The Malady and Other Stories: An Andrzej Sapkowski Sampler Read online

  The Malady

  An Andrzej Sapkowski Sampler

  Andrzej Sapkowski

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  THE MALADY

  I see a tunnel of mirrored walls where nothing seems

  and nothing is, unwarmed by human breath and cast

  in a timeless warp where seasons never come to pass,

  a tunnel dug beneath the cellars of my dreams.

  I see a legend of mirrored gleams, a silent wake

  that’s kept amidst the sea of candlelight by none

  over the corpses of pre-beings, a legend spun

  in endless yarn whose magic spell is ne’er to break…

  Bolesław Leśmian

  For as long as I remember, I have always associated Brittany with drizzle and roaring waves breaking on its jagged, rocky shore. The colours of Brittany that I remember are grey and white. And aqua marina of course, what else.

  I spurred my horse gently and moved towards the dunes, pulling the cloak tighter around my shoulders. Tiny raindrops, too small to soak in, fell thick and fast on the cloth and on the horse’s mane, dulling the sheen of the metal parts of my outfit with a thin veil of steam. The horizon kept spitting heavy, swirling, grey-white clouds which rolled across the sky towards the land.

  I rode up the hill covered with tufts of hard, grey grass. Then I saw her: black against the sky, motionless, still as a statue. I moved closer. The horse stepped heavily on the sand, breaking the thin, wet crust with its hooves.

  She sat on a grey horse the way ladies do, wrapped up in a long cloak, the hood thrown on her back. Her fair hair was wet, and the rain twisted it into curls and made it stick to her forehead. Sitting still, she watched me calmly as if sunk in thought. She radiated peace. Her horse shook its head, the harness rattled.

  “God be with you, sir knight.” She spoke first, before I could open my mouth. Her voice was calm, just as I had expected.

  “And with you, my lady.”

  She had a pleasant oval face, unusually full lips and above her right eyebrow was a birth mark, or a small scar, the shape of a crescent turned upside down. I looked around. Nothing but dunes. No sign of an entourage, servants or a cart. She was alone.

  Just like me.

  She followed my eyes and smiled.

  “I am alone,” she confirmed. “I’ve been waiting for you, sir knight.”

  Hm. She was waiting for me. Strange, for I didn’t have a clue who she was. And I didn’t expect there to be anyone on this beach who might be waiting for me. Or so I thought.

  “Well then,” she said, turned her calm face towards me, “let us go, sir knight. I am Branwen of Cornwall.”

  She was not from Cornwall. Or from Brittany.

  There are reasons why I sometimes fail to remember things, things which may have happened even in the recent past. There are black holes in my memory. And conversely, sometimes I remember things I’m sure have never taken place. Strange things happen inside my head. Sometimes I’m wrong. But the Irish accent, the accent of the people from Tara – this I would never get wrong. Ever.

  I could have told her that. But I didn’t.

  I bowed with my helmet on, and with my gloved fist I touched the coat of mail on my breast. I didn’t introduce myself. I had the right not to. The shield hanging by my side, turned back to front, was a clear sign that I wished to remain incognito. The knightly customs had by then assumed the character of commonly accepted behaviour. I didn’t think it a healthy development, but then the knights’ customs grew odder, not to say idiotic, by the day.

  “Let’s go,” she repeated.

  She started the horse down the hill, among the mounds of dunes bristling with grass. I followed, caught up with her and we rode side by side. Sometimes I moved ahead and it looked as if it was me who was leading. It didn’t matter. The general direction seemed correct. As long as the sea was behind us.

  We didn’t talk. Branwen, the Cornish impostor, turned her face towards me several times as if she wanted to ask me something. But she never did. I was grateful. I was not disposed to giving answers. So I too remained silent and got on with my thinking, if the laborious process of putting the facts and images whirling in my head into a semblance of order could be called thinking.

  I felt rotten. Really awful.

