‘Which is why,’ Geralt continued, ‘you will now turn back into Biberveldt and hold your hands out nicely to be tied up. You aren’t capable of defying me, because I am what you are unable of copying. You are absolutely aware of this, Dudu. Because you took over my thoughts for a moment.’
Tellico straightened up abruptly. His face’s features, still those of the Witcher, blurred and spread out, and his white hair curled and began to darken.
‘You’re right, Geralt,’ he said indistinctly, because his lips had begun to change shape. ‘I took over your thoughts. Only briefly, but it was sufficient. Do you know what I’m going to do now?’
The leather witcher jacket took on a glossy, cornflower blue colour. The doppler smiled, straightened his plum bonnet with its egret’s feather, and tightened the strap of the lute slung over his shoulder. The lute which had been a sword a moment ago.
‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Witcher,’ he said, with the rippling laughter characteristic of Dandelion. ‘I’ll go on my way, squeeze my way into the crowd and change quietly into any-old-body, even a beggar. Because I prefer being a beggar in Novigrad to being a doppler in the wilds. Novigrad owes me something, Geralt. The building of a city here tainted a land we could have lived in; lived in in our natural form. We have been exterminated, hunted down like rabid dogs. I’m one of the few to survive. I want to survive and I will survive. Long ago, when wolves pursued me in the winter, I turned into a wolf and ran with the pack for several weeks. And survived. Now I’ll do that again, because I don’t want to roam about through wildernesses and be forced to winter beneath fallen trees. I don’t want to be forever hungry, I don’t want to serve as target practice all the time. Here, in Novigrad, it’s warm, there’s grub, I can make money and very seldom do people shoot arrows at each other. Novigrad is a pack of wolves. I’ll join that pack and survive. Understand?’
Geralt nodded reluctantly.
‘You gave dwarves, halflings, gnomes and even elves,’ the doppler continued, twisting his mouth in an insolent, Dandelion smile, ‘the modest possibility of assimilation. Why should I be any worse off? Why am I denied that right? What do I have to do to be able to live in this city? Turn into a she-elf with doe eyes, silky hair and long legs? Well? In what way is a she-elf better than me? Only that at the sight of the she-elf you pick up speed, and at the sight of me you want to puke? You know where you can stuff an argument like that. I’ll survive anyway. I know how to. As a wolf I ran, I howled and I fought without others over a she-wolf. As a resident of Novigrad I’ll trade, weave wicker baskets, beg or steal; as one of you I’ll do what one of you usually does. Who knows, perhaps I’ll even take a wife.’
The Witcher said nothing.
‘Yes, as I said,’ Tellico continued calmly. ‘I’m going. And you, Geralt, will not even try to stop me. Because I, Geralt, knew your thoughts for a moment. Including the ones you don’t want to admit to, the ones you even hide from yourself. Because to stop me you’d have to kill me. And the thought of killing me in cold blood fills you with disgust. Doesn’t it?’
The Witcher said nothing.
Tellico adjusted the strap of the lute again, turned away and walked towards the exit. He walked confidently, but Geralt saw him hunch his neck and shoulders in expectation of the whistle of a sword blade. He put his sword in its scabbard. The doppler stopped in mid-step, and looked around.
‘Farewell, Geralt,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Farewell, Dudu,’ the Witcher replied. ‘Good luck.’
The doppler turned away and headed towards the crowded bazaar, with Dandelion’s sprightly, cheerful, swinging gait. Like Dandelion, he swung his left arm vigorously and just like Dandelion he grinned at the wenches as he passed them. Geralt set off slowly after him. Slowly.
Tellico seized his lute in full stride; after slowing his pace he played two chords, and then dextrously played a tune Geralt knew. Turning away slightly, he sang.
Exactly like Dandelion.
Spring will return, on the road the rain will fall
Hearts will be warmed by the heat of the sun
It must be thus, for fire still smoulders in us all
An eternal fire, hope for each one.
‘Pass that on to Dandelion, if you remember,’ he called, ‘and tell him that Winter is a lousy title. The ballad should be called The Eternal Fire. Farewell, Witcher!’
‘Hey!’ suddenly resounded. ‘You, pheasant!’
Tellico turned around in astonishment. From behind a stall emerged Vespula, her breast heaving violently, raking him up with a foreboding gaze.
