The Saga of the Witcher

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  ‘Have a care,’ she drawled, struggling to keep calm. ‘You might do yourself a mischief from such hard rowing.’

  This time the man raised his face, which was as swarthy and weather-beaten as tanned leather. He grunted, hawked, and pointed his bristly, grey chin at the wooden reel attached to the side of the boat and the line disappearing into the water stretched tight by their movement. Clearly convinced the explanation was exhaustive, he resumed his rowing. With the same rhythm as previously. Oars up. A pause. Blades halfway into the water. A long pause. The pull. An even longer pause.

  ‘Aha,’ Condwiramurs said nonchalantly, looking heavenwards. ‘I understand. What’s important is the lure being pulled behind the boat, which has to move at the right speed and the right depth. Fishing is important. Everything else is unimportant.’

  What she said was so obvious the man didn’t even take the trouble to grunt or wheeze.

  ‘Who could it bother,’ Condwiramurs continued her monologue, ‘that I’ve been travelling all night? That I’m hungry? That my backside hurts and itches from the hard, wet bench? That I need a pee? No, only trolling for fish matters. Which is pointless in any case. Nothing will take a lure pulled down the middle of the current at a depth of a score of fathoms.’

  The man raised his head, looked at her foully and grumbled very – very – grumblingly. Condwiramurs flashed her little teeth, pleased with herself. The boor went on rowing slowly. He was furious.

  She lounged back on the stern bench and crossed her legs, letting her dress ride up.

  The man grunted, tightened his gnarled hands on the oars, and pretended only to be looking at the fishing line. He had no intention of rowing any faster, naturally. The novice sighed in resignation and turned her attention to the sky.

  The rowlocks creaked and the glistening drops fell from the oar blades.

  The outline of an island loomed up in the quickly dispersing mist. As did the dark, tapering obelisk of the tower rising above it. The boor, though he was facing forwards and not looking back, knew in some mysterious way that they had almost arrived. Without hurrying, he laid the oars on the gunwales, stood up and began to slowly wind in the line on the reel. Condwiramurs, legs still crossed, whistled, looking up at the sky.

  The man finished reeling in the line and examined the lure: a large, brass spoon, armed with a triple hook and a tassel of red wool.

  ‘Oh my, oh my,’ said Condwiramurs sweetly. ‘Haven’t caught anything? Oh dear, what a pity. I wonder why we’ve had such bad luck? Perhaps the boat was going too fast?’

  The man cast her a look which expressed many foul things. He sat down, hawked, spat over the side, grasped the oars in his great knotty hands and bent his back powerfully. The oars splashed, rattled in the rowlocks, and the boat darted across the lake like an arrow, the water foaming with a swoosh against the prow, eddies seething astern. He covered the quarter arrow shot that separated them from the island in less than a grunt, and the boat came up onto the pebbles with such force that Condwiramurs lurched from the bench.

  The man grunted, hawked and spat. The novice knew that meant – translated into the speech of civilised people – get out of my boat, you brash witch. She also knew she could forget about being carried ashore. She took off her slippers, lifted her dress provocatively high, and disembarked. She fought back a curse as mussel shells pricked her feet.

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

  Neither waiting for the answering grunt nor looking back, she walked barefoot towards the stone steps. All of her discomforts and problems vanished and evaporated without a trace, expunged by her growing excitement. She was there, on the island of Inis Vitre, on Loch Blest. She was in an almost legendary place, where only a select few had ever been.

  The morning mist had lifted completely and the red orb of the sun had begun to show more brightly through the dull sky. Squawking gulls circled around the tower’s battlements and swifts flashed by.

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

  The Lady of the Lake.

  *

  She was dainty and short, measuring not much more than five feet. Condwiramurs had heard that when she was young she’d been called ‘Squirt’, and now she knew the nickname had been apt. But she was certain no one had dared call the little sorceress that for at least half a century.

  ‘I am Condwiramurs Tilly.’ She introduced herself with a bow, a little embarrassed as she was still holding her slippers. ‘I’m glad to be visiting your island, Lady of the Lake.’

