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

163. Chapter 163

(A/N: So here we are at the last story arc. I am both excited and very nervous about this one. It's been building for the *mumble mumble* years that I've been working on this now and I am far from the same person that I was when I started planning this climax all that time ago. I don't know if I would have planned it differently if I had known who I was going to be and what would have happened in the world in the intervening time. But to do it differently than I had planned it now would be to betray all the work I have done to seed this stuff. So here we go.

Also, I have a request. Please could people be careful about what they put in reviews (FFN) and comments (AO3) to be careful not to spoil it for people reading later? I know that some people have seen the twist(s) coming for some time and have commented in the past. But could we avoid putting it directly into the feedback so that we don't spoil it for other people that might be just starting at the beginning and checking reviews to see if it's for them, please? EG: "I KNEW IT" rather than "I KNEW (specific detail) was at the root of all things." I don't edit comments or reviews deliberately but people have posted things that could be considered spoilers and now that we are at the end of all things, I don't want to ruin anyone's enjoyment.

Thanks for your consideration.

I am also trying something new with a spell/grammar checking process to try and not melt my laptop but still have things being legible and readable. Fuck, I'm really nervous about starting this, need to stop procrastinating now..)

(Warning: This is the climactic arc and a lot of shit is going to go down. This is my generalised warning that things are going to get bleak and dark before they will (hopefully) get better. In this chapter, you will see a character going through a severe depressive episode.)

Hello.

You and I have never met, nor have we ever spoken. I am not Professor Coulthard. I am his publisher and in the early days of his writing, I was also his editor. Due to the work of several people, including Professor Coulthard, I can now hire people that are much better at that task than I to do that for me.

My name is Dorthan and if the name doesn't give it away, I am a dwarf and, again, thanks to the efforts of Professor Coulthard and his family, as well as sponsorship by the University, the Imperial doctrine of education and the grants and generosity of several patrons, I own and operate one of the largest printing presses in what was once the Northern Kingdoms. Certainly, the largest within Redania and it is situated in the University city of Oxenfurt.

So, why are you hearing from me and not Professor Coulthard? Especially given that the article, or pamphlet or… the format is still being argued… that is in your hands is published under the heading of "A scholar's travels with a Witcher"

An awful title by the way, but he wouldn't listen then and by the point that he was having some of his arrogance chipped away, the brand was too established to set aside.

I am writing this as I look out of my office window to the East. It is night-time now but I know that on a clear day, I can look out over the river and over the wooded canopy to the hill upon which rests Castle Coulthard. It takes the better part of a day to travel that road by gentle horseback, several hours if you gallop. I promise that this is relevant information.

As I look out of my window now, we can see that the horizon is burning. Not just the place that Coulthard castle is, but the area surrounding it too, the woods, the villages and… Gods of Fire and Stone only know what else.

I am sitting at my desk and I am writing this as the volume that was brought to us out of that fire and smoke is translated. The volume is Professor Coulthard's diary. Since he returned from the South, he has gone everywhere with this diary. When I first saw it in his hands, I asked him where it came from and he told me that his sister bought it for him. He held it like a shield, like a talisman and he went everywhere with it. And when I saw it, in the hands of his messenger, I feared the worst.

The messenger came out of the night. She was tired, aching and covered in soot with tear tracks carved out of the grime on her face that made shiny lines on her cheeks which she brushed furiously as though the tears offended her. But she couldn't stop crying. She was bundled in a dark cloak and had a long sword on her hip and a dagger in her hand while she handed me an oil-skin-covered bundle. She had insisted on handing it to me personally and had threatened violence to my clerks and guards if they prevented her from fulfilling that mission.

Underneath her cloak, there was a quiver of arrows on her other hip and she was wearing Coulthard livery. The eyes that she still wept from were darting from face to face, marking those faces in her memory. She kept her distance from them all and was ready to strike at any moment.

She was an elf and I know her.

Her name is Carys, not to be confused with Queen Cerys of Skellige whose ship is docked at Novigrad docks. She is one of the Elves that was brought out of the North by Professor Coulthard. She regularly attends upon Lady Emma Coulthard when she comes to town. She is startlingly beautiful although she cuts her hair awkwardly and unevenly. She doesn't talk to anyone other than Elves, Lady Coulthard and the man that appears to be her husband. She pretends that she can't understand human languages, or humans when they speak Elven to her. She seems to hate everyone and everything and from what I understand of her history, we deserve her hatred.

Up until tonight, I would have said that she only had a tender expression on her face when the giant Skelligan warrior, who is her husband, isn't looking at her and she can direct that expression at him.

Tonight, she was weeping as she handed over the bundle and she spoke in the language of Redania. Her voice was soft and articulate. Professor Coulthard would have called it "educated" in tone and delivery. I would agree with him.

"He told me to give you this." She told me. "He told me to get you to publish it and to send copies far and wide. He told me that it was vital. He told me to leave the fight so that I could get this to you."

She said all of that and turned to go. I had questions. Of course, I had questions. But she ignored them, vanishing into the night.

An hour later, the first bells of alarm began to ring as people that were fleeing the fires and the smoke started to arrive in Oxenfurt. She must have ridden her horse to the point of death.

I opened the bundle and knew the volume for what it was. I ordered one of my apprentices up to the University to wake Professor Coulthard's clerk to translate the writing. The professor writes in this spidery kind of script, sweeping lines, dashes, dots and squiggles. Using this language he can write down fast conversations with a speed that is terrifying to us mere mortals and when it is read back it turns out to be more than accurate. But his method of language is adapted from the normal version of this scholar's language with his own idiosyncrasies and encryption. He does this so that people can't plagiarise his work. Like many scholars he's paranoid. So the only person that can translate his writing is his clerk. It also means that no one else can pretend to be Professor Coulthard and… well….

That's not important.

The Clerk is a man who works tirelessly and whenever a new manuscript turns up on some imperial messenger train or at the hands of a messenger from the castle, he goes to action and writes out what Professor Coulthard says. Like all such men, he is woefully underappreciated.

He arrived, tugged from his bed and protesting.

He also recognised the book.

When I opened up the book to check what was inside, a small piece of hide had fallen out. On it were some lines scratched. It had taken me a moment to recognise that the lines were a message and not some damage on a piece of hide that would barely serve as a bookmark. I had carried it around with me, along with the diary, until I knew more. I handed the clerk the hide first. He turned it around a few times before he saw the message. He read it quickly and his eyes widened before he read it again more carefully.

I can always tell when a man is reading something and where he is in the document, it's about the eyes. Always watch the eyes.

I read the clerk's horror in those eyes.

I had a piece of parchment and some ink and quills handy. I passed them to the clerk and he seized them and he translated this message from Professor Coulthard.

I am betrayed. Kerrass is dead and Ariadne killed him.

I am fleeing now, I will not make it and it will not be long before I am caught.

I am doing my best to draw them away so that my messenger can get through.

I did not believe in evil until tonight. Now I do not know what to believe.

I hope that I did not see what I saw.

Publish this, I hope that there are some clues here, something that Ciri or someone can use.

Publish it, warn people. Horror has come.

I cannot believe that Ariadne is a betrayer. I think she is a weapon which means…

What was in the bag?

I believe… I don't know what to believe.

People are being used. Including Ariadne and possibly including me.

Get to safety. Run. Let them know.

I can't think. I need to run, get away, carve a hole for…

Warn people. The Coulthard banner is raised in rebellion.

I have known Professor Coulthard for a long time now. I knew him when his first articles turned up, sent and published by his professors. I have seen him at his best and his worst.

I saw the shell of the man that arrived in Oxenfurt after being tortured by the Knights of the Flaming Sword. When his fingers were broken and his nails had been pulled out. I saw the growing excitement in him when he was in the process of realising that he was in love. He was the last to know, but we all saw it. I saw the awful pride he had in him when he was proven to be right, about anything really. After that first year and his first articles were published and he started to become famous. I was really afraid then that the good, naive… child that I had first met was going to become yet another arrogant ass of a University Professor.

I saw him again when his father died. Something had happened in the North that had changed him. Not just meeting the Vampire, but something else. The man that came back south was different from the one that had departed in that spring of his second year on the road. He was better and it wasn't just his father's death.

As humans go, Professor Coulthard is a good man. He can be arrogant, stupid and painfully naive. He suffers from the sin of being blind when it comes to people that he loves. He is hard on himself and he is certainly guilty of painting himself, and the people that he cares about in a better light than I think they deserve. And it is certainly noticeable that he stopped talking about Kerrass' faults some time ago.

But I have never read his words and felt his fear, his confusion. He is a self-possessed man. He is impulsive, but in that note, I read disbelief, a shock that I have not felt before. My client, my colleague and my friend. He was losing his mind.

I cleared an office for the clerk to work. We asked for volunteers to man the press. We summoned the guard who also knows Professor Coulthard well and told him what had happened. We sent messages out, indeed my wife is currently packing our children off to go and visit her sister in Novigrad.

The Professor's warning means that my family got out ahead of the rush. I will always be grateful to him for that, even if this turns out to be nothing.

It is not nothing.

And now, as I write this, introduction. Lending a piece of myself to what I have no doubt is going to be historic, the presses are working, setting up those first translated phrases.

I have guardsmen with mounted horses waiting for the first copies that will be travelling North to Novigrad and still more that will be travelling South towards where the Empress is encamped. I hope that there are clues, explanations and whatever else is going to be needed to prevent disaster in what I am printing. I have decided to just publish all of it. I don't know what is relevant and what is pointless, so you will be able to play at being a historian if you are reading this in the future, or play detective now while you decide what is important, what will be important and what was important. There will be a lot of pointless information is what I am saying. But I hope, I do, that there is important stuff in here. He didn't date his entries which makes life more difficult. We only have a rough idea from time passing as to his comments.

I hope that my wife and children are safe. I hope that I have made a difference.

Poor Professor Coulthard. Today was supposed to be the happiest day of his life. Delayed first by a storm of all things. But now?

Poor Freddie.

Also, for those people that are reading this and trying to figure things out. There is likely to be a lot of fluff. Professor Coulthard has a tendency to waffle, even in his diaries but we don't know what is relevant. So we are just printing the entire thing.

Over to the Professor.

Entry one.

I can't stop writing.

I have been home for three days now and I wished that it was something other than what it was. It was not a triumphant homecoming. It was not a…

Flame.

Emma lost her temper with me this morning. Not for the last time either. She is trying to understand what is happening to me. Much as I am trying to understand it myself. Poor Emma, she doesn't know…

I think Mark understands it. Poor Mark.

I'm told that Shani, Kerrass, Laurelen and Ariadne sat with Emma and Mark, as well as Rickard, the leaders of the guards and the other household staff to warn them about the state that I was going to be in. As I say, I think Mark got it. So did Rickard I think.

Emma did not. She is angry. She is trying not to be and that makes it worse. She swears, she looks me in the eye and swears that it isn't my fault. That she is not angry with me. But I can see it in her eyes. I can see that thought going on. That she thinks I should have come back sooner. That she thought I was better. That I had been cured of this kind of thing.

They were my thoughts as well.

Why is this happening again? Why do I lie in my own rooms and weep and sweat and tremble?

The other night, the second night of my return, I did little other than sweat and tremble in my bed. I was left with the feeling that my thoughts and mind were going round and round and round and round and… I just wanted to get those thoughts out. So it suddenly occurred to me that I should bash my brains out against the nearest stone wall because at least then I could get a bit of peace inside my own skull.

I think that Mark understands.

Poor Mark

The two Coulthard brothers, losing their minds together. He is ill. It is visible now. The periods when he is not present in his mind are getting longer and longer. Between them, Shani and Laurelen have invented a new medicine. Shani has gotten excited about it saying that we can use this medicine to solve countless problems with men and women that are losing their minds later in life. That this might even have been a cure. I asked her why that couldn't cure Mark now. She looked at me for a long time and told me that that was not how it worked. That it was too late for Mark. That he was just coming back occasionally and that he would still get a lot worse.

It was too late for Mark.

I told her that it wasn't fair. I told her that it was cruel that it took a good man's sickness to invent something that could have saved him. How many other good men or women have gone mad. Why didn't the cure start with them?

I got really angry and it hurt her. Then she got this kind of professional mask over her face. Her doctor's mask.

"It's not fair." She told me. "It's never fair."

And she's right.

If it were fair then Francesca would never have been taken and it would have been me that had gone instead. If it were fair then Sam and Emma would have been brought together by the family tragedies that we have had to put up with, not driven further apart. If it were fair then Edmund would have…

Flame….

I don't know how much longer I can do this. I can't… I can't breathe… I can't…"

Entry 2

Flame this is hard. Really fucking hard. Emma gave me this book. She did it so that I could have "somewhere to put it all." Her words. I don't know what to say to that. Put what?

