Ep. 14 — "Sword of Destiny" with Lars from Witcherflix
Lars from Witcherflix calls in from Berlin to join Alyssa from GoodMorhen to discuss the title story “Sword of Destiny” from Andrzej Sapkowski’s Sword of Destiny. Very important bits include: how this penultimate short story sets up the five-part saga, themes of survival for both humans of the Continent and the dryads of Brokilon, and how the narrative comes full circle on The Law of Surprise from “A Question of Price.”
This episode is available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher.
In this episode
[00:00] Cold Open
[00:00] Introduction
[00:00] Discussion
[00:00] Outro & Credits
Relevant Links
Link
Transcript
Cold Open
ALYSSA: He's like you knew who you were and you knew who I was. Ciri admits that she didn't know who he was in the beginning. Oh, shit. I just turned on – I just turned on Siri.
SIRI: I don't know how to respond to that.
LARS: Of course. It must happen a lot.
Introduction
[Breakfast in Beauclair theme music by MojoFilter Media]
ALYSSA: Welcome to Breakfast in Beauclair, a global Witcher Podcast. My name is Alyssa from GoodMorhen, and I’ll be your host as you, I, and our international hanza accompany Geralt of Rivia and his destiny, Cirilla of Cintra, across The Continent.
[Season 1 Announcement]
We are at the penultimate short story and therefore the penultimate episode of Breakfast in Beauclair Season 1! As a gentle reminder, Breakfast in Beauclair will have a between-season break. The last episode of Season 1, Episode 15 — “Something More” will release on Thursday, February 27. Season 2 will discuss the recently released Netflix series, kicking off on Thursday, June 4 with “The End’s Beginning.”
[Vengerberg Glamarye]
In other news from the Continent, our friend, Charlotte from Vengerberg Glamarye launched her long-awaited Ciri creme perfume to her line of Witcher products! This is the perfect episode to announce the launch, because this chapter, “Sword of Destiny,” is the one in which Geralt describes Ciri as smelling like “a wet swallow.” Charlotte interpreted that brief description into a beautiful blend of Cedar and Elderflower. Pick up a jar of this and other lore-accurate perfumes over at glamarye.com and, remember, listeners of the podcast receive an exclusive discount at anytime with code: HANZA at checkout.
[Patron Announcements]
I’m so excited to announce that I’ve been collaborating with listener Emily of Virginia from Morris and Norris to produce the Producer Patron gifts! Emily reached out to me as a listener of the show back in August and when I found out she was a creative, craftsman, and business owner, I approached her about working on the patron gifts. She’s created something wonderfully on brand for both the podcast and the Witcher Series and I’m so excited to mail them out to our producers over the break with the rest of the patron packages.
Shout out to our producer-level patrons: Luis of Kovir, The Owner of The Churlish Porpoise, Arix the Godling, Katie (The Redhead of Toussaint), Jacob B., Mahakam Elder Joe, Julie, Sylvia of Skellige, Brandon, Jamison, Ayvo of Gulet, Bee Haven of the Edge of the World, Jacob Meeks, and Sebastian von Novigrad.
As Producer-level patrons, they receive an introduction shoutout, a spot on the website, monthly bonus content, stickers, a tee-shirt, an exclusive Producer gift, and producer credits in each and every episode.
If you’d like to explore becoming a patron of the show, head over to patreon.com/breakfastinbeauclair.
[Episode Details]
As for this episode, Lars from Witcherflix calls in from Berlin to discuss the title story “Sword of Destiny” from Andrzej Sapkowski’s Sword of Destiny. Join us as we discuss how this penultimate short story sets up the upcoming five-part saga, themes of survival for both humans of the Continent and the dryads of Brokilon, and how the narrative comes full circle on The Law of Surprise from “A Question of Price.”
Lars decided that you guys already got so much of him in this episode that he lost his voice and called out sick this week. He’ll be back for “Tidings from Toussaint” in the next episode. In the meantime, pop over to send him your well wishes and “Get well soon”s!
After the episode, head over to r/thehanza and jump into our community discussion of the episode with your thoughts, reactions to the episode, or bring up new themes and ideas that we didn’t cover.
Without further ado, let’s get to this episode’s short story, “Sword of Destiny.”
Discussion
[Breakfast in Beauclair stinger by MojoFilter Media]
ALYSSA: Welcome to Breakfast in Beauclair. My name is Alyssa and today we’re joined today by a very familiar voice, our good friend and rockstar correspondent, Lars from WitcherFlix. Hi, Lars.
LARS: Hey, Alyssa, how are you doing?
ALYSSA: I'm good. How are you?
LARS: I’m good too. Thank you. I'm really looking forward on being on your podcasts. Thank you very much for having me.
ALYSSA: Yeah, of course. You have been on the show in every single episode. All of our listeners are so familiar with you, and your voice, and your WitcherFlix content. And it's nice that we're actually getting to have, like, a conversation.
LARS: Yeah, absolutely.
ALYSSA: A real-time conversation.
LARS: Yeah, I totally agree. It's always so great bringing the news from the Witcher worlds to your podcast. Yeah. And, now, I'm here just talking about one of my favorite short stories. And, well, I'm really excited about what we'll be talking about in this episode of Breakfast in Beauclair.
ALYSSA: So, actually, a lot of listeners of the show probably came to Breakfast in Beauclair from WitcherFlix. So, I'm sure a lot of them would love to hear a little bit more about you, Lars, as, like, a person, individual, and the creator of that content. Do you mind telling us, you know, a little bit about yourself, and how you got into the world of The Witcher?
LARS: Sure, of course. Well, like many of us, I started with the video games. I started with watching, Let's Play a Video on YouTube made by a German YouTuber, Gronkh. I think lots of German listeners maybe know him. He played the Witcher III. And I absolutely loved the game and where I needed to read the books. And I don't know, six months later, I read every book, delved deep into the Witcher Wiki. And, one day, I just decided, “Well, I want to do something on social media maybe about the witcher lore, because I am so in love with the witcher lore. And, well, this is when all the WitcherFlix stuff started back in – I don't know.
ALYSSA: December 30th, 2017.
LARS: Yeah. Awesome. You know my birthday. This is great. And I don't know, maybe one and a half years ago, we got to know each other. And, now, I'm sitting here talking to you from Berlin to New York. And I'm just excited to be here.
ALYSSA: Yeah. I think the beautiful thing about the work that both of us are doing really does come down to the original source material. What would you say, though, was the actual catalyst for starting WitcherFlix? What actually drew you to say like, “Hey, I want to create content about this or I'm the right person to create content about this?”
LARS: To be honest, it was a specific tweet by Lauren Hissrich, the showrunner of the Netflix Witcher show. Back in December 2017, she posted a picture of a map of the Northern Kingdoms, I think seven, eight pieces were pointed out, which were places of importance. Well, I looked at the map and thought, “What happened at these places?” There were stuff like Aretuza with the Magical Academy, and, of course, Blaviken. And then I thought about, “Well, I'm interested in these places. Maybe there are people on this planet who are interested in these places, too.” Then I started my first posts. I think one of my first posts was about the Kingdom of Temeria. And, well, there were people who were definitely interested in Temeria.
ALYSSA: So, could you tell us a little bit about the growth of WitcherFlix, you know, over the last two years? What was it like when it started? What is it like now? And how has that journey as a content creator really been for you?
LARS: I remember my first follower. I think he was a porn actor from South Carolina.
ALYSSA: Oh, my god. Really?
LARS: He stopped following me two days later, but, well, he was my first follower. So, I think… Thank you? The more news came out about the Netflix Witcher show, the more people started following me. So, the bigger the show got, well, the bigger that – my page got.
ALYSSA: Creating content that is real-time news driven is something that I got to see when the two of us were in Lucca together actually back in October to attend the Lucca Comics and Games Festival where Lauren, Anya, Freya and Andrezj Sakowski himself were all doing panels and appearances during the convention. So, Lars and I met up there, which is the first time that we met in person, which was really nice. For me, it's like I create podcasts content every two weeks. And, you know, I'll do social posts here and there. I have a relatively long lead time compared to real-time news. Could you tell us a little bit about the process of running a news account?
LARS: Yeah. It's, of course, always being online, always checking news sources be it Reddit, be it Twitter, be it Instagram. And, well, I always had to keep a close eye on what was going on in the Witcher world when all of you could maybe do a little sightseeing. But I always had my cell phone – my phone in my hand and I always had to look. And it can be stressful. It's always fun. Most of the time, at least, it's fun. But this is why I love doing posts about the Witcher lore. I can take my time. Yeah. This is what I absolutely love about doing social media posts, deep dives into the lore.
ALYSSA: The world is just so rich. And there's so much to explore. And I think that, especially when you're juggling news, it'll take you forever to get on the lore, which is really exciting. The thought of having so much opportunity for, for content and creation and analysis.
LARS: Absolutely. Hmmm. Just looking forward to dive deep again into the short story, “The Sword of Destiny.”
ALYSSA: And that's exactly what we're gonna be doing today.
LARS: Yes.
