Introducing the Witcher

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  Eithné still said nothing.

  ‘Farewell, Ciri,’ Geralt knelt down and hugged the little girl. Ciri’s shoulders were trembling powerfully.

  ‘Don’t cry. Nothing evil can happen to you here.’

  Ciri sniffed. The Witcher stood up.

  ‘Farewell, Braenn,’ he said to the younger dryad. ‘Good health and take care. Survive, Braenn; live as long as your tree. Like Brokilon. And one more thing . . .’

  ‘Yes, Gwynbleidd?’ Braenn lifted her head and something wet glistened in her eyes.

  ‘It is easy to kill with a bow, girl. How easy it is to release the bowstring and think, it is not I, not I, it is the arrow. The blood of that boy is not on my hands. The arrow killed him, not I. But the arrow does not dream anything in the night. May you dream nothing in the night either, blue-eyed dryad. Farewell, Braenn.’

  ‘Mona . . .’ Braenn said indistinctly. The goblet she was holding shuddered and the transparent liquid filling it rippled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mona!’ she wailed. ‘I am Mona! Lady Eithné! I—’

  ‘Enough of this,’ Eithné said sharply. ‘Enough. Control yourself, Braenn.’

  Geralt laughed drily.

  ‘There you have your destiny, Lady of the Forest. I respect your doggedness and your fight. But I know that soon you will be fighting alone. The last dryad of Brokilon sending dryads – who nonetheless still remember their real names – to their deaths. In spite of everything I wish you fortune, Eithné. Farewell.’

  ‘Geralt . . .’ Ciri whispered, still sitting motionless, with her head lowered. ‘Don’t leave me . . . all by myself . . .’

  ‘White Wolf,’ Eithné said, embracing the little girl’s hunched back. ‘Did you have to wait until she asked you? Not to abandon her? To remain with her until the end? Why do you wish to abandon her at this moment? To leave her all alone? Where do you wish to flee to, Gwynbleidd? And from what?’

  Ciri’s head slumped further down. But she did not cry.

  ‘Until the end,’ the Witcher said, nodding. ‘Very well, Ciri. You will not be alone. I will be with you. Do not fear anything.’

  Eithné took the goblet from Braenn’s trembling hands and raised it up.

  ‘Can you read Old Runes, White Wolf?’

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘Read what is engraved on the goblet. It is from Craag An. It was drunk from by kings whom no one now remembers.’

  ‘Duettaeánn aef cirrán Cáerme Gláeddyv. Yn á esseáth.’

  ‘Do you know what that means?’

  ‘The Sword of Destiny has two blades . . . You are one of them.’

  ‘Stand up, Child of the Elder Blood.’ The dryad’s voice clanged like steel in an order which could not be defied, a will which had to be yielded to. ‘Drink. It is the Water of Brokilon.’

  Geralt bit his lips and stared at Eithné’s silver eyes. He did not look at Ciri, who was slowly bringing her lips to the edge of the goblet. He had seen it before, once, long ago. The convulsions, the tremors; the incredible, horrifying, slowly dwindling cry. And the emptiness, torpor and apathy in the slowly opening eyes. He had seen it before.

  Ciri drank. A tear rolled slowly down Braenn’s unmoving face.

  ‘That will do,’ Eithné took the goblet away, placed it on the ground, and stroked the little girl’s hair, which fell onto her shoulders in mousy waves.

  ‘O Child of the Elder Blood,’ she said. ‘Choose. Do you wish to remain in Brokilon, or do you follow your destiny?’

  The Witcher shook his head in disbelief. Ciri was flushed and breathing a little more quickly. And nothing else. Nothing.

  ‘I wish to follow my destiny,’ she said brightly, looking the dryad in the eyes.

  ‘Then let it be,’ Eithné said, coldly and tersely. Braenn sighed aloud.

  ‘I wish to be alone,’ Eithné said, turning her back on them. ‘Please leave.’

  Braenn took hold of Ciri and touched Geralt’s arm, but the Witcher pushed her arm away.

  ‘Thank you, Eithné,’ he said. The dryad slowly turned to face him.

  ‘What are you thanking me for?’

  ‘For destiny,’ he smiled. ‘For your decision. For that was not the Water of Brokilon, was it? It was Ciri’s destiny to return home. But you, Eithné, played the role of destiny. And for that I thank you.’

