A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

Ariadne and I work at our relationship every day. We make a point of eating breakfast and dinner together but being a person with the duties that I have and the duties that she has, lunchtime is a movable feast and it often means that I am eating at a point where I can still taste breakfast in the back of my throat, or that I am not particularly hungry for dinner given that my lunch was so recent.

We talk and we try to make plans for the future, but the truth is that there is something missing and neither of us know what it is. We talk about it and we work at reconnecting. There is no problem with us hugging each other but there is a sense that we are both just going through the motions. There is a distance between us that both of us want to bridge, but neither of us can really find a way through. Everyone around us just tells us both to give the other time but… that’s not what either of us want and there is no way of knowing how much time.

As I say, we are both aware of this problem and we are working on it together, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that there is a problem and that it is something that needs working on.

Part of the problem is that neither of us are well, physically or mentally so neither of us have the strength to support the other through what they are going through.

I want to be strong and I want to console Ariadne through her pain. I want to tell her that it doesn’t matter and that I love her and I do tell her all of those things. But while I am saying these things I need what strength I have to keep my own head above water without also having to worry about supporting Ariadne as well. I want to take her in my arms and tell her everything will be ok, but she will often ask “How?” meaning ‘how will it be ok? When will we get there and what do we have to do to get there?’ and then I feel guilty because I have no answers.

Ariadne is the same. She tells me that she wants to be there to comfort me through the nightmares which I still have with alarming frequency. She wants to hold me in the darkness and soothe away my pain with comforting words and embraces but she can’t, because she knows that she is the root cause of some of that pain. Then her own guilt will well up and she will be in tears.

Then I want to comfort her rather than caring for myself and keeping myself going and so the cycle continues. People that are close to us both tell us that we are doing better but I just don’t see it.

We hurt each other by being around each other, but we can’t bear to be apart. In her, all I can see is the harm that I have visited on her. I introduced her to Sam, I didn’t see the evil to which Sam was sinking and in her, I see every victim of Sam’s from all over the continent. Every time she sees something, or a memory occurs to her of all of the things that she did while under the thrall of the rebellion, it hurts me and I blame myself that she must go through that pain anew.

And when she looks at me, she sees in me the face of every victim that she ever tortured on the orders of lesser men. She sees the men and the women and the children that she tortured and tore apart. She sees me, lying in my own filth, sweating with the illness from my injuries that is burning its way through my body. She sees it all and so, to see me, she is hurting herself and neither of us know what to do with that.

We are handing each other roses and trying to pretend that the other person’s rose is not covered in thorns. And that those thorns are not tearing our hands apart and causing us to bleed our lives away.

I love her, I will never stop. I refuse to set her aside. I repeat the same mantra to myself, over and over and over again. All I have to do is love her. That’s all I have to do and everything will be alright.

I just wish that “alright” will hurry up and get here. I am getting really tired of waiting for the rest of my life to begin.

I want to love her in the same way that we always said that we would, sitting by the fireside, or taking walks in my mother’s rose garden (which has been rebuilt and replanted). I wanted to walk across open fields and go to dinner in one of the fabulous restaurants. I wanted to watch her dissect professors that lecture on the genealogy of Vampires and the origins of that species as they insist that Vampires are merely cursed humans and any attempts to say otherwise are merely propaganda.

I want to see how mussy her hair looks in the morning after she wakes up. I want to watch her bathe and I want her to look at me with that hungry look that I have only been privileged to see in the eyes of women a handful of times and even rarer when it is directed at me.

I want to work on our problems with her. I want to sit in council meetings with her. I want to ask her advice about many of the problems that are plaguing me and I want to be there to help her with the riddles of having to govern Angraal and Angral.

I see her every day and yet I feel as though we are further apart than we had ever been while I was travelling and she was reestablishing herself as part of the society of the continent.

I don’t know what to do about that and it is breaking my heart, just as it is breaking hers.

All I have to do is love her and everything will be alright. So many people have told me that and I believe them, but by the Eternal Flame it is hard. Harder than I ever thought it would be. We hurt each other just by being around each other and…

Dammit.

I am also terrified that I am losing another family member. But instead of it happening quickly and cleanly, Emma is dying by inches. She is trapped and although I meet with her and with Laurelen regularly, we can’t see a way out of the trap.

Things are too much for Emma. She gets overwhelmed and… I don’t have the words for it.

You know what, I’m going to keep the Rose bush metaphor.

She is trapped in the middle of the rosebush. The flowers are beautiful but they are getting further and further away. She can’t move for fear of the thorns ripping into her flesh, but at the same time, the bushes are growing and increasingly getting to the point where she must shrink herself to remain safe.

In the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Rebellion, Emma sprang into action untangling the knot that she had made of the Coulthard trading company. There was a lot to do as she had tangled the entire thing so effectively that the only person that could untangle it was herself.

And then people started to fight her. There were legal challenges saying that she was part of the rebellion and as such, she had no right to reclaim her control over those elements of the company. There were people that claimed that because she was sick, she was unable to properly administer everything that she was responsible for. She was hurt, badly injured and desperately frightened by everything that had happened.

But she fought.

You will have possibly noticed that, during my recording of everything that happened, I did not record Emma’s point of view at all. There is a reason for that and it is simply that she was simply unable to give that point of view. She has little memory of those events now. She remembers the night that Sam declared his rebellion and she remembers Laurelen being collared and restrained, but after that, she remembers little. She says that it comes to her in flashes of dreams and nightmares but that she couldn’t tell you which was which. She knows that she has woken up from what she remembers to be a pleasant dream and found herself being shaken awake and finding herself sobbing.

Likewise she has nightmares that seem rather pleasant when she wakes up and moves on.

We know that she was one of the prioritised rescue targets by the teams that assaulted the keep. Indeed, she was one of the last hostages to be rescued and no sooner was she out of the castle than she was calling for pen and paper. She was tried almost immediately and found to be innocent while her bravery in the face of the enemy was one of those quiet things that people struggle to celebrate. But she took back the reins of the trading company almost straight away and then she got on with the work.

But as is the way of things, efficiency means that she eventually ran out of work and would be able to fall back to a more leisurely maintenance standpoint.

She struggled with personal things from the start and only came alive when it was regarding matters of the trading company. She lived in the Novigrad family residence that had been locked down early. At first on the orders of the Rebellion and later on the orders of the Imperial troops and the guards of the Eternal Flame.

So it was as intact as it could be and Emma worked out of there. She emerged to go to court to argue her case, she received trading partners and things. She was the element of charm, she still is on those matters. But then, as things started to die down, Lauelen started to notice a decline.

She would go out less and less, insisting that the meetings be carried out in the residence. From there, the meetings could only be carried out in the office itself.

Then Emma started not wanting to leave the office at all. Not to eat, not to get dressed, not to sleep.

Laurelen tried to be firm with Emma, insisting that my sister accompany her lover/wife to go shopping, to eat at restaurants and to attend poetry and musical recitals. But increasingly it was clear that Emma was becoming more and more distressed by these outings.

And one day, Laurelen found Emma hurting herself in an effort to galvanise herself to go outside because she knew how important it was to Laurelen.

The best doctors in the continent and that the trading company can find have attended upon my sister and I may say that the good ones are the ones that don’t recommend that we just pack her off to a hospital to live in a sanitorium. It cannot be denied that some of those recommendations might be politically motivated as well so we have to take these things with a pinch of salt.

There are herbal remedies and sometimes they seem to help for a while but eventually, the result is always the same, Emma continues to sink while the trading company continues to flourish.

