Season of Storms

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  “But the sorcerers of Rissberg go on cross-breeding, mutating and genetically modifying, from dawn to dusk. And they’ve had numerous successes, they’ve produced so many hybrids it takes your breath away. They think all of them are useful, meant to make people’s lives easier and more pleasant. Indeed, they’re one step away from creating a woman with a perfectly flat back, so you can fuck her from behind and have somewhere to put a glass of champagne and play solitaire at the same time.

  “But let’s return ad rem, that is, to my scientific career. Not having any tangible successes to boast of, I had to create semblances of those successes. It was easy.

  “Do you know that other worlds, different from ours, exist, which the Conjunction of the Spheres cut off access to? Universes, called elemental and para-elemental planes. Inhabited by creatures called demons? The accomplishments of Alzur et consortes were excused by saying they had gained access to those planes and creatures. That they’d managed to invoke and tame such creatures, that they’d wrested from them and gained possession of their secrets and knowledge. I think that’s all nonsense and fabrication, but everybody believes it. And what can one do when faith is so strong? In order for people to believe I was close to discovering the secrets of the old masters, I had to convince Rissberg that I know how to invoke demons. Ortolan, who’d once successfully carried out goetia, didn’t want to teach me that art. He had an insultingly low opinion of my magical abilities and made me remember where my place was. Why, for the good of my career I’ll remember that. They’ll see!”

  The black cat, weary of being stroked, hopped off the sorcerer’s lap. He swept a cold glance of his golden, wide-open eyes over the Witcher. And walked away, tail held aloft.

  Geralt was having more and more difficulty breathing and felt shivers shooting through his body which he couldn’t control at all. The situation looked grave and only two circumstances augured well, giving him reason to hope. Firstly, he was still alive, and where there’s life there’s hope, as his preceptor in Kaer Morhen, Vesemir, used to say.

  The second circumstance that augured well was Degerlund’s swollen ego and conceitedness. It seemed the sorcerer had fallen in love with his own words as a young man and they were clearly the love of his life.

  “Unable, thus, to become a goetic practitioner,” the sorcerer went on, twisting the medallion and endlessly delighting in his own voice, “I had to pretend to be one. Pretend. It’s known that a demon invoked by a goetic practitioner often breaks free and wreaks destruction. So, I did just that. Several times. I slaughtered several settlements. And they believed it was a demon.

  “You’d be astonished how gullible they are. I once decapitated a peasant I had caught and sewed the head of a large goat onto his neck using biodegradable catgut, disguising the stitches with plaster and paint. After that I displayed it to my learned colleagues as a baphomet, the result of an extremely difficult experiment in the field of creating humans with animal heads. Only a partly successful one, because the end result didn’t survive. They believed me, just imagine. I rose even higher in their esteem. They’re still waiting for me to create something that will survive. I confirm their belief in this by constantly sewing some head or other onto a decapitated corpse.

  “But that was a digression. Where was I? Aha, the massacred settlements. As I expected, the masters of Rissberg took them as acts of demons or energumens possessed by them. But I made a mistake, I went too far. No one would have bothered with one settlement of woodcutters, but we slaughtered several. Bue and Bang did most of the work, but I also contributed as much as I could.

  “In the first colony, Yew Trees, or some such, I didn’t exactly distinguish myself. When I saw what Bue and Bang were doing I vomited, puking all over my cloak. It was only fit to be thrown away. A cloak of the best wool, trimmed with silver mink, it cost almost a hundred crowns. But then I did better and better. Firstly, I attired myself suitably, like a labourer. Secondly, I grew fond of those expeditions. It turned out there can be great pleasure in chopping off somebody’s legs and watching the blood spurting from the stump. Or gouging out somebody’s eye. Or tugging a handful of steaming guts from a mutilated belly … I shall be brief. Along with today’s haul it comes to almost two score and ten persons of both sexes of various ages.

  “Rissberg decided that I must be stopped. But how? They still believed in my power as a goetic practitioner and feared my demons. And feared infuriating Ortolan, who was enamoured of me. You were meant to be the solution. The Witcher.”

  Geralt was breathing shallowly. And growing in optimism. His eyesight was much better and the shivers were abating. He was immune to most known toxins, and the venom of the white scorpion—fatal to an ordinary mortal—was no exception, as it was fortunately turning out. The symptoms—which were dangerous at first—were weakening and fading with time, and it was turning out that the Witcher’s body was capable of neutralising the poison quite quickly. Degerlund didn’t know that, or in his conceitedness was underestimating it.

  “I found out they planned to send you to get me. I got slightly cold feet, I don’t deny it, since I’d heard this and that about witchers, and about you in particular. I ran to Ortolan as quickly as I could, crying save me, my beloved master. My beloved master first told me off and muttered something about killing woodcutters being very naughty, that it wasn’t nice and that it was to be the last time. But then he advised me how to trick you and lure you into a trap. How to capture you, using a teleportational sigil that I had tattooed on my manly chest a few years ago. He forbade me, however, from killing you. Don’t think that it’s out of kindness. He needs your eyes. To be precise: the tapetum lucidum, the layer of tissue lining the inside of your eyeballs, a tissue that reflects and intensifies the light directed at the photoreceptor cells, thanks to which you can see at night and in the dark like a cat. Ortolan’s newest idée fixe is to equip the whole of humanity with the ability to see like cats. As part of the preparations for such a lofty goal he intends to graft your tapetum lucidum onto some other mutation he’s creating and the tissue for the implant must be taken from a live donor.”

