The Name of the Wind tkc-1

by Patrick Rothfuss

  “Try no tricks, dark one. Speak no lies,” Tehlu said sternly, his eyes as dark and hard as the iron of the wheel.

  “What then?” Encanis hissed, his voice like the rasp of stone on stone. “What? Rack and shatter you, what do you want of me?”

  “Your road is very short, Encanis. But you may still choose a side on which to travel.”

  Encanis laughed. “You will give me the same choice you give the cattle? Yes then, I will cross to your side of the path, I regret and rep—”

  The wheel rung again, like a great bell tolling long and deep. Encanis threw his body tight against the chains again and the sound of his scream shook the earth and shattered stones for half a mile in each direction.

  When the sounds of wheel and scream had faded, Encanis hung panting and shaking from his chains. “I told you to speak no lie, Encanis,” Tehlu said, pitiless.

  “My path then!” Encanis shrieked. “I do not regret! If I had my choice again, I would only change how fast I ran. Your people are like cattle my kind feed on! Bite and break you, if you gave me half an hour I would do such things that these wretched gawping peasants would go mad with fear. I would drink their children’s blood and bathe in women’s tears.” He might have said more, but his breath was short as he strained against the chains that held him.

  “So,” Tehlu said, and stepped close to the wheel. For a moment it seemed like he would embrace Encanis, but he was merely reaching for the iron spokes of the wheel. Then, straining, Tehlu lifted the wheel above his head. He carried it, arms upstretched, toward the pit, and threw Encanis in.

  Through the long hours of night, a dozen evergreens had fed the fire. The flames had died in the early morning, leaving a deep bed of sullen coals that glimmered when the wind brushed them.

  The wheel struck flat, with Encanis on top. There was an explosion of spark and ash as it landed and sank inches deep into the hot coals. Encanis was held over the coals by the iron that bound and burned and bit at him.

  Though he was held away from the fire itself, the heat was so intense that Encanis’ clothes charred black and began to crumble without bursting into flame. The demon thrashed against his bonds, settling the wheel more firmly into the coals. Encanis screamed, because he knew that even demons can die from fire or iron. And though he was powerful, he was bound and burning. He felt the metal of the wheel grow hot beneath him, blackening the flesh of his arms and legs. Encanis screamed, and even as his skin began to smoke and char, his face was still hidden in a shadow that rose from him like a tongue of darkening flame.

  Then Encanis grew silent, and the only sound was the hiss of sweat and blood as they fell from the demon’s straining limbs. For a long moment everything was still. Encanis strained against the chains that held him to the wheel, and it seemed that he would strain until his muscles tore themselves from bone and sinew both.

  Then there was a sharp sound like a bell breaking and the demon’s arm jerked free of the wheel. Links of chain, now glowing red from the heat of the fire, flew upward to land smoking at the feet of those who stood above. The only sound was the sudden, wild laughter of Encanis, like breaking glass.

  In a moment the demon’s second hand was free, but before he could do more, Tehlu flung himself into the pit and landed with such force that the iron rang with it. Tehlu grabbed the hands of the demon and pressed them back against the wheel.

  Encanis screamed in fury and in disbelief, for though he was forced back onto the burning wheel, and though he felt the strength of Tehlu was greater than chains he had broken, he saw Tehlu was burning in the flames.

  “Fool!” he wailed. “You will die here with me. Let me go and live. Let me go and I will trouble you no further.” And the wheel did not ring out, for Encanis was truly frightened.

  “No,” said Tehlu. “Your punishment is death. You will serve it.”

  “Fool! Madling!” Encanis thrashed to no avail. “You are burning in the flames with me, you will die as I do!”

  “To ash all things return, so too this flesh will burn. But I am Tehlu. Son of myself. Father of myself. I was before, and I will be after. If I am a sacrifice then it is to myself alone. And if I am needed and called in the proper ways then I will come again to judge and punish.”

