The Wise Man's Fear Part 109

As I looked at them all, I realized any choice I made could be interpreted so many ways. I didn't know nearly enough about Adem culture to guess what my item might signify.

Even if I did, without the name of the wind to guide me back through the canopy, I would be cut to ribbons leaving the tree. Probably not enough to maim me, but enough to make it clear I was a clumsy barbarian who obviously didn't belong.

I looked at the gold bar again. If I chose that, at least the weight of it would give me an excuse for being awkward on my way out. Perhaps I could still make a good showing of it ...

Nervously I made a third circuit of the tree. I felt the wind pick up, gusting and making the branches flail about more wildly than before. It pulled the sweat from my body, chilling me and making me s.h.i.+ver.

In the middle of that anxious moment, I was suddenly aware of nothing as much as the sudden, urgent pressure of my bladder. My biology cared nothing for the gravity of my situation, and I was seized with a powerful need to relieve myself.

Thus it was that in the center of a storm of knives, in the midst of my test that was also my trial, that I thought of urinating up against the side of the sacred sword tree while two dozen proud and deadly mercenaries watched me do it.

It was such a horrifying and inappropriate thought that I burst out laughing. And when the laugh rolled out of me, the tension knotting my stomach and clawing at the muscles of my back melted away. Whatever choice I made, it would have to be better than p.i.s.sing on the Latantha.

At that moment, no longer boiling with anger, no longer gripped with fear, I looked at the moving leaves around me. Always before when the name of the wind had left me, it had faded like a dream on waking: irretrievable as an echo or a fading sigh.

But this time it was different, I had spent hours watching the patterns of these moving leaves. I looked out through the branches of the tree and thought of Celean jumping and spinning, laughing and running.

And there it was. Like the name of an old friend that had simply slipped my mind for a moment. I looked out among the branches and I saw the wind. I spoke the long name of it gently, and the wind grew gentle. I breathed it out as a whisper, and for the first time since I had come to Haert the wind went quiet and utterly still.

In this place of endless wind, it seemed as if the world were suddenly holding its breath. The unceasing dance of the sword tree slowed, then stopped. As if it were resting. As if it had decided to let me go.

I stepped away from the tree and began to walk slowly toward Shehyn, bringing nothing with me. As I walked, I raised my left hand and drew my open palm across the razor edge of a hanging leaf.

I came to stand before Shehyn, stopping the polite distance from her. I stood, my face an impa.s.sive mask. I stood, utterly silent, perfectly still.

I extended my left hand, b.l.o.o.d.y palm up, and closed it into a fist. The gesture meant willing willing. There was more blood than I'd expected, and it pressed between my fingers to run down the back of my hand.

After a long moment, Shehyn nodded. I relaxed, and only then did the wind return.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR.

Of Names "YOU," VASHET SAID AS we walked through the hills, "are one great gaudy s...o...b..ating b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you know that?"

I inclined my head slightly to her, gracefully gesturing subordinate acceptance subordinate acceptance.

She cuffed me on the side of the head. "Get over yourself, you melodramatic a.s.s. You can fool them, but not me."

Vashet held her hand to her chest as if gossiping. "Did you hear what Kvothe brought back from the sword tree? The things a barbarian cannot understand: silence and stillness. The heart of Ademre. What did he offer to Shehyn? Willingness to bleed for the school."

She looked at me, her expression trapped between disgust and amus.e.m.e.nt. "Seriously, it's like you stepped out of a storybook."

I gestured: Gracious flattering understated affectionate acceptance Gracious flattering understated affectionate acceptance.

Vashet reached out and flicked my ear hard with a finger.

"Ow!" I burst out laughing. "Fine. But don't you dare accuse me of melodrama. You people are one great unending dramatic gesture. The quiet. The blood-red clothes. The hidden language. Secrets and mysteries. It's like your lives are one giant dumbshow." I met her eye. "And I do mean that in all its various clever implications."

"Well, you impressed Shehyn," she said. "Which is the most important thing. And you did it in such a way that the heads of the other schools won't be able to grumble too much. Which is the other most important thing."

We reached our destination, a low building of three rooms next to a small split-timber goat pen. "Here is the one who will tend to your hand," she said.

"What of the apothecary?" I asked.

"The apothecary is close friends with Carceret's mother," Vashet said. "And I would not have her looking after your hands for a weight of gold." She nodded her head at the nearby house. "Daeln, on the other hand, is who I would come to if I needed mending."

