But history doesn’t end, does it?

At least it doesn’t for me.

When I finished writing that last piece and set my pen aside, I all but threw the bundle of papers at the clerk that was waiting to take them away. I was angry, sullen, upset and all of the other emotions that come with those things. I snapped my quill and deliberately spilt the ink onto the floor before exhaustion took hold of me and I collapsed with just enough strength to summon a guard to help me to bed to sleep.

I absolutely had no intention to write anything more. I had, and have, no plans for the future beyond merely existing and the thought of doing anything else, or setting more words, or thoughts to paper… The very thought of doing all of that made me sick.

Physically sick.

My body seems to be all but permanently linked to my mind now. So when my mind is miserable, stressed and whatever else is going on, then my body reacts along with it. Also vice versa. When the pain of my injuries is particularly sharp, then my mind also seems to be in pain to a level that I find off-putting and distressing.

But I have no choice in the matter. All I can do is do the work that I have been set. Work that I have been ordered to do by my confessor and my masters.

The irony that I am performing the same act for my rescuers as I was performing for my torturers is not lost on me. I hate it and I hate them.

There are still moments when I look up from my desk and I see those sights before my eyes. Still, moments when I can literally see Sam, striding around his study as he declaims on the evils that have been visited on the continent by the Nilfgaardians and this faction or that faction. About the horrors that happened to him and the horrors that he performed in answer.

There are still moments when I look up from my desk as I write these words, and instead of the canvas walls of my pavilion, I see Emma being tortured, Laurelen, or Ariadne. When I close my eyes, I can see Mark’s childlike face as he looks up into the eyes of the figure that had once been his brother. I can still see the gratitude on his face as Sam looked down at him and told him that it would all be alright. That it was time to pray.

I can still see it.

My nightmares are worse if you can imagine. That’s probably unfair, you can probably imagine it just fine.

I can see my mother, kneeling in prayer in the moments before she dies. I can hear Rickard’s moans of pain and I can feel the splintered bones of my left hand as they ground together under the bootheel of the guard. I can feel the awful clammy warmth of my jail cell and the awful, clammy cold of…

You don’t want to read about that.

But I am under orders and I must fulfil my orders, even while I resent them hugely.

I do not remember them coming to take me away from that basement. I remember the moment that I saw the light leave Sam’s eyes and despite the hideous injuries that he had taken, the ones that had killed him, I still shook him as though I was trying to wake him up from a deep sleep.

Sam was… It looked like he was wearing the greater body of the monster that he had become as though it was some kind of horrific suit of armour. His head and upper torso came out of it, peeling away like some seed from within a rotten fruit. Kerrass’ strike, the huge, sweeping, spinning blow had almost, but not quite, cut him in two on the diagonal. So the fact that I had spoken to my brother at all was a minor mystery and there is even a real possibility that who I was talking with was some hallucination of my own mind.

I don’t think so though. I think that was the moment of clarity before he died. I think that was the moment when he realised what he had done. In the last moments before he died, that was when it all came apart for him.

So I shook him, called his name and then I lost useful consciousness.

I get the most out of this story from the eyes of witnesses.

When I was found, I had crawled away from Sam and I was cradling Rickard in my lap. Somehow, I had pulled my mother over and was holding her hand while I sat there in the blood and the filth and I just rocked backwards and forwards. I had done myself more injury in the meantime as to get there I had had to climb over the circle of steel and so I was sitting there, bleeding while I rocked with my friend in my lap and holding my mother’s hand as though she would give me some measure of comfort.

According to those witnesses, I had a knife next to me and when they tried to get near me, I let go of my mother’s hand and brandished the dagger at them.

They couldn’t get near me and given that they had orders to take me alive. And also given my, their words, ‘horrific state’ they reasoned that it would not take me much of an injury to kill me.

They were not wrong.

In the end, a Sorceress was sent for, who spelled me to sleep. According to those self-same witnesses, it took the Sorceress two attempts to get the job done. My mind was just so far gone that it didn’t take the first time.

Then they set about saving my life.

The first part of this was getting me to the medics. The Sorceress that was there, and she wasn’t anyone famous, she was a battlefield Sorceress that had been sent into the castle to ascertain the level of the damage that had been done there, both on a magical level and a spiritual level. Her name was Anna and she was from Nilfgaard. She was the magical equivalent of the miner’s canary in a cage. She was full of measuring magic that was designed to be able to measure any breaches between realms, measuring magical backlash and auras as well as lingering darkness, Goetia or Necromantic effects.

She would later tell me that it was not a field of study that attracted many people given the fact that the job is incredibly boring until it becomes intensely exciting. But the excitement tends to come with having their internal organs smeared over several miles. On the other hand, it tends to pay really well and she was from a poor family.

She knew how to spell people to sleep so that she could preserve witnesses to whatever had happened and the portal that she opened was her emergency teleporting portal to get her out of the incredibly dangerous situations that she occasionally found herself in her line of work.

There was no one of note in the rescue party. The powerful mages and the skilled warriors, including my friends that were in attendance, were still busy securing the rest of the keep and making sure that all of the enhanced people were corralled and that no one escaped. A process that would still take some time afterwards.

The medic of the unit who was just as much a Doctor as I am, if anything he was less skilled than I am, or was, but there was an argument that he didn’t want to move me as his skills were enough to stitch wounds and set limbs. But what was wrong with me was a bit beyond his skills. The Sergeant of the squad ordered that they carry me through the portal and deposited me in the middle of the surgeon’s tents.

According to some of those people, there was an argument about who I was given that I was all but unrecognisable from my former state.

I have been close to death before. I have been sick to the point where there were debates about whether or not my family should be sent for. I have been injured in body and mind but nothing comes…

At one point, there was a debate over my body as to whether or not it would be kinder to let me die because, although they had been ordered to keep me alive, by Imperial decree no less, it was also clear that I was almost beyond saving. There was also a comment made that they were very possibly healing me ready for a trial by Inquisition for Heresy and Treason, therefore, the resources that would be used to save me might be better off being used elsewhere. That while the highly skilled surgeons, which I needed, and the magic power, which I also needed were looking after me, then other men and women would be dying for the lack of those skills and that power.

If I had been awake, I would have told them not to bother. But Imperial decree was Imperial decree and the surgeons and the healing mages bent to their work.

There were a lot of surface injuries that could just be sewn up and I understand that they just set an apprentice to do those. But there were several other serious factors. Two of which I had done to myself. The fall out of the chair after Ella had untied me, landing on my ass without the use of legs, hands or fat to cushion the blow, and given my weakened state, had compacted my spine. My understanding was that it wasn’t deadly but it was more of a compounding problem on top of some of the other things.

I had also hit my head on the way down which was a bit more serious. They call it a concussion in the trade and the fact that I had lost consciousness at some point was considered dangerous.

But the real thing that was going to kill me was the infection that had set in from the shattered hand and equally shattered feet and lower legs. That infection had already gotten into some of my other internal organs that were in the process of shutting down. It had been this, partially, that had meant that I was struggling to breathe and was driving the fatigue and the bowel problems.

According to the witnesses as well as the medical experts that I have consulted. There were several ways that this could be treated. Most commonly with alchemical remedies that border on the magical. This is what is used when there isn’t a handy magic user present. Alchemy on the continent is one of the few magical arts that can be practised by those with absolutely no magical talent. And given the nature of the magic that flows around the continent, some plants can provide this service.

The problem with this is, that these remedies tax the body to the extreme and are not used when the body is already weakened. Which I was.

Another solution was the magical one. But it is not as practical as just waving a magic wand and healing someone. You have to treat things in the right order and if you heal one thing, you cannot heal the other. Also, like herbal remedies, magical healing can take a toll.

Given my weakened state, they tried various things in various orders for fear that the cure would be worse than the disease and that they would kill me while trying to save me.

Over the next couple of days, they used magic to drive the infection back so that they could give my internal organs the rest that they needed to take in some nutrition. This was so that my body would have more strength to fight off all of the things that were happening to me.

I understand that this was partially successful but the infection was becoming stubborn and would come back faster and faster.

So natural remedies were not doing the trick.

Then the plan was that they would continue to drive the infection back while another magic user would heal my internal organs so that they could take in the nutrition.

That left me weak but it did have an effect, not enough to satisfy anyone though.

