The Saga of the Witcher

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  ‘Only because she was terrified of the curse Lara cast when she refused to help and drove Lara out into the cold of winter,’ Keira Metz said, butting in. ‘Had Cerro not adopted the child, terrible calamities would have fallen on her and her entire family—’

  ‘Those are precisely the fantastic ornaments Francesca has dispensed with,’ Philippa Eilhart interrupted. ‘Let us stick to facts.’

  ‘The prophetic abilities of the Sages of the Elder Blood are facts,’ Ida Emean said, raising her eyes towards Philippa. ‘And the evocative motif of prophecy which appears in every version of the legend is food for thought.’

  ‘It is now, and it was in the past,’ Francesca confirmed. ‘The rumours of Lara’s curse never died away, and were even recalled seventeen years later when Riannon – the little girl Cerro had adopted – grew into a young woman whose beauty eclipsed even her mother’s legendary looks. She bore the official title of Princess of Redania, and many ruling houses were interested in making a match with her. When Riannon finally chose Goidemar, the young King of Temeria, from among many suitors, it would not have taken much for rumours of the curse to thwart the marriage. However, the rumours only became common knowledge three years after their wedding. During the Falka Rebellion.’

  Fringilla, who had never heard of Falka or the rebellion, raised her eyebrows. Francesca noticed it.

  ‘For the northern kingdoms,’ she explained, ‘these are tragic and bloody events, which live on in the memory, though more than a century has passed. In Nilfgaard, with whom the North had almost no contact at that time, the matter is probably not known so I will take the liberty of briefly restating certain facts. Falka was the daughter of Vridank, the King of Redania, and the issue of a marriage he dissolved when he took a fancy to the beautiful Cerro – the same Cerro who later adopted Lara’s child. A document survives, lengthily and circuitously stating the reasons for the divorce, but a surviving miniature of Vridank’s first wife, an undoubtedly half-elf Kovirian noblewoman with predominantly human traits, says a lot more. It depicts her with the eyes of a deranged hermit, the hair of a drowned corpse and the mouth of a lizard. To cut a long story short: an ugly woman was sent back to Kovir with her year-old daughter, Falka. And soon after, the one and the other were both forgotten.’

  ‘Falka,’ Enid an Gleanna picked up after a while, ‘gave cause to be remembered five-and-twenty years later, when she launched an uprising and murdered her own father, Cerro and two of her stepbrothers, allegedly with her own hands. The armed rebellion initially broke out as an attempt by the legally firstborn daughter, supported by some of the Temerian and Kovirian nobility, to gain the throne which was rightly hers. But it was soon transformed into a peasants’ revolt of immense proportions. Both sides committed gruesome atrocities. Falka passed into legend as a bloodthirsty demon, although actually it is more likely she simply lost control of the situation and of the slogans displayed on the insurrectionary standards. “Death To Kings”; “Death To Sorcerers”; “Death To Priests, Nobility, Gentry and Anybody Well-To-Do”; and soon after: “Death To Everyone and Everything”, for it became impossible to curb the blood-drenched evil mob. Then the rebellion began to spread to other countries . . .’

  ‘Nilfgaardian historians have written about that,’ Sabrina Glevissig interrupted with a distinct sneer. ‘And Mistresses Assire and Vigo have undoubtedly read it. Keep it brief, Francesca. Move on to Riannon and the Houtborg triplets.’

  ‘But of course. Riannon, issue of Lara Dorren, adopted daughter of Cerro, now the wife of Goidemar, King of Temeria, was accidentally seized by Falka’s rebels and imprisoned in Houtborg Castle. She was pregnant at the time of her capture. The castle was still under siege long after the rebellion had been suppressed and Falka executed, but Goidemar finally took it by storm and rescued his wife. And three children: two little girls, who were already walking, and a boy, who was learning to. Riannon had been driven insane. The furious Goidemar put all the captives on the rack and from the shreds of their testimonies, interspersed with groans, constructed a plausible picture.

  ‘Falka, who had inherited her looks more from her elven grandmother than her mother, had generously bestowed her charms on all her officers in command, from the noblemen to ordinary captains and thugs; by so doing ensuring their faithfulness and loyalty to her. She finally fell pregnant and gave birth to a child, precisely at the same moment that Riannon – who was imprisoned in Houtborg – had twins. Falka ordered her infant to be raised with Riannon’s children. As she was later alleged to have said, only queens were worthy of the honour of being wet nurses to her bastards, and a similar fate would await every queen and princess in the new order Falka would build following her victory.

