Chapter 141: The Eternal Flame and The Sky-father Kreve will help us? (2)

So we snuck out. Kerrass was agreeable. We didn't really talk about it but I got the impression that he was just as glad as I was to get out from under the thumb of all of that nobility. Another similarity between him and his namesake animal was that he has something of a wanderlust. The way he describes it is that when he's out in the wilderness, he longs for the comforts and uniformity of society. But then when he's in a city, he wants to be out amongst the trees and mountains.

Have you ever picked up a cat? Picture that moment when you are holding them against your chest and they can't decide whether they are comfortable there, against you being all snug and warm, against the possibility that there might be mice to chase nearby.

Kerrass is like this far more than he would care to admit.

We headed North and slightly West along the ridges of the foothills. We would take on some more supplies at the last village on Kalayn lands before crossing the border into areas that we weren't familiar with. It would hardly be the frontier but there was no way of knowing what was there. I had not studied any maps of the area before coming to help Sam as we had believed that we would be investigating purely in the area of Kalayn castle. And Kerrass habitually didn't work in this area for reasons of his own.

I suspected, and this was borne out by various comments from the man himself, that this was roughly in the area where his home village had been when he had been born. Although he had told me that the original site had changed beyond recognition, there was something about the lay of the land that had made him uncomfortable for years, so he just got out of the habit. He also hinted that this area was quite thoroughly worked by other Feline Witchers before the decline of the Witcher class. And he had never felt the need to explore in this area.

But still.

We got some supplies and some information from the last village. They were generous and giving of their time which I remembered finding surprising. Normally when I have been involved in saving a village, the villagers tend to want to put the entire thing behind them as soon as possible which includes forgetting their previous offers of generosity, but these people hadn't. They tried to keep us for a day and throw us a feast but we were having none of it, still wanting to push on. This had been the village that Sam and Sir Kristoff had been defending and they were still fortifying the place against future attacks. Reinforcing the barricades and putting things by. They had taken up archery practice and, apparently, a man was expected to practice with his bow for at least an hour a day.

I remembered wondering what Sir Rickard would make of their efforts and whether or not Sam would actually approve of their efforts.

But who am I to comment.

As I say, they were generous with their food and their gossip and we moved on. Taking the high roads out of Kalayn lands.

We took the high roads, the ones just below the tree line before the foot hills became the mountains. The idea was that we wanted to look down at the countryside so that we could see what we were getting in to. Trails of smoke and clearings of the trees.

Things came to a head with my problems when we came to a local landmark that was called Baleberry Rock. I don't know why it was called that, I really don't, although I did ask around at the time. But what it is is this huge boulder that has come off the mountain due to some kind of storm or melting ice. Flame only knows how long ago. It fell with a thump and formed a small dip where it embedded itself info the ground. It's a huge misshapen thing with moss and small plants covering it with lots of loose stone and earth around it. In the time since it came to rest, the forest has grown up to surround it so that it forms this little clearing amongst the trees.

It was raining I remember. Coming down hard as it often seemed to in that neck of the world, Kerrass and I were cold, wet and although we weren't really regretting the decision to make our own way off into the world, the weather was awful and we were looking for a place to find some shelter, build a fire and make something warming to go with the last of the fresh bread that the last village had given us two days ago and we found what we were looking for in that large boulder.

You have to understand just how large this thing was. It took me ten minutes of scrambling to walk round the thing. It was far too slick from the rain to climb but had we wanted to, there were no immediately obvious hand-holds to provide leverage and Kerrass would have had to stand on my shoulders to get anywhere near the top of it. But I suspect that even then, we might have struggled to get someone on top of it. We certainly saw nowhere to attach a rope or a grappling hook.

It was the kind of place that makes you feel really young and insignificant against the age and turning of the world. I don't know if that had any effect on what happened or not, I'll leave you to be the judge.

What it did have was a small area where the water had eroded it over the centuries that it had been there so that there was a small overhang. I say small, but it was only small in comparison to the entire boulder itself.

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We were able to fit both bedrolls in as well as both horses.

We stopped early so that we could properly enjoy our shelter. I spent some time building a fire which took quite a long time despite the dry wood that we had stored in our saddlebags, so it took a lot of attention and work to get it going. When it was, I went out looking for dry wood which was, at the same time, easier than it might have been, but rather time consuming.

In the mean time, Kerrass had made a shelter with one of the oilskins that we kept for when we had to camp out in weather like this and was in the process of digging a rain channel so that the waters running off the mountains would be kept out of our little shelter. Moving back to the fire I lay out the bedrolls so that we could take proper advantage of the warmth and erected the cast iron tripod over the fire from which I hung the small pot that would contain our meal as well as the grating on which I rested our kettle. I, for one wanted to clean myself up with some hot water a bit after the day we'd had.

Kerrass came in and started working on the horses. Rubbing them down and draping them with a blanket, making sure that they had food and water nearby before sitting next to the fire with the horse tack and going over it to make sure that the rain hadn't damaged it too much. I had mulled one of the bottles of cider over the fire while he worked and handed him a cup. It was growing quite warm in our little shelter now and I changed into clean and dry clothing, leaving the wet clothing to dry near the fire. The steam that came off them did much to warm up the air.

