The Wise Man's Fear Part 102

"Since Aethe was the greatest of archers, many challenged him. But a body is nothing of a target when one can strike silk blowing in the wind. Aethe slew them easily as cutting wheat. He took only a single arrow with him to a duel, and claimed if that single arrow was not enough, he deserved to be struck down.

"Aethe grew older, and his fame spread. He put down roots and began the first of the Adem schools. Years pa.s.sed, and he trained many Adem to be deadly as knives. It became well known that if you gave Aethe's students three arrows and three coins, your three worst enemies would never bother you again.

"So the school grew rich and famous and proud. And so did Aethe.

"It was then that Rethe came to him. Rethe, his best student. Rethe who stood nearest his ear and closest to his heart.

"Rethe spoke to Aethe, and they disagreed. Then they argued. Then they shouted loud enough that all the school could hear it through the thick stone walls.

"And at the end of it, Rethe challenged Aethe to a duel. Aethe accepted, and it was known that the winner would control the school from that day forth.

"As the challenged, Aethe chose his place first. He chose to stand among a grove of young and swaying trees that gave him shifting cover. Normally he would not bother with precautions such as this, but Rethe was his finest student, and she could read the wind just as well as he. He took with him his bow of horn. He took with him his sharp and single arrow.

"Then Rethe chose her place to stand. She walked to the top of a high hill, her outline clear against the naked sky. She carried neither bow nor arrow. And when she reached the top of the hill, she sat calmly on the ground. This was perhaps the oddest thing of all, as Aethe was known to sometimes strike a foe through the leg rather than kill them.

"Aethe saw his student do this, and he was filled with anger. Aethe took his single arrow and fitted it to his bow. Aethe drew the string against his ear. The string Rethe had made for him, woven from the long, strong strands of her own hair."

Shehyn met my eye. "Full of anger, Aethe shot his arrow. It struck Rethe like a thunderbolt. Here." She pointed with two fingers at the inner curve of her left breast.

"Still seated, arrow sprouting from her chest, Rethe drew a long ribbon of white silk from beneath her shirt. She took a white feather from the arrow's fletching, dipped it in her blood, and wrote four lines of poetry.

"Then Rethe held the ribbon aloft for a long moment, waiting as the wind pulled first one way, then another. Then Rethe loosed it, the silk twisting through the air, rising and falling on the breeze. The ribbon twisted in the wind, wove its way through the trees, and pressed itself firmly against Aethe's chest.

"It read: Aethe, near my heart.

Without vanity, the ribbon.

Without duty, the wind.

Without blood, the victory.

I heard a low noise and looked over to see Vashet weeping quietly to herself. Her head was lowered, and tears ran down her face to drip deeper spots of red onto the front of her shirt.

Shehyn continued. "Only after Aethe read these lines did he recognize the deep wisdom his student possessed. He hurried to tend Rethe's wounds, but the head of the arrow was lodged too close to her heart to be removed.

"Rethe lived only three days after that, with the grief-stricken Aethe tending her. He gave her control of the school, and listened to her words, all the while the head of the arrow riding close to her heart.

"During those days, Rethe dictated nine-and-ninety stories, and Aethe wrote them down. These tales were the beginning of our understanding of the Lethani. They are the root of all Ademre.

"Late in the third day Rethe finished telling the ninety-ninth story to Aethe, who now held himself to be his student's student. After Aethe finished writing, Rethe said to him, 'There is one final story, more important than all the rest, and that one shall be known when I awake.'

"Then Rethe closed her eyes and slept. And sleeping, she died.

"Aethe lived forty years after that, and it is said he never killed again. In the years that followed, he was often heard to say, 'I won the only duel I ever lost.'

"He continued to run the school and train his students to be masters of the bow. But now he also trained them to be wise. He told them the nine-and-ninety tales, and thus it was the Lethani first came to be known by all Ademre. And that is how we came to be that which we are."

There was a long pause.

"I thank you, Shehyn," I said doing my best to gesture respectful grat.i.tude respectful grat.i.tude."I would very much like to hear these nine-and-ninety stories."

