The old man was small, but not hunched. He was wearing a linen shirt and trousers of the same material. On his feet he wore enormous, ridiculously looking sandals. In one hand he carried a gnarled cane and in the other a wicker basket. Ciri could not clearly see his face as it was concealed by a straw hat, from which protruded a sunburned nose and a mattered grey beard.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said. ‘I won’t harm you.’
Greybeard shifted from behind the oak and took off his hat. His face was round and dotted with age spots but vigorous with a little wrinkled brow and a small chin. He had long grey hair at the nape of his neck which he had pulled back into a ponytail, but the crown of his head was bare, shiny and yellow like a pumpkin.
She noticed that he was looking at her sword, the hilt of which was protruding over her right shoulder.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ she repeated.
‘Hey, hey!’ he said, mumbling a bit. ‘Hey, hey, my lady. Gramps is not afraid. Not afraid, on no.’
He smiled. His teeth were big and due to his receding lower jaw, his upper teeth stuck out of his mouth. There for his speech was hard to understand.
‘Gramps is not afraid of strangers,’ he said. ‘Even bandits. Gramps is poor and pitiful. Gramps is peaceful, no threat to anyone. Hey!’
He smiled again. His smile seemed to be comprised of only his front teeth.
‘And you my lady, are you afraid of Gramps?’
Ciri snorted.
‘I’m not afraid of you.’
‘Hey, hey, hey! Whatever you say!’
He stepped towards her, leaning on his cane. Kelpie snorted. Ciri pulled on the reins.
‘She does not like strangers,’ Ciri warned. ‘And she bites.’
‘Hey, hey. Gramps understands. Bad, rude pony! And out of curiosity, where is the lady going? Where is she heading?’
‘It’s a long story. Where does this path lead?’
‘Hey, Hey! The young lady does not know this?’
‘Do not answer questions with questions, if you please. Where does the path lead> What is this place? And what is the date?’
The old man grinned again, his teeth sticking out like a beavers.
‘Hey, hey, I can see from these questions that my lady has come from far away.’
‘Quite far,’ she said indifferently. ‘From another…’
‘Time and place,’ he finished. ‘Gramps knows. Gramps guessed.’
‘How have you guessed? What do you know?’ she asked excitedly.
‘Gramps knows much.’
‘Speak!’
‘Is my lady hungry? She said. ‘Thirsty? Tired? Gramps will take you to his cottage, give you food and drink and let you rest.’
Ciri had not had time to think about food and rest. Now, the words of the strange old man, made her stomach rumble and her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth. The old man looked at her from under the brim of his straw hat.
‘Gramps,’ he said, ‘has food and spring water at his house. And hey for your mare, the mare that wants to bite Gramps. Hey, hey, at the house we can talk about places and times… It’s not far. Will my lady accept the invitation? Will she enjoy Gramps refreshments?’
Ciri swallowed.
‘Lead on,’
Gramps turned and walked along the barely visible path, measuring the way with long strokes from his cane. Ciri followed him, bowing her head to keep the branches from pulling her from the saddle and keeping a firm hand on the reins to stop Kelpie from biting the old man or eating his straw hat.
Despite his claims the cottage was not close at all. When they finally reached his place the sun was almost at it zenith.
Gramps’s cottage proved to be a picturesque made of wood, with a roof which had been evidently repaired often using the first thing that had come to hand. The walls of the hut were covered with what looked like pig skins. In front of the cottage was a wooden structure in the shape of a gallows, a low table and a stump with an axe sticking out of it. In the cottage was an enclosed fireplace made of stone and clay, on which stood a smoking pot and pan.
‘Gramps’s home,’ said the old man proudly, ‘this is where I live. Here is where I sleep and cook food. Come have something to eat. Hey, hey, it is difficult to capture food in the forest. Does my lady like the flavor of millet porridge?’
‘I like it,’ Ciri swallowed again. ‘I like it.’
‘With pork? With butter? And bacon?’
‘Mmmm.’
