“So then we went back to Toussaint.” I told him, diverting him away from the subject.

He didn’t care about the Jack conspiracy. He dismissed it as political squabbling amongst the nobles of a foreign power and not the kind of thing that he was interested in or particularly cared about. I will leave you with this quote.

“One of the things that all of these monarchs, nobles and lords like to forget is that it’s all desperately important from where they stand. I understand that, I can even agree with that. But at the end of the day, who is on the throne, who owns the castles and who gets to wave the flags are unimportant. At the end of the day, in the years to come, we are all ash on the wind or mouldering in the ground. The very best that any of us can hope for is a line in a history book or a statue that pigeons shit on every day.

“No matter what happens, the peasants still need to work the fields because without those peasants, the merchants have nothing to sell and the taxes cannot be collected. Without either of those things, a nation cannot exist and all of that nonsense, all of that power is… useless.

“The nobles of Toussaint might have succeeded in making the duchess powerless. They might have replaced her with a more pliable Duke or Duchess but at the end of the day, they would still need to find ways to sell their wine. Because without that wine, Toussaint is nothing. Just a bunch of fools that still believe in nonsense like chivalry, courtly love and the use of might for right. When anyone can see that the only reason some warlord hasn’t conquered them is because it’s too much effort.”

My response to that. Bearing in mind Father said this with some genuine anger and passion in his voice. There was a wild look in his eyes, spit flew from his lips and he bit off the words in the same way that he did when he was… well… passionate about something. I waited until he was done before I allowed myself to grin.

“Wow Father” I said. “Tell me how you really feel.”

His eyes blazed at me for a long moment before he saw the funny side of things and started to laugh.

He was interested in my final conversation with Jack though and was particularly intrigued about the message that he gave me for the unseen Elder when I went to see him. He also liked Jack’s curse on the Duchess.

“That’s good.” He said. “As ways to bring down a nation go, that one is particularly good. That’s going to drive her mad.”

I felt myself frown.

“A bit harsh Father. My reading of the Duchess is that she’s a good woman.”

“I have no doubt.” He told me. “But you cannot deny the power of that curse or why it’s going to work. That bottle that he gave her could be filled with vinegar but she’s going to drive herself mad trying to convince herself that it’s the most beautiful wine that she’s ever tasted. Because she’s the DUCHESS OF TOUSSAINT and it couldn’t possibly be anything else. She’s going to serve it to other people, as you said, in thimble sized cups and you are all going to sip it and then look at her, like the mad woman that she is while she asks you your opinion on it and how she should go about duplicating it. You don’t have to hate her, or like her to admire the incredible trap that he has set for her.

“Also, what she was doing, naming a new order of Knights after a girl that they had utterly failed to protect is a travesty bordering on insult. It was grotesque, insensitive and awful and as a result, I think she kind of deserves everything she gets.”

Pain tore through me again. I bent over double with it as again, I felt like I was being split in half. I screamed in that clearing next to the Fire.

Father frowned.

And then All was in that strange kind of green darkness. But I could move. There was also more sensation now. I was choking. Something large had forced its way down my throat and I could feel it blocking everything. It was hard and brutal and it was so large that it felt as though my jaw had been broken in order to accommodate it.

But I could breathe.

I was still split in half from something that had forced its way up my recrum, but I was no longer confined. I could feel my legs and my arms dangling free as though I was hanging above something. And I could hear. Something tore and snapped. I couldn’t see as there was something covering my face. Realising that my arms were free I tried to lift my hands to clear what was going on over my eyes.

The agony that the movement caused was indescribable and I screamed as the thing in my bowls and the thing in my throat seemed to move and protest with it. I tried to scream and shout but I couldn’t move. I was hanging in the air by the things that were impaling me. I pulled the thing off my eyes and I tried to look around but I couldn’t move my head.

I screamed againI was in a web of green. Limbs and vines and branches surrounded me, moving and waving in some kind of breeze or at the whim of some kind of intelligence or instinct that I could not identify. I looked about frantically and I could see nothing else. I was being tugged in different directions by it all as though there were hooks embedded in my skin. Those tentacles of green reached out and struck me, impaling me in the chest and the abdomen.

More pain, I felt and saw blood and worse, spilling itself down those tentacles, those branches of pure green. One tentacle that looked nothing more than a large dark, forest green worm reared up before my face and spat a goo of green horror onto my face. I was smothered and I could no longer see. I thought I had been panicking before but now I really started to scream and then…

“Freddie? Are you ok?”

I scrambled backwards and away from the fire through instinctual horror more than any kind of real conscious effort. I climbed to my feet, found my spear and brandished it in front of me, looking around for an enemy, anything? Something to explain what was happening.

“Freddie?” Father was climbing to his feet with the slow, exaggerated movements of a man trying to ensure that he didn’t panic the crazy person. “Freddie?”

“Who are you?” I demanded. “What are you? What’s going on?”

He frowned slightly.

“Freddie?” He said it slowly and carefully, drawing out the name in a way that was probably meant to be cautious but came across as being kind of threatening.

“What is this place?” I demanded, looking around me again, trying to see it for the first time. Trying to really look at what was happening around me. I leapt to my feet and ran over to the nearest tree and pushed at it, trying to tell if it felt real. Was it real? What did it feel like? Was this real or was this all in my head.

Both reassuringly and terrifyingly, it felt like a pine tree.

I knelt on the ground and started scrabbling at the ground. Maybe, if I dug down deep enough I would be able to dig below the leaves, the moss and the pine needles and then I would be able to find the edges of the illusion and some kind of evidence that all of this might not be real.

Again, both reassuringly and terrifyingly, it felt like mud. Slightly damp, slightly cold and even when I drew my dagger and tried to dig with it, it was still just compacted ground. I even found part of a tree root.

I absently wiped the dagger on my arm before realising what I had done but then I looked at the mud smear. There was normal, reddish brown mud. A touch of grey clay in the midst of it. It was mud like any other. Nothing to add, nothing else to say.

I put the knife away in the often practised and automatic movement and ran over to my pack which I unpacked. It looked like my travel pack. The blanket felt like my blanket and even had the same pattern. The spare clothes in my pack were my spare clothes and the gear was either mine or close enough to mine to suggest that I had replaced it. Sooner or later tinder and flint need to be replaced and there are many different kinds of tinder and flint for you to play around with.

“Freddie?” Father called. He was standing now.

“Shut up.” I told him as I looked around the place frantically.

My eyes lit on my spear and I picked the thing up from where I’d dropped it. I automatically broke it down before slotting it back together thinking that if all of this was an illusion summoned for my own head, then there would be a mistake there. It would feel wrong somehow. And if this was a delusion that I had summoned from my own mind, then there would be a mistake because I wouldn’t be acting or thinking rationally.

The spear slotted together the same as it ever had. I examined the spear further. Looking for the scars on the haft that were left from the many times that I had used it in order to protect myself. The slightly discoloured metal where the sheen was different. The glittering lines of fresh impact. They all fell into place where they were supposed to be.

I examined the blade in the same light. According to a couple of craftsmen that I know, the blade is holding up well through all of the abuse that I have put it through over the years. More than one person has wondered where the smith was that made it for me on the grounds that she had more than a small amount of talent and was wasted being just a village blacksmith. I agreed with them but I have long since given up trying to find the place on a map. Just one of those small farming villages that happen in the world. Far too small to be mapped and named by anything greater than the tax collector that was just passing through.

I looked at the blade for a long time and took a deep breath. I pulled my sleeve up my arm exposing some flesh and started to lower that arm towards the blade.

Father’s arm slapped into my shoulder and he pushed me off balance.

I reacted instantly, brandishing the spear towards him. Kerrass has been training me for a long time after all. He leapt back. Father saw service in the first and second Nilfgaardian wars. Mostly in the Logistics divisions given his status as a merchant. The first war he served as a Quartermaster for a cavalry regiment and in the second, he served as a Colonel of logistics when he was newly married. He claims to have fought, but will not say when or where which actually makes the possibility of him actually fighting more likely. In my experience, people that have combat experience prefer not to talk about it whereas people that have none will not stop talking about battles that they have fought in and the number of people that they have killed.

He certainly leapt backwards from me fast enough and his sword leapt into his hand with the speed of long reflexes before he realised what happened and put the sword away again. Still taking care to stay well out of range of me though.

“Freddie.” He said carefully. “I don’t know what’s going on but if you try and hurt yourself I will try and stop you.”

“Why?” I demanded. “We’re dead aren’t we? Why stop me? What possible further harm could we do to each other?”

“Are we dead?” He countered. “I only have your word for that. For all I know, this could be a dream.”

“I sat next to your death bed.” I told him. “I chanted the psalms with Mark and I prayed for your soul. I ate a ham sandwich at your bedside when Mother used logic in order to point out that I would need my strength and that it was not me that was dying.”

He smiled suddenly. “That sounds like something that she would do.”

“Who are you?” I demanded. “Who are you? What am I doing here?”

“I am your Father.”

“No…” I said, “No you’re not. I am getting on with you much better than I ever got on with my Father.”

At first he seemed to get angry about that. A sudden flash of anger crossed his face before a deep sadness settled in his eyes.

“That is, unfortunately true and I bear the fault for most of that. But…” His eyes narrowed at me, the firelight reflected in them making him seem angrier than he was and uncomfortably sinister. “You cannot claim that there were not times when you made things worse, deliberately antagonised me or otherwise made matters harder on yourself.”

That is probably not unfair.

“Come and sit.” He said, seating himself back down.

“Tell me something that only you would know.” I demanded, proving again that there are always some cliches that are based in fact.

“Are you sure?” He asked, a slow smile crossing his eyes.

I brandished my spear, not really seeing the humour.

“Very well.” He said with a smile and holding his hands up in surrender. “But don’t blame me when you get all of those years worth of embarrassment in your face at the same time.”

He leant back and closed his eyes.

“You were fourteen.” He said. “I was already confident that you liked girls rather than boys because I had seen the way that you looked at those Elven Acrobats in Oxenfurt market square when you were twelve. But there was a time when a minstrel had come to the castle in an effort to sing for his supper. He was good, but not great. His name was…” he paused in thought. “Pavel. Your mother claimed that he had some talent but that all he was doing was playing other people’s songs.”

I realised where the story was going. “Ok, that’s enough.” I told him.

“Oh no,” He told me with a smile. “You started this so now I’m going to finish it. He had a dancer with him. She was graceful and was doing her best to act as a honey trap. Trying to seduce me, just as the minstrel was trying to seduce your mother or Emma, which ever he could in order to guarantee some kind of longer term meal ticket. I won’t deny that she was a good looking girl but her advances were too clumsy for me. Edmund and Mark were long gone. Sam was uninterested and so she tried her moves on you, you remember?”

He mimicked a woman dancing.by holding his arms out to the side and shaking his torso from side to side as if to jiggle breasts that weren’t there.

I sat down.

“I remember being confused.” I said, “I had no idea what was happening at the time.”

“No.” Father nodded, “I should have sent you to the Belles in Beauclair so that they could take care of you and ensure a proper education in such things. I would have done, or hired one to come and see to the matter. I wanted to but your mother would not allow it. I thought it would help prevent you from being… I thought it would prepare you for what happens to your mind and body when a woman decides that she’s going to make a fool out of you.”

“Did that ever happen to you?”

“Don’t try and change the subject. I remember you blushing when she bent over to show you down her dress. Later, after you went to your room, I had to come and tell you about a message that your tutor had sent and to make sure that you had written to Lady Anita in order to further your courtship, do you remember?”

“I remember that Anita called me a foolish little boy.”

“You remember what you were doing when I opened the door?”

“Of course I remember.” I retorted. “You should have knocked?”

“As I have explained before, it is my castle and I will go where I wish. It is not my fault that you had taken that opportunity to try and pleasure yourself.”

I cringed in left over horror. One of those teenaged embarrassments that never leave you.

He grinned at my reaction.

