‘I am listening, Your Majesty.’
‘How did this… Infanta get here? Who took care of it?’
‘From the fortress Nastrog,’ the leader of intelligence furrowed his brow. ‘She was escorted by guards of your Majesty under the leadership…’
‘Thats now what I am asking, cholera on you. How did she appear in Nastrog, in Verden? Who delivered her to the castle? Who commands it? The one, who sent the report? Some Godyvron?’
‘Godyvron Pitcair,’ immediately answered Vattier de Rideaus. ‘He was of course, informed of the task, that Rience and count Cahir aep Caellach had. Three days after the events on Thanedd Island, two people appeared in Nastrog. To be exact, one human and one halfelf. They supposedly had orders from Rience and count Cahir and gave the infant to commander Godyvron.’
‘Aha’ smiled the Emperor, so that Kalous felt the frost on his back. ‘Vilgefortz promised me he would catch Cirilla on Thanedd. Rience assured me the same. Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach had detailed orders. And look, three days after the incident on that mage island, they deliver Cirilla do Nastrog over Yarra. Not Vikgefortz, not Rience or Cahir, but a human and halfelf. Godyvron, of course did not think about imprisoning them?’
‘No. Punish him for it, Your Majesty?’
‘Not needed.’
Kalous swallowed his saliva. Emhyr was silent, rubbed his forehead, the giant brilliant in his ring shone like a star. The the Emperor lifted his head:
‘Vattier.’
‘Your Majesty?’
‘Declare alert to all your men. I order the capture of Rience and Cahir. I presume, both are hiding in areas that are not under control of our forces, possibly with the Scoia’tael or elves of Enid Findabair. Both arrested, are to be immediately brought to Darn Rauch and be passed to torture and law.’
‘What should we ask them, Your Majesty?’ Vattier narrowed his eyes, pretending not to notice the sudden pallor of Seneschal Ceallach.
‘Nothing, Later, once they soften up, I will interrogate them personally. Skellen!’
‘Im listening.’
‘As soon as that damn Xarthisius finds something out – of course if that bumbling kopromant is able to do what I ordered – then immediatelly organise a search for a person in the location that the mage pinpointed. You will get the description. It is possible, that the astrologer will mark a location under our rule. In that case, everyone will be at your disposal who lives in that area – all civilian and military apparatus. An affair of absolute priority. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. Can I…’
‘No you cannot. Sit and listen, Kalous. Xarthisius probably wont find anything out. The person, that we are looking for, is almost certainly in a foreign land and under magical protection, I bet on the same place as our mysteriously disappeared friend Vilgefortz of Roggeveen. Because of that, Skellen, you will prepare and train a special squad, which you will lead. You will choose the best people. They have to be prepared for anything – and they cannot be superstitous. That means they must not fear magic.’
Kalous raised his brows.
‘Your new squad,’ finished Emhyr, ‘will be tasked to invade and captrure the, for now unknown, but surely perfectly hidden and guarded hideout of sorcerer Vilgerfortz, our former friend and ally.’
‘I understand,’ said Kalous calmly. ‘If I understand correctly, the person that we are looking for, if we find in that hideout, not even a hair can fall off the head.’
‘You understand correctly.’
‘And Vilgefortz?’
‘Him can,’ smiled cruely the Emperor. ‘His hair must even fall – together with the head. That also applies to other sorcerers who will be in his hideout. Without exception.’
‘I understand. Who will be tasked with finding Vilgefortz‘s hideout?’
You, Kalous.’
Stefan Skellen and Vattier de Rideaux exchanged short glances. Emhyr comfortably leaned back in his seat.
‘Is everything clear? Then… What is the matter Ceallach?’
‘Your Majesty…’ said the Seneschal imploringly, who has not joined the converstaion until now. ‘I beg for pardon…’
‘There is no pardon for traitors. There is no mercy for those, who did not fulfill my will.’
‘Cahir… My son…’
‘Your son,’ narrowed Emhyr his eyes. ‘I dont know yet, what your son caused. I want to believe that his guilt is only because of his stupidity and incapability and that its not conscious treason. If that is the truth, he will be beheaded, and not crushed on the wheel.’
