"Patrick Rothfuss - Kingkiller 01 - The Name of the Wind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rothfuss Patrick)

The
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 PROLOGUE

A Silence of Three Parts




I T WAS NIGHT AGAIN. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a si-
lence 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 hand-
ful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversa-
tion 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 si-
lence 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 ma-
hogany 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 appropri-
ate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside it-
self. 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 ONE

A Place for Demons




I T WAS FELLING NIGHT and the usual crowd had gathered at the Way-
stone Inn. Five wasn't much of a crowd, but five was as many as the Way-
stone ever saw these days, times being what they were.
Old Cob was filling his role as storyteller and advice dispensary. The men