And I was weakening.

No one wants to own up to what the final idea was. Someone suggested that the main problem was the infection that was burning through my body. Then they needed to remove the infection and the things that were causing the infection.

How did they do that?

They used magic to drive the infection into the injured limbs. Then they amputated, still using magic to keep me alive.

Apparently, healing my hands and my feet was almost certainly never going to be possible, but the process of amputation was so traumatic that they had wanted to leave it until much later in the process when I was much stronger.

But it was clear that I was never going to be stronger so the time was now.

So with three mages standing over me to drive the infection back, the surgeons got to work. They amputated my left arm below my elbow and both legs below the knee. They told themselves that it would be better this way because then, there was still the probability that I would be able to find decent wooden legs and feet to be able to carry on with life.

The surgeons consoled themselves with the fact that I still had a right arm and would therefore be able to wield a sword and a pen. And that I didn’t need feet to ride a horse.

Showing how much they know.

Also, someone made the joke again that I was probably going to burn in the pyres of heresy anyway so… who cared?

The siege had all but finished by this point so one of my friends, I have no idea who, heard this and took the offending idiot out and had words with them. I have no idea who that friend was, nor do I know who it was that made the joke.

I have no memory of any of this.

I am now some distance from these events and after that first flurry of writing where I recorded what had happened in the Coulthard family cellar, I find that I can no longer just sit and write for extended periods. So it is now some time since all of this happened.

There are some flashes of memory during this time but I have no idea, absolutely none, as to which images, sounds and flashes are genuine memory or whether they are dreams, nightmares and visions brought on by proximity to that much awful magic, that much horror, or the very real sickness and injury that has been inflicted on my body and mind. No one will tell me how severe my fever had become in this period and as such the answer that what I saw and heard was down to pure “fever dream” is not easily dismissed.

But I do have flashes.

I remember the sight of Dr Shani’s weeping face. At the immediate time of writing, she and I have not had time to converse properly so I can’t possibly comment on whether this is a real image. But I have the most vivid image of her red-headed and freckled face above my own. She was frowning, wearing her Doctor’s mask of professionalism. There was no emotion on her face at all as she peered at me carefully doing… whatever it was that she was doing. The only sign that anything was going on was that the tears ran down her face freely.

No sign of emotion other than those tears. I owe that woman more of an apology than I can easily say.

I think I can remember the moment when I came out, or was carried out into the open air. I remember coming out…. I think it was nighttime. I remember coming out and being able to see the stars. It was impossibly cold and despite being wrapped up in blankets, bandages and Flame knows what else. I remember shivering with the cold. I remember someone shouting that “we need to get a bloody move on” and then the pace seemed to pick up. I remember the jarring movements jerking some of my injuries and I remembered screaming before blacking out.

I think that one’s pretty true.

I remember a swirling whirlpool of blue light. It was sucking at me and I was fighting not to dive into it head-first. I felt that if I jumped into that whirlpool then I would lose what was left of my body and my soul. I remember being deathly afraid of it.

I remember feeling a pressure on my chest concentrated into eight individual points that hurt as they pressed down.

I remember seeing Ciri. I have no idea why. She had her sword out and was all but spinning in place as she fought off some white-blue monster that I could not see.

I remember a conversation between a group of corpses as one of them tried to unwrap the bandages from my hand. They were arguing with each other. Something to do with the danger lies in the fact that the act of unwrapping could jar things free and cause more of a problem than it would if they were just left. The other corpse argued that they needed to see what they were dealing with in the first place to decide what the best course of action was. The corpses' faces were melting from their faces in the heat of wherever it was. They were melting as wax melts from a candle.

I remember seeing an impossibly pale woman putting her hand on my head. At first, the touch was so cold that it caused me pain but after a while, the cold began to be soothing.

Not all of the visions were bad. Some of them were almost pleasant. I saw Mark, healthy again as he was greeted by Father, Mother and Francesca. He was given a huge hug by Francesca who leapt into his arms and wrapped her arms and legs around him. They were all laughing and joking with each other. Edmund and Sam were nearby in that vision as well. I say vision as I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. Edmund looked scaled and ugly but as Father, Mark and Mother reached out to him, beckoning him into the embrace, the scales fell from him and he went to join them, becoming the image of Edmund from his tomb, the elder brother that he should have been.

Sam was a hideous, mutated, horror of a creature and although Mother reached for him, he turned away and walked into the darkness.

Then they all turned and looked at me expectantly. It struck me that I was standing on a boat that was gently bobbing in a river. It would not take me much to jump over the side and run up to my family to be embraced, just as Mark had.

It would not have taken much.

I could also, just about, make out the figures of fallen friends behind my family. It would not have taken much for me to leap over the side of the boat.

But I did not.

I also saw memories. Again, sometimes these were pleasant. I saw Ariadne, working in her canvas study in the snow. I saw Kerrass working on something beside a campfire. I was on the decks of the Wave-Serpent as it sailed through the ocean.

But I also saw the horror. I saw Mark’s childlike expression as Sam’s knife descended. I saw Mother kneeling in a ragged dress while she prayed desperately for deliverance. I heard Rickard’s awful screech as he tried to keep his guts and entrails inside his body.

I saw the thing that Sam had turned himself into and I watched each and every death that he visited on the people that he sacrificed to his God inside that circle.

I listened to Ariadne’s screaming. The noises she made when Sam tortured her to ensure my compliance in his schemes but also her screams of sorrow and rage from when she was released. I remember that as a physical force that I fought to get away from.

I am pretty sure that I remember my arm and legs being amputated. There was much debate about how to go about doing that safely as I was very weak and they were honestly worried that I might be too weak to survive having that happen. There was a balancing act between the herbs needed to numb the pain, and the magic needed to send me to sleep, numb the pain and fight off the infection. Versus the shock to the body. I can’t answer for any of this. But I have the most vivid memory of the sound of the bone saw as it cut through my limbs. That is a vibration that I cannot forget. It haunts me still and it is another one of those things that if I am not careful, I can hear it when I close my eyes. I can feel it in what remains of my arms and legs.

Not that I needed any more nightmares.

I know that I was restrained on my sick bed with strong bands of leather from which I still have bruises and scars. But despite all of this, I survived.

I slept, woke, ranted and raved in my insensibility for several days after this. As I say, I remember nothing. Once again, I was subject to the indignity of the tube down my throat for me to be fed and to take on my medicine. According to my physicians, there were times when I seemed to be awake enough and conscious enough to properly take my medicine and eat. But there were other times when I was just ranting, raving and trying to fight them off, telling them things that either made no sense or trying to warn them to get away.

Or condemning them for following a false God.

After four days, one of the healers decided that my fever had broken and that I was out of immediate danger. Not that I was on the mend because it was the healer’s opinion that there was still a lot of work, a lot of healing for me to do. But I was healed enough. During that period, I was transported by virtue of a river barge to Novigrad where I was carried through the war-torn streets to the Cathedral where I was housed in one of the cells there to await my Inquisition.

Because I was going to be tried for Heresy and Treason.

I am not going to be the final arbiter of that decision. By now what happened is a matter of record and I will not be able to change the minds of the people that made their cases. Nor will I be able to change the minds of those people that heard about the trial and decided what the verdict, and my punishment, should be.

My opinion is a matter of record.

But I am supposed to be recording what happened so here it is.

I was still sick and still recovering. I had more and more periods of consciousness though. I don’t know what orders had been given regarding my captivity, but it was not nearly as bad as it had been…

Not a high bar to clear but even so.

Nor was it as bad as it could be and arguably should have been. But there was the factor that they wanted me to be strong enough so that if I were to be executed, then I would also be strong enough to stand on my own two feet as I walked to the pyre.

Proverbially speaking of course.

So I was kept in a cell that I would guess to have been the cell of some kind of attendant monk. It was still small but at least it had a bed in it which was more comfortable than the cot that Sam had given me. The walls were stone but there had been some tapestries put up to try and keep the warmth in. They were religious in nature. One depicted the original basket of flame while the other depicted the gauntleted hand holding onto the three lightning bolts of Kreve.

I found that curious given that I was being held in the highest citadel of the Eternal Flame.

