The Saga of the Witcher

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  ‘I’ve done it. Of course.’

  Though the hour was late, Triss Merigold was not in a negligee, or in working clothes. She was wearing an evening gown. As usual, buttoned all the way up to the neck.

  ‘May we talk freely?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Yennefer . . .’

  ‘Don’t trick me, girl. I know that expression, I’ve seen more than enough of it. You had one like that when you started sleeping with Geralt behind my back. You put on the identical innocent-whorish little mask then that I see on your face now. And it means the same now as it did then!’

  Triss blushed. And beside her in the window appeared Philippa Eilhart, dressed in a dark-blue men’s doublet with silver embroidery.

  ‘Bravo,’ she said. ‘Sharp as usual, acute as usual. As usual difficult to comprehend and fathom. I’m glad to see you in good health, Yennefer. I’m glad that the crazy teleportation from Montecalvo didn’t end tragically.’

  ‘Let’s assume you are indeed glad.’ Yennefer grimaced. ‘Although that’s a most bold assumption. But we’ll leave it. Who betrayed me?’

  ‘Is it important?’ Philippa shrugged. ‘You’ve now been communicating for four days with traitors. With traitors to whom venality and treachery are second nature. And traitors whom you have forced to betray others in turn. One of them has betrayed you. That’s the usual course of events. Don’t tell me you didn’t expect it.’

  ‘Of course I did,’ Yennefer snorted. ‘I proved that by contacting you. I didn’t have to, did I?’

  ‘You didn’t. Which means you stand to gain from it.’

  ‘Bravo. Sharp as usual, acute as usual. I’m contacting you to assure you that the secret of your lodge is safe with me. I won’t betray you.’

  Philippa looked at her from beneath lowered eyelashes.

  ‘If you expected,’ she said finally, ‘to buy yourself time, peace and safety with that declaration, you miscalculated. Let’s not kid ourselves, Yennefer. By fleeing Montecalvo you made a choice, you threw in your lot with one side of the barricade. Whoever’s not with the lodge is against it. Now you’re trying to beat us to Ciri, and the motives driving you are counter to ours. You’re acting against us. You don’t want to allow us to use Ciri to serve our political ends. Know then, that we shall do everything to prevent you using the girl to serve your own sentimental ones.’

  ‘So it’s war, then?’

  ‘Competition,’ Philippa smiled venomously, ‘Only competition, Yennefer.’

  ‘Fair and honourable?’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘Naturally. Nonetheless, I’d like to present one matter honestly and unambiguously. Banking, of course, on gaining something from it.’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘In the course of the next few days – perhaps even tomorrow – events will occur whose outcome I’m unable to predict. It may turn out that our competition and rivalry will suddenly cease to have any meaning. For a simple reason. There won’t be a rival any longer.’

  Philippa Eilhart narrowed her eyes, which were accented with light blue eye shadow.

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Ensure then, that I posthumously regain my reputation and good name. That I won’t be thought of as a traitor and an accomplice of Vilgefortz. I ask that of the lodge. I ask you personally.’

  Philippa was briefly silent.

  ‘I decline your request,’ she said finally. ‘I’m sorry, but your rehabilitation is not in the interests of the lodge. Should you die, you die a traitor. To Ciri you shall be a traitor and a criminal, for then it will be easier to manipulate the maid.’

  ‘Before you undertake anything that may prove fatal,’ Triss suddenly said, ‘leave us something . . .’

  ‘A will?’

  ‘Something that will allow us . . . to continue . . . to follow in your footsteps. And find Ciri. Surely it’s in Ciri’s interests, after all! It’s about her life! Yennefer, Dijkstra has found . . . some tracks. If it’s Vilgefortz who has Ciri, a terrible death awaits the girl.’

  ‘Be quiet, Triss,’ Philippa Eilhart barked sharply. ‘There won’t be any bargaining or horse-trading here.’

  ‘I’ll leave you directions,’ Yennefer said slowly. ‘I’ll leave you information about what I’ve found out, and what I’ve undertaken. I’ll leave a trail you’ll be able to follow. But not for nothing. If you don’t want to rehabilitate me in the world’s eyes, then to hell with you and the world. But at least rehabilitate me in the eyes of one witcher—’

  ‘No,’ Philippa retorted almost immediately. ‘That isn’t in the interests of the lodge either. You shall remain a traitor and a dishonourable sorceress to your Witcher, too. It isn’t in the lodge’s interests to stir up trouble, looking for revenge, and if they have contempt for you, they won’t want revenge. Besides, he’s probably dead. Or will die any day.’

