


He had suspected from the start the elders weren’t telling them something. Yarpen stroked his beard and muttered something under his breath. The elders claimed that the calm had disrupted the village’s status quo. The village elders knew someone who knew Geralt and had offered him a fat purse if he’d gather a party to look into it. Lately, though, the gloom had receded, and no one had disappeared for months. Villagers who wandered too close would vanish without a trace.

A profitable gold mine at one point, the caverns had been a gloomy, monster-infested place for decades. Perhaps the cave’s inhabitants were his intended audience. This time his whining seemed especially loud, as though he were shouting to something in the darkness. So why hasn’t she said anything? “We’re here! And not a moment too soon – my saddle sores were about to incite an uprising.” Dandelion always complained in his performing voice, to make sure his woes registered in the cheap seats. Some kind of magic nearby, or some creature from another sphere. His witcher medallion twitched on his chest. Riss must have sensed it, too,” Geralt thought to himself.
