A Scholar's travels with a Witcher

Freddie von Coulthard and Ariadne

(WARNING: This one contains some lemons late in the story. There is an extra warning in advance of it)

Lord Professor Frederick von Coulthard, Duke of the Pontar, Count of Angral, Vergen and Kalayn, Knight of the White Cliffs and the hidden vale, Protector of Novigrad, Oxenfurt and Velen, Commander in Chief of the First Northern Imperial whom some men call Scribbler was never bored. Indeed, he would often say that he wished life could be more boring so that he could spend some time actually enjoying it. But people kept trying to rebel against his rule or the rule of the Empire or the rule of one of the people that he was sworn to protect or was allied with.

Or a couple of times, some people needed to be rebelled against that he himself hated. His life was never peaceful and quiet until the moment that it ended.

Although it might be argued that one of the reasons that life was always so interesting was because he lived for so long.

A short while after their marriage, Freddie took the first of the anti-aging magical treatments administered by Ariadne.

Unlike his sister, he seemed to take to the treatments well. His guise was of a young man in his early twenties, just as Ariadne’s guise was of a young woman of a similar age. They reasoned that this would mean that no-one would think of either of them as being out of sync with each other and that was pretty much how he looked until he left public life.

His first acts were to support the Regency Councils that he was part of while he also took on the work that was required of him.

He advised the Empress and later the Emperor and their sons, he helped set up the new Witcher Schools with both philosophical help and practical help in providing places for the new schools to be part of. He became a figurehead for the first Northern Imperial army where he was, at first merely a figurehead but later as his knowledge of warfare and tactics progressed, he became commander in chief.

He even found the time to deliver the odd lecture at the universities and Witcher schools of which he was a patron. Over the years he wrote many books, some in collaboration with the Lady of Corvo Bianco on the various powerful singular entities that travelled the continent and the spheres of existence. Although many of these works were popular, particularly the tomes regarding the hooded man of the forest and the Headless horseman. The first book on Jack was by far the most popular.

He also wrote several other treatises. The first was a book of practical advice for a young knight on traversing the courts of the land that was commissioned by Knight Commander Guillaume of the Knights of Saint Francesca. He wrote a few biographies of various figures although he steadfastly refused to write an autobiography. He said that he had written about his early life to an extent that he found embarrassing to look back on and his later life was too private. Sometimes on an international scale. He would be content if someone wrote a biography after him.

He was instrumental in persuading the Empress that she needed to marry and have children to maintain peace in the world. He was also instrumental in the preservation of the Redanian state and some people credited him with keeping Temeria alive for as long as it lasted.

He fought in many wars of the decades of his life. He avoided combat when he could but Kerrass had taught him to be ruthless when he needed to be. And the Kalayn rebellion had taught him that when you need to be ruthless, you need to be uncompromising when you do so.

His longest lasting achievement, leaving aside his ongoing dynasty, his writings and his help with the Witcher schools, was the creation of the Pontar line.

The Pontar line was a series of fortifications that was built along the realm of the Pontar valley. Starting with Novigrad itself, and moving on to the other end of the line which was anchored by the Elven Stronghold at Dol Blathanna. The idea was that Lord Frederick expressed dismay that so many wars were fought between opposite sides of the river. It was always catastrophically bloodthirsty and calamitous in terms of blood loss and damage to the local environs and it always always meant that there was a large famine, disease and huge amounts of displacement followed by extended skirmishing, raids and general unpleasantness.

So after a few years of being a Military Commander, he devised the strategy.

He became a military commander in the aftermath of the wars against Cidaris and Vergen. He insisted on surrounding himself with the best generals and commanders and it was only inevitable that some of that quality would rub off on himself and he became knowledgeable. Then he became skilled. Then he became a military mind.

It must be said that he was horrified by this. But the other side effect of him studying so much history was that he had vast knowledge of warfare as it so often had an impact on the history that he had studied.

His fighting skills only improved once he had decided on the axe and his enemies began to be terrified of him when he turned up on the field of battle.

He hated this as well.

He maintained and insistence about his lack of skill and knowledge until the now elderly General Voorhis took him aside and pointed out that he was being foolish.

“The Matter is simple, Lord Frederick,” he said. “You are a born student. You absorb knowledge and learning the way the rest of us absorb food. You see a book or learn about a new subject that needs to be studied and you do it. Not because you have to the way that the rest of us do, but because you have the desire to. You enjoy learning. So you learned about siege warfare when you were rebuilding Castle Coulthard into the horror of modern Siege engineering that it is.

“You are a younger man too, physically I mean. So while the rest of us get old and lose some physical skills. You keep those physical capabilities. Kerrass taught you to train every day and you have seen what happens when you don’t train so you keep training. Still at your, essentially, physical peak of life. One of the reasons that the old Witchers were the best swordsmen was because they had the experience of decades packed into a body that is still young and hearty.

“That you hate warfare and see the horrors of it, makes you an even better general and military man. Because you want it to end. Do not be ashamed of your skills, Lord Frederick. Learn enough, employ them enough and then ensure that you must utilise them as rarely as possible.”

Out of that philosophy came the Pontar line.

The idea was that no-one would be able to cross the Pontar to attack their neighbours without having to take all of the fortresses. If you went between and tried to go around, the forces would emerge, cut off your supply lines and then destroy you at leisure. If you took one fortress then the fortresses on either side of you would combine in order to relieve the siege and destroy you. And the fortresses were so terrifying to an attacker that any army that tried to take them, even if they did so successfully, would cost them so much that further campaigning would be rendered all but impossible.

The strategy worked.

The defences of Novigrad were substantially upgraded and designed so that even if someone mounted another uprising from within, then the rest of the city could be held accordingly. Castle Coulthard was already a marvel of modern engineering and had been designed so that it could be rebuilt and restructured as modern innovations made old ones obsolete. The line took advantage of the Dwarven fortress at Vergen and with the help of the Elves, there was another fortress built on the outskirts of Dol Blathanna that was manned (pun) by Elves and the army of the North.

There were ten fortifications in total and their very presence meant that they became almost instantly obsolete.

There were three attempts to breach the line. The first was a Kaedweni rebellion that tried to come South. The Northern parts of Kaedwen had never really been conquered by the Empire and they resented the fact that they were made Imperial by the stroke of a pen. They hated the tax collectors that turned up and demanded money for foreign wars. They hated the Imperial Governors that tried to tell them what to do, even while those same governors were Kaedweni themselves.

So they rebelled. They laid siege to two of the Fortresses and a relief force of Non-humans from Mahakam and Dol Blathanna, as well as the sallying of the Fortress Garrisons led to the rebellious armies surrendering.

The second time was during the tyranny of King Royston of Temeria who tried to take what he thought was his and conquer Novigrad and Redania.

He did not succeed.

The third happened much later when people thought that The Duke’s death meant that people would be weak and they underestimated the ability of the fortresses to be able to innovate in their fortification and training. It was a royalist plot out of Angraal who were angry at the loss of their identity. It did not last.

The strategy was so successful that the building of another line of fortifications was begun on the Yaruga although geographical factors meant that this one was not as successful.

For her part, when she was not being a mother, Ariadne worked on her studies regarding female reproductive health. She was bitterly disappointed that she wasn’t able to help Laurelen and Emma conceive but apparently the sterilisation of Laurelen as well as the damage that had been done to Emma during her captivity meant that it could not be managed.

Having said that, she made vast leaps forward in helping the women of the continent being able to survive childbirth as well as working on matters of cross species procreation. Her desire to keep her husband alive for as long as possible meant that she became a patron and worked with the Oxenfurt Dean of Medicine to keep things going. She and Dr Shani managed to get around their past differences and form a friendship, even while Shani and Frederick could not.

For those first few years immediately after the reunion between Kerrass and Freddie and before Kerrass went south to live with Sleeping Beauty on a permanent basis, Freddie and Kerrass would often travel together and see new things and fight new monsters. They travelled as either part of Frederick’s civil duties or as part of Kerrass’ Witcher wanderings. They did not spend the entire year together but they would try and spend a few weeks or so before one or other had to go. That all but finished when Kerrass went south.

Freddie struggled with loneliness a lot as it gave him room to brood. He had many good friends in those early years but many of them were elsewhere or otherwise engaged with their own duties. So when Kerrass departed on a more permanent basis, Freddie went through a period of deep depression. Nothing that would reduce things when it came to his duties, indeed, it seemed that his duties were the only thing that kept him going. But otherwise he was dangerously depressed.

