Summary: An sorceress contracts a witcher to capture a djinn, and everyone who has read The Last Wish collectively cringes at my lack of originality.
THE LAST WISH
VII
The brook criss-crossed the valley lazily, a murder of crows cried overhead, and the four men scattered through the forest like Zanguebarian jungle predators. And, inside one of them, an unwanted fifth guest. The pain was less intense now, a mild twinge preferred to head-splitting stabbing, and Hermione soon moved into his head yet again:
"Witcher," the sorceress's voice rang through the gray matter and bounced at the dome prison of his cranium. "I trust nothing serious has happened as a result of this spell?" Harry opened his mouth to retort, but was instead cut off by the elf. "You needn't speak it. Merely think whatever you wish to say, and I shall hear it."
Harry ducked low when Harys did, looking to the Kaedweni and seeing the spark of curiosity in his otherwise soulless eyes. The yellow scout raised up his left hand, encased in a lobstered gauntlet, and formed a fist; Nowak and Dagnar ducked on command.
Aside from the skull-crushing pain? Nothing serious, he gibed sourly.
"When has a little pain ever hurt anyone?" asked Hermione innocently, fully aware of the irony in her words. "It's a pretty little forest, for a pretty little town. I can certainly see the appeal of it for the thieves."
Yet we get ever-closer to the town, and all I hear are crows.
"Not a good sign," agreed Hermione.
Whatever Harys saw must have passed, for the glint in his eyes had faded, and he raised his other hand, this one gloved in a simple leather vambrace. Pointing forward, the Kaedweni indicated the makeshift troop to scurry forward past great oaks and strong elms.
"Your eyesight is incredible," Hermione marveled, breaking an increasingly tense silence, "it's an entirely different world from mine."
Harry smiled grimly. A different world indeed. Prior to the Trial, he had terrible sight: he would bump into every wall, trip over every stair, and stub his toe on every piece of furniture, when he wasn't wearing a pair of owlish spectacles that consumed half his face. At Kaer Almhult, the other 'recruits' exploited the weakness ruthlessly: knocking off those glasses and laughing as he wildly swung at oblong shapes and colours.
"And I imagine you got your revenge once your eyesight was as sharp as a cat's?" Hermione asked, evidently able to read his memories as well as his thoughts. "Of course," she scoffed immediately, "I am sharing your consciousness, after all."
The witcher exhaled softly. There was no revenge to be had. He had taken well to the mutations, yet more than half the boys who knocked his spectacles died screaming with fire in their veins. A mutant might feel nothing for their deaths, but only a monster would take pleasure in it all.
Hermione abruptly fell silent, allowing the Bear to return to the task at hand.
Harys silently signaled through a convoluted dance of gesticulations that the village neared, and they were to split and each get a handle of the hustle and bustle of the town. He was to drop off east, while Dagnar and Nowak scurried west, and Harys continued forward.
"Can you hear anything?" Hermione asked as Harry turned his back on his companions.
No. And I should be hearing something by now; we're not far at all.
He skirted around plants and bushes, ducked through brambles and low-hanging branches, and popped out at the east end of town. Camouflaged as he was by the flora of the forest, Harry took some time to gather his bearings. The houses in the distance were longer than they were tall, often set upon stilts, and were covered in grass, not thatch, as he had thought before. The sod houses were everywhere, in fact, but for the holdfast Harry stood nearest to: a dome-like structure of treated timber and roofed with the more conventional reed-thatch.
And yet, though the witcher had a perfect view of homes and small, winding streets, he neither heard nor saw another soul in the village.
"Curious," mused Hermione, taking in the empty village as Harry did. Out of the corner of his eye, a scrap of yellow hidden among green caught the witcher's attention, and soon a lobstered gauntlet raised up. The fingers closed in a fist, yet the thumb remained out, proudly pointing upward. "What on earth does that mean?"
It means our friend hasn't seen anyone on his end, either.
Harry returned the gesture, then pointed at the holdfast, signaling to meet. He was immediately rewarded with another thumbs-up, and Harys standing to his full, mountain-like stature. The witcher stood as well, to step over the last bushes and branches that blocked his way into the town proper. The man in yellow and the man in blue met outside the double-doors of the town gathering hall, where they found two men in red scampering their way from the other direction.
"Nothing," wheezed Nowak. "Couldn't see anyone."
Harry grimaced. "That's because there's no one here. Maybe we might not see anybody, but you can't fool a witcher's ears. I can't hear a heartbeat, a voice, even footsteps. Near as I can tell, it's deserted."
"We should tell our commanders," Harys spoke for the first time since they met with a rough, cracked timbre.
"Aye," agreed the Redanians.
Harry nodded. "They already know. The sorceress has seen everything I have. She'll report back to the Baron and Master Dorcan."
"And so I shall," Hermione hummed from somewhere within his skull, and promptly withdrew from it.
"They'll be arriving soon," said the witcher. "For now, we wait."
As soon as the troops arrived, they were given a quick rest from their marching, with Lockhart and the Kaedwenis retreating to the warmth and spaciousness of the holdfast, and the Redanians to the cozy comfort of a recently-abandoned inn. Left out in the cold were the sorceress, her bodyguard, and the witcher they'd both dragged into their adventure.
"It's all so very strange," the sorceress said, more to herself than her companions. "Two men show up one day, several more the next, and now an entire town has been abandoned."
"I vould vager they did not have the... vanderlust, how you say," quipped Viktor, more lightheartedly than Harry thought the dour man capable.
Harry shrugged. "There's a whole bunch of abandoned houses here. I'll search them for clues; you two should head over to the inn and get some rest while you can."
"What? Sit in an inn with boors doing nothing? I think not," sniffed Hermione.
"Have it your way. It'll mostly be you following me around while I follow tracks in mud and shite for several long hours in the sun. Unless you're a tracker, too. Then you can get in on the fun."
The sorceress laughed nervously. "Actually, it just happens I do have a matter to attend to," she said, backing away from the other two slowly. "Viktor isn't an exceptional tracker, but he can certainly help you more than I ever could. Va faill, witcher," she finished, abandoning all pretense and trotting away. Viktor looked between his retreating boss and the witcher, and promptly jogged after the woman. They disappeared around a bend and past a house, and neither returned.
"Ploughing southerners," Harry grumbled to himself, "always chasing after a woman's arse over buckling down and getting work done," though, in truth, had Harry been in Viktor's place, he would have done exactly the same: they'd all agreed by popular vote that it was a fine arse to chase.
Sighing, the witcher turned round and faced the nearest house, one of those sod-covered boathomes so favoured this far north. He walked over to a crude, but functional door, where he reached out a hand to touch the soft grass growing atop the low-hanging and steep gable roof and pulled a few roots out. After rubbing them in his hands for a moment, Harry pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
With the exception of exposed beams and timber, the house wasn't entirely different to the common Redanian household. It was a single room, split into two by a thin plank of wall, by which shelves of dried vegetables and herbs. Opposite the shelves was a kitchen table with a haunch of slightly rancid goat, seasoned and prepared to enter a stew on a stove that had long gone cold.
Squinting at the strange occurrence, Harry looked around for any signs of struggle or rushed behaviour, but only found a pile of shifted dust from the floor nearby the stove. And that could have meant anything: from a person fall, to a sack of grain being shifted from one place to another. The witcher passed round the table, and went into the accompanying bedroom, where an unremarkable nightstand stood next to a bed with mussed sheets.
Whatever happened was sudden enough that they left a meal out in the cold and unprepared, but gave them time enough not to rush out the door. And there was near no chance that whomever lived in that house was attacked, given the lack of any signs of struggle or destruction within the house. It was as if they had just disappeared.
Shaking his head, Harry left that house and moved to the next. Inside, he found more troubling signs: a bath had been drawn, but unused, and was bone cold to the touch. In the next, a dress lay half sewn on a table, pin and threaded needle still stuck in it. All around the village, he found dinners half-made and chores half-done, with nothing to show for it.
