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

175. Chapter 175

But history doesn't end, does it?

At least it doesn't for me.

When I finished writing that last piece and set my pen aside, I all but threw the bundle of papers at the clerk that was waiting to take them away. I was angry, sullen, upset and all of the other emotions that come with those things. I snapped my quill and deliberately spilt the ink onto the floor before exhaustion took hold of me and I collapsed with just enough strength to summon a guard to help me to bed to sleep.

I absolutely had no intention to write anything more. I had, and have, no plans for the future beyond merely existing and the thought of doing anything else, or setting more words, or thoughts to paper… The very thought of doing all of that made me sick.

Physically sick.

My body seems to be all but permanently linked to my mind now. So when my mind is miserable, stressed and whatever else is going on, then my body reacts along with it. Also vice versa. When the pain of my injuries is particularly sharp, then my mind also seems to be in pain to a level that I find off-putting and distressing.

But I have no choice in the matter. All I can do is do the work that I have been set. Work that I have been ordered to do by my confessor and my masters.

The irony that I am performing the same act for my rescuers as I was performing for my torturers is not lost on me. I hate it and I hate them.

There are still moments when I look up from my desk and I see those sights before my eyes. Still, moments when I can literally see Sam, striding around his study as he declaims on the evils that have been visited on the continent by the Nilfgaardians and this faction or that faction. About the horrors that happened to him and the horrors that he performed in answer.

There are still moments when I look up from my desk as I write these words, and instead of the canvas walls of my pavilion, I see Emma being tortured, Laurelen, or Ariadne. When I close my eyes, I can see Mark's childlike face as he looks up into the eyes of the figure that had once been his brother. I can still see the gratitude on his face as Sam looked down at him and told him that it would all be alright. That it was time to pray.

I can still see it.

My nightmares are worse if you can imagine. That's probably unfair, you can probably imagine it just fine.

I can see my mother, kneeling in prayer in the moments before she dies. I can hear Rickard's moans of pain and I can feel the splintered bones of my left hand as they ground together under the bootheel of the guard. I can feel the awful clammy warmth of my jail cell and the awful, clammy cold of…

You don't want to read about that.

But I am under orders and I must fulfil my orders, even while I resent them hugely.

I do not remember them coming to take me away from that basement. I remember the moment that I saw the light leave Sam's eyes and despite the hideous injuries that he had taken, the ones that had killed him, I still shook him as though I was trying to wake him up from a deep sleep.

Sam was… It looked like he was wearing the greater body of the monster that he had become as though it was some kind of horrific suit of armour. His head and upper torso came out of it, peeling away like some seed from within a rotten fruit. Kerrass' strike, the huge, sweeping, spinning blow had almost, but not quite, cut him in two on the diagonal. So the fact that I had spoken to my brother at all was a minor mystery and there is even a real possibility that who I was talking with was some hallucination of my own mind.

I don't think so though. I think that was the moment of clarity before he died. I think that was the moment when he realised what he had done. In the last moments before he died, that was when it all came apart for him.

So I shook him, called his name and then I lost useful consciousness.

I get the most out of this story from the eyes of witnesses.

When I was found, I had crawled away from Sam and I was cradling Rickard in my lap. Somehow, I had pulled my mother over and was holding her hand while I sat there in the blood and the filth and I just rocked backwards and forwards. I had done myself more injury in the meantime as to get there I had had to climb over the circle of steel and so I was sitting there, bleeding while I rocked with my friend in my lap and holding my mother's hand as though she would give me some measure of comfort.

According to those witnesses, I had a knife next to me and when they tried to get near me, I let go of my mother's hand and brandished the dagger at them.

They couldn't get near me and given that they had orders to take me alive. And also given my, their words, 'horrific state' they reasoned that it would not take me much of an injury to kill me.

They were not wrong.

In the end, a Sorceress was sent for, who spelled me to sleep. According to those self-same witnesses, it took the Sorceress two attempts to get the job done. My mind was just so far gone that it didn't take the first time.

Then they set about saving my life.

The first part of this was getting me to the medics. The Sorceress that was there, and she wasn't anyone famous, she was a battlefield Sorceress that had been sent into the castle to ascertain the level of the damage that had been done there, both on a magical level and a spiritual level. Her name was Anna and she was from Nilfgaard. She was the magical equivalent of the miner's canary in a cage. She was full of measuring magic that was designed to be able to measure any breaches between realms, measuring magical backlash and auras as well as lingering darkness, Goetia or Necromantic effects.

She would later tell me that it was not a field of study that attracted many people given the fact that the job is incredibly boring until it becomes intensely exciting. But the excitement tends to come with having their internal organs smeared over several miles. On the other hand, it tends to pay really well and she was from a poor family.

She knew how to spell people to sleep so that she could preserve witnesses to whatever had happened and the portal that she opened was her emergency teleporting portal to get her out of the incredibly dangerous situations that she occasionally found herself in her line of work.

There was no one of note in the rescue party. The powerful mages and the skilled warriors, including my friends that were in attendance, were still busy securing the rest of the keep and making sure that all of the enhanced people were corralled and that no one escaped. A process that would still take some time afterwards.

The medic of the unit who was just as much a Doctor as I am, if anything he was less skilled than I am, or was, but there was an argument that he didn't want to move me as his skills were enough to stitch wounds and set limbs. But what was wrong with me was a bit beyond his skills. The Sergeant of the squad ordered that they carry me through the portal and deposited me in the middle of the surgeon's tents.

According to some of those people, there was an argument about who I was given that I was all but unrecognisable from my former state.

I have been close to death before. I have been sick to the point where there were debates about whether or not my family should be sent for. I have been injured in body and mind but nothing comes…

At one point, there was a debate over my body as to whether or not it would be kinder to let me die because, although they had been ordered to keep me alive, by Imperial decree no less, it was also clear that I was almost beyond saving. There was also a comment made that they were very possibly healing me ready for a trial by Inquisition for Heresy and Treason, therefore, the resources that would be used to save me might be better off being used elsewhere. That while the highly skilled surgeons, which I needed, and the magic power, which I also needed were looking after me, then other men and women would be dying for the lack of those skills and that power.

If I had been awake, I would have told them not to bother. But Imperial decree was Imperial decree and the surgeons and the healing mages bent to their work.

There were a lot of surface injuries that could just be sewn up and I understand that they just set an apprentice to do those. But there were several other serious factors. Two of which I had done to myself. The fall out of the chair after Ella had untied me, landing on my ass without the use of legs, hands or fat to cushion the blow, and given my weakened state, had compacted my spine. My understanding was that it wasn't deadly but it was more of a compounding problem on top of some of the other things.

I had also hit my head on the way down which was a bit more serious. They call it a concussion in the trade and the fact that I had lost consciousness at some point was considered dangerous.

But the real thing that was going to kill me was the infection that had set in from the shattered hand and equally shattered feet and lower legs. That infection had already gotten into some of my other internal organs that were in the process of shutting down. It had been this, partially, that had meant that I was struggling to breathe and was driving the fatigue and the bowel problems.

According to the witnesses as well as the medical experts that I have consulted. There were several ways that this could be treated. Most commonly with alchemical remedies that border on the magical. This is what is used when there isn't a handy magic user present. Alchemy on the continent is one of the few magical arts that can be practised by those with absolutely no magical talent. And given the nature of the magic that flows around the continent, some plants can provide this service.

The problem with this is, that these remedies tax the body to the extreme and are not used when the body is already weakened. Which I was.

Another solution was the magical one. But it is not as practical as just waving a magic wand and healing someone. You have to treat things in the right order and if you heal one thing, you cannot heal the other. Also, like herbal remedies, magical healing can take a toll.

Given my weakened state, they tried various things in various orders for fear that the cure would be worse than the disease and that they would kill me while trying to save me.

Over the next couple of days, they used magic to drive the infection back so that they could give my internal organs the rest that they needed to take in some nutrition. This was so that my body would have more strength to fight off all of the things that were happening to me.

I understand that this was partially successful but the infection was becoming stubborn and would come back faster and faster.

So natural remedies were not doing the trick.

Then the plan was that they would continue to drive the infection back while another magic user would heal my internal organs so that they could take in the nutrition.

That left me weak but it did have an effect, not enough to satisfy anyone though.

And I was weakening.

No one wants to own up to what the final idea was. Someone suggested that the main problem was the infection that was burning through my body. Then they needed to remove the infection and the things that were causing the infection.

How did they do that?

They used magic to drive the infection into the injured limbs. Then they amputated, still using magic to keep me alive.

Apparently, healing my hands and my feet was almost certainly never going to be possible, but the process of amputation was so traumatic that they had wanted to leave it until much later in the process when I was much stronger.

But it was clear that I was never going to be stronger so the time was now.

So with three mages standing over me to drive the infection back, the surgeons got to work. They amputated my left arm below my elbow and both legs below the knee. They told themselves that it would be better this way because then, there was still the probability that I would be able to find decent wooden legs and feet to be able to carry on with life.

The surgeons consoled themselves with the fact that I still had a right arm and would therefore be able to wield a sword and a pen. And that I didn't need feet to ride a horse.

Showing how much they know.

Also, someone made the joke again that I was probably going to burn in the pyres of heresy anyway so… who cared?

The siege had all but finished by this point so one of my friends, I have no idea who, heard this and took the offending idiot out and had words with them. I have no idea who that friend was, nor do I know who it was that made the joke.

I have no memory of any of this.

I am now some distance from these events and after that first flurry of writing where I recorded what had happened in the Coulthard family cellar, I find that I can no longer just sit and write for extended periods. So it is now some time since all of this happened.

There are some flashes of memory during this time but I have no idea, absolutely none, as to which images, sounds and flashes are genuine memory or whether they are dreams, nightmares and visions brought on by proximity to that much awful magic, that much horror, or the very real sickness and injury that has been inflicted on my body and mind. No one will tell me how severe my fever had become in this period and as such the answer that what I saw and heard was down to pure "fever dream" is not easily dismissed.

But I do have flashes.

I remember the sight of Dr Shani's weeping face. At the immediate time of writing, she and I have not had time to converse properly so I can't possibly comment on whether this is a real image. But I have the most vivid image of her red-headed and freckled face above my own. She was frowning, wearing her Doctor's mask of professionalism. There was no emotion on her face at all as she peered at me carefully doing… whatever it was that she was doing. The only sign that anything was going on was that the tears ran down her face freely.

No sign of emotion other than those tears. I owe that woman more of an apology than I can easily say.

I think I can remember the moment when I came out, or was carried out into the open air. I remember coming out…. I think it was nighttime. I remember coming out and being able to see the stars. It was impossibly cold and despite being wrapped up in blankets, bandages and Flame knows what else. I remember shivering with the cold. I remember someone shouting that "we need to get a bloody move on" and then the pace seemed to pick up. I remember the jarring movements jerking some of my injuries and I remembered screaming before blacking out.

I think that one's pretty true.

I remember a swirling whirlpool of blue light. It was sucking at me and I was fighting not to dive into it head-first. I felt that if I jumped into that whirlpool then I would lose what was left of my body and my soul. I remember being deathly afraid of it.

I remember feeling a pressure on my chest concentrated into eight individual points that hurt as they pressed down.

I remember seeing Ciri. I have no idea why. She had her sword out and was all but spinning in place as she fought off some white-blue monster that I could not see.

I remember a conversation between a group of corpses as one of them tried to unwrap the bandages from my hand. They were arguing with each other. Something to do with the danger lies in the fact that the act of unwrapping could jar things free and cause more of a problem than it would if they were just left. The other corpse argued that they needed to see what they were dealing with in the first place to decide what the best course of action was. The corpses' faces were melting from their faces in the heat of wherever it was. They were melting as wax melts from a candle.

I remember seeing an impossibly pale woman putting her hand on my head. At first, the touch was so cold that it caused me pain but after a while, the cold began to be soothing.

Not all of the visions were bad. Some of them were almost pleasant. I saw Mark, healthy again as he was greeted by Father, Mother and Francesca. He was given a huge hug by Francesca who leapt into his arms and wrapped her arms and legs around him. They were all laughing and joking with each other. Edmund and Sam were nearby in that vision as well. I say vision as I'm pretty sure that's what it was. Edmund looked scaled and ugly but as Father, Mark and Mother reached out to him, beckoning him into the embrace, the scales fell from him and he went to join them, becoming the image of Edmund from his tomb, the elder brother that he should have been.

Sam was a hideous, mutated, horror of a creature and although Mother reached for him, he turned away and walked into the darkness.

Then they all turned and looked at me expectantly. It struck me that I was standing on a boat that was gently bobbing in a river. It would not take me much to jump over the side and run up to my family to be embraced, just as Mark had.

It would not have taken much.

I could also, just about, make out the figures of fallen friends behind my family. It would not have taken much for me to leap over the side of the boat.

But I did not.

I also saw memories. Again, sometimes these were pleasant. I saw Ariadne, working in her canvas study in the snow. I saw Kerrass working on something beside a campfire. I was on the decks of the Wave-Serpent as it sailed through the ocean.

But I also saw the horror. I saw Mark's childlike expression as Sam's knife descended. I saw Mother kneeling in a ragged dress while she prayed desperately for deliverance. I heard Rickard's awful screech as he tried to keep his guts and entrails inside his body.

I saw the thing that Sam had turned himself into and I watched each and every death that he visited on the people that he sacrificed to his God inside that circle.

I listened to Ariadne's screaming. The noises she made when Sam tortured her to ensure my compliance in his schemes but also her screams of sorrow and rage from when she was released. I remember that as a physical force that I fought to get away from.

I am pretty sure that I remember my arm and legs being amputated. There was much debate about how to go about doing that safely as I was very weak and they were honestly worried that I might be too weak to survive having that happen. There was a balancing act between the herbs needed to numb the pain, and the magic needed to send me to sleep, numb the pain and fight off the infection. Versus the shock to the body. I can't answer for any of this. But I have the most vivid memory of the sound of the bone saw as it cut through my limbs. That is a vibration that I cannot forget. It haunts me still and it is another one of those things that if I am not careful, I can hear it when I close my eyes. I can feel it in what remains of my arms and legs.

Not that I needed any more nightmares.

I know that I was restrained on my sick bed with strong bands of leather from which I still have bruises and scars. But despite all of this, I survived.

I slept, woke, ranted and raved in my insensibility for several days after this. As I say, I remember nothing. Once again, I was subject to the indignity of the tube down my throat for me to be fed and to take on my medicine. According to my physicians, there were times when I seemed to be awake enough and conscious enough to properly take my medicine and eat. But there were other times when I was just ranting, raving and trying to fight them off, telling them things that either made no sense or trying to warn them to get away.

Or condemning them for following a false God.

After four days, one of the healers decided that my fever had broken and that I was out of immediate danger. Not that I was on the mend because it was the healer's opinion that there was still a lot of work, a lot of healing for me to do. But I was healed enough. During that period, I was transported by virtue of a river barge to Novigrad where I was carried through the war-torn streets to the Cathedral where I was housed in one of the cells there to await my Inquisition.

