A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

I am going to start with one of the big ones but it also means that I can tick one of the other questions off the list. The smaller question is, “How did I expect this all to end, given everything that has happened?”

The tone of that question varies according to who it is that actually sent it. Sometimes, according to my secretary, the question is couched in terms of respect and hope for the future, but other times it is accusatory. “Given everything you have done, and all the harm you have caused, what did you THINK was going to happen?” and words and phrases of that sort.

I was supposed to come home. I was, and am, self-aware enough to know that I would have struggled to settle for quite a while but then there would have been a time of acclimatisation followed by a time where I could expand into my new roles. Namely that of husband and Count of Angral. There was supposed to be a big wedding and all of my friends were going to be there. I was going to dress in my best clothes and Ariadne was going to look beautiful. I would have kissed her in front of everyone and then I would have carried her off to the bridal suite where I would have done my very best to make sure that woman was aware of just how much I loved her.

That is how stories end is it not? With the wedding of the heroes.

There would be other things after that. I imagined a quiet life of feudal duties with Ariadne. Occasional travels with Kerrass when life got too boring, lectures at the university, trips down to Toussaint to discuss this or that academic endeavour with Lady Yennefer, trips to Skellige to see all of my old friends there and yes, trips up to Kalayn lands to see my brother and Coulthard Castle to see my sister and to soak up the atmosphere of that childhood place.

That was the ending I wanted. There were even other things there. Arguments and dramas. I expected to have to work towards repairing the relationship between Emma and Sam. I expected there to be problems with the church that I would have to work through and matters of faith for me to struggle with. I imagined all of the tears over Mark’s funeral and death and I had a bleak and unhappy anticipation of sitting by his deathbed reading from the writings of the prophets and singing hymns and psalms to draw him out.

None of that will happen now.

But it does lead me to the next question, the big one about which I get letters from all over the continent. That question is whether or not Ariadne and I still intend to get married? Again, the tone of this question seems to vary according to the sender. Sometimes it is a polite enquiry as to whether or not one or other of us might be open to marriage negotiations given the abrupt shift in social status.

After all, I am a Duke now and she is but a Countess. I noticed that this wasn’t too much of a thing when I, a younger son of a mere Baron, was marrying up to being a Count.

There are also questions like “You can’t possibly be thinking of marrying that monster are you?” It might be said that I don’t read those. One got through the screening early on because the letter was from a very important person who shall remain nameless in their ignorance as the rest of the letter was rather kind. But it drove me into a rage that rendered the rest of the day’s business pointless.

By far the largest number of letters though, are the romantic type. Those letters that want to know when the wedding is going to be. They imagine a huge fancy thing with trumpets and processions. Fancy gowns and dancing and laughter.

Much in the same way that I had once imagined that I might be.

Well here is the answer to that question.

Ariadne and I were married, a week after she arrived back at the castle. We spent time with each other every day and I told her that I wanted to have her married. I told her that I wanted it to be so that no one could ever take her away from me. I wanted to stand up before everyone, even despite everything that had already happened and was going to happen and I wanted to declare that she was the woman for me and that I was the man for her. I wanted to say it and I wanted it to be legally true, before the courts and before the Eternal Flame, I wanted it to be true.

She agreed.

It was not the wedding that either of us wanted, or that I suspect, my readers wanted. Apart from anything else, we don’t yet have a new family chapel. I spoke to Father Anchor, by this point Deacon Anchor about the problem and he waved his hands as though it was unimportant before riding for Novigrad.

In the end, an altar was erected in the middle of the new Castle courtyard. Right in the middle. Deacon Anchor had heard me talk about how I wanted it all to be done in the middle of everyone and I wanted them all to see it. So he had discussed the matter with his superiors and this is what they came up with.

A small, temporary chapel was erected. Thin cloth made up the walls that were hung from bits of rope and raised torches that stood on tripods at the corners of the square. The altar was in the middle with the traditional bowl of fire in the middle. The Hierarch’s gift was that a cup of that oil was taken from the great fire of Novigrad to signify the church’s blessings of this union.

The ceremony itself was conducted by the former Bishop of Angraal who, by my reckoning, is one of the more likely candidates to take Mark’s place on the council of Cardinals. He wept through the entire thing.

Everyone came.

The Lodge manned the portals so all of my friends could come from Skellige and Toussaint. Padraig, Chireadean and Carys along with the now single remaining bastard joined the surviving Wave-Serpent crew to form a guard of honour. Helfdan, Svein, Ciri, Guillaume and Gregoire stood with me. Emma, Laurelen, Maleficent, Yennefer and Samanatha stood with Ariadne. The Lodge and a few other dignitaries were allowed into the “chapel” as the two of us were married but the truth of the matter was that I didn’t see them.

All I could see were the people that were not there.

But everyone else came and stood around the “chapel”. We had wanted an autumn wedding but instead, we were married in the spring. There is symbology there but I do not have the nerve or the desire to look into it. Guests were told that rank was not important as they came. Knight and General stood next to stone masons and carpenters and I am told that Lord Voorhis especially was astonished when he found himself standing next to the Blacksmith’s daughter who pushed her tiny, grubby hand into his.

I don’t remember much of the ceremony. Chiredean, Padraig, Carys, Svein, Kar and a few others that may or may not have included an Empress of the continent, conspired to take me somewhere and get me horrifically drunk the night before and I’m told that Maleficent did the same with Ariadne. A hangover cure was provided, on the day, by an amused Yennefer and I stood in my best clothes and pretended not to notice the fact that Gregoire positioned himself nearby and behind me to catch me if I lost balance and fell.

For herself. Ariadne was still skeletally thin. She was still eating like she was famished and a famished elder vampire is not something that you want to entertain. She has regained some strength physically but it seems that Vampires are a little self-actualizing. As such, she didn’t want to be beautiful, she didn’t feel that she deserved it, and therefore she wasn’t.

I still think of her as beautiful and tell her so whenever I can.

But she came out in a white dress with a thick veil and the ceremony was performed. The Arch-Bishop did well and as I say, he was so moved by it all that he wept, tears streaming down his face as he spoke the traditional words. When he was done, I lifted Ariadne’s veil to see the terrified face of the woman that I love and I took her in my arms and kissed her as gently as I could.

I could feel her trembling the entire time.

The roar of approval was enough to make the dwarven architects and builders look at the new walls nervously and I remember being proud of that fact.

Afterwards, the party and feast were held out in the courtyard and work sites of what would one day be the new Coulthard Castle. I thought that this was important too as it meant that the new fortress would be built on a foundation, not just of stone, but of a happy moment where everyone that built it came together for this moment.

But there was no putting off the inevitable. Ariadne and I were pushed together and we went off together to the bridal sweet.

I am sorry.

To those maids and staff and everyone that had put all of that effort into that room. To the people who made sure that the sheets were clean and soft, to the person who built the fire so that we would be warm, to the person who scattered rose petals over the bedsheets.

I am sorry, but it was wasted on us. I carefully set aside the joking gift of a potion to maintain my stamina as I bathed and changed into my nightshirt. Ariadne was similar to climbing into bed and as I looked at her I could see it in her eyes, the same thing that I do not doubt was in mine.

“This was not the wedding I wanted,” she said.

I wept then. She wept too and we held each other as we wept for nearly the rest of the night and eventually, we fell asleep like that.

I remember very little of it. I remember it as though I was watching the entire thing from a distance. I remember seeing myself as this happy, smiling man. I remember making jokes and I remember being moved by the gestures, the gifts and the people that arrived to wish us well. I remember Emma telling me that Father would have been proud of me that day and I remember having to suppress a sudden and unexpected wave of rage that almost overcame me. I don’t think she saw it though. I hope she didn’t see it.

But all I could see were the people that were not there. Mother, Father, Mark, Rickard… Sam.

And Kerrass.

I hated myself for it, and I hate myself still. But I looked at Ariadne and I love her, I do, I love her and I will until the day I die. But all I could see was what was done to her. I want the happy, smiling, relaxed and thoughtful young-looking woman that I know that she was. Maleficent and others tell me that Ariadne will return again but on that day, I remember hating myself because she was still so scared and I hated myself for putting her through all of that. I felt as though I forced her into it for my own reasons.

So I’m sorry. Not the lurid, romantic, sexual longing of two people who have adored each other from afar, coming together like you might have wished. I wish that had been the case. I wish I could have had the traditional witnesses in our marital chambers to witness the consummation but the truth is that neither of us is fit for that.

All anyone tells me is to be the best husband that I can be and the rest will fall into place. I hope so because I don’t feel like a very good husband.

Another question that I’m afraid doesn’t have a satisfactory answer is “What are our immediate plans for the future?”

