elir

1

The Rising Sun.

On the wall in Pat's office I imagine there to be a nice map of the Waystone Inn in all it's glory. Apart from it's aesthetic it is a useful device used by the writer so that he doesn't get confused one day and accidently have someone go through a door that isn't there or look through a window which doesn't exist to see the sun rising in the West. The Sun in Temerant rises in the East, just like it does in our world, although even finding the proof of that small assumption in a very big book took a lot longer to finally track down than it really should have.(spoiler pp.135) But find it I did and that gives us what we need to start mapping out this pub crawl and see if we cannot recreate Pat's clever map for ourselves. All the details necessary details are buried among the Waystone 's storyline. All of the subtle asides regarding the inn's general layout do, of course, correlate perfectly with each other into one unique answer of what must go where and thus should tally to the original master architects blueprint. 

Of Beginnings..

In order to fill our paper to it's fullest and easiest I'm going to imagine the inn's footprint to be that of a large rectangle. Our starting point is the repeated line that there is a massive black stone fireplace on the Northern Wall of the taproom. Why did Pat bother to tell us where North was? Twice! That's wasting ink and one of the first lessons to learn here is that Pat Doesn't Waste Ink. Period. If he has done so for no apparent reason it's probably important to solving the puzzle. We can now have a compass pointing North and once we have one cardinal orientation written in stone all the rest can be deduced.

The second clue comes at the start of day two when Bast had his back to the bar when he was looking out through the 'wide front windows.'

It was the start of day one when we are told that 

'Sunlight poured into the Waystone. The light flowed across the bar, scattered a thousand tiny rainbow beginnings from the coloured bottles and climbed the wall towards the sword.'

The wide windows (plural) that Bast mentioned must therefore face East in order for the early morning sunlight to do this and so the bar itself is therefore going to be located up against the Western wall.

But the large public bar is only one part of the downstairs rooms. Asides from the single large taproom is the (probably) smaller kitchen area which we never actually get to see but which needs to be acknowledged regardless. We must then divide our building into two pieces by drawing a dividing wall  to distinguish between the bar room and the kitchen. Where to draw the line though? Half-way is one thought but I suggest a 2:1 size ratio would be a better guess a that would give us a nice square bar room to decorate and leave the rest of our rectangular building given over to the unseen kitchen areas. Drawing this new wall means that we shall probably have to reposition our massive fireplace a bit since such an imposing feature would surely be central to the north wall to most efficiently warm the whole room.

Back to our windows then and we are told that they have shutters on the insides and overlook the only road that runs, from North to South, through the middle of this one street town. The Inn's wooden front door also opens onto this road and so shall be found somewhere on the same Eastern pub wall as our wide light admitting windows are. The mid-point would be one guess meaning it would have one window on either side and the one small piece of artwork we have [image] seems to suggest that is the case without actually showing the front door itself but we have already learn't from our fireplace mistake about assuming things without thinking them through. I have issues with this picture since it clearly shows the chimney, which we know is on the north wall, to the left of the image and that little detail would maen that if our picture was accurate Kote would be approaching from the west, which means this is the back of the Inn, which it is not. Perhaps the printers simply reversed the layout so that what we get is a mirror image of what is true. Written evidence that the front door is not central comes when Both Carter and the mercenary bang this door open against the inside wall and for that to happen the East facing front door would have to hinge to the South-Eastern corner of the pub so that it could bang flat against the Southern wall when it is opened fully inwards. It would not be a small door, it has to admit some barrels later, but this isn't a barn either so it is probably a bit narrower than either our 'wide' windows and so it is likely to be about half the width of our 'massive' hearth. There is also mention of a porch and a raised planking area out front, a verandah with a small roof directly in front of the pub windows on which a lot of the town locals stood upon to view the scene of the crime in the aftermath of Shep's death. The front of the Inn is lit by lamps when Kote remembers to light them and I like to imagine that somewhere there a pub sign hanging from a bracket outside, a picture of nice three stone henge would be my choice, although no such thing is ever mentioned or even heard of creaking in the wind to break the silence in three parts. 

By now we should have drawn a rectangle with a line dividing it somewhere to the left of centre giving us a square taproom with a door in one corner, probably two windows on the Eastern wall and our massive black hearth still holding things together at the top of the page. 

The Western edge of the taproom is the location of the bar and this is the wall where folly hangs on her new mounting board. The tap room itself is open plan with a maze of scattered tables and chairs. It has beams in the ceiling and planks on the floor but no supporting pillars are ever mentioned. The only actual measurement that I found was of an arachnophobic Aaron standing fifteen feet away from the dead scrael which Carter dumped onto the table closest to the front door. Thats actually pretty useless as information goes but having this one size does give us some scope on the general scale of the bar room. Somewhere there is a staircase  and since it is not a spiral staircase in the rooms centre it needs must be a trditional staircase with a wall on one side and the taproom on the other. The only spare wall space left for that is the Southern wall but again we need to find a true reference for us to draw that conclusion for certain. Fortunately Chronicler provides this on the second morning. 

'Chronicler reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the Waystone's common room. Stopping in the doorway, he eyed the red-haired inn keeper hunched intently over something on the bar.'

Thanks Pat, a perfect vista of the stage properties is now ours to decorate. The front door we have  worked out is the only door and must be in the South-East corner of the bar room. Since the stairs are not in the centre of the room nor do they obstruct the bar, the windows or hearth we can confidently put the staircase climbing up and away from the front doorway along the Southern wall of the inn, a design which would allow guests to come and go from their rooms to the road outside without having to pass through the tap-room at all. The bottom step should leave plenty of room for the door to bang past and the top step should reach the safety of the supporting Western wall which is standard practice as any good builder will confirm. 

There are two more interior doorways left to deduce and I believe the entrance to the kitchen is to be found at the South-West corner of the taproom which is also the corner where the staff can get behind the bar proper. This is where Kote stood waiting in the wings whilst Old Cob was telling Taborlin stories in the books opening pages. Of the kitchen itself we know little enough and so decorating this room can happily be left to the imagination. Suffice to say it includes a pantry large enough to put an apple barrel in and an oven large enough to cook a lot of damfine pies in. It also has room for a table and chairs, an icebox, a sink with a pump, a stove and a back door. We will take a turn around the garden before we leave but back inside the bar we must go for now to find the basement. Every bar needs a cellar and it is once hinted that Kote makes his own beer so the cellar would be the ideal place for any brewing. Bast gives us our best clues to the unseen basement as he uses it the most. On one page he emerges from the kitchen and crosses the room to the basement stairs meaning that these two doors are not found side by side and the cellar stairs down are not then going to be found directly beneath the main staircase on the Southern wall which would leave the elusive way downstairs to be found in one of the two Northern corners.  Any opening in the North East corner of the room would actually lead to you stepping directly out onto the main road which is out of the question since the wooden stairs lead straight down and therefore away from the bar room but not crossing the footprint of the four boundary walls of the building entire. Instead I expect that when going down you would actually be descending below the floor of the unseen kitchen pantry where one of the landlord's two new barrels resides. The other barrel was manhandled (diagonally) across the room from the front door and down the wooden steps to the cellar. Lastly we know that when Bast is eavesdropping on his masters story he is doing so from below and in all probability that means directly below Kvothe's chair listening up through the cracks in the floorboards meaning access is universal. We could well assume that the cellars footprint extends to exactly the same size as all the floors of the building above with the same dividing wall forming two sub cellars. One for brewing and one for tinkering.

When summoned upstairs by his reshi he emerges through this doorway and first talks to Kote, who is standing behind the bar before he is attacked by Chronicler who was seated at a table somewhere out the room proper. Bast responds by leaping towards him which means that no matter where Chronicler was actually sitting Bast was definitely leaping away from the bar and therefore in an Easterly direction, before Kote reaches across the bar and stops him. This little detail confirms the only possible place for the basement doorway is to be between the North end of the bar and to the western edge of the fireplace, creating a second doorhole in our Western wall with the entire length of the bar between them. 

The bar itself is a long stretch of polished mahogany and it is polished at every idle moment. It doesn't offer direct access from the kitchen to the cellar doorway and so it must also curve around at one end and disappear right into the wall itself. Many pubs would cut a lifting hatch at this point that would allow serving access from both ends but there is never any mention of one here and in fact we are told that it is all one large piece of wood. A curved bar would afford all those sitting on barstools at this end a good wide space to huddle around and argue about things over a nice bowl of stew without the comimgs and goings of the staff interrupting their repast. The old git's corner is how I think of it as it is also the area that would be warmest as they would always be sitting with their backs towards the nearby fireplace. No cellar door is mentioned, just wooden stairs leading down, it might well be that the gents toilets are to be found downstairs too whilst ladies like Mary and little Syl are allowed through the more private kitchen doorway at the other end of the bar to do their necessary in privacy, quite probably in a garden out house although such a thing is never mentioned. 

The wooden floor of the bar is meticulously swept every night and is mopped quite a lot too. A maze of tables come and go in various shapes and sizes and there are chairs available if you don't merit a stool at the bar and thats about it for the downstairs furninshings.

Half Built Houses 

Climbing the staircase takes us to the living quarters and the first room we see is Kote's room. This location means that any guests comings or goings will involve them passing the landlord's door since it is found directly at the top of the staircase in the inn's South West corner. This room is going to be directly above our Kitchen which means that Kote's room is going to be exactly the same length as the kitchen is wide. It is a small narrow room with a desk, two chairs, and a narrow bed with the thrice-locked chest of Kvothe the Bloodless sitting at it's foot on what I hope is reinforced flooring. It also has a single window that overlooks the garden and the woods beyond. It is mentioned that Kote is quite proud of his small central fireplace, a feature that will surely share a chinmey with the oven in the kichen below and is in no way related to our massive hearth downstairs since the landlord's room is at the wrong end of the building to use the chimney from the bar room. 

