Chapter 204

“La la la ... la la la ... la la la...”

A middle-aged man came swaying forward with his eyes half closed, humming a strange little tune. His crimson sleeping robe shifted and rippled with every loose movement of his body. He looked like a man deep in drink, or else a patient in the grip of some fit.

He seemed not to notice the Witchers standing guard and walked straight toward the smithy door, only to slam hard into Letho’s solid chest.

The man jolted all over like a sleepwalker suddenly woken, his thick, overlong brows folding down.

“What’s this supposed to mean?” He lifted his head.

Gods, what a face. Greasy dark-brown hair hung loose behind his head, both shoulders of his robe dusted white with dandruff. He wore a ragged goat beard under a jutting brow, with a flattened upturned nose and a narrow monkeyish mouth.

Roy had to narrow his eyes. The man looked like a half-evolved curly-haired baboon wrapped in a red nightgown.

“That’s the question we ought to ask you,” Roy said, fighting down a ridiculous urge to laugh, and pointed to the sign hanging at the door. “The shop’s closed for a few days. No customers. Come back later.”

“Who said I came for the blacksmith? I’m here for the bastard inside...” A cold, human sort of sneer spread across the man’s simian face. “He took my money and failed to do the work. A grave breach of contract, all written out in black and white.” He fished a sheet of paper from his robe and flashed it in front of the Witchers so quickly that only a blur could be seen. “A debt must be paid, even a king can’t wriggle out of one. So, are you two going to stop me?”

At once the Witchers understood. This had to be the “madman” Berengar had spoken of, the creditor. And of course, he had waited until the Viper School swords were nearly complete to come and make trouble.

“Take it easy, sir. Berengar won’t evade the debt.”

“You’re his friends? Fellow Witchers from another school? Planning to pay it in his place?” The man’s eyes swept across Roy, pausing a little too long at his throat and pupils.

“I’m Roy of the Viper School. This is Letho. Berengar and we are, more or less ... friends. And you are?”

Roy’s eyes flicked toward the obsidian pendant hanging at the man’s throat.

“My name is Kalkstein. Alchemist.”

The man spoke, and at the same time his personal information rose before the Witcher’s eyes.

Kalkstein

Age: 209

Identity:

Alchemy Master (He has mastered alchemical arts to their pinnacle: potion-making, biology, transmutation, and magical synthesis)

Free Sorcerer (Tamed magic flows within him; he has not joined the Brotherhood of Sorcerers)

...

Roy rubbed at his temples with a faint headache, something complicated flashing through his eyes.

This strange-looking fellow was no obscure nobody. If things followed their expected course, he would later have no small number of dealings with Geralt, and as a generous alchemist, he would even help the White Wolf more than once. But his most obvious trait was his wildly unrestrained thinking. He had one famous saying in particular:

“Ghouls are little darlings. They clean up rotting corpses and prevent plagues.”

It was hard to say simply whether he was a good man or a bad one.