Chapter Text
Istredd paced in the magnificent library of the Cintran palace, down a row of beautifully bound, priceless books and then back again, then up the next row. He should be working. He had more documents to look through, more leads to chase. Further to dig. Always, further to dig. But for the moment, an obstacle blocked his progress. And she didn’t seem inclined to go away without an answer. Istredd stopped at the end of the aisle where Fringilla stood, irritatingly placid.
“This is not my area. At all,” he said. “Why ask me?”
“This prisoner has information about something the White Flame needs,” she said.
“And?” Istredd demanded. Emhyr surely had in his employ many experts far more skilled at loosening the tongues of recalcitrant prisoners. There must have been a reason Fringilla had approached him with this request.
“This is an opportunity.” Fringilla spoke so quietly that Istredd had to lean closer to hear her. “If you want to continue to do your work in Cintra, you need to make yourself useful to Emhyr.”
“I’m a scholar.” Istredd raised his chin. “The work I’m doing on monoliths could–”
“No one cares about that, least of all the White Flame,” she said acidly. “We have a war to fight.”
Istredd huffed out an irritated sigh. Even here, he had to defend himself, to prove the importance of his work. Short-sighted fools, all of them. “Then what do you want from me?”
“Help me,” she gritted out. “This prisoner knows the location of the Cintran princess. The White Flame needs her to consolidate his power. Find out where she is.”
Istredd stared at her as his stomach dropped. If this was about the princess, he was swimming in even more troubled waters than he’d imagined. And if he wanted to preserve his own neck, Istredd couldn’t venture to suggest he wasn’t fully willing to pursue whatever goal Emhyr wanted. He needed another excuse to demure. “I’ve told you, this isn’t my area,” he tried.
“Really?” The look she gave him was almost pitying. “We both know you’ve done your share of manipulation.” She didn’t need to say anything more to evoke the specter of his actions when they’d been at school together. “And you’re Stregobor’s protege. Don’t tell me you learned nothing.”
Istredd turned away from Fringilla and paced to the other end of the row of shelves. It was true that no one in the Brotherhood knew more about extracting memories from unwilling minds than Stregobor. Istredd had tried to forget those lessons. But sometimes the remembered screams from the objects of Stragobor’s demonstrations still woke him from sleep.
So it wasn’t that Istredd couldn’t rip information from a resisting mind. The question, really, was whether or not Istredd was willing to do so.
Istredd paced back to see Fringilla raise an eyebrow expectantly. He turned and walked again to the end of the row, stroking the spines on the books to ground himself as he went.
If Emhyr got his hands on this girl, the girl with the Lara Dorren gene, he would be even more in control of the fate of the continent that he was now. Istredd had benefited from the advance of the empire, hadn't he? Sure, the ale was shit, but they had proper bath houses and a functioning government, and they'd given refuge to the elves. Well, that last had been mostly Fringilla, as far as he understood the matter. But you could hardly say that the monarchs of the north were any more enlightened. Certainly none of them had given him nearly as free a hand or a purse when it came to his research.
But delivering a generational weapon, built by the elves to destroy all humans, into the hands of a conqueror who’d already subjected half the Continent and was only a tenuous ally of the elves, well, one didn’t need a deep dive into Cintran royal genetics nor all the resources of Codringher and Fenn to know that would be unwise. If it came to it, was there anyone Istredd would trust with the power of an impressionable young girl destined to destroy humanity? No one should have that much power. The girl existed, however, and aside from destroying her, there seemed no way to mitigate the threat she represented.
Istredd felt his hands curling into frustrated fists, and forced himself to relax. Fringilla was watching him.
He hated this. He hated not knowing what would happen. He hated not having a plan. He hated that other people were making decisions that forced him into a corner. He wasn’t done with his work here, not nearly. He’d only begun to unravel the secrets of this monolith. But he would not show the extent to which this request had unnerved him. At least, any more than his measured pacing already had.
He returned to Fringilla and said, “Who is it I’m meant to be extracting this information from?”
“A witcher. She was last seen with a witcher, and this one likely knows where she’s gone.”
