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  “That’s right,” interjected Prince Xander, who had been waiting for some time for a chance to interject. “Precisely!”

  “A woman who is averse to motherhood,” continued Belohun, “a woman whose belly, the cradle and a host of brats don’t imprison her in the homestead, soon yields to carnal urges. The matter is, indeed, obvious and inevitable. Then a man loses his inner calm and balanced state of mind, something suddenly goes out of kilter and stinks in his former harmony, nay, it turns out that there is no harmony or order. In particular, there is none of the order that justifies the daily grind. And the truth is I appropriate the results of that hard work. And from such thoughts it’s but a single step to upheaval. To sedition, rebellion, revolt. Do you see, Neyd? Whoever gives womenfolk contraceptive agents or enables pregnancies to be terminated undermines the social order and incites riots and rebellion.”

  “That is so,” interjected Xander. “Absolutely!”

  Lytta didn’t care about Belohun’s outer trappings of authority and imperiousness. She knew perfectly well that as a sorceress she was immune and that all the king could do was talk. However, she refrained from bluntly bringing to his attention that things had been out of kilter and stinking in his kingdom for ages, that there was next to no order in it, and that the only “Harmony” known to his subjects was a harlot of the same name at the portside brothel. And mixing up in it women and motherhood—or aversion to motherhood—was evidence not only of misogyny, but also imbecility.

  Instead of that she said the following: “In your lengthy disquisition you keep stubbornly returning to the themes of increasing wealth and prosperity. I understand you perfectly, since my own prosperity is also extremely dear to me. And not for all the world would I give up anything that prosperity provides me with. I judge that a woman has the right to have children when she wants and not to have them when she doesn’t, but I shall not enter into a debate in that regard; after all, everyone has the right to some opinion or other. I merely point out that I charge a fee for the medical help I give women. It’s quite a significant source of my income. We have a free market economy, Your Majesty. Please don’t interfere with the sources of my income. Because my income, as you well know, is also the income of the Chapter and the entire consorority. And the consorority reacts extremely badly to any attempts to diminish its income.”

  “Are you trying to threaten me, Neyd?”

  “The very thought! Not only am I not, but I declare my far-reaching help and collaboration. Know this, Belohun, that if—as a result of the exploitation and plunder you’re engaged in—unrest occurs in Kerack, if—speaking grandiloquently—the fire of rebellion flares up, or if a rebellious rabble comes to drag you out by the balls, dethrone you and hang you forthwith from a dry branch … Then you’ll be able to count on my consorority. And the sorcerers. We’ll come to your aid. We shan’t allow revolt or anarchy, because they don’t suit us either. So keep on exploiting and increasing your wealth. Feel free. And don’t interfere with others doing the same. That’s my request and advice.”

  “Advice?” fumed Xander, rising from his seat. “You, advising? My father? My father is the king! Kings don’t listen to advice—kings command!”

  “Sit down and be quiet, son.” Belohun grimaced, “And you, witch, listen carefully. I have something to say to you.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m taking a new lady wife … Seventeen years old … A little cherry, I tell you. A cherry on a tart.”

  “My congratulations.”

  “I’m doing it for dynastic reasons. Out of concern for the succession and order in the land.”

  Egmund, previously silent as the grave, jerked his head up.

  “Succession?” he snarled, and the evil glint in his eyes didn’t escape Lytta’s notice. “What succession? You have six sons and eight daughters, including bastards! What more do you want?”

  “You can see for yourself.” Belohun waved a bony hand. “You can see for yourself, Neyd. I have to look after the succession. Am I to leave the kingdom and the crown to someone who addresses his parent thus? Fortunately, I’m still alive and reigning. And I mean to reign for a long time. As I said, I’m wedding—”

  “What of it?”

  “Were she …” The king scratched behind an ear and glanced at Lytta from under half-closed eyelids. “Were she … I mean my new, young wife … to ask you for those physicks … I forbid you from giving them. Because I’m against physicks like that. Because they’re immoral!”

