‘In your dreams?’ Yennefer’s face became contorted. ‘With a crossbow, from hiding? Or perhaps with a draught of poison?’
Bonhart put the medallions back under his shirt and took two paces towards her.
‘You vex me, witch.’
‘That was my intention.’
‘Oh, yes? I’ll soon show you, bitch, that I can compete with your witcher lover in any way. Why, that I’m even better than him.’
*
The guards standing outside the door started at the thudding, banging, crashing, howling and wailing. And if the guards had ever happened to hear before the yelling of a panther caught in a trap, they would have sworn there was a panther in the cell.
Then a dreadful roar reached their ears. It was the exact sound of a wounded lion. Although the guards actually hadn’t ever heard that, either, only seen one on coats of arms. They looked at each other. They nodded to each other. Then they rushed inside.
Yennefer was sitting in the corner of the chamber among the remains of her pallet. Her hair was dishevelled, her dress and blouse were torn from top to bottom, and her small breasts were rising in the rhythm of heavy breathing. Blood dripped from her nose, her face was quickly swelling, and welts from fingernails were also growing on her right arm.
Bonhart was sitting on the other side of the chamber amongst pieces of a stool, holding his crotch in both hands. Blood was dripping from his nose too, staining his grey whiskers a deep carmine. His face was criss-crossed with bloody scratch marks. Yennefer’s barely healed fingers were a poor weapon, but the padlocks on the dimeritium bracelets had splendidly sharp edges.
Both tines of the fork that Yennefer had swiped from the table during supper were rammed deep and evenly into the bone of Bonhart’s swelling cheek.
‘Only little curs, you dogcatcher,’ gasped the sorceress, trying to cover up her breasts with the remains of her dress. ‘And stay away from bitches. You’re too weak for them, pipsqueak.’
She couldn’t forgive herself for not striking where she had aimed –his eye. But why, the target was moving, and besides, nobody’s perfect.
Bonhart roared, stood up, pulled out the fork, howled and staggered from the pain. He swore hideously.
Meanwhile, two more guards looked inside the cell.
‘Hey, you!’ roared Bonhart, wiping blood from his face. ‘In here! Drag that harlot into the middle of the floor, spread-eagle her and hold her down.’
The guards looked at each other. Then at the floor. And then at the ceiling.
‘You’d better be going, sir,’ said one. ‘There won’t be any spread-eaglin’ or holdin’ here. It’s not among our duties.’
‘And apart on that,’ muttered the other, ‘we don’t mean to end up like Rience or Schirrú.’
*
Condwiramurs put aside the painted board, which depicted a prison cell. And, in the cell, a woman sitting with head bowed, manacled to the stone wall.
‘They imprisoned her,’ she murmured. ‘And the Witcher was taking his pleasure in Toussaint with some brunette.’
‘Do you condemn him?’ Nimue asked severely. ‘Knowing practically nothing?’
‘No. I don’t condemn him, but—’
‘There are no “buts”. Be quiet, please.’
They sat in silence for some time, leafing through engravings and watercolours.
‘All the versions of the legend—’ Condwiramurs pointed to one of the engravings ‘—give Rhys-Rhun castle as the place of the ending, the finale, the conclusive battle between Good and Evil. Armageddon. All of the versions. Aside from one.’
‘Aside from one,’ nodded Nimue. ‘Aside from an anonymous, not very popular version, known as the Black Book of Ellander.’
‘The Black Book states that the ending of the legend played out in Stygga citadel.’
‘Indeed. And the Book of Ellander presents matters that describe the legend in a way that differs significantly from the canon.’
‘I wonder—’ Condwiramurs raised her head ‘—which of those castles is portrayed in the illustrations? Which one is shown on your tapestry? Which likeness is true?’
‘We shall never know. The castle that witnessed the ending of the legend doesn’t exist. It was destroyed. Not a trace of it remains. All the versions agree on that, even the one given by the Book of Ellander. None of the locations given in the sources is convincing. We do not know and shall not know what that castle looked like and where it stood.’
‘But the truth—’
‘But the truth means nothing whatsoever,’ Nimue interrupted sharply. ‘Don’t forget, we don’t know what Ciri really looked like. But look at this figure here, on this piece of parchment drawn on by Wilma Wessely, in a heated conversation with the elf, Avallac’h, against a background of figurines of macabre children. It’s her. Ciri. There isn’t any doubt about it.’
