Chapter 8: Unveiling the Ancient Truth
The candle on the table guttered, throwing Thorn’s sharpening features into sudden, stark relief. A week of rest had put the color back in their cheeks, but a new kind of tension had settled in its place—the restless energy of a creature too long confined. They traced the grain of the wooden table with a fingertip, their bandaged palm a stark white against the dark wood.
Geralt watched from the room’s single, uncomfortable chair, his posture deceptively relaxed. “The alderman’s son,” he said, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room. “Mentioned a hunter gone missing up near Blackwater Fords. Weeks ago.”
Thorn didn’t look up. “And you, with your winning personality and comforting eyes, got nothing from him.”
“He clammed up. Said it was a private grief.” Geralt’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “The family’s from a village a day’s ride north. Oxenfurt way. They don’t trust outsiders.”
“And you think they’ll trust me?” A slow, sly smile touched Thorn’s lips. Their eyes, a shifting sea-green today, lifted to meet his. “The mysterious, convalescing stranger who arrived with the grim-faced Witcher?”
“People talk to pretty things. They let their guard down.” He said it like a statement of fact, no flattery in it. “You’re good at getting people to talk.”
“I have many talents you’ve yet to appreciate.” Thorn pushed themself up from the bed, a slight wobble in their stance that they masked with a fluid turn toward the room’s small washbasin. They splashed water on their face, the cold a welcome shock. “So, that’s the job you put on hold? Chasing a missing woodsman?”
“The contract was for a beast haunting the trade road near the Fords. A creature that’s been taking livestock. And now, a person.” Geralt stood, his shadow engulfing the room. “The son paid the first half of the fee. Then he stopped returning my questions. Now he just avoids me.”
Thorn studied their reflection in the chipped piece of polished metal that served as a mirror. They ran a hand through their short, chestnut hair, fluffing it back into its usual artful disorder. The person staring back still had shadows under their eyes, but the gray hollows of utter exhaustion were gone. “You need someone to play the sympathetic ear. The harmless traveler, shaken by their recent ordeal, seeking news of the world.” They turned, leaning back against the washstand. “And you’ll be what? My surly, overprotective bodyguard lurking in the background?”
“I’ll be nearby.” He tossed a small, leather purse onto the table. It landed with a soft clink of coin. “Get yourself a drink. Listen. The boy’s name is Liam. He drinks at the tavern most evenings. Talks to anyone who’ll listen about his father.”
Thorn picked up the purse, weighing it in their hand. A real, genuine smile, sharp and alive, finally broke through. “You’re giving me money to go to a tavern and be charming. Geralt, you do know how to show a creature a good time.”
The tavern, ‘The Stuck Pig’, was a low-ceilinged den of smoke and noise, the air thick with the smell of spilled ale, roasting pork, and unwashed bodies. Thorn slipped inside, their movements a study in casual grace that seemed out of place amidst the rustic clamor. They’d chosen a dark corner table, a half-finished mug of mediocre ale before them, their posture subtly inviting conversation.
Geralt watched from the deep shadows of a covered alleyway across the muddy street. Through the grimy window, he saw Thorn lean forward, saying something to a serving girl that made her blush and laugh before scurrying off. He saw them nod sympathetically at a grizzled old man, their head tilted in a picture of attentive concern. They were a spider, weaving a web of casual charm, and the flies were happily buzzing right into it.
It didn’t take long. A young man, maybe twenty, with a thatch of straw-colored hair and a permanently worried crease in his brow, slumped onto the bench opposite Thorn. Liam. He talked with his hands, his gestures agitated and wide. Thorn listened, their expression a perfect mask of compassionate interest, occasionally taking a sip of ale or offering a quiet word.
Geralt’s senses, stretched to their limit, picked up only fragments over the tavern’s din. “…not just wolves…”, “…found his hat, torn…”, “…the sounds at night, all wrong…”
Then Liam’s voice rose, strained with a fear that wasn’t just grief. “…says we shouldn’t talk! Says it’ll bring more bad luck. But it’s not right… leaving him out there…”
Thorn placed a comforting hand on the boy’s arm, a gesture of solidarity. They spoke again, their voice too low for even Geralt to catch. Liam nodded, his shoulders slumping in relief, as if sharing the burden had physically lightened him. He talked for another few minutes, his words coming in a rushed, desperate torrent.
Finally, Liam stood, clapping Thorn weakly on the shoulder before stumbling back toward the bar, looking more drunk on despair than ale.
