So, as some of you may be aware, Kerrass and I have been forced to take refuge in my family's castle in South Western Redania, a day's ride away from Oxenfurt.

Believe me when I say that I will get to why in a minute.

But first I wanted to thank each and every person that has written to me or my family with your thoughts, prayers and best wishes in our family's time of crisis. Letters from all over the place, from people that I haven't met, from people that I have met once or twice, all the way up to, and including, people that I was genuinely convinced despised me and the ground that I walked on.

It's been both humbling and incredibly touching, to find out how many people's lives Francesca has touched. Along with how much her story has been taken on by the people that are reading about it now.

So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I promise you that the letters and messages are all read and although I may struggle to help out as much as I would like due to current circumstances, my sister tells me that she absolutely intends to respond to each and every letter that has been written. The family appreciates your gestures in ways that I struggle to put into words and although I admit that my written tone can sometimes come across as being sarcastic or ungrateful then please take this. As simple as I can make it and know that I write this with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.

Thank you. Thank you so much. It means so much to us how much you care.

.

A couple of notes though before we carry on to the topic at hand.

And Oh, how I am looking forward to getting my side of the story out there, in the face of the people that are calling me a treasonous, heretical murderer.

But first, a couple of ongoing and general things to be said about Francesca and her disappearance.

We are not yet in a position to take any kind of legal steps. We all feel it would be wrong to hold any kind of funeral or remembrance service for Francesca until her status has been confirmed. Although my family and I are in the process of coming to terms with what has happened and the fact that Francesca is almost certainly no longer with us.... It is important to us that we hold out hope and do not give up on our sister.

To that end, as I say, we have no intention of holding a funeral service or remembrance thing for her, so please stop asking when that will be. We are aware that you only want the best for us and do not intend any harm or insult but we are finding this increasingly upsetting.

However, the family does intend to hold an annual celebration of my sister on her birthday every year where guests will be more than welcome to come and share stories of Francesca, her goodness, kindness and sense of mischief. More information will be forthcoming when arrangements are a little more certain.

On a continuing note on that regard, as I say, we are more grateful than we can articulate for all the kind gestures of kindness that we have received. However I must ask that the gifts of wine and flowers no longer be sent.

The first reason is that we no longer have the room.

The second reason is that the family believes that Francesca would like to be thought of as still making a contribution to this society. To that end we have opened an account with Vivaldi's bank in Novigrad and that account can be paid into in any city where the bank has a branch. Simply ask for the “Francesca von Coulthard” charitable fund and the bank will know what to do with your donation. What we do with the money is a little up in the air at the moment, but we were thinking along the lines of donations to hospitals, war and disaster relief to those worst affected and possibly academic scholarship for those who are unable to pay the university's fees.

The more you give, the more people we will be able to help. So instead of sending flowers, wine or other such expensive gestures. We would ask that you donate what you can to the fund so that we can do something that she would approve of.

My last note is this.

I also want to thank all of those people that have sent in news, sightings or theories about Francesca and her possible whereabouts. I am grateful for these as well, however neither I, nor the rest of our family have access to the necessary resources to follow up on all of these matters. If you do have information regarding Francesca's disappearance or you have information regarding the kidnappers or her current whereabouts then I must ask you to direct your information to the local garrison. If you mark it for the attention of Sir Artur Szostek of the Nilfgaardian security forces as he is the officer who is currently heading up the civilian aspect of the investigation. Your local garrison or messenger service will be able to direct your information so that it gets into the right hands. If you cannot write the information down then, likewise, the imperial garrison will be able to take the message down and take it off to where it needs to go. You will not have to pay to have your message delivered and yes, there is a reward providing the information proves to lead to something useful.

I don't know what the reward is as the family have been ordered not to interfere in that matter. The reward is being offered by the Imperial state and as such is out of our hands.

I think that's it.

Thanks again for all the well wishes. I do not know how my family and I would have got through without your help.

So anyhow. I suppose that there are a few pressing matters of concern.

So lets cut right to the chase. Yes, Kerrass and I have been accused of murder, treason, sedition and heresy. Yes we dispute these claims. Yes there is a large group of very unpleasant looking men made up of some guardsmen but mostly mercenaries who are, increasingly looking bored, currently camped outside our castle's gates, waiting to arrest and execute us.

They are under orders by the right-honourable Sir Robart de Radford, under sherriff of Redania.

Yes. That fucker.

For those readers that might be new to my journals, Sir Robart was the insufferable prick that went out of his way to completely fuck up the investigation into the murder of my father and elder brother. During that investigation he did his very best to have me hanged for the crime myself. As far as I could tell, this sentiment was born out of an intense, class based loathing of my family coupled with extreme ambition. He came from the kind of “old money” noble family that could chart their families lineage back to the founding of the nation of Redania. But, despite their lineage, were actually rather cash poor due to their insistence on “abiding by tradition,” promoting for blood rather than intelligence and then got cross when all of the clever people left to go to where their skills would be better appreciated.

My father had been one of the beneficiaries of this exodus of highly skilled and motivated labour.

At the time, my temper was rather short so I may have given voice to some rather choice and juicy insults which did not endear me to the Under Sheriff, he lost his temper and ordered a young watchman to his death despite the warnings of Kerrass who advised Sir Robart of what would happen.

I made no secret of my disgust and called him out for the incompetent and cowardly streak of piss that he is. After my fathers death I made a large gesture to tell everyone that I had challenged him, published that intention far and wide and then, at the appointed time, he didn't show up.

I also informed everyone who would listen that if he was kept from our appointment by more pressing matters, such as duties or the urgent need to shit himself violently, then I would be receptive to an alternative time and date of his choosing.

Needless to say I heard nothing and from that moment on I referred to him, to anyone who asked me about the situation, as an inbred, pox-filled, streak of piss who wasn't even competent to wipe his own arse.

I'm since told that he didn't take it well.

Having looked into the matter since then, by virtue of having several friends who have taken great delight in informing me of what had happened, what he did was this.

After my challenge he fled Oxenfurt to Novigrad but discovering that that was no boundary to the reach of my rage, given that I could easily hire the Novigrad town-criers to holler my challenge out on every street corner, he fled back to the protection of his master the High Sheriff. The High Sheriff was, at the time, appealing for guidance to the Emperor and Empress as to what they wanted him to do with this nation that they had managed to conquer as well as deal with the aftermath of that little adventure and so didn't really have time to deal with Sir Robart's issues.

The High Sheriff found Sir Robart some out of the way town or city in the North of Redania to go and uphold the law in despite the biggest crime that had been committed there in recent years was the stealing of some sheep.

I'm told that he wasn't entirely stupid and sat and bided his time.

Fortunately for him, old blood and noble connections pay off in the long run and the noble classes memory soon turns onto different things. The Empress' coronation, and the scandals that followed that, chased Sir Robart's disgrace from the public view and his father managed to arrange matters so that Sir Robart could return to more important, or more prestigious, I'll let you be the judge, duties.

I'm told that he became a senior customs inspector at the Novigrad city docks. A position that meant that he soon became rich on the taxes and bribes that he was paid to overlook various things, while at the same time being able to victimise those people that he didn't like. Which meant the Coulthard shipping companies and merchant ventures often struggled to ship things out from Novigrad docks. My sister wrote to the merchants guild and the High Sherriff to complain about this unfair treatment pointing out, correctly, that the only contraband that had been found in any of our ships had been planted there by men under Sir Robart's command.

Yes Sir Robart. I just called you a corrupt jack-ass that goes out of his way to ignore real crimes while doing his best to find crime where there isn't any. I call you worse than that even. I infer that you even go out of your way to create the crime yourself where none exists which means that you aren't just a corrupt official. You are also a criminal.

If you take offence at these statements you yellow bellied bag of puke then I shall await you in our castle's courtyard with my spear. I would offer to leave the castle and meet you out front but my castle guards have also pointed out those places where you have hidden bowmen. We captured one once, the day before yesterday. He told us that you had ordered him to shoot either Kerrass or myself the instant that we showed our faces. Don't worry about him though. We fed him some proper food and sent him back to his post after having a good laugh with him at your expense.

He told us that you have offered a reward of 50 crowns for Kerrass' head and one hundred Crowns for my head. We warned your man by the way. He is now well aware that there is a better than evens chance that he would be given up, by you, as the ass-hat the killed me without trial.

Also, everyone should know that Coulthard Emterprises can ship from the Oxenfurt docks just as easily which means that the trade tariffs will be paid into the Oxenfurt city coffers rather than Novigrad. Emma has written to the Merchants guild of Novigrad to inform them of this planned change as a result of the victimisation that we have received at the hands of it's corrupt officials. Yesterday, she received a letter from the merchant's guild that made her laugh for a long time, pleading with us not to change our practices as the loss of our trade would, apparently, be a significant dip in city income.

Emma is still enjoying composing a letter that tells Novigrad that we will not ship any business from Novigrad docks until we receive guarentees that neither Sir Robart, any of his subordinates or anyone of his influence (read anyone that he hires or persuades or blackmails) has anything to do with the right and proper customs inspections of our ships. Essentially she's telling them that they either get rid of him or we take our trade elsewhere.

Oxenfurt are more than happy to accommodate Coulthard family requirements, especially as Emma offered to help finance a strengthening and lengthening of the Oxenfurt docks. As far as we know, Sir Robart knows nothing of the political game that Emma is playing at his expense.

But anyway.

Sir Robart had not forgotten his disgrace at the hands of myself and my seconds, Sir Rickard and Kerrass. He couldn't do anything about Kerrass but he set about doing everything he could to disgrace and spread shit about Sir Rickard.

For those people that don't know Sir Rickard, again, we met during the events surround my fathers death where we became friends.

As a result of the lies that Sir Robart spread about him, Sir Rickard also challenged Robart to a duel. When no answer was forthcoming and having no way to defend himself from the accusations and gossip without being able to confront his accuser, Sir Rickard resigned his commission and took Emma up on her invitation to come and work for the Coulthard family.

He didn't care so much. He and Dr Shani have been getting closer in the mean time and his being able to relocate a bit closer to Oxenfurt where Shani resides has been a boon for them both. He and his men have made the roads through my families lands as safe as they've ever been and it has been some time since there was last an attack on one of our wagons.

But, then came the recent events.

Sir Robart came at us with a dozen guardsmen and fifty mercenaries that he paid for out of his own pocket in an effort to bring us in.

However, Sir Rickard caught wind of this effort to take Kerrass and I on the road and came to our rescue.

Rather forcefully I might add.

So now we're at this stand off.

We made it to the castle gates without incident and Sir Robart had to resort to legal means to try and get me out. He insists that he has a warrant for our arrest. We insist that we have already been proven not responsible for the things that we stand accused of and that the High Constable of Lyria and Rivia has told us that we are free to go.

Sir Robart insists that he does not recognise the law of Lyria and Rivia and as such calls us criminal.

We point out that the, supposed, crimes that we committed happened in and around Lyria and as a result, the High constable of Lyria has jurisdiction.

Sir Robart points out that we are all supposed to be of one Empire now and as a result, “Law has no borders.”

We sent for word to the Constable of Lyria who is, as I sit here and write this, either on his way personally or has sent enough people and proof to shout this thing down.

For his part Sir Robart insists that he, as Under Sherriff, out ranks a High Constable because in Redania, a constable is a term for a common Watchman.

