The Gate of Ivory

by Doris Egan

  We spent a couple of days in the capital waiting on the ship's schedule; and I used the time to ask a favor of my old market-mate, Irsa. She approached a couple of the illegal market bankers on my behalf, and we discovered that the ones who'd claimed they had to charge interest on handling my savings were taking advantage of a foreigner. They made profits on that money, illegal or not, and they were supposed to pay interest. I gave Irsa a split on my last week's pay, most joyfully, and made the necessary arrangements. By the time I boarded ship for Issin I'd made three payments into the account.

  Issin is a good way down the continent, three days for a little freighter like the Summer Ice. Autumn was coming on, the captain pointed out, and we'd have slow going down Issin-way, watching out for the first ice. We had a good cabin, he said, and it was true. Of course it was the only passenger cabin on the ship.

  I slung my pack under the narrow bunk and said to Ran, "Which of us gets the floor?"

  "You do," he said.

  "I was thinking we would match for it."

  "I was thinking I'm senior to you."

  "I was thinking how I hate rolling over onto the cards in the middle of the night. With a mattress it's not so bad…"

  "All right, all right." He threw some of the blankets on the floor. I bent over the bunk to hide my grin and offered thanks to Grandmother Cormallon. Ran hated to be reminded of my nonexpendability.

  I did the cards that night; again they were unhelpful and I was left wondering if I were reading things into them. There was no clear sense of what was coming from them and what was born of my frustrated imagination. I joined Ran on deck afterward.

  It was a cool night. Moonlight spilled in twin trenches over the water. I looked blankly up at constellations I didn't recognize; usually I saw that I was safe indoors after sundown.

  "Where's your coat?" asked Ran.

  "I left it on the bunk."

  "You should be wearing it."

  "You hate that coat," I pointed out.

  "It's a secondhand disgrace," he said, "and unfitting for a member of our house. You ought to have gotten a new one when we were in the capital."

  I shrugged. It was only cold for a few weeks anyway in the capital. "New coats cost too much. This one's cheap."

  "And I assume it's warm. You should go down and put it on."

  I decided to get him off the subject. "Ran, when you were at Cormallon, did you get the feeling everything was not quite right there?"

  "Grandmother's ill. The house routine was thrown off. Is that what you mean?"

  «. THE GATE OF IVORY HI

  "I don't think so. Or maybe it is, I don't know."

  "I was only there for a couple of days."

  "And I was there for a month, and I still don't know what I'm talking about." I shivered. "You should—" he began.

  "I know," I said. "I only planned on staying here for a minute. I'm going to bed, don't wake me up when you come in." And I went down to the cabin. A long time later it occurred to me that I was nervous about Cormal-lon because it had come to represent, for me as well as Ran, a safe haven in a paranoid universe. The thought was upsetting when it came; I didn't want to rely on anything Ivoran.

  We came into Issin harbor on early morning of the third day. Not a sign of ice anywhere, and I was beginning to think that the captain had ice on the brain. It was autumn, after all, even if we were pretty far south. It was go-through-your-bones chilly, though, and I wore my old blue coat on deck, wrapping the straps of my pack over the thick shoulders. Underneath it I wore a long wool robe, and underneath that a thin silk one.

  Ran was already at the rail, looking over the harbor. "Not a land of excitement," I said as I joined him. A half-circle of rippling gray water, old wooden boats bobbing at their moorings, and maybe twenty or thirty stone houses on the hills around the bay.

  "Every house there belongs to Cormallon," he replied. "And they do their share. You wouldn't think they could, just from fishing, but every year they send money into the treasury instead of taking it out. I only wish some of the flashier branches could do as well."

  Hooray for them, I thought, and was immediately ashamed. This wasn't the most hospitable spot I'd ever seen. If they could wrench a good living from it, they were doing better than I'd been doing before I hooked up with Ran. I said, "Why do they call this ship the Summer Ice, anyway? It's a cold autumn, and I still haven't seen any ice."

