A human head was floating in the third jar. Geralt might not have recognised the features, which were distorted by cuts, swelling and discolouration, barely visible through the cloudy liquid and thick glass. But the head was quite bald. Only one sorcerer shaved his head.

Harlan Tzara—it transpired—had never made it to Poviss.

Things were suspended in other jars: various blue and pale horrors. But there were no more heads.

There was a table in the middle of the room. A steel, purpose-built table with a gutter.

A naked corpse was lying on the table. A diminutive one. The remains of a child. A fair-haired little girl.

The remains had been slit open with a cut in the shape of a letter “Y.” The internal organs, removed, had been arranged on both sides of the body, evenly, neatly and orderly. It looked just like an engraving from an anatomical atlas. All that was missing were plate numbers: fig. 1, fig. 2 and so on.

He caught sight of movement out of the corner of his eye. A large black cat flashed by close to the wall, glanced at him, hissed and fled through the open door. Geralt set off after him.

“Mester…”

He stopped. And turned around.

In the corner stood a low cage, resembling a chicken coop. He saw thin fingers clenching the iron bars. And then two eyes.

“Mester… Help me…”

It was a little boy, no more than ten years old. Cowering and trembling.

“Help me…”

“Sssh, be quiet. You’re in no danger now, but hold on a little longer. I’ll be back soon to get you.”

“Mester! Don’t go!”

“Be quiet, I said.”

First there was a library with dust that made his nose tingle. Then something like a drawing room. And then a bedchamber. A huge bed with a black canopy on ebony columns.

He heard a rustle. And turned around.

Sorel Degerlund was standing in the doorway. Coiffured, in a mantle embroidered with gold stars. A smallish, quite grey creature armed with a Zerrikanian sabre was standing beside him.

“I have a specimen jar full of formalin prepared,” said the sorcerer. “For your head, you abomination. Kill him, Beta!”

The creature, an incredibly fast grey apparition, an agile and noiseless grey rat, had already attacked with a whistle and a flash of the sabre before Degerlund had finished his sentence and while he was still delighting in his own voice. Geralt avoided two blows, delivered diagonally in classic style. The first time he felt the movement of air pushed by a blade by his ear, and the second a brush on his sleeve. He parried the third blow, and for a moment they crossed swords. He saw the face of the grey creature, its large yellow eyes with vertical pupils, narrow slits instead of a nose and pointed ears. The creature had no mouth at all.