While the food warmed up we took our time to maintain our own equipment. Oiling and sharpening is vitally important, then as always.

There was a sense of something building in the air. A moment of crisis.

We took our time about the tasks. I can't speak for Kerrass but I was enjoying the simplicity of them. The need to concentrate on what I was doing without having to worry about what else was going on in the world. Without having to be concerned about other factors, while doing so in the fresh air.

My mental state had not really improved over the course of our five day journey.

The problem was that, and again this is another thing that I find hard to describe, even though I was enjoying the simplicity of the tasks of making camp. This simplicity and the steady sound of the rain against the oilskin was sending my mind down a spiral of dark thoughts that I was finding it increasingly difficult to pull myself out of.

Three times, while working on my equipment, I realised that I was sat, just staring into space. Now, at the time of writing, I couldn't even tell you what I was thinking. What the thoughts were that were going round my head. All I can say is that I felt myself getting worse and worse. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

My eyes felt hot, like I hadn't slept for several days and again my legs were feeling like they were wanting to run, sprint really, frantically for several hours. My entire body seemed as though it was fighting me. My muscles clenching and unclenching leaving me shivering. I felt like I had a fever, that feeling of being cold but also sweating freely in the air. I gritted my teeth

A thought has just occurred to me as to what I looked like.

You know how you boil a kettle of water, whether for tea, cleaning, purification or any of the other reasons that you might boil water for. It was like that. At first I was still and then gradually, as things built up, the steam started to come. Just a trickle of steam at first until it came out in an almost steady stream.

But then things started to get violent.

At some point I had closed my eyes.

Kerrass said my name. I must have done something to prompt this but I have no idea what that was, something that I had done or said had alerted him to the fact that I was struggling. Or maybe he had been watching for this kind of thing for days. I don't know.

What I do know is that he said my name and it was like somebody had driven a cold metal spike up my arse.

I shot off my seat and ran out into the rain. I didn't go very far, I certainly didn't pick a direction. It was more that I just wanted to be in the general direction of “away”.

I was shaking, trembling violently as I sprinted through the trees, slipping on the loose rocks that had tumbled off the mountainside and careening from tree to tree.

I stopped abruptly in the space between a few trees. I paced for a minute or two, my breath whistling between my teeth as I tried to contain and tamp down the overwhelming....things that I was feeling. I felt like a boat on the rapids being bounced from rock to rock with the occupants of the boats having no choice but to hold on for dear life and just pray that they find safe harbour.

I felt hot. So hot that I honestly believed that steam was rising from my now sodden shirt and from my hair that was plastered to the side of my skull.

There was a small rock pool nearby. I saw it and suddenly it seemed like the best idea in the world to go over to it and plunge my head into the water in an effort to cool off. I know, I know that this isn't really the best idea but some part of me thought that it was. I would tell anyone who is reading this that I wasn't thinking rationally.

I plunged my head in. The relief was instant, but as was the pain. Mountain wash off water is no joke and it must have been freezing cold, but I forced myself to keep my head under water for as long as I could bear it before lifting my head out. I stood there trembling for a moment or two before I plunged my head back into the water.

The violent motion had all but emptied the small pool now, so I tried the next best thing of throwing what was left down my back and across my face, rubbing the back of my neck with my, now, cold wet hands. My legs buckled under me and I slumped, sliding down the rock until I was in a kind of crouched ball.

I took a deep breath and screamed my lungs out. I screamed and screamed until I could no longer manage anything and my throat was sore. But no sound emerged, just a quiet kind of tortured rasp.

The pressure in my head was indescribable. It felt like my head was trying to explode or for my brain to forcefully pull itself from the body that encapsulated. My hands clutched to my ears in an effort to try and contain everything as though bits of my brain were trying to escape.

I felt like I was watching all of this happen, calmly from inside my own skull. I was certainly not in conscious control of things but I felt as though I was watching and taking note of everything that was happening.

I was still breathing heavily and despite the water in the air, I was sweating profusely. Rivers of it running from my scalp and down my spine and stinging in cuts and scratches that I hadn't registered previously.

I don't know how long I lay, or crouched there for. I imagine that it wasn't as long as I felt as though it was but I suspect that it was longer than was entirely healthy, either mentally or physically but I remember being surprised as it stopped just as suddenly as it started.

Abruptly I stopped sweating, the trembling stopped and I felt my mind return to my body. I was suddenly in control of my actions and could move, think and act rationally again. I climbed to my feet with some difficulty as all of my muscles had seized up and I felt stiff. As though I had been training hard for several days.

I still felt ungainly though and it took me some time to walk back to the camp where Kerrass was waiting for me. I noticed that he had set the stew aside and was stirring a pot of something else on the fire. He looked up on my arrival and taking a dipper and poured a liquid into a cup before handing it too me.

“Strong and sweet.” he said, gesturing towards my stool as I took the drink from his hand. I peeled my wet shirt off and hung it from the drying set up next to the fire before carefully lowering myself back down to a seated position. Kerrass passed me a towel which I used to wipe the worst of the water from myself.

“You stink.” He commented, not unkindly.