  "The captain and crew are Andulsine. It's summer up there when it's winter down here. That's where their regular route starts—comes by way of the capital, by Sebral, and down to Issin. I guess it's sort of a message to their Andulsine customers about their route. Anyway, even if they weren't from above the equator… icebergs have crumpled up a few ships in these waters even at high summer. Oar high summer."

  I was glad I hadn't known.

  Ran looked toward the shore. "Our welcome," he said.

  A rowboat was heading out to us. A man and a woman sat in it. The man had his back to me but I could see the woman's scarf blowing on the wind, rippling above the ripples on the bay. They both wore scarves wrapped around their heads, covering their ears, with green caps pulled over the scarves. At last the boat bumped against side of the Summer Ice. "Sir?" the man called up.

  "Ran Cormallon," said Ran, as though answering a challenge. He added, one hand on my shoulder, "Theodora Cormallon."

  "Welcome," called the woman. She looked up with a red and wrinkled face.

  "Welcome, and come down," echoed the man. Ran glanced over at the captain, who motioned to have the ladder lowered. It was a rope affair, not at all like the elegant way we walked on board from the pier in the capital. I hitched the ends of my robes into my belt and felt them balloon out as the wind bit my legs, and tried not to picture what the Cormallon representatives below thought of the figure I must cut. Still, I had no intention of taking a tumble in that cold gray water for the sake of decorum.

  They said nothing about it, though, as they helped me in. I noticed as I sat down that they both wor.e trousers.

  "Beth and Kara, happy by your presence. It's a fine time for you to honor us," said the man. He was solidly built, on the late side of middle age, and his face was as ruddy as the woman's. He smiled at me as he said, "Luck for us all, the timing. We've a wedding at the house."

  "My son," said the woman, Beth.

  "Fine food and drink in plenty," said Karn.

  "We only hope you remember all the words of the service," said Beth, and they both laughed.

  Ran looked taken aback. "… Service?" he said, in a voice that was the pattern of noncommittance.

  Beth and Karn exchanged glances. Some of the light left their faces. "We assumed," said Beth, "that as first in the family you would do the ritual yourself."

  They looked at him warily, like children waiting to be told there would be no birthday gifts this year.

  "Well, of course," said Ran.

  "That goes without saying," I agreed, and though Ran's eyes flicked past me he gave no other sign.

  "Is it today?" he asked.

  "This afternoon," said Beth. "When we heard you were coming, we postponed it."

  "I'm honored," he said, as gracefully as possible.

  The wedding proper took place in a long, low stone hall attached to Karn's house. The bride and groom seemed about twenty years old; they both wore long red silk tunics with woven belts, and looked shy and silly. Everyone present was dressed up. I hoped I wasn't disgracing Ran with my own clothes, but probably not; the outer robe was from Kylla, and I had great faith in her judgment.

  In some ways it was more like a night club than a wedding. I sat at a round table with half a dozen strangers, and the half of the table not facing the couple had to crane their necks for the service. The hall was filled with similar tables. Not that anyone had to crane for long; whatever Ran was mumbling over the bride and groom only lasted about a minute, the two exchanged their bluestone pendants, and everyone sat down for the main event, which seemed to
mean: food. And there was food. One course after another of the most amazing, wondrous, deliciously prepared food it has ever been my privilege to partake. I didn't know what any of it was, and I gave up trying to ask and remember all the names of the dishes. Where had they been hiding this stuff while

  I was in the capital? I sat in a glow of calories and thought how mad I must be to consider leaving this fine planet.

  Ran had to sit at the bride and groom's table, but I was in an expansive mood after the first two courses, and more than willing to try small talk with the people on either side of me. The girl on my left was Cara, the bride's cousin, and she told -me that the exchange of pendants was temporary and took place so that "there would always be a little of them mixed together," come what may. That seemed a bit messy, I thought, considering that (for all I knew) they might not even be acquainted yet.

