(A/N:It happened again. That urge to get to the end of a story line took a hold of me and as a result I made a mad dash towards the finishing line that was otherwise a bit unseemly. In editing I discovered that the chapter changed tone about a third of the way in so I chopped it off there. Otherwise there would have been a chapter that would have been in the running for “Longest Chapter Ever” award. The next one will be edited and put up either tomorrow or the day after.Thank you for reading)

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I have discovered a new level of waiting hell.

It has been noticed, by not a few people including my publisher, the university, Kerrass, Emma, Ariadne, Mark and many many others, that a lot of the chapters of my work involve my waiting for something. This is an entirely fair criticism as I can remember many many instances of waiting for things during my adventures. I've also spoken about the reason why these moments stick out in my memory so much. My working theory is that these are the moments where my mind can spread out to fill the cracks of my consciousness. It's where my brain has the time to come to a halt and really consider all the things that have happened and therefore, it is those times where I process everything that has taken place.

Everything since I was last stood, sat, laid on the floor and waited for something.

In all other times I might be listening, fighting, talking, running this way or that, reading or trying to stop everything from falling apart. I might be making notes, getting ready to go to bed or taking in the world while it passes me by. But it's when I'm waiting for something specific to happen that the world seems to settle around me.

I've even had to make an effort to talk about things other than sitting around and waking. Different things than the small and quiet conversations and exchanges of humour that occur when people are waiting for action, waiting for violence or otherwise waiting for the appointed time. This is because it might become repetitive and the last thing that I want to do is to bore the people that do me the honour of taking some time out of their lives to properly read the things that I am talking about.

So even though this is the time, when waiting for something, where the insights come and ideas occur. Even though it is one of the most interesting periods of time to pass with simple people-watching. Even though all of that is true, I had done my best to avoid talking about it.

But now I have a new experience and I think that this one was worse than all of the others combined. I might be lacking in perspective as this occasion was more recent than all of those others, but at the same time, I really did think it was worse because it was also different.

That difference being that this time I wasn't waiting for something specific to happen. I wasn't waiting for an attack to take place or an enemy to approach. I wasn't waiting for an event to start. No, that would be too easy.

This time I was waiting for someone to make a decision.

This, in and of itself, was not the worst thing about it. That the decision would be made, there was no doubt that that was going to happen. So, in that light, it was the same kind of waiting that I had done before. It wasn't that different. What made it different was that I had no idea what was going to be decided.

I was waiting for the shoe to drop and I didn't know which way it was going to go.

I was in the main hall of Kaer Trolde. The place was all but deserted as most of the warriors and people that would normally be in attendance were down in the harbour, jostling for the best possible view of the Skeleton Ship as it finally sailed through the gap. The Thralls had gone, barring those men and women that were preparing the kitchens for the feast that would be following that final passage of the ship, but other than that, the cleaners, the smith, the farrier and the horse-master had all gone to the harbour. Along with the guards, the warriors and all the other people whose job it is to keep a castle running. So the place was deserted.

And it echoed as well. It echoed with the sounds of the fires that were burning in order to keep the place warm and lit. You could hear the wood crackling and hissing as well as that slow sound that flame makes as the heat ripples and pools around the wood that someone has used to fuel the flame. It also echoed with my footfalls as I paced. Walking the length of the hall before turning and walking back. Then I walked the width of the hall before getting frustrated with my own slow pace and speeding up until I returned to where I started.

I tried to settle down. To read something or to write something but I just couldn't make my mind settle and I was soon back on my feet and moving around the place. I knew that it was irritating more than one other person in the room because they had tried to get me to calm myself and stop moving around.

They had not been successful.

Darkness was falling in the world outside. The violent, angry cold had plateaued and now, the cold was the kind of temperature that came with gentle Yule festivals. There was no driving, bitter qualities to it anymore. The snow fell gently and settled in the same way. The kind of snow where children build men out of the snow and make balls of the stuff to throw at each other and any passing adult that they thought they could get away with targeting.

My mood was not improved by the fact that I knew that I should be down there with the crowd. Drinking in the atmosphere and speaking to the people. I should be experiencing this festival of the Skeleton Ship. I should be listening to the stories of the Skelligan people, taking part in their small acts of remembrance as they paid tribute to those men and women that had been lost at sea without leaving a body behind to be buried or burnt according to religious observations. I had people of my own to mourn and I had been looking forward to the catharsis of those moments. I had even tried to go down to the town but I had found that I could not tear myself away from this place and the things that were taking place here.

Just through the door at the back of the hall and a little way down that corridor, Queen Cerys was deciding what she was going to do. And even the people that knew her best told me that there was absolutely no way of telling which way the thing was going to go. Absolutely no way, and that uncertainty meant that there was an added layer to waiting for the things to start happening.

There were two possibilities. The first was that she would decide to throw Lennox to the Skeleton Ship. The second was that she would decide not to. And there she was. Maybe twenty meters away from where I was right at that time. I could be there in a matter of heartbeats and I had absolutely no idea what she was going to do.

She had thrown us all out. All of us. The Jarls had been expelled first, Kerrass, Helfdan and myself next. Then the Skalds had followed and now there was just the Queen, Ciri and Ermion still with her. Flame knows what they were talking about and the rest of us had absolutely nothing to do other than to just stand there and wait for the decision to be made.

Nothing to do other than to pick fights with each other.

As part of the Queen's decision making process, she had asked for another vote of the Jarls which, to no-one's real surprise, had gone exactly the same way as the last one had. No changes in any of the votes except that this time, Jarl Ingimund had waxed more lyrical in all of the things that he had to say, ranting and raving at length until he had almost had to be physically restrained from grabbing the Queen and shaking some sense into her.

I almost wish that Jarl Donar of Clan Heymaey hadn't chosen to get in the way. That way he could have been banished or otherwise disposed of for attacking the Queen. As it was, he was annoying everyone with his various opinions.

As it was, it had all gotten quite heated with people shouting at each other, spittle flying and fingers wagging and I couldn't be the only person there that thought that some of them were arguing just for the sake of it. Particularly Jarl Udalryk who seemed to want the debate to go on as long as possible in an effort to “run the glass down” or, in other words, ensure that the Queen would run out of time.

It was a risky ploy though as such tactics in courtly sessions can force hasty decisions. Perfectly acceptable in political opponents, but dangerous when it comes to forcing your own monarch into doing something. It's more commonly a battlefield tactic but Udalryk seemed to be using it in his position as an advisor.

But I digress.

The debate had become heated and in the end it had been Ciri who had lost her temper. She had told the room that the next man that tried to shout over the Queen would be taken, by the Imperial Guard that go with the Empress everywhere now, and thrown off the highest tower of Kaer Trolde.

Cerys did her eyebrow raising trick. No-one had been trying to talk over Cerys as the Queen had been sat and listening to everything being said, very carefully.

“You wouldn't dare.” Jarl Throst of Clan Tordarroch tried. He was trying to throw his weight around again and remind everyone that he was a Jarl.

“Try me,” Ciri had hissed back.

“Thank you for the sentiment Imperial Majesty.” Cerys spoke calmly. “But I would ask you not to damage any of my Jarls. Such an act would be most.... problematic.”

Her comments were said dryly and had the desired effect of letting some much needed levity into the room. Holger, Donar and Hjalmar had all laughed. Even Helfdan managed a small smile but I couldn't help but feel that the Skelligan royal court was just as much a nest of poisonous snakes as the worst court on the continent. I was oddly depressed by the thought as I liked these Jarls. I was also self-aware enough to know that I was tainting the thing. Courtier training can sometimes make you look for and see things that aren't necessarily there. But the process saddened me.

In the end though, the vote was made before Cerys banished the Jarls from her presence. Then she spoke to Kerrass, Helfdan and myself before we too were thrown out. The Skalds followed immediately after. And that was where we were now.

The main hall of Kaer Trolde. A place that is usually bustling with activity, filled with hundreds of people, warriors, guards, thralls, merchants and visitors. All trying to shout for each other's attention. Now there were six Jarls, Two Skalds, A Witcher, a Scholar and Helfdan.

And we had nothing to do but wait.

Over in the corner, Holger was sharing a jug of mead with Throst of Clan Tordarroch. They were speaking in low voices about something. I don't think they were being secretive, it was more that the silence was oddly oppressive in this hall that was used to so much more noise. The two older Jarls were playing Gwent, Donar and Udalryk were sat facing each other holding their cards closely while Kerrass stood and watched them. Hjalmar had climbed up onto a table and lay down before folding his hands over his chest and stared at the ceiling. I got the feeling that he was trying to sleep but even the mighty Hjalmar couldn't properly distract himself.

Ingimund stood, leaning against the wall.

Helfdan had sat and produced his book. I thought it was a new one although I have no idea where he got it from. The last one must surely have been lost at sea but he sat, laying out an inkwell and a quill before he began to write in his book. Ingimund had stood and watched this for a while before shaking his head in disgust and walking off.

There was a sound, the sudden scraping sound and the creak as the old doors at the back of the hall opened. We all looked up, excitement rushing through us before we saw Ermion entering the main hall before turning and closing the door behind him. He looked over to where we were all watching him and shook his head.

The Queen had not yet made her decision.

