Introducing the Witcher

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  ‘Time will tell who was right,’ said the elf quietly. ‘And herein lies the advantage of longevity. I’ve got a chance of finding out, if only because of that stolen handful of grain. You won’t have a chance like that. You’ll die shortly.’

  ‘Spare him, at least,’ Geralt indicated Dandilion with his head. ‘No, not out of lofty mercy. Out of common sense. Nobody’s going to ask after me, but they are going to take revenge for him.’

  ‘You judge my common sense poorly,’ the elf said after some hesitation. ‘If he survives thanks to you he’ll undoubtedly feel obliged to avenge you.’

  ‘You can be sure of that!’ Dandilion burst out, pale as death. ‘You can be sure, you son-of-a-bitch. Kill me too, because I promise otherwise I’ll set the world against you. You’ll see what lice from a fur coat can do! We’ll finish you off even if we have to level those mountains of yours to the ground! You can be sure of that!’

  ‘How stupid you are, Dandilion,’ sighed the witcher.

  ‘Your mother gives birth to you only once and only once do you die,’ said the poet haughtily, the effect somewhat spoilt by his teeth rattling like castanets.

  ‘That settles it.’ Filavandrel took his gloves from his belt and pulled them on. ‘It’s time to end this.’

  At his command the elves positioned themselves opposite Geralt and Dandilion with bows. They did it quickly; they’d obviously been waiting for this a long time. One of them, the witcher noticed, was still chewing a turnip. Toruviel, her mouth and nose bandaged with cloth and birch bark, stood next to the archers. Without a bow.

  ‘Shall I bind your eyes?’ asked Filavandrel.

  ‘Go away.’ The witcher turned his head. ‘Go—’

  ‘A d’yeable aep arse,’ Dandilion finished for him, his teeth chattering.

  ‘Oh, no!’ the sylvan suddenly bleated, running up and sheltering the condemned men with his body. ‘Have you lost your mind? Filavandrel! This is not what we agreed! Not this! You were supposed to take them up to the mountains, hold them somewhere in some cave, until we’d finished—’

  ‘Torque,’ said the elf, ‘I can’t. I can’t risk it. Did you see what he did to Toruviel while tied up? I can’t risk it.’

  ‘I don’t care what you can or can’t! What do you imagine? You think I’ll let you murder them? Here, on my land? Right next to my hamlet? You accursed idiots! Get out of here with your bows or I’ll ram you down. Uk! Uk!’

  ‘Torque.’ Filavandrel rested his hands on his belt. ‘This is necessary.’

  ‘Duvvelsheyss, not necessary!’

  ‘Move aside, Torque.’

  The sylvan shook his ears, bleated even louder, stared and bent his elbow in an abusive gesture popular among dwarves.

  ‘You’re not going to murder anybody here! Get on your horses and out into the mountains, beyond the passes! Otherwise you’ll have to kill me too!’

  ‘Be reasonable,’ said the white-haired elf slowly. ‘If we let them live, people are going to learn what you’re doing. They’ll catch you and torture you. You know what they’re like, after all.’

  ‘I do,’ bleated the sylvan still sheltering Geralt and Dandilion. ‘It turns out I know them better than I know you! And, verily, I don’t know who to side with. I regret allying myself with you, Filavandrel!’

  ‘You wanted to,’ said the elf coldly, giving a signal to the archers. ‘You wanted to, Torque. L’sparellean! Evellienn!’

  The elves drew arrows from their quivers. ‘Go away, Torque,’ said Geralt, gritting his teeth. ‘It’s senseless. Get aside.’ The sylvan, without budging from the spot, showed him the dwarves’ gesture.

  ‘I can hear . . . music . . .’ Dandilion suddenly sobbed.

  ‘It happens,’ said the witcher, looking at the arrowheads. ‘Don’t worry. There’s no shame in fear.’

  Filavandrel’s face changed, screwed up in a strange grimace. The white-haired Seidhe suddenly turned round and gave a shout to the archers. They lowered their weapons.

  Lille entered the glade.

  She was no longer a skinny peasant girl in a sackcloth dress. Through the grasses covering the glade walked – no, not walked – floated a queen, radiant, golden-haired, fiery-eyed, ravishing. The Queen of the Fields, decorated with garlands of flowers, ears of corn, bunches of herbs. At her left-hand side a young stag pattered on stiff legs, at her right rustled an enormous hedgehog.

