Andrzej Sapkowski - [Witcher 05] Read online

  ‘I can give you everything you desire,’ said the fairy. ‘Wealth, a crown and sceptre, fame, a long happy life. Choose.’

  ‘I do not desire wealth or fame, a crown or sceptre,’ the witcher replied. ‘I desire a horse that is black as night and as fast as the wind. And I desire a sword that is sharp and as bright as a moonbeam. I want to ride at night on my black horse; I want to defeat the powers of Evil with my bright sword. That is all I desire.’

  ‘I’ll give you a horse that will be blacker than the night and faster than the wind,’ promised the fairy. ‘I’ll give you a sword, which will be sharp and brighter than a moonbeam. But what little you ask for, witcher, you will have to pay dearly.’

  ‘With what? In truth I have nothing.’

  ‘With your blood.’

  Flourens Delannoy, Fairytales and Stories.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was well known that the Universe, as well as life, revolves in a circle. On the rim of this circle, in pairs exactly opposite each other are eight magic points, which give a full rotation, the annual cycle. These points, lying along the rim of the circle in pairs opposite each other, are: Imbaelk that is, Germination, Lammas that is, Maturity, Belleteyn, that is Blossoming, Saovine that is, Withering. The rim of the circle is also marked by two solstices – winter or Midinvaerne and summer or Midaete. There are also two equinoxes – spring or Birke and autumn or Velen. These dates divide the circle into eight parts – and so the elven calendar year is divided.

  When Humans landed in the estuary of the Yaruga and the delta of the Pontar, they brought with them their own lunar calendar, dividing the year into twelve months – which cover the full annual cycle of work in the fields – from the beginning of January until the end – in which frost turned the earth into a hard lump. But although humans divided the year and counted the date differently, they accepted the elven circle and the eight points: Imbaelk, Lammas, Belleteyn, Saovine and both solstices and equinoxes and among the humans they became important holidays. Distinguishing themselves among other dates as much as a solitary tree standing out in a meadow.

  These dates differ from others by magic.

  It was no secret that during these eight dates and nights magical auras intensify dramatically. Nobody is surprised by these magical phenomena and enigmatic events that accompany these eight dates, especially the equinoxes and solstices. Everyone had become accustomed to these phenomena and they seldom gave rise to great sensation.

  This year was different.

  This year, as humans usually celebrate the autumn equinox festival dinner, during which the table had the largest possible number of fruits from the harvest that year, but no more than a little of each of them. So custom commanded. Once they had prepared the dinner and had thanked the goddess Melitele for the year’s harvest, the humans settled down to rest. And then the horror began.

  Shortly before midnight a terrible storm broke, the wind blew hellishly, in which could be heard the crackling of broken branches, roof timbers creaking and shutters banging and the sound of ghostly howls, screams and wailing. Even the clouds took on fantastic shapes, among which the most frequently repeated were silhouettes of galloping horses and unicorns. The wind suddenly stopped after about an hour. But silence did not occur, because the night suddenly came alive with the chirping and fluttering of hundreds of nightjars, these mysterious birds, according to popular belief flock to the houses of the dying and sing their mournful song. This night, the chorus of the nightjars was so massive and loud that it seemed as if the whole world were to die.

  The nightjars warbled there wild song for the dead while on the horizon the clouds had extinguished the remains of the moonlight. Then all of a sudden the dreadful howling of a Banshee was heard, harbinger of sudden and violent death, and through the sky rode the Wild Hunt, a procession of ghosts with flaming eyes riding on the backs of skeletal horses, their tattered clothes waving around them like banners. From time to time, the Wild Hunt made its harvest, but it had not been for decades so terrible. In Novigrad it was counted more than twenty people had disappeared without a trace.

  When the Hunt and the clouds had dispersed, human eyes where once again able to see the moon, as usual at the time of the equinox, it was waning. But this night it was the colour of blood.