Even if I don't have all my ducal levies. Even if I wasn’t taxing the people and the Lords in my province, an amount which advisors (including Emma) insist is fair if not outright generous, then I would never want for money. It has been suggested that I could probably fund the first Northern Army out of my own pocket and I would not really notice the difference.

I mean I won’t do that. I can’t.

We pay a fortune into the Imperial, Redanian and Temerian coffers anyway through taxes and I have a small army of accountants that keep my books for me so that I can defend myself against any accusation from any of the three treasurys of corruption.

I am expanding my investment into the local lands and my other provinces. Doing the boring things like building proper roads, rebuilding villages and erecting fences and walls. Installing proper mills and helping out smithies but all of that turns out to just be investment in trade, which means I make more money.

I have ideas. I intend to carry on funding academic things in Oxenfurt and become a patron of the arts in Novigrad. There are other ideas that I can’t really discuss as well but it seems that no sooner have I spent the money, then I make more.

And all of that is down to Emma. But the part of that person that is my sister is getting further and further away, leaving an abacus that walks in her place.

The pain that this causes Laurelen and I is unspeakable. Not least because neither of us saw how bad the problem was getting until the problem was already really bad.

She won’t talk about it though and we have no idea why she is becoming the way that she is. All we can do is defend her from attackers and from herself while giving her reasons to keep going and being there to catch her when she emerges.

What this all means is that, when it comes to dealing with all of the private matters when it comes to my family, I am alone. I don’t mean to sound all melodramatic or anything but it is true. Our parents are dead and so the only remaining members of the family are Emma and myself. Emma is not capable of doing anything outside of her existing trading concerns so when it came time to organise the final funerals for those that we had lost with the finality of the rebellion…

I had to do it. Emma wept as she admitted there was nothing that she could do and she promised that she could be there when she could and when it came time to inter people.

And then things started to go wrong. Why?

Because these people don’t belong to me anymore.

We have no idea, no way of telling which bones, if any, in the manor of the White Cliffs belonged to Francesca. I am told that priests went and made their best guess but they came back with a couple of skulls and little else. But there couldn’t be a public funeral. There couldn’t be a grand thing where we all mourned and then she was interred in the family crypt because she is now “Saint Francesca”, the virginal saint of purity for Toussaint. There are churches and chapels to her now in Toussaint and people go there claim to have received visions of a beautiful young and pure woman that comes to them and advises them, heals them and leads them away from disaster.

So it was out of my power. I tried to protest. I tried to tell everyone that she was my sister first, she was a Coulthard long before she was a saint and I was told that such matters were unimportant. That she belonged to the people that worship her now, the people that look up to her as a paragon of virtue. There is going to be a state funeral for her in Toussaint. There is going to be lace and a stone coffin that will be placed… somewhere prominent so that people can visit her and pray at her feet.

By the time you read these words, I might even have had to go to pay my respects myself. Something to which I will have to go alone as Emma is in no way able to travel and Ariadne is not…

In her current guise she would not be welcome. She looks like a vampire now and it would be clear to all of those people in Toussaint and Beauclair that still fear Vampires as to what she is, there would be no going around it. She would come if I asked her to, but she is too fragile as it is and when she looked at me when the matter of our attendance came up, there was real… fear in her eyes.

So I have to go. I have received my official itinerary and there are almost more people going to that interment than there were that went to the coronation. There are going to be processions and singing. There is going to be a tournament because of course there has to be a tournament. There will be more of that infernal artwork and sermons and gifts and well wishes and…

I wish Kerrass could be beside me. I will be bracketed by Guillaume and Gregoire at all stages but I know both men well enough to know that Guillaume will be just as moved as the rest of them and Gregoire will want to stay silent, still concerned about the way people perceive him in such matters.

There are going to be veils, and handkerchiefs wrapped around people’s fingers as they carefully dab at the corners of eyes so as not to smear makeup. There will be gloves and little bursts of stifled laughter.

And I am going to have to keep my temper through the entire thing. I will not be able to challenge anyone as I will not be able to fight and after all, this is how these people grieve.

I did meet with Mother Nenneke regarding what to do regarding Mother’s body. As was the initial agreement, I discussed with her whether Mother had earned the right to take holy orders and Mother Nenneke’s response was a snort.

“I understand the penance my son,” she smiled as she said it but her tone was withering. “I understand why you did it and why you told her the things that you did, but that woman should have been in a cassock and a wimple long before she died. She was more holy than I am,” she sniffed, “and I am pretty damned holy.”

I sighed and the old woman put her hand on my shoulder in sympathy.

“So does she get buried in my family crypt or in your graveyard?” I wondered.

“What do you think?” the old woman asked as she skewered me with her gaze.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “On the one hand, Father loved her and I think she loved him as well. But on the other hand, with everything she said before… before. She has never been happier than when she was serving in your order.”

Nenneke watched me carefully.

“Send her body to the abbey,” I told her before fleeing so she would not see me weep.

But the one that finally got me, the thing that finally caused me to lose my temper was when I received word that the church of the Eternal Flame intended to canonise Mark. Therefore he will be Saint Mark and he will be interred in the vault of saints on Temple Isle. Like Francesca, although with far more an austere ceremony, less open to the public. Mark will be taken off, mummified and placed inside the sarcophagus. He needs that preservation so that should a time come where he becomes more powerful as a saint, then he can be removed and given his own chapel.

Yes, for my southern readers, there is indeed a hierarchy of saints as well as a whole list of things that need to happen to you before you can be called a saint. A lot of them can be fudged and pushed aside on the whim of the Hierophant if they so see fit. But it’s to do with “How much do they answer the prayers of people,” and “How often do people perform miracles in their name.”

If that happens then he will be removed, sarcophagus and all before he will be placed in a chapel that is there for the purpose so that people can pray to him easier.

I’m afraid that I lost my temper then and as is my wont, I rode to the Temple Isle and demanded a meeting with someone. I didn’t really care who. Much to my shock and horror, as well as the shock of Father Anchor who had been nearby and had therefore come with me in an effort to calm me down, I was escorted into a meeting with the Hierarch himself.

The Hierarch is an older man now, I would put him somewhere north of seventy five. Chosen by the cardinals when it became clear that Hierarch Hemmelfart would have led the church into destruction when the Empire had conquered the North. Hemmelfart wanted to denounce them all and castigate the new Empress and stir up trouble. The Cardinals and the elders of the church were not stupid and knew exactly what that would lead to, which is a general holy crusade against the Eternal Flame which would have been joined by all of the other smaller religions that the Eternal Flame had stepped on in their mission to get to the top. Lords and things would have joined the crusade and then, the Eternal Flame would have lost all the ground that it would have made.

There was a general culling of the top officers of the church. Mark was not shy of explaining that this was how he managed to secure promotion after promotion so early in his career, but one of the advancements was right at the top. Hemmelfart was quietly told that he needed to retire. This was put across with his recent lack of health…

Critics can’t decide if this was due to his massive weight issues in that he was monstrously fat, or was it the fact that he was poisoned at some stage so that he could make way for the next model.

The new Hierarch was chosen and he made no delay in making the Eternal Flame into a more acceptable modern alternative. There has been some pushback. The Knights of the Flaming Sword as led by Sansum were good examples of this as they tried to return the church to what they saw as more traditional values. In and of itself, this is a joke given that the more traditional values are what the church has been going back to. The more militant interpretation has been a relatively recent thing. But that’s beside the point at this stage.

