CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SEVEN

Fire

I CAME TO THE PENNYSWORTH Inn long after the sun had set. The huge inn’s windows swelled with lamplight and there were a dozen horses tethered outside, champing into their feed bags. The door was open, casting a slant square of light into the dark street.

But something was wrong. There was none of the pleasant rousing clamor that should be coming from a busy inn at night. Not a whisper. Not a word.

Anxious, I crept closer. Every faerie tale I’d ever heard was running through my head. Had I been gone years? Decades?

Or was it more ordinary trouble? Had there been more bandits than we thought? Had they returned to find their camp destroyed, then come here to make trouble?

I slid close to a window, peered inside, and saw the truth.

There were forty or fifty people in the inn. They sat at tables and benches and lined up at the bar. Every eye was pointed at the hearth.

Marten sat there, taking a long drink. “I couldn’t look away,” he continued. “I didn’t want to. Then Kvothe stepped in front of me, blocking the sight of her, and for a second I was free of her spell. I was covered in a sweat so thick and cold it felt like someone had thrown a bucket of water over me. I tried to pull him back, but he shook me off and ran to her.” Marten’s expression was lined with regret.

“How come she didn’t get the Adem and the big one too?” asked a man with a hawkish face sitting nearby on the corner of the hearth. He drummed his fingers on a battered fiddle case. “If you’d really seen her, you all would have run off after her.”

There was a murmur of agreement from the room.

Tempi spoke up from a nearby table, his blood-red shirt making him easy to spot. “When I was growing, I train to have control.” He held up a hand and made a tight fist to illustrate his point. “Hurt. Hungry. Thirsty. Tired.” He shook his fist after each of these to show his mastery over it. “Women.” The faintest of smiles touched his face and he shook his fist again, but with none of the firmness he had used before. A murmur of laughter ran through the room. “I say this. If Kvothe did not go, I may.”

Marten nodded. “As for our other friend ...” He cleared his throat and gestured across the room. “Hespe convinced him to stay.” There was more laughter at this. After a moment of searching I spied where Dedan and Hespe sat. Dedan seemed to be fighting down a furious blush. Hespe rested a hand possessively on his leg. She smiled a private, satisfied smile.

“The next day we looked for him,” Marten said, regaining the room’s attention. “We followed his trail through the woods. We found his sword half a mile from the pool. No doubt he lost it in his haste to catch her. His cloak hung from a branch not far from there.”

Marten lifted up the threadbare cloak I had bought from the tinker. It looked like it had been savaged by a mad dog. “It was caught on a branch. He must have torn free rather than lose sight of her.” He idly fingered the ripped edges. “If it had been made of stronger stuff he might still be with us here tonight.”

I know my cue when I hear it. I stepped through the doorway and felt everyone turn to look at me. “I have found a better cloak since,” I said. “Made by Felurian’s own hand. And I have a story too. One you will be telling your children’s children.” I smiled.

There was a moment of silence, then an uproar as everyone began to speak at once.

My companions stared at me in stunned disbelief. Dedan was the first to recover, and after making his way to where I stood, surprised me with a rough, one-armed embrace. Only then did I notice one of his arms was hanging from his neck in a splint.

I gave it a questioning look. “Did you run into trouble?” I asked while the room buzzed chaotically around us.

Dedan shook his head. “Hespe,” he said simply. “She didn’t take too kindly to the thought of me running off after that faerie woman. She sort of... convinced me to stay.”

“She broke your arm?” I remembered my parting glimpse of Hespe holding him to the ground.

The big man looked down at his feet. “A bit. She sort of held onto it while I tried to twist away.” He gave a slightly sheepish smile. “I guess you could say we broke it together.”

I clapped him on his good shoulder and laughed. “That’s sweet. Truly touching.” I would have continued, but the room had quieted. Everyone was watching us, watching me.

As I looked at the crowd of people, I felt suddenly disoriented. How can I explain... ?

I’ve already told you I don’t know how much time I spent in the Fae. But it had been a long, long while. I had lived there so long, that the strangeness of it had faded. I’d grown comfortable there.

