(A/N: The following chapter contains some discussion regarding the separation of church and state. The debate of this issue in the real world is not something that I'm interested in getting into and I may say that my views on the subject are different from Freddie's views. However Freddie approaches this topic from the attitude of a fantasy middle ages world and he comes from a background of idealised religious belief that I do not share. As I say though, I am not interested in debating this topic, just in telling the stories.)

(Warning: The following contains past tense accounts of horrific injury towards a woman. She is much better now but it might upset some people)

I think, on the whole, that it would once have actually been quite a nice village.

The kind of idyllic country place that people imagine when they get told about countryside villages. Woodland on either side, no real industry to speak of. I mean yes, there was a small scale tannery and a smith but beyond that there wasn't really anything there. It was... peaceful. I understand that a lot of my feelings on these kinds of places have been tainted over the last little while because of my experiences up in the north. But I could honestly imagine finding myself living in a place like this.

It was all built along the road, as I found when I left Kerrass back at the inn. He had returned to the council to listen to what we supposed to be their many and varied untruths while I collected my spear, hid Father Gardan's axe under the bed for lack of anywhere else to put it, made sure that my dagger was tucked into my belt and wandered off.

It was quiet but the birds were singing in the trees and I could see children chasing a wheel made from a metal band from a barrel down the road with a stick. They were laughing as they went and I had to dodge to one side to let them past. Whatever else you could say about the place, it didn't seem like the kind of place that a Demon is playing around with. It seemed... nice.

But it was quiet. As I walked down the main street there were a couple of houses away from the road front that were obviously abandoned and empty, families having either died or moved on. There was also a general kind of shabbiness to the place. Doors that hadn't been varnished or whitewashed in ages stood there, bleached dry by the sun. Even to my untrained eye it was obvious that the Thatcher wasn't really keeping up with demand and that he could make a tidy sum by just walking down the main street and pointing out where the weather would soon come in through the roof.

I went and had a look at the Smithy first. A young man was working at the forge, someone I took for an apprentice of some kind. Mostly he was just keeping the forge hot so that when his master came back then the work could continue without pause. Apparently it takes less effort to maintain a forge at the proper temperature than it does to get the damn thing lit. He was also doing some minor work around the place. As I watched, looking at the wares that they were selling, he was working on a set of skinning knives and heating some metal to make arrow-heads. He was quiet, industrious and when I turned up he told me that his master was just away seeing to some business and that he would be back soon. If I needed anything then I should wait for him.

I asked him the price of a small hatchet for splitting firewood for kindling. He told me the price but that I would need to wait for the Smith himself to return before I could hand over any money and that he wasn't allowed to haggle on the subject.

I tried to ask him a few questions, about the demon or the doings of the village but he pleaded ignorance and told me that he needed to get back to work. He didn't seem particularly afraid, there were no marks or bruises on him, no signs of his nose having been broken and he was working hard. To my mind that showed that he was relatively happy in his work and that the smith was not that bad a man. Just a little....

What was he really?

I shook my head as I walked on. Kerrass likes to say that it is useless to try and theorise when you don't know everything. All you end up doing is twisting what you know to suit the facts that you have managed to gather rather than the other way round. That was what I was here for. To gather facts so that later, in the privacy of our room, we might be able to put them all together in a way that might make some sense.

I went to the Bowyr next. I wanted to give the impression that I was just walking down the road, poking my head into the shops and the craftspeople. Really though, I was heading towards the church and looking for a herbalist or a herb-woman of some kind as between a village priest and a village healer you can normally get your hands on all the gossip that a village can contain. Often more gossip than you want if the truth be told. But if I just walked off like a man with a purpose then there was a risk that people would see that, get suspicious and clam up. I needed people to talk to me.

The Bowyr was a quiet man, stoop shouldered with the hugely muscled arms of an experienced archer. Rickard and the others didn't display that kind of thing as they prided themselves on their accuracy rather than the training of the Longbowman who stand in ranks and whose job it is to just send arrow after arrow off in the direction of the enemy. Those men are surprisingly large. He was one of them.

I made a show of examining his wares but I didn't really know what I was looking at and it must have shown as the man went back to doing something arcane with a long piece of wood. Again, he seemed reluctant to talk to me. He knew who I was which was different from what had happened with the Smith's apprentice but after he had asked a few questions about what I was looking for when it came to a bow, he dismissed me from his mind. He told me that real bows need to be made from the beginning with the archer in mind and as I wasn't going to be around for very long then I would need to content myself with anything I found in the racks.

I liked him. He had a no-nonsense attitude that I found appealing even though he plainly didn't think very much of me. The bows in his shop that stood on the shelves were well carved and smooth to the touch, well varnished and treated to protect from the weather but they lacked the ornamentation of those people that think that ornamentation makes things better. He was content to let the bows speak for themselves. I liked that. He also sold oilskins, bowstrings, quivers and all the other gear that an archer might want.

I didn't buy anything. Archery is a mystery to me, almost like magic. I don't understand how you can do what archers do. I once saw Dan shoot a rabbit that was moving from cover to cover at a hundred paces. He drew his arrow, fitted it to the string and fired in less time than it's taken you to read this sentence, and the rabbit was dead. Adding to the company stew-pot that night.

It might as well be Sorcery to me. I tried it a couple of times at Rickard's insistence but it left my arms shaking and my back hurting. Somewhat discouraged to find that I had failed to move the bow any more than a hand-span. I finally gave up trying to learn the art when it was made clear to me that real archers start training from a young age and that to try and pick it up later in life is almost impossible.

I passed a Cooper who was treating a series of wooden staves until they bent properly to form the right shape for barrels. I obviously had nothing that would need to be transported so he would know that I was just trying to get information out of him. I also passed a baker who was too busy to talk despite my buying a small lump of bread as I found I was hungry.

The next store was a Cartwright. There were wheels, both wooden rimmed and metal rimmed as well. I know a little about the craft. It's impossible to grow up in a situation where your family owns many wagon trains to not know a little something about wagons and the rules of the road. Wheels are one of those things that you don't appreciate until they're gone, shattered on some stone or pot-hole on the road. Then you either have to fit a spare wheel or wait, and hope that the next person that comes down the road is going to help you rather than slit your throat and steal all your stuff.

It's for that reason that you should always help people when you're on the road, because one day it will be you that needs help and will watch as traveller after traveller just walks past you. For more practical advice, always carry spare wheels and keep the ones that you have properly maintained. Also, if you can afford them, get the metal rimmed ones. They will last longer and will save you money in the long run.

I spent a bit of time talking with the Cartwright. Having enough knowledge about such things meant that I could have an extended conversation with him on the topic before being able to turn things more towards the direction that I wanted them to go. In every way that the Smith of the town had bucked the trend and gone against the stereotype of the big, muscled man. The Cartwright was the opposite. He was huge, massively bearded and was vain enough about the fact that he was obviously bald to have taken a razor to his scalp and shave himself entirely bald. Not entirely successfully it has to be said as there were obvious tufts of hair growing around his ears and the back of his head where he couldn't see. He told me more about the kinds of things that I had already been able to guess, or surmise about the village.

He told me that they had been a moderately busy waypoint town. The kind of place where merchant caravans would stop, take on supplies and spend a night in warm beds where they don't have to be afraid of bandits. It wasn't one of the major routes but it was out of the way enough that some of the people that didn't want to spend as much time going through royal, now imperial, customs checks would often use this road to avoid such Imperial entanglements.

I did ask him about whether or not this technically meant that they supplied and looked after smugglers and he shrugged. He saved and paid his taxes when the collectors did show up, which was rare, and all he did was sell his services to wagon-masters. He had once been a travelling carpenter himself, repairing the wagons for this merchant and that one before he met a girl and settled down. She had died though, in childbirth a couple of years before. He bore it well, but he didn't bother hiding the fact that he was thinking of packing up and moving on. Business had been slow since the Skelligan raiders had begun to relax, opening up the sea route from Novigrad to the North that was faster and cheaper.

Of course I told him to present himself to the Coulthard trading company with my recommendation. We're a merchant company and we could always use good Cart or Wheelwrights.

He did get a bit shifty when I tried to talk about the Demon or what had been going on in the meantime. He did the thing where he looked up and down the street before brusquely telling me that “We don't talk about that.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“We just....” He shifted from foot to foot. The very image of discomfort. “Look, I don't know what's going on alright. I don't. I just....when the screaming or the shouting starts, I lock my door. I'm not afraid of a fight, I'm not. Back when I was on the road I carried a sword and shield like anyone. I didn't really fight in the war as I spent most of my time repairing army wagons. But this situation?”

He shook his head.

“It's not right though. It's not right what's happening and that's the truth. We could use the money, couldn't we all use the money but it's not right.”

“You mean hiring the Witcher?” I asked.

His face froze.

“Look,” I said after it became clear that he wasn't going to answer. “I know that Witchers can be expensive. I know that they're frightening sometimes but Kerrass is a good man....well, he's mostly good, well he's alright. But he won't swindle you.”

He shook his head. “We've all gotta make a living. That's all.” Is what he said. Over and over again. It struck me that he was undoubtedly a good Cartwright but not the brightest tool in the box and my continued questioning was beginning to make him uncomfortable. So I wished him well, reminded him about the fact that the Coulthard trading company would easily find him a job, especially if he was willing to relocate, a condition that he brushed aside easily, and I left.

The following house had a large pig pen attached and the woman that was minding them waved and said hello. She told me that they used the pigs to hunt for truffles in the woods as well as for food. I asked her which woods they went into to hunt and she smiled and told me that all of the woods were fair game when it came to hunting for truffles.

I smiled at her. She was a woman in her early to mid forties I would guess, with a long brown braid that she had round and over her shoulders. Her clothes were hard wearing and she treated the pigs with rough affection. I didn't stay long. She seemed friendly enough but I didn't want to get her into trouble by stopping in the middle of the street and talking to her. I had visions of her husband, who was the town butcher, coming and demanding to know what I had said to her and as such, I moved on.

