Andrzej Sapkowski - [Witcher 05]

by The Tower of the Swallow (fan translation) (epub)

  He could see her green eyes flash.

  ‘There are ruins? A tower, perhaps?’

  ‘A tower?’ He could not suppress a disparaging snort. ‘A couple of stones on top of one another, covered with moss. A pile of rubble…’

  The perch was no longer struggling, it only moved its colourful striped gills.

  The girl looked at it thoughtfully. ‘Death on the ice,’ she said. ‘There is something captivating about that.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘How far is it to the lake and the ruins? Which way do I ride?’

  He said it. Then he showed it. He even scratched it into the ice with the sharp end of the ice pick. She nodded her head and memorized it. The mare pounded its hooves on the ice lake, snorted, and blew steam out its nostrils.

  * * *

  He watched as she moved away towards the western shore, galloped up the slope, and faded against the backdrop of leafless alders and birch, into the beautiful, enchanted forest, which was adorned with a coating of white frost. The black mare ran with indescribable elegance, sharp, but also lightweight. You could hardly hear the sound of its hooves against the frozen ground, and the snow barely rippled from the branches that they grazed. Running through this ancient and frost-covered enchanted forest, it did not appear to be an ordinary horse, but rather a magical horse.

  But perhaps it was an apparition?

  A demon on a ghost horse, a demon who had assumed the form of a girl with big green eyes and a disfigured face?

  Who, if not a demon, travelled in the winter? And asked for directions to haunted ruins?

  After they had ridden away, Gosta quickly packed up his belongings. On his way home, he walked through the woods. It was a detour, but reason and instinct warned him not to use the road. Reason told him that the girl was, after all, not a ghost, but a human. The black mare was not an apparition, but a horse. And those who ride alone on horseback through the wilderness in the winter are all too often pursued.

  An hour later the pursuers galloped along the forest path. Fourteen horses.

  * * *

  Rience shook the silver box again, cursed, and beat it against his pommel in anger. But the Xenophon remained silent. How enchanted.

  ‘Magical bullshit,’ commented Bonhart coldly. ‘It's broken – the cheap fairground trick.’

  ‘Or Vilgefortz is demonstrating how important we really are to him,’ added Stefan Skellen.

  Rience raised his head and measured both of them with evil eyes. ‘Thanks to this fairground trick,’ he noted sharply, ‘we are on the track and will no longer lose her. Thanks to Master. Vilgefortz we know where the girl wants to go. We know where we are riding and what we are doing. I think that's a lot. Compared to what you’ve done over the past month.’

  ‘Don’t talk so much. Well, Boreas? What do the tracks say?’

  Boreas Mun sat up and cleared his throat. ‘She was here an hour before us. Where she can, she tries to ride fast. But this is difficult terrain. Even on that incredible mare she isn’t more than five or six miles ahead of us.’

  ‘She travels to the lake so resolutely’, murmured Skellen. ‘Vilgefortz was right. And I did not believe him…’

  ‘I didn’t either,’ confessed Bonhart. ‘But only up to the moment yesterday when the farmers confirmed that some magical building actually is on the shore of Lake Tarn Mira.’

  The horses snorted and steam ran through their nostrils. The Owl looked over his left shoulder at Joanna Selborne. He had not liked the facial expression on the telepath the past couple days. I’m getting worried, he thought. This chase has exhausted all of us, physically and mentally. It's time to stop. High time.

  A cold shiver ran down his spine. He remembered the dream he had last night.

  ‘All right!’ He pulled himself together. ‘Enough talking. To the horses!’

  * * *

  Boreas Mun hung from the saddle, on the lookout for signs. It was not easy. The ground was frozen hard and the loose, quickly-windswept snow remained only in furrows and depressions. Boreas was looking for the shoe prints of the black mare. He had to be extremely careful that he did not lose the trail, especially now that the urgency of the silver box’s magical voice was silent and there was no more advice or information.

  He was inhumanly exhausted. And worried. They had pursued the girl for nearly three weeks – since Saovine, since the massacre at Dun Dare. Almost three weeks in the saddle, always on the chase. And all this time neither the girl nor the black mare had showed weakness or slowed down.

