The Lady of the Lake

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Truly, I say, who believes in dreams is like one who wants to catch the wind or is grasping at shadows. Fooled by deceptive images in a curved mirror that lies or twists the truth like a false woman. It is a fool indeed who gives faith to the dream and walks the path of deception.

  But even he who has few dreams should not put faith in them and wisely does not. Why, if dreams would not have any meaning, would the gods gift us the ability to dream?

  The wisdom of the prophet Lebioda, 34; 1

  Is all that we see or seem

  But a dream within a dream?

  Edgar Allan Poe

  A breeze wrinkled the steaming cauldron that was the surface of the lake, scattering thin ribbons of morning mist. The oarlocks squeaked and rumbled rhythmically, a bright spray of droplets showered from the oars.

  Condwiramurs put her hand on the railing. The boat was sailing at a slow speed and the water rose and fell just over her fingers.

  ‘Ah ah,’ she said, putting as much sarcasm in her voice as she could. ‘What a speed! We seem to be flying over the waves. My head is spinning!’

  The rower, a short, stocky, thickset man, growled something angry and indistinct, not even raising his head of overgrown curly hair, worthy of a sheep. The adept was already fed up of the muttering, grunting and growling, with which the man used to answer her questions.

  ‘Careful,’ she said with difficulty, maintaining the peace. ‘From rowing so rapidly you could overturn the boat.’

  This time the man lifted his face, with skin that was as dark as if it had been tanned. He muttered, coughed and pointed with his gray stubble chin to a line mounted on the rail on a wooden reel that disappeared into the water, straining with the motion of the boat. Apparently convinced that the explanation was enough, he continued rowing. With the same pace as before. Oars up. Pause. Lower the oars half into the water. Long pause. Pull. An even longer pause.

  ‘Ah,’ Condwiramurs said looking at the sky. ‘I understand. It is important that the lure that you drag behind the boat must move at the proper speed and the proper depth. Fishing is important. Nothing else matters.’

  It was so obvious that the man did not even both to grunt.

  ‘Well, who cares,’ Condwiramurs continued her monologue, ‘that I have been travelling through the night? That I’m hungry? That my ass hurts and itches from the hard, wet bench? That I have to pee? No, it is only important to catch fish. And it is pointless anyway. The lure that we are dragging behind us in the middle of the stream is not going to catch anything.’

  The man raised his head and gave her an ugly look. Condwiramurs flashed her teeth in a sly smile. The man continued to row slowly. He was angry.

  She collapsed on the bench at the stern and crossed her legs. So that the slits in her shirts were as visible as possible.

  The man grunted and pulled on the oars with his calloused hands, pretending not to watched anything but the tow rope. Of course, the speed of the rowing did not accelerate. The adept sighed in resignation and turned to watch the sky.

  The oarlocks creaked, shiny droplets splashed from the paddles.

  From out of the quickly lifting fog appeared the outline of an island. And rising above it the dark obelisk of a domed tower. The man, sitting with his back to it was aware that they had almost arrived. Taking his time, he placed the oars inside the boat, stood up and began to slowly wind the rope on the reel. Condwiramurs still with her legs crossed, whistled and watched the sky.

  The man slowly rolled up the end of the fishing line and began to view the lure – a shiny brass spoon equipped with a triple hook tail of dyed wool.

  ‘Oh, nothing caught,’ Condwiramurs said sweetly, ‘What a shame. I wonder why you were so unlucky? Maybe the boat was moving too fast?’

  The man gave her a look that said a lot of ugly things. He sat down, coughed, spat overboard grabbed the oars in his gnarled hands and bent his strong back. The oars splashed, stirring in the oarlocks and the boat was launched across the lake like an arrow, the water roared and foamed at the bow and circled in whirls at the stern. The distance separating them

  from the shore was about the quarter of the length of a crossbow shot and they covered the distance in two grunts. The boat slammed into the sand with such force that Condwiramurs fell off the bench.

