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Автор Патрик Ротфусс
Patrick Rothfuss
THE WISE MAN’S FEAR
The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day Two
To my patient fans, for reading the blog and telling me what they really want is an excellent book, even if it takes a little longer.
To my clever beta readers, for their invaluable help and toleration of my paranoid secrecy.
To my fabulous agent, for keeping the wolves from the door in more ways than one.
To my wise editor, for giving me the time and space to write a book that fills me with pride.
To my loving family, for supporting me and reminding me that leaving the house every once in a while is a good thing.
To my understanding girlfriend, for not leaving me when the stress of endless revision made me frothy and monstrous.
To my sweet baby, for loving his daddy even though I have to go away and write all the time. Even when we’re having a really great time. Even when we’re talking about ducks.
PROLOGUE
A Silence of Three Parts
Dawn was coming. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.
The most obvious part was a vast, echoing quiet made by things that were lacking. If there had been a storm, raindrops would have tapped and pattered against the selas vines behind the inn. Thunder would have muttered and rumbled and chased the silence down the road like fallen autumn leaves. If there had been travelers stirring in their rooms they would have stretched and grumbled the silence away like fraying, half-forgotten dreams. If there had been music . . . but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.
Inside the Waystone a dark-haired man eased the back door closed behind himself. Moving through the perfect dark, he crept through the kitchen, across the taproom, and down the basement stairs. With the ease of long experience, he avoided loose boards that might groan or sigh beneath his weight. Each slow step made only the barest
The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened long enough you might begin to feel it in the chill of the window glass and the smooth plaster walls of the innkeeper’s room. It was in the dark chest that lay at the foot of a hard and narrow bed. And it was in the hands of the man who lay there, motionless, watching for the first pale hint of dawn’s coming light.
The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he lay with the resigned air of one who has long ago abandoned any hope of sleep.
The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, holding the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great riversmooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.
CHAPTER ONE
Apple and Elderberry