  ‘Nimue,’ the diminutive sorceress corrected her. ‘Nimue, nothing more. We can skip titles and honorifics, Miss Tilly.’

  ‘In that case I’m Condwiramurs. Condwiramurs, nothing more.’

  ‘Come with me then, Condwiramurs. We shall talk over breakfast. I imagine you’re hungry.’

  ‘I don’t deny it.’

  *

  There was white curd cheese, chives, eggs, milk and wholemeal bread for breakfast, served by two very young, very quiet serving girls, who smelt of starch. Condwiramurs ate, feeling the gaze of the diminutive sorceress on her.

  ‘The tower,’ Nimue said slowly, observing her every movement and almost every morsel she raised to her mouth, ‘has six storeys, one of which is below ground. Your room is on the second floor above ground. You’ll find every convenience needed for living. The ground floor, as you see, is the service area. The servants’ quarters are also located here. The subterranean, first and third floors house the laboratory, library and gallery. You may enter and have unfettered access to all the floors I’ve mentioned and the rooms there. You may take advantage of them and of what they contain, when you wish and however you wish.’

  ‘I understand. Thank you.’

  ‘The uppermost two storeys contain my private chambers and my private study. Those rooms are absolutely private. In order to avoid misunderstandings: I am extremely sensitive about such things.’

  ‘I shall respect that.’

  Nimue turned her head towards the window, through which the grunting Ferryman could be seen. He had already dealt with Condwiramurs’ luggage, and was now loading rods, reels, landing nets, scoop nets and other fishing tackle into his boat.

  ‘I’m a little old-fashioned,’ she continued. ‘But I’ve become accustomed to having the exclusive use of certain things. Like a toothbrush, let’s say. My private chambers, library and toilet. And the Fisher King. Do not try, please, to avail yourself of the Fisher King.’

  Condwiramurs almost choked on her milk. Nimue’s face didn’t express anything.

  ‘And if . . .’ she continued, before the girl had regained her speech, ‘if he tries to avail himself of you, decline him.’

  Condwiramurs finally swallowed and nodded quickly, refraining from any comment whatsoever. Though it was on the tip of her tongue to say she didn’t care for anglers, particularly boorish ones. With heads of dishevelled hair as white as curds.

  ‘Good,’ Nimue drawled. ‘That’s the introductions over and done with. Time to get down to business. Doesn’t it interest you why I chose precisely you from among all the candidates?’

  If Condwiramurs pondered the answer at all, it was only so as not to appear too cocksure. She quickly concluded, though, that with Nimue, even the slightest false modesty would offend by its insincerity.

  ‘I’m the best dream-reader in the academy,’ she replied coolly, matter-of-factly and without boastfulness. ‘And in the third year I was second among the oneiromancers.’

  ‘I could have taken the number one.’ Nimue was brutal, frank. ‘Incidentally, they suggested that high-flyer somewhat insistently, as it happens, because she was apparently the important daughter of someone important. And where dream-reading and oneiromancy are concerned, you know yourself, my dear Condwiramurs, that it’s a pretty fickle gift. Fiascos can befall even the best dream-reader.’

  Condwiramurs
kept to herself the riposte that she could count her fiascos on the fingers of one hand. After all, she was talking to a master. Know your limits, my good sir, as one of her professors at the academy, a polymath, used to say.

  Nimue praised her silence with a slight nod of her head.

  ‘I made some enquiries at the academy,’ she said a moment later. ‘Hence, I know that you do not boost your divination with hallucinogens. I’m pleased about that, for I don’t tolerate narcotics.’

  ‘I divine without any drugs,’ confirmed Condwiramurs with some pride. ‘All I need for oneiroscopy is a hook.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You know, a hook,’ the novice coughed, ‘I mean an object in some way connected to what I’m supposed to dream about. Some kind of thing or picture . . .’

  ‘A picture?’

  ‘Uh-huh. I divine pretty well from a picture.’

  ‘Oh,’ smiled Nimue. ‘Oh, since a painting will help, there won’t be any problem. If you’ve satisfactorily broken your fast, O first dream-reader and second-among-oneiromancers. I ought to explain to you without delay the other reasons why it was you I chose as my assistant.’

