WARNING! Contains scene of a family style intervention and a character having a panic/anxiety/trauma blackout/attack. Join me at the end of the chapter where I will talk about this some more if you are interested or would like to know more. Specifically as to the reference for the character's distress and exactly why I have come back to this subject.WARNING 2 suggestive Boogaloo. Scene of crude sexual language designed to tease and mock another character.In the meantime, stay safe out there everyone, take care of yourselves and look after each other)

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After we had finished our prayers, I spent a lot of time crying gently to myself and Mark sat with me as we waited for the mood to pass.

It was an odd feeling of catharsis. Like all the best types of confession, those ones where you confess to things where you feel as though you have actually done something wrong, rather than what society thinks you have done wrong....

Ok, lets back up a bit.

Confessing is supposed to be a means of getting things out there. To say what you think and what you feel guilty about. Then the priest can listen, give advice, give a punishment and a way that you can redeem yourself in the eyes of the Eternal Fire.

And the Priest.

In my experience with this, though, there are two kinds of “Admissions of guilt.” The first, and by far the most common type of thing is where we have done something that might have been a genuine mistake, or an accident, or something that you knew to be right on a moral foundation. The kind of thing that you feel is right in the pit of your soul. But society or the rules of the church declare these actions to be “sins” or “Crimes against the Sacred Flame”.

This always seems kind of false to me. I am confessing in an effort to assuage my own guilt and to try and hedge my bets. Those times where I don't think I have done anything wrong, but, in the face of the wrath of the Eternal Flame, who am I to say what is right and wrong.

Now that I am a grown man and more in charge of my own moral compass, I am much more likely to skew this a little in order to confess to things that I feel genuinely awful about and leave out those things that I don't feel particularly bad about.

For example. I have never taken the murders of Sansum and his knights to the confessional booth. Nor have I taken the deaths of those Nilfgaardian merchant seamen that we killed on the shores of Skellige. That was a killing that needed to happen and the demands of self-preservation respectively. I have confessed about the murderous rage in Skellige but that seemed to be a different topic of conversation to me.

My mother once gave me an interesting little piece of advice, when I was younger, about what to confess and what not to confess. She said, “if in doubt, confess it.” That statement is another in a long line of things that could probably tell an interested reader more about my upbringing than certain people would entirely be comfortable with.

But then comes the other part of confessing. Those times where you genuinely feel as though you have something to confess. That you feel as though you have really done something wrong and genuinely need to atone for it. In those instances, you realise just why the act of confessing is so important. Why it is part of our religion.

I will be the first person to admit that often, confessing can be kind of a chore. Made more so by a confessor that likes to lord it over the person doing the confessing and use it as a way to fatten their own purse or to get more money out of the person doing the confessing.

But there are times where it is all worth it. There are times that in making those confessions, you feel as though a weight has been lifted from your shoulders and you find yourself wondering how you could possibly have survived carrying all of that round with you.

A genuine confession is one of those things that can keep you safe at night.

But damn me if it isn't exhausting. I wept for a long time. And like in those moments of extreme violence, or those moments where my mouth just decides to start talking without me really having any kind of input in the decision making process, I felt like I was a spectator in my own head. I felt like I was just sat there, waiting for the body to do what it needed to do in order to feel better about the entire process. It took a long time.

A very long time.

After the initial, violent stage of Catharsis where my brother held me tight against the sobs that tried to rip my body in half, I was sat back, resting against the wall of the hut, weeping much more gently as Mark wandered around a bit. Idly read some of the notes on my desk and made us some more tea. He would later tell me that it is one of those things that they have to train new priests into recognising. That when a member of the congregation has gone particularly deep into a confession, that they might need to be looked after for a little while afterwards. Where it can actually be dangerous to let a person like that back out onto the street before they are entirely ready.

So he waited, made us some drinks, read a little bit of the chapters that Lady Yennefer and I were working on as he waited for me to come back to myself.

I was nearly there. Close to being back in my own body and ready to fall asleep with the exhaustion of it as this was all going on. I had one question though, one question that kept bouncing off the walls of my head and I asked it as I finally managed to make it back inside my own skull and able to think clearly.

“So wait a second.” I began. “I have started a movement?”

Mark laughed. “Don't get too big for yourself. It's not very organised. Nor is it very competent. If I am any judge of the matter, I strongly suspect that it is almost entirely made up of people that would make your fists itch.”

“I don't suppose....”

“I have some papers on the subject if you are feeling a bit stronger.” Mark added. “Angry correspondence of people ordering me to curtail your activities and the like. Emma has some similar letters. You interested?”

“Morbidly so.”

“Then I shall send them over.” He told me with a grin. “On two conditions. The first is that they are not turning up until the morning. The second is this. That you understand that the actions of these moronic pieces of sputum are not your fault. If you turn this all into some kind of means of self-punishment and guilt then I shall have them taken off you. Am I clear?”

“Yes. Mark.” I said contritely.

“And it's not to interfere with your other work either. You have a book to finish and a penance to perform. Understand?” “Yes Mark.”

“Don't you “Yes Mark” me.”

“No Mark.”

We both laughed but I'm pretty sure that I fell asleep shortly after that. I don't remember us talking about anything particularly important.

I slept for a long time. Well past the point where I would normally be getting up and doing things. But when I did get up, I felt drained and still more than a little bit tired and exhausted. I struggled to a sitting position and ate some of the breakfast that had been left for me. Samantha came in and looked at me for a long time before nodding to herself and telling me that I stank and that if I needed to speak to anyone in particular then I should consider having a bath first.

Because I stank.

She realised that she had already told me about the fact that I stank but that it was such an important point that it bared repeating.

I did as I was told and had a long hot bath which was suitably invigorating before I ate a huge lunch and sat at my writing desk.

This is my penance. I am supposed to have stopped hiding things here about how I am feeling and what I am getting up to so let me make one thing clear. According to everyone around me, this was really the moment where I started to get better. I was not cured, nor was I back up to full health and energy. But I was better. I felt stronger and more resilient. Not by much. But a little.

I did some work on one of the “Jack” chapters and went off to spend some time working on things with Yennefer before I went back to the hut in the middle of the afternoon to find one of Mark's many secretaries waiting for me with a satchel full of papers. He also had a note from Mark to say that he and Emma would be able to talk to me in the morning. That if I did not feel up to that conversation, then I should say so rather than trying to hold in any fear or sense of reluctance. But that it would not be as bad as I thought it would be and that I should not be afraid. He reminded me again that both he and Emma loved me and only wanted the best for me and that not all of the conversation would be about me.

I did my best to take that in the spirit that it was intended but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't dreading the coming conversation a little bit.

Fortunately I had some distraction there waiting for me. And distraction it was. Glorious, mortifying, terrifying distraction. The Stachel contained a pile of letters. Some of them were addressed to Mark and still others were addressed to Emma. All of which were appeals for them to use their influence on me to stop what I was doing and take up proper feudal duties or to return to the University to take up my Professorial responsibilities.

Some of them, if not most of them, were written by the parents of men, and women, that had gone out into the world in order to try and emulate my success. Still others were written by the people themselves, the companions of the people or witnesses to the activities of the people. When I am feeling a little braver, I intend to ask Mark and Emma as to whether or not they deliberately chose the selection of letters that was sent to my hut, in order to make me laugh as most were blatently ridiculous.

I have changed some of the names of these people and this is not an exhaustive list of what I read about here. This is just a few examples of the things that people have gotten up to while trying to emulate me.

In no particular order. A man went up to a Witcher, I have no idea which one, and demanded that the Witcher allow him to follow the Witcher around on his travels. The Witcher asked the errant man what he could possibly do to convince the Witcher to allow that. The man offered money, similar to what I did to Kerrass and the Witcher, not wanting to turn down the opportunity of a few free meals allowed the young man to follow him around.

The Witcher gave similar instructions as well, being well aware of the arrangement between Kerrass and myself, and instructed the poor idiot to stay well back and allow the professional to do his job. The entitled moron decided that he knew more than the Witcher did and advanced on the monster. When the Witcher pushed the nobleman out of the way, the Nobleman fell and injured himself minorly while the Witcher dealt with the creature that I understand to be a Cockatrice. The nobleman decided that he had been insulted and demanded satisfaction from the Witcher and drew his sword.

The Witcher kicked the man in the testicles so hard that one of the testicles burst, thus rendering the man incapable of producing off-spring. I apologise to any men that might be reading this as I can feel the desire to cross your legs protectively. I am sympathetic.

I read another story of a man who went out to help the local villagers with one of their problems. He was a younger son of someone and was interested in ghost sightings. He seemed to have a theory that a lot of these ghost sightings are matters of mass hysteria, of people seeing what they want to see and hearing what they want to hear. He came across a local village after staying with the Lord of the area who was complaining that the local peasants were not farming a particular field on the grounds that the field was cursed in some way.

Our hero decided that he would investigate on the grounds that “if that idiot Coulthard can do it then so can I,” and went down to enquire. He heard the stories about the field being the site of a small skirmish between armed forces and some of the ghosts of the dead still fight the battle there to this day. He did not believe this and insisted on going onto the field himself.

At night. Alone.

The villagers found him in the morning where he had escaped, more through luck than judgement, and apparently he had been so scared that his hair had turned white.

Lest we all think that the idiocy was confined to the Male gender, there was also a letter from the parents of a very eligible young lady who were insisting that I apologise to them personally for failing to properly point out the dangers of consorting with Vampires. I understand that the lady in question was fairly young and lonely, the castle being quite a distance from any other sign of civilisation meaning that the girl had no-one of her own age to converse with other than castle servants. An activity that her parents banned her from persuing on the grounds that a couple of the grooms were rather strapping young men.

So the girl had read about my romance with Ariadne, been swept up with the romance of the affair and when rumour had surfaced of a Vampire lair up in the local mountains, she was swept up in fantasies of dark, sinister and beautiful men that would sweep her off her feet and show her what the world was really like.

According to the letter, she really did find out what the world was like as what she found was a fairly intelligent Vampire. Not of the Elder kind like Ariadne, but more of the Ekkimara level, or a Katakan of some kind, it's impossible to tell which from the letter. A group of the castle guard was put together and went off to find the poor girl. Find her they did, on the verge of death, all but drained of blood and weeping in fear. Attached to her body was a note, written in her own blood on a patch of leather of dubious providence that read “Be careful what you wish for”.

There are many many more of these. I have taken to collecting them and if anyone has a favourite example of a person doing something stupid and arrogant in pursuit of fame or in attempting to emulate me and taking short cuts to what Kerrass and I might have achieved over the years, then please send me them. If any of them are particularly foolish or entertaining, then I might even publish them. How's that for an idea for a new book. I would need a better editor though, in order to ensure the anonymity of the people involved.

Another favourite of mine is someone that came across Letho when he was on his travels but had not recognised the bald Witcher for who he was and demanded that Letho allow the noble to follow him around. When Letho said that he would rather have sex with a bog hag than allow this fop to follow him around, the noble in question got quite aggravating. I understand that he suggested that Letho should feel priviledged to allow someone such as he to grace the Witcher with his presence and lay his hands on the Witcher as he went to walk away.

I imagine he looked auite astonished as his head sailed through the air.

A noble woman wanted me to condemn all Succubi due to the fact that a Succubus had arrived nearby and was seducing her way through the Manor staff including the Noblewoman's favourite guard captain. Another wanted me to confine my stories to Skelligan infamy rather than to tell tales of the good, noble and brave men and women that I encountered there.

There are loads of these stories now and I am mortified. Some of them are sad. Some of them are funny and still more of them make me furious beyond my capacity for easily rational thought. It was a struggle not to see myself in some of these people and looking back, I am reminded of just how lucky I was to find the right Witcher at the right time in order to.... well... survive. Having seen how other people are doing, I am left wondering how long I would have survived myself if I hadn't found Kerrass on that inn doorstep.

It was an effort not to blame myself for all of that though. A real effort. The sheer arrogance and stupidity of human-kind was laid out. The worst, for me, were those letters that wanted me to condemn the Elves that had helped Kerrass and I survive. That condemned me for taking them in, or painting the Elves in a positive light in my account of those events. But most surprising to me were those people that just wanted me to stop. Every time I published another story about how this race or that race was not as bad as they had been led to believe. Every time that I pointed out how much better the common folk were than the nobility wanted to believe. Every time I pointed out that Education does not equal Intelligence. Every time I praise the commonfolk over the local nobility and condemn the nobles for their stupid arrogance and superiority, it seemed that both Mark and Emma received letters demanding that I be told to stop.

