.
CHAPTER FOUR
So Bright It Blinds
Rain rolled in halfway through the night. It was the sort of sluggish autumn drizzle that seeps into your bones, leaving you chilled and weary and thoroughly disillusioned with romantic notions about sleeping under the stars. I huddled beneath my shaed, just out of reach of the dripping hemlocks and the bitter wind. I turned over in my sleep and reached blindly for Denna, unconsciously seeking her warmth.
I woke with my fingers buried knuckle-deep in the damp earth. Denna was gone.
I stumbled to my feet, half awake and half-wild with panic. It was still dark. The trees around me were dim shadows, barely discernible against the overwhelming blackness of the sky. The cold, damp wind turned my skin to gooseflesh. I fumbled for my shirt and trousers and dressed hastily, wincing at the feel of the damp cloth against my bare skin. I did not bother with my boots. The underbrush was no trouble for my city-hardened feet.
I cursed my eyes roundly as I waited for them to adjust to the darkness. "Denna?" I whispered. I was answered by silence.
That silence, in itself, was ominous. No deep-throated widowbirds sang out their endless cries, no beetles scuttled underfoot, no crickets chirped. The water-laden trees barely even rustled in the wind.
Then I heard a woman scream. I spun towards the sound, drawing the dagger I kept strapped to my leg.
I stumbled towards the road. I was half-blind in the darkness, and was forced to wave my hands in front of me as I walked in order to avoid impaling myself on the branches that jutted outwards from the tree trunks that surrounded me on all sides. I cringed each time a stone shifted beneath my feet, each time a branch cracked under my weight, certain the racket would bring the Chandrian down upon me where I stood.
The ground beneath my bare feet was suddenly firm, the air before me clear of branches. I'd reached the road. I slunk along it in the direction of the raw scream I'd heard.
It was probably nothing, I told myself. Foxes shrieked like that sometimes. I kept to the edge of the trail. Cold water trickled around my feet as I trudged uphill.
I crested the small hill, then dropped flat on my belly, flinging a hand over my mouth to keep from crying out in shock. A campfire danced not fifty yards ahead, in the center of a straight stretch of road. The fire burned blue at the edges.
I lay flat against the cold, wet ground and stared at the flames. They were here. The Chandrian were here, and they had Denna.
My body clenched. I began to tremble.
I squeezed my eyes shut against a bewildering onslaught of pure, uncontrolled panic. In that moment, I was no longer Kvothe the Arcane, Kvothe the Bloodless. I was a child again, newly orphaned, hiding in a heap of trash as a pack of older boys stumbled along an alleyway in search of prey. They banged bottles and pipes off the walls, slurring obscenities. I could tell from the way they stumbled and swayed that they were high on resin and spirits, hungry for a chase.
Since my escape from Tarbean, I had faced worse than would-be rapists and thugs. I had faced assassins. I had faced an entire army of men. I had faced the draccus, and Felurian, and the Cthaeh. But I had never yet wittingly faced the Seven.
Oh, I had dreamt of this moment, of course. I had dreamt of standing over Cinder as he cowered beneath me, of resting Caesura against his neck. Of striking the fatal blow.
But these were only dreams. I knew the difference. I was no Taborlin the Great. I knew better than anyone that the stories others told of me were nothing more than armor spun of half-truths and lies. They wouldn't really protect me, if it came to blows. If I faced the Chandrian, I would surely die.
Worst of all, my parents would never have justice. What would they say to me, if we met again on the long road? Would my father be disappointed that I had failed? Would my mother weep to know that I had thrown my life away on dreams of revenge?
I pushed these thoughts away savagely, swallowed them down. This wasn't me. This broken, fearful child was a ghost. A shadow. A memory. I had left him in the past, left him to die on the rooftop of a tannery Waterside.
I focused on breathing. In my head, I recited Shehyn's rhyme. Cyphus bears the blue flame, Stercus is in thrall of iron ... I repeated it like a litany, until I again felt calm enough to open my eyes.