  My thinking was interrupted by Branwen’s stifled cry and the sight of a serrated blade pointed at my chest. I lifted my head. The blade belonged to a spear which was held by a big brute wearing a horned fool’s hat and a torn coat of mail. His companion, a man with an ugly, gloomy face, held Branwen’s horse by the bridle, close to its mouth. The third, standing a few steps to one side of us, was aiming a crossbow at me. I can’t stand it when someone is aiming a crossbow at me. If I were Pope, I would ban crossbows under the threat of excommunication.

  “Keep still, sir,” said the one with the crossbow, aiming straight at my throat. “I will not kill you. Unless I have to. And if you touch your sword, I’ll have to.”

  “We need food, warm clothes and some money,” announced the gloomy one. “We don’t want your blood.”

  “We are not barbarians,” said the one in the funny hat. “We are reliable, professional robbers. We have our principles.”

  “You take from the rich and give to the poor, I suppose?” I asked.

  The Funny Hat smiled broadly, revealing his gums. He had black, shiny hair and the tawny face of a southerner, bristling with a few days’ stubble.

  “Our principles don’t go that far,” he said. “We take from everybody, as they come. But because we are poor ourselves, it comes to the same thing. Count Orgellis disbanded us. Until we join up with someone else we’ve got to live, don’t we?”

  “Why are you telling him all this, Bec de Corbin?” spoke the Gloomy Face. “Why are you explaining yourself? He is mocking us, wants to offend us.”

  “I’m above it,” answered Bec de Corbin proudly. “I’m letting it pass. Well, Sir Knight, let’s not waste time. Unstrap your saddle bag and throw it here, on the road. Let your purse sit next to it. And your cloak. Mind we are not asking for your horse or your armour. We know how far we can go.”

  “Alas,” said the Gloomy Face, squinting his eyes horribly, “we will have to ask you for this lady. Not for long.”

  “Ah, yes, I almost forgot.” Bec de Corbin bared his teeth again. “Indeed, we need this lady. You understand, sir: all this wilderness, the solitude… I’ve forgotten what a naked woman looks like.”

  “Me, I can’t forget that,” said the crossbower. “I see it every night, the moment I close my eyes.”

  I must have smiled, for Bec de Corbin quickly raised the spear to my face, while the crossbower brought the crossbow to his cheek in one move.

  “No,” said Branwen. “No, there is no need.”

  I looked at her. She was growing pale, gradually, from the mouth up. But her voice was still quiet, calm, cold.

  “No need,” she repeated. “I don’t want yo
u to die on my account, sir knight. I’m not that keen to have my clothes torn and my body bruised either. It’s nothing… After all, they are not asking much.”

  I’m not sure who was more surprised – me or the robbers. But I should have guessed earlier: what I took to be her calm, her inner peace and immutable self-possession, was simply resignation. I knew the feeling.

  “Throw them your saddle bag,” Branwen carried on, growing paler still, “and ride on. I beg you. A few miles from here there is a cross where two roads meet. Wait for me there. It won’t take long.”

  “It’s not every day that we have such sensible customers,” said Bec de Corbin, lowering his spear.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” whispered Branwen. No doubt she must have seen something in my face, though I always thought myself good at self-control.

  I reached behind me, pretending I was unstrapping the bag, and pulled out my foot from the stirrup. I spurred the horse and kicked Bec de Corbin in the face so that he reeled back, balancing with his spear as if he were running on a tight-rope. Pulling out my sword I leaned forward and the bolt aimed at my throat banged on my helmet and slipped away. I swung in a nice, classic sinister on the Gloomy Face; the leap of my horse helped in pulling the blade out of his skull. It’s not really that difficult if one knows how to do it.

  Bec de Corbin, had he wanted to, could have run for the dunes. But he didn’t. He thought that before I could turn the horse he would run me through with his spear. He thought wrong.

  I slashed him broadly, right across his hands holding the spearshaft, and then again, across his belly. I wanted to reach lower but failed. No one is perfect.