  ‘Information,’ Yennefer said hollowly, ‘in exchange for his life. Save him, Philippa.’

  ‘No, Yennefer.’

  ‘For it isn’t in the interests of the lodge.’ Purple fire flashed in the sorceress’s eyes. ‘Did you hear, Triss? This is your lodge. This is its true countenance, these its true concerns. What do you say to that? You were the maid’s mentor, almost an older sister, as you yourself said. And Geralt . . .’

  ‘Don’t beguile Triss with romance, Yennefer.’ Now Philippa’s eyes blazed in turn. ‘We’ll find the maid and rescue her without your help. And if you succeed, thanks a million, you’ll help us, you’ll save us the bother. You’ll snatch her from Vilgefortz’s hands, we’ll snatch her from yours. And Geralt? Who is Geralt?’

  ‘Did you hear, Triss?’

  ‘Forgive me,’ Triss Merigold said hollowly. ‘Forgive me, Yennefer.’

  ‘Oh, no, Triss. Never.’

  *

  Triss looked at the floor. Crach an Craite’s eyes were like a hawk’s.

  ‘The day after the last secret communication,’ the yarl of the Isles of Skellige said, ‘one you, Triss Merigold, know nothing about, Yennefer left Skellige, setting a course for the Sedna Abyss. When asked why exactly she was heading there, she looked me in the eye and replied that she intended to find out how natural disasters differ from unnatural ones. She set off with two longships, Tamara and Alkyone, with crews made up entirely of volunteers. That was the twenty-eighth of August, two weeks ago. I haven’t seen her since.’

  ‘When did you find out—?’

  ‘Five days later,’ he interrupted quite bluntly. ‘Three days after the September new moon.’

  *

  Captain Asa Thjazi, who was sitting behind the yarl, was anxious. He licked his lips, shifted around on the bench, and wrung his hands so hard the knuckles cracked.

  The red sun, finally emerging from the clouds covering the sky, sank slowly over Spikeroog. ‘Speak, Asa,’ Crach an Craite ordered.

  Asa Thjazi cleared his throat noisily.

  ‘We were making good way,’ he began, ‘the wind behind us, we were doing a good twelve knots. Then on the night of the twenty-ninth we espied the lighthouse at Peixe de Mar. We struck out a little westwards, so as not to chance on any Nilfgaardians . . . And at dawn, one day before the September new moon, we reached the region of the Sedna Abyss. Then the sorceress summoned myself and Guthlaf . . .’

  *

  ‘I need volunteers,’ Yennefer said. ‘Only volunteers. No more than is necessary to steer a longship for a short time. I don’t know how many men are needed for that, I’m not an expert. But please don’t leave even one more man on Alkyone than is absolutely necessary. And I repeat – only volunteers. What I plan to do . . . is very dangerous. More so than a sea battle.’

  ‘I understand,’ the old seneschal nodded. ‘And I volunteer first. I, Guthlaf, son of Sven, request that honour, madam.’

  Yennefer looked him long in the eyes.

  ‘Very well,’ she
said. ‘And I, too, am honoured.’

  *

  ‘I also volunteered,’ said Asa Thjazi. ‘But Guthlaf disagreed. Someone, he said, must keep command on Tamara. Consequently, fifteen men volunteered. Including Hjalmar, yarl.’

  Crach an Craite raised his eyebrows.

  *

  ‘How many are needed, Guthlaf?’ the sorceress repeated. ‘How many are essential? Please reckon it exactly.’

  The seneschal was silent for some time as he added up.

  ‘Eight of us can cope,’ he said finally. ‘If it’s not for long . . . Why, but everyone here is a volunteer, no one’s being forced—’

  ‘Select eight from that fifteen,’ she interrupted sharply. ‘Choose them yourself. And order those selected to transfer to Alkyone. The rest are staying on Tamara. Aha, I shall choose one of those who stays. Hjalmar!’

  ‘No, madam! You can’t do that to me! I volunteered and will be at your side! I want to be—’

  ‘Be silent! You’re staying on Tamara! That’s an order! One more word and I’ll have you tied to the mast!’

  *

  ‘Go on, Asa.’

