The Last Wish (22 page)

'That's rubbish,' interrupted Dandilion. 'I've tried it. It doesn't strengthen anything and it makes the soup taste of old socks. But if people believe it and are inclined to pay—'

'I'm not going to kill mecopterans. Nor any other harmless creatures.'

'Then you'll go hungry. Unless you change your line of work.'

'To what?'

'Whatever. Become a priest. You wouldn't be bad at it with all your scruples, your morality, your knowledge of people and of everything. The fact that you don't believe in any gods shouldn't

be a problem - I don't know many priests who do. Become a priest and stop feeling sorry for yourself.' .

'I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I'm stating the facts.'

Dandilion crossed his legs and examined his worn sole with interest. 'You remind me, Geralt, of an old fisherman who, towards the end of his life, discovers that fish stink and the breeze from the sea makes your bones ache. Be consistent. Talking and regretting won't get you anywhere. If I were to find that the demand for poetry had come to an end, I'd hang up my lute and become a gardener. I'd grow roses.'

'Nonsense. You're not capable of giving it up.'

'Well,' agreed the poet, still staring at his sole, 'maybe not. But our professions differ somewhat. The demand for poetry and the sound of lute strings will never decline. It's worse with your trade. You witchers, after all, deprive yourselves of work, slowly but surely. The better and the more conscientiously you work, the less work there is for you. After all, your goal is a world without monsters, a world which is peaceful and safe. A world where witchers are unnecessary. A paradox, isn't it?'

'True.'

'In the past, when unicorns still existed, there was quite a large group of girls who took care of their virtue in order to be able to hunt them. Do you remember? And the ratcatchers with pipes? Everybody was fighting over their services. But they were finished off by alchemists and their effective poisons and then domesticated ferrets and weasels. The little animals were cheaper, nicer and didn't guzzle so much beer. Notice the analogy?'

'I do.'

'So use other people's experiences. The unicorn virgins, when they lost their jobs, immediately popped their cherry. Some, eager to make up for the years of sacrifice, became famous far and wide for their technique and zeal. The ratcatchers . . . Well, you'd better not copy them, because they, to a man, took to drink and went to the dogs. Well, now it looks as if the time's come for witchers. You're reading Roderick de Novembre? As far as I remember, there are mentions of witchers there, of the first ones

who started work some three hundred years ago. In the days when the peasants used to go to reap the harvest in armed bands, when villages were surrounded by a triple stockade, when merchant caravans looked like the march of regular troops, and loaded catapults stood on the ramparts of the few towns night and day. Because it was us, human beings, who were the intruders here. This land was ruled by dragons, manticores, griffins and amphisboenas, vampires and werewolves, striga, kikimoras, chimerae and flying drakes. And this land had to be taken from them bit by bit, every valley, every mountain pass, every forest and every meadow. And we didn't manage that without the invaluable help of witchers. But those times have gone, Geralt, irrevocably gone. The baron won't allow a forktail to be killed because it's the last draconid for a thousand miles and no longer gives rise to fear but rather to compassion and nostalgia for times passed. The troll under the bridge gets on with people. He's not a monster used to frighten children. He's a relic and a local attraction - and a useful one at that.

And chimerae, manticores and amphisboenas? They dwell in virgin forests and inaccessible mountains—'

'So I was right. Something is coming to an end. Whether you like it or not, something's coming to an end.'

'I don't like you mouthing banal platitudes. I don't like your expression when you do it. What's happening to you? I don't recognise you, Geralt. Ah, plague on it, let's go south as soon as possible, to those wild countries. As soon as you've cut down a couple of monsters, your blues will disappear. And there's supposed to be a fair number of monsters down there. They say that when an old woman's tired of life, she goes alone and weaponless into the woods to collect brushwood. The consequences are guaranteed. You should go and settle there for good.'

'Maybe I should. But I won't.'

'Why? It's easier for a witcher to make money there.'

'Easier to make money,' Geralt took a sip from the demijohn. 'But harder to spend it. And on top of that, they eat pearl barley and millet, the beer tastes like piss, the girls don't wash and the mosquitoes bite.'