  Ordinary people had many explanations for the equinoxial phenomena, which differed significantly according to regional demonology. Astrologers, druid and wizards also had their explanations, but were mostly wrong and exaggerated. Few, very few people were able to associate these phenomena with actual facts. For example, on the Skellige Islands, a few superstitious people saw in those events the prophecies of Tedd Deireadh, the end of the world, which is proceeded by the battle of Ragh nar Roog, the final struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness. The superstitious believed that the violent storm on the night of the autumn equinox and the waves that shook the islands with a wave was driven by the monstrous bow of Naglfar from Morhogg, leading an army of ghosts and demons in a ship built from the finger and toe-nails of the dead. Wiser and better informed people however associated the fury of the elements with the infamous sorceress Yennefer and her terrible death. And still other – even better informed, saw a sign in the stormy sea that someone was dying, in whose veins ran the blood of the Rulers of Skellige and Cintra.

  Since the world began, the night of the autumn equinox has also been a night of ghosts, nightmare and apparitions, sudden awakening in the night, with breath and heartbeat caught in fear, between sheets, twisted and wet with perspiration. The apparitions and awakenings did not even spare the clearest of heads, in Nilfgaard, in the Towers of Gold, the emperor himself, Emhyr var Emreis, woke up screaming. Far to the north in Lan Exeter, King Esterad Thyssen jumped out of bed, waking his wife, Queen Zuleyka. In Tretogor, Dijkstra woke up and reached for his knife, waking the Minister of Treasuries wife. In the palace of Montecalvo, Philippa Eilhart jumped up from damask bed linens, without waking the wife of Count de Noailles. They awoke – more or less sharply – the dwarf, Yarpen Zigrin in Mahakam, the old witcher Vesemir in the mountain fortress of Kaer Morhen, the trainee banker, Fabio Sachs in the city of Gors Velen and Crach an Craite on board the ship ‘Ringhorn’. It awoke the witch Fringilla Vigo at the castle of Beauclair, the priestess Sigrdrifa in the temple of the goddess Freya located on the island of Hindarsfjall. It awoke Daniel Etcheverry, Earl of Garramone, at the besieged fortress of Maribor, Lance-corporal Zyvik of the Dun Banner, at the fort of Ban Glean. Businessman Dominik Bombastus Houvenaghel in the town of Claremont, and many others.

  Few were able to connect these phenomena with actual events. And with a specific person. As luck would have it, three of these people spent the night of the autumn equinox under one roof. In the temple of the Goddess Melitele in Ellander.

  * * *

  ‘Nightjars…’ moaned the scribe Jarre, while watching the darkness that flooded the park in the sanctuary. ‘I think there are thousands of them, a whole flock… They scream for the death of someone… For the death of her… She is dying…’

  ‘Do not talk nonsense,’ Triss Merigold, turned abruptly, raised her clenched fist a looked for a moment like she was going to push the boy or hit him in the chest. ‘Do you believe in stupid superstitions? September is finished, the birds are gathering to migrate. It is totally natural!’

  ‘She is dying…’

  ‘Nobody is dying!’ cried the enchantress, pale with rage. ‘Nobody, do you understand? Stop babbling!’

  In the library hall, novices were awakened by the natural alarm. Their faces were grave and pale.

  ‘Jarre,’ Triss calmed down, she put
her hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed. ‘You’re the only man in the temple. All are looking to you, looking to you for help. You must not be afraid, do not panic. Control yourself. Do not disappoint us.’

  Jarre sighed and with a visible effort tried to suppress the shaking of his hands and lips.

  ‘I’m not afraid…’ he whispered, avoiding the eyes of the enchantress. ‘It is not fear, just concern. For her. I saw her in a dream…’

  ‘I saw her too,’ Triss pursed her lips, ‘we had the same dream, you, me and Nenneke. But not a word about it.’

  ‘The blood on her face… So much blood…’

  ‘I have asked you to be quiet. Nenneke is coming.’

  The high priestess approached them. Her face was tired. At Triss’ silent question, she shook her head. Noticing Jarre opening his mouth, she hastened to speak.

