The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicle, Band 1)
Pressestimmen “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 “Jordan and Goodkind must be looking nervously over their shoulders!” —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 Wake “Fans of the epic high fantasies of George R.R. Martin or J.R.R. Tolkien will definitely want to check out Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind.” —NPR “Shelve The Name of the Wind beside The Lord of the Rings...and look forward to the day when it's mentioned in the same breath, perhaps as first among equals.” —The A.V. Club “I was reminded of Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, and J. R. R. Tolkein, but never felt that Rothfuss was imitating anyone.” —The London Times “This fast-moving, vivid, and unpretentious debut roots its coming-of-age fantasy in convincing mythology.” —Entertainment Weekly “This breathtakingly epic story is heartrending in its intimacy and masterful in its narrative essence.” —Publishers Weekly (starred) “Reminiscent in scope of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series...this masterpiece of storytelling will appeal to lovers of fantasy on a grand scale.” —Library Journal (starred) Über den Autor und weitere Mitwirkende 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. Leseprobe. Abdruck erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. PROLOGUEA Silence of Three PartsIt was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. 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 pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.CHAPTER ONEA Place for DemonsIt was Felling Night, and the usual crowd had gathered at the Waystone Inn. Five wasn’t much of a crowd, but five was as many as the Waystone ever saw these days, times being what they were.Old Cob was filling his role as storyteller and advice dispensary. The men at the bar sipped their drinks and listened. In the back room a young innkeeper stood out of sight behind the door, smiling as he listened to the details of a familiar story.“When he awoke, Taborlin the Great found himself locked in a high tower. They had taken his sword and stripped him of his tools: key, coin, and candle were all gone. But that weren’t even the worst of it, you see...” Cob paused for effect, “...cause the lamps on the wall were burning blue!”Graham, Jake, and Shep nodded to themselves. The three friends had grown up together, listening to Cob’s stories and ignoring his advice.Cob peered closely at the newer, more attentive member of his small audience, the smith’s prentice. “Do you know what that meant, boy?” Everyone called the smith’s prentice “boy” despite the fact that he was a hand taller than anyone there. Small towns being what they are, he would most likely remain “boy” until his beard filled out or he bloodied someone’s nose over the matter.The boy gave a slow nod. “The Chandrian.”“That’s right,” Cob said approvingly. “The Chandrian. Everyone knows that blue fire is one of their signs. Now he was—”“But how’d they find him?” the boy interrupted. “And why din’t they kill him when they had the chance?”“Hush now, you’ll get all the answers before the end,” Jake said. “Just let him tell it.”“No need for all that, Jake,” Graham said. “Boy’s just curious. Drink your drink.”“I drank me drink already,” Jake grumbled. “I need t’nother but the innkeep’s still skinning rats in the back room.” He raised his voice and knocked his empty mug hollowly on the top of the mahogany bar. “Hoy! We’re thirsty men in here!”The innkeeper appeared with five bowls of stew and two warm, round loaves of bread. He pulled more beer for Jake, Shep, and Old Cob, moving with an air of bustling efficiency.The story was set aside while the men tended to their dinners. Old Cob tucked away his bowl of stew with the predatory efficiency of a lifetime bachelor. The others were still blowing steam off their bowls when he finished the last of his loaf and returned to his story.“Now Taborlin needed to escape, but when he looked around, he saw his cell had no door. No windows. All around him was nothing but smooth, hard stone. It was a cell no man had ever escaped.“But Taborlin knew the names of all things, and so all things were his to command. He said to the stone: ‘Break!’ and the stone broke. The wall tore like a piece of paper, and through that hole Taborlin could see the sky and breathe the sweet spring air. He stepped to the edge, looked down, and without a second thought he stepped out into the open air....”The boy’s eyes went wide. “He didn’t!”Cob nodded seriously. “So Taborlin fell, but he did not despair. For he knew the name of the wind, and so the wind obeyed him. He spoke to the wind and it cradled and caressed him. It bore him to the ground as gently as a puff of thistledown and set him on his feet softly as a mother’s kiss.“And when he got to the ground and felt his side where they’d stabbed him, he saw that it weren’t hardly a scratch. Now maybe it was just a piece of luck,” Cob tapped the side of his nose knowingly. “Or maybe it had something to do with the amulet he was wearing under his shirt.”“What amulet?” the boy asked eagerly through a mouthful of stew.Old Cob leaned back on his stool, glad for the chance to elaborate. “A few days earlier, Taborlin had met a tinker on the road. And even though Taborlin didn’t have much to eat, he shared his dinner with the old man.”“Right sensible thing to do,” Graham said quietly to the boy. “Everyone knows: ‘A tinker pays for kindness twice.’”“No no,” Jake grumbled. “Get it right: ‘A tinker’s advice pays kindness twice.’”The innkeeper spoke up for the first time that night. “Actually, you’re missing more than half,” he said, standing in the doorway behind the bar.“A tinker’s debt is always paid:Once for any simple trade.Twice for freely-given aid.Thrice for any insult made.”The men at the bar seemed almost surprised to see Kote standing there. They’d been coming to the Waystone every Felling night for months and Kote had never interjected anything of his own before. Not that you could expect anything else, really. He’d only been in town for a year or so. He was still a stranger. The smith’s prentice had lived here since he was eleven, and he was still referred to as “that Rannish boy,” as if Rannish were some foreign country and not a town less than thirty miles away.“Just something I heard once,” Kote said to fill the silence, obviously embarrassed.Old Cob nodded before he cleared his throat and launched back into the story. “Now this amulet was worth a whole bucket of gold nobles, but on account of Taborlin’s kindness, the tinker sold it to...
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