Geralt seized another grimoire from the table. It was heavy, with a binding encrusted with fragments of a human skull. He slammed the hunchback with it, sending bone splinters flying in all directions.

Degerlund spluttered, fighting to raise a hand. Geralt realised he was trying to cast a spell. The growing thud of heavy feet indicated that Bue and Bang were approaching. Pastor scrambled up from the floor, fumbling around, searching for the crossbow.

Geralt saw his sword on the table and seized it. He staggered, almost falling over. He grasped Degerlund by the collar and pressed the blade against his throat.

“Your sigil!” he screamed into his ear. “Teleport us out of here!”

Bue and Bang, armed with scimitars, collided with each other in the doorway and got caught there, jammed solid. Neither of them thought of letting the other one through. The door frame creaked.

“Teleport us!” Geralt grabbed Degerlund by the hair, bending his head backwards. “Now! Or I’ll slit your throat.”

Bue and Bang tumbled out of the doorway, taking the frame with them. Pastor found the crossbow and raised it.

Degerlund opened his shirt with a trembling hand and shrieked out a spell, but before the darkness engulfed them he broke free of the Witcher and pushed him away. Geralt caught him by a lace cuff and tried to pull the sorcerer towards him, but at that moment the portal was activated and all his senses, including touch, vanished. He felt an elemental force sucking him in, jerking him and spinning him as though in a whirlpool. The cold was numbing. For a split second. One of the longer and more ghastly split seconds of his life.

He thudded against the ground. On his back.

He opened his eyes. Black gloom, impenetrable darkness, was all around him. I’ve gone blind, he thought. Have I lost my sight?

He hadn’t. It was simply a very dark night. His tapetum lucidum—as Degerlund had eruditely named it—had started working, picking up all the light there was in those conditions. A moment later he recognised around him the outlines of some tree trunks, bushes or undergrowth.

And above his head, when the clouds parted, he saw stars.

INTERLUDE

The following day