So Ariadne took things in hand. She rarely let him out of her sight. At most they were separate for a day or two. Even when Freddie travelled and she had to be elsewhere, she would teleport to where he was.

When he was at one of the many courts at which he had duties, she would attend with him wearing dress, hair and makeup to “give him something to think about when everyone was being cretinous”. When he was out on campaign, she went with him as a field surgeon. She refused to use magic to help him fight and he never asked. Nor did she ever fight herself, but she was more feared by their own side than the enemy. Soldiers dreaded going to the surgeon’s tent. Not because they feared they would not survive but because the sight of Ariadne, tongue clamped between her teeth while she carefully threaded a needle was terrifying.

And she moved so fast. A man would go in with his guts hanging out and two heartbeats later he would be in recovery with a very calm Ariadne instructing a nurse in proper aftercare.

She would just smile and explain that vampiric speed had its uses.

Freddie worked with Emma on the trading front when Emma needed support, but other than providing money for his projects, the two siblings didn’t really work together in an effort to avoid obvious accusations of nepotism. The two remained close to the ends of Emma’s life.

One day, Freddie told Ariadne that he was comfortable with the idea of having children. Ariadne very calmly, and to the amusement of onlookers, took Freddie by the hand and led him from the room. Lord Frederick emerged a couple of days later with a goofy grin on his face and a bit of a limp, but Ariadne did not emerge for three months.

Ariadne chose a section of the basement of Coulthard Fortress and forbade anyone to go there. Specific servants would take food and water there and leave them at the end of the corridor. Those servants would report sounds of “scuttling” coming from the corridor and further into the places that were shrouded in darkness.

But after a few months, a very smug looking Duchess emerged with twelve newborn children. Wetnurses were quickly found and the twelve rapidly turned out to be raised by the fortress as a whole.

Scholars, other mages and scientists came (including Regis) to study the children and after some carefully supervised testing, they were declared to be fully human. Ariadne very carefully didn’t say “I told you so”.

Freddie took to the life of a Father well. Determined to correct the mistakes of his own parents he raised them according to what they were good at and what they showed an interest in. He had a lot of help.

He needed a lot of help.

Three children went to live with Emma and Laurelen. The way it seemed to work was that the children had taken much of their appearance from their Father’s line of forebears. Therefore many of them looked like the younger versions of Freddie’s siblings.

Emma and Laurelen’s children looked like tiny versions of Emma and Francesca and a young boy that looked like Emma’s Father.

The other children grew up to look like other siblings with one or two that grew up to look like Ariadne herself. In the long run, three of those children went off to be Witchers. One went off to the school of the Dragon in the hills of Kalayn. Another went to the school of the Spider in Angral and a third went to the school of the Swallow in honour of the long vanished Empress.

Of the remaining six, Lord Frederick brought them up to rule those parts of his lands that he had hereditary lordship over. The Eldest grew to be Count Coulthard, the next, a girl, became Countess Angral, the third became Baron Kalayn. The Fourth of the remaining children decided that he wanted to be a churchman while the fifth and sixth both became knights and joined the army.

Although he was proud of all of his children and loved them all dearly, Lord Frederick was always disappointed that none of them became scholars. It took her a while for Lady Ariadne to worm that detail out of him but eventually he admitted it and she laughed at him, kissing him on the cheek and told him that there was always room for the next batch.

Those were her words.

There were two more “batches.” If there was one that all of the children had in common was their sense of duty. All of them found ways to serve their fellow people. Several of them joined religious orders although not all went into service of the Eternal Flame. One of the girls became prominent in the service of Melitele. Others went to Ban Ard and Aretuza to study magic. One travelled to Toussaint to join the expanding orders of the Knights of the Saint.

And yes, eventually Freddie got his little scholar son.

Those children spread themselves around. Other than those that inherited the various titles, they lived relatively quietly and worked hard, earning what they were given. Their physical characteristics varied. They tended towards the tall, often coming across as gangly and clumsy. They would tend to grow into their bodies relatively late in their development. A poet once wrote of her lover that she had ridiculed him one day and turned away from him as he was too ugly for her. Then she turned back and the most handsome, graceful creature that she had ever seen fell back from her, hurt at her cruel jests. She says that she learnt not to judge too quickly after that.

Ariadne also devoted a lot of time to Angral and Angraal.

She was hurt by the rift between the young Count of Angraal and her husband. She understood it but that didn’t help anything and when he died, she was heartbroken. She had her husband invest considerable money into making Angraal a rich place but she always missed the serious faced young boy that had told her that he was a man.

As well as the work regarding her own fertility and the prenatal health of a continent, Ariadne also took the time to formalise her studies of the Spider’s web which led her onto the Mitochondrial network of fungus that spread underneath the continent itself. She was the first pioneer in these subjects and although a lot of her research on the Great Web was merely there to formally confirm what she already knew, her studies of the Mitochondrial network was truly pioneering. She theorised that it could be used as transport, communication, the sharing and distributing of knowledge. She even theorised that the entire thing was actually sentient and could be communicated with before she removed herself from public life.

The Duke and Duchess were never without friends as I say, but gradually those friends would drift away or inevitably, natural causes would take them away from the greater whole.

Chireadean travelled South where he became something of a poet. He was not formally trained by any of the major institutions, but his distaste for grand words did not deny the fact that he knew them all and could put them together in an order that seemed to make them dance across people’s minds.

He was never a high poet of any kind, he never performed in palaces or courtrooms. But he would stop and tell dirty limericks for a crowd of tired farm workers in exchange for his supper. He did marry again. A travelling woman in a similar line of work to himself. They kept travelling on and on and eventually had a family. Unfortunately, such a life is not conducive to a long and happy life. They were set upon by someone and this time, Chireadean’s luck ran out.

Carys and Padraig served the Coulthard family faithfully until late in Padraig’s life. Carys and the Duke’s friendship remained firm and based, as far as outsiders could see, on her insulting him soundly and him putting up with it. Padraig ended up being the Captain of the Coulthard guard and garrison and refused promotion to the Nilfgaardian First Northern army, preferring to stay in the Coulthard family colours. He never had a problem taking orders from the Imperial officers, but he could never see himself wearing black.

But age caught up with the big Skelligan and he expressed a desire to die in his homeland. Carys and Padraig took their leave of the Coulthard family and moved to Skellige where they lived as part of the Black Boar clan until Padraig died seven years later at the age of Seventy two.

Carys was devastated, but Padraig had ordered her, on his deathbed, not to do anything foolishly romantic. She returned to Coulthard lands and tried to take up her old service but the fun had gone out of the action for her. Instead, upon the invitation of a visiting Elven noble from Dol Blathanna, she sought leave and went back amongst her people.

It is generally agreed that she departed the continent with the rest of the Elves.

Father Anchor and his wife Tulip, served the Coulthard family as the Coulthard Family priest and their confessor. Much to their joy, that meant that Anchor’s flock was much larger than they had ever anticipated and while Anchor was well liked and respected, people could not help but love Tulip and even her husband would proudly say that woman did more for the church of the Eternal Flame than he ever could.

Anchor was eventually lifted to the position of Cardinal by the Hierophant of Novigrad but his marriage prevented him from climbing to the Hierophant’s throne. He did not seem dismayed by this and indeed, he enjoyed the scandal of being able to openly spend time with his wife while the other Cardinals had to scurry around with their mistresses behind everyone’s backs.

He served as Cardinal for a long time until many called him the Hierophant that never was. It was true that many would check their decisions with him before taking it to the Hierophant himself. The Hierophant of that time hated this and the power that Anchor and Tulip had over the church as a whole and had the pair of them Poisoned. Anchor and Tulip knew what the Hierophant had done in poisoning the wine that he had given over and they smiled as they drank deeply from the wine, thanking the Hierophant for his gift as they did so.

Naturally they died. He was sixty seven and she was fifty nine.

The fact that the assassination was so obvious meant that the other Cardinals all but rebelled. They couldn’t oust the Hierophant because he was the face of the Eternal Flame. But they could obstruct him at every turn. The top of Temple Hill was very tense for a number of years until the Hierophant finally died. The cardinals elected one of their own to lead them who promptly declared the martyrdom of Cardinal Anchor and Lady Tulip. They were canonised as ]soon as it was reasonably done according to church law. They became the Married saints, when visions of one or other came, then the other was not far behind. People who prayed to one sometimes didn’t get an answer but those that prayed to both often did.

From their so obvious holiness and the provable good works that they did as a married couple the Hierophant made it legal for his common priests to marry. It took a while to catch on but that stuck. It took another few generations before female priests would be allowed but historians would credit that effort starting with Saints Anchor & Tulip.

