(Warning: Some spoilers for the first Witcher game this time if you can believe it. Although, I think the spoiler warning might be a little redundant by this point and that if you've made it this far without playing the games, then you've already spoiled yourself on far too much. Also some spoilers for the Skelligan sections of the third game)

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I have been to many amazing places.

I don't say this to brag but more as a statement of fact and to put the following things into context.

There are places that hold special places in my heart. Places that I will always love for reasons of sentiment rather than for any other logical reason. Chief amongst those is the city of Oxenfurt.

I've spoken about Oxenfurt before but quite a bit of time has passed since I did that so I think it's worth going over. Oxenfurt is my home city. The castle that my Father built is a different home and I'm working on a theory that suggests that a person can actually have several different homes that mean different things to him. As an example, if home is the people that you love then I am very much looking forward to being able to spend more time with the the home of my heart.

Just to be clear, I'm talking about Ariadne.

But I love Oxenfurt. I know every nook and cranny of that place. I know the best places to get a beer, the best places to get a jug of wine and the best places for different kinds of food. I know the best place to sleep if you don't have any money and the places that you can go to eat that will feel sympathetic to the student that has already spent their stipend. I know many of the street-traders by name and those that I don't, I know by sight and they tend to be the places that sell things that I don't need on a regular basis.

I know the guards and when it's acceptable to offer them a drink and stop for a gossip, or when the best thing to do is to just keep going through the gate. I've walked in the student protests and I've watched from the sidelines of those self-same protests and jeered at the sentiments that I do not agree with. I got drunk for the first time in Oxenfurt. Not the kind of tipsy that you can get at family gatherings when a parent still has the ability to signal someone in order to have your alcohol privileges taken away. But properly, lying down, holding on to the world drunk. Where you wake up in different clothes, several days later having little to no memory of how you got there, drunk.

I lost my virginity in Oxenfurt to a courtesan who gave her name as Ruby. She was very kind to me and very understanding about the nervous young man who was rushing into something that he did not understand. I was and remain grateful to her for that experience and making it as pleasant as she could despite the fact that I later came to regret rushing into the act with undue haste.

I fell in love for the first time in Oxenfurt. Seperate to that, the first time a woman returned my affections was in Oxenfurt as well and I might have married her too. If her parents hadn't found her a husband elsewhere so that she vanished from my life. We still correspond and she tells me that she is happy with her husband and two children with a third on it's way.

I made many many friends in Oxenfurt. Good friends, amazing friends who I look forward to seeing every time I return to either Oxenfurt or to my families castle. The kinds of friendships where, despite the months and even years apart, we still take up our friendships from exactly where we left off.

This despite the changes in all of our lives. I am still the slightly socially awkward one despite my fame and increase in rank. Another friend is still considered the ladies man despite being the first one of us to marry and having never strayed away from the woman he loves. Another friend is the group jester despite his occupation as a lawyer and on and on it goes. I love those people and I can't wait to see them again. Kerrass might be my best friend, we have been through too much together to avoid the bond that has formed between us and nor would I want to, but those other friends were with me when I was deciding the type of person that I wanted to be and I remain forever grateful for that. That and for the fact that they accepted Kerrass into our circle with ease and familiarity enough to warm my heard.

All of this before I get to talking about the University itself.

My family's castle is another home. The great keep, the mighty walls and the soaring towers. The fields surrounding it with the range stones marking out those places that the castle defences could reach. The woods, the trees and the little streams that Father carefully cultivated so that he could go on one of his beloved hunts. There is a different feeling for me around that place. I still love it with all my heart but I struggle to think of it as anything other than my Father's castle, with all of the positive and negative thoughts that go with that.

I can remember a lot of happiness there. A lot of happiness. Small memories mostly, of birthday parties and family pranks. Of laughter shared and tears shed. The memories are more complicated but it is still my home. Not as rosy with nostalgia but it is still an important place to me and in my life. Some day I hope to build a home with Ariadne that rivals Castle Coulthard as being “The place that I live” with all of the attendant memories that goes with that. She tells me that she has already started but doesn't want to do too much more because she wants me to be involved as well.

I look forward to that.

But there are other places that I have seen.

Novigrad should be mentioned. The vast and still growing centre of northern ingenuity, industry and commerce. There is a saying, among merchants, that all roads lead to Novigrad and despite my sister's efforts to undermine some of those things with the building of a more commercial district in Oxenfurt, the fact remains that the saying is an accurate one. Sometimes it seems that all the wealth of the continent goes through Novigrad. Despite all of that it is almost surprising that it is not a more beautiful place. There is beauty there but it is found in isolated areas. Individual buildings and bits of architecture.

Regardless of what you think of what goes on in there, the Passiflora is an amazing building. Professor Dandelion would be very upset with me if I didn't mention the Rosemary and Thyme in the same breath although I think that even he would be forced to admit that his building was modelled on the Passiflora. But Novigrad is a city where form follows function. Where people are obsessed with money and as a result, people would rather save their money and build a building that will merely “serve their purposes” rather than one that looks as though it might be pleasing on the eye. Where district and location are more vital to long term survival than aesthetic concerns.

It's the kind of place where Rich merchants live in shacks in order to save money is what I'm saying. All of that life being forced together into a confined space is not conducive to beauty.

But what beauty there is is concentrated in the temple to the Eternal Flame on top of the hill. That is where the Elven architecture really makes itself known and it is still as awe-inspiring today as it ever was.

But Novigrad remains a hard place to love.

If we're talking about beauty though, truly the most beautiful place that I have ever had the good fortune to visit is the city of Beauclair in Toussaint. All of Toussaint is beautiful really, despite the negative associations that I have with the place. Even the smallest villages have flowers planted by the hedgerows and it always seems as though the sun is shining out of a blue sky and that the birds are singing in the trees. The palace itself is impossible to behold and understand. It makes you think that it's almost foolish that such a place could exist let alone be an actual working castle where people live, orders are given and troops are stationed.

I have visited city's out of storybooks. I have seen the capitals of Aedirn, Lyria and Rivia, Kaedwen, Redania and Temeria. I have travelled throughout what would now be considered “The Southern Empire” and I have seen many amazing things. I would argue with the statement that I am well travelled as I am all too aware that there are many, many places that I have still to see. I have never visited the city states of the Hengfors league or the twin kingdoms of Kovir and Poviss. This is apparently because Kerrass might still be a wanted fugitive there despite the many years that have passed since those days but his caution has kept him alive all this time so who am I to argue.

I have never visited Cintra although I really should. A place with that amount of historical significance almost demands that I really should go an see it. My understanding is that the retired Emperor of Nilfgaard has all but rebuilt the keep and has erected a monument to the slaughter of Cintra. An act that he ordered committed by the way, but now he honours the Queen of that place and her daughter. No-one really knows why although Professor Dandelion has offered his own theory and I would recommend you read some of his works if you want that perspective. I would suggest that you don't talk about that in the former Emperor's presence though as rumour has it that he can get quite..... snippy. As in he will have someone cut bits of you off with scissors. In the meantime he entertains himself by surviving assassination attempts and making Cintra a prosperous place again.

