by Doris Egan
"No, do you?"
We sat in the grass under the trees. The wind shook the branches, and I wrapped the coat around me tighter. Luckily it was warm for the time of year, and the wind wasn't the enemy it would become in a month.
"I know lots of stories," he said. "I thought you'd have a new one. Being an outlander."
"Well, I can't think of any right now. You tell me one."
I said it because I wanted to think, but he went ahead and told a wonderful, harrowing, magical story about Kata the Mother of Soldiers and the evil Emperor of the tenth dynasty. I wished I had a notebook with me. From time to time I looked back at the hut where a suspicious-looking green glow seeped through the door frame.
"He'll be all right," said Seth once, interrupting the fight between the Clay Soldiers and the Emperor's griffin.
"I hope so."
"Vale's the best, everybody says. He's been here as far back as I can remember.''
Seth was maybe all of ten. "Don't stop the story," I said.
He finished the story, and I applauded and stamped one foot against the side of the hill. Seth ducked his head. "You're a prince of storytellers," I told him.
"Don't make fun," he said.
The door to the hut opened. "Come in," said Vale.
We went inside. Ran was sitting by the hearth, the striped cat leaning against him.
"I don't know," said Vale. "I'm sorry to give you an answer like this. I do know that it will take time."
"What's wrong with him?" For the first time I felt ready to cry.
"Shock, as you said. But that was just the stimulus. His life-force has been blocked."
" 'Life-force'—oh, really, what garbage! I didn't come out here and sit on your damned hill to hear about kanz like a life-force. I thought you could help." I grabbed Ran's hand and pulled him up. "Come on, Seth."
Vale stepped in front of the door. "Listen to me. He's a sorcerer. He draws on magic for his energy. Now he can no longer touch that source of power.''
I said, "Get out of the way."
"Think a minute. I haven't even mentioned a fee yet, have I? Do I have something to gain by lying to you?" He said, in despair, "What is it about you foreigners that you can't see magic when it's in front of you?"
That made me pause. I remembered the jokes my Ath-enan friends and I had made about magic on the liner voyage out. My judgment of the situation had changed a great deal since then. I'd had to accept the reality of a lot of things I hadn't quite approved of… was I going to maybe wreck Ran's last chance because I didn't like the way Vale talked?
Then it hit me. Blocked. Ran's source of magic was blocked—and it was really Ran's ability to read cards that I used for his benefit, thanks to the curse. Except that I hadn't been able to read the cards for months.
Vale was watching me. He stepped away from the door. "I can help him," he said, "maybe."
"What do you want to do?" I asked.
"Bring him here every day. I'll work to wear away the blockage—it has to be done little by little, and he has to help me."
"He can't even help himself. He's been like this for months, he doesn't care what happens to him. I could have left him in the woods and he wouldn't have lifted a finger to stop me." What's more, he seemed supremely uninterested in this conversation now.
"Oh, he's not quite as na' telleth as all that." Vale smiled. "He cared enough to call you a name. And you cared enough to remain hurt by it for months."
I could really learn to dislike Vale.
"Need another cup of tah?" he asked pointedly.
"All right, you win. I'll bring him back tomorrow evening."
"Morning," said Vale. "Drop him off on your way to work." And as I left the hut with Seth and Ran, he added, "And if you experience any abdominal pains connected with your new job, see me immediately."
I hadn't mentioned my work. Apparently even the recluse outside of town knew what the tymon was doing.
Winter on Ivory is officially equal to five standard months. Which is really just saying that five standard months is equal to one-quarter of the Ivoran year. In real life, winter defines itself, and along the southern coast it blows in fiercely and stays for half a standard year, at the very least. I was glad to have settled in Teshin before it came in earnest.
I dropped off Ran every morning and went by after work to pick him up again, jingling my seven bakras all the way. (Seven bakras minus two bakras a day for rent and one for food—since I got all the food I wanted on the job, I only needed to pay for Ran—left four bakras to accumulate under the loose floorboard in our room. Which came to a total of three tabals profit per week, not bad compared to the nothing we had before entering Teshin.) As I waited for Ran in the evenings, I saw that a number of villagers made their way to and from Vale's hut.