‘Your Majesty! Cahir is no traitor… Cahir would not…’
‘Enough, Ceallach, not a word more. The guilty will be punished! They tried to deceive me and that is unforgivable. Vattier, Skellen, in an hour, you will return here for my signed instructions, orders and powers of Attorney, then immediately start carrying out your tasks. And one more thing: I dont have to, I hope, tell you that that girl, whom you saw in the throne room today, must be regarded as Cirilla, Princess of Cintra, Infanta of Rowan.By everyone. It is a national secret!
The present men all looked at the Emperor with astonishment. Deithwen Addan yn Carn aep Morvudd smiled:
You dont understand? Instead of the real Cirilla of Cintra, they delivered me some shade. Those traitors, probably assumed I dont know her. But I know the true Ciri. I would recognize her even in the end of the world and in the darkness of the underworld!’
“The puzzling thing about the unicorn is that, although extremely timid and fearful of people, if it encounters a young maiden, who has not physically been with a man, in intimacy, it will approach her, kneel, and without fear place its head in her lap. It is said in past and ancient times that there were maidens who did not have real dealings with them. For many years they went without marriage and practiced chastity, so they could serve as decoys for unicorn hunters. Soon, however it was learned that the unicorns would only approach maidens that were young. Being a wise beast, the unicorn inevitably understood that those that remained a virgin were suspicious and unnatural.”
Physiologus
CHAPTER SIX
She was awakened by the heat. The heat burned her skin like an executioners iron.
She could not move her head, something held her back. She tugged and howled in pain, feeling the tears and splits from the skin on her temple. She opened her eyes. The stone on which she rested her head was brown from the dry clotted blood. She touched her temple; her fingers felt a hard, cracked crust. Her scab had been attached to the stone, and now flowed with blood from where she had pulled her head away. Ciri coughed and spat out sand and long sticky saliva. She raised herself up on her elbows; she looked around, then lay back down.
On all sides she was surrounded by a rocky plain, a red-grey, cut by ravines and faults, with mounds of stones piled here and there and huge boulders in bizarre shapes. On the plain, high above, the hot sun hung huge, golden yellow in the sky which distorted the view completely with it blinding glare and vibrating air.
‘Where am I?’
She carefully touched the swollen wound on her temple. It hurt. I hurt a lot. I must have hit a pretty large rock, she thought. I must have taken a good tumble through the air. Suddenly she noticed her clothes torn and ripped, and found new sources of pain in her kidneys, back, arms and thighs. During the fall, sand and pebbles had gotten everywhere: in her hair, ears, mouth, also in her eyes, which were stinging and weeping. Her fingers and elbows burned where they had been scrapped to the bone. Slowly and gently she straightened her legs and groaned again, because her left knee answered with a sharp pain. She massaged the knee through her leather pants, she saw no swelling. When trying to breathe she felt an ominous stinging in her side, and when trying to bend her torso she almost screamed, a strong spasm emanated from her lower back. Just bruised, she thought. I don’t think I have broken anything. If I had a broken bone it would hurt more. I’m only a little battered. I can stand. I can get up.
Gradually, with slow
movements, she assumed a kneeling position clumsily trying to protect her injured knee. She then got on all fours, moaning, panting and groaning. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, she stood up. Only to collapse immediately back to the stones, due to a way of dizziness. Feeling a violent wave of nausea, she lay on her side. The rocks burned like fiery red coals.
‘I can’t get up…’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t… I’ll burn under this sun…’
Her head was throbbing a dull, terrible, unstoppable throb. Every movement made the pain grow worse, so Ciri stopped moving. She covered her head with her arms, but the heat soon became unbearable. She realized she would have to escape it. Overcoming the pain in her body, squinting from the pain in her temples, she crawled on all fours towards a huge rock shaped by the wind to resemble a large mushroom, whose shapeless hat gave a bit of shade at its base. She curled herself into a ball, coughing and sniffing.
She lay there a long time, until the sun wandered across the sky and caught up to her again pouring its fire down from above. She shifted to the other side of the boulder, only to realize that it did make a difference. The sun was at its zenith, the mushroom stone gave almost no shade. She pressed her hands to her temples which were bursting with pain.