  “We can agree on that.” Coral smiled charmingly. “If your little cherry asks I won’t give her anything. I promise.”

  “I understand.” Belohun brightened up. “Why, how splendidly we’ve come to agreement. The crux is mutual understanding and respect. One must even differ with grace.”

  “That’s right,” interjected Xander. Egmund bristled and swore under his breath.

  “In the spirit of respect and understanding—” Coral twisted a ginger ringlet around a finger and looked up at the plafond “—and also out of concern for harmony and order in your country … I have some information. Confidential information. I consider informants repellent; but fraudsters and thieves even more so. And this concerns impudent embezzlement, Your Majesty. People are trying to rob you.”

  Belohun leaned forward from his throne, grimacing like a wolf.

  “Who? I want names!”

  Kerack, a city in the northern kingdom of Cidaris, at the mouth of the River Adalatte. Once the capital of the independent kingdom of K., which, as the result of inept governments and the extinction of the royal line, fell into decline, lost its significance and became parcelled up by its neighbours and incorporated into them. It has a port, several factories, a lighthouse and roughly two thousand residents.

  Effenberg and Talbot,

  Encyclopaedia Maxima Mundi, vol. VIII

  CHAPTER TWO

  The bay bristled with masts and filled with sails, some white, some many-coloured. The larger ships stood at anchor, protected by a headland and a breakwater. In the port itself, smaller and absolutely tiny vessels were moored alongside wooden jetties. Almost all of the free space on the beach was occupied by boats. Or the remains of boats.

  A white-and-red-brick lighthouse, originally built by the elves and later renovated, stood tall at the end of the headland where it was being buffeted by white breakers.

  The Witcher spurred his mare in her sides. Roach raised her head and flared her nostrils as though also enjoying the smell of the sea breeze. Urged on, she set off across the dunes. Towards the city, now nearby.

  The city of Kerack, the chief metropolis of the kingdom bearing the same name, was divided into three separate, distinct zones straddling both banks at the mouth of the River Adalatte.

  The port complex with docks and an industrial and commercial centre, including a shipyard and workshops as well as food-processing plants, warehouses and stores was located on the left bank of the Adalatte.

  The river’s right bank, an area called Palmyra, was occupied by the shacks and cottages of labourers and paupers, the houses and stalls of small traders, abattoirs and shambles, and numerous bars and dens that only livened up after nightfall, since Palmyra was also the district of entertainment and forbidden pleasures. It was also quite easy, as Geralt knew well, to lose one’s purse or get a knife in the ribs there.

  Kerack proper, an area consisting of narrow streets running between the houses of wealthy merchants and financiers, manufactories, banks, pawnbrokers, shoemakers’ and tailors’ shops, and large and small stores, was situated further away from the sea, on the left bank, behind a high palisade of robust stakes. Located there were also taverns, coffee houses and inns of superior category, including establishments offering, indeed, much the same as the port quarter of Palmyra, but at considerably higher prices. The centre of the district was a quadrangular town square featuring the town hall, the theatre, the courthouse, the customs office and the houses of the city’s elite. A statue of the cit
y’s founder, King Osmyk, dreadfully spattered in bird droppings, stood on a plinth in the middle of the town square. It was a downright lie, as a seaside town had existed there long before Osmyk arrived from the devil knows where.

  Higher up, on a hill, stood the castle and the royal palace, which were quite unusual in terms of form and shape. It had previously been a temple, which was abandoned by its priests embittered by the townspeople’s total lack of interest and then modified and extended. The temple’s campanile—or bell tower—and its bell had even survived, which the incumbent King Belohun ordered to be tolled every day at noon and—clearly just to spite his subjects—at midnight. The bell sounded as the Witcher began to ride between Palmyra’s cottages.

  Palmyra stank of fish, laundry and cheap restaurants, and the crush in the streets was dreadful, which cost the Witcher a great deal of time and patience to negotiate the streets. He breathed a sigh when he finally arrived at the bridge and crossed onto the Adalatte’s left bank. The water smelled foul and bore scuds of dense foam—waste from the tannery located upstream. From that point it wasn’t far to the road leading to the palisaded city.

