New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤
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Marek’s mount was a dark brown gelding with a black mane and black hooves.
He was docile, slow to panic, and perfectly suited to a beginner, so Marek had named him Trusty.
According to Vesemir, when they had collected the horse from the farmer outside the mountains who kept him, Trusty had been plowing a field and doing a fine job of it.
With the field-dressed bear carcass slung across his back, Trusty followed Marek into the keep, through the inner courtyard, and straight to the rear kitchen.
Marek unloaded the hide, spread it out to dry, then packed most of the bear meat in brine so it could be hung in a day or two.
Finally, he stuffed a handful of oats into Trusty’s feed bag as an apology.
Having a dead carnivore draped over him had clearly made the horse miserable.
Footsteps approached.
Not Vesemir’s rhythm.
“So you’re Marek,” Eskel said.
Marek turned.
The face looking back at him was cut by several long scars, the kind of face that might make a timid person scream if it appeared suddenly at night.
It did not frighten Marek.
He only smiled.
“That’s me.
You’re Eskel or Lambert, then.
Definitely not Geralt.
No white hair.”
He washed his hands in a basin, then rose and walked over.
Eskel smiled too, though the scars made the expression look worse than it was.
“Right.
Not Geralt.
Just an ordinary witcher.
I don’t hunt dragons, I don’t drink with kings, and I don’t sleep with sorceresses.
I’m Eskel.”
Marek extended his right hand, the same hand that had been hovering near his sword hilt since the conversation began.
“Marek.
Just Marek is fine.”
Eskel shook it, friendly and steady.
“Lambert came back with me.
He’s in the hall bragging to Vesemir.
You wouldn’t mind two more mouths sharing your catch and your cooking, would you?”
“It would be my honor.”
***
That night, the roasted bear smelled excellent, and the meal was warm enough that even Lambert hesitated for a while before ruining it.
In the end, he decided the bad news had to be said, even if it killed the mood.
“About Geralt and Ciri.
I heard something.
Bad news.”
The opening drew every eye at the table.
Both names belonged to people they cared about.
“In early April, Geralt and Yennefer finally found Ciri.
The timing lines up with what Vesemir said about her returning to Kaer Morhen.
Looks like she jumped straight to them after leaving here.
“After that, the three of them spent months settling debts.
“Then they split up for a while.
“On September twenty-fourth, Geralt and Dandelion arrived in Rivia.
Geralt was supposed to meet Ciri and Yennefer at the Cock and Bull.
“The next day, a riot broke out against nonhumans.
Geralt was stabbed with a pitchfork and died at the hands of the mob.
Yennefer reached him afterward and exhausted herself trying to heal him.
She died too.
“Ciri, Triss Merigold, and Dandelion were there at the end.
“Afterward, Ciri took both bodies onto a small boat and followed a unicorn that appeared out of nowhere.
They vanished on Lake Eskalott.”
Lambert finished solemnly.
Silence settled over the hall.
Then Eskel barked out a laugh, and for a heartbeat the room filled with relieved, almost desperate mirth.
“That’s a poor story,” he said.
“Yennefer dying from exhaustion, fine, I don’t understand sorceresses well enough to argue.
But Geralt?
Killed by a mob with a pitchfork?
That’s funny.
I bet fifty crowns that before he got stabbed, he put at least two cuts across the bastard’s throat, one from the left and one from the right.”
“This wasn’t my story,” Lambert snapped.
“I don’t want to believe it either.”
“Especially the unicorn and the boat at the end,” Marek added calmly from his seat.
“That part has the smell of a third-rate bard trying too hard.”
“Damn it,” Lambert said.
“Next time I see him, I’ll pass that review along to Dandelion.”
He took a swallow of beer.
The laughter died at once.
Eskel lowered the cup that had almost touched his lips.
“So Dandelion told you this himself?” Vesemir asked.
Lambert drank again, harder this time, then set the cup down with a dull knock.
“Yes.
I ran into Dandelion in Vengerberg.
He said he’d never set foot in Rivia again.
Said the mob there made his friends bleed.”
Only the fire answered them for a while, crackling in the hearth.
At last, Eskel sighed.
“That’s…
hard to believe.”
“Would some kind soul tell me who Dandelion is?” Marek asked, though he already knew.
Of course he remembered Dandelion: Geralt’s best friend, famous bard, and a man whose trousers seemed to have a mind of their own.
In the memories from Marek’s former life, nearly every story involving Dandelion ended in trouble, usually the sort that began with someone’s breeches.
“Geralt’s good friend,” Vesemir said, his voice low.
“A famous bard, composer, singer, and writer.
He’s written plenty of verses about the White Wolf.
Half the taverns outside these walls know at least one of them.
If the story came from him, then it is likely true.”
Then he seemed to remember something else.
“About Ciri…” Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Marek cut in softly.
“It’s all right, Vesemir.
I’m fine.
I believe Ciri will come back soon.”
Lambert climbed onto the table and raised his cup.
“Few witchers get to die peacefully in bed.
Seems even the legendary White Wolf was no exception.
Drink to him.
May he rest.”
They raised their cups together.
“May he rest.”
***
Deep that night, Marek closed his door and sat cross-legged before the hearth.
His right hand stirred the cauldron almost mechanically.
Inside was the fortifying tonic meant for the next morning.
Lambert’s news weighed on Marek.
He believed Ciri had won at Stygga Castle.
If she had disappeared again, she had most likely crossed into another world.
Geralt and Yennefer, meanwhile, were almost certainly not dead.
Or at least, not dead in any final sense.
The memories from his former life insisted on that much.
They had at least alluded to the White Wolf’s death at Rivia, and they had not come from nothing.
Sooner or later, he would have to face the Aen Elle behind the Wild Hunt.
They were Ciri’s pursuers, and the reason he had been brought into this world.
That made them an obstacle between him and a good night’s sleep.
Rainbow light flashed and vanished.
Marek lifted the ladle and poured the blue liquid into vials.
He no longer needed to hide the fortifying tonic too carefully.
After months of improving the process, he could make a traditionally brewed version that looked close to the impossible one.
In his Impossible Alchemy batches, he deliberately left a few harmless impurities behind.
The two versions looked almost identical.
Only drinking them revealed the real difference.
His thoughts shifted again to the shallow footprints he had seen while collecting the unused bear traps.
While he had been fighting the bear, someone had been watching nearby, quietly guarding him until the fight was over, then leaving before he noticed.
That made him feel good.
It also made him feel bad.
Being protected was not the problem.
The problem was that he had not sensed the other person at all.
If those eyes had belonged to an enemy, he could have been ambushed with ease.
He needed a way to make up for that weakness in perception.
He set himself a deadline: next spring.
He would leave Kaer Morhen.
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Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.