‘It is exactly as you say, knight unknown to me,’ Urcheon laughed out loud. ‘That is exactly what I claim! Give me the one who is my destiny!’
‘That,’ said Geralt, ‘will have to be proved.’
‘You dare doubt it? After the queen confirmed the truth of my words? After what you’ve just said?’
‘Yes. Because you didn’t tell us everything. Roegner knew the power of the Law of Surprise and the gravity of the oath he took. And he took it because he knew law and custom have a power which protects such oaths, ensuring they are only fulfilled when the force of destiny confirms them. I declare, Urcheon, that you have no right to the princess as yet. You will win her only when—’
‘When what?’
‘When the princess herself agrees to leave with you. This is what the Law of Surprise states. It is the child’s, not the parent’s, consent which confirms the oath, which proves that the child was born under the shadow of destiny. That’s why you returned after fifteen years, Urcheon, and that’s the condition King Roegner stipulated in his oath.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Geralt of Rivia.’
‘Who are you, Geralt of Rivia, to claim to be an oracle in matters of laws and customs?’
‘He knows this law better than anyone else,’ Mousesack said in a hoarse voice, ‘because it applied to him once. He was taken from his home because he was what his father hadn’t expected to find on his return. Because he was destined for other things. And by the power of destiny he became what he is.’
‘And what is he?’
‘A witcher.’
In the silence that reigned the guardhouse bell struck, announcing midnight in a dull tone. Everyone shuddered and raised their heads. Mousesack watched Geralt with surprise. But it was Urcheon who flinched most noticeably and moved uneasily. His hands, clad in their armour gauntlets, fell to his sides lifelessly, and the spiked helmet swayed unsteadily.
The strange, unknown Force suddenly grew thicker, filling the hall like a grey mist.
‘It’s true,’ said Calanthe. ‘Geralt, present here, is a witcher. His trade is worthy of respect and esteem. He has sacrificed himself to protect us from monsters and nightmares born in the night, those sent by powers ominous and harmful to man. He kills the horrors and monsters that await us in the forests and ravines. And those which have the audacity to enter our dwellings.’ Urcheon was silent. ‘And so,’ continued the queen, raising her ringed hand, ‘let the law be fulfilled, let the oath which you, Urcheon of Erlenwald, insist should be satisfied, be satisfied. Midnight has struck. Your vow no longer binds you. Lift your visor. Before my daughter expresses her will, before she decides her destiny, let her see your face. We all wish to see your face.’
Urcheon of Erlenwald slowly raised his armoured hand, pulled at the helmet’s fastenings, grabbed it by the iron horn and threw it against the floor with a crash. Someone shouted, someone swore, someone sucked in their breath with a whistle. On the queen’s face appeared a wicked, very wicked, smile. A cruel smile of triumph.
Above the wide, semi-circular breastplate two bulbous, black, button eyes looked out. Eyes set to either side of a blunt, elongated muzzle covered in reddish bristles and full of sharp white fangs. Urcheon’s head and neck bristled with a brush of short, grey, twitching prickles.
‘This is how I look,’ spoke the creature, ‘which you well knew, Calanthe. Roegner, in telling you of his oath, wouldn’t have omitted describing me. Urcheon of Erlenwald to whom – despite my appearance – Roegner swore his oath. You prepared well for my arrival, queen. Your own vassals have pointed out your haughty and contemptuous refusal to keep Roegner’s word. When your attempt to set the other suitors on me didn’t succeed, you still had a killer witcher in reserve, ready at your right-hand. And finally, common, low deceit. You wanted to humiliate me, Calanthe. Know that it is yourself you have humiliated.’
‘Enough,’ Calanthe stood up and rested her clenched fist on her hip. ‘Let’s put an end to this. Pavetta! You see who, or rather what, is standing in front of you, claiming you for himself. In accordance with the Law of Surprise and eternal custom, the decision is yours. Answer. One word from you is enough. Yes, and you become the property, the conquest, of this monster. No, and you will never have to see him again.’
The Force pulsating in the hall was squeezing Geralt’s temples like an iron vice, buzzing in his ears, making the hair on his neck stand on end. The witcher looked at Mousesack’s whitening knuckles, clenched at the edge of the table. At the trickle of sweat running down the queen’s cheek. At the breadcrumbs on the table, moving like insects, forming runes, dispersing and again gathering into one word: CAREFUL!
‘Pavetta!’ Calanthe repeated. ‘Answer. Do you choose to leave with this creature?’