“Cold sweat'll do that to you.” I told him. “I'll dunk my head in the next river that we pass.”

He grunted, taking the towel off me and draping the blanket roughly around my shoulders. I would have commented something about being mothered but I doubt that that would have ended in my favour. Instead I placed the blanket around my shoulders a little more securely and drank my drink.

It was indeed, strong and sweet.

I realised that I was still shivering. It felt a lot like battle fatigue or battle reaction whatever you want to call it and it took me a long time to come back down to earth. It was odd. As I say, I was completely in command of my faculties, thinking clearly and everything but sudden bursts of shivering and trembling would take hold of my body and I would be absolutely helpless before them.

Kerrass went on about his camp-site tasks. He had put the pot of stew back over the fire, added a little water and some wild garlic that he had found before adding a bit more salt and pepper. He prefers his food with a bit more seasoning than I do. Then he settled back with a knife to work on some part of the horses tack that needed some kind of superficial repairs.

It was a long time before either of us spoke.

“Do you mind if I talk to you about something?” I asked him after a long while

“Do you want to talk about it?” He said calmly while examining a hole that he had just pushed through the leather strap.

“Flame no.” I told him. “But I think that I need to. In much the same way as sometimes, I need to train.”

Kerrass said nothing. Just blew through the small hole in the leather strap.

It took me a long time to start talking. A very long time.

“Right.” I said. Then I hesitated and leant forward. “Right, here it is.”

I took another deep breath. This was hard, much harder than I thought it should be.

“Here's the thing. If it wasn't for Francesca's disappearance. If it wasn't for that. Then I think that it would be time for me to go home.”

Kerrass' eyes seemed to flicker in the firelight but otherwise his face didn't change expression.

“It's a thought I've had, on and off, since we left Nilfgaard and started coming north.” I told him. “In fact, I've actually made my mind up to leave for home, or Angral three times now.

“The first time was about a week after we did that hunt after we left Toussaint. You remember?”

“I remember knocking you off your feet.”

I grinned at the thought.

“Yes, I remember.” I sub-consciously rubbed my jaw. “It was about a week later. I was tired and we were travelling north. We had taken the contract for you to deal with that Wyvern. You had told me to remain behind and keep that farming family indoors. I remember looking over at the old couple and their eldest daughter who was shepherding the younger children, presumably her children, under the table. I remember looking at that elder daughter and thinking of Emma. I was just beginning to lose that element of righteous anger that had kept me going through the pass out of Toussaint and I was beginning to get tired as my anger at the situation with Francesca was burning itself out. I found myself thinking that I was running around after a ghost when I should be at home looking after those siblings that I still have

“The second time was when we stood in the ashes of Pula, Saffron and Sally's home. I decided then that I was done and that I needed to head for home. I promised myself, and you, that I would help you do what needed to be done in the immediate aftermath of that. I remember looking at the ashes of the woman that I had loved, however briefly and the corpse of the man and child like creature that I had liked and respected and thought to myself that I couldn't do this any more.

“I remember it clearly as we laid out their bodies for their funeral rites and I remembered the moonlight in Saffron's smile and the strange lop-sided smile that Pula gave me when I got confused at his marriage arrangements. I remembered how much I had liked Sally and felt both, nurturing and in awe of the power of the being that just wanted to sit and read a book. I saw what the world had done to the three of them and I felt sick to my very stomach. I remembered thinking that I would see this hunt through and then I would turn for home.

“The third time was just before we set off to come north and meet up with Sam. I remember standing on the walls of my families castle and thinking that I didn't want to leave. I made my mind up not to go.”

I sighed.

“But every time. Every time, I change my mind, or I almost forget that I had promised myself to stop and I saddle up my horse, strap my weapons to my side and I head out.”

Kerrass continued to say nothing.

“Partially, it's this thing with Francesca that's got me freaking out. That's not what's got to me but it's built off that. It's certainly the reason that I'm still here, traipsing around after you.”

“OR having me traipse around after you.” Kerrass gave me one of his lopsided smiles.

I acknowledged his point with a nod. “But it sometimes worries me how much of my....of my thinking, how much of my brain, thinking about Francesca takes up and it doesn't seem to leave room for anything else.

“I spend my days going over the circumstances that led up to her disappearance. I remember the social fuck-up that Ariadne and I made of our engagement.” I smiled at the memory, “And although, at the time it was one of the happiest moments of my life, I criticise myself because I worry that, being so self-involved, that I missed some important clue. Some sign that I should have seen and would have seen if I had had my wits about my.”

Kerrass opened his mouth to object to this and I held my hands up to forestall him.

“I know, I know,” I groaned. “I know that it's foolish to think that and that I couldn't possibly have known, especially after the teleport lag.....”

As a note for those people that don't know what I'm talking about when I say “time lag.” Teleport lag is a thing that occurs when you teleport around the continent a bit. When you go from one place with it's own distinct time of day and climate, to another. You can, sometimes find the change jarring in ways that you don't always understand. It can lead to you being sub-consciously confused or unaware. Changes in diet, weather as well as exposure to the local people in general can be jarring if you haven't gone through the intervening landscape which allows you to become accustomed to the changes as you go. Apparently, this is one of the reasons that Kerrass doesn't like to teleport anywhere.