  So Tehlu held him to the burning wheel, and none of the demon’s threats or screaming moved him the least part of an inch. So it was that Encanis passed from the world, and with him went Tehlu who was Menda. Both of them burned to ash in the pit in Atur. That is why the Tehlin priests wear robes of ashen grey. And that is how we know Tehlu cares for us, and watches us, and keeps us safe from—

  Trapis broke off his story as Jaspin began to howl and thrash against his restraints. I slid softly back into unconsciousness as soon as I no longer had the story to hold my attention.

  After that, I began to harbor a suspicion that never entirely left me. Was Trapis a Tehlin priest? His robe was tattered and dirty, but it might have been the proper grey long ago. Parts of his story had been awkward and stumbling, but some were stately and grand, as if he had been reciting them from some half-forgotten memory. Of sermons? Of his readings from the Book of the Path?

  I never asked. And though I stopped by his basement frequently in the months that followed, I never heard Trapis tell another story again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Shadows Themselves

  Through all my time in Tarbean, I continued to learn, though most of the lessons were painful and unpleasant.

  I learned how to beg. It was a very practical application of acting with a very difficult audience. I did it well, but Waterside money was tight and an empty begging bowl meant a cold, hungry night.

  Through dangerous trial and error I discovered the proper way to slit a purse and pick a pocket. I was especially good at the latter. Locks and latches of all kinds soon gave up their secrets to me. My nimble fingers were put to a use my parents or Abenthy never would have guessed.

  I learned to run from anyone with an unnaturally white smile. Denner resin slowly bleaches your teeth, so if a sweet-eater lives long enough for their teeth to grow fully white, chances are they have already sold everything they have worth selling. Tarbean is full of dangerous people, but none as dangerous as a sweet-eater filled with the desperate craving for more resin. They will kill you for a pair of pennies.

  I learned how to lash together makeshift shoes out of rags. Real shoes became a thing of dreams for me. The first two years it seemed like my feet were always cold, or cut, or both. But by the third year my feet were like old leather and I could run barefoot for hours over the rough stones of the city and not feel it at all.

  I learned not to expect help from anyone. In the bad parts of Tarbean a call for help attracts predators like the smell of blood on the wind.

  I was sleeping on the rooftops, snugged tightly into my secret place where three roofs met. I awoke from a deep sleep to the sound of harsh laughter and pounding feet in the alley below me.

  The slapping footsteps stopped and more laughter followed the sound of ripping cloth. Slipping to the edge of the roof, I looked down to the alley below. I saw several large boys, almost men. They were dressed as I was, rags and dirt. There may have been five, maybe six of them. They moved in and out of the shadows like shadows themselves. Their chests heaved from their run and I could hear their breath from the roof above.

  The object of the chase was in the middle of the alley: a young boy, eight years old at the most. One of the older boys was holding him down. The young boy’s bare skin shone pale in the moonlight. There was another sound of ripping cloth, and the boy gave a soft cry that ended in a choked sob.

  The others watched and talked in low urgent tones with each other, wearing hard, hungry smiles.

  I’d been chased before at night, several times. I’d been caught too, months ago. Looking down, I was surprised to find a heavy red roof tile in my hand, ready to throw.

  Then I paused, looking back to my secret place. I had a rag blanket
and a half a loaf of bread there. My rainy-day money was hidden here, eight iron pennies I had hoarded for when my luck turned bad. And most valuable of all, Ben’s book. I was safe here. Even if I hit one of them, the rest would be on the roof in two minutes. Then, even if I got away, I wouldn’t have anywhere to go.

  I set down the tile. I went back to what had become my home, and curled myself into the shelter of the niche underneath the overhanging roof. I twisted my blanket in my hands and clenched my teeth, trying to shut out the low rumble of conversation punctuated by coarse laughter and quiet, hopeless sobbing from below.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Interlude—Eager for Reasons

  Kvothe gestured for Chronicler to set down his pen and stretched, lacing his fingers together above his head. “It’s been a long time since I remembered that,” he said. “If you are eager to find the reason I became the Kvothe they tell stories about, you could look there, I suppose.”