“Cutting it a little fine isn't she?” Holger joked.

“There is plenty of time yet.” Donar said before carefully putting a card down on the table, making Udalryk wince.

Ermion went over and spoke to the two Skalds that were talking near the fire pit. The pair of them, mast and apprentice, seemed to be working together in an effort to ensure that they could remember everything that had been said over the course of the last few days.

“I don't understand what's taking so long.” Jarl Throst said suddenly. It was like a splash of cold water over the room and I remember jerking as though I had been struck. “The decision is a relatively simple one after all.”

“Is it?” Jarl Donar asked after placing another card down on the table. “I think that the question is remarkably complex.”

“Oh?”

“Indeed. The matter is not just one of political expediency. The Queen knows that some of us will be annoyed by the result and that no matter what she decides to do. Some of us will dislike what she decides and some others will like it. Hjalmar was an interesting choice. As he said last time as well, he wants one thing but the benefit of his clan is something else. So she has to decide the political aspect of things.”

“Politics is the lowest form of the question.” Ingimund snarled. He seemed to be getting more and more annoyed as things were going on. “There is the traditional aspect of things as well. Men and women will die as a result of this.”

“Careful Ingimund.” Holger's own humour was slowly being eroded away. “Some might see what you just said as a threat.”

“Some might.” Ingimund retorted quickly. “But others would see it as a truth. One way or another, the islands will be changed irrevocably after this. I don't like the Queen or a lot of the changes that she has chosen to make to the islanders way of life. But she is right to take her time over this decision. Especially as the longer she takes, the more likely she is to come over to the correct way of thinking.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because her closest friends and advisers want the Skeleton Ship gone. Her brother wants it gone...”

“I voted that it should stay remember.” Hjalmar protested. “For the good of my clan.”

“And you were right.” Ingimund told him. “But try and tell me that you don't want to consign the man Lennox to a lifetime of damnation and madness. Tell me that and I will call you a liar.”

“And you try and tell me that you don't only want to preserve traditions as a political outlook. Tell me that you are honestly concerned for the man and I will call you the same.”

“Gentlemen.” Snapped Udalryk as he picked up his cards and shuffled. “This is unseemly. The Queen is a woman of integrity. She doesn't care about the politics of the matter. She doesn't care about the traditions of the thing. She cares about the lives of her people and she cares about her personal integrity. That is the debate that is raging in her head at the moment and it is a not invalid one.” He dealt himself his hand of cards and examined them before placing one down on the table. “I, for one, am glad that this is not a decision that I have to make.”

“Well said.” Jarl Donar agreed placing his own card to answer. “There is also no taking the decision back after it's been made. Not if she decides to throw the man away. Once he is gone, he is gone and with all respect to the Scribbler. He really does represent a wealth of knowledge about the other worlds that are out there.”

“What would you do Jarl Donar?” Ermion wondered, his eyes glinting.

“I would delay.” Donar admitted after a moment. “Once that decision is made then it is made. We know how to get rid of the ship now. Yes, the next time it will come it will cause more damage and destruction but we can throw the man Lennox to the ship any time we want to.”

“I would not be comfortable with that.” Holger said. “I would not want to look into the eyes of some farmer's widow and say that he froze to death while caring for his flock, during the passage of the Skeleton Ship when we knew we could have gotten rid of it sooner. Even if it only saves a single life. Are we honestly getting to the point where we are weighing one life against another?”

“That's precisely what the Queen is doing.” Donar admitted. “It is still the moral nature of the question that is causing the pause I think. But yes, I would delay. I would gain as much information from the man Lennox as I can and then I would throw him to the ship.”

“Is that not a bit cruel?” Holger teased him.

“A little.” Donar admitted. “Also a little indecisive. Looking back, I would have made a very poor King.”

There was a bit of a chorus of dismay and denial at this.

“No, I would.” Donar said. “I am very much a man of the “wait and see” generation and that overall method can be dangerous in a monarch.”

“But think about what we could discover.” Ingimund tried. “We could learn so much....”

“You're reaching again Ingimund.” Udalryk told him. “That point has been argued. The Queen is not going to let you back into the room to make another point as to why she should bow to your will.”

Silence fell for a long time.

“What would you do Witcher?” Ermion asked. “I have heard many different arguments about what would happen and what should happen. What would you do?”

Kerrass leant forward. “You are asking the wrong question Lord Ermion.”

“Oh.”

Kerrass scratched his chin as he considered. “I was once hired to remove the curse from a small town. It was that curious place between being larger than a village but not quite big enough to be a city. Big enough to have taverns as well as having inns. Multiple Blacksmiths and a market area. Big enough that a few of the buildings were built with stone and had slate roofs rather than thatch. It was a nice place really, I liked it.”

“When was this?” I wondered.

“Ever the chronicler Freddie.” Kerrass teased. “It was about seventy years ago I think, somewhere towards the beginning of my time on the path and it was the first time this question came up in my life.”

I nodded.

“I wasn't looking for a hire, I remember that much. I had plenty of money in my pocket and was mostly there to sleep in a proper bed for a few nights, maybe find a nice willing woman to keep me company. Sooner or later you have to indulge these kinds of urges. If you spend all your time on the road and sleeping in ditches then you can go mad awfully quickly. And I will make the joke for you. It is already easier for a Cat Witcher to lose their grip on sanity so we have to carefully husband our grip on reality.

“But in that time and place, I was not struggling for work and I could be confident in finding work again when I left the place so I wanted a few evenings off. I wanted to purge all the potions out of my system with some proper food and drink so that I could get some decent rest. People have never liked Witchers and I still ended up paying more than my fair share for room and board, but I was happy, I had a fat purse and, as I say, I needed a break.

“So I was almost dismayed when I looked up from my meal to find some of the locals had gathered round my table. To make a long story short, the villagers claimed that there was a demon in town. So I did all of the things that Witchers do when locals claim that there is the presence of a demon. The first thing is to claim disbelief. Demons are rare. Really rare and they take many different forms. So many different forms that the term “Demon” was literally invented in order to describe any kind of creature that doesn't fall under any other classification. They are also, often, used as an excuse for perfectly normal humans who have decided to do horrible things to people. “Oh he must have been possessed by a demon to act in such a way.” They claim when the reality is that the human is just sick and needs to be put down like the sick puppy that they really are.”

Jarl Udalryk had paled when Kerrass started talking about a demon but he was listening to the story as much as everyone else was.

“But, one of the lessons that had been driven through my skull back at the Cat school was that it is a foolish Witcher that turns down work when it falls into their laps. So out of habit more than anything else I asked a few questions. At first, nothing came up that would suggest that this was anything other than a case of a person going mad and killing a variety of people in a few horrible ways. You would be absolutely astonished as to what human beings are capable of doing to each other in the name of slaking their thirst for blood and violence.”

“I wouldn't.” Udalryk muttered darky.

“Nor would I.” Jarl Holger said with a happy smile.

“So I asked the questions that a Witcher asks in these situations.” Kerrass ignored the interruptions. “I asked if the town had a watchman, guard or detective whose job it is to look into such matters.

“They did not.

“Then I asked if there was any suspects that might be possessed.

“There was not. That was when I started to get interested.

“Then I asked if there was a priest of the local religions nearby. A Druid or a mage.

“The local priest had fled the night of the first murder and the local wizard hadn't been seen for weeks.

“That was when I really sat up and started paying attention. Priests are often like divining rods. If they are there, preaching doom, then the whole possession thing is often a con. The priest might believe it, but what he's really doing is drumming up the fear in order to expand their congregation. But if whatever power or God that they represent has reached down and warned them to fuck off then that is also a sign that something really sinister is in the area.

“The same with Mages. There were a lot more of them around back then and the thing about mages is that when they are under threat by something more powerful than they are, they tend to go to ground. So when the local mage had vanished then that too was suggestive.

“There was also no local Witch, herbalist or knowing one in the area but this was a larger town now so such things are not unusual.

“So I enquired about the local mage. Apparently, he had arrived a few years ago and built his tower in the middle of town. No, I don't know why mages like towers either. I would suggest that they might be compensating for something but Sorceresses like towers too so that is not a perfect observation. But this wizard had arrived, built his tower and occasionally loaned his services to the locals in return for their hospitality. It was not an unusual arrangement at the time.

“But then he had become withdrawn. People had spoken of lights and strange sounds coming from the tower where before there was nothing and the Mage hadn't been seen since. Two days after the last time they heard anything, the first killing was done.

“I was intrigued by all of this and the villagers had not complained when I warned them that the price of such a service would be high but after haggling a bit in order to suggest that they were not averse to the idea, I set about doing the work. I interviewed some of the people that had found the bodies. I inspected the sites of the murders and read up on the local area. All the routine things that you do when investigating unexplained phenomenon. There was definitely something here but it was escaping easy classification by me and it became clear that I would need to go into the mage's tower.

“The door was locked and the wards that the wizard placed were substantial but the application of a wood axe to the hinges on the door soon fixed that. It's a common mistake to ward the door and the lock but to leave out the hinges, and I went on in.”

Kerrass poured himself a drink and I had time to think if this story was true or if Kerrass was just spinning a yarn in order to pass the time. More of those stories creeping in again. Skellige is contagious.

