Season of Storms Page 13

  “Very much.”

  “I acted alongside a priest in the case of the wolf that had, in broad daylight, killed and ripped eleven people to pieces. Magic and sword triumphed side by side. When, after a hard fight, I finally killed the wolf, the demon possessing it broke free in the form of a large glowing ball. And devastated a fair stretch of forest, scattering the trees all around. It didn’t pay any attention to me or the priest, but cleared the forest in the opposite direction. And then it disappeared, probably returning to its dimension. The priest insisted he deserved the credit, that his exorcisms had dispatched the demon to the beyond. Although I think the demon went away because he was simply bored.”

  “And the other case—?”

  “—was more interesting.

  “I killed a possessed man,” he continued without being pressed. “And that was it. No spectacular side effects. No ball lightning, auroras, thunderbolts or whirlwinds; not even a foul smell. I’ve no idea what happened to the demon. Some priests and mages—your confraters—examined the dead man. They didn’t find or discover anything. The body was cremated, because the process of decay proceeded quite normally, and the weather was very hot—”

  He broke off. The sorcerers looked at each other. Their faces were inscrutable.

  “That would be, as I understand it, the only proper way of dealing with a demon,” Harlan Tzara finally said. “To kill, to destroy the energumen, meaning the possessed person. The person, I stress. They must be killed at once, without waiting or deliberating. They should be chopped up with a sword. And that’s it. Is that the witcher method? The witcher technique?”

  “You’re doing poorly, Tzara. That’s not how it’s done. In order to insult someone properly, you need more than overwhelming desire, enthusiasm and fervour. You need technique.”

  “Pax, pax.” Pinety headed off an argument again. “We’re simply establishing the facts. You told us that you killed a man, those were your very words. Your witcher code is meant to preclude killing people. You claim to have killed an energumen, a person who’d been possessed by a demon. After that fact, i.e. the execution of a person, ‘no spectacular effects were observed,’ to quote you again. Where, then, is your certainty that it wasn’t—”

  “Enough,” Geralt interrupted. “Enough of that, Guincamp, these allusions are going nowhere. You want facts? By all means, they are as follows. I killed him, because it was necessary. I killed him to save the lives of other people. And I received a dispensation from the law to do it. It was granted to me in haste, albeit in quite high-sounding words. ‘A state of absolute necessity, a circumstance precluding the lawlessness of a forbidden deed, sacrificing one good in order to save another one, a real, direct threat.’ It was, indeed, real and direct. You ought to regret you didn’t see the possessed man in action, what he did, what he was capable of. I know little of the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of demons, but their physical aspect is truly spectacular. It can be astonishing, take my word for it.”

  “We believe you,” confirmed Pinety, exchanging glances with Tzara again. “Of course, we believe you. Because we’ve also seen a thing or two.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” The Witcher grimaced. “And I didn’t doubt that during your lectures at Oxenfurt. It was apparent you knew what you were talking about. The theoretical underpinning really came in handy with that wolf and that man. I knew what it was about. The two cases had an identical basis. What did you call it, Tzara? A method? A technique? And thus, it was a magical method and the technique was also magical. Some sorcerer summoned a demon using spells, extracted it forcibly from its plane, with the obvious intention of exploiting it for their own magical goals. That’s the basis of demonic magic—”

  “—goetia.”

  “—That’s the basis of goetia: invoking a demon, using it, and then releasing it. In theory. Because in practice it happens that the sorcerer, instead of freeing the demon after using it, imprisons it magically in a body. That of a wolf, for example. Or a human being. For a sorcerer—as Alzur and Idarran have shown us—likes to experiment. Likes observing what a demon does in someone else’s skin when it’s set free. For a sorcerer—like Alzur—is a sick pervert, who enjoys and is entertained by watching the killing wrought by a demon. That has occurred, hasn’t it?”