"They are not for barbarians," she said. But she didn't seem offended at my request, gesturing a combination of reproach reproach and and regret regret. She changed the subject. "How is your Ketan coming?"

"I struggle to improve, Shehyn."

She turned to Vashet. "Does he?"

"There is certainly struggle," Vashet said, her eyes still red with tears. Wry amus.e.m.e.nt Wry amus.e.m.e.nt. "But there is improvement, too."

Shehyn nodded. Reserved approval Reserved approval. "Several of us will be fighting tomorrow. Perhaps you could bring him to watch."

Vashet made an elegant motion that made me appreciate how little I knew of the subtleties of hand-language: Gracious thankful slightly submissive acceptance Gracious thankful slightly submissive acceptance.

"You should be flattered," Vashet said cheerfully. "A conversation with Shehyn and an invitation to watch her fight."

We were making our way back to a sheltered box valley where we typically practiced the Ketan and our hand fighting.

However, my mind kept spinning back to several unavoidable and unpleasant thoughts. I was thinking about secrets and how people longed to keep them. I wondered what Kilvin would do if I brought someone into the Fishery and showed them the sygaldry for blood and bone and hair.

The thought of the big artificer's anger was enough to make me shiver. I knew the sort of trouble I would face. That was clearly laid out in the University's laws. But what would he do to the person I had taught these things to?

Vashet slapped my chest with the back of her hand to get my attention. "I said you should be flattered," she repeated.

"I am," I said.

She took hold of my shoulder, turning me to face her. "You've gone all pensive on me."

"What will be done with Tempi if all of this ends badly?" I asked bluntly.

Her cheerful expression faded. "His reds will be taken away, and his sword, and his name, and he will be cut away from the Latantha." She drew a slow breath. "It is unlikely any other school would take him after such a thing, so this would effectively exile him from all Ademre."

"But exile won't work for me," I said. "Forcing me back into the world would only make the problem worse, wouldn't it?"

Vashet didn't say anything.

"When all of this started," I said. "You encouraged me to leave. If I had run, would I have been allowed to go?"

There was a long silence that told me the truth of it. But she said it aloud, too. "No."

I appreciated not being lied to about it. "And what is my punishment to be?" I asked. "Imprisonment?" I shook my head. "No. It's not practical to keep me locked up here for years." I looked up at her. "So what?"

"Punishment is not our concern," she said. "You are a barbarian, after all. You did not know you were doing anything wrong. The main concern is to prevent you from teaching others what you have stolen, to keep you from using it to your own profit."

She hadn't answered my question. I gave her a long look.

"Some say killing you would be the best way," she said frankly. "But most believe killing is not in keeping with the Lethani. Shehyn is among these. As am I."

I relaxed slightly, that was something at least. "And I don't suppose a promise on my part would rea.s.sure anyone?"

She gave me a sympathetic smile. "It speaks well of you that you came back with Tempi. And you stayed when I tried to drive you away. But the promise of a barbarian amounts for little in this."

"What then?" I asked, suspecting the answer and knowing I wasn't going to like it.

She took a deep breath. "You could be prevented from teaching by removing your tongue or putting out your eyes," she said frankly. "To keep you from using the Ketan you might be hobbled. Your ankle tendon cut, or the knee of your favored leg lamed." She shrugged. "But one can still be a good fighter even with a damaged leg. So it would be more effective to remove the two smallest fingers from your right hand. This would be ..."

Vashet kept speaking in her matter-of-fact tone. I think she intended it to be rea.s.suring, calming. But it had the opposite effect. All I could think of was her cutting off my fingers as calmly as you would pare away a piece of apple. Everything grew bright around the edges of my vision, and the vivid mental picture made my stomach roll over. I thought for a moment I might be sick.

The light-headedness and nausea pa.s.sed. As I came to my senses, I realized Vashet had finished talking and was staring at me.

Before I could say anything, she waved a hand dismissively. "I see I will get no more use of you today. Take the rest of the evening for yourself. Get your thoughts in order or practice the Ketan. Go watch the sword tree. Tomorrow we will continue."