Because I was going to be tried for Heresy and Treason.

I am not going to be the final arbiter of that decision. By now what happened is a matter of record and I will not be able to change the minds of the people that made their cases. Nor will I be able to change the minds of those people that heard about the trial and decided what the verdict, and my punishment, should be.

My opinion is a matter of record.

But I am supposed to be recording what happened so here it is.

I was still sick and still recovering. I had more and more periods of consciousness though. I don't know what orders had been given regarding my captivity, but it was not nearly as bad as it had been…

Not a high bar to clear but even so.

Nor was it as bad as it could be and arguably should have been. But there was the factor that they wanted me to be strong enough so that if I were to be executed, then I would also be strong enough to stand on my own two feet as I walked to the pyre.

Proverbially speaking of course.

So I was kept in a cell that I would guess to have been the cell of some kind of attendant monk. It was still small but at least it had a bed in it which was more comfortable than the cot that Sam had given me. The walls were stone but there had been some tapestries put up to try and keep the warmth in. They were religious in nature. One depicted the original basket of flame while the other depicted the gauntleted hand holding onto the three lightning bolts of Kreve.

I found that curious given that I was being held in the highest citadel of the Eternal Flame.

There was also a window which looked out over Novigrad bay, away from the city. It was bitterly cold but peaceful and there was a shutter there that if it became too cold I could order an attendant to come and close it for me. There was an interesting thought process to that at one point where I wondered what they would all do if I simply climbed out the window, and then it occurred to me that I was horrifically weak with only one fully working limb.

The fact that I had to send for a servant to come and close the shutters should have been a clue really.

I was provided with a copy of the scriptures and a book of prayer. There was also a padded chair and a footstool to help me get around bed sores and other such indignities. But even then, I still needed help to get around the room.

The food was better although I instead saw that they were adjusting the food according to the requirements of the medicine: red meat, green vegetables, and thick gravy. The bread was soft baked and the butter was creamy.

I had to be careful that I didn't puke it all up. The sheer physical pleasure of proper food and the feeling of a full belly meant that I started to sleep that much better.

It didn't stop the nightmares though.

They didn't provide me with a confessor, even though I asked repeatedly. Nor did they give me any news about other survivors of Sam's rebellion. Nor did they tell me anything that was happening. That I was now a cripple made me more of their prisoner than anything else.

I also remember being absurdly pleased when, in the depths of the night, I discovered that Sam's promise of preserving my manhood had been kept.

According to the calendar, I was in that cell in the upper towers of the Cathedral for a couple of weeks as I recovered. Truth be told, if it wasn't for my worry about what was happening elsewhere, it would have been a fairly peaceful and pleasant time. I had good food and a clean drink. I could study scripture, pray and rest to my heart's content. It was then that I finally understood the attraction of the life of a monk.

I was examined daily by a doctor that would come and see me. He seemed to be a monk of some kind, an elderly gentleman that gazed at me with sad eyes and a watery smile. But his hands were firm and dry and he seemed to be held in good regard. Under his ministrations, I would spend a lot of time asleep and other times doing various things involved in maintaining myself.

There was this horrific-smelling cream that I had to rub into my stumps that were designed to toughen things up. I have no idea what that meant but there you go.

The steady progression of potions and herbs that he would line up for me was less pleasant. I alternated between being horrifically bloated and constipated to spending, not small, amounts of time on the garderobe. One of the guards that I had been assigned made jokes that I should have a book or something to read in there.

Yes, I was guarded. There were three of them all told and mostly, they were there to ensure that I didn't hurt myself. The youngest was a happy and smiling type of holy man. He looked fat under his habit but that image was false. I would soon discover that he was hugely strong and that he could easily manhandle me around the place which seemed to be his purpose.

The other two looked to be retired soldiers of some kind. They spoke to me without emotion to answer questions, but it was also clear that they were guards before they were anything else.

None of them would tell me their names or what was going on.

My sense of time was confused but I think it was a little over two weeks later when I met my Inquisitor.

It was full-on winter by this point. I have no idea if the Solstice had passed but I could look out of my window and see that the snow had advanced down the mountains. Given that I was next to the sea, there was no snow on the hills or fields nearby but there was snow in the air as it happened. I liked to sit next to the window and feel the cold for as long as I could bear it before being forced to have someone close the shutters. The basement of Coulthard castle had been hot, stuffy and clammy, so now I liked cold, fresh air. It had the feeling of reminding me that I was free of that place.

My various attendants were keen to see to it that I could appreciate my privacy so the first thing I heard about this new man's arrival was that someone new knocked on the door.

You can tell a lot by the way that someone knocks on the door. Especially when you have no other ways of intellectual stimulation. This was the knock of a man that was professional and had a job to do. Kind of heavy, slow, three knocks.

I smirked at myself a little bit and called out for the person to enter.

It was actually two people. The second person was a younger man and was far more laden down. Aided by one of the guards, he came in and unfolded a small camping stool while my friendly younger guard manhandled a folding desk into the area. The young man set out papers, quill and ink before drawing a small knife from his belt and sharpening the quill.

I almost chuckled as I watched him. The movements were so familiar to me that I was given a strong sense of nostalgia for all of the times that I have found myself in that position. He seemed very serious as he went and set things out.

He and his master were wearing thick, dark blue, almost black habits complete with cowls and hoods. The younger scribe had his hood up and was avoiding looking at my face. I got the impression of a young man, somewhere in his early teens.

The older man was the one that commanded the attention though.

He was not old, but his hair and beard were mostly white. Just a smattering of grey in the hair while there was still a trail of darkness in the moustache, goatee and soul patch parts of his beard. He was a distinguished-looking gentleman and I could easily imagine him being someone who would have attracted a lot of female attention in his youth. As he ]walked in, he took in the rest of the room with a quick series of eye movements before peering at me with an intensity that made me want to look away.

"Do you know who I am?" He asked, not unkindly.

I shook my head.

"Ah well." He sighed. "The final injury to pride. Do you mind if I sit? Old bones you see."

I found myself liking him. His charm was a weapon that he wielded easily and there was an odd accent in his voice that I didn't recognise. A certain elongation of the soft sounds. A whistling to his 's' sounds.

I nodded and he perched on the bed. I was still in my chair and carefully set aside my copy of the scriptures and watched as he scooted backwards on the bed and crossed his legs to sit with his back to the wall.

"My name is Father William of Baskerville." He told me. "And my novice over there is a young man called Adso."

I nodded my acknowledgement of the names.

"Don't any memories ring clear?" The older priest asked?"

I cleared my throat.

"I am sorry," I told him, my voice has remained hoarse since I left Coulthard castle. "But I'm afraid that I don't know your name. Nor do I know where Baskerville is."

"A pity." He said. "It's not there any more of course." He waved at his novice who dipped his quill and started writing. "It was consumed in this war or that and is now called something else. I know who you are of course."

I nodded. I had to force myself to use my voice.

"Do you know," the old priest continued? "... What I am?"

I looked at him carefully and he was peering at me again with his piercing eyes. Which were blue, startlingly so.

"You are my Inquisitor," I said carefully. It had taken me several attempts to clear my throat. I was not afraid of what the man represented. Indeed, I was rather surprised that it had taken them so long to get to this phase of things.

"Yes." He smiled, not unkindly. "They told me that you were intelligent."

His voice was deep and sonorous as well, as all good priestly voices are.

"Specifically," he went on, "I am Inquisitor William of Baskerville of the church of Kreve."

I felt my eyebrows rise in surprise and he chuckled warmly.

"Yes, I thought that would catch your attention. You see there is more than a little bit of politics about the entire situation." His mouth twisted at the word 'politics' as though it tasted bad.

I was intrigued despite myself and wondered if he knew that.

"I am an old man now, even though I am still hale and hearty. I was enjoying my retirement and training of youngsters and arguing with peers about the proper interpretations of scripture and the proper preparation of fish. But it seems that there is a long list of people that want to be involved in your coming trial."

I nodded to show that I understood.

"Your guilt in the matter is obvious to anyone with half a brain," he went on and I could no longer meet his glittering gaze. "And as such, there was some conversation as to who would ascertain your final guilt and who would take your confession given that there is the potential of some prestige attached to the matter. The Empress has that decree that we cannot try people for Heresy out of hand and as such, there is, at the moment, a panel of judges is convened. Do you follow me so far?"

I nodded, unable to lift my eyes from the floor.

"The fact that you are also being tried for treason is a factor as well. So the churches couldn't divide you up among themselves. The Flaming folk wanted you to keep all to themselves because then they would be able to condemn you for being involved in the death of one of their saints."

I felt myself frown and looked up. The old priest had pulled out a small metal box from somewhere and was arranging some snuff on his hand. He saw my question and he laughed.

"Yes, your brother Mark is going to be canonised. If he hasn't been already."

I nodded and felt my head sink again.

"There is, apparently…" He paused to sniff hugely. "Also some other matters that mean that certain members of the Fire folk that mean that they are positively beside themselves to hurl you onto a fire. I suspect politics again myself, but your obvious guilt is a factor I suppose."

He sniffed again.

"The Great Sun also wants to be involved. You committed treason after all, as well as heresy, which means that you went against the Sun, in the personification of the Empress. Melitele is outraged at all the horror that was committed at your family's hands and Kreve?"

He built up to a huge sneeze and it did not let him down. I looked up briefly to see him wiping his face with a large handkerchief.

"Well, we just like working against evil."

I felt, rather than saw, him smile.

"Do you understand all of that?" He asked me.

I nodded.

"Good," he admitted with some more rustling cloth that I would take to mean that he was shifting his weight. "Because I don't. I hate politics with a passion that regularly sends me to the confessor. But still…"

He seemed to have some kind of nervous energy that meant that it was impossible to keep him still.

"So what happened…" He had gotten to his feet and was moving around. "Was that there is a tribunal of judges? Religious and terrestrial. They each submitted a list of names of people that they would be happy with performing your inquisition and interrogation. My name came up on multiple lists and so they got me down here and here we are."

Again, he was peering at me. I continued to say nothing.

"I may say…" he went on when he was sure that I was not going to respond. "That you are not the only person that is currently being… Do you know, I never figured out the word? Are you being Inquisited? Every time I think of the question I always forget about it. Adso?"

The young man sighed with the air of someone who had already performed this task several times.

"Being an Inquisitor is a title," Adso said, still making notes. "The person is generally called 'Subject' or 'prisoner' or in some harsher circles 'victim'."

"Ah yes. You are not the only victim of these things and I imagine that the judging body has quite a lot of work to do. However, you are their star case."

I finally looked up at him. Again, it took me several attempts for me to clear my throat and be able to speak.

"So how does this work?" I asked. "No instruments, fire or rack?"

"Good gracious no." He laughed. "No, I don't think so. Apart from anything else, you have no feet so we have nothing to tie a rack to. Besides…"

His tone turned serious.

"I know who you are. I was a friend of Inquisitor Jerome back in the day. Good man that did some good work. Shame he was working for the wrong church and they burnt him out. Kreve could have made a good Inquisitor out of him. So I know that he has taught you how to withstand torture. I also know that you have been tortured before. Both at the hands of monstrous entities and at the hands of physical people. So torture holds no real fear for you. All I would be doing is causing you pain."

He spoke conversationally but he continued to watch my face closely.

"Also," he spoke a bit more softly. "You know that I don't really need all of those things don't you?"

I nodded.

"Frederick. You know as well as I do that I only need a small, very sharp knife to get the job done. Don't you."

I nodded again.

"Frederick, it would be much easier for everyone, including you, if you gave me a verbal response."

"Yes," I croaked hoarsely. "I know that."

"Good." He said precisely before he straightened up and his tone became friendly again

"Also, I don't think that I need all of that."

I looked up at him in confusion.

"Why not?"

"Because every day that you have been here, you have asked for a confessor. You know of your guilt and you want to confess. So here I am." he spread his arms wide. "Confess to me and I will listen to what you have to say."

He perched back on the bed and leaned his head back on the wall, his eyes drooping closed.

I looked from him towards the young novice Adso who was watching me carefully, his pen poised over the parchment that he was leaning on. There was no help for me there and I looked back towards his master who had not moved.

I cleared my throat to begin and suddenly the old man moved.

"I do apologise," he told me sincerely, "but you have been fed properly haven't you? I should check and all that. I will send for water, or milk if you prefer, to loosen up your throat. I would send for alcohol but they don't let the stuff in here."

He went to the door and issued some instructions through the gate.

"I apologise Frederick. It is Frederick, isn't it? I understand that you prefer not to be called Freddie?"

I nodded.

"Remember what I said about audible responses?" Father William raised his eyebrows.

"Yes," I croaked out. "I prefer to be called Frederick."

"But not by friends or close family members. I was right about your throat though wasn't I? Hoarse from all the screaming and shouting and the smoke of heresy. I recognise the type you know. I shall have someone put some vinegar in the water to help scour the goo from the back of your throat."

He spoke slowly and not unkindly.

"And have you eaten?" He asked when he came back from the grating. "We have a lot to talk about you and I and although your doctors have decreed that you are strong enough for Inquisition, it is my experience that they, meaning the doctors… especially doctors of the Eternal Flame, are a bit hesitant to waste medical supplies on someone that is going to burn anyway. But you have much to say and I have many questions and we do not have an infinite amount of time to say them. So have you eaten?"

I nodded, before remembering.

"Yes," I said.

"What have you eaten?"

My gaze had sunk to be staring somewhere in my lap.

"Some porridge I think."

"You think? You are not certain. I warn you that I will not settle for any kind of plea of insanity. There is no leniency for traitors and heretics as well you should know."

"The days seem to merge," I told him, and my mouth spoke slowly. Far too slowly. It seemed to me that it took far too long for the words to leave my brain and head to my mouth. It was as though I was having to think about the formation of every single word.

"Mmm," he grunted. He seemed unsatisfied by this.

"Tell me what happened." He said. "From the day of the Winter Solstice, please. Go into as much detail as you can."

There was some rustling to suggest that he sat back on my bed.

I took a deep breath before I started to speak.

It was a long story, made even longer by the state that I was in. It had been a while since I had spoken this much and as such, it took my throat time to warm itself up. Somewhere, as I was describing the opening dinner where Kerrass had had his neck broken, the promised food and drink arrived. The monk that brought it served everyone in the room, his face was sombre and this time, he made no jokes and did not look at me.

Father William did not speak or move through the entire thing. If there was a breeze from the window, it might have blown through his hair but otherwise, he appeared completely unmoved. The only accompaniment to my voice was the steady scratching of Adso's quill.

I spoke about the betrayal, the time that I was on the run and my determination to buy as much time as I could for Chireadean, his wife, Carys and Padraig to make their headlong flight to warn other people of the treason that had taken place.

