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"Should have known I'd find you here," said a familiar voice.
Aleksander looked toward the door of the stable. The horse in front of him, a magnificent black stallion with a white star on his forehead, nudged Aleksander's hand as if reminding him not to take the treats away. Aleksander held out his hand, palm open, and let the horse lick the last of the sugar.
He touched the horse's mane carefully. "Of course I'd let you eat the rest of your treats. Never fear. But someone has decided to interrupt us." He kept his voice quiet, but he was sure Geralt heard.
Geralt walked up to Aleksander and Aleksander stepped back from the black horse's stall to face him.
"You don't have to spoil Hector, you know," Geralt said. "I do plenty of that myself."
Hector snorted, and Geralt pet his mane. "Hey, don't contradict me. Just because I didn't come through a portal to bring you sugar cubes..."
"Yennefer told you, then?" Aleksander asked. The mage had been there in the dining hall as Aleksander had emerged through the tree that held the medallions of past Witchers.
"She stopped mid-sentence when she sensed your arrival," said Geralt. “Left me and Tris to finish making potions. There's... things that have come through that gate, you understand."
"I understand," said Aleksander. He knew all about magically created monsters, and what it took to cross between worlds.
The ache in his bones was back, the ache that had awoken him three days ago in Ravka. Something strange must have been echoing in the Making at the Heart of the World, because his sister had arrived in Os Alta that morning. It was rare for Ulla to put on legs and find him, instead of him seeking her out on the shores of her island. She had helped him make the portal to cross. He'd be on his own for the way back.
Geralt appeared to look more closely at Aleksander's face. "Might just be the dim light in here, but you haven't aged a day," he said.
Aleksander regarded him in a similar way. "And you seem to have gotten grimier."
Geralt hummed. "It's been...intense here lately. Usually winter is when Witchers retreat and rest here, but this winter our hardest battle was here instead.” Geralt peered at him again. "How long has it been for you?" he asked.
Aleksander thought back to the last time he had crossed through to the Continent, bringing Grisha with him to keep them safe. That time, they'd been refugees from Fjerda, and he'd sought out Ulla instead of fighting his way back through half the Druskelle in the country. "Twenty years or so, I think." He'd been busy over the past couple centuries setting up the Little Palace and the Second Army, but he'd occasionally made the crossing to check on the Grisha he'd helped settle on the Continent.
"Two years here," said Geralt. "But they've been very eventful years. Cintra fell to Nilfgaard. The Northern kingdoms have been expelling the surviving Elves, and Nilfgaard is taking them in. For now."
Aleksander made a face at yet another expression of prejudice, in the place where his Grisha had found relative safety.
“Something else you should know,” Geralt said. “Nilfgaard also expelled their few Grisha. Said something about the Elves having the only magic they needed, although their Emperor is attended by a mage.”
Aleksander cursed.
"Exactly,” said Geralt. “If they made it to the Northern kingdoms, they’d be welcomed with the other refugees.” He looked down for a moment. “On a lighter note, I found my Child of Surprise," said Geralt. "Or maybe she found me."
"Oh?" asked Aleksander.
"Ciri. The heir of Cintra in exile. I think you'll like her."
"Geralt?" another voice called. It was Vesimir. Aleksander could remember what he'd looked like as a boy.
"What is it?" asked Geralt.
"A messenger found us here," he said. "You should come talk to him.” He appeared to notice Aleksander. "You too."
*
The messenger was a young man from Temeria, pacing nervously in the dining hall. "Send a Witcher to Wyzima at once," he said, with hardly any preamble. "She'll burn us all!"
"She?" asked Geralt. "Is she a dragon? A salamander? Morozova's long-lost Firebird?"
One corner of Aleksander's mouth twitched up at the mention of his grandfather's creature. But then again, Witchers like Geralt were also his grandfather's creatures, created during one of Ilya's visits to the Continent.
The Temerian looked puzzled. "No, she's a woman. A mage maybe. The Sun Witch, we call her."