Now that I was back in the mortal world, this crowded taproom seemed strange to me. How odd to be indoors, rather than under the naked sky. The thick-timbered wooden benches and tables looked so primitive and rough. The lamplight seemed unnaturally bright and harsh to my eyes.

I’d had no company but Felurian for ages, and the people around me seemed strange by comparison. The whites of their eyes were startling. They smelled like sweat and horses and bitter iron. Their voices were hard and sharp. Their postures stiff and awkward.

But that only scratches the bare surface of it. I felt out of place in my own skin. It was profoundly irritating to be wearing clothes again, and I wanted nothing more than to be comfortably naked. My boots felt like a prison. On my long walk to the Pennysworth, I’d had to constantly fight the urge to remove them.

Looking at the faces around me, I saw a young woman of no more than twenty. She had a sweet face and clear blue eyes. She had a perfect mouth for kissing. I took half a step towards her, fully intending to catch her up in my arms and . . .

I stopped suddenly, just as I began to reach out with one hand to caress the side of her neck, and my head spun with something very close to vertigo. Things were different here. The man sitting beside the woman was obviously her husband. That was important, wasn’t it? It seemed a very vague and distant fact. Why wasn’t I already kissing this woman? Why wasn’t I naked, eating violets, and playing music underneath the open sky?

Looking around the room again, everything seemed terribly ridiculous. These people sitting on their benches, wearing layers on layers of clothing, eating with knives and forks. It all struck me as so pointless and contrived. It was incredibly funny. It was like they were playing a game and didn’t even realize it. It was like a joke I’d never understood before.

And so I laughed. It wasn’t loud or particularly long, but it was high and wild and full of strange delight. It was no human laugh, and it moved through the crowd like wind among the wheat. Those near enough to hear it shifted in their seats, some looking at me with curiosity, some with fear. Some shivered and refused to meet my eye.

Seeing their reaction shook me, and I made an effort to get a grip on myself. I drew a deep breath and closed my eyes. The moment of strange disorientation passed, though my boots still felt hard and heavy on my feet.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw Hespe looking up at me. She spoke hesitantly. “Kvothe,” she said hesitantly. “You look . . . well.”

I smiled wide. “I am.”

“We thought you were . . . lost.”

“You thought I was gone,” I corrected gently as I made my way to the fireplace where Marten stood. “Dead in Felurian’s arms or wandering the forest, mad and broken with desire.” I looked at them each in turn. “Isn’t that right?”

I felt the whole room’s eyes on me and decided to make the most of the situation. “Come now, I am Kvothe. I am Edema Ruh born. I have studied at the University and can call down lightning like Taborlin the Great. Did you really think Felurian would be the death of me?”

“She would be,” said a rough voice from the edge of the hearth. “If you had ever so much as seen her shadow.”

I turned to see the hawk-faced fiddler. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

“You should beg the pardon of everyone here,” he said, his voice dripping with disdain. “I don’t know what you hope to gain from this, but I don’t believe the lot of you saw Felurian, not for a second.”

I met his eyes. “I did more than see her, friend.”

“If that were true, then you’d be mad now, or dead. And while I’ll admit you might be mad, it’s not from any faerie charm.” The room chuckled at this. “No one has seen her in a score of years. The fair folk have left this place behind, and you’re no Taborlin, no matter what your friends say. I’m guessin’ you’re just a clever storyteller hopin’ to make a name for himself.”

That struck uncomfortably close to the mark, and I could see some of the crowd eyeing me skeptically.

Before I could say anything Dedan burst in. “What about his beard then? When he ran off three nights ago his face was smooth as a baby’s ass.”

“So you say,” the fiddler replied. “I was going to keep quiet even though I didn’t believe half what you told us about those bandits or him calling the lightning. But I thought to myself, ‘Their friend probably died and they want folks to remember him with a proud story or two.’ ”

He looked down his broken nose to where Dedan sat. “But really, this has gone too far. It’s not wise to tell lies about the fair folk. I don’t appreciate strangers coming here and spinning my friends’ heads full of nonsense. Be quiet, the lot of you. We’ve heard enough out of you tonight.”