“Wizard towers are funny things. If you ask any one of them why they build themselves towers you will come back with hundreds of different reasons. The most obvious ones being Solitude, it makes it easier to watch the stars, monitor magical currents and so they don't hurt others with their experiments. It gives them privacy which is not the same as Solitude and there are many many more. My favourite excuse ever was when one person looked at me and said “You would not understand.” I understood perfectly as it happened because what it boiled down to was that it was a status symbol. I took great delight in kicking the crap out of that particular mage because he was a condescending piece of shit and he had betrayed me in an effort to get away with not paying me the required price.”

He took the time to look around the room. “People should take note. I tend to get all cross and unaccountably violent when people betray me. Can't think why that might come to mind at the moment.”

He sniffed and took a drink.

“This particular Wizard turned out to make his living by summoning things. His stated research was to get a better grip on how existence works, about travelling between worlds and things, so he was summoning different entities and seeing what he could learn from them. In practice though, this.... questionable pass-time was rather spoiled when he would also ask these entities if they could help him become a more powerful mage than he actually was.

“Fortunately for everyone concerned, it turned out that, to date, he had only been summoning small things, small entities that he could easily control. It is apparently a rule in the Wizard school in Ban Ard that you never summon anything bigger than your head, or that might be able to defeat you in a chess game. The Wizard had obeyed these rules but that meant that the things that he was summoning were about as intelligent and able to communicate as a sneeze.

“You understand I'm talking about the liquid that a sneeze sprays across the surrounding area.

“The mage had got bored and decided to stretch his luck. I read his diary in an effort to understand and it seemed that he was in friendly competition with someone a little way over. A competition that was becoming less friendly as time went on and he was beginning to feel as though he was losing. Freddie can tell you what happens when different scholars are competing to publish their papers on the same work. The person who gets his work out first is remembered more. Even when it is later proved that he is wrong. This mage knew this and as a result, he had moved ahead in his study.

“This time, the tower was built around a summoning circle. The design of the place, the architecture, the stuff it was made out of. All of it was designed about being better able to channel the force and the chaos required to better summon these entities and put them in place the easier and the better. It worked too. I got to the central chamber where I was instantly confronted with a huge, towering figure of blood and flame. The walls seemed to be made out of weeping flesh melded together into the walls themselves. Slithering things crawled underfoot and wept at the agony of simply existing.

“It wasn't that impressive as things went and I said so. The illusion vanished almost instantly when I complained at the overly dramatic and cliché nature of the illusion. When it did so, the thing that the mage had summoned stood in the centre of the room.

“When they are intelligent and able to communicate and think beyond a very basic desire to get home, destroy things, eat, procreate and generally make nuisances of themselves, such things often reach inside the mind of the person that they are speaking to in order to be able to construct an image for themselves. They tailor this image to get what they want. They might appear in the guise of an old tutor, a lover, or someone that they know would attract the viewer. If they are particularly skilled they can reach inside a man's mind and pull out an image of their most perfect, ideal lover in order to torment.

“This creature knew who and what I was as well as what I was there for. So he provided me with a rough, humanoid shape with eyes, ears, nose and mouth. It looked like a wooden toy soldier.

“We talked for a while as the being turned out to be quite civil really. The mage had summoned it in an effort to become more powerful and to learn more. The demon, it would be really offended if it knew that I called it that as it considered the term derogatory, had been summoned and had promptly laughed at the mage's efforts to contain and control the thing so the mage had promised the Demon something.”

“What did the mage promise?” As I keep saying. Skelligans are suckers for stories and Hjalmar was caught up in the Witcher's tale.

“Innocence.” Kerrass replied.

“I don't....”

“Hush.” Jarl Donar was smiling. I think he knew the effect that Kerrass was having. Cynical enough to realise what was taking place but happy to be carried along with it. “Let the Witcher Speak.”

“The Demon told the mage what the Mage wanted to hear and then the Mage tried to dismiss the Demon without paying the required price. After the Demon had stopped laughing it had told the Mage that it would carry out the other part of the deal. That it would kill one villager a week until the deal had been paid and that it would do so horribly.

“The Demon was quite open about this. It came from a different place so it saw no moral problem. The villagers, I and everyone here saw that as murder. It saw that as fair. It came from an existence where you can't kill another creature. There is no such thing as death there and the only thing that has any value is experience and a person's word. So the mage breaking his word was literally the worst crime imaginable to the Demon. It's priorities were so different from ours you see.

“The Mage, soundly trounced, did not dare go to his fellows because he would be executed for his crime of summoning the thing in the first place. So he went to the populace and told them what had happened and that they had no choice other than to hand over what the Demon wanted.

“The Demon wanted a child.

“It even had one picked out. A tomboy girl with short blonde hair that curled. Her mother kept it cut close to the scalp in a futile effort to keep it clean and free of lice. You can find girls like her all over the world. Far more clever than life will allow her to be, running around, wanting to be a boy because boys get to play all the fun games rather than staying at home and playing with dollies. Brighter than her parents and doomed to a life of trying to rear too many children for a husband who she struggles to summon up enough feeling for to let him get remotely close to her. If she's really really lucky. He will not hate her for being more intelligent than he is and won't beat her.

“As I say, you can find women like her all over the world.

“So the Mage went to the townsfolk and told them what the demon wanted. The Townsfolk were appalled and told the Mage that he created the problem and so he should fix it. They refused to give the child over. The Mage properly prepared and tried to fight the demon again. But the Demon had had time to prepare also and continued to spank the Mage all over the tower. The Demon had indeed made the Mage more powerful and helped him skip many years worth of study but the Demon was far from stupid and had not taught the Mage how it, the demon, could be defeated whereas the Demon could remove everything that made the Mage alive until all it was left with was a single sensation which would be pain.

“The Mage, much chagrined, went back to the parents of the girl. He told them what was going to happen if the girl wasn't produced and insisted that the only thing to do was to hand the girl over. One girl for the good of the town seemed a small price to pay for the Mage in question.

“The townsfolk were less convinced and threw stones at the Mage until he fled. In the middle of the night, the Mage came back, snuck into the house where the girl lived and attempted to kidnap her. She screamed for help because, why wouldn't she? Then her father came and beat the mage to death with the iron fire poker. The Mage had been prepared for demonic magic but not the simple application of hardened metal to the base of his skull.

“There is a lesson there somewhere for those willing to hear it.

“The village assumed that this would be the end of it. The deal had been made between the Demon and the Mage and they, rather foolishly, thought that this meant that the Demon would withdraw. They hanged the girls father on the grounds that he had committed murder, no matter the justification. The mage had, after all, brought in tourists, the patronage of the local Lord's wife who bought medicine and aphrodisiacs from the Mage and also because the Mage really did add revenue to the town's income.

“They were honestly shocked when the first death occurred, despite having been warned, by the Mage, that his death would not get rid of the Entity.

“A delegation was sent, where they found the Demon telling them that it had fulfilled it's side of the bargain and now it expected it's payment. It was not it's fault that the Mage had been killed, the Mage should have secured payment before a deal had been struck.

“They fought, it defended itself. They tried to lock it in the tower. It laughed at them. Eight more deaths occurred which was when they contacted me.

“I spoke to the Demon at length. It was clear that I was just as outclassed as the villagers had been, trying to find a way round the problem when it became clear that there was no way around the problem, I went downstairs and told the townsfolk what they should do. I was not kind. The villagers had attempted to throw me to the wolves in getting me to fight the demon without properly warning me of the situation that I was walking into and that sort of thing is another of the many, many things that tend to make me cross.”

Kerrass stopped drinking and it seemed that that was the end of the story. A few of the other Jarls had taken the point and had looked away.

“What did you tell them to do?” Throst, the young Jarl of Clan Tordarroch asked.

“Sooner or later, an unpleasant task needs to be done.” Kerrass told him, pitching his voice so that the room could hear it. “The Demon was going to kill and kill and kill some more. When everyone in the village was dead it would move on to the surrounding area and so on and so on until the little girl, she was about eight, arrived in the tower and that would be the end of it. The problem was going to get worse and worse over time. There was nothing that anyone could do to stop it and distance was no bar to it's reach.

“Destroying the thing would take a mage of more power than was easily reachable or affordable and the resulting magical backlash would level that part of the continent. How many more deaths would have been needed before the little girl would need to go to the Demon. It was a horrible choice, but sooner or later the action needs to be taken. If not, the problem gets worse and worse and inevitably the problem escalates.

“So back to your question Lord Ermion. The Question is not “What would I do in this situation?” The question is “What have I done?”

“This situation that you all find yourselves in is not that unique and you should not delude yourselves into thinking that your situation makes you special or particularly grand. There is something nasty going on. The something nasty is only going to get worse and something needs to be done. When all other options have been exhausted you must do the unpleasant thing in order to save lives. There is no other alternative and it is the task of rulers and Lords to make those choices so that their people don't have to.

“In my example, the demon wanted the girl. It never said what it was going to do with her once it got her. If it did not get the girl then he was going to kill and keep killing and we couldn't stop it. The villagers knew this too. They just wanted, or needed someone to tell them this so that they could feel better about it in the morning. They needed to be able to tell themselves a pretty lie in order to ensure that they could sleep at night and so they could pass the blame onto other people. In this case, me.

