With trial and error comes expertise. Thyssen soon understood that the ghost sightings, which at first glance seemed as much a feature of the city as its landscape, had four principal causes. The first was, of course, the need to explain away the unintended outcomes of erotic encounters. The boys from the academy, most of them naturally mischievous; the rowdy soldiers who always seemed to be passing through the town; the streets full of maids and servants, many quite lovely, usually wearing tatters which left little to the imagination - all of this had exactly the outcome one would expect.
But there were also more mundane causes. One Thyssen had already encountered on his way to Oxenfurt - loose paneling. A series of wooden planks, not perfectly aligned, will produce a wide-berthed sound in a strong gale, a noise that will change as fast as the wind. You may laugh at this, reader, but I assure you there was no shortage of men who managed to read otherworldly warnings into these sounds.
It was not enough, in such cases, to make some noise and emerge having declared victory, for the problem would only reappear. The loose board had to be found and nailed shut; better yet, it could be broken entirely, perhaps as an unavoidable consequence of the "battle" with the ghosts, forcing the client to fix it at his own expense.
The third cause, which took Thyssen quite a bit of effort to unearth, was a species of magical mold. This mold sparkled and shimmered beautifully in the light of a full moon, and only in the light of a full moon. This damnable fungus caused a minor smirch on Thyssen's reputation, as several places that he had declared free of ghosts teemed with reported sightings later, the glowing moonlight transformed into Gods-know-what kind of monsters. After many failed experiments, Thyssen brought some samples to a few of the washerwomen who made their living on the outskirts of the city, and a cleaning solution which handled it satisfactorily was found.
But the last cause, if it can even be called that, was the most difficult one of all. All over the city, men cheated, stole, and betrayed each other; many a mage was burned at the stake; nonhumans were hanged on the words of their neighbors, the same neighbors who would later appropriate the posessions of the deceased. Historians would later draw an arbitrary line in their chronologies and declare, here began the Age of Contempt . Yet even the most evil of men is not bereft of a conscience. It may be hidden, suppressed, out of sight, but it is there, lying in wait to take some tangible form, perhaps that of a ghost come for revenge. Thyssen could nail shut a floorboard or wash away mold but what could he do to relieve a guilty conscience?
"She looks at us when we sleep,'' the townswoman said. Her name was Eliza and her husband, a prosperous and portly fur merchant named Petrus, sat beside her; their voices, though tightly controlled, seemed to be on the verge of an explosion. A few servants were standing mutely at the entrances.
"Looks at you?"
"I see her pale white form when I wake up. It dissolves into mist just as I open my eyes."
"Sometimes I hear her footsteps in the garden," Petrus added. "She used to love walking there when she lived. I hear footsteps but the garden is empty whenever I open the door."
"And then there are my cups," Eliza continued. "I'll be carrying a tray when she'll knock it out of my hands. I can feel her touch on me, the coldness of her hands. She hated my cups. Too floral, she always said."
They were speaking of Eliza's sister and Petrus' former wife, for the two persons were one and the same. The three of them had lived together for a decade before Eliza's sister perished in the Catriona plague, and Eliza married her former brother-in-law a year later.
Thyssen thought it over. He had already inspected the house - no mold, no loose flooring. He had first supposed the footsteps could be the work of neighboring kids; but the garden was too steeply walled. His medallion did not give off even a hint of vibration as he walked from room to room.
He could, of course, make some noise and declare the ghost banished. No doubt all would be well for a time; but the guilty consciences of the people in front of them would give rise to another sighting soon enough and then he would have a very unhappy client on his hands.
He might declare himself powerless. The merchant had offered him a hundred orens to take care of the problem, and though he would be sorry to lose them, his long-term reputation was more important.
His thoughts turned to a group of monks he saw walking through the town gate the prior afternoon. A new order of the Church of the Eternal Fire whose name he could not recall. The monks were clothed in only their loincloths, their emaciated bodies cut to and fro by long gashes, self administered with the whips they carried about them. Some of the wounds were still bloody. The procession made for quite a sight, evincing as much wonder as disgust as the monks proudly paraded their wounds.
