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.
She didn’t faint. She could still feel. They beat her. They beat her hard, cruelly, as a man is beaten. With blows that aren’t just meant to hurt, but meant to fracture, meant to crush all energy and the will to resist from the victim. She was beaten, jerking in the steely grip of many hands.
She wanted to faint but couldn’t. She could feel it.
‘Enough,’ she suddenly heard from far away, from behind the curtain of pain. ‘Have you gone mad, Rience? Do you mean to kill her? I need her alive.’
‘I vowed to her, master,’ snarled the shadow looming in front of her, which gradually took on Rience’s form and face. ‘I promised I’d pay her back… With these hands…’
‘I care little for what you promised her. I repeat, I need her alive and capable of articulated speech.’
‘It’s not so easy,’ laughed the one holding her by the hair, ‘to knock the life out of a cat or a witch.’
‘Don’t be clever, Schirrú. I said she’s been sufficiently beaten. Pick her up. How do you do, Yennefer?’ The sorceress spat red and lifted her puffy face. At first she didn’t recognise him. He was wearing a kind of mask, covering the entire left side of his head. But she knew who it was.
‘Go to hell, Vilgefortz,’ she mumbled, gingerly touching her front teeth and cut lips with her tongue.
‘What did you make of my spell? Did you like it when I lifted you and that boat up from the sea? Did you enjoy the flight? What charms did you protect yourself with to survive the fall?’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Tear that star from her neck. And to the laboratory with her. Let’s not waste time.’
She was dragged, pulled, occasionally carried. A stony plain, with Alkyone lying smashed on it amid numerous other wrecks with protruding ribs, like the skeletons of sea monsters. Crach was right, she thought. The ships that disappeared without trace on the Sedna Abyss weren’t victims of natural disasters. Ye Gods… Pavetta and Duny…
Above the plain, in the distance, mountain peaks thrust up into the overcast sky.
Then there were walls, gates, cloisters, floors, staircases. Everything somehow odd, unnaturally large… Still too few details to let her work out where she was, where she’d come to, where the spell had carried her. Her face was swelling up, making observations all the more difficult. Smell became the one sense supplying her with information–she smelled formalin, ether and spirits. And magic. The smells of a laboratory. She was brutally shoved down into a steel armchair. Cold, painfully tight clamps slammed shut on her wrists and ankles. Before the steel jaws of a vice tightened on her temples and immobilised her head, she managed to glance around the large and glaringly lit room. She saw one more armchair and a strange steel construction on the stone floor.
‘Yes indeed,’ she heard the voice of Vilgefortz from behind her. ‘That little chair is for your Ciri. It’s been here for ages; it can’t wait. Neither can I.’
She heard him up close, literally felt his breath. He stuck some needles into her head, attached something to her ears. Then he stood before her and removed the mask. Yennefer sucked in air involuntarily.
‘That’s the work of your Ciri,’ he said, indicating his once classically beautiful, now hideously mutilated face, criss-crossed with golden clasps and fastenings securing a multifaceted crystal in his left eye socket.
‘I tried to catch her when she entered the Tower of the Gull,’ the sorcerer calmly explained. ‘I meant to save her life, certain that the teleporter would kill her. How naive of me! She passed through smoothly, with such force that the portal exploded, blew up right in my face. I lost an eye and my left cheek, as well as a lot of skin from my face, neck and chest. A very disagreeable, very bothersome, very complicated accident. And very ugly, isn’t it? Ha, you ought to have seen me before I began to regenerate magically.
‘If I believed in such things,’ he continued, pushing a bent copper tube into her nose, ‘I’d have thought it was Lydia van Bredevoort’s revenge. From beyond the grave. I’m regenerating, but it’s slow, time-consuming and heavy going. It’s particularly difficult with the regeneration of the eyeball… The crystal in my eye socket plays its role splendidly; I can see in three dimensions, but yet it’s a foreign body, and the lack of a natural eyeball occasionally makes me absolutely furious. Then, seized by–let’s face it–irrational anger, I vow to myself that when I catch Ciri–immediately after catching her–I’ll order Rience to pluck out one of those huge, green eyes. With his fingers. With these fingers, as he likes to say. You’re saying nothing, Yennefer? Perhaps because you know I’d also like to rip out one of your eyes? Or both?’
