Blood of Elves Read Free

Cintra, the town destroyed by the Invaders. Am I right?”
    Dandilion smiled, remaining enigmatic and aloof. “I sing of universal matters, my dear, generous lady,” he stated. “Of emotions which anyone can experience. Not about specific people.”
    “Oh, come on!” yelled a voice from the crowd. “Everyone knows those songs are about Geralt the Witcher!”
    “Yes, yes!” squealed Baron Vilibert’s daughters in chorus, drying their sodden scarves. “Sing on, Master Dandilion! What happened next? Did the witcher and Yennefer the Enchantress find each other in the end? And did they love each other? Were they happy? We want to know!”
    “Enough!” roared the dwarf leader with a growl in his throat, shaking his mighty waist-length, red beard. “It’s crap – all these princesses, sorceresses, destiny, love and women’s fanciful tales. If you’ll pardon the expression, great poet, it’s all lies, just a poetic invention to make the story prettier and more touching. But of the deeds of war – the massacre and plunder of Cintra, the battles of Marnadal and Sodden – you did sing that mightily, Dandilion! There’s no regrets in parting with silver for such a song, a joy to a warrior’s heart! And I, Sheldon Skaggs, declare there’s not an ounce of lies in what you say – and I can tell the lies from the truth because I was there at Sodden. I stood against the Nilfgaard invaders with an axe in my hand…”
    “I, Donimir of Troy,” shouted the thin knight with three lions passant blazoned across his tunic, “was at both battles of Sodden! But I did not see you there, sir dwarf!”
    “No doubt because you were looking after the supply train!” Sheldon Skaggs retorted. “While I was in the front line where things got hot!”
    “Mind your tongue, beardy!” said Donimir of Troy flushing, hitching up his sword belt. “And who you’re speaking to!”
    “Have a care yourself!” The dwarf whacked his palm against the axe wedged in his belt, turned to his companions and grinned. “Did you see him there? Frigging knight! See his coat of arms? Ha! Three lions on a shield? Two shitting and the third snarling!”
    “Peace, peace!” A grey-haired druid in a white cloak averted trouble with a sharp, authoritative voice. “This is not fitting, gentlemen! Not here, under Bleobheris’ crown, an oak older than all the disputes and quarrels of the world! And not in Poet Dandilion’s presence, from whose ballads we ought to learn of love, not contention.”
    “Quite so!” a short, fat priest with a face glistening with sweat seconded the druid. “You look but have no eyes, you listen but have deaf ears. Because divine love is not in you, you are like empty barrels—”
    “Speaking of barrels,” squeaked a long-nosed gnome from his cart, painted with a sign for “Iron hardware, manufacture and sale”, “roll another out, guildsmen! Poet Dandilion’s throat is surely dry – and ours too, from all these emotions!”
    “—Verily, like empty barrels, I tell ye!” The priest, determined not to be put off, drowned out the ironware gnome. “You have understood nothing of Master Dandilion’s ballad, you have learned nothing! You did not see that these ballads speak of man’s fate, that we are no more than toys in the hands of the gods, our lands no more than their playground. The ballads about destiny portrayed the destinies of us all, and the legend of Geralt the Witcher and Princess Cirilla – although it is set against the true background of that war – is, after all, a mere metaphor, the creation of a poet’s imagination designed to help us—”
    “You’re talking rubbish, holy man!” hollered Vera Loewenhaupt from the heights of her cart. “What legend? What imaginative creation? You may not know him, but I know Geralt of Rivia. I saw him with my own eyes in Wyzima, when he broke the spell on King Foltest’s daughter. And I met him again later on the Merchants’ Trail, where, at Gildia’s