“I’m surprised at you,” she replied sharply. “I’m surprised that you’re saying this, surprised by your lack of motivation, as you learnedly chose to describe your supercilious distance and indifference. You were at Sodden, Angren and Transriver. You know what happened to Cintra, know what befell Queen Calanthe and many thousands of people there. You know the hell Ciri went through, know why she cries out at night. And I know, too, because I was also there. I’m afraid of pain and death too, even more so now than I was then – I have good reason. As for motivation, it seems to me that back then I had just as little as you. Why should I, a magician, care about the fates of Sodden, Brugge, Cintra or other kingdoms? The problems of having more or less competent rulers? The interests of merchants and barons? I was a magician. I, too, could have said it wasn’t my war, that I could mix elixirs for the Nilfgaardians on the ruins of the world. But I stood on that Hill next to Vilgefortz, next to Artaud Terranova, next to Fercart, next to Enid Findabair and Philippa Eilhart, next to your Yennefer. Next to those who no longer exist – Coral, Yoël, Vanielle… There was a moment when out of sheer terror I forgot all my spells except for one – and thanks to that spell I could have teleported myself from that horrific place back home, to my tiny little tower in Maribor. There was a moment, when I threw up from fear, when Yennefer and Coral held me up by the shoulders and hair—”
“Stop. Please, stop.”
“No, Geralt. I won’t. After all, you want to know what happened there, on the Hill. So listen – there was a din and flames, there were flaming arrows and exploding balls of fire, there were screams and crashes, and I suddenly found myself on the ground on a pile of charred, smoking rags, and I realised that the pile of rags was Yoël and that thing next to her, that awful thing, that trunk with no arms and no legs which was screaming so horrifically was Coral. And I thought the blood in which I was lying was Coral’s blood. But it was my own. And then I saw what they had done to me, and I started to howl, howl like a beaten dog, like a battered child— Leave me alone! Don’t worry, I’m not going to cry. I’m not a little girl from a tiny tower in Maribor any more. Damn it, I’m Triss Merigold, the Fourteenth One Killed at Sodden. There are fourteen graves at the foot of the obelisk on the Hill, but only thirteen bodies. You’re amazed such a mistake could have been made? Most of the corpses were in hard-to-recognise pieces – no one identified them. The living were hard to account for, too. Of those who had known me well, Yennefer was the only one to survive, and Yennefer was blind. Others knew me fleetingly and always recognised me by my beautiful hair. And I, damn it, didn’t have it any more!”
Geralt held her closer. She no longer tried to push him away.
“They used the highest magics on us,” she continued in a muted voice, “spells, elixirs, amulets and artefacts. Nothing was left wanting for the wounded heroes of the Hill. We were cured, patched up, our former appearances returned to us, our hair and sight restored. You can hardly see the marks. But I will never wear a plunging neckline again, Geralt. Never.”
The witchers said nothing. Neither did Ciri, who had slipped into the hall without a sound and stopped at the threshold, hunching her shoulders and folding her arms.
“So,” the magician said after a while, “don’t talk to me about motivation. Before we stood on that Hill the Chapter simply told us: ‘That is what you have to do.’ Whose war was it? What were we defending there? The land? The borders? The people and their cottages? The interests of kings? The wizards’ influence and income? Order against Chaos? I don’t know! But we defended it because that’s what had to be done. And if the need arises, I’ll stand on the Hill again. Because if I don’t, it will make the sacrifices made the first time futile and unnecessary.”
“I’ll stand beside you!” shouted Ciri shrilly. “Just wait and see, I’ll stand with you! Those Nilfgaardians are going to pay for my grandmother, pay for everything… I haven’t forgotten!”
“Be quiet,” growled Lambert. “Don’t butt into grownups’ conversations—”
“Oh sure!” The girl stamped her foot and in her eyes a green fire kindled. “Why do you think I’m learning to fight with a sword? I want to kill him, that black knight from Cintra with wings on his helmet, for what he did to me, for making me afraid! And I’m going to kill him! That’s why I’m learning it!”
