And lovely, of course. I concentrated on my fingering so as not to think about it.

  After each song she rewarded me with a kiss that made it difficult to decide what to play next. Not that I minded horribly. I’d come to realize rather quickly that I preferred kisses to coins.

  I played her “Tinker Tanner.” Let me tell you, the image of Felurian, her quiet, fluting voice singing the chorus of my favorite drinking song is something that will never, never leave me. Not until I die.

  All the while I felt the charm she had on me slacken, bit by bit. It gave me room to breathe. I relaxed and let myself slide a little farther out of the Heart of Stone. Dispassionate calm can be a useful frame of mind, but it does not make for a compelling performance.

  I played for hours, and by the end of it I felt like myself again. By which I mean I could look at Felurian with no more reaction than you might normally feel, looking at the most beautiful woman in the world.

  I can still remember her, sitting naked among the cushions, twilight-colored butterflies dancing in the air between us. I wouldn’t have been alive had I not been aroused. But my mind seemed to be my own again, and I was grateful for that.

  She made a disappointed noise of protest as I set the lute back into its case. “are you weary?” she asked with a hint of a smile. “I would not have tired you, sweet poet, had I known.”

  I gave my best apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, but it seems to be getting late.” Actually, the sky still showed the same purple hint of twilight it had since I first woke, but I pushed on. “I’ll need to be moving quickly if I’m to meet . . .”

  My mind went numb as quickly as if I’d been struck a blow to the back of my head. I felt the passion, fierce and insatiable. I felt the need to have her, to crush her body to mine, to taste the savage sweetness of her mouth.

  Only because of my arcane training did I hold onto any concept of my own identity at all. Even so, I only held it with my barest fingertips.

  Felurian sat cross-legged on the cushions across from me, her face angry and terrible, her eyes cold and hard as distant stars. With a deliberate calm she brushed a slowly fanning butterfly from her shoulder. There was such a weight of fury in her simple gesture that my stomach clenched and I realized this fact:

  No one ever left Felurian. Ever. She kept men until their bodies and minds broke beneath the strain of loving her. She kept them until she tired of them, and when she sent them away it was the leaving that drove men mad.

  I was powerless. I was a novelty. I was a toy, favorite because it was newest. It might be a long while before she tired of me, but the time would come. And when she finally set me free my mind would tear itself apart with wanting her.

  CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN

  Blood and Bitter Rue

  As I sat among the silks with my control slipping away, I felt a wave of cold sweat sweep over my body. I clenched my jaw and felt a small anger flare up. Over the course of my life my mind has been the only thing I’ve always been able to rely on, the only thing that has always been entirely mine.

  I could feel my resolve melting as my natural desires were replaced by some animal thing unable to think beyond its own lust.

  The part of me that was still Kvothe raged, but I felt my body respond to her presence. With a horrible fascination I felt myself crawl through the cushions toward her. One arm found her slender waist, and I bent to kiss her with a terrible hunger.

  I howled inside my own mind. I have been beaten and whipped, starved and stabbed. But my mind is my own, no matter what becomes of this body or the world around. I threw myself against the bars of an intangible cage made of moonlight and desire.

  And, somehow, I held myself away from her. My breath tore out of my throat as if racing to escape.

  Felurian reclined on the cushions, her head tilted up toward me. Her lips were pale and perfect. Her eyes half-lidded and hungry.

  I forced myself to look away from her face, but there was nowhere safe to look. Her throat was smooth and delicate, trembling with her rapid pulse. One breast stood round and full, while the other angled slightly to one side, following the downward slope of her body. They rose and fell with her breath, moving gently, making candle-cast shadows on her skin. I glimpsed the perfect whiteness of her teeth behind the pale pink of her parted lips. . . .

  I closed my eyes, but somehow that only made it worse. The heat of her body was like standing near a fire. The skin of her waist was soft beneath my hand. She moved beneath me, and her breast brushed softly against my chest. I felt her breath against my neck. I shivered and began to sweat.

