She decided to try. The burning city, for example, couldn’t be burning permanently, could it? And if she were to get there before the fire? Or after it?
She landed almost in the centre of the fire, scorching her eyebrows and eyelashes and arousing horrendous panic amongst the victims of the fire fleeing from the blazing city.
She escaped to the friendly moors. It probably wasn’t worth taking a risk like that, she thought, the devil only knows how it might end. I do better with places, so I’ll stick to places. Let’s try to get to places. Familiar places, ones I remember well. And ones I have pleasant associations with.
She began with the Temple of Melitele, imagining the gate, the building, the grounds and the workshop, the novices’ dormitory, and the rooms where Yennefer lived. She concentrated with her fists against her temples, evoking in her memory the faces of Nenneke, Eurneid, Katje and Iola the Second.
Nothing came of it. She found herself in some swamps shrouded in mist and swarming with mosquitoes, resounding with the whistling of turtles and the deafening croaking of frogs.
She tried in turn – with no better result – Kaer Morhen, the Isles of Skellige, and the bank in Gors Velen where Fabio Sachs worked. She didn’t dare to try Cintra, knowing that the city was occupied by Nilfgaardians. Instead of that she tried Vizima, the city where she and Yennefer used to go shopping.
*
Aarhenius Krantz, sage, alchemist, astronomer and astrologer, fidgeted on a hard stool with his eye stuck to the eyepiece of a telescope. The comet of great size and power, which it had been possible to observe in the sky for almost a week, merited observation and research. A comet like that, as Aarhenius Krantz knew, with a fiery red tail, usually heralded great wars, conflagrations and massacres. Now, to tell the truth, the comet had been a bit late with its prophecy, because the war with Nilfgaard was well underway, and one could already have prophesied conflagrations and massacres correctly, without hesitation, for not a day went by without them. Aarhenius Krantz, who was familiar with the movements of heavenly bodies, was however hoping to calculate when, in how many years or centuries, the comet would appear again, announcing another war, which, who knows, it would perhaps be possible to prepare for better than the present one.
The astronomer stood up, massaged his backside and went to relieve his bladder. From the terrace, through the small balustrade. He always pissed straight from the terrace onto a bed of peonies, not caring at all about the housekeeper’s reprimands. It was quite simply too far to the privy. Wasting time walking a long way to relieve himself bore the risk of the loss of valuable reflections, which no scholar could afford to do.
He stood by the balustrade and undid his trews, looking at the lights of Vizima reflected in the lake. He sighed with relief and raised his eyes heavenwards.
Stars, he thought, and constellations. The Winter Maiden, the Seven Goats, the Pitcher. According to some theories, they aren’t just little twinkling lights, but worlds. Other worlds. Worlds from which time and space separate us . . . I believe deeply, he thought, that one day journeys to those other places, to those other times and universes, will be possible. Yes, it will certainly be possible one day. A way will be found. But it will demand utterly new thinking, a new, original idea that will tear apart the rigid corset called rational cognition that restricts it today . . .
Ah, he thought, hopping, if only it could be achieved . . . If only one could experience inspiration. If there could be one, unique opportunity . . .
Something flashed below the terrace, the darkness of the night ruptured like a starburst, and a horse emerged from the flare. With a rider on its back. The rider was a girl.
‘Good evening,’ she greeted him politely. ‘I’m sorry if it’s a bad time. May one know what place this is? And what time?’
Aarhenius Krantz swallowed, opened his mouth and mumbled.
‘The place,’ the girl repeated patiently and clearly. ‘The time.’
‘Errrm . . . Iiii . . . Ummm . . .’
The horse snorted. The girl sighed.
‘Well, it must be the wrong place again. The wrong place, the wrong time. But answer me, fellow! With at least one comprehensible word. For I can’t be in a world where people have forgotten articulate speech!’
‘Errr . . .’
‘One little word . . .’
‘Ummm . . .’
‘Then bugger you, you stupid old goat,’ said the girl.
And vanished. Along with the horse.
Aarhenius Krantz closed his mouth. He stood for a while by the balustrade, staring into the night, at the lake and the distant lights of Vizima reflected in it. Then he buttoned up his trousers and returned to his telescope.