‘But,’ Condwiramurs soldiered on pugnaciously, ‘your tapestry—’
‘Depicts the castle where the legend’s climax was played out.’
There was a long silence. The sheets of parchment rustled as they were turned over.
‘I don’t like the version of the legend from the Black Book,’ Condwiramurs began again. ‘It’s . . . It’s—’
‘Brutally authentic.’ Nimue finished her novice’s sentence, nodding.
*
Condwiramurs yawned, put down an edition of Half a Century of Poetry with an afterword by Professor Everett Denhoff Jr. She plumped up her pillow, changing the arrangement for reading to one suitable for sleeping. She yawned, stretched and blew out the lamp. The chamber was plunged into darkness, lit only by needles of moonlight squeezing through chinks in the curtains. What should I choose tonight? wondered the novice, wriggling on the sheets. Take pot luck? Or anchor myself?
After a brief moment she decided on the latter.
It was a vague, repeating dream that she couldn’t see through to the end. It evaporated, vanished among other dreams, like a thread of the weft vanishes and gets lost among the pattern of a coloured fabric. A dream that vanished from her memory, but which in spite of that stubbornly remained in it.
She fell asleep immediately, the dream engulfing her at once. As soon as she closed her eyes.
A night sky, cloudless, bright from the moon and the stars. Hills, and on their slopes vineyards dusted with snow. The black, angular outline of a building: a wall with battlements, a keep, a lonely corner watchtower.
Two horsemen. The two of them ride beyond the outer wall, they dismount, they both enter the portal. But only one of them enters the opening to a dungeon gaping in the floor.
The one with utterly white hair.
Condwiramurs moaned in her sleep, tossing around on her bed.
The white-haired man descends the stairs, deep, deep into the cellar. He walks along dark corridors, from time to time illuminating them by lighting brands held in cast-iron cressets. The glow from the torches casts ghastly shadows on the walls and vaulting.
Corridors, stairs, and again corridors. A dungeon, a huge crypt, barrels by the walls. Piles of rubble, heaps of bricks. Then a corridor which forks into two. Darkness both ways. The white-haired man lights another torch. He unsheathes the sword on his back. He hesitates, not knowing which fork to take. He finally decides on the one to the right. It’s very dark, winding and full of rubble. Condwiramurs groans in her sleep. Fear grips her. She knows that the way chosen by the white-haired man leads towards danger.
She knows at the same time that the white-haired man seeks danger.
For it is his profession.
The novice thrashes around in the sheets, moaning. She’s a dream-reader, she’s dreaming, she’s in an oneiric trance, she suddenly knows what is about to happen. Beware! She wants to scream, though she knows she’s unable to. Look out, behind you!
Beware, Witcher!
The monster attacked from the darkness, from an ambush, silently and horrendously. It suddenly materialised in the darkness like a flame flarin
g up. Like a tongue of flame.
No matter how much he hurried, urged, fumed and stormed, the Witcher remained in Toussaint almost the whole winter. What were the reasons? I shall not write about them. It is all over. There is no point dwelling on it. Anyone who would condemn the Witcher I would remind that love has many names and not to judge less they themselves are judged.
Dandelion, Half a Century of Poetry
CHAPTER THREE
The monster attacked from the darkness, from an ambush, silently and horrendously. It suddenly materialised in the darkness like an exploding flame flaring up. Like a tongue of flame.
Geralt, though taken by surprise, reacted instinctively. He dodged, brushing the dungeon wall. The beast flew past, rebounded off the dirt floor like a ball, flailed its wings and leaped again, hissing and opening its awful beak. But this time the Witcher was ready.