“Besides.” He went on. “If I had knocked on any of your doors, it would have given you time and warning in order to hide the contraband. Like the bottle of wine that Sam would regularly keep under his bed. Or the foolish books of romantic poetry that your sister was obsessed with. She called them “Bodice-rippers'' whatever that meant. The difference being that she always dreamed that she was the one doing the ripping of the bodices.``

“Thank you for that image, and that memory Father.” I told him. “Now I’m definitely going to turn my blade on myself in order to save myself the embarrassment.”

“Don’t be too embarrassed.” He told me. “Most people do it. Mark never did for reasons that I never understood. Or if he did, I never caught him. But at the end of the day, parents are more perceptive than you might think and whatever your mother might have to say on the matter… I remember doing it when I was fourteen and I have a similar story about my father catching me at it after a day of playing in the local pond with some of the village girls.”

His face became solemn. “Your mother didn’t have the childhood to compare it to though so she couldn’t have known.”

“I remember that you said nothing,” I admitted. “Just gave me the time to… conceal and pretend to myself that I had gotten away with it.”

There are so many times as a parent.” He told me. “That the best thing you have to do is to pretend that you saw nothing.”

We both laughed.

“Now will you sit down?” He asked me.

Not being able to think of any other reason to do otherwise. I sat where he gestured.

He stared at me over the fire before passing me his flask again.

“Keep it.” He told me. “I don’t know why you take brandy with you on a hunt, or why you give it to people after they’ve passed out or are in the process of freezing to death, but they do and it works. So take your time with it. It’s expensive.”

I nodded and did as I was told.

“What’s happening?” He asked. “Why the sudden panic?”

“I saw something.” I said, “I have no idea what it was but I saw something.”

“What did you see?” He asked gently, more gently than he had ever asked me anything in his life.

“I was hanging.” I told him. “There was something in my mouth and something in my… in my bowels. I felt like I was being smothered but at the same time I could breathe.”

“What did you see?” He asked again, softer this time.

“I saw a network of things. Ariadne would be cross if I tried to call it a web, but that was what it was. It was a web. Clusters and junctions with lines of stuff connecting the one thing to the next. I was hanging wrong. Far above the ground.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw these pulses of green going through the web. It felt like a heartbeat as it went but at the same time, there was less order to it. No… I’m wrong. It wasn’t like the pulses of a heartbeat, it was more like the flashes of lightning. I was looking… I was hanging above the ground, looking up I think. I couldn’t see the ground and it gave me this feeling of, I didn’t know what was up or what was down. A thing came to my face and fired this goo at me. I couldn’t see anything else.”

“Then what did you hear?”

“I heard… I heard a voice calling to me. It was telling me to… Wait, be patient.”

“Who was it that was calling to you?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

Father grunted and looked down into the fire.

“What’s happening?” I asked again.

“I’m not sure that I’m the right person to tell you.” He said, stretching his legs out. “I am the merchant son of a farmer. You and Mark were the ones that asked Spiritual, existential questions about life, consciousness and the expectation of… being wasn’t it?”

I smirked at the memory of having an argument with Father about the implications of consciousness and what we were if the soul didn’t exist.

“Something like that.”

“So what do you think is happening?” He prompted.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on Freddie, you can do better than that?”

I felt myself stiffen and an old anger rise in my chest. There was that way that he used to say Freddie again.

“‘I don’t know’ is a perfectly good answer.” I told him. “How else is a tutor supposed to know what we know and what we don’t know unless we tell them that we don’t know something.”

“Which is true,” his own voice raised a little, his eyes narrowing and flashing in the firelight. “Unless the phrase “I don’t know” is being used as a substitute for doing actual work. If you say “I don’t know” because you can’t be bothered to think about the question or if you are using the answer in order to excuse yourself from actually doing the work and finding the answer.” He told me. “You are the one with the experience in these matters. You tell me that I am dead. Fair enough. Does that mean that you are dead?”

“Probably?”

“Probably,” He echoed with a bit of a sneer. There was the Father that I remembered. “But I am not experiencing these visions of a network of green. So what’s going on? What is the difference there?”

“I don’t…” I found my mouth forming the words automatically. “The fact that you are here and that I am here would suggest that I am dead as well.”

He nodded. “Then the only thing to do is to wait and see if things sort themselves out. Although it has to be said, again, that I don’t really feel dead. If we’re dead. I thought there would be a flame, something that would lead me into the next world or at least, that’s what your brother kept promising me.”

“That’s the accepted scripture version of it, yes.” I told him. “The church of the Great Sun believes something similar where they think that the…”

“I know what the Great Sun says.” He snapped. “You might be a professor now but that doesn’t mean that you get to lecture me on things that I already know the answer to.”

“Sorry Father.”

“So I should hope. I don’t know what the network of Green was that you were seeing though.” He told me. “Sounds… unpleasant.”

“It was certainly not something that I am entirely comfortable with.” I admitted.

“So where does that leave us?” Father asked. “Dead?”

“More than likely. Or at least…” It was another one of those moments where I could feel that my brain was starting to work. “Or at least you are. I was there when they entombed you so you had better be dead. Otherwise, there is going to be an awfully unpleasant conversation coming up in a short while.”

He sniggered.

“But I suppose… if there is a death. And a place where you go when you die. We know that some people kind of hang around because they have unfinished business, because the emotions surrounding their death are so extreme that they cannot move on, or because it does not occur to them that they might be dead. So in turn, they refuse to believe it. Therefore, it would suggest that there is a place where the dead go before they move on to whatever it was that comes next.”

“How do you know that?” He wondered.

“Because… wraiths.” I told him. “I have seen a number of wraiths now and I have watched as Kerrass has destroyed them. It’s never fun, it’s always tragic and more often than not, I always find myself siding with the wraiths.”

“Fair enough. So by that logic, I am here because I am waiting for someone, or because something in my life is unfinished.” He considered this. “I would like to see your mother again. I have a lot that I would like to say to her and a lot to apologise for. I should have been a better husband to her. But still…”

“So for me.” I went on, ignoring his self pity. “I am here because… I suppose it’s possible that I am not quite dead yet. Or that something is happening that is keeping me from death.”

“Or that you have unfinished business of your own.” He suggested.

I considered this.

“No.” I said, “The only thing I have left is Ariadne and that is sad, yes, but we knew that this would happen eventually. She is Vampire and I am human. I would have died long before she would even notice the onset of age. And she would be the first to dismiss me or see that I moved on to a better place.”

“Are you sure?” He wondered. “Absolutely no unfinished business?”

Something in the way that he said that caught my mind and I forced myself to consider what he was saying.

“No.” I decided after a long while. “No, there is nothing outstanding.”

He gazed at me for a while before shrugging.

“If you say so.”

“The other possibility is that I’m not dead and that things are happening to me that makes me over on both sides of the line.”

“Nasty. So, you could go either way is what you’re telling me. You could wake up, any second and you will be back to being the obnoxious and unfairly still alive Freddie that I know and love and despair of at the same time. Or you could die properly and move onto wherever or whatever will come for you next.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Lovely. Although the prospect that you might have something in your mouth and something in your bowels doesn’t give me much hope.”

“Not really.”

“So you know what you should do?”

“Stop worrying?”

“Almost, but what I think you should do is to come and sit back down next to the fire and share a drink with your father. You have yet to finish up the story about what was happening to you. And call me selfish if you like, which I will admit to, if not entirely happily. But I want to know the rest of the story if you’re going to be whisked off to the next stage of your afterlife… What happened?”

“So I finished telling him about Toussaint. I went back to the fireplace, settled myself down, accepted another long pull from the flask, which should have been long empty by now, and I started to talk. I told him about the Knights of Saint Francesca. Something that he was appalled by, and I told him about my part in that. I told him about the deepening rift in the family between Sam and Emma which he was not as disturbed about as I thought he would be.

“Those two never got along.” He told me. “Too different. The only thing they had in common was you, Francesca and the sure knowledge that neither of them were going to inherit. So it is not a surprise to me that the knowledge that they are both going to inherit bits, while at the same time neither of them are going to inherit the entire thing, would be dangerous. With Francesca leaving and you finding love, rank, fame and wealth separate from the pair of them. It is not that surprising to me that they are at each other’s throats.”

“I always thought that they were…”

“I love you my son but you have always had a blind spot when it came to your family. Your mother and I did our best but she had no idea how to be a mother given that her family were so utterly bad at it. She had nothing to base it on. And I… Well, I have many excuses. My Father was not an ideal Father either and I am very much afraid, looking back, that in trying to be a different man, or a different kind of father to how he was to me, I ended up becoming just like him.

“If you do manage to return to your life and return to that Vampire woman of yours. And if you do manage to make her pregnant if that turns out to be remotely possible, then ensure that you do not repeat the same mistakes that I did. And when you do anyway, despite your own best efforts, be generous with yourself. Do not be too hard on yourself. None of us know how to be parents, we’re all just making it up as we go along. Remember that.”

I took that in as best as I could.

Then I told him about how we had found out about what had happened to Francesca. About how a chance meeting from Kerrass while I was convalescing told us that our true enemy was someone that we hadn’t met for the longest time. That he’d hated us for years and that we had never seen him. And that he had done, just what we had most feared. He had kidnapped Francesca, intending to torture her, and us, and use her in his magical experiments. But then he realised that there was too much risk, slit her throat and dumped her somewhere.

I told him how we had caught Phineas Tordril looking to take a ship for the Ofieri Empire in Novigrad and that he had confessed to the crime before biting his own tongue off to ensure that he would tell us no more.

Father didn’t take this well.

“That makes little sense to me.” he said.

I just laughed at him and he frowned.

“Father, nothing about any of this makes any kind of sense. I have been over the disappearance of Francesca in my own head, over and over and over again. I have gone over the days of her disappearance until it literally made me sick. I have wondered what would have happened if I had done this or if I had done that but I keep coming back to the conclusion that I could have done nothing other than what I ended up doing. I might have done other things if I had had more information but the truth of the matter is that we did the best we could at the time.

“The problem is that everything we tried, everything we thought of was dreamed up by rational people. But we weren’t dealing with rational people, we were dealing with a mad man. That is what makes no sense and it makes me sick. Literally sick. We had him, we were inches away from him and we had no idea. I hate myself for that mistake but it was made and now there is nothing we can do to bring her back.”

There is always a danger whenever someone tries to talk to me about Francesca’s disappearance, that I can go a bit off the rails. I find myself wanting to relive the entirety of the investigation and go through it again. I can tend to get a bit overwhelmed by it all and suddenly, or if I’m not particularly careful, it can become too much and I turn hysterical. So if you do have any theories or anything that you want to talk about when it comes to Francesca’s disappearance. I would ask you to do us all a favour and only approach me on the topic if I seem to be in a good mood and of a mind to discuss the matter. Because otherwise, things are likely to go badly for both of us. And for the love of the flame, if I tell you that I don’t want to, or am not up to, talking about it. Take the fucking hint.

“Hey hey hey,” He spoke calmly and firmly. “Don’t… Don’t fall over.”

“The problem is,” I took a couple of deep breaths. “That we were always, always thinking about what we were doing from the point of view of someone that was making rational choices. Someone that was thinking clearly. At the best, this man was a mad man who was pursuing his sick experiments. The most conservative, sympathetic viewpoint is that he was frustrated with his lack of power and that, in trying to find ways to make himself more powerful, he accidentally opened his way into another realm where the beings or the entities on the other side of… wherever the fuck, took advantage of him and tore him apart.

“The less sympathetic viewpoint of the matter is that he did this deliberately. He found cultists and other places that needed his services and that he fed off them, taking money, resources and Flame knows what else until they were caught or were going to be exposed and then he moved on.

“We caught his eye because we were at the root of several of his places of power being destroyed. That’s it. Nothing more complicated than that.”

“No,” He said, shaking his head. “I understand all of that. But the basic premise is incorrect. Even if he was mad with power, then he would still need a certain amount of logical intelligence to be able to use magic. Over and over again, people have told me that magic is as much science and craft as it is art. And both science and craft, especially science, need logical thought behind it. Mark has told me these things over and over again. As has Emma for that matter.”