She knocked on the door. "You may be a member of the school, but do not forget that I am still your teacher. In all things, I know what is best."

Later, my hand tightly bandaged, Vashet and I sat with Shehyn. We were in a room I'd never seen before, smaller than the rooms where we had discussed the Lethani. There was a small, messy writing desk, some flowers in a vase, and several comfortably cus.h.i.+oned chairs. Along one wall was a picture of three birds in flight against a sunset sky, not painted, but composed of thousands of pieces of bright enameled tile. I suspected we might be in the equivalent of Shehyn's study.

"How is your hand?" Shehyn said.

"Fine," I said."It is a shallow cut. Daeln has the smallest st.i.tches I have ever seen. He is quite remarkable."

She nodded. Approval Approval.

I held up my left hand, wrapped in clean white linen. "The hard part will be keeping this hand idle for four days. I already feel as if it were my tongue that were cut, and not my hand."

Shehyn gave a slight smile at this, startling me. The familiarity of the expression was a great compliment. "You performed quite well today. Everyone is speaking of it."

"I expect the few that saw have better things to speak about," I said modestly.

Amused disbelief. "That may be true, but those who watched from hiding will doubtless say what they have seen. Celean herself will have already told a hundred people unless I miss my guess. By tomorrow everyone will expect your stride to shake the ground as if you were Aethe himself come back to visit us."

I couldn't think of anything to say, so I kept quiet. A rarity for me. But as I've said, I had been learning.

"There is something I have been waiting to speak to you about," Shehyn said. Guarded curiosity. "After Tempi brought you here, he told me the long story of your time together," she said. "Of your search for the bandits."

I nodded.

"Is it true that you made blood magic to destroy some men, then called lightning to destroy the rest?"

Vashet looked up at this, glancing back and forth between us. I had grown so used to speaking Aturan with her that it was odd to see the expressionless Adem impa.s.sivity covering her face. Still, I could tell she was surprised. She hadn't known.

I thought of trying to offer an explanation for my actions, then decided against it. "Yes."

"You are powerful then."

I had never thought of it in those terms before. "I have some power. Others are more powerful."

"Is that why you seek the Ketan? To gain power?"

"No. I seek from curiosity. I seek the knowing of things."

"Knowing is a type of power," Shehyn pointed out, then seemed to change the subject. "Tempi told me there was a Rhinta among the bandits as their leader."

"Rhinta?" I asked respectfully.

"A bad thing. A man who is more than a man, yet less than a man."

"A demon?" I asked, using the Aturan word without thinking.

"Not a demon," Shehyn said, switching easily to Aturan. "There are no such things as demons. Your priests tell stories of demons to frighten you." She met my eye briefly, gesturing a graceful: Apologetic honesty Apologetic honesty and and serious import serious import. "But there are bad things in the world. Old things in the shape of men. And there are a handful worse than all the rest. They walk the world freely and do terrible things."

I felt hope rising within me. "I have also heard them called the Chandrian," I said.

Shehyn nodded. "I have heard this too. But Rhinta is a better word." Shehyn gave me a long look and fell back into Ademic. "Given what Tempi has told me of your reaction, I think that you have met such a one before."

"Yes."

"Will you meet such a one again?"

"Yes."The certainty in my own voice surprised me.

"With purpose?"

"Yes."

"What purpose?"

"To kill him."

"Such things are not easily killed."

I nodded.

"Will you use what Tempi has taught you to do this?"

"I will use all things to that purpose." I unconsciously began to gesture absolute absolute, but the bandage on my hand stopped me. I frowned at it.

"That is good," Shehyn said. "Your Ketan will not be enough. It is poor for one as old as you are. Good for a barbarian. Good for one with as little training as you have had, but still poor overall."

I fought hard to keep the eagerness out of my voice, wis.h.i.+ng I could use my hand to indicate how important the question was to me. "Shehyn, I have a great desire to know more of these Rhinta."

Shehyn was quiet for a long moment. "I will consider this," she said at last, making a gesture I thought might be trepidation trepidation. "Such things are not spoken of lightly."

I kept my face impa.s.sive, and forced my bandaged hand to say profound respectful desire profound respectful desire. "I thank you for considering it, Shehyn. Anything you could tell me of them I would value more than a weight of gold."

