(A/N: This might not make sense here and now, as you read this before the beginning of the chapter. But I apologise for any historical inaccuracies. I just wanted to write the thing without falling down a hole of research. With that cryptic statement out of the way I'll leave you to it.

Also, WARNING for some scenes of descriptions of torture devices and their history.)

“It turns out that Jack's real name, in this case, was Antoine de Mornir. He was a school teacher.”

“What?” The Empress demanded. She had her head in her hands, resting her elbows on her desk and was massaging her eyes. “What did he teach? Badassery? Fencing? Acrobatics?”

“None of the above.” Phillipa Eilhart said looking as tired, if not worse than the Empress did. “He was actually a maths tutor with some history and handwriting done on the side. He was the kind of man that nobles hire to come and instruct some basic skills to their children. Before the children have begun to decide what they want to do with themselves.”

She sat down heavily in a nearby chair before pouring herself a hot steaming drink. “He did that sort of thing four days out of seven and then spent two days “giving some back to society” where he taught some of the children of the townsfolk and what surrounding villagers could make it to the church schools. Widower, no children devoted to his work and to the children. Is known to the Knights Errant as a couple of years ago he discovered that one of the children in his classroom was being being abused by their father. Whole matter was dealt with in a duel and the child went off to stay with an Aunt out of town.”

“How can a man like that do all of these things?” The Empress stared over her hands at the other occupants of the room. There weren't that many of us and none of us had slept. “He killed two Witchers, eleven Knights Errant and close to forty Imperial Guardsmen in a single night. That's not including those men that are wounded and may never walk, let alone fight again. You're telling me that all of that was done by a school teacher? And quite a nice, moral man at that?”

“I can't speak for any certainty, Majesty.” Lady Eilhart put just the slightest emphasis on the title, I sense an old conflict here but it was glossed over. “But if I was to guess, I would say that he was possessed.”

“If it was a possession then it's not like anything that I've ever seen,” The Empress' chaplain was there, the first time I'd met the man. He was the kind of quiet elderly man who could surprise you with his vigour and the sudden bursts of charm and very sharp intelligence. “Is there any possibility at all that he wasn't just simply mad?”

“Oh, he was quite mad.” Said Lady Eilhart. “But you don't understand. Not only did he not have the skill to do the things that we saw last night, but he physically couldn't have done it. The cartilage in his joints was simply gone. His limbs, especially his legs and feet, were fractured in multiple places and in multiple ways. His muscles were torn and strained. That's leaving aside the fact that his jaw was broken, his tongue torn out at the root and that he was missing an eye. Not that the eye was removed. But because the side of his face was caved in and the eye must have burst.

“It wasn't a madness that made him do all of the things that happened last night. He was physically incapable of standing and holding himself upright. His shattered limbs make that certain. If I hadn't been scrying the events, with my own magic and with other witnesses at the time, I would have sworn that the Witchers and Lord Frederick here, had substituted someone else in place of the killer.”

“My God.” The Chaplain made the sign of the sun over his heart. “But, possession is normally accompanied by more supernatural elements, things floating, strange voices, promises of power and damnation. This was just a killer.”

“Just a killer, Lord Chaplain?” Geralt of rivia was another person in attendance. He showed no signs of the weariness that was affecting most of the rest of us. “Believe me, there was no “just” about what happened last night. That power played us like mandolins. Played all of us. It's my view that nothing happened last night that the attacker didn't want to happen. Up to and, I think, including his capture at our hands. Certainly Lord Frederick here owes that fact his life.”

“Why would he want me alive?” I asked the room. Not for the first time. It was one of many questions that I had spinning round my head at that point. It turns out that I didn't say it loud enough this time and so no one spoke. It wasn't as if anyone had an answer for me anyway.

“Why would someone want to do all of that?” The Chaplain asked again.

“Distraction?” Lord Voorhis was in the room and had poured himself a goblet of liquid from the same jug that Lady Eilhart had drunk from. “While we were chasing him across the rooftops, we weren't looking somewhere else. That brings us back to the probability that this whole thing comes down to a matter of state rather than something specifically designed to target or annoy the Empress or the Coulthard family. Nothing else happened last night in Toussaint that was of any note. No ships moved, no boats docked and nothing went anywhere. We checked.”

The Empress rose to her feet and walked to look out the window. She was very pale that morning and I suspected that, along with not having slept, she also hadn't eaten anything. Her hair was kept back by a simple silver circlet and a hair design that I recognised as being another from Francesca's repertoire of simple but effective things that you can do with long hair. But other than the circlet she wore no other ornamentation and was dressed in a simple, high collared black robe that was belted at the waist. For all the world it looked like a cassock only it was black rather than red. I guessed at the boots underneath.

“So here's the big question I suppose,” The Empress said after a while. “Did he have anything to do with Francesca's disappearance?”

“Oh yes.” Said Lady Eilhart.

“Beyond any doubt.” Kerrass commented. “As soon as we managed to get his address out of him, or rather, as soon as lady Eilhart and her fellows got his address out of him, we went and searched his residence in the early hours of this morning. Just as the sun was beginning to come up. He had paintings of her all over his little house. That and a cage in his basement where he kept his victims. He had...souvenirs.”

The Empress shuddered. “Was this something that he did or was it something that was done to him?”

“There is still some argument about that, Majesty,” Lady Eilhart said. “I think though, that the man was possessed and manipulated into doing these things. I think he is as much a victim of all of this as Lady Francesca is. He was driven mad with what he had seen and what he was being forced to do. A lot of his injuries, we believe, were self-inflicted.

“Early on he injured himself in an effort so that the people around him would realised that something was wrong, but the possessing personality simply made him wear a mask when he went out and steal anything that he needed. It's almost certain that he clawed at his own face, tore out his own tongue and bashed his head against a wall in an effort to kill himself. But again, the possessing personality simply wouldn't allow it.”

Lady Eilhart is a difficult woman to like but I found that I was grateful to her there for the use of the present tense regarding Francesca.

What she said was an understatement of the horror that we found when we went to the teachers house. It was just a small house, behind a butchers shop, and you got to it by going down a side alley. You would need to be told where it was, you couldn't come across it accidentally. He had a ground floor room in which he seemed to do most of his cooking, a basement room that he hadn't previously been using and an upstairs room where he slept and kept his books. If it wasn't for the location being less than entirely beneficial I would have called it a nice place to live.

But the smell as we walked into the back room was enough to send even a Witcher retching. The reek itself of blood, faeces and offal was overpowering enough but there was another scent here. It was an evil scent of fear, rage and helplessness. It made the hair on the backs of my head stand up.

I will set it out as clinically as I can.

On the top floor he was surrounded by the dresses and small belongings of the women that he had captured. He had dressmaker dummies set out upon which he had set out the women's dresses. He had placed their hair upon the dummies heads and had nailed the poor women's faces to the front of the dummies.

Yes, he skinned their faces off.

As well as this, the books that had once lined the shelves in the room were scattered around the place. We found some evidence to say that many of them had been used to start fires and for fuel for the fire. On the wall, over and over again, were different portraits of my sister. Some were professionally done and I would later learn that those pictures had been created by professional artists in the capital, who had been commissioned by “foreign nobility” who were interested in the eligible women at court. But some, just as clearly had been done by the occupant. They were drawn on the wall using whatever artistic material could be found. Blood, excrement, charcoal and anything else that you might not want to imagine. It was also easy how he chose his victims. Not just for the superficial similarities to Francesca but also by the way they dressed.

On the ground floor it was obvious that he had been eating his victims. He must have struggled to go out into town to get what food and things that he had needed due to his obvious disfigurements and so he had turned to the only food source that he had available.

This was also the room where he clearly had done things to himself, both to call attention to his plight at first, but later in an effort to end his own existence. He had castrated himself with a knife. Flame knows how he managed to survive that. He had torn his own tongue out with a pair of pincers as well as taking a knife to himself. He had a large sledgehammer which it turned out he had used to shatter his own feet as he tried to disable himself into not being able to go out.

Finally, when none of those things had worked he had tried ramming his head into a wall.

Why none of these things had worked, I suppose we will never know. We did propose the theory that the teacher personality, the true personality, was driven mad by the things he was forced to do and the things he was forced to see. Then he tried to prevent himself from doing or seeing these things. But all the time he was prevented from doing so by the other personality that we referred to as the “Jack” personality that saved his life at every turn. All the time forcing him to perform increasingly brutal and horrible things.