And yet what Thyssen remembered the most were the beatific smiles of the men in the procession. Even as the townspeople jeered and laughed, and as some threw rotten food at the procession, the monks never wavered, and the expressions of utter, complete, rapturous happiness never disappeared from their faces.
Making up his mind, he made a gesture as if to stretch. Channeling his energy as best he could, Thyssen poured all of his efforts into his aard.
Across a hall, an empty coat stand which had been leaning precariously toppled over with a sharp clang.
"It's her!" Eliza and her husband rose to their feet in a panic. "It must be."
"Leave the house," Thyssen said, trying to make his voice calm yet laden with a detectable undertone of panic. The couple did not need to be told twice. "Take the servants with you," he added as an afterthought, but they were already out the door with the servants on their heels.
Within moments, he was alone. He stood in silence for several moments, just in case someone was still inside the house; but he heard nothing, only the faint creaking of wood in the autumn wind. Walking through the rooms, careful to check that he could not be seen through any of the windows, he made a effort to to make it seem as if a fight had taken place here: cups strewn on the floor, books tossed everywhere, curtains ripped apart. As was his habit by now, he inflicted a few minor injuries on himself, small bruises and cuts that made him look suitably frazzled.
And then he sat still. After an hour, he ventured outside, where a circle of onlookers had gathered.
"Did you defeat it?"
"Are we safe?"
He motioned the couple to follow him inside the house, away from the prying ears of the crowd.
"I'm afraid not," he replied.
He could see their faces fall. Impatiently, they led him to one of the guest rooms deep inside the house where they could talk privately.
"We fought for a good while," Thyssen said, "but she was simply too strong. Too powerful." He shook his head. "Never have I met a ghost this well-formed, not in my..." he paused "...many years of witchering. "
"Perhaps we ought to employ a more powerful witcher," Petrus said sharply. "Someone who has been witchering, as you say, for a little while longer."
"If you wish," Thyssen answered calmly. "If any other man drives away the ghost, I won't take for a single oren from you, I assure you."
He let the silence linger for a while. "You see," he finally continued, "we had a conversation." He stopped for effect. They were both looking at him with wide eyes and open mouths. Just as he saw they were about to bombard him with questions, he went on.
"We sparred until our energies drained, until it was clear that neither of us could defeat the other. It was only then that she looked me up-and down and began to speak."
He turned to the merchant. "She..the ghost that is...it said that you betrayed her. That you never loved her, not truly."
"Ridiculous!" Petrus retorted angrily. "Twelve years we were together."
"She said," Thyssen continued, "that you were eyeing her sister the whole time."
"Lies," the merchant said, but Thyssen noticed that his outrage seemed to diminish somewhat.
"She accuses both of you of sneaking behind her back for years."
The couple shared an anxious glance before Eliza spoke. "It is not true, master witcher, I assure you. If anything, it was the grief that brought us together. When she had passed away..."
She left her sentence hang in the air.
"I argued with her on your behalf," Thyssen said. "Assured her of your good will. But she would not believe me. "
Eliza put her hands over her face and looked as if she were about to start sobbing. Wary of overdoing it, Thyssen jumped to the bombshell he had prepared.
"But, in the end, we struck an agreement."
That provoked a reaction; for a moment, the couple seemed speechless.
"I told her that your love was genuine and free of ill will. I apologize for the presumption, kind ser," Thyssen added, for indeed it was unclear from what source he would have obtained such a conviction. "But I have much experience with ghosts, and rest assured, it was the right course to take."
"In the end," Thyssen said, "she set her conditions. You are to separate for a year." He turned to the merchant. "You shall remain here in Novigrad, while you, madam, shall spend the year alone at one of your country estates. The two of you must have no contact whatsoever during that time. If you find yourself still in love at the end of the year, your sister will be able to pass into the nether world in peace."
"A year?" said the merchant unhappily, twirling his mustache. But his wife had the opposite reaction.