I walked aimlessly for a while, trying not to think about my fingers being cut away. Then, coming over a hill, I stumbled almost literally onto a naked Adem couple tucked away in a grove of trees.

They didn't scramble for their clothes when I burst out of the trees, and rather than try to apologize with my poor language and fuddled wits, I simply turned and left, face burning with embarra.s.sment.

I tried to practice the Ketan but couldn't keep my mind on it. I went to watch the sword tree, and for a while the sight of it moving gracefully in the wind calmed me. Then my mind drifted and I was confronted with the image of Vashet paring off my fingers again.

I heard the three high bells and went to dinner. I was standing in line, half stupid with the mental effort of not thinking of someone maiming my hands, when I noticed the Adem standing nearby were staring at me. A young girl of about ten wore an expression of open amazement on her face, and a man in his mercenary reds looked at me as if he had just seen me wipe my a.s.s with a piece of bread and eat it.

Only then did I realize I was humming. Not loud, exactly, but loud enough for those nearby to hear. I couldn't have been doing it for long, as I was only six lines into "Leave the Town, Tinker."

I stopped, then lowered my eyes, took my food, and spent ten minutes trying to eat. I managed a few bites, but that was all. Eventually I gave up and headed to my room.

I lay in bed, running through the options in my mind. How far could I run? Could I lose myself in the surrounding countryside? Could I steal a horse? Had I even seen a horse since I'd been in Haert?

I brought out my lute and practiced my chording a bit, all five of my clever fingers flicking up and down the long neck of the lute. But my right hand ached to strum and pick notes from the strings. It was as frustrating as trying to kiss someone using only one lip, and I soon gave up.

At last I brought out my shaed and wrapped it around myself. It was warm and comforting. I drew the hood over my head as far as it would go and thought of the dark piece of Fae where Felurian had gathered its shadows.

I thought of the University, of Wil and Sim. Of Auri and Devi and Fela. I had never been popular at the University, and my circle of friends had never seemed particularly large. But the truth was I'd simply forgotten what it was like to be truly alone.

I thought of my family then. I thought of the Chandrian, of Cinder. His fluid grace. His sword held easy in his hand like a piece of winter ice. I thought of killing him.

I thought of Denna and what the Cthaeh had told me. I thought of her patron and the things I had said during our fight. I thought about the time she had slipped on the road and I had caught her, how the gentle curve above her hip had felt against my hand. I thought about the shape of her mouth, the sound of her voice, the smell of her hair.

And, eventually, I stepped softly through the doors of sleep.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN.

Storm and Stone I WOKE THE NEXT MORNING knowing the truth. My only way out of this situation was through the school. I needed to prove myself. That meant I needed everything Vashet could teach me as quickly as possible. WOKE THE NEXT MORNING knowing the truth. My only way out of this situation was through the school. I needed to prove myself. That meant I needed everything Vashet could teach me as quickly as possible.

So the next morning I rose in the pale blue light of dawn. And when Vashet emerged from her small stone house I was waiting for her. I was not particularly bright-eyed or bushy-tailed, as my sleep had been filled with troubling dreams, but I was ready to learn.

I realize now that I may have given an inaccurate impression of Haert.

It was no thriving metropolis, obviously. And it couldn't be considered a city by any stretch of the imagination. In some ways it was barely a town.

I do not say this disparagingly. I spent the majority of my young life traveling with my troupe, moving from small town to small town. Half the world is made of tiny communities that have grown up around nothing more than a crossroads market, or a good clay pit, or a bend of river strong enough to turn a mill wheel.

Sometimes these towns are prosperous. Some have rich soil and generous weather. Some thrive on the trade moving through them. The wealth of these places is obvious. The houses are large and well-mended. People are friendly and generous. The children are fat and happy. There are luxuries for sale: pepper and cinnamon and chocolate. There is coffee and good wine and music at the local inn.

Then there are the other sort of towns. Towns where the soil is thin and tired. Towns where the mill burned down, or the clay was mined out years ago. In these places the houses are small and badly patched. The people are lean and suspicious, and wealth is measured in small, practical ways. Cords of firewood. A second pig. Five jars of blackberry preserve.

