The Saga of the Witcher

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  ‘Draw huge, erect phalluses on the primitive hunters.’

  ‘That’s a thought.’ The elf dipped his brush in the paint. ‘The phallic cult was typical for primitive civilisations. It could also serve as the birth of a theory that the human race is yielding to physical degeneration. Its forebears had phalluses like clubs, but their descendants were left with ridiculous, vestigial little pricks . . . Thank you, Witcher.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. It was somehow in my heart. The paint looks very fresh for something prehistoric.’

  ‘In three or four days the colours will fade due to the salt exuded by the wall and the painting will look so prehistoric you won’t believe it. Your scholars will wet themselves with joy when they see it. Not one of them, I swear, will see through my deceit.’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘How is that?’

  ‘You won’t be able to resist signing your masterpiece, will you?’

  The elf laughed dryly.

  ‘Quite right! You’ve seen through me. Oh, fire of vanity, how difficult it is for an artist to quell you. I’ve already signed the cave painting. Right here.’

  ‘That isn’t a dragonfly?’

  ‘No. It’s an ideogram denoting my name. I am Crevan Espane aep Caomhan Macha. For convenience I use the alias Avallac’h, and you may also address me as such.’

  ‘I shall be sure to.’

  ‘You, though, are called Geralt of Rivia. You’re a witcher. Presently you are not, however, destroying monsters or beasts, but are busy hunting for missing girls.’

  ‘News spreads astonishingly quickly. Astonishingly far. And astonishingly deep. You allegedly foresaw that I’d show up here. You can foretell the future, I gather?’

  ‘Anyone,’ Avallac’h wiped his hands on a rag, ‘can foretell the future. And everyone does it, for it is simple. It is no great art to foretell it. The art is in foretelling it accurately.’

  ‘An elegant deduction, worthy of an epigram. You, naturally, can prophecy accurately.’

  ‘And often. I, my dear Geralt, know much and am capable of much. Actually, my academic title – as you, humans, would say – indicates that. It reads in full “Aen Saevherne”.’

  ‘A Sage – a Knowing One.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And willing, I hope, to share that knowledge?’

  Avallac’h said nothing for a moment.

  ‘Share?’ he finally drawled. ‘With you? Knowledge, my dear, is a privilege, and privileges are only shared with one’s equals. And why would I, an elf, a Sage, a member of the elite, share anything with a descendant of a creature that appeared in the universe barely five million years ago, having evolved from an ape, a rat, a jackal or some other such mammal? A creature that took around a million years to discover that one can execute some sort of operation with a gnawed bone using its two hairy hands? After which it shoved the bone up its rectum and shrieked for joy?’

  The elf fell silent, turning and fixing his gaze on his painting.

  ‘Why indeed,’ he repeated, ‘do you dare to think I would share any knowledge at all with you, human? Tell me!’

  Geralt wiped the rest of the shit from his boot.

  ‘Because, perhaps,’ he replied dryly, ‘it is inevitable?’

  The elf spun around.

  ‘What,’ he asked through clenched teeth, ‘is inevitable?’

  ‘Perhaps –’ Geralt didn’t feel like raising his voice ‘– for the reason that a few years will pass and people will simply take all knowledge for themselves, heedless of whether anyone wants to share it with them or not? Including knowledge which you, elf and Sage, cunningly conceal behind cave paintings? Counting on the fact that people will not want to take pickaxes to that wall, painted with the false evidence of primitive human existence? Eh? O, my fire of vanity?’

  The elf snorted. Quite cheerfully.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘It would be vanity truly carried to stupidity to believe you wouldn’t smash something. You smash everything. But what of it? What of it, man?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tell me. And if you don’t think it fit, I’ll take myself off. Ideally through a different exit, since your mischievous chums are waiting for me by the other one, longing to crack my ribs.’

  ‘By all means.’ The elf spread his arms wide in a sudden movement, and the rock wall opened with a grinding and a cracking, brutally splitting the purple bison in two. ‘Leave this way. Tread towards the light. Metaphorically or literally, that is usually the right way.’