Put my thoughts is the obvious answer. She thinks that if I write it all down then I will somehow be able to get those thoughts out of my head and onto paper. I know that they are all worried about me. I know that Emma cries herself to sleep at night and moans to Laurelen that she is losing her brothers. I hear them talking when I sneak about at night.

Mark is a lot worse than he was when I last saw him. It seems stupid to say that, as though it's even remotely surprising that that might be a thing. The man is dying. And even worse, Shani says that he's going to get a LOT worse before…

Before he just doesn't wake up.

I apologised to Shani for what I said to her before. She forgave me. Of course, she forgave me. I honestly think I would have been happier if she had been angry. She told me that if that is the worst thing that she has to listen to when she tells a patient's family the bad news, then she was having a pretty good week.

I didn't like the sound of that and threatened to get angry again.

My respect for the woman is endless and I still think that Rickard is a lucky man. He's not as convinced. He loves her. He really does. So much that I can see the intensity in his eyes and the way that he feels. But it breaks his heart a little bit when a runner from the guard comes to her and she has to drop what she's doing to go and deal with… whatever crisis she is being summoned to deal with. He says that she made it clear to him that he would always be second place to the patients in her care and her duty. He understood that, he really did. But he didn't know how that would make him feel. He hates it, but that is precisely why he loves her.

Mark is tired and his death is going to be awful and when the end comes. There is more than a little conviction that we will all think it's a blessing. He sat me down when I got back and told me that the end was going to be awful but that he didn't want me to pre-empt that death. He doesn't want us to slip him some strong painkillers in order to gently push him over the edge into the next world. He understands that urge but he doesn't want it. He wants the end to come when the end wants to come. He will fight for every breath that he has, the same as Father did. He said that this trial was given to him by the Holy Flame and now he must set an example. He intends to use his position to show….

Something. I'm not entirely sure what.

They have pills for him now. The problem is that the pill is almost worse than the sickness. It would seem that because his heart is damaged, it needs to work harder to get the proper amount of blood around his system. So that blood doesn't reach the brain, or the lungs properly. In turn, that means his lungs are working too hard and filling with fluid.

I've probably got that wrong.

And his brain is not getting enough air. I don't know how that works and both Shani and Laurelen have tried to explain it. But that means his brain isn't working properly.

But the pill does something that helps the heart and lets it do its thing. Watching it is heart-breaking. He takes the pill and if he's having a good day, he sits and grimaces as the medicine gets into his system. Apparently, it makes him dizzy and leaves him feeling light-headed and unsteady on his feet. But then he is filled with energy and all he wants to do is work.

On those days when he is having a bad day, he takes the pill and you watch this face kind of relax, but then you watch his eyes open and by layers, you can see Mark come back into the room. Again, Laurelen and Shani have warned us all that this is going to get harder. That the pulls will stop working and will only keep his body moving and not be as much of a benefit to his mind anymore.

I hate it.

He can't take too much of the medicine because that will weaken his body even further. So there are times when he is just left to sit there. Just to sit there. Vacant. As though his body is just a suit of clothes that have been dumped on a chair. And then he will move and it will look as though my brother has just put his body back on again. He does all of this with a smile on his face and a hymn in his heart. He's followed around by church scribes and things in order to. I quote, "capture his wisdom when it is there." They honestly said that. It made me sick.

Francesca was taken from me and even as I write this, she is no longer my sister. Frannie, the girl that used to laugh when I tripped on the dance floor. She is becoming Saint Francesca. It's not just in Toussaint now. It's spreading.

According to rumour, the Empress has plans.

And now Mark is being taken from me. He is not going to be my brother anymore. Not the man that would pass me candy after Father had forced him to be particularly harsh in giving me a penance after his confession. He's not going to be the man who encouraged me to pursue my scholarly passions. He's not going to be the man with whom I used to sit up late at night and discuss theology and all of the problems and contradictions in scripture.

He's going to be another saint. I know it. His words are going to be noted down and they are going to go off somewhere and form a new gospel. His words are popular at the moment because he preaches about the hard work of everyone in society. Not just the farm workers in the field but of the merchants and the politicians and courtiers and kings and lords as well.

It's popular, even while I can also see how people are going to take it and twist it after he's dead and not able to defend his own speeches.

He's going to be a saint as well and then there will be no one left of the family. My brother and sister. Taken from Emma, Sam and I. The one by enemy forces that we knew nothing about and the other by an illness that we were powerless to prevent.

I just want my family back. I just want…

Damn it.

Entry 3

One day. I'm going to finish one of these entries without bursting into tears. One day.

Emma gave me this book. She did it so that I would have something to try and get my feelings out. So far, all it has done is get the bad thoughts to the surface and send me to weeping again.

I feel weak. I feel tired but most of all, I feel useless.

Poor Emma. And poor fucking me.

She is so angry, so frustrated and she doesn't understand it. And I agree with her. I really do. It shouldn't be like this. This should be the happiest time of my life. I get married soon. I get married to a woman that I genuinely love. Not some arranged marriage that my parents have put me up for the same as any number of other people my age would accept. I love her and she loves me. How fucking crazy is that?

But I am not excited. I am angry and sad and frustrated and I cannot stop crying.

Emma wants to talk to me about the wedding. She wants to talk to me about arrangements, flower decorations, songs, hymns, choirs, and attractions. She wants me to be involved with food and drink and where we should host certain guests and who would be coming and what was going to happen afterwards.

I told her that I didn't care. That was a lie. I do care. I know that somewhere deep down in the pits of my soul there is a version of Freddie Coulthard that really cares and is really excited about all of this stuff. But I can't reach him. I can't pretend to get to him and cheer him on. I just can't seem to ake all of that work on that kind of level and to try and pretend that I cared and could talk about it with some level of excitement.

She asked me if I wanted to call the wedding off. I didn't have words for that and turned my back on her. I couldn't tell her how I really feel. I couldn't tell her that of course, I don't want the wedding called off. I love Ariadne. Why would I want the wedding called off? I want to have the wedding. It's one of the few things that I have going for me.

She lost her temper for the second time and she finally expressed that frustration that I had seen building behind her eyes.

"I thought you were better." She said. "I thought you were over all of this. I thought you had gotten better and moved past all of the…"

I don't remember all of what happened after that. Apparently, I turned back to look at her and she fell back as though I had struck her. I didn't do that but…

She came to my room later and apologised. She was in tears. Laurelen had chastised her, as had Shani. They told her that the injuries that I had taken were more severe than could be articulated. That she should think of the injuries to the mind the same way that she thought of injuries to the back. Sometimes those injuries would just come back for no readily apparent reason and that no-one knew why.

So Emma came to apologise. I told her that she was right. That I thought I was over all of this too. That I so desperately wanted to be the man that Ariadne deserved and that Emma needed. The little brother that would love and care and put everything to right. That would write to Sam and patch up a family rift. That would help keep Mark stimulated when Mark was with us at all.

I told her that I wanted to be involved with the wedding plans and I wanted to be excited and I wanted to… I wanted to talk to her about it. I was looking forward to spending days discussing and arguing over seating arrangements but I just couldn't…

I couldn't think about that. I can't… I can't bring that caring out of myself.

I just can't…

Turns out that I'm not going to get to the end of this chapter either.

Kerrass left today, and with him goes the last illusion that this might only be a temporary break from travelling.

This isn't a pause in our journey. It's over. I've known it for a while but as I stood at the castle gate and watched him climb into his saddle and ride off, weaving his way through all the workmen that are setting up the generalised wedding area. It kind of sank home to me that he was really going and that it was all over.

I ached, I really did. I longed to go and get my horse and chase after him. Even though I know for a fact that my saddle and gear are locked safely away somewhere in a mysterious place that only Emma and the stablemaster know where it is. Even though the guards at the gate are under strict orders to prevent me from leaving on any unannounced journeys.

Ordered by me.

I still wanted to go with him.

Three weeks now that I've been back. Three, long stinking weeks and I feel like another one of my pieces of armour has been taken away from me. Another prop.

He would say, "Another crutch Freddie." And he would be right about that too. Stupid bastard. I would have thought that eventually, he would get bored of being right all the time.

Three weeks.

We started out with the best of intentions. We knew it was going to be bad. We knew that it was going to be hard. Ariadne has been helping but she has her own things to take care of and her own methods. She has a county to run after all. But Kerrass was there.

He seems to have wanted to fight off my pain with work. He's been the one that has dragged me out of bed. On more than one occasion he has turned up with a bucket of water prepared to pour it all over me should the time come that I haven't been ready or prepared to do the task for myself. He hasn't caught me out yet though.

Then he would have me run the walls with the other guards while he and Rickard sit and watch, laughing and joking with each other while the rest of us sweat in the increasingly warm weather before Kerrass moves on to train with me and he is pushing me hard.

There is a logic behind it, or at least I hope there is a logic behind it. The logic of the fact that if he works me hard then it's that much more likely that I will sleep properly. It's not true though. I still lie there for hours, staring at the ceiling, turning all the questions over and over in my head until I eventually pass out from exhaustion, only to wake due to an excruciating pressure in my bladder and the sound of Kerrass' footsteps coming down the corridor.

So Kerrass is gone.

He came to me yesterday. He came and looked at me for a long moment before declaring loudly at the dinner table that he would be departing in the morning. His stated aim was that he had preparations to make for his part in the coming festivities. People to fetch, money to make, arrangements and bookings to be made. He had things to do, or so that was his argument. And he is probably right. I hear rumours of Ariadne's weekend plans for the weekend before the wedding and it makes me a little bit nervous about what Kerrass has in mind for me.

But he announced these things and that was that.

I didn't sleep last night.

I've been travelling with Kerrass for three years now, maybe a little bit more. I met him in the early spring and it is now late spring, arguably the beginning of summer. It took us a long time to be friends and still longer to be able to tell each other that we were friends but then there didn't seem to be much else that we could…

And now he's gone.

The longest we've been apart before was when he appointed himself as the personal champion of Sleeping Beauty. An act that was supposed to exorcise some of his guilt over that entire situation and help the girl herself. I was coming home, reasonably sure that I know most of what I was going to learn about Witchers but we had promised each other that we would not be strangers. We knew that we were going to see each other again come the coronation which, at the time was only a couple of months away really.

This is going to be longer. Emma claims that it isn't and while it is true that…

Fuck.

It feels like it's going to be longer. I don't know what I'm going to do without him.

I was still up early this morning. I had visions of him trying to sneak off without saying goodbye. Trying to get away without some kind of extended farewell. I wasn't going to let him get away with that though. So I dressed and I was there by the stables ready to see him off. I was going to wave dammit and I was going to watch him get out of sight.

He was waiting for me. That smug smile that I remembered so well from our earliest adventures together. That smile that came out whenever something that he had ordered me to do that I hadn't seen as being particularly important, turned out to have saved my life, or his life or… something.

We walked to the castle gate. Rickard was waiting there also, on guard although I suspect that he had stationed himself there specifically so he could make sure that I wasn't going to try and run away. He needn't have worried.

Kerrass led his horse out of the gate and turned to look at me. He didn't say anything, what else could he say that we haven't said to each other over the years.

It wasn't going to be long. We both knew that. He had work to do. He had wasted enough time and he needed to get back out there. Dealing with the small Wyvern that had been attacking the eastern flocks had not been too much of an issue for him and now he needed to get back out there.

He was bored I think. Bored and sick of dealing with a petulant nobleman's son, riddled with self-loathing.

Ok, that last part is my putting words in his mouth but the sentiment is there.

He looked at me for a long time before holding his hand out.

Of course, I took it. I wanted to slap it away and hug him. Either that or punch him in the face and scream and weep and demand to know why he was deserting me. I shook his hand and then I went to pull away but he wouldn't let me.

"I will be back, about a month or so before the big day." He told me. "At the absolute latest."

"I know, we've said."

He smiled or smirked, it could have gone either way.

"I know we've said it Freddie, but I want to make sure that you know it. I will be back."

"Ok Kerrass," I said.

"You're doing fine." He told me.

"I don't fucking feel as though I'm doing fine," I told him, the tears threatening again. Those damned tears.

"Then trust the outside observers." He told me. Then he clapped me on the shoulder and swung into the saddle.

"Show off." I joked.

"We all have to have a talent." He replied. "And mine is to be better at this than you."

"Which of us is getting married again?" I demanded and he laughed before waving and riding off.

I watched him go. I stood there for a long moment. I don't know why, I wonder if I was hoping that he would come back. That I would look and see him turning around and slowly walking his horse back and not leaving after all.

Footsteps turned up next to me.

"You are doing better," Rickard told me.

I couldn't hold it in anymore and I fled.

