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Barmin strode down the hall, his cane clicking on flagstones worn smooth with the passage of many feet over the centuries. His knee throbbed--it protested the stairs in this wing on the best of days, and today was not the best of days. He drew the key from his belt, unlocked the greenhouse door, and closed it behind him. The door did nothing to drown out either the smell of smoke or the shouting and screaming. He ignored it.
The pale spring sunlight lit up the neat rows of plants, from the seedlings just beginning to sprout to the beds of mature plants whose progenitors had been brought here decades or even centuries ago. The damp air carried the scent of dirt and compost, with the smell of flowers and herbs as a shifting complement. As usual, it was several degrees warmer in here than in the drafty hallways of the keep. The atmosphere never failed to soothe Barmin’s irritation, but it was failing today.
Barmin stepped up to the plantings closest to the door and touched the leaves of the berbercane. He remembered bringing home a handful of tiny berbercane seeds half a century ago. They had declined to grow, as had the next batch of seeds Barmin brought with him from the Path. But at last he’d thought to keep them steeped in a muddy morass, as they were when found in the swamps, and they had thrived. This plant was just coming into flower. There wouldn’t be fruit for weeks yet, however. Or now, Barmin supposed, there never would be.
He raised the hand not gripping his cane and formed Igni. Fire blazed over the tall, healthy plants. The nearest berbercane was so saturated with water that it hissed and spat as it wilted, at last curling into ash against the blackened soil.
A loud crash came from outside, the direction of the courtyard. Barmin would need to move faster. He stepped along the row, keeping his hand extended and drawing igni again and again, scouring every living thing.
He wasn’t certain it was necessary. It was possible that these invaders cared nothing for the secrets of the witchers and were here only to kill. However, Barmin was a mean old witcher. When it became clear that the keep would fall, he’d decided that if these humans and the mages leading them were going to massacre the witchers, he would make certain the knowledge Barmin had gathered, his life’s work, would profit them nothing.
Varin had agreed, and hurried off to the cellars to destroy the mushrooms, the mutagens, and everything he could find related to the Trials. No one would recreate those intricate formulas without the specific ingredients the mages had painstakingly cultivated. The plants for the witcher elixirs grew outside of Kaer Morhen, scattered across the Continent, but the recipes themselves were closely guarded. It wouldn’t do to leave intact this place where all the ingredients were gathered, making it easy to guess what plants might be used.
Screams drew nearer. Possibly the fighting was spilling into the classrooms below. When Barmin had left the battle, most of the adult witchers had already been dead. Many were killed in the mages’ initial assault, opening the way for the peasant rabble they’d brought. The trainees, confident of their immortality and eager to test their skills, had taken up arms to defend their home. Surely most of them were dead now as well.
Barmin had never been beloved by his pupils. He was a demanding instructor. He made sure witchers left Kaer Morhen ready to survive. But since his knee had healed wrong, he’d given up teaching the sword, and his old student Vesemir had taken up the mantle. He saw how the trainees looked to Vesemir with adoration and worked hard to win his approval. Vesemir wasn’t soft on the boys--Barmin and the other elders would never have allowed that--but he possessed a certain charisma Barmin never had.
In any case, Barmin couldn’t have imagined his students squaring up around him, ready to fight an angry mob for his sake. But as he’d crossed the battlement to reach this wing, he’d seen the invaders sweep into the training courtyard and Vesemir standing at the center of his trainees, crying “steady, lads” as he raised his sword.
It wasn’t that no trainees had ever taken to Barmin. After he’d left behind his role as fencing master, he’d taught alchemy, which was altogether easier to do while sitting down. The plants did not talk back to him. They had their foibles, as all living things did, but they were foibles Barmin had learned to work around. More water here, nutrients for the soil there, clip back this flower as it starts to wilt.
The students that took to Barmin were the ones who liked the greenhouse or the alchemy lab: a place where precision was rewarded and conversation optional. There’d been a few over the years. Most recently, that incorrigible Lambert had insinuated himself into Barmin’s experiments in potion formulation, asking impertinent questions about this plant or that, and what if he increased this ratio, or added a touch of the dried leaves instead of fresh, or boiled down this sap before adding it. On two notable occasions, Lambert’s work had set the alchemy lab on fire. Barmin had been looking forward to Lambert’s return as a full witcher, so that they could compare notes on the different variations of Superior Cat they’d each insisted improved the recipe.
Which reminded Barmin, he needed to burn his notes as well. He directed the gout of flame further down the row, to the table at the end with his notebooks and pens neatly laid out. The ink bubbled in its pot and the pages flared bright and charred to ash in seconds, erasing centuries of records and observations.
He made his way across the greenhouse row by row, watching fruit burst, new buds pop and deflate, stems bend and drop their heads to the dirt, roots curl and crisp. White myrtle, hellebore, pingrape. The blue lotus he had carried back from Toussaint in an enchanted glass orb. Wolfsbane, one of the first plants he’d brought to grow here after he’d convinced the elders to make a greenhouse, smiling to himself as he nurtured the seeds of a plant whose name suggested doom. Verbena was a prairie plant--fire wouldn’t kill the seeds. Well, no matter. Fire was the means he had at his disposal, so fire it must be.
Last were the new seedlings, plants he’d planned to experiment with this year. Eyebrights that he thought might stand in for mistletoe, which had always been bothersome to gather. Marsh marigold, which could possibly add more staying power to Superior Blizzard than celandine. Speedwell to test as an alternative in white gull, in case of another year of blighted crop of arenaria. Barmin burned them all, the eager, seeking sprouts withering back into the dirt.
The air was becoming thick with smoke. The plants burned sluggishly, but the desk had caught by now, as well as the wooden racks that held the raised beds. Above, one glass panel cracked and showered down shards.
Barmin slowly scanned the greenhouse, making certain he’d incinerated every plant. Everything was sufficiently aflame. He limped to the center of the room. His knee was protesting urgently now, and his lungs complaining of the smoky air. But it wouldn’t be long.
Around him, more of the glass panels shattered. There was a freeze coming tonight, Barmin knew. A killing frost. Whatever in this sanctuary of his was left alive, the elements would destroy. What he had built here would be entirely destroyed. That was for the best. What was destroyed could not be taken from him.
He drew his sword--steel, for men--from his back, and held it ready in one hand as the screaming neared.