Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

I believed him. After patching up my leg, I took every bit of rainy-day money I had saved and bought five pints of dreg, a cheap, foul liquor strong enough to blister the inside of your mouth. Then I limped into Dockside and waited for Pike and his friends to spot me.

It didn’t take long, I let him and two of his friends follow me for half a mile, past Seamling Lane and into Tallows. I kept to the main roads, knowing they wouldn’t dare attack me in broad daylight when people were around.

But when I darted into a side alley, they hurried to catch up, suspecting I was trying to make a run for it. However, when they turned the corner no one was there.

Pike thought to look up just as I was pouring the bucket of dreg onto him from the edge of the low roof above. It doused him, splashing across his face and chest. He screamed and clutched at his eyes as he went to his knees. Then I struck the phosphorus match I’d stolen, and dropped it onto him, watching it sputter and flare as it fell.

Full of the pure, hard hatred of a child, I hoped he would burst into a pillar of flame. He didn’t, but did catch fire. He screamed again and staggered around while his friends swatted at him, trying to put him out. I left while they were busy.

It had been over a year ago and I hadn’t seen Pike since. He hadn’t tried to find me, and I had stayed well clear of Dockside, sometimes going miles out of my way rather than pass near it. It was a kind of truce. However, I didn’t doubt that Pike and his friends remembered what I looked like, and were willing to settle the score if they spotted me.

After thinking it over, I decided it was too dangerous. Even the promise of free stories and a chance at a silver talent wasn’t worth stirring things up with Pike again. Besides, what story would I ask for?

The question rolled around in my head for the next few days. What story would I ask for? I jostled up against a dockworker and was cuffed away before I could get my hand all the way into his pocket. What story? I begged on the street corner opposite the Tehlin church. What story? I stole three loaves of bread and took two of them down to Trapis as a gift. What story?

Then, as I lay on the rooftops in my secret place where three roofs met, it came to me just as I was about to drift off to sleep. Lanre. Of course. I could ask him for the real story of Lanre. The story my father had been. . . .

My heart stuttered in my chest as I suddenly remembered things I had avoided for years: my father idly strumming at his lute, my mother beside him in the wagon, singing. Reflexively, I began to draw away from the memories, the way you might pull your hand back from a fire.

But I was surprised to find these memories held only a gentle ache, not the deep pain I expected. Instead I found a small, budding excitement at the thought of hearing a story my father would have sought out. A story he himself might have told.

Still, I knew it to be sheer folly to go running Dockside for the sake of a story. All the hard practicality Tarbean had taught me over the years urged me to stay in my familiar corner of the world, where I was safe. . . .

The first thing I saw on entering the Half-Mast was Skarpi. He was sitting on a tall stool at the bar, an old man with eyes like diamonds and the body of a driftwood scarecrow. He was thin and weathered with thick white hair on his arms and face and head. The whiteness of it stood out from his deep brown tan, making him seem splashed with wave foam.

At his feet were a group of twenty children, some few my age, most younger. They were a strange mix to see, ranging from grubby, shoeless urchins like myself, to reasonably well-dressed, well-scrubbed children who probably had parents and homes.

None of them looked familiar to me, but I never knew who might be a friend of Pike’s. I found a place near the door with my back to the wall and sank down onto my haunches.

Skarpi cleared his throat once or twice in a way that made me thirsty. Then, with ritual significance, he looked mournfully into the clay mug that sat in front of him and carefully turned it upside down on the bar.

The children surged forward, pressing coins onto the bar. I did a quick count: two iron halfpennies, nine shims, and a drab. Altogether, just a little over three iron pennies in Commonwealth coin. Maybe he was no longer offering the silver talent bet. More likely the rumor I’d heard was wrong.

The old man nodded almost imperceptibility to the bartender. “Fallows Red.” His voice was deep and rough, almost hypnotic. The bald man behind the bar gathered up the coins and deftly poured wine into Skarpi’s wide clay cup.

“So, what would everyone like to hear about today?” Skarpi rumbled. His deep voice rolling out like distant thunder.

There was a moment of silence that again struck me as ritualistic, almost reverent. Then a babble burst forth from all the children at once.

“I want a faerie story!”

“. . . Oren and the fight at Mnat’s . . .”

“Yes, Oren Velciter! The one with Baron . . .”

“Lartam . . .”

“Myr Tariniel!”

“Illien and the Bear!”

“Lanre,” I said, almost without meaning to.

The room went still again as Skarpi took a drink. The children watched him with a familiar intensity I couldn’t quite identify.

Skarpi sat calmly in the middle of the quiet. “Did I,” his voice rolled out slowly, like dark honey, “hear someone say Lanre?” He looked directly at me, his blue eyes clear and sharp.

I nodded, not knowing what to expect.

“I want to hear about the dry lands over the Stormwal,” one of the younger girls complained. “About the sand snakes that come out of the ground like sharks. And the dry men who hide under the dunes and drink your blood instead of water. And—” She was cuffed quickly into silence from a dozen different directions by the children surrounding her.

Silence fell sharply as Skarpi took another drink. Watching the children as they watched Skarpi, I realized what they reminded me of: a person anxiously watching a clock. I guessed that when the old man’s drink was gone, the story he told would be over as well.

Skarpi took another drink, no more than a sip this time, then set his cup down and pivoted on his stool to face us. “Who would like to hear the story of a man who lost his eye and gained a better sight?”

Something about the tone of his voice or the reaction of the other children told me this was a purely rhetorical question. “So, Lanre and the Creation War. An old, old story.” His eyes swept over the children. “Sit and listen for I will speak of the shining city as it once was, years and miles away. . . .”

Once, years and miles away, there was Myr Tariniel. The shining city. It sat among the tall mountains of the world like a gem on the crown of a king. Imagine a city as large as Tarbean, but on every corner of every street there was a bright fountain, or a green tree growing, or a statue so beautiful it would make a proud man cry to look at it. The buildings were tall and graceful, carved from the mountain itself, carved of a bright white stone that held the sun’s light long after evening fell.

Selitos was lord over Myr Tariniel. Just by looking at a thing Selitos could see its hidden name and understand it. In those days there were many who could do such things, but Selitos was the most powerful namer of anyone alive in that age.

Selitos was well loved by the people he protected. His judgments were strict and fair, and none could sway him through falsehood or dissembling. Such was the power of his sight that he could read the hearts of men like heavy-lettered books.

Now in those days there was a terrible war being fought across a vast empire. The war was called the Creation War, and the empire was called Ergen. And despite the fact that the world has never seen an empire as grand or a war so terrible, both of them only live in stories now. Even history books that mentioned them as doubtful rumor have long since crumbled into dust.