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…”