Also, I'm always a little suspicious of these pig pens that are kept in the town. I always remember the stories that I was told when I was younger about pigs that would eat the dead.

It was Sam that told me those stories in order to attempt to give me nightmares.

I moved on. I skipped the tannery. There was absolutely no reason that I could contrive to go and pay a visit there so it struck me as a wasted visit that would only raise suspicions.

I finally found a reason for the village to exist exactly where it does. It turns out that there was a creek, little more than a stream that was fed by the marshes and flowed through the village from east to west. The village itself is a line that fits on either side of the road that travels north to South. So someone had either drained the land for the village to sit on or, more likely, they had found a flat, relatively stable piece of land for the village to occupy. That, and to build a bridge over the stream. I guessed that there would be many such streams further into the woods or into the marshlands but there it was. A stone bridge that arced over the creek.

It was almost built into the road itself, if you were asleep in the back of a wagon, I'm not sure that you would have realised that you had crossed over it. The roadway itself was well worn and rutted. As I looked, I could see where there had been some efforts to fill several pot holds by the application of some loose gravel but I know from bitter personal experience that such measures never last for long without proper and experienced repair.

I took a bit of time to look round the bridge and was amused when, under the arches I found that someone had scratched a little heart into the stonework. The age old letters spoke to me from some time long ago. “JH Luvs KJ”. As always, whenever I see things like this I am struck with the question of who JH was and whether or not KJ returned their affections. Or, as my cynical soul suspects, did JH do this as a romantic gesture only for KJ to spurn their advances. I hope not. I hope that their story had a happy ending.

I had a bit of a play at examining the creek bed and the banks of the stream for the herbs that Kerrass uses before carefully picking a couple with my sharpest knife and tucking the stems inside my jacket.

The next couple of houses that I came to didn't seem to have anyone in them. I thought that one of them was a fisherman's house, or a net repair person or something. It was something to do with Fish anyway. I thought I could see a smoke house and there were a pile of fishing rods propped in the corner and a fishing net nearby. It didn't look like a shop though and I didn't want to just knock on people's doors so I moved past it. Then there was just a standard house. There were definitely people that lived there. There were sheets on the line and a pair of boots outside the door but I could see no signs of people moving around inside and again, I didn't want to intrude.

I still hadn't got to where I really wanted to go yet which was the chapel but, again truth be told, I was enjoying the stroll. The sun was shining, there weren't any bad smells in the air, I had food in my belly and a problem to solve. Life was good and I was just taking the time to enjoy it as well as enjoying that feeling. Enjoying that my wedding and therefore the end of my travelling was still way off in the distance and that I didn't need to worry about it yet.

“You look happy,” someone called. A woman's voice from a nearby house.

“Hmm? What?” I turned around, I didn't sense any danger. There had been no padding feet, no scuffing noises and no shouts. The street and the town wasn't deserted so if someone tried to attack me then I doubt that they would have been able to do so quietly. I turned and looked over at the small house to be taken by surprise actually. It was not what I had expected.

When I had been approaching this part of the village I had seen just a small cottage, the smallest that I had seen up to that point in the village itself. Now that I was closer and could take a good look at it. It was also, by some margin, the oldest building in the village along with the largest garden. It looked like it was a Witch's cottage. It was one of those places where it was so old that the sheer weight of years had started to compress down on it making it look as though it was melting. The thatch was huge and heavy looking and the stonework was intricate and hypnotic.

Because it was stonework, of the other houses in the village, only the inn, so far, was a stone building. The others were all built from wood, straw and clay. But this was stone and it had been built by stacking bits of stone on top of each other. There was some kind of mortar there but it was old. Tiny windows with shutters were there and a smell of herbs and baking came out.

It was the kind of building where you look at it and you just know that it's been there for hundreds of years and that it will still be there for a hundred more easily.

Attached was a large fenced off area where I could see rows of herbs, carefully planted out and cultivated. Some were covered in, what must have been expensive, glass boxes, others in earthenware pots which I took to mean that there would be mushrooms underneath and still others grew up, tying themselves round cane structures forming triangles of herbs that stood in the ground.

Leaning on the fence in a homespun dress was one of the more attractive women that I've ever had the good fortune to encounter.

And I've met a significant portion of the Lodge of Sorceresses.

Obviously, she's nothing compared to Ariadne, the light of my life and the woman of my dreams, but even allowing for this, she was a good looking woman. I would like to think that I'm not that shallow and that I can see past the physical attributes of the people that I meet but it was so startling that I found myself lost for words.

She was the kind of woman where I found my eyes automatically fixing themselves to her face so that they would never get caught looking elsewhere.

As I say, she was in a plain homespun dress, wearing an apron that was stained with green and dirt and other colours that she presumably got from the flowers of her herb-garden. Underneath the dress I could see large, heavy boots which struck me as a bit incongruous. The dress wasn't particularly low cut, nor was there a slit up the side but she was....shall I say.....shapely. Yes, I think I can get away with describing her as that. From her hands, which were obviously dirty, dangled a trowel and she also had obviously been working at something hard and physical judging by the sheen of sweat on her face.

She was, I would guess, a few years older than me which would put her in her mid twenties. Her hair was dark, long and dread-locked which she had then wrapped around her head to the point that, when I first saw her, I mistook her for wearing a turban. The head covering that you sometimes see people from Ofir where when you chance to see them in port. She had a round face, huge, pale blue eyes, the colour of a winter morning as well as large lips that were grinning at me.

“Don't worry,” she told me. “You're doing better than some. You a herbalist?”

“Errr, what?”

Her grin widened. “ARE.” She raised her voice for comic effect. “YOU. A. HERBALIST? I saw you fishing around down by the river.”

“Oh,” I laughed. “No, I'm not. I know just about enough to know what not to eat in the woods.” I remembered what I was there for. The presence of a beautiful woman does not do my thinking process any good. “It's my master that's the herbalist.”

“Your master?” She beckoned me over.

“Yes. I'm apprentice to the Witcher that the village council are looking to hire.”

She gazed at me sceptically with a twist to her mouth that suggested that she was trying not to smile. “You look old to be an apprentice.”

“I'm also a runaway.”

“Some nobleman's bastard?”

“As you say.” I bowed.

She laughed in delight. “That would explain the courtesy and the education. So you're hiding with a Witcher until it all dies down.”

I grinned back at her. “So,” I began, “As one runaway to another....”

“What?”

“It was the first thing that you guessed so I'm going to guess that it occurred to you because you are a runaway too.”

She pursed her lips into a grimace and frowned critically although her eyes were still dancing with merriment. “Interesting theory. Who am I running away from then?”

“My first guess would be a runaway Sorceress of some kind. In hiding from something.”

She laughed again and I found myself liking this woman. “Tea?” She suggested. “I've never met an apprentice yet who would turn down a free piece of cake and a rest from whatever attentions their master are directing at them.”

“I would love to. Although I notice that you haven't answered my question.”

“You are correct,” she said as she gestured for me to climb the fence. “I have not.”

I climbed over and sat on one of the larger rounds of wood that she gestured me towards. She vanished inside and I could hear her singing as she went, clattering around the place. Something smashed and she swore hugely before she came out with an immaculate tea set and a dainty little plate with some cakes arranged on it.

“Milk and honey?” she asked.

“Just as it comes,” I told her. Her eyebrows raised in response.

“I've never liked my tea overly sweet and when you're out on the road, a bit of milk for your tea is a luxury that you sometimes have to do without.”

“Fair enough. So you're an apprentice Witcher are you?”

“I am.”

“What's it like?”

“Being an apprentice Witcher?”

“Yes.”

“Which part?” I asked her back, laughing. “The hunting or the serving of my master.”

“Either,” she said promptly, “Both.”

“The hunting is both the most terrifying and the most boring thing that I have experienced.” I told her. “As for the serving part of it? My master is not cruel although, at first I thought he was. He does not suffer fools gladly and but can be as patient with children, simple people or the uneducated as anyone I've ever met. He's a contradiction. Unemotional and yet capable of great acts of kindness and wrath. In return, what's it like being a runaway Sorceress?”

“I'm not a runaway Sorceress.” She told me and, to be fair, I believed her. “What I am is the village Witch and herb-woman. I'm also the Midwife and local healer. My mother, or rather the woman that raised and trained me took me in when I was younger as I was an orphan of the first Nilfgaardian conflict. I barely remember my father who died and my mother left me somewhere. Took me out into the woods I suspect.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. The bitch did me a favour. Now I'm a respected member of the community, even though it's a community that's dying which is a shame.”

“Dying?”

“Yeah,” She scratched at the giant mass of hair perched on top of her head. It wasn't that it looked dirty, it just looked like a....well a mass. “We were on a trade route once or so my mother said. We made our livings off the travellers that came through. Feeding them, supplying them with things. Acting as healers for the sick or trading with them. But since the sea routes and the main road have become safer since the Black ones took over, there's just no need for people to divert and come through here.”

She didn't sound bitter about that, just...resigned, a little sad and accepting. “Truth be told, I should probably start making plans to leave myself but I feel as though I would be deserting them all if I left now. All it would take would be the right....reason to leave.” She winked at me suggestively, in a way that made me feel a little hot under the collar.

“Believe it or not,” I said carefully. “I'm actually engaged to be married.”

She laughed again. “That does not surprise me. Besides, you're not the kind of man to settle down somewhere. Not yet anyway. I've seen very many travellers, girl and woman. You're one of those that wants to see what the next horizon brings and you're not going to be satisfied otherwise. Me? I want a garden so that I can grow my herbs. I like people and communities. If this place doesn't pick up then.... I don't know what I want. I've put down roots here, literal and figurative. I don't fancy a city or anything though, something small where everyone knows everyone else's name. Also,” a shadow crossed her face for a moment before a smile returned and she looked at me slyly. “You're not really my type.”