  The crossbower didn’t belong to the cowardly, either. Rather than run, he worked the string again and tried to take aim. I reined in the horse, caught the sword by the blade and threw it. It worked. He fell conveniently, so I didn’t have to get off the horse to retrieve the weapon.

  Branwen lowered her head onto her horse’s neck and cried, choking with sobs. I didn’t say a word, didn’t make any gestures. I didn’t do anything. I never know what to do when a woman cries. One minstrel I met in Caer Aranhrod in Wales claimed that the best way to deal with it was to burst out crying oneself. I don’t know if he was serious or joking.

  I carefully wiped the sword-blade. For such emergencies I carry a rag under my saddle. Wiping a sword-blade calms the hands.

  Bec de Corbin was wheezing, moaning, making a huge effort to die. I could have got off my horse and helped him, but I didn’t feel all that good myself. Besides, I didn’t pity him enough. Life is cruel. If I remember correctly, no one’s ever pitied me. Or so it seemed to me.

  I took off my helmet, the ring-mail hood and the skull-cap. The last was soaked through, I can tell you. I sweated like a pig in labour. I felt awful. My eyelids felt heavy as lead and my arms and elbows were slowly filling with a painful numbness. I heard Branwen’s crying as if through a wall of logs tightly fascined with moss. My head rang with a dull, throbbing pain.

  Why am I on these dunes? How have I got here? Where from? Where am I going? Branwen… I had heard that name somewhere. But I couldn’t… couldn’t remember where…

  My fingers stiff, I touched the swelling on my head: the old scar, the reminder of that terrible cut which cracked my skull open, hammering in the sharp edges of the broken helmet.

  “No wonder,” I thought, “that going around with a hole like this my head sometimes feels empty. Even when I’m awake I feel as if I were still inside that black tunnel with a turbid glow at the end, just as I see it in my dreams.”

  Sniffling and coughing, Branwen let me know that she was ready. I swallowed a lump in my throat.

  “Ready?” I asked in a deliberately hard, dry tone of voice, to mask my weakness.

  “Yes.” Her voice was equally hard. She wiped her tears with the top of her hand.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “You despise me, don’t you?”

  “That’s not true.”

  She turned away from me violently, spurred her horse and rode off down the road among the dunes, towards the rocks. I followed her. I felt terrible.

  I could smell the scent of apples.

  * * *

  I don’t like locked gates, lowered portcullis, raised drawbridges. I don’t like standing like an idiot by a stinking moat. I hate wearing out my throat answering the guards who shout at me incomprehensibly from behind the walls or through the embrasures. I’m never sure if they are cursing me, jeering at me, or asking my name.

  I hate giving my name when I don’t feel like it.

  It was lucky then that we found the gate open, the portcullis raised and the guards leaning on their picks and halberds, not inclined to be too officious. Luckier still, a man dressed in velvet robes who greeted us in the courtyard was satisfied with a few words he had exchanged with Branwen and didn’t ask me any questions. Holding the stirrup, he offered Branwen his arm and politely turned his eyes away while she dismounted, showing her calf and knee. Then, just as politely, he motioned us to follow him.

  The castle was horribly empty. As if deserted. It was cold and the sight of empty hearths made us feel even colder. We were waiting, Branwen and I, in an empty great hall, among the diagonal shafts of light falling in through the arched windows. We didn’t wait long. A low door creaked.

  “Now,” I thought, and the thought exploded in my head with a white, cold, dazzling flame, illuminating for a moment the long, unending depth of the black tunnel. “Now,” I thought. “Now she’ll come in.”

  She did. It was her. Iseult.

  I felt a deep shudder when she entered: the white brightness in the dark frame of the door. Believe me or not, at first glance she was identical with that other, the Irish Iseult, my cousin, Iseult of the Golden Hair from Baile Atha Cliath. Only the second glance revealed differences: her hair was slightly darker and without the tendency to curl into locks; her eyes green, not blue, and more oval, without that unique almond shape. The line of her lips was different too. And her hands.