Then I buried myself in the Heart of Stone, as Abenthy had taught me. I buried myself so deeply I thought I might never emerge again. I was stone itself. I was silence. I was death.
I felt a stillness settle within me. It was the stillness that comes of knowing. I took immeasurable comfort from it.
I heard another scream. This time, it was unmistakably human.
I did the only thing I could think to do. I rose to my feet, scrubbed a few stray tears from my cheeks, and walked straight towards the fire.
I am sure right now you are cursing me for a fool. You think that I walked right into their trap. But you are wrong. Calling it a trap implies that I had some hope of avoiding it. I knew better. The Chandrian knew it too. And so they waited, and I came.
I stepped into the circle of firelight and fixed my gaze on Denna.
She had been forced to her knees before the fire. Her arms were bound behind her at the elbows. Her dress had been cut away at the shoulders, her skirts sliced to shreds. Her hair was unbraided. Her beautiful locks had been shorn away just below her chin. The air was thick with the rotten stench of burning hair.
Her flesh was marked with a half-dozen bloody gashes. They were shallow, surgical. They had been inflicted to make her cry out. To draw me in.
I fought down a wave of nausea. This was how I most often remembered my mother: broken and half-naked, her dark hair cut away. It hurt too much to remember her otherwise: warm and kind, soft hands and soft kisses, smiling. Fair-skinned and fine-boned. I had never before realized how much Denna looked like her.
Cinder stood at Denna's shoulder. The bloodied tip of his grey blade rested against her throat. He was pale and beautiful, just as I remembered. His eyes were pure black, flat and cruel. He said nothing as I approached the fire. He simply watched, his eyes flickering between us curiously. I met his gaze, and his lips twisted into a sliver of white that was nothing like a smile.
Denna's breathing was shallow and pained. Her gaze was unfocused, dazed. "Kvothe," she mumbled. "I'm s...sorry. I just w-went to sit by the water ... for a while. To think."
I stepped closer. I looked directly into her eyes, and willed her to be calm. "Be easy," I said softly. "All will yet be well." She stilled at the look on my face, the sound of my voice. Her body relaxed a fraction. Her breathing slowed.
"A bold promise, Kvothe," Cinder said, "and a foolish one." The savor with which he spoke my name erased any hope I'd had that he knew nothing of my involvement in his affairs in Vintas.
He knelt like water flowing out of a jar. Then he reached out and ran his long, pale fingers through Denna's hair. "She is a pretty thing, this woman of yours," he mused. "Pretty, but ignorant."
I said nothing. I just watched him, silent and expressionless. His flat black eyes narrowed.
"We have been ... chatting, she and I," he said. He dug a finger into a cut at the nape of her neck. She cried out sharply, then clamped her mouth shut. The sound became a muffled whimper.
He frowned at her. "It's very noble of you to try," he said, "but there's really no point in making efforts to hide your pain. The agony I'm going to inflict on you tonight ... frankly, I'll be quite surprised if you even realize you're screaming."
The last trace of color drained from her face. Her eyes rolled back, and she swayed in his arms. He braced her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her like a lover. "Deep breaths," he chided. "It's not any fun if you faint."
She made no effort to breathe. Still, the color crept back into her face.
Once Cinder was certain she was in no danger of fainting, he turned his full attention back to me. "As I was saying," he continued, "we have been getting to know one another. Am I to understand that she knows nothing of me?" He shook his head, and his sharp white smile turned rueful. "You wound me, Kvothe. I thought we were close."
Denna made a small noise of surprise. She tossed her head back to stare from me to him, and back again. She tried to rise to her feet.
"I wouldn't recommend it," Cinder said, and she froze.
His eyes caught on something just over my shoulder. "Ah, my brothers and sisters return from their vigil." I turned, following his gaze. I could not see them yet, but I could smell their stench, the foul odor of decay.
I took a careful half-step forward. This was my best chance to strike Cinder down. Now, before the others arrived. My hand closed around Caesura's hilt, hidden beneath my shaed.
