“Spare me, Dandilion.”

“As you wish. I only wanted to be helpful, that’s all. And you shouldn’t scorn ancient songs. There’s wisdom in them, accumulated over generations. There’s a ballad about a farmhand called Slow, who—”

“Stop wittering. We have to earn our board and lodging.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Rummage around a bit in the hemp.”

“That’s original,” snorted the troubadour. “Though not too refined.”

“And you, how would you go about it?”

“Intelligently.” Dandilion sniffed. “Craftily. With a hounding, for example. I’d chase the devil out of the thicket, chase him on horseback, in the open field, and lasso him. What do you think of that?”

“Interesting. Who knows, maybe it could be done, if you took part—because at least two of us are needed for an enterprise like that. But we’re not going hunting yet. I want to find out what this thing is, this devil. That’s why I’m going to rummage about in the hemp.”

“Hey!” The bard had only just noticed. “You haven’t brought your sword!”

“What for? I know some ballads about devils, too. Neither the woman nor Slow the farmhand used a sword.”

“Hmm…” Dandilion looked around. “Do we have to squeeze through the very middle of this thicket?”

“You don’t have to. You can go back to the village and wait for me.”

“Oh, no,” protested the poet. “And miss a chance like this? I want to see a devil too, see if he’s as terrible as they claim. I was asking if we have to force our way through the hemp when there’s a path.”

“Quite right.” Geralt shaded his eyes with his hand. “There is a path. So let’s use it.”

“And what if it’s the devil’s path?”

“All the better. We won’t have to walk too far.”

“Do you know, Geralt,” babbled the bard, following the witcher along the narrow, uneven path among the hemp. “I always thought the devil was just a metaphor invented for cursing: ‘go to the devil’, ‘to the devil with it’, ‘may the devil.’ Lowlanders say: ‘The devils are bringing us guests,’ while dwarves have ‘Duvvel hoael’ when they get something wrong, and call poor-blooded livestock devvelsheyss. And in the Old Language, there’s a saying, ‘A d’yaebl aep arse,’ which means—”

“I know what it means. You’re babbling, Dandilion.”

Dandilion stopped talking, took off the hat decorated with a heron’s feather, fanned himself with it and wiped his sweaty brow. The humid, stifling heat, intensified by the smell of grass and weeds in blossom, dominated the thicket. The path curved a little and, just beyond the bend, ended in a small clearing which had been stamped in the weeds.

“Look, Dandilion.”

In the very center of the clearing lay a large, flat stone, and on it stood several clay bowls. An almost burnt-out tallow candle was set among the bowls. Geralt saw some grains of corn and broad beans among the unrecognizable pips and seeds stuck in the flakes of melted fat.