I told him that he could tell that to the High Constable's face.

Sir Robart seems unwilling to call on The High Sherriff of Redania, insisting on the superiority of his rank and the rightness of his cause despite many of his men looking at each other and beginning to look unsure of themselves.

So that's the stand off as it currently stands.

Sir Robart spends his days screaming at his men who, being mercenaries, ignore him and follow their own command structure. Or he comes to the gate to loudly and prominently demand that I be produced for summary execution. Or he rides around the countryside telling everyone who will listen that the Coulthard family will pay for their insolence.

Heh.

So we're under siege until the High Sherriff hears about this and takes steps, and/or the High Constable of Lyria and Rivia turns up. Either way, Sir Robart is causing a massive diplomatic incident in an effort to get me hanged.

I've never been under siege before. It's incredibly boring. Sir Robart has ordered that no-one is to leave the castle but he has forgotten that we have a Sorceress as part of the family who is sending out our own messages.

So I've begun to do as I've promised Kerrass I would. I have sent off copies of articles on the subjects of what happened at the coronation to my publishers and have been working on the first couple of chapters of my part of the book on “Jack”.

No you can't read it yet.

But that's not the only thing that I promised to do. I also promised that I would help, tell people about what I've been up to and show them a little bit about what goes on in the world.

So, you might ask and indeed, probably are asking. What's this whole thing that I stand accused of? What did Kerrass and I do that someone, even someone as stupid and incompetent as Sir Robart might latch on to, might accuse us of murder, treason, heresy and whatever else it was that people care about?

Well, I'll tell you.

Despite my joking, there is no getting away from the fact that what's going on and what happened is rather serious. Although I'm not particularly worried, there is a risk that Kerrass and I are going to be hanged in the long run.

You see, here's the thing.

We stand accused of Treason. Of that crime we are absolutely not guilty. Theses events took place in the city of Lyria, and we neither know, or care particularly, about the current political situation there. I am dimly aware that Queen Meve likes to split her time between the summer palace in Lyria and the winter palace in Rivia. I know that the Kingdom is called, The Kingdom of Lyria and Rivia as the two countries joined some time ago but beyond that I know very little. I don't even know for sure whether or not Queen Meve still rules there although from what I've heard about the woman, I would be surprised if you could convince her not to rule there without using a headsman's axe and even then I would bet on the Queen's neck rather than the axe.

But I also suspect that that kind of character would appeal to the Empress. I don't recall her being at the coronation but to be fair, I had other things on my mind at the time.

We are also not guilty of Sedition as I rather feel that that is rather covered by my denial of having committed Treason. What we did was talk to some villagers who expressed their dissatisfaction with what had happened. We happened to agree with them.

Heresy is a little more difficult. I maintain that we are not guilty of Heresy. We desecrated no alters, we defaced no images of Gods or Godesses nor did we stand in a large and open space and declare to the world at large that religion is bullshit and that people should run around doing whatever the hell they damn well please in the face of whatever divine retribution that may or may not be coming their way.

We may have killed a priest. I'm not convinced of this though as the person in question was a blemish on the face of humanity and is genuinely better off dead. I also question the legitimacy of his ordination. I say that because the churches as a whole have, somehow, completely managed to fail to protest his death.

You think about it. You think of any situation where a priest has been killed near you. That shouldn't be too hard as, unfortunately there have been loads of deaths of religious people recently. But you think if a priest of St Lebioda, the church of the holy flame, the divine sun or any of the others and think how the various churches react.

They don't react well do they.

We have heard nothing from the official higher-ups in any kind of church organisation. Or at least we didn't until the man's family started to get involved and then applies political pressure to the church to step up. What religious officials that I have talked to seem to be rather embarrassed by the entire affair. Not that I can blame them.

But murder? That we did do. Many times in fact. You can take that as a confession if you like. You can even claim that the reason that I get away with it is because of my rank, status and who my friends are. You can do all of those things and condemn our actions all you like.

I don't care.

You see, the thing is this.

Those bastards had it coming.

Even if the penalty is the ultimate one which, as I say, I think is unlikely then I will march to the scaffold or the headsman's block with a smile on my face knowing that Kerrass and I made the world a better place. Even knowing everything that I know now, I would still do it again.

That's a big statement I know. I am a lord and a member of the ruling class and as such I am supposed to uphold the Empress' laws all over the empire.

This is correct. The reason I'm pretty sure that we're going to get away with this is because that is what I think we did.

Here's what happened and I'll let you be the judge.

-

I've just taken a break from my desk. The realisation that I haven't eaten anything for a while has started to pray on my mind and I went in search of something to eat. Then I came back and have spent the last....I would say half an hour or so staring at the piece of paper in front of me and I can't think of where to start. There are many layers to what has happened and I'm not sure where it all begins as there is also a lot of context. So this may be a little confusing.

-

As you are probably aware, Kerrass and I were heading north from Toussaint. Our long term goal was to meet up with Sam in Kalayn lands in the North Eastern chunk of Redania so that we could help him investigate the Kalayn family holdings. We needed to see if there were any remnants of the cult that our cousin had run and maintained, while also cleaning out the keep of any monsters or ghosts that might have taken up refuge there in the immediate aftermath of the greater part of the cults destruction. There was also the matter of seeing whether there was any knowledge of what might have happened to Francesca in that place. Cousin Kalayn had claimed to worship “Ancient powers” and to have access to magic, knowledge and power that existed prior to the spreading of the greater part of humanity and the ascendancy of the prophets and the eternal flame.

Sam has, quite sensibly, built himself a temporary series of cabins for him and his men to stay in while he was waiting for the castle to be properly investigated and dealt with. The church, under Mark's orders, had sent a couple of Inquisitors, church knights and more benevolent priests to help council and stabilise the region while Emma had released funds to have a few simple churches built around the place as both a physical sign, and a psychological sign that the land was now under new ownership and that the new lords were substantially different from the old ones.

But Sam wanted to wait for a professional to come and help with the castle as he didn't “want to put all his faith in Inquisitors and holy knights” to help him clean the place out. He had jokingly told me that most of the knights were happy and understanding about this but the Inquisitors were chomping at the bit. Sam had had to have a couple of them restrained so that they didn't march into the local villagers to roust out heretics.

I hope he was joking.

On the way north Kerrass wanted to talk to a few people about what had happened and to set some other investigations rolling. One of the people, or rather places that he wanted to go and visit was a small homestead in Lyria and Rivia.

No I'm not going to tell you where it is. It's not entirely unlikely that people will want to go there afterwards for less than savoury reasons and they will not do so by my...mistakes.

What we were visiting is the largest library that I have ever heard of. The single largest collection of written documents that has ever been collected into one place.

That is not an exaggeration either.

Wherever I go I try to see the local libraries and centres of learning. I've been to the great library of Novigrad. I've visited the Academia de Vizima and the royal libraries in Toussaint, Tretogor, Vengerberg and Maecht city but that is by no means an exhaustive list of places that I've been to.

This place dwarfed them all and unless you've been specifically let into the secret then it's doubtful to me that you will have ever heard that the place exists.

To go there you have to have been specifically invited by someone else that was already aware of it's existence. When you are there you are allowed to ask questions of one of the three attendants who will look the matter up for you if they don't know it off the tops of their heads but there is always a price.

Always.

The price tends to vary upon what you want to know. If it is a simple thing then the attendants might ask for whatever written pieces of paper that you might have on you. It doesn't matter if that's a bill of sale or a love letter or some correspondence between family matters. Or they might ask for the price of a good meal. For you to do some simple chores around the place or the performing of a simple favour. When I met them I was once told that a bard went there once and he was charged the performance of a ballad that one of the attendants hadn't heard before. The more serious or in depth the question then the more the attendants will ask for.

The only way that you are allowed into the library itself is this.

First of all you must be accompanied by one of the three attendants.

Yes, there are only three of them.

The second thing is that you must bring them an academic piece of writing that they don't already have. This is not easy as their collection is vast. I mentioned the Academia de Vizima. A wonderful place of practical learning in the directions of engineering and practical sciences. Their library is give over to mathematical texts about projectile weaponry, tensile strength of metal wood and the use of different materials in the building of siege weaponry.

I asked one of the attendants of this secret library how big their collection of works was on this subject and the answer would have made the lecturers at the Accademia blush.

What we wanted to do was to go and see if they could tell us anything about the magic involved in kidnapping Francesca. Or if they had any more information about Jack and his children so that we might be able to investigate further. We were pretty sure that Jack was not responsible. We knew that we had banished the beast of Amber''s crossing which we had begun to call by his more proper name of “The Darknes.”

We had a list of other names that might fall into this group of beings. Kerrass wanted to refer to them as a Pantheon but I didn't like the term as it suggested that there was something Godlike about them all. I didn't like that.

Right now there are people all over the continent spitting with rage at the fact that they didn't know about this place. That such a centre of learning had been there for all of this time and that it hadn't been exploited and the knowledge shared freely or handed out indiscriminately.

I'm not going to take part in that debate. I'm not going to argue whether all of knowledge should be free or what should be done with it or who deserved to have access to this or to that.

I'm not that guy.

What I will say is this.

Kerrass and the three attendants all swore me to secrecy about where they were and what they had kept. After having met them and seen how they worked then I could absolutely understand their desire for privacy and solitude. Unfortunately though, their privacy has been forever made redundant.

I first met those attendants several months after I had first started travelling with Kerrass. For long term readers, these events took place after the adventure with Sir William the Ram and the death of Tom the Troll but my encounter with the beast of Amber's crossing was still a couple of months away.

Kerrass was much more comfortable with me by this point and I with him. We were not friends, he knew nothing about my family and I knew less about his past. We were still travelling south on our way to cross the Yaruga and head into Nilfgaard and Kerrass had taken a contract that he wasn't entirely certain of.

The contract in question isn't important to our story but just briefly. What it was was that a large winged beast was terrifying a group of villagers roughly a day away. We had sat and watched it from a distance, flying and swooping in amongst the trees and hills of the local area and Kerrass had become frustrated.

To all intents and purposes it looked like a form of Siren or Lamia. The only problem was that sirens and their more powerful cousins Ekhidnas only occur by the sea or occasionally in large bodies of water.

There might have been some small streams nearby but nothing large enough to warrant their presence.

The other thing that it reminded Kerrass of was a Lamia. Lamia are very similar to sirens in size and shape but they primarily occur in desert environments and this was anything but. Kind of a more lush and relatively fertile farm land despite the lack of farmers in the local area.

So Kerrass was confused and this kind of confusion was not doing his temper any good. As has previously been mentioned, the secret to being a Witcher is preparation. It was no good for Kerrass to prepare for a siren, only for the beast to turn out to be a Lamia and the same vice versa.

There was also the possibility of some kind of mutation happening.

So Kerrass wanted more information. He told the people that had hired him to spread their herds out so that the beast couldn't utterly destroy their food-stocks. That the men should not stand and fight but that the use of hunting bows might drive the creature off and that otherwise, they shouldn't allow themselves to be drawn out. Then he told them that he would be back in a few days with a hopeful solution.

That was when we consulted “The Library.”

It was unlike anything that I had ever seen or experienced.

Kerrass found what he was looking for in that place, destroyed the beast and we moved on.

