"Yes," he said, "but only disguised. I won't put a
semblance-spell on you till we're on Roke Island."
"I thought it would be a spell of Change," she said.
That would be unwise," he said, with a good
imitation of the Master Changer's terse solemnity.
"If need be, I'll do it, of course. But you'll find
wizards very sparing of the great spells. For good
reason."
The Equilibrium," she said, accepting all he said in
its simplest sense, as always.
"And perhaps because such arts have not the
power they once had," he said. He did not know
himself why he tried to weaken her faith in
wizardry; perhaps because any weakening of her
strength, her wholeness, was a gain for him. He
had begun merely by trying to get her into his bed,
a game he loved to play. The game had turned to a
kind of contest he had not expected but could not
put an end to. He was determined now not to win
her, but to defeat her. He could not let her defeat
him. He must prove to her and himself that his
dreams were meaningless.
Quite early on, impatient with wooing her massive
physical indifference, he had worked up a charm, a
sorcerer's seduction-spell of which he was
contemptuous even as he made it, though he knew
it was effective. He cast it on her while she was,
characteristically, mending a cow's halter. The
result had not been the melting eagerness it had
produced in girls he had used it on in Havnor and
Thwil. Dragonfly had gradually become silent and
sullen. She ceased asking her endless questions
about Roke and did not answer when he spoke.
When he very tentatively approached her, taking
her hand, she struck him away with a blow to the
head that left him dizzy. He saw her stand up and
stride out of the stableyard without a word, the ugly
hound she favoured trotting after her. It looked
back at him with a grin.
She took the path to the old house. When his ears
stopped ringing he stole after her, hoping the
charm was working and that this was only her
particularly uncouth way of leading him at last to
her bed. Nearing the house, he heard crockery
breaking. The father, the drunkard, came wobbling
out looking scared and confused, followed by
Dragonfly's loud, harsh voice - "Out of the house,
you drunken, crawling traitor! You foul, shameless
lecher!"
"She took my cup away," the Master of Iria said to
the stranger, whining like a puppy, while his dogs
yammered around him. "She broke it."
Ivory departed. He did not return for two days. On
the third day he rode experimentally past Old Iria,
and she came striding down to meet him. "I'm
sorry, Ivory," she said, looking up at him with her
smoky orange eyes. "I don't know what came over
me the other day. I was angry. But not at you. I
beg your pardon."
He forgave her gracefully. He did not try a lovecharm
on her again.
Soon, he thought now, he would not need one. He
would have real power over her. He had finally seen
how to get it. She had given it into his hands. Her
strength and her willpower were tremendous, but
fortunately she was stupid, and he was not.
Birch was sending a carter down to Kembermouth
with six barrels of ten-year-old Fanian ordered by
the wine merchant there. He was glad to send his
wizard along as bodyguard, for the wine was
valuable, and though the young king was putting
things to rights as fast as he could, there were still
gangs of robbers on the roads. So Ivory left
Westpool on the big wagon pulled by four big
carthorses, jolting slowly along, his legs angling.
Down by Jackass Hill an uncouth figure rose up
from the wayside and asked the carter for a lift. "I
don't know you," the carter said, lifting his whip to
warn the stranger off, but Ivory came round the
wagon and said, "Let the lad ride, my good man.
He'll do no harm while I'm with you."
"Keep an eye on him then, master," said the
carter.
"I will," said Ivory, with a wink at Dragonfly. She,
well disguised in dirt and a farmhand's old smock
and leggings and a loathsome felt hat, did not wink
back. She played her part even while they sat side
by side dangling their legs over the tailgate, with six
great halftuns of wine jolting between them and the
drowsy carter, and the drowsy summer hills and
fields slipping slowly, slowly past. Ivory tried to
tease her, but she only shook her head. Maybe she
was scared by this wild scheme, now she was
embarked on it. There was no telling. She was
solemnly, heavily silent. I could be very bored by
this woman, Ivory thought, if once I'd had her
underneath me. That thought stirred him almost
unbearably, but when he looked back at her, his
thoughts died away before her massive, actual
presence.