There was also a window which looked out over Novigrad bay, away from the city. It was bitterly cold but peaceful and there was a shutter there that if it became too cold I could order an attendant to come and close it for me. There was an interesting thought process to that at one point where I wondered what they would all do if I simply climbed out the window, and then it occurred to me that I was horrifically weak with only one fully working limb.

The fact that I had to send for a servant to come and close the shutters should have been a clue really.

I was provided with a copy of the scriptures and a book of prayer. There was also a padded chair and a footstool to help me get around bed sores and other such indignities. But even then, I still needed help to get around the room.

The food was better although I instead saw that they were adjusting the food according to the requirements of the medicine: red meat, green vegetables, and thick gravy. The bread was soft baked and the butter was creamy.

I had to be careful that I didn’t puke it all up. The sheer physical pleasure of proper food and the feeling of a full belly meant that I started to sleep that much better.

It didn’t stop the nightmares though.

They didn’t provide me with a confessor, even though I asked repeatedly. Nor did they give me any news about other survivors of Sam’s rebellion. Nor did they tell me anything that was happening. That I was now a cripple made me more of their prisoner than anything else.

I also remember being absurdly pleased when, in the depths of the night, I discovered that Sam’s promise of preserving my manhood had been kept.

According to the calendar, I was in that cell in the upper towers of the Cathedral for a couple of weeks as I recovered. Truth be told, if it wasn’t for my worry about what was happening elsewhere, it would have been a fairly peaceful and pleasant time. I had good food and a clean drink. I could study scripture, pray and rest to my heart’s content. It was then that I finally understood the attraction of the life of a monk.

I was examined daily by a doctor that would come and see me. He seemed to be a monk of some kind, an elderly gentleman that gazed at me with sad eyes and a watery smile. But his hands were firm and dry and he seemed to be held in good regard. Under his ministrations, I would spend a lot of time asleep and other times doing various things involved in maintaining myself.

There was this horrific-smelling cream that I had to rub into my stumps that were designed to toughen things up. I have no idea what that meant but there you go.

The steady progression of potions and herbs that he would line up for me was less pleasant. I alternated between being horrifically bloated and constipated to spending, not small, amounts of time on the garderobe. One of the guards that I had been assigned made jokes that I should have a book or something to read in there.

Yes, I was guarded. There were three of them all told and mostly, they were there to ensure that I didn’t hurt myself. The youngest was a happy and smiling type of holy man. He looked fat under his habit but that image was false. I would soon discover that he was hugely strong and that he could easily manhandle me around the place which seemed to be his purpose.

The other two looked to be retired soldiers of some kind. They spoke to me without emotion to answer questions, but it was also clear that they were guards before they were anything else.

None of them would tell me their names or what was going on.

My sense of time was confused but I think it was a little over two weeks later when I met my Inquisitor.

It was full-on winter by this point. I have no idea if the Solstice had passed but I could look out of my window and see that the snow had advanced down the mountains. Given that I was next to the sea, there was no snow on the hills or fields nearby but there was snow in the air as it happened. I liked to sit next to the window and feel the cold for as long as I could bear it before being forced to have someone close the shutters. The basement of Coulthard castle had been hot, stuffy and clammy, so now I liked cold, fresh air. It had the feeling of reminding me that I was free of that place.

My various attendants were keen to see to it that I could appreciate my privacy so the first thing I heard about this new man’s arrival was that someone new knocked on the door.

You can tell a lot by the way that someone knocks on the door. Especially when you have no other ways of intellectual stimulation. This was the knock of a man that was professional and had a job to do. Kind of heavy, slow, three knocks.

I smirked at myself a little bit and called out for the person to enter.

It was actually two people. The second person was a younger man and was far more laden down. Aided by one of the guards, he came in and unfolded a small camping stool while my friendly younger guard manhandled a folding desk into the area. The young man set out papers, quill and ink before drawing a small knife from his belt and sharpening the quill.

I almost chuckled as I watched him. The movements were so familiar to me that I was given a strong sense of nostalgia for all of the times that I have found myself in that position. He seemed very serious as he went and set things out.

He and his master were wearing thick, dark blue, almost black habits complete with cowls and hoods. The younger scribe had his hood up and was avoiding looking at my face. I got the impression of a young man, somewhere in his early teens.

The older man was the one that commanded the attention though.

He was not old, but his hair and beard were mostly white. Just a smattering of grey in the hair while there was still a trail of darkness in the moustache, goatee and soul patch parts of his beard. He was a distinguished-looking gentleman and I could easily imagine him being someone who would have attracted a lot of female attention in his youth. As he ]walked in, he took in the rest of the room with a quick series of eye movements before peering at me with an intensity that made me want to look away.

“Do you know who I am?” He asked, not unkindly.

I shook my head.

“Ah well.” He sighed. “The final injury to pride. Do you mind if I sit? Old bones you see.”

I found myself liking him. His charm was a weapon that he wielded easily and there was an odd accent in his voice that I didn’t recognise. A certain elongation of the soft sounds. A whistling to his ‘s’ sounds.

I nodded and he perched on the bed. I was still in my chair and carefully set aside my copy of the scriptures and watched as he scooted backwards on the bed and crossed his legs to sit with his back to the wall.

“My name is Father William of Baskerville.” He told me. “And my novice over there is a young man called Adso.”

I nodded my acknowledgement of the names.

“Don’t any memories ring clear?” The older priest asked?”

I cleared my throat.

“I am sorry,” I told him, my voice has remained hoarse since I left Coulthard castle. “But I’m afraid that I don’t know your name. Nor do I know where Baskerville is.”

“A pity.” He said. “It’s not there any more of course.” He waved at his novice who dipped his quill and started writing. “It was consumed in this war or that and is now called something else. I know who you are of course.”

I nodded. I had to force myself to use my voice.

“Do you know,” the old priest continued? “... What I am?”

I looked at him carefully and he was peering at me again with his piercing eyes. Which were blue, startlingly so.

“You are my Inquisitor,” I said carefully. It had taken me several attempts to clear my throat. I was not afraid of what the man represented. Indeed, I was rather surprised that it had taken them so long to get to this phase of things.

“Yes.” He smiled, not unkindly. “They told me that you were intelligent.”

His voice was deep and sonorous as well, as all good priestly voices are.

“Specifically,” he went on, “I am Inquisitor William of Baskerville of the church of Kreve.”

I felt my eyebrows rise in surprise and he chuckled warmly.

“Yes, I thought that would catch your attention. You see there is more than a little bit of politics about the entire situation.” His mouth twisted at the word ‘politics’ as though it tasted bad.

I was intrigued despite myself and wondered if he knew that.

“I am an old man now, even though I am still hale and hearty. I was enjoying my retirement and training of youngsters and arguing with peers about the proper interpretations of scripture and the proper preparation of fish. But it seems that there is a long list of people that want to be involved in your coming trial.”

I nodded to show that I understood.

“Your guilt in the matter is obvious to anyone with half a brain,” he went on and I could no longer meet his glittering gaze. “And as such, there was some conversation as to who would ascertain your final guilt and who would take your confession given that there is the potential of some prestige attached to the matter. The Empress has that decree that we cannot try people for Heresy out of hand and as such, there is, at the moment, a panel of judges is convened. Do you follow me so far?”

I nodded, unable to lift my eyes from the floor.

“The fact that you are also being tried for treason is a factor as well. So the churches couldn’t divide you up among themselves. The Flaming folk wanted you to keep all to themselves because then they would be able to condemn you for being involved in the death of one of their saints.”

I felt myself frown and looked up. The old priest had pulled out a small metal box from somewhere and was arranging some snuff on his hand. He saw my question and he laughed.

“Yes, your brother Mark is going to be canonised. If he hasn't been already.”

I nodded and felt my head sink again.

“There is, apparently…” He paused to sniff hugely. “Also some other matters that mean that certain members of the Fire folk that mean that they are positively beside themselves to hurl you onto a fire. I suspect politics again myself, but your obvious guilt is a factor I suppose.”

He sniffed again.

“The Great Sun also wants to be involved. You committed treason after all, as well as heresy, which means that you went against the Sun, in the personification of the Empress. Melitele is outraged at all the horror that was committed at your family’s hands and Kreve?”

He built up to a huge sneeze and it did not let him down. I looked up briefly to see him wiping his face with a large handkerchief.

“Well, we just like working against evil.”

