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

120. Chapter 120

(A/N: It occurs to me, at the time of writing and editing these last few chapters, that what people might have wanted as a follow up to the months of Viking adventures, during a time of global crisis and pandemic, was not some kind of rumination on Loss, Failure, Grief and reflection on the nature of our purpose in life as well as a search for a route forward. Unfortunately I was already embarked on this arc before the global crisis was properly getting it's hooks in.

I am also aware that there is a, not unfair, point to be made about everything I write being pretty relentlessly dark and depressing. And that this arc is even worse on that matter.

So while I agree that what I possibly wanted to write, and what you wanted to read was something to do with high romance, adventure and swashbuckling in defiance of the times that we live in. I am now at a stage in the story where these arcs are set in stone and planned out, and this arc was unavoidable and has been coming for a while.

In the meantime, please know that I love you all, wish you the very best in this time of crisis. And please, no matter where you are in the world, stay safe out there. I am just going to keep on sitting here and tapping away at the laptop.

Thank you for reading)

As I sit here and write this I am at my desk and wondering where to start. The logical progression would be to talk about what happened next of course, along with the conversations that I had and what was talked about and when. But that seems unsatisfying to me somehow.

I am writing out of obligation. That much is clear. These are words that need to be written, although I suspect that not many people want to read about the things that I have to say at the moment. It is certainly true that I am not enjoying writing about this stuff. But, as I say, I think that it is also true that these things need to be written about. I am slowly coming round to that idea.

Now that people are getting the layout of where I currently am. The mail has started to arrive as well as various other, less welcome, intrusions.

For instance, there is a growing number of political and religious activists that have turned up to demand my summary arrest and execution. That's quite entertaining in a "Black humour" kind of way, in that they seem to be turning up on Ariadne's doorstep and demanding that I be produced for trial and execution for heresy. I have not seen any of this as I have been advised by the guardsmen of Angraal that I should stay indoors when these people arrive. But I'm told that the first time these people arrived, Ariadne went out to talk to them all. They were quite perterbued by this and were especially put off when she smiled sweetly at them.

Shortly after though, due to us still living in a feudal state and as Ariadne's law is paramount, official churchmen turned up and escorted the agitators firmly from Ariadne's lands and saw to it that they didn't come back. One man tried it and he was sent off to one of the quarries that the Duke of Angraal maintains.

There are other, less pleasant or entertaining visitors. I have been accused of blasphemy by several people now due to my "consorting with a Goddess". That is less easy to dismiss as my own guilt over the incident is still taking some time to process. Worshippers of Melitele seem to think that I am insulting Melitele by saying that this woman was a Goddess at all. Men who are trying to prove to the Church of the Sun that the north can be just as holy as the south are calling me blasphemous for declaring that there is any God other than the sun. That thought is laughable and I think that they are coming after me because I am available and nearby to be honest.

And there are fanatics who are stating that my "consorting" makes me unclean and that I should be cleansed in the same way that the pyres of Novigrad once burnt many others. I don't like these people. Once, they might have made my fists itch. Now, they just make me sad.

To be honest though, I am beginning to wonder why all this excitement hasn't made the erstwhile Lord Robart de Radford emerge from whatever hole he is hiding in. I've not heard from him since back before we headed north to destroy the Cult of the First-Born. He was last seen accusing me of blasphemy and treason, being held back by the officials of Redania as Kerrass, Rickard, the bastards and I rode away. I remember him as being quite upset as he was led away, his ambitions and his hatred unfulfilled.

Kerrass is still here although we have yet to speak in person. I hear tales of him travelling this way and that way around the countryside. Hunting monsters, dismissing curses and getting rid of monster nests. He's spending the nights in ruined shepherd huts and old remains of houses. According to witnesses he looks deeply unhappy and pensive. The very image of the Witcher out of stories. A lone wanderer, travelling through the night, glittering sword on his back as he goes into caves to seek out the evil that exists in there.

I'm sure that he's having the time of his life.

I do not know how I feel about Kerrass yet. I am left with the impression that we have treated each other unfairly but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what we did to each other. I am also still angry, extremely so and until that moves or comes to some kind of... climax I suppose. I don't want to...

I still struggle when I think about Kerrass.

I don't know where to start here. Part of the problem is that I know that the next stage of things is that I have to write about myself and I don't like the idea of that. It feels self-indulgent. I have done this before where I have talked about the injuries that I have sustained, the torture that I have undergone and my periods of convalescence. I don't see the purpose in talking about those things. They don't seem that interesting to me. If anything, they seem kind of boring. Why would anyone want to read about my lying in bed, sobbing my heart out and literally having to rehydrate myself because, no matter how hard I try, I just cannot stop bursting into tears at a moments notice.

I've literally just had to put my quill down and stopped up my ink because otherwise my tears will have stained the very paper that I am writing on.

So why am I doing it? Because I have been told to. It is my penance and my hope that, in reading about it and learning about it, some people will realise that they are not alone when they are in the very depths of despair and others might see the results of everything that I have been through and maybe, just maybe, turn themselves away from a dangerous and destructive path.

When I started writing about what happened after Kerrass and I left Skellige, I was writing out of habit. That was just what was happening next. I made some notes on what Kerrass said to me about his Goddess. But after that, I stopped writing about our travels. I wrote about Jack. I wrote about Ice giants and Yukki-Onna and Vodyanoi. I talked about Skellige and all the vast thinkgs that take place in that great area and some of the stranger flora and fauna that can be found there. But I didn't write about what happened in that circle of fire. Nor did I write about what came afterwards when Kerrass and I rode and walked back to Angraal. Then I stopped writing altogether.

Why?

Because it was self-indulgant. I was feeling... I was frustrated with myself as well as our failure to get anything done when it comes to the situation with Francesca.

But now I'm under orders.

Mark's orders. This is my penance and it is he that has directed it.

He arrived, maybe a week after Emma first came south. Emma and Laurelen stayed a couple of days before heading off to speak to someone who's name I didn't catch. Emma spent a good amount of time with me. We chatted about small things, less weighty topics. We talked about Coulthard castle gossip and small anecdotes of life. It was awkward and uncomfortable in a way that neither of us enjoyed. We were both skirting round topics of conversation that neither of us wanted to go into. I was careful not to lead the conversation in towards matters of my problems and how I felt about Ariadne. Emma was doing the same but also not wanting to add any unnecessary pressure on me. I noticed that she didn't talk about Sam, or any of the trade issues that I might help her with.

We traded anecdotes. She told me about the siege engineers that she had found for Helfdan in order to help him build his castle. I told her a little bit about my interactions with Queen Cerys. I asked after the Elves and whether they had actually shown up on Coulthard lands. Which they had. Chireadean now owns and runs an inn in one of the small villages near the castle. Castle guardsmen get their first drink for free in gratitude for their service and as a result, Chireadean's inn is the safest place to drink in that area of countryside.

Especially for non-humans.

Sir Rickard's courtship of Shani was going well. As I wrote, she had accepted his betrothal and the pair had set a wedding date for a winter wedding after the date that was still set aside for Ariadne and my wedding. This date was set on the grounds that work for a Doctor and Surgeon falls off in the winter months. Same as it would for a military man.

The Skelligan Sergeant of the bastards had already married his Elven Hell-Cat (Emma's words). The pair had gone off and been married according to their own ways. Emma had not been invited although she understood that there had been a feast conducted in Chireadean's inn. A feast that Emma had arranged to pay for and ensure was fully stocked. Apparently, Sir Rickard performed the ceremony near a particular tree that the elven woman liked. They sent their best and a message to say that I would have been invited along with all of the other veterans of the Destruction of the Cult, but they didn't know where I was or what I was doing.

And the pair were not willing to wait for me to resurface.

But that was how we talked. Small anecdotes, small jokes and memories. Careful words and careful sentences so that we didn't hurt each other. The conversations left me tired, but I always struggled to sleep.

Then one day she left, coming to say goodbye and that she would be back soon.

Mark arrived a few days later by wheelhouse with an escort of forty church knights, their squires and attendants as well as the Cardinal's staff. There were so many of them that Ariadne was forced to turn many of them away. She had been warned however and the military forces were housed (I understand that the military term is "billeted") with local residents that had volunteered their homes. But even then, that still left a considerable armed presence outside Ariadne's doors.

Mark would later tell me that she took great delight in being a gracious host to all of the suspicious knights. She came out to bring them their Bread and Salt personally and took the time to talk to each of them.

Apparently it was funny watching men fighting the differences. Where at first, the beautiful, charming and approachable woman meant that they should be painstakingly polite. But then the realisation that she was both a monster and a magic user and therefore anathema to everything that they had been taught. But then she had been provably baptised into the cult of the Eternal Fire. So... But she's a vampire. But the Cardinal of the Church was her friend. But...

But Mark had deliberately chosen older, more steady knights as well as younger knights that had come to the order more recently, since the overthrow of Radovid and therefore ensuring that the worst of the, still prevelant, Witch-hunter faction would remain at home.

In the meantime. The plan was that Mark would take over one of the bigger guest buildings that had smaller rooms for his staff and his servants. He would also later tell me that although he had worked hard to remove many of the more excessive extravagences of wealth that came with the office of Cardinal. He was struggling to justify getting rid of the servants and staff.

Apparently, it went like this. He declared that he didn't need that many servants and his adjutant asked him which of the servants he, Mark, would like to turf out onto the street. So Mark wanted to live simply but if he got rid of the servants, then that meant that he would be depriving men of their livelihood.

So he spent his time telling his, supposedly vast, kitchen staff to prepare banquets for the poor. That his household servents would go into the hospitals and poor houses of Novigrad and help there. They formed soup kitchens and the like. The practice was causing quite some consternation among the other cardinals who were being shown up by this "upstart Coulthard" but Mark reasoned that he had no ambitions to rise any higher, that the Hierarch himself had chosen Mark to serve, that his office was for life and that Mark wouldn't survive that much longer anyway. So what did he have to lose?

He also admitted that he hadn't been allowed to get a mage to transport him to Angraal. It seemed that such things "just weren't done" and although it would have been quicker, easier, cheaper and better for him personally if some mage just opened a gate so that he could come down here. There was still enough of an anti-magic bias in the Cult of the Eternal Flame that made that impossible.

So on the day that he arrived I was told to stay indoors so as not to upset too many things. Some people think I'm a saint for highlighting the heresy of the First-born Cult. Others think I am a heretic for killing Sansum and company. Along with Ariadne's presence and all and it just seemed wiser for me to stay indoors.

So after he was here, after all the ceremonies were done and people were getting settled and Mark could take his hat off. He came to see me.

He looked dreadful.

He was pale, sweaty and with dark rings under his eyes. But that was just the fatigue speaking. His eyes looked bright and feverish while there were unhealthy spots of colour on his cheeks. He looked... sunken and saggy. As though his flesh and skin was hanging off his frame rather than actually being part of his body. He has a tremble in his hand now. It isn't always there and if he realises that it's there then he can banish the tremor with a small burst of concentration. But the worst thing about him was the sense of vacancy.

It was best summed up by his bottom lip.

Just every so often he would lose that sense of himself and he would stare off into space vacantly. This is not the same as being lost in thought. This is different. There is a lack of him when he is doing this as though there is no-one there. And all the energy and the intelligence and the drive of the man is missing and what I am looking at, is just a shell of a person who is standing there, trying to remember who and what he is. As I say, this was best demonstrated by his bottom lip.

When this kind of thing happened his bodttom lip seemed to retreat from the top lip. I don't know how else to describe it. But his jaw, and lips seemed to become weakened and he would just stand there, bottom lip being sucked into his mouth as he stared into distance.

He came into my little hut, still in his full priestly regalia which I know that he finds massively uncomfortable. He also walks with a cane now which he finds infuriating and I can absolutely understand why. But he walked in, the door opened by one of his associated hangers on and I could hear the crash of armour as guards came to attention outside.

He stood looking at me for a long moment.

And then he was my brother again and I saw him register how horrified I was at his appearance.

"Because you look the very fucking picture of health." He yelled at me angrily.

I laughed, he laughed and we threw our arms round each other.

"You look awful." I told him.

"Well you look worse. You've gone all pasty and pale. Like the white stuff that needs to be scraped from under my finger-nails."

"Lovely. Thank you for that."

"Well, you can't look at me as though I'm some kind of animated corpse and expect a warm welcome."

He took a deep and shuddering breath. "You try travelling in a shitty coach surrounded by all the people, in the cold..."

"I've done that."

"But you haven't done it while dying have you."

"No." I admitted, watching him carefully. "No I have not. Although it has felt like that a few times."

Mark nodded. "I want to sit and talk with you Freddie." He told me. "I do. I want to bring you the comfort that I can, both as your brother and as your priest. But right now, I feel damned awful and my doctors are going to yell at me if I stay here much longer before having a bath and getting some rest. And when those people say rest, they mean for several days."

I nodded unhappily.

"So Freddie. Here's what I want you to do in the meantime. I understand that you have had contact with a Goddess and this is what is troubling you. Or at least part of what is troubling you. So, in the meantime, while you wait for me to be able to come and talk these things through with you..."

He gestured at my desk that was covered in papers.

"You are a writer Freddie. I want you to write down what happened. Be a scholar. Leave out your feelings and only enough thinking in order to justify why you did what you did. But after that, write down what happened."

I nodded, jumping forward to help him back to his feet.

"Bless you brother." Mark told me. "I understand it's going to get a lot worse, but I'm not dead yet. I'm looking forward to being a family man for a few weeks, if not months, but there's only so much of being a Cardinal that I can set aside."

I nodded.

He left, I had a little cry to myself before turning back to my desk and pulling over the papers and began to get to work.

Those papers would then go onto form the basis of the first three articles that have since been published in the magazine since I came back from Skellige. The accounts of what has become clear were Kerrass' preperations for the ritual. The story of Kerrass' history with the Goddess and then my meeting with the Goddess herself. The published versions went into a bit more detail as I got them ready for publication as all that Mark wanted were the bare facts.

But in that hut, I worked, quietly and calmly working through the words and setting them down onto paper. Mark's personal secretary came to me at the end of every day to see how I was getting on and to take any and all work that I had actually managed to do, away with him. Despite my protestations that they weren't ready.

For his part, Mark spent a couple of days after his arrival in bed. He was desperately unhappy at the prospect but reasoned that he was not going to get away with it.

The only reason that he did finally climb out of his bed was because the Bishop of Angraal had been camped outside of his quarters since Mark's arrival. Camped in the rain. This, despite Ariadne's invitation to come and sleep indoors in one of the guest rooms.

But I kept writing the pages and they kept being sent off to Mark's desk and he kept reading them. Then Mark came to see me again.

"So." He began.

"So." I said, kind of squaring up my shoulders ready for what I was sure was about to happen. He looked down at me from where he stood frowning slightly and the longer he waited, the more I was preparing myself for the inevitable, patented Priest Mark penance.

He looked better though. More proper food, warm beds and warm baths as well as some proper sleep in a proper bed had worked wonders. The black bags under his eyes had retreated and it looked, increasingly, like there was a real human being in there after all. It was helped by the fact that he was just wearing his cassock. He still wore his ring of office, but beyond that, there was nothing to tell him apart from any other wandering priest.

He looked so much better for it. And happier too.

"So, do I pass inspection?" He wondered.

"Do I?" I asked in response. "You've been standing there for a while and I'm kind of waiting for the hammer to fall."

He smiled gently before scratching his head. "Freddie, I've read your account of what happened and although I certainly have some things to say on the matter. As well as a penance to hand out. It is neither as bad as you think, or what you think. I think you were incredibly foolish, naive and stupid. These things are not always character flaws and they are certainly flaws that you have had since you were younger. Flaws that I seem to recall Father trying to force out of you. But you are not the only person that has these little problems in our family."