It was awful, horrifying and heartbreaking.

In the basement we found his torture chamber. Where he confined, raped and tortured those poor women to death. He used objects after he had castrated himself. We found the instruments on the floor. I stood in that room for a long time looking at the cage where Francesca must have been. No matter for how long she had been there.

Then I had gone away to weep and shake and sweat for a while.

“So, lay this out for me then please.” The Empress said. “Was the man interrogated?”

“He was, although it had to be done magically,” Kerrass returned the floor to Madame Eilhart.

“Yes, it took some time but we were able to get through the man's madness to be able to talk to him. That was how we found his address.”

“How did it take so long to find him?”

“Early on, apparently he seemed quite rational to his neighbours, students and clients. He complained about some kind of family crisis and that he would be coming in and out at all kinds of odd hours. He was well known as a good and upstanding member of society so people just let him get on with it.

“So, as I say, lay it out for me. What was the sequence of events?”

Lady Eilhart took another drink from her steaming cup.

“We think that the man was possessed. We don't know why he was targeted and it's one of those things that we will struggle to find out now.”

“Why?”

Lady Eilhart sighed and rubbed at her eyes before pinching at the bridge of his nose.

“You have to understand the depths of the man's madness and despair. He had seen himself doing all of the things that have been described. All the crimes that he had committed. He had seen them, experienced them, known that they were wrong and tried to prevent himself from doing so but his will was completely overcome.

“Towards the end he could no longer distinguish himself from the entity inside him, such was the state of his madness. He had tried to end himself several times in an effort to save future victims but he was kept from that in some way, we assume that the entity just refused to let him die. We can't say any of this for certain because once he told us everything he knew and led us to his residence he finally succeeded in killing himself by dashing his brains out against the floor.”

“I see,” The Empress winced in sympathy. I was too far gone to feel sympathy for him at that stage. I was tired but I couldn't sleep. I still felt so angry that I was beginning to frighten myself. “Go on, he was targeted, what then?”

“We think he was given a gift of some kind. Or something was slipped into his house or whatever. Something was done to draw down Jack's presence into his mind and his body. He was also given his target well in advance. Paintings and descriptions of Francesca were provided although he remembers them just turning up in his house. He remembered becoming obsessed with her and what she looked like. He freely admitted that he fell in love with her but couldn't do anything about it.

“As I say, he was a widower, he loved his wife and had never felt the need to remarry. When he started to feel the need he would go down to the brothel and spend a bit of money. He didn't spend his money on much else but that way he could express his physical desires in a safe way.

“But now that option was taken from him. Not only that but Jack was taking over by this point and his desires and drives were no longer quite so....wholesome. Eventually, when he couldn't take it anymore he went out and found his first victim. She was similar but at the same time, wasn't quite the Francesca that he was looking for. So then there was another victim and another victim.

“All the while he was being built up into a single, Francesca hunting machine. This was before Lady Francesca had even arrived in Toussaint you understand. When she did arrive, he stalked her. Following her about. He was sensible enough not to try and get at her in the palace so he watched and waited. Then one day he saw her come out, descend through the pathways to the bridge and he pounced.”

“What did he do with her?”

“He locked her in his dungeon. He went out for something, possibly another moment where the man overwhelmed the spirit in an effort to prevent harm from befalling the Lady, but when the spirit had reasserted itself. Francesca was gone.

“The spirit went mad with impotent rage and desire. Then the plan was put into place and the “Jack” spirit determined to have a bit of fun at everyone else's expense.”

The entire room shifted it's weight in discomfort.

“So this was something that was done to him?” Lord Voorhis asked.

“I have no doubt. It has to be said that from my perspective, the teacher Antoine was an extraordinarily brave man. He did everything he could to fight the possessing spirit and to prevent harm from coming to those young women. He tried to draw attention to himself, to injure himself so that he would find it harder to perform the physical feats that the spirit demanded of his body. Unfortunately the spirit was strong enough to make sure that he couldn't follow through. It simply ignored his injuries. Indeed, the spirit did more damage to that body than the Witchers did in the effort to capture him.

“Was this part of the same plot to remove Francesca?” The Empress asked “Or was it just coincidence that Jack was active in the local area while Francesca disappeared. It would piss me off if we lost all those people to a fucking distraction.”

Lady Eilhart shared glances with a couple of other people round the room.

“I think we can discount the “coincidence theory” majesty. This man was used as a weapon to capture Lady Francesca. She was lured out by methods or means unknown. Then Jack captured her and the conspirators removed her from him knowing that Jack would make as big a mess as possible while we were all trying to track him down.”

“Fuck.” The Empress swore. “Fuck it all.” She sprang to her feet and stalked up and down for a moment or two. “That means that all of our current precautions are useless too?”

“Majesty?” Voorhis asked.

“We didn't know Francesca was missing until the midday of my coronation. The people looking for her just thought she had run off somewhere. She went missing the night before. Jack had her, then lost her all before we even knew to be looking for her. That means that she could be anywhere right now.”

The Empress stalked up to Voorhis. “Tell me I'm wrong.”

He shook his head. The Empress marched up to Lady Eilhart. “Tell me I'm wrong,” she pleaded. “Please.”

Lady Eilhart wouldn't meet her gaze either.

The Empress went back to her window and stared out at the annoyingly sunny day.

“Fuck,” she said again and put her head in her hands.

If you watch carefully, you can see the precise moment that someone gives up someone else for dead.

“Ok,” she said after a while and turned back around. She had her “Empress” face back on although she wasn't looking anyone in the eye and her eyes were moving around constantly, refusing to alight on anything.

“Here's what I want to happen. Lord Voorhis?”

“Majesty?”

“What else happened in the Empire last night? Find out would you please?”

“Yes your majesty.”

“And mention to the Diplomatic corps I am not in the mood for anyone fucking about.

“Yes Your Majesty.”

“Lords Kalayn and Coulthard?”

Mark stood up from where he had sat on a stool in the back ground. Emma hadn't been able to come. Sam stood up with him. “Majesty?” Mark asked looking pale.

“Your family is to consider itself under my protection. But that goes both ways. You can expect some members of the Imperial guard to arrive and to audit your lands and your merchant endeavours properly. I want to know who your enemies are, in detail. I expect you all to comply with these orders. In the meantime you should assume that you are being stalked. You will all stay here in Toussaint until your new Imperial advisers are ready to depart.”

“Yes Your Majesty.”

“Lady Eilhart.”

“Your Majesty?”

“I will expect a full report on the Jack phenomenon and how it happened here. Work with Lord Geralt if you please and complete the investigation into what happened in Toussaint. I also expect you to assist Duchess Anna Henrietta in her endeavours.”

“Yes Your Majesty.” Lady Eilhart was sensible enough to not want to rock the boat on this one.

“Lady Duchess?”

“Majesty?” Anna Henrietta stepped forward. She had taken to wearing a plain white dress without adornment. No jewellery or make-up adorned her and her hair hung loosely down her back. As I said earlier, for my money, she looked far more beautiful like this than she ever had in her massively ornate gowns.

“I want your Duchy searched from top to bottom. House to house searches. If Francesca is here, alive or dead I want her found. Coordinate with the Lodge and Lord Geralt if you would. If she's....dammit....If she's buried in the back woods somewhere I want to know about it. Martial law and your borders remain sealed without my express permission until the search is concluded. Trade only starts up again when everything has been searched.”

“Yes Your Majesty.”

“That's it everyone. Fuck off for five minutes and then send in my secretary so we can all get back to work. Oh, and can someone mention it in court that I'm in a desperately foul mood and that if anyone crosses me then I am more than a little bit tempted to pull out their spleen with my own hand.”

There was quite a bit of bowing.

“No mother you stay. The rest of you though. Fuck off.”

I saw Lady Yennefer move over to where the Empress sat with her head in her hands but I found that I suddenly couldn't move.

“Wait,” It was a bit of time before I realised that it was me that had spoken suddenly. “Is that it? Are we just giving up?”

The Empress looked up from where she had been resting her head in her hands. “What would you have us do Lord Frederick. We have no leads.”

Kerrass clapped me on the shoulder. “That's it Freddie, just leave it now,” he whispered.

