"The Witcher:
Raven’s Crossing" by Andrzej Sapkowski, summary

This book is a return to the roots of the White Wolf saga, devoid of grand political intrigue and focusing on the young mutant’s first steps beyond the walls of the mountain fortress of Kaer Morhen. Published in 2024, it is the ninth book in the series. The series also includes the short story collections "The Last Wish" and "The Sword of Destiny," the novels "Blood of Elves," "Hour of Contempt," "Baptism of Fire," "The Tower of the Swallow," "The Lady of the Lake," and the prequel "Season of Storms." The plot chronologically precedes the other works.

Getting on the Highway and Preston Holt’s Lessons

In the spring of 1229, young Geralt left the walls of the mountain citadel forever and set out for the highway. Near Neuhold, guards seized a stranger. The local mayor, Bulava, shackled the prisoner, and Captain Carleton, who followed, ordered the vagabond hanged from the pillory. A rider on a black stallion appeared in the square. The white-haired veteran, Preston Holt, wearing a silver snake symbol around his neck, scattered Carleton’s soldiers with a powerful blast of the Aard sorcerous sign, freed the young man from captivity, and offered his inexperienced comrade shelter in his own estate, Rocamora.

In the manor barn, the old master taught the guest crushing blows with his fist to the vulnerable points of the skull, fencing with oak poles, and the secret lunge of the Cat School.

Conversations by the fireplace revealed secrets. Holt told of the creation of witchers by renegade mages in the northern citadel of Mirabel and the bloody pogrom at Kaer Morhen in the summer of 1194. The young man listened silently to his mentor. Agent Timur Voronoff, who had arrived in the town of Belvoir, signed a contract with the young swordsman to search for monsters, with a ten percent commission on every profit.

Crafts and service among the Kaedweni margraves

The first orders brought experience. The village half-blacksmith, August Hornpepper, hired a wanderer to hunt a forest monster that had torn several mowers to pieces in distant clearings. The creature turned out to be a scaly zorril. After a furious battle with a meteorite steel blade, the exhausted hunter spent a long time vomiting bile in the middle of the night forest. The fighter regained his strength. In the town of Berentrode, the young man publicly decapitated a five-meter-long mamutak, protecting terrified crayfish fishermen. An innkeeper bought the carcass of the strange beast. The meat dish was sent to the feast of the Kaedweni monarch in Ard Carraigh, in order to secure a baronial title for the enterprising restaurateur Metzgerkop.

The stolen bay mare was replaced by Roach. The town of Glass Mountain greeted the traveler with the stench of rot and black, living slime, consuming the bodies of the burgomaster and his household. The curse had been cast by a local dyer. To save two innocent children, a young swordsman cold-bloodedly pierced the inconsolable mother’s sternum with a long steel blade while she sat in a wicker rocking chair, shattering her upper ribs with precise horizontal thrusts, and forever stopping the culprit’s broken heart. The greedy councilors paid a pittance.

Guard Commandant Elena Fiachra de Meursault delivered the wanderer to Margrave Lindenbrog at Brunanburh Castle. A striga was terrorizing the salt mines. In a midnight battle among the tombstones of an ancient cemetery, Geralt succumbed to an overwhelming fear and severed the monster’s head with a silver blade. The headless carcass transformed into a dead girl. The etched pattern of the scales on the corpse’s pale skin exactly matched the pattern on Margravine Deianira’s loom. The ruler did not pay. Commandant de Meursault hastened to spread the fame of the young savior’s heroism throughout the region, depriving the nobleman of the opportunity to deal with the unwanted witness. A horseman galloped away from the castle.

A castle on a lake and a revealed conspiracy

The road led the traveler to the broad shores of the Long Lake in Lake Marchia. Fort Seewalk guarded a noble captive. Countess Ludmilla Vaykinen suffered in captivity due to her passionate love for the young man Redfern Finnegan, from a rival clan. That night, the healer Vrai Natteravn opened a portal. The captured youth was locked in a dungeon, and the girl’s arrogant brother, Count Frederick, promised the witcher two hundred gold crowns for the prisoner’s murder during the night. Geralt refused to do the dirty work.

The sailing cutter "Nikhil Novi" carried the young lovers to freedom through the dense wall of lake fog. The grateful sorceress presented the witcher with a teleportation talisman. Urgent news called the traveler to the Xendell apple orchard, to the Dean of the Ban Arda Academy, Artamon of Asgut. The mage had created the libelous "Monstrum." Having overheard an order to poison Holt and slaughter the priestesses of Melitele, the guest crushed the sorcerer’s larynx with his fist and pierced his neck with a key.

Execution at Sturefors and ambush at the sanctuary

Preston Holt voluntarily surrendered himself to justice. The veteran took the blame for four murders to save his younger comrade from the royal executioner’s block. Geralt rushed to Sturefors Prison. Prefect Estevão Trillo da Cunha rejected the youth’s belated confession to preserve the official authority of the investigation and the Academy. The iron gate of the scaffold creaked. The old woman, Marquise Graffiacane, burst into a wild, triumphant laugh, and the prefect allowed the youth to secretly take the executed master’s body for burial under a spreading yew tree.

A lone rider hurried north. Near the ruins of an old farm, the jaws of a wolf trap pierced his boot with terrible force, shattering his ankle bone. Mercenaries pounced from the darkness. Their heavy forged clubs brutally broke the young man’s fingers and crushed his skull. The prisoner was tied to a mule. At the gates of the sanctuary, the crippled swordsman miraculously pressed the heliodor in a hidden pocket on his belt.

The portal’s flash revealed Vrai Natteravn. A magical swarm of searing sparks blinded the bandits and sent them fleeing. A long struggle for life began. The healer and the stern priestess Nenneke spent weeks resetting bones, stitching up lacerations, and feeding the patient Black Seagull. Only by spring did his strength return. Nenneke tied a wide strip of cloth around the recovered swordsman’s forehead to conceal the hideous crimson scar. Her stern instructions remained a secret. Mother Assumpta refused to meet with the young man personally, reminding him of the dangerous crossroads of his fate.

The end of the journey and the final choice

Retribution caught up with the culprits. Marchioness Graffiacane died of a broken heart at the sight of a grinning wolf medallion in the hands of a night visitor. In the port of Piana, Cibor Ponti met his death in a noose. In an alley in Oxenfurt, Beauregard Frick attempted Holt’s secret strike and met the crossguard of a sword in his eye socket. The mercenary fell dead.

The last fugitive, Meritxell, attempted to escape overseas on a smuggler’s vessel, but fell from the saddle of her frightened gray horse onto the dusty road and lay there in full view of her armed pursuer. A croaking sound came from above. A two-meter-long centipede with deadly mandibles crawled out of the pine forest toward the playing children. Meritxell leaped into the saddle and galloped away. A defender, a drawn silver blade, strode diagonally down the slope to intercept the creature. The wind ruffled his hair. Startled grasshoppers scurried from beneath the witcher’s dusty boots into the green grass.