“In your example. The Skeleton Ship is going to keep coming and according to people whose job it is to record such things, it is getting more powerful. The cold is getting worse and more deadly. You have adapted for now but those adaptations can only carry on so far. If it's getting worse, how long will it be before your adaptations and ways of living with the Skeleton Ship no longer work. How long before the timbers that you build your houses out of start to crack and shatter with the cold. How long before the stone of your keeps gives way? How long before fires won't start because it is simply too cold?”

“We have adapted before.” Ingimund waved his hand dismissively. “We will do so again. If the Cold gets worse then we will find new ways to survive. You will not frighten us with a pretty story.”

“At what point do your adaptations make a person's life intolerable? It won't be with your generation. I will admit that. But what happens when your children are driven underground. They can't grow crops any more or keep herds so they're living off fungus and cave slime. Sharing the caves with insects and things, all the time burrowing deeper to escape the cold until they can no longer breathe. Or until they have to flee to the continent who will not want them and will not accept them.

“This thing needs to be done. Lennox needs to be given to the Skeleton Ship. Failure to do so is just passing the problem down to your children, or your children's children. Failure to act now is cowardice and negligent.”

“Are you calling me a coward?” Ingimund growled.

“I notice you don't complain about being called negligent.” Holger quipped.

“Not helping matters Holger.” Donar had pushed his chair back, the same way I had in getting ready for preventing a fight breaking out.

“Not trying to.” Holger told him.

“It's because he doesn't know what “negligent” means.” Hjalmar had risen to his feet.

“Don't claim that you do.” Holger was relentless.

“I will not stand here and be called a coward.” Ingimund had moved towards Kerrass who climbed to his feet.

“Please challenge me.” Kerrass growled. “Please. I am itching for a good fight. I could really do with something to hit. My friend is about to lose a lead on something important to him and I really could do with smashing something. And as I see your hand in many of the betrayals I have suffered recently, I honestly believe that I could do a lot worse than having a fight with you.”

“Witcher.” Udalryk warned.

“I am a monster slayer.” Kerrass' temper was up now, I could tell. It was in the bared teeth that I could never quite tell whether or not they included fangs. “And I am feeling the urge to kill a monster.”

“How dare you.” Ingimund's own temper flared. “I remind you that you are a guest here and that....”

“He's my guest.” Hjalmar growled, “As are you and you will both...”

The fight was averted. Narrowly. By the door opening at the back of the throne room.

“Gentlemen.” a herald said, ignoring the sense of violence in the room. “The Queen is ready for you.”The Jarls subsided and filed through to the Queen's chambers. I held Kerrass back though.

“Wait, wait, wait.”

Kerrass stopped, sighed and turned back to face me. “I can always trust you to ask can't I Freddie.”

“What else am I here for?”

“Many things, my friend. Many many things.” He shook his head and smiled slightly. “For making that recommendation, the villagers ran me out of town with hunting dogs and threatened that if I ever tried to go back, then they would string me up. I had to sneak back in in the middle of the night to steal back my horse and the rest of my things. It wasn't hard, the villagers were all shouting at each other and didn't notice me.

“The girl did though. As I say, she was far from stupid and had figured out that there was some kind of crisis going on in the town and that it centred around her in some way. She asked me what was going on and insisted that I tell the truth. I did so and the girl nodded and went off into the night.”

“She went to the wizard's tower and gave herself to the demon?”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“She did. One of the bravest people that I ever met. And that's the difference between what happened then and what happened now. That little girl had more courage in her little finger than Lennox possesses. More courage than I have as well. She told me that she didn't want any more of her friends or family to suffer in her name.”

“That poor little girl. What horror's she must have endured?”

Kerrass smirked. “I was camping down the road, two nights later when she walked into my camp and asked, all polite like, if she could travel with me. The demon didn't want her life or her soul or, in his words, “anything so crass”. He wanted to experience things. That was the thing that it was missing. It had never experienced anything. Not food, drink, sex, emotion, travel, spiritual fulfillment, it had not experienced what it was like to live. So it had asked for innocence so that it could experience everything for the first time. She had agreed with the demon that she couldn't provide this in her home village anyway. The village had been horrified when she had emerged from the tower with her burning eyes and new attitude. So she had decided to travel.

“She told me that having the demon inside her was like having an imaginary friend. Except that the friend would protect her from harm and would always love her. She would never need to live in fear again and that when the demon grew tired of her, she would be allowed to die painlessly and go onto whatever afterlife we all go to. That had been her terms of the agreement that she inflicted, along with informing the demon that it would never be allowed to influence her decision although it could make requests so that new things could be experienced.”

“What happened then?”

“We travelled to the next big city and she joined a travelling circus so that she could... well... travel and learn more about the world. Turned out that she could now do a passable fire breathing act.”

I laughed.

“I still bump into her occasionally and we say hello. She's obviously relatively old but she looks like a woman in her mid to late twenties, although it's hard to guess her age. She claims that the demon still has many things that it wants to experience, that she needs a young, fit and healthy body to do so and she is happy to oblige.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Not that long ago I think.”

“Kerrass. Have I met this girl.... I mean.... woman now.”

Kerrass grinned at me without answering.

“Are you two ladies done gossiping.” Holger joked. “The Queen wants us.”

We all filed in to find the Queen sat behind her desk.

“Very well,” she said. “I want to go through it all again. Not the votes, or the reasoning. I want to hear theories. I'm looking for alternatives, nothing is stupid but what else can we do here. According to the lookouts we have three hours before the ship enters the harbour. In two hours, my decision will be made final.”

She turned an hourglass over.

“So Witcher, I want to hear what you think about what Lennox said to you. Not just the facts, but what do you think and theorise about them?”

-

It took us a long time to get even that much of his story out of Lennox, back in the Druid's sanctuary. A long time. Time enough that refreshments were brought. Hot food and hot drink as well as a message from Hjalmar asking if we were going to be much longer.

People talk about the concept of an unreliable narrator a lot and I have been asked if I am one too. I will admit that I do occasionally obscure events in order to protect the lives and well-being of people that do not deserve the wrath that would fall down upon them. For example, we knew the identities of some the knights of Bishop Sansum and the things we discovered about those people is not entirely pleasant. But their families didn't deserve the awful things that would be done to them out of some misplaced sense of justice.

I also hid the names of some of the people that Kerrass and I used as informants when we were unearthing the cult that killed my father and corrupted my brother. I don't mind people hating me for what we did that night and Emma tells me that we have lost business because of what we dared to do to some elevated and entitled assholes. But some of the people that we got information from during that period do not have the resources to hire guards like the Chess Club now boasts near Oxenfurt. Nor have the back up of the city watch like the detective that we consulted.

So I am not a perfect narrator. But this guy?

One of the questions that we had to ask ourselves when we were done and discussing the things that he told us afterwards was, “Which of the versions of his story do we choose to believe?” Because there were many many versions. Leaving aside all of the things about his quality as a story teller. You know, the stuff about him jumping ahead in the story, jumping back, forgetting things, telling the same things over and over again. If you ignore all of that then it was still a bad story and not an entirely reliable one.

As a historian I have attended lectures on the subject of “The reliability of Sources”. There are whole courses on the subject and my knowledge is far from exhaustive. But you have to look at the source, figure out what their agenda was when they made the statements or wrote the letters or recorded the events.

Again, using myself as an example. My intention in these stories is primarily to inform and secondarily to entertain. The two feed into each other. If it was just a cold recitation of facts and events then no-one would read it. My circulation would fall off and then the university would not get the funding that the magazine pays them in return for my writing. Also, I have found that in order to remember things, or take things in, people remember things easier when they are being entertained.

So looking at Lennox and the story he was telling us.

Yes, he was hypnotised in some way. He was hypnotised by Ermion to trust us and to be open to us but he still had his own motives. He still wanted to be saved and he still wanted to divert the fault of those events away from himself. Before getting to the example of the Albatross, he didn't like any kind of suggestion that he might have been at fault in all of his many and varied failures in business. The fault was always that he was unlucky or that he was let down by circumstances or something of that nature.

There are two options there. The first is that he is telling the truth. That he was just monstrously unlucky. That defies expectation though. No-one is that unlucky, there is always some kind of fault to be had.

So the next option is that he is outright lying. In which case, why is he lying? Our theory was that he was trying to get us to sympathise with him. He was aware that we were angry and didn't trust him so he was trying to get us on his side.

With two extremes like this, the truth is nearly always somewhere in the middle. I have no doubt that he had some shitty luck. People always do when they try to do something different from what they have always done because they have no idea how to do it. It's how they learn, adapt and then move on that makes the difference. But he seemed to always need money which I found quite telling.

But we weren't really paying attention to that stuff. We were interested of course and it gave important context, but the thing that really gave us pause for thought was what happened with the killing of the Albatross.

You will have read about this in the last chapter. We heard somewhere around the region of six to seven different versions of that event. In two of those versions, the crew egged him on to perform the act before pretending to be outraged at his actually going ahead to do it. He had been chosen to fire the shot because he was the best shot on the crew and he had the best crossbow. Another one said that the crew was secretly quite pleased that he had done it. On the grounds that they had been following the Albatross for ages and the bird had still not led them out of the ice. Another version claimed that others had shot at the Albatross but that he had been the first one to actually hit it.

