Chapter 115: I don't dream that often any more.

I don't dream that often any more.

Which is odd because I used to dream all the time.

When I say “dream” by the way, you should substitute the word “nightmare”.

Especially at the start of my travels and a significant chunk of that first year until shortly after my father's death. I would have nightmares about all the things that I had seen, or had happened. But gradually, they just seemed to peter off. As though the dreaming parts of my brain had been burnt out by the terror and the regret that most of my dreams were about.

Most of my dreams are dreams about memories. Those troubled thoughts about the fights and the battles that I have taken part in. Or the hopeless moments when it was only by the skin of our teeth that we managed to survive. I dream about what would have happened if I had not managed to parry that attacker's sword, or what would have happened if I hadn't managed to roll under the attacking creatures lunge. I dream about what would have happened if Maleficent the dragon had just decided to eat me rather than talk to me. I used to have many dreams, terrifying dreams, about what would have happened if Ariadne had decided to start a new reign of terror in Angraal and what would have happened to Kerrass and I if she had decided to act on that impulse.

I don't have those particular dreams any more in case you're wondering. On those rare occasions when I do dream about Ariadne, I dream about something else instead.

When I do dream, I dream extremely vividly, so vividly that when I wake up, it often takes me a moment or two to realise that I'm awake and no-longer need to be terrified. That horrible moment where you find that you have climbed out of bed, the cold of the floor seeping into your feet and you have to remember where you are and what is happening. That split second where you wonder if this is the dream.

I recently had cause to talk to Dr Shani about this. She was at the castle visiting with Sir Rickard and we were talking about sleep and it's importance in the healing of someone. I told her about my dreams and she asked what I did when I wake up from those kinds of dreams.

I told her that I often take the time to have a drink and to relieve myself.

“But doesn't that wake you up even further?” She asked.

“Well, yes.”

“But that would mean that it will take you longer to get back to sleep meaning that you would get less rest.”

This is true, but the entire point is to wake myself up, to shock my mind out of whatever thought processes had led me to having a nightmare in the first place. When I do eventually go back to sleep, I don't want to return to wherever the dream left off. To wherever the false memory restarts with the dragons teeth impaling me through the gut, and the first rough caress of it's tongue and the burning of it's saliva.

I want to dream about something else or, more preferably, have no dreams at all, instead leaving me with a quiet and dreamless, infinitely more restful sleep.

Why do I bring this up?

Because when I was knocked unconscious by that knight of the Flaming sword in their small enclosure, I dreamt.

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It was an interesting dream and not one that I could remember ever having before. I dreamt about Father Jerome all that time ago.

For the newer readers, this will have been shortly after the adventure with the beast of Amber's crossing and I was struggling to recover from my injuries. Kerrass had left me with a priest named Father Jerome for some spiritual guidance and we would often spend our days getting his little shrine and hospital ready for the winter or sat by the side of the road, watching the world go by and talking.

The subjects of these conversations would shock a lot of people. Before I had been a party to them, they would have shocked me.

You see, the thing that he was telling me was both how to torture someone but also, how to withstand torture.

Father Jerome had once been a Questioner of the Church of Eternal Flame in Novigrad. He had also been really really good at his job but eventually, as happens with many of these people, he had a nervous breakdown of sorts and fled. He now tended a small shrine and did his best to see to the spiritual and bodily needs of the local populace.

I would like to say that it was a horrible topic of things to talk about and I don't know why he chose to tell me about it. I was recovering from being tortured by an otherworldly, demonic entity that had access to my body and soul to use as it's plaything for what had felt like aeons. In our world, the time that passed would only have been a matter of minutes, certainly no more than an hour but the soul's perception of time is not so regimented as our bodies perception of time and it had tortured me to the edge of my sanity and beyond.

I suppose that it could be argued that Jerome was giving me the knowledge of how it all worked so that I would lose my fear of it but I never asked him why he was giving me this particular insight into the mind of a torturer.

As I say, I would like to say that it was an awful topic of conversation but in truth I found the subject fascinating. Not the talk about the implements or the things that you do, or have done to yourself, but the psychology behind the entire process, the interrogation and the questioning.

That I found fascinating.

It was a memory dream. I remembered that time and place so clearly, details that I had forgotten about or not thought about in ages came and went across my vision and brain. The smell of the place, the wood-smoke and the heady smells of the herb-gardens that Jerome kept. I remembered the weakness that I still felt and the incredible sense of fatigue that still racked my body at the time as well as the listlessness and the fog that would drift through my brain at a moment's notice. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

At the time I had struggled to concentrate on what Jerome was telling me. But now I could hear it clearly, so clearly that if I just reached out. Just...held my hand out and reached for it.

