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

82. Chapter 82

(Warning: Inferred suggestion about Institutional religious pedophilia. Further discussions about racism, mental illness (that is discussed from a badly educated and old fashioned standpoint) and Sexism)

I slept through to early evening when I was woken up by the Priestess to take my medicine and eat something. My appetite was depressingly small but the older woman stood over me and forced me to finish everything that had been provided for me. Rickard and Kerrass were outside waiting for me to finish and they came in to tell me that the movers and shakers wanted our full report up at the castle the following day.

My sentiments hadn't changed since the previous day and I said that the movers and shakers could jam our report up their arse.

My language tends to become less flowery when I'm ill.

Rickard and Kerrass agreed but it was still true that the cult needed to be dealt with. Danzig, Rickard and Kerrass had already spent time with some maps which Danzig had brought down from the castle and messengers and armies had been despatched and were in the process of mobilising for the invasion of Kalayn lands as well as the lands of the various Lords that we had implicated in the course of our hunt for the cult.

No I'm not going to tell you who these particular lords were on the grounds that some of them still have family members in far flung corners of the continent that still need to be accounted for in acts that are a little bit outside my control.

We talked things through about how we were going to go back up to the castle, while still making our points regarding the virtues of the Elven contingent. We all agreed that a report needed to be given but we didn't want to let the bastards think that we had just given in. Nor did we want to endorse their opinions of the Elves.

It was Rickard who suggested the best solution. He suggested that he hire on the Elves as part of the bastards, taking on Chireadean as a second in command and as such, it would only be natural that Chireadean would have to attend the debriefing the same as any second in command would in any other situation. The proposition was put to Chireadean who found the entire thing rather amusing and it was settled. This before I was drugged up again and put back to sleep.

Laurelen had agreed that she would spell me up to hold off the effects of the fever that was now gripping me with a vengeance but warned me that this would leave me flat on my back for somewhere close to a week afterwards and that I would be weakened for a lot longer than that. It would mean that I wouldn't get to witness the final destruction of the cult but I found that I could live with that. Disappointing? Yes but at the same time, I didn't want to descend beneath the Earth into those caves again. The thought of that made me feel more sick than I was already feeling.

So I awoke, feeling much better than I had in several days, ate a huge breakfast of bacon, bread and sausage before Kerrass, Rickard, Chireadean and I walked back up to the castle with Father Danzig as escort. For the record, Danzig found our decisions regarding Chireadean's situation and rank, endlessly amusing.

As a note. I was still angry with Emma but I was somewhat mollified that morning after I had dressed and left my tent, to see Emma playing with the Elven child that I had seen earlier. I had forgotten that we had children with us and felt another wave of my own guilt at that ignorance.

To be fair, there was no argument at the gate over Chireadean's presence. I am grateful for that and I wonder if this is another problem. I was ready for a fight and from Rickard's attitude as well, I suspected that he shared my sentiments there. But then it was a relief not to have to fight. I don't know if Danzig had already paved the way or if we had been anticipated and Sam had, wisely, put some more tolerant people on the gate, or if the problematic men who had forced a confrontation were simply elsewhere. I don't know the answer, all I can say is that I was caught between relief and disappointment as I walked up to the castle.

I'm not going to go through the full debriefing as I would still be writing this in six months time and knowing the release schedule of the paper, you would still be reading it when I was getting married. Suffice it to say that it was a full day where we reported our whereabouts, what we did, when and why.

I did leave out a couple of things as the four of us told our stories. I left out my personal feelings and emotions that that came to a head at the camp underneath the rock. I didn't think that I was quite ready for several people to know how I was feeling or where my head was at when it came to that kind of thing. I also didn't tell the room about finding out about the agents, or rather the agent, that the cult had in the area. I wanted to deal with Ella myself and I still hadn't quite decided how I wanted to do that.

When I had first came back I had intended to drag her out, have her tried and then sentenced accordingly but something about the previous day made the idea seem somehow...inappropriate. Finally, I didn't tell the assembly what I had been told by the spirit about the magic that had taken Francesca. I wanted to run that past some people first before it became more common knowledge. Primarily, I admit, I wanted to talk to Ariadne. I wanted to spend a lot of time talking to Ariadne about a great many things but it seemed that circumstances were conspiring to make that all but impossible.

Ariadne was there as well as she had been nominated to direct the magical part of the excursion. There was a great deal of coordination going on which needed magical help. Not least of which was the mapping of the caverns that Cavill and his cronies were in. We needed to plug up all the holes to prevent anyone escaping to carry the taint of the cult elsewhere, or so that we could catch the victims of the cult to get them the help that they needed.

As well as Sam, there was also Inquisitor Dempsey who greeted me loudly and warmly before making a point of greeting Kerrass, Rickard and Chireadean with similar affection shaking Chireadean's hand, hard enough to make the Elf make a joke about massaging life back into his palm afterwards. Apparently Father Trent was now living in Father Gardan's old chapel and carrying the word of the Eternal Flame to the villagers. I was told that he would be grateful for a visit if I had the chance.

Also there were a bunch more priests including the large, one-armed priest that had found us, many church knights and Redanian knights as led by knight Lieutenant Kristoff who had become openly hostile to both Rickard and Chireadean while simply ignoring Kerrass and myself. There was also a sizeable contingent of Priests and Knights of Kreve. The entire thing would have been fairly comical if not for the fact that it felt uncomfortably like being on trial for our lives.

I went first as Danzig told everyone that I was sick and that I had been spelled in order to be strong enough to pass on the intelligence that I had. Ariadne's eyes glittered strangely when that was said although her face was a mask. I got off fairly easily all things considered.

But the room noticeably changed when Sir Rickard started to explain what he and his men had done. Equal parts boredom from a lot of the church contingent who couldn't see what all the fuss was about but an unbelievable amount of hostility coming from the group that was rapidly becoming labelled in my head as "Kristoff's faction." It started with the perceived desertion and dereliction of duty by Sir Rickard and his men by deserting their posts and coming after Kerrass and I.

To my mind, Rickard did very well to keep his temper. Over and over again he was forced to remind the assembly that he was not part of the Redanian military and was therefore not part of the military chain of command. He told them, over and over again that he was under orders by his employer, who was Lady Emma Coulthard, that he should be acting as Lord Frederick's guard and as such it would be desertion and dereliction if he had not gone after us. Various people argued the point. They argued every which way, including that Sam, being a male of the Coulthard line and future Lord Coulthard, could countermand his sister's orders.

Rickard told them that that hadn't happened.

It was argued that Rickard's men were essential for the security of the realm.

To which Rickard argued that it wasn't his realm which was Temeria and that it clearly wasn't essential as the realm was still here.

It went on and on before Sam finally made the point that this bickering was pointless and told Rickard to proceed with his account.

Every single decision that Rickard made, every action that he took, was questioned and criticised. It made the questioning that I had received seem paltry in response and the mood in the room started to shift with the Priests wanting to get towards, what they saw, as the good stuff.

How Rickard remained calm in the face of all of that, I will never know. Over and over again he pointed out that Kristoff was basing his criticisms on information that he, Rickard, simply didn't have access to at the time. That it was all well and good criticising decisions given the obvious results but at the end of the day, in the heat of the moment, when the results were far from certain, Rickard made the best decisions that he could.

He also had to point out, over and over again that his loyalty was not to Redania, the Redanian crown or even the Imperial one. His loyalty was to Lady Emma Coulthard and to me and his only concern was to keep me safe. When someone told him that he clearly hadn't done a good job on that regard given the state of me, he shrugged and said nothing.

Once again though, I couldn't let that lie and re-emphasised that I would not be alive if it wasn't for Rickard and his people.

And that was that. Then came the churches turn.

Oh. Dear.

You see. It seemed that the more militant church contingent had one outcome in mind. One thing that they wanted and that was to burn Kerrass at the stake. The thinking seems to have been that they wanted to burn me really but given that they couldn't really get at me, they would settle for Kerrass as they had already tried and failed to send Ariadne to the flames.

I have no idea why although various suggestions have come to mind. The main prevailing theory was that it was a measure to put my Brother Mark who was in the process of being confirmed in his seat as a Cardinal, in his place. Mark, I later found out, was doing his best to put his remaining time to good use and was trying to force through some reforms. In short, he was trying to force the church back into it's older, more traditional role of being a caring and nurturing church rather than the hate mongering aggressi that had happened as part of Radovid's reign.

Unfortunately this meant that a lot of the priests that had joined the church in the time of Radovid's and Jacque de Aldersbourg's time, resented this as they quite enjoyed burning heretics and enjoying the status and fear that this earned them. They perceived Mark's reforms to be an attack on that, which they were, despite the fact that this was actually in line with the Empress' declaration that no church authority could summarily try and execute anyone.

Then Mark's brothers had had the temerity to find a significant piece of heresy on the churches doorstep that they, despite all their scheming, had been unable to find. So they couldn't even argue that the removal of their powers would leave the continent vulnerable to heretical thought. Because they hadn't found it and we had.

So they wanted to put us in our place, they resented that they hadn't been the ones to find the "worship of dark powers" and they hated us for it. They couldn't attack Mark, Sam was going to be the future Lord Coulthard as well as being the Lord Kalayn which would, politically, be a bad move for the church which meant me. But I was out of bounds because I had famously converted a heathen vampire to the church of the Eternal Flame as well as being a prominent and, dare I say famous, worshipper and advocate for the Church of Eternal Flame.

Therefore they tried to make Kerrass suffer.

The other thing that is worth saying is that it wasn't all churchmen. Even in that room that was full of aggressive churchmen who were looking forward to a good burning, there were several people that were firmly on our side. Notably Inquisitor Dempsey who's stock seemed to have risen since he had been involved in rooting out the heresy from the beginning. Also Father Danzig and Father Trent had re-emerged from his self-imposed exile to take a hand in matters. He had changed. He was sterner now and much more forceful. The small diplomatic man that I remembered had vanished and had been replaced by a much more forceful personality. Fortunately he was forceful on our side rather than on anyone else's.

The sticking point was the ritual that Kerrass had performed in order to deliver us from all the cultists. Over and over again Kerrass was asked what he had done. Why. When. Why not earlier. And what his methods were. How did he come to those conclusions. Who was it that he had summoned and what was the driving goal behind this. Had he endangered anyone.

Kerrass simply refused to answer. At first it was shocking as he steadfastly refused to acknowledge the self-important authority of the people assembled. Then it became funny as the ridiculousness of the entire situation started to become apparent. Then it was boring for a while before the situation started to come round full circle and start to become frightening as the men doing the questioning got angrier and angrier. I am still enough of a student of religion and in fear of my eternal soul to be frightened when people threaten my damnation.

But he just sat there. Over and over again refusing to answer questions. That's not strictly true though, he did answer two questions. The first was "Do you have any intention of answering questions regarding the ritual that you performed?" to which he answered simply "No."

"Why not? Do you not recognise the authority of the people asking you these questions?"

"No. The reason I do not tell you is that I am a Witcher. I was removing a curse. It is my job to remove curses and to slay monsters. So that was what I was doing. I was removing a curse. To explain my reasoning and my methods would be to betray Witcher secrets and that I will not do."

Then they would get on to demanding stuff and Kerrass would go back to ignoring them.

In the end, it was Danzig, Dempsey and Trent who lost their tempers and informed the assembly that they needed to move on. They pointed out that Kerrass had long warned people of the extensive magical field in the area, that he had come up with the methods which the soldiers could use to protect themselves from the cultists poisons and that he was under no obligation to anyone here. They also pointed out that Kerrass was a guild master now, following the declarations of the Empress at her coronation, and that blind attacks on a master craftsman carried grave penalties.

Judging by the expression that Kerrass pulled during this speech, he had forgotten this too.

Danzig went on to say that without Kerrass' intervention. That there was no way that I, or anyone else for that matter would have been able to get word back to Kalayn lands about who and where the cultists were. So arguing was pointless.

So the church contingent that were coming for me joined Sir Kristoff in his search to take Rickard and Chireadean down.

Things got really ugly after that and I realised that I had made a mistake. I had thought that I was going into a room to tell what had happened and that everyone there was after the truth in order to help them in the coming combats against the cult. But that wasn't it. In all reality, instead, I was walking into a courtroom, with politics and factions that hated each other. The were fighting over the prestige of destroying the largest collection of heretical cultists that had been found, arguably, since that great collection of Lionhead worshippers had been found in Tretogor twenty years ago.

In my defence, I was sick and I like to think that if I was a bit better then I might have been able to defend some of my friends from the attacks that they were having to defend themselves from.

So they tried to paint Rickard as being incompetent. Then they tried to paint the Elves out as being secretly against us from the very beginning. Then Sir Kristoff said something that nearly caused everything to get very dark.

"So let me just make sure that I understand this Sir Rickard. Why did you take the Elves along with you in the first place?" he asked

"I have answered this question before." Rickard responded with not a small amount of heat.

"Indulge me." Kristoff had a condescending kind of sneer that passed for a smile.

Rickard sighed. He had shown admirable restraint before and I guess that he was getting aggravated on the grounds that, technically, he and Kristoff were of equal social rank, although Kristoff was still in the military rather than privately employed and he thought he was done with his bit. He had begun to relax and was reaching back for some kind of...professional outlook. He was bored, tired and frustrated. It bears remembering that he had been through a lot as well and rather than being greeted as a hero, which he deserved by the way, he was being questioned as though he was accused of some kind of serious crime. He took a deep breath.

"I accepted the offer of help." He said it slowly, as though the person that he was talking to was terminally stupid. "Because we were massively outnumbered. The objective was to get Freddie through in order to report what he had found. That was the beginning middle and end of the job..."

"Yes yes, we know all of this. But why did you need the Elves?"

"We were outnumbered. I could see no possible way of getting Freddie through without them."

"So you took on the Elves"

"Yes."

"They agreed to follow your commands." I found it interesting that Kristoff wasn't asking questions. He was simply making statements that he expected answers to.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You would have to ask Chireadean here who was acting as my..."

"I'm asking you."

Rickard took another deep breath.

"Because I had military experience."

"Why didn't you think you could get Lord Frederick von Coulthard through." He emphasised my title and full name as though Rickard had insulted me by not using the full title. For the record, I don't like being called Freddie. But it's considerably better than some of the names that I've been called. Also, some people have earned the right to call me Freddie. This list includes my family, Kerrass, Ariadne, the Empress and some others. After our adventures in the woods, both Chireadean and especially Sir Rickard have earned that right.

It rankled that Kristoff was trying to call him on that.

"You had military experience." Kristoff said, drawing the words out with a smirk and exchanged notable glances with his fellows. He was goading Rickard and despite Rickard's earlier calm, he had relaxed his defences during his break now the goading was working.

"What do you mean by that?" Rickard asked coolly.