  Boreas Mun was on the lookout for signs.

  His thoughts constantly returned to the dream he had last night. In the dream he was bogged down, sunken. The black surface had closed over his head as he sank to the bottom and cold water penetrated his throat and lungs. He had woken up soaked in a hot sweat – although all around there had been a true freezing chill.

  That’s enough, he thought as he was hanging from the saddle, on the lookout for signs. It's high time to stop.

  * * *

  ‘Master? Can you hear me? Master?’

  The enchanted Xenophon was silent.

  Rience’s shoulders shivered violently as he breathed into his clammy hands. The bitter cold bit his neck, back, and aching loins. Every movement brought pain to his mind. He had even lost the desire to curse.

  Almost three weeks in the saddle, on a relentless chase. In penetrating cold. And for a few days with frost setting.

  And Vilgefortz was silent.

  We are also silent. And look at each other askance. Rience rubbed his hands and put on his gloves. Skellen, he thought, looks at me strangely. Is he planning some treachery? He reached agreement with Vilgefortz a little too quickly and a little too easily… But this squad, these thugs who are so loyal to him, carry out his orders. If we get a hold of the girl, he is capable of ignoring the deal, killing her, and using these conspirators of his to carry out his crazy ideas of democracy and civil rule.

  Or maybe Skellen has already had enough of the conspiracy? As a born conformist and opportunist maybe he is now thinking it's better to bring the girl to Emperor Emhyr?

  He looks at me strangely. Like an owl. And the whole squad… That Kenna Selborne…

  And Bonhart? Bonhart is an unpredictable sadist. When he speaks of Ciri, his voice trembles with anger. Depending on the discretion he would execute or kidnap the girl, to make her fight in the arena. The deal with Vilgefortz? That agreement will not matter to him. Especially now that Vilgefortz…

  He took out the Xenophon. ‘Master? Can you hear me? It is Rience…’

  The machine was silent. Rience didn’t even curse.

  Vilgefortz is silent. Skellen and Bonhart have made an agreement with him. But in a day or two when we catch up to the girl it may turn out that there is no agreement. And then I will be the one to get a knife in the throat. Or made to ride in shackles to Nilfgaard, as the Owl’s proof and pledge of loyalty…

  Damn it!

  Vilgefortz is silent. He does not give advice. Does not show the way. Does not scatter doubts with his calm, logical, true to the depths of his soul voice. He is silent.

  Perhaps Skellen was right? Perhaps Vilgefortz really has turned to something else and does not care about us and our destiny?

  For all the devils, I did not think this would happen. If I had known this, I would not have… I would have ridden to kill the witcher instead of Schirru… Damn it! I'm freezing out here and Schirru is surely sitting in the warmth…

  When I think that I myself urged that I be sent after Ciri and Schirru be sent after the witcher… I myself asked for it.

  Back then, in the beginning of September, when Yennefer fell into our hands.

  * * *

  The world that had just been a surreal, soft, muddy, sticky blackness, turned to solid surfaces and contours in a split second. If it was bright. It was real.

  Yennefer opened her eyes, shaken by convulsive tremors. She was lying on rocks, down the middle of corpses,
rigging, and tarred boards – the remnants of the dragon boat ‘Alcyone’. All around, she saw feet. Feet in heavy boots. One of these boots had kicked her to consciousness a moment ago.

  ‘Get up, witch!’

  Again a kick brought pain that penetrated to her roots. Then she saw a face bend over hers.

  ‘Get up, I said! On your feet! Do you recognize me?’

  She blinked. She recognized him. Because she had once burned his face as he fled through a teleport in front of her. Rience.

  ‘We will settle,’ he promised. ‘We will settle everything, you whore. I will teach you what pain is. With these hands and with these fingers, I will teach you what pain is.’

  She tensed, clenched her fists, and opened them again, about to cast a spell. And immediately they writhed together. She choked, gasped, and shook.

