Chapter 30: The Dying Maer

ALVERON LOOKED LIKE a man halfway to the grave.

He lay in the same bed where I’d tended him months ago, but the change was startling. His skin had gone grey. Papery. His hands trembled constantly, and when he spoke, his voice was a whisper of what it had been.

“Kvothe.” He managed a smile. “You came.”

“You summoned me.” I sat in the chair beside his bed. “I came as quickly as I could.”

“Not quickly enough, perhaps.” He coughed—a wet, rattling sound. “I fear I don’t have much time left.”

“What are the symptoms?”

“Weakness. Confusion. Pain in my joints and my belly.” He closed his eyes. “The physicians say it’s my heart. My liver. My kidneys. They say everything is failing at once.”

“That’s not natural decline.”

“No.” His eyes opened, and for a moment I saw the sharp intelligence that had made him one of the most powerful men in the Four Corners. “It’s poison. Slow poison, administered in ways we can’t detect. Every precaution we’ve taken has failed.”

I thought of Caudicus—the previous poisoner, who had spent years slowly killing the Maer while pretending to cure him. This felt similar, but also different. More sophisticated. More patient.

“Tell me everything you’ve tried.”

He told me. New cooks. Tasters. Sealed water supplies. Food prepared in isolation and delivered by trusted servants. Nothing had worked. The poison continued its slow work, invisible and unstoppable.

“There has to be a vector,” I said. “Something they’re using to reach you.”

“We’ve considered everything. Food, water, clothing, bedding, the very air I breathe.” His voice was bitter. “Either the poisoner is a ghost, or they have capabilities beyond anything I understand.”

“Or they have access you haven’t considered.”

Alveron’s eyes met mine. “Such as?”

I hesitated. The thought that had occurred to me was dangerous—implicating someone close to him, someone he trusted.

“Your medicines,” I said carefully. “After Caudicus, who manages them?”

“Marte Vandel. A woman of impeccable reputation. She came highly recommended from—” He stopped. Understanding dawned in his eyes. “You think she’s the poisoner.”

“I think she has access. That doesn’t mean she’s guilty.”

“But it makes her suspect.”

“Everyone with access is suspect.” I stood, began pacing. “I need to examine your medicines. Your routine. Everything that touches your body in any way.”

“Stapes will arrange it.” The Maer’s voice was fading. “But Kvothe… there’s something else. Something more important than my life.”

“The door.”

“Meluan found it. In the old Lackless estate, in a chamber that’s been sealed since before the Empire fell.” His hand gripped mine with surprising strength. “She didn’t tell me at first. Didn’t trust me, perhaps. But when she finally showed me…”

“What did you see?”

“A door. Stone and shadow. And something behind it, pressing to get out.” His eyes were haunted. “I felt it, Kvothe. The way you feel a storm before it breaks. Something ancient and terrible, waking after millennia of sleep.”

“The Doors of Stone.”

“Perhaps. Or one of them. I don’t know enough to say.” He released my hand. “But I know this: whatever is behind that door, it’s connected to everything happening. The war. The Chandrian. The song your friend is singing. It’s all part of the same pattern.”

“How do you know about the song?”

“I have ears in many places.” A ghost of his old smile. “The song about Lanre. The one that’s changing how people think. I’ve heard it’s spreading like fire through dry grass.”

“It is.”

“And you believe it’s connected to what’s happening here.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences anymore.”

The Maer nodded slowly. “Then find the connection. Save my life if you can, but more importantly—understand what’s happening. Before it’s too late for all of us.”

I spent the next three days examining everything.

I tested the Maer’s medicines six different ways, drawing on everything I’d learned at the University. Alchemy. Sympathy. Even a rudimentary analysis using the principles of Cealdish accounting—tracking inputs, outputs, and any discrepancies in between.

What I found was disturbing.

The medicines were clean. No poison I could detect, nothing I’d ever seen or heard of. The food supply was equally secure—multiple checkpoints, redundant tasters. The only way to poison the Maer’s meals would be to poison half the estate along with him.

So it wasn’t coming from the obvious sources.

But something else was odd about the medicines. They were too clean. Too perfect. Every compound exactly balanced, every dose precisely measured. That kind of precision was almost inhuman.

So either Marte Vandel was the greatest alchemist alive, or she was following instructions from someone who was. Either way, I wasn’t dealing with an ordinary poisoner.

I thought of Cinder. Of the Chandrian’s ancient knowledge. Of the magics that had been practiced before the University existed.

But another thought nagged at me—something Bredon had said about Master Ash. A patron who moved in unusual circles. Someone who took interest in talented young women. Someone ancient enough to wear scholarship like a mask.

