desire to enter for an hour. Reason triumphed. Dandilion sighed and rode on towards the university trying not to look in the direction of the taprooms from which issued the sounds of merriment.
Yes, what more can be said — the troubadour loved the town of Oxenfurt.
He looked around once more. The two individuals had not made use of the barber’s services, although they most certainly should have. At present they were standing outside a musical instrument shop, pretending to ponder over the clay ocarinas. The shopkeeper was falling over himself praising his goods and counting on making some money. Dandilion knew there was nothing to count on.
He directed his horse towards the Philosophers’ Gate, the main gate to the Academy. He dealt swiftly with the formalities, which consisted of signing into a guest book and someone taking his gelding to the stables.
Beyond the Philosophers’ Gate a different world greeted him. The college land was excluded from the ordinary infrastructure of town buildings; unlike the town it was not a place of dogged struggle for every square yard of space. Everything here was practically as the elves had left it. Wide lanes – laid with colourful gravel – between neat, eye-pleasing little palaces, open-work fences, walls, hedges, canals, bridges, flower-beds and green parks had been crushed in only a few places by some huge, crude mansion constructed in later, post-elven times. Everything was clean, peaceful and dignified — any kind of trade or paid service was forbidden here, not to mention entertainment or carnal pleasures.
Students, absorbed in large books and parchments, strolled along the lanes. Others, sitting on benches, lawns and in flower-beds, repeated their homework to each other, discussed or discreetly played at evens or odds, leapfrog, pile-up or other games demanding intelligence. Professors engrossed in conversation or debate also strolled here with dignity and decorum. Younger tutors milled around with their eyes glued to the backsides of female students. Dandilion ascertained with joy that, since his day, nothing had changed in the Academy.
A breeze swept, in from the Delta carrying the faint scent of the
sea and the somewhat stronger stink of hydrogen sulphide from the direction of the grand edifice of the Department of Alchemy which towered above the canal. Grey and yellow linnets warbled amongst the shrubs in the park adjacent to the students’ dormitories, while an orang-utan sat on the poplar having, no doubt, escaped from the zoological gardens in the Department of Natural History.
Not wasting any time, the poet marched briskly through the labyrinth of lanes and hedges. He knew the University grounds like the back of his hand – and no wonder, considering he had studied there for four years, then had lectured for a year in the Faculty of Trouvereship and Poetry. The post of lecturer had been offered to him when he had passed his final exams with full marks, to the astonishment of professors with whom he had earned the reputation of lazybones, rake and idiot during his studies. Then, when, after several years of roaming around the country with his lute, his fame as a minstrel had spread far and wide, the Academy had taken great pains to have him visit and give guest lectures. Dandilion yielded to their requests only sporadically, for his love of wandering was constantly at odds with his predilection for comfort, luxury and a regular income. And also, of course, with his liking for the town of Oxenfurt.
He looked back. The two individuals, not having purchased any ocarinas, pipes or violins, strode behind him at a distance, paying great attention to the treetops and facades.
Whistling lightheartedly the poet changed direction and made towards the mansion which housed the Faculty of Medicine and Herbology. The lane leading to the faculty swarmed with female students wearing characteristic pale green cloaks. Dandilion searched intently for familiar faces.
‘Shani!’
A young medical student with dark red hair cropped just below her ears raised her head from a volume on anatomy and got up from her bench.
‘Dandilion!’ She smiled, squinting her happy, hazel eyes. ‘I haven’t seen you for years! Come on, I’ll introduce you to my friends. They adore your poems ‘
‘Later,’ muttered the bard. ‘Look discreetly over there, Shani. See those two?’
‘Snoops.’ The medical student wrinkled her upturned nose and snorted, amazing Dandilion — not for the first time – with how easily students could recognise secret agents, spies and informers. Students’ aversion to the secret service was legendary, if not very rational. The university grounds were extraterritorial and sacred, and students and lecturers were untouchable while there — and the service, although it snooped, did not dare to bother or annoy academics.
‘They’ve been following me since the market place,’ said Dandilion, pretending to embrace and flirt with the medical student. ‘Will you do something for me, Shani?’
‘Depends what.’ The girl tossed her shapely neck like a frightened deer. ‘If you’ve got yourself into something stupid again . . .’
