He quickly made up his mind. He simply rose, took his cloak and left, a gesture full of disgust holding off his secretary, who was trying to force a leather portfolio of urgent documents onto him. Tomorrow! Tomorrow is another day!
He left the palace by the rear exit, which opened onto the gardens, and walked along a path lined with cypresses. He passed an ornamental pond, where a carp introduced by Emperor Torres was approaching the venerable age of a hundred and thirty-two years, as testified by a golden commemorative medal attached to the gills of the immense fish.
‘Good evening, viscount.’
Vattier released the dagger concealed in his sleeve with a short movement of his forearm. The hilt slid into his hand by itself.
‘Very risky, Rience,’ he said coldly. ‘Very risky, showing your burned countenance in Nilfgaard. Even as a magical teleprojection.’
‘You noticed? And Vilgefortz assured me that if you didn’t touch me you wouldn’t guess it was an illusion.’
Vattier put the dagger away. He had not guessed it was an illusion at all, but now he knew.
‘You are too great a coward, Rience,’ he said, ‘to show yourself here in person. You know what would befall you if you did.’
‘Is the emperor still so determined to seize me? And my master Vilgefortz?’
‘Your insolence is disarming.’
‘Go to hell, Vattier. We’re still on your side, Vilgefortz and I. Well, I admit we tricked you with the counterfeit Cirilla, but it was done in good faith, in good faith, may I be drowned if I lie. Vilgefortz believed that since the real one had vanished, a fake one was better than none at all. We reckoned it was all the same to you—’
‘Your insolence has stopped being disarming and has begun to be insulting. I have no intention of wasting time talking to an insulting mirage. When I finally get my hands on you we shall have a conversation, a long conversation. So until that time . . . apage, Rience.’
‘What’s come over you, Vattier? In the past, if even the Devil himself appeared to you, you wouldn’t forget to investigate – before the exorcism – if you couldn’t, by any chance, profit in some way.’
Vattier did not grace the illusion with a glance. Instead he watched the algae-covered carp idly churning up the sludge in the pond.
‘Profit in some way?’ he repeated slowly, pouting his lips contemptuously. ‘From you? And what could you give me? The real Cirilla, perhaps? Perhaps your patron, Vilgefortz? Perhaps Cahir aep Ceallach?’
‘Hold hard!’ Rience raised an illusory hand. ‘You mentioned him.’
‘Who?’
‘Cahir. We shall bring you Cahir’s head. I, and my master, Vilgefortz . . .’
‘Have mercy, Rience,’ Vattier snorted. ‘Reverse the order.’
‘As you wish. Vilgefortz, with my humble help, will give you the head of Cahir, son of Ceallach. We know where he is and can pluck him out like a lobster from a pot, if you wish.’
‘So you have such capabilities, well, well. Such good stoolpigeons in Queen Meve’s army?’
‘Are you testing me?’ Rience grimaced. ‘You really don’t know? Must be the latter. Cahir, my dear viscount, is . . . We know where he is. We know where he’s headed and in what company. You want his head? You shall have it.’
‘A head,’ Vattier smiled, ‘which won’t be able to tell anyone what really happened on Thanedd.’
‘That’s probably for the best,’ said Rience cynically. ‘Why give Cahir the chance to talk? Our task is to ease – not exacerbate – the animosity between Vilgefortz and the emperor. I shall bring you the mute head of Cahir aep Ceallach. We’ll do it in such a way that it looks like your, and only your, achievement. Delivery in the next three weeks.’
The ancient carp in the fishpond fanned the water with its pectoral fins. That beast, thought Vattier, must be very wise. But why does it need that wisdom? It’s still the same sludge and the same water lilies.
‘Your price, Rience?
‘A trifle. Where is Stefan Skellen and what is he plotting?’
*
‘I told him what he wanted to know.’ Vattier de Rideaux stretched out on the pillows, playing with a ringlet of Carthia van Canten’s golden hair. ‘You see, my sweet, one has to approach some matters wisely. And to approach them wisely means to conform. If one behaves differently, one won’t get anything. Just the putrid water and foul-smelling sludge in a fishpond. And so what if the pond is made of marble and is three paces from the palace? Aren’t I right, my sweet?’