Most of them seemed pretty healthy. I passed Hall Master Peradon once on the way down the hill, and asked him about it. "Well, of course," he said, "you don't want to climb up this hill when you're sick, do you? The whole point is not to get sick."
I thought Peradon was the last visitor of the day, so I went right up to the door and knocked. Usually I respected Vale's wish not to be disturbed when he was with someone.
"A moment," called Vale. He opened the door. "Oh, it's you, tymon. You'll have to wait a bit, I'm with someone right now.''
Behind him, on the mat by the fire, I saw one of the young fishermen lying with his shirt off. His head was resting on his arms. As I stood there he turned his face to the door and called lazily, "Oh, she can wait in here if she's cold. I don't mind."
Vale bowed and motioned me inside. I sat down in a corner where Ran was waiting for me. The cat was in his lap.
Vale knelt down by the fisherman and placed his hand gently in the center of the man's back. Then he closed his eyes and breathed quietly. A moment later he knelt up higher, bent over the body on the mat, and began moving his hands down the sides of the back, a few inches from the spinal column. It was some form of massage. I watched the procedure for about forty minutes. He did the back, the legs, the rump, the feet; then rolled the man over and worked up from the feet to neck and face. He did not spare the area around the pelvis, which caused me to look away into the darkness of the hut for a few minutes and try to stop the redness I was sure was covering my cheeks. He worked cheerfully but quietly, and I didn't know what to think; it was by no means impersonal, but it wasn't sexual either. I wasn't used to seeing physical contact that didn't fit into one of those two baskets.
When he was finished, the man just lay there on the mat for a few minutes while Vale brewed tea. "Not tah," said Vale to me, when he offered me a cup, and the fisherman sat down beside us with his. "You shouldn't have tah just after a session. It overstimulates the system. And as for you, little tymon, you've drunk more tah in your time than is good for you—I can tell from the color of the whites of your eyes."
I peered into the shininess of my cup, trying to make out the whites of my eyes. As far as I could tell, they were fine. "That was interesting to watch," I said to Vale.
The fisherman—his name was Pyre, and I came to know him very well over the next few months—grinned at me and said, "Interesting to do, also."
I asked, "You really liked it?"
"Why would I come three, four times a week if it were boring?"
"Pyre is one of my more enthusiastic clients," said Vale. "But given the things he asks of his poor body, it's no wonder."
"I'm a chakon dancer," explained Pyre.
"I thought you were a fisherman."
"I'm a fisherman the way you're a poison-taster, tymon. It pays me through the winter." He finished his tea and poured another cup, topping mine off as he did so. Pyre was of middle height, brown-haired, and wiry-looking. It was only when his shirt was off, as it had been a few minutes ago, that you saw the well-defined muscles of his arms.
When he'd left, I said, thoughtfully to Vale: "I wish I could do something like that. It's a simple thing, but he left happier than h
e came in, I'll bet. And when it comes to really helping another person, it's usually a pretty hopeless task."
"You could do it if you wanted to."
"Ha."
Vale said, "Yes, it is a simple thing, and like many simple things it takes years to learn. But it's like The River that way; you can learn the basics quickly, and then you let your clients teach you. That part only takes a lifetime.'
"IVe got several months."
He laughed. "It will have to do, then," he said.
"Come on, Vale, don't sell me kanz instead of a calf. I'm clumsy, that's just the way I am. I accept it. I can do other things."
"You can do this thing, if you want to."
"I'd better be taking Ran home now," I said.
"Wait," said Vale, and he called out, "Ran, would you mind picking up the dishes and helping me carry them to the bucket?"
Ran got up, came over to the low table, and began lifting the cups. I stared. "… Ran?" I said, tentatively.
