The Wise Man's Fear tkc-2, page 67
part #2 of The Kingkiller Chronicle Series
The third time we called Martin back, he suggested we make a standing wager. Tempi and I would win a ha’penny for every sign we found, and he’d win a silver bit for every one we missed. I jumped at the offer. Not only would it help keep us on our toes, but five-to-one odds seemed rather generous.
This made the rest of the day pass quickly. Tempi and I missed a few signs: a log shifted out of place, some scattered leaves, and a broken spiderweb. I thought this last one was a bit unfair, but even so, by the time we headed back to camp that evening, Tempi and I were two pennies ahead.
Over supper, Marten told a story about a young widow’s son who left home to make his fortune. A tinker sold him a pair of magic boots that helped him rescue a princess from a tower high in the mountains.
Dedan nodded along while he ate, smiling as if he’d heard it before. Hespe laughed in places, gasped in others, the perfect audience. Tempi sat perfectly still with his hands folded in his lap, showing none of the nervous restlessness I’d come to expect from him. He stayed that way through the entire story, listening while his dinner grew cold.
The story was a good one. There was a hungry giant and a riddle game. But the widow’s son was clever, and in the end he brought the princess back and married her. It was a familiar story, and listening to it reminded me of days long gone, back when I had a home, a family.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
Tone
The next day Marten left with Hespe and Dedan while Tempi and I remained behind to keep an eye on the camp.
With nothing else to occupy my time, I started gathering extra firewood. Then I searched for useful herbs in the undergrowth and brought water from the nearby spring. Then I busied myself by unpacking, sorting, and rearranging everything in my travelsack.
Tempi disassembled his sword, meticulously cleaning and oiling all the pieces. He didn’t look bored, but then again, he never looked like anything.
By midday I was nearly mad with boredom. I would have read, but I hadn’t brought a book. I would have sewn pockets into my threadbare cloak, but I didn’t have any spare cloth. I would have played my lute, but a trouper’s lute is designed to carry music through a noisy taproom. Out here, the sound of it could carry for miles.
I would have chatted with Tempi, but trying to have a conversation with him was like playing catch with a well.
Still, it seemed to be my only option. I walked over to where Tempi sat. He had finished cleaning his sword and was making small adjustments to the leather grip. “Tempi?”
Tempi lay aside his sword and came to his feet. He stood uncomfortably close to me, with barely more than eight inches of space between us. Then he hesitated and frowned. It wasn’t much of a frown, barely a thinning of the lips and a slight line between his eyebrows, but on Tempi’s blank sheet of a face, it stood out like a word written in red ink.
He backed away from me by two good paces, then eyed the ground between us and stepped forward slightly.
Understanding dawned on me. “Tempi, how close do Adem stand?”
Tempi looked at me blankly for a second, then burst out laughing. A shy smile flickered onto his face, making him look very young. It left his mouth quickly, but lingered around his eyes. “Smart. Yes. Different in Adem. For you, close.” He stepped uncomfortably close, then backed away.
“For me?” I asked. “Is it different for different people?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“How close for Dedan?”
He fidgeted. “Complicated.”
I felt a familiar curiosity flicker up inside me. “Tempi,” I asked. “Would you teach me these things? Teach me your language?”
“Yes,” he said. And though his face betrayed none of it, I could hear a great weight of relief in his voice. “Yes. Please. Yes.”
By the end of the afternoon, I had learned a wild, useless scattering of Ademic words. The grammar was still a mystery, but that is how it always begins. Luckily, languages are like musical instruments: the more you know, the easier it is to pick up new ones. Ademic was my fourth.
Our major problem was that Tempi’s Aturan was not very good, which gave us little common ground. So we drew in the dirt, pointed, and waved our hands quite a bit. Several times, when mere gestures were not enough, we ended up performing something close to pantomime or little mummer’s plays in order to get our meaning across. It was more entertaining than I had expected.
There was one stumbling block the first day. I had learned a dozen words and thought of another that would be useful. I made a fist and pretended to throw a punch at Tempi.
“Freaht,” he said.
“Freaht,” I repeated.
He shook his head. “No. Freaht.”
“Freaht,” I said carefully.
“No,” he said firmly. “Freaht is . . .” He bared his teeth and worked his jaw as if he were biting something. “Freaht.” He punched his fist into his palm.
“Freaht,” I said.
“No.” I was amazed at the weight of condescension in his voice. “Freaht.”
My face got hot. “That’s what I’m saying. Freaht! Freaht! Fre—”
Tempi reached out and smacked me in the side of the head with the flat of his hand. It was the same way he had struck Dedan last night, the way my father had cuffed me when I was being troublesome in public. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, it was just startling. No one had done that to me in years.
Even more startling was that I hardly saw it. The motion was smooth and lazy and faster than snapping your fingers. He didn’t seem to mean anything insulting by it. He was merely getting my attention.
He lifted his sandy hair and pointed to his ear. “Hear,” he said firmly. “Freaht.” He bared his teeth again, making a biting motion. “Freaht.” Raised fist. “Freaht. Freaht.”
And I did hear it. It wasn’t the sound of the word itself, it was the cadence of the word. “Freaht?” I said.