The fireplace in Bast's room has a mantle and would therefore be large enough to utilise this chimney and that will place his room in the North-Eastern corner of the inn.  Basts room is larger and  more luxurious than Kote's, decorated with wood pannelling and thick carpets there is enough space for two lounging couches whilst one corner of the room is dominated by a large canopy bed which I imagine means the interior corner because outside walls are cold walls. It also has a window through which we can contrive to get to Chronicler's window if we wanted to avoid using the hallway. Since the fireplace has taken up the north exterior wall Bast's window must face East and overlook the main road and this is exactly the same vista that we get from Chroniclers window which we are told gives him 'a view of the little town to the East'. 

So, we can confidently state that Bast's and Chronicler's windows are both in the same Eastern wall and the path betwixt the two windows is simple enough for a nimble fae and is also achievable for a balding old human and so I doubt the way between is going to offer the same danger level as the windows of the Golden Pony do that Kvothe describes to us when he was breaking into Ambrose' room at the University. Instead, I imagine both Bast and Devan simply walked atop of the aforementioned verandah that just happens to run along the full outside of the building at a level just below these upper windows. Tar and tin to shelter the planked area on the street below. This would make any journey between windows quite feasible, even if there were an unmentioned third room to pass on the way.  

 Bast also tells us that he moved to the room to be at the opposite corner of the pub from Kote so that any noise he makes won't disturb his reshi since that put 'six solid walls' between them. How we might draw these six lines onto a map is up to you but as a minimum we need just two large rooms overlooking the front that will nicely balance with perhaps four smaller rooms overlooking the back with a long hallway running the buildings length between. This would leave one spare double room and three smaller single rooms to accommodate any other guests. 

Chronicler was put to bed in one of the 'many' other rooms on the second floor, I take this to mean the first floor proper as the basement will count as ground Zero. 

This room is another large room with a bed, a  chair, and a heavy chest of drawers he could push in front of the door. His room is uncomfortably close to Kote's room and Chronicler's late night visitor urges quiet in case they are overheard talking which almost certainly places it in the inn's South-Eastern corner just across the hallway from the landlord The roof, so Bast informs us, is pointed but climbable meaning that there would also be space for an attic which will itself require a loft hatch, probably found somewhere along the hallway I would guess.

Thats about it for the Inn building, so lets have a quick peek at the garden. 

#Insert garden piece here.#

Now all that remains is polishing off the bar

2

Teaching Colours to a Blind Man.

Behind the bar itself are Kote's special bottles...

'Two huge barrels loomed on the counter behind the bar, one for whiskey, one for beer. Between the barrels stood a vast panoply of bottles: all colours and shapes. Above the bottles hung a sword.'

I think that we need a new sheet of paper now, the bar is like the altar and deserves some details. Using this quote as a frame we can draw two large circles for our barrels, one on either side and hang the sword above the bottles below. Working out the correct order for all of these bottles is another small puzzle that Pat has hidden for us to solve and he has kindly given us  enough information to be able to make a start. We are in Master Bast's hands now, and the answers to the bottles secrets lie within his drinking song. The lesson starts as he points at the first bottle on the bottom row. He began chanting as he counted the bottles down the line. 

Maple. Maypole. Catch and carry. 

How many bottles is that? I make it three. He calls the first two bottles Maple and Maypole and gives them a capital letter each and a period between to distinguish them. We might then imagine that his name for bottle #3 is Catch but the lower case lettering used for 'and carry' indicates to me that carry is not itself a word for bottle #4 but instead that Catch and carry is all one name which simply has a longer sounding name than the first two,  'Catch and carry' as a descriptor sort of sounds like something that you might do to an apple falling from a tree so perhaps therein lies a clue as to its fruity content? Names are important after all.

Ash and Ember. Elderberry.

The first line logic that we just used might then suggest that the use of  the word 'and' in the next pair of potential bottle names will provide us with the same answer of this being another single  long named bottle but whilst the names Ash and Ember do not have a period between them both names do receive their own capital letter and that seems to take precedence in Pats rulebook that points to the correct shape of things and so I would suggest that despite our linkage process changing and despite the word 'and' Ash and Ember are in fact bottles #4 & #5 respectively. The trick here is all about the meter of the chant. It has a count of eight beats to the bar and so uses eight syllables to name three bottles in two rhyming lines of verse and at this point in his song Bast fully expects to have reached Elderberry. He has sung this rhyme before, but this time something makes him stop and taste from this bottle #6 (which is described as being 'squat and green') before he pours. Maybe this is because it is a different colour or shape to what he expected? Instead of his usual elderberry tipple, which he likes, he get's some sort of sour melon instead, which he does not.

The reason why his counting is out is because unknown to him, just the night before, Kote smashed one of these very bottles in the mercenary's face, and we know that bottle was of Elderberry because we could smell it. SO if the usual bottle #6 is now missing then Bast is actually now drinking from the next bottle along, what used to be bottle #7 which is his sour melon thing. 

He then picks up a curving red bottle instead which has something spicy in it's flavour, possibly cinnamon which I presume was formerly the 8th bottle in the line. This content is deemed acceptable for his cocktail but it still might not be what he was hoping for, but his rhyme continues from this place satisfied that he knows where he is again as he pointed to the 'next' bottle along and started counting once more.

Woolen. Woman. Moon at night. 

Willow. Window. Candlelight.

Another half a dozen bottles in two pairs of three and we can see the trick now, it's the same meter as before. The spicy cinammon bottle may well somehow translate into 'Woolen' though don't ask me why. 'Woman' could very well be his name for the strawberry drink that Kote broke two days before since that was the exact same word that Chronicler spoke just before the bottle shattered. whilst I haven't the slightest inkling as to what kind of drink 'Moon at night' might suggest these three words are quite obviously naming just one single bottle with it fitting the same position in the chant as 'Catch and carry' does from our opening lines. 

We are equally in the dark about the two bottles called Window and Willow but we are told that 'Candlelight' is a clear bottle with a pale yellow liquor inside. Bast is not at all suspicious to taste this one, straight into his cocktail it goes since it is the correct shape and colour as usual and is therefore exactly the one that he expected. There are a few reasons why Bast must know that he has the right bottle in his hand this time despite his earlier mistake. Firstly there is the colour of the contents, but that is no guarantee since two yellow bottles may exist, this also applies to the shape of the bottle but the odds are that each liquor is unique. But this is a counting game and randomly picking colours is against the rules. As to the count being correct, he can no longer be totally sure on that count whether he does indeed hold Candlelight in his hand... unless of course Candlelight is always going to be the final bottle in the line and if that is so then we must have reached the second of the two huge barrels mentioned in our starting quote and so the next name 'Barrel' which begins Bast's final verse, is not going to be a bottle but must be talking about a real barrel.

'Barrel. Barley. Stone and stave. Wind and water----'

Assuming this singsong chant to be an extension of the bottle song would bring us to the barrel which really ought to be beer given the phrasing earlier... but the chant continues with Barley next followed by stone and stave. Now, since we have finished with bottles and the barrel is not only vast but also round then in order not to roll it might be best positioned lying tight up against the stone wall and the wooden doorframe of the cellar entrance. If Bast was instead referring to the Stave of the barrel itself then things would pan out in the wrong order and Stave and Stone doesn't have the same ring to it somehow. Since we have now introduced the barrel as a whole individual item then the Barley part must be referring to the barrel's contents, and that means whiskey...not beer. 

Crazy Martin  has planted all barley again this year, which is a good thing to do if you are running a still and need a lot of raw materials. The only time we go to the whiskey barrel is when the regulars all have a tumble of barrel whiskey together which is very generous of Kote because barrel whiskey is far superior to bottle whiskey and costs a penny a swallow. That would mean with this whiskey is a single malt whiskey which is a top class spirit made with Barley. Purists will argue whether whisky is spelt with an 'E' but regardless of that, this is the barrel from where it is tapped. If this is indeed Martin's moonshine that could also explain how Kote could afford to stock it in 'vast barrels' I mean how many swallows is that? Small whiskey. Good whiskey is what Tempi drinks but it's a special occasion drink in Newarre. The town simply can afford it even though money doesn't seem to matter much to Kote it might be noticed by a suspicious tax collector that this is actually a very expensive aquisition for a poor village pub. Buying local would also tally with the Landlord's general persona of looking out for all of the diverse members of his community financially if he can help it. Being a good man Kote tends to his flock, usually at his own expense, and his generosity is an underlying theme throughout all of the interludes. 

With the barrels out of the way Bast continues his pointing through 'Wind and water' which should bring us up to the basement and so these choice words might indicate the presence of our gents toilet. Alternatively, it  may mean something more physical, perhaps a small window with a view of the rain barrel maybe but we can only really guess. What we do know is that if he kept going around Bast must soon reach our massive black fireplace again, and we have a very good closing link for that. The final word of verse three is cut short by the arrival of his Reshi, but Bast does have the last word when he repeats his rhyme to the soldiers in the woods in the books final scene. The final word is now revealed as Misbehave and on this occasion he is pointing directly at the fire giving Bast's song and my extrapolation some balance and some closure.

That was what we can glean from Bast's view of the bar but Kote also tells us what he has to offer the weary traveller with a rhyme of his own which we can use in combination with Bast's chant. 

'I have it all right here' Kote gestured expansively behind the bar. 'Old wine, smoothe and pale? Honey mead? Dark ale? 

So from left to right we have a selection of drinks before we reach Dark ale which was Shep's favourite tipple which we do see being tapped from a barrel on the bar. That will then be the first, and left most bar Barrel before we reach the riddle of the Liquor cabinet once more. 

'Sweet fruit liquor! Plum? Cherry? Green apple? Blackberry? 