"But that is wonderful," she exclaimed, putting her hands together. "A year is nothing, nothing at all!"
"Do you think so, my dear?" Petrus said skeptically.
"There is more, I'm sorry to say," Thyssen continued. "You must both take a vow of silence for the last two weeks of that year. You may communicate only with gestures during that time."
"Impossible," Petrus declared, and even Eliza looked taken aback. The merchant a quick mental calculation. "A year takeaway two weeks puts us during the time of the fall harvest, the most lucrative time of my trade."
"I'm afraid," Thyssen said in the most apologetic tone he could muster, "the ghost's terms were not negotiable."
"Very well," Eliza said with a gleam of determination as her husband let loose a string of curses. "We'll do it, darling, won't we?"
There followed a lengthy and somewhat agonizing discussion. Thyssen had remained silent at first, then coughed gently and moved out of earshot to an adjoining room. He left several hours later, a hundred orens richer, with the household's servants already starting to pack Eliza's effects for a lengthy sojourn in the country.
He poured himself a drink when he had arrived home that evening, a strong Mahakan ale that lulled him into a pleasant state of contentment. Did he just save or destroy a marriage? Should he have said six months instead of a year? How much suffering should people be expected undergo for love? Eventually, he managed to convince himself that nothing easily obtained feels truly valuable; that the couple's inner demons can only be banished through hardship; and that if their love cannot survive a year's separation, it was worth little to begin with and he would have done them both a favor. Comforted by these arguments, he finally fell into a light asleep, and on waking up the next morning, groggy and with a minor hangover, he resolved that doubting his decision would produce no good, and he would not dwell on the matter again.
Reader, I suspect only your politeness restrains you from accusing me of lamentably poor organization. I am not unconscious that, having launched into an account of Thyssen's experience as a witcher, I may have neglected to clarify a number of key points. Where did Thyssen live? Did he long to return to Kaer Morhen? Did he obtain any comrades, traveling companions, or won the heart of a fair damsel? To these pressing questions I now turn.
Thyssen's first impulse was to take rooms in the cheapest inn in town, The Red Lion, which in spite of the regal-sounding name turned out to be an overgrown hut a half-hour past the city walls. The chief thing to recommend it was that the proprietor could be bargained to a mere half-oren a week. But, on reflection, Thyssen decided that an appearance of poverty would not do. One had to spend money to make money. Instead he took rooms in an inconspicuous tavern just past the western gate at two orens a day, clean, sturdy, with a clientele largely composed farmers who came to the city to bargain away their crops.
Fortunately there was no shortage of jobs for Thyssen, and as I have already began to detail, and he soon embarked on a veritable one-man spree to rid the city of its ghostly infestation. Within a few weeks, flush with an influx of coin, he rented a few rooms at the top of the Duke of Bann Glean, a fancier establishment of the sort frequented by passing merchants. Although more expensive, the owner allowed him to unfurl a banner which, as it flopped to-and-fro in the wind, advertised his services to all who went by.
His fame grew, buoyed by a string of apparent successes. He received a fair amount of commissions for witcher's work unrelated to ghosts; many came to him with requests to banish ghouls, drowners, barghests, and other marvelous beasts which prowled about freely during those chaotic times. Naturally he sent them all away, either naming outrageously high prices, or pleading that he had too much work as things stood. If a customer did, perchance, agree to his extravagant price, he would then demand the fee in advance; if even that failed, a bit of "research" on his part would reveal dangers in the assignment previously unrealized, leading to a massive increase in the asking price. One way or another, he managed to restrict himself to ghost-related work without seeming to arouse suspicion.
His services steadily grew more expensive. If at first he had served mainly the fishermen on the wharf and the peasants who labored on the city's outskirts, his clients were now predominantly merchants who did business within the city. A few even came from the aristocracy. In spite of this, when he took stock of his finances at the end of each week, it was clear that he was not growing wealthy fast enough to realize his dream of a vineyard in Toussaint. For he did not abandon his dream; on the contrary, as he heard travelers passing through Oxenfurt full of nothing but superlative praise for that land, Toussaint had grown in his imagination to almost mythic proportions.
