Slipping
Up until this point in the term, Elxa Dal had been teaching us theory in Adept Sympathy. How much light could be produced from ten thaums of continuous heat using iron? Using basalt? Using human flesh? We memorized tables of figures and learned how to calculate escalating squares, angular momentum, and compounded degradations.
Simply said, it was mind-numbing.
Don’t get me wrong. I knew it was essential information. Bindings of the sort we’d shown Denna were simple. But when things grew complicated, a skilled sympathist needed to do some fairly tricky calculations.
In terms of energy, there isn’t much difference between lighting a candle and melting it into a puddle of tallow. The only difference is one of focus and control. When the candle is sitting in front of you, these things are easy. You simply stare at the wick and stop pouring in heat when you see the first flicker of flame. But if the candle is a quarter mile away, or in a different room, focus and control are exponentially more difficult to maintain.
And there are worse things than melted candles waiting for a careless sympathist. The question Denna had asked in the Eolian was all-important: “Where does the extra energy go?”
As Wil had explained, some went into the air, some went into the linked items, and the rest went into the sympathist’s body. The technical term for it was “thaumic overfill,” but even Elxa Dal tended to refer to it as slippage.
Every year or so some careless sympathist with a strong Alar channeled enough heat through a bad link to spike his body temperature and drive himself fever-mad. Dal told us of one extreme case where a student managed to cook himself from the inside out.
I mentioned the last to Manet the day after Dal shared the story with our class. I expected him to join me in some healthy scoffing, but it turned out Manet had actually been a student back when it had happened.
“Smelled like pork,” Manet said grimly. “Damnedest thing. Felt bad for him of course, but you can only feel so much pity for an idiot. A little slippage here and there, you hardly notice, but he must have slipped two hundred thousand thaums inside two seconds.” Manet shook his head, not looking up from the piece of tin he was engraving. “Whole wing of Mains reeked. Nobody could use those rooms for a year.”
I stared at him.
“Thermal slippage is fairly common though,” Manet continued. “Now kinetic slippage . . .” He raised his eyebrows appreciatively. “Twenty years back some damn fool El’the got drunk and tried to lift a manure cart onto the roof of the Masters’ Hall on a bet. Tore his own arm off at the shoulder.”
Manet bent back over his piece of tin, engraving a careful rune. “Takes a special kind of stupid to do something like that.”
The next day I was especially attentive to what Dal had to say.
He drilled us mercilessly. Calculations for enthaupy. Charts showing distance of decay. Equations that described the entropic curves a skilled sympathist needs to understand on an almost instinctive level.
But Dal was no fool. So before we grew bored and sloppy, he turned it into a competition.
He made us draw heat from odd sources, from red-hot irons, from blocks of ice, from our own blood. Lighting candles in distant rooms was the easiest of it. Lighting one of a dozen identical candles was harder. Lighting a candle you’d never actually seen in an unknown location . . . it was like juggling in the dark.
There were contests of precision. Contests of finesse. Contests of focus and control. After two span, I was the highest ranked student in our class of twenty-three Re’lar. Fenton nipped at my heels in second place.
As luck would have it, the day after my assault on Ambrose’s rooms was the same day we began dueling in Adept Sympathy. Dueling required all the subtlety and control of our previous competitions, with the added challenge of having another student actively opposing your Alar.
So, despite my recent trip to the Medica for heat exhaustion, I melted a hole through a block of ice in a distant room. Despite two nights of scant sleep, I raised the temperature of a pint of mercury exactly ten degrees. Despite my throbbing bruises and the stinging itch of my bandaged arm, I tore the king of spades in half while leaving the other cards in the deck untouched.
All of these things I did in less than two minutes, despite the fact that Fenton set the whole of his Alar to oppose me. It is not for nothing that they came to call me Kvothe the Arcane. My Alar was like a blade of Ramston steel.
“It’s rather impressive,” Dal said to me after class. “It’s been years since I’ve had a student go undefeated for so long. Will anyone even bet against you anymore?”
I shook my head. “That dried up a long time ago.”
“The price of fame.” Dal smiled, then looked a little more serious. “I wanted to warn you before I announce it to the class. Next span I’ll probably start setting students against you in pairs.”
“I’ll have to go against Fenton and Brey at the same time?” I asked.
Dal shook his head. “We’ll start with the two lowest ranked duelists. It will be a nice lead-in to the teamwork exercises we’ll be doing later in the term.” He smiled. “And it will keep you from growing complacent.” Dal gave me a sharp look, his smile fading. “Are you all right?”
“Just a chill,” I said unconvincingly as I shivered. “Could we go stand by the brazier?”
I stood as close as I could without pressing myself against the hot metal, spreading my hands over the glimmering bowl of hot coals. After a moment the chill passed and I noticed Dal looking at me curiously.
“I ended up in the Medica with a bit of heat exhaustion earlier today,” I admitted. “My body’s just a bit confused. I’m fine now.”
He frowned. “You shouldn’t come to class if you aren’t feeling well,” he said. “And you certainly shouldn’t be dueling. Sympathy of this sort stresses the body and mind. You shouldn’t risk compounding that with an illness.”
“I felt fine when I came to class,” I lied. “My body is just reminding me I owe it a good night’s sleep.”
“See that you give it one,” he said sternly, spreading his own hands to the fire. “If you drive yourself too hard you’ll pay for it later. You’ve been looking a little ragged lately. Ragged isn’t the right word, really.”
“Weary?” I guessed.
“Yes. Weary.” He eyed me speculatively, smoothing his beard with a hand. “You have a gift for words. It’s one of the reasons you ended up with Elodin, I expect.”
I didn’t say anything to that. I must have said it quite loudly too, because Dal gave me a curious look. “How are your studies progressing with Elodin?” he asked casually.
“Well enough,” I hedged.
He looked at me.
“Not as well as I might hope,” I admitted. “Studying with Master Elodin isn’t what I expected.”
Dal nodded. “He can be difficult.”
A question sprang up in me. “Do you know any names, Master Dal?”
He nodded solemnly.
“What are they?” I pressed.
He stiffened slightly, then relaxed as he turned his hands back and forth over the fire. “That isn’t really a polite question,” he said gently. “Well, not
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be,” he said. “There’s no reason for you to know. It’s a holdover from older times, I think. Back when we had more to fear from our fellow arcanists. If you knew what names your enemy knew, you could guess his strengths, his weaknesses.”
We were both silent for a moment, warming ourselves by the coals. “Fire,” he said after a long moment. “I know the name of fire. And one other.”
“Only two?” I blurted without thinking.
“And how many do you know?” He mocked me gently. “Yes, only two. But two is a great number of names to know these days. Elodin says it was different, long ago.”
“How many does Elodin know?”
“Even if I knew, it would be exceptionally bad form for me to tell you that,” he said with a hint of disapproval.