He presents as a tall man, not particularly overweight but even he would admit that he has put on some padding around his middle since his elevation. One of the few luxuries that he has been unable to set aside was to have his own cook and be able to sample all the delicacies that Novigrad, being a port town, can bring.

Other than that, he agreed with Mark on a lot of matters. He dresses in a simple cassock which, I do not doubt, shares a certain level of personal armour with the best dresses that Ciric wears and owns. He belts the cassock with a dark sash from which hangs his holy symbol. He also wears a cap on his head and has a chain of offices. Upon his hands there is the single ring of his office.

Like Mark, he was appalled at the level of opulence that was offered him in his new rank and removed a lot of it, but found that he was unable to get rid of the servants because “what else were they all going to do with their lives,” and the last thing he wanted them all to think was that the Hierarch didn’t like them.

He received me graciously that day and arranged for us to be seated and served something hot before he asked us what the trouble was.

He listened carefully as I ranted. The Hierarch has that gift of being able to look as though he was listening. He didn’t really move as I spoke, other than to lift his cup to his lips and take a drink or to grimace in dismay when he spilt a bit of that drink down his cassock. He brought his brows forward and otherwise clasped his hands together and he gazed at me with this intensity that was both off-putting and rather intense.

I finished my diatribe and I’m afraid that I honestly cannot remember anything that I said.

He sat there for a long time just staring at me. I glanced over at Father Anchor who was sitting back in a chair looking annoyingly serene. To be fair though, he had heard this rant or something like it fairly constantly over the last few days.

“I do not understand,” the Hierarch said after a pause. “Do you not want your brother to be a saint?”

“No I do not,” I snapped.

The Hierarch said nothing for a long moment, just staring at me.

“No, I don't want him to be a saint,” I said. “My brother was not a saint. He wasn’t. He was just a man. A good man to be sure but only when the law of averages evens out. He was an angry man, an ambitious man. He would give out harsh penances when he thought Father wanted the punishments to be harsh. He dismissed my best friend and the woman I love when all they were trying to do was to help him. He hated… Flame but he could be so cruel, so locked in his ways.”

The Hierarch said nothing.

“And he was funny too. People claim that he was wise but he wasn’t. Not until he was dying and then he became wise. Only in the last few years. Before that…”

I laughed.

“He used to fart at the table when he knew that it would make people laugh and then, when Father got angry, he would blame someone else, or a servant so that the blame would not fall on him. He kept sweets in his pocket that he used to bribe me into happiness when he had made me cry in confession because then Mother would not be as upset with him. He knew that he was being too harsh or he would have felt the need.

“He used to beat us over the head with his holiness and how powerful he had become. He would give us sermons about bullshit little things that we didn’t… And the level of hate that he gave to Emma and Laurelen when he realised what was going on between them. My brother was no saint.”

I realised that I needed to wipe my face.

“My brother was no saint. He was just a man. He came to his revelations late in life but he was just a man. He farted and drooled and got drunk like the rest of us. He had a talent for remembering scriptures, had a good singing voice, speaking voice and he never looked at a woman sideways so he was well suited to the church, but he was a man. He got jealous and he got angry. He was proud and… ambitious. I remember talking with him and how angry he got when he realised that he would climb no higher in the church hierarchy because of Father’s position. I remember how disappointed he was.”

I ran out of words.

“So you’re telling me that your brother was just a man,” The Hierarch began.

I said nothing, hearing my petulance in the words of the holy man in front of me.

And my anger rose to meet it.

“And my mother,” I began.”She murdered her eldest son. She admitted it. She stood there and admitted it. But worse than that, she could have stopped all of this. She could have dealt with it all, in advance, without anyone having to be in pain, or suffer or…

I wiped my face on the back of my sleeve, a habit from childhood that used to be the bane of my mother as I left tears and snot trails up my sleeve. With the added wrinkle that nowadays, I have a wooden hand so I’m just as likely to give myself a black eye.

“She could have told everyone everything. The moment she came south. The moment she was out of the power of the cult, she could have told everyone what was going on. The Eternal Flame would have gone north and the cult would have been no more. Edmund would not have been corrupted and therefore, Sam would never have become….

“She could have done something. She should have done something. But now she’s dead and she did her best to die a martyr’s death. She forgave Sam when she died. She apologised.

“WELL IT’S TOO FUCKING LATE NOW ISN’T IT.”

I staggered a bit, not remembering when I climbed to my feet and needed to take a moment to catch my breath.

Neither the Hierarch or Father Anchor did or said anything. They just sat there and I made myself sit down in an effort to calm myself.

“My mother,” I began again, quieter. “Mmyyyyy Mother. She ignored Sam. He said it and I absolutely believe him. He tried to tell her what the problem was and she ignored him because she was too busy watching Francesca run around and scrape her knees in the flower garden. I can absolutely believe that. Just as she used to ignore the pain that Father caused me because to do otherwise was to lead her into a confrontation.

“And now she’s dead. She’s dead and she’s going to lie in the place that she wants to be laid. Mother Nenneke tells me there’s a little orchard where the dead nuns and healers get to be laid to rest. Then they can fertilise the fields and the fruit and help to feed the next generation, even in death. She’s dead and that’s what she gets. She gets peace after all that she has done. She gets peace after all she did NOT do. She gets peace.”

I forced myself to breathe in and out and realised that I was weeping.

“Flame curse me,” I muttered as I examined the ruin that I had made of my left sleeve. Finally, belatedly I pulled out a rag and blew my nose.

“It will not do that my son,” The Hierarch said softly. “It will not do that. Tell me though, do you wish you could join them? Your Mother, Your brother and the rest.”

“No,” I lied and knew it for a lie the moment I said it. “I mean… sometimes. Life would be less complicated and what’s so great about living anyway. I’ve lost… so much. And people tell me all of the things that I have gained. I have money, wealth and power but in doing so I’ve lost my friends.

“Kerrass is gone. He wouldn’t stay, he can’t stay and I don’t know why. He promised me that he was going to stay with me and that we would work through all of this together and now his actions have made a lie of that. I don’t know what he’s going through or what he’s thinking. But I wish he would have told me, I might have been able to help.

“Ariadne is so far away from me now. I mean, she sleeps a couple of rooms away and we see each other in the morning and the evening but she’s so far away and I can’t reach her. I can’t. I’ve tried and she flinches away. My presence hurts her and I don’t know what to do about it. There are days where I bid her good night at her door where I honestly think it would have been better for everyone if I had left her in her cave so that she could sleep and heal and do… whatever it was that she needed to do. I love her desperately and want nothing more than to talk it all out with her. I want to be held in her arms and have this rant to her rather than the highest churchman in the land.”

We all managed to chuckle at the levity.

“I love her and I remember the words of all of the entities that I have met. That all I have to do is love her, but Flame, sometimes loving someone is supposed to be about letting them go isn’t it? Should I let her go? There are days when it seems like she’s halfway out the door as it is. Is it my own selfishness that keeps her here?”

I shook my head at the question.

“I don’t know, I don’t….

“Emma is going too. I don’t know how to help her. In the same way that people told me that all I have to do is to love her… Were they talking about my sister not Ariadne? Which of the two do I love?”

“Both,” suggested Anchor.

“OF COURSE BOTH,” I snarled. “Sorry, sorry. But Emma is fading. Did you know that they have to take her knives away at the end of the day. When she’s done they have to search her desk and things to make sure that they have all of her knives that she would normally use for sharpening quills. She has three normally but she’s recently tried hiding them because she wants to feel safe? But at the same time, Laurelen caught her holding one differently and examining her wrists, or so Laurelen thought. Scared the life out of her.”

