The Slow Regard of Silent Things Quiz

Answer: A fragile young woman who was once a University student

Here's how the narrator first describes Auri in "The Name of the Wind", Patrick Rothfuss's first book: "Auri was ... certainly no more than twenty. She dressed in tattered clothes that left her arms and legs bare, was shorter than me by almost a foot. She was thin... Her cheeks were hollow and her bare arms waifishly narrow. Her long hair was so fine that it trailed her, floating in the air like a cloud."

She doesn't talk about her past; when her one friend asks too many questions, she disappears for a time, saying that she doesn't like remembering. It isn't unusual, though, for students at the University to suffer mental breakdowns of one sort or another; magical knowledge is dangerous. "The Slow Regard of Silent Things" is told from Auri's perspective and confirms her former student status -- but the details of her past are still a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

Answer: A network of tunnels and disused rooms beneath the University

The University, located just across the river from the town of Imre, is a magical place -- literally. Students study a wide range of magical arts, from alchemy to naming to sympathy, and thus confront mysteries every day. So it's appropriate that the University is built atop a mystery: a vast, sprawling underground complex that encompasses both forgotten chambers and utility tunnels. No one at the University is quite comfortable underground, except for Auri, who has made it her piece the world. "The Underthing" is her name for it.

It is her home, and her vocation.

Answer: Kvothe

Here's a small snippet of how Kvothe describes himself in Patrick Rothfuss's 2007 novel: "My name is Kvothe .... I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me."

"The Name of the Wind" and its sequel, "The Wise Man's Fear", are the first two parts of Kvothe's story, as told by Kvothe himself to a visiting chronicler. It's in those books that we meet Auri, one of Kvothe's most enigmatic and intriguing friends. They met irregularly by moonlight, Kvothe says; Kvothe would play music, and they would exchange mundane gifts made extraordinary by poetic descriptions. This book, "The Slow Regard of Silent Things", is a rare glimpse into that past world from the perspective of someone else.

Answer: Mantle

In Mantle, everything is in order; everything is there for Auri. Here's how it looks to Auri, toward the beginning of the book: "She saw her perfect bed. Just her size. She checked her sitting chair. Her cedar box. Her tiny silver cup ... Nothing was nothing else. Nothing was anything it shouldn't be." It's a safe place, a retreat, a mantle Auri can pull around herself for warmth and comfort.

Answer: A brass gear with a broken tooth

The pool of water is in a room called the Twelve, whose nature changes with the light. There are pipes in the pool, and other dangers, but treasures wash in and can be retrieved by a patient diver. On this finding day, Auri finds an armbone, a belt with a silver buckle, a twig with a snail as a passenger, a key, and a brass gear so heavy and awkward that she nearly drowns carrying it back up to the surface.

But she doesn't let go. She is well rewarded, for this turns out to be a very special object: "It was full of true answers and love and hearthlight.

It was beautiful."

Answer: Nurturing the Underthing by placing objects where they will be most happy

For Auri, inanimate objects are anything but. Everything has some personality, some desire, some need that must be met if the Underthing is to be squared away. Take keys, for example, like the one she found in the pool: "Keys were hardly known for their complacency, and this one was near howling for a lock."

Mostly Auri's work involves moving objects from one place to another, according to where she feels they will be most happy. (Never for her own use or pleasure; that would be selfish, a thought she finds viscerally revolting.) With everything in its proper place, a room feels right; with something just a little misplaced, the room feels subtly wrong to her, like a mistaken note in a harmony.

Answer: Naming each room

The key opens an oaken door leading off of Wains, an ornately decorated corridor blocked by rubble at both ends. Exploring this new terrain, Auri first passes through a nearly perfect sitting room that she will eventually name Annulet, then up a crumbling stairwell, then into a thoroughly disarrayed bedroom that she instantly calls Tumbrel. The stairwell's name is harder; that will take some time. She muses on the problem:

"Some places had names. Some places changed, or they were shy about their names. Some places had no names at all, and that was always sad. It was one thing to be private. But to have no name at all? How horrible. How lonely ... she couldn't tell what sort of place this was. Shy or secret? Lost or lonely? A puzzling place. It made her grin all the wider."

Answer: She takes it, and leaves another item in exchange

She trades lace for honeycomb, a silver bowl for a crock of olives, a piece of her now-broken gear for an eiderdown mattress. None of these trades are negotiated in any way, or anticipated by the other participant. Auri simply arrives, surveys, and makes the trade that feels right, whether she's in the basement of a busy inn or a just-excavated room that's been abandoned for decades. Sometimes no trade feels right.

She often returns to a fine sheet in Tumbrel that she desperately covets, but only to leave it in place: it's happiest where it is.

Answer: Fixing leaks in pipes that serve the University

The bootprints, which Auri spots while borrowing tools to fix a leak herself, are not new; they mark a past intrusion, one she would hate to see repeated. Musing on the various ways that plumbing can go wrong, Auri reflects on the dire consequences: "It led to the same thing. Folk finding keys. Folk opening doors. Strangers in her Underthing, shining their unseemly lights about. Their smoke. The braying of their voices. Looking at everything without a single thought of what a look entails. Poking things and messing them about without the slightest sense of what was proper."

The University's plumbing runs through various parts of the Underthing, especially the room Auri calls Rubric; their utilities are a legacy of centuries past.

Answer: A candle

Auri spends many of her treasures on this gift: beeswax, laurel fruit, pitch, and lavender. She knows how to make this candle the ordinary, careful, workaday way, but by this time she has very little time remaining before Kvothe's arrival -- not enough to do the job right. So she remembers her power, remembers things she learned at the University even though the Masters could not teach her.

"She knew the true shape of the world. All else was shadow and the sound of distant drums ... Auri stood, and in the circle of her golden hair she grinned and brought the weight of her desire down full upon the world. And all things shook. And all things knew her will. And all things bent to please her."

It is an astounding end to the book of a young woman who spends her days cocooning herself underground, treading lightly on the world.