‘Eyeing up tarts, you cad?’ she hissed, breast heaving more and more enticingly. ‘Singing your little songs, are you, you knave?’
Tellico took off his bonnet and bowed, broadly smiling Dandelion’s characteristic smile.
‘Vespula, my dear,’ he said ingratiatingly, ‘how glad I am to see you. Forgive me, my sweet. I owe you—’
‘Oh, you do, you do,’ Vespula interrupted loudly. ‘And what you owe me you will now pay me! Take that!’
An enormous copper frying pan flashed in the sun and with a deep, loud clang smacked into the doppler’s head. Tellico staggered and fell with an indescribably stupid expression frozen on his face, arms spread out, and his physiognomy suddenly began to change, melt and lose its similarity to anything at all. Seeing it, the Witcher leaped towards him, in full flight snatching a large kilim from a stall. Having unfurled the kilim on the ground, he sent the doppler onto it with two kicks and rolled it up in it quickly but tightly.
Sitting down on the bundle, he wiped his forehead with a sleeve. Vespula, gripping the frying pan, looked at him malevolently, and the crowd closed in all around.
‘He’s sick,’ the Witcher said and smiled affectedly. ‘It’s for his own good. Don’t crowd, good people, the poor thing needs air.’
‘Did you hear?’ Chappelle asked calmly but resonantly, suddenly pushing his way through the throng. ‘Please do not form a public gathering here! Please disperse! Public gatherings are forbidden. Punishable by a fine!’
In the blink of an eye the crowd scattered to the sides, only to reveal Dandelion, approaching swiftly, to the sounds of his lute. On seeing him, Vespula let out an ear-splitting scream, dropped the frying pan and fled across the square.
‘What happened?’ Dandelion asked. ‘Did she see the Devil?’
Geralt stood up, holding the bundle, which had begun to move weakly. Chappelle slowly approached. He was alone and his personal guard was nowhere to be seen.
‘I wouldn’t come any closer,’ Geralt said quietly. ‘If I were you, Lord Chappelle, sir, I wouldn’t come any closer.’
‘You wouldn’t?’ Chappelle tightened his thin lips, looking at him coldly.
‘If I were you, Lord Chappelle, I would pretend I never saw anything.’
‘Yes, no doubt,’ Chappelle said. ‘But you are not me.’
Dainty Biberveldt ran up from behind the tent, out of breath and sweaty. On seeing Chappelle he stopped, began to whistle, held his hands behind his back and pretended to be admiring the roof of the granary.
Chappelle went over and stood by Geralt, very close. The Witcher did not move, but only narrowed his eyes. For a moment they looked at each other and then Chappelle leaned over the bundle.
‘Dudu,’ he said to Dandelion’s strangely deformed cordovan boots sticking out of the rolled-up kilim. ‘Copy Biberveldt, and quickly.’
‘What?’ Dainty yelled, stopping staring at the granary. ‘What’s that?’
‘Be quiet,’ Chappelle said. ‘Well, Dudu, are things coming along?’
‘I’m just,’ a muffled grunting issued from the kilim. ‘I’m . . . Just a moment . . .’
The cordovan boots sticking out of the kilim stretched, became blurred and changed into the halfling’s bare, hairy feet.
‘Get out, Dudu,’ Chappelle said. ‘And you, Dainty, be quiet. All halflings look the same, don’t they?’
Dain
ty mumbled something indistinctly. Geralt, eyes still narrowed, looked at Chappelle suspiciously. The minister, however, straightened up and looked all around, and all that remained of any gawkers who were still in the vicinity was the clacking of wooden clogs dying away in the distance.
The second Dainty Biberveldt scrambled and rolled out of the bundle, sneezed, sat up and rubbed his eyes and nose. Dandelion perched himself on a trunk lying alongside, and strummed away on his lute with an expression of moderate interest on his face.
‘Who do you think that is, Dainty?’ Chappelle asked mildly. ‘Very similar to you, don’t you think?’
‘He’s my cousin,’ the halfling shot back and grinned. ‘A close relative. Dudu Biberveldt of Knotgrass Meadow, an astute businessman. I’ve actually just decided . . .’
‘Yes, Dainty?’
‘I’ve decided to appoint him my factor in Novigrad. What do you say to that, cousin?’
‘Oh, thank you, cousin,’ his close relative, the pride of the Biberveldt clan, and an astute businessman, smiled broadly. Chappelle also smiled.
