The Last Wish (5 page)

He let her go when she stopped moving, got to his knees, tore a piece of canvas from his sleeve pocket and pressed it to his neck. He felt for his sword, held the blade to the unconscious girl's throat, and leant over her hand. The nails were dirty, broken, bloodied but .

. . normal. Completely normal.

The witcher got up with difficulty. The sticky-wet greyness of early morning was flooding in through the crypt's entrance. He made a move towards the stairs but staggered and sat down heavily on the floor. Blood was pouring through the drenched canvas onto his hands, running down his sleeve. He unfastened his tunic, slit his shirt, tore and ripped rags from it and tied them around his neck, knowing that he didn't have much time, that he would soon faint . . .

He succeeded. And fainted.

In Wyzim, beyond the lake, a cock, ruffling his feathers in the cold damp, crowed hoarsely for the third time.

He saw the whitened walls and beamed ceiling of the small chamber above the guardroom.

He moved his head, grimacing with pain, and moaned. His neck was bandaged, thickly, thoroughly, professionally.

'Lie still, witcher,' said Velerad. 'Lie, do not move.'

'My . . . sword . . .'

'Yes, yes. Of course, what is most important is your witcher's silver sword. It's here, don't worry. Both the sword and your little trunk. And the three thousand orens. Yes, yes, don't utter a word. It is I who am an old fool and you the wise witcher. Foltest has been repeating it over and over for the last two days.'

'Two—'

'Oh yes, two. She slit your neck open quite thoroughly. One could see everything you have inside there. You lost a great deal of blood. Fortunately we hurried to the palace straight after the

third crowing of the cock. Nobody slept in Wyzim that night. It was impossible, you made a terrible noise. Does my talking tire you?'

'The prin . . . cess?'

'The princess is like a princess. Thin. And somewhat dull-witted. She weeps incessantly and wets her bed. But Foltest says this will change. I don't think it'll change for the worse, do you, Geralt?'

The witcher closed his eyes.

'Good. I take my leave now. Rest.' Velerad got up. 'Geralt? Before I go, tell me: why did you try to bite her to death? Eh? Geralt?'

The witcher was asleep.

'Geralt.'

He raised his head, torn from sleep. The sun was already high and forced blinding golden rays through the shutters, penetrating the chamber with tentacles of light. The witcher shaded his eyes with his hand in an unnecessary, instinctive reflex which he had never managed to shake off - all he needed to do, after all, was narrow his pupils into vertical slits.

'It's late,' said Nenneke, opening the shutters. 'You've slept in. Off with you, Iola.'

The girl sat up suddenly and leant out of bed to take her mantle from the floor. Geralt felt a trickle of cool saliva on his shoulder, where her lips had been a moment ago.

'Wait . ..' he said hesitantly. She looked at him, quickly turned away.

She had changed. There was nothing of the water nymph in her any more, nothing of the luminous, chamomile-scented apparition she had been at dawn. Her eyes were blue, not black.

And she had freckles - on her nose, her neckline, her shoulders. They weren't unattractive, they suited her complexion and reddish hair. But he hadn't seen them at dawn, when she had been his dream. With shame he realised he felt resentment towards her, resentment that she hadn't remained a dream, and that he would never forgive himself for it.

'Wait,' he repeated. 'Iola ... I wanted—'

'Don't speak to her, Geralt,' said Nenneke. 'She won't answer you anyway. Off with you, Iola.'

Wrapped in her mantle the girl pattered towards the door, her bare feet slapping the floor - troubled, flushed, awkward. No longer reminding him, in any way, of—

Yennefer.

'Nenneke,' he said, reaching for his shirt. 'I hope you're not annoyed that— You won't punish her, will you?'

'Fool,' the priestess snorted. 'You've forgotten where you are. This is neither a hermitage nor a convent. It's Melitele's temple. Our goddess doesn't forbid our priestesses anything. Almost.'

'You forbade me to talk to her.'

'I didn't forbid you. But I know it's pointless. Iola doesn't speak.'

'What?'

'She doesn't speak. She's taken a vow. It's a sort of sacrifice through which . . . Oh, what's the point of explaining, you wouldn't understand anyway. You wouldn't even try to understand, I know your views on religion. No, don't get dressed yet. I want to check your neck.'

