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They say there’s an enchantress in the far north who steals men, turning their hearts to ice within their breast and bearing them away to her frigid, silent citadel, where nothing grows, and all the flowers that once bloomed are rimed in frost, too cold even to wither.
Jaskier figures that’s probably a myth, but it makes an awfully good story, so he makes a song about it. It’s a very good song, too, if he does say so himself, comparing the beauty of the enchantress to the beauty of the falling snow, her temper to the biting winter wind, her power to the implacability of a glacier’s endless ice.
The song wins him a large purse at a contest in Novigrad, which he tells Geralt gleefully when they meet up again a week or two later. Moreover, it proves popular in the towns and villages they pass through - almost as popular as Toss a Coin - so Jaskier obligingly sings it as often as people are willing to pay him to do so.
It keeps them in hot baths and decent dinners well into the autumn, so Geralt doesn’t even complain all that much.
Jaskier is on his way back to Oxenfurt as autumn turns towards winter, humming the tune to The Winter Queen idly as the first snow of the season begins to drift down to melt on the still-warm stones of the rutted road, when the sleigh swoops down out of the sky and lands in a newly-reaped field beside him. In the sleigh is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, a vision in white and silver, cool and lovely as the patterns of frost on a window pane.
“So,” she says, in a voice like the distant wind. “You are the bard who dares sing of me.”
“Ah - yes, my lady,” Jaskier says, bowing deeply.
“Then you shall sing for me,” she says, and waves a hand, and something strikes Jaskier in the chest - it doesn’t hurt, though. It doesn’t hurt at all.
Nothing hurts.
Nothing matters, either.
“Get in,” says the woman. Jaskier gets into the sleigh, and it lifts off, four snow-white swans as large as griffins pulling it easily back into the sky. “Sing,” says the woman.
Jaskier does.
*
Geralt comes down from Kaer Morhen and heads for Oxenfurt, expecting to meet Jaskier halfway, as he usually does. But Jaskier isn’t in any of the towns that he passes, even as spring gets further and further along and Geralt gets closer and closer to Oxenfurt. Finally he actually reaches the city, and leaves Roach in a stable outside the walls before heading in, worried and irritated, to find out what has become of his bard.
His bard is not in Oxenfurt. His bard has not been in Oxenfurt, though he was scheduled to teach this winter, and the Dean is quite put out at having had to find a substitute so late in the season.
No one has even heard from Jaskier since last autumn...since the last letter he sent, stating his intentions to teach during the winter, right before he and Geralt parted ways.
Fuck.
Geralt re-traces his steps, working his way north and east until he finds the last town with an innkeeper who remembers Jaskier - thank fuck Jaskier is very memorable - and then south and west again, going over each thumblelength of ground to try to find any trace - any sign - that his bard has passed this way. After an entire winter, the chances of actually finding anything are slim indeed, but Geralt has to try.
He can’t have lost Jaskier. The thought is so incomprehensible he can’t even quite make the words fit together in his head. Jaskier is just...there, immutable. He worked his way into Geralt’s life and now he’s part of it, and Geralt can’t imagine - doesn’t want to imagine - a world without his bard at his side, warbling and laughing and chattering, constant and changeful as the tides.
He’s been searching for two weeks, and his rations are starting to get dangerously low, when his efforts finally bear fruit. A farmer - a herdsman, really, with a flock of goats who remind Geralt painfully of Lil Bleater in their antics - who lives near the road allows as how he might’ve seen someone matching Jaskier’s description.
“I didn’t get close, though, no sir,” he says gruffly. “Not when she came down.”
“She?” Geralt asks.
The herdsman tells him.
Geralt doesn’t really think again until he’s made camp that night, discovering as he surfaces from his blank horror that he’s tended Roach, built a fire, and caught several rabbits without actually needing to pay attention to doing so. It isn’t the first time he’s done something like that; it probably won’t be the last.
The Winter Queen. The enchantress from Jaskier’s song.
She is a monster far beyond Geralt’s power to fight.
That doesn’t matter.
All that matters is getting Jaskier back again.
*
Jaskier sings. His queen likes his singing. She says it is almost as beautiful as the winter wind. He thinks it lacks...something. Something it maybe used to have. But it makes his queen happy.
