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

by Patrick Rothfuss

“But Taborlin knew the names of all things, and so all things were his to command. He said to the stone: ‘Break!’ and the stone broke. The wall tore like a piece of paper, and through that hole Taborlin could see the sky and breathe the sweet spring air. He stepped to the edge, looked down, and without a second thought he stepped out into the open air. . . .” The boy’s eyes went wide. “He didn’t!” Cob nodded seriously. “So Taborlin fell, but he did not despair. For he knew the name of the wind, and so the wind obeyed him. He spoke to the wind and it cradled and caressed him. It bore him to the ground as gently as a puff of thistledown and set him on his feet softly as a mother’s kiss.

Cob turned back to the boy. “That’s the mystery of the Chandrian,” he explained. “Where do they come from? Where do they go after they’ve done their bloody deeds? Are they men who sold their souls? Demons? Spirits? No one knows.” Cob shot Jake a profoundly disdainful look. “Though every half-wit claims he knows. . . .”

The innkeeper nodded to himself as he continued to prod the thing. “There’s no blood. No organs. It’s just grey inside.” He poked it with a finger. “Like a mushroom.” “Great Tehlu, just leave it alone,” the smith’s prentice begged. “Sometimes spiders twitch after you kill them.”

Everyone knew what he was thinking. Certainly there were demons in the world. But they were like Tehlu’s angels. They were like heroes and kings. They belonged in stories. They belonged out there. Taborlin the Great called up fire and lightning to destroy demons. Tehlu broke them in his hands and sent them howling into the nameless void. Your childhood friend didn’t stomp one to death on the road to Baedn-Bryt. It was ridiculous.

He called himself Kote. He had chosen the name carefully when he came to this place. He had taken a new name for most of the usual reasons, and for a few unusual ones as well, not the least of which was the fact that names were important to him. Looking up, he saw a thousand stars glittering in the deep velvet of a night with no moon. He knew them all, their stories and their names. He knew them in a familiar way, the way he knew his own hands.

“Today, master, I learned why great lovers have better eyesight than great scholars.” “And why is that, Bast?” Kote asked, amusement touching the edges of his voice. Bast closed the door and returned to sit in the second chair, turning it to face his teacher and the fire. He moved with a strange delicacy and grace, as if he were close to dancing. “Well Reshi, all the rich books are found inside where the light is bad. But lovely girls tend to be out in the sunshine and therefore much easier to study without risk of injuring one’s eyes.” Kote nodded. “But an exceptionally clever student could take a book outside, thus bettering himself without fear of lessening his much-loved faculty of sight.”

Kote sighed. “They took it to the priest. He did all the right things for all the wrong reasons.”

Bast visibly relaxed, settling back into his chair. “I know you’re not, Reshi. But I wouldn’t trust half these people to piss leeward without help.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I can’t imagine why there was only one.”

“Begone demon!” Kote said, switching to a thickly accented Temic through half a mouthful of stew. “Tehus antausa eha!” Bast burst into startled laughter and made an obscene gesture with one hand. Kote swallowed and changed languages. “Aroi te denna-leyan!” “Oh come now,” Bast reproached, his smile falling away. “That’s just insulting.” “By earth and stone, I abjure you!” Kote dipped his fingers into the cup by his side and flicked droplets casually in Bast’s direction. “Glamour be banished!”

The chest was sealed three times. It had a lock of iron, a lock of copper, and a lock that could not be seen. Tonight the wood filled the room with the almost imperceptible aroma of citrus and quenching iron.

The Penitent King was having a difficult time with the rebels in Resavek. This caused some concern, but only in a general way. Resavek was a long way off, and even Cob, the most worldly of them, would be hard pressed to find it on a map.

That had been two span ago: twenty-two days.

cleaning my pens. It’ll go badly if he drinks it.” The commander smiled and nodded. “You see what comes of treating people well?” he said to his men as he pulled himself up onto his horse. “It’s been a pleasure, sir scribe. If you get on your way now, you can still make Abbot’s Ford by dark.”

He had to admit, it was probably the most civil robbery he’d ever been through. They had been genteel, efficient, and not terribly savvy. Losing the horse and saddle was hard, but he could buy another in Abbot’s Ford and still have enough money to live comfortably until he finished this foolishness and met up with Skarpi in Treya.

Best of all was the noise. Leather creaking. Men laughing. The fire cracked and spat. The women flirted. Someone even knocked over a chair. For the first time in a long while there was no silence in the Waystone Inn. Or if there was, it was too faint to be noticed, or too well hidden.