He blew out his breath.

"Yes, I think we have a lot to talk about. But unfortunately, I rather do not have the time. I leave today for the Capital of Angraal where I am to give a sermon in the church there. Then I want to travel around a bit, to see and be seen. This is the first time that I've been able to get out and about since they made me Cardinal and I want to see what our ministry is doing out here."

"It's getting cold and damp Mark, are you sure you're up to it? I don't want you to get worse out there."

Mark waved his hands dismissively.

"Pssh," He said. "The most optimistic forecast as to my health says that I will be sane and capable enough to be able to have a dance with Ariadne on your wedding night. The most pessimistic says that I'm going to be a gibbering shell of a man by this time next year."

"Everyone still assuming that we are going to get married." I muttered, a little bitterly.

"Yes." He told me. "Because you are. Oh I know about your grand gesture and I know the drive that made you do it. But I don't, for a moment, think that you really want to break it off. I don't for a moment think she wants to either. I think that the two of you need to talk, and you will. But you are not strong enough for any of these talks yet.

"So I am going to go out ministering to the flock."

He grinned. "You wanna come with me. It will be good for you and I need a guide."

"Mark, There are better guides."

"There might be. But you need to get to know your lands as well. And you were there in the most recent historical upheavel. My understanding is that you saved many lives here."

"Ariadne saved many lives." I argued.

"Yes she did." Mark granted me the point, although his eyes glinted as he said it. "I wonder why she did that. Come with me. When was the last time you went for a proper church service and sat in the presence of the flame?"

"It's been a long time." I admitted.

"Then it will do you good to remember some things, as well as getting you out of this little hut. Come along."

And then he left. Not giving me time to argue back. So that was it. A decision had been made. I thought I would be angry but the truth was that I almost instantly felt better. I realised that in taking away the decision making process, Mark had wrapped me in a comfort blanket. That part of me that wanted someone to come in and make everything better again had been fulfilled and now I was there. Wrapped in swaddling clothes.

It felt amazing. To be told what to do. To be told how to behave.

My old life had not been left behind. During all of this, my spear had been propped up in the corner of the cottage that I was staying in. Samantha and her husband took it away when there was no-one present in case I used it to hurt myself. But other than that. That was where it lived.

At first, I wrapped up warm and tried to leave the cottage without my weapons. I tried to tell myself that I would be surrounded by church guards and that I was in no physical danger.

But Kerrass had been shown to be right. Over and over and over again. There was no guarentees and as I walked away I realised that I felt naked. Uncomfortable even without my weapons. I got out of the cottage and halfway to the guesthouse that was surrounded by church soldiers and knights and realised how unhappy I was. My feet were uncomfortable in my boots without my boot knife. My stomach felt wrong without my belly knife sat crosswise. And my arm felt... It felt uncomfortable without the weight of the spear.

I tried to tell myself everything. I tried to tell myself that there was a time coming when I would need to set the spear aside. That I would need to put the knives away. I had thought before that I wouldn't be comfortable without them but I was genuinely astonished as to how uncomfortable and unhappy I was without those weights and that artificial comfort. That illusion of self-sufficiency and security.

And yes, I realise the irony of saying these things so soon after saying how relieved I was after Mark took away my decision making apparatus.

I even tried it in stages. A boot knife would not be out of place but I found that the presence of that comfort highlighted the other discomforts even further.

So then my belly-knife was attached to my belt and my spear was taken apart and put in it's scabbard before being slung on my back.

I instantly felt better. Even though the leader of Mark's escort didn't agree. Frowning at my appearance. I don't know what he thought I was trying to say. Whether I was trying to suggest that he couldn't look after us all, that I felt unsafe or what. But the truth is much simpler. That I didn't feel comfortable without my weapons to hand. That long ago made theory and prophecy was now made to be true. I didn't like it, but that was the truth.

For his part. Mark was dressed simply. He was wearing his family Cassock which meant that he didn't really consider himself "on duty", but I saw that this was a front. When you are a man like that, you are always on duty and always have to be ready. He certainly showed me that over that couple of days that we spent riding round Angraal together.

As well as his Cassock, he was wearing a large, heavy, all purpose cloak in the same colours as his cassock. His holy symbol was the same old wooden one that he had had for years and he wore a simple, fur cap that kept the warmth in and the weather out.

We rode to the Capital of Angraal where we went to the church and filed in. I wanted to sit in the back somewhere but Mark wouldn't have it. So I was shepherded to the front and sat next to the Duke and Duchess of Angraal who greeted me warmly. I did the best I could, deflecting questions like "Have I recovered from my illness?" and "How long will I be staying?" as well as comments about how much the pair of them were looking forward to the wedding between myself and the Countess.

It seems that they are both more comfortable referring to Ariadne as "The Countess" rather than by her name. Certainly the Duchess is more comfortable with Ariadne than her husband is, but I had wondered how that relationship had progressed. At first it seemed that there was a firm friendship growing there but over time, it seemed as though that had fallen off.

But we sat there and gossipped a bit until the Bishop came in and began the service. It was a very traditional service, harking back to the older services of helping others. Of following the flame towards comfort and safety. There was a marked lack of demands and about how we should force people to come to the flame whether they wanted to or not.

The Bishop did a good job I thought. Relatively recently, I read through those early chapters about what happened when I first came through Angraal and I will admit to having been a bit dismissive towards the Bishop of Angraal. He is a firm and staunch man of Faith, a little bit too much towards the "purging fire" perspective of the flame than I am entirely comfortable with, but there was absolutely no denying his capabilities, the firmness of his belief and his compassion was beyond reproach.

He also showed that a lot of his argumentative pose was a front. He really did believe all of that stuff but he was also absolutely willing to put all of that aside in the face of a common enemy. Whether that be treachery, evil or anything else. He seemed to be the kind of person that liked a good argument. That he didn't know how to have a conversation with anyone unless it was a debate or an argument.

He was the kind of man that would argue that a blackbird is a dove just to get a rise out of someone and was just as capable of switching sides in an argument to bolster up the losing side if that meant that the argument would be prolonged. He was in charge of Ariadne's baptism to the faith and she claimed that he was a good teacher providing you could stomach his slightly confrontational style. He would not have been a good teacher for anyone who was lacking in personal confidence.

He stood and introduced Mark as a Cardinal of the faith and people turned to look at my brother as he emerged from somewhere.

Having heard of the arrival of a Cardinal, the church was full of people, old, young, rich, poor and of all possible professions. Other than the front pews, we were quite tightly packed in. Even several members of the Sisterhood of Melitele were here to hear what Mark had to say. After all, it is not often that people get to hear a Cardinal speak and folk were wondering what he was going to say. I had heard everything according to gossip. Some folks were looking forward to some good old fashioned fire and hate. While others were hoping that Mark was going to preach about some peace, love and understanding.

As it turns out, he did neither. What he did was to come into the church dressed as a clown. The full on thing. The baggy trousers, the grease paint, the absurdly coloured wig and the giant red nose that he could squeak. He had one of those flowers on that squirted water and his shoes had bells on. Wearing this ensemble he walked to the front of the church and didn't get up on the pulpit, instead he stood there with all the supposed majesty that a Cardinal can have, while also looking utterly ridiculous.

The entire congregation, including me, was frozen in shock, awe and surprise. Unsure as to what was happening, what was going to happen or what we were about to do here. Was this a joke? What point was being made here?

And then I saw the Bishop of Angraal stifling a laugh and I relaxed a tension that I had not known that I was holding in.

I turned back from watching the congregation's reaction, just in time to see Mark, Cardinal Mark no less, stick his tongue out towards his audience.

The congregation couldn't believe it. It was a child that laughed first. Then a parent tried to shush the child but the sheer ludicrousness of the entire thing was too funny for anyone to take into account and then the hilarity swept through the hall. Mark laughed with us.

One of his hangers on had moved to stand next to Mark with a large box while another carried a basin of water.

Mark waited for the laughter to die down before he smiled down at the congregation. "Absurd is it not?" He asked and people began to nod. "You are right to think so. It is absurd and it is alright to laugh. These things are funny. Laughter dismisses fear and helps us combat pain. I've met more than one Doctor who would talk about the healing power of laughter and I have seen it in my own life and in my own actions. So it is alright to laugh and if all I have done today is to make you laugh then this visit has been worthwhile. Then, in days, weeks, months or even years to come. You will be able to tell your friends, your family and your loved ones, that you saw a Cardinal of the church of the eternal Flame, dressed as a clown."

There was more laughter as Sam pulled his wig off and tossed it into the box.

"There is another purpose behind my doing this of course." He went on as he set aside the clothing of a clown. That is to show you that I am just a man underneath all of the garments, all of the vestements. Under the robes and the gowns and the truly absurdly sized hats that it is, for some reason, necessary for us to wear. We are just men who are here to do our best towards helping men and women towards the light of the eternal Fire. We are men, same as you, we fight, we lie, we cheat, we steal and we commit all the sins that you yourselves are guilty of. If I did not wear the clothes of the Cardinal, then would you even acknowledge me as we pass each other in the street?"

He shrugged.

"I am just a man. I love my siblings, even those who I sometimes get angry with." I thought he did very well not to turn and look at me as he said that. "I am no more holy, no more special, no more... sacred than any of you.

"So why do I get to wear all of this stuff and you do not?" He gestured as his person laid out the Cardinal's regalia.

"There are answers to that. Some of you might be thinking of some of those answers even now. Some of you might be saying that I get to wear these things because of the money that I was born into. They might say that my position was purchased."

His servant helped him to put the cassock on.

"And there is some truth to that. I won't lie. I was extraordinarily lucky to be born into the family that I was born into. Extraordinarily lucky that my Father had worked hard enough to ensure that I, and my other siblings, had all the money that we needed to pursue our interests and our goals. But if it was just the money that got me here, then are there not plenty of other people, richer than I am, that have got further than I have?

"There are. But the opposite is also true. There are many members of the Cardinal's council who have come from common backgrounds. Men who ran away from home with little more than the clothes on their backs while there are also priests from wealthy families that are still little more than lay preachers who sit around in various places, complaining about how the world would be a lot better if only they could be in charge.

"There is an inevitable truth to the use of money to climb the ranks of any organisation, including mine. Sooner or later you hit a ceiling that no amount of money can buy you any further up the ladder towards the top. Sooner or later you reach that point where people will be examining candidates for a position in the... whatever, the nobility, the church, the army or guilds. And someone will say. "he's very rich" and someone else will say. "Yes, but he's an ass","

The congregation laughed at the expression of beaurocratic pain on Mark's face.

"And then, that group of people will move onto other, better candidates. So what else could contribute to why I wear all of this... frankly gaudy and heavy outfit and you do not? Another answer that you are all shouting out in your minds is rank. That I was born into a higher family than yours."

His hangers on put on the surplice. The white outer garment that is meant to signify purity. This despite the wine stains that you so often see on this garment of the priesthood.

"This is also true." Mark told us all. "I was born as the son of a Baron. But here's one of those truths that they never tell you about the Nobility. And that is that any single one of us can be removed from our position. We might be born into the nobility, but only the elder son gets to keep a title. The rest of us need to make our way in the world. It is true that that lineage can give us power, legitimacy and open doors that were otherwise closed. But there is also a truth that the title, the name, the lands and the wealth are just as subject to royal whim as your neighbours. My family is powerful at the moment. But all of us worked hard to get to that point. We have bled, and suffered and it has cost us blood, sweat, many tears and several lives."

Mark seemed to drift off for a moment. I wondered what Mark was looking at in that moment. But then he shook himself and seemed to come back into the room.

"But that has made us just as many enemies as it has friends. There was a long period of my career where I was nothing more than a church priest. Far below what your Bishop of Angraal is now. And I was told that I would, by Flame, climb no higher because my father had upset and insulted their father and as a result... Blah blah blah blah blah, moan moan, dribble,"

He grinned at the congregation. "I still have strong feelings about that man."

We all laughed with him.

"But the other problem in saying that being part of the nobility guarentees progression is that a noble is only a noble on their monarch's sufferance. What the King, Queen or Empress awards, the King, Queen or Empress can take away at the edge of an axe, or at the point of a sword so that the estate, lands, coin, trading ventures, can be absorbed by the crown or given to a favourite.

"This can be shown in the fact that I used to be the Arch-bishop of Tretogor. Before that, I was a fairly small Bishop in that area of countryside. I ascended because the Arch-Bishop of Tretogor called the Empress Elect a harlot, deviant magic user. This shortly after the North had been conquered. As I had been more moderate in my views and had not expressed a political opinion on the matter, I was selected as a replacement. Even the church is not immune to politics."

"So why else do I get to wear this, heavy robe?"

His servant put on the Cardinals golden over garment. I forget what it's called.

"Some might say luck. And if you happen to believe in luck then I would agree with you again. I was lucky, to be in the right place at the right time with the right training, knowledge and ethics to progress and improve in my chosen fields of excellence. There is certainly some truth in that. Certainly.

"But I do not believe in luck. I share a familial belief that a man makes their own luck. Luck happens if you are ready for the opportunity..

"I once heard someone claim that when the Emperor chose a general to put in charge of this army or that army, he would not ask whether or not a general was good at their jobs, but rather whether or not they were lucky.

"But I also heard that when asked, all the people that are called "lucky" said that they were just better able to see, and then take advantage of, the opportunities when they arose.

"So I do not believe in Luck. I think that I was better prepared than my immediate competition. That I was prepared and that I was ready. I believe that a man, or a woman, makes their own way in the world. They are only lucky in the basis of who they were born to and what they were given to make their start and then you have to make the most of that. History is replete with examples of men and women who have wasted everything that they were born with and given. I even believe that you have examples of such men in your own recent history."

The Duke of Angraal led the laughter.

"So lets address the follow on from that." Mark went on a bit further. "Let's say that I know more than you do. That I was trained better, that I have more knowledge and more experience in all of these things. That is also true and undeniable."

The servant put his Cardinal's hat on. The one with the absurdly wide brim.

"But there are people in monastaries of the Flame all over the North that know more about Scripture than I do. Men and women who have made it their lives works to study this bit of scripture or that bit of scripture in order to discern some kind of meaning behind the words. They know far more than I do. Far, far more.

"Is it my work ethic?" Mark went on as someone passed him the staff. The symbolic staff of office that was supposed to be a lantern staff or to house a torch on the top so that the priests of the flame could light the way to wherever the priest was leading. "I like to think that this is part of it." Mark admitted. "My pride drives me to work hard and my pride in the work that I have done and that my subordinates continue to perform in the name of the eternal Flame. Pride is a sin, I will admit to this and when I make my confession, my confessor regularly has to take me to task for my pride."

He held his hand up to stop the other servants as they were about to fasten another badge of office round his frame.

"Yes, I have a confessor. Do I need to remind you about what I said earlier about my being a normal person underneath all of this... dreafully heavy nonsense?"

People were a bit more nervous about this laughter as the scarf was draped around his neck.

"Besides, it was my father and other siblings that gave me this work Ethic. And if the ability to work hard was the thing that carried a man high, then every man and woman that struggles to scratch out a living from the dirt of their farms deserves to climb twice as high and twice as far as I ever have."

He turned to me and I shrank in horror.

"My brother taught me that." Mark said.

"So what else is there. Ah yes. Ambition? Ambition is a drive to succeed and yes. I have had a drive to succeed but not for the reason that you might think."

The servant tied the sash around Mark's waist

"Raw ability" Mark said as they hung the weighty chain around his neck and arranged it so that it settled properly. "Talent, suitability for the task. In short, Did I do well because I like being a priest and all of the things that that entails? This is also part of it. Each of us plays our role and here is another place that I was lucky."

