The Time of Contempt (The Witcher, #2)

by Andrzej Sapkowski

“Geralt,” said the lawyer, closing his eyes. “What drives you? If you want to save Ciri… I wouldn’t have thought you could afford the luxury of contempt. No, that was badly expressed. You can’t afford the luxury of spurning contempt. A time of contempt is approaching, Witcher, my friend, a time of great and utter contempt. You have to adapt. What I’m proposing is a simple solution. 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—” “And who am I free to despise?” interrupted the Witcher. “Am I to pay for what I love with contempt for myself? No, Codringher. Leave the girl in peace; may she continue to measure cloth.

Ciri, listen to me and learn. 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.

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.

“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.”

“War,” said the poet finally. “War, hatred and contempt. Everywhere. In everyone’s hearts.” “You’re being poetic.” “But that’s what it’s like.”