Thorn sat for a moment longer, finishing their drink with a contemplative air. Then they rose, dropped a coin on the table, and swept out of the tavern with an air of quiet purpose.
They didn’t look at Geralt’s hiding place. They simply turned and walked down the main street, away from the inn, their pace unhurried. Geralt detached himself from the shadows and followed, a silent ghost in the twilight.
At the edge of the village, where the cobbles gave way to churned mud and the forest loomed dark and close, Thorn stopped. They stood by a rain barrel, pretending to adjust their boot.
Geralt moved up beside them, the scent of damp earth and pine needles clinging to his cloak. “Well?”
Thorn kept their eyes on the dark tree line. “It’s not a beast. Or, not just a beast.” Their voice had lost all its theatrical lilt. It was flat, analytical. “The hunter, Kael, was a seasoned man. Known for his caution. He went out after something that was killing his traps. He came back once, white as a sheet, babbling about ‘men made of shadow and twig’.” They finally glanced at Geralt, their eyes now a sober, stormy gray-green. “He told his son he’d pissed off a ‘root-witch’. Then he went back out to ‘make it right’. That was the last anyone saw of him.”
Geralt was silent for a long moment, processing. “A leshen.”
“That’s the word Liam couldn’t remember. The alderman, his uncle, is terrified. He’s forbidding anyone from going into those woods, threatening to disown Liam if he goes looking. He thinks if they ignore it, it will leave.”
“It won’t,” Geralt said, his tone final. A leshen was territorial, ancient. It wouldn’t stop because men looked the other way. It wove itself into the forest, and the forest became its weapon.
“There’s more.” Thorn’s voice dropped further. “The alderman’s own daughter. She’s been… different. Since around the time the hunter vanished. Wandering off at night. Coming back with leaves in her hair and dirt on her feet, muttering about the ‘old man of the wood’. She’s fourteen.”
Geralt’s blood went cold. A leshen didn’t just kill. It sometimes sought to bind. To claim a human soul as a guardian, a conduit for its power. It started with fascination, sleepwalking, a pull toward the ancient trees. It rarely ended well for the human.
Thorn watched his face, reading the grim understanding there. “So. Not a simple beast hunt.”
“No.” Geralt turned his gaze from the forest back to Thorn. The flickering light from a nearby cottage window caught the sharp line of their cheekbone, the lingering pallor of their skin. The bandage on their hand was a bright reminder of the cost of their last collaboration. “You’ve done enough. Get back to the inn. Rest.”
Thorn let out a short, sharp laugh that held no humor. “Rest? While you go off to negotiate with a walking tree god that steals children?” They shook their head, a glint of their old fire returning to their eyes, tinged now with something darker, more visceral. “I’ve spent a week in that room. I’ve tasted nothing but broth and your scintillating company. That thing in the keep… it fed on life. It was a parasite. This…” They gestured toward the brooding forest. “This feels different. Older. I’m coming.”
“You can barely stand without swaying,” Geralt stated, his voice hard.
“I’ll sway dramatically out of the way of any murderous branches, then.” They took a step toward him, their expression turning serious. “You need someone who can talk to the girl. You think she’ll confide in you? You look like you eat rocks for breakfast. I can get to her. Find out how deep its hooks are in.”
Geralt held their gaze. He saw the fatigue they were trying to hide, but he also saw the stubborn will, the refusal to be sidelined. The memory of their collapsed form in the black heart’s chamber was a cold weight in his gut. This was different. This was a fight in the open air, a enemy he understood. And they were right. He needed their particular skills.
“Stay behind me,” he grunted, turning to walk toward the alderman’s house. “And if I tell you to run, you run. No arguments.”
Thorn fell into step beside him, a ghost of a smile playing on their lips. “No arguments,” they agreed, their voice a whisper on the chill night air. “But I’m full of other surprises.”
The alderman’s house stood apart from the others, a larger timber-framed building that should have spoken of comfort and authority. Now it just looked violated. The heavy front door hung splintered from a single hinge, its wood gouged by what looked like enormous, crude claws.
Thorn’s lighthearted remark died in their throat. They exchanged a single, grim look with Geralt, whose hand had already dropped to the hilt of his steel sword. “Stay sharp,” he murmured, his voice barely a breath as he stepped inside.
The main room was a wreck of overturned furniture and scattered kitchenware. A cold stew pot lay upended by the fireplace, its contents splattered and congealed on the stone hearth. There was no blood, but the violence was in the disruption, the utter contempt for order.
Thorn moved to a toppled cradle, running a bandaged hand over the carved wood. “It didn’t just take the hunter. It came for the family.” Their eyes, a swirling mix of lilac and unsettled green, scanned the shadows. “It’s expanding its territory.”
