In short, it was wonderful. Even the Witcher, that old sourpuss and bore, began to smile and enjoy life more, for he reckoned we were covering fifteen miles a day, which we had never once managed since leaving Brokilon. The Witcher had no work, for though the Dank Wilderness was so dank it would have been difficult to imagine anything danker, we did not encounter any monsters. Sure, at night spectres howled a little, forest weepers moaned and will o’ the wisps capered on the bogs. But nothing remarkable.

It was a tiny bit worrying, in truth, that once again we were travelling in quite an accidentally chosen direction and once again without a precisely defined destination. But, as the vampire Regis articulated, it is better to go forward without an aim than loiter without an aim, and with surety much better than to retreat without an aim.

‘Dandelion! Strap that tube of yours on securely! It would be a shame for half a century of poetry to break free and get lost in the ferns.’

‘No fear! I shan’t lose it, be certain of it. Nor let anyone take it from me! Anyone wanting this tube will have to wrest it from my cooling corpse. Might one know, Geralt, what provokes your peals of laughter? Let me hazard a guess… Congenital imbecility?’

It so happened that a team of archaeologists from the University of Castell Graupian, conducting excavations in Beauclair, dug through a layer of charcoal–indicating a great fire–to an even older layer, estimated to date from the 13th century. In that layer, a cavern formed by the remains of walls and sealed by clay and lime was excavated, and in it–to the great excitement of the scholars–were two perfectly preserved human skeletons: those of a woman and a man. Beside the skeletons–apart from weapons and countless small artefacts–was a tube made of hardened leather and measuring two and a half feet long. A coat of arms with faded colours depicting lions and lozenges was embossed on the leather. Professor Schliemann, a distinguished specialist in the sigillography of the Dark Ages, who was leading the team, identified the coat of arms as the emblem of Rivia, an ancient kingdom of unconfirmed location. The archaeologists’ excitement reached its peak, since manuscripts were kept in similar tubes in the Dark Ages, when the container’s weight permitted the supposition that there was plenty of paper or parchment preserved inside. The tube’s excellent condition offered hope that the documents would be legible and throw light on the shadowy past. The centuries were about to speak! It was an exceptional surprise, a victory of science which could not be squandered. Linguists and scholars of extinct languages were prudently summoned from Castell Graupian, along with specialists capable of opening the tube without the risk of even the slightest damage to the valuable contents.