The two churchmen shifted their weight in discomfort.

“Emma swears that she wouldn’t do anything, but Laurelen is afraid which means that I’m afraid. My sister. She used to be so full of life. I once said that all of the women that have shared my life get compared to my sister in some way and that is no longer true. I compare them to who my sister used to be. I remember her being so full of life and happy. I remember her laughing and smiling and confounding our parent’s attempts to get her married while looking after me and telling me that our parents love me.

“I miss her. I miss my sister and she hasn’t gone anywhere. Someone else that this whole fucking thing has taken away from me.

“Francesca is gone now. We’ve known it for a long time but she’s really gone now and I don’t know what there is left for me to bury. Not that it matters. Toussaint has already taken her away from me and made her a saint. This virginal thing that I do not recognise. I loved my sister, I did, I still do and although I remember the image that she presented, the virginal, perfect flower of a young girl. The pretty dresses, the jewellery, the wit and the charm that could reduce anyone to a gibbering wreck. The way that she could just smile at someone and they would be swearing that they would do anything for her.

“And that is true, that was there. I remember that. But it takes away the mischief. The humour. The faces that she would pull when she thought no-one was looking. The way that she knew how to diffuse a family argument by acting out because she knew that she was favourite daughter and therefore, could get away with it. I have been saved from a whipping or three by her ability in that.

“The way she would be standing there, in a perfect dress with her hair done up and her makeup perfect as a young man came to meet her, long before Father would even get close to allowing her to be courted and then she would turn and reduce everyone into hysterics with a dirty joke.

“And then I remember the woman that she was becoming. Armoured, fit, lean, muscled… Strong. But my sister was still there. Happy, kind… loving… mischievous. There is none of that in what Toussaint has made of her and now, if I try to tell some of them, even my closest friends, even people that met her, about a dirty joke that Francesca once told me while we were waiting… something, I don’t know… They will tell me that I am being disrespectful to the memory of the saint. Fuck that, it was my sister. She was my sister. Not this… thing dressed in white with her hands held to the heavens with a look of supplication.”

“She has become a symbol, my son.” The Hierarch said. “People need symbols. They need them to guide themselves forward, there is no shame in that.”

“Then they can use someone else.” I growled. “Use a flag for fuck’s sake, that’s what everyone else does. But they’ve taken my sister from me. I have to go south soon to attend her official funeral and I don’t want to go. People are going to come and offer their condolences but I don’t know the woman that they’re burying. That’s not my sister. That’s not… She would have hated it.”

“No she wouldn’t,” Anchor said. “You yourself have admitted that. You wrote that she would have found it funny, then she would have found it an honour. Then, eventually, she would have decided that if that is what they needed of her then that is what she would be.”

I glared at him. He was right, I do remember that being said although I thought it was Emma that said it.

“That doesn’t change that my sister is being taken away from me and turned into something else,” I argued. “And now you are taking away my brother as well. Mark. The man who would sneak me sweets when he thought Father couldn’t see. The man who would hold out his finger to be pulled and then when his victim did pull on the finger he would give the longest, most musical fart that you’ve ever heard. My brother… He was not a saint, he is not a saint. He is not a symbol.”

I shook my head in frustration. The tears had come back again and were obscuring my vision. I am the most powerful man in the North of the continent but I didn’t want to wipe my eyes again for fear of what my laundry people would say.

“I know that things have changed,” I all but whispered it. “I know that Mark was dying anyway and I know that Mother had left a long time ago, long before she actually left the castle. I know that Francesca was going to be the confidante of the Empress and eventually marry someone in the South and I knew that she was dead a long time ago. Long before I knew she died. Emma has always been more powerful than me, stronger, more intelligent and Mark… Poor Mark.”

I gave a little sob.

“But they are all becoming something that I do not recognise. Something else. Something so vast and frightening. Francesca is a Saint already in the South. People talk about her visiting them as visions. People have been healed for the Flame’s sake when they are placed on the statue’s base. She comes to people in dreams… WELL WHERE’S MY FUCKING DREAM?”

I took a breath.

“Emma is a shade of what she was but she is still making money and we are still becoming richer faster than I can spend it and I can spend money quickly now. Mark… Poor Mark… A Saint?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t recognise these people any more,” I all but whimpered.

Silence fell for a long moment that seemed to spread out. I was watching the Hierarch who was watching me with what I imagine to be a very similar kind of expression to... Like a Witcher who has thrown a bomb and that bomb hasn’t gone off. He looked the same way that most churchmen do. He looked stern, gentle and if an expression could be described as being “benevolent” then he was wearing that expression.

Then a voice came from a quarter that I don’t think either of us expected.

“Yeah… Do you not think you’re being a bit hypocritical there My Lord?” Father Anchor asked in a genial tone of voice while scratching his chin.

I sniffled and stared at him, again committing the cardinal sin of scuffing the tears and snot from my face with my left sleeve.

“What?” I asked, incredulous at this unexpected attack from an unexpected place. It was like being savaged to death by a rabbit. “I don’t understand, what are you…”

“I mean, and I don’t think I’m wrong here, but what the basic nature of your complaint seems to revolve around, to me, is that you don’t want the people around you to change.

“You want your sister to remain your rock. You want her to be as funny, charming and beautiful as you ever remember her being. You want her to be there for you when you are overwhelmed by this thing or the other and you want her to take you in her arms and tell you that it’s all going to be alright. Just as she used to do when you were young and she was trying to protect you. Isn’t that it?”

Can you be both gentle and scornful at the same time? If so, that was what Anchor was doing.

“Ariadne is pretty much the same. She has been a power in your life. You describe her as this supremely beautiful and powerful being. Intelligent, wise, charming, funny and all the rest of it. Your perfect woman and now she is struggling to be that.

“And you also resent the fact that death has claimed those that you love and yet they are still changing.

“You want your mother to be the same aloof, distant, neglectful, remote… I’m running out of words that essentially mean the same thing. You want the mother back that used to ignore you, the terrified little girl that fled from the north into your Father’s arms who found love and fulfilment there for a while until she changed again and sought holy orders. You still want your mother to be mooning around the castle and feeling a guilt that you assigned to her. And even more than that, you resent her for finding some measure of peace in the penance that you set her.

“Are you so surprised that she found her peace there? Are you so surprised that she found a measure of comfort in what she was doing and so became more than she had ever been before. She learned so much in that period of time at the abbey, including how badly she had treated all of you. Yes she could have done more at the time. And yes, I will agree that she could have solved the entire situation if she had just listened to your brother Sam in the first place. But how often had she heard tales being told about your elder brother. And she was looking after your youngest sister, which is what she was supposed to be doing.

“I never knew your youngest sister, but yes, she is changing in the aftermath of what has happened and yes, it is also true that she is a saint. I have read the reports and there are honest to flame factors that prove that she has ascended in some way.

“And yes, your brother changed. He was dying. Sickness and pending death can change a man. It can. The idea of pending mortality is a perspective that not many people get the time to come to terms with. But your brother took that and changed it into something for the positive and it was that that is making him a saint. And you cannot tell me that you would have loved the man that he used to be.

“You seem to forget that I have read your works too. The man that we first met as your brother despised your sister for her preferences towards female lovers. He hated your best friend and was actively working to have the woman you love declared monstrous and heretical. It was only in the confirmation of illness that he let that go and rose to be a better man.