ALYSSA: Lars and I are going to be discussing Sword of Destiny, which is the fifth short story in Andrejz Sapkowski’s Sword of Destiny. Part I starts. Geralt enters Brokilon Forest, home of the Continent’s dwindling dryad population, as a diplomatic envoy. In the forest, the witcher comes across a wounded man, Freixenet, who is looking for a princess, and the two are found by dryad warriors. One, Braenn, agrees to accompany the witcher to the heart of the forest, Duen Canell, to speak with the dryad queen, Lady Eithne. So, Geralt enters Brokilon Forest. And he starts to come across all these bodies that are just lying in the undergrowth. And he only really spots them, because of things like a sword or fletchings out of someone's back. He gives a lot of insight into Brokilon Forest and the history of it kind of as he's looking around. So, we, as readers, are introduced to him as he's doing like these autopsies, deducing what has happened to these bodies.
LARS: I really love the opening line of the story. It was like he found the first body around noon. I instantly wanted to know what's the matter with all the other bodies he found later. There must be, at least, one body more. One of my favorite starts of all the short stories in the books.
ALYSSA: The first body that he finds is one of like a young teenage boy, who has an arrow through the eye. He turns around and finds what he's looking for. The boy had had an arrow in his eye, and Geralt finds an identical one in a tree nearby. And he talks about how arrows are used as a way to kill by dryads, but also as a warning. A dryad would shoot an arrow to try to warn an intruder that they shouldn't come any closer, that they shouldn't step deeper into Brokilon, and then they would shoot to kill. But he notes that, in the past, dryads would shoot, you know, two even three warnings before they shot. But, now, they shoot to kill.
LARS: The history of the dryads is one of the big themes of this story. Even in the first paragraph, you hear how different it was in the past to what it is now. It all became much more dangerous for everyone. Well, you instantly get the feeling that Brokilon is not the place to be when you're a human. Sapkowski really manages to give this feeling to the reader, too.
ALYSSA: Yeah. I mean, as you said, a lot of the themes of this short story refer back to themes that we've already discussed in previous ones. Always coming back to animosity or to the relations between humans and nonhumans.
LARS: Absolutely. When, when I read this short story for the first time, it was kind of hard for me to differentiate between elves and dryads, to be honest. Of course, they are different beings in fantasy and mythology, but their fates seem very, very similar. They – but they handle it differently. But I think we'll come to that later, too. It's very interesting, because the dryads originally come from Greek mythology, I think. And, in Greek mythology, where they are the absolute opposite of the dryads from the Witcher. They are Tree Spirits and are very tender creatures, if I remember correctly, and gentle creatures. Well, of course, they live in the surrounding of trees and forests too like in the Witcher books. But – and then came Andrejz Sapkowski. And he does what he does best. Well, he twists the legend of the dryads and turns them into some kind of Amazon warriors.
ALYSSA: Yeah, absolutely. It makes it a really exciting way to interpret and explore the lore. And I think having the added character trait that these dryads are incredibly hostile adds a lot more to the greater context of the world.
LARS: Absolutely.
ALYSSA: As Geralt kind of continues through the forest, he finds two more bodies, and then a man who's alive. It turns out that Geralt knows this man, who he refers to as Freixenet. And it seems that Freixenet has punctured a lung. As Geralt is helping him, he gets a warning from the dryads. And he tries to talk them down by speaking to them in their dialect, which does seem to be, if not elder speech in its pure form, a dialect of elder speech in Brokilon Forest. He, eventually, is able to communicate with them enough so that they reveal themselves and have a brief conversation with them.
LARS: Let's start with this guy. How did you call him? Freixenet?
ALYSSA: That's what I said. I don't know what Peter Kenny says. What do you say?
LARS: Well, it's kind of a funny story, because, I don't know if you know this, in – at least in Europe, there's this sparkling wine of – I think it's from Spain. It has the same name. And it's called Freixenet.
ALYSSA: That could be it.
LARS: At least, it’s how I would call it. When I was little, there was this TV commercial about Freixenet. And this is what I always – I always had to think about when I was reading this short story. And, well, I would have never thought to meet this name again, 20 years later, in a short story about elf-like creatures killing people. I would call it Freixenet, but I'm not quite sure of this if this is correct.
ALYSSA: Yeah. There are, like, very few useful X’s in English.
LARS: Mhmm.
ALYSSA: So, meanwhile, we’ve all sorts of languages that, like, have a silent X in them.
LARS: Right.
ALYSSA: And it's, like, I don't know what to do with that.
LARS: Okay.
ALYSSA: Whatever will bring you joy—
LARS: Yeah. Yes.
ALYSSA: —let’s go with that.
LARS: Whatever floats the boat. I think, when I was reading this paragraph, I was kind of relieved to see a living human being at this point, because, where there were so many bodies Geralt stumbled upon before, it was good to see someone alive for the time being.
ALYSSA: And, at this point, we actually don't know how they know each other. We just know that they do.
LARS: Geralt is asking Freixenet what he's doing here. Doesn't he know how dangerous it is to be in Brokilon Forest? But, well, at the same time, I was wondering, “Well, what is Geralt doing here in Brokilon? It's getting much more mysterious from paragraph to paragraph until the dryad starts speaking, of course, then we learn something.
ALYSSA: In the opening of the story, we have no insight into the motivations of why anyone is there. We just know that they're looking to survive. And we only have kind of, like, an immediate need in order to analyze their actions. As you said, like, the dryads start talking to them. And we hear that Geralt just wants to go to Duen Canell to speak with Eithne, who's the Lady or the Queen of Brokilon Forest.
LARS: So, what I thought was interesting of elder speech or dryad language in this chapter. There are some words, at least, as a German speaker, you could recognize a little bit at least. There was this word in German you would say Dloede, D-L-O-E-D-E. And, well, you instantly know it's not a very grave one, but it's a swear word. So, you instantly know there's some not so sympathetic feelings from the dryads to Geralt. The situation is still very grave.
ALYSSA: It's really interesting to see how they approach Geralt. So, he gets his warning shot. And it turns out there's a lot more dryads than he expected to the point that he recognizes that one is right next to him. And he has no idea how he hadn't seen her, because she was like standing behind a super thin tree that wouldn't have actually disguised her. So, the dryads, we hear – first of all, they all have different colored hair, which is how they're identified. He notes like the one with honey hair, the one with fire hair, and that's the only way he really describes the individuality of those dryads. But he notes that what they're wearing really is almost like militant camouflage. These are the sentries of Brokilon.
LARS: What they really want, of course, is that no human would actually reach Brokilon. If a human comes close to Brokilon, they would shoot them.
ALYSSA: So, eventually, The Witcher is able to talk them down. One of the dryads, a honey-haired girl named Braenn is assigned to take him to Duen Canell. Geralt notes that she's human based on the smell of her sweat alone. She's just an ordinary human girl and is, by blood, not a dryad. But he has a suspicion that Braenn thinks he's an ordinary human man. The prose here says, “She did not know, of course, that she was dealing with a witcher, not a man. She was too young to know what a witcher was.” Geralt notes that she must have looked about 16 or 17 and couldn't have been in Brokilon for more than six or seven years. Because, if she had come to Brokilon, as a young child or as a baby, he wouldn't have been able to see any of the human in her.
LARS: You know, you instantly get the feeling that there's maybe a little bit more to the dryads of Brokilon than just Amazon women attacking humans. This is very interesting that they have humans In their own ranks, too.
ALYSSA: Well, explicitly from the text, we get to hear about why that is the way that it is and what human girls are doing as dryad warriors. As Braenn leads them through the forest, we hear a little bit more about Brokilon as, like, a landscape. We hear a lot about traps that the dryads had set up. We do recognize that it is a dangerous place, and that Geralt does need her as a guide before they stop and camp for the night.
LARS: Well, what I found interesting during this conversation between Geralt and Braenn, again, is I think this is the first instance where Geralt is called Gwynbleidd. This is one of his famous nicknames. It's White Wolf in elder speech. I looked it up actually. It's almost straight up Welsh, another source of inspiration for Sapkowski, I think, where the different languages in Europe, and I find this very interesting too.
ALYSSA: And I think it also makes it very clear how famous Geralt is outside of Dandelion’s ballads and his notoriety among humans. He's well-known among nonhumans as well. So, the fact that he has, like, a translated name that's unique to him in another language that's used amongst elves and dryads is really interesting, I think.
LARS: Yeah. You instantly got the feeling that, well, the dryads and Geralt have a history. It’s not here for the first time.
ALYSSA: In Part II, the pair rescue a little creature, which turns out to be a young human girl. Geralt pieces that the girl must be the princess Freixenet had been looking for. While Geralt wants to take the girl, Ciri, back to Verden, where she had escaped from, Braenn refuses and they continue toward Duen Canell.
LARS: Yeah, I think this is it. This is the meeting we've all been waiting for.
ALYSSA: At this point in Sword of Destiny and in, you know, the greater story of The Witcher, we don't know who this girl is.
LARS: No. It seems like this typical Witcher situation at this point. There's a human – a human girl, who needs to be safe from a monster.
ALYSSA: Braenn and Geralt have broken camp. They're just kind of sitting around. And then they hear a scream from the forest. The two of them run over. And they see a little creature, as it's described, in a gray jacket. Geralt goes to help the creature. He, apparently, attacks this Scolopendromorph, which Braenn refers to as a Yghern.
