The sword I had seen from the edge of the clearing was bound to the tree with a white silk cord that ran around the trunk. The sword was half-drawn from its sheath, and I could see the blade was similar to Vashet’s sword. The metal was an odd, burnished grey without mark or blemish.
Next to the tree on a small table sat a familiar red shirt, folded neatly in half. There was an arrow with stark white fletching and a polished wooden cylinder of the sort that would hold a scroll.
A bright glitter caught my eye, and I turned to see a thick gold bar nestled in the dark earth among the roots of the tree. Was it truly gold? I bent and touched it. It was chill under my fingers, and was too heavy for my single hand to pry up from the ground. How much did it weigh? Forty pounds? Fifty? Enough gold for me to stay at the University forever, no matter how viciously they raised my tuition.
I slowly made my way around the trunk of the sword tree and saw a fluttering piece of silk hanging from a low branch. There was another sword of a more ordinary sort, hanging from the same white cord. There were three blue flowers tied with a blue ribbon. There was a tarnished Vintish halfpenny. There was a long, flat whetstone, dark with oil.
Then I came to the other side of the tree and saw my lute case leaning casually against the trunk.
Seeing it there, knowing someone had gone into my room and taken it from under my bed, filled me with a sudden, terrible rage. It was all the worse knowing what the Adem thought of musicians. It meant they knew I wasn’t merely a barbarian, but a cheap and tawdry whore as well. It had been left there to taunt me.
I had called the name of the wind in the grip of a terrible anger before, in Imre after Ambrose had broken my lute. And I had called it in terror and fury to defend myself against Felurian. But this time the knowledge of it hadn’t come to me borne on the back of some strong emotion. I had slipped into it gently, the way you must reach out to catch a gently floating thistle seed.
So when I saw my lute, the welter of hot emotion brought me crashing out of Spinning Leaf like a sparrow struck with a stone. The name of the wind tattered to shreds, leaving me empty and blind. Looking around at the madly dancing leaves, I could see no pattern at all, only a thousand windblown razors slicing at the air.
I finished my slow circuit of the tree with a knot of worry tightening my stomach. The presence of my lute made one thing clear. Any of these objects could be a trap someone had left for me.
Vashet had said the test was more than what I brought back from the tree. It was also how I brought it, and what I did with it afterward. If I brought out the heavy bar of gold and gave it to Shehyn, would that show I was willing to bring money back to the school? Or it would signify that I would cling greedily to something heavy and unwieldy despite the fact that it put me in danger?
The same was true of any of these things. If I took the red shirt, I could be seen as either nobly striving for the right to wear it, or arrogantly presuming I was good enough to join their ranks. This was doubly true of the ancient sword that hung there. I didn’t doubt that it was as precious to the Adem as a child.
I made another slow circuit of the tree, pretending to consider my choices, but really just stalling for time. I nervously looked over the items a second time. There was a small book with a brass lock. There was a spindle of grey woolen thread. There was a smooth round stone sitting on a clean white cloth.
As I looked at them all, I realized any choice I made could be interpreted so many ways. I didn’t know nearly enough about Adem culture to guess what my item might signify.
Even if I did, without the name of the wind to guide me back through the canopy, I would be cut to ribbons leaving the tree. Probably not enough to maim me, but enough to make it clear I was a clumsy barbarian who obviously didn’t belong.
I looked at the gold bar again. If I chose that, at least the weight of it would give me an excuse for being awkward on my way out. Perhaps I could still make a good showing of it . . .
Nervously I made a third circuit of the tree. I felt the wind pick up, gusting and making the branches flail about more wildly than before. It pulled the sweat from my body, chilling me and making me shiver.
In the middle of that anxious moment, I was suddenly aware of nothing as much as the sudden, urgent pressure of my bladder. My biology cared nothing for the gravity of my situation, and I was seized with a powerful need to relieve myself.
Thus it was that in the center of a storm of knives, in the midst of my test that was also my trial, that I thought of urinating up against the side of the sacred sword tree while two dozen proud and deadly mercenaries watched me do it.
It was such a horrifying and inappropriate thought that I burst out laughing. And when the laugh rolled out of me, the tension knotting my stomach and clawing at the muscles of my back melted away. Whatever choice I made, it would have to be better than pissing on the Latantha.
At that moment, no longer boiling with anger, no longer gripped with fear, I looked at the moving leaves around me. Always before when the name of the wind had left me, it had faded like a dream on waking: irretrievable as an echo or a fading sigh.
But this time it was different, I had spent hours watching the patterns of these moving leaves. I looked out through the branches of the tree and thought of Celean jumping and spinning, laughing and running.
And there it was. Like the name of an old friend that had simply slipped my mind for a moment. I looked out among the branches and I saw the wind. I spoke the long name of it gently, and the wind grew gentle. I breathed it out as a whisper, and for the first time since I had come to Haert the wind went quiet and utterly still.
In this place of endless wind, it seemed as if the world were suddenly holding its breath. The unceasing dance of the sword tree slowed, then stopped. As if it were resting. As if it had decided to let me go.
I stepped away from the tree and began to walk slowly toward Shehyn, bringing nothing with me. As I walked, I raised my left hand and drew my open palm across the razor edge of a hanging leaf.
I came to stand before Shehyn, stopping the polite distance from her. I stood, my face an impassive mask. I stood, utterly silent, perfectly still.
I extended my left hand, bloody palm up, and closed it into a fist. The gesture meant
After a long moment, Shehyn nodded. I relaxed, and only then did the wind return.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR
Of Names
“You,” Vashet said as we walked through the hills, “are one great gaudy showboating bastard, you know that?”
I inclined my head slightly to her, gracefully gesturing
She cuffed me on the side of the head. “Get over yourself, you melodramatic ass. You can fool them, but not me.”
Vashet held her hand to her chest as if gossiping. “Did you hear what Kvothe brought back from the sword tree? The things a barbarian cannot understand: silence and stillness. The heart of Ademre. What did he offer to Shehyn? Willingness to bleed for the school.”
She looked at me, her expression trapped between disgust and amusement. “Seriously, it’s like you stepped out of a storybook.”
I gestured:
Vashet reached out and flicked my ear hard with a finger.
“Ow!” I burst out laughing. “Fine. But don’t you dare accuse me of melodrama. You people are one great unending dramatic gesture. The quiet. The blood-red clothes. The hidden language. Secrets and mysteries. It’s like your lives are one giant dumbshow.” I met her eye. “And I do mean that in all its various clever implications.”
“Well, you impressed Shehyn,” she said. “Which is the most important thing. And you did it in such a way that the heads of the other schools won’t be able to grumble too much. Which is the other most important thing.”
We reached our destination, a low building of three rooms next to a small split-timber goat pen. “Here is the one who will tend to your hand,” she said.
“What of the apothecary?” I asked.
