The Last Wish (28 page)

'Go on, finish,' said Torque bitterly. 'You wanted to say: hasten what can't be avoided. The inevitable.'

'Let's not talk about it,' interrupted Geralt. 'Why talk about it? Words aren't necessary. Follow Lille's example.'

'She spoke to the elf telepathically,' muttered the bard. 'I sensed it. I'm right, aren't I, Geralt?

After all, you can sense communication like that. Did you understand what . . . What she was getting across to the elf?'

'Some of it.'

'What was she talking about?'

'Hope. That things renew themselves, and won't stop doing so.'

'Is that all?'

'That was enough.'

'Hm . . . Geralt? Lille lives in the village, among people. Do you think that—'

'—that she'll stay with them? Here, in Dol Blathanna? Maybe. If . . .'

'If what?'

'If people prove worthy of it. If the edge of the world remains the edge of the world, If we respect the boundaries. But enough of this talk, boys. Time to sleep.'

'True. It's nearly midnight, the fire's burning out. I'll sit up for a little while yet. I've always found it easiest to invent rhymes beside a dying fire. And I need a title for my ballad. A nice title.'

'Maybe The Edge of the World?'

'Banal,' snorted the poet. 'Even if it really is the edge, it's got to be described differently.

Metaphorically. I take it you know what a metaphor is, Geralt? Hmm . . . Let me think . . .

“Where ...” Bloody hell. “Where—'”

'Goodnight,' said the devil.

The witcher unlaced his shirt and peeled the wet linen from his neck. It was very warm in the cave, hot, even, the air hung heavy and moist, the humidity condensing in droplets on the moss-covered boulders and basalt blocks of the walls.

Plants were everywhere. They grew out of beds hewn into the bedrock and filled with peat, in enormous chests, troughs and flowerpots. They climbed up rocks, up wooden trellises and stakes. Geralt examined them with interest, recognising some rare specimens - those which made up the ingredients of a witcher's medicines and elixirs, magical philtres and a sorcerer's decoctions, and others, even rarer, whose qualities he could only guess at. Some he didn't know at all, or hadn't even heard of. He saw stretches of star-leafed melilote, compact balls of puffheads pouring out of huge flowerpots, shoots of arenaria strewn with berries as red as blood. He recognised the meaty, thickly-veined leaves of fastaim, the crimson-golden ovals of measure- me -nots and the dark arrows of sawcuts. He noticed pinnated pondblood moss huddled against stone blocks, the glistening tubers of raven's eye and the tiger-striped petals of the mousetail orchid.

In the shady part of the grotto bulged caps of the sewant mushroom, grey as stones in a field.

Not far from them grew reachcluster, an antidote to every known toxin and venom. The modest yellow-grey brushes peering from chests deeply sunken into the ground revealed scarix, a root with powerful and universal medicinal qualities.

The centre of the cave was taken up by aqueous plants. Geralt saw vats full of homwort and turtle duckweed, and tanks covered in a compact skin of liverwort, fodder for the parasitic giant oyster. Glass reservoirs full of gnarled rhizomes of the hallucinogenic bitip, slender, dark-green cryptocorines and clusters of nematodes. Muddy, silted troughs were breeding grounds for innumerable phycomycetes, algae, moulds and swamp lichen.

Nenneke, rolling up the sleeves of her priestess's robe, took a pair of scissors and a little bone rake from her basket and got to work. Geralt sat on a bench between shafts of light falling through huge crystal blocks in the cave's vault.

The priestess muttered and hummed under her breath, deftly plunging her hands into the thicket of leaves and shoots, snipping with her scissors and filling the basket with bunches of weeds. She adjusted the stakes and frames supporting the plants and, now and again, turned the soil with her small rake. Sometimes, muttering angrily, she pulled out dried or rotted stalks, threw them into the humus containers as food for mushrooms and other squamous and snake-like twisted plants which the witcher didn't recognise. He wasn't even sure they were plants at all - it seemed to him the glistening rhizomes moved a little, stretching their hair-like offshoots towards the priestess's hands.

It was warm. Very warm.

'Geralt?'

'Yes?' He fought off an overwhelming sleepiness. Nenneke, playing with her scissors, was looking at him from behind the huge pinnated leaves of sand-spurry flybush.

