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After Ciri’s done screaming—with the remnants of her uncontrolled burst of power still wracking her body, causing her muscles to spasm and twitch painfully—she drags herself across the courtyard to Vesemir’s body, but she doesn’t cry. Kneeling before his too-still form, she feels more shock and disbelief than anything else. Her breath is coming short, in small desperately inadequate gasps, making her light-headed and causing her vision to tunnel, greying out the rest of the world until the corpse is the only thing she can see. The grief is sitting inside of her, an immense, bottomless pit ready to swallow her whole. She stands on the precipice, but doesn’t fall. Yet.
She doesn’t know how long she sits there, frozen, unwilling to move forward into the sorrow that awaits her, but eventually Geralt finds her—as is his way. He lets the snow and ice crunch under his boots as he approaches, warning her of his presence. When he wants, he can move as silently as a shadow. Vesemir taught him how to do that. Vesemir taught her how to do that. Vesemir will never teach anyone how to do that again.
Her breath catches quietly at that, her first small admission that this is actually happening, that a future without the old man awaits.
Geralt stands behind her for a moment and she doesn’t have the strength to look at him. To see his grief would undoubtedly plunge her into her own and she obstinately does not want to face that. Eventually, he bends to pick up Vesemir’s discarded sword and resheathes it, as if he could not bear for his mentor to be unprepared, even though the swords will no longer do the old man any good. The action is so endemic to Geralt, such a fundamental aspect of his personality—to want to help, but to be unsure as to what he can actually do which is helpful—that her resolve to remain stationary at this point in time cracks and she stumbles forward, one step closer to the pit.
“I… I was too late… to help him.”
“It’s not your fault.”
His response is so predictable that it almost doesn’t register with her. He’s always had a blind spot when it comes to her. She’s always taken advantage of that. She’s always taken advantage of them all, depended on them too heavily, asked of them far too much.
“I should not have fled here to Kaer Morhen.”
Despite how it seems like an indisputable fact to her, she does recognize—after she’s spoken, of course—that her observation is a blatant opening for Geralt’s inevitable rebuttal. But there is nothing he can say in response to that that she can possibly believe right now, so it’s really a mercy when Yennefer decides in that moment to interject with practical matters and save them both from the argument.
“Avallac’h is weak, but alive. Triss is tending to the others.” The sorceress’ voice is sure and calm, in control in a way that Ciri envies. Ciri knows Yennefer, knows how she can struggle to express sympathy, so she knows what Yennefer is actually trying to say: don’t worry, everyone else is going to be alright.
But that isn’t good enough.
A sudden burst of frustration is enough to distract her from the looming potential of her grief, and the intensity of the unexpected emotion drives her to her feet. Her body tenses with the desire to move, to do something, to fix it. “I nearly killed you… Killed everyone…”
“We’d all be dead if not for you.” Geralt’s voice tries for certainty, but he has not mastered the ability to resolutely dictate facts into existence as Yennefer has. It’s a nice sentiment, but it’s just wrong.
This whole situation, she realizes with a cold clarity, is wrong. That’s why it feels so unreal: it should never have happened at all. She’s been in realities like this before when she was on the run from Eredin and the Red Riders, realities that have spun off their proper course and into chaos. That is exactly what this feels like.
“No, Geralt. The Hunt would never have come to Kaer Morhen if I wasn’t here.”
As much as he may want to, he can’t deny it. Unlike how she had phrased it earlier, that is just a fact. The truth of it hangs heavily between them until Geralt finally quietly says, “Vesemir’s funeral—we should prepare.”
But Ciri isn’t listening. She is the Lady of Space and Time and this isn’t right. She isn’t a witcher, left impotent in the face of forces beyond his control. She can fix this. She will fix this. Defiantly, she turns her back on the pit entirely and walks away.
*
The city of Brugge, capital of the Kingdom of Brugge, seat of power for King Venzlav and centre of commerce and civilization for the surrounding area, loses what little charm it had briefly possessed for Yennefer by the end of the second day of her sojourn there. That Brugge fails to compare to her own Vengerberg, the shining capital of Aedirn, is not surprising—Brugge is, after all, a vassal state to Temeria and not a proper kingdom in its own right—but even Gors Velen and Maribor have more to offer the discerning visitor than this backwater collection of peasants and buildings. There are no theatres, no schools or libraries, and, due to the imminent war, no parties. It’s also crawling with mages, which, Yennefer will magnanimously grant, is not technically Brugge’s fault.
After the Chapter had made the decision to intervene in the Nilfgaardian invasion in defence of the Northern Kingdoms, the call had gone out for all members of the Brotherhood who were willing and able to gather in Brugge in preparation to repel the inevitable incursion of the black ones at Sodden Hill. While Yennefer is not officially attached to the Aedirnian court, she had nevertheless chosen to answer the call when her king and countrymen had marched forth. The amassed forces of Aedirn, Kaedwen, Redania and Temeria are situated in the surrounding area, closer to the field of battle: a fortified hill across the river in Sodden.
