‘I’m thirsty.’ Ciri slipped off his back and reached for Eskel’s chalice. Eskel deftly moved the vessel beyond her reach and grabbed a jug of water. Triss stood quickly.
‘Here you are.’ She gave her half-full chalice to the girl while meaningfully squeezing Geralt’s arm and looking Vesemir in the eye. ‘Drink.’
‘Triss,’ whispered Eskel, watching Ciri drink greedily, ‘what are you doing? It’s—’
‘Not a word, please.’
They did not have to wait long for it to take effect. Ciri suddenly grew rigid, cried out, and smiled a broad, happy smile. She squeezed her eyelids shut and stretched out her arms. She laughed, spun a pirouette and danced on tiptoes. Lambert moved the stool away in a flash, leaving Coen standing between the dancing girl and the hearth.
Triss jumped up and tore an amulet from her pouch — a sapphire
set in silver on a thin chain. She squeezed it tightly in her hand.
‘Child . . .’ groaned Vesemir. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ she said sharply. ‘Ciri has fallen into a trance and I am going to contact her psychically. I am going to enter her. I told you, she is something like a magical transmitter -I’ve got to know what she is transmitting, how, and from where she is drawing the aura, how she is transforming it. It’s Midinvaerne, a favourable night for such an undertaking . . .’
‘I don’t like it.’ Geralt frowned. ‘I don’t like it at all.’
‘Should either of us suffer an epileptic fit,’ the magician said ignoring his words, ‘you know what to do. A stick between our teeth, hold us down, wait for it to pass. Chin up, boys. I’ve done this before.’
Ciri ceased dancing, sank to her knees, extended her arms and rested her head on her lap. Triss pressed the now warm amulet to her temple and murmured the formula of a spell. She closed her eyes, concentrated her willpower and gave out a burst of magic.
The sea roared, waves thundered against the rocky shore and exploded in high geysers amidst the boulders. She flapped her wings, chasing the salty wind. Indescribably happy, she dived, caught up with a flock of her companions, brushed the crests of the waves with her claws, soared into the sky again, shedding water droplets, and glided, tossed by the gale whistling through her pinfeathers. Force of suggestion, she thought soberly. It is only force of suggestion. Seagull!
Triiiss! Triiss!
Ciri? Where are you?
Triiiss!
The cry of the seagulls ceased. The magician still felt the wet splash of the breakers but the sea was no longer below her. Or it was – but it was a sea of grass, an endless plateau stretching as far as the horizon. Triss, with horror, realised she was looking at the view from the top of Sodden Hill. But it was not the Hill. It could not be the Hill.
The sky suddenly grew dark, shadows swirled around her. She saw a long column of indistinct figures slowly climbing down the
mountainside. She heard murmurs superimposed over each other, mingling into an uncanny, incomprehensible chorus.
Ciri was standing nearby with her back turned to her. The wind was blowing her ashen hair about.
The indistinct, hazy figures continued past in a long, unending column. Passing her, they turned their heads. Triss suppressed a cry, watching the listless, peaceful faces and their dead, unseeing eyes. She did not know all of the faces, did not recognise them. But some of them she did know.
Coral. Vanielle. Yoel. Pox-marked Axel . . .
‘Why have you brought me here?’ she whispered. ‘Why?’
Ciri turned. She raised her arm and the magician saw a trickle of blood run down her life-line, across her palm and onto her wrist.
‘It is the rose,’ the girl said calmly. ‘The rose of Shaerrawedd. I pricked myself. It is nothing. It is only blood. The blood of elves …”
The sky grew even darker, then, a moment later, flared with the sharp, blinding glare of lightning. Everything froze in the silence and stillness. Triss took a step, wanting to make sure she could. She stopped next to Ciri and saw that both of them stood on the edge of a bottomless chasm where reddish smoke, glowing as though it was lit from behind, was swirling. The flash of another soundless bolt of lightning suddenly revealed a long, marble staircase leading into the depths of the abyss.
‘It has to be this way,’ Ciri said in a shaky voice. ‘There is no other. Only this. Down the stairs. It has to be this way because . . . Va’esse deireadh aep eigean . . .’
‘Speak,’ whispered the magician. ‘Speak, child.’
‘The Child of Elder Blood . . . Feainnewedd . . . Luned aep Hen Ichaer . . . Deithwen . . . The White Flame . . . No, no . . . No!’
‘Ciri!’