The Empress sighed. “We share your anguish Lord Frederick, we love her too but what else is there. She was taken at a time when we weren't looking for her. She was conned into thinking that her brother was summoning her outside the castle. She was kidnapped by Jack and then taken from him as well by persons or people unknown. The clues are either buried in this man Antoine's house, in his body or elsewhere. If you can see any other leads for us to pursue then point them out to us. I have the resources of an Empire Lord Frederick and I have a burning need to use them on this. Give me something, anything that I can do to find your sister and I will do it.”

For a moment, the passion that the Empress spoke with took me aback.

“Jack,” I said after a long while. “We need to speak with Jack himself.”

“The man died Lord Frederick.” Lady Eilhart was looking at me oddly. “Believe me when I say that he gave us everything that he knew. But even if he didn't. He smashed his brains across the floor. He was only coherent due to some incredible willpower on his part. Even if we performed Necromancy, which we won't by the way, he wouldn't be able to tell us any more.”

“Not him.” I said. “Jack himself. The entity “Jack.” He had his prey stolen from him so he's bound to be pretty pissed. We know that he has a bizarre sense of duty and humour. We also know that he is jealous of his power and imitators. Surely he would know some more things. Who summoned him? Who put him in that body? how did it happen? Why did he allow himself to get manipulated like that?”

“And how do you propose to talk to him?” Lady Eilhart said. “Even if it could be done, which I'm not saying it can. How would you talk to him? That wasn't the being itself that we fought last night, that was just a part of him possessing a man. Can you imagine the amount of chaos that the man himself might be able to cause to the world. I can.”

“It's an avenue.” I insisted. “It's something that we can pursue. Something else that we can ask. Another lead.”

Lady Eilhart shook her head. “It can't be done.”

There was another sigh in the room. “It can,” said lady Yennefer somewhat reluctantly. “It can be done although I agree that it's not a great idea.”

“How do you know this?” Lady Eilhart looked aghast at the other Sorceress.

“There was a time when I was as desperate to find the Empress as Lord Frederick is to find his sister. There is no avenue that I did not look at to find and come to her aid. I looked into it. Found the rituals but there were other things that I pursued first. Avenues which were more successful.”

Lady Eilhart. “This is madness. I want no part of it. This kind of consorting with demons is not something that the Lodge will support.”

“Fuck the Lodge,” The Empress snapped.

“What?” Lady Eilhart yelled astonished but the Empress ignored her.

“Can it be done Mother?”

Lady Yennefer considered for a while before nodding firmly.

“Then do it. I'm sure Lord Frederick will assist where he can.”

“I will also need Witcher Kerrass' assistance.

“You have it ma'am.” Kerrass said.

“Then I shall fetch my notes.”

The Sorceress got up and left. Kerrass took my arm and firmly led me out of the room from where the Empress and Lady Eilhart were glaring at each other.

The yelling started just as we left the room.

Lady Yennefer had disappeared. There was just the ends of a gate, the silvery writing still hovering in the air to tell us that she had teleported off some place.

“This is a really bad idea Freddie,”

“Worse than facing a dead King to ask him who he sired a bastard with?” I asked. I was trying to feel jovial but it wasn't working.

“Worse,”

“Worse than attempting to talk to a dragon?”

“This is not a fucking Dragon we're talking about here Freddie. We're talking about an ancient and unknowable being. I'm not going to call him evil because calling a thing like Jack evil is like calling water evil for drowning you. A Dragon at least is a creature that can be killed. Jack is.....”

“Jack?” I asked him and he subsided. “Kerrass, I'm grateful. I really am for your concern but.... I have to know. I can't just sit here and wait while they search Toussaint, building to building, before failing to find her. They are right. They had an entire morning to move her and secrete her some place. She's not going to be found because big and burly men are going to be knocking on doors.

“This is my sister Kerrass. I can't.... I can't say how important she is to me. She's my little sister. She's more physically capable than me, smarter than Emma, more intelligent than Mark and more charming than Sam but out of everyone I know. She's the only one that I am afraid for.

If you, or Emma or Ariadne or anyone else got taken then I would pray for the kidnappers. But Francesca is too innocent for that. Even though she probably isn't as innocent as I think she is, I fear for her. I've never stopped being afraid for her.

“When I left home I was worried that our father would turn his displeasure onto Francesca. I saw a little girl of fourteen, bright eyes and smiling, despite being sad to see me go and I was so afraid that I was throwing her to the wolves. That she came out of all of that and was still kind and gentle and....

“Flame, she's the best of all of us Freddie. She's the best thing that my family produced and to think of her being kidnapped, let alone dead and despoiled in a ditch somewhere.

“I just can't Kerrass. I just can't. And I just couldn't live with myself if I thought that there was something that I could do and then didn't do it.”

I was astonished at the tears that had sprung into me eyes and I turned away to hide them even though Kerrass must have already seen them.

“It might be selfish Kerrass given all of the families that are mourning the good men that died last night in an effort to find the man that had kidnapped her and it is. It is selfish to worry about one young woman when so many people have died but she's my sister. I need her to be ok, I need her to be ok.”

Kerrass sighed. “I'm sorry Freddie, I didn't understand. Look, you've not slept since yesterday. Get something to eat, get some rest and I will come and find you when Lady Yennefer has something or when she needs you.”

“I don't think I could eat anything, or sleep.”

“Then you will understand that I have absolutely no guilt about harnessing your elder sisters wrath on the subject.”

He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me off to our new set of family rooms inside the castle.

After the decision that we were innocent of complicity in Francesca's disappearance the Empress had demanded that the family be moved to rooms inside the palace on the grounds that if it was an attack against the family then we would be better protected there than in some villa in the centre of time. I'm told there was a bit of a furore as a number of people had to be kicked out of those rooms to make space but in the face of the Empress' displeasure, people soon found that they could stay with friends just out of town. I can't say I was entirely comfortable with the new sleeping arrangements and I wondered if we were borrowing more trouble for ourselves at a future juncture. However it did mean that I didn't have to worry about Emma, Laurelen or Mark getting into mischief.

I couldn't do anything about Sam. If Sam wanted to get into mischief then I was fairly certain that he could do so without any kind of input from me.

Kerrass marched me through the corridors and all but threw me into the room to an astonished look from Emma who was writing something on a side desk and Mark who was talking with a couple of other churchmen.

“He needs to eat something.” Kerrass told the room. “Then he needs some sleep. Tie him to the bed if you have to.”

Emma carefully put her quill down. “Is there any news?”

Kerrass shook his head. “But we're going to try something else in a few hours with the help of Lady Yennefer.”

“Is it safe?”

“No,”

“Will it work?”

“Probably not. But it's even less likely to work if he hasn't eaten something and gotten some rest.” Kerrass said that last to me. Emma nodded at a servant. There seemed to be a lot of them in the room now as well. Far more than I was strictly comfortable with but that's what happens when you sleep in the same palace as the Empress.

“Bring Lord Frederick something to eat would you,” she wrinkled her nose, “and run him a bath. Also, kindly enquire of Lady Laurelen or Countess Ariadne if they are free to help put him to sleep.”

“That won't be necessary,” I tried to say but Emma ignored me. She was another one who looked as though she could do with a month's holiday and the tender ministrations of a gentle sleep spell.

I ate something, some kind of roast meat sandwich with some apple sauce and sage stuffing. I suspect it was delicious but I don't remember much of it. I bathed and although I only went to bed to keep Emma quiet, I suspect I was asleep before I hit the pillow.

It wasn't long though before Kerrass was there shaking me awake.

“If you're still set on this utterly absurd plan then you need to come now.”

He watched with amusement while I plunged my head into the basin of cold water for a few seconds and followed him out.

Emma said nothing else to me and Mark had gone to bed. It was late in the evening I think by the amount of light that came in through the windows. Kerrass led me down several flights of stairs.

“Did you know that Toussaint was elven originally?” he asked me.

“Come on Kerrass, give me a little credit. Of course I knew that.”

Kerrass snorted. “Well excuse me for tripping on someone's intellectual superiority.”

“Fuck off.”

Kerrass sniggered at me.

“Well it was elven. We don't know why the elves built a city here. It's certainly a beautiful spot but they could have built it higher up or in a more strategically powerful place. It's the human city that has spread down to the water to make a harbour, that, certainly, wasn't an elven design.”

“I've heard it said that most of the larger human settlements are built on the ruins of older elven settlements. I know that Oxenfurt is definitely built over an elven ruin.”

“As is Wyzima. Nor do we know why those sites were chosen. The sites aren't similar to each other and they certainly wouldn't be easy to build on or to get workers and goods there, but they were built for a reason. Even the elves themselves no longer know the reason for the locations of these places.