Pavetta raised her head. ‘Yes.’
The Force filling the hall echoed her, rumbling hollowly in the arches of the vault. No one, absolutely no one, made the slightest sound.
Calanthe very slowly, collapsed into her throne. Her face was completely expressionless.
‘Everyone heard,’ Urcheon’s calm voice resounded in the silence. ‘You, too, Calanthe. As did you, witcher, cunning, hired thug. My rights have been established. Truth and destiny have triumphed over lies and deviousness. What do you have left, noble queen, disguised witcher? Cold steel?’ No one answered. ‘I’d like to leave with Pavetta immediately,’ continued Urcheon, his bristles stirring as he snapped his jaw shut, ‘but I won’t deny myself one small pleasure. It is you, Calanthe, who will lead your daughter here to me and place her white hand in mine.’
Calanthe slowly turned her head in the witcher’s direction. Her eyes expressed a command. Geralt didn’t move, sensing that the Force condensing in the air was concentrated on him. Only on him. Now he understood. The queen’s eyes narrowed, her lips quivered . . .
‘What?! What’s this?’ yelled Crach an Craite, jumping up. ‘Her white hand? In his? The princess with this bristly stinker? With this . . . pig’s snout?’
‘And I wanted to fight him like a knight!’ Rainfarn chimed in. ‘This horror, this beast! Loose the dogs on him! The dogs!’
‘Guards!’ cried Calanthe.
Everything happened at once. Crach an Craite seized a knife from the table and knocked his chair over with a crash. Obeying Eist’s command Draig Bon-Dhu, without a thought, whacked the back of his head with his bagpipes, as hard as he could. Crach dropped onto the table between a sturgeon in grey sauce and the few remaining arched ribs of a roast boar. Rainfarn leapt towards Urcheon, flashing a dagger drawn from his sleeve. Coodcoodak, springing up, kicked a stool under his feet which Rainfarn jumped agilely, but a moment’s delay was enough – Urcheon deceived him with a short feint and forced him to his knees with a mighty blow from his armoured fist. Coodcoodak fell to snatch the dagger from Rainfarn but was stopped by Prince Windhalm, who clung to his thigh like a bloodhound.
Guards, armed with guisarmes and lances, ran in from the entrance. Calanthe, upright and threatening, with an authoritative, abrupt gesture indicated Urcheon to them. Pavetta started to shout, Eist Tuirseach to curse. Everyone jumped up, not quite knowing what to do.
‘Kill him!’ shouted the queen.
Urcheon, huffing angrily and baring his fangs, turned to face the attacking guards. He was unarmed but clad in spiked steel, from which the points of the guisarmes bounced with a clang. But the blows knocked him back, straight onto Rainfarn, who was just getting up and immobilised him by grabbing his legs. Urcheon let out a roar and, with his iron elbow-guards, deflected the blades aimed at his head. Rainfarn jabbed him with his dagger but the blade slid off the breastplate. The guards, crossing their spear-shafts, pinned him to the sculpted chimney. Rainfarn, who was hanging onto his belt, found a chink in the armour and dug the dagger into it. Urcheon curled up.
‘Dunyyyyyyy!’ Pavetta shrilled as she jumped onto the chair.
The witcher, sword in hand, sprang onto the table and ran towards the fighti
ng men, knocking plates, dishes and goblets all over the place. He knew there wasn’t much time. Pavetta’s cries were sounding more and more unnatural. Rainfarn was raising his dagger to stab again.
Geralt cut, springing from the table into a crouch. Rainfarn wailed and staggered to the wall. The witcher spun and, with the centre of his blade, slashed a guard who was trying to dig the sharp tongue of his lance between Urcheon’s apron and breastplate. The guard tumbled to the ground, losing his helmet. More guards came running in from the entrance.
‘This is not befitting!’ roared Eist Tuirseach, grabbing a chair. He shattered the unwieldly piece of furniture against the floor with great force and, with what remained in his hand, threw himself at those advancing on Urcheon.
Urcheon, caught by two guisarme hooks at the same time, collapsed with a clang, cried out and huffed as he was dragged along the floor. A third guard raised his lance to stab down and Geralt cut him in the temple with the point of his sword. Those dragging Urcheon stepped back quickly, throwing down their guisarmes, while those approaching from the entrance backed away from the remnants of chair brandished by Eist like the magic sword Balmur in the hand of the legendary Zatreta Voruta.