You might be wondering why I'm talking about all of this and that would not be an unfair question.

The answer is to put this next statement into context.

The city and keep of Kaer Trolde on the island of Ard Skellie in the Skelligan isles is like no place I've ever seen before.

The closest, and this is very tenuous, but the closest place, the place it reminded me of the most was actually Kaer Morhen. That sounds strange and it is. The two places are nothing alike. Kaer Morhen is a fortress in the mountains near a lake and a river whereas Kaer Trolde is a harbour with a keep overlooking it on the side of an island. Kaer Morhen is landlocked and Kaer Trolde is very, very not. Kaer Morhen is all but deserted and ruined. Kaer Trolde is busy, bustling and full of life. Extremely well maintained. One of the sailors that I met there claimed that the Kaer Trolde harbour is the busiest harbour in the known world. I can't answer for that as it's actually not very big. But it feels busy. It feels as though it's much busier because there's less physical room.

But I was talking about Kaer Morhen in comparison to Kaer Trolde.

Even the type of stone used to construct the places are different. Kaer Trolde is almost carved out of the black stone of the mountain that it perches on, other buildings are built from wood. In comparison, Kaer Morhen is built from a kind of grey brown stone. It's also built from blocks of stone rather than the almost solid appearance of Kaer Trolde that looks as though it was literally carved out of the cliff face. But to me, the similarity is not in the physical details but more of a kind of feeling that I got from the place.

Both places seem to be weighed down by things that have happened there. They're both ridiculously well fortified (if Kaer Morhen was properly rebuilt, manned and maintained) and they give the impression of being places of legend. You can't help but imagine heroes standing on the walls of those places screaming their defiance against a tide of oncoming darkness. There is a poetic majesty to them both as if these are places where mankind, or Elvenkind if that theory works better for you, made their stand against something that was coming for them.

Kaer Trolde is... Saying that Kaer Trolde is an odd kind of place is a little bit redundant. There is nowhere that I've come across, or heard about, that is remotely like it. For a start, you have to come to terms with the duality of the place. Kaer Trolde is, depending on who you speak to, either then name of the harbour town at the foot of the cliffs, or it's the name of the keep on top of the mountain. A few people have the temerity to suggest that it's actually the name of the mountain but in my experience, those people tend to get shouted at a lot. Then, because this is Skellige, fists start to fly, daggers are drawn and things tend to get out of hand.

So this is what it looks like. It's situated in the North West corner of Ard Skellig in the most mountainous region of that great island. Where the rest of the island is, relatively speaking, flat and given over to more arable pursuits, the area around Kaer Trolde is made up of a huge mountain range. It's not the shapely scenic kind of mountain range either. This place is hard, black and covered in snow. They're the kind of mountains that look as though they would cut you if you fell, as though they are angry and resent your intrusion into their most private of places.

Through the middle of these mountains there is a channel for the sea to flow into and through. Some people argue that the channel was manufactured rather than formed naturally and I can't answer for that. I will say that some parts of it, especially the Northern end of the channel, are so narrow and Uniform that it seems unfeasible that erosion and the elements cut through in such a way.

An alternative theory is that the mountain that the keep stands on is actually separate from the mainland. There's a name for this kind of formation but at the moment I can't remember what it is for the life of me. What I can tell you is that the wind whistles through that channel at an incredible rate and is an ever present noise in the background of your thinking. A deep and gentle murmur when the wind is low, or a high shriek of a tortured soul. The native Skelligans claim that the wind is singing to them and that to native children of those islands, the wind is like the music that sings them to sleep. That only strangers hear the anger and the disdain in the noise and that the wind is showing strangers what it thinks of them.

The harbour itself nestles against the Southern bank of the harbour, following the curve of the channel round until it forms the town of Kaer Trolde as the flat land comes away from the water. Realistically speaking, it's the only place for the harbour to be as it simply wouldn't fit anywhere else. The mountains and the land would not permit it. Houses are on the eastern bank on the raised area away from the storm waves and the like, whereas the southern bank is the place where the ship builders are. Where the warehouses and the landing platforms are. The cranes and the staging areas where ships could be docked, unloaded and then sent on their way again with a speed that would be off-putting to the crews anywhere else.

The reason for this is that you can't really get anything larger than a small rowing boat into the harbour itself.

The Skelligan longboats are launched and then head out to sea, they never land at the harbour, they beach elsewhere, but they are hardly trading vessels in the first place. The wind is murderous to sailing vessels anyway. I'm told that the bottom of the channel is lined with the wreckage of long boats that were launched from the ship builders but the sea and the wind took hold of the new vessel and shattered it into splinters against the rocks. The Skelligans are philosophical about such matters and simply tell themselves that the sea rejected the ship and that it would have been unlucky if anyone actually tried to sail on it.

But to trade or land at the harbour, you anchor your vessel well out of the way of the channel. Then the harbour fleet of small boats will come to meet you, you load your cargo aboard the smaller boats, and then they take the cargo back to the docks where they are tied on to the wharfs, the cargo or passengers deposited on the quayside and then the boats move on.

The men and women that work these small boats are, in my considerable opinion, either absolutely mad or have magical abilities. When I disembarked the harbour was a hive of activity. The wind was high and the weather was what we shall charitably describe as being less than entirely pleasant, but they didn't even blink. Laughing and joking as they threaded us expertly through the busy traffic up to dock and deposited us. Not a bump or accident and that is true all day. I checked later and the safety record is incredible. The only time there are ever serious accidents in port are when “foreign scum”, which is a term of affection apparently, start to get uppity and DEMAND that things are done differently. Or ignore all other warning and decide to try and sail, or row, their own vessel into the harbour.

This never ends well for the “foreign scum” although the harbour workers all get a good giggle out of it when they get to the pub later. There, stories will be told of the stupid foreigner who's ship dashed itself against the rocks and the cargo hitting the bottom along with the drowning foreigner in question.

You might be thinking to yourself that you are a good swimmer but do not make the mistake of thinking that you would be Ok. The water is icy cold and I know from personal experience that the shock of that cold is just as much of a killer as the possibility of drowning. In summer it's enough to endanger your life, in winter a grown and healthy man will freeze to death inside of thirty heartbeats.

As an example of how Skelligans are in response to this, it is a regular drunken game to run down to the harbour and leap into the freezing water to demonstrate their manliness. I never saw a woman do it because, apparently, only men are stupid enough to put themselves through that.

Seems legitimate to me.