He winked at the audience. "Another luck point that I forgot earlier. See, another exmple of my imperfections."

"I was lucky. I was pushed into a role for which I was eminently suited and I am grateful to my father for putting me here. I did not have to fight to get the role that I wanted and for that I am grateful too. But after that? Yes, I like being a priest and that enjoyment meant that I was more... driven to be a better one.

"So now we're getting to the final places. The final pieces."

His servant handed him his huge symbol of the flame that Mark himself attached to the chain around his neck.

"Was it the Will of the Flame that put me where I am today? No it was not. The flame does not push or pull us into any particular place or pattern. The Flame is a guiding light. It is the lighthouse that keeps us from falling onto the rocks. It is the guiding lights that steer us into harbour. It is the beacon that tells us that help is needed. It is the warm fire that brings the weary traveller home and keeps our families warm on a cold winter's night. It does not push us around like game pieces.

"It can show us the path but we have to be the ones that follow that path. I love the flame for that. It means that I am not a slave to it's will and it means that neither is everyone else. I would struggle to follow a God that could force people into the right place and then did not. That could prevent the evil that men do and then did not. That I could not face.

"So then there is the last thing. The last symbol of being a Cardinal. What made me a Cardinal over all others?"

Mark held his hand out and the Bishop of Angraal passed Mark the Cardinal's ring. The badge of office. Mark took it and weighed it in his hand reflectively, holding it up and making it so that the light could shine through the hole.

"When they gave me my ring of office." Mark began. "I could not believe what it was. It was a ring of Gold, in which was the most beautiful, flaming red ruby. I'm told that Jewellers call it a "Sun stone." A jewel where, somewhere in the centre of the stone, there is a tiny speck of Gold. And as light shines onto the stone the gold reflects that light around the jewel that it is contained within which makes the stone itself seem to burn like fire, or glow like the sun if you prefer.

"I remember being astonished at the beauty of the thing and the weight of the Gold that held it. I asked how much the thing was worth. I won't tell you how much it was but it was a ridiculous sum. Using that amount of money, I do believe that I could have bought a significant chunk of Angraal. I remember being horrified. I was sat at the feet of the Holy Father, the Hierophant of the church at the time and I looked up and said. "Father, I cannot take this."

"I remember that he seemed to become angry. "Why not?" He wondered."

""Because with that money," I began "the church could heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the poor and put roofs over the heads of the homeless. It is obscene that I should wear it on my finger while so many are poor, starving and suffering."

"The Holy Father smiled at me and said. "And that is why we made you Cardinal." He told me. He turned and gestured. The other Cardinals, who were also smiling, took their rings from their fingers. We replaced them with cheap steel rings with glass stones and they are now the badge of office. I wear it and it is a crime, punishable by being tortured to death to steal them or wear them if you are not a Cardinal. A law as approved by the Empress. But I think that you would struggle to get more than a couple of crowns for one of them in the Novigrad street market.

"So what did that mean? Why was I made a Cardinal? The answer is Service.

"Now I can see some of you already wincing, grunting and turning away from what I am saying. I know why this is as well. You are already thinking to yourself. "This is another sermon from a rich, entitled, noble man telling us why we should be grateful to our lords and masters for allowing us to serve them. I can see some nobles in the crowd sitting a little straighter, maybe a master of an apprentice or two thinking that I am supporting them.

"And yes, like so much in the words that I am saying to you today, this is partly correct. But that is not the reason that I was made Cardinal. I was made Cardinal because of my desire to serve. Not the Hierophant which is the kind of service that you are all thinking about. I was made Cardinal because of my desire to serve the common man on the street. The men and women... and yes, the Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Vampires, Trolls, Dopplers, Succubi, Inccubi and anyone else that lives in the continent that we all share. Any being that might stop, take a moment to sit, listen, talk, share a drink and otherwise spend some time in each other's company.

"I want to serve all of them. I want to help them all. I want to ensure that they have clothes and food and clean water to drink. I want to fulfill their spiritual needs and help them towards the light of warmth and safety. I want to help these people and I could no longer do that from my current position. I could do more of that from my position of Cardinal than I could from any other seat and that want, that need, to help people is why they made me a Cardinal.

"I was not always like this. I wasn't. I was exactly the kind of priest that you are all thinking about. I was the kind of man who wanted to achieve great office in the world. I wanted to stamp my own particular brand of "holy" onto the people in my parrish and the priests, monks and Lay-brothers that answered to me. Looking back, I weep for the arrogance that I displayed.

"From where I am now, I realised that I was there by virtue of all of the other things that we have already mentioned as well as several others. Money, Wealth, prestige, rank, ambition, training, knowledge, talent, ability, energy... Luck. But I was not going to climb any higher than I already was. The fact that I made the jump to Arch-Bishop was purely a matter of luck. I was in the right place at the right time and my politics were not as controversial to the new world order as my immediate predecessor's were.

"But even that was a leap. But then I changed. Something happened to me and I was made to see the problems in my entitlement. I was made to see the flame that exists in the places that we had been taught to believe contained only darkness. I saw the flame in the caring eyes of someone who I had been taught to believe was a monster. More than one person for that matter and they would have done everything that they could to have helped me. They did not force me, they did not coerce me. They told me the problem and they offered to help.

"It was me that turned away. In my arrogance and stupidity...

"Remember, I am just as human as the rest of you."

He grinned at them.

"But what they had told me was confirmed as true by men of learning, Flame fearing men and women who told me that if I had just listened to the monster who cared more for my well-being than I did, then I would have lived for a lot longer.

"Yes. I'm dying. I am angry and have still not come to terms with it, but what I insist upon is that my death will not be in vain. But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

"That event opened my eyes and then another man came along to show me all the things that I had missed. In all the time, while sat in my Arch-Bishop's palace, even though I had stripped that palace of wealth and luxury and donated the proceeds to the poor and dispossessed that had been made so by the war. I was shown that I had been doing these things in order to serve myself. I absolutely believed that it was the right thing to do. And it was. But I did it for the wrong reason. I did it to make a point. To play politics within my own particular faction within the church.

"In doing so, I was still blind to the people that I had helped. Even indirectly. I was shown that my view of the world was skewed. That I had been blind, biased, or however you want to describe it. I had... I had lost my way.

"That realisation came slowly. It takes a long time to unlearn everything that I have been taught or learned for myself. A very long time but when I finally managed to open my eyes and to properly see what was going on around me. To really see the suffering that was being inflicted on the people of the continent. I was horrified that I hadn't seen it before.

"So I set out to help those people. I looked at what I could do with my position, my wealth, my rank and influence. I stopped serving my own ambition. I could even argue that I stopped serving my own feudal Lords and stopped serving my own masters in the church. I started to serve the people under me. I started to serve the people that I bumped into in the street. Whether by helping a man to his feet, helping a lady with her burdens or briefly comforting an unhappy child. I started to really serve the people around me.

"And they made me Cardinal for it. The Holy Father and the other Cardinals saw the changes in me and I was elevated.

"Now don't get me wrong. The Church has not always been so caring. Believe me I know and there might even be people in the congregation today that have suffered the scars and the injury that the... hatred of Radovid and the church were labouring under, made possible. For that I am sorry and I beg for your forgiveness that I did not do more to try and stop that. That I did not do more to help you. I plead with you for your forgiveness.

"Had I served then, with hatred and anger, then I might have climbed higher. But I count myself fortunate that the world has moved on from that. That service and kindness is beginning to take a more active role in our society."

He spent a bit of time looking out over the congregation. I was impressed with his speaking and gifts of oratory. People were listening to him, even though I had a niggling doubt at the pit of my stomach as to what this was all about.

"So how do we serve? You might be asking the same question. You might be saying that you are the lowest farmer in the area. So how can you serve other people. You might tell me that you are serving your masters. You might also be saying that you are the noble in charge and that it is your flame given right to take the service of these people for yourself. You might be a member of some other priesthood. I see my noble colleagues from the church of Melitele. I bow to you Ladies as there are few priesthoods that serve in the community quite as well as you do. You might be a bishop of the Flame, or a priest of the flame, or Kreve or any of the others, secure in your moral rightness and goodness that says that you are correct.

"The answer to some of that is simple. I am a Cardinal of the Cult of the Eternal Flame. I rose to the position I have due to the service of my fellow man. For the noble Lords. The duty of "A noble's obligation" is well known in these parts. That the way it is supposed to work is that a noble serves his people, almost as much as the people serve him while still serving the Lords above him.

"The Empress herself spends restless nights, unable to sleep and pacing her rooms because even one of her subjects is living in poverty while their bellies swell in starvation. She chastises herself every minute of every day for not being able to do better. You can believe that, she has admitted as much and I have seen her efforts for the betterment of her people in action. As have you if you think about it.

"So what can you do? What can any of us do? We work in the fields all day, hammer in the forge all day, wrestle with horses, hammer staves and do the rest of it with relentless... relentless drive. After all, if we do not work, we do not earn and if we do not earn, we do not eat and our children cry themselves to sleep with hunger.

"I know this and I am not proposing some kind of revolution against our feudal masters. I am not. That's not what I am saying. I might suggest that some of those feudal masters need to spend some time examining their actions a little. I might say the same about some priests I know and have met on my journey as well. What I'm saying is this."

He paused and looked over the congregation. His words became a little heavier, a little more carefully enunciated. Adding weight to what he was saying. I knew the method and why it worked. This was the bit he wanted us to really remember.

"The Continent is in a hell of a state. It has been for years. Decades even. You might look around and see that the crops are coming back, that people are no longer as hungry as they used to be and that people are starting to live with each other better than they have in a while. But I have found, that if you scratch the surface, even a little bit, you will see that neighbours are scared of neighbours. That their worst enemies are neighbours.

" You will see that Banditry and stealing from your fellow human beings is considered a viable career choice. That Lords, Priests and Guildmasters are demanding the same amount of dues as they did in the height of wartime. That parents are still... STILL to this day, sending their children out to the woods in order to collect mushrooms alone in order to lessen the burden on the rest of the village.

"The Continent is still in a hell of a state and people sit around in taverns, common rooms, court rooms and church halls and they moan about what the world is coming to. They sit around and complain about how life was better in the olden days. About how people knew their place and about how men, did not live in fear. About when food was plentiful and about how no-one lived in fear.

"The Continent is still in a hell of state and it is very easy to suppose that it has always been this way. There has always been hardship, there has always been poverty and war and hardship. There is even compelling evidence to say that there always will be.

"The Continent is still in a hell of a state. So how do we fix it?

"We serve each other. If a neighbour is fixing his roof, go and help him. If a woman is struggling to control the children then help her. Don't yell at them, help them. If a man is hungry, feed them. If someone is naked, clothe them. If someone needs medicine, then go and fetch it for them. If someone is ignorant of something, show them, teach them. And if someone has wronged you and shows remorse... Forgive them.

"The Continent is still in a hell of a state and it is not going to get better by us all wishing that it is going to get better. We have to make it get better. We need to be the change that we want to see. We need to be better people than how we have been."

He scanned the room again.

"Some of you are uncomfortable with this. You, not incorrectly, suggest that there will be people who take advantage of generosity. They say that some people are lazy and will take advantage of those of us who are trying to make the Continent a better place to live. This is true. There are always people without shame. But let me put It like this. If they take advantage of you by stealing food from your mouths then that reflects badly on him. Both in the eyes of society and in the eyes of the Holy Flame, Melitele, Kreve, Freya, the Holy Sun and just about any other religion you care to name. Including more than one of the darker ones that I shall not utter here.

"If they take advantage of you. If they scam you? That reflects badly on them. But if you walk past a person in tears because they cannot afford to pay the farmer for the food for their family and you can afford that little bit extra. Then that reflects badly on you.

"And if you do that. You will find no respite within the warm comfort of the flame when the time of cold comes. And it will come. We all have a time of cold in our lives when we need a bit of help from the men nearby. Be the flame. Carry the flame, carry the warmth of it within your hearts and give freely of that light, that warmth and that love and between us all, we cam make the continent a place that is worth living in."

He turned and bowed towards the alter.

"Hail the eternal Fire." He cried and we all shouted with him.

You never applaud in church. I have never found out why. But it's just not done. I have never learned the purpose of it, but I wanted to and I thought I saw more than one person also wishing to applaud what my brother said.

He sat down and one of his assistants passed him what looked like a potion bottle to me. He leant back in his chair and closed his eyes. The Bishop of Angraal performed the rest of the service. Mark took part but he looked spent to me.

Afterwards, the Bishop and Mark stood together and Mark shook everyone's hand. He gave everyone a blessing that asked for one. He cuddled babies, blessed unions and spoke to old people. So I didn't get a chance to talk to him until later when he was taking his regalia off again and getting back into his older, more weatherbeaten cassock.

"Good sermon." I told him. The feeling of earlier disquiet had grown in my stomach as the rest of the service had gone by.

"Thank you. Glad you liked it."

"How much of that was aimed at me?" I wondered. "Some of those barbs hit a little close to home there Markymark."

He straightened and looked at me with his piercing, Confessor's stare.

Then he laughed. For a long time.

"Konrad?" He called and one of his servants looked up.

"Eminence?"

"How often have I given that Sermon?"

"At least once in every church or area that you've been to Eminence."

"Often enough that you can say it by heart back to me?"

The young man cleared his throat.

"Absurd is it not?" The young man began, his impression of Mark was a little uncanny. "You are right to think so. It is absurd and it is alright to laugh. These things are funny. Laughter dismisses fear and helps us combat pain. I've met more than one Doctor who would talk about the healing power of laughter and..."

"Ok, enough enough." I laughed with Mark.

"I love you Freddie, I really do. But the purpose of the sermon was not directed at you. If you are made to feel uncomfortable by any of that stuff then that is because you brought that with you. I did not put that stuff in there to target you. I put that stuff in there to target the guilt of people who knew that they could do better. Could you do better Freddie?"

He didn't wait for an answer.

"Come along. We have a state dinner to attend."

It occurred to me over the next several days that I had never really seen Mark being a priest. I had seen his youthful attempts to gather authority to himself that he didn't think he had earned. Back when he hid a lack of confidence behind an austere cassock and strict punishments for the small sins that Sam and I would confess to him on a daily basis. I had also seen him debate Theology before now and seen his "Proffessional outrage" when Kerrass had been asking questions and investigating, then, Edmund's death.

I am older and more experienced now, than I was then, even though it was only really a little over eigteen months ago that Father had died, and I am able to see certain things for what they were. His had been the kind of outrage where a man feels as though he should be outrage and therefore is outraged. Just to show everyone that he is outraged so that they don't ask questions about it later. Because no respectable churchman would ever allow himself to be questioned by a mutant monster such as this. Such things were simply not even to be questioned.

So he had thrown his toys out of the pram and stomped off to his rooms where Kerrass couldn't get at him. But beyond that, the closest that I had ever come to seeing Mark, actually being a priest was when he had sat down with Kerrass and I, several bits of string and some bits of debris as he had set out to show us how the world works.

So I had seen the part of him that a priest has to be a teacher. But now I was seeing the rest. Amplified up along an exponential curve given the rank that he had attained. I had seen and heard him speak. I had watched as he disarmed his audience with a couple of jokes. Then he had pointed out how he was just like them really, then he had separated himself from them without talking them down. And then he had given them an easy way to fix things. How they, not just their rulers but how each and every man, woman and child in that congregation. From the Duke and Duchess down to the lowliest, muddiest street urchin that was in attendance in the hope of getting some of the alms that are always handed out to the poor at the end of such things.

And then he had, as I think of what he did afterwards, gone to work with a vengeance.

