The Time of Contempt (The Witcher #2)

by Andrzej Sapkowski

“Danger comes silently. You will not hear it when it swoops down on grey feathers. I had a dream. The sand… The sand was hot from the sun.”

Someone will die, so someone else can live. Someone you love will survive. A girl you don’t know, and whom you’ve never seen, will die—”

“The wolf, heedless of warnings, wants to carry on hunting,” he said. “He doesn’t see he’s being hunted, and he’s heading straight for some tasty kippers hung up as bait by a real hunter.”

hot sand.

Ciri prophecy

grey feathers,

Ciri prophecy

hit the messenger in the back

Ciri prophecy

“Think about it. And dismount, as I said. Not in a puddle! Leave your horse; that’s the servant’s job. Take off your gloves. You don’t go into a bank wearing riding gloves. Look at me, Ciri. Straighten your beret. And your collar. Stand up straight. And if you don’t know what to do with your hands then don’t do anything with them!”

Mother mothering

naiad.

An enchantress always takes action. Wrongly or rightly; that is revealed later. But you should act, be brave, seize life by the scruff of the neck. Believe me, little one, you should only regret inactivity, indecisiveness, hesitation. You shouldn’t regret actions or decisions, even if they occasionally end in sadness and regret.

Madam Yennefer, Forgive me. I’m riding to Hirundum because I want to see Geralt. I want to see him before I start school. Forgive my disobedience, but I must. I know you’ll punish me, but I don’t want to regret my indecision and hesitation. If I’m to have regrets, let them be for deeds and actions. I’m an enchantress. I seize life by the scruff of the neck. I’ll return when I can. Ciri

Thus do I take you, to have and to hold, for the most wondrous and terrible of times, for the best and the worst of times, by day and by night, in sickness and in health. For I love you with all my heart and swear to love you eternally, until death do us part.

We know little about love. Love is like a pear. A pear is sweet and has a distinct shape. Try to define the shape of a pear.

After the compulsory air kisses or unpleasantly weak handshakes, after the insincere smiles and even less sincere, although well-concocted, compliments, followed a brief and tediously banal conversation about nothing.

you’re not mistaken. There is only she, Yennefer, at my side, here and now, and only she matters. Here and now. And what she was long ago, where she was long ago and who she was with long ago doesn’t have any, doesn’t have the slightest, importance. Now she’s with me, here, among you all. With me, with no one else. That’s what I’m thinking right now, thinking only about her, thinking endlessly about her, smelling the scent of her perfume and the warmth of her body. And you can all choke on your envy.

The landscape depicts the meeting between Cregennan of Lod and Lara Dorren aep Shiadhal, the legendary lovers, torn apart and destroyed by the time of contempt. He was a sorcerer and she was an elf, one of the elite of Aen Saevherne, or the Knowing Ones. What might have been the beginning of reconciliation was transformed into tragedy.”

Lara Dorren aep Shiadhal looked at him from the portrait with Ciri’s eyes.

I mistook stars reflected in a pond at night for those in the sky.”

Think, as you look up at the sky. At the stars. And don’t mistake them with their reflection in a pond.

do you know when stories stop being stories? The moment someone begins to believe in them.

from Falka’s blood will be born an avenger who will destroy the old world and build a new one on its ruins.”

A fire. An inferno. Blood. A nightmare… I don’t remember, I don’t remember anything…

Codringer and Fenn death

Had it not been for the foolish scruples of the Witcher, and his impractical principles, many subsequent events would have run their course quite differently. Many events would probably have not taken place at all. And the history of the world would have unfolded in an alternative way.

the history of the world unfolded as it unfolded, the sole cause of which was that the Witcher had scruples.

green beet soup.

anthracite.

“Blessed are they who do not know,” said Philippa, in a voice devoid of mockery. “For they will live longer.

Ignorance is bliss

“I love you, my daughter,”

she turned around and showed her pursuers her middle finger, a gesture she had been taught by the dwarf Yarpen Zigrin.

You mistook the stars reflected in a pond at night for the sky.

May Ye All Wail, for the Destroyer of Nations is upon us. Your lands shall they trample and divide with rope. Your cities razed shall be, their dwellers expelled. The bat, owl and raven your homes shall infest, and the serpent will therein make its nest… Aen Ithlinnespeath

War. It was always a fight to kill—never to let live

“A coward,” he declared with dignity, when he’d stopped coughing and had got his breath back, “dies a hundred times. A brave man dies but once. But Dame Fortune favours the brave and holds cowards in contempt.”

Fortune favors the bold; contempt

“Ciri was right,” whispered the Witcher. “Neutrality… Neutrality is always contemptible.”

Reference To Blood of Elves. Ciri was angered by Geralt's neutrality

anachronistic

“Apart from one sorceress, who has become a queen.”

Francesca Findabair AKA Daisy of the Valleys AKA Enid an Gleanna

Valley of the Ashes.”

Foreshadowing? Queen is called Daisy of the Valley

Francesca Findabair, known as Enid an Gleanna, once a sorceress and presently the Queen of Aen Seidhe,

Tissaia de Vries sat down on the chair by the table, blew out a candle, straightened the quill lying across the letter one more time and severed the arteries in both wrists.

Being a wise creature, the unicorn indubitably knows that remaining too long in the state of maidenhood is suspicious and counter to the natural order.

The stars in the sky danced like stars reflected on the surface of a pond.

You shall bear a name of the Elder Folk, a name you have chosen for yourself. You will be Falka.”

They were children of the time of contempt. And they had nothing but contempt for others. For them, only force mattered. Skill at wielding weapons, which they quickly acquired on the high roads. Resoluteness. Swift horses and sharp swords.