  “Various things have occurred,” said Harlan Tzara in a slow, drawling voice. “It’s stupid to generalise, and low to reproach. And to remind you of witchers who didn’t shrink from robbery. Who didn’t hesitate to work as hired assassins. Am I to remind you of the psychopaths who wore medallions with a cat’s head, and who were also amused by the killing being wrought around them?”

  “Gentlemen.” Pinety raised a hand, silencing the Witcher, who was preparing to make a rejoinder. “This isn’t a session of the town council, so don’t try to outdo one another in vices and pathologies. It’s probably more judicious to admit that no one is perfect, everyone has their vices, and even celestial creatures are no strangers to pathologies. Apparently. Let’s concentrate on the problem before us and which demands a solution.”

  “Goetia is prohibited,” Pinety began after a long silence, “because it’s an extremely dangerous practice. Sadly, the simple evocation of a demon doesn’t demand great knowledge, nor great magical abilities. It’s enough to possess a necromantic grimoire, and there are plenty of them on the black market. It is, however, difficult to control a demon once invoked without knowledge or skills. A self-taught goetic practitioner can think himself lucky if the invoked demon simply breaks away, frees itself and flees. Many of them end up torn to shreds. Thus, invoking demons or any other creatures from elemental planes and para-elements was prohibited and had the threat of severe punishments imposed on it. There exists a system of control that guarantees the observance of the prohibition. However, there is a place that was excluded from that control.”

  “Rissberg Castle. Of course.”

  “Of course. Rissberg cannot be controlled. For the system of goetia control I was talking about was created here, after all. As a result of experiments carried out here. Thanks to tests carried out here the system is still being perfected. Other research is being conducted here, and other experiments. Of a wide variety. Various things and phenomena are studied here, Witcher. Various things are done here. Not always legal and not always moral. The end justifies the means. That slogan could hang over the gate to Rissberg.”

  “And beneath that slogan ought to be added: ‘What happens at Rissberg stays at Rissberg,’” added Tzara. “Experiments are carried out here under supervision. Everything is monitored.”

  “Clearly not everything,” Geralt stated sourly. “Because something escaped.”

  “Something escaped.” Pinety was theatrically calm. “There are currently eighteen masters working at the castle. And on top of that, well over four score apprentices and novices. Most of the latter are only a few formalities away from the title of ‘master.’ We fear … We have reason to suppose before that someone from that large group wanted to play at goetia.”

  “Don’t you know who?”

  “We do not,” Harlan Tzara replied without batting an eye. But the Witcher knew he was lying.

  “In May and at the beginning of June, three large-scale crimes were committed in the vicinity.” The sorcerer didn’t wait for further questions. “In the vicinity, meaning here, on the Hill, between twelve and twenty miles from Rissberg. Each time, forest settlements, the homesteads of foresters and other forest workers, were targeted. All the residents were murdered in the settlements, no one was left alive. Post-mortem examinations confirmed that the crimes must have been committed by a demon. Or more precisely, an energumen, someone possessed by a demon. A demon that was invoked here, at the castle.”

  “We have a problem, Geralt of Rivia. We have to solve it. And we hope you’ll help us with it.”

  Sending matter is an elaborate, sophisticated and subtle thing, hence before setting about teleporting, one must without fail defecate and empty t
he bladder.

  Geoffrey Monck,

  The Theory and Practice of Using Teleportals

  CHAPTER TEN

  As usual, Roach snorted and protested on seeing the blanket, and fear and protest could be heard in her snorting. She didn’t like it when the Witcher covered her head. She liked even less what occurred right after it was covered. Geralt wasn’t in the least surprised at the mare. Because he didn’t like it either. Naturally, it didn’t behove him to snort or splutter, but it didn’t stop him expressing his disapproval in another form.

  “Your aversion to teleportation is truly surprising,” said Harlan Tzara, showing his astonishment for the umpteenth time.

  The Witcher didn’t join in the discussion. Tzara hadn’t expected him to.

