Almost three weeks in the saddle, on a relentless chase. In penetrating cold. And for a few days with frost setting.
And Vilgefortz was silent.
We are also silent. And look at each other askance. Rience rubbed his hands and put on his gloves. Skellen, he thought, looks at me strangely. Is he planning some treachery? He reached agreement with Vilgefortz a little too quickly and a little too easily... But this squad, these thugs who are so loyal to him, carry out his orders. If we get a hold of the girl, he is capable of ignoring the deal, killing her, and using these conspirators of his to carry out his crazy ideas of democracy and civil rule.
Or maybe Skellen has already had enough of the conspiracy? As a born conformist and opportunist maybe he is now thinking it's better to bring the girl to Emperor Emhyr?
He looks at me strangely. Like an owl. And the whole squad... That Kenna Selbourne...
And Bonhart? Bonhart is an unpredictable sadist. When he speaks of Ciri, his voice trembles with anger. Depending on the discretion he would execute or kidnap the girl, to make her fight in the arena. The deal with Vilgefortz? That agreement will not matter to him. Especially now that Vilgefortz...
He took out the Xenophon. ‘Master? Can you hear me? It is Rience...’
The machine was silent. Rience didn’t even curse.
Vilgefortz is silent. Skellen and Bonhart have made an agreement with him. But in a day or two when we catch up to the girl it may turn out that there is no agreement. And then I will be the one to get a knife in the throat. Or made to ride in shackles to Nilfgaard, as the Owl’s proof and pledge of loyalty...
Damn it!
Vilgefortz is silent. He does not give advice. Does not show the way. Does not scatter doubts with his calm, logical, true to the depths of his soul voice. He is silent.
Perhaps Skellen was right? Perhaps Vilgefortz really has turned to something else and does not care about us and our destiny?
For all the devils, I did not think this would happen. If I had known this, I would not have... I would have ridden to kill the witcher instead of Schirrú... Damn it! I'm freezing out here and Schirrú is surely sitting in the warmth...
When I think that I myself urged that I be sent after Ciri and Schirrú be sent after the witcher... I myself asked for it.
Back then, in the beginning of September, when Yennefer fell into our hands.
The world that had just been a surreal, soft, muddy, sticky blackness, turned to solid surfaces and contours in a split second. If it was bright. It was real.
Yennefer opened her eyes, shaken by convulsive tremors. She was lying on rocks, down the middle of corpses, rigging, and tarred boards – the remnants of the dragon boat ‘Alcyone’. All around, she saw feet. Feet in heavy boots. One of these boots had kicked her to consciousness a moment ago.
‘Get up, witch!’
Again a kick brought pain that penetrated to her roots. Then she saw a face bend over hers.
‘Get up, I said! On your feet! Do you recognize me?’
She blinked. She recognized him. Because she had once burned his face as he fled through a teleport in front of her. Rience.
‘We will settle,’ he promised. ‘We will settle everything, you whore. I will teach you what pain is. With these hands and with these fingers, I will teach you what pain is.’
She tensed, clenched her fists, and opened them again, about to cast a spell. And immediately they writhed together. She choked, gasped, and shook.
Rience roared with laughter. ‘Not working?’ She heard. ‘You do not have even trace power! You are no equal with Vilgefortz at spells! He has squeezed it all out from you, to the last drop, as the whey from the cheese. You cannot even...’
He did not finish. Yennefer drew the stiletto from the sheath fixed to the inside of her leg, jumped up like a cat, and pushed blindly. She did not succeed, the blade only grazed its goal, tearing the fabric of his pants. Rience jumped back and fell down.
Immediately a hail of punches and kicks rained down on her. She howled as a heavy boot stomped the dagger from her hand and pressed down, crushing her thumb. Another boot stomped onto her abdomen. The sorceress was writhing and gasping. She was torn from the ground and her arms were twisted behind her back. She saw a fist flying towards her and the world suddenly flared up in sparks as her face exploded in pain. It ran down her spine into her abdomen and womb. Her knees turned to soft jelly. She hung powerlessly in the hands that held her. Someone grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head up. She took another blow to the eye, and everything blurred and disappeared in a blinding flash.