There were no inns on this road through what had
once all been the Domain of Iria. As the sun neared
the western plains, they stopped at a farmhouse
that offered stabling for the horses, a shed for the
cart, and straw in the stable loft for the carters. The
loft was dark and stuffy and the straw musty. Ivory
felt no lust at all, though Dragonfly lay not three
feet from him. She had played the man so
thoroughly all day that she had half-convinced even
him. Maybe she'll fool the old men after all! he
thought, and grinned at the thought, and slept.
They jolted on all the next day through a summer
thundershower or two and carne at dusk to
Kembermouth, a walled, prosperous port city. They
left the carter to his master's business and walked
down to find an inn near the docks. Dragonfly
looked about at the sights of the city in a silence
that might have been awe or disapproval or mere
stolidity. "This is a nice little town," Ivory said, "but
the only city in the world is Havnor."
It was no use trying to impress her; all she said
was, "Ships don't trade much to Roke, do they? Will
it take a long time to find one to take us, do you
think?"
"Not if I carry a staff," he said.
She stopped looking about and strode along in
thought for a while. She was beautiful in
movement, bold and graceful, her head carried
high.
"You mean they'll oblige a wizard? But you aren't a
wizard."
"That's a formality. We senior sorcerers may carry
a staff when we're on Roke's business. Which I
am."
Taking me there?"
"Bringing them a student - yes. A student of great
gifts!"
She asked no more questions. She never argued;
it was one of her virtues.
That night, over supper at the waterfront inn, she
asked with unusual timidity in her voice, "Do I have
great gifts?"
"In my judgment, you do," he said.
She pondered - conversation with her was often a
slow business - and said, "Rose always said I had
power, but she didn't know what kind. And I ... I
know I do, but I don't know what it is."
"You're going to Roke to find out," he said, raising
his glass to her. After a moment she raised hers
and smiled at him, a smile so tender and radiant
that he said spontaneously, "And may what you find
be all you seek!"
"If I do, it will be thanks to you," she said. In that
moment he loved her for her true heart, and would
have forsworn any thought of her but as his
companion in a bold adventure, a gallant joke.
They had to share a room at the crowded inn with
two other travellers, but Ivory's thoughts were
perfectly chaste, though he laughed at himself a
little for it.
Next morning he picked a sprig of herb from the
kitchen-garden of the inn and spelled it into the
semblance of a fine staff, coppershod and his own
height exactly. "What is the wood?" Dragonfly
asked, fascinated, when she saw it, and when he
answered with a laugh, "Rosemary," she laughed
too.
They set off along the wharves, asking for a ship
bound south that might take a wizard and his
prentice to the Isle of the Wise, and soon enough
they found a heavy trader bound for Wathort,
whose master would carry the wizard for goodwill
and the prentice for half-price. Even half-price was
half the cheese money, but they would have the
luxury of a cabin, for Sea Otter was a decked, twomasted
ship.
As they were talking with her master a wagon
drew up on the dock and began to unload six
familiar halftun barrels. That's ours," Ivory said, and
the ship's master said, "Bound for Hort Town," and
Dragonfly said softly, "From Iria."
She glanced back at the land then. It was the only
time he ever saw her look back.
The ship's weatherworker came aboard just before
they sailed, no Roke wizard but a weatherbeaten
fellow in a worn sea-cloak. Ivory flourished his staff
a little in greeting him. The sorcerer looked him up
and down and said, "One man works weather on
this ship. If it's not me, I'm off."
"I'm a mere passenger, Master Bagman. I gladly
leave the winds in your hands."
The sorcerer looked at Dragonfly, who stood
straight as a tree and said nothing.
"Good," he said, and that was the last word he
spoke to Ivory.
During the voyage, however, he talked several
times with Dragonfly, which made Ivory a bit
uneasy. Her ignorance and trustfulness could
endanger her and therefore him. What did she and
the bagman talk about? he asked, and she
answered, "What is to become of us."
He stared.
"Of all of us. Of Way, and Felkway, and Havnor,
and Wathort, and Roke. All the people of the
islands. He says that when King Lebannen was to
be crowned, last autumn, he sent to Gont for the
old Archmage to come crown him, and he wouldn't
come. And there was no new Archmage. So he took
the crown himself. And some say that's wrong, and
he doesn't rightly hold the throne. But others say
the king himself is the new Archmage. But he isn't a
wizard, only a king. So others say the dark years
will come again, when there was no rule of justice,
and wizardry was used for evil ends."