  The man muttered, coughed and spat. The adept knew that translated into the language of civilized people as “Get out of my boat, annoying witch!” She also knew that she couldn’t count on his arms to get her out. She took off her shoes, lifted her skirt of a provocative height and lowered herself from the ship. She swallowed a curse as the shells on the shore dug painfully into her feet.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said through clenched teeth, ‘for the ride.’

  Without waiting for the next grunt and not looking back, she walked barefoot towards the stone stairs. All the hardships and pains had fled without a trace, erased by her growing excitement. She was here on the island of Inis Vitre, on the lake Loc Blest. It was an almost legendary place where only a chosen few visited.

  The morning fog had lifted almost entirely, the red ball of the sun began to shine strongly in the heavens. Above the water, crying seagulls circled and flew around the battlements of the tower.

  At the top of the staircase leading from the shore to a terrace, leaning against a statue of crouching, grinning chimera, was Nimue.

  The Lady of the Lake.

  She was delicate and small, she was no larger than five feet. Condwiramurs heard mention that as a young girl they called her “Thumbelina,” now she saw the nick name was appropriate. But she was sure that for a least half a century no one had dare say that to the little sorceress.

  ‘I’m Condwiramurs Tilly,’ she introduced herself with a nod, a little embarrassed, still with her shoes in her hand. ‘I am happy that you have invited me to your island, Lady of the Lake.’

  ‘Nimue,’ the little sorceress corrected. ‘Nimue and nothing else. We can forgo the titles and epithets, Lady Tilly.’

  ‘In that case, I’m Condwiramurs. Condwiramurs and nothing else.’

  ‘Then, with your permission, Condwiramurs. We’ll talk over breakfast. I guess you are hungry.’

  ‘I will not deny it.’

  The breakfast was rye bread, cottage cheese with chive butter, eggs and milk. Serving it was two very young, quiet and maid who smelled of starch. While dinning Condwiramurs felt the stare of the small sorceress.

  ‘This tower,’ Nimue said, watching ever movement of her visitor, her every bite, ‘has six floors, including one underground. Your room is on the second floor, you’ll find all the necessary comforts. On the ground floor, you see, is for the management of the house, here is where then rooms for the servants are. In the basement is the laboratory and in the first and third floors are the library and the gallery. To all these floors you have free access and use to all the equipment that is in them, whenever you want.’

  ‘I understand. Thank you.’

  ‘In the upper two floors are my private rooms and office. In those rooms I was absolute privacy. For the future to avoid misunderstandings, note that in this respect I am very sensitive.’

  ‘I respect that.’

  Nimue turned her head towards the window, through which one could see the gruff fisherman who had managed to unload all of Condwiramurs luggage and now carried in his boat a reel, nets and other paraphernalia of the art of fishing.

  ‘I’m a little old fashioned,’ she continued. ‘But some things I’m used to using some things with exclusive rights. Toothbrushes, for example. My private rooms, my library, my bathroom. And the Fisher King. Please do not try and use the Fisher King.’

  Condwiramurs nearly choked on her milk. Nimue’s face expressed nothing whatsoever.

  ‘And if...’ She continued before the woman regained speech. ‘And if he was interested to use you, reject him.’

  Condwiramurs, swallowed and finally
nodded her head, refraining from make any comments. Although she was about to say a stinging rejoined, that rural fisherman were not her type. Especially when they have a gray head and manifest themselves as morose louts.

  ‘So,’ Nimue said emphatically. ‘We have made our introductions. It is time to move on to more specific things. Do you want to know why out of so many candidates I choose precisely you?’

  Condwiramurs, if she thought a bit before answering, would only show that she was pretending not to show too much pride. She however, concluded that to show Nimue false modesty, even if it was only a very small degree, would sound too fake.

  ‘I’m the best at the academy,’ she replied coolly, objectively and without boasting. ‘In my third year I had the second best rating in oneiromancy.’

  ‘I could have brought to me the first.’ Nimue said, painfully sincere. ‘Incidentally, you were proposed to me with honors. Even quit strongly, because apparently you are the daughter of someone important. As for dreaming, dear Condwiramurs, you know, that oneiromancy it is a somewhat fickle gift. Failure can happen to even the best dreamer.’

