The Wise Man's Fear

CHAPTER ONE

Apple and Elderberry

BAST SLOUCHED AGAINST THE long stretch of mahogany bar, bored.

Looking around the empty room, he sighed and rummaged around until he found a clean linen cloth. Then, with a resigned look, he began to polish a section of the bar.

After a moment Bast leaned forward and squinted at some half-seen speck. He scratched at it and frowned at the oily smudge his finger made. He leaned closer, fogged the bar with his breath, and buffed it briskly. Then he paused, exhaled hard against the wood, and wrote an obscene word in the fog.

Tossing aside the cloth, Bast made his way through the empty tables and chairs to the wide windows of the inn. He stood there for a long moment, looking at the dirt road running through the center of the town.

Bast gave another sigh and began to pace the room. He moved with the casual grace of a dancer and the perfect nonchalance of a cat. But when he ran his hands through his dark hair the gesture was restless. His blue eyes prowled the room endlessly, as if searching for a way out. As if searching for something he hadn t seen a hundred times before.

But there was nothing new. Empty tables and chairs. Empty stools at the bar. Two huge barrels loomed on the counter behind the bar, one for whiskey, one for beer. Between the barrels stood a vast panoply of bottles: all colors and shapes. Above the bottles hung a sword.

Bast s eyes fell back onto the bottles. He focused on them for a long, speculative moment, then moved back behind the bar and brought out a heavy clay mug.

Drawing a deep breath, he pointed a finger at the first bottle in the bottom row and began to chant as he counted down the line.

 

Maple. Maypole.

Catch and carry.

Ash and Ember.

Elderberry.

 

He finished the chant while pointing at a squat green bottle. He twisted out the cork, took a speculative

Patrick Rothfuss is the bestselling author of The Kingkiller Chronicle. His first novel, The Name of the Wind, won the Quill Award and was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. Its sequel, The Wise Man s Fear, debuted at #1 on The New York Times bestseller chart and won the David Gemmell Legend Award. His novels have appeared on NPR s Top 100 Science Fiction/Fantasy Books list and Locus Best 21st Century Fantasy Novels list. Pat lives in Wisconsin, where he brews mead, builds box forts with his children, and runs Worldbuilders, a book-centered charity that has raised more than six million dollars for Heifer International. He can be found at patrickrothfuss.com and on Twitter at @patrickrothfuss.

The best epic fantasy I read last year.... He s bloody good, this Rothfuss guy.
George R. R. Martin, New York Times-bestselling author of A Song of Ice and Fire
 
Rothfuss has real talent, and his tale of Kvothe is deep and intricate and wondrous.
Terry Brooks, New York Times-bestselling author of Shannara
 
"It is a rare and great pleasure to find a fantasist writing...with true music in the words."
Ursula K. LeGuin, award-winning author of Earthsea
 
"The characters are real and the magic is true.
Robin Hobb, New York Times-bestselling author of Assassin s Apprentice
 
"Masterful.... There is a beauty to Pat's writing that defies description."
Brandon Sanderson, New York Times-bestselling author of Mistborn
 
[Makes] you think he's inventing the genre, instead of reinventing it.
Lev Grossman, New York Times-bestselling author of The Magicians
 
This is a magnificent book.
Anne McCaffrey, award-winning author of the Dragonriders of Pern
 
The great new fantasy writer we've been waiting for, and this is an astonishing book."
Orson Scott Card, New York Times-bestselling author of Ender s Game
 
It's not the fantasy trappings (as wonderful as they are) that make this novel so good, but what the author has to say about true, common things, about ambition and failure, art, love, and loss.
Tad Williams, New York Times-bestselling author of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn
 
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Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times-bestselling author of The Dark Between the Stars
 
An extremely immersive story set in a flawlessly constructed world and told extremely well.
Jo Walton, award-winning author of Among Others
 
Hail Patrick Rothfuss! A new giant is striding the land.
Robert J. Sawyer, award-winning author of