After a pause Ivory said, "That old weatherworker
says all this?"
"It's common talk, I think," said Dragonfly, with
her grave simplicity.
The weatherworker knew his trade, at least. Sea
Otter sped south; they met summer squalls and
choppy seas, but never a storm or a troublesome
wind. They put off and took on cargo at ports on
the north shore of O, at Ilien, Leng, Kamery, and O
Port, and then headed west to carry the passengers
to Roke. And facing the west Ivory felt a little
hollow at the pit of his stomach, for he knew all too
well how Roke was guarded. He knew neither he
nor the weatherworker could do anything at all to
turn the Roke-wind if it blew against them. And if it
did. Dragonfly would ask why? Why did it blow
against them?
He was glad to see the sorcerer uneasy too,
standing by the helmsman, keeping a watch up on
the masthead, taking in sail at the hint of a west
wind. But the wind held steady from the north. A
thunder-squall came pelting on that wind, and Ivory
went down to the cabin, but Dragonfly stayed up on
deck. She was afraid of the water, she had told
him. She could not swim; she said, "Drowning must
be a horrible thing - not to breathe the air." She
had shuddered at the thought. It was the only fear
she had ever shown of anything. But she disliked
the low, cramped cabin, and had stayed on deck
every day and slept there on the warm nights. Ivory
had not tried to coax her into the cabin. He knew
now that coaxing was no good. To have her he
must master her; and that he would do, if only they
could come to Roke.
He came up on deck again. It was clearing, and as
the sun set the clouds broke all across the west,
showing a golden sky behind the high dark curve of
a hill.
Ivory looked at that hill with a kind of longing
hatred.
"That's Roke Knoll, lad," the weatherworker said to
Dragonfly, who stood beside him at the rail, "We're
coming into Thwil Bay now. Where there's no wind
but the wind they want."
By the time they were well into the bay and had
let down the anchor it was dark, and Ivory said to
the ship's master, "I'll go ashore in the morning."
Down in their tiny cabin Dragonfly sat waiting for
him, solemn as ever but her eyes blazing with
excitement. "We'll go ashore in the morning," he
repeated to her, and she nodded, acceptant.
She said, "Do I look all right?"
He sat down on his narrow bunk and looked at her
sitting on her narrow bunk; they could not face
each other directly, as there was no room for their
knees. At O Port she had bought herself a decent
shirt and breeches, at his suggestion, so as to look
a more probable candidate for the School. Her face
was windburned and scrubbed clean. Her hair was
braided and the braid clubbed, like Ivory's. She had
got her hands clean, too, and they lay flat on her
thighs, long strong hands, like a man's.
"You don't look like a man," he said. Her face fell.
"Not to me. You'll never look like a man to me. But
don't worry. You will to them."
She nodded, with an anxious face.
The first test is the great test, Dragonfly," he said.
Every night he lay alone in this cabin he had
planned this conversation. "To enter the Great
House: to go through that door."
"I've been thinking about it," she said, hurried and
earnest. "Couldn't I just tell them who I am? With
you there to vouch for me - to say even if I am a
woman, I have some gift - and I'd promise to take
the vow and make the spell of celibacy, and live
apart if they wanted me to -"
He was shaking his head all through her speech.
"No, no, no, no. Hopeless. Useless. Fatal!"
"Even if you -"
"Even if I argued for you. They won't listen. The
Rule of Roke forbids women to be taught any high
art, any word of the Language of the Making. It's
always been so. They will not listen. So they must
be shown! And we'll show them, you and I. We'll
teach them. You must have courage, Dragonfly.
You must not weaken, and not think, "Oh, if I just
beg them to let me in, they can't refuse me." They
can, and will. And if you reveal yourself, they will
punish you. And me." He put a ponderous emphasis
on the last word, and inwardly murmured, "Avert."
She gazed at him from her unreadable eyes, and
finally said, "What must I do?"
"Do you trust me, Dragonfly?"
