Chapter 32: He was sobbing

I had wanted to do this bit myself but Kerrass had argued, correctly, that one of us needed to carry the box that we had found and that person would not be able to fight properly. Also of the two of us, he was the one that could reasonably be expected to take on three to five highly trained church guards as well as the fact that he could probably get away with it given that he wasn't part of the family.

Having said that, it is all well and good to say that you are alright with someone attacking your brother's guards but it is a whole other thing to watch it happen.

My brother had taken up a large office in one of the quieter parts of the keep. He is, after all, an important person in larger church affairs and even though he is away from his home diocese he still gets a large number of visitors and it is useful for him as well as the rest of the family for him to be able to differentiate his visitors from the rest of the people who come to the keep on other errands.

It sits at the end of a corridor before the corridor itself turns a corner which leads to some more guest rooms and it was down this corridor that we strode purposefully. Me with the box in a sack over one shoulder and Kerrass with his sword on his back and the iron bar part of my spear swinging easily in his hand.

“Greetings my friends,” Kerrass called as we came in sight of the room and the guards standing outside. “So good to see you on this rather pleasant morning. My compliments to your master but it is rather urgent that we speak to him.”

The lead guard seemed rather bored.

“Morning Witcher. This game of yours is no longer funny and neither ourselves nor the Arch-Bishop are amused. His Grace has informed us that he is indisposed and as such is not to be disturbed for any reason.”

He fixed his eyes on me, “For any reason at all.” He was sneering slightly.

Some people just seem to fit the stereotype and despite everything you do to try and help them move past that stereotype, they just give up and jump right into it.

“Ah,” Kerrass looked comically crestfallen. “I notice however that he was disposed enough to come to his office which is some distance from his room. But that is not important today. Today I'm afraid that I really must insist that I be allowed in to see the Arch-Bishop. It is a matter of faith, religious learning, family history and his brothers murder. I am sure that he will understand in this case. Please check with him.”

Kerrass made a little 'shoo' gesture with his left hand.

He had warned me earlier that he had done his best to annoy the Arch-bishops guards at every available opportunity. He regarded it as part of a game but also he felt that he had a certain duty to annoy self-righteous pricks who don't know what they're talking about. His words, not mine. Personally I had found the church guards that had come with my brother from Tretogor to be relatively harmless. When not on duty they had passed the time with our family guards and myself and seemed relatively friendly. There were a couple of... more uptight individuals who seemed to think of me as being somehow 'soiled' from being associated with a Witcher and had treated me exactly how you think they might have but for the majority of them, they seemed like reasonable human beings.

“The order stands that His Grace not be disturbed for ANY reason, Witcher. As well you know.”

I particularly enjoyed how the man sneered while he said the word “Witcher” as though it was somehow badly flavoured or that it sullied his lips with the sound of it.

“Darn,” said the Witcher.

Helmets are useful things. They are particularly good at protecting from overhead strokes. That is why Kerrass brought the heavy metal bar up to the offending guards chin with a hard underhand movement. It was hard enough to lift the man almost completely off his feet with an accompanying crack and crunch. He fell backwards between the other two astonished guards.

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The guard on Kerrass' left knocked on the door in a pattern that I didn't follow while the remaining guard thrust his shield at Kerrass while struggled to unsheathe his sword.

Kerrass grabbed the top of the shield and tugged at it causing the man to stagger forward. Kerrass then used the momentum to spin on his heel to bring his makeshift club around in a semi circle and clout the man on the back of the head. He fell forwards.

The remaining guard looked a little resigned but he certainly seemed cleverer than his fellow. He dropped his shield and didn't bother going for his sword, instead he drew a dagger from a sheath on his back and used his other hand and arm to take hold of the club and trap it. It was a good plan.

Unfortunately for the guard, Kerrass was unmoved and simply let go of the club, took hold of the man's head and rammed it into the wall. Once, twice before checking for consciousness and then a third time for good measure.

Stooping he retrieved the club, gestured me further back and made a hand gesture.

A golden light seemed to flicker over his body before another gesture made the door explode off his hinges and into Brother Marks office, flattening a fourth guard under the heavy Oak and iron reinforcings. Kerrass stepped into the office, another guard brought his sword down hard onto Kerrass' head from where he had been hiding behind the door. Again, another good plan.