That was where we were heading. Kerrass was of the opinion that if any single collection of knowledge would have some information about what we were looking for then it would be this place. I tended to agree.

There was a village near to the library. It was a mining village that Copper and some tin from a nearby group of rocky hills. They weren't massively wealthy as the mine had long since been played out but they still made enough to get by. They prospected quite a bit and spent their time looking for other veins to be exploited. There was also some gold in there somewhere. Not enough to be properly exploited but there was enough to keep the village alive and crouched next to the nearby stream, sifting through the grit and dirt that was washed down from uphill.

On our previous visit they had been friendly enough not to be unpleasant to the Witcher anyway, which can be rare sometimes in that part of the world. Lyria and Rivia seem to have something specific against Witchers although I don't know why. I have heard suggestions along the lines that something had happened between a Witcher and their Queen but I didn't pry and know better than to listen to that kind of rumour.

We didn't see the village first. We smelt it.

You always read about the fact that travellers see the smoke rising from a stricken village first before anything else. I can't answer for it in this case. All I can say is that we were riding down the road to the town before we would follow the path up to the library. I was looking forward to the hospitality of the attendants, a good meal and a bath, despite the fact that I would probably be sleeping on the rug rather than the bed that night, so at first I didn't notice it when my horse shook it's head in protest and refused to go any further down the road.

Then I smelt it. You never lose that smell after you have first got it into your nose. You never lose it. It cloys at you. The sickly sweet smell of burnt flesh.

If you don't catch yourself you find yourself thinking something along the lines of “Oh, I could just do with some roast pork,” before you realise what's happening and are overcome with a desire to vomit.

I looked at Kerrass. He was alert, left hand on his sword strap, head cocked to one side, listening.

“I can't hear anything.” He told me before taking a deep sniff of the air. “I think that, whatever happened here is over.”

“Do you want me to stay here?”

“No,” he said, dismounting. “Lets go in. Cautiously though, and put your spear together.”

We walked the horses into the village. It wasn't burnt to the ground which was what I had feared but it was certainly not without it's scars.

I've seen it so often. So very often but I never get used to it. I hope I never do either. It would be awful if this was something that you could get used to.

There were four stakes in the middle of the town with piles of ash around the base. A couple of the piles were still smouldering.

“Oh no.”

I wanted to rush down there. I could already feel my feet, arms and hands wanting to start moving. I wanted to be down there already. But as I say, I've seen this kind of thing before. Living in Redania around Novigrad especially. I'd seen my first “Witch” burning at the age of eight when my family had gone to Novigrad for some important occasion. To meet some local dignitary or to appeal to the officials about something my father wanted to be done. Even then I remember looking at the crowds and noticing the differences between the people. Onlookers were either watching quietly or they were cheering. But then Emma saw what I was looking at and turned me away.

This is not a new story. We all know someone who has had this happen to them. We all have. We've all either lost someone or we know someone who has lost someone to this kind of thing. Hell, I'd even been responsible for a number of people being burned at the stake which had robbed me of a lot of innocence on the matter.

I will say that if you're going to execute someone, I think it's kinder to use an axe or a noose rather than the flames. But the more...extreme of the priests that I've heard of would argue that the flame is to purify the person responsible.

I once asked Mark, in one of my more cynical moments while he was at home for Yule one year whether the purpose of the flames was to purify the body of the person or whether it was so that we would indelibly remember it happening.

He was skilful enough to turn it into a joke but I was quick enough to see his discomfort. Father was much less subtle and suggested a strict penance from Mark for my... wilfulness.

.

I really am struggling to talk about this. Even as I sit here writing I feel an anger as well as an incredible sadness as to what I saw that day. So much so that I struggle to bring things to the point.

.

So I wanted to rush into the village but I stayed calm. I couldn't see any armed men so I took my spear apart and put it away. These villagers would not want to see any more armed men coming attacking them. They had already been through too much.

Kerrass agreed with me. He took his sword from his back, he was only wearing the steel one anyhow, and tied it onto the horses' saddle. He kept on the same side of the horse as the sword though but there is a difference. He had left it to hand but it wasn't on his person as it were.

The things that we think about.

We walked slowly and carefully down into the village. Kerrass seemed as though he was beginning to get nervous, his hands clenching occasionally and eyes shifting from side to side with nervous jerks from one direction to the other.

I wasn't worried yet but.... I resolved to keep an eye on him. It had been a while since his last period of “mutation based depression” which is what we call it whenever he has a shutdown for no apparent reason. Theoretically this meant that he might be due for another one soon. But now was not the time to think about it. I knew he was worried about the library and the attendants but we still needed to check what was happening. It is always a mistake to go rushing in without caution.

The village looked as though it was in shock. As an entity I mean, a couple of people were doing their best to do some work, the normal kind of spring jobs of tidying up after winter storms, making repairs to houses as well as working what bits of garden and vegetable patches that they might have lying around. But if you watched closely, the people that were doing the work would stop suddenly and sit down to stare into space for extended periods of time. It was also so quiet. At this time of day you would expect to see children running around, laughing, joking and playing games. Elders would be gossiping at gates and doorways, there would be tobacco smoke and the scent of wood sap.

You have to remember that villages are noisy places really. Villagers don't have time to be quiet or to spend their time messing around with stupid things like propriety. Children, animals, adults and old folks living and working together in a relatively small space makes for a lot of noise. Hammering, sawing, shouting, laughing, crying and generally living in one place.

Here it was quiet. A hushed sense of....dread and fatigue. It felt like dread as well as a sullen anger that threatened to break free and overwhelm anyone that might be watching.

I'd seen this kind of thing before as well as the burnings. You used to see it quite regularly in the aftermath of war as the armies of two nations rolled over so many of the villages taking what food wasn't locked down or hidden, abusing what women they could see and comandeering what able-bodied men there were that hadn't been taken by the recruiting sergeant before. It was almost like the place was in shock. Trying to decide what to do as well as asking the age-old unanswerable question of “why us?”

They were thinking about survival, what they had to do to carry on and wondering whether it was worth the effort.

We walked down slowly. Already I could tell that a couple of the houses were deserted, shutters closed, no smoke rising from the chimneys. The fact that the places still seemed in relatively good repair told me that this was a recent thing.

We rode on.

“Didn't expect to see you here.” A woman called to us. We both spun in the road to see where the call came from. Spun a little too quickly showing how on edge we were. The woman pretended not to notice.

“Maiden Karreen.” Kerrass said forcing a smile. He passed the reins over to me before going over to embrace the ageing woman who accepted his hug with good grace before giving him a playful slap.

“Hark at you calling me “Maiden.” They call me “old Mother” Kareen now.”

I recognised her from my previous visit. When I had last seen her she had been a handsome woman in her fifties, tall, proud with silver hair and a spine of steel. She had stood, unbent, as she told me how she had buried two husbands. One to sickness and one to a mine collapse and was well onto her third while she ruled over a tribe of children and grand-children. She wasn't an Ealdorman or anyone of significance on a town council or anything but she was important. The kind of woman that people turn to when they need some good and proper advice.

She hadn't changed a great deal but those changes were important. She had a large bruise on the side of her face as well as a split lip and a heavy limp which meant that she was walking with the aid of a badly improvised crutch that looked as though it had once been a broom. When she spoke there was a whistling sound that came from the fact that she was missing several teeth and her mouth hadn't yet adjusted to the lack.

“Does that mean you won't run away with me this time?” Kerrass asked her. The joke was feebly made and both he and Kareen knew it.

“Cheeky. I remember you Witcher.” She said it with a tired smile. “All charm and false promises.”

“It was never false when it came to you Maiden Kareen.”

“No longer a maiden Witcher.” her attempt at maintaining a sense of humour was slipping.

“You will always be a maiden to me Kareen.” As was Kerrass'

As a note, in the local area it seemed that the term that prefixed a woman's name was a mixture of local custom as well as a description of status. If a woman was called “Maiden” then it meant that she was an eligible woman of child rearing age. You might also use the term to describe someone that you consider to be a great beauty so it would occasionally be used between husband and wife. “Mother” described a married woman, regardless of whether or not children had been produced and “Old Mother” meant a woman with Grandchildren or as a term of respect.

As another interesting point. For men, they would be given their proffession before their given name so a man might be called. “Thatcher John of Rivia,” or “Cooper William of Yellowdowns.”

I would make a study of it if I had more time, but Philology and Anthropology aren't really my field.

Kareen led us over to her house, one of the larger ones towards the centre of the village. She steadfastly refused any offers of support from Kerrass and insisted on making us tea and offered us cake despite our protests. We sat out in the garden. The unfortunate effect of which was that we could see the stakes standing out in the view. In the end I admitted defeat and turned away so that I wouldn't have to look at them while Kareen told me stories about how a young Kerrass had turned up tot he village and offered to “take her away from all of this,”

Kerrass laughed along with her and we made small talk for as long as possible until she eventually ran out of words.

“What happened Kareen?” Kerrass asked.

“They came from the North, over towards Rivia way.” She told us. “Came sort of middayish about two weeks ago and demanded food and water.”

“Who were they?”

“Knights,” she said shaking her head. “Had these strange read tabbards on with a flaming sword on the front. Bastards.”

Hearing her swear was odd. Strangely endearing.

“What happened?”

“They knew exactly what they were looking for. They were barely here to stop and water their horses before they headed off up the hill.”

The haunted look that was in Kerrass' eyes became shadowed.

Saying that something was “up the hill” was roughly from where the library and it's attendants were. He stood, staring off into the distance. He made to stand up but she caught him by the sleeve. “I'm so sorry Witcher.” She told him. “We loved them too.”

He nodded and gently pulled free before walking to the edge of the garden and leaning on a fence post.

“Who we...” I had to clear my throat past the emotion that was suddenly blocking it. “Who were they?” I asked pointing at the stakes.”

“Just women and a couple of men. They were busy little stakes those half a dozen or so. Went through the last of the villages firewood supplies keeping those fires burning.”

“Did they say why?” I asked although I didn't expect an answer. Anyone who proudly wears a tabbard that displays a flaming sword and does this kind of thing doesn't really need a reason.

“They did actually. Apparently all of them had been with her”.

I nodded to show that I knew what she was talking about. That would be enough to a certain kind of religious knight.

“They stood in front of them, chanting as they all burned.” Now that the woman had started to talk it seemed that she had uncorked the bottle it seemed that she couldn't stop. “They did this thing with the wood that meant that it wouldn't smoke.”

I nodded. I had heard of that kind of thing before. “They wanted them to die from the flames and the heat rather than the smoke.”

She nodded and I saw suspicious wetness in the corners of her eyes. She hadn't seemed like the kind of person that would shed tears. “They had a priest with them. He stood before the flames and told us all that we were blessed. Blessed to see that.” Her voice shook as she said that last.

She took a moment to steady her voice.

“They burned my son.”

“I'm so sorry.” I said even though I knew that it wouldn't help her. I put my hand on her shoulder in an effort to pass on some strength. She patted the hand with some gratitude.

“What's that?” Kerrass pointed. Between the houses there was a small lane and at the end of the lane there was a large tree. From one of the low hanging branches there was another body swinging by a rope. Kareen rose to her feet to see what Kerrass was looking at. This time she accepted my help to rise before I lowered her back to the seat.

Kareen was looking around furtively.

“That was the bastard that brought them here.” She said it almost quietly. A whisper.

