The Gate of Ivory

by Doris Egan

"Curran Lor—the Old Man. The Old Man of the Island."

  The smiles broke wide. "Yes, of course," said the first man, relieved I spoke the language after all. They directed me over the hill and down to the island settlement. I thanked them and they bowed and hurried off to the boat, talking excitedly to each other about this encounter with the cosmopolitan.

  I couldn't have missed it anyway. There were over a dozen cabins in this settlement, with wells, livestock, dogs, and children. Everybody knew the Old Man; they were thrilled to show off their knowledge to an outlander. An old porch with peeling paint and soft floorboards led up to the door of the cabin. Wooden wind chimes hung from a string above the doorpost.

  I knocked. "Gracious sir?" I called. He might be hard of hearing.

  He opened the door slowly. He was indeed very old, and pale-skinned. He was stocky, with alert black eyes, totally bald, and wearing a thick green robe with an orange undertunic. And he was short! He wasn't much taller than I was. "Curran Lormer?" I asked.

  "Yes. And you are the little tinaje artist?"

  Little, indeed—that was nice, coming from him.

  "Coral Passuran," I agreed. So our relationship began with a lie. However, at the time, I thought I was the one who was lying.

  He was a restful person to do tinaje for. He knew exactly what he wanted and needed, having dealt with Vale for at least ten years, and was willing to direct me when I asked for it. He was very tolerant. Looking back on how little I knew at that time, I realize that he must have been. He told me that he was in the last stages of hemgee poisoning, given him by an old enemy many years ago. He kept it at bay through herbal treatments and touch healing, but it was gradually winning.

  "So my fire lines need especial attention, little one," he told me from the mat on the floor.

  Poor man, I could see why he chose tinaje rather than the other arts. For all he looked so stocky and vigorous, I could barely lean against him without feeling the delicacy of his bones and seeing him wince. His skin had the texture I came to associate with the very old, at least on this planet; it was gray-looking in the cabin, under the two candles that were our only light source.

  "Where are you from, little one?" he asked.

  I pulled his pendant out of the way. "Here and there," I said. I didn't like the idea of putting this much force on his body. Vale had taught me to lean over and let my weight to do the work, and not be afraid… but he also said that every case was different. Well, this was my decision then: I put one foot on the floor in a genuflection position, and rested some of my body weight on my own knee.

  He didn't seem in as much pain after that. "Do they do tinaje differently in the land of Here and There?" he asked.

  "Oh, much the same." I worked down the dorsal fire lines. "How could it dare be different, when Ivory is the center of the universe, and Teshin the center of Ivory?"

  There was a rumble in his body, like a subdued chuckle. "You're not content in the provinces, are you?"

  I grunted. An honest answer to that would be insulting. I said, to change the subject, "Do you know any stories?"

  And he told me a story, and because it will tell you a little about how Ivorans regard the hill-healers, I will repeat it here.

  The Tale of Two Families

  There once was a healer named Old Kenthik, and he was a member of the family Solovay. They were enemies with a family named Davis, a very old and respected family indeed, who lived just next door. The Solovay men came to the Davis house and said that they wanted to make peace, because they all lived in a town on the coast (but bigger than Teshin) and wanted to combine their shipping line with the Davis one. So they agreed to pay the Davises a face-price of two hundred bolts of silk and eighty oil-jars. After the Davises collected the payment, they called peace and invited the Solovays to a feast. All the important Solovay men came to the feast, including Old Kenthik, who was invited down from the hills. After the first course was served, Old Kenthik became ill and vomited on the floor, which was embarrassing because they had an Andulsine carpet of intricate design in the banquet hall. So he apologized and went out to be sick in the garden. But one of the Solovay women was walking in the garden next door, and she looked over the wall because she was curious about what was going on at this party she hadn't been invited to. And she saw Old Kenthik being sick under the rose bushes. And she said to herself, Old Kenthik's done The River every day of his life for the last fifty years, and his body is a friend of his. So she sent a note over to her young husband that said, "Husband, you've been poisoned." And her husband went carefully around to his relatives and told them so. One by one they excused themselves for some air, and went into the garden and made themselves vomit out the poison, and the young wife passed their knives and short swords to them over the wall. And when each one came back to the party he was armed. Then the young husband gave the signal, and they fell on their hosts and killed them, and set fire to their house. When the neighbors heard the noise, they came to investigate, but seeing the bloody weapons in the hands of the men, they were too timid to say anything. And the men said, "Go back to your homes, good neighbors. This is not because of anything you've done, and it's not because we're angry with you. It's just one of those things that happen because we are in this world."