These four descriptions would give us a proper matchable content for the first four names in Bast's song. Thus Maple would be Plum. Maypole would be Cherry... and 'Catch and carry' does indeed refer to my predicted Green apples! I love it when a plan comes together :0) One small thing that I will question here is that whilst Maypole is a perfectly fine word to use in England, I can think of no such justification for one to exist in Temerant as well since the month of May is strictly a Terran construction and therefore not allowed. Unless its a refence to the may tree of course...

Kote's revealing of Blackberry as #4 dictates that fruit should tally up with Ash from Bast's rhyme but that was as far as he got in his own list. However, there is still a final twist to be added to the puzzle when few pages later we get one major clue. Kote has his back to the room and so is facing the bottles now, facing his memories face on. His hands were flat on the counter before his bottles as Chronicler talks about a woman.

'His right hand, tangled in a clean white cloth, made a slow fist. Eight Inches away a bottle shattered. The smell of strawberries filled the air...'

If the landlord is a central figure facing a dozen bottles with enough room before them to prepare a cocktail then I can well imagine his left hand to now be hovering some 8'' from this blackberry 'Willow' drink at bottle #4. Plotting this same distance out from his right hand would put things close enough for my liking to suggest his right hand is 8'' from bottle #8 the one that Bast thinks of as representing 'Woman' and the Woman we most associate Strawberry wine with, is Denna.

That's almost it for the bottles and whilst we now have half the picture labeled there are still too many holes for my liking. Resorting to guess work is the next step then and so I asked myself 'can we glean anything else from Kote's list?' and the answer was a tentative 'yes we can' when you notice that the fruity content in his bottles #2 & 4 also happen to rhyme in what may be this barmans mnemonic. Cherry/Blackberry is a little too coincidental for my taste and since our research so far gives bottles #6 & 8 as being two more berries, elder and straw, dare we suggest that bottles #10 & 12 might well follow this trend? Raspberry anyone? Blueberry perhaps?

To give the odd numbererd lines a rhythm will require some shorter words to balance things four square with our plum and the double barrelled (ha!) green apple. Now Bast has bought up the word melon as a flavour he tasted from what was hinted at being his Ember bottle, a fruit that could well find a rhyme with lemon, or for more syllables, bitter lemon or, thinking even further afield, persimmon which might be a very good guess indeed. Persimmon, Pat has recently revealed, is his best friend Sim's full given name and given the love that Kvothe shows his bottles, affection perhaps is a better word, could it be that each individual bottle triggers within him a fond memory? If Denna has a bottle in there why not Wilem and Simmon? Why not Auri, Mola and Fela for that matter. 

During the fight with the soldiers a tall blue bottle gets broken and a yellow girly fruit thing is taken, along with what appears to be an unbreakable wine bottle but none of that information really helps us today. Perhaps, if we are as patient as three stones together, we will be given the clues we need to polish off the remaining third of these bottles in book three.

The truth is that we are only working with 2/3 of the trilogy here and sometimes you need three keys to unlock the whole puzzle. 

Maple                  Plum                           Ambrose

Maypole              Cherry     

Catch and carry   Green Apple                Auri

Ash                      Blackberry                  Wilem

Ember                  (melon)

Elderberry            Elderberry

Woolen                (Persimmon)               Simmon

Woman                Strawberry                  Denna                   

Moon at Night

Willow

Window

Candlelight           (Cinnas?)

bredon beer?

 

3

Folly

The same lack of information problem occurs when we look above the bar to where the sword Folly now resides. This is not Kvothe's Adem sword Saicere, he tells Chronicler that much, but the description we have strongly suggest it to be similar in its make up. [Visit the chandlery now?]. In order for Kote to have become its new owner its previous owner is almost certainly dead and has no further use for it. If this blade was another Adem sword, that makes its correct home to be not on the wall of a bar but back in Haert on the wall of the Adem sword room where all such antique swords reside between owners. Kvothe promised to make arrangements for the return his own blade upon his death and so we can assume that has already happened back when he faked his own demise since the last thing he would want is for the Adem come looking for it. How? Well perhaps Kvothe paid a tinker to deliver it, that's what I'd do.

Since Kote has decided to keep this sword instead suggests that he is confident that the Adem are certainly not currently scouring the 4corners in search of this ancient sword because it is simply not one of theirs. Folly is of a completely different lineage to their heirloom weapons. 

From its very similar grey metal description and the inate feeling we get that this is somehow more than just a weapon, we can be pretty sure that Folly is indeed another ancient weapon from the lost days of Ergen. These Adem swords are very rare and special in the world today and I will go into much greater length concerning such artefacts when we reach The Chandlery but as far as Folly is concerned there is one other sword mentioned in these books outside it the Adem' hands that might also be an Ergen original and that is the blade which was carried by Cinder. The description we have of that sword is not dissimilar to this one, especially if you focus on words like pale and elegant. It was also described like something more than a sword would be and it had a definite sense of forboding about it that might well come from being the property of a chandrian. Why would Kvothe hold Cinder's sword in such high esteem? Because according to the Cthaeh this blade would have been responsible for the death of his parents which will turn the expensive mounting board a shrine to their memory.

These two swords being one and the same is the most likely answer and if this puzzle is meant to be solved satisfactorily then the chances of it being any other sword are remote so I'm happy to name Folly as being Cinder's ex-sword with which can only mean that Kvothe once won it off him in a fight to the death. If Pat were ever to tell us that was indeed the correct answer then nobody would be surprised but until he does then any speculation regarding this sword is simply rumourmongering. 

4

Thrice Locked Chest 

The same level of guesswork applies to any questions we might have about the Thrice Locked Chest of Kvothe the Bloodless and whilst we are given a whole chapter and then some regarding this little chestnut nobody has cracked it yet. 'What's in the Box' remains one of the great unanswered questions commonly asked by fans and once more the answer is... Pat alone knows. 

Some folk think it holds his lute but that seems silly to me since whilst music is important, there are many other lutes in the world and Kvothe's tatty old lute was no more than a tool in his hand at the end of the day, only its case made it vaguely especial.  Perhaps it holds all the things that he gathered in his travels, stuff like his sword and his shaed? But as I mentioned above Saicere really ought to have been returned to the Adem upon his death and his shaed could probably just hang in his wardrobe and no-one would even notice enough to care what it really was. 

One theory I have that does hold some water is that Kote's chest might well contain the original mystery Loeclos box that is described as being the very root of the Lackless family. Kvothe would actually have some claim to becoming the rightful inheritor of that box some day and it is a secret well used to spending its existence being a box, within a box, within a box. All three of which employed some pretty clever security measures to keep this Lockless secret safely hidden away. We are told that Kvothes chest also has three locks and we see that the one of iron and the one of copper are accompanied by two appropriately similar keys. Futhermore the shape of Kote's keys exactly mimic the odd looking key that Meluan Lackless used to access her own family heirloom and whilst we are here I should also point out a definite similarity between these unusual round keyholes and the four round holes that are a key feature of the four plate door of the archives....a door which itself is remarably similar to a door reputed to be found on the oldest parts of the Lackless estates which brings us back to the Loeclos Box again.

 On their own these key similarities might just be coincidental since Kvothe might have simply stolen another locksmith's ideas for his own secret chest building program but then we come to the third lock, the 'lock which cannot be seen'. 

Now that is not much to go on, one single line, but might I suggest that a magic word (like Edro) could well be the invisible key needed to open an invisible lock. Perhaps the Loeclos box requires naming to open it? If a magic word opens a magic lock then that might make the Lockless box itself to be the third and final lock and whatever cleverness opens that will likewise be our mystery third key. That all fits together quite well but I do fail to see what possible help that final mystery item would be to the life of Kote the innkeeper, unless whatever ancient item of importance that original box itself contains could be used to heal whatever alement you may may have.

The most popular theory I hear is that the thrice locked chest actually contains somebody's true name just like the black iron box in Hespe's story of Jax and the Moon does and Names do seems like a good path to follow here since Names are Important. 

Firstly we should consider if a living beings Name might still be considered as alive which raises the question 'Is this chest actually a naming prison?' If you can't break in to it, then it goes without saying that you couldn't break out of it either.  What if this box also contains a piece of the moons true name? Still fluttering like a moth in the darkness. What if contains a  piece of Cinder's true name?? that might explain the joke about it knocking back but I can't see anyone ever wanting to release that particular name after going to all the trouble of imprisoning there it in the first place. 

Kvothe built this lockbox himself for his own secret reasons and everything about it screams high security of a level that makes the stealing of it to be nigh impossible and the opening it even less likely, a task far beyond the ability of most everyone, himself included. If anyone was to ever come looking for this missing Name then they would have to be a very powerful person indeed to succeed in their quest, moreso than Bast is and the very fact it has been built to be as inaccessible as he can possibly make it implies that Kote genuinely believed that there was a chance someday, somebody might well try do just that.

That Kote wants to open his own chest himself at the end of book two suggests that he believes whatever is hidden inside will make him feel better about himself. If it's that personal to him then perhaps it is his own true name trapped inside, or a part of it at least, just a couple of letters worth, and that is probably the most likely answer to 'Whats in the box'. He changed his name and buried his past away never again to see the light of day. That was deemed sensible precautions when he first went into hiding and the bringing up of old memories has awakened within him a desire to be his old self once more, with his name and his power restored, just as Bast has been hoping he would do all along. If such a thing were possible, that Kote can become Kvothe again simply by releasing his old name back into his body then perhaps we might get an ending to his chronicle less tragic than was previously promised. Thats a nice answer which ticks all the boxes and so thats what I hope is going to be the correct answer. 

5

A Matter of Hands. 

