‘A herring? Or a cuttlefish?’

‘Dolt. I’ll find some amber, perhaps a seahorse, or maybe a pretty conch. The point is it’s a symbol, a sign of concern and affection. I like Little Eye and I want to please her. Don’t you understand? I thought not. Let’s go. You first, because there might be a monster down there.’

‘Right.’ The Witcher slid down from the cliff onto the slippery rocks, covered with algae. ‘I’ll go first, in order to protect you if needs be. As a sign of my concern and affection. Just remember, if I shout, run like hell and don’t get tangled up in my sword. We aren’t going to gather seahorses. We’re going to deal with a monster that murders people.’

They set off downwards, into the rifts of the exposed seabed, in some places wading through the water still swirling in the rocky vents. They splashed around in hollows lined with sand and bladder wrack. To make matters worse it began to rain, so they were soon soaked from head to foot. Dandelion kept stopping and digging around in the pebbles and tangles of seaweed.

‘Oh, look, Geralt, a little fish. It’s all red, by the Devil. And here, look, a little eel. And this? What is it? It looks like a great big, transparent flea. And this… Oh, mother! Geraaalt!’

The Witcher turned around at once, with his hand on his sword.

It was a human skull, white, worn smooth by the rocks, jammed into a rocky crevice, full of sand. But not only sand. Dandelion, seeing a lugworm writhing in the eye socket, shuddered and made an unpleasant noise. The Witcher shrugged and headed towards the rocky plain exposed by the sea, in the direction of the two jagged reefs, known as the Dragons Fangs, which now looked like mountains. He moved cautiously. The seabed was strewn with sea cucumbers, shells and piles of bladder wrack. Large jellyfish swayed and brittle stars whirled in the rock pools and hollows. Small crabs, as colourful as hummingbirds, fled from them, creeping sideways, their legs scurrying busily.

Geralt noticed a corpse some way off, wedged between the rocks. The drowned man’s chest could be seen moving beneath his shirt and the seaweed, though in principle there was no longer anything to move it. It was teeming with crabs, outside and inside. The body could not have been in the water longer than a day, but the crabs had picked it so clean it was pointless examining it closer. The Witcher changed direction without a word, giving the corpse a wide berth. Dandelion did not notice anything.

‘Why, but it stinks of rot here,’ he swore, trying to catch up with Geralt. He spat and shook water from his bonnet. ‘And it’s tipping down and I’m cold. I’ll catch a chill and lose my bloody voice…’

‘Stop moaning. If you want to go back you know the way.’

Right beyond the base of the Dragons Fangs stretched out a flat, rocky shelf, and beyond it was deep water, the calmly rippling sea. The limit of the tide.