If I had been sat next to him then I might have been able to jump into the breach. Restrain Rickard in some way. But, Chireadean was sat between us in some hope of Rickard and I being able to support the Elf if people turned on him. I was also slow.

"Oh Rickard, no." I muttered.

"I mean," Kristoff said with sudden asperity and anger. "That if you were even remotely competent, then Lord Frederick would not have been kidnapped in the first place. You would not have spared your own feelings and gone with Lord Frederick into Lord Cavill's castle despite your personal enmity and done. Your. Job. Lord Frederick would have got out of the castle clean and you would have gotten away. Wouldn't you."

Again, it was not a question. But the way he said it seemed to require some kind of response.

Rickard paled. Not the response that Kristoff wanted I suspect but it seemed enough for him.

"So then, after Lord Frederick and his Witcher companion..." It never ceases to amaze me how some people can still turn the term "Witcher" into an insult. "... were taken. You mounted no rescue attempt. You barely even knew where he was. You were one of Temeria's finest. A Harrier no less. Why didn't you make a rescue attempt?"

"As I explained before. I judged that if we mounted a rescue, that we would not be able to get to Lord Frederick before he would be killed."

"Would it not be worth the risk?"

"Not in my estimation and..."

"But what if Lord Frederick had been killed?"

"They had captured him for a reason. There was no indication that..."

"So then, rather than rescuing him straight away and making good time during his initial flight. You left it and as such..."

"The caverns were vast and complex and they came out of..."

"That would be immaterial to good soldiers. To the famed "Best scouts on the continent" So Frederick was injured, sick, starving and you left him to it. Is it not true that it was the Elves that rescued him." Again with the question that isn't a question. "Is it not true that you only found them after the Elves had fed them and saved them."

Rickard said nothing. Resigning himself to just being insulted I suspect.

"But, to me, that isn't the most egregious crime that you have committed in this entire affair. That crime being that you condemn your comrade, your friend even, Witcher Kerrass to damnation for forcing him to commit heresy."

"Wait, what?"

Rickard wasn't the only person who was astonished but a couple of the churchmen that were there leant forward eagerly, possibly sniffing out a target that might be easier than the Witcher or I.

"Is it not true, Rickard, that you were rescued the day after all of this happened. Is it not true that our forces found you the day after Master Kerrass had been forced to drastic action by your incompetence. You had a defensible position, you were dug in, no soldier could ask for a better situation to be in. But you still needed to be saved. You still forced Master Kerrass to damn himself in an act that was ultimately unneeded. We were there, Sir Rickard. All you had to do was to hold out another day."

Rickard had paled even further during this little speech.

"There was no way that we could have known...There was no way that we could have held..."

But Kristoff was not to be deterred. He was like a warhorse, which I suppose he was really, who had the bit between his teeth and his target in sight and would no longer be kept back. His inertia must have been tremendous.

"Admit the truth Sir Rickard, that you and your men are dangerously incompetent buffoons and that if you had been proper soldiers rather than the lazy, incompetent, thieving criminals that they are then you would have been able to hold that hill. That you would have been able to keep your people alive if you had been remotely competent. Leaving aside all the mistakes you made to put you into that position in the first place, is it not true that if you had led your men properly, having forged the men and Elves under your command into a proper unit then the Witcher would not have needed to summon forth dark and dangerous powers. Is it not true that you could have held, that you should have held, and is it not true that all of those deaths could have and should have been averted."

Again, for the second time, I saw Rickard transform from the calm, relatively collected man into the fighter and killer capable of colossal violence.

Before anyone could react he was up and over the table, sword being drawn as he went. Kristoff was in the process of drawing his own weapon and rising to his feet. Others were rising, shouting had begun as Rickard leapt at the armoured knight. It bears mentioning that Rickard was in a shirt and tunic while Rickard was in his half plate and chainmail. Rickard kicked Kristoff in the chest, knocked the knights sword aside with a stroke from his own blade and shoulder checked him off his feet.

Then he stood over the fallen knight with the point of his sword at Kristoff's throat while standing on Krstoff's sword arm. The room had frozen.

"Say that about my people again." He snarled, remarkably quietly considering. "Say it again. I fucking dare you."

Kerrass, Chireadean and I had risen. Ariadne was chanting something quietly and I suspect that if violence really had broken out then she might have had something to say about it.

It was a pause that seemed to last for years, during which you could have heard a pin drop.

It was Danzig who broke the silence.

"I believe an apology would be appropriate." He said calmly.

"At least." said one of Kristoff's faction. It might even have been Sir Colrith but I couldn't swear to it. "This kind of behaviour from a knight of Temeria..."

"IT IS SIR RICKARD WHO DESERVES THE APOLOGY." Danzig roared. Another man who, it seemed, hid some rather extreme violence behind a mask of calm and genial friendliness. "I have never seen anything more shameful in my life." He declared in a good Preaching voice. "Those four men, sorry, Those two men along with the Noble Elf and honourable Witcher should be being hailed as heroes for bringing us the information that we need in order to rip out the roots of this heresy. Admit it, all of you, that the reason you hate them is because you want the credit for yourselves and if it was you that was sat there then you would expect to be sainted for your work."

"I agree," Father Trent stepped next to him. "I am sure, like any situation, these men might do things differently in hind sight but that is not for us to criticise. They did the best they could and we should be praising them for that. I also demand an apology."

"And I." Inquisitor Dempsey added. "And may I say that, as an Inquisitor, I see no signs of heresy. Just honest work from a nobleman, a Witcher, a soldier and an Elven warrior who did their duty as they saw fit. I too add my words of praise."

I stepped forward, cautiously. It was still a frozen tableau and I wasn't entirely certain that a sudden movement wouldn't make Rickard simply murder Kristoff. As it was I had to call his name several times before I placed my arm on his shoulder and he withdrew.

"That fucker," he said, quietly at first before saying it again loudly so that the words carried while he pointed at Kristoff with the point of his sword. "That fucker comes down to camp by the end of the day tomorrow to apologise or I'll see him at dawn the day after."

Then he left. Chireadean followed. There didn't seem to be anything to add to that.

All the way through all of that. Sam sat at the head of the table in the middle of the room and did nothing.

Needless to say. No apology came.

Instead Sir Kristoff and a lot of the military people that were involved in systematically insulting the four of us, departed for their deployment the following morning. Rickard was informed by post that, as such, Sir Kristoff would not be permitted to fight a duel as his duties would prevent him from doing so.

Which is literally the only reason that is acceptable for dodging a duel according to standard duelling practice and culture.

Instead, Sam came to camp to apologise for himself. He told us that his hands were tied and that there was nothing he could do. If it was up to him and blah blah blah blah. I like to think he meant it but I also think that his excuses were far too convenient to be taken entirely on face value. He also, noticeably, did not withdraw his ban on Elves entering his castle before he himself departed to the sacking of Cavill's lands and the lands of Cavill's allies, so when someone went up to the castle gate to enquire as to whether we could all come up and sleep in some actual beds rather than in hammocks and bed rolls we were told that we were not allowed.

So fuck that.

Not that I was in any state to be making decisions by that point as I was very very sick.

By some margin it was the strangest illness I've ever had. I had been warned of course, Ariadne, Laurelen and The Melitele Priestess whose name I had been told but now can't remember, had all told me that having myself spelled up to be able to work through the symptoms was a bad, bad idea. That what I should be doing is staying in bed and drinking the fluids but I thought it was important to do my duty and inform people of where the enemy could be found.

So what started as a mere cold, no matter how severe having been compounded with exhaustion, exposure to poison, plain old exposure, a period of deprivation and blood loss and the massive, huge psychological crash that comes after a period of extended high action, became something stranger.

For the record, I am aware of the stereotype of being the male that likes to make relatively small illnesses into things that are much larger than they actually are. I have seen this many times and have felt that temptation but, I would like to think, that I tend to beat that stereotype. Certainly in this case, the same as those times after I was poisoned and after my conversation with Jack. There were things that I wanted to do. Things that needed doing and I wanted to be the person doing them. I wanted to see it and record it, even though I had obviously been heavily involved up until that point. I wanted to be there when they assaulted the caverns.

But it was not to be.

In the end, the threats, bargains and pleas turned out to be pointless as there was simply no way that I could have done what I wanted to do. As I say it was the strangest period of illness that I could remember as it seemed that my symptoms were all over the place. The first day after the meeting felt like the most standard period of having a cold that you can imagine. I was shivering with the cold despite the warmth of the day, the fire that was lit inside the pavilion and the blankets that were piled on top of me. I was sneezing and oozing from most major orifices and that sickness was moving down into my belly which made things even more unpleasant. All the while I wasn't sleeping properly so my head felt as though it was full of gunk and I could neither think nor speak or act according to my own wishes.

I was pretty miserable

This continued for another two days. Then abruptly, those symptoms vanished to be replaced by a thing that I had never before experienced. The fever vanished, almost overnight along with the cold and flu symptoms. Instead this was replaced by an almost permanent headache and uncontrollable vomiting. The nausea only really happened if I tried to move so the best thing I could do was to keep as still as I could and just wait for my body to finish doing whatever it was doing.

I found the entire process rather fascinating if I'm honest as my ability to think came back at almost the same time. So, I was able to think, to converse and generally feel as though I was beginning to live my life again. Unfortunately, if I tried to move, I would get a crippling bout of nausea and start to vomit. Thirty seconds later, after I had stopped moving, it would all go away and I would be back to normal again.

Also, my innards would decide that I needed to vomit again with little to no warning and I was forced to keep a bucket next to my bed.

The Priestess just told me not to worry about it, to rest and to drink the potions that she prepared for me and to let my body get on with whatever it was that it was doing. Neither she, nor Laurelen seemed concerned and I took solace from their complacency.

To my mind, so long as I didn't move too much, I could get back to work. Reading the letters and reports that we got back from what was going on with the fighting and starting to write up the considerable adventures that I had been working on, so that they could be published. It was slow going as looking at the words on the paper would eventually give me a headache and I would be forced to stop.

Ariadne had come to see me briefly to say Goodbye as she was heavily involved in rousting the cult out. She was there to neutralise the Cavill mage if that was required, as he had seemed to be a man of some skill. She apologised over and over again that she had to leave me in the state that I was in but that she was bound by, and I quote, "certain obligations that I cannot break". I told her not to worry and that we would talk better when she came back. I told her to be careful and to not take too many risks.

For some reason she found this incredibly funny.

I also took this opportunity to tell her what the ghost had told me. About ancient and alien magic being involved. She reacted rather oddly to this, frowning and concentrating for a moment before visibly moving the information over to one side so that she could think about it later. She told me that she would need to think about that and consult some people as it suggested something that she had wondered but that for now, she needed to focus on what was going on with Cavill.

As I write this, the campaign that was being waged against the cult is going well. Co-ordinated by Ariadne the caverns that Kerrass and I were taken through, were located and then scouted out so that armed troops could watch all entrances. Ariadne didn't tell anyone how she managed to do that but I strongly suspect that she harnessed the spiders that infested the place. Then there was a concerted attack.

Which failed.

As it turns out. The Cult had long since known that such a thing might happen and had spent their time preparing for the prospects of a siege. Given that there were no walls that could be beaten down or scaled, the only thing that the Church and Redanian troops could do was to storm the various entrances where it turned out the cultists had set traps after traps and then, could defend the narrow places to their hearts content.

I was bitterly amused, as were Rickard and Chireadean when we received word about this. As it turns out the defenders were horribly out numbered but their knowledge of the caverns and the long awaited nature of the assault meant that they could inflict horrendous casualties on both the invading troops and the captives that our side had hoped to rescue.

In the end the armies had to consult with Ariadne and she "dealt with the matter." She ordered that the army plug up the holes so that no-one could get out and then teleported away. She returned a little while later with Maleficent and a tall thin man that was not introduced. Apparently he was described as being quite bookish. Maleficent had transformed into a dragon, parked herself outside the biggest entrance into the caverns that there was and just blew dragon flame in.

Then Ariadne and her fellow seemed to dissolve into smoke which gusted, under it's own power, into the caverns and the armies followed the smoke in. Traps were triggered by Ariadne and the other man, those that hadn't been destroyed by Maleficent's dragon fire of course and still more cultists were seen to be fighting invisible creatures before dying on the spot with very precise injuries that always resulted in death.

Many cultists fled, into the waiting arms of the armed forces where they were arrested and still, as of when I write these words, are awaiting trial and sentencing. Many of them are still heavily drugged and so it will be hard to say how far guilt will be assigned. Many church officials just want to burn the lot and have done but at various stages it has been pointed out that it is increasingly difficult to tell legitimate victims apart from perpetrators in this case.

I understand that the Lodge of Sorceresses has offered their assistance in these matters but the case is still ongoing.

I wish I could tell you that Arthur, Cavill's bastard son, survived and was taken prisoner. I wish I could tell you that he could be identified as the sick man that he was and that he could begin the long journey that some of those people have begun, towards getting better. I wish I could tell you that, but according to reports, he died during the first attack. He was leading the defence of the caverns at one of the entrances and stood firm in the face of overwhelming odds when his fellows, who were similar slaves to the will of the cult, broke and fled. As far as anyone could tell, he was one of the first people killed.

That is a shame. I had liked him.

I also wish I could tell you that the various attacking forces caught Cavill's pet mage, Phineas Torlane. I had been especially looking forward to seeing that fucker get what was coming to him. But it turned out that he had left Cavill's castle shortly after Lord Cavill had left to oversee my sacrifice. Meaning that he departed a couple of days after I had been taken in the woods. He had passed on the method to get rid of my amulet and then had simply packed up his goods and transported himself out of the castle.

No-one knows where he is.

Turns out that Mage Phineas is a nasty piece of work. A disciple of Vilgefortz of Rogeveen, otherwise known as the school of "The ends justify the means. No matter how horrible or how evil those means might be." He was on the list of people that the Lodge of Sorceresses one hundred per cent agreed with the church of the Eternal Flame on what to do with him and is widely believed to be one of the people for whom the rule about "No Necromancy" was invented.

If you see him, or hear of him. Do NOT, in BIG ASS CAPITAL LETTERS. DO NOT approach him. As he is extremely dangerous. Be patient, do what you need to do to survive and then get word to your nearest Nilfgaardian garrison or mage if you know one.

As for me. It would seem that my active deeds in the matter were over. All that was left for me to do now was to have a series of conversations while I worked to properly record everything that I had seen and everything that I had done. Some were short conversations but all of them important. I shall describe them to you in order beginning with the one which was, to me, the most surprising.

Of all people, Brother Mark came to visit.