  ‘Unfortunately, nothing. When the Wild Hunt passed over the sanctuary, it awakened almost everyone, but none have had visions. Even as vague as ours. Go to sleep, boy, there is nothing here for you to do. Girls, go back to the dormitory!’

  She rubbed her face with both hands.

  ‘Heh… Equinox! Cursed night… Go to sleep, Triss. We cannot do anything.’

  ‘This helplessness drives me crazy,’ the enchantress said, clenching her fists. ‘Just thinking that she is suffering, bleeding, that she is threatened… The devil, if I know what to do!’

  Nenneke, the high priestess of the temple of Melitele, turned.

  ‘And you have tried to pray?’

  * * *

  In the south, far beyond the mountains of Amell, in Ebbing, in the country called Pereplut, in the extensive swamps formed by the intersection of the rivers Velda, Lete and Arete, a place about eight hundred miles as the crow flies from the city of Ellander and the temple of Melitele, as dawn, a nightmare abruptly woke an old hermit named Vysogota. Once awake, Vysogota could not remember any of the content of the dream, but a strange uneasiness kept him from falling back to sleep.

  * * *

  ‘Cold, cold, cold, brrr,’ Vysogota said to himself as he walked along a path through the bushes. ‘Cold, cold, cold, brrr.’

  The next trap was empty. Not a muskrat. A whole day of hunting with no luck. Vysogota cleaned the mud and the algae covering the trap, muttering curses and sniffing his nose.

  ‘Huh, it is winter’ he said, walking towards the swamp. ‘And it is not even the end of September. After all, we are barely four days after the equinox. Such cold at this time I cannot remember in my whole life. And I have been alive a long time!’

  The next trap, the last one, was also empty. Vysogota had no desire to even curse.

  ‘There is no doubt,’ mused the old man, ‘that year after year the climate is slowly cooling. And now it seems the cooling effect is accelerating like an avalanche. Ha, the elves had foreseen this a long time ago, but who believes in the predictions of the elves?’

  Above the old man’s head, fluttered wings, and dark silhouettes began to dart. The fog over the marshes rang with the sudden wild shriek of nightjars, and with the rapid flapping of their wings. Vysogota paid no attention to the birds. He was not superstitious and there had always been many nightjars in the swamp, especially at dawn when they flew so close it was a wonder they didn’t collide with his head. Well, they may not have as many as they have this day and not always with this dismal screaming… However, in recent times it was the nature for outrageous antics and strange phenomena which followed one another, each more bizarre than the last.

  He was pulling the last snare from the water, also empty, when he heard the neighing of a horse. The nightjars singing stopped as if on command.

  Even on the moor, Pereplut had dry thickets located in higher places, ridges covered with black birch, alders, cornejo, dogwood and blackthorn. Most of the groves were surrounded by bogs so that it was completely impossible for any horse or rider who did not know the way to reach them. And yet the neighing – Vysogota heard again – came precisely from one of these groves.

  Curiosity overcame caution.

  Vysogota did not know much about horses and their breeds, but it was an aesthetician and knew how to recognise and appreciate beauty. And the horse’s hair glistened like anthracite, silhouetted against the trunks of birches was extraordinarily beautiful. It was the quintessence of true beauty. It was so beautiful it seemed unreal.

  But it was real. And it was real in the way it was trapped, entangled with the halter straps and red blood embrace of the branches of a cornejo.

  When Vysogota came closer, the horse pricked up its ears, gracefully shook its head, turned and stamped until the earth trembled. Now he could see that the animal was a trapped mare. The old man saw something else. Something that caused his heart to run away beating and invisible fingers to squeeze his throat.

  Behind the horse, in a shallow ditch, lay a corpse.

  Vysogota threw his bag on the floor. He was ashamed by that his first thought had been to turn around and run away. He approached with caution, because the black mare stamped the floor and chewed her bit and was apparently only waiting an opportunity to bite or kick a stranger.

  The corpse was a dead teenage boy. He lay face down on the ground, one arm crushed against the side of his body, the other outstretched to the side with fingers dug into the ground. The boy was wearing a suede jacket, tight leather pants and elven boots with buckles that reached to the knees.