Entry… Fuck I can't remember. And I forgot to number the last one…

Entry five.

I went to see Father today. I spent the day yesterday, walking around the halls of the castle and wondering what he would make of all of this. The conversation at the end of the adventure in the Black Forest is praying on my mind still.

I just can't get it out of my head. Was that Father?"

Mark says it wasn't, but Emma disagrees.

Laurelen has warned that if it was Father, then the Schattenmann was far more dangerous than we had previously suspected and Ariadne took a deep breath and tilted her head to one side.

"Fascinating." She said. The same thing that she said when I first told her about the entire conversation.

So yesterday, I was wandering around, turning things over in my head. It was a bright day, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. I stood on top of the castle walls and I decided that enough was enough. That I needed to start getting back on top of things. Easier said than done of course, but the decision was made. So last night, I told Emma and Rickard what I intended to do. There was some concern about that. There is a worry that I might head down to the crypt to kill myself but I told them that I had no intention of doing that.

They didn't look reassured. In the end, I had to agree to take someone with me. Carys, the elven wife of the Skelligan Sergeant whose name I still can't remember, was told to come with me. The argument was that she would not particularly care about my status, who I was, or what I was. That if I was going to do something foolish, then she would stop me without pausing to consider that I might be offended by this or that.

The thought amused me so I agreed.

Turns out that she still hates me. And she still pretends not to understand northern. And then she claims not to understand me when I speak Elder to her, claiming that my accent is appalling. In a strange way, I find this entire process incredibly amusing.

Emma claims that Carys is the best guard that she could wish for because no one dares get close to her for fear of the elf unsheathing her claws.

Their words.

But she came with me. I am pleased to realise that she still hates me. But there is a friendly, little brotherly cast to her hatred. It makes the entire thing seem real to me somehow. As though it can be quantified.

So I got the staff to prepare us something to eat which I packed into a small bag and we set out.

First, though, there was another unpleasant thing that I had to do. I also visited Edmund.

He's still there. That part of the crypt is designated for those people that are considered traitors to the family. It always said something to me that there is part of the family crypt that is meant for that. It says something, I have no idea what, but it says something. It's dark, damp and mostly derelict although there are signs that someone does come down here occasionally. I suspect Emma, even if it's just to spit on Edmund's headstone.

I talked to Edmund for a while. I don't know why. We were never close. I was never interested in his style of games and therefore, he found me boring. I wonder now, knowing what I do, whether he would have tried to recruit me into his cult if we had had a few more things in common. But then again, he was the first born and I was… well… not. So the thought of the matter is not wonderful in my mind.

I told him that I was sorry. I make a point of visiting him whenever I come down here. It would seem churlish to visit Father and not Edmund.

But when I was done, I went and sat with Father. I talked for a while and I like to think that he listened. It was a long conversation and by the end of it, I was feeling tired.

I hope it was Father that I was speaking to in that clearing of dreams. I really do. I hope it was him. And that he really was proud of me.

And he really did love me.

Tears still come, but they are different now, I think. Less desperate. I think… I think I might be on the mend.

Entry 6

Ding Dong I Was Wrong.

Went to go out and do some training today. The physical exercise was not too bad but when it came time for the weapons work, I had to stop because the tears were streaming down my face and my training partner was becoming uncomfortable. I was fighting the Knight of Toussaint that hated me. The Shadow from Amber's crossing. A cultist, a guard, a bandit, a wraith and I could barely lift my spear. I was sobbing and shaking as I fought.

And in the end, the fight was over and I was left trembling.

Rickard came and led me away.

Entry 7

I had another go at getting back into the swing of things today. Emma was going to Oxenfurt so I asked if I could go with her. I needed to pay my respects at the university and see if I could get some work done.

This didn't go well either. It had been decided that I should leave my spear at home and I wasn't allowed to carry my belly dagger either. By the time I got to the castle gates, I felt relatively ok. But then we started down the tree-lined path that takes us down to the market square at the foot of the hill upon which the fortress stands. Each tree by the side of the road was examined, by me, in detail to see if an assailant was hiding behind it. Then as we passed it, for a moment I was relieved until the point occurred to me that the assailant could have moved around the tree, keeping the eye contact broken. The logical rebuttal to this would be that we were riding with twenty or so guards which takes up quite a lot of space. And in turn, at least one of those guards would have seen someone sneaking around a bush like that.

But that assumes that I was thinking logically. And I wasn't.

So now I had potential assailants in front of me and behind me.

Then we came down to the market square. My wedding day is still several months off. But that still means that the market stall holders are desperately trying to sell their goods in advance. Desperately trying to get Lady Coulthard to buy their goods before the wedding comes and the chances of making a sale retreat. But there was a new horror in me now as well. That horror was the fact that there were people down there. Lots of people. People that I could, in no way, protect myself from. But that meant that I couldn't keep my eyes everywhere.

This was the square in which I had first met Robart de Radford. I remembered kicking him in the face, one of the highlights of memories that I have about our interactions that I have… enjoyed isn't the right word. But when I feel particularly low, the feeling of the impact shooting up my leg as I kick him in the face. The rattling crash of the armour and the strange kind of yelp, gasp thing that he did upon impact. I like to imagine the kind of smirk that some of his men might have hidden after I had done the deed.

I thought of this memory this time to drive the fear off. It didn't work. It only made me more anxious. Now I was looking around for him. Convinced that he was going to jump out and try and get hold of me at a moment's notice. I thought I could see him moving through the crowds. Again, the conflict between the logical mind and the instinctual mind. I knew he wasn't there. I know for a fact that he is somewhere in the North at the moment, running one of the Imperial customs stations on the road.

Apparently, he's quite good at it, even if it does mean that Coulthard goods have to travel miles out of the way. But his jobsworth nature means that he allows no pack to be unsearched and…

Flame but I'm sick of this.

I'm supposed to be using this journal to get my thoughts and feelings outside of my head. But I get distracted. My mind wanders off and down tangents. Some critics of my recent work, especially around the story of the Jack conspiracy, point out that I get diverted on these things. But I'm only ever distracting myself. And often trying to tell the reader how clever I am.

But they don't care. They want the knowledge and the story.

I don't care either.

After the market square, we went into the woods and I was already sweating. I could feel it running down my spine and making me shiver. It was springing up on the top of my head and making my scalp itch. My shirt was becoming sticky and slimy and I could feel my arms moving with the slickness. I had to wipe my forehead on what was not a hot day.

I started to see things. Things were hiding in the shadows by the side of the road. I do not doubt that Jack would find it all incredibly amusing. I saw assailants making their way toward us. I swear, I saw a dryad levelling her bow at me.

I blinked and shook my head furiously, intending to try and shake the illusions from my eyes. I knew they were illusions. I knew it. But I couldn't help but see those things there. I couldn't… get away from them.

I was breathing heavily as well and I felt dizzy.

Someone halted the column and Emma asked me if I was ok and I started to laugh hysterically.

She ordered four men to escort me back to the castle. One of those was Carys, bless her. One of the guards muttered something about me that I didn't hear. What I did see and hear was him crashing from his horse in a clatter of armour after she hit him in the face.

"You're fired." She told him in the broken northern language that she affects when she is forced to communicate in the common language. I know that she has quite a pretty voice, cultured and educated. I also know that she hates that voice, that gift from a former master who used her for her beauty and her grace.

"You can't do that." He claimed, climbing to his feet.

I felt a cold feeling rush over my skin and suddenly, I was no longer afraid, no longer trembling or sweating.

"Yes, she can," I said, calmly. "And if we've paid for that equipment you carry, you will give it back to us at the gate, or we will hunt you like a thief. I imagine that Carys would enjoy that."

One of the older men with us sniggered.

The man spat at my feet.

He said some things. Called me a coward, a race traitor and some other things.

"I won't be sorry." He said. "I won't regret not working for cowards, having to answer to fucking Elves and their unclean..."

"Ah," I said. "You must be new around here."

"And I won't work for cowards like you. Fucking weak and spineless, jumping at shadows. You wouldn't stand up to a real fight."

One of the guards that knows me better tried to diffuse the thing with a joke, diverting his, and my, anger onto himself. He told the errant guard that I would eat him for breakfast.

The now jobless man hurled some more insults. Told me that I hadn't met a real fighter.

I dismounted and told him to try it.

He did and ended up with my boot knife at his throat.

They had let me keep my boot knife.

That small patch of the road got really quiet and the only reason I didn't kill him was Carys' hand on my arm.

I threw the boot knife away and stalked off a little way before I fell to my knees and wept for a while. In the meantime, A rider rode back to the castle which wasn't far away. They stripped the sacked guard and also got rid of the man's brother and his friend before I came home in a cart.

The incident was reported to Emma later and Rickard told Emma that we needed better hiring tests.

I was already in bed, dosed up with a potion. I was woken for something to eat so that I could write this before the next dose kicks in.

Is this what my life is now that I've started to stand still? A series of challenges where men think they can make their name for themselves by challenging me to a fight and challenging the validity of what I've done.

Is this what life is like for Kerrass, Geralt and the rest. Men have made their names by the sword and now, people keep wanting to test themselves against those weapons.

I'm not sure I want to live like that.

Flame I'm tired. Hopefully, that's the potion beginni…

Entry 8

Spent the last couple of days struggling to do anything. Struggling to get out of bed. Struggling to bathe, struggling to do anything other than sit in a room and watch the life of the castle from out the window.

Even eating seems like so much hard work.

I fucking hate this.

Entry 9

Why is everything so tiring. I've just had to force myself to pick up this pen to write. This is taking so much effort.

Emma, Mark and the rest are trying to get me to get out of bed and interact with the world because they think I am trying to hide. But the truth is that I am in bed because I feel exhausted and just want to sleep.

Entry 10

Today was a good day.

Something twisted in my head yesterday and I went to Mark and demanded that he hear my confession. He was also having a good day and he laughed, reminding me of all of the times that I needed to be dragged, kicking and screaming to the confessional booth. I laughed with him.

I told him the story of the time with the Schattenmann and everything that I had done and was prepared to do. He listened to the tale gravely.

"You were lucky," he said. "We were worried that this might happen. That you would be overcome with a desire to get back on the road and find your sister."

"So why didn't you stop me?"

He sighed and nodded. "That was our mistake. We so wanted to believe you, your sister, Ariadne and me. We didn't see the danger and we wanted to believe you. You believed it and therefore we convinced ourselves that there was no danger. We were wrong."

"Huh," I grunted.

He agreed with me that I had done nothing wrong so my penance was to love Ariadne as no wife had ever been loved before, but if contact is made with the dryads of the Black Forest, then I should make provisions for my two, dryad bastard daughters.

"Because that's what they will be Freddie. If they come out into the world, you will need to contend with that. Not your fault, but you will have to be peaceful with what has happened.

I nodded, he probably wasn't wrong.

"Oh and Freddie," he said. "That would make a good series for the scholar's travels articles."

"But we failed."

"Did you?" He asked. "I wonder. But even if you did. People need to hear about the failures, just as much as they enjoy hearing about the successes. You have built this aura of invulnerability around yourself. It will be good to remind people that you are human just like the rest of us."

"Dorthan would hate me. Over and over again he's told me that readers are only interested if the result of the story ends in success."

Mark laughed at me.

"Are you honestly trying to tell me that if you turn up with a load of fresh articles for him, he won't fall over himself to publish the entire lot? How much money does he make off those articles again? How much does his readership boom whenever there's a new series of articles in them?"

"I have no idea."

"Neither do I. But Emma finds it funny."

We broke for dinner as I had gone to see him in the middle of the afternoon and then when dinner was over, we returned to his study and talked over the conversation that I had had with Father's shade.

Today, I woke up refreshed and full of energy. For a moment, I wanted to examine the feeling and decide what had caused the difference. But in discussing the matter with Ariadne, she told me not to look too deeply into things and to enjoy the sun while it was out.

So I took up my spear and ran along the walls. When I was done with that. I demolished a series of practice dummies, before just as quickly, smacking the crap out of a couple of sparring partners.

Today was a good day.

I don't know how long it will last but Ariadne is right. I must enjoy it for as long as I can.

Entry 11

I'm bored. I'd forgotten what that feels like. At first, I was enjoying the sensation because I couldn't remember the last time that I had been bored.

I had a good day yesterday and I felt the same today, I got up, ran the walls, and exercised in the yard with Rickard and some of the others. Then I went to…. And I discovered that I had nothing to do.

I went to see Emma who had just returned and asked if there was anything that she needed my help with and she laughed at me. She told me that the wedding would need my help in a few weeks and that they needed my help a week ago but there was nothing to do now except wait for some of the orders to turn up.