I spoke of my capture and about the first bout of torture where Sam had broken me by torturing Ariadne, Emma and Laurelen. I talked of the conversations that I had heard and the other people that I had bared witness to and after a time that seemed as though it had taken days, even if it can only have been a little while given the fact that it was still daylight, I came to the ending.

Silence reigned for a long moment.

"Mmm," William said and he seemed to move for the first time in a while. "An interesting story certainly. Would make for some good chapters in your ongoing works."

"Really?"

"Oh yes. I am a reader of your work after all. It makes for interesting reading. I don't approve of all of it, of course, your consorting with the sorts of people that you consort with. I prefer chastity myself but I cannot speak against such things."

He grunted as he got to his feet and moved around a bit.

"I suspect that I would agree with some of your older tutors in that your subject matter is rather too lurid and populist to be of proper academic merit, but as a gateway writer, you have more than a little merit. Or you would have if your career wasn't going to end so ignobly.

"The stories that you tell display many examples of good, honest investigative work. Your discourses on the use of silence to interrogate a person are, specifically, some of the best uses of the strategy and you always treat the witnesses with the respect that they deserve. Even down to the children which is something that I approve of."

He had this habit of giving little grunts and 'hm's between phrases in his speech.

"The problem being of course that now, given what we know to have happened in Coulthard castle, all of your good work is now suspect. Still, we must go through the motions, must we not?"

I didn't answer that.

"Tell me the story again." He ordered this time leaning forwards on the bed.

I cleared my throat and started again. Two sentences in he sprang to his feet.

"Hang it all, I need a proper chair. I don't know how you do it Adso, sitting on a stool like that all day. Must be a benefit of youth. I must send for a chair." He did so and paced until it arrived where he arranged it until he was satisfied. Then he sat down and looked up at me.

"Continue Frederick."

No sooner had I opened my mouth than he stopped me.

"No, no, sorry." He got up and moved his chair again. And again and this time he settled down, gesturing to me and I started again.

It cannot be denied that, as I spoke, more details came to my memory and I spoke of those details that little bit more. Again, Father William did not speak or seem to move. Again, the only other sound in that room other than my voice was the steady scratching of Adso's pen on the parchment.

Again, I concluded with the last, desperate effort to strike Sam from behind, both to provide a distraction for Kerrass to be able to deliver some kind of killing blow but also so that I could make sure that I was not insignificant in Sam's eyes at the end.

I spoke about the visions that I had seen, the ghosts or hallucinations of the dead that had come to me and I spoke about Sam's last words. Again, I finished with the phrase.

"And then I didn't wake up properly until I was in this cell."

Again, there was no movement for some time.

This time though I summoned my courage and looked up to find that Father William was watching me, his eyes glittering from underneath his hooded cowl.

Then he grunted and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling for a long moment in the attitude of someone who is contemplating what they had heard.

Then he scratched his head, reaching into the cowl to do so.

"I was a fan of your brother." He told me.

"What?" I felt that the man's mind was moving so quickly that it was leaving me feeling bewildered.

"Yes I was, I will not deny it. Like many of the Flaming persuasion, he was one of those that I daresay belonged on our side of the divide. I saw him speak on several occasions including a conclave that was called when it became clear that the North was going to fall to the Black and the Great Sun. There was a conclave as to what the major religions of the North were going to do to preserve ourselves in the face of the Monotheism of the South.

"Of course, it provided much entertainment for me to notice that only Kreve and the Eternal Fire were invited to the conclave of 'Major religions'."

He smiled a little sadly.

"I saw your brother then as he stood in the gathering, standing tall above all others and surveying the surroundings. I remember saying to my friend then 'What a soldier of Kreve we could have made of that man?' I saw him again a couple of years later and remember wondering if he was ill. And a third time when he was travelling around the countryside trying to tell people about the benefits of servitude. It was a good sermon that one. I liked it and said so to my fellows."

I nodded when it was clear that he had finished speaking.

"Thank you," I said. I could not keep a small tear from running down my face.

"They're going to make him a saint you know." Father William said again. I looked up at him. "Oh it's quite true," he smiled. "Two saints in the family. Shame about the heretics and traitors."

He leaned forwards in the chair and fixed me with his gaze.

"Tell me the story again." He said. "This time, try and keep away from all of the lies."

He rose and this time, he stood with his back to me, hands clasped behind his back.

I did as I was told. At some point, Father William bowed his head.

Towards the end, he rubbed at his eyes.

When I had finished he turned around and sat back down in his chair. His face was… He was displeased with something and frowning.

"Tell me the story again." He ordered, leaning forwards to peer into my eyes.

I did the best that I could but under the man's gaze, I was beginning to falter. About halfway through this time, he stopped me.

"Kreve preserve me." He snapped before stalking the corner of the room. He stood there, facing the stone wall for a moment before he spun around.

"Eat something." He ordered. "You are growing tired and I will not have you using that as an excuse when the time comes for you to die. Eat something."

I tried to do as he ordered. I felt sick and the food tasted like ash in my mouth. It was little more than chicken and bread with some kind of leafy salad and some cheese. Simple food but the cheese felt oily and cloying in my mouth. The chicken was dry and tasteless while the bread felt tough and chewy.

All the time, he stood over me, glaring as he did so.

"Now again." He ordered. "Tell me your story again."

"Why?" I demanded. "I've told you what happened three times now."

"And you will tell me again, and again, and again until I am satisfied." He instructed. "Now again, from the top please."

I did my best, now I was trying to remember all of the things that I had spoken about before. I tried to remember the details, but he was right, I was tired, ill and Flame knows what. The food was roiling in my belly and I wanted to vomit.

I did my best but he was not satisfied.

"Again," he ordered.

"But?"

He moved very quickly, startlingly quickly. He moved until his face was inches away from my own.

"Again," he whispered.

It took me a while to get the words out after that as he stayed as close to my face as a lover might. Easily within kissing range and I wondered at the tactic that he was using. But I did as I was told. I started again, talking about the time that I spent with Ariadne before the evening feast during the Autumn Equinox. My words expanded this time as I spoke more about my suspicions, and the feelings that I had, and as I spoke, more and more of my feelings came out. I was no longer just talking about the facts of the matter. I was telling him about what I was thinking.

I talked for a long time until I was about two days into the account and he stopped me.

"Frederick." He told me. "Let us be honest with each other."

"But I…"

"Stop lying to me, Frederick. You are not being honest at all."

He sighed and rubbed his forehead, sitting back down.

"If you are going to lie to me, then I will be honest with you. There are two ways that this can go. The first route is that you are taken from here. You will be given a last rite to purify your soul before your body is cleansed with the heat of the Eternal Fire. You will die quickly because the heat will be very hot."

He stared at me for a long moment, making sure that I was listening.

"Or," he went on. "You will be taken from here and you will be… cleansed. I do not know what happens when the Eternal Flame does that kind of thing but that cannot be pleasant. It certainly isn't when Kreve does it. You will be cleansed. They will heal you when you cannot stand any more physically and then they will start again. The difference between those two states is my word. My word and you will die quickly and painlessly. Or my word and your death will be long and agonising. And at the moment Frederick, I am inclined to send you to torment. Now tell me the truth."

"I am telling you…"

"What was that?" He demanded.

"I AM TELLING YOU THE TRUTH," I screamed, my voice tearing.

"What possible reason do I have to believe you?" He demanded. "The story you tell is rife with untruths. Apart from anything else, it is so clear that you have rehearsed many aspects of it ad nauseum. I suppose that part of the problem is that you have been allowed to languish in this cell, you have been able to rehearse your story night and day in the hope that you might be able to be let off whatever fate was in store for you rather than facing that fate, properly like a flame fearing man of the church."

I tried to speak but it seemed as though some dam had burst in the old man.

"You are lying to me Frederick, now tell me the truth."

"WHAT TRUTH?" I wanted to know. "What truth?"

"The truth, the objective truth. Tell me what happened in that cellar, that charnel house that they found in the centre of what remains of Coulthard castle. Tell me what happened. Tell me how you conspired with your brother to overthrow the rightful ruler of the continent, which, to be clear, is the Empress of the Continent, Cirilla, first of her name and blah blah blah. Tell me how you helped your brother orchestrate all of this horror, all of this death. Tell me what happened."

"I did not help him." I refuted. "I did not help him. I tried to send out word."

"Really?" Father William wondered. "Ah yes, I remember. That pair of Elves… Whatshername. Carys and the innkeeper. And what was his name? The Skelligan?"

"Padraig," I replied.

"That's him. None of those people made it through to warn anyone. No one tried to cross the river by that name as the Oxenfurt militia were still recording all those that crossed. No one approached Vizima and tried to access the Empress to pass on the words. So that is no proof at all."

"I got word to my publisher to try and get…"

]"Yes, we know. The dwarf Dorthan published a few pamphlets. That is not informative at all as well you might be able to think. Not only that but Dorthan the dwarf, himself, can't be found. So we only have your word for it that it was you that sent those diary entries. Not only that, but it is just as likely that you arranged those diary entries in advance to throw people off the scent. Or at best, to cover your bases due to your knowledge about the weakness of the plans that you and your brother were making."

"The writing that we… I…"

"Yes… You were talking about those documents, those… records that you were ordered to make of what had happened in the castle while you were suffering through your so-called captivity yes?"

I said nothing.

"Those records are in your own code in a form of scholar's writing that no one can decipher other than yourself and therefore could mean anything. You, and your scribe who was found dead."

"My injuries?"

"Were inflicted by honest, Flame, Kreve and Sun-fearing soldiers as they took the castle."

"Kerrass saw?... Where is Kerrass?"

"Is dead. He was indeed sent into the castle to deal with your brother and the magic that was being gathered to the place, but he died in the process. He was found in one of the upper corridors having been gutted."

I could not hold in a sob.

"Spare me your pretences at grief, Lord Frederick. Your Spider vampire monster of a betrothed is gone and no one can find any sign of her. Your sister's mind is broken but she would not help you as much as you like given that she was using your family's mercantile efforts to support your brother's rebellion. Her lover is, like yours, missing without a trace. Nothing supports your side of the story Frederick, nothing."

He had been ranting and pacing as he spoke but then he sat on the edge of the bed and stared into my eyes.

"Shall I tell you what I do have? Hmmm? Shall I tell you? I have numerous witnesses and prisoners that swear that you were your brother's friend. That he intended for you to rule when all of this was over. Men who hated the fact that you were being placed over them. Soldiers, and nobles alike. Even the Queen Regent admits that your brother intended to place you over all else? So why should I believe that you were your brother's prisoner hmm? What possible reason could you all have for that conflict in the story, hmm?"

He stood over me, tall and terrible.

"Tell me what happened. Again."

I tried again. Starting at the beginning. But this didn't seem to satisfy him. He would jump to a point at the end. Then he would jump to a point in the middle. He would question me, jerking me around in the narrative. I remember very little of it.

I got angrier and angrier until I eventually lost my temper.

"You wanna know what I did?" I demanded. "You wanna know what part I had to play in all of this?"

"That's been the entire point of this Frederick."

"Do you want to know?"

"Yes. Tell me what I want to know."

"I did nothing."

William stared at me, standing tall and over the top of me, his face shadowed in the depths of his cowl.

"I did nothing. Over and over again people warned me about Sam. Ciri, Ariadne, and Emma especially. Queen of Dorne. Syanna… All of them. They tried to warn me. I even saw it once, I think. I saw it when we were investigating… I remember looking across the courtyard and I saw Sam just standing there watching me. He had this weird expression on his face that I didn't recognise. He was calculating. He was plotting. I saw it and I did nothing.

"I even fucking told him what we had found. I told him. I kept him in the loop at every stage while we were…" I petered out. The anger had carried me so far and now I was done.

"Yes, I'm guilty," I told him. "I am, I admit it. Is that what you want to hear? I am guilty. I should have done more. I should have seen it, I should have listened. I should have stopped it. I should have…"

I shook my head.

"Take me to the pyre," I told him. "Take me to the pyre."

William stared down at me for a long time before he started to speak.

"Being an Inquisitor is an interesting profession." He told me. "There is no other task like it in the world. No two Inquisitors approach their task in the same way."

He came to the table and poured himself a drink, took a sip and grimaced at the taste.

"I will freely admit," he went on, "that we have lost our way over the last couple of decades. Not only because of what has happened but also because we have been competing with each other. The Eternal Flame and Kreve. Who could catch the most heretics? Who can burn the most magic users and destroy the most monsters? That work has also attracted more than its fair share of sadistic idiots who are looking for an outlet for all of their depraved…"

He shook his head.

"What was your turn of phrase? I remember reading it and admiring the poetry of what you had said before I was forced to acknowledge that I too had seen the same thing. I have seen ugly men burning beautiful women, beautiful girls and boys on the pyre and fondling themselves openly. It's disgusting.

"It's even more disgusting that the pursuit of heretics has become a political pursuit. We ignore one set of heretics because their father is a prominent donator to the church. We ignore that other heretic because he is a favourite at court and to pursue him is to weaken the political power of the church. It's disgusting. I agree with you.

"The work in the North of Redani was an inspiring thing. You reminded us, both of us, Kreve and the Eternal Flame, that we are supposed to be investigators. We are not there to hunt out heresy for the sake of it. If that were the case then we would simply never stop. There's so much of it about and we would need to be working day and night until we used every tree on the continent to build the pyres before we were done and when we were done we would be left with no one to work the fields. No one to come to church and no one to do… well… anything.

"We are investigators. What Witchers were supposed to do with monsters, we were supposed to do with evil. Those of us from the old school know the difference between the two. I understand that you were not lying when you tell us how much good your Vampire woman was doing in Angral before she was enslaved, making it even more tragic as to what happened to her. About how you strung her along before your brother could enslave her.

"We were meant to hunt out evil.

"Evil exists Frederick. It does and anyone that's been in my line of work has seen it. It's in the man that likes to abuse children. The people that get their sexual pleasure through active torture. Not the gentle parody of such actions that I understand some people use in the bedroom, but other, more harmful, hate-riddled torture.

"The summoning of dark gods. Not the gentle little spirits of the harvest. But the real darkness. Invoking the Linhead to kill your enemies rather than invoke her mercy in the ending of a suffering grandparent. The use of magic to enslave. That is what we are for. That is what we were created for.

"And sometimes, it is necessary. Not all people have a friendly cat Witcher to be called on to end the life of a monstrous nobleman who is murdering people and wearing their dead faces as a mask because he thinks it means that he can experience their lives. So a peasant can go to a priest and the Inquisition can be called. It's probably madness but it might also be a demon and so we can burn the man and the community was saved."

He sighed.

"I feel like I am getting off-topic. I read about your work in the North. I admired you then. You, your Witcher and to a lesser extent, your brother. You did an amazing thing. A thing that no one else had managed to do in the history of the country. You had gone into the heartland. You had hunted down the heretic, going into his very lair to destroy him and then you had done so, bringing back word of what had happened so that the rest of us could follow through on the matter."

