The Name of the Wind (67 page)

She looked at me blankly.

“Do it!” I shook the handful of coals at her. “If you don't chew this up and swallow it, I'll knock you out and force it down your throat!” I put some in my own mouth. “Look, it's fine. Just do it.” My tone softened, became more pleading than commanding. “Denna, trust me.”

She took some coals and put them in her mouth. Face pale and eyes beginning to brim with tears, she gritted up a mouthful and took a drink of water to wash it down, grimacing.

“They're harvesting Goddamn ophalum here,” I said. “I'm an idiot for not seeing it sooner.”

Denna started to say something, but I cut her off. “Don't talk. Keep eating. As much as you can stomach.”

She nodded solemnly, her eyes wide. She chewed, choked a little, and swallowed the charcoal with another mouthful of water. She ate a dozen mouthfuls in quick succession, then rinsed her mouth out again.

“What's ophalum?” she asked softly.

“A drug. Those are denner trees. You just had a whole mouthful of denner resin.” I sat down next to her. My hands were shaking. I lay them flat against my legs to hide it.

She was quiet at that. Everyone knew about denner resin. In Tarbean the knackers had to come for the stiff bodies of sweet-eaters that overdosed in the Dockside alleys and doorways.

“How much did you swallow?” I asked.

“I was just chewing it, like toffee.” Her face went pale again. “There's still some stuck in my teeth.”

I touched the waterskin. “Keep rinsing.” She swished the water from cheek to cheek before spitting and repeating the process. I tried to guess at how much of the drug she'd gotten into her system, but there were too many variables, I didn't know how much she had swallowed, how refined this resin was, if the farmers had taken any steps to filter or purify it.

Her mouth worked as her tongue felt around her teeth. “Okay, I'm clean.”

I forced a laugh. “You're anything but clean,” I said. “Your mouth is all black. You look like a kid that's been playing in the coal bin.”

“You aren't much better,” she said. “You look like a chimney sweep.” She reached out to touch my bare shoulder. I must have torn my shirt against the rocks in my rush to get the waterskin. She gave a wan smile that didn't touch her frightened eyes at all. “Why do I have a belly full of coals?”

“Charcoal is like a chemical sponge,” I said. “It soaks up drugs and poisons.”

She brightened a little. “All of them?”

I considered lying, then thought better of it. “Most. You got it into you pretty quickly. It will soak up a lot of what you swallowed.”

“How much?”

“About six parts in ten,” I said. “Hopefully a little more. How do you feel?”

“Scared,” she said. “Shaky. But other than that, no different.” She shifted nervously where she sat and put her hand on the sticky disk of resin I'd knocked away from her earlier. She flicked it away and wiped her hand nervously on her pants. “How long will it be before we know?”

“I don't know how much they refined it,” I said. “If it's still raw, it will take longer to work its way into your system. Which is good, as the effects will be spread out over a longer period of time.”

I felt for her pulse in her neck. It was racing, which didn't tell me anything. Mine was racing too. “Look up here.” I gestured with my raised hand and watched her eyes. Her pupils were sluggish responding to the light. I lay my hand on her head and under the pretext of lifting her eyelid a little, I pressed my finger against the bruise on her temple, hard. She didn't flinch or show the least hint that it pained her.

“I thought I was imagining it before,” Denna said, looking up at me. “But your eyes really do change color. Normally they're bright green with a ring of gold around the inside….”

“I got them from my mother,” I said.

“But I've been watching. When you broke the pump handle yesterday they went dull green, muddy. And when the swineherd made that comment about the Ruh they went dark for just a moment. I thought it was just the light, but now I can see it's not.”

“I'm surprised you noticed,” I said. “The only other person to ever point it out was an old teacher of mine. And he was an arcanist, which means it's pretty much his job to notice things.”

“Well it's my job to notice things about you.” She cocked her head a bit. “People probably are distracted by your hair. It's so bright. It's pretty…. pretty distracting. And your face is really expressive. You're always in control of it, even the way your eyes behave. But not the color.” She gave a faint smile. “They're pale now. Like green frost. You must be terribly afraid.”

“I'm guessing it's old-fashioned lust,” I said in my roughest tones. “It's not often a beautiful girl lets me get this close to her.”

“You always tell me the most beautiful lies,” she said, looking away from me and down to her hands. “Am I going to die?”

“No,” I said firmly. “Absolutely not.”

“Could…” she looked up at me and smiled again, her eyes wet but not overflowing. “Could you just say it out loud for me?”