"It's been nearly five years, hasn't it?" Cinder asked.
I went as still as a startled rabbit. For the first time, I realized that he remembered me, not as the arcanist who had destroyed his army, but as the boy who had survived the slaughter of Lord Greyfallow's Men. I looked into his eyes, and in my reflection I saw myself suddenly as he saw me. A child still, not even a man grown. Untried, untempered, with no particular strength or power.
A sliver of fear, cold and sharp, cut through the stillness in my heart. How could he know me? Had he been watching me since that night? Surely not. To what end?
"I suppose that makes this a reunion of sorts," he continued. He threw his arms wide, as if to embrace his companions in the trees. "Cause for celebration!" he cried. "Tonight we shall have a feast." His eyes slid to Denna, then to me. His smile widened.
Three figures stepped out of the darkness. A balding, bearded man. I remembered him from my childhood nightmares. A tall, dour woman, dressed all in grey. She held Roah's reins loosely in one hand. The mare's eyes were white with fear, and yet she made no move to flee. The woman stared into my eyes, and the paralysis I had felt in the road washed over me again. I glanced quickly away, and she smiled.
A second woman stepped forward, naked and pale. Her features were fair, her body ripe and supple, yet she repulsed the eye as surely as Felurian attracted it. I could hardly bear to look upon her face.
She stepped too close. In one smooth motion, I turned and drove my dagger into her stomach. Or at least, I tried. The dagger rusted even as I moved, crumbling to dust before it could cut her skin.
The woman threw back her head and laughed. Her laughter was like the screech of metal on slate.
I stared down at the fistful of rust and fashioned my face into a mask of surprise. So this was the one the Adem called Usnea, whose sign was decay. No mortal steel would ever find its mark against her.
I slid my fingers under the shadow of my cloak, brushing my fingers across Caesura's hilt. It was smooth, cold. Untouched. I fought the sudden urge to smile.
I turned my attention back to Cinder. He and Usnea still laughed. I brushed the rust off of my hands and raised my shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, as if to say this whole exercise bored me.
Cinder's smile fell. He looked me up and down, his black eyes curious.
"This is between us," I said calmly. "Let her go."
"Don't flatter yourself," he sneered. "My orders are to kill her." He shrugged broadly, mimicking me, and flashed his teeth. "Your presence only ensures that I will take my time."
His eyes locked on mine and he reached out again, seizing Denna by the waist. He leaned forward to lap sweat and blood from a long gash on her neck. She moaned and thrashed, rearing in his arms like a captured animal. He tightened his grip on her and gave me a languid smile, his mouth filled with blood.
Blind, overpowering rage crashed through me. I wanted to throw myself at him, to rip his ribcage open with my bare hands and tear out his guts. I wanted it more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. I wanted it even though I knew I would fail, even though I knew Denna would die screaming when I did. I knew he was baiting me, and still I felt my control, my sanity, slipping away from me, like water through a sieve.
I closed my eyes and dove for the stillness in my heart. I seized it the way Felurian had once taught me to seize the moonlight. I simply reached out, and knew that I could hold it in my fist. Once caught, I wrapped it around me like a shroud.
I opened my eyes. Cinder blinked and took a half-step back, surprise plain on his face.
We stared at each other for a long moment. "Why do you do this?" I whispered finally, asking the question that had burned in me since the night my parents died. "Why do you kill those who tell stories of you, or sing your songs?"
He misunderstood me. Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that his reasons differed from those of his master. "I want their pain," he said. "I want to hear them scream as I slice into them. I want to claim their bodies and break their bones. I want to dance in their blood."
"If all you want is pain," I said quietly, "then take mine. I offer myself in her place."
He laughed. "Why would I do that? How can I savor your pain if I know it is given willingly?" His smile was sharp and hungry. "Besides, then I would not have the pleasure of hearing you beg for mercy as I cut her open."