  Rience roared with laughter. ‘Not working?’ She heard. ‘You do not have even trace power! You are no equal with Vilgefortz at spells! He has squeezed it all out from you, to the last drop, as the whey from the cheese. You cannot even…’

  He did not finish. Yennefer drew the stiletto from the sheath fixed to the inside of her leg, jumped up like a cat, and pushed blindly. She did not succeed, the blade only grazed its goal, tearing the fabric of his pants. Rience jumped back and fell down.

  Immediately a hail of punches and kicks rained down on her. She howled as a heavy boot stomped the dagger from her hand and pressed down, crushing her thumb. Another boot stomped onto her abdomen. The sorceress was writhing and gasping. She was torn from the ground and her arms were twisted behind her back. She saw a fist flying towards her and the world suddenly flared up in sparks as her face exploded in pain. It ran down her spine into her abdomen and womb. Her knees turned to soft jelly. She hung powerlessly in the hands that held her. Someone grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head up. She took another blow to the eye, and everything blurred and disappeared in a blinding flash.

  She did not faint. She felt. She was being beaten. Violently beaten, cruelly, beaten like a man. With blows that were not only painful, but also drained you of energy, beat out any will to resist. She was beaten and twitched in the steely grip of many hands.

  She wanted to faint, but could not. She felt.

  ‘Enough,’ she suddenly heard from far away, passing through the veil of pain. ‘Have you gone mad, Rience? Are you trying to kill her? I need her alive.’

  ‘I promised her, master,’ growled the wavering shadow in front of her, which gradually became the shape and face of Rience. ‘I promised her that I'd get back at her… With these hands…’

  ‘I care little what you promised. I repeat, I need her alive and able to articulate speech.’

  ‘Neither a cat nor a witch,’ said the one who held her by the hair, laughing, ‘can have the life beaten out of them so easily.’

  ‘No voice wise speeches, Schirru. I said that is enough beating. Raise her head high. How are you, Yennefer?’

  The sorceress spat out red and lifted her swelling face. At first she did not recognize him. He wore a mask that covered the entire left side of his head. But she knew who it was.

  ‘Go to hell, Vilgefortz,’ she stammered as she gently touched her tongue to her front teeth and bruised lips.

  ‘How do you like my spell? Did you like it, as I lifted you up along with this boat from the sea? Did you enjoy the flight? Which spells did you place on yourself that you have managed to survive the fall?’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Destroy the star necklace around her throat. And take her to the laboratory. We will not waste any time.’

  She was dragged, pulled, and sometimes carried. Over a stony plain that held the smashed pieces of the ‘Alcyone’. And remainder of many other wrecks, their towering frames like the ribs of the skeletons of sea monsters. Crach was right, she thought. The ships that have disappeared without trace over the Sedna-depth were not victims of natural disasters. Gods… Pavetta and Duny…

  A distant mountain peak rose above the horizon in the cloud-covered sky.

  Then came walls, gates, cloisters and stairs. Everything was somehow strangely and unnaturally large… There were still too few details for here to be able to orient herself, to know where she was, where she had fallen, where the spell had brought them. Her swollen face made it even more difficult to observe. Smell had become her sole sense that provided information – she immediately smelled formalin, ether, and alcohol. And magic. The odours of a laboratory.

  She was brutally placed on a steel chair. Cold clamps closed painfully on her wrists and ankles. After the steel jaws of a vice were fixed to her temples, trapping her head, she looked around the spacious and dazzlingly brightly lit room. She saw another chair, a strange steel structure on a stone pedestal.

  ‘That,’ she heard Vilgefortz's voice behind her. ‘That little chair is for your Ciri. It has waited a long time, it can wait no longer. Me neither.’

  She could tell he was close, could almost feel his breath. He pushed needles into her scalp and stuck something firmly to her ear lobe. Then he stood before her and took off his mask. Yennefer sighed involuntarily.

  ‘This is the work of that very same Ciri,’ he said, pointing to the once classically beautiful, now horribly ravaged face that was framed by gold clasps and retainers that held a multi-faceted crystal in the left eye socket. ‘I tried to catch her when she entered the portal in the Tower of Gulls,’ said the sorcerer quietly. ‘I wanted to save her life, I was sure the portal would kill her. How naive I was! She went through smoothly, with such force that portal broke and exploded in my face. I lost an eye and my left cheek, and a lot of skin on my face, neck and chest. It was very unpleasant, very tedious, and very complicated. And it is very ugly, is not it? Ha, you should have seen me before I started to magically regenerate.’

