‘Hmm . . . It’s best I start from the beginning.’
‘Oh, no,’ she interrupted him. ‘If it’s all that complicated then wait. An aftertaste in my mouth, dishevelled hair, sticky eyes and other morning inconveniences strongly affect my perceptive faculties. Go downstairs to the bath-chamber in the cellar. I’ll be there in a minute and then you’ll tell me everything.’
‘Yennefer, I don’t want to be persistent but time is pressing. My friend—’
‘Geralt,’ she interrupted sharply, ‘I climbed out of bed for you and I didn’t intend to do that before the chime of midday. I’m prepared to do without breakfast. Do you know why? Because you brought me the apple juice. You were in a hurry, your head was troubled with your friend’s suffering, you forced your way in here, and yet you thought of a thirsty woman. You won me over, so my help is not out of the question. But I won’t do anything without hot water and soap. Go. Please.’
‘Very well.’
‘Geralt.’
‘Yes,’ he stopped on the threshold.
‘Make use of the opportunity to have a bath yourself. I can not only guess the age and breed of your horse, but also its colour, by the smell.’
IV
She entered the bath-chamber just as Geralt, sitting naked on a tiny stool, was pouring water over himself from a bucket. He cleared his throat and modestly turned his back to her.
‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ she said, throwing an armful of clothing on the hook. ‘I don’t faint at the sight of a naked man. Triss Merigold, a friend, says if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.’
He got up, wrapping a towel round his hips.
‘Beautiful scar,’ she smiled, looking at his chest. ‘What was it? Did you fall under the blade in a saw-mill?’
He didn’t answer. The sorceress continued to observe him, tilting her head coquettishly.
‘The first witcher I can look at from close up, and completely naked at that. Aha!’ She leant over, listening. ‘I can hear your heart beat. It’s very slow. Can you control how much adrenalin you secrete? Oh, forgive me my professional curiosity. Apparently, you’re touchy about the qualities of your own body. You’re wont to describe these qualities using words which I greatly dislike, lapsing into pompous sarcasm with it, something I dislike even more.’
He didn’t answer.
‘Well, enough of that. My bath is getting cold.’ Yennefer moved as if she wanted to discard her coat, then hesitated. ‘I’ll take my bath while you talk, to save time. But I don’t want to embarrass you and, besides, we hardly know each other. So then, taking decency into account—’
‘I’ll turn round,’ he proposed hesitantly.
‘No. I have to see the eyes of the person I’m talking to. I’ve got a better idea.’
He heard an incantation being recited, felt his medallion quiver and saw the black coat softly slip to the floor. Then he heard the water splashing.
‘Now I can’t see your eyes, Yennefer,’ he said. ‘And that’s a pity.’
The invisible sorceress snorted and splashed in the tub. ‘Go on.’
Geralt finished struggling with his trousers, pulling them on under his towel, and sat on the bench. Buckling up his boots, he related the adventure by the river, cutting out most of the skirmish with the catfish. Yennefer didn’t seem the type to be interested in fishing.
When he got to the part where the cloud-creature escaped from the jar, the huge soapy sponge froze.
‘Well, well,’ he heard, ‘that’s interesting. A djinn in a bottle.’
‘No djinn,’ he contested. ‘It was some variant of scarlet mist. Some new, unknown type—’
‘The new and unknown type deserves to be called something,’ said the invisible Yennefer. ‘The name djinn is no worse than any other. Continue, please.’
He obeyed. The soap in the tub foamed relentlessly as he continued his tale, and the water overflowed. Something caught his eye. Looking more carefully he discerned outlines and shapes revealed by the soap covering the invisible Yennefer. They fascinated him to the extent that he was struck dumb.
‘Go on!’ a voice coming from nothingness, from above the outlines which so absorbed him, urged. ‘What happened next?’
‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘I chased him away, that djinn, as you call him—’
‘How?’ The ladle rose and poured water. The soap vanished, as did the shapes.
Geralt sighed. ‘With an incantation,’ he said. ‘An exorcism.’