They had four children together. One of which rebelled and joined the growing Knights of Francesca seeking other ways to serve that were not from a pulpit. The other three became holy people like their parents, even while they did all eventually marry people that they loved.

Freddie and Ariadne continued their work and worked hard, loved hard, laughed, cried and existed hard. There were moments, even years when the world seemed quiet and contemplative and there were other years where the pair of them seemed equally as breathless. Freddie would often sit and keep journals and try and continue doing what, to him, was more important than all the rest, which was to record things and educate people.

He finally had the thought in his ninety-fifth year while he was sitting at his desk in his study, staring out his window, listening to his grandson calling out the marching cadence for the latest batch of recruits. He was feeling a little melancholy, thinking of all of his friends and family that had died and he realised that he was all alone. This would have been… Maybe a decade after Kerrass had died.

The thought occured to him then that he was no longer recording history. He was history. His world was moving on and he was the thing that was holding people, his people back by simply still being there and still influencing the world.

Two weeks later he spoke to Ariadne about it where he discovered that she had been aware of his thinking for some time. Some weeks later he spoke to his children and grandchildren about it and then he went to see the Emperor.

To the world, Lord Frederick Coulthard, Duke of the Pontar Valley died in the Spring. He saw to his will in advance, attended his own wake and was there when the headstone was placed.

Everyone that was everyone attended the party and the, now former, Lord of the Pontar insisted that it not be a sad occasion. He just felt that he was in the way. He was a little hurt that a number of people agreed with him but he took it as a sign that he made the right decision.

He shook everyone’s hand, hugged those people that needed hugging, kissed those people that needed kissing. He spent a bit of time in the family mausoleum, prayed for a while in the family chapel and then he shouldered his pack, saddled his horse and fixed his axe in place as he, and Ariadne, rode out of the castle gates.

And that was the last anyone saw of Lord Frederick Coulthard.

Of course, it wasn’t and for a while, his friends looked for him. But he had gone. There was some rumour of him riding south and East but he knew the roads and the troop patrol patterns given that he invented them.

And he had a powerful Sorceress with him.

So Frederick von Coulthard died and Lady Ariadne vanished.

Two centuries later, a scholar named Wilhelm Treus submitted a paper for publication to the Ban Ard library of entities. He believed that he had identified another, otherworldly entity and wished to finance an expedition to hunt down the entity in question and try and talk to it.

His treatise was quite thorough and reasonably well documented. Problems with it were that a lot of his material was hearsay in nature, drawn from foreign sources. It was only a few centuries after Wilhelm’s death that the accuracy of his work was proven. What he had found was not what he thought it was. He thought he had found another Jack, or another Headless Horseman.

But the Bianco library of entities, which was the final authority on such matters, dismissed his work as nonsense and told him to go out and find some proper evidence or, better yet, contact the entity in question before his work could be published.

He did so, raising money for his expedition but, alas, he did not survive the crossing of the Korath desert. He turned out to be one of those, very clever by exceedingly stupid people and he didn’t take a proper map with him.

What he discovered though was that there was a common story throughout the greater world.

The world had shrunk since the days of the Duke of the Pontar. Trade across the Korath was more regular, Ofieri and Zerrikanian travellers were more common in the greater parts of the continent and there were even rumours of empires and nations beyond Zerrikania to the East and beyond Ofier to the South.

There was even rumour of a vast, uncharted continent across the sea which Magical scholars dismissed on the grounds that it was well known by now that the sphere that they lived on was, well… a sphere. So they reasoned that if you sailed far enough then you would come back on yourself.

But as Wilhelm looked, he found a common thread of story. It concerned a pair of travellers. A man, primarily presenting as some kind of scholar who would speak to the locals, gathering stories and folklore from locals before moving on. But every so often he would find some kind of problem that needed fixing. Whether that was a local monster, a local curse or spectre, a local tyrant that needed overthrowing whether a bandit Lord, a religious ruler, village leader or an actual lord.

He would find this problem and then he would solve it before moving on.

He wielded an axe which was described as a fearsome, double-bladed axe that he used with frightening skill, even as the world moved past large heavy weapons and more into rapiers and sabres.

And with him, travelled a tall woman. She often dressed in light colours, cream, blue, green or yellow. She would always be described as incredibly beautiful but in a slightly off-putting way that no-one could quite understand. She had skills and talents that no others had, even while magic was still being used on a huge scale. She walked into dark places and would emerge unscathed, often dragging the head of some terrifying beast behind her while wearing a smug expression and dumping the corpse at the feet of someone who told her that “such deeds are best left for the men”.

People would often comment on how off-putting it was to see a pair so obviously in love with each other being utterly unconcerned with the personal safety of the other. “He can handle himself,” was a common reply from her while “I find it best to worry about the people that try to attack her” was what he would say.

She would heal, he would record, they would both fight and then they would move on, doing their best to reject any rewards that were offered.

Often these sightings would be small scale things. They would protect a village from bandits. Only after the first attack, the pair would move on and the villagers would find the bandits tied up with spider’s webs, screaming for mercy.

There were multiple examples of the pair rescuing travelling caravans from bandits or attacking monsters.

They stood at the right hand of the young Empress of Zerrikania for a decade while she solidified her rule after a group of traders had done their best to overthrow her and install a merchant’s cabal instead.

They travelled with the horse tribes of Ofier and when the great Sand Devil rose and besieged those people, it was the pair of them that rescued the tribe of the White horse from death, leading them to safety through the storm.

And as the world shrunk even further, not least because of the innovations given by The old Duchess of the Pontar, there was even word of them far to the east where the stars are strange.

Not to say that all of the tales of them were so far away from where the Lord of the Pontar had “died”.

The pair of them spent a dozen years in Toussaint, working with the Knights of the Saint in honing their skills. He became a great Knight, known for his charm and his vast knowledge regarding obscure schools of knowledge. Particularly History. They lived in a small cottage in a small part of that place that had once existed as part of a greater Knight’s realm. No-one knew who owned the cottage beforehand, nor did anyone know who owned the cottage afterwards. Eventually though that land reverted to the Ducal crown.

The Pair spent some time working as part of the Clan of the Black Boar. He became a teacher on the islands after the prejudice against writing was lost. He taught the young people of the Black Boar and when attackers came, he defended them with his axe swinging. He also went with the sailors when Skellige went to war and the woman went with him.

As time went on, it became clear that the woman seemed to be retreating from things. In the early stories, she was very active, helping and working with the man in whatever goals that they had set themselves, but later, it seemed more and more that she was sitting on the outside of events, content to merely watch the man as he spent his time in the lands that they found themselves.

The pair took part in the patrols along the Pontar valley and stood with those people that prevented the harvesting of Dol Blathanna after the Elves had left.

They spent some time lecturing at the University of Kaer Morhen. They lived as minor nobility in the Nilfgaardian capital and spent some time just living the lives of a pair of hermits in Dorn.

There was no record of what happened after that and as a result, the work of Master Wilhelm was ridiculed and dismissed. It wasn’t until later that the matter came back to prominence and his work was validated.

That process started when a pair of people sailed into Kaer Trolde harbour in Skellige.

Kaer Trolde had lost some of its prominence after the building of the great Fortress on The Rock of Holmstein. It was still a central harbour and area, but the harbours of Holmstein were more open, better built than the historical ones at Kaer Trolde and therefore more accessible. This coupled with the building of Tuirseach burg left Kaer Trolde feeling a little old fashioned.

But nevertheless, a hale and hearty man in his mid to late thirties, maybe early forties climbed off the ship and helped a woman that many took to be his daughter off the ship. He moved expertly but looked around himself with a look of bewilderment. He seemed confused until the woman spoke to him for a while and his eyes seemed to come into focus.

The pair walked up to the Kaer Trolde hall where they spoke to the Jarl of An Craite in private. The Jarl at the time was not a young man and when the three of them emerged from the meeting, he looked as though he had aged a decade.

He tried to organise a feast in honour of the pair but the woman politely declined as the man was weeping in confusion at the lack of people from out of the past. He spoke to people that were no longer there and to people that were long dead. And he wept as they would not answer him.

He calmed when the woman spoke to him and the Jarl understood.

They were escorted down to Holmstein where they were again received by the Jarl of the Black Boar. The man bore up much better under what was happening and didn’t seem to be quite as confused as he had been previously. He spoke to the Jarl who was being sceptical as to what was being told to her until the man unslung a long heavy bundle from his back and handed it to the Jarl who struggled to lift it.