Carthia van Canten, known by the pet-name of Cantarella, did not answer. Vattier in no way expected an answer. The girl was eighteen and – to put it mildly – no genius. Her interests, at least for the moment, were limited to making love with – at least for the moment – Vattier. Cantarella was a natural talent in sexual matters, combining enthusiasm and wholeheartedness with technique and artistry. That was not the most important thing about her, though.
Cantarella spoke little and seldom, while listening willingly and splendidly. With Cantarella one could unload oneself, relax, spiritually unwind and psychologically regenerate oneself.
‘A man in this service can expect nothing but reprimands,’ Vattier said bitterly. ‘Just because he hasn’t found some Cirilla or other! And is the fact that, thanks to the work of my men, the army is achieving successes unimportant? Does the fact that the general staff knows the enemy’s every move mean nothing? And how many strongholds have my agents opened for the imperial forces, which would have taken weeks to storm? But no, there is no praise for that. Only some Cirilla or other is important!’
Puffing up angrily, Vattier de Rideaux took a glass of excellent Est Est of Toussaint from Cantarella’s hands, a wine with a vintage that remembered the days when Emperor Emhyr var Emreis was a cruelly damaged little boy, devoid of any rights to the throne and Vattier de Rideaux was a young officer of the intelligence service, insignificant in the hierarchy.
It had been a good year. For wine.
Vattier sipped it, played with Cantarella’s shapely breasts and went on. Cantarella listened splendidly.
‘Stefan Skellen, my sweet,’ muttered the chief of the imperial intelligence service, ‘is a wheeler-dealer and a conspirator. But I shall know what he’s up to before Rience gets there . . . I already have an agent there . . . Very close to Skellen . . . Very close . . .’
Cantarella untied the sash fastening Vattier’s dressing gown, and leaned forward. Vattier felt her breath and moaned in anticipation of the pleasure. That’s talent, he thought. And then the soft, hot touch of velvety lips drove all thoughts from his head.
Carthia van Canten slowly, deftly and skilfully supplied Vattier de Rideaux, the chief of the imperial intelligence service, with sexual bliss. That wasn’t Carthia’s only talent. But Vattier de Rideaux had no idea about her others.
He didn’t know that despite appearances Carthia van Canten possessed a splendid memory and intelligence as lively as quicksilver.
Everything Vattier told her, every piece of information, every word he uttered, Carthia passed on to the sorcereress Assire var Anahid the next day.
*
Yes, I would stake my head that everyone in Nilfgaard forgot about Cahir long ago, including his betrothed, if he had one.
But more about that later, for now we return to the day and place the Yaruga was crossed. We rode quite briskly eastwards, meaning to reach the region of the Black Forest known in the Elder Speech as Caed Dhu. For there dwelt the druids, who were capable of divining where Ciri was residing, or foretelling her location from the weird dreams that were vexing Geralt. We rode through Upper Riverdell, also known as Left Bank, a wild and deserted land situated between the Yaruga and the Slopes, set at the foot of the Amell Mountains, delineated to the east by the Dol Angra valley, and to the west by a boggy lakeland whose name has slipped my mind.
No one laid any specific claim to that land, and so it was never rightly known to whom it actually belonged or who governed it. In that respe
ct, it seems, the successive monarchs of Temeria, Sodden, Cintra and Rivia – who, with varying results, treated Left Bank as a fiefdom of their kingdoms and occasionally tried to drive home their arguments using fire and sword – had some say. And subsequently the Nilfgaardian Army arrived from beyond the Amell Mountains and no one had anything more to say. Or any doubts about issues of fiefdom or territorial rights. Everything south of the Yaruga belonged to the Empire. As I write these words, plenty of lands to the north also belong to the Empire. Owing to a lack of precise information, I do not know how many or how far to the north.
Going back to Riverdell, permit me, dear reader, a digression concerning historical processes. The history of a given territory is often created and formed by accident, as a side effect of the conflicts between external forces. A given land’s history is very often created by foreigners. Foreigners are the cause – but the effects are always invariably borne by the local people.
That rule fully applied to Riverdell.
