‘How did it go?’ she asked. ‘What was it, on the midden?’
‘A zeugl, as I suspected,’ Geralt said, pulling off his boots, discarding his clothes and lowering a foot into the tub. ‘Bloody hell, Yen, that’s cold. Can’t you heat the water?’
‘No,’ the sorceress, moving her face towards the looking glass and instilling something into her eye using a thin glass rod. ‘That spell is bloody wearying and makes me feel sick. And the cold will do you good after the elixirs.’
Geralt did not argue. There was absolutely no point arguing with Yennefer.
‘Did the zeugl cause you any problems?’ The sorceress dipped the rod into a vial and dropped something into her other eye, twisting her lips comically.
‘Not particularly.’
From outside the open window there was a thud, the sharp crack of wood breaking and an inarticulate voice, tunelessly and incoherently repeating the chorus of a popular, obscene song.
‘A zeugl,’ said the sorceress as she reached for another vial from the impressive collection on the table, and removed the cork from it. The fragrance of lilac and gooseberries filled the room. ‘Well, well. Even in a town it’s easy for a witcher to find work, you don’t have to roam through the wilds at all. You know, Istredd maintains it’s becoming a general rule. The place of every creature from the forests and swamps that becomes extinct is occupied by something else, some new mutation, adapted to the artificial environment created by people.’
As usual, Geralt winced at the mention of Istredd. He was beginning to be sick of Yennefer’s admiration for Istredd’s brilliance. Even if Istredd was right.
‘Istredd is right,’ Yennefer continued, applying the lilac-and-gooseberry perfumed something to her cheeks and eyelids. ‘Look for yourself; pseudorats in sewers and cellars, zeugls in rubbish dumps, neocorises in polluted moats and sewers, taggirs in millponds. It’s virtually symbiosis, don’t you think?’
And ghouls in cemeteries, devouring corpses the day after the funeral, he thought, rinsing off the soap. Total symbiosis.
‘Yes,’ the sorceress put aside the vials and jars, ‘witchers can be kept busy in towns, too. I think one day you’ll settle in a city for good, Geralt.’
I’d rather drop dead, he thought. But he did not say it aloud. Contradicting Yennefer, as he knew, inevitably led to a fight, and a fight with Yennefer was not the safest thing.
‘Have you finished, Geralt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Get out of the tub.’
Without getting up, Yennefer carelessly waved a hand and uttered a spell. The water from the tub – including everything which had spilled onto the floor or was dripping from Geralt – gathered itself with a swoosh into a translucent sphere and whistled through the window. He heard a loud splash.
‘A pox on you, whoresons!’ an infuriated yell rang out from below. ‘Have you nowhere to pour away your piss? I bloody hope you’re eaten alive by lice, catch the ruddy pox and croak!’
The sorceress closed the window.
‘Dammit, Yen,’ the Witcher chuckled. ‘You could have chucked the water somewhere else.’
‘I could have,’ she purred, ‘but I didn’t feel like it.’
She took the oil lamp from the table and walked over to him. The white nightdress clinging to her body as she moved made her tremendously appealing. More so than if she were naked, he thought.
‘I want to look you over,’ she said, ‘the zeugl might have injured you.’
‘It didn’t. I would have felt it.’
‘After the elixirs? Don’t be ridiculous. After the elixirs you wouldn’t even have felt an open fracture, until the protruding bones started snagging on hedges. And there might have been anything on the zeugl, including tetanus and cadaveric poison. If anything happens there’s still time for counter-measures. Turn around.’
He felt the soft warmth of the lamp’s flame on his body and the occasional brushing of her hair.
‘Everything seems to be in order,’ she said. ‘Lie down before the elixirs knock you off your feet. Those mixtures are devilishly dangerous. They’ll destroy you in the end.’
‘I have to take them before I fight.’
Yennefer did not answer. She sat down at the looking glass once more and slowly combed her black, curly, shimmering locks. She always combed her hair before going to bed. Geralt found it peculiar, but he adored watching her doing it. He suspected Yennefer was aware of it.
