‘I was wounded the day of the equinox.’
‘It is not possible, Ciri. You must have mistaken the date.’
‘Absolutely not. You are probably using an out-dated calendar, hermit.’
‘As you wish. Is it so important?’
‘No. Not at all.’
Three days later, Vysogota took out the last of the stitches. He had every reason to be please and proud of his work – the stitching was straight and clean, there was no fear of dirt being tucked in the wound. The surgeon’s satisfaction was only marred by watching Ciri star at the scar in gloomy silence, trying different angles with a mirror and trying to hide it, without success, by throwing her hair over her cheek. The scar had disfigured here. A fact is a fact. There was nothing she could do. Nothing could help her pretend that it was not there. Still red and swollen like a rope, dotted with the traces of the sting of the needle and marked with the signs of the thread, the scar looked truly macabre. It was possible that the condition might show a slow or rapid improvement. However, Vysogota knew there was no possibility that the scar would disappear or cease to disfigure her.
Ciri was feeling much better, to Vysogota’s amazement and satisfaction and no longer spoke of leaving. He took the black mare, Kelpie from his the pen. Vysogota knew that in the north, Kelpie was a sea monster that could according to superstition take the form of horse, a dolphin or even a beautiful woman, but in its real form it looked a lot like sea weed. Ciri saddled the mare and rode around the pen and hut, after which she returned Kelpie to the pen to keep company with the goat, and Ciri returned to the hut to keep Vysogota company.
She started to help him – probably out of boredom – when working with the skins. While he separated the otter skins into size and tone, she divided the muskrats in backs and bellies and stretched the skins over a table that they had brought into the house. Her fingers were extremely nimble.
It was while during this task a strange conversation occurred between them.
‘You do not know who I am. You could not even imagine who I am.’
She repeated this trivial statement several times and it bothered him a bit. Of course she fail to notice his annoyance, it would have lowered him to betray his feelings to a brat like that. No, he could not let it happen, but neither could he betray the curiosity that devoured him.
A curiosity that was unfounded, because he could have easily guessed who she was. In the days of Vysogota’s youth, gangs were not uncommon. The years have passed, but it could not eliminate the magnetic force with which these gangs attracted a girl eager for adventure and strong emotions. Which often led to their undoing. The brats who came out of it with a scar on their face could say that they had been lucky. For the less lucky they could expect torture, the gibbet, the axe or the stake.
Ha, from the time of Vysogota only one thing has changed – progressive emancipation. The band attracted not only the young males but also crazy girls who preferred swords, horses and the unbridled life than needles, dishes and waiting for suitors.
Vysogota did not tell her directly, but gave her a sufficiently clear note that he knew with whom he was dealing with. To make her aware that if there was a mystery here it was surely not this girl – a girl who was on the road with a gang of bandit teens and had miraculously escaped from a trap. A disfigured brat trying to surround herself with a halo of mystery...
‘You do not know who I am. But do not worry, I’ll go soon. I will not expose you to danger.’
Vysogota had had enough.
‘What sort of danger?’ he said. ‘Even if your pursuers found you here, which I doubt, what harm could befall me? Assisting runaway criminals is punishable, but not to a hermit since he is not aware of the world. My privilege is to accommodate everyone who comes into my hermitage. Well, you say I do not know who you are. How could I know, a hermit, who you are, if you committed a crime and why the law is chasing you? And what law? I do not even know whose law applies in this region and who the representatives of this law are. I do not care and it has never interested me, I’m a hermit.’
He realized he had gone too far. But he would not budge. Her green eyes were full of rage and pierced him like knives.
‘I’m a poor hermit. Dead to the world and their work. I am a simple man, uneducated, ignorant of worldly affairs…’
He exaggerated.
‘Sure!’ she cried, throwing the skin and the knife onto the floor. ‘Do you take me for a fool? Well do not think that I am so stupid. A simple hermit. When you were gone I looked around your hut. I looked into that corner covered by the curtains. Where you have many books of science on the shelves, uh, a simple and uneducated man?’