He stuck thick needles into the veins on the back of her hands. Sometimes he missed and jabbed to the very bone. Yennefer gritted her teeth.
‘You’ve caused me problems. You’ve made me interrupt my work. You’ve exposed me to risk. Forcing your way over the Sedna Abyss in that boat, towards my Maelstrom… The echo of our brief duel was powerful and travelled far, it may have reached the wrong ears, prying ears. But I couldn’t stop myself. The thought that I would have you here, that I’d be able to connect you up to my scanner, was too appealing.
‘For you can’t possibly imagine–’ he stuck in another needle ‘–that I was taken in by your provocation? That I swallowed the bait? No, Yennefer. If you think so, you’re mistaking stars reflected in the surface of a pond at night for the sky. You thought you were tracking me, whereas in fact I was tracking you. You made my job easier by sailing over the Abyss. For I cannot find Ciri, you see, even with the help of my peerless scanning device. The girl has powerful, innate defence mechanisms, her own powerful anti-magical and suppressive aura: it’s the Elder Blood, after all. But my super-scanners ought to detect her anyhow. Yet they don’t.’
Yennefer was now completely entwined in a network of silver and copper wires and encased in a scaffolding of silver and porcelain tubes. Glass vessels containing colourless liquids wobbled on racks placed by the chair.
‘And so I thought–’ Vilgefortz thrust another tube into her nose, this time a glass one ‘–that the only way of tracking Ciri was an empathic probe. For that I needed someone who had a sufficiently strong emotional bond with the girl and had developed an empathic matrix, a kind of algorithm–to coin a phrase–of feelings and mutual affection. I thought about the Witcher, but he had disappeared, and besides, witchers are poor mediums. I planned to order the kidnapping of Triss Merigold, our Fourteenth from the Hill. I pondered over abducting Nenneke of Ellander… But when it turned out that you, Yennefer of Vengerberg, were literally forcing yourself into my hands… Truly I couldn’t have hoped for anything better… Once connected to the scanner you will track down Ciri for me. Admittedly, the operation requires your cooperation… But there are, as you know, ways of making people cooperate.
‘Of course,’ he went on, rubbing his hands, ‘you deserve a few explanations. For example–how did I find out about the Elder Blood? About Lara Dorren’s legacy? What that gene actually is? How Ciri ended up having it? Who passed it on to her? How will I take it from her and what will I use it for? How does the Sedna Maelstrom w
ork, who have I sucked into it, what did I do with them and why? Plenty of questions, aren’t there? It’s such a pity there’s no time to tell you everything, explain everything. Nay, even astonish you, for I’m certain several of the facts would astonish you, Yennefer… But, as has been said before, there’s no time. The elixirs are beginning to take effect, so it’s time you started concentrating.’
The sorceress clenched her teeth, stifling the deep groan shooting from her guts.
‘I know,’ Vilgefortz nodded, drawing closer a professional looking megascope; a screen and a great crystal ball on a tripod, wrapped around by a web of silver wires. ‘I know it’s most disagreeable. And very painful. The sooner you set about scanning, the sooner it’ll be over. Well, Yennefer. I want to see Ciri, here, on this screen. Where she is, who she’s with, what she’s doing, what she eats, where and with whom she sleeps.’
Yennefer screamed shrilly and wildly, in despair.
‘It hurts,’ Vilgefortz guessed, staring at her with his living eye and his dead crystal. ‘Well, of course it hurts. Start scanning, Yennefer. Don’t resist. Don’t play the hero. You know full well it’s impossible to endure this. The result of resistance may be pitiful; a stroke will follow, you’ll suffer paraplegia or simply turn into a vegetable. Start scanning!’
She clenched her jaw so hard her teeth creaked.
‘Why not, Yennefer?’ the mage said kindly. ‘If only out of curiosity! You’re surely curious about how your darling’s coping. Perhaps danger is hanging over her? Perhaps she’s in need? You know, after all, how many people wish Ciri ill and desire her death. Start scanning. When I find out where the girl is, I’ll bring her here. She’ll be safe… No one will find her here. Ever.’
