The Name of the Wind Read Free

He looked around, making eye contact with each of them. “It’s a demon.”
    They looked at the broken thing. “Oh, come on now,” Jake said, disagreeing mostly out of habit. “It’s not like…” He made an inarticulate gesture. “It can’t just…”
    Everyone knew what he was thinking. Certainly there were demons in the world. But they were like Tehlu’s angels. They were like heroes and kings. They belonged in stories. They belonged out there. Taborlin the Great called up fire and lightning to destroy demons. Tehlu broke them in his hands and sent them howling into the nameless void. Your childhood friend didn’t stomp one to death on the road to Baedn-Bryt. It was ridiculous.
    Kote ran his hand through his red hair, then broke the silence. “There’s one way to tell for sure,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “Iron or fire.” He brought out a bulging leather purse.
    â€œAnd the name of God,” Graham pointed out. “Demons fear three things: cold iron, clean fire, and the holy name of God.”
    The innkeeper’s mouth pressed itself into a straight line that was not quite a frown. “Of course,” he said as he emptied his purse onto the table then fingered through the jumbled coins: heavy silver talents and thin silver bits, copper jots, broken ha’pennies, and iron drabs. “Does anyone have a shim?”
    â€œJust use a drab,” Jake said. “That’s good iron.”
    â€œI don’t want good iron,” the innkeeper said. “A drab has too much carbon in it. It’s almost steel.”
    â€œHe’s right,” the smith’s prentice said. “Except it’s not carbon. You use coke to make steel. Coke and lime.”
    The innkeeper nodded deferentially to the boy. “You’d know best, young master. It’s your business after all.” His long fingers finally found a shim in the pile of coins. He held it up. “Here we are.”
    â€œWhat will it do?” Jake asked.
    â€œIron kills demons,” Cob’s voice was uncertain, “but this one’s already dead. It might not do anything.”
    â€œOne way to find out.” The innkeeper met each of their eyes briefly, as if measuring them. Then he turned purposefully back to the table, and they edged farther away.
    Kote pressed the iron shim to the black side of the creature, and there was a short, sharp crackling sound, like a pine log snapping in a hot fire. Everyone startled, then relaxed when the black thing remained motionless. Cob and the others exchanged shaky smiles, like boys spooked by a ghost story. Their smiles went sour as the room filled with the sweet, acrid smell of rotting flowers and burning hair.
    The innkeeper pressed the shim onto the table with a sharp click. “Well,” he said, brushing his hands against his apron. “I guess that settles that. What do we do now?”
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    Hours later, the innkeeper stood in the doorway of the Waystone and let his eyes relax to the darkness. Footprints of lamplight from the inn’s windows fell across the dirt road and the doors of the smithy across the way. It was not a large road, or well traveled. It didn’t seem to lead anywhere, as some roads do. The innkeeper drew a deep breath of autumn air and looked around restlessly, as if waiting for something to happen.
    He called himself Kote. He had chosen the name carefully when he came to this place. He had taken a new name for most of the usual reasons, and for a few unusual ones as well, not the least of which was the fact that names were important to him.
    Looking up, he saw a thousand stars glittering in the deep velvet of a night with no moon. He knew them all, their stories and their names. He knew them in a familiar way, the way he knew his own hands.
    Looking down, Kote sighed without knowing it and went back inside. He locked the door and shuttered the wide windows of