“But. . .” The Changer paused.
“When did a woman last ask to enter the School?”
“They know the Rule doesn’t allow them.”
“Did you know that, Irian?” the Doorkeeper asked her.
“Yes, sir.”
“So what brought you here?” the Changer asked, stern, but not hiding his curiosity.
“Master Ivory said I could pass for a man. Though I thought I should say who I was. I will be as celibate as anyone, sir.”
Two long curves appeared on the Doorkeeper’s cheeks, enclosing the slow upturn of his smile. The Changer’s face remained stern, but he blinked, and after a little thought said, “I’m sure – yes – it was definitely the better plan to be honest. What Master did you speak of?”
“Ivory,” said the Doorkeeper. “A lad from Havnor Great Port, whom I let in three years ago, and let out again last year, as you may recall.”
“Ivory! That fellow that studied with the Hand? Is he here?” the Changer demanded of Irian, wrathily. She stood straight and said nothing.
“Not in the School,” the Doorkeeper said, smiling.
“He fooled you, young woman. Made a fool of you by trying to make fools of us.”
“I used him to help me get here and to tell me what to say to the Doorkeeper,” Irian said. “I’m not here to fool anybody, but to learn what I need to know.”
“I’ve often wondered why I let the boy in,” said the Doorkeeper. “Now I begin to understand,”
At that the Changer looked at him, and after pondering said soberly, “Doorkeeper, what have you in mind?”
“I think Irian of Way may have come to us seeking not only what she needs to know, but also what we need to know.” The Doorkeeper’s tone was equally sober, and his smile was gone. “I think this may be a matter for talk among the nine of us.”
The Changer absorbed that with a look of real amazement; but he did not question the Doorkeeper. He said only, “But not among the students.”
The Doorkeeper shook his head, agreeing.
“She can lodge in the town,” the Changer said, with some relief.
“While we talk behind her back?”
“You won’t bring her into the Council Room?” the Changer said in disbelief.
“The Archmage brought the boy Arren there.”
“But – but Arren was King Lebannen -“
“And who is Irian?”
The Changer stood silent, and then he said quietly, with respect, “My friend, what is it you think to do, to learn? What is she, that you ask this for her?”
“Who are we,” said the Doorkeeper, “that we refuse her without knowing what she is?”
“A woman,” said the Master Summoner.
Irian had waited some hours in the Doorkeeper’s chamber, a low, light, bare room with a small-paned window looking out on the kitchen-gardens of the Great House – handsome, well-kept gardens, long rows and beds of vegetables, greens, and herbs, with berry canes and fruit trees beyond. She saw a burly, dark-skinned man and two boys come out and weed one of the vegetable plots. It eased her mind to watch their careful work. She wished she could help them at it. The waiting and the strangeness were very difficult. Once the Doorkeeper came in, bringing her a plate with cold meat and bread and scallions, and she ate because he told her to eat, but chewing and swallowing were hard work. The gardeners went away and there was nothing to watch out the window but the cabbages growing and the sparrows hopping, and now and then a hawk far up in the sky, and the wind moving softly in the tops of tall trees, on beyond the gardens.
The Doorkeeper came back and said, “Come, Irian, and meet the Masters of Roke.” Her heart began to go at a carthorse gallop. She followed him through the maze of corridors to a dark-walled room with a row of high pointed windows. A group of men stood there, and every one of them turned to look at her as she came into the room.
“Irian of Way, my lords,” said the Doorkeeper. They were all silent. He motioned her to come farther into the room. “The Master Changer you have met,” he said. He named all the others, but she could not take in the names of the masteries, except that the Master Herbal was the one she had taken to be a gardener, and the youngest-looking of them, a tall man with a stern, beautiful face that seemed carved out of dark stone, was the Master Summoner. It was he who spoke, when the Doorkeeper was done. “A woman,” he said.