Kerrass had come back to hear and sat back down “A villager?” he asked.

“Sshh.” she gestured for silence. “They told us that there were more people here and that they would be watching us.”

“You know that that was probably a lie to keep you nervous?” Kerrass said.

Kareen lowered her eyes.

“Of course we know that but...” She spread her hands that were trembling. “But what if they aren't?” She wailed.

Kerrass nodded turning away.

I made placating gestures in an effort to keep her calm.

“The son of a bitch has killed this village.” She hissed abruptly. “Three families have left already. Another two are packing. Friends, good friends look at each other with distrust now. We can't trust each other. That's the thought, that anyone could be a traitor. We daren't even go up there to bury them. We were ordered not to. Told that they needed to be left out there as a warning to any that might come afterwards. I wanted to go but... I daren't. I'm so....so sorry.

“Sssh, Sshh.” I did my best to calm her but even I could tell that she was a woman on the edge of her endurance. “No-one told us not to care for the fallen. We'll take care of them.”

She nodded and silence fell as she began to calm down for a moment.

“What happened to him?” Kerrass gestured towards the corpse on the tree.

“I don't know,” she lied. It was so blatant that both Kerrass and I looked at her sharply. “That bastard killed us. Why?” We didn't look at her. We didn't need to. Her rage and pain was spilling over. “Because a woman turned him down. Because she turned him down.” She snarled that last.

There was no need to ask what had happened. The village had lynched him. But now they were afraid of reprisals.

“He killed a village. He killed us.”

I caught Kerrass' eyes and he nodded. I went into the house to make the poor woman something herbal to help her calm down. When I came back Kerrass was crouched in front of her.

“I have to go,” he was telling her. “I am so sorry.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

She was nodding. “You were so handsome Kerrass.” She told him.

I waited in the doorway to let them have this moment of privacy.

“Were?” He tried for a joke.

“Old age changes a woman's desires.” She said softly. “But I so nearly went with you.”

“You would have been bored,” he told her, doing his best to be kind. “You would have had no children with me. And then you would have been alone.”

“But I would have had you,” she told him. “I would have had you, and I would have been spared all of this.”

“No,” he told her. “No you wouldn't. You would have exchanged one type of pain for another.”

“Silly Kerrass.” I could tell she was smiling and I heard tears as well. “I was trying to comfort you.”

“I know. And I messed up trying to comfort you back.”

“Oh Kerrass,” she said sadly. “Story of our lives.”

There was silence for a while.

It's true what they say you know. Sometimes, silence is the better part of valour.

“Ok Freddie, you can come back out now.” Kerrass called.

“Just trying to give you two a moment.”

Kerrass came over to me and took the tea from my hand. “Wait for me with the horses.”

I nodded. I considered trying to say goodbye to the woman but she had turned away from me, hiding her face.

That thing about discretion keeps coming up doesn't it.

I went back over to the horses but made sure that I was holding both sets of reins so that Kerrass couldn't call his horse away without me. I didn't think he would but I wasn't sure how he was going to react to what was happening at the moment.

I had had no idea that he and Kareen had had a thing, no matter how long ago.

He came over after a short while and mounted up with me following his example. He wouldn't look at me or meet my gaze. He said nothing, his gaze staring fixedly ahead as he led us towards the path up the hills.

It wasn't a path any longer. It had been trampled flat by horses. Kerrass dismounted once to examine the tracks.

“Shod,” he told me. “Heavy war horses,”

“Rather unsuitable for this kind of climb.” I commented. The ground was soft with water running down hill. Not as firm as many horses would prefer in this kind of situation.

Kerrass said nothing.

The village and the Librarians didn't bother doing anything with this slope. So it had been left to the grass and weeds that you might find in any kind of meadow. The village herb woman would have been able to come up here and gather medicines which was part of the idea behind it. It served to cover the Library and also added to the village....I suppose “economy” is the right word although it doesn't seem entirely suitable. Most villages have several patches of land given over to, just, meadowland. That way plants could grow and produce strange things that would become old herbal recipes that would then go on to help and nurture food and medicines for the whole place.

It was also a place where youngsters could go and play and where not so young people could go and enjoy each other's company.

We found the first of the three Librarians on the path. Poor thing. She had probably been watching the village as she had been wont to do and had seen the strangers arrive. In her innocence, she had probably even gone out to greet them only for someone to cave her skull in with what looked like a mace. Her being a magical creature though, this hadn't been enough to kill her. It had been enough to cause her eyes to pop from their sockets and for her to bite her tongue in half under the impact and splinter her teeth but then the...

heh....

“knights,” and I use the term in the loosest possible sense, had ridden her down as she had turned to flee.

She looked like a broken doll.

That was the thing you see. The Librarians or attendants as they preferred to call themselves weren't human.

This one was a Godling.

For those people who are wondering what I'm talking about. Godlings are small, sentient beings, sometimes called Bozatko. They look like small children only with blue skin and large luminous eyes that seem to glow. They normally live in woody or swampy areas but have been known to “adopt” small villages or areas as a kind of guardian spirit. There they will perform small acts of care over the inhabitants, especially children whose innocence fascinates the creatures.

They wear relatively little and generally, they only do that when they have been persuaded to do so by neighbours as modesty is unimportant to them. They are childlike in attitude as well, delighting in simple mischief unless they are...upset or angry at which time their games become more...not dangerous but more malicious. They do also occasionally tattoo themselves with herbal dyes and adorn themselves with simple looking jewellery made out of natures detritus, roots, grasses and twigs tend to be the basis of such things.

Whoever had killed her though, had known their business.

I dismounted to gather her up in a blanket with a dim thought that we should bury the three Librarians together. There is a herb that kills them although I won't tell you what it is. I want no gangs of people who have read this to go out and start hunting Godlings for sport. But when I examined the poor thing I found the herb in her injuries. She had survived the first blow but was already dying.

Poor thing.

Her name was Sally.

Yes she was a girl. Some fucker had done this to something that looked like a little girl who would never have done anything to hurt anyone without provocation. Indeed, when I had first come here the village had been quite proud of their little guardian spirit and had protected her fiercely.

I took a blanket from my pack to wrap her up in.

Kerrass waited a moment.

“I'll uh, I'll go on ahead.”

I nodded. “Wait for me though Kerrass.” I told him remembering the old woman's line. “I loved them too remember.”

He nodded back and walked his horse on.

After I lay the blanket down and lifted the tiny corpse into the middle of it, I sat next to her and tried to think of what to say.

What can you say?

I was struck by a sudden memory, like being struck between the eyes by a lightening bolt.

-

It was late summer early autumn when I had last been riding down this path. The air was thick and heavy with the scent of plants and flowers, close with heat and I was dressed lightly in my shirt but even then I was still having to peel the shirt from my skin. I felt sticky, smelly and unpleasant to be around.

Looking back, Kerrass was teasing me. He had manipulated things so that I was riding in front, swatting insects from my eyes and sneezing with the pollen. I should have seen the slight smirk on his face or seen something that indicated what he was plotting, but we still weren't close. He cold make me laugh and I could make him smile while also being fairly skilled at cooking the things that he liked to eat.

It was just after midday and it was hot enough that we should probably have stopped for a break down at the village. Indeed I was surprised that Kerrass hadn't called a halt at the village below but had insisted on pushing things on.

I should have known he was playing a joke on me. I was drinking from a water bottle at the time. Kerrass' old orders of telling me to drink all the time to keep myself hydrated was still preying on my mind.

At first I could hear the sound of someone running. The grass swishing as it parted before a rushing body. Someone running fast.

I had time to turn into the noise.

I must have looked particularly foolish, water still coming from the bottle and wetting my face and chest. But then a shape came out of the grass. Leaping at me, Brown and flesh colours. A high pitched woman's voice, just a little bit shrill.

I didn't even have time to raise my hands to defend myself.

The impact drove the air from me and that was before I hit the ground. I didn't have time to register what was happening. I landed on my backside and fell backwards, my right foot was still stuck in the stirrup and my hip was wrenched and twisted. I fell backwards and hit my head on the road.

I never understood all the things that say that you see stars or hear birds or something. I saw white light and heard a musical tone.

The flashing lights in my vision though were due to the multicoloured flame that was leaping from the figures hands.

“Don't move.” it said. A woman's voice, deep,harsh and unpleasant. “Don't move or I'll burn your face off.”

That was when I realised that I had also bit the inside of my mouth as well as all of the other things. I blinked furiously for a moment or two trying to focus on the strange figure in front of me.

Reflexively I tried to sit up and get my arm under me but I was pushed back down into the ground by virtue of a foot on my chest.

“Don't kill him,” Kerrass' voice drifted up the path. “I've nearly got him trained.

The figure standing over me turned to face down the path.

“Kerrass?” She called wonderingly in a more normal tone.

“The very same.” He said openly smiling as he stepped into view.

There was more sounds of someone else running through the grass and my vengeance was sooo sweet as a small childlike figure came running out of the grass. It was accompanied by the sound of the Witchers name being screamed in delight as the figure ran up to the Witcher and leapt into his arms, which was some feat given that he was still riding his horse at the time. The girl wrapped her arms and legs around the Witcher and didn't look as though she would let go willingly as she rained kisses on his somewhat bemused face.

“KERRASS, KERRASS, KERRASS, KERRASS, KERRASS.” The girl punctuated the screaming of his name with a kiss on his cheek.

“Hello Sally,” He said in a tone of long suffering amusement.

She wasn't done though and continued to scream his name over and over again.

I still couldn't see the figure that had knocked me down though as it was still a little blurry and I found I was having to blink rapidly. I did see that the fires that had sprouted from the figures hands vanished though as quickly as they had appeared.

The pressure against my chest vanished and the figure left my field of view.

The girl Sally was still calling the Witcher's name though. I managed to prop myself onto one elbow and turned to look.

With a bit of effort I could focus enough to see that he had managed to manoeuvre the girl so that he could dismount and knelt to embrace her properly.

It was a sweet image and one that would have possibly had more of an effect on me if my head hadn't chosen that moment to swim

“Did I hurt you?” A woman's voice asked, much more normal register, calmer and soothing.”

I turned my head and spat blood for answer.

She chuckled. Strong hands helped me to sit up. “Just sit here while I go and get you some help.” Said the voice. The very, very female presence came round behind me and whispered in my ear. “Don't worry, I promise I'll make it up to you.”

As quickly as the presence was there, it was gone. Sounds of the grass parting before a figure leaving me astonished with how suddenly I had gone from a state of injury to being aroused.

I looked up and Kerrass stood over me. I knew him well enough to be amused.

“Don't worry,” he told me, “She has that effect on people. Don't try to get up or anything. The pain is still there, she's just distracted you from it for a moment.”

“You did that on purpose didn't you.” I accused him. Now that he mentioned it I could see the flickering grey around the edges of my vision that told me that I was possibly a little concussed.

“I may have planned something along those lines.”

“What if she'd killed me?”

“She wouldn't kill you outright.” He grinned. “She likes to play with her food first.”

“Reassuring.”

“Quite. Here I want you to meet someone,”

He reached behind him and pulled the small child-like figure around to his front. She kept trying to hide behind Kerrass' legs and it took some effort to get her round so that she could face me.

“Freddie, this is Sally. Sally, this is Freddie. Say hello Sally.”