It was relatively early on in my convalescence. I was still getting tired easily and had spent a bit of time having a bit of a snooze. One of the only times in my entire life that I have been actively encouraged to nap whenever I wanted and I was taking full advantage of this whenever I felt the need. I still needed a sick bucket next to me but I was able to work which was better than I had been for a while. Then, suddenly, I woke up to discover Mark sat on a stool nearby going through my papers.

"You're spelling is getting worse," he commented when he realised that I was awake.

"Thank you for your criticism Brother mine." I told him. "But what the hell are you doing here?"

He tossed one of the pieces of parchment down on to the growing pile of papers that was taking over the corner of my tent, and brought his stool over so that he could sit next to the bed.

"Apparently, it's an thing that you need a Cardinal present when there is a large scale heresy going on."

"Really?"

"Yes. I was as shocked as you are. Apparently it's to do with the fact that there might be important nobles involved and they want someone with suitable rank in order to outrank anyone that might be inclined to plead wealth, and or, privilege. And nowadays, I'm the closest Cardinal."

"Bully for you. Congratulations. The last I had heard was that they were still in the process of confirming you."

"It all went through while you were...missing."

"Yes well. I was a little out of touch at the time so you can't entirely blame me for that."

He laughed.

"Honestly Freddie, I don't know whether to be proud of you or pissed at you."

"There seems to be a lot of that sentiment going around." I commented.

"Yes."

The silence lengthened for a while as I spent some time looking at my brother. I knew that his sickness must be advancing but I couldn't tell in what direction it was going. He looked well, he'd lost a bit of weight but I had no idea if this was as a result of his illness, his change in work load and headquarters or because his doctors had ordered him to to put less strain on his heart. He looked tired but that too was a common symptom in the local area and so picking that out in particular seemed a little redundant. I could see no tremors in his limbs and he was bright eyed.

"So let me ask the important question." I said after a moment.

"Which is?"

"Does your new and exalted position come with a new hat?"

Mark's eyes twinkled. "It does."

"Is it even more ridiculous and impractical than the last one?"

"I would suggest it's more practical. It keeps the sun out of my eyes at least. Oi, Markus?"

A young lad of about seven poked his head into the pavilion. Bright blue eyes and mop of dirty blonde hair.

"Fetch me my hat of office would you Francis?"

The boy frowned. "Sir? It's not an official occasion."

"Did I stutter Francis?"

The boy looked rather disapproving and headed back out of the tent.

"A good kid." Mark told me. "But I don't really like having him around. He's supposed to fetch and carry for me. Bring me food and water but if I'm honest it makes me uncomfortable. When I moved into the Cardinal's quarters there was a heavy implication that I could use him in any way I saw fit."

"Yikes."

"I was rather more forceful than that." A storm-cloud flitted across Mark's face. "I ordered a room prepared for him nearby on the spot and regularly order him back to his studies. I'm still looking for the person who thought that a Cardinal might like a small boy as a bed-warmer and when I find them I'm rather tempted to...Ah here we are."

The boy came back with something that looked rather like a large red disk with a small indent in the middle. It reminded me of a shield with a central boss.

"Ridiculous thing." Mark told me, carefully placing his head in the middle of the indent and securing the hat in place with two pieces of string that came through the brim precisely for that purpose.

"I think it looks very dignified." I told him with an utterly straight face.

"Liar," Mark accused. The lad Francis seemed horrified that his master would accept mocking with such a calm demeanour.

"I have to hand it to your profession Mark." I told him. "You priests do invent some amazing clothing."

"It's heavy." Mark complained. "And you have to tie it on so that it doesn't blow off in even the slightest breeze, so tight that it cuts off air flow. Fucking thing."

Francis' jaw hit the floor at the sound of a cardinal being profane. Mark noticed.

"Go and talk to the Heathen Witcher or one of the equally heathen Elves." Mark told him. "Ask them, politely mind you, to find you something to eat."

"But...they're heathens."

"Yes. But does that make them evil? Think carefully now."

"Ummmmm. They are heathens so...Yes?"

Mark sighed. "Go outside and decide for yourself rather than just repeating what your parents taught you."

Francis fled.

"Stupid kid. If he can get past the damage that his parents and tutors have done to him before they sent him to me then he might become a decent thinker."

"My advice?"

"Go on then."

"Wait a few years and then send him to help out in the hospitals in Novigrad. Whatssitsname? Vilmerius Hospital in the Bits. That'll cure him of his preconceptions. If that doesn't work, wait a few years more and then send him to a brothel."

Mark was laughing. "That would certainly do something. Not sure it would cure him of his preconceived notions though. Or his prejudices. You can be a cruel man Freddie."

"How are you though Mark?"

"I'm alright. The doctors have given me a year of useful life where I can work to a reasonable standard, providing I'm careful and do what I'm told, and then it will start dropping off and I will start losing things. Small things at first, words, time, that kind of thing. That will get worse on something like an exponential curve with the degradation getting increasingly worse as time goes on. At some point I will lose control of my body, oddly looking forward to being incontinent to tell you the truth. Then it will simply be a case of waiting for my heart or my lungs to give up and just stop one day."

"I'm so sorry Mark."

"Don't be, it's my own damn fault. If I'd just asked the right people for help at the right time then it all might have been avoided. As it is, I actually find it rather freeing. I can say what I like and do what I like without having to worry about the future."

"I've heard a lot about these reforms that you are pushing through."

Mark grinned nastily. "I thought you might like them."

"Not quite the word that I'd use but..."

"The church is corrupt." Mark began. Clearly an often repeated speech that he felt quite strongly about. "I suspect that it has been some time. The instant that priests start to care about politics and earthly powers then they start to lose sight over what's really important. Namely the proper care of our people."

"But "our people" is subjective is it not." I argued out of habit and reflex rather than due to any kind of disagreement with my brother. "My thoughts of "our people" are going to be different from your thoughts which will be different from the people over in Kaedwen or down in Cintra."

"Precisely the problem." Mark argued and I guessed that I had jumped into a well travelled debate path. "We need to adapt with the times. We are no longer part of a small city state which is how the church was first founded. Nor are we a nation or an army. We are an empire and we need to start thinking in those terms. Whether we like it or not, and many people don't like it, the people inside the borders of the Empire are our people now and we need to start working to protect them. To heal them and care for them. And unfortunately that includes non-humans and magic users as well as mutants and any others."

"I notice how carefully you didn't mention monsters in there." I said dryly.

"But. You yourself have proved that there's no such thing as a monster." Mark beamed at me. "The term "Monster" is out of date as is proved by the conversion of your fiancée to the worship of the Holy Fire. Don't get me wrong, I am well aware that she is doing this to comfort you as much as it is from any legitimate belief. But it is proof that what we, the church, think of as "monster" is no longer true. There are still dangerous magical creatures that have sprung up again around continent. Necrophages, Griffins and the like but again, this proves my point. Instead of working with the Witchers and making sure that these creatures stayed dead, we persecuted the mutated wretches..." He winked to show that he was teasing, "and as such, we removed the only natural predator that these creatures had."

He sighed happily.

"I can say these things now and people promise me doom and damnation but the truth is that I feel better about things than I have done in years. If it wasn't for my illness and family troubles I do believe that I would be a happy man."

"Family troubles?"

Mark sighed. "Yes unfortunately and that's one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you. The main reason is to make sure that you are Ok and to tell you that I am both furious with you for risking yourself and proud of you for doing the same in order to save these people. I wanted to tell you that I love you and that I look forward to seeing you married and settled down. It will be a comfort to me as I lie in whatever sick bed waits for me to know that you, at least, are happy and settled down in doing what you need to do."

He said it with a certain conviction that took my breath away. I found that I was moved and said so. He waved me off though.

"Don't take it too hard." He told me with a sad, but slightly wicked smile. "As I say. It is sometimes freeing to be able to say what you think. To know that you can't put it off until later but you should know that today is a good day. Sometimes I am angry and scared as well as happy and full of Joy. Every day is a gift, yes, but every day is also a curse. Knowing that I am one step closer to senility and death."

He sat and stared into silence for a moment.

"Family troubles." I prompted him.

"Ah yes." He sighed again and rubbed at his temples. "Your sister and Sam have fallen out."

I swore for a bit. "I should have seen that I suppose."

"Maybe, but at the end of the day, you were sick, exhausted and had your own axe to grind with both of them. I'm on your side about that by the way."

I blew out a breath that I didn't know that I'd been holding in.

"Those Elves are heroes." Mark went on. "If only because they brought my brother back to me when I thought that I had lost another sibling and I don't have that many more to lose."

"Mark I'm sorry."

"I know, but the other thing that you look forward to when you're dying is being surrounded by people that you love and sometimes I feel that I'm running out."

I didn't have anything to say to that.

"Anyway. I was talking about Sam and your sister."

"Yes, you were."

"The problem is that although I would flatter them both by suggesting that they do love each other. Your sister and Sam don't really get on. In losing Francesca they have lost one of their unifying factors, one of the things that they had in common and now..."

He sighed and leant forward.

"According to my spies..." He began.

"Hang on." I interrupted. "You have spies?"

"Yes. I was as astonished to find out that I had them as you are. I turned up, settled into my new quarters after having ordered most of the rich furnishings, jewelery and ornaments to be sold with the proceeds going to some of the local charities, a very sinister man approached me and told me that he was my new spymaster and wondered how I wanted to use him. He turned out to be fairly genial and friendly while also being utterly without morals and pity. I don't think I've met a more ruthless man and I give daily thanks that he's on my side."

Mark sniffed hugely.

"But according to my spies, when Ariadne had brought Sam word of your disappearance, she immediately ran off to tell Emma and then me what was happening. She was right to do so by the way, although I might wish that your betrothed had been a little bit more circumspect..."

"That sounds rather ominous,"

"And it is, or rather it was I should say." Mark sighed.

"What did Emma do?" I groaned.

"Thinking with my big boy hat on, what I suspect happened was that she was worried about you. She had Laurelen transport her here as soon as was able and demanded to know what Sam was doing to find you. He, not incorrectly, informed our sister that he was doing everything within his power to be able to do so. Emma being Emma was unimpressed with his efforts."

I nodded as I began to see a picture of where this was all going. Mark was shifting in his seat and took the opportunity to yawn hugely and scratch his arse with a happy and contented smile. Yes, Cardinals occasionally need to scratch their arses, same as the rest of us. Get over it.

"I love Emma, I really do, but she sometimes struggles with the fact that she had to, essentially, be the mother figure to Sam, you and Francesca. You possibly didn't see this as you can hardly be depended upon to be subjective at the time but Emma and Sam don't really have a great deal in common. As such, with Sam especially, Emma struggled with needing to be the mother while also wanting to get on with her own thing. She found it easier with you and Francesca but she found it quite hard with Sam for some reason that I could never quite figure out. I was deep into my studies at the time as you know so I didn't really pay enough attention."

He sniffed again and started patting around himself.

"The long and short of it is that I don't think that Sam and Emma really got on. They love each other, don't get me wrong, but they don't really..."

He sneezed, failing to get his handkerchief out in time.

"I swear Freddie that if you've given me your cold I'm gonna..."

His threat turned out to be empty as he promptly sneezed again, even more violently. "Flame preserve me."

"So what happened?"

"Emma tried to take over. Then when that, obviously, didn't happen. She started walking around the castle and commenting on what could be done with the place. She started talking about the different ways that Kalayn lands could be used by the trading company, commenting on the Herb trade. Farming and such like. Before beginning to give orders about what was going to happen over the coming years."

"I can't see Sam taking that well."

"He did not, no. In short, the two of them had a screaming row in the middle of the castle where, when one of them tried to escape to calm down, the other would pursue them to keep the argument going."

Mark chuckled suddenly. "I wish I'd seen it. It sounds rather epic."

"And harmful." I pointed out.

"Yes." We sunk into silence for a while. "But one way or another, they hurt each other during all of that shouting and I'm more than a little concerned that the damage might be permanent."

"So what are we going to do about it?"

Mark chuckled. "We? Freddie, I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm not sure I have it in me. Furthermore I'm not sure I should do anything about it. I'm Lord Coulthard now and if I get involved one way or another...I also don't think that this is a new problem. I think it's been going on for a while but it's bubbled to the surface."

"What caused it?"

"It might just be as simple as the fact that Sam wants a piece of land that he controls and only he controls. He's decided that it's going to be Kalayn lands. He's lost interest in his more martial pursuits and having talked to him. I think he likes it here. He feels more at home here than he does back at Coulthard and I think he wants to hold this place separate so that when he comes here he can leave all the expectations of being a Coulthard behind. Here he can be his own man and not have to worry about Emma and whatever business deals and politics she's involved in now.

"Then Emma comes along with an investment opportunity along with considerable, well thought out and researched documents on what can be done with Kalayn lands and something inside Sam just rebels and he refuses. Being Lord Kalayn, he can forbid it from happening and has done so. Emma meanwhile is quite right in knowing that her plans would make all of us, Sam included, a ridiculous amount of money. Not that we really need more money to be fair, but Emma doesn't see that. She's been given control of the family business, a gift and a blessing from a father who she thought didn't trust or love her and she's determined to take that and build it into something bigger and grander than ever. She feels as though that's her obligation to the man who gave it to her.

"Now the two are clashing."

"You think this has been going on a while then?"

"I think so," he told me. "I think it's been seething away. It might be that Sam asked for some funds for some renovations but the money was tied up...Oh, I could speculate for a while. But the result is always the same. At the moment, Sam and Emma hate each other with quite a lot of passion."

"That doesn't explain why you shouldn't get involved in it."

"Because I am the deciding vote. They're both right but they're also both wrong at the same time. I am Lord Coulthard, if I come down on either side then that's the way the family goes forward from there. Plus, and I have to be honest here, I don't really care that much."

"What?"

"I'm serious. I'll be honest, I think it's all a little petty of them both."

"Well...yes but..."

"You can see it too can't you." He accused, pointing with an index finger.

"But we have to do something."

"Do we? Do we really?"

I didn't have an answer to that.

"I'll be honest Freddy. I love you and I love both of them but at the same time, they need to get over their nonsense here. They're both being foolish and petty and if I get involved it will only escalate."

He watched me for a long time.

"Yeah," he said as though he was coming to some kind of decision. "Did you know that Emma wants you to inherit the title of Baron Coulthard after I'm gone?"

"Me?"

"Yep."

"Why would she want to do that?"

"That is an interesting question isn't it. She didn't admit it to me really but she has certainly been dancing around the question. She doesn't think that Sam has it in him to rule, to govern. She likens him to Edmund in many ways."

"Sam is no Edmund."

"No, he's far more intelligent for a start. But the less charitable theory is that she thinks that you will do what you're damn well told."

I subsided. "I can believe that actually."