  ‘A bit of a shame,’ Geralt muttered. ‘I liked the frescoes.’

  ‘You must be jesting,’ the elf said after a brief silence, sounding quite astonishingly kindly and friendly. ‘The fresco won’t be harmed. I shall close the rock with an identical charm, and not even the trace of a crack will remain. Come. I’ll go out with you, I shall escort you. I’ve reached the conclusion that I have something to tell you. And show you.’

  It was dark inside, but the Witcher knew right away that the cave was immense – he could tell from the temperature and air currents. The gravel they walked over was wet.

  Avallac’h conjured light in the elven fashion, simply using a gesture, without uttering a spell. A glowing ball rose towards the ceiling and the formations of rock crystal in the cave walls sparkled in a myriad of reflections and gleams. Shadows danced. The Witcher gasped involuntarily.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d seen elven sculptures and statues, but the impression was the same each time. That the figures of elves and she-elves frozen in mid-movement, in mid-flicker, weren’t the work of a sculptor’s chisel, but the result of a powerful spell, able to change living tissue into the white marble of Amell. The nearest statue depicted a she-elf sitting with her feet tucked beneath her on a basalt slab. The she-elf was turning her head away, as though alarmed by the patter of approaching steps. She was utterly naked. The white marble, polished to a milky brilliance, meant one virtually felt the warmth emanating from the statue.

  Avallac’h stopped and leaned against one of the columns marking the way among an avenue of statues.

  ‘You have seen through me for a second time, Geralt,’ he said softly. ‘Yes, you were right, the bison cave painting was camouflage. Intended to discourage hacking and drilling through the wall. Intended to defend everything in here from plunder and devastation. Every race – the elven too – has a right to its roots. What you see here are our roots. Tread carefully, please. It is essentially a graveyard.’

  The reflections of light dancing over the rock crystals drew further details from the gloom. Beyond the avenue of statues could be seen colonnades, stairways, amphitheatrical galleries, arcades and peristyles. Everything made of white marble.

  ‘I want it,’ Avallac’h continued, stopping and indicating with a hand, ‘to survive. Even when we depart, when this whole continent and this whole world ends up under a mile-thick layer of ice and snow, Tir ná Béa Arainne will endure. We shall leave this place, but one day we shall return. We elves. We are promised this by Aen Ithlinnespeath, the Ithlinne Aegli aep Aevenien prophecy.’

  ‘Do you really believe in it? In that prophecy? Does your fatalism really run so deep?’

  ‘Everything –’ the elf looked not at him, but at the marble columns covered with reliefs as delicate as cobwebs ‘– has been foreseen and prophesied. Your arrival on the continent, the war, the shedding of elven and human blood. The rise of your race, your decadence. The battle between the rulers of the North and the South. And the king of the South shall rise up against the kings of the North and overrun their lands like a flood, they will be crushed, and their nations devastated . . . And so shall begin the extinction of the world. Do your recall Ithlinne’s text, Witcher? Who is far shall die at once; who is near shall fall from the sword; who hides shall die of hunger, who survives shall perish from the frost . . . For Tedd Deireadh, the Time of the End, the Time of the Sword and the Battle Axe, the Time of Contempt, the Time of the White Cold and the Wolfish Snowstorm shal
l come . . . ’

  ‘Poetry.’

  ‘Do you prefer it less poetic? As a result of a change in the angle of the sun’s rays, the margin of permafrost will shift – significantly. Then the mountains will be crushed and pushed back southwards by the ice sliding from the North. Everything will be buried under snow. Under a thick layer more than a mile deep. And it will become very – very – cold.’

  ‘We’ll wear warm britches,’ Geralt said without emotion. ‘Sheepskins. And fur hats.’

  ‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ the elf agreed calmly. ‘And you’ll survive in those hats and britches, in order to return one day, dig holes and poke around in these caves, to wreck and plunder. Ithlinne’s prophecy doesn’t say so, but I know it. It’s impossible to utterly destroy humans and cockroaches; at least one pair always remains. As far as we elves are concerned, Ithlinne is more explicit: only those who follow the Swallow will survive. The Swallow, the symbol of spring, is the saviour, the one who will open the Forbidden Door, signal the way of salvation. And make possible the world’s rebirth. The Swallow, the Child of the Elder Blood.’

