Chapter 125: Let's be fair brother mine

She had drifted off into another memory before shaking herself.

“Sorry, but who are you again?”

“I....” My brain fought the change of subject. “I'm your nephew.”

“But I don't have any nephews. My husband was an only child.”

She shook her head and climbed to her feet. This time she seemed to do it confidently and with energy.

“I will thank you to leave before I call the guard.”

She leaned back into a chair and was asleep faster than I could believe.

“Aunt Kalayn?” I called gently, then again with a little more force.

“It's no good.”

The Elven servant had re-entered the room quietly. “She'll sleep now for a few hours.”

I nodded.

“Would you mind if I ask you a few questions.”

She looked uncomfortable for a moment.

“Just a few.”

I nodded.

“Who are you?” I asked her. “I, to my occasional shame, know servants and you are no servant. I've made the mistake before of assuming that someone who looks like, dresses like and behaves like a servant, actually is a servant but I was watching more closely this time.”

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“I....I.”

Then she realised that she had lost, she tensed, eyes darting around as she looked at the doors. I could almost feel her dismiss the door that was immediately behind her with the presence of Sam and Danzig on the other side, but also realised that she would have to get past me to reach another exit.

A knife appeared in her hand.

“Wait,” I told her, raising my hands. “I mean you no harm,”

She moved slightly. Not being foolish, I mirrored the movement to keep the furniture between us. She wasn't holding the knife as though she meant to throw it.

“That's what they all say,” she snarled, her eyes flashing with hatred. “You, fucking d'Hoine.”

“They might,” I countered, still keeping the couch between us. “But on the other hand, I could call for help and I have not.”

“Your overconfidence will be your death.”

I sighed.

“You look tired.” I told her, largely because it was true. “How long have you been running now, how long have you been hiding from everyone, including people like me. When was the last time you had an honest nights sleep or a decent meal that you weren't testing for poison in advance?” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

She sighed.

“It's been a long time.” She admitted and I nodded acceptance of the fact.

“Trust is tricky.” I told her. “I know this. Although I cannot claim to have lived longer than you, or have known even a fraction of the pain that you have felt, I do know that trust is hard. Especially when you have been hurt.”

Carefully, I sat down. Still keeping my hands away from my body. I still had my boot knife but my spear and dagger had been left by the door.

“How can you possibly....” She closed her mouth like a trap.

“Well,” I said. “Sit down and I will tell you.”

She moved and sat in the chair closest to the other door in the room. She still had the knife in her hand though.

“I'm getting married to a vampire.” I told her. “An elder vampire at that.”

Her eyes widened.

“I'm not lying when I say that she scares the shit out of me. Still, even though I've agreed that the marriage can go ahead.”

“Why?”

“Why? Is it not obvious. Her species used to use mine for sport.”

“No, not why are you afraid, but why did you agree to the marriage?”

I shrugged. “Because I love her. Oh don't get me wrong, there are times when I question my own sanity for doing this but.... From the moment I met her, she has done nothing to hurt me. She could overpower me in an instant. She could control my brain, cast magics that could swallow me whole or make me her slave. But she asked me.”

I sighed as I thought about it. I hadn't taken these feelings out to examine for a while.

“She could have taken me if she wanted. She could have re-written my very being if she had decided to but she hasn't. Instead, she came to me and asked me.

“That's not to say that we haven't hurt each other.” I winced at the memories. “There are several differences between human society and Vampire society and they sometimes clash as we make mistakes with how that works. Also, I was a Jackass towards her a little while ago. There were reasons but.... heh....sorry, it's becoming a family saying. Those reasons are explanations, not excuses for how I behaved.”

I leant forward and ignored the fact that she flinched. “She could rip my throat out at any second. But she hasn't. Instead she speaks of our future together, she talks of love and poetry and philosophy and history. The last time I saw her she helped nurse me back to health after I had been tortured at the hands of some religious fanatics. Fanatics of the same religion that I am a confirmed member of. She terrifies me because of what and who she is. But gradually I am learning to trust her.

“It's slow, and my body and my instincts still cause me to flinch whenever she makes sudden movements. I know the flinch it's coming and I know it's going to happen but the only way to stop it is to tense up and that's more hurtful to her than the flinch is. She knows it's involuntary and so.....