"Not yet," said Vale. "He's not all the way back yet. But he's watching. I think it does him good to be here when the different clients come. The fluctuations in the energy fields draw him out."
Vale would say things like that just when you thought he was beginning to make sense.
"Think about it," he said as we left. "I haven't had a student in two decades, and it would do some of my clients well to have a different touch."
"Different, yeah," I muttered, as I led Ran down the hill. He almost tripped over a groundhermit hole, and I said, "Fluctuations in the energy fields, my maiden aunt."
But in fact he did seem better, and could respond to simple requests although he still wouldn't initiate anything. I thought about that, and I thought about not living enough in my body, whatever that may mean, and decided that a course with Vale might be good for me. It's hard to explain; it's not that I was looking forward to it, it's not as though I thought I would enjoy it; it was more like going for a blood test because it's a necessary thing to do.
So I knocked on Vale's door a few days later and said, "Maybe I'm interested in learning from you after all. Let's talk about money, Vale."
He said, "Sir or Teacher, not Vale."
I said, "You like to keep your relationships clear on this planet, don't you?"
He smiled and gestured me inside.
Chapter Eleven
Money was, of course, the first concern. I found that Vale expected me to appear on his doorstep first thing in the morning, and work through the evening. "It's the only way," he said. "You told me that you have just a few months."
"It's the only way to starve," I said. "What am I supposed to do without the coin I get from the kitchens? And how am I supposed to pay you?"
"You can't afford me, so don't worry about it. When I see a penniless barbarian working her way up the coast in clothes like yours, I really don't expect her to meet my tuition."
I said, suspiciously, "So you're not charging me? This is free?"
"It is not. It's only deferred. When I see a penniless barbarian in the company of a high-level sorcerer—in clothes that must have cost him a great deal once—I suspect she may one day come into better fortune." He added, "Especially when the sorcerer is Ran Cormallon. I saw him in the capital once."
I stared.
"A most impressive young man. We'll speak no more about it, though. Here is your mat—you see I've gotten you your own, and I expect you to keep it clean."
"You never said anything."
"I had nothing to say. On the floor now, and I'll show you the proper beginning positions. Kneel down, back straight, weight even—"
I did so. By the time the day was over, my knees and arms and calves and buttocks all knew they had been through a great deal more than they had ever expected. I had also settled with Vale that he would pay four bakras a day to me to make up for my loss of income, at an interest rate of twenty percent, compounded weekly. He said it would be unethical for me to charge money to any of the clients I would be working on, since I was only an ignorant apprentice. I asked if twenty percent interest struck him as unethical, and he said no.
I ate, breathed, and slept work for the next few months. When I wasn't practicing at Vale's, I was studying body charts in the room at Mullet's. I had to give up The River in the morning, I was too exhausted; studying with Vale was more physically demanding than I'd dreamed, and a second workout on top of it was more than I could handle. But I learned what I set out to learn. I'd come to this place a well-trained scholar, with, as Vale later said, a soul that needed a good turning-out; and had spent my time studying the cruder arts of Ivory instead of the kind ones. I had barely noticed there were kind ones. And if I had, I wouldn't have expected them to be this complicated.
Tinaje was what I was studying; Vale gave me a choice from three forms of touch healing: Bratelle, Perthes, and Tinaje, in descending order of roughness. Tinaje was the gentlest. That other stuff hurt. "They're very popular," said Vale. "Not with me," I said.
So Vale let his clients know that he had a tinaje apprentice, should they want free sessions, and many of them did. The most accommodating was Pyre, who showed up every day, and sometimes twice a day.
As he lay there on his stomach, Vale would walk around me while I worked, pulling my legs back and tapping my back unexpectedly with just enough force to make me bend the way he wanted.
"That's better," he said.
"But this way all my body weight will be on him!"
"Exactly," he said.
I said to Pyre, "Doesn't it hurt?"
"Nooo," said Pyre smugly.
