‘Those girls,’ the high priestess interrupted, ‘have spent their whole young lives learning to treat and heal illnesses and to care for the sick and wounded. They are going to war not out of patriotism or a hankering after adventure, but because there are countless wounded and sick people there. Piles of work, day and night! Eurneid and Iola, Myrrha, Katje, Prine, Debora and the other girls are the temple’s contribution to this war. The temple, as part of society, is repaying its debt to society. It’s giving the army and the war its contribution: experts and specialists. Do you understand that, Jarre? Specialists! Not arrow fodder!’
‘Everybody’s joining the army! Only cowards are staying at home!’
‘You’re talking nonsense, Jarre,’ Triss said sharply. ‘You don’t understand anything.’
‘I want to go to war . . .’ the boy’s voice broke. ‘I want to rescue . . . Ciri . . .’
‘My, my,’ Nenneke said mockingly. ‘The knight errant wants to ride out to rescue his sweetheart. On a white horse . . .’
She fell silent under the sorceress’s gaze.
‘In any case; enough of this, Jarre.’ She shot the boy a black look. ‘I said I’m not letting you! Return to your books! Study. Your future is scholarship. Come, Triss. Let’s not waste time.’
*
A bone comb, a cheap ring, a book with a tattered binding, and a faded light blue sash lay spread out on a cloth before the altar. Iola the First, a priestess with prophetic powers, was kneeling over the objects.
‘Don’t hurry, Iola,’ Nenneke, standing beside her, warned. ‘Start concentrating slowly. We don’t want a dazzling prophecy, we don’t want an enigma with a thousand solutions. We want an image. A distinct image. Take the aura from these objects; they belonged to Ciri, Ciri touched them. Take the aura. Slowly. There’s no hurry.’
Outside, a strong wind howled and a snowstorm whirled. Snow quickly covered the temple’s roofs and courtyard. It was the nineteenth day of November. A full moon.
‘I’m ready, O mother,’ Iola the First said in her melodious voice.
‘Begin.’
‘One moment.’ Triss sprang up from the bench and threw the chinchilla fur from her shoulders. ‘One moment, Nenneke. I want to enter the trance with her.’
‘That isn’t safe.’
‘I know. But I want to see. With my own eyes. I owe her that. I owe it to Ciri . . . I love that girl like a sister. She saved my life in Kaedwen, risking her own life to do it . . .’
The sorceress’s voice suddenly broke.
‘Just like Jarre.’ The high priestess shook her head. ‘Run to the rescue, blindly, recklessly, not knowing where or why. But Jarre is a naive young boy, and you’re supposedly a mature, wise sorceress. You ought to know that you won’t be helping Ciri by entering a trance. But you may harm yourself.’
‘I want to enter the trance with Iola,’ Triss repeated, biting her lip. ‘Let me, Nenneke. As a matter of fact, what am I risking? An epileptic fit? Even if I am, you’d pull me out of it, wouldn’t you?’
‘You risk,’ Nenneke said slowly, ‘seeing things you ought not to see.’
The hill, Triss thought in horror, Sodden Hill. Where I died. Where I was buried and my name was carved into the obelisk over the grave. The hill and the grave that will one day call for me.
I know it. It was prophesied.
‘I’ve already made my decision,’ she said coldly, haughtily standing up and throwing her luxuriant hair back with both hands onto her shoulders.
‘Let us begin.’
Nenneke kneeled down and rested her forehead on her folded hands.
‘Let us begin,’ she said softly. ‘Make ready, Iola. Kneel beside me, Triss. Take Iola’s hand.’
It was dark outside. The snowstorm moaned. Snow was falling.
*
In the South, far beyond the Amell mountains, in Metinna, in a land called Hundred Lakes, in a place far from the town of Ellander and the Temple of Melitele, five hundred miles away as the crow flies, a nightmare jolted the fisherman Gosta awake. After waking, Gosta could remember nothing of the dream, but an eerie anxiety kept him awake for a long time.
*
Every experienced angler knows you must wait for the first ice to land a perch.
