Chapter Text
Jaskier woke from a dream about swallowing glass, only to discover his subconscious hadn't been that far off. Bollocks. A few too many wet days and cold nights on the road would give anyone a sore throat.
He was fine. Fine.
Jaskier coughed. He gargled an infusion of honey and cloves. The cup of hot water and herbs Geralt brewed soothed some of the scratchiness. Not now. He didn’t have time to get sick.
“You’re quiet.”
"Does my voice sound different to you?" Jaskier asked, then coughed again in a failed attempt to clear whatever was in it. "Oooh, though it is a little deeper isn't it. Throaty. Maybe not all bad then." He took a deep breath. "There once was a-"
"Don't you think you should save your voice?"
Jaskier grinned. "Oh no. You'll like this one. There once was a maiden of tricks, who swore she could handle five pricks, she said with a cry as she pulled out her glass eye, ‘Now I can handle six!’"
He started coughing again as he laughed at the look on Geralt's face. "Don't pretend to be a prude. I've known you too long. You liked it, I can tell."
"If you don't rest your voice, it will stay like that."
“Not true. Though, if it did, we could form a duet." Jaskier cleared his throat again and took another sip of the herbal water. "Have no fear. My voice will be back to its normally resonant self soon enough."
It wasn’t. The ache in his throat spread down into his chest.
As they headed south the trees thinned and grew crooked postures. Standing water lay in patches. The afternoon air grew humid. The fog, sticky and moist, clung to his skin. Pungent scents of decay gorged Jaskier’s nose, overwhelming any other scent. Even after growing used to the odor he remained one deep breath away from gagging.
“... so I’m just saying when you have the choice between a—oh, what the fuck.” Jaskier nearly tripped in his effort to cross to the other side of the path. What if his first instinct was to put as much distance between himself and the ears hanging from the branches. Not that crossing the road did any good. The damn things were there too. “Geralt?”
Ears.
Human ears. Non-human ears would be bad too, but maybe just a little less horrifying.
They hung from strings, dangling.
Geralt studied the grisly display. “The trees have ears.”
“Ha,” Jaskier let out the sound in a puff of air. “Ha, ha. No.” Joking about it didn’t lessen the horror of the gruesome display.
“They’re enchanted,” Geralt added. “Whoever put them here is listening.”
Not a joke then, lovely. Great, that made everything so much worse. “Hag? Ear hag? Is that a thing?”
“Stay close. Be quiet.”
Oh. Being quiet wasn’t going to be an issue. “Can they really hear us? Who can hear us?” On second thought, silence was overrated; he had questions.
“We’ll be in Downwarren soon.”
Jaskier walked closer, so close that Geralt placed a hand on his shoulder and sternly nudged him an arm’s breadth away.
“Drowners,” Geralt explained. “I’ll need room to maneuver if they attack.”
Not talking meant listening. And listening led to hearing all the sloshing and creaking going on in the misty woods off the path he couldn't see. Fuck. “Geralt,” he whispered.
“No.”
Well.
They trudged on, and thankfully Geralt’s swords stayed sheathed. “What’s that ahead?” Jaskier asked and waved toward an odd shrine built to the side. Melted candles lined the base, along with offerings of wrapped cakes and vegetables. And a bowl of... were those entrails? Most striking, however, was the carved statue. A ghoulish figure of an old woman, mouth open like a wraith, tits hanging down to her knees. “What is it?”
“A representation.”
“Of nightmares, maybe.”
“Locals call them the Ladies of the Woods.”
Jaskier allowed a dramatic shiver to crawl up his spine as he glanced around, almost expecting one of those Ladies to be lurking in the shadows. “Ladies with an ear fetish? I prefer deities who are content with offerings of coin and fake prayers rather than body parts.”
“The Ladies of the Woods aren’t deities,” Geralt insisted.
“No,” Jaskier conceded easily. “Monsters are monsters; worshipping them doesn’t change what they are.”
The hollowed-out eyes of the statue pulled Jaskier’s attention. The blackness of the depths went beyond the scope of a simple wood carving. A well with no bottom, falling forever. A whisper of wind like breath swept past his ear. The air grew heavy, thick in his nose and chest. Sweat trickled down his forehead, into his eyes, dripped down his neck. His clothes hung limp with damp and cold.