Riverdell had its own folk, indigenous Riverdellers. The unceasing years of scrambles and struggles had transformed them into beggars and forced them to migrate. Their villages and settlements had gone up in smoke, and the ruins of homesteads and fields were transformed into fallow land and swallowed up by the wilderness. Trade fell into decline and caravans avoided the neglected roads and tracks. The few Riverdellers who remained turned into coarse boors. They mainly differed from wolverines and bears by the fact that they wore britches. At least some of them did. I mean some of them wore britches and some of them differed from the beasts. They were – generally speaking – an unobliging, crude and boorish nation.
And utterly devoid of a sense of humour.
*
The dark-haired daughter of the forest beekeeper tossed her plait over her shoulder, and resumed turning the quern with furious vigour. Dandelion’s efforts were in vain; the poet’s words seemed not to register with their audience. Dandelion winked at the rest of the company, pretending to sigh and raise his eyes to the ceiling. But he did not quit.
‘Let me,’ he repeated, grinning. ‘Let me grind, while you fetch some ale from the cellar. There must be a hidden cellar somewhere around here and a keg in the vault. Am I right, fair one?’
‘You might leave the wench alone, m’lord,’ the forest beekeeper’s wife – a tall, willowy woman of astonishing beauty – said crossly as she busied herself around the kitchen. ‘I already told ‘ee there ain’t no ale ‘ere.’
‘You bin told near a dozen times, m’lord,’ the forest beekeeper said, backing up his wife, breaking off from his conversation with the Witcher and the vampire. ‘I shall make you pancakes with honey, and then you’ll eat. But leave the wench in peace to grind the corn for meal, for without meal even a sorcerer cannot make a pancake! Let ‘er be, let ‘er grind in peace.’
‘Did you hear that, Dandelion?’ called the Witcher. ‘Leave the girl alone and go and do something useful. Or write your memoirs!’
‘I fancy a drink. I fancy a drink before eating. I have some herbs, I’ll brew myself an infusion. Granny, would there be any hot water in this cottage? Hot water, I’m asking. Would there be any?’
An old woman, the forest beekeeper’s mother, sitting on the stove bench, raised her head from the sock she was darning.
‘There would, petal, there would,’ she muttered. ‘Only it be cold b’ now.’
Dandelion groaned and sat down, resigned, at the table, where the company was chatting with the beekeeper, whom they had happened upon in the forest early that morning. The beekeeper was short, thickset, swarthy and terribly hairy. No wonder, then, that he had given the company a scare when he loomed out of the undergrowth unexpectedly; they had taken him for a lycanthrope. To make it funnier still, the first to yell ‘Werewolf! Werewolf!’ had been the vampire, Regis. There was something of a commotion, but the matter was quickly cleared up, and the beekeeper, though at first sight surly, turned out to be hospitable and courteous. The company accepted the invitation to his homestead. His homestead – called, in forest-beekeeping jargon, a ‘shanty’ – stood in a cleared glade, where the beekeeper, his mother, his wife and their daughter lived. The latter two were women of exceptional, though somewhat curious, looks, clearly indicating that there was a dryad or hamadryad among their forebears.
During the conversations that ensued, the forest beekeeper at first gave the impression one could talk to him solely about bees, beehives carved into trees, hollows, rope harnesses, bear fences, beeswax, honey and honey-gathering, but that was just a semblance.
‘With politics? And what should be happening with it? The same as usual. We ‘ave to pay more and more duty. Three urns of honey, and an entire length of wax. I can barely supply it. I sit on my ropes from dawn to dusk, gouging out hollows . . . Who do I pay the duty to? To whoever calls, how am I to know who’s in power now? Some time since, you know, they bin speakin’ Nilfgaardian. I ‘ear we’re now an imporial provenance, or summat like ‘at. They pay for the honey – if I sell any – in imporial coin, with the emprer’s head struck on it. ‘Is mush is more comely, though cruel, you’ll know ‘im right away. If you get my drift . . .’
Two dogs – one black and the other ruddy – sat facing the vampire, raised their heads and started to howl. The beekeeper’s hamadryad wife turned back from the hearth and hit them with her broom.
‘It be an evil sign,’ the beekeeper said, ‘when hounds howl in broad daylight. Kind of thing . . . What was I sposed to be talkin’ ‘bout?’