Most, if not all tracks trod in a million directions, and most had been washed away by rains that had thundered through whilst the party made their way to Wezyn. Harry came close to giving up the search entirely around noon, were it not for a faint scent he caught in one of the few spacious, well-furnished boathouses.
"Honeysuckle," Harry murmured, identifying the perfume quickly from a little crystal flask of amber liquid.
It was faint, but strong enough that Harry could track it outside the house and north to the other end of the valley, where the mountain range rose once more. He followed his nose, as he did all those weeks ago in Oxenfurt, out into the woods, where sod boathouses and thatched holdfast were little more than a distant memory.
This was the witcher's element: with the blue sky above him and great elms surrounding him like soldiers in a phalanx. Here, at his core, he was a hunter, trapping down the dregs of animal kingdom and dispatching them with clinical grace. But the scent wound through the trees at the edge of the glade and righted itself back on the main road ringing the wooden pikemen of the forest.
The road wound and twisted along with the scent of honeysuckle for a mile until a stronger, more pungent scent assaulted the witcher's nose. Harry's lip curled, experienced with the odor due to his profession: decay. Off and to the northeast, back into the forest, the aroma of perfume mixed with the stench of rotting flesh.
Haltingly, Harry stepped off the main road once more, already three-quarters assured of what laid beyond the trees. The ground below was matted and uneven, as though several people has traveled this way multiple times, and the tracks has been preserved by the gargantuan trees above, blocking out any inclement weather. With every step forward, both the scent of perfume and putrefaction intensified a thousand-fold, and as Harry sidestepped one last formation of those silent warriors, he covered his nose.
At least, they had the decency to bury the villagers, but the courtesy only extended that far, if the massive, dirt-covered pit was anything to go by. And not but a moment later, the bear on Harry's chest jangled softly. The witcher grit his teeth and drew his silver sword:
An entire village slaughtered. The thought of a different village butchered, their skin bubbling, melting, and combining after a conflagration in a dance hall, would not leave the witcher's mind. An entire village slaughtered, and placed haphazardly into an unmarked burial pit. Prime location for a haunting.
The witcher stepped out of the shade of the trees with his silver bastard-sword at the ready, as the bear medallion jitters turned to tremors. Smoke descended over the pit, and swirled into sphere, black and fathomless, until it exploded outward into the shape of a child.
Harry recognised it immediately, and lowered his sword. "A night spirit? This early in the day?"
Unlike nightwraiths, night spirits were one of the few spectres Harry, and many other witchers, refused to hunt: the were the shades of children who died suddenly, but had such a powerful connection to the world that they remained. Never harmful, and almost always of sweet disposition, night spirits deserved pity and understanding, not hate and silver.
This one was likely a little girl, if the long strands of wispy black smoke around her head were sufficient to judge her by. She giggled softly and waved, confirming the witcher's suspicions.
"Now what shall I call you?"
The shadow-girl pointed to the ground by his feet, just left of the upturned soil of the mass grave. There, in the dirt, etchings were scraped from the ether itself, forming slowly into an S. Harry watched with interest as the next letters were carved in: a Y, an L, so on and so forth. When the writing finished, the witcher looked back to the girl and smiled:
"Hello, Sylvie," he greeted quietly, respectfully, and the girl waved back.
Night spirits were sweet, but they were also shy: a night spirit would rarely appear to a passing traveler without reason. "Have you something to show me?" Harry crouched low to question the little spectre. Another giggle and nod was his answer. "Show me the way, then, little one."
The spirit scampered over to the witcher and took one gloved hand in her own wispy one. It was surprisingly solid and human to the touch.
Then, she moved forward, leading Harry away from the grave of the lost and damned. The pit soon faded from memory, and the spirit took the young Bear deeper into the woods and closer to the looming mountain range.
Along they ran, up a beaten path cut into the mountainside, and to the mouth of a cave. Harry squinted at the darkness, and saw a long-necked passage that curved toward an interior antechamber he couldn't quite see into. The night shade pointed a small digit into the cavern and promptly disappeared into a puff of black smoke. His medallion no longer vibrated, but Harry could hear hurried movement within the cave, backed by wheezing breaths.
Slowly the witcher sheathed his silver blade, and moved the same hand a few inches over to rest on haft of his faithful Zerrikanian sabre. He half-crouched, half-stood, and stepped forward defensively, one arm covering easy access to vital organs, and a slow, sneaking pace at the feet. So, Harry traversed the neck, stumbled into the chamber, and with it, into heaven.
Gold. Silver. Jewels. All the treasure a man could want hoarded up in a cave as though a dragon were to roost there. Treasure chests of opal, sapphire, lapis lazuli and other precious stones mingled with sackfuls of crowns, tables of orens and fine gold jewelery. And that did not even include the bed of diamonds that damn near touched the ceiling of the cave.
"Halt! Who goes there!?" someone shouted. And there was the problem: in the centre of those riches was one man dressed in finery that might not have been out of place in Toussaint. "I asked: who goes there!?" A loaded crossbow met Harry from fifteen paces away.
"Witcher Harry," he replied, and tightened his group round the sword hilt.
But, instead, a smile appeared from under moustachioed lips and relief flashed across his face. "A witcher!? By the gods, our prayers have been answered! Apologies, master, your eyes left me afear'd, the way they glow and such."
"Prayers? Prayers for what?"
"For what? For what!? Did ye' not see the ploughin' army of the dead after us!?"
"I haven't seen an army of the dead," said Harry, crossing his arms. "What I did see, was a mass grave, laid over only days ago."
The news was met with a sigh, as the man before him dropped the crossbow with a frightful clang and collapsed on a silver-forged throne with an air of bone-shaking weariness:
"Aye," he spat, "his Archmaginificency's doing."
"Who?"
"The sorcerer. 'Come along, Rhaeler, you'll be rich, you'll have more gold than you can fathom, you'll drown in meat and mead and muff' he said. And I, like a bloody fool, agreed."
"It's not an every day thing, capturing a djinn. I would have been tempted, too," the Witcher mused honestly, looking wistfully at a plate of black pearls atop a solid gold dinner table.
Rhaeler looked up sharply. "You know of the spirit?"
"I do. As does a contingent of sorcerers, sorceresses, as well as a solid chunk of the Redanian and Kaedweni aristocracy, I'd wager."
"Fine. Whatever," grumbled the man. "You're ploughing welcome to the gold. Take what you like, and don't be shy: it's blood money and I want no part of it."
"Blood money. You mean the grave."
"Of course I mean the grave, have you seen another round here? Our wonderful leader asked that djinn to give us great riches and take it to a place where no one would look for us. Somehow, I don't think he meant for the spirit to land us in the middle of an occupied town, no matter how far from 'polite civilisation'."
"So what happened then?"
"We landed here, and the devil himself couldn't muck things up worse than we did. My stomach turns even thinking of it; you'd best ask the great magician yourself."
"And where is he?"
"Up the slopes, cowering where he thinks the spirits can't find him."
"Well, Rhaeler, you ought to take me to him," said the Witcher, with an air of finality. There was no attempt at resistance from Rhaeler; he exhaled tiredly, and nodded:
"Aye, s'pose I should. Someone should answer for this, and if not us, then who?"
Who indeed, the witcher wondered.
The sorcerer was handsome, or, at least, he was handsome once. He sat cross-legged by a cliff in dirty robes, rocking back and forth with epileptic fervour, barely viewing the world through half-lidded cerulean eyes that had long since seen sleep. Rhaeler had led Harry to this promontory, and the witcher immediately found reason to be wary: the stone spoke to him as he took his first step.
The ground here is unstable, Harry thought as they made their way to the sitting man, it could give way any minute. Best to trad carefully.
Rhaeler stopped only feet away from the unwashed man, and Harry stopped only inches behind Rhaeler. Together, they gazed out on the scenery, Wezyn and surrounding environs, for a long while.
"You've brought someone," the sitting man said at length.
"A witcher."
The sorcerer laughed bitterly. "This is a jest, is it not? It's cruel, even for you."