“All this after another supernatural creature tore the soul from my body in order to torture me. Which caused me, in the long run to fear her even more.”

“You've been tortured a lot.”

“Mmmm. How much is a lot?” I laughed. “Still, that's what you get when you travel around with a Witcher.”

“You travel with a Witcher.”

“Yep. It's no lie to say that he's my best friend. I wouldn't have met my fiancee without him and instead I would probably have been married off by my family to some woman where we would have ended up boring each other to death.”

“He's your friend?” She frowned in disbelief. “You, a d'hoine, friends with a Vatt'ghern.”

“Yes,” I answered in Elven. “Although I don't think he feels like he's getting the fair end of the deal at the moment. I'm trying to bully him into talking to the girl that he loves.”

She gave a little, involuntary bark of laughter before her hand shot up to her mouth and covered it.

“I would like to meet a Witcher.”

“I would be glad to arrange it.”

“How did you know?” She asked, after staring at me for a long time as though she was weighing me in some way. “That I wasn't a servant.”

“It was a guess, but a good one. A lady like Aunt Kalayn,” she flinched at the name, “would know that you offer tea to visitors upon arrival, even when they're waiting. Even if you are understaffed you would know that. The onus is then upon us to wait until refreshments are brought. Also, you served the lady before the guests and when Sam wanted to discuss the, what did he call it, the “dispensation of the household,” you went with him yourself rather than summoning a butler.”

“There isn't a butler.”

“Precisely my point. Aunt Kalayn is a noble lady of the “old school.” She would expect there to be a butler, as would any other visiting noble but you didn't even think it was a thing. The female staff always defer to the male staff. Even if you had to go and fetch the gardener to speak on those matters, then you would have fetched him. The female household deal with things like cleanliness, decorations and provisions. Not “number of servants and the like”. That is a man's job.”

She grunted. “I thought I had this all down.”

I laughed, as gently as I could. Kerrass calls it my “court laugh,” but I was gambling on her not knowing the difference.

“Believe me when I say, as someone who grew up with this kind of thing, that it will never make sense. You will never get it all down. You need to be brought up to it.”

“But,” her eyes became a little sly. “How would you know that your Aunt would see those kinds of things as important.”

“Because of her little finger.”

“I don't understand.”

“When you hold a cup of tea, one of these smaller ones here made from pottery,” I leant forward and demonstrated with Sam's abandoned cup. “You are supposed to hold it by the handle only yes? It's the height of bad manners to wrap your fingers round the pottery.”

She nodded.

“Most people know this and do so, but they automatically stick their little fingers out. Don't ask me why this happens, it's an involuntary thing. Apparently it helps with balance. It's also considered rude as it suggests that the little finger possessor is superior to the others as they are showing off the fact that they are only using a few fingers to eat their food rather than the five that “peasants” use. So a properly trained person, like I am or Sam is, holds their fingers in like so,”

I demonstrated. “That is the sign that you have been brought up in high society. Or that your parents have hired you a tutor to teach you such things.”

“That doesn't say why the lady would care about such things.”

“Didn't you notice how she frowned at Father Danzig when he stuck his little finger out. It was a momentary thing and it passed almost instantly but...”

She sighed. “Humans.” She took another breath. “Ask your questions.”

“I don't want to ask you questions.” I told her. “But perhaps we can talk for a while.”

A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “Then what would you like to talk about.” She said in the common tongue. “You're very good at Elven though, your accent is odd to me.”

“That is because it is the scholarly version that we learn to read the more ancient manuscripts. We learn to speak it so that we can feel superior to the other people that pass us on the street.”

She laughed allowed.

“You, a race that looks down on me and my kind, using our language as a method of looking down on each other.”

I think I surprised her by laughing with her.

“To be fair, some people look down on us for using the language so it's a kind of share of disapproval,”

She laughed some more but slowly her laughter turned to tears.

“Goddess,” she said after a while. “I have been so dreading someone spotting me.”

I nodded. The question of “why,” hung in the air between us but I guessed that she wasn't quite comfortable enough to answer me yet.

“Let me tell you what I know about Kalayn lands and my history with what I found out, how and why. Then you can join in when you know the words if you like,”

She nodded her agreement to this plan.

I spoke for a long time. Telling her about father's death. About my brother's involvement and about what we had found going on in the area around Oxenfurt.

