“You shouldn’t have …” said Tiziana modestly, when a moment later the innkeeper placed a flagon of Est Est, the most expensive white wine from Toussaint, in front of them. And several additional candles stuck into the necks of old bottles.
“You’re going to too much trouble, really,” she added, when a moment later some dishes arrived on the table, one with slices of raw, dried ham, another with smoked trout, and a third with a selection of cheeses. “You’re spending too much, Witcher.”
“It’s a special occasion. And the company is splendid.”
She thanked him with a nod. And a smile. A pretty smile.
On graduating from magic school every sorceress faced a choice. She could stay on at the school as an assistant to the master-preceptresses. She could ask one of the independent sorceress-masters to take her on as a permanent apprentice. Or she could choose the way of the dwimveandra.
The system had been borrowed from the guilds. In many of them an apprentice who had qualified as a journeyman would embark on a trek, during which he would take on casual work in various workshops with various masters, here and there, and finally return after several years to apply to take the final exam and be promoted to master. But there were differences. Forced to travel, journeymen who couldn’t find work were often stared in the face by hunger, and the journey became aimless wandering. One became a dwimveandra through one’s own will and desire, and the Chapter of sorcerers created for the journeymen witches a special endowment fund, which was quite sizeable, from what Geralt heard.
“That horrifying character was wearing a medallion similar to yours,” the poet said, joining the conversation. “He was one of the Cats, wasn’t he?”
“He was. I don’t want to talk about it, Dandelion.”
“The notorious Cats,” said the poet, addressing the sorceress. “Witchers—but failures. Unsuccessful mutations. Madmen, psychopaths and sadists. They nicknamed themselves ‘Cats,’ because they really are like cats: aggressive, cruel, unpredictable and impulsive. And Geralt, as usual, is making light of it in order not to worry us. Because there was a threat and a significant one. It’s a miracle it went off without a fight, blood or corpses. There would have been a massacre, like there was in Iello four years ago. I was expecting at any moment—”
“Geralt asked you not to talk about it,” interrupted Tiziana Frevi, politely but firmly. “Let’s respect that.”
Geralt looked at her affectionately. She seemed pleasant to him. And pretty. Very pretty, even.
Sorceresses, he knew, improved their looks, since the prestige of their profession demanded that they should arouse admiration. But the beautification was never perfect, something always remained. Tiziana Frevi was no exception. Her forehead, just beneath the hairline, was marked by several barely perceptible scars from the chicken pox that she had probably experienced during childhood before she became immune. The shape of her pretty mouth was slightly marred by a wavy scar above her upper lip. Geralt, yet again, felt anger, anger at his eyesight, his eyes, forcing him to notice such insignificant details, which after all were nothing in view of the fact that Tiziana was sitting at a table with him, drinking Est Est, eating smoked trout and smiling at him. The Witcher had rarely seen or known women whose beauty could be considered flawless, but the chances that one of them might smile at him could be calculated at precisely nil.
“He talked about some reward …” said Dandelion, who, when he got onto a subject was difficult to be dislodged from it. “Do any of you know what it was about? Geralt?”
“I have no idea.”
“But I do,” boasted Tiziana Frevi. “And I’m astonished you haven’t heard, because it was a well-known case. As Foltest, the King of Temeria, offered a reward. For removing a spell from his daughter who had been enchanted. She had been pricked by a spindle and consigned to eternal sleep. The poor thing, so the rumour goes, is lying in a coffin in a castle overrun with hawthorn. According to another rumour the coffin is made of glass and was placed at the top of a glass mountain. According to yet another the princess was turned into a swan. According to still one more into an awful monster, a striga. As a result of a curse, because the princess was the fruit of an incestuous union. Apparently, the rumours are being invented and spread by Vizimir, the King of Redania, who has territorial disputes with Foltest, is seriously at variance with him and will do anything to annoy him.”