“However, one of the many theories is that they were built on sites of magical significance. We know that magic flows through the world, almost like water. We know that it has currents, swirls and eddies. The magic is deeper in some areas and not in others and it is believed that Toussaint was built over one of those deep reservoirs of magic.

“At one point it was claimed that this well of magic was responsible for the particular flavour of Toussaint's wine industry but that has since been proven false.”

“I know all of this Kerrass, why are you telling me this now?”

“Because if there is a room that is at the bottom of this supposed well of magic. Then that's the room that we're going to.”

We came to the bottom of a flight of stairs and Kerrass knocked on a door.

“Come in,” came a woman's voice.

“Or,” Kerrass said as he opened the door. “I might just have been passing the time.”

The room was surprisingly well lit for a cellar, torches hung on brackets at regular intervals that gave of a clean flame that neither guttered nor smoked. In one corner stood a large Lectern on which rested a huge book, so big that it must have taken several people to manhandle it into the place. It was marked by a purple ribbon.

Nearby was a large table, covered in many jars of various liquid and solid herbs. I recognised a mandrake, Sage and Cinnamon as well as some puffball but there were many other things that I didn't recognise. Most of them looked...unpleasant.

Lady Yennefer had changed, She was no longer wearing the black and white dress that she had been wearing earlier. Now she was wearing what looked like a doublet over a tight set of riding trousers and boots. She had a dagger belted at her waist and her hair was tied back out of her way. Obviously the colours that she wore were still black and white and her choker with the pentagram sigil was still there at her neck. She was on her knees drawing complicated patterns on the floor with various pieces of differently coloured chalk.

As I watched, she worked slowly, carefully and patiently. Far from the tempestuous and passionate woman that I had been warned about but I suppose that when you're building a summoning circle for powers that you don't really understand, you want to make sure that you get it right before you do anything else.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

She stood up and carried the chalk over to the table where she put them into a small box and turned to me.

“I would be remiss, Lord Frederick, if I didn't take one last opportunity to warn you that this is an amazingly bad idea and that it almost certainly won't work.”

“I know.”

“And yet you still wish to go ahead?”

I nodded.

“Say it please. For my own comfort. I don't want a situation where you change your mind at the last second. Once we start this there is no going back.”

“What do you know of Jack?” she asked.

“He is a primal force. A primal spirit conjured from the human race consciousness if that makes any sense to you. There are many of them if you know where to look but, he is possibly the oldest and amongst the most powerful. I don't know why.”

She smiled at me. It was the same smile I could imagine a cat giving the mouse before it started to play with it's food.

“Do you want to continue?”

“No,” I said honestly. “But I will. I have to.”

She nodded.

“Then look at the design. Note that there are two circles inside the design as a whole. For the earliest part of the summoning you should remain in the smaller of the two circles. Do not be tempted to cross the line as the magic that will be unleashed elsewhere in the greater circle will strip the flesh from your bones and your sanity from your mind. Once the summoning is complete, he will appear in the larger of the two circles but he will be unable to cross. You may then move around freely.

“However,

“The small circle is the method of dismissal. Once you have the information that you need, you must step back into the small circle and he will be dismissed. The circle is then designed to protect you from him as much as it is to protect you from the magical forces that can be unleashed.

“Remember this well. His presence is likely to be overwhelming and powerful. If it gets too much then I encourage you to step back into the circle and dismiss him. Do not hesitate. Do not let him draw you out. If you are beginning to think that you should be dismissing him then you should already have dismissed him. This is not a time and a place for fucking around.

“Do you understand?”

“I think so,”

She blew her breath out through her nose in exasperation and I thought, for a moment, that I could see the woman that I had been warned about.

“You must be certain. If you are not then I will destroy the circle now. The risk of you letting this thing out if you forget my instructions under pressure is more than I can bear. I would rather disappoint the Empress then let him loose. So do you understand the things that I have said?”

“I do.”

“Repeat them for me please.”

I did so.

“Excellent. Then take your place.”

I did so.

“Good luck,” Kerrass said as he left the room.

“Thanks Kerrass.” I said.

“I wasn't talking to you.” He got out as he shut the door.

Yennefer had set up another little circle of protection. I noticed that there was a chair there as well as an apple, cup and jug of liquid as well as a book. She moved to her own circle and began an incantation.

At first I tried to listen and to follow the words. Some of them didn't sound as though they could be spoken by a human throat.

At some point, I don't know when, I blacked out as I felt a massive surge of vertigo and felt as though I was falling a huge distance.

Something for the record now. I have told this story many times now to a variety of people and everyone refuses to believe that it actually took place. What they tell me is that I saw something that my mind could not understand and could not come to grips with and as a result it imposed it's own sense of order on what I saw and heard.

The only person, to date, who has listened to this account and nodded thoughtfully before telling me that it sounded probable was the Empress herself. You can take that however you like.

What I will do now is record exactly what I saw and heard. Whether it's what I saw and heard or whether it's what I think I saw and heard, I will leave up to your interpretation. I cannot say whether you are right or wrong on that regard.

I treat it as literal though. Certainly the things that I was told in that strange and alien place.

I woke up suddenly and a wave of dizziness and nausea swept over me as I felt as though my brain was trying to force the top of my skull open and climb out of my head. I scampered a short distance away and heaved up what little food I had managed to choke down over the course of the day. The effort left me feeling weak and shaky and I only managed to crawl a short distance away before I collapsed again. Which was when the awful, awful smell hit me. An ammonia like smell that seemed to be made up of hot metal, burnt wood, vomit, bile, stale urine and strong alcohol. There were other ingredients to it as well but I couldn't quite identify them, chemical smells as well as the smell of salt water. What was there was enough to make me sneeze and to make my eyes water.

The ground was hard and smooth despite feeling like stone. When I finally opened my eyes to stare at the ground beneath me it looked as though it was a pattern of fitted together squares of stone but they were much larger than the cobbles used in the more well to do cities of the continent.

I looked up and almost fell again as I tried to take a deep breath. The air was thick with mist although of a pale green or yellow colour. Nothing could be seen other than the small pathway beneath my feet. If I waved my hand in front of my face, I could see that but beyond a ten meter radius around me, nothing could be seen. The smell of the air was putrid and it clawed at my throat. I felt short of breath and felt the first scrabblings of panic at my throat.

I looked down at the floor, remembering Madame Yennefer's instructions about the circles that she had drawn into the pattern with great care. That there would be a small one that I could step into that would banish the entity. I looked around and I couldn't see anything. It was just flat stone walkway. I was next to a wall and I leant against it. The wall was of red brick and it towered up and up until it vanished into the fog.

An incredible clattering came to my ears but I thought there was something familiar to it. Away from the wall the pathway fell down a steep kerb into a more normally cobbled road. Globes of light were coming towards me, accompanied by the clattering. Suddenly a large black horse, bigger than anything that I had seen came out of the fog. At first I was reassured that there was at least something familiar about this place and I stepped up to try and get a hold of it. But then there was a sound of a whip cracking and I staggered back.

The horse was pulling a strange, open wagon that seemed to only be balanced on two wheels. There was an open seat in which sat a strange man with no beard but the largest sideburns that I have ever seen. He had a scarf over his mouth so I couldn't recognise him. As the thing thundered past, I saw that the globes of light were generated by two lanterns that were attached to the side. I saw that there was another man, sat precariously on the top of the two wheeled carriage that was holding the reins and a large whip. He yelled something at me that I didn't catch before he, his horse and his carriage disappeared back into the fog. The light from the lanterns faded after him.

I backed up, tripped over the kerb and staggered backwards into a man. Possibly the foulest smelling man that I have ever encountered. As I grabbed hold of him to keep myself from falling, his clothes made a sticky, squishy kind of noise.

He laughed at me, I counted maybe three teeth in his mouth and he stank of alcohol so strong that I felt myself almost becoming intoxicated from his breath alone. I staggered back and caught my hands on the stone walls that surrounded me on both sides. My eyes were stinging from the fog and from the awful cocktail of smells that assailed my consciousness. I walked along looking for some kind of chalk drawing on the floor. Something that might have told me where I was and how I might get home.

I heard a monster in the distance. It sounded huge with a vast hissed breath and a whistling sound. Then there was another screeching noise as well as the sounds of men shouting but it didn't sound like they were shouting in fear. It almost sounded as though their voices were rehearsed and considered to be normal.