The harbour structure itself looks strange to me and it took me ages to figure out why until I saw it in action when a storm hit later on in my stay. I am used to permanent structures making up harbours. The harbours of Novigrad are made from stone and the wooden pilings and jetties have been there since before I was born. In some cases the wood has needed to be changed or things have needed to be moved around, but it's about repairs and the odd piece of innovation rather than any kind of lasting change. Kaer Trolde's harbour though is portable. It is designed by some past genius of architecture and design for it all to be removed. Cranes, Jetties, lifts, platforms, all of it can be lifted up out of the water and carried to safety which gives the entire thing a strange, lightweight kind of appearance. This so that if a proper storm really does hit, then the harbour can be removed while the storm blows itself out.

I used the term “proper storm” there. It's a term used by the locals to dismiss “foreign scum” like me when they complain about the weather. As in:

Foreign scum: This weather's a bit extreme isn't it?

Skelligan harbour worker: (Laughing. They're nearly always laughing.): This? This is just a light breeze. Wait until you see a “proper storm”.

You see how it works?

So that is the harbour aspect of the town. The other part of the place, the flip side of the coin if you prefer, is the keep on top of the mountain.

Because Kaer Trolde is also a fortress. Arguably the most defensible place that I've ever seen. The keep itself is an impossible thing to look at. In the same way that you look at Beauclair in Toussaint and wonder how the towers stay up, you look at the keep in Kaer Trolde and find yourself imagining how it was built.

Attackers can approach Kaer Trolde in two ways. The first is through the harbour which would require an amphibious operation against a sea faring nation who know the waters and the weather and are just better sailors than you are. I'm sorry if this offends you. I know many nations have fine naval traditions, Cidaris, Redania and Temeria let alone Nilfgaard itself whose fleet is an awesome, terrifying thing to behold. But it is said, not in jest, that Skelligans are taught to sail before they learn to walk. This is not an exaggeration either.

So your other option is to take the place by land. Leaving aside the fact that you would have to land an invasion force, by sea again, on a hostile island. Then having to make your way across the island through the valleys, ravines and gullies where any numerical advantage would be neutralised, you would come to the entrance to the town. This is through a gulley and the road then either goes straight ahead of you to get to the harbour or it bends to the right to get to the town itself.

But Freddie, how does one get to the keep itself?

That is a good question and I will get to that in a moment.

Across the mouth of this gulley there is a relatively small looking wall. No more than twelve foot high. I've thought about this a bit and I've decided that the wall is a diversion. The Military equivalent of an optical illusion. Any general or soldier that attacks it would be being shot at from the rocks on either side of the wall. You spill over the wall and into the town and the harbour, all the time you're looking for the way up to the castle and the keep. It's the way of soldiers, it's how they're trained. When they see a wall with enemies on top of it they have been conditioned to go up to the wall and go over it, or to go through it. But that is missing the point of the place.

To get to the keep you need to go along the wall. The wall is actually a bridge. You get on top by going through the gate to the harbour side where there are some steps on the left that can be turned into a ramp for horses and wagons should the need arise. The steps are steep to prevent easy access by cavalry or siege equipment. Then you get on top of the wall and go along it so that you can enter the tunnel.

The tunnel itself is a marvel and how it was accomplished I will never know. It defies logic to believe that it might be a natural formation. It's too....Too perfect to be a natural formation. Too perfect for defences. It curves to one side and slopes upwards perfectly to take you to the keep and it travels through the mountain on the mainland side of the harbour. All I can imagine is that it was carved by some immense race of antiquity or by some form of magic as I cannot imagine workers doing it with chisels. The tunnel itself is sloped and can be ridden by horsemen if they really wanted to. Then you come to a narrow opening before you come out onto a bridge that spans the ocean channel below.

If you are afraid of heights, I would suggest that you not look over the side. It is a dizzying distance to the water below. Water that is cold and choppy, even in clement weather.

The bridge itself is very narrow. Only two men or one horse can cross it at any one time making it easily defensible. There is an alternative way down to the keep from this point. A narrow and winding staircase. Most of which is wooden and artificial along with lifts for the raising of goods up to the keep. It would be all too easy to imagine that these constructions could quickly be destroyed in the event of a siege though.

Another dare of local folk is to race up and down the stairs. It looked fairly suicidal to me and when I said so, I was informed that that was the point.

Across the bridge you come to the keep itself which is carved out of the mountain. I would go so far as to suggest that even if I had stayed there a year and spent my days exploring, I wouldn't know all the ways of that place. Or have any more information to give you about how it was made.

As I say, it is a formidable place and is the seat of Clan An Craite power in The Skelligan isles. At the moment, that makes it the seat of the Queen of Skellige.

The locals claim that the castle was carved out of the rock by the founder of clan An Craite. A man named Grymmdjarr. The story goes that he landed on the island from elsewhere and travelled, looking for a place to make the seat of his power but he was disappointed as there was no fit place to house his strength. He prayed to Hemdall, the God of Skellige or one of them at least, and Hemdall gave the hero a mighty chain.

Grymmdjarr dove into the depths of the sea and used the chain to drag a mountain to the surface and placed it on the corner of the island, which then became the mountain that the keep was built on. After that, Grymmdjarr carved the tunnel and castle himself.

By hand.

Make of that what you will.

I saw none of this. I wish I could tell you that I had proper enthusiasm and appreciation for the artistry, majesty and feeling of the place as I approached. But I did not. I was too busy trying to make sure that I didn't puke my guts up.

Not that I had anything to puke up. It had already gone over the side of the Imperial Courier boat that Kerrass and I had been brought to the Skelligan isles in.

The really aggravating thing about the entire thing is this. I don't get sea-sick. I've never been sea-sick. I have taken many small sea voyages and two extended journeys. The first being that time when I travelled up from the south to Novigrad where Kerrass told me the first chunk of his life story. The second being the journey back southwards when we were preparing to rescue the Princess Dorne. I've even been in storms, the most serious of which was in that journey back South where I was forced to lash myself to the mast. Both to ensure that I didn't get in the way of those sailors that were working to save all of our lives but also so that I didn't just pitch over the sides.

I'll never forget that storm. Never. It was a time of fear so intense that all you could do was laugh in the face of death and just admire the fury of the sea as she (yes, the sea is a feminine. Deal with it.) tossed us backwards and forwards. Even despite that, I didn't get sick. I wobbled a bit and for a while it was a struggle to stay upright. At one point I had been forced to take the tiller with the vague orders of “Steer us into the wave” which I didn't entirely understand but Kerrass and I could at least do that. After the storm blew itself out, they had to peel me off that piece of wood while the repairs were carried out and we could continue the journey south. But even then, even in the middle of a storm where I was afraid that it would take my life, I was not sick.

The Imperial Courier craft was like nothing that I've ever seen before. The entire purpose of an Imperial Courier is speed. That's it. The beginning and end of it's purpose. It's a tiny little vessel but it has as much sail as a ship twice it's size. Every spare strip of deck that is not taken up by benches for rowing, has poles that more sails can be tied to, in order to make the boat travel faster. When there is no wind, the sails are taken down and the men sit on the benches, taking up their oars and listen to the beating of the drums.