  I opened my eyes again and saw her staring at me. Her expression was innocent, almost hurt, as if she couldn’t understand being refused. I nursed my small flame of anger. No one did this to me. No one. I held myself away from her. A slight line of a frown touched her forehead, as if she were annoyed, or angry, or concentrating.

  Felurian reached up to touch my face, her eyes intent as if trying to read something written deep inside me. I tried to pull back, remembering her touch, but my body simply shook. Beads of sweat fell from my skin to patter gently on the silk cushions and the flat plane of her stomach below.

  She touched my cheek softly. Softly, I bent to kiss her, and something broke in my mind.

  I felt the snap as four years of my life slid away. Suddenly I was back on the streets of Tarbean. Three boys, bigger than me with greasy hair and piggish eyes had dragged me from the broken crate where I’d been sleeping. Two of them held me down, pinning my arms. I lay in a stagnant puddle that was bitterly cold. It was early in the morning and the stars were out.

  One of them had his hand over my mouth. It didn’t matter. I had been in the city for months. I knew better than to yell for help. At best no one would come. At worst someone would, and then there would be more of them.

  Two of them held me down. The third cut my clothes off my body. He cut me. They told me what they were going to do. Their breath was horribly warm against my face. They laughed.

  There in Tarbean, half-naked and helpless, I felt something well up inside me. I bit two fingers off the hand over my mouth. I heard a scream and swearing as one of them staggered away. I strained and strained against the one who was still on top of me. I heard my own arm break, and his grip loosened. I started to howl.

  I threw him off. Still screaming I stood, my clothes hanging in rags around me. I knocked one of them to the ground. My scrabbling hand found a loose cobblestone and I used it to break one of his legs. I remember the noise it made. I flailed until his arms were broken, then I broke his head.

  When I looked up, I saw the one who had cut me was gone. The third huddled against a wall. He clutched his bloody hand to his chest. His eyes were white and wild. Then I heard footsteps approaching, and I dropped the stone and ran and ran and ran. . . .

  Suddenly, years later, I was that feral boy again. I jerked my head back and snarled inside my mind. I felt something deep inside myself. I reached for it.

  A tense stillness settled inside of me, the sort of silence that comes before a thunderclap. I felt the air begin to crystallize around me.

  I felt cold. Detachedly, I gathered up the pieces of my mind and fit them all together. I was Kvothe the trouper, Edema Ruh born. I was Kvothe the student, Re’lar under Elodin. I was Kvothe the musician. I was Kvothe.

  I stood above Felurian.

  I felt as if this was the only time in my life I had been fully awake. Everything looked clear and sharp, as if I was seeing with a new set of eyes. As if I wasn’t bothering with my eyes at all, and was looking at the world directly with my mind.

  The sleeping mind, some piece of me realized faintly. No longer sleeping, I thought and smiled.

  I looked at Felurian, and in that moment I understood her down to the bottoms of her feet. She was of the Fae. She did not worry over right or wrong. She was a creature of pure desire, much like a child. A child does not concern itself with consequence, neither does a sudden storm. Felurian resembled both, and neither. She was ancient and innocent and powerful and proud.

  Was this the way Elodin saw the world? Was this the magic he spoke of? Not secrets or tricks, but Taborlin the Great magic. Always there, but beyond my seeing until now?

  It was beautiful.

  I met Felurian’s eyes and the world grew slow and sluggish. I felt as if I had been thrust underwater, as if my breath had been pressed from my body. For that tiny moment I was stunned and numb as if I had been struck by lightning.

  The moment passed and things began to move again. But now, looking into Felurian’s twilight eyes, I understood her far beyond the bottoms of her feet. Now I knew her to the marrow of her bones. Her eyes were like four lines of music, clearly penned. My mind was filled with the sudden song of her. I drew a breath and sang it out in four hard notes.