‘No, no,’ he quickly reassured her. ‘I only want to pass on some information and can’t do it myself with these shits stuck to my heels—’
‘Shall I call the lads? I’ve only got to shout and you’ll have those snoops off your back.’
‘Oh, come on. You want a riot to break out? The row over the bench ghetto for non-humans has just about ended and you can’t wait for more trouble? Besides, I loathe violence. I’ll manage the snoops. However, if you could . . .’
He brought his lips closer to the girl’s hair and took a while to whisper something. Shani’s eyes opened wide.
‘A witcher? A real witcher?’
‘Quiet, for the love of gods. Will you do that, Shani?’
‘Of course.’ The medical student smiled readily. ‘Just out of curiosity to see, close up, the famous—’
‘Quieter, I asked you. Only remember: not a word to anyone.’
A physician’s secret.’ Shani smiled even more beautifully and Dandilion was once more filled with the desire to finally compose a ballad about girls like her – not too pretty but nonetheless beautiful, girls of whom one dreams at night when those of classical beauty are forgotten after five minutes.
‘Thank you, Shani.’
‘It’s nothing, Dandilion. See you later. Take care.’ Duly kissing each other’s cheeks, the bard and the medical student briskly moved off in opposite directions – she towards the faculty, he towards Thinkers’ Park.
He passed the modern, gloomy Faculty of Technology building, dubbed the ‘Deus ex machina’ by the students, and turned on to Guildenstern Bridge. He did not get far. Two people lurked around a corner in the lane, by the flowerbed with a bronze bust of the first chancellor of the Academy, Nicodemus de Boot. As was the habit of all snoops in the world, they avoided meeting other’s eyes and, like all snoops in the world, they had coarse, pale faces. These they tried very hard to furnish with an intelligent expression, thanks to which they resembled demented monkeys.
‘Greetings from Dijkstra,’ said one of the spies. ‘We’re off.’ ‘Likewise,’ the bard replied impudently. ‘Off you go.’ The spies looked at each other then, rooted to the spot, fixed their eyes on an obscene word which someone had scribbled in charcoal on the plinth supporting the chancellor’s bust. Dandilion sighed.
‘Just as I thought,’ he said, adjusting the lute on his shoulder. ‘So am I going to be irrevocably forced to accompany you somewhere, gentlemen? Too bad. Let’s go then. You go first, I’ll follow. In this particular instance, age may go before beauty.’
Dijkstra, head of King Vizimir of Redania’s secret service, did not resemble a spy. He was far from the stereotype which dictated that a spy should be short, thin, rat-like, and have piercing eyes forever casting furtive glances from beneath a black hood. Dijkstra, as Dandilion knew, never wore hoods and had a decided preference for bright coloured clothing. He was almost seven foot tall and probably only weighed a little under two quintals. When he crossed his arms over his chest – which he did with habitual pleasure – it looked as if two cachalots had prostrated themselves over a whale. As far as his features, hair colour and complexion were concerned, he looked like a freshly scrubbed pig. Dandilion knew very few people whose appearance was as deceptive as Dijkstra’s – because this porky giant who gave the impression of being a sleepy, sluggish moron, possessed
an exceptionally keen mind. And considerable authority. 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.
At present, however, the poet had other reasons to worry.
‘Dandilion,’ said Dijkstra sleepily, crossing the cachalots over the whale, ‘you thick-headed halfwit. You unmitigated dunce. Do you have to spoil everything you touch? Couldn’t you, just once in your life, do something right? I know you can’t think for yourself. I know you’re almost forty, look almost thirty, think you’re just over twenty and act as though you’re barely ten. And being aware of this, I usually furnish you with precise instructions. I tell you what you have to do, when you have to do it and how you’re to go about it. And I regularly get the impression that I’m talking to a stone wall.’
‘I, on the other hand,’ retorted the poet, feigning insolence, ‘regularly have the impression that you talk simply to exercise your lips and tongue. So get to the point, and eliminate the figures of speech and fruitless rhetoric. What are you getting at this time?’
They were sitting at a large oak table amongst bookshelves crammed with volumes and piled with rolls of parchment, on the top floor of the vice-chancellor’s offices, in leased quarters which Dijkstra had amusingly named the Faculty of Most Contemporary History and Dandilion called the Faculty of Comparative Spying and Applied Sabotage. There were, including the poet, four present -apart from Dijkstra, two other people took part in the conversation. One of these was, as usual, Ori Reuven, the aged and eternally sniffing secretary to the chief of Redanian spies. The other was no ordinary person.