  “We’ve been transporting you for over a week,” he continued, “and each time you put on the look of a condemned man being led to the scaffold. Ordinary people, I can understand. For them matter transfer remains a dreadful, unimaginable thing. But I thought that you, a witcher, had more experience in matters of magic. These aren’t the times of Geoffrey Monck’s first portals! Today teleportation is a common and absolutely safe thing. Teleportals are safe. And teleportals opened by me are absolutely safe.”

  The Witcher sighed. He’d happened to observe the effects of the safe functioning teleportals more than once and he’d also helped sorting the remains of people who’d used teleportals. Which was why he knew that declarations about their safety could be classified along with such statements as: “my little dog doesn’t bite,” “my son’s a good boy,” “this stew’s fresh,” “I’ll give you the money back the day after tomorrow at the latest,” “he was only getting something out of my eye,” “the good of the fatherland comes before everything,” and “just answer a few questions and you’re free to go.”

  There wasn’t a choice or an alternative, however. In accordance with the plan adopted at Rissberg, Geralt’s daily task was to patrol a selected region of the Hills and the settlements, colonies and homesteads there. Places where Pinety and Tzara feared another attack by the energumen. Settlements like that were spread over the entire Hills; sometimes quite far from each other. Geralt had to admit and accept the fact that effective patrolling wouldn’t have been possible without the help of teleportational magic.

  To maintain secrecy, Pinety and Tzara had constructed the portals at the end of the Rissberg complex, in a large, empty, musty room in need of refurbishment, where cobwebs stuck to your face, and shrivelled up mouse droppings crunched under your boots. A spell was activated on a wall covered in damp patches and slimy marks and then the brightly shining outline of a door—or rather a gateway—appeared, beyond which whirled an opaque, iridescent glow. Geralt walked the blindfolded mare into the glow—and then things became unpleasant. There was a flash and he stopped seeing, hearing or feeling anything—apart from cold. Cold was the only thing felt inside the black nothingness, amid silence, amorphousness and timelessness, because the teleport dulled and extinguished all the other senses. Fortunately, only for a split second. The moment passed, the real world flared up, and the horse, snorting with terror, clattered its horseshoes on the hard ground of reality.

  “The horse taking fright is understandable,” Tzara stated again. “While your anxiety, Witcher, is utterly irrational.”

  Anxiety is never irrational, Geralt thought to himself. Aside from psychological disturbances. It was one of the first things novice witchers were taught. It’s good to feel fear. If you feel fear it means there’s something to be feared, so be vigilant. Fear doesn’t have to be overcome. Just don’t yield to it. And you can learn from it.

  “Where to today?” asked Tzara, opening the lacquer box in which he kept his wand. “What region?”

  “Dry Rocks.”

  “Try to get to Maple Grove before sundown. Pinety or I will pick you up from there. Ready?”

  “For anything.”

  Tzara waved his hand and wand in the air as though conducting an orchestra and Geralt thought he could even hear music. The sorcerer melodiously chanted a long spell that sounded like a poem being recited. Flaming lines flared up on the wall, then linked up to form a shining, rectangular outline. The Witcher swore under his breath, calmed his pulsating medallion, jabbed the mare with his heels and rode her into the milky nothingness.

  Blackness, silence, amorphousness, timelessness. Cold. And suddenly a flash and a shock, the thud of hooves on hard ground.

  The crimes of which the sorcerers suspected the energumen, the person possessed by a demon, were carried out in the vicinity of Rissberg, in an uninhabited area called the Tukaj Hills, a chain of upland covered in ancient woodland, separating Temeria from Brugge. The hills owed their name—some people insisted—to a legendary hero called Tukaj, or to something completely different, as others claimed. Since there weren’t any other hills in the region it became common to simply say “the Hills,” and that shortened name also appeared on many maps.

  The Hills stretched in a wide belt about a hundred miles long and twenty to thirty miles wide. The western part, in particular, was worked intensively by foresters. Large-scale felling had been carried out and industries and crafts linked to felling and forestry had developed. Large, medium, small and quite tiny, permanent and makeshift, tolerably and poorly built settlements, colonies, homesteads and camps of the people earning their living by forest crafts had been established in the wilderness. The sorcerers estimated that around four dozen such settlements existed throughout the Hills.

