I demand all apprentices be sterilised. Without exception.
Tissaia de Vries, The Poisoned Source
‘I’m going to tell you something,’ said Iola the Second suddenly, resting the basket of grain on her hip. ‘There’s going to be a war. That’s what the duke’s greeve who came to fetch the cheeses said.’
‘A war?’ Ciri shoved her hair back from her forehead. ‘With who? Nilfgaard?’
‘I didn’t hear,’ the novice admitted. ‘But the greeve said our duke had received orders from King Foltest himself. He’s sending out a call to arms and all the roads are swarming with soldiers. Oh dear! What’s going to happen?’
‘If there’s going to be a war,’ said Eurneid, ‘then it’ll most certainly be with Nilfgaard. Who else? Again! Oh gods, that’s terrible!’
‘Aren’t you exaggerating a bit with this war, Iola?’ Ciri scattered some grains for the chickens and guinea-hens crowding around them in a busy, noisy whirl. ‘Maybe it’s only another raid on the Scoia’tael?’
‘Mother Nenneke asked the greeve the same thing,’ declared Iola the Second. ‘And the greeve said that no, this time it wasn’t about the Squirrels. Castles and citadels have apparently been ordered to store supplies in case of a siege. But elves attack in forests, they don’t lay siege to castles! The greeve asked whether the Temple could give more cheese and other things. For the castle stores. And he demanded goose feathers. They need a lot of goose feathers, he said. For arrows. To shoot from bows, understand? Oh, gods! We’re going to have masses of work! You’ll see! We’ll be up to our ears in work!’
‘Not all of us,’ said Eurneid scathingly. ‘Some aren’t going to get their little hands dirty. Some of us only work two days a week. They don’t have any time for work because they are, apparently,
studying witchery. But in actual fact they’re probably only idling or skipping around the park thrashing weeds with a stick. You know who I’m talking about, Ciri, don’t you?’
‘Ciri will leave for the war no doubt,’ giggled Iola the Second. ‘After all, she is apparently the daughter of a knight! And herself a great warrior with a terrible sword! At last she’ll be able to cut real heads off instead of nettles!’
‘No, she is a powerful wizard!’ Eurneid wrinkled her little nose. ‘She’s going to change all our enemies into field mice. Ciri! Show us some amazing magic. Make yourself invisible or make the carrots ripen quicker. Or do something so that the chickens can feed themselves. Well, go on, don’t make us ask! Cast a spell!’
‘Magic isn’t for show,’ said Ciri angrily. ‘Magic is not some street market trick.’
‘But of course, of course,’ laughed the novice. ‘Not for show. Eh, Iola? It’s exactly as if I were hearing that hag Yennefer talk!’
‘Ciri is getting more and more like her,’ appraised Iola, sniffing ostentatiously. ‘She even smells like her. Huh, no doubt some magical scent made of mandrake or ambergris. Do you use magical scents, Ciri?’
‘No! I use soap! Something you rarely use!’
‘Oh ho.’ Eurneid twisted her lips. ‘What sarcasm, what spite! And what airs!’
‘She never used to be like this,’ Iola the Second puffed up. ‘She became like this when she started spending time with that witch. She sleeps with her, eats with her, doesn’t leave her side. She’s practically stopped attending lessons at the Temple and no longer has a moment to spare for us!’
‘And we have to do all the work for her! Both in the kitchen and in the garden! Look at her little hands, Iola! Like a princess!’
‘That’s the way it is!’ squeaked Ciri. ‘Some have brains, so they get a book! Others are feather-brained, so they get a broom!’
‘And you only use a broom for flying, don’t you? Pathetic wizard!’
‘You’re stupid!’
‘Stupid yourself!’
‘No, I’m not!’
‘Yes, you are! Come on, Iola, don’t pay any attention to her. Sorceresses are not our sort of company.’
‘Of course they aren’t!’ yelled Ciri and threw the basket of grain on the ground. ‘Chickens are your sort of company!’
The novices turned up their noses and left, passing through the hoard of cackling fowl.
Ciri cursed loudly, repeating a favourite saying of Vesemir’s which she did not entirely understand. Then she added a few words she had heard Yarpen Zigrin use, the meanings of which were a total mystery to her. With a kick, she dispersed the chickens swarming towards the scattered grain, picked up the basket, turned it upside down, then twirled in a witcher’s pirouette and threw the basket like a discus over the reed roof of the henhouse. She turned on her heel and set off through the Temple park at a run.
