“Very well,” I said.
Vashet reached out and gripped my hand in both of hers, squeezed it, then let it fall.
I walked to the sword tree. For a moment the wind eased, and the thick canopy of hanging branches reminded me of the tree where I had met the Cthaeh. It was not a comforting thought.
I watched the spinning leaves, trying not to think of how sharp they were. How they would slice into the meat of me. How they could glide through the thin skin of my hands and slice through the delicate tendons underneath.
From the edge of the canopy to the safety of the trunk couldn’t be more than thirty feet. In some ways, not very far at all....
I thought of Celean darting wildly through the leaves. I thought of her, jumping and swatting branches away. If she could do it, then certainly so could I.
But even as I thought it, I knew it simply wasn’t true. Celean had played here all her life. She was skinny as a twig, quick as a cricket, and half my size. Compared to her, I was a lumbering bear.
I saw a handful of Adem mercenaries on the far side of the tree. Two of the more intimidating white shirts were there as well. I could feel their eyes on me, and in a strange way, I was glad.
When you’re alone, it’s easy to be afraid. It’s easy to focus on what might be lurking in the dark at the bottom of the cellar steps. It’s easy to obsess on unproductive things, like the madness of stepping into a storm of spinning knives. When you’re alone it’s easy to sweat, panic, fall apart . . .
But I wasn’t alone. And it wasn’t just Vashet and Shehyn watching me. There were a dozen mercenaries and the heads of other schools besides. I had an audience. I was onstage. And there is nowhere in the world I am more comfortable than on a stage.
I waited just outside the reach of the longest branches, watching for a break in their motion. I hoped their random spinning would, just for a moment, open into a path I could dart through, striking away any leaves that came too close. I could use Fan Water to keep them away from my face.
I stood at the edge of the canopy and watched, waiting for an opening, trying to anticipate the pattern. The motion of the tree lulled me like it had so many times before. It was beautiful, all circles and arcs.
As I watched, gently dazed by the motion of the tree, I felt my mind slip lightly into the clear, empty float of Spinning Leaf. I realized the motion of the tree wasn’t random at all, really. It was actually a pattern made of endless changing patterns.
And then, my mind open and empty, I saw the wind spread out before me. It was like frost forming on a blank sheet of window glass. One moment, nothing. The next, I could see the name of the wind as clearly as the back of my own hand.
I looked around for a moment, marveling in it. I tasted the shape of it on my tongue and knew if desired I could stir it to a storm. I could hush it to a whisper, leaving the sword tree hanging empty and still.
But that seemed wrong. Instead I simply opened my eyes wide to the wind, watching where it would choose to push the branches. Watching where it would flick the leaves.
Then I stepped under the canopy, calmly as you would walk through your own front door. I took two steps, then stopped as a pair of leaves sliced through the air in front of me. I stepped sideways and forward as the wind spun another branch through the space behind me.
I moved through the dancing branches of the sword tree. Not running, not frantically batting them away with my hands. I stepped carefully, deliberately. It was, I realized, the way Shehyn moved when she fought. Not quickly, though sometimes she was quick. She moved perfectly, always where she needed to be.
Almost before I realized it, I was standing on the dark earth that circled the wide trunk of the sword tree. The spinning leaves could not reach here. Safe for the moment, I relaxed and focused on what was waiting there for me.
The sword I had seen from the edge of the clearing was bound to the tree with a white silk cord that ran around the trunk. The sword was half-drawn from its sheath, and I could see the blade was similar to Vashet’s sword. The metal was an odd, burnished grey without mark or blemish.
Next to the tree on a small table sat a familiar red shirt, folded neatly in half. There was an arrow with stark white fletching and a polished wooden cylinder of the sort that would hold a scroll.
A bright glitter caught my eye, and I turned to see a thick gold bar nestled in the dark earth among the roots of the tree. Was it truly gold? I bent and touched it. It was chill under my fingers, and was too heavy for my single hand to pry up from the ground. How much did it weigh? Forty pounds? Fifty? Enough gold for me to stay at the University forever, no matter how viciously they raised my tuition.
I slowly made my way around the trunk of the sword tree and saw a fluttering piece of silk hanging from a low branch. There was another sword of a more ordinary sort, hanging from the same white cord. There were three blue flowers tied with a blue ribbon. There was a tarnished Vintish halfpenny. There was a long, flat whetstone, dark with oil.
Then I came to the other side of the tree and saw my lute case leaning casually against the trunk.
Seeing it there, knowing someone had gone into my room and taken it from under my bed, filled me with a sudden, terrible rage. It was all the worse knowing what the Adem thought of musicians. It meant they knew I wasn’t merely a barbarian, but a cheap and tawdry whore as well. It had been left there to taunt me.
I had called the name of the wind in the grip of a terrible anger before, in Imre after Ambrose had broken my lute. And I had called it in terror and fury to defend myself against Felurian. But this time the knowledge of it hadn’t come to me borne on the back of some strong emotion. I had slipped into it gently, the way you must reach out to catch a gently floating thistle seed.
So when I saw my lute, the welter of hot emotion brought me crashing out of Spinning Leaf like a sparrow struck with a stone. The name of the wind tattered to shreds, leaving me empty and blind. Looking around at the madly dancing leaves, I could see no pattern at all, only a thousand windblown razors slicing at the air.
I finished my slow circuit of the tree with a knot of worry tightening my stomach. The presence of my lute made one thing clear. Any of these objects could be a trap someone had left for me.
Vashet had said the test was more than what I brought back from the tree. It was also how I brought it, and what I did with it afterward. If I brought out the heavy bar of gold and gave it to Shehyn, would that show I was willing to bring money back to the school? Or it would signify that I would cling greedily to something heavy and unwieldy despite the fact that it put me in danger?
The same was true of any of these things. If I took the red shirt, I could be seen as either nobly striving for the right to wear it, or arrogantly presuming I was good enough to join their ranks. This was doubly true of the ancient sword that hung there. I didn’t doubt that it was as precious to the Adem as a child.
I made another slow circuit of the tree, pretending to consider my choices, but really just stalling for time. I nervously looked over the items a second time. There was a small book with a brass lock. There was a spindle of grey woolen thread. There was a smooth round stone sitting on a clean white cloth.
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 shiver.
I
n 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 pissing 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 impassive mask. I stood, utterly silent, perfectly still.
I extended my left hand, bloody palm up, and closed it into a fist. The gesture meant 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 showboating bastard, you know that?”
I inclined my head slightly to her, gracefully gesturing subordinate acceptance.
She cuffed me on the side of the head. “Get over yourself, you melodramatic ass.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 amusement. “Seriously, it’s like you stepped out of a storybook.”
I gestured: 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 cushioned 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 stitches I have ever seen. He is quite remarkable.”
She nodded. 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 impassivity 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 and 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, 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, wishing 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. “Such things are not spoken of lightly.”
I kept my face impassive, and forced my bandaged hand to say 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, then 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 pushing 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.“Your Ketan is poor. But were you to train yourself in proper fashion for a year, you would be Tempi’s equal.”
“You flatter me.”