Kingkiller - Blog Posts

azaraelaxelus

1 year ago

me: alright. i'm going to read more books this year. it's a resolution.

also me: *re-reads the Kingkiller Chronicle for the hundredth time while completely ignoring my TBF pile*

DOS Fanfic: The Silent Swaying of Sorrowed Men

!! // TW: Suicide, Hanging

I saw a theory a while ago that the reason we don't have book 3 is because Kvothe is dead and never went downstairs to tell the third part. I combined this with the theory that the "one single, perfect step" was him walking off of something to end it all. You can still decide if this happens before or after he's told his final tale.

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DAWN HAD ARRIVED. 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 its innkeeper had been awake, the smell of early noontime stew would have drawn the men of Newarre to the Waystone, their feet clattering upon the cold stone of the doorstep as they filled the inn with the clamor of amiable, hungry men. If there had been the barest hint of impatience, the innkeeper’s student would have ran up the stairs and knocked on his door and called on him with the cold banter of a man who could no longer wait. 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 made his slow way up the stairs to his master’s room, moving with the confident caution of fearless men. His steps were steady and sure, hidden from the rest of the world and careful not to give too much away, slow and even more slowly set. In doing this, he added a small, fretted silence to the larger, more prominent one. They made a melody of sorts, making way for the song’s refrain.

The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it from the slow swaying of a knotted cord and the soundless waiting of a letter, safely tucked away. If you listened for longer, you would find it in the weight of a man’s mortality, hidden within his darkest chords, kept deep beyond the great stone doors of forgetting and finally laid to rest. And it was once in the heart and mind of that very same man who hanged there, rocking, swaying for the sweet embrace of memories never lost.

The man had true red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he remained there with the indifference of someone who had known and learned far too 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, holding the others inside itself, as firm as a single, perfect step. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was as heavy as a thrice-swallowed secret of the heart. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who could not wait to die.