He suddenly felt very cold, and the elixirs indeed jolted him, numbed the nape of his neck and swirled around the bottom of his stomach in vortices of nausea. He cursed under his breath and fell heavily onto the bed, without taking his eyes off Yennefer.
A movement in the corner of the chamber caught his attention. A smallish, pitch-black bird sat on a set of antlers nailed crookedly to the wall and festooned in cobwebs.
Glancing sideways, it looked at the Witcher with a yellow, fixed eye.
‘What’s that, Yen? How did it get here?’
‘What?’ Yennefer turned her head. ‘Oh, that. It’s a kestrel.’
‘A kestrel? Kestrels are rufous and speckled, and that one’s black.’
‘It’s an enchanted kestrel. I made it.’
‘What for?’
‘I need it,’ she cut him off. Geralt did not ask any more questions, knowing that Yennefer would not answer.
‘Are you seeing Istredd tomorrow?’
The sorceress moved the vials to the edge of the table, put her comb into a small box and closed the side panels of the looking glass.
‘Yes. First thing. Why?’
‘Nothing.’
She lay down beside him, without snuffing out the lamp. She never doused lights; she could not bear to fall asleep in the dark. Whether an oil lamp, a lantern, or a candle, it had to burn right down. Always. One more foible. Yennefer had a remarkable number of foibles.
‘Yen?’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘When are we leaving?’
‘Don’t be tedious,’ she tugged the eiderdown sharply. ‘We’ve only been here three days, and you’ve asked that question at least thirty times. I’ve told you, I have things to deal with.’
‘With Istredd?’
‘Yes,’
He sighed and embraced her, not concealing his intentions.
‘Hey,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve taken elixirs . . .’
‘What of it?’
‘Nothing,’ she giggled like a schoolgirl, cuddling up to him, arching her body and lifting herself to allow her nightdress to slip off. As usual, the delight in her nakedness coursed in a shudder down his back and tingled in his fingers as they touched her skin. His lips touched her breasts, rounded and delicate, with nipples so pale they were visible only by their contours. He entwined his fingers in her hair, her lilac-and-gooseberry perfumed hair.
She succumbed to his caresses, purring like a cat, rubbing her bent knee against his hip.
It rapidly turned out – as usual – that he had overestimated his stamina regarding the witcher elixirs, had forgotten about their disagreeable effects on his body. But perhaps it’s not the elixirs, he thought, perhaps it’s exhaustion brought on by fighting, risks, danger and death? Exhaustion, which has simply become routine? But my body, even though artificially enhanced, doesn’t succumb to routine. It reacts naturally. Just not when it’s supposed to. Dammit.
But Yennefer, as usual, was not discouraged by a mere trifle. He felt her touch him, heard her purr right by his ear. As usual, he involuntarily pondered over the colossal number of occasions she must have used that most practical of spells. And then he stopped pondering.
As usual it was anything but ordinary.
He looked at her mouth, at its corners, twitching in an unwitting smile. He knew that smile well, it always seemed to him more one of triumph than of happiness. He had never asked her about it. He knew she would not answer.
The black kestrel sitting on the antlers beat its wings and snapped its curved beak. Yennefer
turned her head away and sighed. Very sadly.
‘Yen?’
‘It’s nothing, Geralt,’ she said, kissing him. ‘It’s nothing.’
The oil lamp glimmered and flickered. A mouse was scratching in the wall, and a deathwatch beetle in the dresser clicked softly, rhythmically and monotonously.
‘Yen?’
‘Mhm?’
‘Let’s get away. I feel bad here. This town has an awful effect on me.’
She turned over on her side, ran a hand across his cheek, brushing some strands of hair away. Her fingers travelled downwards, touching the coarse scars marking the side of his neck.
‘Do you know what the name of this town means? Aedd Gynvael?’
‘No. Is it in the elven speech?’
‘Yes. It means a shard of ice.’
‘Somehow, it doesn’t suit this lousy dump.’