“You aren't going to die,” I said, getting to my feet. “Come on, let's see if our lizard friend is gone yet.”

I wanted to keep her moving around and distracted, so we each had another little drink and headed back to the lookout. The draccus lay sleeping in the sun.

I took the opportunity to stuff the blanket and the dried meat into my travelsack. “I felt guilty about stealing from the dead before,” I said. “But now…”

“At least now we know why he was hiding in the middle of nowhere with a crossbow and a lookout and all that,” Denna said. “A minor mystery solved.”

I started to fasten up my travelsack then, as an afterthought, packed the crossbow bolts as well.

“What are those for?” she asked.

“They're worth something,” I said. “I'm in debt to a dangerous person. I could use every penny…” I trailed off, my mind working.

Denna looked at me, and I could see her mind jumping to the same conclusion. “Do you know how much that much resin would be worth?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said thinking about the thirty pans, each with a wafer of black, sticky resin congealed in the bottom, big as a dinner plate. “I'm guessing a lot. An awful lot.”

Denna shifted back and forth on her feet. “Kvothe, I don't know how I feel about this. I've seen girls get hooked on this stuff. I need money.” She gave a bitter laugh. “I don't even have a second set of clothes right now.” She looked worried. “But I don't know if I need it this badly.”

“I'm thinking of apothecaries,” I said quickly. “They'd refine it into medicine. It's a powerful painkiller. The price won't be nearly as good as if we went to the other sort of people, but still, half a loaf….”

Denna smiled broadly. “I'd love half a loaf. Especially since my cryptic prick of a patron seems to have disappeared.”

We headed back down into the canyon. This time as I emerged from the narrow passageway, I saw the evaporating pans in a different light. Now each of them was the equivalent of a heavy coin in my pocket. Next term's tuition, new clothes, freedom from my debt with Devi….

I saw Denna looking at the trays with the same fascination, though hers was somewhat more glassy-eyed than mine. “I could live comfortably for a year off this,” she said. “And not be beholden to anyone.”

I went to the tool shed and grabbed a scraper for each of us. At the end of a few minutes work we had combined all of the black, sticky pieces into a single wad the size of a sweetmelon.

She shivered a bit, then looked at me, smiling. Her cheeks were flushed. “I suddenly feel really good.” She crossed her arms across her chest, rubbing her hands up and down. “Really, really good. I don't think it's just the thought of all that money.”

“It's the resin,” I said. “It's a good sign that it's taken this long to hit you. I'd have been worried if it had happened sooner.” I gave her a serious look. “Now listen. You need to let me know if you feel any heaviness in your chest, or have any trouble breathing. So long as neither of those things happens, you should be fine.”

Denna nodded, then drew a deep breath and let it out again. “Sweet angel Ordal above, I feel great.” She gave me an anxious expression, but the wide grin kept spilling out. “Am I going to get addicted from this?”

I shook my head and she sighed with relief. “You know the damnedest thing? I'm scared about getting addicted, but I don't care that I'm scared. I've never felt like this before. No wonder our big scaly friend keeps coming back for more….”

“Merciful Tehlu,” I said. “I didn't even think of that. That's why it was trying to claw its way in here. It can smell the resin. It's been eating the trees for two span, three or four a day.”

“The biggest sweet-eater of them all, coming back to get his fix.” Denna laughed, then her expression went horrified. “How many trees were left?”

“Two or three,” I said, thinking of the rows of empty holes and broken stumps. “But it may have eaten another since we've been back here.”

“Have you ever seen a sweet-eater when they've got the hunger on them?” Denna said, her face stricken. “They go crazy.”

“I know,” I said, thinking of the girl I'd seen in Tarbean dancing naked in the snow.

“What do you think it's going to do when the trees run out?”

I thought for a long moment. “It's going to go looking for more. And it's going to be desperate. And it knows the last place where it found the trees had a little house that smelled like people…. We're going to have to kill it.”

“Kill it?” She laughed, then pressed her hands against her mouth again. “With nothing but my good singing voice and your manly bravado?” She started to giggle uncontrollably, despite the fact that she was holding both her hands in front of her mouth. “God, I'm sorry Kvothe. How long am I going to be like this?”

“I don't know. The effects of ophalum are euphoria…”

“Check.” She winked at me, grinning.

“Followed by mania, some delirium if your dose was high enough, then exhaustion.”

“Maybe I'll sleep through the night for once,” she said. “You can't seriously expect to kill this thing. What are you going to use? A pointy stick?”

