Long ramble incoming, this started off with me wondering where the moon actually is when Kvothe is in the Fae, and has somehow ended up with the Mauthen vase being a map to the Doors of Stone and Iax…

So bear with me.

Something has always bothered me about the moon in the Fae.

When Kvothe follows Felurian into the Fae, the moon is full in the mortal world. Felurian has crossed into the mortal world under the full moon, Kvothe follows her back into the Fae, and there is no moon in the Fae sky.

Felurian lives in the twilight, and later, while Kvothe is there, the moon eventually appears.

“foolish sweet, there is only one moon. we have been waiting on her. she will help us enbighten your shaed.”

So they have actually been waiting for the moon to arrive in the Fae.

We know from Felurian that there is only one moon, and it moves between the two worlds,

“so now she moves ’twixt mortal and the fae.”

When the moon is full in the mortal world, the Fae feel its pull towards the mortal, which is how Kvothe encounters Felurian in the first place. When there is no moon in the mortal sky, the moon is in the Fae and the pull goes the other way.

But I think I’ve been looking at this wrong.

What if the moon doesn’t just move between the mortal world and the Fae?

What if it physically travels through the Fae?

The Fae doesn’t work like the mortal world. Day and night seem to be geographical there. Kvothe can literally walk Dayward and the sky gets progressively brighter until he is standing in full daylight. He can travel in the opposite direction, Darkward, and the world gets progressively darker.

Felurian lives somewhere between the two, in the twilight.

So what if the moon moves through those geographical regions too?

When the moon is full in the mortal world, the moon isn’t visible in the Fae at all.

Then as the mortal moon begins to wane, the moon starts entering the Fae.

Kvothe actually seems to witness this. He enters the Fae under a full mortal moon and there is no moon there, but later the moon arrives while he is with Felurian in the twilight. She has literally been “waiting on her.”

So maybe as the moon disappears from the mortal sky, it is not simply becoming more visible in a fixed position in the Fae sky.

It is travelling geographically further into the Fae.

Full moon in the mortal world, no moon in the Fae.

Then the moon begins to enter the Fae through the lighter/twilight regions.

As the mortal moon becomes half, the moon has travelled further into the Fae.

As it becomes a sliver in the mortal world, it has travelled further Darkward again.

Then finally the moon disappears completely from the mortal sky, because it is now entirely within the Fae, at the deepest and darkest end of its journey.

So the phases we see in the mortal world could effectively tell you where the moon is geographically within the Fae.

And that made me look at the Mauthen vase completely differently.

Nina says,

“There was one with no face, just a hood with nothing inside. There was a mirror by his feet and there was a bunch of moons over him. You know, full moon, half moon, sliver moon.”

Full moon.

Half moon.

Sliver moon.

Where is the dark moon?

There isn’t one.

Instead there is Haliax.

A hood with nothing inside.

What if the moons aren’t telling us when to find Haliax?

What if they’re telling us how to find him?

I think the vase might actually be showing a route through the Fae.

You enter the Fae when the moon is full in the mortal world.

Then you follow the moon.

As the mortal moon wanes, the moon travels geographically further through the Fae and you travel with it, from the lighter regions, through the half moon location, towards the sliver moon and progressively Darkward.

Eventually the mortal moon disappears completely.

You have reached the dark moon.

And that is where you find Haliax.

The missing moon on the vase isn’t necessarily missing at all. Haliax occupies its position, the man whose hood contains nothing but darkness.

And then there is the mirror at his feet.

This becomes even stranger when you look at what Felurian actually says about the darker Fae,

“most fae are sly and subtle folk who step as soft as chimney smoke. some go among your kind enshaedn, glamoured as a pack mule laden, or wearing gowns to fit a queen.”

Then,

“many of the darker sort would love to use you for their sport. what keeps these from moonlit trespass? iron, fire, mirror-glass. elm and ash and copper knives, solid-hearted farmer’s wives who know the rules of games we play and give us bread to keep away.”

Moonlit trespass.

Mirror-glass.