We all but dismissed one account where he claimed that he had shot the bird due to self defence as we struggled to understand why an Albatross would attack him.

He claimed that he had a dream about being led astray by the Albatross, that the Albatross spoke to him and threatened him with eternal damnation if he didn't do what the Albatross demanded. The justifications for the action went on and on and on.

But what we believed it came down to was that he was an angry man who had hated the Albatross so he had picked up his crossbow and shot the thing down. Again, we were confronted by two possible extremes. The first being that he had a plan and that he took his time to come up with the plan before following through on it. The other possibility was that he had picked up his crossbow and killed the Albatross on a whim. We had no way of telling which of these two options was correct though.

But we listened. I made notes. Again, noticing the fact that the Druids had no problems producing paper and ink despite their determination on insisting that they didn't know how to read and write.

Then we retreated for a conference.

“Well?” Ermion asked Kerrass. “What do you think?”

Kerrass smirked slightly. “That's an awfully big question at the moment.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry, my head is spinning at the moment. It would seem fairly clear that he is lying on several points but I also worry about the problem of self-delusion.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Freddie.” Kerrass warned. “I know that you like asking questions to hear me speak but I am tired,” he smiled as he spoke, “and I want to get drunk and laid and all of the other things that we do after an extended job. You know the answer to that.”

“I don't.” Ermion put in, “or rather, I would like to hear the explanation as well. I must say that Lennox's story has left me feeling more than a little bit angry. Sad, yes, but angry as well and I would like to think that there is something to redeem the man that I have liked and worked with for many years.”

Kerrass nodded his acceptance of the point.

“We know that Lennox has lived for hundreds of years. We also know that he should have died multiple times now due to cold, drowning, starvation, exhaustion and whatever other circumstances that history might have thrown at him. But just those alone, none of them are pleasant ways to go.”

“Are there any that are?” I wondered before I could stop myself.

“I could mix you a poison that could pass you into a dream of a thousand orgasms and you would die at the very height of pleasure.” Ermion told me. “I have a vial of it, that I keep next to my bed, against my own developing dotage and senility.”

“Yeah, sorry, I should have seen that coming really.”

Ciri snorted at some joke that only she heard.

“But.” Kerrass tried to frown sternly. “We also know that a person's mind can only take so much. For the vast majority of that time, Lennox has been by himself. Historically speaking, the islands have only been populated by humanity, relatively recently and if his story is to be believed, he has been here since long before that. Including before the Elves came here. That, at least, we can be relatively confident as being true because it is corroborated by the Vodyanoi and the fact that the Ice giants have been worshipping the Skeleton Ship since that time.”

Ciri was nodding. “So his many “deaths” are just a small part of what he has been through.”

Kerrass nodded his agreement. “I think he's spent years, centuries even, with no company but himself and he has spent his own time avoiding the skeleton ship and dissecting his own story. A story that he doesn't understand. I think he's spent that time telling himself what happened over and over again. I think he's gone over those events over and over and over again. I think he's told himself what happened and explained it away and over time, I worry that the story has changed. He's told himself these points so many times now, that he believes them.”

“I don't follow.” Ermion said.

“I think that every word he said in there. Every word he said in the is true.”

Ermion just looked at him as though Kerrass had sprouted horns. “Even the contradictions?”

“Especially the contradictions. I think that there was a storm. I think it blew him into ice waters and that the ship was trapped by ice. We know that there was an Albatross because we see it floating above the skeleton Ship. I think he shot it and then made his escape to the prehistory versions of Skellige.”

“So the story is useless.” I half agreed, have almost wept.

“No, I don't think it's entirely useless. What I'm saying is that we might never truly get all the answers that we want. Because our only available source is very possible self-delusional.”

“So we're nowhere.” Ciri muttered.

“So what do you think?” Ermion prompted again.

“I think....” Kerrass began. “Here's the problem. Magic obeys certain laws right?”

“Correct.”

“Curses are magical, so therefore, curses have certain rules that they obey. Right?”

“Correct so far.” Ermion agreed. “I know more than one Sorceress that might argue a few points or suggest that you are over simplifying things but so far that rings true to me.”

It was quite a while before Kerrass spoke again. “You see....” Then he stopped before starting again. “You see it's like this. Curses always work the same way right? We know how they work. An extreme of negative emotion, commonly hate, anger or fear. Channeled into a spell or an off hand action causes that same emotion to back fire on the user of that emotion. Only magic users can safely channel all of that raw emotion and even then, the sheer uncontrolled power of the emotion can produce strange results.”

“You're thinking of Maelficent aren't you.” I told him.

“She is only one of several examples but yes.” Kerrass answered. “So if this story began and ended in our world then that was the point that cursed him. He admits, and one of the common factors in all of the versions of his story, is the hate that he felt towards the Albatross. He admits that he hated the creature and that he killed it with hate in his heart. That is the point at which he was cursed for me. So, in theory, the way to defeat the Skeleton Ship is to kill the Albatross.”

“But that's been tried.” Ermion said. “With silver arrows, with enchanted arrows and everything in between.”

“I know.” Kerrass sighed. “Which is why I'm not suggesting we try it. We know it won't work and if the Saga masters are right, the retribution of magical feedback is....”

“Horrific.” Ciri finished for him.

“I was going to say devastating but that works too.” Kerrass told her.

“Are there any other methods of lifting the curses?” Ermion asked after a long moment where we all contemplated the “horrific and devastating” vengeance of the Skeleton Ship.

“There are. You have to make amends with whatever it is that you cursed. But how do you make amends to an Albatross? Also, the hater has to let go of the hate. That man in there is almost defined by his hate and his fear of that ship and that bird. It's sickened him and poisoned him.”

Ermion nodded his agreement in this.

“But the problem there is, does this curse obey those rules? And that question,” Kerrass shook his head, “I simply don't have an answer to.”

“Is there any reason to suspect it doesn't?” Ermion asked.

“The storm,” Kerrass told him. “Everything about his story suggests that this entire thing was inevitable. That it was going to happen. There is a certain amount of his story that can be put down to a man being self-pitying. But what if.... just suppose, what if he is telling the truth about all of that. What if something tainted his luck and kept him at sea. That's the problem with the suggestion that the curse occurred the way that we understand curses to start. But what if he was cursed much sooner. The bad luck, the fact that he was constantly forced into being at sea by circumstances. He talked about an abnormally fast current that carried him south with a chasing wind. I will accept that those things happen occasionally....”

“They do.” Helfdan put in, we all jumped as Helfdan can be an easy man to forget when he puts his mind to it. “But rarely is the sea so accommodating for prolonged periods of time over the kinds of distances that he describes.”

“But what if that was the curse. What if there was some kind of power that was behind all of that? Something that drove that ship into the ice. And then when they reached the ice.... Something trapped them there. Something didn't want them to escape. Something wanted them to die in that ice. We will never get to interrogate the other sailors or the Captain as to if there were any other signs. Any other sailors or mariners that were forced to go to that ship. Where coincidences piled up so that they got on that ship. But it's just as possible, that something wanted him dead and that ship dead.”

“Couldn't they have been killed closer to home?” I wondered. “Seems like an awful lot of trouble and power for one ship.”

“Yes. That in and of itself is a prominent thing.” Kerrass said. “He said that the south was as cold as the north. So it was something that lived in the South.”

“But then the Albatross came.” Ciri said. “I don't want to think about things that wield the power of ice on so huge a scale. Brings bad memories.”

“Yes.” Kerrass said. “The Albatross came. The Albatross. You understand that I am just guessing now and I have no way to prove whether or not this is true. But I think that the green flicker and sense of vertigo that he experienced in the cave was the ship and crew travelling between worlds.”

Ciri and Ermion nodded. “That's possible,” Ciri said.

“So I think that the Albatross was sent by someone. I think the Albatross was sent to lead those sailors and that ship to take them to.... whatever it needed to go to.”

“We're talking some epic powers there Kerrass.” I commented.

“Yes we are. Which is more than a little terrifying. Because then, fuck-face over there killed the Albatross. Stranding the ship and the crew somewhere between worlds and with a journey unfulfilled. All of this is supposition of course.”

We spent a bit of time looking at each other unhappily.

“So how do we lift the curse?” Ermion wondered.

“I still think that the answer is that he needs to get back on the ship and he needs to play this thing out.”

“Isn't that dangerous?” Ermion asked. “We are either pissing off, or playing into huge powers. Either the thing that wants him on the ship or the thing that wants to destroy the ship.”

“We are. But that is getting into places where we can't possibly, even remotely, guess what those motives are. I agree with Ciri, an entity of pure cold and destructive power and then something happens to try and guide them out of it?... At a guess, I would be on the side of the Albatross.”

“Some sailors in that world do call them the Gods of the sea.” Ciri said.

“And that comes with so many negative possibilities.” I grinned.

“What else could it have been?” Ermion wondered, almost to himself. “I agree with your assessment Kerrass and I will admit that, not for nothing, you have taught me something new about Witchers in the way that you have approached this. I agree that, if this had all taken part in this world then the killing of the Albatross would be the root cause of the curse. If the curse actively took place beforehand, what could have caused that?”