When she unwrapped it and looked at the axe she looked at the man in awe. The man was weeping again at the lack of the axe and he reached for it before the woman caught his hand and held him as he wept.

The Jarl also wanted to organise a feast but the woman wouldn’t have it.

“My husband has lived too long,” she told the Jarl, seeming close to tears herself. “The madness of that is consuming him. If we may, we would take up an old compact so that he might live out the rest of his life in peace.”

Of course, now knowing who this pair of people were, the Jarl agreed. They sailed out to the village in the hidden cove. Now a farming village with a small fleet. The pair were escorted without announcement and taken to a large cabin in the woods that was built over a cave mouth.

At first, the villagers were a little outraged that a pair of strangers were given a home in a place that was almost sacred to the Black Boar, but the Jarl and the Lord of that village wasn’t having that. They bid their people to give the pair peace and so they did.

At first they took the man for what he was, a man that was sinking into senility and decrepitude while the woman who was described as “freakishly '' beautiful must be his daughter. It was considered, by some of the men of the village, to be a waste of a good woman. But very early on she rebuffed a couple of advances rather harshly and told them that she loved the man fiercely and that she would not be parted from him for as long as he still drew breath.

She became the medicine woman of the village. She healed injuries that others believed could not be cured and no woman that fell pregnant in that place was afraid that she would have a difficult birth. Women from all over Skellige, and indeed from some parts of the continent, would travel to that small part of Skellige for the woman’s advice. She gave it freely and refused the regular invitations to go and live elsewhere where she could be held in higher esteem.

For his part the man just lived his life. He still seemed like a hale and hearty man in his early forties. He was obviously intelligent and knew things about subjects that many didn’t know. When he could be convinced, he could tell the best stories. He taught the young folk of the village about the history of the Black Boar and when he described those early men and women that had founded the place. People of legend, he made them sound so human.

The entire village roared with laughter at the story of the Manbreaker being slapped by his wife, the Valkyre Yngvild, for not sending word that he was coming home. They wept at the story of the death of the Wave-Serpent and they cheered at the deeds of Kar the Cunning. He dredged up old tales of The Witcher and the Swallow and how they had stood together to help the Wave-Serpent come home and he spoke of how the Skeleton Ship used to be, rather than the now ceremonial beginning of Spring that it was.

At first, he seemed to get better, thriving in the new environment and with the new people, but after a decade, it was clear that he was beginning to sink again.

But other than the man’s occasional bouts of illness, the pair lived happily in their longhouse deep in the woods.

They were visited many times and by many strange people. Strange people arrived at that cottage and took passage to go and speak with the man and the woman. A tall knight arrived travelling over land. He wore a suite of golden armour but kept the visor closed. He went into the house and spoke with the pair for a long time. Witchers would appear from time to time to consult with the man. An odd person with a shock of grey hair and a pale face that seemed to be an uncle or friend of the woman arrived to speak.

He was made instantly popular with the locals as he gave them all some bottles of the most delicious alcoholic cordial that any of them had ever tasted and he told stories that none of them believed.

There was also a regular guest that would turn up out of the blue. A young woman, beautiful except for a scar down her cheek. She was white haired despite her apparent youth and had green eyes that sparkled with humour and rage alike. She carried a red scabbarded sword across her back and was always welcomed.

The pair lived there for twenty four years before his bouts of illness started to increase in regularity to the point that people were getting worried about him. A new Jarl of the Black Boar was chosen, the old Hersir of the village was killed on a raid. The woman was becoming more and more remote and some whispered that she seemed almost inhuman. She seemed to wrap herself around with shadows and wear a terrible sadness that caused people to flee her presence.

The woods around the cabin became dark and unpleasant. Regular animals wouldn’t go there. It became a dare for the local children to stand close to that area. Things started to move in the darkness and for a while, it became a taboo to go anywhere near those woods.

The woman became a figure of terror. She would still help those that braved the danger, especially having sympathy for younger women who had been made pregnant against their will or the victims of some kind of abuse. But she became abrupt and angry. She seemed to haunt the local area and increasingly the man was no longer seen.

One day, in late Autumn, a great forest blaze sparked up. Terrified that the fire would spread to the woods and the nearby cottages. Despite the rain there was a fierceness to the flame that caused them to be afraid. They went and were terrified. There was a green edge to the flame and it seemed to consume everything that went near it.

And there was a thing there. Spiders were climbing around the trees and not just the house spiders, large ones the size of rabbits and even small ponies seemed to be around the place and seemed to be agitated. And in the middle of it, running around the burning shell of the building was a… thing. No-one recognised it. It was black, almost shapeless and it seemed to move as though it could not decide what it wanted to look like. It was made of Blackness, Claws, Teeth, Mandibles and legs.

And it was screaming.

Even the bravest of warriors fled.

The flame burned for a week before it died down but a new darkness seemed to sink over the woodland. It became a dark place and terrifying. Same as there had been on the night of the green fire, there were things that crawled around in the darkness. Stories started to be told in the village of the darkness that lived there, of the great fear and rage that seemed to settle over the place. The small town started to become cut off from the rest of Ard Skellige. People would only come to that place by sea as to go overland meant that they would have to travel next to the depths of that haunted, terrifying forest.

Naturally, the new Hersir in charge resented that his forest was cut off from him. He was still young in his lordship and neither he, nor the relatively young Jarl had been warned about who it was that lived in the forest. This had been at the request of the man and woman in question as they wanted to be left alone in order to live out the rest of their lives and were terrified at the prospect of new lords trading off old glories. The Jarl wanted to harvest the trees ready for replanting. There had been pigs in that forest that were needed for their meat. Herbs and things that needed to be gathered for medicine and the like.

So naturally, he did what he was supposed to do.

He hired a Witcher.

Perhaps portentously, the Witcher team that was sent for arrived from the school of the Spider. They came to the islands and landed at Holmstein where they booked passage on a fishing boat that took them and their equipment round the headland and it landed without ceremony. The village would tell stories about the four Witchers for some time afterwards. The slayer was a tall woman from the mutations, standing a little under seven foot tall, with dark blonde hair that she had pulled back in a braid. She had the yellow-green cat’s eyes of the new Witcher’s and moved with the long limbed grace that seemed to typify that particular school.

The mage was a shorter man at five foot something and onlookers were slightly surprised at how heavily muscled he seemed to be. The smith and the alchemist also didn’t seem to fit the mould of what was expected, even though they were un mutated, they seemed a little alien to the villagers of that hidden fishing village.

The four of them met with the Hersir and his family before stowing their gear and resting for a while after their journey. The Slayer especially seemed to be struggling after the trials of the sea voyage.

Then they got to work. They spoke to the village as a whole, asking questions and commiserating with each other. The Slayer and the alchemist went to scout the outside of the affected area of woodland and when they returned for the night, they were speaking animatedly.

The four Witchers sat together that night, eating carefully as they conversed about what might be happening.

The following day, all four of them went towards the woodland. They went with measuring tape and magical amulets that the mage had designed in order to measure the effects of whatever it was that was going on inside the woodland. Again, when the day was heading towards being over, they returned to the village looking pensive.

The following day, they spent it at the tavern eating almost constantly and drinking from endless pots of coffee. The mage had produced a large chest and the four of them sat and just ate, drank, argued and read. But still, they were no closer to a solution as to what was going on.

The following day, the Slayer gathered her weapons to herself, put on the amulets that the mage gave her and strode into the forest.

She was in the forest for a day and a night. Long enough that the other members of her team started to become concerned. When she emerged, she did so looking pale and with her weapons in their sheathes. She gathered her team together and told them that they should prepare for imminent departure. Her team seemed astonished that she was weeping openly with the tears streaming down her face.

They collected the Hersir and they all sailed to Holmstein where the Witcher recovered her wits. When she had disembarked from the ship as part of her arrival, she had seemed relatively jovial, laughing and joking with her friends, throwing ribald jests around and flirting with any of the warriors that tried to talk to her on any level that wasn’t professional. Now she seemed cold, withdrawn.

They sailed into Holmstein on the Village lord’s own ship and went into the castle. The Witcher gathered the Hersir and the Jarl together and gazed steadily at the pair of them for a long moment.

“Leave her alone,” she told them. “She is grieving. Let her.”

“But my woodland?” the Hersir protested. “What am I supposed to do?”

