A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

by Spike368

Sent out to gather the knowledge of the real world. A young scholar from the University of Oxenfurt finds a wounded Witcher on the steps to the inn where he was staying. So he starts gathering the material for his journals. Rated T for language I will be publishing this story on Royal Road /profile/349358

77. Chapter 77

(A/N: The discussion regarding racism in this chapter is not meant as a comment on modern society or anything that's going on in the world. This chapter is another long planned chapter and is not the result of any real world events other than it being necessary to the continuation of the story Also, what I didn't plan was that this story arc regarding the cult would turn out to be the arc that talks about mental illness. But it is and we go into it a bit more here.)

So we're getting towards the end of my little series on the different parts of being a Witcher that I've been prefacing these articles with, although we haven't quite got to the end of it.

Yet.

So far we've talked about many of the tools of being a Witcher. We've talked about swords, crossbows, magic, alchemy and the many and varied things that these terms can contain. I skipped over bombs and traps because I rather thought that they would be covered in the section talking about Alchemy and there was a running theme at the time that, the things that I was talking about, all fell in the category of "Yeah but the other tools that a Witcher carries with them are just as useful towards doing the tasks required" and I was beginning to feel as though I was talking mysElf round in circles.

Last time we talked about mutations which is a more nebulous term so now we're going to go a little deeper. Today I want to talk about a Witcher's training.

First a short disclaimer. I have the most experience with the Witcher training of the Cat school of the Witchers. Kerrass' methods have been much tempered by his interactions with the Wolf school of Witchers but his thinking and certainly his fighting styles are based on the Cat school of Witchers. I have also spent two, or was it three, memorable days in the company of Letho of Gulet who showed me what it was like to be trained as a Witcher which will have been adjusted by the Viper school. I have no idea what form the training of the Bear school was, or the Gryphon or the Manticore school.

All Witchers have the same framework applied to them. They are taught to fight with one sword at a time in flexible armour. They are taught some small magical tricks that are quick and relatively easy to cast in a combat situation and their fighting style emphasises dodging and movement over blocking and parrying. They are certainly taught not to depend on their armour to save their lives.

As well as this they are given advanced tutoring on the subjects of various monsters. Kerrass himsElf has a depth and breadth of knowledge that would easily qualify him as a Professor of Monster studies and indeed, knows more on the subject than many of the men who claim that same title with the added bonus that he can prove all of the things that he knows through practical experience. This rather than the theoretical arm-chair variety that most professors of the subject have access to.

I sometimes feel that this is an under-represented part of Witcher training. The years that are spent poring over old books written long ago by people long dead. The dissections of monster corpses. The studying and the field trips to go and see monsters in the wild under the guidance of experienced Witchers. I think that this is often overlooked in the discussion of Witchers.

People look at the man, in the dark leather armour with the sword on his back and the scars on his face and they see a ruffian, a scoundrel, a killer and a thief and although Kerrass would be the first person to admit that Witchers can be, and have been, all of these things in various different definitions of the term. That also hides the fact that Witchers are extremely highly educated. Not just in Monster Lore, but also in languages so that they can talk about the monsters that are plaguing the local area, no matter whether they're in the North, South or with Elves, Dwarves, Halflings or even those few Werebubbs that are still around if you know where to look in the non-human districts.

They learn Philosophy and Psychology as well. Does that surprise you? They need to be able to get into the minds of the people that they talk to in order to better help the people around them. They need to be able to differentiate between lies and truths, they need to be able to deal with people, to be able to tell when a person is lying to them and when that person is hiding an important truth.

They learn history. When they come across a ruined manor then they need to know whether it will have been occupied by a Redanian family, a Temerian family or does this even predate the landing of the exiles? Was it built on a site of religious significance? was it built on top of Elven ruins? All of these questions might be important and give insight into the thing that the Witcher is hunting. Meaning that the importance of this knowledge is impossible to understate. They have to know these things. They have to be able to answer these questions because to them, it might be the difference between life and death.

They are taught to exist outside of society, to be the outsider looking in. Not all of it is due to the fact that they are mutants and as a result their status of "outsider" is a thing that they cannot avoid but it's something that is taught to them from a young age. Almost from the moment that they are picked up and taken to the schools. That the only people that they can rely on are other Witchers, and only then if they come from the same school, although that has been reduced over the last few decades as other Witchers on the path are no longer in a position to be quite so choosy when it comes to their friends on the road.

This is the basic framework. The Foundation, if you like, of the way that the Witcher's are trained. After that, the different schools added different things and adjusted their teachings in different ways. The reason for this is lost to time unfortunately. It might be that the locations of the Witcher keeps were chosen tactically to deal with the different factors that were around at the time. Such as monster migration patterns as well as human population centres that needed to be taken into account. There's no way of knowing but this might be the reason why different Witcher schools were taught with different techniques to everyone else.

The differences are slight though. They might sound like an awful lot but it bears remembering that all Witchers had the same Cat's eyes. All Witchers carried two swords, had their swords on their backs, had a row of the same kinds of potions on their belts and were utterly, utterly neutral in the matter of politics.

From where I sit, I can hear all the people who are aware of current international politics, snorting audibly at the ridiculousness of that last statement. And I get it. No single group of people has had a larger impact on the current state of the world than the Witchers. The only group that might challenge that statement would be the mages with the Thanedd coup before the second Nilfgaardian war and the betrayal of the Lodge of Sorceresses that led to the third.

You can take both of those events any way you want and I'm not going to go into too much detail here.

But consider this. The most important and powerful person in the world, the Empress of Nilfgaard, was brought up by Witchers. She refers to the remaining Wolven Witchers as "Uncles" other than the one that she calls "Dad". That one, the White Wolf of legend was present at the aforementioned Thanedd coup and the summit at Loc Muinne where the Betrayal of the Sorceresses was brought to light.

Geralt of Rivia was also present at several decisive battles during the second war, was there at the destruction of Stygga castle, died during the Pogrom of the non-humans in Rivia, came back in time to get involved in the attempted Coup of the Flaming Rose and save the Life of King Foltest before also being present when Foltest was finally assassinated. He is credited as the man who saved the life of the Empress and brought her back into public life. Rumour has it that he was involved in the death of King Radovid, an instrumental event leading to the end of the third war and also managed to make it south in time to prevent the attacks of the Beast of Toussaint. Events which led to the unearthing of the Duchess' long lost and disinherited sister.

And Geralt is far from alone. Never forget that the Kingslayer, the man who assassinated Kings Foltest and Demavend while also implicating the Lodge of Sorceresses in Treason was also a Witcher. I would also be remiss in pointing out that my own friend and companion, Kerrass of Maecht has often been far from entirely neutral in dealings that I have witnessed. For instance, he is heavily involved with the Kingdom of Dorn, The Cuchy of Angraal and up until he left to come and help me with my search for Francesca, he was acting as personal champion and bodyguard to that same. That's leaving aside the obvious times when he jumps to my defence and his association with my family.

Far from neutral.

This is not a recent phenomenon either. Witcher Gerd of the Bear school is known to have taken one side over the other in a civil war before fleeing from the victor to join forces with a Skelligan Jarl whom he worked for for some time. Slaying monsters, raiding and hunting together.

Those people, including me although I shouldn't be viewed as an unbiased source, would claim that these are the exceptions that prove the rule. How many other Witchers were there? or are there still? Versus how many of them that have had significant impact on the world stage.

But another aspect of their training which I sometimes feel is overlooked is the not inconsiderable training that they have on the subjects of philosophy and religion. Kerrass knows considerably more than I do about many of the other religious sects that populate the world. The only area where he would bow to me is in the case of my knowledge with the church of the Holy Fire. But in every other case, he can see a totem, or a shrine and he will be able to tell me how the thing is worshipped, what kind of offerings you are supposed to leave there and so on. But also the philosophical knowledge, not to argue or to teach despite the fact that these are the natural product of such educations, but so that they are well aware of the possible outcomes should they "get involved". In short, they are trained in what would be the entire point of neutrality in the first place.

I suspect that there is another reason behind this particular branch of the Witcher's curriculum as well which I will go into later.

I feel as though I've gotten off topic again.

There are small differences between each of the schools. The most obvious one is the bear school. The Bears, according to Kerrass, taught their students to fight in heavier armour than their fellows. They pushed their bodies to the extreme lengths of physical conditioning which was helped by their particular forms of mutations. They are, or were, much taller and more heavily muscled than the average Witcher, capable of delivering blows of incredible strength with pinpoint accuracy. I have only met one Bear Witcher and he was challenged by a courtier. The courtier claimed that with a sword the size of the Bear's weapon, it must be huge and ungainly to wield. That a smaller sword, like the courtier's own rapier, would be more manoeuvrable and therefore more suitable.

This was back in Toussaint when I was still enjoying the festivities. Kerrass pointed me in the direction of this particular piece of entertainment.

The Bear Witcher, Uhtred was his name, responded with a proposition towards a Wager. He suggested a challenge to the courtier. Uhtred would set out four items to be thrown into the air before each swordsman. The person who could cut, or destroy the most items would be declared the winner. The courtier agreed and the party was quickly awash with bets as people wagered astonishing sums on the outcome of the contest.

Uhtred wandered off towards the buffet table and selected two apples and two chicken legs. Then he whispered in the ear of a waiting servant who ran off towards the kitchen.

"Very well," said Uhtred. "Are you ready?"

The courtier had changed into an arming jacket loaned to him by a friend. He drew his sword and nodded. A knight errant was chosen to adjudicate the match and to throw the items. As I recall, he swore on the heron that he would be unbiased.

Heh, the things that you remember.

First was the apple. The rapier flickered and his apple split into two halves. Uhtred's blade flashed and his own appled split down the middle although I may say that the cut was less clean.

Then came the chicken legs. Again, the rapier flickered and the chicken leg was cut in two. I remember being impressed that the rapier had cut through the chicken bone rather than glancing off. To my utter lack of surprise, Uhtred's sword mauled the chicken, also cutting clean through the bone.

Then the third item. The servant handed two small logs of firewood to the waiting knight errant. The courtier frowned and I fancy that he paled a little. But gamely he stood up. I noticed that the blow wasn't as quick this time. He was sweating a little as when he swung he wanted to hit the wood so that the impact would be along the grain to help with splitting the wood. He struck and the sword went in before being caught in the wood. The weight of the wood pulled the rapier out of the man's hand.

The Knight errant declared that this was worth half a point.

Uhtred cut the log clean in two with an almost casual strike. The log had been cut across the grain.

The final object turned out to be a piece of rock. I don't know what it was but I suspect it was some kind of light, porous stuff. The courtier took one look at it and declined to strike, no doubt fearing the loss of his sword or to his reputation if he looked quite that silly.

Uhtred nodded at the Knight Errant who threw the rock. It was only a pebble really, about the size of your fist. Uhtred swung. The rock shattered.

To me, that story sums up the Bear Witchers best. Moreso than the story that Kerrass tells about the Witcher and the training dummy.

Bear Witchers are also the only other Witcher school that are taught the use of the crossbow. Other Witchers have taken up the practice in recent years, or so I'm told, but it was only the Cat and the Bear schools that taught the art from the first days of their training.

The Wolven school focused on their swordplay and I don't know many swordsmen, including Kerrass, that would argue with the claim that the remaining Wolven Witchers are among the foremost swordsmen on the continent. They are still skilled in other areas but their training was focused on the blades.

Apparently, The Griffins focused on the magic although I have never met a Griffin Witcher and as a result I can't really comment. The Vipers focused on their alchemy and crafting with the rest of their training being focused according to the personal and bodily configuration of the Witcher being trained. They also focused on the use of weapons in the off hand. They still have the two swords but they also carried the two shorter daggers that they use in enclosed spaces. I have known two Viper Witchers now. The one, Letho, fought like a bull. He would line up his attack before moving forward in an inexorable and unstoppable charge. The other, whose name I never learned, had a similar charge but he fought much lower to the ground, almost crouching. He seemed to be all about the patterns of movement. I wondered at the time if those patterns could be learned and therefore countered. Kerrass laughed at the suggestion.

The Cat school is all about movement. Quick, lightening strikes and acrobatic movements designed to overwhelm their opponents coming in at all angles.

But despite all of this. Unless you knew what to look for, The two daggers on the belt of the Viper, the larger build of the Bear, the shape of the medallion if you can see it, there is no way of telling a Witcher from one school apart from another.

So that's it, the training of a Witcher. Aimed to prepare a Witcher for anything that they might come across while they are on the path. They are not always successful in this. This small essay doesn't talk about the students that they kill or that don't make it through the entirety of the process. Nor does it talk about the dehumanising effect that it can have on the students in question. For that I would refer you to those chapters and articles that I discussed my time spent in Kaer Morhen with Letho of Gulet. I think he said those things far more eloquently than I ever could.

So then we come to my question. The question that drives this entire series of essays. Is the training indispensable to the Witcher. Can you be a Witcher without it?

For the answer, I would have said No. I didn't think you could be a Witcher without the training aspect. Because otherwise how would you know how to kill the monsters that you come across. How would you know which oils to smear your blade with in order to destroy the small nest of nekkers? How would you know how to make a spirit turn corporeal so that you can hit it in the face? These are the questions that only a Witcher's training can answer.

But Kerrass, of all peopl,e disagreed.

His argument was that if you separate the term Witcher into "Witcher the race" and "Witcher the profession," then, theoretically you can be either of those things without having had the formal training of the Witcher schools. Kerrass regards the most important part of his training as being the knowledge that was imparted to him and has expressed gratitude for it many times, but at the same time, he argues that you can be mutated into a Witcher without any of that knowledge being given to you. Without being trained in Alchemy or signs or the use of a sword and you would still be mutated enough for other people, including the other Witchers, to call you a Witcher.