“Really?” I don't know if she wanted some kind of reaction of disappointment out of me but if she did then she was disappointed. “What is your type?”

“I don't know....I like muscles though.” She smiled at me, presumably in an effort to take the sting out of her words. “Also, believe it or not. I like bald men.”

“Bald men?” I made my voice sound aghast and astonished. As though she had just admitted to enjoying sleeping with the dead.

“Yes.”

Bald men?” This time I went for incredulity.

“Yes,” She giggled.

I shook my head and stared into space for a while. “Seriously though. Bald men?”

“Is it so hard to believe?”

I nodded acceptance of the sentiment. “I suppose that you have enough hair for two.”

“I really do.” She admitted.

“Isn't the Cartwright your type then?”

Another shadow crossed her face. “Yes. But he hates me.”

“Hates you? He seemed like a nice man to me.”

“He is.” Her previously open face had closed off. Time to change the subject.

“So, you're not some kind of escaped Sorceress or something?”

She visibly shook herself out of her thought pattern and shook her head. A gesture that wasn't at all confusing. “No, I'm not. Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because, and I speak as a happily engaged man, you are rather a beautiful woman. Some women I know would kill for your secrets.”

“Oh that,” she laughed again. It seemed that she was a woman that liked to laugh and I thought that I would fuel that for a while. “The secret,” she leant forward and whispered it as though she was imparting a great conspiracy that was kept from the entire world by shadowy people that gather in the hidden palaces in the world. “Is clean living.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Avoid clean living at all costs. Drink, smoke and generally do everything you can to have a good time. I can recommend some mushrooms if you care to partake.”

“No it's ok. I struggle enough with what I see as it is without trying to adjust my perceptions even further.”

“As a Witcher's apprentice I can understand that.” She mused. “Seriously though, there isn't that much to it. Proper herbal care will do it. There are oils that can easily be made and any herbalist knows the recipe for a cream that you can use on your skin to protect you from the sun's rays. It's about keeping your skin from drying you out you see. Also to stop yourself getting cooked.”

“Cooked? By the sun?”

“Have you ever had sunburn?”

“Well yes but....”

“There you go then. That's all sunburn, Heatstroke and sunstroke are. Your body and brain gets cooked by the rays of the sun. You must protect yourself from that.”

“Well ok, but what about....”

“You mean my feminine assets?”

“I wasn't going to say it like that.”

“Really? How are you going to say it?” She was enjoying my discomfort. I wasn't really that uncomfortable but I was trying to put her back at ease so that she would be more relaxed when I began to ask her the real questions.

“I don't feel I should tell you.” I responded.

She laughed again. “Mother used to say that I was just lucky. That some people are born that way, that I might have some elven blood in my ancestry or something. Believe it or not, it can be a problem sometimes.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. Even though I have no magical talent whatsoever I am still called the village Witch more often than I would care to admit. You would be surprised how many people, both travellers and merchants believe that the term “village Witch” can be swapped out for the term “Village Whore”. But men have a particular image in their mind about herbalists and healers. They like them to be older and unattractive. I don't know why. Something about age giving them authority or something.

“But if they're young and attractive they're too busy trying to get you to do what they want with such charming words as “Smile, a woman as pretty as you deserves to be happy,” and, “What you need is a husband and then you wouldn't have to work as hard.”

She snorted to show what she thought of this opinion.

“The truth is that I like my job. I like helping people and although there are and have been many that I'm attracted to, there aren't any that would accept having a wife that's more intelligent than them.”

“Because you are?”

“Because I am, and they won't accept anyone who enjoys working. They want me to sit and look pretty so that they can show me off to their friends. Not really my idea of a good time.”

She grimaced.

“I can't believe I've just told you all of that. I've only just met you. I called you over because you seemed to be interested in herbs by the river and I thought that I could make a sale.”

“It's a gift.” I told her. “To get people to talk, it's often as easy as just being able to listen.”

She stared at me for a long time. “Did your Witcher master teach you that?”

“No, it is something I already knew although he uses the same trick when he's trying to find things out.”

“Are you trying to find things out?”

I considered lying but she was right. This woman was clever and I suspected that I would regret trying to lie to her.

“I am.”

“What are you trying to find out?”

“You've already told me much of it. That the village is dying due to lack of industry and lack of willingness to change into something new. That you are all holding onto some kind of proud past that you are beginning to realise will never come again. You have also told me that, despite appearances, you are not a very happy lady.”

She nodded as though accepting something.

“Anything else?”

“I think you love the Cartwright but that's just a guess.”

She thought about this for a while. “I think you will make a good Witcher.”

“No,” I told her. “I don't think I will.” I allowed a smile to creep into my face and voice. “For instance, I'm useless at herbalism and alchemy and just don't have the memory to remember the formula and how they all work.”

She laughed, as I intended.

“Why did your village seek to hire a Witcher?”

And then she instantly clammed up. As though her mouth, and face was a trap door or a lock box. “You would need to ask the village council. It is them that are arranging that and they know all the details.”

“But I'm asking you.” I told her.

She turned away, staring out at her garden. “Bad things are happening here. Good people are becoming desperate and are losing their integrity.”

“What is happening? The council claim a demon.”

“It's not a demon.” She said it almost automatically, as though she said it without thinking.

“Then what is it?”

Her eyes widened and she seemed like a frightened animal, on the verge of bolting into the woods.

I sighed and eased off. “Look.” I said. “My master and I are here now. We don't know what's happening but sooner or later, something is going to happen and my master will have to take steps. When that happens, people have a tendency to die. That's not a threat, but a plea. One of those people might be me and I would like to live to see my wedding night. I would imagine that you would like to see yours too.”

She hung her head then which was when I realised that I had won. She wouldn't tell us what she knows now, but I knew how to get the information out of her later. But she needed time for my words to sink in.

“The more we know, my master and I, the better prepared that we can be and the more likely we are going to be able to save people's lives. That's how this works.”

She said nothing but I knew she was taking it in. I climbed to my feet. “Time for me to go. Thank you for the tea.” I turned and went to climb over the fence and back into the road.

“Don't go into the forest.” She called after me. “Especially not the Eastern woods.”

I turned back to her. Her eyes were shining. I felt a little guilty that I had brought tears to this woman's face but I also felt as though I was justified. Kerrass was right. This place was dangerous and one of the things that was making it dangerous was the people that lived there. Also, part of the job of being a scholar is to get people to tell you things that they might not want to tell you.

“Why does the Cartwright hate you?” I asked. I don't know why, some half-baked notion of helping her.

“I delivered the still-born baby that killed his wife.”

I nodded. That would indeed do it.

“Does he love you as well?”

She threw her hands up in despair. “I don't know. I never know, how do you find out such things?”

I nodded again. “I will mention your shop to my master. He will, undoubtedly want to pay your a visit and make some purchases.”

I left, feeling a little dirty.

The most necessary part of a Witcher's task is getting information on the situation that they are dealing with. It also seems as though it can be the hardest sometimes. Having to push through the lies and the secrets to get to the truth, even when that truth is unwelcome.

After vaulting the fence I carried on, still moving towards the church as I still wanted to speak to the priest that was there.

As I got further and further away from the Livery stable and the Inn, the buildings that I was passing seemed to be deserted and in woeful need of repair more and more often. It would not have been unfair to say that the Herb-woman lived on the outskirts of the centre of the village. There was still smoke rising from a couple of chimneys but more and more often, the windows were shuttered and dirt, twigs and other tree debris blown up against the doors showing that they hadn't been open in a while. It was broad daylight though so I decided that I didn't want to go poking around in the remnants of people's lives.

Maybe when it's dark, Kerrass and I could come back but I didn't want to look and feel like a looter.

I found an empty and abandoned inn building where the door was still open. Either having been abandoned that way or, I suspected, because some people had thought there was still abandoned beer and other alcohol in the cellars or something. But an open door seemed like an invitation and my curiosity got the better of me.

After all, Curiosity may have killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back.

It was just a small, empty inn. Anything that could be removed had obviously already been taken, either by looting or by the original owners. It was smaller than the one that we were staying in and I supposed that this one was further away from the Livery stable which mean that they caught less business from travellers. I guessed that this was more of a tavern for locals than the other one. It didn't inspire any kind of dread. None of the feelings that you get when you enter haunted buildings, it was just....empty. Empty and a little sad. It was all to easy to imagine this as a family run business, to imagine their dreams and aspirations that would have been born here. That would have died here.

I left.

Near the inn were a number of broken down merchant booths. The same that you find in most villages. With a table out front where a merchant can spread his wares for other travellers and locals to go through and investigate. I saw an old, cooking pot. Long given over to rust, sat in the corner of one of them.

I moved on, exchanging greetings with an old man who was walking down the road towards the tavern, leaning heavily on a walking stick. He took the pipe out of his mouth and waved it at me in greeting but he didn't slow his pace in an invitation to a conversation so I kept on walking, realising that it was the first person that I had seen in some minutes.

I passed a few more houses and then I had reached my destinations. Both the edge of the village and the church. The road that I stood on weaved off between the trees heading northwards. I had a strange feeling that I sometimes get when I am standing on a path that I don't know where it goes and had no intention of following, that if I just went round that bend, then I would get an answer. That in the shadowed treeline, I was being watched.

I shook myself free of the thought and the vision and turned into the churchyard.

The church itself was a deceptive thing. It was surrounded by an old stone wall. The Kind of wall built by old shepherds and farmers just for the purposes of keeping livestock in or out. I've sat and watched these kinds of walls being built, both when I was younger and sat watching the common folk at their work while Father discussed something with one of his tenant farmers. But also while waiting for Kerrass to do whatever it was that Kerrass needed to do.

They build them, literally one stone at a time. I suppose that the foundations are laid well in advance but then, whenever a villager finds a loose stone of suitable size, in a riverbank or in a field or something. Then they pick it up and find a nice solid place in the nascent wall to place it before wandering off to be about their normal tasks. It's the sort of thing that you do when you find yourself with five minutes spare in your day or you finish your farm chores early but it's not yet time for dinner. Just pick up a couple of stones and go and build a wall.