‘It is clear,’ the old man gave her a probing look, ‘that you have not recently filled a plate full of pork and bacon. My lady is skinny. Skin and bones. Hey, hey. What is that back there?’
Ciri looked back. She fell for the old and most primitive trick in the world.
The heavy blow from the cane hit her directly in the head, her reflexes were just enough to raise her hand and cushion some of the blow which could have broken her skull like an egg. But Ciri found herself bewildered, stunned and complete disoriented.
Gramps showed his huge teeth then leapt at her and hit her again with his gnarled stick. Ciri once again managed to protect her head with her upraised hands, but the result was her left hand falling limp, probably broken. Gramps jumped to her other side and swung, hitting her in the stomach. She screamed and curled into a ball. He threw himself on her like a hawk; he turned her face to the ground and crushed her knees. Ciri arched up and kicked back, hitting him a sharp blow to his elbow. Gramps roared furiously and slammed his fist onto the back of her head with such force that her face dug into the sand. He grabbed her by the hair on her neck and ground her nose and mouth into the sand. She felt suffocated.
The old man knelt on her, still pushing her head into the ground, pulled out her sword and tossed it to the side. He fumbling hand reach over her stomach and unlaced her pants. Ciri screamed and her mouth filled with more sand. The old man pushed harder, clutching her hair in his fist. With a strong tug her pulled down her pants.
‘Hey, hey,’ the old man wheezed. ‘Today Gramps caught a nice ass. It has been a long time.’
Ciri felt the touch of his dry hand and cried out again through her mouth full of sand and pine needles.
‘Just be quiet and lay still, my lady,’ he drooled onto her buttocks. ‘Gramps is no longer young, like he used to be… But no fear, the old man still knows what to do. Hey, hey, and then Gramps will eat you…’
He did not finish the sentence, he grunted and roared.
Ciri felt his grip break, and broke away from him like a spring. Now she could see what had happened.
Kelpie had silently crept up from behind, grabbed Gramps in her teeth and literally lifted him off the ground. The old man yelled and thrashed about, kicking. Finally he managed to break free, but left a lot of his grey hair in the mare’s teeth. He leaped for his gnarled stick but at the last moment Ciri kicked it out of his reach. The second kick she wanted to deal out was to where it was necessary, but her pants pulled down to her knees restricted her movements. She pulled them up and turned, but Gramps had utilized the lost time well. With several jumps he reached the stump and wrested the axe from it. He waved the axe, driving Kelpie back, then with a roar, he lunged at Ciri, raising the axe to strike.
‘Gramps is gonna bugger you wench!’ he howled wildly. ‘Even if he has to hack you to pieces first. Gramps doesn’t care if my lady is whole or filleted!’
Ciri thought that she could handle his easily. He was after all, a decrepit old man. She was mistaken.
Despite his age and large sandals, he was as agile as a rabbit and leaped at her, brandishing the axe with the skill of a butcher. When the sharpened blade almost hit her a few times, Ciri realized that the only way to save herself was to escape.
But she was save by coincidence. Stepping backwards she ran into her sword. She quickly picked it up.
‘Throw down the axe,’ she yelled, pulling her sword with a hiss from its scabbard. ‘Throw down your axe, you old shit, maybe I’ll give you your life.’
He paused. Wheezing and puffing, he had saliva running from his mouth into his beard. But he did not throw down the axe. She saw in his eyes a murderous rage.
‘No!’
‘Then come at me.’
For a moment he looked at her as if not understanding, then he gnashed his teeth, roared and lunged at her. Ciri had had enough. She turned quickly and cut up from the bottom slicing his arms above the elbow. The old man dropped the axe and his bloody hands followed, he immediately jumped at her again. She jumped and slashed him across the neck. More out of pity than necessity, the open arteries in his arms would have bled out in a few moments.
He lay there, parting with life with incredible difficulty, without his severed limbs, he squirmed like a worm. Ciri stood over him. In her teeth, sand gritted. She spat it out on the dying old man. Before the saliva hit him, he died.
The strange construction in front of the cottage that resembled a scaffold was decorated with iron hooks and rigging. The table and the stump were slippery, covered in grease and smelled. Like a slaughterhouse.