As for the "profession" part of being a Witcher? The definition of the term "Witcher" to the common folk is "someone who makes their living from the slaying of monsters". The fact that they use this term exclusively to describe mutated Witchers is actually unimportant.

He argues that if you see a monster, realise that that monster needs to be killed, and then follow through on that need to actually destroy the monster, then you are a Witcher. Getting paid for that act is a bonus. That is the beginning and end of a Witcher's task. It is what they are about. What they have to do and what they were created for.

He admits that some of this attitude might be due to his training as a cat Witcher rather than anything else but he regularly sees monsters in human shapes as well as the more magical creatures that people call monster in the countryside.

So he has decided that you can be a Witcher without being trained as a Witcher and if he, a Witcher, can decide that, then who am I to argue?

As it turned out. It was the presence of a Witcher that saved my life.

I don't know for sure, I was pretty tired and may have been mildly hallucinating in fear, hunger and exhaustion. But I'm pretty sure that I saw that Elf woman decide that it was time for me to die. There was just a tightening of her fingers, a slight groan from the bow that she was holding and the point of the arrow seemed to glitter in the light.

"Fuck it," I thought. I had time to think those words. I was going to die on my arse. People say that your life flashes before your eyes, but that I can't answer for. As I looked down the shaft of the arrow that I felt sure was about to kill me, all I could think about was the fact that I was sitting on my arse.

I closed my eyes, feeling that I didn't really want to watch the arrow fly from the bow and hear the whispering sound of the bowstring leaving the woman's fingers.

But then there was another voice and I risked opening one eye. This was actually surprisingly difficult as my eyes wanted to stay closed, they were that tired. In the heat of the moment, sitting before the Elf that clearly hated me, I had forgotten just how tired I was. There was another Elf stood there. Long, flowing black hair, held back from his face with a leather band. He wore a green woollen tunic, leather trousers and surprisingly rich looking leather boots. They were well worn but I could tell that they were much loved. It gave him an air of command and relative wealth over the much more ragged woman beside him. He also carried a bow with one arrow nocked to the bow and another handful of arrows carried in his hand by the nocking points. He had a sword on one side, the long, curved sweeping swords that Elves seem to prefer with the elongated handles. He also had a thick, black furred shoulder guard and a leather hood.

"Va'fail Vatt'ghern," he said to Kerrass who was equally as exhausted as I was. Maybe even more so. Kerrass made some kind of flicking gesture towards me and lay backwards. For all I know he was asleep before he hit the ground.

"Va'fail Aen Seidhe." I told him and was absurdly pleased when his eyebrows raised in surprise. The woman's mouth twisted into a sneer.

"You speak the Elven tongue?" The male Elf said in that language.

"I do," I responded in the same. "Enough to know that you call it the Elder tongue and that it is exceedingly rude to welcome one person and not the other even if you're going to kill them. It would have been more courteous if you had simply not welcomed either of us and shot us on sight."

He astonished me then by laughing. He had the same easy grace of all of his kind along with the beautiful features and easy charm. Like the woman though, he was thin underneath his clothing which hung loosely off his frame.

"Bluntly spoken," he said in the Northern common tongue. "For one who criticises the lack of courtesy in another."

"My fatigue steals my manners from me."

He nodded and turned and told the woman to "fetch the others."

"I would like to know more about what is happening here, including questions about why the countryside is boiling with hunters." He told me, "and I think it better if we discuss such things in hiding."

"Is it far?" I asked. "I ask because at the moment, this floor seems awfully comfortable to me."

He laughed again. He seemed to do it easily and frequently. "Not far. We can help your companion and obscure your tracks a little way. A couple of my people will lead a false trail into a nearby stream. That should obscure you from your followers, for a while at least."

"Grateful to you."

I didn't feel like speaking for a while after that as I sunk into a fug. That state of mind and body where you just sit, staring ahead and into space for an indeterminate amount of time before someone, or something shakes you out of it. In this case it was the Elven woman who offered me a hand to help me to my feet before prominently and pointedly wiping her hand on her tunic and spitting at my feet.

"Human filth," she spat.

"Elven lady," I told her with a bow.

She hissed like a cat and went off to join a couple of others who were clearing the back trail.

The male Elf was laughing again.

"I do believe that that woman hates me." I told him.

"She does." He told me.

"Is there a reason for it, beyond my just being a human?"

"Oh yes. She was taken from her mother and used as a mistress for some Lord's pleasure. By human standards her jail cell wasn't uncomfortable, she wasn't particularly mistreated and had servants and luxuries but she saw it as the slavery that it was and cut her master's throat before fleeing to join the Scoia'tael. Unfortunately, Nilfgaard had won by that point and "the cause" is faltering due to the humans being forced to treat Elves more favourably by Nilfgaardian law. It's very hard to be angry when you can walk up to a Nilfgaardian official who will then try your case fairly."

"But she is still angry."

"Wouldn't you be?"

I shrugged at the question. I was too tired at the time for such questions but the truth is that I would still have been angry. Of course I would.

"But anyway, she assumes that all male humans want to fuck her and hates them all for it. She is, as I understand it, extremely beautiful to human eyes." He paused. "Do you want to fuck her?"

He was looking at me oddly. I had the sense that I was being tested in some way s I considered my next words carefully.

"Nah," I said after a while. "Needs more pie."

The Elf laughed aloud and seemed startled by it as though it was the first time that he had laughed genuinely in some time. I had made the joke before or something like it when Ariadne had been particularly skinny but it seemed to be relevant here as well.

"Don't get me wrong." I said. "She is a very a beautiful woman but I am lucky enough to be engaged to marry a woman that I love and now I find that I have relatively little physical desire for someone else."

"But it is also true that you prefer women with a little more meat on their bones?" he suggested. There was a distinct glint of humour in his eye and I decided that I liked this Elf.

"That is also true, as well as the fact that I prefer my women to want me." I considered the next part carefully. Weighing up whether or not the Elf would appreciate the joke. "Or at least, want my money enough to pretend."

He laughed.

"My name is Chireadean." He told me offering his hand.

"Frederick von Coulthard." I told him, taking his hand.

He raised his eyebrows at the name as though he recognised it. "There is a lot to this story it would seem." he told me.

We moved off soon after that. There were maybe half a dozen Elves all told including Chireadean and the Elven woman. Another three men and another woman, and I knew that there were a couple of other people who were guarding the back trail. They fashioned a stretcher using Chireadean's cloak and a pair of unstrung bows that Kerrass was made to lie down in. He seemed to sleep but I think that it might have been closer to passing out. He whimpered and moaned as they moved him.

The Elves moved fast and the world soon dissolved into an agony of aching limbs, nausea and my headache getting worse and worse. The edges of my vision started to blur and go grey and I expect that I was getting into pretty bad shape. I have no idea how long it was before we stopped but Chireadean steered me towards a blanket and a pile of leaves where I collapsed and just lost consciousness.

Like Kerrass, sleep was the wrong word for it.

I woke up, it was dark and I must have stirred. I felt a hand across my mouth. A male voice hissing at me to be quiet in Elven. I noticed that I was once again called Human filth but then my ears were straining to listen. I could hear nothing other than the pounding of my own heartbeat in my ears and the sounds of my own breathing. The rest of the night was still and calm.

Much to my later astonishment, I fell asleep again.

Only to be woken up by my own stomach rumbling as Chireadean waved a slice of bread under my nose that had been drenched in honey.

"Humans." He said in Elven with a slight smile. "You will literally sleep through the end of the world if we let you."

"Not gonna lie," I told him, groaning at my stiffening muscles. "That actually sounds quite pleasant right now."

"Eat," the Elf told me. "You need it."

It was two slices of bread. Objectively they were quite small but it looked like a feast to me and I had to force myself to eat it slowly.

"Where did you get this?" I said looking around. "I can't see any ovens around here."

"We were in a thick cluster of trees. I could only really see sunlight above the trees so I assumed that we were in some kind of Forest. Calling it a camp would be ambitious but at the same time I could see, maybe a couple of dozen Elves wandering around. A couple were poking at tiny, smokeless camp-fires. A few more were working, making arrows by tying feathers to the shafts of wood. A few more were asleep.

"No," The Elf sat next to me and handed me a cup of something hot. It smelled herbal. "We occasionally get given supplies by the local villages. Sometimes it's a bribe to get us to move on. Other times it's a genuine act of sympathy and charity." He smiled often I noticed. Often and easily. "I'll let you guess which one pisses the others off the most."

I grinned. "My guess would be that the most annoying one is whichever one of the two that happened most recently."

"Not far off." Chireadean agreed.

"So you must be the group of Elves that I've heard about so much?" I asked him, forgetting my manners and talking through a mouthful of bread and honey.

"Yes," The ever-present smile turned wistful. "That group. Are you disappointed?"

"Nope. To be disappointed you have to have expectations. Back when we were investigating what's going on in these parts, we wanted to talk to you. But for the last few days, all I've been thinking about is surviving if I'm honest. More recently, the question has been about putting one foot in front of the other,"

"It's good to have goals in life."

"Survival is a simple goal at least." I looked over at him. As I say, I was finding that I liked him. His attitude was easy going and relaxed and his Elven was informal. "Look, I have to ask. Are you my friend or what?"

He scratched his chin. "I will admit that it's a little early to say."

"Do you lead round here?"

"Powers no." His laughter seemed genuine. "There isn't really a formal leader. This isn't a Scoia'Tael Commando with a military format. It's a lot less formal than that. But can I ask you a series of questions before I get too deep into answering your questions?"

I felt a smile creeping across my face.

"You've been sent to talk to me because you hate me the least haven't you?"

"Close." He said with a smile. "I've found over the years that Hating someone takes up so much energy and I would rather devote my energy to more useful things."

"Like survival?" I suggested with a smile.

He just grinned for an answer.

He waited courteously for me to finish my meal. I was somewhat dismayed to find that the two small pieces of bread and honey had filled me up to the point that I was concerned that I may burst.

"So," he began. "What is Professor Frederick von Coulthard of the Oxenfurt academy doing out here being chased by a significant group of cunts?"

"You know my name?"

"Of course I know your name. Which means that I also know who that Witcher of yours is. He's fine by the way."

"I had been meaning to ask."

"But you haven't answered my question."

Something about the way he said that made me look at him sharply. He had a jovial face and manner, easy to smile, easy to laugh but somewhere in the depths of his eyes I could see a flinty hardness that glittered in the shimmering sunlight.

"Exactly how many archers are there in the trees pointing arrows at me right now?" I asked him.

"None," he said. The absence of a smile was eloquent. "But your spear and dagger are over there which is considerably further from you than my dagger is from me." He gave me a moment to let the words sink in. "I know what I look like, I know what I sound like and I will admit to not liking violence. But I am a veteran of three wars as well as continued anti-human bias and I will kill you without mercy if I think you are a threat to these people."

I nodded and took a long drink from the cup. It was refreshing. Neither tea or coffee or any of the various varieties of either that you can find on the road. I guessed that it was some kind of Elven variety.

"Well, that's my name. If you know who I am then you know of the circumstances surrounding my Father's death and the murder of my elder brother?"

"I do. I read about the episode with interest."

"Then you will also know that one of the conspirators was the son of the nearby Count Kalayn and my cousin?"

He nodded.

"As it turns out, because of legal shenanigans, the nearest heir for Kalayn lands after Count Kalayn killed himself, was my brother Sam."

The Elf's eye glittered.

"But there was some, justifiable, concern that Castle Kalayn might be haunted and so Sam asked Kerrass and I to help him in that matter. I also hoped to find some more remnants of the cult that Cousin Kalayn had belonged to in case they had anything to do with the disappearance of my sister, which I also assume you know about."

He nodded again.

I began fairly easily, skipping over the details about what we had done since leaving Toussaint. I began by telling him about the hunting for details of the cult. Of the efforts to purge Castle Kalayn of spirits and the identification of the Hounds of "Kreve". I spoke about the villager religion of "Crom Cruarch" which was the only time that he smiled, rather sadly I thought, before I described our battle against the Hounds followed by our defence of the villages in Kalayn lands.

He was mostly motionless during the entirety of the narrative but I got the impression that he was being particularly attentive during the description of that fight. I don't know, I was still tired, edgy and exhausted so my brain was far from operating at peak efficiency but I thought that it was something about his eyes. They seemed to sharpen in some way. Then I talked about the journey north and our talking to the various Lords of the area before meeting with Lord Cavill and what happened afterwards.

He seemed to have made his mind up by the time that I had finished.

"Fascinating," he said and he started as I laughed.

"Are you teasing me?" I asked him.

"What?"

"My fiancée says the same thing after I've told her a lot of things."

"I would like to think that my reaction is a statement of how I feel following your...I truly hate using grand words when something simple would do but I feel that, in this case, the word "remarkable" is most fitting."

"So," I began after a moment where his eyes seemed almost lidded as he considered the story. "Am I going to make a dash for my spear, you go for your dagger and we try to kill each other like civilised people?"

His eyes snapped open.

"No," He said, "No I don't think so. I think that you need a bit of help. After that though?" He shrugged.

"Who are you people?" I asked. "When I was first told that there was a group of Elves in the countryside I have imagined everyone and everything from a paramilitary group of Scoia'Tael commandos to a croup of runaway servants."

Chireadean mused at the question for a moment.

"You know how offensive that question is don't you?" He asked after a long moment.

"No," I admitted after a moment.

He smiled a little sadly. He truly had a repertoire of smiles that could be as expressive and eloquent as a dozen words.