Mark nodded. "So can I. Again, not that I think that that's what's going through her head. She is much closer to you than she is with either Sam or myself. I think there is part of her that thinks that the two of you would make a better team towards furthering Coulthard holdings and family prestige than she would with Sam. She thinks that Sam will want to do something else, turn the family business towards a different direction."

"She might not be wrong there." I sighed. "Not that I want it. I'm going to be Count of Angral. I understand it's rocky but produces passable olives and some other crops that Ariadne is making some money out of, but let's be fair here. Agriculture and business just don't interest me. Leaving aside the fact that I'm going to be newly married and will want to explore everything that comes with that."

Mark smirked.

"Flame Mark but I don't want to be Baron Coulthard. Dad was Baron Coulthard, I would feel like an imposter. I would be an imposter."

"I know the feeling."

"Emma's being silly."

"Yes." Mark agreed. "Yes she is. She sees herself in you. She recognises a lot of similarities. You and her are very much Father's children."

"There was a time when I would have hit you for saying that."

"I know." Mark laughed. "And you would be right to do so. But it's true. You both have your passions that drive you both. You have your academics and your desire to learn, as well as to teach, and Emma has the drive to further the families legacy. Francesca was the same. You weren't at home when she left so you missed the moment when she heard about the Empress and everything that the Empress was going through and decided that the Empress must be lonely. After that, that was all she was building towards.

"Whereas Sam and I are more our Mother's sons. We needed to find our goals. I was lucky in that I was pushed into something that appealed to me but it was different from everything else. But I have felt the same frustration that Sam has. He tells me that he talked to you about losing interest in his more martial pursuits. That he just stopped caring about how good he was with a sword and no longer felt the need to pursue it."

"Yes he did."

"I remember feeling exactly the same. I reached a plateau with Religious writings. A point where I felt as though I was reading the same thing over and over again and that the existing doctrine of the Eternal fire had nothing else to teach me. I nearly got into a lot of trouble as I started to read the teachings and the writings regarding other religions but nothing held my interest as much as the Holy Fire work. Which is what told me that I wasn't being called elsewhere. I felt that I was in the right place but I needed something else. I was lucky enough to find it when I read some of your works."

"Really?"

"Oh yes, although don't get too smug. It was something that I was already thinking of at the time but reading about Eternal Fire Priests and hearing about the depravity that some of them had sunk to. I was already on the beginning of my path but I didn't know where I was going until it crystallised.

"I think Sam is at the same place I was. He's just no longer as thrilled about being the best with a sword, or a lance or any of the other ludicrous weapons that he used to like to fight with. He wants something else, he needs something else. He could probably do with getting married if the truth be known. Settle him down a bit. At the moment, the line of Coulthard still dies with our generation."

I laughed. "You know that Laurelen is working on something so that she could, in theory, get Emma pregnant right?"

Mark rolled his eyes. "Yes I know. Fortunately not something I'm going to have to deal with. Although I would have liked to meet my nephew or niece. Have you and Ariadne thought about how that might work for the two of you?"

"We haven't really. When we got engaged she told me that there is no reason why she couldn't extend my life for a while so that I could be party to the same methods as some mages use so there's no rush. She's also interested in Laurelen's research into various things and failing all else, we can always adopt. I would like children but I kind of want to enjoy being married to someone before I start to worry about that."

"I know, but the problem isn't going to go away."

I glared at him. "Well you're just a ray of sunshine aren't you?"

Mark laughed.

A soldier poked his head through the tent flap, ignoring me completely. "Eminence, your transport is ready."

Mark nodded. "I'll be out in a moment."

The soldier left.

"Eminence," I mocked. "You gonna be able to get out of the tent with your new title and all."

He grinned. "Take care of yourself Freddie," he told me. "And give some thought as to what you want to do about Sam and Emma. Personally, I reckon you should just bang their heads together and tell them to behave but that's just me."

"Do you think that will work?"

"It might. Especially if you do it. Whether you want the title or not, the fact is that you are the head of the family now. I don't know when it happened, how it happened or why. But you are the thing that keeps us together, keeps us moving forward and ties us to each other. We were all terrified when you went missing. If Sam, or Emma, or I vanished off the face of the continent then we'd all be worried. But that's nothing close to the terror that we all felt when we got news that you had gone missing."

I gaped at him. I must have shaken my head or something because he immediately started to offer evidence.

"You're the one that slapped us all into shape regarding Dad's death. I couldn't... I couldn't have done what you did there and right now, Edmund might be in charge of the family with this cult, and the one outside of Oxenfurt still running if you hadn't started your investigation. It was you that ran out to try and find Francesca. You swept Sam up and brought him with you but otherwise, I would have been content to let the professionals do their job. You couldn't help yourself it was so important to you. You feel for this family Freddie and we all see it and react in kind. You make all of us better just by being alive. You challenge us and force us to think."

"Eminence," someone called.

Mark pulled a face. "We'll talk soon Freddie. I would hug you but I'm afraid I'll catch plague."

He looked down at me for a long time. "Love you Freddie."

"Love you too Mark." I managed.

I felt as though Mark had hit me upside of the head with a stew pot.

Emma was the next really significant conversation that I had. After Mark had gone, I sent several messages to her in an effort to try and get her into my tent in order for the two of us to have a chat, but for whatever reason, she just didn't materialise. I don't know what she was doing. She has since claimed that she spent a lot of time talking to the Elves that had come with me but I also know that she had spent even more time talking to the local villagers.

During this time I was still, all but bedridden. The Priestess would allow me to work at a small lectern that I could prop on the bed to act as a desk but I was under strict orders to stop whatever it was that I was doing whenever I got a headache. I suppose that now is as good a time as any to admit that I ignored these orders on more than one occasion. I also spent some time talking with Kerrass. Nothing too deep and meaningful because I didn't want to pressure him into talking about something that he didn't want to, and I wanted to make sure that I had all my faculties about myself when we actually did sit down and started talking.

I also spent some time talking with Chireadean, as well as Chireadean, Rickard and Kerrass as a group. We agreed a couple of things as to what we were going to do next but mostly we just gossiped. I enjoyed Chireadean's sense of humour and he and Rickard were well on the way to forming a firm friendship, although Chireadean admitted that he had had enough of living in the woods and eating berries. He wanted to sleep in a bed, preferably with the option of sharing that bed with a nice, buxom woman.

I was also allowed out to go out "into the bushes" if you know what I mean and I also made a point to eat the main evening meal with the remaining bastards and Elves. I thought that this was important and this was, more than a little bit confirmed by the fact that, at first, I was still receiving odd looks from the Elves that would gather round us. As though I was behaving in ways that they did not expect and they were waiting for me to turn around and bite their heads off.

But one day, Emma strode into the pavilion like she was a woman on a mission.

"Good," I began, setting aside my impromptu writing desk. "I want to talk to you." There might have been a bit more anger in my voice than I had been intending at first.

"And I want to talk to you." She responded just as quickly. She seemed odd to me and at first I thought she might have done something different with her hair or one of the other small changes that she sometimes made to her appearance without telling anyone before expecting me to pick up on it without prompting. "Are you allowed outside yet?"

"What?" The question had thrown me off but I did my best to rally. "Of course I'm allowed outside, do you see a chamberpot."

But she was already waving her hand in an effort to dismiss my words. "Then follow me. I want you to see this." Without explanation, she turned with her skirts swishing behind her and left the tent.

I considered not following her for a whole forty two heartbeats before admitting to myself that I was far too curious to not see what she had in store for me. My sister knows me well it would seem.

So she should as well, after all these years.

I pulled myself out of bed and found some trousers and pull my boots on. I also considered whether or not I would survive going outside without pulling on a cloak of some kind to keep me warm. Not that I was afraid of the fever or anything but I was a little concerned that the Priestess might skin me alive if I risked it.

In all fairness, the most dangerous stage of recovery is just when you think you've thrown off the illness and start throwing yourself into activities before you're ready for them.

But, as I say, one of my occasional weaknesses is that I refuse to accept just how ill I get until I'm almost literally dying and people need to sit on me in order to prevent me from doing anything stupid. I suspect that this quality is something that I get from having to be inspected by my mother whenever I got sick as a child.

She took the view that unless blood was actively gushing from the open head wound that I had sustained when trying to stand in front of a fully armoured knight on the back of an equally armoured war horse, then sympathy was not required. I would be sent off for my medicine, which was always vile on the grounds that if you make the medicine vile enough then children won't come back and ask for some more as some kind of treat, and packed off to bed.

Then I would be, in my eyes, punished for being ill by not being allowed to read or do anything interesting while being sick. The manifest unfairness of all of this was the cause of many tears when I had been younger.

I stumbled out of the tent as I was still having some difficulty in balancing properly for no good reason that I could understand to see what was waiting for me.

"There appear to be many more Elves than I was expecting," I commented to no-one in particular.

"A couple more have come in when they heard what had happened here." Kerrass, who was perched on a stool near the entrance to the tent, told me.

"Not many, but enough to actually manage to make a couple of people nervous." Danzig agreed, seeming to be having far more fun with this entire situation than was strictly needed in my opinion. "Mostly non-combatants and people that Chireadean had left behind when you first joined up with them. It seems that he wasn't foolish enough to put all his eggs into one basket. They caught up recently and were brought here. A couple of people were quite angry about this." Danzig snorted, showing exactly what he thought of soldiers who were afraid of a dozen, ragged, half-starved non-combatants.

"Hush," Kerrass quieted him with a flap of his hand. I got the sense that Danzig wasn't the only one enjoying the bit of theatre.

Chireadean was ushering the Elves towards an upturned barrel which Emma climbed on top of. I saw that Emma was wearing a relatively plain dress with some leggings underneath, the same kind of clothing that she used to wear when she went riding and wanted to annoy father. I looked for Laurelen and found her a little distance off watching the entire situation. She seemed relaxed and calm so I assumed that she knew what was happening and took a bit of comfort from that.

Emma began to speak.

"First of all." She said loudly and clearly, "I want you all to know that I'm not standing up here in order to place myself above you in any way. I'm just doing that so that you can all see me and hear me as I don't want anyone to mistake what I need to say. Least of all my younger brother who is stood on the edge of the clearing glowering at me."

There was some muted laughter from the Elves, a sound which grew in volume as the translation of some of the words filtered through as well as the fact that some of the more cowed people there realised that despite Emma's obvious wealth and status...

Try as she might, there is no longer any denying who and what Emma is. Her hair is too clean and well cared for, her clothing too well made and the way she stands conveys a sense of the person and the attitude of command that she has. It's not something you notice until you've been cold, dirty and hungry yourself and had your own privilege torn away from you.

… she wasn't going to tear anyone's heads off for laughing. A couple of people turned to look at me to see if I was, indeed, glowering at her. I cannot answer for what they saw but I saw a couple of them grinning openly.

"I asked Chireadean here," she gestured. A movement that I found funny as you normally make those kinds of gestures when you're giving a speech in order to ensure that everyone knows who the relevant people are. But in this case, it was absurd for people to assume that anyone didn't know who Chireadean was. "I asked him to gather you all here so that I could say some things to you all." She went on.

"The first thing I want to say is almost a little note. I want to apologise to you all for not being able to speak to you in your own language. I can talk finances in the Elder speech," I applauded her silently for using the correct term for the Elven language, "so that I can argue with Southerners and I can read and write quite well. But there are sentiments that I want to express that I don't think I can do so adequately. So I do so, in my own language and I beg your forgiveness."

There was another pause as Emma waited for the translators to catch up.

"So here it is." She began. "I am sorry." The way she said it. Calmly and simply seemed to make it have more impact than if she had made the apology more flowery with many more big words attached to it. "I am so, so very sorry." She said again. I saw her looking around the group, presumably meeting everyone's eyes before I realised that one of the people that she was looking at was me.

"My father once told me about apologising," she went on. "He told me two things that have stuck with me over the years. The first thing is that simply apologising is not good enough. You have to be able to tell the person that you are apologising to, what you are apologising for. So, to that end..."

She took a deep breath.

"I am sorry that I leapt to conclusions. I am sorry that I assumed who you all were. I am sorry that I deliberately lessened you all in my eyes and that I saw you as a group rather than the collection of individuals that you are. Over the last couple of days since I came back here and you had returned, bringing my brother back to me through fire and death. I have spoken to many of you. As many as I could and one thing has become clear. The way that you have been treated is appalling. You are no less than I am. In many ways, you are greater than that. But I heard the word "Elves" and I assumed that you were brigands and thieves. I assumed that you were scum, vagabonds and layabouts who simply never tried hard enough to fit in with human society. Who simply didn't do what they needed to do to fit in.

"That assumption was wrong.

"I also, assumed that I was one of the good ones. I have never, nor has anyone within my sphere of influence ever done anything to harm an Elf. We have not enslaved Elves, nor have we taken advantage of Elves. I had not realised that this is simply not enough in correcting the great evil that has been committed against your people by mine.

"This crime of mine is made worse in my eyes because I discriminated against you further. When the mages and magic users were being persecuted, not only did I not hurt them or torture them or execute them in droves, I devoted time, money and resources to their rescue and safety. I risked my own life and my own freedom in order to make that rescue happen and work towards the betterment of magical lives, spiriting magic users to safety aboard my families ships.

"But I did nothing to help the non-humans when the torturers came for them. I told myself that it was too risky, too dangerous and that people were already wary of us and I didn't want to risk myself or any of the people that I was responsible for.

"I now see that to do nothing to fight that persecution is as bad as being a persecutor myself.

"I do not expect your forgiveness. These wrongs are too raw and too heinous to be forgiven. I do not have excuses for my actions or lack thereof, only explanations but I will not waste your time with them. But I want you to know that I am sorry."

The speech was punctuated with pauses so that the translators could catch up. It was a good speech and I agreed with it. There was just a small, bitter and cynical, part of me that wondered how long she had been practising it.

But it would seem that the speech wasn't over yet.

"Now believe it or not, I know what you're thinking." Emma went on. "You're thinking "Pretty words from the human noble-woman who can retreat behind her castle walls to her life of privilege." And you would be correct, I can do that and I absolutely intend to do so. I need to examine myself and my actions for a while but I said that there were two things that my father told me about apologising.

"The second thing that he told me about apologising is that it is not enough to say that you are sorry, nor is it enough to know why what you have done is wrong. The real part of the apology comes when you take steps to correct the mistake and to make sure that the thing that you are apologising for, never happens again. You have to show the injured parties, that means you, that you are making changes.

"To that end, I promise that I will do what I can to help you. I will not do anything to harm those people for whom I already hold responsibilities such as the people who already live on lands that I administer. But there are things I can do.

"To start with there is this. If you wish to stay in this part of the world, no judgement from me, this is your home after all, then I will ensure that Lord Samuel Kalayn, another younger brother of mine, will treat you fairly. I have, not inconsiderable, influence with him and I will use it to your benefit wherever I can.

