No one remembered what the place was, who had built it and whom and what it served. The ruins of an ancient edifice, once a large and probably prosperous complex, had survived in the valley beyond the inn. Practically nothing remained of the buildings apart from what was left of the foundations, some overgrown hollows and some stone blocks dotted about. The rest had been demolished and plundered. Building materials were precious, nothing went to waste.

They walked in beneath the ruins of a shattered portal, once an impressive arch, now resembling a gibbet; the impression of which was enhanced by ivy hanging like a severed noose. They walked along a path between the trees. Dead, crippled and misshapen trees, bent over as though by the weight of a curse hanging over the place. The path led towards a garden. Or rather towards something that had once been a garden. Beds of berberis, juniper shrubs, rambling roses, probably once decoratively pruned, were now a disordered and chaotic tangle of branches, prickly climbers and dried stalks. Peeping out of the tangle were the remains of statues and sculptures, mainly full-length. The remains were so vestigial that there was no way of even approximately determining who—or what—the statues had once portrayed. In any case, it wasn’t especially important. The statues were the past. They hadn’t survived and so they had stopped mattering. All that remained was a ruin and one—it seemed—that would survive a long time, since ruins are eternal.

A ruin. A monument to a devastated world.

“Dandelion.”

“Yes?”

“Lately everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. And it seems to me that I’ve fucked everything up. Whatever I’ve touched lately I’ve botched.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It must be so, then. Don’t expect a comment. I’m tired of commenting. And now go and feel sorry for yourself in silence, if you would. I’m composing at the moment and your laments are distracting me.”

Dandelion sat down on a fallen column, pushed his bonnet back on his head, crossed his legs and adjusted the pegs on the lute.

A flickering candle, the fire went out,

A cold wind blew perceptibly…

A wind had indeed blown up, suddenly and violently. And Dandelion stopped playing. And sighed loudly.

The Witcher turned around.

She was standing at the entrance to the path, between the cracked plinth of an unrecognisable statue and the tangled thicket of a dead whipple-tree. She was tall and wore a clinging dress. With a head of greyish colouring, more typical of a corsac than a silver fox. Pointed ears and an elongated face.

Geralt didn’t move.

“I warned you I would come.” Rows of teeth glistened in the she-fox’s mouth. “One day. Today is that day.”