LARS: Well, in German, it's – it has a different name again. I think it's the same in the Polish translation. It's called a wig, wig, W-I-G.
ALYSSA: W-I-G.
LARS: Yeah. It means centipede. I think it just means centipede.
ALYSSA: In the English translation, it says Y-G-H-E-R-N, Yghern, Yghern. I don’t know.
LARS: Yghern. I don’t know how to pronounce the Y in elder speech. Maybe we need a Duolingo session for this at some point.
ALYSSA: If the Witcher gets big enough, I'm sure they'll also put it next to High Valyrian.
LARS: Yeah, absolutely.
ALYSSA: But it's interesting, because I think we know that, at least in Sapkowski’s original works, that he didn't really create the language to operate on its own, only in the context of the dialogue.
LARS: Right.
ALYSSA: They won't be able to come purely from the original text.
LARS: For the Witcher show, the languages were created by David J. Peterson, who also created High Valyrian and the Dothraki languages in Game of Thrones. So, maybe there's absolutely a possibility we have elder speech Duolingo.
ALYSSA: We can only hope.
LARS: Yeah, absolutely. Keeping our fingers crossed.
ALYSSA: Geralt attacks this Scolopendromorph. It’s like a giant centipede. And, by giant, I mean truly massive. Like, man-size massive. So, he knocks this little creature out of the way, and he and Braenn work on attacking it. When they go to find the little girl, who Geralt assumes as this little dryad, it turns out that she's a completely ordinary human girl in the middle of Brokilon. And the prose is very beautiful here. And it says, “It was not a dryad. Neither was it an elf, sylph, puck, or halfling. It was quite an ordinary little human girl. In the center of Brokilon, it was the most extraordinary place to come across an ordinary, human little girl.” And it says a lot, I think, about the dangers of Brokilon as well and how incredible it is that she's just in the middle of it in one piece.
LARS: Absolutely, especially after Gerald found a body of a child in the first paragraph of the short story.
ALYSSA: We get a little more about this girl. We know that she has fair mousy hair and huge glowingly green eyes. And she could not have been more than 10 years old. The description kind of continues a little later saying that her ashen gray hair was disheveled, full of pine needles and small leaves, but smells of cleanliness not smoke nor the cow shed nor tallow. It talk – he talks about her hands, and that they were soft and not calloused. And that she was wearing expensive calfskin boots. So, she was not a village child. And the Witcher deduces that she must be the princess that Freixenet was looking for.
LARS: Of course, you would expect a girl with calfskin boots at the court of some king or something. It's even more intriguing after this description of the girl.
ALYSSA: Geralt infers that she might be from Verden.
LARS: Yeah, I think it's the kingdom that's the closest to Brokilon, I guess. At least, the part of the Brokilon he’s in. Maybe this is why – well, he knows that Freixenet, he's a Baron in Verden. I think this is why he's thinking this girl must be from Verden, too.
ALYSSA: And then it comes out she must have escaped from the prince, and, therefore, the king. And, therefore, he wants to bring her back. Braenn refuses to let them go. Geralt notes that there's no way that they can leave, one, just purely out of a sense of direction, but also because, even if they try to leave, they're likely to be killed. So, eventually, Geralt makes a decision to just go with Braen to Duen Canell.
LARS: You already know that Geralt knows the dryads. And maybe he knows the queen of the dryads, Eithne. And maybe it's much more easier to go straight to Duen Canell, into the heart of the Brokilon Forest and have a talk with the Queen than just, well, moving back and escaping. And then – so, maybe this is the easiest way to get back, to go straight into the heart of Brokilon.
ALYSSA: We've had scenes in courts, in kingdoms. We have the Feast of Cintra in A Question of Price. We met King Foltest in the Witcher. And we've had interactions with monarchs here and there. We're seeing someone who is of high rank and high importance politically in such a separated, I think, environment, which is what triggers Geralt to recognize that she must not be, like, a normal village child.
LARS: Yeah, I think the funny thing about this is this girl we know is from a big court of a king. Maybe she doesn't differentiate between the court she doesn't want to be in and the Brokilon Forest when it comes to the danger. So, it's from our point of view where we see, hmm, maybe the court seems to be much more safe for her. But, well, when you put on her shoes, both places, well --
ALYSSA: It seems to her that anything is better than going back to Kistrin in Verden. And she doesn't really seem to fathom the danger that Brokilon can present or does present to her. You know, I guess especially, as a child or even honestly, sometimes, as adults, like, it's very easy to just see the obvious threat and then just go for – I mean, for lack of a better phrasing, the lesser evil.
LARS: Whoa.
ALYSSA: But that's my dad joke for the episode.
LARS: Well, that’s a good one.
ALYSSA: But it's like, sometimes, hard to see. And, for Geralt, he's acutely aware of the danger that Brokilon presents not only to him, but also to a young girl and the consequences for her just having found herself in here.
LARS: Right. While, at the same time, maybe the story of a princess who doesn't want to marry a prince, you must have heard it a thousand times. It's one of his things not to mingle into politics of the Northern Kingdoms. This is maybe one of his motivations to bring this girl back.
ALYSSA: You're right. He does keep his nose out of politics. And he does know, like, throughout the chapter, the consequences that could happen if this little girl doesn't get back. As Geralt's familiarity with customs comes out, we get a very strong reaction from this girl. One of the passages that I personally like from this chapter is this little bit on marriage customs and how, I guess, factual and why Geralt is about it versus this little girl. Referring to Kistrin, she says, “He doesn’t want me and I don’t want him. So what use is a wedding?” The Witcher says, “Ciri, he’s a prince and you’re a princess. Princes and princesses marry like that, that’s how it is. That’s the custom.” She says, “You sound like all the rest. You think that just because I’m small you can lie to me.” He says, “I’m not lying.” And she says, “Yes you are.” I feel like everyone has had that conversation with a child.
LARS: Yeah, absolutely.
ALYSSA: They're so incredibly perceptive, sometimes, like, alarmingly so and unexpectedly so. And I don't think that Geralt has anything good to say to her after that.
LARS: He's not really in the mood, at the same time, to put up with stuff like that – with this child's play. Well, he has this mission to go to the queen of the dryad. And that is what he wants to do at the moment. I don't know what his experience are with children up to this point. Are there any experience at all – I don’t know – at this time with --
ALYSSA: Umm, none that we can explicitly point to, I think. In a lot of the section, Geralt is carrying Ciri on his back, which has resulted in some really lovely fan art. It's very sweet. And then, eventually, they stopped for the night, because Braenn is tired as well and she recognizes that Geralt won't be able to go much further with the child on his back.
LARS: Right. But it's – well, it's absolutely sweet these moments. Well, they don't really know each other. And it's actually kind of contradicting what I was saying a few moments ago. Would Geralt really put this little girl onto his back if he really didn't really know how to handle children? I'm not quite sure. So, he’s compassionate as you said.
ALYSSA: Yeah. And we see quite a bit of that compassion come around in Part III. In Part III, as they rest, Geralt tells the young princess and dryad a bedtime story. So, in this part, as they camp, we hear a little bit more about Ciri and her background. And then we also get a lovely, weird little parable from Geralt, which is an unexpected side I think of him that we see here. Both Geralt and Braenn recognized how just genuinely extraordinary it is that Ciri had found her way into Brokilon Forest and as far as she did. And Braenn says that she'll be useful to us. Meaning that there's intentions of keeping Ciri, this young princess in Brokilon. Geralt has a small reaction to this. He thinks to himself:
[Reading] “Pity. She’s such a determined rascal! Where have I seen her before? Never mind. But it’s a pity. The world is so big and so beautiful. And Brokilon will now be her world, until the end of her days. And there may not be many. Perhaps only until the day she falls in the bracken, amidst cries and the whistles of arrows, fighting in the senseless battle for the forest. On the side of those who will lose. Who have to lose, sooner or later.”
LARS: Yeah. And I instantly get a glimpse at what kind of fate she awaits. Well, Geralt seems to have a heart absolutely for this girl, even though he knows – he knows her only for a few moments.
ALYSSA: One of the things that stood out to me about this specific passage was how resigned and accepting of the fate of the dryads, like, Geralt was. You know, we see a little bit of this in The Edge of the World. And we'll get to talk about it more in depth throughout the chapter as we actually meet more dryads and learn more about their community and way of life, where he just says that, one, the battle for the forest is senseless. And that the dryads will lose, and they have to lose sooner or later, which is strangely ominous, I think, coming from Geralt and could say, I think, a lot about what he assumes the fate of the world is and the fate of dryads ultimately.
LARS: Well, I think he is – he sees the similarities between the dryads and the elves. He knows what happened to the elves in the course of the history of the Northern Kingdoms. And I think he also sees, if the dryads continue their ways, well, maybe they will await the same fate as the elves. And it's not a good one.
ALYSSA: Yeah. And we'll get to see further battles between humans and nonhumans throughout the series and, you know, in the next book, Blood of Elves, specifically. But the warfare – I think the act of warfare presents a very immediate danger for everybody. It's, like, hard to say so little at this point, because we’re so early in the chapter and we're going to hear more.
LARS: Right. Right.