Vysogota threw an otter skin onto the pallet.
‘They belonged to a local tax collector,’ he waved his hand carelessly. ‘When he died, the villagers did not know what to do with them and brought them to me. They are land registers and accounting books.’
‘You’re lying.’ Ciri winced and rubbed her scar. ‘You are clearly lying to me!’
He did not answer, pretending to evaluate the next skin tone.
‘You think,’ she continued, ‘that because you have a white beard, wrinkles and a hundred years on the neck that you can effortlessly fool an innocent girl, huh? Well I’ll tell you – the first duck to pass through here may have been deceived. But I’m not a duck.’
He raised his eyebrows in silent but provocative question. She did not let him wait too long.
‘I, dear hermit, I have studied in places where there were many books, and with some of the same title that are on your shelves. I know many of those titles.’
Vysogota raised his eyebrows even more. She looked him straight in the eye.
‘Incredible tales,’ she said, ‘you told the ragged tomboy, the dirty orphan, the thief or bandit you found in the reeds with the smashed face. But you should know, sir hermit, that I have read the History of the World by Roderick de Novembre. I went over and over again, the works that bear the titles Materia medica and Herbarius, which is the same one you have on your shelf. I also know what the ermine cross on a red shield embossed on the backs of your books mean. It is a sign that the books were made at the University of Oxenfurt.’
She paused, still staring intently. Vysogota was silent; he struggle to make sure his face did not betray anything.
‘So I think,’ Ciri said, throwing back her head in a move that was characteristic of her, proud and somewhat violent, ‘that you are not a simpleton or a hermit. That you did not leave voluntarily from the world, but you ran away from it. And you hide here in the wilds, masked between the impassable swamps.’
‘If so,’ Vysogota smiled, ‘then our luck has joined in a very strange way, my well-read maiden. Destiny has put us together in mysterious ways. At the end of the day, you too, Ciri, are hiding. At the end of the day, you too, Ciri, deftly weave around you a veil of appearances. I’m old and full of suspicions and mistrust, embittered by age…’
‘Towards me?’
‘Towards the world, Ciri. A world where appearances take the deceptive mask of truth to expose other truths, but is false as well as attempting to deceive. To a world in which the shield of the University of Oxenfurt is painted on the doors of brothels. To a world where a ragged bandit is knowledgeable, wise and may even be of noble birth, who is an intellectual and scholar who reads Roderick de Novembre and knows the seal of the Academy. Against all appearances. Against the fact that they themselves carry another mark. A criminal tattoo, a red rose etched near the groin.’
‘You’re right,’ her lips tightened and her face flushed so intense that the line of the scar was almost black. ‘You’re a bitter old man. And a musty busybody.’
‘On my shelf, behind the curtain,’ he said with a nod, ‘is the Aen N’og Mab Taedh’morc, a collection of short storied and Elven prophecies. In there is a story that fits this situation and conversation. It is the story of the old raven and the swallow. Just like you, Ciri, I’m a scholar, so I w
ould like to recite a short passage, I hope my memory does not disappoint. The raven, as I remember, accuses the swallow of rashness and inappropriate levity:
Hen Cerbin dic’ss aén n’og Zireael
Aark, aark, cáelm foilé, tee veloë, ell?
Zireael…
He stopped and leaned his elbows on the table and placed his chin onto his extended fingers. Ciri shook her head, straightened up and looked at him defiantly. She finished the poem.
…Zireael veloë que’ss aén en’ssan irch
Ma bog, Hen Cerbin, váen ni, quirk, quirk!
‘The embittered, suspicious old man,’ Vysogota said after a moment of silence, ‘apologizes to the educated maiden. The old raven, who sense fraud and deceit everywhere, begs forgiveness from the swallow, whose only fault is that it is young and full of life. And pretty…’
‘Now you’re raving,’ she grumbled, covering the scar on her face in an unconscious movement. ‘You can save the compliments. They will not mend the scar left on my skin. Don’t think that is how you are going to win my trust. I still do not know who you really are. Why you lied to me about the days and dates. And why you looked between my legs when the wound was on my face. And if you were limited to just looking.’
