His head would ache up to this day, foreboding autumn rains.

“Well, let it be so,” said Peter, barely understanding what he meant. “Let it be...”

At the roadside there was standing a coach. The moustached coachman sat there, bored, sipping from his flask from time to time. Still higher, to the left hand, where heather was fading under dark firs, a graveyard began. Near one of the crosses, around the grave there were sitting people. Peter recognized the company officer with his wife, the mage and young Karolinka. Also there was a very old man dressed in dark blue – the colours of the Opolie house. The old man was stooping heavily, leaning forward. All the people didn’t move, looking at a single point in front of them. Thus would sit players absorbed in a complicated game.

Peter could swear he knew what game was lying on the grave in front of the amazing five.

The “Triple Nornscoll”.

“ ‘I have a presentiment,’ said the mage, getting up. ‘Today, with the God’s help...’ ”

“I’ll write a song,” Peter Sliadek stopped. He was looking at the people occupied with the game, as if hoping they could hear him, digress, stop racking their tormented hearts with the dream of correcting – the most wonderful and the most deceitful dream in the world. “I give you my word, I’ll write a song. A real one. You won’t get angry if I sing it everywhere? I’m seldom allowed to visit castles...”

He threw his lute farther on his shoulder and moved along the Kichora road.

Whistling “Hoy, clover of five leaves.”