Throughout the Inn-terludes the narrator constantly makes oblique references to Kote's hands that suggest something might not be quite with them, but being a crafty bugger he manages to hide exactly what the problem might be. Kote is often described looking down sadly at his hand, holding his hand, or hiding his hand but of course, Pat won't even tell us whether its his left hand or his right hand or even if its in both hands where the problem lies . For a while I thought Kote might be physically missing a thumb or two, a grisly fate which actually comes up in converstaion three times during these books but I cannot believe such an obvious disability could escaped Chroniclers notice without comment. Twice in these books we hear him swear by 'his hand and his power'  once to Denna when he swears on his good left hand and once to Meluan using the more traditional right handed oath. Either oath might have been the cause of what ails him. And then we have the fight with the soldiers where something goes horribly wrong for this once formidable barman. This next chapter investigates the relationship between left and right and hopes to diagnose Kotes problem of hands. 

Sleeping Bear

Sleeping bear is the name given to the twelfth movement of the sword tree's Ketan and it appears to be the go-to move to incapacitate an opponent when it comes to Pat's fighting scenes.  Seven times we encounter it and from these seven different angles we can piece together enough clues to write a small chapter about. The shape of the first six pieces can be placed into three parallel bindings which will form a nice strong triangle to use as a solid framework to build comfortably upon and so point towards the lucky seventh clue and a new puzzle to solve which will be revealed at the end.

The Lock ~ Sleeping Bear

Our first actual mention of Sleeping Bear comes from a remote angle as Kvothe watches two young Adem boys sparring together.

'It finally ended when one boy caught the other's wrist and shoulder in SB. It was only when I saw the boy twist his opponents arm and force him to the ground that I recognised it as the grip Tempi had used in the bar fight in Crosson.'

so following this signpost we can turn back the pages for a second view of SB in action.

'There was a flurry of movement and Tempi was left gripping the man's wrist and shoulder. The bald man snarled and struggled. But Tempi simply twisted the man's arm until he was bent over, staring at the floor. Then Tempi kicked the mans legs out from under him sending him tumbling to the ground.'

This pair of descriptions shows us the general overview from two remote angles but for a more technical assessment we need to try it for ourselves and so witness SB from a Kvothe perspective. Enter Celean.

'My left hand missed but the long strong fingers of my right hand wrapped all the way around her slender wrist. I didn't have her in the proper submission but now it was a game of strength, and I couldn't help but win. I already had her wrist, all that remained was to grip her shoulder and I'd have her in SB before--'

This third example gives us our first indication of which hands are used for which move. It should be noted that the Ketan is a set of classical moves passed down from teacher to pupil across the long ages of the Latantha. It does not change to suit the body, the body moves to accommodate it. Height, for example, is taken into consideration during the training and is not used as an excuse for poor perfomance. Therefore it will be true to say that the Ketan does not care if someone is left-handed or not. In this dance it is the strong right hand which will always grip the wrist meaning that all Adem fighters are right handed. Tempi tells us that the strong right hand is always the dominant hand in Adem culture as they use their clever left hands for speaking. 

As Kvothe's teacher, it is only correct that Vashet gives us our next lesson. In this instance we discover what it is like to have SB used against you as recounted when Vashet places Kvothe under her complete control by using it upon him.

'Vashet frowned, then reached out casually to grip my wrist and shoulder, twisting me into SB. Her right hand held my wrist over my head stretching my arm at an awkward angle, while her left pressed firmly against my shoulder.'

Having already ascertained from Celean's input that it is the right wrist that is grabbed Vashet now reveals that it is also the Right hand which does the gripping. This is important as it is the best image we get of how SB exerts full control over your opponent. It has the potential to do great damage to the body and the control it gives the user is absolute. SB is all about control as is emphasised in the line...

'Right now you are mine to do with as I wish. I can move you or break you, or let you free.'

Lesson learnt, Vashet eventually releases Kvothe but later on, at his stone trial, Tempi warns Kvothe that Carceret is planning revenge and that she would not be so merciful if she could catch him in SB  and that he heard her say that she will pull his arm from his shoulder, given half the chance. Sure enough this movement appears to be exactly what is about to happen to our hero when Carceret does indeed catch his wrist with her hand tight as a band of iron and so we can deduce without it being specifically stated that in making SB in this ancient Ketan it will always be an action of strong right hand on strong right hand leaving us the users clever left hand to be the one that will hold and control the shoulder.

Our penultimate mention of SB comes from two fingers, or Naden as he is properly called. He lost half of his right hand to a sword stroke and whilst he can still speak using his left he can no longer fight well enough to 'wear the red'.

'Holding a sword is not enough. A proper mercenary requires two hands. I could never make lover out the window or SB with only one....'

This small mention should be obvious to anyone studying the move in closer detail and is a fine example of exactly how all of the individual observations can be gradually woven together into a nice secure knot of top grade tinfoil. This is how the game works, and it is a game between DM Pat and his readers. He didn't write these lines randomly, he deliberately placed them there 'just so' for us to find and elaborate upon until we reach the correct conclusion. He has even highlighted its importance for us with one of his signature endings,that of a four dot ellipsis.... which, if you keep your eyes open for them (amongst other things), you will soon discover that they can be recognised as a big Pat signpost to keep pointing you in the right direction. Keep your eyes open for them and they will start to give you a good feel for further things which are usually important. 

The direction that this particular cryptic indication points is towards the future, far away from Kvothe and the Adem as our new bread-crumb trail crosses the boundary of miles and years over to connect us with the interludes that feature Kote, Landlord at the Waystone Inn. In these pages the 'narrator' takes over the chronicling of the scene and (for reasons as yet unknown) the name used for the barman during this interlude is Kvothe the innkeeper, not Kote. That is a further mystery to explore another day but for now we are here to analyse the scene where he is seen to be fighting with the two soldiers, late on the second day...

'Then Kvothe stepped close, caught the bearded man's shoulder, gripped his wrist, and twisted the outstretched arm at an awkward angle. The big man was forced to bend over grimacing in pain. Then he jerked his arm out of the inkeepers grip. Kote had half a moment to look startled before the soldiers elbow caught him in the temple.'

The Key ~ Break Lion

Break lion is a movement of the Ketan used to disengage yourself from your opponent. Celean had invented her own twist to this ancient move with a variation which incorporates both hands. This means that the classic Break Lion which Carceret and all the other mercenaries know is only a one handed movement. Sheyehn once used break lion to dismiss 'thunder upwards' but the two-hand technique is a secret thing known only to small girls and red haired musicians. Since it is most effective in freeing a pinned right wrist by a strong right hand we can assume that Break Lion (standard) is therefore a single clever Left hand move used to free your pinned strong Right hand. Break Lion (Cub version) likely uses both clever left and strong right working together in concert to obtain some extra leverage to achieve its aim.

Back at the Waystone Inn, Kote clearly made Sleeping Bear on the soldier and so regardless of whom he might be holding in submission, they were his to move, to break or to let go as he chose. Once you find yourself in this position resistance is futile as you have already missed your only chance at using either version of break lion and the result is now a foregone conclusion. Yet the soldier, who obviously knows nothing about any Ketan, somehow manages to force his way loose! So either Kote deliberately let him free, (which he didn't) or there is something else going on here which we are not being told the full story of.... Something which may be broadly hinted at in many interlude lines but never explained.

The Ketan is like a dance which is practised and repeated faithfully, over and over again, in order to train the body to follow the steps more naturally. (Think of mister Miyagi and his wax-on wax-off method of teaching.) Once learnt it becomes almost reflex in it's execution and requires almost no thought, Right hand wrist, Left hand shoulder. But this is not quite what Kote actually does. He clearly caught the shoulder first and the wrist grip came second. What's more we are told that it was the grip which was broken which means that, as far as we can deduce, it was Kote's apparently strong right hand which simply wasn't strong enough to do the job required of it. Kote does, however, possess strength of arm in abundance as is evident in the vice-like grip that he had earlier employed upon Bast, a grip which was strong enough to leave behind a bruising mark. 

'Kvothe's long fingered hand caught Bast's wrist. Unaware or uncaring, Bast leapt toward Chronicler only to be bought up short, as if Kvothes hand were a shackle. Bast struggled furiously to free himself, but Kvothe stood behind the bar, arm outstretched, motionless as steel or stone.'

'He's stronger than he looks' Bast confides to Chronicler afterwards but when we put all the clues together it is plain that to see that he could not have done this damage using his weak right hand. This can only mean that, as a person, Kote actually has a strong LEFT hand, and one that is incredibly so it would appear in order to restrain one of the fae so calmly, meaning that it was this hand which he used to constrain Bast with a grip of iron. 

When it comes to using other Adem moves, Kote also failed when he attempted to use Celean's two handed version of Break Lion to free himself from the soldiers wrist grip.

'Kvothe struggled to free his wrist. Dazed, he made a quick motion with both hands, then repeated it, trying to pull away. His eyes half-focussed and dull with confusion, he looked down at his wrist and made the motion again, but his hands merely scrabbled uselessly at the soldiers scarred fist.'

Now, it is inconceivable that the barbarian soldier has a more powerful Ketan of his own which somehow supercedes that of an Adem trained warrior. Moreso, it is equally unlikely that Kote accidentally got his hands mixed up and performed this move cack-handedly. It would therefore seem more logical (however unlikely) that Kote is making the correct moves with the correct hands but crucially he is now making them with (what we must consider to be) the opposite dextrosity that he learnt with from his training, almost as if he is now fighting as a South-Paw. The overall situation suggests that his once strong right-hand has somehow been 'transformed' into his naturally clever side, and that his once clever left-hand is likewise trying to perform as his naturally stronger arm should.

What I am now proposing here is this: When Kvothe changed his own name into Kote, some kind of 'accident' occurred during the translation process and instead of what came out the other end being a replica of Kvothe, exact in every detail, and with a perfect new name to boot, he has instead become a mere reflection of himself... and everything looks backwards in a mirror.