  "Well," I said to the Old Man, "that's a good story. I'll write it down when I get back to Teshin."

  "It's not the real ending," he said. "The real ending's that the Imperial Police used to collect bribes from the Davises every week, and they resented the Solovay family for what they'd done. So every male in the family cleared out of town overnight and ran off to the Northwest Sector.''

  "Northwest Sector… say, do you know any Annu-rian stories?"

  "Dull stuff," he said, and then he said "ahh," because I was going to work on his feet.

  "I like them," I said, disappointed.

  "I like true stories… I'll bet you have a story," he said. He grinned and wiggled his toes.

  I gave the soles of his feet a gentle slap. "Dull stuff," I said.

  "Dull," he repeated lightly. "You know, that's why I like the provinces. Someday when you're old and white-haired, you'll be glad for a place where nothing happens."

  When the session was over, I thanked him as was customary for being so good as to trust me and took the sunset ferry back to Teshin.

  "Name," Vale would say to me these days, as he demonstrated a certain point on the tolerant corpse of Pyre. "Soft Rain," I would say. "Line," Vale then said. "Earth," I replied. "Organ," said Vale. "Liver," said I. "Poisons which affect," said Vale. "Hethra, genroot, tiril… that's all I can think of."

  "Treatments," snapped Vale, who didn't like to see hesitation. "Liquids. Red tah and crushed tannis seeds. No purgatives." Then he would either make me do it all again, while I wondered what I'd missed, or he'd move to the next point and say: "Name."

  We did anatomy at the same time, which at least I understood. Vale would have me count down the ribs and show what point was at what intercostal space, where the pericardium was, what to look for where the rib cage ended. By now I firmly grasped the fact that I'd gotten into a lot more than I'd bargained for when I decided to study with Vale. Before this I had never considered the knowledge of five hundred kinds of poisons and the proper treatment of stab wounds to be part of general health maintenance, whereas in Vale's mind it seemed to be what every young girl should know.

  It was a relief to have the stories to look forward to. The clients always offered to leave me money, which I had to refuse, and I often said, "But if you have a story to tell, I'd like to hear it." Vale didn't mind, because he got to listen. There's nothing an Ivoran likes more than a story, and the blank pages in my notebook were growing few. I was beginning to think: This could get you a doctorate back on Athena… there's no point in thinking of your years here as wasted.

  As for Ran: I saw no difference, but Vale told me to keep close to him at all times. He was heading for some kind of crisis, and it was important—so Vale sai
d—that he come out of it in as gentle a fashion as possible. So I even took Ran with me on the ferry to Kado Island once a week, and let him sit on the porch while I did tinaje for the Old Man.

  It was very late in the winter on one of my weekly visits, when I stood on the dock and saw the two gray-haired polite men who'd directed me to the cabin on my first trip. They were making their usual way down the steps, trousers flapping back from their legs, smiles for me and Ran as they passed. They had to wait for one of the ferrymen to do something with the plank, and as they hung back one of them approached me. "You know," he said confidentially, "he's Annurian."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Our Old Man," he said, with the same insane smile. "He's Annurian."

  "Vathcar Annurian?" I said, for lack of anything else.

  He nodded. "He thinks we don't know. But everybody knows."

  "Annurian is a historical figure," I said, although actually I wasn't sure. Maybe he was a legendary figure. But in any case, he certainly lived a long time ago.

