Chapter 23: Secret of the Cellar

Letho and Roy stepped over the bear skin rug, entering the great hall that glowed in resplendence under the candles. Meters away from them stood polished armor that gleamed under the light. The great hall was also lined with pastel-colored vases and china ornaments. A dozen expensive oil paintings hung on the walls, most of them portraits of other people. When Roy looked around, he realized one of the paintings depicted the emperor of Nilfgaard, Emhyr var Emreis, who took out the usurper years ago.

"Didn't expect him to hang an oil painting of the enemy's king in Aedirn," Roy said. "Seville knows how to butter people up."

"The dwarves have power. As long as he doesn't try to start a coup, the army can't do anything to him. And it's normal for dwarves to like Emhyr. At least he doesn't discriminate against non-human races."

"I don't think so." Roy shook his head. "The emperor of Nilfgaard is just using the non-human races," he mumbled almost inaudibly. "Witchers and Scoia'taels alike will be the victims of Emhyr's conquest of the north." But now that I'm here, I'm not letting the Viper School become Emhyr's tool.

They left the topic there and went ahead. Two servants were watering the plants in the vase beside the staircase leading to the second floor. Roy's eyes widened when he saw who they were. He wanted to laugh, but he held it in. The servants were dwarves. They wore skirts and were stout, and they had beards as thick as a grown man's, but they were… female.

"Respect the different races' customs," Letho whispered. He took out a satchel of white powder from his alchemy bag and spread it everywhere in the residence. At the same time, he explained, "This is dried black hellebore powder. It's a nice scent for humans, but pungent for some creatures."

"You have a clue about what the culprit is?" Roy asked, but Letho didn't answer. Roy went with him around the great hall, then the guest room on the second floor, and Seville's bedroom on the third floor. The dwarf was napping there. The witcher and Roy searched everywhere they went.

"Did you find something?" The dwarf who was roused by the commotion rubbed his eyes and yawned. When he took a whiff of the black hellebore's scent in the air, Seville calmed, and the frustration that had haunted him was gone.

"Not at the moment," Letho answered. "Do you have any secret chambers here aside from the third floor's room?"

Seville frowned, but he kept quiet.

"This concerns the culprit's capture," Roy said sternly. "You must tell me, or I might fail to capture the creature. No refunds."

Seville rubbed his braided beard intensely. A long while later, he sighed. "Very well then. I trust the Viper School's reputation. I wasn't going to refuse, but I needed time to think. This is important. There's a trapdoor beside the kitchen cabinet on the first floor. It leads… to the cellar. Be careful when you investigate. Do not destroy my wine barrels." He evaded their gazes, and when Seville came out from his bedroom, he held a key close to himself. "I'll be going with you."

"No. Give me the key. All you remember is that we're still searching your residence. Go back to sleep for an hour and forget everything that happened," Letho said hypnotically, and he drew a sign in front of the dwarf. Seville's eyes quickly lost focus, and he dumbly handed the key over to Letho. A moment later, he closed the bedroom's door, and a loud snore came from inside.

Roy looked surprised. "You hypnotized him?"

"He lied to me," Letho answered calmly. "Sometimes you have to adapt to find the truth." Since they had Seville's orders and key, they went into the kitchen without a hitch and found their way down to the cellar.

Despite it being a cellar, it was actually bigger than the house upstairs. Roy estimated that it was as big as the whole residence combined. Sconces lined one side of the wall, lighting up every corner of the cellar. The only thing in the room was wine. Barrels and barrels of it. There were two barrels on the ground, two on the rack, making them four barrels a group. They had signs hanging on them, showing the year and type of wine. Roy was fascinated, and he looked around.

"Grape wine from the year 1259. Honey wine from the year 1258. Nutty wine from the year 1257." The barrels in front were the younger ones. The further inside the barrel, the older the wine was. "Fiorano from the year 1200."

***

"Erveluce from the year 1158. Seville couldn't have stored all the wine made by dwarves in here, could he? There's even wine that's a hundred years old. Pity I don't like wine." Letho smacked Roy's shoulder, and Roy winced in pain. "You'll know the beauty of wine once you become a man," he lectured.

"I have no plans on becoming a drunkard."

One walk around the cellar would have taken them more than half an hour, but ten minutes later, Letho stopped in his tracks when he passed a barrel of dwarven liquor from the year 1198. His nose wiggled like a hunting dog's, and he rooted himself into his spot. Then he caressed the barrel and knocked on it. Roy heard nothing aside from the knocking sounds, but he smelled something.

"That smell…" Roy blurted out. His high Perception lent him a keen sense of smell. There was a rotten stench lingering near the barrels of wine they were examining. It was faint, but it was there.

Letho glanced at him in surprise. "Not everyone could've smelled that." Roy knew the smell belonged to a corpse, but Letho knew what kind of species the corpse belonged to. "Yes, this is the smell of a corpse, but the corpse of a human. The fifty-year-old dwarven liquor managed to cover most of the smell, but it can't fool a witcher."

Roy's heart skipped a beat. "You're saying there's a corpse in there?" He pointed at the barrel.

Letho nodded, his bushy eyebrow arched. "So that's why he wanted to follow us. He didn't want us to find out his little secret. I thought this was a little prank from a godling when I came here, but now I don't think so. It's more complex than that."