"That all Elves fall into those two categories? Either human hating commandos or human hating runaway servants and slaves. I notice that you're leaving out the acclimatized Elves that try to join human society and contribute in our own small way."

"True, but in my defence I would argue that those acclimatised Elves would not be hiding out in the woods. I apologise for any offence that I may have given though. That was not my intention."

"I know," he said. "But men like you. Good men who work hard to improve themselves, as I know that you do still make the little mistakes. You think that we are all the stereotypes when the truth is that we are people, same as you and that if we are Elves then we must be one thing without room for being more than one thing.

"For instance. I was a city Elf. I tried to make the peace with humans by helping my cousin run an inn over in Rinde until Good King Radovid stirred up the anti-human sentiment and men came to burn our inn down. Couldn't stand that we had some prime real estate next to the city gates. The first place that travellers would come to for a pint and a bed as they came through the door. My cousin sunk a fortune into that place. Not only the initial investment but also the insurance settlement when a Sorceress and a Witcher destroyed the first building that we had."

He was staring at his feet.

"We had friends on the council, we had friends in the townsfolk. I was even courting a woman for her hand in marriage, being one of those few Elven men lucky enough to find human women attractive. And I was considered a catch at the time as well. But not one of our friends came to help us when the mob came. Not my fiancée's father, nor our friends on the council or our friends in the church. They sat by and watched as the strung my cousin up from the rafters and stretched his neck. They turned their backs when I fled with the clothes that I had on my back."

There was an old and well worn quality to his anger. As though it had been worn out and gone over until the sharp edge had been blunted, until there was only a rough feeling there now. Just a well worn groove in his emotions that his brain couldn't help but go down.

"I joined the Scoia'Tael after that. Because where else do I go? To another town where I start the entire process again? Only to be knocked down when some human decides that I am making too much money. Getting too successful for their comfort and wants to make sure that "I know my proper place." I fought with the commandos during the second war and long after until all that business with the Flaming Rose down in Temeria. I fought hard but I was never one of them. They saw me as tainted you see? I spent time working with humans. I had human friends and a human lover. I had a human job and a human social life. I had contributed to the human economy and added to human society. I was not an Elf to them. I was...something else. All of it wrong."

The sadness was in the smile again.

"And that is the root of the problem here. We have two hardcore Elven commandos with us here. Proper, hardcore, refusing to speak anything other than ancient Elven. They would kill you if you spoke it or even tried to learn it."

"Good to know," I commented. "I had to learn ancient Elven so that I could study some of the older texts."

"Yes," another slight smile. "I imagine that you would." He sighed and rubbed at a spot on the side of his head. "They were born in the valley of the flowers and left to fight against the human filth during the second continental war."

For the first time, he gave an expression of revulsion. It too was a kind of smile crossed with a frown and a shudder.

"You may be aware that Queen Francesca of Dol Blathanna was forced to condemn the actions of the Scoia'Tael as part of the peace process and the second treaty of Cintra."

"I had heard."

"So there own nation sold them out at the insistence of their only allies against their enemies. They can't hate Dol Blathanna but they are unspeakably angry at them and at the Queen."

"To be honest? I can kind of see why."

"Yes, especially as they were ordered to support the Nilfgaardian advance at the time in order for Dol Blathanna to be names a separate entity. At the time, that seemed impossible after the second peace. Both Henselt and Demavend eyed that valley greedily."

"Further Irony now that that land has been declared a Duchy of Nilfgaard with all the military support that they might want. It paid out in the long run."

"Yes, but all that those two Elves can see is that they were sold out, by their Queen, for political expediency and they rage at the entire situation. So they can't go home. But where do they go?"

He shrugged.

"So they stay with us. But they hate us too as the rest of us are mostly runaway servants, slaves or concubines from the north."

"Slavery is illegal in the North." I commented. I knew that it was pointless to say it just as I knew what his answer was going to be.

"Yes, I know." He commented with a sly smile. "Funny that, isn't it. I looked into it once. The statutes actually say about how the term "slave" is defined as a man who works for no wages and has no choice in the matter being considered the "property" of their owner rather than a worker for their employer. Those people that want to, have been side-stepping the law with that clause for years."

I nodded, "Only some people though."

"But those people do fuck all to help. It only takes some people and with respect, neither your father, nor yourself, your sister or your lover have gone out of their way to employ Elves or to free them from their servitude. You say things like "You hire the best people for the job" and local to you, that is always a human."

"It is also because the employment of an Elf would leave us vulnerable to enemies who would use that as an excuse to destroy us."

"Poor little Rich boy," he sneered, "making excuses about not doing the right thing." For a moment, a spasm of what I took to be rage crossed his face before his face went blank and he sighed before standing up. "You will have to excuse me Lord Frederick. I am furious with you at the moment. It will pass and then I will return to continue our conversation."

He gave me a little half bow before walking off. I heard him joke about something with another Elf as they passed each other.

I dozed for a little while, sitting with my back to a tree trunk, head resting backwards. There's no sleep aid quite like the sleep aid of being utterly exhausted and then being fed after you are hungry. Yes, even if you have just had some of your own hypocrisy thrown into your face.

I was woken by the simple virtue of being kicked in the leg. "Here," Chireadean stood over me with another cup. "Drink up. I spat in it as a way to cement our new found friendship."

I sat up and accepted the drink.

"Look." I began. "I just wanted to say that you're right. But..."

He waved the explanations off though. "Don't worry about it." He said. He was smiling again. "I am self-aware enough to know that you are not in charge of your household and that you were taught to look after the people that you could look after over and above those people for whom it's a lost cause. You were taught this from a very young age. I don't hate you, I even quite like you. But it sometimes hurts to hear someone say it, or to be confronted with it you know?"

"I don't." I told him. "I really don't. And I suppose that that's part of the problem."

"That it is."

I drank some of my drink.

"What is this stuff?" I asked him.

"It's herbal."

"I know that but what is it."

"It's a mixture that one of the others knows. We don't have much in the way of supplies but one of the few things that we do have are herbs. Lots of them. They grow in abundance in this corner of the world. If your brother really wants to make some money off the land around here, he doesn't want to mine or farm or any of that kind of nonsense. He wants to hire a bunch of herbalists and a bunch more alchemists and work the land looking for new ingredients for potions. If he goes about it carefully, he could be a major distributor for medicines and other potions."

"I'll tell him if I ever see him again. What does it do?"

"It repairs a body that's suffering from malnutrition. It doesn't do everything, it doesn't give you protein or carbohydrates or any of that kind of thing."

"Huh?"

"Meat and potatoes to ignorant savages like you." He said it with a smile although, to be fair, there weren't many things that he didn't say with a smile.

I decided not to pursue this and to drink my medicine like a good little boy.

"We were talking about the make-up of your people." I told him.

"That's true, we were, although I can't for the life of me think why,"

"I had commented that I had heard there was a group of Elves in the area and I was wondering who you were." I told him.

He snapped his fingers. "That's right, of course you were. You were being an arse as I recall."

"Maybe, but to be fair, are there many things that I can say about Elves which wouldn't make me seem like an arse?"

"Not many I suppose. You also wanted to know if I'm the leader here. I was in the process of explaining to you, in a long, convoluted and roundabout way that I am not. The quality that I have over everyone else here is that I possibly hate you the least."

I laughed, assuming that he was making a joke but this was one of the first times that he seemed to be being deadly serious.

"I understand humans better it is true. I know more of your human languages..."

"Again, I am aware that this is probably a mistake but I thought all the northern Kingdoms speak the same language."

"Really? Do the Skelligans speak the same language as the Temerians then? Also, I point out that Dol Blathanna is now part of the Northern Kingdoms and the Nilfgaardians that now live here all speak the elder tongue."

"I'm a historian," I told him. "Not a linguist."

"True, so I suppose that I'll forgive you that mistake. I also suppose that instead of saying that I know more human language than the next Elf I should say that I know more slang, idiom and dialects than some of my fellows. I used to help run an inn after all."

"You see how easy it is if we all just use the right words?"

He gave me a sidelong look as if he was trying to figure out if I was joking. Fortunately, I was.

"Yes, now define "The right words" for me and we'll all be good."

""A touch," as my old fencing master would say."

Chireadean smiled. The sadness had crept back into it again. "As did mine." He seemed to turn reflective for a moment. If he was entirely human I would have thought that he was lost in old memories.

"So what are you then?" I prompted. "You are neither a group of run-aways, not refugees, not a commando. Who are you?"

"We are Elves." He told me. "That might seem like a simplistic answer to you and you would be right. We are Elves. It's almost as if you told a painter to make a picture of a couple of dozen people that represented the entire Elven race. That is what we are and that is what we look like. We are refugees and runaways and commandos and travellers and poets."

"So why here?" I asked. "Look. I will admit that I know next to nothing about Elven culture other than the stuff that I needed to learn to learn the language and a rough impression of what had happened in history."

I saw his mouth quirk up and his mouth open.

"You can school me later Chireadean and I will be glad to listen but, much though I've enjoyed our conversation and getting my ass handed to me on a verbal battleground rather than the physical one. I have enemies snapping at my heels. I can't just escape from them..."

"But you need to do that too."

"I do. I need to get away really badly. But I can't just do that. I need to destroy these bastards."

His smile, just a slight upturning of his lips, was becoming maddening. "Why?"

"Are you trying to decide whether to help me?" I asked suddenly as the query crossed my mind.

"Yes." He said simply.

So I thought about my answer for a moment.

"If there's one thing that I have learned while on my travels it's that the world is not what I thought it was." I told him. "It's bigger and smaller, darker and more horrible, while at the same time having moments of light and beauty that I couldn't have imagined before I set out. I've learned how utterly wrong I have been and," I gestured at him, "how wrong I continue to be. I've learned that the term "Monster" is just a word and can be applied to humanity as often as it can be applied to other races. Sometimes more so even. I have learned that I am in fact very small compared to the world and that, although I might make a small difference in a few lives, in a few centuries, no-one will even remember my name."

Chireadean said nothing.

"But if there's one other thing that I have learned while on my travels with Kerrass it is that evil doesn't exist. Not real evil. I always knew the words in order to parrot them at my Philosophy professor, that Evil is in the eye of the beholder but until I actually got out here, I didn't know that to be true. It was just words to me. Out here, I learned that bandits are often starving desperate men who do this because going home to the farm is a fate worse than they can imagine. I learned that what society deems as "monsters" are often creatures that society hasn't taken the time to try and learn to understand. I learned that, at the root of the vast majority of crime you will normally find money and jealousy. And for the rest of the crime, the big stuff like wars, the root is politics and economics."

I stopped there for a while.

"The very worst things that I've seen and the very best thing's I've seen were done in the name of religion, my religion at that. You don't know me, even if you've read my journals and my book, you don't know how much it took out of me to admit that. My faith has been a great solace to me in the past but I look at what the church has become and I no longer..." I shook my head. The words escaping me for a moment. They weren't important to what I was trying to say anyway.

"When I was young, like many in my social class, I had a nanny. I had no choice in the matter so please don't hold it against me."

"I don't."

"But she used to tell me story's when I was little. Mostly to distract me, I suspect, and those stories were always about heroes doing the right thing, saving the peasants," I felt my lips curl into a sneer, "saving the Princess and upholding truth and justice. As if both truth and justice were not subjective but that's a digression for another day. The enemy in these stories was always some kind if "evil" thing. A "monster" or a "Mage" which says a lot about my nanny's politics I suppose, but they were always Evil with the appropriate capital letters.

"I was taught that those that might work against Truth and Justice and threaten the lives of my subjects were evil, baby-eating monsters and that good and noble men should hunt them down and destroy them."

I frowned as I realised that my throat was dry.

"Now I realise that evil, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. It was one of the first things that I learned on the road, one of the very first things. I still don't believe in evil."

"But." Chireadean prompted. "I know human speech patterns well enough to know that there's a "but" coming."

There was a brief pause as I considered the challenge that he was making. For some reason though I felt an edge of hilarity scrabbling at my throat

"hehe, you said butt." I giggled like a child suddenly. I suppose it was a form of exhaustion fuelled hysteria that caused the childish outburst

"Do not be childish," he scolded but I saw that he was laughing as well.

"You're right though." I told him after we calmed down. "The closest that I've ever been to seeing true evil was when I looked into the eyes of Lord Cavill and saw the things that he has done and continues to do to the people in this part of the world. My cousin was a sick, entitled fucker, there was something wrong with him. My brother was weak and fell in with the wrong crowd. This bastard though? He has chosen this. He likes this. And now I need to kill him for it."

Chireadean nodded. "Other people could do it instead." He suggested.

"Yes, I admitted. Yes they could, and when it comes down to it, the chances that it will be my spear or dagger that takes his life are remote. It would be much better if he could be tried, openly and prominently, followed by a nice, public execution. But the only way that that happens is if I can get through and let the right people know."

Saying it again reminded me of how...impossible the task ahead of me was and how vitally important it was.

My exhaustion came back in a rush as though I had been hit by a tidal wave. I rested my head on the log behind me.

"We're going to need a fucking army to get him out of the mountains." I carried on. "We're then going to need another army of Inquisitors and investigators to go through the countryside to make sure that this cult of his is dead." I slapped my hand down on my knee for emphasis. I wasn't being theatrical. I was tired, angry, upset and very very frightened. "It has to be dead. We need to pull this thing out by the roots and make sure that this...this "evil", and I do not use the word lightly, can never sprout up again. Whether it was born out of Human privilege as an excuse for a powerful group of people to do whatever the hell they want to people that they saw as beneath them. Or if it was a genuine religion or cult worshipping some power or God that we've never heard of."