  Vysogota bent down and at that moment the corpse groaned loudly. The gray mare whinnied sharply and stomped the earth with her hooves.

  The hermit knelt down and carefully turned the wounded boy over. Instinctively he drew back his head and hissed at the sight of the monstrous mask of dirt and dried blood on the boy’s face. Gently he wiped away the moss, leaves and sand on his lips covered with snot and drool, and tried to remove a tangle of hair stuck to his cheek with blood. The wounded boy groaned dully, tensed and then began to tremble. Vysogota removed the hair from his face.

  ‘A girl,’ he said loudly, unable to believe what was right in front of him. ‘It is a girl.’

  * * *

  If the day after at nightfall someone had crept up to the hut deep in the swamp and looked through the cracks in the shutters, in the flickering light of an oil lamp they would have seen a slender body with its head wrapped in bandages, lying motionless, almost dead, covered with a fur blanket. They would have also seen an old man sitting with a long white beard and white hair falling from the edges of his bald head down to his shoulders. They would have seen the old man silhouetted against a lit candle, how on the table there was an hourglass, how he sharpened his pen, as he leaned over a sheet of parchment. How he intently watched the wounded girl and spoke to himself.

  But nothing like that could happen, nobody could see. The hut with a roof covered with moss was lost in the mists, abandoned in the middle of the marshes, where no one dared to tread.

  * * *

  ‘I record the following,’ Vysogota dipped his pen into the ink. ‘It is passed the third hour after the operation. Diagnosis – vulnus incisivum, a laceration inflicted with considerable force by an unknown object, probably a curved blade. The wound begins under the eye socket on the left cheek and runs through the temporal region towards the ear. The deepest part of the wound, which reaches the periosteum, starts under the eye socket. The estimated time that has passed since the wounds were inflicted until the time of the first treatment, ten hours.’

  The pen squeaked on the parchment, but the squeaking did not last for more than a few moments. For only a few lines. Vysogota obviously did not consider everything he was saying to himself, as worthy of being written down.

  ‘Returning to the treatment of the wounds,’ the old man continued fixing his eyes on the pulsating and crackling flame of the tallow candle, ‘I write the follow. I did not cut along the edges of the injury, I limited myself to only removing a few tears that were not bleeding and clotting, of course. I cleaned the wound with an extract of wil
low bark. I removed the dirt and foreign bodies. Then stitched it, with hemp thread. Other types of string are not available to me. Finally I put on a poultice of mountain arnica and gauze bandages.’

  A mouse scampered though the middle of the room. Vysogota threw it a piece of bread. The girl on the pallet breathed raggedly and moaned in her sleep.

  * * *

  ‘It is eight hours after the procedure. The state of the patient – no change. The state of the doctor… in other words, mine, is improved, since I repaired it with a bit of sleep… I can continue with the notes. It is therefore be appropriate to transcribe in these pages some information about my patient. For future generations. In case some future generations are able to get to these wetlands before this becomes rot and discarded ashes.’

  Vysogota sighed heavily, dipped the pen and cleaned it on the edge of the fountain.

  ‘As for the patient,’ he murmured, ‘let it be recorded as follows. She appeared to be about sixteen years of age, tall, her formation is rather thin, but at least it is not weak, showing no signs of malnutrition. Muscle and physique are rather typical of a young elf, but I have not noticed any other characteristics of mixing… even quadroon inclusive. A lower percent of elven blood, as is known, can leave no trace.’

  Only then did Vysogota realise that he had not written on the page, not one rune, not a single word. He supported the pen on the paper, but the ink had dried. The old man paid no attention.

  ‘Let it be recorded also,’ he continued, ‘that she has never given birth. Also on the body there are no old signs left after accidents or injuries, no scars or traces of those who are put to hard work or a risky life. I emphasize the I speak of old signs. There are no shortage of recent signs throughout the body. The girl has been beaten. A real beating and not at the hands of her father. Probably kicked her too.’