The Witcher sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“I don’t care,” she told the furious Lord. “I am going down into the town where I intend to drink myself silly for a day or two. After I’ve done that, I am going to consume some of my Alchemist’s ‘medicine’ before doing my best to take at least two people to my bed for the night. But as for you…”

She sighed again and for a moment she looked as though she was going to shed tears again.

“For you… She is grieving. Give her a month, maybe two and then she will leave.”

“Is that your professional position?” The hersir demanded, hurt at the dismissive way that she had talked to him.

“Yes,” The Witcher told him in a tired tone of voice. “If you go into the woods before she is ready, she will tear you limb from limb and drape your innards over the trees for all to see as a warning, prolonging the time it will take her to leave. And if you send someone else? She will know it and will, instead, drape your guts around the town for your villagers to see your death. This is not something that can be faced with swords and magic.”

The Jarl placed their hand on the Hersir’s arm to calm him.

“What do we fight it with?” the Jarl asked.

“Time.” The Witcher replied. “Time and compassion.”

Then the Witcher team left and put actions to words, their debauchery was another tale that was told around the campfires of the Black Boar for some time.

As the Witcher predicted, gradually the blight seemed to retreat from the woodland. Three months later, a brave villager took up his wood saw and got to work with the lumber harvest.

Nothing happened of note, and again, the only reason that we know as to this event was because of the writings of what and who came afterwards.

Maybe eighty years after this, an old woman strode up to the gates of Aretuza. She looked to be an older woman somewhere a little north of Seventy. She walked with a plain golden staff that had a simple rounded end. Despite her advanced seeming age in a land where Seventy was still considered quite old. She moved like a much younger woman. She strode into the entrance hall of Aretuza and looked around.

One of the attendants walked up to her and asked if she was lost. The old woman looked at the attendant for a long moment, absolutely expressionless before extending her hand. At the end of her hand, a fireball formed.

“I always found fire to be the most impressive element to summon,” said the old woman.

The attendant blinked for a few times before summoning the Rectress

Aretuza had also had to move with the times in the intervening… well… centuries. Magic was at a low ebb since the vanishing of the Elves and so to make sure that the school could remain open and continue to help with the education of those magical girls that did arrive, they had been forced to expand.

Like Oxenfurt before it, it had expanded into the more “artistic” sciences. Where the Witcher Schools concentrated on the more physical sciences of medicine, engineering, Alchemy, fencing, tactics, metallurgy and the rest. Aretuza, Oxenfurt and a couple of others concentrated on the “arts”. Law, Language, writing, art, poetry and others. But it also taught magic.

Magic was now considered as a kind of backward thing by this point. Not least because anyone that showed magical ability didn’t need to pay for admittance. If you were a girl and had magical talent, then you were enrolled. It didn’t matter if you were highborn or were found in a hovel, you would be taken to Aretuza and trained.

You might not be able to afford extra classes in the other things that the school offered, but at least you were properly educated.

The Rectress of the school arrived to meet the strange woman. The two retreated to a private room for tea and by the end of that meeting, Aretuza had a new Mistress of Magic.

The old woman lived in one of the towers, nice and close to the stars so that she could teach astronomy but also so that she could enjoy her privacy. She answered to “Mistress” to her students, “Magic” to her peers and to some very few she told them that her name was “Andry”.

She was known to be a stern teacher without compromise. She would regularly tell people that she would tolerate mistakes. But anyone that failed to learn from those mistakes had no place studying magic. When people progressed to get to know her a little better, they started to learn that she had a very dry sense of humour that she applied ruthlessly to those that dismissed the ideas of magic.

She also hated bullies. I mean… hated them.

She seemed to have a particular affinity for ugly, broken things and she seemed keen on helping those people up from the ground.

She rarely emerged from her little tower, at the back of which she had a small room where she lived and worked. She only emerged into the greater part of the academy on formal occasions and when the presence of such an important member of the faculty was required. She was never seen to leave the school.

Where the other members of the faculty enjoyed some, not small wealth, no-one could ever find out what it was that Mistress Magic was paid. She would just teach and lock herself in her small study behind the classroom. If she wasn’t in her classroom, she would be there and she would not suffer visitors.

Over time though, she began to gather a small group of disciples together. The number grew a little over time and gradually, those girls were allowed into the inner sanctum, but what they found there, they would never say.

So the months turned into years and the years turned into decades. Mistress Magic contributed to the academic studies of the school. She wrote several treatises on the movements of stars and wrote several academic studies of the ebb and flow of magic, predicting with a certain amount of accuracy as to when the magic would start to flow into the world again so that the people of the continent could expect magical numbers and powers to increase.

She was also the first person to start devising mathematical and magical models for predicting when the ice would close over the world. Occasionally, people would ask her if she was making prophecies?

She expelled one girl for asking that same question.

Her age didn’t appear to change and the stories of her magical nature started to spread. It was said of those Sorceresses of old that they didn’t age, but Mistress Magic didn’t comment on rumour.

When the Rectress of Aretuza retired, the position was offered to Mistress Magic and she turned the position down, preferring to concentrate on her existing work. She still wouldn’t tell anyone what the work was though.

The scandal of this strange new Mistress of Magic passed into the commonplace and after a while, even this was dismissed as unimportant when the businesses of Kings and Queens seemed to be more common and more commonplace.

It certainly had more of an effect on the lives of the young women that attended Aretuza academy anyway. Mistress Magic continued to teach the small number of magical students that were presented to her. Occasionally and as required she taught other subjects as well such as History and Medicine which she seemed to have an odd outlook on both. But her primary function was as the Mistress of Magic. Of the few remaining magic users in the land that were powerful and skillful enough to call themselves Magic users rather than anything else, a large number of them had been trained by the Mistress of Magic.

Even the magical students and teachers of Ban Ard would travel to Aretuza to consult with the Mistress. She was always courteous, answered the questions where she could, advised where she could but otherwise, she refused all invitations to attend upon this personage or that member of the royal family.

She certainly never used magic in anger. She could. She just chose not to. If anyone or anything threatened her she would simply transport her students away before teleporting herself.

She had a pet spider. A large thing that used to sit on her shoulder and that she treated like other people might treat a pet rat or ferret. People that went into her classroom soon learned to be careful where they sat in case they sat on the spider. It would hiss at them, scolding them with a chittering sound before scuttling off, much to the amusement of Mistress Magic.

All told she was the head of Magical studies in Aretuza for a couple of hundred years. She never seemed unhappy or anything and there were a few times when the students were off visiting friends and family, where she would vanish from sight. No-one thought that this was unusual given… you know… magic. But when the next class was due she would always emerge from her little tower room, locking the door behind her and moving forward to greet the class.

Two hundred and Fourteen years later. When Magic was starting to come back again and spells that hadn’t worked for centuries started to become more commonplace. She summoned her disciples to her.

Old and young they came from all the corners of the Continent. Some had died in the meantime but all those that survived looked up from whatever they were doing and set off to go to Aretuza. Many did not make it in time but those that did arrive, went to that back room where they found a staircase that let them up to an even higher tower room. Inside that, relatively small room was a small bed that looked barely used, a writing desk and shelf upon shelf of similarly worked, leather bound books.

Mistress Magic stood there looking at her disciples. Some of which were, in some way, descended from that ancient coupling of Vampire and Scholar. She looked at them and smiled, the widest smile that any of them had ever remembered seeing her smile.

“This is goodbye,” she told them. “I am leaving and I do not intend to return. I have completed my work and so it is time for me to depart. Please do not be sad as I have waited for this day for a few centuries at least.”

To be fair, the gathered women and girls were more astonished than sad as the enormity of what was being said to them escaped them at first.

“These books,” Mistress Magic told them, gesturing to the shelves, “are my report. I once promised someone that I would report to them my findings when it came to matters of living amongst humans. But I can no longer find the people that asked for that report. So here it is. I require you to take these writings, print them if you can, and have them published throughout the land so that… hopefully… people will hear of it and I will not be known as an oathbreaker.”

She sighed and looked around the room for a long moment. One of the women would later write as though she was saying Farewell to that place.

“Thank you,” she said to no-one in particular. “These last few centuries have been hard, and without all of you, it might even have been impossible. But now? I deem my duty done and it is time for me to depart. Farewell.”

She seemed to stretch, in the same way that a Cat might stretch and then the old woman was gone, leaving a young woman, terrifying and alien in her beauty. Still dressed in the same, black robe but now she looked younger than many of the people in the room. When she smiled, it was clear that she had fangs.

