‘This.’

‘You’re descending from cynicism into triviality and banality. Try again.’

‘The thing I love most about you is your mind, your intelligence and your spiritual profundities. Your independence and freedom, your—’

‘I don’t understand where all this sarcasm in you comes from…’

‘It wasn’t sarcasm; it was a joke.’

‘I can’t bear jokes like that. Especially not at the wrong time. Everything, my dear, has its time and a time is set for all matters under the sun. There is a time for silence and a time for speech, a time for weeping tears and a time for laughter, a time for sowing and a time for groping, I mean reaping, a time for jokes and a time for gravity…’

‘A time for carnal caresses and a time for refraining from them?’

‘Hey, don’t take it so literally! Accept, rather, that there’s a time for compliments. Love-making without compliments smacks of physiology and physiology is shallow. Pay me compliments.’

‘No one, from the Yaruga to the Buina, has such a gorgeous behind as you.’

‘Blast it, now for a change you’ve compared me to some barbaric little northern rivers. Passing over the various metaphors, couldn’t you have said from the Alba to the Velda? Or from the Alba to Sansretour?’

‘I’ve never seen the Alba. I try hard to avoid judgements when they aren’t backed up by hard experience.’

‘Ooh! Truly? Then I think you’ve seen and experienced enough bums–for that’s what we’re talking about–to be able to judge. Well, White Hair? How many women have you had before me? Eh? I asked you a question, Witcher! No, no, let go, hands off, you won’t wriggle out of it like that. How many women have you had before me?’

‘None. You’re my first.’

‘At last.’

Nimue stared for a long time at a painting depicting ten women sitting at a round table in subtle chiaroscuro.

‘Pity,’ she finally said, ‘that we don’t know what they really looked like.’

‘The Great Sorceresses?’ snorted Condwiramurs. ‘There are dozens of portraits of them! In Aretuza alone—’

‘I said really,’ interrupted Nimue. ‘I didn’t mean flattering likenesses painted on the basis of other flattering likenesses. Don’t forget there was a time when the reputations of sorceresses were maligned. As were the sorceresses themselves. And later there was the time of propaganda when the Great Sorceresses must have aroused respect, admiration and reverential fear by their very appearance. The Meetings of the Lodge, The Conspiracies and The Convents all date from that time, canvasses and engravings showing a table and around it ten magnificent, enchantingly beautiful women. And there aren’t any real, authentic portraits. Apart from two exceptions. The portrait of Margarita Laux-Antille that hangs in Aretuza on the Isle of Thanedd and which miraculously survived the fire is authentic. And the portrait of Sheala de Tancarville in Ensenada, Lan Exeter is authentic.’

‘And the portrait of Francesca Findabair painted by elves hanging in the Vengerberg gallery?’ asked Condwiramurs.