“Everyone changes milord. Everyone. And you are sitting there because everyone has changed into things that you do not recognise. Living and dead.”

I just stared at him, tears threatening to fall.

“But I call you hypocrite, not because you have a desire to return to a simpler time, when you were a disappointment to your Father, your mother neglected you and all the rest of it. But because you also expect all of those people to put up with the changes that you have put them through.”

I was aware that I was gaping at him but I couldn’t stop.

“You were the youngest son. Literally, the spare one. The one that no-one could control. Smarter than they wanted you to be, uglier than they needed you to be. Too clever to be a priest or a courtier, not strong enough to be a soldier. Not hard enough to be a politician and too honest to be a seducer of noblemen’s daughters. Too poetic to be a merchant, too down to earth to be a poet. Too lazy to gain rank, too angry to settle in one place, too romantic to settle for something… lesser. Not even determined enough to become a famous drunk and gambler. Too curious, too romantic, too interested in tiny unimportant things.

“There was no expectation on you. Everything that your father tried to turn you towards failed. You could not find a wife, could not find a task to fulfil you, could not find a topic to interest you at university. You were doomed to be your parent’s greatest fear. The shiftless nobleman’s son that had no prospects, no future and even worse than that, no ambition to be anything other than a little nobleman’s son, living off his Father’s wealth while he descends into obscurity and dies early from some pox or some kind of sickness of the liver after you try and live like a student. Still trying to be a student long after you are twice as old as any of the people that you try to live around.

“But then you decide to follow a Witcher around. Not just any Witcher, a Cat Witcher at that. It is no exaggeration to say that they are the scariest Witcher school. Not because of their skills or their powers, but because of their mental… I’m going to call them “issues”.

“And again, I remember something else. You fell on the topic of Witchers purely because no-one else was working on them. It was an open field so you would have no-one to compete with on the subject. And suddenly… you’re off. Like a race-horse being released onto the course.”

A thought visibly occured to him.

“Or a hunting hound released at his prey.”

He nodded his satisfaction at the point before starting again.

“You were the one that changed first. Before Francesca, before Emma, Before Mark, your Mother, Father and everyone else involved. You changed. Suddenly, there was a fire underneath you. You had ambition, your rage and your frustration were levelled at other targets. You started to see what was real in the world. You moved out there, you saw what life in the continent was really about and you started to become a man, leaving the boy you had been behind.

“Suddenly, everything was different. You became a fighter, a killer even. You became the kind of man that leapt into collapsing buildings to rescue children. You became a hero. Even while you are humble enough to admit that you pissed yourself while you were doing it. You became a lover too, you became confident. You had a field of study in which you were becoming an authority and because you had chosen that particular field of study, you started to become famous.

“You were standing on the shoulders of a giant in the figure of Professor Dandilion to be sure, but without your work, your sister would never have been noticed. She would have just been one more other young girl that had been sent to the Imperial court to gain the eye of the Empress. After that, have you ever wondered how many avenues opened up for your sister’s mercantile endeavours due to your efforts, the contacts you made and the favour that your sister gained in the court.

“Would Sam have been allowed to keep Kalayn lands if he hadn’t been part of such a famous family? The Kalayn name is old and prestigious whereas the Coulthard name is new and… kind of tarnished by your new money influences. Would someone have challenged that will, especially given the heretical nature of the person that gave the will, or the suspicious nature of how your brother inherited?

“Would the manhunt for your sister have been quite so all encompassing if your… It goes on and on.

“So the people that know you, your mother, your friends and siblings, all have to contend with the fact that their shiftless layabout, student of a son, friend and brother comes home. He’s made himself famous by the fruits of his own labours. He walks with a confidence of step enough so that trained warriors step aside from him. He has secured an engagement with a noblewoman of higher rank than any of the rest of your siblings could even dream of before you had started.

“You are friend and adopted brother of the Empress, you have the gratitude of several members of the Skelligan court and the Lodge of Sorceresses for your interdiction in her determination to board the skeleton ship. You are chosen as a comrade of the newest and arguably most powerful of the Skelligan Jarls. You have the ear of multiple monarchs. You are instrumental in the founding principles of the Knights of Saint Francesca. You have unearthed and uprooted the single greatest heresy in the North, a heresy that has quietly been spreading its roots right under the noses of both the Eternal Flame and the Sky Father Kreve. And to cap it all off, you travel into the heart of the Black Forest of the South and converse with a figure of legend. Not to mention bringing a long lost colony of Dryads back into the modern world.

“You have elevated Elves, openly employed Dwarves and Gnomes while loudly declaring the benefits of their craftsmanship. You have loudly championed the rights of the common folk, castigated the more militant members of my religion, you have loved multiple women including non-humans and now you stand as the most powerful single man in the North of the Continent.

“Who has changed more? You or them?”

I had nothing to say to that.

“You have changed yourself and in doing so, you have changed the lives of those people around you. Not everyone is going to be comfortable with that. And you have the temerity to demand that they stay the same? Shame on you Milord, Shame on you.”

His tone of voice made it funny and I saw the hierarch hide a smirk behind his hand.

“The world has changed Freddie,” Anchor went on. “Do not resent people for changing. Sometimes people change for the better and sometimes people change for the worst. Also, change is scary. It’s ok to be scared but it is not ok to be angry at people for their own changes. Some people are changed by the world and some people change the world themselves. You have done both. Do not be resentful of other people when they do not catch up as quickly as you would like them to, or that the world changes people in ways that you do not appreciate.

“Things change. It is one of the few constants on the continent. Do not resent change or you will be forever resentful. And that resent is poisonous.”

There was another long pause as I think all three of us realised that Anchor had stopped speaking.

The look of horror that started to cross Father Anchor’s face was comical and I would have laughed if I wasn’t feeling so raw.

“Sorry Holy Father,” he bowed towards the older man, “did you want to say something?”

The Hierarch very carefully reached to one side and poured himself a drink.

“Tell me,” he began, “what rank did we give you so that you could be a confessor to the Duke here?”

“Uhh, Deacon… Holy Father.”

The Hierarch set his cup down and pulled out a notepad on which he made a small note.

“We shall have to do something about that.” He said. “A young man of your talent should be at least a Bishop by now.”

“But… I thought that the whole marriage thing… I thought…”

“Yes,” the Hierarch raised a bushy eyebrow at the younger priest. “You have done entirely too much thinking.” He set the notebook aside and picked up his cup which he used as a cover so that he could wink at me. “As for the marriage thing? I look forward to meeting your wife. If everything I have heard of her is true, then she seems like a most sensible young woman. Other than marrying you of course. I am pretty sure that she would make for a better priest than some others that I could mention. We are all thinking of certain names I am sure.

“But you are telling yourself lies if you think you are the first priest to fall in love and be married.”

“What?” Anchor’s moth was opening and shutting like a fish.

I perked up, this was news to me as well.

“Naturally, priests are only human after all. More often than not though, they tend to call these women other things. Housekeepers are often the term used. Always seemed a sensible arrangement to me. A woman’s touch, a woman’s perspective can keep a man grounded and sensible in the wake of... All of the rest of it. Still, after you have served the relevant amount of time, we will see to it that you are in a position to influence things. A voice such as yours should be heard.”

Father Anchor sat back, dazed.

“Another life that has changed in your passage.” The Hierarch told me with a smile and another wink before gazing at me shrewdly. “Tell me though, Lord Duke, who else has changed, is being changed beyond your recognition?”