She ran lightly, skilfully controlling her breath. At every other tree she passed, she made an agile half-turn leap, marking slashes with an imaginary sword and immediately following them with dodges and feints she had learned. She jumped deftly over the fence, landing surely and softly on bent knees.
‘Jarre!’ she shouted, turning her head up towards a window gaping in the stone wall of the tower. ‘Jarre, are you there? Hey! It’s me!’
‘Ciri?’ The boy leaned out. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Can I come up and see you?’
‘Now? Hmm . . . Well, all right then . . . Please do.’
She flew up the stairs like a hurricane, catching the novice unexpectedly just as, with his back turned, he was quickly adjusting his clothes and hiding some parchments on the table under other parchments. Jarre ran his fingers through his hair, cleared his throat and bowed awkwardly. Ciri slipped her thumbs into her belt and tossed her ashen fringe.
‘What’s this war everybody’s talking about?’ she fired. ‘I want to know!’
‘Please, have a seat.’
She cast her eyes around the chamber. There were four large
tables piled with large books and scrolls. There was only one chair. Also piled high.
‘War?’ mumbled Jarre. ‘Yes, I’ve heard those rumours . . . Are you interested in it? You, a g—? No, don’t sit on the table, please, I’ve only just got all the documents in order … Sit on the chair. Just a moment, wait, I’ll take those books . . . Does Lady Yennefer know you’re here?’
‘No.’
‘Hmm . . . Or Mother Nenneke?’
Ciri pulled a face. She knew what he meant. The sixteen-year-old Jarre was the high priestess’s ward, being prepared by her to be a cleric and chronicler. He lived in Ellander where he worked as a scribe at the municipal tribunal, but he spent more time in Melitele’s sanctuary than in the town, studying, copying and illuminating volumes in the Temple library for whole days and sometimes even nights. Ciri had never heard it from Nenneke’s lips but it was well known that the high priestess absolutely did not want Jarre to hang around her young novices. And vice-versa. But the novices, however, did sneak keen glances at the boy and chatted freely, discussing the various possibilities presented by the presence on the Temple grounds of something which wore trousers. Ciri was amazed because Jarre was the exact opposite of everything which, in her eyes, should represent an attractive male. In Cintra, as she remembered, an attractive man was one whose head reached the ceiling, whose shoulders were as broad as a doorway, who swore like a dwarf, roared like a buffalo and stank at thirty paces of horses, sweat and beer, regardless of what time of day or night it was. Men who did not correspond to this description were not recognised by Queen Calanthe’s chambermaids as worthy of sighs and gossip. Ciri had also seen a number of different men the wise and gentle druids of Angren, the tall and gloomy settlers of Sodden, the witchers of Kaer Morhen. Jarre was different. He was as skinny as a stick-insect, ungainly, wore clothes which were too large and smelled of ink and dust, always had greasy hair and on his chin, instead of stubble, there were seven or eight long hairs, about half of which sprang from a large wart. Truly, Ciri did not understand why she was so drawn to Jarre’s tower. She enjoyed talking to him, the boy knew a great deal and she could learn much from him. But recently, when he looked at her, his eyes had a strange, dazed and cloying expression.
‘Well.’ She grew impatient. ‘Are you going to tell me or not?’
‘There’s nothing to say. There isn’t going to be any war. It’s all gossip.’
‘Aha,’ she snorted. ‘And so the duke is sending out a call to arms just for fun? The army is marching the highways out of boredom? Don’t twist things, Jarre. You visit the town and castle, you must know something!’
‘Why don’t you ask Lady Yennefer about it?’
‘Lady Yennefer has more important things to worry about!’ Ciri spat, but then immediately had second thoughts, smiled pleasantly and fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Oh, Jarre, tell me, please! You’re so clever! You can talk so beautifully and learnedly, I could listen to you for hours! Please, Jarre!’
The boy turned red and his eyes grew unfocused and bleary. Ciri sighed surreptitiously.
‘Hmm . . .’ Jarre shuffled from foot to foot and moved his arms undecidedly, evidently not knowing what to do with them. What can I tell you? It’s true, people are gossiping in town, all excited by the events in Dol Angra . . . But there isn’t going to be a war. That’s for sure. You can believe me.’
‘Of course, I can,’ she snorted. ‘But I’d rather know what you base this certainty on. You don’t sit on the duke’s council, as far as I know. And if you were made a voivode yesterday, then do tell me about it. I’ll congratulate you.’