He jabbed from the elbow, aiming at the crop beneath the crimson dewlap, which was large, twice as big as a turkey’s. He found the target, and felt his blade slice the body open. The blow’s force knocked the beast to the ground, against the wall. The skoffin screamed, and it was almost a human scream. It thrashed around among broken bricks, writhed and fluttered its wings, splashing blood and lashing its whip-like tail around. The Witcher was certain the battle was over, but the monster surprised him unpleasantly. It unexpectedly lunged for his throat, croaking horribly, talons outstretched and beak snapping. Geralt dodged, pushed off from the wall with his shoulder and smote with great force from below, taking advantage of the momentum he’d generated. The wounded skoffin tumbled among the bricks again, and stinking gore splashed on the dungeon wall, describing fanciful patterns. Wounded, the monster stopped thrashing around and was only trembling, croaking, extending its long neck, swelling its crop and shaking its dewlap. Blood flowed swiftly between the bricks it lay on.
Geralt could easily have finished it off, but didn’t want to damage its hide too much. He waited calmly for the skoffin to bleed to death. He moved a few steps away, turned around to the wall, undid his trousers and pissed, whistling a sad song. The skoffin stopped croaking, lay still and went quiet. The Witcher moved closer and poked it gently with the point of his sword. Seeing it was done, he seized the monster by the tail and picked it up. He held it by the base of its tail at hip height. The skoffin’s vulture-like beak reached the floor and its wingspan measured more than four feet.
‘You’re light, kurolishek.’ Geralt shook the beast, which indeed didn’t weigh much more than a well-fattened turkey. ‘You’re light. Luckily they’re paying me by the piece, not the pound.’
*
‘It’s the first time,’ Reynart de Bois-Fresnes whistled softly through his teeth, which, as Geralt knew, he did to express the highest admiration. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it. An absolute oddity, by my troth, an oddity to end all oddities. Does that mean it’s the infamous basilisk?’
‘No.’ Geralt raised the monster higher so the knight could examine it better. ‘It isn’t a basilisk. It’s a kurolishek.’
‘Is there a difference?’
‘A crucial one. A basilisk, also known as a regulus, is a reptile; but a kurolishek, also known as a skoffin or cockatrice, is neither a reptile nor a bird. It’s the only member of an order that scholars called ornithoreptiles, for after lengthy debate they found—’
‘And which one,’ interrupted Reynart de Bois-Fresnes, clearly uninterested in the scholars’ motives, ‘can kill or petrify with a look?’
‘Neither of them. That’s fiction.’
‘Why do people fear them both so much then? This one here isn’t all that big. Can it really be dangerous?’
‘This one here—’ the Witcher shook his quarry ‘—usually attacks from the rear and aims unerringly between the vertebrae or below the left kidney, at the aorta. One blow of its beak usually suffices. And as regards the basilisk it doesn’t matter where it strikes. Its venom is the most powerful known neurotoxin. It kills in a few seconds.’
‘Ugh . . . And which one, do tell, can be despatched with the help of a looking glass?’
‘Either of them. If you whack it over the head.’
Reynart de Bois-Fresnes chortled. Geralt didn’t laugh. The joke about the basilisk and the looking glass had stopped amusing him in Kaer Morhen, for the teachers had flogged it to death. The jokes about virgins and unicorns were just as unamusing. The record for idiocy and primitivism was achieved in Kaer Morhen by the numerous versions of the joke about the she-dragon the young witcher shook hands with for a bet.
He smiled. At the memories.
‘I prefer you when you smile,’ said Reynart, scrutinising him very closely. ‘I prefer you much more, a hundredfold more like you are now. Compared to how you were back then in October, after that scrap in the Druids’ Forest when we were riding to Beauclair. Back then, let me tell you, you were sullen, embittered and as sour as a usurer who’s been swindled, and as irritable as a man who hasn’t had any luck the whole night. Or even in the morning.’
‘Was I really like that?’
‘Really. Don’t be surprised that I prefer you the way you are now. Changed.’
‘Occupational therapy.’ Geralt shook the kurolishek he was holding by the tail. ‘The salutary influence of professional activity on the psyche. And so, to continue my cure, let’s get down to business. There’s a chance of making a little more money on the skoffin than the fee agreed for its killing. It’s almost undamaged. If you have a customer for a whole one, to be stuffed or prepared, don’t take less than two hundred. If you have to flog it in portions, remember that the most valuable feathers are from just above the rump, specifically, those ones, the central tail feathers. You can sharpen them much thinner than goose feathers, they write more prettily and cleanly, and are harder-wearing. A scribe who knows his stuff won’t hesitate to give five apiece.’
