A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

“Did you ever tell ghost stories when you were younger?” Kerrass asked me as he built up the fire.

I still felt the cold keenly and although it was reminding me that it was good to feel alive and that I was feeling better than I had in a long time, I think we both felt the need for some light and heat that night.

I sat there, wrapped in my cloak and my blankets, my spear near to hand after some gentle evening practice to get myself back into the swing of things after my month of illness after the village of Amber's crossing. My muscles were sore and ached rather more than I was entirely comfortable with but it felt good. In the meantime it was cold out, but I was warm. Good hot food filled my belly and a pleasant glow filled me from the small amount of apple brandy that Kerrass had allowed me to drink.

Finally I felt strong enough to hear the stories. I was not up to my full strength yet but I was getting better with every passing day. But now it was time. I had to know. It was like an itch, directly between my shoulder blades, just out of reach of either hand and it was driving me mad.

We were sat together, sharing the camp fire, feet stretched out towards the flames and letting the warmth wash over us. It was quiet as well. Peaceful rather than intimidating.

The Witcher knew it too.

“Are you sure?” he asked without prompting and he had stared into the flames for a long time before asking that question.

“Did I ever tell ghost stories?” I repeated him. “Of course I did. We were young at some point. My big sister used to entertain herself by telling my brother and I the scariest tales possible, to see how long she could make us stay up at night in fear. Then when I had a little sister I used to pass on the joys of tormenting younger siblings myself. So yes, I've told ghost stories. I have to admit though that they were much more interesting than the true stories which I've found more tragic and sad rather than scary.”

The Witcher nodded. He had a long stick in his hand that he was using to stir the fire. I had a sense that he was also relaxing as we slowly left the ghost of Amber's crossing behind us.

“Witchers tell ghost stories as well.” He said, staring at me from across the fire, the fire-light dancing in his eyes. “Mostly we do it to torment Novices,”

We both snickered a little.

“What I remember most though,” he went on, “was that when I was a novice myself we would stay up to tell each other stories. Made up stories about the things that we would see, the things that we would do. The idea was that we would always set out to scare the other novices so that they would be the person that seemed the most tired in the morning rather than ourselves.”

His mouth twitched in memory

“It never worked though. We would always wake up after a night like that, pale as death and absolutely exhausted.”

It was always interesting to watch the Witcher stir up old memories.

I guess it was a side effect of having so many.

“The master of novices was an old Witcher called Nayhan. I never found out how old he was but he was old back then. He was one of those old men that even though you knew he was ancient, he still seemed as though he was going to live forever. He had faced every monster multiple times, back from a time when civilisation was much more confined and the wild was much wilder so he had this air of a scarred old tom-cat who had seen it all, done it all and had somehow made it back. He was feeling tired and the masters of the school thought that it would be a good idea for him to try and pass on some of the wisdom that he had learned during his many years on the path to us novices.”

No this time there was definitely a smirk.

“We hated him. He was a nightmare of an old man. Awake and fully groomed, his armour shining, his face shaved and fastidiously clean. Always awake, fresh and with his mind going. We would try and play pranks on him all the time but not a single one of those pranks ever seemed to strike home. He would always, always catch us out and administer a punishment that was as harsh as he liked.

“In the end, as we got a bit older we figured out that the punishment was proportional to the amount of effort he thought we had gone to to play the prank. The better prepared the prank, the more impressive the prank, the less the punishment. But if the prank was lazy he would give us a right thrashing.

“Discovering that he had a sense of humour was a remarkable thing. An insight into an old man that had terrified me for years whose every blow, every sharp retort or order to “do it again,” was an effort to keep us all alive when it became our turns to take the trials and go on the path.”

I smiled as I thought of some of my own tutors. Especially of my own horse-riding tutor who had bullied me back onto the horse the first time I fell off.

“In the end,” Kerrass went on, “I think that that old man is the reason that I'm still alive today and I miss him now that he's gone but that's not important to this story.”

Kerrass shifted his weight a little.

“One night he caught us. Sat in a circle in the novice's cave, all gathered round the fire-bowl that gave out it's heat as we competed in tales designed to scare each other silly.

I remember that he came in so quietly that we didn't see him or hear him until he stepped into the firelight, making us all yelp in terror and anticipated punishment.

“'What you all doin' instead of sleepin' as you ought ta be?' he asked casually. I now think he was more amused than angry but I was terrified at the time.

“He stared at us one by one, his big bushy eye-brows bristling with displeasure until one of the younger ones managed to squeak out that we had been telling ghost stories.”

“'Ghost stories?' he exclaimed 'Ghost stories. I'll give you ghost stories'. He sat amongst us, pushing into the circle and shuffling until he had made himself room. He took out a long clay pipe and started filling it from a pouch.

“'In a few years time some of you will be walking the path and you won't need to tell each other ghost stories to scare yourselves to sleep. You can just tell each other of your adventures and then you'll be so bleedin' terrified that you won't know where to put yourself.'

“I remember him cackling around his pipe.

“'Listen close boys and I'll spin you a tale, the likes of which you'll never hear from anyone who hasn't been on the road as long as I have. A tale that still scares the Shite out of me after all this time as the thought that he still spends his nights watching me and following my progress'

“'I'm going to tell you the story of Jack' he said.”

-

I don't remember much of my time immediately after our confrontation with “The Creature of Amber's woods which is what it's now called in the local area. But I vividly remember the moments after I had been returned to my body.

Kerrass had made his way over to me to check that I was alive and that I was indeed in my own body. Then it was his turn to collapse in exhaustion while I keened my grief and pain into the night sky. I honestly think that we would have stayed there for days which would undoubtedly have meant that, unclothed as I was, that I would have frozen to death in the cold, early winter air.

But there was a young child present and children, as a rule, are difficult to ignore.

I remember that he tugged at Kerrass and asked in a quavering voice where Mr Snugglepants had gone.

Kerrass tells me that I started to laugh at the question which was when he realised how serious my injuries were.