I’m afraid I don’t have anything beyond continuing to do what I am doing. I am promised that sooner or later, the amount of work that I am doing will start to reduce as those people that I have placed in charge of the various pieces of territory that I have rulership over start to take up the slack of whatever is going on. This process has already begun in Novigrad and Flotsam although other areas are taking longer to get back up to their proper operating status.

I will also admit that it seems to me that, the more work I seem to get done, the more is piled on my plate. There is an old saying that feels quite relevant here which is that the worst punishment that you can have for doing a good job is another job that needs completing and only you can do it.

I wish I could tell you that I am enthusiastic about any of it. I wish I could tell you that I look forward to travelling or going to Skellige or Toussaint or any of the other places that I have visited with my wife and entourage in tow. I wish I could tell you that I was looking forward to getting back towards some academic work. Lecturing in the university and getting on with some writing to do with any of the entities that Lady Yennefer and I have chosen for our studies and that she still intends to carry on.

In the dim recesses of my mind, I am aware that these are all things, but I find that I just don’t care. There is an excitement to it all that I am lacking. I remember being interested in these topics. I remember being fascinated with it all and looking forward to meeting these entities and discussing things with them. But now, those things that seemed so vivid to me, so much that was worth looking forward to seem so drab and boring.

It is an old truth that if you are going to study something, then you must be interested in the thing that you are studying. You must find it fascinating and you have to want to study it. No, it’s more than that. You have to need to study it. It needs to be a thing where you can’t even breathe for fear that you won’t be able to study it.

And I just don’t care.

One thing that I have put in place after some discussion with the relevant parties involved was that I named Ariadne Regent of Angraal. The people of Angraal accepted that far easier than I thought they would and the young Count of Angraal was especially pleased with his “Aunt Spider” taking charge of certain things. The boy still doesn’t like me and resents my presence and I cannot say that I blame him. But Ariadne’s return means that he has an old friend, someone who was friends with his parents that he can rely on. Likewise, I was expecting some pushback from the other people of Angraal who must have remembered how close she had nearly been to ruling Angraal but they seem calm on the matter.

Of all the people that was most resistant to that decision, was Ariadne herself. I told her that she needed something to do other than just “recovery” and although she agreed with that. She begged off until I told her all of the things that had happened to her people and her lands, and above that, the realm that she had been part of and she reluctantly agreed. She was installed with a little ceremony and like Emma herself, she seems to come most alive when she is at her hall of stone and making decisions.

Then she comes home, whether to her estate in Angral or here to Coulthard Castle where we dine together and spend some time together and she withdraws back into herself.

All I have to do is love her. And I will and I do, but sometimes, that seems like a big ask.

She still won’t sit on the throne though. She has a small chair that she sits in, next to the throne where she holds court but even she admits that she spends most of her time in the offices and meetings.

I miss her when she goes to Angraal and I pace and I worry and I fear that she won’t come back. But part of loving someone is trusting them and I have to trust that she will come back. And she does, every time…

So far.

Beyond that, it might only be late spring now but for the future, there is the first meeting of the Regency Council of Redania that I must attend. The Queen Regent can no longer put it off apparently. After that, there is also a meeting of the same council of Temeria. Not the first as there have been others that I have attended but it feels significant this time.

Then there will be the wedding of Cerys and Helfdan to attend in the Autumn along with the next tournament of Saint Francesca which is being held in the Winter of Toussaint. Knight Commander Syanna has assured me that this time I will not be called on to solve a murder.

After that… Lord Voorhis still makes noises about me going south to advise the Empress and… I don’t know. It feels like a mistake to plan too far in advance when we have no idea what is going to happen.

Onto the next question.

What, if anything, am I planning on doing with those estates and lands that I own and hold lordship over, that are somewhat remote from my main holdings in the Pontar valley?

Many different sentiments are driving these questions I fear. One of which is interest and I will give everyone the benefit of the doubt by hoping that this is the thing that you are all resting on. Because after that, things are much less savoury.

Because by far, the most likely motive for this question is greed. People are sniffing around Kalayn lands and the manse of the White Cliffs to add to their own holdings.

The last reason, which is the frightening reason and the reason that kind of explains why I am doing what I am doing with those lands, is that people want to take over those lands in the hope that they will find something there that will guide them towards the knowledge that Sam, Phineas, Kristoff and the rest had tapped into. They want those places because they have become holy to them and that is a terrifying thought.

It is for this reason that, although I have no idea what to do with them and although I don’t really want them, I must continue to hold onto those lands and will be doing so for some time still to come. As I write these words there is, yet another, Inquisition being called in both Kalayn lands and the manse of the White Cliffs. The military arms of Kreve, the Eternal Flame and the Great Sun have already been through the pair of places. So now it’s the investigator's turn.

And they have gone through with the sinister weapons of blankets, medical expertise and kindness.

The people of Kalayn lands are reacting well to this although I don’t think that they are going to let go of their little blasphemies and heresy just yet. And the people of White Cliffs? I think that before this generation is out, the place is going to be all but deserted. I think the only people that are going to be left are the old and the dying and a few years after that, there will be spirits and spectres and all kinds of unpleasantness in that area.

I have left word that a Witcher will be welcome to go and clean out the place for me but I don’t expect much. The case is not interesting enough for Lord Geralt and the place is too out of the way for many of the others. The ride there and the ride back to collect their wages along with the Witcher’s famous aversion to gate travel, is too long and costly.

I have myself been to both places.

I went to White Cliffs for the first time with no expectations. We had to gate some distance away as Lady Yennefer, who came with me, told me that there were problems and concerns with trying to teleport too close. We trudged up the muddy path towards the manse and explored.

There is no way that I could have separated my feelings about the place from my experiences. I remember it being cold and unpleasant. The winds were high that day and the sea was violent, The crashing of the waves as they hit the white cliffs that gave the place its name, drove sea spray high into the air and although it wasn’t raining, it felt colder and damper than it was.

The place was bleak and felt desolate. The common folk were watching us with suspicious and fearful eyes. They had been told that the lord of White Cliffs was dead and churchmen were going this way and that way in an effort to try and deal with the matter, but this didn’t seem to be helping.

The house itself? If you had picked it up and put it anywhere else, then I suspect it would have made quite a nice place to live. But the grey stone, along with the damp feeling of the air left it feeling cold. I had ordered guards placed there in case anyone came to try and loot or look for knowledge that Sam or Phineas might have left but nothing had happened.

I explored a little. I found the room where Sam stayed whenever he was forced to be in this place overnight. It made me wonder why we had not seen his madness earlier. There were scrawlings on the walls and a repeated motif of a broken and jagged spiral that I recognised but couldn’t remember seeing anywhere.

I left there.

We had no way of knowing for certain, but I spent the longest time in the room where I thought Francesca must have died. I stood there for a long time, looking at the chains that hung from the ceiling and those stains on the walls and the floor that could not be removed by even the hardest scrubbing. I closed my eyes after a while and I could hear the sea wind blowing through the cracks in the mortar that kept the house standing. I could hear the chinks in the chains rubbing against each other, causing each other to clink and clank and the moaning of the wind made me think of a woman screaming or moaning in a drug-induced stupor.

“I’m sorry,” I said aloud. “I should have seen this, I should have seen what was happening.”

And then I left. I turned slowly at first, there was an odd feeling about that room that suggested that I needed to stay there and apologise properly. But I had said all that I needed to say, all that I wanted to say and all that I could say. so I was done.

I made it out into the open air before puking up what lunch I had had into a nearby ditch and then I stood, letting the sea spray wash me clean. But even then, I felt dirty.

I asked Lady Yennefer to take me home. I wish that I could say that I didn’t look back. But I looked back often. Francesca had died in that building, I had finally found out where she was and after all the dreams of crawling into dark places to bring her out, I was leaving her in the place that I had found her. There was no grave for her, there was nowhere for me to leave flowers, it was all just so… so pointless.

I wept myself to sleep that night and I could not explain to anyone why I felt the way that I did.

Kalayn lands were a little different, but not by much. There were more administrative things that needed to be done there and there was only a little bit that I could do to avoid them. I would try and go to spend days there with a transport gate to take me back when I couldn’t stand it any more. But even then, it didn’t quite work and more than one person was left wondering why I wasn’t staying in the castle itself.

In the end though, I was forced to go there and I slept in one of the servant’s quarters. I didn’t want to sleep in anything that might have housed Sam or one of his assorted hangers on. But the truth was, that it barely seemed to have been lived in at all.

There were certainly signs of activity. There had been administrative tasks carried out here. There had been courts held here, meetings and things. I don’t think that the ritual chambers of Uncle Kalayn and the rest had even been opened since Kerrass and the members of the church had last been in there to clear it out.