“I don't think that there is any kind of reasonable chance that we will ever find out.” Kerrass answered. “Off hand, I can think of several possibilities. He might have been cursed by a spurned lover but I think that what has happened to him and the crew he sailed with might be a bit extreme in response to that. I also think it's interesting that....” He trailed off as he sat there and thought for a moment.

“Ok. All of this is supposition. I'm just throwing out a theory that almost certainly has no basis in fact and we will probably never learn the real answer. So is everyone ok with that?”

We all nodded.

“Another option might be about the father. Again, this is assuming that curses work, at least roughly, similar to the way that they do in our world. Everyone with that?”

We all nodded again.

“So here is a theory. Sometimes curses can travel down the bloodline. We know that the mother was a dockside whore. Making her living off returning sailors. We also know that the father insisted on making sure that his son knew how to sail and would become a sailor. We also know that the father kept the son from joining one of the many trading companies as a ship's boy. The story is that he did this to protect his son from the conditions at sea but lets suppose something else.

“Lets suppose that the Father was out on a voyage and something happened. It could be anything. Shipwreck, taken by pirates, storm, sea monster or whatever passes for that in their world. Anything. So then the Father sells his life and soul to whoever or whatever is listening at the time. Promising that if the father makes it to shore then his soul belongs to whatever it was....”

“It would be the devil in that time and place.” Ciri put in. “He would have sold his soul to the devil.”

“What it is, doesn't matter.” Kerrass suggested. “And just because everyone believes in this “devil” doesn't mean that that is what, or who, was listening at the time. But he sells his soul, gets to shore and tries to back out of the deal.

“But the devil protests and the father offers something else instead. The life and soul of his first-born son.”

“I see where this is going.” Ciri agreed. “The Father heads back to port and sleeps with everything that could give him a son. The Devil, the Frost or whatever it was that the Father sold his soul to gives the father instructions. It must be a son, the son must be able to sail....”

“And the Father does that.” Kerrass took up the story again. “We don't know what happened before the boy was born. The father had to stick around in order to ensure that the conditions were met but before that. He could have had any number of lovers in multiple ports until one of them ended up pregnant. Then he sticks around, makes sure the kid is raised to the correct trade and then “disappears.” The story even admits that the disappearance was slightly unbelievable. That he was “lost in a storm,” despite the sailor's experience and the lack of other storm damage.”

“The Father then goes off,” Ciri's eyes glowed with excitement. “Spends the rest of his days suitably far in land so that the power that he sold his son to can never find him again.”

“Precisely.” Kerrass agreed. “The son goes to see and when it is ready, when the son is the correct age. The power summons him to the ice, where it lives, and tries to hill him. Only to be thwarted by an Albatross.”

“Which the sailor kills.” I muttered. “Thus causing his doom.”

“All of this is fascinating stuff.” Ermion said after a while. “But none of this deals with the Skeleton Ship. Or Frees Lennox from his torment. What do we do about Lennox? How do we fight against this thing that is coming for him or desires his torment and death?”

We stared at our feet for a while.

“It is interesting and Freddie should certainly write all of this down.” Kerrass said. “Write it down and have it published, if only to talk about those times when we get it wrong or we realise that we don't always have all the answers, and that even Witchers occasionally have to take a best guess while hoping for the best.”He shook his head. “I think that there is a fight going on here. I think it is part of a battle that has been going on for a while.

“But I also think this fight Is not ours. It did not start in our world and we have no way of knowing who the combatants are. I think that the fight is stalled until he returns to the ship and the battle is played out.”

“Isn't that dangerous for us?” I wondered. “If the fight is then brought to our world instead?”

“It might be.” Kerrass said. “But I doubt it. The Skeleton Ship is solid and it leaves this place between trips here.”

“What about Lennox?” Ermion asked.

“I think that, if he wants to have his curse lifted, then he must do it himself. I think he has to forgive the Albatross or the power that controls the Albatross. Then he needs to forgive himself and make some kinds of amends. But I have no idea how he sets about doing that. Everything that we've just been talking about is supposition. Glorified guesswork. Not even educated guesswork. It's based on assumptions and leaps of logic that we can't possibly justify and I know how Freddie feels about “Assuming” Anything. One way or another, to break this curse, Lennox needs to get back on the ship.”

-

And as it turns out ,Cerys had actually already made her decision. She was going to put Lennox on the Skeleton Ship. She reasoned that over the many years that the Skeleton Ship had been coming to the islands, many things had been tried to get rid of the thing. All of which had failed. So now she was going to try this new thing.

What she was doing, now that she had called us all back into the room, was looking for reasons that she shouldn't do what she had decided to do. She was looking for alternatives, doubt and thoughts. She wanted theories and guesses and anything else that might take root in her mind and imagination in order to sway her from her chosen course.

There was some time left so she was taking that time to examine everything and to go over things from the new angles. She had us all stand there while she sat behind her desk with her legs stretched out in front of her, almost slouching in the chair as she sat there with her eyes closed and hands folded across her stomach as she listened. She wanted us to fire theories at her. Anything that we could think of. Anything else that might be done to get rid of the Skeleton Ship or why we shouldn't give Lennox to the Skeleton Ship. When she decided that she had had enough of a particular theory or debate, she would cut the speaker off and ask for the next theory.

It was brutal. Absolutely brutal.

Theories were suggested which she would listen to for a while before shaking her head and then moving the person on as quickly as possible. The Jarls behaved exactly as you are probably expecting them to behave. Jarl Throst didn't say much but when he did, he seemed to be struggling not to take the dismissals of the arguments personally. The older Jarls, Udalryk and Donar did not take it personally, but I got the feeling that this was a little strange to their way of thinking. I was certainly left with the impression that they were struggling to keep up with the speed of the thinking and speaking. They participated certainly but they were not too active in their participation.

Jarl Holger had to be reprimanded. He said, again, that he agreed with the decision and so he didn't feel as though he could argue that we should let the man Lennox go, so why should he even try. The Queen opened her eyes and fixed him with a stare that could fell warriors in their stride. “Because I order it.” She snapped. Then he tried cracking some jokes and mocking the entire process. Which didn't help because he was a genuinely funny man. The Queen fixed him with another stare and then he started to respond properly.

Hjalmar knew a little bit more about what his sister was going for. He explained it to me later that their father, the fabled Crach an Craite had encouraged people that disagreed with him. He wanted people to argue and tell him that he was wrong. He wanted the reasons for it though and had no patience for people that simply told him that he was wrong and could not argue the point. He also expected people to stop talking when the decision was made. He rather thought that Cerys was expanding on this method.

He gave as good as he got, but there was little doubt in my mind that Hjalmar was... He will admit that he is a strong man and a warrior. He didn't need to learn how to use his mind as his strength at arms would carry him through most situations. So his arguments and points were a little bit.... lesser than some of the points raised.

Ingimund was the problem. I think I might have been a little harsh about Lord Ingimund over time. I honestly think that he believed every word that he said. It is true that what he would keep going on about was also a political position. But he had taken that up because no-one else would. He resented the new and strange version of his home that Skellige was turning into and he was appalled that the other, older Jarls on the Jarls council were not supportive of his sentiments.

As to why that is, it is known that Udalryk considers himself indebted to the Queen for some past service and Jarl Donar sees no problem in gentle change so long as fundamentals like religious practices and culture were left alone. I imagine that he might get a little angrier if Cerys had declared that raiding was outlawed, or that the Islands would cast aside their old religions or that the Crown would pass down to an heir of her choosing rather than an elected one. I stress that I think that this is the case. But I think that he doesn't see what Cerys has done as breaking with traditions. I think that he sees it as her introducing new ones and he doesn't see that as a bad thing. But don't quote me on that.

But Ingimund was not dealing with the situation. In the same way that Throst was taking it hard that he kept being cut off mid sentence, Ingimund was also getting frustrated and angry. But where Throst was getting angry because he felt that Cerys was criticising his youth or his status, Ingimund was increasingly beginning to take the interruptions and denials as personal insults. Cerys had blunted his most powerful weapon in that Ingimund is a genuinely skilled and passionate speaker. But he would get a few sentences into what sounded like an impassioned and practiced speech on the value of the challenge that the Skeleton Ship faced, or talking about the moral problems with practising human sacrifice to appease strange powers before Cerys would cut him off. Sometimes with a declaration that such a thing has already been discussed or that the lives of the rest of the population outweigh the lives of one liar.

He was not taking it well. Visibly getting angrier and angrier. The old cartoons of steam coming out of his ears as he got more and more red faced were particularly apt. Although, Cerys was treating all of us like this so it was provable that she wasn't being personal.

But Ingimund took it as such.

Ermion, I think, was the most used to this kind of thing. He also needed to be reminded to actually participate but he seemed to take a perverse delight in not noticing, or not reacting to some of the extreme things that were being said.

Kerrass and I gave the best we could, recounting Lennox's tale again with the occasional suggestions of Ciri. Throwing out our increasingly crazy theories about what could really be going on here or there, or what might be the results of this happening or that happening. I found the topic and style of questioning no more abrupt or insulting than the average University seminar except that Cerys did not really feel as though she needed to explain her reasoning.