Having said his piece, the fiddler opened the battered case that sat next to him and drew out his instrument. The mood of the room had grown vaguely hostile by this point, and more than a few people eyed me resentfully.

Dedan sputtered angrily. “Now listen h—” Hespe said something and tried to pull him down into his seat, but Dedan shook her off. “No. I won’t be called a liar. We were sent here by Alveron himself because of them bandits. And we did our job. We’re not expecting a parade, but I’ll be damned before I let you call me a liar. We killed those bastards. And afterward we did see Felurian. And Kvothe there did take off after her.”

Dedan glared around the room belligerently, mostly in the direction of the fiddler. “That’s the truth and I swear it by my good right hand. If anyone wants to call me a liar we can have it out right now.”

The fiddler picked up his bow and met Dedan’s eye. He drew a screaming note across the strings. “Liar.”

Dedan nearly leapt across the room as people pushed their chairs back to make a clear space for the fight. The fiddler came to his feet slowly. He was taller than I’d expected, with short grey hair and scarred knuckles that told me he knew his way around a fistfight.

I managed to get in front of Dedan and leaned against him, speaking low in his ear, “Do you really want to brawl with a broken arm? If he gets hold of it, you’ll just scream and piss yourself in front of Hespe.” I felt him relax a bit and gave him a gentle push back toward his seat. He went, but he wasn’t happy.

“... something here.” I heard a woman say behind me. “If you want to have a scuff with someone you take it outside and don’t bother coming back. You don’t get paid to fight the customers. You hear?”

“Now Penny,” the fiddler said soothingly. “I was just showin’ some teeth to him. He’s the one took it all personal. You can’t blame me for makin’ fun with the sort of stories they come in with.”

I turned around and saw the fiddler explaining himself to an angry woman in her middle years. She was a full foot shorter than him, and had to reach up to jab his chest with a finger.

That’s when I heard a voice exclaim to one side of me, “God’s mother, Seb. You see that? Look at it! It’s movin’ by itself.”

“You’re blind drunk. It’s just a breeze.”

“There ain’t no wind in tonight. It’s moving itself. Look again!”

It was my shaed, of course. By now several people had noticed it blowing gently in a breeze that wasn’t there. I thought the effect was rather nice, but I could tell by their wide eyes that folk were becoming alarmed. One or two slid their chairs away from me uneasily.

Penny’s eyes were fixed on my gently flowing shaed, and she walked over to stand in front of me. “What is it?” she asked, her voice showing just a hint of fear.

“Nothing to worry over,” I said easily, holding out a fold of it for her inspection. “It is my shadow cloak. Felurian made it for me.”

The fiddler made a disgusted noise.

Penny shot him a look and hesitantly brushed my cloak with a hand. “It’s soft,” she murmured, looking up at me. When our eyes met she looked surprised for a moment, then exclaimed, “You’re Losi’s boy!”

Before I could ask what she meant, I heard a woman’s voice say, “What?” I turned to see a red-haired serving girl moving toward us. The same one who had embarrassed me so badly on our first visit to the Pennysworth.

Penny nodded toward me. “It’s your fresh-faced fiery boy from about three span back! You remember pointing him out to me? I didn’t recognize him with the beard.”

Losi came to stand in front of me. Bright red curls tumbled over the bare, pale skin of her shoulders. Her dangerous green eyes swept over my shaed and made their slow way up to my face. “It’s him all right,” she said sideways to Penny. “Beard or no.”

She took a step closer, almost pressing against me. “Boys are always wearing beards and hoping it will make them men.” Her bright emerald eyes settled boldly onto mine as if expecting me to blush and fumble about as I had before.

I thought of everything I’d learned at the hands of Felurian, and felt the strange, wild laughter welling up in me again. I fought it down as best I could, but I could feel it tumbling around inside me as I met her eye and smiled.

Losi took a startled half-step back, her pale skin blushing to a furious red.

Penny held out a hand to steady her. “Lord girl, what’s the matter with you?”

Losi tore her eyes away from me. “Look at him Penny, really look at him. He’s got a fae look about him. Look at his eyes.”

Penny looked curiously at my face, then flushed a bit herself and crossed her arms in front of her chest, as if I had seen her naked. “Merciful lord,” she said breathlessly. “It’s all true, then. Isn’t it?”

