An escalating rivalry with a powerful member of the nobility forces Kvothe to leave the University and seek his fortune abroad. In Vintas, he becomes entangled in courtly politics while attempting to curry favour with a powerful noble, uncovering an assassination attempt and coming into conflict with a rival arcanist. Tasked with solving the mystery of who - or what - is waylaying travellers on the King's Road, Kvothe leads a group of mercenaries into the wild. His journey takes him further than he ever expected: into the Fae realm, where he meets Felurian, the faerie woman no man has ever survived; to the legendary Adem mercenaries, who put him on trial before teaching him the way of the sword; and closer to the truth about the Chandrian and the mysterious Amyr. All the while, the gap between the man telling the story in a quiet inn and the legend the world remembers continues to widen. The second day of Kvothe's three-day tale, where the path of the hero begins in earnest.