‘About the druids of Caed Dhu.’
‘Eh! So you wasn’t jestin’, m’lord? You rightly mean to go to the druids? Sick of life, are you? That way is death! He who dares to venture into the Mistletoers’ clearings is seized, shoved into a wicker doll and roasted over a slow flame.’
Geralt looked at Regis and Regis winked at him. They both knew the popular rumours about the druids, and every last one was fabricated. Milva and Dandelion, though, began listening with greater curiosity than before. And evident alarm.
‘There’s some as say,’ the forest beekeeper continued, ‘that the Mistletoers are getting their own back, for the Nilfgaardians vexed ‘em first, by entering their holy oak groves down in Dol Angra and by walloping the druids for no reason. Others say the druids started it, capturing and tormenting a couple of imporial men to death, and now Nilfgaard are getting their revenge. ‘Ow it rightly is, no one knows. But one thing brooks no doubt; the druids catch people, puts ‘em in the Wicker Woman and burns ‘em. To venture among ‘em is certain death.’
‘We are not afraid,’ Geralt said calmly.
‘Certainly,’ the forest beekeeper eyed the Witcher, Milva and Cahir up and down. Cahir was just entering the cottage, having groomed the horses. ‘It is evident you are fearless folk, valorous and armed. Eh, wouldn’t be no fear journeying with the likes of you . . . you know . . . But the Mistletoers ain’t in the Black Grove presently, your toils and travels would be in vain. Nilfgaard pressed ‘em, drove ‘em from Caed Dhu. They ain’t there presently.’
‘How so?’
‘Thus it is. The Mistletoers ‘ave fled.’
‘Fled where?
The forest beekeeper glanced at his hamadryad wife and said nothing for a moment.
‘Fled where?’ the Witcher repeated.
The beekeeper’s tabby cat sat down before the vampire and miaowed frightfully. The hamadryad hit it with her broom.
‘It be an evil sign when a tomcat mews in broad daylight,’ the beekeeper mumbled, strangely embarrassed. ‘But the druids . . . you know . . . They fled for the Slopes. Right enough. I speak the truth. To the Slopes.’
‘A good sixty miles south,’ Dandelion estimated in quite a casual – even cheerful – voice. But he fell silent when he saw the Witcher’s expression.
Only the ominous miaowing of the cat, promptly driven outside, could be heard in the silence that fell.
‘Well,’ the vampire began, ‘what difference does it make to us?’
*
The next morning brought more surprises. And riddles, which were quickly solved. ‘A pox on it,’ said Milva, who was the first to scramble out of the hay barrack, awoken by the commotion. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed. Look at that, Geralt.’
The clearing was full of people. At first glance it could be seen that five or six forest beekeeping families were gathered there. The Witcher’s trained eye also picked out several fur trappers and at least one tar maker. Taken together, there were twelve men, ten women, ten adolescents of both sexes and the same number of little children. The gathering was equipped with six wagons, twelve oxen, ten cows and four goats, a fair number of sheep, and also plenty of dogs and cats, whose barking and miaowing could definitely be considered a bad omen in such circumstances.
‘I wonder,’ Cahir said, rubbing his eyes, ‘what this means?’
‘Trouble,’ Dandelion replied, shaking the hay from his hair. Regis said nothing, but wore a curious expression.
‘Please break your fast, noble lords,’ said their friend the forest beekeeper, approaching the rick accompanied by a broad-shouldered man. ‘Breakfast is ready. Milky porridge. And honey . . . And if I may introduce Jan Cronin, headman of us forest beekeepers . . .’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ the Witcher lied, without returning the bow, partly because his knee was paining him intensely. ‘And this crowd, how did they get here?’
‘Type of thing . . .’ the beekeeper scratched the back of his head. ‘As you see, winter’s coming . . . The trees have bear fences, the hollows have been gouged out . . . Time we returned to the Slopes and Riedbrune . . . Store away the honey, for winter, you know . . . But it is perilous to be in the forests . . . alone . . .’
The headman cleared his throat. The beekeeper glanced at Geralt’s face and seemed to shrink a little.
The Saga of the Witcher Page 117