Yennefer supposes she would reluctantly admit, if she were pressed, that Brugge is at least preferable to the mire and muck of an army encampment in terms of places to be left to loiter away the hours waiting for Nilfgaard to arrive. It’s why the Brotherhood, ever aware of its members’ delicate sensibilities and proclivity towards luxurious ease and extravagant comfort, chose to summon them to the city in the first place. They have been told that they will be rowed to the opposite bank of the Yaruga when their talents are actually required; the implication that they are far too important to be made to wait fruitlessly like the common rank and file going some way toward mollifying their formidable egos. Still, twenty-two scheming, manipulative, back-stabbing, gossipy magic-users sharing limited space while they imposed on the royally mandated hospitality of the eight reluctant ‘noble’ households that Brugge had to offer is well over Yennefer’s quota for bullshit per capita.
She had spent the first day strolling leisurely about the city and taking its measure, the first evening pleasantly reconnecting (and drinking to excess) with Triss and had managed to kill the second afternoon discussing the interesting properties of witcher mutations with Gorazd. However, by the end of dinner on that second day she is desperately in need of some time away from her compatriots. Vilgefortz, or rather the noble family Vilgefortz is currently inconveniencing with his illustrious presence, is hosting the entire group for the meal, and the insincerity in the room as they all fawned over ways to backhandedly compliment each other and jockey for position is so thick you could have cut it with a knife.
Yennefer is no newcomer to politicking and more than capable of playing the game with the best of them, but looking around the room at the perfect faces and practiced expressions she can’t help but feel the surreality of the situation. Victory against Nilfgaard is far from assured, no matter how prettily Vilgefortz proclaims the inevitable supremacy of their power. It is possible, likely even, that some of the people in this room, including potentially even herself, will be dead in a few days time. But this party is not the soldiers’ cynical celebration: drink now and make merry, for tomorrow we may die. This is a room full of people who are so accustomed to seeing themselves as the ultimate authority that they are lost in denial of their own mortality. It is nauseating. She picks idly at the feast presented to them for as long as she finds herself able, before pleading exhaustion and fleeing the gathering for the sanctity of her borrowed room.
Frustratingly, peace is no easier to find in these confines. Yennefer is, very assuredly, not ready to die. She may have had over a hundred years to work her will on the world, but she is far from finished. There are, she thinks, resting a hand on her empty abdomen, still so many things she wants to do. The thought of leaving, abandoning the cause entirely, flickers temptingly across the surface of her mind, but there is no way she could possibly do that and save face. It was known that she had gathered, it would be known if she left. And besides, she does truly believe that Nilfgaard has to be stopped, if for no other reason than the rumours of how the Empire of the Great Sun treats its own magic users. She is afraid, or uncertain at least, and she doesn’t like it, which makes her angry.
She then wonders if this feeling is something akin to what Geralt must feel before leaving on a contract—uncertain of his own survival but bound to the hunt by years of tradition and his own stubborn sense of duty and honour—but thinking of the witcher only makes her more angry. She hasn’t had any contact with him since she’d left him in Aedd Gynvael, after his petty argument over her with Istredd wherein the two of them had decided to butt heads like stags in rut over her affections. She had been considering seriously, there and then, sending Istredd away once and for all and potentially admitting that the witcher held a terrifyingly significant portion of her heart, but Geralt’s pride and refusal to admit his own feelings, coupled with her prickly reaction to his reticence, meant she had felt safer leaving them both behind. Even then, despite her resolution that the two men were both idiots and she was better off without them, there had always been the certainty at the back of her mind that there was time. Geralt was nearly as nigh-on immortal as she was and that damned wish was certain to pull them back together as inexorably as the tides. She had thought she could afford to wait.
Her reverie is interrupted by a clamour in the front hall. She can hear her host graciously greeting Coral with the news that yes, Lady Yennefer was home and he was certain she would be delighted to accept visitors, and Yennefer curses. With her mind in turmoil, her mental shields are weakened and, even if the chance is small, the absolute last thing she needs is for someone to pull her doubts and regrets out of her surface thoughts inadvertently. If she lives, she would never live that down.
She grabs her cloak and shimmies awkwardly out of her window onto the gently sloping roof like the rebellious teenager avoiding authority she has always been at heart. From the roof it is a short drop down to the garden and a haughty glare gets her through the guarded gate and into the streets of Brugge. She needs a drink and a place where her fellow mages will not think to look for her, so the seediest tavern she can find seems an appropriate destination.
Heading directly for the edge of town, she then follows the scent of stale beer and piss to a squat building. Given the sober traffic into and the intoxicated traffic out of it, she has to assume it is a pub despite the fact that the proprietor has obviously not deemed the place worthy of either a sign or a name. She pushes the door open to reveal a modestly sized common room, half full with the usual assortment of workmen and ne’er-do-wells and somewhat stuffy in the early summer heat. In her dinner dress and jewels it is obvious she doesn’t belong, but Yennefer has spent a great deal of her life in places where she was made to feel like she doesn’t belong, so she merely turns up her nose at the few curious looks she receives and strides confidently over to the bar. Confidence, she has learned, is easy enough to fake and is almost as good as magic when it comes to changing people’s perception of her and granting her entry to places.
“Est est,” she says, placing a ten crown piece on the damp, warped wood separating her from the skeptical barman.
“Don’t have it,” he responds gruffly, pocketing the coin regardless.
She feels her eyebrow twitch in annoyance. “Erveluce?”
The man just crosses his arms.
“Well what do you have?”
“We’ve got one red and one white. Don’t know that they have any fancy names.”
She clenches her teeth, but manages to force out, “White.” The man turns to head for the back room and she yells after him, “Bring the bottle!”
