The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)

by Patrick Rothfuss

Remember your father’s song.

folly.

Three Pennies for Wishing?

“They come,” Haliax said quietly. He stood, and shadow seemed to boil outward from him like a dark fog. “Quickly.To me.”

Tehlu and his angels?

First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind’s way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door. Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there

is no healing to be done. The saying “time heals all wounds” is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door. Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind. Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.

I returned to the greystone to make a shelter for my lute.

I had everything I needed to

survive: a stone-lined fire pit, a shelter for my lute.

I could not bring out my lute to play, and that pained me.

Of course I played. It was my only solace.

Needless to say, playing these things hurt, but it was a hurt like tender fingers on lute strings. I bled a bit and hoped that I would callous soon.

I tried humming

Calloused Fingers and a Lute With Four Strings, but it wasn’t the same as playing it.

I gave them a wide berth.

Farmers have no need for lute strings.

My nimble fingers were put to a use my parents or Abenthy never would have guessed.

I set down the tile.

“I don’t. I remember that young boy sobbing in the dark. Clear as a bell after all these years.”

It was years before I met someone who could do those things.” He smiled at Chronicler. “Before I met Skarpi.”

Three birthdays

speaking in an awed voice about a storyteller

What story would I ask for?

three loaves

I could ask him for the real story of Lanre.

The first thing I saw on entering the Half-Mast was Skarpi.

Lanre and the Creation War. An old, old story.”

eight cities

Lyra was terrible and wise, and held a power just as great as his. For while Lanre had the strength of his arm and the command of loyal men, Lyra knew the names of things, and the power of her voice could kill a man or still a thunderstorm.

for three days in the light of the sun, and for three nights

Then rumors began to spread: Lyra was ill. Lyra had been kidnapped. Lyra had died. Lanre had fled the empire. Lanre had gone mad. Some even said Lanre had killed himself and gone searching for his wife in the land of the dead. There were stories aplenty, but no one knew the truth of things.

I am no longer the Lanre you knew. Mine is a new and terrible name. I am Haliax

“I only know one story. But oftentimes small pieces seem to be stories themselves.”

as if I were a book that he could read.

It’s too bad, the world could do with a little less truth and a little more . . .”

I looked down at my hands and found myself wishing they were cleaner.

“All stories are true,” Skarpi said. “But this one really happened,

You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.”

waste three hours begging,

I was certain I had forgotten something. Something about the story Skarpi had told.

It is easy for you to see, no doubt, hearing the story like this, conveniently arranged and narrated.

I could see nothing of his face, only darkness under the cowl of his hood, only shadow.

“Someone’s parents,” he had said, “have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.”

They had killed my parents for gathering stories about them. They had killed my whole troupe over a song.

He was lean, with sunken eyes that smoldered like half hidden coals. A carefully trimmed beard the color of soot sharpened the edges of his knife blade face.

“You should run, Kvothe.