His voice was warm and velvety.
‘Start scanning, Yennefer. Start scanning. I implore you. I give you my word: I’ll only take what I need from Ciri. And then I’ll give both of you your freedom. I swear.’
Yennefer gritted her teeth even harder. Blood trickled down her chin. Vilgefortz suddenly stood up and beckoned.
‘Rience!’
Yennefer felt some kind of device tightening over her hands and fingers.
‘At times,’ said Vilgefortz, bending over her, ‘where magic, elixirs and narcotics fail, what works on the stubborn is good old-fashioned pain. Don’t make me do it. Start scanning.’
‘Go to hell, Vilgefoooortz!’
‘Tighten the screws, Rience. Slowly.’
Vilgefortz glanced at the torpid body being dragged across the floor towards the stairs to the cellar. Then he lifted his eye towards Rience and Schirrú.
‘There’s always the risk,’ he said, ‘that one of you will fall into the hands of my enemies and be interrogated. I’d like to think that you’ll demonstrate as much fortitude. Yes, I’d like to think so. But I don’t.’
Rience and Schirrú said nothing. Vilgefortz started up the megascope again and projected the image generated by the huge crystal onto the screen.
‘That’s all she could produce,’ he said, pointing. ‘I wanted Cirilla, she gave me the Witcher. Fascinating. She didn’t allow the girl’s empathic matrix to be wrested from her, but she cracked when it came to Geralt. And I didn’t suspect her of harbouring any feelings for Geralt at all… Well, for now let’s settle for what we have. Witcher, Cahir aep Ceallach, the bard Dandelion, some woman? Hmmm… Who’ll undertake this task? The final solution to the witcher problem?’
Schirrú volunteered, recalled Rience, raising himself up in the stirrups to give his saddle-sore buttocks at least some relief. Schirrú volunteered to kill the Witcher. He recognised the countryside Yennefer had traced Geralt and his company to; he had friends or family there. Vilgefortz sent me, meanwhile, to negotiate with Vattier de Rideaux, and then to tail Skellen and Bonhart…
And I–stupidly–was glad at the time, certain that the easier and more pleasant task had fallen to me. One I would make short, easy, pleasant work of…
‘If the peasants weren’t lying–’ Stefan Skellen stood up in his stirrups ‘–the lake must be over that hill, in the valley.’
‘The trail leads there,’ Boreas Mun confirmed.
‘Why have we stopped here?’ Rience rubbed a frozen ear. ‘Spur on the horses and let’s go!’
‘Not so fast.’ Bonhart held him back. ‘Let’s split up. We’ll encircle the valley. We don’t know which of the lake’s shores she took. If we choose the wrong way, we may put the lake between us.’
‘How very true,’ Boreas nodded.
‘The lake’s frozen over.’
‘It may be too thin for the horses. Bonhart’s right, we must split up.’
Skellen quickly issued orders. The group led by Bonhart, Rience and Ola Harsheim, numbering seven horses in total, galloped along the eastern shore, quickly disappearing into the black forest.
‘Very well,’ Tawny Owl ordered. ‘Let’s go, Silifant…’
He realised at once that something wasn’t right.
He reined his horse around, slapped it with his knout and rode directly for Joanna Selborne. Kenna backed up her mount, and her face seemed to be made of stone.
‘It’s no use, sir,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Don’t even try. We’re not going with you. We’re turning back. We’ve had enough.’
‘We?’ Dacre Silifant yelled. ‘Who’s “we”? What is this, a mutiny?’
Skellen leaned over in the saddle and spat on the frozen earth. Andres Vierny and Til Echrade, the fair-haired elf, had stopped behind Kenna.
‘Miss Selborne,’ said Tawny Owl scathingly, in a slow, drawling voice, ‘It isn’t the point that you are squandering a very promising career, that you’re permanently throwing away the chance of a lifetime. You’ll be handed over to the hangman. Along with these fools who’ve listened to you.’