So he sings.
*
Geralt leaves Roach with a good-natured farmer in Caingorn, with most of his remaining money and the farmer’s promise that if he doesn’t return, Roach will be well-tended. The farmer’s daughter has clearly fallen in love with the horse already. Geralt is leaving his horse in good hands.
He goes north.
The only thing he has to go on is Jaskier’s song - that damnable song - which claims the Winter Queen’s castle lies beyond the mountains of the north, so far from the sun that summer never dares intrude upon her lands. Geralt’s working on hope and the faint, faint scent of magic on the wind, and nothing more, but he cannot turn back now.
The mountains north of Caingorn are not full of monsters - it’s too cold for anything but ice trolls, and those are hibernating for the summer. Summer it may be, but it is still bitterly cold here in the farthest north.
He’s eight days into the mountains when the storm hits, a out-of-season blizzard fierce enough to turn the whole mountain range into an endless expanse of blinding, whirling snow. Geralt just barely manages to find a cave, tucking himself back into a crack in the rock only just large enough to fit him, and sends himself into meditation to keep himself from dying.
He dreams of Renfri, eyes dark in her pale face, watching him silently as the blood drips down her throat. “You didn’t save me,” she says softly.
“I failed,” Geralt says hoarsely. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to have to choose this time,” she tells him. “You can’t walk away from this one. If you do not choose, you will lose him forever.”
“I won’t fail this time,” Geralt says. “I won’t fail him.”
Renfri smiles. “Good,” she says. “Good luck, Geralt.”
“Thank you,” Geralt whispers, and she is gone.
He opens his eyes to find the storm has passed.
*
Jaskier sings.
His throat hurts.
His heart hurts.
It doesn’t matter.
He keeps singing.
*
Geralt stumbles over a rock hidden beneath the snow, slips on a patch of ice, and slides on his ass in an ungainly heap of flailing limbs down over an overhang to thump, flat on his back and utterly winded, into a sheltered alcove in the side of the mountain.
The very large golden dragon which had been sleeping curled up in the alcove raises its head with a snort of surprise.
“Witcher,” it says, craning its long neck so it can look down at him.
“Uh,” Geralt says. “I...apologize for intruding on you.”
The dragon snorts gently. “Apology accepted. What brings a witcher so far north?”
“I am looking for someone,” Geralt says, sitting up slowly and wincing. His scabbards have drawn a pair of bruises across his back that are going to be hell to sleep with tonight. “The Winter Queen.”
The dragon rears back. “She is not a safe person to seek out, witcher.”
“I know that,” Geralt says. “She took someone from me.”
“She takes many people,” the dragon observes. “She does not give any of them back.”
Geralt grimaces and shoves himself to his feet. “Then I’ll die trying. He’s - he’s my bard.”
“Your bard?” the dragon asks. “Stay a while, and eat with me, and tell me this tale. I can at least give you a few hours’ warmth before you go on into the heart of winter.”
Geralt agrees, and over seared venison he explains, awkwardly but stubbornly, what Jaskier is to him. His bard. His friend. The brightest and most precious part of his life.
“You love him,” says the dragon softly.
Geralt swallows hard. “I do,” he admits. “Witchers aren’t supposed to love. But I do.” He has never said it out loud before - never let himself think the words. But he cannot lie to a golden dragon.
“I see,” the dragon says. “Well then. I will take you to the border of the Winter Queen’s lands.”
Geralt stares in shock and wonder. “You will? Why?”
“A witcher with a heart and a golden dragon - we may well be the only ones of our kinds. One rare beast ought to aid another,” the dragon says, chuckling.
“Thank you, then,” Geralt says softly.
The dragon rises to its full height and beckons him close, and Geralt finds himself clambering onto the shoulder of a half-mythical beast, and clinging on as it rises into the sky. He’ll have to tell Jaskier about this.
*
Jaskier sings.
He is very cold, and his words echo oddly from the arching ice of the throne room. The queen on her throne watches him with silver eyes, unreadable as a frozen lake. His voice falters for a moment, and her fingers twitch.
He keeps singing.