But my head felt heavy and I could feel it rolling around on my neck.

“He's waking up,” someone said. I had the feeling of being carried, of being dragged along a corridor, my feet scuffing along the ground. I felt my eyes trying to roll up into the back of my head and it felt like an amazing amount of effort to peel my eyelids open and to hold my head up. My head felt like a boulder and I was mystified as to how I could possibly support it on the fragile neck on top of a fragile body. The edges of my vision seemed to rattle, as though my eyes were being tapped by the end of a finger.

I don't know but I might have groaned.

“No Wait,” another voice yelled before I heard, rather than felt, another impact. To my jaw this time.

I will admit to thinking that it was a little bit unfair. I wouldn't have needed much of a blow to send me back to unconsciousness. If you had left me alone then I would probably have dropped off back to sleep with relative ease.

I then proved my theory about needing time to shake myself awake from dreams otherwise I would just return to them where I had left off. I was back, sitting on the stone wall listening to Father Jerome deliver his lecture on the psychology of the torturer.

“It's a truth to remember,” he told me. I could hear him clearly as though he was sat next to me in truth rather than just in memory, “that if you ever find yourself at the mercy of a man, whether on the torturer's table or at the wrong end of a blade. Then hope that you are at the mercy of an evil man.”

I had remembered laughing at this and asked him why?

“Because a good man will do his job. Whether that's in the killing or the torturing. The evil man will want to gloat. He will want you to prove him right because that way you justify his actions for him. The good man know's that he's doing the right thing and does what needs to be done. An evil man, you can normally get him talking. If he's talking then he's not torturing you.”

“So what do you do then?”

“Engage the questioner. Remember that the torturer and the Questioner are not always the same person. The torturer is just a tool, a weapon if you like. It's the questioner that you have to deal with. Also, always, always be the smartest person in the room. Control the situation.”

His face seemed to flicker in front of me as the smell of stale urine washed over me.

“Remember that you have what they want.” Jerome continued talking. “So always remember that they can hurt you but never, ever, let them be in control of the situation.”

I felt liquid hit me in the face.

Jerome was grinning at me as my head started to feel heavy again and my neck rolled around on my shoulders.

“Keep the control and play for time.” Jerome's voice said again.

I was sat down, in a chair. I kept up the pretence of struggling to consciousness for a moment longer while I took stock of the situation. Still had all my arms and legs. All ten fingers and all ten toes. Indeed I was still in the clothes that I had broken into the compound with, so that was a good start. Wooden chair from the feel of the grain under my fingertips.

Ooh, that was a question to work on, how was I tied up? My legs weren't tied to the legs of the chair. I was secured around the waist, and my hands were tied at the wrist. Together not to the chair.

Heh.

Ok, promising start.

“Is he awake?”

Someone grabbed me by the hair and tilted my head back. To try and look at my face. I rolled my eyes back.

“Not quite.”

“More then.”

I got another face full of piss for my trouble. This one was warmer than the last one, the acrid smell was doing it's best to clean out my brain and scour the wool from my thoughts. My body hadn't caught up yet though. It still wanted to slip into unconsciousness and go to sleep. I felt for the aches and pains around my body.

I had a worrying amount of experience now with being able to catalogue my own injuries. A couple of bruised ribs, some stiffness and pain in my legs, left arm numb and then....obviously....my head was ringing.

I forced myself to smile.

“You see?” I croaked before hawking and spitting. “Here's the first lesson in interrogating someone. A free lesson if you like.”

I still couldn't focus very well. There were a number of shapes in front of me, red torso's with pink blobs on top which suggested heads. Just a couple of them.

“Never start with the head.” I told them. “It leaves the subject groggy and confused. You can't torture someone and ask them questions if they keep slipping out of consciousness.”

“We can always wake you up.”

I laughed. Dear flame but it hurt. “No, you can force me back to consciousness, but that's not the same thing as waking me up. Dipshit.”

I got a slap for my troubles and let myself sink back into the warm velvety blackness of unconsciousness.

“What you have to do is to try and figure out what they want from you.” Jerome told me. Do they want information? Or are they just getting off on causing you pain?”

“What's the difference?” I asked him. I couldn't tell if I had asked him at the time or whether I was asking him now. They must have hit me harder than I had thought if I was beginning to lose track of what was real and what was not.