Presumably this is because they do not enjoy their settled order of nature being challenged. That they are superior than the Elves and the common folk. That they get so angry that their children and their fellows are having dangerous notions of doing things like, “helping their fellow man.”

It also bears remembering that there are also a number of letters of thanks. Where this nobleman or noblewoman, who was struggling what to do with an errant child, has had that sorted out for them. One young man declared some of the things that I had written as being nonsense. Quite a clever boy apparently, bored with his normal studies, uninterested in martial pursuits he had gone down to the villages, in disguise, in an effort to disprove my declarations as to the quality of the common folk.

There he had met a number of people and through various challenges, he had been rescued from calamity by a group of farmers from a bear that had scared the thing away with rakes and pitch-forks. As he was in disguise and had already had his money fleeced off him by thieves, he could not prove that he was a nobleman's son and therefore the villagers had declared that he was mad. They took him in, fed him, clothed him and had set about nursing him back to health.

This kindness had changed the young man. When healthy he had returned to the castle and was currently designing an irrigation system in order to help the local villagers in their farming efforts. Now that he had a proper avenue to direct his talents and his intelligence, he had become like a different young man, no matter what his father might say. She wrote that he was kinder, more accepting, gentler and oddly, he was now more handsome and attractive to those women his father was sending him off to court.

Much to the annoyance of his elder brother.

Go figure. I would also appreciate any other success stories that people might have. Silly stories about fools getting their comeupance, but also stories about men and women who are making a difference and are improving themselves.

Believe it or not. I need to hear the second, almost as much as I would like to read the first.

I read everything and had many a laugh, a bit more of a cry over some of the sadder letters and I even wrote a few resonses to some of the more stupid ones. I tossed these on the fire though as it never does anyone any good to engage with angry parents who don't want to listen.

After I had set these aside, I sat down and started a huge long essay. A big article, not unlike this one, that decried people that were following in my footsteps. I wrote angrily and split several quills, spattering ink everywhere and generally making myself feel a bit foolish. But dammit I was cross and I needed to get some of those feelings out of me and onto a piece of paper.

It was a work of art that essay. It decried all noble parents for pushing their children into the wrong occupation for themselves. It argued that a person will not become good at something unless they are interested in that something and as a result it is utterly futile to try and argue differently. For a man to want to be a scholar of history, like I am, then first he must be interested in history. For a man to become a decent swordsman or fighter then they have to have a vested interest in becoming so. Either because their survival depends on it (hello) or because they happen to enjoy the martial pursuit as a form of self-betterment.

You would be surprised about how many of the latter actually end up in the army.

I also said, in many many angry words, that if you cannot go out into the world with your eyes open and mind awake to possibility, then just blundering around is going to get you killed, or worse, get other people killed. I argued that if a man wants to go out and try to seduce a Bruxa then before dying then, generally speaking, the average intelligence of the human race has just gone up, doing the rest of us a favour.

It was a work of art that essay. I almost wish I had kept it but then it occurred to me that I was not angry at them, but more angry at myself for allowing this situation to come about as it was. Then the thought occurred that people might find the article and publish it, anonymously or not, and then what little remains of my reputation would be in tatters around my ankles. So I balled it up, threw it on the fire and sat there as I watched it burn.

It was oddly therapeutic.

But, on that matter, I do feel as though I have a certain amount of responsibility for whatever these people are doing and as such, I am unable to entirely set that aside. So I do have a few things to say on the matter.

The first thing to say is that I think it's actually laudible that people want to follow my footsteps. Laudible and more than a little flattering. If Kerrass knows, or finds out about it, I have no doubt that he will find the entire thing horrifyingly, amusingly fascinating in the same way that men sit and watch as a badly laden wagon tips over in the street. There is a big old “however” coming after this though. That is that I do think it's laudable that people are going out into the world to find out what's out there and learn a bit about both the world and themselves.

HOWEVER.

You do need to make sure that you are doing it for the right reasons. This is one of those places where the Philosopher had it right. The destination is not what matters here, it is the journey that is important. If all you are going out for is to find someone to love that is not according to the marriage that you have had arranged for you by your parents. If all you are going out for is to get rich, gain prestige, fame, infamy and the like. If all you are going out to do is to confirm your very narrow views on the world rather than seeing what is actually out there.

If that is all you are going out to do. Then this is not the lifestyle for you. You will soon find that the world does not work like that. The monster will not love you and is more likely to eat you, or if you're lucky, avoid you entirely. Bandits are far more likely to steal everything that you have on you. People that you speak to will hate you, ridicule you and then, when you take offence, they will apologise, back down and then slit your throat while you sleep and bury you in the back woods somewhere where no-one will ever find you.

This is the truth of life out here.

I will get to why I survived in a moment.

So instead, what you have to do is to go out there for the right reasons. Come out to learn. Come out to see, listen, help and take in what it is that everyone is telling you. See for yourselves, don't trust me, don't trust your tutors or your parents. Come out and see what's going on for yourself.

The most important thing that you can have when you come out on the road as I have is an open mind. You must have the ability to take in what you are seeing and then accept that the world is not what you have been led to believe that it might be. That is vital. Nothing kills out here more assuradly than presumption.

For example. A nobleman's son thinks he's better than the villagers that he travels amongst and demands food and drink fit for his station. The villagers find him arrogant and then, because he's not their lord's son. They quietly take him off somewhere and tell the next passer by that “The wolves got 'im.”

Open mind, it's vital.

The other thing that you absolutely have to accept and take in is that luck plays a huge part of survival out here. Luck. You want an example? Why did none of the above stuff happen to me?

I'll tell you.

I found Kerrass within about a week of leaving home. It was a few days at most. Near enough to civilisation that I was still staying in inns and taverns every night so the roads were still fairly clear, there were soldier patrols on a regular basis. But when I look back, I wasn't that far away from the wilds and there would have been more than one group of bandits out there that would not have been afraid of my little quarterstaff.

And then Kerrass spent a good year to six months confronting me with all of my misconceptions and beating me round the head with them. It took him time and cost us both blood.

I was lucky. Never get away from that. Never believe otherwise. I certainly don't. I was lucky. I was in the right place at the right time and I had the right mix of personality, knowledge and experience to get through to Ariadne. I had the right mix of anger at my past and dogged determination, as well as money, to convince Kerrass to take me with him.

And then I had the right mix of stupidity and insanity to run into a hut with a monster crawling up out of the floor.

I was lucky. There were a thousand and one different factors that meant that I could get to where I am today. And all of them conspired together to get me there. Do not convince yourself that you can follow my methods exactly and that this will carry you forwards. You must find your own path and be lucky.

So do I have any other advice? Certainly. As I say, the most important thing that you need if you go travelling is an open mind. This is essential and cannot be done without. The second thing is a guide. Someone who knows how the world works and is willing to take you with them and to accept what is going on.

And then, and this goes back to the thing about the open mind, you must listen to them. Do not assume that you know more than they do. Do not assume that, because you are paying them to guide you around and look after you, that does not mean that you are in charge. If they tell you not to go somewhere then DON'T GO THERE. It's not that hard.

Do learn some basic first aid.

Do learn how to use some weapons that are more dangerous looking than a stick. I recommend a bow as well as a melee weapon if you have time. I've been learning and it's hard work.

Don't carry too much money. There are thieves everywhere, including the mercenary that you hired. If you're being foolish then they might consider just slitting your throat and taking what you have on you. Open an account with a bank or a money lender so that you must always be present to withdraw money rather than them accepting a note that can be forged. I can recommend the Vivaldi banks and the Krotschen money-lenders. Both of these establishments have guards at every branch and you can set up in advance that, if you are under duress or otherwise being forced to withdraw money against your will, then you can be “taken into custody” by the guards, or otherwise protected from mischief.

Lower your standards when it comes to food and accomodation. I will say this as simply as I can. If you regularly suffer from a weak digestive system or bad back, then life on the road is not for you. Likewise learn that sometimes, there are not inns and taverns available and that the best and easiest thing to do is to sleep under a hedge.

Having said that, learn to cook a few simple meals that are markedly different from each other and can be prepared over a small fire. Oooh, and always carry salt, pepper and some cooking herbs with you. You will thank me for it later.

But when you do end up staying with a farming family or some villagers then I can suggest a couple of quick pieces of advice. Never ever mistake a lack of education as being that someone lacks in intelligence. This is another one of those mistakes that can get you killed really easily. These people also know when they are being condescended to and patronised, just as children always know that.

Always accept hospitality in whatever form it takes. One drink and a bit of food, even if you are not hungry or if the food is not to your taste or looks disgusting. Even if they are plainly poorer than the dirt off the bottom of your boots, take the food and eat it. Because if you don't, even if you decline out of pity, then you are throwing your advantages and relative wealth in their faces and they will hate you for it. “Ooohhhh, too good for the likes of us is he?” and other phrases of that kind will be heard.

What is happening there is that they are being extraordinarily generous with you and you need to respect and accept that. When this happens, nod, smile, accept that you will occasionally be the butt of some farmer's jokes and laugh along with them. Because they hold your life in their hands. Do not think otherwise.

Learn this phrase. “That was lovely, thank you very much.” Even the poorest of tavern cooks will think better of you if you compliment their food. Let alone farmer's wives.

Never ever ever seduce and sleep with the village, farmer or merchant's wives or daughters under the same roof as their parents. There are several reasons for this. The first is the very real possibility that the girl is trying to get pregnant, sometimes even at the orders of the Father, in order to have a bastard child that needs looking after by you or your family. This or to trap you into a marriage.

Secondly, the girl might be trying to seduce you in order so that she can run away with you for a life of luxury and comfort.

Thirdly, if they are seducing you, how many others have they seduced and with the state of sexual hygeine out in the villages, what do you stand to catch? If this is a form of entertainment that you intend to pursue then you should no that I do not condone it, but take some common remedies for a variety of different poxes with you.

And finally, I remind you that while you sleep under their roofs, you are in their power. If the father decides that you are having your way with his darling child, then again, a knife in the dark, a poison in your food. Even the most highly trained, best equipped, veteran of many battlefields and tourneys, knight. Even they have to sleep and eat occasionally and that's how these people will get you if they decide to.

I will admit that this is less of a problem for any potential female reader.

However, again, I do have some advice if this kind of entertainment is something that you want to partake in.

The first is ensure that the partner is willing. I shouldn't have to tell you why that is important. Secondly, If you must seduce the offspring, whether male or female, of the person that you are staying with, then do so under a different roof from their parents, Kerrass recommends the stables as there are often escape routes from there. Ensure that the partner in question remembers you fondly. Both male and female travellers should carry preventatives with you, whether you intend to get involved or not. Because, as I have recently found out, sometimes circumstances can carry you away.

Aim to confine your attentions to older men and women who know what they want and know what they are getting rather than naive young folk. Boys and girls over the age of nineteen is best in Kerrass' opinion. Be honest as to what they are getting and expect honesty in return. If you get the sense that you are being toyed with, then walk away.

Ok. I've got one last piece of advice and this is the piece of advice that none of you want to hear. That none of you want to get. But it might be the most important.

Before you leave home, ensure that your will and testament is in order and held by a reputable solicitor. Write letters to be sent to the people that you love where you say all of the things that you have never got to say and leave these letters with the same solicitor with strict instructions as to when these letters are to be sent out. Instructions regarding how long people should wait after you have gone missing before the will is enacted and the letters are sent out.

And finally, say tender good byes to the people that you care about. You might come back injured, you might come back sick or chaged due to the things that you have seen or learned (hello again). Give the people that love you a memory to hold onto in the dark days to come where they sit up at night, stare into the hearth fire and worry about where you are and what you are doing.

You are welcome.

So I read the letters and set them aside, wrote my rant and threw that on the fire for the immature, self-flaggelating and insensitive dog leavings that it was. Then I sketched out some notes on what I actually thought about all of this stuff before setting that aside too. I was still working on earlier chapters in this series. Writing down what Kerrass had said about the Goddess properly while thinking about how all of that must have affected him and what living like that would do.