  Chronicler’s forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean, exactly?”

  Kvothe paused for a long moment, looking down at his hands. “Do you know how many times I’ve been beaten over the course of my life?”

  Chronicler shook his head.

  Looking up, Kvothe grinned and tossed his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. “Neither do I. You’d think that sort of thing would stick in a person’s mind. You’d think I would remember how many bones I’ve had broken. You’d think I’d remember the stitches and bandages.” He shook his head. “I don’t. I remember that young boy sobbing in the dark. Clear as a bell after all these years.”

  Chronicler frowned. “You said yourself that there was nothing you could have done.”

  “I could have,” Kvothe said seriously, “and I didn’t. I made my choice and I regret it to this day. Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.”

  Kvothe pushed himself away from the table. “That’s enough of Tarbean’s darker side, I imagine.” He came to his feet and gave a great stretch, arms over his head.

  “Why, Reshi?” The words poured out of Bast in a sudden gush. “Why did you stay there when it was so awful?”

  Kvothe nodded to himself, as if he had been expecting the question. “Where else was there for me to go, Bast? Everyone I knew was dead.”

  “Not everyone,” Bast insisted. “There was Abenthy. You could have gone to him.”

  “Hallowfell was hundreds of miles away, Bast,” Kvothe said wearily as he wandered to the other side of the room and moved behind the bar. “Hundreds of miles without my father’s maps to guide me. Hundreds of miles without wagons to ride or sleep in. Without help of any sort, or money, or shoes. Not an impossible journey, I suppose. But for a young child, still numb with the shock of losing his parents… .”

  Kvothe shook his head. “No. In Tarbean at least I could beg or steal. I’d managed to survive in the forest for a summer, barely. But over the winter?” He shook his head. “I would have starved or frozen to death.”

  Standing at the bar, Kvothe filled his mug and began to add pinches of spice from several small containers, then walked toward the great stone fireplace, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You’re right, of course. Anywhere would have been better than Tarbean.”

  He shrugged, facing the fire. “But we are all creatures of habit. It is far too easy to stay in the familiar ruts we dig for ourselves. Perhaps I even viewed it as fair. My punishment for not being there to help when the Chandrian came. My punishment for not dying when I should have, with the rest of my family.”

  Bast opened his mouth, then closed it and looked down at the tabletop, frowning.

  Kvothe looked over his shoulder and gave a gentle smile. “I’m not saying it’s rational, Bast. Emotions by their very nature are not reasonable things. I don’t feel that way now, but back then I did. I remember.” He turned back to the fire. “Ben’s training has given me a memory so clean and sharp I have to be careful not to cut myself sometimes.”

  Kvothe took a mulling stone from the fire and dropped it into his wooden mug. It sank with a sharp hiss. The smell of searing clove and nutmeg filled the room.

  Kvothe stirred his cider with a long-handled spoon as he made his way back to the table. “You must also remember that I was not in my right mind. Much of me was still in shock, sleeping if you will. I needed something, or someone, to wake me up.”

  He nodded to Chronicler, who casually shook his writing hand to loosen it, then unstoppered his inkwell.

  Kvothe leaned back in his seat. “I needed to be reminded of things I had forgotten. I needed a reason to leave. It was years before I met someone who could do those things.” He smiled at Chronicler. “Before I met Skarpi.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Lanre Turned

  I had been in Tarbean for years at this point. Three birthdays had slipped by unnoticed and I was just past fifteen. I knew how to survive Waterside. I had become an accomplished beggar and thief. Locks and pockets opened to my touch. I knew which pawnshops bought goods “from uncle” with no questions asked.

  I was still ragged and frequently hungry, but I was in no real danger of starving. I had been slowly building my rainy-day money. Even after a hard winter that had frequently forced me to pay for a warm spot to sleep, my hoard was over twenty iron pennies. It was like a dragon’s treasure to me.