“And therefore you’ll stop learning,” said Geralt in a voice colder than the walls of Kaer Morhen. “Until you understand what a sword is, and what purpose it serves in a witcher’s hand, you will not pick one up. You are not learning in order to kill and be killed. You are not learning to kill out of fear and hatred, but in order to save lives. Your own and those of others.”
The girl bit her lip, shaking from agitation and anger.
“Understood?”
Ciri raised her head abruptly. “No.”
“Then you’ll never understand. Get out.”
“Geralt, I—”
“Get out.”
Ciri spun on her heel and stood still for a moment, undecided, as if waiting – waiting for something that could not happen. Then she ran swiftly up the stairs. They heard the door slam.
“Too severe, Wolf,” said Vesemir. “Much too severe. And you shouldn’t have done it in Triss’s presence. The emotional ties—”
“Don’t talk to me about emotions. I’ve had enough of all this talk about emotions!”
“And why is that?” The magician smiled derisively and coldly. “Why, Geralt? Ciri is normal. She has normal feelings, she accepts emotions naturally, takes them for what they really are. You, obviously, don’t understand and are therefore surprised by them. It surprises and irritates you. The fact that someone can experience normal love, normal hatred, normal fear, pain and regret, normal joy and normal sadness. That it is coolness, distance and indifference which are considered abnormal. Oh yes, Geralt, it annoys you, it annoys you so much that you are starting to think about Kaer Morhen’s vaults, about the Laboratorium, the dusty demi-johns full of mutagenic poisons—”
“Triss!” called Vesemir, gazing at Geralt’s face, suddenly grown pale. But the enchantress refused to be interrupted and spoke faster and faster, louder and louder.
“Who do you want to deceive, Geralt? Me? Her? Or maybe yourself? Maybe you don’t want to admit the truth, a truth everyone knows except you? Maybe you don’t want to accept the fact that human emotions and feelings weren’t killed in you by the elixirs and Grasses! You killed them! You killed them yourself! But don’t you dare kill them in the child!”
“Silence!” he shouted, leaping from the chair. “Silence, Merigold!”
He turned away and lowered his arms defencelessly. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “Forgive me, Triss.” He made for the stairs quickly, but the enchantress was up in a flash and threw herself at him, embracing him.
“You are not leaving here alone,” she whispered. “I won’t let you be alone. Not right now.”
They knew immediately where she had run to. Fine, wet snow had fallen that evening and had covered the forecourt with a thin, impeccably white carpet. In it they saw her footsteps.
Ciri was standing on the very summit of the ruined wall, as motionless as a statue. She was holding the sword above her right shoulder, the cross-guard at eye level. The fingers of her left hand were lightly touching the pommel.
On seeing them, the girl jumped, spun in a pirouette and landed softly in an identical but reverse mirror position.
“Ciri,” said the witcher, “come down, please.”
It seemed she hadn’t heard him. She did not move, not even a muscle. Triss, however, saw the reflection of the moon, thrown across her face by the blade, glisten silver over a stream of tears.
“No one’s going to take the sword away from me!” she shouted. “No one! Not even you!”
“Come down,” repeated Geralt.
She tossed her head defiantly and the next second leaped once more. A loose brick slipped beneath her foot with a grating sound. Ciri staggered, trying to
find her balance. And failed.
The witcher jumped.
Triss raised her hand, opening her mouth to utter a formula for levitation. She knew she couldn’t do it in time. She knew that Geralt would not make it. It was impossible.
Geralt did make it.
He was forced down to the ground, thrown on his knees and back. He fell. But he did not let go of Ciri.
The magician approached them slowly. She heard the girl whisper and sniff. Geralt too was whispering. She could not make out the words. But she understood their meaning.
A warm wind howled in the crevices of the wall. The witcher raised his head.
“Spring,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” she acknowledged, swallowing. “There is still snow in the passes but in the valleys… In the valleys, it is already spring. Shall we leave, Geralt? You, Ciri and I?”
