Season of Storms

Season of Storms is a novel in Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher fantasy series. It follows Geralt of Rivia, a witcher: a magically mutated monster hunter for hire who carries two signature swords, one of steel for mundane threats and one of silver for magical creatures. An epilogue set 127 years later connects the story to the series' broader mythology.

Geralt kills a deadly predator called an idr in the rural district of Ansegis, saving a woman and her daughter but failing to prevent the death of a man torn apart before Geralt can intervene. The local reeve tries to inflate the payment invoice to skim from the royal treasury, but Geralt refuses to sign the fraudulent bill. This refusal sets events in motion: The sorceress Lytta Neyd, known as Coral, an independent practitioner backed by the sorcerers' governing bodies, offers King Belohun of Kerack information about treasury embezzlement. Her tip-off becomes the basis for a denunciation targeting Geralt.

When Geralt arrives in the port city of Kerack, he deposits his swords at a guardhouse before entering the upper town. Three men arrest him on charges of inflating witcher invoices and misappropriating Crown funds. At trial, Geralt argues his own defense, asserting that a single anonymous denunciation is insufficient evidence. The judge sets bail at 500 crowns, which Geralt cannot pay. Someone posts his bail, but upon release he discovers his swords have been stolen from the guardhouse. Dandelion, Geralt's long-time bard companion, appears alongside his cousin Ferrant de Lettenhove, the royal instigator, and reveals that Coral both informed on Geralt and paid his bail.

Geralt confronts Coral at her villa, where she confirms she acted on behalf of unnamed sorcerers with unspecified plans for him. She explains that Geralt's romance with the sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg, and their breakup about a year earlier, made him an object of interest within the magical community. To provoke Coral, Geralt stares at her pupil Mozaïk, a pale girl with slicked-down hair. Coral retaliates by magically twisting Mozaïk's hand. When Geralt returns carrying a white freesia matching Coral's perfume, she promises to heal Mozaïk's hand, and their confrontation escalates into a passionate affair. Coral reveals she hails from the island nation of Skellige, while Geralt privately recognizes he is filling the void left by Yennefer. Mozaïk warns him that Coral knows this, too.

During a storm, Coral performs divination through her magical fountain, revealing visions linked to the stolen swords. Dandelion recognizes a towering rock formation as a landmark near Ravelin, the fortified home of Pyral Pratt, the region's organized crime lord. Pratt confirms he was offered the swords but directed the seller to auction them at the Borsody brothers' house in Novigrad on July 15th. The price for this information: Geralt must fight a vigilosaur, a magically bred guard lizard, bare-chested in Pratt's arena. Geralt kills it and departs with the crucial lead.

Riders intercept Geralt and bring him to Prince Egmund, one of Belohun's rival heirs. Disguised as his brother Xander, Egmund demands Geralt help seize the throne, threatening to destroy his reputation with forged evidence. Geralt refuses. Egmund drops the pretense and hires Geralt to protect King Belohun during the royal wedding, promising payment and dismissal of his court case while retaining the forged documents as leverage.

Geralt arrives at Rissberg Castle, seat of the ancient Grandmaster Ortolan, as part of the sorcerers' plans. The sorcerers Pinety (Algernon Guincamp) and Harlan Tzara reveal someone at the castle has been practicing goetia, the forbidden invocation of demons, and the resulting possessed individual has massacred three forest settlements, killing roughly 40 people. At a fresh massacre site, Geralt finds Sorel Degerlund, Ortolan's assistant, drenched in blood. Degerlund activates a teleportation sigil tattooed on his chest and transports Geralt to a secret lair, where two ogrotrolls (ogre-troll hybrids) called Bue and Bang and a marksman called Pastor seize him. Degerlund injects Geralt with venom and confesses he never practiced goetia at all: The massacres were committed by Bue and Bang while Degerlund participated, growing to enjoy the killing. Ortolan wants Geralt's eyes for transplant research. Geralt's witcher metabolism neutralizes the venom; he incapacitates Degerlund with the Somne Sign, a sleep-inducing spell, and forces a teleportation that malfunctions, ejecting Geralt alone into a marsh.

Stranded, Geralt escapes pursuing soldiers and meets Addario Bach, a dwarf musician who helps him reach the river. They board the cutter Prophet Lebioda and discover it carries a kidnapped she-fox child seized during a botched rescue expedition. When a drunken merchant strangles the girl, the child's mother, an aguara (a fox-like shape-shifting creature), pursues the ship through swampy channels with devastating illusions. She boards the vessel, takes the girl's body, and warns Geralt she will come for him. Geralt and his companions escape in a small boat.

Geralt returns to Kerack too late for the auction. In an interlude at the Borsody auction house, Yennefer secretly purchases the swords through the dwarf banker Molnar Giancardi. The seller turns out to be Nikefor Muus, the court clerk from Geralt's trial, and Yennefer curses his gold so it turns to excrement when spent.

Back in Kerack, Geralt finds his affair with Coral over. The sorcerer Pinety arrives, bringing Geralt's mare Roach and gifting him a Viroledian sword. Pinety reports that Degerlund received only a reprimand and house arrest in the Citadel, a fortress atop Mount Cremora. Geralt enlists Otto Dussart, a werewolf whose life he once spared, to find a cave entrance into the Citadel. Inside, he discovers Harlan Tzara's severed head in a specimen jar, confirming Degerlund murdered the sorcerer. Geralt kills Bue, Bang, and Pastor with Dussart's help, then strangles Degerlund to death.

At King Belohun's wedding, both Egmund and Xander are exposed as plotters and exiled. The king puts on a medallion gifted by his bride, Ildiko Breckl, and the gold chain magically contracts, strangling him. The banished firstborn Viraxas immediately appears with mercenaries and claims the throne. When conspirators take Dandelion hostage to coerce Geralt into killing the royal guards, Geralt kills all four captors in seconds.

A catastrophic tsunami devastates Kerack. Coral vanishes during the storm. Geralt dives into floodwaters to rescue drowning children; Antea Derris, Pratt's daughter, helps but is killed by debris. When Coral returns, Geralt coldly rejects her, and Mozaïk chooses to leave with him. Geralt later parts from Mozaïk at an inn, leaving her a letter instructing her to return to Coral and continue her studies.

A journeyman sorceress named Tiziana Frevi, commissioned by Yennefer, delivers Geralt's original swords. A rogue witcher called Brehen, the Cat of Iello, threatens a confrontation over King Foltest's bounty to lift a curse from Foltest's daughter, but Geralt faces him down without violence. In a ruined garden, the aguara appears one final time, revealing the she-fox child was alive all along: Her death was merely an illusion. The aguara transforms into the likeness of Yennefer, lets Geralt touch her cheek, and dead dogwood blooms white around them. "Illusion," she says. "Everything is illusion."

In an epilogue set 127 years later, a girl named Nimue, trekking to the sorceress school at Aretuza, is saved from an idr by a white-haired man with two swords. She recognizes him as Geralt, but the man gently notes that Geralt died over a century ago. He performs an unknown witcher Sign and Nimue falls asleep. She wakes on a merchant's wagon, uncertain whether the encounter was real. "The story goes on," she thinks. "The story never ends."