A shape detached itself from the wall a bit further on. It was a woman shape although she was painfully thin. She wore a long skirt of indeterminate colour and what looked like a tight waistcoat that might once have been an expensive one although it looked a little too tight for the woman wearing it. She also wore a ridiculously small bonnet with ribbons on her head and lace gloves. She barked something at me but again I didn't recognise the words. It sounded like a question of some kind. Like the old man that I had bumped into earlier she had very few teeth and her breath smelled of rot. Her face ravaged by some disease. That or a combination of malnutrition and alcohol poisoning. She ran her hand up my chest in what I assume was a sexual way and asked me the same question again.

Without meaning to I recoiled. She, at least had seemed friendly but I couldn't help myself but to recoil from the horror that was in front of me. I recoiled and one step turned into two steps as my brain retreated from sense and I fled from the strange and alien nature of the place. The panic of not knowing where I was and how to get home was too much and I lost my mind for a bit.

I ran through the streets that seemed to be quiet to me. There were still the odd person about but they were much fewer and further between than would be found, even in the heights of Novigrad.

I didn't manage to run very far. The place stank and the poison that seemed to be in the air prevented me from drawing proper breath. I was soon gasping for air and I stumbled to halt, fell to my knee's and vomited again, this time I was vomiting up a yellow bile and what felt like the dust that I had breathed in from the air.

Vomiting is the wrong word for it, more like coughing up the poison that I was breathing in.

I looked up and I saw a grey, white haze through the fog. I climbed up to my feet and stumbled towards it to discover that it was a white building made out of some kind of stone, or whether it was whitewashed or something I don't know. For all the world it looked like a church. Very similar to the churches of the holy fire that you can find dotted around the countryside although it was far more ornate and elaborate. It seemed to have a repeated motif of a vertical cross. I stumbled up to the stone walls and put my hand out to them. They felt like they were solid stone although incredibly dirty. The entire place seemed to be covered in filth. Even I was filthy just from the short period of time that I had been there.

I shuddered.

I looked around, the fog seemed a little thinner here, as if the large white building provided some kind of shelter from the toxins that floated through the air. It looked like I was standing in a graveyard. Huge stone slabs covered every spare patch of grass. Again the cross motif was common. I walked up to the nearest one and bent to try and read what had been carved into the stone but I couldn't make it out. It seemed wrong to me. Somehow alien.

I recoiled again. I hadn't realised it but there were other people in this yard with me. Filthy children played between the stones, their eyes shrunken in filthy faces, what passed for their clothes being tied to their person with other strips of cloth and bits of string. I saw one child, couldn't have been more than eight, lift a bottle to his lips and drink deeply before passing it to his friend. He belched and then swayed in place where he sat.

Now that I looked again I could see more. More people were trying to sleep behind the graves. A man and a woman was coupling against the wall of the, presumed, church just round the corner from the entrance. His face was buried in her neck and she looked at me. She seemed to shrug at me and looked incredibly bored despite the sounds of pleasure that came from her mouth.

I turned and walked away, The little yard around the church was walled in by metal railings with surprisingly sharp spikes on although whether that was to keep people in or people out I don't know. I walked round it until I found an exit and stepped out into the street. I was weeping with a combination of the awful air that I was breathing, fear and confusion. Eventually the strength left my legs and I collapsed leaning against the wall. No longer feeling the strength to carry on..

I was there for, only a few minutes before I felt my feet being kicked. I looked up to see a large man in black standing over me. I blinked at him a few times before he gestured for me to stand up. I levered myself up and when I was approaching upright he put his hand under my arm-pit and helped me the rest of the way.

When I could look at him properly he was wearing some kind of uniform although I didn't recognise it. Black, or at least a very dark shade of blue trousers and coat that was done up with silvery buttons. He had a black belt that sat across his belly from which hung a small black club, some manacles and a long chain which was attached to something that looked like a short whistle. The belt was buckled with a large silver ornament. There was a white stripe around the sleeve and the coat had a high colour that had two pictograms on it very similar to the writing that I had seen on the grave stones.

He was also wearing an absurd looking conical hat which again had a silver star shape fixed to the front. He said something that I didn't catch and I think I merely blinked at him stupidly. He had a scarf across his mouth which he pulled down to display a bushy moustache that looked as though it had been waxed or oiled in some way. He spoke again although I still couldn't understand him.

Another voice came out of the gloom which distracted the uniformed man as a dark shape came out. The shape resolved itself into the figure of a man who was carrying both a cane and a large cloth bag. The two men exchanged words before the second man moved close to me and clapped his hand to my shoulder in a friendly way.

“You'll have to forgive my friend.” He said and I startled as I could suddenly understand him. “He's a stranger here and we were separated at the station.” His voice sounded cultured although drawn out. As though the speaker could take their time under the surety that whoever he was talking to would have to stay and listen. As though he had time to say whatever he liked.

“Where's 'e from den?” The other man asked. Even with the change I still struggled to understand him. “Circus?”

“Ah, constable, I'm afraid not. He's from the continent come to visit and speak at the university of Cambridge and Oxford. Possibly going so far as Edinburgh.”

The other man looked at my erstwhile saviour as though he was talking about extremely remote and prestigious locations.

“Not sure I would have brought a foriner in to Whitechapel sir if you don' mind me sayin' so. Maybe King's cross might have been better.”

“Better, yes. But not as convenient.”

“Right then... Well I'll be off then.” The man tugged at the brim of his hat and walked off.

“The constablery are well meaning but they sometimes get a bit over keen.” My new companion said. “Now lets have a look at you.” I turned to stare at him. He had a heavy coat over him and detail was obscure. “Ah yes of course, “ he said. “I should have known. Here.” He bent and opened his bag from which he took a long scarf. “Tie this round your neck and use it to cover your mouth and nose. It will help until you get used to it.”

I reached for the cloth but he just held it out of reach. “This is not a gift. It is a loan and I expect it back. This means that this loan is free from any obligation on your part.”

Then he handed me the scarf which I wrapped round my head as instructed.

He looked me up and down for a long moment. I struggled to focus and see if I could see his face but what wasn't obscured by the fog was obscured in a large voluminous, kind of shabby looking coat. It was an oilskin coat with one of those extra little cape things round the shoulders that northern farmers and Shepherds wear. He also had a huge hat on that looked like a chimney with a brim.

After looking at me for a moment he looked around.

“I know a charming little watering hole, not too far away from here where they serve a relatively acceptable mug of ale or a decent claret if that happens to be to your taste. I think it would be much more preferable if we had our little talk over a drink, do you not agree?”

I don't know what I was expected to say after that but he took my agreement as read and stalked off into the night. I stood there for a moment before having to scamper to catch up.

“Where are we?” I asked him as he strode off into the fog.

I thought I heard him chuckle.

“The borough of Whitechapel in the fair city of London. Which might as well be capital of the world in this time and place. But otherwise it is the capital of these fair isles, the Kingdom of Great Britain.”

I took this information in for a moment.

“That means nothing to me.” I decided after a while.

“And I would be surprised if it did.”

“When are we? Is this the future?”

He definitely laughed this time.

“It is both the future and the past but as your species still considers itself prisoner to the artificial, self inflicted law regarding the linear nation of time. I will set a name to it. It is the 16th August in the year of our Lord 1888.”

I mused for a while. “But that makes no sense.”

“My young friend, I suspect that a good deal of this conversation will go easier for you if you just accept that a great deal of it is not going to make any sense.”

The woman that I had seen earlier jumped out of a doorway again and accosted me.

“Buy a lady a drain o pale sir? Just a small cup is all I ask.”

I couldn't help myself as I recoiled again.

“Back wretch,” my companion hissed and struck out at her with his cane. “Back. Mark well your betters and leave us in peace.”

The woman didn't seem to mind the violence of his rebuttal, instead responding. “Can't blame a gal for trying can ye? But I needs the money, I do. Got sick children to feed.”

“If by sick children you mean yourself.” My companion retorted. “And by feed you mean, “Let them drink gin.”

“You says it Y'onour.” She responded without a look of shame. I felt my elbow being taken and my companion led me off insistently.

“They are a plague on the streets,” he said grimly, “poor wretches but there's no helping them. There are thousands of women just like her on the streets, selling what remains of their pox and disease riddled bodies for the price of a cup of gin. But soon she, and women like her will be quaking in their homes in the face of the Leather Apron.”