“The difference is simple as it decides how you need to play it. In either case though, it's a case of playing for time. Make them tell you what they want. Not the surface questions that everyone asks to try and ascertain whether you're lying or not. But the real questions, the underlying questions. The one's that they're terrified of exposing, to you, or even to themselves.”

I blinked furiously.

“My name....” My mouth was filled with blood though. “My name is Frederick von Coulthard. Son of Baron von Coulthard and younger brother of Arch-bishop Coulthard of Tretogor. I demand treatment proper and appropriate to my rank.”

“We know who you are, heretic,” someone said calmly. I lifted my head and tried to focus on my tormentors.

“Heretic?” I asked, having to spit again. I didn't want to think about the taste in my mouth. “Who are you to call me heretic?”

This time they hit me in the gut.

I groaned with it, there was no way that I could roll, or compress myself with the blow so it was impossible for me to lessen the impact.

“Play for time,” Jerome seemed to say in my ear.

“Yeah,” I said aloud as though I had just finished considering for something. “I can see how you might confuse violence for some kind of witty and intellectual retort, but to those of us that are more civilised will quickly realise that you haven't answered the question.”

“We will ask the questions here.” A man got close to my face. He was wearing a chain-mail coif and would have been described, by a couple of my female friends as being “pretty.” Sharp nose and cheekbones, large eyes and long eyelashes.

I head-butted him. There wasn't much power to it but suddenly there was this face in front of me that I didn't like and, well, you take these pleasures where you find them.

“Bastard,” he shouted, staggering back, clutching at his face. He pulled his hands away to see if he was bleeding. He wasn't but his eyes were streaming. He stormed up and kicked me in the chest sending me flying backwards.

The only avoidance that I managed was that I kept my head from bouncing off the floor as I landed on my back.

I started laughing as the whole thing was patently ridiculous.

The man that I had head-butted was being talked at by Sansum. My vision was clearing now and I could take a good look around to see where I was. I guessed that I was in the main “church” part of the place. The atmosphere was thick with smoke as there were many fires dotted around the place, including a large pyre that had taken the place of where an alter would be in a normal church. The smoky atmosphere told me that there was a distinct lack of ventilation but also, that they had been burning people here.

There were a lot of people watching, knights and their squires all watching me with angry, sick hunger in their eyes. Most of them looked dirty, covered in soot and a few in blood.

I didn't bother counting. It seemed rather pointless.

“But he hit me.” The young knight complained to the Bishop. Completely independently I noticed that the poisonous little oik's chain-mail was painted gold. “He hit me.”

“And he will be punished my son, but for now, we need to know what he knows. Now go and check on the Witcher as I asked.”

“Yes,” I called over to them. “You can't kill me yet.” I made myself sing the old children's boast. “I know something you don't know,” I grinned at him.

He stormed over to me. “You're going to wish they let me kill you. After the things that they're going to do to you.”

I made a face. “Flame but I already wish they'd let you kill me. The perfume that you're wearing is awful.” I made a gagging sound.

The knight spat again and stormed off leaving me facing Bishop Sansum.

“I haven't forgotten by the way.” I told him. “Having your crony come and intimidate me is still another evasion so I ask again. Who are you to call me heretic?”

This time it was Bishop Sansum that came forward.

“That's an interesting question,” he said, leaning forward so that he could look me in the eye. I noticed that he stayed out of range of any kind of attack that I might make though. “Who am I?”

I grinned at him.

“Very good.” Jerome whispered in my ear. “Any time that he's not causing you pain is time well spent. Keep control. Don't let him get so angry that he starts hurting you, hook him if you can, keep his interest. But also have a look around. It's possible that he's not really the questioner. Are you also playing to an audience? He might just kill you to prove his strength to his followers or this entire display might be for their benefit. That's a risk on his part as it means that he needs to keep them happy. Keep control. Play for time. It's all about the time.”

I considered my approach carefully.

“May I have some water,” I spat again. “I'm struggling to speak round this awful taste in my mouth.”

Sansum considered, his eyes flickered from side to side. I saw him glance at the assembled knights and then back at me again.

Jerome's voice was so clear that if I didn't know any better then I would have sworn it was real. “See that?” he told me. “That's a tell. He's thinking. So try and use that to follow his thought process. He's looking at the knights. Why? Then he looks at you. What's he thinking when he looks at you?”

“He hates me.” I thought back.

“How can you tell?”

“His eyes tighten, his lip curls and he grits his teeth.”

“Very good. So why's he looking at the crowd?”