The craft is thin and narrow as well. Built as though it is a knife designed to cut through the waves rather than to ride atop them. There were no cabins and we could only bring basic equipment with us on the grounds that we could get more when we arrived at our destination.

The other thing about Courier vessels is that they're not exactly designed to accommodate passengers. Kerrass and I were forced to kind of camp out near the tiller and kind of wedge ourselves into corners. The men manning these things are massively muscled but relatively short in stature, almost misshapen in that way that men who constantly exercise a particular set of muscles are. The way that Longbowmen have massive arms that seem out of proportion to the rest of their bodies.

They seemed friendly enough but they just didn't have time to fuck about. At one point I was physically picked up and moved aside when I accidentally found myself in the way. Food was cold and infrequently served, largely given out when there was nothing else to do. As I say, it was not a craft used to travelling with passengers but Kerrass suggested that one of the reasons for my sudden and unusual illness was the fact that the food was... somewhat unflattering. The sailors who lived off the stuff consumed it at speed but I found it too salty and rather cloying. That feeling that you get at the back of your throat that makes it impossible to swallow.

Personally though, I think it was the sheer speed with which we moved. I have never experienced anything like it. I can only wish that I had had the opportunity to enjoy it rather than spending a bunch of time just holding on for dear life and making sure that the results of my many bouts of vomiting and heaving would end up over the side rather than at the feet of the sailors where they might slip and fall.

It truly was extraordinary the speed with which we travelled so that it felt that we were flying. I swear that their were times when we were moving so fast that we were flying through the air rather than sailing across the ocean.

It was those jerks that did it for me I think. That moment when we were coming back down to the ocean after soaring high above on the crest of the wave. There was an almost jarring thud as we hit the sea level that always, always shook me and made my teeth rattle. Even Kerrass, the stoic Witcher of close to a hundred years experience on the path seemed to be almost shaken by it. He didn't struggle with the nausea that I experienced because he was a Witcher and I hated him for that at several points. But he was surprised and I would like to believe that I did not imagine the slight paling of his skin, the widening of his eyes or the ever so slight tremble that I thought I caught in his hands.

But the sense of movement was strange. Rather than the roiling wave like motion that comes with a normal kind of sailing. A movement that you can anticipate and get used to if you plant your feet properly. This was unpredictable. There was no rhythm to it. No anticipating things, no...no feel to it. The jarring, the strangeness to it all, all of these things combined to shape my discomfort.

Someone wanted Kerrass and I in Skellige very badly indeed.

Not that the Captain knew, we asked him many times when we came aboard but he didn't know, or particularly care. He was a short, no-nonsense man in his early twenties which was surprising to me, a man so young captaining so important a vessel. I have since found out that the design of the courier ships is considered “dangerous innovation” by those older and more experienced Captains in the Imperial Navy and as such, many of those older men refuse to command such a....and I quote..... “fucking death trap”. The problem, apparently, is that these courier ships simply don't move like normal ships, so when you try and get it to do things that other ships would do happily, the courier ship will either break, capsize or do other, equally as horrible things.

So you need men who are trained to the Courier vessels. Men who have a feel for the new types of craft and operate faster and in the moment. I can't speak for any of the others but certainly the man that we met had absolutely no sense of imagination whatsoever. He just did as he was told, moving messages from point A to point B with as minimum a fuss as possible and with as much speed as he could wring out of his crew and his tiny vessel. Apparently, the pay was significant. Significant enough that people would continue to sign up for “courier duty” despite the risks involved. But since these new types of courier were introduced, there is another running theme which is that it is always the same Captains that come back. That throw their vessels into the deepest and darkest maelstroms and still come out the other side, a little battered maybe but alive and in one piece nonetheless. They are getting a reputation apparently. A kind of elite status amongst other sailors but I notice that many are unwilling to take the plunge and to actually perform the duties of the messenger service.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I knew none of this either when I first encountered the courier vessel. I had been holed up in my rooms putting the finishing touches to my account of the village of Crayton and the incident with the Unicorn. The entire process of writing that episode was an odd one. On the one hand, the magic surrounding the unicorn meant that I was struggling to remember what had happened. But the more I thought about it the easier that it became. It was like a muscle I suppose. The more I practised remembering the Unicorn, the more I could remember. As you might have gathered from the end of that passage, I was just putting the finishing touches to the matter when the innkeeper, of the place I was staying in, was all but forced into my room at knifepoint by a sailor in Nilfgaardian black.

“I'm sorry sir, but this... this.... shit licking, cock sucking, woman worshipping heathen would not take no for an answer and has forced his way in.” The innkeeper was apoplectic with rage. I was busy trying to stifle my amusement that out of the list of insults that he was throwing at the sailor, he reserved the most venom for the term “heathen”.

“Lord Frederick von Coulthard sir?” The Sailor asked me in the Elder speech that they use in the South. As a matter of course, you should probably be aware that any Nilfgaardians that you see in the North are bilingual and can speak both the Northern tongue as well as the Elder speech. Just be warned that if you wander into a tavern populated by Nilfgaardians, that you should watch your words. They might be speaking in Elder speech but they are listening in Northern.

“Don't worry Innkeeper.” I told the balding man.

“My wife is positively beside herself with the intrusion.” The innkeeper claimed. His wife was a formidable woman and my guess would be that she would take the arrival of the Empress herself through her doors, with a calm and placid outlook on life.

“I'm sure that it will all be passing by.” I told him as I rose to my feet. I turned to the Nilfgaardian and switched to the Elder speech.“I am so named. What can I do for you?”

“The Captain's compliments sir.” The Young man responded, putting his dagger away. He reached inside his doublet and produced an oil-skin wrapped bundle which he opened and took out a folded piece of paper. He took it and offered it to me. I scanned it quickly.

“Innkeeper,” I began when I was half way through the letter. “I will be leaving shortly. If you could send a messenger up to the Rosemary and Thyme to fetch Kerrass from whatever he's doing then I will be obliged.”

As I think I've said before. The inn I was staying in was a little dive of a place down by the water front. Nothing very large but the Innkeeper had been educated when he was younger and still liked to practice his vocabulary on those people that he thought might be able to understand him. He was a snob but I liked him. He could be made to do anything you wanted providing you asked using suitably long words.

The innkeeper left and I turned back to the Sailor. “Where are you docked?”

“Docking bay 94 sir. The Captain asks that you make all possible haste.”

“Ninety four? That's up where all the smaller fishing vessels are isn't it?”

“If you say so sir. Do you require an escort?”

I shook my head and heard him stamp off as I quickly packed my gear. I read the letter again while I waited for Kerrass to arrive from wherever he had got himself off to.

It was actually really short. Intimidatingly short really and like all letters of this kind. The vast majority of it was utter waffle. There is a trick to reading these things which is to get past the titles and the compliments and get to the heart of the matter. I actually had to sit through classes on this kind of thing with my tutor when I was younger. Another reason that I really must hunt that old bastard down and thank him for all the things that he did manage to force my brain to absorb. Those lessons did nothing for my enjoyment and I complained regularly and often that I would never be important enough to be receiving such messages.