She did not faint. She felt. She was being beaten. Violently beaten, cruelly, beaten like a man. With blows that were not only painful, but also drained you of energy, beat out any will to resist. She was beaten and twitched in the steely grip of many hands.
She wanted to faint, but could not. She felt.
‘Enough,’ she suddenly heard from far away, passing through the veil of pain. ‘Have you gone mad, Rience? Are you trying to kill her? I need her alive.’
‘I promised her, master,’ growled the wavering shadow in front of her, which gradually became the shape and face of Rience. ‘I promised her that I'd get back at her... With these hands...’
‘I care little what you promised. I repeat, I need her alive and able to articulate speech.’
‘Neither a cat nor a witch,’ said the one who held her by the hair, laughing, ‘can have the life beaten out of them so easily.’
‘No voice wise speeches, Schirrú. I said that is enough beating. Raise her head high. How are you, Yennefer?’
The sorceress spat out red and lifted her swelling face. At first she did not recognize him. He wore a mask that covered the entire left side of his head. But she knew who it was.
‘Go to hell, Vilgefortz,’ she stammered as she gently touched her tongue to her front teeth and bruised lips.
‘How do you like my spell? Did you like it, as I lifted you up along with this boat from the sea? Did you enjoy the flight? Which spells did you place on yourself that you have managed to survive the fall?’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Destroy the star necklace around her throat. And take her to the laboratory. We will not waste any time.’
She was dragged, pulled, and sometimes carried. Over a stony plain that held the smashed pieces of the ‘Alcyone’. And remainder of many other wrecks, their towering frames like the ribs of the skeletons of sea monsters. Crach was right, she thought. The ships that have disappeared without trace over the Sedna-depth were not victims of natural disasters. Gods... Pavetta and Duny...
A distant mountain peak rose above the horizon in the cloud-covered sky.
Then came walls, gates, cloisters and stairs. Everything was somehow strangely and unnaturally large... There were still too few details for here to be able to orient herself, to know where she was, where she had fallen, where the spell had brought them. Her swollen face made it even more difficult to observe. Smell had become her sole sense that provided information – she immediately smelled formalin, ether, and alcohol. And magic. The odors of a laboratory.
She was brutally placed on a steel chair. Cold clamps closed painfully on her wrists and ankles. After the steel jaws of a vice were fixed to her temples, trapping her head, she looked around the spacious and dazzlingly brightly lit room. She saw another chair, a strange steel structure on a stone pedestal.
‘That,’ she heard Vilgefortz's voice behind her . ‘That little chair is for your Ciri. It has waited a long time, it can wait no longer. Me neither.’
She could tell he was close, could almost feel his breath. He pushed needles into her scalp and stuck something firmly to her ear lobe. Then he stood before her and took off his mask. Yennefer sighed involuntarily.
‘This is the work of that very same Ciri,’ he said, pointing to the once classically beautiful, now horribly ravaged face that was framed by gold clasps and retainers that held a multi-faceted crystal in the left eye soc
ket. ‘I tried to catch her when she entered the portal in the Tower of Gulls,’ said the sorcerer quietly. ‘I wanted to save her life, I was sure the portal would kill her. How naive I was! She went through smoothly, with such force that portal broke and exploded in my face. I lost an eye and my left cheek, and a lot of skin on my face, neck and chest. It was very unpleasant, very tedious, and very complicated. And it is very ugly, is not it? Ha, you should have seen me before I started to magically regenerate.’
‘If I believed in that sort of thing,’ he said while pushing a curved metal tube into her nose, ‘I might think this is the revenge of Lydia van Bredevoort. From beyond the grave. I can regenerate, but slowly. It is time-consuming and laborious. Especially with the regeneration of the eyeball, there are problems... The crystal I have in my eye socket serves its purpose well – I see three dimensions, but the lack of a natural eyeball sometimes really drives me to despair. Indeed, I've developed an irrational anger – I swear that when I capture Ciri, immediately afterwards I'll instruct Rience to remove one of those big green eyes. With his fingers. These fingers, as he likes to say. You are silent, Yennefer? But you already know that I desire to tear one of your eyes out as well? Or both eyes?’