  ‘Dana Meadbh,’ said Filavandrel with veneration. And then bowed and knelt.

  The remaining elves also knelt; slowly, reluctantly, they fell to their knees one after the other and bowed their heads low in veneration. Toruviel was the last to kneel.

  ‘Hael, Dana Meadbh,’ repeated Filavandrel.

  Lille didn’t answer. She stopped several paces short of the elf and swept her blue eyes over Dandilion and Geralt. Torque, while bowing, started cutting through the knots. None of the Seidhe moved.

  Lille stood in front of Filavandrel. She didn’t say anything, didn’t make the slightest sound, but the witcher saw the changes on the elf’s face, sensed the aura surrounding them and was in no doubt they were communicating. The devil suddenly pulled at his sleeve.

  ‘Your friend,’ he bleated quietly, ‘has decided to faint. Right on time. What shall we do?’

  ‘Slap him across the face a couple of times.’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  Filavandrel got up from his knees. At his command the elves fell to saddling the horses as quick as lightning.

  ‘Come with us, Dana Meadbh,’ said the white-haired elf. ‘We need you. Don’t abandon us, Eternal One. Don’t deprive us of your love. We’ll die without it.’

  Lille slowly shook her head and indicated east, the direction of the mountains. The elf bowed, crumpling the ornate reins of his white-maned mount in his hands.

  Dandilion walked up, pale and dumbfounded, supported by the sylvan. Lille looked at him and smiled. She looked into the witcher’s eyes. She looked long. She didn’t say a word. Words weren’t necessary.

  Most of the elves were already in their saddles when Filavandrel and Toruviel approached. Geralt looked into the elf’s black eyes, visible above the bandages.

  ‘Toruviel . . .’ he said. And didn’t finish.

  The elf nodded. From her saddle-bow, she took a lute, a marvellous instrument of light, tastefully inlaid wood with a slender, engraved neck. Without a word, she handed the lute to Dandilion. The poet accepted the instrument and smiled. Also without a word, but his eyes said a great deal.

  ‘Farewell, strange human,’ Filavandrel said quietly to Geralt. ‘You’re right. Words aren’t necessary. They won’t change anything. ’

  Geralt remained silent.

  ‘After some consideration,’ added the Seidhe, ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that you were right. When you pitied us. So goodbye. Goodbye until we meet again, on the day when we descend into the valleys to die honourably. We’ll look out for you then, Toruviel and I. Don’t let us down.’

  For a long time, they looked at each other in silence. And then the witcher answered briefly and simply:

  ‘I’ll try.’

  VII

  ‘By the gods, Geralt.’ Dandilion stopped playing, hugged the lute and touched it with his cheek. ‘This wood sings on its own! These strings are alive! What wonderful tonality! Bloody hell, a couple of kicks and a bit of fear is a pretty low price to pay for such a superb lute. I’d have let myself be kicked from dawn to dusk if I’d known what I was going to get. Geralt? Are you listening to me at all?’

  ‘It’s difficult not to hear you two.’ Geralt raised his head from the book and glanced at the sylvan, who was still stubbornly squeaking on a peculiar set of pipes made from reeds of various lengths. ‘I hear you, the whole neighbourhood hears you.’

  ‘Duvvelsheyss, not neighbourhood,’ Torque put his pipes aside. ‘A desert, that’s what it is. A wilderness. A shit-hole. Eh, I miss my hemp!’

  ‘He misses his hemp,’ laughed Dandilion, carefully turning the d
elicately engraved lute pegs. ‘You should have sat in the thicket quiet as a dormouse instead of scaring girls, destroying dykes and sullying the well. I think you’re going to be more careful now and give up your tricks, eh, Torque?’

  ‘I like tricks,’ declared the sylvan, baring his teeth. ‘And I can’t imagine life without them. But have it your way, I promise to be more careful on new territory. I’ll be more restrained.’

  The night was cloudy and windy. The gale beat down the reeds and rustled in the branches of the bushes surrounding their camp. Dandilion threw some dry twigs into the fire. Torque wriggled around on his makeshift bed, swiping mosquitoes away with his tail. A fish leapt in the lake with a splash.

