The Wise Man's Fear Part 129

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY-SIX.

Failures DURING SPRING TERM I experienced several failures.

The first of these was mostly a failure in my own eyes. I had expected that picking up Yllish would be relatively easy. But nothing could have been further from the truth.

In a handful of days I had learned enough Tema to defend myself in court. But Tema was a very orderly language, and I'd already known a little bit from my studies. Perhaps most importantly, there was a great deal of overlap between Tema and Aturan. They used the same characters for writing, and many words are related.

Yllish shared nothing with Aturan or Shaldish, or even with Ademic for that matter. It was an irrational, tangled mess. Fourteen indicative verb tenses. Bizarre formal inflections of address.

You couldn't merely say "the Chancellor's socks." Oh no. Too simple. All owners.h.i.+p was oddly dual: as if the Chancellor owned his socks, but at the same time the socks somehow also gained owners.h.i.+p of the Chancellor. This altered the use of both words in complex grammatical ways. As if the simple act of owning socks somehow fundamentally changed the nature of a person.

So even after months of study with the Chancellor, Yllish grammar was still a muddy jumble to me. All I had to show for my work was a messy smattering of vocabulary. My understanding of the story knots was even worse. I tried to improve matters by practicing with Deoch. But he wasn't much of a teacher and admitted the only person he'd ever known who could read story knots had been his grandmother who had died when he was very young.

Second came my failure in advanced chemistry, taken under Mandrag's giller, Anisat. While the material fascinated me, I did not get along with Anisat himself.

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.

Anisat didn't feel it. For him chemistry was written journals and carefully penned rows of numbers. He would make me perform the same t.i.tration four times simply because my notation was incorrect. Why write a number down? Why should I take ten minutes to write what my hands could finish in five?

So we argued. Gently at first, but neither of us were willing to back down. As a result, barely two span into the term we ended up shouting at each other in the middle of the Crucible while thirty students looked on, openmouthed with dismay.

He told me to leave his cla.s.s, calling me an irreverent dennerling with no respect for authority. I called him a pompous slipstick who had missed his true calling as a counting-house scribe. In all fairness, we both had some valid points.

My other failure came in mathematics. After listening to Fela chatter excitedly for months about what she was learning under Master Brandeur, I set out to further my number lore.

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.

Due to my abandonment of chemistry and arithmetic, I had a great deal of free time on my hands. Some of this I spent in the Fishery, making a Bloodless of my own that sold practically before it hit the shelves. I also spent a fair amount of time in the Archives and the Medica, doing research for an essay t.i.tled "On the Non-Efficacy of Arrowroot." Arwyl was skeptical, but agreed my initial research warranted attention.

I also spent some of my time romantically. It was a new experience for me, as I had never caught the eye of women before. Or if I had, I hadn't known what to do with the attention.

But I was older now, and wiser to some degree. And because of the stories circulating, women on both sides of the river were beginning to show an interest in 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.

"Master Kilvin," I asked. "Can you think of a metal that will stand hard use for two thousand years and remain relatively unworn or unblemished?"

The huge artificer looked up from the bra.s.s gear he was inscribing and eyed me standing in the doorway of his office. "And what manner of project are you planning now, Re'lar Kvothe?"

In the last three months, I'd been trying to create another schema as successful as my Bloodless. Partly for the money, but also because I'd learned that Kilvin was much more likely to promote students with three or four impressive schema to their credit.

Unfortunately, I had met with a string of failures here, too. I'd had more than a dozen clever ideas, none of which had led to a finished design.

Most of the ideas were struck down by Kilvin himself. Eight of my clever ideas had already been created, some of them more than a hundred years ago. Five of them, Kilvin informed me, would require the use of runes that were forbidden to Re'lar. Three of them were mathematically unsound, and he quickly sketched out how they were doomed to failure, saving me dozens of hours of wasted time.

One of my ideas, he rejected as "utterly inappropriate for a responsible artificer." I argued that a mechanism that would cut the time needed to reload a ballista would help s.h.i.+ps defend against piracy. It would help defend towns against attack by Vi Sembi raiders... .

But Kilvin would hear none of it. When his face began to grow dark as a storm cloud, I quickly abandoned my carefully planned arguments.

In the end, only two of my ideas were sound, acceptable, and original. But after weeks of work, I was forced to abandon them as well, unable to get them to work.

Kilvin set down his stylus and half-inscribed bra.s.s gear, turning to face me. "I admire a student who thinks in terms of durability, Re'lar Kvothe. But a thousand years is a great deal to ask of stone, let alone metal. To say nothing of metal put to heavy use."