  Condwiramurs again refrained from a brisk replay that its failures can be counted on the fingers of one hand. After all, she was speaking with a master. It is necessary to know peace in matters large and small, as one of her professors are the academy was fond of saying.

  Nimue’s reward for her silence was a nod of approval.

  ‘I have detailed reports on you,’ she said. ‘I know that you do not need the help of dreaming dugs. I am glad, because I do not tolerate drugs.’

  ‘I dream without drugs,’ Condwiramurs confirmed with pride. ‘With oneiromancy it is enough for me if I have an anchor.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, an anchor,’ the adept cleared her throat. ‘Something that the subject who I’m dreaming about is somehow associated with. Any personal belongings. Or a picture...’

  ‘A picture?’

  ‘Yes. I’m never wrong with a picture.’

  ‘Oh.’ Nimue smiled. ‘Oh if a picture helps, then we will not have a problem. If you have finished breakfast, let’s go, the best and second best among the oneiromancers. It would be good for me to explain the other reasons why it is I chose you as an assistant.’

  The stone walls emitted cold, which even the dark wood paneling and carpeting wasn’t able to stop. She felt cold even through the soles of her shoes.

  ‘Beyond these doors,’ Nimue pointed out, ‘is the laboratory. As I mentioned, you can use it as you wish. Of course, I recommend caution. Moderation is advised, especially if you try and force a broom to carry water.’

  Condwiramurs laughed out of politeness, even though it was an old joke. All the professors in her lectures entertained jokes that related to the mythical trouble of the legendary magician’s apprentice.

  The staircase wound up like a sea serpent, and it seemed to have no end. It’s stages were high and steep. Before they arrived, the young adept was panting and sweating, but Nimue seemed to appear not affected in any way by the effort.

  ‘This way please,’ she opened a oak door. ‘Beware the threshold.’

  Condwiramurs entered and sighed.

  The room was a gallery. Its walls were covered with paintings from floor to ceiling. There hung huge oil paintings, old chipped and cracked miniatures, engravings, and yellowed woodcuts, faded watercolors and sepia. There also hung here recent works – vivid colors, modernist tempera and gouache, aquatints and etchings of clean strokes, contrasting prints and mezzotints, which attracted the eye with its sharp black spots.

  Nimue stopped before a picture that was hanging closer to the door, depicting a group of people gathered under a huge tree. She looked at the canvas, then Condwiramurs and her silent gaze was extraordinary eloquent.

  ‘Dandelion,’ the adept said, realizing the point was not to wait, ‘singing ballads at the foot of the oak Bleobheris.’

  Nimue smiled and nodded. She took a step and stood before another picture. Watercolor. Symbolism. Two female figures on a hill. Gulls circling above them, beneath them , on the slopes of the hill, a procession of shadows.

  ‘Ciri and Triss Merigold. The prophetic vision at Kaer Morhen.’

  Smile, nod, step, another picture. A rider on a galloping horse, a misshapen double row of alders, stretching out their arms their branches towards him. Condwiramurs felt a chill go through her.

  ‘Ciri... Hmmm... Apparently her night ride to her meeting with Geralt at the Halfling Hofmeier’s farm.’

  The next picture, a dark oil painting. A battle scene.

  ‘Geralt and Cahir defending the bridge on the Yaruga.’

  Then faster and faster.

  ‘Yennefer and Ciri, their first meeting in the temple of Melitele. Dandelion and the dryad Eithné, in the woods of Brokilon. The company of Geralt during a blizzard on the mountain pass of Malheur...’

  ‘Well done,’ Nimue praised. ‘A excellent knowledge of legend. Now you know the second reason why you are hear and not someone else.’

  Above the ebony table at which they sat, was dominated by a large canvas depicting a battle scene, it seemed to be the Battle of Brenna, a key moment in the battle or a tacky scene of a death of a hero. The canvas was beyond a doubt the work of Nicholas Certosy, you could tell by the expression, the perfect attention to details and the artist’s lighting effects.

  ‘Yes, I know the legend of the Sorceress and the Witcher,’ said Condwiramurs . ‘I dare say, down to the smallest detail. As a child I loved this story, I literally listened to the story and read it many times. I dreamed to be Yennefer. But I’ll be honest – even if it was love at first sight, even if they were explosively passionate... It was not eternal.’