‘The black knight . . . with feathers in his helmet . . . What did he do to me? What happened? I was frightened . . . I’m still Hightened. It’s not ended, it will never end. The lion cub must die . . . Reasons of state . . . No . . . No . . .’
Ciri!’
‘No!’ The girl turned rigid and squeezed her eyelids shut. ‘No, no, I don’t want to! Don’t touch me!’
Ciri’s face suddenly changed, hardened; her voice became metallic, cold and hostile, resounding with threatening, cruel mockery.
‘You have come all this way with her, Triss Merigold? All the way here? You have come too far, Fourteenth One. I warned you.’
‘Who are you?’ Triss shuddered but she kept her voice under control.
‘You will know when the time comes.’
‘I will know now!’
The magician raised her arms, extended them abruptly, putting all her strength into a Spell of Identification. The magic curtain burst but behind it was a second … A third … A fourth . . .
Triss sank to her knees with a groan. But reality continued to burst, more doors opened, a long, endless row leading to nowhere. To emptiness.
‘You are wrong, Fourteenth One,’ the metallic, inhuman voice sneered. ‘You’ve mistaken the stars reflected on the surface of the lake at night for the heavens.’
‘Do not touch— Do not touch that child!’
‘She is not a child.’
Ciri’s lips moved but Triss saw that the girl’s eyes were dead, glazed and vacant.
‘She is not a child,’ the voice repeated. ‘She is the Flame, the White Flame which will set light to the world. She is the Elder Blood, Hen Ichaer. The blood of elves. The seed which will not sprout but burst into flame. The blood which will be defiled . . . When Tedd Deireadh arrives, the Time of End. Va’esse deireadh aep eigean!’
Are you foretelling death?’ shouted Triss. ‘Is that all you can do, foretell death? For everyone? Them, her . . . Me?’
‘You? You are already dead, Fourteenth One. Everything in you has already died.’
‘By the power of the spheres,’ moaned the magician, activating what little remained of her strength and drawing her hand through
the air, ‘I throw a spell on you by water, fire, earth and air. I conjure you in thought, in dream and in death, by all that was, by what is and by what will be. I cast my spell on you. Who are you? Speak!’
Ciri turned her head away. The vision of the staircase leading down into the depths of the abyss disappeared, dissolved, and in its place appeared a grey, leaden sea, foaming, crests of waves breaking. And the seagull’s cries burst through the silence once more.
‘Fly,’ said the voice, through the girl’s lips. ‘It is time. Go back to where you came from, Fourteenth of the Hill. Fly on the wings of a gull and listen to the cry of other seagulls. Listen carefully!’
‘I conjure you—’
‘You cannot. Fly, seagull!’
And suddenly the wet salty air was there again, roaring with the gale, and there was the flight, a flight with no beginning and no end. Seagulls cried wildly, cried and commanded.
Triss?
Ciri?
Forget about him! Don’t torture him! Forget! Forget, Triss!
Forget!
Triss! Triss! Trisss!
‘Triss!’
She opened her eyes, tossed her head on the pillow and moved her numb hands.
‘Geralt?’
‘I’m here. How are you feeling?’
She cast her eyes around. She was in her chamber, lying on the bed. On the best bed in the whole of Kaer Morhen.
‘What is happening to Ciri?’
‘She is asleep.’
‘How long—’
‘Too long,’ he interrupted. He covered her with the duvet and put his arms around her. As he leaned over the wolf’s head medallion swayed just above her face. ‘What you did was not the best of ideas, Triss.’
‘Everything is all right.’ She trembled in his embrace. That’s not
true, she thought. Nothing’s all right. She turned her face so that the medallion didn’t touch her. There were many theories about the properties of witcher amulets and none advised magicians to touch them during the Equinox.
‘Did . . . Did we say anything during the trance?’
‘You, nothing. You were unconscious throughout. Ciri . . . just before she woke up . . . said: “Va’esse deireadh aep eigean”.’
‘She knows the Elder Speech?’
‘Not enough to say a whole sentence.’
‘A sentence which means: “Something is ending”.’ The magician wiped her face with her hand. ‘Geralt, this is a serious matter. The girl is an exceptionally powerful medium. I don’t know what or who she is contacting, but I think there are no limits to her connection. Something wants to take possession of her. Something which is too powerful for me. I am afraid for her. Another trance could end in mental illness. I have no control over it, don’t know how to, can’t … If it proved necessary, I would not be able to block or suppress her powers; I would even not be capable, if there were no other option, of permanently extinguishing them. You have to get help from another magician. A more gifted one. More experienced. You know who I’m talking about.’
