The Wise Man's Fear

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY-FOUR Sword and Shaed

With my purse full to bursting and Alveron’s letter of credit assuring my tuition, my winter term was carefree as a walk in the garden.

It was strange not having to live like a miser. I had clothes that fit me and could afford to have them laundered. I could have coffee or chocolate whenever I wanted. I no longer needed to toil endlessly in the Fishery and could spend time tinkering simply to satisfy my curiosity or pursue projects simply for the joy of it.

After almost a year away, it took me a while to settle back into the University. It felt odd not wearing a sword after all this time. But such things were frowned on here, and I knew it would cause more trouble than it was worth.

At first I left Caesura in my rooms. But I knew better than anyone how easy it would be to break in and steal it. The drop bar would only keep away a very genteel thief. A more pragmatic one could simply break my window and be gone in less than a minute. Since the sword was quite literally irreplaceable, and I’d made promises to keep it safe, it wasn’t long before I moved it to a hiding place in the Underthing.

My shaed was easier to keep at hand, as I was able to change its shape with a little work. These days it only rarely billowed on its own. More commonly it refused to move as much as the gusting wind seemed to demand. You’d think people would notice such things, but they didn’t. Even Wilem and Simmon, who teased me about my fondness for it, never marked my cloak as anything more than an exceptionally versatile piece of clothing.

In fact, Elodin was the only one to notice anything out of the ordinary about it. “What’s this?” he exclaimed when we crossed paths in a small courtyard outside Mains. “How did you come to be enshaedn?”

“I beg your pardon?” I asked.

“Your cloak, boy. Your turning cape. How in God’s sweet grace did you tumble onto a shaed?” He mistook my surprise for ignorance. “Don’t you know what you’re wearing?”

“I know what it is,” I said. “I’m just surprised that you do.”

He gave me an insulted look. “I wouldn’t be much of a namer if I couldn’t spot a faerie cloak a dozen feet away.” He took a corner of it between his fingers. “Oh, that’s just lovely. Here’s a piece of old magic man rarely lays a finger on.”

“It’s new magic, actually,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

When it became obvious my explanation involved a long story, Elodin led us into a small, cozy pub I’d never seen before. I hesitate to call it a pub at all, actually. It wasn’t full of chattering students and the smell of beer. It was dim and quiet with a low ceiling and scattered clusters of deep, comfortable chairs. It smelled of leather and old wine.

We sat near a warm radiator and sipped mulled cider while I told him the whole story of my unintentional trip into the Fae. It was a wonderful relief. I hadn’t been able to tell anyone yet for fear of being laughed out of the University.

Elodin proved to be a surprisingly attentive audience and was especially interested in the fight Felurian and I had had when she had tried to bend me to her will. After I’d finished the story, he peppered me with questions. Could I remember what I’d said to call the wind? How had it felt? The strange wakefulness I described, was it more like being drunk, or more like going into shock?

I answered as best I could, and eventually he leaned back in his chair, nodding to himself. “It’s a good sign when a student goes chasing the wind and catches it,” he said approvingly. “That’s twice you’ve called it now. It can only get easier.”

“Three times, actually,” I said. “I found it again when I was off in Ademre.”

He laughed. “You chased it to the edge of the map!” he said, making a broad motion with his splayed left hand. Stunned, I realized it was Adem hand-talk for amazed respect. “How did it feel? Do you think you could find its name again if you had need of it?”

I concentrated, trying to nudge my mind into Spinning Leaf. It had been a month and a thousand miles since I’d tried, and it was hard to tip my mind into that strange, tumbling emptiness.

Eventually I managed it. I looked around the small room, hoping to see the name of the wind like a familiar friend. But there was nothing there except dust motes swirling in a beam of sunlight that slanted through a window.

“Well?” Elodin asked. “Could you call it if you needed to?”

I hesitated. “Maybe.”

Elodin nodded as if he understood. “But probably not if someone were to ask you to?”

I nodded, more than a little disappointed.

