The Wise Man's Fear Part 89

Still, I learned things from these stories: a thousand small, scattered facts about the Fae. The names of the courts, old battles, and notable persons. I learned you must never look at one of the Thiana with both eyes at once, and that the gift of a single cinnas fruit is considered a terrible insult if given to one of the Beladari.

You might think these thousand facts gave me some insight into the Fae. That I somehow fit them together like puzzle pieces and discovered the true shape of things. A thousand facts is quite a lot, after all....

But no. A thousand seems like a lot, but there are more stars than that in the sky, and they make neither a map nor a mural. All I knew for certain after hearing Felurian's stories is that I had no desire to ever entangle myself in even the kindest corner of the faen court. With my luck I'd whistle while walking under a willow and thereby insult G.o.d's barber, or something of the sort.

Here is the one thing I learned from these stories: the Fae are not like us. This is endlessly easy to forget, because many of them look as we do. They speak our language. They have two eyes. They have hands, and their mouths make familiar shapes when they smile. But these things are only seemings. We are not the same.

I have heard people say that men and the Fae are as different as dogs and wolves. While this is an easy a.n.a.logy, it is far from true. Wolves and dogs are only separated by a minor shade of blood. Both howl at night. If beaten, both will bite.

No. Our people and theirs are as different as water and alcohol. In equal gla.s.ses they look the same. Both liquid. Both clear. Both wet, after a fas.h.i.+on. But one will burn, the other will not. This has nothing to do with temperament or timing. These two things behave differently because they are profoundly, fundamentally not the same.

The same is true with humans and the Fae. We forget it at our peril.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED.

Shaed I SHOULD, PERHAPS, EXPLAIN a few peculiarities of the Fae. SHOULD, PERHAPS, EXPLAIN a few peculiarities of the Fae.

At first glance, Felurian's forest glade did not seem particularly odd. In most ways it resembled an ancient, untouched piece of forest. If not for the unfamiliar stars above, I might have suspected I was still in an isolated piece of the Eld.

But there were differences. Since I had left my mercenary companions I had slept perhaps a dozen times. Despite this, the sky above Felurian's pavilion remained the deep purpling blue of summer dusk and showed no signs of changing.

I had only the roughest guess as to how long I had been in the Fae. More importantly, I had no idea how much time might have been pa.s.sing in the mortal world. Stories are full of boys who fall asleep in faerie circles only to wake as old men. Young girls wander into the woods and return years later, looking no older and claiming only minutes have pa.s.sed.

For all I knew, years could pa.s.s each time I slept in Felurian's arms. I could return to find a century had pa.s.sed, or no time at all.

I did my best not to think about it. Only a fool worries over what he can't control.

The other difference in the Fae realm was much more subtle and difficult to describe....

In the Medica, I had spent a fair amount of time around unconscious patients. I mention this to make a point: there is a great difference between being in a room that is empty and being in a room where someone is sleeping. A sleeping person is a presence in a room. They are aware of you, even if it is only a dim, vague awareness.

That is what the Fae was like. It was such an odd, intangible thing that I didn't notice it for a long while. Then, once I became aware of it, it took me much longer to lay my finger on what the difference was.

It felt as if I had moved from an empty room into a room where someone was asleep. Except, of course, that there was no one there. It was as if everything around me was deeply asleep: the trees, the stones, the rippling stream that widened into Felurian's pool. All these things felt more solid, more present than I was used to, as if they were ever so slightly aware of me.

The thought that I would eventually leave the Fae alive and unbroken was an unfamiliar one for Felurian, and I could tell it troubled her. Often, while in the midst of an unrelated conversation, she would change direction and make me promise, promise, promise, to return to her. to return to her.

I rea.s.sured her as best I could, but there are only so many ways you can say the same thing. After perhaps three dozen times I said, "I will do my best to keep myself safe so I can come back to you."

I saw her face change, becoming first anxious, then grim, then thoughtful. For a moment I worried she had decided to keep me as a pet mortal after all, and I began to berate myself for not fleeing the Fae when I had the chance....

But before I could begin to grow genuinely concerned, Felurian c.o.c.ked her head to one side and seemed to change the subject, "would my sweet flame like a coat? a cloak?"