Not of the body you understand but my mind had nearly given the entire thing up as a bad job and was trying to retreat into a dark hole from which it had no intention of returning.

From my end I was drifting in and out of consciousness so I have little memory of any of this.

He took one of the torches from his pack and drove it into the ground so that the flammable part stood upright. Then he twisted his fingers in the sign that he called “Igni,” to light it. He covered me with his coat before picking the boy up and slinging him over his shoulder and running back to the village where he almost dropped the boy into the astonished arms of his parents.

Please bear with me if my recounting of events seems a little dry but this information comes to me second hand.

He drank a potion for energy, demanded that the innkeepers wife start heating water for a bath, lots of water, no more than that before he grabbed my cloak and some sheets from a nearby washing line.

He made it back to me then, used the rags to clean the worst of the muck and filth off me, wrapped me up in the blankets with my cloak over the top and picked me up to carry me back to the village where I was dumped into a bath full of hot water.

Apparently I fought him tooth and nail.

Apparently I also grabbed a knife and tried to cut myself with it, but the Witcher was fast enough to take it from my hands.

I was scrubbed clean with several changes of water required before the Witcher was satisfied, my skin pink with the scrubbing, blood having been drawn in more than one place.

I was then bundled back up into a clean set of blankets and laid down on a rug next to the open fire.

The memories of that day and the next run into each with the nightmares of my imprisonment at the hands of the creature for me. I had managed to impart to Kerrass that although mere minutes had passed in the real world, whole years seemed to have passed in mine.

The inn was shut for that day as the innkeeper and his wife cared for me, feeding me soup and keeping me from harming myself. I slept until I dreamt, at which point, I would wake screaming at the nightmares that tore at my vision.

In the meantime the tireless Witcher had taught the parents of the boy some signs to watch for in case the boy was sick or otherwise damaged by his time spent with the Creature. Then he had lead a team of woodsmen into the trees where they found a massive bone yard where the remains of the Creature's victims had been sorted into piles. A pile of rib-cages, another of leg bones but the worst was the skulls, perfectly preserved and obviously cleaned and regularly handled by loving hands. A great bonfire was built in the middle of the village, a huge thing with flames and smoke high enough to reach the sky while a constant stream of men with sacks of bones, fed the fire. Oil and wood was fed to the flames, trees were cut down around that place and chopped up to feed the flames which burnt for days and nights at a time.

Eventually though it had become clear that I was not recovering. The Innkeeper and his wife managed to get me dressed. Apparently I would swallow when food was put before me and my urge to end my life had been reduced. I could also take care of my own visits to the outhouse providing I was escorted there and escorted back but in all other ways I was still not myself.

The Witcher made our farewells, collected our rewards and tied me to my horse as he had no faith that I would not pitch over the side onto the roadside.

The first thing he tried was a village Witch although he tells me that it took some time to find one who was willing to help me. In the end he found one on the edge of some village that I can't remember. A Witch who preferred the privacy to being woken up at all hours with whatever problems the local village had produced that day. She took us in for a couple of days where she treated me for exhaustion and the nightmares. My guess is that she had a little bit of magic in her somewhere although I doubt that she knew that that was what it was. She tried to read my dreams and retreated from them with a scream of her own while Kerrass gathered her some herbs and other ingredients that she had wanted.

She mixed Kerrass a potion that he was instructed to pour down my throat if I went more than a couple of days without any proper kind of sleep. It was supposed to prevent dreaming sleep and take me straight to the deep resting sleep that my body required.

I have no idea who that witch was or where she lived. If I push myself I can remember a smell of sage and the face of a harried looking woman in her late fifties with shortish hair.

The Witcher conferred with her as to what he should do next and she told him that my body was as fine as it was going to get, but that now he needed to concentrate on my mind and soul.

Kerrass thought for a while and went in search of a priest.

Apparently he didn't find what he was looking for until his sixth attempt by which time I was slipping backwards again, the herbs having less and less benefit towards my well-being and were running the danger of giving me an addiction to the mixture as well as all the other problems that we were dealing with.

Let me just put forward my position on the Church of the Holy Flame again. The Church has done a lot of good. Especially in it's early days when it seemed to start as an effort to keep the poorer people warm on cold nights. I've seen good men and women tending a fire that was being used as a kind of Lantern to bring in wandering refugees in an effort to get them some food and a bit of medical care where they don't need to be worried about bandits or “random inspections for contraband” from regular troops.

But I've also seen men in robes openly fondling themselves as young and pretty men and women are tied to the stake and kindling set about their feet.

Those priests that Kerrass found first fall into the second category. There had been three wars in living memory and finally the northern Kingdoms had lost to the bright sun of the Empire of Nilfgaard. There were fewer people to work the fields and as such there was now a famine as well as a disease from all the un-buried bodies. Yes we were far south from the front lines now but the war's impact was still being felt. In this case it came in the form of men who, for whatever reasons, thought that vitriol and filth could be seen as holiness.

In that time on the road I once saw a priest with red robes and no symbol of office striding down the road followed by a train of starving women and their children. As it turns out the man was basically running a brothel, rewarding converts and offerings of food and wine with an hour with the donators choice of woman. It had made me almost physically ill.

If I had been conscious and rational I would have been able to help Kerrass find what he was looking for but Kerrass who had no clue as to how to deal with Priests of the Holy Flame other than when they are clients, just approached those men who were preaching.

Two of the men just hurled mud and dung at him, calling him mutant and deviant as he approached.

He found a town with a more formal church and a slightly better provided for priest who, because he had access to better supplies, had chased the Witcher off with rotten eggs and tomatoes.

One man had listened to the problem carefully before earnestly suggesting that I was a lost soul already, tainted by the evil that I had come into contact with and that I should be burnt at the stake as soon as possible in an effort to save what remained of my soul before the rot finally took over.

The last man was actually the worst.

He had listened, sympathised and been solicitous and kind to our hurts. He had taken me off the Witchers hands promising to heal my soul. The Witcher had collapsed onto a pile of straw in the next room and was drifting off to an exhausted sleep when he heard the crack of a whip.

