brought me to the castle. She ought to keep me company—’
‘She is undergoing training here, Merigold.’ Lambert grimaced in a parody of a smile. He always called her that: ‘Merigold’, without giving her a title or a name. Triss hated it. ‘She is a student, not a major domo. Welcoming guests, even such pleasant ones as yourself, is not one of her duties. We’re off, Ciri.’
Triss gave a little shrug, pretending not to see Geralt and Eskel’s embarrassed expressions. She did not say anything, not wanting to embarrass them further. And, above all, she did not want them to see how very intrigued and fascinated she was by the girl.
‘I’ll take your horse,’ offered Geralt, reaching for the reins. Triss surreptitiously shifted her hand and their palms joined. So did their eyes.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said naturally. ‘There are a few little things in the saddle-bags which I’ll need.’
‘You gave me a very disagreeable experience not so long ago,’ he muttered as soon as they had entered the stable. ‘I studied your impressive tombstone with my own eyes. The obelisk in memory of your heroic death at the battle of Sodden. The news that it was a mistake only reached me recently. I can’t understand how anyone could mistake anyone else for you, Triss.’
‘It’s a long story,’ she answered. Til tell you some time. And please forgive me for the disagreeable moment.’
‘There’s nothing to forgive. I’ve not had many reasons to be happy of late and the feelings I experienced on hearing that you lived cannot compare to any other. Except perhaps what I feel now when I look at you.’
Triss felt something explode inside her. Her fear of meeting the white-haired witcher, which had accompanied her throughout her journey, had struggled within her with her hope of having such a meeting. Followed by the sight of that tired, jaded face, those sick eyes which saw everything, cold and calculating, which were unnaturally calm but yet so infused with emotion . . .
She threw her arms around his neck, instantly, without thinking. She caught hold of his hand, abruptly placed it on the nape of her neck, under her hair. A tingling ran down her back, penetrated her
with such rapture she almost cried out. In order to muffle and restrain the cry her lips found his lips and stuck to them. She trembled, pressing hard against him, her excitement building and increasing, forgetting herself more and more.
Geralt did not forget himself.
‘Triss . . . Please.’
‘Oh, Geralt … So much . . .’
‘Triss.’ He moved her away delicately. ‘We’re not alone . . . They’re coming.’
She glanced at the entrance and saw the shadows of the approaching witchers only after some time, heard their steps even later. Oh well, her hearing, which she considered very sensitive, could not compete with that of a witcher.
‘Triss, my child!’
‘Vesemir!’
Vesemir was really very old. Who knows, he could be even older than Kaer Morhen. But he walked towards her with a brisk, energetic and sprightly step; his grip was vigorous and his hands strong.
‘I am happy to see you again, Grandfather.’
‘Give me a kiss. No, not on the hand, little sorceress. You can kiss my hand when I’m resting on my bier. Which will, no doubt, be soon. Oh, Triss, it is a good thing you have come . . . Who can cure me if not you?’
‘Cure, you? Of what? Of behaving like a child, surely! Take your hand from my backside, old man, or I’ll set fire to that grey beard of yours!’
‘Forgive me. I keep forgetting you are grown up, and I can no longer put you on my knee and pat you. As to my health . . . Oh, Triss, old age is no joke. My bones ache so I want to howl. Will you help an old man, child?’
‘I will.’ The enchantress freed herself from his bear-like embrace and cast her eye over the witcher accompanying Vesemir. He was young, apparently the same age as Lambert, and wore a short, black beard which did not hide the severe disfigurement left behind by smallpox. This was unusual; witchers were generally highly immune to infectious diseases.
‘Triss Merigold, Coen.’ Geralt introduced them to each other. ‘This is Coen’s first winter with us. He comes from the north, from Poviss.’
The young witcher bowed. He had unusually pale, yellow-green irises and the whites of his eyes, riddled with red threads, indicated difficult and troublesome processes during his mutation.
‘Let us go, child,’ uttered Vesemir, taking her by the arm. ‘A stable is no place to welcome a guest, but I couldn’t wait to see you.’
In the courtyard, in a recess in the wall sheltered from the wind, Ciri was training under Lambert’s instructions. Deftly balancing on a beam hanging on chains, she was attacking - with her sword -a leather sack bound with straps to make it resemble a human torso. Triss stopped to watch.