"You're a feeble little barbarian," said Vale. "He's a big healthy boy. Don't be so timid."
After Pyre had left, Vale got out his charts and lectured me on the incomprehensible nature of Ivoran energy-flow theories. As far as I could tell he considered the body as practically imaginary, a convenient peg for dealing with the actual human condition, which he called "energies in flux." ("We'll save the muscle groups and rib counts for later," he told me. "Were you Ivoran, I'd begin with those. But we start with the most alien system first.") I really didn't know how to accept this sort of thing, which seemed firmly grounded in folk-belief. But I decided that Vale was the Teacher, I was there to learn, and I'd make up my mind later when I'd gathered enough experience. Meanwhile, if it worked, it worked… an acceptance system which had weathered me safely through Ivoran thought to this point.
I sat there thinking despairing thoughts about the length of time it would take to learn these theories. Each chart was full of complex diagrams, and there were dozens of charts. I'd thought I was doing well to get the strokes and pressures down.
"All right, tymon, lie down," said Vale.
"What?"
"On the mat," he said patiently. "I'm going to demonstrate the fire lines and the major points. We'll do legs and back tonight."
"On me?" I lay down and pulled up my shirt. Mostly tinaje is done clothed, but the lower back is often bare-skin.
"Who else is here to demonstrate on? Besides, you look as though you haven't been touched very much."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"My, look at those back muscles tense up. Now: Fire line one, the Point of Gathered Thunder."
He did it, he said, a little deeper than was necessary, almost perthes rather than tinaje, and when I got up I could see why. I could still feel the pathway tingling down my back and legs. It would be hard to forget, at least for the rest of the night, and I could review the points on my way home. Or so he suggested.
But in fact on the way home I ran into Seth, who'd come up the hill earlier on an errand for Hall Manager Peradon, and I let him tell me another story about An-nurian the Outlaw and his band in the Northwest Sector. There seemed to be a lot of stories about Annurian, he was a popular legendary figure in the provinces. There were at least three Annurian tales in my new notebook (purchased for half a bakra after much soul-searching) and Seth said he knew dozens more. When I got back to Mullet
's rooms, I should have studied the tinaje points, but instead I scribbled down Seth's tale and then lay awake dreaming about an adventurous life in the Northwest Sector. But doubtless such are the dreams of all provincial apprentices.
It was a few weeks into my training when the unusual thing happened. Vale sent me to see a client of his who was too old to come to the hut himself. But he was a connoisseur and hard to please, said Vale, so I was to do my very best.
"Won't he mind taking tinaje from an apprentice?" I said.
"Not at all," said Vale, which surely had to be a lie.
So I found myself on the ferry that made the once-a-week crossing to Kado Island, in the middle of the bay, on my way to see Curran Lormer… which was his name, I found after much digging, although the only thing the villagers ever called him was the Old Man of Kado Island.
The ferry was an actual little steamer, down-at-the-heels and elderly, but still a cut above the boats Teshin usually used. There were about fifteen people on it besides myself. I hadn't expected so many would have business on the island, but there were twenty or thirty families living there, and I suppose many of them had weekly errands. The boat would make two trips back, one at noon and one at sunset, taking care of everyone, inbound to out and outbound to in. But if I missed the sunset run, I would be stuck for a week.
We docked in the little inlet at the foot of the hill. A long series of wooden steps led up the hill to the blue sky above, and that was all one could see of Kado Island. As I stood on the dock, I saw two men in fisherman's trousers and jackets making their way down the steps, the wind whipping the trousers against their legs, scarves tied around their caps to keep them on. As they came closer, I saw they were gray-haired, with wrinkled, leathery faces. They smiled and nodded to me in passing, and headed for the boat. "Excuse me!" I called. They turned and bowed, their hands stuffed in their jackets. "Can you tell me where to find Curran Lormer?"
They looked at each other. "I am sorry?" said one. They seemed polite but faintly off-balance, as though to say to each other, well, one can't expect a foreigner to make sense.