Then, four years later I received news from Aridea. She’d tracked down the little one, who was living in Mahakam with seven gnomes whom she’d managed to convince it was more profitable to rob merchants on the roads than to pollute their lungs with dust from the mines.

Miners and geologists, for whom the bleakness of Kovir’s barren mountains and rocks was an infallible signal that if there was such paucity on the surface there must be wealth beneath, also headed North. For nature loves equilibrium.

I need this conversation. They say silence is golden. Maybe it is, although I’m not sure it’s worth that much. It has its price certainly; you have to pay for it.

Which was why he knew that declarations about their safety could be classified along with such statements as: “my little dog doesn’t bite,” “my son’s a good boy,” “this stew’s fresh,” “I’ll give you the money back the day after tomorrow at the latest,” “he was only getting something out of my eye,” “the good of the fatherland comes before everything,” and “just answer a few questions and you’re free to go.

I was watching them carefully, and I know people. They weren’t lying.” “No,” the witcher agreed. “They weren’t lying. They firmly believed it all. Which doesn’t change the facts.

He was calm and cold. And killed calmly and coldly.

We be decent thieves, not some politicals. We didn’t try to attack the authorities. We was only stealing.

You surround the dead with veneration and memory, you dream of immortality, and in your myths and legends there’s always someone being resurrected, conquering death. But were your esteemed late great-grandfather really to suddenly rise from the grave and order a beer, panic would ensue.

It’s time you gave up your secrets, Geralt,’ Zoltan grimaced. ‘Dandelion hasn’t told us much we didn’t know. You can’t help it if you’re a walking legend. They re-enact stories of your adventures in puppet theatres. Like the story about you and an enchantress by the name of Guinevere.’ ‘Yennefer,’ Regis corrected in hushed tones. ‘I saw that one. It was the story of a hunt for a genie, if my memory serves me correctly.

A popular saying at King Vizimir’s court held that if Dijkstra states it is noon yet darkness reigns all around, it is time to start worrying about the fate of the sun.