I stiffened. "My mother didn't beg you for anything," I said, remembering the words of the Cthaeh. "And neither will I."
"Ahhh!" Cinder clapped his hands together like a delighted child. "Were you watching then," he crowed, "five years ago, when I tied your mother to that tree? The big oak, by the little stream? When I broke her wrists? When I cut her breasts and arms and hands, until the trunk shone red with her filthy Ruh blood?"
He danced merrily, smooth as quicksilver, barely able to contain his happiness. He ran his fingers down Denna's shoulders and across her breasts. "Did it excite you, boy?" he whispered harshly. "When I claimed your mother like the ravel beast she was, while your father and your uncles and your cousins watched? Is that why you will not beg? Do you hunger to see it again?"
The stillness in me shattered. I threw myself at him.
Usnea seized me by the waist. With one smooth motion, she drove me to my knees. She was impossibly strong. She held me by the shoulders as I twisted uselessly in her grip. Inside, I screamed with rage, a single unending roar. All these years of searching, of studying, of gathering power, and it was over in a single step, over before it had even begun. I glared up at Cinder as he approached, panting in fury.
I spat on his shoes. "Petty," He sneered. "Childish. Weak." He straightened and spread his arms wide, as if to show me what an easy target he was, how pathetic I was for failing to strike him.
"Is this the vengeance of Kvothe the Arcane?" he cried. The others laughed. He kicked me in the face, and I sagged forward. For a moment, the world went dark. I came to, spitting blood.
He leaned in close. His breath was cold and stale. He smelled like ice and iron and blood. "You will beg, in the end," he hissed. "Just like your father begged, when I -"
"Quickly, Cinder." Haliax's voice cut through Cinder's like a saw through bone. He stepped out of the shadows, hardly more than shadow himself. "They come."
Cinder stepped away from me and cocked his head to the side. Sudden fear crept into his eyes.
I could feel it, too. A change in the air, a prickling on the back of my neck. I was certain we were being watched. This knowing was more than gut instinct. It was physical, like the static charge that makes your hair stand on end before lightning strikes.
"Kill her now," Haliax said.
I was powerless, awash in fear and shock, my sleeping mind as hopelessly out of reach to me now as if I had never studied naming at all. I didn't even have the strength to break Usnea's grip. I bucked once in silent, futile protest as Cinder stepped forward and buried his blade in Denna's chest.
I did not struggle then, or cry out. I simply watched her die.
She slid backwards onto the ground, onto her bound wrists, then onto her side. Blood pooled outwards from her heart in a wide circle, staining her bodice an opulent red. She didn't try to speak. She just stared down at the hole in her chest, then up at me, her mouth a perfect O of surprise. Her face slackened. Her gaze clouded over.
I watched with empty, unseeing eyes. In some deep corner of my mind, I knew I was in shock. I embraced it utterly. For a moment, all was perfectly, blessedly still.
Then lightning struck the road, a column of pure light. The force of it threw me to the ground. The air screamed as if it had been split open.
Thrown free of Usnea, I staggered dizzily to my feet. I stumbled forward, half-blinded and deeply confused. There was something ... I struggled to think through the morass of my mind. Denna. I needed to save Denna.
"To me," Haliax called. Usnea ran towards his reaching arms, stepped into his shadow, and was gone. The others followed quickly behind.
Cinder was the last to enter Haliax's embrace. He took a single step forward, then paused. He turned to me, and smiled.
Somewhere in my mind, I felt something snap. "Ferula," I sang, and my voice was ice and iron and blood. It was a vise around his heart, tendrils of fire lashing at his skin.
He fell to his knees, writhing in agony. He opened his mouth to speak and I sang his name again. His throat and lungs filled with the feel of a thousand ants, crawling and biting and frantic. He choked, clutching at his throat.
I walked forward. I was as calm now as the sky before a storm, filled with terrible purpose. He mouthed wordlessly at me, his black eyes desperate and pleading.
I knelt before him, and looked behind his eyes.
