A Little Sacrifice 5

V

‘You rise early, Essi.’

The poet smiled, holding down her hair, which was being blown around by the wind. She stepped gingerly onto the jetty, avoiding the holes and rotten planks.

‘I couldn’t miss the chance of watching the Witcher at work. Will you think me nosey again, Geralt? Why, I don’t deny it, I really am nosey. How goes it?’ ‘How goes what?’

‘Oh, Geralt,’ she said. ‘You underestimate my curiosity, and my talent for gathering and interpreting information. I know everything about the case of the pearl divers, I know the details of your agreement with Agloval. I know you’re looking for a sailor willing to sail there, towards the Dragons Fangs. Did you find one?’ He looked at her searchingly for a moment, and then suddenly decided.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘I didn’t. Not one.’

‘Are they afraid?’

‘Yes, they are.’

‘How, then, do you intend to carry out an exploration if you can’t go to sea? How, without sailing, do you plan to get at the monster that killed the pearl divers?’ He took her by the hand and led her from the jetty. They walked slowly along the edge of the sea, across the pebbly beach, beside the launches pulled up on the shore, among the rows of nets hung up on stilts, among the curtains of split, drying fish being blown by the wind. Geralt unexpectedly found that the poet’s company did not bother him at all, that it was not wearisome or intrusive. Apart from that, he hoped that a calm and matter-of-fact conversation would erase the results of that stupid kiss on the terrace. The fact that Essi had come to the jetty filled him with the hope that she did not bear him a grudge. He was content.

‘“Get at the monster”,’ he muttered, repeating her words. ‘If only I knew how. I know very little about sea monsters.’ ‘Interesting. From what I know, there are many more monsters in the sea than there are on land, both in terms of number and variety of species. It would seem, thus, that the sea ought to be a great opportunity for witchers to show what they can do.’ ‘Well, it isn’t.’

‘Why?’

‘The expansion of people onto the sea,’ he said, clearing his throat and turning his face away, ‘hasn’t lasted very long. Witchers were needed long ago, on the land, during the first phase of colonisation. We aren’t cut out to fight sea-dwelling creatures, although you are right, the sea is full of all sorts of aggressive filth. But our witcher abilities are insufficient against sea monsters. Those creatures are either too big for us, or are too well armoured, or are too sure in their element. Or all three.’ ‘And the monster that killed the pearl divers? You have no idea what it was?’ ‘A kraken, perhaps?’

‘No. A kraken would have wrecked the boat, but it was intact. And, as they said, totally full of blood,’ Little Eye swallowed and visibly paled. ‘Don’t think I’m being a know-all. I grew up by the sea, and I’ve seen a few things.’ ‘In that case what could it have been? A giant squid? It might have dragged those people from the deck…’ ‘There wouldn’t have been any blood. It wasn’t a squid, Geralt, or a killer whale, or a dracoturtle, because whatever it was didn’t destroy or capsize the boat. Whatever it was went on board and carried out the slaughter there. Perhaps you’re making a mistake looking for it in the sea?’ The Witcher pondered.

‘I’m beginning to admire you, Essi,’ he said. The poet blushed. ‘You’re right. It may have attacked from the air. It may have been an ornithodracon, a gryphon, a wyvern, a flying drake or a forktail. Possibly even a roc—’ ‘Excuse me,’ Essi said, ‘Look who’s coming.’

Agloval was approaching along the shore, alone, his clothes sopping wet. He was visibly angry, and flushed with rage on seeing them.

Essi curtseyed slightly, Geralt bent his head, pressing his fist to his chest. Agloval spat.

‘I sat on the rocks for three hours, almost from daybreak,’ he snarled. ‘She didn’t even make an appearance. Three hours, like an ass, on rocks swept by the waves.’ ‘I’m sorry…’ the Witcher muttered.

