Two of my favorite books are The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, written by Patrick Rothfuss. Both books are beautifully written and if I was forced to keep only two on my shelf, it’d be these two. By the way, if you’ve ever been interested in what Patrick Rothfuss’ favorite fantasy books are (that he’s enjoyed reading, himself), please visit my post on the topic. Yes, this is something I’ve looked into. I’m always curious about what other fantasy genre aficionados have found themselves toiling with. Some of his list I agree with, some I don’t. I have a feeling he listed a few books in there that are so common that it would be strange not to include them. Yet, I doubt he’s even read them. But alas, I may be wrong.
In this post, I’d like to discuss a part of a chapter I’ve both listened to and read over and over in the book, The Name of the Wind. The section I’m referring to can be found in chapter 54, although both chapters 54 and 55 are excellent, especially when read by Nick Podehl. I’ve listened to quite a few audiobooks in my day and trust me when I say this; narrator matters. Nick is one of my favorites as is Thandiwe Newton reading Jane Eyre and Allan Corduner reading The Book Thief. By the way, if you’d ever like to get lost in a book, either read or listen to The Book Thief. What an experience.
Kvothe decides to play his lute at the Eolian to earn some much needed money. Chapter 54 is described by many as the most beautiful in either book – and I tend to agree. I first listened to this chapter many years ago and for some reason thought of it once again during a mid-February cold snap. Luckily for me, I avoided sliding into an abyss of never-ending internet searches. Luckily for me again, a few folks enjoyed the chapters as much as I did and luckily once more, some of them decided to transcribe said chapters.
I encourage you to read them and/or listen to them. They describe a, shall we say, turning point in Kvothe’s life and one that has brought a tear to more than one eye, if the comments beneath the video are to be taken seriously.
Below is a section of chapter 54 narrated by a gentleman who had decided to take the reading of the entire book on himself. He’s an excellent narrator, but he’s not Nick Podehl. Listen if you care to.
If you’d like to read the entirety of chapter 54, you may do so here. If you’d like to read the very brief chapter 55, you may do so here. Below, I’ll include the best parts of both chapters to offer a taste of what they’re about.
Chapter Fifty-Four – A Place to Burn
My audience. I smiled at them. The smile drew them closer still, and I sang.
“Still! Sit! For though you listen long
Long would you wait without the hope of song So sweet as this. As Illien himself set down An age ago. Master work of a master’s life Of Savien, and Aloine the woman he would take to wife.”
I let the wave of whisper pass through the crowd. Those who knew the song made soft exclamation to themselves, while those who didn’t asked their neighbors what the stir was about. I raised my hands to the strings and drew their attention back to me. The room stilled, and I began to play.
The music came easily out of me, my lute like a second voice. I flicked my fingers and the lute made a third voice as well. I sang in the proud powerful tones of Savien Traliard, greatest of the Amyr. The audience moved under the music like grass against the wind. I sang as Sir Savien, and I felt the audience begin to love and fear me.
I was so used to practicing the song alone that I almost forgot to double the third refrain. But I remembered at the last moment in a flash of cold sweat. This time as I sang it I looked out into the audience, hoping at the end I would hear a voice answering my own.
I reached the end of the refrain before Aloine’s first stanza. I struck the first chord hard and waited as the sound of it began to fade without drawing a voice from the audience. I looked calmly out to them, waiting. Every second a greater relief vied with a greater disappointment inside me.
Then a voice drifted onto stage, gentle as a brushing feather, singing…
“Savien, how could you know
It was the time for you to come to me?
Savien, do you remember
The days we squandered pleasantly?
How well then have you carried what
Have tarried in my heart and memory?”
She sang as Aloine, I as Savien. On the refrains her voice spun, twinning and mixing with my own. Part of me wanted to search the audience for her, to find the face of the woman I was singing with. I tried, once, but my fingers faltered as I searched for the face that could fit with the cool moonlight voice that answered mine. Distracted, I touched a wrong note and there was a burr in the music.