I was asking about Caesura, of course. But I hesitated to tell Kilvin the full truth. I knew all too well that the Master Artificer did not approve of artificery being used in conjunction with any sort of weapon. While he might appreciate the craftsmans.h.i.+p of such a sword, he would not think well of me for owning such a thing.

I smiled. "It isn't for a project," I said. "I was just curious. During my travels I was shown a sword that was quite serviceable and sharp. Despite this, there seemed to be proof that it was over two thousand years old. Do you know of any metal that could avoid breaking for so long as that? Let alone keep an edge?"

"Ah." Kilvin nodded, his expression not particularly surprised. "There are such things. Old magics, one could say. Or old arts now lost to us. These things are scattered through the world. Marvelous devices. Mysteries. There are many reliable sources that speak of the ever-burning lamp." He gestured with a broad hand at the hemispheres of gla.s.s laid out on his worktable. "We even possess a handful of these things here at the University."

I felt my curiosity flare up. "What sort of things?" I asked.

Kilvin tugged his beard idly with one hand. "I have a device devoid of any sygaldry that seems to do nothing but consume angular momentum. I have four ingots of white metal, lighter than water, that I can neither melt nor mar in any way. A sheet of black gla.s.s, one side of which lacks any frictive properties at all. A piece of oddly shaped stone that maintains a temperate slightly above freezing, no matter what the heat around it." His ma.s.sive shoulders shrugged. "These things are mysteries."

I opened my mouth, then hesitated. "Would it be inappropriate for me to ask to see some of these things?"

Kilvin's smile was very white against the dark of his skin and his beard. "It is never inappropriate to ask, Re'lar Kvothe," he said. "A student should be curious. I would be troubled if you were indifferent to such things."

The big artificer went to his large wooden desk, so strewn with half-finished projects that the surface was barely visible. He unlocked a drawer with a key from his pocket and drew out two dull metal cubes, slightly larger than dice.

"Many of these old things we cannot fathom or make use of," he said. "But some possess remarkable utility." He rattled the two metal cubes as if they were dice, and they rang together sweetly in his hand. "We call these warding stones."

He bent and set them on the floor, s.p.a.ced several feet apart from each other. He touched them and spoke very softly under his breath, too quietly for me to hear.

I felt a subtle change in the air. At first I thought that the room was growing colder, but then I realized the truth: I couldn't feel the radiant heat of the smoldering forge at the other end of Kilvin's office.

Kilvin casually picked up the bar of iron used to stir the forge and swung it hard at my head. His gesture was so casual that it caught me completely off my guard, and I didn't even have time to cower or flinch away.

The bar stopped two feet away from me, as if striking some unseen obstruction. There was no sound as if it had struck something, neither did it rebound in Kilvin's grip.

I reached out my hand cautiously and it b.u.t.ted up against ... nothing. It was as if the intangible air in front of me was suddenly made solid.

Kilvin grinned at me. "The warding stones are of particular use when performing dangerous experiments or testing certain equipment," he said. "They somehow produce a thaumic and kinetic barrier."

I continued to run my hand along the unseen barrier. It wasn't hard, or even solid. It gave way slightly when I pushed at it and felt slippery as b.u.t.tered gla.s.s.

Kilvin watched me, his expression faintly amused. "Truthfully, Re'lar Kvothe, until Elodin made his suggestion, I was thinking of calling your arrow-arresting device the Minor Ward." He frowned slightly. "Not entirely accurate, of course, but more so than Elodin's dramatic nonsense."

I leaned hard against the unseen barrier. It was solid as a stone wall. Now that I was looking more closely, I could see a subtle distortion in the air, as if I were looking through a slightly imperfect sheet of gla.s.s. "This is far superior to my arrowcatch, Master Kilvin."

"True." Kilvin gave a conciliatory nod and bent to pick up the stones, muttering again under his breath. I staggered a little when the barrier disappeared. "But your cleverness we can repeat endlessly. This mystery we cannot."

Kilvin held up the two cubes of metal on the palm of his huge hand. "These are useful, but never forget: cleverness and caution profit the artificer. We do our work in the realm of the real." He closed his fingers over the warding stones. "Leave mystery to poets, priests, and fools."

Despite my other failures, my study with Master Elodin was progressing rather well. He claimed all I needed to improve myself as a namer was time and dedication. I gave him both, and he put them to use in odd ways.

