Chapter 17: THE DEVIL IN THE FIELDS
"It's the devil, I tell you. The devil himself."
Farmer Borys—a different Borys than the one I'd helped at the Temple of Melitele, but the coincidence made me think of drowners and terror ballads—stood in the tavern doorway, cap twisted in his hands. His face was pale beneath the sunburn.
"What happened?" I set down my ale.
"The wheat field. Something... something destroyed half my crop. But not like animals would—they made shapes. Pictures. Mocking pictures." He swallowed hard. "A face. Laughing at me."
The tavern fell quiet. Everyone knew about the "devil" by now—the strange disturbances that had plagued Posada for months. But this was the boldest attack yet, targeting a farmer's livelihood directly.
"I'll watch the fields tonight," I said.
Borys stared at me like I'd offered to wrestle a striga. "You? But you're just a—"
"Just a bard. I know." I smiled with more confidence than I felt. "But I've traveled strange roads. Seen things that make ordinary devils look tame. Let me watch. If nothing else, I can tell you what I observe."
He agreed because no one else volunteered.
The field stretched silver under moonlight, wheat stalks whispering in the wind. I sat at the edge with my lute across my knees, Evasion awareness extended as far as I could push it. My power reservoir felt strong—three months in Posada had rebuilt what the Dandelion experiment had drained.
Torque. I know it's you. Question is, do you know me?
Hours passed. My legs cramped. An owl hooted somewhere in the darkness, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. The heroic bard, frightened by birds.
Near midnight, something moved.
A figure—small, quick, horned—darted through the wheat with impossible grace. It danced more than walked, weaving patterns that seemed random until you realized they were letters, words, insults written in trampled grain.
There you are.
Torque the Sylvan. Goat-legged, horned, grinning with a mouth full of pointed teeth. He hummed tunelessly as he destroyed crops, a working song for a night's labor.
I didn't run. Didn't shout for help.
I sat down properly, arranged my lute, and began to play.
The music cut through the night—a gentle melody, something I'd composed back in Oxenfurt about moonlit wanderings. Nothing threatening. Just beauty offered into darkness.
Torque froze mid-dance.
His head swiveled toward me with the uncanny flexibility of someone whose neck wasn't entirely human. Yellow eyes gleamed in the shadows. For a long moment, we simply looked at each other across thirty yards of damaged wheat.
Then he walked closer.
Don't reach for power. Don't try to influence him. Just play.
The Sylvan stopped ten feet away, head tilted at an angle that would have hurt a human neck. Up close, he was stranger than any show had depicted—not cute or comic, but genuinely inhuman. His hooves left no marks in the soft soil. His horns curved like a ram's, grooved with age I couldn't guess.
"You play well for a human." His voice was reed-thin, musical in its own dissonant way. "Most would be running by now. Screaming. Calling for pitchforks."
"I've met worse things than you." Not strictly true, but close enough. "You're not here to kill anyone."
"How would you know what I'm here for?"
"The crop damage is annoying, not devastating. You're making a point, not waging war." I kept playing, kept the melody light and unthreatening. "You want the farmers scared enough to stop expanding. Not scared enough to form a militia."
Torque's eyes narrowed. The grin didn't fade, but something sharpened behind it.
"Clever human. Too clever, perhaps." He stepped closer, and I forced myself not to flinch. "My friends don't like clever humans. They have a history with your kind. A painful one."
Filavandrel's elves. The last survivors of a dying race, watching their world shrink year by year.
"I'm not your enemy."
"No?" The Sylvan's head tilted the other direction. "Then what are you?"
"A bard. Here to make songs, not trouble." I met his yellow eyes. "I have no interest in what happens in those hills. That's between you and whoever comes to handle it."
"Someone will come?"
"Someone always comes."
Torque stared at me for a long moment. Then he laughed—a strange, bleating sound that echoed across the field.
"I like you, human. You're honest, in your strange way." He backed away, hooves silent on the ground. "But playing won't save you if you're ever caught in those hills. My friends are not as forgiving as I am."
He vanished.
One moment there, the next gone—melted into darkness like he'd never existed. The wheat still showed his damage, the mocking patterns still visible, but the Sylvan himself had disappeared.
I stopped playing. My hands shook.
Faster than he looked. If he'd wanted to hurt me, I couldn't have stopped him.
The Evasion Instinct had barely stirred throughout the encounter. Torque hadn't attacked, hadn't truly threatened—just observed, tested, measured. He'd decided I wasn't worth escalating over.
For now.
I told Borys I'd seen "something" but nothing had attacked. He thanked me with visible relief, and the crop damage stopped for the following weeks. Torque had made his point; pushing further risked actual confrontation.
The walk back to town that night felt longer than the walk out. My hands didn't stop shaking until I'd had two cups of strong ale.
He mentioned friends. Filavandrel's elves. The story is aligning.
I thought about the drowners at the temple, the way my Terror Ballad had barely touched their alien minds. Torque had responded to music—not with fear, but with curiosity. A different kind of creature, one that appreciated art even while committing mischief.
Don't interfere further. Let Geralt handle this when he arrives.
The timeline was fragile. Every interaction risked changing the sequence of events I was counting on. Geralt needed to come to Posada, take the contract, confront Filavandrel. That confrontation was important—it shaped who the Witcher would become, what choices he'd make later.
I couldn't afford to steal that from him by solving the problem early.
Five more months. Maybe four. Be patient.
I ordered another ale and tried to stop my hands from trembling.
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