Aleksander forced his face to keep its calm mask. Seven hundred years, in Ravkan time at least, fighting and leading across two worlds, gave him the ability to hide his emotions from others. Not from himself, though.
He couldn’t hope. He dare not.
"You said she'll burn you. Does she summon fire?" He'd helped settle some Inferni on the Continent over the years, after all.
"No, Witcher," the man said as if Aleksander was stupid. "I said, the sun. She summons the sun."
*
"Of course you can be the one to go," says Geralt. "Happy to send my esteemed colleague from the Eclipse School to deal with the problem."
Aleksander straightened the silver eclipse pendant he wore on the Continent. The people from this world understood long-lived people with strange powers and a tendency to wear black—they just knew them as Witchers. So far, no one had dared comment on the fact that his eyes were dark, not yellow and catlike.
"Yen can make a portal," Geralt said. "She could be helpful for whatever you might find."
They finished the rest of the preparations quickly. He tried not to stare when he saw Yennefer in a long black-and-gold coat so similar to his own kefta. It wasn't terribly different from the one he could imagine the long-awaited Sun Summoner wearing. He tried not to get lost in those thoughts. A true equal at last, wearing his color...
And could it be that this "sun witch" was the person he had been looking for?
He couldn't get his hopes up. Besides, he needed to understand what was going on and get her somewhere safe before anyone harmed her. And perhaps before she harmed anyone.
He made final preparations and pulled on his sable-trimmed cloak. The calling in his bones was back, and he wondered if it was pulling him towards this "sun witch".
"This may be unpleasant," Yennefer said. She gestured and whispered some words, and suddenly there was a hole in the air in front of him, leading from the dining hall to a busy street in Temeria.
"After you," she said.
Aleksander stepped through. It wasn't pleasant, but it was less disorienting than crossing between worlds. Yennefer stepped through behind him, and closed the portal.
"Wyzima's a large city," said Yennefer. "When in doubt, I recommend checking in the taverns to start with. The most popular one is just up ahead."
Aleksander nodded. The ache was back, and now that he was in Temeria it felt like something physically pulling him forward.
He recognized the city, the capital of Temeria. Ever since the messenger had mentioned Wyzima, he was thinking about the Grisha he had settled there. It had been two hundred years or so ago Ravkan time, but only about twenty on the Continent. He had only been able to get a small group together before the time that Ulla said was most auspicious to open the portal—a Tidemaker, an Alkemi, an Inferni, and the Inferni's otkazat'sya husband. They had come from a town near the Shu border, and the Inferni was Shu herself, and had escaped to Ravka as a child.
The calling in his bones pulled him in the same direction that Yennefer led, and they quickly reached a large tavern with a half-timbered facade. It was warm and crowded inside, packed with a raucous crowd even though the sun was hours from setting.
Out of old habit, he scanned the room as he stepped inside. The main room was large and full of long tables and benches, with a few smaller tables at the sides. One side of the room was occupied by the bar, where several barmaids were doing a brisk business. The other side had a stair leading upward in one corner, and a small table in the other with two figures at it, shrouded in shadows.
The calling in his bones seemed to be focused in this building, at that table. Convenient. The shadows were his , all shadows, here or in Ravka. He tried to use them to sense more about the figures at the table, and if one or both of them were Grisha.
He was nearly sure that they were both Grisha when the one facing him looked up and met his eyes, the hood of her cloak falling back. There was something familiar about the woman's face, although he was sure he'd never seen her before. A sense of bone-deep resonance shook him, and he wondered if she felt the same.
Everything went still, but then someone else yelled, "Hey, Witcher, here to take care of our Sun Witch? I'm sure someone has some coin."
The woman stood up, raising her hands in a fluid motion that he knew viscerally. He brought his own hands together, pulling the shadows into a shield between the woman and the rest of the room. At almost the same instant, he felt her Cut hit his shield.
He knew the shadows, so he knew where they weren't. He couldn't see anything beyond the protective darkness, but he could feel the blade that strained against his powers. It was bright. It was pure light.