  ‘The witch, Guthlaf and those eight volunteers boarded Alkyone and sailed for the Abyss. We, on Tamara, hung back according to our orders, but not too far away. But some devilry began with the weather, which had been wonderfully favourable till then. Aye, I speak truly that it was devilry, for the power was sinister, yarl . . . May I be keelhauled if I lie . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Where we were, I mean Tamara, the sea was calm. Though the wind whistled some and clouds darkened the horizon so day almost became night. But where Alkyone was all hell suddenly broke loose. Hell indeed . . .’

  *

  Alkyone’s sail suddenly fluttered so violently that they heard the flapping in spite of the distance separating the longships. The sky turned black and the clouds swirled. The sea, which seemed completely calm around Tamara, churned up and foamed white by Alkyone’s sides. Someone suddenly yelled, someone chimed in, and a moment later everybody was yelling.

  A cone of black clouds was striking Alkyone, making it bob on the waves like a cork. The ship twisted, spun, its bow and stern rising and falling into the waves. At times the longship almost completely vanished from sight. At times they could only see the striped sail.

  ‘It’s magic!’ bawled someone behind Asa’s back. ‘It’s devil magic!’

  The whirlpool spun Alkyone around faster and faster. Shields torn from the sides by centrifugal force whirred in the air like discs, and splintered oars flew in all directions.

  ‘Reef the sail!’ yelled Asa Thjazi. ‘To the oars! Row, boys! To the rescue!’

  But it was already too late.

  The sky above Alkyone turned black, and the blackness suddenly exploded in zigzags of lightning which entwined the longship like a medusa’s tentacles. The clouds, swirling in fantastic shapes, writhed up into a horrendous funnel. The longship spun around with incredible speed. The mast snapped like a match, the torn sail dashed over the breakers like a huge albatross.

  ‘Row, men!’

  Over their own yells, over the all-deafening roar of the elements, they nonetheless heard the cries of the men from Alkyone. Cries so extraordinary they made their hair stand on end. And these were old sea dogs, bloodied berserkers, mariners who had seen and heard many things.

  They dropped the oars, aware of their impotence. They were dumbfounded, they even stopped yelling.

  Alkyone, still whirling, slowly rose above the waves. And rose higher and higher. They saw the keel, dripping water, covered in shellfish and algae. They saw a black shape, a figure falling into the sea. Then a second. And a third.

  ‘They’re jumping!’ Asa Thjazi roared. ‘Row, men, don’t stop! With all your might! We must row to their aid!’

  Alkyone was now a good hundred cubits above the boiling surface of the water. It continued to whirl, an immense spindle dripping with water, entwined in a cobweb of lightning, being dragged into the swirling clouds by an unseen force.

  Suddenly an ear-splitting explosion rent the air. Although fifteen pairs of oars were pushing Tamara forwards, she suddenly leaped up and flew backwards, as if rammed. The deck flew from under Thjazi’s feet. He fell over, banging his forehead on the side.

  He couldn’t stand up by himself, he had to be lifted to his feet. He was dazed; he twisted and shook his head, staggering and mumbling incoherently. The screams of the crew seemed muffled. He went over to the side, tottering like a drunkard and clung on to the rail.

  The wind had dropped and the sea was calm. But the sky was still black from the billowing clouds.

  There wasn’t a single trace of Alkyone.

  *

  ‘Not even a trace was left, yarl. Well, tiny pieces of rigging, some rags . . . Nothing more.’

  Asa Thjazi interrupted his tale, watching the sun vanishing beyond Spikeroog’s wooded peaks. Crach an Craite, lost in thought, didn’t hurry him.

  ‘We know not,’ Asa Thjazi finally continued, ‘how many managed to jump before Alkyone was sucked into that devilish cloud. But no matter how many jumped, none survived. And we, though we spared neither time nor strength, fished out but two bodies. Two bodies, borne on the water. Only two.’

  ‘Was the sorceress,’ the yarl asked in an altered voice, ‘not among them?’

  ‘No.’

  Crach an Craite was silent a long while. The sun was completely hidden behind Spikeroog.

  ‘Old Guthlaf, son of Sven is lost,’ Asa Thjazi spoke again. ‘The crabs on the bottom of the Abyss have surely ate him till the last little bone . . . And the witch is certainly lost . . . Yarl, folk are beginning to talk . . . That it’s all her fault. And punishment for her crimes . . .’