The priest had me tied to a post, stripped to the waist and was lashing me with a flail.

Fortunately for me and, I suspect, the priest, he wasn't very strong and as such it looks like I won't carry the scars of a flogging although Kerrass won't tell me what he did to the man. But there is a glint in his eyes whenever we talk about it which suggests it was something humorous rather than deadly.

But just as he was about to give up and enquire at one of the old shrines to Veyopatis, or to see if there was a priestess of Melitele around that would help, he managed to find Father Jerome.

Father Jerome was a cheerfully angry man who both resented and enjoyed his lot in life. It was curious the way he dealt with people, haranguing them with terms of religious ire calling them things like “harlot” or “Blasphemer,” or “Sinner” as quickly as others would call them friend or brother. But the way he did it lacked any kind of venom or hate. It was just the way he talked.

Once when we were sitting outside his small shrine and he was having a smoke as we talked, a painfully thin elven woman came by. She saw him before he saw her and I saw her shrink from him.

Sure enough a torrent of abuse escaped his lips calling her a scarlet and ungodly whore before The holy flame and Man and how dare she show her face here before the burning pyres of the God.

The woman looked confused as his tone of voice was as though he was telling a joke. He had rushed over to her, taken the plainly exhausted woman by the hand and gently lead her and her toddler towards one of the waiting blankets and showed her where the food, water and clean linens were kept. All the while keeping up a constant stream of blasphemy and condemnation. He even picked up the small elven child that I hadn't seen hanging off the woman's skirts and made the child giggle while at the same time asking her “Who's a filthy little hell-spawn?”

He was a large man, heavily muscled and had obviously had some kind of military training. He was maybe thirty and his hands and fore-arms were heavily scarred with burn and scorch marks but other than that he looked like a fairly normal countryside priest.

The lie was proven by his cultured accent along with his vast and wide-ranging knowledge of church dogma.

Including the contradictions that lay in that Dogma.

He was also anything but poor as the locals would often bring him food, drink and other offerings. He confided in us that he only really needed a fraction of what he was brought and used the rest of it to care for the poor and hungry.

The Witcher had been with us at the time and although Jerome called him a deviant and unholy freak, the two of them traded insults like the most foul-mouthed of sailors and were fast on their way towards becoming firm friends.

The Witcher asked him whether or not he had any problems with bandits or soldiers commandeering his supplies. For answer, Jerome produced his metal shod staff.

It was obscenely heavy although Jerome could swing it around as though it was nothing.

Jerome took us in and for reasons that he would later explain to us, he set about the business of saving my soul.

Or as he put it. Persuading me that there was nothing wrong with my soul, that I had done the right thing in saving those people (even though I had done it at the behest of a deviant heretical heathen rather than a good and godly man) and that my soul would be accepted into the warmth of the everlasting flame.

Unfortunately I was less convinced.

But Jerome was a stubborn man. Extremely flawed and given to some black rages and self flagellation for his own perceived weaknesses, but at the same time he persevered.

He never once told me that I was being silly, nor did he make light of my ordeal. He would just repeat the same things over and over and over until eventually they began to filter through. Comforting me in the dead of night as I woke up, screaming and sweating after another nightmare. He held vigil with me long into the night and showed me how to keep the fire burning.

With him I helped him care for the refugees and the poor. His compassion was very rough and ready. His sympathy seemed arbitrary but no-one could question his care. He also had a nose for sniffing out those people who were there to take advantage of his generosity and would chase them off giving them a sound thrashing as they went.

Women were always whores and Harlots. Men were always heretics and sinners but it seemed he loved his little flock, such as it was.

I learnt his story as well.

He had been a questioner in Novigrad. By which he meant that he was a torturer and he was really really good at it. He could produce a confession to just about anything from just about anyone and had taken pride in doing his work well.

He had worked tirelessly as well and many men, women and non-humans had gone to the pyres after his searching instruments had found the truths that those people had kept hidden.

Then one day he had been brought another subject who had been tied to his table.

For some reason that day he had stared at the young woman who was being accused of Witch-craft and Sorcery. A crime of which she was clearly guilty, just the glint in her eyes with flawless features and complexion was enough to prove that. He even found that he recognised her from a wanted poster. She was bound, gagged and her fingers were broken so he knew she could cast no spells but suddenly as he stood over her with her pliers in hand he found that he couldn't do it.

He remembered that he had become a priest because he wanted to help people, to spread the light of the fire into dark places and comfort those in need. To convert through example rather than force.

He told me that he had carefully put down his pliers, on the tray with the others, and carefully untied the woman. Without saying a word he had left to find her some clothes and a cloak after which he smuggled her out of the building telling her that he would claim that he was bewitched.

He'd resigned his work which was apparently not uncommon. Good torturers sometimes have breaks and he had been told that the position would be open to him if he ever wanted to return but instead he had taken his 'instruments' to a blacksmith and had them melted down, telling the blacksmith to make small useful things with them, nails, hammerheads and the like.

He had gone to his house, sold his belongings, giving the money to the local hospital and had left with his robes, his chants and his copy of the holy teachings.

He often said that he was happier now than he had ever been in the church.

He had wandered for a while, preaching where he could find a willing audience and moving on where he could not. Eventually he had found this old shrine and the sight had depressed him. He'd built it up, kept the fire burning and wanted nothing more than to spend out his days in contemplation and prayer.

But as is the way with such people, he started to gain notice and followers.

Much to his own disgust.

He was now working with a local Witch to build a kind of field hospital for the sick and the injured.

His knowledge of anatomy and wound treatment (apparently a torturer has to know about healing as well as pain) along with her herb craft made a powerful team despite their almost comical loathing for each other.

Although part of me wonders how much of that loathing was an act and whether or not the two would be having a torrid and passionate affair when the refuge was empty.

I like to think that they were.

They made a fearsome team together.