The implications that this change would have on his musical performance goes without saying....

So, the question we have arrived at is now this:

'Are we reading about a left-handed barman with a clever right hand or a right-handed musician with a clever left hand? Or are we looking at both together? 

6

A Tick in the Box

The next thing on my list for disection at the Waystone is the stone demon which Carter brings to the table on the opening night Our first mention of the Scrael tells us it is a spider, only as large as a wagon wheel and as black as slate. It has eight legs, as all arachnids do, but then it is pointed out that...

'It's not a spider, it's got no eyes... It's got no mouth either. How does it eat? What does it eat ?'

And this got me thinking a bit... All spiders have eight legs, but not everything with eight legs is a spider, just an arachnid and that made me realise that this isn't a spider, it's actually a bloodsucking tick! Ticks do exist in Pat's world though not in Ademre it seems, 'I hate Tick' decides Tempi on encountering one for the first time. Ticks are also arachnids, but unlike spiders they have no eyes. They hunt by scent apparently, just like the scrael do, and ticks either have a mouth somewhere underneath their bodies, hidden between all the legs, or else they burrow their entire head right into their chosen choice of flesh (horse is a popular dish in normal tick land) and then suck out all the blood like a demon sucking the juice out of a plum!

The bodies of ticks will swell up like a bladder when feeding. They may not get as big as a wagon wheel, but ticks can naturally enlarge their bodies to some limited degree in order to feed giving it some natural scope for growth that could be magically enhanced if anyone had the desire to tinker with ticks down at the creation level and turn them into monsters of living stone. A tick made of stone would not be bound to any natural limits if it was created from a large enough piece of black stone to begin with. Scrael are not solid stone, the inner parts of a scrael are not black like its shell, just grey like a mushroom suggesting two kinds of stone in it's make-up. This description sounds to me like the ideal shape structure for a creature that feeds on blood as a way to absorb it's food into its body, rather like a sponge does. 

This scrael jumped on poor nellie first, it jumped out of a tree and started to climb all over her, cutting her up with it's feet and creating a lot of blood for it to absorb. During it's feeding frenzy the heavy but basically soft horse fell on top of it and broke a few of it's legs but it still had enough life left in it to have a go at the smaller target of Carter. That the wagonner managed to defend himself at all speaks volumes although if he had known it was a tick then he would also have realised that it was a bit big to crush between his fingernails in the proscribed method. He luckily chose a similar crushing action in his desperation and finished the job nellie had begun by repeatedly stomping on it until it stopped moving. I don't know what Carter was wearing on his feet but we do hear of booted feet on the other villagers and I doubt he wears soft shoes to do heavy wagon work. I would recommend a good pair of nobnail boots like all workmen wear which we know would be most solidly suited and heavy enough to stomp anything into flinders. Simmon agrees. He owns a nice pair of such boots himself.

Early in the first book Kote needed a piece of iron to use on the spider-demon. Kote knew what it was immediately and using his worldly knowledge he names it as a scrael. He examined the dead demon spiderthing and discovered that it was made entirely of stone and was all one basic building block but one which had become animated with something like a 'desire'... a compulsion to act towards a purpose. One might suggest that it was following a primal urge to seek out sustenance in the form of horseflesh or man blood, everything must eat I suppose, except stones of course. Both Kote and Bast seem to know a lot about these creatures, including how to ensure that one is properly dead. The part of the semi-dead scrael which Kote kept he later used as a lure to attract the other living scrael to his stinking summoning fire (there is no such thing as only one scrael, they hunt in packs). Keeping a bit as a souvenir is not a good idea, Bast knows this, but Kote deliberately did so in order to give him a proper link back towards the rest of it's pack, all spiderstone is one spiderstone after all. This summoning power which spiderstone seems to exhibit also implies that if you don't destroy the whole corpus properly then it's fellow scraels would be able come looking for it more easily, possibly by following the trail of it's dead demon scent . Burning hair and rotting flowers is our malodorous description for the smell of this stuff and to the Felling night crew this was the smell a demons corpse makes.

Vaevin & Stangle

What we really need now is a nice simple single word we can pin on this demonflesh stuff to act as a badge for what it really is without getting all wordy and poetic about what it might best be, and so I shall borrow the term Stangle from the world of Lyonesse as a name to be used here to indicate this 'stuff of dead fairies'.

Stangle: The stuff of dead fairies, with implications of horror, calamity and putrefication; a term to excite fear and disquiet among halflings, who prefer to think of themselves as immortal, though this is not altogether the case.

In Pat's world, Ademic features a good word to use as for the opposite of Stangle, a word for the stuff of life fairies, which is as close as we're likely going to find for our purposes and that word is Vaevin. Penthe tries to explain it's meaning to Kvothe after they have sex but with some limited success. She thinks of it as 'anger', 

'It is a desire . It is a making. It is a wanting of life... It is the feeling that makes them want to move and grow and do and make. All things have anger, (although) a stone does not have much compared to a budding tree'

These are the two ends of the same scales that we shall be using in our workings, a second way of describing things. These terms will come in useful to more easily help to describe some of the indescribable understanding necessarily needed when dealing with the shaping of such things. Elodin would understand.

How to build a Scrael

Now shaping is a big subject which would be messy to explain all at once. However, there are levels to shaping and the most basic level would be shaping a base element and training it to your will. This is entry level shaping, good luck

Being entirely made of stone would imply to me that this not a natural creature but rather that of a creation, shaped for purpose by someone speaking the longname of stone bound together with the longname of their own vaevin to thereby encourage a greater percentage of Vaevin into the basic stone shape than is normally present. You first choose a nice piece of stone and speak it's name to bind it to your desire. Once you are at this point, a namer could ask the stone to become a ring to fit their finger, or to become any other shape they so desired. Spider shaped for instance. Breathing the name of your own Vaevin into the stone would be akin to giving it a link to your own life, and since it is your own powerful vaevin it will give you a personal link to it, (a bit like the feel of Chael's hand was copied into the sword itself when he shaped it in fire to make a perfect bond with him.) Forcing your mastery upon the simple stone can then be used as a means of control to force it to move, and grow and do and to make which would make it like a slave to your alar, bound by it and thus compelled to dance to your own masterly music, a lot like the pied piper is the one who is calling the tune, and all the children came running to follow him, or like a dog on a lead or a puppet on a string, or maybe even like ball and cup! This newly animated life form is therefore an act of shaping between the inanimate and the animate, and such shaping as this was once the province of an ancient and historically faen power in the world which Felurian names as the shapers. 

The Shapers were those ancient name knowers who's powers created the entire faen realm, every single part of it, right down to the butterflies, through asserting the power of their individual vaevin upon nature. They sewed the 'whole cloth' of the world into something that it never was before, and in doing so giving it a sense of heightened awareness of it's new place in the world that shouldn't really be there, a lot like Felurian sewed the shaed to be an extension of Kvothe's will. He could shape it's length and cut and make it move to his desire, she created a link of mastery, or rather posession, between Kvothe and this shadowy fabric of the universe. This new turning cape is a piece of old magic akin to that of the shapers who created many similar things from many different building blocks and who turned such links as they could forge to fulfill their own whimsical desires.

'and at first it was not all bad, there were wonders...once I ate fruit from a tree in Murilla...' 

'the fruit was but the first of it, the early toddlings of a child. they grew bolder, braver, wild. the old knowers said “Stop!”but the shapers refused. they quarrelled and fought and forbade the shapers. they argued against mastery of this sought. 'but oh' she sighed, 'the things they made.'

In this memory, one of the things they made was a silver tree which created a link or bond between all those who tasted it's fruit, later, braver wilder experiments led to other organic creations, some of which were quite possibly spidershaped . The 'older' name-knowers could speak these long names and in doing so dance with the usually inert stone , but they knew the fox and the hare and they knew the space between the two. (this is of the Lethani!) They knew enough to work alongside nature but not to assume mastery over it, they knew enough to stop at that point and they said as much to the 'new' shapers. But of course, once opened, this tin of worms could not be easily closed and the inevitable happened. The advice was not heeded and Tin-foil worms became a thing. 

The 'new' 'progressive' name knowers evidently decided that true power knows no limits and weakness is to be exploited by the strong. So they expanded further and further and gave more and more of themselves to their creation creatures and in doing so they permanently infused base names, such as stone, with their own personal Vaevin and thus they commanded the very fabric of the universe to dance to their desire in a more permanent shape. This was not like creating artificial intelligence, this was more like cloning extensions of themselves. This power of unbound creation, this level of 'playing god' was the breaking point that divided the old and new name-knowers into factions and this split led to 'the war' between them. And once that step was taken, the shapers went further and began creating real monsters, stone scraels and black iron draccus and such, Gremen and Daruna too, things to fight wars with, things that were not meant to be, blurring the longnames of things together into an army of monsters that marched to the beat to their drum. 

Given that Bast is at least as knowledgable about the exact nature of scrael as his Reshi is and that these alien invaderrs are only now begun arriving in mortal lands shows that he must have some prior experience of them from a time before, a time spent in his own realm. The finger of blame for where the Waystone scrael actually came from is clearly pointing to them being an invasion force of faen extraction.

How to destroy a scrael.

At the end of the day they are little more than enchanted rocks and they can be broken by force and detroyed by the application of Iron and fire which is another indication of faen handiwork since they are both most vulnerable to these same two elements. I shall be investigating the magical properties of  IRON in a later chapter but for now all we really need to know is that it works and that Kote chose the correct weapon when he went hunting them because a steel sword is not as good an iron bar. 

What makes them tick?