Vashet gestured firm discomfort firm discomfort, then polite desire, difference polite desire, difference. Two span ago I couldn't have understood, but now I realized she wanted to move the conversation onto a different subject.

So I bit my tongue and let it go. I knew enough about the Adem by this point to realize that pus.h.i.+ng the issue was the worst thing to do if I wanted to learn more. In the Commonwealth I could have pressed the point, teased and wheedled it out of the person I was talking to. That wouldn't work here. Stillness and silence were the only things that would work. I had to be patient and let Shehyn return to the subject in her own time.

"I was saying," Shehyn continued. Reluctant confession Reluctant confession."Your Ketan is poor. But were you to train yourself in proper fas.h.i.+on for a year, you would be Tempi's equal."

"You flatter me."

"I do not. I tell you your weaknesses. You learn quickly. That leads to rash behavior, and rashness is not of the Lethani. Vashet is not alone in thinking there is something troubling about your spirit."

Shehyn gave me a long look. For over a minute she stared at me. Then she gave an eloquent shrug and glanced at Vashet, favoring the younger woman with a ghost of a smile. "Still," Whimsical musing. Whimsical musing. "if I have ever met someone without a single shadow on their heart, it was surely a child too young for speaking." She pushed herself out of her chair and brushed off her s.h.i.+rt with both hands. "Come. Let us go and have a name for you." "if I have ever met someone without a single shadow on their heart, it was surely a child too young for speaking." She pushed herself out of her chair and brushed off her s.h.i.+rt with both hands. "Come. Let us go and have a name for you."

Shehyn led the three of us up the side of a steep, rocky hill.

None of us had spoken since we had left the school. I didn't know what was about to happen, but it didn't seem proper to ask. It would have seemed irreverent, like a groom blurting out, "What comes next?" halfway through his own wedding.

We came to a gra.s.sy ledge with a leaning tree clutching tight to the bare face of a cliff. Beside the tree was a thick wooden door, one of the hidden Adem homes.

Shehyn knocked and opened the door herself. Inside it wasn't cavelike at all. The stone walls were finished, and the floor was smooth wood. It was much larger than I'd expected, too, with a high ceiling and six doors leading deeper into the stone of the cliff.

A woman sat at a low table, copying something from one book into another. Her hair was white, her face wrinkled as an old apple. It occurred to me then that this was the first person I'd seen reading or writing in all my time in Haert.

The old woman nodded a greeting at Shehyn, then turned to Vashet and her eyes crinkled around the edges. Gladness Gladness. "Vashet," she said. "I did not know you were returned."

"We are come for a name, Magwyn," Shehyn said. Polite formal entreaty Polite formal entreaty.

"A name?" Magwyn asked, puzzled. She looked from Shehyn to Vashet, then her eyes moved to where I stood behind them. To my bright red hair and my bandaged hand. "Ah," she said, growing suddenly somber.

Magwyn closed her books and came to her feet. Her back was bent, and she took small, shuffling steps. She motioned me forward and walked a slow circle around me, looking me carefully up and down. She avoided looking at my face, but took hold of my unbandaged hand, turning it over to look at the palm and the fingertips.

"I would hear you say something," she said, still looking intently at my hand.

"As you will, honored shaper of names," I said.

Magwyn looked up at Shehyn. "Does he mock me?"

"I think not."

Magwyn made another circle of me, running her hands over my shoulders, my arms, the back of my neck. She moved her fingers through my hair, then stopped in front of me and looked me fully in the eye.

Her eyes were like Elodin's. Not in any of the details. Elodin's eyes were green, sharp, and mocking. Magwyn's were the familiar Adem grey, slightly watery and red around the edges. No, the similarity was in how she looked at me. Elodin was the only other person I had met who could look at you like that, as if you were a book he was idly thumbing through.

When Magwyn met my eyes for the first time, I felt like all the air had been sucked out of me. For the barest of moments I thought she might be startled by what she saw, but that was probably just my anxiety. I had come to the edge of disaster too often lately, and despite how well my recent test had gone, part of me was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Maedre," she said, her eyes still fixed on mine. She looked down and made her way back to her book.

"Maedre?"Vashet said, a hint of dismay in her voice. She might have said more, but Shehyn reached out and cuffed her sharply on the side of the head.

It was exactly the same motion Vashet had used to chastise me a thousand times in the last month. I couldn't help myself. I laughed.

Vashet and Shehyn glared at me. Actually glared.