‘Among the elves,’ the sorceress whispered pensively, ‘there is a legend about a Winter Queen who travels the land during snowstorms in a sleigh drawn by white horses. As she rides, she casts hard, sharp, tiny shards of ice around her, and woe betide anyone whose eye or heart is pierced by one of them. That person is then lost. No longer will anything gladden them; they find anything that doesn’t have the whiteness of snow ugly, obnoxious, repugnant. They will not find peace, will abandon everything, and will set off after the Queen, in pursuit of their dream and love. Naturally, they will never find it and will die of longing. Apparently here, in this town, something like that happened in times long gone. It’s a beautiful legend, isn’t it?’
‘Elves can couch everything in pretty words,’ he muttered drowsily, running his lips over her shoulder. ‘It’s not a legend at all, Yen. It’s a pretty description of the hideous phenomenon that is the Wild Hunt, the curse of several regions. An inexplicable, collective madness, compelling people to join a spectral cavalcade rushing across the sky. I’ve seen it. Indeed, it often occurs during the winter. I was offered rather good money to put an end to that blight, but I didn’t take it. There’s no way of dealing with the Wild Hunt . . .’
‘Witcher,’ she whispered, kissing his cheek, ‘there’s no romance in you. And I . . . I like elven legends, they are so captivating. What a pity humans don’t have any legends like that. Perhaps one day they will? Perhaps they’ll create some? But what would human legends deal with? All around, wherever one looks, there’s greyness and dullness. Even things which begin beautifully lead swiftly to boredom and dreariness, to that human ritual, that wearisome rhythm called life. Oh, Geralt, it’s not easy being a sorceress, but comparing it to mundane, human existence . . . Geralt?’ She laid her head on his chest, which was rising and falling with slow breathing.
‘Sleep,’ she whispered. ‘Sleep, Witcher.’
III
The town was having a bad effect on him.
Since first thing that morning everything was spoiling his mood, making him dejected and angry. Everything. It annoyed him that he had overslept, so the morning had become to all intents and purposes the afternoon. He was irritated by the absence of Yennefer, who had left before he woke up.
She must have been in a hurry, because the paraphernalia she usually neatly put away in boxes was lying on the table, randomly strewn like dice cast by a soothsayer performing a prophecy ritual. Brushes made from delicate horsehair: the large ones used for powdering her face, the smaller ones which she used to apply lipstick to her mouth, and the utterly tiny ones for the henna she used to dye her eyelashes. Pencils and sticks for her eyelids and eyebrows. Delicate silver tweezers and spoons. Small jars and bottles made of porcelain and milky glass, containing, as he knew, elixirs and balms with ingredients as banal as soot, goose grease and carrot juice, and as menacingly mysterious as mandrake, antimony, belladonna, cannabis, dragon’s blood and the concentrated venom of the giant scorpion. And above all of that, all around, in the air, the fragrance of lilac and gooseberry, the scent she always used.
She was present in those objects. She was present in the fragrance.
But she was not there.
He went downstairs, feeling anxiety and anger welling up in him. About everything.
He was annoyed by the cold, congealed scrambled egg he was served for breakfast by the innkeeper, who tore himself away for a moment from groping a girl in the kitchen. He was annoyed that the girl was no more than twelve years old. And had tears in her eyes.
The warm, spring weather and cheerful chatter of the vibrant streets did not improve Geralt’s mood. He still did not enjoy being in Aedd Gynvael, a small town which he deemed to be a nasty parody of all the small towns he knew; it was grotesquely noisier, dirtier, more oppressive and more irritating.
He could still smell the faint stench of the midden on his clothes and in his hair. He decided to go to the bathhouse.
In the bathhouse, he was annoyed by the expression of the attendant, looking at his witcher medallion and his sword lying on the edge of the tub. He was annoyed by the fact that the attendant did not offer him a whore. He had no intention of availing himself of one, but in bathhouses everybody was offered them, so he was annoyed by the exception being made for him.
When he left, smelling strongly of lye ash soap, his mood had not improved, and Aedd Gynvael was no more attractive. There was still nothing there that he could find to like. The Witcher did not like the piles of sloppy manure filling the narrow streets. He did not like the beggars squatting against the wall of the temple. He did not like the crooked writing on the wall reading: ‘ELVES TO THE RESERVATION!’.