  "He is, of course, historical. He retired thirty years ago. It was thirty years, was it not?" He appealed to his companion, who nodded.

  Seth had never actually told me when his stories were supposed to have taken place. I'd only assumed it was a thousand years ago.

  "It is, of course, an honor," said the other man, and they both hurried onto the boat. I wasn't sure what was an honor, talking to me or harboring a famous fugitive on their little island.

  If he was, technically, a fugitive. Annurian: The leader of a raider band in the Northwest Sector that drove the Emperor crazy for years. That was the time that most of the stories were set in, the outlaw years. Later he was captured and sentenced to the Imperial Army. He worked his way through the ranks and, very likely, arrested many former colleagues; ending as Chief General and later Prime Minister. It was a Cinderella story, bloody but Ivoran.

  "Gracious lady!" called a voice.

  I turned. A few feet away, over the water, the man I'd just spoken to called, "Don't mention it, gracious lady! I don't think the new Emperor likes him."

  * * *

  intuition develops between people who work on tinaje together? I felt what you were thinking then, like a cold gust of wind."

  "What I think is dull stuff," I said carefully.

  He said, "You're a novice. It takes years to learn the craft, but you show promise or I would have sent you back to Vale. Let's not cut your career short, you and I, with a misunderstanding."

  By all means, let us not.

  He went on. "I'm an old man, the oldest man on Kado Island. But I sleep with a knife under my mat, and a short sword over the door post, and if you think you could get to either of them faster than I could, I can only say— you're wrong."

  "I see."

  The neck muscles under my hands were very tight. I wondered what would happen if I closed my fist around his throat. The outcome looked uncertain; he was old, but I was a feeble barbarian. "So the question is, my friend, are you going to go back to the capital and tell anyone where I am?''

  "Would you kill me if I said that I would?"

  "Most certainly."

  "In that case," I said, "I won't mention it."

  The neck muscles relaxed, and he laughed. "Oh, my dear barbarian. If we can't trust someone who's done tinaje with us through the whole cold winter, whom can we trust?"

  I made the ferry crossing in a daze. When we docked, I took Ran with me to the market to pick up some supper, and that's when I got my third shock of the day.

  We were walking down the narrow street that ran behind the village hall when I heard voices justaround the corner. There was something both out-of-place and familiar about them. I frowned, feeling there was something about these particular voices it was important I should know; then I got it, just as they came round the bend and we were face-to-face with a dozen tourists. Of course they had to be tourists; they were speaking Stan-dard with Athenan accents! They ranged in age from about eighteen to sixty, wearing Athenan clothing with the occasional robe thrown over their thermal suits, and they were talking the sort of nonstop, interested, meaningless jabber that made me homesick. What could they possibly be doing in a backwater town like Teshin?

  By the looks of things they wondered the same about me. A couple of them caught sight of me and halted their arguing colleagues, mostly by pulling forcibly on their clothing, and we stared at each other. "Hello," I said, in Standard.

  "Hello," said the youngest, a girl—probably a first year student. Very likely these were her topic relations, and a wealthy group they must be, to afford the Grand Tour. But then, the retirement-age adults outnumbered the younger ones. I'd planned on saving up myself, and taking the sector round to Ivory and Tellys when I was retired; I was willing to save the money and skip Pyrene, the usual third point on the tours.

  So here we were. About half the group didn't want to give up their argument, something about provincial art forms, but the other half clustered around me. "Are you Athenan?" asked the girl. She sounded uncertain.

  "Legends and Folk Literature," I said, extending a hand.

  "You must talk to Clement. He's Cross-Cultural Myths," she said. "I'm Annamarie, and I haven't decided yet."

  "We're on a tour of the provinces," put in a boy who looked not too much older than Annamarie. "Clement wants to study the mental structure of the provincials."

  "Oh, does he?" I said.

  "Their world-view, you know. It's what he's famous for."

  Annamarie said, "We're very lucky to have the opportunity of traveling with him."

