“I found out they planned to send you to get me. I got slightly cold feet, I don’t deny it, since I’d heard this and that about witchers, and about you in particular. I ran to Ortolan as quickly as I could, crying save me, my beloved master. My beloved master first told me off and muttered something about killing woodcutters being very naughty, that it wasn’t nice and that it was to be the last time. But then he advised me how to trick you and lure you into a trap. How to capture you, using a teleportational sigil that I had tattooed on my manly chest a few years ago. He forbade me, however, from killing you. Don’t think that it’s out of kindness. He needs your eyes. To be precise: the tapetum lucidum, the layer of tissue lining the inside of your eyeballs, a tissue that reflects and intensifies the light directed at the photoreceptor cells, thanks to which you can see at night and in the dark like a cat. Ortolan’s newest idée fixe is to equip the whole of humanity with the ability to see like cats. As part of the preparations for such a lofty goal he intends to graft your tapetum lucidum onto some other mutation he’s creating and the tissue for the implant must be taken from a live donor.”

Geralt cautiously moved his fingers and hand.

“Ortolan, an ethical and merciful mage, intends—in his boundless goodness—to spare your life after removing your eyeballs. He thinks that it’s better to be blind than deceased, furthermore he hesitates at the thought of causing pain to your lover, Yennefer of Vengerberg, for whom he feels a great and—in his case, strange—affection. On top of that, he, Ortolan, is now close to completing a magical regenerational formula. In several years you’ll be able to report to him and he’ll restore your eyesight. Are you pleased? No? And rightly. What? Do you want to say something? Please speak.”

Geralt pretended to be having difficulty moving his lips. Actually, he didn’t have to pretend at all. Degerlund raised himself from his chair and leaned over him.