Ciri knew it was now or never. She spun around in a half-turn, and jerked Swallow from the scabbard. The entire castle suddenly whirled and she felt herself falling, painfully banging her knees. She bent over, her forehead almost touching the floor, fighting the urge to vomit. The sword slipped from her numb fingers. Someone lifted her up.
‘Yeees,’ Vilgefortz drawled, resting his chin on hands held together as if in prayer. ‘Where was I? Ah, yes, that’s right, your offer. Yennefer’s life and freedom in exchange . . . For what?’ For your voluntary surrender, willingly, without violence or compulsion? I’m sorry, Ciri. Violence and compulsion are simply essential to what I shall do to you.
‘Yes, yes,’ he repeated, watching with interest as the girl wheezed, spat and tried to vomit. ‘It simply won’t happen without violence or compulsion. You would never agree voluntarily to what I shall do to you, I assure you. So, as you must see, your offer, still pathetic and ridiculous, is furthermore worthless. So I reject it. Go on, take her. To the laboratory! At once.’
*
The laboratory didn’t differ much from the one Ciri knew from the Temple of Melitele in Ellander. It was also brightly lit, clean, with long metal-topped tables, laden with glass, large jars, retorts, flasks, test tubes, pipes, lenses, hissing and bubbling alembics and other strange apparatus. Here also, as in Ellander, it smelled strongly of ether, alcohol, formalin and something else, something that triggered fear. Even in the friendly temple, beside the friendly priestesses and a friendly Yennefer, Ciri had felt fear in the laboratory. And after all, in Ellander no one had dragged her to the laboratory by force, no one had brutally shoved her onto a bench, and no one had held her shoulders and arms in an iron grip. In Ellander there hadn’t been a dreadful steel chair whose purpose was quite sadistically obvious. There had been no shaven-headed characters dressed in white in the middle of the laboratory, no Bonhart, and no Skellen, excited, flushed and licking his lips. And neither was there Vilgefortz, with one normal eye and the other tiny and twitching hideously.
Vilgefortz turned around from the table, where he had spent a long time arranging some sinister-looking instruments.
‘Do you see, my splendid maiden,’ he began, walking towards her, ‘that you are the key to mastery and power? Not only over this world, a vanity of vanities, doomed in any case to early extinction, but over all worlds. Over the whole compass of places and times which have arisen since the Conjunction. You certainly understand me; you have already visited some of those places and times.
‘I’m ashamed to admit it,’ he continued a moment later, rolling up his sleeves, ‘but I’m terribly attracted by power. It’s crude, I know, but I want to be a ruler. A ruler before whom people will bow down, whom people will bless simply because I let them be, and whom they will worship as a god, if, let’s say, I decide to save their world from a cataclysm. Even if I only save it on a whim. Oh, Ciri, my heart is gladdened by the thought of how magnanimously I shall reward the faithful, and how cruelly I shall punish the disobedient and arrogant. The prayers that shall be offered up by whole generations to me and for me; for my love and my mercy will be balm and honey to my soul. Whole generations, Ciri, whole worlds. Listen out. Do you hear? Deliver us from the plague, hunger, war and wrath of Vilgefortz . . .’
He moved his fingers just in front of her face, then violently seized her by the cheeks. Ciri screamed and struggled, but she was held firmly. Her lips began to tremble. Vilgefortz saw it and sniggered.
‘The Child of Destiny,’ he laughed nervously, and white flecks of foam appeared at the corners of his mouth. ‘Aen Hen Ichaer, the sacred elven Elder Blood . . . Now all mine.’
He straightened up abruptly. And wiped his mouth.
‘Various fools and mystics,’ he now announced in his usually cold tone, ‘have tried to adapt you to fairy tales, legends and prophecies; have tracked the genes you carry, your inheritance from your ancestors. Mistaking the sky for stars reflected in the surface of a pond, they mystically supposed that a gene determining great potential would continue to evolve, that it would achieve the height of power in your child or the child of your child. And a charming aura grew around you, incense smoke trailed behind you. But the truth is much more banal, much more mundane. Organically mundane, I’d say. Your blood, my splendid one, is important. But in the absolutely literal, quite unpoetic sense of the word.’