“'lo,” she said sullenly, staring at her fingers and twisting from side to side in discomfort. She was wearing a plain yellow dress that looked as though it had been stitched together out of a sheet. It was torn, ragged and looked as though Sally had been running through mud and dirt as well as being covered in grass stains.

It had the look of a well worn and much loved dress. She also wore a crown of daisies woven together with Dandelions and a necklace of woven grass. Her hair was plainly filthy but I couldn't see any of the signs of matting that you sometimes see in village and farm folk who let their hair grow and don't take care of it properly. This suggested that someone washed it for her regularly although she clearly promptly ran off into the nearest field and got herself all mucky again.

Like all Godlings, she had blue skin and large luminous eyes which were green.

“Hello Sally,” I said carefully trying to keep myself upright. I held my hand out to be shaken.

I have little experience with children but I had learned a couple of tricks from Kerrass. Those being that you should always put yourself on eye-level with them but otherwise, talk to them normally. Don't be condescending and don't, for one second think that you are smarter than they are.

“I am very pleased to meet you.” I told her.

Sally was already losing interest though and was trying to hide behind Kerrass again.

“Come on Sally, be nice.” Kerrass told the Godling. “Freddie here, is a scholar from the university of Oxenfurt.”

The Godling smiled in joy and enthusiasm. It was as though the sun came out, my increasing headache vanished along with the nausea and acid feeling in my stomach. I still had aches and, I suspected, some bruised ribs but I suddenly felt so much better.”

“You're a scholar?” She said.

“I am,” I answered, smiling at her enthusiasm.

“What do you study?” she asked me.

“At the moment?” she nodded. “I'm studying Kerrass.”

“Why?” Her forehead wrinkled in confusion. “He's a fairly standard mutation of the Homo Sapient using the mutagens of the cat school of Witchers which were, in turn, derivatives of the Wolf Witcher mutagens. He has some genetic traits of the Elven blood, specifically from that part of the race referred to, internally, as the Aen Seidhe but I would suspect that it comes to no more than one sixteenth of elven blood at best. He suffers from a fairly mild case of depression resulting from some mild psychoses such as....”

“That's enough Sally,” Kerrass came back leading the horses, he was smiling gently. “No point in giving the entire game away.”

“But I just wanted to find out why?”

“It's not about Kerrass the man. It's about Kerrass the Witcher,”

“But you know about what Witcher's do.” she argued

“I might,” I answered quickly. “But the rest of the world does not.”

“Why not?”

“They have forgotten or they have been misinformed”

“Who would misinform people.”

“People who benefit from the lie. People who don't know better.”

“But if you know the truth, why do you need to tell people?”

“Do I know the truth though?” I responded quickly. “Do any of us know the truth? Apart from anything else, what is truth? But before we go too deep down that hole How can I be sure that I know what the truth is other than to check. But also, how do I help other people get to the truth if I don't look for it.”

Sally considered me for a moment. “I like him,” she decided. “I'm not sure I approve of him not looking for new knowledge though.”

“But how do I know I haven't missed something though?” I was beginning to feel a bit dizzy again.

“Then you check don't you,” she answered.

I just stared at her for a moment.

“.......Oohhhhhhh” Her comprehension was endearingly child-like.

There was more crashing coming through the grass and a huge man came into view. Square jawed and massively muscled. I started to panic as the sheer size of him made me feel dizzy.

“Kerrass.” The man rumbled, nodding at the Witcher as Kerrass scooped Sally into his saddle. “This him?”

“That's him.” Kerrass tickled the Godling making her giggle.

The man scooped me up into his arms easily.

My dizziness returned as I began to feel as though I was loosing my grip on the situation.

-

I crouched next to Sally's body and it was almost as though I could hear that giggle echoing around along with the sound of the wind in the grass.

For a while as I listened to the wind I could feel a lump form in my throat and my eyes begin to burn. I covered my face for a moment before I forced it back down. There would be time for that later.

I took a deep breath and wrapped the body up in the blanket as tight as I could. I tried to think of a more dignified way of carrying the poor girl but in the end I was forced to just sling her over my saddle. “She wouldn't mind.” I told myself. Given that she was a Godling there was even a better than evens chance that she was already out and dancing in the trees somewhere and in a way that I did not understand and couldn't see.

I hoped so.

I checked around to see if I had missed anything before gathering up my horses reins and led it on. As I did so I could begin to smell the burnt wood and the slight difference that meant I could also smell burnt paper. I sighed. Not only were they dead but their charge had also been destroyed.

My first thought was that it meant that our little detour out to search the library had ended up being wasted and that we were wasting our time. I nearly wept again then with self-loathing. It was an involuntary thought but even so, I found that I hated myself for a moment then.

I remembered that the main cabin was in a clearing surrounded by an almost marshland and a thicket of thick, deliberately placed bushes inter-weaved with twigs and plants designed to make passage difficult if not impossible.

But the undergrowth had been swept aside. First, I guessed by axes and other bladed weapons but after that it had been decimated by fire. I saw Kerrass standing there walking around absently staring at the floor. I had to take my eyes of him for a while as I picked my way through the roots and undergrowth.

But when I got through and saw what was there, I groaned aloud.

There was no other way that it could have gone. Of course they were dead and their home ruined, but until I had actually seen the bodies there was a wild hope. Of course they were dead. They would have died to defend what they had but at the same time. I had hoped.

I had hoped.

The other two of them were there. The Succubus and the Doppler.

The Succubus was badly burned and wasn't really recognisable. But even under the charring it was plain that her body had been torn apart. Looking at the marks on the ground I guessed that she had been tied to a set of horses and pulled apart.

The Doppler had been nailed to one of the big trees nearby where he had been crucified. I could see glittering metal at his wrists and ankles. The fuckers had bound him with silver. Presumably in an effort to keep him from changing shape. I felt bile rise in my throat. They must have nailed him there and he had been forced to watch. While his life's work and the body of his wife and lover burned before him. I wondered if the struggle had hastened or prolonged his death.

Poor man.

The lump was back in my throat.

By my guess, the blaze had been arrested by a rainfall at some point. The cabin itself had been gutted, the roof had collapsed in and what remained of the walls were charred and crumbling.

I walked over to Kerrass and put my arm on his shoulder. Offering strength and what comfort I could. But I may as well have been trying to comfort a statue.

“I'm going to...” I began before having to clear my throat again. “Dammit, I'm going to check inside.”

Kerrass nodded. “Good idea.” His voice sounded as though it took a lot of effort to produce.

I tied my horse to a post, the poor beast was restive and unhappy. I couldn't blame it. Not only was it surrounded by death and ash but also the smell of burnt non-human.

I thought I smelt rain and looked up at the horizon where rain-clouds were beginning to gather.

Fucking wonderful.

I picked my way into the ruin, for ruin it was.

“The knights came here first.” Kerrass' voice drifted to me over the sound of the wind. “They came here and did this before going back into the village to carry on.”

I grunted an agreement.

“Probably having too much fun to leave,” Kerrass' voice was bitter.

It was a large cabin. Well built. I had never got around to asking how long the three of them had lived here. I know Godlings, to all intents and purposes, are immortal. I had no idea about Succubi and Dopplers but they were magical creatures so there was no reason to believe that they weren't all but immortal. Nor did I know how long the three of them had lived here but the cabin was well built. I remember asking the Doppler about it and he told me that he had learnt to build a house by reading a book.

I picked my way through the wreckage carefully. I had heard far too many stories about ruined and gutted buildings collapsing on people that were exploring it.

The hatch that I was looking for was open. Black smoke still drifted gently from the hatchway and I could still felt warmth. I tried to look through the hole but it was too dark and I reluctantly withdrew.

I stood in the middle of the cabin and looked around. This had been a nice place once. I would have been quite happy living here myself.

Another memory took me by surprise.

-

The huge man carried me into the cabin easily, moving through the main room which was part living area with a large fire pit and elaborate cooking apparatus nearby. Pots and pans hanging from the roof along with a cleaver and several, wickedly sharp looking knives. Several large and comfortable chairs lined the walls and there was a metal hood situated over the fireplace that I assumed would carry the smoke from the fire outside and into the open air. Also in the corner I could see two desks set up easily in a way that would make most scholars, including me, nod with approval. Stacked vellum and parchment, a place for inkwells and a sheaf of quills wrapped together along with a sharp knife for quill trimming. Above the desk there was a small shelf on which rested a lantern which was held so that it could shine onto whatever the desk user was working on.

As well as all the comforts of home there were numerous lecterns around the place. Made from wood and metal, places where books could be propped and read easily. I noticed one, particularly large one was situated next to the cooking area.

“Welcome to my home?” The huge man rumbled. I began to recognise his accent as being Skelligan originally. He moved through the living area to a door in the back which opened into a bedroom. Large and luxurious with a huge bed, tables on either side of the head board. There was an arm chair next to the window that, again, looked exceedingly comfortable. The chair had a small table next to it on which rested another book and a cup of some kind.

I was a bit put off by the large, thick and strong looking leather straps that were situated at the four corners of the bed.

I must have protested a little when I saw them but he wasn't having it.

“Don't worry about it.” He told me. “Those aren't for you.”

“Who are they for?”

“Me,” he said with a huge grin. “Or sometimes her. It depends on what mood we're in really.”

My mystification left me unable to speak for a moment and the huge man took that moment to deposit me on the bed.

“Try to stay awake,” he said. “You have a concussion and it might be dangerous if you go to sleep.”

“I know,” I tried to tell him but he had gone. At first I had thought that the bang on my head was causing me to hallucinate as he turned from being a huge, heavily muscled man into someone with a much slimmer build. He left the room.

The bed was really soft and I really did struggle to stay awake. In the end I did my best to push myself up the bed so that I could lean against the pillows. The effort hurt though and I found that I was having trouble breathing.

I heard voices from outside. It sounded like a woman's voice scolding Kerrass.

“I could have killed him.” She was yelling at him but I could tell that she wasn't too angry.

“But you didn't,” Kerrass told her. “In fact, how many men have you killed outright.”

“That's not the point,” she told him. “I could have. That was a cruel trick you played on him Kerrass.”

“He'll be fine,”

The man came back in and this time I was sure of it. He had shrunk a good foot in height and had changed from being a heavily muscled Skelligan to someone who wouldn't have looked out of place on the streets of Oxenfurt. Thin, dark haired with the hair pulled back from his face and a scholarly air about him. He had put on a shirt and a jacket and was carrying a basin of water from which there were tendrils of steam rising and he had a cloth of some kind draped over his shoulder. On his other shoulder he was carrying a satchel.

“Alright, lets have a look at you,” he told me. Setting the basin of water on the floor. And the satchel on the bed. From the satchel he took a small glass phial of a clear liquid which he uncorked and passed under my nose.

It smelled like needle had been jammed up my nostril and straight into my brain. It did have the side-effect of clearing the grogginess out of my brain though.

“Try not to move,” the man said. He was grinning, presumably at the effect that his little potion had had on me.

“Those are some smelling salts that you have there.” I told him.

“My own recipe,” the man said a little smugly while peering into my eyes.

“I know a number of people that might pay good money for that recipe.” I told him, doing my best to submit to the examination.

“I know, but then you'd have to tell them where you got the recipe and we value our privacy here.” He seemed satisfied with his examination and moved me so that he could examine the back of my head where he made a tutting noise.