The scrael are an invasive species into Temerant and so we might consider them to be part of an invasion force sent by an enemy to mankind. Dangerous though they are I would only rank them at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to weapons at the enemies disposal. Nothing we are told indicates they have any purpose in life other than to kill and feed although it is possible they have been imbued with some compulsion that sent them hunting blood in some vaguely specific direction, Westerly if the mountains clue can be trusted. Perhaps they aren't just mindless creatures after all but actual enemy scouts that were looking for something (or someone) specific. As part of an invaders arsenal I would consider them as more than monsters but less than men, something similar to drones that their creator has unleashed into an unsuspecting nation, possibly with some seek and destroy compulsion but with no real hands on control guiding them towards a specific end. Perhaps they are being used as scouts with some sort of built in tracking device so that their  master would know exactly if, where and when anything terminal ever happened to them, thus pin-pointing a location of interest to be investigated further. That rather outlandish theory would mean that by destroying the entire scouting party of scrael in one night, Kote drew attention to the presence of a formidable foe living somewhere in the vicinity of Newarre that prompted the arrival of a more intelligent follow up agent, such as a skin dancer

 7

Rhint-A

Ive always wondered how Tempi knew enough about rhinta in the bandit camp to recognise one for what it was... I mean, he never told Kvothe this fact before, or after, Kvothe had found this news out for himself from the Cthaeh, but Tempi reported a Rhinta to Sheyen as though he knew exactly what they had faced. Yes, there is the arrow in the leg thing and the disappearing body to factor in of course, but that should just make it a strange mystery, not a certain sign of the chandrian being present in the woods. There may be some general signs which would denote something to be clearly a rhinta, if you knew what to look for. Let us take what we know of them and build up a checklist to use when trying to tell the differnce betweern a rhinta from a robber. Taking in all the information that Sheyen tells us gives us a 7-point checklist to follow... how lucky.

A rhinta is defined as 1) Bad 2) Old 3) Man shaped 4) More than a man 5) Less than a man 6) Walks the world freely 7) Does terrible things.

Knowing the bandit leader to be Cinder means we can all agree that he is pretty damn bad, and that he has been around for a long, long time. He has a man shaped appearance... more or less, except that he is 'chill and dark of eye' so he is more than a mortal man.., or less than one, depending on whether this is seen as being a blessing or a curse. Either way, he walks the world freely doing terrible things. Pretty much a full house for Cinder the Rhinta then.

Now we shall check this list against someone else for comparison and take Chronicler's horse-thieving robber soldier as an example. He get's to appear in two chapters of the Waystone interludes, although you could say he wasn't the same man he used to be on his return. He also speaks the line 'Te Rhintae?'  as a question and so it very much sounds like he might know something about what our similarly spelt word Rhin-ta might actually mean, perhaps he is one himself? Let's lay off from labeling him as variously a horse thief, a deserter, a mercenary, a tabard-mad ex-soldier, a  sweet eater, a denner addict or a skin dancer and just call him Rob for short since when we first encountered him he was just a robber. 

You could certainly say that he was Bad, yes, but not on the same league as Cinder is. He falls down on being 'Old' too, but does get a tick for being 'man shaped', although he did not appear to be exceptionally more or less so than any other man. He was last seen freely doing as he pleased with Chronicler's posessions, but he wasn't exactly terrible in his behaviour, in fact he was quite genteel. Total score 3/7 ...if we are being overly generous.

But then something unexplained happened to him.

The next time we see him it is about five days later and he certainly did some terrible things this time around. He walked freely into the bar and questioned the locals as though he could do exactly as he pleased, and whilst still as man shaped as before, things that would hurt other men have little effect on him now as he shrugged off the mortal threats of knife and sword which clearly marks him more than a normal man. But by the same token, any other man of the world could easily touch a piece of iron, indeed he could do this simple thing himself five days ago, yet now iron was anathema to him, which makes him less than the man he was, too. He was still the same age as before, which is still a miss, but he retains his previous tick for being a bad thing which gives him a score of 6/7! which is almost full rhinta level. All that is missing from making him indistinguishable from an official Rhinta is that he is under age. But being classified as 'Old' comes with time and experience, even Cinder was young once, and Rob has only been doing this sort of thing for a few days now. He is a new Rhinta'

This is startling improvement for the original Rob in his score on the Rhinta scale and since he only really falls down on not being an 'old thing' let's focus on that part.

He may not be old enough to qualify himself, but he has somehow learnt to speak what I like to think of as Eld Faen, the language of some very old and bad things which most certainly would qualify him, and more importantly, he has stopped understanding how to speak his own modern day Aturan at the same time. This clearly means that poor old Rob has been changed significantly somewhere along the way and his body has clearly been the victim of a recent act of possession by something that is very old, very bad, and it is now controlling Rob's living flesh with a lot more precision than it could a scrael. For all intents and purposes, he is no longer Rob, just a little Rob shaped glove puppet wiggling on something elses evil fingers. Rob now acts with the ancient desire of whatever being now controls him. Just as this power is speaking it's faen tongue inside his head so does his mouth now speak with it's voice. Since noboby could possibly learn an entire ancient language in a single day, or even five, we can happily concur that his words and thoughts were not in any way of his own shaping but were simply those of his new Lord and Master. 

Master Yew

Lets simplify things again and give a working name to this eld faen robber demon thing and name him Master Yew. Mr Yew is a very powerful force in the universe who is treating little Rob as a tool in his hand. He has been splashing about inside him like a boy in a muddy puddle and it is Mr Yew that is now making him move, and act, and speak. If Mr Yew so desired he might string a fiddle with Rob's guts and make make him play it whilst he danced and so is also quite capable making him pluck out his own eye or Bite. Out. His. Tongue... if they weren't deemed nesessary to his current task of looking and questioning. Yew is using Rob's body as a vehicle to walk the world freely 'looking...' for something. Mr Yew has placed a compulsion upon Rob, who is of course powerless to refuse, and his task we might very well assume is to locate whoever killed the scrael scouts a few nights before and the best path to tracking them down was apparently to track and trace the previous owner of the new shirt that he is now wearing. Some kind of sympathy at work here would seem likely. Apparently this newly minted agent will provide Mr Yew with the opportunity to witness and to question the results of this search first hand. We can therefore ascertain that Mr Yew currently has an open link to all of Rob's senses which is how Rob can follow his orders, relay his findings back and receive his next instructions. Mr Yew is then to be considered riding inside Rob body and mind just like we hear that some demons did to folk in olden times. The various sorts of demonic links available to demonkind have been described to us by Trapis and Rob's possession would then fall into one of two kinds. Partial posession (A), or full posession (B). There is also a Type C... the Encanis level version of 'walking the world freely and doing terrible things', but I'm pretty sure that powerful as Mr Yew is he was operating at a much lower power level than that on the scales of such things.

'It might not even have been a dancer, perhaps it was just something similar.

'Kind A ) Some of them were small and troublesome, creatures who lamed horses... Kind B)'There were demons who hid in men's bodies and made them sick or mad, but these were not the worst... Kind C) Some demons stole the skins of men and wore them like clothes.'

I have already designated the Scrael as being demon kind A) and they would fit the first line well enough to let us move on from them now. Since line two has us looking for 'sick or mad' and given that the last thing that happened to Rob when Aaron finally dispatched him was that he sicked up what could be thought of as his 'internal demon-link' which came out of his mouth in the form of a black inky puddle I'm going with Rob being one of these middle sort of  the three demon-kind's, Demon-Kind B) and is therefore more troublesome that a scrael but not as bad or powerful as a full blown skin-dancer, which would be more like Demon-Kind C)

Bast also said that Rob was acting...dumb, and he was clearly not in total control of himself what with his  unnatural movements and the trouble he had making himself understood. This was clearly an inferior model of rhinta than the far more graceful Cinder-rhinta. The difference I suspect is that Cinder would be a C class to Rob's B class and would (usually ) have more freedom and inclination to act on his own instincts than to require an overseeinging hand upon him at all times like our new-rhinta-Rob does. Rob never volunteered for this job like the chand-rhinta did. Cinder is Lord Haliax' servant and a major power in his own right who has personally refused the will of Lord Tehlu to his face. He is a meant to be obedient to his masters bidding, and has learnt the consequences of straying. Mr Yew was forcing his chosen piece of flesh to make it act to a new desire and was also operating with an unfamiliar tool here. The rhintA that we call Rob is best thought of as being Mr Yew's puppet, and this is his first ever experience in having his strings pulled and he isquite a blunt tool to work with. But some piece of Mr Yew was actuallly present in the room himself because Rob alone would have no powers in his own flesh and blood which would ever have allowed him to give chronicler a touch of the 'Frostburn' as Bast called it. This could not be done with the touch of his own mere mortal hand making Mr Yew's presence in the rhintA a certainty. 

But nor was RhintA Rob 100% Mr Yew in the flesh, Rob was necessarily there, it was his body after all, and so this was actually a hybrid of the two. 'RhintARob' was, I would suggest, more likely to be 99% Rob's body with 1% My Yew's mindlink inside it. This piece was the overwhelming desire and was exerting a form of mind control such as those discussed elsewhere in these pages... Big Brother. Is watching you! and the mind was easily more than a match for the flesh. As a whole, the rhint-a-unit was more than the man although, at the same time, it was less than the man. DemonKind B)'s would likely put more of themselves into their glove puppet than just a finger, They would enjoy a greater control that would offer a grip with the full power of a fist, at least, and the more of themselves they put into it, the more comfortable the demon's overall control. 

The power scale inherent between different sorts of Rhinta is sort of on a par with Selitos being the most powerful namer in the land, although many others could do such things as well, Selitos had the surest grasp of such things. The more powerful the link the more powerful the rhinta. Knowing the long names of things, in this case the longname of a living thing, i.e. Rob. is necessary to creating (shaping*) any kind of Rhinta and the stronger the namer would the more infused their level of control could be, somewhere up to a maximum 99% Mr Yew and just 1% Rob, although the difference between RhintA and RhintB would probably be reaching more than half way at any rate. This is how I imagine the Rhinta make-up to be, one name being overpowered by another's desire to dance with it, usually by force. A mind actually skin dancing in someone else's flesh, which is what Bast and Kote wrongly assumed poor Rob to be.