“I can't just let it run wild. Trebon's only about five miles from here. And there's smaller farms closer than that. Think of the damage it would do.”

“But how?” she repeated. “How do you kill a thing like that?”

I turned to the tiny shed. “If we're lucky this fellow had the good sense to buy a spare crossbow….” I began to dig around, throwing stuff out the door. Stirring paddles, buckets, scrapers, spade, more buckets, a barrel….

The barrel was about the size of a small keg of ale. I carried it outside the shed and pried off the lid. In the bottom was an oilcloth sack containing a large gummy mass of black denner resin, at least four times as much as Denna and I had already scraped together.

I pulled out the sack and rested it on the ground, holding it open for Denna to look. She peered in, gasped, then jumped up and down a little bit. “Now I can buy a pony!” she said, laughing.

“I don't know about a pony,” I said, doing some calculations in my head. “But I think before we split up the money, we should buy you a good half-harp out of this,” I said. “Not some sad lyre.”

“Yes!” Denna said, then she threw her arms around me in a wild, delighted hug. “And we'll get you…” She looked at me curiously, her sooty face inches away from my own. “What do you want?”

Before I could say anything, do anything, the draccus roared.

T
HE ROAR OF THE draccus was like a trumpet, if you can imagine a trumpet big as a house, and made of stone, and thunder, and molten lead. I didn't feel it in my chest. I felt it in my feet as the earth shook with it.

The roar made us jump nearly out of our skins. The top of Denna's head banged into my nose, and I staggered, blinded with pain. Denna didn't notice, as she was busy tripping and falling over into a loose, laughing tangle of arms and legs.

As I helped Denna to her feet I heard a distant crashing, and we made our way carefully back up to the lookout.

The draccus was…cavorting, bounding around like a drunken dog, knocking over trees like a boy would topple cornstalks in a field.

I watched breathlessly as it came to an ancient oak tree, a hundred years old and massive as a greystone. The draccus reared up and brought its front legs down on one of the lower branches, as if it wanted to climb. The branch, big as a tree itself, practically exploded.

The draccus reared again, coming down hard on the tree. I watched, certain that it was about to impale itself on the broken limb, but the jagged spear of hard wood barely dimpled its chest before splintering. The draccus crashed into the trunk, and though it didn't snap, it fractured with a sound like a crack of lightning.

The draccus threw itself around, hopped and fell, rolling over jagged spurs of rock. It belched a huge gout of flame and charged the fractured oak tree again, striking with its great blunt wedge of a head. This time, it knocked the tree over, causing an explosion of earth and rock as the tree's roots tore out of the ground.

All I could think of was the futility of trying to hurt this creature. It was bringing more force to bear against itself than I could ever hope to muster.

“There's no way we can kill that,” I said. “It would be like trying to attack a thunderstorm. How could we possibly hurt it?”

“We lure her over the side of a cliff,” Denna said matter-of-factly.

“She?” I asked. “Why do you think it's a
she
?”

“Why do you think it's a
he
?” she replied, then shook her head as if to clear it. “Never mind, it doesn't matter. We know it's drawn to fires. We just build one and hang it from a branch.” She pointed to a few trees overhanging the cliff below. “Then, when it rushes over to put it out….” She made a pantomime with both hands of something falling.

“Do you think even that would hurt it?” I asked dubiously.

“Well,” Denna said, “when you flick an ant off a table it doesn't get hurt even though for an ant that has to be like dropping off a cliff. But if one of us jumped off a roof, we'd get hurt because we're heavier. It makes sense that bigger things fall even harder.” She gave a pointed look down at the draccus. “You don't get much bigger than that.”

She was right, of course. She was talking about the square-cube ratio, though she didn't know what to call it.

“It should at least injure it,” Denna continued. “Then, I don't know, we could roll rocks down onto it or something.” She looked at me. “What? Is there something wrong with my idea?”

“It's not very heroic,” I said dismissively. “I was expecting something with a little more flair.”

“Well I left my armor and warhorse at home,” she said. “You're just upset because your big University brain couldn't think of a way, and my plan is brilliant.” She pointed behind us, to the box canyon. “We'll build the fire in one of those metal pans. They're wide and shallow and they'll take the heat. Was there any rope in that shed?”

“I…” I felt the familiar sinking feeling in my gut. “No. I don't think so.”

Denna patted me on the arm. “Don't look like that. When it leaves we'll check the wreckage of the house. I'll bet there's some rope in there.” She looked at the draccus. “Honestly, I know how she feels. I feel a little like running around and jumping on things too.”