That year, the winter – although unexpectedly early – played tricks and was as fickle as a pretty, popular girl. The first frost and snowstorm came as an unpleasant surprise, like a brigand from an ambush, at the beginning of November, right after Samhain, when no one had been expecting snow or frost and there was still plenty of work to do. By the middle of November the lake was already glazed over with a very thin layer of ice, which seemed just about able to bear the weight of a man, when the fickle winter suddenly subsided. Autumn returned, torrents of rain shattered the ice and a warm, southerly wind pushed it against the bank and melted it. What the devil? the peasants wondered. Is this winter or is it not?
Not even three days passed before winter returned. This time it came with no snow, with no wind; instead, the frost gripped like a pair of blacksmith’s tongs until everything creaked. Over the course of a night the eaves dripping with water now grinned with sharp-fanged icicles, and astonished waterfowl almost froze to their duck ponds.
And the lakes of Centloch heaved a sigh and turned to ice.
Gosta waited one more day, just to be sure, then took the chest with a shoulder strap where he kept his fishing tackle down from the loft. He stuffed his boots well with straw, donned a sheepskin coat, took his chisel and a sack and hurried to the lake.
It’s common knowledge that it’s best to fish for perch with the first ice.
The ice was thick. It sagged a little beneath the man, groaned a little, but held firm. Gosta reached the broad water, cut an ice-hole with the chisel, sat down on the chest, unwound a horsehair line fastened to a short larch rod, attached a little tin fish with a hook, and cast it into the water. The first perch, measuring half a cubit, snatched the bait before it had sunk or the line become taut.
Before an hour was up more than four dozen striped green fish with blood-red fins lay all around the ice hole. Gosta had more perch than he needed, but his angler’s euphoria wouldn’t let him stop fishing. After all, he could always give the fish away to his neighbours.
He heard a long-drawn-out snort.
He lifted his head up from the ice hole. A splendid black horse was standing on the lake shore, steam belching from its nostrils. The face of the rider, who was dressed in a muskrat coat, was covered.
Gosta swallowed. It was too late to run. In his heart of hearts he hoped the rider wouldn’t dare to venture out onto the thin ice.
He was still mechanically moving his rod as another perch jerked the line. The angler hauled it out, removed the hook and tossed it down on the ice. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the rider dismount, toss the reins onto a leafless bush and walk towards him, treading gingerly on the slippery surface. The perch flapped about on the ice, flexing its spined dorsal fin and moving its gills. Gosta stood up and reached for his chisel, which as a last resort might serve as a weapon.
‘Fear not.’
It was a girl. Now, the scarf was removed he could see her face, disfigured by a hideous scar. On her back was a sword. He saw a hilt of exquisite workmanship, sticking up above her shoulder.
‘I won’t do you any harm,’ she said quietly. ‘I only want to ask the way.’
Course you do, thought Gosta. Pull the other one. Now, in winter. In the frost. Who treks or travels? Only a brigand. Or an outcast.
‘This land, is it Mil Trachta?’
‘It is . . .’ he mumbled, staring into the ice hole, into the black water. ‘Mil Trachta. But we says: Hundred Lakes.’
‘And Tarn Mira lake? Do you know of such a place?’
‘Everyone does.’ He glanced at the girl, frightened. ‘We calls it Bottomless Lake, mind. It’s enchanted. Awfully deep . . . Rusalkas live there, drown folk, they do. And phantoms live in the ancient, enchanted ruins.
’
He saw her green eyes light up.
‘There are ruins there? A tower, perhaps?’
‘What tower?’ He couldn’t suppress a snort. ‘Stone upon stone, covered over with stone, overgrown with weeds. A heap of rubble . . .’
The perch had stopped flopping, and was lying, moving its gills, amidst its colourful, striped brothers. The girl stared at it, lost in thought.
‘Death on the ice,’ she said, ‘has something bewitching about it.’
‘Eh?’
‘How far is it to the lake with the ruins? Which way should I ride?’
He told her. He showed her. He even scratched it on the ice with the sharp end of the chisel. She nodded, trying to remember. The mare at the lakeside struck its hooves on the frozen ground and snorted, belching steam from its nostrils.
*
He watched her move away along the western edge of the lake, gallop along the edge of the cliff against a background of leafless alders and birches, through a breathtaking, fairy-tale forest, adorned with a white icing of hoarfrost. The black mare ran with unutterable grace, swiftly, but at the same time lightly, the beat of its hooves barely audible on the frozen ground, a faint silver powder of snow dropping from the branches it knocked against. As though it were not an ordinary horse but one from a fairy-tale, as if a spectral horse was running through a mythical forest, the trees bound in hoarfrost like icing.