  ‘How little you know of destiny,’ the dryad said bitterly. ‘How little you know, Witcher. How little you see. How little you understand. You thank me? You thank me for the role I have played? For a vulgar spectacle? For a trick, a deception, a hoax? For the sword of destiny being made, as you judge, of wood dipped in gold paint? Then go further; do not thank, but expose me. Have it your own way. Prove that the arguments are in your favour. Fling your truth in my face, show me the triumph of sober, human truth, thanks to which, in your opinion, you gain mastery of the world. This is the Water of Brokilon. A little still remains. Dare you? O conqueror of the world?’

  Geralt, although annoyed by her words, hesitated, but only for a moment. The Water of Brokilon, even if it were authentic, would have no effect on him. He was completely immune to the toxic, hallucinogenic tannins. But there was no way it could have been the Water of Brokilon; Ciri had drunk it and nothing had happened. He reached for the goblet with both hands and looked into the dryad’s silver eyes.

  The ground rushed from under his feet all at once and hurled him on his back. The powerful oak tree whirled around and shook. He fumbled all around himself with his numb arms and opened his eyes with difficulty; it was as though he were throwing off a marble tombstone. He saw above him Braenn’s tiny face, and beyond her Eithné’s eyes, shining like quicksilver. And other eyes; as green as emeralds. No; brighter. Like spring grass. The medallion around his neck was quivering, vibrating.

  ‘Gwynbleidd,’ he heard. ‘Watch carefully. No, closing your eyes will not help you at all. Look, look at your destiny.’

  ‘Do you remember?’

  A sudden explosion of light rending a curtain of smoke, huge candelabras heavy with candles, dripping garlands of wax. Stone walls, a steep staircase. Descending the staircase, a green-eyed, mousy-haired girl in a small circlet with an intricately carved gemstone, in a silver-blue gown with a train held up by a page in a short, scarlet jacket.

  ‘Do you remember?’

  His own voice speaking . . . speaking . . .

  I shall return in six years . . .

  A bower, warmth, the scent of flowers, the intense, monotonous hum of bees. He, alone, on his knees, giving a rose to a woman with mousy locks spilling from beneath a narrow, gold band. Rings set with emeralds – large, green cabochons – on the fingers taking the rose from his hand.

  ‘Return here,’ the woman said. ‘Return here, should you change your mind. Your destiny will be waiting.’

  I shall never return here, he thought. I never . . . went back there. I never returned to . . .

  Whither?

  Mousy hair. Green eyes.

  His voice again in the darkness, in a gloom in which everything was engulfed. There are only fires, fires all the way to the horizon. A cloud of sparks in the purple smoke. Beltane! May Day Eve! Dark, violet eyes, shining in a pale, triangular face veiled by a black, rippling shock of curls, look out from the clouds of smoke.

  Yennefer!

  ‘Too little,’ the apparition’s thin lips suddenly twist, a tear rolls down the pale cheek, quickly, quicker and quicker, like a drop of wax down a candle.

  ‘Too little. Something more is needed.’

  ‘Yennefer!’

  ‘Nothingness for nothingness,’ the apparition says in Eithné’s voice.

  ‘The nothingness and void in you, conqueror of the world, who is unable even to win the woman he loves. Who walks away and flees, when his destiny is within reach. The sword of destiny has two blades. You are one of them. But what is the other, White Wolf?’

  ‘There is no destiny,’ his own voice. ‘There is none. None. It does not exist. The
only thing that everyone is destined for is death.’

  ‘That is the truth,’ says the woman with the mousy hair and the mysterious smile. ‘That is the truth, Geralt.’

  The woman is wearing a silvery suit of armour, bloody, dented and punctured by the points of pikes or halberds. Blood drips in a thin stream from the corner of her mysteriously and hideously smiling mouth.

  ‘You sneer at destiny,’ she says, still smiling. ‘You sneer at it, trifle with it. The sword of destiny has two blades. You are one of them. Is the second . . . death? But it is we who die, die because of you. Death cannot catch up with you, so it must settle for us. Death dogs your footsteps, White Wolf. But others die. Because of you. Do you remember me?’

  ‘Ca . . . Calanthe!’

  ‘You can save him,’ the voice of Eithné, from behind the curtain of smoke. ‘You can save him, Child of the Elder Blood. Before he plunges into the nothingness which he has come to love. Into the black forest which has no end.’

  Eyes, as green as spring grass. A touch. Voices, crying in chorus, incomprehensibly. Faces.