“I know that you and Emma worked hard to get a lot of mages out of Novigrad Father.”

“Yes, well…” He sniffed and looked, much to my astonishment, embarrassed. “Foolish of Radovid to get rid of those resources like that. Magic users are powerful tools, and to ostracise them, to get rid of them with that level of…” he shook his head in disgust. “Foolish.”

“All of that is correct, but you didn’t have to do anything.”

He sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “Yes I did. But don’t let my philanthropic efforts distract you. Magic is a logical thing. He would know that to attack us would draw our ire. Even if, as you suggest, he didn’t know that Francesca had the ear of the Empress and that the amount of attention he was receiving was more than he could easily cope with, even if that was the case. He still knew that we were rich and powerful. He still knew that if we put our minds to it, we could hire detectives, mercenaries and hunters. Royal favours of which we are still owed several, could be called in and he would eventually be found. To challenge us was a mistake. I won’t try and say that the Coulthard family is too big to fail, or too powerful to attack in the way that we might be vulnerable to. But we are pretty big and we are pretty powerful.

“He must have had a reason beyond simple revenge. He could have killed us in the street. After all,” he gestured at me, “you tell me that Edmund and his friends of all people, were able to come up with a scheme to get me killed.”

“That’s true.” I admitted, feeling the pull of the mystery even if it had already been solved.

“There’s a ‘but’ coming here isn’t there.” He declared.

“Even if magic has a requirement of logical thought and calm intelligence. That doesn’t mean that the person has to be entirely sane. Speaking as a person that has gone, at least, a little bit insane. I thought that what was going on made me saner, and it wasn’t until other people pointed out how stupid and mad I was being that it all came crashing down around my head. He hated us. And it was Imperial interrogators that were getting this information out of him. We have to assume that they knew their stuff.”

“Do we?”

“But the other point.” I said, ignoring his comment. “Was that he’s dead. We can’t ask him any further questions. His places of power in the North have been destroyed and the churches of the Eternal Flame, Melitele and the rest are all looking out for those same kinds of cultists. And whatever else might be said of the matter. He is dead and we can’t ask him what his reasons or his methods were. I’m told that the Empress even enquired as to whether or not Necromancy was a viable option. And she was told it wasn’t.”

He shuddered but asked the question anyway. “Why not?”

“Apparently, Necromancy works by summoning the spirit of the dead person into the body that they used to reside in. If that body can’t speak because, I don’t know, it’s jaw is broken or it’s teeth are all caved in, then the necromancer can’t ask any questions. In this case, the prize monster turd had bitten off his own tongue. So all we would get is some incoherent groaning.”

“But wraiths and ghosts happen all the time?” Father protested.

“Yes they do.” I agreed. “But in those cases, the wraith generally wants to come back. Necromancy is the forcing of unwilling spirits to return to their former bodies.”

Father nodded, considering the matter before taking a deep breath.

“No-one tried to necromancy me did they?”

“Not that I ever heard of. And besides, with you. Wouldn’t you have felt it by now?”

“I don’t know.” He thought for a while before shaking his head, clearing his mind of the image. “So what happened next? You had a small existential crisis. It turns out that Francesca’s name will be remembered long after the rest of us are forgotten about, even if it is in a ghoulish and macabre way that she definitely wouldn’t have approved of. And then you did what?”

I told him about the conversation that I had with Yennefer and Jack. About how my new way forward and the new thing that I was going to do was to contact and interview otherworldly and powerful entities. That I intended to publish a series of books on these entities, starting with Jack, moving through the Unseen Elder and then onto other things. Including the Schattenmann of the Black Forest as well as others. He grunted as he listened.

“Why did you go to the Black Forest?” He asked.

“What? To speak to the Schattenmann of course.”

“Yes, I know that. But why did you go to the Black Forest? You didn’t need to, you were already sending the best possible envoy that you had at your disposal in sending that Witcher friend of yours. You could have stayed in Toussaint eating the best food in the continent, drinking the best wine and making love to the best women given that your betrothed seems quite open to that kind of thing. So why did you go to the Black Forest? Why did you go to the Black Forest?”

I heard another voice then. It was an alien voice and it sounded harsh in my ears. It was as though I had been listening to a beautiful piece of music and then the musician suddenly hit a wrong note and thus, destroyed the entire piece of music. It was discordant and hurt my ears. I felt sharp things in my skin and then a now, almost familiar agony ripped through me.

-

“HOLD ON FREDDIE.” Kerrass was screaming.

I was staring through this greenish film that was covering my face. I could see all of the roots and the vines and the leaves and how they were all connected with each other. I could see the seeds and the petals and everything. There was a music to it all that sang in the depths of my very soul. I had not heard it before but it had somehow always been there. I knew that now and it sounded beautiful.

“HOLD ON FREDDIE.”

THere was something intruding on my sense of peace. The pain obviously, there is only so much that can be done to ignore the fact that I had a large, intrusive… thing jammed down my throat. But there was the sound of something thrashing about. I could hear things screaming and tearing. THere was wood splintering and the sound of metal chopping into wood.

“HOLD ON FREDDIE.”

I tried to turn my head to see what was coming and there I saw him. My friend. He looked awful. Not just because he was paler, thinner and more skeletal than I could ever remember seeing him. Not just was it the lank, greasy hair and the huge bloodshot eyes set in deep, dark, shadowed hollows. Nor was the blood that ran down his own mouth where the corners of his mouth looked as though they had been torn. Nor was it where the snot from his nose mingles with that very black blood or the way that his clothing was tattered or the livid black bruises that stood out on his skin. He looked… ugly. He looked… frightening and scary. He looked as though he was everything was wrong in the world. He looked…

He looked like, you are standing on a hillside and as far as you can see is the basic farmland and wilderness of the wilder parts of Temeria. You can see the odd stone wall or old fencing and you can see flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. It seems peaceful, quiet and even pleasant. But then you turn your head a little further and you see the remains of a battlefield, or an industrial smelting furnace with the horrific, oily greasy smoke belching from the top.

“HOLD ON FREDDIE.”

Vines and tendrils were reaching for him and taking hold of his legs and his arms, pulling him back, pulling him flush and preventing him from moving. His arms spu and the sword that he held moved with it, freeing him from the grasping tendrils, but there were always more tendrils.

“HOLD ON FREDDIE.”

-

And I was next to the fire, staring at my Father who was gazing at me steadily.

“Why did you go to the Black Forest?” He asked again.

I looked up at the sky and it seemed to me that a layer of clouds had covered the stars as I could only see blackness. The moon must have set as that too had vanished from sight. A sense of stillness had come over the clearing. There was no longer any breeze disturbing the leaves int he trees overhead and I looked at my Father.

“Who are you?” I asked him.

He frowned. “I thought we had been over this.” He said unhappily. “I am your Father. I swear Freddie, for a clever boy you can sometimes be extremely stupid. I am your Father. Now stop avoiding the question and answer it. Why did you go to the Black Forest?”

“Don’t you want to know about the rest of the journey?” I challenged him. “I could tell you about my companions on the journey or I could…”

“And I have no doubt that I will enjoy hearing about all of those things.” He retorted, a shade of anger deepening in his voice. “But for now, I am asking you a question and I would like you to answer it please. Why did you go to the Black Forest?”

“I went because to do otherwise was unthinkable.” I told him. “I have been travelling with Kerrass for just about three years now and although it has left me hurt, wounded and almost certainly dead, I have learned so much, I have gained more than I can possibly imagine. To not go was unthinkable. I literally couldn’t contain myself and not go.”

“Why did you go to the Black Forest?”

“Who are you?” I demanded. “What are you?”

“I asked first, and also answered your question in case anyone is keeping score. Which I am not. I am, instead, becoming annoyed.”

“I have also answered your question.”

“Claiming that you did a thing out of habit is not the same as an explanation.” He snapped. “I am still your Father Frederick and you will tell me what I want to know. Why did you go to The Black Forest?”

“Because I had nothing else to do.” I told him. “THe wedding was months away. My latest work was completed and I was essentially a book in hand, waiting for my collaborators to catch up. The planning of the wedding is all but out of my hands, handled by Emma, Ariadne and the Empress of all people. So it was this or sitting there with my thumb up my ass.”

He looked me in the eyes and waited until he was sure that he had my gaze. “I don’t believe you.” he told me. “The only reason I haven’t slapped you for lying, the same way I did when you were a child.”

“I WAS FOURTEEN.” I bellowed at him. A hurt that I had forgotten bubbling into my voice.

“AND BEHAVING LIKE A CHILD.” He snarled before suddenly stilling. The only reason I haven’t done that is because I honestly think that you are trying to convince yourself of that as well. Why did you go to the Black Forest?”

“I went because I missed my friend.” I told him. “I went because I missed being on the road. I went because I love it, riding along the small roads that no-one other than the locals have travelled over. I love drinking local drinks and eating local food. I love the faces of the villagers and the farmers when I insist on paying for their goods and services rather than expecting it and demanding it like their own nobles do. I love coming around the corner and seeing a new place that is so utterly different from everything and anything that I have seen before and likewise I love it when I come around the corner and I see something that is exactly the same the world over, showing me that no matter how hard we try to differentiate ourselves from each other, we are all the same really.

“I love the old buildings and I love the mystery of what they used to be. I love walking around them and imagining the men and women, or dwarves and gnomes or Elves or Vran or Werebubbs or whatever the fuck, who put them there. I imagine their hopes and dreams or were they just doing it as fast as they could so they could get home to their wives and lovers. If all they were looking forward to was the equivalent of a pint or whatever it was they had in mind at the time.

“I love it Father and I know, I know that I will have to go home and I know that sooner or later I am going to have to get involved with the wedding and dealing with things. I am looking forward to being a married man and I am looking forward to making love to the woman that I love, dining with friends, working in a study of my very own rather than a commandeered one from the place that I still think of as your castle. I am looking forward to all of those things but I still, I STILL dread the moment where I stable my horse and know that I might as well sell the poor beast because I am never going to put her to the amount of work that she deserves to be put to again.”

“All of that is true,” he snapped. “All of it, I can hear it in your voice and see it in your face but that is not the only truth Freddie.” He took a breath to steady himself. “I love you my son and I know you better than just about anyone except maybe that Witcher of yours and one day that Vampire that you have fallen for. I know you and I hear the desperation in your voice. It is the same desperation that you used to try and convince me that you had done the work that I had set you. It is the same desperation that you used to tell me that you had done your utmost to woo the daughter of Baron Strenger of Velen.”

“She had no interest in me, it was a wasted effort.”

“SHE HAD NO INTEREST IN YOU BECAUSE YOU DIDN”T TRY HARD ENOUGH.” He bellowed. “You gave up at the first hurdle. But you stood there and told me that she had no interest in you and that everything you did was rebuffed. But at the same time, you tried nothing at all to meet her on her level. You went through the motions. You went after a woman like that with poetry and flowers and then you….” He took a deep breath.

“And you are not going to divert me, my son.” He said it calmly, almost gently. “You are not going to lead me away with old arguments which I am old enough and wise enough to see that we were both wrong. Why did you go to the Black Forest?”

I screamed as the agony tore through me again.

-

“HOLD ON FREDDIE.” Kerrass was screaming. The agony was different this time. There was a new component to it. It wasn’t the agony of foreign things ripping and tearing their way through my insides. This was different. Kerrass struck at the thing that was coming out of, or going into my mouth. He struck it as though it was a tentacle but his sword bounced off the surface of it. The vibrations of the impact shuddered down the… whatever it was and directly into my insides. I would have howled with the agony of the thing but the thing itself seemed to howl for me.

The same screeching sound that didn’t sound as though it could have come from the throat of a person, was echoing all around me. I could see stumps of tendrils that Kerrass must have cut through to get to me, they were waving around in the spasming agony that is universal in all living things. They were leaking a white, creamy liquid that seemed to pulse out of the ends with the same kinds of rhythms as a heartbeat.

