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

by Patrick Rothfuss

The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music . . . but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.

The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.

IT WAS ONE OF those perfect autumn days so common in stories and so rare in the real world. The weather was warm and dry, ideal for ripening a field of wheat or corn. On both sides of the road the trees were changing color. Tall poplars had gone a buttery yellow while the shrubby sumac encroaching on the road was tinged a violent red. Only the old oaks seemed reluctant to give up the summer, and their leaves remained an even mingling of gold and green.

“I tend to think too much, Bast. My greatest successes came from decisions I made when I stopped thinking and simply did what felt right. Even if there was no good explanation for what I did.”

Kvothe shook his head. “No. 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.

My first mentor called me E’lir because I was clever and I knew it. My first real lover called me Dulator because she liked the sound of it. 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.

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.

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.

If there is one thing I will not abide, it is the folly of a willful pride.”

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.”

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.

PERHAPS THE GREATEST FACULTY our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need. 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.

“This road is like the meandering course of a life. There are two paths to take, side by side. Each of you are already traveling that side. You must choose. Stay on your own path, or cross to mine.” “But the road is the same, isn’t it? It still goes to the same place,” someone asked. “Yes.” “Where does the road lead?” “Death. All lives end in death, excepting one. Such is the way of things.” “Then what does it matter which side a man is on?” It was Rengen asking these questions. He was a large man, one of the few that was taller than dark-eyed Tehlu. But he was shaken by all that he had seen and heard in the past few hours. “What is on our side of the road?” “Pain,” Tehlu said in a voice as hard and cold as stone. “Punishment.” “And your side?” “Pain now,” Tehlu said in the same voice. “Punishment now, for all that you have done. It cannot be avoided. But I am here too, this is my path.”

“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.”

“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.”

As I stood pressed against a wall, waiting, the feeling faded. After a few minutes, I began to feel foolish. I trusted my instincts, but they gave false alarms every now and again. I waited a few more minutes just to be sure, then moved back into the street.

Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear.

The boy grows upward, but the girl grows up.

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.

The strings felt strange against my fingers, like reunited friends who have forgotten what they have in common. I played soft and slow, sending notes no farther than the circle of our firelight. Fingers and strings made a careful conversation, as if their dance described the lines of an infatuation.

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.

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.”

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

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

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.

All together, it was enough to start a steady stream of rumor around me, and I decided to take advantage of it. 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.

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.

To really fear something you have to dwell on it.

“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.”

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

Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.

“Sometimes my mouth just starts talking and it takes my mind a little bit to catch up.”

Music sounds different to the one who plays it. It is the musician’s curse.

“Her eyes were dark. Dark as chocolate, dark as coffee, dark as the polished wood of my father’s lute. They were set in a fair face, oval. Like a teardrop.”

“Her easy smile could stop a man’s heart. Her lips were red. Not the garish painted red so many women believe makes them desirable. Her lips were always red, morning and night. As if minutes before you saw her, she had been eating sweet berries, or drinking heart’s blood.

“No matter where she stood, she was in the center of the room.” Kvothe frowned. “Do not misunderstand. She was not loud, or vain. We stare at a fire because it flickers, because it glows. The light is what catches our eyes, but what makes a man lean close to a fire has nothing to do with its bright shape. What draws you to a fire is the warmth you feel when you come near. The same was true of Denna.”

“You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while. “But Dianne . . . Dianne is like a waterfall of spark pouring off a sharp iron edge that God is holding to the grindstone. You can’t help but look, can’t help but want it. You might even put your hand to it for a second. But you can’t hold it. She’ll break your heart. . . .”

“Nothing makes a man feel older than a young woman.”

A plate of eggs, a couple sausages, and some fried potatoes later, I felt I could begin to think rationally about my situation. It’s amazing how much easier it is to think productively when your belly is full.

“Anyone can make the trip after they get the news,” she said dismissively. “It takes a special sort of man to show up when he doesn’t know there’s trouble.” She sat up and turned to face me, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

Over the last month I had pulled a woman from a blazing inferno. I had called fire and lightning down on assassins and escaped to safety. I had even killed something that could have been either a dragon or a demon, depending on your point of view. But there in that room was the first time I actually felt like any sort of hero. If you are looking for a reason for the man I would eventually become, if you are looking for a beginning, look there.

There was no Kvothe, only the confusion, the anger, and the numbness wrapping them. I was like a sparrow in a storm, unable to find a safe branch to cling to. Unable to control the tumbling motion of my flight.

There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man’s will.

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

The first part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been horses stabled in the barn they would have stamped and champed and broken it to pieces. If there had been a crowd of guests, even a handful of guests bedded down for the night, their restless breathing and mingled snores would have gently thawed the silence like a warm spring wind. If there had been music . . . but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.

The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the thick stone walls of the empty taproom and in the flat, grey metal of the sword that hung behind the bar. It was in the dim candlelight that filled an upstairs room with dancing shadows. It was in the mad pattern of a crumpled memoir that lay fallen and unforgotten atop the desk. And it was in the hands of the man who sat there, pointedly ignoring the pages he had written and discarded long ago.

The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.