It cast quite a lot into a different light as well. And I spent quite a long time staring into the fire and thinking about those things and going over past events and past circumstances to see if, what I now knew about Kerrass, changed anything that I thought I already did.

It did. It certainly couches the Trial of Death in a new light and I wonder if that means that he made that up or whether there are paralells in the lives of other Witchers. I must remember to ask one next time I bump into one.

When/If I suppose.

I went for a walk before taking another bath. I have no idea why I suddenly have the urge to bathe so often but I do. It's not a luxury. I actually really struggle with the urge to bathe. It's an activity that needs to be done, don't get me wrong, but for a man like me and in my position, I have found that it leaves a long time to sit and think. You can't distract yourself from the world while you are in the bath. I did try reading a book in the bath once but the steam got into the paper and ruined the thing.

I received another message to say that Mark and Emma were hoping that I could join them in the morning for a family conference. They understood that I might not be able to make it, might not be strong enough, might not be able to face the prospect of sitting and talking to them for a long period of time. But they asked that, if that were the case, that they should send word.

The message sent me into anoter round of tears. I'm getting really fucking sick of the tears. Even the smallest thing can set me off and then I'm hopeless for ages. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have literally lost hours to just sitting around and weeping. It's boring apart from anything else and I always find myself wondering what else I could be doing at the same time. I hate it. But there it is. One of those things that has been shaken loose in my head since everything came down. Another thing that you, dear reader, need to be warned about I suppose. That if you mess with strange powers from other realms of existence, then you can expect to have your head messed with.

I don't care for it myself but there you go.

The other problem with all of these emotions boiling up all the time, without warning or without consulting me for convenience, is that it's exhausting as well. Sometimes, I find myself in need of a nap afterwards, with the sheer effort involved. The other thing to say is that I was always thirsty. I suppose the sheer amount of water that was being shed from my eyes meant that I needed to recharge that water from somewhere.

But, all joking aside. It was tiring. I was spending large amounts of time lost to exhaustion. The only way that I could avoid it was by distracting myself with something. Most commonly work as I could wile away hours at a time with writing something to do with the book or the next article for the magazine or working on classifying the monsters that I had encountered for the new books on creatures that have arrived in the world since the most recent conjunction.

The chapter on the Yukki-Onna especially is worth reading I think. I'm particularly proud of that one.

However, the problem with distraction as a technique for avoiding all the emotions that boil away under the surface is that it only works for so long. Then you will find yourself sitting in the bath, trying to sleep, eating your dinner or having a good hard shit in the out house and then all of those thoughts and feelings come boiling out of you without warning.

Otherwise, just keeping them in check is exhausting.

So I was due to have the promised talk with Emma and Mark. I was dreading it but it didn't occur to me that I should put it off or delay the matter in any way. It needed doing and like any unpleasant job, it was better that it be done sooner rather than later. But I wasn't looking forward to it.

I tried to think about the various things that they were going to ask me. I still had no idea how to proceed on the matter with Ariadne as waslking away didn't seem like an option, just the thought of getting on my horse and riding away was enough to reduce me to tears, sweating and shaking. But nor could I just hurl myself at her feet and beg for forgiveness. I knew that I still loved her and I knew that I was being silly and that I should just go to her and talk. But I had no idea about how I was going to start that.

I also couldn't think about what I was going to do with Kerrass. The truth was that the person that I wanted to talk all of this out with was Kerrass. But he was the one that had dumped me in this mess. Of course that was untrue, unfair and I know that. But at the same time, that was how I felt. I am becoming used to the thinking process of recognising the difference between my grown up brain and my childhood brain. I was self-aware enough to know that the part of me that was in charge more than any other was my childish brain but knowing that and dealing with that were two different problems. I missed Kerrass, I missed training with him and talking these problems through with him.

But I had no idea what to do about that either.

Now here's another little problem. I also knew that worrying about all of this was pointless. I knew that. But at the same time, I felt the need to strategise, to figure things out. To come up with arguments and things to think about. The fact that I also knew that they wanted to talk about Sam and what was going to happen in Toussaint, whatever that was, when we all went back there was immaterial.

I felt stupid, ungrateful and unfair to two of the people that I love most in the entire world. But that doesn't change the fact that that was what I was feeling.

I didn't sleep well that night, and I didn't eat much of the food properly either so I was feeling pretty shitty the following morning when I went to see them. I did manage to make a proper effort though and put some clothes on. I didn't think it would be entirely proper to go and greet my sister and my brother in a pair of trousers and a blanket.

They were in one of the guest rooms. I could tell that Mark was there because some of the Cardinal Guards were outside. But this was Emma's semi-permanent guest house. It was the one that she always stayed in whenever she came to talk things over with Ariadne. There was an attached lab, a couple of studies, one for Laurelen and Emma each as well as a receiving room for Emma to speak to people about business when they inevitably found out where she was and tracked her down.

When I arrived, I was shown in promptly. The room was furnished according to Emma's tastes although with a slight skew to suggest that it had been done so on Ariadne's instructions. So there was a sense of the room being slightly off.

Emma likes to expand into a room. She would much rather have one, small painting that she absolutely loves than have loads of them covering the walls. She likes comfort, large, soft sofas and chairs with large soft cushions. She also likes to be warm, so as well as a roaring fireplace the place was covered in fluffy blankets that visitors are encouraged to wrap around themselves.

If Emma could get away with it, she would have live music playing at all times. She is the first ruler of Castle Coulthard to employ a minstrel on a permanent basis. An innovation that she has only recently taken on once she realised that Mark had no intention of making the castle his. Despite the fact that he now, all but, lived between home and the Hierophant's palace in Novigrad.

The minstrel in question was off somewhere, dismissed for the purposes of the coming conversation.

Laurelen was there. I don't entirely know how I felt about that. I was the first, outside of Emma obviously, to welcome Laurelen to the family. But now that she was here, I kind of felt... as though she was an intruder. This was massively unfair both to her and to Emma. I knew that and I know that but I'm supposed to be honest here. I'm supposed to be laying it all out here for everyone to see so there it is.

Laurelen is, of course, ridiculously attractive and part of it might be my general reluctance to admit my various weaknesses before attractive women. I don't know, but that might certainly be part of it. But also, this was going to be hard enough and painful enough without having to tell it all to someone else.

My feeling wasn't helped by the fact that she was laughing at some joke that Mark had made when I walked in.

I was announced and the three of them looked over at me. It was clear very quickly that Laurelen had already made her mind up for me and rose, finished her drink and started walking towards me.

“I'm going to go and see if I can annoy Ariadne with something.” She declared. “I want to know how she's getting on with extracting and replicating viable tissue from dead samples.”

“I didn't understand a word of that.” Mark joked.

“I did.” Emma declared. “Be careful though will you.” She shouted to her wife. “You know you can stay if you want.”

“I know. But I think that this is better between the three of you.”

She turned to look at me and stood in front of me for a moment. The look in her eyes was not sympathy, but nor was it the condemnation that I suppose I was dreading. Instead there was understanding. One old soldier to another, was the vibe that I was getting from her. She looked at me like that for a long moment before she threw her arms around me.

“It will not be as bad as you think,” She whispered. “They love you. I love you. You'll get out of this.”

I took a deep shuddering breath. “You really can stay if you want to.” I forced myself to say. The second sentence was easier. “You really are family now after all.”

“I know.” She said. “But you don't want me here. Not really. Come talk to me later if you wish but I think that other people have priority.”

And then she was gone. But that was ok, because tears were already making my vision blurry.

I dashed them from my eyes angrily. “Flame curse it to hell.” I snapped and moved over to a chair where I could sit with my head in my hands and wait for the tears to pass.

I heard a rustling of silks as Emma sat next to me and put her arms round me.

“I'm getting really fucking sick of this.” I wanted to snarl it but I suspect that it came out more as a whimper than anything else.

“I know Freddie,” Emma whispered as she pulled me into a proper hug. “I know.”

The attack didn't last long though and Emma pulled away.

“How are you holding up big man?” Mark wondered.

“About the same,” I commented. “Not gonna lie. It's fucking shitty. I would apologise for my language but saying that, “it feels really bad” doesn't really cover the way I feel.”

“I suspect that we can forgive you your language.” Emma grinned. “I've said worse.”

“No you haven't.” Mark protested. “You are my perfect, pure, virginal little sister. You can't possibly know what all of those words mean.”

Emma winked at me. “Mark, my same-sex lover just left the room. Do you want to know what she did to me last night?”

“I'm not listening.” Mark protested, moving back to the drinks tray.

“Up to her elbows Mark.”

“I can't hear you.”

“Honest to Flame, the only reason I can walk straight is that she does it so often that I'm used to it by now and....”

“LALALALALALALALALA.” Mark trilled as he poured me a cup of something fortifying.

I laughed. I mean what else was I supposed to do. It would almost have been churlish not to.

And then I burst into tears again before swearing a bit more. Mark poured me a drink and passed it over to me where I discovered that he had poured me a brandy. I had been avoiding alcohol since I had reached Ariadne's estate on the grounds that alcohol reduces your inhibitions and that was not something that I wanted. The loss of self-control was not something that I wanted to put up with at that point in time.

But I had my big sister on one side of me with her arm round me and my big brother, the cardinal of the church, being the one to actually offer the drink, I thought I might get away with this one.

The fiery liquid burned on the way down. I nodded my thanks as I fought to gain mastery over my emotions and passed him the glass back.

“So,” I began after a while when my breathing had stopped juddering and shaking in my throat. “Is this the part where the pair of you gang up on me and tell me that it's time that I stop travelling round the continent with a Witcher?”

I closed my eyes as I waited for the dreaded response.

“No.” Mark said, I could tell he was smiling as he said it and my eyes snapped open in shock. “Emma and I have talked about the subject and we agree that you are never going to stop travelling.”

“I will admit that I want you to.” Emma said sheepishly. “Partly for selfish reasons as I could really use your help sometimes back at the castle, wrangling all the things, Sam, the wedding, trading partners and all of that. You are far better and more presentable at court than I am and have far more friends there than I do.” She took a deep breath. “But I do want you to stop. Even as I register the fact that you are never going to.”

Mark took up the thread again.

“We both agree that you are never going to stop. Even if we tried then that effort would be futile. You would probably even agree with us for a while. Spend some time here, or back in Coulthard lands resting up and dealing with things. And then you would run away to join Kerrass on one of his latest adventures, or worse. You would find a cause that you decide needs fighting and then you will wander off somewhere. Running away from us and pushing us away. Neither of us wants that.”

Emma nodded. “We think that you will settle down for a while with Ariadne after the marriage. You will come to live here and spend a year or three playing house and enjoying being a married couple. You will get the place up to where you both want it to be and get it running smoothly. Then, when a routine has become established, you will get itchy feet.

“Then Ariadne will have some kind of long term project that she wants to devote a month or two to. You will get in touch with Kerrass and then go wandering again. Travel is your calling. Travel and education through that travel. You see things and then you want to tell everyone about it. It's your way of expanding your mind and learning about new things, new people and new aspects to the continent that we all live in. So although I want you to stop travelling, I accept that you are never going to stop and I am working at coming to terms with that.”

Mark had pulled over a chair and had collapsed into it. I noticed that he had brought the decanter over with him and he had refilled my glass as well as poured a drink for Emma and himself.

“Having said all of that,” Mark came into the conversation. “We hope that you will agree with us that you need to take some steps in order to take better care fo yourself. Does that sound unfair? I stress that I'm here now as your brother, not as your priest.”

I really wanted to just shake my head and get this whole ordeal over with. I wanted to flee from the room, free from their gentle kindness and just get away. I wanted to run from them, say whatever it was that they wanted to hear and get away. It was a physical, sweat inducing effort to think about what they had said and try to take it in.

The two of them exchanged glances and settled in to wait as my brain tried to process and protest everything that they had said. It took a long time. It was like sitting in the middle of a hot bath of unpleasant and sour alcohol while waiting for the next thought to turn up. I couldn't force the words to come. I could only gently coax them into existence.

“It's not unfair.” I finally managed to force the words out through gritted teeth. It was easy to forget that they were doing this out of love. They were doing this because they cared. But in the heat of the moment, it felt worse than it had while sitting in the chair of torture at the hands of Sansum.

