“Do you know that other worlds, different from ours, exist, which the Conjunction of the Spheres cut off access to? Universes, called elemental and para-elemental planes. Inhabited by creatures called demons? The accomplishments of Alzur et consortes were excused by saying they had gained access to those planes and creatures. That they’d managed to invoke and tame such creatures, that they’d wrested from them and gained possession of their secrets and knowledge. I think that’s all nonsense and fabrication, but everybody believes it. And what can one do when faith is so strong? In order for people to believe I was close to discovering the secrets of the old masters, I had to convince Rissberg that I know how to invoke demons. Ortolan, who’d once successfully carried out goetia, didn’t want to teach me that art. He had an insultingly low opinion of my magical abilities and made me remember where my place was. Why, for the good of my career I’ll remember that. They’ll see!”

The black cat, weary of being stroked, hopped off the sorcerer’s lap. He swept a cold glance of his golden, wide-open eyes over the Witcher. And walked away, tail held aloft.

Geralt was having more and more difficulty breathing and felt shivers shooting through his body which he couldn’t control at all. The situation looked grave and only two circumstances augured well, giving him reason to hope. Firstly, he was still alive, and where there’s life there’s hope, as his preceptor in Kaer Morhen, Vesemir, used to say.

The second circumstance that augured well was Degerlund’s swollen ego and conceitedness. It seemed the sorcerer had fallen in love with his own words as a young man and they were clearly the love of his life.

“Unable, thus, to become a goetic practitioner,” the sorcerer went on, twisting the medallion and endlessly delighting in his own voice, “I had to pretend to be one. Pretend. It’s known that a demon invoked by a goetic practitioner often breaks free and wreaks destruction. So, I did just that. Several times. I slaughtered several settlements. And they believed it was a demon.

“You’d be astonished how gullible they are. I once decapitated a peasant I had caught and sewed the head of a large goat onto his neck using biodegradable catgut, disguising the stitches with plaster and paint. After that I displayed it to my learned colleagues as a baphomet, the result of an extremely difficult experiment in the field of creating humans with animal heads. Only a partly successful one, because the end result didn’t survive. They believed me, just imagine. I rose even higher in their esteem. They’re still waiting for me to create something that will survive. I confirm their belief in this by constantly sewing some head or other onto a decapitated corpse.