A Shard Of Ice 3

III

The town was having a bad effect on him.

Since first thing that morning everything was spoiling his mood, making him dejected and angry. Everything. It annoyed him that he had overslept, so the morning had become to all intents and purposes the afternoon. He was irritated by the absence of Yennefer, who had left before he woke up.

She must have been in a hurry, because the paraphernalia she usually neatly put away in boxes was lying on the table, randomly strewn like dice cast by a soothsayer performing a prophecy ritual. Brushes made from delicate horsehair: the large ones used for powdering her face, the smaller ones which she used to apply lipstick to her mouth, and the utterly tiny ones for the henna she used to dye her eyelashes. Pencils and sticks for her eyelids and eyebrows. Delicate silver tweezers and spoons. Small jars and bottles made of porcelain and milky glass, containing, as he knew, elixirs and balms with ingredients as banal as soot, goose grease and carrot juice, and as menacingly mysterious as mandrake, antimony, belladonna, cannabis, dragon’s blood and the concentrated venom of the giant scorpion. And above all of that, all around, in the air, the fragrance of lilac and gooseberry, the scent she always used.

She was present in those objects. She was present in the fragrance.

But she was not there.

He went downstairs, feeling anxiety and anger welling up in him. About everything.

He was annoyed by the cold, congealed scrambled egg he was served for breakfast by the innkeeper, who tore himself away for a moment from groping a girl in the kitchen. He was annoyed that the girl was no more than twelve years old. And had tears in her eyes.

The warm, spring weather and cheerful chatter of the vibrant streets did not improve Geralt’s mood. He still did not enjoy being in Aedd Gynvael, a small town which he deemed to be a nasty parody of all the small towns he knew; it was grotesquely noisier, dirtier, more oppressive and more irritating.

He could still smell the faint stench of the midden on his clothes and in his hair. He decided to go to the bathhouse.

In the bathhouse, he was annoyed by the expression of the attendant, looking at his witcher medallion and his sword lying on the edge of the tub. He was annoyed by the fact that the attendant did not offer him a whore. He had no intention of availing himself of one, but in bathhouses everybody was offered them, so he was annoyed by the exception being made for him.

When he left, smelling strongly of lye ash soap, his mood had not improved, and Aedd Gynvael was no more attractive. There was still nothing there that he could find to like. The Witcher did not like the piles of sloppy manure filling the narrow streets. He did not like the beggars squatting against the wall of the temple. He did not like the crooked writing on the wall reading: ‘ELVES TO THE RESERVATION!’.

He was not allowed to enter the castle; instead they sent him to speak to the mayor in the merchants’ guild. That annoyed him. He was also annoyed when the dean of the guild, an elf, ordered him to search for the mayor in the market place, looking at him with a curious contempt and superiority for someone who was about to be sent to a reservation.

The market place was teeming with people; it was full of stalls, carts, wagons, horses, oxen and flies. On a platform stood a pillory with a criminal being showered by the throng in mud and dung. The criminal, with admirable composure, showered his tormentors with vile abuse, making little effort to raise his voice.

For Geralt, who possessed considerable refinement, the mayor’s reason for being among this clamour was absolutely clear. The visiting merchants from caravans included bribes in their prices, and thus had to give someone the bribes. The mayor, well aware of this custom, would appear, to ensure that the merchants would not have to go to any trouble.

The place from which he officiated was marked by a dirty-blue canopy supported on poles. Beneath it stood a table besieged by vociferous applicants. Mayor Herbolth sat behind the table, displaying on his faded face scorn and disdain to all and sundry.

‘Hey! Where might you be going?’

Geralt slowly turned his head. He instantly suppressed the anger he felt inside, overcame his annoyance and froze into a cold, hard shard of ice. He could not allow himself to become emotional. The man who stopped him had hair as yellow as oriole feathers and the same colour eyebrows over pale, empty eyes. His slim, long-fingered hands were resting on a belt made from chunky brass plates, weighed down by a sword, mace and two daggers.

‘Aha,’ the man said. ‘I know you. The Witcher, isn’t it? To see Herbolth?’

Geralt nodded, watching the man’s hands the whole time. He knew it would be dangerous to take his eyes off them.

‘I’ve heard of you, the bane of monsters,’ said the yellow-haired man, also vigilantly observing Geralt’s hands. ‘Although I don’t think we’ve ever met, you must also have heard of me. I’m Ivo Mirce. But everyone calls me Cicada.’ The Witcher nodded to indicate he had heard of him. He also knew the price that had been offered for Cicada’s head in Vizima, Caelf and Vattweir. Had he been asked his opinion he would have said it was a low price. But he had not been asked.

‘Very well,’ Cicada said. ‘The mayor, from what I know, is waiting for you. You may go on. But you leave your sword, friend. I’m paid here, mark you, to make sure etiquette is observed. No one is allowed to approach Herbolth with a weapon. Understood?’ Geralt shrugged indifferently, unfastened his belt, wrapped it around the scabbard and handed the sword to Cicada. Cicada raised the corners of his mouth in a smile.

