The Wise Man's Fear tkc-2, page 82
part #2 of The Kingkiller Chronicle Series
I’d heard of fool’s fire before, but never seen it. And given that we were in the Fae, I doubted this was anything so mundane. I thought of a hundred faerie stories and wondered which of those creatures could be responsible for these dim, madly dancing lights. Tom-Sparks? Will o’ wisps? Dennerlings with lanterns full of corpselight?
Then they were all around us, startling me. The lights were smaller than I’d thought, and closer. I heard the hushed snowfall sound again, this time from all around me. I still couldn’t guess what they might be until one of them brushed my arm as lightly as a feather. They were moths of some sort. Moths with luminescent patches on their wings.
They shone with a pale, silvery light too weak to illuminate anything around them. But hundreds of them, dancing between the boles of trees, showed the silhouette of our surroundings. Some of them lit on trees or the ground. A few landed on Felurian, and though I still could not see more than a few inches of her pale skin, I could use the moving light of them to follow her.
We walked a long while after that, Felurian leading between the trunks of ancient trees. Once I felt grass soft beneath my bare feet instead of moss, then there was soft soil, as if we were crossing a farmer’s fresh-tilled field. For a time we followed a twisting path of smooth paved stone that led us over the arch of a high bridge. All the while the moths followed us, giving me only the dimmest impression of our surroundings.
Eventually Felurian stopped. By now the darkness was so thick I could almost feel it like a warm blanket around me. I could tell by the sound of the wind in the trees and the motion of the moths that we were standing in an open space.
There were no stars above us. If we were in a clearing, the trees must be vast for their branches to meet overhead. But for all I knew we could just as easily be deep underground. Or perhaps the sky was black and empty in this portion of the Fae. It was a strangely unsettling thought.
The subtle feeling of sleeping alertness was stronger here. If the rest of the Fae felt like it was sleeping, this place felt like it had stirred half a moment ago and hovered on the verge of waking. It was disconcerting.
Felurian gently pressed the flat of her hand against my chest, then a finger against my lips. I watched as she moved away from me, softly humming a little snatch of the song I had made for her. But even this piece of flattery couldn’t distract me from the fact that I was in the center of the Fae realm, blind, stark naked, and without the slightest idea of what was going on.
A handful of moths had landed on Felurian, resting on her wrist, hip, shoulder and thigh. Watching them gave me a vague impression of her movements. If I had to guess, I would have said she was picking things out of the trees, from behind or beneath bushes or stones. A warm breeze sighed through the clearing, and I felt strangely comforted as it brushed my bare skin.
After about ten minutes, Felurian came back and kissed me. She held something soft and warm in her arms.
We walked back the way we had come. The moths gradually lost interest in us, leaving us with less and less of an impression of our surroundings. After what seemed an interminable amount of time I saw light filtering through a break in the trees ahead. It was only faint starlight, but at that moment it seemed bright as a curtain of burning diamonds.
I started to walk through it, but Felurian took hold of my arm to stop me. Without a word she sat me down where the first faint beams of starlight lanced through the trees to touch the ground.
Carefully she stepped between the rays of starlight, avoiding them as if they might burn her. When she stood in the center of them, she lowered herself to the ground and sat cross-legged, facing me. She held whatever she had collected in her lap, but other than the fact that it was shapeless and dark I could tell nothing about it.
Then Felurian reached out a hand, took hold of one of the thin beams of starlight, and pulled it toward the dark shape in her lap.
I might have been more surprised if Felurian’s manner hadn’t been so casual. In the dim light, I saw her hands make a familiar motion. A second later she reached out again, almost absentmindedly, and grasped another narrow strand of starlight between her thumb and forefinger.
She drew it in as easily as the first and manipulated it in the same way. Again the motion struck me as familiar, but it was nothing I could press my finger to.