“There is tainted power in the air. We should turn around. Take the long way around the bog,” Geralt said.
The tone of Geralt’s voice startled Jaskier out of whatever fascination those pit-like eyes had held on him. He looked away. Fuck, but the statue was unsettling.
Geralt started leading Roach to turn around. “We’ll double back. The innkeeper in Lurch seemed impressed with your talents.”
“Oh, yes. The innkeeper was extremely impressed with my talent-- the innkeeper's wife, not so much.” Jaskier laughed. He still had a bruise on his bottom from the broom the woman had swung at him. “Geralt, it’s never a good idea to return to a crowd that’s already taken its pleasure.”
“If you refrained from bestowing so much of your pleasure on your crowds, you wouldn’t need me to guard your back so often.”
“Fair.” Jaskier grinned and winked. “But I do have such a lovely back. You’d miss it.” But he didn’t get the rise out of Geralt he was looking for. The witcher stared at the statue as well. “You’re not afraid of an old crone, are you? Geralt?”
“No.”
“It should at least be good for a story, don’t you think? What did you say is the next town?”
“Downwarren.”
“It’s, what, at least a week-long detour if we go around?”
“If we make good time.”
“Downwarren it is then.” Jaskier knew he’d won, for now. He didn’t want to be the reason Geralt missed plucking his special flowers. Herbs only found in a specific location on the first new moon of midsummer, or something like that.
Geralt could travel faster without him. Jaskier had to be honest with himself; he was no longer in his twenties. Years were starting to add up, as they did for any normal human. He couldn’t expect to revel the entire night and wake up refreshed and ready to set out on the road at dawn. Walking ten hours a day at a brisk pace guaranteed waking with a myriad of aches and pains in the morning. A shortcut through a creepy bog to avoid an extra week of hard travel was well worth the smell of rotten-eggs and sulfur in the air.
Tendrils of fog slithered along the path. Jaskier watched the wisps of it curl as he kept up a brisk pace to match Geralt’s.
How many more seasons could he keep up? Jaskier had passed from being the youngest to win prizes at festivals to being a seasoned performer. He’d spent a good part of the winter as a guest lecturer educating eager young students on the Safety of Bardic Travel, for fuck’s sake.
Find a travelling companion, he’d told them. Join a caravan. There was security in numbers. All the worst moments in his life had been times he traveled alone. There was a reason he’d latched onto Geralt so many years ago, and it wasn’t only about inspiration. When they were together, Jaskier never went hungry after performing to an apathetic crowd, never needed to charm a friendly widow into allowing him into her bed when he didn’t have enough coin for a room at the inn.
Most of all, with Geralt, he wasn’t lonely.
The mist grew thicker. It swept up around him, curling around his legs. Jaskier swallowed around an uncomfortable thickness in his throat. When the inevitable time came for Geralt to discover that Jaskier could no longer keep up, Jaskier didn’t know what he’d do. He still travelled alone when necessary, but always with the knowledge that his and Geralt’s paths would intertwine.
Vapor slid along Jaskier’s skin like hundreds of damp fingers. Had he really been so lost in maudlin thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the mist surrounding him completely?
“Geralt?” Jaskier whispered. The fog closed in as Jaskier reached out for Roach’s saddle, anything to grip on to. When had the mist grown so thick?
And a hand grabbed his wrist. Jaskier gasped, flinched and tried to pull away, but the grip held.
Geralt’s hand was cool against his skin, strong. The murky haze receded with unnatural ease.
“Fuck. Fuck.” What kind of fog was that?
“Stay with me,” Geralt stood tense, body poised to defend and attack.
Jaskier sank to his knees. He grasped Geralt’s arm with his other hand and held on with all his strength, afraid that if he lost that anchor, he’d be lost again.
Geralt pulled him up, dragged him forward. “I’ve got you.”
But the fog wrapped around Jaskier more forcefully, more insistently than before. Every weakness, every inadequacy rushed to the surface, and flayed Jaskier's defences to the core. He bled helplessness. Suffocated on it. Jaskier choked on his own frailty.
“Jaskier,” Geralt’s voice, a word in his mind. “Rest.” The command enveloped him, soothing, calming, sweeping away all else until he knew no more.