In the kitchen Ciri found millet porridge, full of pieces of meat and mushrooms. She was very hungry, but something stopped her from eating it. Instead she drank only a little water from a jug and at a small wrinkled apple.
Some stairs descended deep into a cool cellar. The shelves were stored with earthenware pots and lard. Meat hung from the ceiling. Some remnants of a thing.
She ran from the cellar, as if chased by demons, She fell into the nettles and rose, staggering away from the cottage. Despite having an empty stomach, she vomited violently for a long time.
The thigh hanging in the cellar belonged to a child.
Driven by a stench, she found a pit whose bottom was half flooded with water were Gramps threw his garbage, everything that he did not eat. Looking at the skulls, ribs and pelvis rolling in the mud, Ciri realized with horror that she had survived only because of the old man’s lust, he wanted to rape more than he wanted food. If his hunger at that moment had been stronger that his lustful appetites, he would have treacherously struck her with the axe and not the gnarled stick. He would have hung her by her feet on the wooden gallows, gutted her, pulled off her skin and chopped her up on the table…
Although her legs were shaking with weakness and her left hand throbbed with pain, she dragged the body into the forest and plunged it into the stinking mud, between the bones of his victims. She returned to the cottage with branches and dried twigs and placed them around the four sides of the house. The carefully set fire to all four sides.
She left when the fire had flared up properly. When she felt the heat, heard the roar and when she was sure that a random shower would not prevent the razing of this place.
Her hand was not so bad. It was swollen, yes, and it hurt, but there didn’t seem to be any broken bones.
When evening came, a single moon appeared in the sky. However Ciri did not want to accept this world as her own.
Or stay in any longer than necessary.
‘Tonight,’ Nimue whispered, ‘will be a good night. I can feel it.’
Condwiramurs sighed.
The horizon burned in gold and purple. A beam of the same colors settled on the lake.
They were sitting on the terrace in chairs, behind them was a mirror in an ebony frame and a tapestry depicting a small castle clinging to a rocky wall which was reflected in the water of a mountain lake.
How many evenings, Condwiramurs thought, will we sit up in the falling twilight and the darkness? Without any results? Just talking?
It got colder. The sorceress and the adept were wrapped in furs. From the lake came the creak of oars from the boat of the Fisher King, but they could not see it as it was hidden by the blinding glow of sunset.
‘Quite often I dream,’ Condwiramurs said, ‘I’m in an icy wasteland, where there is nothing but piled of white snow and the sun sparkling on ice. And there is silence, silence calling in my ears. Unnatural silence. The silence of death.’
Nimue nodded, as if she knew what this meant. But she said nothing.
‘Suddenly, it seems that I can hear something,’ continued the adept. ‘I can feel the surface of the ice tremble under my feet. I kneel down in the snow. The ice is clear as glass, it is from a mountain lake, stones and fish can be seen through the thick pane. In my dream, I can also
see that, the layer of ice is dozens or perhaps hundreds of inches thick. This does not prevent me from hearing… people screaming for help. Below the ice… there is a frozen world.’
Nimue remained silent.
‘Of course, I know,’ said the adept, ‘the dream is born from Ithlinne’s Prophecy, the famous White Winter, the Time of the White Frost, the time of the Wolf Blizzard. The world has perished under snow and ice that is the forecast of re-birth. Pure and better.’
‘I deeply believe that,’ Nimue said softly, ‘it will regenerate the world. But not that it would be better.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘I did not mishear? Nimue, the Time of the White frost has been predicted many times, every cold winter; people believe that it is beginning. But today not even children believe that some long winter will destroy the world.’
‘So you can see, children do not believe, but I do.’
‘do you have some rational reasons,’ Condwiramurs said with slight irony, ‘or is it a mystical belief in the infallibility of elven prophecies?’
Nimue’s fingers twitched among the fur in which she was shrouded.
‘Our world,’ she began in her mentoring tone, ‘has the shape of a sphere and revolves around the sun. Do you agree or do you belong to one of those tiny sects that believe the opposite?’