  Cold emanated from the stone walls, alleviated neither by the heavy tapestries nor the darkened wood panelling. The stone floor chilled her feet through the soles of her slippers.

  ‘Beyond that door,’ she indicated carelessly, ‘is the laboratory. As has been said before, you may make free use of it. Caution, naturally, is advised. Moderation is particularly recommended during attempts to make brooms carry buckets of water.’

  Condwiramurs giggled politely, although the joke was ancient. All the lecturers regaled their charges with jokes referring to the mythical hardships of the mythical sorcerer’s apprentice.

  The stairs wound upwards like a sea serpent. And they were precipitous. Before they arrived at their destination Condwiramurs was sweating and panting hard. Nimue showed no signs of effort at all.

  ‘This way please.’ She opened the oak door. ‘Mind the step.’

  Condwiramurs entered and gasped.

  The chamber was a picture gallery. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with paintings. Hanging there were large, old, peeling and cracked oils, miniatures, yellowed prints and engravings, faded watercolours and sepias. There were also vividly coloured gouaches and temperas, clean-of-line aquatints and etchings, lithographs and contrasting mezzotints, drawing the gaze with distinctive dots of black.

  Nimue stopped before the picture hanging nearest the door, portraying a group gathered beneath a great tree. She looked at the canvas, then at Condwiramurs, and her mute gaze was unusually eloquent.

  ‘Dandelion.’ The novice, realising at once what was expected, didn’t make her wait. ‘Singing a ballad beneath the oak Bleobheris.’

  Nimue smiled and nodded, and took a step, stopping before the next painting. A watercolour. Symbolism. The silhouettes of two women on a hill. Gulls circling above them, and below a procession of shadows on the hillside.

  ‘Ciri and Triss Merigold, the prophetic vision in Kaer Morhen.’

  A smile, a nod, a step, the next painting. A rider at gallop on a horse down an avenue of misshapen alders extending the arms of their boughs towards him. Condwiramurs felt a shudder running through her.

  ‘Ciri . . . Hmm . . . It’s probably her ride to meet Geralt on the farm of the halfling Hofmeier.’

  The next painting, a darkened oil. A battle scene.

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

  Then things went more quickly.

  ‘Yennefer and Ciri, their first meeting in the Temple of Melitele. Dandelion and the dryad Eithne, in Brokilon Forest. Geralt’s company in a blizzard on the Malheur pass—’

  ‘Bravo, splendid,’ interrupted Nimue. ‘Excellent knowledge of the legend. Now you know the other reason it’s you that’s here and not anybody else.’

  *

  A large canvas portraying the Battle of Brenna overlooked the small ebony table they sat down at. It showed a key moment of the battle; that is, somebody’s vulgarly heroic death. The painting was beyond a doubt the work of Nikolai Certosa, which could be ascertained by the atmosphere, the perfect attention to detail and the lighting effects typical for that artist.

  ‘Indeed, I know the legend of the Witcher and the witcher girl,’ replied Condwiramurs. ‘I know it, I have no hesitation in saying, thoroughly. I loved that story when I was a young girl. I became engrossed in it. I even dreamed of being Yennefer. I’ll be frank, though, even if it was love at first sight, even if it was explosively torrid . . . my love wasn’t everlasting.’

  Nimue raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I first became acquainted with the story,’ continued Condwiramurs, ‘in popular abridgements and versions for young people, précis cut and cleaned up ad usum delphini. Later, naturally, I studied the so-called serious and complete versions. Extensive to the point of superfluity, and at times also beyond. Then passion

  was replaced by cool reflection and wild desire by something like marital duty. If you know what I mean.’

  Nimue confirmed she did with a barely perceptible nod.

  ‘Summing up, I prefer legends that cleave more strongly to legendary convention, do not mix fables with reality, and don’t try to integrate the simple, elegant morality of the story with deeply immoral historical truth. I prefer legends to which encyclopaedists, archaeologists and historians don’t add epilogues. I prefer it when a prince climbs to the top of the Glass Mountain, kisses the sleeping princess, she wakes up and they both live happily ever after. A legend should end like that and no other way . . . Who painted that portrait of Ciri? That full-length one?’