I hung my head.

"But now?"

He shook his head. "Even those actions must be examined in the light of what has happened since. Your little insurrection with your brother has proven that you are not shy about cutting the dead weight from your efforts. You are not afraid of removing those people that are pulling you back and I wonder… Was that what you were doing in the North? Were you cutting the dead flesh from your little cult? Those men might have been holding you back. Tarring others who might have known what you were up to."

His voice started to rise to a shout.

"Did you point out those people that were innocent but that might be able to point you out? You were untouchable.

You had outed the cult. Did you use your newfound prestige to destroy your enemies?"

"I…"

"Tell me what happened Frederick. Confess your sins. Tell me what happened and I will do my best to ensure that your death is painless. Confess and those people who have had faith in you over the years will be vindicated. Confess."

"What do you want me to confess to?" I wondered plaintively.

"Tell me the truth." He told me, putting some overtones of kindness into his voice. "Tell me what happened. Tell me that you tried to help your brother. Tell me that you were there, that you tried to turn him aside but that in doing so you became embroiled in his schemes. Tell me that you helped him, gave him advice, told him how to conquer the North."

I think I had already started to shake my head as he was speaking. I don't really remember but I think that it was beginning to happen as his voice started to become sharper and harsher.

"Tell me that you told him about the vulnerabilities of your monster lover. Tell me that you told him how to kill your Witcher. Tell me that you were on his side."

"I was not on his side." I wailed. This wasn't supposed to be happening. I was done with the torment now. I was out of that basement and I was free. If they wanted to kill me for something then I was at peace with that. But if all that was going to happen was that men like this would be getting into my face and yelling at me then what more did they want from me?

"I advised him," I admitted. "Yes, I advised him. But I advised him when he was just my big brother. I advised him on how to be friends with our big sister and that he needed her. I advised him how to live in this world and not upset or otherwise drive people away. I did try to help him but not like this. I told him to turn himself over to the eternal Flame. I told him to stop this madness. I told him to give himself up and throw himself at people's mercy. I would never have helped him to do that. Never. Never. Never. I would never have helped him commit all of that horror."

His face turned into a rictus of hate and disgust.

"Give me something Frederick." He hissed. "I am trying to help you. Give me something. Everyone knows of your guilt. Everyone. You might even have had some mitigating factors. Maybe there is some truth in the lie. Maybe… Maybe you were just trying to alleviate your guilt, maybe you fell down and worshipped The God so that your own pain would stop. You might have crossed your fingers behind your own back but you still did it. No one would have blamed you. You would just have been a weak man. Confess Frederick. Confess and I will be able to help you."

"I cannot confess to what didn't happen." A sudden wave of calm struck me. "I will stand before the Eternal Flame and I will admit to my faults. I could have done more. I should have done more. I might have helped Sam when I was unaware of his plans and his treachery but I never did that. I NEVER bowed down to his God.

"I would never do that. I would never be part of that. I would have died first. I have seen the darkness that waits for us all and I would never allow my soul to be tarnished in such a way. I did what Sam wanted to prevent him from hurting my sister and the Flame-Fearing woman that I love. I am guilty of that. But I did not bow down before his God. I did not support Sam in his treason. I had no idea that this was coming because if it did, I would have done more to stop it."

"Why should I believe you? Hmm?" He demanded. "Why should I believe you when so many of your family have turned out to be traitors and heretics?"

"I don't know." I wailed, my courage and willpower leaving me. "I don't know but it's true."

He grunted and stood up.

"Then I cannot help you, Frederick. They will come for you in the morning. If I was in your place, I would pray for your soul and be ready to meet the flame. Come along Adso."

And he left, leaving me in tears.

It was dark shortly afterwards. I tried to sleep with some kind of determination that if I was going to be burnt or tortured tomorrow then I wanted to do it with enough strength to stand and not whimper. I wanted to be able to walk, figuratively speaking, to meet my fate.

Instead, old illnesses, tremors and nightmares haunted me. All of those images, my mother and brother at prayer and so many people dying before my eyes.

Ariadne's scream echoed in my ears throughout the entire night.

But that was only when exhaustion finally got the better of me. I did sleep then. But before that, when I still struggled to find that blissful state of sleep, I spent the night going over all of my interactions with Sam. Every major chat that I had with him. Every event where we had been together. Particularly in Toussaint where he would have been in the middle of committing all of the horrors that would have made him able to control Ariadne.

I pored over every word that we exchange and I wished, bitterly, to have a copy of my accounts from those days to see if there was any clue there that I could have seen if there was anything, anything at all that I could have found that would have meant that all of this could have been averted.

So I didn't sleep, or when I did, I had nightmares.

I have no idea what state I was in in the morning. And again, I was confused. If today was going to be my last day then I wanted to face it like a man. I wanted to shave, bathe properly and dress carefully to find my courage in the face of whatever was going to come next. I was under no illusions. I was weak, sick and probably still recovering from my injuries and whatever else. I would not survive any kind of torture over a long period. Therefore, if today was going to be the day then I wanted to face it.

But I was not given time.

My door burst open as though it had been kicked open by a troll and four men came in. They were cowled and masked in some way but they seized me by a limb each and lifted me, placing me onto a stretcher that they lay on the floor. I tried to protest, flailing at them weakly. I could feel the stone through the cloth beneath me and it was cold.

They quickly and efficiently tied me to the stretcher with leather straps and placed a bag over my head as I tried to protest, but it was all happening so fast that I wondered if I was going insane. I wondered if they were coming for me and that I was finally, finally, losing what was left of my sanity.

Or worse, that my liberation had all been some kind of hallucination at the hands of my brother.

I was lifted and carried out of the door where they turned to lead me down the corridor.

"WAIT." Someone shouted. "Wait," I could hear running feet and in the middle of my bewilderment at the sudden movement it took me a moment to be able to recognise Father William as he came to the side of my stretcher.

I was shivering and trembling as he took my hand.

"Give me something Frederick." He pleaded with me. "Give me something that I can use, something that I can show them. Let me tell them that you have some kind of remorse. Anything. Tell them that your brother forced you to worship the God that he followed. Tell them that you were forced to rebel. I cannot save you if you do not help me. I cannot save you if you…"

"Father William." One of the guards intoned in a dire voice. "Justice is waiting."

"Yes, yes. Just a minute." He turned back to me. "Give me something Frederick. I just need…"

"We are leaving Father William." The man intoned and then we were heading back down the passageway.

"GIVE ME SOMETHING FREDERICK." William jogged along with me for a moment before I went around a corner and down some stairs before I was deposited in another room. This time, they propped me on a table for a while. This was just a stone room. No windows. There were torches on the wall to give me some light.

And then I waited.

I heard the sound of a door opening and another man came in. I heard the sound of wood scraping against the stone and I guessed at a chair being pulled up.

"I have come to keep you company, you filthy excuse for a heretic." It was a surprisingly high-pitched voice, dripping with scorn and hate. "You are going to be taken from this place where you will have hooks inserted into your flesh. After that, they are going to heat the hooks until afterwards, over time, you are going to be cooked from the inside out. It's going to really hurt."

The tone of voice was kind of friendly but I must have whimpered.

There was a sigh and the sound of a man taking his ease.

"I always hated your brother," the voice said. "I thought he gave the rest of us a bad name. Preaching his nonsense about serving your fellow man." He chuckled. "Our fellow men should know their place. They should bow before the Eternal Flame and they should be grateful that the flame does not burn the flesh from their bones. You are no better of course. You, telling them that the Eternal Flame is supposed to be a beacon of hope, something to lead people to their home port like a lighthouse."

He hawked and spat.

"Didn't help him, did it? Or you. Now you're going to die here and you are going to die a death as painful as the questioners can conceive."

He laughed.

"The only way out of it all is if you give William and the others like him what they want. You should do it, you know. You should confess. It will be easier for everyone if that's what you did. Will save time after all and torturing someone to death is hard work. I should know."

He laughed again.

"But still, if you don't, that's ok by me. They will use a hooked knife. Sharpened point but the other parts of the blade will not be quite as sharp. They want the skin to tear, you see. They will cut into you and they will place the hooks inside. Then they will heat the ends of the hooks until the metal grows hot. Not too hot, but just enough to keep you on the edge of agony."

He laughed.

"We're going to take your body and display it for the cowardly, traitorous, heretical scum that we all know you to be. People will look at what we've done to you and they will quake and whimper in fear at the thought that this might all happen to them. That way we will keep them in the right and just fear the Eternal Flame."

He laughed again. Spat again.

"You're not a man. You're a thing. A treasonous thing. I am the torturer, the questioner. So many people… Dandelion and the rest. They all want to make me out to be the bad bad guy in some kind of stage show drama. They do not see how we protect them from the darkness on the edge of sight. They don't see it. The world wants its villains and after we had done everything that we could to save them, they decided to hate us for it. But you know what makes it all better?"

He laughed.

"You are the cure for that. The horror that you and your brother have inflicted on the rest of us means that you will be the villain. You are the villain. You do not even dare to confess your sins. So you are going to be paraded before the masses as a warning. 'This is what happens to traitors and scum' the heralds will cry and for once, we will know our justice because then, we have caught and punished a traitor. Something that should have happened to you and your entire miserable family years ago. You could stop all of it. You could confess and I will go away. They will have to carry you to the fire but then you would be able to breathe the smoke and die relatively quickly.

"But you won't do that, will you? Too much of a coward."

I said nothing. What was there to say? The first stage of the disorientation was dissipating.

The door opened again and another voice came through.

"Enough," the new voice said. "If he's not going to confess now, he's not going to."

"Remember," the old one, the laughing one, said. "All you have to do is confess and then this all goes away."

Men entered, their footsteps echoing on the floor and I felt myself move, being carried away. I looked for the laughing speaker but I couldn't catch sight of him.

I was taken down a corridor before a door was opened and I was placed on the floor inside a small room. Not much bigger than your average broom closet. A cloth bag was put over my head and I was in the darkness then. They picked me up instantly and then we were off.

At first, I spent some time trying to guess where I was going, trying to take in the sounds of the footfalls and the feeling of us turning left and right. But after a while and with the speed of the way that things were moving, I became disoriented, the urge to vomit started to grow and I needed to focus on keeping what had passed for breakfast, or dinner or whatever, in my belly.

It was not an easy thing although it occurred to me that part of the reason that I was struggling so much was that I hadn't eaten anything since yesterday and in the middle of my interrogation.

I went down several flights of stairs, I know this because of the way that the movements changed. I ended up in a large open area where I was set on the floor. A not-unkind voice told me that I was going to be transferred to a chair and that it would be easier for everyone if I didn't struggle. I let them lift me into the chair which they did with relative ease before the same voice told me that they were going to tie me into the chair to preserve my dignity.

I tried to shrug but that didn't seem to make much of a difference.

Then the bag was removed from my head and I saw where I was.

I had never been in the room before but I have been in many rooms like it. It was like a lecture hall or an operating theatre where the ranks of chairs surround a central point which is normally where the lecturer or the operation is taking place. Mostly these kinds of rooms are found in hospitals or in places of learning like the university.

As these kinds of rooms go, this was a relatively small one. There was no natural light but there were plenty of torches lining the walls so it was quite a warm room and well-lit. A chandelier containing a couple of dozen candles was on it and I was relieved to notice that I had been placed so that the wax wouldn't dribble down and onto my head.

There was one balcony with a few chairs in it which were populated by several people, most of whom I didn't recognise.

In no particular order.

There was a Cardinal of the Eternal Flame there. I had no idea who he was and I didn't recognise him but he was wearing the robes and accoutrements that Mark had been wearing since his elevation. He wasn't wearing all of them and he had the impression of someone that was dressing down to where he was needed at that time. He was a thin man, not ascetically thin but the kind of weight of someone that occasionally looks up from whatever it was he was doing and realised that he had forgotten to eat. His hair was white and it was the only real sign of age on the man as he looked down at me.

I thought he looked tired.

Next to him was a priest of Kreve, obvious in his armour with the banner of Kreve propped next to him. Similar in age to the Cardinal but a bit bulkier. He lacked the bulk of the average armoured knight and I guessed that this would be a kind of general figure. Someone who directed armies and took care of logistics. I thought that he might once have been larger but I remember that he looked down at me with an air of slight disdain and boredom.

Next to him again was the priest of the Nilfgaardian Great Sun. Wearing a simple black habit, he was tonsured quite severely and was the heaviest set of all of the religious factions that were present. He had a face that looked as though it was used to being jolly, just slightly overweight but there were smile lines on his face and he smiled down at me benignly although I got the feeling that there was some steel in his gaze. My thought was that he was the kind of priest that would be very kind to everyone so it was shocking when he needed to bring the pain.

Next to him again was Mother Nenneke. The most famous of all of the Priestesses of Melitele and only that because she is the mother superior of the largest existing convent of priestesses of that kind. That and the fact that Professor Dandelion and Lord Geralt would spend time with her. She is known to have a love/hate relationship with the Professor and Lady Yennefer while treating Lord Geralt as an Errant son. She must be ancient by now and she is certainly showing her age. She walks with the aid of two walking sticks that were propped next to her against the rail.

I was terrified that I would see hate in her gaze as it had been her convent that Mother had been sent to but she regarded me without expression. She was well dressed in habit and wimple so I was unable to tell more about her.

Like the cardinal, she looked tired and desperately sad.

Then we moved on to the more secular authorities.

In the middle was Queen Cerys of Skellige. She shared the same characteristics as the others in that she looked tired. She was wearing a shirt with an over tunic and her tartan was arranged in a sash over her shoulder. She was making a note of something as I had my bag removed and didn't look at me. Other than that, she seemed impeccably groomed, not a hair out of place and as with most of the things that she does, I guessed that she was making a point.

Next to her was a Nilfgaardian Officer that I didn't know. He was still dark-haired despite being somewhere in his fifties. He wore his armour well, black lacquer with the Golden symbol of the sun on the breastplate. He had a small moustache and a goatee. His hands were un-gauntleted and he had a habit of stroking his moustache while he was thinking, seeming to be something he did so that his hands had something to do.

After him was the old director of Imperial Intelligence that I had spoken to before all of this went on. The man that I had interrogated to see if there was anything that I might have missed during the night where we burnt the heretics that had killed Father. Injured in one of the wars, he had taken up the position of Commander of the Oxenfurt City watch before finding his way up through the ranks to be declared head of the Imperial intelligence services based in Novigrad. He looked ashen pale and was fidgeting.

Next to him was a Redanian official of some kind. If I had been more awake or more able to use my brain, I would have laughed at the fact that his fashion choices regarding facial hair and things were all but identical to the Nilfgaardian general. He was a thinner man and he had a pair of magnifying glasses in wooden frames that he used to peer at me. He was not a soldier though and his clothing was rich. I understood him to be some kind of courtier and he looked at me curiously.