"It's not a jest," Harry interrupted, and the sorcerer turned around wiping the fringe of his curly blond hair away so he could get a better look at the witcher. Rhaeler slowly backed away, so the two oddities could have their own, private conversation.
"Ha. So it's not. And you are?" he asked, apparently seeking a name.
"A witcher," Harry repeated Rhaeler's words, uninterested in giving the mage anything beyond his title and even less enthused with the prospect of learning the other man's name.
"I see. Well, witcher, I am a sorcerer. You needn't worry about my name, either; neither you nor your friends that have come to haul me away would recognise me even if I gave it to you," he said, and pointed back down to the village, where a few specks that could be construed as people milled about the town square.
Harry nodded. "I doubt that matters much. They've come looking for a thief, and you've a lot to answer for."
"So I do. A dead schoolmaster and a whole village that both Redania and Kaedwen claim as theirs. I suspect they'll squabble over the right to hang or behead me if Dumbledore doesn't have my guts for garters first. I don't want to run."
"Good, then let's—"
"—and I won't surrender until you do something for me, Witcher."
Harry sighed. "Of course there's a catch."
"There's always a catch."
"And what's yours?"
"You're a witcher, you must already sense the darkness in this place. It's only been days since the act, but the valley seems saturated in it," the sorcerer mused.
"I've seen the grave, and the empty houses. And you're responsible. You've admitted as much."
"I have, but you must believe me when I say I did not intend for this to happen," he entreated; the witcher did not believe him, but nodded along anyway. "Yes, I stole the bloody lamp from that old fool Fudge."
"Do you still have it?" Harry asked.
"The original lamp, no. We discarded it because there was a tracking spell on it, but..." he reached into his robes and pulled out a small, rune-engraved flask with a swirling grey substance beating against the walls, "I do still have the djinn we took from the Chancellor."
"So, you took the djinn from the Chancellor. With your partner, yes?"
"Clever," said the sorcerer. "But my partner is away and safe right now, and I've no intention of giving them up, for I love them as I love my own sibling. But, as I was saying, we took the lamp from Fudge."
"He didn't give it to you?"
"Why would he give it to us?" came the stone-faced response.
"Why would he be in his office when you decided to free the djinn for the first time?"
"Bad luck?"
The witcher's eyes flashed. "There's no need to cover for a dead man. He won't thank you for it."
"There also appears to be no reason to lie to you, since you've already pieced just about everything together. Fine, the three wishes were originally to be split among us: one for me, one for my partner, and one for Fudge. But Fudge did not survive our first encounter then, and my partner and I rethought our wishes. The first almost went according to plan: we wished for a king's ransom hidden in a safe place only we could find."
"And djinn leaves it here," said Harry.
The sorcerer laughed and threw his arms wide out over the valley. "And the djinn left it here. Among mountain folk who know this valley far better than I ever could. Can you blame me for being paranoid? I thought every day that I would return to that cave and find nothing but a few scraps of gold and maybe a necklace left. Even as more of the brigands and cutthroats I hired made their way into the mountains, I felt less and less secure. Especially since my partner was not among us."
Harry's eyes flashed with understanding: the second thief was still in the wind, so he had not been the second man who arrived in town on the first day. "And because of that, you had them killed?" Harry asked, ignoring that detail for now.
"No. Not exactly," said the sorcerer. "I asked the Djinn to keep our treasure safe from the villagers. It apparently thought the best way to preserve our treasure was to kill everyone living in the town. After all, a dead person has no use for coin. It wasn't painful, of course. They just fell to the ground, in the middle of dinners, baths... you name it. Like falling asleep."
Explains why there were no signs of a fight in any of the houses, Harry thought.
"We were afraid that the dead bodies would attract corpse-eaters and other such monsters to the valley, if we just left them to rot. So, Havard and his boys buried them deep while I was away for a few hours. And that was that... until nightfall."
"Heard a bit about it from Rhaeler: some sort of spectral army?"
"Yes. Every night, they rise from the grave and comb the valley like a bloody unit of dragoons, killing anything living. We've been scurrying further up the mountains away from where they roam, yet they've nearly killed us all. Rhaeler and I are the only ones left."
The witcher frowned. He and the other scouts had led everyone into a town that would be overrun with spectres come nightfall, and no-one save himself and possibly Hermione could hold the vengeful dead off. He only had a few hours of light left, and the need to get back to Wezyn intensified with every passing minute.
"Why did you not just leave the valley?"
"As I said," the sorcerer reiterated, "my friend was not among us, and I had no way of contacting him from here. He was to come later, once all the furor over the theft died down. I could not just leave the valley and allow him to walk into an early grave when he finally made it here." Harry couldn't argue with that logic:
"And what do you want me to do?" he asked.
"Take as much of the gold as you please, take it all, if you'd like: it'll be my payment for this contract. You'll put those souls to rest, make sure they've gone on to wherever we go... then, I'll give myself up and return the djinn. I don't trust the thing any further than I can throw it; it's an instrument of violence, not good fortune."
"And if I just tell the lot where you are?"
"I have enough traps set about the mountain that Francesca Findabair herself would need the better part of a day to crack them all. And by then, the spectres will have butchered three-quarters of your men and I'll have taken my chances to escape by portal. And if you decide to attack yourself, you'd best hope to have dimeritium."
Harry nodded. "Fine. I'm taking my gold in advance, however."
"Ah, yes. Business is business, of course. Go ahead. As I said, you're welcome to how much you want."
The witcher wasted not another moment, and turned away. As he passed Rhaeler, he asked if the moustachioed man would come with him or stay until the spirits had been put to rest:
"I think I'll stay," said the mercenary. "I'm not turning myself until that fool does, as well."
Again, Harry nodded. "Suit yourself," he said, returning the way he came.
Half an hour later, after a stop by the cave of gold to collect sufficient payment, Harry returned and the Redanians were still congregated in the inn:
"Baron," he called out to their commander, who sat drinking an old bottle of mead by the fire. "I need you to come with me."
In a flash, the other man stood, ready to follow. It almost brought a smile to Harry's face, that he had earned the respect of the Redanian troop so easily; it was rare that he won anyone's favour that quickly. They walked outside together, toward the holdfast where the Kaedweni troop stayed:
"What's this about, Witcher?" asked Baron von Steuen curiously.
"It'll be easier to tell everyone at once. Do you happen to know where the mages are?"
"Lady Hermione and Master Gilderoy, you mean? I'd imagine that Master Gilderoy stayed with yellow-bellies, because he came with them. Lady Hermione, on the other hand, I've not seen in hours. Though, she's a canny one, that lass: she could come and go, and few would notice."
"We need to find them as well, the news concerns us all."
"Aye, well I'd expect to find a fair few of them at the holdfast."
And the Baron's prediction proved true, for when they knocked on the double doors of the the holdfast, a soldier opened the door, and let the two men into the antechamber, where Dorcan sat by his troops around another fire, and stared contemplatively into the flames, while the two mages stood off to the side, guarded by Viktor, engaged in heated discussion.
"Get Lady Hermione and Master Gilderoy, if you please, Baron; I'll flag down Master Dorcan," said Harry, gesturing in the direction of the two mages.
"By your leave, Witcher," came the Baron's genial response, and the well-dressed commander scarpered off to Viktor, Hermione, and Lockhart. Harry watched him speak to Viktor for a short moment, before remembering he had his own task to complete. So the witcher moved toward the center of the antechamber and took a seat next to the Kaedweni commander.
"Witcher," the man said without looking away from the fire, "you have news?"
"I do."
"And the news is sensitive?" he asked, eyeing the soldiers who sat around them, all eager to hear what the witcher had uncovered.
"Mhm."
"Fine. There's a comfortable home by the edge of town I spied you blundering around in a few hours ago. It's the only one I've seen with more than one floor; we should speak there."
"As you wish."
"Good. I'll be along presently with Lockhart. You take the elf and the Redanian and get out."