The comet swiftly flashed across the sky. One ought to observe it, not let the eyepiece and eye lose sight of it. Track it until it disappeared into the chasms of the universe. It was an opportunity, and a scholar cannot waste such an opportunity.
*
Perhaps I could try from another direction, she thought, staring at the two moons above the moor, now visible as two crescents, one small, the other large and less crescent. Perhaps not imagine places or faces, she thought, but strongly desire . . . Strongly wish for something, very strongly, right from my belly . . .
What harm is there in trying?
Geralt. I want to go to Geralt. I very much want to go to Geralt.
*
‘Oh, no,’ she cried. ‘Where have I bloody ended up now?’
Kelpie confirmed that she thought the same by whinnying, belching steam from her nostrils and scraping her snowbound hooves.
The blizzard whistled and moaned, blinding them. Sharp snowflakes stung her cheeks and hands. The cold chilled her to the marrow, nipped her joints like a wolf. Ciri trembled, hunching her shoulders and hiding her neck in the meagre, non-existent protection of her turned-up collar.
To the left and right rose majestic, menacing peaks, grey, glazed monuments whose summits vanished somewhere high up in the fog and blizzard. A swift, very swollen river, dense with frazil and lumps of ice, sped along the bottom of the valley. It was white all around. And cold.
So much for my abilities, thought Ciri, feeling the inside of her nose freezing. So much for my power. A fine Master of the Worlds, well, well. I wanted to go to Geralt, and I ended up in the middle of some bloody wilderness, winter and blizzard.
‘Come on, Kelpie, move, or you’ll go numb!’ She grabbed the reins with fingers paralysed by the frost. ‘Gee up, gee up, girl! I know it’s not the place it’s meant to be, I’ll soon get us out of here, we’ll soon return to our warm moor. But I have to concentrate, and that may take some time. So move yourself! Come on, ride!’
Kelpie belched steam from her nostrils.
The strong wind blew. Snow stuck to her face, melting on her eyelashes. The freezing snowstorm howled and whistled.
*
‘Look!’ called Angoulême, outshouting the blizzard. ‘Look there! There are tracks. Someone rode that way!’
‘What are you saying?’ Geralt unwrapped the shawl he had wrapped around his head to protect his ears from frostbite. ‘What are you saying, Angoulême?’
‘Tracks! Hoof prints!’
‘A horse, here?’ Cahir also had to shout. The blizzard intensified, and the River Sansretour, it seemed, whooshed and roared even louder. ‘How could a horse get here?’
‘Look for yourselves!’
‘Indeed,’ commented the vampire, the only member of the company who wasn’t displaying symptoms of being utterly frozen, since he was for obvious reasons just as insensitive to low as to high temperatures. ‘Hoof prints. But are they a horse’s?’
‘It’s impossible for it to be a horse.’ Cahir massaged his cheeks and nose hard. ‘Not in the middle of nowhere. The tracks must have been left by some wild animal. Most probably a moufflon.’
‘Moufflon yourself!’ yelled Angoulême. ‘When I say a horse, I mean a horse!’
Milva, as usual, preferred practice to t
heory. She dismounted and bent over, pushing her fox-fur kalpak back on her head.
‘The pup’s right,’ she decided after moment. ‘It’s a horse. I think it’s even shod, but it’s hard to say, the blizzard has covered the tracks. It rode over there, into that ravine.’
‘Ha!’ Angoulême banged her arms together briskly. ‘I knew it! Somebody lives here! In the vicinity! Let’s follow the trail, perhaps we’ll find some warm cottage or other? Perhaps they’ll let us get warm? Perhaps they’ll treat us to something?’
‘For certain,’ said Cahir with a sneer. ‘Most probably a crossbow bolt.’
‘It would be most sensible to keep to our plan and the river,’ Regis decided in his most omniscient tone. ‘Then we won’t be at risk of getting lost. And further down the Sansretour there was meant to be a trapper’s manufactory, there’s a greater likelihood they’ll put us up there.’
‘Geralt? What do you say?’
The Witcher said nothing, and fixed his eyes on the snowflakes swirling in the blizzard.
‘We’ll follow the tracks,’ he finally decided.
