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.