It was also very old. There was moss crawling up the side, moss and various molds. Vegetable debris that had blown into it over the years from the nearby woodland that had now found something to grow in. Sprouts of flowers that would have gladdened the herb-woman's heart, mushrooms and other fungus grew out of a couple of gaps that I could see. Such growths only occur in the oldest of old constructions.

To get through the wall, other than hopping over the top of course which could have been done easily, I walked through a small wooden archway that also seemed to double as a noticeboard for the church. A lot of the notices were faded now, as though someone had once put a lot of effort into them and were now realising that such things are simply not as important as they used to be.

One of the ways that the person, presumably, had found something to do was in the preservation of the churchyard which seemed to double as the village graveyard. In as much as Graveyards can ever be beautiful. This one was. Flowers everywhere. Both in small bushes and in pots that were placed near the graves. Other bunches of flowers adorned the headstones themselves. The grass that provided the walkways between the stones was well maintained and although not short, it looked as though it was regularly kept trimmed and cared for. It was a peaceful place, both in the sense that there wasn't much noise but also in the kind of peace that comes with the odd holy places that I had been to. It reminded me of my family chapel and I decided that I liked it here.

I spent a bit of time wandering around. There were names on some of the stones and many of the stones were quite old.

But the church building itself was relatively new. Made from wood that had obviously been harvested from the nearby trees. It was one of the only buildings that hadn't been thatched. Instead, a wooden roof that had been sealed with tar or something similar. The was only a couple of windows, but again, it looked plain, clean and well cared for.

I was beginning to find that I was hoping that I would like this priest. Recent experience had told me not to hold my breath though.

I walked up the main door, knocked and tried the handle which told me that the place was unlocked. Churches like this one are supposed to be open spaces where anyone can walk in and worship at any time so I didn't feel any particular hesitation to go inside.

What I found inside was another peaceful and quiet place of worship and I was struggling, more and more, to remain objective when coming in to meet this priest.

Inside, the church was simple, clean and tidy. Several rows of wooden benches made up the congregation area of the building. There was a confession booth off to one side that provided anonymity for both the confessor and the person confessing. This is not as common as you might think. Again, there were flowers everywhere, underneath the windows to take advantage of the sunlight, at the end of every bench and in all corners of the building.

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At first I was worried that the flowers themselves would be potentially overwhelming, filling the relatively small space with so much scent and pollen that the air would become cloying and sickly. But that just failed to happen. Instead there was a gentle, clean scent about the place. At the end of a central aisle there was an alter with a relatively small bowl of fire on top of it. As I walked in, the man that I took for the priest was feeding small logs to the flames from a well stacked and tidy pile that was off to one side.

“Welcome,” he called over without looking. “I'll be right with you.”

He had the booming voice of a man who has been trained to speak to large crowds of people and make sure that his voice was going to get heard.

“Take your time,” I called back. I walked forward, made the proper bows towards the flame and found a seat on one of the benches. A woman entered through a door in the back of the church with an armful of flowers and set about working on an arrangement. She either didn't notice me or didn't care that much, so focused was she on her small tasks. When she was done with the flowers she reopened the door, picked up a broom of twigs that looked like the stereotypical witches broom of a simple pole with a collection of dry twigs tied to the end. Then she started sweeping.

“Now, what can I do for you,” came the Priests voice and I turned back towards him. I was leaning on my spear at the time. “I should say,” The priest went on, “That you have nothing to fear here.”

“Errr, What?”

“The spear my son. You do not need the spear.”

I had genuinely forgotten that I still had it on me. “Oh, sorry. Force of habit.”

He smiled at me genially. I was surprised by how young he was. Normally men of this kind of priesthood tend to be in their middle ages. That period where they are no longer going to rise any higher in the church hierarchy and they have done everything that they can in whatever monastery or parish that they come from. Village priesthoods like this tend to be the places where priests retire to when they've done everything in the church organisation that they want to do. But this man was in his late twenties at most.

He had warm, but sharp brown eyes that gazed at me from underneath bushy eyebrows. He had a crooked smile on when I saw him properly for the first time and the kind of stubble that you get when you have other things to worry about than shaving in the morning. I regularly wear similar stubble myself. I would have put him at about my age, his hair was dark and tied back into a small pony tail. I don't think it was any kind of statement but more that it was tied back to keep it out of his way. He was neither short, nor tall and might have been designed by nature to be a big round man but it seemed that he hadn't taken those instructions to heart. Instead he had a massive frame about his body structure but there was relatively little on it. Neither fat nor muscle. I was also surprised that he didn't have a tonsure on the top of his head although it did look as though there might once have been one there but that it had been allowed to grow out.

“Do I pass inspection?” He asked with curiosity and humour.

“Forgive me father.” I said automatically. “But I am going to be asked to pass on details at a later date.”

“I see. I am Father Anchor sir and you are?”

“My name is Frederick Coulthard.”

When I'm meeting villagers or farmers. I tend to leave out the “von” part of my name because some people tend to clam up when they think you're taking on “airs and graces”.

He looked at the spear though and noticed the dagger in my belt.

“Frederick von Coulthard? Brother to Cardinal Mark?”

I sighed. “The very one.”

There was a gasp from the corner of the room and a clatter as the broom hit the floor. There was some flapping of cloth and the woman that I had seen earlier ran off towards the door. “When I turned back, the priest was grinning at me.

“I take it you've heard of me then.”

“Not me, although I may say that if you want to travel incognito then you might want to change your name or stop having your works published. But it's my wife that's the fan. In fact, if I'm not that much mistaken, she's gone off to find her copies of your journals so that you can sign them for her.”

“The books or the original....”

“The originals.”

I winced. “That's a lot of journals.”

“That's what I keep telling her.” he sighed. “We don't have a lot of personal space here as it is and a shelf full of heavy paper is bulky. But damned if I can get her to listen,” He spoke fondly though and I ventured a guess.

“Also,” I began, “It would be better if you could refuse her anything that she asks for.”

He laughed. “You have the right of it.”

“I didn't think priests could get married. I know that Mark never wanted to and I have never really met any priest that has.”

“It's rare,” he scratched his cheek. “And I would be lying if I claimed that it hasn't damaged my church career if I wanted to climb to the lofty heights that your brother has achieved. They want their cardinals and Hierophants to be free of any other concerns other than their worship and protection of the flame. But I find I quite enjoy being a village priest anyway, trying to help people find spiritual fulfilment. I like the community of it. That and I didn't like the way the church was going.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, to start with, they didn't want me to marry my wife.”

We both laughed.

“But seriously. I was all but brought up in a monastery. I'm told according to extremely wise people that the Father Abbot was a traditionalist who believed that the church was about protection and nurturing things and so the monks would take part in local things, help to build houses and mucked in at harvest and planting. I remember looking at them and the way that they were accepted by the village and townsfolk, the way that they were loved. That's the kind of priest I wanted to be and that's the kind of priest I hope I am. I want people to feel safe when they come here.”

He looked at me sharply as he said that.

“I'm pretty sure though,” I told him, “That celibacy is one of the rules.”

“Is it?” He stared me straight in the face. “I'm astonished. I notice how often the priests don't obey that rule though and I also notice how much trouble that gets them in. Instead I am in a committed, loving marriage with the most beautiful woman in the world and anyone that disagrees with me can fight me for it.”

“Isn't violence one of the rules that priests are supposed to avoid.”

“Yes, unless they're a Witch hunter I notice. Or a church soldier, a member of a knightly order, a guard on a place or taking out your aggression on heretics, magic users and non-humans.”

He sighed.

“I love my religion and I love the Holy Flame, but flame if the “church” part of it does my head in sometimes. Still, I like your brother, he seems to have a good head on his shoulders and if he can be allowed to continue then he might have the chance at seeing to some real change. Change for the better. Including letting us marry.”

“Why's that so important?”

He considered this. “Being a priest is hard. Anyone who tells you different is either lying in an effort to recruit you into the church itself, or has never done the job. We're only human. I know that some priests like to think of themselves as the personification of the Flame on the continent but that's utter rubbish. We're human we need the human touch. We need friends and loved ones and intimacy in order to retain our sanity. How many of those fucking torturers and murderers that used to fill the ranks of the Witch hunters and priests under Radovid's encouragement, would have been able to get away with that stuff if they had gone home to a wife and kids and had to look them in the eye?”

“Quite a few of them I suspect.”

He thought on this. “You are probably right there. But for me, I have found my wife's presence and her love invaluable in the pursuit of my work. As good a woman, as good a person as I've ever known and she makes me a better man because of her presence. A better man, a better priest.”

There was a noise and he turned. “Ah, speak of the heretic and lo she doth appear.”

Out of the back room, the woman returned, tottering under the weight of too many books and scrolls compelling both myself and the priest to leap to our feet and rush to her aid. A feat of minor gallantry that earned us a smile each.

She wasn't the prettiest woman I've ever met. Maybe in her late teens or very early twenties. Her hair was cut so that it could be tied out of the way, her nose was a little bit too pronounced and there was a strange, I almost want to say “sunken” quality to her jaw and her mouth. Her forehead was a little too pronounced and there were some scars of some childhood disease that marred her skin that was also flushed in ways that would subtract from what would be considered “classic” beauty.

I really hope that when she and her husband read this, that she is not too upset at these words.

But there were two things about her that made her beautiful. The first was that her eyes contained an intelligence and humour that was amazing to see. They were among the most expressive eyes that I've ever seen. They gave the impression of a person that wandered around observing the world and finding some measure of amusement in what she saw. Both gentle mocking amusement as well as genuine and gentle laughter and humour at what was happening in the world around her. They were eyes that saw the best in everything. They saw the beauty in wild flowers and plants that others would refer to as weeds. They saw the wonder and peace that can be around a graveyard and in some way, she seemed to see the best qualities in the people that she met.

