The Last Wish

  “What was it, if not an incantation?” he asked, watching two black stockings outline shapely legs, one after the other.

  “A witty saying.” Frilly knickers clung to nothing in an unusually interesting manner. “If rather indecent.”

  A white shirt with an enormous flower-shaped ruffle fluttered upward and outlined Yennefer's body. She didn't, the witcher noticed, bother with the whalebone nonsense usually worn by women. She didn't have to.

  “What saying?” he asked.

  “Never mind.”

  The cork sprang from a rectangular crystal bottle standing on the stool. The bath-chamber started to smell of lilac and gooseberries. The cork traced several circles and jumped back into place. The sorceress fastened the cuffs of her shirt, pulled on a dress and materialized.

  “Fasten me up.” She turned her back to him while combing her hair with a tortoiseshell comb. He noticed that the comb had a long, sharp prong which could, if need be, easily take the place of a dagger.

  He took a deliberately long time fastening her dress, one hook at a time, enjoying the scent of her hair, which fell halfway down her back in a black cascade.

  “Going back to the bottle creature,” said Yennefer, putting diamond earrings in her ears, “it's obvious that it wasn't your funny incantation that drove him away. The hypothesis that he discharged his fury on your friend and left seems closer to the truth.”

  “Probably,” Geralt agreed, gloomily. “I don't think he flew off to Cidaris to do away with Valdo Marx.”

  “Who's Valdo Marx?”

  “A troubadour who considers my companion, also a poet and musician, a talentless wastrel who panders to the taste of the masses.”

  The sorceress turned round with a strange glimmer in her eyes. “Could it be that your friend managed to express a wish?”

  “Two. Both stupid. Why do you ask? This fulfilling of wishes by genies is nonsense, after all, djinns, spirits of the lamp—”

  “Clearly nonsense,” repeated Yennefer with a smile. “Of course. It's an invention, a fairy tale devoid of any sense, like all the legends in which good spirits and fortune tellers fulfill wishes. Stories like that are made up by poor simpletons, who can't even dream of fulfilling their wishes and desires themselves. I’m pleased you're not one of them, Geralt of Rivia. It makes you closer in spirit to me. If I want something, I don't dream of it—I act. And I always get what I want.”

  “I don't doubt it. Are you ready?”

  “I am.” The sorceress finished fastening the straps of her slippers and stood up. Even in high heels, she wasn't impressively tall. She shook her hair which, he found, had retained its picturesque, disheveled and curling disarray despite the furious combing.

  “I’ve got a question, Geralt. The seal which closed the bottle…Has your friend still got it?”

  The witcher reflected. He had the seal, not Dandilion. But experience had taught him that sorcerers shouldn't be told too much.

  “Hmm…I think so.” He deceived her as to the reason for his delay in replying. “Yes, he probably does. Why? Is the seal important?”

  “That's a strange question,” she said sharply, “for a witcher and a specialist in supernatural monstrosities. Someone who ought to know that such a seal is important enough not to touch. And not to let their friend touch.”

  He clenched his jaw. The blow was well aimed.

  “Oh, well.” Yennefer changed her tone to a much gentler one. “No one's infallible and no witcher's infallible, as we see. Everyone can make a mistake. Well, we can get it on our way. Where's your comrade?”

  “Here, in Rinde. At Errdil's. The elf's.”

  She looked at him carefully.

  “At Errdil's?” she repeated, contorting her lips in a smile. “I know where that is. And I gather his cousin Chireadan is there too?”

  “That's right. But what—?”

  “Nothing,” she interrupted, raised her arms and closed her eyes.

  The medallion around the witcher's neck pulsed, tugged at the chain.

  On the damp bath-chamber wall shone the luminous outline of a door which framed a swirling phosphorescent milky nothingness. The witcher cursed. He didn't like magical portals, or traveling by them.

  “Do we have to…” He cleared his throat. “It's not far—”

  “I can't walk the streets of this town,” she cut him short. “They're not too crazy about me here. They might insult me and throw stones—or do something worse. Several people are effectively ruining my reputation here, thinking they can get away with it. Don't worry, my portals are safe.”