We attended the state dinner that he told me about. Calling it a state dinner was a little bit ambitious really. It was a matter of the Duke, Duchess and their family along with those nobles and more well to do merchants that were living in the capital. The Duke spent most of the time apologising to Mark for their not being more people in attendance but that the majority of the local nobility were following Countess Ariadne's example and staying at home to help with the preparations for the coming winter storms.

Mark was accepting of this and made jokes about how people might guess how he felt about the matter given the topic of his most recent sermon. Mark was not the most popular person in the room but there was enough idealism there that made the things that he had been talking about seem attractive.

The worst I saw was a sense of internal conflict among some of the older people. The Younger sons and more than one younger daughter that had taken over estates that had been depopulated by wars and, later, Lord Dorme's attempts at rebellion, seemed all for the idea. But invoking Ariadne's name was not an automatic ticket for approval, that was plain. More than one older Lord politely enquired as to whether or not I would be making any efforts to instill more traditional values into my wife when the time came.

My return joke was not appreciated although I saw a few people having to hide laughter behind cups and coughing fits. I said that "more traditional" values in Ariadne's case meant that she ruled the countryside with absolute power over life and death and enquired whether that was the kind thing that he was interested in.

He didn't take it well.

Mark was too well trained in the courtly arts to succumb to anything as foolish as to allow his own amusement to show at such things but he did tell me later that he thought I was "wicked".

After that, Mark was the life and soul of the party. There was a dance where he did remarkably well, dancing with many of the women present although I noticed that he only danced with the married ones. He did avoid the more energetic dances with a deft word and a complaint about his health, but other than appearing slightly red faced, he did well.

I did, however, see one of his attendants, there are three of them, pour something into a drink for him. At first I was worried, concerned about poison or something similar, but then I saw Mark checking over and seeing the attendant with the bottle in his hand, Mark nodded and drank it down.

When he danced, laughing, with the Abbess of Melitele though, that was his crowning acheivement. The woman, I forget her name at the time of writing, was clearly astonished twice. The first time was that she had been asked and then again when it turned out that my brother knew all the moves.

But Mark retired shortly after that.

The following day Mark went out into the town, travelling from tavern to tavern where he went in, had a pint, bought a meal at lunchtime and ate it with everyone in attendance. He talked with the stall holders and the travelling merchants. I watched him buy a charm from one of those travelling trinket salesmen. You know the kind. The people that sell "Teeth drom the Dragon that ate St Lebioda" and "The fingerbones of St Samuel" and, more believably, "The dried Faeces of St Terrence". But Mark bought one after whispering something to the salesman who fled after the transaction was complete.

He walked with both the Abbess of Melitele and the Bishop of the Eternal Fire. He walked into those houses that contained the old and the infirm, visited with people that had been injured in the pursuit of this or that. He did, to be fair, avoid those houses where he was told that there was infection but more than once, he knelt next to the sick-bed and offered his prayers along with the families.

No child was turned away as Mark offered blessings to any that wished them and no young couple was safe from a gentle jest of encouragement. Molly-Anne, or at least I think that's what her name was, the Priestess of Melitele, was clearly flabbergasted at what she was seeing and spent most of her time in astonishment. Occasionally forgetting that she was one of the tour guides that was seeking to get everything done. The Bishop of Angraal was taking it all in his stride although I did wonder if some kind of crisis of faith was happening underneath the surface there. He had taken up the position of a student, was asking questions of Mark as to why the Cardinal was doing this or doing that and then nodding as he tried to take in the answering piece of wisdom.

Eventually though, one of the promised Rainstorms blew in and we all retreated back indoors where it was declared that Mark would be in the chruch for some time should any wish to come and see him.

I would have gone with him but I was chased off to one side by one of the attendants that told me "His Eminence says that you have some writing to do." Which I did and I always found an office set aside for my purposes.

There was a smaller meal that night with just the Duke and his family where the Duke's wife, who was newly pregnant again, had a number of questions on Theology that, to my eyes at least, showed that she was more educated than some priests can have claim to. I was especially interested when she asked why women weren't allowed to be members of the priesthood of the eternal Fire.

"I'm afraid that my brother rather had the right of it on that subject Milady." Mark said. "Have you read his chapters on the subject?"

"I have." The Duchess astonished me by smiling at me. "He says that societal pressure as well as early church doctrine prevented women from attaining prominence."

Mark grimaced. "He did and he is right. Also late church doctrine from the current Hierarch's predecessor, Hemmelfart. But in doing so he was trying to lessen the power of the Sorceresses of the continent. The honest answer milady is that there is no possible reason to keep women from serving in the priesthood. No reason save for dogmatic ones. Personally, I can't see it happening any time soon however as the church needs to change a little more completely to allow that to happen."

The Duchess harrumphed to show her displeasure at the thought.

For my part of the evening I was left entertaining the children. The eldest was growing quickly into the spitting image of his mother. He was going to be taller than his father unless his growth slowed down, but he had his mother's intelligence. The Duke had long maintained a habit of having her consult on his more important decisions precisely for this reason and I rather thought that the young Duke would become a player in the relatively near future. Next few years or so.

Indeed, he would be my liege lord eventually so I did my best to form the beginnings of an alliance with him. Struggling with the fact that children are always a bit of a problem for me despite all the training and examples that Kerrass had given me on how to handle it all.

But we seemed to be getting on alright, mostly by virtue of the fact that I wasn't asking him how his studies were going. I think and the most basic trick that Kerrass ever taught me was to not talk down to children. Even when they are being children. "Kids can sense being patronised at from about the age of three." He told me.

The Duke also had some words, enquiring about the wedding and whether it was still going ahead. He had taken me off to one side to discuss the matter and I don't think anyone heard us, but I was a little concerned.

"You came back and called it all off in public Lord Frederick." He told me, a little more intensely than I thought the occasion warranted. "And yes, I have people watching the Countess. She was this close to subverting my position and ruling Angraal and although I trust her as much as I can, she is still... well..."

"The Spider-Queen of Angraal?" I wondered.

"You may joke Lord Frederick but it is something else entirely when your childhood boogeyman turns up and smiles sweetly at you before asking after the health of your children."

I took pity on him. "That conversation still needs to be had." I told him. "Sometime soon I think but I am not ready for it yet. Her presence is..."

"Powerful?" The Duke wondered. "I don't need to imagine the effect that she can have, or could have if she put her mind to it. But do not underestimate her anger. Our storybooks are full of those stories about what happens if and when she gets angry."

I nodded in gratitude for the warning but it was one of those things that I was trying not to think about, There was a conversation with Ariadne in the future and I was dreading it. No matter which way I tried to approach it in my head, I couldn't picture it. There was nothing there. If I went there with a view of begging her forgiveness for being an idiot and a moron... How do you apologise for something like that? I had no idea, but the follow up was just as important. After that was done, there would then be a conversation about why I had behaved in such a way.

And I was definitely not ready for that.

After the time away from things I thought that this was closer to the direction that I was going to go. This, on the grounds that I was pretty confident that I still loved her. The way that I felt about her was unlike anything else that I had ever felt for anyone else. The closest was how I had felt with Marion on an autumn day in the Southern parts of the Empire. But there was a depth to the feeling with Ariadne. A tentativeness and a... a fear of going too fast and too deep. I wanted to savour the getting to know each other part. I wanted to take my time with learning to love her.

I was ashamed. But I couldn't bring myself to just walk up to her and tell her that. There were still things that … I was still ashamed of what had happened. And I still felt as though I had betrayed both her and myself in behaving the way that I had and I no longer felt as though I deserved the love that Ariadne could and probably would give me.

So although, on one level, I could see which way I was leaning. My mind just refused to accept that that would be the way I would go.

So I gave the Duke something noncomittal. I told him that I still had a lot of thinking to do and that the decision was in Ariadne's hands as much as it was mine. He didn't look satisfied though but his wife dragged him away.

I also had time to talk with the Bishop of Angraal that night. He looked like a man that was having the world taken away from under his feet and was gently bemused by the entire process. Not quite able to decide what he would find underneath what had happened before.

"How are you holding up Your Grace?" I wondered gently.

He laughed for a long time.

"The thought has occurred that I should hate you Lord Frederick. That I should denounce you for the unclean heretic that you so clearly are."

"Oh?"

He laughed again as he watched the Cardinal of the Eternal Flame telling a dirty joke.

"A year and a half ago, I would have cheerfully burnt you at the stake for consorting with darkness. That Witcher friend of yours and then the Vampire whore-bitch."

I would have bridled at the insult but the way he said it made it sound like an automatic thing.

"But then a Witcher and a Vampire between them showed more care and more humanity than... Than I had. I still struggle with that. I saw the Countess walk through fire to rescue a child. Now the part of me that knows about... excuse me... That knows about Monsters knows that creatures..." He winced. "That people like her are immune to fire and that there was no risk to her at all. But the part of me that is a priest of the Eternal Flame. The romantic part of me. The part that listened to the stories of the saints as a young man and decided who he was going to be and what he was going to do as a result, That part of me looks at the symbolism of that and wonders."

Mark was now holding court on a couple of the minor nobility of Angraal who had gotten up enough courage from the Duke's wine to challenge Mark on the sermon from earlier in the day.

"Your brother represents the new church I think." The Bishop told me. "I think he's going to be a... He's going to be a saint some day and I hold myself up next to him and I fall short. Desperately short. I read your tale about Sansum and the flaming sword crowd."

"Oh?" I found myself sinking back into interview technique. The man was unhappy and I get the feeling that he wanted to say things. That he needed to say some things.

"This is really bad of me." He said before pouring himself a cup of wine and downing it at a swallow. "I sympathised with those knights. If I had been a bit younger or a bit fitter then I could well have seen myself joining their ranks and doing some of the things that they had done. I wanted what they had so badly, their certainty... but you were right to kill them... You were right and I would be wrong. When did I become the monster? When did we become the monster?"

I waited for a while to see if there was anything else to come from that. "There is no answer to that." I told him when it became clear that he wasn't going to answer his own question.

"I know. Your brother is right of course." He said. "Your brother is right. Service, serving our fellow man, serving our fellow... people is the only way to improve the world for the better. Part of me thinks that this is a lost cause and another part of me recoils at the prospect of feeding a hungry Elf, accepting women into the priesthood or accepting that the reason that a troll flattened a miner was because the miner mistook a sleeping troll for a rock-face."

He winced automatically at the thought.

"I'm not sure I can do that. Which makes me part of the problem. I can absolutely see why it is necessary but I don't like the picture that your brother paints. I don't think I like what I'm seeing and I don't feel..."

He sighed. "I think it might be time for me to retire. Find a nice, out of the way monastary somewhere and get out of the way of good, flame-fearing men like your brother who want to change the continent for the better."

I looked at him for a long time before filching another bottle of the Duke's wine stocks and topping up his cup with it.

"Doubt is good." I told him after a moment's thought. "Doubt is not bad. Challenging the problems is good as it makes people take it seriously. But you can see that Mark and his people are right can't you. You can see that he is right."

"Yes."

"So you are exactly the kind of people that they need. Exactly the kind. Because you are the old people that see the new ways and have seen all the ways that the old kind are wrong. But doubts are good. They make us challenge what we believe to be true. Just as you doubt the new ways of the Cult of the Eternal Flame given everything that you have been taught to think before, so you must also doubt the old ways given everything that you have seen and experienced since. Doubt. Challenge, argue. That is not bad. It makes it stronger."

He looked at me for a long time with a cynical, but also slightly amused glint in his eye. "Are you talking to me, or are you telling that to yourself Lord Frederick?"

I thought about that, and about what I had just said. As I thought those words back to myself it reminded me of the Goddess, I could almost hear her saying them. Could almost feel her putting words into my mouth.

"Could go either way." I admitted.

"Lord Frederick, are you alright?"

I must have paled or something. I certainly felt a little light-headed for a moment. "I'm fine." And I was, the little wobble lasted a fraction of a moment. "Have you talked to Mark about any of this?"

"No."

"Why? Are you afraid that he will agree with you stepping down and retiring. Or are you concerned that he will push you further into higher office?"

The Bishop said nothing.

"You should talk to him." I told him. "You should express your doubts and ask your questions. After all, when are you going to get another chance to make your confession to a Cardinal?"

I made myself scarce after that. I had been given a guest room given that the weather was beginning to close in and riding back to Angral was probably going to be difficult. There was a desk in my room and from the looks of it, it had recently been moved there. I took the hint and wrote up some more of my interactions with the Goddess. What had happened, what she had said and what I had said in return.

I didn't sleep well that night. I had a lot to think about.

And that was the pattern. From there we went to the convent of Melitele where Mark insisted on touring the infirmary. Spending time with all of the sick and injured and praying with them, blessing where the blessing would be welcomed and baptising more than one child. We ate a simple meal with the convent company. A some-what bemused group of ladies who were either in the latter parts of their life, many of them widows and Grandparents or even great grand-parents in their own right who had lost husbands and children to war, famine, disease, monster attack or Dorme's rebellion.

Or younger girls who had been given to the convent to be inducted into the convent in order for them to have somewhere to go. Unwanted daughters mostly, sent somewhere where they would, at least, have some form of education and have a roof over their heads. Apparently, most of them could be expected to run away at some point. Their eyes caught by this handsome man or that travelling troubadour. The rules were a little strict though. The Abbess Molly-Anne had a rule that she expected people to run away, but if they tried to come back, she would only take them back if they had good reason to come back. Being rejected by the man was not good enough reason as this meant that they would run awayagain, just as quickly.

But we ate and retired early. Something that I rather think Mark was grateful for although he hid it well.

And once again, I found a desk moved to my room and one of the Cardinal's attendants came to ask if I had any papers that I wanted the Cardinal to read.

We toured all of Angraal I think. Mark spent as much time staying in village halls and farm cottages as he did in castles and manor houses. Angraal is not large, a little smaller than Toussaint I think, for a Dukedom and it is made smaller by the fact that some of it is mountains that can't be used for anything other than, rahter optimistically, grazing cattle. But there were dozens of hidden valleys and things that I would not have guessed at their presence if a guide hadn't taken us there.

Mark continued to kiss babies and give blessings where he was wanted. He joined a druid in praying for a lenient winter. We were invited to a number of village weddings, one of which Mark presided over, much to the mortification of the young couple in question but to the pleasure of the girl's father, the village headman.

Many, many children were baptised into the cult of the Eternal Flame. Mark was a little annoyed by this as it went against his own beliefs on the grounds that he was no more or less holy than the next priest of the flame but there it was. People wanted their children to be baptised by him though and he felt that it was rude to turn these people down.

And every night. I would sit and do some writing and then the loose leaves of paper would be collected by one of Mark's people and taken off.

We were six days before we got back to Angral when I was done with what he had asked me to do.

"So Mark," I began. "When are we going to talk about what I've told you?"

"What?" He was beginning to look tired.

"I've written down everything that happened. Have you read it yet?"

"I have. Many times in fact."

"So when are we going to talk about it?"

His gaze was steady and a little forbidding. The stern priest of his youth looked out of his eyes for a moment. "When I am ready Frederick."

And he said nothing more.

As time went by I began to see more and more signs of strain on him. Hie appetite was becoming less and less. He was eating the same amount, but I got the feeling that he was doing so to keep his strength up rather than because he wanted the food. He had this front that he presented to people as he tried to keep the outward cheer and passion going. But it was also clear that, as soon as people were out of sight, that he simply seemed to fold in on himself. I started to catch him leaning on fence posts and door frames in order to get his breath back. I noticed that his attendants would cover him and obscure him from sight so that people, including me, wouldn't notice that he was losing strength.

I rather thought he was wearing makeup to hide some of the signs of strain in his face.