Kerrass snarled, his own voice being used as a weapon against the nose battering at his ears and mine. His body, clearer to me now that it was closer, was torn and battered. Horrific bruises stood out on his skin where the clothing was torn, blood ran down his face which was in its own rictus of hate, pain and… something else.

He grunted in frustration before he gestured at the trunk of the thing where he had struck, sparks shot from the palm of his hand and scorched the surface.

Hot, burning agony was added to the horrific, tearing sensation.

After two seconds, no more than that, a whimpering Kerrass struck out again at the burnt patch.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered, tears mingling with the blood that was running down his face. The sounds of his voice making it through my own agony. “Just hold on, please hold on.”

-

I was back at the fire.

I looked around. There was darkness all around me now. I could still see the trees but beyond that first layer of trees was just a shadow. I felt like I was surrounded by a painting of trees, a painting of a clearing. But the fire still burnt and my Father was still watching me.

“Who are you?” I said again.

“I am your Father.” He told me, seeming a little bit frustrated with the question.

“My Father?” I checked.

“Who else would I be?”

“You are not the only person who has asked me that question?”

“Which question?” he countered. The question about whether or not I am your Father?”

“Now who’s ducking the question.” I retorted.

“I remind you that…”

“You are my father, yes you said. You look like him and you sound like him. You even behave like him.”

“I told you the thing that only I could know.”

“Yes, but I know it as well and you’re in my head aren’t you. So of course you know it too.”

He sighed looking defeated.

“I remember the day you were born…” He began.

“Another story that you have told me a thousand times before.”

He threw his hands up in the air, frustration marking his face and his body language. “How can I convince you that I am your Father then. If everything I tell you is lies in your eyes, how can I convince you? Making your mind up to the exclusion of all others is a sign of weakness. Real strength is allowing other points of view to be entertained so that you can act on them and do things with them. See if other people might be right where you were wrong.”

“Another line straight from our dinner table. This time directed at Mark when he dismissed some of the teachings of Melitele as being weak and you wanted to tell him off for presuming that women are weak. You are not the only person who has asked me why I went to the Black Forest and you are not the only person who has been dissatisfied with every answer that I have been able to give.”

“That could be coincidence. But../”

“But you don’t believe in coincidence.”

“Fine then.” he snapped. “If I am not your Father, who am I? Because I don’t feel like a figment of your imagination?”

I tried to get my brain to work.

“It is possible…” I began carefully. “That I am talking to someone else. And that rather than trying to talk to me like the… strange, otherworldly powerful thing that it is, it has chosen the image and form of my Father to have that conversation to put me at my ease.”

He shook his head.

“I love you my son, but it is also true that I am a bad choice for that. I have never not loved you, but in our time together, we argued as often as we relaxed and I lost you just as we started to have things in common. They would have been better off sending you an image of your sister. Either sister. Your tutors, take your pick. But me? I am the very worst person that they could choose to put you at your ease.”

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He wagged a finger in my face.

“And before you start to argue that that could be the point. That the flawed choice makes it the perfect choice, I would point out that you are looking for confirmation bias there. You have decided that I am not your father and there is no proof that you could accept.”

It was a fair point.

“Let me counter with the fact that it went into your mind and pulled me from wherever it was that we go when we die.” He said. “It chose me because it knew that for all our interactions were sometimes, no… often antagonistic, it knew that we loved each other. Why not someone else? Why not some other departed soul? Because you respect me. And also, because I want to know how everything has turned out. I wanted those answers more than your sister did. So I was the one that was sent back because I made the most sense.”

-

More pain, Hot, cold, metallic, ripping and tearing agony.

“Hold on Freddie,” Kerrass whimpered. “I am nearly through.” He struck at the charred, all but cut tentacle again.

-

Now there was just the fire and my Father who was still speaking.

“Regardless of whether or not I am your Father, or whether I am some… phantom, some wraith of your father summoned from… wherever. If I am your Father, I want to know the answer and also as your Father, I think you need to tell me the answer. I think you need to confront it for yourself. Why did you go to the Black Forest?

“Also as your father, I don’t believe the thing about boredom. You could have learnt to be a Count. Meet the people that will be your people. You could have gone to court, from everything that you said, you have the ear of the Empress and I have no doubt that you could represent us well in the courts of the Empire. You could be a Professor. I am proud of that by the way. Truly. You set yourself a target that no-one in our family has ever achieved and you did it, in some cases despite us. You could be giving lectures and shaping young minds. So don’t feed me a line of having nothing better to do.

“But if I am some… image of your Father. Then answer the question. Why did you go to the Black Forest? A mission that you knew might end in your death. A mission that over and over again, people have been warning you was incredibly dangerous. Why did you do it? Why? What could possibly have possessed you? What was worth that risk?”

-

It was both agony and a relief. Kerrass had finally cut through the thing that came from my mouth.

“LET HIM GO.” He screamed as he took hold of the stump that emerged from my throat and started to pull.

It was agony and relief.

-

“What was worth all of this? What were you so desperate for?” Just my Father now.

And just like that, the answer was obvious.

“I want to know what happened to Francesca.” I sobbed. “We were always going to come here as the next thing. To try and ask The Schattenmann what he might know about Francesca, her disappearance and why someone might have taken her. I have to know, I need to know.”

My Father’s face fell. “Oh Freddie.”

He rushed around the fire that was no longer there and he embraced me like a Father does. Hard and firm, a pillar of strength that I needed and had not had for far too long.

“I need to know Dad. I need to know. And I will never find out now. I will never… I will never know. My sister. I loved her and I failed her and there is nothing I could have done differently but I should have. I should have known and I should have done it differently. I should have protected her and seen the threat and I…”

“You know how I feel about babbling.” He chided gently.

I laughed and as it has before, laughter was the last crack in the dam that sent the torrent rushing forward. I screamed the horror, and the longing and the pain and the sorrow into my Father’s chest. Tears clouded my eyes and soaked his shirt and I no longer cared. I have no idea how long that lasted before the pain came again.

“NEARLY THERE FREDDIE.” Kerrass grunted. He was cutting at the thing that came out of my bowls now. My upper body was resting on something soft and firm. My hands scrabbled and I felt something soft and damp. I thought it might be moss.

Whole new levels of agony tore through my insides as whatever it was that was inside me scrabbled for purchase.

-

Just my father now, sitting in front of me. All was blackness now. Just blackness. Father was looking around.

“It is so beautiful here.” He said. Tears streaming down his own face., answering to the wetness on mine.

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.”

He looked at me, sensing the lie I think.

“It seems that my time is growing short.” he told me. “So let me leave you with this.

“Whether I am a figment of your imagination carrying you through a dark and awful time. If I am the ghost of your Father summoned back from beyond to help be a messenger or whether I am a construct of whatever it was that is trying to talk to you. All three things would say that I have heard your story and I know several truths.”

I swallowed.

“There was nothing you could have done. Nothing, to prevent your sister from being stolen from us. It was the act of evil men, fanatics and I would charge you to be vigilant. Where there is one there is always more and you know that.”

“I do.” I was trying to listen. This might be the last advice I ever received from my Father.

“Where there is one, there is always more.” He said. “Remember that.”

“I will.”

“So I am your Father and even if I wasn’t, then I would tell you that I love you so much. Believe it my son, even if I didn’t tell you enough in life. I hope that you know that is true.”

“I love you too Father and I am so, so very sorry that I…”

He held his hands up to stop me.

“You do not need to apologise.” He said. “You are my son and I…”

-

I screamed as Kerrass pulled the last tendril from my bowels.

was sobbing. In pain of the body and the soul.

“Well Freddie.” Kerrass said as he tried to put my arm over his shoulder. “Lets…”

I couldn’t stand. My mouth was swelling and filling with blood. A horrible sticky wetness was running down my leg. I grabbed hold of Kerras and tried to turn his head to mine. I tried to tell him to leave me and I had no words… I couldn’t say it, I couldn’t form the words but he knew.

“Fuck that.” He told me. “I would never leave my brother.”

He lowered me to the ground and stood over me with his sword raised. I could hear things moving, slithering towards us.

“Besides.” he told me with an awful grin, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. “What would I tell Ariadne?”

I saw the tendrils and the tentacles behind him. He screamed as he attacked but there were so many and they were moving so fast.

My last thought was a hope that I would see my father again and that he would let me finish telling me that I was sorry for letting him down and that he could finish telling me… whatever it was that he was going to tell me. Then darkness took me.

I had time to register it as a warm, soft, even restful darkness of a strange kind of purity that I had not found in any of the other darknesses that I have seen or been part of before. In the real world, there is always something there. Always something deep in the darkness, even in our fears. Sleep comes with dreams, the darkness of a city is always broken with the torch or lantern light of the guard and the watch, broken by the sounds of the people in those houses and broken by the distant glow of cities. Even at night, there is starlight and moonlight which sometimes, when the moon is particularly full, that moonlight can shine through even cloud cover. This was none of those things. This was the darkness of the purest, deepest sleep that you can imagine. This was the darkness of what you hope death will be like.

Restful, complete and quiet.

I have no idea how long that darkness lasted. No idea how long that… rest was granted to me.

Then I woke up.

Compared to my earlier waking, this was so utterly different that I almost look back on it with amusement. This was not the long, slow climb towards wakefulness. This was the surge of adrenaline version of waking up. That moment where the pressure in your bladder becomes too much for even your exhausted brain to be able to ignore. This was the adrenaline shot of hearing something nearby that you do not recognise. This was the surge to your heartbeat from rolling over to find someone unexpected in your room.

I woke, the sunlight cut through my vision like a hot knife and I came to a fully sitting position as though someone had jammed a hot poker in my… well…

It was a bright spring morning. There was the shine of damp in the air and the slightly watery feeling of the sunlight shining through that dampness. I could see the sky looking as blue as I could ever remember seeing it with large puffballs of clouds floating serenely by.

Realisation struck me almost immediately afterwards. I could see the sky. And it had never seemed quite as beautiful before. It was so beautiful that it seemed to take my breath away.

But I could still hear the sound of wind in the trees. I looked around me frantically. Kerrass was lying next to me and like me he was frantically examining himself. Also nearby were our two packs, our weapons and all of our belongings, even our two horses were nearby with all the signs that they had wandered off to tug at the grass that was all around us, rippling in the breeze.

Kerrass looked over at me and with some kind of inarticulate cry, he all but leapt at me and started checking me for injuries.

“Freddie.” He said as he grabbed my head and twisted it this way and that way, examining it minutely. “I swear that your jaw had nearly been torn off with that… And I could see that…”

He said this last as he tried to turn me over and examine my backside. Never the most flattering of angles and I protested automatically.

“You have your silver sword.” I pointed it out. “I thought that that had been left behind when…”

He spun and took it up from the ground. He stood and prowled around, snatching the cat medallion from around his neck and walking around in a long circle, examining the medallion minutely.

I also stood, carrying out my own examination of my clothes and my belongings. My spear, dagger and knives were all in their proper positions. If I didn’t know better I would say that they were freshly oiled and cleaned. My clothing as well. I remembered the broken ankle or whatever it was that I had suffered when the dryads had taken me and I pulled off my boot and lifted my trousers to examine the area. I could see a little scar and if I really tried to probe the area then I would be forced to admit that there was some muscular tenderness. But beyond that, it was the same as it ever was.

I checked the rest of my belongings. They had been packed away neatly and carefully. If I really tried to exercise my paranoia then I would say that it was close to how I would pack them, but not quite correct. But even that would have been false on the grounds that I pack my travelling bags with the kind of logical process that anyone would. So that meant nothing. I went over to the horses and checked them as well, they seemed fine and well looked after. Nothing that some time in a decent stable wouldn’t fix. They had the same kind of wear and tear that you would expect from a pair of horses that had been on the road for a long time.