Felurian started to hum quietly to herself as she gathered in the next beam of starlight, brightening things an imperceptible amount. The shape in her lap looked like thick, dark cloth. Seeing this I realized what she reminded me of: my father sewing. Was she sewing by starlight?
Sewing with starlight. Realization came to me in a flood. Shaed meant shadow. She had somehow brought back an armful of shadow and was sewing it with starlight. Sewing me a cloak of shadow.
Sound absurd? It did to me. But regardless of my ignorant opinion, Felurian took hold of another strand of starlight and brought it to her lap. I brushed any doubt aside. Only a fool disbelieves what he sees with his own eyes.
Besides, the stars above me were bright and strange. I was sitting next to a creature out of a storybook. She had been young and beautiful for a thousand years. She could stop my heart with a kiss and talk to butterflies. Was I going to start quibbling now?
After a while I moved closer so I could watch more carefully. She smiled as I sat next to her, favoring me with a hasty kiss.
I asked a couple questions, but her answers either made no sense or were hopelessly nonchalant. She didn’t know the first thing about the laws of sympathy, or sygaldry, or the Alar. She simply didn’t think there was anything odd about sitting in the forest holding a handful of shadow. First I was offended, then I was terribly jealous.
I remembered when I’d found the name of the wind in her pavilion. It had felt as if I were truly awake for the first time, true knowledge running like ice in my blood.
The memory exhilarated me for a moment, then left me with a broken chord of loss. My sleeping mind was slumbering again. I turned my attention back to Felurian and tried to understand.
Before too long, Felurian stood in a fluid motion and helped me to my feet. She hummed happily and took my arm as we strolled back the way we had come, chatting of little things. She held the dark shape of the shaed draped easily over her arm.
Then, just as the first faint hint of twilight began to touch the sky, she hung it invisibly in the dark branches of a nearby tree. “sometimes slow seduction is the only way,” she said. “the gentle shadow fears the candleflame. how could your fledgling shaed not feel the same?”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ONE
Close Enough to Touch
After our shadow-gathering expedition, I asked more pointed questions about Felurian’s magic. Most of her answers continued to be hopelessly matter-of-fact. How do you take hold of a shadow? She motioned with one hand, as if reaching for a piece of fruit. That was how, apparently.
Other answers were nearly incomprehensible, filled with Fae words I didn’t understand. When she tried to describe those terms, our conversations became hopeless rhetorical tangles. At times I felt like I’d found myself a quieter, more attractive version of Elodin.
Still, I learned a few scraps. What she was doing with the shadow was called grammarie. When I asked, she said it was “the art of making things be.” This was distinct from glamourie, which was “the art of making things seem.”
I also learned that there aren’t directions of the usual sort in the Fae. Your trifoil compass is useless as a tin codpiece there. North does not exist. And when the sky is endless twilight, you cannot watch the sun rise in the east.
But if you look closely at the sky, one piece of the horizon will be a shade brighter, in the opposite direction a shade darker. If you walk toward the brighter horizon, eventually it will become daytime. The other way leads to darker night. If you keep walking in one direction long enough, you will eventually see a whole “day” pass and end up in the same place you began. That’s the theory, at any rate.
Felurian described those two points of the Fae compass as Day and Night. The other two points she referred to at different times as Dark and Light, Summer and Winter, or Forward and Backward. Once she even referred to them as Grimward and Grinning, but something about the way she said it made me suspect it was a joke.
I have a good memory. That, perhaps more than anything else, sits in the center of what I am. It is the talent upon which so many of my other skills depend.
I can only guess how I came by my memory. My early stage training, perhaps. The games my parents used to help me remember my lines. Perhaps it was the mental exercises Abenthy taught me to prepare me for the University.
Wherever it came from, my memory has always served me well. Sometimes it works much better than I’d like.
That said, my memory is strangely patchy when I think of my time in the Fae. My conversations with Felurian are clear as glass. Her lessons may as well be written on my skin. The sight of her. The taste of her mouth. They are all fresh as yesterday.
