The Wise Man's Fear (146 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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“Why do we spend so much time on my hand fighting?” I asked Vashet as I made Picking Clover.
“Because your hand fighting is sloppy,” Vashet said, blocking me with Fan Water. “Because you embarrass me every time we fight. And because three times of four you lose to a child half your size.”
“But my sword fighting is even worse,” I said as I circled, looking for an opening.
“It is worse,” she acknowledged. “That is why I do not let you fight anyone but me. You are too wild. You could hurt someone.”
I smiled. “I thought that was the point of this.”
Vashet frowned, then reached out casually to grip my wrist and shoulder, twisting me into Sleeping Bear. Her right hand held my wrist over my head, stretching my arm at an awkward angle, while her left pressed firmly against my shoulder. Helpless, I was forced to bend at the waist, staring at the ground.
“Veh,” I said in submission.
But Vashet didn’t release me. She twisted, and the pressure against my shoulder increased. The small bones of my wrist began to ache.
“Veh,” I said a little louder, thinking she hadn’t heard me. But still she held me, twisting a little harder at my wrist. “Vashet?” I tried to turn my head to look at her, but from this angle all I could see was her leg.
“If the point of this is to hurt someone,” she said, “why should I let you go?”
“That’s not what I meant . . .” Vashet pushed down harder, and I stopped talking.
“What is the purpose of Sleeping Bear?” she asked calmly.
“To incapacitate your opponent,” I said.
“Very well.” Vashet began to bear down with the slow, relentless force of a glacier. Dull pain began to build in my shoulder as well as my wrist. “Soon your arm will be twisted from the cup of your shoulder. Your tendons will stretch and pull free of the bone. Your muscles will tear and your arm will hang like a wet rag at your side. Then will Sleeping Bear have served its purpose?”
I struggled a bit out of pure animal instinct. But it only turned the burning pain into something sharper, and I stopped. Over the course of my training, I had been put into inescapable positions before. Every time I had been helpless, but this was the first time I had truly felt that way.
“The purpose of Sleeping Bear is control,” Vashet said calmly. “Right now, you are mine to do with as I wish. I can move you, or break you, or let you free.”
“I would prefer free,” I said, trying to sound more hopeful than desperate.
There was a pause. Then she asked, calmly, “What is the purpose of Sleeping Bear?”
“Control.”
I felt her hands release me, and I stood, slowly rolling my shoulder to ease the ache.
Vashet stood there, frowning at me. “The point of all of this is control. First you must have control of yourself. Then you can gain control of your surroundings. Then you gain control of whoever stands against you. This is the Lethani.”
 
After the better part of a month in Haert, I could not help but feel that things were going well. Vashet acknowledged that my language was improving, congratulating me by saying I sounded like a child, rather than just an imbecile.
I continued to meet with Celean in the grassy field next to the sword tree. I looked forward to these encounters despite the fact that she thrashed me with cheerful ruthlessness every time we fought. It took three days before I finally managed to beat her.
That’s an interesting verse to add to the long story of my life, isn’t it?
Come listen all, and I will tell
A tale of brave and daring deeds.
Of wonders Kvothe the Bloodless wrought,
And of the time he bravely fought
A twigling girl no more than ten.
And listen how it came to pass,
The mighty blow he bravely dealt
That knocked her sprawling to the grass,
And of the glow of joy he felt.
 
Awful as it might sound, I was proud. And justifiably so. Celean herself congratulated me when it happened, seeming more than a little surprised that I had managed it. There, in the long shadow of the sword tree, she showed me her two-handed variant of Breaking Lion as a reward, flattering me with the familiarity of an impish grin.
That same day we finished our prescribed number of bouts early. I went to sit on a nearby lump of stone that had been smoothed into a comfortable seat. I nursed my dozen small hurts from the fight and prepared to watch the sword tree until Vashet returned to fetch me.
Celean, however, was not the sort to sit and wait. She skipped over to the sword tree, standing only a few feet from where the longest branches bobbed and danced in the wind, sending the round, razor-sharp leaves turning in wild circles.
Then she lowered her shoulders and darted under the canopy, in among the thousand madly spinning leaves.
I was too startled to cry out, but I did come halfway to my feet before I heard her laughing. I watched as she darted and jigged and spun, her tiny body dodging out of the way of the wind-tossed leaves as if she were playing tag. She made it halfway to the trunk and stopped. She ducked her head, reached out, and swatted away a leaf that otherwise would have cut her.
No. She didn’t just lash out. She used Drifting Snow. Then I watched her move even closer to the trunk, weaving back and forth and protecting herself. First she used Maiden Combs Her Hair, then Dance Backwards.
Then she skipped to one side, the Ketan abandoned. She crouched and sprinted through a gap in the leaves and made her way to the trunk of the tree, slapping it with one hand.
And she was back among the leaves. She made Pressing Cider, ducked and spun and ran until she was clear of the canopy. She didn’t shout out in triumph as a Commonwealth child might have, but she jumped into the air, hands raised in victory. Then, still laughing, she did a cartwheel.
Breathless, I watched Celean play her game again and again, moving in and out of the tree’s dancing leaves. She didn’t always make it to the trunk. Twice she scampered back out of the reach of the leaves without making it, and it was obvious even from where I sat that she was angry. Once she slipped and was forced to crawl out under the reach of the leaves.
But she made it to the trunk and back four times, each time celebrating her escape with upraised hands, laughter, and a single perfect cartwheel.
She only stopped when Vashet returned. I watched from a distance as Vashet stormed over and gave the girl a stern telling off. I couldn’t hear what was said, but their body language spoke volumes. Celean looked down and shuffled her feet. Vashet shook a finger and cuffed the young girl on the side of her head. It was the same scolding any child receives. Stay out of the neighbor’s garden. Don’t tease the Bentons’ sheep. Don’t play tag among the thousand spinning knives of your people’s sacred tree.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN
 