“Thousands?” I asked incredulously. “How do they make their way? Surely they can't all expect to get work. To support a prostitute population of that size you would need a city of millions.”

The man turned to me and I saw a twinkle in his eye. “You would wouldn't you. Be grateful that you have come to us on a day when the fog is thick. If it was not you would see a sea of humanity stretched out in front of you, behind you and on either side. You would not be able to move for the stench of them. You would see great machines and tall buildings built solely for the purposes of storing goods. You would see chimneys belching forth their poisons into the air all in the name of progress.”

He laughed. “Truly it's a wondrous sight. All the while the betters of society think that they are building an empire that will last for a thousand years when in all truth the first signs of rot have already settled into the body of the great beast. Along with the Pride of people that have built it all without thinking whether or not they should.

“Ah here we are.”

He turned into a building, seemingly at random. In the gloom I couldn't have told you what kind of building that it was. The windows were dark but in I went into a suddenly warm, humid atmosphere full of far too many people who's pass-time seemed to be shouting at each other about whatever it was that had annoyed them most recently. There was the smell of unwashed human and strong tobacco as well. In the back of the place I managed to see a group of men who were playing some kind of game where they threw small hand held arrows into a board which kept score. In the corner another group of men were playing a variety of things which included one man on a washboard and another who was tapping something against his leg to form some kind of rhythm. I saw a couple of fiddles as well but the sound was drowned out by the general hubbub.

My companion forced his way into the landlord by the liberal application of his cane. People swore at us good naturedly and moved out of our way. He seemed out of place here. This was clearly the kind of tavern that was meant for working people. Men were covered in dirt and grime, more than one smelt of river water and sewage but my companions hat and cane set him apart. He made it to the counter and screamed something into the landlord's ear. He ordered a pint of “your finest,” and a large cup of port for me. The landlord raised his eyebrows at me and my companion explained my taste by telling him that I was “french,” whatever that means.

The Landlord nodded knowingly and passed over the drinks.

In turn I was led towards a set of stairs and walked up them to where there was a much quieter atmosphere of people sat at tables and talking quietly. We went to an empty table where my companion gestured and I took of my scarf and handed it back. He, in turn, removed his hat, put his gloves inside the hat and placed it on top of his folded coat.

How to describe him. To my eyes, he looked faintly ridiculous but I was also very aware that we were not in my world any more. Where his coat was rather shabby, the rest of his dress was anything but. His shoes were polished to a mirror sheen, his trousers were pressed to within an inch of their lives with a crease that I suspect that you could have shaved with. He wore a buttoned up long coat style jacked that was made up of material that was so thick and rich to look at that I was astounded. It almost looked furry in nature but only if the fur itself was astoundingly short.

I'm not explaining this very well.

Underneath the coat, which he unbuttoned to sit down, he wore a white waistcoat that was embroidered with a silver thread pattern. A chain went from one of the buttons on his waistcoat to a pocket. As he sat down he withdrew something from the pocket, a strange flat, round contraption which he opened with the press of a button somewhere before examining the insides, closing the lid and returning it to his pocket with a look of satisfaction. He had on a white shirt which was starched to the point of what I would consider idiocy which kept a huge collar, forcing his chin up and around his neck he wore an immaculate, dark green cravat which was held in place with a golden pin with a red jewel of some kind embedded on it.

He was a handsome man. I put him in his late forties, maybe early fifties with the hair at his temple just beginning to go grey. He had a long nose and startling blue eyes that seemed to house a depth of humour that was bottomless. He reminded me a bit of Ariadne in that he seemed to be looking out at the world and finding everything about it rather amusing.

“Well?”

“I'm sorry,” I said, breaking off my inspection, “I don't know what I was expecting.” I said sitting down. I reached for my drink but he held his hand up to stop me. I was really struggling to keep myself from liking the strange man in front of me.

He reached out to my hand and kept me from drinking.

“Once again, this drink is merely the hospitality that is freely offered to a traveller that is a stranger to this place. You are to consider yourself free from any kind of obligation towards either me, as the buyer of the drink, or the landlord who is the provider of the drink.”

He leant back. The words had the ring of, almost a poem or a prayer.

“Really,” he said accusingly. “You need to be more careful with these things. May I give you a piece of advice?”

“You may give it although I would hasten to suggest that I might not follow said advice.”

He laughed. “A good answer. I like that.”

His face went serious again. “Never accept gifts, especially not from strangers. Words are empty and meaningless but gifts. Those things have value and you do not know what value is attached to those same gifts. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you suspect that you might be given a gift, then have a gift of your own, ready for the return gift. Nothing worse than a gift debt.”

“Oh I can think of several worse things.”

He smirked. “Spoken like a human. So lets get down to it shall we? Who are you?”

“My name is Frederick von Coulthard of Redania.”

He sighed and put his drink back down again. He had just lifted it up to his mouth to take a drink.

“So easy. You give me your name so easily. Heh. Not even an evasion or an attempt to obfuscate. You didn't even try to get my name first or to enquire as to whom you would be giving your name.”

“So who are you then?”

“Who am I?” He put his drink down and wiped the foam moustached from his face with a handkerchief that he had kept in his breast pocket. “Don't you know?”

I shook my head, finally managing to take a sip of the drink in front of me. It was a good, highly fortified red wine. Similar but utterly different from anything that I had tasted before.

He shook his own head in wonderment. “I don't know. So very rude of you. You go to all the trouble of trying to summon someone and then you don't recognise them when you see them.”

I staggered back from my chair out of pure reflex. He raised his eyebrow and didn't bother hiding his amusement.

It took me a moment to reclaim my chair.

“Did you bring me here?”

“Of course I did. You can't expect me to drop everything and attend upon you whenever you wish it do you?” There was suddenly just a hint of violence in his face. “You don't summon people like me. You run from us. If we take an interest in you then you flee. You run and you hide but not you. You hunted me out and tried to summon me to your puny little circle at the hands of your ridiculous Sorceress. You should consider yourself grateful that I'm not stringing your entrails from roof-top to roof top while keeping you alive so that you can properly enjoy the process you imbecile.”

I took a swallow of the drink as I watched the shadow cross his face.

“Then why did you decide to speak to me at all?” I asked him.

“Curiosity. A little pity and a certain troublesome sense of humour.”

I stared at him for a long while, I think my mouth must have fallen open in astonishment.

“Who are you?”

“That is a large question?”

“It might be large but it is also simple. Who are you?”

“I am me. Who do you think I am?”

“I think you are evil.”

“Ah, my young friend. Leaving aside the fact that that is a description as well as being a woeful simplification of me, it is still not the who of who I am.”

“You don't think you're evil?”

“Does anyone ever think they're evil?”

“I will concede that point.” I said grudgingly “But that does not get me any closer to the answer of the question as to who you are?”

“But you haven't answered my question. Who do you think I am.”

“I think that you are Jack.”

He chuckled, a little playfully.

“Ah, that name. Do you know that I have never chosen that name for myself. I have never sat up and stated that my name is Jack.”

“Have you not?”

“No. I don't like the name if I'm honest. The name of Jack suggests heroism rather than a predatory being. I can't get angry though as it's in the nature of sentient creatures to name things in an effort to lessen their impact. But Jack?” He shuddered theatrically. “Jack climbed the bean-stalk. Jack slew the giants. Jack of all trades. I'm alright Jack.

“Take this place.” He waved at the surrpoundings. “Whitechapel. In a few days they will find the first body, her throat cut with two strokes before several more cuts to her abdomen. The medical science of this place is enough to recognise that the stabs were done by the same weapon as slashed her throat. Her name is Mary Ann Nichols.

A little over a week later the second body will be discovered by the name of Annie Chapman. Again her throat will be slashed only this time her entire abdomen will be ripped open.

That's all it takes to get the wheels turning. The wheels of fear. Then a letter will be received by the news services which will be forwarded to the local police force. In years to come it will be referred to as the “Dear Boss” letter and it is signed from “Jack the Ripper,”

“There are many more such letters of course. All sent to various sources and it spreads the fame of “Jack,” to the surrounding area.

There are many more deaths but only a total of five are actually killed by the original person. Only five but the letters, which in turn will be discovered to have been sent by the news service to themselves in an effort to up the macabre nature of the crimes and therefore to sell newspapers, will spread the name of “Jack the Ripper” all over the world.