She sat on the edge of the bed and skilfully unwound the linen bandages wrapped thickly around the witcher's neck. He grimaced in pain.

As soon as he had arrived in Ellander, Nenneke had removed the painfully thick stitches of shoemaker's twine with which they had stitched him in Wyzim, opened the wound and dressed it again. The results were clear: he had arrived at the temple almost cured, if perhaps a little stiff. Now he was sick again, and in pain. But he didn't protest. He'd known the priestess for years and knew how great was her knowledge of healing, how rich and comprehensive her pharmacy was. A course of treatment at Melitele's temple could do nothing but good.

Nenneke felt the wound, washed it and began to curse. He already knew this routine by heart.

She had started on the very first day, and had never failed to moan when she saw the marks left by the princess of Wyzim's talons.

'It's terrible! To let yourself be slashed like this by an ordinary striga. Muscles, tendons — she only just missed your carotid artery! Great Melitele! Geralt, what's happening to you? How did she get

so close to you? What did you want with her? To mount her?'

He didn't answer, and smiled faintly.

'Don't grin like an idiot.' The priestess rose and took a bag of dressings from the chest of drawers. Despite her weight and low stature she moved swiftly and gracefully. 'There's nothing funny about it. You're losing your reflexes, Geralt.'

'You're exaggerating.'

'I'm not exaggerating at all.' Nenneke spread a greenish mush smelling sharply of eucalyptus over the wound. 'You shouldn't have allowed yourself to get wounded, but you did, and very seriously at that. Fatally even. And even with your exceptional powers of regeneration it'll be months before your neck is fully mobile again. I warn you, don't test your strength by fighting an agile opponent during that time.'

'Thank you for the warning. Perhaps you could give me some advice, too: how am I supposed to live in the meantime? Rally a few girls, buy a cart and organize a travelling house of ill-repute?'

Nenneke shrugged, bandaging his neck with quick, deft movements. 'Am I supposed to give you advice and teach you how to live? Am I your mother or something? Right, that's done.

You can get dressed. Breakfast's waiting for you in the refectory. Hurry up or you'll have to make it yourself. I don't intend to keep the girls in the kitchen to midday.'

'Where will I find you later? In the sanctuary?'

'No.' Nenneke got up. 'Not in the sanctuary. You're a welcome guest here, witcher, but don't hang around in the sanctuary. Go for a walk, and I'll find you myself.'

'Fine.'

Geralt strolled - for the fourth time - along the poplar alley which led from the gate to the dwellings by the sanctuary and main temple block, which merged into the sheer rock.

After brief

consideration he decided against returning to shelter, and turned towards the gardens and outbuildings. Umpteen priestesses, clad in grey working garments, were toiling away, weeding the beds and feeding the birds in the henhouses. The majority of them were young or very young, virtually children. Some greeted him with a nod or a smile in passing. He answered their greetings but didn't recognise any of them. Although he often visited the temple — once or even twice a year — he never saw more than three or four faces he knew.

The girls came and went — becoming oracles in other temples, midwives and healers specialising in women's and children's diseases, wandering druids, teachers or governesses.

But there was never a shortage of priestesses, arriving from all over, even the remotest regions. Melitele's temple in Ellander was well-known and enjoyed well-earned fame.

The cult of Melitele was one of the oldest and, in its day, one of the most widespread cults from time immemorial. Practically every pre-human race and every primordial nomadic human tribe honoured a goddess of harvest and fertility, a guardian of farmers and gardeners, a patroness of love and marriage. Many of these religions merged into the cult of Melitele.

Time, which was quite pitiless towards other religions and cults, effectively isolating them in forgotten, rarely visited little temples and oratories buried amongst urban buildings, had proved merciful to Melitele. She did not lack either followers or sponsors. In explaining the popularity of the goddess, learned men who studied this phenomenon used to hark back to the pre-cults of the Great Mother, Mother Nature, and pointed to the links with nature's cycle, with the rebirth of life and other grandiloquently named phenomena. Geralt's friend, the troubadour Dandilion, who enjoyed a reputation as a specialist in every possible field, looked for simpler explanations. Melitele's cult, he deduced, was a typical woman's cult. Melitele was, after all, the patroness of fertility and birth; she was the guardian of midwives. And a woman in labour has to scream. Apart from the usual cries — usually promising never to give herself to any bloody man ever again in her life - a woman in labour has to call upon some godhead for help, and

Melitele was perfect. And since women gave birth, give birth and will continue to give birth, the goddess Melitele, the poet proved, did not have to fear for her popularity.