It was exhausting but, if I had been in a better mood, it was also rather stimulating and I found myself with a new found level of respect for the Queen of the islands, over and above what I already had. I also, for the first time, realised what someone like Helfdan would see in the Queen.

But eventually, the time came due. The last grains of sand fell out of the hourglass and we all looked at each other while at the same time not really meeting each other's gaze.

The Queen allowed the moment to stretch for a little while before abruptly climbing to her feet and pulling her thick cloak from where it rested on the back of her chair and throwing it around her shoulders.

“Well then,” she said as the cloak fell to lie over her. Then she picked up her sword belt from where it rested and tied it around her midriff. I noticed that she, like Helfdan, eschews the normal trappings of wealth and nobility. She was lacking in jewellery and ornamentation although I supposed that her tunic and sword scabbards looked very impressive and the torque around her nexk was certainly thick and rich. I found myself wondering if Helfdan copied the mannerism off her or whether it was the other way round.

Then then thought occurred that I was possibly putting too much thought into this entire thing and dismissed the idea.

“Let's get to our places,” The Queen declared as she tied the belt securely, “so that we can watch the ship come through the harbour. I will go to the cells to tell Lennox personally that this has been the decision before moving to my own place and I hope to see you all there.”

“Majesty.” Kerrass stepped forward. “If we might ask it. I would like to be the one to take the prisoner and hand him over to the Skeleton Ship. And I will take Freddie with me if I may?”

The Queen raised her eyebrow in question before she turned her gaze to me.

“You do not need to do this.” She said to us both. “My men are...

“It was my hand that found him and it is my hand that has put him there. I should do it literally as well as figuratively.” Kerrass said. “And it is not impossible that we might get some more information out of him regarding Freddie's sister on the way to the landing place. Truth and forgiveness are often sought on the way to the gallows.”

The Queen considered before nodding.

“I shall go with them.” Helfdan said. “I want to see the end of this.”

“And I.” Ciri spoke up. “I owe these men a lot and I should stand by them as this endeavour comes to an end.”

Cerys frowned at this last. “I hope that you have no intention of climbing aboard the ship.” The Queen told the Empress. “I rather thought that we had moved past all of that nonsense.”

“I will stand at the end of the jetty.” The Empress smiled. “I just want to watch, there is not enough room anyway but have no fear. I will not board the skeleton Ship unless invited or otherwise it is made clear that it is safe. But I want to witness the last journey of the Mariner.”

The Queen nodded before turning and sweeping her way towards the door, her guards falling in around her.

Where she was met by an angry Lord Inismund who stepped close and grabbed her by the sword arm.

The room was suddenly ringing out with the sound of metal scraping against metal as weapons were drawn and levelled. If you put a dagger to my throat, I would say that the Imperial Guard are a little quicker than the royal guard of Skellige are. But not by a great deal. Not by a great deal at all.

Ingimund found himself with blades all around him but his eyes stared at the Queen unflinchingly.

“You cannot do this Cerys.” He said. “This is madness. The Skeleton Ship is part of who we are. It is part of what we do. It is part of our culture and part of our very souls. You have already taken so much, you can't take any more.”

Cerys had held her other hand up to prevent further violence. “Can't?” She asked. I am sure, in all my time on the road and dealing with everything that has come with that, that I have heard colder tones of voice. But there won't have been many.

“You have to let the Druid go. You have to let this matter rest and we have to prepare for the next coming of the Skeleton Ship.”

“Or what?” Cerys spoke calmly.

Ingimund's mouth opened and closed a few times.

Courtly training tells me that she had trapped him. The only follow up from there would be to make a threat. And what could he threaten her with, Rebellion? in which case he would die here and now and he would be the traitor. Or what?

Cerys lowered her gaze to look at the hand that was still clutching her arm before her, ice cold eyes rose back up to the Jarl of Clan Tuirseach.

Ingimund snatched his hand away.

Cerys nodded and turned to move away before some emotion got the better of her and she turned back.

“Your attempts to martyr yourself for a cause will not succeed.” She told him with tones that could freeze the blood. “I am disappointed in your service as Jarl. My decision is made and will not be altered now, especially not by some last minute, dramatic gesture. I have also, not forgotten all the other charges that have been laid at your feet by others. Both from within the clan and outside it. I have not yet decided how to proceed on that matter as I have been to engaged with the subject of the Skeleton Ship. Also, I find that I am too angry to trust my own judgement. But be assured that judgement is coming.”

She whirled away and was marching. Kerrass, Ciri, Helfdan and myself had to scramble to keep up. I had chance to look up and see Jarl Donar's hand on Ingimund's shoulder.

A little way through the corridors we came to a landing and some steps that led downwards.

The Queen held her hand out to the rest of us and we stopped for a moment while she moved off a little way and leant on a wall by one hand with her head bowed. After a longer moment, her other hand came up and covered her eyes. The hand was trembling.

She stood like that for several minutes. If I was an artist I would have painted that scene and when I came to sell it it would be titled “The weight of a crown.”

Then she seemed to shake her head before straightening and beckoned us on to follow her.

“Why did I want to be Queen again?” She asked no-one in particular. “I seem to have forgotten.”

“Because if it wasn't you, it would have been your brother.” Ciri answered quickly.

Cerys shuddered comically at the thought.

“Lord Hjalmar would have made a fine King.” Helfdan said with a little look of confusion.

Cerys gave him a withering look which only seemed to confuse him further.

“Lord Frederick?” The Queen said formally as she led us deeper into the depths of the castle.

“Majesty?”

“I trust that you intend to record your adventures in Skellige for publication and prosperity.”

“I certainly intend to Majesty.” I told her.

“Good. I would ask that you will be detailed and accurate when you come to record the politics of the situation. It is my experience that some on the continent idealise Skelligan honour as being a way to say that politics is neutralised. I would be grateful if you could disabuse them of this.”

“I will endeavour to serve Majesty.”

“And I trust that an invite to your wedding will be forthcoming?” She was trying to lighten the mood.

“Your Majesty must forgive me.” I told her, doing my best to rise to the occasion despite my concerns about what was about to happen. “But I have found that, being the groom, I actually have very little say on this matter. But I do believe that another lady, who is walking not very far from us both at this time and who occasionally likes to behave like another big sister of mine, might have some influence.”

“I will discuss the matter with the person you suggest.” The Queen told me.

“Also, my dear betrothed is hoping to visit during the thaw and I shall put the matter to her then.”

“I shall look forward to meeting her. Ciri?”

“I'm sure an invitation can be arranged.”

We all had a little laugh as the tension lifted a little. Sometimes the levity is needed at moments like this. You never hear about that sort of thing in the big sagas and epic poems, where the heroes head off the trail for a few short moments to brutally shit themselves due to the bad food, or someone passes wind and everyone sniggers. You never hear about that stuff but I am certain that it happened.

Cerys led us into the depths of Kaer Trolde through torch-lit corridors. It was strangely quiet and I was forced to guess that most of the attending guards and servants would be out to watch the Skeleton Ship arrive. But that silence led me to find the entire experience a little terrifying and intimidating. Kaer Trolde is one of the busiest and most important keeps in the world but just then I kept expecting to turn a corner and come across some wraith or spectre dragging it's headstone behind it and shaking chains.

But the Queen knew exactly where she was leading us as we seemed to descend deep into the mountain. That can't have been true but as is so often the case with this kind of thing, it felt like we were descending into the underworld. She led us down until the walls started to get more roughly hewn with sharper edges. The walls seemed more carved out of the stone rather than constructed out of dressed blocks.

We came to a long hallway. There were other stairs that seemed to go further down but I never found out where those steps went. The air was cold, damp and I found that I was grateful for the thick winter furs that the Skelligans had gifted us with.

I count myself fortunate that I have never been in many dungeons or cells from the wrong side of the bars. It has happened on occasion when I have been caught up with something involving Kerrass and someone that he has fallen afoul of. Also a couple of times when I have found myself shovelled up with the rest of the drunk and disorderly students that have been dumped in the cells for the night to cool off. But they were relatively warm rooms with bars for walls that have been installed in existing buildings as a kind of afterthought.

But for castles that have been built and designed around the fact that they need a dungeon. The prisoners are thrown into this kind of pit, lined with straw and generally just left to it. Lucky prisoners are kept in dungeons that are under some kind of covering. I have been in many keeps where the dungeon is outside, so not only are the prisoners kept in a hole in the ground but there is little to no shelter from the rain or the cold or the snow or the heat at the height of summer.

Yes, my families castle does indeed have dungeons. It is part of our responsibility as feudal lords of the estate that occasionally we have to administer judgement to our people. Emma does her best to ensure that no-one is kept in the dungeons for extended periods of time and that, after arrest, the prisoners are well fed and looked after and that their trials and sentence are carried out with alacrity. And our dungeons are in the basement of the keep itself so they are, at least, relatively sheltered.

I have seen, much worse. I have seen prisoners that sleep in their own filth and muck. I have seen prisoners pulled out from these pits in order to stand trial who went into the hole as tall, broad shouldered strong men and come out frail and aged before their own time. Men who have needed help to be lifted from the pit rather than being able to climb out under their own power with the provided ropes and ladders. I have heard of men who have died. Not due to the trial or the sentence, but because they were thrown into the pit to land badly and to break some bones in their legs before the filthy conditions mean that they prisoner died.