"Or you can come and live with me. Sir Rickard of my castle guard tells me that he is more than willing to recruit any number of you to join his unit. A unit that my family uses in order to protect our roads and our people from bandits and when there's none of that to do, they act as guards for our goods and occasionally our persons, as you all saw they did with Freddie. If you prefer to leave the more combative side of life behind you, and who could blame you, then simply tell me of your capabilities and expertise and I will find work for you that you will be comfortable with, with employers who will treat you fairly on the grounds that, ultimately, you will be working for me.

"If you would rather travel, my mercantile enterprises are always in need of more workers, as wagon masters, trail blazers, guards, sailors, ship masters, warehouse guards, administrators, factotums and everything in between. I will be able to find you work easily.

"I also have no doubt that Freddie himself will take you with him when he gets married as well if that's the kind of thing that you fancy.

"I cannot promise you a life of complete safety, not can I promise you a life of idleness and comfort. But I can promise you that I will work as hard for you as I can and that you will always have a friend in me and anyone else that I might have influence over.

"Spread the word as well. My people and I already employ many dwarves and more than one gnome. Halflings work our fields and we are only under-represented by Elves. If you hear or meet any of your people that are looking for a fair chance, then send them to me.

"That's all that I have to say."

She stepped down and started talking to Chireadean, who hugged her. I was, a little, astonished.

I stood there for what felt like an age waiting for the world to start making sense.

"See," Laurelen is surprisingly good at sneaking up on people. "I told you she would change her mind."

"Is it a genuine change or is it something else?"

"I think it's genuine. Time will tell though and I can promise you that I will be there to keep her on the straight and narrow."

I turned to the Sorceress and hugged her. "Thank you." I whispered.

"Thank you as well." She whispered back. "You gave her the kick and showed us both a problem that neither of us really knew existed. Now go inside and get back to bed before you catch your death."

"I'm pretty sure that I've already caught a little cold, what could more hurt?"

"Just off the top of my head? Your lungs, your heart..."

"Ok, I get the picture," I told her as I turned to re-enter my pavilion.

"Also your brain, your nose..."

I left her there, listing off the things that could be damaged by colds.

I didn't have to wait long before Emma swept the entrance flap to the tent aside.

"What did you think of my speech?" She demanded with a little bit of a wicked smile about her eyes.

"Not bad." I told her. "How long did it take you to practice it in front of a mirror?"

"Cheeky sod." She told me, pulling over a stool. "And after all I've done for you."

"What have you done exactly?" I realised that I was grinning.

"I all but raised you with my own two hands," her voice quavered in an impression of a much older woman. "I protected you from the darkness on the outside of things that you have not seen and could not comprehend. Did I not protect you from harm, protect you from parents and the scolding of tutors?"

I had start chuckling which, in turn, made me cough.

"Flame but I've missed you Emma."

"I've missed you too. You seem different since I last saw you. Not including the time when you scolded me about my attitudes, but from back when you and Kerrass last stayed with us. You seem a little more...I don't know...calm. Less angry I mean, despite having plenty of things to be angry about. You seem more at peace somehow."

"Well, about that..."

I began to tell her my own account of what happened since I had last left Coulthard castle. Including telling her about my realisations under the rock. Of my conversations on the subjects of anger and my deepening distress at the state of things with Kerrass, Rickard and Ariadne. Despite everything, Emma is my closest friend as well as being my sister and my mother. Towards the end of my story, I remembered laughing.

"What's so funny?"

"It's an odd feeling, but I almost feel as though I've missed you somehow. I only saw you last a couple of months ago and yet I feel as though I haven't seen you in years. Which is ironic because before that we've spent longer apart and yet we've been able to take up almost directly from where we left off."

"A lot has happened in the last six months." She told me with a haunted look in her eyes. "A lot has happened."

I finished my story and then Emma had some questions. I still hadn't told her about Ella as I was still determined that I would deal with that problem myself. I had questions that I wanted to ask that Elven alchemist.

Emma sat in silence.

"So what has happened in the last six months?" I asked her. "Last time we talked you were in the process of expanding the Oxenfurt docks, fighting the Novigrad customs keepers and pursuing a personal vendetta with half the administrators in Redania."

Emma smiled at the thought and I was amazed to see her eyes fill up with tears.

"Oh that's only the half of it," she told me with a very shaky smile. "Along with all of that I've had a wedding to plan for my favourite little brother. A wedding, by the way, that the Empress of Nilfgaard and the entire continent wants to attend and have more than a little say in how it's run. I've also had to deal with the fact that my big brother is dying, my other little brother is growing more and more distant from me by the day and Mother isn't returning my letters. I know that she was going into isolation to a healing order so that for all I know she's off somewhere giving healing out to people infinitely less fortunate than ourselves and is simply not receiving the letters.

"The family has been audited by Imperial investigators, not to see if we've done anything wrong but because they want to know just how many people that we've pissed off and upset."

She fastened her eyes to mine. "Freddie, it's a lot. A lot of people hate us and I find that I don't like it. I know that Father, and Grandfather had to work damn hard and step on a lot of people to get our family to where we are now but at the same time, I had not realised it was so many, nor had I realised just how many people that hate us. Or how many people I have hurt in continuing our father's legacy.

"And I know, I know that some of those people are worse than we are. I know that some of those people are scum and devious and cruel and have committed those same cruelties on other people. Worse cruelties even but when they put it all down on a piece of paper and you are forced to look at it...?"

She shook her head, eyes brimming with tears.

"The Empress came to see me." She went on, just the hint of a tremor in the back of her voice somewhere. "She came when she had received the same report that I had and commented that most of those people deserved what they got but that doesn't help. I don't like being feared Freddie. I don't like it."

She laughed suddenly. "And then the Empress asked me to come and do my own inspection of the Imperial treasury. She wants to put me in charge of the Imperial budget with a remit of making that money work harder for the Empire rather than going on to provide public works that the people don't want or need or going on to line the pockets of bureaucrats all over the Empire."

"Did you say yes?"

"I still don't know. You are not the only one who is examining themselves. I know that Mark has decided that life is too short, for obvious reasons, and is taking the chance to say what he wants to say before he runs out of opportunities. You tell me that you've been examining your own tendency towards anger. We used to make jokes about your temper tantrums when you were little, remember?"

"I remember. I remember being beaten for them and learning to swallow them so I didn't upset people. I remember that this seemed to make them even more explosive though, if fewer."

"And I look at these things. I want the job that Ciri, the Empress I should say..."

"She did ask me to call her by her name as well."

"Yes but I find I don't really want to. I want to call her the Empress but when it's just the two of us or she has taken steps to make the surroundings less formal then I have to work really hard not to call her Ciri. She doesn't make it easy."

"She likes to put the crown on and off."

"Yes, but she can't. She really can't. She's the Empress and she needs to remember that she's still the Empress when she's drunk and taking a dump in a flower pot as well as being in a frock and wearing a crown."

Silence reigned for a moment after that.

"That's a true story by the way." Emma told me with a sly smile. "Apparently, the roses in Mother's garden are turning out really well this year."

I couldn't help but laugh at that.

"But I want that job Freddie. I want it so bad. I can make it work, I can change the face of politics and the world and I can help this awesome, amazing woman make a difference in everything and I can do that. I have been offered that chance, but I'm not sure I can cope with being hated by even more people. Just from a quick glance at the records I can tell that several powerful people are stealing money from the Empire to line their own pockets. As a percentage of the Empires overall budget, it's nothing. Less than point zero one percent. But it adds up over the years. I pointed this out and the Empress had them exiled and one of them killed.

"I'm not sure I want that on my conscience Freddie. I don't know if I want to work for a woman who can speak so passionately when it comes to the protection of the common folk and installing justice for all as well as improving race relations and the treatment of magic users but can go from that to a cold and calculating mindset. Utterly ruthless in it's obsession to make the world a better place. I'm not sure I want to do that."

"And I miss Francesca so much. Oh Freddie it hurts so very badly."

She shuffled over towards me and hugged me for a long time as she wept.

"Even when I knew that she was half a continent away, I didn't miss her this much." She said into my shoulder.

"I'm the same," I told her. "I keep seeing things that she would like, or think of a joke that would make her giggle while being horrified at the filthy nature of the joke. I tell myself that she would like that and remind myself to make a note of it and add it to my next letter. Then I remember and..."

It took us both a long time to recover from that little bout of tears.

"And then," She began again, "you go missing and I fly into a raging storm of terror that I might lose you as well and then, mercifully, when you turn up to not be dead, you challenge me and tell me off for being far more unpleasant that I had ever thought of myself." She pulled back and wiped her eyes. "I felt like I was having my heart ripped out."

"I won't apologise for it though."

"Nor would I expect you to. You wouldn't be you otherwise."

"As I've said to others," I went on. "I would have shared your sentiment a month ago, not even that. But now... I saw an Elf die to save my life. Others died to make sure that Cavill and his cultists, the same cult that corrupted Edmund and killed Father, would never hurt anyone ever again, including humans. How do I thank them for that?"

I shook my head.

"There is no way I can thank them for that. No way that I can do that, it would seem condescending. I owe those... those people more than I can possibly express and I don't know what to do about it. I should make them nobles, I should elevate them to the level of us, you and me, higher even. They should be kings and Queens and teach us all what it means to be truly noble. Offer them jobs? I feel like we're spitting in their faces but I can't think of anything else to do about it and it kills me that they're probably going to be grateful for it."

Emma said nothing, just squeezed her lips together.

I took a deep breath. "So what's this that Mark tells me that you tried to get him to name me heir over Sam. Leaving aside the fact that Father said what he wanted to happen in his will about the title and land passing down Father's male line..."

"Yes, I've looked at that. According to the lawyers that I've spoken to, Dad named Mark his heir of title and grants of nobility. It was some legal wrangling on his part apparently. The very fact that churchmen are not really allowed to inherit wealth and land was what made it necessary. But they were ok with Mark inheriting the title so long as he didn't inherit the land or the wealth, which is always the thing that people really care about here anyway,"

"That's immaterial Emma."

"I know but there's the thing. If the will had merely said that his, father's, eldest son was to inherit everything, then Mark would have been passed over and Sam would have inherited the lot."

"So?"

"So the title passes to Mark which means that Mark gets to decide what happens to it. Father's wishes on that regard are literally just that. Father's wishes which can be ignored. I sometimes wonder if Father did that on purpose?"

"Did he?"

"There's no way to tell. Mother isn't talking about those decisions and you remember Father's solicitor who was bound to be the one to orchestrate any kind of scheme?"

"Yeah, uh...Bernie?"

"Yes. He died in the Spring."

"Oh bless him. I liked him."

"Heart attack apparently. So there's actually no way of knowing what Father was thinking at the time and knowing Father he probably kept that to himself."

"All of this is unimportant though Emma. Why don't you want Sam to inherit? Father was clever enough to know that Mark would either give all the money to the church, which is a much more plausible explanation for why Father protected the money than some conspiracy theory. A theory which, by the way, turned out to be correct as Mark has all but admitted to intending to do himself."

"Yes. But that's not the issue..." She turned away, thoughtful expression.

"Emma, you seem to forget that I was good at the politics side of things as well, just not as driven. This is nothing to do with Father being worried about Sam and playing legal tricks to make sure that he wouldn't inherit. This is about you. So what's the problem?"

"I love Sam. I really do but there's something..." She shook her head. "There's a reason why he's still unmarried. Mark's illness is getting out. Turns out that there have been rumours about it for ages so everyone knows that Mark is going to pass on. People know that the money and the land and the power and influence is going to pass down the line according to whatever it is Mark decides. Mark, being Mark and something of a traditionalist is going to name Sam heir. So why aren't there eligible women queueing up to marry him?"

"I have no idea."

"Neither do I. There has been some interest from Nilfgaard and from the more far flung areas of the empire such as northern Kaedwen, Lyria and Rivia and people the other side of the Yaruga. But they turn up, spend some time with him and then I never hear anything else about it. I should at least hear something. But there's nothing there. They just, never ask for a separate meeting."

"Sam is a soldier," I told her. "He knows next to nothing about courting a woman. He's still, I understand, going to be only a Baron in places where titles mean more than the amount of money and land that comes with it. He barely reads and writes although his math is better than his writing. His knowledge of poetry, history...the arts in general is not going to help his ability to hold a conversation with any kind of eligible noble woman. He's a boor and a soldier. We both know this. He is not traditionally charming. We both know that as well."

"Yes but..."

"What he is, is cleverer than a lot of people give him credit for. He is faster than most people give him credit for and he's also absurdly pretty. Leaving aside my recent problems with him regarding the Elves and the way he treated them and therefore me, he's not a bad guy. So why are you afraid of him inheriting? Why are you afraid?"

Emma thought about this for a moment.

"Men like to talk about their gut feeling occasionally." She said after a while. "This is my gut feeling. I don't think that he's going to be able to handle the responsibilities of running the family. I don't think he's going to be able to expand our influence which, despite my earlier moaning, absolutely has to happen because if we're not fighting other people off with cold ruthlessness, then people are going to see our good treatment of people like the Elves and the peasants, yes I use the word but I'm thinking like them in order to figure out ways to defeat them, they will see that as a weakness to exploit.

"But the truth is simpler than that. It boils down to this. There are two males left in the Coulthard family line after Mark. You and Sam. Of the two of you, you are the one that is provably better at expanding the families influence. You are an academic, you have made us famous throughout the continent when all Father, and I to be fair, were able to do was to make us rich. You have made us popular in ways that I would never have been able to do. You have skills that will be needed in the world that is currently being formed. A world that needs eloquence and learning and charm and humour. Much more than it will need the swordsmanship and the tactics that fill Sam's mind.

"You will make a better Lord Coulthard than Sam will. You will be better for it, better for us."

"Has he threatened you in any way. Has he made your life difficult with Laurelen?"

"No. But..."

"Has he said he wants to do anything with the family businesses and money that don't fall in line with what's needed for the best interests of it all?"

"I..."

"I remind you that he took the money that he inherited and put it back into the family business. Same as I did."

"You're right."

"So has something else happened?"

"No it's just..."

"He wants to do his own thing?"

She just looked at me.

"He wants his own little corner of the world. He wants to take Castle Kalayn and turn it into a reflection of himself in the same way that Father, and you to a certain extent, have taken Castle Coulthard and turned it into a reflection of himself and yourself. You want my advice?"

She sighed expressively before nodding.

"Give him this thing." I told her. "Let him have this land to do with as he pleases. Let him make something of it and when he asks for help, instead of just throwing money at him then teach him. Show him where he went wrong, ask him what he wants to do and help him. Include him..."

"You're going to be a wonderful professor at the university. You're going to be a good teacher."

"Now that's something that a man wants to hear when he's only in his early twenties."