  ‘You mean Ciri?’ Geralt burst out. ‘Or Ciri’s child? How? And why?’

  Avallac’h seemed not to hear.

  ‘The Swallow of the Elder Blood,’ he said again. ‘From her blood. Come. And look.’

  The statue Avallac’h pointed at stood out even among the other astoundingly realistic statues; most captured mid-movement or mid-gesture. The white marble she-elf reclining on the slab gave the impression that – having been awoken – she was about to sit up and get to her feet. Her face was turned towards the empty place by her side, and her raised hand seemed to be touching something invisible.

  There was an expression of calm happiness on the she-elf’s face.

  It was a long time before Avallac’h broke the silence.

  ‘That is Lara Dorren aep Shiadhal. It’s not a grave, naturally, but a cenotaph. Does the statue’s position surprise you? Support was not gained for the plan to carve both of the legendary lovers in marble. Lara and Cregennan of Lod. Cregennan was a man; it would be sacrilege to waste Amell marble on a statue of him. It would be blasphemy to erect a statue of a man here, in Tir ná Béa Arainne. On the other hand, it would be an even greater crime to deliberately destroy the memory of this emotion. So a happy medium was found. Formally . . . Cregennan is not here. And yet he is. In Lara’s aspect and pose. The lovers are together. Nothing was able to separate them. Neither death, nor oblivion . . . Nor hatred.’

  It seemed to the Witcher that the elf’s indifferent voice had changed for a moment. But that would have been impossible. Avallac’h approached the statue and stroked the marble arm with a cautious, gentle movement. Then he turned around and the usual, slightly sneering smile reappeared on his angular face.

  ‘Do you know, Witcher, what the greatest snag of longevity is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sex.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard right. Sex. After almost a hundred years it becomes boring. There’s nothing in it to fascinate or excite any longer, nothing that has the exciting appeal of novelty. It has all been done already . . . In this or that way, but it has happened. And then suddenly comes the Conjunction of the Spheres and you, people, appear here. Human survivors, come from another world, from your former world, which you managed utterly to destroy with your still-hirsute hands, barely five million years after evolving as a species. There’s only a handful of you, your life expectancy is ridiculously low, so your survival depends on the pace of reproduction. Thus unbridled lust never leaves you, sex totally governs you; it’s a drive more powerful even than the survival instinct. To die? Why not, if one can fuck around beforehand. That is your entire philosophy.’

  Geralt didn’t interrupt or comment, although he felt a strong desire to.

  ‘And what suddenly happens?’ Avallac’h continued. ‘Elves, bored by she-elves, court the always-willing human females. Bored she-elves give themselves, out of perverse curiosity, to human males, always full of vigour and verve. And something happens that no one can explain: she-elves, who normally ovulate once every ten or twenty years, when copulating with a man begin to ovulate with each powerful orgasm. Some hidden hormone, or combination of hormones, became active. She-elves suddenly understand they can, in practice, only have children with humans. So, owing to the she-elves, we didn’t exterminate you when we were still the more powerful race. And later you were more powerful and began to exterminate us. But you still had allies in the she-elves. For they were the advocates of coexistence and cooperation . . . and they didn’t want to admit that essentially it was about commingling.’

  ‘What does that –’ Geralt cleared his throat ‘– have to do with me?’

  ‘With you? Absolutely nothing. But with Ciri, a great deal. For Ciri is a descendant of Lara Dorren aep Shiadhal, and Lara Dorren was an advocate of coexistence with humans. Chiefly with one human. Cregennan of Lod, a human sorcerer. Lara Dorren coexisted with Cregennan often and effectively. To put it more simply: she became pregnant.’

  The Witcher kept silent this time too.