  Felurian sat upright. She passed her hand before her eyes and spoke a word as sharp as shattered glass. There was a pain like thunder in my head. Darkness flickered at the edges of my sight. I tasted blood and bitter rue.

  The world snapped back into focus, and I caught myself before I fell.

  Felurian frowned. Straightened. Stood. Her face intent, she took a step.

  Standing, she was not tall or terrible. Her head was barely level with my chin. Her dark hair hung, a sheaf of shadow, straight as a knife until it brushed against her curving hip. She was slight, and pale, and perfect. Never have I seen a face so sweet, a mouth so made for kissing. She was no longer frowning. Not smiling either. Her lips were soft and slightly parted.

  She took another step. The simple motion of her moving leg was like a dance, the unexaggerated shifting of her hip entrancing as a fire. The arch of her bare foot said more of sex than anything I’d seen in my young life.

  Another step. Her smile was fierce and full. She was as lovely as the moon. Her power hung about her like a mantle. It shook the air. It spread behind her like a pair of vast and unseen wings.

  Close enough to touch, I felt her power thrumming in the air. Desire rose around me like the sea in storm. She raised her hand. She touched my chest. I shook.

  She met my eyes, and in the twilight written there I saw again the four clear lines of song.

  I sang them out. They burst from me like birds into the open air.

  Suddenly my mind was clear again. I drew a breath and held her eyes in mine. I sang again, and this time I was full of rage. I shouted out the four hard notes of song. I sang them tight and white and hard as iron. And at the sound of them, I felt her power shake then shatter, leaving nothing in the empty air but ache and anger.

  Felurian gave a startled cry and sat so suddenly that it was almost like a fall. She curled her knees toward herself and huddled, watching me with wide and frightened eyes.

  Looking around, I saw the wind. Not the way you might see smoke or fog, I saw the ever-changing wind itself. It was familiar as the face of a forgotten friend. I laughed and spread my arms, marveling at its shifting shape.

  I cupped my hands and breathed a sigh into the hollow space within. I spoke a name. I moved my hands and wove my breath gossamer-thin. It billowed out, engulfing her, then burst into a silver flame that trapped her tight inside its changing name.

  I held her there above the ground. She watched me with an air of fear and disbelief, her dark hair dancing like a second flame inside the first.

  I knew then that I could kill her. It would be as simple as throwing a sheet of paper to the wind. But the thought sickened me, and I was reminded of ripping the wings from a butterfly. Killing her would be destroying something strange and wonderful. A world without Felurian was a poorer world. A world I would like a little less. It would be like breaking Illien’s lute. It would be like burning down a library in addition to ending a life.

  On the other hand, my safety and sanity were at stake. I believed the world was more interesting with Kvothe in it as well.

  But I couldn’t kill her. Not like this. Not wielding my newfound magic like a dissecting knife.

  I spoke again, and the wind brought her down among the pillows. I made a tearing motion and the silver flame that once had been my breath became three notes of broken song and went to play among the trees.

  I sat. She reclined. We looked each other over for several long minutes. Her eyes flashed from fear to caution to curiosity. I saw myself reflected in her eyes, naked among the cushions. My power rode like a white star on my brow.

  Then I began to feel a fading. A forgetting. I realized the name of the wind no longer filled my mouth, and when I looked around I saw nothing but empty air. I tried to remain outwardly calm, but as these things left me I felt like a lute whose strings were being cut. My heart clenched with a loss I hadn’t felt since my parents died.

  I could see a slight shimmer in the air around Felurian, some shred of her power returning. I ignored it as I struggled frantically to keep some part of what I had learned. But it was like trying to hold a handful of sand. If you have ever dreamed of flying, then come awake, dismayed to realize you had lost the trick of it, you have some inkling how I felt.

  Piece by piece it faded until there was nothing left. I felt hollow inside and ached as badly as if I’d discovered my family never loved me. I swallowed against the lump in my throat.