  He could no longer see anything. He was plummeting into the chasm, into the void, into darkness. The last thing he heard was Eithné’s voice.

  ‘Let it be so.’

  VII

  ‘Geralt! Wake up! Please wake up!’

  He opened his eyes and saw the sun, a golden ducat with distinct edges, high up above the treetops, beyond the turbid veil of the morning mist. He was lying on damp, spongy moss and a hard root was digging into his back.

  Ciri was kneeling beside him, tugging at his jacket.

  ‘Curses . . .’ He cleared his throat and looked around. ‘Where am I? How did I end up here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘I woke up a moment ago, here, beside you, awffy frozen. I can’t remember how . . . Do you know what? It’s magic!’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he said, sitting up and pulling pine needles from his collar. ‘You’re probably right, Ciri. Bloody Water of Brokilon . . . Looks like the dryads were enjoying themselves at our expense.’

  He stood up, picked up his sword, which was lying alongside him and slung the strap across his back.

  ‘Ciri?’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘You were also enjoying yourself at my expense.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You’re the daughter of Pavetta and the granddaughter of Calanthe of Cintra. You knew who I was from the very beginning, didn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ she blushed. ‘Not from the beginning. You lifted the curse from my daddy, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Your mama did. And your grandmamma. I only helped.’

  ‘But my nanny said . . . She said that I’m destined. Because I’m a Surprise. A Child of Surprise. Geralt?’

  ‘Ciri,’ he looked at her, shaking his head and smiling. ‘Believe me, you’re the greatest surprise I could have come across.’

  ‘Ha!’ The little girl’s face brightened up. ‘It’s true! I’m destined. My nanny said a witcher would come who would have white hair and would take me away. But grandmamma yelled . . . Oh, never mind! Tell me where you’re taking me.’

  ‘Back home. To Cintra.’

  ‘Ah . . . But I thought you . . . ?’

  ‘You’ll have time to think on the way. Let’s go, Ciri, we must leave Brokilon. It isn’t a safe place.’

  ‘I’m not afraid!’

  ‘But I am.’

  ‘Grandmamma said that witchers aren’t afraid of anything.’

  ‘Grandmamma overstated the facts. Let’s go, Ciri. If I only knew where we . . .’

  He looked up at the sun.

  ‘Right, let’s risk it . . . We’ll go this way.’

  ‘No.’ Ciri wrinkled her nose and pointed in the opposite direction. ‘That way. Over there.’

  ‘And how do you know, may I ask?’

  ‘I just know,’ she shrugged and gave him a helpless, surprised, emerald look. ‘Somehow . . . Somewhere, over there . . . I don’t know . . .’

  Pavetta’s daughter, he thought. A Child . . . A Child of the Elder Blood? She might have inherited something from her mother.

  ‘Ciri.’ He tugged open his shirt and drew out his medallion. ‘Touch this.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, opening her mouth. ‘What a dreadful wolf. What fangs he has . . .’

  ‘Touch it.’

  ‘Oh, my!’

  The Witcher smiled. He had also felt the sudden vibration of the medallion, the sharp wave running through the silver chain.

  ‘It moved!’ Ciri sighed. ‘It moved!’

  ‘I know. Let’s go, Ciri. You lead.’

  ‘It’s magic, isn’t it!’

  ‘Naturally.’

  It was as he had expected. The little girl could sense the direction. How, he did not know. But soon – sooner than he had expected – they came out onto a track, onto a forked, three-way junction. It was the border of Brokilon – according to humans, at least. Eithné did not recognise it, he remembered.

  Ciri bit her lip, wrinkled her nose and hesitated, looking at the junction, at the sandy, rutted track, furrowed by hooves and cartwheels. But Geralt now knew where he was and did not want to depend on her uncertain abilities. He set off along the road heading eastwards, towards Brugge. Ciri, still frowning, was looking back towards the west.

  ‘That leads to Nastrog Castle,’ he jibed. ‘Are you missing Kistrin?’

  The little girl grunted and followed him obediently, but looked back several times.

  ‘What is it, Ciri?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘But we’re going the wrong way, Geralt.’

  ‘Why? We’re going to Brugge, to King Venzlav, who lives in a splendid castle. We shall take baths and sleep on a feather bed . . .’

  ‘It’s a bad road,’ she said. ‘A bad road.’

  ‘That’s true, I’ve seen better. Don’t be sniffy, Ciri. Let’s go. With a will.’

