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“Any harmful sympathy falls under malfeasance.” Manet pointed at me with his piece of bread, his wild, grizzled eyebrows arching seriously over his nose. “You’ve got to pick your battles, boy. Keep your head down around the masters. They can make your life a real hell once you get into their bad books.”
Rothfuss has decided Kvothe cannot be spared falling into traps, getting into trouble on his own, ....apparently he is Murphys Law embodied.
“This isn’t funny,” I said, but found myself wearing a grin regardless.
And unfortunately Kvothe actually enjoys the trouble.
“Weren’t you wearing a gram?”
“We should all take precautions,” Brandeur said, placatingly. “You know as well as—”
Why is he surprised at the absence of a gram? Constant danger requiring protection from magic. Big hint.
“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’m not as young as I look, sir. I know it. I just wish other people knew it, too.”
I lay down and stared at the ceiling. My bunk lay outside the light of the other student’s candles and sympathy lamps.
We parted ways, and I fought down a wave of guilt. After knowing me less than three days Wil had gone out of his way to help me. He could have taken the easy route and resented my quick admittance into the Arcanum as many others did. Instead he had done a friend’s duty, helping me pass a difficult time, and I had repaid him with lies.
After a certain point is reached the numbers cease to matter, and all that remains is the faceless mass of a crowd.
My last resort then, the truth. “My teacher, Abenthy, taught me as much as he could about the physicker’s arts,” I explained. “When I ended up living on the streets of Tarbean I took care of myself.” I gestured to my knee. “I didn’t wear my shirt today because I only have two shirts, and it has been a long time since I have had as many as that.” “And the nahlrout?” he asked. I sighed. “I don’t fit in here, sir. I’m younger than everyone, and a lot of people think I don’t belong. I upset a lot of students by getting into the Arcanum so quickly. And I’ve managed to get on the wrong side of
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‘So same can the humble thrush well know its north?’ I mean, I don’t even know how to begin to criticize that. It practically mocks itself.”
“What do you know of poetry?” Ambrose said without bothering to turn around. “I know a limping verse when I hear it,” I said. “But this isn’t even limping. A limp has rhythm. This is more like someone falling down a set of stairs. Uneven stairs. With a midden at the bottom.”
It was quite by accident that I found the four-plate door. It was made of a solid piece of grey stone
Doorway to elsewhere, to travel for the Amyr
BE worthy?
“E’lir Kvothe is banned from the Archives.”
He needs to ban him to prevent him learning more of the Chandrim and the Amyr, their secret identities being at stake, if you will.
And because “near the whatever stairwell” is clearly the DOOR. Why is Kvothe a threat?
the room, I realized the truth. I had traded away my access to the Archives in exchange for a little notoriety.
He owns his errors. Not Ambrose's...HIS OWN. so why vengeance later?
“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.”
I think that's exactly what he does. He IS Kingkiller but by the time it happens the king ....is Ambrose and he has nefarious ties to Denna, K's lady love. And Kvothe is stupid. The way knowledge without wisdom is stupid.
Elodin needed cover to get away from being Chancellor.
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
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Rothfuss telling us what this account will NOT be, who Kvothe is NOT
That’s why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”
“If this were some tavern tale, all half-truth and senseless adventure, I would tell you how my time at the University was spent with a purity of dedication. I would learn the ever-changing name of the wind, ride out, and gain my revenge against the Chandrian.” Kvothe snapped his fingers sharply. “Simple as that.
He DID say clearly the what he wants after all.
“I won’t lie to you. There were times late at night when I lay sleepless and desperately alone in my narrow bunk in the Mews, times when I was choked with a sorrow so endless and empty that I thought it would smother me. “There were times when I would see a mother holding her child, or a father laughing with his son, and anger would flare up in me, hot and furious with the memory of blood and the smell of burning hair.”
“If I find out that Whin has been sedated or restrained I’ll ride you naked through the streets of Imre like a little pink pony.”
All I could think of was the old line from a hundred half-remembered stories: And Taborlin the Great said to the stone: “BREAK!” and the stone broke. .
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.”
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.
BAST SAT in the Waystone Inn and tried to keep his hands motionless in his lap. He had counted fifteen breaths since Kvothe had spoken last, and the innocent silence that had gathered like a clear pool around the three men was beginning to darken into a silence of a different kind. Bast took another breath—sixteen—and braced himself against the moment he feared would come.
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. Bast breathed in again—seventeen. He fought not to wring his hands as he waited for the deep silence to invade the room. He waited for it to crystallize and show its teeth on the edges of the cool quiet that had pooled in the Waystone.
Kvothe is under multiple death sentences. Chandrim from the night his parents died. The Fae for talking to that thing. And whatever king or kingdom, Vintas I think, he managed to offend
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.” Kvothe smiled. “Not women, Bast. A woman. The woman.”
“But still, I will try. She is in the wings now, waiting for her cue. Let us set the stage for her arrival. . . .”
Should I move recklessly, I might startle even the idea of her into sudden flight.
“There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other to lend.”
I did my best to keep my desperate poverty to myself. Pride is a foolish thing,
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.
That is how I felt, watching the musicians play. I couldn’t stand it. 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.
To all appearances I held the lute casually, carelessly. But in my heart I was clutching it with a white-knuckled fierceness. I cannot hope for you to understand this. When the Chandrian killed my troupe, they destroyed every piece of family and home I had ever known. But in some ways it had been worse when my father’s lute was broken in Tarbean. It had been like losing a limb, an eye, a vital organ. Without my music, I had wandered Tarbean for years, half-alive, like a crippled veteran or one of the walking dead.
I met his eye, careful to keep my face from showing how badly I needed it. I would do anything to keep this lute. I would dance naked in the snow. I would clutch at his legs, shaking and frantic, promising him anything, anything. .
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.
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.
It was true of course—I had been neglecting my friends even more than I had been neglecting myself. I felt a flush of guilt wash over me. I couldn’t tell them the full truth, that I needed to make the most of this term because it would very likely be my last.
If you cannot understand why I couldn’t bring myself to tell them this, then I doubt you have ever been truly poor.
Make DO!?!?!?
I found it hard to swallow past the sudden lump in my throat. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been missed. For a long time, I hadn’t had anyone to miss me. I felt the beginning of hot tears in the back of my throat.
“Thanks for the use of your fire.” “We’re both sympathists,” Dal said, giving me a friendly wave as I gathered my things and headed for the door. “You’re welcome to it any time.”
THE EOLIAN IS WHERE our long-sought player is waiting in the wings. I have not forgotten that she is what I am moving toward. If I seem to be caught in a slow circling of the subject, it is only appropriate, as she and I have always moved toward each other in slow circles.
“What I’m saying is that he was really good. I laughed and cried and just hurt all over.”
When I’d asked her name, she bolted back underground and didn’t return for days. So I picked a name for her, Auri. Though in my heart I thought of her as my little moon-fey.
I almost said, “Luck has nothing to do with it.” Master Arwyl’s words, repeated sternly a thousand times in the Medica. I tasted them on the tip of my tongue for a minute, hesitated, then spat instead.
If it is done well, it is enough to cut a heart. Unfortunately, few musicians could perform calmly in the center of such a storm of song.
