The Wise Man's Fear

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIVE Interlude—A Certain Sweetness

Kvothe motioned for Chronicler to stop writing. “Are you all right, Bast?” He gave his student a look of concern. “You look like you’ve swallowed a lump of iron.”

Bast did look stricken. His face was pale, almost waxy. His normally cheerful expression was aghast. “Reshi,” he said, his voice as dry as autumn leaves. “You never told me you spoke with the Cthaeh.”

“There’s a lot of things I’ve never told you, Bast,” Kvothe said flippantly. “That’s why you find the sordid details of my life so enthralling.”

Bast gave a sickly smile, shoulders sagging with relief. “You didn’t really, then. Talk with it, I mean? It’s something you just added to make things a little more colorful?”

“Please, Bast,” Kvothe said, obviously offended. “My story has quite enough color without my adding to it.”

“Don’t lie to me!” Bast shouted suddenly, coming halfway out of his seat with the force of it. “Don’t you lie to me about this! Don’t you dare!” Bast struck the table with one hand, toppling his mug and sending Chronicler’s inkwell skittering across the table.

Quick as blinking, Chronicler snatched up the half-covered sheet of paper and pushed his chair back from the table with his feet, saving the sheet from the sudden spray of ink and beer.

Bast leaned forward, his face livid as he stabbed a finger at Kvothe. “I don’t care what other shit you spin into gold here! But you don’t lie about this, Reshi! Not to me!”

Kvothe gestured to where Chronicler sat, holding the pristine sheet of paper in the air with both hands. “Bast,” he said. “This is my chance to tell the full and honest story of my life. Everything is—”

Bast closed his eyes and pounded the table like a child in the grip of a tantrum. “Shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP!”

Bast pointed at Chronicler. “I don’t give a fiddler’s fuck what you tell him, Reshi. He’ll write what I say or I’ll eat his heart in the market square!” He turned the finger back to the innkeeper and shook it furiously. “But you’ll tell me the truth and you’ll tell me now!”

Kvothe looked up at his student, the amusement bleeding out of his face. “Bast, we both know I’m not above the occasional embellishment. But this story is different. This is my chance to get the truth of matters recorded. It’s the truth behind the stories.”

The dark young man hunched forward in his chair and covered his eyes with one hand.

Kvothe looked at him, his face full of concern. “Are you alright?”

Bast shook his head, still covering his eyes.

“Bast,” Kvothe said gently. “Your hand is bleeding.” He waited a long moment before asking, “Bast, what’s the matter?”

“That’s just it!” Bast burst out, throwing his arms wide, his voice high and hysterical. “I think I finally understand what the matter is!”

Bast laughed then, but it was loud and strained, and choked off into something that sounded like a sob. He looked up at the rafters of the taproom, his eyes bright. He blinked, as if fighting back tears.

Kvothe leaned forward to lay his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Bast, please . . .”

“It’s just that you know so many things,” Bast said. “You know all sorts of things you’re not supposed to. You know about the Berentaltha. You know about the white sisters and the laughing-way. How can you not know about the Cthaeh? It’s . . . it’s a monster.”

Kvothe relaxed visibly. “Good Lord, Bast, is that all? You had me all in a sweat. I’ve faced down things far worse than—”

“There isn’t anything worse than the Cthaeh!” Bast shouted, bringing his clenched fist down on the tabletop again. This time there was the sharp sound of tearing wood as one of the thick timbers bowed and cracked. “Reshi, shut up and listen. Really listen.” Bast looked down for a moment, choosing his words carefully. “You know who the Sithe are?”

Kvothe shrugged. “They’re a faction among the Fae. Powerful, with good intentions—”

Bast waved his hands. “You don’t understand them if you use the term ‘good intentions.’ But if any of the Fae can be said to work for the good, it’s them. Their oldest and most important charge is to keep the Cthaeh from having any contact with anyone. With anyone.”

“I didn’t see any guards,” Kvothe said in the tones a man might use to soothe a skittish animal.

Bast ran his hands through his hair, leaving it in disarray. “I can’t for all the salt in me guess how you slipped past them, Reshi. If anyone manages to come in contact with the Cthaeh, the Sithe kill them. They kill them from a half-mile off with their long horn bows. Then they leave the body to rot. If a crow so much as lands on the body, they kill it too.”

Chronicler cleared his throat gently, then spoke up. “If what you’re saying is true,” he asked, “why would anyone go to the Cthaeh?”

Bast looked for a moment as if he would snap at the scribe, then gave a bitter sigh instead. “In all fairness, my people are not known for making good decisions,” he said. “Every Fae girl and boy knows the Cthaeh’s nature, but there’s always someone eager to seek it out. Folk go to it for answers or a glimpse of the future. Or they hope to come away with a flower.”

“A flower?” Kvothe asked.

Bast gave him another startled look. “The Rhinna?” Not seeing any recognition in the innkeeper’s face he shook his head in dismay. “The flowers are a panacea, Reshi. They can heal any illness. Cure any poison. Mend any wound.”

Kvothe raised his eyebrows at that. “Ah,” he said, looking down at his folded hands on the tabletop. “I see. I can understand how that might draw a person in, though they knew better.”

The innkeeper looked up. “I have to admit I don’t see the trouble,” he said apologetically. “I’ve seen monsters, Bast. The Cthaeh falls short of that.”

“That was the wrong word for me to use, Reshi,” Bast admitted. “But I can’t think of a better one. If there was a word that meant poisonous and hateful and contagious, I’d use that.”

Bast drew a deep breath and leaned forward in his chair. “Reshi, the Cthaeh can see the future. Not in some vague, oracular way. It sees all the future. Clearly. Perfectly. Everything that can possibly come to pass, branching out endlessly from the current moment.”