I felt, rather than saw, him smile.

“Do you understand all of that?” He asked me.

I nodded.

“Good,” he admitted with some more rustling cloth that I would take to mean that he was shifting his weight. “Because I don’t. I hate politics with a passion that regularly sends me to the confessor. But still…”

He seemed to have some kind of nervous energy that meant that it was impossible to keep him still.

“So what happened…” He had gotten to his feet and was moving around. “Was that there is a tribunal of judges? Religious and terrestrial. They each submitted a list of names of people that they would be happy with performing your inquisition and interrogation. My name came up on multiple lists and so they got me down here and here we are.”

Again, he was peering at me. I continued to say nothing.

“I may say…” he went on when he was sure that I was not going to respond. “That you are not the only person that is currently being… Do you know, I never figured out the word? Are you being Inquisited? Every time I think of the question I always forget about it. Adso?”

The young man sighed with the air of someone who had already performed this task several times.

“Being an Inquisitor is a title,” Adso said, still making notes. “The person is generally called ‘Subject’ or ‘prisoner’ or in some harsher circles ‘victim’.”

“Ah yes. You are not the only victim of these things and I imagine that the judging body has quite a lot of work to do. However, you are their star case.”

I finally looked up at him. Again, it took me several attempts for me to clear my throat and be able to speak.

“So how does this work?” I asked. “No instruments, fire or rack?”

“Good gracious no.” He laughed. “No, I don't think so. Apart from anything else, you have no feet so we have nothing to tie a rack to. Besides…”

His tone turned serious.

“I know who you are. I was a friend of Inquisitor Jerome back in the day. Good man that did some good work. Shame he was working for the wrong church and they burnt him out. Kreve could have made a good Inquisitor out of him. So I know that he has taught you how to withstand torture. I also know that you have been tortured before. Both at the hands of monstrous entities and at the hands of physical people. So torture holds no real fear for you. All I would be doing is causing you pain.”

He spoke conversationally but he continued to watch my face closely.

“Also,” he spoke a bit more softly. “You know that I don’t really need all of those things don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Frederick. You know as well as I do that I only need a small, very sharp knife to get the job done. Don’t you.”

I nodded again.

“Frederick, it would be much easier for everyone, including you, if you gave me a verbal response.”

“Yes,” I croaked hoarsely. “I know that.”

“Good.” He said precisely before he straightened up and his tone became friendly again

“Also, I don’t think that I need all of that.”

I looked up at him in confusion.

“Why not?”

“Because every day that you have been here, you have asked for a confessor. You know of your guilt and you want to confess. So here I am.” he spread his arms wide. “Confess to me and I will listen to what you have to say.”

He perched back on the bed and leaned his head back on the wall, his eyes drooping closed.

I looked from him towards the young novice Adso who was watching me carefully, his pen poised over the parchment that he was leaning on. There was no help for me there and I looked back towards his master who had not moved.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I cleared my throat to begin and suddenly the old man moved.

“I do apologise,” he told me sincerely, “but you have been fed properly haven’t you? I should check and all that. I will send for water, or milk if you prefer, to loosen up your throat. I would send for alcohol but they don’t let the stuff in here.”

He went to the door and issued some instructions through the gate.

“I apologise Frederick. It is Frederick, isn’t it? I understand that you prefer not to be called Freddie?”

I nodded.

“Remember what I said about audible responses?” Father William raised his eyebrows.

“Yes,” I croaked out. “I prefer to be called Frederick.”

“But not by friends or close family members. I was right about your throat though wasn’t I? Hoarse from all the screaming and shouting and the smoke of heresy. I recognise the type you know. I shall have someone put some vinegar in the water to help scour the goo from the back of your throat.”

He spoke slowly and not unkindly.

“And have you eaten?” He asked when he came back from the grating. “We have a lot to talk about you and I and although your doctors have decreed that you are strong enough for Inquisition, it is my experience that they, meaning the doctors… especially doctors of the Eternal Flame, are a bit hesitant to waste medical supplies on someone that is going to burn anyway. But you have much to say and I have many questions and we do not have an infinite amount of time to say them. So have you eaten?”

I nodded, before remembering.

“Yes,” I said.

“What have you eaten?”

My gaze had sunk to be staring somewhere in my lap.

“Some porridge I think.”

“You think? You are not certain. I warn you that I will not settle for any kind of plea of insanity. There is no leniency for traitors and heretics as well you should know.”

“The days seem to merge,” I told him, and my mouth spoke slowly. Far too slowly. It seemed to me that it took far too long for the words to leave my brain and head to my mouth. It was as though I was having to think about the formation of every single word.

“Mmm,” he grunted. He seemed unsatisfied by this.

“Tell me what happened.” He said. “From the day of the Winter Solstice, please. Go into as much detail as you can.”

There was some rustling to suggest that he sat back on my bed.

I took a deep breath before I started to speak.

It was a long story, made even longer by the state that I was in. It had been a while since I had spoken this much and as such, it took my throat time to warm itself up. Somewhere, as I was describing the opening dinner where Kerrass had had his neck broken, the promised food and drink arrived. The monk that brought it served everyone in the room, his face was sombre and this time, he made no jokes and did not look at me.

Father William did not speak or move through the entire thing. If there was a breeze from the window, it might have blown through his hair but otherwise, he appeared completely unmoved. The only accompaniment to my voice was the steady scratching of Adso’s quill.

I spoke about the betrayal, the time that I was on the run and my determination to buy as much time as I could for Chireadean, his wife, Carys and Padraig to make their headlong flight to warn other people of the treason that had taken place.

I spoke of my capture and about the first bout of torture where Sam had broken me by torturing Ariadne, Emma and Laurelen. I talked of the conversations that I had heard and the other people that I had bared witness to and after a time that seemed as though it had taken days, even if it can only have been a little while given the fact that it was still daylight, I came to the ending.

Silence reigned for a long moment.

“Mmm,” William said and he seemed to move for the first time in a while. “An interesting story certainly. Would make for some good chapters in your ongoing works.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. I am a reader of your work after all. It makes for interesting reading. I don’t approve of all of it, of course, your consorting with the sorts of people that you consort with. I prefer chastity myself but I cannot speak against such things.”

He grunted as he got to his feet and moved around a bit.

“I suspect that I would agree with some of your older tutors in that your subject matter is rather too lurid and populist to be of proper academic merit, but as a gateway writer, you have more than a little merit. Or you would have if your career wasn’t going to end so ignobly.

“The stories that you tell display many examples of good, honest investigative work. Your discourses on the use of silence to interrogate a person are, specifically, some of the best uses of the strategy and you always treat the witnesses with the respect that they deserve. Even down to the children which is something that I approve of.”

He had this habit of giving little grunts and ‘hm’s between phrases in his speech.

“The problem being of course that now, given what we know to have happened in Coulthard castle, all of your good work is now suspect. Still, we must go through the motions, must we not?”

I didn’t answer that.

“Tell me the story again.” He ordered this time leaning forwards on the bed.

I cleared my throat and started again. Two sentences in he sprang to his feet.

“Hang it all, I need a proper chair. I don’t know how you do it Adso, sitting on a stool like that all day. Must be a benefit of youth. I must send for a chair.” He did so and paced until it arrived where he arranged it until he was satisfied. Then he sat down and looked up at me.

“Continue Frederick.”

No sooner had I opened my mouth than he stopped me.

“No, no, sorry.” He got up and moved his chair again. And again and this time he settled down, gesturing to me and I started again.

It cannot be denied that, as I spoke, more details came to my memory and I spoke of those details that little bit more. Again, Father William did not speak or seem to move. Again, the only other sound in that room other than my voice was the steady scratching of Adso’s pen on the parchment.

Again, I concluded with the last, desperate effort to strike Sam from behind, both to provide a distraction for Kerrass to be able to deliver some kind of killing blow but also so that I could make sure that I was not insignificant in Sam’s eyes at the end.

I spoke about the visions that I had seen, the ghosts or hallucinations of the dead that had come to me and I spoke about Sam’s last words. Again, I finished with the phrase.

“And then I didn’t wake up properly until I was in this cell.”

Again, there was no movement for some time.

This time though I summoned my courage and looked up to find that Father William was watching me, his eyes glittering from underneath his hooded cowl.