Then I ran out of things to look at and I could no longer ignore the vast expanse of trees on the horizon. The forest was this huge, massive thing that dominated the skyline. And everything just kind of hit me in the face. Everything that had happened or that I had thought had happened and my knees just kind of buckled and the tears welled up in my eyes. I remembered the conversation with my Father, or not my Father and I just wept for a long time.

Kerrass came over and crouched in front of me., waiting for me to find my sense of calm again.

“If all of that turns out to have been a dream, or some kind of vision.” I began after a while, my voice trembling a little. “Then words cannot express just how pissed I’m going to be.”

He chuckled at me and turned to look out over the treeline.

“I don’t think so.” he said. “Some of it was, not all of it but I think some of it was. Who knows what kind of hallucinogens that they gave us, or plants that we ingested. I’m going to need to think about that for a while. But first, I think it’s time that I took you home and got your sister to sit on you.”

I nodded and his face seemed to fall. He had been trying for some levity or something and instead I was on the verge of tears.

“I didn’t come here to keep you company Kerrass.” I admitted. “I came here to keep looking for Francesca. I wanted to ask if The Schattenmann knew something about it and I wanted to… Flame, I wanted… I don’t know.”

He put his hand on my shoulder.

“I know Freddie. I know. I knew from the first moment that I saw you. The only reason I didn’t kick your ass was because I didn’t know if you knew.” He smirked at a memory. “That was the other reason that I was pissed at you when you found us. Also… I was still looking for Francesca as well. I mean, I know that she is gone and that we won’t find her now. But I am still looking. I honestly wonder if we will be looking until the ends of our lives now.”

“Flame I hope not.” I told him. “But I don’t think I would be wasting my life to do that.”

“You would,” he told me.

“I know. And that’s why you’re right. I had already decided. I need to go home now. I need to stay there. It’s going to be hard and I will hate you and Emma and everyone else involved, but I think it needs to be done.”

He nodded but I was not looking at him. Another thought occurred and I was pulling at my clothing. Looking for the item that was how I contacted the woman that I love. I took hold of it in both hands as Kerrass saw what I was doing and walked off a little distance to give me some privacy.

“Ariadne?” I asked in a small voice.

“Freddie?” She called back in an equally small but far more hopeful voice.

I couldn’t say anything else as I was already in tears.

-

This is not the end of the story although it was the end of our part in it really. And indeed, the story of the Black Forest is still going on as I sit here writing this back in Coulthard castle in the North. I am getting regular reports though and some other detective work has been done in the meantime. It has been some time since I have been able to write a proper kind of “aftermath” of what my adventures entail though so I feel positively nostalgic about this.

We didn’t go straight home. As Kerrass said, we had a lot of thinking to do. We stayed where we were, thoroughly taking stock, for about an hour until Ariadne arrived and we pitched camp. Kerrass did some personal exercises while I sat and told Ariadne everything. She sat and listened, taking occasional notes, acting as both my fiancee and the woman I love, but also acting as a member of the Lodge of Sorceresses which answers to the Empress. When we had finished she looked at me for a long time.

“So you have daughters?” She asked with an odd note to her voice.

“I’m sorry.” I said, “I probably have daughters, I think so, or am going to have daughters or… I don’t know. It gets complicated.”

She nodded. “Of course I forgive you.” She told me. “You did what you did for the sake of survival, but I cannot deny that I am jealous, of them I mean. Later I might get angry but I would not be angry with you.”

“I’m sorry.” I said again.

She sighed in exasperation. “I’m not angry with…”

“I know.” I told her. “I also know and have known that you would forgive me, or at least, that you would forgive me if I wasn’t so much of an asshat about it this time.”

She laughed at that.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that I am sorry. Sorry for the pain that this will have caused you and sorry for the fear that I have given you.”

Very carefully, she set aside the travel desk that she had worked on, rolled up the papers into her messenger tube and sealed it, putting away her quills and ink before she looked at me with watery eyes.

“I was very scared, Freddie.” She told me. “I will admit to not wanting you to go anywhere without me again for a while, or at least until after our wedding night.”

“I’m sorry.” I said again.

“I mean,” She sighed with annoyance. “Obviously there there are things that you have to do and that I have to do and that there are different places and…”

She was locked into one of her spirals of thought and I know from experience that the best thing to do in these instances is to just shock her from that spiral. So I hugged her and told her that I loved her. It seemed like the right thing to do.

“Interesting.” She said after a long while before tightening the embrace. “Daughters. I would like to meet them. And to meet this Chestnut-Shell and Apple-Seed that you seem to have spent so much time with.”

“If you do.” I told her. “I would ask you to be gentle.”

“I will, I promise. They are just as much victims of their society as you are. I shall tell them so and do my very best to see if I can help them. I like the sound of this Chestnut-Shell.”

I felt a familiar fear come over me then. It had been the same fear that I had felt when Ariadne had spent time with the courtesan that she had chosen for me. Your fiancee discussing you with your previous lover, swapping tricks and things.

The Horror.

She left before evening to make her report and start the ball rolling on what needed to happen. I had no idea what that was at the time but have since learned that it was mostly to do with things like protecting the borders of the Black Forest. Making sure that there were no unfortunate logging efforts or that people were taking advantage of it.

Eventually that led to contact being made with the dryads of the Brokilon forest who are sending a mission to the Black Forest in order to make contact with their lost sisters.

I have no idea how that is going.

Kerrass and I didn’t return home immediately. We both had a lot to do and a lot to think about. Not least was trying to establish how much of what we had seen was a dream or a vision and how much of it had actually happened. Ariadne came back after submitting our research and we found her cooking breakfast for the three of us the following morning.

That day, we travelled easily, Kerrass and I on horseback with Ariadne making her own way by whatever means she found necessary. Neither of Kerrass’ or my horses were used to Elder Vampires and both objected to her presence, otherwise I would have taken great delight in riding with her. But it was impractical. Instead, she stayed at the campsite when we rode off, met us for lunch and camped with us again that night.

We were trying to find out where we were and although there were plenty of villages in the nearby area. Kerrass and I wanted to dissect our past activities in order to see if we could figure out a few things. Ariadne’s input was invaluable and we didn’t want to talk about meeting The Schattenmann in the middle of the local tavern with locals nearby that might revere him like a God.

Although we could never prove what happened or what our experiences were, we decided that everything was true up until the moment that Stefan struck the Schattenmann’s form with Kerrass’ silver sword.

By the way, Ariadne was insistent that she would have gone to the Black Forest and lived with me for those seven years, even if I had become The Schattenmann’s vessel. She would have stayed and done her best to help prolong my life.

I love her an awful lot.

Kerrass had a similar experience to mine. He remembered the two of us fleeing the raging Schattenmann after Stefan’s presumed death. When we were overtaken, he remembered sitting by a stream, speaking with the Unicorn and Schrodinger before his Goddess had turned up and proceeded to kick his ass all over that streamside clearing. He had woken up wrapped in green tentacles and had freed himself using at first a knife and then his steel sword that was nearby. It took him some time to find me but when he tried to cut his way towards me, the green roots, tentacles or whatever they were really were, got angry and started to attack him. The rest seemed to match up with my own memories.

Ariadne travelled with us for about a week on and off, occasionally disappearing for a day only to meet us at night. Sometimes she would just stay with us for an hour, watching me as if making sure that I wasn’t just going to run off somewhere. Then she would go back. Her report, and later mine after I had had the chance to send my own report to the Empress, had kicked off a stink. Bordering Lords of the Black Forest had been eyeing the place up for logging rights for decades and now the Empress was forbidding it on pain of the second Imperial army. This did not sit right with many people.

So Kerrass and I travelled together for a bit, trying to retrace our, and his, steps in order for us to try and decide what was real and what was hallucination. We figured out where we were fairly quickly and headed to a nearby town where we bathed thoroughly and Kerrass found himself a willing woman. I was too tired for anything though so I just ate, bathed until my skin became wrinkled and climbed into bed. Then we set out.

The first of our companions that we found any trace of was Piotr. Or rather we found the village that he had come from. The one that had lynched Piotr’s wife and then The Schattenmann had found some measure of vengeance for the fallen woman.

We found the Father of Piotr’s wife who attentive readers will remember was called Hugo. He told us that Piotr had come back from his last journey with a strange expression and an attitude as though he had been slapped in the face. I said nothing to that as the poor man looked as though he was on the verge of tears. We asked him where Piotr had gone and what he had done and we were directed towards a camp that was out in the woods. The old man who looked as though he had visibly aged in the time that we had been gone gave us careful directions with an attitude of bittersweetness.

We stayed the night in the village and then went along the directed path in the morning where we found a clearing that seemed natural to our eyes. Before anyone gets caught up in the symbology of the thing, it was not the clearing of my dreams and where I had spoken to my Father. It was only similar in that it was flat, surrounded by trees and had running water nearby.

Off to one end of the clearing there were signs of some ground clearance and some area was being marked out for the building of a new cabin. Nearby there was a large, pavilion style tent where we found the old herbmistress and healer of the village who was called Rose. I wrote of her as a handsome but bitter woman in her early to mid thirties. To see her this time… They say that emotions have an effect on a person’s appearance and if that were the case, Rose was the best evidence of this theory. She looked like she had lost ten years of age, as though she had slept a proper night’s sleep and a smile seemed to be permanently fixed to her face.

She greeted us warmly and bustled around to make us tea. She didn’t let us in the pavilion as she told us that she had a couple of sick children in there that had eaten the wrong berries. Kerrass offered to look and she looked at him with a sly smile before allowing him entrance. She had not been lying.

She told us the story quite happily and thanked us both, particularly me, for what had happened. She told us that a tearful and a confused looking Piotr had turned up on her doorstep and demanded to know if what I had said would be true.

“You told him that I loved him.” She accused with a smile.

“Call me a liar.” I retorted and she laughed. It was like talking to a different woman.

She told us that he had sobbed and had wailed the question “Why?” telling her that he was an awful man and that no-one could love him, least of all a wonderful woman like her.

There had been a row, and then a conversation and then a tentative agreement and then a realisation that there was enough affection there to build on.

Piotr couldn’t live in the village, but neither could Rose leave the village. The neighbouring village also needed a healer and an arrangement was made. A cabin would be built between the two villages. Piotr would continue to work as a local guide and Rose would be a healer for both villages.

The two would try living together. We didn’t probe too deeply but it was pretty clear that the pair of them were lovers and that Piotr was trying to change his life.

“How is he?” I asked.

“He is…” She frowned. “He hates himself.” She admitted. “Over and over again he tells me that he is not a good man and that I should flee far away from him. I tell him over and over again that if he was a bad man, or if he acts like a bad man then I will leave in a moment. But he has already lost that shadow that hangs over him. I have friends that are watching him and he has not grown angry and…”

She laughed.

“He says that he is a bad man. But in the time since he has come back, we work on it. He weeps regularly and I hold him. He has nightmares. But so far he is doing well. He has told me all about the women and the drink and the narcotics as well as the fits of temper. He knows that I will stand for none of those things and he agrees. He goes into the woods when he gets too angry. He says that he is a bad man but I live for the day when he says that he “was” a bad man.”

We checked to make sure that she was alright. Kerrass was concerned that Piotr might turn abusive and said so. Rose admitted that she was aware of the danger. That she still slept with a knife, had a separate sleeping area and that her old house was still open and available. That she was visited regularly by her friends and the sheer number of patients now that she had been given two villages to look after. Then he would be held accountable and so would she.. But that, so far, his anger and his hate was directed inwards rather than at her. To her, he had behaved as a gentleman.

We stayed for a while, hoping to see Piotr but it became clear given a couple of the hints that she gave us, that he knew we were here and had gone off to hide in the woods. He had no intention of coming to see us and would deliberately stay away until we had gone. He was due to guide a wagon train through the nearby paths the day after tomorrow, his second since he had returned and so far, there was nothing for her to complain about.

So with her best wishes and her sincerest thanks, we went back on our way and stayed the night at the next village over.