‘You’re sorry?’ the duke exploded. ‘Sorry? It’s your fault. You fouled everything up. You spoiled everything.’ ‘What did I spoil? I was only working as an interpreter—’

‘To hell with work like that,’ Agloval interrupted angrily, showing off his profile. His profile was indeed kingly, worthy of being struck on coinage. ‘Verily, it would have been better not to hire you. It sounds paradoxical, but while we didn’t have an interpreter we understood each other better, Sh’eenaz and I, if you know what I mean. But now–do you know what they’re saying in town? Rumours are spreading that the pearl divers perished because I enraged the mermaid. That it’s her revenge.’ ‘Nonsense,’ the Witcher commented coldly.

‘How am I to know that it’s nonsense?’ the duke growled. ‘How do I know you didn’t tell her something? Do I really know what she’s capable of? What monsters she chums around with down in the depths? By all means prove to me that it’s nonsense. Bring me the head of the beast that killed the pearl divers. Get to work, instead of flirting on the beach—’ ‘To work?’ Geralt reacted angrily. ‘How? Am I to go out to sea straddling a barrel? Your Zelest threatened the sailors with torture and the noose, but in spite of that no one wants to sail out with me. Zelest himself isn’t too keen either. So how—?’ ‘What does it bother me how?’ Agloval yelled, interrupting. ‘That’s your problem! What are witchers for if not so that decent folk don’t have to wrack their brains about how to rid themselves of monsters? I’ve hired you to do the job and I demand you carry it out. If not, get out of here before I drive you to the borders of my realm with my whip!’ ‘Calm down, Your Grace,’ Little Eye said softly, but her paleness and trembling hands betrayed her irritation. ‘And please don’t threaten Geralt. It so happens that Dandelion and I have several friends. King Ethain of Cidaris, to mention but one, likes us and our ballads very much. King Ethain is an enlightened monarch and always says that our ballads aren’t just lively music and rhymes, but a way of spreading news, that they are a chronicle of humankind. Do you wish, Your Grace, to be written into the chronicle of humankind? I can have it arranged.’ Agloval looked at her for a while with a cold, contemptuous gaze.

‘The pearl divers who died had wives and children,’ he finally said, much more quietly and calmly. ‘When hunger afflicts the remaining ones they will put to sea again. Pearl, sponge and oyster divers, lobster fishers, fishermen; all of them. Now they are afraid, but hunger will overcome their fear. They will go to sea. But will they return? What do you say to that, Geralt? Miss Daven? I’d be interested to hear the ballad which will sing of that. A ballad about a witcher standing idly on the shore looking at the blood-spattered decks of boats and weeping children.’ Essi blanched even more, but raised her head proudly, blew away the lock of hair and was just preparing a riposte, when Geralt seized her hand and squeezed it, stopping her words.

‘That is enough,’ he said. ‘In this entire flood of words only one has true significance. You hired me, Agloval. I accepted the task and shall accomplish it, if it is feasible.’ ‘I’m relying on it,’ the duke said curtly. ‘Then goodbye. My respects, Miss Daven.’ Essi did not curtsey, she only tilted her head. Agloval hauled up his wet trousers and headed off towards the harbour, walking unsteadily over the pebbles. Only then did Geralt notice he was still holding the poet’s hand, but she was not trying to free herself at all. He released her hand. Essi, slowly returning to her normal colours, turned her face towards his.

‘It’s easy to make you take a risk,’ she said. ‘All it takes is a few words about women and children. And so much is said about how unfeeling you witchers are. Geralt, Agloval doesn’t give a hoot about women, children or the elderly. He wants the pearl fishing to begin again because he’s losing money every day they don’t come back with a catch. He’s taking you for a ride with those starving children, and you’re ready to risk your life—’ ‘Essi,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m a witcher. It’s my trade to risk my life. Children have nothing to do with it.’ ‘You can’t fool me.’

‘Why the assumption that I mean to?’

‘Perhaps because if you were the heartless professional you pretend to be, you would have tried to push up the price. But you didn’t say a word about your fee. Oh, never mind, enough of all that. Are we going back?’ ‘Let’s walk on a little.’

‘Gladly. Geralt?’

‘Yes.’