“I met your brother,” she said suddenly in the middle of the conversation. It shocked me out of my narrative and I stared at her a little dumbstruck. “He visited the Kalayn's a few times. He was a snake.”

I sighed. “Yes.” I agreed. “Yes he was.”

There didn't seem to be any further comment coming though so after a while I carried on talking.

Then, slowly, she started talking. The comment about Edmund was the first in a stream of comments, one following after the other. Before she intended to, I think, she was part of the conversation.

In the end though, things became stuffy in the small room that we were sitting in and we went for a walk. I saw Sam, Danzig and the others were still at the entrance to the house waiting for us but the Elf, who finally introduced herself to me as Lillafaswen took me out into the gardens.

Once upon a time I suspect it was a rose garden judging by the walkways but whatever it had been, it was now a herb garden.

“I should bring Kerrass down here.” I told her. “He will want to talk shop with you about this.”

“Yes well,” She sighed looking out over the flowering plants, some of them, looking as though they were struggling in the damp mountain air. “I spent my life studying Chemistry, herbalism and the like. I'm hundreds of years old, most of that devoted to the study of plants. It was my passion, my drive my world....everything. But now.... I look at these plants and I no longer care.”

She looked at me. She looked as though she was under so much pain that she actively couldn't weep.

“The Kalayn's took everything from me. My life, my....sense of being, my passion. Do you know about Elven reproduction?”

“I know that they don't do it enough for the survival of the species.”

She snorted at that.

“You are right you know. Possibly more than you know. And all because of people like me.”

“You know I have to ask you about what you mean now.”

“I know. Elves are at their most fertile in their first couple of hundred years of life. Fertility after that is rare. But that's also the period of our lives where we are at our most passionate. That's where we choose what is to become our life's work. It takes passion to reproduce but what if we get distracted.

“That's what happened to me. I was so fixated about plants and their uses. Most elves are only interested in the plants for their beauty or for medicinal purposes. But that's hardly the point. What else can we learn from the plants. The flowers and the fruit of these things.”

She was staring at an odd purple flower. The base of the petals was bright yellow but as they grew out from the stem.

“But Goddess, I hate this place now. Come...”

She led me through a small stone doorway in the wall that surrounded the herb-garden and out into the fields behind the dower-house. I imagined that, in better days, there might have been people out playing games on the grass, children running around and playing hide and seek in the ever present trees.

The air smelt like it was going to rain.

“Why don't you leave?” I asked her. “We are not the old Lords Kalayn now. Sam's a different man, he won't mind you leaving.”

“I have considered it, but then....where would I go. Home? Home to the people I betrayed by simple virtue of pursuing my art rather than finding a husband and giving birth. Or human society where I would have to prove that I had served as apprentice to someone who's herbal expertise is but a fraction of mine. How about the villages where elves and other non-humans are looked down at and spat upon.”

“But that's not all is it?”

“No.”

“It's Aunt Kalayn isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Why? I thought you hated the Kalayns.”

“I do, but she? She saved my life several times. She sheltered me when they wanted to use me for their own sick amusement. She pointed out how useful I could be, even as they abused her too.”

I opened my mouth to ask the question.

“Oh yes,” she smiled grimly. “Lady Kalayn was no immune to their....depredations. The men, including her husband and father in law used to pass her round like some kind of “After dinner treat” to their special guests. That was my job you see. As a herbalist. I created the medicine and the drugs that would keep her docile and the men high. Her and your mother and any of the other women and boys that they would bring in.”

“They never used men?”

“No, never men. They seemed to think that that was somehow....filthier than everything else that they did. So I kept them in their drugs. Kept her high so that she didn't complain and I salved her injuries and the injuries of those people that they couldn't afford to leave marks on. Then, I could make some people forget what had happened. I'm that good at what I do, you see.”

She said the last with a self-loathing that hurt my ears.

“They could bring a girl up, rape her for days and then she would given to me. I would feed her one of my herbal potions and she would remember none of it. That's how they decided who should marry their son you see.”

She looked at me for the first time since our conversation. She had been avoiding my gaze “You did the world a favour when you killed that monster.”

I grunted something to the affirmative. There was a fire in her eyes that was hard to see.