Harry did exactly that, gathering the ones the Kaedweni had allowed him and leaving the makeshift barracks. The foursome arrived at the house Harry had found the perfume in and waited in the semi-spacious sitting room for Master Dorcan and Lockhart. And though the witcher looked on nervously at the slowly dipping sun, they did not have to wait very long, for as gruff and unpleasant as Master Dorcan might be, he was a man of his word.
"So, Witcher, what's this about?" he asked, electing to stand when offered a seat in one of the chairs around a heating stove.
"I found out what happened to the original inhabitants of the village," said Harry. "And I've found one of our two thieves, as well as an accomplice."
Hermione raised a delicate eyebrow, and leaned forward, looking the same and yet somehow completely different. "Who is he?" she asked.
"I don't know; he claimed none of you would recognise him even if you saw him."
Hermione reclined back against the chair, looking unconvinced, and Harry spotted what had changed: For as long as he'd known her, Hermione wasn't one to wear particularly fancy necklaces round her neck, which made it all the more surprising that she had chosen today to wear a delicate, leather choker, with fat oval of black opal dangling as its centrepiece.
It was a nice piece of jewelry, but it didn't really suit her, in Harry's opinion.
"Then, why are we sitting here? Better yet, why do you not have him already?" she interrogated, and Harry forgot about the choker for the time being.
"I'm not properly equipped to take on a sorcerer at the moment, Lady Granger," Harry said. "And our quarry's scattered magical traps and wards like caltrops around his location. Said Francesca Findabair herself would need the better part of the day to reach him."
Lockhart snorted. "If it would take the Daisy a full day, we wouldn't punch through his barriers in three or even four."
"And by then," continued Harry, "he could escape a hundred different ways."
"He must have spoken to you for a reason, otherwise he'd have left the moment he smelled danger," said Hermione, and the others nodded their agreement.
"That's where the original villagers come into play," Harry said, and went on to tell the assembled group what the sorcerer had told him: how the djinn had played him for a fool with every wish he uttered, how now the dead rose with every sunset, marauding their way up and down the valley, and how he wouldn't surrender himself until the restless spirits were given peace.
"I see," said the Baron. "So we're to push back the way we came and set up camp there?"
"Until I can put the spirits to rest, at least. Steel and sorcerer's magic matters little against the dead, so I'll stay behind. But the rest of you will need to leave the valley until I tell you otherwise," said Harry in a tone that brooked no argument.
Of course, Hermione appeared to live for vexing Harry. Even now, not but two hours before the sun set, the sorceress assured Harry in no uncertain terms that she'd be of more use in the valley than cowering in a cozy tent.
"I don't doubt your competence," entreated Harry, following the sorceress as she stormed away, "what I doubt is your training. We're bred to solve these problems; you aren't."
"Witcher," argued Hermione without slowing, "it's not a single wraith, or a scant few. There were close to thirty or forty people who lived in this town! If all, or even half, of them have turned into spectres, even a witcher doesn't stand a chance without help."
Harry didn't like her logic, mostly because he didn't have an adequate counterpoint to it. "If I manage the fight," he said. "If I'm careful..."
"Do shut up," the elf stopped long enough to fling, and then continued her single-minded march.
Harry sighed, part-annoyed and part-impressed at the incomprehensible stubbornness of the woman. "Where are you going?" he asked wearily.
"To set up magical protection around the town," she spat, "in case you fail at what you were bred to do."
Harry grunted in frustration, and turned to Viktor, who had followed behind: "Can't you do something about this?" he asked. The southerner merely shrugged and made no attempt to leave the valley.
Fortunately, Lockhart was much easier to convince; the great fool flashed a blindingly white smile and graciously thanked the witcher for his sacrifice, as if he was volunteering to die rather than lift a curse on the already dead. The Baron and Dorcan were soldiers, and as such, had little experience with the supernatural; still, they understood the stakes and had their men beat feet back to higher ground for the long night ahead.
Just before sending Sleipnir with them, Harry fished out one of the many trusty bestiaries he kept with him, and tucked it into a small pouch attached to his sword belt. He handed the reigns off to the Baron, and made his way out past the edge of town, where Hermione was hard at work mouthing incomprehensible spells as well as ignoring him. Fortunately, that worked well enough for Harry, who made his way back to the forest and the grave within.
"Sylvie?" he called out to no-one when back on the disturbed earth. Again the wisp formed, and from it emerged Sylvie, dancing and lively as she ever was. "Sylvie," he crouched down to her level. "The other people who are here—" he pointed to the grave, "—Can you show them to me? Tell me what they look like?"
The little spirit shook her head.
"You can't tell me? Why not?" asked Harry, who immediately received his response as a little finger jabbed upward into the sky. "What? The sky?" A nod. "What about the sky?" The girl stamped her feet and pointed more vigorously at the setting sun. "Oh, the sun. Nightfall, then?" Another nod. "Ah, I did suspect that, given that they only attack during the night, but one can never be too careful."
Nightwraiths, then. I'll need to burn the remains of the victims and something of value to them before night falls, and I haven't much time.
"Listen, Sylvie. Once night comes, I want you to run away, do you understand me?" Harry asked, and Sylvie made a little feminine sound of understanding. "Go away from the valley and stay there until an hour past dawn. I promise, when morning comes, I'll play with you all day."
"Who are you talking to?" another voice broke through Harry and Sylvie's one-sided conversation. Harry stood, and glanced over his shoulder: Hermione stood some twenty paces behind Harry, while Sylvie gasped and hid herself behind the witcher's trouser leg. She immediately dispersed into smoke and cleared away from the copse.
"No one important," replied Harry, running a hand through sweaty raven hair. "I was just outsourcing a bit of help."
"Outsourcing," Hermione deadpanned, looking wholly unconvinced.
"I've found that 'the army of the dead' are probably nightwraiths, which is a fairly good deal, as mass hauntings go."
"How so?"
"It doesn't take much to put a nightwraith's spirit to rest. All you need is something valuable of theirs, and burn it at the same time as the body. This will usually lure them in close enough that we can defeat them with silver. The real question isn't difficulty, it's a question of time."
Hermione nodded in agreement. "I've no idea how we're meant to find the most valued possessions of every person in an entire community that we never met within an hour or two before the sun sets."
"As well as dig up the bodies to burn them."
The sorceress glowered deeply at a doorframe behind Harry for a long moment, and suddenly, she smiled, in that way only Hermione Granger could when solving a particularly difficult problem. "I have an idea," she said.
That idea turned out to be somewhat of a eureka moment: Terrifying, but brilliant. And so caught in its beauty and simplicity, Harry forgot about the shovel in his hand and stared at the rising conflagration with an expression that lay somewhere between slack-jawed wonderment and supreme irritation. Beside him, even Viktor looked impressed at the sheer display of magical output.
"So this was your idea," Harry deadpanned as the sorceress threw another fiery meteor at a different house.
"Mhm," agreed Hermione, smiling as the boathouse burst into flames and eventually settled into a pile of steaming grey ash. "It burns everything, good or bad. The villagers are dead, so I'm sure they won't mind."
"You know I'm supposed to say a few words about the dead before you go around crashing fireballs into houses."
"Well," shrugged Hermione uncaringly, "you'd best speak quickly then."
"Erm... To the men and women of Wezyn, frontiersmen and explorers the lot, who were taken before their time... Well, you're gone, but you're... Erm... You're not forgotten."
Harry cringed at his own words, as insincere as they were. When he finally dared to crack open an eye, he spied Hermione failing to hide her amusement at his failed eulogy:
"I suppose we'll have to hope that was good enough for them," she said, summoning more monstrous lances of fire from the darkening sky. They struck down with fury and consumed the village once known as Wezyn in a sphere of brilliant yellows and raging reds. "That should take care of that," she said, clapping her hands free of some nonexistent dust. "Where to next?"
"Back to the grave. We have to dig it up and do the same as you did to the town," Harry said, holding up the shovel.