Oh how wrong I was.

To Lord Frederick von Coulthard, future Count of Angral

Please accept our sincerest greetings and most ardent wishes that this missive finds you in good health. For too long have our paths gone in separate directions and my heart yearns that we should see each other again soon so that we might discuss matters that are of grave importance to each of us, to our most noble people and to this state and Empire which we both serve and love so much. We feel that your absence from court is pronounced and that your advice, expertise and perspective is sorely missed in these troubling times.

I have been informed that you intend to visit the Skelligan isles in the near future in order to attend the coming festival with your esteemed and most excellent companion and colleague, Master Witcher Kerrass. I am overjoyed to say that I will also be present to witness so momentous an occasion.

We have been made aware that your transport arrangements to the Islands has been delayed. This situation is intolerable to our minds, our hearts and our senses and as such we have made available a vessel of the Imperial fleet in order to carry yourself and your companion to our side with the utmost speed.

We do so request and require you to present yourself to the Captain of the vessel “Knife of the Wind” and he will see to your every comfort and place you upon the shores of Ard Skellig with all possible alacrity. He is authorised to make all arrangements in this matter and has our utmost confidences and trust in his abilities.

I shall look forward to your presence upon these shores and ask you to make all possible haste in order to properly allay my fears and to resolve the problems of your absence.

Yours, most sincerely.

Morvran Voorhis.

It was an interesting missive and told me almost nothing at all. The most important section was the bit about “Request and Require”. That is the part of the letter that was an order and that could not be ignored. It's a phrase that is drilled into the minds and memories of every noble-born person on the face of the continent.

It's a phrase used by people of higher social standing than you, most often by people that have some form of feudal power over you in order to get you to do what they want. The failure to obey those particular orders can be catastrophic. In this example, it's the polite version of saying “Get your fucking ass over here now”.

There were some other things that could be gleaned from the letter although that was not a lot. The fact that it was Lord Voorhis that had sent me the letter was telling. Normally the kind of person who would be throwing their weight around towards me would be either my immediate Lord of my house. Which would be Mark but his Eternal Flame coat of arms is much more fancy than a missive like this. Through him I owe fealty to the Redanian Duke of the Pontar. Which is interesting because we don't have one at the moment. The last one having died at the hands of King Radovid's paranoia. Or certainly around that time. I have absolutely no idea who currently claims the title or indeed if the client Throne of Redania is even inclined to fill the position. After the Duke of the Pontar then it would be the King of Redania. Like the Dukedom of the Pontar, at the moment, we don't have a King, we have a regent's council, ostensibly led by Queen Adda.

But from everything I've heard, Adda was distraught at her Father's death, Her father being King Foltest of Temeria. That distress angered King Radovid who was being advised by the Hierophant of the Eternal Flame in Novigrad that his wife was a harlot, a madwoman and a heathen. That she had been the subject of magic, which I understand is true although she didn't have much choice in the matter, and that as a result she should should be cast off and burned at the stake.

My dynastic and politician's brain would suggest that this was done in order to get a more flame fearing woman into the marriage bed of the King in order to spread the influence of the Holy Fire in royal circles. King Radovid, though, took this admonishment to mean that his wife needed to be punished for these perceived sins.

If even half of what I've heard about Queen Adda is true then the poor woman has had an impossibly awful time and has been a victim of being tugged around in various schemes and designs since before she was born. Her time with her husband, which had started off relatively happy and pleasant had become a literal torture. Fortunately for her and indeed for Redania though, she gave birth early giving the realm an heir in the form of a young boy and a princess to go with it. The queen is mostly a broken woman now but she has the gift of knowing how to properly delegate the responsibilities of the Kingdom now that the regency council has been confirmed by the Imperial court.

She and the Empress are rumoured to hate each other though. No-one seems to know why although unkind whispers suggest that the two are somewhat alike in certain elements of their characters. I've never met the Queen though so I can't comment and have only seen her at a distance in parades and the like. Other than her startlingly red hair I didn't get much of an impression of her.

But anyway, digression over.

But after her and her regency council, the next person who could call on me in such a way would be The Empress herself. But she was not the writer or the signature at the bottom of the letter. I suspected that this was Lord Voorhis' way of telling me something. That he had used the words of an Imperial summons while not actually being the Empress.

There also wasn't a seal on the letter. It had been folded and tied but there was no formal seal in any kind of wax. The signature was certainly large enough to suggest that it was Lord Voorhis' signature. The importance of people can often be measured in the size of their signature after all. It was neat and collected and relatively contained. All of which were elements that reminded me of Lord Voorhis but that could mean anything. It looked like it was written in haste. I counted six spatters of ink and several blobs of ink that signified that he didn't have time to take proper care of the ink in his quill as he moved from the inkwell to the paper.

As to the rest of it, it was a mystery and one that I was tickled to learn the answer to. But there simply wasn't enough information in the letter to give me any hint as to what was happening. There were many suggestions that he needed my advice or my presence in Skellige. But that could mean anything and could easily be dismissed as empty compliments. The kind of which are often added into this kind of missive in order to butter up the person receiving the message.

I resolved to ignore this and to stop with my useless theorising. As Kerrass would say at the beginning of a hunt, when we were still trying to figure out what was going on. It is useless to theorise before proper facts have been discovered. He believes that if you do this you end up bending what you find in order to fit the theories that you had on approach rather than to do things the other way round. Which is the correct way round in his opinion and to be fair, I have seen his opinion be proven right on more than one occasion.

I shrugged and shouldered my belongings as Kerrass came through the door.

“Our ship's in?” he asked.

“In a manner of speaking.” I handed him the letter which he read through quickly.

“Interesting.” He passed it back and packed his own gear away. He had considerable less than I did and we walked out of the door. Saddle-bags over our shoulder. I had a feeling of excitement in my chest now that things were finally happening.

Docking Bay ninety four is at the far end of the Southern tip of Novifrad harbour. The one that's closest to the sea. As I said to the sailor, it's most often used for Novigrad's fishing fleet and it is far from the most pleasant area of town. The problem of being an industrial grade fisherman is that you invariably smell of fish. Most of the fishermen lived close so that they could take advantage of any kinds of storms or so that they could work with the tide rather than with the rising of the sun. There were warehouses nearby and a constant industry of fish cleaning and gutting.

The smell was awful.

On the plus side it meant that the area is relatively safe. The fact that it smells so bad means that those people worth robbing don't go there. And if there's no-one to rob then what's the point of having a criminal element present either. Also, criminals, like their targets, want the finer things in life so they want to go to the baths and the Passiflora themselves so only go to the Fisherman's quarter when they need to hide out. So the best thing they can do when they're hiding out is to keep their heads down and not bother anyone.

But at the end of the docks, there was a new addition.