Lastly, at the end was Lady Eilhart. She had cut back on the weaponized femininity and was wearing a simple dress with a simple cloth ruff around her neck. Like many of the others, she seemed to have some notes that she was working on. Unlike some of the other times that I have seen her, she was not making the quill do her writing for her. Other than that, she seemed to largely ignore me.

I didn't have to wait long before they told me what was going on.

"Lord Frederick." Queen Cerys spoke, her Skelligan accent subdued. "Given your physical condition, we will forgive you for not bowing or providing any forms of etiquette, we are also keen to save time here so we will cut to the chase of things."

It always surprises me how her voice is just a little bit higher than expected.

"We are the panel of judges that has been convened to judge your guilt in the crimes of Heresy and Treason. This panel is larger than most due to the circumstances of your nature, what we know of your past and what has been proven as to what happened to you. You should know that there have been many trials of others that surround this case and most of them have used smaller panels than this. We would have dealt with your case sooner, but it was determined that your physical recovery should be made a priority to ensure that you were fit to stand trial. That determination has occurred and now here you are. Do you understand what I am saying to you?"

I think she read that speech from a paper in front of her

I nodded before realising that a nod was probably not enough.

"I do," I said before clearing my throat to say it again. "I do," I repeated, hoping that I spoke with more power the second time.

"Further to this," the Queen went on. "It should be said that, due to our history together and your close personal friendship with the man that I love and intend to marry, I shall be recusing my vote until it becomes clear that I am needed to make a tie-breaking vote. Other than that, you should think of me as more like a chairperson of the committee. The Empress has dictated that this is the way that she wants this trial to be carried out and you should know that there has been some distress in that determination. Do you understand this?"

Another pre-written speech.

"I do,"

"Good then," She leant back in her chair. "Do you have anything to say in your defence?"

I forced myself to speak.

"No," I said.

Some were shifting in their seats before the Queen's voice whipped around the room.

"The time for debate is over." She declared her accent more apparent. "We will not go over this again. The Empress made her decision and now it is law, the panel will vote in a moment even though we all know what people will say…"

Her tone became lighter.

"Honestly gentlemen, I have enough of this nonsense at home with my Jarls when it comes to politicking after the decision has been made, surely we all realise that the faster we can move on to other cases the better it will be for everyone."

I saw that Lady Eilhart smirked at that. As did the Cardinal of the Eternal Flame and although there might be others, those were the ones that I caught.

"I would like to hear from Inquisitor William before the final vote is cast." The priest of Kreve's voice was a rasping, shell of a voice.

"I agree that it would be prudent to enter that into the public record." The Cardinal of the Eternal Flame agreed.

Queen Cerys nodded and glanced around the other seated figures who mostly seemed to nod. Then she glanced at someone who was out of my view. After a long moment, Inquisitor William came and stood in front of me, looking up into the light. His novice Adso came in with papers.

"Report?" Queen Cerys asked, I got the feeling that she was distasteful of what the Inquisitor was there for.

William bowed slightly and grunted his little grunt.

"My novice Adso has the written transcript of the interview that was conducted although it will be some time before a report can be put together…"

"Perhaps a summary then William." Mother Nenneke spoke with familiarity and fond exasperation.

William grunted unhappily and took some time before he started to speak. I got the feeling that he took the time to annoy the panel.

"We did not have as much time as we would have liked. As you will all know, the use of instruments would not have produced acceptable results due to the history and experience of the accused. Likewise with other physical techniques such as deprivation and the like due to his physical state and time constraints. Nor did we have time to insert someone into his confidence…"

"Yes yes, get to the point." The Redanians' voice was shrill and William shifted in what I took to be frustration and displeasure.

"The point is that the boy is clearly innocent," William told the room which caused a bit of shifting of the weight. I was certainly horrified.

"But…" I protested.

"In fact," William went on. "The boy is so innocent that I feel a bit insulted, to tell the truth. There are far more interesting and complicated cases that my skills would be better used for." He made a harrumphing noise

"Explain." Again, Queen Cerys' voice cracked out stilling the protests of the other men.

"Frederick did not even admit to anything to preserve his body and soul. He told his tale in the same way, every time with the only things changing being the adding or loss of detail but the salient points remain the same. He is innocent and if we are adding things to the record, the use of other techniques would only find the same thing other than to force an untrue confession. The case is so cut and dried that it is pointless. My colleagues from the Eternal Flame that assisted in the matter agree."

He gave a little bark of laughter.

"He did not even admit to smaller, harmless heresies that might alleviate his guilt."

"And further recommendations, Father William?" Cerys asked.

"The boy is guilty, in that he feels guilt but is not guilty of any crime that I would punish. His crimes are ignorance and a certain amount of wilful blindness to the faults of the people that he loves. Also, a tendency to make poor choices under pressure, a common fault of the young." The Inquisitor went on with an audible smirk. "Give him a confessor, a good one," he gave a little chuckle. "A really good one as he will need it. Someone understanding who will not scourge him into madness and death. He needs understanding, care, kindness and also discipline."

There was some more general stirring on the benches forcing Queen Cerys to intercede again.

"Thank you, Father William, you may go."

Inquisitor William came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder in comfort before moving on.

"It was nice to meet you." The novice Adso told me in his child's voice before following his master.

I stared after him in shock and horror as I dimly took in what else was happening.

"Given that response." Lady Eilhart's voice spoke coldly and with a certain amount of disdain. "A response that I am utterly unsurprised with hearing, do we really need to prolong this any further?"

"I agree," The Cardinal of the Eternal Flame added, presumably to make his voice heard.

"Time for a final vote then," Queen Cerys said before making her voice that little bit more formal. "In the case of Frederick von Coulthard and the accusations of Treason and Heresy, how do we find the accused?"

"Innocent of both charges." The Cardinal of the Eternal Flame answered promptly.

"Innocent of both charges." Mother Nenneke said, speaking as though the matter was a foregone conclusion.

"I concur, innocent. Utterly innocent." The priest of the Great Sun spoke for the first time. His voice was warm and rich.

"Innocent." Lady Eilhart said, "As I said from the beginning.

"Guilty of both charges and you are fools for not seeing it." The Redanian spoke. I have since had reason to examine him and have wondered if he was speaking for someone else.

"Innocent of both." The priest of Kreve seemed bored.

"Guilty of treason," the head of Imperial Intelligence said, "But I abstain from the vote of heresy."

The Imperial officer made a play of winking at me. "Innocent." He said, simply.

Queen Cerys nodded.

"Clear innocence and as such, given that my vote is not needed, the chair shall remain in abstention. Thank you for your service gentlemen, Lord Frederick you will be taken from this place to a place where your convalescence can continue. I understand that the Empress will be in touch when it comes to your future and…"

I don't remember much else of it that can easily be recounted with any kind of faithful interpretation.

I swear that as the Eternal Flame is my witness and may it burn me if I tell a lie. I swear that I heard them call me guilty. And I was alright with that. I was even rather looking forward to it. A nice execution, something public where I could stand… figuratively speaking of course… and stand before the world to apologise for my sins before I go onto whatever comes next. Then I could rest, or do… I don't know. Life would be over, I would be able to stop worrying. I didn't really want to die, but also… I didn't really want to live. I've said that before as well and it just seemed like it would be all over.

I would be happy with that. Regardless of society's, or my friend's judgement, I knew that I had planted Father Gardan's axe in the back of my enemy and that I had helped kill him. I had done my part in gaining justice for all the wrongs and all of the evils that had been committed against me and mine and now… and now… I felt as though I could go to my death with that and be happy about it.

If that had been all I had done, then I would be happy with that.

I was at peace with that. I was happy with that. And then those bastards took it away from me.

I have no useful memory of what happened in that little amphitheatre when it was made clear that I wasn't going to be taken from that place to a place of execution. I remember a cry of pain and I remember trying to hurl myself into my restraints. I had a feeling of the light and warmth of the flame in front of me and it was taken away from me.

I have the transcripts of the court reports now as part of my role… I have astonishing powers when it comes to demanding that kind of thing and what the transcript reports are that a cry of anguish escaped me where I pleaded with the assembled panel that I was guilty and how dare they take this away from me. I begged them to kill me and told them that I was supposed to be standing before the flame's judgement today.

"I was to be with Francesca today," I said.

Queen Cerys didn't stand for much more and ordered Lady Eilhart to put me to sleep before she decreed that court proceedings were over which is the end of the transcript.

For me… I was back into the same kinds of realms that I had been in immediately after I had been taken from the basement of Coulthard castle. The difference was that I was in less pain now than I had been.

I felt as though I was walking in a desert of red sand. There were the steady impacts of footfall but I also lacked the strain in the legs that say that I was walking on soft sand. I was walking without fatigue. It was nighttime, peaceful and as I looked up into the sky, I could see twin moons spinning there.

There were other dreams. Given the nature of the things that I have been seeing in my dreams since I was taken into the basement of Coulthard castle by Sam, I have consulted a dream mage named Corinne Tilly who has interpreted the dreams for me and she is "as confident as I (she) can be that the dreams are just dreams."

I remember feeling as though I was lying in a bed and a woman's arms wrapped around me. It wasn't Ariadne as the hair was blonde, even as I didn't see a face.

"It's ok," she said. "It's ok. Rest."

And I did. I have rarely felt so rested.

I stood, again, on the prow of a ship that was floating just off the shore of some forested land. I could hear the sounds of the seagulls cawing in the air and as I looked at the shore, I could make out figures standing there. Mother, Father, Mark, Francesca and Edmund. The last time that I had stood in this place, listening to the sounds of the gentle waves splashing against the side of the hull and causing the boat to bob around in the water, those people on the shore were looking at me with expectation, they were beckoning to me as they welcomed Mark to stand amongst them.

This time though, this time was different. They were waving to me. Their faces seemed sad but pleased. Happy even. Francesca rested her head on Mark's shoulder as they waved.

I remember waving back and turning away.

It took me a long time to wake up. This was the slow returning of the senses rather than the springing open of the eyes or the sudden realisation that I was thirsty or needed to piss.

I heard a woman's voice and I recognised it although I have no idea who that voice belonged to.

"It's alright Freddie, you're safe and it's time to wake up now."

At first, all I could see were blobs of colour.

"It's alright Freddie," said the voice again. "It's ok, but we need you to wake up now. It won't be long, I promise and then we can let you rest again. We need to get some liquid in you and… It's alright.

I struggled to make my eyes focus. Someone got their hand under my neck and lifted me up. I had the dim feeling that others were around me as they worked and I felt a cup at my lips. I drank and it was the sweetest, most wonderful-tasting pure water that I have ever tasted. After that, the cup was replaced by a spoon and I was fed some of the most delicious chicken broth. It was as though my body cried out in relief at what I was being fed.

I ate as much as I could which seemed dismayingly small before a different, smaller cup was placed at my lips and I drank something bitter. This time, I tried to pull away but I was made to drink.

"It's alright Freddie, it's medicine. You were sick again after that foolishness of a trial but now you're…"

The words petered out as I fell backwards into unconsciousness.

I didn't dream that time, or if I did, I remember nothing of those dreams.

The next time I woke up, there was a guard in my room. My vision was blurry with sleep but the room seemed warmer somehow. Less cold stone and more wooden panelling.

The guard noticed that I was awake and opened a door to say something to the person who was waiting and again, someone was fetched. I didn't know this person but they seemed cheerful. They were dressed in grey, a big buxom woman who manhandled me with deceptive ease as she moved me around, fed me, cleaned me, wiped my arse and brought a bottle for me to piss in.

"The faster we get this done, the faster we can get on with pretending it didn't happen." She told me cheerfully as she worked and that was more than enough to quench my embarrassment.

When she was done she sat with me and told me childish stories for a while until some kind of signal was given and she poured me another small cup and made me drink it.

This time I protested.

"You need to rest in your condition." She told me. "That means sleep. So drink up…"

She was strong enough to make my feeble protests pointless and her tone of voice made it clear that if I didn't drink it of my own free will, then she intended to take steps to make it so.

Again, I slept and the sleep was as dreamless as it gets.

The next time I woke up, I was not alone. It was more of a standard waking-up kind of feeling. The slow realisation that there was a before time and an after time. I woke abruptly and then took a moment to calm down, forcing myself to breathe in and out.

"It's always interesting to me," said a woman's voice, "that these Doctor people can predict with relative accuracy just what time sick people are going to wake up from a drugged sleep."

I blinked into the gloom.

"From my own experiences," the voice went on as I forced myself to try and put a name to the voice… I felt sure that I recognised the voice but couldn't quite remember the name.

"From my own experiences, I know that bright lights can hurt when waking up from a long convalescence so I closed the blinds and things. Do you want me to lift you so you can sit?"

I took a couple of more moments to breathe in and out before I nodded.

A strong but slim woman bent and rather expertly lifted me into a sitting position. Pillows were fetched and placed so that I could sit relatively comfortably.

"Let me know if you are slipping but in the meantime, I shall light some candles and things so that we can see each other properly and so you can work up to fresh air and sunlight."

As she worked, what light there was shone on the ashen blonde hair of The Empress. She was wearing a long dark coat as is fairly standard for her while carrying a sword in her off-hand. She held it ready to draw in her left hand while her right lit tapers and transferred flames to candles, lamps and lanterns.

When she came back, she stood over me and looked down at me for a long moment.

I stared up at her, blinking.

"Water?" She asked and I nodded.

She poured, still with one hand and passed me the cup before sitting back down. She held her sword tightly to her chest in the same way that she might hold a cat or a friend.

"I am… so sorry Freddie," she said after a long moment. "So sorry that I can't easily speak it."

It was so silent then that other sounds started to filter through. I was in the city now I thought I could hear people moving around in the street outside. But in the here and now, I could hear the candle flames guttering.

My thoughts seemed to echo from a long distance and take their sweet fucking time to get to my mouth.

"Where am I?" my voice was raspy and I took a drink of water. I didn't trust my ability to swallow so I was only sipping the water.

Ciri shifted, as though I had woken her up.

"You are in the Rosemary and Thyme." She told me. "As soon as you were declared innocent, I wanted you out of that damn cathedral. They would have kept you up there but I wanted you to be surrounded by…" She sighed. "Friends," she said after a moment.

There was another long moment as she stilled before she suddenly started moving again.

"It would seem though, that we rushed your trial and recovery and you relapsed a bit. There was still a bit of infection in your body that was not caught, your fever came back and there was pus in your wounds again. Nothing particularly life-threatening as now that you were proven innocent, they could use proper resources to make you well again but…"

"Am I?" I wondered.

"Are you what?"

I opened my mouth to speak but she saw what I was saying.