There was a flash and an explosive concussion which caused me to stagger a little but I had seen this before and had been prepared. The guard that had attacked the Witcher was not so lucky.

Kerrass gestured me forward and I followed him into my brothers lair. One guard was struggling up from the remains of the door before an unceremonious boot from Kerrass connected with his chin causing him to slump. The magical explosion had caused the last guard to fly backwards into a shelf which had rained other books and scrolls so that his unconscious form was half covered.

Mark was behind his desk on the far side of the room with an absurdly small knife in his hand. He was plainly terrified and snarled at us in his mix of anger and terror.

I deposited my burden on the floor and checked to make sure that Kerrass hadn't killed anyone. Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

He knew his craft though.

Never being one to let a good opportunity go to waste, my brother was calling for guards. Red in the face.

“Yes,” said Kerrass grinning nastily. “Bring the guards. Then they can see what happens when a group of trained church soldiers try to prevent an innocent Witcher from fulfilling his contract and duty. Just count yourself lucky that I wasn't a Sorcerer or Wizard as they would have done much worse and they would not be frightened by your little knife any more than I am. They would also want to know what the presumed master of the castle had to hide that he locks himself away from any encroaching person who might be able to ask him questions. Questions that might call into doubt his very inheritance.”

“I have nothing to hide, least of all from you. And your comment on Sorcerers and Wizards is unfair.” Mark showed that he could also smile horribly. “We burned many in Novigrad with only our small and unimpressive knives to help us,”

Kerrass winced. “I had friends on some of those pyres Arch-Bishop. Friends who had never hurt anyone. Friends who had even gone out of their way to help and heal others.”

The two men glared at each other. Kerrass spoke first.

“But that is not why I am here. I also know that you had nothing to do with those deaths and I even know that you protested them in the strongest terms for which I am grateful so I would thank you not to attempt to provoke me.”

The two men stared at each other. I was fascinated at this meeting of two minds. Mark has been and I suspect will always be a great influence on my life. He was my earliest confessor and as such has had a great impact on my spiritual progression which is still important to me despite my dislike of discussing it too much. To see him challenged so much by another equally as strong personality was.... enlightening.

It was Mark who looked away first.

“What do you mean “presumed” master of the castle? And also, how would my reluctance to talk to a heretical mutant on a matter that I don't agree with have any bearing on the case. I did not kill my brother and I was provably somewhere else on the matter of Fathers death.”

Mark's disdain for Kerrass struck me as lacking a certain something. He seemed tired and more as though he was trotting out the old “heretical mutant” thing as though he had to rather, than if he believed it.

The distant sound of people running came to me in my position by the door.

Kerrass waved his hands dismissively. “Distance is not a concern to a man with wealth and power but that is not something that I am concerned with. But I do have questions, questions that I would be willing to believe that only an Arch-Bishop can answer and that might be able to shed light on. Questions pertaining to what's in the sack that Frederick is carrying.”

Mark looked at me. There was a question there and I saw how well he had been played. My brother is a clever man but like anyone he is susceptible to flattery.

“Show me.”

The guards arrived as I was stooping and Mark gestured for them to wait.

The first thing I did was to move some of the rugs aside that were on the floor and I produced a wooden board that I put in the middle.

Next came a box. Putting it on the floor next to the board I put on a large, thick pair of gloves.

Kerrass was watching my brother carefully but he needn't have worried. Mark was rapt.

Flicking the lid open with my foot I reached inside and took out a Large round wooden stone and placed it on the wooden board.

Mark hissed in anger and rage. “You dare?” he snarled. “You bring that...that thing here. Into my rooms. You invoke her presence here. How dare you?”

“I take it you know what that is then.”

“Of course I do.”

What it was was a round, flat stone that had been smoothed on one side maybe 2 feet in diameter. Upon the surface of the stone there had been carved the pattern of a spiders web. In the centre of which was a large spiders body with the head of a Lion.

“The Lion-headed spider.” Mark hissed. “The Lion-headed Spider. How dare you...?”

Kerrass held his hands up. “The tablet has been desecrated by me as well as someone whose opinion I trust so therefore holds no power. I ensured that before I brought it here as I had no desire to bring her gaze on the house of a friend and afterwards I was hoping that you would help me destroy it.”