“A witcher,” Istredd echoed. Geralt’s face came easily to mind, his reticence to even mention why he came searching out the monoliths. He had been protecting the girl, even from Istredd, whom he’d come to for help. But he almost certainly did have the information Emhyr wanted. Istredd schooled his face into an expression of scorn. “Everyone knows you can’t torture a witcher. Their mutated physiology is highly sensitive.” The anatomy charts, formulae, and notes from dissections he’d seen in the archives of the Research Chapter came to mind, the ones that had treated the witchers as little more than dumb beasts. “They expire before they give up anything.”
“You don’t need to torture someone to get information from them. That’s the point.” Fringilla stepped up beside Istredd and said, ever so quietly, “And as your friend, let me say that it’s in your best interest to make a proper effort.”
Istredd made himself keep breathing, even as panic began to rise. Betraying Emhyr now would mean, at the very least, that he wouldn't have access to any of the southern monoliths ever again, nor any that fell under the increasing reach of the empire. And that issue would only be relevant if Istredd lived to escape this place. Sorcerers who displeased Emhyr seldom had the chance to exist outside his good graces. Istredd gritted his teeth, and made the only choice he could.
“Where is the witcher?”
–
Coën wasn’t actually meditating. He was trying, really he was. He’d dragged himself onto his knees, rested his hands on his thighs, and tried to take deep breaths, despite the searing pain in his side whenever his lungs expanded. Hunger was a companion he was familiar with, though it had been long, long years since he’d known it this well. Pain, too, he had trained to deal with. The fear, though. Witcher mutations were meant to destroy fear. But perhaps, Coën reflected, fear for someone else was different than fear for oneself.
Coën refocused again, tried to calm his mind. He needed to be ready when they came to work on him again. The harsh voice of one of the guards tore his attention away from his wavering attempt to concentrate.
“Come on, look lively.” When Coën opened his eyes, he saw one guard gesturing imperiously at the other guards who’d been squatting in the corridor outside his cell, dicing. “Get him out of his cage. They found a sorcerer to get it out of him.”
“A sorcerer?” Said another one of the guards, whose beard was still mostly peach fuzz. “Fuh. I could’ve made him talk if they gave me a go, see if I couldn’t.”
Not bloody likely, Coën thought. They’d begun asking him questions the same day they’d dragged him off the road and stuffed him into this cell. Questions about the north, about his own activities, and then, ever so casually, about Ciri.
Emhyr’s questioners were good. They’d hurt him very skillfully. Perhaps they’d heard the rumors, vigorously encouraged by the witcher schools back when they had been more influential and less decimated, that witchers would only die under torture, so it wasn’t worth bothering with. But if they had, they weren’t afraid to test the theory. The questioners had inflicted short bouts of extremely intense pain, mingled with long and grinding agony, but had always been careful to patch up any serious wounds. Well, except the ones from this morning, wounds from a knife that hadn’t been sharpened in far too long, still sluggishly dripping blood.
And still, despite their best efforts, Coën had not told them what they wanted to know. He wouldn’t now, whoever they sent.
“Well, maybe they’ll let us watch,” a third guard said, as he unlocked the door to the cell. “Wouldn’t mind seeing this mutant prick get his due. I’ve seen the White Flame’s sorcerers tear apart a man’s mind, leave him broken.”
“Would you like that, witcher?” the first guard asked, then cackled at what passed for wit among the guards in this place.
Coën said nothing. No, he didn’t like sorcerers. Triss Merigold was alright. She said what she thought, she smelled nice, and she was good with the princess. But most sorcerers were like the ones that had destroyed Coën’s home and murdered his brothers, made him an orphan even among the motherless rabble of witchers. If it was true that they could pluck thoughts out of people’s minds, like birds picking worms out of the ground, Coën couldn’t let that happen. He’d have to do something. Goad the guards into killing him. Get ahold of a blade and end it himself. Something. No matter what, he wasn’t letting these bastards get their hands on the little witcher girl.
He pushed himself to his feet, gritting his teeth against the pain, and waited for the next ordeal.