‘Which one?’ The ladle poured water once more. The witcher started to observe the ladle’s action more diligently because the water, albeit briefly, also revealed this and that. He repeated the incantation, substituting the vowel ‘e’ with an intake of breath, according to the safety rule. He thought he’d impress the sorceress by knowing the rule so he was surprised when he heard laughter coming from the tub.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘That exorcism of yours . . .’ The towel flew off its peg and suddenly began to wipe the rest of the outlines. ‘Triss is going to kill herself laughing when I tell her. Who taught you that, witcher? That incantation?’
‘A priestess from Huldra’s sanctuary. It’s a secret language of the temple—’
‘Secret to some.’ The towel slapped against the brim of the tub, water sprayed on to the floor and wet footprints marked the sorceress’s steps. ‘That wasn’t an incantation, Geralt. Nor would I advise you to repeat those words in other temples.’
‘What was it, if not an incantation?’ he asked, watching two black stockings outline shapely legs, one after the other.
‘A witty saying.’ Frilly knickers clung to nothing in an unusually interesting manner. ‘If rather indecent.’
A white shirt with an enormous flower-shaped ruffle fluttered upwards and outlined Yennefer’s body. She didn’t, the witcher noticed, bother with the whalebone nonsense usually worn by women. She didn’t have to.
‘What saying?’ he asked.
‘Never mind.’
The cork sprang from a rectangular crystal bottle standing on the stool. The bath-chamber started to smell of lilac and gooseberries. The cork traced several circles and jumped back into place. The sorceress fastened the cuffs of her shirt, pulled on a dress and materialised.
‘Fasten me up.’ She turned her back to him while combing her hair with a tortoiseshell comb. He noticed that the comb had a long, sharp prong which could, if need be, easily take the place of a dagger.
He took a deliberately long time fastening her dress, one hook at a time, enjoying the scent of her hair, which fell halfway down her back in a black cascade.
‘Going back to the bottle creature,’ said Yennefer, putting diamond earrings in her ears, ‘it’s obvious that it wasn’t your funny incantation that drove him away. The hypothesis that he discharged his fury on your friend and left seems closer to the truth.’
‘Probably,’ Geralt agreed, gloomily. ‘I don’t think he flew off to Cidaris to do away with Valdo Marx.’
‘Who’s Valdo Marx?’
‘A troubadour who considers my companion, also a poet and musician, a talentless wastrel who panders to the taste of the masses.’
The sorceress turned round with a strange glimmer in her eyes. ‘Could it be that your friend managed to express a wish?’
‘Two. Both stupid. Why do you ask? This fulfilling of wishes by genies is nonsense, after all, djinns, spirits of the lamp—’
‘Clearly nonsense,’ repeated Yennefer with a smile. ‘Of course. It’s an invention, a fairy tale devoid of any sense, like all the legends in which good spirits and fortune tellers fulfil wishes. Stories like that are made up by poor simpletons, who can’t even dream of fulfilling their wishes and desires themselves. I’m pleased you’re not one of them, Geralt of Rivia. It makes you closer in spirit to me. If I want something, I don’t dream of it – I act. And I always get what I want.’
‘I don’t doubt it. Are you ready?’
‘I am.’ The sorceress
finished fastening the straps of her slippers and stood up. Even in high heels, she wasn’t impressively tall. She shook her hair which, he found, had retained its picturesque, dishevelled and curling disarray despite the furious combing.
‘I’ve got a question, Geralt. The seal which closed the bottle . . . Has your friend still got it?’
The witcher reflected. He had the seal, not Dandilion. But experience had taught him that sorcerers shouldn’t be told too much.
‘Hmm . . . I think so.’ He deceived her as to the reason for his delay in replying. ‘Yes, he probably does. Why? Is the seal important?’
‘That’s a strange question,’ she said sharply, ‘for a witcher and a specialist in supernatural monstrosities. Someone who ought to know that such a seal is important enough not to touch. And not to let their friend touch.’
He clenched his jaw. The blow was well aimed.