I was persuaded to see Sam’s room, or what we presumed to be Sam’s room. I found it quite sad. The bed itself was bare and Sam seemed to have slept on a military cot that he had taken in there. He had also slept in the furthest corner of the room away from the door and windows. The most defensible positions. Other than that, it seemed that nothing had been changed.

If I hadn’t known what happened in the end, I would have felt sorry for the person that had lived inside that room.

Kristoff’s room was more identifiable. The walls were covered in a military standard from the Knight contingent that he had served in during the war. And other than that, the walls were bare but at least there was that expression of personality.

On those days where I was forced to stay and after the business had all been concluded, I would wander the halls. I found myself in several spots. I visited that place that Sam had told me about on the walls, the quiet sheltered spot where no-one could find you. Where the wind was diverted away by the keep and where a strange sense of peace crept over me. There really would have been no need for someone to guard this patch of wall and so…

It was indeed peaceful there and in a side shed, I found some small camp supplies and the chair that I can well imagine Sam dragging out of the shed in order to sit and watch the sunset.

And then, my peace was shattered. This was one of the places where Phineas had set about manipulating my brother into doing what he wanted. There were other places that I visited. I visited the spot where the boy from the bastards had died. I remember it clearly although at the time of writing, I can’t remember the poor boy's name. I remember it so clearly as he wailed in his pain and his agony. About how he was apologising to us all for messing up. And about how he called for his mother and he had to be told that his mother was there.

I remembered the terrible rage that had been lit in my belly then, a rage that I had not really gotten rid of, even when I was cutting my way through cultists later.

I also spent time at the lookout post. A small patch of wall where it seemed to me that I could hear my brother. Not the man he turned out to be, or the man that he was. But the man that I still struggle not to think of as my brother. I could hear him.

The conversation that he and I had had on this small patch of wall about a soldier’s pride and about how he had desperately wanted another crack at the Nilfgaardians. About how he wanted to show then that he was the better soldier, the better warrior.

I remember that conversation, I have gone over it time and again to see if there was any way that I could have turned that around and changed it into a way forward. If I could have really seen the things that Sam had been trying to tell me and therefore be able to divert the disaster that was coming.

I have no idea. But I stay up nights worrying about that.

It was cold and grey up on those walls and like it had in the manse of the White Cliffs, the wind seemed to want to talk to me and tell me something. I have no idea what of course, but the thought was there.

But damn me, that land is still beautiful.

I visited some other landmarks while I was there. The former dower house where Aunt Kalayn had died, another person that, looking back, had tried to tell me what was going on, still stood and was in pretty good repair. Given the negative feelings about Kalayn castle, I think it’s much more likely that I will stay in the Dower house when my duties take me to Kalayn lands. I do not know who I am going to appoint as chancellor to that place. I kind of want to give it to someone local but I don’t have any ideas.

The chapel of Father Gardan is still there and is thriving. It is now a multi-building affair and is populated by followers of Kreve. I took Father Danzig to see the place and he wept to see it. He is still struggling with the lack of arm as his arm had to be removed at the shoulder and he still has balance problems. Like me, he knows that he has lost his arm and when he remembers, he compensates for it properly, but then every so often, instinct will take over and he will forget what has happened before losing his balance and tipping over.

He says that the worst moment is the moment as he is falling. He told me that there is always this moment when you start to topple over where you realise what has happened, what is happening and what is going to happen. You wince in the anticipation of the pain and berate yourself for your own foolishness. All before you just kind of… hit.

He hates to feel so weak.

But the two of us went to the chapel of Father Garden.

It is now a walled enclosure where young soldiers of Kreve are trained. There are old monks who tend to the graveyard and the spiritual aspects of it all. Then there are a couple of soldier priests who are, essentially, glorified drill sergeants to the youngsters. And then there are the novices themselves who train and train hard. The graveyard is still peaceful but the rest of it is like walking into an armoured barracks. Inside the chapel itself, there is a portrait of Father Gardan in his prime and before the altar, they have exhumed his body and laid it down in a stone sarcophagus.

Apparently, pilgrims have started to visit the place, especially now that Lord Kalayn is known to be dead. I had wondered if Father Danzig had wanted to stay but he turned away in disgust.

“Gardan would have hated it,” he told me before walking off a little distance to come to terms with his own thoughts.

I am not so sure. I think that the old man that he had become would have been flattered but also mortified. He would have demanded to know whether or not there were better people that deserved this kind of worship more than him. He would have told people that he was a soldier, a warrior, not some holy saint.

As for the man himself, when he was in the middle of his prime. I don’t think he would have noticed. He might have scoffed a bit before dismissing the entire thing as being unimportant. After all, there were other things to be doing and getting on with.

I took the axe of the man himself and tried to give it back. Even if they didn’t want to house the thing in the chapel itself, it rather struck me that it would be more fitting if it was wielded by a man of Kreve rather than standing against a wall, unused in the castle of a cripple.

One of the old men who tended the chapel and kept the candles lit, accepted the axe gratefully. He was an old soldier himself and he showed an appreciation for the weapon in his hands. We looked around and I could see some of the novices, and even some of the drill sergeants…

I call them that because that is what they were really,

… I could see a hunger, a warrior’s desire to make themselves worthy of that weapon. I had seen identical expressions in the eyes of more than one Skelligan that I can name.

The older priest had wanted to make something of a ceremony over what was happening and the novices had lined up like they were on some kind of parade ground within a church. Which seemed a little obscene to me.

The priest took the axe and went to lay it down on the altar, in the place that had been prepared for it.

I don’t know what happened, but it seemed to me that he lost his grip on the axe. I don’t know why, but it is not light but the balance can be deceptive and it can feel light if you hold it incorrectly. But the axe fell and rattled off the side of the altar.

The priest jerked back as the weapon fell, it looked to be an automatic response and so the peculiar way that the axe fell meant that it clattered to my feet.

I bent to pick it up and hand it back to the priest and was astonished to realise that he was pale and shaking.

“No,” he said. “The axe doesn’t belong here.” He told me, swallowing. “It is your axe now, that much is clear. You should take it, learn to use it if you can.”

He was not the first person to suggest such a thing and I always wave the wooden hand in their faces. But it was clear that they were not going to let me give them the axe back. I turned and bowed to the reliquary of Gardan, a man who they are already calling a saint, and left. I was astonished at what I saw in the other priest and novice faces.

They were not jealous of me and I found that strange.

I tried to visit the village but found that I couldn’t go in. It is so different now, children running around cheerful and delighted. All I could see was RIckard, picking up a child and carrying him on his shoulders. Taylor, dancing with all of the village girls but leading none of them on. There was laughter in that village and I couldn’t partake of it. It left me feeling dirty, as though I had soiled something and I didn’t want to walk into that place, taking my filth with me.

I also rode out to the hill of Crom Cruarch, the crooked man. I didn’t recognise the place. It seemed so small to me and yet it was so huge in my memory.

There is a memorial stone there, talking about Dan and the sun shot. It’s one of those things that you find… a Copper plate on a stone that describes what had happened in that place. The names of those Elves and men that had died here in protection of me so that word could get back to the courts.

It did not mention the innumerable victims of the cult that had been driven against us by the whips of those men that thought they were entitled to more than they had been given.

There is also a small camp of mages and other historians as they try to identify what had happened here and the magic that Kerrass had harnessed. I met them and made all the right noises but they were too excited for me. I remembered the people dying whereas they were dismissive of that. They wanted the things that had happened before.

I visited Dan’s grave on the crown of the hill and laid some flowers there before I turned and left. I stayed there for a much shorter time than I had meant to.

So yeah, the long and short of it is that morally and legally, there is nothing that I can do with those two patches of land, so kindly stop asking.

There are a lot of questions about what happened to certain people and things so if you don’t mind, I will leave those to the end so that I can give you the maximum possible amount of information, but I would warn you that almost all of the information is bad and I cannot tell you to expect a happy ending for anyone that has been involved in all of this.

It is becoming clear to me now, as I write these words, that this is the end of my journals and that if I am to continue writing in some form, then it will be in a markedly different form to this one.

I am not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I will miss the routine of sitting at my desk and working on these writings, but on the other hand it cannot be denied as to how much time will be saved by not needing to worry about this.

Bringing things back a little bit. I have a number of questions here that are about the ritual. People are asking technical questions about what Sam was trying to accomplish and what would have actually happened if he had been successful. There is also a regular question of why didn’t any of the beings or entities that knew about all of this, why didn’t they actually do anything about any of this.

I wish I had concrete answers for any of these but alas, I don’t. All I can do is consult the experts in their field and tell you their theories based on experience and their various mathematical extrapolations from the power involved.