But anyway. Back to my breakdown.

“But I recriminate myself about this. I look at all the steps we took during the investigation. I think about our last exchanged conversation before she went off to sleep that night. I think of all the things that we did and about how I charged off in the pursuit of Jack both literally and figuratively, so obsessed about the idea that he must be to blame rather than it be something else. I think of all of these things and I get angry at myself for not looking at the other options. For not seeing that Jack was just a smokescreen designed to lead us, to lead me off the scent of where I should be looking.”

I reached into my bags and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

“These are my notes. The ones I didn't offer up to the God. Not just from the time spent at Toussaint. I've got copies of all my journals with me. I had to go out and buy a copy of my own books and my own travel journals, therefore paying royalties to myself and to the university publishing press. I read through them all, over and over and over again. Trying to relive the moments from before the coronation to see if I can remember some kind of sign. Some kind of clue that might lead to the proper identification of what happened. Of suspects who might have conspired to take my sister away.

“Again, I know that there was no way to know. I'm also well aware that the odds are good that this is a thing targeted at her, separate from me. I know that it's probably due to her actions at court or her deeds on behalf of the Empress. I'm even aware of how arrogant it makes me to think of her disappearance as being connected to me over all of these factors.

“But that doesn't stop me for looking for clues that probably aren't there. We have, after all, killed a lot of the enemies that we have left behind us....”

“Sir Robart?” Kerrass suggested.

I shook my head. “I don't think he has the capability, the resources or the intelligence to pull off something like this. If it was him he would have taken credit for it or rubbed her disappearance into my face a bit more when we saw him last. Besides, he is someone that I know the Imperial investigators are going after.”

“The former vassals of the former Lord Angral?” Kerrass tried again. “People who resent being ruled over by a vampire. They can't attack her but they might come after you.”

“Possible, but again, it seems a little far fetched. There are easier targets and they were nationalists. Wouldn't they go after the King of Angraal? (Note for the reader: The Duke of Angraal. Calling him the King of Angraal is a local tradition that the Empire tolerates). It's possible, I suppose but again I understand that both Ariadne and the Empire are pursuing that line of enquiry. The same goes for the brothers of that “William the Ram” knight that you killed and then I mocked in prose.”

“What about that guy, you know the one....”

“I really don't.”

Kerrass glared at me. “The one that nearly made me kill him. The one on the docks just before we sailed north and I told you my life story, bits of it anyway. You certainly did a number on him in your writing.”

“Oh him. Didn't I tell you. He got his throat slit in a Vizima back alley. Emma looked into it for me. He took one too many debts which didn't return enough of his investment in time and he got murdered for his trouble, is the common theory. Another suggestion was that he wasn't local to the area and went out drinking in the wrong part of town. Either theory was perfectly valid but they didn't prove it one way or another.”

Kerrass grunted. “Shame. I would dearly have liked to murder him myself.”

I decided to diplomatically ignore that comment.

“There is also something about our freeing of the Princess Dorn and the way that it upset the local power balance in the area. But again, the Empress is all over that.

“But even despite knowing that far more capable, experienced and influential people are on the case. I am going over the details, over and over again to see if I can see something.

“I resent that I don't know what I'm doing. We've talked about this before. We're here, because we have no other ideas as to where to look. That the conspiracy that killed my father were the people with the most magical capabilities that would have a motive. We haven't found them yet though and we're walking forward into what may very well be a trap. We have no choice other than to turn aside and send someone else that might be fobbed off or ignored. Or we continue to walk forward and wait for the jaws of the trap to close around our necks. And I know that that's what I'm doing. It's that thing with Jack in Toussaint all over again, rushing into a situation without knowing what's about to come down.

“Any way that I look at, this is a stupid thing to do. I'm honestly angry at Sam for putting me in this position, for exploiting my desire to help him and my desire, my.....my need to find these people and ask them questions in order to help him deal with this problem and yet, despite knowing how stupid it is, I can't turn aside.”

“It's not that stupid.” Kerrass argued before reconsidering. “It's a little stupid, but one way or another, someone has to go out there and scout out the area. We are, by far, the best qualified to do that. The church either of them, will announce their presence as church soldiers and church officials are absolutely incapable of travelling incognito without giving themselves away by being so aggressively holy and self righteous that it would drive everyone away. The military guys might be able to go incognito but at the same time, they wouldn't really know what they're looking for. It's not, strictly speaking, Witcher's work but I do feel as though I'm hunting down monsters. The fact that I'm also helping you is an extra bonus.”

“Ok.” I said after listening to that little speech. “I feel a little better but you won't be able to convince me that you wouldn't do better by yourself.”

“I can argue that point, but we're not talking about that at the moment.” Kerrass told me.

I let him have that.

“I'm so obsessed with it Kerrass, so obsessed that I can't think of anything else. I just can't. You were right when we left Toussaint. I need to think of other things. I need to continue working, writing, thinking, learning and educating. But I can't bring myself to care. I've tried, I really have. I've tried to write things. I talked about the thing with Bishop Fuck-face and I wrote about the child beneath the Watchtower. But I feel as though I'm just going through the motions. Marking time until we find the next clue, the next step forward.