‘Oh, well.’ Yennefer changed her tone to a much gentler one. ‘No one’s infallible and no witcher’s infallible, as we see. Everyone can make a mistake. Well, we can get it on our way. Where’s your comrade?’
‘Here, in Rinde. At Errdil’s. The elf’s.’
She looked at him carefully.
‘At Errdil’s?’ she repeated, contorting her lips in a smile. ‘I know where that is. And I gather his cousin Chireadan is there too?’
‘That’s right. But what—?’
‘Nothing,’ she interrupted, raised her arms and closed her eyes.
The medallion around the witcher’s neck pulsed, tugged at the chain.
On the damp bath-chamber wall shone the luminous outline of a door which framed a swirling phosphorescent milky nothingness. The witcher cursed. He didn’t like magical portals, or travelling by them.
‘Do we have to . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s not far—’
‘I can’t walk the streets of this town,’ she cut him short. ‘They’re not too crazy about me here. They might insult me and throw stones – or do something worse. Several people are effectively ruining my reputation here, thinking they can get away with it. Don’t worry, my portals are safe.’
Geralt had once watched as only half a traveller using a safe portal flew through. The other half was never found. He knew of several cases where people had entered a portal and never been seen again.
The sorceress adjusted her hair again and pinned a pearl-embossed purse to her belt. The purse looked too small to hold anything other than a handful of coppers and a lipstick, but Geralt knew it was no ordinary purse.
‘Hold me. Tighter. I’m not made of china. On our way!’
The medallion vibrated, something flashed and Geralt suddenly found himself in black nothingness, in penetrating cold. He couldn’t see, hear or feel anything. Cold was all that his senses could register.
He wanted to curse, but didn’t have time.
V
‘It’s an hour since she went in,’ Chireadan turned over the hourglass standing on the table. ‘I’m starting to get worried. Was Dandilion’s throat really so bad? Don’t you think we ought to go and have a look?’
‘She made it quite clear that she didn’t want us to.’ Geralt finished his mug of herb tea, grimacing dreadfully. He valued and liked the settled elves for their intelligence, calm reserve and sense of humour, but he couldn’t understand or share their taste in food or drink. ‘I don’t intend to disturb her, Chireadan. Magic requires time. It can take all day and night, as long as Dandilion gets better.’
‘Oh well, you’re right.’
A sound of hammering came from the room next door. Errdil, as it turned out, lived in a deserted inn which he had bought intending to renovate and then open with his wife, a quiet, taciturn elf. Vratimir, who had taken to their company after a night spent with the elves in the guardroom, volunteered to help with the repairs. He got down to renovating the wood panelling, working alongside the married couple, as soon as the confusion created by the witcher and Yennefer leaping through the wall in the flash of a portal had subsided.
‘I didn’t think you’d find it so easy, if I’m to be honest,’ Chireadan went on. ‘Yennefer isn’t the most spontaneous of people when it comes to help. Others’ troubles don’t particularly bother her, and don’t disturb her sleep. In a word, I’ve never heard of her helping anyone if there wasn’t something in it for her. I wonder what’s in it for her to help you and Dandilion.’
‘Aren’t you exaggerating?’ The witcher smiled. ‘I didn’t have such a bad impression of her. She likes to demonstrate her superiority, it’s true, but compared with other wizards, with that whole arrogant bunch, she’s walking charm and kindliness personified.’
Chireadan also smiled. ‘It’s almost as though you thought a scorpion were prettier than a spider,’ he said, ‘because it’s got such a lovely tail. Be careful, Geralt. You’re not the first to have judged her like that without knowing she’s turned her charm and beauty into weapons. Weapons she uses skilfully and without scruple. Which, of course, doesn’t change the fact that she’s a fascinating and good-looking woman. You wouldn’t disagree, would you?’
Geralt glanced keenly at the elf. For a second time, he thought he saw traces of a blush on his face. It surprised him no less than Chireadan’s words. Pure-blooded elves were not wont to admire human women, even the very beautiful ones, and Yennefer, although attractive in her own way, couldn’t pass as a great beauty.