I went to see Mark, but he was having a bad day and he is surrounded by people that know how to care for a sick Mark far better than I do. Ariadne is back in Angral. Laurelen was doing something magical and technical in one of the cellars. Rickard is reforming the hiring procedures and testing for new guards that are being brought into the guards. Testing them to make sure that they can work with Elves and the like and to do our best to break down national lines.

He's enjoying the challenge and stuff…

But it doesn't leave me much to do.

I went to find a book in the end but my legs want activity and my mind found the book boring.

I need something to do.

Entry 12

I'm writing this from my study in Oxenfurt. I came into town today and I feel absurdly pleased with myself. The same strange energy and cheerfulness that I have been feeling the last couple of days is still with me. I keep waiting for it to fall down and for my good mood to evaporate and to find myself back in the pits of despair again.

It hasn't happened yet.

So this morning, not particularly appreciating the possibility of another day of looking for things to do. I dressed, prepared and went to Emma before telling her that I was going into town. She looked at me for a long time before nodding her agreement.

I felt myself kind of deflate. I had expected an argument, rows, strong words and so on. I mean we got there in the end, but I had expected the fight over whether or not I was allowed to go.

The fight was about whether or not I should take a guard or not.

She wanted to send half a dozen men. I wanted to go by myself. I have made that ride a couple of hundred times. Time enough that I can ride the road while thinking about all the things that I have to do from one end of the journey to the other. Enough so that I can do it without really thinking about it. I didn't need an escort.

Emma decided that I did. Rickard agreed and Mark frowned at me which was as good as I was going to get.

In the end, they sent one person which was when I realised that they were there to protect me from myself as much as protecting me from anyone or anything else.

They sent Carys. According to Rickard, she volunteered. I made a joke about her getting me away from the castle so that she could slit my throat and leave me in the woods. He told me not to give her ideas.

So I dressed in my travelling gear, took up my spear and dagger… I cannot speak for how much better that felt and I rode into Oxenfurt.

We made fairly good time because the road was mostly empty and for reasons that I didn't understand, I went and stood at the patch of ground where Edmund's and Cousin Kalayn's cultist group was burned by the mob.

The ground is still bare and burnt but there is a monument there now. It made me want to vomit to look at the damn thing. Carys was watching me carefully as I dismounted and went to read the inscription. I hadn't come to this place in a while and to see it here was strange. I knew that it was here, as a couple of friends had written and warned me about it. But to actually be here and to see it.

It wasn't much. A large stone that had been brought in from somewhere, possibly by a friendly troll. One side was smooth and into it was etched the names of those men… they were always men… that had died here. It was good work and I wondered who they got to do it.

The truly grotesque thing about it was that etched at the top was the symbol of the eternal Flame. And on the bottom, the ankh of life.

I read the names carefully to see if they had missed any off before I looked around to see if there was any other form of dedication. Something along the lines of "Paid for by Lord shithumper of Jam" or something. Someone who could be called an enemy that I could go over and hit, or arrange the destruction of. But there was nothing.

I did notice that there was a large bare patch of stone though and I felt myself smirk. This was a monument that was meant to change with time. It was fine now, just a lump of stone and a list of names. But in the future, someone was going to add a dedication. These men were going to become martyrs. Someone had decided it.

I resolved to find out who.

I laughed.

"Are you alright?" Carys wondered. She uses her normal, educated voice when she forgets that she's supposed to be angry. Not the harsh, heavily accented voice that she affects when she is pretending to hate everyone.

"I'm fine," I told her, before turning and climbing into my horse's saddle again.

We were not late getting into Oxenfurt, but we were late enough. My lodgings were the same as I had left them, but needed airing out. I diverted my landlord's questions about who "the girl" was and pointed out that I was getting married. Carys just glared at him and bared her teeth.

I managed to get an extra bed out of the landlord and between us, Carys and I manhandled it into my rooms. She claimed that she would have been fine on the couch, but I countered by telling her not to be silly.

We ate at the Merchant's rest. Not the best place to eat in Oxenfurt but far from the worst. I like it because they do good food and plenty of it, for not too much money. That, and they can appreciate when a man needs to be left alone. Carys ate her body weight in mashed potato and the chicken wrapped in bacon speciality of the house. I made jokes about having to roll her back to the rooms and she glared at me.

Entry 13

I love Oxenfurt. I think I always will. This is the city that turned a boy into a… well… slightly older boy to be honest.

Kerrass made me a man but Oxenfurt started it. I think the Imperial takeover has been good for Oxenfurt. The university has taken a hammering from Radovid's… ignorance and anger. And was suffering in comparison to the Universities of Kaedwen.

But Imperial money and the fallacy that the further away the learning is, the better the quality of knowledge, means that a large number of Imperial sons and daughters have started to come. You can always tell them apart from the Northerners. They dress in drab clothing for a while, walking around as though they've been smacked in the face and then after a while, they become the most debauched, wild dressing, wild partying group of students that you could imagine.

I did as I always do when I have been away from the city for a while. First up to the university where I checked my mail and the bulletin boards. I stopped in for a coffee with the Professor (Editor: I assume this would be Professor Coulthard's mentor.) for Coffee where he made jokes about the beautiful warrior woman that was standing behind me.

Not for the last time, I had to stop Carys from killing someone.

I agreed to give a couple of lectures and then escaped before too many people could learn about my presence. If I leave it too long then word gets out and I end up spending hours signing autographs. I don't mind but I had other things that I wanted to do today.

I paid a visit to Menden's book shop. Not because I needed any books but because Menden's son was a friend of mine and we regularly enjoyed complaining about girls. He propositioned Carys who hissed at him.

Like a cat.

I think she was enjoying herself.

Next, I went to Dorthan who, just as Mark had suggested, wanted to know if any more articles were coming from me. I was non-committal and he got quite angry. He was also the only person so far who has not commented on Carys' beauty. He nodded to her, as between two professionals just doing their jobs.

We ate lunch at a food cart. There's a man there that does these kinds of meat patties in a bun. No one has been able to figure out where he gets these patties from but they taste delicious. I mean, it's little more than meat in bread. You can pay extra for onions and a slice of cheese. But otherwise, the source of the meat remains a mystery. One of those mysteries that you kind of… don't want to know the answer to.

When I was a student, we had all decided that he makes them out of the rat population of Oxenfurt and pays the rat catchers.

I now know that this is not true of course because rat is rather gamey and most rat catchers use poison nowadays. And the city would certainly know if they were eating a poisoned rat.

But we ate there. The owner, a man called Bill, was older now, his moustache that had once been dark and bristly was now grey and a bit droopy. He had a young man with him that was close enough to his appearance to be called his son.

Carys eats like Kerrass does. She eats large portions because she remembers those days when she couldn't. She lives an active life and given her elven frame, she remains fairly slight. But this always gives the world comedy when she is eating something as big as her head and people watch.

She also eats quickly, again, because there were times when taking the time to savour the food was dangerous.

I went to the docks and watched the workmen unload for a while as I walked up and down the new queys. It's called Coulthard's harbour now.

Shani was out on some errand or another so I bought Carys and me a skin of wine each and we went and sat on the quad of the university, watching the world go by.

That grassy area is covered in memories for me. Not all of them are good ones, but the march of time is beginning to cover the place in nostalgia. I don't see the bad places now, or the bad memories. I laugh, rather than cringe, at all of the times when the pretty girls laughed before seeing my stricken face and saying "Holy flame you're serious." As though I would walk across the green to invite a stranger for a drink for the fun of it.

They were good times.

We dined at the University that night. Rich food, good wine and relatively good company. We didn't stay long as I was honestly becoming concerned that Carys would murder someone.

Entry 14

Gave a good lecture this morning and a merely ok lecture this afternoon. Had to remind myself that the keen students get up in the morning but the afternoon ones have given the students enough time to buy a skin of wine, drink it and think of lots of pointless questions. It was the wrong choice to talk about the mating habits of ghouls.

Entry 15

Gave another good lecture this morning on the subject of the effects of hunting Griffins on the local populace. I've given it before but it never ceases to make people think. The point is that there was a knock-on effect from hunting and killing Griffins that we can't see. Sometimes the world needs a natural predator. One young lady thought she had me with the question "Then why hunt them. You sound as though you are arguing that your friend the Witcher is doing bad things."

I gave the stock answer that, sometimes the wilderness gets affected. And sometimes, when the game moves on, the griffin chooses easier prey. Like livestock or a wandering human."

"But surely, that is acceptable if leaving the griffin alone brings benefits."

"It might be," I told her. "But what if that sheep, goat or cow was your last sheep and you needed the wool to clothe your children over the winter. What if the goat's cheese and the cow's milk are how you keep starving children from crying at the night. What if the shepherd has been told that if he loses a sheep, then he doesn't get paid and will be exiled from the lord's lands meaning his wife and children will starve.

"What if it's your mother, your father, sibling, child, cousin, or friend that has been eaten?"

She didn't like that but a couple of people were nodding.

"I've travelled with a Witcher," I told them. "These things always always come up when someone, often a noble, sees a nice, rich piece of land. He asks the locals who tell him that the land is in the territory of a beast. The noble decides that such things would come with acceptable losses, even if he believes the people which they rarely do. He sends the flocks and pays the settlers. Over time, the Griffins, because griffins mate for life, eat one in eight people. One in seven when there are young griffins.

"But let's be generous and say that it's one in eight. And that's not including those people who starve or are cast out in the Lord's insistence because of lost profits."

I took out my bag and passed it to one student.

"Each person takes out a stone and then passes the bag around. If it's a white stone go and stand over there, to the left of the hall, and if it's a black stone, to the right."

I watched. To my rather harsh delight. The questioner who was thinking that people were expendable got a black stone.

When it was done I turned to the white stones. "Congratulations, you are the seven in eight. You survived. Look back at the group of the dead. Some of you are friends, and some of you might even be seeing each other in a romantic sense. Some of you might be fuck buddies."

There is always some sniggering. Professor Dandelion taught me once that to shock or upset people, first, you must make them laugh.

"Now they are dead. Eaten because the lord decided that the benefits of allowing a Griffin to hunt were worth more than the cost of hiring a Witcher."

I let that sink in for a moment.

"Class dismissed," I told them. "Sorry for over-running a little bit. You can tell your other lecturers that they can yell at me for it. Kindly put my stones back in the bag on your way out."

Carys managed to hold her laughter in until the last one had left.

Sometimes. I love my job.

Heh, I can't even avoid going off on ridiculously pointless tangents when it's just my own diary.

Entry 16

It happened today. The first one of these that I've had in a long time, but it was inevitable I suppose. Very little that can be done about it. They always come up, always turning up out of the woodwork and always leave me feeling like hammered crap.

This time I was on my way to the University. I need to head back to the castle the day after tomorrow to help with something that… I don't care about it but need to go and sort it out. Probably some paperwork to sign or something.

I was on the way to giving a pair of lectures so that I could spend time in the office and answer questions and offer critiques on…

Dammit.

Carys and I had had breakfast. I have adapted to Kerrass' pattern of eating big breakfasts in the morning before moving on to a smaller lunch before a big evening meal. I wonder when that happened. He would laugh to see it. I always used to…

Dammit

We had had breakfast and were walking over to the University when he turned up. They are always the same, these kinds of people. Loud, angry and otherwise…

Actually, they are never the same. Some are fat with large florid noses. Some are tall and ascetically thin. Some are men, some are women, some are old, and some are young.

They are always angry.

This one was a younger brother.

He launched himself at me from… a group of milling students I think. He was already angry and shouting about how I was a murderer and a thief. How I was a schemer and a heretic.

Yelling about how I was a traitor.

I have no idea if he was genuinely trying to attack me. Not a clue in the world. I didn't even register whether he had any weapons on him. I do know that my head was more into the space of the lecture that I was due to deliver later, going over the immediate points and the salient arguments. So when he came, I reacted on instinct. Only a fraction of a heartbeat behind Carys who had her shortsword out and pointed at the idiot.

I had my spear and it was out, assembled and pointing at the man's throat at the same time.

"Oh," he demanded in shock. They are always shocked at how fast I move, or how fast Kerrass, and in this case, Carys, can move when we think we might be being attacked. Then a flash of fear crossed his face before the fear started to make him angry.

"So now you would kill me too would you?" He demanded. "Just like my poor…"

I didn't hear the rest of it. The guards were there as this was not the first time that it has happened and it will certainly not be the last. They are always on their toes when one of the Coulthard family is in town as Emma gets the same things as I do.

The guards surrounded him and Carys pushed me away, supported by another one of the town guards. She made me put the spear away and got me out of sight before I started trembling.

I looked into it later and it turns out that the man was the younger brother of one of the heretics that was burnt as part of the vigilante action where Coulsin Kalayn died. He had hero-worshipped his older brother and now that his brother was dead, he hated those that he saw as being responsible for it.