I found myself grinning at him sidelong as another sense of odd amusement bubbled up inside me.

"Or at least, that humanity has never heard of. I would like to think that if humanity had heard of it then I would have heard of it. I am, at least that arrogant about my education."

Chireadean said nothing.

"But regardless of that, this needs to be destroyed. Why me and not someone else? Because I know the name of the bastard. I know what he looks like and where his civilian power comes from. No-one else does. It's the first mistake that the cult has made and we need to capitalise on it. We need to make sure that my friend Taylor didn't die in vain. That all the people's deaths that have led us to this point haven't died in vain."

"What was his mistake?" Chireadean asked gently. There was something in his eyes that I didn't recognise.

"That he let me go and take part in his stupid hunting ritual. He should have just cut my throat and left me to bleed out, but instead he lets me run off. Kerrass, Taylor, any of the other humans that he might have hunted through the lands, or, with respect, any of the other Elves that he might have hunted and I would guess that there's a couple of those Elves in your number, am I right?"

Chreadean said nothing but something glimmered in his eyes which told me that my guess was fairly accurate.

"If any of those people got to the authorities. Found the church of the Eternal Flame, or Kreve or whoever the fuck else there might be. Then they won't be believed. But I will be. I just need to get there and I want to get there as quick as possible to save any of the other poor fuckers that that bastard has in his cave that might be tortured in my place to quench his sick thirst. That was his mistake. He doesn't like me, fair enough, maybe he even hates me, but he should have just killed me when he had the chance. Not kept me prisoner because then I could escape or be rescued. Just a nice quick slit throat in a way that would suggest that I was robbed on the road. But instead, he made me angry and left me my weapons."

I sighed, the brief spurt of energy had left me again and I felt drained.

"So that's why it has to be me. I'm the man, because I'm the one here, with the skills, and the knowledge and the status to bring this fucker down. It might not be the first time that that has happened, that all of those factors have come together in the right order to make that happen but they clearly failed. So I must succeed. I must. Because otherwise, more innocent farmers and villagers will be hunted down and killed at best or tortured at worst and yes... I include the other Elves that live here, or hide in the other villages amongst the people that I have to save. Because no-one else can."

Chireadean looked at me for a long time. "You should rest. You are still tired and not entirely healthy and you need to spend a bit of time recovering at the least." He told me before another pause. "I try never to rush into a decision based on emotional impact or prejudice so I need to think about what you've told me. I will have someone bring you some food, in a little while."

I nodded and lay back down. He was right. I was, again, asleep shortly after my head was pillowed on the log.

Isn't it odd how soft the ground can be if you haven't slept for a while or when your body doesn't want to wake up in the morning?

This time, it was Kerrass that was kicking me awake before sitting opposite me with his legs crossed. He looked better than I had seen him in ages. He had some colour back, his breathing was steady and he even wore a slight smile. He seemed, comfortable in the world again. A quality of his that I hadn't missed until it had suddenly been taken away. I had become used to the long, almost languid grace of Kerrass which he had lost over our time on the run. But now he had that quality back. The sardonic and occasionally puerile sense of humour was back in his eyes.

"You look better," I commented as I levered myself up into a sitting position.

"I feel better too." He said with a happy little sigh. He still had his arms crossed in a sling in front of his chest. "Goddess Freddie but I do feel better. It's like..." He stared off into the trees for a moment as he thought. "It's like that moment when your hangover begins to recede. There is still pain and discomfort but it is, at the same time, somehow less than it was a moment earlier and you begin to know that it will all be ok soon."

I looked at him for a while. "Not gonna lie Kerrass, but you worried me for a while there."

He nodded. "I know and I'm sorry. I owe you another one.

"Give over," I told him. "How many times have you saved my life?"

I didn't give him time to recover.

"We're friends now aren't we?" I demanded.

Kerrass nodded.

"Then stop acting as though that quality is in jeopardy. I would give my life for you Kerrass, that's how this works. You owe me nothing. You would have done the same for me wouldn't you?"

"Yes." He admitted, "But I am a Witcher. It's my job to do that kind of thing. I'm used to it. Trained to it. If it had been you that had been crippled, however temporary that this will hopefully turn out to be, then I would have carried you away because that's what Witchers do. It's our duty as well as being a factor of friendship. But, you're not a Witcher Freddie. You're a fighter, yes, but the best thing for you to do would have been to leave me there and run for it."

I opened my mouth to protest but he held up a finger to prevent me from speaking. "And before you start, no. Just, our being friends, is not a reason that would motivate the vast majority of people in the world. There is a significant truth to be admitted that if you had left me behind, that you would already be safe in Ariadne's arms and the armies of Nilfgaard and the church would be tearing the countryside apart even now."

"You're assuming that I wouldn't be crippled by guilt or regret."

"Which is the thing that makes you rare Freddie, even now. I am grateful, don't get me wrong but I cannot lie. I think you made the wrong choice." He stared at me for a long time. "That saddens me a little, that I would think that you made the wrong choice and it is something that I need to think about."

I shifted a little in discomfort.

"How're your arms?" I asked, more for something to say rather than anything else.

He brightened instantly. Slowly, he raised his right arm and lifted both arms out of the sling and waved them about for emphasis.

"Better." He said. "Not better, but better." He slid the arms back into the sling. "The Elves had some strong alcohol sitting around the place and they were good enough to let me tell them what to do to brew some potions and elixirs out of it which means that I'm on the mend. Don't get me wrong, The bones are still very weak..."

"Well, that's what happens when you let someone shatter them with a Warhammer. Careless of you Kerrass, very careless."

For a moment, I was worried that I had gone too far and that he wouldn't appreciate the teasing nature of the joke but he chuckled.

"You are not wrong. I should have seen that coming really but still. I've had broken bones before. Just not in such a time of crisis. It's still going to be weeks before I can pick up one of my swords, let alone before I can get my arms back to where they need to be in order to function in the way that I want them to be. But at least I can feed myself and wipe my own arse now."

"Good. Not a memory that I'm going to cherish,"

"No," he shuddered theatrically.

We sat in silence for a bit. I was worried. I felt as though something had come between us and I didn't like it very much.

"Kerrass?" I began. "You know that I have questions. About what was wrong with you towards the end of things before the Elves found us"

"I know." He told me. "And I will tell you everything I promise. When I'm feeling a bit more like myself. As I say, I feel like I'm coming out of a long dark tunnel. I can see the light at the end of it but I'm not quite there yet."

He stared at a point on the ground in front of him.

"I will go into more detail at a future point but the long and short of it is..." He raised his eyes to meet mine. "I was losing my mind. I once told you that Cat Witchers often suffer psychoses and that I was one of the lucky ones. That I only suffered from bouts of depression."

"As I recall you once joked about hearing voices."

"Yes." He chuckled. "Yes I did didn't I. Heh." Again, the staring into space. I was beginning to realise that he still wasn't quite right. As he said, "better, but not better."

"Well," he went on. "I lied. I wasn't one of the lucky ones."

He looked away from me.

"I am not proud of keeping this from you Freddie, you have never betrayed my trust, either in this or in any of the other little things that I have told you. You have put up with me when many people would have cast me aside and no-one, least of all me, would have blamed you for doing so."

I was struggling to think about what to do. It didn't even occur to me to reject him. But I got the feeling that he was telling me something that no-one else knew about him. That no-one else had ever been told. There was a certain amount of solemnity about this and I wanted to treat it with the dignity that it deserved. I decided that silence was the best option here and did my best to keep my face still. I didn't want him to see anything that he might misunderstand in my expression.

"But..." He seemed to grit his teeth. "But, I was losing my mind over those last few days. I was weak. Injured. I felt useless and entirely dependent on you...I was hungry and thirsty because I didn't want you to be feeding me. I was angry with you for not leaving me behind and I disagreed with almost every decision that you made when we were running. You got us here but my brain, even now, is rebelling at the fact that you did that.

"All of this and I was without my elixirs and my...my grip on reality started to slip away."

Reading this you might be left with the impression that he said this quickly. That the words came out of him clearly and with conviction. But you would be wrong. That little speech took a long time. A long time and it cost him. I think it cost him a lot. He was breathing heavily by the time he was done. Gasping for breath.

"As I say Freddie," He told me when he got his breath back. "I will tell you everything. I promise. It's my last secret, the last thing that you don't know and I will tell you. Just...I can't...Not yet anyway, when I'm stronger I will tell you everything in detail. When I'm more sure that it's me speaking and that I'm alone inside my own head. When I'm sure that my thoughts are my own The outline of it was that the mutations that they subjected me to sent me mad. Full on, barking at the moon, howling mad. If I was given the chance, I would have torn at the raw flesh of my victims. With my teeth. I was everything that the common folk say about Cat Witchers. Everything."

He seemed to have stopped.

"But you got better Kerrass."

"I did. By the time we're done. I will tell you how I did it. But not now. Not here."

"Fair enough Kerrass. I'm your friend and I hope that you know that nothing you can tell me will change that."

He looked at me sharply as though he didn't believe me and I felt the need to clarify.

"If this happened to you as the result of the mutations that were done to you then this is not your fault. It was something that was done to you and I can't hate you for that. I won't pressure you either. When you want to talk, then I will listen. I will even keep it to myself and not publish it if you want. But, can I just ask a question?"

He laughed and I could see a bit of his old sElf returning. "You wouldn't be you if you didn't have questions."

I smiled to let him know that I took the joke.

"Why not now?" I asked him. "Is it just your physical strength? If you don't want to answer that's fine but..."

He waved me off.

"It's not that." He considered this for a moment. "It's partly that. I'm also still getting back into the elixirs. They help with it, that's part of the reason that I take them every day. It's only partially to do with being a Witcher. But a lot of Witchers will just start taking them on a build up to a hunt. I do that too but the stuff I take every day. That's to help me keep a grip on my sanity."

"I didn't know you took them every day."

He smiled again. "You've commented in your journals, quite often in fact, that I sometimes go off by myself for training and a bit of solitude. I take the elixirs then and meditate on my mental state. As well as training."

I nodded and went to turn away, I don't know what I was going to do. Crack a joke, adjust my posture or what but Kerrass wasn't done.

"I promised you the truth Freddie. So here's the other reason other than my personal well-being, physical and mental." He waited a moment. "The other reason is that she might hear me. And we have enough going on here without having to worry about her as well."

"Who is she?" I asked. The last time I heard you talking like that, you were talking about the Princess Dorn in her sleeping state.

"She, the thing that I'm referring to, ismy Goddess." He said simply. "Yes, I don't worship Melitele or Freyja or anyone else. I don't say her name as to say her name is to summon her gaze and I am not strong enough for that."

"We could do with the help Kerrass."

He laughed. He actually laughed. "You're assuming, of course that she would be on our side."

I didn't know what to say to that. I was rescued by Chireadean walking up. He had two plates with some hard cheeses, a bit more bread and a large pile of greens.

"You two finished kissing and making up?" he asked with one of his slyer smiles.

"Mostly," I told him, winking at Kerrass. "We've still got some stuff to work out but..." I looked off into the distance, gurning my face into an expression of wistful and optimistic hope. "We'll get there."

Chreadean laughed and handed us a plate each.

"So," He said, sitting down at the third point of the triangle between the two of us. "I'm not convinced yet. Nor am I convinced about how we can, or how we should help you beyond feeding you and helping you to recover your strength. All I know is that you can't stay here indefinitely. They might be spread thin but the bastards do have access to a couple of trackers with some real talent. Just not that many. But eventually they will find you which means that they will find us and the fact that we helped you and we cannot afford that."

"What's your relationship with them?" Kerrass was wearing his Witcher persona again. But this time I could see it for a mask and a cloak that he had pulled about himself. It was the difference between an actor playing a tough guy on stage, versus an actual tough guy. Chireadean seemed to buy it though, he grimaced.

"It's complicated. They know we're here and there's some evidence that they allow it, or tolerate it. It seems to amuse them to have us running around the place, relying on the charity of the common-folk like the beggars that we are. I suppose that it plays into their love of torture and belittling people, that the prideful Elves are forced to subsist off human charity."

"Is it that torturous?" I asked. More out of curiosity than anything else.

"It can be," Chreadean admitted. Those of us who know and understand more about humans can see it for the charity and occasional kindness that it often is, whereas those that were taken as slaves and were abused as that same, tend to get angry at it. They tend to see it as a kind of insult and I can't really blame them either." He snorted. "Pride. Pride is the besetting sin of our race and if we're not careful then it will be the death of us as well."

Kerrass and I said nothing. Chireadean was staring into space for a moment before he kind of shook himself and started talking again.

"But the other thing that we're useful for, from their perspective is that they use us for practice."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, when there aren't political prisoners like yourself for them to chase across the countryside, or human transgressors that they don't like the look of ,or who have broken their many and convoluted laws to use for their hunts and so that they can get their rocks off. You know, when there aren't any spare farmers daughters for them to rape to death. They come and get an Elf."

He said that last bitterly.

I struggle with Elves. I have never known many and those that I have known have been of the kind of Elves that have amalgamated with human society, or are no longer pure-blooded. The kinds of men, and women who are basically human in their behaviour but are slighter of build with pointed ears. As such, I've never really thought about what kind of things that they go through on a daily basis. Chreadean's earlier accusations of racism had hurt a little bit as I rather thought that I wasn't too bad on that regard.

I don't hate Elves. I would certainly never call for them to be hung from the nearest tree as some of my fellows and acquaintances have. But then I was brought up to believe that you needed to be polite to everyone and to treat people with respect despite what I might think of them personally.