‘I do.’ He turned his head away, clenched his lips.
‘Don’t resist. Don’t defend yourself. I can guess why you turned to me rather than her. Overcome your pride, crush your rancour and obstinacy. There is no point to it, you’ll torture yourself to death. And you are risking Ciri’s health and life in the process. Another trance is liable to be more dangerous to her than the Trial of Grasses. Ask Yennefer for help, Geralt.’
‘And you, Triss?’
‘What about me?’ She swallowed with difficulty. ‘I’m not important. I let you down. I let you down … in everything. I was . . . I was your mistake. Nothing more.’
‘Mistakes,’ he said with effort, ‘are also important to me. I don’t cross them out of my life, or memory. And I never blame others for them. You are important to me, Triss, and always will be. You never let me down. Never. Believe me.’
She remained silent a long while.
‘I will stay until spring,’ she said finally, struggling against her shaking voice. ‘I will stay with Ciri … I will watch over her. Day and night. I will be with her day and night. And when spring is here . . . when spring is here we will take her to Melitele’s Temple in Ellander. The thing that wants to possess her might not be able to reach her in the temple. And then you will ask Yennefer for help.’
‘All right, Triss. Thank you.’
‘Geralt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ciri said something else, didn’t she? Something only you heard. Tell me what it was.’
‘No,’ he protested and his voice quivered. ‘No, Triss.’
‘Please.’
‘She wasn’t speaking to me.’
‘I know. She was speaking to me. Tell me, please.’
‘After coming to . . . When I picked her up . . . She whispered: “Forget about him. Don’t torture him.’”
‘I won’t,’ she said quietly. ‘But I can’t forget. Forgive me.’
‘I am the one who ought to be asking for forgiveness. And not only asking you.’
‘You love her that much,’ she stated, not asking.
‘That much,’ he admitted in a whisper after a long moment of silence.
‘Geralt.’
‘Yes, Triss?’
‘Stay with me tonight.’
‘Triss . . .’
‘Only stay.’
‘All right.’
Not long after Midinvaerne the snow stopped falling. The frost came.
Triss stayed with Ciri day and night. She watched over her. She surrounded her with care, visible and invisible.
The girl woke up shouting almost every night. She was delirious, holding her cheek and crying with pain. The magician calmed her
with spells and elixirs, put her to sleep, cuddling and rocking her in her arms. And then she herself would be unable to sleep for a long time, thinking about what Ciri had said in her sleep and after she came to. And she felt a mounting fear. Va’esse deireadh aep eigean . . . Something is ending . . .
That is how it was for ten days and nights. And finally it passed. It ended, disappeared without a trace. Ciri calmed, she slept peacefully with no nightmares, and no dreams.
But Triss kept a constant watch. She did not leave the girl for a moment. She surrounded her with care. Visible and invisible.
‘Faster, Ciri! Lunge, attack, dodge! Half-pirouette, thrust, dodge! Balance! Balance with your left arm or you’ll fall from the comb! And you’ll hurt your . . . womanly attributes!’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Aren’t you tired? We’ll take a break, if you like.’
‘No, Lambert! I can go on. I’m not that weak, you know. Shall I try jumping over every other post?’
‘Don’t you dare! You might fall and then Merigold will tear my— my head off.’
‘I won’t fall!’
‘I’ve told you once and I’m not going to say it again. Don’t show off! Steady on your legs! And breathe, Ciri, breathe! You’re panting like a dying mammoth!’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Don’t squeal. Practise! Attack, dodge! Parry! Half-piroutte! Parry, full pirouette! Steadier on the posts, damn it! Don’t wobble! Lunge, thrust! Faster! Half-pirouette! Jump and cut! That’s it! Very good!’
‘Really? Was that really very good, Lambert?’
‘Who said so?’
‘You did! A moment ago!’
‘Slip of the tongue. Attack! Half-pirouette! Dodge! And again! Ciri, where was the parry? How many times do I have to tell you? After you dodge you always parry, deliver a blow with the blade to protect your head and shoulders! Always!’
‘Even when I’m only fighting one opponent?’
‘You never know what you’re fighting. You never know what’s happening behind you. You always have to cover yourself. Foot and sword work! It’s got to be a reflex. Reflex, understand? You mustn’t forget that. You forget it in a real fight and you’re finished. Again! At last! That’s it! See how such a parry lands? You can take any strike from it. You can cut backwards from it, if you have to. Right, show me a pirouette and a thrust backwards.’