“Smash us to pieces,” confirmed Pudlorak. “Or capsize us. Or throw us onto the bog, and we’ll end up like that wreck. See those trees being tossed about in the maelstrom? That whirlpool is tremendously powerful.”

“Indeed. It is. Because it’s probably an illusion. I think it’s another of the aguara’s illusions.”

“You think? You’re a witcher and you can’t tell?”

“I’d recognise a weaker illusion. And these ones are incredibly powerful. But I reckon—”

“You reckon. And if you’re wrong?”

“We have no choice,” snapped Pudlorak. “Either we go through the whirlpool or we sail around in circles—”

“—to our deaths.” Addario Bach finished his sentence. “To our miserable deaths.”

* * *

Every few moments the boughs of the tree spinning around in the whirlpool stuck up out of the water like the outstretched arms of a drowned corpse. The whirlpool churned, seethed, surged and sprayed foam. The Prophet shivered and suddenly shot forward, sucked into the maelstrom. The tree being tossed by the whirlpool slammed against the side, splashing foam. The cutter began to rock and spin around quicker and quicker.

The entire crew were yelling at various pitches.

And suddenly everything went quiet. The water calmed down and the surface became smooth. The Prophet Lebioda drifted very slowly between the tupelos on the banks.

“You were right, Geralt,” said Addario Bach, clearing his throat. “It was an illusion after all.”

Pudlorak looked long at the witcher. And said nothing. He finally took off his cap. His crown, as it turned out, was as shiny as an egg.

“I signed up for river navigation,” he finally croaked, “because my wife asked me to. It’ll be safer on the river, she said. Safer than on the sea. I won’t have to fret each time you set sail, she said.”

He put his cap back on, shook his head, then tightly grabbed a handle of the wheel.

“Is that it?” Kevenard van Vliet whimpered from under the cockpit. “Are we safe now?”

No one answered his question.

* * *

The water was thick with algae and duckweed. Cypresses began to dominate the riverside trees, their pneumatophores—or aerial roots, some of them almost six feet tall—sticking up densely from the bog and the shallows by the bank. Turtles basked on islands of weed. Frogs croaked.

This time they heard her before they saw her. A loud, raucous barking like a threat or a warning being intoned. She appeared on the bank in her vulpine form, on a withered, overturned tree trunk. She was barking, holding her head up high. Geralt detected strange notes in her voice and understood that apart from the threats there was an order. But it wasn’t them she was giving orders to.