Again, the diarist wrote:

“It was not a glamour that she dropped, there was no illusion or spell that she uttered to change things. I have held her hand and looked at things and she was an old woman. It was just as though something changed within her and then…

She was there, looking breath-takingly, awfully, mind-shreddingly, terrifyingly beautiful.

She nodded to the room before catching up her golden staff from where it was propped next to the window and leapt. As she leapt, it seemed to the women that she turned into a reddish, dark smoke and simply flowed out of the window.

The women were stunned as they looked around at each other, unable to decide what to do next before one of them, amongst the oldest, broke the spell by walking up to the shelves and taking out a large volume, seemingly at random, and opened it.

Inside was line after line of carefully scribed, thin, neat, handwriting.

The same handwriting could be found in all of the other volumes.

“Well let's get to work,” that woman said.

It was a strange night that night. Later, people would describe it as feeling as though a storm was brewing. That sense of pressure was in the air, giving people headaches but it was more than that. It was as though the world was changing and people could feel it. It was a night where children clutched stuffed animals, or parents or each other to escape the nightmares that beset them. It was a night where lovers loved each other fiercely and where enemies hated each other with a determination that would later terrify both of them.

There was blood shed that night. But also a sense of great beauty. An artist looked out of his window and saw the night sky in a new way that he had not contemplated before and painted a woman, standing on a balcony looking out over the starlit lands beneath her.

A poet took up a pen and left his panting lover in the bed behind him as he set pen to paper and wrote an epic poem about love against the coming darkness. It was his best work and it made him famous but when he finished it, he wept because he knew he would never write better.

A bandit was caught at bay by a Knight of Saint Francesca. Heavy plate armour and broadswords had long been exchanged for large hats, brocaded coats, rapiers and the like. And for a moment, the bandit fell back from his rival. The Knight backed off and the two men saluted each other before they strode to a nearby tavern and shared a bottle of wine before the bandit wept for the life that had led him to that point and surrendered.

Not only were these things going on but there were other things abroad, nameless terrifying things.

The portent was a woman. The story of the horsewoman of war had long been dismissed and this was provably not that woman. The Sorceress whose name was now forgotten was lost to time and place and the entity that was the Goddess of Battle did not look like that.

This woman was tall and wore a long flowing dress. The dress was black and reminded those that saw her of it being a widow’s dress.

She wore a veil but her hair was long and flowing. Those that saw her said that occasionally she would pull it around her shoulder and stroked it for a while as she gazed out at whatever it was that she was looking at. She was described as pale skinned, fearfully beautiful but not the kind of beauty that attracts. This was a beauty to be commiserated with. It seared the soul of those people that looked at her and many wept to see such a thing.

One young man was inspired by the sight so that he painted his memory of her and became famous for it. The painting was called “The wistful widow” and it made him famous.

Some brave souls even attempted to approach and speak to her but she would smile sadly and turn away before seeming to become like smoke.

The woman was seen all through the continent that night. She was seen on the bridge above Kaer Trolde harbour and on the battlements of The Rock of Holmstein. She was witnessed walking through the streets of Novigrad, Beauclair and the capital city of Nilfgaard. She was witnessed walking the walls of Coulthard Fortress where the locals were more aware of the ghosts that appear on nights like this and she was left alone, perhaps wisely.

All through the continent and possibly all through the world she was seen. Occasionally walking alone and lost in thought but more often she was standing in what seemed to be a specific spot.

The gardens of Beauclair palace was one such, at a place called “Lovers seat” although no-one knew why it was called that any more. She was seen in fields, by rivers and on the sea shore. Atop towers, walls and mountains.

It was that only night she was seen and until the full story came out. Those people that had seen her began to be disbelieved. People would claim that they had seen the Wistful Widow and that it must mean something. People would laugh and dismiss them. And maybe some of those people were liars.

What is known is that the last person to see the Wistful Widow apparition was the only person to actually speak to her.

The girl's name was Annalise, a name chosen because her mother had liked the sound of it. She was lying naked next to a boy whose virginity she had taken a short while before and she was contemplating the young man lying next to her and she was fascinated by this act alone.

Normally when she found herself in these kinds of positions, she would be disappointed that the boy had fallen asleep so quickly after the act of love-making. So normally she would be hunting around for her clothes in order to sneak away quietly. That or she would be trying to wake the boy up for another go around. It had certainly been pleasurable enough to want another go and there was enough raw talent there for her to work with.

But this was different. He had fought to stay awake and she had actually encouraged him to fall asleep, to rest and that she would watch over him. She was astonished to find that she meant it too. The entire night had felt different and as she lay there next to the boy in question, she was trying to figure out why, all the while marvelling at her own body’s reaction to him.

Annalise was twenty one years old and the boy was nineteen. Old enough that she could get away with calling him “boy” but remarkably, he had not bridled at the jest and had merely shrugged and grinned.

She was nothing special. She was self-aware enough to know that there were any number of women just like her all over the continent during the decline of the noble class and the ascent of the merchant families in this new renaissance. She herself was the daughter of a younger son merchant who had more mercantile talent in his little finger than all of the rest of her uncles put together.

Her Father was rugged and a bit weatherbeaten from his younger years spent on the road, but objectively, his charm and his smile made him attractive. Her mother had certainly fallen for that smile.

Her mother had been a circus performer. An acrobat and dancer whose slightly pointed ears and narrow, deceptively fragile looking frame spoke of more than a little bit of Elven blood. Not enough to mean that she disappeared with the other Elves, but enough to guarantee her daughter a similar frame and a lifespan of about a hundred and twenty years if she was lucky.

Annalise loved her parents very much.

Her Father had seen the circus performer when he was just a travelling wagoneer. He was the kind of man that would try his luck and had been astonished that someone as beautiful and graceful as Annalise’s mother would deign to spend the night with him. He was even more astonished when she asked if she could go with him. The two fell in love, much to Annalise’s grandparent’s horror and her father was disowned.

How her Grandparents regretted that now.

Her Father proved that he was more than lucky and grew his fortune by leaps and bounds using the economic theory called Emmanomics. Named for an old Imperial Treasurer that, after reading into her life, had become something of a hero to Annalise’s family. The model had been dismissed for many years as no longer being valid, but Annalise’s Father had used it to great effect. Effect enough that Annalise could have studied wherever and whatever she wanted and that when she decided that she wanted to get married, she could expect enough of a dowry to marry who she wanted.

She liked to say that her Father had taught her to be clever, but her mother had taught her to be wise.

Her mother’s ancestry, along with all of the proper lessons in hair, makeup and the like had all but guaranteed that Annalise was going to be beautiful. She was not the classical image. She was self-aware enough to admit that. But a slender frame was fashionable at the moment and as such, she could afford to be picky when she chose her partners.

Her Mother had helped her.

Annalise really loved her mother.

While her father taught her maths, language, literature, economics and what sciences he was aware of that helped his trade, her mother taught her other things that would be useful to a woman.

With her rougher background, Annalise’s mother taught her daughter how to fight, how to hide a dagger, where to strike a man to disarm him, where to cripple him and where to frighten him and where to kill him. She taught her daughter wrestling for those moments when the knife was impossible to reach. She taught her dancing, tumbling, how to run, how to climb, how to pick a lock and pick a pocket.

And her Father would check Annalise’s progress and would cheer her accomplishments in these skills as well.

Her parents loved each other very much.

Her mother had also taught her about her body’s reaction to lust. She provided her daughter with her first carved phallus and gave her a book that taught Annalise how to use it. She taught her how to count in order to keep the risk of pregnancy down and taught her the potions to be made and drunk in case her body refused to listen to reason.

“And those days and nights will come,” she warned her daughter. “So remember, count, always count. And carry a vial of preventative with you in case the boy is just too pretty. A preventative is much better than the expulsion tonic. When you get pregnant for the first time, ensure that you are happy to greet the baby, rather than ashamed at the mistake.”

Annalise loved her mother

And Annalise listened. Her mother scandalised society with her past history, but her Father would laugh, throw his arms around his wife and kiss her soundly and scandalously, setting the tongues wagging even further when his laughing wife would respond with laughter and equal passion.

Annalise had learned to cover her head with a pillow on nights like that one.

But she loved her Father for it.

She had resolved that if she was going to marry at all, something that she was not convinced about, she wanted a marriage like her parents.

But under her mother’s advice, she indulged when she had felt like it. She had enrolled in the University of Angraal. Primarily to remain near her family…

Have I mentioned how much she loved her family?

… and because Angraal was known for its study of Economics. She also studied Geography and Anthropology with a side course in “Curses and how to spot them”.