–
The witcher was not Geralt of Rivia. Istredd didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed by that fact.
He glared up at Istredd with one yellow eye and one dark, likely the result of a troublesome mutation process. One side of the man’s head was a patchwork of scars, though they seemed to be old and not a result of the man’s captivity. Bruises weren’t terribly visible on the man’s dark skin, but there was a bright patch of blood on the left side of his shirt that suggested a fresh wound, or a deeper one re-opened. His hands were chained together with a metal that glinted blue-green in the flickering torchlight—dimeritium. His breath rasped in his throat, sounding vaguely wet. The collar of his shirt was singed, the garment hanging off him as if several sizes too large. He still appeared to have all his extremities, which was more than Istredd could say for some of the residents of Nilfgaard’s dungeons. But clearly Emhyr’s questioners had found some methods of torture they could employ while still keeping a witcher alive.
Istredd eyed the guards looming on either side of the witcher, whose attention was fixed on their charge. One gripped the hilt of his sword tightly, and the other kept a hand on the back of the prisoner’s neck, as if that could restrain a witcher. They were Fringilla’s people, of course, and surely had orders to report to her anything they saw or heard.
If Istredd had any hope whatsoever of pulling this off, he couldn’t have witnesses. He lifted his chin and channeled his haughtiest court manor. “You may leave us.”
The guards exchanged a skeptical look. The one on the left tightened his grip on the witcher’s neck. The one on the right said, “But sir, we were told—”
“Would you like to tell Madame Vigo that you interfered with my work, or shall I?”
The guards looked at each other, down at the witcher, and at each other again. Then, the one on the right shrugged. “As m’lord wishes.” They backed towards the door, keeping a wary eye on the witcher until they’d shut the door behind them.
Istredd watched them go somewhat wistfully. If only walking out of this room would solve his problems, he’d be happy to do so, and let this witcher fend for himself. But alas, the only way out seemed to be through.
Istredd looked down at the witcher, who stared back at him with mismatched eyes and a blank expression that was somehow much more intimidating than a scowl would have been. It was difficult to know where to start. At last, Istredd decided on the direct approach. “Do you know where Cirilla is or not?”
The witcher spat on the floor, more blood than saliva, and said nothing.
“What about Geralt of Rivia?” Istredd tried, without much hope. “He came to me for help, to find out about monsters associated with a monolith near here. Cirilla is connected to that monolith. I need to find out where she is.”
“Want to satisfy your own curiosity before you turn her over to your master?” The witcher’s expression had darkened to pure disgust.
“Emhyr is not my master.” Istredd snapped. Then he gritted his teeth and let out a breath. There was no use getting angry, not now. It would be so easy simply to take what he wanted from this man’s mind and give the information to Emhyr, if only he could bury the horror he would feel at handing over the elves’ best hope for survival to a human conqueror. Istredd would be so much better off if he could stomach doing what Fringilla had asked. “And I don’t want any harm to come to the girl.”
“I will die before you get any information from me,” the witcher said. He spoke so calmly, with such utter assurance that Istredd could not doubt him.
Istredd held back a frustrated sigh and snapped, “I am not your enemy.”
The witcher snorted ungracefully, and shook his head without bothering to refute Istredd’s admittedly rather unbelievable assertion.
“Fine. Just… wait.” There was no point in attempting to explain his intentions. The witcher wouldn’t believe him, and so Istredd would have to demonstrate. He stepped back and planted his feet. From the pouch at his belt, he drew the fresh feainnewedd out gently, careful not to jar the petals loose. After his mistake with Yennefer, he’d never again shared his spell for untraceable portals, much to the frustration of his fellow sorcerers. And to disguise the fact that he held such a powerful spell he would not share, he didn’t use it often. It would take concentration to weave the portal while taking what he needed from a resistant mind. But he would contrive.