‘I study historical treatises,’ Jarre turned crimson, ‘and one can learn more from them than sitting on a council. I’ve read The History of War by Marshal Pelligram, Duke de Ruyter’s Strategy, Bronibor’s The Victorious Deeds of Redania’s Gallant Cavalrymen . . . And I know enough about the present political situation to be able to draw conclusions through analogy. Do you know what an analogy is?’
‘Of course,’ lied Ciri, picking a blade of grass from the buckle of her shoe.
‘If the history of past wars’ - the boy stared at the ceiling -‘were to be laid over present political geography, it is easy to gauge that minor border incidents, such as the one in Dol Angra, are fortuitous and insignificant. You, as a student of magic, must, no doubt, be acquainted with the present political geography?’
Ciri did not reply. Lost in thought, she skimmed through the parchments lying on the table and turned a few pages of the huge leather-bound volume.
‘Leave that alone. Don’t touch it.’ Jarre was worried. ‘It’s an exceptionally valuable and unique work.’
‘I’m not going to eat it.’
‘Your hands are dirty.’
‘They’re cleaner than yours. Listen, do you have any maps here?’
‘I do, but they’re hidden in the chest,’ said the boy quickly, but seeing Ciri pull a face, he sighed, pushed the scrolls of parchment off the chest, lifted the lid and started to rummage through the contents. Ciri, wriggling in the chair and swinging her legs, carried on flicking through the book. From between the pages suddenly slipped a loose page with a picture of a woman, completely naked with her hair curled into ringlets, entangled in an embrace with a completely naked bearded man. Her tongue sticking out, the girl spent a long time turning the etching around, unable to make out which way up it should be. She finally spotted the most important detail in the picture and giggled. Jarre, walking up with an enormous scroll under his arm, blushed violently, took the etching from her without a word and hid it under the papers strewn across the table.
‘An exceptionally valuable and unique work,’ she gibed. ‘Are those the analogies you’re studying? Are there any more pictures like that in there? Interesting, the book is called Healing and Curing. I’d like to know what diseases are cured that way.’
‘You can read the First Runes?’ The boy was surprised and cleared his throat with embarrassment. ‘I didn’t know . . .’
‘There’s still a lot you don’t know.’ She turned up her nose. ‘And what do you think? I’m not just some novice feeding hens
for eggs. I am … a wizard. Well, go on. Show me that map!’
They both knelt on the floor, holding down the stiff sheet, which was stubbornly trying to roll up again, with their hands and knees. Ciri finally weighed down one corner with a chair leg and Jarre pressed another down with a hefty book entitled The Life and Deeds of Great King Radovid.
‘Hmm . . . This map is so unclear! I can’t make head or tail of it . . . Where are we? Where is Ellander?’
‘Here.’ He pointed. ‘Here is Temeria, this space. Here is Wyzima, our King Foltest’s capital. Here, in Pontar Valley, lies the duchy of Ellander. And here . . . Yes, here is our Temple.’
‘And what’s this lake? There aren’t any lakes around here.’
‘That isn’t a lake. It’s an ink blot . . .’
Ah. And here . . . This is Cintra. Is that right?’
‘Yes. South of Transriver and Sodden. This way, here, flows the River Yaruga, flowing into the sea right at Cintra. That country, I don’t know if you know, is now dominated by the Nilfgaardians—’
‘I do know,’ she cut him short, clenching her fist. ‘I know very well. And where is this Nilfgaard? I can’t see a country like that here. Doesn’t it fit on this map of yours, or what? Get me a bigger one!’
‘Hmm . . .’ Jarre scratched the wart on his chin. ‘I don’t have any maps like that . . . But I do know that Nilfgaard is somewhere further towards the south . . . There, more or less there. I think.’
‘So far?’ Ciri was surprised, her eyes fixed on the place on the floor which he indicated. ‘They’ve come all the way from there? And on the way conquered those other countries?’
‘Yes, that’s true. They conquered Metinna, Maecht, Nazair, Ebbing, all the kingdoms south of the Amell Mountains. Those kingdoms, like Cintra and Upper Sodden, the Nilfgaardians now call the Provinces. But they didn’t manage to dominate Lower Sodden, Verden and Brugge. Here, on the Yaruga, the armies of the Four Kingdoms held them back, defeating them in battle—’
‘I know, I studied history.’ Ciri slapped the map with her open palm. Well, Jarre, tell me about the war. We’re kneeling on
political geography. Draw conclusions through analogy and through anything you like. I’m all ears.’
The boy blushed, then started to explain, pointing to the appropriate regions on the map with the tip of a quill.