First of all, the question of what Sam was trying to do versus, what would the ritual have actually done. I agree that what was happening there were two different things.

I believe Sam in this regard. I absolutely believe that Sam was trying to harness powers so that he could feasibly take on the Empress and the various bands of mages around the continent in order to first, free Redania and later, carry Redania’s vengeance into all of the corners of the Continent. Although I think he would have agreed that such a goal was a little extreme, I think that when he was at his lowest points and rocking himself to sleep at night, he was having dreams of a Redanian Empire rather than a Nilfgaardian one. Where the predominant colour of the armour would have been red instead of black.

I think that his plan was to draw as much of this power unto himself so that he would have that ancient and alien magic, that no-one else could have been able to comprehend and that he could then use that power to carry the fight against the armies of those that would have come against him. I think that when he started all of this off, his motives were genuinely perceived, by him, as being noble. But the further and further along the goals went and the darker and darker the methods that he had to use to achieve his goals, the further and further he sunk into madness.

Had he been right, and therefore successful then he would have laid waste to the armies at his gate before leading his much reduced force against the next fortress. There would have been a series of actions where the garrison would be told to surrender to fight in his ranks, or die. This would have continued until more armies could have been raised against him and then there would have been a decisive moment. According to modern political science. If he had been able to beat the big Nilfgaardian armies, the continent would have fractured into hundreds of tiny little kingdoms.

A conservative estimate suggests that there would have been three kingdoms of Redania alone.

After that, Sam could simply conquer them one at a time and then he would have had the Empire that he wanted.

But that was not what was happening.

I maintain that the Sam that entered that ritual circle was not the same Sam that Kerrass and I fought. I think that Sam was deceived by Phineas and many of the scholars agree.

Phineas was a mediocre mage at best. There are numerous witnesses to this. His method was solid but the talent simply wasn’t there. He left the schools in an effort to find something or someone that would give him an alternative method.

Eventually, he found it and we still don’t know how he did that.

We think he made contact with an entity of some kind. Something from outside our sphere of existence. He found this thing and instead of being a mage, he became a kind of priest. He worshipped the entity and in return, it gave him power that was close enough to magic to deceive him. For all we know it really was magic but the entity was able to control magic in a different way. But if we go down that route, then we are getting into a higher magical theory that I do not comprehend.

Eventually, Phineas became a fanatic for this entity and the power that the entity gave him. People that have had experience with his form of power say that the power feels tainted and unclean somehow which, had he been a better mage, he would have felt and better understood. We theorise that constant use of this magic meant that the mind was subsumed by the entity. So the figure, Phineas was still Phineas but it would have been a long time since he had an original thought.

It is very important to think of Phineas as being like a religious Zealot rather than a mage. It is very easy to think of him as being a mage who just wanted more power. Quoting Lady Eilhart.

“Mages like us want more power so that they can feel more secure. It is a weakness of our society that we equate power with intelligence and we base our internal rank with that power. I too have been guilty of working on that kind of equation. We want power so that we can lord it over our rivals, so that we can parlay that power into wealth and influence. We want power to secure ourselves and sometimes, in the manner of some particularly worrying people, we want power so that we can have access to more power.”

Phineas did none of these things. He wanted power, and did the things that he did in order to empower the entity that he worshipped and that, in turn, empowered him.

This difference explains why he was more than willing to sacrifice his own life for the cause. There are many people who don’t believe that Phineas is dead and believe me, that is a nightmare that I still wake from occasionally. They argue that he was a mage and mages tend towards narcissism which means that they are far less likely to sacrifice their own lives.

So that is why we argue that he wasn’t a mage, he was a priest.

The ritual that Phineas gave Sam, was nothing to do with giving Sam magical power. It was to allow the entity more access to a person with more power in that figure than Phineas had.

The ritual was to create an avatar of that entity. Something or someone that could walk around on this sphere of reality and influence it to further empower the entity so that, eventually, the entity could break free. Had the ritual worked, Sam would no longer be there, it would just be a fraction of the entity with a fraction of the entity’s power, walking around in a body that looked like Sam’s body.

I find this a great comfort. Kerrass and I didn’t kill Sam, the entity did and we destroyed the instrument of the entity rather than killing Sam.

So what would have happened had the ritual succeeded?

According to those people that have worked on this particular question, there are two possible outcomes. The first is the reason why the entity doesn’t exert more control over this sphere in the first place. There is some law of nature here that is not true in the entity’s own sphere of existence that means that it, and its power, doesn’t work here, or at least, not as well as it should.

There is a reason it didn’t come through during the conjunction.

So one theory, the optimistic theory is that the new avatar of the entity would have destroyed itself simply by existing. It might have survived for a little while but eventually, the laws of nature would simply cause it to decay and die. Before you get to comforted by this notion though, it is generally believed that the resulting magical explosion would have been just as explosive as if Kerrass had just murdered Sam without the lodge taking their own precautions during the battle. The magical explosion would have been enough to, at least, level the Kingdom.

The other theory is that Sam would have survived and this is, by far, the most terrifying option for me. I refer to him as Sam but we are as sure as we can be that it was not Sam.

For Sam, by that point, he no longer cared about the Rebellion. There is even evidence to suggest that Sam was heading down this pathway before the ritual started. This version of Sam would have used the soldiers and monsters that were defending him, to fuel as many sacrifices as he could get away with before circumstances forced the ending of the ritual. At which point, he would simply have left.

Then he would have had the opportunity to rebuild his power base. This figure would have made the amount of entity given power that Phineas had seem insignificant in comparison. We would have started to see cults like the cult of the first-born spring up all around the continent, and every single one of them would be fueling the entity. There would have been a man hunt around the continent to find this elusive figure as he built his augmented cults and armies and then, eventually, a monarch would be on a throne who would have been a puppet for Sam and therefore the entity and then…

The continent would become a very dark place. Shadows around every corner and men creeping from place to place, locking their doors at night. It would be a return to the early days of the settled continent. Of walled towns and villages but even then, you wouldn’t be safe because now, the monsters would be the men that worshipped the entity and now, they would be everywhere.

I am glad that I do not have to live in such a world. So think about that. If you are one of the people that secretly wishes that the Rebellion had been successful, think about where they might have led. More than just the war that would have restarted between the North and the South… But think about what a successful Sam might have led to.

Not a nice thing to think about.

So onto the other, more metaphysical question. Why didn’t all of the other entities and things just… help me. Why did they lead me around on a metaphysical and metaphorical harness? Why didn’t Crom Cruarch just tell me what kind of magic it was that was causing all the problems. Why didn’t Life in Death just tell me where Francesca was? And why, why WHY did so many of them tell me “You already know the answer, you are just blind to it,” rather than much more easily and much more simply just saying “IT’S YOUR BROTHER. DOLT. YOUR BROTHER DID THIS. PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU THAT HE’S A CREEP FOR MONTHS. JUST GO AND SEARCH HIS ESTATES AND YOU’LL FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR.”

And when I answered with “But Sam says…” They could have said “SAM IS LYING TO YOU. HE’S A VILLAIN, DON’T TRUST HIM. STOP THINKING OF HIM AS YOUR BROTHER AND REALLY LOOK AT HIM. LOOK AND LISTEN TO WHAT HE’S SAYING.”

So many of them could have just solved all of the problems and if the problem was as bad as they suggested that it was… It would have solved so much.

The Schattenmann, Jack, Life in Death, the Goddess, Crom Cruarch, all of them. Why didn’t they just help me instead of hanging a carrot in front of my nose on a piece of string so that I was always chasing after it?

I have an answer for this. It is not a nice answer and there is no way that we can prove it. I would suspect that if I tried to gain answers from any of these entities, or any of the other entities that we know about, I would not receive a proper answer and that is if we would survive.

The Beast of Amber’s Crossing isn’t there any more. No-one survives a second venture into the Black Forest. Life-In-Death will not come back to our shores, Crom Cruarch steadfastly refuses all efforts to summon him, and the thought of trying to summon either Jack, or the Goddess is laughable.

But we have spent some time thinking about this. And here is what we have come up with. When reading this answer, please bear in mind that we have no way of knowing if this is true and to reach this answer, we have to assume that some of the things that we have been told are true. And you know how I feel about assuming things.

So let’s assume that what we have been told is true. Let’s assume that there really was a war across the heavens. A war that was fought between beings and entities of untold power that might as well be Gods. And for all we know, those are the actual Gods and Goddesses that we worship. Beings that could not reach out to affect those that opposed them due to the physical laws that bound them and so they used proxies. Soldiers and puppets of which we know of several. The Unicorns, the Vampires, the Elves and those… proto-Elves, the Aen Aelle or whatever it is that they’re called.