Also, when she smiled. It was like the sun coming out on a cold day. The entire room lit up and seemed to chase the chills away. As I say, not classically beautiful but there was a warmth and a kindness to her that was wonderful.

The priest, Father Anchor, is a very lucky man.

She also had a blank slate that was tied around her neck. I wondered at it but decided not to pursue it.

We placed the piles of paper and leather bound volumes on the bench next to me before she scurried back into the back room which I guessed contained the living area that she and Father Anchor shared. Before I really had time to assess just how much she had produced from the back room she had come back with a sheaf of quills and a small pot of ink that she presented to me with an endearing kind of shyness.

“I'm sure that Lord Frederick will be good enough to sign them all for you.” Father Anchor told her.

She looked at me with an expression that plainly apologised to me for the stupidity of her husband before her eyes widened in an almost comical level of hope. The same way that a small child would when they want a cookie or a piece of cake. Emma calls them “Puppy dog eyes” and none of us could stand tall in the face of Francesca's version of them.

I laughed and reached for the quill.

“Perhaps we could bring our guest some tea?” Father Anchor suggested. “You know, while he signs just about your entire library.”

She really had the most expressive body language and facial expressions of anyone I've ever known. She folded her arms across her chest and gave him a scolding look. There was no doubt in my mind that what she was telling him was “And why do I have to be the one that fetches the tea?”

Father Anchor saw it too. “I'm talking to our guest,”

She made a kind of “Harrumph” kind of noise to show what she thought of that.

“Also, it's you that he's doing the favour for.” He pointed out.

She gave him a look that promised some kind of punishment at a future date before she almost skipped out the back, Father Anchor's eyes followed her with an odd expression.

I signed the first book. “Who should I make it out to?” I asked.

The priest shook himself from thoughts that I guessed were kind of maudlin. “It would not be inaccurate to write that she's your biggest fan. Her name is Tulip though.”

I nodded and made the appropriate adjustments to my written message. “You know I have to ask though right?”

The priest nodded. “You want to know our story?”

“I do,” I put one book down and picked up the first magazine. She had clearly collected my articles from when they had first started to be published along with every magazine, or book to which I had contributed, even those ones where I only added an academic essay on the behaviour of something that I had come across. The clinical, academic works that don't really speak to anything entertaining or exciting. The writing that is little more than updated classifications of old books and documents. I gestured at it all. “You must be well aware of my habit for curiosity.”

“I am.” He sighed. “But look. I love my wife and she would be really cross with me if I let her...be taken advantage of.”

“What do you mean?” I had started on the magazines now.

“I would be really cross as well.”

I smiled. “Look, I'm a historian by trade. I've become a traveller and a mover and shaker, largely by accident. I'm not even sure yet whether this entire episode is going to make it into my writings at all. Either as a whole or in part. So it's more than possible that her, and your, story is never going to get told. But just so you know, I don't have a switch where I suddenly decide that I'm not listening, or not collecting material for a future date. I'm not that guy. Either tell me or don't, that is your choice.

“I actually came here for another reason but now that I've met the two of you, I am insatiably curious about that. So I can either ask you the questions I came here to ask, but I would rather wait until your wife comes back so that I can ask you both. Or, you can tell me the story about how a young priest and his wife came to live in the back end of beyond. Especially a woman who is clearly rather well educated.” I tapped one of the more advanced academic texts that I had helped contribute some things to. “That tome is not for beginners and I notice that it's well worn and that she's annotated it.”

“Yes, not your sections though.” He sighed.

“Was she born unable to speak?” I asked.

“No, Flame no.” He hung his head for a moment. “I was young then, younger in mind and character rather than age. According to the monks that raised me I was abandoned to them at a young age, I have no idea why and they either didn't know or wouldn't tell me. I grew up in the monastery and found that I quite liked the church and the religion that came with it. All things considered I had a happy childhood and I don't think I surprised anyone when I took holy orders. I liked working with people. I liked working alongside people in order to make the world a better place. I like providing sanctuary to strangers and being a sympathetic ear that people can trust.”

I nodded and reached for another magazine.

“I didn't want to serve in any of the larger churches. I like the religion, not the church and I certainly didn't want to be part of the Witch hunters or the Flaming rose before them.”

“A little unfair,” I said. “The Flaming rose were not the Witch hunters.”

“No, but they were militant. And like the Witchhunters, they were given their leave to do horrible things by madmen.” He spoke with sudden energy, passion and determination. “They also attracted the very worst kind of men. They should have, both of them, been the very pinnacles of humanities efforts to be good, kind, chivalrous and decent, but instead they descended into becoming examples of the very worst kind of cruelty that humanity could be. I wanted no part of that. Instead, I joined the Flame wardens.”

“You tended the shrines?”

“I did.”

For those who don't know. On the many and varied roads that lead towards Novigrad there are a series of small buildings that house large bonfires. They're supposed to be guiding lights that help people towards the great flame that is housed in Novigrad cathedral. In practical terms they end up being stopping points where people can get a drink of water from the well, or a bite to eat should food be available. Also some healing and other services that the church can offer.

“I was stationed there during the rise of the Witch-hunters. It was an awful time.” He shook his head, lost in some kind of old memory. “She came to us then. Like me she has absolutely no idea how old she was. We guessed that she was sixteen at the time but, you've seen her. There's almost nothing to her and her, I suppose we have to call them what they are, her feminine curves are underdeveloped to say the least. But she was an old soul in a young body.”

He smiled at a memory.

“I had absolutely no idea how much she would change my life when she first turned up. She was a tiny little waif of a thing, I certainly didn't harbour any feelings towards her. It wasn't love at first sight or anything like that. She was a small, lost, starving person but she wasn't sad, upset or beaten down. She had this strange ability to see the best in anyone that she saw and a touch of her hand and the sound of her singing could calm even the most troubled of people.”

He sighed.

“As she opened up to us, it became clear that she wanted to be a priest of the holy flame. She had heard a calling to serve that entity, rejected being a priestess of Meletele, Freyja or any of the other Gods and Goddesses that would welcome women into their priesthood. She wanted to be a priestess of the Holy Flame. Obviously church law does forbid that and she had run away from home after being told this for what must have been a truly ridiculous amount of times in the hope that she could serve the fire in some way, even if she couldn't do it in a cassock from a pulpit.”

I continued to sign my name, doing my best to add little jokes and comments to each of the things that I was signing so that I wasn't just going over the same things over and over again.

“She worked just as hard as the rest of us, getting up early with us and working until long after other volunteers were pleading off and going home to bed. She didn't eat enough to feed a sparrow but always her smile and her gentleness seemed to carry her through. There wasn't, there isn't an angry or hate-filled bone in her body.”

There was a pause in the story.

“When did the two of you fall in love?”

“Oh we all loved her. But it was a kind of little sisterly, younger daughter kind of love. I stress and I will point out over and over again that I didn't think of her romantically for ages. I've since been told that it's not uncommon, that a person doesn't realise that they're falling in love.”

I grunted. “I remember how it was with me. I just realised one day that I was in love and that was that.”

“With me, it was a couple of years after she had first arrived and things in Novigrad were turning for the worst. We, and by we I mean she and I, think she was about seventeen at the time. I will have been about twenty five. The Witch-hunter faction was becoming more and more powerful and those of us that were more accepting of those different from ourselves or even the more moderate members of the priesthood were being shut out. Simply put, the fact that we had this girl with us that we were feeding out of our allowance was becoming controversial. Many times church nights and witch-hunters would come out and search our place for “magic using fugitives. Many many times we had to stand between her and them in order for her to not be taken out for burning as they had all heard of the “Calming effect” that the girl of the fire, which is what she was called in that area by the pilgrims and travellers, had on people. They claimed that that was sign of sorcery.”

He snorted to show what he thought of that.

“In the end, we had to tell them that we had driven her off, but in reality she had a hiding place a little way off. One of the points of those shrines is that they can be seen from a long distance but that also means that we could see Witch-hunters coming, almost from the moment that they left the city and then she was like a deer, running off through the grass and the bushes.”

“Flame,” I muttered.

He laughed at me. “This story isn't going where you think it's going. It wasn't the Witch-hunters that crippled her. If anything, arguably, it was the Witch-hunters that saved her life. One of those silly little circumstances that shape the world. But I was telling you about how it happened that I realised that I was falling in love.

“She came to me. The Witch-hunters were the real power in the countryside now and we all knew it and we all feared them. For whatever reason, she came to me in the middle of the night.”

He grinned at the memory. “But again, it's not what you think. I slept in the store-room. I was young and although I couldn't hurt a fly there was some kind of feeling that if they put me in the store-room then people would be less likely to steal from it. But anyway, I woke up to find that she was shaking me. She was sat next to me, cross legged wearing her shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of trousers but I notices that she had no shoes or boots on. I remember finding that odd. I remember thinking that she looked very serious as though something really important had happened. Which I suppose it had. But anyway, she looked at me as I struggled to wake up. When she was sure that she had my full, awake intention.

““Don't say anything,” she told me. “I am well aware how silly you are likely to get over this given that you are a man,” she counted the points off on her fingers, “older than me and a priest. But there is something that I want you to know. Before the Witch-hunters come for us for not being as violently anti-magic as they think we should be or someone else comes for us in revenge for the excesses of the Witch-hunters themselves. I have thought about it for a while and I want to tell you this before something happens.”

“She stared at me for a long time.

““I love you.” She told me.

““And I love you too.” I told her back.

““No, silly,” she told me crossly. “Not as a priest loves a person, or as a brother loves a sister or as two friends might love each other. I love you as a man loves a woman. I love you.”

She put her head on one side and considered for a moment or two.

““Yes,” she decided after a while. “I think that covers it.” Then she darted forward and kissed me. It was a chaste thing, over before I could realise what was happening but I will never forget that feeling. She nodded in satisfaction and got to her feet telling me to get some rest.”