"Yes."
"Will you trust me entirely, wholly - knowing that
the risk I take for you is greater even than your risk
in this venture?"
"Yes."
"Then you must tell me the word you will speak to
the Doorkeeper."
She stared. "But I thought you'd tell it to me - the
password."
"The password he will ask you for is your true
name."
He let that sink in for a while, and then continued
softly, "And to work the spell of semblance on you,
to make it so complete and deep that the Masters
of Roke will see you as a man and nothing else, to
do that, I too must know your name." He paused
again. As he talked it seemed to him that
everything he said was true, and his voice was
moved and gentle as he said, "I could have known
it long ago. But I chose not to use those arts. I
wanted you to trust me enough to tell me your
name yourself."
She was looking down at her hands, clasped now
on her knees. In the faint reddish glow of the cabin
lantern her lashes cast very delicate, long shadows
on her cheeks. She looked up, straight at him. "My
name is Irian," she said.
He smiled. She did not smile.
He said nothing. In fact he was at a loss. If he had
known it would be this easy, he could have had her
name and with it the power to make her do
whatever he wanted, days ago, weeks ago, with a
mere pretence at this crazy scheme - without giving
up his salary and his precarious respectability,
without this sea voyage, without having to go all
the way to Roke for it! For he saw the whole plan
now was folly. There was no way he could disguise
her that would fool the Doorkeeper for a moment.
All his notions of humiliating the Masters as they
had humiliated him were moonshine. Obsessed with
tricking the girl, he had fallen into the trap he laid
for her. Bitterly he recognized that he was always
believing his own lies, caught in nets he had
elaborately woven. Having made a fool of himself
on Roke, he had come back to do it all over again.
A great, desolate anger swelled up in him. There
was no good, no good in anything.
"What's wrong?" she asked. The gentleness of her
deep, husky voice unmanned him, and he hid his
face in his hands, fighting against the shame of
tears.
She put her hand on his knee. It was the first time
she had ever touched him. He endured it, the
warmth and weight of her touch that he had wasted
so much time wanting.
He wanted to hurt her, to shock her out of her
terrible, ignorant kindness, but what he said when
he finally spoke was, "I only wanted to make love
to you,"
"You did?"
"Did you think I was one of their eunuchs? That I'd
castrate myself with spells so I could be holy? Why
do you think I don't have a staff? Why do you think
I'm not at the School? Did you believe everything I
said?"
"Yes," she said. "I'm sorry." Her hand was still on
his knee. She said, "We can make love if you want."
He sat up, sat still.
"What are you?" he said to her at last.
"I don't know. It's why I wanted to come to Roke.
To find out."
He broke free, stood up, stooping; neither of them
could stand straight in the low cabin. Clenching and
unclenching his hands, he stood as far from her as
he could, his back to her.
"You won't find out. It's all lies, shams. Old men
playing games with words. I wouldn't play their
games, so I left. Do you know what I did?" He
turned, showing his teeth in a rictus of triumph. "I
got a girl, a town girl, to come to my room. My cell.
My little stone celibate cell. It had a window looking
out on a back-street. No spells - you can't make
spells with all their magic going on. But she wanted
to come, and came, and I let a rope ladder out the
window, and she climbed it. And we were at it
when the old men came in! I showed 'em! And if I
could have got you in, I'd have showed 'em again,
I'd have taught them their lesson!"
"Well, I'll try," she said.
He stared.
"Not for the same reasons as you," she said, "but I
still want to. And we came all this way. And you
know my name."
It was true. He knew her name: Irian. It was like a
coal of fire, a burning ember in his mind. His
thought could not hold it. His knowledge could not
use it. His tongue could not say it.
She looked up at him, her sharp, strong face
softened by the shadowy lantern-light. "If it was
only to make love you brought me here, Ivory," she
said, "we can do that. If you still want to."
Wordless at first, he simply shook his head. After a
while he was able to laugh. "I think we've gone on
past .. . that possibility . . ."
She looked at him without regret, or reproach, or
shame.
"Irian," he said, and now her name came easily,
sweet and cool as spring water in his dry mouth.
"Irian, here's what you must do to enter the Great
House..."