This time she managed to upset him.
‘How dare you, kid?’ he cried. ‘I could be your father!’
‘My grandfather,’ she corrected him icily. ‘Or my great-grandfather. But you’re not. I do not know who you are. But surely not the person you are pretending to be.’
‘I am the one who found you in the swamp, nearly froze to the bone, with a black mask instead of a face, unconscious, filthy and dirty. I am the one who brought you home but did not know who you were and had the right to imagine the worst. Who cured you and lay you on a bed. Gave you medicine when you were burning with fever. Who took care of you. I washed you. Very carefully. Also in the vicinity of the tattoo.’
Ciri calmed down, but her eyes did not lose the challenging and insolent look.
‘In this world,’ she snapped, ‘there are those with deceptive appearances that put on a mask of truth, as you yourself have said. I also know a little about how this world works. You saved me, treated and cured me. Thank you. I am gratefully for your… Kindness. But I know there is no kindness without…’
‘Self interest and hope of a favor,’ he finished with a smile. ‘Yes, I know. I am a man of the world, who knows the world as well as you, Ciri. Young women who have been deprived of everything that has any value. If you are unconscious or too weak to defend yourselves, they usually give free rein to lust and appetite, often depraved or unnatural. Is it not true?’
‘Nothing is as it seems,’ Ciri replied, blushing again.
‘An accurate statement,’ said the hermit, while adding another skin to the appropriate lot. ‘And how inevitably it leads to the conclusion that we, Ciri, we know nothing about each other. We know only the appearances and they lie.’
He waited a moment, but Ciri did not hasten to say anything.
‘Although we both have succeeded in making a preliminary inquiry, we still don’t know anything. I do not know who you are, you do not know who I am…’
This time he deliberately waited. She looked at him and her eyes burned with the question he was expecting. Her eyes flashed when she asked:
‘Who will start?’
If someone had crept up to the dark hut with the sunken, overgrown with moss roof and if they looked inside, in the firelight of the hearth they would have seen an old man with a white beard hunched over bundles of skins. They would have also seen a girl with ashen-hair with an ugly scar on her cheek, a scar that did not fit at all with the green eyes as big as a child’s.
But nobody could see. The hut was lost in the endless field of reeds, in the middle of a swamp where no one dared to enter.
‘My name is Vysogota of Corvo. I was a doctor, a surgeon. I was an alchemist. Later I worked as a researcher, a philosopher and an ethicist. I was a professor at the University of Oxenfurt. I had to flee from there after publishing some work that was considered impious and heretical. Then, fifty years ago that charge carried the death penalty. I went into exile. My wife did not want to immigrate, so she left me. While on the run I stopped in the far south, in the Nilfgaardian Empire. I settled down after a while and became a professor of philosophy and ethics at the Imperial Academy in Castel Graupian. I served in that position for almost ten years. Then history repeated – I had to flee after the publication of a certain treatise… Which by the way, dealt with the totalitarian regime and the criminal nature of the wars of occupation, but officially my work and I was branded as clerical heresy and metaphysical mysticism. An investigating showed that I was a lackey of expansive and revisionist clergy circles that were effectively ruling the Nordling Kingdoms. It seemed like a grim joke, considering that these priestly circles had twenty years before issued me with a death sentence for atheism. In fact, it had been a long time since the priests in the North had lost their influence, but in Nilfgaard they refused to acknowledge it. Combining mysticism and politics were prosecuted and punished without mercy.’
‘Today, judging from the perspective of years, I think if I had humbled myself and had shown remorse, I’m certain the matter would have been settled and I would have just fallen into disgrace with the emperor without having to resort to drastic means. But I was outraged. I was sure of my truth, It was timeless and superior to any policy. I felt an injustice. I was unjustly wronged by the ruling tyrannies. I had established active contacts with dissidents seeking to overthrow the tyranny. Before I could realize I was thrown into prison with my new friends. Some of them, when the executioner showed them his tools, identified me as the chief ideologue of the underground movement. But before I was executed, I was saved by the imperial grace and I was sentenced into exile – under threat of immediate execution of the original sentence if I ever returned to imperial lands.’
