The Name of the Wind

I paused, taken aback by the scope of the question. None of the other students had been asked anything so broad as this. “Well sir,” I said slowly to give myself a moment or two to organize my thoughts. “Partly because Lord Nalto was an inept egomaniac. Partly because the church went into upheaval and denounced the Order Amyr who were a large part of the strength of Atur. Partly because the military was fighting three different wars of conquest at the same time, and high taxes fomented rebellion in lands already inside the empire.”

I watched the master’s expression, hoping he would give some sign when he had heard enough. “They also debased their currency, undercut the universality of the iron law, and antagonized the Adem.” I shrugged. “But of course it’s more complicated than that.”

Master Lorren’s expression remained unchanged, but he nodded. “Who was the greatest man who ever lived?”

Another unfamiliar question. I thought for a minute. “Illien.”

Master Lorren blinked once, expressionless. “Master Mandrag?”

Mandrag was clean-shaven and smooth-faced, with hands stained a half hundred different colors and seemed to be made all of knuckle and bone. “If you needed phosphorus where would you get it?”

His tone sounded for a moment so much like Abenthy’s that I forgot myself and spoke without thinking. “An apothecary?” One of the masters on the other side of the table chuckled and I bit my too-quick tongue.

He gave me a faint smile, and I drew a faint breath. “Barring access to an apothecary.”

“I could render it from urine,” I said quickly. “Given a kiln and enough time.”

“How much would you need to gain two ounces pure?” He cracked his knuckles absentmindedly

I paused to consider, as this was a new question too. “At least forty gallons, Master Mandrag, depending on the quality of the material.”

There was a long pause as he cracked his knuckles one at a time. “What are the three most important rules of the chemist?”

This I knew from Ben. “Label clearly Measure twice. Eat elsewhere.”

He nodded, still wearing the faint smile. “Master Kilvin?”

Kilvin was Cealdish, his thick shoulders and brisding black beard reminded me of a bear. “Right,” he grumbled, folding his thick hands in front of him. “How would you make an ever-burning lamp?”

Each of the other eight masters made some sort of exasperated noise or gesture.

“What?” Kilvin demanded, looking around at them, irritated. “It is my question. The asking is mine.” He turned his attention back to me. “So. How would you make it?”

“Well,” I said slowly. “I would probably start with a pendulum of some sort. Then I would bind it to—”

“Kraem. No. Not like this.” Kilvin growled out a couple words and pounded his fist on the table, each thump as his hand came down was accompanied by a staccato burst of reddish light that welled up from his hand. “No sympathy. I do not want an ever-glowng lamp. I want an ever-burning one.” He looked at me again showing his teeth, as if he were going to eat me.

“Lithium salt?” I asked without thinking, then backpedaled. “No, a sodium oil that burned in an enclosed ... no, damn.” I mumbled my way to a stop. The other applicants hadn’t had to deal with questions like these.

He cut me off with a short sideways gesture of his hand. “Enough. We will talk later. Elxa Dal.”

It took me a moment to remember that Elxa Dal was the next master. I turned to him. He looked like the archetypal sinister magician that seems to be a requirement in so many bad Aturan plays. Severe dark eyes, lean face, short black beard. For all that, his expression was friendly enough. “What are the words for the first parallel kinetic binding?”

I rattled them off glibly.

He didn’t seem surprised. “What was the binding that Master Kilvin used just a moment ago?”

“Capacatorial Kinetic Luminosity.”

“What is the synodic period?”

I looked at him oddly. “Of the moon?” The question seemed a little out of sync with the other two.

He nodded.

“Seventy-two and a third days, sir. Give or take a bit.”

He shrugged and gave a wry smile, as if he’d expected to catch me with the last question. “Master Hemme?”

Hemme looked at me over steepled fingers. “How much mercury would it take to reduce two gills of white sulfur?” he asked pompously, as if I’d already given the wrong answer.

One of the things I’d learned during my hour of quiet observation was this: Master Hemme was the king- high bastard of the lot. He took delight in student’s discomfort and did everything he could to badger and unsettle them. He had a fondness for trick questions.

Luckily, this was one I had watched him use on other students. You see, you can’t reduce white sulfur with mercury. “Well,” I drew the word out, pretending to think it through. Hemme’s smug smile grew wider by the second. “Assuming you mean red sulfur, it would be about forty-one ounces. Sir.” I smiled a sharp smile at him. All teeth.

“Name the nine prime fallacies,” he snapped.

“Simplification. Generalization. Circularity. Reduction. Analogy. False causality. Semantism. Irrelevancy....”I paused, not being able to remember the formal name of the last one. Ben and I had called it Nalt, after Emperor Nalto. It galled me, not being able to recall its real name, as I had read it in Rhetoric and Logic just a few days ago.

My irritation must have shown on my face. Hemme glowered at me as I paused, saying. “So you don’t know everything after all?” He leaned back into his seat with a satisfied expression.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I had anything to learn,” I said bitingly before I managed to get my tongue under control again. From the other side of the table, Kilvin gave a deep chuckle.

Hemme opened his mouth, but the Chancellor silenced him with a look before he could say anything else. “Now then,” the Chancellor began, “I think—”

“I too would ask some questions,” the man to the Chancellor’s right said. He had an accent that I couldn’t quite place. Or perhaps it was that his voice held a certain resonance. When he spoke, everyone at the desk stirred slightly, then grew still, like leaves touched by the wind.

“Master Namer,” the Chancellor said with equal parts deference and trepidation.

Elodin was younger than the others by at least a dozen years. Cleanshaven with deep eyes. Medium height, medium build, there was nothing particularly striking about him, except for the way he sat at the table, one moment watching something intently, the next minute bored and letting his attention wander among the high beams of the ceiling above. He was almost like a child who had been forced to sit down with adults.

I felt Master Elodin look at me. Actually felt it, I suppressed a shiver. “So-heketh ka Siaru krema’teth tu?” he asked. How well do you speak Siaru?

“Rieusa, ta krelar deala tu.” Not very well, thank you.

He lifted a hand, his index finger pointing upward. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

I paused for a moment, which was more consideration than the question seemed to warrant. “At least one,” I said. “Probably no more than six.”

He broke into a broad smile and brought his other hand up from underneath the table, it had two fingers upright. He waved them back and forth for the other masters to see, nodding his head from side to side in an absent, childish way Then he lowered his hands to the table in front of him, and grew suddenly serious. “Do you know the seven words that will make a woman love you?”

I looked at him, trying to decide if there was more to the question. When nothing more was forthcoming, I answered simply, “No.”

“They exist.” He reassured me, and sat back with a look of contentment. “Master Linguist?” He nodded to the Chancellor.

“That seems to cover most of academia,” the Chancellor said almost to himself. I had the impression that something had unsettled him, but he was too composed for me to tell exactly what. “You will forgive me if I ask a few things of a less scholarly nature?”

Having no real choice, I nodded.

He gave me a long look that seemed to stretch several minutes. “Why didn’t Abenthy send a letter of