We found news of Trayka next. There was nothing unusual about her other than the fact that she was a woman. The continent is full of men that lived the way she did. Killers and hunters that live on both sides of the law, hunting down fugitives and other people for the legal authorities and sometimes for the not so legal authorities. Men who blow into town, drink all the drink, sleep with all the women, take the wanted posters just before they are due to be forcefully moved on by the guard and then come back a week later dragging the fugitive or the proof of the fugitive’s death and then the entire thing starts again.

The only difference being in this case that she was a woman and slept with men rather than with women. She didn’t seem to care, or even notice all of the scandal that she caused when she passed through, but that didn’t stop it from happening. We found several richer men who had tried to keep her as a mistress and one instance where she had been forced to flee town when she had visited a medicine woman to help her with an unwanted pregnancy which would be the bastard of the local Reeve.

She hasn't come back and as far as we know, she is a dryad in the Black Forest now. We tracked her back to her home village which was when we found news of Henrik.

Henrik had turned out to be well known as the town drunk. He was genuinely thought to have been a good man and when sober he worked hard and did his best to bring his family up. To my eyes and ears, Trayka’s account of her father was a bit harsh. When his children had left, Henrik had worked and provided money to ensure that they had food, but Trayka had been stubborn and refused it until the son had been old enough to ask for his father.

Henrik’s story was considered a village tragedy. His heart was broken and he’d had a tough life. Then every time that Henrik had done his best to pick himself up, life had a habit of hammering him in the face. In the end, it was clear that Henrik had become sick and they had wondered where he had gone with his daughter.

They did not like Trayka very much. Lots of stories of “She was a very unhappy child” and stories about broken hearted boys and a bad attitude. She had apparently taken the time to hide out in the village after some of her adventures had gotten her into trouble and the village resented that. We told them that they probably didn’t need to worry about either of them. The village put up a memorial stone for Henrik, but not for Trayka.

We also heard the story about how Trayka’s brother had been taken. It does have to be said that that account was true as far as we could tell.

We went to see the line of ash. It was still there and I spent a long time looking at it. Kerrass was next to me and informs me now that he was ready to physically restrain me should I have tried to cross the line.

We found no sign of Stefan. Absolutely none.

We went to the monastery where Kerrass had recruited Stefan from. Kerrass’ account of meeting Stefan was that he had been asking for guides and companions to travel with him into the Black Forest for an expedition to speak to The Schattenmann. He had received news that there was a local monastery that was interested in that kind of thing and Kerrass had gone.

Kerrass led me to that monastery, you can find monasteries like them occasionally. Men and women, although it’s mostly men, who find spiritual fulfilment through the learning of martial arts. There are good and bad examples of this throughout the world and also knightly, martial orders that start as one and then become the other. Normally when politics are introduced into the mix,

Like normal for this kind of thing, the monastery was either built as a fortress or had taken over an old one. Not as big as some, but it was still quite big. There were twenty warriors, another dozen older, retired warriors, most of whom were sporting some kind of old injury and maybe sixty novices. The place seemed to make Kerrass uncomfortable for some reason and we were in and out fairly quickly.

According to the abbot, Kerrass had arrived, spoken to the abbot at some length about the requirements. But there wasn’t anyone skilled enough or properly available to go on the mission with The Witcher. The Abbot seemed genuinely upset that this was the case and apologised often.

Kerrass had to leave but I stayed there for some time, meeting Kerrass in the village every night to discuss what I found. Not only was there no Stefan, but it appeared that there never was. The monastery, as they tend to, kept careful records of their members, the missions that they departed on. In theory this was to remember the fallen but I also got the feeling that this was also so that they could feel good about themselves.

But there was never anyone called Stefan that had stayed there or trained there. No record, nothing. I asked many of the attending Knights and Elders and they agreed. Even physical descriptions of Stefan and his history which he had recounted to me over the time that we had spent on the road together, there was nothing. It was as though a great hand had reached into the very existence of the continent and had plucked Stefan from the face of history.

We gave up after a few days.

We also found some evidence of the three men that were with us when I knelt before The Schattenmann and Stefan stole Kerrass’ sword.

Regarding the woodcutter that had been taken prisoner and was there with us at the end, I’m afraid we could find no sign of and we looked. Unfortunately, it is true that I possibly haven’t been able to communicate just how vast the Black Forest is end to end. And after our own adventures in the depths of the thing, I would also say that the difference between flying over it and and actually walking through it would be, not inconsiderable. Therefore that woodcutter or whatever he was could have been anyone and could have become anyone else.

His is an interesting case. When I met him, I didn’t really get to know him because I was so tied into my own thought patterns so I didn’t get to know him when I had the chance. But the probability that he simply entered the Black Forest from a different direction than what we did is high. The follow up problem to people like that is that people like him, men, and women, both human and non-human, can be found up and down the continent everywhere. Indeed, I only call him the Wood-cutter because I don’t want to call him Villager, peasant, Farm-worker or any other slightly derogatory phrase that people use about such people. People that were born in the place that they are going to spend the rest of their lives in. Their lives are simple and that is all that they want. And if we’re being brutally honest, they don’t have the ability, imagination or the intelligence to do anything else. That’s not a knock on them. I know that it sounds like it but it really isn’t.

Some people are born to that life and are satisfied with that life. Simple in mind and wit and if it seems like I am being down on them then let me say this as well. Sometimes, I quite envy that kind of lifestyle. To know that I get up at a certain time, that I need to do a certain amount of work and that when that work is done, then I will have provided for myself and for my family. Lacking in the imagination or the intelligence to do more than that. That sounds like a simple life to me and I like the sounds of it.

Of course, if you pick me up and put me in such a life then I would last a few days before I find it boring. He seemed like a good man, paralysed by the terror and the strangeness that was surrounding him and that wherever he is, I hope that he landed on his feet and can find some form of happiness.

We also didn’t find the specific soldier that acted as the woodcutter’s friend but we did find out the likeliest solution as to who he was. We would have found him eventually if we had had the freedom and the luxury to keep looking.

In that part of the Empire, there have been no real wars to speak of for a couple of generations now. But the local lords like to throw their weight around and when hunting no longer fulfils that desire for warfare and bloodshed then they conduct raids on each other. In light of the continental wars taking place, it would be laughable for us to call these raids full blown wars but I suspect that it would be no less unpleasant and violent for the people involved.

“Armies” would be numbered in the hundreds rather than in the thousands and these nobles, who like to think that if they had fought in the continental wars then it would have all been over in a matter of weeks rather than the Empire needing several attempts to get it right. I have spoken about such men before. See my comments when it came to Lord Cavill and his court as well as the nobles that would have made up the Knights of the Burning Sword. Sir Robart de Radford is one of these kinds of people.

So they all get dressed up in their finery and meet in fields to smack the shit out of each other. In return a bunch of soldiers get killed, a bunch of villagers get displaced and if it all gets out of hand, the Empress has to intervene. It’s the kind of thing that has been going on for the last couple of centuries. Men need to think of themselves as warriors and when they are bored, they look around for someone to fight and normally, they find one.

According to the locals that I spoke to, this kind of “warfare” had gotten quite brutal about a year ago. Just when I had been departing Toussaint for the first time in my hunt for Francesca. One of the nobles decided that he was going to terrify the locals into submission. He raised a largish army and hired a bunch of mercenaries and laid siege to a series of villages and towns full of common folk. He ordered his troops to do horrifying things to the common people in order to subdue them. Eventually a division of Imperial forces arrived and spanked them. There were a bunch of beheadings and a series of younger sons took over the former noble lands.

It is almost certain that the soldier in question was one of these soldiers that had been ordered to carry out, well, war-crimes.

It is easy to condemn such men and I am not going to fall into the trap. My brother was a soldier and several of my closest friends are soldiers. I spoke about this to Sir Rickard when I got home and he had this to say.

“I cannot tell you what it’s like to be part of a sieging force. It’s one of those things, like the huge battles, that you can either be in or not and trying to describe it is fruitless. But it changes men and later on, when the siege is over, you look back at the horrors that you lived through and the horrors that you perpetrated and you despair at the things that you become.”

He considered. The two of us were sitting in Chireadean’s tavern at the time. I had just arrived back from the south and Shani was away on some mission which always leaves Rickard introspective and a little maudlin.

“There is a fear of being in a siege.” Rickard went on. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a village or the largest fortress that you can imagine. It’s different to battles as well because you can see the bastards in a battle and you know that sooner or later, one side is going to advance towards the other and do their best to carve a new asshole for each other. But in a siege? The defenders are terrified because you can see the besiegers prepare assaults and there is the constant knowledge that sooner or later, the food and the water is going to run out. So you spend all of your time coming up with increasingly awful things to do to the other guy when they come over the walls.

“And being the attacker is worse. You are outside in the elements, in the filth and the mud and the horror. Bored out of your mind, waiting for the disease that always accompanies besieging forces. Eating rotten food and drinking foul water and you look at the city, or town and all you do is imagine all of the horror that the defenders are storing up just for you. You think of them as being warm, dry and eating good food and drinking nice wine. Maybe with a pretty girl to keep them warm at night. And you know that eventually, your generals are going to order you to throw yourselves into that awful place.

“There is hatred in a siege, where there often isn’t in a battle. In a battle, you are just doing your job and doing your best to prevent the other guy doing theirs. But in a siege? The attackers hate and fear the defenders and the defenders hate and fear the attackers. So when it’s over, when that fear is proved false, it can send a man mad.

“You yourself have felt that moment, where fear turns into anger and it feels wonderful doesn’t it?”

I nodded, listening in fascination.

“So there you are, in the homes and the streets of men and women that you have hated for days, weeks, months and in some cases even years. And that explosion of fear defeated, spiced with hate? It does awful things to a man. I’ve seen good family men go into a building, rape the women before murdering them and then stealing everything that seemed even remotely worth anything. Just as I’ve seen the most awful, cut-throat, psychotic murderer weeping at the sight of the baby that the previous family man killed. It’s even worse when the nobleman orders you to that horror. Because what’s a common soldier to do when he is ordered to visit horror on his enemy? Refusing the order leads to torture and death and the habit of obedience under combat is drilled and flogged into the soldiery.”

He shrugged and ordered another round.

“Write that down Freddie.” He told me. “Write that down.”

So I did.

And that’s who I think that soldier was. A good man was ordered to do horrible things that would and have haunted him for the rest of his life.

Eventually though it became clear that it was time for me to be taken home. I felt the pull of the Black Forest and admitted it to Kerrass. I wanted to go back and see if I could speak to Chestnut-Shell and Apple-Seed. I wanted to properly speak to The Schattenmann and I could feel it in my bones. My legs ached for not walking towards the Schattenmann and my soul wept for not turning my horse for the line of trees that still dominated the horizon. So we set aside our enquiries and headed north. Ironically, this was when we found out the identity of the minstrel that The Schattenmann had killed in so awful a fashion.

We had travelled to the coast and then taken a series of ships to get to Novigrad. Kerrass and Ariadne had schemed to take me by ship so that I could both enjoy the last part of the journey but also so that I couldn’t sneak off in the middle of things to go and indulge my increasingly spiralling thinking. The plan worked and we arrived back in Novigrad with about five months to spare before the wedding day which, at time of writing is still going to take place at the Autumn Equinox.

By this stage I was resigned but a strange feeling had stolen over the both of us. It was clear to us now that this was going to be the end of our journeys together and neither of us wanted it to end just yet. So we dawdled. We spent a couple of days in Novigrad. We told ourselves that it was to relax after so long spent at sea, but the truth was that we just weren’t ready for things to come to an end yet. So we stayed at the Rosemary and Thyme as guests of Professor Dandelion and Master Chivay.

We got drunk, played cards and Kerrass made use of several women that were available for the use. One night while Kerrass was out enjoying himself and picking fights with some of the local riffraff… I mean, he calls it working as there are increasingly monster types that live exclusively in cities that the guards like to hire Witchers for when available. But Kerrass was out and I was telling the story to the Professor while we were listening to Priscilla perform.