No, that is not an exaggeration.

“I take it that you have suggestions.” I began. Sweat was pouring down my face and I looked around. Emma handed me a towel.

“We do,” Mark admitted. “Several actually. For a start, I should tell you that Emma has read your recent account of what happened with Kerrass' Goddess. I thought it only fair that she read it.”

Of all of the things, I was most ok with this, even though, in hindsight, it was the thing that I should have been most angry about.

I realised that they were looking at me expectantly. It took me another few moments to realise that they were waiting for me to acknowledge the previous response. I nodded.

“So,” Mark began, “for a start, there needs to be a conversation between you and Kerrass. He sometimes still seems to be falling into the trap of thinking of you as the naive little rich boy that he met all that time ago. In some ways, that can never be escaped from. You are not as skilled as he is, not as knowledgeable as he is and not as.... fortified as he is against certain problems. You have said that you both have boundaries that exist in careful boxes, anything to do with a Witcher Contract or a monster attack then you defer to him. Anything involving social etiquette or social situations is something that you are involved in.”

“But,” Emma butted in, literally and figuartively. “You need to be more honest with each other. You need to be able to ask him what is going on and he can no longer be putting you off with a simple “Witcher business” and expecting you to put up with that. Part of what has got you into trouble here is that you didn't know what you were getting into and, as a result, you were unprepared for the ordeal that you were about to undergo. That both of you were going to undergo.”

“So that needs to stop.” Mark came back in. “You need to be able to demand information from him and he needs to realise that going through these things goes both ways. It is not just physical injury that you risk in these matters. That this can also damage you... you know.... spritiually, mentally.”

“Does that sound unfair?” Emma asked me. I got the sense that there was a tick-sheet somewhere. That they had prepared a list of things that they wanted to talk to me about and were simply working through the list. Not a bad idea but it did leave me feeling a little... uncomfortable that they had been plotting this.

“You also need to let go of an annual format for your travelling.” Mark was pouring himself another drink. “The first year, fair enough. The second year was cut a little short by what was happening with the Princess Dorne in the South. This year, you have stayed out until the Winter. Everything stops for Winter. We know this. It's a fact of life. But you've been doing this for three years now and look at what it's done to you.

“We know that Kerrass liked to build in periods of rest and relaxation for the two of you, but you need to accept.... You need to accept that you are not a Witcher and that you cannot keep up with his pace of physical and mental exertion. So sometimes you need to accept that the year might start a little later than you had both initially planned, that you are not properly prepared to go out there again.

“Or it needs to finish earlier because you are tired, or even that you need to take a month or two off in the middle so that you can enjoy the summer or whatever. You need to learn that it's ok to take a break from all the horror that you see when you are travelling with Kerrass.”

I nodded my acceptance of this. This too seemed reasonable and logical. I could see some problems with it but nothing worth the argument. The problem being that, often, I didn't realise that I needed the rest until too late. But then Emma jumped in with precisely that point.

“You also need to be better with your own self..... Oh I don't know the word.... Your self-awareness I suppose. You need to be able to know when you are struggling, or need a break. You need to take the time out of your day to sit down and figure out whether or not you need to stop for a while and either, go home, take some time out with friends in a nearby city or have Ariadne, or Laurelen for that matter, come and get you so that you can go home and get some quality time by yourself or otherwise taking the time to have a bit of relaxation time.”

“That will be less of a problem when the two of you are married.” Mark put in, “Or so Ariadne reassures me. She tells me that once that happens and the two of you have....uh....”

“Fucked.” Emma teased him again. “The word you are looking for is Fucked, Shagged, Screwed, Made love, put her feet on the ceiling, hidden the rabbit, nailed, hammered, played whoopey, boffed,”

“I suppose the correct term would have been “consummated.” Mark glared at Emma. I could see that he was trying to be serious, but I appreciated Emma's attempt to lift the mood. “Ariadne has promised us that when that happens, then she will be more in tune with you than she has ever been before. Which, in turn, means that she will be able to tell when you are struggling and if you do not answer her queries through.... whatever link the pair of you have established, then you will be connected enough that she will just turn up and whisk you away should the need arise.”

“I'm not sure how I feel about that.” I managed to comment. I was quite proud of myself to be honest, it was the most I'd said in some time.

“I think it's amazing.” Emma informed me. “It means that I don't have to worry as much if I know that one of the most powerful women on the continent can just turn up, roast anything that might be upsetting you, including Kerrass if it comes to that, and then take you off somewhere to be looked after.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Mark said nothing although I could tell that he agreed with Emma on this subject. Even though I suspect he would have preferred if my aid turned up in a more traditional manner. Like a Regiment of church knights for example.

There was a pause as the pair of them exchanged glances unhappily. This was the big one and the one that they thought I wouldn't like. This was the real reason that they had brought me here and were talking to me.I didn't know what to do to brace myself so I just sat there for a moment.

“We think that youneed to leave the search for what happened to Francesca to the professionals.” Mark told me.

There was a pause as the pair of them let that sink in for a moment.

“It's time Freddie.” Emma added, her hand on my arm.

They were right to be worried about this moment. I felt myself draw back and try to rebel at the very thought of it. I wanted to resist. It was like a pain in the chest, or the gut and I felt myself bend over and crease up. As though someone had tied a knot in my chest.

I could feel them exchanging glances over my head.

“There's no easy way to say this Freddie.” Mark began, sadness dripping from every letter in every word that he said. “But Frannie is dead. The Imperial Intelligence service, the Armed and Investigative services of the Continent, the Lodge of Sorceresses, the Witchers and you have been unable to find her or even find a hint as to what might have happened to her in Toussaint.”

He sighed and his own voice shook a little as he spoke.

“The one theory that no one has been able to disprove is the simplest one. And who was it that said that in the absence of all other factors, the simplest explanation is often the truth?”

I didn't answer. Emma held me as I sobbed and I thought I could feel her own tears as they ran into my hair as she rested her chin on the top of my head.

“The simplest explanation, the avenue that we can't pursue is this. Someone took her, they framed Sam for their own purposes which could be as simple as just throwing investigators off the scent. They took her intending to find some way to get at us, or get at the Empress, but when they found out the amount of shit that they had called down to land on their heads. They realised that asking for terms or doing some kind of prisoner exchange or organising a ransom of some kind was pointless. So they slit her throat and dumped her in a Necrophage nest. Or out to sea for the drowners and sirens. Or any of the other ways that a person could be disposed of.”

There was a pause and a rustling of cloth. My guess was that he wiped his own eyes during the pause.

“But that's the one thing we can't take into account. It might even have been factors that were working for our enemies or enemies of the Empress that realised that they had over-reached. But she's gone Freddie and we.... you need to start to come to terms with the fact that she is never going to be found. That she is dead and that there is nothing that we can do about it.”

I tried to rally. “But...”

“Freddie, she's the most famous missing person in history.” Emma all but whispered it. “Everyone knows, at least, a basic description of what she looks like and how it all happened. The rewards that have been offered for information that would lead to her rescue are enough that what Ciri is essentially offering is the landmass equivalent of Aedirn. Aedirn might be a mess and worth fuck and all after all the armies tromping over it, but still.”

“That's a lot of motivation Freddie.” Mark took up the point. “People have been searching for her out of enlightened self-interest more than any other factor and still she hasn't been found.”

“But the magic.” I protested. “To bring an aspect of Jack. To force the possession of that tutor. To whisk her away under the careful watch of the Lodge of Sorceresses.”

“Valid points all.” Mark admitted. “But you pursued that lead. The people that could do that kind of thing, or have access to that kind of thing are Dark Cults who get their magic through different means. Apparently, the wild hunt could have done it but they were defeated. And the rest of it?”

He shook his head. At some point I had raised my eyes and saw him. He was weeping too. “Freddie, there are several themes to your work. But one of those themes is that you should leave dangerous and specialised work to the professionals. The people to roust out the cults are the churches. Kreve, the Holy Sun or the Eternal Fire. Any of those will do. But the specialists in Magic? Those are the Lodge of Sorceresses. Do you really think that you are more qualified than the Lodge of Sorceresses to hunt down that particular brand of magic?”

He snorted in amusement at something. “Freddie, there's even a competitive aspect to it all. While you have been wandering around and feeling sorry for yourself...”

Emma moved sharply and Mark winced at his own words. “Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean that. I meant it teasingly.” He sighed and rubbed his head. “Flame damn it. But while you've been travelling around, there has been a foundation of a new Brotherhood of Mages. So now, the Lodge of Sorceresses even have competition in the matter while the Brotherhood are coming out of things with something to prove. If they can find out what happened before the Lodge can then it underlines the Men and undermines the Lodge's authority.”

“But the Lodge failed.” I wailed. “The Lodge failed.”

Mark sighed and looked away.

“So did you Freddie.” Emma whispered softly.

I struggled and she let go as I sprang out of the chair and stalked off to the other side of the room.

“You're in the best possible company Freddie.” She said. “But why did you think that you would succeed where everyone else would fail?”

I could feel a terrible anger building in my belly. All the while I knew that she was right, as was Mark. She carried on speaking.

“Was it that you felt that your connection to Frannie would give you an.... an edge, or an advantage in some way? This is not a race Freddie.”

Mark had moved off a little in an effort to calm down or something. Emma carried on speaking, gently, relentlessly and there was no escape from her words.

“Or was it that you had this romantic notion that you would be the one to find her. You and Kerrass. A scholar and, by his own admission, not one of the best of Witchers. But because you were her brother, did you think it would be you, that because you had lifted the curse on Sleeping Beauty, that you had rescued Ariadne and found your Father's killer. Did you think that.... I don't know, that you deserved that victory?”

She said nothing for a moment. She saw something in me, I don't know what it was. I don't know whether it was that my shoulder slumped or that I relaxed or something, I don't know. I still don't. But whatever it was that she was looking for, she saw it.

“That's it isn't it. It was your pride. A pride made even worse by the events of the last year. You destroyed the rampaging knights of the Flaming Sword or whatever they called themselves. You brought the news of the Cult of the First-Born out of the North when no-one else could and you lifted a second unsolvable curse that no-one has managed to solve, this one that has been going for over a thousand years, let alone a paltry little century. You've gone and given yourself a Hero complex.”

Emma's voice sounded horrified. She could not have said it differently if she had told me that I had cut my own arm off.

“It's not just that though is it.” Mark joined her. “I asked you about this last night remember. Why does it have to be you? It's a martyr complex as well. Someone has to do it so why not you? If you don't do it, who else will? You've been that way since Father died and the rest of us had our heads stuck up our own arses with grief. And it was grief Freddie. Grief and shock. Not stupidity as you quite unfairly labeled it. Freddie, look at us.”

There was a depth of sorrow to Mark's voice that forced me to turn and look at the pair of them. I did not do so consciously, I did not decide to do so. I certainly didn't want to do so. But I turned and looked at the pair of them. I had no idea what I was expecting.

I suppose that I was expecting the pair of them to look as though they were attacking me. I turned and expected to see enemies, opponents, angry people that were coming after me, chasing me and trying to take me down.

But I didn't see that. What I saw instead were two, desperately unhappy people that were desperately trying to get through to me.

They reminded me of a thing that I saw occasionally while on the road and that reminder struck me in the face like a spike of ice between the eyes. I literally shivered.

When people tell you about their curse, or the monster that is eating people and otherwise terrorising the village. They always know about this because they have lost someone to the creature. There is always someone missing and the one begging for help always pleads with us to find their missing child or darling.

You would be surprised at just how often, the person missing is a child. Prepare yourself for that as well if you decide to take yourself out onto the road.

And that's what they reminded me of. They reminded me of two people that had lost someone and were pleading with me to find them. Another astonishing similarity is that desperation is a great leveller. It brings everyone down to the same level. From the highest Lord in the land to the lowest beggar, when they lose a child to the darkness that exists on the very edge of civilisation then they all look the same.

This realisation was what struck me. Mark and Emma were afraid that they were losing me to a monster. I wanted to turn and find that monster and slay that monster, but I had no idea who or what that monster was. I would have killed myself then and there if it meant that they would not have that look of pain and anguish on their faces.