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘How meek, not a word of protest. I knew the rumours about you were exaggerated. I’d like you to ask for my sword one day; then you’d see my answer.’ ‘Hi, Cicada!’ the mayor called, getting up. ‘Let him through! Come here, Lord Geralt, look lively, greetings to you. Step aside, my dear merchants, leave us for a moment. Your business dealings must yield to issues of greater note for the town. Submit your entreaties to my secretary!’ The sham geniality of the greeting did not deceive Geralt. He knew it served exclusively as a bargaining ploy. The merchants were being given time to worry whether their bribes were sufficiently high.

‘I’ll wager Cicada tried to provoke you,’ Herbolth said, raising his hand nonchalantly in response to the Witcher’s equally nonchalant nod. ‘Don’t fret about it. Cicada only draws his weapon when ordered to. True, it’s not especially to his liking, but while I pay him he has to obey, or he’ll be out on his ear, back on the highway. Don’t fret about it.’ ‘Why the hell do you need someone like Cicada, mayor? Is it so dangerous here?’

‘It’s not dangerous, because I’m paying Cicada,’ Herbolth laughed. ‘His fame goes before him and that suits me well. You see, Aedd Gynvael and the other towns in the Dogbane valley fall under the authority of the viceroys of Rakverelin. And in recent times the viceroys have changed with every season. No one knows why they keep changing, because anyway every second one is a half-elf or quarter-elf; accursed blood and race. Everything bad is the fault of the elves.’ Geralt did not add that it was also the fault of the carters, because the joke, although well-known, did not amuse everybody.

‘Every new viceroy,’ Herbolth continued in a huff, ‘begins by removing the castellans and mayors of the old regime, in order to give his friends and relations jobs. But after what Cicada once did to the emissaries of a certain viceroy, no one tries to unseat me from my position any more and I’m the oldest mayor of the oldest regime. Which one, I can’t even remember. Well, but we’re sitting here chin-wagging, and we need to get on, as my late first wife was wont to say. Let’s get to the point. What kind of creature had infested our muck heap?’ ‘A zeugl.’

‘First time I’ve ever heard of anything like that. I trust it’s dead?’

‘It is.’

‘How much will it cost the town treasury? Seventy?’

‘A hundred.’

‘Oh, really, Witcher, sir! You must have been drinking hemlock! A hundred marks for killing a lousy worm that burrowed into a pile of shit?’ ‘Worm or no worm, mayor, it devoured eight people, as you said yourself.’

‘People? I like that! The brute, so I am informed, ate old Zakorek, who was famous for never being sober, one old bag from up near the castle and several children of the ferryman Sulirad, which wasn’t discovered very quickly, because Sulirad himself doesn’t know how many children he has. He produces them too quickly to count them. People, my hat! Eighty.’ ‘Had I not killed the zeugl, it would soon have devoured somebody more important. The apothecary, let us say. And then where would you get your chancre ointment from? One hundred.’ ‘A hundred marks is a good deal of money. I don’t know if I’d give that much for a nine-headed hydra. Eighty-five.’ ‘A hundred, Mayor Herbolth. Mark that although it wasn’t a nine-headed hydra, no local man, including the celebrated Cicada, was capable of dealing with the zeugl.’ ‘Because no local man is accustomed to slopping around in dung and refuse. This is my last word: ninety.’ ‘A hundred.’

‘Ninety-five, by all the demons and devils!’

‘Agreed.’

‘Well, now,’ Herbolth said, smiling broadly, ‘that’s settled. Do you always bargain so famously, Witcher?’ ‘No,’ Geralt did not smile. ‘Seldom, actually. But I wanted to give you the pleasure, mayor.’ ‘And you did, a pox on you,’ Herbolth cackled. ‘Hey, Peregrib! Over here! Give me the ledger and a purse and count me out ninety marks at once.’ ‘It was supposed to be ninety-five.’

‘What about the tax?’

The Witcher swore softly. The mayor applied his sprawling mark to the receipt and then poked around in his ear with the clean end of the quill.

‘I trust things’ll be quiet on the muck heap now? Hey, Witcher?’

‘Ought to be. There was only one zeugl. Though there is a chance it managed to reproduce. Zeugls are hermaphroditic, like snails.’ ‘What poppycock is that?’ Herbolth asked, looking askance at him. ‘You need two to reproduce, I mean a male and a female. What, do those zeugls hatch like fleas or mice, from the rotten straw in a palliasse? Every dimwit knows there aren’t he-mice and she-mice, that they’re all identical and hatch out of themselves from rotten straw.’ ‘And snails hatch from wet leaves,’ secretary Peregrib interjected, still busy piling up coins.

‘Everyone knows,’ Geralt concurred, smiling cheerfully. ‘There aren’t he-snails and she-snails. There are only leaves. And anyone who thinks differently is mistaken.’ ‘Enough,’ the mayor interrupted, looking at him suspiciously. ‘I’ve heard enough about vermin. I asked whether anything might hatch from the muck heap, so be so gracious as to answer, clearly and concisely.’ ‘In a month or so the midden ought to be inspected, ideally using dogs. Young zeugls aren’t dangerous.’ ‘Couldn’t you do it, Witcher? We can come to agreement about payment.’