And on the vase Haliax has a progression of moons above him and a mirror by his feet.

I don’t think the mirror is just a symbol for reflection.

I think it’s a boundary.

But I also think it is a door.

A barrier separating the ordinary Fae from another part of the world which has been folded away and sealed off.

Which brings me back to Iax and the Doors of Stone.

Felurian tells Kvothe about the greatest of the shapers stealing the moon, and we know Iax was put beyond the Doors of Stone.

I don’t think Iax and Lanre are the same person.

Lanre fought at Drossen Tor, died during the victory where the enemy was defeated and put beyond the Doors of Stone, and Lyra called Lanre back afterwards.

So in this theory Iax is still there.

Beyond the Doors.

But maybe “beyond the Doors of Stone” isn’t simply a prison somewhere in the normal Fae.

Maybe part of the Fae itself was folded away.

Jax’s story gives us the folding house, a place with impossible geography where rooms and directions don’t work as they should. The Fae itself seems to work in much the same way.

So perhaps when Iax was defeated, they didn’t just lock him in a room.

They folded part of the world around him.

Cut it off.

Bound it.

And the mirror on the Mauthen vase represents the boundary between ordinary Fae and that folded-off world.

The mirror keeps things from crossing, just as Felurian tells us mirror-glass prevents “moonlit trespass,” but it is also the doorway to whatever exists on the other side.

I think Kvothe has already seen the entrance.

In his dream after his troupe is killed, he comes across the strange stone structures, two circles of standing stones, and eventually a stone doorway filled with shadow.

I don’t think that image is there by accident.

What if that is the entry point?

The stone circles are the way into the Fae, but they have to be entered under the correct lunar condition.

Full moon.

You pass through the stone doorway and enter the Fae.

Then the moon becomes your compass.

You follow it as it moves geographically further and further Darkward.

Full.

Half.

Sliver.

Dark.

And at the end of the route you reach Haliax and the Seven.

Their lair.

Except it isn’t really a lair.

It’s a guard post.

They are standing in front of the mirror/boundary which keeps Iax and his folded world sealed away.

Which brings me back to the Lackless rhyme,

“Seven things stand before
The entrance to the Lackless door.”

Maybe we’ve all been trying too hard to turn those seven things into ingredients needed to open the door.

What if it is much more literal?

Seven things stand before the door.

The Seven.

The Chandrian.

They are guarding it.

Haliax is the boundary guardian, and the Chandrian are there to make sure whatever is behind that mirror stays there.

Shehyn says,

“Alaxel bears the shadow’s hame.”

A hame is part of a harness. Maybe Haliax doesn’t simply wear shadow as a curse, he is bound to it.

And perhaps Iax has his own binding.

He stole part of the moon’s name.

What if by doing that Iax didn’t just bind the moon to himself, he bound himself to the moon too?

Even after he was defeated and his part of the world was folded away, the connection remained.

So every month the moon comes back towards him.

It leaves the mortal world, enters the Fae and travels progressively Darkward, getting closer and closer to the boundary of Iax’s prison.

At the dark moon, when there is nothing visible in the mortal sky, the moon is entirely in the Fae and has reached the furthest point of its journey.

Maybe it reaches the mirror.

But it cannot cross.

Iax stole the moon, started a war over her and ended up trapped on the other side of a barrier, with the moon returning to the edge of his prison over and over again but never able to reach him.

Which is a fairly horrible fairy-tale punishment.

And maybe that’s also when the binding is weakest.

The moon is closest to Iax, the connection between them is strongest, and Haliax and the Seven have to guard the boundary.

That would explain why Haliax occupies the position of the missing dark moon on the vase.

Follow the moon until it disappears.

That is where you find him.

This might also explain why the Chandrian are so bloody determined to destroy accurate information about themselves.

People already know about the Chandrian. Children sing songs about them. Everyone knows their signs. Simply knowing they exist can’t be the problem.

But what if the old stories contain directions?

The Lackless rhyme tells you there is a door and that Seven stand before it.