  Geralt left his horse in the stables outside the city centre, paying for two days in advance and giving the stableman some baksheesh in order to ensure that Roach was adequately cared for. He headed towards the watchtower. One could only enter Kerack through the watchtower, after undergoing a search and the rather unpleasant procedures accompanying it. This necessity somewhat angered the Witcher, but he understood its purpose—the fancier townspeople weren’t especially overjoyed at the thought of visits by guests from dockside Palmyra, particularly in the form of mariners from foreign parts putting ashore there.

  He entered the watchtower, a log building that he knew accommodated the guardhouse. He thought he knew what to expect. He was wrong.

  He had visited numerous guardhouses in his life: small, medium and large, both nearby and in quite distant parts of the world, some in more and less civilised—and some quite uncivilised—regions. All the world’s guardhouses stank of mould, sweat, leather and urine, as well as iron and the grease used to preserve it. It was no different in the Kerack guardhouse. Or it wouldn’t have been, had the classic guardhouse smell not been drowned out by the heavy, choking, floor-to-ceiling odour of farts. There could be no doubt that leguminous plants—most likely peas and beans—prevailed in the diet of the guardhouse’s crew.

  And the garrison was wholly female. It consisted of six women currently sitting at a table and busy with their midday meal. They were all greedily slurping some morsels floating in a thin paprika sauce from earthenware bowls.

  The tallest guard, clearly the commandant, pushed her bowl away and stood up. Geralt, who always maintained there was no such thing as an ugly woman, suddenly felt compelled to revise this opinion.

  “Weapons on the bench!”

  The commandant’s head—like those of her comrades—was shaven. Her hair had managed to grow back a little, giving rise to patchy stubble on her bald head. The muscles of her midriff showed from beneath her unbuttoned waistcoat and gaping shirt, bringing to mind a netted pork roast. The guard’s biceps—to remain on the subject of cooked meat—were the size of hams.

  “Put your weapons on the bench!” she repeated. “You deaf?”

  One of her subordinates, still hunched over her bowl, raised herself a little and farted, loud and long. Her companions guffawed. Geralt fanned himself with a glove. The guard looked at his swords.

  “Hey, girls! Get over here!”

  The “girls” stood up rather reluctantly, stretching. Their style of clothing, Geralt noticed, was quite informal, mainly intended to show off their musculature. One of them was wearing leather shorts with the legs split at the seams to accommodate her thighs. Two belts crossing her chest were pretty much all she had on above the waist.

  “A witcher,” she stated. “Two swords. Steel and silver.”

  Another—like all of them, tall and broad-shouldered—approached, tugged open Geralt’s shirt unceremoniously and pulled out his medallion by the silver chain.

  “He has a sign,” she stated. “There’s a wolf on it, fangs bared. Would seem to be a witcher. Do we let him through?”

  “Rules don’t prohibit it. He’s handed over his swords …”

  “That’s correct,” Geralt joined the conversation in a calm voice. “I have. They’ll both remain, I presume, in safe deposit? To be reclaimed on production of a docket. Which you’re about to give me?”

  The guards surrounded him, grinning. One of them prodded him, apparently by accident. Another farted thunderously.

  “That’s your receipt,” she snorted.

  “A witcher! A hired monster killer! And he gave up his swords! At once! Meek as a schoolboy!”

  “Bet he’d turn his cock over as well, if we ordered him to.”

  “Let’s do it then! Eh, girls? Have him whip it out!”

  “We’ll see what witchers’ cocks are like!”

  “Here we go,” snapped the commandant. “They’re off now, the sluts. Gonschorek, get here! Gonschorek!”

  A balding, elderly gentleman in a dun mantle and woollen beret emerged from the next room. Immediately he entered he had a coughing fit, took off his beret and began to fan himself with it. He took the swords wrapped in their belts and gestured for Geralt to follow him. The Witcher didn’t linger. Intestinal gases had definitely begun to predominate in the noxious mixture of the guardhouse.