Hands
 
O
NCE VASHET JUDGED MY language only moderately embarrassing, she arranged for me to talk with an odd handful of people scattered around Haert.
There was a garrulous old man who spun silk thread while chattering endlessly, telling strange, pointless, half-delirious stories. There was a story of a boy who put shoes on his head to keep a cat from being killed, another where a family swore to eat a mountain stone by stone. I could never make any sense of them, but I listened politely and drank the sweet beer he offered me.
I met with twin sisters who made candles and showed me the steps of strange dances. I spent an afternoon with a woodcutter who spoke for hours of nothing but splitting wood.
At first I thought these were important members of the community. I thought Vashet might be parading me in front of them in order to show how civilized I had become.
It wasn’t until I spent the morning with Two-fingers that I realized she sent me to each of these people with the hope I would learn something.
Two-fingers was not his real name. I’d merely come to think of him as that. He was a cook at the school, and I saw him at every meal. His left hand was whole, but his right was viciously crippled, with only his thumb and forefinger remaining.
Vashet sent me to him in the morning, and together we prepared lunch and talked. His name was Naden. He told me he had spent ten years among the barbarians. What’s more, he had brought more than two hundred and thirty silver talents back into the school before he was injured and could no longer fight. He mentioned the last several times, and I could tell that it was a particular point of pride with him.
The bells rang and folk filtered into the dining hall. Naden ladled up the stew we’d made, hot and thick with chunks of beef and carrot. I cut slices of warm white bread for those who wanted it. I exchanged nods and occasional polite gestures with those who moved through the line. I was careful to make only the briefest eye contact, and tried to convince myself it was just a coincidence so few people seemed interested in bread today.
Carceret made a show of her feelings for everyone to see. First she made it to the front of the line, then made a widely visible gesture of
abhorrent disgust
before walking away, leaving her wooden plate behind.
Later Naden and I tended to the washing up. “Vashet tells me your swordplay is progressing poorly,” he said without preamble. “She says you fear too much for your hands, and this makes you hesitant.”
Firm reproach
.
I froze at the abruptness of it, fighting the urge to stare at his ruined hand. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
He turned from the iron pot he was scrubbing and held out his hand in front of him. It was a defiant gesture, and his face was hard. I looked then, as ignoring it would be rude. Only his thumb and forefinger remained, enough to grip at things, but not enough for any delicate work. The half of his hand that remained was a mass of puckered scar.
I kept my face even, but it was hard. In some ways I was looking at my worst fear. I felt very self-conscious of my uninjured hands and fought the urge to make a fist or hide them behind my back.
“It has been a dozen years since this hand held a sword,” Naden said.
Proud anger. Regret
. “I have thought long on that fight where my fingers were lost. I did not even lose them to a skilled opponent. They fell to some barbarian whose hands were better suited to a shovel than the sword.”
He flexed his two fingers. In some ways, he was lucky. There were other Adem in Haert who were missing entire hands, or eyes, or limbs to the elbow or knee.
“I have thought a long time. How could I have saved my hand? I have thought about my contract, protecting a baron whose lands were in rebellion. I think: What if I had not taken that contract? I think: What if I had lost my left hand? I could not talk, but I could hold a sword.” He let his hand drop to his side. “But holding a sword is not enough. A proper mercenary requires two hands. I could never make Lover out the Window or Sleeping Bear with only one. . . .”
He shrugged. “It is the luxury of looking backward. You can do it forever, and it is useless. I took the red proudly. I brought over two hundred and thirty talents to the school. I was of the second stone, and I would have made the third in time.”
Naden held up his ruined hand again. “I could have gained none of these things if I had lived in fear of losing my hand. If I flinched and cringed, I would never have been accepted into the Latantha. Never made the second stone. I would be whole, but I would be less than I am now.”
He turned back and began to scrub the pots again. After a moment I joined him.
“Is it bad?” I asked quietly, unable to help myself.
Naden didn’t answer for a long moment. “When it first happened, I thought to myself it was not so bad. Others have had worse wounds. Others have died. I was luckier than them.”
He drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I tried to think it was not bad. My life would continue on. But no. Life stops. Much is lost. Everything is lost.”
Then he said, “When I dream, I have two hands.”

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