Perhaps you have spotted what the monster was before I did. I have to admit that as I look back, it seems pretty obvious to me.

Both of them had tears streaming down their faces. Mark did not bother to hide them, he was pale and his eyes were bloodshot. Emma had clearly been scrubbing at her face a bit. She had a handkerchief that she was weaving between her fingers backwards and forwards.

“Freddie.” Mark said. “Do you look down on us for not rushing around and trying to find Francesca too?”

I said nothing and, again, Mark saw his answer in me. I have no idea how.

“Do you want me to devote the full resources of my office to that end? Do you want Emma to burn the Coulthard training company and spend all of that money on finding it. All the time the pair of us, Sam too, to join you out on the road as we look for her?”

He was not incredulous. Nor was he angry. He spoke carefully and softly. He more reminded me of a man trying to speak to a crying child or to coax out a terrified animal.

I did want that. I did want that and they knew it too. They looked at each other, one of those shared glances that happens between two people that have known each other almost all their lives. One of those looks of communication.

“Freddie, do you know why we don't do either of those things?” Emma asked, speaking just as carefully as Mark did.

I nodded, forcing it out.

I lied as I did so.

And they saw through me.

“Freddie, neither of us would think any less of you if you thought it.” Mark said.

“The truth is that it has occurred to both of us.” Emma went on. “But think it through.”

This was the part of the conversation that they had rehearsed. They had known, or suspected that this was the case. They had talked and strategised about what they were going to say and when. I don't know why I was surprised that they had done that.

“I am dying Freddie.” Mark said. “I've got nine months to a year of useful life left to me after this and then I'm essentially going to be a senile old man after that until my heart, my lungs or my brain just stop working. Life on the road would kill me. Also, we are not the only family that has lost someone. Not even the only family that has lost someone since the war. Fuck, we're not even the only family that has lost someone to mysterious forces that no-one can explain.

“We live on the continent, that shit happens all the time as well you know. You know this more than anyone as you've spent part of the last three years looking for these people. So what gives me the right to use the full weight of my office to try and find one woman. My job is to improve matters for all of the people on the continent. Not just those people that I Love as family. I'm supposed to carry the light of the Eternal Flame to all corners of the Continent. Not just the specific bit that I look at. The Eternal Flame is not a searching Lantern.”

“And I?” Emma shook her head. “How many people would lose their homes and their lives if the Coulthard trading company was destroyed. How many sailors, wagoneers, merchants, traders, craftsmen, farmers, how many would would lose their livelihoods if I stopped doing what we do. The continent runs on money. We know it and you know it. The economic realities are part of the reasons that Nilfgaard invaded the North and didn't give up after the first attempt. If Coulthard trading company collapses then it is more than just us losing our homes. It's hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. All of them are people that I have a responsibility to.”

They were right. And I hated them for being right. And I hated myself for not seeing it.

But that was unfair of course. I had seen it. But I hadn't wanted to look at it.

“Freddie,” Emma went on. “I love you, but you need to let go of that naivete. You are not the hero of some book. Francesca is not going to come running out into your arms. And you need to let go of that fantasy. You need to let it go now and you need to do so before it kills you. Because it will kill you now.”

Her voice broke. “I... I can't lost you Freddie. Not you too.” She sobbed and turned away.

The small, hateful part of my soul wondered if she had rehearsed that too.

Mark sighed and patted her on the shoulder as she turned away. He looked at me for a long time before turning away and moving back towards the drinks cabinet and pouring himself another stiff drink.

“You want one?” He asked in a voice that rasped a little. I nodded and went to join him. Almost automatically. Following that impulse he led me back to where the chairs were and gestured for me to sit. The ingrained habit of obedience in the face of my brother's authority ran deep and I almost felt my legs folding under me of their own accord.

“This is no longer just about you Freddie,” He said after bowing his head in thought for a while. “It's about the family and by that I don't just mean me, Emma and Sam. Nor do I mean that in the way that father used to say it, as though it was some flag or some altar that we should all sacrifice ourselves to in the name of furthering the work that he and his father started. I include Laurelen in that too.

“I was wrong about her and our sister. I still struggle with it and I work on it every day. But love is love and your sister and she love each other very much. “It's also about Ariadne as well. It sometimes surprises me about how quickly your betrothed brought me round on the subject of her presence. You're a lucky man there Freddie.”

I was wise enough to spot the subtext there. “Don't throw her away” my brother was telling me.

“But also think of this. Sam is unmarried. He will have to marry some day. Possibly in a few years after he's had time to calm his shit down a bit and he starts accepting marriage proposals again. Because in a year and a half, whethere we like it or not,” he glanced at Emma as he said that, “he is going to be Lord Coulthard. And what with Kalayn lands and Coulthard lands, even if he leaves Coulthard castle as Emma's demesne, he is almost certainly going to be named as a Count, he is going to get marriage proposals whether the women want to marry him or not.”

He winced in comic sympathy. “Flame Freddie, can you imagine some poor girl being thrown into this family by a father that wants the political and comercial alliance?”

I felt myself smile. The image was rather comical.

We sat in silence for a bit. Emma seemed to be leaving the boys to talk for a bit.

“This is a cheap shot Freddie and I'm sorry that I have to use it.” Mark said suddenly. “I am dying and Sam is going to be Lord Coulthard.” He sighed. He seemed to be saying it over and over again in an effort to get me to believe it. “Once upon a time it was Francesca that held this family together. She was the golden child, the one that we all loved. All of us. Even Edmund loved her in his own special away and fuck am I glad that he was out of the castle by the time she got past the age of ten.”

He sighed again and scratched at a point on his temple.

“But Francesca is gone. I'm still not over it and neither is Emma. I suspect that it's eating Sam alive as well although he's even worse at talking about his feelings than you are. But here's the thing that you can do that Sam cannot. You lead this family now. It was said in the north and it bears repeating. You lead this family now. Not Sam, not Emma and certainly not me. If you called we would all come. And I will remind you that...

“You have always got on with Emma, you have been close to her and respect her and listen to her. Sam does not. But in the same way that you listen to Emma, Sam listens to you. If anything happens to you, anything at all whether you end up in the ground or whether you end up in an asylum somewhere, Sam and Emma are going to tear each other apart. So the only thing, the only person that is going to keep this entire thing from falling apart is you.”

I looked away.

“Freddie, you've shouldered so much. It's my fault as much as anyone else. I put this on you back when Dad died and I know it. I had a lot on my mind back then. I had just been told that I was sick and I was in denial over that and I'm sorry. I don't think I ever properly apologised for that.” He grinned suddenly. “I can almost feel you wanting to understand and tell me that it's alright but it's not. I was an ass. To you, to Kerrass and as a result, I all but left the leadership of the family to you. It was you that stepped up.”

He stared into space for a long time.

“You've led this family a long way Freddie. We've gotten further than even Father ever dreamed that we would. We are in the confidences of the Empress, Emma is going to be made Imperial Secretary to the Treasury within the next couple of years when the Empress is a bit more secure and a bit more fed up with all of the old men surrounding her. And neither Emma, nor I, think otherwise. You've taken all of that on. All of it.

“But it's time to let this thing go. It's time Freddie, before it smothers you.”

There was a rustle of Fabric as Emma rejoined the fray.

“We need you Freddie. Ariadne needs you, I need you. Hell, Kerrass needs you too, and Sam. We are going to need you over the coming months and years. You cannot give up on us. Frannie's gone.” She sobbed. “We need you now more than ever.”

There had been something growing in my chest for a while now and it wrenched itself free with an almost tearing sound. “But what am I going to do?” I half wailed, half screamed.

We've all talked a bit about those few days and those first few conversations since this time. My first confession with Mark, the first of many. The first conversation as siblings with Mark and Emma and still others. But one of the things that we all agreed on was that that was the moment where I both realised and admitted that it was a problem. I had bounced off the bottom of my mood, I was on the mend physically and mentally. But this was the point where I realised that my search for Francesca was a problem.

That my obsession with finding Francesca had become as big and as dark as it was to the point where it obscured everything else. Hiding all that was good and all that was going bad in my life. It was certainly that which had kept me from realising how bad my own.... self was getting. How injured I was, physically and mentally. It kept me from seeing how much I had deteriorated, how tired I was. It had kept me from seeing so much as I had taken all of those things and put them away, put them to one side, convincing myself that I would deal with those things when Francesca had been found.

But Emma and Mark were right to ask the question. What if she was never found. What if we never found out what had happened to her. Another theme that occasionally crops up in what I talk about is that cliches exist for a reason and one of those cliches is that no-one wants their loved ones to stop living after they are gone.

I thought of Francesca and she would hate to see what was happening now. I rather think that there would be a little bit of her that would have mischeivously enjoyed the drama for a while, but after that, it would just start making her feel sad and then, she would start to blame herself. She would want us to grow up. She would want us to move on. It would hurt her that we were all so... torn apart.

But that was the moment that I realised that it was a problem. I couldn't have told you that at the time. I was reeling from all the things that everyone kept telling me. I felt like I was under assault but I couldn't defend myself from it. I couldn't fight back because they were doing it out of care and concern for me. But also, I couldn't fight back because they were right. And I knew it too.

And they finally saw that they had gotten through to me and relaxed. Not by much, but there was a kind of attitude of the pair of them relaxing in their chairs. They were done, they didn't have to worry about it too much any more. They could take their time.

“What do you mean Freddie?” Emma asked gently after taking a few deep breaths.

“I...” I had no idea what I had meant. They were just words that had emerged from my brain at that moment and in that time. I tried to reach for it, the.... whatever that had dredged that wail from the depths of my soul and tried to figure out what I was trying to say.

“What are you going to do instead?” Emma wondered. “As we say, we don't want you to stop travelling. We just need you to let go of Francesca. Take better care of yourself. Have a rest, take a break. Take your time with it. Let yourself live a little.”

I shook my head. That felt wrong, I didn't know why but that wasn't what I was trying to say. I had no idea what I was trying to say either. I was staring into space, waiting for the next series of words to form up and make themselves known.

“Freddie, there's lots of work for you to be getting on with.” Mark tried to find his way in to where my head was. “Lots of things for you to be doing. Even now, while your injured, ill or heartsick or whatever it is that we're supposed to be calling it, you have kept up your work. I have told you about all of these people that are trying to emulate you. You could shape them. You could possibly even found a new field of study, you could....”

I shook my head again. A little more violently than I had previously. That felt even worse than whatever it was that Emma had said and I could not articulate as to why.

There was another pause as Emma and Mark exchanged glances. The feeling of urgency about the entire thing had gone. They were waiting for me now. They had said the things that they wanted me to hear so now they were waiting for me to come back at them. To respond, to come back at them.

Mark tried again. “Is it that you need something to look forward to? I would hope that getting married to the woman that you love is...”

I shook my head again. “No.”

Another thought, one of those stupid flashes of humour crossed my mind and before I could stop it, I said it aloud. “Hey look, I actually said a word.”

Emma spluttered and Mark laughed. Emma put her drink down and put her arms round me. “It's alright Freddie, take your time.”

The laughter, that had been the thing that had broken the dam. I hate that little voice. Even when it has saved my life. It's the little voice that started to speak when I needed to confront Ariadne with the realities of the world. It was the little voice that asks the stupid questions and the little voice that cracks jokes in the most stupid of situations.

Even though it is that little voice that made Ariadne fall in love with me, that little voice that made Kerrass let me follow him round, that little voice that had startled a Dragon. It is also the little voice that is born out of my rage and frustration with the world. It is the little voice that is the tip of the dagger, the tip of the blade that opens up the way into the part of me that belongs to the berzerker spirit. Some people have argued that I should depend on that little voice a bit more. That I should let it have it's free rein but I am certain, more certain than I can easily articulate that little voice leads to madness.

And rage.

But in this case, it had broken the lock that I had on my jaw, the lock that I had on my emotions and suddenly, I found that I could speak.

“I've been thinking about this for so long. Over and over and over again. I go through all of the events in Toussaint over and over in my head. I've read and reread and read again, my notes on the events at the time. Both the published versions and the original short hand to see if anything jogs my memory or occurs given the time and the space from the events themselves. There has to be something that I've missed. There has to be something there but....