‘Whoever’s meant to hang won’t drown,’ Kenna replied philosophically. ‘And don’t threaten us with the hangman, sir. For who knows who’s closer to the scaffold; you or us.’
‘Is that what you think?’ Tawny Owl’s eyes flashed. ‘You’re convinced of that after slyly eavesdropping on somebody’s thoughts? I thought you were cleverer than that. But you’re stupid, woman. Whoever’s with me wins, whoever’s against me always loses! Remember that, girl. Even though you think I’m incriminated now, I’ll still manage to send you to hang. Do you hear, you mutineers? I’ll have your flesh torn from your bones with red hooks.’
‘We have but one life, sir,’ Til Echrade said softly. ‘You’ve chosen your way, and we’ve chosen ours. Both are uncertain and risky. And no one knows what fate will befall any of us.’
‘You won’t set us on the girl like dogs, Mr Skellen, sir.’ Kenna raised her head proudly. ‘And we won’t let ourselves be killed like dogs, like Neratin Ceka. Oh, enough talking. We’re turning back! Boreas! Come with us.’
‘No.’ The tracker shook his head, wiping his forehead with his fur hat. ‘Farewell. I don’t wish you ill. But I’m staying. It’s my service. I took the oath.’
‘To whom?’ Kenna frowned. ‘The Emperor or Tawny Owl? Or a sorcerer talking from a box?’
‘I’m a soldier. I serve.’
‘Wait,’ called Dufficey Kriel, riding out from behind Dacre Silifant. ‘I’m with you. I’ve had enough of this too! Last night I dreamed of my own death. I don’t want to croak for this lousy, suspicious affair!’
‘Traitors!’ yelled Dacre, flushing like a cherry. It seemed as though dark blood would spurt from his face. ‘Turncoats! Miserable curs!’
‘Shut your trap.’ Tawny Owl was still looking at Kenna, and his eyes were just as hideous as the bird from which he took his name. ‘They’ve chosen their way; you heard. There’s no point shouting or wasting spit. But we’ll meet again one day. I promise you.’
‘Perhaps even on the same scaffold,’ Kenna said without spitefulness. ‘For they won’t put you to death alongside noble princes, will they Skellen? But with us churls. But you’re right, there’s no point wasting spit. Let’s be
going. Farewell, Boreas. Farewell, Mr Silifant.’
Dacre spat over his horse’s ears.
‘And beyond what I’ve said here–’ Joanna Selborne proudly raised her head, brushing a dark lock from her forehead ‘–I have nothing to add, Illustrious Tribunal.’
The convenor of the tribunal looked down on her. His face was inscrutable. His eyes grey. And decent.
Anyway, what do I care? thought Kenna. I’ll try. You can only die once; sink or swim. I’m not going to rot in the citadel and wait for death. Tawny Owl didn’t make wild promises, he’s liable to take revenge even from beyond the grave…
What do I care? Perhaps they won’t notice. Sink or swim!
She pressed her hand to her nose, seemingly wiping it. She looked straight into the grey eyes of the tribunal convener.
‘Guard!’ said the convener. ‘Please take the witness Joanna Selborne back to…’
He broke off and started coughing. Sweat suddenly broke out on his forehead.
‘To the tribunal chancellery,’ he finished, sniffing loudly. ‘Write out the appropriate documents. And release her. The witness Selborne is of no further use to the court.’
Kenna surreptitiously wiped away the drop of blood that was trickling from her nose. She smiled charmingly and thanked him with a delicate bow.
‘They’ve deserted?’ Bonhart repeated in disbelief. ‘More of them have deserted? And just rode away, like that? Skellen? You permitted it?’
‘If they inform on us…’ Rience began, but Tawny Owl interrupted him at once.
‘They won’t inform, because they don’t want to lose their own heads! And besides, what could I have done? When Kriel joined them, only Bert and Mun were left with me and there were four of them…’
‘Four,’ said Bonhart malevolently, ‘isn’t many at all. As soon as we’ve caught up with the girl I’ll go after them. And I’ll feed them to the crows. In the name of—’
The Tower of Swallows Page 44