As I write this, I'm kind of struggling to articulate how I feel on this subject so please bear with me.

There have always been greater problems for me to deal with when it comes to the prejudices that I had trained into me from a young age. The problems that came with being who I am, the family that I was born into and the social class that came with that. Going out into the world I have had to train myself to get over many of these things. The one that comes to mind the most often is my behaviour towards what my father would call "The lower classes," or what the other members of my social strata would refer to as "peasants".

As I have said before I have worked hard to get over this prejudice, to see the people that work the fields and in the warehouses for who they are rather than as a collective of people that I am better than.

Similarly the woeful inadequacy of the word "Monster." Like "peasant" it is pitifully unsuitable to properly describe what is actually out there as well as often being inaccurate. Most people use the word to describe anything that isn't covered by the terms "Human" or "Non-human" which they tend to define as being dwarves, Elves, Halflings and gnomes. But again, I have found some humans that have been more "Monstrous" than some "monsters" that roam the world.

Indeed, I am in love with and marrying someone who, once upon a time, I would have described as a monster.

I appreciate that I may have gone over these topics of conversation before.

But I had never seen the way I treated towards Elves as a problem. Or Dwarves for that matter. I've only met the odd Halfling in passing and have never seen a gnome or a Werebubb. Let alone a Vran.

So when Chireadean confronted me with the sentiment about my family never having hired an Elf for a job, let alone a servant on the grounds that it would endanger our standing and put us at risk from enemies that would use that to turn those elements of the church...that I will admit, still exist, against us. For fear of being labelled "non-human" lovers.

Which I am. I love me my dark, terrifying and endearing non-human fiancée. But I'd somehow got the feeling that this meant that I was ok. That I wasn't prejudiced.

I'm still not entirely convinced that his attitude and his accusations were entirely fair or unfair.

But. The thing that I do not understand and I suppose that I can never understand is what it's actually like to be a non-human. Chireadean would argue that, although I didn't agree with my friends that non-humans are scum and need to be strung up by the side of the road, what I should have done was call them out for being the racist fucks that they undoubtedly are.

But I didn't do that. Because, what would it have achieved?

And I suspect that that is the real evil here. That is the real wrong and I suspect that I am on the wrong side here.

I don't know the answer and it's something that I'm going to continue to think about over time. I do know that I certainly intend to make sure that Ariadne and I allow Elves and Dwarves and Halflings and whoever else wants to come and work on our land will be more than welcome.

For all I know she already has ideas in that direction. For all I know, she's already hiring rock trolls to build some of the out buildings.

"They come and get an Elf." Chireadean was saying. "They always seem to know where we are,"

"The mage," Kerrass muttered to me. "Another man that needs to die."

Chireadean either hadn't heard him or ignored him.

"They ride through camp like the wind and pluck one of us from the ground, slinging them over the back of their horses. Covering us in that awful poison that they throw out so that we can barely see, let alone fight back. I mean, our elder blood means that we can handle that stuff better than how some of the other humans handle it, but it's no joke."

"Do they pick out an Elf at random or do they have a specific target." Kerrass asked.

Chreadean shrugged and raised his hands in the eternal sign of a man who has no clue.

Kerrass and I exchanged glances. "So here's my question and I'm sorry if this is a further insult." I told the Elf. "But why do you stay here? You seem like a rational man," I frowned as I heard myself speak. "Elf...Whatever...So why haven't you and your people taken to your heels and fled." He opened his mouth to speak and I held my hand up to stop him mid-flow "And before you speak, you are not going to convince me that you're not in charge here. You might not have any kind of official title like "War leader" or anything else that might be used in that direction but I bet, I would bet money if I had any, that if you said something, or told them to do something, then they would do it. Wouldn't they?"

Chireadean said nothing.

"They might not like you." I told him. "They might even hate you a little bit, but they follow where you lead." I was watching him carefully. "So why don't you lead them elsewhere?"

"It's not as simple as that." The Elf said. He was looking uncomfortable.

"It never is." Kerrass told him.

"So talk to us." I said. "We might need your help now and it might not seem as though we can do much for you, but give us a chance. What's going on here? Why don't you just tell them all to go somewhere else?"

"Because they won't." Chreadean said after a long while. "That's the difference here. No matter how gently I suggested it. No matter how carefully I word it or how well I speak. They will never leave this place. And I find that I can't just leave them to it. I can't desert them now to the whims of this...your are quite right Lord Frederick. I can't leave them to this evil. I've even tried, several times. Take some human clothes, walk off for a couple of weeks, maybe a month. Even if I can't find a job, it's not that hard to get a living of some kind. But I come back here because I can't stop thinking about what these other Elves are going through and all the different ways that I could be helping them."

"So why don't they leave?"

He laughed. I certainly wasn't expecting that and he stared at me for a long time before he scratched the side of his head in thought.

"Have you ever been to a place in Kaedwen, I think it's called Ard Clairen?"

"No I haven't." I told him.

"I have." Kerrass said, to no-one's surprise. "Small place in Kaedwen, up against the mountains. Large church as I recall."

"It would have to. Have you at least heard of it Lord Frederick?"

"I can't say that I have."

He made a face, "I'm not all that surprised if I'm honest." The Elf told me. "It's fairly remote, up against the mountains as your Witcher companion says and it's importance is played down by the rest of the church of eternal Flame, as the reliquaries are kept in the Cathedral in Novigrad. The great stone coffin that is supposed to contain the earthly remains of the Saint."

I laughed in sudden realisation. "Your talking about the place where St Lebioda was killed by the dragon."

"I am. Although saying that he was killed by the dragon is a little extreme in my opinion. To my mind, it was much closer to a suicide if you walk up to an angry dragon without arms or armour and politely ask it to stop chewing on the sheep of the local shepherds."

For those people who don't know the story, briefly it goes like this. Famous holy man and general wise person St Lebioda the Prophet was travelling through the continent, preaching his good works when he came to Kaedwen.

Please understand that I am generalising for our foreign readership as most people in Novigrad and Oxenfurt already know the story.

But he was in Kaedwe,n trying to get people to be nice to each other, when he was approached by some villagers who asked for his help in getting rid of a dragon that was chewing up their daughters and livestock. Although the more historical version that I read suggested that the farmers were more interested in saving their livestock than their daughters and still another account suggested that the Kaedweni nobility were trying to arrange matters so that what happened, actually happened. This being because, at the time, they didn't like people walking around telling folk how to live their lives according to the will of the Holy Flame rather than the will of their proper societal betters.

But I digress.

Naturally, the Prophet agreed to help and went with the villagers to where the dragon was flying around and doing the general terrorising. Praying to the Holy Flame which he absolutely expected to keep him safe, the Prophet went out to confront the dragon and banish it with the power of prayer and faith.

According to legend, the Dragon demonstrated what it thought of the word of the Flame and ate the prophet whole to the rejoicing of the local nobility.

According to that same legend the Prophet's followers tracked the Dragon for some miles, scooping up the dragon's dropping so that they could properly recover the mortal remains of the Saint. These remains are now kept in the tomb that was built for him in the Novigrad cathedral.

If you turn up on holy days, or pay the priests there enough money, they will take out the reliquaries so that you can kiss them.

For more information on the subject as well as analysis of the history around the subject of the Prophet, who was undoubtedly a good and holy man, if a little naïve about the nature of dragons, then I recommend "The life and death of the Prophet Lebioda. An examination of the history rather than the legend." By Professor Tigismund of Oxenfurt.

"I've been there a couple of times." Chireadean told us. "I actually quite like it there. I see it as a kind of monument to human optimism. You can see that the Kaedweni, and maybe even the church of Kreve tried to turn it into a new religious centre for the veneration of the prophet and the Holy Fire so as to leech off some of the power and influence of Novigrad, but the village is just that little bit too remote, that little bit too far off the beaten track for people to actively be attracted to going there.

"Having said that, there is a small group of worshippers there. Did you meet them when you went there Kerrass?"

"I didn't." The Witcher answered. "I was in the region for another reason and the holy men were not really interested in speaking to a mutant freak and as such, I wasn't well disposed to meeting them either."

Chireadean grinned.

"As Kerrass says. There is a small group of Worshippers. They claim to be descendants of the Prophet himself although every story I ever heard about his was that he was celibate and actually not that fond of women. When I countered them with that, then they claimed all kinds of nonsense but I suspect that some of the Prophet's followers stayed after he died while the..." he cleared his throat. "The remains were carried off to Novigrad. They couldn't bear to be taken away you see. They couldn't bear to leave the place where their master, where their teacher had died. Even when Redania rolled over them in the recent wars, I'm told that they stayed there and that they died there such was their devotion to the memory of that one holy man."

I smiled a little myself. I had been eating while the Elf spoke and so I had to swallow when Chireadean had finished.

"So the point of that little story is?" I prompted.

"You know what the point of the story is Lord Frederick." Chireadean chided gently.

"Yes, but I want to hear it in your words. So many mistakes in the recording of this kind of thing happen because people put words into the mouths of the people that they are talking too."

The Elf considered this. "You are probably right." He admitted. "The others won't leave here. This is place is...holy to them. It's probably as close as any of them will get to a home."

I had a mouthful of greenery so I was grateful that Kerrass asked the obvious question.

"Why?" He asked simply.

Chireadean sighed. He seemed to be doing that a lot. "It's a long story but I can see why it might be useful to you." But then he stopped speaking again.

"Is it to do with this cult that Lord Cavill follows?" I prompted again, trying to keep the conversation going.

"Partially," He seemed to shake himself free. "But it's more to do with...Forgive me. I'm struggling to think of where to begin."

"At the beginning generally." Kerrass tried to joke.

"Ah, but where do things begin? Where do they end? Does anything truly begin." Chireadean said with a slightly mocking version of his regular smile.

"Fuck off." Kerrass told him flatly. "Goddess but talking to you is almost as bad as talking to him." He nodded in my direction.

"Some people in the camp would take that as an insult." Chireadean said. "Not me though. I think...Yes, I think I will take that as a compliment."

"Don't," Kerrass told him flatly.

We sat in silence for a while as Chireadean considered a way to start his story. I took the opportunity to eat the food that he had given me, possibly a little too fast for the fact that I was still recovering from a period of borderline starvation but the scholar's instinct that I was about to be told something important was on me. Something that I would need to remember.

Kerrass seemed to share my opinion but he took a slightly more measured approach to swallowing the food. Partially due to the fragile nature of his arms but I also saw him gingerly taking a swig from one of the bottles at his belt before I carefully looked away. Not that he won't have seen me but I thought he might appreciate knowing that I didn't care about what potions that he was taking.

"How much do you know about Elven history?" Chireadean asked suddenly.

"Not enough," I responded promptly, and I meant it. "Not by choice I should say but, funnily enough, few Elven historians want to come and lecture at Oxenfurt."

Chireadean smiled as I had hoped he would.

"Then I will assume that you know as little about Ancient Elven culture then. That's not a criticism. Despite my current circumstances, I was born and raised as a city Elf so what I know now are things that my parents taught me as bed time stories. As well as the kinds of things that I've picked up from my comrades in arms and others as well."

He stared off into space. I guessed that he was watching some kind of memory from long ago. It is, often, a mistake to interrupt a man when he has that look on him.

"Do you know about the Conjunction of spheres?"

"I do," I said. "It's that method by which the monsters on the continent came here. Also, probably, humanities route to this world if not this particular part of it. That's a simplification of it as well."

Kerrass nodded as I spoke.

"One of the overwhelming ironies of Elven life," Chireadean began, "is that we too, are strangers to this world. One of the things that makes me laugh in my darker, more cynical moments is that every sin that we accuse humanity of, we are guilty of that same.

"I have heard many theories about where the Elves come from." He went on. "Many many theories including the possibility that we are also refugees that came here through the same conjunction of spheres that brought humanity, vampires and the other monstrous people to this place. I have also heard the theory, that is given more weight considering relatively recent events, that there have been many conjunctions over the millennia and that, even if we did not come here through that one, we came here through one of those conjunctions.

"But regardless of how we got here, we know that we are not native to this world. We are colonists, refugees... Invaders. Just as the early humans were and like humanity we came here by boat. Our stories tell of a large fleet of white ships that carried us from heavens know where and we landed on these shores and decided, in our infinite and boundless wisdom, that this place was good and that we could build a home here."

"You sound almost cynical about those early Elves." Kerrass commented. I almost resented the interruption though as I was rather caught up in the story.

"A little," Chireadean admitted. "The course that they lay for the future of the Elven people is part of the reason that we are in so much trouble today."

Again, he went into a kind of trance which, if he were human, I would have thought that he was caught up in his memories or putting his words in the right order.

"The thing that you have to remember about that earliest incarnation of Elven society, all of those centuries ago, was that their overwhelming drive was towards perfection. That was their ideal and everything that they strove towards. They built their cities in the most "perfect" places where "perfect" is defined as being the most practical but also the most beautiful places. Near water, near pastoral land but also in areas of outstanding natural beauty."

"The people that live in Novigrad might disagree about the natural beauty part." Kerrass commented.

For those people that don't know, the majority of the larger cities on the continent were built on the ruins of Elven civilisation. This includes Novigrad, Oxenfurt, Vizima, Ban Ard and many many more. Vengerberg is another example as is the palace in Toussaint. Sorry, but humanity is not that good at architecture.

"And the Elven contingent would argue that that lowering of standards was brought about by human industry and farming methods." Chireadean countered with a smile. "But still, that was what they were about. They would discard, weeks or months of work if it was found to be faulty in some way. Humanity would fix the problem, the Elves would simply destroy the entire thing and start again. Everything was about striving towards that abstract concept of perfection. Even when perfection is subjective as in the case of physical beauty.