Other killings are done but they are later proven to be the work of other individuals but after those first five, the original killer stopped. No-one ever knows why. But all of London, for this late summer and into Autumn will know the name of Jack the Ripper. Even people who have never been to Whitechapel will scurry from door to door and strangers to an area will be beaten within an inch of their lives before being examined in minute detail. Suspects will be examined and discarded with as much detail as they can. But the name... Jack will be remembered for years to come. Centuries even.”

His voice was hypnotic and I could not help but be swept up in the narrative.

“But I still don't like the name.” He said with a wry chuckle. “I preferred what the police called the killer. They called him “Leather Apron” or “The Whitechapel killer.”

“Why did you prefer those names?” I asked.

“More anonymous.” He said. “An anonymous murderer is a force of nature whereas Jack, no matter how terrifying a countenance the term might summon to the minds eye, Jack is a monster. Jack can be hunted down and slain.”

He stopped for a moment or two, staring into his drink.

“I'm not sure that I understand your point.” I said slowly.

His lips twitched a little. “My point? Tell me, which is the most evil do you think? The murderer Jack, or the people who spread the story, the people who made the populace too afraid to leave their homes?”

“You are joking right? The answer is obvious. The murderer is the more evil. You could argue, and I expect that you will, that if there wasn't a murderer then the town criers would invent something to stir fear into the hearts of the populace to sell their fliers and things and that is true. But if you ask a victim which they would rather be, murdered horribly of fleeced for a bit of money? Having their throat slit before being mutilated horribly or living in fear? I know which one I would choose.”

“Ah, but if I asked someone else, someone else in this very tavern perhaps, they might make a very different choice. Some would argue that death is not to be feared for instance. That fear is the real killer for fear is a paralytic that causes inaction.”

“Maybe.”

“Besides,” he went on. “Evil is an artificial construct made up by moralisers in an effort to make themselves feel better about their general, overall desire to be shitty to their neighbours. You see it over and over again. In your world as well as this one. They construct artificial morality rules and laws, often under the guise of religion to excuse themselves, to tell themselves, “Ah, I might have slaughtered entire cities worth of children but I was doing it for religious reasons therefore I'm still going to heaven.

“Humanity is insane that way. They can't just stand on their own two feet and admit that they just enjoy being horrible to each other. They even go so far as to invent “adversaries” for their “Good” Gods so that there is someone to blame. A stick to their carrot. “Do good or the devil wins.”

I stared at him for an even longer period.

“Who are you?” I asked again.

He smiled at me. It reminded me of the smile that a cat gets before it pounces on a mouse.

“I am surprised,” I said after a while. “You almost seemed as though you were angry at the accusation that you were evil. You almost seemed as though it upset you. You also don't like to be named.”

“Names are power my friend. If you knew my true name then that would give you a power over me. A power that I am not willing to surrender under any circumstances. Not even my wife knows my true name.”

“You have a wife?” I had felt my mouth open.

He grinned at me.

“So many questions.” I moaned.

“Be grateful that you are sat over a table from me rather than my wife.” He commented as he raised the glass to his lips again. “She is far more terrible than I am.”

I took a moment to think about that. “Then she must be pretty terrible as you strike me as the most awful thing that I can imagine.”

“Then your imagination is not very large. To know my wife is to adore her. To love her more than life itself. She would take away your will and your intelligence and your wits and you would give them all to her freely and willingly without a seconds delay. She wouldn't need to even ask for them before you had them all out and you would beg her to take them. You would make yourself into a willing slave and worship her in adoration. If she asked you to you would rip out your own heart to see her smile but importantly, she would do none of those things. She would love you back and that love would burn your soul into a cinder.”

“You sound like you love her.”

He laughed at me. “Did you not hear what I just said? Of course I love her and she loves me. We just hurt each other too much to spend too much time around each other. She is so good, so pure and so gentle that it causes me pain whereas I am too sharp and too cruel for her to stand being around her for any length of time. But we miss each other all the time.”

“I don't understand.”

“Nor should you. What is the question you really want to ask me?”

“Who are you?”

“I don't think that's the question. But I will allow it this time. What form does my answer take? Would you like a name, a title... All of these things are merely titles that other people award us with. Someone else calls me Jack. Someone else calls me evil. Someone else called me the Temerian Strangler or the Butcher of Bakersfield. I have so many names. They call me beast, they call me terror, they call me darkness. All of those things are wrong and none of them are my name.

“My name would mean nothing to you, just a sound, some of it in your level of hearing and some of it that would bypass your educated and evolved sensibilities and head straight down your spine to the primal part of you that is labelled, “terror”. I am King of my kind, father also, and husband to one who is also three. I have been lover and killer and so long as there is a single thing that is living that is aware of it's own ability to feel pain, or is aware of their own mortality then I will always be here.”

“Are you a God?”

“Does all of that sound like I'm a God?”

“It sounds like you think of yourself as a being of myth and legend.”

“Close. Very close. Ask your question.”

I tried to think, the being in front of me was beginning to be agitated and I could feel a small amount of panic fluttering against my chest.

He didn't help.

He slammed his hand on the table to startle me out of my train of thought.

“Ask your question,”

“What are you?”

“Still not the question that you want to ask.” He said after subsiding a little bit. “But a little closer I suppose. Close to a question that I could actually answer with some definition and authority though I suppose.”

“And you couldn't answer the last one?”

“What do you think?”

“I think that after all of this time you have yet to answer a single question of mine straight. I think you've come close a couple of times but more often than not you answer a question with a question.”

“You're catching on. Well done.”

“Did you ever consider something?” He asked. “What makes humans so special?”

“In comparison to what.”

“In comparison to whom. Why do you think that all of the powers that are around compete over the lives of humanity? Why do you think that the elven gods fell before the human ones?”

“I do not know?”

“Why is that?”

“How can I possibly know the answer to something like that?”

“Because you are a scholar? Because you believe in a single truth above all others.”

“We are trained to believe that. We are trained to believe there is a single truth that is true for all things and that all we really need to do is to hone in onto that truth.”

“And thus ignore the role of the observer.”

“I think you are leading me off topic.”

“I might be. But the thing about humanity is that you are unique in your ability to shape the world around you. I'm not talking about magic although that is part of it. This world has only a little magic compared to the one that you are from and it is a deep thing that needs to be ferreted out with a pin in the same way that you would with a splinter. But humanity....Humanity can change the world if it puts it's mind to it. It's already doing so. Why do you think that the elves are falling back from you quite as fast as they are?”

“I thought that was due to differing breeding rates and fertility.”

“It is, but that doesn't mean that the one thing doesn't come from the other.”

“Are you saying that the one thing led to another? Which way round?”

He just grinned at me.

“You're not helping.” I accused him.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Was I supposed to be wearing a hat that says, “I'm your friend and am hear to help?””

He got up. “Time for another drink.”

He left and came back with a tray. “Time for you to try a beer.” He declared.

I did so. It tasted like how I imagine sewer water tastes. Only with a thicker taste that coated the back of my throat. I grimaced and swallowed before discovering that the after taste was not entirely unpleasant.

He laughed at my face. “It's an acquired taste.”

“How long does it take to acquire the taste?” I wondered.

“I wouldn't know.” He said taking a healthy swallow from his own glass. “So where were we?”

“You were spectacularly failing to tell me what you are.”

“That's right.

“The human imagination is a powerful thing. It literally gives form and shape to only the things that they dream of.

“When humanity first lived in caves, wrapped in fur and leaves, huddled together for the warmth of their own bodies to protect themselves from the cold in the night. To make the time pass more easily they started to tell each other stories.

“It is debatable which came first, the stories or the music of banging sticks against rock for rudimentary rhythm but I do know that the music happened during the day whereas the stories happened at night. In the dead of night, when the children asked why they didn't go outside, their parents would tell them stories about the horrible and terrible things that lived out in the darkness. The quiet, terrible predators that sucked the marrow from the bones of children and drank their blood. Nightmarish creatures who stalked humanity in the same way that humanity stalked the mammoth and the tiger. Horrible things that would skin the child and make a drinking vessel out of a babies skulls.

“I was the thing that waited in the night. It was fear of me that kept those children from running off. I was the thing that drove the fear into those children's minds. When those children became adults then they told the same stories to their children and their children and so the story of me became more powerful.

“I am the invisible predator, the perfect hunter and killer. I toy with my pray as I enjoy the hunt and the explosion of fear that comes with the prey's knowledge that they can't possibly fight any more. That they know that they are about to die.”

“Holy flame.” I whispered. “So they told the story of the thing that lived in shadow and you were born.”