Reader, I will not disparage Oxenfurt, or any other Redanian city for that matter. The writings that have passed to us from that time make it clear that the city, although small, dirty, full of beggars, beset by cold and rainy weather, and with bandits prowling its outskirts, was nevertheless charming and beautiful. Travelers often remarked on her streets, paved with uneven bricks; her expansive and wide squares; the labyrinthine maze of red roofs that shone so brightly in the summer their glare could be seen from mountains away. And yet, for some inexplicable reason entirely mysterious to me, Thyssen remained unsatisfied with his lot.
What it was that he wanted, I very much doubt he could say himself; and yet these hopes and dreams took personification in Toussaint, in the thoughts of lazy afternoons spent drunk on grapes lounging in the sun's glare. The problem was that a typical week for Thyssen would involve one or two jobs, with a net profit of a hundred orens or so. At this rate, he would be saving coin for a hundred years or so before he could afford that hypothetical vineyard.
All the same, the work of a witcher-charlatan was not an overly consuming one. He spent a few hours each day sifting through clients and one or two evenings each week were wholly devoted to his craft; otherwise he was free. You might therefore wonder, dear reader, how Thyssen spent his remaining hours.
The answer should be entirely obvious. Thyssen was a healthy boy on the cusp of adulthood. Naturally, he poured all of his energy into, as the men of my generation were fond of saying, "chasing skirts." Unfortunately, he was quite hampered in this endeavor by his complete and utter lack of knowledge of what one ought to do in the presence of the opposite sex.
The stories he heard growing up at Kaer Morhen suggested that merely walking down the street in the armor of a witcher, with two swords at his back, would be sufficient to seduce any woman. One of the witchers who wintered there often - a certain Geralt, not a terribly attractive man, face marred by scars and hair in a ponytail that made him look vaguely equine - often told stories of his dalliances with sorceresses, all supposedly exceedingly beautiful and powerful. According to this Geralt, he barely had to do anything before these beauties threw themselves at him.
But no matter how many times Thyssen strolled down the street with the swords at his back, the only women who accosted him were fishermen's wives looking to interest him in the catch of the day. If anything he seemed to be almost invisible: just one more young boy decked in leather armor, likely a mercenary looking for work among the soldiers which were constantly prowling the city. Occasionally, he would wander into an inn, still in his armor, and recline against a wall throwing cool glances at the drinking and gambling taking place. Here the only women who accosted him were of the sort that wanted payment for services rendered.
Perhaps, he thought, he needed to be a touch more aggressive, to approach some fair maiden strolling about the city and start a conversation. But what could he possibly say?
The books he had read in his Kaer Morhan suggested long and flowery speeches praising the woman's beauty, which seemed like quite reasonable advice. Besides, he had often seen knights in bright plumage and gleaming armor loudly proclaiming poetry in the midst of some public declaration of love within the city's squares.
He would approach a woman buying fruit at one of the stalls into the market; making some small talk about the fresh oranges from Nazir or some such, he would wait for an opening to launch into a sonnet (composed beforehand) on the subject of her great beauty. He spent quite a few evenings laboring on these sonnets, and he thought they flowed rather elegantly. The women looked at him as if he was a lunatic and, seeming vaguely disoriented, sought to distance themselves as fast as they could.
For a while, he thought that his poetry was insufficiently effusive, and even took some lessons from a travelling bard. Unfortunately, what Thyssen neglected to consider was that while such poetic effusions were not uncommon among the aristocracy, where the women typically possessed a courtly education and might be impressed by a rhyming couplet or an unexpected turn of phrase; but the maids who were sent out to shop at the market were not the best audience for his attempts at cleverness. I regret to report that his efforts in this direction failed to produce anything in the way tangible results.