Dandilion chuckled loudly and rested his head against the bookshelf, on the leather-bound volumes.

'Millet and mosquitoes! That reminds me of our first expedition together to the edge of the world,' he said. 'Do you remember? We met at the fete in Gulet and you persuaded me—'

'You persuaded me! You had to flee from Gulet as fast as your horse could carry you because the girl you'd knocked up under the musicians' podium had four sturdy brothers. They were looking for you all over town, threatening to geld you and cover you in pitch and sawdust.

That's why you hung on to me then.'

'And you almost jumped out of your pants with joy to have a companion. Until then you only had your horse for company. But you're right, it was as you say. I did have to disappear for a while, and the Valley of Flowers seemed just right for my purpose. It was, after all, supposed to be the edge of the inhabited world, the last outpost of civilisation, the furthest point on the border of two worlds . . . Remember?'

'I remember.'

Dandilion came down the steps of the inn carefully, carrying two tankards dripping with froth.

Cursing under his breath he squeezed through a group of curious children and crossed the yard at a diagonal, avoiding the cowpats.

A number of villagers had already gathered round the table in the courtyard where the witcher was talking to the alderman. The poet set the tankards down and found a seat. He realised straight away that the conversation hadn't advanced a jot during his short absence.

'I'm a witcher, sir,' Geralt repeated for the umpteenth time, wiping beer froth from his lips. 'I don't sell anything. I don't go around enlisting men for the army and I don't know how to treat glanders. I'm a witcher.'

'It's a profession,' explained Dandilion yet again. 'A witcher, do you understand? He kills strigas and spectres. He exterminates all sorts of vermin. Professionally, for money. Do you get it, alderman?'

'Aha!' The alderman's brow, deeply furrowed in thought, grew smoother. A witcher! You should have said so right away!'

'Exactly,' agreed Geralt. 'So now I'll ask you: is there any work to be found around here for me?'

'Aaaa.' The alderman quite visibly started to think again. 'Work? Maybe those . . . Well . . .

werethings? You're asking are there any werethings hereabouts?'

The witcher smiled and nodded, rubbing an itching eyelid with his knuckles.

'That there are,' the alderman concluded after a fair while.

'Only look ye yonder, see ye those mountains? There's elves live there, that there is their kingdom. Their palaces, hear ye, are all of pure gold. Oh aye, sir! Elves, I tell ye. 'Tis awful.

He who yonder goes, never returns.'

'I thought so,' said Geralt coldly. 'Which is precisely why I don't intend going there.'

Dandilion chuckled impudently.

The alderman pondered a long while, just as Geralt had expected.

'Aha,' he said at last. 'Well, aye. But there be other werethings here too. From the land of elves they come, to be sure. Oh, sir, there be many, many. 'Tis hard to count them all. But the worst, that be the Bane, am I right, my good men?'

The 'good men' came to life and besieged the table from all sides.

'Bane!' said one. 'Aye, aye, 'tis true what the alderman says. A pale virgin, she walks the cottages at daybreak, and the children, they die!'

'And imps,' added another, a soldier from the watchtower. 'They tangle up the horses' manes in the stables!'

'And bats! There be bats here!'

'And myriapodans! You come up all in spots because of them!'

The next few minutes passed in a recital of the monsters which plagued the local peasants with their dishonourable doings, or their simple existence. Geralt and Dandilion learnt of misguids and mamunes, which prevent an honest peasant from finding his way home in a drunken stupour, of the flying drake which drinks milk from cows, of the head on spider's legs which runs around in the forest, of hobolds which wear red hats and about a dangerous pike which tears linen from women's hands as they wash it - and just you wait and it'll be at the women themselves. They weren't spared hearing that old Nan the Hag flies on a broom at night and performs abortions in the day, that the miller tampers with the flour by mixing it with powdered acorns and that a certain Duda believed the royal steward to be a thief and scoundrel.

Geralt listened to all this calmly, nodding with feigned interest, and asked a few questions about the roads and layout of the land, after which he rose and nodded to Dandilion.