Then he grunted and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling for a long moment in the attitude of someone who is contemplating what they had heard.

Then he scratched his head, reaching into the cowl to do so.

“I was a fan of your brother.” He told me.

“What?” I felt that the man’s mind was moving so quickly that it was leaving me feeling bewildered.

“Yes I was, I will not deny it. Like many of the Flaming persuasion, he was one of those that I daresay belonged on our side of the divide. I saw him speak on several occasions including a conclave that was called when it became clear that the North was going to fall to the Black and the Great Sun. There was a conclave as to what the major religions of the North were going to do to preserve ourselves in the face of the Monotheism of the South.

“Of course, it provided much entertainment for me to notice that only Kreve and the Eternal Fire were invited to the conclave of ‘Major religions’.”

He smiled a little sadly.

“I saw your brother then as he stood in the gathering, standing tall above all others and surveying the surroundings. I remember saying to my friend then ‘What a soldier of Kreve we could have made of that man?’ I saw him again a couple of years later and remember wondering if he was ill. And a third time when he was travelling around the countryside trying to tell people about the benefits of servitude. It was a good sermon that one. I liked it and said so to my fellows.”

I nodded when it was clear that he had finished speaking.

“Thank you,” I said. I could not keep a small tear from running down my face.

“They’re going to make him a saint you know.” Father William said again. I looked up at him. “Oh it’s quite true,” he smiled. “Two saints in the family. Shame about the heretics and traitors.”

He leaned forwards in the chair and fixed me with his gaze.

“Tell me the story again.” He said. “This time, try and keep away from all of the lies.”

He rose and this time, he stood with his back to me, hands clasped behind his back.

I did as I was told. At some point, Father William bowed his head.

Towards the end, he rubbed at his eyes.

When I had finished he turned around and sat back down in his chair. His face was… He was displeased with something and frowning.

“Tell me the story again.” He ordered, leaning forwards to peer into my eyes.

I did the best that I could but under the man’s gaze, I was beginning to falter. About halfway through this time, he stopped me.

“Kreve preserve me.” He snapped before stalking the corner of the room. He stood there, facing the stone wall for a moment before he spun around.

“Eat something.” He ordered. “You are growing tired and I will not have you using that as an excuse when the time comes for you to die. Eat something.”

I tried to do as he ordered. I felt sick and the food tasted like ash in my mouth. It was little more than chicken and bread with some kind of leafy salad and some cheese. Simple food but the cheese felt oily and cloying in my mouth. The chicken was dry and tasteless while the bread felt tough and chewy.

All the time, he stood over me, glaring as he did so.

“Now again.” He ordered. “Tell me your story again.”

“Why?” I demanded. “I’ve told you what happened three times now.”

“And you will tell me again, and again, and again until I am satisfied.” He instructed. “Now again, from the top please.”

I did my best, now I was trying to remember all of the things that I had spoken about before. I tried to remember the details, but he was right, I was tired, ill and Flame knows what. The food was roiling in my belly and I wanted to vomit.

I did my best but he was not satisfied.

“Again,” he ordered.

“But?”

He moved very quickly, startlingly quickly. He moved until his face was inches away from my own.

“Again,” he whispered.

It took me a while to get the words out after that as he stayed as close to my face as a lover might. Easily within kissing range and I wondered at the tactic that he was using. But I did as I was told. I started again, talking about the time that I spent with Ariadne before the evening feast during the Autumn Equinox. My words expanded this time as I spoke more about my suspicions, and the feelings that I had, and as I spoke, more and more of my feelings came out. I was no longer just talking about the facts of the matter. I was telling him about what I was thinking.

I talked for a long time until I was about two days into the account and he stopped me.

“Frederick.” He told me. “Let us be honest with each other.”

“But I…”

“Stop lying to me, Frederick. You are not being honest at all.”

He sighed and rubbed his forehead, sitting back down.

“If you are going to lie to me, then I will be honest with you. There are two ways that this can go. The first route is that you are taken from here. You will be given a last rite to purify your soul before your body is cleansed with the heat of the Eternal Fire. You will die quickly because the heat will be very hot.”

He stared at me for a long moment, making sure that I was listening.

“Or,” he went on. “You will be taken from here and you will be… cleansed. I do not know what happens when the Eternal Flame does that kind of thing but that cannot be pleasant. It certainly isn’t when Kreve does it. You will be cleansed. They will heal you when you cannot stand any more physically and then they will start again. The difference between those two states is my word. My word and you will die quickly and painlessly. Or my word and your death will be long and agonising. And at the moment Frederick, I am inclined to send you to torment. Now tell me the truth.”

“I am telling you…”

“What was that?” He demanded.

“I AM TELLING YOU THE TRUTH,” I screamed, my voice tearing.

“What possible reason do I have to believe you?” He demanded. “The story you tell is rife with untruths. Apart from anything else, it is so clear that you have rehearsed many aspects of it ad nauseum. I suppose that part of the problem is that you have been allowed to languish in this cell, you have been able to rehearse your story night and day in the hope that you might be able to be let off whatever fate was in store for you rather than facing that fate, properly like a flame fearing man of the church.”

I tried to speak but it seemed as though some dam had burst in the old man.

“You are lying to me Frederick, now tell me the truth.”

“WHAT TRUTH?” I wanted to know. “What truth?”

“The truth, the objective truth. Tell me what happened in that cellar, that charnel house that they found in the centre of what remains of Coulthard castle. Tell me what happened. Tell me how you conspired with your brother to overthrow the rightful ruler of the continent, which, to be clear, is the Empress of the Continent, Cirilla, first of her name and blah blah blah. Tell me how you helped your brother orchestrate all of this horror, all of this death. Tell me what happened.”

“I did not help him.” I refuted. “I did not help him. I tried to send out word.”

“Really?” Father William wondered. “Ah yes, I remember. That pair of Elves… Whatshername. Carys and the innkeeper. And what was his name? The Skelligan?”

“Padraig,” I replied.

“That’s him. None of those people made it through to warn anyone. No one tried to cross the river by that name as the Oxenfurt militia were still recording all those that crossed. No one approached Vizima and tried to access the Empress to pass on the words. So that is no proof at all.”

“I got word to my publisher to try and get…”

]“Yes, we know. The dwarf Dorthan published a few pamphlets. That is not informative at all as well you might be able to think. Not only that but Dorthan the dwarf, himself, can’t be found. So we only have your word for it that it was you that sent those diary entries. Not only that, but it is just as likely that you arranged those diary entries in advance to throw people off the scent. Or at best, to cover your bases due to your knowledge about the weakness of the plans that you and your brother were making.”

“The writing that we… I…”

“Yes… You were talking about those documents, those… records that you were ordered to make of what had happened in the castle while you were suffering through your so-called captivity yes?”

I said nothing.

“Those records are in your own code in a form of scholar’s writing that no one can decipher other than yourself and therefore could mean anything. You, and your scribe who was found dead.”

“My injuries?”

“Were inflicted by honest, Flame, Kreve and Sun-fearing soldiers as they took the castle.”

“Kerrass saw?... Where is Kerrass?”

“Is dead. He was indeed sent into the castle to deal with your brother and the magic that was being gathered to the place, but he died in the process. He was found in one of the upper corridors having been gutted.”

I could not hold in a sob.

“Spare me your pretences at grief, Lord Frederick. Your Spider vampire monster of a betrothed is gone and no one can find any sign of her. Your sister’s mind is broken but she would not help you as much as you like given that she was using your family’s mercantile efforts to support your brother’s rebellion. Her lover is, like yours, missing without a trace. Nothing supports your side of the story Frederick, nothing.”

He had been ranting and pacing as he spoke but then he sat on the edge of the bed and stared into my eyes.

“Shall I tell you what I do have? Hmmm? Shall I tell you? I have numerous witnesses and prisoners that swear that you were your brother’s friend. That he intended for you to rule when all of this was over. Men who hated the fact that you were being placed over them. Soldiers, and nobles alike. Even the Queen Regent admits that your brother intended to place you over all else? So why should I believe that you were your brother’s prisoner hmm? What possible reason could you all have for that conflict in the story, hmm?”

He stood over me, tall and terrible.

“Tell me what happened. Again.”

