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

by Patrick Rothfuss

For he knew the name of the wind, and so the wind obeyed him.

making him seem younger, certainly not yet thirty. Not even near thirty.

Autumn’s the time. In autumn everything is tired and ready to die.’”

It reeked of burning hair and rotting flowers.

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

“Nothing but the truth could break me. What is harder than the truth?”

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.

“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.”

And then there was Abenthy, my first real teacher. He taught me more than all the others set end to end. If not for him, I would never have become the man I am today. I ask that you not hold it against him. He meant well.

It’s hard to be wrongfully accused, but it’s worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born.

What he had done afterward was different. He called the wind and the wind came. It was magic. Real magic. The sort of magic I’d heard about in stories of Taborlin the Great. The sort of magic I hadn’t believed in since I was six. Now I didn’t know what to believe.

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.

A poet is a musician who can’t sing. Words have to find a man’s mind before they can touch his heart, and some men’s minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.”

“I never said stupid,” Ben corrected me. “You’re clever. We both know that. But you can be thoughtless. A clever, thoughtless person is one of the most terrifying things there is. Worse, I’ve been teaching you some dangerous things.”

My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you’re lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years.

What would it be like to settle in one place, not just for an evening or a span of days, but for months? Years?

I would spare you the burden of any of it if one piece were not necessary to the story. It is vital. It is the hinge upon which the story pivots like an opening door. In some ways, this is where the story begins. So let’s have done with it.

And even with no one there to see, he hid his face in his hands and wept quietly, his body wracked with wave on wave of heavy, silent sobs.

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.

I began to play something other than songs. When the sun warms the grass and the breeze cools you, it feels a certain way. I would play until I got the feeling right. I would play until it sounded like Warm Grass and Cool Breeze.

By the end of the second month, I could play things nearly as easily as I saw and felt them: Sun Setting Behind the Clouds, Bird Taking a Drink, Dew in the Bracken.

Somewhere in the third month I stopped looking outside and started looking inside for things to play. I learned to play Riding in the Wagon with Ben, Singing with Father by the Fire, Watching Shandi Dance, Grinding Leaves When it Is Nice Outside, Mother Smiling. . . . 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.

He started to sing “Tinker Tanner,” a drinking song that is older than God. After a second his son joined in, and their rough voices made a simple harmony that set something inside me aching as I remembered other wagons, different songs, a half-forgotten home.

“You’ve been sleeping in the church again, haven’t you? You get religion like I get fleas.”

I decided that he was not an altogether bad fellow. I smiled back at him and for a second I almost felt guilty about how I’d written the receipt. I also felt guilty about the three pens I’d stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.

“Would you like your old clothes?” I shook my head. “Throw them away—actually, burn them, and make sure no one accidentally breathes the smoke.”

Once I knew what was bothering me, the greater part of my uneasiness left. Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear.

Waterside had thieves. Hillside had bankers—I’m sorry, burglars.

Why? Because pride is a strange thing, and because generosity deserves generosity in return. But mostly because it felt like the right thing to do, and that is reason enough.

But beyond all that, two facts remain to recommend a cloak. First, very little is as striking as a well-worn cloak, billowing lightly about you in the breeze. And second, the best cloaks have innumerable little pockets that I have an irrational and overpowering attraction toward.

Neither of us spoke. I closed my eyes. The closeness of her was the sweetest, sharpest thing my life had ever known.

“What are the three most important rules of the chemist?” This I knew from Ben. “Label clearly. Measure twice. Eat elsewhere.”

Quite the contrary. It reassured me. I had been feeling rather out of my element until Ambrose let me know, in his own special way, that there wasn’t much difference between the University and the streets of Tarbean. No matter where you are, people are basically the same.

Besides, anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to wondrous things.

But I had had enough of bullies in my life.

No wonder you have to hold women down to get them to listen to it.” Ambrose stiffened and his arm slid off the back of the chair to fall at his side. His expression was pure venom. “When you’re older, E’lir, you’ll understand that what a man and a woman do together—” “What? In the privacy of the entrance hall of the Archives?” I gestured around us. “God’s body, this isn’t some brothel. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, she’s a student, not some brass nail you’ve paid to bang away at. If you’re going to force yourself on a woman, have the decency to do it in an alleyway. At least that way she’ll feel justified screaming about it.”

As the door swung shut behind her, the room seemed to grow a little dimmer. I am not speaking poetically. The light truly seemed to dim.

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.

“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.”

“Master Elodin,” I said, pelting up to him. “I was hoping I could talk with you.” “A sad little hope,” he said without breaking stride or looking in my direction. “You should aim higher. A young man ought to be afire with high ambitions.”

“Ye Gods,” Elodin sighed, disgusted. “A bootlicker too. You lack the requisite spine and testicular fortitude to study under me.”

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.

Think now. What does our story need? What vital element is it lacking?” “Women, Reshi,” Bast said immediately. “There’s a real paucity of women.”

“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.”

AS WITH ALL TRULY wild things, care is necessary when making your approach.

“There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other to lend.”

Pride is a foolish thing, but it is a powerful force.

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.

Girls are wonderful, I’ll admit, but when one takes one of my friends away, I get a little jealous.” He gave a sudden, sunny smile. “Not that I think of you in that way, of course.”