'Don't leave yet. Stay. A few more days.'

'No, Nenneke. It's time for me to be on my way.'

'Why the hurry? You don't have to worry about Hereward. And let that vagabond Dandilion go and break his neck on his own. Stay, Geralt.'

'No, Nenneke.'

The priestess snipped with scissors. 'Are you in such haste to leave the temple because you're afraid that she'll find you here?'

'Yes,' he admitted reluctantly. 'You've guessed.'

'It wasn't exactly difficult,' she muttered. 'But don't worry. Yennefer's already been here. Two months ago. She won't be back in a hurry, because we quarrelled. No, not because of you. She didn't ask about you.'

'She didn't ask?'

'That's where it hurts,' the priestess laughed. 'You're egocentric, like all men. There's nothing worse than a lack of interest, is there? Than indifference? No, but don't lose heart. I know Yennefer only too well. She didn't ask anything, but she did look around attentively, looking for signs of you. And she's mighty furious at you, that I did feel.'

'What did you quarrel about?'

'Nothing that would interest you.'

'I know anyway.'

'I don't think so,' said Nenneke calmly, adjusting the stakes. 'You know her very superficially.

As, incidentally, she knows you. It's quite typical of the relationship which binds you, or did bind you. Both parties aren't capable of anything other than a strongly emotional evaluation of the consequences, while ignoring the causes.'

'She came looking for a cure,' he remarked coldly. 'That's what you quarrelled about, admit it.'

'I won't admit anything.'

The witcher got up and stood in full light under one of the crystal sheets in the grotto's vault.

'Come here a minute, Nenneke. Take a look at this.' He unknotted a secret pocket in his belt, dug out a tiny bundle, a miniature purse made of goat-leather, and poured the contents into his palm.

'Two diamonds, a ruby, three pretty nephrites, and an interesting agate.' Nenneke was knowledgeable about everything. 'How much did they cost you?'

'Two and a half thousand Temeria orens. Payment for the Wyzim striga.'

'For a torn neck,' grimaced the priestess. 'Oh, well, it's a question of price. But you did well to turn cash into these trinkets. The oren is weak and the cost of stones in Wyzim isn't high; it's too near to the dwarves' mines in Mahakam. If you sell those in Novigrad, you'll get at least five hundred Novigrad crowns, and

the crown, at present, stands at six and a half orens and is going up.'

'I'd like you to take them.'

'For safe-keeping?'

'No. Keep the nephrites for the temple as, shall we say, my offering to the goddess Melitele.

And the remaining stones . . . are for her. For Yennefer. Give them to her when she comes to visit you again, which will no doubt be soon.'

Nenneke looked him straight in the eyes.

'I wouldn't do this if I were you. You'll make her even more furious, if that's possible, believe me. Leave everything as it is, because you're no longer in a position to mend anything or make anything better. Running away from her, you behaved . . . well, let's say, in a manner not particularly worthy of a mature man. By trying to wipe away your guilt with precious stones, you'll behave like a very, very over-mature man. I really don't know what sort of man I can stand less.'

'She was too possessive,' he muttered, turning away his face. 'I couldn't stand it. She treated me like—'

'Stop it,' she said sharply. 'Don't cry on my shoulder. I'm not your mother, and I won't be your confidante either. I don't give a shit how she treated you and I care even less how you treated her. And I don't intend to be a go-between or give these stupid jewels to her. If you want to be a fool, do it without using me as an intermediary.'

'You misunderstand. I'm not thinking of appeasing or bribing her. But I do owe her something, and the treatment she wants to undergo is apparently very costly. I want to help her, that's all.'

'You're more of an idiot than I thought.' Nenneke picked up the basket from the ground. 'A costly treatment? Help? Geralt, these jewels of yours are, to her, knick-knacks not worth spitting on. Do you know how much Yennefer can earn for getting rid of an unwanted pregnancy for a great lady?'

'I do happen to know. And that she earns even more for curing infertility. It's a shame she can't help herself in that respect. That's why she's seeking help from others - like you.'

'No one can help her, it's impossible. She's a sorceress. Like most female magicians, her ovaries are atrophied and it's irreversible. She'll never be able to have children.'

'Not all sorceresses are handicapped in this respect. I know something about that, and you do, too.'

Nenneke closed her eyes. 'Yes, I do.'