Soon enough he realized a new approach was called for. One night, as he was having his dinner at his inn's lobby, he overheard the conversation of a trio of merchants seated at the next table. Besides learning much about the price of cloth all over the Northern Kingdoms, he found out that, each month, on the night of the full moon, one of the villages outside Oxenfurt held a dance that lasted until dawn. Much alcohol would be served, and the merchants had indulged in some speculations about the chastity of peasant girls, or the lack thereof, which I shall not deign to repeat here.
Visions of tightly-dressed, simple but lovely peasants girls floated before Thyssen's eyes. It would be too much, he reasoned, to attend clad in full armor, but perhaps a couple of swords at his back would not hurt…
He could hardly wait until the next full moon.
When it finally came, and when he had arrived (bedecked in leather armor) in the small hamlet where the dance was held, he found the scene much like he imagined it. Musicians were playing cheerful tunes on lutes, simple and fast music. A few couples were dancing with the wild abandon that comes from drunkenness in the open barns. There were many braziers all around, so much that the bright hue of the village was visible for miles on the road. The air smelled of damp moss, reminding him of his time at Kaer Morhen.
After tying his horse to a tree, he approached one of the makeshift stands to buy a drink.
"Notfromaround'ere, eh?" the seller said in a mildly hostile tone as he took the coin handed to him.
"No," Thyssen said taking the tankard and taking in the scene. He stood aimlessly, slowly sipping his drink, which was as close to pure alcohol as anything he had drunk recently. It took all of his self-control to stop himself from spitting it out.
He was pleased to see a few of the peasant girls shyly eyeing him from a distance, and one even giggled when he asked her to dance. So unlike the well-dressed city girls, who would take one look at either his armor or his clothes and seem to instantly lose interest. Here things were altogether different. Was it the two swords at his back, one of them recently-polished silver? Or was it his his carefully crafted attire, purchased from a tailor not far from the tavern where he stayed, which contrasted so sharply to the unshapely overalls worn by the peasants here? Whatever it was, he was in no mood to question it.
But it was here that he discovered another obstacle to his romantic endeavors, namely that he had nothing whatsoever to talk the peasant girls about.
"Harvestwasgoodthisyear," the first girl he danced said to him after the music stopped and he vaguely hovered about her thinking of something to say. The people here seemed to slur the Common Speech rather than speak it, so that all of their words felt as if they lumped into one.
"Yes," he said. "That's what I hear."
There was a silence.
"Lots of fruits and vegetables collected?" he offered what seemed to him to be the logical continuation of the topic, but she only looked at him a little strangely.
"Your eyes look beautiful in the moonlight," he shifted the conversation onto safer ground.
She smiled, "Thankyaverymuch," she said, her accent so thick that, were it not for context, he would have had no idea of what it was she had just said.
"It's a beautiful village," Thyssen said, looking around at the decrepit houses. "Have you lived here your whole life?"
She nodded. "Iwasbornyonder," she said, pointing to one of the huts not far from where they were standing.
"I'm originally from Kaedwen," Thyssen offered.
"Where?"
"A castle called Kaer Morhen. In Kaedwen." But the girl looked at him with a confused face. After some back and forth, it turned out that she had never heard of any such place. Redania, Aedirn, and Temeria were the only nations she knew of and she was much surprised to learn the Northern Kingdoms comprised of many more countries than these. This momentous revelation did not seem to affect her much. Thyssen had excitedly began to tell her of the various lands of the North and their customs; but he could not go on for long without noticing her manifest lack of interest.
"So what do you do?" he asked after lapsing into a silence.
The question seemed to confuse her. "Ipackhaylots," she said finally.
"Interesting work?" He realized the inanity of the question as soon as the words emerged from his lips. Fortunately, the girl was not offended as much as confused.
"Iguessso," she said.
He was racking his brains for how to proceed when the music started again and another fellow asked the girl to dance. His former dance partner smiled apologetically and accepted, looking slightly relieved.
Things proceeded likewise with each successive partner. There was a flurry of initial interest, and his clumsy dancing did not seem to put them off; but the making of conversation afterwards proved to be rather challenging. He tried to tell the next one about his favorite books, the adventure stories he had read obsessively while at Kaer Morhen, but she only looked blankly at him. He tried asking about her favorite books but it transpired that she did not know how to read.