Geralt knelt, examining the deep grooves scored into the floorboards. They weren’t random. They formed a pattern, a tangled, spiraling knot that made his medallion vibrate against his chest. “This is a claim. A statement.”
A child’s wooden doll lay broken near the threshold, its head crushed. Thorn picked up a small, embroidered hair ribbon, clean and bright amidst the chaos. “It’s not killing them. Not here, anyway.”
“A leshen needs a bonded human. A connection to the village.” Geralt stood, his gaze sweeping the room and seeing the missing pieces. “The daughter. It’s trying to complete the bond.”
A clumsy, shuffling step sounded outside in the mud. Liam stood there, his face a mask of drunken confusion that rapidly curdled into horror. His eyes darted from the destruction to Thorn, who still held the delicate ribbon.
“You,” he breathed, his voice trembling with a terrible, sudden certainty. He pointed a shaking finger at Thorn. “You were asking about her! You were asking about my cousin!”
“Liam, we just arrived,” Thorn said, their tone carefully neutral, but their posture had gone rigid. They dropped the ribbon as if it had burned them.
“Where are they?” Liam screamed, lurching forward. Spittle flew from his lips. “What did you do with them, you monster?”
Geralt moved to interpose himself, but Liam was already backing away, his face contorted with rage and fear. “I saw you! You’re one of its creatures! You led it here!” He turned his frantic eyes to Geralt. “And you! You brought this here!”
“Liam, think,” Geralt commanded, his voice cutting through the boy’s panic. “This was a leshen. Look at the marks.”
But reason was lost. Liam saw only the androgynous stranger standing in the wreckage of his family’s home, holding a token of the missing girl.
“They’re gone! He took them!” Liam’s voice broke on a sob. He spun on his heel and ran, his boots pounding through the mud toward the distant lights of the village. “Help! Someone help! The witcher’s monster has my family!”
The sound of his desperate cries faded into the night, leaving Geralt and Thorn alone in the silent, ransacked house. The momentum of the night had just shattered, replaced by the impending roar of a different kind of hunt.
The last echo of Liam’s shout was swallowed by the damp night, leaving a silence that felt like a held breath. Then, a dog barked, its sound sharp and urgent. Another joined it, then another, until a frantic chorus erupted from the village.
“That went well,” Thorn quipped, but the usual lilt was strained. They peered through the shattered doorframe. “Seems we’ve been promoted from investigators to prime suspects.”
Geralt was already moving, grabbing a leather satchel from a hook and stuffing a child’s warm woolen cloak inside. “We’re leaving. Now.” He tossed the bag to Thorn. “The girl will need that.”
“Chivalrous,” Thorn said, catching it. “And terribly misguided. They’re not going to let us walk out of here.”
A deep-throated bell began to toll from the village square, a slow, grim sound that organized the chaos. Shadows shifted behind lantern glass as doors slammed shut, then opened again with the metallic scrape of tools being grabbed.
A single, long howl, unlike any dog, cut through the bell’s resonance from the direction of the forest. It was an ancient, wooden sound, a tree groaning in a storm that didn’t exist.
“They’re coming from the village,” Thorn observed, their voice unnervingly calm. “And it seems our leshen is inviting us in.”
“It’s herding us.” Geralt’s gaze swept from the growing cluster of torchlights moving up the street toward them. “It wants us in its territory.”
“It’s a terrible host,” Thorn muttered, slinging the satchel over their shoulder. “Back door?”
“No. They’ll have it covered.” Geralt moved to the side of the building, beneath a small, shuttered window on the upper floor. “Up. Through the window.”
“You cannot be serious.” Thorn stared at the sheer wall. “I’m still relying on this wall to hold me up.” They gestured to their bandaged leg.
Geralt didn’t answer. He laced his fingers together, creating a step. His yellow eyes were insistent. “Now, Thorn.”
With a grunt of effort, Thorn placed a foot in his hands and was boosted upward. They shoved against the shutter, the old wood groaning in protest before it burst outward.
The mob was at the front of the house now, a dozen strong men holding torches and hayforks, their faces hard and fearful in the flickering light. Liam was at the front, pointing wildly.
Geralt hauled himself up and through the window after Thorn, landing in a crouch in a small, dark bedroom. Below, they heard the crash of the remains of the front door being shoved inward.
“They’re inside,” Thorn whispered, crouched on the floor.