‘Has your dream about life in the city come true?’ Geralt muttered. ‘What do you see in this city, Dudu . . . and you, Chappelle?’
‘Had you lived on the moors,’ Chappelle muttered back, ‘and eaten roots, got soaked and frozen, you’d know. We also deserve something from life, Geralt. We aren’t inferior to you.’
‘Very true,’ Geralt nodded. ‘You aren’t. Perhaps it even happens that you’re better. What happened to the real Chappelle?’
‘Popped his clogs,’ the second Chappelle whispered. ‘Two months ago now. Apoplexy. May the earth lie lightly on him, and may the Eternal Fire light his way. I happened to be in the vicinity . . . No one noticed . . . Geralt? You aren’t going to—’
‘What didn’t anyone notice?’ the Witcher asked, with an inscrutable expression.
‘Thank you,’ Chappelle muttered.
‘Are there more of you?’
‘Is it important?’
‘No,’ agreed the Witcher, ‘it isn’t.’
A two-cubit-tall figure in a green cap and spotted coney fur coat dashed out from behind the wagons and stalls and trotted over.
‘Mr Biberveldt,’ the gnome panted and stammered, looking around and sweeping his eyes from one halfling to the other.
‘I presume, shorty,’ Dainty said, ‘that you have a matter for my cousin, Dudu Biberveldt, to deal with. Speak. Speak. That is him.’
‘Sorrel reports that everything has gone,’ the gnome said and smiled broadly, showing small, pointed teeth, ‘for four crowns apiece.’
‘I think I know what it’s about,’ Dainty said. ‘Pity Vivaldi’s not here, he would have calculated the profit in no time.’
‘If I may, cousin,’ Tellico Lunngrevink Letorte, Penstock for short, Dudu to his close friends, and for the whole of Novigrad a member of the large Biberveldt family, spoke up. ‘If I may, I’ll calculate it. I have an infallible memory for figures. As well as for other things.’
‘By all means,’ Dainty gave a bow. ‘By all means, cousin.’
‘The costs,’ the doppler frowned, ‘were low. Eighteen for the oil, eight-fifty for the cod liver oil, hmm . . . Altogether, including the string, forty-five crowns. Takings: six hundred at four crowns, makes two thousand four hundred. No commission, because there weren’t any middlemen . . .’
‘Please do not forget about the tax,’ the second Chappelle reminded him. ‘Please do not forget that standing before you is a representative of the city authorities and the temple, who treats his duties gravely and conscientiously.’
‘It’s exempt from tax,’ Dudu Biberveldt declared. ‘Because it was sold in a sacred cause.’
‘Hey?’
‘The cod liver oil, wax and oil dyed with a little cochineal,’ the doppler explained, ‘need only be poured into earthenware bowls with a piece of string dipped into it. The string, when lit, gives a beautiful, red flame, which burns for a long time and doesn’t smell. The Eternal Fire. The priests needed vigil lights for the altars of the Eternal Fire. Now they don’t need them.’
‘Bloody hell . . .’ Chappelle muttered. ‘You’re right. They needed vigil lights . . . Dudu, you’re brilliant.’
‘I take after my mother,’ Tellico said modestly.
‘Yes, indeed, the spitting image of his mother,’ Dainty agreed. ‘Just look into those intelligent eyes. Begonia Biberveldt, my darling aunt, as I live and breathe.’
‘Geralt,’ Dandelion groaned. ‘He’s earned more in three days than I’ve earned in my whole life by singing!’
‘In your place,’ the Witcher said gravely, ‘I’d quit singing and take up commerce. Ask him, he may take you on as an apprentice.’
‘Witcher,’ Tellico said, tugging him by the sleeve. ‘Tell me how I could . . . repay you . . . ?’
‘Twenty-two crowns.’
‘What?’
‘For a new jacket. Look what’s left of mine.’
‘Do you know what?’ Dandelion suddenly yelled. ‘Let’s all go to the house of ill repute! To Passiflora! The Biberveldts are paying!’
‘Do they admit halflings?’ Dainty asked with concern.
‘Just let them try not to,’ Chappelle put on a menacing expression. ‘Just let them try and I’ll accuse their entire bordello of heresy.’
‘Right,’ Dandelion called. ‘Very satisfactory. Geralt? Are you coming?’