*
The golden dragon puts Geralt down at the edge of a great field of gleaming snow, unbroken by footsteps or even the swirling marks of the wind. So far away that even a witcher’s eyes strain to find it, a castle that seems to have been carved from ice rises into the sky.
“Thank you,” Geralt says softly.
“Good luck,” the dragon says.
Geralt bows to it and steps forward. The snow creaks under his feet, the thin crust breaking and letting his boots sink knee-deep into the snow. He slogs forward, eyes on the castle, leaving a trail behind him as straight as a razor-blade.
It takes him the whole long afternoon to reach the castle’s front step, and he looks up at it in awe and something that might be terror if witchers could feel it. It seems to have been carved of a single enormous block of ice, as though some enormous hand had scooped the heart out of a glacier, molded it, and placed it here.
Very faintly, he can hear someone singing.
Jaskier.
The doors are standing open, just far enough for him to squeeze in. Geralt follows the sound of singing down freezing corridors, eyeing the translucent walls warily for enemies which never appear, until he emerges at last into a throne room larger even than the great hall in Cintra.
There is a throne at the far end, carved of ice like everything else in this terrible place, and a woman lounging upon it as though it were a comfortably padded chair. She is dressed in ermine and snow-white silk, and her hair is whiter than Geralt’s own, and her skin as pale as bone. Her eyes are silver, like the glint of sunlight from broken ice, too sharp to look upon for long.
In the middle of the throne room, Jaskier is singing.
He is the only spot of color in the whole palace, his doublet red as blood, his skin pale with the cold but still a healthy human tone, his brown hair wind-blown and messier than he would ever leave it by preference. His lute sits by his leg, set aside carelessly in a way he has told Geralt a thousand times is terrible for the delicate instrument. Geralt spares half a thought to worry that the priceless thing may well be irreparable, the cold and lack of care having done some permanent harm to it. Hopefully its elven make, and whatever enchantments have preserved it this long, will protect it.
He doesn’t look at Geralt. The Winter Queen does, though.
“Witcher,” she says, in a voice like winter winds and breaking ice. “You are trespassing.”
“You took my bard,” Geralt says. He doesn’t bother to unsheathe his sword. The Winter Queen is clearly far, far too powerful for him to fight, though he’ll try if he must.
The Winter Queen laughs; it’s a terrible sound, like ice cracking beneath his feet on a frozen river, too far from the edge to reach safety. “He is mine now.”
“He’s his own man,” Geralt says quietly. “He always has been. He did not choose to come with you. He has chosen to accompany me these twenty years and more.”
The Winter Queen smiles, sharp and mirthless. “Yet here he is.”
“Not by his own will,” Geralt insists. “Let him go.”
The Winter Queen raises one snow-white eyebrow. “If you can convince him to come with you, I will let him go,” she says lazily. “But if you fail, I will keep you both. You will make a fine statue to adorn my palace. A gargoyle, perhaps.”
Geralt bows his head. “I accept your terms.”
She waves a hand dismissively. Slowly, Geralt approaches Jaskier, and calls the bard’s name.
Jaskier doesn’t look at him.
Geralt touches his shoulder; Jaskier keeps singing. He moves to block Jaskier’s view of the Winter Queen, and Jaskier meets his eyes without any recognition whatsoever. His eyes are as cold as the ice around them, a blue as lifeless as the winter sky. There is no emotion in them, nor in his voice; his songs are empty, fillingless pies without the depth of feeling he has always poured into them.
“Jaskier,” Geralt says. “Please.”
Jaskier doesn’t even seem to hear him. His chest beneath Geralt’s hand is cold, too cold.
The Winter Queen laughs. “He has my ice in his heart, foolish witcher. Give up. He is mine wholly.”
Geralt swallows hard. “Ice in his heart, is it,” he says grimly, and does maybe the stupidest thing he’s done in a whole season of very stupid decisions: he takes off his armor, setting it and his swords aside, and wraps his arms around Jaskier, willing his own unnatural warmth to soak into the bard.
Jaskier’s singing falters a little. Geralt breathes hot against his throat, watching the skin flush a little. Jaskier’s voice cracks slightly.
