The Wise Man's Fear (122 page)

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Authors: Patrick Rothfuss

Tags: #Mercenary troops, #Magicians, #Magic, #Attempted assassination, #Fairies, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Heroes, #Epic

BOOK: The Wise Man's Fear
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Still, I couldn’t let the subject go so easily. This was, quite literally, a once in a lifetime opportunity. If Felurian could be persuaded to tell me even a piece of what she knew, I could learn things no one else in the world might know.
I gave her my most charming smile and drew a breath to speak, but before I could get the first word out, Felurian leaned forward and kissed me full upon the mouth. Her lips were plush and warm. Her tongue brushed mine and she bit the swell of my lower lip playfully.
When she pulled her mouth from mine, it left me breathless with a racing heart. She looked at me, her dark eyes full of tender sweetness. She laid her hand along my face, brushing my cheek as gently as a flower.
“my sweet love,” she said. “if you ask of the seven again in this place, I will drive you from it. no matter if your asking be firm or gentle, honest or slantways. if you ask, I will whip you forth from here with a lash of brambles and snakes. I will drive you before me, bloody and weeping, and will not stop until you are dead or fled from fae.”
She didn’t look away from me as she spoke. And though I hadn’t looked away or seen them change, her eyes were no longer soft with adoration. They were dark as storm clouds, hard as ice.
“I do not jest,” she said. “I swear this by my flower and the ever-moving moon. I swear it by salt and stone and sky. I swear this singing and laughing, by the sound of my own name.” She kissed me again, pressing her lips to mine tenderly. “I will do this thing.”
And that was the end of it. I might be a fool, but I am not that much of a fool.
 
Felurian was more than willing to talk about the Fae realm itself. And many of her stories detailed the fractious politics of the faen courts: the Tain Mael, the Daendan, the Gorse Court. These stories were difficult for me to follow as I didn’t know anything about the factions involved, let alone the web of alliances, false friendships, open secrets, and old grudges that bound Fae society together.
This was complicated by the fact that Felurian took it for granted that I understood certain things. If I were telling you a story, for example, I wouldn’t bother mentioning that most moneylenders are Cealdish, or that there is no royalty older than the Modegan royal line. Who doesn’t know such things?
Felurian left similar details out of her stories. Who wouldn’t know, for example, that the Gorse Court had meddled in the Berentaltha between the Mael and the House of Fine?
And why was this important? Well of course that would lead to members of the Gorse being scorned by those on the dayward side of things. And what was the Berentaltha? A sort of dance. And why was this dance important?
After a handful of questions such as this, Felurian’s eyes would narrow. I quickly learned it was better to follow along, quiet and confused, rather than try to winkle out every detail and risk her irritation.
Still, I learned things from these stories: a thousand small, scattered facts about the Fae. The names of the courts, old battles, and notable persons. I learned you must never look at one of the Thiana with both eyes at once, and that the gift of a single cinnas fruit is considered a terrible insult if given to one of the Beladari.
You might think these thousand facts gave me some insight into the Fae. That I somehow fit them together like puzzle pieces and discovered the true shape of things. A thousand facts is quite a lot, after all....
But no. A thousand seems like a lot, but there are more stars than that in the sky, and they make neither a map nor a mural. All I knew for certain after hearing Felurian’s stories is that I had no desire to ever entangle myself in even the kindest corner of the faen court. With my luck I’d whistle while walking under a willow and thereby insult God’s barber, or something of the sort.
Here is the one thing I learned from these stories: the Fae are not like us. This is endlessly easy to forget, because many of them look as we do. They speak our language. They have two eyes. They have hands, and their mouths make familiar shapes when they smile. But these things are only seemings. We are not the same.
I have heard people say that men and the Fae are as different as dogs and wolves. While this is an easy analogy, it is far from true. Wolves and dogs are only separated by a minor shade of blood. Both howl at night. If beaten, both will bite.
No. Our people and theirs are as different as water and alcohol. In equal glasses they look the same. Both liquid. Both clear. Both wet, after a fashion. But one will burn, the other will not. This has nothing to do with temperament or timing. These two things behave differently because they are profoundly, fundamentally not the same.
The same is true with humans and the Fae. We forget it at our peril.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
 