‘Wrong!’ yelled Lambert. ‘You’re getting too close! Don’t hack blindly at it! I told you, the very tip of the sword, at the carotid artery! Where does a humanoid have its carotid artery? On top of its head? What’s happening? Concentrate, Princess!’
Ha, thought Triss. So it is truth, not a legend. She is the one. 1 guessed correctly.
She decided to attack without delay, not allowing the witchers to try any ruses.
‘The famous Child Surprise?’ she said indicating Ciri. ‘I see you have applied yourselves to fulfilling the demands of fate and destiny? But it seems you have muddled the stories, boys. In the fairy-tales I was told, shepherdesses and orphans become princesses. But here, I see, a princess is becoming a witcher. Does that not appear somewhat daring to you?’
Vesemir glanced at Geralt. The white-haired witcher remained silent, his face perfectly still; he did not react with even the slightest quiver of his eyelids to Vesemir’s unspoken request for support.
‘It’s not what you think.’ The old man cleared his throat. ‘Geralt brought her here last autumn. She has no one apart from— Triss, how can one not believe in destiny when—’
‘What has destiny to do with waving a sword around?’
‘We are teaching her to fence,’ Geralt said quietly, turning
towards her and looking her straight in the eyes. ‘What else are we to teach her? We know nothing else. Destiny or no, Kaer Morhen is now her home. At least for a while. Training and swordsmanship amuse her, keep her healthy and fit. They allow her to forget the tragedy she has lived through. This is her home now, Triss. She has no other.’
‘Masses of Cintrians,’ the enchantress said, holding his gaze, ‘fled to Verden after the defeat, to Brugge, Temeria and the Islands of Skellige. Amongst them are magnates, barons, knights. Friends, relations … as well as this girl’s subjects.’
‘Friends and relations did not look for her after the war. They did not find her.’
‘Because she was not destined for them?’ She smiled at him, not very sincerely but very prettily. As prettily as she could. She did not want him to use that tone of voice.
The witcher shrugged. Triss, knowing him a little, immediately changed tactics and gave up the argument.
She looked at Ciri again. The girl, agilely stepping along the balance beam, executed a half-turn, cut lightly, and immediately leaped away. The dummy, struck, swayed on its rope.
‘Well, at last!’ shouted Lambert. ‘You’ve finally got it! Go back and do it again. I want to make sure it wasn’t a fluke!’
‘The sword,’ Triss turned to the witchers, ‘looks sharp. The beam looks slippery and unstable. And Lambert looks like an idiot, demoralising the girl with all his shouting. Aren’t you afraid of an unfortunate accident? Or maybe you’re relying on destiny to protect the child against it?’
‘Ciri practised for nearly six months without a sword,’ said Coen. ‘She knows how to move. And we are keeping an eye on her because—’
‘Because this is her home,’ finished Geralt quietly but firmly. Very firmly. Using a tone which put an end to the discussion.
‘Exactly. It is.’ Vesemir took a deep breath. ‘Triss, you must be tired. And hungry?’
‘I cannot deny it,’ she sighed, giving up on trying to catch Geralt’s eye. ‘To be honest, I’m on my last legs. I spent last night
on the Trail in a shepherd’s hut which was practically falling apart, buried in straw and sawdust. I used spells to insulate the shack; if it weren’t for that I would probably be dead. I long for clean linen.’
‘You will have supper with us now. And then you will sleep as long as you wish, and rest. We have prepared the best room for you, the one in the tower. And we have put the best bed we could find in Kaer Morhen there.’
‘Thank you.’ Triss smiled faintly. In the tower, she thought. All right, Vesemir. Let it be the tower for today, if appearances matter so much to you. I can sleep in the tower in the best of all the beds in Kaer Morhen. Although I would prefer to sleep with Geralt in the worst.
‘Let’s go, Triss.’
‘Let’s go.’
The wind hammered against the shutters and ruffled the remains of the moth-eaten tapestries which had been used to insulate the window. Triss lay in perfect darkness in the best bed in the whole of Kaer Morhen. She couldn’t sleep – and not because the best bed in Kaer Morhen was a dilapidated antique. Triss was thinking hard. And all the thoughts chasing sleep away revolved around one fundamental question.