  ‘The problem was that no one, not even Riannon, knew which of the “triplets” was Falka’s. It was surmised that it was most likely one of the girls, because Riannon had reputedly given birth to a girl and a boy. I repeat, most likely, since in spite of Falka’s boast the children were suckled by ordinary, peasant wet nurses. Riannon could hardly remember anything when her insanity was finally cured. Yes, she gave birth. Yes, the triplets were occasionally brought to her bed and shown to her. But nothing more.

  ‘Sorcerers were summoned to examine the triplets and establish which was which. Goidemar was so unwavering that he intended – after ascertaining which was Falka’s bastard – to publicly execute the child. We could not allow it. After the uprising’s suppression, unspeakable brutality had been inflicted on the captured rebels, and it was time to put an end to it. The execution of a child before its second birthday? Can you imagine? What legends would have sprung up! And anyway it had already been rumoured that Falka herself had been born a monster as a result of Lara Dorren’s curse. Nonsense, of course, since Falka had been born before Lara had even met Cregennan. But few people could be bothered to count the years. Pamphlets and other ridiculous documents were written about it and published clandestinely in Oxenfurt Academy. But I will return to the examination Goidemar ordered us to carry out—’

  ‘Us?’ Yennefer asked, looking up. ‘Who precisely was that?’

  ‘Tissaia de Vries, Augusta Wagner, Leticia Charbonneau and Hen Gedymdeith,’ Francesca said calmly. ‘I was later added to that body. I was a young sorceress, but a pureblood elf. And my father . . . my biological father, who disowned me . . . he was a Sage. I knew what the Elder Blood gene was.’

  ‘And that gene was found in Riannon, when you examined her and the king before studying the children,’ Sheala de Tancarville stated. ‘And in two of the children – although to different extents – which allowed Falka’s bastard to be identified. How did you save the child from the king’s wrath?’

  ‘Very simply,’ the she-elf smiled. ‘By feigning ignorance. We told the king that the matter was complicated, that we were still doing tests, but that tests of that kind demanded time . . . A great deal of time. Goidemar, an irascible but fundamentally good and noble man, quickly cooled down and put no pressure on us while the triplets were growing and running around the palace, bringing joy to the royal couple and the entire court. Amavet, Fiona and Adela. The triplets were as alike as three sparrows. They were watched attentively, of course, and there were frequent suspicions, particularly if one of the children was getting up to mischief. Fiona once tipped the contents of a chamber pot from a window right onto the Great Constable. He called her “a demonic bastard” and kissed goodbye to his post. Sometime later Amavet smeared tallow on the stairs, and then, when a splint was put on the arm of a certain lady-in-waiting, she groaned something about “accursed blood” and soon afterwards said farewell to the court. More lowborn loudmouths made the acquaintance of the whipping post and the horsewhip. Thus everyone swiftly learned to hold their tongues. There was even a baron from an ancient family, who Adela shot in the backside with an arrow, who confined himself to—’

  ‘That’s enough about the children’s pranks,’ Philippa Eilhart interjected. ‘When was Goidemar finally told the truth?’


  ‘He was never told. He never asked, which suited us.’

  ‘But you knew which of the children was Falka’s bastard?’

  ‘Of course. It was Adela.’

  ‘Not Fiona?’

  ‘No. Adela. She died of the plague. The demonic bastard, the accursed blood, the daughter of the diabolical Falka helped the priests in the infirmary beyond the castle walls during an epidemic – in spite of the king’s protests. She caught the plague from the sick children she was treating and died. She was seventeen. A year later her pseudo-brother Amavet became romantically involved with Countess Anna Kameny and was murdered by assassins hired by her husband. The same year Riannon died, distraught and inconsolable after the death of two of her beloved children. Then Goidemar summoned us once more. For the King of Cintra, Coram, was showing an interest in the last of the famous triplets: Princess Fiona. He wanted her to marry his son, also Coram, but knew of the rumours and didn’t want to go ahead with the match in case Fiona was indeed Falka’s bastard. We staked our reputation on the fact that Fiona was a legitimate child. I don’t know if he believed us, but the young couple grew to like each other and thus Riannon’s daughter, Ciri’s great-great-great-grandmother, became the Queen of Cintra.’