Each to their own taste but, in actual fact, not many would describe sorceresses as good-looking. Indeed, all of them came from social circles where the only fate for daughters would be marriage. Who would have thought of condemning their daughter to years of tedious studies and the tortures of somatic mutations if she could be given away in marriage and advantageously allied? Who wished to have a sorceress in their family? Despite the respect enjoyed by magicians, a sorceress’s family did not benefit from her in the least because by the time the girl had completed her education, nothing tied her to her family anymore – only brotherhood counted, to the exclusion of all else. So only daughters with no chance of finding a husband become sorceresses.
Unlike priestesses and druidesses, who only unwillingly took ugly or crippled girls, sorcerers took anyone who showed evidence of a predisposition. If the child passed the first years of training, magic entered into the equation – straightening and evening out legs, repairing bones which had badly knitted, patching hare-lips, removing scars, birthmarks and pox scars. The young sorceress would become attractive because the prestige of her profession demanded it. The result was pseudo-pretty women with the angry and cold eyes of ugly girls. Girls who couldn’t forget their ugliness had been covered by the mask of magic only for the prestige of their profession.
No, Geralt couldn’t understand Chireadan. His eyes, the eyes of a witcher, registered too many details.
‘No, Chireadan,’ he answered. ‘I wouldn’t disagree. Thank you for the warning. But this only concerns Dandilion. He suffered at my side, in my presence. I didn’t manage to save him and I couldn’t help him. I’d sit on a scorpion with my bare backside if I knew it would help him.’
‘That’s precisely what you’ve got to beware of most.’ The elf smiled enigmatically. ‘Because Yennefer knows it and she likes to make the most of such knowledge. Don’t trust her, Geralt. She’s dangerous.’
He didn’t answer.
Upstairs, the door squeaked. Yennefer stood at the stairs, leaning on the gallery balustrade.
‘Witcher, could you come here?’
‘Of course.’
The sorceress leant her back against the door of one of the few rooms with furniture, where they had put the suffering troubadour.
The witcher approached, watchful and silent. He saw her left shoulder, slightly higher than her right. Her nose, slightly too long. Her lips, a touch too narrow. Her chin, receding a little too much. Her brows a little too irregular. Her eyes . . .
He saw too many details. Quite unnecessarily.
‘How’s Dandilion?’
‘Do you doubt my capabilities?’
He continued watching. She had the figure of a twenty-year-old, although he preferred not to guess at her real age. She moved with natural, unaffected grace. No, there was no way of guessing what she had been like before, what had been improved. He stopped thinking about it; there wasn’t any sense.
‘Your talented friend will be well,’ she said. ‘He’ll recover his vocal talents.’
‘You have my gratitude, Yennefer.’
She smiled. ‘You’ll have an opportunity to prove it.’
‘Can I look in on him?’
She remained silent for a moment, watching him with a strange smile and drumming her fingers on the door-frame. ‘Of course. Go in.’
The medallion on the witcher’s neck started to quiver, sharply and rhythmically.
A glass sphere the size of a small watermelon, aflame with a milky light, lay in the centre of the floor. The sphere marked the heart of a precisely traced nine-pointed star whose arms reached the corners and walls of the small chamber. A red pentagram was inscribed within the star. The tips of the pentagram were marked by black candles standing in weirdly shaped holders. Black candles had also been lit at the head of the bed where Dandilion, covered with sheepskins, rested. The poet was breathing peacefully; he didn’t wheeze or rasp anymore and the rictus of pain had disappeared from his face, to be replaced by an idiotic smile of happiness.
‘He’s asleep,’ said Yennefer. ‘And dreaming.’
Geralt examined the patterns traced on the floor. The magic hidden within them was palpable, but he knew it was a dormant magic. It brought to mind the purr of a sleeping lion, without suggesting how the roar might sound.
‘What is this, Yennefer?’
‘A trap.’
‘For what?’
‘For you, for the time being.’ The sorceress turned the key in the lock, then turned it over in her hand. The key disappeared.
‘And thus I’m trapped,’ he said coldly. ‘What now? Are you going to assault my virtue?’
Introducing the Witcher Page 25