‘I then got mad at the world, with the kingdoms, empires and universities, with the dissidents, civil servants and lawyers. With colleagues and friends who, as if by magic, did not want to know me. With my second wife, who similar to the first, thought that her husband’s problems were reason enough for divorce. With my children, I gave up. I became a hermit. Here in Ebbing, in the swamps of Pereplut. I took over the hut where a hermit used to live. With all the bad luck I had, Nilfgaard annexed Ebbing, so before I could settle in, I found myself again in imperials territory. I had no desire nor the energy to make another journey and so I decided to hide. Imperial verdicts are never time-barred, even when the Emperor who issued it is long dead, and the current emperor has had little reason to recall it. The death sentence remains in force, as is the custom and law in Nilfgaard. Sentences for high treason do not expire and are not subject to amnesty. At the coronation of every new emperor, everyone is pardoned who was denounced by his predecessor – except for traitors. Therefore it makes no difference to me who sits on the throne – if I violate the decision of the court to exile me and if I am arrested, my head will fall on the scaffold.’
‘So you see, dear Ciri, we are both in a similar situation.’
‘What is ethics? I knew, but I have forgotten.’
‘The science of morality. The rules of customary behavior, nobility, benevolence and honesty. From the heights of good which elevates the human soul to morality and righteousness. And from the depth of evil which brings it down to wickedness and immorality...’
‘The heights of good!’ she snorted. ‘Righteousness! Morality! Don’t make me laugh, or you’ll make my scar open up again. You had the devil’s own luck, that they didn’t manage to send a bounty hunter, such as... Bonhart. You learned the depth of evil. Ethics? To hell with your ethics, Vysogota of Corvo. It is not the wicked and immoral people who sink into the abyss, no! Oh, no! There are the bad, but determined and there are those who are decent, honest and noble, but clumsy, hesitant but full of scruples.’
‘Thank you for your t
eachings,’ he said jokingly. ‘Believe me, even if you live for a century, it is never too late to learn something new. Truly, it is always helpful to hear from mature people who have experienced the world.’
‘Laugh,’ she shook her head. ‘Laugh while you can, because now it is my turn. Now I’ll entertain you with a story. I’ll tell you what happened to me. And when I’m finished, we’ll see if you still want to joke.’
If someone had crept up to the hut in the swamp after dark, and looked through a crack in the shutters and saw into the room, he would have seen in the dim light a white-bearded old man intently listening to an ashen-haired girl sitting on a stump by the fire. He would she that she speaks slowly, as if it was hard to find words, rubbing her cheek that was distorted by a scar nervously, and intertwined with long moments of silence, tells the story of her fate. A story about teaching she received that proved to be all false and misleading. On the promises made to her that had not been kept. A story about doom, where she learned to believe, but was shamefully betrayed. The fact that every time she was beginning to hope for a change for the better, she was subjected to humiliation. Humiliation, injustice and pain. The fact that those who she trusted and loved, betrayed her, did not come to her aid when she was threatened with violation, suffering and death. The councils, that according to people should be true to their ideals, failed whenever they wanted to build and thus proved to be useless. The help, friendship and love of those in which support and friendship had never been looked for – to say nothing about love.
But no one could see or hear. The hut with the sunken roof was enveloped in an impenetrable fog in a swamp, where no one dared to go.
CHAPTER TWO
When a young girl enters adolescence, dreams examine hitherto inaccessible areas, which are represented by a hidden chamber... As the girl approaches the fateful spot, she has to climb a spiral staircase, and in dreams those stairs typically mean sexual experiences. She passes over the stairs to a small locked door, which has a key in the lock... A small locked room in dreams often means the vagina, the turn of the key in a lock symbolizes the sex act.