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

by Patrick Rothfuss

Having started this little game, Hemme was unable to stop it without looking foolish. As he shook my hand he gave me the look a wolf gives a treed cat. Smiling to himself, he left the stage to assume my recently vacated seat in the front row. Confident of my ignorance, he was willing to let the charade continue.

Plainly said, he was giving me enough rope to hang myself with. Apparently he didn’t realize that once a noose is tied, it will fit one neck as easily as another.

“First is the Doctrine of Correspondence which says, ‘similarity enhances sympathy.’ Second is the Principle of Consanguinity, which says, ‘a piece of a thing can represent the whole of a thing.’ Third is the Law of Conservation, which says ‘energy cannot be destroyed nor created.’ Correspondence, Consanguinity, and Conservation. The three C’s.”

AFTER HEMME DISMISSED HIS CLASS, news of what I had done spread through the University like wildfire. I guessed from the students’ reactions that Master Hemme was not particularly well loved. As I sat on a stone bench outside the Mews, passing students smiled in my direction. Others waved or gave laughing thumbs-up. While I enjoyed the notoriety, a cold anxiety was slowly growing in my gut. I’d made an enemy of one of the nine masters. I needed to know how much trouble I was in.

“Master Namer.” Elodin actually smiled at me. Not just a perfunctory curling of the lips, but a warm, toothy grin. I drew a bit of a shaky breath, relieved that at least one person present didn’t seem eager to hang me up by my thumbs.

“And it is always, always, expressly forbidden to cause harm with sympathy, especially to a master. A few hundred years ago arcanists were hunted down and burned for things of that sort. We do not tolerate that sort of behavior here.”

“Damn it, Hemme,” Elxa Dal burst out. “You let the boy make a simulacrum of you, then bring him here on malfeasance?” He spluttered. “You deserve worse than you got.” “E’lir Kvothe could not have hurt him with just a candle,” Kilvin muttered. He gave his fingers a puzzled look, as if he were working something out in his head. “Not with hair and wax. Maybe blood and clay . . .”

It was a good performance. My father would have been proud. “Well it did,” Hemme said bitterly. “And where is the damn mommet anyway? I demand you return it at once!”

word for word. “Does this constitute proof?” Both Hemme and the Chancellor opened their mouths to say something. Hemme was louder. “Look here, you little cocker!” “Hemme!” the Chancellor snapped. Then he turned to me, “I’m afraid proof of mastery requires more than a simple sympathetic binding.”

The Chancellor looked down at the empty table for a minute. Then he shrugged, looked up, and gave a surprisingly jaunty smile. “All in favor of admitting first-term student Kvothe’s reckless use of sympathy as proof of mastery of the basic principles of sympathy vote by show of hands.” Kilvin and Elxa Dal raised their hands together. Arwyl added his a moment later. Elodin waved. After a pause, the Chancellor raised his hand as well, saying “Five and a half in favor of Kvothe’s admission to the Arcanum. Motion passed. Meeting dismissed. Tehlu shelter us, fools and children all.” He said the last very softly as he rested his forehead against the heel of his hand.

“I’m afraid the boy will be having an appointment with my folk shortly after the whipping, Kilvin,” Arwyl said with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. “Have someone bring you to the Medica afterward, son. We’ll stitch you back together.”

“I’m sorry to be so much trouble so soon, sir.” I offered hesitantly. “Oh?” he said. His expression considerably less stern now that we were alone. “How long had you intended to wait?” “At least a span, sir.” My brush with disaster had left me feeling giddy with relief. I felt an irrepressible grin bubble onto my face. “At least a span,” he muttered. The Chancellor put his face into his hands and rubbed, then looked up and surprised me with a wry smile. I realized he wasn’t particularly old when his face wasn’t locked in a stern expression. Probably only on the far side of forty. “You don’t look like someone who knows he’s going to be whipped tomorrow,” he observed.

It was easy to understand why. Most students attend the University for several terms before being admitted into the Arcanum. Everyone here had worked their way up through the ranks the hard way. I hadn’t.

“Oh,” I said, slightly embarrassed. “It’s just a greeting. It’s kind of like asking ‘how is your day?’ or ‘how is everything going?’” “That is also an idiom,” Wilem grumbled. “Your language is thick with nonsense. I wonder how any of you understand each other. How is everything going? Going where?” He shook his head. “Tinuë, apparently.” I grinned at him. “Tuan volgen oketh ama,” I said, using one of my favorite Siaru idioms. It meant ‘don’t let it make you crazy,’ but it translated literally as ‘don’t put a spoon in your eye over it.’