  The boy on my right was more interesting. He was eighteen, and a medical student. Medical studies on Ivory cover a wide range, depending on where you do the learning; and since about half of it was secondhand knowledge from Tellys and the other half from a tradition of folklore, magic, and consmanship, it made for a fascinating topic. He held forth for quite a while, until I interrupted him by dropping the latest small dish of delicacies I'd been handed.

  I'd been staring down at the dish, wondering if I were imagining the eyes I thought I saw there… not to mention the… beaks?

  "Those are heads," I said to him.

  "Yes," he said.

  "Those are birds' heads," I said.

  "Yes," he said again, and taking the one I held frozen in a pair of tongs away from me, he proceeded to pull the skin off the top of the skull. Then he pointed to the quartered brains inside and began explaining some neurological experiments he had been performing recently. Afterward he popped the brain into his mouth and smiled happily.

  "They've done some excellent food, haven't they?" he said. "I came all the way from South Port when I heard they were planning to use the traditional dishes."

  "Yes, I can see why you would." I hoped I hadn't eaten anything too strange underneath all the sauces. Perhaps I shouldn't get a list of the ingredients after all.

  After a good deal more wine and more courses than I thought possible, the party started to break up. I parted amicably from my dinner partners and went to join the line of people waiting for their coats. Ran found me there. "We're to stay the night at Beth's house," he said.

  "Yes, I know."

  When the line reached me, Ran took my tattered and disgraceful blue coat and held it for me to get into. It was a gesture no one else on the line had yet made. He held it, I thought, no differently than if it had been the most expensive tanil-lined fur available in the Imperial stores. As I turned to put my arms in it, I saw the face of the woman behind me. Her eyes widened and she seemed impressed. Her glance flickered toward her own escort, a short, balding man who was looking at his watch. As I turned back to Ran, from the corner of my eye I saw her elbow jab out viciously, though not lethally, into her escort's side. "Hey!" he said suddenly. Ran and I headed toward the door. "What was that all about?" the short man went on. The door closed before I heard her answer.

  The next day was clear and bright. Ran borrowed a landcar for us, the ferocious, hill-climbing, snow-ignoring, rock-crumbling kind they use around Issin. A closed car with internal environment—they like having that kind of option at Issin, too. We headed west toward the hills. Not many villages out there, the Issin people said, and what there were were definitely provincial. Ran let that pass, since in the capital Issin would be provincial.

  It was dull. Two days' ride into the real hills, nibbling packed food and water and exchanging conversation about the environment, mostly on the order of "should we stop and ask questions at this village" and arguments over which direction we should be taking. The hills were pretty much dirt and grass, the sky was uniformly gray, and the occasional sheep herds only served to remind me how far off the beaten track I was. I entirely reversed my pleasure-induced estimate of Ivory made at the wedding banquet. This place was provincial. I passed the time recalculating the interest I should be earning on the last payment I made to my nonNet banker.

  Some of these villages didn't even have names; they were just six or seven houses clustered together. We had reached the foothills of the Skytop Mountains when a local informant told us he had indeed heard of the village we were seeking, and we were on the right track. Just keep going up, he pointed; and the looming range of mountains shivered in the heat from the car's system.

  Well, there was a pass, more or less, where he was pointing, and we could take the car most of the way. "Most of the way?" I asked Ran. He got that grim look I was beginning to know, and we climbed back into the car without further discussion. Anyway, it wasn't as if I had other plans.

  So we walked into Pina's village. It really was Pina's village, too, and one could see why she'd been in no hurry to return to it. In fact, I began to seriously think that she probably hadn't. Sod huts and a lot of clotheslines seemed to make up the main portion of the place. We walked past rows of damp, flapping laundry, while a gaunt woman with a sheet in her hand turned her fixed, unhappy gaze from the clothes to us. "I'd look unhappy too," I said to Ran, my hands in my coat pockets. Her hands were red and worn-looking. "Can we leave her a pair of gloves?"