‘Actually—’ began the vampire, but Geralt immediately interrupted him.
‘Follow the hoof prints! Ride!’
They spurred their steeds, but didn’t get very far. They ventured not more than a quarter of a furlong into a gorge.
‘That’s it.’ Angoulême stated a fact, looking at the quite smooth and virginal snow. ‘Now you see it, now you don’t. Like an elven circus.’
‘What now, Witcher?’ Cahir turned around in the saddle. ‘The tracks have ceased. They’ve been covered up by the blizzard.’
‘No they haven’t,’ Milva said. ‘The blizzard doesn’t reach here, in the canyon.’
‘What happened to the horse then?’
The archer shrugged, huddled up in the saddle, pulling her head into her shoulders.
‘Where’s that horse?’ Cahir wasn’t giving up. ‘Did it vanish? Evaporate? Or perhaps we imagined it? Geralt? What do you say?’
The gale howled above the ravine, whipping up and swirling the snow.
‘Why,’ asked the vampire, scrutinising the Witcher intently, ‘did you order us to follow those tracks, Geralt?’
‘I don’t know,’ he confessed a moment later. ‘I . . . I felt something. Something touched me. Never mind what. You were right, Regis. Let’s go back to the Sansretour and keep by the river, without any excursions or diversions that might end badly. According to what Reynart said, the real winter and bad weather only begin in the Malheur pass. When we get there we’ll have to be sound in body. Don’t just stand there, we’re turning around.’
‘Without having cleared up what happened to that strange horse?’
‘What’s there to explain?’ the Witcher said bitterly. ‘The tracks were swept away, and that’s that. Anyway, maybe it really was a moufflon?’
Milva looked at him strangely, but refrained from comment.
When they returned to the river the mysterious tracks were no longer there either, for they had been covered up by wet snow. Frazil was floating densely, pieces of pack ice were swirling and turning around in the tin-grey current of the Sansretour.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ Angoulême piped up. ‘But promise you won’t laugh.’
They turned around. In her woollen pompom hat pulled down over her eyes, with cheeks and nose red from the cold, wearing a shapeless sheepskin coat, the girl looked funny, a dead ringer for a small, plump kobold.
‘I’ll tell you something about those tracks. When I was with Nightingale, in the hanza, they said that during the winter the Mountain King, leader of the ice demons, rides on an enchanted horse in the passes. To meet him face to face is certain death. What do you say to that, Geralt? Is it possible that—’
‘Anything,’ he interrupted her. ‘Anything’s possible. On we go, company. Before us is the Malheur pass.’
The snow lashed and whipped, the wind blew, and ice demons whistled and wailed amidst the blizzard.
*
Except the moor she’d landed on wasn’t the one she knew, Ciri realised at once. She didn’t even have to wait until evening, she was sure she wouldn’t see the two moons.
The forest along whose edge she rode was as wild and inaccessible as the other one, but differences could be seen. Here, for example, there were more birches and fewer beeches. She hadn’t heard or seen any birds there, while there were great numbers of them here. There had only been sand and moss between the clumps of heather; here whole carpets of green clubmoss sprawled. Even the grasshoppers running from under Kelpie’s hooves were somehow different here. Somehow familiar. And then . . .
Her heart began beating harder. She saw a track, overgrown and neglected. Leading into the forest.
Ciri looked around carefully and made sure the strange track didn’t go on any further, that it ended here. That it didn’t lead to the forest, but from it or through it. Without deliberating for long, she prodded the mare’s sides with her heels and rode between the trees. I’ll ride south, she thought. If I don’t come across anything to the south, I’ll turn around and ride in the opposite direction, beyond the moor.
She trotted beneath a canopy of boughs, looking around attentively, trying hard not to overlook anything important. Because of that she didn’t overlook an old man peeping out from behind an oak tree.
The old man, who was very short, but not at all stooped, was dressed in a linen shirt and trews made from the same material. On his feet he had huge and very funny-looking bast slippers. In one hand he held a gnarled stick and in the other a wicker basket. Ciri couldn’t see his face precisely, for it was hidden by the frayed and drooping brim of a straw hat, from under which protruded a sunburnt nose and a tangled grey beard.