In that one single moment, I discovered more of the Chandrian than I had learned in all my years of searching.
I learned that Lanre had assembled the Seven after Iax's imprisonment, after Lyra's death. He had chosen them from among his highest-ranked generals, his most trusted advisors. They were each as different as daylight and darkness, as river and stone, but all had two things in common. They were reckoned the greatest of men, and they had no gift for naming. They ruled by the sword.
Lanre had assembled them beyond the walls of Emlen, at the Stone Circles, where Cinder had once held court. Cinder had worn a different name then, of course, a different face. He still wore the face occasionally, when it pleased him. The dribble of power he had left to him still allowed him that small amusement, at least. But he was not the same man now that he had been that day. Not by half.
Yes, Lanre had assembled them beyond the walls of Emlen. There he had shown them what the Cthaeh had revealed to him. He had shown them how to kindle within themselves that feeble scrap of power innate to all men. How to forge it into a fire so bright it blinded.
He had shown them how to shape.
Such power. Such promise. Even now, Cinder remembered what it had meant to them then. They could protect the living. They could seek justice for the dead. They could end the unending war. In exchange for this gift, Lanre had said, they had only to help him cast Selitos from his throne. They had only to set fire to Myr Tariniel.
They had all agreed, of course they had agreed. Hundreds of cities had already fallen. What was one more, or seven? The world was broken. It was on its knees. Surely it was better to strike the final blow, to end the suffering of man? To forge a new empire from the ashes of the old?
They had not known then the price that they would pay. By shaping the world to their purpose, they had bound themselves to it. If they were killed, if their souls were sent beyond the doors of death, they would simply return, drawn always back to the mortal world.
It was terribly ironic, of course. Lanre wished so fervently to destroy the world. To him it was a broken thing, cankerous and cruel. And yet he, too, was tied to it forever by the power of his name. He could never be free of it. Not in sleep, not even in madness.
Cinder was luckier than him, in this. Time had broken him. He knew it, and he was glad of it. His only purpose now, his only pleasure, was pain. He was a rabid creature, driven through the infinite days by an all-consuming hunger.
Such hunger ... Gods, he ached with it. Hunger to claim, to possess, to destroy. To gorge. To sate.
I jerked back, and the connection between us snapped. I felt sick.
For a moment, we simply watched each other. Then, because I could not kill him, I unmade him.
It was a simple thing, really. As simple as cutting a shape from cloth, then stitching the pieces back together. I cut, and stitched, and he simply failed to exist. There was no dust left behind, no footstep to mark his passing. He was simply gone.
I wonder now at the power that possessed me in that moment. At the time, it had seemed as natural as breathing. He was a cruel, mad thing, and the world was better without him. And so it must be.
I looked up. For the first time that night, I became aware of my own awareness. The world was a book laid out before me, a story half-written, a song half-sung. I saw it all, and yet I felt entirely separate from it. My knowing rode on my brow like a white star, as sharp and sweet as it had been in Felurian's meadow.
Haliax was gone. Denna lay at my feet.
Denna. I knelt at her side. I straightened her ragged skirts and brushed her hair back from her face. Even in death, she was beautiful. But I could not stand to see her so, bound and slashed and broken. So I spoke the name of rope, and her bindings fell away. I spoke the name of blood, and it flowed back into her body, clean and warm and rich with oxygen. I spoke the name of flesh, and healed her wounds. I spoke the name of cloth, and her dress was whole again, untorn and unstained. Still, she did not stir.
I touched her cheek. A drop of water fell onto her forehead, and I realized I was weeping. Here was one who deserved life.
I smiled suddenly. This was a gift I could give. She had barely passed the doors of death. Her body was still warm and soft, a vessel waiting to be filled.
I rested one hand upon her brow and the other upon her chest, just above her silent heart.
"Stop, Kvothe."
The voice was like thunder and song, beautiful and powerful and strangely familiar. I ignored it. This was no time for conversation. I had to save Denna, while my power was still upon me. I closed my eyes and focused on the steady beat of my own heart.