He was not allowed to enter the castle; instead they sent him to speak to the mayor in the merchants’ guild. That annoyed him. He was also annoyed when the dean of the guild, an elf, ordered him to search for the mayor in the market place, looking at him with a curious contempt and superiority for someone who was about to be sent to a reservation.
The market place was teeming with people; it was full of stalls, carts, wagons, horses, oxen and flies. On a platform stood a pillory with a criminal being showered by the throng in mud and dung. The criminal, with admirable composure, showered his tormentors with vile abuse, making little effort to raise his voice.
For Geralt, who possessed considerable refinement, the mayor’s reason for being among this clamour was absolutely clear. The visiting merchants from caravans included bribes in their prices, and thus had to give someone the bribes. The mayor, well aware of this custom, would appear, to ensure that the merchants would not have to go to any trouble.
The place from which he officiated was marked by a dirty-blue canopy supported on poles. Beneath it stood a table besieged by vociferous applicants. Mayor Herbolth sat behind the table, displaying on his faded face scorn and disdain to all and sundry.
‘Hey! Where might you be going?’
Geralt slowly turned his head. He instantly suppressed the anger he felt inside, overcame his annoyance and froze into a cold, hard shard of ice. He could not allow himself to become emotional. The man who stopped him had hair as yellow as oriole feathers and the same colour eyebrows over pale, empty eyes. His slim, long-fingered hands were resting on a belt made from chunky brass plates, weighed down by a sword, mace and two daggers.
‘Aha,’ the man said. ‘I know you. The Witcher, isn’t it? To see Herbolth?’
Geralt nodded, watching the man’s hands the whole time. He knew it would be dangerous to take his eyes off them.
‘I’ve heard of you, the bane of monsters,’ said the yellow-haired man, also vigilantly observing Geralt’s hands. ‘Although I don’t think we’ve ever met, you must also have heard of me. I’m Ivo Mirce. But everyone calls me Cicada.’
The Witcher nodded to indicate he had heard of him. He also knew the price that had been offered for Cicada’s head in Vizima, Caelf and Vattweir. Had he been asked his opinion he would have said it was a low price. But he had not been asked.
‘Very well,’ Cicada said. ‘The mayor, from what I know, is waiting for you. You may go on. But you leave your sw
ord, friend. I’m paid here, mark you, to make sure etiquette is observed. No one is allowed to approach Herbolth with a weapon. Understood?’
Geralt shrugged indifferently, unfastened his belt, wrapped it around the scabbard and handed the sword to Cicada. Cicada raised the corners of his mouth in a smile.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘How meek, not a word of protest. I knew the rumours about you were exaggerated. I’d like you to ask for my sword one day; then you’d see my answer.’
‘Hi, Cicada!’ the mayor called, getting up. ‘Let him through! Come here, Lord Geralt, look lively, greetings to you. Step aside, my dear merchants, leave us for a moment. Your business dealings must yield to issues of greater note for the town. Submit your entreaties to my secretary!’
The sham geniality of the greeting did not deceive Geralt. He knew it served exclusively as a bargaining ploy. The merchants were being given time to worry whether their bribes were sufficiently high.
‘I’ll wager Cicada tried to provoke you,’ Herbolth said, raising his hand nonchalantly in response to the Witcher’s equally nonchalant nod. ‘Don’t fret about it. Cicada only draws his weapon when ordered to. True, it’s not especially to his liking, but while I pay him he has to obey, or he’ll be out on his ear, back on the highway. Don’t fret about it.’
‘Why the hell do you need someone like Cicada, mayor? Is it so dangerous here?’
‘It’s not dangerous, because I’m paying Cicada,’ Herbolth laughed. ‘His fame goes before him and that suits me well. You see, Aedd Gynvael and the other towns in the Dogbane valley fall under the authority of the viceroys of Rakverelin. And in recent times the viceroys have changed with every season. No one knows why they keep changing, because anyway every second one is a half-elf or quarter-elf; accursed blood and race. Everything bad is the fault of the elves.’
Geralt did not add that it was also the fault of the carters, because the joke, although well-known, did not amuse everybody.
Introducing the Witcher Page 39