He picked up from the table a glass syringe measuring about six inches. The syringe ended in a thin, slightly curved capillary. Ciri felt her mouth go dry. The sorcerer examined the syringe under the light.
‘In a moment,’ he declared coldly, ‘you will be undressed and placed on this chair, precisely this one, which you’re contemplating with such curiosity. You’ll spend some time in the chair, albeit in an uncomfortable position. With the help of this device, which also, as I see, is fascinating you, you will be impregnated. It won’t be so awful, for almost the whole time you’ll be befuddled by elixirs, which I shall give you intravenously, with the aim of implanting the foetal ovum properly and ruling out an ectopic pregnancy. You needn’t be afraid, I’m skilled; I’ve done this hundreds of times. Never, admittedly, to a chosen one of fate and destiny, but I don’t think the uteruses and ovaries of chosen ones differ so much from those of ordinary maids.
‘And now the most important thing.’ Vilgefortz savoured what he was saying. ‘It may worry you, or it may gratify you, but know that you won’t give birth to the infant. Who knows, perhaps it would also have been a great chosen one with extraordinary abilities, the saviour of the world and the king of nations? No one, however, is able to guarantee that, and I, furthermore, have no intention of waiting that long. I need blood. More precisely, placental blood. As soon as the placenta develops I shall remove it from you. The rest of my plans and intentions, my splendid one, will not, as you now comprehend, concern you, so there’s no point informing you about them, it would only be an unnecessary frustration.’
He fell silent, leaving a masterly pause. Ciri couldn’t control her trembling mouth.
‘And now,’ the sorcerer nodded theatrically, ‘I invite you to the chair, Miss Cirilla.’
‘It would be worth having that bitch Yennefer watching this.’ Bonhart’s teeth flashed beneath his grey moustaches. ‘She deserves it!’
‘Indeed she does.’ Small white balls of froth appeared again in the corners of Vilgefortz’s smiling mouth. ‘Impregnation is, after all, a sacred thing, solemn and ceremonial, a mystery at which one’s entire close family should assist. And Yennefer is, after all, your quasi-mother, and in primitive cultures the mother virtually takes an active part in her daughter’s consummation ceremony. Go on, bring her here!’
‘But regarding that impregnation . . .’ Bonhart bent over Ciri, whom the sorcerer’s shaven-headed acolytes had begun to undress. ‘Couldn’t one, Lord Vilgefortz, do it more normally? As nature intended?’
Skellen snorted, nodding his head. Vilgefortz frowned slightly.
‘No,’ he responded coolly. ‘No, Mr Bonhart. One couldn’t.’
Ciri, as though only now realising the gravity of the situation, uttered an ear-splitting scream. Once, and then a second time.
‘Well, well.’ The sorcerer grimaced. ‘We entered the lion’s den, bravely, with head and sword held high, and now we’re afraid of a small glass tube? For shame, young lady.’
Ciri, not caring about shame, screamed so loudly the laboratory vessels jingled.
And the whole of Stygga Castle suddenly responded with yelling and commotion.
*
‘There’ll be trouble, boys,’ repeated Zadarlik, scraping dried dung from between the stones of the courtyard with the metal-tipped butt of his ranseur. ‘Oh, you’ll see, there’ll be trouble for us poor wretches.’
He looked at his comrades, but none of the guards commented. Neither did Boreas Mun speak. He had remained with the guards at the gate, from choice, not because of orders. He could have, like Silifant, followed Tawny Owl, could have see
n with his own eyes what would happen to the Lady of the Lake, what fate she would suffer. But Boreas didn’t want to watch it. He preferred to stay here, in the courtyard, beneath the open sky, far from the chambers and halls of the upper castle, where they had taken the girl. He was certain that not even her screams would reach here.
‘Those black birds are a bad sign.’ Zadarlik nodded at the rooks, still sitting on the walls and cornices. ‘That young wench who came here on a black mare is an evil omen. We’re serving Tawny Owl in an evil matter, I tell you. They’re saying, in truth, that Tawny Owl himself isn’t a coroner or important gentleman now, but an outlaw like us. That the emperor has it in cruelly for him. If he seizes us all, boys, there’ll be trouble for us poor wretches.’