'Geralt.'

'Nenneke. I was looking for you.'

'Me?' The priestess looked at him mockingly. 'Not Iola?'

'Iola, too,' he admitted. 'Does that bother you?'

'Right now, yes. I don't want you to get in her way and distract her. She's got to get herself ready and pray if something's to come of this trance.'

'I've already told you,' he said coldly, 'I don't want any trance. [ don't think a trance will help me in any way.'

'While I,' Nenneke winced, 'don't think a trance will harm you in any way.'

'I can't be hypnotised, I have immunity. I'm afraid for Iola. It might be too great an effort for a medium.'

'Iola isn't a medium or a mentally ill soothsayer. That child enjoys the goddess's favour. Don't pull silly faces, if you please. As I said, your view on religion is known to me, it's never particularly bothered me and, no doubt, it won't bother me in the future. I'm not a fanatic.

You've a right to believe that we're governed by Nature and the Force hidden within her. You can think that the gods, including my Melitele, are merely a personification of this power invented for simpletons so they can understand it better, accept its existence. According to you, that power is blind. But for me, Geralt, faith allows you to expect what my goddess personifies from nature: order, law, goodness. And hope.'

'I know.'

'If you know that then why your reservations about the trance? What are you afraid of? That I'll make you bow your head to a statue and sing canticles? Geralt, we'll simply sit together for a while - you, me and Iola - and see if the girl's talents will let her see into the vortex of power surrounding you. Maybe we'll discover something worth knowing. And maybe we won't discover anything. Maybe the power and fate surrounding you won't choose to reveal themselves to us, will remain hidden and incomprehensible. I don't know. But why shouldn't we try?'

'Because there's no point. I'm not surrounded by any vortex or fate. And if I were, why the hell would I delve into it?'

'Geralt, you're sick.'

'Injured, you mean.'

'I know what I mean. There's something not quite right with you. I can sense that. After all, I have known you ever since you were a youngster. When I met you, you came up to my waist.

And now I feel that you're spinning around in some damned whirlpool, tangled up in a slowly tightening noose. I want to know what's happening. But I can't do it myself, I have to count on Iola's gifts.'

'You want to delve too deeply. Why the metaphysics? I'll confide in you, if you like. I'll fill your evenings with tales of ever more astounding events from the past few years. Get a keg of beer so my throat doesn't dry up and we can start today. But I fear I'll bore you because you won't find any nooses or vortexes there. Just a witcher's ordinary tales.'

'I'll willingly listen to them. But a trance, I repeat, would do no harm.'

'Don't you think,' he smiled, 'that my lack of faith makes such a trance pointless?'

'No, I don't. And do you know why?'

'No.'

Nenneke leant over and looked him in the eyes with a strange smile on her pale lips.

'Because it would be the first proof I've ever heard of that a lack of faith has any kind of power at all.'

A number of black points moving against a bright sky streaked with mist drew the witcher's attention. Birds. They wheeled in slow, peaceful circles, then suddenly swooped and soared up again, napping their wings.

The witcher observed the birds for a long time then - bearing in mind the shape of the land, density of the wood, depth and course of the ravine which he suspected lay in his path -

calculated the distance to them, and how long he would take to cover it. Finally he threw aside his coat and tightened the belt across his chest by two holes. The pommel and hilt of the sword strapped across his back peeked over his shoulder.

'We'll go a little out of our way, Roach,' he said. 'We'll take a detour from the highway. I don't think the birds are circling there for nothing.'

The mare walked on, obedient to Geralt's voice.

'Maybe it's just a dead elk,' said Geralt. 'But maybe it's not. Who knows?'

There was a ravine, as he had suspected; the witcher scanned the crowns of the trees tightly filling the rift. But the sides of the gully were gentle, the riverbed dry and clear of blackthorns and rotting tree trunks. He crossed it easily. On the other side was a copse of birches, and behind it a large glade, heath and undergrowth, which threw tentacles of tangled branches and roots upwards.