  Her hands were indeed beautiful. I think she must have got used to all the flattering comparisons with alabaster and ebony, but to me, the whiteness and smoothness of her hands brought back the image of the candles in the chapel of Ynis Witrin in Glastonbury: burning bright in the semi-darkness, aglow to the point of transparency.

  Branwen made a deep curtsy. I kneeled down on one knee and, bowing my head, stretched towards her both hands, holding the sheathed sword. Thus, as required the custom, I was offering my sword in her service. Whatever it might mean.

  She answered with a bow, came closer and touched the sword with the tips of her slender fingers. Then the rules of the ceremony permitted me to rise to my feet. I gave the sword to the man in velvets, as the custom demanded.

  “Welcome to the castle Carhaing,” said Iseult. “Lady…”

  “My name is Branwen of Cornwall. And this is my companion…”

  “Well?” I thought.

  “… Sir Morholt of Ulster.”

  By Lugh and Lir! Now I remembered: Branwen of Tara, later Branwen of Tintagel. Of course. It was her.

  Iseult watched us in silence. In the end, clasping her famous white hands, she cracked her fingers.

  “Have you been sent by her?” she asked quietly. “From Cornwall? How have you got here? I look out for the ship every day and I know that it has not yet reached our shores.”

  Branwen was silent. I, of course, didn’t know what to say either.

  “Do tell me,” said Iseult. “When will the ship we are waiting for arrive? Who will it bring? Under what colour will it sail from Tintagel? White sails? Or black?”

  Branwen didn’t answer. Iseult of the White Hands nodded, as if showing she understood. I envied her that.

  “Tristan of Lionesse, my lord and husband,” she spoke, “is gravely wounded. His thigh was torn with a lance in a skirmish with Estult Orgellis and his mercenaries. The wound is festering… and
will not heal…”

  Her voice broke and her beautiful hands trembled.

  “Fever has been eating him for many days now. He is often delirious, loses consciousness, doesn’t recognise anybody. I stay by his bed day and night, tend to him, trying to ease the pain. Nevertheless, perhaps due to my clumsiness and incompetence, Tristan has sent my brother to Tintagel. Apparently, my husband thinks it is easier to find a good medic in Cornwall.”

  We remained silent, Branwen and I.

  “But I still have no news from my brother, still no sign of his ship,” continued Iseult of the White Hands. “And now, instead of the one awaited by Tristan, you appear, Branwen. What brings you here? You, the maid and friend of the golden-haired Queen of Tintagel? Have you brought with you your love potion?”

  Branwen turned pale. I felt an unexpected pang of pity. For in comparison with Iseult – tall, slim and slender, proud, mysterious and a ravishing beauty, Branwen looked like a simple Irish peasant woman: chubby-cheeked, round-hipped, coarse as homespun cloth, with her hair still tangled from the rain. Believe it or not, I felt sorry for her.

  “Tristan has already accepted the potion once from your hands, Branwen,” continued Iseult. “The potion which is still working and slowly killing him. Then, on the ship, Tristan took death from your hands. Perhaps you have arrived here now to give him life? Verily, Branwen, if this is so, you had better hurry. There is little time left. Very little.”

  Branwen didn’t stir. Her face was expressionless; the wax face of a doll. Their eyes, hers and Iseult’s, fiery and powerful, met and locked. I could sense the tension, creaking like an overstretched rope. To my surprise, it was Iseult who turned out to be stronger.

  “Lady Iseult,” Branwen fell down to her knees and bowed her head, “you have the right to feel bitter towards me. But I do not ask you for forgiveness, as it was not you whom I offended. I beg you for grace. I want to see him, beautiful Iseult of the White Hands. I want to see Tristan.”

  Her voice was quiet, soft, calm. In Iseult’s eyes there was only sorrow.