He favored me with a small, rare smile. “Yes. Good.”
Then I had to go back and relearn all the words, making note of their rhythm. I hadn’t really heard it before, just mimicked it. Slowly, I discovered each word could have several different meanings depending on cadence of the sound that composed them.
I learned the all-important phrases “What does that mean?” and “Explain that more slowly,” in addition to a couple dozen words: Fight. Look. Sword. Hand. Dance. The dumbshow I had to perform to get him to understand the last of these left both of us laughing.
It was fascinating. The differing cadences of each word meant the language itself had a sort of music to it. I couldn’t help but wonder . . .
“Tempi?” I asked. “What are your songs like?” He looked at me blankly for a moment, and I thought he might not understand the abstract question. “Could you sing me an Adem song?”
“What is song?” he asked. In the last hour, Tempi had learned twice as many words as I had.
I cleared my throat and sang:
Little Jenny no-shoes went a-walking with the wind.
She was looking for a bonny boy to laugh and make her grin.
Upon her head a feather cap, upon her lips a whistle.
Her lips were wet and honey sweet. Her tongue was sharp as thistle.
Tempi’s eyes went wide as I sang. He practically gaped.
“You?” I prompted, pointing to his chest. “Can you sing an Adem song?”
His face flushed a burning red, and a dozen emotions ran wild and undisguised over his face: astonishment, horror, embarrassment, shock, disgust. He got to his feet, turning away and chattering something in Ademic far too quickly for me to follow. He looked for all the world as if I’d just asked him to strip naked and dance for me.
“No,” he said, managing to collect himself somewhat. His face was composed again, but his fair skin was still flushed a violent red. “No.” Looking down at the ground, he touched his chest, shaking his head. “No song. No Adem song.”
I got to my feet as well, not knowing what I’d done wrong. “Tempi. I’m sorry.”
Tempi shook his head. “No. Nothing sorry.” He drew a deep breath and shook his head as he turned and started to walk away. “Complicated.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
The Jealous Moon
That evening Marten shot a trio of fat rabbits. I dug roots and picked a few herbs, and before the sun was down the five of us sat down to a meal made perfect by the addition of two large loaves of fresh bread, butter, and a crumbly cheese too local to have any specific name.
Spirits were high after a day of good weather, and so with dinner came more stories.
Hespe told a surprisingly romantic tale of a queen who loved a serving boy. She told her story with a gentle passion. And if her telling didn’t show a tender heart, the looks she gave Dedan as she spoke of the queen’s love did.
Dedan, however, failed to see the marks of love on her. And with a folly I have rarely seen equaled, he began to tell a story he’d heard at the Pennysworth Inn. A tale of Felurian.
“The boy who told me this was hardly as old as Kvothe here,” Dedan said. “And if you’d heard him talk you’d have seen he wasn’t the sort who could invent such a tale.” The mercenary tapped his temple meaningfully. “But listen and judge for yourself if it’s worth believing.”
As I’ve said, Dedan had a good tongue in his head, and a sharper wit than you’d guess, when he decided to use it. Unfortunately, this was one of the times that the former was working and the latter was not.
“For time out of mind, men have been wary of this stretch of woods. Not for fear of lawless men or becoming lost.” He shook his head. “No. They say the fair folk make their homes here.
“Cloven-hoofed pucks that dance when the moon is full. Dark things with long fingers that steal babes from cribs. Many’s the woman, old wife or new, who leaves out bread and milk at night. And many’s the man who makes well sure he builds his house with all his doors in a row.
“Some might call these folk superstitious, but they know the truth. The safest thing is to avoid the Fae, but barring that, you want to keep in their good graces.
“This is a story of Felurian. Lady of Twilight. Lady of the First Quiet. Felurian, who is death to men. But a glad death, and one they go to willingly.”
Tempi drew a breath. It was a small motion, but it was eye-catching as he’d continued his habit of sitting perfectly still through the evening’s stories. Now this made better sense to me. He was being quiet.
“Felurian,” Tempi asked. “Death to men. She is—” he paused. “She is sentin?” He lifted his hands in front of himself and made a sort of gripping gesture. He eyed us expectantly. Then, seeing we didn’t understand, he touched his sword where it lay at his side.
I understood. “No,” I said. “She’s not one of the Adem.”
Tempi shook his head and pointed at Marten’s bow.
I shook my head. “No. She’s not a fighter at all. She . . .” I trailed off, unable to think of how I would explain how Felurian killed men, especially if we were forced to resort to gestures. Desperate, I looked to Dedan for help.
Dedan didn’t hesitate. “Sex,” he said frankly. “Do you know sex?”
Tempi blinked, then threw back his head and laughed. Dedan looked as if he were trying to decide whether or not to be offended. After a moment Tempi caught his breath. “Yes,” he said simply. “Yes. I know sex.”
Dedan smiled. “That’s how she kills men.”
For a moment, Tempi looked more blank than usual, then a slow horror spread across his face. No, not horror, it was raw disgust and revulsion, made all the worse by the fact that his face was usually so blank. His hand clenched into several unfamiliar gestures at his side. “How?” he choked out the word.
