The sheets of the mainmast caught on a hanging branch. Several snakes coiled themselves around them, and several others—including two mambas—dropped onto the deck. Raising their heads and hissing, they attacked the men huddled up against the starboard side. Fysh and Cobbin fled aft and the deckhands, yelling, bolted astern. One of them jumped into the water and disappeared before he could cry out. Blood frothed on the surface.

“A lopustre!” shouted the Witcher, pointing at a wave and a dark shape moving away. “It’s real—unlike the snakes.”

“I detest reptiles…” sobbed Kevenard van Vliet, huddled up by the side. “I detest snakes—”

“There aren’t any snakes. And there weren’t any. It’s an illusion.”

The deckhands shouted and rubbed their eyes. The snakes had vanished. Both from the deck and from the bank. They hadn’t even left any tracks.

“What…” Petru Cobbin grunted. “What was it?”

“An illusion,” repeated Geralt. “The aguara has caught up with us.”

“You what?”

“The vixen. She’s creating illusions to confuse us. I wonder how long she’s been doing it. The storm was probably genuine. But there were two offshoots, the captain’s eyes didn’t deceive him. The aguara cloaked one of the offshoots in an illusion. And faked the compass needle. She also created the illusion of the snakes.”

“Witcher tall tales!” Fysh snorted. “Elven superstitions! Old wives’ tales! What, some old fox has abilities like that? Hides rivers, confounds compasses? Conjures up serpents where there aren’t any? Fiddlesticks! I tell you it’s these waters! We were poisoned by vapours, venomous swamp gases and miasmas! That’s what caused those hallucinations…”

“They’re illusions created by the aguara.”

“Do you take us for fools?” yelled Cobbin. “Illusions? What illusions? Those were real vipers! You all saw them, didn’t you? Heard the hissing? I even smelled their stench!”

“That was an illusion. The snakes weren’t real.”

The Prophet’s sheets snagged on overhanging branches again.

“That’s a hallucination, is it?” asked one of the deckhands, holding out his hand. “An illusion? That snake isn’t real?”

“No! Stand still!”

The huge ariete hanging from a bough gave a blood-curdling hiss and struck like lightning, sinking its fangs into the sailor’s neck: once, twice. The deckhand gave a piercing scream, fell, shaking in convulsions, banging the back of his head rhythmically against the deck. Foam appeared on his lips and blood began to ooze from his eyes. He was dead before they could get to him.

The Witcher covered the body in a canvas sheet.

“Dammit, men,” he said. “Be heedful! Not everything here is a mirage!”

“Beware!” yelled the sailor in the bow. “Bewaaare! There’s a whirlpool ahead of us! A whirlpool!”