I have also heard of prisoners that were thrown into these dungeons for some crime last thing at night where the guards tell themselves that they will report the new prisoners presence to their superiors in the morning before forgetting or being distracted with other problems so that the prisoner languishes in the pit until old age over takes them.

The dungeons at Kaer Trolde seemed to be in relatively good repair though. The guard room was warm and well lit. There was a hearth with a lit fire, over which a pot of a bubbling soup was set and the guards sat at a table enjoying the eternal pass-time of men guarding prisoners. They were playing dice.

They climbed to their feet when we all arrived and the Queen waved them back.

“Thank you for your service.” She told them. “I'm sorry that you are committed to service at times like these when you would much rather be with your families.”

“It's not so bad.” One of them said, I thought it was the younger of the two although the armour and the hair made judging the age a little difficult. “Someone's gotta do it after all.”

“Nevertheless,” The Queen told them. “I would still thank you.”

The two men bowed.

“Only two guards?” I wondered aloud.

“The insides of the dungeons are smooth.” One of the guards had heard me. A narrow chute leads to a wider hole so there are no hand holds for someone to climb out. Then they would have to unlock the grating.”

“Standing on each other's shoulders?” I wondered.

“It gets tried occasionally.” The guard wondered. “But that would involve a concerted effort to escape from everyone involved. They all know that such an action would result in penalties for all so we often find that prisoners are quite good at policing themselves.” He sniffed. “There aren't that many in there at the moment anyway.”

“And how are they doing?” The Queen asked.

“Most are just quiet and grateful for the blankets and the warm food.” The older of the two guards told her. “The new one...”

(Freddie's note: Apparently, guards are not told prisoner's names due to the potential of guards having sympathy for the people that they are guarding)

“.... has spent most of his time down here weeping.” The guard was obviously a little scornful.

Cerys nodded. I almost thought I saw her wincing slightly. “Well, lets get him up here then.”

The two guards nodded. One went to the honestly relatively small hole in the ground where he knelt and pushed the bolts aside in the ground with a cold, jarring scraping sound. The other went and manhandled a wooden ladder over to the side before lowering it into the hole.

“New guy.” The old guard called. “Get your behind up here.”

There was a long pause.

“I said now new blood.”

“No.” Came a stubborn and petulant call up from the depths.

The two guards did not seem particularly fazed by this. “Your choices are simple new blood.” The older guard shouted. “Either you climb up the ladder yourself or my colleague comes down there, breaks both your legs and ties you to a rope so that we can lift you out of the hole. Where I have no doubt that you will bang your head on the walls. Your choice.”

There was some more silence. “Come on new blood,” the younger guard shouted down. “Be a man and get up here to take your punishment.”

There was another pause before some sounds of a scuffle started to filter up from the hole. Some other voices and a man's voice complaining. I only heard one voice for certain, a man's voice. “Get the fuck up the ladder or I'll do worse than break your fucking legs.”

There was the sound of more scuffling.

“As it turns out.” The older of the guard who was stood near me and must have noticed my confused expression, “even scum have standards when it comes to this kind of thing.”

“I'll take your word for it.” I told him. I felt kind of disgusted by the entire affair.

“He's coming up.” A voice called from below and sure enough, shortly afterwards, a bedraggled Lennox was pulled from the hole. Hauled out by the two guards who lifted him out by the arm pits and tossed him to the side where he collapsed onto the cold stone floor.

“Mercy.” Lennox whimpered. “Mercy.”

The ladder was lifted from the hole and the grating slammed into place with a crash that jarred somewhere deep in my chest and set my teeth to grinding.

“Mercy.” Lennox moaned again.

“Mercy?” Cerys asked him gently. “What does mercy look like to you?” She waited until he looked her in the eyes again. “And of which of us standing here, would you ask it of? Mmm?”

Lennox looked awful. He was pale, clammy and his eyes were bloodshot. He was still wearing his druid robe although he was bare-foot and the rope belt that druids normally wear was missing.

“Please,” he whimpered. “Please don't.”

“Please don't, what?” Cerys was angry. I wondered how long she had been angry, for as it seemed to be spilling out a little.

“Please don't throw me back to that ship? Please show mercy.”

“Who would you ask mercy of?” The Queen asked again. “There is not a man or woman in Skellige, including the guards and myself who have not lost someone to the Skeleton Ship. For me it was a cousin. He got caught in a snow storm while trying to find some sheep that had wandered off and hadn't made it back. Would you ask me for mercy? Every time one of my subjects loses someone to the Skeleton Ship. Or feels hunger afterwards due to the failed harvests. Every time the raiding ships have to go to the continent to make up the shortfall and all of those lost lives. All of that falls on my shoulders and you could have fixed all of that by being honest.

“This man?” She gestured at Helfdan. “He was just an escort. Something that he did as a favour to a new friend and as a favour to me. In doing so he lost his ship and a significant portion of his crew. Would you ask him for mercy?”

Helfdan shifted uncomfortably. “It was our duty.” He said. “This is unseemly and cruel, I agree that he must...”

Cerys spun on him, her gaze hard. Slowly, Helfdan lifted his eyes from his habitually downcast attitude until her met her eyes and Cerys looked away.

“Everyone here has lost someone.” She said after a moment a little quieter and, I think, a little chastened. “Who would you ask for mercy?”

There was a long silence of people shifting their feet and avoiding each other's eyes.

“Help me.” Lennox whimpered. “Do not send me back to that.... I can't do that again. Not again... Please.” I realised that Lennox was talking to me. I turned, slowly and forced myself to look him in the eyes. “Please. He said again. “I can help you. I can help you find your sister.”

I felt the barb hit home in my heart. I could do this. I could ask him for help and the knowledge that I had longed for for so long would finally be within my grasp.

“I can do it.” I think he sensed my weakness. “I can help you. I can tell you things and teach you things. I can help you find what happened to her.”

I sobbed. I felt dizzy for a moment and I closed my eyes. I wanted this so bad. I wanted it so badly that I could taste it. I sobbed again.

“My sister.” I began. I don't know where the words came from. It wasn't as the result of any thought process. I just started speaking. “My sister was better than me. Better than everyone here. She cared so much. Flame but I miss her. Every day. She would want us to show mercy I think. But if she were here, if her spirit could call to me and tell me what I should do. Then she would tell me that my selfish desire for vengeance or closure is not worth this. You stand condemned by your own actions.”

I began to feel myself coming back.

“Mercy?” I wondered. “I will show mercy to all the people who will come after us. All the lives that will be saved because they don't have to worry about the Skeleton Ship. Those lives? I will save them I think.”

“What would you do if our situations were reversed?” Lennox whimpered. “What would you do if you were the one kneeling here, begging for help from me, standing over you. Demanding that you give your life and your soul... what would you....”

He was cut off by Kerrass' slow and awful laughter.

“Oh that was the wrong question.” He grated. His graveyard voice again. “Just as you were wrong when you questioned my honour. Freddie would never be in your position. He would have begged for help as soon as people arrived. He would have told all he knew and if there was no other option. He would have walked back onto the deck of the Skeleton Ship, solid in the knowledge that, in doing so, he was bettering the lives of others. He would go into pain, hardship and madness for others. How do I know this? He has done it before. Many times. For strangers.

“And, if someone had come to him to ask for his help. He would have given it gladly without asking for a price.”

Lennox paled at that as Kerrass crouched next to him.

“You want to know the real irony of what is happening here? And yes, this is cruel and horrible.” He said this to Helfdan who was shifting his weight uncomfortably. “If you had just done that. If you had just given us the information that we wanted when we arrived. This wouldn't have happened. We would not have hunted the Skeleton Ship. We would not have found these answers and you would still be wrapped up in your blankets, shivering in terror while better folk face the cold and horror on your behalf. We would have observed the ceremony and then, when they waters had calmed, Freddie and I would have gone on our way. I want you to remember that when I throw you to the Skeleton Ship. Because I begged the Queen for that. I want you to remember that all of this, from the curse that you toil under, to the fact that you are about to return to that curse. Remember, that all of this, is your own fault.”

Kerrass straightened and Lennox quailed before his gaze.

“Lennnox.” The Queen began again, a little more formally. “The Skeleton Ship passes through the harbour. You will be taken from this dungeon to the place of the ship's landing. You will be held until the Skeleton Ship decides whether they want you or not. If they do, you will be handed over to them without question. If not, you will be staked out on the rock until you die of starvation or exposure. I pass this sentence as the Queen of the Skelligan isles for the crime of murder. For I hold that you are guilty of the murders of people of Skellige without number for keeping this information secret under the presumed motivation of preserving yourself. A number so high that I cannot comprehend it.” After this speech, the Queen turned to Ciri. “You know where you're going?”

Ciri nodded.

“Then I shall see you on the landing, I must go and be seen.”

Ciri touched the Queen on her arm briefly before Cerys turned and left. There was a finality to the gesture. As though she had done and said everything that she meant to say and do on the subject.

Lennox burst into tears. It was a horrible sight and I so desperately wanted to flee from it. But Kerrass was right. He had made this bed for himself and I was going to put him in it.