“I did awful things to that woman,” she went on. “And she begged me to do them while at the same time saving my life. Or it would have been me tied to the rack and having specially forged implements shoved into me until I died screaming in agony.”

We stopped on the edge of the grass and stared back at the house.

“She's dying.” She said. “You can't tell it but her system is so tied into the herbs that I gave her over the years that she can't live without them now. But at the same time they're destroying her from the inside out. She's had a hell of a life that woman. You can map her injuries on her body, the badly healed scars and things and still I have to feed her the drugs or she will die all the quicker.”

She sighed and kicked at the ground.

“What I did to that woman was evil. I should go and ask your Witcher friend to end my life.”

I shook my head.

“The greatest evil that a man can commit, is to force another to do evil.” I told her. “You were just trying to survive. What would have happened if you had refused?”

“I would have died in agony.”

“Then you did what you needed to do. I can't condemn you and you may find that more than one person will agree with you. Especially Kerrass as he has more experience with evil being done to him and by his hand than most.”

“Kerrass?”

“My Witcher friend.”

“Ah.”

“In the meantime. If you want to stay here then I imagine that Sam will agree to it. I won't give away your secret if you don't want me to. (Freddie's notes: As it turns out, she didn't care that much) He, certainly, won't have noticed who you are. But when you feel that you have no more atonement to do here.”

“You mean, when she's died.”

“As you say. When you're done here. The Coulthard family would give you things you could do with your skills that would only benefit the world. If that doesn't appeal then I'm on the faculty of Oxenfurt university and I can easily arrange for you to give some lectures there. Or I can recommend you to members of the Imperial court who are currently looking into the creation of another Witcher school for which they need skilled alchemists and you surely qualify.”

“You are well connected.”

“Yes, it has been said. But what is the use of power if you don't use it to help people.”

“Some would say that you should use it to put down others.”

“Now those people are arguing for evil.”

She nodded.

“I am grateful, but I will see this out I think, for now at least.”

I nodded and we stood back together and looked at the house. “Shame really.” I heard myself say. “Otherwise it would have been a nice house.”

“Do not be seduced,” she told me. “This entire countryside is poison.”

“Why do you say that?”

She shook her head in response. “You cannot see the things that I have seen and not think that. You cannot do what I have done and not think that. This place is tainted. You should leave this place before it becomes angry and decides to take it's vengeance. Or it overcomes you.”

“Is that what's happening here?”

“What do you mean?”

“This place feels wrong. It's objectively beautiful. The climate is a bit damp but I could imagine it being truly beautiful. But there is an oppression here that I can't put my finger on. The world seems...I don't know. The villagers hide in their homes and won't talk to us. It's like they're afraid of us.”

“They are afraid, they have every reason to be. You spoke about the horrible things that you saw your cousin and brother do, the rituals that they would perform. But here it was different.”

“In what way.”

“It was more ritualised. It took longer. I don't know but they had a good thing going here. They could have stayed up here for years without anyone finding out what was going on. Indeed they had stayed up here for years. So why did your cousin go south. It was so that the hunting pool was so much larger. Your cousins appetites were no longer sated here. Here they took their time. They would drug their targets which is where I would come in of course. But every part of what they did was wrapped up in ceremony. They would spend ages looking for, choosing and grooming a single victim.”

“So why are the villagers still afraid? They know that Lord Kalayn is dead. That was one of the first things that Sam did was to let people know that they don't have to be afraid.”

“Of course they have to be afraid. They are villagers. It's habit now.”

“No,” I said. “No, there is something more. I don't know why.”

“Humans,” she said with a strange combination of a sneer and a smile. “Always looking for it to be more complicated than it actually is. This land is so soaked in fear and pain and hate. It is doubtful that it will ever recover. Let alone the villagers that live here.”

She shook her head again. “I am tied to this place. There is a certain part of me that suggests that I should die here. I certainly deserve to die here after everything I've done but I am tied here. You should tell your brother to leave here. Keep the title if he has to for the foolish obsession that your people seem to have with the titles and land grants, but he should tear that castle down and leave here. Take the people with him and never look back.”

“Do you not think that we can heal it?”

She looked at me for a long time.

“What's to heal?” she said. “Let it die.”

I thought about her comments a lot as I wandered through the castle the following day. Those last three words seemed to stick in my brain.