We spent hours riddling. He made me drink a pint of applejack, then read Teccam's Theophany Theophany from cover to cover. He made me wear a blindfold for three days straight, which didn't improve my performance in my other cla.s.ses, but amused Wil and Sim to no end. from cover to cover. He made me wear a blindfold for three days straight, which didn't improve my performance in my other cla.s.ses, but amused Wil and Sim to no end.

He encouraged me to see how long I could stay awake. And since I could afford all the coffee I liked, I managed nearly five days. Though by the end I was rather manic and starting to hear voices.

And there was the incident on the roof of the Archives. Everyone has heard about that in one version or another, it seems.

There was a great beast of a thunderstorm rolling in, and Elodin decided it would do me good to spend some time in the middle of it. The closer the better, he said. He knew Lorren would never allow us access to the roof of the Archives, so Elodin simply stole the key.

Unfortunately, that meant when the key went tumbling off the roof, no one knew we were trapped up there. As a result the two of us were forced to spend the entire night on the bare stone rooftop, caught in the teeth of the furious storm.

It wasn't until midmorning that the weather calmed enough for us to call down to the courtyard for help. Then, as there didn't seem to be a second key, Lorren took the straightest course and had several burly scrivs simply batter down the door leading to the roof.

None of this would have been a particular problem if, just as it had started to rain, Elodin hadn't insisted that we strip ourselves naked, wrap our clothes in an oilskin, and weigh them down with a brick. According to Elodin, it would help me experience the storm to the fullest degree possible.

The winds were stronger than he'd expected, and they had s.n.a.t.c.hed both the brick and our bundled clothes, hurling them into the sky like a handful of leaves. That was how we lost the key, you see. It had been in the pocket of Elodin's pants.

Because of this, Master Lorren, Lorren's giller Distrel, and three brawny scrivs found Elodin and me stark naked and wet as drowned rats on the roof of the Archives. Within fifteen minutes, everyone in the University had heard the story. Elodin laughed his head off at the whole thing, and though I can see the humor of it now, at the time I was far from amused.

I won't burden you with the entire list of our activities. Suffice to say that Elodin went to great lengths to wake my sleeping mind. Ridiculous lengths, really.

And much to my surprise, our work paid dividends. I called the name of the wind three times that term.

The first time I stilled the wind for the s.p.a.ce of a long breath while standing on Stonebridge in the middle of the night. Elodin was there, coaching me. By which I mean he was prodding me with a riding crop. I was also barefoot and more than slightly drunk.

The second time came on me unexpectedly while I was studying in Tomes. I was reading a book of Yllish history when suddenly the air in the cavernous room whispered to me. I listened as Elodin had taught me, then spoke it gently. Just as gently the hidden wind stirred into a breeze, startling the students and sending the scrivs into a panic.

The name faded from my mind some minutes later, but while it lasted I held the certain knowledge that should I wish it, I could stir a storm or start a thunderclap with equal ease. The knowledge itself had to be enough for me. If I had called the wind's name strongly in the Archives, Lorren would have hung me by my thumbs above the outer doors.

You may not think these terribly impressive feats of naming, and I suppose you are right. But I called the wind a third time that spring, and third time pays for all.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY-SEVEN.

Debts SINCE I HAD A great deal of free time on my hands, midway through the term I hired the use of a two horse fetter-cart and headed to Tarbean on a bit of a lark.

It took me all of Reaving to get there, and I spent most of Cendling visiting old haunts and paying old debts: a cobbler who had been kind to a shoeless boy, an innkeeper who had let me sleep on his hearth some nights, a tailor I had terrorized.

Parts of Waterside were strikingly familiar, while other pieces I didn't recognize at all. That didn't particularly surprise me. A city as busy as Tarbean is constantly changing. What did surprise me was the strange nostalgia I felt for this place that had been so cruel to me.

I had been gone for two years. For all practical purposes it was a lifetime ago.

It had been a span of days since the last rain, and the city was dry as a bone. The shuffling feet of a hundred thousand people kicked up a cloud of fine dust that filled the city streets. It covered my clothes and got in my hair and eyes, making them itch. I tried not to dwell on the fact that it was mostly pulverized horses.h.i.+t, with an a.s.sortment of dead fish, coal smoke, and urine thrown in for flavor.

If I breathed through my nose, I was a.s.saulted with the smell. But if I breathed through my mouth, I could taste it, and the dust filled my lungs making me cough. I didn't remember it being as bad as this. Had it always been so dirty here? Had it always smelled this bad?

After half an hour of searching, I finally found the burned-out building with a bas.e.m.e.nt underneath. I made my way down the stairs and through the long hallway to a damp room. Trapis was still there, barefoot and wearing the same tattered robe, tending to his hopeless children in the cool dark below the city streets.