The look he got in response was equal parts disdain and pity. "Master Witcher, I am a sorceress. Which means I can do magic. What on earth do you need a shovel for?" she said sardonically, and stalked off in the general direction of the forest, without waiting for either the witcher or the bodyguard. Harry, by virtue of paying attention, was able to close the gap between himself and Hermione, but Viktor, who was still enthralled with her overglorified light-show, only noticed they'd gone when they were halfway to the forest:
"Very good!" he shouted loudly, louder than Harry had imagined the sullen man could speak. "I vill just vait here then!"
"He seems pleased," said Harry.
"He can wait five minutes. Because it'll only take that long with magic."
"If you're sure."
"I'm sure."
When Hermione flexed her magical muscle at the grave, and lifted the loamy earth of the grave, no less than ten stiff, semi-decayed corpses came tumbling out from the mountain of dirt and crashed atop the other stiffs with a series sickening crunches. This time, Hermione cringed, and Harry gave her his own pitying look:
"This is why I default to the shovel, Madame Sorceress."
"Shove it."
Harry hid his smile, outstretched an arm, and made a complicated series of wiggles with his fingers until a strong jet of fire seemingly spewed from his hands and onto the broken bodies. "However you found yourselves in this place, know you are remembered, and take some solace in that."
"What do we do after this?" Hermione asked once Harry stepped away from the makeshift crematorium.
"Dusk isn't a long ways off, and we still need to prepare," said the witcher, eyeing the skyline through the trees. "Tell me, Sorceress, do they give you even a modicum of instruction with blades at Aretuza?"
Hermione arched a brow. "Again, Witcher, we are capable of magic. I can throw down fireballs, electrocute you, send a bird through your forehead... we never had need for such brutish instruments as a sword."
"So, if I were to give you one, you wouldn't be able to use it?"
"I could wave it like an overgrown fork," Hermione said as they began the long trek back to the destroyed town.
"Good," said Harry, reaching beneath the leg-slit in the kaftan of his bear school armour, and withdrawing a silver-forged, bone-handled, Ofieri dagger he'd picked up in Gors Velen. "If you can use a fork, you can use a knife."
"Wonderful, I'll hand it off to Viktor," said Hermione, accepting the dagger like an unwanted child. "Anything else that I can't use that you want to give me?"
"Moon Dust bombs," Harry said, only to receive a blank stare. "Nightwraiths are incorporeal. If you can't lure them into a Yrden trap, a moon dust bomb contains enough silver fragments to explode over the spectre, and will make them material long enough for you to get in the killing stroke. I've five of them."
"Again, all useless to me," said the sorceress. "I can make a trap stronger than your Yrden, so your bombs will better serve Viktor than they will me. As will this dagger: he can't very well fight wraiths with a steel longsword, can he?"
"True, but I'd rather he be out of the valley. You're already a liability, and you're a sorceress, think of how much worse it is for a person who has no power whatsoever beyond how good a sword-hand he has."
Hermione placed her hands on her hips, which was significantly less intimidating when she did it while still walking. "Your objection has been noted," she said dismissively. "I shall bring it up with Viktor when we return to camp, but whether he stays or goes is his decision."
Upon return to the camp, Hermione gave Viktor the choice to stay or leave, and, predictably, he choose to stay. The sorceress smiled smugly at Harry, who merely shook his head: Viktor didn't know what what he was getting into, and Hermione was treating a haunting as though it was a game. But who was he to turn away help? And even if he really wanted to, he very much doubted that he'd be able to convince either to leave with anything less than force.
So it was with a shrug that he returned to his preparations. The trio gauged the time, and happily observed there was still an hour before the sun dipped below the horizon. And another hour to dusk meant another hour to fully-prepare. This manifested itself in different ways among the three: Hermione, as she was wont to do before a deadline, obsessively and nervously checked and re-checked her traps and protective spells around the burned village; Viktor practiced with his newly gifted dagger, in a stance not entirely dissimilar to Zerrikanian warrior women who used similar knives; and Harry meditated on his knees with a selection of potions and blade oils laid out before him.
The witcher found his whetstone, a metal brick sintered from meteorite ore and ceramics, and coated it with a generous amount of his spectre oil. Drawing his silver longsword from its grey-fur-and-green-leather scabbard, Harry set about sharpening it with smooth strokes of the blade's edge to the block, admiring the way the carved bear pommel glittered in the late evening sun. It was easy to get lost in the routine, but Harry could not help but keep one eye on the horizon, and the sun as it dipped lower and lower until partially obscured by several mountain peaks.
Once finally convinced that her spells and protective enchantments wouldn't fail, Hermione wandered over to the Witcher, watching with academic interest as he finished his own task. And Viktor, sensing that time was now short, also returned to the Witcher and the sorceress to wait out the last golden rays of sunshine, before the long night ahead.
They watched the sunset like romantics on a first date, marveling as the sky turned from pale yellow, to brilliant gold, to burnt orange. When the last bits of bronze were replaced by a deep, dark blue, a little rattling disturbed the shared reverie. Harry, on account of having faster reflexes than the others, was the first to take his eyes off the sky, instead letting them fall down to his chest where his medallion lay. It was not shaking, jangling, tinkling, or rattling in any way.
Instead, the disturbance had come from Hermione, and the mysterious black opal that lay between her collarbones. The oval chunk of precious stone lifted off her milk-glass skin and rose a few inches into the air. There it hovered for a long moment, pointing forward, and then it swiftly moved from side-to-side until it came to rest in the direction of a mountain with a ridge overlooking the town. The ridge, Harry remembered, where he met the penitent thieves. But while Harry and Viktor eyed the suddenly-animated rock with varying degrees of confusion from the witcher and distrust from the bodyguard, Hermione observed the floating stone with academic interest and, irritatingly to the witcher, even smirked at it:
"Curious," she said, with that equally curious smile.
"What's all that about, then?" Harry asked.
Hermione took a moment to reply, still transfixed by the stone and the mountain at which it pointed. "Nothing of special importance," she said. "Just a little spell I've been working on."
"Is it of any use to us right now?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Of course," sighed Harry, but then a second piece of neckwear was possessed, and made a racket much louder than the the soft clinking of Hermione's choker. So, this time, Hermione let her amber eyes fall on the medallion resting over the coarse leatherwork of Harry's chest-armour:
"Your medallion," she pointed out quietly. Harry could already feel the first stirring of sorrow in the valley, choking the life from the trees around that grave hidden in the forest copse, and returned his silver meteorite sword back to its scabbard.
"They'll be coming soon. If you've no experience with spirits, now would be the time to steel your resolve," the witcher said, withdrew several potion vials from the pouch, and stood, swiftly reattaching his silver sword to the open ring on his sword-belt.
He knew the stories; he'd heard them long ago as a lad in the dark dungeons of Kaer Almhult, when the older witchers would regale the recruits with stories of their own hunts. Ragnar, a man the size of one of the many mountains surrounding Harry now, loved to talk of nightwraiths, of beautiful women who haunted barrowfields and forest meadows, ready to lynch the unwary merchant with his own entrails. So for years, Harry had thought nightwraiths these translucent nymphs with gryffin-like temper, skin that looked as soft as silk, and voice like a wealthy trobairitz.
When he'd encountered his first nightwraith, a sad young woman murdered the night before her marriage, Harry swore to relieve Ragnar of his sword-hand for his tall tales. Harry, not much more than a boy then, had not been prepared for a shriveled, jawless excuse for a maid in a mourning dress that swiped at everything passerby with erynia-like claws.
And no matter how much preparation it took, no one could look on, unsurprised, as a horde of wraiths melted out from the forest, and glided up the long path to the burnt town. Harry was intimately familiar with the melted-wax sculpture look of the drifting spectral monstrosities, but his companions most decidedly were not:
"Dana Méadbh!" Hermione exlaimed softly. "Are those truly nightwraiths?"
"Yes," Harry said, tapping the bottom of his sword's scabbard upward to aid with drawing the blade from his back.
"Perhaps I was hasty dismissing the dagger," replied the elf with a rueful little grin.