The Witcher laughed softly.
‘Do you know what, Dandelion?’ he said. ‘I’ll come with pleasure.’
A LITTLE SACRIFICE
I
The mermaid emerged to waist-height from the water and splashed her hands violently and hard against the surface. Geralt saw that she had gorgeous, utterly perfect breasts. Only the colour spoiled the effect; the nipples were dark green and the areolae around them were only a little lighter. Nimbly aligning herself with an approaching wave, the mermaid arched gracefully, shook her wet, willow-green hair and sang melodiously.
‘What?’ The duke leaned over the side of the cog. ‘What is she saying?’
‘She’s declining,’ Geralt said. ‘She says she doesn’t want to.’
‘Have you explained that I love her? That I can’t imagine life without her? That I want to wed her? Only her, no other?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing.’
‘Say it again.’
The Witcher touched his lips and produced a quavering warble. Struggling to find the words and the intonation, he began to translate the duke’s avowal.
The mermaid, lying back on the water, interrupted.
‘Don’t translate, don’t tire yourself,’ she sang. ‘I understand. When he says he loves me he always puts on such a foolish expression. Did he say anything definite?’
‘Not really.’
‘Pity,’ the mermaid said, before she flapped in the water and dived under, flexing her tail powerfully and making the sea foam with her notched flukes, which resembled the tail of a mullet.
‘What? What did she say?’ the duke asked.
‘That it’s a shame.’
‘What’s a shame? What does she mean, “shame”?’
‘I’d say she turned you down.’
‘Nobody refuses me!’ the duke roared, denying the obvious facts.
‘My Lord,’ the skipper of the cog muttered, walking over to them. ‘The nets are ready, all we need do is cast them and she will be yours . . .’
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ Geralt said softly. ‘She’s not alone. There are more of them beneath the waves, and there may be a kraken deeper down there.’
The skipper quaked, blanched and seized his backside with both hands, in a nonsensical gesture.
‘A kra— kraken?’
‘Yes, a kraken,’ the Witcher repeated. ‘I don’t advise fooling around with nets. All she need do is scream, and all that’ll be left of this tub will be a few floating planks. They’d drown us like kittens
. Besides, Agloval, you should decide whether you want to wed her or catch her in a net and keep her in a barrel.’
‘I love her,’ Agloval said firmly. ‘I want her for my wife. But for that she must have legs and not a scaly tail. And it’s feasible, since I bought a magical elixir with a full guarantee, for two pounds of exquisite pearls. After drinking it she’ll grow legs. She’ll just suffer a little, for three days, no more. Call her, Witcher, tell her again.’
‘I’ve already told her twice. She said absolutely no, she doesn’t consent. But she added that she knows a witch, a sea witch, who is prepared to cast a spell to turn your legs into a handsome tail. Painlessly.’
‘She must be insane! She thinks I would have a fishy tail? Not a chance! Call her, Geralt!’
The Witcher leaned far out over the side. The water in the boat’s shadow was green and seemed as thick as jelly. He did not have to call. The mermaid suddenly shot out above the surface in a fountain of water. For a moment she literally stood on her tail, then dived down into the waves and turned on her back, revealing her attributes in all their glory. Geralt swallowed.
‘Hey!’ she sang. ‘Will this take much longer? My skin’s getting chapped from the sun! White Hair, ask him if he consents.’
‘He does not,’ the Witcher sang back. ‘Sh’eenaz, understand, he cannot have a tail, cannot live beneath the water. You can breathe air, but he cannot breathe underwater!’
‘I knew it!’ the mermaid screamed shrilly. ‘I knew it! Excuses, foolish, naive excuses, not a bit of sacrifice! Whoever loves makes sacrifices! I made sacrifices for him, every day I hauled myself out onto the rocks for him, I wore out the scales on my bottom, frayed my fins; I caught colds for him! And he will not sacrifice those two hideous pegs for me? Love doesn’t just mean taking, one also has to be able to give up things, to make sacrifices! Tell him that!’
‘Sh’eenaz!’ Geralt called. ‘Don’t you understand? He cannot survive in the water!’
‘I don’t accept stupid excuses! I . . . I like him too and want to have his fry, but how can I, if he doesn’t want to be a spawner? Where should I deposit my eggs, hey? In his cap?’
Introducing the Witcher Page 48