He laughed at the memory. I realised that I had been kind of holding my breath and had stopped signing things. I hurriedly dipped my quill and started writing again, hoping that he wouldn't notice.

“Things weren't the same from then on.” He carried on. “I was trying to be celibate and follow the tradition that priests don't get married but it was like.... It was like a different path opened in front of me, as though there was a new path through the trees that I hadn't noticed before. It was an odd thing, but I started to realise that she was a sexual creature. She used to dress the same as any other labourer in the fields and keep her hair short which meant that she often got mistaken for a boy that worked at the shelter. Too young to take holy orders. But it meant that up until that point I had never thought of her as anything other than being, just another worker. But suddenly I started realising that I was admiring the curve of her leg. Or what happened in her chest when she stretched her arms over her head. The shape of her neck, that kind of thing.”

“You sound like a man falling in love.”

“Which I suppose I was. I loved her most though for the way she handled the other people at the shelter, the poor and the injured, the people that thought that a pilgrimage to Novigrad would solve all their problems. She was good and kind and gentle and that was the thing about her that I loved the most. I realised what was happening and talked to her about it. I made some kind of gallant gesture and suggested that I should leave the priesthood so that we could marry.

“She laughed at me as I recall. We hadn't discussed her feelings towards me since the night that she came to my room and I had certainly not told anyone about the fact that I was beginning to reciprocate.”

“I suspect that you reciprocated long before that.”

“My master at the shrine agreed with you. But she laughed when I suggested that I give up holy orders and that we should run away together. She told me that it was my devotion to the flame and my...holiness, her words, that attracted her to me. The same values I saw in her, she claimed to see in me. She told me that I made her better than she was and that was what she loved about me.” He grinned at me. “The fact that she then told me that all of this is true while she also wanted to fuck my brains out was a bit of a brain melter to me.”

I laughed with him.

“I went to my confessor and the chief priest of the shrine. A good man that I miss a great deal. I told him about the problem and he also laughed at me. Not for the first, or the last time that he did that. Apparently there had been a pool running between him and the other priests about how long it would take us both to realise that we loved each other and ran off with each other.”

“I might be a little hazy on marriage but I'm pretty sure that gambling is forbidden in the priesthood.” I commented reaching for another magazine.

“It is,” he replied. “But then again, so is hating other people. We're supposed to guide people back to the light, not torture them into submission. Anyway, they didn't gamble for money, but who got to clean out the chamberpots and move the cesspit. That kind of thing.”

“I see.”

“He told me that they would support our decision one way or another. But in the end, as with so many things in our lives, it was my wife that came up with an answer. We had taught her to read but we hadn't registered how much she wanted to learn. She consumed knowledge at an amazing rate. Can read and understand faster than anyone else I've ever known. Had she been born wealthy, I suspect that she could have attended the universities. Or even been a lawyer or even a Sorceress.”

I saw his hands twitch towards making an automatic warding sign. I was pleased when he didn't do so though as he stopped himself with conscious thought.

“She had some books that we had taught her to read with. She had a copy of the writings of St Thomas as well as the holy scriptures and the teachings of the Prophet Lebioda. She hunted through them all and could find no reference to priests being unmarried. All she found was the same old passage. The one about priests being chaste and good in all their dealings. There was nothing about not marrying and as marriage was and is one of the most important rites of the church, she reasoned that being married was perfectly acceptable, providing that the priest took his responsibilities seriously, both as a priest and as a husband.”

“Haven't people argued that a priest's first duty is to the church and that having a wife would distract them from that duty. Not that I disagree with you but I want to know where you stand on it.”

“I had the same problem. She argued that a wife can actually help a priest do this. She can remove a lot of the other responsibilities that a priest had. Like having to care for themselves, feed themselves and clothe themselves. They can help out around the place, to take worries off the priests shoulders as well as providing the occasionally valuable woman's perspective. And she argued that getting good and properly shagged occasionally is good for the soul.”

“You know what?” I said. “I kind of agree with her.”

“So did my confessor as it happens. He married us in secret. We're public knowledge to the rest of the church now but at the time we were worried about what some of the fanatics might do to us at this perceived breach of church law. We feared that the fanatics wouldn't stop to listen to reasoned debate and would just kill me and rape her before killing her.

“I will never forget my wedding day.”

“Especially the wedding night.”

“That too.” He admitted reasonably. “Turns out that there's no sexual appetite quite like a repressed, flame fearing sexual appetite.”

There was a period of silence for a while as he was lost in his memories.

“So what happened?” I prompted.

He surfaced out of the sea of memory. “Nothing much. The shrine was manned by a group of relative traditionalists in that we were all well aware that the recent attacks on magic users were fuelled by politicians in the church hierarchy who wanted to take advantage of political realities rather than standing up for what's right. Unfortunately, our political stance was why many of us were exiled to the shrines on the outskirts of things in the first place. Therefore we were the first suspects whenever anyone escaped custody and people just assumed that we were guilty.”

“Were you?”

“Of course we were but that's not the point. We were so in the eye of the hierarchy that we could draw eyes towards us rather than in, say, the local village which would often put mage refugees on barges and have them shipped up, or down, the river. So while we were being searched those self-same forces were not elsewhere. Also their insistence on carrying flaming torches everywhere meant that we could always see them coming. But it meant that my new wife spent a lot of time away from the shrine and away from me. We had agreed that the time was not right for children as it meant that she would have her mobility curtailed, mobility that was vital to her survival so we waited, taking what refuge we could.”

“Did your wife lose her speech during all of that?”

“No,” he shook his head and smiled sadly. “We haven't got to that part yet. It happened after the Witch-hunters had run out of Sorceresses to hunt. It always struck me that they were more interested in Sorceresses than they were in Sorcerers or Wizards. Can't think why, although I always suspected some suppressed sexual rage. The magical folk had escaped and the Witch-hunters needed a new enemy to stir the people against in order to keep their control over the populace.”

“Nothing like a foreign enemy to bind people together.”

“I think it's more than that. It's fear that they use. Divide and conquer is the oldest tool in the arsenal of tyranny and this is no different. It also served to keep the Witch-hunters and the Inquisition in power. They'd killed or driven off all the Witches and as a result, what were they still doing here? They needed something else to keep them all in power and so they turned on the non-humans. I suppose we should have seen it coming but we really didn't. We all kind of hoped that the anger and the hatred that had driven the Witch-hunters up until that point would have spent itself in the pyres that they had all built but of course it hadn't and it was this that caught her out.”

“How, she's thin to be sure but she's hardly Elven in appearance.”

He smiled sadly. “You misunderstand again Lord Frederick. The Witch-hunters didn't do that to her. It was a group of Elves. As I say, ironically, the Witch-hunters saved her life.”

I felt my mouth hang open.

“Here's the story. She was in Novigrad when the first of the massive pogroms was taking place. When they were literally rounding up Elves, Dwarves and Halflings before putting them to the sword. It was awful and my wife couldn't stand it. She was in town when it happened, picking up some supplies for the shrine in the Bits. We needed bandages and some....it doesn't matter but she saw what was happening and hid.”

“Sensible,” I commented.

“Yes it was. But then, being my wife, instead of escaping she saw a group of Elves that were being chased and she beckoned them on, telling them that they could find safety if they just followed her. She beckoned them on and they followed her. But then they saw the holy symbol that she had round her neck.”

He sighed. “It's hard to be objective when it comes to this. It's hard to remember how scared those Elves were. How angry they were and how bitter they had become at just one more cruelty they had suffered. But they saw that Holy symbol, assumed that she was a servant of the Holy Fire, which she was, and then they assumed that she was leading them into a trap where they would all be killed.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Yes. So instead of following her to freedom, they pulled her into a side alley and, in their words, cut her lying tongue out.”

He didn't say anything for a long time. I didn't move as it seemed a little tactless to continue signing things in the wake of that kind of revelation

“She was pretty sure that they were going to kill her as well as she kind of became a focus for all their fear and their rage. She told us later that there were two things that saved her. The first was that they were so angry and scared that they couldn't agree on what to do with her. Some wanted to rape her before they killed her. Others wanted to start cutting bits off her before they killed her but in all the arguing they forgot that tearing someone's tongue out doesn't stop them from screaming. Her screaming summoned a group of Witch-hunters who drove off the Elves before helping her. Eventually she was taken to the hospital where they patched her up and she escaped.

“I was beside myself. Because she couldn't speak she couldn't tell them where she was from. It never occurred to them to give her a piece of chalk and slate to find out what was going on. So she escaped and all but fell into our arms. It was the closest I've ever come to losing my faith.”

“I can't say anyone can blame you.”

He grunted at that.

“I remember thinking that the Flame was supposed to protect us from monsters if we believed in it. I obviously did and my wife was even more obvious in her faith so how had the flame allowed this to happen? I was furious. The person who got me to calm down?”

“It was your wife wasn't it.”

“It was. She reminded me that the Elves were afraid. That they were scared and that the horrors that they had done to her was merely a reflection of what had been done to her. She didn't hate them. She felt pity for them and if she could feel that, then what right had I to my rage?”

He shrugged. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a hint of movement and noticed that she had snuck out of the back room and was listening, just being out of sight of her husband. She put her finger to her lips to show that she wanted me to be silent as her husband continued the story.

“The terror and the madness ended with the death of Radovid. Cooler heads, like that of your brother over in Tretogor started to gain power and my brothers and I started to rise in prominence again as stories of our exploits during that time began to get about. But I didn't want to be there any more. I am ashamed to admit that I still feel that anger in my heart when I think about what happened to my wife.”

His wife pointed at her head and spun her finger around in the childish mime for suggesting that her husband was a crazy person.

“So I asked for, and got assigned to this parish, well away from Novigrad. A nice small parish where I could bring the word of the flame to the locals.”

“How are you and your wife finding life here?”

