“That’s the sixth time you’ve shown it to me. And it’s no more interesting now than it was the first time.”

“How charming. And I thought I’d be safe with you!”

“I didn’t ask you to traipse after me in the hemp, and I did ask you to keep that foul tongue of yours quiet. You didn’t listen, so now you can suffer. In silence, please, because they’re just coming.”

Nettly and Dhun walked into the dayroom. Behind them hobbled a gray-haired old woman, twisted as a pretzel, led by a fair-haired and painfully thin teenage girl.

“Honorable Dhun, honorable Nettly,” the witcher began without introduction. “I asked you, before I left, whether you yourselves had already tried to do something with that devil of yours. You told me you hadn’t *done anything. I’ve grounds to think otherwise. I await your explanation.”

The villagers murmured among themselves, after which Dhun coughed into his fist and took a step forward. “Ye be right, sir. Asking forgiveness. We lied—it be guilt devours us. We wanted to outwit the deovel ourselves, for him to go away—”

“By what means?”

“Here in this Valley,” said Dhun slowly, “there be monsters in the past. Flying dragons, earth myriapodans, were-brawls, ghosts, gigantous spiders and various vipers. And all the times we be searching in our great booke for a way to deal with all that vermin.”

“What great book?”

“Show the booke, old woman. Booke, I say. The great booke! I’ll be on the boil in a minute! Deaf as a doorknob, she be! Lille, tell the old woman to show the booke!”

The girl tore the huge book from the taloned fingers of the old woman and handed it to the witcher.

“In this here great booke,” continued Dhun, “which be in our family clan for time immemorial, be ways to deal with every monster, spell and wonder in the world that has been, is, or will be.”

Geralt turned the heavy, thick, greasy, dust-encrusted volume in his hands. The girl was still standing in front of him, wringing her apron in her hands. She was older than he had initially thought—her delicate figure had deceived him, so different from the robust build of the other girls in the village.

He lay the book down on the table and turned its heavy wooden cover. “Take a look at this, Dandilion.”

“The first Runes,” the bard worked out, peering over his shoulder, the horseshoe still pressed to his forehead. “The writing used before the modern alphabet. Still based on elfin runes and dwarves’ ideograms. A funny sentence construction, but that’s how they spoke then. Interesting etchings and illuminations. It’s not often you get to see something like this, Geralt, and if you do, it’s in libraries belonging to temples and not villages at the edge of the world. By all the gods, where did you get that from, dear peasants? Surely you’re not going to try to convince me that you can read this? Woman? Can you read the First Runes? Can you read any runes?”