“Every word,” I said.

“How did you get away from her?” Penny asked.

“Oh come on, Penny!” the fiddler cried out in disbelief. “You aren’t buyin’ this pup’s story, are ya?”

Losi turned and spoke hotly. “There’s a look a man has when he knows his way around a woman, Ben Crayton. Not that you would know. When this one was here a couple span ago I liked his face and thought I’d have a roll with him. But when I tried to trip him . . .” She trailed off, seemingly at a loss for words.

“I remember that,” a man at the bar called out. “Funniest damn thing. I thought he was gonna piss himself. He couldn’t say a word to her.”

The fiddler shrugged. “So he found some farmer’s daughter since then. It don’t mean . . .”

“Hush Ben,” Penny said with quiet authority. “There’s more changed here than a bit of beard can account for.” Her eyes searched my face. “Lord but you’re right, girl. There is a fae look about him.” The fiddler started to speak again but Penny shot him a sharp look. “Hush or get out. I don’t want any fights in here tonight.”

The fiddler looked around the room and saw the tide had turned against him. Red-faced and scowling, he gathered up his fiddle and stormed out.

Losi stepped close to me again, brushing her hair back. “Was she really as beautiful as they say?” Her chin went up proudly. “More beautiful than me?”

I hesitated, then spoke softly. “She was Felurian, most beautiful of all.” I reached out to brush the side of her neck where her red hair began its curling tumble downward, then leaned forward and whispered seven words into her ear. “For all that, she lacked your fire.” And she loved me for those seven words, and her pride was safe.

Penny spoke up. “How did you manage to get away?”

I looked around the room and felt everyone’s attention settle onto me. The wild, fae laughter tumbled around inside me. I smiled a lazy smile. My shaed billowed.

Then I moved to the front of the room, sat on the hearth, and told them the story.

Or rather, I told them a story. If I’d told them the entire truth they wouldn’t have believed it. Felurian let me go because I was holding a song hostage? It simply didn’t fit the classic lines.

So what I told them was closer to the story they expected to hear. In that story, I chased Felurian into the Fae. Our bodies tangled together in her twilight glade. Then, as we rested, I played her music light enough to make her laugh, music dark enough to make her gasp, music sweet enough to make her weep.

But when I tried to leave the Fae, she would not let me. She was too fond of my . . . artistry.

I shouldn’t be coy, I suppose. I implied rather strongly that Felurian thought quite highly of me as a lover. I offer no apology for this behavior except to say that I was a young man of sixteen, proud of my newfound skills, and not above a little bragging.

I told them how Felurian had tried to trap me in the Fae, how we fought with magic. For this I borrowed a little from Taborlin the Great. There was fire and lightning.

At the end I bested Felurian but spared her life. In her gratitude she wove me a faerie cloak, taught me secret magics, and gave me a silver leaf as a token of her favor. The leaf was pure fabrication, of course. But it wouldn’t have been a proper story if she hadn’t given me three gifts.

All in all, it was a good story. And if it wasn’t entirely true . . . well, at least it had some truth mixed in. In my defense, I could have dispensed with the truth entirely and told a much better story. Lies are simpler, and most of the time they make better sense.

Losi watched me all through the telling, and seemed to take the whole thing as something of a challenge to the prowess of mortal women. After the story was over, she laid claim to me and led me to her small room on the topmost floor of the Pennysworth.

I managed very little sleep that night, and Losi came closer to killing me than Felurian ever had. She was a delightful partner, every bit as wonderful as Felurian had been.

But how could that be? I hear you ask. How could any mortal woman compare with Felurian?

It is easier to understand if you think of it in terms of music. Sometimes a man enjoys a symphony. Elsetimes he finds a jig more suited to his taste. The same holds true for lovemaking. One type is suited to the deep cushions of a twilight forest glade. Another comes quite naturally tangled in the sheets of narrow beds upstairs in inns. Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.

Some might take offense at this way of seeing things, not understanding how a trouper views his music. They might think I degrade women. They might consider me callous, or boorish, or crude.

But those people do not understand love, or music, or me.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 780