It was the second night they had rowed the dugout to the river’s boggy tributary, set nets and traps for the eels heading in great numbers towards the sea. They returned to the cottage well after midnight, smeared in slime from head to toe, wet and tired as hell.
But they didn’t go to bed at once. The haul earmarked for barter had to be put in crates and sealed securely–should the eels find the smallest crack there wouldn’t be a single one left the next morning. After the work was done Vysogota skinned two or three fat eels, chopped them into steaks, coated them in flour and fried them in a huge frying pan. Then they ate and talked.
‘You see, Ciri, one thing still nags at me. I can’t forget that right after your recovery we couldn’t agree about the dates, even though the wound on your cheek constituted the most precise of possible calendars. The cut couldn’t have been more than ten hours old, while you insisted that they’d wounded you four days earlier. Though I was certain it came down to a simple mistake, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I kept asking myself the question: what happened to those four lost days?’
‘So? What do you think happened to them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s marvellous.’
The cat made a long leap and the mouse it pinned with its claws squeaked shrilly. The tomcat unhurriedly bit through its neck, disembowelled it and began to eat it with relish. Ciri watched it impassively.
‘The Tower of the Gull teleporter,’ Vysogota began again, ‘leads to the Tower of the Swallow. And the Tower of the Swallow—’
The cat ate the entire mouse, leaving the tail for dessert.
‘The Tor Lara teleporter,’ said Ciri, yawning widely, ‘is warped and leads to a desert. I’ve probably told you that a hundred times.’
‘That’s not the point, I’m talking about something else. That there’s a connection between the two teleporters. The Tar Lara portal was warped, I agree. But there is also the Tor Zireael teleporter. If you could reach the Tower of the Swallow, you could teleport back to the Isle of Thanedd. You would be far from the danger threatening you, out of reach of your enemies.’
‘Ah! That would suit me. There’s just one little snag. I have no idea where the Tower of the Swallow is.’
‘Perhaps I’ll find a remedy for that. Do you know, Ciri, what university studies give a person?’
‘No. What?’
‘The ability to make use of sources.’
‘I knew I’d find it,’ Vysogota said proudly. ‘I searched and searched and… Oh, bugger…’
The armful of heavy tomes slipped through his fingers; grimoires tumbled onto the threshing floor, leaves fell from their decayed bindings and were strewn around haphazardly.
‘What have you found?’ Ciri kneeled beside him, and helped him gather up the scattered pages.
‘The Tower of the Swallow!’ The hermit drove away the tomcat, which had impudently settled on one of the leaves. ‘Tor Zireael. Help me.’
‘How dusty it is! And sticky! Vysogota? What’s this? Here, in this picture? That man hanging from a tree?’
‘This?’ Vysogota examined the loose leaf. ‘A scene from the legend of Hemdall. The hero Hemdall hung from the Ash of the Worlds for nine days and nights to gain knowledge and power through sacrifice and pain.’
‘I’ve dreamed of something like that several times.’ Ciri wiped her forehead. ‘A man hanging from a tree…’
‘The engraving fell out of this book, here. If you like, you can read more later. But now the more important thing is… Ah, I have it at last. Peregrinations along Trails and Magical Places by Buyvid Backhuysen, a book regarded by some as an apocryphal work…’
‘You mean it’s poppycock?’
‘Something like that. But there were also those who valued the book… Here, listen… A pox on it, how dark it is…’
‘There’s enough light, you’re going blind from old age,’ said Ciri, with the detached cruelty befitting her age. ‘Hand it over, I’ll read it. Where from?’
‘From here.’ He pointed with a bony finger. ‘Read it aloud.’
‘That old Buyvid wrote in weird language. I think Assengard was some castle or other, if I’m not mistaken. But what’s this land: Centloch? I’ve never heard of any such place. And what’s trefoil?’
‘Clover. And I’ll tell you about Assengard and the Hundred Lakes when you finish reading.’