What had she been summoned to the fortress for? Who had summoned her? Why? For what purpose?
Vesemir’s illness was just a pretext. Vesemir was a witcher. The fact that he was also an old man did not change the fact that many a youngster could envy him his health. If the old man had been stung by a manticore or bitten by a werewolf Triss would have accepted that she had been summoned to aid him. But ‘aching bones’ was a joke. For an ache in his bones, not a very original complaint within the horrendously cold walls of Kaer Morhen, Vesemir could have treated with a witchers’ elixir or — an even simpler solution – with strong rye vodka, applied internally and externally in equal proportions. He didn’t need a magician, with her spells, filters and amulets.
So who had summoned her? Geralt?
Triss thrashed about in the bedclothes, feeling a wave of heat come over her. And a wave of arousal, made all the stronger by anger. She swore quietly, kicked her quilt away and rolled on to her side. The ancient bedstead squeaked and creaked. I’ve no control over myself, she thought. I’m behaving like a stupid adolescent. Or even worse — like an old maid deprived of affection. I can’t even think logically.
She swore again.
Of course it wasn’t Geralt. Don’t get excited, little one. Don’t get excited, just think of his expression in the stable. You’ve seen expressions like that before. You’ve seen them, so don’t kid yourself. The foolish, contrite, embarrassed expressions of men who want to forget, who regret, who don’t want to remember what happened, don’t want to go back to what has been. By all the gods, little one, don’t fool yourself it’s different this time. It’s never different. And you know it. Because, after all, you’ve had a fair amount of experience.
As far as her erotic life was concerned, Triss Merigold had the right to consider herself a typical enchantress. It had began with the sour taste of forbidden fruit, made all the more exciting by the strict rules of the academy and the prohibitions of the mistress under whom she practised. Then came her independence, freedom and a crazy promiscuity which ended, as it usually does, in bitterness, disillusionment and resignation. Then followed a long period of loneliness and the discovery that if she wanted to release her tension and stress then someone who wanted to consider himself her lord and master – as soon as he had turned on his back and wiped the sweat from his brow – was entirely superfluous. There were far less troublesome ways of calming her nerves – ones with the additional advantages of not staining her towels with blood, not passing wind under the quilt and not demanding breakfast. That was followed by a short-lived and entertaining fascination with the same sex, which ended in the conclusion that soiling towels, passing wind and greediness were by no means exclusively male attributes. Finally, like all but a few magicians, Triss moved to affairs with other wizards, which proved sporadic and frustrating in their cold, technical and almost ritual course.
Then Geralt of Rivia appeared. A witcher leading a stormy life, and tied to her good friend Yennefer in a strange, turbulent and almost violent relationship.
Triss had watched them both and was jealous even though it seemed there was little to be jealous of. Their relationship quite obviously made them both unhappy, had led straight to destruction, pain and yet, against all logic … it had lasted. Triss couldn’t understand it. And it had fascinated her. It had fascinated her to such an extent that . . .
. . . she had seduced the witcher – with the help of a little magic. She had hit on a propitious moment, a moment when he and Yennefer had scratched at each other’s eyes yet again and had abruptly parted. Geralt had needed warmth, and had wanted to forget.
No, Triss had not desired to take him away from Yennefer. As a matter of fact, her friend was more important to her than he was. But her brief relationship with the witcher had not disappointed. She had found what she was looking for – emotions in the form of guilt, anxiety and pain. His pain. She had experienced his emotions, it had excited her and, when they parted, she had been unable to forget it. And she had only recently understood what pain is. The moment when she had overwhelmingly wanted to be with him again. For a short while – just for a moment – to be with him.
And now she was so close . . .
Triss clenched her fist and punched the pillow. No, she thought, no. Don’t be silly. Don’t think about it. Think about . . .
About Ciri. Is she . . .
Yes. She was the real reason behind her visit to Kaer Morhen. The ash-blonde girl who, here in Kaer Morhen, they want to turn into a witcher. A real witcher. A mutant. A killing machine, like themselves.
It’s clear, she suddenly thought, feeling a passionate arousal of an entirely different nature. It’s obvious. They want to mutate the child, subject her to the Trial of Grasses and Changes, but they don’t know how to do it. Vesemir was the only witcher left from the previous generation, and he was only a fencing instructor. The