"I have one," I said, gesturing to where my possessions lay scattered at the edge of the pavilion. Only then did I notice that the tatty old tinker's cloak wasn't wasn't there. I saw my clothes, my boots, and my travelsack still bulging with the Maer's lockbox. But my cloak and sword were gone. The fact that I hadn't noticed their absence was understandable, as I hadn't bothered dressing since I first woke next to Felurian. there. I saw my clothes, my boots, and my travelsack still bulging with the Maer's lockbox. But my cloak and sword were gone. The fact that I hadn't noticed their absence was understandable, as I hadn't bothered dressing since I first woke next to Felurian.

She looked me over slowly, her expression intent. Her eyes lingering on my knee, my lower arm, my upper arm. It was only when she took hold of my shoulder, and turned me so she could examine my back, that I realized she was looking at my scars.

Felurian took hold of my hand and traced a pale line that ran along my forearm. "you are not good at keeping yourself safe, my kvothe."

I was a little offended, especially as there was more than a little truth to what she said. "I do fairly well," I said stiffly. "Considering the trouble that I find."

Felurian turned over my hand and examined my palm and fingers closely. "you are not a fighter," she mused softly to herself. "yet you are all iron-bitten. you are a sweet bird that cannot fly. no bow. no knife. no chain."

Her hand moved to my foot, running thoughtfully along the calluses and scars from my years on the streets of Tarbean. "you are a long walker. you find me in the wild at night. you are a deep knower. and bold. and young. and trouble finds you."

She looked up at me, her face intent. "would my sweet poet like a shaed? shaed?"

"A what?"

She paused as if considering her words. "a shadow."

I smiled. "I already have one." Then I checked to make sure. I was in the Fae after all.

Felurian frowned, shaking her head at my lack of understanding. "another I would give a s.h.i.+eld, and it would keep him safe from harm. another I would gift with amber, bind a scabbard tight with glamour, or craft a crown so men might look on you with love."

She shook her head solemnly. "but not for you. you are a night walker. a moon follower. you must be safe from iron, from cold, from spite. you must be quiet. you must be light. you must move softly in the night. you must be quick and unafraid." She nodded to herself. "this means I must make you a shaed."

She stood and started walking toward the forest. "come," she said.

Felurian had a way of making requests that took some getting used to. I'd discovered that unless I was steeling myself to resist, I'd find myself automatically doing whatever it was she asked of me.

It wasn't that she spoke with authority. Her voice was too soft and edgeless to carry the weight of command. She did not demand or cajole. When she spoke, it was matter-of-fact. As if she couldn't imagine a world in which you didn't want to do exactly as she said.

Because of this, when Felurian told me to follow her, I jumped like a puppet with its strings pulled. Soon I was padding along beside her, deep in the twilight shadows of the ancient forest, naked as a jaybird.

I almost went back to grab my clothes, then decided to follow some advice my father had given me when I was young. "Everyone eats a different part of the pig," he'd said. "You want to fit in, you'll do the same." Different places, different decorums.

So I followed, naked and unprepared. Felurian struck out at a good pace, the moss m.u.f.fling the sound of our bare feet.

As we walked the forest grew darker. At first I thought it was simply the branches of the trees arching over our heads. Then I realized the truth. Above us, the twilight sky was slowly growing darker. Eventually, the last hint of purple was gone, leaving the sky a perfect velvet black, flecked with unfamiliar stars.

Felurian kept walking, I could see her pale skin in the starlight and the shapes of trees around us, but nothing more. Thinking myself clever, I made a sympathetic binding for light and held my hand above my head as if it were a torch. I was more than slightly proud of this, as the motion-to-light binding is rather difficult without a piece of metal to use as a focus.

Light swelled and I caught a moment's glimpse of our surroundings. Dark trunks of trees rose like ma.s.sive pillars as far as the eye could see. There were no low-hanging branches, no undergrowth, no gra.s.s. Only dark moss underfoot and the arch of dark branches overhead. I was reminded of a vast, empty cathedral swathed in sooty velvet.

"ciar nalias!" Felurian snapped. Felurian snapped.

Understanding her tone if not her words, I broke the binding and let the darkness rush back over us. An instant later Felurian leapt at me and bore me to the ground, her lithe, naked body pressed against mine. It was not an entirely uncommon occurrence, but this time the experience was not particularly erotic as the back of my head struck a knuckle of protruding root.

Because of this I was half dazed and nine-tenths blind when the earth shuddered slightly beneath us. Something vast and almost perfectly silent stirred the air above us and slightly off to one side of where we lay.