"It must be terrible to be a vitcher," said Viktor, grasping the dagger a bit tighter, despite Hermione's earlier quip.
"Aye, Viktor, it's a dog's life," the witcher said, and downed a quick dose of blizzard, reveling in the slimy texture, noxious smell, and vomit-inducing taste. "Madame Sorceress, if you'd be so kind as to place a barrier between us and them?"
Waving an arm at the ground below the trio, Hermione spoke, "Aen'drean aenye, en'ca deith, vorsaeke'llan me neén, voe'rle holl morvudd!"
Fire swirled from the edges of a runic symbol that etched itself into the ground, and spewed upward to blot out the world beyond ten feet. A dome of flame surrounded them, and just as quickly receded, to leave a sparking orange shield not unlike a more powerful version of the quen sign most witchers were taught.
"Well done," Harry praised.
"Make it quick," Hermione replied rigidly, ever the one to ignore a compliment. "I can't hold this forever."
She didn't have to worry, because the wraiths more than made it clear they wanted this to end quickly, as well. Upon sighting the flames and barrier surrounding the trio, they picked up pace and the peaceful glide turned into searing speed.
"They'll not be able to harm us while we're inside the barrier, but wraiths aren't stupid: they'll adapt," Harry said to Viktor, whose face had paled progressively since the jawless faces and dead eyes of the wraiths started bearing down on the trio:
"Vat shall ve do then, Vitcher?" he asked quietly, steeling himself for what was to come, but the mettle seemed to seep out of his body when a thunderous boom filled the world, and Hermione cried out at the pressure that crashed round her barrier. The spectres had made their charge and started their assault with a coordinated and continuous rush against the barrier in waves.
Harry counted the wraiths, numbering around fifteen, and was delighted to see that only a handful of them were true nightwraiths, while the rest were standard spectres. While not as dangerous as a nightwraith, they carried blades with steel as dark as midnight, which, even in the most untrained of farm-hands, could still disembowel a seasoned swordsman.
On a second look at the bodyguard's limp stance and wan look, the witcher grit his teeth. This was why he hadn't wanted Hermione or Viktor around: neither were trained for this sort of engagement, and while Hermione was holding her own, she had the weapon of the gods in magic; Viktor had no such tool in his belt, and was slowly realising that his immense skill with the sword meant little in the face of the unnatural. He'd have to rebuild the bodyguard's confidence, to show him that he could be of use in this situation:
"For now, stay back, and watch me," Harry ordered the man, grabbed one of the moon dust bombs he'd prepared, and walked calmly to the edge of the barrier, wincing at the wails of women and the shouts of men. With another complicated twist of the fingers, Harry set down the sign of Yrden in a circle around him, forcing two of the nightwraiths to turn corporeal, and slowing three more.
He exhaled softly, inhaled, and jumped out of the safety of the barrier. Viktor gasped and Hermione shouted curses at him to return to within the dome, but any protests died on their lips when they saw the witcher dance. He leapt out of the shield and immediately ran sharp silver through a wraith, in a way that would have unseamed a man from naval to chest. There was a howl of pain, and the skinny thing disappeared into an ether of green fog, a fog that tasted remarkably of blood and death. The taste made the witcher smile.
Here, there was no need to hide. Here was chaos, and misery, and rage, and the thrill of a hundred deaths to die. Here was home to the witcher: a whirlwind of silver; a storm of parries, pirouettes, and blocks; and the single stroke that would end it all. In the fray, there was nothing to fear: no witcher ever earned the luxury of dying in his bed, so every win, every contract was more stolen time from the gods.
A sword bore hotly down toward the witcher's head, but with savage grace, he parried the blade and used the positioning of his own sabre to turn the spectre's blade to the side, taking the edge from it's strike. Once properly parried, Harry cut upward and diagonally, from right arm to left shoulder.
A scant few seconds stolen from Melitele.
That strike led to a downward cut at the encroaching final wraith. Another minute stolen from the Lionhead Spider.
Just as Harry faced down two of the nightwraiths, with the other dozen spectres slowly converging, the sign of Yrden began to fade away. They became faster now, and two wraiths became six, lunging for the head of the witcher who had just sent three of their own off to eternal rest. Harry, ever the pragmatist, backed away into the safety of Hermione's barrier, and regrouped. He weighed his options as a gnarled, clawed hand swiped at and bounced off the sorceress's shield, debating whether to repeat the sign of Yrden, or throw one of his moon dust bombs into the coterie and attack them from within safety.
"Hermione," shouted Harry over the spectral wails, "how long can you hold this shield for?"
"What!?" Hermione shouted back, unable to hear the witcher over the cacophony.
"I asked, 'How long can you hold this shield for?'!"
"Not long!" she exclaimed, having heard him this time. "Maybe another minute if this assault keeps up! Once the barrier breaks, I'll have to use conventional magic!"
And just as Harry decided to throw the Moon Dust bomb, to make full use of the barrier before Hermione lost control of it completely, a small, spherical object went whizzing past the witcher's face. Harry watched in slow motion as the object sailed past the red-orange edges of Hermione's spell and into the second line of wraiths. And in a great turn of fortune, the sphere broke against one of the corporeal wraiths and exploded out all over its companions, until a fine snow of silver rained down over them, leaving them solid, slowed, and unable to access their own magic abilities.
"There," said Viktor to Hermione, flexing the fingers that had thrown the bomb, "I have bought you time." Hermione smiled tiredly as the bodyguard recovered his gumption and lined up next to the witcher, steel sword in one hand, silver knife in the other.
Harry nodded to the sellsword. "Good to see you feeling like yourself again."
"Vat vould you have me do?"
"We target the wraiths with swords first; the blades may look dangerous but they're easier to kill," said Harry, "the women in rags, you leave to me." At that, Viktor nodded and waited for the witcher to make the first move.
Harry crept over to the edge of the barrier, resisting the primal urge to set down another Yrden trap, for fear of slowing Viktor along with the spectres. Still, if he feared that the southron swordsman would be a liability, it was soon proven unfounded. While he did not synergise with Viktor like he had Ron, the Wolf he'd met a few days out from Cintra, they still made a whirlwind of blades the moment they stepped out from the safety of Hermione's shield.
They felled one, two, three wraiths in a deadly dance of steel, and stole more seconds from the Eternal Fire. But it soon became clear that they were slowly being driven away from each other. In a fight, Harry and another witcher knew to stay close to each other by instinct alone, it was not so with Viktor, who had put a distance of about eight feet between himself and the witcher.
Harry grunted in annoyance and tried to shift back toward Viktor, but a quick jangle of his medallion told him the space had already been filled by three wraiths waving their blackened swords. With a graceful pirouette, Harry avoided an unskilled sword blow from one of the lantern-holding wraiths, as well as the sharp jab of the claw of a nightwraith, and danced out of the circle the spirits had been trying to enclose him within.
Viktor wasn't so lucky: he was slow being consumed by his own group of wraiths, unable to make use of the dagger Harry had given him. Harry dodged another incoming strike, and rolled back into the confines of the shield:
"Hermione! The Etolian!"
The elf did not need to be told again; she screwed her eyes shut and her arms shook under the tremendous strain of those words of power: "Aedd, aedd deith. Aedd deith am fhean glândeal. Aedd deith am f'heail invaerne aen marwen."
There was a clap of thunder, and a burst of colour and light that near blinded the witcher with his enhanced sight, leaving him seeing fading stars and pyrotechnics like he had in Toussaint on Belleteyn night several years earlier. When his vision returned to him, the shield Hermione had painstakingly erected was gone, she was on her knees, and Viktor had scrambled back to relative safety from the wraiths, all of whom appeared to be momentarily cowed by the woman's display of raw power. I didn't know she could do that, Harry thought to himself.
"Sorceress," he then asked urgently. "Are you still able to fight?"
"I'm fine," Hermione answered testily, though her breathing was ragged. "It's fine, really. There's nothing that stings more at the pride than doing little else but look pretty while the men think themselves gallant for waving their steel cocks at shadows."