"Oh… Yes. Yes, you are. For certain. For someone of your rank, I would have judged it myself but I recused myself deliberately so that there could be no accusations of… So no one would think that I pulled strings." There was a smile in her voice then. "We had to work a bit to find people that were neutral to you and we didn't entirely succeed as there was still some politics going on in that room. But even taking out the politics that we know about, you were still found innocent."

I nodded and I felt tears on my face.

"Freddie." The crack of authority was in her voice. "Look at me."

I did and her eyes shone in the candlelight.

"You are innocent." She told me. "As I understand the Inquisitor said. You are only guilty of ignorance, a little stupidity and the blindness towards the faults in our friends and our loved ones. If we burned people for that, then the entire continent would be aflame and I would be one of the first on the pyre."

She rearranged the sword in the crook of her arm.

"You are innocent Freddie. I believe that so does everyone who matters, including the church hierarchies. You are innocent."

I nodded and the tears fell from my eyes.

"What happened?" I asked after a moment.

"A lot." She told me. "A lot happened. Some of it is still coming to light. But in very broad strokes, your brother rebelled, we cut him off from his power base in a fairly standard divide and conquer manoeuvre and then we laid siege to himself. There was one battle and then a siege and the castle fell quickly due to some clever tactics from our side. Since then, we are doing our best to heal the sick and to try and convict the guilty. But in the meantime, we are still working to properly find out what happened."

I nodded. There was another long pause.

"I'm glad you're alright," I whispered before taking another drink.

She snorted. "I don't want to belittle what you went through Freddie, but I was never in any real danger."

I snorted as well and a cramp went through my chest.

"Emma?" I asked.

Ciri grimaced. "She's… damaged Freddie. Physically she has some small injuries, and it is entirely possible that we will look back on all of this and say that she was the hero of it all. But she is speaking less and less and is now all but silent. She can speak but Laurelen, who is also still alright, seems to be the only person that she will speak to."

I nodded. The next question was easier.

"Kerrass?"

"He's fine as well. He would be here but he is frantically helping put down the feral Vampires and Arachnomorphs that have come to the surface in your Family's lands and surroundings. They are no longer being controlled so they are mostly angry and afraid so they are lashing out."

I nodded.

It took a long while to ask the next question. I knew what it was but I couldn't get the words out.

"A…Aria…Dammit."

"She's gone, Freddie. We don't know where she is. No one does."

I heard myself sob.

"Your messengers survived," Ciri said, doing her best to ignore the sobbing. "Chireadean is making loud noises about choosing a site for a new inn although I think his wife has left him as she is nowhere to be seen. Carys and Padraig were able to be back in time to help with the assault and…" I waved her off.

"What happens now?" I asked.

"Now?..." her voice juddered and she wiped her hand across her face before turning to the window. "Lots of things Freddie. Lots of things…. Sorry. It's my first rebellion and I didn't know that I was going to take it this much to heart."

Something in that struck me as funny and I felt myself smirk. She saw and smirked back for a moment before her face went still.

"You are now…."

She stopped and rested her forehead on her hand as she looked at me. She seemed to be considering a lot of things.

Then she nodded.

"There's a lot of politics still happening Freddie," she told me. "A lot of politics. But I have the bonus that not only do I trust you, but the Imperial we trust you as well. The court found you innocent and therefore your story is true, you gave the most of yourself to try and prevent the rebellion from succeeding.

"The Empress needs someone that she can trust in the Pontar region and I want to make it all up to you. So…"

She nodded again and leaned forward, resting her sword on the ground and leaning on it while she still used her right hand to gesture as she started to get excited.

"Your surgeon tells me that you are getting better but that you still need a while, possibly a long while before you can start… doing things. When you are cleared, which will give us plenty of time to root out who is guilty and who is not, I will call you to court where I will formally name you Lord Coulthard."

"I am hardly in any fit state to serve…"

I raised my shortened left arm to illustrate but she shook her head.

"I need your mind and you still have a good right hand and a good brain on you. As for the rest of it. The dissolution of those rebellious Lords is paying for an awful lot. Amongst other things I mean to see to it that you have the best prosthetics for your feet and left hand that can be provided. It might take some time to learn to use them before you get full mobility back but then again, you are going to be Lord Coulthard, you will mostly be on horseback anyway."

"But…"

"And I think… Every time you have been sick after an adventure… I think people make mistakes with you. I think that they always try to get you to rest. I don't think you're good at resting. I think you need work. So I am going to give it to you…"

She was building up to something, she wasn't meeting my gaze.

"But I need something." She told me.

I said nothing.

"I uh… I need you to write what happened in that basement."

"What?"

"I need you to record it. I need you to write down how Sam died and I need you to record it."

"Why me?" I croaked out. "Ask Kerrass, he was there."

"Yes…." Ciri started before pausing. "But he is not you."

"What do you mean?"

"We have your diary." She told me. "The one that talks about those events that lead up to the rebellion itself. We have the documents that you wrote while you were Kalayn's prisoner up to the moment when you thought you saw Kerrass. What we don't have is what happened after that."

"I barely know what happened after that…"

"Freddie…" Ciri pulled her chair closer. "People want to know. People need to know. Samuel Kalayn is the new villain. There were others but Samuel is the new… People need to know that he's dead and no matter how much we tell them that he is, they won't believe us because we are Nilfgaard and we have been wrong before. We need it to come from you. We need the record of the Rebellion and how it ended and what comes after."

"Ciri…" I tried. "Ciri I can't, I can't remember that. I can't…"

She looked me in the eye.

"You can." She told me and it was suddenly the Empress speaking. "You must, you can and you will."

"Or what?" I demanded.

She took a deep breath and stood up.

"I love you like a brother Frederick." She told me. "I will not make threats. But we need you to do this, therefore you will do it. We need you and if we don't have you then there is a whole lot of disaster coming. Therefore, I order you to do it. I request and require to perform this task. As Empress I order it."

Silence fell after that order as she stared down at me.

I turned away from her. It was my acknowledgement I think, looking back even as I fought it.

"We need you, Freddie." She was trying to make me feel better. "We need your voice because people trust you."

I cleared my throat.

"If you have read my notes you will know that Sam demanded the same thing."

"I know."

"He also gave the same reason as to why it had to be me."

"I know that too."

"He tortured me to make me do it."

"He did."

I felt hot tears on my cheeks and I brushed them away angrily.

"The irony is not lost on me," I began carefully. "That I am doing the same thing for my friends, as I did for my enemies, and the same reasons and under the same threats."

"Freddie…"

"Get the fuck out of here Ciri." My fury was sudden and consuming. "Get the fuck out of here or I swear to the flame, with one hand and no feet, I will kill you. I will tear your throat out with my teeth if I have to."

I sobbed.

At some point, I dropped my goblet of water and the liquid soaked my sheets.

"I had expected better," I told her.

"I will send for…" She began, her voice was rough. "I will send someone." I heard footsteps retreating as I started to weep.

It felt like hours before someone finally emerged into the room and in the reduced light, it took me a while to remember my old nurse Samantha from Angral. The water had soaked me much to my disgust and grief so I felt particularly wretched.

Samantha looked awful. She had lost weight and for a beautiful woman, she looked exhausted. She was pale and pasty with huge dark rings under her eyes. It was the face of a person that had been crying almost constantly for several days and she was exhausted from it.

She looked at me for a moment and I saw a certain level of anger that I felt was a background feeling that was all that was keeping her going over the recent times. She looked around the room, looking for someone to be angry at and then she seemed to see me properly for the first time. Her eyes widened after a long moment, her mouth fell open and she covered her mouth with her right hand.

"Oh my lord, what have they done to you?" She moaned.

From somewhere deep within me my voice answered automatically.

"'My Lord' is it now?" I wondered.

A sudden bark of laughter escaped around the hand that was covering her mouth and her shoulders shook for a moment, whether with sobbing or giggles, I couldn't tell.

But the professional mask came over her and she came to the bedside.

"Your bed clothes are wet." She accused.

"I had noticed."

"Did you piss yourself?"

"I don't think so, it's just water."

She nodded.

"Right then, let's have a look at you."

And she did. It was oddly reassuring to be looked after by someone I knew. There was no embarrassment between the two of us now and I just let her manhandle me. She examined my stumps, took my temperature, listened to my heartbeat and took my pulse while staring off into the distance with a vacant expression and counting under her breath.

"Well," she said. "You're horrifically weak and we have a lot of work to do."

She ordered me a bath and left to arrange things. After Ciri, she was the first person that I knew that had turned up. It was good to see her. I didn't ask her what was happening or what had happened. She told me that she had been summoned and that was that. She had a couple of orderlies to help her out with my physical movements of me. I bathed, cleaned myself up, used the chamber pot and climbed back into a clean bed.

"Do I need to hold your nose to make you take your medicine?" Samantha demanded as she stood over me. Her smile was weak and watery and her voice trembled but I appreciated the effort. I shook my head and drank what she gave me. Right then and there, I would just as easily have drunk poison.

I had a nightmare that night although I didn't remember it in the morning.

Samantha spent the day fussing over me. She had a different ointment that she had made that was rubbed into my stumps which became warm and tingling. There was regular food as well. Small portions, well spread out. Very tasty but I became full quickly and then they were moved on.

I spent a lot of time staring into space in the middle of all of that until at some point, Samantha tapped me on the arm.

"You have a visitor." She said with a grin,

"Who is it?" I demanded, looking over towards the door, "because if it's…"

"I don't know who you're expecting," said a warm voice. "But I doubt it's me."

Stepping through the door was a priest. He had a bearded face and a long ponytail which he had tied back with a bit of twine. He wore a simple cassock with a symbol of the Eternal Flame hanging around his neck and he walked into the room with a smile.

"Do you remember me?" He asked. "I ask because, since the incident with the Unicorn, I find that far too many people have forgotten that I even exist."

I remembered him then. It was the smile that reminded me.

"Father Anchor," I told him. "Of course, I remember you. After a while, the Unicorn just seems to fade into the distance."

"She does at that."

"How is your wife Tulip?" I wondered.

"She's here." He admitted, taking a chair from the wall and pulling it over to be situated next to the bed before turning to address a delighted-looking Samantha. "She's downstairs and wants to see your nurse."

Samantha squealed in delight and left the room.

"I didn't want her to come back to Novigrad given what happened to her when we were last here." Father Anchor said as he sat down with a sigh. "But when she heard what was going on back here, she insisted and I can never refuse her so…"

He laughed and I began to feel my mood lift.

"So…" he said. "You must feel fucking awful."

"I don't feel great," I admit. "How did you get here? How have you been since I saw you last?"

He grimaced.

"I've not been bad really. The village didn't really survive past the winter. We strapped everything down but the hunting dried up as it always does. There was a caravan that came through which energised everyone for a while but in the spring of this year, it became clear that things were at an end. The loss of Charlotte, the innkeeper's wife was a blow. Given that meant there was no beer or not even any good food, it became certain after that."

He grimaced but then he smiled.

"Your write-up did me good though. We wrote to ask for a new posting and I was sent to another, similar but larger and more prosperous village where I worked with an old man who wanted to retire and die in post. He was a grumpy old bastard and hated Tulip but I liked him and I all but took over his responsibilities while Tulip became his nursemaid. He died in the summer and we burnt him, scattering his ashes in the nearby orchards."

I nodded along as he told me his tale. At some point, someone in grey turned up and handed us both a cup of something tasty.

"Tulip's chicken soup." He grinned, "I can always tell when it's hers. Get that inside you and we'll have you dancing a jig."

"I doubt it," I told him. "I don't have any feet."

He shrugged.

"You can slap your thigh and sway then, I don't know."

For some reason, we both found that funny.

"Anyway," he went on. "The old priest had been there for something like fifty years. He had gone there as a young man and then stayed. Entire generations of the locals had known him as their priest and as a result, I turn up, a young priest with a wife no less and the locals could barely contain their disdain. They were angry with themselves just as much as they were angry with me. One of those instances where they were aware of their hypocrisy and they hated themselves just as much as they hated me."

He laughed and I smirked with them.

"Anyhoo," he set his cup aside on a nearby table. "We were just becoming sure that I was going to make some headway there… It was a thing of slow decisions we thought. Saving souls one at a time was the rule. They were bemused when I would go and work in the fields or turn up to help with the work crews and buy everyone drinks. Tulip helped out where she could with the healing of the sick and injured. Turned out Samantha had shown her a thing or two but as you so kindly pointed out. She has a way with words and where people tolerated me, they loved her. More than one young man had decided that our marriage was a fake and tried to seduce her away from me, much to her amusement and my terror."

We both laughed at that.

"So anyway… I keep getting off topic… There we were, minding our own business, waiting for news as to what was happening up in Redania… You have to understand that we were stationed in Temeria at this point."

I nodded to show that I understood.

"And then out of nowhere, a black and swirling pool of nothingness appears in front of the church and half a dozen black armoured soldiers arrive… This would have been yesterday. Along with them comes this terrifying woman dressed in a black doublet with a silver lining, black trousers and boots with a white shirt and black-furred shoulders. She had wild black hair and violet eyes. Do you know the lady in question?"

"I do." I had a sinking sensation of dread but couldn't deny being amused at the image.

"Coming with her comes another woman with white hair although she was maybe my age. Only a bit older than you. She was wearing a black coat with a golden sunburst on her chest and was carrying a red scabbarded sword as though it was something precious."

My suspicions had proven true.

"Anyway. The guards formed up around my little church. There was a crowd of watchers by this point as THE EMPRESS OF THE FUCKING CONTINENT walked up to me, where I was doing some work in the garden of remembrance and then she asks if we could talk somewhere privately, all politely like."

He sniffed happily.

"That'll have them talking about things down the tavern for a week and a bit."

He cackled.

"So then she asks me if I know you, which I said that I did, and then she asked me if I would be willing to help you out but that I had to go, right then and there. Tulip had come running as we had been told that we would need changes of clothing for a couple of days. I asked about a replacement priest to take up my duties while I was gone and the black-haired woman cackled as the Empress waved her hand as though it was unimportant and told me that she would send a bishop or something."

He peered at me.

"I've never travelled by mage gate before. Is it always like that?"

"Yes," I told him. "It's always like that."

"Huh." He commented thoughtfully. "Anyway. We appeared here behind the building and we were let in through the back door past the giant, terrifying Skelligans that were guarding the place and then they told me briefly what had happened and what the problem was."

"They told you that I was refusing to do what the Empress wanted me to do."

"Pretty much." He said happily.

"Did they tell you why?"

"Yep. I've spent a couple of hours reading your notes while Tulip made herself useful. She's really good at that. She only squealed when she found out that Samantha was here but Sammi has made it clear that no one's to interrupt you when she's with you. Sammi's got the place marching to her tune already. Even the dwarf, the bard and the Skelligans are terrified of our Samantha. I'm trying not to think about who that bard and dwarf are by the way."

He said that last point with pride.

"So that's that and here I am."

He leant back contentedly.

"So have you come here to talk me into…"

He waved his hand in front of my face in a negative gesture.