  Felurian looked at me curiously. I could still see myself reflected in her eyes, the star on my forehead no more than a pinprick of light. Then even the perfect vision of my sleeping mind began to fade. I looked desperately at the world around me. I tried to memorize the sight of it, unblinking.

  Then it was gone. I bowed my head, half in grief and half to hide the tears.

  CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT

  The Lay of Felurian

  A long moment passed before I regained enough of my composure to look up. There was a hesitancy in the air, as if we were young lovers who didn’t know what was expected of us next, who didn’t know what parts we were supposed to play.

  I picked up my lute and brought it close to my chest. The motion was instinctive, like clutching a wounded hand. I struck a chord out of habit, then made it minor so the lute seemed to be saying sad.

  Without thinking or looking up I began to play one of the songs I had written in the months after my parents died. It was called Sitting by the Water Remembering. My fingers strummed sorrow into the evening air. It was several minutes before I realized what I was doing, and several more before I stopped. I wasn’t done with the song. I don’t know if it really has an ending.

  I felt better, not good by any means, but better. Less empty. My music always helped. As long as I had my music, no burden was ever too heavy to bear.

  I looked up and saw tears on Felurian’s face. It made me less ashamed of my own.

  I also felt myself wanting her. The emotion was damped by the ache in my chest, but that touch of desire focused my attention on my most immediate concern. Survival. Escape.

  Felurian seemed to reach a decision and started through the cushions toward me. Moving in a cautious crawl, she stopped several feet away and looked at me.

  “does my tender poet have a name?” Her voice was so gentle it startled me.

  I opened my mouth to speak, then stopped. I thought of the moon, caught by her own name, and a thousand faerie stories I had heard as a child. If you believed Elodin, names were the bones of the world. I hesitated for about half a second before I decided I had given Felurian a damn sight more than my name already.

  “I am Kvothe.” The sound of it seemed to ground me, to put me inside myself again.

  “kvothe.” She spoke it softly, and it reminded me of a bird calling. “would you sing sweet for me again?” She reached out slowly, as if afraid of being burned, and laid her hand lightly on my arm. “please? your songs are like a caress, my kvothe.”

  She pronounced my name like the beginning of a song. It was lovely. However, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the way she referred to me as her Kvothe.

  I smiled and nodded. Mostly because I didn’t have a better idea. I struck a couple of tuning chords, then paused, thinking.

  Then I started to play “In the Forest Fae,” a song about, of all things, Felurian herself. It wasn’t particularly good. It used about three chords and two dozen words. But it had the effect I was looking for.

  Felurian brightened at the mention of her name. There was no false modesty in her. She knew she was most beautiful, most skilled. She knew men told stories, and she knew her reputation. No man could resist her, no man could endure her. By the end of the song, pride had her sitting straighter.

  I finished the song. “Would you like to hear another?” I asked.

  She nodded and grinned eagerly. She sat among the cushions, back straight, as regal as a queen.

  I moved into a second song, similar to the first. It was called “Lady Fae” or something of the sort. I didn’t know who had written it, but they had an appalling habit of sticking extra syllables into their lines. It wasn’t bad enough to get anything thrown at me in a tavern, but it was close.

  I watched Felurian closely as I played. She was flattered, but I could read a slight dissatisfaction growing. As if she was irritated, but she couldn’t decide why. Perfect.

  Last I played a song written for Queen Serule. I guarantee you haven’t heard it, but I’m sure you know the type. Written by some toadying minstrel looking for a patronage, my father had taught it to me as an example of certain things to avoid when writing a song. It was a numbing example of mediocrity. You could tell the writer was either truly inept, had never met Serule, or that he simply didn’t find her attractive at all.

  While singing it, I simply exchanged the name Felurian for Serule. I also replaced some of the better phrases with less poetic ones. By the time I was through with it, the song was truly wretched, and Felurian wore an expression of naked dismay upon her face.