The Tower of Swallows (The Witcher, #4)

by Andrzej Sapkowski

Tedd Deireadh, the end of the world, preceded by Ragh nar Roog, the last battle between Light and Darkness.

Ragnarök, the final battle before the end of the world

linked the turmoil of the heavens with the evil witch Yennefer, and her dreadful death. Others yet—who were even better informed—saw in the churned-up sea a sign that someone was dying, someone in whose veins flowed the blood of the kings of Skellige and Cintra.

Yennefer or Ciri

The girl has a red rose tattooed on her loins, right by the pubic mound.”

Three of the four cardinal symptoms of acute inflammation have appeared. Rubor, calor and tumor can easily be confirmed by eye and touch.

Red, hot, and swellikmg. In latin

fourth symptom—dolor

Pain

kelpie was borne by a water spirit, a dangerous sea monster, according to superstition able to assume the form of a splendid steed, dolphin or even a comely woman,

A world in which a deceptive appearance dons the mask of truth to pull the wool over the eyes of another truth—a false one, incidentally, which also tries to deceive.

“What is ethics? I knew, but I’ve forgotten.”

It isn’t the evil and indecent who are flung down into the depths, no! Oh, no! The evil and decisive fling down those who are moral, honest and noble but maladroit, hesitant and full of scruples.”

Mamma, are they demons? Is it the Wild Hunt? Phantoms from hell? Mamma, mamma! Quiet, quiet, children. They are not demons, not devils… Worse than that. They are people.

as though he’d just declared that the sun had fallen into the river and must be fished out before the crayfish pinched it.

Fifty Years of Poetry.”

The title means that the author of the work has spent fifty years, no more and no less, in the service of Lady Poetry.”

you only began seriously rhyming and composing melodies when you were nineteen, inspired by your love for Countess de Stael. That makes it the nineteenth year of your service, Dandelion.

Dandelion Is 38

Aha, Dandelion, a minor observation. In my opinion, Half a Century of Poetry sounds better than Fifty Years.” “I don’t deny it,” said the troubadour,

A given land’s history is very often created by foreigners. Foreigners are the cause—but the effects are always invariably borne by the local people.

garland of destiny: stylised oak blossom, bridewort and broom flowers. A tower being struck by lightning—a symbol of chaos and destruction, for the Old Races… And above the tower—” “A swallow,” Ciri completed. “Zireael. My name.”

sword of destiny

The line delineated by destiny is winding, but leads to this tower. Towards annihilation, towards the destruction of established values, of the established order. But there, above the tower, do you see? A swallow. The symbol of hope.

Everything that's happened; sword of destiny

In Kaer Morhen you were taught how to kill, so you kill like a machine. Instinctively. To kill yourself you need character, strength, determination and courage. And they couldn’t teach you that.”

For the law is not jurisprudence, not a weighty tome full of articles, not philosophical treatises, not peevish nonsense about justice, not hackneyed platitudes about morality and ethics. The law means safe paths and highways. It means backstreets one can walk along even after sundown.

For, after all, the result of all great crackdowns on miscreants is always that the miscreants enter the ranks of the guardians of public order en masse. Your vision is a world of bribery, blackmail and entrapment, a world of turning imperial evidence and false witnesses. A world of snoopers and coerced confessions. Informing and the fear of being informed upon. And inevitably the day will come in your world when the flesh of the wrong person will be torn with pincers, when an innocent person is hanged or impaled. And then it will be a world of crime.

Ciri stroked the black cat, which had returned to the cottage in the swamp, as is customary with all cats in the world, when its love of freedom and dissolution had been undermined by cold, hunger and discomfort.

Geralt… I couldn’t forget her. “I won’t lie to you. I saw her constantly in my dreams. And not as the skinny child she was by the river, when I undressed and washed her. I saw her… and I still see her… as a woman; comely, aware, provocative… With such details as a crimson rose tattooed on her groin…”

Not long before, Geralt would have mocked, mercilessly ridiculed and thought a complete idiot anyone who would have dared claim that he—a witcher—would feel great joy at the sight of a vampire.

“I’ve dreamed of this since I was a child! Since I was a child! My dream has finally come true. Look to the left.” Like an idiot he looked. And was punched in the teeth

scholars have roamed through caves like this for ages, searching for traces of primitive man. And whenever they find something like this they are inordinately fascinated. For it is proof that you aren’t strangers in this land and in this world. Proof that your forebears have lived here for centuries; thus proof that this world belongs to their heirs.

Knowledge, my dear, is a privilege, and privileges are only shared with one’s equals.

It’s impossible to utterly destroy humans and cockroaches; at least one pair always remains.

Cregennan is not here. And yet he is. In Lara’s aspect and pose. The lovers are together. Nothing was able to separate them. Neither death, nor oblivion… Nor hatred.”

In combination with another charge—an elven one, naturally—she was meant to bear an even more special child.

Elf eugenics

I dreamed as a child of one day charging at people with a witcher on me back!

“I’m no longer a witcher. I’ve stopped being a witcher. I’ve learned that now. On Thanedd, in the Tower of the Seagull. In Brokilon. On the bridge on the Yaruga. In the cave beneath Gorgon. And here, in Myrkvid Forest. No, I’m not a witcher now. So I’ll have to learn to manage without my medallion.”

not interrupting her crocheting for a moment.

A crochet queen

Treaties are like marriage: they aren’t entered in to with the thought of betrayal,

‘On the way to eternity everyone will tread their own stairway, shouldering their own burden.’

“Destiny,” Yennefer interrupted sharply, “can be interpreted in many, many different ways.

“Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Order and Chaos? They are but symbols; in reality no such polarity exists!

The black mare soars like a bird, smoothly gliding over the top rail of a high gate. Ciri sways in the saddle, but doesn’t fall off…

A unicorn churning up gravel with its hoof… Many unicorns… Fire… Fire…

Geralt on a bridge. In combat.

Fringilla Vigo, her green eyes wide open in sexual ecstasy, her close-cropped head on an open book, on the frontispiece… Part of the title is visible: Remarks on Inevitable...

dreadful cold of stone walls. The cold of iron on wrists, on ankles. Pain pulsing in mutilated hands, shooting down crushed fingers…

She skated like a demon, but to compete at the salmon leap with the lads? And challenge Hjalmar? It was unbelievable!” “She leaped,” the sorceress guessed. “Yes, she did. The little Cintran half-devil leaped. A real Lion Cub from the Lioness’s blood.

the sacred unicorn which looked after the village had many years before been made of gold, then silver, then copper; there were several versions in bone and several in hardwood. But all of them had been stolen.

Biblical reference? to golden calf idol worshiped by Israelites as in image of god or a new god becauae they thought the real god was "missing"

I’m a witcher!”

Ciri is a Witcher whereas Geralt is not

A beann’shie. An elven phantom. The harbinger of death. Vysogota trembled, from cold and from fear. He quickly headed back towards the cottage, muttering and humming under his breath, so as not to hear it, not to hear it at all, because he must not hear it.

And then ciri emerges. A harbinger of death

she’s the Lion Cub of Cintra, the Elder Blood. In keeping with Ithlinne’s Prophecy, her descendants will rule over the world in the future.”

“I only need her placenta. Her womb.

on Samhain Eve, on that one and only night of the year, hags’ cats turn into mares as black as pitch.

“She will come at night like a black pall,” muttered the beggar, pressing the empty mug to his belly. “And who shall meet her will not avoid death…”