"No no no, before we get to that…" He rooted around in a pouch that was tied to his belt to produce his stole which he wrapped around his neck. "I wondered if you would like to pray with me. How long has it been since you last properly offered praises to the Eternal Flame?"

"The Eternal Flame has not done such a good job of…"

"The Eternal Flame is a guide." He told me gently, it is not a shield, or some warrior standing between you and danger. It is a guide and whatever else might be true, it did guide you through. Now when was the last time you prayed?"

He settled the stole around his neck.

"It's been a while," I admitted.

He nodded, the laughter vanishing from his eyes to be replaced with kindness.

"Then pray with me now."

And we did. He led me through it. The big prayers, the regular prayers and then at the end, he gave thanks for my survival and asked that the Flame carried the dead home.

I am not ashamed to say that I wept after that. Not the tears of sickness or the tears of being overwhelmed by this or that or the other thing. These were tears of grief and they felt…

It was like a wound was lanced so that all of the pain and pus and infection could come out.

"There now," he said when I was done. "Feel better?"

"Fuck no." I sobbed. "I'm under threat. They want me to…"

"That's right." He snapped his fingers. You were wondering what I was doing here."

"You're here to try and talk me into…"

"I'm here to offer you some spiritual guidance. There was a big furore of it. Do you know what the Empress has in mind for you by the way?"

"I know that she wants me to…"

"Yes yes, apart from that. She wants to make you important. She wants to make you powerful. That terrifying black-haired woman explained it to me… By the way," he leaned forward to me. "Is she who I think she is?"

"Probably," I told him, his changing of the subject was keeping me off-centre. But where Sam had done it to disorient me and keep me like that, the priest was doing it to keep me away from terrifying subjects.

"Lady Yennefer," he breathed in something approaching awe. "Fuck me."

"I thought you were married." My mouth was doing that thing where it was talking again without me actively being involved in the conversation.

"I am. But do you know what's terrifying? My wife and she seem to get on really well. Something to do with the foolishness of men folk."

I almost chuckled at that.

"But I'm not here to talk you into doing anything," he told me. "I am here to hear your confession when you're ready. There was some furore about that too. Apparently, someone in your position should be attended by someone that's at least an Arch-Bishop, or a Bishop at the very least.

"I barely qualify as being a priest in these days but there you go." He said that last with a sideways glance at me and amusement in his voice.

"There are important church people downstairs that are all but fighting for the privilege of hearing your confession but… Lady Yennefer…" He paused and swallowed. "Flame but that takes some saying doesn't it."

"You get used to it," I told him.

"Flame I hope not." it was almost a prayer the way he said it. "But she laughed at them. The Empress seemed to agree with her. There was some other argument from some black-robed priest of the great sun. He was a cheerless fucker. Not allowed to eat anything but bread or drink anything but milk or water. 'Thus to properly cleanse the mind for worship of the sun', or whatever that means. Charming enough, happy enough but he had that kind of ethereal holiness about himself that made me want to throw rotten eggs and fruit at him."

I laughed. It was hard to stand before this youngish priest's charm offensive. There was something about his eyes that said he knew exactly what he was doing but the charm was inexorable.

"Proper worship, proper… Godliness is not found in some… remote sense of holiness. It's found in the streets with the common man. It's found in the fields with the workers dragging the food and nourishment out of the earth. It's found in those people that stand there, after rain and wind and storm batter their houses down, or the sun scorches the earth into a barren wasteland. Men and women that stand there and look at all that before sighing and starting the work again."

He looked at me sidelong and I thought that this was where a point was coming from.

"The Flame is found in those Elves that took in the human refugees as they fled before your brother's depredations. It was found in your father and your sister when they helped the mages escape from Novigrad. It was found in you when you stood before an ancient vampire and told her that the world had moved on and you taught her to love."

And then he moved away from the point.

"Godliness… Holiness is not found in some remote, ascetic form. But I digress." He grinned at me. "Then an unlikely ally turned up. Do you know a man called Danzig?"

It took me a while to make the connection as Father Anchor continued to speak.

"Tall chap, heavily muscled. Always smiling but his eyes are always watching."

"Priest of Kreve?" I wondered.

"That's the fucker. Says he served with you in the North. He's downstairs as well, waiting to see you. There are a lot of very famous, very powerful people downstairs waiting to speak to you by the way. I might be the least popular man on the continent given that I got up here first."

"They can live with their disappointment," I muttered bitterly. He ignored the comment.

"Anyway," he went on. "That Danzig fellow stands up and tells the esteemed priest of the Great Sun to shut the fuck up, something that I enjoyed a great deal, but even my fellow Eternal Flame chaps were put off by that and he gave a big speech. Let me see if I get it right."

He cleared his throat and came out with a passable attempt at an impression of Knight-Father Danzig, Inquisitor of Kreve.

"'Lord Frederick is an inestimable man,' he said. He has a big booming voice I noticed. 'And despite many people's best efforts, including the best efforts of his own church, he steadfastly refuses to change his religion. He is called to the Eternal Flame and that should be respected. Having said that, he has positive experiences with maybe three priests that I know of. One of which is his brother, another of which is dead and the third of which is this man…' he pointed at me. 'I say, let the boy try. From everything that I have heard, it is a miracle that Frederick hasn't broken like glass or a badly forged blade. If you send the wrong man, or someone that is going to start yelling at him, then he will shatter and you will be worse off than when you started. He knows Father Anchor, he is the right choice'."

Anchor smiled at me.

"Lady… ahem… Yennefer then agreed and gestured at Danzig with a nod. Then the Empress stood up, told everyone that she had shit to do… Another shock. You don't often imagine someone like that swearing like a sailor, no matter how tired she looks at the moment, and that was the end of it. Up here I came. Before waiting for Samantha to tell me that I could go in. If there is one woman that I am almost as afraid of as my wife, then it's Samantha."

He checked to see if I was caught up.

"So are you not going to try and convince me to do what the Empress wants?" I complained.

"No." he smiled. "Not because I disagree with her, or because I agree with you. But you are not ready to think rationally about the entire situation yet. You still want to scream, shout, weep and throw things. Entirely understandable if you ask me."

He sighed and got back to his feet.

"How are you feeling?" he smiled a little. "Other than tired I mean. In my experience, everyone feels as though they're always tired after big events. After the battle with the unicorn, it took everything I had to get out of bed for a week and I spent most of my time just looking at my wife. And nothing very much had happened to me."

"I seem to remember an injured shoulder," I told him.

"Yes well… I can still feel it when it rains. But stop dodging the question or I'll get Tulip to come up here and sit on you."

"Truly a fate worse than death."

He smiled at me and the moment lengthened.

"Freddie…" he said calmly.

And the words spilled out of me.

"I'm tired," I admitted. "Also angrier than I can easily comprehend being. So sad that it's a shock to me that I can even speak let alone stop weeping. I want to hide and I want to cry and I want to be alone and the two people that I want to see the most are missing and busy respectively. And after that, they are either dead or more broken than I am from what I've been told."

He nodded and scratched at his chin, dislodging some dry flakes of skin before turning for the door.

"I shall call on you tomorrow Lord Frederick." He told me.

And he did. This time, we began with a prayer and then he produced a dice board. He did suggest that we play Gwent but this was easier to play with one hand. I was just on the verge of descending into self-pity when he laughed at it as though I had made a joke before setting up the board.

We played several rounds and I felt my brain being drawn into the thought pattern of the game. The same thing happened the following day. After a prayer in the morning, we would play dice and chat about small things, books and the like, and then just as we were entering our fourth go around of dice, he asked the question.

"So… Are you ready to talk yet?"

I was in a relatively good mood at that point so I decided to make a joke of it.

"Sure," I began. "What do you want to talk about?"

He laughed. "Not me." He shuddered. "This has the stink of world politics and the like. I'm just a simple priest."

"Hardly simple."

"Oh Flame," he shook his head unhappily. "After all of that, I've really worked hard at just being a simple priest."

We both chuckled at that.

"No," he said. "They wanted me to but I refused." He was rubbing his hands together as he spoke, appraising the dice and the layout of it all. "You need spiritual guidance. That was what I was brought here for and so that is what I am going to do."

He let the mask of forced cheerfulness slip for a moment, which is how I knew it was a mask. The mask of a man speaking to an invalid whose grip on their sanity is weak at best.

"A lot of the evils of the world at the moment, are down to the various churches getting involved in politics." His gaze became haunted for a moment. "I don't want that. I don't want to advise a political or powerful man with anything other than the well-being of his soul."

He shuddered theatrically before looking up at me and smiling.

"Besides, there are plenty of other people downstairs who are far better qualified to talk about that kind of thing than me."

"How many people are downstairs?"

"A lot." He sighed. "I'm not going to tell you everyone who is down there because the small team of doctors that are in charge of your case and the cases of some of the other "guests" of the inn that you are staying in have ordered me not to." He grinned at the thought. "Samantha, not least. I will tell you that one of those people is an Imperial Mage of some kind who has a direct link to the Empress. The moment that you agree to talk to her, that mage is to teleport to the Empress' side and inform her of your decision."

"Who can you tell me about?" I wondered.

"There are… I can talk about generalities. The worry is that if I tell you that suchandsuch is here then you might hurt yourself in trying to get to them, or that they might hurt themselves trying to get to you. I can tell you that at the moment, the inn, and you, is guarded by a terrifying gentleman who was introduced to me as Lord Roary the Red of the Black Boar."

He chuckled at a memory.

"He was actually quite polite and well-spoken, even as he spoke about all of the horrible things that he intended to do to anyone that hurt you. Apparently, he is under orders to protect you and yours and that he is allowed to take… ahem… whatever means necessary to get the job done. As I recall, he leered at me when he said it."

I was forced to laugh. I remembered Roary the red. A terrifying man who knew exactly what effect he had on the people around him and was one of the first men to proclaim Helfdan as the new Jarl.

"You are served by his Thralls and all of them are armed. I saw some of them train in the yard out the back the other day."

Father Anchor shuddered theatrically.

"But anyway, there are many people that want to see you, I cannot tell you all but I do know that the personage that is waiting outside was allowed past Lady Yennefer. It is not Lady Yennefer and my understanding is that she is not a Sorceress either."

"Do I know her?"

"I am as confident as I can be that you do. If you do not, then I must discount all of your writings as filthy lies."

"You are trying to engage my curiosity so that I let this person in."

"Curses," he exclaimed. "You have seen through my cunning plan."

He took the board and set it aside.

"I will go and let her in." He told me. "And I will be right outside."

"I don't recall agreeing to see anyone," I argued.

"That's because you weren't paying attention," he retorted.

He left and as he did, he bowed low as the most beautiful woman on the continent entered the room.

"It has been some time since I last saw Sleeping Beauty and when I did see her, neither of us was really at our best. At the time she was grieving a good man and was sick with love for a man that was misguided in his affections. She was also, a seventeen-year-old girl dealing with things that would intimidate someone twice her age and twice her experience. She was the sort of person where people said 'She's bearing up well… considering…'

It was a little shaming to me that it was now nearly two years since I had seen her last. She is Eighteen now at the time of writing, leaving her youth behind and turning into the woman that she will become. Of course, she is still beautiful but where some beauties are hard such as Lady Eilhart, or terrifying as in Lady Yennefer. Hers is a soft beauty. It is kind and gentle which is slightly misleading because I know for a fact that she is becoming hard. She is good and kind and decent and all of the things that the good "fairies" blessed her with. But she is also a Queen.

She still wears her hair the same way, a long Golden blanket that falls down her back in a perfectly straight curtain. Her eyes would normally contain a certain amount of mischief dancing in their blue depths and her face is the kind of thing where sculptors and painters will break their chisels and snap their brushes out of despair that they could capture a fraction of what she looks like in the meantime.

She was wearing a long Blue dress, thick, fur-lined and well-made. She wore a small circlet in her hair that acted both as proof that she was a Queen and also meant that her hair was kept back and out of her eyes. But her customary gloves had gone.

She looked at me for a long moment as she came into the room and her face seemed to soften for a moment before she shook her head slightly and firmly walked towards me before sitting in the same seat that Father Anchor had left.

She sat there looking at me.

"I hope," I began, finding the silence oppressive. I cleared my throat and tried again. "I hope that you don't take this untoward when I tell you that you look far better than you did last time I saw you."

I saw her expression melt a little as the memory came to her.

"And I hope…" her voice deepened a little in the intervening time. "That you will not take it untowards that you look a thousand times worse. It is good to see you alive, Lord Frederick."

"Freddie, please Your Highness. Please call me Freddie."

"Then, given the circumstances," she winked at me, "I hope that you will call me Rose."

"I would be honoured," I told her. "I would get up to bow but…"

I gestured at the stumps of my legs and she laughed.

"It is good to laugh," she told me. "Especially in hard times and you have been through the hardest. You helped me through mine and set me on the path to friendship and strength and now I hope to do the same for you, even if our friendship is not as firm as I would like it to be."

"I am sorry You…" I began.

"Ah," she held a finger up in warning and smiled gently. Everything that she does is gentle.

I smiled, it is impossible to be unhappy in this woman's presence.

"I am sorry Rose," I told her. "But I am…"

'No no." She told me. "The blame lies entirely with me and I shall be exceedingly cross with you if you try and take the blame for yourself." She furrowed her nose to pretend to be cross with me before she laughed and continued.

"I have read your account of the time and I thought that I was very cruel to you. I have taken up my pen a thousand times to apologise to you and a thousand times more have I set the pen aside and found some other task with which to occupy myself. But I know that you went through horrific things that year, not least with trying to save the life of the Witcher that I love and that made you sick. I am sorry for my part in rendering you ill, Lord Frederick and I intend to make it up to you in any way that I can."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"You can nail down that Witcher we speak of and make him listen to reason for a start," I told her and she laughed again.

"Would you believe that I have been trying?" She played with one of her earrings as she spoke. "I think he's avoiding me. He is in the wilds around the battle dealing with Necrophages and Vampires at the moment. I sent him a message and contrived to be nearby when he returned for goods and services. However, he does all but outright flee from me."

I nodded.

"How long have you been in the area?" I wondered.

"I was due to travel to the wedding as part of the Imperial party." She told me. "I was looking forward to it. I had, and have, resigned myself to a conversation with Kerrass that will not slake my heart's desires but I intended to have fun with it all the same." She smiled as she said that.

I nodded, not yet willing to dive into some of the topics.

"But now, the wretch has the gall to avoid me." She laughed. "I understand that there was a plot to lock him and me up in the same room with several bottles of wine."

"There was…" I remembered that Ariadne had suggested the plot and I had to force the wave of sadness away.

She saw that and didn't push me any further.

We sat in silence for a while before the next topic of conversation occurred.

"Marion says hello. She hoped that you would understand why she didn't come."

"I understand. Is she still down in Dorne?"