  ‘I’ll describe our whole expedition to the edge of the world in a ballad,’ declared Dandilion. ‘And I’ll describe you in it, too, Torque.’

  ‘Don’t think you’ll get away with it,’ growled the sylvan. ‘I’ll write a ballad too then and describe you, but in such a way as you won’t be able to show your face in decent company for twelve years. So watch out! Geralt?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you read anything interesting in that book which you so disgracefully wheedled out of those freemen?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘So read it to us, before the fire burns out.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Dandilion strummed the melodious strings of Toruviel’s lute, ‘read us something, Geralt.’

  The witcher leant on his elbow, edging the volume closer to the fire.

  ‘“Glimpsed she may be,”’ he began, ‘“during the time of sumor, from the days of Mai and Juyn to the days of October, but most oft this haps on the Feste of the Scythe, which ancients would call Lammas. She revealeth herself as the Fairhaired Ladie, in flowers all, and all that liveth followeth her path and clingeth to her, as one, plant or beast. Hence her name is Lyfia. Ancients call her Danamebi and venerate her greatly. Even the Bearded, albeit in mountains not on fields they dwell, respect and call her Bloemenmagde.” ’

  ‘Danamebi,’ muttered Dandilion. ‘Dana Meadbh, the Lady of the Fields.’

  ‘“Whence Lyfia treads the earth blossometh and bringeth forth, and abundantly doth each creature breed, such is her might. All nations to her offer sacrifice of harvest in vain hope their field not another’s will by Lyfia visited be. Because it is also said that there cometh a day at end when Lyfia will come to settle among that tribe which above all others will rise, but these be mere womenfolk tales. Because, forsooth, the wise do say that Lyfia loveth but one land and that which groweth on it and liveth alike, with no difference, be it the smallest of common apple trees or the most wretched of insects, and all nations are no more to her than that thinnest of trees because, forsooth, they too will be gone and new, different tribes will follow. But Lyfia eternal is, was and ever shall be until the end of time.”’

  ‘Until the end of time!’ sang the troubadour and strummed his lute. Torque joined in with a high trill on his reed pipes. ‘Hail, Lady of the Fields! For the harvest, for the flowers in Dol Blathanna, but also for the hide of the undersigned, which you saved from being riddled with arrows. Do you know what? – I’m going to tell you something.’ He stopped playing, hugged the lute like a child and grew sad. ‘I don’t think I’ll mention the elves and the difficulties they’ve got to struggle with, in the ballad. There’d be no shortage of scum wanting to go into the mountains . . . Why hasten the—’ The troubadour grew silent.

  ‘Go on, finish,’ said Torque bitterly. ‘You wanted to say: hasten what can’t be avoided. The inevitable.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about it,’ interrupted Geralt. ‘Why talk about it? Words aren’t necessary. Follow Lille’s example.’

  ‘She spoke to the elf telepathically,’ muttered the bard. ‘I sensed it. I’m right, aren’t I, Geralt? After all, you can sense communication like that. Did you understand what . . . What she was getting across to the elf?’

  ‘Some of it.’

  ‘What was she talking about?’

  ‘Hope. That things renew themselves, and won’t stop doing so.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That was enough.’

  ‘Hm . . . Geralt? Lille lives in the village, among people. Do you think that—’

  ‘—that she’ll stay with them? Here, in Dol Blathanna? Maybe. If . . .’

  ‘If what?’

  ‘If people prove worthy of it. If the edge of the world remains the edge of the world. If we respect the boundaries. But enough of this talk, boys. Time to sleep.’

  ‘True. It’s nearly midnight, the fire’s burning out. I’ll sit up for a little while yet. I’ve always found it easiest to invent rhymes beside a dying fire. And I need a title for my ballad. A nice title.’

  ‘Maybe The Edge of the World?’

  ‘Banal,’ snorted the poet. ‘Even if it really is the edge, it’s got to be described differently. Metaphorically. I take it you know what a metaphor is, Geralt? Hmm . . . Let me think . . . “Where . . .” Bloody hell. “Where—”’

  ‘Goodnight,’ said the devil.