Geralt breathes out against his cheek, and watches the skin pinken. The other cheek. The tip of Jaskier’s nose. Jaskier is faltering now, voice wavering, a strange look in his eyes. Geralt takes a deep breath: he only has one more idea, and if this doesn’t work, then they will die here together in this ice castle at the end of the world.
He presses his lips to Jaskier’s, and breathes out into the bard’s singing mouth.
Jaskier stops singing.
*
It’s warm.
It’s warm, and it hurts, and his throat hurts, and his fingers hurt, and everything hurts, and -
Geralt. Geralt is here. Geralt is...kissing him?
Jaskier clutches at Geralt with frostbitten fingers, fumbling at his shirt. Why is he not wearing his armor? Where are they? Why does everything hurt?
“Geralt,” he croaks.
“Jaskier,” Geralt murmurs. “Do you want to come with me?”
What sort of a question is that? “Yes,” Jaskier rasps. “Always. Yes.”
Geralt looks over his shoulder, and Jaskier follows his gaze to see a stunningly beautiful woman lounging on a throne of ice. The Winter Queen - he remembers the sleigh now, the griffin-sized swans. She must have taken him, carried him off to...wherever this is.
Fuck, but it’s cold.
“Fine,” says the Winter Queen, grimacing delicately. “Take him and go, witcher. If you ever trespass here again, I will turn you to ice and shatter you.”
“I understand,” Geralt says, bending to scoop up his armor and swords in one arm, grabbing Jaskier’s lute with the other hand and pressing it into Jaskier’s grasp. “Come on, Jaskier. Let’s go.”
Jaskier follows Geralt at a clumsy trot, staring around at the ice walls in shock and dismay. Geralt is shrugging into his armor as they go, buckling it on as fast as he can, and then as they reach the front doors he turns and gathers Jaskier up into his arms like a child or a bride.
“Snow’s too deep, your toes will freeze,” he grunts, and Jaskier clings to his shoulder as Geralt forges forward along the trail he clearly left on the way in.
“How did you find me?” he asks.
Geralt grimaces. “I followed your song. And then - well -” He jerks his chin towards the far end of the snowfield, and Jaskier peers through the dusk to see a single, incongruous glint of gold.
“What’s that?”
Geralt smiles. “You’ll see.”
*
Geralt genuinely does not know how he can repay the golden dragon for waiting, for being willing to bear Geralt and Jaskier away from the Winter Queen’s castle to safety - and then, abruptly, he does.
The dragon puts them down on the side of a mountain just north of Caingorn, within a few days’ hike of the farm where Geralt met Roach, and once they have dismounted, Geralt bows deeply to the dragon. “If you want a sanctuary,” he says, “someplace a little warmer than the mountains, go to Kaer Morhen in the Blue Mountains, and tell Vesemir I sent you. Wolf witchers don’t hunt dragons, and Kaer Morhen’s big enough that you could have five dens and still never see us if you don’t want to.”
The golden dragon dips its head and touches the tip of its muzzle to his shoulder. “Thank you, witcher. Perhaps I will do so. These mountains may be inhospitable for a while.”
It launches itself into the sky, and Geralt turns to Jaskier, who is watching in utter wonder. Jaskier stares after the dragon until it is barely a speck of gold against the cold and cloudless sky, and then turns back to Geralt.
“You came for me,” he breathes.
“Of course,” Geralt says, and Jaskier lights up, beaming like sunrise over the ocean, and reaches up to pull Geralt close.
“Tell me if I’m reading this wrong,” he whispers, and kisses Geralt ardently.
Geralt kisses back.
“Not wrong,” he says gruffly, once they part again. “You’re...you’re my bard, and I’m your witcher.”
“A finer declaration I could not desire,” Jaskier says merrily.
“Got to go get Roach back,” Geralt says, and then, awkwardly, “and then...you could come to Kaer Morhen, too. If you want.”
“I would like nothing more in all the world,” Jaskier says, and they go down the mountain together, and as they go Jaskier begins to compose a new song, about a girl who goes to free her lover from the Winter Queen’s embrace.
The roses they are rimed in frost / my lover’s heart is ice / but I shall warm him in my arms / and thaw him with a kiss...