ALYSSA: Up until this point, Ciri has been very mysterious about her origins. And she hasn't really said anything. But, as they’re resting, we do hear a little bit from her about her childhood. And she says, “My mama was a witch, so you’d better watch your step. And my papa was enchanted, too. It was all told to me by one of my nannies, and when grandmamma found out about it, there was a dreadful to-do. Because I’m destined, you know?” And Geralt, presumably, asks, “To do what?” And Ciri says, “I don’t know. But I’m destined. That’s what my nanny said. And grandmamma said she won’t let anyone… that the whole ruddy castle will collapse first. Do you understand?” And we don't get anything from that. She's still been very vague about, you know, where she's from, who she is, but we do know, like, from this – at this point, that her grandmamma is a queen of sorts from somewhere.
LARS: I'm wondering if Geralt doesn't instantly think about this episode in Cintra he had a few years back. If she's telling about a witch, who's the daughter of a queen, well, I don't really know how many witches were daughters of queens he met in the course of his adventures.
ALYSSA: I feel like he definitely doesn't, because Ciri mentions that she doesn't have parents. And Geralt is just like, “Oh, yeah, she must be like the bajillionth daughter of some—
LARS: Hmm. Yeah.
ALYSSA: —of some, like, no-name backwards kingdom. I think it just goes right over his head.
LARS: Maybe he's not even really listening at this point. His short answer, “To do what?’ Well, it's all he utters at this moment.
ALYSSA: The last little bit we get here in the chapter, Geralt tells the girls bedtime story at Ciri’s demand. It's cute, because he notes that, you know, even Braenn was really, really interested in the story. And little dryads are just like little witchers in that they love stories like this. And he finally remembers Vesemir, who is that Kaer Morhen, continually telling him and the other little witchers stories as a child. So, he indulges them. He tells them this parable of a cat and a fox, who are in the woods when hunters arrive. The fox has 1,286 ways to outfox the hunters, and the cat only has one. And the cat just climbs up into the tree. So, the hunters come. The fox, before it can even use any of those 1,286 ways to outwit the hunters, is captured and immediately turned into a muff. And the cat scrambles up a tree. The hunters can't do anything. So, they leave, and the cat comes back down and slinks on its way.
LARS: I think the story is, again, about one of the biggest themes of the short stories, which is survival. Yeah, of course, it resembles Ciri’s story, of course, as she was in a forest and hunted by monsters, by Freixenet. I think the other moral of the story is quite interesting – interesting to Ciri, as it turns out later in the short story.
ALYSSA: Yeah. And, as you said, Braenn even makes this explicit herself. She just says that, “That's all the wisdom that there is to it. It’s to survive and to not be caught.” It's a very interesting, you know, theme that covers it just because survival looks very different depending on whose side that you're on. Like, looking at what your motivations are in both the long term and short term, what does survival mean? It's interesting the perspectives that we're going to get on this topic, like, in this chapter, specifically, but, again, like, in the world as a whole.
LARS: Yeah. We learn a lot about the survival of the dryads in later chapters of the short stories.
ALYSSA: In Part IV, the trio journey past the final layer of forest, the Trees, to reach its center. In this part, Geralt is blindfolded by Braenn, and Ciri is not. She insists on being the one to lead Geralt, by the hand, through this patch of forest. The ending of the section, it's very, very short; only a couple pages. And Ciri says:
[Reading] “How delightful it is here… Pity you can’t see. There are so many flowers. And birds. Can you hear them singing? Oh, there’s so many of them. Heaps. Oh, and squirrels. Careful, we’re going to cross a stream, over a stone bridge. Don’t fall in. Oh, so many little fishes! Hundreds. They’re swimming in the water, you know. So many little animals, oh my. There can’t be so many anywhere else.”
And Geralt says, “There can’t. Nowhere else. This is Brokilon.”
And she says, “What?”
“Brokilon. The Last Place.”
“I don’t understand.”
Geralt responds, “No one understands. No one wants to understand.”
LARS: I really love this nickname for Brokilon, ““The Last Place”. It's this threat to outsiders, to humans not to enter Brokilon, but, also, of course, to the human children who come here.
ALYSSA: Oh, that's an interesting way of looking at it. When you talk about the concept of The Last Place, the binary coin that you just kind of alluded to, for dryads, the last place, as a name, could refer to, you know, these last planes of existence for certain kinds of fauna, for certain kinds of animals. But it's interesting the point that you bring up that the last place could come from humans. It refers to a place of death, the last place, the resting place. So, that's actually a really interesting analysis. I hadn't – I hadn't thought of that. When I read it, I interpreted it as the former, the last place referred to preservation of wildlife. And that no one wants to understand, because they're so interested in resources and just tearing something down rather than understanding, I guess, the significance and importance of having something so untouched and preserved.
LARS: Of course, it's the last place to the dryads as a species. This is a very sad meaning too, of course. It has a very sad undertone.
ALYSSA: [Reading] In Part V, in Duen Canell, Geralt reunites with Freixenet, who had been brought to the homestead on a sledge. Lady Eithne arrives and declares Freixenet will stay to sire dryad children and the young Princess Cirilla will be turned into a dryad herself.
ALYSSA: When we get into the heart of Duen Canell, we see that the dryads have kind of built their homes out of living trees. They have methods of, like, warping the trees that they grow into these little homesteads. But Geralt also notes that there's less of them in the entryways of the homes than he'd seen there the last time that he had been in Brokilon. Upon entering, Braenn also has a conversation with another dryad in the Brokilon dialect about Geralt, which causes a little animosity and, like, some snickering about it. Well, as readers, we don't know what the conversation is about, and Geralt doesn't respond to it in the moment. But Braenn leads them into one of the homes, and Freixenet is there.
LARS: Geralt and Freixenet meet again. And, well, we, we learn the story of their past, because they have met before. One of the things that stands, stands out for me in the short story, not because of a scene or because it's very deep, but because this story is just so unique – the backgrounds of Freixenet.
ALYSSA: And it's a story that I had also heard before, you know, as Sapkowski does bastardizing existing fairy tales. Freixenet was cursed, turned into a bird. Apparently, he had a very lovely and stupid sister that tried to weave him a shirt out of nettles that would hopefully turn him back. It didn't work, but, apparently, his brother-in-law, who was the king, hired Geralt to lift the curse, which Geralt did. There's a number of variations of the fairy tales that Freixenet’s origin story is based on. In all of them, there's a number of brothers and a sister. And the brothers were all cursed, and they turned into swans. The sister has to take a vow of silence and sews shirts to turn her brothers back from swans into humans. Eventually, she isolates herself and is then found by a prince or a king, who then takes her back to his home and wants to marry her. Apparently, his mother doesn't approve of their union. She puts the girl on trial. And, as the girl finishes as much as she can of the very last shirt, she's, like, put to death. The birds come. She, like, throws the shirts. And the brothers put them on, turn back into humans, except for one brother who still has a feathered arm, because she didn't finish the shirt. They killed the mother-in-law. And they all live happily ever after. And that's kind of like the broad strokes of those fairy tales. It's funny, because Geralt tells the story of how Freixenet’s curse became more or less, you know, fairy tales of the six swans or the 12 brothers.
LARS: When I was reading this bit, I wondered why it was, out of all birds, turned into a cormorant.
ALYSSA: I don't know anything about birds. So, what is – what is strange about it?
LARS: In the entirety of the Brothers Grimm, they all got turned into ravens or crows. What's so special about cormorants? That – to choose this bird over all these classic. Well, of course, it's this Sapkowskian twist, I don’t know, that he chose a different bird.
ALYSSA: Yeah. It's funny, because Geralt says, “As word has spread about the breaking of this curse, the story is changed. People wanted it to be more romantic. So, they may you a swan.”
LARS: Yeah. Right.
ALYSSA: Freixenet is just like, “How is a swan more romantic?” And Geralt is just like, “I don't know.”
LARS: I think we have the explanation right here. Sapkowski gives it in the text. What's also funny, at least, for me, in this story, is that Freixenet revealed, at this point, that he's the Baron of a city called Hamm. And, well, this is actually the name of my hometown in Germany.
ALYSSA: Oh, is it really?
LARS: Yeah. So, I always imagined, when reading this bit, that there was a cormorant-man hybrid in Hamm wandering the street. But it's a very boring city. So, this would have been the most exciting thing to have ever happened in, I don't know, 1000 years or so. It was kind of fun for me.
ALYSSA: Oh, that's cool. They start talking about Ciri and possibly trying to get out, and Eithne walks in. She kind of, like, glides into the room with, like, this one-liner that, like, “No one can escape their destiny.” And then she just, like, floats into the room.
LARS: Yeah.
ALYSSA: I'm making a little bit of fun at it, but it is very powerful when you actually read the text. She is the Queen of the Dryad. She's the Lady of Brokilon. And she acts in the way like a monarch would act. The description that we get of her is that her voice is quiet but sonorous, hard and decisive. A voice commanding obedience, which brooked no argument. The ruler of Brokilon was wearing a glowing, gauzy, light-green gown. Like most dryads, she was small and slender, but her proudly raised head, grave, sharp-featured face and resolute mouth made her seem taller and more powerful. Her hair and eyes were the color of molten silver. You know, it’s really interesting, like, hearing this description of nonhumans. Like, the Gwent art for dryad is absolutely beautiful if you do happen to see it. In the art for Gwent, their skin is green. Their hair is, like, green blue. Their monarch has beautiful molten silver. Like, it's something that I can't even fathom to be honest.