  I had grown comfortable there. But aside from the desire to add to my rainy-day money I had nothing to live for. Nothing driving me. Nothing to look forward to. My days were spent looking for things to steal and ways to entertain myself.

  But that had changed a few days earlier in Trapis’ basement. I had heard a young girl speaking in an awed voice about a storyteller who spent all his time in a Dockside bar called the Half-Mast. Apparently, every sixth bell he told a story. Any story you asked for, he knew. What’s more, she said that he had a bet going. If he didn’t know your story, he would give you a whole talent.

  I thought about what the girl had said for the rest of the day. I doubted it was true, but I couldn’t help thinking about what I could do with a whole silver talent. I could buy shoes, and maybe a knife, give money to Trapis, and still double my rainy-day fund.

  Even if the girl was lying about the bet, I was still interested. Entertainment was hard to come by on the streets. Occasionally some ragamuffin troupe would mum a play on a street corner or I’d hear a fiddler in a pub. But most real entertainment cost money, and my hard-won pennies were too precious to squander.

  But there was a problem. Dockside wasn’t safe for me.

  I should explain. More than a year before, I had seen Pike walking down the street. It had been the first time I’d seen him since my first day in Tarbean when he and his friends had jumped me in that alley and destroyed my father’s lute.

  I followed him carefully for the better part of a day, keeping my distance and staying in the shadows. Eventually he went home to a little box alley Dockside where he had his own version of my secret place. His was a nest of broken crates he had cobbled together to keep the weather off.

  I perched on the roof all night, waiting until he left the next morning. Then I made my way down to his nest of crates and looked around. It was cozy, filled with the accumulated small possessions of several years. He had a bottle of beer, which I drank. There was also half a cheese that I ate, and a shirt that I stole, as it was slightly less raggedy than my own.

  Further searching revealed various odds and ends, a candle, a ball of string, some marbles. Most surprising were several pieces of sailcloth with charcoal drawings of a woman’s face. I had to search for nearly ten minutes until I found what I was really looking for. Hidden away behind everything else was a small wooden box that showed signs of much handling. It held a bundle of dried violets tied with a white ribbon, a toy horse that had lost most of its string mane, and a lock of curling blond hair.

  It took me several minutes with flint and steel to get the fire going. The violets were good tinder and soon greasy clouds of smoke were billowing high into the
air. I stood by and watched as everything Pike loved went up in flames.

  But I stayed too long, savoring the moment. Pike and a friend came running down the box alley, drawn by the smoke, and I was trapped. Furious, Pike jumped me. He was taller by six inches and outweighed me by fifty pounds. Worse, he had a piece of broken glass wrapped with twine at one end, making a crude knife.

  He stabbed me once in the thigh right above my knee before I smashed his hand into the cobblestones, shattering the knife. After that he still gave me a black eye and several broken ribs before I managed to kick him squarely between the legs and get free. As I pelted away he limped after me, shouting that he would kill me for what I’d done.

  I believed him. After patching up my leg, I took every bit of rainy-day money I had saved and bought five pints of dreg, a cheap, foul liquor strong enough to blister the inside of your mouth. Then I limped into Dockside and waited for Pike and his friends to spot me.

  It didn’t take long, I let him and two of his friends follow me for half a mile, past Seamling Lane and into Tallows. I kept to the main roads, knowing they wouldn’t dare attack me in broad daylight when people were around.

  But when I darted into a side alley, they hurried to catch up, suspecting I was trying to make a run for it. However, when they turned the corner no one was there.

  Pike thought to look up just as I was pouring the bucket of dreg onto him from the edge of the low roof above. It doused him, splashing across his face and chest. He screamed and clutched at his eyes as he went to his knees. Then I struck the phosphorus match I’d stolen, and dropped it onto him, watching it sputter and flare as it fell.

  Full of the pure, hard hatred of a child, I hoped he would burst into a pillar of flame. He didn’t, but did catch fire. He screamed again and staggered around while his friends swatted at him, trying to put him out. I left while they were busy.