Let’s assume that all of that is true. Now let’s assume that all of these Gods…

I call them Gods because I find it easier to use that term. In trying to imagine something so vast, so powerful and so… all consuming , it starts to take on more meaning.

Now we have been told that these Gods stopped their war through an unspoken, mutual agreement that continuing to pursue the war was going to result in the destruction of… well… existence. Not just the physical ground that we stand on. But time itself would simply… cease. The very fabric… the very…

I struggle to wrap my head around it.

Everything would be destroyed. There would not even be a person called Freddie to tell you what that looked, or felt like.

So they stopped fighting. This was not an armistice situation. There were no peace talks or treaties. There was no drawing up of borders or lineation of who was allowed to worship what. The war just stopped.

And bear in mind that this wasn’t a war of borders, trade or any of the other factors that we think of. None of the reasons that we know or understand. This was a war that was fought because it was unfeasible that the other beings exist.

This is something else I struggle to get my head to understand. I can understand hatred and fighting to kill the thing that you hate. I can understand that, but this was more a case of… There was no conscious thought behind it. As though instinct and base drive meant…

It was as though war with their enemies was as compulsory as breathing is to you and me, or… as compulsory as living is.

So imagine that stopping. But you would still know that they are there. There is still this thing out there that your entire being yearns to fight. But you know that if you did, then you and everything that you protect and hold dear would also die.

Now let’s assume that the peace is tentative. And that both sides are secretly just itching for an excuse to have another crack at their enemy, in the same way that Sam was desperate to have another crack at the Nilfgaardians.

If I was in charge of such a force. If I commanded, or led those people I would institute rules. Laws. And Guidelines to keep my people in check. And if my people could not be trusted to keep existence safe, I would imprison them.

I believe this is what happened to the entity that Sam and Phineas worshipped and wanted to empower.

And then… if I detected the movements of my enemy… After all, both sides have used proxies in the past… And I wasn’t able to interfere myself due to the rules that have been put in place to stop me.

Even Jack once commented that he never lied and that his word was his bond.

Wouldn’t you then leave breadcrumbs to guide your own proxies into place in order to combat the proxies of the other guy.

And why were they so cryptic? Because if they were more direct, then they would be seen to be being direct and that could trigger another war, or the wrath of their superiors. Or maybe they simply couldn’t.

Anyway, if you can detect my reasoning behind all of that waffle, then I hope you can understand just how terrified I am of that question. So terrified that I must set those thoughts and theories aside so that I can function, let alone sleep.

I mean… If all of that is true, then beings, powers and entities like the Eternal Flame, Kreve, Hemdall and the rest. Do they all serve some other, higher power, or powers. And if they do, what could they possibly have been fighting against.

What kind of horror would want the destruction of all of that? And if there is something like that out there? Then what kind of things would serve that kind of thing. All we know for sure is that Jack and The Unseen Elder were on opposite sides at some point. But who’s side? Are they on ours? Both of them seem a little bigger than the mere concept of “sides”.

It is a vortex that sucks at the mind and I can feel it pulling at me even now. So I hope, dear reader, that you are not too upset if I leave this subject here and move onto other factors.

I am told, anyway, that if this theory is correct… And it has been suggested that, although the theory does fit all the facts, it does rather assume mundane motivations of things that are more powerful than entity’s that we call Gods. So it might be something completely different after all of that.

But even if this theory is correct, there is nothing that we can do about it. If we, as a species, are forced to come together in a giant war that crosses spheres then all we can do is fight. Fight, or be otherwise destroyed.

Cheery thought isn’t it.

So we are finally coming to the end of things.

I have decided that this will be the last time you all hear from me. I believe that my duty in the regard to recording what happened around my brother’s rebellion is done. Both the rebellion itself and the immediate aftermath around it which led to my elevation.

All that is left is to tell you what happened to the remaining players.

We will start with the news about my informants, the people that contributed the most to my account of what had happened.

After his duties around Coulthard Castle were complete, Thierry, my logistical and strategic analyst was reassigned to the front with Vergen. The last I heard from him, he spends his days on a small boat, mapping the currents between the islands that make up Western Velen.

Possibly not this year, what with the rains, but I’m told that in the height of summer, the water recedes from those island inlets and it will be possible to cross that area without getting your feet wet and Thierry is one of those Imperial troops that is tasked with coming up with a way to defend that area.

I didn’t like Thierry. He had a condescending air about him. Quite possibly one of, if not the, smartest person that I have met that doesn’t have some kind of magical factor to their makeup. But he has a tendency to expect other people to keep up with him which is all but impossible to us mere mortals. I don’t think he cares. He is happy so long as he has some intellectual puzzle to work on. I understand that he’s married, which astonishes me if we’re honest.

According to his Colonel who recommended him to me in the first place, she is a large, sensible woman who orders him around and keeps him in line.

I know that men like that are absolutely necessary to the running of the world and I am glad that men like Thierry are on my side, and I am afraid that there is someone just like him on the opposite side. I have no doubt that he would die for whatever cause he chose to follow and his bravery cannot be questioned.

But I still don’t like him.

The castle blacksmith who told me something of what life was like inside the castle decided that he couldn’t stay. He tried, and stuck to his forge, working hard for several weeks. He was there when Ariadne returned and I know that he and she spoke about the things that he saw her do. It wasn’t her that drove him away. He told me that it all looks so alien to him now. He looks around and all he can see are those faces that are lost, or something there that shouldn’t be there.

I gave him my best wishes and a promissory note that he could use to set himself up with a forge, wherever it was that he ended up. He walked away, leading a mule and a small cart which was laden down with his anvil and those tools that he was too attached to, to discard while his daughter rode the mule.

I wish him well, wherever it was that he ended up and I completely sympathise with his standpoint. At the moment, there are regular days when I wish that Ariadne and I had stayed down in the depths of the cave, in the dark.

I am pleased to relate that the dockworker is still around. His wife and he seem to have reconciled in the face of the crisis. Something about the whole thing teaching them both what was really important to them both. Through distant strings I was able to get him a job with one of the merchants that have ties to the Coulthard trading company. This came with a move to Oxenfurt which pleased both of them, along with a substantial boost in pay, which pleased both of them even more. This means that she no longer has to turn the occasional trick on the docks when times are slow and he doesn’t have to break his back lugging too heavy crates around for ungrateful ships masters. He runs a small dock crew now and is learning to read and do formal maths with a view to taking on more responsibility.

He knows about maths, but struggles to apply that to slate and parchment which is what he would need to do if he had that responsibility.

I liked the pair of them. They argue fiercely with each other but woe-betide anyone that gets between them, and the love between them is obvious to everyone involved.

Unfortunately, that’s the last bit of the good news.

The Skelligan man who leapt overboard, the man who I am fairly sure was some kind of pirate rather than the honest trader that he pretended to be, survived the procedure to remove the parasite that had lodged itself inside his bowels somewhere. But he wishes he hadn’t.

I wasn’t there for the procedure and only visited him because I was passing.

He was another man that I didn’t like very much. I remain convinced that he was a pirate and that many innocent traders and villagers have fallen to his blade over the years. He had that hunger in his eyes the way he looks at a person. But when I went in, he was a pale shadow of the man that he had been. The violence of the purging had robbed him of much of his strength and he tottered about the place, tiny little steps and when he did sit down again, he was struggling for breath.

I sat with him for a while and tried to speak to him and for a while there, he seemed to recognise me but then a strange dreaminess crossed his eyes and I lost him.

The Doctors at the hospital where he is staying tell me that the parasite tried to claw its way deeper into his bowel when it realised that it was under threat and when it came out… I will leave that image to the imagination… But even when it did come out, it was still trying to claw its way back in.

The doctor that I was speaking to had little sympathy.

“This is the illusion that the warrior casts on themselves.” He told me. “They convince themselves that they can survive anything and that their elders don’t know what they’re talking about. We tell them, ‘don’t swim in the harbour’ and they see their friends doing it and they emerge unscathed before they try it. Then they ignore the symptoms that they suffer for whatever reason and then when the inevitable results occur, they come to men like me and expect us to just fix it for them.

“Sometimes, there are things that cannot be fixed.”

He fixed me with a baleful glare and left me with the impression that some of that was meant to hit home for me as well.

Another doctor was more charitable.

“He would have been better off dying with his friends. But leaping into the harbour water is a perilous passtime. There are things that live in there and given all the blood and things, they came to the surface to feed. He was unlucky, but even then, if he had gone to an apothecary, he would have been saved. But he told himself that it was just the bad food he was eating while avoiding everyone.”