LARS: Mmm. Yeah, right.
ALYSSA: Like, I have a hard time visualizing it.
LARS: Yeah. But, at the same time, I think, based on this description, she feels kind of familiar. You can describe Queen Calanthe, for example, in the same manner. Well, she also has this queenly aura that you instantly have this respect towards this queen, even though she isn't a human queen, but queen of warrior people. This is what I really like about this description.
ALYSSA: At this point, Ciri is sent away. Eithne ends up talking to Geralt about why he's here. It's interesting, because she's able to deduce who sent Geralt into the forest based on what she knows about the kings in the surrounding areas and their attitudes toward Brokilon. It catches Geralt off guard. It really does. She says, “I don't care,” ultimately.
LARS: Well, she's well informed. And this is what a queen is supposed to be.
ALYSSA: She's very firm with Geralt though, being very dismissive of why he's here and then of humanity as a whole.
LARS: Well, Geralt is in Brokilon Forest not really as a witcher or as himself. He’s there as an envoy for humans. She instantly sees him as a representative for the kings. She hates humans, but I think she hates kings and queens even more.
ALYSSA: You know, we've heard, like, in bits and pieces throughout the chapter, how old some of these dryads might be. You know, she doesn't really care, because the human lifespan is so short. She's gone through this, you know, however many dozens of times that monarchs have tried to come into Brokilon. She's like, “What's another?” Although Eithne and Geralt talk a little bit about his proposal from Venzlav, we don't hear too much about it. And she just says, you know, “I'll listen to you just out of respect for you kind of [Inaudible 41:42].” She doesn't know what to do with Freixenet. She says that she can't order him killed. Eithne considers him for a little bit. She just says very suddenly like, “Hey, you, can you sire children?” And he's like, “What?” He's a little kind of out of it. And, after Eithne leaves, he asks Geralt, “What was that about me being able to have children?” And Geralt says, you know, “You'll be allowed to heal here in Brokilon. And then you might become the father of a couple little dryads.” Freixenet, you know, turns it into a thing. He's like, “Oh, I'm gonna be a stud.” Geralt’s like, “No, listen, like, this is super critical. Don't do anything stupid or you're going to die. Do what you have to do. Leave and let that be that.”
LARS: Right. Even though it seems funny at first, maybe it also shows the grave situations the dryads are in at the moment. They don't know really how to procreate. And procreation, of course, is necessary to survive. Now, we're back again, at the theme of survival.
ALYSSA: So, going back to the beginning of the story, when Geralt meets Braenn and some of the other dryads, he notes that dryads are able to procreate with human men and elves, but that all the characteristics take on a dryad, and they're always girls. They're proposing to use Freixenet as a stud for lack of a better word. It's incredibly, incredibly critical. And Geralt gives Freixenet a rundown of their mating customs. Things like having a very critical conversation with them, ideally, about trees. If not trees, then the weather. Don't be handsy. Don't make it anything more, and don't expect basically, like, this Brokilon revelry of sex basically. Freixenet is then surprised. And he points out, “So, you're familiar with their mating customs.” Geralt just says, “Yep.” And then that's kind of that.
[Reading] In Part VI, in the evening, Geralt and Eithne argue above Ciri about the centuries-long fights between kings and dryads, about the rights of humans and non-humans, and about the princess. Ciri declares that Geralt is her destiny and when Eithne gives her the Water of Brokilon, to cleanse the girl mentally, nothing happens. Geralt, believing that it was just for show, drinks the Water of Brokilon himself and falls into a trance.
ALYSSA: When the chapter first opens, Geralt enters Eithne’s tree. And Eithne is there brushing Ciri’s hair and just having conversation with Geralt about the state of the world, the place of dryads within it, the place of humankind, et cetera. It's, like, a very heavy and very loaded conversation between the two of them.
LARS: Basically, she talks about the last 200 years of history between the dryads and the humans. So, there's a lot to process.
ALYSSA: Eithne opens her argument with Geralt referring to the law of surprise. And she says that witchers use the law of surprise in order to recruit young witchers. “Why can’t I take a human girl for every dryad who's killed defending Brokilon?” Geralt warns her that like, “This isn’t an ordinary girl. This is a princess. And it has consequences.” Eithne just says, “Human hatred is nothing new to me. I want to keep her especially because she's healthy.” Apparently, that's incredibly uncommon, because people will abandon their children at Brokilon in order to try to infect the dryads. So, they'll leave children with scarlet fever, small pox, and they think that the dryads aren't immune and that it'll just kill them all. They don't do anything, and we care for our children.
LARS: It's, again, about the children who go to Brokilon. And, of course, it's a tragedy for the parents of the children. They don't really see that the dryad’s – well, they treat the children with respect. Of course, they are turned into warriors, who live very dangerous lives. Of course, they aren't monsters at all. But, well, this is one of the big themes of The Witcher books. So, again, this is summarized very well in this paragraph.
ALYSSA: Eithne talks about the war for Brokilon and how it has been for the last 200 years. In that, she's like, “Why would I just give this up for a king who's going to die anyway? Why would I give up what we've been defending for so long?” Geralt says something interesting here, which parallels the conversation he had with Filavandrel in “The Edge of the World”. And he tells me, “Nonetheless, the world is changing. Something is ending. Whether you like it or not, man’s dominion over this world is a fact. Only those who assimilate with humans will survive. The rest will perish.” He said something very similar to Filavandrel. Filavandrel was in the Valley of Flowers Dol Blathanna at The Edge of the World. Geralt says, like, basically, “Assimilate or die.” And they refuse. They would rather wait it out.
LARS: Yeah, sure. Again, it's the theme of survival, and the different interpretations of survival, and the different perspectives of survival. Where Eithne thinks their only way of survival is hiding. It's like the cat in Geralt's story. And Geralt, of course, thinks, well, they have to adapt to survive. Of course, after hundreds and hundreds of years of fights and wars between humans and dryads, the dryads are not really capable of adapting anymore, because they're too far gone.
ALYSSA: Too far gone in terms of values and ideology.
LARS: Right. Absolutely. They're too far gone, because they can't have any empathy anymore towards humans. And, of course, the other way around.
ALYSSA: And it's interesting to see dryads in certain populations of elves, like Filavandrel’s lot, that survival means fighting, remaining independent, and defending that independence. Whereas for other pockets of elves, for halflings, and dwarves who have successfully assimilated but also, like, dopplers that we saw in The Eternal Flame, that assimilation is part of their goal. So, it's kind of interesting to see what they'll do to survive. Like, Dudu has that whole monologue about like, “I want to survive. I will survive, and I'll do it Novigrad even as a beggar.” I don't know. It's interesting, because I wonder, if even for, for a doppler, let's say, you know, what would happen if a doppler tried to live as a dryad or if a doppler tried to live as an elf in those independent pockets?
LARS: Well, it must be interesting.
ALYSSA: Eithne calls Ciri A Child of the Elder Blood. And this is the first I believe that we hear of it. She says:
[Reading] “Yes, Geralt. There are still being born Children of the Elder Blood, of whom the prophesies speak. And you tell me that something is ending… You worry whether we shall survive—’ [...] You say something is ending, Not true. There are things that never end. You talk of survival? I am fighting to survive. Brokilon endures thanks to my fight, for trees live longer than men, as long as they are protected from your axes. You talk to me of kings and princes. Who are they? Those whom I know are white skeletons lying in the necropolises of Craag An, deep in the forest. In marble tombs, on piles of yellow metal and shining gems. But Brokilon endures, the trees sough above the ruins of palaces, their roots break up the marble. Does your Venzlav recall those kings? Do you? And, if not, how can you claim that something is ending? How do you know whose destiny is destruction and whose eternity? What entitles you to speak of destiny? Do you actually know what it is?”
ALYSSA: You know, destiny is also a huge theme in the Witcher world as we know. I think it says a lot about how relative time is in the lifespan of a seemingly eternal being such as Eithne, such as Filavandrel. From her perspective, she has a point. She talks about how people have been riding up to Brokilon for centuries demanding their surrender. Where are they now? They're long dead to the point beyond remembrance.
LARS: Yeah, sure. She's done that for hundreds of years. And, to her, of course, it was right. It worked. And there's no reason to change it now.
ALYSSA: Now that we're getting Eithne’s perspective in full, going all the way back to the beginning of the chapter, Geralt says, “They have to lose. They're destined to lose.” What do you think about the contrast of those perspectives? And who would you say may be “right”?
LARS: This is a good question. Well, at first, I think it's interesting that, at this point, Geralt – well, he talks about destiny where he speaks in favor of destiny. He tells the dryads, “Stop fighting. You have to negotiate with King Venzlav to survive. If you don't, it's your destiny.” But, when it comes to himself, when it comes to his child of surprise or everything that happened in A Question of Price, he says, “I don't believe in destiny.” Well, who's right? I don't really know. This is a good question. I think, from Eithne’s point of view, you can say that she makes her own destiny. They are fighting for hundreds of years. And, by fighting the humans, they say what their destiny is like. At first, you just have to say what is destiny at all. If Geralt doesn't have to do anything, he can wait. And, at one point, his destiny will call him. In contrast to that, Eithne says, “No, we'll have to act. We have to fight the humans.” Of course, there's no right or wrong. There's two edges to this sword, I think.