The label on the bottle he returns with is faded beyond legibility, but uncorking it she can smell that it is at least still wine and not vinegar, so she accepts the glass he hands her and turns to find an empty table.
She’s about half-way through it when the girl comes in.
Not girl, she corrects herself upon meeting the newcomer’s startlingly green gaze, woman. She is petite, lovely and fair, skin mostly unblemished except for a scar crossing her left cheek, but her eyes give the impression that she has seen far more than her youthful appearance might suggest. Her ashen hair is mostly bundled into a knot at the base of her neck, she has a sword slung over her shoulder and a dagger on her belt, and she’s dressed practically in leather and linen. Yennefer would assume she was just another fighter, one more teenager turned sellsword by the ravages of war, were it not for the unmistakable aura of chaos surrounding her like a pall. Another sorceress perhaps, answering the Brotherhood’s call?
“Yennefer?!?” The woman gapes in recognition, which effectively confirms Yennefer’s assumption that she is some recent graduate of Aretuza here to join the glorious cause. “What are you doing here?”
Yennefer is typically accustomed to a great deal more respect from her juniors, but in the interest of controlling the situation she deigns to ignore the familiarity of the greeting and waves the girl over. The other woman’s mind is heavily guarded, but Yennefer can pick up genuine surprise overlaying a deep pain. Maybe not a graduate then: an upper year student who has run away at the news of some horror befalling her homeland to throw her sword in where she thinks it might count. She has that desperate sort of determination about her, along with a hint of guilt at being caught.
The newcomer hesitates to accept Yennefer’s invitation, glancing back at the door furtively. She’s probably concerned that Yennefer will march her straight back to Rita and her studies, but ultimately decides to skulk over and take the chair across from her. She sits in silence, staring at Yennefer with an entirely unsettling intensity.
“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure yet,” Yennefer starts graciously, but the other woman continues to just stare until Yennefer finally adds, “Your name?”
She opens her mouth, closes it quickly and swallows, eyes darting down to her hands in her lap, before finally looking up again and saying, “Falka.”
Yennefer raises a brow. It isn’t the obvious lie that attracts her attention—it was not uncommon for adepts, especially the commonborn, to rechristen themselves while at school—but rather the audacious choice. “Rather inauspicious name.”
Falka shrugs. “I’ve lived a rather inauspicious life.”
Yennefer snorts at that. She cannot be more than twenty or so years old, what could she possibly know of futility and fate? But it would be unkind to say so, especially in the face of Falka’s obvious sorrow, and Yennefer does need the woman’s cooperation if she is to keep her little evening out slumming here a secret from the rest of the Brotherhood. “Well to answer your question, I’m having a quiet drink in this fine establishment free from the machinations of our esteemed order and I’d rather like it to stay that way. So I propose a truce: you will keep your mouth closed regarding my presence here and I won’t tell Headmistress Laux-Antille that I’ve found you. Deal?”
“Laux-Antille?” Falka’s brow furrows in confusion. “Margarita? Why would she—” A sudden revelation crosses her face. “Oh! I’m not a student at Aretuza. I didn’t...” She frowns slightly, as if she is somewhat unsure of the veracity of the words she finds herself speaking, and they leave a foul taste in her mouth as a result. “I didn’t run away.”
“You didn’t?” Yennefer asks skeptically. It seems impossible that with her aura she would not have been snatched up for the school. Anyone with even the barest connection to chaos can tell that she has power.
Falka glances guiltily away. “From that, at least.”
Yennefer narrows her eyes in suspicion, but Falka does not appear to be lying. If she isn’t affiliated with the Brotherhood, she poses no risk to Yennefer and there is no merit to continuing the conversation. She should just send Falka on her way. On the other hand, there is something in her demeanour that is almost painfully familiar. A look about her like she has made good decisions that she has been made to regret and bad decisions that have haunted and scarred her. A look that reminds Yennefer, for some reason, of Geralt. She is, in other words, interesting and Yennefer needs a distraction.
“Well, grab a glass then.” Yennefer gestures towards the bar. “This wine isn’t going to drink itself.”
Falka's eyes flicker to the door again, but only briefly. She fetches a cup, allows Yennefer to fill it for her and then drinks and pulls a face. “Ugh! That’s awful.”
“I know.” Yennefer smiles sharply. “Why did you think I was so willing to share? The only other option was a red of an equally unknown provenance and I can’t imagine it’s any better. I have to say, it does get better with time.”
“An acquired taste?” Falka smiles back.
“Or I’m just getting drunk,” Yennefer admits, earning a short laugh from the woman across the table. “The bouquet and flavour leave much to be desired, but the proof is strong.”
Falka takes another sip, wrinkling her nose adorably in distaste as she does so, and Yennefer is kind enough to let her swallow before bluntly asking, “So what are you running from then, if not Aretuza?”
Falka’s bright green eyes widen in surprise for a second and her mouth opens and closes several times before she finally decides what she is going to say. “I’m not running from anything,” she starts defiantly.
“Really?” Yennefer prods. “Because earlier you said—”
“I misspoke,” Falka interrupts. “I’m not running from anything, I’m running to something.”
“Are you?”
Falka nods. “I am. I’m going to— I am looking for— Oh,” she interrupts herself and drains her glass. “I don’t know why I’m telling you. It doesn’t matter. You haven’t seen her.”