“To judge their mood.”

“So?”

“So he's considering between what he wants to do to you and what he thinks the crowd will expect.”

I saw Sansum's face firm into decision.

“Of course.” He said with a smile. He gestured and another bucket was thrown into my face. Fortunately this one was definitely water.

“Thank you.” I told him. “So, to answer your question. I know that your name isn't Sansum.”

“Oh?”

“Oh yes.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I hear things.”

“Really, from whom.”

I smiled at him. “Friends of mine.” I grinned in what I hoped was an approximation of cheekiness.

Sansum sighed. “We know that you captured the lad, Maxwell.”

“Freed him, you mean. From his tormentors.” I felt the bile rise in my throat along with my anger. I could feel Jerome shake his head in disapproval.

“He would never have known such a thing. So how did you find that out?”

“You mean I was right?” I asked him before bursting out laughing. “By the holy sacred flame. You are just no good at this at all are you?”

I laughed at him long and hard. He stepped close and another knight came with him to hold my head back by the hair.

“Oh you are quite wrong. HERETIC.” He screamed the epithet into my face. “You are about to discover just how good we are at causing pain.” He nodded and the other man let go of my hair.

I shook my head. “Oh I know that you can inflict pain.” I told him. “But that's not the same is it. Flogging someone, beating someone, raping someone. All of these things I have no doubt that you can do.”

I pretended to consider the matter for a moment.

“Ok, you can do all of those things badly, but the extraction of information is quite different. That, you truly suck at.”

I grinned at him again.

“In fact, you are so terrible at it that you haven't even asked me a real question yet. What kind of torturer are you?”

“Very well....”

“But first,” I grinned at his discomfort and confusion. “You should really answer my question. I asked first after all.”

It was uncomfortably like playing a round of school-yard taunting.

He looked confused.

“WHO ARE YOU TO CALL ME HERETIC?” I demanded putting a good amount of hatred and fury behind my voice. I supported it properly as well. Giving it the strength from the diaphragm as well so that they could all hear me. “YOU, WHO COMMAND MURDERERS. YOU WHO ORDER THE TORTURE AND MURDER OF GOOD, FLAME FEARING MEN AND WOMEN. YOU WHO CONDONE THE ABUSE OF YOUR OWN NOVICES.”

My voice cracked. Too much smoke inhalation.

“You. You shame the cassock that you wear. You contravene the flame's holy laws. Of all people here, you are the heretic. You are the murderer. You are the one that should be burnt at the stake.”

Sansum regarded me for a long time.

“Are you quite finished?” He said after a long time.

I considered the matter for a moment before nodding.

“Then kindly cease with your tantrums.” He told me. He turned to say something to one of his subordinates who brought him a chair. “They tell me that you are a man of learning, heretic and oh yes. I know who you are. I know who your brother is and I also know, that even now, there are many who are looking to see to his downfall and overthrow. He is but a symbol of the churches growing corruption and decadence.”

I laughed at him. “You obviously haven't met my brother. Corruption? You can't corrupt someone like Mark. He made his name by making the church give away a good chunk of it's wealth to the poor. He doesn't need money, he's not interested in wealth, he hardly ever drinks and he's not that interested in women. What would you corrupt him with.”

“Precisely.” Sansum told me. “He weakened the church. He took away the churches power in these things. He saw to it that the church armies were reduced so that we would find it harder to police the countryside. To keep it free from heretics and sinners.”

Jerome again. “Good, keep him talking. You have him engaged now. Keep him there. The longer that he talks, the longer that he isn't torturing you.”

“The countryside would have been free from sin alright.” I answered Sansum. “There would have been no food. People would have been dying in their hundreds, in their thousands. Keeping a church army would have meant that there would have been no-one to farm the fields, no-one to raise the cattle, no-one to hunt the game.”

“The flame would have provided.”

“The flame would have provided.” I mimicked. “That's not the way the flame works. If that was the way it worked then all the beggars, the poor and the starving who go to sleep at night, praying for the flame to deliver them from their trials, would be sleeping on beds with full bellies.”

“But the flame only provides for the truly holy.”

“And who gets to define what is holy?” I asked. “You?”

“Me.” He declared. “Arch-Bishop Sansum and the holy Scripture,” he said it grandly, appealing to his congregation and they cheered on cue.