ALYSSA: And that's Lars’ dad joke for the episode.
LARS: Yeah, absolutely.
ALYSSA: You know what? Obviously, it has a lot of parallels to our own world. We see preservationists, conservationists, here in our own society, and the monopoly of industry, and also, like, how those things have played out over the course of hundreds of years when you look back to things like the Industrial Revolution all the way up to the insurgence of environmental consciousness. These arguments have withstood the test of time and are equally as relevant now. I think it's the exact same argument that we saw in Episode 5. I don't know if there's a right or wrong and just different perspectives. Umm, I think that Eithne has a right to defend what is hers. She has a right to defend the independence of Brokilon. I think Geralt also has a point in that there must be, you know, compromises somehow. You're killing people who will be able to help with your survival just by refusing it. So, could there be a compromise? You need elves. You need humans in order to survive. As you said, procreation is, you know, one of the components of survival. To what end do we need warfare? I think it’s also a huge question. Again, something very timely given the circumstances of the world at the moment, what is the purpose of it? What is the point of it? Can it be pointless? Is there a better way?
LARS: Right. Well, it would be interesting to see. Maybe – I don't know if Sapkowski will ever write another book in The Witcher world. But – well, what would be Brokilon Forests like 100 years after the Witcher books? I don't know. Will it still be the same? I think, as long as Eithne will be Queen of the Brokilon, I don't think they will change their ways. It all depends on Eithne, of course.
ALYSSA: Yeah. I mean I wonder how the dryad ideology would change or evolve over the course of time, especially if Eithne isn't there.
LARS: Right.
ALYSSA: That's an interesting point. Yeah. We get a lot more into the meat of Ciri’s importance and even deeper why Eithne has insisted that Geralt be here with Ciri. And Eithne would tell Ciri, “Tell me what you told me before Geralt walked.” Ciri says, “I want to go with Geralt, because he's my fate.” They don't really understand what it is or, at least, Geralt doesn't. Eithne, I think, has a suspicion or fully understands what's going on. And Geralt, ultimately, asks like, “Why are you bullying the child? She's gonna drink the water of Brokilon. That's gonna be that. She's gonna become another dryad. Why are you making me stay for this?” Eithne says, “I want to show you what destiny is. I want to prove to you that nothing is ending. That everything is only beginning.” So, she makes Ciri drink this water, which is supposed to kind of, like, erase her memories. Geralt has seen this ritual before. There's, like, convulsions. There's trembling. There’s seizures, and then kind of, like, nothingness from human girls. Ciri doesn't go through any of that. She, like, shakes a little bit. And then she's like, “Nope. I want to go with Geralt. See ya.” And Geralt ultimately thinks that this was just a trick. That Eithne let Ciri go with a placebo. Eithne just says, “No, this is destiny. Do you want to test destiny?” So, again, Geralt has always been very skeptical of destiny in the context of himself. As you said, Lars, we, like, saw this in “A Question of Price”. And we're kind of seeing it again here. Eithne challenges him. And this is where the title of the story, “Sword of Destiny”, comes in. She says:
[Reading] “Can you read old runes, White Wolf?” And he says, “Yes, I can.” “Read what is engraved on the goblet. It is from Craag An. It was drunk from by kings whom no one now remembers.”
ALYSSA: And I.. can’t read this.
LARS: Okay.
ALYSSA: Do you want to give it a try?
LARS: Oh, no. I'm not quite sure. Yeah. We need the Duolingo session so bad, I think.
ALYSSA: I don't even know how to... It's like, “Duet—”
LARS: “Duet—”
ALYSSA: “Duettaeánn aef—”
LARS: “Cirrán.”
ALYSSA: “—cirrán Cáerme—”
LARS: “Cirrán.” Very good. Yeah.
ALYSSA: “—Gláeddyv. Yn á esseáth.” I don’t know.
LARS: Yeah. It sounds – sounds great.
ALYSSA: Thanks, Lars. But, ultimately, Eithne asks, like, “Do you know what that means?” And Geralt translates, “The Sword of Destiny has two blades… You are one of them.” I think I've heard other translations where it's like the Sword of Destiny has two edges – edges would probably be the more appropriate translation. The “official" English translation” says, “The Sword of Destiny has two blades. You're one of them.” As I said, Ciri drinks the water. Nothing happens. Eithne is bitter right now. She's incredibly bitter about this outcome. And she says:
[Reading] “How little you know of destiny. How little you know, Witcher. How little you see. How little you understand. You thank me? You thank me for the role I have played? For a vulgar spectacle? For a trick, a deception, a hoax? For the sword of destiny being made, as you judge, of wood dipped in gold paint? Then go further; do not thank, but expose me. Have it your own way. Prove that the arguments are in your favour. Fling your truth in my face, show me the triumph of sober, human truth, thanks to which, in your opinion, you gain mastery of the world. This is the Water of Brokilon. A little still remains. Dare you? O conqueror of the world?”
ALYSSA: Ugh. Geralt is, like, not sure what's going on, and he's really skeptical. And he's like, “Fine. I'll prove you wrong.” And he drinks the little bit that's left. And he falls into this hallucinogenic trance. This trance is heavy. It is heavy. And there's a lot of, like, premonition that happens in it that we don't understand as someone who's reading it for the first time. And a lot of the vision that he gets becomes much more clear as the saga moves forward and as we move on to the next short story, “Something More.” He has multiple visions. The one that seems to be the most impactful, at least for my reading, but it says:
[Reading] “The nothingness and void in you, conqueror of the world, who is unable even to win the woman he loves. Who walks away and flees, when his destiny is within reach. The Sword of Destiny has two blades. You are one of them. But what is the other, White Wolf?” “There is no destiny,” his own voice. “There is none. None. It does not exist. The only thing that everyone is destined for is death.” “That is the truth,” says the woman with the mousy hair and the mysterious smile. “That is the truth, Geralt.” The woman is wearing a silvery suit of armour, bloody, dented, and punctured by the pikes or halberds. Blood drips in a thin stream from the corner of her mysteriously and hideously smiling mouth. “You sneer at destiny,” she says, still smiling. “You sneer at it, trifle with it. The sword of destiny has two blades. You are one of them. Is the second… death? But it is we who die, die because of you. Death cannot catch up with you, so it must settle for us. Death dogs your footsteps, White Wolf. But others die. Because of you. Do you remember me?”
ALYSSA: And Geralt cries out, “Calanthe!” Outside of this hallucinogenic trance, he, kind of, hears Eithne’s voice:
[Reading] “You can save him. You can save him, Child of the Elder Blood. Before he plunges into the nothingness which he has come to love. Into the black forest which has no end.”
ALYSSA: Whoa. It’s, like, very heavy.
LARS: Yeah, absolutely. There's lots of things going on in these short sentences even before the quote you read out. But I think the last paragraph of this quote you were reading out makes it kind of clear what the other edge of the sword is. So, it's the Child of the Elder Blood.
ALYSSA: It's interesting to see, like, how the metaphor of the Sword of Destiny. Like, Geralt is on one side. What is on the other? How that plays out in some of his relationships throughout the books, whether that's with the ambiguous and abstract entity of death, or whether that's with a more concrete individual.
LARS: Geralt, as a witcher, well, there's some kind of dualism; being a witcher and symbolizing death in the rest of the world. These two factors are always in conflict with each other. Geralt, who thinks he brings death in the world. And this is why Eithne thinks he's stuck in this nothingness. And there's only one person who can save him. This paragraph makes it quite clear that their fates are linked. Maybe from a narrative point of view that the short story, The Sword of Destiny and Something More are linked very much. You can't have the one without the other. It feels much more like a continuous story than two short stories. This makes it very convoluted, I guess, but very interesting, nonetheless.
ALYSSA: Eithne ends it by just saying, “If this is what you want, if this is your destiny, the destiny of you, Child of the Elder Blood, then let it be so.” In Part VII, Geralt and Ciri wake alone in the forest. Geralt, from his trance, realizes that Ciri is the daughter of Pavetta and Duny and the granddaughter of Calanthe, the Queen of Cintra, and therefore his Child Surprise. They run into a band of bandits, who attack the witcher and girl. The pair are saved by Braenn and the dryads, shooting from the forest, and Mousesack, who has come to claim Ciri.
LARS: It almost feels like the whole episode with Queen Eithne is a dream now.
ALYSSA: Yeah.
LARS: I got the impression, “This really happened. Did we just dream about this?”
ALYSSA: You know, it really brings everything full circle. As you said, like, this is the point where everything starts to wrap up. And we can't have Sword of Destiny without Something More, because this is now leading into the end of the short stories and into, as we know, the saga, which is a five-part series of novels. Geralt, they wake up alone in this forest. And he's like, “You're the daughter of Pavetta and the granddaughter of Calanthe.” He's like, “You knew who I was.” Ciri admits that she didn't, but, eventually, knows he lifted the curse from Duny. The passage continues, and it really is very sweet. Ciri says:
[Reading] “But my nanny said… She said that I’m destined. Because I’m a Surprise. A Child of Surprise. Geralt?” Geralt says, “Ciri.” He looked at her, shaking his head and smiling. “Believe me, you’re the greatest surprise I could have come across.” Ciri says, “Ha! It’s true! I’m destined. My nanny said a witcher would come who would have white hair and would take me away. But grandmamma yelled… Oh, never mind! Tell me where you’re taking me.” Geralt just says, “Back home. To Cintra.”