  ‘Introducing your celebrated gene to the Coram dynasty.’

  ‘Fiona,’ Enid an Gleanna said calmly, ‘was not a carrier of the Elder Blood gene, which we had begun to call the Lara gene.’

  ‘What do you mean exactly?’

  ‘Well, Amavet carried the Lara gene, so our experiment went on. For Anna Kameny, who inadvertently caused the death of both her lover and husband, gave birth to twins while still in mourning. A boy and a girl. Their father must have been Amavet, for the baby girl was a carrier. She was named Muriel.’

  ‘Muriel the Impure?’ Sheala de Tancarville asked in astonishment.

  ‘She became that much later.’ Francesca smiled. ‘At first she was Muriel the Delightful. Indeed, she was a sweet, charming child. When she was fourteen they were already calling her Doe-Eyed Muriel. Many men drowned in those eyes. She was finally given in marriage to Robert, Count of Garramone.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘Crispin. He wasn’t a carrier, so he was of no interest to us. If my memory serves, he fell in combat somewhere, for his passion was warfare.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ Sabrina said, ruffling her hair vigorously. ‘Wasn’t Muriel the Impure the mother of Adalia the Seer?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Francesca confirmed. ‘An interesting one, was Adalia. A powerful Source, excellent material for a sorceress. But she didn’t want to be one, unfortunately. She preferred to be a queen.’

  ‘And the gene?’ Assire var Anahid asked. ‘Did she bear it?’

  ‘Interestingly not.’

  ‘As I thought,’ Assire said, nodding. ‘Lara’s gene can only be passed on inviolately down the female line. If the carrier is a man, the gene disappears in the second, or – at most – the third generation.’

  ‘But wait—’

  ‘It activates later, however,’ Philippa Eilhart broke in. ‘After all, Adalia, who didn’t have the gene, was Calanthe’s mother, and Calanthe, Ciri’s grandmother, carried the Lara gene.’

  ‘She was the first carrier after Riannon,’ Sheala de Tancarville said, suddenly joining the discussion. ‘You made a mistake, Francesca. There were two genes. One, the true gene, was latent, quiescent. You were beguiled by Amavet’s powerful, distinct gene. However, what Amavet had wasn’t a gene, but an activator. Mistress Assire is right. The activator travelling down the male line was so faint in Adalia you didn’t identify it at all. Adalia was Muriel’s first child; her later-born definitely didn’t have even a trace of the activator. Fiona’s latent gene would probably also have vanished in her male descendants at most in the third generation. But it didn’t, and I know why.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Yennefer hissed through her teeth.

  ‘I’m lost,’ Sabrina Glevissig declared. ‘In this tangle of genetics and genealogy.’

  Francesca drew a fruit bowl towards herself, held out a hand and murmured a spell.

  ‘I apologise for this vulgar display of psychokinesis,’ she said with a smile, making a red apple rise high above the table. ‘But the fruit will help me demonstrate your mistake. Red apples are the Lara gene, the Elder Blood. Green apples represent the latent gene. Pomegranates are the pseudo-gene, the activator. Let us begin. This is Riannon, the red apple. Her son, Amavet, is the pomegranate. Amavet’s daughter, Muriel, and his granddaughter, Adalia, are still pomegranates, the last of which is very faint. And here is Fiona’s line, Riannon’s daughter: a green apple. Her son, Corbett, the King of Cintra, is green. Dagorad, Corbett and Elen of Kaedwen’s son, is green too. As you have observed, in two successive generations there are exclusively male descendants. The gene is very weak, and vanishes. So at the very bottom, here, we finish with a pomegranate and a green apple; Adalia, the Princess of Maribor, and Dagorad, the King of Cintra. And the couple’s daughter was Calanthe. A red apple. The revived, powerful Lara gene.’

  ‘Fiona’s latent gene’ – Margarita Laux-Antille nodded – ‘met Amavet’s activator gene through marital incest. Did no one notice their kinship? Did none of the royal heraldists or chroniclers pay any attention to this blatant incest?’

  ‘It wasn’t as blatant as it seems. After all, Anna Kameny didn’t advertise that her twins were bastards, because her husband’s family would have deprived her and her children of their coat of arms, titles and fortune. Of course there were persistent rumours, and not just among the peasantry. That’s why they had to search for a husband for Calanthe, who was contaminated by incest, in distant Ebbing, beyond the rumours’ reach.’