One of our last visits was to the site of the dead spot where the former Lord of Angral had had his manor and he had sat on his horse and stared at that space for a long time with a look of stone on his face. Then he wept at the small shrine nearby where the remains of Lord Dorme's totem had been buried. Where the remains of the little girl had been placed when they had been removed from the bag and laid to rest with all the tenderness that a Bishop of the Eternal Flame and the priestess of Melitele could muster.

We stood there for a long time, the two of us. We stood there as the rain came down. If I had been stood on the outside of that moment looking in, I would probably have laughed at the cliché but at the time, as I always think when I'm part of such moments, Sometimes two men stand next to a grave in the rain.

But the rain didn't fall prettily from our noses, nor were we immune to the cold tha the water brought. And Mark was beginning to feel the effects of the last week or so having to be in full on "Cardinal guise" as he calls it and we turned away.

I spent a bit of time thinking about the girl in the bag. From what Ariadne had said, she would have been a matter of weeks old. At most, a month old and during that time she would have been subject to such horror that the rest of us would not be able to comprehend it. By now, she would have been a year and a half old.

Old enough to be tottering around a building being chased by parents, grand-parents and older siblings as she threatened to get into problem after problem. She would have laughed for the first time. Wept for the first time. She would have known the great joy of being a child and, I hope, she would have felt the love that can be felt between a parent and a child.

I like to think so. But she hadn't. She had been torn from her mother's womb and then she had had sick rituals performed on her before she was killed and placed in a bag of human skin. I shuddered at the thought of people that could do that.

Mark was on his horse by that point. Wrapped in a fur blanket and a waterproof oil-skin. He looked pale, drawn and utterly wretched.

But there was no putting it off any further. I climbed onto the back of my own horse and we turned our horses back towards Ariadne's manor house.

She was there waiting for us. Dressed a little more formally than the "working dress" that I had last seen her in when I had first arrived. She was dressed in a long skirted dress, belted at the waist. I couldn't see too much because she was wearing a deeply hooded cloak against the rain. It had that effect that I occasionally see in the garments of some of the other Sorceresses in that it didn't seem to be subject to the rest of the water. As though there was just a null space where the rain didn't fall.

When we came into the courtyard and our escort was moving into place. Mark finally let his strings be cut and nearly fell from his horse. Ariadne was among the first to his side to catch him and help him to the ground. I dismounted and stood on the edge of things watching. It was clear that Mark was exhausted and needed rest, but I could not prevent a small rush of childish resentment that ripped through me as I looked at him and I realised that I wasn't going to have my confession heard today.

And again, I found a new depth of self-loathing.

I watched as Ariadne and a couple of the attendangts of the church of the flame, helped Mark from his horse and got him standing. I nearly giggled at the attendant's surprise at Ariadne's strength, but then they took Mark off her and he pulled himself to a standing position. He looked for me and saw where I was standing and gave me a little wave. I was in no doubt as to what the wave meant.

"Later Freddie." Was what he was saying to me and the flash of resentment was gone just as fast. He was taken inside to his rooms where I rather thought a hot bath would already be waiting for him. That, as well as some of Samantha's finest herbal draughts and a solid, warming and above all "restoring" meal.

I watched him and the rest of the church knights go indoors other than the sentries that Ariadne's manor now had. Guard posts to protect the Cardinal I supposed, but I noticed that they all had their hands wrapped around hot, steaming drinks. Ariadne was getting herself a reputation for hospitality.

But then I realised that she and I were alone in the courtyard. She was still standing in the place where she had passed Mark over to his people and I, still stood next to my horse.

She turned and looked at me. She was not cold towards me. There was a question in her posture and neither of us said anything. Again proving that if the opportunity prevents itself, then no-one can resist obeying a cliché. Two people that love each other, standing meters apart in the rain, both of us longing to be with the other while at the same time, various factors kept us apart. My stubborness and her... I don't know. I like to think it was that she didn't want to make me feel uncomfortable or push me before I was ready. I think she was concerned that, in pushing me, or holding me too tightly, I might fall apart.

What was the question she was asking me as we stood there, looking at me in the rain? I have no idea. I suspect that It was "Are you ready yet?" But I didn't know.

I laughed bitterly at the image we were presenting to the world. It felt ridiculous to me. Stupid, arrogant and a lot of other negative things that I hated about the entire thing.

I thought I saw Ariadne smile slightly, sharing my sense of humour on the matter and she nodded. I hoped that she was acknowledging the way I felt about the entire thing and she turned away, going inside and pulling her cloak around herself as she went.

After I was sure she was out of sight, I led my own horse to the stable and took my time about caring for it. There was comfort there in the basic chores that come with caring for an animal. The long, brush-strokes and the ensuring that they were comfortable. And everytime I decide to do a proper job of caring for my horse, I always decide that I should do a better job of it in the future. That I should care more and work on my horse more. And I should. But it always seems to slip my mind in the heat of the moment.

So I stayed in the stables. It was warm in there, pleasantly so and I was reminded of home suddenly. I looked for the grooms and, not finding them, I found a stool and sat, just inside the stables and looked out as the rain pounded the courtyard flat and the thunder rolled overhead.

It was four days before Mark came to see me to talk about what I had written regarding the Goddess. That is not to say that nothing happened during that time however.

For a start, much to my astonishment, Madame Yennefer turned up. Out of the blue and unlooked for. She trotted through a teleport gate with two mules, laden with boxes of various kinds, that she pulled behind her with a halter rope. I didn't see it but I'm told that Ariadne came out to meet her with a laugh and a smile and the two women walked back indoors with their arms round each other companionably, laughing as they went.

The only thing that might be more terrifying, from my point of view, is if Madame Eilhart had turned up as well.

But Lady Yennefer moved in and came to see me almost straight away.

"I hear that you've been putting yourself through some nonsense." She told me as she came into my little hut. She stood in the kitchen and surveyed the area with her violet gaze and a raised eyebrow.

"Something like that." I answered. "I was..."

She held her hands up. "I don't care." She told me. "You are surrounded by people that are trying to help you with that kind of thing and that's not what I'm here for."

I felt my mouth trying to smile. I liked Madame Yennefer. She is, of course, absurdly attractive and any man, any man who claims to think differently is clearly lying. But although I might, once, have been quite open to an adventure or two I think that she and I would drive each other mad. It's like admiring the beauty of a far away Griffin as it sails lazily through the air.

I suspect that if we were romantically involved, I would have no patience for her mental games that she plays with people, while she would have no patience with my occasional need to be... I don't know... loved? She would just assume that I knew that she loved me and that that was that.

I'm just guessing though. To me, she was beautiful on an aesthetic level but nothing more than that. I couldn't have told you much more about it.

"I'm here," She stared at a chair that had some folded clothes on it. She frowned until I got up and moved the offending articles so that she could sit down.

"I'm here," she began again. "Because Ciri is in Cintra with her other father and wanted Geralt and I to go with her. Cintra is..." Her face softened from the mask that she most often wears for a moment. "Cintra is a problem for me," Then her face hardened again. "And weeks of being feted by the former Emperor while he shows off "what he's done with the place" while he walks around with that girl on his arm that looks so much like his own daughter. Only younger. Is not my idea of a good time."

I hid a smile behind a cup.

"So I shall go for Yule and the day after Yule where we'll all be lying around after having eaten too much and drank too much for their to be much going on anyway and then I shall come back here."

"With respect Lady Yennefer, that doesn't tell me why you're here."

"I'm here to work Frederick. I'm here to work. We're near the end of our little book now and we need to start bringing things together." She looked round the room again and sniffed. "But we can't work in here. Far too cramped and not nearly enough comfort for my liking. You shall come and join me in my guest rooms. Ariadne has kindly given me one of the cottages higher up in the hills. Come along."

I felt like a tree had fallen on top of me.

The feeling of being some student and answering to a Headmistress of some kind lessened a little bit when she raised an eyebrow at the fact that I had clearly been working on my own part of the text. Indeed, I had done more work than she had if you counted such things in the clear amount that we had both written.

And then the dynamic shifted slightly. We were no longer a master and a student, a relationship that we both had with each other and something that swung both ways. Sometimes I was the master and she was the student, especially in matters making the work more approachable by the general public. But sometimes she was as well when we were talking about her own are aof expertise. And raw, academic work.

But then we were just two people, getting excited about doing something academic with each other and I could almost feel my excitement growing.

But then the strangest thing happened. I realised that I was beginning to feel good about what was happening here. That I was beinning to feel good and a wave of guilt swept over me and I burst into tears.

Yennefer didn't react. She just nodded and declared that we were done for the day.

It was on the second day of this that Emma and Laurelen came back. Also with several boxes and more trunks of clothing.

This time Emma was not in the main house long before she came out to see me. Apparently, her first visit was to Mark to check on how he was before she stomped through the rain to come and see me. I was working with Yennefer on some part of the work about Jack when Emma knocked on the door.

"You don't need to knock Lady Coulthard." Yennefer called out. "I can hear a sister coming to swat an errant younger brother in line a mile away." She sniffed. She was not agreeing with the new and damper air but was steadfastly refusing all attempts to suggest that she hould wrap up warmer, or take a cold remedy from Samantha.

Emma entered carefully. "Forgive me Lady Yennefer but your reputation precedes you."

"Oh?" Yennefer didn't look up from a line that she was writing carefully. Correcting something from the proofs of the first edition that we had been sent by the Oxenfurt printers. "I would be positively delighted to know what reputation that would be."

"That you suffer interruptions as well you suffer fools."

Yennefer finished her sentence and tilted her head to one side as she considered this. "Not innacurate." She decided after a while. Except in the case of what happens when dealing with a chore or series of chores that I hate. In this case, and I cannot emphasise this enough, I really hate editing. And you are no fool."

"I am pleased to hear that you think so." Emma moved a little bit further into the room.

"A fool could not run a merchant empire such as the one that you have overseen. Nor could you have, all but, raised your younger brother here to be the relatively decent scholar that he is. Room to improve mark you."

"Always room for improvement." Emma agreed as she sat down and began to relax.

"Hey," I protested.

"But surely, Lady Coulthard..."

"Emma, please."

Lady Yennefer paused as she considered this. "You might be comfortable with those familiarities this early in our relationship, Lady Coulthard. But I am not. Maybe, by the time you all travel to Toussaint we might have got there, but time will tell on that matter. I was going to say that you of all people know the value of a carefully cultivated reputation."

Emma was taken aback. "Ummm. Alright. Yes, I do. But sometimes that reputation is deserved and a carefully constructed, but false, reputation can be mistaken for the real thing."

"It can. But errors on the side of caution in those areas disprove the rule." She gathered up some papers and put them in a leather satchel. "I shall go and work in the other rooms while the two of you talk."

"There's really no need." Emma said to Yennefer's retreating back. "Did I say something wrong?" She asked me.

"No?" I guessed. "With Lady Yennefer it's always difficult to say. If she was just an average scholar then I would say that she is in some kind of mental groove and is resisting being distracted from it."

"But she's not an average scholar is she?"

"No, she is not. She is difficult but I think... I think she has been wound so tight for so many years that now that pressure is no longer there she sometimes doesn't know how to react to certain things."

"You like her don't you."

"I do. I always know where I stand with her and..." I felt my mood crumple and the now ever-present tears at the back of my throat threatened to come back. "I value that rather a lot at the moment. Too much perhaps."

"Well I love you Freddie. You can always depend on that." She put her hand on my shoulder.

I took a deep and shuddering breath, forcing the tears back and this time I won the battle, swallowing the lump in my throat.

This time.

"I'm getting really fucking sick of this." I complained when the moment passed.

Emma grunted in agreement and sympathy.

"Well," She began, kind of straightening up. "I didn't come over here to interrupt your work. I wanted you to know that we are here. I have spoken to Mark and he wants to talk to you as your confessor before we talk together as a family."

"Sounds serious." I tried for a joke. "What's going on Emma?"

"Mark has made me promise..."

"Fuck that." I felt a strange and unfair anger growing in my belly. "What's going on? If you don't tell me then I'm going to worry and get anxious and scared and..."

Emma sighed. "We need to talk about Francesca and what we're doing about this. What you're doing about Francesca really. We're worried about you Freddie and we want to talk about that. I promise that it's a talk, not a confrontation, but we also need to talk about the fact that Sam didn't want to come south for Yule as he had previously promised. We need your help on that as I..."

She blew out a breath. The kind of breath that I got the feeling had been long held in.

"I fucked up Freddie, I think I might have alienated Sam and I don't know what to do about it. Our family is under siege and we are breaking apart at the seams. You are one part of that, Mark's illness is another and Sam's..." She reddened for a moment in an anger that was all to recogniseable. Before it was her turn to swallow an irrational emotion.

"We need you back Freddie. We need you back and we need you to be your fully grown, charming, passionate, driven self. You are the only person that has ever been able to get through to Sam. I've read your articles and you claim that you are closest to me. Fair enough, but the member of the family that Sam is closest to is you. He's going to be Lord Coulthard soon and he won't let any of the rest of us help him with that."

She took a deep breath.

"We need to talk about this and other matters and your wellbeing is not the least of our concerns. But Mark has made me promise that I will let him talk to you first in his capacity as your priest and confessor."

I nodded. "Fair enough. But Emma. I won't stop doing what I'm doing."

For the record. I had no idea what "it" was that I was refusing to stop doing.

"You might have to Freddie. For your own sake,"

She left. Looking back it was probably a good thing that she did otherwise the conversatation might have become even more emotional.

It was two days after that that Mark finally came. It was late. I had eaten my evening meal and was sat in my own cottage reading Lady Yennefer's latest iteration on a particular chapter of interdimensional magical Law. She called the term Metaphysics and I didn't like it. It was far too technical for my taste and I wanted and needed her to chill the hell out with it. It was our oldest argument. The simple, conversational style that I chaampioned, that would make it accessible to the average person, versus the cold, clinical, academic style that would appeal more to a very specific subset of people.

The truth was that both of us were right and both of us were wrong. And we both knew it and the problem was coming to be that we needed to find that happy middle ground. We called this a "Gateway book". A book that people could read that would make them hunger for more information so that they would go off and study by themselves.

One of the earliest lessons that Kerrass ever taught me was that knowledge denies fear. And we were trying to show people the avenues that they needed to travel through in order to not be afraid any longer.

But Mark knocked on the door and came in to my appeal. He took off his rain cloak and hung it by the door before sneezing hugely. I was up, like a flash, pulling a blanket from nearby and wrapping him in it so that I could get him a hot drink.

"Dammit Mark," I began. "I would have come to you."

"Yes you would." He admitted, "But that's not the point to this. I know you little brother and you are not there yet. You need some more time and there are things that you need to hear. Truths that you already know but I think that you need to be told them by an outside person in order to take them in."

An image of a dark-haired Goddess rising naked above me and grinning, flashed in front of my eyes. It was like being punched in the gut. Not that it was a new sensation but it's one of those things that you never get used to. Never get to the point where you get rid of them completely.

I took a few deep breaths as I waited for everything to calm down, before I opened my eyes to find Mark watching me.

He was wearing a thicker, almost quilted version of his normal Cassock. A form of the thing that made me want to call it his "Cold weather gear." I saw fur lined soft boots under the hem of the robe and I guessed that there were some thick, woolen undergarments going on under there as well. When he realised that I wasn't immediately going to burst into tears or do something foolish he reached into a bag that he he had tied to his belt and pulled out one of his Vestements. Only a lighter weight, a smaller, thinner version of the one that he normally wore.

"So I want to make it clear." Mark began. "There is no getting away from the fact that I am your brother..."

Then he produced a small bowl and a bottle of oil. "... But I want to stress that I am hear as your priest and confessor first and your brother second. The fact that I am also your liege comes, like..." he waved his hand as if to imply distance, "... a distant third."

