“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 traveled past them in the opposite direction. The bard pulled his leg over the saddlebow, 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 colored 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 toward 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.