  Geralt had once watched as only half a traveler using a safe portal flew through. The other half was never found. He knew of several cases where people had entered a portal and never been seen again.

  The sorceress adjusted her hair again and pinned a pearl-embossed purse to her belt. The purse looked too small to hold anything other than a handful of coppers and a lipstick, but Geralt knew it was no ordinary purse.

  “Hold me. Tighter. I’m not made of china. On our way!”

  The medallion vibrated, something flashed and Geralt suddenly found himself in black nothingness, in penetrating cold. He couldn't see, hear or feel anything. Cold was all that his senses could register.

  He wanted to curse, but didn't have time.

  V

  “It's an hour since she went in.” Chireadan turned over the hourglass standing on the table. “I’m starting to get worried. Was Dandilion's throat really so bad? Don't you think we ought to go and have a look?”

  “She made it quite clear that she didn't want us to.” Geralt finished his mug of herb tea, grimacing dreadfully. He valued and liked the settled elves for their intelligence, calm reserve and sense of humor, but he couldn't understand or share their taste in food or drink. “I don't intend to disturb her, Chireadan. Magic requires time. It can take all day and night, as long as Dandilion gets better.”

  “Oh well, you're right.”

  A sound of hammering came from the room next door. Errdil, as it turned out, lived in a deserted inn which he had bought intending to renovate and then open with his wife, a quiet, taciturn elf. Vratimir, who had taken to their company after a night spent with the elves in the guardroom, volunteered to help with the repairs. He got down to renovating the wood paneling, working alongside the married couple, as soon as the confusion created by the witcher and Yennefer leaping through the wall in the flash of a portal had subsided.

  “I didn't think you'd find it so easy, if I’m to be honest,” Chireadan went on. “Yennefer isn't the most spontaneous of people when it comes to help. Others’ troubles don't particularly bother her, and don't disturb her sleep. In a word, I’ve never heard of her helping anyone if there wasn't something in it for her. I wonder what's in it for her to help you and Dandilion.”

  “Aren't you exaggerating?” The witcher smiled. “I didn't have such a bad impression of her. She likes to demonstrate her superiority, it's true, but compared with other wizards, with that whole arrogant bunch, she's walking charm and kindliness personified.”

  Chireadan also smiled. “It's almost as though you thought a scorpion were prettier than a spider,” he said, “because it's got such a lovely tail. Be careful, Geralt. You're not the first to have judged her like that without knowing she's turned her charm and beauty into weapons. Weapons she uses skilfully and without scruple. Which, of course, doesn't change the fact that she's a fascinating and good-looking woman. You wouldn't disagree, would you?”

  Geralt glanced keenly at the elf. For a second time, he thought he saw traces of a blush on his face. It surprised him no less than Chireadan's words. Pure-blooded elves were not wont to admire human women, even the very beautiful ones, and Yennefer, although attractive in her own way, couldn't pass as a great beauty.

  Each to their own taste but, in actual fact, not many would describe sorceresses as good-looking. Indeed, all of them came from social circles where the only fate for daughters would be marriage.
Who would have thought of condemning their daughter to years of tedious studies and the tortures of somatic mutations if she could be given away in marriage and advantageously allied? Who wished to have a sorceress in their family? Despite the respect enjoyed by magicians, a sorceress's family did not benefit from her in the least because by the time the girl had completed her education, nothing tied her to her family anymore—only brotherhood counted, to the exclusion of all else. So only daughters with no chance of finding a husband become sorceresses.

  Unlike priestesses and druidesses, who only unwillingly took ugly or crippled girls, sorcerers took anyone who showed evidence of a predisposition. If the child passed the first years of training, magic entered into the equation—straightening and evening out legs, repairing bones which had badly knitted, patching harelips, removing scars, birthmarks and pox scars. The young sorceress would become attractive because the prestige of her profession demanded it. The result was pseudo-pretty women with the angry and cold eyes of ugly girls. Girls who couldn't forget their ugliness had been covered by the mask of magic only for the prestige of their profession.