“It indeed sounds like fabrication,” judged Geralt. “Based on a fairy tale or fable. An accursed and transformed princess, the curse as a punishment for incest, a reward for removing a spell. Hackneyed and banal. The person who came up with it didn’t make much of an effort.”
“The issue,” the dwimveandra added, “has a clear political subtext, which is why the Chapter forbade sorcerers from getting involved in it.”
“Whether it’s a fairy tale or not, that damned Cat believed it,” pronounced Dandelion. “He was clearly hurrying to that enchanted princess in Vizima to remove the spell and claim the reward promised by King Foltest. He had acquired the suspicion that Geralt was also heading there and wanted to beat him to it.”
“He was mistaken,” Geralt responded dryly. “I’m not going to Vizima. I don’t intend to stick my fingers in that political cauldron. It’s perfect work for somebody like Brehen who’s in need, as he said himself. I’m not in need. I’ve recovered my swords, so I don’t have to pay out for new ones. I have funds to support myself. Thanks to the sorcerers from Rissberg …”
“The Witcher Geralt of Rivia?”
“Indeed,” said Geralt, eyeing up and down the clerk, who was standing alongside looking sulky. “Who wants to know?”
“That is inconsequential,” said the clerk, putting on airs and pouting, trying hard to make himself look important. “What’s consequential is the summons. Which I hereby give you. In front of witnesses. In accordance with the law.”
The clerk handed the Witcher a roll of paper. And then sat down, not failing to cast Tiziana Frevi a contemptuous glance.
Geralt broke the seal and unfurled the roll.
“‘Datum ex Castello Rissberg, die 20 mens. Jul. anno 1245 post Resurrectionem,’ he read. ‘To the Magistrates’ Court in Gors Velen. Plaintiff: The Rissberg Complex civil partnership. Defendant: Geralt of Rivia, witcher. Claim: the return of the sum of one thousand Novigradian crowns. We hereby petition, primo: a demand to the defendant Geralt of Rivia for the return of the sum of one thousand Novigradian crowns with due interest. Secundo, a demand to the defendant for the court costs to the plaintiff according to prescribed norms. Tertio: to lend the verdict the status of immediately enforceability. Grounds: the defendant swindled from the Rissberg Complex civil partnership the sum of one thousand Novigradian crowns. Proof: copies of bank orders. The sum constituted an advance fee for a service that the defendant never executed and in ill will never intended to execute … Witnesses: Biruta Anna Marquette Icarti, Axel Miguel Esparza, Igo Tarvix Sandoval …’ The bastards.”
“I returned your swords to you,” said Tiziana, lowering her gaze. “And at the same time saddled you with problems. That beadle tricked me. He overheard me this morning asking for you at the ferry port. And then immediately stuck to me like a leech. Now I know why. That summons is all my fault.”
“You’ll be needing a lawyer,” stated Dandelion gloomily. “But I don’t recommend the one from Kerack. She only performs well outside the courtroom.”
“I can skip the lawyer. Did you notice the date of the claim? I’ll wager the case has already been heard and the verdict read out in absentia. And that they’ve seized my account.”
“I am sorry,” said Tiziana. “It’s my fault. Forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive, you aren’t to blame for anything. And Rissberg and the courts can go to hell. Master innkeeper! Another flagon of Est Est, if you would.”
They were soon the only guests left in the chamber. The innkeeper soon let them know—with an ostentatious yawn—that it was time to finish. Tiziana was first t
o go to her room and Dandelion followed suit to his soon after.
Geralt didn’t go to the bedchamber he was sharing with the poet. Instead of that he knocked very softly at Tiziana Frevi’s door. It opened at once.
“I’ve been waiting,” she murmured, pulling him inside. “I knew you’d come. And if you hadn’t I would have gone looking for you.”
She must have put him to sleep magically, otherwise she would certainly have woken him as she was leaving. And she must have left before dawn, while it was still dark. Her scent lingered after her. The delicate perfume of irises and bergamot. And something else. Roses?
A flower lay on the table by his swords. A rose. One of the white roses from the flowerpot standing outside the inn.