I tried again. Starting at the beginning. But this didn’t seem to satisfy him. He would jump to a point at the end. Then he would jump to a point in the middle. He would question me, jerking me around in the narrative. I remember very little of it.

I got angrier and angrier until I eventually lost my temper.

“You wanna know what I did?” I demanded. “You wanna know what part I had to play in all of this?”

“That’s been the entire point of this Frederick.”

“Do you want to know?”

“Yes. Tell me what I want to know.”

“I did nothing.”

William stared at me, standing tall and over the top of me, his face shadowed in the depths of his cowl.

“I did nothing. Over and over again people warned me about Sam. Ciri, Ariadne, and Emma especially. Queen of Dorne. Syanna… All of them. They tried to warn me. I even saw it once, I think. I saw it when we were investigating… I remember looking across the courtyard and I saw Sam just standing there watching me. He had this weird expression on his face that I didn’t recognise. He was calculating. He was plotting. I saw it and I did nothing.

“I even fucking told him what we had found. I told him. I kept him in the loop at every stage while we were…” I petered out. The anger had carried me so far and now I was done.

“Yes, I’m guilty,” I told him. “I am, I admit it. Is that what you want to hear? I am guilty. I should have done more. I should have seen it, I should have listened. I should have stopped it. I should have…”

I shook my head.

“Take me to the pyre,” I told him. “Take me to the pyre.”

William stared down at me for a long time before he started to speak.

“Being an Inquisitor is an interesting profession.” He told me. “There is no other task like it in the world. No two Inquisitors approach their task in the same way.”

He came to the table and poured himself a drink, took a sip and grimaced at the taste.

“I will freely admit,” he went on, “that we have lost our way over the last couple of decades. Not only because of what has happened but also because we have been competing with each other. The Eternal Flame and Kreve. Who could catch the most heretics? Who can burn the most magic users and destroy the most monsters? That work has also attracted more than its fair share of sadistic idiots who are looking for an outlet for all of their depraved…”

He shook his head.

“What was your turn of phrase? I remember reading it and admiring the poetry of what you had said before I was forced to acknowledge that I too had seen the same thing. I have seen ugly men burning beautiful women, beautiful girls and boys on the pyre and fondling themselves openly. It’s disgusting.

“It’s even more disgusting that the pursuit of heretics has become a political pursuit. We ignore one set of heretics because their father is a prominent donator to the church. We ignore that other heretic because he is a favourite at court and to pursue him is to weaken the political power of the church. It’s disgusting. I agree with you.

“The work in the North of Redani was an inspiring thing. You reminded us, both of us, Kreve and the Eternal Flame, that we are supposed to be investigators. We are not there to hunt out heresy for the sake of it. If that were the case then we would simply never stop. There’s so much of it about and we would need to be working day and night until we used every tree on the continent to build the pyres before we were done and when we were done we would be left with no one to work the fields. No one to come to church and no one to do… well… anything.

“We are investigators. What Witchers were supposed to do with monsters, we were supposed to do with evil. Those of us from the old school know the difference between the two. I understand that you were not lying when you tell us how much good your Vampire woman was doing in Angral before she was enslaved, making it even more tragic as to what happened to her. About how you strung her along before your brother could enslave her.

“We were meant to hunt out evil.

“Evil exists Frederick. It does and anyone that’s been in my line of work has seen it. It’s in the man that likes to abuse children. The people that get their sexual pleasure through active torture. Not the gentle parody of such actions that I understand some people use in the bedroom, but other, more harmful, hate-riddled torture.

“The summoning of dark gods. Not the gentle little spirits of the harvest. But the real darkness. Invoking the Linhead to kill your enemies rather than invoke her mercy in the ending of a suffering grandparent. The use of magic to enslave. That is what we are for. That is what we were created for.

“And sometimes, it is necessary. Not all people have a friendly cat Witcher to be called on to end the life of a monstrous nobleman who is murdering people and wearing their dead faces as a mask because he thinks it means that he can experience their lives. So a peasant can go to a priest and the Inquisition can be called. It’s probably madness but it might also be a demon and so we can burn the man and the community was saved.”

He sighed.

“I feel like I am getting off-topic. I read about your work in the North. I admired you then. You, your Witcher and to a lesser extent, your brother. You did an amazing thing. A thing that no one else had managed to do in the history of the country. You had gone into the heartland. You had hunted down the heretic, going into his very lair to destroy him and then you had done so, bringing back word of what had happened so that the rest of us could follow through on the matter.”

I hung my head.

“But now?”

He shook his head. “Even those actions must be examined in the light of what has happened since. Your little insurrection with your brother has proven that you are not shy about cutting the dead weight from your efforts. You are not afraid of removing those people that are pulling you back and I wonder… Was that what you were doing in the North? Were you cutting the dead flesh from your little cult? Those men might have been holding you back. Tarring others who might have known what you were up to.”

His voice started to rise to a shout.

“Did you point out those people that were innocent but that might be able to point you out? You were untouchable.

You had outed the cult. Did you use your newfound prestige to destroy your enemies?”

“I…”

“Tell me what happened Frederick. Confess your sins. Tell me what happened and I will do my best to ensure that your death is painless. Confess and those people who have had faith in you over the years will be vindicated. Confess.”

“What do you want me to confess to?” I wondered plaintively.

“Tell me the truth.” He told me, putting some overtones of kindness into his voice. “Tell me what happened. Tell me that you tried to help your brother. Tell me that you were there, that you tried to turn him aside but that in doing so you became embroiled in his schemes. Tell me that you helped him, gave him advice, told him how to conquer the North.”

I think I had already started to shake my head as he was speaking. I don’t really remember but I think that it was beginning to happen as his voice started to become sharper and harsher.

“Tell me that you told him about the vulnerabilities of your monster lover. Tell me that you told him how to kill your Witcher. Tell me that you were on his side.”

“I was not on his side.” I wailed. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. I was done with the torment now. I was out of that basement and I was free. If they wanted to kill me for something then I was at peace with that. But if all that was going to happen was that men like this would be getting into my face and yelling at me then what more did they want from me?

“I advised him,” I admitted. “Yes, I advised him. But I advised him when he was just my big brother. I advised him on how to be friends with our big sister and that he needed her. I advised him how to live in this world and not upset or otherwise drive people away. I did try to help him but not like this. I told him to turn himself over to the eternal Flame. I told him to stop this madness. I told him to give himself up and throw himself at people’s mercy. I would never have helped him to do that. Never. Never. Never. I would never have helped him commit all of that horror.”

His face turned into a rictus of hate and disgust.

“Give me something Frederick.” He hissed. “I am trying to help you. Give me something. Everyone knows of your guilt. Everyone. You might even have had some mitigating factors. Maybe there is some truth in the lie. Maybe… Maybe you were just trying to alleviate your guilt, maybe you fell down and worshipped The God so that your own pain would stop. You might have crossed your fingers behind your own back but you still did it. No one would have blamed you. You would just have been a weak man. Confess Frederick. Confess and I will be able to help you.”

“I cannot confess to what didn’t happen.” A sudden wave of calm struck me. “I will stand before the Eternal Flame and I will admit to my faults. I could have done more. I should have done more. I might have helped Sam when I was unaware of his plans and his treachery but I never did that. I NEVER bowed down to his God.

“I would never do that. I would never be part of that. I would have died first. I have seen the darkness that waits for us all and I would never allow my soul to be tarnished in such a way. I did what Sam wanted to prevent him from hurting my sister and the Flame-Fearing woman that I love. I am guilty of that. But I did not bow down before his God. I did not support Sam in his treason. I had no idea that this was coming because if it did, I would have done more to stop it.”

“Why should I believe you? Hmm?” He demanded. “Why should I believe you when so many of your family have turned out to be traitors and heretics?”

“I don’t know.” I wailed, my courage and willpower leaving me. “I don’t know but it’s true.”

He grunted and stood up.

“Then I cannot help you, Frederick. They will come for you in the morning. If I was in your place, I would pray for your soul and be ready to meet the flame. Come along Adso.”

And he left, leaving me in tears.

It was dark shortly afterwards. I tried to sleep with some kind of determination that if I was going to be burnt or tortured tomorrow then I wanted to do it with enough strength to stand and not whimper. I wanted to be able to walk, figuratively speaking, to meet my fate.