  ‘Add two more red apples to your pyramid, Enid,’ Margarita said. ‘Now, as Mistress Assire has astutely indicated, we can see the reborn Lara gene moving smoothly down the female line.’

  ‘Yes. Here is Pavetta, Calanthe’s daughter. And Pavetta’s daughter, Cirilla, the sole inheritor of the Elder Blood, carrier of the Lara gene.’

  ‘The sole inheritor?’ Sheala de Tancarville asked abruptly. ‘You’re very confident, Enid.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Sheala suddenly stood up, snapped her beringed fingers towards the fruit bowl and made the remaining fruit levitate, disrupting Francesca’s model and transforming it into a multi-coloured confusion.

  ‘This is what I mean,’ she said coldly, pointing at the jumble of fruit. ‘Here we have all of the possible genetic combinations and permutations. And we know as much as we can see here. Namely nothing. Your mistake backfired, Francesca, and it caused an avalanche of errors. The gene only reappeared by accident after a century, during which time we have no idea what may have occurred. Secret, hidden, hushed-up events. Premarital children, extramarital children, adoptive children – even changelings. Incest. The crossbreeding of races, the blood of forgotten ancestors returning in later generations. In short: a hundred years ago you had the gene within arm’s reach, even in your hands. And it gave you the slip. That was a mistake, Enid, a terrible mistake! Too much confusion, too many accidents. Too little control, too little interference in the randomness of it all.’

  ‘We weren’t dealing,’ Enid an Gleanna said through pursed lips, ‘with rabbits, which we could pair off and put in a hutch.’

  Fringilla, following Triss Merigold’s gaze, noticed Yennefer’s hands suddenly clenching her chair’s carved armrests.

  So this is what Yennefer and Francesca have in common, Triss thought feverishly, still avoiding her close friend’s gaze. Cynical duplicity. For, after all, pairing off and breeding turned out to be unavoidable. Indeed, their plans for Ciri and the Prince of Kovir, although apparently improbable, are actually quite realistic. They’ve done it before. They’ve placed whoever they wanted on thrones, created the marriages and dynasties they desired and which were convenient for them. Spells, aphrodisiacs and elixirs were all used. Queens and princesses suddenly entere
d bizarre – often morganatic – marriages, contrary to all plans, intentions and agreements. And later those who wanted children, but ought not to have them, were secretly given contraceptive agents. Those who didn’t want children, but ought to have them, were given placebos of liquorice water instead of the promised agents. Which resulted in all of those improbable connections: Calanthe, Pavetta . . . and now Ciri. Yennefer was involved in this. And now she regrets it. She’s right to. Damn it, were Geralt to find out . . .

  Sphinxes, Fringilla Vigo thought. The sphinxes carved on the chairs’ armrests. Yes, they ought to be the lodge’s emblem. Wise, mysterious, silent. They are all sphinxes. They will easily achieve what they want. It’s a trifle for them to marry Kovir off to that Ciri of theirs. They have the power to. They have the expertise. And the means. The diamond necklace around Sabrina Glevissig’s neck is probably worth almost as much as the entire income of forested, rocky Kaedwen. They could easily carry out their plans. But there is one snag . . .

  Aha, Triss Merigold thought, at last we’ve reached the topic we should have started with: the sobering and discouraging fact that Ciri is in Nilfgaard, in Emhyr’s clutches. Far away from the plans being hatched here . . .

  ‘There is no question that Emhyr had been hunting for Cirilla for many years,’ Philippa continued. ‘Everyone assumed his goal was a political union with Cintra and control of the fiefdom which is her legal heritage. However, one cannot rule out that rather than politics it concerns the gene of the Elder Blood, which Emhyr wants to introduce to the imperial line. If Emhyr knows what we do, he may want the prophecy to manifest itself in his dynasty, and the future Queen of the World to be born in Nilfgaard.’

  ‘A correction,’ Sabrina Glevissig interrupted. ‘It’s not Emhyr who wants it, but the Nilfgaardian sorcerers. They alone were capable of tracking down the gene and making Emhyr aware of its significance. I’m sure the Nilfgaardian ladies here present will want to confirm that and explain their role in the intrigue.’