And perhaps it was an apparition?
A demon on a ghostly horse, a demon that assumed the form of a girl with huge green eyes and a disfigured face?
Who, if not a demon, travels in winter? Or asks the way to enchanted ruins?
After she had ridden away, Gosta quickly packed away his fishing tackle. He walked home through the forest. He was going out of his way, but his good sense and instincts warned him not to take the forest tracks, to stay out of sight. The girl, his good sense told him, had not – contrary to all appearances – been a phantom. She was a human being. The black mare hadn’t been an apparition, it was a horse. And people who gallop through the wilds – in winter, to boot – are very often being hunted.
An hour later a search party galloped along the forest track. Fourteen horses.
*
Rience shook the silver box once again, swore and smacked his saddle pommel in fury. But the xenogloss was silent. As the grave.
‘Magic shit,’ commented Bonhart coldly. ‘It’s broken, the cheap gewgaw.’
‘Or Vilgefortz is showing what he thinks of us,’ Stefan Skellen added.
Rience raised his head and glared at the two of them.
‘Thanks to this cheap gewgaw,’ he stated caustically, ‘we’re on the trail and won’t lose it now. Thanks to Lord Vilgefortz we know which way the girl is headed. We know where we’re going and what we have to do. I’d call that plenty. Compared to your efforts of a month ago.’
‘Don’t talk so much. Hey, Boreas? What does the trail say?’
Boreas Mun straightened up and cleared his throat.
‘She was here an hour before us. She’s riding hard where she can. But it’s difficult terrain. Even on that exceptional mare she’s not more than five, six miles ahead of us.’
‘And so she’s still pushing on among those lakes,’ Skellen muttered. ‘Vilgefortz was right. And I didn’t believe him . . .’
‘Neither did I,’ Bonhart admitted. ‘Until yesterday, when those peasants confirmed there really is some kind of magical structure by Tarn Mira.’
The horses snorted, steam billowing from their nostrils. Tawny Owl glanced over his left shoulder at Joanna Selborne. For several days he had been none too pleased by the telepath’s expression. I’m getting edgy, he thought. This chase has exhausted all of us, physically and mentally. It’s time to be done with it. High time.
A cold shudder ran down his back. He recalled the dream that had visited him the night before.
‘Very well!’ he said, coming back to his senses. ‘That’s enough meditation. To horse!’
*
Boreas Mun hung from his saddle, looking for tracks. It wasn’t easy. The earth had frozen solid, hard as iron, and the loose snow, quickly blown away by the wind, only lingered in furrows and clefts. It was in them that Boreas was searching for the black mare’s hoof prints. He had to pay close attention in order not to lose the trail, especially now, when the magical voice coming from the silver box had fallen silent, stopped giving advice and instructions.
He was unbelievably weary. And anxious. They’d been tracking the girl for almost three weeks, since Samhain and the massacre in Dun Dare. Almost three weeks in the saddle, constantly on the hunt. And still neither the black mare nor the girl riding it had weakened or slowed their pace.
Boreas Mun looked for tracks.
He couldn’t stop thinking about a dream from the night before. In it he had been drowning. The black water had closed over his head and he sank to the bottom, the icy water gushing into his throat and lungs. He awoke hot and sweaty, wet through, although a truly bitter winter was raging around them.
That’s enough, he thought, hanging from his saddle, looking for tracks. It’s high time we were done with it.
*
‘Master? Do you hear me? Master?’
The xenogloss was silent as the grave.
Rience moved his arms vigorously and breathed on his numb hands. The cold nipped his neck and shoulders, his lower back and loins hurt; each jolt of the horse reminded him of the pain. He didn’t even feel like swearing. Almost three weeks in the saddle, in an unending pursuit. In the bitter cold and for several days in severe frost.
And Vilgefortz was silent.
We are too. And we’re scowling at each other.
Rience rubbed his hands and pulled down his sleeves.