  Massacres—from which no one escaped with their life—had occurred in three of them.

  Dry Rocks, a complex of low limestone hills surrounded by dense forests, formed the westernmost edge of the Hills, the western border of the patrol region. Geralt had been there before; he knew the area. A lime kiln—used for burning limestone—had been built in a clearing at the edge of the forest. The end product of this burning was quicklime. Pinety, when they were there together, explained what the lime was for, but Geralt had listened inattentively and forgot it. Lime—of any kind—lay quite far beyond his sphere of interests. But a colony of people had sprung up by the kiln who made a living from said lime. He had been entrusted with their protection. And only that mattered.

  The lime burners recognised him, one of them waved his hat at him. Geralt returned the greeting. I’m doing my job, he thought. I’m doing my duty. Doing what they pay me for.

  He guided Roach towards the forest. He had about a half-hour ride along a forest track ahead of him. Nearly a mile separated him from the next settlement. It was called Pointer’s Clearing.

  The Witcher covered a distance of from seven to ten miles over the course of a day. Depending on the region, that meant visiting anything from a handful to more than a dozen homesteads and then reaching an agreed-upon location, from where one of the sorcerers would teleport him back to the castle before sundown. The pattern was repeated the following day, when another region of the Hills was patrolled. Geralt chose the regions at random, wary of routines and patterns that might easily be decoded. Despite that, the task turned out to be quite monotonous. The Witcher, however, wasn’t bothered by monotony, he was accustomed to it in his profession: in most cases, only patience, perseverance and determination guaranteed a successful kill. Actually, never before—and this was pertinent—had anyone ever been willing to pay for his patience, perseverance and determination as generously as the sorcerers of Rissberg. So he couldn’t complain, he just had to do his job.

  Without believing overly in the success of the enterprise.

  “You presented me to Ortolan and all the high-ranking mages immediately after my arrival at Rissberg,” he pointed out to the sorcerers. “Even if one assumes that the person guilty of the goetia and the massacres wasn’t among them, news of a witcher at the castle must have spread. Your wrongdoer, assuming he exists, will understand in no time what’s afoot, so will go into hiding and abandon his activities. Entirely. Or will wait until I leave and then begin again
.”

  “We can stage your departure,” replied Pinety. “And your continued stay at the castle will be a secret. Fear not, magic exists to guarantee the confidentiality of what must remain a secret. Believe us, we can work that kind of magic.”

  “So you believe my daily patrols make sense?”

  “They do. Do your job, Witcher. And don’t worry about the rest.”

  Geralt solemnly promised not to worry. Although he had his doubts. And didn’t entirely trust the sorcerers. He had his suspicions.

  But had no intention of divulging them.

  Axes banged and saws rasped briskly in Pointer’s Clearing, and there was a smell of fresh timber and resin. The relentless felling of the forest was being carried out by the woodcutter Pointer and his large family. The older members of the family chopped and sawed, the younger ones stripped the branches from the trunks and the youngest carried brushwood. Pointer saw Geralt, sank his axe into a trunk and wiped his forehead.

  “Greetings.” The Witcher rode closer. “How are things? Everything in order?”

  Pointer looked at him long and sombrely.

  “Things are bad,” he said at last.

  “Why?”

  Pointer said nothing for a long time.

  “Someone stole a saw,” he finally snarled. “Stole a saw! How can it be, eh? Why do you patrol the clearings, sire, eh? And Torquil roams the forests with his men, eh? Guarding us, are you? And saws going missing!”

  “I’ll look into it,” Geralt lied easily. “I’ll look into the matter. Farewell.”

  Pointer spat.

  In the next clearing, this time Dudek’s, everything was in order, no one was threatening Dudek and probably no one had stolen anything. Geralt didn’t even stop. He headed towards the next settlement. Called Ash Burner.