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Edek knew, they all knew, nine out of ten would die screaming. Some batches were better, some were worse, but you would either be a Witcher or dead, after.
Edek wasn’t sure he had survived his Grasses. He wasn’t a trainee anymore, so he must be dead, mustn’t he? His legs had grown to different lengths. One arm was strangely twisted, mutated so it could snap out and grab faster than the mages could see – but that was all it could do, lash-out-grab-pull-back to his body. He couldn’t get it to hold a dagger or keep from retracting so it would be useless on the Path. His eyes had almost gone right, they had turned yellow, yes, and seemed to have the slitted pupil. That pupil was wide, wide open though, all the time. The mage had checked, it didn’t matter how close the lantern was brought – his eyes would not adjust. Midmorning was painfully bright; dawn was not much more tolerable.
(He found out, months later, that the mutagens his class took were all untested. The mage didn’t even use the traditional animals for the base, didn’t use mammals at all, didn’t bother to do the usual feasibility tests. That mage wasn’t allowed to run a whole class Trial, not anymore. One or two specimens per Trial, that was all.)
After Edek didn’t survive, they had to decide what to do with him. There was no point in him continuing to train. He couldn’t be in the upper levels of the keep – it was too bright in the daytime, and at night the grown Witchers didn’t appreciate his skulking about. The mages found him helpful, though – he could clean up after them, carry things (bodies, he could carry bodies), without them needing to find a Witcher.
He became the silent assistant, doing grunt work the mages didn’t want to arse themselves to do. He worked hard to be unobtrusive but helpful – the last thing he wanted was to get a mage interested enough to take him apart and see what had gone wrong so he could be dead and moving at the same time.
He was busy scraping blood and bits off the great stone tables, another round of Trials having passed with four (four!) of the ten surviving. The ironbound door opened with a bang, Marcin storming in and dumping a double handful of metal on the nearest clean table.
“What in hells I’m to do with these,” Marcin muttered, “Useless things I can’t even – Edek! Get over here, make yourself useful.”
Edek approached quickly, years of practice keeping his face impassive. There on the dark stone charnel table, the first he’d cleaned the first boy to die, choking on his own lungs, blood weeping from his skin were hearts, each in a utilitarian protective cage. The hearts of the four boys who had survived.
Marcin looked ready to spit. “Festering things aren’t useful in any way – you have to tend them, and turn them, and all sorts of rot I haven’t got time for – just take them, I haven’t time, there’s a book in the library on what to do by Master Grzegorz, black color, so big,” the mage sketched a rectangle in the air, then spun on his heel, leaving Edek alone. Once the door closed, Edek let himself rock forward, bringing the hearts into better focus.
They seemed to be beating… fast, even compared to his after his Trial. Made sense, being separated from their hearts for the first time had to be stressful for the trainees. Edek was suddenly struck by a fierce desire to keep these safe, hidden, away from the mages with their uncaring curiosity, away from remembered pain echoing through the keep, away away away.
He knew just the place. In an out of the way corridor, carved into the mountain and surrounded by rooms for storage, was a room where the springs also made themselves known. Nothing was stored there - a small trickle seeped from the wall, collecting in a bucket-sized basin before overflowing into a hole into the mountain. The dampness was bad for supplies, but a little work and it would be perfect for the hearts of Witchers.
Edek devoted himself to the care of the Witchers’ hearts. He collected as many as he could find, finding the cages in workshops, laboratories, and storage rooms. Some were dry, almost desiccated, every beat creating an audible creaking noise. Some seemed to be skipping beats, or changing pace unpredictably. Some of the cages – most, especially in the older piles he found – were empty.
The mages didn’t want the chore of caring for the hearts.
The treatise by Master Grzegorz was worth its weight in dimeritium to Edek. It talked in depth about the care of hearts, what was best for lining the cages to prevent bruising, the details of softening a hard heart – it even proposed letting hearts out to swim in warmed water, to exercise them and keep them limber.
He tried that on his own heart first, of course. It felt like he was removing a part of himself, the first time he slipped the short chain over his head, heart cage held tightly in his good hand. When he lowered it into the water, he could feel the warmth seeping through his body, felt like he could take a full breath for the first time since he died. It felt… good.
It was in that little book that he found the reason the mages had for keeping the caged hearts.
A hundred years and more pass. Classes of trainees die, or become Witchers and die. Edek cares for the hearts, and when he wakes to find an empty cage he does not hesitate to cry. Then the Pogrom comes to Kaer Morhen, and he dies too. For real this time.