Gradually under his care I started to come back to myself, gaining strength and fortitude by the day, but I was still badly depressed. I still had nightmares and no joke or story could raise my spirits for long. I would often sink into a black stupor of self-recrimination as I remember all those other lost souls that I had left behind in the creatures store-house.

I still feel that guilt today even though, logically, I know that there was nothing I could do to help them.

In the end Jerome took Kerrass aside and gently informed the Witcher that the priest had done all he could for me, but the remains of the healing was outside his power.

Kerrass had spent the two weeks that I was at the shelter doing some odd jobs for the local village. If you look hard enough, Witcher's would always find work in those days. I suppose it was supply and demand. Too many dead meant that vast tracts of the countryside were becoming wild again. He was never more than two days ride away though and would often stop in to check on my condition.

Kerrass had asked what was left and Jerome had told him that my body had been healed, as had my soul but I had forgotten how to live. How to feel joy and that was something that he, Jerome, couldn't help me with.

They had discussed a few methods with which to do this. I don't know what they said and Kerrass has never told me but apparently Jerome is one of the few people that could make the Witcher chuckle.

We left. I no longer needed to be tied to my horse to prevent me from falling or leaping off and I embraced Jerome as I left.

“Take care,” he whispered as he did so.

I miss that man.

Kerrass took me to a nearby by city called Fealburg. I spent most of that journey in a strange state. The world seemed grey and uninteresting to me. Food lacked taste, conversation was pointless. The prospects of the following day were just drowned in monotony. I tried reading but couldn't keep my concentration. I tried some training but I was so exhausted that I could barely lift my spear and my head wasn't in it anyway.

I did my chores despite Kerrass' insistence that I didn't need to before crawling into my blankets and sleeping the sleep of the exhausted which was spoiled by ongoing nightmares.

Fealburg is fairly near the coast. A little ways north of the place where we had originally intended to take ship to return north. Kerrass seemed familiar to the place and greeted one of the gate guard by name, exchanging a few insults as a matter of course and as a result, the required bribe for entrance was not too high. He led my horse confidently through the streets which is good as I would have been hopelessly lost within seconds only to have been knifed in some back ally.

One day I hope to go back to Fealburg in full possession of my faculties as I was not in a fit state when I got there.

I find that period between leaving Jerome, who I didn't want to leave by the way, and my arrival at “The Floating Blossom,” the most disturbing. There was nothing wrong with me physically. A priest had absolved me of my actions and surely he would know about what needed doing but here I was, still upset. Still having nightmares. I used to think about ending it all on a daily basis. I felt like a burden to Kerrass, trailing the countryside after me and I was so unreasonably tired. Fatigue weighed me down like a weight tied to my feet and lifting them and moving them just required so much effort. I longed to find some hole. A deep, cool dark hole to bury myself in where I could just shut away the world and I could die in peace.

It's so hard to describe now and as I write it down I feel as though, compared with the very real injuries and horrors of war, my problems were petty and small. No matter how many times the Witcher or Jerome or anyone else told me I deserved to feel this way and that I wasn't wrong. It was just a different kind of injury that would take a different kind of healing is all.

I'm struggling to tell you what it felt like.

It was as though the entirety of the world. All of existence, the very act of breathing in and out was full of bright lights and sharp edges. Loud noises and sudden, terrifying events. It hurt. It constantly hurt. I wanted to retreat. I wanted to give up so desperately, it was just that going against Kerrass' wishes seemed like so much extra effort.

So we came to The floating Blossom. I suppose that what that place was was a brothel although Madame Karla would be deeply insulted to hear me say that. She would say that it was a guest house where men and indeed women could come and have their troubles taken away from them. I was deposited in a booth while Kerrass went and told my story to Madame Karla and then it was her turn to take over my care. It would seem that the last step in my recovery would be to teach me how to live again.

It has to be admitted that I did not take it with good grace.

I was paraded before Karla's other ladies. I was told that I was going to be looked after and that should I require anything at all. I was simply to ask.

I took offence and wondered if I was supposed to sleep with them all at once or one at a time.

Showing remarkable insight Karla took me aside and asked me whether or not I would be able to do that thing.

As it turns out my depression had left me impotent.

The ladies took me in hand and I was left with no choice but to hand myself over to their care. They bathed me, clothed me and fed me. It seemed that I became something to all of them. To Karla I was an errant child that needed some looking after. To the others I was sometimes a younger brother, an older brother, a long lost friend, a figure of authority and a potential lover.

I would spend my days in the company of these women and looking back I will never forget their kindnesses and to my dying day I will protect the honour of prostitutes.

They would take me for walks around the city showing me the undeniably splendid sights that were around. We went to see plays, listen to music and watching sporting events. We gambled and laughed. Always I was accompanied, always I was dressed in the finest clothes with a beautiful woman on my arm attentive to my every need.

Gradually I began to relax. I relearned how to let people get close to me, physically and mentally. As I did so they began to let go and give me more freedom. They would talk to me, ask my advice regarding the men in their lives and the women in mine. There was so much laughter and although I can't imagine that their lives were easy, they managed to find the enjoyment in all things.

I am also aware how lucky those women are. I have seen much more brutal bordellos, brothels and whorehouses. Couple that with the universal truth that no girl of any age wakes up one morning and declares to themselves and to their parents that they want to be a prostitute, but I felt that these women were content.

They were clean, well fed and protected from rough clients. They were educated (something else which I found myself helping them with) and had regular visits from doctors.

I used to spend my days quietly sitting in a corner reading a book, chatting with the women and providing them with a safe haven if they wanted a break from entertaining their “clients”. They could fetch a drink and sit and talk with me while we played cards or some other game, conversed and played at flirting.

I was happy for a time and gradually, oh so gradually I learnt that this effect was not a trick. That it wasn't going to go away. I was weak yes, in body and mind. I spent days just being held by people as I sobbed myself to exhaustion. I started to come to terms with the fact that I would probably wear the scars for all my days but the sun would shine, there was still knowledge to be gained and pleasure to be had in good company. Especially the company of beautiful women.