Yennefer refills it for her. “Maybe, maybe not. You can’t know for certain until you ask.”
She looks for all the world as if she is about to say she does know for certain, but bites her tongue. “A young girl. Ashen blonde hair. Green eyes. She’s lost in the forest near here; I’m not sure exactly where. I never bothered asking. Everything was just not Cintra in my mind at the time...” She trails off, likely realizing that whatever tangent she’s found herself on makes little sense to her companion. “I need to get to her before— I need to get to her.”
“Daughter?” Yennefer guesses feeling a twinge of jealousy entwined with compassion.
The blood drains from Falka’s face and she freezes. “What?”
“Your daughter?” Yennefer repeats calmly, unsure of why her question elicited such a response.
“Oh!” she exclaims, and then repeats it again softer and with a hint of sadness. “Oh. No. She’s my younger… sister.” Falka fiddles with the glass in her hand, swirling the contents. “I have to find her before… before she meets someone she shouldn’t.”
It is a dangerous time to be a child lost in the woods—despite her eccentricities, Falka must recognize that truth—so the sorceress reserves judgement when the other woman coarsely drains her glass again and signals the barman for another bottle.
Once she’s paid the man and refilled both of their glasses, Falka seems to read Yennefer’s pessimistic outlook on her face and says firmly, “She is alive. I have no doubt about that. I just need to find her and I can make things right.”
“Have you been looking for her long?” Falka had mentioned Cintra and if the girl has been missing since that country fell then the odds seem to indicate that, despite Falka’s certainty, her search is likely hopeless. Although Yennefer has heard of bands of druids roving the area, rounding up the war-orphans and refugees and rehousing them with local families.
Falka huffs a small laugh. “Forever, it feels like. Although I’ve only just arrived now.”
“From?”
There’s a moment when Yennefer thinks Falka is not going to answer, but after a short internal debate she shrugs. “I guess there’s no harm in telling you now. As soon as I find her it won’t— Well, it doesn’t matter. I was in Vengerberg, actually. There was a letter there that I thought would… but it wasn’t enough. It’s never enough.”
She pauses for a drink and Yennefer is about to prompt her to continue when she starts again on her own, the words tumbling out of her quickly and with passion. She seems half-desperate to talk to someone, which Yennefer supposes explains why she agreed to join the sorceress at her table despite not being the delinquent student Yennefer had thought she was. “Before then I was in Metinna and before then Rivia and before then Redgill and before then Novigrad and before then Hindarsfjall and before then Kaer—Kaedwen. But every time, no matter what I did, no matter how many times I tried it was never enough. It’s maddening, but I had to keep going back further.”
Yennefer furrows her brow at that confusing turn of phrase, but Falka quickly clarifies, “Back to the source of the problem, I mean, instead of trying to deal with all of the fallout as it arises.”
“The little girl?” Yennefer asks, somewhat intrigued by Falka’s intensity. “Your sister?”
Falka nods. “She’s the key to it all. If I can get a hold of her here and now, I can fix it all.”
There’s a look in her eyes, a coldness and ferocity, and suddenly Yennefer isn’t so certain that Falka’s intentions towards her younger sister are entirely noble. She feels a rush of protectiveness for the unknown Cintran girl lost in the woods. It’s not an unfamiliar reaction for her, tangled as it is with her own unspoken desires and the ever lingering guilt over her failure to save Kalis’ baby all those many years ago. She has been sensitized to any perceived suggestion of violence against children, so she may be jumping to conclusions here. After all, she can sense no malice swirling on the surface of Falka’s mind, only stalwart determination. Falka is proving herself to be a compelling puzzle, as endlessly intriguing as Yennefer could possibly have hoped for in a distraction—or a friend.
Yennefer sips her own drink and prods encouragingly, “Fix what?”
“It’s, well”—Falka gestures vaguely—“complicated. And a very long story.”
Yennefer tuts condescendingly, aiming to goad her companion for more details. “Such a tease, little storyteller. Take a lesson from Master Dandelion: that’s no way to keep an audience entertained.
“He may be disappointed in me,” Falka says with a laugh, “but he’s quick to forgive. I think I’ll manage.”
“Come on,” Yennefer urges, filing away that little tidbit of information: that Falka is as casually familiar with the famous poet as she seems to be with Yennefer. The woman is either a little daft and assumes that knowledge of a person is the same as an introduction, or she is surprisingly well connected.
“All that work suggests a truly epic cause,” Yennefer continues. “Some grand matter of life or death.”
The mention of death chases the disarming smile from her face and the ice is back in her eyes as Falka answers, “He won’t die. None of them will die. Not because of her. I’ll make sure of it.”
“He?”
“My grandfather,” Falka tries to wave the topic away. “My uncles. My… my parents. I don’t want to— They’ll try to save her, putting themselves at great risk, but I’ll get her first so they won’t.”
It’s an admirable sentiment, to want to save those you love from any pain, but hits perilously close to a topic that has been haunting Yennefer for years. Impulsively, she decides to speak; if she regrets it the next morning, she can always blame it on the wine. “You don’t think your parents would rather risk themselves and spare you?”
Falka stutters. “They won’t— They won’t know. They’ll be fine. Good, even.”