‘No,’ Geralt said, taking the money from Peregrib’s hands. ‘I have no intention of being stuck in your charming town for even a week, quite less a month.’ ‘Fascinating, what you’re telling me.’ Herbolth smiled wryly, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Fascinating, indeed. Because I think you’ll be staying here longer.’ ‘You think wrong, mayor.’

‘Really? You came here with that black-haired witch, what was it again, I forget… Guinevere, wasn’t it? You’ve taken lodgings with her at The Sturgeon. In a single chamber, they say.’ ‘And what of it?’

‘Well, whenever she comes to Aedd Gynvael, she does not leave so quickly. It’s not the first time she’s been here.’ Peregrib smiled broadly, gap-toothed and meaningfully. Herbolth continued to look Geralt in the eye, without smiling. Geralt also smiled, as hideously as he could.

‘Actually, I don’t know anything,’ the mayor looked away and bored his heel into the ground. ‘And it interests me as much as dog’s filth. But the wizard Istredd is an important figure here, mark you. Indispensable to this municipality. Invaluable, I’d say. People hold him in high regard, locals and outsiders, too. We don’t stick our noses in his sorcery and especially not in his other matters.’ ‘Wisely, perhaps,’ the Witcher agreed. ‘And where does he live, if I may ask?’

‘You don’t know? Oh, it’s right there, do you see that house? That tall, white one stuck between the storehouse and the armoury like, if you’ll pardon the expression, a candle between two arsecheeks. But you won’t find him there now. Not long ago, Istredd dug something up by the southern embankment and is now burrowing around there like a mole. And he’s put some men to work on the excavation. I went over there and asked politely, why, master, are you digging holes like a child, folk are beginning to laugh. What is in that ground there? And he looks at me like I’m some sort of pillock and says: “History”. What do you mean, history? I asks. And he goes: “The history of humanity. Answers to questions. To the question of what there was, and the question of what there will be”. There was fuck-all here, I says to that, except green fields, bushes and werewolves, before they built the town. And what there will be depends on who they appoint viceroy in Rakverelin; some lousy half-elf again. And there’s no history in the ground, there’s nothing there, except possibly worms, if someone’s fond of angling. Do you think he listened? Fat chance. He’s still digging. So if you want to see him, go to the southern embankment.’ ‘Oh, come on, mayor,’ Peregrib snorted. ‘‘E’s at ‘ome now. Why would ‘e want to be at the diggings, when he’s…’ Herbolth glanced at him menacingly. Peregrib bent over and cleared his throat, shuffling his feet. The Witcher, still smiling unpleasantly, crossed his arms on his chest.

‘Yes, hem, hem,’ the mayor coughed. ‘Who knows, perhaps Istredd really is at home. After all, what does it…’ ‘Farewell, mayor,’ Geralt said, not even bothering with an imitation of a bow. ‘I wish you a good day.’ He went over to Cicada, who was coming out to meet him, his weapons clinking. Without a word he held out his hand for his sword, which Cicada was holding in the crook of his elbow. Cicada stepped back.

‘In a hurry, Witcher?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve examined your sword.’

Geralt shot a look at him which, with the best will in the world, could not have been described as warm.

‘That’s quite something,’ he nodded. ‘Not many have. And even fewer could boast about it.’ ‘Ho, ho.’ Cicada flashed his teeth. ‘That sounded so menacing it’s given me the shivers. It’s always interested me, Witcher, why people are so afraid of you. And now I think I know.’ ‘I’m in a hurry, Cicada. Hand over the sword, it you don’t mind.’

‘Smoke in the eyes, Witcher, nothing but smoke. You witchers frighten people like a beekeeper frightens his bees with smoke and stench, with your stony faces, with all your talk and those rumours, which you probably spread about yourselves. And the bees run from the smoke, foolish things, instead of shoving their stings in the witcher’s arse, which will swell up like any other. They say you can’t feel like people can. That’s lies. If one of you was properly stabbed, you’d feel it.’ ‘Have you finished?’

‘Yes,’ Cicada said, handing him back his sword. ‘Know what interests me, Witcher?’

‘Yes. Bees.’

‘No. I was wondering if you was to enter an alley with a sword from one side and me from the other, who would come out the other side? I reckon it’s worth a wager.’ ‘Why are you goading me, Cicada? Looking for a fight? What’s it about?’

‘Nothing. It just intrigues me how much truth there is in what folk say. That you’re so good in a fight, you witchers, because there’s no heart, soul, mercy or conscience in you. And that suffices? Because they say the same about me, for example. And not without reason. So I’m terribly interested which of us, after going into that alley, would come out of it alive. What? Worth a wager? What do you think?’ ‘I said I’m in a hurry. I’m not going to waste time on your nonsense. And I’m not accustomed to betting. But if you ever decide to hinder me walking down an alley, take my advice, Cicada, think about it first.’ ‘Smoke,’ Cicada smiled. ‘Smoke in the eyes, Witcher. Nothing more. To the next time. Who knows, maybe in some alley?’ ‘Who knows.’