ALYSSA: But, so, Ciri leads him out of the forest using her, you know, intuition and premonition. And Geralt kind of checks her first, because Geralt has her touch his medallion, which starts to vibrate just from the magic from her. He trusts her. She leads him out of the forest, but, when they get to a point where Geralt knows where he is, he stops listening to her. And she's insisting that the way that they're going isn't a good way. Geralt is like, “The other way is to Verden. And you don't want to go back to Verden. You don't want to go back to Kistrin.” She keeps insisting like, “It's a bad road. It's a bad road.” And, eventually, they turn the corner, and they come across this, like, huge murder scene. There's a fallen tree that's blocking a wagon. There's a couple of dead merchants. There's horses shot through with arrows. And the whole scene is being assessed by men who claim to be in the Royal Service of King Ervyll. They're talking to Geralt, who lies about who he and Ciri are. And these men kind of say that Freixenet was murdered, and that Princess Cirilla was kidnapped. And they swear revenge against the dryads. Ciri steps in. Geralt is kind of playing along with this and assessing the danger of the situation. And he notes that there's something fishy about the whole thing. Ciri steps in, and she's like, “Oh no, the dryads couldn't have done this, because they wouldn't have knocked down the tree. The fletchings are the wrong color.” They realize that Ciri is too clever. And they go to attack the Witcher and the girl. Obviously, they don't know that they're dealing with a Witcher. So, Geralt kills off a few of them. Ciri scrambles up a tree.
LARS: We heard that before.
ALYSSA: Yeah. Eventually, they're saved by the dryads, who were shooting down the men from the forest, and, eventually, by Mousesack, who we haven't seen since Episode 4, Chapter IV, which was A Question of Price.
LARS: This is a big cut from the chapters before this one. Lots of magical stuff was going on. And, now, Geralt and Ciri are instantly thrown back into reality. This cut is very harsh. Yeah. While they are attacked by these bandits, maybe Geralt’s just thinking, “Well, Eithne, maybe she has a point.”
ALYSSA: The other thing that we do know, if these men are actually in the Royal Service and they're not just pretending to be, the name that they invoke, King Ervyll, he's the one from Verden. But he also is the one who, Eithne notes, pays for dryad scalps. There's still animosity going down the ranks within this region.
LARS: Well, it makes you understand, again, that Ciri isn't really willing to marry the son of King Ervyll who's collecting scalps of dryads. I think it's one of the points Geralt’s talking about to Eithne. Maybe, if Ciri marries Prince Kistrin, she can change him. She can make him much more – at least, neutral to the dryads. You know, at this point, you see humans are too far gone too when it comes to the morals or opinions towards the dryads. And the bandits, they're too far gone, of course, too. They attack, because they don't care about humans or dryads. They only want the money and the loot.
ALYSSA: Yeah. They're very entrenched into their ideologies. The animosity is just so strong. Geralt has brought this up throughout the chapter. He talks about how early these ideologies are brought into people. When the chapter opens, he talks about, you know, this 15-year-old boy with an arrow in his eye. He’s probably never known a woman, and then he just happened upon Braenn and her dryad sisters. None of them have probably ever known a man, but they know how to kill. It's interesting that they tried to just, like, create this fake ambush, because Geralt notes that something was wrong. He takes a look at the scene. And, one, the fletchings aren’t the right color on the arrows. They're not these like yellow-dyed fletchings that the dryads use. A tree has been knocked down, which dryads wouldn't do. And the men have had their throats slit. Again, dryads wouldn't do. Eventually, the men turn on them. Geralt takes care of most of the men. Some of the rest are finished off by dryads. The bandits had noted that they were expecting a druid. It turns out to be Mousesack. And this is a lovely little reunion between Ciri and Mousesack, but also between Mousesack and Geralt.
LARS: Mousesack is a druid. And I wonder if dryads would attack a druid as they have a very close relationship through the woods, through the nature in general.
ALYSSA: Yeah. I don't know how obvious it would be from, like, him or his dress or anything. Mousesack does greet them. The visualization is very beautiful. The leaves blow back on the trees, revealing a number of dryads. And then Braenn steps forward. The last time we saw Braenn, she was the one who was bearing the cup that had the Sword of Destiny written on it. And Geralt has said something to her, which kind of shook her out of her dryad mentality. And she remembered her old name, which was Mona. Here, she says goodbye to Geralt and Ciri. Geralt says, “Goodbye, Mona.” And she says, “No,” like, “Mona was a dream. I am Braenn of Brokilon.” And then that is her exit from the short story. Reading it, it comes across as very powerful and very beautiful. You know, despite points of denial that Geralt has put into her throughout the chapter, she is now renouncing her humanity and embracing her identity as a dryad. It's a very powerful and, and close for that character.
LARS: But maybe, after meeting Geralt, she was confronted again that, actually, she isn't a dryad. She is a human. And maybe there was some inner turmoil. She knows she's human. And, of course, she is reminded of her humanity by Geralt, again, when he enters the Brokilon Forest. By uttering this sentence, “There is no Mona,” we know that she has decided what she is.
ALYSSA: We haven't seen Mousesack since “A Question of Price”. He was the druid, who came with the Skellige delegation and, ultimately, Calanthe asked him to help Pavetta hone her powers. Presumably, as we can kind of infer from his appearance here and Ciri’s familiarity with him, it’s that he stayed even after the death of Duny and Pavetta, which we find out about through Ciri, because Ciri mentions that her mother and father have died.
LARS: Well, this says a lot about Mousesack as a character. Originally, he has no relations to Cintra or the queen. He stays anyway. He must be really close to Ciri and Calanthe, of course.
ALYSSA: But Mousesack’s response is very funny. Ciri asks if Calanthe is worried. Mousesack says, “No, not really. She's too busy soaking her switch.” Meaning that Ciri better have a really, really, really good explanation. And she's probably still gonna get punished.
[Reading] In Part VIII, while Ciri sleeps, Mousesack tries to convince the Witcher to come with them to Cintra. And, if not, then to take the girl with him and Mousesack would talk to Calanthe himself. Despite the druid’s warnings, Geralt renounces his destiny and leave Ciri shouting after him on a hillside begging for him not to go.
ALYSSA: So, again, we get, like, another very heavy chapter of dialogue mostly between Mousesack and Geralt. Again, we see really strongly here Geralt's attitude toward destiny as a concept for himself.
LARS: He's in denial all the time.
ALYSSA: Yeah. It's – umm, it's kind of a rough chapter. And it's also really interesting to see how firmly Mousesack, himself, believes in destiny and what happens when these kind of ideologies and values clash. So, Mousesack asks Geralt to come with them to Cintra. And Mousesack insists it’s destiny. This is now the third time that your paths have crossed. One being A Question of Price when Pavetta was pregnant with Ciri, the second one we're going to hear about in Something More, and this is now the third time. So, Mousesack says, “Geralt, you demanded a vow from Calanthe, and then from Pavetta and her husband. The vow has been kept. Ciri is the Child of Destiny. Destiny demands…” And Geralt finishes his sentence almost rudely, “That I take the child and turn her into a witcher? A little girl? Take a look at me, Mousesack. Can you imagine me as a comely lass?” And Mousesack says, “To hell with witchering. What are you talking about? What has the one to do with the other? No, Geralt, I see that you understand nothing, I shall have to use simple words. Listen, any fool, including you, may demand a vow, may exact a promise, and will not become remarkable because of it. It is the child who is extraordinary. And the bond which comes into being when the child is born is extraordinary. [...] From the moment Ciri was born, what you wanted and what you planned to do ceased to matter, and what you don’t want and what you mean to give up doesn’t make any difference either. You don’t bloody matter! Don’t you understand?” Geralt says, “Mousesack, one must occasionally give up… even the most extraordinary things.” And Mousesack says, “But you know you will never have a child of your own.” Geralt says, “Yes.” Mousesack says, “And you’re still giving her up?” “Yes, I am. I’m surely permitted to, aren’t I?” “You are. Indeed. But it is risky. There is an old prophecy saying that the sword of destiny…” And Geralt finishes the sentence, “… has two blades. I’ve heard it.” What are your thoughts on the contrast between Mousesack’s devotion to the idea of destiny and Geralt’s skepticism of it, but also Mousesack’s argument that what girl wants doesn't matter anymore?
LARS: Right. Geralt has absolutely no say in it. This is the gist of destiny. And he doesn't want to get it, I think. Well, maybe deep inside he knows that he has no say in it, but he can't accept it yet. I think this paragraph, what Mousesack says here really resonates with Geralt. I don't want to say it's something more must happen at this point, but, well, it's true.
ALYSSA: You know, something that we explored when we first learned about the law of surprise back in Episode 4 really was, as Mousesack says here, “Anybody can ask for anything, but that doesn't mean that something will come of it.” You know, we hear maybe it's a dog, or maybe it's a chicken, or maybe it's like nothing. But the fact that it is a child and the fact that destiny fulfilled the promise of the law of surprise is much more meaningful and is a true sign of destiny.