Yennefer shakes her head and collects her thoughts, debating whether to continue the argument. Expressing her position aloud opens it up to criticism, and she isn’t certain she wants to take that risk. But just as Falka had felt the compulsion to explain herself, so does Yennefer. She might die in a few days’ time, lost to a war that is callously consuming the futures of so many people like the insatiable beast it is, so she may as well confess to the only person who seems willing to listen.
“For some people, there comes a time,” she begins carefully, “when they find they want to create something, to… to shape something for the future, something that connects them to the ageless onward march of history, something that makes them... matter. For some, like the aforementioned Dandelion, this manifests in a desire to create art. For some, the desire is satisfied in the relentless pursuit of science and the advancement of knowledge. For me, I thought my immortality was to be found in politics, but the shine came off that apple soon enough. For some it’s magic and for some it’s governance and for some it’s enough to teach their profession to the younger generation, but others”—she can annoyingly feel a faint flush saturating her cheeks—“others have children.”
Falka’s eyes widen in surprise, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“I’m not saying that is the only reason children arrive in this world. The act of creation in itself is, after all, pleasing, consequences be damned. And there are certainly those who reject the responsibility and the gift they are given, who can’t recognize what they hold in their hands over their obsession with their own petty present.” Yennefer frowned slightly at the uncomfortable memory of her own uncaring father. “But there will always be fools in the world and there is no accounting for their folly.”
She feels the compulsion to soften her voice as she reaches the crux of her argument, but forces herself to ignore it and continues confidently, “And it's selfish, undoubtedly, to bring a creature into this world simply to satisfy your own needs, but all love is, at its core, both selfish and selfless: to want someone so strongly, but at the same time to want to give them the whole world. There’s a reason that science tries to reduce it to hormones and that the poets won’t ever run out of material. It’s a contradiction in logic by definition, but yet the compulsion remains.”
“You want to be a mother,” Falka says, obviously surprised. “I never knew that.”
Yennefer raises a brow at that, annoyed again at the casual familiarity. “Well, we’ve only just met. Anyway, what I mean to say is, while it may hurt to lose a parent, an uncle or a grandfather, for them, I think, it must be exponentially more painful to lose a child. It’s against the natural order of things after all, for the elder generation to survive the younger.”
“But what if—” Falka starts quickly, but cuts herself off and reconsiders before continuing in a more thoughtful tone. “What if the child causes nothing but trouble? What if the child isn’t worth it? What if the child is nothing but a failure? Don’t you think, in that case, it would be better if they’d never met— never been born?”
She can’t help but think of Geralt at that, and their seemingly doomed affair. For the longest time after leaving him in Aedd Gynvael, she had wished that she had never met him, that their paths had never crossed in Rinde. It hurt too deeply, not having him, so much that it seemed to overwhelm whatever small joy she had previously found in the having of him. But as time passed and the ache eased, she couldn’t help but recognize that she had learned a lot about herself from the witcher, about the kindness she was awkwardly capable of and her own severely stunted but nevertheless still present capacity to accept gentle affection. She has hopes, if she survives Sodden, that she has not seen the last of him, that their story is not yet concluded, but even if she does die tomorrow, it would still have been worth it just as it was.
“Life is always a risk. Love is always a risk. After it has gone sour, of course one might curse someone they had once loved and wish that things had happened differently, even that they had never met, yet all disappointment fades with time. It is always better to know, to try, than to regret and wonder what if. But the sting of disappointment or failure isn’t what you’re running from, is it, Falka?”
“I’m not running from anything,” she insists obstinately. “I told you, I’m running to.”
“You're running to your sister because you’re running from the potential pain of losing someone you love; you said so yourself. But loving someone always comes with the risk of losing them. In any relationship—familial, romantic, friendly—someone has to eventually leave or die first. It’s infuriating, believe me, I know the madness it can inspire, but it is just the way the world is. You can’t control that.”
“You can’t,” Falka murmurs sullenly and Yennefer has no idea how to respond to that.
“I’m sorry,” Falka then says quickly, losing her air of petulance and aiming instead for casual chatter again. “You came here for a quiet drink and I’ve baited you into talking philosophy and hypotheticals. Of course no one can know how the world might be different without them. It’s just… it’s just idle speculation. The future is still yet to be written, and we each get to choose and strive for the outcome we want, right? You surely won’t begrudge me the opportunity to try and prevent tragedy, would you?”
“No,” Yennefer responds. “I suppose not.” The battle has her all wound up. She has to remind herself that it’s ultimately nothing to her if this stranger risks her own safety, or worries her family, in her quest to retrieve her sister.
Falka clears her throat and awkwardly changes the topic of conversation. “You never actually answered my first question, you know. What are you doing here anyway? In Brugge, I mean, not this pub. You’ve never liked being so close to Brokilon; the dryads are secretive with their own magical arts and you don’t trust them as far as you can throw them. Well, from what I’ve heard of you anyway,” she adds quickly.
While it was undeniably true, Yennefer wasn’t aware there were any such rumours circulating about her. She prefers to keep her prejudices to herself, lest they be used against her or decried as a fault or weakness in the public forum. It isn’t the first time in this conversation that Falka has shown herself privy to what Yennefer assumed was private information and it irks her indescribably. There is something odd about this woman, something odd about the way she talks and what she seems to know. “You’ve heard about that, but not that the Brotherhood of Sorcerers has decided to intervene in the war effort?”