Pavetta’s cries reached a peak and suddenly broke off. Geralt, sensing what was about to happen, fell to the floor watching for a greenish flash. He felt an excruciating pain in his ears, heard a terrible crash and a horrifying wail ripped from numerous throats. And then the princess’s even, monotonous and vibrating cry.
The table, scattering dishes and food all around, was rising and spinning; heavy chairs were flying around the hall and shattering against the walls; tapestries and hangings were flapping, raising clouds of dust. Cries and the dry crack of guisarme shafts snapping like sticks came from the entrance.
The throne, with Calanthe sitting on it, sprang up and flew across the hall like an arrow, smashing into the wall with a crash and falling apart. The queen slid to the floor like a ragged puppet. Eist Tuirseach, barely on his feet, threw himself towards her, took her in his arms and sheltered her from the hail pelting against the walls and floor with his body.
Geralt, grasping the medallion in his hand, slithered as quickly as he could towards Mousesack, miraculously still on his knees, who was lifting a short hawthorn wand with a rat’s skull affixed to the tip. On the wall behind the druid a tapestry depicting the siege and fire of Fortress Ortagar was burning with very real flames.
Pavetta wailed. Turning round and round, she lashed everything and everybody with her cries as if with a whip. Anyone who tried to stand tumbled to the ground or was flattened against the wall. An enormous silver sauce-boat in the shape of a many-oared vessel with an upturned bow came whistling through the air in front of Geralt’s eyes and knocked down the voivode with the hard-to-remember name just as he was trying to dodge it. Plaster rained down silently as the table rotated beneath the ceiling, with Crach an Craite flattened on it and throwing down vile curses.
Geralt crawled to Mousesack and they hid behind the heap formed by Fodcat of Strept, a barrel of beer, Drogodar, a chair and Drogodar’s lute.
‘It’s pure, primordial Force!’ the druid yelled over the racket and clatter. ‘She’s got no control over it!’
‘I know!’ Geralt yelled back. A roast pheasant with a few striped feathers still stuck in its rump, fell from nowhere and thumped him in the back.
‘She has to be restrained! The walls are starting to crack!’
‘I can see!’
‘Ready?’
‘Yes!’
‘One! Two! Now!’
They both hit her simultaneously, Geralt with the Sign of Aard and Mousesack with a terrible, three-staged curse powerful enough to make the floor melt. The chair on which the princess was standing disintegrated into splinters. Pavetta barely noticed – she hung in the air within a transparent green sphere. Without ceasing to shout, she turned her head towards them and her petite face shrunk into a sinister grimace.
‘By all the demons—!’ roared Mousesack.
‘Careful!’ shouted the witcher, curling up. ‘Block her, Mousesack! Block her or it’s the end of us!’
The table thudded heavily to the ground, shattering its trestle and everything beneath it. Crach an Craite, who was lying on the table, was thrown into the air. A heavy rain of plates and remnants of food fell; crystal carafes exploded as they hit the ground. The cornice broke away from the wall, rumbling like thunder, making the floors of the castle quake.
‘Everything’s letting go!’ Mousesack shouted, aiming his wand at the princess. ‘The whole Force is going to fall on us!’
Geralt, with a blow of his sword, deflected a huge double-pronged fork which was flying straight at the druid.
‘Block it, Mousesack!’
Emerald eyes sent two flashes of green lightning at them. They coiled into blinding, whirling funnels from the centres of which the Force – like a battering ram which exploded the skull, put out the eyes and paralysed the breath – descended on them. Together with the Force, glass, majolica, platters, candlesticks, bones, nibbled loaves of bread, planks, slats and smouldering firewood from the hearth poured over them. Crying wildly like a great capercaillie, Castellan Haxo flew over their heads. The enormous head of a boiled carp splattered against Geralt’s chest, on the bear passant sable and damsel of Fourhorn.
Through Mousesack’s wall-shattering curses, through his own shouting and the wailing of the wounded, the din, clatter and racket, through Pavetta’s wailing, the witcher suddenly heard the most terrible sound.
Coodcoodak, on his knees, was strangling Draig Bon-Dhu’s bagpipes with his hands, while, with his head thrown back, he shouted over the monstrous sounds emerging from the bag, wailed and roared, cackled and croaked, bawled and squawked in a cacophony of sounds made by all known, unknown, domestic, wild and mythical animals.
Pavetta fell silent, horrified, and looked at the baron with her mouth agape. The Force eased off abruptly.