He poured the oil into the bowl and lit a taper from one of the lamps that I had burning in the hut.

"So there's that and I wanted it to be made clear."

He lit the bowl with the taper and it caught fire with a small but perceptible Whomping noise.

"I also want it to be made clear that I haven't heard your confession in a number of years. Don't get me wrong," he held his hand up before blowing out the taper and leaving it next to the flame. "Don't get me wrong, I know why. Physical distance is a factor," He roved around the room blowing out my candles and lamps, creating the proper atmosphere for a confession to the Eternal Flame. "But also, I am aware that I haven't always been the best confessor to you. So I appreciate that, when you have made a confession, it has been to someone else under different circumstances."

He slumped back into his seat.

"But are you content to talk with me if I admit to past mistakes? Especially when we were both younger."

I nodded but that gesture didn't feel enough. "I can."

"Good." Mark sighed in exaggerated relief. "Then that's better. So... I'm not going to call you "My Son" or any of that stuff. Feels weird you know?"

I looked at him. The lack of formality in his voice was shocking. He caught me looking and grinned at me.

"You would really be astonished." He winked slyly. "How much of the formal language is there so that the person giving the confession can be reminded as to who has the real power in the relationship. The higher up the church ladder you get. The less of the "My Son's" and "Thee's and Thous" there are. It's all about exerting dominance apparently."

"You seemed to like that part of it as I recall." I joked. I suppose I wanted to see how far I could push it.

"I did at that. There I was, confessor for the family with you, Emma, Sam and Frannie..." I checked, he only had a little wince as he said Francesca's name. "would come and confess your sins. Edmund only came once and he didn't perform the penance that I assigned."

"Imagine my lack of surprise." I commented dryly.

"Mother came surprisingly often actually, but I think Father was aware of the powerplays involved and insisted on making his confession to one of my tutors."

"I can absolutely see that." I said.

"But I am a bit more practised at this now." Mark went on and I do this so rarely that you shouldn't think about the same kinds of things. So, you ready?"

I kind of squared my shoulders. "I am."

"Then I will sit with you here in the shadows." He began in the traditional starting prayer of confession.

"I will sit with you here in the shadows.

Tell me of the darkness in your heart.

Tell me of the blight that stains your soul

Tell me of the smoke that obscures your sight

Tell me of these things and I will be the light.

I will be the guilding light that brings you out of the darkness

Into the radiance of the Holy Flame."

"So then." He beamed happily. "What would you like to confess?" He sat back and twiddled his thumbs.

I stared at him in astonishment for a while

"Is that it? I wondered after a while.

"Were you expecting more?"

"I mean..." I searched for words. I had expected more. I had expected insults, I expected to be called a fool. I expected more pomp, ceremony... I don't know. I had expected something.

"You read my notes right?" I demanded. "On what happened."

"I did." Mark reached back into his bag and produced a thick bundle of paperwork. "Fascinating stuff."

"But..."

"I have to say though." Mark overrode me. "That even if she was not a God, and if she was, then she is different from how we would perceive a Goddess. Even if she was a God and not just a woman with a great deal of power. Regardless of any of that, she played you excellently. Played you like a fiddle in fact."

"I..." I didn't know how to answer that.

"Freddie, I love you. But there is one thing that you are hopeless with and that is women."

"Says the priest."

"Brother mine, I might not have much carnal experience."

"Much?" I wondered with a raised eyebrow. Mark was keeping the tone light and I fed off that.

"A story for another time." He grunted at me. "But what I do have, or rather what I did have for a long time was a steady stream of men coming through my confessional, who wanted to moan at me about the treatment that they had received at the hands of their women. Then, as well, I also had a steady stream of women who came through my booth who would complain all day about the inadequacies of their men folk.

"I might not know how to seduce a woman into my bed. I might not be able to manipulate women but I do know a lot more about how women think than you might realise. And this one." He gestured at the pile of papers. "Could not have played you better if she had literally tied bits of string to your limbs and physically moved you round the place."

"I don't..."

"Freddie. She started off playful and normal. Thus distracting and disarming you from what you were expecting to happen. Then she got aggressive in her sexuality, getting your blood flowing to your other brain." He gestured at my crotch. "Then when she had pushed you to the point where you almost flew from her, she turned all that off and almost made herself seem vulnerable. Building up your need to protect her and otherwise look after her. Then she got your blood pumping a different way and engaged that part of your primal brain. You were not thinking by the end. You reacted primally, and instinctively. You were putty in her hands."

He stared at me for a long time, the flame dancing in his eyes.

"Were you foolish? Yes. Were you naive? Incredibly so. But Freddie, not a thing happened in that circle of fire, that she did not intend to happen. You were in her power the entire time and she played you brilliantly. Kerrass too for that matter. That's what you get for talking toa Goddess of Battle."

He sniffed hugely and blew his nose on a handkerchief that he produced from somewhere.

"Look. This was fascinating reading. I don't know if this woman is a genuine Goddess. Whether she's an avatar of some, hereto unknown power, whether the physical manifestation of that power, possessed by a power or whether she is some kind of uncategorised entity from other worlds that came through at some point during one of the Conjunction of the spheres..."

He paused as his thought process caught up with him. "If I'm honest, I suspect the latter. Without talking to her directly, which I never want to do, I would suspect that she comes from a different plane of existence. Where there are little or no powers to speak of and beings like this wander around and are called Gods. She all but admits that this might be the case. But I digress.

"So let me ask you again Freddie. What do you wish to confess?"

I stared at him for a long time. I felt as though I had been punched in the face. "But I betrayed Ariadne."

"Freddie, I love you, but you are only human. You were seduced. You were seduced by a woman who was better at seducing than you were at resisting. I don't know of course but I suspect that there might even have been magic involved. But you didn't have a choice in the matter. You automatically resisted the allure of the woman and in doing so, you challenged her. One of the few things to Kerrass' credit in all of this is that he did warn you of that. That he did so obliquely and without transparency is something that he will have to answer for. But he did try.

"That she saw that as a challenge is on her. That you deliberately looked away in the face of someone who must have been a devestatingly attractive woman, is a thing that you should be, at least a little, proud of. How many other men would have looked, had lustful thoughts and been dismissed by this woman as being the kind of bottom feeding scum that they are."

"But I didn't resist Mark?"

"No. Nor could you. She could not have seduced you better if she had read a book on the subject. She couldn't have done better if she had literally had a written list of step by step instructions on how to get inside your pants. Just as, I suspect, she knew exactly how to provoke Kerrass in the same way. She knew how to win."

He sighed. "Freddie, you were foolish. But you are an intelligent man. You and I both know that sometimes, what happens when you put attractive men together with attractive women and lock them in a room together with a load of alcohol, then something is going to happen. Some will resist, most of them even, but some will drink and then will wake up next to a partner and most will regret it. That's biology and entirely natural. The thing that makes us human is that we can choose not to be in that situation. That's what being in a committed relationship means. Remove the temptation."

"How do you know all this?" I wondered.

"I have an outsiders view on humanity. Just as Kerrass has an outsider's view on what happens when monsters attack. But we're not talking about me here. We're talking about you. Here is why I don't think you should feel too guilty about what happened. You were in a situation that you did not control. Dealing with someone who knew how to control you. You were not in control of yourself. And you could not have gotten away from the situation. Your nature led you there but when you were actually there. There was nothing you could have done to stop it."

"So I should feel no shame?" I wondered, appalled.

"No, I didn't say that. A little bit of shame, a little bit of guilt is good. It will teach you something. Just as a little bit of pain when you fall out of a tree as a child will teach caution. Think of it. Are you ever, ever going to let Kerrass, or anyone for that matter, take you somewhere where you don't know entirely what you're getting yourself in for?"

"No," I admitted.

"You made a mistake Freddie. It happens, ensure that it will never happen again. Think about how you would do things differently if a similar situation comes up and then move on."

"I'm not sure I can."

"Sure you can. Think about it. If this was anyone else. If this had happened to me, or to Sam or Rickard or anyone else that you have met. I am looking forward to meeting this Helfdan the Black Boar that I hear so much about. But if he got into this mess. Would you be angry at him or would you give him a bit of a break?"

"But I hurt Ariadne." I hollered in a voice that came alarmingly close to cracking.

"Yes you did." He told me. "Yes you did. But you hurt her because you didn't talk about it. You hurt her because instead of coming here and talking about it, you tied yourself up into a knot and tried to... self-flagelate yourself by having some kind of masterbatory break up fantasy with her. That, too, was foolish, stupid and selfish. But also entirely human. That's the reason that she is not angry with you. You are being human Freddie and she does not blame you for being human.

"She knows that the reason, or one of the reasons that you are so upset with all of this is because you have held yourself to a higher standard. You will have to talk to her about this yourself, but I strongly suspect that she would not have been surprised or particularly upset if you had gotten drunk and allowed one of the Skelligan Shield-Maidens to have their way with you.

"That will change after you're married of course. Then her wrath will know no bounds if you indulge in infidelity. Unless you found yourself in a situation that you could not control. She is just as aware of human nature and human biology as I am. If not more so.

"From my view, you need to learn that Ariadne is not made of paper. She has seen and done far more shocking things than you can imagine and she will not weep too hard if you make a mistake and then take steps to fix it. She will get angry if you make a mistake more than once and do nothing to address the lapse in judgement however. But again, you must take that up with her."

I nodded and looked away. I sensed, from somewhere, the Mark was watching me carefully.

"Let me ask you something Freddie. Did you ever expect differently? Did you ever expect that she wasn't going to forgive you?"

"Yes... No... I don't know." I wailed.

Mark nodded. "And therin lies the problem. You didn't think."

I found some anger. "If this is going to be one of Father's lectures about thinking things through then I'm going to punch you in the face."

Mark sighed, my anger washing around him, like water round a stone. "Freddie, give me some credit. I've been doing this a long time now. I know why you didn't think. You didn't have the capacity to think. You were too busy tearing yourself apart to think."

"What are you saying?" I wondered.

Mark peered at me again for a while. "We will get to that point I think. But not yet. Let's just... return to an earlier question. What do you have to confess?"

"I..." I ran out of words.

Mark let the silence hang for a while before he took matters up again.

"We have dismissed your mistake with this Goddess. This Morrigan or whatever her name was. That was a mistake, do better next time. That is the answer to that little riddle. We have addressed the matter with your treatment of the woman that you love. That too was a mistake but I don't think you were entirely in control of your actions there. I think you were trapped. I think you were driven to that point and that you had nowhere else to go. No other place to be other than to do the last thing that you were "supposed" to do in that situation.

"If there had not been other people there to catch you, I wonder what you would have done. I dread to think what you might have done in order to exorcise your guilt."

I had nothing to say to that. I felt adrift on a sea of blackness and confusion.

"So again Freddie, let us return to the question at the root of what is going on here. What do you wish to confess?"

"I can't think of anythin..."

"Freddie." Mark said carefully. "This is one of those times. I am a good priest. Whatever else you might think of me, I am a good priest and I know that there is something else going on there. If you were any other man, or if I was even a slightly worse priest than I actually am, I would bless you for the things that you have already said, give you some kind of penance that is based on money and prayer so that you can go back into the world and get on with seeing the next supplicant. What do you feel guilty about? What do you need to confess?"

"The way I talked about you, the way I talked about Emma..."

"Yes, I know. I tormented you and none of us stood up for you when we could have defended you from Father's wrath. That hurt you. I know it. Emma knows it and deals with her own guilt for all of that in her own way. But she and I can both see and understand that the person that was angry there was Freddie as a child. That you were eleven or twelve when you felt those things and all that this woman, this... This Goddess did was to rake those feelings out for her own purposes. That is nothing to feel guilty about.

"It's the kind of thing that you take out, talk over and discuss with us. Then we all have a little cry as a family and swear undying oaths to each other that we will never, ever, ever again allow anything to come between us and then we move on. We'll talk about all of that and more, as well as all the childish things that you did or didn't do to help us when we, and you, were young. What do you feel guilty about?"

He seemed to be passionate about it. He seemed to be angry, frustrated. During this speech I had been getting more and more upset, tears sat on the edge of my vision unsaid. Every word that Mark was saying was like a dagger being thrust into my flesh.

"I don't know Mark."

"Oh come on." He began another diatribe.

"No, fuck you Mark. I don't know why. Everything you said is true. Everything. I know that I made a mistake, several of them in fact. My life seems to have been a series of them, one after another that people need to rescue me from. First Emma, then some friends at the university. Now Kerrass. Then, possibly even Ariadne when this is all over. But if that was a simple thing, and my hurting of Ariadne was another mistake that I was driven to then why do I feel so Flame-damned awful?"

"What do you want to confess?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I DON'T KNOW." I screamed. Mark shot out of his chair and paced in agitation.

"I don't know Mark alright." I howled, the tears falling freely down my face. "I'm sick of it. Sick of feeling like this. I'm on the verge of tears all the damn time and anything can set me off. I went to see my horse the other day and I'm stood in the stall, tears streaming down my face and I have no idea why. I try and find a piece of work to do in the stables and I can barely stand for the sobbing."

"What do you want to confess?

"I train with my spear. I sharpen and care for my weapons and there having to do it multiple times because my tears are essentially salt water and they need cleaning and scouring from the metal."

"What do you want to confess?" Mark's voice was getting quieter

"I think of Ariadne and every single time I catch sight of her in the field, or see her a bit closer I want to run towards her. I want to take her in my arms and love her and cherish her and do all of the things that I'm supposed to do according to the holy Oaths as well as a few things that a good Flame-fearing man should not and it feels like I'm being punched in the gut and the tears leap forward and I can't control them. Fuck I even wept the other day when Yennefer told me that my penmanship is particularly good. Flame but I want this to be over. I want to get back to normal so badly that it hurts. Why does it hurt Mark? Why does it hurt?"

Mark stood over me then, the flame from the oil made his face look shadowy and sinister.

"What do you want to confess?" he intoned.

"I don't know."

"What do you want to confess?" He repeated.

"I don't know."

"What do you want to..."

"I'VE FAILED."

I don't know where the scream came from. It was this wrenching, howling thing. It hurt my throat and later I would cough and there would be small spots of blood that terrified me until Samantha looked down my mouth and found where I had torn and strained my throat.

But that scream was torn from me as though it was some kind of parasite that had been feeding on my innards for a long time and Mark was a doctor that had plunged his hand into my chest and torn it free.

"I've failed." I whispered hoarsely afterwards.

"Why? What have you failed at Freddie?" Mark asked quietly and gently. His mood changing.

"I have not found Francesca. I promised you all that I would. I promised myself... I promised her that I would find Francesca. I promised. I swore that I would do this and I failed. I've travelled up and down the continent. I've nearly died numerous times. I've done damage to myself, my body and my mind from which doctors and people that I respect have warned me that I may never recover and I have still not found her."

Mark had sat back down in his seat. He looked calm. From this place of writing, several days after these events, I wonder if he had guessed at what had happened and that his priestly anger and his frustration had been a front.

"I've looked everywhere Mark." I told him. "I've done everything and I don't know where else to look. I don't know... I just don't know... Flame. I've talked to Unicorns, Goddesses, otherworldly beings and Cultists. I've written to all the friends that I've made over all this time and no-one knows anything. I keep being told cryptic nonsense and annoying... Flame curse me for a flame-damned fucking fool but I just can't find her. I feel as though she's right under my nose. As though she's just out of reach. Just out of sight. The next mission, the next quest, the next monster that Kerrass hunts will give me what I want to know. But I still can't find her. Why can't I find her Mark?"

I shook my head and a swiped at the falling tears angrily. Keeping hold of my pain with both hands as I held onto that well of feeling that Mark had unearthed with both hands.