One day as I lay in bed waiting for the sun to come and listening to the beginnings of city business outside I realised that I was not alone. I looked over at the woman next to me. She had always been around in the background and she was unutterably beautiful although we had never really had the chance to talk. Long golden hair and sleepy blue eyes. She smiled at me. Where other women had been hard edges and cruelty, this lady was soft and kind. Her eyes seemed to search my face for something before she moved forwards and kissed me.

That morning as we loved each other, the bright winter sunlight shining through my window and being reflected off that ladies skin as she rose above me is one of the most beautiful images in my memory and I cherish it like a precious jewel that I take out and look at whenever I need to.

I dozed afterwards and she slipped out as I did so.

I got up that day feeling better than I had in weeks. Took care of my personal hygiene, dressed in my new travelling clothes and went downstairs for breakfast.

The Witcher was already there tucking into one of his characteristically huge breakfasts.

I joined him, he raised an eyebrow and I nodded.

“I would not blame you if you wanted to part company,” he said around a mouth full of sausage.

“No,” I said. “I will continue, if you let me.”

Kerrass shrugged. “I'm not sure I deserve a choice in the matter.” he looked up again. “Welcome back.”

I saw him hand a considerable pouch over to Karla afterwards and was momentarily annoyed at the illusion being stripped away but that was dispelled at the many tearful farewells that I then had with just about every woman there including Madame Karla.

The blonde was nowhere to be seen.

That first day was not a long one. At first it was just a joy to be back out on the road. A joy that was compounded by the fact that I was enjoying myself again. My questions were coming back, as was my curiosity.

The first night we stopped early at my request as I had a need to stay outside that night. We built a huge fire and I slept in a way that I hadn't done for weeks.

The following day I did better and that night I finally asked the question that had come back to me now that I was on the mend.

“Who is Jack?” I asked, wrapped in blankets my hands around a pot of Kerrass' tea. “What was that creature?”

Kerrass sighed and poked the fire. “I owe you answers and if you are sure you want them now, I will tell you what I know. Are you ready for them? I don't want to trigger a relapse.”

I thought about it for a long time. He was right of course. That was a danger.

“Sooner or later I will want to know. You say that knowledge is dangerous and if it is, then I would rather be informed by a man who knows where the pitfalls are.”

Kerrass nodded and stared into the fire for a long time.

I didn't push, he was clearly thinking where to start.

“Did you ever tell ghost stories when you were younger?” he asked me.

-

“No-one knows who Jack is.” Nayhan had said. “No-one ever knows. It's not even a hundred percent certain that that is in fact his name. Normally you find him as a portent, a dream. You'll be investigating some kind of horrific case of horrible and gruesome murder at the hands of some monster, apparition or otherwise possessed person. You'll ask around about anything strange going on in the recent past and you'll occasionally find a report that someone had had a dream. Often the victim before they died, or sometimes a close friend, family member or lover who would dream of Jack before or shortly after the person died. Sometimes, as a Witcher you can try and help protect the dreamer, or sometimes you can prevent something terrible or catch the person responsible but always the dream turns out to have been significant in some strange way.

“Dreamers will describe a man. Always well dressed in the latest fashions wearing black, red and occasionally some white splashes across the chest along with a hat of some kind. Whatever the local fashion is at that time. The hat always has a long feather in it. Sometimes the man will have human legs or sometimes he will have legs more resembling that of a goat. Huge and massively powerful. Jack will flee from the dreamer, often leading them on some merry goose chase before vanishing before the dreamers eyes, but always there are a set of burning hoof prints where Jack had last stood in the dream. The dreamer would have time to see them. Know what they were. But then they would wake up, often in a sweat.

“Of course, that's the problem with prophecy. Making sense only in the past tense. 'Oh of course the ghost was trying to tell us that we needed to smear cheese oil over our swords to defeat the demon. Because that was what it was trying to tell us when it was rolling something around on the floor'.

“But in this case, if you look far back enough and have access to enough data you come back with a truism which is that Jack gets about.”

Nayhan paused to tip the ashes out of his pipe and looked us each in the face.

“So,” he went on, “So I had been on the path for around forty years at this point and I was on my way back to the keep to spend the winter there when a messenger summoned me towards Oxenfurt. Nowadays a Witcher has to go looking for work and that situation is only going to get worse but back then people would often have to seek us out. Couple that with the usual problems of having to sort out fact from fiction and those occasional cases where criminals would try to suggest supernatural goings on in an effort to obfuscate rather mundane crimes meaning that we would often get called in to 'consult' on perfectly normal murders or kidnappings.

“In this case it was even less than that. The messenger who summoned me had a message with him set out the basics of the case. The other thing about back then was that the university of Oxenfurt was getting established but to get to the state that they wanted to be in they needed more students. More students equals more fees which in turn means more money for the colleges and so on. The way that was being tried at the time was they were testing out whether or not female students could hack it. It was seen as a way for the nobility to occupy younger daughters who were dissatisfied with their suitors or younger wives who wanted to get away from husbands who were practically their grandparents. On the downsides to all of this, students were invariably nobles who saw study as a man's pass time and were threatened by the potential intelligence of their female counterparts.”

Apparently at this point Nayhan had sniffed loudly and suggested that the younger male students had clearly missed the potential of lots of young, bored and frustrated noble-women all kept in one place. The comments went over the heads of the young Witcher hopefuls.

“So it seems that a Lady Katya was out with her friend, a Lady Theresa. Lady Katya had a fascination with the early works of a philosopher that I (meaning Nayhan) couldn't remember. She had decided to take an evening stroll with her friend Lady Theresa to get some air, a little light exercise and an opportunity to think on the problems that class presented her away from the loud noises of their boarding rooms. As they were walking along the alleys of the still growing city a figure jumped out at the two young women. The figure wore black trousers of expensive cut, shiny black boots, a black doublet with white piping and a black velvet cape with crimson inlay. He had a cap with a feather and carried a cane.