‘Fear not,’ she said. ‘I won’t do you any harm.’
The grey-bearded man shifted his weight from one foot to the other and removed his hat. He had a round face flecked with liver spots, ruddy and not very wrinkled, thin eyebrows, and a small and very receding chin. His long grey hair was tied up on his nape in a queue, but the top of his head meanwhile was completely bald, as yellow and shiny as a pumpkin.
She saw him looking at her sword, at the hilt extending above her shoulder.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ she repeated.
‘Ho, ho!’ he said, mumbling a little. ‘Ho, ho, my young maiden. Forest Gramps isn’t afraid. He ain’t one of those fearful types, oh no.’
He smiled. He had large, very protruding teeth, because of a bad occlusion and receding jaw. It was because of that that he mumbled so much.
‘Forest Gramps ain’t afraid of wanderers,’ he repeated. ‘Or even brigands. Forest Gramps is poor, he’s a poor thing. Forest Gramps is peaceful, he doesn’t disturb no one. Hey!’
He smiled again. When he smiled he seemed to be all front teeth.
‘And you, young lass, aren’t you afraid of Forest Gramps?’
Ciri snorted.
‘I’m not, just imagine. I’m not the fearful kind either.’
‘Hey, hey, hey! Well I never!’
He took a pace towards her, resting on his stick. Kelpie snorted. Ciri tugged on the reins.
‘She doesn’t like strangers,’ she warned. ‘And she bites.’
‘Hey, hey! Forest Gramps knows. Bad, unruly mare! Where are you riding from, miss? And where are you heading, may I ask?’
‘It’s a long story. Where does this road lead?’
‘Don’t you know that, miss?’
‘Don’t answer questions with questions, if you don’t mind. Where will that road take me? What place is this, in any case? And what . . . time is it?’
The old man stuck his teeth out again, moving them like a coypu.
‘Hey, hey!’ he mumbled. ‘Well I never. What time, you ask, miss? Oh, I see you’ve travelled from far away, from far away to Forest Gramps, miss!’
‘From quite far away, indeed,’ she nodded indifferently. ‘From other—’
‘P
laces and times,’ he completed her sentence. ‘Gramps knows. Gramps guessed.’
‘What?’ she asked, excited. ‘What did you guess? What do you know?’
‘Forest Gramps knows much.’
‘Speak!’
‘Miss must be hungry?’ he stuck out his teeth. ‘Thirsty? Fatigued? If you want, miss, Forest Gramps will take you to his cottage, feed you, give you drink. Take you in.’
For a long time Ciri hadn’t had the time or the peace of mind to think about rest or food. Now the words of the strange old man tightened up her stomach, knotted up her guts, and tied up her tongue. The old man observed her from under the brim of his hat.
‘Forest Gramps,’ he mumbled, ‘has meat in his cottage. Has spring water. And has hay for the mare, the bad mare that wanted to bite good old Gramps! Hey! Everything is in Forest Gramps’ cottage. And we’ll be able to talk about other places and times . . . It’s not far at all, oh no. Will the young traveller avail herself? Won’t disdain a visit to poor old Gramps?’
Ciri swallowed.
‘Lead on.’
Forest Gramps turned around and shambled down a barely visible path among the thicket, measuring off the road with energetic swings of his stick. Ciri rode behind him, dipping her head under branches and reining Kelpie back. The mare was indeed determined to bite the old man, or at least eat his hat.
In spite of his assurances it wasn’t near at all. When they got there, to a clearing, the sun was almost at its zenith.
Gramps’ cottage turned out to be a picturesque shack on stilts, with a roof that had clearly often been patched up using whatever happened to be to hand. The shack’s walls were covered with hides resembling pigskin. In front of the cottage there was a wooden construction shaped like a gallows, a low table and a chopping stump with an axe stuck in it. Behind the cottage was a hearth made of stones and clay with a large, blackened cauldron on it.
‘This is Forest Gramps’ home,’ the old man indicated with his stick, not without pride. ‘Forest Gramps lives here. He sleeps here. He cooks vittles here. Should he have something to cook. It’s a hardship, a severe hardship to get vittles in the forest. Does miss wanderer like pearl barley?’
The Saga of the Witcher Page 180