The witcher laughed at her predictably curmudgeonly reply. "They're silver, Madame Sorceress," he retorted quickly, and scurried away to where Viktor sat dazed, and pulled him up before the wraiths attacked again, and they were moving again, crossing the threshold of the burned homes they had lived in not but a week earlier.
"A d'yaebl aép arse. That tongue of yours will get you into trouble one day, Witcher," sneered Hermione from behind the two men.
"So they say. But you'd best take your frustrations out on the 'shadows', rather than me," he said over his shoulder to the sorceress, and then spoke to the sellsword. "This time, don't get separated from me; two swords together are always better than one."
His pep talk was cut short by a blood-curdling, inhuman cry from one of the nightwraiths. They were down to less than a third their number, thanks to the partially to the swordsmen, and mostly to Hermione's exploding shield, and it seemed their companions now understood that their fallen friends were not going to return. On one hand, Harry was relieved; the lack of returning wraiths meant that Hermione's scorched earth policy of reducing the village to ash had managed to work. On the other, this meant that the surviving dead would be even more vicious than they had been before.
The screams intensified as the other nightwraiths took on the first's cause. The witcher winced, not for the first time tonight ruing his enhanced senses. But, as ever, his salvation came in the form of Hermione, and an angrily thrown comet of fire that barreled toward the screaming banshees. Wraiths were quick, but none were quick enough to dive out of the way of a bolt like that, so the conflagration crashed and splashed against the group and the howls of rage quickly morphed into shrieks of pain.
All the while, Hermione wore a serene little smile, as if she had used magic to heat her dinner rather than burn a score of furious ghosts. Harry, too, felt a smile pulling at his unwilling lips when he saw her expression.
And, finally, he thought, I think I'm beginning to see what Viktor does in her.
But now was not the time to marvel at the sorceress's charming sociopathy. Now was the time to return to the fray; now was the time to dance with death and see if he could add a few more grains of itinerant salt to his hourglass. And so, with the thrill building back after its quick respite, Harry stalked toward the wraiths even as they glided to meet him, profile low and predatory, like a wolf circling wounded prey. Hermione stayed back, her magical power alone enough to allow her leave to wander as she pleased; Viktor had to keep up with Harry, and he did, but there was apprehension in his steps and worry in the lines of his face, so unlike the half-mad grin the witcher wore.
"Do you enjoy this?" Viktor asked suddenly, with one eye on the enemy.
"Do I enjoy what?"
"Fighting these monsters?"
"Of course," replied Harry, "the life of a witcher would be dreadfully boring otherwise, wouldn't you say, Master Viktor?"
"You may speak like a Roethainne," said Viktor, "but you are truly a man of the barbarian isles at heart." Harry laughed at that, unsure as to whether the man's words were compliment, insult, or mere observation. The barbarian isles must have meant Skellige, where he spent much of his childhood and good chunk of his time as a grown man, but Viktor was doubly wrong in his assessment: his lost family had been Temerian, though the lineage did carry Redanian blood in it, and he took no pleasure in cutting down men, as the pirates of Skellige did, only monsters.
But there was no point in telling the surly swordsman any of this, especially when the dead stood only metres away. The nightwraiths took lead now, leaving the few remaining conventional spectres to spectate.
The ear-splitting shriek returned, and immediately, the women wreathed in black split apart and lunged forward, each attempting to divide the trio by overwhelming them individually. The wraith who took on Hermione was the least lucky of three, earning a thorough charring from the sorceress's repeated fire-based spells. Still, nightwraiths were made of sterner stuff than their unremarkable counterparts: without a silver blade, it was near impossible to land a death blow on such a creature. So, nearly as soon as the spectre fell back shrieking, it flew back in full-force, this time wreathed in flame.
Hermione swore and scrambled out of the way of the runaway wraith, letting loose an elder speech obscenity that was both impossible for Harry to pronounce, and utter lovely to hear dropped from the elf's rosebud lips. She struggled over to where Harry and Viktor defended themselves against their own wraiths, which drew the flaming nightwraith's attention to Harry, who the elf had stopped closer to.
The wraith turned in the night sky, the crescent moon behind her smoking form, and lunged downward toward the two, just as the second nightwraith split into three, in attempt to drain the life-force out of her living opponents. Without so much as a second thought, Harry dove for the sorceress's wrist, pulled her to his chest, and cast an active Quen shield around them, just in time for the burned wraith to crash into it.
It wasn't a perfect plan, but Harry surmised that it could possibly work in the battlefield: the split nightwraith would gain life-force from something, but it would not be him. The wraith would steal energy from his active shield, weakening it enough so that when the other wraith crashed into it, he would replicate the same controlled detonation Hermione had with her own shield. Sirius would have his hide if he knew Harry was testing new techniques in the midst of a life-and-death battle, but, Harry thought with some humour, he'd also be furious that Harry had allowed non-witchers to help him in the first place.
When the second wraith struck, Harry's gamble paid off, and the shield exploded outward, though the witcher's sign magic lacked the brilliance and sheer power of the Hermione's spell. Still, it was enough to stagger the swooping spectre, and, with feline reflexes, Harry grasped his unused moon dust bomb, and shattered it at his feet below to coat the two assaulting ghosts in silver once more.
In the space of an instant, the screeching, burning wraith could no longer screech nor burn, and her comrade that had split into three was forcibly made whole once more. They moved slowly, lethargically, and Harry could send them both beyond the veil of death in an instant.
"Go aid Viktor, Sorceress; I can clean up here just fine."
Hermione evidently agreed with his assessment, for once, and hurried off toward Viktor on the other side of the road surrounded by the burned sod homes. Once Hermione was with him, Harry no longer feared for Viktor's safety, and could focus fully on the powerless wraiths.
"Well, shall we finish this, then?" he said to them, and raised his sword high. After these two, there were only a few of those sword-bearing wraiths left. Easy pickings.
He would steal another night of sweet life from Freya and all her hosts, after all.
Harry received a hard look from Hermione as they trudged up the mountain pass toward where he had left Rhaeler and The Sorcerer. "To be certain, he did say he would surrender himself and the djinn once we put the souls in the valley to rest, yes?"
"Aye, that's what he said," Harry replied.
"And all the spirits have been put to rest, yes?"
"Aye," said Harry once more, "it's only two hours past nightfall and my medallion's not shook once since we left town. There's little magic left in this valley, and even fewer monsters."
"Ah, forgive me my proclivities, Harry; I like to be sure of things," said Hermione; she then shivered and looked around the barren mountain. "I do hope Viktor will return soon; I cannot wait to see the end of this matter."
Harry grunted his agreement. The Etolian had gone off back the way they came to inform the Redanians and Kaedwenis that the worst was over with, and that the sorceress and the witcher had gone to retrieve the penitent thieves. Harry too wished to be done with this whole sorry affair; he had become quite sick of mountains and cliffs and plateaus, and the quicker they apprehended the sorcerer and his surviving accomplice, the quicker they'd leave the Kestrels behind.
So the witcher picked up his pace, and the sorceress followed at heel, nearly matching his stride step-for-step as they trudged up the mountainside to the place where Harry the plateau overlooking the valley before, where Harry had first met the mystery sorcerer.
But midway through that trek, Harry stopped abruptly, and the inattentive sorceress crashed into his back. "Witcher," she said, annoyed, "why have you stopped?"
Harry didn't answer.
He was a tracker, and he was long used to the spoor that assaulted his senses, but he could not fathom why it would be still be this far up the mountain when the villagers had long been buried. But, he surmised, I hadn't noticed it on the way up from the valley. Curious, he moved ten paces further up the path, and the faint smell turned ever-so-slightly stronger. No, it wasn't from the villagers in the valley.
He smelled blood and death, and it went up, up, past the crags and rocky faces, to that ridge overlooking the dead valley. Harry and Hermione roamed up those crags and traversed those sheer faces, until they came to the place, and spied blood artistry, spattered across the jutting rocks and smoothed stone alike.