‘For the life of me, barely had the elf Ayallac’h uttered those words, than did hurry out from beneath the lake’s waters those meagre black birds that had sheltered from the frost the whole winter at the bottom of the depths. For the swallow, as learned men know, does not fly south for the winter in the manner of other birds and return in the spring, but binds itself with its claws in great swarms and sinks to the bottom of the waters, there to spend the whole winter season, and only in the spring does it fly out de profundis from beneath the waters. Howbeit, that bird is not only the symbol of spring and hope, but also the model of unblemished purity, since it never alights on the ground nor with earthly dirt and filth have any commerce.
‘Let us, though, return to our lake: you would have said that the circling avians dispersed the fog with their wings, for tandem a marvellous, occult tower unexpectedly emerged from the vapour, and we sighed in awe with one voice, because it seemed to be a tower woven from mist, having fog as its fundamentum, and its top was crowned with the gleam of the aurora, an enchanted aurora borealis. Indeed, that tower must have been erected using powerful occult arts, beyond human ken.
‘The elf Avallac’h marked our awe and spake: “This is Tor Zireael, the Tower of the Swallow. This is the Gate of Worlds and the Threshold of Time. Feast your eyes on this sight, man, for not to everyone nor always is it given.”
‘But when asked if we might approach and from proximity gaze on the Tower or propria manu touch it, Avallac’h laughed. “Tor Zireael,” he spake, “is for you a reverie, and reveries may not be touched. And a good thing it is,” he added, “for the Tower serves only the few Chosen, for whom the Threshold of Time is a gate of hope and rebirth. But for the profane it is the portal of nightmare.”
‘Barely had he uttered those words than the fog fell once more and denied our eyes that enchanted prospect…’
‘The land of a Hundred Lakes, once called Centloch,’ Vysogota explained, ‘is called Mil Tracta today. It’s a very vast lake land bisected by the River Yelena in the northern part of Metinna, close to the border with Nazair and Mag Turga. Buyvid Backhuysen writes that they walked towards the lake from the North, from Assengard… Today Assengard is no more, only ruins remain and the nearest town is Neunreuth. Buyvid counted four hundred furlongs from Assengard. Various furlongs have been used, but we’ll accept the most popular reckoning, according to which four hundred and twenty furlongs gives around fifty miles. South of Assengard, which is about three hundred and fifty miles from us here in Pereplut. In other words, there are more or less three hundred miles between you and the Tower of the Swallow. Ciri. That’s some two weeks riding on your Kelpie. In the spring, of course. Not now, when the frosts may be upon us in a day or two.’
‘Assengard–which I was reading about–is a ruin today,’ Ciri murmured, wrinkling her nose pensively. ‘But I’ve seen the elven town of Shaerrawedd in Kaedwen with my own eyes–I’ve been there. People prised out and pillaged everything, they only left bare stone. I bet only stones remain of your Tower of the Swallow. The larger ones, because the smaller ones have probably been stolen. If there was a portal there as well—’
‘Tor Zireael was magical. Not visible to everybody. And teleporters are never visible.’
‘True,’ she admitted and pondered. ‘The one on Thanedd wasn’t. It suddenly appeared on a bare wall… Actually it appeared just in time, because that mage who was chasing me was close by… I could hear him… And then the portal materialised as though I’d summoned it.’
‘I’m certain,’ Vysogota said softly, ‘that if you reached Tor Zireael, that teleporte
r would also appear to you. Even in the ruins, amidst the bare stones. I’m certain you’d manage to find and activate it. And it–I’m certain–would obey your order. For I think, Ciri, that you are the chosen one.’
‘Your hair, Triss, is like fire in the candlelight. And your eyes are like lapis lazuli. Your lips are like coral—’
‘Stop that, Crach. Are you drunk, or what? Pour me some more wine. And talk.’
‘What about, exactly?’
‘Come off it! About how Yennefer decided to sail to the Sedna Abyss.’
‘How goes it? Tell me, Yennefer.’
‘First of all, you answer my question: who are the two women I invariably encounter when I come to you? And who always give me looks usually reserved for cat shit on the carpet? Who are they?’
‘Are you interested in their formal and legal–or actual–status?’
‘The latter.’
‘In that case, they’re my wives.’
‘I understand. Explain to them–when you get the chance–that bygones are bygones.’