This turned out to be the Imperial Courier dock. The last four births were kept empty. I had never been down this end of the dock on the grounds that I had never been in need of any fish on that kind of scale. Nor did I need to bath in fish guts or any of the other, doubtlessly, delightful amenities at the end of the dock. But the last four births had been completely renovated. New, more seasoned wood had replaced older and more slimy docks, pilings and wharfs. You could tell because of the wood used on nearby jetties. Above the docks was a newly built small building that had a pigeon coop on the roof. Presumably to house the messenger pigeons that the Imperial courier service required.

I did wonder aloud as to why messages couldn't travel solely by pigeon but I was informed that that would be fine unless the message needing to be carried was an envoy, an item or a gift. A pigeon would really struggle to carry me off to Skellige for instance.

To my, non-nautical, eyes the ship we were headed for was painfully small. I struggled to imagine how we were going to fit aboard it let alone how we were going to survive the crossing to the Skelligan isles which is not the safest passage as it was.

The first answer is that I was informed that passage was booked for Kerrass, myself and our personal weapons. Clothing, horses and anything other than essential tools would follow on other forms of transport and that all other requirements would be taken care of at the destination. Very serious looking men in their Imperial blacks came to take away our horses, Kerass took his silver sword out and his potion box to bring with him while I carried my spear and dagger. I looked longingly at my writing gear but I reasoned that I would be able to find quills and ink in Skellige if it really came to that. Even if I followed the prejudice of some in my caste in believing that the Islanders are little more than barbarians then they would at least need to record things. And I knew for a fact that the Skelligans are far more than the barbarians that modern Propaganda would paint them.

The ship was called “The knife of the Wind,” and we were shuffled aboard and told, precisely where to stand. Not there, just a little bit to the left, no that's too far, and then we sat cross-legged and proceeded to get in everyone's way. It was already uncomfortable and we hadn't even left port yet.

As I say, I've been part of sea voyages before and the sight of men working on a boat is not new to me. It always makes me think of an ant-hill. Where everyone has a job and everyone knows what it is and no two ants collide or get in anyone's way. But this was different. This was almost like a dance. It looked rehearsed, the movements precise and contained. Minimum effort expended with the maximum possible result. The Captain, as I mentioned before, was a surprisingly young man. Younger than me even and I would not be surprised if he turned out to be younger than the vast majority of his crew. But the Captain just stood there next to the tiller with his arms folded. He barely moved keeping a critical eye on his crew. I did try to talk to him and strike up a conversation as I was insatiably curious but he cut me off, telling me that he was working.

“Catch me at port and I will answer all the questions you like.” He told me surprising me again. His voice was cultured and his language was educated. Most ship captains in my experience are clever men, as stupid sailors rarely survive, but their education is in one specific direction and their School mistress is the sea. This means that their voices are rarely cultured and their educations in other areas are lacking. This seemed to be different here “But right now,” the Captain went on. “My duty depends on the work my men are doing and I will not interrupt that.”

I sat back and resolved to watch. It was interesting but, as I say, I found myself cramping up as I sat in my confined little area.

Things were stowed away, different things having specific areas to sit before ropes were cast off just as abruptly and we were away.

It was a fairly clear day to start with and the sea was calm around Novigrad. The sailors picked up their oars and began to row with a pace that I am sure that any other group of men would find punishing so that we fairly sped through the water. The Captain persisted in astonishing me by continuing to say almost nothing at all. The men rowed and he steered. Occasionally examining the sun in perspective to the sea and other landmarks. At one point he pulled a compass out of a pocket and examined it carefully before replacing it but after that he went back to scanning the horizon. Not just for storms or to monitor the direction, but for the large waves that would be a danger to his tiny vessel.

We shot across the waves like an arrow flying from a bow. At first I found the speed exhilarating but then the wind started to pick up, the waves started to become taller and although I am sure that in any other circumstance it would have been considered good sailing weather, I began to feel that I wasn't going to enjoy the voyage.

The speed was incredible.

When the wind properly kicked in the crew stowed their oars and moved around the ship. Poles were extended on either side. Wheels mounted into the deck were spun. Levers pulled. Ropes coiled and suddenly we were under sail and speeding across the water. The lurch as we changed from man power to wind power was when I lost my breakfast over the side.

And still the Captain had said nothing. He just watched. Very occasionally he would gesture to one of the watching crew members.

But then I was mostly involved in making sure that I spilt my guts up over the side rather than in the ship itself. This was actually much harder than it might first appear but given that the ship was so small I felt that it would be rude to stink out the place with what remained of my breakfast.

Kerrass, it has to be said, loved it. I maintain that he was afraid. I maintain that he was a little bit put off by it and I will maintain to my dying day that by the end of the journey he was trembling slightly. He denies this of course but he found the sheer sensation of speed to be utterly intoxicating.

The day turned into night without my really noticing it. I just looked up at one point and noticed that it was dark, the wind of movement still tugged at my hair though so I knew we hadn't stopped or put down and anchor. Come to think of it, I'm not even that sure that we had an anchor.

The Captain finally came to see us.

“It is not a lack of yourself to be sick.” He told me as he handed me a ship's biscuit. “Try to eat it,” he told me. “It helps, believe it or not.”

“Are there any weevils in it?” I asked with a trembling attempt at a smile.

“No,” his face turned slightly towards a smile. “I'm saving them for myself.”

“This is different to anything I've experienced.” Kerrass said to him as I nibbled at the small chunk of hardened flour, water and salt. “And I've been on the path for nearly a hundred years.”

“It's new to the navy.” The Captain said. “Though we don't normally carry passengers. Someone must want the pair of you in Skellige really badly.”

“But you don't know who?”

“No idea at all. And I care even less. Decisions like that are made well above my pay grade.”

“How high is your pay level I wonder?” Kerrass mused.

For the first time the Captain laughed. “Considerable.” I began to wonder if his lack of noise was a character trait rather than any kind of leadership technique. I remembered abruptly that Sir Rickard rarely issued orders except in extreme circumstances.

“You're amongst the quietest ship's captains that I've met.” Kerrass and I were obviously thinking along the same lines. Sometimes it is reassuring when he does that. Other times, not so much. He's a self-confessed madman and I hate to think that I was mad too. Then again, who is the most mad? The man who walks into the cave full of monsters or the man who follows him?

“Most ships captains like to shout to impose their authority.” The Captain told us. “But in truth, I don't have time. This crew is my crew. They've worked for me for the last three years since I was given this command.”

He must have seen my raised eyebrows. “I was sixteen at the time. I trained them to anticipate my needs. With the bigger ships you can roll with the punches. If you don't turn into the wave you might take some damage or at worst, you might capsize. But a big enough wave would simply kill us.

“I am one pair of eyes and I cannot be watching the entire horizon and steering the boat at the same time as navigating. I do not have room for an officer's mess so I have to trust my crew to do the jobs as well. If something happened to me, every single man on this vessel minus the apprentice at the tiller there.” He gestured, it was the young sailor that had come to fetch me from the inn. “could take over instantly and without pause. I've trained them to anticipate my needs and the needs of the ship so that by the time I need things doing then they're already done.”