Being me.

When I'm in town, I get one of these, on average, about one of these a week. Sometimes it's relatives of people that I have killed or have outed as bastards. I try to hide the identities of the people that I write about, but I am not always successful.

Sometimes it's someone that has lost out on business to the Coulthards, sometimes it's someone complaining about what they see as the progressive arguments that Mark is proposing. Sometimes it's the relatives of those victims that I was unable to protect, demanding to know why I couldn't have done something earlier. Which is something that I sympathise with if we're honest with each other. I will admit that I normally handle the angry ones better than I do the weeping ones.

But it always happens and I hate it. I hate it. I did my best in the situation and I did my best to save as many lives as I could. I chose the values that I was taught and did my best to protect those that are weaker than myself.

In this case I was angry, furious even. I don't understand why parents and siblings and cousins and… friends and… Fuck knows who doesn't see those cultists for the unspeakably evil people that they were. I don't understand why people are ok with the rape, torture and murder of women and children. I don't understand why people object when these fucks receive justice. It is proven that they were doing these things. There are witnesses by the dozen. Evidence by the wagonload but people don't believe it.

They look for someone to blame and well…

I always have more trouble with the ones that are weeping.

The lecture went badly.

Entry 17

I have not been doing well the last few days and I seem to be the only one that seems to be surprised by this.

I'm keeping my head above water, but that's the best that can be said about it. The lectures are ok. The students aren't too annoying but I'm also struggling to keep my head in things. I want to be reading up on the Headless Horseman. A fascinating figure that I've always wanted to know about. The fact that this is not the same thing as the horsewoman of war has always fascinated me.

And why is he so associated with pumpkins and Jack o lanterns?

Jack

Heh

I have numerous sources on the subject now. Things are lined up, stacked up and ready to be read and researched. And I can't get into them.

I also have the first proofs of the Elder Vampire book to read over and go over. But I just can't focus on… whatever.

Entry 18

Talked with my tutor today. The old man is still my tutor, even though nowadays, we are technically colleagues. But he is still my tutor. He moves even less than I remember him moving before. But he still has the wisdom that I don't have. I was in his office complaining about the lectures that weren't going well.

He told me a couple of things that I need to take to heart.

"Throughout your career as an academic, you are going to give many lectures and write a lot of articles and books. Most of which, no-one will read. And regarding your lectures, some will be good, some will be bad and most will just be a recitation of facts. That is the life that you have chosen and that is the way that it will always be. None of us can be perfect at this for long. We grow bored."

He is right. I can remember many lectures during my time here that were merely aggressively average that I needed to remember simply for the content.

"But you Frederick, You are still young and you have yet to learn how to fake the interest that you are trying to generate in the students."

I nodded in acceptance of his point.

"Can I make another observation?"

"Since when has that stopped you before?" I wondered.

"A touch my boy, a touch."

I hated him when I was a student. I really did. He had this habit of just asking me questions, making me go the one step further. He made me a better scholar, and I hated him for it. Since being colleagues, he still does it, only now he expects the critiques in return.

"You are trying to do this too quickly," he said. "You have gone from being on the road for most of the last few years and now you are trying to go to the lifestyle of a Professor almost overnight."

"Hardly overnight."

"Nevertheless. Ease into it, my friend. Take it easy. We can use your lecturing skills, but if you burn yourself out?"

I took a deep breath. He was right. He normally is.

"Ok, so how do I…"

"Have you written up that latest adventure of yours yet? I, for one, am interested in The Schattenmann of legend."

I feel I'm being ganged up on.

Entry 19

I returned home for the urgent errand that Emma wanted me to be there for. It turns out that it was for cake testing. The opportunity to hire a baker who would sort out all of our desert needs. I had wondered why the castle cook wouldn't be taking charge of that matter and indeed she was. But there was a combination of different cakes and I had to make choices about which cake I wanted and with which wine.

Never have I felt more full having eaten so little. And I must confess that in the end, I arbitrarily chose one based on Emma's expression. Ariadne was there and discussed things at length and she helped me narrow the matter down but after that, sooner or later, the dreaded question came. "Which do you prefer Freddie?"

And I was forced to answer.

My truthful answer was that I just didn't care. I was marrying the woman that I love, the rest was just frivolity and an excuse for everyone to get together and have a party. I barely cared. I have never been more tempted to elope.

Apparently, the tailor is coming tomorrow.

Entry 20.

There is nothing more sure to make you feel inadequate than a group of people, often men, walking around your all but naked form and discussing the proper way in which to clothe you. I swear that my manhood shrivelled up in embarrassment during the entire proceedings. Thank the flame that the castle is warm at this time of year.

Entry 21

Emma agrees with my publisher and my tutor. I don't know what to say about that. She thinks it would be good for me to get it all out onto paper. I have no idea if that is true. It feels as though it might be true but that is not as enticing thought as people might think.

I'm not sure if I want to go back. I'm not sure I want to think about the things that I was thinking or the things that I was ignoring in preference for self-delusion.

I'm not even sure if I am making sense.

"I love you," she told me, and if I have any experience of my sister at all, I know that nothing good ever comes after she has told me that she loves me.

"I love you, but you're moping. You rallied for a little while but now you're sinking again."

"It's hard," I told her. A little bit more petulantly than I like. "Keeping things going, keeping my head above… whatever. It's hard and tiring and… watching myself all the time. It's hard."

"I know." She told me, not unkindly but with enough… vehemence to call things to mind. "I know it's hard and I know it's tiring. But I also know that you stay in bed because it's safe there. You need to pick yourself up and get back out there. You need to get back to work."

"I rather thought I was doing that," I told her.

"Yes. And I'm proud of you. But that is not what I mean. You need to get back to…"

"I know what you mean," I told her. And I did.

"So work Freddie." She said.

"I don't want to go back there," I told her. I don't want to go back to the woodland of shadows and questions to which I don't know the answer."

She considered this for a moment.

"Think of it as a service." She said. "The Empress is moving her eye southwards. She knows that she and her father spent so much time looking north that they neglected the South. Now the time has come for her to look to the South again. People will be looking at the Black Forest. Delegations have been sent. Imperial forces are deploying. You need to explain why. People already know that you are involved, they want to know how and what you did and what they can do to…"

I glared at her. She took another approach.

"All of that is true." She said. "It is. And I mean it. But you once told me that history marches on. You tell me that sometimes when there are no answers, all a historian can do is change the context. You put the context into place so that those historians that come after you can answer the questions for themselves."

"Did I say that?" I wondered. "It sounds too clever for me to have said that."

"That, or words to that effect."

I swore at her and she laughed. She knew that she had won, even as I knew that I was going to fight it for a bit longer.

Entry 22

I went to see Chireadean today. He looks happy and his wife is pregnant. He looks happy and insists that I eat for free there. I wanted to get drunk but I am self-aware enough to know that that is possibly unwise. I drank just enough to know that I wanted to drink much more and then I made Carys take me home. She has been appointed my shadow now, whether by herself or by some order.

I don't want to ask her which it is.

I stopped off at the crypt again to talk to Father. I know that it worries people when I do this but…

I went and sat in front of his headstone and looked at the picture of him the headstone carving that has him on horseback, staring off and pointing at some game.

This time, I thought I could see disapproval in the lines of his body and his face. As though he had turned away from me in disgust.

I will start work tomorrow

Entry 23

Much to my disgust, things have started off really well. As it always does, it is taking me a little time to get into the swing of things after a long rest between writing these articles and it's left me feeling a bit… dry. But the early part of the series is planned out and the words seem to be flowing moderately well which is a good sign. It feels alarmingly good to be sitting at my desk and working through it.

Entry 24

I still feel pretty good about the work. I am left wondering what is going to happen when I run out of things to write. I am dreading the end of this series as I see no other way to address the end other than to describe exactly what happened. It's far from a satisfying ending for me let alone a reader. And there are too many questions there that…

No,

I'm not there yet. I won't borrow trouble against a future that has not yet come. I have work to do. Things to write and people to harass.

Entry 25

Now that I am in the midst of things, I find that I kind of want to defer the pleasure, to spread things out a bit and enjoy writing my last series of articles regarding my travels with a Witcher. This isn't helped by the fact that the exciting parts of the mystery are very front-loaded in this series. Trayka's eyewitness accounts, Stefan's tale of the ghost village and so on. That's the stuff that sells magazines, or so Dorthan would like to tell me. The problem then is that we go from that and into the village of the dryads where… I'm not sure how to get across the horror of that situation.

It is the primal male fantasy to be with more than one woman at the same time. I have no idea why but it reaches down into the depths of our souls. It's one of the first dreams that we have about eroticism. The formless female shape, followed by the endlessly willing partner followed by the multiple willing and enthusiastic partners.

The female equivalent, for reasons I've never understood which is surely part of the point, seems to be warmed blankets and rugs, preferably sheepskin, in front of an open log fire. There is probably a reason for this but I've never understood it.

So there is too much of me worrying that I will write about what happened to us, to me, amongst the dryads, will be seen as some kind of ideal. Something that people will envy rather than something that should be… I don't know. Something that should be frightening and sickening.

Made even worse by the fact that I miss the pair of them. With this amount of distance and the relatively close contact with Ariadne, I am more aware than ever that I love Ariadne and what I felt for Chestnut-Shell and Apple-Seed was a shadow of that greater feeling. But I miss them. They were good people.

I hope that they are alright.

But again, I am thinking ahead in the story. Not living in the now of what I am writing. Speaking of which, I really should get back to it.

I'm going back to Oxenfurt tomorrow. Time to start bringing in some more of my other professional activities. Writing and lecturing and teaching and the normal day-to-day life of the Academy.

I'm oddly looking forward to it.

Entry 26

I hate those days when I don't get any work done. It might not be much, only a few thousand words at best but when I don't manage it, I somehow feel as though I haven't achieved anything. Carys, my new shadow, and I rode back to Oxenfurt today. Again, for reasons I did not really understand, I wanted to go out of my way and check out the new memorial stone to those that had been burnt on that dead patch of ground.

I stood there for a long time. Long enough that someone, who I hope didn't recognise me, came over to stand with me.

"Did you lose anyone that day? They asked, I'm pretty sure it was a male voice.

"No," I said. "Not on that day. But many before and certainly many since."

I sensed rather than saw the nod from the person.

"So many fine, good and decent men, plucked away from us too soon."

It took me a long time for my brain to start catching up to my ears. To my credit, I had been riding in a kind of dreamlike state. The same one that I normally manage to achieve when I am riding with Kerrass. I was thinking about the work that I wasn't going to be doing because I was on the road. Thinking over the proofs of the book that I still haven't touched…

I spoke to Yennefer last night. She laughed when I told her that I was going to miss the deadline on that.

"Publishers exist for us to punish them." She told me with relish. "Learn to love deadlines, I certainly do. I like to listen to the whooshing noise they make as they whistle past you."

"If I missed deadlines at university, I would have been kicked out," I told her.

"Yes, but that is because they were telling you what to think. Giving you the building blocks of thinking. That takes time and they need you to take that in in a fixed amount of time so that they can give you the next brick. Whereas now you are older, you can think for yourself, you are required to think for yourself and that takes time. They need you more than you need them. That's the difference."

I felt bewildered by that and she knew it.

"The switch is something that always takes people, including me, off guard." She told me.

.

Fucking tangents.

So my mind had been going over that conversation and the conversation about wine that I had not been paying attention to in the first place. As well as thinking about the lecture that I would be giving in the morning and the academy social that I was planning on attending in the evening. I was still partially lost in that haze while I stood in front of the stone and my brain was struggling to catch up with whatever it was that the man next to me had said. I was just in the process of turning, my mouth opening as I decided what to say when he clapped me on the shoulder.

"I will leave you to your thoughts." He told me. "My condolences."

And he walked off. For a long time, I watched him go until he joined the lines of people that were moving along the road between Novigrad and Oxenfurt.

He didn't look poor, nor did he look particularly rich either. He looked… ordinary. I don't know what's more terrifying.

I turned back to the stone and went back to counting the names.

Entry 27

Made Dorthan happy today. Turned up unannounced and told him that I had a couple of new articles for him. I love being able to do that and take him by surprise like that. Just walking up and dumping the papers on his desk and saying "There you go, okthanksbye." The mixture of hatred and joy always makes for an interesting combination on the dwarf's face.

I normally then have to follow it up with some kind of social invitation so that he can network with the university higher-ups. That always makes him feel better.

Entry 28

I had a lot of fun today. I gave a good lecture this morning and saw a lot of people engaging with it. The girl that was fighting me over the presence of Griffins in the wild and the benefits of leaving them to run wild is beginning to come round and engage with both sides of the thinking.