Instead, old illnesses, tremors and nightmares haunted me. All of those images, my mother and brother at prayer and so many people dying before my eyes.

Ariadne’s scream echoed in my ears throughout the entire night.

But that was only when exhaustion finally got the better of me. I did sleep then. But before that, when I still struggled to find that blissful state of sleep, I spent the night going over all of my interactions with Sam. Every major chat that I had with him. Every event where we had been together. Particularly in Toussaint where he would have been in the middle of committing all of the horrors that would have made him able to control Ariadne.

I pored over every word that we exchange and I wished, bitterly, to have a copy of my accounts from those days to see if there was any clue there that I could have seen if there was anything, anything at all that I could have found that would have meant that all of this could have been averted.

So I didn’t sleep, or when I did, I had nightmares.

I have no idea what state I was in in the morning. And again, I was confused. If today was going to be my last day then I wanted to face it like a man. I wanted to shave, bathe properly and dress carefully to find my courage in the face of whatever was going to come next. I was under no illusions. I was weak, sick and probably still recovering from my injuries and whatever else. I would not survive any kind of torture over a long period. Therefore, if today was going to be the day then I wanted to face it.

But I was not given time.

My door burst open as though it had been kicked open by a troll and four men came in. They were cowled and masked in some way but they seized me by a limb each and lifted me, placing me onto a stretcher that they lay on the floor. I tried to protest, flailing at them weakly. I could feel the stone through the cloth beneath me and it was cold.

They quickly and efficiently tied me to the stretcher with leather straps and placed a bag over my head as I tried to protest, but it was all happening so fast that I wondered if I was going insane. I wondered if they were coming for me and that I was finally, finally, losing what was left of my sanity.

Or worse, that my liberation had all been some kind of hallucination at the hands of my brother.

I was lifted and carried out of the door where they turned to lead me down the corridor.

“WAIT.” Someone shouted. “Wait,” I could hear running feet and in the middle of my bewilderment at the sudden movement it took me a moment to be able to recognise Father William as he came to the side of my stretcher.

I was shivering and trembling as he took my hand.

“Give me something Frederick.” He pleaded with me. “Give me something that I can use, something that I can show them. Let me tell them that you have some kind of remorse. Anything. Tell them that your brother forced you to worship the God that he followed. Tell them that you were forced to rebel. I cannot save you if you do not help me. I cannot save you if you…”

“Father William.” One of the guards intoned in a dire voice. “Justice is waiting.”

“Yes, yes. Just a minute.” He turned back to me. “Give me something Frederick. I just need…”

“We are leaving Father William.” The man intoned and then we were heading back down the passageway.

“GIVE ME SOMETHING FREDERICK.” William jogged along with me for a moment before I went around a corner and down some stairs before I was deposited in another room. This time, they propped me on a table for a while. This was just a stone room. No windows. There were torches on the wall to give me some light.

And then I waited.

I heard the sound of a door opening and another man came in. I heard the sound of wood scraping against the stone and I guessed at a chair being pulled up.

“I have come to keep you company, you filthy excuse for a heretic.” It was a surprisingly high-pitched voice, dripping with scorn and hate. “You are going to be taken from this place where you will have hooks inserted into your flesh. After that, they are going to heat the hooks until afterwards, over time, you are going to be cooked from the inside out. It’s going to really hurt.”

The tone of voice was kind of friendly but I must have whimpered.

There was a sigh and the sound of a man taking his ease.

“I always hated your brother,” the voice said. “I thought he gave the rest of us a bad name. Preaching his nonsense about serving your fellow man.” He chuckled. “Our fellow men should know their place. They should bow before the Eternal Flame and they should be grateful that the flame does not burn the flesh from their bones. You are no better of course. You, telling them that the Eternal Flame is supposed to be a beacon of hope, something to lead people to their home port like a lighthouse.”

He hawked and spat.

“Didn’t help him, did it? Or you. Now you’re going to die here and you are going to die a death as painful as the questioners can conceive.”

He laughed.

“The only way out of it all is if you give William and the others like him what they want. You should do it, you know. You should confess. It will be easier for everyone if that’s what you did. Will save time after all and torturing someone to death is hard work. I should know.”

He laughed again.

“But still, if you don't, that's ok by me. They will use a hooked knife. Sharpened point but the other parts of the blade will not be quite as sharp. They want the skin to tear, you see. They will cut into you and they will place the hooks inside. Then they will heat the ends of the hooks until the metal grows hot. Not too hot, but just enough to keep you on the edge of agony.”

He laughed.

“We’re going to take your body and display it for the cowardly, traitorous, heretical scum that we all know you to be. People will look at what we’ve done to you and they will quake and whimper in fear at the thought that this might all happen to them. That way we will keep them in the right and just fear the Eternal Flame.”

He laughed again. Spat again.

“You’re not a man. You’re a thing. A treasonous thing. I am the torturer, the questioner. So many people… Dandelion and the rest. They all want to make me out to be the bad bad guy in some kind of stage show drama. They do not see how we protect them from the darkness on the edge of sight. They don’t see it. The world wants its villains and after we had done everything that we could to save them, they decided to hate us for it. But you know what makes it all better?”

He laughed.

“You are the cure for that. The horror that you and your brother have inflicted on the rest of us means that you will be the villain. You are the villain. You do not even dare to confess your sins. So you are going to be paraded before the masses as a warning. ‘This is what happens to traitors and scum’ the heralds will cry and for once, we will know our justice because then, we have caught and punished a traitor. Something that should have happened to you and your entire miserable family years ago. You could stop all of it. You could confess and I will go away. They will have to carry you to the fire but then you would be able to breathe the smoke and die relatively quickly.

“But you won’t do that, will you? Too much of a coward.”

I said nothing. What was there to say? The first stage of the disorientation was dissipating.

The door opened again and another voice came through.

“Enough,” the new voice said. “If he’s not going to confess now, he’s not going to.”

“Remember,” the old one, the laughing one, said. “All you have to do is confess and then this all goes away.”

Men entered, their footsteps echoing on the floor and I felt myself move, being carried away. I looked for the laughing speaker but I couldn’t catch sight of him.

I was taken down a corridor before a door was opened and I was placed on the floor inside a small room. Not much bigger than your average broom closet. A cloth bag was put over my head and I was in the darkness then. They picked me up instantly and then we were off.

At first, I spent some time trying to guess where I was going, trying to take in the sounds of the footfalls and the feeling of us turning left and right. But after a while and with the speed of the way that things were moving, I became disoriented, the urge to vomit started to grow and I needed to focus on keeping what had passed for breakfast, or dinner or whatever, in my belly.

It was not an easy thing although it occurred to me that part of the reason that I was struggling so much was that I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday and in the middle of my interrogation.

I went down several flights of stairs, I know this because of the way that the movements changed. I ended up in a large open area where I was set on the floor. A not-unkind voice told me that I was going to be transferred to a chair and that it would be easier for everyone if I didn’t struggle. I let them lift me into the chair which they did with relative ease before the same voice told me that they were going to tie me into the chair to preserve my dignity.

I tried to shrug but that didn’t seem to make much of a difference.

Then the bag was removed from my head and I saw where I was.

I had never been in the room before but I have been in many rooms like it. It was like a lecture hall or an operating theatre where the ranks of chairs surround a central point which is normally where the lecturer or the operation is taking place. Mostly these kinds of rooms are found in hospitals or in places of learning like the university.

As these kinds of rooms go, this was a relatively small one. There was no natural light but there were plenty of torches lining the walls so it was quite a warm room and well-lit. A chandelier containing a couple of dozen candles was on it and I was relieved to notice that I had been placed so that the wax wouldn’t dribble down and onto my head.

There was one balcony with a few chairs in it which were populated by several people, most of whom I didn’t recognise.

In no particular order.

There was a Cardinal of the Eternal Flame there. I had no idea who he was and I didn’t recognise him but he was wearing the robes and accoutrements that Mark had been wearing since his elevation. He wasn’t wearing all of them and he had the impression of someone that was dressing down to where he was needed at that time. He was a thin man, not ascetically thin but the kind of weight of someone that occasionally looks up from whatever it was he was doing and realised that he had forgotten to eat. His hair was white and it was the only real sign of age on the man as he looked down at me.

I thought he looked tired.