‘Now!’ yelled Mousesack, waving his wand. ‘Now, witcher!’
They hit her. The greenish sphere surrounding the princess burst under their blow like a soap bubble and the vacuum instantly sucked in the Force raging through the room. Pavetta flopped heavily to the ground and started to weep.
After the pandemonium a moment’s silence rang in their ears; then, with difficulty, laboriously, voices started to break through the rubble and destruction, through the broken furniture and the inert bodies.
‘Cuach op arse, ghoul y badraigh mal an cuach,’ spat Crach an Craite, spraying blood from his bitten lip.
‘Control yourself, Crach,’ said Mousesack with effort, shaking buckwheat from his front. ‘There are women present.’
‘Calanthe. My beloved. My Calanthe!’ Eist Tuirseach said in the pauses between kisses.
The queen opened her eyes but didn’t try to free herself from his embrace.
‘Eist. People are watching,’ she said.
‘Let them watch.’
‘Would somebody care to explain what that was?’ asked Marshal Vissegerd, crawling from beneath a fallen tapestry.
‘No,’ said the witcher.
‘A doctor!’ Windhalm of Attre, leaning over Rainfarn, shouted shrilly.
‘Water!’ Wieldhill, one of the brothers from Strept, called, stifling the smouldering tapestry with his jacket. ‘Water, quickly!’
‘And beer!’ Coodcoodak croaked.
A few knights, still able to stand, were trying to lift Pavetta, but she pushed their hands aside, got up on her own and, unsteadily, walked towards the hearth. There, with his back resting against the wall, sat Urcheon, awkwardly trying to remove his blood-smeared armour.
‘The youth of today,’ snorted Mousesack, looking in their direction. ‘They start early! They’ve only got one thing on their minds.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Didn’t you know, witcher, that a virgin, that is one who’s untouched, wouldn’t be able to use the Force?’
‘To hell with her virginity,’ muttered Geralt. ‘Where did she get such a gift anyway? Neither Calanthe nor Roegner—’
‘She inherited it, missing a generation, and no mistake,’ said the druid. ‘Her grandmother, Adalia, could raise a drawbridge with a twitch of her eyebrows. Hey, Geralt, look at that! She still hasn’t had enough!’
Calanthe, supported by Eist Tuirseach’s arm, indicated the wounded Urcheon to the guards. Geralt and Mousesack approached quickly but unnecessarily. The guards recoiled from the semi-reclining figure and, whispering and muttering, backed away.
Urcheon’s monstrous snout softened, blurred and was beginning to lose its contours. The spikes and bristles rippled and became black, shiny, wavy hair and a beard which bordered a pale, angular, masculine face, dominated by a prominent nose.
‘What . . .’ stammered Eist Tuirseach. ‘Who’s that? Urcheon?’
‘Duny,’ said Pavetta softly.
Calanthe turned away with pursed lips.
‘Cursed?’ murmured Eist. ‘But how—’
‘Midnight has struck,’ said the witcher. ‘Just this minute. The bell we heard before was early. The bell-ringer’s mistake. Am I right, Calanthe?’
‘Right, right,’ groaned the man called Duny, answering instead of the queen, who had no intention of replying anyway. ‘But maybe instead of standing there talking, someone could help me with this armour and call a doctor. That madman Rainfarn stabbed me under the ribs.’
‘What do we need a doctor for?’ said Mousesack, taking out his wand.
‘Enough.’ Calanthe straightened and raised her head proudly. ‘Enough of this. When all this is over, I want to see you in my chamber. All of you, as you stand. Eist, Pavetta, Mousesack, Geralt and you . . . Duny. Mousesack?’
‘Yes, your Majesty.’
‘That wand of yours . . . I’ve bruised my backbone. And thereabouts.’
‘At your command, your Majesty.’
III
‘. . . a curse,’ continued Duny, rubbing his temple. ‘Since birth. I never found a reason for it, or who did it to me. From midnight to dawn, an ordinary man, from dawn . . . you saw what. Akerspaark, my father, wanted to hide it. People are superstitious in Maecht; spells and curses in the royal family could prove fatal for the dynasty. One of my father’s knights took me away from court and brought me up. The two of us wandered around the world – the knight errant and his squire, and later, when he died, I journeyed alone. I can’t remember who told me that a child-surprise could free me from the curse. Not long after that I met Roegner. The rest you know.’
Introducing the Witcher Page 16