Mark watched me for a long moment.

"Why, oh why." He began slowly. "Why was it your responsibility to find her?"

I stared at him appalled.

Mark stared back at me calmly for a long time. He waited until I was about to open my mouth again and then it was as though he was a Golem or a Gargoyle that suddenly came alive.

"Seriously though." He began. "That question has come in two parts. The first is the obvious argument that was made back in Toussaint at the beginning of the year. The one that will probably make you angry, even though that quality doesn't make it any the less true.

"We live in an Empire. Francesca was a close friend and confidant of the Empress. That means that the full might of the Imperial special services have come to bear on the matter. Not just part of it. Not part of it allowing for their normal proceedings. But the full might of everything that Lord-General Voorhis can bring to bear on the matter. Why? Because, correctly and you know it, they have to assume that an attack on one of the Empress' women is an attack on her being. It's a plot against the Empress herself so they have to take it seriously. They don't have a choice."

He paused and laughed a little.

"It's almost ironic that we're back here as I try and talk you through all of this. When you freed Ariadne from her captivity you made a similar case for her to stand down. What worked on her might work on you. I might be paraphrasing your words as it is a while since I last read that particular chapter but...

"The Empress has four armies as well as two more armies of reserves that can be raised with relatively short notice. Now one of those armies is coordinating the invasions of Cidaris and Vergen but that is still three armies that are searching the continent, and beyond, for any sign of Francesca that can be found.

"The Imperial Intelligence service is possibly going to end up being the most lasting legacy of Emperor Emhyr. It is the thing that will out last anything. For a lifetime of acheivement including recovering his father's throne and conquering the North. He set up an Intelligence Service that has caught several plots against him, his daughter and numberous other factors. And has then removed, not only those particular enemies, but how many other enemies besides. Why is Emhyr so terrifying? It's not the armies that scare children to sleep at night in different parts of the continent. It's the Intelligence Service.

"Then there are the Questing Knights Errant. We haven't talked to you about our trip to Toussaint yet but when all of this is over, we are going to Toussaint. But even then, there are numerous of those knights that travel up and down the continent, tearing it apart and looking for Francesca. They see it as their great failure. Because it is, and they seek to expunge that failure from their record. I've seen those men at work Freddie, there are few people that are better swordsmen than the Knight's Errant and we will get to them next. The Knight's Errant might have fallen from Grace, but you yourself said that they would be sent out into the world to take down Bandit Enclaves. By themselves. And they would win.

"The Lodge of Sorceresses. I can remember, even if you can't, that Ariadne joined the Lodge of Sorceresses to aid in their efforts to find Francesca. Joined by a fucking Dragon I understand. I can even go so far as to say that the two Sorceresses on that council that have the most to dislike in each other, Madame Yennefer and Madame Eilhart agree that Francesca must be found. Even for the political victory they have a powerful incentive to do something about this.

"And then there are the Witchers. Many of whom can remember the night that someone summoned an aspect of the "Jack" entity and used it to attack common folk. It is the biggest contract that has ever been seen since Geralt of Rivia was hired by the Emperor to find his missing daughter.

"So all of these people, More powerful than you, more skilled than you, more numerous than you have set out to find our sister. So why do you feel that you have something extra to contribute?"

"But they have all failed." I protested.

"Yes they have. And that's precisely the point. They have failed and if all of those people have failed, why are you giving yourself a particularly hard time over that self-same failure. Do you blame Lady Eilhart for not being able to find our sister?"

I considered the question.

"Do you blame Lord Voorhis for not figuring it out?"

I realised that I didn't have an answer.

"Of course you don't. You are angry certainly, but you are conscious and logical enough to be able to see that the person to blame for the loss of our sister is the fuck-nut that took her in the first place. So why are you giving yourself such a hard time over it?"

He was right and I knew it. But I couldn't accept it. Despite the fact that I knew he was right, there was just part of my mind that was shying away from the truth. I knew it to be true but I couldn't take it in. It was more than I could handle. It was like... If the truth was a stone that I hurled at the mountain that was my mind. I wanted the stone to shatter the mountain but, obviously, it wouldn't do that. It would just skitter away.

Mark sighed and moved back to where the pot of tea was brewing over the fire. He poured us both measures of the strong, invigorating drink as he spoke.

"I know the answer to this particular part of things of course." He reached for the honey pot. I noticed that I got double the normal amount of honey that I would normally have in my tea. "The answer is that you are arrogant." He grinned as he said it.

"What?" The joke startled me out of my spiral of thought.

"Oh don't get me wrong, I love you for it and I recognise that same kind of arrogance in myself. It is a symptom of being a young man. Of believing that we know something that everyone else doesn't. That we are more important that everyone else and the belief that the world revolves around us. It is the same arrogance that makes a young man believe that they are immortal."

He sat down with a sigh and pushed my drink over to me.

"You are not to blame for this feeling. Even though I hope that you realise just how wrong you are when you think it. But it is also one of those things that happens when you are brought up as the son of a nobleman. In this area Father did alright by us. Not brilliantly," he held his hand up to forestall any kind of protest. "But alright. Over and over again he insisted that he had worked hard to get us to this point and that we should absolutely continue to work just as hard to further anything else. He made us understand that this was not automatic. That we didn't deserve it. I rather think that he learned from the mistakes that he made with Edmund in this particular case."

He sniffed. Of all of us, Mark has the most complicated feelings about his big brother.

"But that doesn't change the fact that you are arrogant, partly from your education, partly from your personal wealth and your social standing." He watched me carefully. "Also the fact that you are a skilled fighter which is something new to some of us. That you have killed and can defend yourself. Also made arrogant by your knowledge and experience in the world. What it boils down to is that these things have conspired to make you think that you have a unique view-point and that therefore, you are better equipped to find Francesca than anyone else. Am I wrong?"

He wasn't wrong. It was more complicated than that and I could tell that he knew that too.

"But here's the thing Freddie. You might have skills, you might have a unique perspective on things. But so does everyone else out there. You know that too. So I rather suspect that there is something else going on here. Which leads to my second point on the matter of this question.

"Why do you feel the need to take all of this on yourself. Not you as in the extra agent, or the man with the extra friends and credentials. But why do you feel as though you have to do this. Why are you responsible over and above everyone else?"

"I don't..."

"Ok. Let me rephrase it a little. Why are you responsible? When did you become responsible for all of this stuff. When did you need to take all of this over?"

We sat in silence for a while as I rolled the implications of what he was asking me around in my head. "I'm sorry Mark I still don't..."

"Ok look. Do you know what you remind me of? You remind me of a martyr. One of the good old fashioned religious ones. You go around trying desperately to take responsibility for everything. You get up from your sick bed before you should. You push yourself further and harder than anyone thinks that you should. You take on more than you should and everything seems to rest on your shoulders. Everything seems to rest on your shoulders.

"You carry the weight of so much on your own back. So much. You can find it in your articles that have been published. Admittedly you need to know what you're looking for and you need to know a bit more about you but to those of us that love you, it is plain to see that it is there. It was a thing even before Francesca was taken.

"You took it upon yourself to get in the way of an angry Vampire and the rest of the world. You took it upon yourself to carry a heart-broken Witcher through Northern Redania. Twice. Both times suffering more abuse and hurt than any reasonable human being would have put up with. I don't know anyone. Anyone at all that woulld have put up with what you went through at Kaer Morhen at the hands of the Kingslayer and then put up with a demented Kerrass while he went to pieces."

"He needed my help."

"But who was helping you Freddie? You had been tortured. I was prouder of you than I have ever been when I read that series on the abuses that young Witchers suffered at the hands of their peers. You took an awful experience and turned it into one of the most educational pieces of writing that we have on the subject of Witchers. But that must have been awful for you.

"And then Kerrass does his best to fall apart. You carried him Freddie. You saved his life. How many people would have put up with that. How many?"

"He was my friend and he needed help."

"But why you Freddie?"

I looked up at him and we said it in unison. "Because there was no-one else."

"And in that particular case, you were right." He agreed. "There was no-one else at the time. But later? There have been plenty of people out there. Someone was going to bring Sansum and his ilk to task. Not to the extent that you did but someone would have done that. Someone would have routed the Cult of the First-born and found out whether or not they had any connection to Francesca's disappearance and they would have done so without you having to put yourself in harm's way.

"If I don't do these things. Who will?" I wondered. "If I hadn't stood in front of Ariadne that day. Who would have done it? Kerrass? If I hadn't been there, he would never have been caught in Dorme's trap. If I hadn't stepped up, then we would still have been harbouring a murderer in our family and we wouldn't have known about the activities of the cult around Oxenfurt. If I hadn't have stepped up, we wouldn't have known for certain that Jack was not involved in Frannie's disappearance. If I..."

"If... Freddie. If."

Mark sat back.

"You have taken all of this extra guilt onto yourself. Extra responsibility. It is your responsibility to find Francesca. It is your responsibility to care for Kerrass, even when he doesn't want or need the care. It is your responsibility to right the wrongs that you come across and put yourself in harm's way. That is noble of you. But a man can only take so much before they crack."

"People have seen much worse than I have and come out alright?"

"Have they though?" Mark wondered. "Here are some of the things that I know about from your own writings that I have had access to. You started off your journey by watching a Witcher consume his potions. Starting off with a bang you might even say. After that, it is rare that there hasn't been some kind of violence in your life. But we will start with the village of the Nekkers. Your first adventure. You nearly got hanged there Freddie, hanged for turning up and trying to help."

"Yes but..."

"And even allowing for that you saved a life and saw a child killed before your eyes in what must have been a truly horrible fashion. From there, and again, this is just what I know about. You were confronted, brutally, with the truth that being a lady and a lauded light does not fill you with virtue. You saw the pain and hardship in another's eyes. You actually got away relatively lightly with that one.

"But after that, you start to have all of your preconceived notions challenged. You made friends with a Doppler, slept with a Succubus and flame knows what else. You killed your first man. You killed several men from what I heard. You started to have your eyes opened to all of the horror and the brutality that people do to each other over the course of things.

"And then you went to Amber's Crossing. If you had been shown all the evils that men can do to each other, then that was the first time that you really saw what waits for us all in the darkness. You saw what's really out there. You learned that there are things in the darkness that cannot be swatted with a spear or even a Witcher's sword. You learned that there are some things that you just can't fight. And no-one would have blamed you if you had turned and run from that place. As I recall from the chapters on the subject, Kerrass even encouraged you to do that. Shortly before he kept the plan from you for the first time. A time which nearly drove you to madness.

"I might be dwelling on that a lot but according to your own account, you were tortured on a fundamental level by something which genuinely deserves the title of "Demon". How long did it take you to recover from that Freddie? I know the answer because I'm not stupid, but how long did it take you to recover from that?"

"Physically a couple of weeks."

"Don't patronise me Freddie. This is not the first time I've had a conversation like this. You and I both know that you still have nightmares about that time. You and I both know that you had one not less than a week ago when we were staying in that village after the wedding and you woke up screaming."

He was not wrong. The village had backed onto a small copse of trees that the villagers kept pigs in. The wind had been blowing that night and the branches had been tapping on the shutters of my hut.

"So what's the answer? How long did it take you to recover from that time with the Demon of Amber's Crossing?"

"It wasn't a Demon." I tried.

"Don't toy with me Freddie and don't dodge the question."

"I'm still not recovered." I admitted.

"Quite right. It is still that and some of the things that that being showed you that gives you the fear of Ariadne isn't it."

I nodded.

"So from there you travel a bit more and you meet Ariadne. A meeting during which you were poisoned and nearly died. Only being saved from serious and permanent damage, let alone your death, by being bitten by giant Spiders and magical healing. How close were you to death then Freddie?"

I didn't answer for a long time. "Hours." I admitted eventually. "Ariadne once reckoned that if she hadn't gotten to me then I would have been past the point that an antidote or her Spider's venom could have saved me in about half an hour. After that, if the Priestess hadn't directed Ariadne on how to heal me, my heart and Kidneys would have failed in a day or so."

Mark was shaken by that. He hid it quickly but I knew him better than that.

"Hours from death Freddie. And that was not the worse that you've been. Looking back over your adventures. How often have you been left being ill, being injured or being otherwise horrified by what you've seen. How many monster's has Kerrass killed while you have been in attendance, how many lives have you saved. How many lives have you ended."

He sighed and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry." He said after a while. "I am trying to be your priest here and sometimes, the fact that I am also your brother is interfering with that. My point is that you've been through a lot. I've spoken to the same soldiers that you have. They all agree that the life of a soldier is long periods of routine followed by occasional and sudden periods of intense stress, fear, rage and anger followed by another, much longer, period of routine and training.

"You can counter with the fact that Witchers go through more, as do questing knight's Errant that are righting wrongs. Knightly Orders like what the Flaming rose was meant to be. And there are other orders that try and do that, even while the bigger ones like Flaming Rose and Sansum's Wretches turn towards villainy and politics. You could argue that. But I would argue that they are trained in how to deal with seeing those things. In some cases, especially in the cases of what was done to the Witchers, they have been trained to the expense of themselves. Something else I learned from your writing. And also, that they rarely travel alone.

"Then you could argue that mercenaries go through worse. They can but they retire. Or poor folk... and they can and often do. Then they go mad or get sick, or get injured. And then they die. And that is what I am worried about happening to you."

I looked up at him sharply.

"I can prove it too. There was a time there where every time you published a series of articles on this or that, there was a period after whatever it was that took place where you needed to spend some time in a quiet room being looked after.

"You've even said so yourself. You don't trust priests any more. You like individuals, you trust Jerome, me and I think that that Bishop has grown on you. But Sansum or whatever the fuck his name was has ruined you for us. Even when men like Trent, Danzig and the rest come into your life, you resist their influence on you.

"You've tried to drive Ariadne away on several occasions by my count. A couple of times you did so accidentally, this time you have done so deliberately. And when this is all over you are going to buy her some flowers and some sweetmeats and whatever else she might want.

"I don't know, do Vampires like cuddly toys?" He wondered before refocusing.

"But you've done all of that because you were once shown the sinister vision of a dark and magical woman by a creature.

"You don't trust your family any more because people have told you that someone close to you will betray you and because Edmund turned out to be a heretic deviant. Of course we have betrayed you. It happens all the time. Sam drove you and the people that saved you out of the castle. Kerrass took you to see his Goddess without proper warnings. We betray each other all the time, it was one of the things about this Goddess' words that I liked and agreed with her about. We always hurt each other.

"But that distrust means that you don't trust us to help you when the time comes and you need to be helped. And you need to be helped now Freddie."

He sighed and peered into his cup. "Flame but I would kill for a beer." He stomped over to get another cup of tea. He didn't offer me another one as I hadn't drunk the first one.

"What with Mark?" I asked automatically. I was disoncerted by how close to home some of those comments of his were. Trust did come harder to me now. I was closing myself off from people. The only person that had been immune from that to date was Kerrass.

And then Kerrass had taken me to see the Goddess without telling me what the risks were. And thus, he had forced me to go against my own moral choices and now... How much had I been pushing him away? Was our estrangement my fault?

I felt the tears again as the thoughts scuttled across my mind. Mark sat back and watched it all happen.

Had I set out to sabotage my relationship with Ariadne? Had I deliberately done all of those things because I was afraid of the implications from Amber's Crossing?

Had I turned away from my family, learnt to distrust them because of Edmund? Because of what Sam had done to Chireadean and the other Elves in Northern Redania.

All of these thoughts shot across my mind as I thought. It was like being flogged by a whip with multiple tails. Each tail being another question.

"All of those thoughts are true to a certain extent." Mark told me after a while. "Don't think about them too hard or they will drive you mad though. What are you thinking about?"