Hespe’s story tells you about Jax, the folding house and stealing the moon.

Felurian tells you how the moon actually moves between the worlds and that Iax is beyond the Doors of Stone.

The Adem preserve the names and signs of the Seven.

The old stories about greystones preserve the fact that stone doors can lead into the Fae, particularly under certain moon conditions.

Then the Mauthen vase gives you the actual route.

Full moon.

Half moon.

Sliver moon.

Haliax.

Mirror.

Put all those scraps together and somebody might actually be able to find the place.

Maybe the Chandrian aren’t destroying their history because they don’t want people knowing who they are.

They’re destroying directions.

Arliden was putting the old story back together.

The Mauthens dug up something that showed it pictorially.

And Kvothe has spent his entire life collecting the other pieces without realising what they actually mean.

Then there is the question of what Iax has been doing for the thousands of years he has been trapped there.

Because he is a Shaper.

If part of the Fae was folded away around him, why would he have stopped shaping?

Maybe he didn’t.

Maybe he has spent thousands of years shaping his own cut-off piece of the world.

And maybe the things he made are still trapped in there with him.

Scrael.

Skin dancers.

And whatever other horrible things exist in the frame story that apparently shouldn’t be loose in the mortal world.

That could explain why these things don’t seem like the Fae Kvothe knows.

They aren’t from Felurian’s Fae.

They aren’t necessarily even from the ordinary Dark Fae.

They’re from Iax’s Fae.

The bit that was folded away.

Then Kvothe does what Kvothe does.

He finds the entrance.

He enters under the right moon.

He follows the moon through the Fae, travelling further and further Darkward.

He reaches the Seven.

He finds Haliax.

He thinks he has finally found the monsters who murdered his family.

And he destroys them.

Then he breaks the mirror.

Or breaks whatever binding the mirror represents.

And opens the Doors of Stone.

Except Haliax wasn’t keeping Kvothe out.

He was keeping Iax in.

Suddenly Iax’s folded world is connected to the ordinary Fae again, and through the Fae to the mortal world.

The things Iax has been shaping for thousands of years can get out.

Which brings me to the scrael.

Right at the beginning of NOTW, with the scrael now loose in the mortal world, Kvothe looks up and sees,

“a thousand stars glittering in the deep velvet of a night with no moon.”

No moon in the mortal world.

According to Felurian, the moon is in the Fae.

And if this theory is right, it is at the furthest, darkest end of its geographical journey, exactly where the old boundary used to be.

Except now the guardian is gone.

The mirror is broken.

And the door is open.

There is another mirror quote that probably means absolutely nothing, but I’m throwing it in anyway.

Bredon says,

“Tak reflects the subtle turning of the world. It is a mirror we hold to life.”

And,

“There is a beauty to these things for those with eyes to see it.”

“The subtle turning of the world” is a very interesting choice of words if the trick here is that we have been reading the moon as a clock, when it is actually a compass.

So my current rambling theory is that the Mauthen vase isn’t just a picture of the Chandrian and their signs.

It’s a map.

Enter through the stone door under the full moon.

Follow the moon as it moves geographically through the Fae.

Full, half, sliver.

Keep travelling Darkward until the moon disappears from the mortal sky and reaches the darkest end of the Fae.

There you find Haliax and the Seven standing before the entrance.

At their feet is the mirror, the barrier and doorway to the folded-off part of the Fae.

Behind it is Iax, still bound to the moon and still shaping his own little world after thousands of years.

And if Kvothe eventually breaks that mirror/binding thinking he is finally getting his revenge on Haliax, then he doesn’t just open the Doors of Stone and release Iax.

He opens the door to everything Iax has been making in there with him.

Which might be why, by the time we reach the Waystone Inn, there are scrael crawling around the mortal world and Kvothe is waiting to die.

He didn’t find the Chandrian’s lair.

He found the prison they were guarding.

Just thought this guy looked uncannily like an all white haired Pat.

Not specifically about KKC but I got a chuckle out of it.