“What, I don’t know…”

“Who do you miss that is not who they used to be? Who was missing at your wedding?”

“Kerrass was…”

“Not Kerrass. I rather think that Witcher is the one that has changed the least since you first started your travels. Who else?”

It took me a long moment to realise who he was talking about. But when I did I went through the full range of emotions. I was enraged, I was terrified, frustrated, self-hating, but most of all a terrible grief welled up in my chest and I didn’t know what to do with it.

I have never had a heart attack but that is what it felt like.

“It’s alright Lord Frederick,” The Hierophant told me. “You can say it aloud, you are among friends and priests here and your word will be protected.”

I couldn’t say it though, the pain in my chest had spread out to my throat and I couldn’t force the words out. I wanted to scream but I had no breath to do so.

“Lord Duke… if I may… Freddie, you need to say it. You need to know that this feeling exists. Let it go, let it out. Tell us… who do you miss?”

“I miss Sam.” I wailed, “Flame preserve me but I miss Sam. I miss my brother.”

The rage came back.

“Not the thing that he became, not the traitor, the torturer and the heretic, my brother.”

I struggled to breath and I couldn’t sit still. I fell.

“My brother could never do those things. Not Sam. I was there. I saw what he did, I heard what he did and Flame knows that I felt what he did but I don’t believe it. I still don’t believe it. That wasn’t Sam. It wasn’t…”

I sobbed and wept and howled for a moment.

Father Anchor came to help me and I threw his hands from me.

“He was my brother.” I wailed. “He wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. But now he’s the arch traitor and heretic. The raper of women and the torturer of … me for the flame’s sake. Oh Sam…

“He was my brother and he was going to stand next to me at my wedding. Along with Mark, and Kerrass and fucking Ciri for the flame’s sake. He was going to be there and he was going to make jokes and tease me for the rest of the night. He was going to tease Ariadne too, asking if she had a sister or something and then he was going to give me lots of lewd tips about how to treat my wife on my wedding night before running off and spectacularly failing to seduce one of the Sorceresses.

“That is my brother. That was Sam.

“Oh Sam. Why did you…”

I wept again for a while.

“I miss him. I miss that Sam, THAT Sam. And I know that all of it is a lie. I know that it was some deception, some grand deceit that he wove and threw at all of us but all I want right now… I want my brother back.”

I swear that I could see Sam standing next to the Hierophant, looking down on me sadly. He was wearing a plain shirt, trews and riding boots with his sword strapped to his waist. He was looking at me sadly.

“He was my brother. He was my comrade in arms. Emma always objects to the idea that the castle in our childhood was a warzone, but on that battlefield, Sam was my comrade. He was the man that stood with me elbow to elbow against the tyranny of our Father. We were just kids but we saw the unfairness of it all and we tried to help each other, he was my brother.

“Edmund was just a bastard, Mark was more of a Father to me than Father was and Emma was more of a Mother. Francesca was my sister but SAM WAS MY BROTHER and now he’s being taken away from me. How do I grieve for the brother that I lost when I’m not allowed to say his name? How can I properly say Goodbye to the brother that… that I helped kill if I can’t say his name? He was my brother.

I lapsed into silence for a while.

“More than anyone else, that is the face that I miss. That is the person that I want to turn to. That…

“I still, even now… I still go through all of my old interactions with him. I still want to see if there is something that I missed, something that I could have used to try and help him. I go over childhood events and Flame damn it… I want my brother back.”

I sobbed again. Dimly, in the back of my mind I can distinctly remember looking at myself and telling myself that I was just throwing a tantrum and that I needed to pull myself together.

But instead I got worse.

“Do you know,” I said aloud. “That there are such things as demons. I mean the real ones, not the scientific terms that I talk around in writings. Yes, I know that the term classically means “beings that come from other spheres of existence” but given that we, meaning humanity, came from another sphere of existence then I don’t think that means very much.

“But the real demons, the ones that take possession of people and make those people do evil, horrible things to other people. Those kinds of demons. The ones that evoke images of people tied to beds and stakes while holy people throw holy water and things at them while brandishing holy symbols and muttering archaic spells that we call exorcisms.

“Those demons. They do exist but they hardly ever do what they are supposed to do.

“I’ve been waiting… I’ve longed for it. I’ve been waiting for someone else to say it first and I want it to be true so very badly.

“Sam was possessed. I mean, I know that he wasn’t but I want him to be. Sam was possessed. That wasn’t Sam, that wasn’t my brother. He didn’t do these things. He didn’t kill…. Flame… I so badly wanted to believe that he had been possessed.”

I stuttered to a halt.

“And he’s declared Anathema now. I can’t even legally say his name, let alone mourn him.

“And I know, I know that the only way that I can reconcile these things is if my Sam is my brother and the other, real Sam is… whoever or whatever… I know that I can mourn the man I lost while hating the man that…

“It’s just…

I stopped talking abruptly, just stopped. There was another long pause.

I could hear the distant sounds of the city outside the Hierophant’s shutters. I could hear city stall holders selling their wares and city watchmen calling the time with the legend “All’s well”.

Then I started to weep. Proper tears. What I would almost have called “healthy tears”. I slumped against whichever piece of furniture was leaning against and fell, lending on my ass and fell backwards. Covering my face.

I lost a bit of time after that until Father Anchor came and helped me up and held onto me as I wept my grief for the man that I had not allowed myself to grieve.

“Well,” the Hierophant said when he was sure I was calm and sitting back in my chair. “The Great Duke of the Pontar is human after all.” He smiled as he spoke.

“Lord Frederick… Freddie. Look at me.”

I did as I was told. When the head of your religion tells you to do something, you damn well do it.

“You are only human. You are supposed to love your brother. Samuel deceived many and the fact that you were deceived by him makes you one of those people. Even those people that were on his side were deceived by him. And for all any of us know, he had been the victim of dark magic for a while and maybe he was possessed, or was not himself anyway.

“It seems to be your nature to take on burdens that you do not own. That is understandable given your situation and your history. But remember that none of this is your fault. None of it. The person that did these things was Samuel. He knew the difference between right and wrong but he did it anyway. We know this because if he had been truly convinced of his cause, he would have told everyone about it and his followers would have included some of the truly powerful of the North. But instead, he was followed by weak, ambitious men.

“And just because he was evil and dark to a lot of other people, that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t your brother all the same. And that doesn’t mean that he didn’t love you in his own way.

“What he did was monstrous and there were a lot of things that were done to him to make him that way. He was made into what he was.

“I agree with you, treasure the man that you remember and vilify the man that did these things. Remember your brother in your heart while the traitor burns in the cleansing flame. Just take care not to get the two confused. It is no sin to love your brother. As the prophet once said, ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin,’ and for you, I hope that takes special meaning.”

I nodded, accepting the point.

“I, and others,” he continued, “think that you are doing well, better than you might have done otherwise. You are without corruption, just keep your head, trust your closest advisors, especially the remarkably wise young man that you have chosen as your confessor and I agree with those other entities. Love your wife, she will return to you in time. She loves you, Lord Frederick, do not fear that.”

We spoke for a little while longer before I left.

I spent a couple of nights at the Rosemary and Thyme after that. I felt the need to retreat to a place of safety and security before I struck out again.

-

I think that this is the last time that I will put pen to paper to talk to you all now. I have spoken to the Empress and she has agreed that I might be permitted to grieve for my brother. So I can tell you that I can grieve for my brother. There are now two men in my presence. Lord Kalayn who led the rebellion, and Sir Samuel who was my brother. That might not be true in the courts of the rest of the land but it is true in my lands so I will thank you to remember that.