I got to the part where I was describing the death of the Minstrel in question and he abruptly sighed and hung his head, setting his lute aside. Up until that point he had been gently playing around with the music, partially accompanying his lover’s music but also just playing.

Then he hung his head for a while before shaking it and beginning to speak. It is sometimes easy for Professor Dandelion to pretend that he has never lectured, but in the end, he slips back into that way of thinking with astonishing ease.

“Foolish, foolish boy.” He said sadly before signalling for one of the barmaids to bring over some more spirits and a pair of cups.

“Did you know him?”

“Saying that I knew of him, would be closer to the mark. I met him a couple of times and warned him about his lifestyle choices but he was young and beautiful and…” He accepted the bottle off the pretty woman that served us. All the bar staff at the R&T are pretty. Apparently, Dandelion demands them that way although I have it on good authority that it’s actually Priscilla that does most of the hiring. And as far as I know, Dandelion has never strayed and the ladies are not required to do anything they don’t want to.

I am going to do my best to capture this lecture as close to the man’s actual words as I can.

“His working name was Wilhelm von Plume just as mine is Dandelion and his problem was that he did not see the irony in our role as bards or minstrels.

“Our job is to provide an escape in the world. Even you yourself, while commenting on the life and works of the Witcher that is in your care, have remarked that even the most fantastical of existences can become mundane and boring after a while. A Witcher’s life is boredom, followed by excitement and in that way, they are like soldiers except that the Witchers fight their wars without glory, without banners, without nations, generals or battles to be written in the history books. There will never be medals or plaudits. Not parades or flowers strewn at their feet. The only thing that there is is casualties in that war. The never-ending battle of the Witcher.”

He picked up his lute again and strummed a few chords. I was reminded of the romance of the thing that had attracted me to the subject in the first place.

“But everyone is the same really. As soon as something becomes routine it becomes mundane. Magic users spend most of their time in their laboratories or libraries. Theirs is a life of research and experiment so that they can keep up with the latest knowledge and fashions while their factionism means that they try and insert their way into courtrooms so that they can protect their fellows and students and so on and so on. And to many, the courtroom is actually more relaxing than dealing with the fast and terrifying forces that they have to deal with otherwise.”

The strumming on his lute had taken on a plaintive note and he got a vacant expression, tilting his head over to one side as he considered, playing a few chords over and over again at varying speeds and emphasis. Like many creative types, he habitually keeps some parchment and charcoal near himself and he quickly pulled them over and scribbled down a few things. Similar to my own scholar’s language, his seemed to be a series of letters and numbers along with some dots and lines that were drawn on a series of horizontal lines. Then he quickly wrote a couple of lines before violently strumming something else.

“What was I saying?”

“Routine and that a bard’s job is…”

“Ah yes. Peasants grinding their lives away in the fields. Merchants working away at… whatever it is merchants do. Market stall holders accept abuse and hurling out friendliness in an effort to attract customers. To the next person over it might seem more attractive but the truth is that all of our lives are a matter of routine and that routine becomes boring.

“The task of the travelling bard and minstrel,” he struck a couple of heroic chords and puffed out his chest, “is to provide a moment of fantasy to help people escape from that life. We arrive at a place and we perform, we sing songs, play music, dance, juggle, perform acrobatics and things so that in that moment, the watcher and listener can be transported away from their mundane existence and moved towards a higher place, a different place.

“And everything we do is geared towards that end. The way we dress, the way we speak and act. Our entire persona is geared towards that goal. Including, the keeping of ourselves, personal grooming and all of that. But it’s also in the art of seducing the right person. Because if you can get that bit right, then your name will spread.

“Because we all need an edge. Not everyone can be as talented, handsome and wonderful as I can.”

I can never tell whether or not he’s joking when he says things like this. I have seen the stage persona of Dandelion and I occasionally think that I have seen Viscount Pankratz peeking out from behind Dandelion’s eyes, laughing at all of us buying into Dandelion’s nonsense.

“So we need an edge. Something to make people remember us and to drive the story of us forwards to the customers down the road so that we get hired and invited into the powerful places to perform and get a better payday that is more than a patch of floor to sleep on and a hot meal in our bellies. Something that will not help us when Winter comes.

“Hmm.”

He frowned into the distance again.

“We are like soldiers and Witchers again. Except our enemies are boredom and mundanity. Our war is a private thing, fought in the hearts and minds of… Nooooo, no no. No-one will find that tragic.”

He tilted his head to one side, trying to remember where he was.

“So seducing the audience is part of what we do. In theory that is in order to get the audience to buy into the stories that we tell. So that they are in the mood for what we have to offer. Not all villages are capable of enjoying epic tales and histories. Likewise, some don’t want to hear about long, convoluted romances. They want a bawdy tune that they can sing along to. So you must convince them that they want to hear what you have to offer.

“And that will also involve seducing the individual. Sometimes a side-effect, sometimes… It can help to have a muse. Inspiration can come from anywhere and it is hard to sing about the most beautiful woman in the world if you are keeping yourself separate from the women in the room. So you pick one, and you sing to her. You convince yourself that she really is the most beautiful woman in the world and after several days on the road with only your horse,” he cocked his eyebrows at me “or your Witcher for company, she might actually be that. And so you fall in love with her because you have to believe the song that you are singing. And then you have to move on in the morning to avoid the angry Father, older brother or husband.

“But also to avoid hurting her. There is an art to this as well. Not all people can be loved and left so you have to choose the right one. Someone that is available for what you are offering. But also, if you choose a woman who’s husband is particularly vengeful and angry, then that can cause problems for her after you’ve gone. It took me…”

His eyes went vacant.

“It took me a long time to learn that lesson and I have only recently learned it.”

He spent some time looking at Priscilla on the stage. Then he set his lute aside and leant forward, suddenly all business.

“Wilhelm was a moderately talented bard. He was never going to achieve worldwide fame and no-one was going to take his songs and perform them themselves. He was a good player, good singer and his poetry was passable but the only person that could elevate what he wrote was himself. When his music came out of other hands than his own, it was flat and lacking in passion.

“His major weakness though, was that he would set himself targets of women. He had bought into the image of the travelling bardic seducer and to be fair to him, his conquests were legendary. But he prioritised looks over willingness.”

He caught my gaze.

“Oh, he wasn’t a rapist or an assaulter. He was a seducer. And he was good at it. If you were slightly naive and very beautiful, you would be vulnerable to his charms. He would hunt them out, travelling, not where the money was as a proper bard does, but where the targets of seduction were. The beautiful and unhappy women would be open to his charms and then when they were a notch on his bedpost, he would move on. Not caring about the trouble he left behind.

“Speaking as a fellow lover of the feminine shape and the noises they make when they are excited, I can understand. But where I was always shocked when the wings of love struck my heart, he would seek them out and do it deliberately.

“There are several stories like this in his past. The one that I know about is this one as I was in Toussaint at the time while Geralt was off doing what he did and I heard about this from someone I trust.”

“While you were with the Duchess you mean?”

He didn’t rise to my baiting.

“She was a beautiful young nobleman’s daughter. Younger daughter, unfortunately intelligent and ridiculously beautiful. He was similar in that he was a younger son, good with a lance and very dutiful. He was doing his best to get some capital together by working the jousting circuit in order to buy himself a title and they caught each other’s eye. I’m told the romance was sudden and passionate although there was no feeling of impropriety. They were engaged, agreements and oaths were given, marriage contracts exchanged and a beautiful ceremony was had.

“Like all such things, the wedding night was less than stellar for either of them as the pressure of the thing was too much and it was over too early and they both fell into a drunken stupor. Then disaster struck.

“At the party, the groom’s older brother and heir to the Earldom got drunk and insulted someone powerful. A duel was had and the older brother was trounced. Suddenly the groom had gone from a travelling Knight to the heir to a, not rich, important but less than picturesque Earldom. So the girl had gone from the glamorous life of the jousting circuit to the wife of an heir in an old, cold and draughty castle where her dutiful husband was riding around, learning his duties and neglecting her by extension.”

Dandelion took a drink before continuing.

“Wilhelm heard of this and heard about how beautiful the girl was and decided that she would be another notch on his belt. He went, seduced the maid first and then managed to make the girl fall in love with him through numerous passionate songs and performances. She was naive and believed herself the heroine in some tragic love story. A falsehood that Wilhelm took full advantage of. The inevitable happened and the couple got caught because Wilhelm was having far too much fun, and she was being far too naive, to be properly discreet.

“He fled. The cuckolded man was not unaware of the girl’s plight and would have done her best to hush the thing up for her, and his discretion. It would seem that he really did love his wife and had hopes of reconciliation. But Wilhelm destroyed that because he wrote a song, probably the best song he ever wrote. Certainly the song was good enough to make Wilhelm wealthy for a time and it was often requested and spread with speed. In theory, the identity of the heroine of the song was hidden but practically? The groom’s father carried out an investigation and the truth was soon found.

“In that part of the world, the punishment for adultery and the helping of that adultery is rather extreme. The maid was hanged and the bride was packed off to a convent where she killed herself in an act that was undoubtedly hoped, by her, to be part of the very tragic poetry of her life.”

Dandelion rose at that point as the applause from the stage was building and Priscilla was bowing.

“The person who told me this story,” Dandelion told me, “was Wilhelm himself.” He took up his lute and strode towards the stage, leaving me with this comment.

“He was proud of the story.”

Dandelion sat on the stool so recently vacated by Priscilla who came over and sat with me.

“What did the two of you talk about?” She breathed in awe as she looked at the man that is essentially her husband.

I didn’t have time to answer as Dandelion started to play, forestalling the jugglers that were supposed to climb on stage instead. It is part of his ownership that whenever Dandelion feels like performing, then the stage is his, no matter who or what is about to take a turn. Many people frequent the R & T in the hopes that they see one of these performances.

I’ve heard better songs, but not many. It is possibly true that the artist elevated the art, but still.

The song he sang was a beautiful, simple story. A flower which was clearly a young woman of startling beauty, kept in a tower of ice by an unfeeling jailor. It was clear that the jailor loved the flowers but did not have any care for what the flower was feeling. Then the gardener came who told the jailor that the flower needed care and so the jailor listened.

The gardner climbed the tower of ice and sat with the flower, talking with her for a long time until slowly, the flower started to trust the gardner and just as slowly, the gardner began opening the windows around the flower’s prison so that the flower could see all the beautiful countryside around the tower and as the sun shone on the flower, her petals bloomed.

Then the jailor grew jealous of the gardener and cast him out before closing all the windows, reforming the ice around the flower. The flower petals closed, although for a while, the flower hoped that the gardener would return. But the jailor was vengeful and the gardener was too afraid. And eventually, after much heartache, the flower died. According to the song, the gardener still thinks about that flower and mourns the loss of such beauty and the cruelty that kept it from the world.

It is easy to mock and tease Dandelion and his abilities but there is no denying that the man is supremely talented and has the genius to use that talent properly. The truth of the matter is that when he set aside his lute and wiped his eyes, accepting the applause graciously and a hug from Priscilla even more graciously. I will freely admit that I had tears running down my cheeks as well. And then the context of the song made me hate myself a little.

I talked to Priscilla about it later while Dandelion was working on something.

“The power of the song comes from the fact that all of us see ourselves as the flower and the gardener both.” She explained. We want to be the gardner that rescues the flower and causes her to,” she smirked, “open her petals. But we are also the flower hoping to be rescued from… whatever it is that is keeping us cold, tired and isolated at that point in time. And we are made vulnerable to those emotions by the fact that we are all guilty of the suspicion that we might be the jailor. That guilt opens us up to the greater emotions conveyed which is what makes the song so effective.”

She laughed, she does that often. “I did not know that he knew it. It’s not a great song as you need to put a lot of emotion in it to play it well. But it is often taught at the academy in order to illustrate the proper use of emotional context and how to draw the listener into the composition.”

I said nothing to this and went to my room that night, still fighting back tears. I called for Ariadne who is, and was, keeping an eye on me for my emotional state and I told her about the song and the vague, romantic longing that it had awakened in me.