“Let it die,” she said. As though the land was a living breathing thing. As though the horror that had been perpetrated in this place had somehow scorched the very air that we had been breathing, tainting the water that we drank and the ground that we walked upon. After some of the things that I had seen in the castle's basements, I could believe it too.

We've all heard about the implements of torture. Iron Maidens, racks, vats of oil for boiling or broiling alive. We know about hot pokers and thumbscrews, pliers and hammers. Various things to cause our fellow humans pain. I'd even had recent experience with such things myself although, thankfully, at a reduced rate. But what was here was different.

There were still implements of torture but everything, and I do mean everything, had a sexual twist to it. The Iron Maiden had holes at the groin and the face so that people could still stick themselves into the person trapped inside. The pokers weren't the normal, sharp edge, instead they had been shaped like phalluses. There were still whips and chains but they were focused on the binding of people rather than in the stretching.

There was dried blood everywhere as well as dried....other substances that I prefer not to think on their nature.

Sam was having it cleansed. A large bonfire had been built and anything that was wooden was being thrown into it after being smashed with one of the soldiers had applied the business end of their war-hammer to them. The other implements had been, likewise destroyed. Another of the soldiers had a background as the son of a blacksmith and he was supervising the melting down of the metal. A large furnace was being built to help with this process.

I am avoiding talking about some of the things that I saw that day when I went up to the castle because I am aware of the people that I'm talking to. I find that I don't want to tell you these things so that they don't disgust you or worse, for those people that might find these things...appealing. I don't want to give you ideas.

But just to give you a sense of how awful it was, the Inquisitors....The Inquisition declared that it was disgusting.

Nor was it the only thing we found.

We found the cults collection of skulls.

The upper stairs of the castle, where everyone lived and where the guest rooms were as well as the servants quarters, the living areas and the kitchens. Those appeared normal. There were some oddities but I dare-say that you could walk into any living castle and find something that would strike you as a bit weird or a bit....off. My family castle is overseen by my elder sister and her Sorceress lover for instance. I don't think that that's a bad thing but I have received, many, letters that tell me that others find it disgusting.

But, if you hadn't known that there was anything going on there, you would have gone into that castle and had a look round to find the residence of a fairly eccentric, but otherwise perfectly normal dwelling for an older noble family that had fallen on hard times.

But, there was a door at the end of a corridor on the ground floor. It was round a corner and out of sight but if you went through that door, then you would find where the cult lived. As you go through the door, on the right hand side there was a small, cupboard that contained a set of robes. Just a couple, one or two that looked as though they might have been tailored to meet specific sized people and then another couple, less ornate, that we guessed would be for visiting guests that didn't have their own robes.

Then there was a flight of stairs which you would descend to enter hell itself.

The contrast between the two kinds of rooms that we found down there was extreme. On the one hand were those rooms, those dungeons where the prisoners were kept in the most filthy, obnoxious, closed in, stifling rooms where the scent of excrement and human waste was overpowering. Not just the urine and the faeces but also the genuine waste, blood, entrails and skin, all of it could be seen and identified.

But on the other hand were the richly appointed guest rooms, the large beds with rich furnishings. Bottles of spirits on the side. We found a dining room with glasses and silverware resting on polished wooden surfaces.

But then there was the ritual hall. Same as back in that clearing outside of Oxenfurt. A strange pillar in the middle of it, next to an alter. Everything was carved with various jagged spiral patterns but the other reason that we knew that it was the right place was that we found a stone disk, with a silver ankh strapped to it, inverted so that the one cancelled the other out.

We found a bone room. The upper castle had a room dedicated to the trophies that the Kalayn family had collected over the years and it seemed that their upper castle habits were reflected downstairs as well. They had a room that was piled hard high with various bones of different sizes and shapes. I saw femurs and rib-cages. Bowls that were filled with toe and finger bones. And of course, there were the skulls. Some piled haphazardly but others mounted onto things, polished and obviously much handles by people over the years.

I found myself imagining cousin Kalayn showing people round and telling his guests things like. “Ah yes, I remember this one. A blonde boy, just coming into his teenage years but surprisingly tough and strong. He lasted for weeks and his screams were a music that lulled us to sleep in the afterglow of the rituals.

There was another drinks cabinet in the room. That told me all that I needed to know about the place.