"Freddie, you remember that I've met your fiancee."

"So?"

"And you remember that I'm gay right?"

"I say again, so?"

"So she's really hot. I mean frighteningly hot. So hot that I considered stealing her from you."

"But Laurelen would have objected surely."

"Laurelen was actually quite open to the idea."

"Aaarrrggghhh." I screamed before an idea for some kind of revenge crossed my mind. "Hang on, is there the possibility of some kind of trade here?"

"What do you mean?"

"You get to try to steal Ariadne from me, whereas I get to steal Laurelen from you?"

"Do you fancy your chances?"

"Do you?"

We laughed at the same time.

"What are we saying?" I laughed.

"I know,"

"Besides, the truth is that they would probably run off with each other leaving us both."

"Alone and unloved."

We laughed a bit more.

"Sam has his faults Emma and Flame knows that I am fucking pissed at him at the moment but he doesn't deserve to be passed over because you have a bad feeling about things."

"You're right. But you're not going to be the one that has to live with him if it all goes wrong. You're going to be off having amazing sex with your insanely beautiful wife."

"Thank you yes. I shall remember that this is my end goal."

She grinned. "I've missed you Freddie."

"I've missed you too Emma."

We gossiped for a while after that. We talked about what was going on with the Empress' knitting circle, gossiped about other things and then she left in the evening in order to head home. Sam was still a long way away but she promised that she would talk to Sam when he was more easy to find.

So that was that.

All told it took me a good three weeks to recover, both my strength and my stamina. As always, recovery was intensely dull and boring. I had my work to concentrate on but the person that really kept me sane through all of that was, of course, as he always is, Kerrass.

It was a good three weeks and a bit. By which I mean that I look back on those three and a bit weeks with fondness and humour. Kerrass was, by no means, my nursemaid but we sat and talked a lot. It was a reaffirmation of our friendship and it felt good.

I felt guilty about the way that I had treated Kerrass over the last few weeks and I felt as though I needed to reconnect. It was also about this time that we had the conversation that I had been looking forward to for a while.

"So Kerrass."

"Yes Freddie." He still had a slightly exasperated air about him whenever he was talking to me. One of the first things that had happened when we got back to the castle was that some Mage or Sorceress, probably Laurelen or Ariadne, had taken the time to properly repair his forearms. I understand it's something to do with the acceleration of the bones being reformed and strengthened at a rate far in advance of what they would be normally. He had also found a small cave somewhere nearby where he had set up a small alchemy lab in order to properly restock his potion box.

He had developed a habit of stretching his arms and rotating his wrists, staring at them in marvel before allowing them to hang at his side. He did things like swinging his arms in an exaggerated way as he walked.

The other half of his time he spent training. For some reason he wasn't entirely satisfied though. He was training obsessively squeezing a small rubber ball as well as sword and strength work. Even though, as far as I could tell, there was no lessening of muscle strength, he complained that "they didn't move right" and wanted to "retrain his arms" into doing what he needed and being as quick, skilled and strong as he needed them to be.

"Next time Kerrass, Next time we have some kind of adventure. Can you be the one that gets sick and has to spend a whole bunch of time recovering?"

"I would, but I don't get sick, and it doesn't take me ages to recover unlike someone like you. I have a decent constitution."

"So what you're saying is...?"

"That I'm just better than you and you should learn to live with that."

"That makes me feel so much better, thank you.

"In fact, it's actually a charity for me to be travelling with you. I'm doing you a service is what I'm saying."

"Kerrass, what did you say to the Ghost? And why?"

"I thought you let me off easily when it came to that thing." He sighed. "This is the part where you want me to tell you what happened and why isn't it?"

"It is a little. How did you know what to say? How did you know what to do? Who was that that talked to me about my way forward and answered my questions?"

Kerrass climbed to his feet and left the tent. When he came back he was carrying a large pot of tea and built one of his "hot rock" cooking fires where he heated a rock with his "Igni" sign so that it could provide heat without actual flames that could cause dangerous fires or give away our position with flaring light. Another little trick that would have been useful when we were fleeing from Cavill and his cultists, before setting up a pot and brewed some tea.

"This is a long story," he told me, "and I figure that we're going to need some liquid refreshment." He passed me a writing desk, ink, parchment and a sheaf of quills.

"To be honest the entire thing started when we were approaching Kalayn lands. The long and short of what happened here was that you, your brother, Rickard and the rest haven't really been able to see the woods for the trees. You spent your entire time in this part of the world fighting off individual situations and working to overcome individual trials without taking a big step back and looking at the entire painting. Don't feel too badly about this, it is a common flaw amongst people as a whole and I am just as guilty about it all as anyone else.

"Why?

"Because it all comes down to how we are trained. I wouldn't have the first idea of how to fight a battle. I just wouldn't know how to do it so my method of fighting in a mass battle would be to concentrate on the person in front of me, fight him and kill him before moving onto the next person and so on and on. That is fine, I don't need to know how any of that works. That is what we have people like Rickard and your brother for. Nor do I know how to move a significant number of people through relative wilderness while fighting off hostile forces. That is Chireadean and Rickard again that do things like that.

"You? You can navigate a courtroom, you can talk to people and make them love you. If I dropped you in the middle of a strange city surrounded by strangers and asked you to find out about what's going on there. You would know how to do it. You're even formulating a list of what you would do and in what order as we sit here and talk about it aren't you?"

"I might be." I admitted.

"So what am I good at? What do I do? The obvious answer is that I kill monsters but the slightly less well known factor is that I combat curses. It is a less well accepted truth that Witchers often prefer to lift curses rather than trying to destroy the various victims of the curses. It is only when the victim is actively dangerous that we need to actively destroy the victim, for example, most cases of lycanthropy need to be introduced to the sharpened edge of a silver sword. Some do not, I grant you. Story and history books are filled with examples of the noble Lycanthrope who fought against their more savage nature and managed to become worthwhile members of society. But in the vast majority of cases, the anger and hate that started the curse is enough to drive the victim insane and the poor beast needs to be ended.

"So we all approached the area differently. Sam, when he first got here was concerned about the state of his castle and his countryside. You were concerned about looking for the cult and looking for any sign that they might have had anything to do with the disappearance of your sister. Rickard was concerned about you. The only person that actually came here with the outlook of having a job to do, was me.

"As I say, that's not a criticism. Just a statement of fact from my perspective.

"It was clear from the moment that we approached the border of Kalayn lands that something was going on. You may remember my commenting that there was a considerable magical presence in the area. A field of magical energy that surrounded us and pushed at us. It seemed to flow over us and wrap around us. Much more so than it would normally. Magical force normally flows through the land like streams and, in some cases, rivers. But here, it was like a sea. Ebbing and flowing around the land, manipulated by rocks and dips on the shore.

"There had to be a reason for this and the first thing that I decided I had to do was to look for signs that this magical effect was having on the surrounding area."

He poured us both some tea, sweetening his own with a large spoonful of honey. I like mine a bit more bitter than he does, a change that he considers as utter lunacy.

"That was the basis of my thinking from the very beginning." He went on after taking a long drink. "At first my working theory was that the land itself was scarred and that that was having an effect on the people that lived here. That the awful things that were done up at the castle had, in some way, reverberated throughout the countryside and, in some way, influenced the way that the world worked. This view was emphasised by the hostile nature of our reception when we finally got to the castle. The sense of disquiet that we all felt, yes, even you. It was easy to dismiss these feelings as a result of the ghosts and the evidence of all the horrors that had been committed in the castle as well as the personal connection that you had with what had happened there.

"But then you took me to the village and I noticed something else.

"This is a truly beautiful part of the world. It really is. Even the mists, which to most people living here were a justifiably terrifying occurrence, gave the area an otherworldly beauty that calls to the soul. That and the relatively idyllic lifestyle of the local villagers. That simple arable life where they are provided for, have plenty to eat, lack of monsters...

"Yes there are some insectoids and Arachnomorphs around but not in particularly large numbers and certainly not in a way that would adversely affect the villagers. They had learned to live with these creatures and do so to a better level than most would. They have what they need. My theory changed when I was told about their "Crooked man of the mound." Their Crom Cruarch. A story of which was so vastly different from the entity that your cousin described to us back in Oxenfurt. This was a relatively simple, spirit of the harvest kind of affair. It would not have surprised me at all to find that there was some kind of satyr here that was returning the locals sacrifices with bounty but that simply wasn't the case. It also wouldn't track with the presence of these hounds. A terrorising program of the size that the Hounds had put in place would certainly turn out and discover anything of the size of a satyr.

"But there was a problem. Two problems actually. The first problem was that the villagers version of Crom Cruarch was so different to the one that we knew about..."

"But Mark said that that was not unusual." I interrupted That cultists who get off on the power and the...depravity of certain things often like to take more than they need and to change details of what they had been told in order to better suit what they felt was right..."

"Yes, but that, in and of itself was a clue. The other problem was with the villagers form of worship. They operate a, not unique, viewpoint of how a small scale harvest God needs to be worshipped. They make offerings to the God in return for having more in return. Think about it. They offered the first fruits of the harvest in return for a bountiful harvest that year. They offered the first foals, the first crops of apples the first sheafs of corn. This was true in all things. The Bastards were offered the suggestion of giving up an arrow so that the rest of their arrows would fly true. You gave up knowledge in return for knowledge but there was one thing that was wrong with the situation which was the old story that they used to sacrifice their first-born children in return for everything else. Do you remember?"

"Yes. They gave up their first born in return for increased fertility, for better harvests, clement weather and the strength to carry on."

"That was the biggest clue if I'm honest."

"Why?"

"Because it was wrong. It didn't fit with the rest of the pattern of worship. These primal, old Gods are creatures of habit. They ask for one thing over and over again and then they give back one thing in return. In this case, the villagers gave up one thing in return for many many more of that one thing and the return was quite literal in many cases. You give up Apples, you get more apples. You give up corn, you get more corn. But there was something about the killing of the first born that didn't sit right with me."

"I can see why."

"No, I think you misunderstand. I could almost see the logic that you would give up children in return for increased fertility so, you give up one child in return for more children. But remember that in the rest of the forms of worship, the sacrifice and reward was much more logical and literal in it's chain of thought. So if you were killing a child as part of a sacrifice then the God was just as likely to kill more children, rather than provide you with more. If you also remember, the Priestess, or maybe it was the headman, told us that there were fertility rites where people had sex in the holy place and then they were regularly rewarded with children, despite the proven lack of fertility in either the male or the female. That was the method of achieving more children. So what was it about the killing of the First-born? That was the question that started to oppress me. It was a riddle that I couldn't seem to answer."

He paused for thought for a long while, staring into space before seeming to shake himself loose of whatever he was thinking about and poured himself some more tea. He raised his eyebrows at me in question as he pointed at my own cup to see if I wanted some more. I nodded on the grounds that I was still under orders to drink as much liquid as I could manage.

"And it was that that made me shift my thinking as to what was going on here. It was that question that shifted me away from the land and the spiritual nature of that land having been scarred by the horrible things that your mother's family and the rest of the cult had done. More towards the possibility that there was some kind of curse going on here. This was an idyllic place, populated by good people who were just trying to scratch out a living.

"But then along comes an evil cult that subjugates them and punishes them for perceived sins. Because we're in a modern world, the trappings are slightly different. The Hounds were called "The Hounds of Kreve" and so on but everything about it reminded me of a curse. I thought that the basis of things was that the villagers were performing the rites wrong in some way and that as a result, they were being punished by the spirit of the God, or power if you prefer, as personified by whatever or whoever these Hounds were."

He sat in silence for a while before he smirked. "Turns out that they were indeed performing some of the rites incorrectly. But that's getting ahead of ourselves.

"There was even a point where I thought that what was going on with the hounds was separate from the Cult, but eventually I decided that there was no such thing as coincidences and that the two must be connected in some way. But I still thought that the cult was acting out the punishment of whatever this Crom Cruarch wanted them to do."

"But they were people. The hounds were people."

"So? That doesn't stop them being slaves to the will of a more powerful being. It's just that instead of the curse being enacted as an outgrowth of Sword-vines and a magical effect of lethargy, instead it produced an effect of increasing the baser natures of people as well as an unreasoning hatred of the villagers in these parts."

"So that was where the difference was. As I say, you, Sam, Rickard and the rest saw the problem as a human one. As a military problem that can be planned for, strategised for and defeated with tactics and superior skills. But for me? I saw a curse that needed to be lifted. I would go so far as to say that even had we killed everyone in the cult, then the cult would just grow up again in a different form in order to terrorise the countryside.

"At first, I assumed that the curse would follow a similar pattern to other curses that I have lifted in the past. That we would find some kind of shrine in a desecrated temple somewhere up in the mountains. That there would be some kind of old stone carving or a statue that was painted in what could only be dried blood. But then the scope of the problem seemed to become much larger. Much larger indeed, and as we left your brother's lands and went northwards and back into more settled lands. As we get towards the borders of Kovir, Poviss and the Hengfors league and over to the border with Kaedwen, I absolutely assumed that we would find that the cult phenomenon, the Hounds and whatnot, would turn out to be a relatively localised phenomenon."

He had a little chuckle to himself.

"Boy was I wrong."

We both had a little smirk to ourselves, as Kerrass sat in thought. "One of the interesting things about being a Witcher is that we very rarely get to see what happens after we've hunted. We kill the beast, lift the curse or dismiss the ghost. But very rarely do we get to see what happens as, more often than not, we are firmly, if politely, asked to leave the local area. So we climb on our horses and ride away. The side-effect of this is that we don't really analyse what we did. We don't really look back and think about the actions that lead us to this point. Having spent a bit of time with you and reading your accounts of past hunts, both the popular versions for that magazine as well as the clinical and scholarly versions for the books and the lectures, I sometimes wonder if this is a mistake.

"I still can't quite decide what was happening in these lands and I suppose that only time will provide us with the answers that I would like to be privy to. But I think that there are two options. The first is that we are dealing with a "Two sides of the same coin," effect. There is the evil side that the cultists follow and then there is the more benign side of things, the harvest God that the villagers worship. Again, I more than suspect that this is going to be one of those things where I will never know the answer.

"The alternative is far more terrifying. Which is that the cultists are right. That something came through with the Conjunction of spheres. Another being, vast and terrifying that simply doesn't agree with the laws of existence here."

"The laws of existence?"

"Yes, the basic stuff. That up is up and down is down. That we breath air, drink water and that, generally speaking, what goes up must go down. Fire is hot, ice is cold that kind of thing. Even magic obeys these rules on a basic level. It is a separate force to be sure, but at the same time, it does follow rules. It is classifiable."

I tried to imagine a world where these things could not be the case.

"Hard isn't it." Kerrass said with a smile.