“So that's the second thing that's got me so.....so fucking.....”

“Tied up?” Kerrass suggested. “Wrung out.”

“I was thinking “fucked off” to be honest but your things would be true too.”

I sighed and rubbed my head with a hand that trembled. Kerrass passed me another cup of liquid and told me to drink.

“I've....” I clutched the cup in my hand, staring deep into the liquid in an effort to try and find inspiration at the bottom of the cup. In the dark, swirling liquid that was there before lifting my gaze to stare out of the opening and into the woods. I noticed that the rain was beginning to lessen. Bleeding typical. The rain stops shortly after I have a breakdown and run out into the weather.

“I've lost the joy of all of this.”

“All of what?”

“All of this,”. I said, waving my arms round at the little, make-shift cave. “I remember during the roughly two years that we travelled together. I loved every minute of our time on the road. Every. Last. Minute. Every new creature that you showed me was fascinating to me. The people were interesting, the food was inspiring, the women were beautiful. The culture, architecture and....and “life” was fascinating to me. From everything to the way that villages were built to the way that they were the same. From Southern Imperial lands, all the way up to Northern Redania and Kaedwen. The differences in diet. The different way the different whore houses worked. How in some places you pay up front and some places you pay afterwards. The way merchants work. It was all so interesting to me.

“That wasn't to mention the main reason that I was out there. I remember hounding you with questions. Waking you up with questions, distracting you with questions and sending you to sleep with questions. I remember you having to tell me to shut the fuck up or you'd knife me, to stop me asking you questions.”

“Which lasted all of five minutes as I recall.”

“But that's my point. When was the last time I asked you a question about Witcher's work? When was the last time I talked to you about potions, techniques or Witcher philosophy? I can't remember but it was certainly before Toussaint. I just don't care any more Kerrass.”

Somewhere in the back of my head I realised that I was getting upset again and I forced myself to take a deep breath in an effort to calm down.

“I hope I didn't insult you there.” I told him. “That's not to say that you aren't interesting it's just....”

“I know what you meant Freddie. I'm not insulted.”

“That stuff was so important to me. So important and now I just can't bring myself to care. I've worked really hard to keep going with that kind of stuff since we left Toussaint. Don't get me wrong, you were right when you told me that it was important and that I should continue working on it. You were right and you are still right.....

“Heh.” I chuckled. “I didn't tell you this but I got a letter from a friend when we were back at Coulthard Castle.”

“You mean that you got a letter from a fan don't you?” Another one of Kerrass' smirks.

“I do, so help me I do. But he complained that I wasn't talking about you as much anymore. He said that he still enjoyed the stories and spent time learning from them but that he missed hearing about you and your history.”

“Nice to know I'm popular.”

“You are. But what to tell him? I just haven't learned anything new about you in ages.”

I sank into silence. Staring down into my cup and swirling the liquid about.

“But that's not the real reason that you're upset is it.” Kerrass prompted. It was not a question and he was not wrong.

“No,” I admitted. “No it's not.”

Kerrass said nothing. I couldn't look at him any more and I felt the shame that I had been feeling for a while start to climb up my throat like Bile.

“I'm....” I began but it caught in my throat. “Dammit it all to hell.”

I took another deep breath as though I was taking a run up against a tricky jump.

“I'm angry all the time Kerrass. All the Flame cursed time. You used to mock me for it. You'd tease me and tell jokes to other people about how violent I could get. I used to get really upset and really offended about it but you're right.”

I turned away as I felt hot wetness behind my eyes.

“Remember that Hound that I fought in the village?”

I didn't wait for an answer.

“I was disappointed in that fight. There wasn't enough of it for me. I wanted more. I wanted the blood of those assholes that were victimising those people. I wanted to fight. I wanted to show them just how wrong they are and how they should run from people like me. I was so angry then that I scared myself and it's not the first time either.

“I murdered Bishop Sansum. I snuck up behind him and I choked the life out of him. I could feel his life dribbling past my fingers and still I squeezed. That guy is the closest I've ever come to hating someone. Anyone really although I wonder whether I'm going to feel worse when I....when we actually find the bastards that took Francesca. I hated Sansum and I squeezed the life out of him. I remember his tongue lolling out of mouth and slobbering everywhere. I couldn't see his eyes but I could feel the desperation in his movements. The way that his arms and legs were jerking and frantically tearing at me. Grinding and scrabbling for air but still I squeezed until the last vestiges of life came out of him and there was nothing left. And I was disappointed that I couldn't do more to him.

“When did I start doing this Kerrass?” I looked at him for the first time in a while. He was sat, unmoving, the firelight reflected in his eyes.

“When did I start enjoying fighting. When did I start looking forward to it and only feeling alive in the middle of a battle. I've tried, Flame knows that I've tried, but all I can think about is how angry I am at everything. I'm angry at myself for feeling this way. I'm angry at you for not magically and amazingly being able to conjure up an answer to the mystery of Francesca's disappearance. I'm angry at Sam and Emma and Mark for returning to their lives as though everything is normal when it's not fucking normal. We've lost our sister, flame damn them and they're doing nothing about it.