Poised atop me, one leg on either side, Felurian's body was as taut as a harp string. The muscles of her thighs were tense and quivering. Her long hair fell over us, covering us like a silk sheet. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed against my chest as she drew a shallow, silent breath.

Her body thrummed with the rhythm of her racing heart, and I felt her mouth move where it rested near the hollow of my throat. Softer than a whisper, Felurian spoke a gentle, edgeless word. I felt it press against my skin, sending silent ripples through the air the same way a thrown stone makes circles on the surface of a pond.

There was a soft sound of movement above us, as if someone was folding a huge piece of velvet around a piece of broken gla.s.s. Saying that I realize it makes no sense, but still, that is the best way I can describe the sound. It was a soft noise, the half-heard sound of deliberate movement. I cannot tell you why it made me think of something terrible and sharp, but it did. My forehead p.r.i.c.kled with sweat, and I was filled with a sudden pure and breathless terror.

Felurian went perfectly still, as if she were a startled deer or a cat about to pounce. Quietly, she drew a breath, then spoke a second word. Her breath brushed hot against my throat, and at the half-heard word my body thrummed as if I were a drumhead soundly struck.

Felurian turned her head a bare degree, as if straining to listen. This movement pulled a thousand strands of her splayed hair slowly over the entire left half of my naked body, covering me in gooseflesh. Even in the grip of my nameless terror, I s.h.i.+vered and gave a soft, involuntary gasp.

There was a stirring in the air directly above us.

The sharp nails of Felurian's left hand dug hard into the muscle of my shoulder. She s.h.i.+fted her hips, and slowly slid her naked body up along my own until her face was even with mine. Her tongue flicked against my lips, and without even thinking I tilted my head, reaching for the kiss.

Her mouth met mine, and she drew a long slow breath, pulling the air out of me. I felt my head grow light. Then, her lips still tight against mine, Felurian pushed her breath hard into me, filling my lungs. It was softer than silent. It tasted of honeysuckle. The ground s.h.i.+vered beneath me and everything was still. For an endless moment my heart ceased beating in my chest.

A subtle tension left the air above us.

Felurian pulled her mouth from mine and my heart thumped again, sudden and hard. A second beat. A third. I pulled in a deep, shaking breath.

Only then did Felurian relax. She lay atop me, loose and supple, her naked body flowing over mine like water. Her head nestled into the curve of my neck and she gave a sweet, contented sigh.

A languid moment pa.s.sed, then she laughed, her body shaking with it. It was wild and delighted, as if she had just played the most marvelous joke. She sat up and kissed my mouth fiercely, then nipped at my ear before climbing off me and pulling me to my feet.

I opened my mouth. Then closed it, deciding this was probably not the right time for questions. Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

So we continued in darkness. Eventually my eyes adjusted, and through the branches above I could see the stars, differently patterned and brighter than those in the mortal sky. Their light was barely enough to give an impression of the ground and surrounding trees. Felurian's slender form was a silver shadow in the darkness.

We kept walking, and the trees grew taller and thicker, blocking out the pale starlight bit by bit. Then it became truly dark. Felurian was little more than a piece of pale darkness ahead of me. She stopped walking before I lost sight of her entirely and cupped her hands around her mouth as if she were about to shout.

I cringed at the thought of a loud noise invading the warm quiet of this place. But instead of a shout there was nothing. No. Not nothing. It was like a low, slow purr. Not anything so loud and rough as a cat's purr. It was closer to the sound a heavy snowfall makes, a m.u.f.fled hush that almost makes less noise than no noise at all.

Felurian did this several times. Then she took me by the hand and led me farther into the dark where she repeated the odd, almost inaudible noise. After she had done this three times it was so dark I could no longer see even the faintest shape of her.

After the final pause, Felurian stepped close to me in the dark, pressing her body to mine. She gave me a long and thorough kiss that I expected to become something more involved when she pulled away and spoke softly into my ear. "quietly," she breathed. "they come."

For several minutes I strained my eyes and ears to no avail. Then I saw something luminous in the distance. It disappeared quickly, and I thought my light-starved eyes were playing tricks on me. Then I saw another flicker. Two more. Ten. A hundred pale lights danced toward us through the trees, faint as foxfire.

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 gra.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce.

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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 b.u.t.terflies. 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.