“I think I must go to class,” Wil tried to mention it nonchalantly, but it came out almost strangled. He looked up at me, embarrassed and a little pale under his dark complexion. “I am not fond of blood.” He gave a shaky smile. “My blood . . . friend’s blood . . .”

he had done a friend’s duty, helping me pass a difficult time, and I had repaid him with

If you do as I tell you, you’ll have nothing but smooth silver scars to show the ladies how brave you are.” He stopped in front of me and raised his white eyebrows enthusiastically behind the round rings of his spectacles, “Eh?”

“Just bones and a little wrapping. It is easier for us if we have more meat to work with.”

Arwyl looked at it closely, holding his glasses with one hand. He gave it one gentle prod with his index finger before straightening. “Sloppy,” he pronounced with a mild distaste. I had thought it was a rather good job. “My cord broke halfway through,” I said stiffly. “I wasn’t working under ideal circumstances.” Arwyl was silent for a while, stroking his upper lip with a finger as he watched me through half-lidded eyes. “And do you enjoy this sort of thing?” he asked dubiously.

“But I am not so old as that. Hmmm. Not yet. Not by half. Anyone who thinks boys are innocent and sweet has never been a boy himself, or has forgotten it. And anyone who thinks men aren’t hurtful and cruel at times must not leave his house often. And he has certainly never been a physicker. We see the effects of cruelty more than any other.”

Before I could respond he said, “Close your mouth, E’lir Kvothe, or I will feel obliged to put some vile tonic in it. Ahhh, here they come.” The last was said to two students entering the room. One was the same assistant who had shown me here, the other was, surprisingly, a young woman.

“Anesthetized,” Arwyl corrected. “You have a good eye for detail, Mola. No, he has not. Now, what would you do if E’lir Kvothe reassured you that he has no need for such things? He claims to have self-control like a bar of Ramston steel and will not flinch when you stitch him.” Arwyl’s tone was serious, but I could detect a hint of amusement hiding underneath. “I would tell him that he was being foolish,” she said after a brief pause. “And if he persisted in his claims that he needed no numbing agent?” There was a longer pause from Mola. “He doesn’t seem to be bleeding much at all, so I would proceed. I would also make it clear to him that if he moved overmuch, I would tie him to the table and treat him as I saw fit for his well-being.”

I can hardly describe how comforting it was in the cool, quiet dark. I was perfectly content, lost among the endless books. It made me feel safe, knowing that the answers to all my questions were here, somewhere waiting.

I wanted to get inside so badly I could taste it. It probably shows a perverse element of my personality that even though I was finally inside the Archives, surrounded by endless secrets, that I was drawn to the one locked door I had found. Perhaps it is human nature to seek out hidden things. Perhaps it is simply my nature.

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Lorren rounded on me. His expression, always so calm before, was filled with such a cold, terrible anger that I took a step away from him without meaning to. “You mean?” he said. “I care nothing for your intentions, E’lir Kvothe, deceived or otherwise. All that matters is the reality of your actions. Your hand held the fire. Yours is the blame. That is the lesson all adults must learn.”

“Upon him I will visit famine and a fire. Till all around him desolation rings And all the demons in the outer dark Look on amazed and recognize That vengeance is the business of a man.”

Kvothe drew a deep breath and sighed. “But the simplest reason is the least satisfying one, I suppose. The truth is this: I wasn’t living in a story.” “I don’t think I’m understanding you, Reshi,” Bast said, puzzled. “Think of all the stories you’ve heard, Bast. You have a young boy, the hero. His parents are killed. He sets out for vengeance. What happens next?” Bast hesitated, his expression puzzled. Chronicler answered the question instead. “He finds help. A clever talking squirrel. An old drunken swordsman. A mad hermit in the woods. That sort of thing.” Kvothe nodded. “Exactly! He finds the mad hermit in the woods, proves himself worthy, and learns the names of all things, just like Taborlin the Great. Then with these powerful magics at his beck and call, what does he do?” Chronicler shrugged. “He finds the villains and kills them.” “Of course,” Kvothe said grandly. “Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts.

That’s why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”

I sighed. If I left now, I could still catch my class in the Medica, but part of me suspected that this might be a test of some sort. Perhaps Elodin was simply making sure that I was genuinely interested before he accepted me as a student. That is the way it usually goes in stories: the young man has to prove his dedication to the old hermit in the woods before he’s taken under his wing.

“You aren’t telling me the truth,” I said. “Why don’t you want to teach me?” “For the same reason I don’t want a puppy!” Elodin shouted, waving his arms in the air like a farmer trying to startle crows out of a field. “Because you’re too short to be a namer. Your eyes are too green. You have the wrong number of fingers. Come back when you’re taller and you’ve found a decent pair of eyes.”

Elodin stopped walking and turned to look at me. “Fine. Prove me wrong. Prove that you’ve thought this through. Why does a University with under fifteen hundred students need an asylum the size of the royal palace?”

“Do you know why they call this place the Rookery?” Elodin asked. I shook my head. “Because it’s where you go if you’re a-ravin’.” He smiled a wild smile. He laughed a terrible laugh.