Mark was visibly relieved which surprised me.

“Unfortunately that is not the only thing we found,” Kerrass went on nodding to me.

Equally as carefully I reached into the box and pulled out a Silver Ankh symbol. It was heavy, about 2 feet tall. The fact that the size of the Ankh was the same as the stone tablet had not been lost on Kerrass and I.

I placed it next to the stone.

Mark recoiled visibly.

“We found them together,” Kerrass said carefully, “The ankh was strapped to the stone by thin leather straps. I have already burned the straps.”

Mark nodded. His eyes had gone wild and he was visibly sweating.

“Good,” he said. “Good, the Ankh will need to be melted as well.”

“I am having an impromptu furnace built away from the walls for that purpose.”

Mark nodded and visibly made an effort to control himself.

“Where did you find these things?”

“Alas we still haven't told you everything that we have found, perhaps we should sit?”

Mark nodded.

The guards were dismissed, wine was brought and we sat down to talk.

It felt as though years had passed since Father had finally died but in the event it had only been a few days.

We had talked to Emma about things and our plans to make sure that the funeral would leave us enough time to go away and come back. Fortunately even a Barons funeral can take time to organise, for the necessary guest invitations to be sent out, frocks to be cleaned, decorations to be taken down and put up again so there was still some time yet in which I could... “Go and play” as my sister so encouragingly put it.

We rode over to Oxenfurt in that early evening with our family lawyer. He had long been known to me and I had always remembered him as a fierce grey-haired old man with a receding hairline and who's whiskers bristled fiercely when he was annoyed by small children. What I had clearly forgotten, or missed was the way that his eyes would crinkle when he was amused and his great booming laugh which he employed often.

He and Kerrass had struck up some kind of partnership which was the very original version of the old saying about “opposites attracting.” The Lawyer's name was Barnabus Krayt of Krayt, Morgan and associates and although this is not an advert for their services they always did right by my family.

We parted ways at an inn just outside of Oxenfurt. There's an old chess club there where people can sit around and play each other on the provided chess sets for hours at a time while downing a suitable amount of wine and ale and start carousing until the early hours of the morning. Kerrass insisted on pulling us over there and bought Mr Krayt (although he tried to insist, I still can't bring myself to to think of him as Barnaby) a large pint of frothy ale which the old man drank with envious speed. They told many jokes and stories and they even managed to entertain their audience with their witticisms and jokes at each others expense. I was fairly quiet despite their best efforts to get me drunk. In the end Mr Krayt promised Kerrass faithfully that he would be at the watch house in the morning insisting that Kerrass and I be allowed access to Edmund's rooms. I was all for heading there straight away but apparently the people who have the authority to be yelled at by lawyers “simply don't work like that,” so I suffered in silence.

After he left Kerrass took me over to a corner table. He was stone cold sober of course and called over the barman. The company was in good cheer and Mr Krayt had been generous with his money so we were all quite popular and everyone, other than me, was in good spirits but the barman paled when Kerrass spoke to him.

“This is awkward,” Kerrass began with one of his more disarming smiles. “But I was hoping you could answer a question for me.”

“And why would I do that?” The Barman was a tall, thin man but other than that he was fulfilling the stereotype of pub landlord with ease. The question wasn't accusatory but rather an invitation for further jokes and good cheer.

“Because I've spent a good amount of money,”

“Do you intend on spending more?” There was some laughter from some of the nearby listeners who thought that some kind of competition was still going on.

“Maybe,” Kerrass responded quickly. “That depends on whether you answer the question,”

This was met with general applause as though Kerrass had won a point.

The Barman mused but seemingly couldn't think of anything else he could say that would be funny enough to satisfy the audience.

“What's your question?” he said as though he was granting us a huge favour.

“Does the name Eloise Karnak mean anything to you?”

As a historian or as a scholar, storyteller or writer or whatever people seem to consider me nowadays you have to do a small amount of research. One of the ways that I have done this is by reading other peoples works. These particular writings from my journals are published in a magazine and so it is meant to entertain as well as to inform so I wanted to make sure that I get this right. But there was one definition that always surprised me. That was when someone is described as having “paled”. It's a simple enough word and yet it conveys so much meaning as well as everyone knows precisely what you mean by it. It describes a person when the red pigment leaves their face. Unfortunately the rest of it lacks a certain something, in other words, why are they losing their colour. Are they sick? Are they in pain? Angry? Sad? Shocked?