I attended the formal funeral of Saint Francesca. It was a very beautiful time. I was the only member of the family that was well enough to go. Emma, Laurelen and Ariadne stayed in the North to continue their duties and their hopeful path towards recovery. It was good to see Guillaume and Lady Vivienne, Gregoire and Lady Anne. I enjoyed watching Knight Commander Syanna and Captain de la Tour needle each other and I may say that Toussaint as a whole, did my family much honour. I was able to cheer the jousts and I was honoured to speak at the funeral to tell people how honoured I was, how honoured our family was and how honoured my sister would be given the great works that had begun in my sister’s name. I attended the parties and avoided those people that did their best to try and insinuate themselves into my company when it was not wanted.

I did not visit the Belles of Beauclair, no matter what you have heard from other people. I am still not well enough to act on any… of those activities.

Although I was welcome at the palace and I did spend the night on either side of the formal service, I spent the rest of my time there in Corvo Bianco where the servants, Lord and Lady of the house looked after me by virtue of just leaving me to it. It was nice not to be treated as an invalid and to just be treated as Freddie for a while. I looked over some of Lady Yennefer’s notes and expressed some opinions but beyond that, I just rested.

A similar fuss was made about Mark’s internment. I managed to hobble behind his coffin as it was placed in its niche inside the chapel of the saints and I knelt in prayer for a long time. Again, Emma was not well enough to emerge and Ariadne didn’t think it would be entirely political to stay there. There were many church services performed throughout Novigrad and I attended a couple and I shed many tears. I could almost feel Mark getting further and further away from me and the pain that this caused me was immeasurable.

I didn’t stay in the city that night.

Mother’s body was taken away by the priestesses of Melitele and my advisor Iona went with them for a while to witness the burial. I gave them the permissions and my mother was interred as a full priestess of the Goddess. I am… proud that she was able to achieve her measure of redemption. And along with the symbol of the Eternal Flame around her neck, there was the symbol of the Gryphon there as well.

The historian in me laughs at this. In years to come, long after I am forgotten and these writings are dust, when some future archaeologist digs up that grave and finds the Witcher pendant there as well as a holy symbol, I can only imagine the confusion and the arguments that this will start about whether or not Witchers could be female.

Rickard was buried on a hill near a large chestnut tree which Padraig claimed to be Rickard’s favourite kind of tree. There weren’t many of us there. Myself, Padraig, Carys and the other surviving members of the men and Elves that came from the North. Shani was there too although we didn’t speak.

Shortly after my recovery, Shani came to see me with tears in her eyes and told me that she could not forget that my brother had killed the man that she loved. She knew that I was not to blame and forgave me my part, but whenever she looked at me, she saw my brother and she couldn’t help but hate me.

I miss her.

It is a nice burial site and when I am better, I intend to visit that site often.

Anchor performed the service but apparently, Rickard would not have wanted the grave marked. He was buried with his sword, his bow and a quiver full of arrows and a long hunting knife so that he would be properly prepared in the next life.

Shani was dressed as though she was the bride at a wedding and laid her flower wreath at the feet of the small mound of earth before she went and knelt next to the grave while Anchor performed the service, the tears spilling down her cheeks.

Afterwards we all went to a nearby river and the bastards along with Carys and a couple of the Elves that had accompanied us in the North took bows and lit flaming arrows. The arrows were fired up in arcs that emulated the sunshot until the arrows themselves fell into the river with a small puff of steam and smoke.

I wept, I don’t mind admitting that I felt ashamed that I could not fire an arrow of my own. Rickard would not have minded, nor would anyone else notice or particularly care. But I couldn't help but look up at the hill and the tree under which Rickard will sleep until the world ends.

Shani was standing there. I felt that she was watching us and she turned away to stare into the distance.

I no longer love Shani, I have not done so for a long time but for a moment there, I mourned the loss of that feeling. I wished that I still had it in me to go up that hill, take that woman in my arms and comfort her.

I also hated Sam again that day. There are many days when I remember the man that I thought he was and miss that man with all my heart. But then there are other days like that day when we mourn the death of a better man when the rage and hatred turns into acid in the depths of my belly.

When we were done, We went to the nearest tavern and drank it. We would have liked to have gone to Chireadean’s inn but as that was burnt down and the Elf himself was nowhere to be found, we just picked a nearby one that Padraig recommended as not caring whether or not they served their beer to Elven patrons.

If you read this Chireadean, then know that we missed you that day.

You too Kerrass.

When all that was done, I went to the family crypt. It was the last thing that I wanted to do. When everything else was done, that was the bit I reserved for when it was all finally over. I wanted it to be my last farewell. The last thing to be done. Emma, Ariadne, Laurelen and I will be living with these events for the rest of our lives. Despite this, I wanted a line in the sand. A line that we would be able to move past and look back on so that we could know that we were moving past it.

It was just a small gathering really and it was deliberately kept that way, so please don’t be offended that you weren’t invited. I mean nothing about it. This was a party for old friends of the family. Men and women that were around since long before other relationships were formed. Old friends of Mother and Father. Francesca’s old friends, A couple of Mark’s old teachers and students in the church. That kind of thing.

Emma made it there and she seemed comforted by those people that were there. Old friends, business colleagues and lawyers that had known her since she was a child. She was not the Emma of old but she was certainly better than she had been in a while.

Ariadne came down and Ciri came rather than The Empress, going so far as to ride up to the castle in a shirt and trews with a hood hiding her hair and a sword on her back along with another one of the court ladies that Francesca had been close with at one stage. She wept along with the rest of us. All told, it was maybe twelve of us as we went down into the family crypt, the other guests waiting back at the castle.

But there was no-one to bury. Instead of the ceremony that accompanied Father’s burial, there was no Family guard carrying a coffin. There was no procession, nor did the workers in the fields line the way to say farewell to the Lord. I had not wanted a fuss but a small part of me regretted that there wasn’t a fuss despite this. I wanted people to turn up spontaneously and I was sad that they didn’t.

As was proper only the close members of the family came into the crypt. In this case that meant Emma, myself and our spouses. Ariadne came in and sat on the central chair while Laurelen was Emma’s shadow.

We sat for a while in that place. Contrary to popular belief, the Coulthard family crypt is a well lit and ventilated place. Father had insisted that this would be the case when it was built. He wanted it to be easily maintained so that when people came to visit, as he hoped they would, they would not struggle, nor would there be any unsightly Necrophages or anything to come in.

Before everything happened, Emma also ensured that the place was regularly visited by priests and mages to ensure that no wraiths rose and Kerrass would go down there at least once per visit.

I had dreaded the thought that someone might have desecrated the place when everything was going on, but if anyone had, the place had been well cleaned up.

I examined the plates that were already there.

For the uninitiated, in our part of the world, the corpse goes in head first so that if the body does get animated by something then it will struggle to get out. I mean, that never happens without obvious external stimuli but even so… The fear and the superstition is always there. But then the grave is sealed up with a foot plate. As well as the usual name and date things, there is often something there to symbolise the person that lies in the grave itself and I examined the ones that had come before. As a family, we had kind of decided that these pictures should symbolise how we prefer to remember the dead.

My Grandfather and Mother had been here for some time. Grandfather… Father’s Father I mean, was portrayed as a man who had been a farmer and had grown that into a merchant empire. He was a nobleman setting aside his rich overcoat and jewelled chain in order to take up a farming tool of some kind from an unseen person.