"As well as this, they drove away and destroyed anything that did not fit with this ideal of perfection. This is most notable in the case of the Vran and the Werbubbs. Humanity shares the blame for the, all but extinction of the Werebubb race with us but the Vran? That was mostly on us which is why I find myself unable to share my fellows hatred of humanity. Everything that humanity does or did to drive the Elves to the brink of destruction, we did first to the Vran and, looking back, we did it because they are not good to look at. They did not share our aesthetic tastes and resisted the changes that we made to the surroundings in the name of "perfection".

"But there were some areas that we did not go to. Some areas that those ancient Elves simply had nothing to do with, although we were more than capable of going wherever we wished and doing whatever we wished. This area?" He waved his arms expansively to illustrate his point. "This area up against the mountains between the river and the passes was one of the areas that those ancient Elves didn't go into.

"Why?" He asked his own question, pre-empting my follow up. "I'm afraid that I don't know for sure. All I can confirm for certain is the follow up. They put up, almost a warning fence. The same way that humans do when there's a deserted building that will probably fall down in the near future. They put a sign on the door saying something like "condemned" without actually doing anything about it other than watching it rot. Sometimes this is because the place is haunted and they spend weeks, not hiring a Witcher to exorcise the thing which would mean that the building is available to be used again.

"But instead, they just leave it there to moulder, to fall into ruin and, in many cases, to let the problem get worse, to move from a state when the problem could have been easily dealt with to a state where it's almost impossible to find a solution, for instance, the way that they ignored the problem of humanity's expansion until long after anything could have been done about it. If they had sorted the problem out when humans had first landed here, negotiating from a position of strength, then maybe our peoples would have found a better way to coexist rather than attack and hate each other."

"I doubt it," Kerrass interrupted again.

"I agree." Chireadean nodded after a moment. "I think that the Elves were too proud and the humans too determined. It would have meant a war that may have wiped both of us out. But that failure to do anything about things at the beginning, when more and more humans were landing on our shores, is the reason that the Elves are in the state that they're in at the moment. Another reason why I find that I have relatively little sympathy for their, for our, current plight."

He began to go into another one of his trances but then he shook himself. "I am getting off track. You wanted to know the story of what happened here from the Elven perspective, not the failings of the Elven race."

"Even though that topic is quite interesting."

Chireadean grinned nastily. "Quite."

"My point was that this place made those ancient Elves uncomfortable. I don't know why but we know that this happens because, no matter how hard you try, there is absolutely no sign of any kind of Elven influence anywhere in this place. There are signs of Elven culture in the Skelligan islands but not here. Here there is nothing. They didn't like it so they never came here."

"But they came here eventually?" I prompted. "The Elves did come here eventually otherwise you wouldn't be here yourself."

"Correct. I'm just getting to that though, patience Lord Frederick. This is what the Elves of this area believe happened. I emphasise that I am not as convinced as they are. But this is what I was told when I got here. The short version of the story is that someone came here to combat whatever was wrong with the area. I have no idea who this person was or what he was doing here. But this is where he came. This is the story of who the Elves believe that was."

He took a deep breath.

"As I say, the Ancient Elves valued perfection over all things. That was the thing that they valued and they really put their money where their mouths were. People who were physically perfect were the people with power and influence. It seems stupid when you think about it because surely, in a society that values perfection above all others then somewhere there would be a "perfect" ruler. That person would be wise and intelligent in order to implement laws and issue declarations. They would be fair and kind so that Justice and things would be even-handed. But no, the Elves valued physical perfection above all things."

"That sounds..." I began but I shook my head as words failed me.

"It is no accident that Francesca Findabair, the most beautiful and perfect looking woman in the world is also the Queen of the Elves." Chireadean said with a smirk. "A holdover from our oldest traditions I suspect. Although opinions about her perfection have shifted since her being found to be in league with Nilfgaard and her throwing the Elven Commando's to the wolves after the second war. But that's a story for a different day."

"Another one of many," I said.

"As you say.

"But if you think about it for any longer you start to realise that people who are all, universally, hunting down that elusive quality "Perfection" don't need that much ruling. The builders and the architects are looking for perfection and people who want to live in the perfect city are going to want to help them achieve that vision. The perfect thinkers are working away, along with the perfect artists and the perfect philosophers as well as the perfect warriors. We were few enough in number that the land easily provided us with everything that we needed in order to survive so all the King had to do really was make sure that the artists with conflicting views of perfection would chill their shit down and not come to blows.

"But also he, or she to be fair, was also in charge of making sure that those areas of the world that were not perfect would get that way when we wanted them too.

"Hence the problem with the Vran. Calling it a war is a little ambitious, more a series of skirmishes followed by massacres as the Vran, were not particularly war-like. They mostly fled the superior Elven weapons and techniques of war but occasionally they would fight back and things might go badly. In this instance, the King, being the "perfect" King would be leading his troops and it would occasionally transpire that the King would fall in battle. So far so normal.

"But...It would also be true that just because someone "fell" in battle, it didn't necessarily mean that the King was dead. What it would mean was that the King was injured or crippled. The word that those Elves used to use was "Scarred" and to be a King, you had to be perfect. Therefore a scarred, "imperfect" Elf could never be King. This spread so that "scarred and imperfect" Elves could not take part in the Elven "Perfect" society as they would be a blemish to everyone else."

"Seems a bit harsh." I commented.

"And, luckily for many modern Elves, no longer that enforceable. Now our blemishes and our..."scars" take on different forms. It is this that keeps people like us away from the homeland. It is self-imposed as much as it is imposed on us by the will of the people that we would serve.

"But anyway.

"The wounded King would be thanked for his contribution to society and he would then leave. There would be a funeral, a memory, even statues would be crafted but the truth was that the Elf in question was dead and he would be recorded as such.

"What this means is that we have no idea who it really was that came here and started to put his stamp on the world.

"This will have been after the Conjunction but well before the first landing at the mouth of the Pontar. There is no way of knowing why he came here either but there are some indications that he found it a fitting place to be. Here he was, a crippled King, forced into exile and so he went to a place where he would never mar the world that the Elves were trying to build. He would not ruin that perfection so he gathered a lot of those people who had, like him, suffered from mishaps during the various combats with the Vran and went to those parts of the continent that the other Elves didn't want to have anything to do with."

"Like here."

"Indeed. What he found was the primitive humans. I say primitive but that's possibly a bit unfair. They were certainly well capable of crafting menhirs and building standing stones and circles in places of magical significance."

"You're talking about the Dauk," I put in.

"Yes. As you probably know, they settled far to the North shortly after the conjunction but, for whatever reason, they died out relatively quickly. Giving the rest of the Elves the mistaken belief that humanity was just a passing phase that would soon die out when they landed on the Pontar."

"Just because something was always true doesn't meant it will always be true." Kerrass told him.

"As you say." Chireadean said, his smile faltered at the thought before starting up again. "But since I come here I occasionally entertain myself by imagining what those ancient and relatively primitive humans must have thought of the Elven King's arrival."

"Wait a minute." I interrupted. "Wouldn't the King have wanted to stay with his people. Casting someone out for the dubious crime of no longer looking quite as perfect seems a little harsh. He would still have skills and knowledge and experience for his successors to draw on."

"Which is a human way of thinking." Chireadean told me. "You are right of course but the truth is that he probably left without much of a fuss. Perfection and the pursuit of it was the reason that the Elves existed. It was their reason for being, so suddenly not being perfect but still being surrounded by that same perfection was unbearable to him. There is also the rather unfair factor that anything that he said, did or advised would be tarnished. It couldn't be perfect or that good advice because he failed after all. He was now scarred and therefore his rulership couldn't have been perfect because it had resulted in him being scarred. His skills and knowledge and...what was it you said?"

"His experience,"

"That's right, that too, would be ignored as being imperfect and tarnished."

"Despite everything that he might have done?" Kerrass seemed as horrified by the prospect as I was.

Chireadean said nothing for a long time before taking a deep breath. "One of the problems that I have in understanding my own people is that I can see your problems with this philosophy but I can also see why the Elves of Dol Blathanna feel the way that they do and behave the way that they do. That is my flaw, my scar if you will."

"But you could advise them on how humanity works."

"Yes, yes I could. But they would never accept that knowledge"

I just stared at him for a while. He agreed with me. He clearly did but at the same time it wasn't something that he could get past.

"Sorry," I sad after a long while. "I've distracted us all from the point."

"Yes, well. So anyway. As I say, when I want a bit of a smile I like to think about what those, so called, primitive humans thought about the Elven King arriving with his followers. He would still have been beautiful of face, graceful, charming, commanding with followers that were similar. I imagine their faces, trying to reconcile what they were seeing with what their experiences were.

"We know that there weren't any humans here when the Elves first came to this part of the world and found it flawed. We also know that by the time the Elves came back, led by this fallen King, that the humans that did live here were in dire straights. This was because they had caught the eye of...something. What this thing was, we don't know and we still don't know what it was, or is."

He lapsed into thought for a while. This time I had the wit to not interrupt his thought process.

"I don't like using grand words in general so I'm not going to call this, whatever it was, a God. I liked your brother's description of the way that the world works Lord Frederick, when he was describing the patterns of influence by the various powers that influence and shape the world. So let's call this thing a power. What was it? This is where we're starting to get theoretical again.

"There has always been a small collective of Elves here. It is a place of exile, for those people who are flawed. Never many and some are descended from those people that followed the Crippled King into these lands but even more so are attracted to come here when they have failed in other aspects of life or they have been crippled. We never write anything down because we don't want that kind of permanence. We don't want to record our failures..."

He held his hand up to forestall me. "I know, I know, not failures then. More like...We don't want to record our imperfections. So a lot of what happened there has been passed down in a more aural tradition but without the enforced accuracy that the Skelligan bards use to preserve their ancient songs. So here's what I think happened given what we now know of the world with modern and magical science.

"We know, because extremely wise people tell us so, that the Conjunction of spheres opened rifts all over the continent. Out of which spilled various creatures. For instance, the vampire race turned up, mostly in what is now Toussaint. That several versions of humanity turned up all over the place. We also know that these portals came from many different places. So my theory is that a portal opened to somewhere else.

"I stress that this is just a theory. Unless a Wizard or Sorceress actually turned up to study the area, I doubt that we will find out for sure."

He seemed to consider something for a moment, "although that might not be the greatest idea, but still.

"As I say, I think a portal opened in this area and it opened to a place where another "power", as your brother put it, lived. I think that that power looked through the portal and saw our world but for whatever reason it was unable to come through. Maybe size is a factor, maybe there are elements about our world or our version of existence that would make it impossible for it to come here, or to survive here but, it doesn't come through the portal. But it is able to exert an influence over the area. To leave a piece of itself here so that it can still see through from wherever it still is to here so that it can guide people into doing what it wanted.

"I have no idea how intelligent this thing was, maybe this is an instinctual process rather than because of some kind of intelligent plan but regardless of this, the being exerted it's influence and required feeding for some reason.

"What that reason is is a way that I fuel my nightmares and avoid thinking about for any length of time if I can avoid it.

"But the method of feeding this...this being, is by virtue of extreme sensation."

"Fucking hell." I breathed. "Cavill's God is real."

"Oh yes," Chireadean agreed. "Very real. As I say, something primal in me refuses to accept that it's a God but it is certainly very real. It is fed by extremes of pleasure and pain primarily and, humanity being what it is, pain is the thing that humanity is better at causing. They are not alone in that before you leap down my throat."

"No," I said. "It's not an entirely unfair declaration. A little unfair but not entirely so."

Chireadean smiled genuinely.

"So anyway," he continued. "I theorise that it was this presence that the Elves felt when they got here that made them feel uncomfortable. We now know that Conjunctions have happened more than once and will likely happen again at some point in the future, so I think that this portal that allowed this being to get a toe-hold here happened in one of the ancient conjunctions and it was this presence that the ancient Elves felt which made them discard the area. But when humans came here, there was suddenly a food source and it started to gain in strength and influence.

"But then the Elves came, following their wounded King."

"Hold on," I said, laughing suddenly. "Is this a story about how the Elves turned up and saved the day. Is that what's going on here?"

Chireadean stared at me before abruptly seeing the funny side and joining me in laughter. "Pretty much." He agreed.

"Despite being scarred and injured, the King and his followers were still powerful Elves. Still wise, strong and with access to a magic that modern magic users would find bewildering. Including Queen Francesca. Using these powers and these skills, the Elves were able to liberate those early humans from the...well, the slavery that they were under so that they could carry on with their lives. I would like to think that they did this out of hope. I would like to think that they did these things in order to help those early humans and to ensure their survival. Maybe in gratitude for some unnamed service.

"What is more likely though is that those ancient Elves were still in the habit of ruler-ship and arrogant superiority and helped the humans because they were looking for someone to look after. A people to rule. Another likely feeling is that they saw that this power would, if unchecked, become a threat to the greater Elven nation. But for whatever reason the Elves and the humans worked together to push back the influence of the Power into safe background levels. They taught the people how to seal up the holes through which the Power's influence could come through and showed them how to maintain those seals."

"The King's name was Crom Cruarch." Kerrass said with a kind of depressed, dawning understanding. The kind of tone of voice and expression that suggests that he should have seen the thing coming.

"Close," Chireadean said with a smile. "That's a corruption of the Dauk name for him meaning "The Crooked Man of the Mound". The closest to the correct pronunciation that I can get is "Fear Crom a 'Mhùnd" although I don't know where the "Cruarch" part of that comes from. The people round here have certainly adopted him in that spirit though. I wonder what he would think, of being thought of as a God.