The Sun Summoner. His shadows yearned for her light, even if they had to fight against it at the moment.
He heard shouts around him, but he kept his focus on the shield. Then another voice cut through the crowd, from the direction of the table. "No, Alina, he's a friend!"
The sun blade faltered, then dissolved. He saw Yennefer already moving toward the woman— Alina, her name is Alina —and her companion, whose voice had sounded somewhat familiar.
He pulled the shadows around the four of them, covering their retreat and protecting them from interference from the other people in the tavern. His sister had told him about creatures of the deep sea that released ink to do something similar. He kept the shadows up as he left the tavern last, behind the three others, then dropped them outside. The overcast afternoon suddenly felt bright.
"Aleksander?" the other grisha with Alina asked.
Aleksander nodded. He finally recognized him—the Alkemi that he had brought here two centuries ago, Ravkan time. "Gerasim! It's good to see you again."
"And this is Alina, Hóngméi and Maxim's daughter," Gerasim said.
Alina had pulled the hood of her cloak back up, but she glanced at Aleksander and nodded.
"And I'm Yennefer of Vengerberg," said Yennefer. "Mage. Now, can we have the rest of this conversation somewhere less conspicuous?"
The glances the townspeople were giving them weren't hostile yet, but they weren't precisely friendly either. None of them seemed surprised - apparently people trailing shadows weren't the strangest things to stumble out of a tavern in Wyzima, and that seemed right, given some of Geralt's stories.
"There's the back room at my shop," said Gerasim. "This way."
They turned down a few side streets and arrived at a small but nicely kept storefront with a sign proclaiming "Potions, Salves, and Sundries."
"You haven't had Aretuza after you?" Yennefer muttered.
"The mages know what I do is different," said Gerasim. "They might not believe it's real, but my customers know."
"Hmmm," said Yennefer.
They walked into the shop, which featured orderly rows of bottles and jars on shelves. Gerasim nodded to the woman behind the counter and led back into a storeroom, and then further back into what looked like a laboratory. Aleksander usually only recognized half the items in Materialki labs, but he enjoyed spending time in them anyway.
Gerasim found stools for the three of them. Alina sat down and pulled the hood of her cloak back again, and stared at Aleksander.
"My parents talked about you," she said. "The shadow summoner. You brought them here."
"I did," said Aleksander. "How are they?"
"They're fine," she said. "They have a farm outside of town. I prefer to live in the city, but I still see them often."
There were so many questions he wanted to ask. If it were up to him, they'd have this conversation at Kaer Morhen in safety, but it was a bit much to ask right now. Of course, he'd be asking much more of Alina shortly.
She asked something instead. "Are you really a Witcher? Did you come here to fight me?"
"No," said Aleksander. "I didn't come here to fight you. As for being a Witcher, well..."
Here, he bore his own name. It was strange, but his heritage was understandable. Which meant that Alina would start out knowing what few Ravkans do.
"Ilya Morozova made the Witchers, when he came here. He also altered his own descendants, making them shadow summoners. I'm his grandson. It's easier to say that I'm a Witcher when I'm here."
"Why did you come find me, then?" Alina asked.
I have waited for you for centuries. Out loud he said, "I felt something pulling me here, from my world. When I got to Kaer Morhen, a Temerian had found his way there, begging for help against a so-called sun witch. What happened?"
The northern kingdoms had seemed to be a safe refuge for Grisha so far, although he was glad no one had settled in Cintra.
"My mother helped me train with my powers. She said no one had ever seen a Grisha like me, and that people in Ravka hoped one would be born," said Alina.
'It's true," said Aleksander.
"Well, apparently it doesn't stop pickpockets in Temeria," said Alina. "Someone tried to rob me, and I attacked them on instinct. Next thing I know, people are calling me the "sun witch". I use my light when I need to defend myself, and that's becoming more and more frequent."
"Which is why you were in the most popular tavern, then?" asked Aleksander.
