The Wise Man's Fear

mind. It made it easier to break my mind into separate pieces or maintain the all-important Alar.

On the other hand, Spinning Leaf seemed largely useless. It was relaxing to let my mind grow clear and empty, then float and tumble lightly from one thing to the next. But aside from helping me draw answers to Tempi’s questions out of thin air, it seemed to have no practical value. It was the mental equivalent of a card trick.

By the eighth day on the road, my body no longer ached constantly. That was when Tempi added something new. After performing the Ketan the two of us would fight. It was hard, as that was when I was the most weary. But after the fighting we would always sit, rest, and discuss the Lethani.

“Why did you smile as we fought today?” Tempi would say.

“Because I was happy.”

“Did you enjoy the fighting?”

“Yes.”

Tempi radiated displeasure. “That is not of the Lethani.”

I thought a moment on my next question. “Should a man take pleasure in the fight?”

“No. You take pleasure in acting rightly and following the Lethani.”

“What if following the Lethani requires me to fight? Should I not take pleasure in it?”

“No. You should take pleasure in following the Lethani. If you fight well, you should take pride in doing a thing well. For the fighting itself you should feel only duty and sorrow. Only barbarians and madmen take pleasure in combat. Whoever loves the fight itself has left the Lethani behind.”

On the eleventh day, Tempi showed me how to incorporate my sword into the Ketan. The first thing I learned was how quickly a sword becomes lead-heavy when held at arm’s length.

With our sparring and the addition of the sword, each cycle took nearly two and a half hours. Still we kept to our schedule every day. Three cycles before noon, three cycles after. Fifteen hours in all. I could feel my body hardening, becoming quick and lean like Tempi’s.

So we ran, and I learned, and Haert drew ever closer.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TEN Beauty and Branch

As we traveled, we moved quickly through towns, stopping only for food and water. The countryside was a blur. My mind was focused on the Ketan, the Lethani, and the language I was learning.

The road became narrower as we made our way into the foothills of the Stormwal. The land grew rocky and jagged and the road began to snake back and forth as it avoided box valleys, bluffs, and jumbles of broken rock. The air changed, growing cooler than I expected in summer.

We finished the trip in fifteen days. At my best guess, we covered almost three hundred miles in that time.

Haert was the first Adem town I’d ever seen, and to my inexperienced eye it hardly seemed a town at all. There was no central street lined with houses and shops. What buildings I did see were widely spaced, oddly shaped, and built to fit closely with the natural shape of the land, as if they were trying to keep out of sight.

I didn’t know that the powerful storms that gave the mountain range its name were common here. Their sudden, changing winds would tear apart anything so upthrust and angular as the square timber houses common in the lands below.

Instead the Adem built sensibly, hiding their buildings from the weather. Homes were built into the sides of hills, or outward from the leeward walls of sheltering cliffs. Some were dug downward. Others were carved into the stony sides of bluffs. Some you could hardly see unless you were standing next to them.

The exception was a group of low stone buildings clustered close together some distance from the road.

We stopped outside the largest of these. Tempi turned to face me, tugging nervously at the leather straps holding his mercenary reds tight to his arms. “I must go and make my introductions to Shehyn. It may be some time.” Anxiety. Regret. “You must wait here. Perhaps long.” His body language told me more than his words. I cannot take you inside, as you are a barbarian.

“I will wait,” I reassured him.

He nodded and went inside, glancing back at me before closing the door behind himself.

I looked around, watching a few people quietly going about their business: a woman carrying a basket, a young boy leading a goat by a piece of rope. The buildings were made of the same rough stone as the landscape, blending into their surroundings. The sky was overcast, adding another shade of grey.

The wind blew over everything, snapping around corners and making patterns in the grass. I thought briefly of pulling on my shaed, but decided against it. The air was thinner here, and cooler. But it was still summer, and the sun was warm.

It felt oddly peaceful here, with none of the clamor and stink of a larger town. No clatter of hooves on cobblestones. No cart vendors singing out their wares. I could imagine someone like Tempi growing up in a place like this, soaking in the quiet until he was full of it, then taking it with him when he left.

With little else to look at, I turned to the nearby building. It was made from uneven pieces of stone pieced together like a jigsaw. Looking closer, I was puzzled by the lack of mortar. I tapped it with a knuckle, wondering briefly if it might be a single piece of stone carved to look like many stones fit together.

Behind me, I heard a voice say in Ademic, “What do you think of our wall?”

I turned to see an older woman with the characteristic pale grey eyes of the Adem. Her face was impassive, but her features were kind and motherly. She wore a yellow woolen cap pulled down over her ears. It was roughly knitted, and the sandy hair that stuck out from underneath was starting to go white. After all this time traveling with Tempi, it was odd to see an Adem who wasn’t strapped into tight mercenary reds and wearing a sword. This woman wore a loose-fitting white shirt and linen pants.

“Is it fascinating, our wall?” she asked, gesturing gentle amusement, curiosity with one hand. “What do you think of it?”

“I think it is beautiful,” I responded in Ademic, careful to make only brief eye contact.

Her hand tilted in an unfamiliar gesture. “Beautiful?”

I gave the barest of shrugs. “There is beauty that belongs to simple things of function.”

“Perhaps you are mistaking a word,” she said. Gentle apology. “Beauty is a flower or a woman or a gem. Perhaps you mean to say ‘utility.’ A wall is useful.”

“Useful, but beautiful as well.”

“Perhaps a thing gains beauty being used.”

“Perhaps a thing is used according to its beauty,” I countered, wondering if this was the Adem equivalent of small talk. If it was, I preferred it to the insipid gossip of the Maer’s court.

“What of my hat?” she asked, touching it with a hand. “Is it beautiful because it is used?”

It was knitted from a thick homespun wool and dyed a bright cornsilk yellow. It was slightly lopsided, and its stitching was uneven in places. “It seems very warm,” I said carefully.

She gestured small amusement, and her eyes twinkled ever so slightly. “It is that,” she said. “And to me it is beautiful, as it was made for me by my daughter’s daughter.”

“Then it is beautiful as well.” Agreement.

The woman hand-smiled at me. Her hand tilted differently than Tempi’s when she made the gesture, and I decided to take it as a fond, motherly smile. Keeping my face blank, I gestured a smile in return, doing my best to make it both warm and polite.

“You speak well for a barbarian,” she said and reached out to grip my arms in a friendly gesture. “Visitors are rare, especially those so courteous. Come with me and I will show you beauty, and you will speak to me of what its use might be.”

I looked down. Regret. “I cannot. I am waiting.”

“For one inside?”

I nodded.

“If they have gone inside, I suspect you will be waiting some time. Certainly they would be pleased if you