Denna had a patron. She called him Master Ash. She’d never told me much about him, but what if he was connected to this? What if whoever was poisoning the Maer was also the one controlling Denna?

The thought seemed like a stretch at first. But the more I turned it over, the less I could dismiss it. Denna had been changed. Her patron had been teaching her things—dangerous things. And now I was finding poison that required impossible precision, knowledge that shouldn’t exist anymore.

What if Master Ash wasn’t just a patron? What if he was something older? Something that had been playing this game for centuries?

The Chandrian.

I wanted to dismiss the idea, but the pieces kept fitting together in ways I couldn’t ignore.

Cinder killed my parents. The Cthaeh said I’d met him twice. Once at my troupe. But a second time… The Cthaeh said his “anger is like white-hot iron.” It said something about “the man who hurt her.”

Hurt Denna. It had mentioned a patron. It said, “Stick by the Maer and he will lead you to their door.” But it also mentioned someone who beats Denna. Someone who does terrible things to her.

Master Ash could be Cinder—that would explain the ancient knowledge, the manipulation, the cruelty. But he could also be something else entirely. Bredon had suggested as much.

Unless Bredon himself was Master Ash. The thought made me cold. The old man who knew too much, who appeared at convenient moments, who played games within games…

I was overthinking it. I didn’t have enough information to draw conclusions. I forced my mind back to the immediate problem.

Chronicler looked up from his writing. “The timeline here,” he said carefully. “You said the Maer fell ill on Felling. But you also said Bredon came to see you two days before the Maer fell ill, which would put that meeting on—”

“Theden,” Kote said.

“You told me it was Hepten. Earlier. When you described the meeting.”

A pause. The fire crackled.

“Close enough,” Kote said. “The days blur. I was sleeping badly.”

Chronicler’s pen hovered. “Which was it?”

“Does it matter? The sequence is right. The meeting, the illness, the suspicion. Whether it was Theden or Hepten doesn’t change what happened.”

Chronicler made a small mark in the margin of his page and said nothing more.

I needed to talk to Meluan. About the door. About what was behind it. But I’d been told she refused any contact with “the Ruh bastard who corrupted her husband’s judgment.”

I’d have to find another way in. The same way I always did—by being too stubborn to accept no for an answer.

I found Meluan in the Lackless family chapel.

She was kneeling before an altar, her head bowed, her lips moving in silent prayer. The chapel was ancient—older than the Maer’s estate, older perhaps than Severen itself. The stones were worn smooth by centuries of worshippers, and the air smelled of incense and time.

“You shouldn’t be here.” She didn’t look up. “I gave orders.”

“Orders that don’t apply to me.”

“Everything applies to you, Kvothe.” She finally raised her head, and her eyes were red from weeping. “You who destroyed my family’s reputation. You who seduced my husband with your Ruh tricks. You who—”

“I saved your husband’s life.”

“And now he’s dying again. Convenient, isn’t it?” She stood, her face twisted with contempt. “Perhaps you’re the poisoner. Perhaps this is all part of some elaborate scheme to—”

“I’m not the poisoner.”

“How do I know that?”

“Because if I wanted the Maer dead, he’d be dead.” The words came out harder than I intended. “I don’t need elaborate schemes. I don’t need slow poisons. I could have killed him a dozen times over, and no one would have known.”

She stared at me. “You think that’s reassuring?”

“I think it’s honest.” I took a step toward her. “I didn’t come here to fight with you, Meluan. I came because there’s something happening that’s bigger than both of us. Bigger than your hatred of my blood, bigger than my history with your family.”

“And what would that be?”

“The door. The one you found in the old estate.”

She went very still.

“How do you know about that?”

“Your husband told me. Before he lost consciousness.”

“He shouldn’t have—”

“He’s dying. He’ll tell me anything if he thinks it will save his life.” I met her eyes. “What did you find, Meluan? What’s behind that door?”

For a long moment, she didn’t answer. Her face was a mask, revealing nothing.

Then something cracked. Just slightly. Just enough.

“I don’t know what’s behind it,” she said quietly. “But I know what’s written on it. Words in a language that hasn’t been spoken for three thousand years.”

“What words?”

“A warning.” Her voice was barely audible. “‘Here sleeps what must not wake. Here waits what must not walk. Here dreams the end of all songs.’”

I felt ice in my veins.

“The end of all songs.”

“Yes.” She looked at me, and there was fear in her eyes—genuine fear, overwhelming her hatred. “And the door is opening. Whatever we’ve been guarding all these centuries… it’s starting to break free.”