Eternal Flame

Chapter 1 - In Kovir by Chance

The first rays of the morning sun fell on the frozen ground. The nights were still chilly, but the last days had already caused a change. The trees and shrubs on the edge of the road floated out, forming buds. Kovir's lush vegetation welcomed spring.

A sparrow was sitting in a tree by the wayside, cheerfully whistling his song - presumably to impress any female sparrow. Or to steal her from another sparrow ... in any case, the little guy had a disgusting good mood.

"Stupid little bastard."

Lambert hated this morning. Just like the morning before. Frozen, he had awakened in the barn, where a suspicious farmer had let him spend the night. This scumbag had let him pay for the night in the straw.
Lambert would have loved to tell the man in his own way what he thought about travelers being exempted. But since the alternative would have been an overnight stay under the stars, he'd swallowed his anger and pulled out his purse.

He moved his icy toes in his boots. Damn cold. Why had he been back on the path so early? Two, three weeks longer in Kaer Morhen and he would have spared himself this crap. But after several months in this draughty ruin, alone with Eskel, he had been glad to leave at last. Still, he had waited a few more days than his brother, who had already jumped back into the saddle as soon as the mountain road was passable. Could not wait to come to Oxenfurt.

Lambert snorted. He could not blame Eskel. If a woman like Thalia expected him, he would probably have tried to melt the ice on the passes with Igni himself.

But no woman expected him. Nobody expected him at all.

If any monster tore him to pieces in a stinking cave, no one would ever notice. If Eskel returned to Kaer Morhen next winter - and Lambert wasn't sure if he would - then he would wonder why Lambert didn't come. Had he moved into another winter's quarter somewhere? The following year, Eskel would realize that Lambert would not return. But no one would ever know what had happened to him. That had been the fate of hundreds of witchers before him. No witcher ever died in his bed, as Vesemir always used to say.

And yet he was back on the path again. On the path he hated, which he had not chosen, and which would someday - sooner or later - be his death. First, Lambert had followed the road to Aard Carraigh, with no clear target. Then he rode further west until he had crossed the Kovirian border yesterday.

The fact that he traveled to Kovir had nothing to do with the incidential comment that Triss had dropped during her stay at Kaer Morhen. That Keira now lived in Kovir, more specifically in Lan Exeter. He had no intention of ever seeing this bossy, unfaithful sorceress again.

Everything had started so well at first. They had traveled together to Gors Velen, where Keira had made further research to cure Catriona's disease. The notes of this sorcerer Alexander, that she had found in Velen, were probably a treasure trove of information. But even after Radovid's death, many areas in the northern kingdoms were not a safe place for magicians, so Lambert had kept her out of trouble. If she needed ingredients for her research – in fact monster's ingredients - he had provided them to her.

From the beginning she set the tone, made the decisions and determined her travel destinations. But with all this she had been more or less friendly to him. At least for a sorceress. And she had always been able to appease him as he vented his anger over the hierarchy in their relationship. Oh, yes, she had ...

Lambert quickly suppressed the thought of intimate moments with this deceitful woman. The memory of her soft skin, her touch still provoked a longing in him that he didn't wanted.

If he was honest with himself - and Lambert tried to minimize those moments - then the months with Keira had been the best time of his life. Which was more about how shitty fate had always treated him.