The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2)

by Patrick Rothfuss

“Love is a subtle concept,” I admitted. “It’s elusive, like justice, but it can be defined.”

“Love is the willingness to do anything for someone,” I said. “Even at detriment to yourself.” “In that case,” she said, “how is love different from duty or loyalty?” “It is also combined with a physical attraction,” I said. “Even a mother’s love?” Vashet asked. “Combined with an extreme fondness then,” I amended. “And what exactly do you mean by ‘fondness’?” she asked with a maddening calm. “It is …” I trailed off, racking my brain to think how I could describe love without resorting to other, equally abstract terms. “This is the nature of love,” Vashet said. “To attempt to describe it will drive a woman mad. That is what keeps poets scribbling endlessly away. If one could pin it to the paper all complete, the others would lay down their pens. But it cannot be done.” She held up a finger. “But only a fool claims there is no such thing as love. When you see two young ones staring at each other with dewy eyes, there it is. So thick you can spread it on your bread and eat it. When you see a mother with her child, you see love. When you feel it roil in your belly, you know what it is. Even if you cannot give voice to it in words.”

That is the purpose of the questions. Asking them is like asking a young girl about the boy she fancies. Her answers may not use the word, but they reveal love or the lack of it within her heart.”

‘I won the only duel I ever lost.’

However, my mind kept spinning back to several unavoidable and unpleasant thoughts. I was thinking about secrets and how people longed to keep them. I wondered what Kilvin would do if I brought someone into the Fishery and showed them the sygaldry for blood and bone and hair.

The sweet smile of a young woman. There is nothing better in the world. It is worth more than salt. Something in us sickens and dies without it. I am sure of this. Such a simple thing. How strange. How wonderful and strange.

Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.

“In the empire there were seven cities and one city. The names of the seven cities are forgotten, for they are fallen to treachery and destroyed by time. The one city was destroyed as well, but its name remains. It was called Tariniel.

“The empire had an enemy, as strength must have. But the enemy was not great enough to pull it down. Not by pulling or pushing was the enemy strong enough to drag it down. The enemy’s name is remembered, but it will wait. “Since not by strength could the enemy win, he moved like a worm in fruit. The enemy was not of the Lethani. He poisoned seven others against the empire, and they forgot the Lethani. Six of them betrayed the cities that trusted them. Six cities fell and their names are forgotten.

“One remembered the Lethani, and did not betray a city. That city did not fall. One of them remembered the Lethani and the empire was left with hope. With one unfallen city. But even t...

Cyphus bears the blue flame. Stercus is in thrall of iron. Ferule chill and dark of eye. Usnea lives in nothing but decay. Grey Dalcenti never speaks. Pale Alenta brings the blight. Last there is the lord of seven: Hated. Hopeless. Sleepless. Sane. Alaxel bears the shadow’s hame.”

“Telling a story isn’t what I’m here for.” He tucked the cloth back into his satchel. “In brief, I had a snit and left the University looking for greener pasture. Best thing I ever did. I learned more from a month on the road than I had in three years of classes.”

no man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.”

Caesura leapt, caught the moonlight briefly on her blade, and tore his throat. He staggered to one knee, then toppled to his side, his hands staining black as they clutched his neck. I left him bleeding darkly in the moonlight, unable to cry out, dying but not dead.

“What is the heart of the Lethani?” I asked Vashet. “Success and right action.” “Which is the more important, success or rightness?” “They are the same. If you act rightly success follows.” “But others may succeed by doing wrong things,” I pointed out. “Wrong things never lead to success,” Vashet said firmly. “If a man acts wrongly and succeeds, that is not the way. Without the Lethani there is no true success.”

Since I had slept poorly I was twice weary today. My stomach was sour, and I felt gritty, like someone had sanded the first two layers of my skin away. I was almost tempted to doze in the saddle, but I couldn’t bring myself to ride while the girls walked.

“Am I supposed to be offended that you’re paying attention?” Kvothe laughed again. “What fun is there in telling a story if nobody’s listening?”

Kvothe drew a slow breath, the only motion in the room. “I’m sorry, Bast,” he said without looking up. “I’m just in a little pain right now. It got the better of me. Give me a moment and I’ll have it sorted out.”

I’d been back for a handful of days before I returned to my work in the Fishery. While I was no longer in desperate need of money, I missed the work. There is something deeply satisfying in shaping something with your hands. Proper artificing is like a song made solid. It is an act of creation.

Many of the stories centered around me hunting bandits and rescuing young girls. But none of them came terribly close to the truth. No story can move a thousand miles by word of mouth and keep its shape.

When Wil and Sim pressed me for details, I told them the whole story. It took me a while to convince them I was telling the truth. Rather, it took me a while to convince Sim. For some reason, Wil was perfectly willing to accept the existence of the Fae.

I loved the discovery chemistry offered. I loved the thrill of experiment, the challenge of trial and retrial. I loved the puzzle of it. I also will admit a somewhat foolish fondness toward the apparatus involved. The bottles and tubes. The acids and salts. The mercury and flame. There is something primal in chemistry, something that defies explication. Either you feel it or you don’t.

Unfortunately the loftier peaks of mathematics did not delight me. I am no poet. I do not love words for the sake of words. I love words for what they can accomplish. Similarly, I am no arithmetician. Numbers that speak only of numbers are of little interest to me.

My romances were all pleasant and brief. I cannot say why brief, except to state the obvious: that I do not have much in me that might encourage a woman to make long habit of my company. Simmon, for example, had a great deal to offer. He was a gemstone in the rough. Not stunning at first glance, but with a great deal of worth beneath the surface. Sim was tender, kind, and attentive as any woman could care for. He made Fela deliriously happy. Sim was a prince. By contrast, what did I have to offer? Nothing really. Less now. I was more like a curious stone that is picked up, carried a while, and finally dropped again with the realization that for all its interesting look, it is nothing more than hardened earth.

It was a perfect sunning stone, smooth basalt, dark as her eyes. The whiteness of her skin and the too-revealing shift were a sharp contrast against it, almost too bright to look on. She lay on her back and spread her hair to dry. Its wetness made a pattern against the stone that spelled the name of the wind. She closed her eyes and tipped her face toward the sun. Felurian herself could not have been more lovely, more perfectly at ease.

You would think that would have helped. That a gift and clasped hands would make things right between us. But the silence was back now, stronger than before. Thick enough that you could spread it on your bread and eat it. There are some silences that even words cannot drive away. And while Denna was touching my hand, she wasn’t holding it. There is a world of difference.

“There’s looking and there’s looking,” Fela said to Simmon. “When some men look at you it’s a greasy thing. It makes you want to have a bath. With other men it’s nice. It helps you know you’re beautiful.” She ran a hand absently through her hair.

“But only an idiot sits in a burning house and thinks everything is fine because fruit is still sweet.” Chronicler made a point of looking around the room. “The inn doesn’t look like it’s on fire to me.” Bast looked at him incredulously. “The whole world is burning down,” he said. “Open your eyes.”

“If whatever you’re going to do is wrong, you might as well do whatever you want.” Bast sat quietly for a long moment. Then he nodded, faintly at first, then more firmly. “You’re right,” he said. “If everything is going to end in tears anyway, I should do what I want.”