‘Aye, aye!’ added another guard, with long moustaches, wearing a hat decorated with black stork feathers. ‘The noose is at hand! It’s no good when the emperor’s angry—’
‘Blow that,’ interjected a third, a new arrival to Stygga Castle with the last party of mercenaries recruited by Skellen. ‘The emperor might not have enough time for us. They say he has other concerns. They say there was a decisive battle somewhere in the north. The Nordlings beat the imperial forces, thrashed them soundly.’
‘In that case,’ said a fourth, ‘perhaps it isn’t so bad that we’re here with Tawny Owl? Always better to be with the victors.’
‘Certainly it’s better,’ said the new one. ‘Tawny Owl, it seems to me, will go far. And we’ll go far with him too.’
‘Oh, boys.’ Zadarlik leaned on his ranseur. ‘You’re as thick as pig shit.’
The black birds took flight with a deafening flapping and cawing. They darkened the sky, wheeling in a flock around the bastion.
‘What the fuck?’ groaned one of the guards.
‘Open the gate, please.’
Boreas Mun suddenly detected a powerful smell of herbs: sage, mint and thyme. He swallowed and shook his head. He closed and opened his eyes. It didn’t help. The thin, grey-haired elderly man resembling a tax collector who had suddenly appeared beside them had no intention of vanishing. He stood and smiled through pursed lips. Boreas’s hair almost lifted his hat up.
‘Open the gate, please,’ repeated the smiling elderly gentleman. ‘Without delay. It really will be better if you do.’
Zadarlik dropped his ranseur with a clank, stood stiffly and moved his mouth noiselessly. His eyes were empty. The remaining men went closer to the gate, striding stiffly and unnaturally, like automatons. They took down the bar. And opened the hasp and staple.
Four riders burst into the courtyard with a thudding of horseshoes.
One had hair as white as snow, and the sword in his hand flashed like lightning. Another was a fair-haired woman, bending a bow as she rode. The third rider, quite a young woman, carved open Zadarlik’s temple with a sweeping blow of a curved sabre.
Boreas Mun picked up the ranseur and shielded himself with the shaft. The fourth rider suddenly towered over him. There were wings of a bird of prey attached to both sides of his helmet. His upraised sword shone.
‘Leave him, Cahir,’ said the white-haired man sharply. ‘Let’s save time and blood. Milva, Regis, that way . . .’
‘No,’ mumbled Boreas, not knowing himself why he was doing it. ‘Not that way . . . That’s only a dead end. Your way is there, up that staircase . . . To the upper castle. If you wish to rescue the Lady of the Lake . . . then you must hurry.’
‘My thanks,’ said the white-haired man. ‘Thank you, stranger. Regis, did you hear? Lead on!’
A moment later only corpses remained in the courtyard. And Boreas Mun, still leaning on the pikestaff. Which he couldn’t release, because his legs were shaking so much.
The rooks circled, cawing, over Stygga Castle, covering the towers and bastions in a shroud-like cloud.
*
Vilgefortz listened with stoical calm and an inscrutable expression to the breathless report of the mercenary who had come running. But his restless and blinking eye betrayed him.
‘Last ditch reinforcements.’ He ground his teeth. ‘Unbelievable. Things like that don’t happen. Or they do, but only in crummy, vulgar pageants, and it comes to the same thing. Do me the pleasure, good fellow, of telling me you’ve made it all up for, shall we say, a lark.’
‘I’m not making it up!’ the hireling said in indignation. ‘I’m speaking the truth! Some horsemen have burst in . . . A whole hassa of them—’
‘Very well, very well,’ the sorcerer interrupted. ‘I was joking. Skellen, deal with this matter personally. It will be a chance to demonstrate how much your army, hired with my gold, is worth.’
Tawny Owl leaped up, nervously waving his arms.
‘Aren’t you treating this too lightly, Vilgefortz?’ he yelled. ‘You, it seems, don’t realise the gravity of the situation! If the castle is being attacked, it’s by Emhyr’s army! And that means—’
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ the sorcerer cut him off. ‘But I know what you have in mind. Very well, if the fact that you have me behind you will improve your morale, have it as you will. Let’s go. You too, Mr Bonhart.’
‘As far as you’re concerned—’ he fixed his terrible eye on Ciri ‘—don’t have any false hopes. I know who’s turned up here with these pathetic reinforcements worthy of a cheap farce. And I assure you, I shall turn this cheap farce into a nightmare.