‘You know very well what I’m getting at,’ Dijkstra replied coldly. ‘However, since you clearly enjoy playing the idiot I won’t spoil your game and will explain using simple words. Or maybe you’d like to make use of this privilege, Philippa?’
Dandilion glanced at the fourth person present at the meeting, who until then had remained silent. Philippa Eilhart must have only recently arrived in Oxenfurt, or was perhaps intending to leave at once, since she wore neither a dress nor her favourite black agate
jewellery nor any sharp makeup. She was wearing a man’s short jacket, leggings and high boots – a ‘field’ outfit as the poet called it. The enchantress’s dark hair, usually loose and worn in a picturesque mess, was brushed smooth and tied back at the nape of her neck.
‘Let’s not waste time,’ she said, raising her even eyebrows. ‘Dandilion’s right. We can spare ourselves the rhetoric and slick eloquence which leads nowhere when the matter at hand is so simple and trivial.’
‘Ah, even so.’ Dijkstra smiled. ‘Trivial. A dangerous Nilfgaardian agent, who could now be trivially locked away in my deepest dungeon in Tretogor, has trivially escaped, trivially warned and frightened away by the trivial stupidity of two gentlemen known as Dandilion and Geralt. I’ve seen people wander to the scaffolds over lesser trivialities. Why didn’t you inform me about your ambush, Dandilion? Did I not instruct you to keep me informed about all the witcher’s intentions?’
‘I didn’t know anything about Geralt’s plans,’ Dandilion lied with conviction. ‘I told you that he went to Temeria and Sodden to hunt down this Rience. I also told you that he had returned. I was convinced he had given up. Rience had literally dissolved into thin air, the witcher didn’t find the slightest trail, and this – if you remember – I also told you—’
‘You lied,’ stated the spy coldly. ‘The witcher did find Rience’s trail. In the form of corpses. That’s when he decided to change his tactics. Instead of chasing Rience, he decided to wait for Rience to find him. He signed up to the Malatius and Grock Company barges as an escort. He did so intentionally. He knew that the Company would advertise it far and wide, that Rience would hear of it and then venture to try something. And so Rience did. The strange, elusive Master Rience. The insolent, self-assured Master Rience who does not even bother to use aliases or false names. Master Rience who, from a mile off, smells of Nilfgaardian chimney smoke. And of being a renegade sorcerer. Isn’t that right, Philippa?’
The magician neither affirmed nor denied it. She remained silent, watching Dandilion closely and intently. The poet lowered his eyes and hawked hesitantly. He did not like such gazes.
Dandilion divided women – including magicians – into very likeable, likeable, unlikeable and very unlikeable. The very likeable reacted to the proposition of being bedded with joyful acquiescence, the likeable with a happy smile. The unlikeable reacted unpredictably. The very unlikeable were counted by the troubadour to be those to whom the very thought of presenting such a proposition made his back go strangely cold and his knees shake.
Philippa Eilhart, although very attractive, was decidedly very unlikeable.
Apart from that, Philippa Eilhart was an important figure in the Council of Wizards, and King Vizimir’s trusted court magician. She was a very talented enchantress. Word had it that she was one of the few to have mastered the art of polymorphy. She looked thirty. In truth she was probably no less than three hundred years old.
Dijkstra, locking his chubby fingers together over his belly, twiddled his thumbs. Philippa remained silent. Ori Reuven coughed, sniffed and wriggled, constantly adjusting his generous toga. His toga resembled a professor’s but did not look as if it had been presented by a senate. It looked more as if it had been found on a rubbish heap.
‘Your witcher, however,’ suddenly snarled the spy, ‘underestimated Master Rience. He set a trap but – demonstrating a complete lack of common sense — banked on Rience troubling himself to come in person. Rience, according to the witcher’s plan, was to feel safe. Rience wasn’t to smell a trap anywhere, wasn’t to spy Master Dijkstra’s subordinates lying in wait for him. Because, on the witcher’s instructions, Master Dandilion had not squealed to Master Dijkstra about the planned ambush. But according to the instructions received, Master Dandilion was duty bound to do so. Master Dandilion had clear, explicit instructions in this matter which he deigned to ignore.’