“Ok, first of all. You've been promoted since I last heard your name and believe me, I would have heard about that. Secondly, let's talk about that scripture shall we. Because I've read my scriptures from cover to cover and I would ask you where you find the justification for burning innocent herb-women at the stake. Women who's only crime was to know a little bit about healing and a little bit about herbs in order to make sure that the villagers under her care might have help to survive the winter. So that they can help women give birth and combat diseases”

“Childbirth is a necessary torment. The trial makes the child stronger as well as the mother.”

“Bullshit. Childbirth is a horrific event, alleviated only by the help of someone who know's what they're doing.”

“By Witchcraft.”

“Knowledge isn't witchcraft.”

“But the use of magic is.”

“Prove that they're using magic then. Go on, prove it.”

“Their own books and herbs and spells prove that they are witches.”

“So?”

“So, does the scripture not say, “Suffer not a Witch to live”,”

“Yes it does. I will admit that. It does indeed say that. You know why?”

“That's beside the point.”

“Because Hierarch Hemmelfart of Novigrad was getting upset at the increased and increasing power of the Sorceresses over the ruling class. He was jealous of the power of people like Phillippa Eilhart over Radovid and Triss Merigold over Foltest and opined that those positions of power should be taken by churchmen.”

“He was right then.”

“That's as maybe, but rather than fight their influence by providing good and honest advice and displaying all the virtues of a holy man and showing the world why that was a good thing. He instead chose to adjust scripture to follow his own ambitions inserting the line into scripture to justify the persecution. Meaning that all of those people died because of one man's ambition.”

“The Hierophant is the final adjudicator of such things and if he decides that Hemmelfart is correct then he is correct.”

“Because the Hierophant is completely free of influence of course. If you want to revert to older traditions then you need to return to the older forms of things. The persecution of the magical class is a recent addition to the church.”

I should say that I was and am aware that I was arguing with a fanatical madman and that there is no way of winning such an argument. But it was also why I was arguing with him. He wanted me to believe him, he wanted to win the argument and the more he tried to convince me then the more time we were taking.

“The rest of the churches disagreed with Hemmelfart. The Hierarch's of Tretogor and Vengerberg protested the orders. The Viziman Hierarch also resisted the orders let alone the Hierarchs of Aedirn and Kaedwen, who's Kings were advised by Wizards and Sorcerors. Not Sorceresses. I notice that the scripture says nothing about “Suffer not a Warlock to live”.”

“Magic is an abomination. It is not a natural thing.”

“Science would argue. What you mean, is that magic is not natural to this world, am I right?”

He visibly brightened. “Correct. Magic came to this world through the Conjunction of spheres and we did nothing to combat it. Instead of refusing it's unholy....”

“Yes yes. I've heard this one.” I told him “But if magic isn't natural to this world then neither are we. Mankind came to this world via the conjunction of spheres ourselves.”

“Lies.”

“The Dwarves and the gnomes who's history goes back, literally, thousands of years, tell us that elves and humans weren't sighted on the world before 1600 years ago give or take. Hell, we only came to the Yaruga basin a few centuries ago. Magic is as native to this world as we are.”

“Blasphemy.”

“Prove it.” I told him. “Prove that it's blasphemy. Prove that I'm lying. Which passage of the scriptures is it that says that Magic is the abomination. I will admit to the passage about “suffer not a Witch to live” but not that one.”

“I don't have to prove it.” Sansum sneered. “I am an Arch-Bishop whereas you are not and it is holy because I say that it is holy.”

“Really?” I did my best to put as much disbelief into the word as I could. “Really? That's your argument. That you are an Arch-Bishop and therefore that makes whatever you say and do holy? Well fuck me sideways I didn't know that that's how it worked. Very well. I'm the Hierophant, did you know that? I got ordained a week ago, voted for by the other cardinals the day after that and ascended to the throne the day before yesterday and I'm telling you that it's bullshit.”

“You are not ordained.” he waved his hands dismissively. “You are just an uppity little heretic who doesn't know what you're talking about.”

“I know more than you. How many other people know that your great collection of books is actually a fake. You have maybe a dozen books in your rooms and....”

“Be Silent...”

“And from what I saw there there was not a single copy of the tenets of the flame or the Catechisms of faith nor was there a copy of “The Life and times of the Prophets,” or “The Letters of St Lebioda,” which are required readings of any priest. You know how I know that?”

“Did you search the entire room? We know that you did not. So don't bother trying to answer.”

“All I'm saying is that if you are going to call me heretic, then I deserve to be shown the proper treatment. A panel of investigation needs to be convened. I get to justify my actions and explain why I did what I did.”

“You are condemned out of your own mouth. We are well aware of you Lord Frederick.”