She had no intention of going anywhere near the Witcher part of the school. Her Father was well off enough that she would not need to pay for any of her schooling by seeking Witcher Credits.

She had started to cultivate a small amount of scandal around herself before she had started at the university. Private tutors had established her base but now she was out in the wilds.

She was well aware that the number of lovers that she was rumoured to have was considerably larger than what she had actually enjoyed but she was careful. She wanted a reputation of being choosy but her mother had spoken truly when she had told her daughter that at some point, some man or woman would smile at her and her knees would go weak.

She saw no point in depriving herself. Chastity might be more fashionable, but it wasn’t as much fun.

She was also very careful in choosing her close friends. Anyone that was bitchy was cut immediately. She preferred kind souls that could teach her something but at the same time, were willing to learn from her. Her first friend was a bookish girl from the library. Dismissed by the more popular girls and the more handsome boys as being boring and fat but Annalise taught her that she wasn’t fat, she just had cleavage and hips and if she accentuated those things like this then the men loved it.

They did too. And much to Annalise’s joy and private amusement, her friend turned out to be rather dominant.

In return, the bookish friend taught Annalise a love of literature and exactly how someone goes about studying when you are uninterested in the subject. One of those skills that Annalise felt sure should be part of a class that is taught at a much younger age.

Another friend was the classical beauty that Annalise knew she would never be. Long blonde hair, high cheekbones, gentle and kind blue eyes that a person could get lost in if they didn’t stop themselves. When Annalise had met her, she had been painfully naive and the group of loud and obnoxious young men that Annalise called “The Vultures” had been circling in some kind of bet as to who could deflower the “Princess” first. So Annalise swooped in and gathered the Princess into her little circle. She taught her how to spot the falseness in men. In return, she taught Annalise how to enjoy simple beauty in the world and to enjoy the quieter moments that would pass her by.

There were others. A warrior woman of Toussaint that was fed up with the idea that men get to fence while the ladies get to embroider. She had been sent to learn fencing at the Witcher School with the view of possibly being a slayer.

Annalise taught her to think of hair, makeup, dresses and jewellery as the weapons and armour, while expression and words are the fencing techniques. In return, the warrior taught Annalise some tricks that her Mother would never dream of.

There were a number of them. Sometimes greater and sometimes smaller. Women that loved friendship with the guarantee of no conflict, who loved each other for their differences as much as what they had in common. Men, or women for that matter, who were interested in one of the groups were ruthlessly interrogated, tested and when the blessing was given, the young man (or woman) suddenly found themselves with easily another half a dozen new sisters.

There were rival groups of women who tried to ensnare the group in some form of scandal or otherwise break up the group. Annalise’s policy was that the group would never start a fight with one of these groups, but by the Gods, they would finish it and the groups (other than the Princess who Annalise was convinced had birds braiding her hair in the morning, she was so pure and innocent) ruthlessness was becoming known.

Annalise was horrified to realise that, as she tracked events back in her mind, she had the desire to stroke the cheek, or the chest of her new lover. Such intimacy was unheard of. She was pretty sure that she had the start of things though.

She had her heart broken. Some of the older girls that she knew, including both her parents separately, were of the opinion that everyone needed to have their heart broken at least once. It was how you changed your look at life and you need that common experience with the people around you in order to understand them.

She had fallen for the oldest snare in the book which was doubly rankling. A boy, possibly even her opposite number, had seduced her with words and gestures and had turned out to be all talk. The promised gifts never arrived, the offered excursions didn’t occur, her own gifts were discarded and when she offered to make plans, she was ridiculed.

The breakup wasn’t particularly dramatic or messy.

Another insult.

But it was final and heart-breaking. He had seemed bored with it all and immediately ran off to join his friends.

He hadn’t even been a particularly skilled lover.

She was astonished, horrified and furious at herself when she realised that she was heartbroken and this pain had made her angry and bitter for a while. Her friends had looked after her, but she was still self-aware enough to realise that she had fallen off the path a bit.

She had slept with people that she would not have previously considered, her humour became sharp and pointed and if you were not one of her friends, then the word “bitch” would not be inappropriate. She loved where she wanted to and broke hearts with equal abandon.

Her circle of friends had tolerated this for about six months before they sat her down and smacked some sense into her. Then they got her drunk and put her to bed. And in the morning, they helped her rebuild her life.

Gods but she loved her friends as well as her parents.

She felt very small after that. She had done the same thing for many of her friends and had somehow thought that she was above such things. She hated that arrogance about herself too.

In the time of her heartbreak she had developed an unfortunate reputation of being a bit of a slut. She argued this many times. She was not a slut, but she did enjoy physical love and saw no reason to deprive herself when the need was on her.

Unkind people asked what the difference was.

But that was an old pain and she had long since worked past that.

It was still there though, lurking when she wasn’t looking.

But she had become sharper. She had to choose her lovers with more care and did not enjoy celibacy. There had been one or two which had been nice. But generally she turned people down. Unfortunately, that old reputation meant that people would persist, even when she said no. So she learned to turn her humour into a weapon. She would eviscerate the offending boys and men that asked to join her in bed. There was even an argument to be said that it had made her cruel and in some cases, she would admit that.

When she felt that he deserved it and when her friends agreed then she let them have it. So now she has a new reputation. She was the frigid bitch Ice Queen of the school.

She liked that reputation.

She had first become aware of the boy…

She was afraid of thinking of him as a man. If she thought of him as a man then that led to some scary thought processes.

… in the winter. He had joined the university and looked a little shabby. He was not one to be noticed and didn’t stand out in a crowd. His clothing was rough and basic, his rapier and short-blade were simple and heavy looking, and his looks were the kind that promised that he would grow into them. What was not so great in a boy would be handsome in a man.

So she didn’t notice him. Not really. He just started being there.

Then one day, he was walking up to her, holding his rapier carefully away from his legs so he didn’t trip, cape over his arm and hat jauntily on his head.

She was with her friends. The Librarian, the Princess and the warrior were there. The warrior was lazily trying to teach the Princess how to fight, but while graceful on the dance floor, the Princess was hopelessly inept with a blade. Although judging by the slightly sly expression in the Princess’ eyes, Annalise was beginning to think that she was playing up to it.

The boy walked up to her and greeted her with a pretty good bow and sweep of the hat. Her Father’s lessons told her things. It pointed out the stiffness in the limbs that suggested he had come to etiquette rather late in life. His clothing was cheap but well made although some embroidery suggested that someone cared for him.

She guessed that he was one of the peasant scholarships.

She didn’t like the word ‘peasant’ as more than once, her parents had been called those things in the past and so she had views on the subject. But he looked like one of those students who was just too good to be kept from studying… whatever it was he was studying.

His sword and dagger were military style so she guessed at a soldier’s orphan with maybe a mother at home.

“Fair Maiden,” the boy began in a loud and booming voice. “Word of your loveliness has been carried throughout the lands. And now that I see it as true, I am speechless save to politely enquire if you would do me the honour of accompanying me in a walk around the gardens of stone at the end of the week?”

It was ridiculously overblown and she was opening her mouth with any number of sharp retorts to send this… thing fleeing back to the shelter of his friends.

And then it all hit her at once.

Gods but she loved her Parents and the training they had given her.

He was laughing. She could see it dancing in his eyes. But it wasn’t the laughter of the entitled boy who expected to conquer the Ice-Queen of the Spider school. She knew that look. This was the laughter of a man that knew he was about to be made a fool of.

Her gaze flickered behind him and she saw half a dozen young men struggling to contain their mirth and very carefully, she managed NOT to scowl.

The group was rich, she knew all of them, some of them since they were much younger. And she had rejected each of them. All of them had been exactly that form of entitled asshole that thought their money, good looks and carefully learned charm meant that they were entitled to the use of her body.

She had even allowed the leader access once during her time of darkness. It had not been the most disappointing episode of her career but it was not far off. It was certainly one that fell into the bracket of her needing to find a private area afterwards to finish off.

But he had been entitled and had demanded access later and she had rebuffed hard enough that his Father had complained to her Father.

Her Father had laughed.

She loved her Father.

But now they were egging this new one on. They were looking forward to his downfall. They had set him up for a fall and were going to enjoy her eviscerating him. Which would also mean that all of her fellows, which numbered amongst the most desirable women on campus, would also deny him.

They had set him up and he knew it.

Not only did he know it, but he was walking into the trap proudly. Which meant that he knew he had no choice. He was going to turn his shame into a badge of honour and defeat his bullies that way.