He skewered me with a look. “Write this down Lord Frederick. Yes, I know who you are. But write this down so that all can hear it. Real leaders do not shout. Nor do they exert their authority over others. Real leaders listen. Real leaders know when to stay out of the way. Real leaders eat last.”

“An interesting point of view.” I said. “So rarely exercised.” Or at least that's what I wanted to say but another wave of nausea struck me and I made it to the rail just before I spent a bit more time heaving into the waves.

“Yes well. So few leaders have ever been on the bottom of the ladder. They want to stay on the top and they want to teach those on the bottom that the bottom is all that they deserve. That way, their own positions are never threatened. I will never be an Admiral of the fleet. Those Captains of the bigger vessels will not allow a messenger Captain to rise and they have the status and the influence. Despite the fact that I am twice the sailor than any two of them put together.”

“Bitter about that?” Kerrass wondered. I found myself thinking that just as he has rubbed off on me, maybe I have rubbed off on him. His sense of curiosity was increasing.

“Sometimes.” The Captain admitted. “But the world is changing with the new Empress. She invented the courier fleet and my hope is that she will turn her eyes towards Naval reform in due time.”

He reacted to a shift in the sea. Maybe the ship made a noise or there was an impact on the hull that he didn't like the feel of. But he rose to his feet. I have no idea what it was that he hear or felt but he looked up and sniffed.

“I have to go. As I say, don't feel bad about the sickness.”

“I didn't think I got seasick.”

“This is a whole new level of thing.” He told me before returning to the tiller.

The same thing that had alerted the Captain to the shift in the sea had roused the crew out of the slumber that they had thrown themselves into after the bout of rowing. As I say, I don't know how they knew. Possible one of those sixth sense things that soldiers get when they sense nearby danger. But they knew. Oilskin was stretched over some of the cargo which was mostly the food and the drinking water and we shifted. Then it started to rain but we just kept moving on.

It was incredible and I would like to be able to bear better witness to the skills of those people as they worked. But I was too busy feeling wretched.

It took us a little under three days to make it round the cape of Ard Skellig in order to bring us into port at Kaer Trolde and I bitterly resent the entire thing.

Just as a comparison so that you can gauge the speed with which we were travelling. My understanding is that it takes a little under a week to make the same distance in a standard vessel.

But I wanted to enjoy the passage into Skellige. I wanted to see the majestic mountains and the inhospitable islands. I wanted to see the truth of what the sirens actually are as all the men, including Kerrass, armed themselves with bows in order to defend the vessel in case we were attacked. I wanted to watch the shores or Ard Skellig slip by and get a glimpse of how life works in that strange and fantastical place.

But all I saw was the bottom of the bucket that I was given in order to contain my dry heavings. One of the Captain's rare order were given and I heard a flag being run up the main mast and horns started to blow. The temperature abruptly became bitterly cold as the wind blew off the still snow capped mountains despite the fact that summer was only recently past meaning that we were only in early Autumn and I pulled my cloak tighter around myself in my misery doing my best to console myself with the fact that the journey would soon be over.

But it was not. Then I had to subject myself to the horror of disembarking. It turns out that even the Imperial Courier Service does not have permission to enter Kaer Trolde harbour and we tied ourselves onto the side of one of the larger Imperial craft that was anchored in the bay just outside of the entrance to the harbour itself. We were told not to bother climbing aboard the bigger craft as we had been expected for some time. Indeed, we had been looked for since the initial summons had been issued and sure enough a small, one person, sailing boat was coming towards us with a large grinning man sat at the tiller.

I know I keep mentioning the thing about Skelligans laughing or smiling a lot but it is true. Skelligans seem to have an interesting outlook on life. They believe in fate and that the path of your life has been written since before the moment that you were born. That everything in your life has been predetermined and that the decisions that you make were made in line with what is supposed to happen. It is, in fact, a grave insult and discourtesy to take a man's destiny from him and wars have begun over such things. As a result of this the Skelligans believe that there is a time and a place for sadness. There is a time and a place for anger but for just about all other situations, you should just grin, laugh and enjoy the path that the Gods have laid out for you.

I find this philosophy enticing and bewitching. It would be all too easy to put myself in the hands of powers that I know nothing about and give the responsibility for my actions over to someone, or something else. It is almost alluring to think that it is not my fault and that I should just accept whatever is happening to me. It has to be said that this philosophy does not mean that the Skelligans believe in just giving up and letting the world get on with things. That would be incorrect, you are still expected to contribute to society and fight back against those that have wronged you and yours. But at the same time, there is no purpose or reason to run away. If it is your time to die then it is your time to die and young Skelligans are taught to come to terms with that as soon as they can.

But there is another side-effect to this. That side-effect being that when a Skelligan suddenly decides to stop smiling and starts getting serious about whatever it is that's annoyed them. Then you tend to notice it. There are few things quite as startling as seeing a man, or a woman for that matter, who was telling you lewd and exaggerated stories about their sexual conquests go from that state of fun-loving enjoyment, to startling and sudden violence in the moment between taking a breath. They really do believe in things like hospitality and warm welcomes and in the main, I found them to be very nice people, until they abruptly decided to, not be nice.

It also never stopped amusing me though, during the time that I was there, that the sheer variety of laughter was almost ridiculous. I had never before thought that laughter could be sinister, scary, uplifting, angry, defiant, sad, self-deprecating and bitter. Of course I knew all of that but it was the first time that I was confronted with it on a societal wide scale. They laugh all the time. They also grin openly when they're supposed to be quiet.

The sailor that came to pick Kerrass and I up was no different. He was laughing at the waves that tried to engulf his small craft, laughed at the Nilfgaardian sailors that caught his ropes and hauled him in close. He laughed sympathetically at me when the Captain of the Courier vessel told him that the crossing had been rough and then he laughed again when I climbed aboard and pulled my cloak around me.

“Here,” he said with a chuckle. “Drink this.” He passed over a canteen.

“What is it?” I wanted to know but he didn't answer until after I had taken a small sip. It tasted of burning. Also, fire and smoke and warmth. It was unlike anything I had tasted and I mean that sincerely.

Predictably the sailor laughed at me.

“Is that supposed to help?” I demanded weakly feeling as though I was being the butt of some kind of joke.

“No,” he declared. “But if you get a bit more of that down you, you will soon forget about whatever it was that made you so miserable.

I took another drink to make it clear that I really was a man and passed the canteen back. The Sailor drank a considerable amount. An off-putting amount really given that he still had to steer us into port and I'm at least moderately confident that if I had drunk that amount of the stuff, then I would be close to passing out. He stowed it carefully under his seat, told us where to sit and then put one hand on his tiller and with the other he held a thin rope that was tied to the sail and we were moving.

He laughed almost the entire journey.