He smiled horribly.

“I was always there, waiting.

“I am fear.

“I am that primal thing that waits in the darkness that instils fear into the hearts of the living.”

I stared at him for a long time. As he had spoken his peace, the flesh had seemed to melt backwards from his face until almost a deaths head visage had sat before me. I will not pretend but instead I will admit that I found it to be terrifying. After a moment or two he leant back and the light returned to his face. Then he was the man again, the man with a wicked and sometimes unpleasantly humorous twinkle in his eye. I found the effect unnerving.

“Now you might begin to understand why I am not fond of being described as evil. I was alive a long time before evil was even a construct, a glint in some proto-church philosophers eye when they were trying to come up with new ways with which to control the populace. They knew the secret. It isn't respect or laws or love or any of that nonsense that keeps society in line, that controls the public. It is fear. Fear of damnation, fear of punishment, fear of the loss of their security, fear of strangers and those things different from themselves. That is my gift to humanity. I am born of it, I am it and I give it.”

“You are fear incarnate.”

“Yes. That most basic of human emotions. Is it evil? I could argue the point if you wish.”

“I am fascinated despite myself.”

“That's what makes you different. That's what I like about you. It's why I took an interest in the first place and I decided to meet with you. You don't react to fear in the same way that your fellow humans do. You are fascinated by your fears. You confront them, label them, categorize them and sort them into boxes where you can take them out and examine them at your own leisure. You are actively in love with a being that prey's on humanity despite your self-confessed and quite sensible terror of who and what she is. You look at fear, you look at me with a notebook in hand and seek to tame it, to wrangle it and bring it into control.

“And when you can't do that. When you find something that you can't comprehend or control then instead of reacting how everyone else does, you get angry and attack it.”

“You find that interesting?”

“It's precisely what fear does. For instance what is caution? But a healthy application of fear. Military men all over the worlds tell their fellows and young soldiers to respect their weapons because of how dangerous they are. To respect their enemies and to not take them for granted. That is also fear. When a parent tells a child not to eat the strange herb it's because of a fear of the consequences. Fear again.”

“So if you're fear. What then, does that make your wife?”

“What is the opposite of fear?”

“Hope? That's the standard answer anyway.”

“It's close. Humanity works on the stick and carrot principle. They need both an incentive as well as a goad to stay in doors. So what would keep you indoors? If you remove the fear of the thing, what would keep you indoors?”

“Love?”

“Close, but more visceral than that.”

“Joy.”

“And that's it. That's my wife. She is literally Joy, personified. She can be just as terrible as I can and just as seductive. There is comfort in joy but there is no...drive to succeed. To improve oneself you have to overcome the fear and make it small. Joy is there to catch you when you fail.”

I mused on what he said. It occurred to me then that I was sat talking with a being of primal and elemental terror and I was getting along with him fairly well. I laughed at the thought.

“What are you laughing at?” He asked over the rim of his glass.

“The absurdity of this situation.”

“I remind you that you sought it out.”

“I did at that.”

“Ask your question?”

“Why do you hate me so much?”

He blinked. For all the world it looked as though I had taken him by surprise. He seemed to think for a moment.

“No, you know what?” he said after churning it around in his mind a little. “I'm going to answer that one for free, even though it isn't the question that you want to ask.

“I thought we'd been over this.

“Hate you? I don't hate you. You fascinate me. You are a riddle. You do not react to fear in the same way that people should. You almost take a joy in it. You seek it out and look for it. Hate you, I don't hate you. I actually quite like you.”

“But you tried to kill me?”

“When?”

“You tried to lead me into the woods at Ambers crossing.”

“Oh, that wouldn't have killed you. My son can be an arrogant little puke when he puts his mind to it but that wouldn't have killed you. I wanted to see how you would react. How you would behave.”

My lack of belief must have shown on my face.

“Oh for the love of the creator of all things. Ask your damn question.”

“You believe in a creator?”

“You don't? ASK THE DAMN QUESTION,”

“WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY SISTER?”

I had forgotten that we were in a tavern. Men looked up at us and my companion waved them back to their seats.

“Now we're getting into it.” He said with a smile and I suddenly wanted to punch him in the mouth so hard that I could taste it.

“If you don't hate me, then why did you do it? I did nothing to you and yet you have hounded me...”

“Who says I did anything?”

“Oh come on.” I said. “Laughing Jack? It bears all of your hall marks. An uncatchable man, a sick sense of humour, a strange and perverse sense of honour. This is you, in all of your glory.”

He just smiled at me steadily.

“Oh fuck you.” I snarled at him. “Why? If it wasn't you then you must have been involved. You must have been involved.”

“Why? Why must I have been involved?”

“Because...Because there's no other answer.”

“Because....” He prompted.

“Because if it isn't you I don't know what else to do.”

“So you're desperate?”

“Yes,”

“You need answers?”

“Yes.”

“What would you do to get them?”

“What?”

“I'm serious. What's in it for me to give you the answers that you desire?”

I subsided a little, collapsing back into my chair.

“What would you want?”

He laughed. “Is that an offer for anything that I might want. I might even invoke the law of surprise.”

“Your...son, wanted my soul?”

“And you gave it to him?” he seemed incredulous.

“I did,”

He crowed in triumph and amusement. “Foolish,” he said after a moment. “Very very foolish. But no I don't want your soul. What on earth would I do with it?”

“Your son seemed most keen for it?”

“My children? My children are much more complex than I am, their needs are more refined.”

“How many children do you have?”

“I lose count.” He said, waving his hand dismissively. “There are so many of them over so many worlds.”

“The beast of Amber's crossing?”

“Yes, he is one. Lazy little puke, taking up residence in one place and terrorising a village. Heh,”

“What was his whole thing. If you are fear, what was he?”

“I suppose it won't hurt. You've already banished him so he's not going to come back to you. He is darkness itself. Both physically, but he is the darkness in your soul. The part of you that wants to pull legs off spiders and wings of flies. He's the part of humanity that people use to excuse themselves from dark deeds and sinister actions. The part of a man that wants to rape and degrade a woman, the part of the king that wants to raise taxes so that he can pay for a set of jewels to help him seduce this or that woman at court. He is that.”

“But I thought you said that mankind created those demons and devils that give that excuse for themselves.”

“They did, but as I said before. Just because the one thing is true does not prevent the other from also being true.”

“Why would he want my soul?”

“Because he needs to be sustained. That is his true weakness. If, or when humanity moves beyond the point where it can tell itself that it is responsible for it's own actions then he will no longer exist. There will be no need for it to excuse itself for the darkness in it's soul and so my son will simply cease to exist. He, and others, collect souls so that they can use those souls to maintain their own existence in the event of that happening.”

“But you don't need that.”

“No,”

“Why not?”

He smiled, sickeningly. “Because mankind will always be afraid of something. Fear is the most basic of human emotions after all.”

“Then I don't understand, what could you possibly want from me.”

“Nothing in particular. But it goes against the grain for me to give you something for nothing. Especially something that you so desperately want. Even answers to questions are dangerous in the wrong hands.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“I require your service.”

“My what?”

“I want you to work for me. For let's say, the period of a day, I will be able to make free use of your body and mind, after which it will be returned to you.”

“Hell no. so that you can turn me into a killer like that poor teacher that tore his own face apart because of what you made him do and see? So that I can be used as a weapon against those that I love? No.”

“No no no no.” He said raising his hands in defence. “That isn't it at all.” Then he stopped and considered it. “Although I should have thought of that in advance because that's a much better idea than I had. You see how this works? Humanity is much more of an enemy to itself than I am, or any of my children ever could be, but no. Where was I? Ah yes. No, I guarantee that you will not be a murderer. You will not harm any of those people that you love. Nor will you kill anyone or take the lives of anyone. You will not, in fact, have any real effect on the world around you. I can guarantee that you will not perform any act that goes against your conscience.

“I require your service and your service only, for the period of one day. One full revolution of your planet from day to night.”

“Why should I believe your guarantees?”

“Absolutely no reason at all. But, contrary to popular belief, my word is my bond. Once a deal is made then it cannot be broken, nor should it ever be broken. Do this for me and you will know everything I know about the disappearance of your sister. I promise.”

“And my soul will be intact?”

“It will.”

I wanted to take the time to consider. But then it occurred to me that I would talk myself out of it. Then I would always want to know what he knew.

“Done,” I said.

“Excellent,” he said and snapped his fingers.