“Oh Freddie,” She took hold of me and held me tight. “You did more than open the windows. You took me by the hand and helped me out to the door, even when I was afraid of the light and fought you. You helped me to step into that sunlight and feel the gentle warmth on my face. That’s why I love you so much.”

I no longer tried to hold back the tears.

When I calmed she got a sly, hungry look in her eyes. “And,” she said, lifting my eyes up to meet hers. “I look forward to blooming for you.”

And I’m afraid that that’s it. Nothing more exciting to say I’m afraid. That is the end of the story and there is nothing more to tell you about the adventures of a scholar and a Witcher in the Black Forest of Nilfgaard. I know that it’s unsatisfying. I do and I completely sympathise. It is unsatisfying to me too. I hate stories that end with the whole “It was all just a dream” or a vision of some other kind of fuckery.

My sense is, and Professor Dandelion agreed, that what I have done and talked about is just the start of the story. I have no idea how long that story will go on or when, or even if, the story will have an ending. Such is the nature of history rather than bardic tales. I have more questions now than when I first set out from Toussaint to meet up with Kerrass. Most of those questions are questions that I picked up along the way. Still others are questions that I took with me without intending to. So many mysteries that swirl around in my nightmares.

And I don’t know these answers. I wish I did and I wish that I could pass them onto you.

What was the vision that both Kerrass and I saw after Stefan struck the blow with the silver sword?

When we got back to Coulthard castle, Laurelen and Ariadne summoned Dr Shani in order to do a full examination of Kerrass and myself. As it turns out, there are tear marks in the corners of my mouth and anus, my Jawbone was shattered, and I have injuries in the depths of my bowls, throat and other internal organs. Kerrass has similar injuries although his are more healed than mine are. In the words of Shani, “Such injuries are deadly. She only sees injuries like that in cadavers after they have died in catastrophically horrible ways.” So how did we get them?

These facts give credence to the possibility that we were taken somewhere with the tentacles, roots and Flame knows what else they were. But I remember seeing the sky as I was hanging in the middle of that network of horror. So where is there a thing like that that exists? How did we get back to the outside of the world? And ok, the dryads have ways of healing that we do not understand, but still. Those are some difficult injuries to come back from. But if those injuries are true, then how come my clothes were not torn apart. Why not my trousers and shirt? Or Kerrass’ trousers and shirt?

There are no signs of repair on those garments and I have had a seamstress look.

How did we get outside the forest? I am prepared to admit that the Black Forest is larger than we can conceive and is larger than just the mere boundary of trees. But how did we get there? Who brought our horses? Who refilled our bags, returned Kerrass’ sword and my spear. Who did all of those things?

The likelihood is that it was the dryads that did all of those things in the aftermath of everything calming down.

Kerrass and I had a lot of time to try and untangle these riddles and what we came up with was that the events leading up to Stefan’s attack on The Schattenmann happened. Then the clearing for me and the river bank for Kerrass as well as the people we spoke to was some kind of vision or separate, non-physical experience. We think that whatever the place was with the tentacles and the… you get the idea. Whatever that was, was some way that our physical brains coped with the horror of what was actually happening to us.

There is a philosophical debate that starts with “Perception shapes reality” therefore, if perception shapes our reality then how Kerrass and I saw those places… was our best guess, our best interpretation of what we saw.

What about the place that we saw? The riverbank that Kerrass described was the same place that we met with Schrodinger and the Unicorn. My clearing? I don’t ever remember the place. It was, at the same time, just like any number of clearings and forest openings that I have spent any time in before, or camped down in before. It is true that, often, these places tend to kind of blur together.

But here’s the extra problem. I was dreaming of that clearing for days, weeks even before I met the Schattenmann. Ariadne claims that I dreamt about that clearing back in Toussaint although I don’t remember that.

Who was it that I spoke to in that clearing? This has been the subject of much debate in my family since then.

Emma wants to believe that it really was Father. She says that it sounds like Father, he behaved like Father would and said the kinds of things that Father would say. So she wants to believe that it was our Father.

Mark is the opposite view. Not really surprising because, after all, the man is a churchman. He pointed out that if it really was Father then it upends everything about what we know or think we know about the way the afterlife works. And he found that terrifying on a truly, fundamental level. He asks questions like, “Why Father? Why not Francesca? Why not Edmund? Why not those non-human friends of yours that died. Or any number of dead people that we, unfortunately, know? But Father? You and Father didn’t get on. It was clear to all of us that you loved each other but sometimes, people that love each other can drive each other to distraction. You loved Francesca more and deeper and she died more recently?”

Like all of my questions, there are no answers to this and of course Mark is right but so is Emma. As far as I can remember, that was my Father. But it could just as easily have been the Schattenmann taking the memory of my Father out of my head and forming a construct of him.

Me? I am as confident as I can be that while I was talking to our Father, I was also talking to The Schattenmann. There are reasons that the Schattenmann would summon the image of Father or bring Father out to talk to me. The position of authority, the combative nature of our relationship. All of that would contribute to the sort of figure that I would speak to and answer to an inquisition for. But the ending of our conversation gives me pause. Why would the image of our Father, possessed by The Schattenmann, seek to comfort me?

I like to think that The Schattenmann, whoever and whatever that is, summoned Father’s spirit back and that although it was Father that I was speaking to, I was also speaking to The Schattenmann. That is the image that gives me the most comfort.

Now we’re onto the big questions that I still have left over. Who, or what, was Stefan? I have no theories about that.

We examined as much of our back trail as we could and we could find no record of him. Even places where we stayed could not remember him. That is just going to have to be one of those mysteries that remains, annoyingly, unsolved.

So what do I know?

I know that Kerrass knows more than I do. He thinks that his Goddess gave him the strength to escape our captivity of visions. He hopes that the images of Schrodinger, the Unicorn and my father were just summoned by The Schattenmann because if not, that would suggest that his friends are dead and that causes him pain. Apparently, one of his many plans for after my wedding is to go and see if he can find the pair of them again to confirm this. Or avenge them if necessary.

He also doesn’t want to tell me much more. He spoke directly with The Schattenmann several times. Including in the conversation that happened immediately before Stefan’s strike. He jokes with me that the purpose of this secrecy is so that he can tell Yennefer when the book comes to be published. She is coming up to spend some time with us over the next few days to interview us both on the subject in order to get the new book planned out and researched. The book on the Unseen Elder is just being proofread now to make sure that Lady Yennefer and I are happy with it and then it will be off to the publisher.

The other reason for not telling me everything is that he doesn’t want me to relapse. He, my family and friends, and myself to a certain extent are concerned that I would take to horse and charge off South again to have it out with The Schattenmann. And Kerrass is concerned that his words would act as a goad towards that end. He might not be wrong with all of that.

So there you have it. I wish I had a more satisfying ending for you all. Not least because this will be the last article in the “scholar’s travels” series and is likely to remain so for several years, if not forever. There are certainly no plans of doing any more at this stage. But leaving it like this makes me feel like I’m leaving it with a whimper rather than a bang. We did not solve this mystery, we did not lift this curse or talk to the monster and get its story. Some people are claiming that we did and bless you for that opinion. But I disagree.

You will not be getting rid of me permanently. Neither Kerrass nor I can completely escape you now even if we wanted to. I have made him famous and although I think he enjoys the notoriety, it does not stop him from being annoyed with it.

For myself, you can find me in the lecture halls of the university and my work with Lady Yennefer will continue to be published. After the book on The Unseen Elder is published, we intend a book on the Schattenmann and after that we are immediately unsure. There is a new and powerful entity that haunts the coast of Skellige and those parts of the continent that are closest to the islands nation where witnesses describe a figure, a person that gestures and waves of snow and frost come from their hands like a wave. Apparently, messages are being sent to try and contact the Yukki-Onna about who it might be, or what it might be.

According to Lady Yennefer, Lord Geralt has made contact with some friends and we might have a line on meeting the Rumplesteldt. And speaking personally, I want to meet the headless horseman and find out his story.

But I can’t be on the road now. I need to stop, for a long time, maybe forever. I want to thank you for travelling this path with me for these… Flame it’s only three years. So much has happened and you have been with me every step of the way. Words cannot express how much that means to me. Thank you and thank you and thank you again.

And if you do meet a Witcher on the path, treat them well, buy them a drink and respect their privacy. They will appreciate it. And so will I.

Go well.

(Editor’s note: This series of articles on Professor Coulthard’s journeys and adventures on the Black Forest are done. It’s taken us several weeks to split them up into separate issues and when he wrote those words, he absolutely meant them. However, in the intervening time we received this note that he asked to be attached to the ending of the last article)

There have been some small developments in the saga of the Black Forest and The Schattenmann. I will try and be brief as I am trying to meet a deadline.

It would seem that The Schattenmann still exists. He’s still there and there have been sightings in the local villages. So whatever it was that Stefan did, it certainly did not slay The Schattenmann.

So it would seem that The Schattenmann has chosen a new host. I have no idea who it is, who it might be or whether I even met them. However we do know that the new host is far cruller, much more defensive and at the same time, much more merciful than his predecessors.

The last confirmed source was from the Imperial escort that was taking the Brokilon delegation to try to make contact with The Schattenmann. What they found was… not ideal. Sometimes it is clear that I have had a positive effect on the world and sometimes it is clear that I have caused quite a lot of damage. There have been groups of men, men of the worst sort that have either read, or have heard of my story and have tried to invade the Black Forest in order to get at the dryads for reasons that, frankly, horrify me.

The forest has not taken kindly to this and the surrounding areas are now littlere with the bodies of these men that have been torn apart and killed in the most horrible ways. There are reports of entrails strewn from tree to tree among other things that I will not repeat in print.

On the other hand, the villagers that live in and around the Black Forest report that they have had the perfect weather for their lifestyle. Rain when they need rain, sun when they need sun and although there is noticeably less game in the area. There is still plenty for themselves and their families providing they work hard enough for it. It would seem that the new Schattenmann believes in the virtues of hard physical work.

The last report that I had of the group was that the Imperial escort, along with the pair of dryad delegates who volunteered for the journey, were camped at the village of the hanging priest. The village that is deepest into the borders of the Forest.

The path into the forest is no longer there. Instead there is a wall that has cut off that entrance. A wall of solid thorns that seem impassable. One soldier tried to cut a way in before the accompanying dryads both screamed and begged him to stop. The report said that despite his progress, he could see no end to the thorns and that he had been cut through and around his armour.

According to the report that was sent to me, the Priest no longer hangs there and there is a sign that someone regularly comes to tend the grave that we dug for him.

(A/N: I’m sorry about the ambiguity of the ending but sometimes there are mysteries too big to be solved and speaking personally, I quite like that. That was always the ending too, it wasn’t because I wrote myself into a corner or anything. Call me cruel if you like but there we go.

I’m also sorry for the delay. Not only have I been away, but it turns out that the chapter was also ridiculously long. Normally I might have split the chapter into two, or even three parts. But while editing, I just didn’t think it worked unless the reader could see the whole picture. So thanks for your patience.

Also, this is not the end of the story. Although again, same as last time, Freddie thinks it is. There is still one story arc to go, then an aftermath and finally an Epilogue, so you’re not getting rid of me just yet either. Although if this was an ending, I would be happy with it. And indeed, knowing what comes next, there are some people that might prefer this to be the ending.

Shit’s gonna go down y’all.

And lastly a dedication. I want to dedicate this chapter to my Father. Freddie’s father is not based on either of my father figures. My Father was much better than the former Lord Coulthard and my Step-Father was much MUCH worse. All of Freddie’s family are who they are because of plot reasons. But still, I’ve been thinking about my Father a lot while writing this chapter.

My Father told me that I could do anything. He made a childish game out of reinforcing that message to toddler me. He would make me stand there and say “I can doooooo….” and then I had to finish it by raising my arms in the air and yell “ANYTHING” and it would always earn a hug and a laugh. But the lesson was remembered. I would love to talk to him again.

So….

Dedicated to my Father.

Thanks for Reading.