“Kvothe the Bloodless.” The man pressed ahead with the dogged persistence of the inebriated. “You looked familiar, but I couldn’t finger it.” He smiled proudly and tapped a finger to his nose. “Then I heard you sing, and I knew it was you. I heard you in Imre once. Cried my eyes out afterward. I never heard anything like that before or since. Broke my heart.”

He watched them intently, as if expecting them to do something on their own. Then he lowered them to his lap, one hand lightly cupping the other, and returned to watching the fire. Expressionless, motionless, he sat until there was nothing left but grey ash and dully glowing coals. As he was undressing for bed, the fire flared. The red light traced faint lines across his body, across his back and arms. All the scars were smooth and silver, streaking him like lightning, like lines of gentle remembering. The flare of flame revealed them all briefly, old wounds and new. All the scars were smooth and silver except one. The fire flickered and died. Sleep met him like a lover in an empty bed.

Kote shrugged. “My granda always told me that fall’s the time to root up something you don’t want coming back to trouble you.” Kote mimicked the quaver of an old man’s voice. “‘Things are too full of life in the spring months. In the summer, they’re too strong and won’t let go. Autumn . . .’” He looked around at the changing leaves on the trees. “‘Autumn’s the time. In autumn everything is tired and ready to die.’”

“Tehlu anyway, have you had bad luck your whole life, or have you been saving it up for tonight?” “I don’t know who you’re waiting for,” Chronicler said, taking a step backward. “But I’m sure you’d rather do it alone.”

The red-haired man gave an incredulous laugh. “Well, I guess we can all go home then!” He flashed a manic grin at Chronicler. “Listen, I’m guessing you’re an educated man. I respect that, and for the most part, you’re right.” His expression went serious. “But here and now, tonight, you’re wrong. Wrong as wrong can be. You don’t want to be on that side of the fire when you figure that out.”

Kote turned around and shrugged Chronicler’s limp body into Bast’s arms. “I knew you would just argue with me, Bast.” Bast held Chronicler easily in front of him. “It wasn’t even a good note. ‘If you are reading this I am probably dead.’ What sort of a note is that?”

Then he began to sing softly, the tune lilting and strange, almost a lullaby: “How odd to watch a mortal kindle Then to dwindle day by day. Knowing their bright souls are tinder And the wind will have its way. Would I could my own fire lend. What does your flickering portend?”

The innkeeper shrugged. “Only priests and fools are fearless, and I’ve never been on the best of terms with God.”

Chronicler refused to back down. “Other people say you’re a myth.” “I am a myth,” Kote said easily, making an extravagant gesture. “A very special kind of myth that creates itself. The best lies about me are the ones I told.” “They say you never existed,” Chronicler corrected gently. Kote shrugged nonchalantly, his smile fading an imperceptible amount.

Kvothe held up a hand to keep Chronicler from writing, and spoke, “I’ve never told this story before, and I doubt I’ll ever tell it again.” Kvothe leaned forward in his chair. “Before we begin, you must remember that I am of the Edema Ruh. We were telling stories before Caluptena burned. Before there were books to write in. Before there was music to play.

“That said, do not presume to change a word of what I say. If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way.”

It began at the University. I went to learn magic of the sort they talk about in stories. Magic like Taborlin the Great. I wanted to learn the name of the wind. I

wanted fire and lightning. I wanted answers to ten thousand questions and access to their archives. But what I found at the University was much different than a story, and I was much dismayed.

“In the beginning, as far as I know, the world was spun out of the nameless void by Aleph, who gave everything a name. Or, depending on the version of the tale, found the names all things already possessed.” Chronicler let slip a small laugh, though he did not look up from his page or pause in his writing.

I have been called Shadicar, Lightfinger, and Six-String. I have been called Kvothe the Bloodless, Kvothe the Arcane, and Kvothe Kingkiller. I have earned those names. Bought and paid for them. But I was brought

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me.

Save perhaps that my mother was a noble before she was a trouper. She told me my father had lured her away from “a miserable dreary hell” with sweet music and sweeter words. I could only assume she meant Three Crossings, where we went to visit relatives when I was very young. Once.

My father would encourage me to try particularly good sections myself, and I learned to love the feel of good words.

I learned the sordid inner workings of the royal court in Modeg from a . . . courtesan. As my father used to say: “Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.”

So I invited him into our troupe, hoping to find answers to my questions. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I was looking for the name of the wind.

