The Wise Man's Fear (44 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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“Only a smattering,” I said. “A few dozen words.”
“I can,” Sim said.
“Really?” I felt hope rising in my chest again. “When did you pick that up?”
Sim scooted his chair across the floor until he could look at the book. “My first term as an E’lir I heard some Eld Vintic poetry. I studied it for three terms with the Chancellor.”
“I’ve never cared for poetry,” I said.
“Your loss,” Sim said absently as he turned a few pages. “Eld Vintic poetry is thunderous. It pounds at you.”
“What’s the meter like?” I asked, curious despite myself.
“I don’t know anything about meter,” Simmon said distractedly as he ran a finger down the page in front of him. “It’s like this:
Sought we the Scrivani word-work of Surthur
Long-lost in ledger all hope forgotten.
Yet fast-found for friendship fair the book-bringer
Hot comes the huntress Fela, flushed with finding
Breathless her breast her high blood rising
To ripen the red-cheek rouge-bloom of beauty.
 
“That sort of thing,” Simmon said absently, his eyes still scanning the pages in front of him.
I saw Fela turn her head to look at Simmon, almost as if she were surprised to see him sitting there.
No, it was almost as if up until that point, he’d just been occupying space around her, like a piece of furniture. But this time when she looked at him, she took all of him in. His sandy hair, the line of his jaw, the span of his shoulders beneath his shirt. This time when she looked, she actually
saw
him.
Let me say this. It was worth the whole awful, irritating time spent searching the Archives just to watch that moment happen. It was worth blood and the fear of death to see her fall in love with him. Just a little. Just the first faint breath of love, so light she probably didn’t notice it herself. It wasn’t dramatic, like some bolt of lightning with a crack of thunder following. It was more like when flint strikes steel and the spark fades almost too fast for you to see. But still, you know it’s there, down where you can’t see, kindling.
“Who read you Eld Vintic poetry?” Wil asked. Fela blinked and turned back to the book.
“Puppet,” Sim said. “The first time I met him.”
“Puppet!” Wil looked as if he would tear out his own hair. “God pound me, why haven’t we gone to him about this? If there’s an Aturan translation of this book he’ll know where it is!”
“I’ve thought the same thing a hundred times these last few days,” Simmon said. “But he hasn’t been doing well lately. He wouldn’t be much help.”
“And Puppet knows what’s on the restricted list,” Fela said. “I doubt he’d just hand something like that over.”
“Does everyone know this Puppet person except for me?” I asked.
“Scrivs do,” Wilem said.
“I think I can piece most of this together,” Simmon said, turning to look in my direction. “Does this diagram make any sense to you? It’s perfect nonsense to me.”
“Those are the runes.” I pointed. “Clear as day. And those are metallurgical symbols.” I looked closer. “The rest . . . I don’t know. Maybe abbreviations. We can probably work them out as we go along.”
I smiled and turned to Fela. “Congratulations, you’re still the best scriv ever.”
 
With Simmon’s help, it took me two days to decipher the diagrams in the
Scrivani
. Rather, it took us one day to decipher and one day to double and triple check our work.
Once I knew how to construct my gram, I began to play a strange sort of hide-and-seek with Ambrose. I needed the entirety of my concentration free while I worked on the sygaldry for the gram. That meant letting my guard down. So I could only work on the gram when I was certain Ambrose was otherwise occupied.
The gram was delicate work, small engraving with no margin for error. And it didn’t help that I was forced to steal the time in bits and pieces. Half an hour while Ambrose was drinking coffee with a young woman in a public café. Forty minutes when he was attending a symbolic logic lecture. A full hour and a half while he was working at the front desk in the Archives.
When I couldn’t work on my gram, I labored on my pet project. In some ways I was fortunate Kilvin had charged me with making something worthy of a Re’lar. It gave me the perfect excuse for all the time I spent in the Fishery.
The rest of the time I spent lounging in the common room of the Golden Pony. I needed to establish myself as a regular customer there. Things would seem less suspicious that way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
 
Stolen
 
E
VERY NIGHT I RETIRED to my tiny garret room in Anker’s. Then I would lock the door, climb out the window, and slip into either Wil or Sim’s room, depending on who was keeping first watch over me that night.
Bad as things were, I knew they would become infinitely worse if Ambrose realized I was the one who had broken into his rooms. While my injuries were healing, they were still more than enough to incriminate me. So I worked hard to keep up the appearance of normality.
Thus it was that late one night, I trudged into Anker’s with all the nimble vigor of a shamble-man. I made a weak attempt at small talk with Anker’s new serving girl, then grabbed half a loaf of bread before disappearing up the stairs.
A minute later I was back in the taproom. I was covered in a panicked sweat, my heart was thundering in my ears.
The girl looked up. “You change your mind about that drink then?” she smiled.
I shook my head so quickly my hair whipped around my face. “Did I leave my lute down here last night after I finished playing?” I asked frantically.
She shook her head. “You carried it off, same as always. Remember I asked if you needed a bit of string to hold the case together?”
I darted back up the steps, quick as a fish. Then was back again in less than a minute. “Are you sure?” I asked, breathing hard. “Could you look behind the bar, just to be sure?”
She looked, but the lute wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the pantry either. Or the kitchen.
I climbed the stairs and opened the door to my tiny room. There weren’t many places a lute case could fit in a room that size. It wasn’t under the bed. It wasn’t leaning on the wall next to my small desk. It wasn’t behind the door.
The lute case was too large to fit in the old trunk by the foot of the bed. But I looked anyway. It wasn’t in the trunk. I looked under the bed again, just to be sure. It wasn’t under the bed.
Then I looked at the window. At the simple latch I kept well-oiled so I could trip it while standing on the roof outside.
I looked behind the door again. The lute wasn’t behind the door. Then I sat on the bed. If I had been weary before, then I was something else entirely now. I felt like I was made of wet paper. I felt like I could barely breathe, like someone had stolen my heart out of my chest.
CHAPTER THIRTY
 