At first glance, Haert seemed to be this sort of town. It was little more than tiny homes, broken stone, and the occasional penned goat.

In most parts of the Commonwealth, or anywhere in the Four Corners for that matter, a family living in a small cottage with only a few sticks of furniture would be viewed as unfortunate. One step away from paupers.

But while most of the Adem homes I had seen were relatively small, they weren't the same sort you would find in a desperate Aturan town, made of sod and logs c.h.i.n.ked with mud.

The Adem homes were all snug stone, fit together as cunningly as anything I had ever seen. There were no cracks letting in the endless wind. No leaking roofs. No cracking leather hinges on the doors. The windows weren't oiled sheepskin or empty holes with wooden shutters. They were fitted gla.s.s, tight as any you'd find in a banker's manor.

I never saw a fireplace in all my time in Haert. Don't get me wrong, fireplaces are better than freezing to death by a long step. But most of the rough ones folk can build for themselves out of loose fieldstone or cinder-brick are drafty, dirty, and inefficient. They fill your house with soot and your lungs with smoke.

Instead of fireplaces, each Adem home had its own iron stove. The sort of stove that weighs hundreds of pounds. The sort of stove made of thick drop-iron so you can stoke it until it glows with heat. The sort of stove that lasts a century and costs more than a farmer earns from an entire year of hard harvesting. Some of these stoves were small, good for heating and cooking. But I saw more than a few that were larger and could be used for baking too. One of these treasures was tucked away in a low stone house of only three rooms.

The rugs on the Adem floors were mostly simple, but they were of thick, soft wool, deeply dyed. The floors beneath those rugs were smooth-sanded wood, not dirt. There were no guttering tallow tapers or reedlights. There were beeswax candles or lamps that burned a clean white oil. And once, through a distant window, I recognized the unwavering red light of a sympathy lamp.

It was this last that made me realize the truth. This was not a scattered handful of desperate folk, scratching out a lean existence on the bare mountainside. They were not living hand-to-mouth, eating cabbage soup and living in fear of winter. This community was comfortably, quietly prosperous.

More than that. Despite the lack of glittering banquet halls and fancy gowns, despite the absence of servants and statuary, each of these homes was like a tiny manor house. They were each of them wealthy in a quiet, practical way.

"What did you think?" Vashet said, laughing at me. "That a handful of us win our reds and run off to lives of mad luxury while our families drink their own bathwater and die of scurvy?"

"I hadn't though of it at all, really," I said, looking around. Vashet was beginning to show me how to use a sword. We had been at it for two hours, and she had done little more than explain the different ways of holding it. As if it were a baby and not a piece of steel.

Now that I knew what to look for, I could see dozens of the Adem houses worked cunningly into the landscape. Heavy wooden doors were dug into bluffs. Others looked like little more than tumbles of stone. Some had gra.s.s growing on their roofs and could only be recognized by the stovepipes peeping out. A fat nanny goat grazed atop one of these, her udder swinging as she stretched out her neck to crop a mouthful of gra.s.s.

"Look at the land around you," she said, spinning in a slow circle to take in the landscape. "The ground is too thin for the plow, too jagged for horses. The summer too wet for wheat, too harsh for fruit. Some mountains hold iron, or coal, or gold. But not these mountains. In winter the snow will pile higher than your head. In spring the storms will push you from your feet."

She looked back at me. "This is our land because no one else wants it." She shrugged. "Or rather, it became ours for that reason."

Vashet adjusted her sword on her shoulder, then eyed me speculatively. "Sit and listen," she said formally. "And I will tell a story of a time long gone."

I sat on the gra.s.s, and Vashet took her place on a nearby stone. "Long ago," she said, "the Adem were upheaved from our rightful place. Something we cannot remember drove us out. Someone stole our land, or ruined it, or made us flee in fear. We were forced to wander endlessly. Our whole nation mendicant, like beggars. We would find a place, and settle, and rest our flocks. Then those who lived nearby would drive us off.