No one remembered what the place was, who had built it and whom and what it served. The ruins of an ancient edifice, once a large and probably prosperous complex, had survived in the valley beyond the inn. Practically nothing remained of the buildings apart from what was left of the foundations, some overgrown hollows and some stone blocks dotted about. The rest had been demolished and plundered. Building materials were precious, nothing went to waste.
They walked in beneath the ruins of a shattered portal, once an impressive arch, now resembling a gibbet; the impression of which was enhanced by ivy hanging like a severed noose. They walked along a path between the trees. Dead, crippled and misshapen trees, bent over as though by the weight of a curse hanging over the place. The path led towards a garden. Or rather towards something that had once been a garden. Beds of berberis, juniper shrubs, rambling roses, probably once decoratively pruned, were now a disordered and chaotic tangle of branches, prickly climbers and dried stalks. Peeping out of the tangle were the remains of statues and sculptures, mainly full-length. The remains were so vestigial that there was no way of even approximately determining who—or what—the statues had once portrayed. In any case, it wasn’t especially important. The statues were the past. They hadn’t survived and so they had stopped mattering. All that remained was a ruin and one—it seemed—that would survive a long time, since ruins are eternal.
A ruin. A monument to a devastated world.
“Dandelion.”
“Yes?”
“Lately everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. And it seems to me that I’ve fucked everything up. Whatever I’ve touched lately I’ve botched.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, I do.”
“It must be so, then. Don’t expect a comment. I’m tired of commenting. And now go and feel sorry for yourself in silence, if you would. I’m composing at the moment and your laments are distracting me.”
Dandelion sat down on a fallen column, pushed his bonnet back on his head, crossed his legs and adjusted the pegs on the lute.
A flickering candle, the fire went out,
A cold wind blew perceptibly …
A wind had indeed blown up, suddenly and violently. And Dandelion stopped playing. And sighed loudly.
The Witcher turned around.
She was standing at the entrance to the path, between the cracked plinth of an unrecognisable statue and the tangled thicket of a dead whipple-tree. She was tall and wore a clinging dress. With a head of greyish colouring, more typical of a corsac than a silver fox. Pointed ears and an elongated face.
Geralt didn’t move.
“I warned you I would come.” Rows of teeth glistened in the she-fox’s mouth. “One day. Today is that day.”
Geralt didn’t move. On his back, he felt the familiar weight of his two swords, a weight he had been missing for a month. Which usually gave him peace and certainty. That day, at that moment, the weight was just a burden.
“I have come …” said the aguara, flashing her fangs. “I don’t know why I came myself. In order to say goodbye, perhaps. Perhaps to let her say goodbye to you.”
A slender girl in a tight dress emerged from behind the vixen. Her pale and unnaturally unmoving face was still half human. But probably now more vulpine than human. The changes were occurring quickly.
The Witcher shook his head.
“You cured her … You brought her back to life? No, that’s impossible. So, she was alive on the ship. Alive. But pretending to be dead.”
The aguara barked loudly. He needed a moment before realising it was laughter. That the vixen was laughing.
“Once we had great powers! Illusions of magical islands, dragons dancing in the sky, visions of a mighty army approaching city walls … Once, long ago. Now the world has changed and our abilities have dwindled … And we have grown smaller. There is more vixen in us than aguara. But still, even the smallest, even the youngest she-fox, is capable of deceiving your primitive human senses with an illusion.”
“For the first time in my life,” he said a moment later, “I’m glad to have been tricked.”
“It’s not true that you did everything wrong. And as a reward you may touch my face.”
He cleared his throat, looking at her great pointed teeth.
“Hmm …”
“Illusions are what you think about. What you fear. And what you dream of.”
“I beg your pardon?”
The vixen barked softly. And metamorphosed.