“But that's been my life for so long now. So what do I do instead. What do I think about? I used to think about Kerrass and Witchers? But let's be fair with each other now. I've written everything that there is to know about Witchers. Everything that a Witcher is willing to tell me anyway. The only way I could go further is if they sat down, told me the actual method of creation, or if an otherwise unknown ancient Witcher turned up to tell me about the First Witchers. Or one of the Mages who came up with the idea and devised the mutations turned out to still be alive.

“I've literally written the book on Witchers. Multiple books in fact.

“Monsters. I can't get excited about different monsters. I could write a chapter on their behaviour, another on their appearance and things but I don't really care about that. There are entire groups of people that devote entire careers to classifying the different types of Griffin that there are. They travel round with Mercenaries, kill the Griffins and then dissect the carcasses so that they can find out the different answers. That's not interesting. What's the point to that.

“So what am I going to do? I can't stop thinking about Francesca. I've been doing it for so long now and yes, I will admit that I shouldn't. I will admit that I feel as though I should, because I feel as though no-one else will or that no-one else will be able to do it quite so well as I can. But what am I going to do in the meantime. How can I stop thinking about Francesca. How can I do that because I honestly don't know the answer there. How can I stop trying to figure that out?”

I looked at the pair of them. They were kind of watching me expectantly, as though they wanted me to answer my own riddle or as though they were waiting for me to get to the next thought.

“Answer me. Please” I begged them. “I really need an answer to this. What am I going to fill my time with if I'm not thinking about Francesca. I can't get away from it. I can't think about anything else. What else am I supposed to do? It's all well and good to tell me that there's a problem but are you really going to just tell me that there's a problem without then giving me any solutions.”

Emma wouldn't meet my gaze for long and she looked away.

Mark was not as shy. “That's because there are no solutions to that riddle Freddie and you know it too. Do not try and deflect your.... Do not try and put us off. Do not try and blame us for trying to help you.” He put a touch of steel in his voice. “Look me in the eye Freddie. You are trying to get angry with us. You are trying to find some reason to justify why you might be able to tell us to fuck off. But that will not work. So let me ask this first. Are we wrong?”

I didn't say anything.

“Is there anything that we have said, here today, unfair?”

I didn't answer that one either.

“Can you see that it is a problem? Can you see that you are killing yourself, killing us, killing Ariadne, Kerrass and all of the people that care about you with this obsession? Can you see that you are making yourself ill with all of this. That your refusal to set this aside will lead to your early grave?”

There were no answers to any of those questions.

“Then do not,” Mark began. “For one moment, lose sight of that. If you wish to get angry at us for pointing these things out then you can do that. If you wish to leave here in the morning and continue your futile search without any of us. You can do that too. But if you do, and you find yourself alone, cold, starving and struggling to survive. You find yourself with enemies all around you and no-one coming to save you. When you get there, because you will, when you get there you will not be able to hide behind the excuse that no-one told you that this was coming.”

And that was the slap. He could not have done it more effectively if he had used his hand.

He sighed and looked down at the drink in his hand. He got up and walked over to the decanter where he carefully poured the remains of the drink into the bottle.

“The truth is that your questions is an impossible one for the rest of us to answer. Oh Emma and I could sit here and suggest potential answers to you until we both die of old age but none of them will satisfy you. I could suggest that you could devote yourself to Ariadne's happiness. Something that you should seriously think about as you've behaved appallingly towards her.

“Again.

“You could devote yourself to any number of academic subjects that we could both throw out. You could be an Ambassador for Nilfgaard, Ciri would take you I'm sure. You could devote yourself to your feudal duties, train with Sir Rickard, take up medicine again, join your sister in trade, join me in the church. Leaving yourself free to marry Ariadne of course but not all church scholars are priests.

“But you will shoot down all of them. None of them will satisfy you. Because the answer to that question is something that you need to answer for yourself.”

He took a deep breath and stared into space for a long time. Long enough that I thought he was done speaking.

“I've never told anyone this.” He began. “No-one knows this except my confessor and the Hierophant in Novigrad. When I first started to get sick, this was a couple of years ago now, I thought nothing of it. I thought that I was young, strong and healthy. I had the advantage of the best medical care in my parish, I got on well with the local priestesses of Melitele and I thought that I would be fine. I went to the priestess and told them that I had been feeling dizzy, short of breath and that I needed something to dull the headache. She wanted me to fo a full examination but I refused.

“I am Father Mark.” I told myself. “This is just a small thing that will not bother me. I will pray, I will work and the Eternal Flame will save me.”

“We know this Mark,” Emma began. “You told us back in Toussaint. Freddie even published it. The man in the flood who drowned.”

Mark smiled a little sadly. “But what I didn't say was just how far I went down the path of blindness before I finally realised how much trouble I was in.

“The Priestess told me that I was sick, that I needed to take a break and that I needed to be examined. I ignored her. Then, I got promoted to Arch-Bishop shortly after the end of the war which meant that I got my own palace and my own, private physician as trained by the best doctors in Oxenfurt. Over and over again, he told me that I was pushing myself too hard and that I was going to make myself ill.

“Then I had my first fainting spell. I ignored the doctors and I ignored the priestesses who told me that I was sick. “I am Mark” I told myself. “I am strong as a Bull, I don't get sick and if I do get sick, the Eternal Flame will keep me safe.” But that's not how this thing works.

“I fainted again and then they finally got it into me that I was seriously ill. That I was dying no less. The Priestesses came and took blood and ran their tests. They listened to my heart and listened to my breathing and told me that I was seriously ill. Possibly even dying.

“This was about the Yule before Father died. I ignored the advice. I started to feel better in the Spring with the warmer weather and my physician started to get upset.

“The truth was that I knew that I was ill. I knew it and it became my obsession to find a cure.”

Mark looked at me from underneath his brows. “My obsession was selfish Freddie, so deny yourself that method of beating yourself up as well. You, at least, want to save someone else.”

He went back to staring back into his own hell.

“I was ill. I could now feel the weakness, feel the shortness of breath. I hid it with all of my strength. I worked harder, I prayed harder. But I was also denying it to myself. I prayed. I prayed so hard and then when my prayers went unanswered, or so I thought, I prayed even harder. I tried to be holier. I tried to be so Holy that the Flame wouldn't possibly allow me to die.

“The two of you know a lot of the rest. How Father died and how I reacted to his moving the family fortune out of my grasp. Looking back, I suspect that he was keeping out of the grasp of my ambition, he thought I would waste it all trying to buy higher office when my eventual goal was far more selfish. I was convinced that if I was just a bit more Holy, a bit more “good” then I would be saved.

“Then I passed out in a service and I could no longer hide my condition from anyone.”

He shook his head.

“The Cardinal came, Laurelen came if you recall Emma?”

Emma nodded. “And she brought Ariadne because Ariadne knew more.”

“And I was told that I was dying. That I could have been saved if I had only accepted help when I had first been told that it was a problem. If I had listened to Kerrass or had gone to Laurelen when I found out who she was. But here's the thing that no-one else knows other than my Confessor and the Hierophant. I did not stop trying to be as Holy as I could. I did not stop trying to be cured. Even when all hope had gone, I still worked to get better, to become more Holy. Even after it was clear to everyone, including myself, that I was dying and that nothing could be done. That the damage that my illness had done to my body was irreperable. I still fought on....

“And my Confessor came to me and told me, pretty much what I am telling you. “Your obsession is poisoning you.” He said to me. “Let it go.” And I struggled, I did, same as you are now and same as you will in the future. But here's the truth Freddie. I talked to my friends, I read what you were doing and I found a new path. You heard my sermon. The path of Service to my fellow being.

“I'm a Cardinal of the Cult of the Eternal Fire. Beat that with a stick.

“But it only happened because I let go of my obsession and moved on to find something else. It's time you moved on too Freddie. Talk, ask questions, read, educate yourself. Your cause will come to you.”

“Easy to say.” I commented.

“Yes, easy to say.” He admitted. “But true. I do not know what you are going through Freddie. But neither have you been through what I have been through. But I understand what it is like to have to let go of an obsession that you have been holding onto for a long time. It sucks. There's a better than evens chance that you will hate both Emma and I for confronting you with this, but it needs to be done before you kill yourself with it. And if we've done nothing else today then we hope that you take in that your current path towards self-destruction is not just going to affect you. You can't turn around and say that you are only taking yourself down. You are going to take down so many other people with you. Francesca deserved better than what happened to her. I will not deny that.

“But you deserve better than what's happening to you. We deserve better as well. It's time to look after the people that we can do something about Freddie. You are still alive and you need to start thinking about looking after yourself and moving on.”

We sat in silence for a while. But his point had gone home. I could feel it worming through the darkness on the edges of my thinking. It was as though I had been living in shadow for a long time and someone had poked a hole in that darkness. It was so very bright. So bright that it might have hurt my eyes but it showed me a better world. It was beautiful in that light.

But it was scary too. I didn't know what was out there. I was comfortable in the darkness and I found that I didn't want to leave it. I felt the conflict within me. The desire to move on and the desire to keep going and I wept with it as another thought occurred to me.

Maybe this was the conflict that the Goddess had tried to move me onto. Maybe this was the thing that she was warning me about.

Emma and Mark sat on either side of me and wrapped me up in a hug. It felt uncomfortable and awkward and I wanted nothing more to push them both away. To reject what they were trying to tell me and to reject what was happening here. I wanted it so badly. I wanted to run out onto the road and continue my search for my missing sister. But, at the same time I knew two things. The first was that I didn't know where to look next. The second was that I knew that Mark and Emma were right. Mark doubly so. Both in his guise as a big brother and in his guise as a priest.

I had to let this go.

I had to keep searching.

Round and round in my head the two thoughts went and I couldn't, not for the life of me, figure out how to break the cycle. It left me feeling dizzy. And I sank into a nightmare of darkness in the same way that I imagine you fall into a whirlpool at sea.

“Freddie.” Emma's voice called towards me, as if from a long distance. “Freddie, we need you to calm down. Freddie?”

It was dark. I couldn't see. I was lost and I was frightened. I had become a primal thing, lost and afraid.

“Freddie.” Mark was more insistant. Calmer than Emma. “Freddie, we need you to come back now. Freddie. I need to know if you can hear me.”

I tried to scream. Anything. I was lost and I needed to be found. I needed my big brother to come and save me.

“No, don't try to speak.”

I tried to nod instead but a wave of nausea gripped me and I swallowed bile.

“Don't nod either.” I thought I could hear a gentle smile in Mark's voice. “Just, squeeze my hand. Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

I squeezed and felt his hand in mine. It astonished and frightened me. I had no memory of his hand being in mine. When did that happen?

“No don't try to open your eyes yet.” He told me. “We'll get there. Just...”

“What's happening?” Emma's voice, more panicked, worried.

“He's overwhelmed. Possibly pushed him too far today.” Mark said. “I've seen this before in soldiers coming back from the front, abused spouses in my parish and...” He blew out a tight breath. “In abused children when you tell them that their parents are awful people. We just need to bring him back a little is all. Ok Freddie. The first thing I want you to do is to listen to your breathing can you do that. Squeeze my hand if you can.”

I could hear it. I was wheezing with it, the breath hissing between my teeth. Breathing fast and ragged.

“It's too fast isn't it.” Mark told me. “Far too fast. So here's what I want you to do. Same as the breathing exercises that Kerrass taught you. Breathe in, hold it for a count of three and then blow it out of your mouth. Ready? You're doing really well, now breathe in. One, two, three, now breathe out. Good, you're doing really well Freddie. So let's do another one. Now breathe in. One, two, three, now breathe out.”

It occurred to me that if I was breathing that quickly then my heart was pounding as well. As Kerrass had taught me, and now Mark ordered me, I focused on my breathing. In and out, in and out. And one, by one I felt the muscles in me relax.

“There he is.” Mark beamed in my face when my eyes opened. “Scared the shite out of me for a minute there Freddie.”

“Here,” Emma passed me a cup of the herbal tea which I drank greedily.

And just like that, the panic was all over. Mark was crouched opposite me, still holding onto my left hand. I had forgotten that he was doing that.

Emma was nearby, looking down and frowning in concentration

“Well that was fucking awful.” I commented.

Emma snorted and covered her mouth. Mark laughed openly. “At the very least,” Mark began, “You're going to have to wait until you stop doing that at a moment's notice before you head back on the road.”