Which is the point.

I'm taking great delight in writing out the account of what happened at Piotr's village, the old man's account of what happened to Piotr's wife is good and punchy and also serves to show people that religious fervour is not an evil that is unique to the church of the Eternal Flame.

And today, I had to tell Carys that she would be accompanying me to a formal academy occasion. Ariadne can't come and I am feeling… I don't know if there's a term for it but I kind of have an urge to drive some hypocrisy into people's faces.

I told her that she would have to wear a dress. She didn't like the idea.

I have it all planned out. I have written to Rickard who is going to have a word with that Sergeant of his. Carys is going to look amazing. She's a beautiful woman and the better part of a year of eating proper food, training properly and being taken care of has enabled her to put on some muscle mass as well, so she is going to look amazing.

So we're going to arrange for the pair of them to spend a night in one of Oxenfurt's finest inns. I guarantee that the Sergeant… whose name is Padraig, I've been learning that recently. Will not have seen her in that kind of finery. And Rickard is going to ensure that he is wearing a good suit as well and has, at least, combed his hair and beard.

It's nice to do things for those that you care about.

Carys was unhappy with the idea but I think… I hope… that she will enjoy the surprise.

Entry 29

Ding dong, I was wrong.

Again

You would have thought I would have been used to the idea by now.

I had forgotten what it was that Carys used to do and where she comes from. She had known that I was hiding something from her and she thought I was arranging things to sell her back into pleasure slavery. I found her shivering and shaking in my rooms and then it all came tumbling down around me.

On the other hand. The one thing that I can say about having struggled with traumatic events myself, is that I know how to recognise it in others and know more about how to deal with it.

I sat down with her, talked her through getting her breathing under control and then sat with her until she felt better.

Then I took her to a nice public tavern where I fed her her favourite food and explained the scheme. That night, I arranged that Ariadne would message Laurelen who would be able to come to town to take Carys to Emma's favourite tailor in Oxenfurt. Not as good as the one in Novigrad but still.

Then I told her that the dress that I would buy for her would be the dress of a woman befitting her station and my strictly platonic affection. I told her that I would pay for her hair to be done and to arrange for jewellery and Laurelen agreed to help with cosmetics. We also agreed that Padraig would still be kept in the dark. She liked that.

I think I've saved the situation, I hope so. She deserves better than what was done to her. I am angry at my mistake but in a rare moment of candid talk between us. She told me that it was ok.

Her biggest concern about the dress was where to fit all the knives.

Entry 30

I write this as I'm sitting in the outside area of the tavern while I drink my spiced wine and waiting for Carys to come out of the Seamstress place. This will be her final fitting. I hope it goes well.

The last few days have been busy. The first fitting left Carys feeling nonplussed. She told Laurelen that she felt on edge having people look at her like that. The second fitting left the Elf woman in tears. At first, I was really worried that it was all falling apart around me but then she hugged me hard and fast before she went off to pretend that she was ok.

I hope this one goes well as the formal is tomorrow.

The writing is going well. The chapter regarding Piotr's past is now in the hands of the publisher and the printer is just working on getting the first chapter out. There are flyers, literal flyers advertising another adventure of "Witcher Kerrass and Professor Frederick" in the latest issue of the University magazine. I can't remember the last time I was in town when an article was being published. I don't like it. People are looking at me. Some sourly and some adoringly.

It won't be long before I am unable to walk down the street before someone thrusts a book in my face to sign.

Including books that I didn't write, have never read and are on topics that I could care less about.

Emma has trained me well though. Never sign anything that you don't know the providences of.

Oop, she's coming out. Judging by that grin, it went well.

Entry 31

There is something in the wind. I have no idea what it was but for the first time, my courtier instincts have been firing in the University and I have no idea why.

I was working in my office. I think I was critiquing some essays as a break from working on the latest articles when the Dean of history and Anthropology turned up and asked me to give a series of lectures.

"Now that we know that you're in the neighbourhood for the foreseeable future." He began.

"Or at least until the wedding." I retorted. All of the deans and the faculty of the University are invited to the festivities. This dean is not the least. I have always got on with him but he looked nervous for a reason that I wasn't immediately clear.

"Yes, quite. But still. We were hoping we could persuade you to do a series of lectures. You know, now that you will be around to finish them off."

I sensed the critique, something that I rather felt that I deserved. Getting made a professor and then swanning off around the continent for months on end has not been great for my status as a Professor.

"I'm game," I told him. "Do you have a topic in mind? Or should I feel free to…"

"On Witchers." He said, the verbal equivalent of snapping my hand off. "Definitely on Witchers." He laughed at his own eagerness. Again, that nervous edge to the laughter put my nerves on edge.

"Is everything ok?" I ask him. "Can I get you something to…" I was reaching for my brandy. I keep a small stock of it in the office to help calm nervous students when they are panicking about things that I couldn't care less about.

"No no, it's fine." He laughed again. "We were thinking… five lectures. Maybe once a fortnight?"

I did the arithmetic in my head. That would still leave me plenty of time between the end of the series and the wedding to do… whatever needed to be done. Every time I ask, it seems that more tasks are being added to the list of things that I am absolutely essential for.

"Standard length?" I wondered

"Hour-long, yes."

I could do that. The truth was that I could probably go for longer than five hours on the subject.

"This, as well as your other work. Could you fit that in?"

"I don't think that would be a problem." I watched him carefully.

"Good, Good. Then I will make the bookings and send you the time scales. First one next week?"

I nodded. He was relieved.

Something is in the wind.

The formal is this evening. I would write more but I should go and get ready.

Entry 32

The formal was a disaster.

Not for Carys, thank the flame. That couldn't have gone better. She looked amazing in the dark green dress. Formal, commanding and powerful. It was a noblewoman's dress and there was no denying the fact that this woman was an Elf. She wore her hair high on her head which meant that there was no hiding her raised cheekbones and the upswept ears.

At first, she was shy and I could understand why, given everything that has happened. I found myself in the position of protector for the first time in a long time as she would occasionally try to hide behind me when we were making formal talk with different people.

Watching people, I will admit to finding it entertaining when people didn't know what to make of it. They would be talking to me, have noticed Carys, make some joke about how they thought I was marrying the Countess of Angral. But then their eyes would be dragged back around to the pointed ears and then they would lose their path of thought in a mix of spluttered confusion.

It was amazing.

She was not the only Elf there as it turned out. Emma's concerns are bringing a few more of them out of hiding and more than one has expertise in some of the fields that are being taught in Oxenfurt. So she soon disappeared into the crowd and found her confidence. She found a friend in Dr Shani who was there in her position as Professor of Field Surgery and the two were wandering around looking amazing and throwing it in the face of everyone.

I would dearly have enjoyed spending the majority of the evening watching the pair of them walking around and puncturing the pomposity of the people around.

But sadly it was not to be.

There is always a risk at these things that people that don't like me will turn up. I normally ignore them. And the first couple of versions of "How dare you show your face?" were ignored.

But then it was from a fairly rich-looking man and his wife. Older couple, gold chains, expensive clothes, the normal kinds of things. I would be prepared to swear on the symbols of the sun that I had never met them before.

And he spat in my face.

I felt my eyebrows raise. It has been a long time since someone has given me such a direct insult and I was working out what to do when the Dean of History turned up out of nowhere and led the man and his wife off.

Then my old tutor arrived and handed me a small cloth to wipe my face which I took and he steered me away. I wiped my face with the provided towel.

"What was that about?" I wondered, still waiting to see if I was angry about it.

"Nothing." He told me and I looked up at him sharply. He was turning to walk away and I grabbed his arm.

"People don't challenge people to duels over nothing," I told him. "And that is what he did. No one could blame me if I…"

"You shouldn't have brought the Elf," he told me.

I stared at him, feeling the anger building up.

He saw it too.

"Look, nothing against Elves, truly, nor do I have anything against the Lady…"

"Something something, anything said before a 'but' something." I felt the anger rising.

"These people don't need another excuse to hate you." He told me.

I stared at him. He was embarrassed, looking around. And he was sweating.

I felt like I was on a battlefield.

"Alright," I said. "What the fuck is happening? Where has this new lecture series come from and…"

"The chancellor and the deans are having pressure placed on them by city officials, certain other members of the administration and important alumni to remove you from the faculty. They want to strip you of your Professorship and have you kicked out of…"

I laughed at him.

"Fine," I said. "I'll go. I give it a day before I'm offered a professorship in the secular divisions of Ban Ard or the Imperial Academy. I'll publish in either of their presses in absentia and I will still be able to…"

He has known me for a long time and knows the warning signs of an eruption from Mount Freddie. Again, he took me by the elbow and steered me off. We went to his office in the end where he poured me a drink and sat facing me as he filled his pipe.

"First of all," he said. "You should know that we are on your side." He considered this for a moment. "Well, maybe not the poetry and arts faculty but…"

"Cut to it." The anger was still flickering through my blood. "I'm not falling for the scatty old man routine."

"But I am a Scatty old…"

"Professor," I warned.

He sighed and seemed to age in front of me.

"This is why I never wanted to be a dean." He told me before looking up and continuing.

"The university is being put under pressure to expel you." He told me.

"What?"

"It's the same group of merchants that are outraged by your sister being who she is and charging a fortune for the use of the docks…"

"That she built."

"You have been away too long Frederick, and Oxenfurt is changing. So is Novigrad for that matter and although I don't like it. There is little we can do to…"

He realised that he was getting angry himself and took a deep breath.

"I'm not on their side." He told me. "But dammit if it isn't easy to fall into that role." He took a deep breath. "You and your sister have changed Oxenfurt and Novigrad over the last couple of years. And although I and anyone with an ounce of intelligence would admit that the change was coming anyway, people see you both and want to blame you for it. They think it all started with your Father's death and then…"

He sighed and took a large drink from his cup.

"Your sister is a woman and better at being a merchant than most of the average men put together. This threatens them. She has removed the monopoly of the Novigrad docks, meaning that people can dock their ships here to get a head start on the roads heading south. Meaning that those men that owned the Novigrad dockside warehouses have had to lower their rents to remain competitive. They hate her for that. The Novigrad dock inspectors have seen a reduction in the amounts of bribes that they receive because those shipmasters can just come to Oxenfurt.

"Those merchants that do use your sister's docks are angry because she charges them rent and docking fees. And she has her own warehouses which she charges fees for. Those fees are competitive with Novigrad, by which I mean that they are lower. But because it's your sister, therefore a woman, who loves another woman and can therefore not be married to a man more open to persuasion. And an Elf lover and magic lover to boot. They hate her."

"It sounds like they resent the fact that she is better than they are…"

"Nobody likes to be beaten at their own game." He said to me sharply. "And being beaten by one who you have been taught to believe, from birth, is lesser than you makes it even worse. So they hate her and therefore they hate you."

"Ok but…"

"And they hate you because you are famous. You have made it more acceptable to like Elves and to approve of Magic users. You are marrying a monster. You have advocated for the rights of workers and peasants and women. You have promoted education when the majority of these people depend on keeping their workers down and uneducated. But you have started to spread the message that this is not alright.

"You have created a new Knight Errant movement." He went on.

"That's down in Toussaint though." I protested.

"I'm not talking about the Knights of Francesca. Those younger sons and daughters… which is another thing they hate your sister for. Your family has proven that daughters are just as good as boys in doing… whatever. So now daughters are refusing to marry who they have been told to marry. They are coming to University and then going travelling. They are denying husbands, Fathers and older brothers and they are doing it because you told them that it was ok and then your sister proved it.

"But I'm talking about those people that are wandering the countryside righting wrongs and making a nuisance of themselves, pointing out to the villagers that they are being victimised. They do it with paper, quills, ink and mathematical tools rather than breastplate, shield and sword.

"You did that. You are powerful now. You have the ear of the Empress, the Queen of Skellige as well as being friends with some of the most feared men of the sea. These merchants spread tales of how… the reason that Coulthard shipping is avoided is that you were sent and you went there."

"I went there and was a decent human being."

"I know that and you know that. These changes were coming. All of them were. It's just that you and your sister are the visible spearpoint of those changes.

"The university used to be a place where people could come and learn to write poetry, sing and learn about the properly approved history. Then, when they got here, they would learn about things like subjectivity, and objectivity and could make their things. But you have taken the art of critical thinking and elevated it. Some are even saying that the administration had to make Dr Shani a Professor because of your advocacy of the woman."

"She's deserved that role for longer than I've been studying…"

"I agree. But those outside the university see the woman being elevated over their sons, want someone to blame for it and they find you."

"That seems weak to me. I mean, I can see my sister's kind of… But me?"

"The university is failing Freddie."

I was shocked for a moment. He said it brutally and without compromise.