"I figured there were enough people there who would also want to be inconspicuous that no one would hassle me. Which almost worked," said Alina with a little scowl.
"If people are braving the mountains around Kaer Morhen to plead for a Witcher, it wouldn't have worked for long," said Aleksander. "I'm sorry.”
“You could always go to Aretuza,” said Yennefer. “I’m not sure if my recommendation would count for much these days, but I’m sure Rectoress Tissaia would be interested to meet you.”
Alina made a face. “No, thank you. You’re joking, right?”
Yennefer shrugged. “You’re unlikely to be turned into an eel. And you’d be safe from Nilfgaard there, too.”
Aleksander shuddered inside at the thought of Alina captured by the Nilfgaardians. If she was lucky, she’d be a figurehead for them, the living embodiment of their heraldic sun… no.
“You’re going to say I should come back to Ravka with you, aren’t you?” asked Alina.
“Yes,” said Aleksander.
“I thought Ravka wasn't safe for Grisha,” Alina said. “That’s why my parents are here, after all.”
“Time flows differently there,” Aleksander said. “About two hundred years have passed in Ravka since they left. They understood this, before they made the crossing.”
“Oh,” said Alina. She gestured at Aleksander. “Then you’re…more than two hundred years old,” she said.
“Considerably,” said Aleksander. “A Grisha’s gift prolongs their life. The more powerful they are, the longer they live. Ilya Morozova gave his descendants immortality along with shadow summoning.”
Alina was silent for a moment, and seemed to be taking that in.
“I have every reason to believe that a sun summoner would be immortal as well,” Aleksander added.
Alina exhaled at that. “Did my power…come from Morozova as well, somehow?”
“No,” said Aleksander. “I believe it came from the Making at the Heart of the World, that which expresses itself in the gifts of all Grisha.” He hesitated. “Can I…see it again?” He tried to hide the yearning in his voice. “I can make sure that it won’t be visible from the street.”
Alina looked at him steadily. Then she nodded.
He brought his hands together, pulling shadows around the edges of the room to cover the windows. He felt Alina’s eyes on him as he Summoned.
He nodded, and Alina brought her own hands together, pulling them apart to cradle a ball of light between them. It was steady and bright enough that it was hard to look at. As she spread her hands, the ball expanded until it was a veil of the light that enclosed the four of them, full of gentle warmth. He exhaled at the feeling, a tension he had carried for centuries slowly leaving his body.
*
Yennefer opened the portal back to Kaer Morhen the next morning, after Alina had a chance to talk to her parents and prepare for the crossing. Aleksander could only travel to Ravka through one of the obelisks, and the safest one by far right now was in the Witchers’ fortress.
He’d offered to bring her parents back through to Ravka as well, but they had decided to stay in Temeria. He didn’t blame them. Besides, time would be on Alina’s side when she went back and visited them.
He wouldn’t be surprised if, working with Ulla, Alina would be able to cross between worlds herself. He’d be there to help and make sure she’d never have to attempt the merzost alone, the way he first did. That desperate attempt at a portal for his Grisha had been at the wrong time and place for such a working, and instead created the Fold.
Yennefer paced around the tree, gesturing and whispering as she made sure nothing unexpected would happen when he activated the obelisk.
Aleksander had already said his goodbyes to Geralt - and to Hector, complete with more sugar cubes. Alina stood beside him, expression serious and determined.
Yennefer finished her work and stepped aside. “It’s done. Good luck, both of you.”
“Thank you,” said Aleksander. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, searching inside himself for the merzost that coiled there, ever ready, intertwined with his own bones. Time to go home, he told it silently.
Then he opened his eyes and reached for the obelisk inside the tree with shadows laced with the power of creation and destruction. He chanted quietly in Old Ravkan, and the familiar and worn passage between the worlds opened for him.
“Hold on to me,” he told Alina, when the portal was stable.
He expected her to grab his wrist or his elbow, but instead she took his hand in a warm, solid grip.
In a blaze of sunlight, they stepped through.