He pushed thick needles into the veins at the top of her hands. Sometimes he did not find his mark, instead hitting the bone. Yennefer gritted teeth.
‘You've made trouble for me. Forced me to stop working. Put me in danger. When you sailed your boat on the Sedna-Deep, beneath my extractors... The echo of our brief duel was strong and widespread, it may be noticed by uninvited and perky ears. But I could not help myself. The idea that I could have you here, that I could link you to my Orter, was too tempting.’
‘Because surely you did not think’ – he put in the next needle – ‘that I had fallen for your provocation? That I had taken the bait? No, Yennefer. If you believe that, you are confusing the sky with the stars which are reflected in the pond at night. Truthfully, I should thank you – you tracked me down. When you went to the Depth, you made my task easier. Because I, you see, cannot locate Ciri, not even with the help of this device here, which has no equal. The girl has strong innate protective mechanisms – a strong anti-magic aura and screening. After all, she is of the elder blood... Nevertheless, my Super-Orter should have discovered her. But it could not.’
Yennefer was quite enmeshed in a web of silver and copper wires, surrounded by a scaffolding of tubes made of silver and porcelain. Tripods mounted on the chair held glass vials that fluctuated with colorless liquids.
‘I've therefore concluded’ – Vilgefortz pushed another tube into her nose, this time it was made of glass – ‘that the only way to locate Ciri is an empathic probe. For this, however, I needed someone with whom the girl had a sufficiently strong emotional connection and has developed an empathic matrix algorithm and mutual sympathy, to borrow a neologism. I thought of the witcher, but he has vanished, and also witchers are unsuitable to use as mediums. I was about to abduct Triss Merigold, our Fourteenth of the Hill. I have considered the kidnapping of Nenneke from Ellander... But then came along Yennefer of Vengerberg, you almost volunteered... Really, I could not have hoped for anyone better... Connected to the apparatus, you will locate Ciri for me. The operation, however, requires cooperation on your part... But there are, as you know, means to force someone to cooperate.’
‘Of course,’ he continued as he wiped his hands, ‘you should get a few explanations. For example – where and how did I learn of the elder blood? Lara Dorren's heritage? What exactly is this gene? How is it that Ciri has it? Who did she inherit it from? In what way will I get it from her, and what am I going to use it for? How does the Sedna Extractor, which I pulled you through, work and what is its purpose? A lot of questions, are there not it? But unfortunately, I lack the time to tell you of anything to explain everything. Ha, it’s a shame because I'm sure you'd be amazed by some of the facts, Yennefer... But, as I said, I do not have time. The elixirs are beginning to take effect. It is time that you begin to concentrate.’
The sorceress gritted her teeth, gasped, and made deep, muffled groans.
‘I know.’ Vilgefortz nodded. He drew a large, professional megascope closer and monitored a large crystal ball on a tripod, surrounded by a silver cobweb of wires. ‘I know, but this is very regrettably required. And very painful. The sooner you start with the locations, the sooner it's over. Well, Yennefer. Here on this screen, I want to see Ciri. Where she is, whom she is with and what she is doing, along with where and with whom she is sleeping.’
Yennefer screamed piercingly, wildly, desperately.
‘It hurts,’ Vilgefortz fixed both his living eye the dead crystal eye on her. ‘Certainly, it hurts. Locations Yennefer. Do not block yourself. Do not play the heroine. You know that you cannot stand it. The result of the resistance can be distressing, it can lead to a cerebral hemorrhage, you could get a double-sided paralysis, or enter a vegetable state for the rest of your life. Locations!’
She clenched her jaw until her teeth began to crack.
‘Well, Yennefer’ the magician said gently. ‘At least out of curiosity! You must be curious about how your student is coping. Perhaps she faces a threat? Maybe she is in trouble? You know how many people want Ciri's death. Locations. If I know where the girl is, I'll get it there. She will be safe... no one will find her here. No one.’
His voice was velvety and warm.
‘Locations Yennefer. Locations. I beg you. I give you my word: I will only take from Ciri what I need. And then I'll give you both your freedom. I swear it.’
Yennefer gritted her teeth even more. A trail of blood flowed over her chin.