Dedan started to say something, then stopped. Then he started to make a gesture and stopped that as well, looking self-consciously at Hespe.
Hespe chuckled low in her throat and turned to Tempi. She thought for a moment, then made a gesture as if holding someone in her arms, kissing them. Then she began to tap her chest rhythmically, mimicking a heartbeat. She beat faster and faster, then stopped, clenching her hand into a fist and making her eyes wide. She tensed her whole body, then went limp, lolling her head to one side.
Dedan laughed and clapped at her performance. “That’s it. But sometimes . . .” He tapped his temple, then snapped his fingers, crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue. “Crazy.”
Tempi relaxed. “Oh,” he said, plainly relieved. “Good. Yes.”
Dedan nodded and settled back into his story. “Right. Felurian. Fondest desire of all men. Beauty beyond compare.” For Tempi’s benefit, he made a gesture as if he were brushing out long hair.
“Twenty years ago, this boy’s father and uncle were out hunting in this very stretch of forest as the sun began to set. They stayed out later than they should, then decided to make their way home by cutting straight through the forest instead of using the road like sensible folk.
“They hadn’t been walking very long when they heard singing in the distance. They made their way toward it, thinking they were close to the road, but instead they found themselves at the edge of a small clearing. And there stood Felurian singing softly to herself:
Cae-Lanion Luhial
di mari Felanua
Kreata Tu ciar
tu alaran di
Dirella. Amauen.
Loesi an delan
tu nia vor ruhlan
Felurian thae.”
Though Dedan made rough work of the tune, I shivered at the sound of it. The melody was eerie, compelling, and utterly unfamiliar. I didn’t recognize the language, either. Not a bit of it.
Dedan nodded as he saw my reaction. “More than anything, that song gives the boy’s story the ring of truth. I can’t put a bit of sense to those words, but they stuck right in my head even though he only sang it once.
“So the two brothers are huddled at the edge of the clearing. And thanks to the moon they could see like it was noon instead of night. She wan’t wearing a stitch, and though her hair was almost to her waist, it were real obvious she was as naked as the moon.”
I have always enjoyed stories about Felurian, but as I glanced at Hespe my anticipation cooled. She was watching Dedan, and as he spoke, her eyes narrowed.
Dedan failed to see this. “She was tall with long graceful legs. Her waist was slender, her hips curved as if begging for the touch of a hand. Her stomach was perfect and smooth, like a flawless piece of birch bark, and the dimple of her navel seemed made for kissing.”
Hespe’s eyes were dangerous slits by this point. But even more telling was her mouth, which had formed a thin, straight line. A word of advice to you. Should you ever see that look on a woman’s face, leave off talking at once and sit on both your hands. It may not mend matters, but it will at least keep you from making them any worse.
Unfortunately Dedan continued, his thick hands gesturing in the firelight. “Her breasts were full and round, like peaches waiting to be taken from the tree. Even the jealous moon which steals the color from all things couldn’t hide the rosy—”
Hespe made a disgusted noise and pushed herself to her feet. “I’ll just leave then,” she said. Her voice held such a chill even Dedan couldn’t miss it.
“What?” He looked up to her, still holding his hands in front of himself, frozen in the act of cupping an imagined pair of breasts.
She stormed away, muttering under her breath.
Dedan let his hands drop heavily into his lap. His expression moved from confused to injured to angry in the space of a breath. After a second he got to his feet, roughly brushing bits of leaf and twig from his pants and muttering to himself. Gathering up his blankets, he started toward the other side of our little clearing.
“Did it end with both brothers chasing after her, and the boy’s father falling behind?” I asked.
Dedan looked back at me. “You’ve already heard it then. You could have stopped me if you didn’t—”
“I’m just guessing,” I said quickly. “I hate not hearing the ending of a story.”
“Father put his foot in a rabbit hole,” Dedan said shortly. “Sprained his ankle. Nobody saw the uncle again.” He stalked out of the circle of firelight, his expression grim.
I cast an imploring look at Marten, who shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “I won’t have any part of it. Not for the world. Trying to help right now would be like trying to put out a fire with my hands. Painful, and with no real results.”
Tempi began to make up his bed. Marten made a circular gesture with one finger and gave me a questioning look, asking if I wanted the first watch. I nodded, and he gathered up his bedroll, saying, “Attractive as some things are, you have to weigh your risks. How badly do you want it, how badly are you willing to be burned?”
I spread the fire and soon the deep dark of night settled into the clearing. I lay on my back, looked at the stars, and thought of Denna.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
Barbarians
The next day, Tempi and I moved camp while Dedan and Hespe walked back to Crosson for supplies. Marten scouted out an isolated piece of flat ground close to water. Then we packed and moved everything, dug the privy, built the firepit, and generally got everything settled.
Tempi was willing to talk as we worked, but I was nervous. I had offended him by asking about the Lethani early on, so I knew to avoid that subject. But if he was upset by a simple question about singing, how could I begin to guess what might offend him?
Again, his blank expression and refusal to make eye contact were the main problems. How could I make intelligent conversation with a person when I had no idea how he felt? It was like trying to walk blindfolded through an unfamiliar house.
