“Ye need nae beat about the bush,” said Dhun suddenly. “We judged the witcher wrong. Tell him everything, Nettly.”

“The old woman forbade us to beat the devil,” said Nettly quickly, “but we know ‘tis Lille, because the woman… The woman only says what Lille tell her to. And we… Ye know yerself, sir. We listen.”

“I’ve noticed.” Geralt twisted his lips in a smile. “The woman can only waggle her chin and mumble a text which she doesn’t understand herself. And you stare at the girl, with gaping mouths, as if she were the statue of a goddess. You avoid her eyes but try to guess her wishes. And her wishes are your command. Who is this Lille of yours?”

“But ye have guessed that, sir. A prophetess. A Wise One. But say naught of this to anyone. We ask ye. If word were to get to the steward, or, gods forbid, to the viceroy—”

“Don’t worry,” said Geralt seriously. “I know what that means and I won’t betray you.”

The strange women and girls, called prophetesses or Wise Ones, who could be found in villages, didn’t enjoy the favor of those noblemen who collected levies and profited from farming. Farmers always consulted prophetesses on everything and believed them, blindly and boundlessly. Decisions based on their advice were often completely contrary to the politics of lords and overlords. Geralt had heard of incomprehensible decrees—the slaughter of entire pedigree herds, the cessation of sowing or harvesting, and even the migration of entire villages. Local lords therefore opposed the superstition, often brutally, and freemen very quickly learned to hide the Wise Ones. But they didn’t stop listening to their advice. Because experience proved the Wise Ones were always right in the long run.

“Lille did not permit us to kill the deovel,” continued Nettly. “She told us to do what the booke says. As ye well know, it did nae work out. There has already been trouble with the steward. If we give less grain in levy than be normal, ‘tis bawl he will, shout and fulminate. Thus we have nay even squeaked to him of the deovel, the reason being the steward be ruthless and knows cruelly little about jokes. And then ye happened along. We asked Lille if we could… hire ye—”

“And?”

“She said, through the woman, that she need first of all to look at ye.” “And she did.”

“That she did. And accepted ye she has, that we know. We can tell what Lille accepts and what she doesnae.”

“She never said a word to me.”

“She ne’er has spoken word to anyone—save the old woman. But if she had not accepted ye, she would nay have entered the room for all in the world—”

“Hmm…” Geralt reflected. “That’s interesting. A prophetess who, instead of prophesying, doesn’t say a word. How did she come to be among you?”

“We nae know, witcher, sir,” muttered Dhun. “But as for the old woman, so the older folk remember, it be like this. The old woman afore her took a close-tongued girl under her wing too, one as which came from no one knows. And that girl she be our old woman. My grandfather would say the old woman be reborn that way. Like the moon she be reborn in the sky and ever new she be. Do nae laugh—”