“I know that that's not true and I know that I'm being unrealistic, I know that but that just makes me angrier.

“I'm angry at Mother for not telling everyone about this cult which might have solved this problem in the first place, furious really despite absolutely understanding why she didn't. I'm angry at Edmund for being weak enough to fall for their schemes. I'm angry at Father for being stupid enough to die in the first place. Not just for his dying at Edmund's hands but also for being a stubborn, ignorant prick that drove me away from the family in the first place.

“I'm angry at Mark for not sorting himself out and seeing to his illness in time. I'm angry at all the Sorceresses, including Ariadne, for not being able to figure all of this out. I'm angry at the Empress for giving up. I'm angry at Toussaint and the Imperial guard as a whole for not properly protecting my sister. Literally, I blame an entire people for that and would not shed a tear if dragons came and set the place ablaze.

“I'm angry at the Princess Dorn for being upset with me before we departed. And I'm really angry, so fucking furious with Francesca for being foolish enough to let herself get taken.”

I felt a bitter chuckle escape me.

“And that's just the people that don't really deserve my anger.

“I would cheerfully murder Lord Voorhis for not knowing who took my sister and why. I would take great delight in fighting Sir Robard de Radford until he bled to death from a thousand tiny little wounds that I would inflict. Slowly, over time.

“I'm angry at these, so-called Hounds of Kreve and the people that are behind them. I'm angry at Sam for preying on my general desire to be a “good person” and harness that desire in order to get me to do what he wants. Manipulative bastard that he can sometimes be. I would have told him to shove it up his arse if it wasn't for the fact that this is one of the best chances that we might have of finding out what happened to Francesca. As it was I was honestly tempted but I'm a sucker for someone asking me for help. Back home I have to deliberately leave money at home so that I don't buy drinks for all my mates rather than having a drink myself. I was so angry with Sam for getting me to do what he wanted. But I was so tempted to tell him to stuff it. If it wasn't for Francesca....”

“No.” Kerrass told me. “No you wouldn't. You would have done it anyway, regardless of Francesca. You would have helped him if he'd asked. I once preyed on that same instinct to help people of yours.”

I sighed.

“I know.”

I brushed some tears from my eyes.

“Flame Kerrass. I'm so angry that I am genuinely frightened.”

“Of what?” Kerrass asked softly.

“Of what I might do.” I answered swiftly. “I used to pride myself on being a calm man. A man who thought things through and took proper care of what the consequences of my actions might be. But I don't do that any more. I rush in, spear flashing depending on you and luck and my own idiotic sense of self worth to carry the day and even worse than that....

“So far it has. What happens when it's not enough, or you're not there to save my ass but I don't notice or forget. Or my running into the fire means that you come in with me and then I get you killed. What happens then?”

I laughed again, bitterly and I could hear the edge of hysteria in it. Which of course made me angrier.

“Princess Dorn was right to be afraid for you.” I said after a while. “She was right to warn me and she will deserve her vengeance if I get you killed.”

Kerrass continued to say nothing.

“When did I start getting so angry?” I asked, somewhat pointlessly. “When did I start looking at the world like this. I considered....I consider myself as a man of learning. A man of respect and....and peace. But I look out at the world looking for people to fight. People to start things with. I look for ways to start violence. I would prefer that to be against people that deserve to get a ballistic spear to the face but if I'm honest with myself, any poor fucker will do. Any one, if they pick a fight with me then they deserve it.

“I worry that I wanted to come with you to help you destroy Bishop Sansum. Not because of the injustice or to help you or to right a genuine wrong. Not because I wanted to clean a human stain off the face of the continent or to combat the appalling acts that are done using “Religion and faith” as a shield as though the Holy Flame tells people to torture children and burn law abiding citizens. I worry that I didn't do that, I didn't walk into that compound and set fire to the place because I was right and they were wrong, or that I was worried that the “proper authorities” wouldn't deal with the matter properly.

“I went with you because I wanted to feel something. I wanted to fight something, and get angry with someone. To kill someone. I was just grateful that there was no moral quandaries. There were evil people that I could kill and then defend my own actions with vigour and right being on my side.

“I don't know their names any more Kerrass.” I wailed. “When did I stop caring? I remember when I've walked past them and it's days later and they're already ash on the wind or buried in the ground and the chances of identifying them is getting remoter and further away with every passing second. When did I stop caring?

“When Did I start looking forward to this? When did I start wanting to fight? When did I stop caring? When did I stop worrying about the outcome of my actions? How many people have I killed, either with my own hands or as a result of what I've done and said? And why don't I care?

“Flame but what have I become? Why am I angry all the time?”

It took a long time but I realised that I had run out of words.

The rain had stopped. The only sound was the occasional glooping sound from the stew and the occasional crack from the wood in the fire.

I felt empty. Drained of energy and spark, I felt exhausted and I was trembling slightly. Caught between tears and the absolute and utter exhaustion that prevented that from happening.

Then Kerrass moved, breaking the spell. What he did was scratch the side of his head.

“Yeah,” he said, as though he was answering a question that he'd asked himself. “Yeah, if it wasn't for the fact that we were hunting for Francesca....If it wasn't for the fact that you would look for her anyway, regardless of what I said. If it wasn't for those things. I would agree with you. It is time for you to go home.”