“Yes. It is high time.”
Upriver we saw their towns, as delicate as if they were woven from the morning mist out of which they loomed. It seemed as if they would disappear a moment later, blown away on the wind which rippled the surface of the water. There were little palaces, white as nenuphar flowers; there were little towers looking as though they were plaited out of ivy; there were bridges as airy as weeping willows. And there were other things for which we could find no word or name. Yet we already had names for everything which our eyes beheld in this new, reborn world. Suddenly, in the far recesses of our memories, we found the words for dragons and griffins, mermaids and nymphs, sylphs and dryads once more. For the white unicorns which drank from the river at dusk, inclining their slender necks towards the water. We named everything. And everything seemed to be close to our hearts, familiar to us, ours.
Apart from them. They, although so resembling us, were alien. So very alien that, for a long time, we could find no word for their strangeness.
Hen Gedymdeith, Elves and Humans
A good elf is a dead elf.
Marshal Milan Raupenneck
CHAPTER FOUR
The misfortune behaved in the eternal manner of misfortunes and hawks – it hung over them for some while waiting for an appropriate moment before it attacked. It chose its moment, when they had passed the few settlements on the Gwenllech and Upper Buina, passed Ard Carraigh and plunged into the forest below, deserted and intersected by gorges. Like a hawk striking, this misfortune’s aim was true. It fell accurately upon its victim, and its victim was Triss.
Initially it seemed nasty but not too serious, resembling an ordinary stomach upset. Geralt and Ciri discreetly tried to take no notice of the stops the enchantress’s ailment necessitated. Triss, as pale as death, beaded with sweat and painfully contorted, tried to continue riding for several hours longer, but at about midday, and having spent an abnormally long time in the bushes by the road, she was no longer in any condition to sit on a saddle. Ciri tried to help her but to no avail – the enchantress, unable to hold on to the horse’s mane, slid down her mount’s flank and collapsed to the ground.
They picked her up and laid her on a cloak. Geralt unstrapped the saddle-bags without a word, found a casket containing some magic elixirs, opened it and cursed. All the phials were identical and the mysterious signs on the seals meant nothing to him.
“Which one, Triss?”
“None of them,” she moaned, with both hands on her belly. “I can’t… I can’t take them.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m sensitised—”
“You? A magician?”
“I’m allergic!” she sobbed with helpless exasperation and despairing anger. “I always have been! I can’t tolerate elixirs! I can treat others with them but can only treat myself with amulets.”
“Where is the amulet?”
“I don’t know.” She ground her teeth. “I must have left it in Kaer Morhen. Or lost it—”
“Damn it. What are we going to do? Maybe you should cast a spell on yourself?”
“I’ve tried. And this is the result. I can’t concentrate because of this cramp…”
“Don’t cry.”
“Easy for you to say!”
The witcher got up, pulled his saddle-bags from Roach’s back and began rummaging through them. Triss curled up, her face contracted and her lips twisted in a spasm of pain.
“Ciri…”
“Yes, Triss?”
“Do you feel all right? No… unusual sensations?”
The girl shook her head.
“Maybe it’s food poisoning? What did I eat? But we all ate the same thing… Geralt! Wash your hands. Make sure Ciri washes her hands…”
“Calm down. Drink this.”
“What is it?”
“Ordinary soothing herbs. There’s next to no magic in them so they shouldn’t do you any harm. And they’ll relieve the cramps.”
“Geralt, the cramps… they’re nothing. But if I run a fever… It could be… dysentery. Or paratyphoid.”
“Aren’t you immune?”
Triss turned her head away without replying, bit her lip and curled up even tighter. The witcher did not pursue the question.
Having allowed her to rest for a while they hauled the enchantress onto Roach’s saddle. Geralt sat behind her, supporting her with both hands, while Ciri rode beside them, holding the reins and leading Triss’s gelding. They did not even manage a mile. The enchantress kept falling from Geralt’s hands; she could not stay in the saddle. Suddenly she started trembling convulsively, and instantly burned with a fever. The gastritis had grown worse. Geralt told himself that it was an allergic reaction to the traces of magic in his witcher’s elixir. He told himself that. But he did not believe it.