I laughed with him. “Can you imagine,” I began as the unexpected hilarity overcame me. “There we are, sneaking up on a Forktail and I start shaking, sweating and weeping uncontrollably.”

Mark caught my hysteria. “All the while Kerrass is there trying to tell you to breathe in and out as the Forktail dives towards you.”

“I don't think that's very funny.” Emma snapped.

Mark and I looked at each other for a moment like scolded school children. But Mark's eyes were shining with the laughter and suddenly I couldn't hold it in either.

The laughter gripped us and I fell off the chair where I had been sitting on the edge of it. Mark pointed at me and laughed, tears streaming down his face. Emma stood over the two of us, hands on her hips and looking disapproving.

“Oh come on Emma.” Mark grinned up at her. “If you can't laugh at this then you're not having enough fun in the circus.”

I pulled a face and I saw the appeal tugging at the corner of Emma's mouth. “Men,” She sighed and poured herself a stiff drink.

Mark helped me up into the chair “How are you feeling now?” He wondered.

“Same as always, rather calm after one of those.” I told him. “Weirdest sensation in the world.”

“Oh I don't know.” Emma came back. “Try being on this side of watching it.”

“We possibly pushed a little hard there Freddie.” Mark told me. “But how do you feel about all of that?”

“I don't know.” I told him, accepting a drink from Emma. “I'm really sick of saying that, over and over and over again.”

“Nothing wrong with that if it's the truth,” Emma said with Mark nodding.

“But that doesn't change the fact that I am sick of not knowing.” I told them both with a slight smile. “Over the past six months, especially since I left Kalayn lands to try and find the cult, I have more and more thought that it was time to stop. To hang up my spear and to settle down. I have thought about what Francesca would think about the entire thing. About everything we've all been through, not just Kerrass and I but all of us.

“Fuck, Kerrass has all but admitted that if it wasn't for the fact that he was pretty sure that I would keep searching without him then he would have sent me home by now.”

Emma nodded at that, I felt something was being confirmed for her.

“But what else is there to do?” I wondered. “This is what I do now. This is who I am and I have no idea how to move forward. No idea. At some point, Ariadne and I will sit down and talk this out, just as soon as I have enough energy to grovel properly and figure out what I'm going to say to her. But even if I do that and she forgives me...”

“She will.” Emma told me.

“... I'm not sure that I deserve forgiving. I've done this to her several times now.”

Emma shrugged. “Twice, maybe.

I ignored that.

“If she forgives me and marrys me, then I will be Count and husband. That is who I will be, but what will I do? I have no idea.”

“It's only been a year Freddie.” Mark told me. “You were something else before that.”

I laughed again. “It sounds so easy when you say it like that.”

“And it will be so hard.” Mark spoke from where he had sat on an arm-chair. “We know it Freddie. We do. But it needs to come from you. We've told you as much as we can now. We've told you how you are hurting yourself, hurting us and hurting others that you love. The question is, do you want to do something about it?”

I considered this a moment.

“I do.” I decided. “But I have no idea what. It's no exaggeration to say that this has been my life for the last year. It's the first thing that I think about when I wake up in the morning and it's the last thing I think about when I go to bed. When I walk down the street, it's what my brain thinks about. When I eat, drink, shit and piss against a tree. It's that puzzle, going over what happened, trying to find a new angle to think about it all. Even now, in moments of silence, I start to think about it again now that I've had some rest.”

“But that's not true is it.” Emma said. “You've done other work. You've written a book, published articles and the like.”

“Momentary distractions.” I said. “I work at it. It's much harder than it ever has been to write now. Always, I struggle to bring my mind back to what it is I'm supposed to be working on. I read the same page over and over again. I stare at a piece of parchment for hours before realising that I haven't written a word because I'm thinking about Francesca and trying to figure out where she could be.”

Mark grunted. Something in what I said must have resonated with him. “When you first picked up your spear, were you any good with it?”

I smiled, trying to keep the humour flowing. “Kerrass would joke that I'm not any good with it now.”

“No he wouldn't.” Emma muttered.

“But you had to practice.” Mark glared at Emma briefly. So briefly that I nearly didn't catch it. “Practice until you got better. And that's what this takes. You will realise that you are thinking about Frannie. Then you must stop yourself and force yourself to think on something else. Let others help you as well. Call for someone, go for a drink with a friend, read a book, go to church. Eat something. I used to find that I was most susceptible to these things and self-pity when I was lonely, tired and hungry.”

A sudden thought made him smirk. “I've already set you your penance, but add to that. You're a historian, research yourself. When do you think about Francesca and the search for her. Is it when you are lonely? Then call for a friend. Is it when bored? Then do something else. Is it when tired? Then have a nap to conserve your strength, change your night time routine or something so that the times change. Train yourself.”

I nodded. It all made sense.

“There's part of me that doesn't want to stop.” I admitted.

“Change is scary.” Mark told me.

I nodded and stared into space for a long time.

Then I shook myself.

“You had other things to talk to me about.” I said.

“Distracting us Freddie?” Emma smiled slightly.

“Distracting myself.” I admitted.

“You were thinking about Francesca weren't you.” Mark accused gently. “In that moment, you were thinking about Francesca.

I nodded. “So distract me. What did you want to talk to me about?”

Mark and Emma looked at each other and nodded.

“We need to talk about Yule, Toussaint and Sam.” Mark said. “Much though I would love to let you take the time to rest and heal. Much though I would devote all the days and months that I have left in life to your wellbeing if I could Freddie. We really do have other things to talk about.”

I looked around the guest rooms and found what I was looking for a bit further in. A small table covered in papers with some smaller chairs arranged around it. I wanted to get away from the arm-chairs and things, I wanted.... I don't know.... I wanted a more formal air about the conversation now. I wanted to look the pair of them in the eye.

“Do you mind?” I asked as I started moving papers from the table onto the floor. “I need to, shift.... myself in some way.”

Emma raised her eyebrows in bemusement and came to sit down. Mark took it much more in his stride and simply strode over, carefully stepping over the moved papers.

“Are you sure you're ok with moving on Freddie?” Emma wondered. “We can have a break if you want.”

“No,” I insisted. “Let's move on. I need to distract myself, get on with something else I need... I need something to think about that isn't.... well.... You know?”

“I know.” Mark looked over at Emma. “He's fine.”

“Yes but....”

“Look, this Freddie, after that, is more than we might get later if he sinks back down again.”

Emma was unhappy but seemed to be taking it a little in her stride. “Ok. Just, let us know if you're struggling, ok Freddie?”

I found the attention rather sweet. A little condescending but rather sweet all the time. It is not lost on me that I was being unfair to Emma, expecting her to roll with the shifts in my own mood and things. Especially as I barely had a proper grip on what was going on in my head so how she was supposed to be keeping up is a question left over for the gods. But I'm supposed to be recording how I felt at the time, and that was how I was feeling.

I felt better. The same as I always do in the immediate aftermath of.... whatever these attacks or breaks are. I always feel clearer, my brain was clear of influence or dirt. Like a cup that has been used for hot drink after hot drink without being cleaned between cups. Then suddenly it's cleaned and you get the full flavour of the drink.

Or like if you need to wear magnifying glasses for your eyes and then, over time, the dust and the grime gets worse and worse until one day you give them a clean. During the cleaning, you can't see anything but then, when you put them back on, you see the world in all of it's unrivalled beauty and you are left wondering as to how you could possibly have lived with so much dirt and grime on your lenses for so long.

That's how I felt right then and there.

“So, in what order are we going to do things. To talk about Yule, to talk about Sam or to talk about Toussaint?” I wondered. “I had been going to go to Toussaint because Ariadne wanted to take me there for a reason to do with helping with the.... dammit.... with the search for Francesca.”

I said that last bit as one onrush of letters and vowels. So it was more like withthesearchforfranCESca. Than anything otherwise audible.

“But I was rather thinking that you wouldn't want me to go there any more.” I continued after taking a break. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about, because believe me, I was not looking forward to going back to Toussaint yet. Not yet. Still too many memories there.”

“And if we could keep you from it, we could.” Emma began. “But....”

“The matter with Ariadne is something you will have to take up with her.” Mark talked over Emma a little, a flash of iritation on Emma's part. “The main issue starts with the fact that Emma and Sam have fallen out. Possibly irretreivably so.”

Emma looked down at the table. I got the sense that there were old rows here. These two had been arguing about this for a while it would seem. “The fault is not mine.” She said.

“Nor is it his.” Mark sighed. “Nor is it Freddie's or mine. Just as it is your fault. And Sam's fault. And Freddie's fault and my fault. Blame is not the issue here but it is something that we are all going to have to get over.

“I liked Kerrass' Goddess.” Mark admitted, much to my astonishment. “I am furious with her for what she did to Freddie and how she tore his mind apart and manipulated him to suit her own ends. But in amongst the things that she did and the manipulations, she also dropped a lot of truth on us all. A lot of truth.”

Emma nodded reluctantly and I was forced to agree. “I particularly liked the sentiment about some women,” Emma muttered.

“I was rather taken with her words on Magic as well.” Mark went on. “There is a parable there somewhere for how the magic users of the world treat their power. But the bit I wanted to talk about was that there are childish little conflicts between siblings that we haven't noticed. That we haven't thought of in years. That we have all of us dismissed because it was childish, happened when we were children, because Father is dead and Mother left us all. But that doesn't takeaway from the very real hurt that we have done to ourselves and are doing to ourselves on a daily basis.

“The Goddess talked about how we all mistreated Freddie, from his perspective of course. That doesn't make it the less true, but at the same time, we did and he was hurt by that. But we all have to realise what we have done and are still doing to each other.

“We had shattered before Father's death.” Mark went on, looking at Emma closely while occasionally glancing at me. Again, I had the view that I was watching something that had been gone over before, over and over again in fact. “Edmund was off being heretical, sex-crazed, drug and alcohol addled and listening to people that were controlling him. I had disappeared into the church and up my own arse. You, Emma, were Father's favourite.”

Emma opened her mouth to protest.

“No Emma, you were.” I agreed with Mark. “We all loved Francesca and she was the apple of his eye. But she was always a child to him. You were the one that he trained, talked to and listened to. You were the one that got away with far more than the rest of us put together. Can you imagine what would have happened if I had brought home a male lover, or Sam had?”

“He didn't know about Laurelen.” Emma protested.

“Of course he knew.” I countered. “Of course he knew. He certainly knew that you didn't like men romantically. Because are you honestly telling me, I love you Emma but, are you honestly telling me that if he put his foot down about you marrying one of the random suitors that came along, that you would be able to stop it? You would weep and be angry but if father wanted it to happen. You would be married.”

Mark nodded his agreement.

“He left the door open.” I said. “So that if you decided that there was anyone that you could tolerate while you took a lover, then he could take advantage of that. But if he wanted you to be married, then you would have been married. That, and he wanted to keep you around in the castle.”

“He never listened to me.” Emma muttered sourly.

“And he left you the business.” Mark said. “Therefore, leaving you the castle, the servants, the land and all of the other stuff. I might have been able to be a lord and hold court, but effectively, you were Lady Coulthard over me as if I wanted to do anything with the castle, the servants, the land and all the other stuff, then I would have had to check with you first.”

Emma harrumphed but settled down with the air of a woman who is storing an argument for later.

“But then we had Sam in the army, almost ran away to join the army. Freddie, literally running away to become a scholar and then we had Francesca.” Mark sighed as he finished. “We were not a family unit, we were a family who were out there fulfilling father's ambitions and furthering his goals. For myself, I am only recently coming to terms with how angry at all the things that Father made us do and come to terms with. But we played his game. But that game scattered us to the four winds. And now, after his death, we are paying the price for that.”

Emma sighed and turned to me. “What Mark is trying to say is that....” She sighed. “Sam is upset. He is not enjoying having limits in his power.”

“That's not entirely true.” Mark put in, “Sam is upset. He doesn't like being told what to do and you are too used to having your own way.”

Emma bridled a bit before she considered what had just been said and nodded to agree, a little ruefully.