"I've never met a person yet," I began, "who would have taken kindly to being referred to as a God."

"Maybe," The Elf said. "But then again, you never met an ancient Elf."

"You don't seem to like your forebears very much." Kerrass face was unreadable. His old Witcher face.

"No," Chireadean agreed. "I don't like their lack of humility. I think that it was this quality of theirs that is going to be the death of us. If they could only have seen the threat for what it was and treated the humans with the respect that they deserved then..."

He shrugged. "But I am treading over old ground here."

We nodded, I felt my brain turning this information over, looking at it from all of the different angles that there could be. Looking at how that information could be used to our advantage. The problem was, that although it provided valuable context to the overall situation. I wasn't sure that it helped us any. I did consider whether the existence, or possible existence of any dark God or power might be usable to turn anyone over to our side but I dismissed that theory almost as soon as it occurred. The people that we were dealing with were already fanatics. They already thought that they were serving some kind of Godhead so it was unreasonable to assume that my simply telling them that the Godhead that they were serving was evil would sway them any.

As it was, this new theory, by Chireadean's own admission was almost impossible to prove.

"So this Elven King..."Kerrass was beginning a question.

"Former king," Chireadean corrected.

"Whatever...He turns up, presumably figures out how to prevent this from happening and teaches the locals how to keep that going?"

"Yes."

"That's what all these symbols are about? The holy places that they've shown us and things like that."

"Yes, I think so."

"Where all the sacrifices were carried out?"

I finally saw where Kerrass was going with this.

"Yes."

There was a long pause as Kerrass worked through the implications of this. I, however, wanted to have some of this take place out in the open. "They were sacrificing children in those places." I said with a certain amount of horror.

Chireadean wouldn't look at me. He nodded.

"Flame above and below me." I swore. "The cure is worse than the disease. They think, they still think that they are making these sacrifices to some kind of God. They think that your Elven King was a God."

"Look..." He sensed my rising outrage, I think, and wanted to head me off before I lost my temper. It was a noble effort.

"Why would they think that?" I ask him. "Did they struggle when he started asking them to sacrifice their children. Did he force them to do it?"

"They were a relatively primitive people..." He protested.

"True or False Chireadean. The Elves still think of us as a primitive people?"

Chireadean said nothing and I took a few deep breaths.

"So he taught them these rituals," I said after forcing mysElf to calm down. "They were designed to keep the influence of this thing at bay?"

"I believe so yes. As I say, I get this from word of mouth. It's legend more than it is fact or recorded history."

"That's not as reassuring as you might think. If you suggest that the solution to the problem is that the rituals need to step up their vehemence in the wake of the cults growing power then..."

"No-one's suggesting that we go back to sacrificing children Freddie." Kerrass jumped in. "No-one's saying that. It was a different time and a different place. They were sacrificing the thing that was most precious to them. Nowadays, children aren't that precious any more. They have to all but cripple them anyway to stop them being taken by the Hounds and who knows when the Hounds are going to come and take them away. So why get emotionally invested in them? But I don't think that that assessment is right. Indeed it actually works against everything that we understand about what's going on here. Sacrificing children would cause pain. Both to the child and to the parent which would surely be just the kind of thing that would feed the darkness that they were fighting."

Kerrass shook his head.

"No. No, if this was a curse that I had been hired to lift, and it sounds like one if I'm honest, then child sacrifice would not be the thing to break the curse. Let's leave aside the suggestion that this is all to do with the Dark God, power or presence or whatever the fuck. It's a curse. Curses are fed and empowered through emotion. In this case the emotions that we are talking about are fear. The intense fear of someone being tortured to death or otherwise debased to death."

I started. "Are we sure that this isn't anything to do with Jack?"

Kerrass thought about it before shaking his head. "This isn't his style. Jack isn't a God, he would never want to be a God or treated as one. He simply is. He doesn't need any of this bullshit. He is simply...Jack."

I nodded, No point in denying it. I was relieved.

"But there's a reverence in what those villagers were doing." Kerrass had carried on talking. "They enjoyed what they were doing they...they were really worshipping. It wasn't something that they did out of a sense of duty, or out of ambition which blemishes the rites of things like the Eternal Fire or Kreve. Nor were they there because it was a societal thing where they had to go because they had to be seen to go which was what the Coram Agh Terra was about as well as the others. Nor was it the transactional faith of Melitele where you go to the shrines and make your offerings so that, in return, you get access to skilled healers and midwives. This was about good, old fashioned worship and faith."

He sat in silence for a while. I had the sense that I was watching what his normal internal monologue would be. As he worked through the problems in what would make up a normal job. This was how he thought things through and I was listening to it straight from the Witcher's mouth.

"There was a certain amount of transaction going on there though." I said quietly, trying to poke some more information loose. "They did believe that they were being protected by Crom Cruarch."

"They did didn't they." Kerrass mused. "What does Cruarch actually mean?"

"Absolutely nothing," Chireadean told him. "Not from Elven or what little of the old Dauk language that we picked up, from the surrounding area."

Kerrass grunted. "We're missing something here." He told us both before staring into space for a long time. Then he looked up at Chireadean. "How much of what you've told us is true versus how much is what you think is true?"

"I did not lie to you."

"I'm not saying that. Please don't be offended. I'm not saying that you're lying I'm suggesting that you're mistaken. There are some problems in your tale and comparing it with what we've seen and heard so far."

"Such as?"

"I'm not buying that an Ancient Elven King. Cast out and crippled though he might have been, would have helped the primitive humans. I just don't... I just don't see that happening. The villagers believe that he still looks after them and there is a considerable magical field over the entire area. It's still here even though I've long since given up on mapping it or talking about it. I would still be talking about it today. I just don't..."

Chireadean and I sat and watched him for a long while

"What happened to the King?" Kerrass asked. "Did he die in battle? What?"

"He went away." Chireadean said. "Or at least, that's how the legend goes. He went away "into darkness, never to return in order to continue the fight". There's also the same legend that tends to follow this kind of man about."

"Let me guess." I spoke up. "That, in an hour of need, he will return to his people."

"Pretty much."

"What classes as an hour of need I wonder?"

"I don't know," Kerrass said, "but I'm feeling pretty needy at the moment." He fell into silence again. "Where did you get this information Chireadean? How did you come by it?"

"Speaking to the others. The Elves that were here before me."

"And where did they get it?"

"Aural tradition."

"So the Elves who see themselves as imperfect. Those Elves that have nowhere else to go. They come here and take up with this band. Kind of like a pilgrimage."

"Pretty much yes."

"Where are the original Elves. Those that came here with the King?"

"I don't know. There are certainly none here now."

"There are a lot of holes in this story here Chireadean."

"I know. I know."

"Why did you come here? You specifically. Out of all the places that you could have gone, why here? The plight of the Elves is lessening, the Nilfgaardians have never disliked the Elves as much as the Northern Kingdoms have. Why not go South? You came here instead, why?"

Kerrass and Chireadean stared at each other for what felt like a long time before it was Chireadean that started to fold in on himself.

"There's no reason." He said. "This is just where I found myself."

Kerrass nodded. "You don't believe in destiny then?"

The Elf snorted. "No. No I don't."

"Then why did you stay?"

"To help. These people are dying. Malnutrition is only part of it. But the despair, the constant driving, back-breaking despair of it all is becoming soul-crushing to them. It's like Elven society in microcosm. Not long now and they'll do something stupid and get themselves killed in a pointless gesture. They deserve better than that."

"And you help them?"

"I get more food out of the villagers. I know how they work, how they think..."

"How to manipulate them."

"Yes."

Kerrass nodded, paused and then nodded again. "This is getting us nowhere." He said. Climbed to his feet and walked off.

Chireadean stared after him for a long time. "Was it something I said?" He wondered aloud.

"He sometimes craves solitude." I told him. "Don't take it to heart. He needs to think."

"Have I helped?"

"I think that you've given us something. We just need to figure out what that something is." I said. "But that isn't all the story. The term Crom Cruarch isn't Elven. Nor is it Dauk and we don't even know where it comes from."

I realised that I was just talking things round again.

"You believe that he was an Elven hero. The villagers believe that he was...that he is a God that can and will protect them. Over and over again I find that the truth is something in between. Why do you believe that he was an Elven Hero? I don't need you to answer that, I'm just thinking aloud."

Chireadean shut his mouth with a snap.

"My experience is that people believe what they want to believe." I said. "People who want to believe that Elves are no better than Ghouls will find evidence to prove them right. The real reason that you believe that he was an Elven hero is because the Elves that you found here told you that this was the case. Just as they were told that this was the case by whoever came before them. What we know is that the nobility of the area have been worshipping this dark thing for a long time. Probably centuries and probably since they arrived here. You tell us that the God that they refer to is real. But is it? Or is that just the folk tale of the area?"

Chireadean said nothing.

"What we know to be true is that there is a strange flow of magic over the area." I said. "We know that there is this cult. We also know that the humans revere this God that they call Crom Cruarch. We also know that you, meaning the Elves that live here, revere him. But in your head, this means an Elven King who came here in exile. Why? Is it because that is true? or is it because that is more comfortable for you to believe than what is actually true? Is it because your ancestors, the first Elves in these parts saw something and told themselves that it was an Elven lord because what else could it be?"

Chireadean said nothing, his mouth twisting in distaste at the thought.

"Crom Cruarch." I said the name aloud. "Who was he? What was he? The humans think he was a God of some kind. The Elves think he was one of their fallen Kings." I shook my head. "My brain is too tired for this. And I'm not sure that it changes the fact that Kerrass and I still need to get back to my brother so that we can get help for you, for us and for everyone that live in this...this reason forsaken part of the world."

I stared into space for a while before I shivered, suddenly realising that I was cold. I looked about myself and was surprised to learn that the sun had set and that Chireadean was still sat there watching me.

"What did you think of my story?" He asked.

"It's a good story." I told him. "Something that I intend to remember and hope to record if I get the chance. It's an interesting piece of folklore or legend, even if it isn't history."

Chireadean didn't react to my accusation.

"It's a story that talks about a flawed Elf, coming to the aid of primitive humanity and that, in and of itself, is an interesting thing, maybe even an important thing. That Elven refugees, like this group are, would come up with a story about their origins that involves one of their number coming to the aid of humanity."

"Why's that interesting?"

I smiled. "This is my area of expertise now," I told him. "I'm sorry if I come across as condescending but, this is what I do now."

"I'll live."

"Will you? I worry that you might have doomed yourself and all your people by taking us in." I told him. I shivered again.

"You are still exhausted." He told me. "Let me get you another hot drink and we can talk about your theories as you drink it."

I dozed while he fetched me a drink as well as a small sandwich made out of something that resembled cheese but was different in many ways. I didn't ask what it was. I had the dim feeling that I wouldn't like the answer. The drink was different and I said so.

"It's to help you sleep." He told me. "So why do you think that my account of local Elven belief is so interesting?"

"You are right." I told him through a mouthful of sandwich. "I know next to nothing about Elves, about the way their...about the way your minds work. I don't know if you have Gods of your own or if you worship some kind of idea of nature. If you worship the "concept" of the world."

"Close." Chireadean told me. His slight smile was back.

"But one thing I do know is that Elves have every right to hate us. Every right in the world." I told him. "So an ancient King, whether he was crippled or not, flawed or not, to come to an area that the rest of his people hated and feared and helped the primitive humans that lived here?"

I took another bite of the sandwich. The flavour of the food was growing on me.

"I don't buy it." I told him. "I'm sorry. I know that the guy is some kind of folk hero to the Elves, especially to your little band of Elves, but I don't buy it."

"Why not?"

"There just isn't enough...The ancient Elves were arrogant right?"

"I would say so, yes."

"So they wouldn't help humans. If there was a threat, then maybe they would confront it but they wouldn't help the humans. And the humans around here that have lived and worked here from time out of hand, revered the figure that they refer to as Crom Cruarch. They love him, they devote their children to him, they fornicate in his name and pray to him for guidance and fertility. That means that they loved him back in the day. I just can't marry what I know of ancient Elves to what happened and is still happening here. It just doesn't fit in my head."

Chireadean grunted.

"Especially," I went on, not wanting to belabour the point. "Especially if he had ordered them to sacrifice children. One of the few things that humanity has going for it is that we love our children dearly. But that's not the point."

"What is the point?"

"That this is a folk story. I'm sorry but it is. It's almost a parable. A noble Elf coming to help the humans? It's an old story as well and somehow, somehow it's managed to survive centuries of my people shitting all over yours. The story of an Elven King coming to save the savage human race. Even your own people have been treated badly by me and mine. So why do they still believe in and revere this Elf. Shouldn't they hate him and villify him?"

I shook my head.

"Maybe the fact that he liked humans and wanted to help them was his flaw. His scar if you will," I suggested.

"Maybe, but that also suggests something ugly, well, uglier about elven society, that compassion would be seen as a flaw. So what do you think happened?" Chireadean asked. He didn't look happy.

"I think that someone came. I don't know who, what, how or why. But someone came here in that time and in that place. I think he brought Elves with him because the original Elven colony here and their stories about that time have to come from somewhere. But I think that someone came here. Amassed some followers and took the fight to the dark power that Cavill worships. I think he looked close enough to what an Elf looks like to be confused for an Elf, or that he had some kind of illusory power to confuse those Elves. Either that or the power of the Elven arrogance at that time was all conquering..."

"How so?"

I made my voice high and snooty. "Someone so powerful can't possibly be anything other than an Elf on this plane of existence. If there was anything that powerful around here then we would have found it. We are the most powerful creatures in this part of the world, the most magical, the most knowledgable, the most skilled and the most strong. Therefore it must be an Elf because what else could it be?"

