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“Destiny has many faces. Mine is beautiful on the outside and hideous on the inside. She has stretched her bloody talons toward me—” “You’ve not changed a bit, Stregobor.” Geralt grimaced. “You’re talking nonsense while making wise and meaningful faces. Can’t you speak normally?”
What is a meteorite, you ask? It’s a falling star.
“My first monster, Iola, was bald and had exceptionally rotten teeth. I came across him on the highway where, with some fellow monsters, deserters, he’d stopped a peasant’s cart and pulled out a little girl, maybe thirteen years old. His companions held her father while the bald man tore off her dress, yelling it was time for her to meet a real man. I rode up and said the time had come for him, too—I thought I was very witty.
And I joined this fight like an idiot, not fifty miles from the mountains. And do you know why? I wanted the girl, sobbing with gratitude, to kiss her savior on the hands, and her father to thank me on his knees. In reality her father fled with his attackers, and the girl, drenched in the bald man’s blood, threw up, became hysterical and fainted in fear when I approached her. Since then, I’ve only very rarely interfered in such matters.
Ah, I don’t need to ask. You’re a witcher, after all; you do your job and take the money. As far as you’re concerned, the idea of being bought has lost its scornful undertone.
Last winter Prince Hrobarik, not being so gracious, tried to hire me to find a beauty who, sick of his vulgar advances, had fled the ball, losing a slipper. It was difficult to convince him that he needed a huntsman, and not a witcher.”
“Hochebuz,” said Calanthe, looking at Geralt, “my first battle. Although I fear rousing the indignation and contempt of such a proud witcher, I confess that we were fighting for money. Our enemy was burning villages which paid us levies and we, greedy for our tributes, challenged them on the field. A trivial reason, a trivial battle, a trivial three thousand corpses pecked to pieces by the crows. And look—instead of being ashamed I’m proud as a peacock that songs are sung about me. Even when sung to such awful music.”
“Aha. So I, a poor witcher, am to face down a destiny which is stronger than the royal will. A witcher fighting destiny! What irony!”
“Would somebody care to explain what that was?” asked Marshal Vissegerd, crawling from beneath a fallen tapestry. “No,” said the witcher.
“Duny,” said Geralt seriously, “Calanthe, Pavetta. And you, righteous knight Tuirseach, future king of Cintra. In order to become a witcher, you have to be born in the shadow of destiny, and very few are born like that. That’s why there are so few of us. We’re growing old, dying, without anyone to pass our knowledge, our gifts, on to. We lack successors. And this world is full of Evil which waits for the day none of us are left.” “Geralt,” whispered Calanthe. “Yes, you’re not wrong, queen. Duny! You will give me that which you already have but do not know. I’ll return to Cintra in six years to
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While this has, thus far, been the happiest conclusion to any story in the book (ignoring a handful of deaths), this line lends an ambiguity. Geralt's life is tragic, and the prior story illustrated as much, his rapid and sorrowful lamenting on his life to that point. Here it is revealed the Geralt was something given away as part of an owed debt, as was the princess.
One of those is negative, created Geralt of Riveria who suffered through the Trail of Grasses and beyond to become an ideal Witcher. One is positive, resulting in the freeing of a knight from a curse and a woman finding love.
The conclusion here leans into the positivity, the unexpected pregnancy being something to bring joy, but it also brings a feeling of ambiguity. For what would Geralt want their child for? For ill or for good?
“You remind me, Geralt, of an old fisherman who, toward the end of his life, discovers that fish stink and the breeze from the sea makes your bones ache. Be consistent. Talking and regretting won’t get you anywhere. If I were to find that the demand for poetry had come to an end, I’d hang up my lute and become a gardener. I’d grow roses.”
“Well,” agreed the poet, still staring at his sole, “maybe not. But our professions differ somewhat. The demand for poetry and the sound of lute strings will never decline. It’s worse with your trade. You witchers, after all, deprive yourselves of work, slowly but surely. The better and the more conscientiously you work, the less work there is for you. After all, your goal is a world without monsters, a world which is peaceful and safe. A world where witchers are unnecessary. A paradox, isn’t it?”
“People”—Geralt turned his head—“like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.”