The figure jumped out at the two women covering the majority of it's face with it's cape, struck Lady Theresa around the face with it's cane causing her to become dazed before dragging Lady Katya off into the darkness. Lady Theresa being a fairly sensible lady staggered towards the road and made good use of her lungs in calling for help. Several gallant gentlemen came running at the calls for aid, charged up the ally down which Katya had disappeared. Some distance down in the light of their torches they saw a man answering to that description bent over a bundle in the road. At the sight of the gentlemen the figure ran off, deftly jumping over a wall to make his escape. The rescuers found that the bundle in the road was the dazed figure of Lady Katya who had clearly fainted and whose clothing was torn exposing her to the elements. The gallant gentlemen charged off in pursuit but in the end they were unsuccessful. Largely due to the fact that they were all a little soused.

It was a mark of the times that the optimistically named “Oxenfurt city guard” put this down to a student prank. The same thing happened a week later only “Jack” had managed to “leap” up a wall to make his escape.

Unfortunately once these things start to happen then they have a tendency to continue happening and escalate. It wasn't long before someone's important daughter was raped and exposed by “Jack” before making a miraculous escape. The guard had no suspects and sorcery or monsters were suspected as no one suspect answered every description nor could any one person who could perform such feats, have been at every crime scene. So they sent for me.

Looking back I always remember finding it surprising that the figure was already being called “Jack” before I got there. Scholarship was still a very new occupation amongst humanity and as such the phenomenon known as “Jack” was only known to specialists in the field such as The Witcher's schools, Sorcerers and Wizards and the elves of course but people were already calling him Jack. They called him “Boot-heel Jack” then, because of his habit of taking to his boot-heels and fleeing whenever he was spotted.

I arrived, did all the interviews which was a little difficult because many of the victims had been sent home, or fled home, or demanded to be returned home. I spoke to some of the “gallant rescuers” I invited some of the guards to explain why they hadn't taken the threat particularly seriously in the first place?”

(Frederick:The answer was not suitable for publication and I, for one, am grateful that the quality of the city guard has improved since those days)

“I (Nayhan) scouted the city for a few days and there was absolutely not a twitch of my medallion. As a result it was entertained that there was nothing supernatural about the phenomenon at all and that this was some kind of mortal perpetrator.

“Sometimes a Witcher will find that the perspective of an outsider is useful and they can use that to look at the bigger picture where local officials are too close to the problem to resolve. The guards had been looking for one person or monster that was doing these things but the truth was much simpler, in that there was more than one person doing it.

“Several attempts were made to catch the miscreants, commonly operations including bait but none of them worked until one night, maybe four nights after my arrival. A male student victim was found tied to a public fountain. He had been tied, gagged, beaten with a stick, his penis removed and a huge wooden phallus had been inserted up the man's arse until his internal organs ruptured and he bled to death.

“This time my medallion was jumping all over the place.

“ Soon after that we found another victim, this time in his home. Again he had been tied up, gagged, beaten with a stick only this time he had died of a combination of extreme alcohol poisoning and drowning. He had had so much vodka forced down his throat that it had filled his stomach and overflowed into his lungs. Believe me when I say that it would not have been a good way to go.

“As we were working on finding a connection between the two boys a third was found having bled to death. Again he was bound, gagged and beaten before being hung upside-down off a temple spire with a small cut in his head meaning that it had taken him hours to bleed out.

“We didn't need to wait very long for a connection as a fourth student came to us and confessed.”

Nayhan had sniggered at this point.

“The poor lamb was terrified. He met us in an inn in the middle of Oxenfurt during the middle of the day. His name was Oswin, tall lad, easy on the eye, blonde hair and had all the charm and social grace of a pubic louse. He was one of that particular breed of rich kid that thinks that money, breeding, title and good looks can get him through life and any problem. He honestly expected that we were going to let him off his crimes because of who his father was. Piece by piece we got his story out of him. There were five of them in total. Obscenely rich boys who had found each other at university where they were studying fencing and other things that had sounded like a jape when they first got to Oxenfurt. They had met, decided that shit should clump together and had spent a bunch of time trying to make themselves as obnoxious as possible to just about everyone,”

(Frederick: Witcher Nayhan's story should not really be considered a historical source as his bias against these people, although possibly justified, is considerable.)

“The five of them had decided that they were offended at the presence of the ladies in this establishment of male betterment and had decided to teach certain members of the more uptight sex, their words not mine, a lesson or two. Reading between the lines I was left with the impression that what had actually happened was that these ladies had been the ones who had rebuffed the gentlemen's less than charming advances.

“We demanded to know about the fifth accomplice. We were not kind and shortly the address was given over along with various threats that “father would have words with our superiors”. We left, armed and armoured to find that we were too late. The fourth victim was found in a private fencing salon where he had been bound and gagged before being tortured to death by wounds that one might receive during a fencing match. There were thousands of cuts. Tiny cuts, all missing the major arteries but still cutting deep enough to reach nerve centres and blood vessels. The poor kid was in incredible pain and had died of his wounds before we got there however the body was still warm so we must have just missed the assailant.

“We continued to interrogate our surviving witness who was, by this point extremely terrified with good reason. The five men were determined to play a series of pranks on these women but were unsure what to do until one of their number had found a story about a killer named Jack that had stalked the streets of Vizima in Temeria about twenty years before. The killer had assaulted and murdered several women during his reign of terror before disappearing just as suddenly as the murders had started. The murders were renowned for the acrobatic prowess and the wicked sense of humour of the killer, leading guardsmen on several merry chases along roof-tops with laughter peeling out behind him, scaling impossibly high walls with ease along with easy looking jumps that could clear outhouses. The killer was never caught although a physical description had been given by witnesses.

“The five young men were physically fit and able so they concocted their plan. With elaborate chases planned where they could pretend to be each other. One person would vanish round a corner and another appear on the rooftops, mob chases visible person and first guy would get away. The costume was bought and they started their systematic assaults on those women that had wronged them in some way.