"It is," sure enough, I was struggling to think in a way that didn't involve the most basic concept that occurred to me, that one plus one equals two. I was trying to think of making it a fact that one plus one equals a dozen, but then I realised that the concept of something called "a dozen," was, in itself, partially defined by the number one. So a world where one does not exist. Not because we have not defined it, but because there is no such thing as quantity that can be measured. It made my brain ache.

"You see?" Kerrass was smiling as he watched me try to contort my brain over into the strange and foreign shapes that I wanted it to.

"No," I decided after a moment. "No, I don't. But I suppose that that's the point."

"Exactly." Kerrass' eyes lit up. "You can't imagine it. But just suppose that the conjunction of spheres opened a portal to some place like that. Now imagine that a being that lived there looked through the portal and saw our world. What would it do. It can't come through because it's concept of space is different to ours. But it is jealous and decides that it wants to come through and so it sets out to change what it's looking at in order to better be able to acclimatise itself. It does that by creating a cult. Giving that cult the power and the abilities in order to...to pervert, yes that's the right word, to pervert the world that it has seen into it's own image."

Kerrass sighed again. "Unfortunately, now that I say this aloud, I think that this is by far the more likely scenario. We are going to need to put things in place to guard against this kind of thing happening again."

"I have no doubt that if you talk to the church representatives then they will be all too keen to help out with that problem."

"Yes, but would their people be susceptible to the rot, to the taint. Or would the churchmen use that power and that remit to become corrupt and harmful in other ways as they have done in the past." He shrugged. "I don't have a better idea unfortunately. But still, I'm trying to explain my reasoning as to why I did what I did and why, I think, it worked.

"So, I've talked about the villagers harvest ritual and why I thought that was important?"

"Yes."

"So we went looking for signs of the cult, and as I say, I absolutely expected to find that it was relatively localised, but it quickly became clear that it was much more widespread than we thought it was. Which to me meant that the curse was having a much greater effect. It had infected a significant part of the population, both in the fear and the downtrodden nature of the peasantry...Yes, I know that you don't like the word but in this case it is fairly accurate, but also in the attitudes of the noble classes. Even those men and, to be fair, the women who were involved as well, thought that the practices of the cult were utterly repellent, they were still turned in one way or the other. Either to the fear, or to the overt and over the top belittlement and subjugation of the women.

"To me? I saw signs of the cult everywhere. But we still knew relatively little about the cult, or what we were dealing with. Then we had the good fortune to get captured."

"The good fortune?"

"Yes. I'm not sure I would have been able to put all the pieces together to solve the problem unless we were told about the opposing point of view. It killed a friend, it shattered my arms, made you ill and it has the potential to cause problems between you and Ariadne, I suspect, with the loss of your medallion.

"But on the whole, I would not have figured things out if it hadn't been for the fact that we had been captured. If we hadn't been captured then I would have let Sam, Rickard and the rest mount an armed incursion into Cavill's territory. We wouldn't have known about some of the other people that surrounded Cavill and his son and even now, some of those noblemen that we had thought of as friends as we travelled through those lands, would be riding off somewhere in an effort to go to ground and take the influence of the cult... the influence of the curse with them.

"I suspect that Cavill and his son would have escaped and, no longer tied down to having to keep up the pretence of his noble name, the cult would have prospered. As it is, the mage Phineas has vanished and I would go so far as to say that if evil truly does exist in this world, then that man is one such. I don't know why. Maybe the being from another plane finds it easier to taint minds like his and he genuinely believes what is happening and worships that...thing whatever it was."

"Even so. I can't think that we were better off captured. Poor Taylor."

"Yes, and let's be fair here. Poor us. Not gonna lie here Freddie. That was a dark couple of weeks there. A dark couple of weeks."

"It really was."

Kerrass stared at me for a long while, his golden eyes shining in the reflected lamp light. I realised that it had gotten dark outside. "You saved my life again Freddie. I know we're not supposed to be keeping score any more but I will remember that you did that."

"You are quite welcome." I told him. It seemed right that I hold out my hand to be shaken and he took it.

We sat in silence for a while after that. It was a pattern that we had come to accept, a mirror of our time on the road where Kerrass would explain something and I would note it down. Our surroundings were better than they had been during that time but I was beginning to long for a return to that time. A bit more time out on the road with my friend. It was during the quiet moments like this one that those kinds of sentiments, those kinds of feelings came back to me. I wondered if Kerrass felt them himself.

"So anyway," he said, seeming to shake himself. "Those were the last pieces of the puzzle. I was convinced of it. That our time spent with Cavill and his son, the things that he told us and our time down in the caves. The discovery that it wasn't just some cult that someone had invented to justify their own sick perversions. That there was something here. Some kind of power. That seems certain."

"Why?"

"North Eastern Redania is not the only home of depravity but it is more widespread here and more uniform. The kinks are the same and they all have a common theme. The degradation of women, more so than a willing subservience but this was an outright hatred of them and then the degrading of them to this extent.

"Most men treat women badly if we're honest with ourselves but the attacks on their perso are particularly harsh here. It does happen elsewhere, I am not so naïve to believe otherwise, but what it is... is rarer and the cases where that does happen are more isolated. Sooner or later, there comes a point where a witness, or someone who hears about it will imagine the victim to be their daughter, sister or mother and will take steps. So people that do that have to be more secretive but here? Here it seems to happen out in the open and it's widespread.

"I remember thinking that I had all the threads then. I thought that I could see the solution before my eyes and that if I could just reach out and grasp them all, then I would be able to tie them up into a pretty bow and come up with an answer."

"But then they shattered your arms."

"And stole all of my Elixirs. The combination of the pain and the lack of proper alchemy took away my reason and I could no longer think beyond surviving past the next moment."

"That's not a bad thing. We needed to survive after all."

"True, but this is one of those times. If our positions were reversed then I would agree that that was true. Survival is the most basic form of instinct so if you were the one telling me that you didn't come up with the solution that would have saved lives because you were too busy just trying to survive and worry about where you were going, to find food and shelter then I would say that that was acceptable. But in my case it is far from acceptable. I am a Witcher."

"Kerrass you shouldn't be harsh on yourself about that."

"Yes I should. I am a Witcher. It was my job to solve this."

"You did."

"But only after many others, including Taylor, Dan and the rest, had died. I should have been faster."

"Next time you will be."

"I know that. I do, sometimes, such a goad is a good thing. It drives us to be better."

"Just so long as it doesn't push us into guilt and self-loathing."

"True.

He sat staring at the flame of the lamp for a long time. Slowly, he reached forward and extended the wick so that the flame lengthened and sent the shadows dancing against the tent walls. For a while he looked around himself at the patterns and the movement. He seemed...happy in some way. As though he had found something that was missing. I have no idea why because after letting his eyes dart this way and that, he settled back down to staring at the flame that echoed the dances of the shadows in it's own peculiar rhythm. Moving with the occasional gusts of air.

"I think I lost my mind in those first few days as we left the caverns Freddie. I do believe I went insane." He said it softly, I wondered if that was what my voice sounds like when I give confession.

"What's it like?" I asked gently. I did consider whether I would be better off leaving him to it and not asking the question. But there was something about him that suggest that he wanted to talk about things and it seemed rude not to. Almost as though it might be an insult to his efforts.

"You must know." He told me. "You've come close to it yourself. After Amber's crossing, I saw your eyes then and there was no-one behind them. When you tried to take my knife away from me in order to cut open your own veins. You were mad then."

I shook my head.

"No, sorry Kerrass, but I truly think that I've never been saner than I was in that moment. I was wrong, but there was an absolutely rational and logical progression going on in my head. I was in so much pain then, physically and mentally and I could not see a way out of it. I could not conceive of a life where I wasn't in some kind of pain, or that I wasn't suffering. I just wanted it to end as soon as possible and the quickest way to do that would be to end my own life. It made complete sense to me at the time."

"And that's precisely what it's like. That is madness in many ways, or at least it is for me. When you are sick or afraid, panicky, depressed or any of the other kinds of mental problems." He gestured at me. "When you are struggling to contain your temper. More often than not you know that you are going overboard. You know that you're being paranoid or that the fear is freezing you to the spot when you know that you should be getting up and doing something. That you should be acting rather than reacting. Or you should be calming down and thinking rationally and calmly about the situation. You know what's happening to you and you try to fight it. To put it behind you and to move on.

"Madness? There isn't even the question there, not even the merest hesitation that you might be wrong. For example. I have told you before that I hear voices."

"Yes, you told me that they tell you to kill me on a regular basis. You made jokes about it as I recall."

"Yes. Jokes and humour as a whole are a defence mechanism and I'm just as guilty of employing that defence as anyone. But yes, I do hear voices. They whisper on the edge of consciousness, just about every day. Sometimes, believe it or not, it is even comforting to know that I am never truly alone. But other times, the things that those voices say to me are truly terrifying. But I know that they are just voices and I also know that the majority of the things that they tell me in order to motivate me into doing one thing or another are lies. I can take comfort in that, because it means that I can work my way through to being able to work through the noise and get the task done, or if you prefer, to make sure that I don't simply murder you in your sleep."

"Not as reassuring as you might think there Kerrass."

He just smiled. I wondered if I could see a tinge of sadness in that smile.

"No, I suppose not. But the truly terrifying time comes when the voices make sense. When I find that I have, not only listened to the voices but that I believe them, that I agree with them and that I am absolutely convinced that the only way for me to survive is to do everything that those voices tell me. That's what it's like for me to lose my mind. In the same way that it seemed like the most logical thing in the world for you to attempt to end your life to make the pain go away? That's what it's like for me."

I nodded to show that I had heard him and joined him in his contemplation of the oil lamp flame.

"But then we found the Elves," he told me after a long time. "Or rather you did and I do believe that those Pointy eared bastards saved our lives."

I snorted. "I don't think there's any doubt of that Kerrass."

"No, I suppose not. So they took us aside, give us some food, give us some water and then, miracle of miracles, I could take some Elixir's and start to reclaim my mind from the problems that gripped it.

"And the Elves gave us another gift. They told us the story of the Damaged Elven King."

"Did you believe that story?"

"Not a word of it." Kerrass grinned. "I absolutely believed that Chireadean meant it. And having talked to his fellow Elves, they believe those same stories too. But I didn't think that Crom Cruarch, the peasant God, was some kind of damaged Elven King. I don't believe that for a moment."

"So what did you take from that, because it did rather seem that you found the first step on your path to dealing with the problem while we were in their company, eating their food and drinking their water."

"And you are correct. What they told me was that something had come in order to oppose whatever it was that the cult was worshipping.

"I wonder what it was. One of the things that you have to remember when you're dealing with Elves, is that Elves are just as arrogant in their own way as humans are. Something turned up with the power, the drive and the capability in order to fight the Cult's entity. To modern Elves, looking back at heroes that were born before the advent of modern humans, it is ludicrous to them that the saviour of the local area should be anything but an Elf. In their heads it just makes sense. What else could it have been that would have had the power to see off so massive and terrifying a being."

"What was it then?"

"I have no idea. Although I suspect that if anyone would know then it would be more likely to be someone like Ariadne, although her area of influence was somewhat further south and vampires would not have taken much interest in anything that was going on outside their own spheres of influence so I doubt that there's any point in asking. As it is, we could sit here and discuss it for hours as there's no possible way that we can discern the answer with any accuracy."

"You must have a theory though."

"Theories? Oh yes. A power of some kind, not unlike Kreve or the eternal Flame. Remember that it still has enough power to grant the wishes of the common folk even all these years removed. I also like the idea that it might be something that was opposed to the Cultists' thing. Maybe a being from it's own dimension, realising that it's enemy had snuck through, came through as well in order to help us fight it off. Maybe such things have natural enemies, who knows?

"But what the Elves did tell me was that we were dealing with two separate powers. It was, due to the Elven stories, unlikely to be some kind of situation where we were seeing the two faces of the same God like being. Instead, it was about two separate...things. Also from the Elves, it could be deduced that the thing, the Elven King if you like or the Villagers God, let's call the "good" entity "Crom Cruarch" for now so that we can get the two separate in our heads."

"Ok, what should we call the Cultist's God then? It seems only fair that it should have a name as well."

"I dunno...Fuck face?"

"Haven't we given that name to someone else?"

"Probably. Probably several somones by now. But anyway. The point was that there was two things at work here. One was the evil, destructive, torturing thing. The other was Crom Cruarch. It seemed logical to believe that Crom Cruarch knew a lot more about how to fight off the other guy as he seemed to be diametrically opposed to him. So why didn't he leave behind knowledge on how to fight off his opposite number should the whole thing start off again?

"The reasons are many and varied. We know that the majority of the local humans died off. If not all of them. We also know that what Elves that were here eventually disappeared and it wasn't until the area was repopulated or started to recover in the wake of various things that the two powers started to reassert themselves.

"So I theorised that Crom Cruarch had indeed left instruction behind as to what to do. He would have had to otherwise, what would be the point. Which led me to the things that all of the villages had in common. They had their holy places and they had their..."

He left it hanging as if he was expecting me to pick up the slack in some way.

"They had their rituals." I answered. Always a sucker for being a teachers pet in any way that I can.

"Precisely. Holy places and their rituals. So, as we journeyed, not being able to take part in the physical aspect of things because of my injuries, I just sunk into thinking about the ritual and how, in the name of all that is holy, would that help in fighting off the bad guy?"

He had a little laugh at himself.

"The answer, as it so often is, is obvious now that we sit here in the safety of camp and look back on it but the question was what I was using to fight back the pain and the frustration of my injuries. It was how I ignored the voices as we marched and I had nothing else to do but be carried around and treated like baggage."

"I suffered with the same problem."

"Yes, and I'm not trying to belittle your contribution towards anything here, but you are not me. You are, and I'm trying to be inoffensive here, used to being carried. By me as well as others."

"Thanks Kerrass I always love it when you belittle me." I said drily.

He waved his hands at me to ward off my anger despite the mocking nature of it.

"I don't mean it like that."

"I know, but I'm having far too much fun to not mock you about being offensive. It's how you get better at dealing with people Kerrass."

"Why do I keep you around again?"

"I have no idea."

"My point though, is that you are used to being an observer. It's the nature of your job. You're used to being part of events but you are very rarely a participant in them. I notice that many of the times where you have been an active participant make up those episodes that make it into magazine publication."

"Well...It doesn't make for very interesting stories, either to write or to read if all I end up saying is "And then I hid in a ditch while Kerrass killed the Griffin. Or, I huddled in a cottage along with the other villagers while you dealt with the nightwraith that was terrorising the apple orchard. Doesn't make for interesting reading."