  ‘If I believed in that sort of thing,’ he said while pushing a curved metal tube into her nose, ‘I might think this is the revenge of Lydia van Bredevoort. From beyond the grave. I can regenerate, but slowly. It is time-consuming and laborious. Especially with the regeneration of the eyeball, there are problems… The crystal I have in my eye socket serves its purpose well – I see three dimensions, but the lack of a natural eyeball sometimes really drives me to despair. Indeed, I've developed an irrational anger – I swear that when I capture Ciri, immediately afterwards I'll instruct Rience to remove one of those big green eyes. With his fingers. These fingers, as he likes to say. You are silent, Yennefer? But you already know that I desire to tear one of your eyes out as well? Or both eyes?’

  He pushed thick needles into the veins at the top of her hands. Sometimes he did not find his mark, instead hitting the bone. Yennefer gritted teeth.

  ‘You've made trouble for me. Forced me to stop working. Put me in danger. When you sailed your boat on the Sedna-Deep, beneath my extractors… The echo of our brief duel was strong and widespread, it may be noticed by uninvited and perky ears. But I could not help myself. The idea that I could have you here, that I could link you to my Orter, was too tempting.’

  ‘Because surely you did not think’ – he put in the next needle – ‘that I had fallen for your provocation? That I had taken the bait? No, Yennefer. If you believe that, you are confusing the sky with the stars which are reflected in the pond at night. Truthfully, I should thank you – you tracked me down. When you went to the Depth, you made my task easier. Because I, you see, cannot locate Ciri, not even with the help of this device here, which has no equal. The girl has strong innate protective mechanisms – a strong anti-magic aura and screening. After all, she is of the elder blood… Nevertheless, my Super-Orter should have discovered her. But it could not.’

  Yennefer was quite enmeshed in a web of silver and copper wires, surrounded by a scaffolding of tubes made of silver and porcelain. Tripods mounted on the chair held glass vials that fluctuated with colourless liquids.

  ‘I've therefore concluded’ – Vilgefortz pushed another tube into her nose, this time it was made
of glass – ‘that the only way to locate Ciri is an empathic probe. For this, however, I needed someone with whom the girl had a sufficiently strong emotional connection and has developed an empathic matrix algorithm and mutual sympathy, to borrow a neologism. I thought of the witcher, but he has vanished, and also witchers are unsuitable to use as mediums. I was about to abduct Triss Merigold, our Fourteenth of the Hill. I have considered the kidnapping of Nenneke from Ellander… But then came along Yennefer of Vengerberg, you almost volunteered… Really, I could not have hoped for anyone better… Connected to the apparatus, you will locate Ciri for me. The operation, however, requires cooperation on your part… But there are, as you know, means to force someone to cooperate.’

  ‘Of course,’ he continued as he wiped his hands, ‘you should get a few explanations. For example – where and how did I learn of the elder blood? Lara Dorren's heritage? What exactly is this gene? How is it that Ciri has it? Who did she inherit it from? In what way will I get it from her, and what am I going to use it for? How does the Sedna Extractor, which I pulled you through, work and what is its purpose? A lot of questions, are there not it? But unfortunately, I lack the time to tell you of anything to explain everything. Ha, it’s a shame because I'm sure you'd be amazed by some of the facts, Yennefer… But, as I said, I do not have time. The elixirs are beginning to take effect. It is time that you begin to concentrate.’

  The sorceress gritted her teeth, gasped, and made deep, muffled groans.

  ‘I know.’ Vilgefortz nodded. He drew a large, professional megascope closer and monitored a large crystal ball on a tripod, surrounded by a silver cobweb of wires. ‘I know, but this is very regrettably required. And very painful. The sooner you start with the locations, the sooner it's over. Well, Yennefer. Here on this screen, I want to see Ciri. Where she is, whom she is with and what she is doing, along with where and with whom she is sleeping.’

  Yennefer screamed piercingly, wildly, desperately.