  No, Geralt couldn't understand Chireadan. His eyes, the eyes of a witcher, registered too many details.

  “No, Chireadan,” he answered. “I wouldn't disagree. Thank you for the warning. But this only concerns Dandilion. He suffered at my side, in my presence. I didn't manage to save him and I couldn't help him. I’d sit on a scorpion with my bare backside if I knew it would help him.”

  “That's precisely what you've got to beware of most.” The elf smiled enigmatically. “Because Yennefer knows it and she likes to make the most of such knowledge. Don't trust her, Geralt. She's dangerous.”

  He didn't answer.

  Upstairs, the door squeaked. Yennefer stood at the stairs, leaning on the gallery balustrade.

  “Witcher, could you come here?”

  “Of course.”

  The sorceress leaned her back against the door of one of the few rooms with furniture, where they had put the suffering troubadour.

  The witcher approached, watchful and silent. He saw her left shoulder, slightly higher than her right. Her nose, slightly too long. Her lips, a touch too narrow. Her chin, receding a little too much. Her brows a little too irregular. Her eyes…

  He saw too many details. Quite unnecessarily.

  “How's Dandilion?”

  “Do you doubt my capabilities?”

  He continued watching. She had the figure of a twenty-year-old, although he preferred not to guess at her real age. She moved with natural, unaffected grace. No, there was no way of guessing what she had been like before, what had been improved. He stopped thinking about it; there wasn't any sense.

  “Your talented friend will be well,” she said. “He'll recover his vocal talents.”

  “You have my gratitude, Yennefer.”

  She smiled. “You'll have an opportunity to prove it.”

  “Can I look in on him?”

  She remained silent for a moment, watching him with a strange smile and drumming her fingers on the doorframe. “Of course. Go in.”

  The medallion on the witcher's neck started to quiver, sharply and rhythmically.

  A glass sphere the size of a small watermelon, aflame with a milky light, lay in the center of the floor. The sphere marked the heart of a precisely traced nine-pointed star whose arms reached the corners and walls of the small chamber. A red pentagram was inscribed within the star. The tips of the pentagram were marked by black candles standing in weirdly shaped holders. Black candles had also been lit at the head of the bed where Dandilion, covered with sheepskins, rested. The poet was breathing peacefully; he didn't wheeze or rasp anymore and the rictus of pain had disappeared from his face, to be replaced by an idiotic smile of happiness.

  “He's asleep,” said Yennefer. “And dreaming.”

  Geralt examined the patterns traced on the floor. The magic hidden within them was palpable, but he knew it was a dormant magic. It brought to mind the purr of a sleeping lion, without suggesting how the roar might sound.

  “What is this, Yennefer?”

  “A trap.”

  “For what?”

  “For you, for the time being.” The sorceress turned the key in the lock, then turned it over in her hand. The key disappeared.

  “And thus I’m trapped,” he said coldly. “What now? Are you going to assault my virtue?”

  “Don't flatter yourself.” Yennefer sat on the edge of the bed. Dandilion, still smiling like a moron, groaned quietly. It was, without a doubt, a groan of bliss.

  “What's this all about, Yennefer? If it's a game, I don't know the rules.”

  “I told you,” she began, “that I always get what I want. As it happens, I desire something that Dandilion has. I’ll get it from him and we can part ways. Don't worry, he won't come to any harm—”

  “The things you've set on the floor,” he interrupted, “are used to summon demons. Someone always comes to harm where demons are summoned. I won't allow it.”

  “—not a hair of his head will be harmed,” continued the sorceress, without paying any attention to his words. “His voice will be even more beautiful and he'll be very pleased, even happy. We'll all be happy. And we'll part with no ill feelings or resentment.”

  “Oh, Virginia,” moaned Dandilion without opening his eyes. “Your breasts are so beautiful, more delicate than a swan's down…Virginia…”

  “Has he lost his mind? Is he raving?”