Vilgefortz abruptly stood up and waved his hand. ‘Rience!’
Yennefer felt a device being attached to her hands and fingers.
‘Sometimes,’ said Vilgefortz bent over her, ‘there are stubborn situations in which magic, potions, and narcotics simply cannot substitute, good old, classic pain. Do not make me do so. Locations.’
‘Go to hell, Vilgefortz!’
‘Pull the screws, Rience. Slowly.’
Vilgefortz looked at the unconscious body being dragged across the floor towards the stairs that led into the dungeon. Then he looked up at Rience and Schirrú.
‘There is always a risk,’ he said, ‘that one of you falls into the hands of my enemies and is interrogated. I would like to believe that you would be as strong minded as her under the screws. Yes, I would like to believe that. But I do not.’
Rience and Schirrú remained silent. Vilgefortz turned again to the megascope, where an image appeared on the screen, produced by the giant crystal.
‘That's all she located,’ he said, pointing at the screen. ‘I wanted Cirilla and she has given me the witcher. She did not have the empathic matrix of the girl, but when she became weak she gave me Geralt's. I would not have believed she had such deep feelings for him... Well, I am satisfied with what we have initially learned. The witcher, Cahir aep Ceallach, the poet Dandelion, and a woman? Hmmm... Who will take this job? The final solution to the witcher question?’
It was assigned to Schirrú, Rience recalled as he shifted himself in the stirrups to gain a moments relief from his aching, saddle-sore buttocks. Schirrú volunteered to kill the witcher. He knew the area where Yennefer had detected Geralt and his company – he had friends or relatives there. I, however, Vilgefortz sent to the negotiation with Vattier de Rideaux, and then to track down Skellen and Bonhart...
And I was a fool then, happy because I was sure I had fallen to the far easier and more enjoyable task. And one that I could finish quickly, easily, and with pleasure...
‘If the farmers did not lie’ – Stefan Skellen stood in his stirrups – ‘then the lake is behind that hill there, in a valley.’
‘That's where the tracks lead’, confirmed Boreas Mun.
‘Why are we still here?’ Rience rubbed his cold, rigid ear. ‘Spur the horses on, and let’s go!’
‘Not so fa
st,’ Bonhart held him back. ‘We scout ahead. Including the valley. We do not know on which side of the lake she's riding on. If we take the wrong side, it can suddenly turn out that the lake separates us from her.’
‘Too true.’ Boreas agreed with him.
‘The lake is frozen over.’
‘The ice may be too weak for horses. Bonhart is right, we have to divide our forces.’
Skellen quickly gave the commands. The first group, a total of seven horses, led by Bonhart, Rience, and Ola Harsheim, galloped along the eastern shore and soon disappeared into the black forest.
‘Good,’ said the Owl. ‘Let’s go, Silifant.’
He immediately noticed that something was wrong.
He turned his horse, drove it forward with a whip, and rode up to Joanna Selbourne. Kenna’s mount stepped back, but her face was like stone.
‘It's useless, Lord Coroner,’ she said hoarsely. ‘We tried to ride with you. We are turning around. We have had enough.’
‘We?’ cried Dacre Silifant. ‘Who is ‘we’? What is this, a mutiny?’
Skellen leaned over the saddle and spat on the frozen ground. Behind Kenna were Andres Vierny and Til Echrade, the bright-haired elf.
‘Lady Selbourne,’ the Owl snapped. ‘It's not the point that you are ruining a promising career and ignoring the opportunity of a lifetime. The point is that you will be handed over to the hangman. Along with these fools who have listened to you.’
‘A man destined to hang can never drown,’ Kenna replied philosophically. ‘But you should not threaten us with the hangman, Lord Coroner. Because you do not know who is closer to the scaffold, you or us.’
‘You think so?’ The Owl’s eyes flashed. ‘This is the cunning conclusion you came to by overhearing someone’s smart thoughts? I’d thought you were wiser. But you're just a foolish woman. With me, you always win. Against me, you lose forever! Just remember that. And if you think I’m done for, realize I will still have an opportunity to send you to the scaffold. Do you all hear me? I'll have them tear the flesh from your bones with red-hot hooks!’