  ‘Foolish nonsense!’

  ‘She’s perished,’ Asa muttered, ‘in the Sedna Abyss. In the same place as Pavetta and Duny did back then . . . It was an accident . . .’

  ‘It was no accident,’ Crach an Craite said with conviction. ‘It was certainly no accident then. And nor was it now.’

  It is proper for a hapless one to suffer. His pain and humiliation result from the laws of nature, and to carry out the aims of nature both the existence of the suffering one is necessary, as is that of those who, causing him suffering, enjoy their successes. That very truth ought to stifle the pang of conscience in the heart of a tyrant or malefactor. He must not bridle himself, he ought to commit all the deeds that arise in his imagination, since it is the voice of nature which suggests them. If the secret inspirations of nature lead us to evil it is evidently essential to nature.

  Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade

  CHAPTER TEN

  The clank and thud of the cell door first opening and then closing awoke the younger of the two Scarra sisters. The elder was sitting at a table, busy scraping dried porridge from the bottom of a tin bowl.

  ‘Well, how was it in court, Kenna?’

  Without a word Joanna Selborne, also known as Kenna, sat down on her plank bed with her elbows resting on her knees and her forehead on her hands.

  The younger Scarra yawned, belched and farted loudly. Kohut, crouching on the opposite bed, muttered something indistinct and turned his head away. He was furious at Kenna, the sisters and the whole world.

  In normal gaols the inmates were still traditionally separated according to sex. In military citadels it was different. Emperor Fergus var Emreis – confirming women’s equality in the imperial army by special decree – had already ruled that if it was to be emancipation, then let it be emancipation. Equality ought to be complete and outright, without any exceptions or special privileges for either sex. Since then, inmates had been serving time in mixed cells in the strongholds and citadels.

  ‘Well?’ the older Scarra repeated. ‘Are they letting you out?’

  ‘Like hell they are,’ said Kenna bitterly, head still resting on her hands. ‘I’ll be lucky if they don’t hang me. Sod it! I told the truth, hid nothing, well, you k
now, almost nothing. But when those whoresons started grilling me, first they made a fool out of me in front of everyone, then it turned out I wasn’t a credible person but a criminal element, and right at the end they brought out my complicity in a plot aimed at subversion with the aim of an insurrection.’

  ‘Subversion,’ the older Scarra nodded, as though she understood exactly what it was about. ‘Aaah, if it’s subversion . . . Then you’re in the shit, Kenna.’

  ‘As if I didn’t know that.’

  The younger Scarra stretched, yawned like a leopard, widely and noisily, jumped down from the upper bunk, vigorously kicked away Kohut’s stool which was blocking her way and spat on the floor beside it. Kohut growled, but didn’t dare do anything more.

  Kohut was mortally offended by Kenna. But was afraid of the sisters.

  When Kenna had been assigned to the cell three days earlier, it soon turned out that Kohut – if he tolerated the emancipation and equality of women at all – had his own views on the subject. He had thrown a blanket over Kenna’s upper half in the middle of the night and intended to avail himself of the lower half, which he certainly would have done but for the fact that he had happened upon a tele-empathic. Kenna penetrated his brain so deeply that Kohut howled like a werewolf and cavorted around the cell as though bitten by a tarantula. Then, out of pure vindictiveness, Kenna telepathically forced him to go down on all fours and bang his head rhythmically against the metal-plated cell door. When the warders – alarmed by the dreadful thumping – opened the door, Kohut butted one of them, for which he received five lashes with a metal-tipped truncheon and as many kicks. Summing up, Kohut didn’t get the gratification he’d been hoping for. And took offence at Kenna. He didn’t even dare to take his revenge, because the next day the Scarra sisters joined them in the cell. The fair sex thus formed the majority, and furthermore it soon turned out that the sisters’ views on equality were similar to Kohut’s, if completely the other way around concerning the roles ascribed to the sexes. The younger Scarra looked at the man lasciviously and made explicit comments, while the older cackled and rubbed her hands together. As a result, Kohut slept with a stool with which he planned to defend his honour. Nonetheless, his chances and prospects were meagre; both Scarras had served on the front line and were veterans of numerous battles, so would not have been daunted by the stool. Had they’d wanted to rape him they would have, even if the man had been armed with a battle axe. Kenna, though, was certain the sisters were only joking. Well, almost certain.