To her astonishment, her rage at the bullying along with her sense of… admiration… conspired to drive the sweetest, most innocent smile to her face and she curtsied low, much lower than she needed to, given the occasion, and replied.

“Kind sir,” she began, doing her best to ignore the gasps of astonishment from her friends. She watched his face carefully to see if he caught on. A quick flash of astonishment crossed his face before the realisation hit him. She saw him not smiling in amused delight.

“Kind sir,” she said again. “I fear you do me too much honour.”

“I say not fair lady,” he insisted, “I say that you are the most beautiful lady that adorns this place with your presence,”

She was unable to keep from needling him a little bit, now ignoring the ironic applause from someone behind her. She gestured them into silence.

“I thought my charms had stunned you into silence,” she suggested with amusement.

“Only to be cured by the sound of your voice,” he replied.

She fought the urge to applaud herself.

“Your sweet words have moved me,” she told him. “It would be my distinct pleasure to accompany you on a walk around the gardens.”

“Then I assure you that the pleasure… and the honour is mine,” he told her. “Shall we say midday in the front of the hall on the first day of the weekend?”

“I shall look forward to it.”

She offered her hand to be kissed. He took it, but did not kiss it. He merely lowered his lips towards the hand and stopped. It would certainly have looked like he kissed them to his bullies.

“Thank you for playing along,” he whispered.

“Fuck ‘em,” she told him. “Those bastards aren’t worth your time.”

He was surprised by her language, but he clearly agreed. She got the feeling he would say more but the moment could not be extended.

He straightened and bowed again.

“Dream of me in the meantime,” she told him loudly.

“I will dream of no other,” he responded, “whereas I am not fit to grace your dreams. Instead, I would ask that you dream of a Pink rose in my place.”

She gave him a warning look and she saw that laughter dancing in his eyes again. He seemed able to laugh with his eyes only, keeping the rest of his face still. It made him look older.

He bowed again and turned away.

She enjoyed watching him march up to the bullies in triumph.

“You’re not going to go on that walk are you?” asked one of the newer girls. Annalise was still not sure about her.

“Of course she is,” said the Librarian, not looking up from her book.

She did as well.

They were watched of course. The bullies were all there but a decent distance away. Her scouts told her that he was waiting for her early as was expected of the male and she was late as was expected of the female. But not too late. Just a few minutes.

She made sure that she dressed carefully with the aid of her circle.

“I want to make an effort without looking like I have made an effort,” she told them. And she certainly did that.

He was dressed well, or as well as she guessed his economic status would allow. Collar, cloak, doublet and hat were all obviously clean and brushed. Which is more than she could say for some of her richer gentlemen accompaniers. His weapons, just as much the mark of a gentleman, were polished to an eye hurting shine despite the scratches and small dents that she could see.

And wonder of wonders, he was carrying a bouquet of roses.

Pink ones.

He did a gratifying double take when he saw her and bowed deeply before offering the flowers.

She took them and they smelled wonderful. Wonderful enough that she wondered how she would carry them on a walk.

“If I may,” he suggested gently, but loud enough to carry. “If they do not offend too much, I can have them sent to your chambers?”

She saw a small street kid nearby that was hovering for a reason, dancing from foot to foot.

She told the lad where to take the flowers and he accepted them, and a coin from the boy, before running off.

“Will he not keep the coin and toss the flowers?” she asked quietly.

He chuckled.

“No,” he told her just as quietly as he offered her his hand. Again that sense of awkward correctness, as though the gesture was copied out of a book. “There is honour amongst those of us who grew up poor,”

She would have asked more but he was performing for the unseen watchers.

“Lady,” he called. “You grace me like a goddess greeting a broken man.”

“And yet, to me,” she began. She found the bullies, just behind her and to one side. She saw money being exchanged. “To me, it is I that am graced by such wit, charm and manners.”

She pulled his arm, and therefore him, closer so that they could walk arm in arm. The gesture was not lost on the bullies and she saw one boy’s face twist in rage.

“Then shall we?” he gestured.

“I believe we shall,”

“Thank you for coming,” he said quietly.

“Of course I came. I owe those boys some pain of my own.”

“So I gather,” he told her.

He did not ask about her history with those others. Meaning he either already knew, or he didn’t care.

“I doubt you will have to stay long,” he told her. “They will soon become bored and wander off.”

“Why would I do that?” she wondered, a little astonished and surprised by how hurt she was. “Am I not good enough for you? Already seeking to escape me?”

He laughed, not a reaction that she expected in the face of her sharp rage and hurt.

“No,” he said. “If anything it is the other way round.”

He didn’t explain that either. This was a man that expected others to keep up. She saw the point but wondered what would happen if she asked. That reaction would tell her much.

“What do you mean?” she asked, cursing her clumsy turn of phrase.

He laughed again, he seemed to do that a lot.

“Only giving you an avenue of escape yourself,” he said. “I know who and what I am, I am hardly a fit person for a lady such as yourself to be walking through the park with.”

She was just forming the words in her mouth when he answered her unspoken question.

“You know,” he said. “Charming, clever, witty and beautiful.”

There was something there about the order in which he named her virtues. Something that she could use to mock him for it but she resolved to save it for later. She certainly noticed that “beautiful” was the last on the list and… Dear Gods, was she blushing? So rather than allow him more room, she decided to give him the point for a moment.

They continued their walk through the gardens.

Two minutes later, he made her laugh.

Five minutes after that, she realised that she was at ease in his company and was unafraid that he would seek to take advantage of her in any way. His hands would stay precisely where they were and whenever his eyes did wander, he realised what was happening and he snapped them back to where they should be, either just over her shoulder or looking at her eyes.

She learnt a bit about him as well.

His name was Samuel. An unlucky name although no-one could ever tell him why that might be the case. He enquired of her as to whether she knew the answer and when she told him that she did not, he clicked his fingers in a comic suggestion of frustration. It was a family name though. His Father had been called Samuel and he understood that his Grandfather had been called Samuel

He was indeed a younger student, taking advantage of the education grants that were available to the lower classes. His Father had been a soldier who had died when he was ten, and his mother was still alive, making a tentative living as a midwife in the town. She was not professionally qualified enough to make any serious money out of it from the higher ladies, but her skills were in good enough demand that she was called on by many.

“Her main problem is a soft heart there,” he told her, his proud tone at odds with his joking words. “Everyone knows that if they turn up with a problem then she will help them and then she struggles to demand payment. But she earns enough for us to get by.”

His mother had taught him about the various medicinal herbs while his Father had given him an impression of being a hero. He was intelligent enough to be sceptical of heroism but his dead Father’s influence as well as his mother’s reluctance to fleece money out of people had given him an urge to serve. He didn’t want to join the army.

“I would be terrible at it,” he confided in her in his typical self-effacing manner. “My mother helped educate me by teaching me to ask ‘why’ at every stage and then find out the answer for myself. So now I do that. But a soldier needs instant obedience. I would be ordered to ‘TAKE THAT HILL’ and I would turn to my Officer or Sergeant and say ‘Why?’ and then I would get the shit kicked out of me. And rightly so.”

He had worked hard, gaining a scholarship to go to the University through the Witcher-School with the aim to be an Alchemist and healer of a Witcher team. His fencing was good enough, but he would never be a swordmaster, or so he claimed, but to her eyes, he held his sword and moved well enough. She rather thought that he lacked proper training from a young age that would have benefited his peers.

And now here he was.

She found that she liked him and in quieter moments she found herself wondering which of her friends she could set him up with.

The afternoon flew past and she found herself disappointed that it was over. Her cheeks hurt from smiling so much and as he bowed over her hand and scraped his hat across the floor as was customary.

“Thank you for a wonderful afternoon,” he said. “I must confess that when I was dared to approach you with a romantic slant, I was, of course, aware that I was being mocked and expected a thorough, and proper dressing down from the famous sharp tongue of the lady Annalise, but might I say that I enjoyed your wit and your cleverness.”

There was a stunning lack of artifice in his words. He was being honest and it took her a moment to recognise what was happening.

“And I, yours,” she told him, answering honestly. “It is rare that I enjoy the company of a stranger so much.”

“May I escort you somewhere?” he wondered politely and formally, as was proper.

“No,” she gestured to her friends who were waiting and giggling.

“Ah, I see the regiment is assembled,” he commented and lifted his hat in salute to her friends who curtsied back ironically.

“Then I shall leave you here,” he told her. “I am your most humble servant.”

“The pleasure is mine,” she told him.

And he didn’t try to kiss her. As she walked away from him to the safety of her friends, she wondered if she was disappointed.