A small mistake. I set my teeth and concentrated on my playing. I pushed my curiosity aside and bowed my head to watch my fingers, careful to keep them from slipping on the strings.
And we sang! Her voice like burning silver, my voice an echoing answer. Savien sang solid, powerful lines, like branches of a rock-old oak, all the while Aloine was like a nightingale, moving in darting circles around the proud limbs of it.
I was only dimly aware of the audience now, dimly aware of the sweat on my body. I was so deeply in the music that I couldn’t have told you where it stopped and my blood began. But it did stop. Two verses from the end of the song, the end came. I struck the beginning chord of Savien’s verse and I heard a piercing sound that pulled me out of the music like a fish dragged from deep water.
A string broke. High on the neck of the lute it snapped and the tension lashed it across the back of my hand, drawing a thin, bright line of blood.
I stared at it numbly. It should not have broken. None of my strings were worn badly enough to break. But it had, and as the last notes of the music faded into silence I felt the audience begin to stir. They began to rouse themselves from the waking dream that I had woven for them out of strands of song.
In the silence I felt it all unraveling, the audience waking with the dream unfinished, all my work ruined, wasted. And all the while burning inside me was the song, the song. The song!
Without knowing what I did, I set my fingers back to the strings and fell deep into myself. Into years before, when my hands had calluses like stones and my music had come as easy as breathing. Back to the time I had played to make the sound of Wind Turning a Leaf on a lute with six strings.
And I began to play. Slowly, then with greater speed as my hands remembered. I gathered the fraying strands of song and wove them carefully back to what they had been a moment earlier.
It was not perfect. No song as complex as “Sir Savien” can be played perfectly on six strings instead of seven. But it was whole, and as I played the audience sighed, stirred, and slowly fell back under the spell that I had made for them.
I hardly knew they were there, and after a minute I forgot them entirely. My hands danced, then ran, then blurred across the strings as I fought to keep the lute’s two voices singing with my own. Then, even as I watched them, I forgot them, I forgot everything except finishing the song.
The refrain came, and Aloine sang again. To me she was not a person, or even a voice, she was just a part of the song that was burning out of me.
And then it was done. Raising my head to look at the room was like breaking the surface of the water for air. I came back into myself, found my hand bleeding and my body covered in sweat. Then the ending of the song struck me like a fist in my chest, as it always does, no matter where or when I listen to it.
I buried my face in my hands and wept. Not for a broken lute string and the chance of failure. Not for blood shed and a wounded hand. I did not even cry for the boy who had learned to play a lute with six strings in the forest years ago. I cried for Sir Savien and Aloine, for love lost and found and lost again, at cruel fate and man’s folly. And so, for a while, I was lost in grief and knew nothing.
While that was a mere sample of chapter 54, this is the entirety of chapter 55. It’s quite brief.
Chapter Fifty-Five – Flame and Thunder
I held all of my mourning for Savien and Aloine to a few moments.
Knowing I was still on display, I gathered myself and straightened in my chair to look out at my audience. My silent audience.
Music sounds different to the one who plays it. It is the musician’s curse. Even as I sat, the ending I had improvised was fading from my memory. Then came doubt. What if it hadn’t been as whole as it had seemed? What if my ending hadn’t carried the terrible tragedy of the song to anyone but myself? What if my tears seemed to be nothing more than a child’s embarrassing reaction to his own failure? Then, waiting, I heard the silence pouring from them. The audience held themselves quiet, tense, and tight, as if the song had burned them worse than flame. Each person held their wounded selves closely, clutching their pain as if it were a precious thing.
Then there was a murmur of sobs released and sobs escaping. A sigh of tears. A whisper of bodies slowly becoming no longer still.
Then the applause. A roar like leaping flame, like thunder after lightning.
Interested in listening to both chapters in full? You may listen to chapter 54 by clicking here and chapter 55 by clicking here. Both narrated by Nick Podehl. And obviously, if you’ll notice, the entire audiobook is included in those links as well. Enjoy.
PS – But wait! What about The Wise Man’s Fear? Don’t worry, it’s right here.