“The little puke was saying “It was only a bit of fun” over and over for so long that I really wanted to slap him. As if raping and torturing women was 'just a bit of fun'

“Pah

“Anyway, it was clear that the boy was going to be arrested, tried and dealt with by the justice system in Oxenfurt at the time and despite my own feelings that we should hand the new killer a medal of some kind it was determined that a skilled killer should be brought to justice. We tried everything to catch him, we set watches, we had patrols out, I used my medallion regularly, we managed to draft a passing mage into helping us. At one point I even dressed myself in the little git's clothes in an effort to draw the killer out but to no avail other than the fact that I spent a lot of time in the baths the day afterwards.

“We found nothing.

“The guard captain eventually talked puke-face into being the bait himself. We had men stationed all along the route that he was going to walk. He was going to be shadowed by myself and the guards best swordsman. The guard captain was at the point where any assault was the most likely to take place. Doctors were on standby in case of injury. The mage was next to a basin of water which apparently meant that he could keep watch over everything.

“It was a tense evening even though I found I didn't really care about the 'fate' of the boy that I was protecting, although I suspected that my wages would suffer if he died or if he was harmed in any way.

“But it was a good night for a hunt. The moon was nearly full but not quite and it was one of those clear winter nights where the stars were out. Freezing cold so we could see each others breath which was less than ideal but again I wasn't worried as I could control mine and I wasn't the quarry.

“But we were wrong. Jack didn't come for the boy in the nice, quiet and secluded ally. He came in the widest square in Oxenfurt.

“We heard his laughter first. Echoing off the buildings. It was loud and it was moving phenomenally fast. My medallion was jerking enough that the chain marked the skin of my neck. The laughter carried on and on. Guardsmen were rushing about, rattling weapons and generally making fools of themselves. The mage appeared through a portal and the guard captain came with his small band of men. All told there were maybe a dozen of us in that square.

“The bait fell into a whimpering heap and pissed himself.

“The laughter increased at every new arrival, the mage, the guards until it sounded like the amused man was in hysterics.

“I will say this for him though. Jack has a well developed sense of drama and likes to arrive in style. There was a building there, slightly larger than any of the others were a pointed roof. A figure emerged there and he stood on the very point of that roof overhanging the square like some kind of gargoyle. He waited until we could all see him before removing his hat and bowing to the assembly before putting the hat back on. I had a sense of a pale face with an immaculate black haircut and goatee. He flourished his cane and drew a ridiculously flimsy looking sword from it and saluted us again. Some of the guards came to their senses and arrows started to fly.

“Jack leapt down.

“It was a three story drop. A Witcher could do it without harm but we would need to roll with the impact. As far as I could tell, Jack simply landed and started to stride forwards.

“Then he vanished.

“But he hadn't gone. He was just moving so fast that he was difficult to see. We took a defensive position around our prey, anything sensible would have fled but Jack didn't. He just moved. I've never seen sword play like it. As I watched three men were cut down, blood exploding from their throats like it would from a geyser, the guards staggering away before collapsing.

Then Jack vanished down a side-street. Laughter following him.

Several of the guards pursued, much to the fury of the guard captain but the chase was on now and not a policeman in the world would have stopped their pursuit of so obviously a guilty man. Soon there were only six of us in the square. Two guardsmen, the bait, the guard captain and the wizard who was muttering to himself and myself.

“Then Jack came back.

“It's a common mistake and I had fallen for it same as anyone else. My medallion was jingling and I was searching the side alleys for signs of movement.

Jack landed behind me. I spun but Jack was there and he blew a white powder into my face and I saw stars. But I was frozen in place and could do nothing but watch.

The guard captain was taken out of the fight when his hand was removed at the wrist. One guardsman went down with a thrust to the leg while the other fled, followed y Jack's laughter and the captains cursing. Jack gestured sharply at the mage who screamed horribly and vanished in a flash of light. Then Jack turned to me and made another sharp gesture which shook me to my core as my medallion suddenly stopped still. I still couldn't see his face but I was sure that he was grinning at me.

Then Jack went for the bait. He was bound and gagged with swift and efficient ease before taking a butchers knife from somewhere in his cloak he pulled the boys trousers down and cut of his genitals. Then he bent down and watched the boys eyes, as close as a lover might, while he bled to death.

The genitals were negligently left covering the boys face.

Jack then turned to me and walked over slowly. His rapier was back in his hand and very slowly, very deliberately he scarred me across the face.”

Nayhan had gestured to a significant facial scar that was vertical from the temple, crossed his right eye and finished at his cheek.

“I roared and freed myself from the enchantment and charged him.”

Nayhan shrugged.

“He didn't just beat me. He was toying with me. I couldn't touch him, he was like smoke and he parried every cut, thrust and trick that I knew. I was even beginning to tire after a while. The witnesses from the houses claim I fought valiantly but all I was really doing was fighting for my life.

“Then the guardsmen that had chased him started to come back. Jack leapt backwards. An impossibly large distance, saluted me again and ran off.

“This time I did give chase. The guard captain, despite being mutilated was back in charge and ordering people about while a medic dealt with the stump of his wrist.

“But I ran. I was already tired but I couldn't leave it there. That boy, no matter what he had done had not deserved that. No-one deserves that. A swift death, certainly but humiliation like that...

“I ran and I chased him. Always he seemed just out of reach, only just out of the range of my sword. We must have run all through the city until we thought we had him cornered. It was at the waters edge. The river between him and the Temerian shore. I was coming from one way and the guard were coming the other. Jack stopped, turned and brandished his sword.

“We had all seen his swordplay then and were rightly scared of it. We advanced cautiously, the guard demanding that he lay down his arms.

“Jack laughed at us, long and loud. He sheathed his sword, bowed to us, turned and gave a little run up before jumping across the river.

“Literally jumping across the river.

“We stopped and stared, he was now out of the guards jurisdiction and would be long gone before I had got to the bridge and convinced someone to open it.

“He turned, waved and vanished into the woods that were much thicker at the time than they are now.

“As I watched the treeline though I noticed something glowing on the floor.

“It was a glowing pair of hoof-prints where Jack had jumped.”