The most powerful man in any debate is a man who knows how to use the weapons of debate and believes in his cause.

"Radovid hurt us." He told me. "I mean, he really hurt us. We smuggled a lot of our professors away and we managed to hide a lot of our vital texts and even the most diligent of book burners would not have been able to get everything. Overnight, we became a resistance cell against our own government and we became cells of knowledge. That is not helped by those books remaining being the ones that he, Radovid approved of."

"I know this." I retorted. "Radovid kept all the books that argued for the supremacy of royal power and the ones about how Kings were close to divinity. Thus securing the power of him and the church. Any texts that argued for anything else were among the first to be burnt."

"You know it but you don't see the way it leads us." He snapped before sighing. "I'm on your side Freddie, I really am, but you have to understand what's happening. That means that the books that are left argue for traditional values. The divine rights of Kings. Magic is evil, anything that isn't human is called a monster. And although there are plenty of arguments to go against this, the fact remains that any student that wants to back up those arguments cannot refer to old texts because all of those ones were the ones that were burnt. While those that argue for the status quo have religious texts, histories, legal arguments and Flame knows what else to back up their arguments. And that weight is telling.

"And we are not alone now. We used to be the premier learning facility in the North. But now there is a new one up in Kovir and the Imperial academy, who knows that they are ahead of us, are opening their doors to all comers without the historical prejudices of Anti-Elven sentiment and the church fanned flames of magical loathing."

"That's not true," I argued. "The Imperials hate magic just as much as we do."

"Do not be a fool." He snapped. "There is a big difference between a doctrine of service and a desire to burn them all as they come."

I had nothing to say to that. Our teachers, like our parents, have the ability to reduce us to the children that we once were.

"So there we are." He went on. "We don't have the resources that we had and we don't have the ability to expand. Whatever else might be the case, we live on an island and Oxenfurt grew out of the need for us to have some kind of service for the university, food, housing, clothes and whatnot. That doesn't change the fact that we cannot expand into new facilities. Therefore we cannot expand into new fields. The only thing that we have going for us is loyalty and geography. In that, we are closer to the population centres than having to send a child up to Kovir or all the way south to the Academy.

"So what do we do?

"There are two schools of thought. The first is that we double down onto our foundations. We concentrate on the fencing and the medical schools. We go back to the great seven art forms and we rebuild using traditional values and traditional systems. We go back to the foundations of what and who Oxenfurt academy is and re-emphasise what our name is and why it's famous. We cannot compete with the Imperial academy on any other basis and like the academy, the one in Kovir is new and is therefore untested and untrusted.

"Therefore we need to remind people that Oxenfurt is the oldest, and therefore best, centre for advanced learning on the Continent. Tradition and experience will be our watchwords."

"Old thoughts." I sneered. "Old facts, old thinking. Learning will again be the province of old men with long beards and grubby robes. An exclusive club that only those with the right amount of money or the right name will be able to gain entry to."

"Precisely." He told me. "And it will work. Oxenfurt will survive. We cannot compete with the South or the growing knowledge factories of the north. Therefore we must fall back to our place of strength."

I felt anger and loathing in the pit of my stomach. I have lived with that shit for as long as I could remember.

"But we also know that this doesn't work." He went on. "You of all people have proven it. But you are a controversial figure. Your sister is your sister. Your Father is a jumped-up son of a merchant."

I have never quite been able to figure out if my mentor really thinks that whenever he talks of my father.

"And you have seemingly made it your mission to murder noblemen and their children."

"I have only killed evil men who use their blood and their title to think that they are above all…"

"I know that and you know that. But you are also the only credible source on those matters. Think like a historian Freddie. We only have your word for it that Lord Cavil in the North was an evil man."

"And the Church."

"Who will say whatever the Empress, a woman, will want them to say to survive. You might be pro-Empress and she has done wonders. But many people remember that her Father conquered us and that we were sold out to the White-Flame by the Temerians. Already histories and analyses are being written that argue that Kalayn, Cavill and all the other Lords and Ladies that were deposed and destroyed by your Brothers, Samuel and Mark, and your sister, were martyrs to the old Northern rule. Men who might have been threats to the Imperial rule. Then you go in, "find heresy" which your brother confirms and then the anti-Imperial lot are murdered.

"But I'm getting off-topic. You are the exception that proves the rule. Nobles from all over have been refusing to send their sons and daughters to Oxenfurt because you are a professor here and you promote dangerous thinking. Things like critical thought, questioning the purpose of nobles and the rights of the nobles."

"I've never done that."

"You argue for the obligations of nobles." He told me. "You argue that nobles have a duty to their people as well as the other way round. People hear what they want to hear, or what they fear to hear so what they hear is 'nobles have a duty to their people'. And then they fear that the peasants will hear that and get ideas."

He was right about that as well.

"So they don't want daughters to think that they can get away with anything they like. They don't want their sons to question the rights of the Father. So they don't want to send their children to be educated here. They take the education upon themselves and hold the children back. Hiring tutors that agree with their way of thinking. So people see our student numbers fall and our fees decrease. There is the prestige loss of these names no longer coming to Oxenfurt to study which then has a knock-on effect. Lord Such-and-such isn't sending his children here therefore Lady thinks-too-much is not sending her daughter. And so on.

"All because you come along with your dangerous way of thinking. Named on the faculty and these powerful men with their rich deep pockets and their old, prestigious names, want you gone before they send their sons to be educated by us.

"But it's not lost on us, especially here in the history dept as well as the medical and anthropology departments, that every time you publish a series of articles, applications from rich merchant families goes up. Your lectures are amongst the highest attended lectures that we offer. We are getting return students that want to learn from you. Other departments are expanding because people want to talk about what you have brought in from the world. People want to discuss the things that you have learned and others are going out into the continent to see if they can find some of the things that you talk about. The small pieces of knowledge and wisdom that exist out there, not in our musty old libraries.

"So we need you. We do. We are never going to get rid of you. We can't. You are one of the pillars that hold up the entire edifice of the university. But nor can we ignore the fact that you and your family have many, many enemies. Including Queen Regent Adda herself. And you make more of those enemies every day just by existing, flaunting your wealth, your powerful friends and your ascension to higher rank."

"And then I walk into the room with an Elf on my arm"

"A startlingly beautiful one at that. Not least because we all know who she is and what her history is. And not one of us, not a one of us honestly believes that she has anything other than every right to be here. But there is also not one of us that doesn't know someone, or love someone or is friends with someone. That wouldn't argue that she is a murderer for buying her freedom on the point of a dagger. They think she should have attained her freedom legally and I know…" He held his hands up to fend off my outrage. "I know that she couldn't and that there was no avenue for that. And I know that the Empress has declared the practice of non-human sex trafficing illegal and has pardoned all such victims for their past crimes as well as the Elves that helped you in particular. But you see why that's a thing?"

I did.

"I was just wanting to do something nice for some people that saved my life once."

He deflated.

"I know." He said. "Which is why my anger is unfair. If you had brought her here to annoy people or provoke people we would be having a very different conversation. As it is, this has gone far more accusatory than I wanted it to. I don't want you to tone down your behaviour. I want you, and your sister to be clear, to be the people that you are. You both deserve it. Even while the part of me that is an old, dusty man with a long beard hates that I am losing my membership in the club.

"The change you bring is vital. It is. I know it and those of us that study history… Really study it, not just learn the facts of what happened. We know that a return to the past will return us to the problems of the past which will lead us towards doom and end us right back where we started. People like you and your sister are dragging us forward. And we need that. But people hate you for all that you've been doing and we are having to fight them for it."

I nodded and finished my drink. I wanted to go home.

"I am sorry for causing you problems," I told him.

"Psshhh." He waved it off. "Just five years ago, I would have relished the fight. But I've been feeling old lately. You have come back, and it looks like you're staying this time rather than swanning off all over the continent, which is another thing they hate. We have given you far too much leeway to be away from the university and not putting the work in for many's comfort. Even while that work has made you, and therefore us, more famous and therefore more powerful. But as I say, you and your energy make me feel old."

I went back to the party.

I made some good noises and now that I knew what the battlefield was, I made sure to put my efforts in. I hope that I helped, even a little bit

And I certainly mean to put some effort in.

It is strange. I honestly believe that I could not have done other than that which I have done. I believe that my old tutor is honestly on my side and that he means to help me. But I cannot deny that I feel as though I have been told off in some way. I can't go back tomorrow for any number of reasons but I'm going to head back to the castle at the end of the week and see if I can work with Emma to help in some way. I have no idea what.

At the appointed time, I took Carys off to the inn and along with Rickard, Shani and Chireadean, we saw Carys and Padraig catch sight of each other across the room.

It was everything I could have hoped for.

I miss Ariadne.

Entry 33

I woke up this morning feeling as though I was hungover. Which I think is monstrously unfair given that I had, at best, two cups of wine which were heavily watered as it was.

But I woke up this morning feeling like hammered shit. An interesting saying that Rickard introduced me to. And even though I always thought it was something of an exaggeration to talk like that, I must say that it is quite accurate to how I am feeling in the here and now of the thing.

I feel like hammered shit.

I have a desperate desire to hide away from everything, not emerge from my bed and just wrap myself in a blanket. I can't do any of those things. I have a new series of lectures to plan for. My word count on the latest series of articles is falling badly behind. I can't go out as my bodyguard is, hopefully, still wrapped in the arms of the man that loves her and I promised Laurelen that I would go nowhere without her.

So I have nothing to do other than to climb into the seat behind my desk and work.

But I don't want to.

I love Oxenfurt. I love the wooden walls and the thatched rooftops. I love the little alleyways and the small gardens with the little fountains and things. I even love the smell of the slow-moving river that eases its way around and on both sides of the island that the place that we laughingly refer to as a city sits.

It's not a city, it's far too small to be a city but dammit if I won't stand on the walls and die on that hill if I have to.

I love Oxenfurt. I love the little shops that you will find nowhere else. The shops that sell things that only the residents of Oxenfurt could ever possibly want to own. The knick-knacks. The learning aids, the special ribbons that you can mark your books with. The rebinding places that will rebind beloved old books with the weird designs that you have been obsessing over. That can mark your books with colour schemes and gilded writing and all of the other pointless little luxuries that only students can get excited about.

I love the feel of the place. The desperate grabbing on of life. The feverish hold on that part of our lives where we began to grow up and decide who we were. I love the little cafes and taverns. The market stalls and the open cooking areas. The kinds of places that are little more than a repurposed old military breast place, hammered flat with a fire lit underneath to make it hot. Then food is cooked on it.

The stalls that sell warmed drinks can only claim to be called a cafe because they have a few tables out the front and a couple of stools to serve as seating.

I love that feeling that you can sit in a tavern and hear an argument, along with an open invitation to join that debate. I love the people here. The constant feeling as though we might be changing the world. That we can solve things and turn the world back to its correct path if we just think hard enough, love hard enough… live hard enough.

I have never felt more alive and more carefree than when I was a student at Oxenfurt. The most I had to contend with was unrequited love and the looming threat of deadlines and exams. I miss those times and sometimes, on my darkest nights, I find myself wishing that I was still there. Still in the midst of things.

So it cuts my heart out that although I love Oxenfurt. And I do. It wounds my soul that Oxenfurt might hate me.

I have work to do.

Entry 34

It is not an uncommon phenomenon where I have to stare at a blank piece of paper for a long period of time. This is no different.

I have been asked a question several times "What is the hardest part of writing the articles, what is the hardest part about writing a book or writing a lecture?" I lie, every time I lie. I tend to say things like "deciding what it is that I want to say." Or I might make a joke about cutting down on the waffling. The truth though is that the hardest part of doing this. Is the starting of it. I'm not talking about the blank page at the beginning of an article or the blank slate where I plan the lectures. I'm talking about starting. Every day, where I sit down at the desk, turn to the relevant page and get the words from my head, down through my arm, into my hand and onto the paper. It's hard. Just deciding what it is that I want to say.

Every time. Starting is the hardest part.

Trying to recover the previous train of thought, trying to remember the passion that you had at the end of the last writing session before fatigue and lack of inspiration dry you out.

Starting is the hardest part.

I don't know what to do.

There is a not small part of me that wants to chuck it all in. I'm going to be married in a few months anyway at which point I will be moving off to take up residence in Angral and my work rate is going to suffer for it. I know that, everyone knows that. I can write books in absentia, I do not doubt that they will be published and if not by one of the Oxenfut presses then I'm sure I can find another one.

But I don't want to hurt the University that I love. I can't…

So there is a part of me that wants to give up. To resign my place on the faculty, to surrender my lodgings in the city which I've been tempted to do for a while now anyway, and just walk away from it all.