Shaed
 
I
SHOULD, PERHAPS, EXPLAIN a few peculiarities of the Fae.
At first glance, Felurian’s forest glade did not seem particularly odd. In most ways it resembled an ancient, untouched piece of forest. If not for the unfamiliar stars above, I might have suspected I was still in an isolated piece of the Eld.
But there were differences. Since I had left my mercenary companions I had slept perhaps a dozen times. Despite this, the sky above Felurian’s pavilion remained the deep purpling blue of summer dusk and showed no signs of changing.
I had only the roughest guess as to how long I had been in the Fae. More importantly, I had no idea how much time might have been passing in the mortal world. Stories are full of boys who fall asleep in faerie circles only to wake as old men. Young girls wander into the woods and return years later, looking no older and claiming only minutes have passed.
For all I knew, years could pass each time I slept in Felurian’s arms. I could return to find a century had passed, or no time at all.
I did my best not to think about it. Only a fool worries over what he can’t control.
The other difference in the Fae realm was much more subtle and difficult to describe....
In the Medica, I had spent a fair amount of time around unconscious patients. I mention this to make a point: there is a great difference between being in a room that is empty and being in a room where someone is sleeping. A sleeping person is a presence in a room. They are aware of you, even if it is only a dim, vague awareness.
That is what the Fae was like. It was such an odd, intangible thing that I didn’t notice it for a long while. Then, once I became aware of it, it took me much longer to lay my finger on what the difference was.
It felt as if I had moved from an empty room into a room where someone was asleep. Except, of course, that there was no one there. It was as if everything around me was deeply asleep: the trees, the stones, the rippling stream that widened into Felurian’s pool. All these things felt more solid, more present than I was used to, as if they were ever so slightly aware of me.
 
The thought that I would eventually leave the Fae alive and unbroken was an unfamiliar one for Felurian, and I could tell it troubled her. Often, while in the midst of an unrelated conversation, she would change direction and make me promise,
promise,
to return to her.
I reassured her as best I could, but there are only so many ways you can say the same thing. After perhaps three dozen times I said, “I will do my best to keep myself safe so I can come back to you.”
I saw her face change, becoming first anxious, then grim, then thoughtful. For a moment I worried she had decided to keep me as a pet mortal after all, and I began to berate myself for not fleeing the Fae when I had the chance....
But before I could begin to grow genuinely concerned, Felurian cocked her head to one side and seemed to change the subject, “would my sweet flame like a coat? a cloak?”
“I have one,” I said, gesturing to where my possessions lay scattered at the edge of the pavilion. Only then did I notice that the tatty old tinker’s cloak
wasn’t
there. I saw my clothes, my boots, and my travelsack still bulging with the Maer’s lockbox. But my cloak and sword were gone. The fact that I hadn’t noticed their absence was understandable, as I hadn’t bothered dressing since I first woke next to Felurian.
She looked me over slowly, her expression intent. Her eyes lingering on my knee, my lower arm, my upper arm. It was only when she took hold of my shoulder, and turned me so she could examine my back, that I realized she was looking at my scars.
Felurian took hold of my hand and traced a pale line that ran along my forearm. “you are not good at keeping yourself safe, my kvothe.”
I was a little offended, especially as there was more than a little truth to what she said. “I do fairly well,” I said stiffly. “Considering the trouble that I find.”
Felurian turned over my hand and examined my palm and fingers closely. “you are not a fighter,” she mused softly to herself. “yet you are all iron-bitten. you are a sweet bird that cannot fly. no bow. no knife. no chain.”
Her hand moved to my foot, running thoughtfully along the calluses and scars from my years on the streets of Tarbean. “you are a long walker. you find me in the wild at night. you are a deep knower. and bold. and young. and trouble finds you.”
She looked up at me, her face intent. “would my sweet poet like a
shaed?
”
“A what?”
She paused as if considering her words. “a shadow.”
I smiled. “I already have one.” Then I checked to make sure. I was in the Fae after all.
Felurian frowned, shaking her head at my lack of understanding. “another I would give a shield, and it would keep him safe from harm. another I would gift with amber, bind a scabbard tight with glamour, or craft a crown so men might look on you with love.”
She shook her head solemnly. “but not for you. you are a night walker. a moon follower. you must be safe from iron, from cold, from spite. you must be quiet. you must be light. you must move softly in the night. you must be quick and unafraid.” She nodded to herself. “this means I must make you a shaed.”
She stood and started walking toward the forest. “come,” she said.
Felurian had a way of making requests that took some getting used to. I’d discovered that unless I was steeling myself to resist, I’d find myself automatically doing whatever it was she asked of me.
It wasn’t that she spoke with authority. Her voice was too soft and edgeless to carry the weight of command. She did not demand or cajole. When she spoke, it was matter-of-fact. As if she couldn’t imagine a world in which you didn’t want to do exactly as she said.
Because of this, when Felurian told me to follow her, I jumped like a puppet with its strings pulled. Soon I was padding along beside her, deep in the twilight shadows of the ancient forest, naked as a jaybird.
I almost went back to grab my clothes, then decided to follow some advice my father had given me when I was young. “Everyone eats a different part of the pig,” he’d said. “You want to fit in, you’ll do the same.” Different places, different decorums.
So I followed, naked and unprepared. Felurian struck out at a good pace, the moss muffling the sound of our bare feet.
As we walked the forest grew darker. At first I thought it was simply the branches of the trees arching over our heads. Then I realized the truth. Above us, the twilight sky was slowly growing darker. Eventually, the last hint of purple was gone, leaving the sky a perfect velvet black, flecked with unfamiliar stars.

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