  His mind wasn't on secondary considerations. "If this isn't the right place," he muttered, as though it were a complete sentence. Thematically, it was.

  There was a group of men in open fur jackets sitting by a fire. They were playing a game with tablets. "We're looking for Pina," said Ran, into the silence our appearance brought.

  "I'm Pina," said a man's voice. He came out of a nearby hut, stooping to get through the door. About fifty to sixty years old, stocky, with a huge knife stuck through his belt. There was fresh blood on his hands. "Beg your pardon, gracious lady," he said, seeing my glance. "I was skinning a jack." He looked to the men at the game and back to us. "Can I offer you mountain tea? We haven't got any tah, it's hard to come by here, strangers prefer it, I know."

  "Excuse me," said Ran, "You're Pina?"

  "Tregorian Pina, headman of this village."

  Ran and I looked at each other. Was this whole thing a mistake? I said, "We're trying to find a woman named Pina. About twenty-five, dark hair—" of course she has dark hair, you idiot, I thought, and went on desperately, "she worked as a sorcerer in the capital for a while—"

  "My daughter, you mean."

  I hoped very much we meant it. I found myself smiling at the man and he returned the smile.

  "You're too late, gracious lady. I welcome you if you're friends of my daughter's, but you've made your trip for nothing, and I must tell you unhappy news. My daughter Katherine died last summer."

  The silence seemed to lengthen, and I found that I was uncomfortable and even a little embarrassed. I was ready to leave immediately, but I'd forgotten that Ran never took anybody's word for anything.

  "Last summer?" said Ran. "She was not home long, then. It's a pity, since we came all the way from Issin to offer her a contract. We'd heard that there was a sorcerer from the capital here, and thought it would be better to deal with her than with the local talent. Local Issin talent, I mean."

  "Yes, I understand she had a fine reputation. I know very little of the trade, myself. I'm sorry you came all this way for nothing, are you sure you wouldn't like some tea?"

  "What did she die of?" Ran went on.

  There was a long silence. One of the players by the fire grunted. Tregorian Pina said, "It was very quick. Merciful for us all that way. If you don't want to stay—"

  "Tell him," said one of the players.

  "That's right," said another. "Tell him what your fine daughter who was too good for her village did."

  "Tell him," said a third.

  The headman's face screwed up. "She was very un-happy. She never thought she was too good for the village, I swear she didn't. She was just unhappy."<
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  "When she came back she talked different," said the first player.

  "Had clothes that wouldn't last a season."

  "Did you see her shoes? Made of paper, I swear to you."

  "Didn't want to do real work."

  "Enough!" roared Tregorian Pina. The comments cut short. He glared at them until they sullenly returned, or pretended to return, to the game. "She hanged herself," he said to us. He looked down at his bloody hands. "I've got to get back to work," he whispered. He turned and went back to the hut.

  Ran and I stood there for a minute. Then we started the long walk to the car.

  It was much longer going back. "When you interfere in someone's life, you have to expect the consequences," Ran had told me a long time ago in connection with this same Katherine Pina. Maybe he was thinking it over in those terms. Or maybe not; maybe he thought that she'd started this chain of events and it was up to her to take care of herself. I can only speculate because we did not talk about it at all on the way back to Issin. Nor did we ever talk about it.

  When I wasn't thinking about Pina, I was thinking what a relief it would be to get out of that whole part of the world and offering thanks that we would be back in the capital in a few days' time.

  As it turned out I was wrong about that, too.

  A siren started to wail as we came in sight of the Issin buildings. Our car rolled onto the dirt road that led to the pond just west of town. As we took the road'east, men and women spilled out and lined up just outside the circle of houses. They stood in a knot on the road, about a dozen of them. A good portion, I noted, were tall and male.

  I said, "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

  Ran did not dignify this observation with an answer.

  I said, "I mean, this isn't some quaint custom I haven't heard of… is it?"