‘I have customers wanting to stuff a corpse,’ smiled the knight. ‘The coopers’ guild. They saw that vile creature stuffed in Castel Ravello. You know, that giant water flea, or whatever it’s called . . . You know the one. The one they clubbed to death in the dungeons under the ruins of the old castle the day after Samhain . . .’
‘I remember.’
‘Well, so the coopers saw the stuffed beast and asked me for something equally rarefied to decorate their guild chambers. The kurolishek will be just right. The coopers in Toussaint, as you can guess, are a guild who can’t complain of a shortage of orders and thanks to that are wealthy. They’re bound to give two hundred and twenty. Perhaps even more, I’ll try to haggle. And as far as the feathers are concerned . . . The barrel bodgers won’t notice if we pull a few pieces from the kurolishek’s arse and sell them to the ducal chancery. The chancery doesn’t pay out of its own pocket, but from the ducal coffers, so they’ll pay not five but ten for a feather without a quibble.’
‘I take my hat off to your shrewdness.’
‘Nomen est omen.’ Reynart de Bois-Fresnes grinned more broadly. ‘Mamma must have sensed something, christening me with the name of the sly fox from the well-known cycle of fables.’
‘You ought to have been a merchant, not a knight.’
‘I ought,’ agreed the knight. ‘But, well, if you’re born the son of a noble lord, you’ll live a noble lord and die a noble lord, having first begat further, ho, ho, noble lords. You won’t change anything, no matter what. Anyway, you reckon up pretty decently, Geralt, but you don’t make a living from merchandising.’
‘I don’t. For similar reasons to you. But with the single difference that I won’t begat anything. Let’s get out of these dungeons.’
Outside, at the foot of the castle walls, they were enfolded by the cold and wind from the hills. The night was bright, the sky cloudless and starry. The moonlight sparkled on the swathes of fresh, white snow lying on the vineyards.
Their tethered horses greeted them with snorts.
‘We ought to meet the customer at once and collect the money
,’ said Reynart, looking meaningfully at the Witcher. ‘But you are surely hurrying back to Beauclair, what? To a certain bedchamber?’
Geralt did not reply, as he didn’t answer questions like that on principle. He hauled the kurolishek’s remains onto the pack horse and then mounted Roach.
‘Let’s meet the customer,’ he decided, turning back in the saddle. ‘The night is young, and I’m hungry. And I fancy a drink. Let’s ride to town. To The Pheasantry.’
Reynart de Bois-Fresnes laughed, adjusted a shield with a red and gold chequerboard pattern hanging from the pommel, and climbed up into the high saddle.
‘As you wish, my good fellow. The Pheasantry it is. Yah, Bucephalus!’
They went at a walk down the snow-covered hillside towards the highway, which was clearly marked by a sparse avenue of poplars.
‘You know what, Reynart,’ Geralt suddenly said. ‘I also prefer you as you are now. Talking normally. Back in October you were using infuriating, moronic mannerisms.’
‘’Pon my word, Witcher, I’m a knight errant,’ chortled Reynart de Bois-Fresnes. ‘Have you forgotten? Knights always talk like morons. It’s a kind of sign, like this shield here. You can recognise the fraternity, like by the arms on the shield.’
*
‘’Pon my word,’ said the Chequered Knight, ‘you needlessly bother yourself, Sir Geralt. Your beloved is surely hale, for she has doubtless utterly forgotten about her infirmity. The duchess retains excellent court medics, fully capable of curing any malaise. ’Pon my word, there’s no need to distress yourself.’
‘I’m of the same opinion,’ said Regis. ‘Cheer up, Geralt. After all the druidesses treated Milva too—’
‘And druidesses are expert healers,’ interjected Cahir, ‘the best proof of which is my very own noggin which was cut open by a miner’s axe, and which is now, take a look, almost good as new. Milva is sure to be well too. There’s no need to worry.’
‘Let’s hope.’
‘She’s hale, your Milva, and hearty,’ repeated the knight. ‘I’ll wager she’s already cavorting at wedding balls! Cutting a caper. Feasting! In Beauclair, at the court of Duchess Anarietta, balls alternate with banquets. Ha, ’pon my word, now that I’ve fulfilled my vows, I also—’
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