  They went around an overgrown bend. And it turned out Ciri had been right.

  They were suddenly, quickly, surrounded, from all sides. Men in conical helmets, chainmail and dark-blue tunics with the gold and black chequered pattern of Verden on their chests. They encircled the pair, but none of the men approached or reached for a weapon.

  ‘Whence and whither?’ barked a thickset individual in worn-out, green apparel, standing before Geralt with bandy legs set wide apart. His face was as swarthy and wrinkled as a prune. A bow and white-fletched arrows protruded behind him, high above his head.

  ‘We’ve come from Burnt Stump,’ the Witcher lied effortlessly, squeezing Ciri’s little hand knowingly. ‘And we’re going home to Brugge. What’s happening?’

  ‘Royal service,’ the dark-faced individual said courteously, as though he had only then noticed the sword on Geralt’s back. ‘We . . .’

  ‘Bring ’im ’ere, Junghans!’ yelled someone standing further down the road. The mercenaries parted.

  ‘Don’t look, Ciri,’ Geralt said quickly. ‘Avert your eyes. Don’t look.’

  A fallen tree lay on the road, blocking the way with a tangle of boughs. Long white splinters radiated from the partly-hacked and broken trunk standing in the roadside thicket. A loaded wagon covered with a tarpaulin stood before the tree. Two small, shaggy horses, stuck with arrows and exposing yellow teeth, were lying on the ground caught up in the shafts and halters. One was still alive and was snorting heavily and kicking.

  There were also people lying in dark patches of blood soaked into the sand, hanging over the side of the wagon and hunched over the wheels.

  Two men slowly emerged from among the armed men gathered around the wagon, to be joined by a third. The others – there were around ten of them – stood motionless, holding their horses.

  ‘What happened?’ the Witcher asked, standing so as to block out Ciri’s view of the massacre.

  A beady-eyed man in a short coat of mail and high boots gave him a searchi
ng look and audibly rubbed his bristly chin. He had a worn, shiny leather bracer of the kind archers use on his left forearm.

  ‘Ambush,’ he said curtly. ‘Eerie wives did for these merchants. We’re looking into it.’

  ‘Eerie wives? Ambushing merchants?’

  ‘You can see for yourself,’ the beady-eyed man pointed. ‘Stuck with arrows like urchins. On the highway! They’re becoming more and more impudent, those forest hags. You can’t just not venture into the forest now, you can’t even travel the road by the forest.’

  ‘And you,’ the Witcher asked, squinting. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Ervyll’s men. From the Nastrog squads. We were serving under Baron Frexinet. But the baron was lost in Brokilon.’

  Ciri opened her mouth, but Geralt squeezed her hand hard, ordering her to stay quiet.

  ‘Blood for blood, I say!’ roared the beady-eyed man’s companion, a giant in a brass-studded kaftan. ‘Blood for blood! You can’t let that go. First Frexinet and the kidnapped princess from Cintra, and now merchants. By the Gods, vengeance, vengeance, I say! For if not, you’ll see, tomorrow or the next day they’ll start killing people on their own thresholds!’

  ‘Brick’s right,’ the beady-eyed one said. ‘Isn’t he? And you, fellow, where are you from?’

  ‘From Brugge,’ the Witcher lied.

  ‘And the girl? Your daughter?’

  ‘Aye,’ Geralt squeezed Ciri’s hand again.

  ‘From Brugge,’ Brick frowned. ‘So I’ll tell you, fellow, that your king, Venzlav, is emboldening the monstrosities right now. He doesn’t want to join forces with Ervyll, nor with Viraxas of Kerack. But if we marched on Brokilon from three sides, we’d finally destroy that scum . . .’

  ‘How did the slaughter happen?’ Geralt asked slowly. ‘Does anybody know? Did any of the merchants survive?’

  ‘There aren’t any witnesses,’ the beady-eyed one said. ‘But we know what happened. Junghans, a forester, can read spoors like a book. Tell him, Junghans.’

  ‘Well,’ said the one with the wrinkled face, ‘it were like this: the merchants were travelling along the highway. And their way were blocked. You see, sir, that fallen pine lying across the road, freshly felled. There are tracks in the thicket, want to see? Well, when the merchants stopped to clear away the tree, they were shot, just like that. Over there, from the bushes by that crooked birch. There are tracks there too. And the arrows, mark you, all dryad work, fletchings stuck on with resin, shafts bound with bast . . .’