“It's always been the case.” Mark went on. “Sam is used to being the best of us at what he does. He was the best fighter, the most physically gifted other than in speed where Edmund was just a bit quicker. I am glad that I never had to see that duel, because I think it would have happened eventually. I rather think that Edmund could have been a better duelist if he had applied himself but Sam is the better fighter. Where I was the churchman and scholar. Emma was the businessman,..... Business person.”

“Whatever,” Emma finished for him.

“Sam was used to being the best at what he did in the family. A fact that he lorded over Freddie on more than one occasion. But now he's struggling with the fact that he's trying to be a Lord, cannot be a soldier as due to his own opinion, he has lost the drive to be a soldier. But he sees Emma telling him he's wrong in the way he wants to run his province while Freddie and I have more influence than him in the world. He's used to being the best, but now he feels as though he's coming up last.”

“Has he told you all of that?” I wondered. “Or is that just another educated guess.”

“He wouldn't tell me that.” Mark chuckled. “He sees me as being remote, condescending and aloof. Emma is the one telling him that he can't do things...”

“It's another reason why we need you back Freddie.” Emma said.

“Mmm.” Mark agreed. “If we all had time, this would work itself out. If I could stay alive and have a normal life-span then we could afford to allow Sam the time to grow into his role as Lord Kalayn. But we don't have time. As it is, you are going to be made Count before he is and he's jealous. He's going to be Lord of Coulthard, Lord Kalayn and Lord of that place up on the coast. He's made bigger leaps than all of us but he still feels as though he lives in our shadow.”

I grinned suddenly. “A fact that is made so much better by the three of us sitting here and scheming about it all.”

They both saw the funny side of that and we had a laugh.

“In short,” Emma said, “he's decided that he's not coming down to Yule despite Ariadne's invitation and that that was the original plan.”

I nodded. “Disappointing.” And it was. “I wanted to talk to him. We did not exactly part on the best of terms.”

“Precisely.” Mark agreed. “His excuse is that he wants to spend his first Yule as Lord of the place up in Kalayn lands. Showing his people that he's not running away to court or warmer climates. He wants to get to know his people and blah blah.”

“It's a good reason Mark.” Emma argued.

“And it is.” Mark shifted uncomfortably. “But this is going to be my last Yule. This time next year I'm either... and lets be fair here.... Dead, or dribbling. With a few hours of useful thought a day.” He poured himself another drink. He was clearly upset by this. “I would have insisted on us all being at Coulthard castle but Ariadne had already made the arrangements. I kind of wanted us all here.”

Emma put her hand on Mark's and I felt awful. I was just going through some stuff after everything but Mark was staring down his own mortality. And not in a quick, easily handled way. But in a slow... awful, agonising way. What right had I to feel sorry for myself.

I hung my head.

I know, I know that I was being harsh to myself. But again, recording what I felt at the time.

I forced myself to look up and look Mark in the eye. “Mark, I am so sorry.”

He smiled, a little sadly and a little slyly. “For which bit?

“For being an asshat in general and for driving Sam away from us all. I can't help but feel that it's my fault, at least a little.”

Mark shook his head. “I will forgive you for being a bit of an asshat Freddie. We all go through our own shit and it's about how we climb out of that shit that makes us better. As for driving Sam away. That is your pride talking and I will not accept an apology for that. You were not in the wrong there. He was.”

“I agree.” Emma went on. “I will admit, grudgingly,” She glared at Mark, “That I own some of the blame about driving Sam away. But although you were a catalyst there, you could not help being the one who went missing after being chased through the wild by a cult. It was also the right thing to do to stick up for the people that helped you. That was not a bad thing to do.”

“Never apologise for doing the right thing.” Mark agreed. “And if there has been one time during your journeys where you have been absolutely right. It was that. What happened to those Elves at Kalayn castle was shameful.”

There was a bit of discomfort there. Emma recalling her own part in that shame. Me, uncomfortable with the praise and Mark being uncomfortable with the sudden vehemence of his language.

“The besetting sin of our family, if we have one, which we do, is Pride.” Mark told the pair of us. “I can analyse where we get it from and I would certainly suggest that it's one of those things that was taught to us from a young age by our parents and our tutors. But we are all victims to it. I would even go so far as to suggest that one of the reasons that we all loved Francesca so much was that she was the only one that didn't struggle with it so much.”

“Pride?” I wondered.

“Yeah. Another one of the many reasons that you're struggling so much at the moment.” Mark told me. “How dare the world not bend to your will and tip Frannie out as soon as possible.”

Emma smirked.

“But Sam's pride was hurt when you called him out. He was hurt again when Emma started arguing with him and again when I agreed with you. So that's why he's being stubborn. He's exerting control. As I say, the right thing to do here is to leave him to it. Let him get it out of his system and run with it for a bit until he starts to run into trouble all on his own. He's not stupid, he will let us help him when he's in trouble, but up until that point?” Mark shrugged.

“So instead, he's meeting us in Toussaint.” Emma told me. “Just for the ceremony.”

I took a deep breath. “That sounds ominous. What Ceremony?”

“We're still talking about Sam here Freddie.”

“Sorry.”

“What we want you to do is to have a talk with Sam when you get to the South. Spend a bit of time with him. Get drunk, listen to him moan a bit. Reestablish that if he needs someone to talk to inside the family, then he can come to you.”

I felt myself shrinking away from the idea. “I'm not comfortable manipulating Sam. That feels.... wrong to me. He had a shitty time in Toussaint as well remember.”

“We remember.” Emma said, a shadow of those times crossing her face. “We remember.”

“But he was always closest to you Freddie. You were the one that figured out his innocence back then after all and we need to start bringing him back to the rest of us. We need to start having him on side.”

“Back on our side.” Emma corrected.

“And he was always closest to you.” Mark went on. He can still remember me chastising him a little too hard and Emma being the golden Girl a little bit too much.”

“I was never the Golden gir...”

“In his head you were. And you never had much in common with him.”

Emma subsided from her brief moment... and nodded unhappily.

I nodded. “So basically, what you're telling me is, that you want me to change from pursuing one impossible task for another impossible task?

Emma saw the humour and smirked.

“It's not impossible. I rather think that Sam wants to be forgiven by you. I think, deep down, he wants to be let off the hook for being awful to those Elves.”

I felt a stab of old anger and resentment and had to breathe deeply for a few minutes in order to swallow that feeling. “No promises.” I whispered hoarsely.

Silence descended and it took a moment or two for me to notice. Mark was watching me.

“Time for a break or something.” he said. “Let's get some food in here.”

Emma nodded and rose to her feet.

“Fuck that.” I said. “You can't tease me with that whole thing about “A ceremony in Toussaint” and then not tell me what's going on.”

Mark sank back down into his chair. “This is the bit that's going to make you really angry.”

“Oh because I've been so calm and contained till now.”

“Originally,” Emma ignored my outburst and overrode Mark's coming response. “The idea was... Ok... That's starting half way through the story. You know how the Knight's Errant have been reformed and restructured in the wake of the disappearance of Francesca.”

“It's kind of hard to forget, yes.”

“And you know that, when the new order of knights were ready, then they were going to lift the sanctions against Toussaint.”

“Sanctions is a strong word.” Mark contributed. “They could be lifted at any time by the Duchess so it hardly feels as though there was a punishment aspect to it.”

“No,” Emma agreed. “The people that were being punished were the knights themselves really. But, we're digressing again. Do you remember how we now own the vinyard and that is financing the knightly reformation?”

“I do.”

“Well, the Duchess is satisfied that the new Knight's Errant can start policing her lands again. The first group of “a new breed of Knight's Errant” are ready to start their service.” She poured herself a drink and mumbled something into the cup.

“What was that?” I wondered sharply.

“They want us to attend the ceremony.” Emma said a little louder.

“Well that doesn't sound so...”

“They want to call the new order, the knights of Saint Francesca.”

I gaped at her.

“That's....”

“Awful.” Mark supplied. “Terrifying, presumptious.”

“Grotesque.” I said eventually. “Frannie would be appalled.”

“Frannie would find it funny.” Emma told the pair of us. “She would laugh, long and loud and hard. She would be rolling around on the floor as the hilarity ripped through her and then, every time she wanted to puncture the seriousness of the situation, she would look one of us straight in the face and just whisper to us “Saint Francesca” and that would utterly destroy everything as she giggled her way through whatever solemn occasion it was that we had found ourselves in.”

She was glaring at us both, her blue eyes were angry although that's possibly a little bit of an exaggeration. She wasn't angry, she was frustrated, desperately unhappy and sad. But also exasperated with us, her brothers.

“Honestly, you both... Especially you Freddie. You both have this exalted image of Francesca, making her this virginal pure person. Enough so that she almost is a saint anyway. She would be if the pair of you had your way or wanted to remember her the way that you wanted.”

She glared at us a little bit in that loving exasperation that sisters tend to be so good at.

“Frannie had a filthy sense of humour. Absolutely fithly. She was still a virgin if I'm any judge, but the way she spoke, there was no way that she didn't have, at least, a passionate clinch or two in suitably discreet, out of sight areas. And I would bet money that the only reason that she was still a virgin was because she didn't want to bring any disgrace down on Ciri. The Empress had taught her how to drink and she used to laugh at fart and dick jokes. She was my sister and absolutely filthy. She would have laughed at it.”

There was a depth to the emotion that I hadn't seen from Emma in this subject before. It actually felt fairly good to see my, collected little sister have a few moments of passion.

“She would have found it funny but then, she would have considered the matter, talked to a few people and then decided that she was rather touched by the effort. She would have said something like “If they need a figurehead, a flag or a symbol to get behind and they want me? Then I am ok with that”. Then she would have been flattered.

“Yes it's Grotesque, awful, terrifying, presumptious. But it's also Romantic and incredibly flattering. And the people of Toussaint go for that. Neither of you have had to deal with them much after that visit, but I have. They live for that kind of thing. A virginal princess who gave her life for an Empress. They eat that shit up. They won't be swearing on the Empress any more, they will be swearing on “The Saint.” or “Saint Francesca,” and if she is to be a guide. If she is to be the... symbol that keeps them on the straight and narrow, the banner that keeps them from falling back into corruption. Then I am all for it.”

Then she glared at us. I was pleased to see that Mark withered under her gaze just as much as I did.

“Flame but I miss her.” Emma moaned a bit. “I'm surrounded by men being foolish all the time and I miss my little sister as well.”

She pulled another small piece of cloth from her sleeve from the seemingly limitless supply that she kept up there and wiped at her eyes.

“Fuck.” She swore before blowing her nose.

“Well I guess that settles that.” Mark said after a moment.

“One day.” I said. “One day, we're all going to have to gather at a time where emotions aren't high so that we can all just generally calm down. One day we're going to gather when things are just.... boring. I won't say normal because I'm not that foolish.”

“A little bit foolish though?” Mark wondered.

For the first time since this new phase of the conversation had started, I felt the first echoes of the pain and sadness. That swirling and seductive darkness that came to swallow me occasionally.

“Yes, a little foolish.” I shook my head to try and clear it.

We all sat together in silence for a little while and a little awkwardly. I can't speak for what Mark and Emma were thinking. But I was thinking that the next time that we would all be together was probably going to be my wedding. And after that, would Mark even be able to enjoy any kind of family meeting?

I felt awful. But it was oddly refreshing and reassuring. It was a normal kind of awful. Not the soul-sucking pit of awfulness that I had known before. Just a general sense of sadness.

I had the strange kind of feeling that an Era was coming to an end. Another phase of life. I had no idea what that was but as I sat there, in the guest rooms of the woman that I loved. I was left with a feeling that something was ending and I felt the tears prick the back of my eyes and a lump enter my throat.

“So we go South.” I said. “Is Sam coming to that?”

“Yes,” Emma supplied. “He could hardly say no to that. So he's coming down for a couple of days before he heads back North so that he can attend the ceremony. He swears that he will be coming to your wedding.”

I nodded.

“So that's the next quesiton Freddie.” Emma carried on.

“What's that?”

“Is there still going to be a wedding for him to come to? Because if there isn't, you are going to be the one that explains it to the Empress.”

The joke hit home and we all laughed.

“The last couple of days have been tough.” I said. “A lot to think about.” Some of the things that we had said earlier came back in a rush. “A lot to think about. But Ariadne is a conversation that is only going to get worse the longer I put it off.”

Mark nodded.

“And then it's up to her I suppose.”