Kerras stopped after finishing the story. He was just staring into the fire, probably at some memory long passed.

“At first I remember thinking that the entire thing was bullshit,” he said after a while. But when I left my school after finishing the last of my trials and being given my shiny new medallion, my shiny new swords and my potion box still had that new box smell. I went to Oxenfurt. It was on my way anyway as there were always contracts to be had in that neck of the woods and I spent an entertaining day down on the docks looking for that pair of hoof-prints and chasing down rumours of that story.

“The story was true as far as I could tell. There were a series of murders within a couple of days where five noble sons were humiliated and killed although there is no mention of the women that had been harassed, raped and murdered beforehand. When I talked about “Jack” I was looked down on by the historian that I was asking and told that such things had been dreamt up by the students at the time who wanted to make a series of simple murders have some kind of meaning and make them more fantastic.

“I kept my peace. I did find the hoof-prints though. They were and, as far as I know, still are on the northern parts of the docks. That area where shallow draft boats can be pulled ashore to be unloaded. There are a series of stone slabs there to prevent erosion. On the end of one, although the marks have been damaged over time with water and wear, you can still see the marks of a pair of hoof-prints. Smaller than a horse but larger than a goat that seem to have been burnt into the stone. As though the hooves had been melted into the bulk.”

“When I came back to the cat's keep that year. It was made known that Nayhan had died while on the path that year, although no-one knew how it had happened. Witnesses claimed to have seen him fighting with a man. A nobleman of some kind.

“I went to the keeper of chronicles. It is, or rather was, a position often held by a Witcher who has been crippled on the path and can no longer walk it. They came back to the keep and would keep the books as a kind of librarian. Ours was killed when our Keep was raised by Redanian troops.

But with his help I found what I was looking for which helped with what that creature was back in Amber's crossing. As to Jack it only gave me more questions.

No-one knows where they come from or why they're here. They are no race that anyone can tell and seem to shift their forms like you or I would change a pair of clothes. We know of several of them.

The most recently famous one is the Master of Mirrors. He goes by many different names and has worn many different faces but he travels the roads and byways of the world seeking amusement. Legend has it that if you call to him at a cross-roads at midnight he will come and grant your wish. He will always demand a price and what he gives you will be close to, but not quite what you were looking for. He is known to have been active towards the North East of Oxenfurt as recently as this time last year but has since vanished.

I believe, although I can't be sure, that what we met is a creature known as “Darkness” because it can hold no other shape for long. It's talent is always rumoured to have been that it can see the darkness inside someone and can bring it out. Our deepest fears, our deepest and darkest desires. The things that we are ashamed of, secrets that we even keep to ourselves. It delights in experiencing these things with it's victims along with the emotions that come with it because, as Darkness, it has no emotions of it's own.”

Insight struck me,

“Which is why your lack of emotion terrified it because it could no longer experience the emotions of those it had captured.”

Kerrass smiled slightly. “Precisely.”

He took a swig from the flask. “It was a risk but it was one I felt was worth it. Again I apologise for what that risk did to you.”

I waved him off.

“There are others, as well,” Kerrass passed the flask over to me, “You might have heard of the horse-man of war. A tall black or white figure who rides before the war-front, sometimes male, sometimes female. Cutting down anyone in it's way with sword and axe. It rides a black horse with red eyes and the rider has no head.

“There is a knight that can sometimes be found. He guards a bridge challenging those who try to cross to a fight. Rumour has it that he has never lost but the people he challenges sometimes survive and sometimes die according to the whim of the knight.

“To the south, in the Black Forest of Nilfgaard which is a huge thing that dwarves even the Brokilon forest even in the north. It is a dark forest where death and decay almost flows from it in a wave. Deep in the depths of it, there is said to be a creature that the locals refer to as “The Schattenmann” which roughly translates as “The man of knives,” or “The man of scissors,” They use him to frighten children saying that if they stay awake or suck their thumbs then The Schattenmann will cut their thumbs off. People who work in or near the Black Forest have a ritual that they do there where they sacrifice things to the Schattenman. People think of it as quaint, but one new village had a fervent priest of the golden sun there and demanded that the peasants put aside their rituals. The village was found later. All the villagers had vanished leaving belongings out and food on the table. The priest however was nailed to his church and was still alive despite many and varied efforts to kill him. In the end the village was abandoned and the forest claimed it back along with the still screaming body of the priest.

“As for Jack. He turns up once every fifty to seventy years if you know what to look for. He will find a city or a castle full of people. He will choose a theme, sometimes virgins, prostitutes, pretenders that try to emulate him, pregnant women, priests. And then he kills them. Humiliating and disfiguring them in various ways. People can only remember the noble outfits and the laughter.

“So who or what are these things?

“We don't know. What we do know are some of the common factors. We know that the same beings, or entities have existed for millennia. The elves know of them all though they know only slightly more than us. The dwarves and the Gnomes have stories of Jack, The Mirror master and the Headless Horseman.

“We all seem to have different names for them.

“They aren't magical but they have more power than any of us can claim to understand.

“The elves theorise that they are emotionless or do not have emotions such as we understand them but that they are curious about us. That we are beyond their understanding and that they have studied us from the shadows since the first gnomes made enough sparks to light fires on this continent. They even believe that they were here before the gnomes came above ground and that they can move between worlds.

“At one point it was thought that they are individual riders of the wild hunt but we since know that this is not true.

“Whatever they are we know one thing. Every single other one of those creatures that we know about interact with people apart from one. Every single one of them trade in souls, stories, favours, jokes, skills and information. They have no sense of morals but they all talk, yes, even the headless one talks. But they all defer to someone. Someone whose orders that they follow, even when they're pursuing their own goals. That is the only thing that connects them, their deference to another party and the only reason we group them together.

“That person they defer to is not a King, not a General or Priest.

“It's not a philosopher or artist.

“As far as we know it's not their parent or creator.

“All we know about him is his name.

“A name that we gave him.

“He is known, throughout the world as simply,

“Jack.”