More Than Salt
 
“T
ODAY,” ELODIN SAID BRIGHTLY, “we will talk about things that cannot be talked about. Specifically, we will discuss why some things cannot be discussed.”
I sighed and set down my pencil. Every day I hoped this class would be the one where Elodin actually taught us something. Every day I brought a hardback and one of my few precious pieces of paper, ready to take advantage of the moment of clarity. Every day some part of me expected Elodin to laugh and admit he’d just been testing our resolve with his endless nonsense.
And every day I was disappointed.
“The majority of important things cannot be said outright,” Elodin said. “They cannot be made explicit. They can only be implied.” He looked out at his handful of students in the otherwise empty lecture hall. “Name something that cannot be explained.” He pointed at Uresh. “Go.”
Uresh considered for a moment. “Humor. If you explain a joke, it isn’t a joke.”
Elodin nodded, then pointed at Fenton.
“Naming?” Fenton asked.
“That is a cheap answer, Re’lar,” Elodin said with a hint of reproach. “But you correctly anticipate the theme of my lecture, so we will let it slide.” He pointed at me.
“There isn’t anything that can’t be explained,” I said firmly. “If something can be understood, it can be explained. A person might not be able to do a good job of explaining it. But that just means it’s hard, not that it’s impossible.”
Elodin held up a finger. “Not hard or impossible. Merely pointless. Some things can only be inferred.” He gave me an infuriating smile. “By the way, your answer should have been ‘music.’”
“Music explains itself,” I said. “It is the road, and it is the map that shows the road. It is both together.”
“But can you explain how music works?” Elodin asked.
“Of course,” I said. Though I wasn’t sure of any such thing.
“Can you explain how music works without using music?”
That brought me up short. While I was trying to think of a response, Elodin turned to Fela.
“Love?” she asked.
Elodin raised an eyebrow as if mildly scandalized by this, then nodded approvingly.
“Hold on a moment,” I said. “We’re not done. I don’t know if I could explain music without using it, but that’s beside the point. That’s not explanation, it’s translation.”
Elodin’s face lit up. “That’s it exactly!” he said. “Translation. All explicit knowledge is translated knowledge, and all translation is imperfect.”
“So all explicit knowledge is imperfect?” I asked. “Tell Master Brandeur geometry is subjective. I’d love to watch that discussion.”
“Not all knowledge,” Elodin admitted. “But most.”
“Prove it,” I said.
“You can’t prove nonexistence,” Uresh interjected in a matter-of-fact way. He sounded exasperated. “Flawed logic.”
I ground my teeth at that. It was flawed logic. I never would have made that mistake if I’d been better rested. “Demonstrate it then,” I said.
“Fine, fine.” Elodin walked over to where Fela sat. “We’ll use Fela’s example.” He took her hand and pulled her to her feet, motioning me to follow.
I came reluctantly to my feet as well and Elodin arranged the two of us so we stood facing each other in profile to the class. “Here we have two lovely young people,” he said. “Their eyes meet across the room.”
Elodin pushed my shoulder and I stumbled forward half a step. “He says hello. She says hello. She smiles. He shifts uneasily from foot to foot.” I stopped doing just that and there was a faint murmur of laughter from the others.
“There is something ephemeral in the air,” Elodin said, moving to stand behind Fela. He put his hands on her shoulders, leaning close to her ear. “She loves the lines of him,” he said softly. “She is curious about the shape of his mouth. She wonders if this could be the one, if she could unclasp the secret pieces of her heart to him.” Fela looked down, her cheeks flushing a bright scarlet.
Elodin stalked around to stand behind me. “Kvothe looks at her, and for the first time he understands the impulse that first drove men to paint. To sculpt. To sing.”
He circled us again, eventually standing between us like a priest about to perform a wedding. “There exists between them something tenuous and delicate. They can both feel it. Like static in the air. Faint as frost.”
He looked me full in the face. His dark eyes serious. “Now. What do you do?”
I looked back at him, utterly lost. If there was one thing I knew less about than naming, it was courting women.
“There are three paths here,” Elodin said to the class. He held up one finger. “First. Our young lovers can try to express what they feel. They can try to play the half-heard song their hearts are singing.”
Elodin paused for effect. “This is the path of the honest fool, and it will go badly. This thing between you is too tremulous for talk. It is a spark so faint that even the most careful breath might snuff it out.”

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