"Don't you know?" I wondered. "You seem to have read my mind easily enough with all of the other things that you have been saying."

"That's just experience." He told me as he sat back down. "And, because I'm your brother, I know you better than most. You are questioning your existence and behaviours at the moment. You are trying to figure out how much of it you did consciously, how much of it is true and how much of it is me being unfair. That stuff can take days, or even weeks to unravel so don't force yourself through it."

He sighed and rubbed his brow. I began to get a feeling of just how tired he was again. Then his hand dropped.

"What were you thinking about?" He asked. "Be honest now."

"I was wondering if it was my fault that Kerrass and I have grown apart. I was wondering how much of it was my fault that Sam is becoming estranged from the family and I was wondering if it was my fault that I have hurt Ariadne so much."

"Ah," Mark nodded sagely but also slightly mockingly. "Self-loathing. I should have recognised it. The answer is... yes. At least partially. Kerrass? I don't know enough about what was happening there but in that regard, I would suggest that it takes two people to break up a partnership. And he does have some things to answer for in all of that. Sam? Sam is going through some things at the moment. Ariadne? That is a conversation that you will have to have with her. Just remember that when you do so, she is not a human woman and you cannot equate what we think and feel with what she thinks and feels. But overall? It is not that simple. Some of these problems arose because you have been pushing us all away. While other problems have occurred because we didn't see the danger and take steps to help you. I include Kerrass in that regard. I do think it would be a shame if the two of you parted ways here though."

I nodded, finding that I agreed with that.

"So you also asked what you needed our help with?" Mark sighed and stretched. "Getting old Freddie." He moaned. "Not used to sitting in cold huts talking to stubborn brothers."

I grinned despite myself.

"Let me ask you another question first." Mark said. "How much longer do you think you can survive if you keep moving forward the way you are doing at the moment?"

"You think I should stop travelling with Kerrass?"

"That's not what I asked. Although it's interesting to me that that is the first thing that has come to your mind. Do you want to stop travelling with Kerrass? I am not the only one that has noticed that your published articles are becoming less and less about Witchers and Kerrass as a whole and rather about the people and places that you go and meet. Including you as I recall. So, do you want to stop travelling with Kerrass?"

I considered the question. "Not like this." I decided. "I wanted to stop in the North. I remember being so angry with the Hounds of Kreve and the people that we would later find out were involved with the Cult of the First-born. I probably should have stopped then. But then I would not have met Helfdan and the crew of the Wave-Serpent. I would not have met Samantha and helped with that village. I would possibly have not even ensured the destruction of the cult of the First-Born."

Mark nodded. "You are afraid to stop now. You want to stop but you are worried about what's going to happen when you do stop."

"Yes. That's it. I kind of wanted to go out on a bang you know. We've failed everything for a year and now..."

I shook my head.

"You have not failed everything for a year Freddie. Who told you that?" It was Mark's turn to be appalled. "You put down a perversion of church knighthood. You helped end a cult and brought to light the darkest heresy that the north has seen since people started worshipping the Lion-head."

We both made the sign of the flame over our hearts.

"You ended a thousand year old curse. Literally a millenium old curse and saved a village from killing itself. Because I read those articles too and you stopped those villagers attacking a Witcher and a Unicorn. An action that would have ended fatally for that village. You did not find Francesca's ki... kidnappers. But that is not a failure that you can recriminate yourself for. You have nearly killed yourself to do that and you are not alone in your efforts."

He peered at me carefully. Presumably to guage whether I had caught the fact that he had nearly said Francesca's Killers rather than Kidnappers.

"Who told you that you have failed Freddie? Point them out to me and I will end them for you. I will raise up an army. I will speak to the Empress and we will chain them over hot coals for you. You have not failed this year. You have accomplished extraordinary things. Extraordinary, amazing things. Do not forget that."

His words fell into the silence with a thump.

"So how do you help me?" I wondered.

"I dunno. How do you want us to help you?" He grinned. "You can't keep going the way you are doing. You will get yourself killed or drive everyone away till you're by yourself, and then get yourself killed. Do you agree with me on that?"

I nodded.

"So you need a route forward?"

I nodded again.

"That I can help with." Mark grinned. It was not a nice grin. It reminded me of the grin of a headsman, just before he executes a child murderer.

"Did you know," Mark began, settling himself back in the chair. "That you have founded a movement?"

"A what now?"

Mark did not stop grinning.

"You have started a movement of people. Not entirely successful people but there are a growing number of them nonetheless. People see you and all that you have accomplished and they have set out to emulate you."

I was horrified. "What an awful thought. Why, in the name of the flame would they want to do that?"

"I think that the question has a better answer of "Why has it not happened before now?" Think about it Freddie. Your journey has made you famous. It has grown the families reputation, wealth and standing to incredible amounts. To a degree where it is becoming likely that you will need to stop before people start uniting against us in case we start wanting to bring down the Empire.

"Indeed, Emma once commented to me that it's a good job that we are so firmly tied into the Empress and her good graces because otherwise we would have been ordered dissolved a long time ago, precisely for this reason.

"You are on first name terms with the Empress, a significant chunk of the Lodge of Sorceresses, the head of Imperial Intelligence and numerous other people. You know the High-Sherriff of Redania, the Queen of Skellige as well as her Jarls and numerous others as well.

"You are in love with, and engaged to be married to, an astonishingly beautiful Vampire woman who is going to remain looking that young and beautiful for the rest of your life. And, much to my astonishment, she loves you back.

"On a personal level, when you marry her you will take on the title of Count as a result. Even our enemies, which Emma assures me are still out there, cannot deny you that as they continue to deny Sam the same kinds of titles. You are a Professor of the Oxenfurt academy at a time when they are competing with Ban Ard over who has the biggest and most powerful centre of learning open to non-magical people in the Continent. You have written several books on the history of various places, Witchers both as a collection of your articles as well as the clinical and scholarly work on the subject. And you have other books coming out.

"And everywhere you go. Literally, everywhere you go. You make friends, bringing your family more prestige and often more money. For example, you met Samantha, the inestimable herb woman who's healing draughts have already made me feel better than I have in months. She comes with her sister who is now Ariadne's cook. It's simple fare but it's better cooked simple fare than I have eaten in all but the palaces of the really rich and famous people who's tastes go in that direction. And she is learning new recipes every day.

"I understand that you have secured trade rights with Skellige, you have acted as first contact between the siege engineers of Temeria and the Skelligans who are rebuilding a keep. An act which, Emma tells me, means that as a family we are being credited with a huge increase in Temeria's economy. And our ships travel trading routes that have not been travelled in years.

"To an outside observer, your life is a blessed one."

I could not meet his gaze.

"To an outside observer maybe." I muttered. "They should try living it."

"That is the point." He told me. "They are trying to live it. It is a new profession for younger sons. They go travelling, trying to find things to write about, wrongs to correct, curses to lift, famous people to chronicle and write about. They're trying to help villagers and farmers and things whether that help is wanted or not."

"Doesn't sound too negative." I commented.

"Ah, but they are missing something. Many of them are younger sons. Their parents are still filling out the "One for the land, one for the church and one for the military." pattern. But they still have spares occasionally or have a child that is so namifestly unsuited to one of those roles and then they are sent out to follow the "Freddie Coulthard" path. Or parents are seeing the things that you are doing for your family and are sending out their children in an effort to do the same. Or kids are tired of the arranged marriages that they are being sent to and saying, "Maybe I could go out, become a famous scholar and find a Vampire woman to love?" You would be astonished at just how many people are dying because they go into the hills to find a vampire like Ariadne."

"There are a lot of dead cretins I assume."

"Yes. They do not understand that the danger in going to look for monsters is that sometimes, you find them."

"Ariadne is not a monster."

"Not to you she is not. Nor to me for that matter, but many still hear the term "monster" and leap to their own conclusions. But people are trying to emulate you and your path. And they are doing so without all of your advantages. They don't have a friendly Witcher to follow around and guide them. They don't have a fore-knowledge on how some of these things work. They are not as "good" as you. When they try and help villagers and farmers, they are condescending and expect gratitude for clearing even the low bar of being vaguely polite to the village folk. They are going to Skelligans and expecting to be respected before realising that Helfdan and his crew were special..."

"I would say unique," I commented.

"And I would agree. They are arrogant, They do not understand that you came across all of these things by accident. You did not fall into Ariadne's bed chamber because you wanted to be there. You were forced in at the point of a sword. That Ariadne didn't fall in love with you because of your rank, wealth or title. But because you stood up to her in order to save your, and her, life. That you weren't there looking for a forever young and beautiful lover, that you were just looking to survive.

"They don't understand that all of your progress has been due to equal hardship and pain and suffering. They don't understand that your wealth, prestige and... knowledge has been bought with horror to be endured. They think that they can get the good, without the bad. And then, when these people die at the fangs of some Bruxa or Ekkimora, they are surprised and say, "But Freddie got Ariadne to love him."

"When they walk into the dark and sinister woods to document what's there. They are surprised when the Leshen is angry at their intrusion and summons a flock of crows to peck out their eyes. They don't understand how hard it is.

"Answer me another question here Freddie before I ask you to do something, before I give you your penance if you prefer to think of it that way. You have started to paint over all the times that you get sick haven't you. Or you've started to underplay it. That time that you got sick when sailing from the mainland over to Skellige, you got really sick then didn't you."

"Yes I did." I admitted. "Sea sickness was only part of it, but I got really sick and no-one could figure out why. I don't get motion sick, they don't know whether I ate something bad or whatever but I was really sick then."

"How sick? Tell me now."

"Mark, at one point there was a conversation as to whether or not they should send for you, Emma, Ariadne and Sam."

Mark sat back. I think he was shocked but he had expected the answer.

"The cold on Skellige. Apparently you walk differently now. What happened about the cold?"

"You know these answers don't you?"

"Yes. But I want you to admit them."

"I lost two of my toes to Frostbight on my right foot." I finally admitted. There was a hole in my boot after that last fight and with the numbness of after battle come-down, I didn't realise that that pain was different from the other pain that I was feeling. It wasn't until I peeled the boot free at the inn that we stayed at that we realised that I had been frost-bitten."

Mark nodded. "You were sick again after it all though weren't you."

"Yes. I have nightmares about the battle on the beach. I have nightmares about how good that axe felt in my hands and I have nightmares about what would happen if I hadn't been able to stop. More nightmares to add to all of the other nightmares that are already floating around my head."

"I've seen some of your scars Freddie. I've heard about some of the others. I know that you have pushed yourself and pushed yourself. I know that you have gone to the very point of madness and even beyond it on occasion. I know that the only reason that you are still alive is due to the magic of people that have cared about you. I know that Kerrass pulled you out of a forest of madness and I know that it took a month to properly heal you from that to a point where you could function as a human being. I know that you wake up nights screaming and I know that you are now afraid of the very people that might help you."

"Priests, friends, family..." I said for him. I didn't want to listen to another list of people that I had hurt.

Mark looked at me flatly. "And Ariadne." He said. "Never forget that Freddie. You are afraid of her too. You talk about that less now... I guess because you feel as though you should have gotten over it. But you are still terrified of her aren't you?"

"You keep asking me these questions." I realised that I was angry. "And you know the answer."

"I do. But I want you to hear the words. You are afraid of me. You are afraid of Emma and what we're going to say to you soon. But you're afraid of the two people that you are closest with. Ariadne and Kerrass. You have been driven part of the way to that pointby circumstance and events, but you have taken yourself the rest of the way."

There was another pause as he allowed those words to bounce around my skull.

"Why did you stop writing about your injuries and your illnesses?" He asked.

"I don't know." I answered promptly. "I suppose I thought it was going over a problem that I had already talked about. I thought it would come across as self-pitying. The amount of mail I got, comments shouted at me in the street that told me that I should just get over my fear and plough the Vampire. I could hear the same voice goading me. That I should get over it. That I should be better."

"You said it was one voice you heard."

"What?"

"You said it was one voice that you heard goading you. "The same voice" you said."

I stared at him in horror as I realised where he was going with this.

"Who's voice is it that you hear? Who's voice is that you hear telling you to get over the fear. To plough the wench, to get over the illness and to move past the horror that you have seen. Horror that many others, including me I think, would have broken under. Who do you hear?"

"I don't know." I lied.

"Come on Freddie, you can do better than that. Who is it? Is it me?"

"No."

"Is it Sam?"

I shook my head.

He asked me some other names, childhood bullies and the like. Names that I am protecting, but it was none of them.

"Is it Edmund?" He asked towards the end. The tears running down my face and I shook my head.

He nodded, he had already known the answer to this as well.

"Is it Father?" He wondered. Although the question was rhetorical.

And I sobbed, only to feel a brother's arms around me.

To say that I wept is an understatement. I howled for a long time.

When we finally pulled apart, I saw tears on Mark's face too.

"Ah Freddie," he heard the catch in his own voice. "Ah Freddie, we have so much to talk about."

I nodded. Mutely. "How did you know?" I asked as I realised that, in talking to me, some of Mark's old scars had been torn open as well.

Mark laughed bitterly. "Do you think you are the only son who is still trying to please a dead man?" He took a cloth and wiped at his eyes. "I have a little over a year to live. Eighteen months at the outside. Part of me hopes that I will find Father waiting for me. I want to see him so very much but another part of me dreads that moment." Mark's lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. "The bastard has some answering to do."

I nodded as I found a similar anger in my own chest.

"Ah Freddie." Mark sighed as he stepped back. "I hope you know, just as I know, that Father was proud of you, and would be still prouder of your accomplishments don't you?"

"I hope so." I said. "I hope so but part of me thinks that he would be bitter that he didn't climb quite as high as his children have after him."

"We have done well haven't we." Mark sniggered.

"We have." My mood soured. "Those of us that have survived anyway."

Mark nodded, his own sadness returning.

"So you have told lies about your health and you have pushed yourself far beyond the point where you should have stopped and taken a break." He told me. If I had my way, you would have stayed on Skellige and allowed yourself to be looked after by people that obviously care about you. Or you would have gone back to Coulthard castle and let some people pamper you. Or come straight here, but then I suppose you and Ariadne might have had difficulty keeping your hands off each other."

"That might have been an issue." I admitted.

"So, speaking as your priest and confessor, I have some penance for you." Mark told me.

"And what is that?"

"Your writing is supposed to educate the people. From the highest noble to the lowest villager. So I want you to educate them all about the dangers of doing what you do. There is no point in going back and filling in the gaps. But I want you to talk about it now. Your unpublished articles are from the end of the Skelligan adventure right?"

I nodded. "I have already got some notes on the journey south and the meeting with the Goddess."

"Alright. So here is what I want you to do. You agree that you can't keep going forward like this?"

"I do,"

"So I want you to write about the anguish that you felt after the incident. I want you to write about the physical pain that you have been driven to by that event. I want you to write about the arguments. I want you to write about your recovery, slow as it might be, and I want you to write about how awful that you have felt during the process. I want these people that idolise you, correctly, to know the cost of what it takes to be Freddie von Coulthard and all the damage that you have done to yourself and the people that you have cared about. Make them feel it Freddie. Make them read about the dark side of what happens to you. Can you, will you do that Freddie?"

"I think so. I will lose readership. People don't want to read about this stuff."

"They don't and some people will leave. Others will just skip past it to whatever it is you decide to do next. Which is the trip to Toussaint by the way. But some people might read it and realise the dangers involved, and take some extra care and practise some compassion."

I nodded my agreement.

Mark nodded. "Then I declare you forgiven Freddie. Now come, pray with me."

And two brothers knelt in the light of the Eternal Flame and prayed for our forgiveness.

And maybe, for our redemption.

(A/N: Once again, stay safe out there guys. Love to you all and to your families.)