“Not gonna lie. It took some getting used to. There is a switch of pace here. They go from being, what I would consider to be relatively lazy and lay-around to being full on and active to the point of lunacy when a caravan comes in. It's obscene the lengths that these people will go to when there is the possibility of making some money. But I like it here. I like being “in charge” of things, for our being able to put our own stamp on things. To be able to preach those parts of Holy teachings that resonate the most with me. To create a space for believers to come, to feel a sense of peace,” he looked at me sharply again, “so that all comers have a place of sanctuary where they can feel safe.”

I nodded. His wife was nodding behind him.

“And how's your wife coping with things?” I asked.

“You can ask her when she turns up with that damned tea. Has she ridden off to Novigrad to buy the damn herbs herself.” He grinned. “I hope she's happy. She makes me buy any books that come through the place as she has some ideas as to helping what few young people still remain in the local area. She's made some inroads to that. She takes great delight in demanding that I....” he blushed. “see to her needs.”

His wife mimed obscene acts behind him. Pelvic thrusts, finger through a circle, that kind of thing.

“She wants children.” He went on.

She nodded vigorously.

“Is there a problem with that?” I asked.

She jumped up and down and applauded my question.

“I worry about her.” He said as she rolled her eyes in her head at the stupidity of the male in her life. Female exasperation is often a funny thing to see. Especially when it's directed at someone else. “She's been through a lot, both before I met her and in the time since then. She's been through a lot and she gets sick easily. I don't want to risk her or hurt her.”

She face-palmed and rolled her eyes again before going back into the back room to fetch the tea.

“I may say,” I said carefully. “I may say two things. The first is that this decision isn't entirely yours.”

“Yes, I know that but...”

“Also, there is a very talented, to my eyes, herb-woman and healer in town. Might I suggest a consultation with her could allay a lot of your fears?”

His wife had returned with a tray. She put the tray down with a crash and pointed at me while glaring at her husband. Even though she couldn't speak, I could hear her. “See,” she said. “That's just what I've been saying. But you have to wait to listen to a man before you'll listen to what I have to say.”

I decided to keep my head out of their brief and obviously loving marital spat. Instead I bent to my work and continued signing. Whoever this woman was, whichever students finally managed to learn from her would be lucky people. From the few notes on the works that I had chance to read, she was also fiercely intelligent and had the talent of cutting through academic bullshit and getting to the root of the matter. I say that as someone who has used my own fair share of academic nonsense in order to appear clever.

In the end though I was surprised when I was asked whether I wanted milk in my tea. Once again I made the point about lack of cows on the road and a cup was handed over. The woman, Tulip, had sat next to her husband, resting against his arm. They were a couple that radiated affection for each other although the atmosphere of the body language suggested that she had won the argument by virtue of his realisation that there was no way that he could win.

She caught up her slate and scribbled on it quickly with a piece of chalk. “So is this village going to make it into your work?”

“I've already asked him that.” Her husband told her. She responded by giving him a withering look.

“I don't know yet.” I told her and therefore them both. “Maybe. It depends on whether anything interesting happens here. I know, that to all of you, what's happening here is of vital importance, but in the greater scheme of things...” I shrugged. “But....if it does then I shall be sure to mention the village priest and his clever, beautiful wife.”

She beamed at me. And I felt that the day was one well spent if I could make this woman smile.

I carefully finished my signing and took a sip of tea which turned out to be a blend that I hadn't tasted before. Not entirely unpleasant but there were some herbs that I couldn't identify. I wanted to believe that I wasn't being poisoned but at the time, I was well aware that people in the village were not entirely trustworthy. That we had already been lied to and led down the garden path. I wanted to believe that this pair, along with the herb-woman and the Cartwright were good people. But the crypts and cemeterys are full of people who trusted too soon and too quickly.

I took a deep breath.

“I want to trust you.” I told them both. “I like you both and I want to thank you for the story that you've told me.”

She had sat next to her husband and had taken her husband's hand which she tugged over so that she could hold it on her lap.

“But.” The priest said.

“But.” I agreed. “You both know why I'm here? You know why Kerrass and I are here?”

“You want to ask us what's going on.”

“I do. One of the first things I learned about life on the road, not just life spent with a Witcher, one of the very first thing's I learned was that the unprepared man is a dead man. Whether because you haven't brought enough water with you on a long journey or because you don't have the right oils and potions when you're facing a monster. We find ourselves in this situation. We saw a sign and we came here to help. But now we're here people are lying to us. So I have to ask you, what's really going on?”

The priest just stared at me. It was as though the gates of a fortress had come down behind his eyes. The same thing that happened with the Herb-woman and I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. I had liked these people.

“People are desperate.” He said carefully. The humour had vanished from the eyes of kind and friendly priest in front of me. “They can't help themselves and they need something.”

“What is going on?” I asked again. I felt like I was at the beginning of a game of Gwent. The moment where you have a deck in front of you, neither of you has played a card and you look up to gaze at the person sitting opposite you. You scan each other's faces looking for openings. That moment where the really good players, the ones with the big decks and lots of money say that you have to realise that you don't play the hands that you deal with, but you play the person sat opposite you.

It's a fight, just as much as if we had both drawn weapons. The man's wife was looking from one face to the others. Concern in her eyes, there was a sympathy there that was directed at her husband that was....daunting. I wanted to reassure her, to tell her that it was ok and that I wouldn't be pushing this any further. But I couldn't and I think she knew that as well.

Kerrass had taught me better than that.

“The town is dying.” He told me. “If there's anyone left here in five years I will be surprised. Five years after that, this will be a place of ghosts and monsters.”

“So? It happens all the time. Towns and villages spring up to service particular trade routes or particular needs and then, when that need goes elsewhere, the town is no longer required. The villagers and the townsfolk move on to a place where they can make a living and that's how it works.”

He said nothing.

“There have been three wars in my living memory.” I went on. “Continental wars that have almost literally rewritten the definition of the term “war” in our language. Wars that have involved multiple countries, on both sides, multiple armies on both sides and a death toll that is still being felt all this time later. It makes every military action that came before them seem like nothing more than border skirmishes. Entire population centres have moved, They have had to and landscape that was once well populated is now all but deserted, returned to the monsters and vagabonds that once lived there.”

The priest still said nothing.

“So saying that these people are desperate is not enough. Of course they're desperate. But in the absence of work or goods or whatever, you either change, or die. You cannot cling on to the past.”

“Unless you want to.” He said finally. “Unless you want to. People here are not just desperate. They are also proud and do not want to let go.”

“But that doesn't explain why Kerrass and I were summoned here with a fake notice of the presence of a demon.”

“The notices were not fake.”

“But what is here is definitely not a demon.”

“No it isn't.”

“So what is here?”

He continued to say nothing.

“Look, Are Kerrass and I in danger?”

“I think you might be.”

“Are you in danger?”

“I might be, if I help you.”

“Then...”

“But more importantly, my wife might be in danger.”

She glared at him but it seemed to be an old expression, as though she well knew what was happening but that the argument was out of date and had happened long before and that there was nothing that she could do to stop it.

“Then you're going to stand by and let innocent people be harmed.”

He smiled, “I doubt that the two of you could be considered innocent.”

“Maybe not. But I wasn't referring to what Kerrass and I could be considered as. If we are attacked we will defend ourselves. We have little patience for this kind of thing and will react accordingly. You have not seen a Witcher fight. You have only read about it, either in the sagas, or in my own writing. The violence is shocking. We will defend ourselves and the less we know about what our circumstances are, the more likely it is that we're going to blunder our way into a situation that we can only get out of by drawing our weapons and laying about ourselves.”

He said nothing to that.

“Have you ever seen what a blade can do to a body?” I asked.

They both shifted with indignation. “Of course we have.” The priest snapped. “Did you not hear my story from earlier. I have spent hours caring for the dying, men and women and children who have been attacked by people who thought that their abilities with a sword made them right above all things.”

“So why would you want to inflict that on the people here. Why would you want to strangers to be cut down by villagers or why would you want us to cut down villagers that are attacking us. We're not the bad guys here. We came here to try and help you. You and the rest of the village. So why don't you tell us what we need to know?”

“I....”

“Oh, and before you start. I will not be made to feel guilty because I used my spear to defend myself. I will not feel guilty for that. I will not. If I am attacked then I WILL defend myself to the best of my ability. I have seen those wounds as well, have inflicted those wounds myself and I will not hesitate if I feel as though I have to again.”

“I am a priest.”

“Yes. Yes you are.”

“I have a duty.”

“Again, I am not arguing with that at all.”

“But I do not know everything. I have been kept from the council meetings.”

“Kept from them, or chosen not to attend?” I wondered. I saw his wife flinch and realised that I had hit the truth of the matter.

To be fair to the priest here. There is a consistent and ongoing debate about the role that religion should play in civil government. Some people, like Father Anchor obviously did, believe that the church should have no say in civil matters, that priests should have absolutely no influence on lawmakers and monarchs the world over. But in return, that monarchs and civil laws should have no influence on church policy. It's a nice idea in theory but is almost impossible in practice.

Why? People often give land and money to the church in order to guarentee their ascent into whatever afterlife they would like to end up in. So some church members end up getting quite rich of rents and and things that their tenant farmers pay to them in return for working on the land.

But that land belonged to the king in the first place and why should he lose that same land to religious authorities. So soldiers turn up on these lands and demand the local feudal lord's taxes. “But we've already paid all of our taxes to our rightful landowners.” Complain the farmers and townsfolk.

And on and on it goes.

But the other problem also exists. Just because a man puts a crown on his head, it doesn't mean that he's entirely immune to the pulls of religious teachings and writings. The recent Kings of Kovir and Poviss have all been religious men, some say to a fault. But when a churchman is telling the King to do something that is blatantly untrue and, or, foolish. What's the poor monarch to do? It's made even worse when the King decides to do the right thing and steadfastly refuses to take any part in the foolish military expedition or refuses to oust the “unpleasant, unsightly and heretical” druid's grove. Then the priests who are jealous of the influence of the druids in question decide to go off on one telling their followers that the King is not a right and just King and they should all disagree with him and refuse to carry out his orders.