The doctor shrugged. I gave him a pouch of coins and told him to contact me if the hospital needed anything. Emma has some interesting ideas about what to do about all of that but I will leave that for another update

As I say, I didn’t like the man. He made me want to be armed. He made me want to know where the door was and just how I planned to get out of there should everything go wrong. He was dismissive of the lives of the people that he had fought with and lived with and worked with. He was the kind of person that would only look after himself. If his ship was caught in a storm, then he would make sure that he survived, tying himself to a floatable device and kicking other people away when they tried to join him on that same floatable device.

But even then, I would not wish the fate that has befallen him on anyone. Occasionally, there are efforts to clean up the harbours and canals of Novigrad but it never works. You can never stop the cattle pissing in it, you can never stop the citizens throwing their rubbish and leaves in it. Never stop the alchemists and the healers throwing their dried up herbs in it.

And you can never stop the criminal element from dumping their victims in the river. And at the time that the Skelligan leapt into the water, there were a lot of dead already in there.

He is a shadow of that man now, listless and vacant. When he does become aware of himself, he rails at himself for his weakness and has to be kept from damaging himself. He will be moved to a Sanitorium soon and I don’t think that there’s anything that can be done to stop it.

Moving onto another great tragedy of what happened with it all. The gate-guard.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the man is a hero. At the time of Novigrad’s greatest need, he rose up and led men against the rebels. He led an effort to take one of the arms of the harbour and rendered their harbour defences useless. Without him and the men that also took part in that effort, the retaking of Novigrad, or the liberation of Novigrad if that’s what you prefer, would have been a much bloodier affair.

There were elements of his character that didn’t speak well of him His Philandering, the low-level corruption that all of the gate guard seemed to partake in, the fact that he just could not resist a pretty face, no matter how committed he might have been elsewhere, he just couldn’t keep himself from a pretty face, a mischievous smile and a pair of pretty eyes with glints in them.

But regardless of his heroic efforts and the small piece of gold painted metal that the new Lord of Novigrad pinned to his chest for his heroic efforts. He can’t get a job.

Why?

Because he turned his coat. He actively threw his uniform away so that he could take part in the rebellion. He did it in disgust because he could no longer bring himself to wear the uniform. But now that means that he can’t get a job. Because everywhere he goes to try and get a job in the trade for which he is most suited, he is forced to admit that he left his last employer by virtue of turning his coat when he no longer liked the orders that he was being given.

Such a quality is essential in a guard, or in the army, or are a sentry or any of the other more military professions for which he would have been suited for.

You can’t have a soldier working in your ranks that will turn coat when he decides that he doesn’t like the orders that he’s given. Part of the make-up of a soldier is the need to answer those orders automatically and without question. You can’t have soldiers asking why we are protecting this hill, not that hill. You can’t have guards giving things away because they don’t like the nature of what they are guarding.

In short, despite him being a hero, no-one trusts him.

I mean… I trust him but I am not the person that he is going to have to work for.

I tried, Flame knows I tried. He was not convincing enough to join any of the church guardships where a sound moral stance and sense of virtue might have carried the day. He is simply not devout enough and he was unable to hide the fact that he would be joining the guard of the Eternal Flame or the soldiers of Kreve out of a need for money so that he could eat and find a place to live.

He could not rejoin the guard of Novigrad because the friend that stayed in the guard to help the resistance, ironically a more acceptable course of action, could no longer vouch for him as he had died during the fighting. He could not join the Imperial Military because he had turned his coat and served in the Redanian guard and he couldn’t join the Redanian army because he had thrown away his Redanian uniform in disgust.

That’s the kind of thing that even recruitment sergeants frown at.

After that, he tried to hire on as a guard mercenary but every merchant caravan that was passing didn’t want him. There were two reasons for this. The first was because he had often been one of the guards that had caught the less reputable merchant wagon trains from being able to smuggle their goods past the gates of Novigrad, and the more reputable guard companies who guarded the more reputable wagon trains didn’t want him because of the turning coat thing.

Even Emma wouldn’t take him as she deferred to the decisions as made by Padraig who oversees those people that guard our local wagon trains. And the others, she leaves to the people that command those trains. She told me that if she started overruling those people then she would soon lose the trust of the people that work for us. She would start being seen as someone who threw her weight around in places where it wasn’t welcome and interfered in things that she didn’t know anything about.

“And they would be right Freddie,” she told me. “You yourself are a proud proponent of trusting the professionals to do their job. They don’t want him. I agree that it would be nice to employ all of the war heroes, but war is an extreme circumstance and who a person becomes in war is not the same as who he is.”

She would not be pushed further on that.

I did try and talk to Padraig about him but the Skelligan was having none of it. We have a good working relationship and it is worth saying that he defers to me and to the Imperial Generals that we have built the First Northern, but on this he wouldn’t budge.

“I am a Skelligan and a soldier,” he told me. “As a proud Skelligan born in the isles, wielding my Grandfather’s sword, a sword that I have carried through a significant part of the continent and letting the blood of so many of my enemies… I can understand what the man went through. I have not seen my homeland since I was twelve and I look forward to going back now that I am a grown man, but I still remember it. I remember the snow-capped mountains, the wind in the branches of the trees, the cries of the gulls on the shore and the screams of the Eagles as they stoop to capture their prey. I can still hear the chanting of the druids and the cadence of the Skalds who taught me about my ancestors and I remember the roar of the longboat crews as they pushed the ships out into the freezing water to raid a shore that I would later come to protect.

I can feel Skellige pounding in my veins and that… that feeling begs me to let him join us. I want to have him with us. I want to agree with that honour. I want to laud that and help him be proud that when his own honour told him to do something, he put that above other considerations. He was pushed until he could be pushed no further and the part of me that is Skelligan loves that in him.

“I joined the army at fourteen. I was a beggar, a thief and a… well. I joined the army and I became a soldier. And that part of me hates him. I cannot tell you how much of a crime it is to turn your coat and fight for an enemy. Even when you might have had a good reason.

“As a soldier, Rickard taught me that most soldiers don’t fight for a flag, or a nation or a cause. They generally fight for their wages and for their friends. They fight because their friends are fighting. That loyalty is at the root of it. So when a friend deserts to go and fight for an enemy?”

The big Skelligan shook his head.

“Battle formations have been disrupted because units have seen deserters in the ranks of our enemies and gone after them. And if he is willing to do that once?”

He shook his head again.

“The Skelligan in me wants to have him join us, but the soldier in me wants nothing to do with him. And you don’t pay me to be a Skelligan.”

“Wait,” I tried to make a joke, “I am paying you?” I was dismayed at the depth of feeling that had been drawn forth about a man who, to my eyes, had done the right thing.

Padraig gazed at me levelly for a moment.

“There are other payments than coin. Rickard taught me that too. You give me food, shelter, respect, honour and so much more that I value far more than I ever would gold.”

He glanced to where Carys was studiously not watching us.

I decided not to say anything.

The last time I saw the guard was at the medal ceremony. He still looked relatively well and I guessed that there were various other people around the place that shared my sentiments. He accepted the medal and I caught him sitting in the reception that the mayor threw for the medal recipients. He had a cup of wine next to his elbow and was admiring the medal in his hands.

“Pretty thing innit,” he told me.

“They are,” I pulled over a chair and sat. I had meant to apologise to this man, to tell him how sorry I was that I couldn’t find him a job, that he was being destroyed for the crime of doing the right thing but now I was sitting in front of him, I didn’t know what I was going to say.

He looked at me through his eyebrows.

“Pity,” he said after a while. “I’m probably going to have to sell it. You can’t eat bits of tin painted with gold.”

I made some small noises of commiseration and offers of help but he smiled and left.

I have no idea where he is now. Apparently, he was seen shouldering a pack and with his sword at his belt, joining a procession of people heading south.

I wish him luck.

And then there is Aleksi, poor Aleksi.

It would almost be easier if I had met him before all of this had happened. He remained relatively sure that if we had met each other before the Rebellion, then we would have hated each other and he is probably correct.

He was a noble of the old school, the kind of noble that remembers the glorious, halcyon days of their Kingdom and the way that it used to be without actually remembering when that time was. He was a man of principle and duty and steadfast belief in the correct order of things. He believed that nobles had the divine right to rule and that everyone else should bow down before that right and worship at the noble’s feet.

But he also believed that the nobility had a duty to the people that served them.

“It’s a double edge-sword isn’t it old cock?” He once told me. “In that it cuts both ways. People forget that part of it. As nobles we have an obligation to the crown and the nation. Not necessarily the King, or so my tutors always told me, but we have an obligation going up and we also have an obligation going down. Down to the lowliest muck farmer that is on our grounds.

“It is our duty to protect them and it is our duty to fight for the nation.”