But other things I cannot bring to mind at all.
For example, I remember Felurian in the purpling twilight. It dappled her through the trees, making her look as if she were underwater. I remember her in flickering candlelight, the teasing shadows of it concealing more than it revealed. And I remember her in the full, rich amber of lamplight. She basked in it like a cat, her skin warm and glowing.
But I do not remember lamps. Or candles. There is a great deal of fuss when dealing with such things, but I cannot remember a single moment spent trimming a wick or wiping soot from the glass hood of a lamp. I do not remember the smell of oil or smoke or wax.
I remember eating. Fruit and bread and honey. Felurian ate flowers. Fresh orchids. Wild trillium. Lush selas. I tried some myself. The violets were my favorite.
I don’t mean to imply she ate only flowers. She enjoyed bread and butter and honey. She liked blackberries especially. And there was meat, too. Not with every meal, but sometimes. Wild venison. Pheasant. Bear. Felurian ate hers so rare that it was almost raw.
She was not a fastidious eater, either. Not prim or courtly. We ate with our hands and teeth, and afterward, if we were sticky with honey or pulp or the blood of bears, we would wash ourselves in the nearby pool.
I can see her even now, naked, laughing, blood running down her chin. She was regal as a queen. Eager as a child. Proud as a cat. And she was like none of those things. Nothing like them. Not in the least little bit.
My point is this: I can remember our eating. What I cannot remember is where the food came from. Did someone bring it? Did she gather it herself? I cannot bring it to mind to save my life. The thought of servants intruding on the privacy of her twilight glade seems impossible to me, but so is the thought of Felurian baking her own bread.
The deer, on the other hand, I could understand. I had not the least doubt she could run one to ground and kill it with her hands if she desired. Or I could picture a shy hart venturing into the quiet of her twilight glade. I can imagine Felurian sitting, patient and calm, waiting until it came close enough to touch. . . .
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWO
The Ever-Moving Moon
Felurian and I were walking down to the pool when I noticed a subtle difference in the quality of light. Looking up, I was surprised to see the pale curve of the moon peering through the trees above us.
Even though it was only the slenderest crescent, I recognized it as the same moon I had known my whole life. Seeing it in this strange place was like meeting a long-lost friend far from home.
“Look!” I said, pointing. “The moon!”
Felurian smiled indulgently. “you are my precious newborn lamb. look! there hangs a cloud as well! amouen! dance for joy!” She laughed.
I flushed, embarrassed. “It’s just that I haven’t seen it in . . .” I trailed off, having no way to gauge my time. “A long while. Besides, you have different stars. I thought perhaps you had a different moon as well.”
Felurian ran her fingers gently through my hair. “foolish sweet, there is only one moon. we have been waiting on her. she will help us enbighten your shaed.” She slipped into the water, sleek as an otter. When she surfaced her hair slicked her shoulders like ink.
I sat on a stone by the edge of a pool and dangled my feet. The water was warm as a bath. “How can the moon be here,” I asked, “if this is a different sky?”
“there is only one slender slip of her here,” Felurian said. “she is still mostly in the mortal now.”
“But how?” I asked.
Felurian stopped swimming and floated on her back, looking up at the sky. “oh moon,” she said forlornly. “I perish for kisses. why have you brought me an owl when I desired a man?” She sighed, then softly hooted into the night: how? how? how?
I slid into the water, not as lithe as an otter perhaps, but somewhat better at kissing.
A while later we lay in the shallows on a broad sheet of stone worn water-smooth. “thank you moon,” Felurian said, looking up at the sky contentedly. “for this sweet and lusty manling.”
There were luminous fishes in the pool. No larger than your hand, each with a stripe or spot of gently glowing color. I watched them emerge from whatever hiding places they had scattered to, startled by the recent turbulence. They were orange as glowing coals, yellow as buttercups, blue as noontime sky.