Istredd set the feainnewedd flower on his tongue and began to chew. The bitter taste swept him back to Tor Lara, experimenting with this enchantment for the first time. He pushed the memories away and focused. He concentrated his attention on the witcher’s mind, the feel of it there across the room, and bid it to open to him. Where did you come from? He turned the question over in his head as he pressed. He didn't have time to sort through all this witcher's memories, nor did he want to unnecessarily harm the man, but home was a concept that loomed large in the mind. If this princess was at the keep of the witchers from which Geralt had come, then it was quite likely a place the witcher knew well, and would therefore be easy to extract.
Where did you come from? Where is home? Where is it? Istredd formed the questions like a lance, pushing them deeper, past the weak resistance of an untrained mind. A thought, a location began to crystallize in the witcher’s consciousness. A fortress in the mountains, majestic in its austerity. The feelings around it were definitely of home, and safety, though tinged with darker feelings Istredd had no time to examine. It was deep and heavy enough in the witcher’s mind that it could only be his home. Now, he only had to use what he’d found.
Istredd held tight to the witcher's mind as he raised his hands to conjure a portal. This had to be his best work, absolutely untraceable, if he didn't want Fringilla or any other of Emhyr’s minions pursuing him. He wove the portal tight, precise, a thing of beauty. He pointed it at the witcher’s solid image of that place in the mountains, and felt it catch and hold.
At last Istredd opened his eyes and turned to bid the witcher follow him. But the man had gotten to his feet, quiet as a cat. As Istredd turned he was already moving. He hit Istredd with incredible force, propelling them both through the open portal, and the Chaos collapsed around them.
–
Coën rolled with the impact as he hit the ground and sprang back onto his feet, studiously ignoring the many injuries crying out for his attention. The dimeritium shackles still enclosed one of his wrists, but he had wrapped the other end of the chain, shackle and all, around the sorcerer’s arm. Coën’s thumb ached from where he had dislocated it to pull his hand out of the shackle, but that was only a little annoyance in the back of his mind compared to, say, the ragged knife wound in his side. He could shut that all out. His attention was all for this sorcerer.
The contact with the dimeritium should cut the sorcerer off from his power, but Coën was taking no chances. He grabbed the man from behind in a chokehold and pulled the trailing end of the chain up against the sorcerer’s body so he could not wriggle his arm free from the dimeritium. The man seemed to have had the air knocked out of him, and was struggling only weakly. Good.
Coën took a moment, then, to assess his surroundings. He wasn't sure exactly what the sorcerer had done to his mind, but he had seemed to be trying to extract a location. And well, he had apparently succeeded, because Coën recognized the silhouettes of the mountain peaks that surrounded them, limned with the weak orange light of the waning day. They were standing deep in the Dragon Mountains, on the site of the ruined Kaer Seren.
Coën gaped for a moment at the tumbled masonry and heaped debris. He had not been here in decades, and those years had softened the memory of the destruction, especially since he preferred to remember the place as it had been when it was when it and the Griffin School had been whole.
But it was whole no longer, and the sight of it in truth was a nasty reminder. This place wasn’t home, not any more, and could not even be called hospitable. In these mountains, winter was perilously near. Threatening clouds crowded the sky above the jagged peaks. There'd been at least one snowfall already, as lingering drifts around them attested. The sun still glowed weakly behind the western clouds, so it was not yet deep twilight, but it would be soon. Not a terribly auspicious place to be when Coën had neither his swords nor his armor, nor a weapon of any sort, and had in his charge a hostile sorcerer.
Well, he could make one of those issues a problem to deal with later. Coën tightened his grip on the sorcerer's throat. Though still dazed, the man began to struggle when his air was cut off. He squirmed and kicked ineffectually, and his free hand gestured emphatically, as if he were trying to call Chaos to him that would not come. His struggles grew weaker, and at last he slumped in Coën's arms. Wary of being fooled, Coën held on a little longer to ensure his prisoner was truly incapacitated. Then he lay the man down on the rocky ground.
He gave himself a moment—only one—to feel all the pain weeks of captivity had left him in. But he couldn’t afford to wallow. He needed to get the other damn shackle off of him and onto the sorcerer. And he’d need to work quickly. Sunset wasn’t far off, and Coën would need to find a way for them both to survive the night