He and I shared many different sentiments, like me he hated those people that served in name only. People whose family pulled strings to be stationed well out of the way of the combat…

Now before you accuse me of hypocrisy, which would be fair, let me finish. I served where I would have been most useful. But those people then make a big deal of their veteran status and walk around, expecting all of the other people around them to kiss the ring, to bow and scrape. As though we are trying to hold them to the same level that we would hold those veterans of the Battle of the Line, or the Battle of White Orchard.

Or the miracle of Brenna.

He told me his disgust of men who had let their keeps become places of beauty rather than what they were supposed to be, which were fortresses to protect themselves, and their people. What is supposed to happen is that when an enemy army is seen on the horizon, the locals rush to the nearest fortress or castle so that the nobles and guards can protect them. That is what is supposed to happen. But increasingly in this time of gentle settling down where neighbours look at those people next to them and try to detect even the smallest amount of weakness so that they can be raided with impunity…

He told me stories about castle walls that are smothered in ivy. Hunting forests that could be used to hide invading armies until they’re right up against the walls of the castle. He told me about walls that were falling into disrepair because the owners wanted to use that stone for other projects.

“If we know that Nilfgaard isn’t going to come north again,” he complained, “Then why won’t Kaedwen come. Those men of Northern Kaedwen who still remember that we went over the mountains to get at them in the depths of winter. It wouldn’t last long but if some enterprising Kaedwen noble decided to, they could be most of the way into Redania before we even noticed.

“The same with Kovir & Poviss. The Hengfors league and all the rest. The state of the Northern defences, manned by the vassals of lords who are too busy fighting for position at the feet of the Queen and taxing their people white so that defences are neglected, guards are badly equipped and undertrained and the workers in the fields kill themselves to bring a harvest in. All so that they can buy a nicer frock when it comes to the next ball that they all want to attend. Flame’s bollocks old man but I hated all of those assholes.”

“So why rebel?” I asked once. “Those were the same people that were part of the rebellion. They are the same people that, even now, are queuing up to argue that Sam coerced them with magic and claiming that they deserve to be spared. Even if you hate Nilfgaard, which I know you don’t…”

“It’s true, I don’t like them and I hate that we bow the knee to them but…”

“You hate Temeria instead.”

“You know me better than I know meself old man.”

“But you had to know that you would be working with these bastards and that their selfishness would mean that they could not be trusted. So why fight with them. You could have hung them all out to dry, clearing the way for a new breed of…”

“First of all,” he began.

A lot of our discussions went like that when I wasn’t properly interviewing him. We would cut each other off and finish each other’s sentences.

“First of all, they wouldn’t,” he told me. “They would not learn, they would not pursue other things. There would just be more assholes to replace the assholes that had died. And I would have been a traitor. But the second thing was…”

He sighed and stared into the distance.

“The truth old boy?”

“Always,”

“It just didn’t occur. We were rebelling against Nilfgaard and we were going to carry our vengeance against those that betrayed us. Temeria and the like. That… unifying factor was the death of all thought, all reason…” He sighed. “You are right of course old friend, you are right and it is easy to see why you would think that. Oh, if only you could have been there to point it all out to me, but the truth is…”

He leant forward,

“The truth is that the Rebellion was a madness. At first it was a happy one, an energising one. One that made all of the problems of the world go away. My sight became golden and I didn’t see the muck on your brother’s cloak or the darkness in his eyes. I didn’t see the flaws in my comrades and I didn’t see the problems with our plans. All I could see, all I could think was the freedom of Redania. I imagined seeing it again, the red flag and the white eagle flying over the turrets of the North, without that unsightly Black square with Yellow sunburst…

“And it is yellow old cock, don’t let the fuckers tell you different. It might be gold when the Empress rides around and it might be gold on the armour of the Generals and the rich, but when you really look at the Imperial flags, the paint is yellow.”

He sighed and became unhappy again.

“Just as the real flags of Redania are a kind of… pink with a grey eagle.”

He shed a small tear.

“It was a madness old man, a madness that pushed away reason and thought and it made us blind to the faults of the people standing next to us.”

I agree with him, I don’t think we would have liked each other if we had met before the rebellion and I hated that we had only become friends afterwards. He has never treated me as anything other than a really close friend. He is always overjoyed to see me, rising to his feet and throwing his hands wide before taking my hand and embracing me. Even the first time we met.

He walked around with an Imperial escort at all times but he walked free, and although he was never armoured, he was allowed to carry a sword and kept himself well trained. He told me that it brought him comfort.

When the castle was more built we had enough space for a guest room, he came to live at Coulthard Castle. There were still many lords that were trying to weasel their way out of the coming consequences of their actions and Aleksi was an important witness in those proceedings. There were regularly people coming to see him to ask about this person or that person and whether or not they had been involved in all of the horror, and if so… to what degree.

As far as I know, he answered quickly and truthfully. Just as he had been so determined to fight on behalf of Redania against the Nilfgaardian now he seemed determined to wipe out any semblance of loyalty to the rebellion.

“Why?” I asked him.

He sighed and scratched his chin.

“What I want to tell you,” he began carefully, “is that I do it on behalf of all of those poor villagers, farm workers and the rest who died as part of the stupid, ambitious nonsense that we were all part of. I want to tell you that. I want to tell you that it’s out of vengeance for the people that died, who should have been the first people that we were doing this to protect.

“I also want to tell you that I am doing this to preserve the future of Redania. If even one of those snakes walks away with anything close to lands and titles then they will live to poison Redania again. They will live to victimise their people and regain their power and their… rightness and then they will be back again and nothing will have changed. That is how I protect my people is by killing those men now with the only weapon that I have left.”

“The truth?”

“I see you know my weapons well. Both of those answers are true old man, do not doubt that. Both of them are true. But also, I do it out of vengeance.”

I saw where this was going but you still need to ask the questions.

“Against whom?”

“Against those bastards that looked down on us and hung us out to dry. We could have really hurt the Nilfgaardians and the Temerians but they wanted their own safety and then they looked down on us for what they saw as our failures. Well fuck em, it was their failures old boy. It was their failures, not mine and I want them to remember it. I would have died with my mouth shut for my comrades but they weren’t my comrades. Not really.”

“No,” I agreed, “they were not.”

He attended my wedding as my guest and was welcomed by the Skelligan and Toussaint contingent who are more used to drinking with an honourable enemy than others. He left early though, after forcing himself to dance with the bride. He was still Redanian enough that he thought of her as a monster and was also uncomfortable around the magic users that were present.

He even managed to make Emma laugh.

I found myself standing next to Ciri at one point.

“You want to ask me to spare him don’t you?” she didn’t need to say who “he” was.

I took a deep breath, I had been dreading this conversation, even though I hadn’t realised that it was coming.

“I really do,” I replied. “Even though I know that you cannot.”

“Why don’t you?” She wondered, taking a nonchalant swig from a bottle of expensive Est Est that she held by the neck. “I mean I won’t, but why don’t you try to save his life?”

“Because he would hate me for it,” I replied,

“He would,” she agreed. “The last of the old Redanians, he would not live in the new world and he would hate you for trying to force him to do that. At the moment, he is free, a freedom he would not find elsewhere”

I nodded and sighed.

“Oh Freddie,” she said, “I know he is your friend and I know your… You have been let down by other friends and still others are bewildered by your change in circumstance. But you still have friends.”

I managed to avoid a petulant cry of “Then where are they,” but she heard it anyway.

She smiled.

“We are here,” she told me. “All around you.”

And then she was gone.

The word came down that he was to die a fortnight later in the main square of Novigrad. We rode together through the increasingly summary countryside and he alternated weeping and laughing at the sights that he saw. We spent the night in the Rosemary and Thyme where he ate, drank and made merry although he declined the offer of a woman. In the morning, he was not hungry. He made his confession to Deacon Anchor and we walked to the square. We were under escort of course but Aleksi tried to pass it off as a morning stroll. He fell twice and we had to pick him up, but all told I thought he did well. We came to the main square and the guards cleared an avenue for us as I walked him up. His legs betrayed him again a couple of paces before the steps.

I have seen uglier crowds. But not many. These people knew that this was one of those that had been part of the rebellion and was therefore part of those that had tortured and executed their friends and family. No rotten fruit or eggs because people were taking what food they could. But dung? There was still plenty of that.

Aleksi righted himself, furious that his legs had betrayed him. He told me to stay behind and find a space so that he could see me.

He walked forward and embraced the Axeman and handed over a pouch of money. The headsman of Novigrad is new to the trade, the previous one being torn apart by the mob after the rebellion, but the new man has had plenty of recent exercise and practise.