Felurian slid back into the water, then tugged at my leg. “come, my kissing owl,” she said. “and I will show to you the workings of the moon.”
I followed her into the pool until we stood shoulder deep. The fish came to explore, the braver ones coming close enough to swim between us. Their motion revealed the hidden silhouette of Felurian’s body beneath the water. Despite the fact that I had explored her nakedness in great detail, I suddenly found myself fascinated by the suggested shape of her.
The fish came closer still. One brushed me, and I felt a gentle nip against my ribs. I jumped, though its tiny bite was soft as a tapping finger. I watched as more of the fish circled round, occasionally nibbling at us.
“even the fish delight in kissing you,” Felurian said, stepping closer to press her wet body against mine.
“I think they must like the salt on my skin,” I said, looking down at them.
She pushed me away, irritated. “mayhap they like the taste of owl.”
Before I could make an appropriate reply, she assumed a serious expression, flattened her hand, and lowered it into the water between us.
“there is only one moon,” Felurian said. “she moves between your mortal sky and mine.” She pressed her palm against my chest, then brought it back and pressed it to her own. “she sways between. back and forth.” She stopped, frowning at me. “be mindful of my words.”
“I am,” I lied.
“no. you are mindful of my breasts.”
It was true. They flirted with the surface of the water. “They are well worth minding,” I said. “To not attend to them would be a terrible insult.”
“I speak of important things. knowings you must have if you are to return safe to me.” She gave an exasperated sigh. “if I let you touch one, will you attend to my words?”
“Yes.”
She took hold of my hand and pulled it close to cup her breast. “make waves upon lilies.”
“You haven’t shown me waves upon lilies yet.”
“that will come later, then.” She put her flat hand back in the water between us, then sighed softly, her eyes going halfway closed. “ah,” she said. “ah.”
Eventually the fish emerged from their hiding places again.
“my most distractible owl,” Felurian said, not unkindly. She dove to the bottom of the pool and returned holding a smooth, round stone. “attend you now to what I say. you are the mortal, I the fae.”
“here is the moon,” she said, tucking the stone between our palms and lacing our fingers together to hold it. “she’s tethered tight to both the fae and mortal night.”
Felurian stepped forward and pressed the stone against my chest. “thus moves the moon,” she said, tightening her fingers around mine. “now when I look above, there is no glimmer of the light I love. instead, all like a flower unfurled, her face shines on your mortal world.”
She stepped back so our arms were straight with our clasped hands between us. Then she pulled the stone toward her chest, dragging me through the water by my hand. “now all your mortal maidens sigh, for she is fully in my sky.”
I nodded, understanding. “Beloved by both the Fae and men. Our moon’s a merry wanderer then?”
Felurian shook her head. “not so. a traveler, yes. a wanderer, no. she moves but cannot freely go.”
“I heard a story once,” I said. “About a man who stole the moon.”
Felurian’s expression went solemn. She unlaced her fingers from mine and looked down at the stone in her hand. “that was the end of it all.” She sighed. “until he stole the moon there was some hope for peace.”
I was stunned by the matter-of-fact tone in her voice. “What?” I asked dumbly.
“the stealing of the moon.” She cocked her head at me, puzzled. “you said you knew of it.”
“I said I’d heard a story,” I said. “But it was a silly thing. Not a story of what truly was. It was a f . . . It was the sort of story that you tell a child.”
She smiled again. “you may call them faerie stories. I know of them. they are fancies. we tell our children manling tales betimes.”
“But the moon was truly stolen?” I asked. “That was no fancy?”
Felurian scowled. “this I have been showing you!” she said, bringing her hand down in an angry splash.
I found myself making the Adem gesture for apology below the surface of the water before realizing it was doubly pointless. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But without the truth of this story I am lost. I beg of you to tell me it.”
“it is an old story, and a sad one.” She gave me a long look. “what then will you trade me?”