“What is this place?” I asked. It was a toss-up as to what question I asked at the time but the top contenders were either that one or asking who the man was.

“It doesn't have any kind of grand name or anything. We don't call it “The library” or “The Collection” or anything quite so ostentatious although it is both of those things. Mostly, the three of us just call it “home”.”

He moved round to the front and was examining the insides of my mouth to check for any injury. Having a strangers fingers inside your mouth will put a crimp on conversation.

“I know that's not an answer that satisfies though.” He said as he seemed satisfied by what he saw. “Lift your shirt up please.”

I did as I was told. Always best to do what the Doctor tells you to do. He bent to feel around my bruised midriff and to listen at my chest.

“Breathe in,” he commanded. “And out.”

I complied.

“Ok. You're not that badly damaged.” He told me. “A few bruised ribs which are going to hurt like the devil for a while, a minor concussion which is going to leave you with a hell of a head-ache. And you've bit the inside of your lip. I'll mix some stuff together to help with that and the injury on your head and we'll strap up your ribs. I'd tell you not to exert yourself but I think that that would be a waste of words don't you?”

He said that last with a smile.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Never mind.” He said He had opened the satchel and was pulling out various pots and bottles, mixing some of them together to make a salve.

“So who are you and what is this place?” I asked, going for both questions at the same time to see if it would trick him into answering at least one of them.

He laughed. “Sorry, yes. Kerrass did say that you were a scholar and that you wouldn't be satisfied with short answers.” He moved my head so that he could start smearing stuff over the back of my head. They normally warn you that this process stings but in this case it didn't. Instead it seemed as though it was abnormally cold to the touch.

“My name is Pula. I am a doppler.”

“Oh.” I said just before my brain caught up with my ears. “Oooohhhhh”.

“Yes. I take it you know what a Doppler is.”

“I think it would be fair to....Ow....say that I know what a Doppler can do but I don't know what one is.”

“An honest answer. Good.”

“You can change shapes but only within relatively confined parameters of roughly equivalent mass. You could probably change from a human to an elf or dwarf without much effort but you couldn't turn into a troll or a beetle.”

“Correct on most counts. It doesn't also mention that when we get someone's shape that we also get a smattering of their memories, skills and talents as well. For instance, you met the Skelligan stonemason but he wouldn't have the first idea how to deal with your injuries.”

“So who are you now.”

“A Dr Nathanial Torrence.” He began to work on strapping up my ribs, putting my arm on his shoulder. “He came here to consult one of the books about twenty years ago. A skilled Doctor but a bit limited in his understanding of anything outside what was going on with his patient.”

“I know the type.” I said wincing at the tightness of the bandage. I wondered at how well I was taking this whole situation and considered whether I was going into shock. “Highly intelligent but relatively few social skills. Hell, I've been that type more times than I care to think.”

“Honest of you. But since then, this is the shape I use when I'm reading up on anatomy and medical techniques. He has this trick of absorbing medical knowledge with an ease that my other shapes struggle with.”

“How many shapes do you have?”

“Quite a few. But if I'm honest I only use about half a dozen on a regular basis. Unless she has any special requests.”

“She?”

“My wife.”

“Your wife's a Succubus.”

“Oh yes. We are well suited to each other.”

“I can feel bits of my brain shrivelling up and waving surrender in protest.” I commented after thinking about this for a while.

He laughed for a long time.

“Let me get you something to drink.” He told me. “And I'll tell you the story.”

He came back a few moments later with a cup of, well, it looked and smelt and tasted like mulled wine except. The cup was cold so whatever heat that came from it must have been some kind of chemical reaction to what herbs had been put into the drink. It was delicious, not tasting like any medicine I had had before.

The Doppler had changed shape again, now dressed in an undeniably handsome shape. He looked like a rugged out doors type. The kind that always had the female students going all gaga and using descriptive words like “dreamy” and “lickable”.

I swear I'm not making those words up.

“So here it is.” He said, pulling over a chair and sitting opposite me. I tried to sit up, “No no,” he said, “Take your time. Give the drugs a bit of time to work and for you to adjust to them. You would probably get dizzy which would mean that I would have to fix you again.”

I subsided but he did help me sit up and propped a pillow underneath my back so that drinking would be easier.

“So you've met Sally?” he asked as he sat and put his slippered feet up on the bed. The slippers were pink and were at odds with his otherwise rugged exterior.

I nodded and took another sip.

“Godlings are fascinating creatures,” Pula started. He sounded rather like a lecturer at the university. “They are, at the same time as being child-like and innocent, extremely clever and sometimes they can be uncommonly wise. They see beauty in places that the rest of us don't. In Sally's case, she sees beauty in the written word. She finds the shapes and the patterns of it absolutely fascinating. So she was the first of the three of us to come here really.”

I listened carefully to the story, sipping from my drink slowly.

“This cabin is built on the top of an old mine. It isn't human in construction as the mining techniques are far too advanced for humans, so I suspect it was dwarven or maybe gnomish in basis. I struggle to believe it was Elven though, but anyway.” He peered at me. “You must stop me if I go off on a tangent.”

“Not in the least.” I told him, hiding my smile behind my cup.

“So anyway, Sally had chosen this as her home and was collecting written works since long before I came here. Books, pieces of paper, scrolls, maps, tapestries. So long as it contained written language then she collected it and stored it here in the mines.”

“How long's she been doing this?”

“I have no idea. I was the next to arrive and the collection was....considerable by the time that I got here. Utterly without order though. She stacked them and kept them according to where it seemed appropriate to her rather than to any other kind of order. She couldn't read at the time you see so, all she had to go on were the shapes of the letters and odd pictures and engravings.

“All things being equal she actually did quite well. When I came here I would often find selections of books by the same author had been kept together because she recognised the pattern of the authors name and decided to keep them together.”

“Storing all of that underground though....”

“Oh yes I see. That's why I know the construction isn't human. There is no damp in the mine. There's some kind of air filtration system that keeps out harmful gasses such as fire-damp and the like but it also means that the parchment or skins or cloth that the things are written on, are perfectly preserved. They degrade over time but that's where I come in. Copying the old and degrading works onto the new. I can do that because of the lack of other harmful effects on the paper. Otherwise it would be the work of thousands of people working around the hours of the day to keep things properly preserved.

“I arrived next you see. I was wandering around the countryside having thought it prudent to leave my most recent village as they had begun to notice that I wasn't entirely....human. I was a monk in that place and I preserved the abbey while working with the books. The vast majority of the other monks had been taken off by the wars of the time which left me in my skin of an elderly monk and some of the other older monks who died off one by one until only I was left. The Abbot left to follow his ambitions and I begged for leave to die there which he granted.

“I lasted ten years before the villagers noticed that all was not quite right with me.

“I packed a wagon full of books, carefully disguising them with sack-cloth and hay, changed my shape to that of a poor farmer and left.

“Through a variety of misadventures, I found myself near here. I was camping one night when I woke up one day to fine Sally going through my personal diary. She had lifted it off my person in the middle of the night and was leafing through it carefully, admiring my penmanship.

“She fled of course when I woke up but I waited, took a couple of my other books from the wagon and she gradually overcame her nervousness. I am blessed with being the kind of scholar that likes to share knowledge with like-minded folks, rather than that kind of arrogant idiot who prefers to horde all the knowledge to themselves, so I started to show her that the funny patterns that she so admired were actually words and language that could be read.

“She was delighted and picked up the trick of reading and writing with remarkable speed. Like many, I suppose I mistook her for a child and as such I had underestimated her hunger for the meaning behind the words. She led me to this place and showed me her collection.”

He grinned at the memory.

“At first I was quite intimidated by it all. But between us we set about working through the treasure trove that she had put together. A lot of it was meaningless of course, sales receipts, love letters or diaries. But together they gave pictures of that time and place. I saw the value of it all and offered to help Sally with her collection to which she agreed. I taught her to read. The various human languages as well as elven and Dwarven and we set about organising her collection.

Sally would regularly go off and return with new bits of paper, sometimes papers, scrolls or another book. It was clear that she had probably stolen them but she was clever enough to never get caught. We spent our time organising her collection and reading from the vast treasure trove of information that we had access to.”

He sighed at a memory.

“Then my wife came. She was running as, she tells me, her people often are. She had made the mistake of bestowing her charms and graces on a nobleman of some power and when she decided to move on to other lovers, as her nature dictates, the man flew into a jealous rage, slew her other lovers and pursued her in an effort to bring her back to him. In chains if necessary.

“Sally found her, unconscious and exhausted in the fields, maybe a mile away and was trying to drag her here by the ankle which was not going well. Instead she came and got me and we managed to heal the poor thing of her injuries, but in taking her away, her pursuers completely missed her. As I was using a shape that moved quickly and easily through the undergrowth, the noble's trackers couldn't see where I had been when I carried her off and rode straight past us.

“As we nursed her to health, Sally and I, I fell in love with her and....thankfully.... she fell in love with me. We got a visiting priest to marry us and here we stayed.”

“Hold on,” I interrupted before he carried on. “With all due respect to the lady and to you. How does that work. Succubi are Succubi after all and....” My words petered out in the face of the man grinning at me.

“You're asking me how I managed to keep her. Why hasn't she got bored of me and moved on?”

“Yes. I suppose I am.” I subsided gratefully.

“I'm not a jealous man. I knew what I was dealing with and I knew what I was getting into. Yes she goes off. For days, weeks or even months at a time as she falls in love with a new man. She is....incapable of being faithful in the human sense of the word and I needed to make peace with that.”

“That must have been hard.”

“Not as hard as you might think. Remember that I am not human either. She is not faithful but she is incredibly loyal. I don't mind her going off and having her adventures so long as she comes back to me and tells me before she goes so that Sally and I don't end up worrying about her. More recently though it has been less of an issue.”

“Why?”

“People come to us.”

“I see.”

“I don't think you do. Not yet anyway. But there's another factor that helps me keep her interest. I can change shape which means that my appearance, manner and almost personality changes with it. So if she wants something different then I can provide that for her. She still, occasionally wants something new and fresh so she does occasionally still go off but...” he shrugged. “I am alright with that. As I say, she comes back. There may come a day where she doesn't.... But until then....”

He shrugged again. “I am happy and content and I hope I make her happy and content. She certainly hasn't left yet and we have been together for a long time.”

I nodded, considering this for a while

“So people come to you.” I prompted.

“Yes. My wife has a talent for organising things and she saw a way that we could turn things to our advantage. Rather than accruing paper without pattern and purpose, she argued that we should charge for our services. If you want knowledge out of our collection then you must give us something in return. Whether that is new knowledge, food, supplies or some time spent with my wife then that is what we ask. We have had enough of a response over the years that we have had to expand the mine twice, with the aid of some people who came here looking for some piece of information or other. We expanded our preservation spells with the aid of a wizard and now here we are.”

“How come I've never heard of you?”

He considered me for a while. “Oxenfurt trained yes?”

“Yes.”

“Oxenfurt is a nice place. I've been many times but it's still a little elitist. You think that knowledge is a privilege that must be paid for. You can't walk in to the university without sufficient money for it and demand to be taught. You require scholarships and patrons and money. Always more money. What this means is that otherwise perfectly intelligent students are kept from the knowledge that they need. How many clever men and women who might change the world with what they could do or discover in that university, have been turned away because they couldn't meet the price?”