I'll leave the results to that little problem up to your imagination.

Also, there's the problem that we have in the north which is that we all worship different Gods and Goddesses. I am well aware that the Eternal Fire, the Church of the Sky Father, Melitele and druidism are the main ones but there are all kinds of others. If you go wandering through Velen you will find wooden posts and idols at a good number of intersections devoted to a local nature God. As we've seen, there are cults to small local deities like Crom Cruarch. So who is right.

And by the way. I don't necessarily think that the Empire has the right idea either. Where the church and the state are actually the same thing. Where the Empress and her predecessors are the very definition of their religion, the holy sun on Earth. I think that that's dangerous, to have one person in charge of your civil and spiritual needs.

Wiser people than me will debate the point and arguments for years to come and maybe they will be able to give better answers than I will.

My own views? I am unsure on the subject. On the one hand I can easily imagine a good King being pressured or forced to do unsavoury things to his people because of the policies of greedy churchmen. But on the other hand, I can also, just as easily see a corrupt and mad King, not being held in check by good, wise and benevolent priests.

I remind everyone that the recent terrors in Novigrad and through a good chunk of the North happened because Mad King Radovid, notice how we call him “Mad King Radovid” now rather than “Radovid the stern”, decided he didn't like Sorceresses and harnessed the greed, ambition and anger of the then head of the church of Eternal Fire which, in turn, whipped up the populace into a frenzy of anti-magic fervour before carrying that over into an all consuming fire of hatred towards non-humans. Many of whom had been good citizens in the past.

That was the church and state working together towards a common goal. If they did that towards a good series of things then that could be a benefit. But recently, we've seen what happens when such things can be used for evil.

This priest had decided not to interfere with the running of his town and be supportive of their efforts to save the place.

The other thing to bear in mind when people make decisions that you don't necessarily agree with, is that I was a stranger coming in from the outside. I had no idea what had happened to this man and his wife, I had no idea about the conversations that had happened between him and the other members of the village. This was all strange to me. It's easy for me to sit here, or to stand there, facing the two of them and for me to say that they took the wrong option. That they should have been involved, that they should have done something, but I was neither a priest, nor had I seen what these people had seen.

What I'm saying is, don't judge a man until you know what you've been through. But, in similar standards, it's easy for me to look at this calmly and say that I should have been calm, but there and then, at the time where I had just come out of one of the darker periods of my life on the road, I was getting scared and angry.

“You didn't attend,” I told him, “because you chose not to rock the boat. You didn't attend because you chose to remain neutral and to be calm and separate from the whole thing. But you can't do that. I hang around with a Witcher so I know a few things about neutrality. One of those things is that sooner or later a situation is going to come up where you can't possibly remain neutral. Where the situation becomes so untenable that you have to step in and when that happens, all you can do is pray that you are not too late. Pray that things haven't gone past the point where you can affect the outcome. Because when it does.”

I made sure that I looked them both in the eye. “If it already has. Then you have to live with whatever it is that you let happen. Because you are letting things happen.”

I had made myself angry, entirely by accident. I liked this couple quite a lot and sometimes it's easier to get angry with people that you like for not living up to your expectations. There is nothing quite as soul destroying as when you find yourself liking someone that you think is despicable. Lord Cavill had been one such and I felt his ghost at my shoulder then.

I still do sometimes.

“That was a good speech,” The priest told me, a little coldly. “Did you work on it for a long time?”

I let the air out of me and forced the anger from my mind.

“It's a standard one,” I lied to them. “There are several “standard” speeches that you trot out in various circumstances when you need to try and get someone to tell you something. That one is about neutrality and not stepping up. There's a variation on that one when the person is not doing something because they are afraid.”

“I can well believe it.” He said. He was a little angry himself which was warring against the fact that he was well aware that I had deliberately taken the sting out of my words with a joke. “One day, you must write all these speeches down for me and I can compare them to some of my sermons. I have several that work similarly. Especially on the nature of support, friendship, forgiveness and understanding. I wonder how similar they will all be.”

“More than somewhat I imagine.”

The priest's wife, Tulip, was looking from my face to his and back again. She looked desperately unhappy and clearly wished that the two of us would just stop being men for just a moment and sort our shit out.

“I am their priest.” He told me. He seemed calm, tired and resigned. “I hear their confessions, I listen to it all when they go on about their hopes and fears, their dreams and worries. I'm not supposed to act on that. I can't condemn a man to death for the fact that he lusts after the herb-woman. I can't hate a man when he tells me that he's worried that he might not be able to feed his children in the winter time. I look out and I see people waiting for the next caravan to come through. Not today, maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after that.

“I see people drawing lines in the sand, lines on the calendar where they say things like “If we haven't made more money by that point then it will be time to leave. But then a storm rolls in or, even worse, a caravan finally does turn up and the rest of the village swoops in like carrion feeders on a corpse. Then they are delayed. A day passes, they tell themselves that they will move on in the morning, or the morning after that. Then they hear rumour that a large caravan is coming up from the south and they convinced themselves to stay on for a bit longer.”

He sighed.

“This is a dying place Lord Frederick. When we came here, four years ago, no more than that, shortly after the death of Radovid and the end of the war. It wasn't thriving then but it was busy enough to maintain two inns. I grew up near Novigrad and my world has always been dominated by that place on the horizon. The village that I grew up in was there for decades, even a hundred years, fishing the river and taking the fish to town on market day. It's still going to be there in a hundred more years until Novigrad expands a bit more and just swallows the place. It's terrifying to me that a place can lose it's reason for existing in a little under five years. They all know it too. They all know what's going to happen and they fear it. They don't want to confront the problem that they face, which is that there is simply no need for a village here any more. The only people left are those people that are either too stubborn, too stupid or too naïve to leave.”

“Naive?”

“Yes. The Herb-woman is a good example of this. She knows she could go and make a fortune elsewhere but she doesn't leave because she feels as though she has a duty to the people here. Also, we are the same.” He took his wife's hand again. “We have a duty to these people and we feel that we have to stay and that we have no choice. But we do. I could write to the bishop and explain the situation and ask for a new posting. I would get one too. Some place where there's a quiet old church with a living room attached that we could make beautiful. But I won't.

“But I'm getting off topic. These people are my people now. I don't know when that happened but they are my people and I am their priest. They might have confessed matters but they haven't told me what has happened so I can't act on it.”

“You can act to prevent a crime.” I told him. “I know that much about the seal of confessional.”

“Yes I can.” He told me. “Is survival a crime?”

“That depends.” I told him. “Does survival mean that you are going to harm others?”

I didn't give him time to answer the question.

“Kerrass and I are here now and we are going to be forced to act. I don't know how that is going to come up but Kerrass thinks that sooner or later we are going to be forced to go into the woods. He thinks we are going to be forced to fight something there although we don't know what that thing is. Even though we are as confident as we can be that it's definitely not a demon. He also thinks that when we have done so, people are going to come for us and try and kill us.”

The priest said nothing. His wife was frowning as though she was thinking furiously. I let the silence hang in the air for a moment.

“We did nothing other than to answer a call for help.” I reminded him. “So show me the way out. Give me something I can use.”

“All I can say,” He told me, “All I can do, and it's all I can do, rather than all I want to do rather than breaking the most sacred laws and you know that. All I can say is to say that I am not a fighter. If armed men come for me then I will not fight, but anyone who comes to my doors and asks for sanctuary will be granted it.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?” I asked.

He said nothing.

“Fine.” I threw my hands in the air and got up to leave. “In which case I will leave with the most obvious barb that I have to throw, obvious and true. If you could have done something and you choose not to, no matter what excuse you decide to give yourself. If people die, whether it's Kerrass and I or any of the people that come for us. If people die then it's on your head.”

“I know. And I will live with that. But I will not be judged by you for keeping my oaths.” He said sadly. “Good luck Lord Frederick.”

I sighed. “I'm sorry.” I said. “I shouldn't have been so harsh.”

“Yes you should,” he said in a similarly tired sounding voice. There was sympathy there I thought. “You would not be who you are otherwise. I flatter you with the thought that you are trying to save as many lives as you can. But I am a priest. A person's life is not necessarily the most important thing that they posses.”

I nodded. I had heard of the quandary before.

“Good bye Father Anchor. Your servant Ma'am.” I bowed to Tulip whose mouth hung open in astonishment.

“Good bye and Good luck Lord Frederick.”

“Call me Freddie would you.” I told him waving off his words.

“I thought you didn't like being called Freddie.”

“I don't. But my friends call me Freddie and “Lord Frederick” sounds wrong coming out of your mouth.”

He smiled. “Then I would be honoured Freddie.”

The way he said it sounded odd. As though he was tasting the word to see how it felt. I turned to leave and Tulip waved as I left.

I left the church and got out into the still lingering sunlight. I felt faintly sick and only partially because I had just tried to hammer two people that I liked into doing what I wanted instead of what they felt they had to do. I wondered if I would have been gentle if our situations had been reversed and some stranger had walked up to me before attempting to get me to go against everything that I believed in.

I looked at the town again with new eyes. I had been correct earlier, it had the makings of a very pleasant little town and I could well imagine living here. But now I saw a place of gossip and lies, I found myself imagining people hiding behind doors and gossiping, conducting plots and schemes. I had found four people that I liked out of however many else there were around the place.

I had two thoughts as I walked down the path back towards the road, intending to walk back towards the inn to where Kerrass would be waiting. The first was that, yes, I had escaped the Cult of the First born but that didn't necessarily mean that I had managed to escape people doing bad things to each other. This felt worse somehow. These were not bad people really. They were just desperate and in a little while I would very probably have to fight and maybe even kill a few of them.

The other thing was that I felt a sense of inertia. We really were going to have to walk out into the woods at some point soon and see what could be seen.