LARS: Yeah. The fact alone that there's a child should show Geralt there must be something about this.
ALYSSA: Mousesack is very insistent. “This is destiny. And I won't get in the way of destiny. I will deal with the consequences.” And it's very interesting how strongly it impacts him, because we've already established that he must be incredibly loyal to Calanthe and to the Cintra throne. But there's a passage here, he's warning Geralt about renouncing destiny. He says, “Unlike you, I believe in destiny. And I knew that it is hazardous to trifle with the two-edged sword. Don't trifle with it, Geralt. Take advantage of the chance which is presenting itself. Turn what connects you to Ciri into the normal healthy bond of a child with its guardian, for if you do not, then that bond may manifest itself differently, more terribly in a negative and destructive way. I want to protect you both from that.” He goes further on that sentiment by saying, “If you wanted to take her, I would not protest. I would it take upon myself the risk of explaining why to Calanthe.” That is incredibly, incredibly unexpected, I think, as a reader.
LARS: Absolutely. Mhmm. You would not have expected that, because, well, it kind of contradicts what you thought of Mousesack beforehand. But it also shows that, well, there's something bigger for everyone to believe in than – I don't know – working in service of queens or kings. I think, especially as a druid, he knows that there is something bigger than kings or queens or humans.
ALYSSA: Although, it is interesting that you have Geralt and Calanthe, both of whom bristle at the idea of destiny, both of whom don't care about destiny, determining the fate of a child of destiny. Like, it sets it up in such a way that you have people who don't agree with this idea. A child who is born of that idea and the consequences for that skepticism.
LARS: Well, this is what makes the story so interesting. We have at least two characters who don't agree with everything that's happening to Ciri’s fate. Yeah. But then we have Mousesack who absolutely agrees. Well, he's kind of the personification of the law of surprise, because he's here to tell us and to tell our main characters, in this case, Geralt, how important it is to follow destiny and to accept your child of surprise.
ALYSSA: So, Geralt fully renounces his right to the child. And he explicitly says as much before riding off, which causes Ciri to wake up. She's literally standing on this hillside shouting for him into the wind. And she says, “You can't run away. I'm your destiny. Do you hear?” Geralt continues to ride on. Part of the closing of the chapter, he says, “There is no destiny,” he thought. “It does not exist. The only thing that everyone is destined for is death. Death is the other blade of the two-edged sword. I am the first blade. And the second is death, which dogs my footsteps. I cannot, I may not expose you to that, Ciri.”
LARS: Geralt is really true to himself at this point. Well, he kind of argues to himself that he doesn't want to accept Ciri to protect her from his lifestyle, because he and death were always very close. And, well, he argues, at this point, that he doesn't want Ciri to have that too. Maybe he doesn't want to give into the idea that maybe there's something more to this whole destiny thing to protect her. But, deep inside of him, well, maybe Mousesack isn't that wrong.
ALYSSA: I think this decision strikes that balance between like care and recklessness, and selfishness and selflessness.
LARS: Absolutely.
ALYSSA: It closes the chapter with the idea that Geralt is doing it, because he doesn't want to put her in any danger. He understands his lifestyle and the demands of his occupation as a witcher. He is constantly penniless. He's always in danger. He's putting himself in danger and himself on the line in order to help others. What is he gonna do with toting around a small child?
LARS: Yeah, of course. Well, he's not – he's not wrong, of course.
ALYSSA: In that way, it does present the selfless understanding what are the actual consequences of taking the child along, is this practical, is this safe. Ultimately, it seems that he decides no. But, on the other side, does he want a child? Is that the selfish side of that coin? He doesn't believe in destiny. He doesn't want to compromise those values or give in to the idea that destiny and fate is something that's outside of his control. So, he clings on to that, doubles down on his disbelief, and then goes on his way, because introducing the idea of destiny into his mentality would open up a whole can of worms. So, it's easier to just kind of, like, put the blinders on and just, like, keep going.
LARS: Yeah, of course. I think destiny is not only about Ciri for him. There's so much factors inside of him that would touch on the topic of destiny. It’s a very big thing for him, not only when it comes to Ciri, but also because Geralt as a witcher as a whole.
ALYSSA: I think, to open up the conversation a little bit more to the close of Sword of Destiny, the Sword of Destiny compilation and Something More, obviously, without spoilers, this refusal of destiny right now, in my opinion, I think it's really important that he does refuse this at least another time. Yeah.
LARS: From a narrative point of view, of course, well, it's the foundation for what will follow in the future stories.
ALYSSA: Both in terms I think of actual events in the plot, but also the character development that happens behind the scenes.
LARS: Absolutely, yeah. Mhmm.
ALYSSA: This chapter I think builds upon the existing world building that we've got both in terms of how these models monarchies function, the purpose of nonhumans within the narrative and within the greater world, the theme of survival as you and I have talked about repeatedly. You know, between this and “Something More”, we really get to see the setup of the saga.
LARS: Yeah. We're through almost – especially this last section shows that the short story of “The Sword of Destiny” is arguably the most important short story as a whole, maybe next to “A Question of Price”, which is the foundation to “The Sword of Destiny”. But, of course, it has the meeting between Geralt and Ciri. But it introduces, again, as a whole, the subject of destiny. Of course, it was in there in all the short stories before especially in “A Question of Price”, well, what we know – we finally learn how impactful destiny is for Geralt’s overall story. And this is the groundwork for every story, everything that's to come in the Witcher saga.
ALYSSA: This episode is so far from Episode 4, when we actually covered “A Question of Price”. And, when you read “A Question of Price” back in The Last Wish, it feels like a standalone story. It really does. Actually, Crisanto in Episode 7, I think, when we talked about “The Voice of Reason”, he's like, “Whatever happened to Pavetta and Duny’s kid, because that kid is definitely going to come back.” I remember my face just – I have such an expressive face that I was like, “Merp.”
LARS: Yeah. I won't say anything.
ALYSSA: I was like I can't – I mean my face is so expressive that he was just like, “Yeah. That kid’s coming back.”
LARS: Yeah.
ALYSSA: But, you know, it feels like a standalone story. And then, to kind of see, you know, the literal fruit of that union and to, actually, I guess, see the follow through and the consequences of it, there's – there's so much more I think to return to in Sword of Destiny and A Question of Price and Something More when we start going through the saga. I'm gonna be referencing this episode for like episodes and episodes to come.
LARS: Right. It doesn't feel like a standalone short story. It feels like the start of the overall saga with the introduction of Ciri. So, from now on, we have a story.
ALYSSA: As Lars and I have talked about continually, “Sword of Destiny” and “Something More” really kick off into the saga. These two chapters are incredibly important. And we'll continue to return to them as the saga moves forward. But, for the moment, that is it for our show today. Lars, thank you so much for joining us for this episode. And thank you to our hanza for listening. So, where can people find you? And is there anything that our community can help you with or anything that you'd like to share with them?
LARS: Thank you very much again for having me. It was great fun, of course. And, yeah, where can you find me? Mhmm. I think on Instagram. I have an Instagram page, WitcherFlix.
ALYSSA: That's definitely your main. You also have a Twitter as well, right?
LARS: Yeah.
ALYSSA: @FlixWitcher.
LARS: Yeah, because WitcherFlix was already taken, unfortunately, even two years ago. But, well, that's life. And, yeah, I'm really looking forward to next episodes and maybe to discussion about this episode. And, well, maybe someone has more insight into the whole destiny thing, because I think you have to subreddit for your podcast.
ALYSSA: I do. I do have a subreddit for the podcast. So, I would love to, like, hear everyone's thoughts about that after this too.
LARS: Yeah, sure. This would be great. So, thank you again for having me.
ALYSSA: Yeah. And thank you in the future for having me, because next episode we are like actually heading to Berlin.
LARS: Yes.
ALYSSA: I'm actually going there in, like, a week—a week and a half.
LARS: Mhmm.
ALYSSA: So, we're really heading to Berlin in the next episode to finish the Witcher short story collections with the final story, “Something More.”
Outro & Credits
[Breakfast in Beauclair theme music by MojoFilter Media]
ALYSSA: Thanks for joining us at the breakfast table! For show notes, transcripts of each episode, and a complete list of our social platforms and listening services, head over to breakfastinbeauclair.com.
Breakfast in Beauclair is created by Alyssa from GoodMorhen. It’s hosted by Alyssa with the “Tidings from Toussaint” News Segment by Lars from WitcherFlix. The show is edited by Alyssa with the Breakfast in Beauclair theme by MojoFilter Media and the “Tidings from Toussaint” theme by Bettina Campomanes.
Breakfast in Beauclair is produced by Alyssa in New York City with Luis of Kovir, The Owner of The Churlish Porpoise, Arix the Godling, Katie (The Redhead of Toussaint), Jacob B., Mahakam Elder Joe, Julie, Sylvia of Skellige, Brandon, Jamison, Ayvo of Gulet, Bee Haven of the Edge of the World, Jacob Meeks, and Sebastian von Novigrad.
Special thanks to Lars for joining us for this episode and our international hanza for their support.
Transcriptionist: Rachelle Rose Bacharo
Editor: Krizia Casil