  “He's dreaming.” Yennefer smiled. “His dream wish is being satisfied in his sleep. I probed his mind to the very depths. There wasn't much there. A few obscenities, several dreams and masses of poetry. But be that as it may. The seal which plugged the bottle with the djinn, Geralt, I know he doesn't have it. You do. Please give it to me.”

  “What do you need the seal for?”

  “How should I answer your question?” The sorceress smiled coquettishly. “Let's try this: it's none of your damned business, witcher. Does that satisfy you?”

  “No.” His smile was equally nasty. “It doesn't. But don't reproach yourself for it, Yennefer. I’m not easily satisfied. Only those who are above average have managed so far.”

  “Pity. So you'll remain unsatisfied. It's your loss. The seal, please. Don't pull that face; it doesn't suit either your good looks or your complexion. In case you hadn't noticed, let me tell you that you are now beginning to repay the gratitude you owe me. The seal is the first installment for the price to be paid for the singer's voice.”

  “I see you've divided the price into several installments,” he said coldly. “Fine. I might have expected that. But let it be a fair trade, Yennefer. I bought your help. And I’ll pay.”

  She contorted her lips in a smile, but her violet eyes remained wide open and cold.

  “You shouldn't have any doubts as to that, witcher.”

  “Me,” he repeated. “Not Dandilion. I’m taking him to a safe place. When I’ve done that, I’ll come back and pay your second installment, and all the others. Because as to the first…”

  He reached into a secret pocket of his belt and pulled out the brass seal with the sign of a star and broken cross.

  “Here, take it. Not as an installment. Accept it from a witcher as proof of his gratitude for having treated him more kindly, albeit in a calculated manner, than the majority of your brethren would have done. Accept it as evidence of goodwill, which ought to convince you that, having seen to my friend's safety, I’ll return to repay you. I didn't see the scorpion amidst the flowers, Yennefer. I’m prepared to pay for my inattention.”

  “A pretty speech.” The sorceress folded her arms. “Touching and pompous. Pity it's in vain. I need Dandilion, so he's staying here.”

  “He's already been close to the creature you intend to draw here.” Geralt indicated the patterns on the floor. “When you've finished your handiwork and brought the djinn here, Dandilion is most certainly going to suffer despite all your promises, maybe even mo
re than before. Because it's the creature from the bottle that you want, isn't it? Do you intend to master it, force it to serve you? You don't have to answer. I know it's none of my damned business. Do what you want, draw ten demons in if you like. But without Dandilion. If you put him at risk, this will no longer be an honest trade, Yennefer, and you don't have the right to demand payment for that. I won't allow—” He broke off.

  “I wondered when you'd feel it,” giggled the sorceress.

  Geralt tensed his muscles and, clenching his jaw until it hurt, strained his entire will. It didn't help. He was paralyzed, like a stone statue, like a post which had been dug into the ground. He couldn't even wiggle a toe.

  “I knew you could deflect a spell thrown straight at you,” said Yennefer. “I also knew that before you tried anything, you'd try to impress me with your eloquence. You were talking while the spell hanging over you was working and slowly breaking you. Now you can only talk. But you don't have to impress me anymore. I know you're eloquent. Any further efforts in that direction will only spoil the effect.”

  “Chireadan—” he said with an effort, still fighting the magical paralysis. “Chireadan will realize that you're up to something. He'll soon work it out, suspect something any minute now, because he doesn't trust you, Yennefer. He hasn't trusted you from the start—”

  The sorceress swept her hand in a broad gesture. The walls of the chamber became blurred and took on a uniform dull gray appearance and color. The door disappeared, the windows disappeared, even the dusty curtains and pictures on the wall, splattered with flies, vanished.

  “What if Chireadan does figure it out?” She grimaced maliciously. “Is he going to run for help? Nobody will get through my barrier. But Chireadan's not going to run anywhere. He won't do anything against me. Anything. He's under my spell. No, it's not a question of black sorcery. I didn't do anything in that way. It's a simple question of body chemistry. He's fallen in love with me, the blockhead. Didn't you know? Can you imagine, he even intended to challenge Beau to a duel. A jealous elf. That rarely happens. Geralt, it's not for nothing that I chose this house.”