The worst part, by far was when we crossed the boundary from being at sea to being inside the harbour itself. Someone at some point explained that this was due to the currents and tides of the sea meeting the current and tide of the harbour. If that makes sense to you then you are a wiser person than me.

During the entire process of travelling from the ship that brought me to Kaer Trolde to actual landfall, I yelped in fear on seven different occasions. I know this because Kerrass kept count and took various opportunities to remind me of my cowardly nature. I can't really claim that he was exaggerating either. The majestic scenery and the awesome power of the place that I was, was reduced to the swell of the water underneath the, to me, pitifully small boat that was carrying me across the harbour. I was all too aware of the jagged rock face that we seemed to be just barely scraping past without disaster. The near collusions with other boats that were making the same journey laden down with supplies for those ships that were still outside the harbour itself, ferrying passengers backwards and forwards and all the other things. But then we made landfall as the ship sped into harbour and into the berth that was meant for us. We didn't even have time to be tied onto the jetty before I was pushed out of the boat and onto the sodden wood where I swayed for a moment before Kerrass had to push me along and onto the stone quayside.

I felt, absolutely awful.

The difference between going from a rolling sea being underfoot towards the feeling of solid ground is something that I have experienced before but in some way that I couldn't identify, it was striking me worse.

“I am sorry Lord Frederick but circumstances forced my hand.”

“What?”

I turned and my bleary, tear-filled eyes were overwhelmed with black armour and grey skin.

“I have only travelled by courier once and it was not something that I would care to repeat again.” The voice went on. “But the need was urgent.”

I blinked and rubbed my eyes until the figure in front of me resolved itself and coalesced into the form of Lord Morvran Voorhis of the Imperial Court.

He smiled slightly and thinly. This is not unusual for him as everything he does seems to be slight and thin. He is a man of calm reserve and careful planning. He serves as a senior advisor to the Empress and in a position that he describes as being “Head of Confidential Agencies.” But which other people refer to as being the Security Services. Less charitable people call it the secret police.

He is a remarkable man and he has my utmost respect and admiration but, like a few other people that I could mention, he is a difficult man to like. He looks like a dead fish that has been left out for two long. His long hair is always slicked back over his head, his skin is pale and clammy looking even though his handshake is always warm and firm, while I always find that his eyes seem to boggle out of his head slightly. The reason that he is a difficult man to like, or certainly the reason that I find him hard to like is that he, by his own admission, needs to think like the world's most suspicious man. He has to imagine that everyone is out to get him at any one time. He constantly has to plot and scheme against the Empress and put himself in the boots of traitors and potential enemies of the state in order for him to look for weaknesses in his own defences.

Which, in turn, means that he looks and feels like an enemy of the state, a schemer and a traitor.

There is a story about Lord Voorhis that may or may not be true but that I could absolutely believe as having happened.

One of the contenders for the crown before Emperor Emhyr decided to name Empress Cirilla as his heir was Lord Voorhis. He is connected to the Imperial line by some kind of link that I used to know but can't quite remember at the moment. When Cirilla was in the process of settling into her new role after the coronation had been performed in Toussaint, she returned to the Capital city of Nilfgaard where she set up her court and set about governing. Many of the older nobility did not like the fact that power, which had begun to move away from them during Emperor Emhyr's reign, was continuing the trend of getting further and further away.

Their proposed replacement for Cirilla was Lord Voorhis himself.

The conspirators approached Lord Voorhis on the subject and he seemed agreeable. The conspiracy grew and grew until they had army officials and generals working for them. They had an infrastructure in place and as far as anyone was concerned, in a month or two, the nation would rise against the Empress and the power of the nation would be back in the hands of the deserving noble families.

Then, in one night, the secret police turned up and started knocking on doors. The entire conspiracy was rounded up, hanged and their lands were passed on to more deserving courtiers while their wealth was taken in by the Imperial treasury.

During the trial of these men it became clear that the Empress was well aware of the conspiracy and that Lord Voorhis had kept her informed of the entire process including during his so-called and apparent betrayal. The senior official was an important Lord. Someone from what is considered “Old Nilfgaard” meaning the place where the Empire was born and when his sentence was passed down, he screamed his defiance and demanded to know why Lord Voorhis had betrayed them.

“You are the only one here whose blood is purer than mine,” he said. “It was why I would have followed you to the end. Why did you betray us? We could have taken back the throne and given it back to Nilfgaard.”

Lord Voorhis raised his eyebrows and walked to face the man. The man who Lord Voorhis had played with as a child, gone to school with and fought alongside during the Empire's many wars.

“Ah my friend.” Lord Voorhis began, a look of profound grief on his face. “What a man you could have been. What a servant of the Empire you would have made. If only you had the courage to be loyal.”

Then he turned his back and walked to the Empress' side.

For all that I struggle to like him, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that he is utterly loyal to the Empress, but that if he turned his not inconsiderable powers towards treason then he would be a terrifying opponent to Imperial interests.

“You look awful.” He told me.

“That's good.” I told him blinking stupidly. “I would hate to feel this bad and look as though I was alright.”

“I know,” he turned and climbed up into the saddle of his horse which was large and jet black. “That all you want to do is to find a cool, dark hole to crawl into until the world stops spinning. But the Empire needs your services.”

“Immediately?”

“Immediately.”

I looked down at my vomit flecked shirt and tunic.

“I have spare clothes for you up at the keep.”

“But....”

“Lord Frederick.” Voorhis' pale eyes bored into my skull. “I am not exaggerating things when I say that I have summoned you here in order to save the Empire. Nor am I exaggerating when I say that I would have rather left you to your own devices. But the need is urgent. I am running out of options to save the Empire.”

I stared at him. “What the fuck is happening that you could need my help?”

“We need to stop the Empress before she does something really stupid. She wants to board the ghost ship and talk to it's passengers.”

“Who are it's passengers?” Kerrass asked.

“I don't know. The Skelligans claim that they are the dead. That she ship is captained by two people. The first is a tall skeleton in a black robe carrying a scythe. The other is a woman and of the two, they seem more afraid of the woman.”

“And you want me to convince her otherwise?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?” Kerrass wondered.

“Because all those who try, die in the attempt.”

“Has it ever been done successfully?” Kerrass asked.

“Yes.” Voorhis sighed and rubbed his eyes. “In legends. Apparently the Skelligan God Hemdall climbed aboard and spent a day in conversation with the two captains.”

I felt my mouth open in a gape. “What could I possibly say to her?”

“Believe me when I say that I've tried everything else.”

There was a horse trough nearby and I stumbled over to it and plunged my head into the icy water. When I was finished I stumbled back to the harbour where I threw up what breakfast I had had, including whatever the harbour boatman had given me.

“I think you need to tell me a bit more about what's going on then.” I told Voorhis when the world had stopped spinning. It took longer than I wanted it to.

Kerrass just watched me with a smile.

(A lot of exposition and description here. Thanks for sticking with it.)