‘I have. But women are women. Never mind. Speak, Yennefer. I’m interested in how your work is progressing.’
‘Unfortunately,’ the sorceress bit her lip, ‘there’s scant progress. And time’s running out.’
‘It is,’ the yarl nodded. ‘And constantly supplying new sensations. I received news from the continent, it ought to interest you. It comes from Vissegerd’s corps. You know, I hope, who Vissegerd is?’
‘The general from Cintra?’
‘The marshal. He commands a corps made up of Cintran emigrants and volunteers within the Temerian Army. Enough volunteers from the islands serve there for me to have first-hand news.’
‘And what do you have?’
‘You arrived here in Skellige on the nineteenth of August, two days after the full moon. The same day, the nineteenth, I mean, Vissegerd’s corps picked up a group of fugitives during fighting by the Ina. Among them were Geralt and that troubadour friend of his—’
‘Dandelion?’
‘Quite. Vissegerd accused both of spying, imprisoned and perhaps meant to execute them, but the two prisoners ran away and sent some Nilfgaardians–with whom they were reputedly in league–after Vissegerd.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘I thought so too. But I can’t get it out of my head that the Witcher, in spite of what you think, is perhaps carrying out some cunning plan. Wanting to rescue Ciri, he’s worming his way into Nilfgaard’s good graces…’
‘Ciri’s not in Nilfgaard. And Geralt isn’t carrying out any plans. Planning isn’t his strong point. Let’s leave it. What’s important is that it’s already the twenty-sixth of August, and I still know too little. Too little to undertake anything… Unless I was to…’
She fell silent, staring out of the window, playing with the obsidian star fastened to a black velvet ribbon.
‘Were to what?’ Crach an Craite burst out.
‘Rather than mocking Geralt, to try using his methods.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘One could try sacrifice, yarl. Apparently readiness to make sacrifices can pay off, produce favourable results… If only in the form of the grace of the goddess. Who likes and esteems people who sacrifice themselves and suffer for a cause.’
‘I still don’t understand,’ he said, wrinkling his brow. ‘But I don’t like what you’re saying, Yennefer.’
‘I know. Neither do I. But still, I’ve gone too far… The tiger may already have heard the kid’s bleating…’
‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ Triss whispered. ‘That’s precisely what I was afraid of.’
‘Which means I understood correctly.’ The muscles of Crach an Craite’s jaw worked vigorously. ‘Yennefer knew someone would eavesdrop on the conversations she was conducting using that infernal machine. Or that one of her interlocutors would basely betray her…’
‘Or the one and the other.’
‘She knew.’ Crach ground his teeth. ‘But carried on regardless. Because it was meant to be bait? Did she intend to be bait herself? Did she pretend to know more than she did in order to provoke the enemy? And she sailed to the Sedna Abyss…’
‘Throwing down the challenge. Provoking. She was taking an awful risk, Crach.’
‘I know. She didn’t want to expose any of us to danger… Apart from volunteers. So she asked for two longships…’
‘I have the two longships you asked for. Alkyone and Tamara. And their crews, naturally. Alkyone will be commanded by Guthlaf, son of Sven. He asked for the honour, as he’s taken a liking to you, Yennefer. Tamara will be commanded by Asa Thjazi, a captain in whom I have absolute faith. Aha, I almost forgot. My son, Hjalmar Wrymouth will also be in Tamara’s crew.’
‘Your son? How old is he?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘You started early.’
‘That’s the pot calling the kettle black. Hjalmar asked to be added to the crew for personal reasons. I couldn’t turn him down.’
‘For personal reasons?’
‘You really don’t know that story?’
‘No. Tell me.’
Crach an Craite drank from the horn and laughed at his recollections.
‘Youngsters from Ard Skellig,’ he began, ‘love playing on skates during the winter, they can’t wait for the icy weather. The first of them go out on the ice when the lake is barely ice-bound, so thin it wouldn’t support adults. Races are the favourite sport, naturally. To gather speed and hurtle, as fast as they can, from one side of the lake to the other. Other boys compete at the so-called “salmon leap”. They have to jump, in their skates, over lakeside rocks sticking up from the ice like sharks’ teeth. Like salmon leaping up waterfalls. You choose a suitably long row of rocks like that, take a run-up… Ha, I jumped like that when I was a scrawny kid…’
Crach an Craite fell into a reverie and smiled slightly.
‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘whoever jumps the longest row of rocks wins the competition and then struts around like a peacock. In my day, Yennefer, that honour often fell to your humble servant and present interlocutor, ha! During the time that interests us most, my son, Hjalmar, was the champion. He jumped over stones that none of the other boys dared to. And paraded around with his nose in the air, challenging anyone to try and defeat him. And the challenge was taken up. By Ciri, daughter of Pavetta of Cintra. Not even an islander, though she thought of herself as one, since she’d spent more time here than there.’
‘Even after Pavetta’s accident? I thought Calanthe had forbidden her from coming here?’
‘You know about that?’ He glanced at her keenly. ‘Indeed, yes, you know a great deal, Yennefer… A great deal. Calanthe’s rage and ban didn’t last more than six months and then Ciri began to spend her summers and winters here again… She skated like a demon, but to compete at the salmon leap with the lads? And challenge Hjalmar? It was unbelievable!’
‘She leaped,’ the sorceress guessed.
‘Yes, she did. The little Cintran half-devil leaped. A real Lion Cub from the Lioness’s blood. And Hjalmar–so as not to expose himself to ridicule–had to risk a jump over an even longer row of stones. Which he did. He broke a leg, broke an arm, broke four ribs and smashed his face up. He’ll have a scar for the rest of his life. Hjalmar Wrymouth! And his famous betrothed! Ha!’
‘Betrothed?’
‘Didn’t you know about that? You know so much, but not that? She visited him when he was lying in bed recovering after his famous leap. She read to him, told him stories, held his little hand… And when someone entered the chamber, they both blushed like poppies. Well, finally Hjalmar informed me they were betrothed. I almost had an attack of apoplexy. I’ll teach you, you rascal, I’ll give you a betrothal, but with a rawhide whip! And I was a bit anxious, for I’d seen that the Lion Cub was hot-headed, that everything about her was reckless, for she was a daredevil, not to say a little maniac… Fortunately Hjalmar was covered in splints and bandages, so they cou
ldn’t do anything stupid…’
‘How old were they then?’
‘He was fifteen, she almost fifteen.’
‘I think your fears were a little exaggerated.’
‘Perhaps a little. But Calanthe, whom I had to inform about everything, by no means made light of the matter. I knew she had marriage plans regarding Ciri, I think it concerned the young Tankred Thyssen of Kovir, and perhaps the Redanian, Radovid. I can’t be certain. But rumours might have harmed the marriage plans, even rumours about innocent kisses or half-innocent caresses. Calanthe took Ciri back to Cintra without a moment’s delay. The girl kicked up a row, yelled and sobbed, but nothing helped. There was no arguing with the Lioness of Cintra. Afterwards, Hjalmar lay for two days with his face turned to the wall and didn’t say a word to anyone… As soon as he had recovered, he planned to steal a skiff and sail to Cintra by himself. For that he was strapped, and he put it behind him. But later…’
Crach an Craite went silent, fell into a reverie.
‘Later the summer came, then the autumn, and the entire Nilfgaardian might struck Cintra’s southern wall, through the Marnadal Stairs. And Hjalmar found another opportunity to become a man. In Marnadal, at the Battle of Cintra and later at the Battle of Sodden, he faced the Black Cloaks valiantly. Later, too, when the longships sailed for the Nilfgaardian coasts, Hjalmar avenged his make-believe betrothed with sword in hand, even though people thought she was dead by then. I didn’t believe it, because those phenomena I told you about didn’t occur… Well, and now, when Hjalmar learned of the possible rescue expedition, he volunteered.’
‘Thanks for the story, Crach. It was restful for me to listen. I could forget about… my cares.’
‘When do you set off, Yennefer?’
‘In the coming days. Perhaps even tomorrow. It remains to me to perform one more, final telecommunication.’
Crach an Craite’s eyes were like a hawk’s. They bored deeply, to the very core.
The Tower of Swallows Page 36