  ‘The snag was that Lara Dorren wasn’t an ordinary she-elf. She was genetic potential. Especially prepared. The result of many years’ work. In combination with another charge – an elven one, naturally – she was meant to bear an even more special child. Engaging with the seed of a man, she ruined that chance, wasted hundreds of years’ planning and preparation. At least so it was thought at the time. No one supposed that the cross-breed begat by Cregennan could inherit anything positive from its pure-blood mother. No, such a misalliance could not bring any good—’

  ‘For which reason,’ Geralt interjected, ‘he was severely punished.’

  ‘Not the way you think.’ Avallac’h glanced at him. ‘Although the relationship between Lara Dorren and Cregennan caused incalculable damage to the elves, and it could have turned out well for humans, it was, however, humans – and not elves – who murdered Cregennan. Humans – and not elves – brought Lara to ruin. Thus it was, despite the fact that many elves had reason to hate the lovers. Personally, too.’

  For the second time, the slight change in the elf’s voice puzzled Geralt.

  ‘One way or another,’ Avallac’h continued, ‘the peaceful coexistence burst like a soap bubble, and the races went for each other’s throats. A war began which endures until today. And meanwhile Lara’s genetic material . . . exists, as you’ve probably guessed. And has even developed. Unfortunately, it mutated. Yes, yes. Your Ciri is a mutant.’

  This time, again, the elf didn’t wait for a comment.

  ‘Of course, the sorcerers had a hand in this, cleverly combining breeding individuals into pairs, but it got out of control. Few can guess how Lara Dorren’s genetic material regenerated so powerfully in Ciri, what the trigger was. I think it is known by Vilgefortz, the one who gave you a hiding on Thanedd. The sorcerers who experimented with Lara and Riannon’s progeny, running a veritable breeding farm, didn’t get the expected results, so they became bored and abandoned the experiment. But the experiment continued; just spontaneously. Ciri, the daughter of Pavetta, the granddaughter of Calanthe, the great-great-granddaughter of Riannon, was Lara Dorren’s true descendant. Vilgefortz learned about it, probably by accident. It is also known about by Emhyr var Emreis, the Emperor of Nilfgaard.’

  ‘And you know about it.’

  ‘I know more about it than the two of them. But that means nothing. The mill of destiny is turning, the querns of fate are grinding . . . Whatever is destined must occur.’

  ‘So what must occur?’

  ‘Whatever is destined to. That which was determined above, in the metaphorical sense, of course. Something that is determined by the action of an unerringly functioning mechanism, at the root of which lies the Purpose, the Plan and the Result.’

  ‘That’s either poetry or metaphysics. Or the one and the other, for they are occasionally difficult to disti
nguish. Are any hard facts possible? If only a very few? I’d love to discuss this and that with you, but it so happens I’m in a hurry.’

  Avallac’h gave him a long look.

  ‘And where are you hurrying to? Ah, forgive me . . . You, it seems to me, haven’t understood anything I’ve said to you. So I’ll tell you straight: your great rescue expedition is meaningless. It has lost all meaning.

  ‘There are several reasons,’ the elf continued, looking at the Witcher’s granite-like face. ‘Firstly, it’s too late now, the serious evil has already occurred; you’re no longer in a position to save the girl from it. Secondly, now that she has taken the right road, the Swallow will cope wonderfully by herself. She carries too mighty a force inside her to fear anything. She doesn’t need your help. And thirdly . . . Hmmm . . . ’

  ‘I’m still all ears, Avallac’h. All ears!’

  ‘Thirdly . . . Thirdly, someone else will help her now. You can’t be so arrogant as to think that the girl’s destiny is exclusively bound to you.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then farewell.’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘I said I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘Let’s suppose for a moment,’ the elf said serenely, ‘that I know what will happen, that I can see the future. What if I tell you what is to happen, what will happen anyway, irrespective of the efforts you make? Of the initiatives already undertaken? What if I told you that you could search for a peaceful place on earth and stay there, doing nothing, waiting for the inevitable consequences of the course of events. Would you choose to do something like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What if I communicated to you that your activities – testifying to your lack of faith in the unwavering mechanisms of the Purpose, Plan and Result – may, though the likelihood is slight, indeed change something, but only for the worse? Would you reconsider? Oh, I see from your expression that you wouldn’t. Then I’ll simply ask you: why not?’