Chapter 44: WINTER AT KAER MORHEN
Winter buried the mountains in white.
Snow piled against Kaer Morhen's ancient walls, drifting high enough to block windows on the lower levels. The wind howled through broken battlements, carrying cold that bit through even the thickest furs.
Inside, Ciri trained.
Swordsmanship with Geralt—hours of forms and footwork, blade meeting blade until her arms shook with exhaustion. Endurance with Vesemir—running the obstacle course again and again, failing less often each time. Agility with Lambert—surprisingly patient instruction in acrobatics and evasion. Strategy with Eskel—board games and tactical discussions that Ciri absorbed with unexpected enthusiasm.
She came to me each evening, bruised and exhausted, muscles screaming from exertion.
I sang her wounds closed. Eased her pain. Helped her sleep.
"You're getting stronger," I told her one night, three weeks into winter. "The falls that knocked you flat on day one barely slow you down now."
"It doesn't feel like progress." She flexed her hands, examining calluses that hadn't existed a month ago. "It feels like I'm always failing."
"That's how learning works. You fail until suddenly you don't." I handed her a cup of tea—real tea, not the terrible stuff she'd tried to make me once. "The Witchers wouldn't push you this hard if they didn't believe you could handle it."
She drank in silence, staring at the fire. Outside, wind screamed against the shutters.
"Tell me a story?" she asked. "Something that isn't about fighting."
I told her about Oxenfurt. About the Academy, where I'd first discovered that my songs carried weight beyond their melodies. About Professor Aldrich and his skepticism, about the Red Boar tavern where everything changed.
Twelve years ago. Almost thirteen now.
In this world, I'd lived longer as Jackier than I'd lived as whoever I'd been before. The old life was fading, becoming more dream than memory.
Good. That person can't help anyone. Jackier can.
The sparring session went wrong on a gray morning in deep winter.
Eskel was testing Ciri with real blades—blunted edges, but steel nonetheless. A test of nerve, Vesemir had called it. The ability to fight through fear when facing lethal opponents.
Ciri was losing.
Not badly, not dangerously. But Eskel was faster, stronger, more experienced. He pressed her across the training yard with controlled aggression, not trying to hurt her but not letting her rest. Her defense was crumbling.
She's about to break.
I saw it in her posture—the slight slump of shoulders, the hesitation before each parry. In a real fight, that hesitation would kill her.
I started singing.
The Battle Hymn poured out of me, pushing physical enhancement into Ciri the way I'd pushed it into myself during the race to Cintra. I felt the connection form—my power flowing into her muscles, her nerves, her reflexes.
Ciri suddenly moved faster.
She parried a strike that should have overwhelmed her, countered with a riposte that caught Eskel off-guard. Her movements gained fluidity they'd lacked moments before—not perfect, but sharper. Better.
Eskel's eyebrows rose. He increased pressure, testing, and Ciri met him blow for blow.
The song ended when my voice gave out. Ciri stumbled, the enhancement fading, and Eskel's practice blade tapped her shoulder.
"Yield?"
"Yield." She was breathing hard, but smiling. "That was—what happened? I felt different."
Vesemir watched from the courtyard's edge, calculating eyes fixed on me.
"More secrets, bard?"
That night, he cornered me in the library.
"You can heal and enhance. What else?"
The question was direct. The old Witcher wasn't interested in games.
"Several things." I chose my words carefully. "I can project fear—strong enough to drive off trained soldiers or unsettle monsters. I can create a barrier, semi-solid, that deflects attacks. I can calm minds, soothe emotions, encourage truth from reluctant speakers."
"Offensive, defensive, and manipulative capabilities." Vesemir absorbed this without visible reaction. "Anything else?"
The elemental manifestations. The reality manipulation potential of higher stages. The way my power feeds on belief and fame.
"That's the extent of what's reliable. There are... possibilities I haven't fully explored." True enough.
"You're not just a bard. You're a weapon."
I shook my head. "I'm a protector. There's a difference."
Vesemir studied me for a long moment. Then, surprisingly, he nodded.
"Perhaps. Weapons don't have the judgment to know when not to strike. Protectors do." He turned toward the door. "Keep your remaining secrets, bard. But know that I'm watching."
He left. I sat alone in the library, surrounded by books about monsters and mutation, and wondered how many more secrets I could keep before they started to crack.
The firelight danced across the great hall's stones.
Ciri was trying to dance with it—or at least, trying to dance, period. Her footwork was excellent from training, but translating combat movement into something graceful proved challenging.
"No, no—you're treating me like an opponent." I adjusted her grip on my hands. "Stop trying to anticipate my attacks."
"But you could attack."
"I'm not going to attack. I'm going to guide you in a circle while we move to rhythm." I hummed a simple tune—nothing supernatural, just music. "Follow the melody, not me."
She tried again. Better this time, though still stiff.
From the shadows near the hall's entrance, I caught movement. Lambert, pretending to examine a rack of preserved herbs. He wasn't watching us.
Except he was. And he was smiling.
Progress.
"Your feet are improving," I told Ciri. "By spring, you'll be ready for actual court dancing."
"Courts." She made a face. "Will I have to deal with those?"
"Probably. You're still a princess, whatever else you become. Politics will find you eventually."
"Then teach me to dance well enough to distract people from my politics."
I laughed. "Now you're thinking strategically."
Snow piled against the windows while inside, a strange family grew closer.
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