A brief look of confusion flashes across Falka’s face before being quickly replaced with recognition. “The Battle of Sodden Hill! Of course. That’s why you’re here at this time. I forgot.”
“You forgot that Nilfgaard is invading?”
“No, I just—”
“And I was unaware that the chosen location for the battlefield was such common knowledge.” To be fair, anyone with half a brain could put together the most logical place for the armies of the Northern Kingdoms to make their stand—there were only so many places it was feasible for armies to cross the Yaruga—but Yennefer is not feeling generous.
Falka shakes her head and moves to stand. “This was a mistake, a weakness. It’s just… It’s just been so long since I’ve had anyone to— I just thought— I should go.”
“Running away again? Typical.” It is a jibe designed to elicit a response and Falka does not disappoint.
She rounds on Yennefer, fury and grief blazing in her eyes. “You don’t know me, Yennefer of Vengerberg.” An inscrutable look of sadness overtakes her as she adds vehemently, “And you never will.”
The thought of following her as she storms out crosses Yennefer’s mind, the nettling desire to know where the woman was getting her information at war with her instinct to not appear desperate by running after her. She has not resolved the debate one way or the other when the barman’s wife’s shocked exclamation of, “What the hell?” grabs her attention.
“You drinking on the job again, Rickart? What do you think this is?” The woman is holding up a coin for her husband’s inspection.
The barman squints at the circle of metal. “Redanian crown, woman. Got it off the blonde bint who just left. Trades even with our orens, don’t it? What’s got your knickers in a knot?”
“Redanian crown? Are you mad? You’ve seen enough of them come through here, you’d think you could recognize a profile! Who’s that on this coin, then? You ever hear of a Radovid V? It’s fake, I tell you!”
The woman is right, there has not been any Radovid V. Yet. But King Vizimir II’s son is named Radovid and his great-grandfather was Radovid IV. An entirely impossible solution to the question of what was so odd about Falka, how she knew what she seemed to know, presents itself to Yennefer. It can’t be true, it just can’t be. But what if…
“Aw,” Rickart whines. “Leave off, Gramela. What’s it matter whose picture is on the blasted thing as long as we can spend it.”
“We can’t bloody spend it if it’s fake, now can we? We’ll get run up for passing forgeries!”
“I’ll trade you one of mine for it,” Yennefer interjects, holding out a coin. “I’ve a passing interest in oddities.”
Falka had a full purse with her when she left and like calls to like. With that coin, Yennefer can track her. It’s probably a wild goose chase, there is probably a perfectly rational explanation for this, but Yennefer’s curiosity has been irrevocably pricked. It will take her some time to cast the spell and if the call comes to take up arms while she is gone, she may be branded a coward and a traitor for her desertion, but Yennefer has to know.
*
In a stroke of luck, Ciri finds her younger self the following afternoon and she is, equally luckily, not too late. Jumping back in time in such close proximity to herself is an inexact process. She had been vaguely annoyed at the prospect of trying multiple times to arrive when and where she wanted to be, as she has had to do occasionally at the previous points in her timeline she has tried to change, but it looks like that will not be the case here. She got it right in one. Before her, unaware of her older shadow, the child she was is alone, stumbling through the woods, hungry and tired and scared, but still determined to survive. The girl’s chances on her own are slim, but any time now the druid who rescues her from this forest will find her and from there Goldencheeks will bring her to the farmstead where Geralt will stumble upon her. That is what Ciri is here to prevent.
When she had started this journey, she had thought it would be enough to just have another crack at the battle against the Wild Hunt at Kaer Morhen. She tried a hundred times, but every outcome ended in tears. If she tried to fight, she couldn’t be everywhere at once and someone always inevitably died. If she tried to surrender to Eredin in exchange for their safety, the witchers and their allies insisted on trying to save her anyways. If she tried to lose the battle strategically, the Aen Elle in their malicious cruelty killed them all anyway. There was no winning.
So clearly the answer had to be to prevent the battle in the first place. Her instinct when she had been kneeling over Vesemir’s corpse that first time had been correct: she needed to have never come to Kaer Morhen in the first place. So she jumped further back, to Hindarsfjall. If she could convince Avallac’h to flee the Continent for other dimensions again then the Wild Hunt would follow them there. But the stubborn elf would no more listen to her pleas to leave her world than he had listened to her pleas to save Hindarsfjall. Knowing he was cursed, Avallac’h was resolute in his single-minded desire that the best course of action was to hide her away. She had even resorted to following Avallac’h secretly to the Isle of Mists and stealing her own soulless body, thereby stymying Geralt’s quest to retrieve her, but no matter what hints she tried to leave that his quest was hopeless, what warnings she tried to impart to him, the man who made himself her father would not leave without her. She only had to watch him fall twice to the oppressive spirit of the mythical island before she realized she had to go back even further.
In Novigrad, she tried to rework her and Dandelion’s arrangement with Whoreson Jr. so that the phylactery could be repaired and Avallac’h’s curse broken without Geralt, Yennefer, or the other witchers’ involvement, but that had proven to be equally as impossible. She learned repeatedly that she was as unwilling to allow Dandelion or Dudu’s deaths to be the price for her own security as she was to allow Vesemir’s, Geralt’s or any one else’s.