'Well, take care, my good people,' he said. 'I'll be back soon, then we'll see what can be done.'

They rode away in silence alongside the cottages and fences, accompanied by yapping dogs and screaming children.

'Geralt,' said Dandilion, standing in the stirrups to pick a fine apple from a branch which stretched over the orchard fence, 'all the way you've been complaining about it being harder and harder to find work. Yet from what I just heard, it looks as if you could work here without break until winter. You'd make a penny or two, and I'd have some beautiful subjects for my ballads. So explain why we're riding on.'

'I wouldn't make a penny, Dandilion.'

'Why?'

'Because there wasn't a word of truth in what they said.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'None of the creatures they mentioned exist.'

'You're joking!' Dandilion spat out a pip and threw the apple core at a patched mongrel. 'No, it's impossible. I was watching them carefully, and I know people. They weren't lying.'

'No,' the witcher agreed. 'They weren't lying. They firmly believed it all. Which doesn't change the facts.'

The poet was silent for a while.

'None of those monsters . . . None? It can't be. Something of what they listed must be here. At least one! Admit it.'

'All right. I admit it. One does exist for sure.'

'Ha! What?'

'A bat.'

They rode out beyond the last fences, on to a highway between beds yellow with oilseed and cornfields rolling in the wind. Loaded carts travelled past them in the opposite direction. The bard pulled his leg over the saddle-bow, rested his lute on his knee and strummed nostalgic tunes, waving from time to time at the giggling, scantily clad girls wandering along the sides of the road carrying rakes on their robust shoulders.

'Geralt,' he said suddenly, 'but monsters do exist. Maybe not as many as before, maybe they don't lurk behind every tree in the forest, but they are there. They exist. So how do you account for people inventing ones, then? What's more, believing in what they invent? Eh, famous witcher? Haven't you wondered why?'

'I have, famous poet. And I know why.'

'I'm curious.'

'People,' Geralt turned his head, like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.'

I'll remember that,' said Dandilion, after a moment's silence. 'I'll find some rhymes and compose a ballad about it.'

'Do. But don't expect a great applause.'

They rode slowly but lost the last cottages of the hamlet from sight. Soon they had climbed the row of forested hills.

'Ha.' Dandilion halted his horse and looked around. 'Look, Geralt. Isn't it beautiful here?

Idyllic, damn it. A feast for the eyes!'

The land sloped gently down to a mosaic of flat, even fields picked out in variously coloured crops. In the middle, round and regular like a leaf of clover, sparkled the deep waters of three lakes surrounded by dark strips of alder thickets. The horizon was traced by a misty blue line of mountains rising above the black, shapeless stretch of forest.

'We're riding on, Dandilion.'

The road led straight towards the lakes alongside dykes and ponds hidden by alder trees and filled with quacking mallards, garganeys, herons and grebes. The richness of bird life was surprising alongside the signs of human activity — the dykes were well maintained and covered with fascines, while the sluice gates had been reinforced with stones and beams. The outlet boxes, which were not in the least rotten, trickled merrily with water.

Canoes and jetties were visible in the reeds by the lakes and bars of set nets and fish-pots were poking out of the deep waters.

Dandilion suddenly looked around.

'Someone's following us,' he said, excited. 'In a cart!'

'Incredible,' scoffed the witcher without looking around. 'In a cart? And I thought that the locals rode on bats.'

'Do you know what?' growled the troubadour. 'The closer we get to the edge of the world, the sharper your wit. I dread to think what it will come to!'

They weren't riding fast and the empty cart, drawn by two piebald horses, quickly caught up with them.

'Woooooaaaaahhhh!' The driver brought the horses to a halt just behind them. He was wearing a sheepskin over his bare skin and his hair reached down to his brows. 'The gods be praised, noble sirs!'

'We, too,' replied Dandilion, familiar with the custom, 'praise them.'

'If we want to,' murmured the witcher.

'I call myself Nettly,' announced the carter. 'I was watching ye speak to the alderman at Upper Posada. I know ye tae be a witcher.'