Chapter 222

“Your Highness, you think highly of me indeed,” the Witcher said gravely. “Vizima’s sewers cover nearly as much ground as the city itself. The channels are dense, the terrain devilishly complex. It would take a great deal of time just to walk the whole place once, never mind clearing out the Monsters lurking inside.”

He thought it through aloud. “Let me see, in a dank, miserable place like the sewers, you’d usually expect Drowners, Drowned Dead, perhaps Nekkers and ghouls. I can handle those. But if my luck turns and I happen on a Fleder nesting down there, then I’m finished.”

Adda, however, had clearly prepared for the Witcher’s concern. She clapped her hands, and a remarkably young Knight approached the two of them and slowly unrolled an old, yellowed parchment map.

“Roy, you are the Goddess’s most trusted Knight. Of course I would not send you to your death.” Adda’s fingertips brushed across the map. “Among the books kept in Foltest Castle, there was this, a sewer construction map from the earliest days of Vizima. It records the location of every channel, the interior structure, and the exits leading up to the surface. Look...”

The map was wrinkled and carried a faint smell of mildew from damp, and, from age, some of the ink had blurred. Judging from the sectional drawings, it was an enormous underground labyrinth, a web of interlinked pipe-like passages covering the whole of Vizima.

Following Adda’s long finger, Roy found the map’s key feature.

Each tunnel joined another end to end, and at every turn, conspicuous numbered markers had been left on the wall bricks. That would let anyone entering the sewers quickly determine where they were and keep from losing their sense of direction.

On top of that, the exits connecting the sewers to the surface were marked even more clearly. At a rough glance, there was at least one for almost every street in the city.

Adda’s finger slid along the map from one exit to another not far away.

“With this map as a guide, no matter where you are in the sewers, you should be able to reach an exit within a quarter of an hour at a normal pace.”

“A quarter of an hour?” Roy sounded doubtful.

“I had men ask every worker who ever cleared the sewers. They all said the same thing.” Adda’s tone was certain. “With a Witcher’s speed, running at full tilt would likely cut that time in half again. So even if you meet a danger you cannot handle, you would still be able to retreat in time.”