 'It seemed like it died when Rob died' Kote said.'We would have seen it leave. They're supposed to look like a dark shadow or smoke when they leave the body.'

I would suggest that anything that looks like a shadow is up in level Rhint-C) that of Encanis and his eternal shadow cloak curse and a discussionfpor later on, but at base level, Rhinta A) is different to rhinta B) as Bast and Kote understand them because of one other major difference... they all survived the attack. On destruction of Rob's body, Mr Yew did not rise out of it like a dark shadow, leaving the one body to jump into the next available host because he wasn't wholly there in the room to do so, there was just a partial presence... one fingers worth perhaps, and this was therefore a much more 'remote-control' operation by Mr Yew. 

Mr Yew's puppet-link was, however, itself under attack from the touch of iron which was unexpected and made MrYew panic and he promptly ordered Rob to retreat, not to fight back but to crawl away from the threat of iron that could also hurt it's own fingersworth that was actually there, to crawl towards the doorway in order to escape back to whence it came, to lick it's wounds and plot it's strategy again, fleeing the dangerous name of iron before the fragile link that bound Yew and Man together was completely snapped! Mr Yew's proverbial 'finger' of power might even have gotten caught in the fast closing door of death itself as it was slammed shut on poor Rob's last mortal breath, or rather the last breath of the demonic Mr Yew's possession, which was seen to come vomiting out of the Rhinta's mouth in the form of a black inky puddle of corruption. 

Alternatively, this was a fully fledged skindancer, and Aaron's iron rod was somehow powerful enough to kill both Rob and Mr Yew simultaneously without either escaping into a second body. The danger is somehow averted and the local priest has seen to the disposal of Rob's mortal remains properly in a deep pit. 10' by 2', with a fire made of ash and elm, with a bit of rowan, too. The Demon is now doubly dead.

The main reason to downgrade the attack from RhintB to RhintA is because only one person died. That would not have happened if it was a true type B) If it was then nothing short of a Sithe, riding a white horse and wearing a holly crown and armed with a long horn bow or perhaps the arrival of the bloody handed Amyr or even the intervention of Lord Tehlu himself should really have had a hope of defeating a fully blown skin dancer...and Aaron is certainly not Lord Tehlu come again... although it must be noted that he did just happen to strike the 'demon' three times with his Iron rod before he scared it enough not to fight on but to make it flee from his wrath instead.

Isn't it great when all the little pieces fit together like this!

 

 As for Newarre itself, there isn't much to say. except that it really is in the middle of Nowhere. The Lightning Tree is our best guide here so read that again and you might discover Bast's special place on the outskirts of town. One thing we do know is that Carter was attacked on the road to Baedn-Bryt. This is also the road you need to continue on to reach Treya, although that is a few days journey. The scrael attack happened two miles North of town by Oldstone bridge which crosses the river in which Emberlee takes her bath. Crazy Martin has his still hidden in a box canyon in the scrubby hills to the north of town where he makes his barley wine. Rike's father fell off Littlecliff which I believe to be in the same area...ish. 

8 The Newarre Road Between Desires

There is only one road and it runs north to south past the Waystone Inn's front door. Its actually a very boring road, a dirt track suitable for farm wagons and thats all we really need to know about it. Much more interesting is the town's river which is called Littlecreek which is central to much of Bast's exploits and can thus be mapped more expansively than just a line on a map. It first enters our map somewhere up in the northern hills where if flows over littlecreek falls before making its way South to Emberlees bathing spot which is variously described as being besides either an ash or an elm tree that is found either ¼  or ½ mile north of the oldstone bridge, depending on which version of the book you read. This old stone bridge is the only place for a wagon to cross the water before it makes its merry way down to the town where it apparently turns a waterwheel at the local mill before it flows around the base of the single lone hill upon which stands the lightning tree before diverging into a reedy bogland off to the south end of the town. The road in that direction also reputedly comes to a bad end meaning nobody ever comes up into town from the South always down from the north.This is a dead end town in more ways than one and That kind of makes the Waystone Inn's location similar to that of Jax broken house which was also found at the end of a broken road. 

As for the town itself Kote jokes that it is 'home to dozens' and there are indeed about a dozen farms and some five dozen folk that get a mention acoss our books. There are also some other local amenities for local folk and whilst no genreral store is ever mentioned there is evidence of a baker. Across the road from the Inn we find master Ferris the blacksmith who is probably Cealdish and might also provide stabling for horses that stop at the Inn. Graham is a carpenter who will undoubtedly have a workshop and somewhere nearby is a miller with a waterwheel. There is also a mayor and a constable a church with two priests.

Back to our single road out of town and Carter declared it was two miles north to the spot where he was attacked by scrael, 'just past Oldstone Bridge'. Since Carter was on his way home from Baeden at the time that puts Baeden-Bryt (to give it it's full name) some twenty miles off to the East on a proper road likely to be named the Kings road . Chronicler, however, came in from the other direction, walking in from the west passing through both Abbot's Ford and Rannish in search of a horse before he encountered Kote who was out hunting scrael somewhere in the vicinity of our bridge. Since Chronicler was now hoping to purchase a horse in Baeden before continuing on to his appointment in Treya that suggests His road and Carters road are the Same road whilst our road to newarre is going to be little more that a T-Junction turn off, down a dirty track to Newarre that eventually comes to a boggy end. Locals only.

Now even with a sketch map of the surrounding area to help us we still don't know where in the world we actually are since none of the placenames used can be cross referenced to our world map. Chronicler says he wasn't heading for Tinue but that is all we have to work with. We do not know where Treya is all though we can make a few educated guesses.

  

9 Which Way Stones

Greystones ~ Their Form And Function.

The Waystone Inn is not by the way of anything in particular. It is in the middle of Nowhere.

Waystones is the name Ben knows for the various Greystones dotted around the world but whilst he is worldly wise, Ben is not Edema Ruh to whom they are special. The stones are rectangular about 12ft long and half that square 'Smaller than a Draccus'. Some point upwards, some lay flat, often alone, sometimes in groups and there is much folklore associated with them. The Edema Ruh stop for the day, no matter what, whenever they see one. Apparently this is for 'tradition and superstition' which are much the same thing. They are also meant to be good luck and everyone enjoys a holiday. All the travellers at the Faeriniel crossroads had stopped to rest there despite there being no inn although the presence of greystones may just be coincidence and like Simmon, who is disconcerted by them, most groups made camp in the surrounding woods instead. The ruh, however, deliberately made their nights camp among the actual stones, safe from the unwanted presence of superstitious travellers who may seek to do them wrong.

Other traditions are investigated by the boys which gives answers including pagan relics, safe places and road markers, all of which could be seem to apply although no reason takes presedence. Kvothe's argument holds the most water so let us consider the ones we visit during the text.

1. The single upright by the side of the Kings Road in the Commonweath which the troupe stop beside when they reach it with Ben. 

2. The pair Kvoth and Denna discover out back of a roadside inn at a pool's edge on the way to Imre, One upright. One horizontal (artwork suggests actually into the water) 

3. One Upright on the Imre side of Stonebridge, 50 ft from the Old Stone Road which the boys investigate. 

4. Two separate horizontal stones and two standing upright with another balanced atop, making an arch or doorway on the hilltop near Trebon. 

5. One Horizontal in a dell outside Imre where Kvothe retured Denna her ring. 

6. One upright by the wide West road outside of Severen where Denna played her song. 

7. Two upright Kvothe passes through when he leaves fae, Apparently present in both worlds simultaneously since when he looks back at Felurian from mortal, she stands between them. A reference to passing greystone is also glimpsed when he enters the Fae from one of the deepest and oldest parts of the Eld, not far from Felurian's pool. 

8. Bast's stone near the lightning tree is single and leaning over enough for small children to climb the leaning edge and jump from the top. 'No-one taller than the stone' is the rule. There is also a stream nearby. 

The results of the boys research tell us variously

9. Of pagan frolics at a pair of matched stone monoliths with a third across the top marking a doorpost. One usually reliable source claims this arch can be a door to Felurian and the Fae realm at certain times and also...

10. Speculations of them marking roads, despite some being found on the side of mountains or river bottoms where no road could be

Then we have Arlidens part-remembered poetry.

'Like a drawstone even in our sleep

standing stone by old road is the way 

to lead you ever deeper into fae.

Laystone as you lay in hill or dell

Greystone leads to …'

This appears to be a list of instructions, with an appalling lack of period and of terrible meter. It needs music to carry its message properly. But the words themselves may well apply to all the written greystone reports as the limited information we have on them does tell us of their geographical positioning and they all fit nicely into three categories of old road, hill or dell. 

, Number 10 is a catch-all location for other, unspecified greystones. Either high on mountainsides with the advantage of a wide view (hill) or low in safe places to rest near water (dell). 

Line 2: Standing stone (single) next to an old road gets a perfect tick with numbers 1, 3, & 6. 

Line 4: Laystones are found Lying in a pair on a hill, or singly in a dell with numbers 4 & 5. 

Number 2 has both kinds in combination. It is in a small wood behind a wayside inn, the dell has become a pond. It is a safe place for travelers to rest. One stone for each bit of poem.

In the Lightning Tree, Bast reveals a secret about the Fae when they visit mortal.

'When they do come, they like some places better than others. They like wild places. Secret places. Strange places.Places with connections to the raw, true things which shape the world. Places that are touched by fire and stone. Places that are close to water and air.

Which nicely applies to all our greystones, and especially to the central line in Arliden's poem. 

Numbers 2,7 and 9 are our doorways of the Fae realm. 

