‘No!’ he cried, clenching his fists. ‘Stop!’

‘That cage,’ said the flaminika, seeming not to hear him, ‘was originally meant to serve as a winter manger for starving animals, was meant to have stood in the forest, stuffed with hay. But when we seized those scoundrels, I recalled the nasty rumours and calumnies which people spread about us. Very well, I thought, you can have your Wicker Hag. You made it up as a horrific nightmare, so I shall treat you to that nightmare…’

‘Order them to stop,’ the Witcher gasped. ‘Honourable flaminika… Don’t set light to it… One of the bandits has important information for me…’

The flaminika folded her arms on her chest. Her cornflower-blue eyes were still soft and gentle.

‘Oh, no,’ she said dryly. ‘No chance. I don’t believe in the institution of turning imperial evidence. Wriggling out of a punishment is immoral.’

‘Stop!’ The Witcher yelled. ‘Don’t set fire to it! Stooo—’

The flaminika made a short gesture with her hand and Little Tree, still standing nearby, stamped down its roots and laid a bough on the Witcher’s shoulder. Geralt sat down with a thump.

‘Light it!’ the flaminika ordered. ‘I’m sorry, Witcher, but it must be thus. We druids cherish and venerate life in all its forms. But sparing the lives of criminals is sheer stupidity. Only terror deters criminals. So we shall give them an example of it. I pin great hopes on not having to repeat this example.’

The brushwood caught fire in an instant. The pyre belched smoke and flames leaped up. The yelling and screaming coming from the Wicker Hag made the Witcher’s hair stand on end. Of course, it was impossible among the cacophony–made louder by the crackle of the fire–but it seemed to Geralt that he could make out Nightingale’s desperate croaking and the high-pitched, pain-filled shrieks of the half-elf Schirrú.

The half-elf had been right, he thought. Death isn’t always the same.

And then–after a terribly long time–the pyre and the Wicker Hag mercifully exploded into an inferno of roaring fire, a fire in which nothing could survive.

‘Your medallion, Geralt,’ said Angoulême, standing beside him.

‘Eh?’ He cleared his throat, for his throat was tight. ‘What did you say?’

‘Your silver medallion with the wolf. Schirrú had it. Now you’ve lost it forever. It’ll melt in that heat.’

‘Too bad,’ he said a moment later, looking into the flaminika’s cornflower-blue eyes. ‘I’m no longer a witcher. I’ve stopped being a witcher. I’ve learned that now. On Thanedd, in the Tower of the Seagull. In Brokilon. On the bridge on the Yaruga. In the cave beneath Gorgon. And here, in Myrkvid Forest. No, I’m not a witcher now. So I’ll have to learn to manage without my medallion.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

The king loved the queen boundlessly, and she loved him with all her heart. Something so fair had to finish unhappily.

Flourens Delannoy, Fairy Tales and Stories