"You must stop," the voice insisted again. "This is not the way of the world. It is wrong."
I glanced up, mild irritation breaking through the calm of my sleeping mind. The creature who had spoke was wreathed in white flame, blinding to look upon. I could not see his face. The fire formed great semi-circles, like the curve of a bird's folded wings. The angel - for surely this was an angel - held a hand out towards me, and his gesture was both supplication and command.
A stab of surprise cut through my calm. I had always dismissed angels as myth. They belonged in the stories that simple village priests told simple village folk.
In hindsight, I should have known better. Skarpi and Felurian had both spoken of Tehlu and his angels, and the part they had played in the Creation War. In their stories, the angels had once been men, Namers like Selitos. Nina, too, had spoken of the angels. She'd said they brought her dreams of the vase the Mauthen family had found, so that she could paint it for me.
I eyed the lightning scars that split the trees along the road. Vaguely I recalled, as if in a dream, that Marten had invoked the angels before lightning struck Cinder's camp in Vintas. In Andan's name, he had prayed, watch over me. Dedan had described the lightning as many strikes in quick succession, like a column of fire. Hadn't Skarpi described the angels as creatures of white fire, just like the creature before me now?
I shook my head slowly, casting my eyes back down to Denna. None of that mattered now. All that mattered was that Denna was slipping away from me. I needed to bring her back quickly, or she would be lost to me forever.
I looked up at the creature before me. "This woman should live," I said. "Her life is a gift to the world. She is light in the darkness. She is safe harbor in a stormy sea."
I could not see the creature's face, but I could hear disapproval in his tone. "She is only a woman," he said dismissively.
"No," I said, "she is everything."
The creature sighed. Obviously he disagreed, but he sensed the uselessness of the debate. "She is at peace beyond the mortal realm. You cannot claim to do this for her own good. What then justifies what you do here today? Shaping the world to your will? Destroying one creature and creating another? What justifies the price you pay to claim mastery over life and death?"
"Love," I said firmly.
The angel sighed again, as if he had heard this many times before. "Love is not wise, Kvothe, no matter what men say. It is selfish. It is impulsive and proud."
I considered this. "I have been called all these things, and worse. I will be called worse still, in days to come. It matters little to me. If I can save her, then I must."
The angel's fire flared. I sensed his fury. Strangely, I sensed he was also disappointed. It rankled me that he should feel that way. Why should he have any say in how I felt, in what I did?
"We had hoped ..." The angel started, then fell silent. When he spoke again, his voice was tired and thin. "Is there nothing I can say that will change your mind?"
"No," I replied. My voice reverberated with power. "There is nothing. I will not be moved."
Another long silence. "Very well," he said finally.
He stepped forward and touched my left hand. His touch was gentle, and yet it seared like fire. I yanked my hand away. I stared at my palm, puzzled. I did not understand.
"This is our curse upon you," he explained quietly. "Ours is the first price you will pay, and the least of the three."
I turned away. "Fine," I said shortly. "Then your part is done. Leave me to my task."
The darkness crashed around me again. I was finally alone. My hand trembled. It ached where the angel had touched me.
My vision danced with afterimages of the angel's light as I again placed my hands over Denna's brow and heart. I closed my eyes and concentrated on her. Not the body lying before me, but the woman I loved.
I sang her name, cautious and wild.
The ache in my hand was worse than I had thought, or perhaps it was worsening. It spread outwards, like fire in my veins, lancing up my arm and through my chest. Blackness gathered at the corners of my vision.
No. Not yet. I sang Denna's name again, bold and sweet.
The world pitched around me. The pain infiltrated every corner of my body. It felt like the pins and needles that prick your muscles when they are deprived too long of blood, except that it was more intense, and everywhere at once. Every movement increased the pain tenfold.
I shouted her name one last time, angry and longing.
I groaned. My body arched off the ground, taut as a lute string. I jerked once more as the tendrils of pain pierced my brain, and all was blackness.