  Geralt cautiously moved his fingers and hand.

  “Ortolan, an ethical and merciful mage, intends—in his boundless goodness—to spare your life after removing your eyeballs. He thinks that it’s better to be blind than deceased, furthermore he hesitates at the thought of causing pain to your lover, Yennefer of Vengerberg, for whom he feels a great and—in his case, strange—affection. On top of that, he, Ortolan, is now close to completing a magical regenerational formula. In several years you’ll be able to report to him and he’ll restore your eyesight. Are you pleased? No? And rightly. What? Do you want to say something? Please speak.”

  Geralt pretended to be having difficulty moving his lips. Actually, he didn’t have to pretend at all. Degerlund raised himself from his chair and leaned over him.

  “I can’t understand anything.” He grimaced. “In any case, what you have to say doesn’t interest me much. Whereas I, indeed, still have something to announce to you. So, know that clairvoyance is among my numerous talents. I can see quite clearly that when Ortolan restores your freedom to you as a blind man, Bue and Bang will be waiting for you. And you will land up in my laboratory, definitively this time. I shall vivisect you. Mainly for pleasure, although I’m also a little curious as to what’s inside you. When I finish, however, I shall—to use the terminology of the abattoir—portion you up. I shall send your remains piece by piece to Rissberg, as a warning of what befalls my foes. Let them see.”

  Geralt gathered all his strength. There wasn’t much of it.

  “But where Yennefer is concerned—” the sorcerer leaned over even closer, the Witcher could smell his minty breath “—unlike Ortolan, the thought of causing her suffering pleases me inordinately. Thus, I shall cut off the part she valued most in you; I shall send it to her in Vengerb—”

  Geralt placed his fingers in a Sign and touched the sorcerer’s face. Sorel
Degerlund choked and drooped on the chair. He snorted. His eyes had sunk deep into his skull, his head lolled on his shoulder. The medallion chain slipped from his limp fingers.

  Geralt leaped to his feet—or rather tried to. The only thing he managed to do was to fall from the chair onto the floor, his head right in front of Degerlund’s shoe. The sorcerer’s medallion was in front of his nose. With a blue enamel dolphin naiant on a golden oval. The emblem of Kerack. He didn’t have time either to be surprised or to think about it. Degerlund began to wheeze loudly, it was apparent he was about to awaken. The Somne Sign had been effective, but faint and fleeting—the Witcher was too weakened by the effect of the venom.

  He stood up, holding on to the table, knocking the books and scrolls from it.

  Pastor burst into the room. Geralt didn’t even try to use a Sign. He grabbed a leather and brass-bound grimoire from the table and struck the hunchback in the throat with it. Pastor sat down heavily on the floor, dropping the arbalest. The Witcher hit him one more time. And would have repeated it, but the incunable slipped from his numb fingers. He seized a carafe standing on the books and shattered it on Pastor’s forehead. The hunchback, although covered in blood and red wine, didn’t yield. He rushed at Geralt, not even brushing the slivers of crystal from his eyelids.

  “Bueee!” he yelled, grabbing the Witcher by the knees. “Baaang! Get to me! Get to—”

  Geralt seized another grimoire from the table. It was heavy, with a binding encrusted with fragments of a human skull. He slammed the hunchback with it, sending bone splinters flying in all directions.

  Degerlund spluttered, fighting to raise a hand. Geralt realised he was trying to cast a spell. The growing thud of heavy feet indicated that Bue and Bang were approaching. Pastor scrambled up from the floor, fumbling around, searching for the crossbow.

  Geralt saw his sword on the table and seized it. He staggered, almost falling over. He grasped Degerlund by the collar and pressed the blade against his throat.

  “Your sigil!” he screamed into his ear. “Teleport us out of here!”

  Bue and Bang, armed with scimitars, collided with each other in the doorway and got caught there, jammed solid. Neither of them thought of letting the other one through. The door frame creaked.

  “Teleport us!” Geralt grabbed Degerlund by the hair, bending his head backwards. “Now! Or I’ll slit your throat.”

  Bue and Bang tumbled out of the doorway, taking the frame with them. Pastor found the crossbow and raised it.

  Degerlund opened his shirt with a trembling hand and shrieked out a spell, but before the darkness engulfed them he broke free of the Witcher and pushed him away. Geralt caught him by a lace cuff and tried to pull the sorcerer towards him, but at that moment the portal was activated and all his senses, including touch, vanished. He felt an elemental force sucking him in, jerking him and spinning him as though in a whirlpool. The cold was numbing. For a split second. One of the longer and more ghastly split seconds of his life.

  He thudded against the ground. On his back.