He paused for a moment to let those words sink into my ears. I suspect he was telling himself that same truth.

“There might even be a case to be argued for you to go home. You should go home. Regardless of Francesca or what's going on at the moment with your brother and his lands and his enemies. You should go home. You should start preparing for your wedding and getting ready for your new life over in Angral. You should go home and start rebuilding your life. It is the first step towards you moving on from everything that's happened.

“But let's be honest with each other here Freddie. Would we even be keeping each other company at all if Francesca hadn't been kidnapped? Or would we both have been moving on with our lives.

“I would still be following Princess Dorn around like some kind of lap cat while at the same time doing my best to reject her romantic advances and not hurt her too badly, at the same time as gently pining away for her. You would very likely already be married. To be honest I'm surprised that you're not already. My understanding of the noble classes is that they like to get on with things. But that's by the by. You should either be getting ready for your wedding or learning what married life is like with the added little spicy nugget that you're married to an insanely powerful, ridiculously strong and equally ridiculously beautiful immortal inhuman being.

“By now we would be friends who say hello when we bump into each other. We would have made plans for me to winter with you occasionally and at the same time, you would meet me for some drunken debauchery whenever I was in the near vicinity where I would get you drunk, you would get me drunk and I would try and convince you to come to the whore house with me.”

“Which you would fail”. I commented.

“You say that now but wait until you've been married for a few years.” A thought occurred to him. “On the other hand though, she can conjure an illusion so that she can look like anything she wants. Or that you want for that matter.”

He smirked.

“Lucky bastard.”

He sat staring into the fire for a moment. Poking it with a stick and thus showing that universal truth that when you sit a man in front of a fire, then he must play with it.

“But I'm not going to send you home or insist that you return there. I think that that would be cruel in your current state. I recognise your longing for your sister and as well as there being a “need” for you to go home for your health and well being but I also think that you are not yet ready to do so. You walk along a sword edge, very possibly the sword edge of destiny where the edge you walk on is you and the other edge is death. Where one way is your need to carry on and find your sister and the other is your need to go home and rest.

“Both needs are jealous spectres on your shoulder that threaten to tear you apart if you listen too deeply to one or the other. So instead I will say a couple of things to you. You may not like some of them but I think that we're getting to the point where they need to be said.

“The first thing that needs to be said. Something that you need to hear and that you need to come to terms with is this. Anger is not new to you. You have always been angry. Always, from the moment that I first met you. I saw it flashing in your eyes when we sat down for our first breakfast where you gave me your proposition. I saw it before that when you were angry at how I spoke to you when I ordered you around to give me the right potions and before that when you were getting worried that the innkeeper would send me away before you had the chance to talk to me.”

I shifted uncomfortably on my stool. It is not pleasant to have your best friend talk to you about your character flaws.

“You have always had a deep-seated rage in you Freddie.” Kerrass went on. “i recognised that in you, it's part of the reason that I liked you so much because a lot of that rage was directed against the flaws of the world. You were angry when you heard those bandits raping that girl and you were angry again when she fled from you after you had helped rescue her. There are even several cases in your own stories where your anger overwhelmed you and you went off and did something stupid. The time you chased into a villagers cottage when the Nekkers were climbing up through the floor. The time where you made jokes and attacked the men who had blades at your throat in the same village.

“I can go on and on.

“Pulling a knife on that merchant by the docks after he belittled you. The rage that you had against Lord Dorme of Angral was terrifying, even to me, despite the obvious provocation and that he deserved your anger and your hate. It was that anger and a healthy dose of fear that made you stand up to Ariadne. Your raging at your father's death bed and your anger at the fact that the rest of your family didn't want to investigate. All of these examples. You've always been angry Freddie. Always. Since long before your sister disappeared.

“I've joked about this before, mocking and teasing you about your anger and I've suggested to you that you are a berzerker. I may have mocked you in the past but sometimes the truest words are said in jest. You are a Berzerker Freddie. I don't know how much of one you are and I have no particular desire to find out. I've said it before in jest, well now I say it with certainty. If you were born on any of the islands of Skellige you would have been taken off and trained how to use that aspect of yourself in battle for the good of your people. You would have been given mushrooms and herbs to bring that out of you until you could do it at will rather than with herbal aid.

“Given your intelligence there is also a good chance that you would have survived and they would have ended up training you as a druid, either after, during or instead of training you as a berzerker.

“Again, I have always known this about you Freddie. As I say, it is this anger that spurs you on. It causes you to act. On the doorstep of the inn where you were angry at the innkeepers treatment of me. In your account of that episode you claim that you offered to take me in without thinking but it wasn't that. It was that your anger spurred you to action.

“It is this quality that makes you a berzerker. For some people, even most people, anger is a paralytic before it is a goad to action. They freeze until the situation makes it impossible to stay still. You don't. You get angry and then you act.

“I saw it again when I cast the Axii sign at you that first time. For many, if not most people, the effects of that confuse the mind. For you, it sent you into a killing Frenzy. I had already decided that I knew what you were and this confirmed it.”