So she had jumped back to Redgill and failed repeatedly to prevent Avallac’h from becoming cursed in the first place. And then jumped back to Rivia, thinking to prevent the incident that had put Eredin and his Red Riders onto her trail in the first place. Despite her many attempts, the pogrom always claimed at least one life she was incapable of living without. It had become an obsession by that point, to find where the problem had started, to find the one moment she could change in order to save everyone.
She tried Metinna next. Maybe if she had never entered the Tower of Swallows, never gone to Tir ná Lia, never met Eredin or Avallac’h at all, the Aen Elle would not be on the lookout for her or her powers. But it was a futile thought. They always came for her. The lure of Lara Dorren’s blood coursing through her veins was too strong.
Desperate and exhausted, Ciri had gone to Vengerberg and stolen the letter that Geralt had written to Yennefer asking her to oversee Ciri’s training at Ellander. Without Yennefer’s intervention, perhaps Ciri would have just stayed at the temple and become a priestess. Or maybe she would have been caught up in the war as so many others were and her story would spiral off in another direction. Either way, without Yennefer to teach her and eventually bring her back to Geralt, she should have been able to untwine her fate from theirs. Again, Geralt’s faithfulness proved her undoing and Yennefer, choosing to tie herself to Geralt, always inexorably found her way into his life and, by association, Ciri’s. And by association with Ciri they were both always brought to ruin.
So there is, ultimately, really only one answer.
It was selfish of me, she thinks, to have not thought of this solution earlier. She had wanted them in her life, wanted Geralt and Yennefer and Vesemir and Triss and Eskel and Dandelion and Lambert and Zoltan. They are, however, as she has proven to herself time and time and time again, better off without her in their lives.
Her eleven-year-old self has stopped walking for the moment and sat herself down on a log to have a quiet cry. Now, she figures, is as good a time as any. Ciri draws her dagger and steels her resolve. She isn’t sure if she can actually kill her younger self without creating some kind of paradox, but it’s worth trying. For the sake of the people she loves, anything is worth trying.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Yennefer hisses in her ear.
“Yennefer?!?” Ciri exclaims before clamping her free hand over her own mouth. It will do no good to scare her younger self away.
The damage has already been done, though, as she hears a painfully familiar voice call out clearly through the trees, “Who’s there?”
Neither she nor Yennefer respond, but someone else does. “What? What’s this now? Another lost child? Where are you, girl?”
The deep masculine voice is coming from the opposite direction of where Ciri and Yennefer are standing. Eleven-year-old Ciri tries to split her attention between the two sources of unknown sounds and is clearly considering just making a run for it when the man’s voice continues. “Well, speak up! I’m with the Mayena Circle. We’re rounding up all you ragamuffins, seeing you properly fed. You hungry out here, girl?”
“Mousesack’s Circle,” young Ciri gasps, before turning away from the two hidden women and toward the approaching man. “I’m here! Oh! I’m here! Come find me!”
“No…” Ciri gasps herself, remembering this encounter. “No!” She lunges for her younger self, but is stopped bodily by Yennefer. She is forced to watch helplessly as her younger self runs into the waiting arms of Fregos Vuggson to be carried off to a warm supper, some new clothes, and eventually Goldencheek’s farm and Geralt.
“No!” She says again, with much more volume and force once the druid and the young girl are out of earshot. “What did you do?”
“I stopped you from killing your… sister.”
Enraged, Ciri doesn’t register the sorceress’ hesitation over the word or think anything of it. “You don’t know what you’ve done! You don’t know anything!” The pit of grief she has been so stalwartly avoiding looms large before her. It’s only her anger that keeps her from succumbing to it.
Yennefer does not look impressed with her outburst. “I know that it’s wrong to kill children. A lesson someone evidently forgot to impart upon you.”
“It’s better for her if she dies out here in the woods!”
“Really?” Yennefer raises a brow. “There is nothing good for her in the future? Nothing good she brings to anyone’s life?”
“Nothing that is worth the cost of knowing her!”
Infuriatingly, Yennefer is not losing her temper. “Is that really your choice to make?”
“Of course it is!” Ciri knows she sounds hysterical, but she can’t make herself calm down. “I am the only one who can change it, so I have to! I have to go back again! I have to fix it! I can’t… I can’t let it happen. I can’t… I can’t…”
Yennefer’s eye twitches, but then her gaze softens. She looks like she’s trying to be kind. She looks like she’s out of practice at it. “What are you running from Falka?”
Ciri doesn’t know if there is a magical compulsion in Yennefer’s words or whether she is just too tired to lie anymore. “He died. My grandfather. And I can’t… it’s too much. It’s like this pit, this hole in front of me and I can’t fall into it. It’s too deep, too dark. I’ll never get out.”
With stitled, but deliberate motions, Yennefer puts her arms around Ciri again. It takes a second for her to realize she’s being hugged and not restrained again. “It always seems like that when you lose someone at first. It always seems unbearable. But you’re stronger than you think, and your uncles and your parents, they will be right there with you in the pit. The only way for it to ever get better is to go forward and through it, not backward. The answer is in the future, not the past. It’s just grief, Falka. Every human experiences it. You’ll live.”