“You are not wrong. But forgive me, you charge for the use of your knowledge.”

“But there is a difference. Here we only ever ask for whatever the knowledge seeker can afford. An exchange of knowledge, time, maybe some food or similar. We believe that knowledge should be freely exchanged. How much better would the world be if everyone knew about things like crop rotations and the proper uses of personal hygiene. Also the benefits of having a cat in every house alongside the uses of regular bathing.”

“But you still keep it here, hidden and locked away.”

“There are two factors. The first is, if we advertised ourselves. How long before a unit of church knights turns up and destroys the three of us for the monsters that we are, before burning the books because they contain things that are considered heretical and dangerous. Or a noble comes to destroy those parts of history that he dislikes. Or the Elves, in an effort to Prove that they were here before humanity and so humanity is stealing what is rightfully theirs without realising that the elves themselves stole the land from the dwarves and the gnomes.

“In our warrens we have the information with which Alfred Nable constructed his blasting powder. What happens if another person recreates that formula and uses it in a manner that Nable specifically killed himself to prevent. In our warrens we have information on the biology of elves that would mean that the humans could wipe the elven race out permanently. Or the dryads out of the Brokilon, or the mer-people out of the sea, or the vodyanoi for that matter.”

He leaned forward.

“Or someone comes and discovers an air-born toxin that would wipe humanity from the face of the planet.”

He sighed and relaxed after leaning forward with his passion.

“We consider ourselves custodians rather than teachers. Yes, my wife too which is another reason that I think she stayed. Knowledge is power and with the contents of our warrens and mines we could make or break the world. There is stuff in here that could benefit the world but there is also stuff in here that could destroy it.”

“I know the answer,” I responded, “but indulge another scholar. Why don't you do your own editing of the place?”

He smiled. “Who am I to say what is important and what isn't. What is vital to another might be dangerous to me.” he shrugged. “We collect, we learn we aid while we can. My wife has some empathic abilities and as such she can normally tell when a person is dangerous or wants the knowledge for evil purpose. They are led away or prevented from coming.”

I rubbed my ribs. “She's not that empathic.”

He smiled. “You took us by surprise, almost coming straight through the village. Normally visitors spend a bit of time down there before coming up. She's also a little on edge.”

“Why?”

He laughed again. “You'd have to ask her. You well enough to stand? and I'll introduce you properly.”

I picked myself up.

“How are the ribs?” He asked me.

“Pretty good actually. Actually I don't....”

He took the bandages off me. The redness and the bruising that I had been expecting had vanished. I looked up at him in astonishment.

“All kinds of knowledge in our warrens. I read a book on rib injuries once and this is what they recommend.”

“This could save lives.” I pointed out.

“Yes. But the means to heal people is often a derivative from the means to harm people. The stuff that I used to heal you with catches fire in presence of water. Notice how I dried your skin before applying the salve? Now imagine a rainy battlefield, or even a misty one. Catapults with clay balls full of the stuff thrown into a city. Once it catches fire, it does not stop burning.”

I shivered at the thought.

-

I shook myself out of the memory with some difficulty. I was stood in the corner of the bedroom where I had once sat and had my ribs taped up. A little patch of colour caught my eye under some ash and I carefully picked my way over and pulled out a little doll made of straw. It had dried out, presumably in the heat but you could still see the overall shape as well as the small red shirt that had been stitched over the thing. I carefully carried it with me as I went back outside.

I didn't recognise the doll. If I didn't know better then I would have assumed that it was Sally's. But at the same time I struggled to mesh the two things together. The extremely intelligent scholar that I had met who could discuss higher mathematics, ethics and engineering while at the same time taking childish delight from Kerrass tickling her, swinging her around and running through the grass with her on his back.

But somehow I didn't think she would mind the assumption.

I put the doll remains on the bundle of blanket that contained the child and stood there looking at it for a while.

I had known these three people for a matter of days. Not even a week as I stayed with them while Kerrass had gone off to hunt the beast. I had laughed with them, shared their food and talked with them long into the night. Not one of them would have been out of place in the university of Oxenfurt. Indeed, I thought that Pula was possibly the most intelligent man I had ever known.

He knew more than I knew on every subject that I had ever studied. His arguments were so vast and far reaching. Compassionate and cautious while at the same time having a cynicism about people. I remembered one of the things that he had said to me.

“People are stupid.” He told me at one point when I was tackling him about the fact that his little family unit were keeping this wealth of knowledge from the world.

“Individual people are clever, they think about things, consider consequences, take people as they find them. The reach past prejudice and learned behaviours. They think things through from beginning to end. But as a whole....people....and I don't just mean humans but also elves and dwarves and all of the intelligent creatures that walk on the continent....people are filled with fear. Anger and hate. They are reactionary and ignorant and so...very....scared.

“Did you know that when the Vampiric race first came her through the conjunction of fears that they were so terrified by humanity that they studied them, almost to extinction in some places?”

I shook my head.

(Frederick's note: Reminding the reader that Pula had told me this before I met Ariadne)

“Fear.” Pula said. “Reaction. They didn't think. They saw something that they did not understand and studied it until they broke it without consideration for the thing that they broke.

“I was once told that the intelligence of a mob is the lowest individual intelligence in the room divided by the number of people in the mob. And yet the most powerful Kings and Queens are always the monarchs that harness the powers of the mob for their own end.

“Individuals are clever,” he told me. “People are stupid.”

I remembered that I had nothing to say. I had thought of the mob rule in Novigrad during the height of the Witch-hunters reign of terror where good people burned the old women and the magic users who only days before had lanced boils and healed the sick. It hough of the way that the people cheered.

I shook my head again to try and free myself from the image and turned to look for Kerrass. He was halfway up a ladder, that he had found somewhere, and was trying to free Pula's body from the tree that he had been nailed to.

“I'm sorry,” I called. “I should have been helping.”

He shook his head.

“See to Saffron.” He said. “I've got this.”

Another thought got through the fog of anger and fury that had covered my brain. “I'm going to call Ariadne,” I told him. “Maybe she can salvage some of the papers. It seems a shame that their life's work go up in smoke without at least trying to do something to preserve it.”

Kerrass thought about this for a while.

“No,” he said after a moment. “No, that's a good idea. You should do that.”

“Are you sure?” I checked. He was arguing with himself again and I wanted to make sure I got the answer out that he wanted to give.

“Call her,” he said after another pause. “Call her, you're right. Better Ariadne than....” He shook his head again before nodding to me. “Call her,” he said again before turning back to trying to work the nails free from Pula's ankles and wrists.

I moved a little way off towards the horses to fetch another blanket as well.

I took my pendant out and grasped it tightly, picturing Ariadne in my mind.

She was a little while in coming, her touch feather gentle on my mind.

“Freddie? What's up?” She sounded surprised. We had only spoken through the pendant a week earlier. We were trying to space out our conversations as I was afraid that we would run out of things to say to each other.

“I...” a sob choked me. “I need your help.”

“Is it Kerrass?” I had a sensation of movement and the feeling of air in her lab out in Angral. She gathered up a satchel and started putting things in the bag.

“No,” I managed, forcing some words out past the lump in my throat “Kerrass is fine. I just....We need your help and I....I kind of need to see you.” I sobbed again.

“I'll be there as soon as I can. I just need to sort a couple of things out.”

I nodded as she broke contact. I got another blanket from a horse and went back to where Saffron's body lay and knelt next to her, spreading the blanket out on the ground.

The day was getting darker and I thought that I could hear the rumble of thunder.

-

“So you've met my wife Saffron?” Pula asked me.

“Briefly.” I said managing to get a smile on my face in front of the horribly beautiful woman in front of me. “At least I believe I met her hooves.” I tried for a joke.

She laughed, turning to Kerrass who was playing checkers with Sally. “You're right. He is funny.”

Ok, so what to say about meeting a Succubus for the first time. It seems ludicrous to describe her as beautiful. Of course she was beautiful. This is literally a creature that survives by seducing men and feeding off their essence. Of course she was beautiful but that is just words written on a page.

Ariadne is beautiful. So beautiful that I wake up and think I must be dreaming when I realise that I'm going to be marrying her and she surprises me with it every time I see her. So beautiful that she frightens me but she has a very particular kind of beauty. It is the beauty of the evil queen in stories but as if she has had someone turn around and tell her that being one of the good guys is a nice thing as well.

She gets taken aback by happy thoughts, covers her mouth when she smiles and this... endearing nervousness is what makes me look at her beyond the superficial way of saying. “She is a beautiful woman.” I love her for the intelligence in her and the sense of humour that she uses to look out at the world.

The Empress is very beautiful. She has the classical face, high cheekbones, clean jaw line and piercing eyes that would not look out of place on portraits of the most beautiful women in the world. She also has the scar on her cheek which somehow accentuates her beauty but more than that... To me, the Empresses beauty comes from her passion and intelligence, her energy and her ability to relate to everyone from the highest lord in the land all the way down to the muckiest commoner. That air of having seen things and done things.

That knowledge and worldly experience. That's what makes her beautiful.

Madame Yennefer has the beauty of a storm cloud.

Madame Eilhart has the beauty of a cold, flawless and remote statue.

Dr Shani has the beauty of the girl you've known for ever whose beauty always takes you by surprise when you return home.

Beautiful women all.

But there is a difference here. The sight of a Succubus just makes a male mind think of sex. And that's when she's not working at it with her skills and magic.

For physical characteristics, Saffron was around five ft and four inches but her height varied depending on how she used her legs. Her hair was a deep burnished red. Not the ginger frizz that Marion has but a deep and dark crimson that just doesn't occur in human hair without the use of dye. Her hair was long and she had it tumbling down her back. At various points in our acquaintanceship she wore it in a braid over one shoulder or another, piled high on her head but most commonly she wore it down and when she just let it go it went down as far as the bottom of her back.

Yes she had horns that swept down from her temples, round the back of her ears and then along the jaw line until the points extended to just back from her chin.

Her skin tone seemed a little darker than most women on the northern continent and to look at her you would think that she was wearing deep eye shadow so that her eyes looked deep and dark and smoky. I would later find that that was either how her eyes were coloured or was a measure of the effect that she was having on me. Her limbs seemed long, supple and smooth but also with toned muscle underneath the skin. There were tattoos on the backs of her hands that reached up and around her wrists and traced up her forearms. All in the same darker shade that lined her eyes. They were the tattoos of leaves and natural shapes. As though she wore the meadowland on her arms.

At the time she was wearing a long dark blue....dress doesn't really describe it well. It came round her neck and down across her front to cover her chest before it went down and became a skirt. It was not small and skimpy, it was a practical piece of clothing that left her arms and legs free to move. But I would be lying if it wasn't also painfully obvious to me that she wasn't wearing anything underneath it.

She also wore a choker of blue leather, similar in shade to her other garment and a silver pendant that depicted a winged fairy that held a blue jewel.

It seemed that blue was her favourite colour

Somewhere around her mid thigh her human legs started to turn into goats legs which she propped onto a foot stool.

“Saffron?” I asked her, reaching for a topic of conversation, any topic of conversation to take my mind off how unbelievably sexy she was.

“Yes.” She smiled as she accepted a glass of some wine from her husband that was cooking us all dinner at the same time. “Because I'm spicy.”