This bar man looked as though it was all of them put together as not only did he “pale” but he also staggered, started sweating and his eyes widened.

A couple of the other patrons asked if he was alright?”

“I'm fine,” he snarled back in a sudden fury. “Now fuck off, we're closed.”

I was as astonished as anyone else there as it was still relatively early in the evening (for Oxenfurt) and the crowd seemed more than capable of drinking much more yet.

“Seriously. Fuck off,” He bellowed at them.

A shocked silence fell. Some men looked angry and might have started something but then they realised something that I hadn't which was that the Barman was weeping openly.

A large man, a labourer of some kind I gathered, stood up, finished his drink and loudly said that he would see the barman tomorrow.

One by one the other patrons did the same.

The Barman went and found himself a bottle. It was black and came in a whicker basket which he started taking large swigs from.

I noticed that we weren't offered any.

“Sorry,” he said after a while, “Sorry it's just... It's just that it's been a long time since I.... thought about her.”

He sniffed, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve before looking back up at the Witcher.

“Is that why you're here. Did you catch the bastard thing that did that? Someone once said they were going to put up a notice about that as only a monster could have done something so evil but the Watch claimed that it was a man.”

Kerrass sighed and shook his head.

“I'm sorry but that's not why I'm here. The name came up in this region in connection to something else that I am working on. I don't yet know how the two were connected but I can promise that I intend to find out.”

The man nodded. “Well if they are, and if they do turn out to be connected, then you come and see me Witcher. I'll give you a reward to see that things head or if it does turn out to be a man, I would pay to see the bastard swing. If not, come back and I'll hire you myself.”

Kerrass nodded, “Why don't you start by telling us what happened and how you know that name.”

“She was just a nice girl,” He looked at us with red eyes. I felt guilty then. I had my own grief that was clawing at the back of my mind like a hungry animal, which I knew would break free eventually, but this man's grief was just as real and just as raw. I could no longer look at him and studied the table, looking at the grain in the wood and the patterns it made of the spilled beer and wine.

“She was just a nice girl. Dark blonde frizzy hair that used to stand up when we had thunder storms. It was always a mess and always getting caught in things but she steadfastly refused to allow anyone to touch it or cut it any shorter claiming that she would look like a cloud or a dandelion.”

He didn't say anything for a while.

“She was fourteen when she died. Maybe a little bit younger than me so that puts it at about thirteen years ago when we found her. We all loved her, all of us but she never tried to make us fight for her affections and I would guess that I wasn't the only one who planned to propose when she came of age. That makes me sound all grown up but I was fifteen? Yeah, I think I was fifteen years old.

“Heh

“You have to understand, she wasn't beautiful or anything, not like these great ladies that you see riding past or those Sorceresses that the Holy Flame insisted on scarring before they threw them into the fire but she had this kind of...light in her eyes. Her entire face lit up whenever she smiled and it was like the sun came out from behind a cloud.”

The poor man sobbed.

“She went missing one day. Just went missing. Her mother had died some time before that and her father was always away on the ships. Her uncle was a drunk and her aunt spent all her time working to pay for them all to survive so Ellie had to make do. Most of the older folk decided that she had simply run away. Joined one of the groups of travelling players or nuns or something to get away from it all. Maybe even a mercenary company or something in her general effort to get away but we who knew her best said that she would never do that. She had a sister to look after see? She would never leave her sister. That's one of the things I liked about her otherwise she could have gone off and got work as a maid out at one of the estates or even in one of the whorehouses in Novigrad I imagine, not that she ever seemed to go for that kind of thing.

“We searched the entire island. We couldn't get off our little stretch of land because the guards would stop us so we thought that she would have the same problem. She wasn't that great a swimmer so she wouldn't have tried for the water. The Dock-workers claimed that she couldn't have stolen aboard any of the ships that had stopped at the docks so she had to be somewhere on our little patch of land.

“It was maddening. We would rush through our chores before running off to join the search parties. It was almost a game.

“But then we found her and it was no longer as funny.