Bast's own stone is strange. It obviously was once upright but has fallen slightly, though whether through time, design or accident is not known. Lightning perhaps had a hand, but it is off in the middle of nowhere and so a simple sign of showing it's age is most likely. Bast himself is fae and has made it his special place, on a hilltop, near water, by old stone, and with the Lightning Tree itself which has the added bonus of being 'touched by fire'. 

'When all four come together...'Mother of God

Mind Your Language

Perial then, and despite the fame and fortune that goes with being the Mother of God, there are only a few tiny scraps available for us to work with when it comes to tracking her down. Trapis' rambling story must be taken as a vaguely accurate truth which does align Perial's name into the accepted Tehlin faith version of things somewhat. Marten calls upon Menda and Perial when he is praying to everything that is holy along with the holy names of Ordal and Andan, two of the angels we see written about in Nina's copy of the Book of the Path. And then there is that one line about our infamous Lady Perial and her hat.

Calling on the Holy Name of God (Tehus antausa eha) is the classical thing to do if you find yourself in trouble with demons, perhaps if one has stolen your own hat during the Seven Days of High Mourning and you were calling upon some divine intervention from above, although Bast just laughs off this traditional line from the Old Tema when Kote tries this demon banishing approach on him. This faith in such a prayer calling for help extends to Tehlu, His angels or even His mother to aid you in times of danger. But there is a time and a place for using such language and saying the unremarkable 'Tehlu Anyway' is an everyday occurrence in Pat's world, it's not really blasphemy, or swearing as such, just a shocked expletive that everyone uses depending on the cause. There are a lot of different ways of getting your emotions across which vary from mouth to mouth, occasion to occasion, and from place to place. There is definitely some kind of sliding ettiquette scale on what to say and when, and why, and to whom depending upon whether you are showing mild surprise or shocking behaviour, whether in praise as a blessing or in anger as a curse there is a different, usually religion based approach for covering every level of outburst. It is just like in our own lives are where we should always choose our own words carefully to match your company. 

One weird thing that my old notebooks recorded was the time when I wondered if there might be anything to be gleaned in noting who swears, by what name, and in which location, and to see if could conform to Teccams Theory of Narrative Septagy... nerd stuff, but being a nerd with nothing better to do, I decided to check up exactly how different people swear, and so I got the books out again and made copious notes and lists during yet another Rothfuss re-read.

Tehlu anyway

Tehlu's name is the most commonly used for swearing, as in Tehlu Anyway, Great Tehlu, Merciful Tehlu, Tehlu hold and over-roll us...Tehlu's tits and teeth! Then there are all the occasions when he is implied more generally as in Holy God, God above , (or gods below), God's body, God's ball's, etc. It is easy to add further nuance with the very common Blackened (or burnt) Body of God, which takes us down the path to the rather extreme Black hands, although that one may be more aimed at Encanis rather than at Tehlu....hmmm

All these 'curse words' and more are used in many shapes and forms by all sorts of folk sounding off about many different things across all of the lands to get their own feelings to circumstance across. But then we have just a couple of very minor references to one specific person in one specific location when common folk are heard swearing by God's Mother, and that can only mean Perial. Penny, the landlady from the Penny'sworth inn uses this term in shock horror at seeing a faerie tale coming true before her eyes and a boy in Levenshir turns it into Mother of God in a different kind of shock horror after Kvothe casually broke his arm. They are both so stunned that they can only be reflexively using the curses that come most naturally to members of such a local community, ones that they have grown up with, the ones their parents used when they were younger, and their parents parents too. The ones they know the best, and believe in the most, namely a reference not to the more recent oaths based upon the arrival of The Book of The Path and authourised by the Tehlin church, but to the far older and more local folk heroine and holy woman, the Lady Perial. 

This small anomaly appears quite specific here since these are the only times this line is heard anywhere in the known world and both occasions happen in rural Vintas, giving a spot of local colour to their colourful language. That the local tracker Marten, who appears to be Vintish himself, also uses her name specifically in this part of the world gives us a small triangle made of small clues to reinforce the larger theory that Perial was a local Vintish legend. This is how common folk speak, local knowledge for local people. Before the church arrived on the scene some four hundred years ago with their book of the path and their iron law, Lady Perial was the focus of some authentic Vintish prayers going back for centuries. A small crumb perhaps, but if someone is following a breadcrumb trail then we must asssume that since it is DungeonMaster Pat laying the way as carefully as ever then ancient Vintas is where our trail is meant to lead us. This would also tally up with our suppositions on Perial's faith stemming from her mothers teachings of this last remaining lethani remembering corner of Ergen, long before Menda's exploits happened in far off Atur. Kote uses both 'Mother of God' and 'God's Mother' during the Waystone interludes which makes her his favoured deity too although he might just be following local custom and cleverly blending in to unremarkable nuance in the village. This last idea may also hint at the elusive Newarre being located in rural Vintas too, which is a nice thought to file away for later. 

Lords and Ladies 

So what did I glean from all this incessive note making? The most prevalent of all 'swear words' usage, not including those crafted in Siaru which is a totally different thing, (shit in gods beard etc) is actually Lord and Lady, a phrase uttered by no less that Ten different characters across both books, which is twice as much voice as it's nearest rival gets. This group can further be split into three subsets as it is also found to be the single most used 'swearphrase' at the Waystone Inn where it is used by Aaron, Graham[twice], and Old Cob for everything from Cob's comlimenting good whiskey to Aaron complimenting Mr Kote's ability as a liar, although, perhaps surprisingly, it is not used by modern day Kote himself. At the university, however, young Kvothe does indeed call upon the Lord and Lady, as do a trio of other very powerful folk who know all sorts of secret and important things, 'Demon' Devi and the multiple name knowers, the masters Elxa Dal and Elodin. 

The final triad are all from the Severen nobility, the trio of Alveron, Stapes and Bredon, which gives this 'Lord and Lady' a bit of class. 

'Lord and Lady' he swore under his breath, 'I hate to be seen doddering about'

'It's good to have you back. Lord and Lady but I've been worried about you.'

'Lord and Lady' he said, 'Tell me you got this from some old fashioned farmer?.'

All these men have the blood of assorted historical Vintish Lords and Ladies running through their own veins. Stapes is a manservant and he is undoubtedly common but the much more refined nobility of Alveron and Bredon should never be expected to resort to swearing anymore than master Lorren would, but Kvothe seems to have an effect on such people and in his presence, they do both swear once each, and this exact same 'Lord and Lady' is the only instance of these lords letting their mask slip and uttering any such vocabulary aloud. The mysterious Bredon's response is the most useful of the three in pinpointing a possible source to this enigmatic phrase since we are also told that Bredon's estates are found to the North of Severen, as are those of ancestral Vint where Alveron and Stapes were boyhood friends. The North is also where we find the Lackless family estates, which starts to focus our search a little more closely. I should also point out that Southern Vintish Ambrose Jakis also only deigns to 'swear' once, and that is a very refined 'Praise Tehlu and all his Angels' a sentence that is unique to just him... and Denna. 

So who are the mysterious Lord and his Lady? After all, they must be a specific couple to excite such a general reference, and one so ingrained in Vintish society. Lanre and Lyra were proclained as Our Lord and Our Lady respectively, but that is ancient, forbidden and long forgotten history from Belen, far away down the old stone road from here and also harking from the unremembered days of Ergen and they cannot in any seriousness be considered as this Vintish based husband and wife. The current ruling monarch and his new queen might fit, but it turns up on the Maer's lips before his own wedding day, and this is an old saying about old things. He might have meant Roderick? Perhaps... although Maer thinks that the king is a bastard which cocks that idea up quite a lot. Stapes family name is quite old, but lacks any pedigree to go on but given that our search is focussing upon Vintas then the most likely scenario is that they are actually talking about Lady Perial and her son Lord Tehlu. These are the two most universally acknowledged Important names from Vintas and atur both, and with a history as old as the four corners themselves, but then again, they were mother and son, not husband and wife. Of course, Tehlu has departed the world now, he only spent seven span in his birth village, but Lady Perial with her Ergen roots and Holy reputation is still a renowned local Vintish figurehead who's name would also be quite an acceptable blasphemy to use in front of the Tehlin Church and the invading Aturan Empire both. 

Now you see the levels that we have to resort to to prove a point. The Lady in Lord and Lady is becoming 99% certain to be reference to Holy Perial ...and probably to her hat too. But Lord Tehlu was her Son, not her husband, and so that puts a bit of a spoke in our wheel, and as Trapis tells us Perial was an unmarried mother at the time of her annunciation. Menda came and went from her life in only seven span, and then spent seven years off chasing Encanis before he died on the wheel in foreign Atur. So what was Perial up to in during all this time? I think I can feel a new tin-foil story coming on...one that might even reveal the truth about the Princess Aerial... perhaps?

 We can confirm that the keys and keyholes work is the same manner as we see  Meluan use on the outer layer that protects the Lackless box. Perhaps that box is now inside this box, that guess holds quite a lot of promise but again that answer doesn't satisfy since the last we see of Kvothe he is now desperastly trying to unlock his own box without success so we must assume that there is something important to him inside that he has suddenly decided that he needs back again. Would the loeclos box help him in any way? Unlikely. Would the contents of the Lockless box help him in any way? That's a really good question which would make the unlocking of the Lockloss box  to be our unseen third lock in the 3LBOKTB. Perhaps the strangest thing about his attempts to open it himself is that it is only after we see him straining his muscles to lift the lid does he bother to go and fetch the keys from their hiding place and unlock it in a conventional way, and that is arse about face way of doing things. I have no explanation as to why Pat told us that strange detail but I am quite happy to wait for book 3 to find out, as we all should be.

We should take a tip from the Maer when asking whats in the box. 

Perhaps the loeclos box is inside the 3LB

The most likely answer is