"I suppose not, but anyway... I was once again drawn into the question of why the villagers would sacrifice their first born. Back when humanity was just beginning to settle in the area, every child was needed, every child. It was the only way that we could survive so the thought of sacrificing the children would have been foreign and terrifying to the people that live here. That's just how people work. So if there was some being that was telling them to sacrifice their children in return for good harvests, there would be some people who would be for it because there are always some people who will take the darker and easier route. Look at how they summoned that entity in Amber's crossing. Another man who wanted an easy way out rather than confronting the truth that the village was doomed and needed to be completely relocated. But remember what happened to him when the village found out what was done."

"They hanged him from the nearest tree."

"Yes. And that would have happened here as well. When starvation and disease and monsters mean that every child's survival is precious, people don't stand for it. Even the people down in Velen who sacrificed their children to the crones only did so if they had a spare.

"So that was the puzzle. That was the thing that was wrong. I wondered where they had got the rules from. Despite the eventual loss of the Dauk in this part of the world, were there still ancient enclaves that were able to pass those rules on? Did the early settlers in this area get the rules of the sacrifice given to them in the form of dreams. It just seemed so out of place. It's worth saying again that Crom Cruarch seemed a very literal God. He would give you back that which you gave him. If you gave him a lamb then he would give you more. A bucket of apples would increase the harvest. Killing a first-born makes no sense. Because you can't have more first-born there is only one first-born of any family."

"But it was the sacrifice of children."

"But that wasn't what was specified. The thing that was specified was the sacrifice of the first-born. So why was that a rule? How did that help the harvest or help the fertility of the people there, either male or female given that we know that there is another rite that provides people with that?

"I remember the problem going round and round in my head until it seemed to echo off the walls of my skull and set my brain vibrating with the questions. Over and over, the same question. Over and over again until every path was so well tread that I knew them all by heart as well as where they went and what was at the end of them. If it was any other situation, any other hunt I would have either walked away or done something physical in order to distract myself. But I no longer had that luxury. I was focused on the solution to the problem to the exclusion of all other things. The only time I lifted my head from the problem was when we were attacked and we had to choose where we were going to make our stand.

"The truth is that we didn't have enough information. We were getting close to where we needed to be. We chose to stand on that hill in the valley that was surrounded by mist when the fog rolled in. I remember thinking that that place was the place that people were drawing or thinking about when they made those little symbols that denote them being a holy place. The hill surrounded by mist and trees. It left me feeling as though I was getting closer to an answer even though it was still just out of reach."

He stopped talking suddenly.

"I wonder..."

"You wonder what Kerrass?" I asked after he had sat in silence for what felt like an age.

"Oh, I was just wondering..." he shook his head. "Whether this is not the first time that this fight has happened. Crom Cruarch and or his followers have fought against the cultists before and I wonder if we were acting out according to our own whims or according tot he desires of Crom Cruarch and that it was he that kept the answer from me for all this time."

"We're heading into deep philosophical waters there Kerrass. Thinkers have been wondering that for years as to whether our wills and our actions are our own or whether we are all at the calling of fate, destiny or something else. It's another one of those questions that serves little or no purpose other than to give you a headache."

"True..." He shook himself free of that train of thought. "The reason that I thought that was that it suddenly all seemed so simple. As though someone, or something had plucked the covering from my eyes and it all made sense in my mind. The answer to the riddle and it hit me in the face as though it was a sword blow."

He leant forward in his chair, the flickering flame highlighting his face.

"I think...I think that Crom Cruarch is the kind of spirit that doesn't want to give you something for nothing. He will help you but he's not going to just save you and keep you safe from all comers. He expects you to do your part. He requires you to pay attention and help yourself rather than just sitting back and letting the God that you worship do everything for you.

"So what I think happened was this. I think that Crom Cruarch was aware that the followers of his enemy that were most powerful, the ones that felt the enemy's power most keenly were the first-born children. Specifically the First-born sons. And what Crom wanted to do was to teach people what to look out for in order to protect themselves from this all consuming bad guy. He was teaching the people to "watch the first-born" because they were the bastards that would come and kidnap your daughters before raping them to death.

"He was well aware that the people that he was protecting were not strong enough to do this off their own initiative...yet...but at the same time, he was wanting to teach them what was going on so that they would be able to take that initiative in the future. That they would be able to step up and protect themselves when he, Crom Cruarch, was less powerful. A factor that he anticipated."

"DO you think he was a genuine person then?" I asked. "If not Elf, Human or whatever, do you think he was a being?"

"If he was, he was unlike anything that I've ever heard of. But it's possible. He was here to fight something else that came through the rifts after the conjunction of spheres so I suppose that it's entirely possible that he came through another rift at the same time. We hear about other races and things coming through. We know that Humans and Vampires as well as magic and the vast majority of those beings and creatures that are badly described as "monsters" also came through. It is not too much of a leap to think that there were also individual beings that came through at the same time and that have since died out.

"It's also possible that he could have been, or could still be for that matter, something else. A kinder, gentler version of Jack, or the beast from Amber's crossing. There are other beings that travel the paths and byways of this world that are neither human nor Elf but have power that you would find astonishing and otherworldly. Maybe he was one such."

"Do you have any examples of these beings?"

"Of course. You have met several. Maleficent not least."

"Fair point."

"So maybe Crom Cruarch was one of these. My impression of him is that he has moved on though. Either to other places or he's died but it's impossible to say. But as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted."

"Sorry."

"No you're not."

"You're right I'm not."

"But as I was saying. I think that Crom was teaching people to protect themselves from the cult or people that would follow the teachings of the cult. So he told them to kill the first-born as a way to show them a route forwards to be able to protect themselves and stand on their own two feet. I think that this instruction has been corrupted and confused over the years so that people who looked back on it think that they were supposed to kill their own first-born in return for... whatever. But the truth was that Crom wanted them to kill the first-born cultists in the same way as they would sacrifice a barrel of apples. To show that they were willing to do their part and not just trust in him. So if they killed the odd first-born cultist...That's what we'll call it by the way. We'll call them the cult of the First-born."

"Suitably sinister sounding. I like it."

"So if the villagers killed the odd cultist then Crom would help them out. That's what he was telling them. In the same way that he would give them more apples in return for a small contribution, he would kill more first-born cultists in return for the villagers just killing one or two."

"So you told us to kill a first-born cultist."

"Correct. Cavill was the one person among the cultists that we knew, for certain, was a first-born cultist. The rest of you offered a sacrifice of blood and I changed the tone of the ritual by offering the death of a First-born."

"And so Crom came to help us."

"Or whatever was left of Crom that is still in this area did."

"Holy Flame."

There didn't seem to be that much that I could say after that. A massive thing encompassed into a few short words.

"He seemed angry to me." I said. "He seemed, disappointed."

"I would be too if I had given people everything they needed to save themselves and then they hadn't listened or forgotten."

"From a few hundred years ago to be fair."

"Would you feel as though that was an excuse?"

"Probably not."

"And you are not some kind of supernatural creature. What did he tell you Freddie?"

"What?"

"At the end, when he looked at us all. What did he say to you?"

"Couldn't you all hear it?"

"No. He said things to each of us. He told me that there was still a lot of work to do. He admonished Chireadean for his people's feelings. What did he say to you?"

"He told me that he remembered me. He told me that the magic that I was looking for was old, very old and that it came from elsewhere."

"Ominous."

"Very."

"But it's a way forward."

"If you like."

"So you saved us."

"Yes. I figured it out. And at the end of the day, I can't help but feel that I should have done it sooner."

"Proving that, despite all evidence to the contrary, you are a good man."

"I'm not convinced."

For a while, I was writing a series of small articles at the beginning of these entries talking about what it was that was indispensable to Witchers. It was an interesting series of things to write on the grounds that it has been some time since I have written anything deeply analytical about the nature of Witchers or what makes them a unique phenomenon. Why they have never been used before other than in that very specific format and why they, may, never be used again.

Yes I know that the Empress is intending to found her own Witcher school but the chances of that school being even remotely similar to what has gone before is, to my mind, remote. I think that the new Witchers, if they can be created at all, will become so tied up within Imperial power that they will bear almost no relation to the old Witchers, other than the tools of their trade and maybe some superficial similarities.

When I was writing those small chunks of work on the subject of Witchers, I was writing towards this point. My final analysis of what it is that makes a Witcher a Witcher. I'm talking there about the building blocks of a Witcher rather than the personality, methods or history of a Witcher. I'm talking about the basic things that are similar, if not the same, between them all.

I talked about their weapons, their mutations, their magic, their alchemy and their knowledge. I said that if it hadn't been for Kerrass' input on that small series of sub-articles, I would have told you that it was the knowledge that was indispensable to a Witcher. That you cannot be a Witcher without having been given the knowledge necessary in order to hunt the monsters that were before you.

I argued that without the knowledge that you could use to identify the monster then you couldn't slay the beast. Therefore the most important thing, the thing that you can't be a Witcher without, is the knowledge and the training involved in being a Witcher. How to fight it and what tools to use. But Kerrass argued differently and this is the best example of his point that I can think of.

In order to be a Witcher, you need to know how to think and it is this skill, this ability that is vital to a Witcher.

That may seem like a small thing and until Kerrass actually said it out loud I would have laughed at anyone that told me that. To me, thinking is like breathing in and out and Kerrass, quite rightly, scolded me for that attitude.

I have been taught to think from an early age. I was taught to be charming, witty and learned. Later I was trained to be able to analyse things. To look at things from a different perspective in order to hone in the truth of whatever it was that I was looking at. I would have admitted that I had to learn how to do that but in all honesty, I thought that that was something that anyone can do.

Kerrass argues that "thinking" is a habit that needs to be ingrained into a person at an early age. Learning, in and of itself, is a separate talent whereas "thinking" is a skill, almost a craft or an art in that you need to practice it over and over in order to get better until it becomes separate nature.

Then, he argued, some people never get into the spirit of that. Some people don't have the opportunity and some people just never see the need. When I asked him for examples of this he gave me one of each.

The first is the person that never had the opportunity to learn how to think. This would be the kind of person who grew up as part of the poorer classes. The people that live in the villages and can't afford tutors, where there isn't a priest or learned person who can teach the children their letters. These are the people that never get to learn that there is a wider world out there so they see no reason to find out or learn about it. All they have to do in order to be able to see to their needs of security, a home, food, drink and family is to learn the skills that their parents have to teach them. The rest of the things will fall into place after that.

Most of these villagers only need one miller for example. He will get married because he's the miller and he will teach his son how to be the next miller. That son will have no need to learn how to think. All he has to do is to learn how to work the mill which he will start to do as soon as he has attained the necessary physical conditioning.

Why would he learn to think? He will never really use the skill of thinking and so he will gain no enjoyment out of it. So he never bothers.

The other kind of person who would never need to learn how to think is, socially, almost the other end of the scale. These are the wealthy nobleman's children. Men and women who are utterly secure in their future. The men know that they are wealthy and that they will inherit everything. Therefore why do they need to learn anything at all other than the stuff that they need to learn in order to preserve their wealth and to preserve their position in society. The women know that if they are the children of wealthy parents, then they will attract suitors who are hungry for the money and influence that their parents bring to any future potential spouses.

It's worth mentioning that I would agree with anyone that says that the women get the shorter end of the stick there. Knowing that they will attract suitors is not the same as knowing that they will be happy. That bears mentioning.

But those people never need to learn to think for themselves because then they might question what led them to this place and they need to sit down and do as they are told, just as much as the common-folk who work the fields do.

Those are the two different kinds of people that are the best examples of people that might be quite clever, quite intelligent and even quite well educated, but they will never learn how to think.

Which is different.

It is.

I know some people are reading this with a strange face on them at the moment but it's true. What's the difference?

This is the oldest example on the subject that I've ever heard of and it goes like this.

"The intelligent and learned man will know that the tomato is a fruit. But the man who knows how to think will prevent the tomato from being put in the fruit salad."

Many of you will be scoffing now, thinking that you would never do the one thing over the other. And you are correct. It is an extreme example. But that is because you have been taught about the flavour of the tomato from the age of being able to distinguish between flavours. Not because you had to figure out where it goes in the first place.

It is also true that many people possess the skill of thinking to a certain degree. You use it whenever you have to think about things. Or answer a question. But, thinking is hard and it can often lead you to conclusions that you might not necessarily like. I can talk about this from my own experience.

When I set out on my journey with Kerrass I was the very image of the privileged noble. Even though I was all but disowned by my parents at the time I had still been raised into a life of privilege and nobility. I was educated and I had kidded myself into thinking that I was educated because I was intelligent but the truth was much closer to the fact that I was educated and got into university because I was intelligent but also because my father was one of the richest people in the country.

I had the inbuilt arrogance of nobility believing that people can drag themselves up and make something of themselves. I believed that the definition of "monster" was anything that wasn't human. I believed that commoners were common and the nobility were noble.

Now, I couldn't tell you why I believed those things.

I also believed that my family were good and that anyone who came after us were the bad guys. I had not yet learned to see things from the other perspective. Kerrass had to teach me how to do that.

I did things like wondering how to talk to farmers and craftsmen when the truth was that you talk to them in the same way that you talk to anyone else. Why?

Because they are people.

I had to learn to think differently. I had to examine things from every perspective so that I could see the entirety of the situation or situations that I found myself in.

I am still learning how to do this. I am still learning how to think differently and in every way I am learning that each situation is unique and different and needs to be thought about differently.

So why don't many people know how to think?

I don't know but I have a theory and it's not a nice theory.

I think it's because, to the vast majority of society, thinking is dangerous. If the farmer starts thinking then he might ask himself why he spends all of his days in backbreaking work in order to put food onto the table of some distant noble who cares little about them. He might start to think that he is not alone in this situation and realise that there are a lot more people like him than there are people like them. He cannot be allowed to think like this because if he does start thinking like this then the status quo might change.

If the nobleman's son starts thinking about things then he might realise that what he is being trained to do to the people that live and work in his fields is morally wrong. He might set out to use his families money in order to change things and that cannot be allowed because then the status quo might change.

The nobleman's daughter might start thinking about why she is automatically subservient to her younger brother. She might start thinking about the fact that she is more intelligent, better educated, more charming and better looking than her younger brother so she might start wondering about why he is inheriting over her. She might start to think that this is wrong and she might start taking steps to correct this injustice. She cannot be allowed to think like this because if she does then the status quo might change.

Education is increasingly becoming a virtue and, to be fair, that is an entirely good thing and we should push that agenda with everything that we have. But we frown at thinkers, we don't like them. Why? Because they start to tell us things that we don't like. Things that, if we're honest with ourselves, we suspect to be true.

But it is a skill that is vital to a Witcher. Without that skill, without the ability to think then all of the other things that they have been trained to use, the swords, the magic, the alchemy, the mutations, the knowledge and training, all of them.

They are all useless.

So speaks the Witcher.