‘I told you I grew up by the sea. I know how to steer a boat and—’ ‘Put that out of your head.’

‘Why?’

‘Put that out of your head,’ he repeated sharply.

‘You might,’ she said, ‘have phrased that more politely.’

‘I might have. But you would have taken it as… the Devil only knows what. And I am an unfeeling witcher and heartless professional. I risk my life. Not other people’s.’ Essi fell silent. He saw her purse her lips and toss her head. A gust of wind ruffled her hair again, and her face was covered for a moment by a confusion of golden curls.

‘I only wanted to help you,’ she said.

‘I know. Thank you.’

‘Geralt?’

‘Yes.’

‘What if there is something behind the rumours Agloval was talking about? You know well that mermaids aren’t always friendly. There have been cases—’ ‘I don’t believe them.’

‘Sea witches,’ Little Eye continued, pensively. ‘Nereids, mermen, sea nymphs. Who knows what they’re capable of. And Sh’eenaz… she had reason—’ ‘I don’t believe it,’ he interrupted. ‘You don’t believe or you don’t want to believe?’ He did not reply.

‘And you want to appear the cold professional?’ she asked with a strange smile. ‘Someone who thinks with his sword hilt? If you want, I’ll tell you what you really are.’ ‘I know what I really am.’

‘You’re sensitive,’ she said softly. ‘Deep in your angst-filled soul. Your stony face and cold voice don’t deceive me. You are sensitive, and your sensitivity makes you fear that whatever you are going to face with sword in hand may have its own arguments, may have the moral advantage over you…’ ‘No, Essi,’ he said slowly. ‘Don’t try to make me the subject of a moving ballad, a ballad about a witcher with inner conflicts. Perhaps I’d like it to be the case, but it isn’t. My moral dilemmas are resolved for me by my code and education. By my training.’ ‘Don’t talk like that,’ she said in annoyance. ‘I don’t understand why you try to—’ ‘Essi,’ he interrupted her again. ‘I don’t want you to pick up false notions about me. I’m not a knight errant.’ ‘You aren’t a cold and unthinking killer either.’

‘No,’ he agreed calmly. ‘I’m not, although there are some who think differently. For it isn’t my sensitivity and personal qualities that place me higher, but the vain and arrogant pride of a professional convinced of his value. A specialist, in whom it was instilled that the code of his profession and cold routine is more legitimate than emotion, that they protect him against making a mistake, which could be made should he become entangled in the dilemmas of Good and Evil, of Order and Chaos. No, Essi. It’s not I that am sensitive, but you. After all, your profession demands that, doesn’t it? It’s you who became alarmed by the thought that an apparently pleasant mermaid attacked the pearl divers in an act of desperate revenge after being insulted. You immediately look for an excuse for the mermaid, extenuating circumstances; you balk at the thought that a witcher, hired by the duke, will murder an exquisite mermaid just because she dared to yield to emotion. But the Witcher, Essi, is free of such dilemmas. And of emotion. Even if it turns out that it was the mermaid, the Witcher won’t kill the mermaid, because the code forbids him. The code solves the dilemma for the Witcher.’ Little Eye looked at him, abruptly lifting up her head.

‘All dilemmas?’ she asked quickly.

She knows about Yennefer, he thought. She knows. Dandelion, you bloody gossip… They looked at one another.

What is concealed in your deep blue eyes, Essi? Curiosity? Fascination with otherness? What are the dark sides of your talent, Little Eye?

‘I apologise,’ she said. ‘The question was foolish. And naive. It hinted that I believed what you were saying. Let’s go back. That wind chills to the marrow. Look how rough the sea is.’ ‘It is. Do you know what’s fascinating, Essi?’

‘What?’

‘I was certain the rock where Agloval met his mermaid was nearer the shore and bigger. And now it’s not visible.’ ‘It’s the tide,’ Essi said shortly. ‘The water will soon reach all the way to the cliff.’ ‘All that way?’

