“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 day break, 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 dishonorable doings, or their simple existence. Geralt and Dandilion learned of misguids and mamunes, which prevent an honest peasant from finding his way home in a drunken stupor, 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.”