Dark, violet eyes, blazing in a pale, triangular face. A tornado of jet-black locks falling onto her shoulders, gleaming, reflecting light like peacock’s feathers, curling and rippling with every movement. The mouth, marvellously thin and pale under her lipstick. A black velvet ribbon on her neck, on the ribbon an obsidian star, sparkling and sending thousands of reflections around …
Yennefer smiled. And the Witcher touched her cheek.
And then the dead dogwood bloomed.
And afterwards the wind blew and shook the bush. The world vanished behind a veil of tiny white whirling petals.
“Illusion.” He heard the aguara’s voice. “Everything is illusion.”
Dandelion stopped singing. But he didn’t put down his lute. He was sitting on a chunk of overturned column. Looking up at the sky.
Geralt sat beside him. Weighing up various things. Arranging various things in his head. Or rather trying to. Making plans. In the main, wholly unfeasible. He promised himself various things. Seriously doubting if he was capable of keeping any of the promises.
“You know, you never congratulate me on my ballads,” Dandelion suddenly spoke up. “I’ve composed and sung so many of them in your company. But you’ve never said: ‘That was nice. I’d like you to play that again.’ You’ve never said that.”
“You’re right. I haven’t. Do you want to know why?”
“Yes?”
“Because I’ve never wanted to.”
“Would it be such a sacrifice?” asked the bard, not giving up. “Such a hardship? To say: ‘Play that again, Dandelion. Play As Time Passes.’”
“Play it again, Dandelion. Play ‘As Time Passes.’”
“You said that quite without conviction.”
“So what? You’ll play it anyway.”
“You’d better believe it.”
A flickering candle, the fire went out
A cold wind blew perceptibly
And the days pass
And time passes
In silence and imperceptibly
You’re with me endlessly and endlessly
Something joins us, but not perfectly
For the days pass
For time passes
In silence and imperceptibly
The memory of travelled paths and roads
Remain in us irrevocably
Although the days pass
Although time passes
In silence and imperceptibly
So, my love, one more time
Let’s repeat the chorus triumphantly
So do the days pass
So does time pass
In silence and imperceptibly
Geralt stood up.
“Time to ride, Dandelion.”
“Oh, yes? Where to
?”
“Isn’t it all the same?”
“Yes, by and large. Let’s go.”
EPILOGUE
On the hillock, the remains of buildings shone white, fallen into ruin so long ago they were now completely overgrown. Ivy had enveloped the walls and young trees had grown through the cracked flagstones. It had once been—Nimue could not have known that—a temple, the seat of the priests of some forgotten deity. For Nimue it was just a ruin. A pile of stones. And a signpost. A sign that she was going the right way.
For just beyond the hillock and the ruins the highway forked. One path led west, over a moor. The other one, heading north, vanished into a thick, dense forest. It went deep into the black undergrowth, vanished into gloomy darkness, dissolving into it.
And that was her route. Northwards. Through the infamous Magpie Forest.
Nimue wasn’t especially perturbed by the stories they had tried to frighten her with in Ivalo, since during her trek she had coped over and over with similar things. Each place had its own grim folklore, local dangers and horrors, serving to give travellers a scare. Nimue had already been threatened by drowners in lakes, bereginias in streams, wights at crossroads and ghosts in cemeteries. Every second footbridge was supposed to be a troll’s lair, every second brake of crooked willows a striga’s haunt. Nimue finally became accustomed to it and the commonplace horrors ceased to be fearful. But there was no way of mastering the strange anxiety that spread through her before she entered a dark forest, walked along a path between fog-bound burial mounds or a track among mist-shrouded swamps.
She also felt that anxiety now—as she stood before the dark wall of forest—creeping in tingles over the back of her neck and drying her lips.
The road is well travelled, she repeated to herself, quite rutted by wagons, trodden down by the hooves of horses and oxen. So what if the forest looks frightful? It’s no desolate backwoods, it’s a busy track to Dorian, leading through the last patch of forest to escape the axes and saws. Many people ride through here, many walk through here. I’ll also pass through it. I’m not afraid.
Season of Storms Page 34