'Something can't be a rule if there are exceptions to it. And please don't give me any banal untruths about exceptions proving the rule. Tell me something about exceptions as such.'

'Only one thing,' she said coldly, 'can be said about exceptions. They exist. Nothing more. But Yennefer . . . Well, unfortunately, she isn't an exception. At least not as regards the handicap we're talking about. In other respects it's hard to find a greater exception than her.'

'Sorcerers,' Geralt wasn't put off by Nenneke's coldness, or her allusion, 'have raised the dead.

I know of proven cases. And it seems to me that raising the dead is harder than reversing the atrophy of any organs.'

'You're mistaken. Because I don't know of one single, proven, fully successful case of reversing atrophy or regenerating endocrine glands. Geralt, that's enough. This is beginning to sound like a consultation. You don't know anything about these things. I do. And if I tell you that Yennefer has paid for certain gifts by losing others, then that's how it is.'

'If it's so clear then I don't understand why she keeps on trying to—'

'You understand very little,' interrupted the priestess. 'Bloody little. Stop worrying about Yennefer's complaints and think about your own. Your body was also subjected to changes which are irreversible. She surprises you, but what about you? It ought to be clear to you too, that you're never going to be human, but you still keep trying to be one. Making human mistakes. Mistakes a witcher shouldn't be making.'

He leant against the wall of the cave and wiped the sweat from his brow.

'You're not answering,' stated Nenneke, smiling faintly. 'I'm not surprised. It's not easy to speak with the voice of reason. You're sick, Geralt. You're not fully fit. You react to elixirs badly. You've got a rapid pulse rate, the dilation of your eyes is slow, your reactions are delayed. You can't get the simplest Signs right. And you want to hit the trail? You have to be treated. You need therapy. And before that, a trance.'

'Is that why you sent Iola to me? As part of the therapy? To make the trance easier?'

'You're a fool!'

'But not to such an extent.'

Nenneke turned away and slipped her hands among the meaty stalks of creepers which the witcher didn't recognise.

'Well, have it your way,' she said easily. 'Yes, I sent her to you. As part of the therapy. And let me tell you, it worked. Your reactions were much better the following day. You were calmer.

And Iola needed some therapy, too. Don't be angry.'

'I'm not angry because of the therapy, or because of Iola.'

'But at the voice of reason you're hearing?'

He didn't answer.

'A trance is necessary,' repeated Nenneke, glancing around at her cave garden. 'lola's ready.

She's made both physical and psychic contact with you. If you want to leave, let's do it tonight.'

'No. I don't want to. Look, Nenneke, Iola might start to prophesy during the trance. To predict, read the future.'

'That's just it.'

'Exactly. And I don't want to know the future. How could I do what I'm doing if I knew it?

Besides, I know it anyway.'

'Are you sure?' He didn't answer. 'Oh, well, all right,' she sighed. 'Let's go. Oh, and Geralt? I don't mean to pry but tell me . . . How did you meet? You and Yennefer? How did it all start?'

The witcher smiled. 'It started with me and Dandilion not having anything for breakfast and deciding to catch some fish.'

'Am I to understand that instead of fish you caught Yennefer?'

Til tell you what happened. But maybe after supper. I'm hungry.'

'Let's go then. I've got everything I need.'

The witcher made a move towards the exit and once more looked around the cave hothouse.

'Nenneke?'

'Aha?'

'Half of the plants you've got here don't grow anywhere else anymore. Am I right?' .

'Yes. More than half.'

'How come?'

'If I said it was through the goddess Melitele's grace, I daresay that wouldn't be enough for you, would it?'

'I daresay it wouldn't.'

'That's what I thought.' Nenneke smiled. 'You see, Geralt, this bright sun of ours is still shining, but not quite the way it used to. Read the great books if you like. But if you don't want to waste time on it maybe you'll be happy with the explanation that the crystal roof acts like a filter. It eliminates the lethal rays which are increasingly found in sunlight. That's why plants which you can't see growing wild anywhere in the world grow here.'

Andrzej Sapkowski The Last Wish

'I understand,' nodded the witcher. And us, Nenneke? What about us? The sun shines on us, too. Shouldn't we shelter under a roof like that?'

'In principle, yes,' sighed the priestess. 'But . . ..'

'But what?'