There was a brief argument as Aleksi wanted to kneel at the block himself without having to be tied but when I asked later, they pointed out to him that his body had already tried to betray him on the way to the block. They compromised and although his hands were tied behind his back, he could kneel himself.

He stood there, looking proud, having removed his collar so that the headsman could get at his neck unhindered. And the crowd quietened.

He took a deep breath.

“LONG LIVE REDANIA.” he shouted. I saw his eyes find me. “LONG LIVE THE KING,” He added before kneeling.

It took two strikes to get his head off due to the neck muscles of his training. The first strike definitely killed him and the second was for the form of the matter.

Aleksi’s last words are interesting. The cry for Redania is obvious but yelling “Long live the King '' has been dissected a bit. He had not told me he was going to do that.

On the one hand, it was a cry for loyalty to Radovid, but it was also a gesture of support for the boy King, and a cry of condemnation for the Queen Regent. Men still call “Long live the Queen,” when she passes so…

Knowing Aleksi, it could have been a last joke.

I miss him every day. Almost as much… no I will be honest. I miss him more than I miss Kerrass. I don’t know why, but I remain convinced that Kerrass and I are not done yet. But Aleksi has been a real friend in the time since the end of the Rebellion.

Which makes me more than a little sad. That I find that I have more in common with a former enemy than I do with the people around me. I don’t know what to make of that. Ariadne suggests that I am lonely and that the reason for my upset is that I miss having friends.

Then she has a tendency to get sad and descend into self-loathing. I try to help her through these episodes of hers but it almost always seems to make the matter worse. She cannot tell me why. I love her fiercely but I find that I miss her too.

So what’s left?

Padriag and Carys are now the foremost couple of the castle and Coulthard County. Padraig is everywhere at the same time, inspecting troops and fortifications, riding this way and that way as he carries out surprise drills on those lords that owe me fealty. He demands that they be ready to defend these lands at a moment’s notice and wants to know what efforts they have made towards readiness.

There is the potential for friendship there, him and me, but I think he is wary of that. He still sees me as a contemporary of Rickard and as such, above his social strata. He has a tendency to fall back onto his soldier’s stance, to stare straight ahead and answer “Yes milord” and “no milord” to all questions that I might level at him. Then he realises that he is not performing his duties in acting like that, looks a bit sheepish and then answers the question properly. He admits that it is something that he needs to work on and he works hard, I will not let anyone suggest that he is not working hard. But firm friendship is still a little way off. He still hesitates before he tells me that he thinks I am making a huge mistake.

But he is growing into a real leader, a leader that Rickard would have been proud of. He does have a tendency to use Rickard’s style on a regular basis and I still occasionally have to ask him “What would Rickard do?” But that is nearly always the goad that will get him back on the right track.

For her part, Carys is taking the responsibility of being the Captain of my personal guard really seriously which, at the same time, is highly gratifying, but also mortifying. She has mastered the ability of being in front of everyone and refusing to allow access to my person without express orders from me, while also fading into the background when needed. She rarely offers her opinion, but she seems to have a habit of moulding herself to whatever the social engagement requires. She is just at home in fabulous gowns that do nothing to prevent her hiding several weapons around herself, as she is at home trailing through the trees and the mud.

As I say, she and Padraig are becoming the first couple of Coulthard County and I cannot begrudge them for it. It would almost be enough to make me jealous, but people need someone to get behind. They need a symbol and a man and a woman that they can believe in. They have not yet been mistaken for the lord and lady of the land but I think that that time will come if Ariadne and I take much longer to sort ourselves out.

Unfortunately, Padraig and Carys are the last of the good news I have to share.

Chireadean never found his family.

There was about a month of his searching where we saw him on a fairly regular basis. He would come in, take on some more provisions, catch us up on how he was getting on with visiting friends and relatives and anyone else that might have taken in his wife and children. Then he would spend a night, maybe two with us before he would take to his horse and be off the following morning. He always greeted us with a smile and a wave and would depart with the same.

There was still just the edge of mockery behind his voice and a haunted look behind his eyes. Pretty much the same expression that he used to wear back when we were fleeing from the North.

After that month though. He came less and less. A week would go by before he would turn up, change horses, get some provisions and then head off again the same day. Then he would be back a day later before leaving for a fortnight and that was the way it went. He made sure he was back for the wedding and then he departed again after that. Then he came to Padraig, Carys and I with several bottles of strong spirits which he proceeded to drink and that we just supped from so he wasn’t drinking alone.

For a long time during that visit he was still the slightly laconic and funny life of the party that he always was until it got to the point, early in the morning when he put his cup down on a table with the exaggerated care of the extremely drunk and then he just crumpled.

Carys caught him and Padraig was not far behind her. I was delayed by wooden feet and hands and also needed to find somewhere to put my own drink.

“THEY’RE GONE.” He wailed and abruptly he was like a little child that we had to whisper kind things to while he wept, wailed and screamed. Eventually he subsided to whimpers and sobs and then later, he passed out asleep where Padriag carried him to a bed.

He stayed a couple of days after that before he came to see me and told me what had happened.

He was more step by step than I will be, but essentially it was clear that his wife and children had fled and didn’t want to speak to him. They had gone with her parents and had headed North to be with a distant family. Then they had heard that Chireadean had been looking for them before they fled again.

“Love was not enough,” Chireadean told me sadly. “Love was not enough, they saw me as inextricably linked with politics, my friendship with you…”

“Chireadean, I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault Freddie, Gods above and below but it was not your fault. Because the other thing that they saw was that they were never going to get around the fact that I have pointy ears rather than round ones,” He sighed again, he was doing that a lot. “I mean, I could be quite bitter about it if I put my mind to it. It was the very fact that I was slim and had interesting ears that she liked in the first place rather than “Big fat and hairy men that would just slobber over me,” she would say. She liked to flick the ends of my ears, and bend them to see if they would stay in different shapes. And then, it was you and your sister that got me an inn in the first place as well as the money to sort it out. So it’s the bits of me that she loved, that have also driven her away.``

I grunted at that.

“I blame her parents,” he muttered bitterly. “I’ve pretended not to hear them before, telling her that I am an elf and what would I be in forty years time when she is old and wrinkly and I am still young and beautiful.”

“Which you would be,”

“Which I would be of course, heh. I told her then that she would still be beautiful to me. That we would love every wrinkle and that I would kiss every grey hair. I would nurse her through her frailty and that when she was gone, I would make a nuisance of myself with our children, doing my best to scandalise them.”

He gave a little sob.

“She always laughed at that image.”

Then he sighed at that image before pinching the bridge of his nose and dismissing his tears with a smile.

“What are you going to do now?” I wondered. “I mean, if you want to try again with an inn then we owe you one. Your wife is not completely wrong when she says that at least some of what has happened to you is our fault. You would not have associated with Sam or been caught up in his reach if it wasn’t for us.”

“Kind of you Freddie,” he said. “And it is tempting. But I look around your lands now and all the changes that you are making only serve to show me all the things that I am missing. Gods Freddie but I miss her. Miss her and the two little idiots.”

He laughed sadly.

“I could help you find them,” I said. “It turns out that Imperial Intelligence works for me in the North. Your parents in law might be working against you but I would bet my remaining hand that she still loves you. You could talk to her when she’s alone, let your kids know that you still love them and… I don’t know.”

“Kind of you Freddie,” he said again. “Very kind of you. But if I took advantage of that…?” He shrugged. “At what point does looking for my wife turn into stalking her creepily. She doesn’t want to see me and if I force the issue? At what point do I become the bad guy in more ways than just her parent’s heads. At what point do I become the sinister Elven criminal in the eyes of my kids. They’re less than two years old. They probably barely remember me now and in a little while, they will hate me for giving them slightly more pointed ears.”

“They will always know.” I told him. “And one day they will come looking for you.”

He smiled sadly.

“I wish I had your confidence,” he told me.

“So that returns us to the initial question,” I said. “What will you do now?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t stay here. I might travel east and see how much it is true that Dol Blathanna keeps City Elves out. Or I will go south where the protection of Elves is more certain and set in stone than it is in the North. Then I might set myself up again, who knows.”

We threw him a little party then, to say goodbye. Old friends, surviving patrons of his inn and people who were nearby. He left the following day with a full pack of supplies and his horse with my best wishes. We also gave him a banker’s draft that he could cash in when he wants to settle down so that he can re-establish himself.

I know that he has the urge to distance himself… He once told me that when life gets hard or that the world points out that it hates him, he always wants to burn his life down around him and start again. So it is possible, even likely that that banker’s draft is torn up and in some river somewhere, or a midden heap or whatever. We know that it hasn’t been cashed at time of writing but if you are reading this Chireadean, then please know that the gesture was sincerely meant.

Another friend for me to miss.