Chireadean continued to look unhappy but I could tell that he was following my reasoning.

"So the Elves see a creature of immense power that looks tolerably close to their own form and decide that he must be some kind of Elven noble that has fallen from grace. A fiction convenient in the fact that it can't possibly be checked against records with the rest of their society. They don't believe in Gods, so what else could it be?

"The humans on the other hand are still busy inventing Gods and stories in order to help them sleep at night. Without understanding it, they worship the rain, the sun and the lightening in the sky. We now know that many of those things are driven by powers that we still don't comprehend although we give them names like Kreve, Melitele, Veyopatis and the Eternal Flame. But those ancient humans see some beautiful, although I doubt it, person who promises to help them."

"Why do you doubt that he was beautiful?"

"The one thing that is common to both the Elven side of the story and the human side of the story is that the figure was not quite right. The humans call him "The crooked man of the mound." The Elves refer to him as being "scarred" in some way. So to both sides of the story, they admit that he was physically flawed in some way."

"Ok, I'll let you have that one."

"Where was I?"

"Why Humans saw him as a God?" Chireadean said with a smile

"Yes. So they see this figure who displays more than a little bit of magical power and he makes all of their problems go away. He makes it clear that this doesn't come easy however. He teaches them that they need to put the work in themselves. Then he vanishes. What is he going to be to those ancient, primitive humans but a God?"

Chireadean grunted again.

"There's also, not enough history to support the Fallen Elven King theory." I carried on. "Where there's one there's going to be more than one. So where did the rest of them go? If these "Fallen Elves" were good and noble creatures then they would still want to serve the ideal of making the world a better place. We would have heard about that. We would know about that. But this is the first time that I've heard about such things. There's also the factor of, Where is he? Elves live for hundreds of years. If he was injured, he would heal, if he was powerful enough to stop a dark God, and we know he did which is another area that both the human account and the Elven account agree. Then what did he do next? There would be a rash of other evidence that he existed in this part of the world. There would be a reverence for Elves around here that transcends the element of pity that gets you all your food from the local villages. If he died, where is the memorial, where is the monument to his life and his passing?"

I shook my head again.

"Someone came here." I said. "Someone powerful and they set themselves up against this dark power from beyond our world."

"What else could it be, who else could it be?" Chireadean argued. "The Dwarves wouldn't do a thing like this as such things would need considerable magic, and the Gnomes are similar. The Vran had been driven away from this part of the world for a long time. The Higher Vampires don't, or didn't, care enough about this kind of thing and those creatures that could shift enough to use magics were elsewhere."

"You're thinking of the shape-shifters."

"Like your Maleficant, or Geralt's Borch Three Jackdaws."

Something about the way he said Geralt's name made me start. "You know the White Wolf?"

"Oh yes. Nice bloke all things considered. Absolutely no self-control when it comes to women though. Especially Sorceresses."

A haunted look appeared in his eyes and I decided not to push it any further.

"But no. I decided. Both of those people display a flighty nature and if it was a dragon then your people, and mine, would be talking about dragons."

"You're probably right."

"I think it's much more likely that another lone traveller came through the Conjunction. We hear a lot about those creatures that can live and survive on this plane relatively easily. Ghouls, vampires..."

"Humans..." He put in with a smile.

"And Elves," I countered. "But they are almost always the people that came over in bulk. What about those things that came over in ones or twos. This all happened shortly after the last conjunction correct?"

"I think so. That's certainly what feels the closest to being correct."

"Then what if someone else came through. Someone who hated this power of Cavill's for their own reason and was hunting down where the power was getting it's new found strength from?"

I shook my head. "We're theorising now and there's absolutely nothing that can prove that he was an ancient Elven King, an old human God to go along with Veyopatis and that ilk, or my new theory of an inter-dimensional traveller. But above all, unless your legend has some kind of weapon in it that can help us cut through the power's followers with ease, none of this is going to help us."

Chireadean nodded. "You are probably right. You should get some sleep." He told me.

I could feel the energy leaking out of me. "You are probably right." I told him, lying down."

The next thing I knew I was being woken up by the unceremonious method of being booted in the ribs. Again. Maybe it was some kind of local custom that you wake people by putting the boot in. That makes it sound worse than it actually was. It was more a gentle kind of rocking than an actual boot but it certainly felt the same.

Like I said earlier, the ground can feel really soft and welcoming when you're being woken up out of a particularly deep sleep.

It was the Elven woman who was staring at me with a cross between naked hate and curiosity. I found myself hoping that someone, someday, would be able to take her cares away. It was an odd feeling. I haven't felt particularly romantic since I had gotten engaged with Ariadne. I had certainly noticed beautiful women but it was on the more aesthetic end of noticing the fact that a person is beautiful in the same way that you might want to admire a beautiful painting on the wall. But in this case, I saw how much pain the girl was in and I hoped that she would eventually find someone to comfort her.

The reason that this was pronounced to my eyes was because, in past circumstances, I might have wanted to do that protecting myself in an effort to be some kind of romantic hero wanting to ride in on a magnificent white horse and save her from her poverty. I am aware of this weakness in myself and have, in the past, been forced to take certain steps to prevent this urge to be some woman's white knight from causing too many problems. To stop looking for a woman to save, or for someone who would save me. But I would be lying if I said that I no longer feel these urges and I am self-aware enough to know that this woman would have been someone that I would have been attracted to for this reason.

But here, I was able to notice that the woman was beautiful, want to help but it didn't have any of the romantic overtones that such feelings often bring forward in my mind.

It was a good realisation in two ways. The first was that I still, despite everything that had happened to me and the recent changes in my way of thinking, I still had the desire to help people and have romantic feelings. The second was that I had clearly committed myself to loving Ariadne.

A friend had told me about this once when at the university. He had settled down to a particular girl early on in his stay in Oxenfurt and, like men are sometimes wont to do, we had settled down to tease him about this.

We were assholes to be absolutely honest.

We would throw pretty women his way while also laughing at the fact that, despite not being particularly more or less attractive than the rest of us, he seemed to be getting more than his fair share of female attention. He took it all with surprising good taste before buying a round and going off to spend the night with the girl he was in love with.

We drifted apart as the years went on and we are no longer that close. He went South as his family was from Temeria and he wanted to make a difference there during the rebuilding after the war, and his girl friend went with him where they were eventually married. I was on the road when it happened but I'm not too sure that I would have gone even if I had known when and where the ceremony was. He sent me a letter when he heard that I was engaged to Ariadne, it was one of those long distance letters which are basically designed to maintain a friendship with the minimum possible effort in case you might want something from each other at a later date. I do remember one passage from it though.

"You will now discover a phenomenon that no-one understands until it happens to them. None of my friends understood it in Oxenfurt but I hope that you will understand it now that you have fallen in love. Yes Freddie, I know you well enough from our friendship and your writing that you are head over heels in love with this Vampire of yours and I wish you well, even as I secretly think that you're a braver man than I am for going there.

"The phenomenon of which I speak is the thing that stops you from panting after every pretty woman that walks by. We are men and I am well aware that that's how it works when you're in your late teens and early twenties, indeed some people never lose that part of their character, where they see a pretty girl who doesn't have to do anything other than be vaguely pleasant towards them and suddenly we fall instantly and hopelessly in love. But now, we have committed to another. I cannot speak for you, but I, certainly, did this subconsciously and suddenly, the girls I see and the girls I saw, no longer hold half the interest for me as did the woman I chose to marry."

I finally knew what he meant. I reached for my amulet to tell Ariadne of this new revelation is she is fascinated by this aspect of human romantic emotional development. She claims that she wants to compare and contrast it with her own experiences as she wants to write a book on the differences between vampire and human mating emotions.

But then I remembered that the amulet wasn't there any more and my face, and mood fell again.

"Follow," she said in Elven before turning and walking off into the trees. I had to struggle to keep up. "So you do speak our language." She told me in the same way that she might have said "I want to rip your balls off."

"I do," I told her in the same language. "Believe it or not, the Elder speech is the language of education as well as being the language of the conquerors."

"I do not believe you."

"Suit yourself."

She stared at me in surprise, stopping in the path as she did so. "Do you not wish to seek insult?"

"Why would I?"

"I have just called you a liar."

I laughed at her. It seemed like the only way out. "Are you trying to pick a fight with me?" She sulked in response. "Listen," I said, "I've been offended by proffesionals. I've been tortured, stabbed, poisoned, beaten up, shot at and insulted by people much worse than you. You have every reason to hate me and I won't judge you for that. I am sorry to disappoint you. Maybe we could spar a bit after you've had several more square meals and I've slept for about a week."

Her face was almost comical in it's confusion.

"In the meantime, do we have somewhere to be?" I prompted and she led me off into the trees. Not gonna lie, I was smirking a little. She led me off for a few minutes. I was pleased to notice that my energy was coming back and was able to keep up with her reasonably well. I found that I was climbing up a small hillock, still covered in trees. Hillock is, in fact, an exaggeration for what it actually was which was a small mound of earth but there was a tree lying flat on the top. The positioning of the tree to allow us to look down onto the approaches to the Elven camp that I guessed that it must have been put there deliberately. But behind the log I found Chireadean and another two Elves, both with quivers of arrows at their belts and bows in their hands. Chireadean was wearing a smile, albeit a grim one.

"Someone's found us." He told me, "But it's not who I thought it was going to be." He was whispering quietly but I could tell that the Elves next to us were almost quivering with a desire to kill something.

"Who is it?" I asked rather redundantly as then a huge Skelligan voice drifted through the trees.

"Hello," it called. "We know you're up there somewhere. I can feel my arse itching where there are arrows pointing at it."

"Friends of yours?" Chireadean asked with another smile. He'd adjusted it to being a wry one.

"You could say that." I told him.

"We're looking for Freddie von Coulthard." Rickard's Sergeant called. "We're only going to get cross if anything's happened to him."

"Can I?" I whispered.

Chireadean shrugged.

"Where you go Seargeant. Rickard isn't far behind. Where is the bastard?" I was struggling not to laugh.

"He's here," came the voice. "Are we going to get shot if we show ourselves?"

I glanced at Chireadean who was gesturing for the other Elves to lower their bows. The two of them looked disappointed.

Chireadean made a bird call with his hands before nodding to me.

I stood up so that I could be seen and the bastard's seemed to melt out of the forest.

"They're good," Chireadean commented but I wasn't really listening, already tumbling down the hill.

Rickard was grinning foolishly as he came into sight and I don't think I was faring any better. I ran down the hill and embraced him. I was halfway between laughter and tears of relief to finally see a friendly face. He hugged me back in an almost death like grip.

"Flame but you look like death." He told me.

"Whereas I don't think I've ever seen a prettier man," I told him. "Give us a kiss."

The Bastards hooted as Rickard avoided me easily.

"I didn't think that humans greeted each other like this." Chireadean said as he walked down the hill, flanked by the other two Elves, the woman stood off in the trees somewhere. "Is this some kind of new mating ritual that has developed in far off lands?"

"We don't normally." I told him. "I'm just overcome by this handsome face."

This time, Rickard didn't avoid me in time. I introduce him to Chireadean and they shook hands.

"Someday," Chireadean said. "You're going to have to tell me how you knew we were there."

"Don't take it to heart." Rickard said. "My men and I do this for a living."

"Hunt Elves?" Chireadean's face was hard.

"Sometimes," Rickard admitted easily and calmly, as if nothing was wrong. "Humans mostly though. Anyone that lives in the countryside and preys on the common folk. We're bandit hunters and the average bandit is a lot nastier and more cunning than you are."

Chireadean allowed himself to be mollified a bit.

"We can give you some pointers if you like," Rickard told him. "Dan over there is the best tracker I've ever seen and I've seen plenty." He gestured to the old poacher who was leaning against a tree chewing a piece of foliage.

"That would be...agreeable." Chireadean still wasn't convinced.

"Also," Rickard said. "We bring food. We have bread, cheese and some meat for the disgusting humans, and some vegetables for the equally disgusting Elves. Funnily enough. People are a lot happier to talk to people who are buying things with real, tradeable, easier to hide, money."

"There is some truth to that." Chireadean admitted, allowing himself to be charmed. "And it's actually a fallacy to believe that Elves don't eat meat. We do, just not to the quantities that humans do."

"Excellent," declared Rickard clapping his new friend on the shoulder. "All the more for us. Lead on."

The Sergeant whistled and made a circling gesture with his hands and the lads fell into an escort marching pattern. Words cannot express how much better I felt.

"I'm just gonna catch up with the boss." Rickard told the Elves who were mostly caught between horror and bemusement at marching with human soldiers before he fell back to walk beside me.

"Kerrass?" He asked.

"He's ok." I told him. "Got both his arms shattered by a warhammer."

Rickard winced in sympathy. "That's him done then."

"Nah, we've made some potions since we got here and he's on the mend. He claims that it's going to be weeks before he can lift a sword though. Which means that it's probably going to be a good month or two before he should be lifting a sword."

"Heh, I know people like that."

"I'm sorry Rickard. Taylor didn't make it."

My friends face hardened for a moment and his expression turned ugly. "I know. We've been following two people's tracks and Taylor isn't...wasn't good enough to hide his tracks so that we couldn't find them. So if he'd gone off by himself as some kind of distractionthen we would have found him."

He grimaced. "Bastards." He shook his head. "So what do we do now?"

"We get the fuck out of here. That's what we do."

(A/N: No this is the longest chapter to date and carries me comfortably over the one million word mark. Whoop whoop.)