Kvothe raised an eyebrow. “It can, can it?”

“It can,” Bast said gravely. “And it is purely, perfectly malicious. This isn’t a problem for the most part, as it can’t leave the tree. But when someone comes to visit . . .”

Kvothe’s eyes went distant as he nodded to himself. “If it knows the future perfectly,” he said slowly, “then it must know exactly how a person will react to anything it says.”

Bast nodded. “And it is vicious, Reshi.”

Kvothe continued in a musing tone. “That means anyone influenced by the Cthaeh would be like an arrow shot into the future.”

“An arrow only hits one person, Reshi.” Bast’s dark eyes were hollow and hopeless. “Anyone influenced by the Cthaeh is like a plague ship sailing for a harbor.” Bast pointed at the half-filled sheet Chronicler held in his lap. “If the Sithe knew that existed, they would spare no effort to destroy it. They would kill us for having heard what the Cthaeh said.”

“Because anything carrying the Cthaeh’s influence away from the tree . . .” Kvothe said, looking down at his hands. He sat silently for a long moment, nodding thoughtfully. “So a young man seeking his fortune goes to the Cthaeh and takes away a flower. The daughter of the king is deathly ill, and he takes the flower to heal her. They fall in love despite the fact that she’s betrothed to the neighboring prince . . .”

Bast stared at Kvothe, watching blankly as he spoke.

“They attempt a daring moonlight escape,” Kvothe continued. “But he falls from the rooftops and they’re caught. The princess is married against her will and stabs the neighboring prince on their wedding night. The prince dies. Civil war. Fields burned and salted. Famine. Plague . . .”

“That’s the story of the Fastingsway War,” Bast said faintly.

Kvothe nodded. “It’s one of the stories Felurian told. I never understood the part about the flower until now. She never mentioned the Cthaeh.”

“She wouldn’t have, Reshi. It’s considered bad luck.” He shook his head. “No, not bad luck. It’s like spitting poison in someone’s ear. It simply isn’t done.”

Chronicler recovered some of his composure and slid his chair back toward the table, still holding the sheet carefully. He frowned at the table, broken and streaked with beer and ink. “It seems like this creature has quite a reputation,” he said. “But I find it hard to believe it’s quite as dangerous as all that. . . .”

Bast looked at Chronicler incredulously. “Iron and bile,” he said, his voice quiet. “Do you think I’m a child? You think I don’t know the difference between a campfire story and the truth?”

Chronicler made a mollifying gesture with one hand. “That’s not what I . . .”

Without taking his eyes from Chronicler, Bast laid his bloody palm flat on the table. The wood groaned and the broken timbers snapped back into place with a sudden crackling sound. Bast lifted his hand, then brought it down sharply on the table, and the dark runnels of ink and beer suddenly twisted and shaped themselves into a jet-black crow that burst into flight, circling the taproom once.

Bast caught it with both hands and tore the bird carelessly in half, casting the pieces into the air where they exploded into great washes of flame the color of blood.

It all happened in the space of a single breath. “Everything you know about the Fae could fit inside a thimble,” Bast said, looking at the scribe with no expression at all, his voice flat and even. “How dare you doubt me? You have no idea who I am.”

Chronicler sat very still, but he did not look away.

“I swear it by my tongue and teeth,” Bast said crisply. “I swear it on the doors of stone. I am telling you three thousand times. There is nothing in my world or yours more dangerous than the Cthaeh.”

“There’s no need for that, Bast,” Kvothe said softly. “I believe you.”

Bast turned to look at Kvothe, then sagged miserably in his chair. “I wish you didn’t, Reshi.”

Kvothe gave a wry smile. “So after a person meets the Cthaeh, all their choices will be the wrong ones.”

Bast shook his head, his face pale and drawn. “Not wrong, Reshi, catastrophic. Jax spoke to the Cthaeh before he stole the moon, and that sparked the entire creation war. Lanre spoke to the Cthaeh before he orchestrated the betrayal of Myr Tariniel. The creation of the Nameless. The Scaendyne. They can all be traced back to the Cthaeh.”

Kvothe’s expression went blank. “Well, that certainly puts me in interesting company, doesn’t it?” he said dryly.

“It does more than that, Reshi,” Bast said. “In our plays, if the Cthaeh’s tree is shown in the distance in the backdrop, you know the story is going to be the worst kind of tragedy. It’s put there so the audience knows what to expect. So they know everything will go terribly wrong in the end.”

Kvothe looked at Bast for a long moment. “Oh Bast,” he said softly to his student. His smile was gentle and sad. “I know what sort of story I’m telling. This is no comedy.”

Bast looked up at him with hollow, hopeless eyes. “But Reshi . . .” His mouth moved, trying to find words and failing.

The red-haired innkeeper gestured at the empty taproom. “This is the end of the story, Bast. We all know that.” Kvothe’s voice was matter-of-fact, as casual as if he were describing yesterday’s weather. “I have led an interesting life, and this reminiscence has a certain sweetness to it. But . . .”

Kvothe drew a deep breath and let it out gently. “. . . but this is not a dashing romance. This is no fable where folk come back from the dead. It’s not a rousing epic meant to stir the blood. No. We all know what kind of story this is.”

It seemed for a moment that he would continue, but instead his eyes wandered idly around the empty taproom. His face was calm, without a trace of anger or bitterness.

Bast darted a look at Chronicler, but this time there was no fire in it. No anger. No fury or command. Bast’s eyes were desperate, pleading.

“It’s not over if you’re still here,” Chronicler said. “It’s not a tragedy if you’re still alive.”

Bast nodded eagerly at this, looking back at Kvothe.

Kvothe looked at both of them for a moment, then smiled and chuckled low in his chest. “Oh,” he said fondly. “You’re both so young.”