She was awakened by a shuddering across her whole body. The fireball-like sun had lost its blinding glare. It was now hanging low over the jagged toothed rocks, it was orange. The heat had receded somewhat.
Ciri sat down with effort and looked around. Her headache had eased and was no longer blinding. She massaged her head and noticed that the heat had dried the wound on her temple, turning it into a hard slippery crust. Still, her whole body hurt, she felt that she did not have one healthy place on it. She cleared her throat, sand gritted between her teeth. She tried to spit the sand out, to no avail. She leaned back against the mushroom shaped boulder, still warm from the sun. It had finally stopped scorching, she thought. Now when the sun goes down, it will no longer be unbearable, and soon…
Soon night will fall.
She gave a shudder. Where the hell am I? How do I get out of here? And which way? Where do I go? Would it be better to stay here and hope they find me? After all they’ll search for me. Geralt. Yennefer. They won’t abandon me…
Again and again she tried to spit but could not. Then she understood.
Thirst.
She remembered. Even during her flight, thirst had tormented her. She remembered that on the saddle of the horse she mounted when fleeing the Tower of Gulls was a wooden canteen. At the time she had no time to untie and drink from it. And now the canteen was gone. There was nothing. Nothing but scorched stones, the tightness that the wound to her head caused her skin, the pain in her body and the dryness of her throat, which was not possible to relieve by even swallowing salvia.
I cannot stay here. I must find water. If I don’t find water I’m going to die.
She tried to get up, resting her hands on the mushroom shaped stone. She rose slowly. She took a step. And with a yelp collapsed and feel on her hands and knees again, her body spasmed in a dry retch. A dizziness gripped her so strong that she was forced to lie on the ground again.
I am powerless. And alone. Again. Everyone has betrayed me, abandoned me, left me alone. Just like before…
Ciri felt her throat constrict in an invisible vice, her jaw ache and her cracked lips began to tremble. She recalled the words of Yennefer. “There is nothing more disgusting that the sight of a sorceress crying.” But no one can see me here… No one…
Curled up under the mushroom shaped stone, Ciri sobbed, and started a dry, awful cry. Without tears.
When she tried to open her swollen eyelids, they were reluctant to open, she realized that the heat had receded more, and the sky was no longer orange but a cobalt blue dotted with thin strips of white clouds. The disc of the red sun was lower than before, but it still poured heat over the desert in waves. Or maybe the stones were radiating heat?
She sat down, noting that the pain in her skull and her beaten body had ceased to bother her. At that moment, nothing compared with the growing pit in her stomach and the terrible itching that forced her to cough her throat raw.
I mustn’t surrender, she thought. I cannot give up. As in Kaer Morhen, I need to get up, I have to defeat, overcome, and suppress this pain and weakness. I have to get up now and go. Now at least I know in which direction to go. Where the sun is now in the west is where I need to go. I have to find water and something to eat. I have to. Otherwise I’ll perish. This is a desert. I flew to a desert. That thing I entered in the Tower of Gulls, it was a magic portal, a device with which you can move over long distances…
The portal in Tor Lara was a strange portal. When she rushed to the last floor, there was nothing, not even windows, just bare walls covered with fungus. And on one wall burned an irregular oval filled with an opalescent glow. She had hesitated, but the portal had attracted her, summoned her, even begged her. And there was no other way out, only the brilliant oval. She had closed her eyes and stepped into it.
Then there was a blinding brightness and a raging maelstrom, an explosion took her breath away crushing her ribs. She remembered the flight in the silence, the cold and emptiness, then another flash and the howling of the air. Above her blue, below a blurry greyness…
She dropped in flight, just as the sea eagle drops the fish into the air when it is too heavy for it. When she hit the stones, she’d lost consciousness. She was not sure for how long.
I had read in the temple about portals, she recalled, shaking the sand from her hair. In the books it mentioned teleporters were warped and chaotic, leading to nowhere to hurling people into unknown places. Surely the portal in the Tower of Gulls was one of these. I’ve been thrown to the end of the world No one knows where I am. No one is going to look for me. If I stay here I die.