Geralt ignored them, his attention on the roof’s thatched edge just above the window. He reached up, grabbed a thick handful of reeds and rope, and pulled himself onto the steep pitch in a single, powerful motion. He reached a hand back down.
Thorn grasped his wrist just as a man’s head and shoulders appeared in the window frame below, his hand clutching a meat cleaver.
Thorn looked from Geralt’s outstretched hand to the cleaver, then back to his face. “This is a profoundly undignified exit.”
They scrambled up as Geralt pulled, their boots scrabbling for purchase on the wattle-and-daub wall. They collapsed onto the thatch beside him, breathing heavily.
The thatched roof was steep and slippery with dew. Geralt moved with a surefootedness that defied gravity, but Thorn slipped immediately, their weight threatening to drag them both down into the mob now filling the house beneath them.
“Don’t let go,” Thorn gasped, their fingers tightening around his forearm.
A torch was thrust into the room below, its light flooding up through the open window and illuminating them both against the night sky.
“There! On the roof!” a voice bellowed.
The first rock whistled past Geralt’s head. The second thudded into the thatch beside Thorn’s head.
“Time to go,” Geralt said.
He didn’t wait for a reply. He shifted his grip, seized the back of Thorn’s tunic, and half-dragged, half-threw them toward the back edge of the roof. Thorn landed hard on the ridge, sliding down the other side before catching themselves.
Geralt followed, dropping over the edge and landing cat-like in the muddy yard below. Thorn half-fell, half-jumped after him, stumbling on impact.
The forest was a black wall twenty paces away. The voices behind them were closer now, angry and confused, arguing about how to get onto the roof.
Then a new sound rose from the trees, a dry rustling that grew into a percussive clatter, like a thousand bones knocking together.
“The crows,” Thorn said, their voice flat.
The trees began to vomit birds. Not a flock, but a swirling, malevolent cloud of them. They didn’t caw; they flew in unnerving silence, their mass blotting out the stars as they swarmed toward the alderman’s house.
“Go!” Geralt barked, shoving Thorn toward the tree line.
They ran. Mud sucked at their boots. The cold air burned their lungs. Thorn’s leg screamed in protest with every step, their breath coming in ragged pants.
A torch flew over the roof, arcing through the air and landing in the mud between them and the woods, its flame hissing.
A man with a hunting bow appeared around the side of the house. He nocked an arrow, his movements hurried.
“Halt! In the name of the alderman!”
Geralt ignored the command, his focus entirely on the dark space between the trees ahead. It was the only path left.
The bowstring twanged. The arrow meant for Geralt’s back was intercepted by a swirling knot of crows. The birds absorbed the impact with a sickening crunch of feathers and bone, falling to the ground in a broken heap. It bought them three seconds.
They crashed through the undergrowth at the forest’s edge, the world narrowing to the frantic rhythm of their flight. The shouting behind them was muffled now, blocked by the dense wall of foliage.
Geralt slowed, then stopped, pulling Thorn behind the thick, gnarled trunk of an ancient oak. The cacophony of the mob faded, replaced by the profound, waiting silence of the leshen’s domain. The air grew colder, and the familiar, oppressive thrum of corrupted magic they’d felt in the keep was absent, replaced by something older and denser, the quiet of a predator that had no need to announce itself.
Thorn leaned against the rough bark, gasping, their face pale. “Remind me again why we didn’t just take the horses?”
“The stables were the first place they looked.” Geralt’s head was tilted, his ears straining. “They’re not following.”
“They’re smarter than they look,” Thorn panted. “They know what’s in here.”
The leshen knew they were here, too. The forest itself was its nervous system. Every snapped twig, every disturbed leaf, was a signal.
The rustling started again, not from above, but from all around them. The very branches of the trees seemed to shift, rearranging themselves in the periphery of their vision.
A figure stepped from behind a tree thirty feet away. It was the alderman’s daughter, her nightdress glowing faintly in the deep gloom. Her eyes were wide, unfocused, and black as pooled tar.
She lifted an arm, not in threat, but in a slow, beckoning gesture. Her mouth moved, but the voice that emerged was a dry, multi-toned rasp, like wind through dead leaves. It was not her voice.
“The Old Man waits,” the voice from the girl’s mouth said. Then she turned and walked, without a sound, deeper into the woods.
Thorn looked at Geralt, their earlier bravado completely gone. Their eyes had shifted to a deep, terrified crimson. “It’s using her as a lure.”
Geralt’s medallion vibrated so violently it felt like a living thing trying to escape his chest. The hunt was on, but the roles of hunter and prey had become dangerously blurred.