‘No, I’m not one of them. I accept the heliocentric doctrine and believe that the earth is round.’
‘Good. Then you know that the earth’s axis is tilted and the track the earth takes around the sun is not circular, but elliptical?’
‘I’ve learned about it. But I am not an astronomer, so…’
‘There is no need to be an astronomer, just think logically. The earth moves around the sun in an elliptical shaped orbit and so during its movements it is sometimes closer and sometimes further away. The further the earth is from the sun, it is logical to think that the colder it will be. And thanks to the planetary axis the northern hemisphere is further from the light.’
‘This is logical.’
‘Both aspects – the ellipse of the orbit and the inclination of the axis are subject to change. Believed to be cyclic. The ellipse can be more or less elliptical, elongated or shallower, the axis also experiences changes. Due to the distance from the Sun and the large tilt of the earth’s axis, the polar regions receive very little light and heat.’
‘I understand.’
‘Less light in the northern hemisphere means more residual snow. The white glistening snow reflects sunlight so the temperature drops even more. The snow remains even longer, the larger tracts do not melt, or only briefly. The more snow, the more residual, the more white and shiny reflective surface…’
‘I understand.’
‘The snow falls and falls and there becomes more and more of it. Note that, the sea currents migrate from the south of the warm air. Humidity condenses over the cold areas and causes further snow to fall. The greater the temperature differences, the more abundant the snowfall. It gets colder.’
‘I understand.’
‘The snow becomes so heavy the ice becomes pressed and forms a glacier. On which, as we know, the snow keeps falling, squeezing it even more, the glacier grows, not only increasingly thick but covering more space. White spaces…’
‘That reflects the sunlight,’ Condwiramurs nodded. ‘Getting colder and colder still. The White Light that Ithlinne prophesied. But can this really lead to a cataclysm? Can the ice that likes to the north suddenly start moving south, crushing and covering everything? How quickly can the ice at the poles grow? How many inches a year?’
‘As you probably know,’ Nimue said staring at the lake, ‘the only port that does not freeze is the Gulf of Praxeda in Pont Vanis.’
‘I know.’
‘Enrich your knowledge. You know that a hundred years ago, all the major ports in the Gulf were open water throughout the year. In the Chronicles it is recorded that even in the last century that Talgar could still grow cucumbers and pumpkins and sunflowers. Now those crops won’t grow there, because the growing season is too short and the winter is too rigid. Did you ever hear that Kaedwen had its own vineyard? Wines from the local vines were probably not the best, but they were cheap. And the local poets sang of them. Those vines no longer grow in Kaedwen because the winters, unlike the old, bring severe frosts and heavy snows that kill the vines. Not only inhibits the vegetation, but simply kills it. Destroys it.’
‘I understand.’
‘Yes,’ reflected Nimue. ‘Shall I tell you more? Perhaps of the snow falls in Talgar in mid-November. And at the end of December and January, there is snow in the catchment area of Alba, where even a hundred years ago nobody had seen snow. Why at Birke do we celebrate the welcoming of spring, what do you think?’
‘It’s the spring equinox. But it is true that the little children wonder, because outside there is still snow on the ground. At the same time I have read that in ancient times that during Birke daffodils and crocuses had already bloomed.’
‘You mean the ancient times, not more than a hundred and twenty years ago. Historically it has been recently. Ithlinne was right, the prophecy is fulfilling. The world is perishing under the ice. Mankind will perish because of the Destroyer, who was to open the way to salvation. As we know from legend, he did not.’
‘For reasons that are not explained in the legend.’
‘That is true. However, the fact remains, the White Frost is coming. The civilizations of the northern hemisphere are doomed. They will disappear under the sprawling ice, under permafrost and snow. But there is no need to panic, because it will take some time before it happens.’
The Sun went down and the blinding brilliance from the surface of the lake disappeared. Now a softer beam of light fell on the water. The moon bathed the tower of Inis Vitre in a bright glow.
The Lady of the Lake Page 27