He paused in his little speech. My gaze had sunk to the floor and I was staring at my feet. As I say, this was not an easy thing to listen to and I was feeling absolutely dreadful.

“Look at me Freddie.”

I didn't respond at first.

“Freddie, look at me.”

I lifted my head. I had expected judgement in Kerrass' eyes, some kind of scorn, condemnation or even worse, pity. But instead I saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. No pity, concern, nothing. Just Kerrass' blank emotionless face. The fire dancing in his eyes. When he finally spoke again he did so in a calm, methodical voice.

“The fact that you get angry is not a bad thing. Anger is not bad and it certainly does not make you a bad person. You have every right to feel the way that you feel and at all the things that you get angry about. Every right in the world.”

“My parents and tutors would tend to disagree.” I commented. I don't know why but I suspect that I was trying to divert the conversation away onto something else.

“Yes,” he said. “Parents do that, but that's because the people that we are angry with when we are young is often out parents and teachers.” His mouth twitched towards a smile. I guessed that a memory was occurring to him.

“But anger is not bad. I'm not going to tell you that anger is not dangerous because it is, especially when you hold it in and can't let go of it as you have been unable to do recently, which is again, not your fault. Or when it rages like an out of control fire, consuming everything in it's path. But it certainly isn't evil and it doesn't make you a bad person.

“It's what you do with that anger that makes a person evil.”

He shifted his own weight again. “Goddess but don't I know that.”

He sighed and rubbed his brow again. Making him appear more human at a stroke.

“It's what you do when you get angry that makes you a bad person. That's not aimed at you as much as it's aimed at myself and at the world, just to be clear. You can get angry at babies for shitting themselves. But yelling at, or striking the baby is wrong. You can get angry at the wild animal for biting you, or the starving man for stealing your food, or at the man who attacks you when he mistakes you for an enemy. But it's how you use that anger and how you react that makes you bad.

“As is how you deal with that Anger and how you express that anger. Which brings us back to you Freddie.” He said that last part with a slight smirk.

“For me, as an observer, your problem is not that you are getting angry all the time, it's that you are getting increasingly violent with that anger. You go from normal, withdrawn, calm and snarky to full on Firestorm of death and violence within seconds. That is the thing that worries me.”

He sighed.

“And partially, if not mainly, that it is my fault not yours.”

“What? Why? Errrrr. What?” That moment when you feel your own chain of thought breaking apart and shattering.

“Because I gave you that extra tool. That extra outlet. That extra way to express your anger.”

He sighed again. “Can I ask you a question here Freddie? and I want an honest answer.”

“Uhhhhh.” I mean honestly, what are you supposed to say when someone asks you something like that.

“Before you met me.” Kerrass carried on regardless. “Had you ever really been in a fight?”

He paused for an answer and I felt my mouth open as I searcher around for something to say.

“And I don't mean one of those staged practice duels that they do in the training yards at the university where fencing is taught alongside ethics, poetry and philosophy. Have you ever been in a fight? Where a punch was thrown and then another punch was thrown and then more punches or weapons were drawn or thrown. Has that ever happened to you?”

“I....”

“I also don't mean where someone just hit you and you went down. That's not a fight, that's an attack. A fight requires someone to fight back and to be able to fight back. If you're on the floor already then you can't fight back and it's not a fight. Also, it doesn't count if a fight starts around you and you flee. That's not being in a fight if you escape. You can be in a war like that but not a fight like that.”

I stared at him for a while. “I....I don't know. Maybe with Sam when we were growing up.”

He nodded his satisfaction. “That means no then. Don't be ashamed. The world would be a better place if more people could answer no to that question or say that the only fights that they've been in involve family. Even if you had been in a fight, I would bet money that you would never have started one. This is because you are an angry man but you are not a violent one. Before you protest, you aren't. I know the difference believe me. If you were a violent man then you would have promptly and simply answered that you had been in a fight. Many, many times.

“You would also not be feeling the way that you do now. You would not see your current feelings as being anything that you need to be ashamed about but that is something that we will come back to. We are talking about my culpability here.”

“Or rather, you are talking.” I tried to lighten the mood.

“Precisely so sit there and stop talking.” He told me sternly.

“You've always been angry Freddie, but before you met me and I started training you, you dealt with that anger in different ways. You might go somewhere private and weep private tears of rage. You might get into a really fierce debate with a rival. You might grab some friends and go down the tavern to have a good bitch and moan about all the things that have pissed you off lately. You might go off to the brothel and get laid. But now I've not only taken a lot of those things off you by walking through the wilderness with just the two of us and it's hard to bitch about me, to me. But I've also shown you that there is something else you can do.

“You can fight a fool.

“You can stab an idiot.

“You can kill the person that is pissing you off.”

He sighed.

“And I was the one that taught you how to do that and I feel awful about it. When I look at the man you are now and see your anguish over the things that you have done and the things that you have seen. I see that as my fault and I mourn the loss of your sheltered innocence as it was me that killed it. Even as I hated that part of you when I recognised it all that time ago.

“I made you a killer. I didn't teach you to defend yourself, I taught you how to kill the other person because I don't know any other way to fight. I don't know any other way to teach.