“That's the mania I was talking about,” I said.

After a quarter-hour the draccus left the valley. Only then did Denna and I emerge from our hiding place, me carrying my travelsack, she with the heavy oilskin bag that held all the resin we'd found, nearly a full bushel of it.

“Give me your loden-stone,” she said, setting down the sack. I handed it over. “You find some rope. I'm going to go get you a present.” She skipped away lightly, her dark hair flying behind her.

I made a quick search of the house, holding my breath as much as possible. I found a hatchet, broken crockery, a barrel of wormy flour, a mildewy straw tick, a ball of twine, but no rope.

Denna gave a delighted shout from the trees, ran up to me, and pressed a black scale into my hand. It was warm with the sun, slightly larger than hers but more oval than tear-shaped.

“Thank you kindly, m'lady.”

She bobbed a charming curtsey, grinning. “Rope?”

I held up a ball of rough twine. “This is as close as I could find. Sorry.”

Denna frowned, then shrugged it off. “Oh well. Your turn for a plan. You have any strange and wonderful magics from the University? Any dark powers better left alone?”

I turned the scale over in my hands and thought about it. I had wax, and this scale would make as good a link as any hair. I could make a simulacrum of the draccus, but then what? A hotfoot wasn't going to bother a creature that was perfectly comfortable lying on a bed of coals.

But there are more sinister things you can do with a mommet. Things no good arcanist was ever supposed to consider. Things with pins and knives that would leave a man bleeding even though he was miles away. True malfeasance.

I looked at the scale in my hand, considering it. The thing was mostly iron and thicker than my palm in the middle. Even with a mommet and a hot fire for energy, I didn't know if I could make it through the scales to hurt the thing.

Worst of all, if I tried I wouldn't know if it had worked. I couldn't bear the thought of sitting idly by some fire, sticking pins into a wax doll while miles away a drug-crazed draccus rolled in the flaming wreckage of some innocent family's farm.

“No,” I said. “No magic I can think of.”

“We can go tell the constable that he needs to deputize about a dozen men with bows to come kill a drug-crazed big-as-a-house dragon-chicken.”

It came to me in a flash. “Poison,” I said. “We'll have to poison it.”

“You've got two quarts of arsenic on you?” she asked skeptically. “Would that even be enough for something big as that?”

“Not arsenic.” I nudged the oilskin sack with my foot.

She looked down. “Oh,” she said, crestfallen. “What about my pony?”

“You'll probably have to skip your pony,” I said. “But we'll still have enough to buy you a half-harp. In fact, I bet we'll be able to make even more money from the draccus' body. The scales will be worth a lot. And the naturalists at the University will love to be able—”

“You don't need to sell me,” she said. “I know it's the right thing to do.” She looked up at me and grinned. “Besides, we get to be heroes and kill the dragon. Its treasure is just a perk.”

I laughed. “Right then,” I said. “I think we should head back to the greystone hill and build a fire there to lure it in.”

Denna looked puzzled. “Why? We know it's going to come back here. Why don't we just camp here and wait?”

I shook my head. “Look at how many denner trees are left.”

She looked around. “It ate all of them?”

I nodded. “If we kill it this evening, we can be back in Trebon by tonight,” I said. “I'm tired of sleeping outdoors. I want to get a bath, a hot meal, and a real bed.”

“You're lying again,” she said cheerfully. “Your delivery's getting better, but to me you're clear as a shallow stream.” She prodded my chest with a finger. “Tell me the truth.”

“I want to get you back to Trebon,” I said. “Just in case you ate more resin than is good for you. I wouldn't trust any doctor living there, but they probably have some medicines I could use. Just in case.”

“My hero.” Denna smiled. “You're sweet, but I feel fine.”

I reached out and flicked her ear with the tip of my finger, hard.

Her hand went to the side of her head, her expression outraged. “Ow…oh.” She looked confused.

“Doesn't hurt at all, does it?”

“No,” she said.

“Here is the truth,” I said seriously. “I think you're going to be fine, but I don't know for certain. I don't know how much of that stuff you have left working its way into your system. In an hour I'll have a better idea, but if something goes wrong I'd rather be an hour closer to Trebon. It means I won't have to carry you as far.” I looked her square in the eye. “I don't gamble with the lives of people I care for.”

She listened to me, her expression somber. Then the grin blossomed back onto her face. “I like your manly bravado,” she said. “Do it some more.”