Not willing to fall down before a challenge, he walked around the festivities until he came across a group of villagers laughing animatedly, three boys and two girls among them. Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, he hovered around within earshot, hoping to catch a drift of the topics they found so engaging.
It was not easy, for he only managed to make out two words out of every five; but, eavesdropping awkwardly for some minutes, he made mental notes of several subjects being discussed. These included the abnormally large tomatoes found in this Fall's crop; the insufferable people from the neighboring village in the East, who thought themselves superior because their settlement was larger and possessed a tavern; the recent infestation of abnormally large raccoons that was eating the local walnuts; the dull people from the neighboring village in the North, who were so poor they could barely afford shoes; the coming arrival of a merchant who sold mirrors, lockets, and other shiny trinkets at significant discounts; the departure of the village herbalist who had been found to have been having an affair with one of the headmen and was run out of town by a justifiably angry mob. "Ihopetheyburnheratthestake," one of the older girls said with evident disgust. One of the boys was bragging about his success in selling mole rats, roasted slowly over a fire and marketed as beef, to travellers who spent the night in the village, much to the delight of all his listeners.
Unfortunately Thyssen did not find he had much to contribute on any of these subject.
Feeling a more direct approach was called for, he simply declared, apropos of nothing, "I'm a witcher, you know" to the next girl - a pretty redhead with large eyes who kept shyly looking down at the floor - after their dance was over.
That, at the very least, seemed to produce an effect. "No," the girl said with a smile, "yourejoking."
He raised his palm and a small flame shot of it. She yelped lightly in shock and looked at him anew, with a mixture of fear and fascination in her eyes.
His demonstration did not pass unnoticed. Soon enough, a circle of admirers surrounded him, largely female, looking at the flames that shot out of his hands. A few of them ran their fingers along his palms, rather tenderly saw, as if to convince themselves that his hands were unscathed.
Reader, the next half hour were quite likely among the most exciting of Thyssen's life, for he had the undivided attention of a dozen fair specimens of the opposite sex. Even Thyssen was stunned at the apparent popularity of his profession. He had, perhaps, expected some revulsion, but his small stature and unassuming looks appeared to preclude that.
He first showed them his silver sword, and then began to tell them stories of the ghosts he had supposedly banished. I regret to report that, even forgetting that none of these ghosts were real, these stories were vastly exaggerated. Thyssen was in the middle of describing how he fought an entire army of banshees when he was rather rudely interrupted.
"IbetIcouldtakeyouon," said one of the peasants, an overgrown hulk of a man. Thyssen looked at him uncertainly, unsure how to respond.
"Yeah!" someone shouted.
A few excited whistles were heard, coming mostly from boys who, only a minute ago, were looking resentfully at the attention Thyssen was receiving from the opposite sex.
"Nothingsmorefunthanagoodfight," someone said.
"Alekseyandthewitcher!"
This was not part of the plan. His opponent was at least thrice his size. His fists were almost as big as Thyssen's face. To make matters worse, this Aleksey was looking at Thyssen with unabashed hatred in his eyes.
"Witchers do not fight for sport…" he offered cautiously but this seemed widely ignored. The girls had dispersed the boys were arranging themselves in a circle around him and the peasant. It would be quite embarrassing to flee, especially after having gone on at some length about defeating ghosts.
On the other hand, having his face disfigured was a far more unattractive prospect. He looked for his horse and found him tied to a birch behind a barn some fifty paces away, too far to make a run for it.
Meanwhile people were flocking in his general direction, drawn by the shouts that a fight was about to take place. Thyssen stood helplessly, hoping that whatever passed for the law in this godforsaken place would intervene. Unfortunately, the village headman, easily identifiable by the crowd that had been surrounding him, only looked at the budding scene with amusement as he puffed on his pipe..
He turned his glance to his opponent who was now rubbing his arms together with a grim anticipation, grinning maliciously.
This would not be pretty.