  "Who's your friend?" asked the boy, nodding to Ran.

  Meanwhile the man Annamarie had gestured toward when she said "Clement" was raising his voice to his companion.

  "Let's face facts, Tom," he was saying. "Our hosts in the capital are one thing, particularly the aristocrats. Abysmally ignorant, of course, but that's hardly their fault. They know how to behave, at least. But we're among primitive people here—you can't expect sophisticated visual expression from them. Of course the murals in the hall are representational. Do you think they've heard of Kohler dual-effect abstractionism here? Maybe we should ask one of them. How about that young savage over here?"

  He was clearly referring to Ran.

  I said to the boy with Annamarie, "He's my guide." Meanwhile I wondered how "Clement" would look staked out on the shore during high tide, when the clickers come out of the water looking for food.

  "Oh," said the boy.

  Annamarie said, "But listen, this is wonderful! Who would think we'd meet someone from home out here in the middle of nowhere? You must come and have dinner with us—we'll be here for three days, you could come any night."

  "Where are you staying?" I asked, knowing very well there was no inn in the village.

  "We've a boat docked on the bay side of the harbor. It's a wonderful thing, we rented it in the capital. It's got cabins and a kitchen and a big dining room, and it's all luxurious,'' she said in happy awe. With reason, things tend to be a bit more functional back in the schoolroom.

  "Clement, really," said his debating partner, "You tell me these things as though you're teaching me something new. I don't expect children to fly. But many of the people here have quite modern minds. Look at the trade suggestion put forth by that fellow in the city—I forget his name, the head of Cormallon."

  I felt Ran stiffen beside me.

  The man went on, "Quite a sophisticated plan. If we got together privately, I think we could pry a few new designs out of Tellys before they got wise to us and cried monopoly. He's right, these things shouldn't be in the hands of governments; governments can't keep secrets, it's not in their nature. And my department could surely use that new scanner system."

  "If you say so," said Clement tolerantly. "I stay away from technology, it's not my field. I'll give you this, though, Eln Cormallon puts on one colossus of a welcome party. My insides are still quivering. I'm just not sure," he said, lowering his v
oice, "that we should have brought the youngsters."

  Ran was walking quickly up the street. I started after him.

  "Wait a minute, friend!" called Annamarie. "Will you come to dinner?''

  "Tomorrow," I said.

  "We don't know your name!"

  "Coral Passuran," I called, without stopping to think.

  Ran was sitting on the bed at Mullet's, muttering. "Eln," he said. "I knew it was Eln. It had to be. I knew it all along."

  I was alarmed. Vale had told me specifically that when Ran came out of it, it should be in "an atmosphere of gentle reassurance." This did not seem to fit that description… if he was normalizing at all, which was still uncertain.

  "Ran? Do you know where you are?"

  He looked up irritably. "Mullet's house, in Teshin, a long way away from where we ought to be. You know Eln is behind all this, don't you? I don't know about Kylla."

  "Uh, are you aware of how things have been for the last few months? You remember?"

  "Naturally." He emptied my pack on the bed. "We'd better start getting ready to move. There's a lot to be done… the important thing is not to trust anybody."

  He was scary this way. When an Ivoran closes down that circle of trust to exclude his family, it gets awfully confining.

  He said. "Take out the cards."

  "I haven't been able to get anything from them. I haven't run them in ages."

  "They'll work now," he said.

  I started to take them out, then stopped. "Look, can we wait a little while on this? It's just… they make me nervous right now."

  He was alert. "Nervous how?"

  "You make me nervous, too."

  He relaxed. "Just the jitters. No wonder you're scret-chy. Never mind, we've waited this long. Where are your weapons, anyway? They're not in the pack."

  I said, "Well, I've got a knife. And there's a hotpencil I stuck under the mat, but it de-energized on the way here."

  "Contact weapons," he said with scorn. "I'm talking about the real thing—the Issin people confiscated my pistols."

  "I never had a pistol. They're expensive."