  He opened his eyes. Black gloom, impenetrable darkness, was all around him. I’ve gone blind, he thought. Have I lost my sight?

  He hadn’t. It was simply a very dark night. His tapetum lucidum—as Degerlund had eruditely named it—had started working, picking up all the light there was in those conditions. A moment later he recognised around him the outlines of some tree trunks, bushes or undergrowth.

  And above his head, when the clouds parted, he saw stars.

  INTERLUDE

  The following day

  You had to hand it to them: the builders of Findetann knew their trade and hadn’t been idle. In spite of having seen them in action several times, Shevlov watched in fascination as they assembled the piledriver again. The three connected timbers formed a tripod at the top of which a pulley was hung. A rope was tossed over the pulley and a heavy metal-edged block—called a ram in the builders’ jargon—was fastened to it. Shouting rhythmically, the builders tugged on the line, lifting the ram right to the top of the tripod, then quickly released it. The ram fell heavily onto a post positioned in the hole, forcing it deep into the ground. It took three, at most four, blows of the ram for the pile to be standing securely. The builders swiftly dismantled the tripod and loaded the parts onto a wagon, during which time one of them climbed up a ladder and nailed an enamel plaque with the Redanian coat of arms—a silver eagle on a red field—to the post.

  Thanks to Shevlov and his free company—and also to the piledrivers and their operation—the province of Riverside, part of the Kingdom of Redania, had increased in area that day. Quite significantly.

  The foreman walked over, wiping his forehead with his cap. He was in a sweat, although he hadn’t done anything, unless you count effing and blinding. Shevlov knew what the foreman would ask, because he did so each time.

  “Where’s the next one going? Commander?”

  “I’ll show you.” Shevlov reined his horse around. “Follow me.”

  The carters lashed the oxen and the builders’ vehicles moved sluggishly along the ridge, along ground somewhat softened by the recent storm. They soon found themselves by the next post, which was decorated with a black plaque painted with lilies. The post was lying on the ground, having been previously rolled into the bushes; Shevlov’s crew had made sure of that.

  Here’s how progress triumphs, thought Shevlov. Here’s how technical thought triumphs. The hand-sunk Temerian posts could be torn out and tossed down in a trice. The Redanian post driven in by a piledriver couldn’t be pulled out of the ground so easily.

  He waved a hand, indicating the direction to the builders. A few furlongs south. Beyond the village.

  The residents of the village—insofar as a handful of shacks and huts could be called a village—had already been driven onto the green by Shevlov’s riders, and were scurrying around, raising dust, being pushed back by the horses. The always hot-headed Escayrac wasn’t sparing them the bullwhip. Others spurred their horses around the homesteads. Dogs barked, women wailed and children bawled.

  Three riders trotted over to Shevlov. Yan Malkin, as skinny as a rake and nicknamed Poker. Prospero Basti, better known as Sperry. And Aileach Mor-Dhu, nicknamed Fryga, on a grey mare.

  “They’re gathered together, as you ordered,” said Fryga, pushing back a lynx-fur calpac. “The entire hamlet.”

  “Silence them.”

  The crowd were quietened, not without the help of knouts and staves. Shevlov went closer.

  “What do you call this dump?”

  “Woodend.”

  “Woodend, again? These peasants don’t have a scrap of imagination. Lead the builders on, Sperry. Show them where they’re to drive in the post, because they’ll get the place wrong again.”

  Sperry whistled, reining his horse around. Shevlov rode over to the huddled villagers. Fryga and Poker flanked him.

  “Dwellers of Woodend!” Shevlov stood up in the stirrups. “Heed what I say! By the will and order of His Majesty by grace here reigning King Vizimir, I inform you that this day the land up to the border posts belongs to the Kingdom of Redania, and His Majesty King Vizimir is your lord and monarch! You owe him honour, obedience and levies. And you’re behind with your rent and taxes! By order of the king you are to settle your debts immediately. Into this here bailiff’s coffer.”

  “How so?” yelled a man in the crowd. “What do you mean pay? We’m paid!”

  “You’ve already fleeced us for levies!”

  “Temerian bailiffs fleeced you. And illegally, for this is not Temeria, but Redania. Look where the posts are.”

  “But yesterday it was still Temeria!” howled one of the settlers, “How can it be? We paid as they ordered …”

  “You have no right!”

  “Who?” roared Shevlov. “Who said that? It is my right! I have a royal decree! We are royal troops! I said whoever wants to stay on their farm must pay the levies to the last penny! Any who resist will be banished! Y
ou paid Temeria? So you clearly think yourselves Temerians! Then scram, get over the border! But only with what you can carry, because your farms and livestock belong to Redania!”

  “Robbery! That’s robbery and plunder!” yelled a large peasant with a shock of hair, stepping forward. “And you aren’t the king’s man but a brigand! You have no r—”

  Escayrac rode over and lashed the loudmouth with a bullwhip. The loudmouth fell. Others were quelled with pikestaffs. Shevlov’s company knew how to cope with peasants. They had been moving the border for a week and had pacified plenty of settlements.

  “Someone’s approaching at speed.” Fryga indicated with her scourge. “Will it be Fysh?”