  The room they entered was split down the middle by a sturdy iron grating. The large key the elderly gentleman opened it with grated in the lock. He hung the swords on a hook beside other sabres, claymores, broadswords and cutlasses. He opened a scruffy register, scrawled slowly and lengthily in it, coughing incessantly and struggling to catch his breath. He finally handed Geralt the completed receipt.

  “Am I to understand that my swords are safe here? Locked away and under guard?”

  The dun-clad elderly gentleman, puffing and panting heavily, locked the grating and showed him the key. It didn’t convince Geralt. Any grating could be forced, and the noisy flatulence of the “ladies” from the guardhouse was capable of drowning out any attempts at burglary. But there was no choice. He had to accomplish in Kerack what he had come to do. And leave the city as soon as he could.

  The tavern—or, as the sign declared, the Natura Rerum osteria—was a small but tasteful building of cedar wood, with a steep roof and a chimney sticking up high out of it. The building’s façade was decorated by a porch with steps leading to it, surrounded by spreading aloe plants in wooden tubs. The smell of cooking—mainly meat roasting on a gridiron—drifted from the tavern. The scents were so enticing that right away it seemed to the Witcher that Natura Rerum was an Eden, a garden of delights, an island of happiness, a retreat for the blessed flowing with milk and honey.

  It soon turned out that this Eden—like every Eden—was guarded. It had its own Cerberus, a guard with a flaming sword. Geralt had the chance to see him in action. Before his very eyes, the guard, a short but powerfully built fellow, was driving a skinny young man from the garden of delights. The young man was protesting—shouting and gesticulating—which clearly annoyed the guard.

  “You’re barred, Muus. As well you know. So be off. I won’t say it again.”

  The young man moved away from the steps quickly enough to avoid being pushed. He was, Geralt noticed, prematurely balding, his long, thin hair only beginning somewhere in the region of his crown, which gave a generally rather unprepossessing impression.

  “Fuck you and your ban!” yelled the young man from a safe distance. “I don’t need any favours! You aren’t the only ones! I’ll go to the competition! Big-heads! Upstarts! The sign may be gilded, but there’s still dung on your boots. You mean as much to me as that dung. And shit will always be shit!”

  Geralt was slightly worried. The balding young man, apart from his unsightly looks, was dressed in quite a grand fashion, perhaps not too richly, bu
t in any case, more elegantly than the Witcher. So, if elegance was the determining criterion …

  “And where might you be going, may I ask?” The guard’s icy voice interrupted his train of thought. And confirmed his fears.

  “This is an exclusive tavern,” continued the Cerberus, blocking the stairs. “Do you understand the meaning of the word? It’s off limits, as it were. To some people.”

  “Why to me?”

  “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The guard looked down on the Witcher from two steps higher up. “You are a foreigner, a walking illustration of that old folk saying. Your cover is nothing to write home about. Perhaps there are other objects hidden in its pages, but I shan’t pry. I repeat, this is an exclusive tavern. We don’t tolerate people dressed like ruffians here. Or armed.”

  “I’m not armed.”

  “But you look like you are. So kindly take yourself off somewhere else.”

  “Control yourself, Tarp.”

  A swarthy man in a short velvet jacket appeared in the doorway of the tavern. His eyebrows were bushy, his gaze piercing and his nose aquiline. And large.

  “You clearly don’t know who you’re dealing with,” the aquiline nose informed the guard. “You don’t know who has come to visit.”

  The guard’s lengthening silence showed he indeed did not.

  “Geralt of Rivia. The Witcher. Known for protecting people and saving their lives. As he did a week ago, here, in our region, in Ansegis, when he saved a mother and her child. And several months earlier, he famously killed a man-eating leucrote in Cizmar, suffering wounds in so doing. How could you bar entry to my tavern to somebody who plies such an honest trade? On the contrary, I’m very happy to see a guest like him. And I consider it an honour that he desires to visit me. Master Geralt, the Natura Rerum osteria warmly welcomes you. I’m Febus Ravenga, the owner of this humble house.”