A man was propped up against a boulder, a man covered from rich Toussaintois doublet to Nilfgaardian leather shoes in his own blood.
Hermione brought a hand up to cover her nose and mouth. "Dana Méadbh," she murmured as Harry crouched and lifted the dead man's head. Even he winced at the way the man's throat had been cut.
"Rhaeler," Harry identified the corpse, "he was the last of the sorcerer's mercenaries. Throat slit over there," Harry pointed to an open space on the cliff where now-dried blood had stained the rocks in spurts. "He was probably then dragged here."
"Speaking of your sorcerer-thief," Hermione said, "where is he?"
Both the witcher and the sorceress stepped out from behind the boulder and looked down the ridge to the promontory where Harry had first met the thief. There he still sat, his back to the two interlopers, though he was kneeling this time instead of sitting cross-legged.
"Over there, I suppose," Harry said.
"Did he do this?" Hermione whispered.
Harry breathed in the noxious air once more, and sighed. "He might have, but—" Hermione was already off, jogging toward the kneeling man:
"You!" she shouted, and received no response. "What's going on here!? Why—" The elf reached the sorcerer and the words died in her mouth, as Harry expected. Hermione stumbled backward as Harry followed wearily in her wake. He caught the reeling woman and steadied her, before they, together, returned to inspect the blond-haired sorcerer.
Harry grimaced at the sight of the man, carrying a wound only the most grievous of sword strikes could induce in a proper fight. "Disemboweled," he said, looking to the small mound of internal organs that had leaked out of his body and onto the promontory before him. Blood drifted away from the mountain of guts, and dripped over the edge.
Hermione, getting over the initial shock of a man with his intestines in his lap, observed the corpse clinically. "Well, he was right about one thing."
"What?"
"I have no idea who this is," sniffed Hermione, "so he was right in telling you that a name would be of no help."
"Ah."
"He's kneeling," she said now, switching topics easily. "and the weapon that killed him is right here," Hermione pointed at a wickedly curved knife, not unlike the bone-handled one Harry owned. "By the looks of things, it's almost certainly a suicide. Perhaps he killed the mercenary first, and then attended to himself?"
"It's a possibility," Harry said distractedly. He fell to his knees and shoved a hand into his bloodied robes, ignoring Hermione's disgusted look, and rutted around until he found the exact place...
"What on earth are you doing, Witcher?"
A gauntleted hand, now stained crimson, withdrew from the once-pristine robes. "It's empty."
"If you're talking about his torso, of course it's empty," said Hermione, nose wrinkled, "his entire belly is out on the ground like it's on display at a merchant's stall."
Harry glared at the elf. "Not his bowels, Lady Hermione, his robes. His robes are empty."
Hermione blinked once, and then comprehension dawned on her. "Oh. Oh! You don't think—you don't think he hid it, do you?"
"I don't think so," replied Harry, "he'd not just hide the djinn, especially after he had shown me the flask. If he had plans of any kind for it, he wouldn't have let me see the damned thing in the first place. No. There's something here, some clue that—"
Harry might have finished his sentence, if not for him nearly tripping and falling over the edge of the promontory. His mouth clamped shut and he tried to balance his legs, though the ground somehow remained unbalanced below them. With a confused look at Hermione, he saw that she too struggled to stay steady. There was no noise, just wordless shaking for one very long moment.
And then, sound: a raucous cacophony. A great wave of sound and shock burst forth and assaulted them from all sides. To that day, Harry had only once heard something similar, and it had been the deafening roar that town hall made all those months ago in Cintra. He did not have the time to dwell on the mass of burned and and melted bodies, that pastiche from his nightmares, as he usually did, because a rock loosened from under him, and fell away only moments after the wary witcher dove back.
"Sorceress!" he shouted, scrabbling back toward the elf to catch her in a sloppy embrace. The stones crumbled further and further back; they dropped out from under the sorcerer. First, the chunks of stone were swallowed by mother night's swell and father gravity's pull, and then the man himself, stomach and intestines following close at heel.
Harry and Hermione had no desire to end up as the mystery sorcerer, so, each holding on to the other like a shipwrecked sailor to driftwood, the two dragged themselves back toward the relative safety of the boulders and Rhaeler's red-black smile. They fell atop each other as the tremors continued and more broken rocks fell from the cliff down into the valley before.
But the rocking ended long before it had a chance to endanger the fallen duo. As abruptly as it began, the noise stopped, and the shaking stopped with it. It left nothing behind but a much smaller ridge, and a witcher in a tangle of limbs with a sorceress by its edge. Harry lay pinned on the bottom, and Hermione sprawled out atop him, dazed:
"What... what just happened?" she asked, breathing heavily. "Earthquake?"
"Seems like it," Harry said, keeping his focus on the pretty, red-purple sky.
Wait. Red sky, this late? Harry wondered to himself suspiciously, but lethargically. Hermione, on the other hand, shot up so that she sat astraddle the prone witcher, and looked in the direction where the rest of the cliff had been. Instead of another question, as he expected, Harry heard a gasp.
"It was an explosion," Hermione murmured face stark-white, pointing in a direction where the sky became redder, and redder.
And when Hermione said why the sky was so red, the colour drained from Harry's face, too. Great, blundering gouts of fire, no more than merry little candlelights from the collapsed cliff, danced far away, rising up beyond the ruined village, through trees, and past the placid brook that separated dale from the mountain pass.
"The soldiers," Harry murmured, knowing exactly who had camped in the mountain pass just outside the valley. Or, at least, that was Harry's concern; Hermione's worry looked to concern someone else entirely, Viktor, whom she had sent personally to tell the soldiers that the job was done.
The sorceress rocketed off him, and offered a dainty hand up. "We must go to them, now." The witcher looked out at the collapsed promontory, and knew the chance to investigate the mountaintop deaths had passed him by. Now, the only thing that mattered were the other men in his own retinue.
Without wasting another second, Harry took the proffered hand.
A/N: A long one, nearly twice the length of my normal chapters, but I think there should only be one more part to TLW, and then we're finally moving on. I'm not sure how happy I am with the way this chapter ended and the wraith fight that surrounded it. It feels lacking, in comparison to the leshen fight in The Lesser Kindness, but I suppose it's alright, because there's a little more to come before all's said and done in this arc.
Chapter Notes:
Zanguebar: One of the mysterious countries in the witcher world that we don't hear much about, but from what we do know, it's overseas to the south, by Ofir. And if I I'm not mistaken, Zanguebar is a real-life French translation of Zanzibar, which is a region of Eastern Africa and its surrounding archipelagos. So, my guess is that the flora and fauna of Zanguebar most likely represent that of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Quick Kills: Harry and co. generally dispatch enemies, including spirits in one or two hits, which is an attempt to return to the type of combat seen in Sapkowski's books over the Witcher games. There's something inherently game-y about Geralt wailing on a dude for thirteen or fourteen hits in the game, when in genuine sword combat, the first cut is usually the last.
Hopefully my Elder Speech wasn't complete shit; I'm basically running off the witcher wiki for elder speech words and phrases, right now. So, if someone knows a more comprehensive glossary of elder speech terms, then don't hesitate to link me.
Night Spirits: I'm extrapolating a lot about them, given that they're (to my knowledge) only mentioned once in the series, by Dandelion in "A Little Sacrifice", part of Sword of Destiny, during his rant about how picky Geralt is with his own contracts, after Geralt accuses Dandelion of "putting on airs" when refusing an offer to work a wedding with another bard. He says Geralt won't hunt "night spirits, because they're sweet". Aside from that, everything else about night spirits is pretty much made up.
Thanks to all who have read thus far, and a special thanks to those who have reviewed, followed, faved and PM'd me about this fic, your continued interest and support is the sole factor as to why this fic has gotten as far as it has. I'd love to keep hearing your thoughts on chapters, tips, criticisms, or even suggestions for story ideas, so feel free to drop me a review or shoot me a PM on anything TLK related, from questions to suggestions, if the fancy takes you.
Geist.