He recognized me. Not as other people would, not as a budding hero out of stories. Trapis had no time for such things. He remembered me as the smudgy, starveling boy who fell down his stairs fever-sick and crying one winter night. You could say I loved him even more for that.

I gave him as much money as he would take: five talents. I tried to give him more, but he refused. If he spent too much money, he said, it would attract the wrong sort of attention. He and his children were safest if n.o.body noticed them.

I bowed to his wisdom and spent the remainder of the day helping him. I pumped water and fetched bread. I made a quick examination of the children, then took a trip to an apothecary and brought back a few things that would help.

Lastly I tended to Trapis himself, at least as much as he would allow. I rubbed his poor, swollen feet with camphor and mother's leaf, then made him a gift of tight-fitting stockings and a good pair of shoes so he wouldn't have to go barefoot in the damp of the bas.e.m.e.nt anymore.

As the afternoon faded into evening, ragged children began to arrive in the bas.e.m.e.nt. They came looking for a bit of food, or because they were hurt or hoping for a safe place to sleep. They all eyed me suspiciously. My clothes were new and clean. I didn't belong there. I wasn't welcome.

If I stayed there would be trouble. At the very least, my presence would make some of the starveling children so uncomfortable they wouldn't stay the night. So I said good-bye to Trapis and left. Sometimes leaving is the only thing you can do.

Since I had a few hours before the taverns started to fill up, I bought a single piece of creamy writing paper and a matching envelope of heavy parchment. They were extremely fine quality, much nicer than anything I'd ever owned before.

Next I found a quiet cafe and ordered drinking chocolate with a gla.s.s of water. I arranged the paper on the table and brought out pen and ink from my shaed. Then I wrote in an elegant, fluid script: Ambrose,The child is yours. You know it is true and so do I.I fear my family will disown me. If you do not behave as a gentleman and see to your obligations, I will go to your father and tell him everything.Do not test me in this, I am resolved.

I didn't sign a name, merely wrote a single initial which could have been an ornate R or perhaps a shaky B.

Then, dipping my finger into my gla.s.s of water, I let several drops fall onto the page. They swelled the paper a bit and smeared the ink slightly before I blotted them away. They made a fair approximation of teardrops.

I let one final heavy drop fall onto the initial I'd signed, obscuring it even more. Now the letter looked as if it could also be an F or a P or an E. Perhaps even a K. It could be anything, really.

I folded the paper carefully, then walked over to one of the room's lamps and melted a generous blob of sealing wax onto the fold. On the outside of the envelope I wrote: Ambrose Jakis University (Two miles west of Imre) Belenay-Barren Central Commonwealth I paid for my drink and headed to Drover's Lot. When I was just a few streets away I removed my shaed and tucked it into my travelsack. Then I dropped the letter in the street and stepped on it, scuffing it around with my foot a bit before picking it up and brus.h.i.+ng it off.

I was almost to the square when I saw the final thing I needed. "Hoy there," I said to an old, whiskery man sitting against a building. "I'll give you ha'penny if you let me borrow your hat."

The old man pulled the draggled thing off and looked at it. His head was very bald and very pale underneath. He squinted a bit in the late afternoon sunlight. "My hat?" he asked, his voice rough. "You can have it for a whole penny, and my blessing too." He gave a hopeful grin as he held out a thin, shaky hand.

I gave him a penny. "Could you hold this for a second?" I pa.s.sed him the envelope, then used both hands to screw the old, shapeless hat down over my ears. I used a nearby shop window to make sure every sc.r.a.p of my red hair was tucked away underneath.

"Suits you," the old man said, giving a phlegmy cough. I reclaimed the letter and eyed the smudgy fingerprints he'd left.

From there it was a quick step to Drover's Square. I slouched a bit and narrowed my eyes as I wandered through the milling throng. After a couple minutes my ear caught the distinctive sound of a southern Vintish accent, and I walked over to a handful of men loading a wagon with burlap sacks.

"Hoy," I said, putting on the same accent. "You folk heading up Imre-way?"

One of the men heaved his sack into the wagon and walked over, dusting off his hands. "Headin' through there," he said. "You looking for a ride?"

I shook my head and brought the letter out of my travelsack. "I've got a letter for up that way. I was going to take it myself but my s.h.i.+p sails tomorrow. I bought it from a sailor off in Gannery for a full quater bit," I said. "He had it himself off some n.o.ble gel for a single bit." I winked. "She was quite urgent that it get to him, I hear."