As we were walking through the room, Kerrass gave this little, almost like a, chuckle.

“Heh,” he said.

“What?”

“Remember Amber's crossing?”

“Of course.”

“Just like that.”

I grunted my understanding but that didn't seem to satisfy Father Hacha that was still following us around suspiciously.

“What do you mean? You've seen this kind of thing before?”

“Not like this.” Kerrass said, holding his medallion next to a couple of the bones, especially the skulls and the rib-cages.

“There was a village that Kerrass tried to save.”

“And you as well Freddie. You were involved as well. It wasn't just me.” Kerrass added.

“Yes well. A village was being tormented by an ancient spirit of darkness. It seems that an ancestor left over from close to the villages founding had sold his village to this thing with the price that it could take whoever it wanted, whenever it wanted in return for the villages prosperity.”

“A common Heresy, unfortunately.”

“Yes,” I cleared my throat in discomfort. “But that man was long dead but the village itself was under this things spell. After we defeated it, it turned out that the spirit had kept the bodies of it's victims. It had a collection.”

“A lot like this one.” Kerrass said, he was peering at a particular skull, holding his medallion over the bones. The medallion was jumping slightly. “This skull needs properly seeing to.” he said to a couple of church soldiers that came to take it away.

Father Hacha surprised me again.

“Evil is evil,” he said. “Sometimes in humans, sometimes in creature. We should not be surprised that we find elements of it in both.”

Kerrass grunted.

“This is worse.” I told Father Hacha. “The deeds performed at Amber's crossing were performed by an entity according to it's nature. The people who did this, chose, to do this. One person can be sick. Maybe even a couple of them can find each other but this kind of torture on this kind of scale? They worked at this. They decided this.”

Father Hacha said nothing.

I couldn't stand it for long and decided that it was time to go and get some air, eventually stumbling into what must, once, have been my mother's rose garden.

Again, I was struck by the place. If it wasn't for the family and everything that had happened within these walls, this would have been a nice place. I could well imagine that I could have been happy here. The climate was to my taste, the scenery was breathtaking. I thought that I could have been happy here.

Now that I think about it a little clearer I suppose that I would have missed Oxenfurt. It's sometimes nice to be so far away from the university and the society that comes with it but I guess that I would miss it.

I found a bench and sat down.

The garden had been all but stripped bare. I guessed that some had gone with Lilla the elf woman when she had left to go with Lady Kalayn and the rest? Torn up by angry villagers? But at that point, I didn't really care. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts.

The problem with Big brothers though, is that they tend not to care about the wants and desires of their younger siblings.

“Still alive?” Sam asked, offering me a hip flask.

“Not gonna lie Sammy. Feeling pretty shitty.” I took a long drink.

“You and me both.” He took the flask back. He shook it to see how much was left and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“What are you gonna do Sammy?”

“Do?”

“With this. With all of this?”

“Let's be fair brother mine, it's far too early to be making big decisions like that.”

“True.”

“Just to say it formally though. We've found no signs of Francesca here. No signs of anything that would suggest that she's ever been here or that these people had anything to do with it.”

“I know,”

“The Kalayn family was destroyed long before she was taken.”

“I know that Sammy.” I felt a touch of asperity in my voice. “Sorry,”

“Don't worry about it. I'm the same. I just....” He shook his head. “I don't know what I can do about it.” He took a swig out of his own flask. “These last few years....I dunno, but it kind of feels like We're under attack.”

“That's kind of because we are. Francesca was taken.”

“Not just that. But before that and bigger than that. Dad and Edmund's death. Mother's exile,” He leant over to me. “I never thanked you for that by the way.”

“Thanked me?”

“Yeah, it would have broken my heart to see mum executed.”

“Mine too. But that's not why I did it.”

“I know. But that, Mark's illness, Francesca's disappearance. I just....” he stared off into the distance. “It all feels a lot to have happened in the next couple of years.”

“That's because it is Sam. It is a lot.”

“Now you're gonna move away to....where was it? Angrel?”

“Angral. Careful you don't get it wrong when you get there. There's Angral, Angrel and the Dukedom is called Angraal. I'm also told that there have been duels fought over people getting it wrong.”

“Then I shall look forward to visiting.”

“You should. We'll make a fuss of you.”