  Nimue raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I learned that the history,’ said Condwiramurs, ‘was a popular abbreviation for young people, Later I naturally read a few of the so-call full and serious versions. Dilated to the border of redundancy and sometimes beyond. Then my passion was replaced by cool

  reflection and the passionate flare turned into something like a marriage of convenience. You know what I mean?’

  Nimue’s nod was barely perceptible confirming that she knew.

  ‘In short, I prefer those legends that cling more to the legendary conventions, and do not mix fiction with reality and do not try and combine the simple and straightforward moral of a fairy tale with amoral historical truth. I prefer the legends without the prefaces of the encyclopedists, archaeologists and historians. Those whose conventionalism are free of experiments. I prefer that if the prince comes to the top of Crystal Mountain and kisses Sleeping Beauty, she wakes up and the two live happily ever after. Yes, no other, should end a legend... Who painted this portrait of Ciri? The one on the stand?’

  ‘There is not one portrait of Ciri,’ the voice of the little sorceress was dry. ‘Neither here nor anywhere in the world. There remains not a single portrait or miniature painted by someone who has seen Ciri or even remembers her. The portrait on the stand shows Pavetta, Ciri’s mother. It was painted by the dwarf, Ruiz Dorrit, the court painter for the rulers of Cintra. It was documented that Dorrit portrayed Ciri when she as ten years old, but the picture had not been preserved. Let us go back to the legend and your relationship with it. In your opinion how should legends end?’

  ‘They should have a good ending,’ she insisted. ‘Good must prevail. Evil must be punished by way of example; the lovers are joined together until the end of life. And none of the good heroes may due, dammit! And the legend of Ciri? How does it end?

  ‘Exactly. How?’

  Condwiramurs was speechless for a moment. She had not expected such a question; she smelled a test, an exam, a trap. She stopped to avoid being caught.

  How ends the legend of Ciri and Geralt? After all, everyone knows that.

  She stared into the dark tones of the watercolor depicting the clumsy barge moving along the surface over a misty lake, a figure standing on the barge was only visi
ble as a black silhouette.

  This is how the legend ends. That’s right.

  Nimue read her mind.

  ‘It is not that certain, Condwiramurs. It is not that certain.’

  ‘The legend,’ said Nimue, “I first heard from the lips of a wandering storyteller. I was village child, the fourth daughter of a poor cottager. The most beautiful memories from my childhood are days when the wandering storyteller Pogwizd came to our village. I could forget for a few moments my work and in my mind’s eye I could see these fabulous wonders, see this wide open world... A beautiful and miraculous world... Further and more wondrous than the town nine miles away... I was about six or seven years old. My sister was fourteen and she was beginning to slouch from the eternal toil. A woman’s destiny. We were preparing for it since childhood. Slouching! We were constantly stooped, bending our backs to work, to care for the child because the weight of your gut has yet to recover from childbirth... It was these stories of the old man that made me begin to desire more than just toil and bending, dream more of giving birth, a husband and children. The first book I bought with the money I got for the sale of blueberries I picked in the forest was the legend of Ciri. This version as you aptly put it was softened and modified for young people. This was the version for me. I read poorly. But even then I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be like Philippa Eilhart or Síle de Tansarville, and Assire var Anahid...’

  Both looked at the gouache, representing a table in the hall of a castle with women sitting around it. Legendary women.

  ‘At the Academy,’ continued Nimue, ‘in which I entered on the second attempt, I was concerned with only the legend of the Grand Lodge and its aspect in the history of magic lectures. I had no time for reading for pleasure at first; I had to occupy my time… to keep pace with the daughters of earls and bankers for which everything was easy, they laughed at a village girl…’

  She paused, then snapped her fingers.

  ‘Finally,’ she went on. ‘I found time for reading, but then I realized that the adventures of Geralt and Ciri held far less interest to me that they did in my childhood. It appears to be a similar syndrome with me as with you. What did you call it? A marriage of convenience? That was until…’