Skellen, he thought, looks at me strangely. Might he be plotting a betrayal? He came to an agreement with Vilgefortz too quickly and too easily back then . . . And that troop, those thugs, it’s him they’re loyal to, it’s his orders they carry out. When we seize the maid, he’s liable – heedless of the agreement – to kill or carry her away to those conspirators of his, in order to enact his insane ideas about democracy and civil government.
But perhaps Skellen’s got over his conspiracies by now? Perhaps that born conformist and opportunist is now thinking about delivering the maid to Emperor Emhyr?
He looks at me strangely. That Tawny Owl. And that whole mob of his . . . That Kenna Selborne . . .
And Bonhart? Bonhart is an unpredictable sadist. When he speaks of Ciri, his voice trembles with fury. Depending on his whims, if we capture the girl he’s liable to beat her to death or kidnap her and make her fight in the arena. The agreement with Vilgefortz? He won’t care about it. Particularly now, when Vilgefortz . . .
He removed the xenogloss from his bosom.
‘Master? Do you hear me? It’s Rience . . .’
The device was silent. Rience didn’t even feel like swearing.
Vilgefortz remains silent. Skellen and Bonhart made a pact with him. Only in a day or two, when we catch up with the girl, it may turn out that there is no pact. And then I might have my throat cut. Or ride in fetters to Nilfgaard, as proof of and as ransom against Tawny Owl’s loyalty . . .
Sod it!
Vilgefortz remains silent. He isn’t giving us any advice. He’s not giving us directions. He isn’t dispelling our doubts with his calm, logical voice, which touches the depths of your soul. He’s silent.
The xenogloss has broken down. Perhaps because of the cold? Or maybe . . .
Maybe Skellen was right? Perhaps Vilgefortz really has turned his attention to something else and doesn’t care about us or our fate?
By all the devils, I never thought it would turn out like this. Had I, I wouldn’t have been so enthusiastic about this mission . . . I would have gone and killed the Witcher instead of Schirrú . . . Damn it! I’m freezing out here and Schirrú is probably nice and warm . . .
To think that I insisted on going aft
er Ciri, and Schirrú after the Witcher. I asked for it myself . . . Back at the beginning of September when Yennefer fell into our hands.
*
The world, a moment ago still an unreal, soft and muddily sticky blackness, abruptly took on hard surfaces and contours. It became brighter. And materialised.
Yennefer opened her eyes, rocked by convulsive shivers. She lay on the stones, among dead bodies and tarred planks, littered with the remains of the rigging of the longship Alkyone. She could see feet all around her. Feet in heavy boots. One of the boots had just kicked her, to bring her around.
‘Get up, witch!’
Another kick, sending pain shooting right into the roots of her teeth. She saw a face bending over her. ‘Get up, I said! On your feet! Recognise me?’
She blinked. Yes, she did. It was the man she had burned, when he was fleeing from her using a teleporter. Rience.
‘We’ll square accounts,’ he promised her. ‘We’ll square accounts for everything, you slut. I’ll teach you what pain is. I’ll teach you what pain is with these fingers and these hands.’
She tensed up, clenched and spread her fingers, ready to cast a spell. And immediately curled up in a ball, choking, wheezing and trembling. Rience guffawed.
‘Nothing doing, eh?’ she heard. ‘You haven’t even got a scrap of power! You’re no match for Vilgefortz when it comes to sorcery! He’s squeezed the very last drop out of you, like whey from curds. You can’t even—’
He didn’t complete the sentence. Yennefer pulled out a dagger from a sheath fastened to her inner thigh, sprang like a cat and thrust blindly. She missed. The blade merely brushed her target, tearing his trousers. Rience leaped aside and fell over.
Immediately, a hail of blows and kicks rained down on her. She howled as a heavy boot dropped on her hand, squeezing the dagger from her crushed fist. Another boot kicked her in the belly. The sorceress curled up, rasping. She was picked up from the ground, her arms jerked behind her. She saw a fist flying towards her, the world suddenly flashed brightly, and her face exploded with pain. A wave of pain passed downwards, to her stomach and crotch, transforming her knees into a thin jelly. She drooped in the arms holding her up. Someone seized her from behind by the hair, lifting up her head. She was struck once more, in the eye socket, and again everything vanished in a blinding flash.
The Saga of the Witcher Page 149