  ‘There isn’t a single portrait of Ciri.’ The voice of the little sorceress was so matter-of-fact it was almost cold. ‘Not here, nor anywhere in the world. Not a single portrait has survived, not a single miniature painted by anybody who could have seen, known or even remembered Ciri. That full-length portrait shows Pavetta, Ciri’s mother, and it was painted by Ruiz Dorrit, court artist to the Cintran monarchs. It is known that Dorrit painted Ciri’s portrait at the age of nine, also full-length, but the canvas, called Infanta with a Greyhound, was lost, regrettably. Let us, though, return to the legend and your attitude to it. And to how, in your opinion, a legend ought to end.’

  ‘It ought to end happily,’ said Condwiramurs with conviction. ‘Good and righteousness should triumph, evil should be punished exemplarily, and love should unite the lovers until the end of their days. And none of the heroes should bloody die! And the legend of Ciri? How does that end?’

  ‘Precisely. How?’

  Condwiramurs was struck dumb for a moment. She hadn’t expected a question like that; she sensed a test, an exam, a trap. She said nothing, not wanting to be caught out.

  How does the legend of Ciri end? But everybody knows that.

  She looked at a dark-hued watercolour which depicted an amorphous barge gliding over the surface of a mist-shrouded lake, a barge being plied with a long pole by a woman visible only as a black shape.

  That’s exactly how the legend ends. Just like that.

  Nimue read her thoughts.

  ‘It isn’t so certain, Condwiramurs. By no means is it certain.’

  *

  ‘I heard the legend,’ began Nimue, ‘from the lips of a wandering storyteller. I’m a country child, the fourth daughter of the village wheelwright. The times the storyteller Pogwizd, a wandering beggar, dwelled in our village were the most beautiful moments of my childhood. One could take a break from the daily toil, see those fabulous wonders, see that far-distant world with the eyes of the soul. A beautiful and marvellous world . . . More distant and marvellous even than the market in the town nine miles away from us . . .

  ‘I was about six or seven then. My oldest sister was fourteen and was already twisted from stooping over her labours. A peasant woman’s lot! In our village, girls were prepared for that from childhood! To stoop! Endlessl
y to stoop, to stoop and bend over our work, over a child, under the weight of a swollen belly, forced on you by your man the moment you’d risen from childbed.

  ‘Those beggar’s tales made me begin to wish for something more than a stoop and the daily grind, to dream for something more than the harvest, a husband and children. The first book I bought from the takings of selling brambles gathered in the forest was the legend of Ciri. The cleaned-up version, as you nicely described it, for children, the précis ad ursum delphini. That version was just right for me. I was a poor reader. But already by then I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be like Philippa Eilhart, like Sheala de Tancarville, like Assire var Anahid . . .’

  They both looked at a gouache depicting a castle chamber, a table and some women sitting around it, in subtle chiaroscuro. Legendary women.

  ‘In the academy where I was admitted – at the second attempt, actually,’ Nimue continued, ‘I only studied the myth with respect to the Great Lodge during lessons on the history of magic. At first I simply didn’t have time to read for pleasure. I had to focus, in order to . . . keep up with the darling daughters of counts and bankers to whom everything came easily, who laughed at lasses from the country . . .’

  She fell silent and cracked her knuckles.

  ‘I finally found time for reading,’ she continued, ‘but then I realised that the vicissitudes of Geralt and Ciri entertained me much less than they had during my childhood. A similar syndrome to yours occurred. What did you call it? Marital duties? It was like that until . . .’

  She fell silent and rubbed her face. Condwiramurs noticed in amazement that the hand of the Lady of the Lake was trembling.

  ‘I suppose I was eighteen, when . . . when something happened. Something that made the legend of Ciri live in me again. That made me begin to involve myself with it seriously, as a scholar. Made me begin to devote my life to it.’

  The novice remained silent, although curiosity was raging inside her.