“Don’t be discouraged. It will give us something to work toward.” He grinned happily and clapped me on the back. “But I think there’s more to your story than you realize. You called more than the wind. From what you’ve said, I believe you called Felurian’s name itself.”

I thought back. My memories of my time in the Fae were oddly patchy, none more than my confrontation with Felurian, which had an odd, almost dreamlike quality to it. When I tried to remember it in detail, it almost seemed as if it had happened to another person. “I suppose it’s possible.”

“It’s more than possible,” he assured me. “I doubt a creature as old and powerful as Felurian could be subdued with nothing more than wind. Not to belittle your accomplishment,” he hurried to add. “Calling the wind is more than one student in a thousand ever manages. But calling the name of a living thing, let alone one of the Fae . . .” He raised his eyebrows at me. “That’s a horse of a different color.”

“Why would a person’s name be so much different?” I asked, then answered my own question. “The complexity.”

“Exactly,” he said. My understanding seemed to excite him. “To name a thing you must understand it entire. A stone or a piece of wind is difficult enough. A person . . .” He trailed off significantly.

“I couldn’t claim to understand Felurian,” I said.

“Some part of you did,” he insisted. “Your sleeping mind. A rare thing indeed. If you’d known how difficult it was, you never would have stood a chance of doing it.”

Since poverty no longer forced me to work endless hours in the Fishery, I was free to study more broadly than ever before. I continued my usual classes in sympathy, medicine, and artificing, then added chemistry, herbology, and comparative female anatomy.

My curiosity had been pricked by my encounter with the Lockless box, and I attempted to learn something about Yllish story knots. But I quickly discovered most books on Yll were historical, not linguistic, and gave no information as to how I might actually read a knot.

So I scoured the Dead Ledgers and discovered a single shelf of disused books concerning Yll in one of the unpleasant, low-ceilinged sections of the lower basements. Then, while looking for a place to sit and read, I discovered a small room tucked behind a piece of jutting shelving.

It wasn’t a reading hole as I suspected. Inside were hundreds of large wooden spools wound about with knotted string. They weren’t books, precisely, but they were the Yllish equivalent. A thin layer of dust covered everything, and I doubted anyone had been in the room for decades.

I have a vast weakness for secret things. But I quickly found that reading the knots was impossible without first understanding Yllish. There were no classes on the subject, and asking around revealed none of Master Linguist’s gillers knew more than a scattering of words.

I wasn’t terribly surprised, considering Yll had been nearly ground to dust under the iron boots of the Aturan Empire. The piece that remained today was populated mostly by sheep. And if you stood in the middle of the country, you could throw a stone across the border. Still, it was a disappointing end to my search.

Then, several days later, Master Linguist summoned me to his office. He’d heard that I’d been making inquiries, and he happened to speak Yllish rather well. He offered to tutor me personally, and I gladly took him up on his offer.

Since I’d come to the University, I’d only seen Master Linguist during admissions interviews and when I was brought up on the horns for disciplinary reasons. Acting as Chancellor, he was rather grim and formal. But when he wasn’t sitting in the Chancellor’s chair, Master Herma was a surprisingly deft and gentle teacher. He was witty with a surprisingly irreverent sense of humor. The first time he told me a dirty joke, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Elodin wasn’t teaching a class this term, but I began to study naming privately under his direction. It went more smoothly now that I understood there was a method to his madness.

Count Threpe was overjoyed to find me alive and threw a resurrection party where I was proudly displayed to the local nobility. I had a suit of clothes tailored specifically for the event, and in a fit of nostalgia I chose to have them done in the colors my old troupe had worn: the green and grey of Lord Greyfallow’s men.

After the party, over a bottle of wine in his sitting room, I told Threpe of my adventures. I left off the story of Felurian, as I knew he wouldn’t believe it. And I couldn’t tell him half of what I’d done in the Maer’s service. Consequently, Threpe thought Alveron had been quite generous in rewarding me. I didn’t argue the point.