‘Hey, you!’ he nodded at the servants and acolytes. ‘Shackle the girl in dimeritium, lock and bolt her in a cell, and don’t move an inch from the door. You’ll answer with your lives for her. Understood?’
‘Yes, sire.’
*
They rushed into the corridor, and from the corridor into a large hall full of sculptures; a veritable glyptothek. No one barred their way. They only saw a few lackeys who immediately fled on seeing them.
They ran up some stairs. Cahir kicked a door open, Angoulême rushed inside with a battle cry and with a blow of her sabre knocked off the helmet of a suit of armour she took for a guard standing by the door. She realised her mistake and roared with laughter.
‘Hee, hee, hee! Look at that . . .’
‘Angoulême!’ Geralt took her to task. ‘Don’t just stand there! Go on!’
A door opened in front of them. Shapes loomed in the doorway. Milva bent her bow and sent off an arrow without a second thought. Somebody screamed. The door was closed, Geralt heard a bolt thudding.
‘Go on, go on!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t just stand there!’
‘Witcher,’ said Regis. ‘This running is senseless. I’ll go off . . . I’ll fly off and do some reconnaissance.’
‘Fly.’
The vampire took off as though blown by the wind. Geralt had no time to be surprised.
Again they chanced upon some men, this time armed. Cahir and Angoulême jumped towards them with a yell, and the men bolted, mainly, it seemed, because of Cahir and his impressive winged helmet.
They dashed into the cloister, and the gallery surrounding the inner vestibule. Around twenty paces separated them from the portico leading into the castle when shapes appeared on the other side of the cloister. Loud shouts echoed out. And arrows whistled.
‘Take cover!’ the Witcher yelled.
Arrows rained down on them. Fletchings fluttered and arrowheads sent up sparks from the floor, chipping the mouldings from the walls and showering them in fine dust.
‘Get down! Behind the balustrade!’
They dropped down, hiding pell-mell behind spiral columns carved with leaves. But they didn’t get away with it entirely. The Witcher heard Angoulême cry out, and saw as she grabbed her arm, her sleeve, which immediately became blood-soaked.
‘Angoulême!’
‘It’s nothing! It passed through muscle!’ the girl shouted back in only a slightly trembling voice, confirming what he had seen. Had the arrowhead shattered the bone, Angoulême would have fainted from the shock.
The archers were shooting from the gallery without let-up
and were shouting out, calling for reinforcements. Several of them ran off to the side, to fire at the pinned-down party from an acute angle. Geralt swore, assessing the distance separating them from the arcade. Things looked bad. But to stay where they were meant death.
‘Let’s make a run for it!’ he yelled. ‘Ready! Cahir, help Angoulême!’
‘They’ll slaughter us!’
‘Run for it! We have to!’
‘No!’ screamed Milva, standing up with bow in hand.
She straightened up, assumed a shooting position; a veritable statue, a marble Amazon with a bow. The marksmen on the gallery yelled.
Milva lowered her head.
One of the archers flew backwards, slamming against the wall, and a bloody splash resembling a huge octopus bloomed on the stone. A cry resounded from the gallery, a roar of anger, fury and horror.
‘By the Great Sun . . .’ groaned Cahir. Geralt squeezed his shoulder.
‘Let’s make a run for it! Help Angoulême!’
The marksmen on the gallery directed all their fire at Milva. The archer didn’t even twitch, although all around her it was dusty with plaster, chips of marble and splinters of shattering shafts. She calmly released the bowstring. Another yell, and another archer tumbled over like a ragdoll, splashing his companions with blood and brains.
‘Now!’ yelled Geralt, seeing the guards fleeing from the gallery, dropping to the floor, hiding from the deadly arrowheads. Only the three bravest were still shooting.
An arrowhead thudded against a pillar, showering Milva in a cloud of plaster dust. The archer blew on her hair, which was falling over her face, and bent her bow.
‘Milva!’ Geralt, Angoulême and Cahir had reached the arcade. ‘Leave it! Run!’
‘One more little shot,’ said the archer with the fletching of an arrow in the corner of her mouth.
The Saga of the Witcher Page 189