“It wasn't me. I was away doing something else but the little lad who did find her was about eight and he killed himself shortly afterwards. He drowned, jumping in the river when it was flowing too quickly for anyone to help him.

“She had been mutilated. Horribly. Torn in places and there were other parts of her... missing. The only reason that anyone recognised her was because there was no-one else like her with that hair of hers.”

The man sobbed again.

“The guards came and got her. Another guard came, asked a bunch of questions. The Holy Flame came to take away her body and then we were told to forget about her.

“Nothing ever came of it. No-one was ever caught. We used to fantasise about what we would do if we ever found out who had done it. What we would do to them. How we would punish them but we never found out what had happened. Never....Never found out what happened”

Silence fell for a long time. But the man wasn't done yet.

“I can't think they tried very hard though. Girl like Ellie doesn't get much notice when she dies. Not like some of those grand high mucky-mucks who go up to the university in it's day. Bet if one of their daughters died then the killer would be found.

“If you find them Witcher. If you find them or find out what happened to them if justice has already found them then you come back and you tell me. You hear? You tell me and I'll reward you. I promise. You come back. I promised myself that if I ever found out I would shit on his grave.”

Kerrass nodded and spent a bit of time soothing the man. I didn't want to hear that part and I went to stand outside where I leant against a nearby fence and stared at the stars. In the distance I could hear the river lapping at the shore and the stone of the bridge where it crossed over and into the city and I felt very small there. A small, lonely and very angry man berating the world for not being a fair place where murderers were brought to justice and good, innocent young girls could live their lives free of any harm or threat.

Eventually Kerrass joined me. It was only a short journey from there into town and I found that I wanted to take the time so we walked the houses.

Those people that have been to the university will be able to tell you that there is a strange kind of energy that comes with being in your student city wherever it might be. For many of us it was the place where we grew up, our first time away from home properly and experienced the heady tonic that is being an “adult” for the first time. It was in Oxenfurt that I lost my virginity shortly after I first arrived. It is an action that I now regret as I lost it with undue haste and rushed the entire experience rather than taking the time to properly do the moment justice. I am told that I am not alone in that sentiment. I got properly drunk for the first time, that state that is only achieved after being drunk, where you get to being drunk, AND THEN GO FURTHER.

Where you wake up and thank the Gods that you are in your own bed, or when you wake up somewhere else and wonder how you got there. When you wake up next to someone else and there's that awful moment of... Did we....you know?...Do the...thing? When you all get together the following day still massively nauseatingly head-achingly hungover and you can only communicate through grunting and yet still understand each other?

I got into a proper fight for the first time (I lost). I gambled for the first time. I sampled foods and drinks, discussed religion and politics, history and arts that I had never experienced or even dreamed of. Then I debated them as if I even vaguely knew what I was talking about.

Oxenfurt is a wonderful place, especially if you have lived there for any period of time but you have to be careful. Sometimes it will chew you up and spit you out.

There is an energy about the place, a strange level of existence. Oxenfurt almost exists on a separate plane of reality.

But then you leave it.

I left to go and find a Witcher to travel around with him for a while and make some notes that I, somewhat naively, hoped that I would be able to publish to get my Professorship or even to be able to publish a book. I recently had cause to look back at the earlier chapters of these chronicles and I wince at the naïve nature of the person that I was with my intellectual and cultural biases. It was like the real world hit me with a frying pan saying “This is what it's really like out here.” Then when I went back to Oxenfurt last winter I spent my time wandering round looking at old friends and professors thinking to myself “How naïve must I have been to look up to these people?” because Oxenfurt had seduced me again into thinking that I was superior to all of these people. These people that have never been out there and looked, really looked at what was going on and how events really were shaping up in the world.

I found that I didn't want to go back to that, I wanted to stay here in the quiet and the dark for just a moment longer.

Kerrass didn't react when he saw that I was leading my horse. Instead he just joined me and we walked alongside each other. The bridge is still guarded after the war by more than just a simple pair of guardsmen that couldn't hold off a group of starving beggars. They knew me though as I had spent some time getting to know the guards last winter and they waved as we went by. A couple offered their condolences.

“Are you alright?” Kerrass said as the walls got closer.

I blew out a breath.

“No, no not by a long shot.”