"She is. She is essentially my regent now. Not that there is much regenting to do. When I am not at home she sends all the correspondence to me but otherwise, she directs work parties. She says that it mostly comes down to telling entitled idiots 'No' on a regular basis."

"She will be good at that."

"She is."

Again, we lapsed into silence.

"Have you come to talk me into…"

She grimaced. She even grimaces beautifully. Every so often the thought occurs that it must be awful to live like that. To be beautiful in everything that you do whether you want to be or not.

"Before we get into that." She told me. "I have several messages for you." She reached into her skirts and pulled out a bundle of papers. "I took notes to make sure that I forgot none of them. First of all…"

She opened the top piece of paper.

"Did you know that you are being protected by quite the most frightening men I have ever seen?"

"I had heard," I told her.

"I have rarely been treated with more courtesy however but even so. Roary the Red… Is that really his name?"

"It is," I replied.

"Yes, well. After suggesting that he would take me back to the islands and make a woman out of me by fucking me until I couldn't walk, he went all serious, the majority of his accent vanished and he told me to tell you that if you just say the word, then you can be at sea by the end of the day. Four days later you will be in Skellige and no one will ever find you."

I took that in for a moment.

"His plan is endorsed by his Lord which is endorsed by his… Lord. He leered as he said that and told me that you would know what he meant. Do you know what he meant? I don't know what he meant."

She was lying. She knew exactly what he meant.

"I see," I said carefully.

She set the piece of paper off to one side.

"Then…" She opened the next piece of paper. "I was approached by possibly the most beautiful couple I have ever seen in my life. Golden-haired they were and he wore an armour that shined so bright that it hurt my eyes to look upon it. She was wearing a formal dress and looked absolutely beautiful. I would have been jealous but I have also rarely seen a couple more in love with each other than that pair. Do you know who I am talking about?"

"I think so."

"He told me that if you needed it, he would carve a path to freedom through the heart of the Imperial army if need be. That he would use a mutual friend of yours who also owes you a great deal to do so and that… ahem… 'none would dare stand before them.' Do you know what he is referring to?"

Her impression of Guillaume was quite good.

"I do." I told her.

"Good. The woman also said that the matter would be made right. She wouldn't tell me how though."

"She wouldn't," I replied.

She nodded and carefully set the piece of paper aside along with the other.

"Let's see, who else have we got here? Another Witcher met me. I have not met the man before as he was not at the Imperial Coronation. Tall man, terrifying in his way. Looked like a brute and ridiculously muscled. Spoke in a drawl. He told me that he could see why the kitten liked me. Do you know who I am referring to…?"

"I think so."

"He told me to tell you that you did alright by him and that he was content. Then he leered at me before walking away."

She looked up from the paper and skewered me with a look.

"I wonder who that was." She said,

"I wonder." I replied.

"There is a lot of guilt going around… Freddie… Do you know, it feels quite wrong of me not to call you Lord Frederick?"

"I know the feeling." I told her.

"But nevertheless. There are a lot of people around that think that they owe you in some kind of small but significant way."

I grunted as I found that I could not look at her any more. She got up, collected the papers and dumped them in the fire.

"I am one of those people." She told me. "I am no longer as young as I was and I am still young. Both Eighteen and… A hundred and forty-something years old. But I have not shown proper gratitude towards you for your kindness when you woke me up. Even though there are some days where I wish that you hadn't."

I still didn't look at her.

"So…" I prompted. "Is now the moment where you try to tell me that you think I should do what the Empress wants me to do."

"Great sun no." She exclaimed. "What an awful thing to say. No. No, Sun no. No."

I looked at her in surprise and realised that she was angry.

"No, she told me what she wanted you to do and I told her that she was evil to ask you to do that. I told her that she was even more evil to ask me to ask you to do that. To be the young and beautiful ingenue to ask you with pleading eyes to perform the most awful service."

She shuddered.

"It's shameful is what it is. It is cruel. I completely understand your rage, your…. Your fury at being told that you must go back into the memory of what happened. Sun but the horror of that. I cannot even imagine…"

She paused and for one awful moment, I wondered if her anger was genuine or whether she was putting on some kind of display for my benefit.

"I told her that she should ask Kerrass. Kerrass was there. I have read their best attempts at translating your shorthand. The record that they already have is there up until the moment where you recognise Kerrass. From there, Kerrass can answer for it surely. He can give them the account that they want, the account that they need. He can answer that. And they can, and should, be happy with whatever he gives them."

I decided that she was genuinely agitated, genuinely angry on my behalf as she got up and paced up and down a few times.

"Fuck her Freddie." She told me. "Fuck her in her stupid, scarred, white-haired face. It is cruel and evil. The thing that your brother made you do under the point of torture and horror is what the Empress is now ordering you to do under the pain of treason and all the horror that goes with that kind of disobedience. It's awful and everyone knows it. Everyone.

She sat down again after a long moment and took my right hand.

"Everyone knows that it is the cruellest irony, Frederick. Look at me."

I did and not for the first time I wondered how it was even remotely possible that Kerrass could avoid diving into those blue eyes.

"Everyone knows Freddie."

I nodded.

"Including her." I whispered.

We sat like that for a long moment.

"You say the word," she told me. "You say the word and I will distract the Imperials so that the Skelligans, the Knights and the Witchers can get you out of here. You say the word and I will get it done, we will get it done. You will, by the sun that shines down upon us, suffer this horror no more. You deserve better than to have to sit at a desk and relive everything that you went through in that cellar over the prolonged period of time that it takes you to write it all out. You deserve better."

She sighed and her eyes stopped being angry and started to be sad.

"How dare she ask you to do that. How dare she." She held my gaze. "But I understand why she did it."

I nodded to show that I accepted that but I couldn't help but pull my hand out of her grip.

"You deserve better." She said, "But so too do the people that have suffered under your brother's grip. You know that he's dead. But do they?"

I said nothing and looked back down at my blanket-covered legs.

"You don't know what's going on out there." She said as she let go of my hand. I let it fall so that it just lay there in my lap, looking uncomfortably like a dead spider. The thought made me want Ariadne in a way that was so bad that iI could taste it.

"You don't know what's going on out there Freddie. That's another one of her orders and I agree with it. Her orders and the orders of your doctors and nurses because if you knew what was going on out there you would be out there and getting involved in it. And doing something like that may damage your health irrevocably and as it is, your health is possibly damaged beyond repair.

"But I don't think people can be so cross with me if I tell you that even as I sit here and tell you this, Imperial Riders are riding up and down the lands telling people that the Kalayn Rebellion has ended with the death of the last son of Kalayn."

"But he isn't the last son of…"

"Hush now Freddie, I am explaining things. Imperial Riders are telling people these things, nailing proclamations at crossroads and notice boards to let people know that the rebellion is over. But the countryside is not rejoicing.

"They look at these riders in their black armour and they think to themselves that the rider is Nilfgaardian and of course the southerners want everyone to believe that the crisis is over. They look at them and wonder why they should trust the conqueror.

"Of course, the rebellion stirred up the evil in the hearts of certain people in the North, but the really insidious thing that it has done is to remind the average person in the street that the North was conquered. Redanian, Temerian and Aedirnian national pride is newly awakened. They didn't like your brother. But at the same time, they remember that they are a conquered people so why should they trust the Southerners?

"Think of them, Freddie.

"Think of the Farmer in Temeria who took in the wounded Nilfgaardian soldier who saved his life at the battle of White Orchard. He is now terrified at the prospect that the secret that was finally allowed into the open is now ready to take him to the headsman for treason. He deserves to know that this is over, indeed, it was almost over before it began.

"Think of the common folk who are wondering who they will be paying their taxes to in the near future, will they just be trading one tyrant for the other and will their money be going to fund the hatred against the dwarf that sold him iron, or the old herb-woman that mixed the medicine that saved his little girl. He doesn't know the answer to that. The black-clad riders are trying to tell him that it is all over but how can he be sure? The Black-clad riders have said the same things before and it hasn't worked out, so who is he to believe?

"Think of the Elf hiding in the woods. Just as the Elves were beginning to emerge from hiding to find jobs and places to belong. Think of them. They know that the rebellion was centred and founded on the hatred of non-humans. They know that and so they look at these Black armoured riders going this way and that way and they wonder if those riders are simply men that have put on the black armour in order to entrap the unwary. They deserve to know that it is all over.

"Think of the townsman. You don't know it yet but there are several sources regarding the self-destruction of places like Oxenfurt when it comes to the wedge that the rebellion drove into the hearts of the populace. They deserve to know that the next tyrant is dead.

"Think of the other Northern Lords. They might not have joined your brother's rebellion but that doesn't mean that the thought of rebellion has not occurred to them. It doesn't mean that they are not thinking about things even now and wondering if the Rebellion might have succeeded if they had dared to join forces. They have to be told what happens when people do that. They need to be warned off before even more bloodshed and even more, death is forced onto the people in the fields and the towns.

"Think of the merchants who even now are doing their best to restart things. It is winter now and, fortunately, the rebellion has been and gone at a time when the trade of the continent had mostly come to a close. But you, of all people, know that the world runs on trade and commerce more than it does on the whims of Kings and Queens. They have to know what is going on. And they are just as guilty of not being comfortable accepting propaganda as the next person. They have to know and who else are they going to trust?

"The people of the South. Those men and women who live in my Kingdom. Or further south even. People might only think of Redania as letters on a map. But they know you because you helped wake me from my slumber and you made contact with The Schattenmann. A figure so shrouded in darkness and horror that even I remember being told to keep my feet inside the covers of my bedclothes in case the Schattenmann comes to bite them off.

"They look to the North and they wonder at the madness and the pain that they visit on each other. The Empress tells them that it's all over but then they look at each other and they remember that the Empress herself comes from that region. So of course they think that she might be in on it. That she might be involved and that it all might be some elaborate plot to bring down the Empire from within.

"This is her first rebellion after all and they are looking to see how she will react. Will she act with the ruthless, cruel strength of her Father? Or will she be weak and merciful? They don't know and even now they look to her to see how she is going to react. Is the rebellion over? Or is it just the beginning and whatever the Empress is telling them just some blind, Imperial propaganda?

"And who is the voice that those people will trust? It is not the Imperial Messenger, it is the Northern Lord who came south to see what it was all like down here in the depths of the Empire.

"Who will the Skelligans trust other than the Scribbler that stood on the battle decks of their warships and fought against the Ice giants?

"And who will the other Redanians believe other than Lord Frederick Coulthard? Not Kalayn, but Coulthard. The man that was in the fire. The man that has proven himself to be their advocate time and time again. Your sister is the trader Queen but she rarely gets a chance to shine to the common folk and whatever else has to be said for her, she is still a woman and there are always people, in all walks of life, who will look down on her simply because she is a woman.

"It has to be you, Freddie. It has to be you, it can be no one else. You were there, your voice is powerful and believed. You have a reputation for honesty and self-examination that is not equalled by anyone else. Who else are all of these people going to believe? The Witcher?"

The silence dragged on.

I could hear my heartbeat and I tried to count the beats.

"Your brother is going to be the boogeyman. If you don't do this, your brother is going to be the shadow that lurks. The ghost of rebellion, hiding in ditches. Small rebellions and cults will be founded in his name and they will always tell each other that Samuel Kalayn is out there somewhere. He will become a figure of myth. A freedom fighter. Long after the facts of the matter have been forgotten, all that they will remember is that Samuel Kalayn stood against the mighty South and tried to forge a new freedom from tyranny and then, even though he is dead, Samuel Kalayn will have won.

"You and Kerrass killed the man and I, for one, believe it. But now you must help us kill the ghost of him. You must make it so that no one fears another Samuel Kalayn rising up, further to the North where there are fewer armed forces. Where a rebellion could gather for weeks and months without anyone actually knowing that. And only you can do this thing. Only you can make it so that the ghost of Kalayn never rises again.

"That is why it has to be you. You were there. You saw it, you did it, and your voice will be believed. That is why she ordered you to do it. That is why it needs to be done. You are enough a student of history to know that a rebellion, a… a war is not over after the last battle is fought. Wars don't start in isolated moments, nor do they end. They are not racehorses leaping forth from the starting lines, nor do they end like the fall of the headsman's axe.

"They take time, time for things to start, but time for things to end. In order for this rebellion to end, even though the fighting is over, the story of what happened during the Kalayn Rebellion needs to be told and it needs to be told by a man that everyone trusts. That everyone trusts Freddie.

"It can only be you. It is only you that can do this thing. It's awful. I know it and so does everyone else. But at the end of all things, this must be done. I am sorry."

And she was right. I knew it too. I think I had known it from the moment that Ciri had first told me that it needed to be done. But at the same time…

I even knew that it might be good for me. Mark, resting with the flame, once told me that I should write things down when I was getting over the situation with the Goddess. So there was even that suggestion that I might need to do it for myself.

So I wept. I wanted to be done with all of this but I couldn't. So I wept. There was a shuffling of cloth and the Queen of Dorn came and wrapped her arms around me. My weeping intensified until I was full-on howling into the embrace and she held me and stroked my hair until I calmed and fell back exhausted.

"I will leave you now." She told me, rising to her feet and dabbing a cloth where I had soaked her dress with my tears and snot. "I will send a message to the Empress that you will do as she has asked but that for now, I shall send your nurse, the formidable Samantha, to you with something to help you sleep."

I nodded, My eyes felt hot and I did not think I would need much to send me drowsing.

"One day." Sleeping Beauty told me with a sad smile. "One day, you and I will have a long conversation that does not involve me being cruel to you, or you upset me in some way. That will send you smiling and me laughing and we will look forward to the next time that we see each other."

"One day," I said and she nodded.

Samantha came, looking red-eyed and sad herself before she gave me some medicine-laced wine and I slept quickly.

When I woke up at some point later I demanded that the curtains be opened so that I could see daylight. And I demanded fresh air, even if it was cold. I could hear the sounds of the city beneath me and I could feel the cool breeze. The scent of the docks is never far away when you are in the city of Novigrad and I looked out of the window from where I sat in bed. There was not much to see, row after row of chimneys, weather vanes and the tops of rooftops. I could smell woodsmoke and see the plumes rising from those chimneys and I thought I could hear the cries of gulls.

When all of that had been done and I had been draped in more blankets and the fire in my room had consumed more wood than could reasonably be expected I sat and looked out of the window.

I had the sense that people were gathering around me, waiting to see if I was going to fall over or tip myself into some kind of new illness or sense of despair.

Instead, I called for a table that could be placed across my lap. Samantha looked confused for a long moment until I told her that if I was going to perform a chore, then it would be better if it was done quickly. The ink was called for, paper, quills and blotting sands. They were nervous enough that they didn't let me have a knife to sharpen my own quills and I felt the first stirrings of genuine humour as I watched Tulip, Father Anchor's wife, sharpen the quill with her tongue tucked firmly between her teeth.

And I began to write what they wanted of me.