‘Yes. The water rises and falls here considerably, well over ten cubits, because here in the strait and the mouth of the river there are so-called tidal echoes, as the sailors call them.’ Geralt looked towards the headland, at the Dragons Fangs, biting into a roaring, foaming breaker.

‘Essi,’ he asked. ‘And when the tide starts going out?’

‘What?’

‘How far back does the sea go?’

‘But what…? Ah, I get it. Yes, you’re right. It goes back to the line of the shelf.’ ‘The line of the what?’

‘Well, it’s like a shelf–flat shallows–forming the seabed, which ends with a lip at the edge of the deep waters.’ ‘And the Dragons Fangs…’

‘Are right on that lip.’

‘And they are reachable by wading? How long would I have?’

‘I don’t know,’ Little Eye frowned. ‘You’d have to ask the locals. But I don’t think it would be a good idea. Look, there are rocks between the land and the Fangs, the entire shore is scored with bays and fjords. When the tide starts going out, gorges and basins full of water are formed there. I don’t know if—’ From the direction of the sea and the barely visible rocks came a splash. And a loud, melodic cry.

‘White Hair!’ the mermaid called, gracefully leaping over the crest of a wave, threshing the water with short, elegant strokes of her tail.

‘Sh’eenaz!’ he called back, waving a hand.

The mermaid swam over to the rocks, stood erect in the foaming, green water and used both hands to fling back her hair, at the same time revealing her torso with all its charms. Geralt glanced at Essi. The girl blushed slightly and with an expression of regret and embarrassment on her face looked for a moment at her own charms, which barely protruded beneath her dress.

‘Where is my man?’ Sh’eenaz sang, swimming closer. ‘He was meant to have come.’ ‘He did. He waited for three hours and then left.’

‘He left?’ the mermaid said in a high trill of astonishment. ‘He didn’t wait? He could not endure three meagre hours? Just as I thought. Not a scrap of sacrifice! Not a scrap! Despicable, despicable, despicable! And what are you doing here, White Hair? Did you come here for a walk with your beloved? You’d make a pretty couple, were you not marred by your legs.’ ‘She is not my beloved. We barely know each other.’

‘Yes?’ Sh’eenaz said in astonishment. ‘Pity. You suit each other, you look lovely together. Who is it?’ ‘I’m Essi Daven, poet,’ Little Eye sang with an accent and melody beside which the Witcher’s voice sounded like the cawing of a crow. ‘Nice to meet you, Sh’eenaz.’ The mermaid slapped her hands on the water and laughed brightly.

‘How gorgeous!’ she cried. ‘You know our tongue! Upon my word, you astonish me, you humans. Verily, not nearly as much divides us as people say.’ The Witcher was no less astonished than the mermaid, although he might have guessed that the educated and well-read Essi would know the Elder Speech better than him. It was the language of the elves, a euphonious version of which was used by mermaids, sea witches and nereids. It also ought to have been clear to him that the melodiousness and complicated intonation pattern of the mermaids’ speech, which for him was a handicap, made it easier for Little Eye.

‘Sh’eenaz!’ he called. ‘A few things divide us, nevertheless, and what occasionally divides us is spilled blood! Who… who killed the pearl divers, over there, by the two rocks? Tell me!’ The mermaid dived down, churning the water. A moment later she spurted back out onto the surface again, and her pretty little face was contracted and drawn into an ugly grimace.

‘Don’t you dare!’ she screamed, piercingly shrilly. ‘Don’t you dare go near the steps! It is not for you! Don’t fall foul of them! It is not for you!’ ‘What? What isn’t for us?’

‘Not for you!’ Sh’eenaz yelled, falling onto her back on the waves. Splashes of water shot high up. For just a moment longer they saw her forked, finned tail flapping over the waves. Then she vanished under the water.

Little Eye tidied her hair, which had been ruffled by the wind. She stood motionless with her head bowed.

‘I didn’t know,’ Geralt said, clearing his throat, ‘that you knew the Elder Speech so well, Essi.’ ‘You couldn’t have known,’ she said with a distinct bitterness in her voice. ‘After all… after all, you barely know me.’