She grinned at me and I couldn't help but feel as though she was laughing at me despite the fact that the line about spice was obviously an old joke.

“Be nice Saff.” her husband told her. “You did give him a concussion and three bruised ribs.”

“He was sneaking up on us,” she protested without much force.

“Yes.” Her husband responded with a deadpan sense of humour. “If by sneaking up on us you mean, riding up the middle of the track without care for stealth. Upwind of us so that we could smell him coming while also chatting to his companion openly. Yes. Sneaking I thought I recognised it.”

She pouted at him but it was clearly an old joking argument. Pula was preparing some chicken. He had taken some chicken, stuffed it with some kind of spiced meet mix while adding some, I think it was garlic butter, and then tying it all together with some thin slices of ham, before pan frying it.

“Yes,” I thought to myself. “Focus on the food.” It'll take your mind of the unspeakably sexual creature that was sat next to you drinking wine.

“Am I making you uncomfortable Master Scholar?” She asked me.

I took a deep breath and turned to face her, feeling the colour rising in my cheeks. “Would you care for honesty madam?” I asked carefully.

“Ooh madam is it.” She lifted her hooves of the foot stool and leant forward. “Go on then.”

There's a moment that comes occasionally when an attractive woman does this. Whether intentionally or unintentionally she accidentally shows you a little more flesh than you had entirely been prepared for. The overwhelming part of your instincts is that you should sneak a look at the forbidden area. This is a mistake.

Even though I was now absolutely convinced that Saffron was teasing me mercilessly for her own amusement I forced myself to carefully maintain eye contact.

“Despite your teasing,” I told her, being careful with my words so as not to give away the fact that I was all but drooling, “Which is not a game that I enjoy by the way.” I added. “You are perfectly aware of the fact that you are a beautiful woman. And yes,” I had to swallow, “I find you intimidatingly beautiful.”

“Ooohh,” she pouted. “I like him.”

Kerrass chuckled.

“Stop playing with your food Saff.” Pula told her.

“Not much to look at though.” She commented.

“Looks can be deceiving Saffron,” Kerrass told her from where he was being thrashed by Sally across the game board. “That one satisfied the most jaded courtesans that I know of, in both Vengerberg and Vergen.”

He said it with a disgusted tone of voice.

“Did he now?” Saffron's gaze became assessing and contemplative.

“Saffron,” warned Pula, gently.

She laughed suddenly and she was a different woman. The hard, mocking edge left her. Suddenly she came across as a laughing young woman. “I'm so sorry,” she said putting her hand on my fore-arm and leaning over conspiratorially. “I jest, more to wind him up than anything.” she gestured at her husband.

“But you never manage it though.” He said, spooning a creamy looking sauce over the chicken

“Can you forgive me?” She leant forward so that she was looking up into my face while making her eyes absolutely huge.

Her eyes were blue, so light in shade that they were almost white.

I was so shocked at the seeming change in her character that I didn't know what to say.

She did confirm for me though that the previous movement of clothing that accidentally exposed some shadowed skin to me was no accident as this time there was no such shadowed opening.

“Of course he forgives you. He's a sucker for a pretty face.” Kerrass commented from the other side of the room.

I took a deep breath to push Kerrass' comment from my mind.

“I cannot madame,” I told her. “For I have already forgiven you.”

She laughed in delight and kissed me on the cheek, quick as lightening before gathering up her cup of wine and sitting back down. She was still distressingly attractive but there was less of an....uncomfortable, aggressive air about it.

“Come on Kerrass.” Sally complained. “I've beaten you six times now and you promised me a present last time you were here.”

“Did I?” wondered the Witcher with comic exaggeration. “A present? I remember making no such promise.”

“You did,” Sally protested. “You said you'd bring me a book with more than three hundred pages in it.”

Kerrass considered the matter for a while “Really,” he wondered. “That doesn't sound like the sort of thing that I would do.”

“You did. You promised.” She muttered darkly. I shivered, remembering some of the things I had heard about what Godlings could do to people when they got irate.

“Remember Sally, I'm not a very nice man. I break promises all the time.”

“No you don't.” She protested but I detected a little bit of fear coming into the girls voice as Pula came round and topped my cup up, poured for his wife while giving her a kiss. It was not lost on me that the kiss seemed genuine and warm with love and affection.

“Well, lets see what fell into my saddlebags shall we?”

Kerrass reached into the bag that was next to him and brought out a large leather book which I recognised as being a book of Skelligan ballads as copied down by the bard Collarion. I remembered the scandal of that book. Collarion had got a Skald drunk and had got him to tell him all of the ballads and epic poems before fleeing the islands before the Druidic protectors of the aural traditions could catch him. Rumour had it that the bard had made a fortune before managing to drown in a bath tub under mysterious circumstances.

Sally counted the pages suspiciously.

“Four hundred and twenty three,” she cheered triumphantly. She picked the book up, tucked it under one arm and strode off to sit, cross legged in a corner of the room where she placed the book on the floor in front of her, cupped her chin under her hands and started reading.

“That's her occupied for a while,” Pula commented as he handed our food round.

It was delicious.

“Where did you learn to cook this?” I asked him.

“Where else?” he asked me, settling into his own chair. “I read a book on the subject. It strikes me as odd that we go through life with the basic need of eating and that we often go out of our way to only eat disgusting food.”

“Or drink shite beer.” Kerrass added.

“Or have bad sex.” Of course it was the Succubus that said it. “Honestly, is it too much to ask to learn how to do these things properly.”

I blushed. Although not innocent I was, and am, unused to discussing such things openly and with children present. Or rather, child-like people present.

We ate in silence and I noticed that I wasn't the only one who watched the portion of the food that had been left out for Sally go cold, untouched, next to her knees as she read through her “present”, ignoring her food.

Pula laughed as he collected the plates. “I'll take that as sign that people liked my cooking then.” He told us. I smiled my agreement and leant back. He stacked the plates in a corner of the cooking area before pouring everyone, other than Sally, a cup of wine and sat down with his own sigh of contentment.

“So then Kerrass.” He took a drink from his cup and grimaced at the taste. I don't know what he was complaining about, I had already taken a sip and I thought that the wine was beautiful. “What can we do for you?”

Kerrass set his cup aside.

“There's a monster I need some help identifying.”

“Oh?”

“I think it's a mutation from a siren, Lamia or Ekhidna.” He told the story about what we'd been hunting. “I want to be sure before I go and make a fool of myself.”

“And get yourself killed,” Pula smiled as he said it.

“That too.” Kerrass admitted, “but right now, I'm more concerned about the embarrassment.”

The three of us laughed at him.

Sally didn't, she was too busy being engrossed in her book.

Pula exchanged some glances with Saffron who nodded.

“We can help you.” Pula told him.

“How much will it cost?”

“Come on Kerrass,” Saffron grinned, “you're not that naïve.”

“I'm not. Let's just say that I want to see his face.”

Saffron nodded, and shared a smirk with Kerrass. “I want him.” She pointed at me.

I spluttered some of my wine through my nose and started choking until Pula clapped me on the back.

“You can't have him permanently,” Kerrass told her. “For how long?”

“A night and a day, or the length of your hunt. Whichever is longest.”

“It's going to take me a few days at least.”

“Then that's how long I can have him.”

“He must agree to it.” Kerrass responded quickly, after pointedly ignoring my discomfort.

“Very well,” she agreed meeting his gaze. I was reeling a little and felt dizzy. The events were spiralling out of my control far too quickly. “But you, Kerrass, must convince him.”

“I don't think he will need much convincing,” Pula commented with a grin in my direction.

“He might.” Saffron glanced in my direction before turning back to Kerrass. What little I saw of her gaze was...appraising. “But my price stands.”

Kerrass considered this for a moment before shrugging.

“Done.” He said.

“Wait,” I tried. “Hang on.”

“Excellent.” She exclaimed happily, “Then I shall go and prepare.” Then she was gone, moving faster than I had thought possible.

Pula moved through the other door in the cabin, there was a thunk and the sounds of a hinge.

“Kerrass.” I couldn't decide whether I was angry, scared or excited.

“Freddie,” he mimicked. “Be a man Freddie. Man up.”

(I would remind people that might judge Kerrass harshly that this was still relatively early in our relationship)

“But...”

“What is it Freddie? Afraid?”

“A little.

“Or is it that you don't like being haggled over.”

“That too.”

“Think about it. You have visited several whore-houses since we met where the price was agreed with the bordello madams. Are you saying that you are better than the women we slept with on those nights?”

When confronted like that I didn't know what to say. Again, I would remind you that this was early in my journeys and I was still working hard to overcome my societal bias. I wanted to yell at him and scream and tell him that I was not some commodity to be haggled over or used.

But he was right. That was what we did in the whore houses and bordellos. I felt myself falling down the rabbit hole.

That's a term that we use for describing what happens when you have a philosophical question that you don't know the answer to and all it does is that it leads you to more questions. If you're lucky, you learn something new about yourself when you go down the rabbit hole. If you are unlucky it can take you a while to pull yourself out of that hole.

I wanted to tell Kerrass that I was better than those women but I already knew how he would respond. He would say “But what makes you better than them? Your social standing? An accident of birth. That answer will be the same if I argued that I was better because I was wealthy as I certainly hadn't earned the money that I had, that I was better educated or because I was a man.

All of these things were down to a simple accident of birth. Modern nobility has long since moved past the state where a man can become powerful by dint of his own effort alone. Sooner or later he would need allies, money a patron or other kind of backing. It is rarer and rarer for a man to change his class in the modern day. We know those people that manage it but make no mistake, they are the exceptions to the rule.

My Grandfather managed it and as a result, our family was almost universally hated by the noble class that we had joined. Sir Rickard (although I had not met him by this point) often complains about the fact that he is rarely accepted by the knights and nobles that he got lifted up to when he was knighted but he is also no longer a common soldier. This makes him hated by a lot of both sides.

This is one of the reasons Sir Robart hates my family and Sir Rickard both. The other being that he's a massive dick-head.

This is still true today. You can think of odd examples of people that have lifted themselves up from the dirt to cause the mighty lords of the land to tremble, but there aren't many that have survived the attempt. As mostly, to do that, the only to do so is on the battlefield and not many people survive that effort.

I came out of my thoughts to discover that Kerrass was reading a book that Pulla had handed him and Pulla was watching me with a slight smile on his face.

Yes I was angry that Kerrass had traded me away for a book. Not even that, I was traded for access to a book.

He realised that I was looking at him.

“Well?” He asked.

“I'm not happy about this Kerrass.”

He smirked a little. “Scared?” he asked again.

“A little.”

“Of what?”

“Don't Succubi kill their prey.”

Kerrass and Pula looked at each other before laughing. I think that that was the first time I heard Kerrass laugh properly and uncontrollably. I had heard laughter and chuckling but not this kind of side-holding laughter.

“Your religious prejudices coming through again Freddie,” Kerrass told me.

“That's not how it works.” Pula added. “She feeds of your life essence yes but where would be the sense in killing you. Then she couldn't feed off you again. The process is not unpleasant...”

“Besides,” Kerrass interrupted, waving Pula into silence. “We both know that you're going to do it.”

“Why's that?”

“Because you're a scholar Freddie. You're curious.”

I didn't have a response to that.

(A/N: I know, I know. I promise that there'll be more cheerful stories coming.....eventually)