But he needed more, proof of my dedication. A demonstration. A leap of faith. And as I stood there, a piece of story came to mind. So Taborlin fell, but he did not despair. For he knew the name of the wind, and so the wind obeyed him. It cradled and caressed him. It bore him to the ground as gently as a puff of thistledown. It set him on his feet softly as a mother’s kiss. Elodin knew the name of the wind. Still looking him in the eye, I stepped off the edge of the roof. Elodin’s expression was marvelous. I have never seen a man so astonished. I spun slightly as I fell, so he stayed in my line of vision. I saw him raise one hand slightly, as if making a belated attempt to grab hold of me. I felt weightless, like I was floating.

He looked down at me. “Congratulations,” he said. “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.” His expression was a mix of awe and disbelief. “Ever.”

And that is when I decided to pursue the noble art of artificing. Not that I had a lot of other options. Before helping me limp to the Medica, Elodin made it clear that anyone stupid enough to jump off a roof was too reckless to be allowed to hold a spoon in his presence, let alone study something as “profound and volatile” as naming.

I returned the favor by giving an impromptu lesson in psychology, probability, and manual dexterity. I won almost two whole talents before they stopped inviting me back to their games.

And there was Ambrose. To deem us simply enemies is to lose the true flavor of our relationship. It was more like the two of us entered into a business partnership in order to more efficiently pursue our mutual interest of hating each other.

Reputation is like a sort of armor, or a weapon you can brandish if need be. I decided that if I was going to be an arcanist, I might as well be a well-known arcanist.

People noticed, and by the end of the term I had a reputation for reckless bravery. But the truth is, I was merely fearless. There’s a difference, you see. In Tarbean I’d learned real fear. I feared hunger, pneumonia, guards with hobnail boots, older boys with bottleglass knives. Confronting Ambrose required no real bravery on my part. I simply couldn’t muster any fear of him. I saw him as a puffed-up clown. I thought he was harmless. I was a fool.

It would not be to Bast’s credit to say that he was afraid of nothing, as only fools and priests are never afraid. But it is true that very few things unnerved him. Heights, for instance, he didn’t care for very much.

To really fear something you have to dwell on it. And since there was nothing that preyed on Bast’s waking mind in this fashion, there was nothing his heart truly feared.

But hearts can change. Ten years ago he had lost his grip climbing a tall rennel tree to pick fruit for a girl he fancied. After he slipped, he had hung for a long minute, head down, before falling. In that long minute, a small fear rooted inside him, and had stayed with him ever since. In the same way, Bast had learned a new fear of late. A year ago he had been fearless as any sane man can hope to be, but now Bast feared silence. Not the ordinary silence that came from a simple absence of things moving about and making noise. Bast feared the deep, weary silence that gathered around his master at times, like an invisible shroud.

“Let me say one thing before I start. I’ve told stories in the past, painted pictures with words, told hard lies and harder truths. Once, I sang colors to a blind man. Seven hours I played, but at the end he said he saw them, green and red and gold. That, I think, was easier than this. Trying to make you understand her with nothing more than words. You have never seen her, never heard her voice. You cannot know.”

Borrowing from a friend seemed like the simplest option, but I valued my handful of friends too much to risk losing them over money. As my father used to say: “There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other to lend.”

Besides, I did my best to keep my desperate poverty to myself. Pride is a foolish thing, but it is a powerful force. I wouldn’t ask them for money except as my very last resort.

But I couldn’t. Bare minutes after the music started I practically fled the room. I doubt very much you’ll be able to understand why, but I suppose I have to explain if things are to make any sense at all. I couldn’t stand being near music and not be a part of it. It was like watching the woman you love bedding down with another man. No. Not really. It was like. . . . It was like the sweet-eaters I’d seen in Tarbean. Denner resin was highly illegal, of course, but that didn’t matter in most parts of the city. The resin was sold wrapped in waxy paper, like a sucking candy or a toffee. Chewing it filled you with euphoria. Bliss. Contentment.

The everyday lack of my music was like a toothache I had grown used to. I could live with it. But having what I wanted dangled in front of me was more than I could bear.

I was just about to head back to the University when my restless pacing took me by a pawnshop’s window. I felt the old ache in my fingers. . . . “How much for the seven-string lute?” I asked. To this day I do not remember actually entering the store. “Four talents even,” the owner said brightly. I guessed he was new to the job, or drunk. Pawnbrokers are never cheerful, not even in rich cities like Imre. “Ah,” I said, not bothering to hide my disappointment. “Could I take a look at it?”

I headed back to the University with money in my purse and the comforting weight of the lute strap hanging from my shoulder. It was secondhand, ugly, and had cost me dearly in money, blood, and peace of mind. I loved it like a child, like breathing, like my own right hand.