“Oh, sir,” said the sergeant, “you have not come at a good time. Indeed, you could not have arrived at a worse moment.”
The sergeant was right. Geralt could neither contest it nor argue.
The fort guarding the bridge, where there would usually be three soldiers, a stable-boy, a tollcollector and – at most – a few passers-by, was swarming with people. The witcher counted over thirty lightly armed soldiers wearing the colours of Kaedwen and a good fifty shield bearers, camping around the low palisade. Most of them were lying by campfires, in keeping with the old soldier’s rule which dictates that you sleep when you can and get up when you’re woken. Considerable activity could be seen through the thrown-open gates – there were a lot of people and horses inside the fort, too. At the top of the little leaning lookout tower two soldiers were on duty, with their crossbows permanently at the ready. On the worn bridge trampled by horses’ hooves, six peasant carts and two merchant wagons were parked. In the enclosure, their heads lowered sadly over the mud and manure, stood umpteen unyoked oxen.
“There was an assault on the fort – last night.” The sergeant anticipated his question. “We just got here in time with the relief troops – otherwise we’d have found nothing here but charred earth.”
“Who were your attackers? Bandits? Marauders?”
The soldier shook his head, spat and looked at Ciri and Triss, huddled in the saddle.
“Come inside,” he said, “your Enchantress is going to fall out of her saddle any minute now. We already have some wounded men there; one more won’t make much difference.”
In the yard, in an open, roofed shelter, lay several people with their wounds dressed with bloodied bandages. A little further, between the palisade fence and a wooden well with a sweep, Geralt made out six still bodies wrapped in sacking from which only pairs of feet in worn, dirty boots protruded.
“Lay her there, by the wounded men.” The soldier indicated the shelter. “Oh sir, it truly is bad luck she’s sick. A few of our men were hurt during the battle and we wouldn’t turn down a bit of magical assistance. When we pulled the arrow out of one of them its head stuck in his guts. The lad will peter out by the morning, he’ll peter out like anything… And the enchantress who could have saved him is tossing and turning with a fever and seeking help from us. A bad time, I say, a bad time—”
<
br /> He broke off, seeing that the witcher could not tear his eyes from the sacking-wrapped bodies.
“Two guards from here, two of our relief troops and two… two of the others,” he said, pulling up a corner of the stiff material. “Take a look, if you wish.”
“Ciri, step away.”
“I want to see, too!” The girl leaned out around him, staring at the corpses with her mouth open.
“Step away, please. Take care of Triss.”
Ciri huffed, unwilling, but obeyed. Geralt came closer.
“Elves,” he noted, not hiding his surprise.
“Elves,” the soldier confirmed. “Scoia’tael.”
“Who?”
“Scoia’tael,” repeated the soldier. “Forest bands.”
“Strange name. It means ‘Squirrels’, if I’m not mistaken?”
“Yes, sir. Squirrels. That’s what they call themselves in elvish. Some say it’s because sometimes they wear squirrel tails on their fur caps and hats. Others say it’s because they live in the woods and eat nuts. They’re getting more and more troublesome, I tell you.”
Geralt shook his head. The soldier covered the bodies again and wiped his hands on his tunic.
“Come,” he said. “There’s no point standing here. I’ll take you to the commandant. Our corporal will take care of your patient if he can. He knows how to sear and stitch wounds and set bones so maybe he knows how to mix up medicines and what not too. He’s a brainy chap, a mountain-man. Come, witcher.”
In the dim, smoky toll-collector’s hut a lively and noisy discussion was underway. A knight with closely cropped hair wearing a habergeon and yellow surcoat was shouting at two merchants and a greeve, watched by the toll-collector, who had an indifferent, rather gloomy expression, and whose head was wrapped in bandages.
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