If life could give me one blessing...

He walked - part 3

Lambert was confused and he was concerned. The bard smelled like a wilting forest, there was no spark to him, none of that energy and life he usually carried around. And what more, Lambert found him barefoot, half up the trail, without anything. No horse, food, proper clothing, not even his lute. As he carried him up, it was like carrying a block of ice.

He came up breathless and sent Eskel for Geralt immediately. If someone knew what was going on, it would be his brother. And then the bard gets all feisty and falls from his hands, only to stare at Vesemir of all people. An what more, Vesemir stares back. Lambert just stood there, watching his mentor almost run to the frozen human and watch him with recognition and concern. The bard calls him silverhair. His voice is disbelieving and broken. Vesemir hugs him.

There is silence. All of the witchers who came to greet Lambert at his return are watching in silence as the stern old witcher lifts up the now unconscious human with extraordinary care and carries him into the fort. Lambert looks at Coen pleadingly and the griffin nods, taking his horse's reins, so Lambert can pick up his pace again and run up the stairs after Vesemir, who is carrying the unconscious bard who knows where.

"You know him?" his mentor asks grimly when Lambert catches up.

"Of course. That's Geralt's bard. We met a few times out on the Path," he says and is surprised when his mentor stops in his steps and inhales sharply. Then he starts walking again and even in his old age Lambert almost has trouble keeping up. He cannot keep the surprise off his face when they enter Vesemir's own rooms and he puts the bard in his own bed without thinking.

"Bring me hot water, disinfectant, and some gauze. We need to clean his feet," his mentor looks at him with serious eyes, and Lambert can't help but nod and turn his feet as he watches his mentor look at the bard's unconscious body grimly from the corner of his eye.

So he rushes down to the spring with a bucket, then to the infirmary, where he grabs a bottle and a packet of gauze, and then back up the stair into his mentor's room, only to bump into Geralt right in front of the door.

"Ah, Geralt, mind explaining why your bard is here like this," Lambert quips before opening the door and pushing around Geralt to go inside and give the things to Vesemir, who already wrapped most of the freezing bard into furs and blankets and fed the fire so it was rather warm inside now. Lambert hears Geralt walk around him and to the bed, where Jaskier is lying, and all he can smell from his brother is worry and guilt.

"How did he get here?" Geralt asks, voice even raspier than usual. At that Vesemir's head snaps up from where he was cleaning the wounds on human feet and the look he gives his favorite student is the coldest Lambert has seen in decades.

"It's his last journey," his master says and there is something concealed deep in his voice that gives Lambert goosebumps.

"Vesemir, do you perhaps know Jaskier? He called you silverhair," Lambert finally finds the strength to ask what he wanted to know since that moment outside. His mentor's shoulders slumped a little as he sighed.

"I know him from long ago. It must've been about forty years since I last saw him. Back then he went by a different name. I called him Zima," Vesemir finished cleaning the wounds and started wrapping them up in gauze.

"Forty years?!" Lambert lifts his eyebrows and he walks over to the bed to look at the face of the bard. Even as ill as he looks now, he wouldn't say he looks over thirty. But then, wasn't the bard traveling with Geralt for over twenty years right now? He should've been in his forties. But Vesemir knew him before that?

"What is he?" it was Geralt who managed to choke out the question, throat tight, fear and nervosity stanching the room. He looked at the man in the bed with a pained expression and Vesemir sighed, finally finished with wrapping up the poor feet and dragging the furs over them too. His eyes then glance back to his table where a small white marble statue stands working to weigh down the few papers that were lying there. He stood up and walked over to it, lifting the small unicorn with gentle fingers.

"I first met Zima about fifty years ago, when I freed him from some minor noble wanting to keep him as an attraction. He was young and curious and got himself into trouble often. I helped him a few times, sometimes he helped me. He would disappear and then appear again. He was like a fleeting light, always with new ideas and never-ending curiosity. Such a majestic being. With the purest of hearts," the mentor said and ran his thumb over the statue's side. Lambert was beginning to understand.

"When he came to me begging to help him get a human body, I never knew my own wolf would make him end up like this. He got me this to remember him after that and I only saw him one time after that. Forty years ago," Vesemir put the statue back on the table maybe a bit more harshly than was necessary and both Lambert and Geralt flinched.

"What do you mean, Vesemir?" Geralt asked, confusion and pain mixing in his voice. Lambert tilted his head. What was going on? Was the bard really a unicorn? And what did they have to do with his condition?

"Unicorns only die of a broken heart. What did you do, Geralt?" the old master asked with a cold voice and both younger wolves paled. Lambert with connecting all of the dots - the bard's weir absence the last two years, Geralt's refusal to talk about him - something must have gone terribly wrong. Geralt's knees wobbled and he made a pained noise as he turned to the dying man in the bed.

"I fucked up," said Geralt eloquent as ever and he ran out of the room.