He spoke gently, laughed often, and never exercised his wit at the expense of others. He cursed like a drunken sailor with a broken leg, but only at his donkeys. They were called Alpha and Beta, and Abenthy fed them carrots and lumps of sugar when he

A true arcanist has worked his way through the Arcanum at the University.” At his mention of the Arcanum, I bristled with two dozen new questions. Not so many, you might think, but when you added them to the half-hundred questions I carried with me wherever I went, I was stretched nearly to bursting. Only through a severe effort of will did I remain silent, waiting for Abenthy to continue on his own.

Ben continued. “The people you see riding with caravans—charmers who keep food from spoiling, dowsers, fortune-tellers, toad eaters—aren’t real arcanists any more than all traveling performers are Edema Ruh. They might know a little alchemy, a little sympathy, a little medicine.” He shook his head. “But they’re not arcanists.

I nodded. I cleared my mind with one of the tricks I’d already learned, and bore down on believing. I started to sweat. After what may have been ten minutes I nodded again. He let go of the rock. It fell. I began to get a headache. He picked the rock back up. “Do you believe that it floated?” “No!” I sulked, rubbing my temples. “Good. It didn’t. Never fool yourself into perceiving things that don’t exist. It’s a fine line to walk, but sympathy is not an art for the weak willed.” He held out the rock again. “Do you believe it will float?” “It didn’t!” “It doesn’t matter. Try again.” He shook the stone. “Alar is the cornerstone of sympathy. If you are going to impose your will on the world, you must have control over what you believe.”

want you to believe the rock will fall and that the rock will not fall when I let go of it.” He grinned. • • • I went to bed late that night. I had a nosebleed and a smile of satisfaction. I held the two separate beliefs loosely in my mind and let their singing discord lull me into senselessness.

I remember one time I looked for the stone for almost an hour before I consented to ask the other half of me where I’d hidden it, only to find I hadn’t hidden the stone at all. I had merely been waiting to see how long I would look before giving up. Have you ever been annoyed and amused with yourself at the same time? It’s an interesting feeling, to say the very least.

I had asked him what E’lir meant once. He claimed it meant “wise one,” but I had my doubts from the way his mouth had quirked when he said it.

He set them both on the table. “So when you move one, the other should move, right?” I agreed for the sake of argument, then reached out to move one. But Ben stopped my hand, shaking his head. “You’ve got to remind them first. You’ve got to convince them, in fact.” He brought out a bowl and decanted a slow blob of pine pitch into it. He dipped one of the drabs into the pitch and stuck the other one to it, spoke several words I didn’t recognize, and slowly pulled the bits apart, strands of pitch stretching between them.

“The law of sympathy is one of the most basic parts of magic. It states that the more similar two objects are, the greater the sympathetic link. The greater the link, the more easily they influence each other.”

“Here is the phonetic pronunciation. It’s called the Sympathetic Binding of Parallel Motion. Practice.” He looked even more lupine than before, old and grizzled with no eyebrows.

No rush of power. No flash of hot or cold. No radiant beam of light struck me. I was rather disappointed. At least as disappointed as I could be in the Heart of Stone. I lifted the coin in my hand, and the coin on the table lifted itself in a similar fashion. It was magic, there was no doubt about that. But I felt rather underwhelmed. I had been expecting . . . I don’t know what I’d been expecting. It wasn’t this.

Let me sum up sympathy very quickly since you will probably never need to have anything other than a rough comprehension of how these things work. First, energy cannot be created or destroyed. When you are lifting one drab and the other rises off the table, the one in your hand feels as heavy as if you’re lifting both, because, in fact, you are. That’s in theory. In practice, it feels like you’re lifting three drabs. No sympathetic link is perfect. The more dissimilar the items, the more energy is lost. Think of it as a leaky aqueduct leading to a water wheel. A good sympathetic link has very few leaks, and most of the energy is used. A bad link is full of holes; very little of the effort you put into it goes toward what you want it to do.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

So I moved closer to my parents’ fire, stepping softly. Eavesdropping is a deplorable habit, but I have developed worse ones since.

“The first thing I need to know is how many there actually are,” my father said. “Most stories say seven, but even that’s conflicted. Some say three, others five, and in Felior’s Fall there are a full thirteen of them: one for each pontifet in Atur, and an extra for the capital.” “That I can answer,” Ben said. “Seven. You can hold to that with some certainty. It’s part of their name, actually. Chaen means seven. Chaen-dian means ‘seven of them.’ Chandrian.”