She stood up. Mobilizing all her strength and relying on the rock, she took a step. Then a second. Then a third.
Those first steps made her realize that her right boot buckles were broken and the drooping buckle prevented her from walking. She sat down, this time voluntarily, without falling and did a review of her clothing and equipment.
The first thing she discovered was her sword. She had forgotten about it as the scabbard had slipped back. On her belt, next to the sword, as always, was a small purse. A gift from Yennefer. Containing “what a lady should always have with her.” Ciri untied the knot holding it closed. Unfortunately the standard equipment of a lady did not reflect the situation in which she found herself now. The purse contained a tortoiseshell comb, a nail-file, and a package wrapped in linen that contained a jade pot of hand lotion. Ciri, immediately began to pour the cream onto her face and parched lips, and immediately licked her hungry lips of the ointment. Without thinking she licked clean the entire jar, enjoying the soothing touch of the fat and moisture. The chamomile, amber and camphor that were used to flavour the cream tasted disgusting, but acted as a stimulant.
She tied the broken buckle of her boot with a strip torn from her sleeve, got up and took a few steps to try it out. She tore off some more and made a bandage that protected her temple and battered sunburned forehead.
She got up, straightened her belt and shifted her sword around on her hips, instinctively she drew it from the scabbard, and ran her thumb down the blade. It was sharp. She already knew it.
I have a weapon, she thought. I’m a witcher. No, I will not die here. As for hunger, I’ve endured fasting for two days in the temple of Melitele. And water… I have to find water. I’ll walk until I find some. This ploughing desert has to stop somewhere, if it is a big desert I would have noticed it in the maps I studied with Jarre. Jarre.. I wonder what he is doing now…
I’m decided. I’m going west, I’ll see where the sun sets, it’s the only safe location. At the end of the day, I never err, I always know which way to go. If need be, I’ll walk all night. I’m a witcher. As soon as my strength returns, I will run the Trail. Then I will soon get to th
e edge of the desert. I will endure. I must endure… Ha, I’m sure Geralt has been in more than one desert like this, who knows maybe he has been in others that are even worse…
I’m going.
The scenery did not change during the first hour of her march. All around there was nothing but grey-red rocks, sharp, which made her legs slip, forcing her to be cautious. A few shrubs, dry and thorny with their twisted stems spread towards her from cracks in the ground. When she first encountered the shrubs, Ciri stopped thinking that it would be possible to find some leaves or a young branch that she could suck or chew. But the bush had nothing but thorns that pricked her fingers. It did not serve to even make a cane. The second and third bush were exactly alike, she ignored them, passing without stopping.
Night fell quickly. The sun set over the broken teeth of the horizon, the sky glowed red and purple. With the sunset came the cold. At first she welcomed it with joy, as it relieved her burned skin. However, it soon became even colder, and Ciri’s teeth began to chatter. She quickened her pace, hoping that it would warm her up, but the effort again awoke the pain in her knee. She started to limp. The downside of the sun sinking completely below the horizon was the immediate darkness that followed. There was a new moon and the stars that dotted the sky did not help. Soon, Ciri could no longer see the road ahead. A few time she stumbled, painfully scraping the skin on her wrists. Twice her foot slipped into a crack in the rock and she only escaped a broken ankle thanks to her training as a witcher which helped against falls. The march in the dark was impossible.
She sat down on a flat block of basalt, feeling a paralysing despair wash over her. She had no idea whether the direction she walked was the same as where the sun disappeared behind the horizon. She had completely lost sight of the glow, which had guided her through the first hours after sunset. All around her was only velvety, impenetrable blackness. And a piercing cold. Cold, which paralysed, biting the joints, which forced her to shrink and put her head between her arms that ached because of the awkward position. Ciri began to miss the sun, but knew that its return would come crashing onto the rocks making them glow, which she would not be able to endure. In which she would not be able to continue the march. Again her throat felt gripped with the desire to weep, and embrace the wave of despair and hopelessness. But this time despair and hopelessness turned into rage.
The Time of Contempt Page 26