Next to him was a priest of Kreve, obvious in his armour with the banner of Kreve propped next to him. Similar in age to the Cardinal but a bit bulkier. He lacked the bulk of the average armoured knight and I guessed that this would be a kind of general figure. Someone who directed armies and took care of logistics. I thought that he might once have been larger but I remember that he looked down at me with an air of slight disdain and boredom.

Next to him again was the priest of the Nilfgaardian Great Sun. Wearing a simple black habit, he was tonsured quite severely and was the heaviest set of all of the religious factions that were present. He had a face that looked as though it was used to being jolly, just slightly overweight but there were smile lines on his face and he smiled down at me benignly although I got the feeling that there was some steel in his gaze. My thought was that he was the kind of priest that would be very kind to everyone so it was shocking when he needed to bring the pain.

Next to him again was Mother Nenneke. The most famous of all of the Priestesses of Melitele and only that because she is the mother superior of the largest existing convent of priestesses of that kind. That and the fact that Professor Dandelion and Lord Geralt would spend time with her. She is known to have a love/hate relationship with the Professor and Lady Yennefer while treating Lord Geralt as an Errant son. She must be ancient by now and she is certainly showing her age. She walks with the aid of two walking sticks that were propped next to her against the rail.

I was terrified that I would see hate in her gaze as it had been her convent that Mother had been sent to but she regarded me without expression. She was well dressed in habit and wimple so I was unable to tell more about her.

Like the cardinal, she looked tired and desperately sad.

Then we moved on to the more secular authorities.

In the middle was Queen Cerys of Skellige. She shared the same characteristics as the others in that she looked tired. She was wearing a shirt with an over tunic and her tartan was arranged in a sash over her shoulder. She was making a note of something as I had my bag removed and didn’t look at me. Other than that, she seemed impeccably groomed, not a hair out of place and as with most of the things that she does, I guessed that she was making a point.

Next to her was a Nilfgaardian Officer that I didn’t know. He was still dark-haired despite being somewhere in his fifties. He wore his armour well, black lacquer with the Golden symbol of the sun on the breastplate. He had a small moustache and a goatee. His hands were un-gauntleted and he had a habit of stroking his moustache while he was thinking, seeming to be something he did so that his hands had something to do.

After him was the old director of Imperial Intelligence that I had spoken to before all of this went on. The man that I had interrogated to see if there was anything that I might have missed during the night where we burnt the heretics that had killed Father. Injured in one of the wars, he had taken up the position of Commander of the Oxenfurt City watch before finding his way up through the ranks to be declared head of the Imperial intelligence services based in Novigrad. He looked ashen pale and was fidgeting.

Next to him was a Redanian official of some kind. If I had been more awake or more able to use my brain, I would have laughed at the fact that his fashion choices regarding facial hair and things were all but identical to the Nilfgaardian general. He was a thinner man and he had a pair of magnifying glasses in wooden frames that he used to peer at me. He was not a soldier though and his clothing was rich. I understood him to be some kind of courtier and he looked at me curiously.

Lastly, at the end was Lady Eilhart. She had cut back on the weaponized femininity and was wearing a simple dress with a simple cloth ruff around her neck. Like many of the others, she seemed to have some notes that she was working on. Unlike some of the other times that I have seen her, she was not making the quill do her writing for her. Other than that, she seemed to largely ignore me.

I didn’t have to wait long before they told me what was going on.

“Lord Frederick.” Queen Cerys spoke, her Skelligan accent subdued. “Given your physical condition, we will forgive you for not bowing or providing any forms of etiquette, we are also keen to save time here so we will cut to the chase of things.”

It always surprises me how her voice is just a little bit higher than expected.

“We are the panel of judges that has been convened to judge your guilt in the crimes of Heresy and Treason. This panel is larger than most due to the circumstances of your nature, what we know of your past and what has been proven as to what happened to you. You should know that there have been many trials of others that surround this case and most of them have used smaller panels than this. We would have dealt with your case sooner, but it was determined that your physical recovery should be made a priority to ensure that you were fit to stand trial. That determination has occurred and now here you are. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

I think she read that speech from a paper in front of her

I nodded before realising that a nod was probably not enough.

“I do,” I said before clearing my throat to say it again. “I do,” I repeated, hoping that I spoke with more power the second time.

“Further to this,” the Queen went on. “It should be said that, due to our history together and your close personal friendship with the man that I love and intend to marry, I shall be recusing my vote until it becomes clear that I am needed to make a tie-breaking vote. Other than that, you should think of me as more like a chairperson of the committee. The Empress has dictated that this is the way that she wants this trial to be carried out and you should know that there has been some distress in that determination. Do you understand this?”

Another pre-written speech.

“I do,”

“Good then,” She leant back in her chair. “Do you have anything to say in your defence?”

I forced myself to speak.

“No,” I said.

Some were shifting in their seats before the Queen’s voice whipped around the room.

“The time for debate is over.” She declared her accent more apparent. “We will not go over this again. The Empress made her decision and now it is law, the panel will vote in a moment even though we all know what people will say…”

Her tone became lighter.

“Honestly gentlemen, I have enough of this nonsense at home with my Jarls when it comes to politicking after the decision has been made, surely we all realise that the faster we can move on to other cases the better it will be for everyone.”

I saw that Lady Eilhart smirked at that. As did the Cardinal of the Eternal Flame and although there might be others, those were the ones that I caught.

“I would like to hear from Inquisitor William before the final vote is cast.” The priest of Kreve’s voice was a rasping, shell of a voice.

“I agree that it would be prudent to enter that into the public record.” The Cardinal of the Eternal Flame agreed.

Queen Cerys nodded and glanced around the other seated figures who mostly seemed to nod. Then she glanced at someone who was out of my view. After a long moment, Inquisitor William came and stood in front of me, looking up into the light. His novice Adso came in with papers.

“Report?” Queen Cerys asked, I got the feeling that she was distasteful of what the Inquisitor was there for.

William bowed slightly and grunted his little grunt.

“My novice Adso has the written transcript of the interview that was conducted although it will be some time before a report can be put together…”

“Perhaps a summary then William.” Mother Nenneke spoke with familiarity and fond exasperation.

William grunted unhappily and took some time before he started to speak. I got the feeling that he took the time to annoy the panel.

“We did not have as much time as we would have liked. As you will all know, the use of instruments would not have produced acceptable results due to the history and experience of the accused. Likewise with other physical techniques such as deprivation and the like due to his physical state and time constraints. Nor did we have time to insert someone into his confidence…”

“Yes yes, get to the point.” The Redanians’ voice was shrill and William shifted in what I took to be frustration and displeasure.

“The point is that the boy is clearly innocent,” William told the room which caused a bit of shifting of the weight. I was certainly horrified.

“But…” I protested.

“In fact,” William went on. “The boy is so innocent that I feel a bit insulted, to tell the truth. There are far more interesting and complicated cases that my skills would be better used for.” He made a harrumphing noise

“Explain.” Again, Queen Cerys’ voice cracked out stilling the protests of the other men.

“Frederick did not even admit to anything to preserve his body and soul. He told his tale in the same way, every time with the only things changing being the adding or loss of detail but the salient points remain the same. He is innocent and if we are adding things to the record, the use of other techniques would only find the same thing other than to force an untrue confession. The case is so cut and dried that it is pointless. My colleagues from the Eternal Flame that assisted in the matter agree.”

He gave a little bark of laughter.

“He did not even admit to smaller, harmless heresies that might alleviate his guilt.”

“And further recommendations, Father William?” Cerys asked.

“The boy is guilty, in that he feels guilt but is not guilty of any crime that I would punish. His crimes are ignorance and a certain amount of wilful blindness to the faults of the people that he loves. Also, a tendency to make poor choices under pressure, a common fault of the young.” The Inquisitor went on with an audible smirk. “Give him a confessor, a good one,” he gave a little chuckle. “A really good one as he will need it. Someone understanding who will not scourge him into madness and death. He needs understanding, care, kindness and also discipline.”

There was some more general stirring on the benches forcing Queen Cerys to intercede again.

“Thank you, Father William, you may go.”

Inquisitor William came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder in comfort before moving on.

“It was nice to meet you.” The novice Adso told me in his child’s voice before following his master.

I stared after him in shock and horror as I dimly took in what else was happening.