The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1
The Name of the Wind
by Patrick Rothfuss
Contents
CHAPTER EIGHTY Touching Iron
Overview
The draccus, slowed but not stopped by resin, spots Trebon’s harvest fires and charges the town. Kvothe safeguards Denna, then uses sympathy to suppress the spreading blaze and lure the beast with a flaming oak and more resin. He culminates with a daring triple binding that tears the church’s iron wheel down onto the draccus.
Summary
Kvothe lies awake beside the sleeping, denner-drugged Denna as the draccus approaches their hilltop fire. The beast devours the bucket packed with resin and crushes the fires as before, but the drug acts too slowly. When harvest bonfires blaze in Trebon, the draccus turns toward the town and bolts downhill.
Unable to wake Denna beyond brief mutters, Kvothe secures her between the greystones, grabs his gear, and races after the draccus. He arrives to find scattered bonfires, panicked townsfolk, and buildings igniting. Climbing to the town hall cistern, he improvises a submerged heat-eater from a burning shingle and quick sygaldry, dimming the town’s fires to buy time for the bucket lines.
Kvothe then kindles the oak outside the Tehlin church into a blazing lure, drawing the draccus closer. The beast snaps up a second, brand-soaked sack of resin, intensifying its dose.
Exhausted but resolute, Kvothe splits his mind for a triple binding, linking a loden-stone to the draccus’s iron scale and the church’s great iron wheel. He releases the pull, ripping the wheel free; it falls faster than gravity, angling toward the draccus under Kvothe’s sympathetic control.
Who Appears
- KvotheNarrator; safeguards Denna, restrains town fires with sympathy, lures the draccus, and uses a triple binding to pull down the church’s iron wheel.
- DraccusMassive, drug-maddened creature drawn to fire; eats resin twice, rampages in Trebon, then targeted by the falling iron wheel.
- DennaExhausted after denner resin; sleeps through crisis while Kvothe moves her to safety and rushes to confront the draccus.
- Trebon townsfolkPanic as fires spread, form bucket lines; some flee to the locked church while Kvothe buys them time.