Sometimes I think about doing that out of anger… How dare they think that of me. How dare they consign me to the same places that those other fuckers want to… How dare they say those things about Emma and me. So fuck em.

What do they know, they don't deserve my help.

But then the other side of things swings into view.

The hurt. I love Oxenfurt and the prospect that I might be causing that place pain… I don't want that. I don't want to be remembered for that.

So I want to quit. I want to walk away, take all of my stuff and dump it in the river as I ride over the bridge back towards the castle and never set foot in this place again. I will look for another home.

Someone, I can't remember who, but someone once told me that you can have more than one home. Someone else said that home is the people, not the place. And that is true, Ariadne, Kerrass, Rickard, Helfdan, Svein and the rest of the Wave-Serpent survivors those friends from university

(Dorthan's note: Freddie has, on multiple occasions, obfuscated the names of his university friends. He wrote their names here but we have honoured his overriding wish in case those people need to be protected. As far as I know, they are all staying in Novigrad anyway after the wedding was delayed so they can't have been involved… And they are well known to many. So…)

Still, others insist that home is wherever you choose to hang your hat.

But for me, I have two homes. I hope that I will be able to call Angral my home soon. Ariadne's presence will help with that. But my two homes are Coulthard castle… My Father's castle.

And Oxenfurt.

I don't know what to do. I feel wretched.

Back to the castle tomorrow.

Entry 35

I lost my temper at Emma today. It sometimes seems as though our entire relationship, brother to sister, is a series of fights where we argue with each other and then make amends with the other. I suspect that this time will be no different.

She knew about all the problems that were happening in Oxenfurt. She knew about the issues that the faculty were having regarding having my name on the lists and she knew about the threats that we had been receiving. She knew about the pressure that was being brought to bear and she knew about all of the people that hate us. It was why she was so insistent on sending some bodyguards with me.

I was furious.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I demanded.

"Because it wasn't important." She told me. "It isn't important. And I didn't want to frighten you. I didn't want you to be driven away or think that you were doing anything wrong. You were fragile when you came home and I didn't want you to think that you needed to do anything to protect me. I was worried that it might be the straw that broke the donkey's back, to know that these people, whom you love and respect, hate you so much. I wanted to protect you."

"So why didn't you tell me when I started to feel better?" I demanded.

That was when the shame hit her I think.

I'm in my rooms now and I'm trying to decide if I'm the asshole here. It's a constant debate. Being ill or being outraged or hurt can be an explanation for shitty behaviour, but it is never an excuse. So when I lose my temper or get angry or have a fight with someone, I must check myself to make sure that I'm not being an asshole.

Am I being an asshole? Emma was doing it out of concern. Was she right about being concerned? Was she right to keep things from me?

At first, I think she might have been right to do so. I think it might have been better if she kept these things from me. But later?

I think it was a mistake. I feel as though I was thrown into the monster's nest without knowing which monster I'm facing. Without the proper weapons or the proper venoms on my blade or the proper methods for the destruction of the beasts.

But she was right about the fact that if she had told me all of this early on, it might have destroyed me.

I still don't know what to do.

Ariadne was no help. She told me that just giving up on the University would be something that I would regret. Which she's right about. But she thinks that both Emma and I have made mistakes here. We are both right and we are both wrong. That we should just apologise to each other, hug it out and come up with a way to fight back against our enemies.

I mean, when I write it out like that, it makes a lot of sense.

.

I should go and find Emma.

Entry 36

Ariadne was right. She's going to enjoy that a bit too much. She's taken a certain delight in tallying all of the things that she has been right about and that I have been wrong about and occasionally likes to bring that tally out. It is disturbingly sparse on my side.

Emma and I are going to hold a war meeting tomorrow.

Entry 37

Kerrass came by this morning. He seems well. A couple of injuries and an arm in a sling. Apparently, he strained his arm muscles and is keeping the arm in the sling for a period to rest it from the strain. He was going off for a bit longer and wanted to check as to how I was doing. I told him that I was getting there and was feeling better but not BETTER.

He took that well, gazed at me for a long time before taking on supplies, hugging Emma and then riding off.

My best friend and my sister have formed an unholy alliance against me. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Emma and I sat for a long time and we formally made friends again. Apologising to each other for the things that we have done wrong. All the things that we said and did not say and now we are hoping to move forward.

The Coulthards are going to war. We have decided that it's time to make all of these friends that we have made, all of these contacts and things… It is time that we start making these things and these people work for us.

It starts with me. I am going to write and deliver the best damn lecture series on Witchers that I can deliver. I am going to pack those halls full of students, lecturers and authorities on the subject. I'm going to get Ariadne to come and to see if she can persuade any of the movers and shakers to arrive as well.

I'm going to get it to the point that even if we book out the largest lecture theatre on campus, then we are still going to have people being turned away at the door.

From there I'm going to do a small book tour, signing the books and giving talks on the topics that have been talked about.

Emma is going to make a significant donation to the University. By now she owns, or at least has a share, in various of the buildings in Oxenfurt itself and as well as money, she argues that those buildings can be used for academic purposes to expand the university itself. If the faculty are going to argue that the city exists to service the University, which is not an unfair statement. Then we must ensure that there is more university to service. That will aid the city in expanding. It will bring in more trade for all the movers and shakers and all of those people, including our enemies, will owe their new wealth, status and power to the Coulthard family.

We are helped by the fact that a lot of powerful and important people are going to be coming to the area for my wedding. So we're going to use that as well. We can have Helfdan bemoan the fact that he had to go to Temeria for the siege engineers that have helped him begin his rebuilt fortress at Holmstein. We can have Queen Cerys tour the docks to look for different ways and different processes that she can take to the docks of Kaer Trolde to bring more modern processes and ideas to the fore.

As well as all of those dignitaries, Sam is going to be there and we are planning to roll him out as the next defacto Lord Coulthard. I am going to write to him and explain the situation. Given that he was there when we talk about the cult in the North, there are plenty of human eyewitnesses to the horror that happened up there in order to disprove all of the nonsense that is being talked about. And with my older brother being a powerful man in the church, as well as all the powerful people that will need to be preached at, we can expect a lot of those self-same inquisitors to be around to spread that word and make it clear what really happened in the North and what the cult that Edmund and Cousin Kalayn were a part of.

Shani, who was here visiting Rickard, is also on board. She immediately came up with a list of things that the medical school has needed and wanted since flame knows when and that was just regarding the traditional medicine schools.

By traditional, she meant that aspect of medicine which is about fixing people that are hurt, the curing of diseases and the prolonging of life. She came up with these things as well as a whole bunch of ideas that she and her fellows had asked for and been asking for, for longer than Shani had been at the University, all put off with the excuses of… we simply don't have the money for that.

It was almost as though she carried the list around on a piece of paper. She and Emma got all excited and spent some time poring over a map. They were talking about partnerships with the hospitals in Novigrad and all over the place, Shani was almost fizzing with excitement.

In the meantime, I must adjust my thinking. I have been treating the University as this immovable rock that I can rest on. The oak tree that was there before I was born will be there long after I have left. It was my fallback point and my guiding light. The place where I remember being happiest. So I have treated it as though it hasn't changed in all of the years that I have been away.

It has changed, of course, it has. And I have changed with it. Neither of us is the same and I need to remember that. Oxenfurt is different and I have been taking it for granted. I need to adjust my thinking on that.

In the same way that the Coulthard family has a residence in Novigrad for when it has business there, I will buy a small townhouse in Oxenfurt. I will pay taxes and therefore have a permanent base for when I am working there.

Obviously, my primary residence is going to be in Angral, but for those times that I am going to be lecturing or when Ariadne is away seeing to feudal duties or whatever, it will become important for me to have a base where I can work from.

It is a symbolic gesture as much as anything. Just a receiving room on the bottom, a sleeping room, a working room at the top and a transport circle for Ariadne to move me in and out. She is absolutely for the idea and already has some ideas as to how to work it.

Shani has promised that she will help me find the right place for it. We mean to head back to town the day after tomorrow.

I feel… rejuvenated by this. I don't know if it says something about me that I feel better knowing that I have someone to fight. A battle to win and something to do.

It probably does and I am going to crush them for their temerity in daring to cross us.

That sounded a little bloodthirsty.

Entry 38

Now that the decision has been made and the fight is on. I have been putting together the brief outline of my lecturing course on Witchers. I'm hoping that Kerrass can come back at some point to go over it and make sure that I am not going to anger any members of his caste by what I am going to say.

In the meantime, I have invited Lady Yennefer as well as lady Eilhart to attend on the grounds that they are working on the new mutations that are being proposed as well as those old members of the council that the Empress formed with regards to reforming the Witcher schools.

I want the debate and I want it to happen inside the halls of Oxenfurt. Lady Eilhart can't go anywhere without pissing someone off and Lady Yennefer is similar so that will cause some arguments. As well as the other members of that council who are still debating things.

The last time I heard anything was that Lady Eilhart was close to a breakthrough on the matter but that's immaterial. I will be lecturing on the history of the Witchers and the future will only be a postscript at the end of the final lecture.

I have also written to try and convince Professor Dandelion to come down and attend. If we add that he will be performing some of his more famous works on the subject of the Witchers then that will be guaranteed to up the attendance.

I am going to start with the stuff that we all know. The mythical figure of the Witcher, standing or sitting on his horse on the edge of the town or the village. Two swords on his back armoured against whatever might come towards him. His medallion twists in the wind as he levels his yellow gaze down at the population centre as he waits for the next soul who is going to approach with the offer of work.

From there I will move into the different schools and the ancient history, or what we know of it anyway. Starting with Alzur and the original mutations and purposes of the Witchers before the various breakings and foundings of the new schools and what we still know of each.

The third lecture will be about the trials. That will almost completely be taken from my own experiences that were provided by Letho in the north. And over and over again, I can take it back to the fact that I am a young, healthy, fit person. Whereas the children of the Witcher schools were starved, mistreated and so on. This is the tricky one as there is no getting away from the fact that the Witchers mistreated their young charges.

The fourth lecture will be about the various attacks on the Witcher orders. What caused them, who attacked and why. I will have to be careful not to go too deeply into this. The art of this lecture is going to be in being brief. I must be careful not to get too distracted and caught up in the details of the matter. Give the watcher and listener enough to be able to perform their own research rather than having to depend on my own.

The final lecture will be on the philosophical questions that Witchers bring. How dare we put others before ourselves. How dare we demand others do our fighting for us. And then, I will be able to talk about why all of the orders stopped making new Witchers and what that means. Why did they stop? Because they chose to stop inflicting this on themselves and others.

That is the ending. That is what makes Witchers heroes. They broke the cycle of their self-inflicted trauma and abuse. They did that, not us, they did that. And then a brief word about the future of Witchers and that will be it. I think that there's some tweaking to do, some things to think about and some work to be done. But I think there's some real promise here.

Entry 39

Emma and I are going to Oxenfurt together. Running out the colours and marching with a purpose. Putting on the full and proper regal behaviour. We're going and we're declaring to everyone in a big voice that this is what we're doing. Unified front and all of that.

Rickard is enjoying himself, putting together an escort. The bastards will be doing the outrunning, deliberately riding in advance, on either side and bringing up the read with bows ready and evil expressions on their faces. The Knights that provide the close escort will be led by themselves and the armour will be polished and glittering. Emma will be formally dressed and although she hates it, she and Laurelen will be riding side-saddle.

I will be riding with Carys, behind Emma and Laurelen.

Unfortunately, Ariadne can't make it.

I think Rickard is looking forward to the possibility of showing off what he can do for Shani who is also riding with us. Thus telling everyone where she falls in the matter.

"It is time to pick sides." She said with a glitter in her eyes. I think she is looking forward to this as much as Emma and I are.

Entry 40

That was more than satisfactory. Emma went to her meetings with the Chancellor and the deans and it is like the sun has risen over the university again. I saw the Dean of history smiling and the Dean of medicine walking around as though he had been slapped across the face before being kissed. A kind of bewildered, shocked smile plastered across his face.

The only person that seems unhappy is my landlord. Poor man. But he's had several years of rent out of me and at the end of the day, I suppose that if I get to be really famous. He can put up some kind of plaque or something.

The University will not change overnight. It is going to take a lot of work and effort. But I think we made a good start today. And I did enjoy seeing the movers and shakers of the city council go running up to the University in a terror.

For now, I will be staying in my faculty rooms on campus while a house is chosen for me.

I have work to do. Letters to write and lectures to prepare.

Busy busy.

Dothan's note: It's me again. That is as much as we can get out easily. As I say, I have no idea how much of this is important or is just Professor Coulthard waffling into his diary. There is more to come that is still being translated and the printers are still being set. But we thought it important to get, at least, the first bit out there. Stay safe everyone and I will hope that you will hear from me soon.