I never asked Father what he had meant by it when he had ordered that plate. I suspect some kind of joke at my Grandfather’s expense because as far as I know, there was little to no love lost between the two.

Grandmother’s plate was just how I remember her. A short woman, slightly given to the rotund but dressed in the finest silks and jewellery. She was also mixing something in a bowl with vigorous movements. She was looking at the observer with a look of conspiracy. Having seen this scene many times, she was just short of offering the observer a lick of the cake batter smeared spoon.

I remembered talking to Mark about how we were going to portray Father. I remember that more than I remembered the picture itself.

“He was a hunter,” Mark said. “He was always happiest in the saddle with a falcon on his wrist and a hound between the horses hooves.”

“He should look up,” I agreed. “I remember him always being happier when he had spotted his prey, or an opportunity or something.”

“It was all the same thing,” Sam had said. “Whether it was his quarry, a merchant deal or an errant child that was stealing another biscuit. He was always happiest when he had seen something no-one else had seen.”

The three of us had laughed and the dwarven smith that specialises in this kind of thing nodded and made some notes.

The eventual result was of just that, a man on horseback with a falcon just taking flight and the hound at his feet just turning as it scented something. Father was leaning forward, eager to start the horse forward and towards its prey. Father’s face was hungry. The face was younger than I remembered and I wondered when I had last been down here to pay my respects.

Edmund’s plate was something Mark had chosen for himself. Of all of us, it was only Mark that had any fond memories of the eldest son of Lord and Lady Coulthard. And it showed a man that I hardly recognised. I remembered Edmund as an oily, handsome thin man with a goatee who always had some obscenely beautiful but classless thing on his arm that he had brought home to scandalise Mother and outrage Father. When he died he was gaining weight and had expanded his beard to hide his double chin. And he was going bald.

The footplate depicted a man sitting behind a table in, presumably a tavern. It was a man happier than I had ever seen Edmund being. He was dressed well but the ties at his neck were undone and hanging loosely, his waistcoat was unbuttoned and his legs were stretched out in front of him. There were Gwent cards on the table in front of him with a half eaten chicken. He was raising a tankard in toast towards the viewer.

Mark told me it was Edmund as he was supposed to be. There was truth there to what Mark said. I could have liked the figure in the carving.

We had a cup of the funeral wine without saying anything. Emma and I exchanged glances and I nodded to the masons who came in to fit the footplates in place and Ciri came in with them. I didn’t protest. She once declared herself our sister and asked me to be her brother.

Mother’s plate depicted a beautiful young noble-woman who was in the process of fastening a symbol of the Eternal Flame around her neck.

I remember the portrait of Mother that Father had kept in his chambers and I remembered being startled at the beauty of the woman depicted. I suppose it’s the place of a son to think of his mother as being beautiful but not in that way. So when I had seen that I had been given an insight.

This carving was based on that portrait. The woman was either getting prepared for the day ahead or getting ready to retire to bed. She was looking up at the observer with a small, shy smile. There was hope in that expression and it was all too easy to imagine that she had once looked at Father in that way.

I had not expected that one to affect me the most, but For a while there I could not stop the tears. There were many times that I disliked both my parents and there are colossal amounts of resentment that I still hold onto, but I would give anything, absolutely anything to speak to either of them again. I desperately want to be told that it’s all going to be ok in only the way that a parent can.

Mark’s was the easiest. Exactly the man that he was. When all of the ambition and learned prejudices and hatred had been stripped away. The carving portrayed a physically powerful man in a priest’s robe, kneeling in prayer. He had been startled by the appearance of a group of children and he was happily tousling a youngster’s hair and welcoming them to the prayer line.

I thought Mark would be proud of that.

Francesca’s plate broke Ciri.

I don’t know how the carver did it but it was just a standard portrait of Francesca. Hair done up in the latest style, there was a pendant around her neck. She looked beautiful but she was stifling laughter and was unable to keep that amusement from dancing in her eyes.

I could see the scenario in detail. She was sitting for a courting portrait. One of those portraits that would be sent out to would be suitors to attract proper suitors. Francesca was sitting there, having gotten herself all dolled up to look as beautiful as she could, something that she never found hard. But she could not help but be amused by the absurdity of the entire exercise.

I could see it. I could hear it. The echoes of her laughter were still in the air and someone, maybe the painter or our mother or a governess or someone had just admonished her to stay silent and to take this seriously.

Ciri collapsed next to the plate and bawled her heart out. I sat next to her and wrapped my arm around her while she wept. Emma joined us and Laurelen sat on the other side of Emma while Ariadne put her hand on my shoulder.

It took us a long time to recover from that moment.

But there was another plate to be put in place.

Even though she knew it was coming Emma shifted in discomfort as the masons put it in place. Ciri left before she saw it. I had had to ask her permission to have the carving done but even then, if she had seen it, she might have had to take steps.

Ariadne stared at it with a hard expression.

Sam stood there, looking out of the stone at us. He was the image of a Knight returned from a mission that someone had just handed a cup to. He was toasting the viewer, his hair plastered to his head. He was wearing a Redanian symbol.

Laurelen’s face crumpled for a moment before her face hardened and she spat so that her saliva ran down his face. She turned and left. Emma said nothing, just touched my arm with a sad smile. I don’t think she had even looked at the carving of Sam. She left to follow Laurelen.

Ariadne and I stood there for a long while.

“Fascinating.” Ariadne said after a while as I stood there looking down at Sam’s plate. “I would have thought that traitors and everything would be forbidden from having a place in the family crypt. Surely a family would want to expunge the shame.”

Her tone was curious more than anything else.

“On the contrary. We have to keep the same close to us to remind us that it exists.”

Ariadne nodded.

“How he should have been?”

“How he should have been.” I agreed.

“You are a good man Freddie, and I love you very much” she said, touching me on the shoulder. “I will be outside.”

I nodded. When I was sure she was gone, I bent down and used my sleeve to clean the carving of Laurelen’s spit. Then I stood and nodded to the mason who was carrying a large chisel. With two large strokes, a gouge was carved across Sam’s chest. I noticed that the carver avoided the Redanian crest though.

I found that funny.

Afterwards the word “Traitor” was carved crudely in the plate above Sam’s name.

When that was done, the carver left, leaving me alone.

-

So that’s it. Nothing else to say. This is the end of these chronicles as moving forwards, there are things that I am unable to discuss due to secrecy and privacy concerns. I hope that this is not the last that you hear from me. I am promised that life will slow down so that I can start returning to other things. Even if I can’t see that light yet. So I want to return to academic work. When I was in Toussaint, Lady Yennefer threatened to teleport to wherever I was and scream until I started work again and that was a threat that Lord Geralt told me I shouldn’t take lightly.

I miss those people that I have lost, including the Witcher that changed my life. I hope he is alright, wherever he is and if he is reading this. Come home Kerrass.

But other than that, I must now devote myself to those people that are still here. Especially the woman that I love.

I want to thank everyone reading this. I hope that you have learned something about this continent that we all share but if not, I hope that I have entertained you a little. All that I would ask is that you be nice to the other people that we share this continent with and respect those in a different station than you.

Thank you for reading.

Farewell.

(A/N:This is not the end, but Freddie does think it is. Don’t worry, I will not leave you like this. Time jump epilogue to follow, then my farewell to the world. See you in the next chapter. And echoing Freddie, thank you for reading)