Анджей Сапковский - Lesser Evil

Having turned his head away, the sorcerer remained silent. Geralt laughed.

"Don't you get puffed up like a toad, magician. Tell me what the threat is. We'll see what can be done."

"Have you heard of the Curse of the Black Sun?"

"Surely, I did. Though it was called the Mania of Etibald the Deranged. For that was the name of the mage who started the whole pickle, which resulted in having a few tens of girls, some of whom were of noble and even royal families, killed or imprisoned in towers. They were alleged to be possessed by demons, condemned, and contaminated by the Black Sun, as that is how you called an ordinary eclipse in that bombastic jargon of yours."

"Etibald, who was not deranged at all, deciphered the inscriptions on the menhirs of the Dauks, on tombstones in the necropolises of the Wozhgors, researched the legends and lays of the werebobos. They all mentioned the eclipse in a way leaving little place for doubt. The Black Sun was to announce the imminent return of Lilith, worshipped still in the East under the name of Niya, and the doom of the human race. The path for Lilith was to be prepared by 'sixty maids in golden crowns, who with blood shall the valleys of rivers fill'."

"Balderdash," said the hexer. "And what is more, unrhymed. All decent prophecies rhyme. It is generally known what Eltibald and the Sorcerers' Council aimed at then. You used the ravings of a moron, to strengthen your power. To break alliances, ruin marriage plans, stir in dynasties, or in other words to give the strings tied to all the puppets in crown a hearty yank. And there you are, telling me about prophecies which a beggar at a fair would be ashamed of."

"One can have reservations to Eltibald's theory, to the interpretation of the prophecy. But it is impossible to question the fact of emergence of a horrible mutation among girls born shortly after the eclipse."

"What makes it unquestionable? I heard something just to the contrary."

"I was at the post-mortem of one of them," said the sorcerer.

"Geralt, what we found inside the skull and the medulla, couldn't be unequivocally described. A sort of red sponge. Internal organs all mixed up, some of them absent altogether. Everything covered in motile cilia and pale-pink shreds. Six-chambered heart? Two practically in atrophy but still. What'd you say to that?"

"I saw people with aquiline talons instead of hands, and people with lupine fangs. People with extra joints, extra organs and extra senses. All these were the effects of your dabbling with magic.

"You saw different mutations, you say," the sorcerer raised his head.

"And how many of them did you bludgeon for money, following your hexer's vocation? Eh? For one may have lupine fangs and do no more than bare them before the maids in an inn, and one may also have a lupine nature and attack children. And that was the case with the girls born after the eclipse. Among them a simply insane tendency to cruelty, aggression, sudden outbursts of anger, as well as exuberant appetites were discovered."

"Each woman may be found to have that." Geralt sneered "What are you trying to peddle here?" You're asking how many mutants I've killed — why then you're not interested in the number of those I freed from a curse or spell? I, a hexer you despise so much. And what have you, oh potent wizards, done?

"Higher levels of magic were resorted to. Ours as well as the priests', in various shrines. All attempts have ended in death of the girls."

"Which is only evidence against you, and not about the girls. So — we have already come to the first victims. I understand they all received a post-mortem?"

"Not only. Don't look at me like that. You know too well that more victims followed. Initially it was decided that they all should be eliminated. We disposed of a few… er… dozens. All were examined. In one case it was a vivisection."

"And you, sons of the bitch, dare criticise hexers? Eh, Stregobor, a day will come when people will wizen and get you a good trashing."

"I don't think such a day is near," — said the sorcerer tartly. — Don't forget that we were acting in defence of people. These female mutants would drown whole kingdoms in blood."

"That is what you, magicians, say looking down at everything from your nimbus of infallibility. Yet, as we're already talking about, you won't tell me that you mistook not even once, in that hunt for the wouldbe mutants of yours, will you?"

"Let it be," said Stregobor having stayed silent for a long while.

"I'll be frank with you, although I shouldn't. In my very interest. We did mistake, and more than once it was. Selecting them was extremely difficult. Therefore we stopped… disposing of them and we took to isolating them..

"Your famed towers," the hexer snapped.

"Our towers. That was yet another mistake. We underestimated them and quite a number of them escaped. Some mad fashion of setting the imprisoned beauties free developed among princes and dukes, especially the younger ones, who did not have much to do, and even less to lose. Most of them, luckily, broke their necks.

"As far as I know, having been imprisoned in towers they started passing away quickly. It was rumoured that it wasn't without your help."

"A lie. Indeed, they quickly became apathetic, refused to eat…

What's interesting, shortly before their death they manifested the gift of clairvoyance. Another proof of mutation.

"Each next proof is less and less convincing. Haven't you got a few more of them?"

"I have. Silvena, the lady of Narok — we never managed even to approach her, as she seized the power really quick. Now horror is alive in that country. Fialka, the daughter of Evermir, escaped from the tower, using a rope braided from her plaits — at present she's the terror of Northern Velhad. Bernica of Talgar was freed by an idiot prince. Now, blinded, he's biding his time in the dungeon, and the most prominent element of the Talgar countryside are gallows. There are other examples."

"Naturally, there are," said the hexer. "Take Yamurlac for one, where the old Abrad rules: he's got scrofula and not a single tooth, he must have been born a good hundred years before all that eclipse, and he want fall asleep, unless someone is cruelly murdered in his presence. He has butchered up all his relatives and depopulated a half of his country in insane, as you put it, sudden outbursts of anger. There are also traces of exuberant appetites, he is said to have been called Abrad the Tearskirt in his youth. Yeah, Stregobor, it would be great if the atrocities of rulers could be explained with a mutation or a curse.

"Listen, Geralt…"

"Don't you even think about it!" You'll never convince me to your point of view, even less so that Eltibald wasn't a nefarious moron. But let us return to the monster which is allegedly threatening you. After the introduction you have made, know that I don't like the whole story. Yet I will listen to you telling me the whole of it."

"Butting in none of these caustic remarks of yours?"

"This I can't promise."

"Well, then," Stregobor shoved his palms in the sleeves of his robes.

"The longer it will take. So, the whole business started in Creyden, a small duchy in the north. Fredefalk, duke of Creyden's wife was Aridea, a wise and educated woman. She had in her lineage a number of eminent sorcerers accomplished in the art, and she most probably inherited a potent and rather uncommon artefact: the Looking-Glass of Nehalenia. As you know, the Looking-Glasses of Nehalenia were used mostly by prophets and oracles, as they foretell the future with no mistake, though in a very muddled way. Aridea quite often addressed her Looking-Glass…"

"With the customary question, as I deem," Geralt interrupted. "'Who's the fairest of them all?' As far as I know all Looking-Glasses of Nehalenia can be divided into the polite and the broken ones."