  THE VOICE OF REASON 6

  The witcher unlaced his shirt and peeled the wet linen from his neck. It was very warm in the cave, hot, even, the air hung heavy and moist, the humidity condensing in droplets on the moss-covered boulders and basalt blocks of the walls.

  Plants were everywhere. They grew out of beds hewn into the bedrock and filled with peat, in enormous chests, troughs and flowerpots. They climbed up rocks, up wooden trellises and stakes. Geralt examined them with interest, recognising some rare specimens – those which made up the ingredients of a witcher’s medicines and elixirs, magical philtres and a sorcerer’s decoctions, and others, even rarer, whose qualities he could only guess at. Some he didn’t know at all, or hadn’t even heard of. He saw stretches of star-leafed melilote, compact balls of puffheads pouring out of huge flowerpots, shoots of arenaria strewn with berries as red as blood. He recognised the meaty, thickly-veined leaves of fastaim, the crimson-golden ovals of measure-me-nots and the dark arrows of sawcuts. He noticed pinnated pondblood moss huddled against stone blocks, the glistening tubers of raven’s eye and the tiger-striped petals of the mousetail orchid.

  In the shady part of the grotto bulged caps of the sewant mushroom, grey as stones in a field. Not far from them grew reachcluster, an antidote to every known toxin and venom. The modest yellow-grey brushes peering from chests deeply sunken into the ground revealed scarix, a root with powerful and universal medicinal qualities.

  The centre of the cave was taken up by aqueous plants. Geralt saw vats full of hornwort and turtle duckweed, and tanks covered in a compact skin of liverwort, fodder for the parasitic giant oyster. Glass reservoirs full of gnarled rhizomes of the hallucinogenic bitip, slender, dark-green cryptocorines and clusters of nematodes. Muddy, silted troughs were breeding grounds for innumerable phycomycetes, algae, moulds and swamp lichen.

  Nenneke, rolling up the sleeves of her priestess’s robe, took a pair of scissors and a little bone rake from her basket and got to work. Geralt sat on a bench between shafts of light falling through huge crystal blocks in the cave’s vault.

  The priestess muttered and hummed under her breath, deftly plunging her hands into the thicket of leaves and shoots, snipping with her scissors and filling the basket with bunches of weeds. She adjusted the stakes and frames supporting the plants and, now and again, turned the soil with her small rake. Sometimes, muttering angrily, she pulled out dried or rotted stalks, threw them into the humus containers as food for mushrooms and other squamous and snake-like twisted plants which the witcher didn’t recognise. He wasn’t even sure they were plants at all – it seemed to him the glistening rhizomes moved a little, stretching their hair-like offshoots towards the priestess’s hands.

  It was warm. Very warm.

  ‘Geralt?’

  ‘Yes?’ He fought off an overwhelming sleepiness. Nenneke, playing with her scissors, was looking at him from behind the huge pinnated leaves o
f sand-spurry flybush.

  ‘Don’t leave yet. Stay. A few more days.’

  ‘No, Nenneke. It’s time for me to be on my way.’

  ‘Why the hurry? You don’t have to worry about Hereward. And let that vagabond Dandilion go and break his neck on his own. Stay, Geralt.’

  ‘No, Nenneke.’

  The priestess snipped with scissors. ‘Are you in such haste to leave the temple because you’re afraid that she’ll find you here?’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘You’ve guessed.’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly difficult,’ she muttered. ‘But don’t worry. Yennefer’s already been here. Two months ago. She won’t be back in a hurry, because we quarrelled. No, not because of you. She didn’t ask about you.’

  ‘She didn’t ask?’

  ‘That’s where it hurts,’ the priestess laughed. ‘You’re egocentric, like all men. There’s nothing worse than a lack of interest, is there? Than indifference? No, but don’t lose heart. I know Yennefer only too well. She didn’t ask anything, but she did look around attentively, looking for signs of you. And she’s mighty furious at you, that I did feel.’

  ‘What did you quarrel about?’

  ‘Nothing that would interest you.’

  ‘I know anyway.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Nenneke calmly, adjusting the stakes. ‘You know her very superficially. As, incidentally, she knows you. It’s quite typical of the relationship which binds you, or did bind you. Both parties aren’t capable of anything other than a strongly emotional evaluation of the consequences, while ignoring the causes.’