Finally, in a wooded glade nearly a decade before it even happens, in the arms of a woman who isn’t her mother yet, Ciri lets herself fall. She cries uncontrollably, inconsolably, without a care for her appearance or surroundings. She cries until her head hurts and she feels nauseous and her breath is coming in stuttered hiccoughs. She cries for all of the future Vesemir will never see, for every moment with him that has been stolen from her, for how lonely she will be without him. She cries until she physically cannot cry any more and when she is finished it still hurts just as much as it did when she started. But she is, as Yennefer said she would be, still alive.
At some point in time they had collapsed to the ground together, Yennefer petting Ciri’s hair and muttering placating nothings to her as she wailed hysterically. Since she seems to be done crying for the moment, and her back is starting to ache, Ciri breaks the embrace and sits up.
Yennefer, with an unimpressed wrinkle of her nose, hands Ciri a handkerchief.
“What?” Ciri sniffles, accepting the square of cloth and blowing her nose.
The sorceress stands, dusting off her skirts. “You really are an ugly one when you cry.”
“Ha!” Ciri huffs, wiping a few stray tears from her eyes that seem to have missed the message about her being done crying for the moment. She hugs herself tightly and finds the fortitude to respond sarcastically, “Thanks for that. That’s really what I needed to hear right now.”
Yennefer shrugs, a small smile on her lips. “I thought we were being honest with each other.”
“Why?” Ciri asks. “Why stop me? Why do you care?”
“You’re not boring,” Yennefer responds as if it were the worst crime an individual could commit in her presence. “And you said I would never know you, but I think I would much rather that I did.”
“Even if I cause trouble for you? Even if I’m a failure or a disappointment? Even if you die?”
“Even then,” Yennefer insists firmly, “I think it will have been worth it.” She smiles confidently. “I am a very curious person, and while curiosity may kill the cat I have it on good authority that satisfaction brings it back.”
She offers Ciri a hand and pulls her to her feet. “Besides,” Yennefer adds, “it is only the past that is immutable, only the past which we must meekly accept. What the future holds has yet to be determined.” She narrows her eyes shrewdly. “Or so it will appear to me, at least, I suppose.”
The implication finally lands and Ciri realizes that Yennefer knows that this is Ciri’s past. “Wait… how did you…”
She hands Ciri a coin. “Radovid V has not been crowned yet.”
Ciri hums and turns the coin over in her hands. “And you jumped immediately to the conclusion that I had to be a time traveller instead of a particularly inept forger?”
“I told you: you’re not boring.”
Ciri smiles briefly, before sighing and closing her eyes in resignation at the magnitude of the task before her. “Oh… I have so much to fix.”
“Well, given your abilities there is no need to rush immediately off is there? I have so many questions about your power if you would just—”
But Ciri never catches the end of that sentence. She knows Yennefer and how long her tests and trials can take. It seems like the far wiser course of action to pop out of that existence before the sorceress could even get started. Besides, she does have a great many stops to make on her way back to the present, like ensuring that a certain letter from a certain witcher infallibly reaches a certain residence in Vengerberg.
*
When she finally gets back to Kaer Morhen, she finds Yennefer waiting for her on her bed. The sorceress doesn’t question where she’s been or berate her for her foolishness. She just opens her arms and enfolds her daughter in a gentle embrace and whispers, “I’m so glad you’re here,” into the top of her head.
Ciri squeezes the sorceress back as tightly as she can. Yennefer has gotten a lot better at hugs, both the giving and the receiving of them, in the intervening years. They fall asleep together, Ciri’s head pillowed on Yennefer’s shoulder.
When she awakes in the morning, Geralt is there too, sitting on the other side of her and softly teasing Yennefer for her bedhead. She still hurts incomparably but is surprised to find that her pain does not actually negate the gentle sweetness of the moment. She had always assumed sadness and happiness were opposite ends of a binary spectrum, utterly incompatible of coexistence. She is beginning to think that may have been an oversimplification of the human condition.
When they all go down to breakfast together, Eskel ruffles her hair and asks if she slept well. Lambert tells her she’s lazy for sleeping in so late and gives her an extra scoop of honey with her porridge. They’re both in pain too, it’s obvious, but they are trying so hard for her. In the face of their love, she can’t help but try hard for them in return. Ciri lets herself lean into Eskel’s side where he’s sitting beside her and smiles at Lambert’s jest. She doesn’t feel as tired here, with them, as she did on her journey.
She can’t stop herself from crying again at the funeral, though, soft tears rolling unchecked over her cheeks. She places a bundle of wildflowers on the body that used to contain Vesemir and steps back, allowing Geralt to light the pyre.
“Don’t blame yourself. No witcher’s ever died in his own bed,” he tells her as the body burns, his concern for her outweighing even his own grief.
She almost cracks then and there, almost starts sobbing again like she had in the past with Yennefer, but she manages to hold it together. They’re all mourning together here, all suffering, and she doesn’t need to make a scene. It’s enough that they are there. Enough that they will be there with her, as they all try to move forward from this.
“You don’t know how it is,” she tells him, because he needs to know the weight she’s carrying if he’s going to help her bear it. “To see someone you love die... because of you, for you.”
She feels Yennefer squeeze her hand in solidarity as Geralt shuffles awkwardly. “We all knew what we were signing up for.”
“Yes,” Ciri agrees, accepting what she means to them. “And you saved me. For how long? A week? A month?”
“We’ll hide you, cover your tracks…”
“No,” Ciri says with absolute certainty, even from the very depths of her pit of grief. “I will flee no more.”